A/N: In which Ral is definitely not panicking, and Iskra helps out.
Chapter Six
Ral stared stupidly at the place where Jace had disappeared. "Jace? This isn't funny. Where are you? I swear to god, I'll electrocute everything in here if I have to."
No answer. The tent was silent, empty of everything but Ral Zarek and his sudden, unreasonable panic. No noise, not even the sound of breathing. He hadn't planeswalked—Ral would have felt the touch of the Eternities if the fabric of the plane had been ruptured, even briefly. "Jace?" he said again. It was an illusion. It had to be.
He groped his way from one end of the tent to the other, desperately trying to find a hint of mind mage. He couldn't have left. He was sick. No one could be stupid enough to just—walk off—who was feeling as sick as Jace had looked. Right?
"Fuck," Ral muttered, his blood starting to pound in his ears. He put a hand to his forehead, and lightning flickered in front of his eyes. "Right. Okay. He's probably—outside somewhere." He headed out of the tent, looking around. Xenia was waiting a few steps away. "Did you see him?" Ral demanded. "Where is he?"
"What?" Xenia asked, sounding confused.
"Jace Beleren. Jace. My—companion. Your oracle. He left."
"He what?"
Ral ran trembling hands through his hair. "He didn't want to get involved, and he fucking left. You didn't see him?"
She shook her head. "I haven't seen anyone."
"Fuck," Ral said, suddenly lightheaded and reluctant to consider possible causes. "Fuck, we have to find him. He's sick. Goddammit."
"I'll go to Brimaz," Xenia said. "We'll find him."
She hurried off toward the other side of the encampment, leaving Ral standing in the middle of the ground, frantically adjusting his gauntlet with trembling fingers. That goddamn Guildpact. If he got killed, Ral would never forgive himself. Ravnica would fall apart. That should have been his first thought, shouldn't it?
Damn, damn, damn. He felt at his belt, wondering if he had anything useful with him, but he came up empty. If only he'd made something that could detect invisible creatures—how would that even work? Well, for Jace, something that was attracted to mana. The Guildpact shed magic the way most people gave off heat. Interesting idea, actually. Ral had done a little work on heat-sensitive instrumentation—if he could somehow modify it to work on the basis of mana currents instead of infrared radiation, perhaps he could make something to—oh, what was the use. He didn't have access to any of his equipment, and every minute that went by was another minute trickling away during which Jace could be getting farther away. Closer to dying.
By the time Xenia returned with a small party of leonin, including Brimaz, Ral had turned the dial on his gauntlet up to its maximum setting, and he still felt full to bursting, electricity wobbling along the hairs of his arms and back, excess voltage bursting into sparks in the air around him.
"Let's see if we can pick up his trail," Brimaz said tightly, and Ral nodded, equally tightly. Damn this wilderness. In a city, he'd at least have known how to start. But here—surrounded by trees and sky—he felt lost. This was not his world.
He couldn't have gone far, Ral repeated to himself. Why would he? Simply because they'd had some kind of stupid argument? Jace wasn't that stupid. He wouldn't kill himself out of anger. Just because Ral had let slip that he had telepathic abilities. Ral ground his teeth together and followed the leonin. Trailing at the back, he felt completely useless.
If there was anything that he hated more than standing still and quiet while someone else tried to work, Ral couldn't think of it. Not that he could think of much, because his brain had bucked off the last semblance of being under his control, and all he could do was replay the scene with Jace over and over again in his head, trying to figure out what he should have said differently, done differently, to make this not happen. Despite the incredible uselessness of this repeated loop, it was still better than the other images his brain kept vomiting up—Jace, whimpering through the nightmares, convulsing with a fit of coughing so hard he couldn't catch his breath, the horrible greenish-white tint of his face.
