Chapter 44

Deep in the Azorius territory, in the furthest corner of the New Prahv district, in the highest room of a towering, triangular monolith that blended seamlessly into the skyline, Dovin Baan smirked. The vedalken mage sat at his control panel, fingers interlaced before his mouth, which was usually as unexpressive as the rest of his humorless face. Now, as his eyes meticulously scanned the wall of screens, each displaying a different slice of the city captured by his network of spying thopters, the corners of his thin lips felt compelled to turn upwards, even if only by a fraction of a degree.

It is quite beautiful, isn't it? he thought. I didn't see it at first, but now, it would be impossible to miss. I don't know why I doubted him.

Dovin allowed his vision to move from one screen to the next, his ruby irises almost mechanically unresponsive as disparate scenes across Ravnica told him a single, unassailable story. In every corner of the city, its citizens were still fighting back, and their struggle had only grown more desperate as their ranks thinned. Their forces were disgustingly ragtag, forming miniature coalitions of mismatched guilds as they clung to their survival. Boros battalion leaders charged forward alongside Simic abominations and Dimir cutpurses. Selesnya drones threw themselves into the fray, martyring themselves before being aided back to life by Orzhov demagogues. Goblins from all guilds that would allow them banded together in filthy, gibbering teams, assaulting both the bodies and sensibilities of all in their purview. Dovin still found it all quite unpleasant, this odious chaos that seemed to plague every crevice of this plane like a cancer. So, when he looked upon the regimented forces of the Dreadhorde, under the strict command of Nicol Bolas, it was enough to cause a slight shift to his unpassable countenance.

Even through his innate stoicism, Dovin had found himself intermittently entranced over the day's proceedings as he watched the Eternals systematically bring Ravnica to its knees. Whether they were surging through the streets in tight phalanxes to dispatch the abandoned masses, maneuvering around the city's allied forces with militaristic precision, or shrugging off the spells of even the most capable of planeswalkers before rightly snatching their sparks, Dovin marveled at the Dreadhorde's mechanistic efficiency.

This had always been Dovin's focus. Even as a young boy on Kaladesh, he could not help but see everything in terms of flaws and gaps. From the small clockwork toys with which he played, to the filigree golems of the local inventors, to even the parliamentary inner workings of the Consulate itself, Dovin's mind could only highlight the glaring deficiencies that filled every corner of his life. He dedicated himself to righting the abundant wrongs he saw, knowing both that perfection was achievable and that entrusting it to anyone else would only serve to push it further out of reach. For so long, Dovin had been almost resigned to his superiority, having learned early that those around him could not see what he saw, and whether out of spite or simple ignorance, they preferred to lash out when confronted by his objective truth. All that had changed, however, when he met Nicol Bolas.

The Elder Dragon was the first being Dovin had ever met that seemed to see what he saw, to understand what he thought that he alone understood. Where Tezzeret was too blinded by his own warped sense of traitorous loathing, Bolas beheld the Multiverse as Dovin beheld his thopters, a system created by other chaotic forces that needed only the proper guidance to reach its fullest, greatest potential. And much like Dovin, Bolas knew that it would only be by his own hands that such work could be properly done. After only one meeting, Dovin had readily joined Bolas' side. His compliance did not require the childish coercion of Domri Rade, the lorded power of Tezzeret, or the enforced devotion of Liliana Vess. To hear Bolas' plans, to see the glint in the dragon's eye mirror his own, was all he needed.

Despite his allegiance, he was under no suppositions that Bolas' plan was perfect. That much was clear enough as he watched the Eternals through his screens. Though they continued to clash against the forces mustered by Ravnica's supposed saviors, slaughtering the weak populace with their superior tactical offences and magical defenses, the Dreadhorde's victory was not as overwhelming as it could be. For every five guild members that were crushed beneath their might, an Eternal soldier met its end, and this measure was as volatile a metric as could be collected. This contemptable chaos was owed entirely to those fighting against Bolas, too disparate to overcome his might and thus more difficult to predict. The Dreadhorde's operations remained as close to perfection as Dovin had seen in any military system.

The same could be said of their leader. It was true that Bolas had flaws of his own, laid bare by Dovin's natural acuity. He was cruel, vainglorious, and almost blinded by his desires. It was always emotions, Dovin noted, that marked the downfall of great innovators, a sentiment that had propelled his own purposefully stunted development. In Bolas, however, these flaws were like ants before the mountains of his vision and ability. While all Dovin's actions were in pursuit of reaching perfection, Bolas did not need to expend such energy to get closer than Dovin ever could. It was not until he saw Bolas, standing with perfection just within his draconic grasp, that Dovin understood how far he had been. Once the Elderspell reached its inevitable conclusion, he knew Bolas would finally close his taloned grip around that elusive ideal, and Dovin would do anything to behold that moment with his own eyes.

