"No!" Garruk seethed with anger. The woman he was about to slay had planeswalked - just as he was delivering the killing blow. "Argh!" He lost control, the curse amplifying his rage, and fueling his body. He drove the spell meant for Kate into a nearby tree, and poured in all the mana that he could find, making the death seep into the ground, and spread. It went, like a blot of ink in wet paper, spreading from the trunk of the tree to others, killing and withering everything it touched. It was only contained by the borders of the park, turning the trees, grass, and water an oily black, even cracking the walkways, turning them a sickly blackish green. The stain of death had taken its toll on what once full of life.
He turned and disappeared into the night.
XXXXX
"What are you talking about 'The Blind Eternities'?" Kate asked. "What's a Planeswalker? You're making no sense."
"Much of your world makes no sense to us," replied Gideon. "Call it even." Kate scowled and Gideon raised his hands in supplication. This wasn't the time. Jace interrupted the conversation, getting to the point.
"You were born with a planeswalker's spark. If ignited through a traumatic event, you become a planeswalker and can travel the multiverse." Kate looked around at her bizarre surroundings then looked at Gideon sharply.
"Traumatic event?"
"Yes, when the Blastoderm and Garruk attacked you. I'd say it's safe to assume that an event like that would shake you up, and more than a little, right?"
"That's not what I'm asking. Did it have to be an attack by a monster to do it? I mean, I've had traumatic events. My mother was murdered when I was nineteen," she pulled the collar of her shirt down, showing a puckered scar. "I was shot last May. Why the hell wasn't this 'spark' ignited then?" Jace stared at the scar in wonder.
"How are you alive?"
"Good doctors," she let go of her collar. "Answer the question." Jace shook his head. A world without any magic, yet their healers could do wonders.
"I'm not sure. But since your world is magically dead – and I still cannot believe it functions without magic – it may simply need to happen more than once. Also, it could be that true magic needed to be in your presence to spark. So, in that sense, yes. It had to be an attack by something magical."
"I don't believe in magic."
"Yet here you are." Kate stared back into Gideon's face. He didn't seem to be lying, but she couldn't get her head around it.
"See, here's what I think really happened," she continued in a tone usually reserved for interrogations. "I decided to mix up my routine. I usually go for a run in the morning, a couple miles down the street and back. Not this time. I was jogging at night in a new place. That right there amps up the wariness I was feeling. I was talking to Castle…"
"That's impossible," Gideon interrupted. "Unless he abandoned you. You were alone."
Kate looked at the man like he was an idiot. "On the phone," she deadpanned. "Anyway. I heard a noise in the bushes, a dog – an admittedly big dog – jumped out and started chasing me. It was probably sicced on me by the guy who attacked me. I was knocked to the ground, in my panic I thought I was injured, but obviously, it wasn't as bad as I thought, and somehow you guys got there in time to stop him. For which I'm grateful – don't get me wrong. Anything weird I thought I saw was caused by imagination brought on by fear and an unfamiliar place. No. Magic. Required."
Gideon's mouth was open and Jace stared in disbelief. How could she not believe her own eyes?
The silence was interrupted by the buzz of Kate's phone.
"What is that?"
"Probably Castle."
"What?"
"On the phone. I'm going to answer, okay?"
"Okay. How?"
"Like this." Kate pulled out the vibrating phone out of her pocket and made a face of disgust as she saw her torn headphones. "Jeez, these earbuds were brand new." She pulled out the ripped cord, accepted the call, and pressed it to her ear, walking away from Gideon and Jace.
"Beckett."
"Kate!" It was Castle. "Oh, my God, are you all right? Where are you? Have you seen the news?"
"I'm fine. I'm at the precinct."
"Really? I just got off the phone with Ryan, he hasn't seen you, and I thought you weren't on call today." Kate looked around.
"I'm…. On the roof. Don't ask, I don't know. What happened?" There was a pause. "Castle?"
"Washington Market is a wasteland."
XXXXX
Kate strode off to take her call Jace and Gideon stared after her as she walked away.
"Are you sure they don't use magic here? Gideon asked. "I mean how is she communicating through that thing if not by magic?"
"I was thinking the same thing, Gideon," Jace answered. He paused. "And without mana? The people here don't use it, that just doesn't make sense."
Gideon shook his head as he watched Kate click her phone off, look at something on the small screen, and walk back to them, seemingly in shock.
"Are you done with that?" Gideon looked annoyed that she had walked away.
"Yeah." She had the strangest look on her face, thoughts of confusion, disbelief and anger were swirling around in her head like a hurricane.
"All right. I'm going to prove this, once and for all, and get us down."
"How, do you have a secret expandable ladder in that backpack of yours?"
"Just give me a second." Jace stepped forward. "I don't, but I can pull some strings in the Æther." And with that, they all appeared on the sidewalk below, still outside the building. "There. I simply teleported us down. What do you have to say about that?" he asked smugly.
Kate stared - dumbfounded, frightened and confused. She recovered her senses. I don't know," she muttered. "I can't explain it, but I don't believe it. I can't believe it." She set off at a brisk pace to the front of the building.
"What- How?" Both planeswalkers stared at each other, and this time it was their turn to be dumbfounded at her reaction.
XXXXX
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, what we are saying is true, she simply won't believe us." Castle had come to the precinct looking for Beckett. He was a little concerned when he couldn't find her – she'd told him she was here after all, but before he could ask an officer, he saw Jace and Gideon and they told him the story.
He eyeballed the two, not knowing exactly what to feel. He wanted to believe, but most of his teasing was exactly that. A tease. He loved driving Beckett crazy with his wacky theories, but faced with the possibility of this being real, he didn't know what to think. They didn't seem to be lying, though. And remembering the vines surrounding the cab - and cab driver, Castle was almost as freaked out as Beckett was.