They moved slowly but steadily to the edge of the encampment, the leonin band seeing and discussing subtle signs of Jace's passage that to Ral's eyes looked like nothing. A crushed blade of grass? Surely there were millions of blades of grass in the world, and Ral could think of at least a hundred ways they could be crushed off the top of his head. The probability of that particular blade of grass having been trodden down by the Guildpact instead of a predator, or a child in an unusual place, or a sudden gust of heavy wind—no, this wasn't helping. The leonin must know what they were doing.
Midway through the field of long grass beyond, they found the first indication that meant anything to Ral—half a human footprint at the edge of a well-placed mud puddle, and a thread of blue cloth clinging to a twig. Half a bare footprint. Lightning skittered along the edge of Ral's gauntlet. Jace hadn't even bothered to put on shoes. Did he have a death wish? Didn't he care about himself at all? Didn't he care about Ravnica at all?
The sun was hot, and Ral was sweating and itchy in his many layers of clothing by the time they reached the forest on the far side of the field. How had Jace even managed to make it this far? Either he'd been less sick than he'd let on, or he was more stubborn than Ral gave him credit for. Ral wasn't sure which one was worse.
Several minutes into the welcome shade of the trees, the group of leonin broke apart from a purposeful knot into a number of confused, directionless individuals. For at least five agonizing minutes, they milled around in all directions, clearly searching for something. Finally, Ral cracked. "What's going on?" he asked.
"The trail is gone," Brimaz answered. "It's as if he flew away. As if he stopped existing. Dark magic at work here. I suspect the gods."
As if he stopped existing. Had he actually planeswalked? Then why had he bothered to slog his way across a muddy field and half a forest?
"This is crazy," Ral said out loud.
"I'm sorry, Zarek," said Brimaz. "I'm afraid we'd better head back to camp and regroup. Perhaps we can go to a seer and—"
"No," interrupted Ral. "No, fuck it, I'm done, I am done, this is impossible, this is ridiculous, I am going home." He nearly reached for the Eternities then and there, but at the last minute stopped himself, instead unleashing a bolt of lightning at a particularly unlucky pine tree and stalking off into the undergrowth. He heard voices calling after him, but they soon faded. They'd get over it. They'd expect him to come back, and he wouldn't come back, and then they'd forget about him. A sharp, miserably painful thought followed that one: was that what Jace had thought?
Ral kicked a tree. Where had the thought even come from? Jace knew he was valuable.
Did he know he was valued? Those damn nightmares. Ral ground his teeth together. All right, so he liked being around Jace. So the man wasn't completely horrible. Was reasonably intelligent, surprisingly brave, and frustratingly stubborn. And apparently had experienced more than his fair share of trauma.
This was useless. Ral needed to decide what to do, not stand here analyzing his feelings. The Guildpact must have planeswalked. But had he made it safely back to Ravnica? Should Ral go back and assume? Hope? If he went back without Jace, there was no question the Azorius would suspect him of involvement in the Guildpact's disappearance. And he couldn't rid himself of the horrible nausea that clawed at his insides when he wondered if Jace had made it to the Eternities and then simply—broken apart.
The noise of quiet footsteps made Ral turn, lightning springing easily to his fingertips—maybe too easily. He made a mental note to increase the capacitance of the gauntlet at the next available opportunity.
"I think I know where to find your friend," Iskra said excitedly. There were dark, singed marks on the tips of her fingers around the places where the claws extruded, but she didn't seem to be in pain as she leapt lightly over the undergrowth and reached out to take his hand.
"What? How?"
"The sparks told me," she responded cheerfully. "And I went and got one of his shoes, so we can check using a finding-spell if we need to when we're close enough."
"The—what? Wait—are you sure?" She had started dragging him along, and he followed slowly, but with cautious optimism starting to rise in his chest.
"Pretty sure. My parents said I shouldn't play with the lightning yet, and I guess I did burn my hand, but I know what I saw. The symbol of Pharika."
"Who?" asked Ral.
Iskra gave him a confused look. "Pharika? Goddess of poison and medicine?"
"Look, kid," Ral said in irritation. "I can't keep track. If you think you know where Jace is, just take me there already."