For now, he was as content as his emotions would allow to simply continue with his small yet significant part in Bolas' plan. While his thopters kept the city under his constant surveillance, allowing him to see every deadly skirmish and structural collapse from his control center, he continued his duties as the Head of the Azorius Senate. On any other day, it meant dredging through endless paperwork and navigating a labyrinth of scheduled, and then rescheduled, meetings. These posed little challenge to Dovin. Between his implementation of the thopter network and the use of precognitive criminal detectors, his tenure as guildmaster had thus far seen a 300% increase in arrests, a 233% increase in convictions, and a 180% increase in executions both judicial and extrajudicial, all of which, by his own calculations, accounted for an overall increase of 64% for bureaucratic efficiency. He had done more in his short time here than either of his predecessors in their expanded lives, and he reasoned that it was because they lacked his vision. Today, however, was the first true test of his position, and thus of his ability to properly serve. He only had one true task this day, one that was simply stated but carried a complex weight all its own: keep the Immortal Sun secured.

It will be my honor to do so, he recalled saying to Bolas after hearing the extent of the plan that the dragon deigned necessary to explain. Before their meeting had ended, Dovin's mind had already begun formulating the best defense he could muster given his resources. Now, as he sat bolt upright in his control center, he could bask in the fruits of his mental labor.

The Immortal Sun was secured by an amplification holding matrix of his own design, though it did require Tezzeret's artificer prowess to construct. Its presence was all but hidden, with only himself and Bolas privy to its exact location. Even this level of security, he knew, was insufficient, for it would require the fullest extent of his senses to perfect his defenses. The thopter network became his eyes, watching the city from the ground, above, and even far below, specially focused on any movement or magic that might direct itself towards him. His arms, with which he could exert his will as he saw fit, came in the form of the Lyev, the elite soldiers of the Azorius. Mounted hussars enforced the laws of the guild from the street, hieromantic lawmages cleared the skies of any unwarranted intruders, and precognitive arresters focused their magics on the winding tunnels below.

He could see the results on every thopter feed from the Azorius District. Regiments of Eternals patrolled in perfect lockstep, while tight formations of guardmages ensured the cleanliness of the darkened skies. Streets were clear of garrulous citizenry or unauthorized creatures. Houses were quiet, their lights dimmed. Fountains flowed in solitude, heard by none. It was the closest to perfection Dovin had seen the Azorius sector since he arrived, and he could not help but revel in a success for which he was singularly responsible. He had created a defense as perfect as he could, moving ever yet forward in freeing Ravnica from its unpredictable shackles.

But even he knew that it would take nothing less than perfection to secure his spot by Bolas' side.

As his eyes drifted to the thopter displays for the Azorius sector, he was once again reminded of this fact. His slight facial contortion dispersed, leaving no trace. Reaching for the successive lenses mounted to his filigree collar, he switched from the broad magnification that let him behold many screens to the small lens precisely etched for fine details. Through its amplifying view, Dovin focused his attention on a single series of screens, grouped by their subsequent vicinity to his location.

To a less attentive observer, nothing would seem amiss. The thopters moved on their regularly programmed paths, detecting no threats for which their direct intervention was needed. The lawmages in the area sent back no reports through their communication devices of any misgivings. But Dovin knew better.

He had been tracking a party of planeswalkers, the only beings currently on this plane powerful enough to disrupt his and Bolas' goals, along this very route, but they had since completely disappeared from his view. Dovin had done everything he could to try and regain an image of them, but he had found his system unresponsive. The slightest hints of vexation had started to enter his mind as he attempted to remedy the situation and uncover the planeswalkers' whereabouts, but such feelings were quickly alleviated under his watchful eye.

An ordinary crow, somehow unperturbed by the madness of the warring sky, flew before a thopter's lens before abruptly disappearing. Seeing this, he focused his attention, waiting for its reemergence. When he saw its black plumage once again appear before him, his mental map immediately filled in the trajectory of this jamming signal, and thus, the planeswalkers.

So, you're still coming my way, are you? Is it merely coincidence, or has my location somehow been found? He once again laced his fingers before his face, leaning heavily into his elbows as he watched the suspiciously blank screen. It matters very little. Your attempts to hide yourselves will only get you so far. After all, Chandra, I know you far too well to let you interfere with my plans.


