A/N: In which Ral searches, Emmara helps, and Jace suffers.
Chapter Seventeen
Ral stormed out of the building, heading back toward his lab. The only clue he had was the missing equations, and that was where he was going to start. If anyone could find Jace, it would be him. It would be—
"Guildmage Zarek!" The elf's voice. Ral didn't stop, didn't turn, just kept striding forward. "Zarek!" She caught up with him on the street corner, despite the fact that Ral had deliberately lengthened his stride to outpace her. "Wait!" she said, sounding frustrated.
"No time," Ral responded, almost cheerfully. "Need to get back to my lab and save Ja—the Guildpact."
"And I'd like to help you do that."
"Why?" asked Ral, not slowing his pace.
"Because he's my friend?" She was definitely getting frustrated now. Good. Maybe she would leave. Ral very deliberately did not think about why he was absolutely one hundred percent not interested in getting help from Emmara Tandris.
"Then go find him yourself," he said.
"Zarek, what is wrong with you? Do you not want him to be found?"
That made him stop. Lightning crackled up his spine as he spoke, the joking tone fading from his words. "Whoever kidnapped him better have a good exit strategy, because they're going to die if they can't outrun me," he said, then immediately wished he hadn't.
Emmara's face softened, and she put a hand on his arm. "I don't want to take him away from you," she said.
"I never said you did." He started walking again.
"I just think that two heads are better than one, and I know I won't be able to help the Azorius. I wouldn't fit in with their procedure."
"What makes you think you'd fit in with mine?"
"Better than the two of us working at cross purposes."
This discussion was pointless. If she wanted to keep following him, let her. Having the argument was only slowing him down from reaching Jace. "If I let you into my lab, you don't touch anything."
"Very well."
"And you don't say anything while I'm thinking unless I ask you to. If you have a brilliant idea of how to find Jace, then you can waltz off on your pretty little elven feet and do it yourself."
Emmara made an annoyed, skeptical noise, but didn't actually voice an objection. Ral rolled his eyes in frustration as she continued to keep pace with him.
He opened the door of Nivix only to find himself staring at a very irate-looking dragon. "There you are, Zarek," the Firemind said. "I need you to track down the Guildpact."
Ral barely managed to swallow an expression of surprise that might have been fatal. "What?" he compromised on.
"I have just received a message from New Prahv," Niv-Mizzet said. "They have determined that the Guildpact is missing. I want you to find him."
"Really?" Ral said, skeptically, pausing to try and catch his breath surreptitiously. "Weren't you just trying to find us an edge against him?"
A puff of smoke told Ral he was treading in dangerous territory, but Niv-Mizzet answered surprisingly civilly. "And right now, we need him. Things have changed. Now do you think you will be able to repurpose Lightning Bug, or shall I arrange to have you stuffed and then roasted?"
Ral grinned, though the grin was a little forced. "Of course I'll be able to."
"Good," said the dragon grimly. "Then go. Send a goblin to let me know if you need anything."
Ral gave him a quick nod, then swept up the stairs toward his lab three at a time. He still had one ace up his sleeve, as long as the earlier explosion hadn't damaged it, and he was desperate to check.
Flinging himself to the ground in front of the flux machine, he sighed with relief to see that the little light on the very top was still clear, unblinking blue. Thank god he'd made backups. Thank god they were actually intact. He frowned. Now all he had to do was boost the power output of Lightning Bug about five times and somehow calibrate it to these brain patterns. And somehow avoid explaining to Niv-Mizzet why he happened to have the Living Guildpact's brain patterns lying around, but that was of secondary concern until Jace's safety was assured.
"Can I help?"
Ral nearly banged his head into the bottom of the machine as he sat up. "How did you get in here?" he asked Emmara.
"I asked nicely," she said with a somewhat self-satisfied-looking smile. "Now is there anything I can do to help?"
"Do you know how to wire mana-lines together to create a modulative phase net?" She looked nonplussed. Ral sighed. "You can carry things if you want." It would be easier than tripping over her every time he needed a different tool, but he was already missing Jace fiercely. Even without the mind mage in his head, they would already be moving toward a solution. "Well, let's get started," Ral snapped. "We've got a lot of work to do."