"You have got to believe us. It just makes sense." The earnest sincerity that Gideon spoke with sent another round of doubts through Castle's mind.
Because it didn't make sense.
"All right. We still need to get a reward, and that's what we came here for." Jace was exasperated at the disbelief that everyone showed, like the very idea of something that had been a part of their entire lives was a thing that they could deny with words. They went to the desk sergeant to find out where to go to pick up their money.
"Okay," the sergeant pointed down a hallway. "Go see Jenkins, down this hall and third door on the right."
The two found the officer, and after a half hour of paperwork, they were handed a check for $10,000.
"What is this? This isn't money." Gideon protested, affronted that he and Jace were being cheated out of their reward.
The secretary cutting the check looked at Gideon like he had two heads.
"It's. A. Check," the man said slowly as if Gideon was speaking a different language. Noticing Rick, he called out. "Hey, Castle!" Could you come here for a sec?" Castle had been standing at the elevator but turned at the voice.
"What's up?"
"Didn't I see you talking to these guys earlier?" Under his breath so only Rick could hear, he went on. "They seem a little…" he twirled his finger at his ear. "You wanna explain a check to them?"
"Ah, sure. Come on you two, I'll take you to the bank."
XXXXX
Kate was sitting in a small hole in the wall coffee shop her father had told her about. She didn't think Castle knew about this one – at least he'd never brought her coffee from here.
And she was okay with that. It was nice to have a place that was all hers, so to speak. She'd never even brought Lanie. It was a place to unwind, even to hide – not just from Castle when he drove her more nuts than usual, but from difficult cases.
And this case was a doozy.
Kate pulled the photo Castle had sent her of the park up on her phone. She couldn't believe the devastation. If she hadn't recognized the buildings across the street, she would have thought she was looking at an old picture of the area around Mount St. Helens just after it erupted. Everything was gray and dead, with one spot as black as the asphalt on the streets.
She couldn't tell from the picture, but she wondered if that spot was where she'd been standing when the attack happened. She wanted to know if other people had posted photos of the park, but this café didn't have Wi-Fi, (one of the reasons she liked it – it was much less crowded) and she didn't want to use her data for something not work related.
Blind Eternities. That's what Jace had called it, but what the hell was it? All she remembered was jogging in the park last night, being attacked by… something, and the next thing she knew it was morning and she was on the precinct's roof.
Magic.
No, Kate Beckett was nothing if not rational. There had to be a reasonable explanation for all this – even if she couldn't think of one.
Glancing at her watch Kate stood. She wanted to go back to the park and make sure this wasn't all a dream or some sort of elaborate prank Castle was playing on her. It wasn't funny if that's what it was.
God, she wished that's what it was.
XXXXXX
"Do you think you can do this?"
"Yeah, I get it. You order your food, then you pay the money. Then, after a few minutes, you get your food. Just like anywhere else."
"All right, if you say so. This does not look like anywhere else."
"You can say that again. Who names the place where they sell food Terrific Nick's?"
"I agree, Gideon. They should have named it with something at least somewhat resembling a food product. Or maybe add a 'food' or 'food shop' to the end. You would think it would be a tavern by the name."
"Different plane, different customs."
"Yeah, whatever, I'm starving. Get two of those things those people are getting." Jace pointed at two young adults eating a slice of pizza.
"What even is that?"
"I don't really care, let's just get some food!" Gideon could not disagree. They got their food and continued for the rest of the day exploring the hundreds of shops that the city had to offer. They purchased, among other things, clothes, food, and other necessities that they could carry in backpacks they bought for themselves. They also purchased phones (The purchase took several hours as neither of them knew a thing about how to buy or set up a phone.)
"Hey, Jace, do you think that they found a hotel for us to live in yet?"
"I don't know. I'll call if I can remember how." Jace pulled out the phone, calling the number on the slip of paper Castle had given to him.
"Castle."
"Castle," Jace was startled at the sound of the voice on the other end. He cleared his throat. "Gideon and I were wondering… we… you told us we needed a place to stay and you would take care of it?"
"Yeah, I talked to Esposito, and although he's not too happy about it, we've decided you should stay with me at my loft."
"Why would he not be happy?"
"He doesn't trust you."
Jace bristled. "We have been cooperative, we have helped - explaining who and what Garruk is, we saved Beckett from Garruk…"
"You have no record of your existence in any database across the country, Espo's checked. You asked a couple of questions about a wanted suspect, then only a few hours later, walked into the precinct with information about where said suspect was. And your only explanation was 'magic'. He's suspicious of you."
"Why would we lie to him?"
"Because he thinks you're involved somehow." There was a pause on the line. "Look, nobody wants to believe in this stuff more than I do, just ask Beckett. But what you've described just doesn't happen."
During the conversation, Jace and Gideon had continued walking when they came across a familiar, yet unnerving sight.
Washington Market Park.
A crowd was milling around the edges of the park, a low rumble of people talking.
"What the hell happened?"
"How isn't anything else burned?"
"What could have done this?" The mixed voices of the people blended together, the confusion heavy in the air.
"This was the park where he attacked Kate," Gideon whispered to Jace.
Jace spoke into the phone again. "What if we healed the park? Would that make you believe?"
"What? What do you mean?"
"Just that. What if we restored the park using only magic?" There was a long pause.
"Yes, I think that would do it."
Yay! Writing this story has been great, thanks a bazillion Netstrik1! I hope you all love reading it as much as I do writing it, writing with another author has been a blast!
Please leave a comment! How true to the MTG world have I been? I try to base the spellcasting on the novels, not as much from the game itself. Not only that but a mix of the two fandoms has created a crazy story that even I won't know how it ends until we get there! Do you think we got the mix right? Comment below please!