Chandra had no idea where she was. At least, not to any degree of detail that would give her a proper bearing. She knew she was still on the plane of Ravnica. She could even zoom in slightly further to say that she was in district of the Azorius guild, though that much would be evident to anyone who saw the same glimpses of sterile architecture and sanitary roadways that she did. In a small, sheltered corner of her mind, she knew where she was heading, but at present, she had no concept of how far this destination truly was from her current position amidst the endless winding streets and sidewalks of the city. It was fortunate, then, that Chandra did not have to think about it.

All she had to do was keep moving forward, to keep carving a path through the streets of New Prahv and all the opposing forces who stepped in to block her way. Though the district was far more barren than any other she had seen that day, its streets still housed enough crops of Eternal soldiers to necessitate the use of force to push through. Chandra barely blinked as she loosed one flaming bolt after another into the skulls and chests of the oncoming undead masses. Her hair and gauntlets were sheathed in perpetual flame, drawing most of the Eternals directly to her, which in turn allowed her to unleash a constant barrage of pinpoint blasts while relying on little more than her reflexes.

From the outside, Chandra appeared as the epitome of ruthless efficiency. Despite the overt outpourings of fiery mana, every piece of magmatic power that escaped her grasp found its mark. The Eternals dropped long before their outstretched hands could infect her with the Elderspell, ensuring that her stride never broke from its headlong charge. All the while, her face was set in an immovable grimace. Her eyes did not shift around as she pushed forward, her lips never parted to let out any sort of battle cry or command, and her facial features remained uncharacteristically still. It looked as if she were wearing a mask of her own face, one that had been carved from a rare occurrence of her stony seriousness.

She knew this was the perspective of her allies. Whether it was Tamiyo and her homunculus companion guiding her from the skies or Daretti and Dack following close at her back, all they could see of her, their temporary leader, was cold resolution in dispatching anything and everything that stood in their way of reaching Dovin and the Immortal Sun. What they did not see, sequestered behind this chilly exterior, was the swirling inferno that raged within Chandra's mind.

Chandra had always likened her thoughts to a campfire. It was energetic and mercurial, leaping out and licking at any fuel source that found itself within its range. Sometimes it could grow unexpectedly high, belching smoke into your eyes no matter what angle you sat from it, but it was still contained within its pit. It could burn as hot and bright as those around it desired, but it could also be reined in when necessary. That, she felt, was no longer an apt metaphor. Her thoughts now felt more like a wild, storming brushfire. There were no longer any barriers for the destructive inferno, nothing to stop it from reaching up as high as it wanted and consuming everything within its reach.

This inferno filled her head, its flaming tendrils steadily pushing into every corner of her being, even spilling over into the fire of her hair and hands. It burned everything it could in her mind, fueling itself on her recent memories and leaving behind nothing but unintelligible puddles of sound and color and sentiment. This left Chandra disoriented, with a pounding headache playing out behind her flame-wreathed eyes as the inferno's smoke pressed against her skull. With every step, she internally winced from the mounting pressure. Were her mind not being persistently harried by the inferno's tempestuous wrath to keep moving forward, she likely would have stopped for a breather.

I can rest when this is done, Chandra thought, the sentence both a roaring scream and barely audible beneath the inferno. I need to keep going. I need to do this. This headache is nothing. I can wait to deal with it until this is over. I've been dealing with it just fine since it started right after Jaya's fall.

The inferno flared, roaring up to the sky with a fiery rebuke. Chandra internally choked against the sudden explosion, though her face did not display any reaction. Inside her mind, she worked frustratedly to quell this outburst, to exert some control over its obvious source.

Don't think about it. Don't think about it. There's no point in dwelling on it. Not with everything else I need to do.

Reacting to her frenetic thoughts, the inferno receded back to its previous state. Her mind still did not calm to any reasonable degree, and the pulsing migraine persisted behind her eyes, but it was not, as far as she could tell, getting any worse. The inferno had kept this level for some time now, and since Chandra could not seem to control it any further, both her mind and body had started adapting around it.

It was not as if she was actively avoiding thinking about Jaya. From what Chandra could tell from the violent churning of her conscious mind, Jaya had yet to leave her thoughts since they last saw each other. Though she could not pierce the veil of the inferno, she knew what lay at its center, the fuel source that refused to turn to cinder and let the flame peter out. It was the most recent memory she had, the last one before every sensory input melted to quicksilver or burned to ash. It was Jaya's face, looking back up at her as it plummeted from Trostani's breached sanctum at the heart of Vitu-Ghazi. Her weathered features, framed by her white locks and crimson hood all billowing in the wind of battle, stood starkly against the darkened sky hanging above and the dark-blue lazotep of the God-Eternals wreaking havoc below. Even through the orange haze of her magics, Chandra could see Jaya so clearly, it looked more like she was simply shrinking before her instead of falling away from her.