Jace didn't know how long it had been. He couldn't see anything except for shadows moving beyond the blindfold, and attempting to reach out with his mind was blindingly painful, so the most he could gather were shreds and scraps from the minds around him, none of which were coherent or useful.
They had given him water and let him relieve himself, but there had been no food, and Jace had gone long past hunger and into a dull stomachache accompanied by dizziness that told him it must have at least been a few days. Yet he wasn't sure if he had even slept. He seemed to be missing swathes of consciousness, but he couldn't tell if that was from actual sleep, or if it was because of whatever they were doing to his head.
His mental barriers had started to falter three drinks of water ago, and he could feel them slowly rewriting the patterns of his mind. It felt like a slower, more painful version of what had happened when he had changed minds with Kallist. He was at bay in his own mind, running from the assault on his self, but his self was eroding.
"Why is this going so slowly?" a voice asked, perhaps now or hours ago or roiling through Jace's mind before the thought had been converted into speech.
"He's stronger than I expected." Stronger. Strength. Jace needed strength but felt only weakness as he ran from the dark lightning bolts that rewired and remade him. The paths of his mind slipped and slid beneath his mental feet as he ran, trying to find somewhere safe, but the memories behind him fell away as he went.
A soft voice telling him he was safe was there and then gone, leaving only a memory of a memory. A less soft voice, breathing his own name into his ear, hands moving down his side, vanished as he ran. As everything was stripped away at last, the nameless mage found himself in a small bubble of memories left untouched only because it was beyond the comprehension of his attackers.
Floating in a sea of colors, someone's hand grasped in his, he tried to look at his companion, but saw only a human-shaped form made from shifting electricity.
"So you have no leads either?" Lavinia asked tiredly. She was exhausted, running on perhaps two hours of sleep, snatched frantically between long periods of fruitless searching. Her vision kept blurring with tiredness, and she leaned against the window for stability.
"I am afraid not," Teysa said, her voice clipped and sharp. "Lavinia, you need rest."
"I can't rest," Lavinia responded dully. "The Guildpact is missing. It is my duty to—"
"Collapse in the middle of a climactic chase?" Teysa asked dryly. "You need to have some form of actual sleep, or you won't be any use to the Guildpact. Right now you are not going to be able to find any leads. Now are you going to sleep here, or shall I have a thrull escort you home?"
"I shouldn't even be here," Lavinia said, but she let Teysa take her hand and gently lead her over to the surprisingly plain bed in the corner.
"Now go—" Teysa's next words were drowned by a tremendous thunderclap that nearly scared Lavinia awake. The two of them turned to stare out the window again.
What had been mostly blue skies just a moment or two ago was already clouding over with a vast, slowly-rotating spiral of cloud cover. Flashes of lightning were visible as sudden illuminations from deep within the clouds. Another thunderclap was immediately followed by a low, constant rumbling, almost like one of the rare earthquakes that occasionally struck the district.
Lavinia's fuzzy head was having trouble understanding what she was seeing, and she turned to Teysa, trying to find the word that she was certain was responsible for this. "Zarek," Teysa supplied, one eyebrow quirking upward in interest. "I was wondering what he was doing."
"I still don't have any idea," Lavinia admitted, collapsing onto the bed with a yawn.
"Oh, neither do I," Teysa smiled, leaning down to press a kiss into Lavinia's forehead. "But it's obvious he's doing something."
"Damn," Ral breathed, straining his eyes against the darkness. Lightning Bug had not originally been intended as a locator, and one thing he had not taken into account was the difficulty of seeing it when it pinpointed Jace's location. There would necessarily be some false positives as well, and it was going to be extremely difficult to sort out one from the other, because there was nothing to be done other than to check out each location on foot. But while doing so, it would be all too easy to miss an important signal.
He would have to build another machine dedicated to data collection and synthesis, but that would take a long time. The modification of Lightning Bug had been time-consuming enough, and he had been building off an existing framework. Ral ground his gauntleted hand into his forehead, and for a moment let the storm take him.