He expected her to say something else. To—want to go back and tell her parents, maybe? That was how children thought, wasn't it? But she just nodded and said, "This way."
The shadows were moving strangely. Jace clutched at his aching chest and leaned against a nearby tree. He just needed to keep moving. His feet hurt as well, but it was a strangely distant pain compared to the pain in his chest, which was like a hot star radiating fire. Shivering, he managed to step forward again—twice—three times.
Something cracked underneath his foot, and Jace felt the world slewing sideways as he fell. He thought it was the dizziness welling up again, and then he landed, pain shivering upward through his back, his own soft gasp ringing in his ears. Colorful dots swirled in front of his eyes for a long moment, but when they cleared, all he could see was green. Dappled shadows moved in his vision, and a low hissing sounded in his ear.
He tried to move, but wasn't sure if his fingers actually responded. Something soft and dry slid across his arm, and Jace blinked his blurry eyes and tried to focus. More soft movement across his arms, his feet, his throat. The soft hissing grew louder. He saw rippled scales and a slitted, golden eye.
"Oh no." His voice was tinny and faint in his ears. Snakes. Their soft, dry bodies slid over his exposed skin, and he felt a forked tongue flicker by his ear. A convulsive, full-body shiver ran through him, and he heard someone whimpering softly, a sound that faded quickly. The hissing crescendoed into a murmuring whisper, as if they were muttering to each other about the strange creature that had fallen into the center of their nest.
Jace lay and tried not to move and wondered if they would leave. Somehow, it didn't seem likely. Somehow, a far likelier scenario involved him dying in a pit of snakes, the Guildpact unraveling like a too-old tapestry, Ravnica crumbling around him. Jace's head ached dully, and the whispering of the snakes sounded like the rushing of water around him. He was thirsty.
Time wore on. Jace felt the sun's heat, which had started on his face, move down his chest. Sweat beaded in patches on his forehead and trickled down, and he grew thirstier. The tight, hot pain in his chest worsened until he could hear the echo of someone moaning softly near his ear.
The snakes were moving again; he could feel their dry bodies sliding over his throat and arms, like hands caressing him. Blinking his eyes, he saw dark purple fire rising, shimmering and slithering upward, and a voice murmuring in his ears.
The purple turned green in a sudden burst, and the voices multiplied. Hands touched Jace, and the world around him rocked sickeningly. He shut his eyes, willing the nausea away, but the world continued to move, slewing from side to side, the only thing staying constant the pain in his chest.
Something cool and wet was laid against his forehead. The voices murmured louder, running together in Jace's muddy ears. Were the snakes talking? A blade brushed across the top of his chest, and he felt the ragged strands of his shirt part beneath it. Strange, soft touch on his chest, but it was too close—too close to the burning hot thing in the center. He whimpered, and then he screamed.
The voices grew louder.
Slogging through the undergrowth soon had Ral finding new and creative ways to be obscene. He didn't like wilderness. It was too hot and too bright and too muddy. Not to mention the fact that he was entirely incompetent at traversing it.
Iskra padded lightly along, ducking beneath whippy branches or gracefully sidestepping puddles, following some directional sense of her own Ral would at this point have considered giving up a small appendage for—possibly one of his toes, or a pinky. He already had scratches on his face where he had entirely failed to duck beneath some of the lower-hanging branches, and the bottoms of his trousers were shredded.
Then the small biting insects showed up. Ral growled wordlessly as he swatted at his exposed neck and face, but it didn't seem to do much good. "Iskra," he said. "How the fuck do you not—" She turned, one ear flicking down and up, and he realized that any insect would have a hard time getting through the thick coat of coarse fur. "Never mind," he sighed, and let loose a single, crackling burst of electricity across his skin. Small corpses dropped to the ground, but they were soon avenged by dozens more of their living compatriots. Ral growled wordlessly and tried to ignore the itching bumps already swelling up on his neck and face.
The trees grew taller and darker as they walked, the sounds of their footfalls muffled in the dead leaves below them, which slowly changed to red pine needles. As they passed a particularly thick tree—if Ral had put his arms around it, they would not have met on the other side—Iskra halted, her ears pricking up once, then drooping. She turned questioningly toward Ral, her nose twitching.
"We've entered Pharika's territory," she said. "This is as far as I've come before."
"Hrm," said Ral. "Anything I should be careful of?"
"I—I don't know," Iskra confessed. "Snakes, probably."
"So, where to now?"
The kitten took a deep breath. "Let me see if I can find out," she said. She shut her eyes and adopted a slightly wobbly but balanced stance. Ral watched with interest as her whiskers and ears twitched and a tiny wrinkle crawled onto her forehead. After a few minutes, she cracked an eye open, saw that he was looking at her, and shut it again. The fur on the back of her neck went up slightly before relaxing again. Her mouth opened slightly to show off her sharp teeth, and her tail lashed once, and then a tiny spark burst into existence in the palm of her hand.
She opened her eyes, and her ears pricked straight up. A miniature fountain of tiny sparks followed the first one, following her burst of confidence. The sharp tang of ozone filled the air, and the sparks began to swirl like lights reflected on a swiftly-running stream. It was different from the sorts of things Ral normally did with lightning, and he was impressed that she was able to control the sparks to this extent when she had only started using electricity a day or two ago.
Iskra gave a soft little mew, tail lashing again once to each side. Ral's eyes were drawn to hers and, to his surprise, her almond-shaped pupils dilated instead of contracting, growing larger and larger as he watched, reflecting the chaotic jumble of electricity pouring across her hands.
A twig snapped somewhere in the forest; Iskra gave a soft squeak, and the sparks vanished. She staggered backward and leaned against a tree, every line of her body suddenly drooping with weariness. "Hey," Ral said, putting a hand underneath her elbow and wondering if he could carry her if she was too tired to keep going. Well, he probably could, but he would also probably run the risk of bashing her skull into a tree. He still wasn't used to them being everywhere, sprouting up higgledy-piggledy as opposed to the neat rows of a Selesnyan orchard.
"I'm fine!" she protested, flashing him a quick snarl, and Ral held up his hands, palms out.
"Okay," he said. "You looked tired."
"Sorry," she muttered. "Just don't like people touching me." Her ears and tail went down slightly.
"Me either," Ral answered, and the ears went up and backwards. Surprise, probably. Trying to read the body language on a creature without the kind of facial variation he was used to was interesting, to say the least. Jace would probably have better luck.
"Anyway, I think he's this way," Iskra said, a little awkwardly, gesturing with her tail.
Something of the confidence and purpose had returned to her walk as she strode forward, and for a moment, Ral wondered if he'd been like that as a kid—that weird mix of excitement and self-consciousness, easily crushed, easily buoyed. He had a feeling Jace would tell him he still was, but he shook his head in irritation. He didn't like introspection at the best of times, and this was definitely not the best of times.
He was so absorbed in not thinking that he barely felt the ground giving out under his feet, and if Iskra hadn't caught the back of his belt, he would have gone straight down. As it was, he teetered at the edge of the pit for a frightening moment before he managed to flail his arms enough to tip his momentum back toward solid ground. "Thanks," he said gruffly to Iskra.
Together, they peered down into the pit he'd nearly fallen into. It was about thirty feet deep, and the sides were covered with crawling vines. It was hard to make out the shadowy bottom, but Ral could see something moving around in the dimness.
"Somebody else really did fall in," Iskra said, kneeling at the edge and pointing. "Look." Along the opposite side of the pit, the vines were ripped all the way down, and a trail of pine needles and twigs were caught in them. Suspicion and concern gnawed at Ral's stomach, and he hurried around to the other side and knelt over, squinting down the trail of disrupted foliage. Sure enough, a scrap of blue cloth was caught in one of the twigs about halfway down.