Storms were his calm and his refuge, and this one welcomed him with open arms, artificial as it was. The rush of blue and red mana curving down his spine pulled his head back and his arms open, drawing an eager gasp from his lips. The hum of electricity in the air increased as he began to draw it down along with the rain, which washed across his face and neck like the touch of—
Ral's eyes snapped open, and he felt his connection to the storm snap like a too-taut manaline. "Shit," he muttered softly to himself.
"Do you need something else, Guildmage Zarek?" Emmara asked, approaching him from behind.
He very nearly snarled, I need Jace, but managed to turn the statement into an incoherent growl instead. After another moment during which he was sure there were sparks flying from his teeth, he managed to calm himself enough to answer. "I am going to have to build a way to analyze the output of the Lightning Bug device."
"That won't be necessary, Head Researcher," said a booming voice from behind both of them.
Ral's lips quirked slightly at the title as he turned to face the dragon. "Of course I am sure the great Firemind has something we could use," he said, in a tone of voice just deferential enough to avoid Niv-Mizzet's anger.
"Yes," said Niv levelly. "Me."
Ral blinked. "You?"
The great head swiveled slightly to one side. "My perceptions and capacity for analysis of data are far greater than a human's, as I'm certain you are aware, Head Researcher."
"Of course, great Firemind, I simply—"
"And, as I have said, this project is of the utmost importance. Or do you find yourself once again doubting my authority with respect to the Guildpact?"
Ral bowed his head. "Of course not." Though it would be wonderful if you'd keep thinking that, he added mentally. Whatever Niv-Mizzet's opinions on the Living Guildpact sleeping with one of the Izzet mages might be, Ral was happy to remain in ignorance of them. "What is it you suggest, Firemind?"
"I suggest you lead a search party to the locations which I will be happy to relay to you. And I further suggest that you find the Guildpact as quickly as possible."
"If you will allow me, Firemind," Emmara spoke up softly, and the dragon's head turned slightly to fix her with his huge, yellow eyes. "I believe that Guildmage Zarek and I will be able to travel most swiftly together, using the powers of Selesnya. It is also in our interests that nothing untoward should happen to the Living Guildpact."
There was a brief moment of hesitation. Ral could almost see the calculations rapidly cycling through the dragon's head, and, for one sick moment of longing, the thought dragged him back to the week before, seated in front of the chalkboard and jabbing an excited finger at the glowing equations hanging in midair in Jace's sprawling handwriting. "Very well," Niv-Mizzet said, his golden, unreadable eyes flicking back to Ral so suddenly that the lightning mage wondered uncomfortably what the dragon was seeing. "To begin with, I wish you to investigate the signal at the junction of Bane Alley and Knock Street."
"Right away," Ral said, trying not to let the impatience sound in his voice. "Come on, Tandris." Then, because he was annoyed and frustrated and because there was a little niggling voice in the back of his mind screaming about 'being too late', he jumped lightly from the side of Nivix, reached out with his gauntleted arm to draw in the mana he needed to buoy himself up on the storm's wind, and landed gently on the street.
It was oddly dim, this half-light, and he had the strange sensation of floating. He felt that it ought to be dark, but he could see, though his sight had been reduced to pulsing lines of blue and red in front of him. There was a female figure standing in front of him. "Can you hear me?" she said calmly.
He did not respond immediately, and she moved a hand. One of the rippling lines connecting them shuddered. Someone cried out, hoarse and painful, and then he heard a voice respond, "Yes, I can hear you." It sounded strangely quiet.
"Good," she said. "Raise your right arm." Again, he paused, again the hand gesture. Again, the cry of pain. Slight nausea welled up in his stomach, and this time he was aware of complying with the instruction. He tried to shake his head to clear it, tried to remember what he was doing, but he couldn't. He couldn't move his head either, but he managed to look downward. His own arms and legs, too, were outlined in blue, but lines of red trailed away from inside them, winding away to somewhere behind him that he couldn't see.
"Now. Tell me my name."
His mouth opened. Red and blue pulsed, and he watched the blue lines hover over the woman's head and then delicately worm their way inside. "Maree," he said, after a moment, as the information traveled back up the blue line, drawn and forced along by the dragging red. "Your name is Maree."
"Just the name."
The scream this time hurt his throat, but he still could not feel the pain.