"Shit," said Ral. "Jace?" he called, but there was no answer. "Jace! Dammit!"
Fuck it. Caution was overrated anyway. Ral sat down and scooted forward, ignoring Iskra's concerned "what are you doing?" and pushed himself over the side. Clutching at the sides slowed his fall somewhat, but he still landed painfully hard on the bottom. Not content to wait for his eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness, he called a crackling ball of electricity to one hand and stared around.
The bottom of the pit was covered in twigs and dead leaves. Near the side he'd come down, there was an indentation in the detritus, approximately the shape of a body, but still no Guildpact. There was also a large quantity of angry reptiles.
"Ah, fuck," Ral said tiredly as several of the snakes reared up, hissing angrily, displaying fangs. One of them struck at him, and he barely dodged out of the way in time. "Fuck it," he said again, and this time he released a crackling radius of electricity large enough to cover the entire bottom of the pit, just too late to stop as Iskra's yell echoed down from the top, "Zarek, wait!"
All across the pit, snakes writhed and twitched, and the smell of ozone mingled with the smell of cooking meat. For a moment, there was dead silence. Then Ral became aware that the ground was trembling slightly. "Fuck," he said helplessly, looking upward. Iskra was clinging to the side of the pit, her eyes wide, her ears and fur sticking up and out. Ral started to make his way back toward her, when there was a loud, creaking noise followed by a slam, and the earth beneath him rocked dangerously.
Landing on his hands and knees, he instinctively rolled to the side, which turned out to be a good choice, because a huge, serpentine head shot through the air, arm-length fangs burying themselves in the spot of ground he had been occupying until a moment ago. Ral tried to find an obscenity strong enough for the situation and failed miserably.
He scrambled upright, backing away against the wall, as the snake's head withdrew from its distended position and back into the doorway it had struck from. Aching and dizzy, Ral still managed to send a warning bolt across the pit. The lightning hit and splashed across the snake without much visible effect. Ral fumbled with his gauntlet and briefly considered switching it off entirely, but Iskra was too close for comfort. He needed to do something, though—he was going to be snake food any minute. The creature—whose head was easily as large as Ral's entire body—was swaying back and forth, forked tongue tasting the air. The vast, coiled muscles in its neck quivered as it prepared to strike. Well, here was hoping the same trick worked on a monster as had worked on a god. Ral reached for his belt, found the last mizzium charge, and flipped the switch before tossing it across the pit.
The little red light blinked as it flew, and Ral felt a sudden hush descend across the pit. The snake reacted suddenly, shooting forward and snapping the little silver sphere out of midair. Ral stared in something like disbelief, almost too long, shutting his eyes a mere millisecond before the mizzium charge detonated.
In the enclosed space, the impact of the explosion was far larger than it had been in the empty field. He was knocked off his feet, the flash searing red across the inside of his eyelids, and somewhere above him, he heard Iskra give out a noise halfway between a squeak and a roar and some small, distracted part of his mind was impressed that such a tiny cat was able to make such a loud noise.
He hit the back of the pit, and something snapped. Pain lanced up his shoulder and arm, and he thought he cried out, but he wasn't sure. His instinctual need for his own lab took over, and he was three-quarters of the way to the Blind Eternities when the thought of Jace pulled him back to the plane with a bump. Why couldn't he just leave the damn mind mage?
Groggily, he opened his stinging eyes, air sobbing roughly in and out of his throat, teeth clenched against the pain. The enormous snake lay half-out of the doorway on its side, the eye still open, the slit fully constricted. There were dark burn-marks around its closed mouth. As Ral's eyes began to adjust back to something more reasonable for a normal dimness rather than the magnesium-flash-brightness of the mizzium charge, he caught sight of movement in the passage beyond.
Squinting, he caught sight of the writhing movement of dozens of snakes, and he just had time to wonder how they had gotten to head height, when two bright yellow eyes opened in the dimness.
Everything went cold.