She could see the look on Jaya's face, the almost surreal transformation as shock gave way to grim realization. She saw the ancient flames of Dominaria evaporate against the turbulent gales of the square no matter how many times Jaya tried to ignite a flame strong enough to carry her to safety. Eventually, she simply ceased trying. It was at this point, when the last of Jaya's fire was carried away by the wind, that the elder pyromancer extended her hand up to Chandra, a pleading look that could only transpire between a student and teacher overtaking her face. Then, not a moment later, she disappeared, obscured beneath the hulking frame of the God-Eternal Bontu who had, unbeknownst to Chandra in the moment, been the one to rip Jaya from her.

That was when the inferno roared to life, engulfing every stray thought and feeling to build its brushfire body higher and higher. Chandra's entire frame filled with shuddering might, pushing at her seams with such voracity that she felt she would burst. In that moment, she almost did. Though Jaya's descent happened in the blink of an eye, this final surviving memory stretched itself into an eternity, trying to fill the void left in the inferno's ruinous wake. Seeing her fall so slowly, Chandra truly believed that she could save her. That she could propel herself off the collapsing husk of Vitu-Ghazi, grasp her mentor's outstretched hand, and jettison them both back to shelter, away from the Dreadhorde and the God-Eternals. In that moment, Chandra had been prepared to throw herself from the sanctuary, readily handing herself over to the inferno so that it could guide her own desperate fall.

But she never jumped, and the decision was not her own. Watching Jaya shrink down to a blip against the shadowed courtyard, Chandra had forgotten about Nissa. Even as Nissa held a firm hand on her pauldron, likely scalding her own palm against the radiating heat of Chandra's rage, her mind did not acknowledge her presence. Chandra had reflexively thrown the elf's hand away, still ready to jump. It was not until Nissa summoned forth the roots and vines of Vitu-Ghazi to fully restrain Chandra that the fire mage remembered her companion.

Nissa's pleading eyes and soothing words were a blur to her now, as were her own undoubtedly torrid outbursts. She knew there had not been much time for them to argue, as it was not long after Jaya's fall that Vitu-Ghazi finally collapsed under the God-Eternals' frenzied assault. From there, her memories only degraded further, with Jace's mental summons, the meeting at Svogthos, the debriefing with her newly assembled team, and their arduous journey to New Prahv, all coalescing into little more than eidetic slag. This left plenty of room for Jaya's final moments to occupy her mind, the last fresh memory keeping the inferno fed.

Thinking and processing are two completely different things. It was one of Jaya's favorite maxims from when she and Chandra trained together in Regatha. She had meant it to apply to pyromancy, that simply summoning fire was not the same as controlling it, the latter of which had always been less accessible to Chandra than the former. She had brushed the adage off in the past, but now, thanks to the second meaning that had been forced upon it, Chandra understood what her mentor had meant.

Unfortunately, she did not have the time to process, only to think. She could not tame the inferno, only let it burn with all its righteous, swirling fury while doing what she could to stop any further growth. Feeling the strength of its hurricanic heat, unlike any her mind had conjured before, she feared that, if she were to let it truly run wild and grow as tall as it could, it would consume her and leave behind nothing but a burnt husk. Chandra knew what havoc her emotions could wreak, both from her own subjective view and the objective perspective of others, and she knew she could not let that happen while Ravnica was still under Bolas' siege. So, she held it inside as best she could manage, isolating the flammable brush of her thoughts and emotions so that the inferno could not escape her head.

This, she knew, was the true source of the drastic change in her actions. While she trapped the raging inferno in the prison of her mind, she could let out only what was necessary to continue her mission. No matter how much she simply wanted to channel every ounce of her spark into a fireball and fling it towards Dovin's headquarters with a guttural scream, she refused to give in to such base desires. She resolved to unleash only as much fire at once that could keep her mentality contained. The result of her forced focus was the cannonade of small bursts that she now flung at the Eternals, which hit with more than enough concentrated energy to break through the lazotep barrier.

Pyromantic power was not the only thing whose release she rationed, but also her exuberant emotions. She did want to yell, to cry, to smile, to urge her allies forward as their leader, but she could not extricate them from the storming inferno. With no heat coming out, all that remained was a cold, expressionless scowl, and an intonation to match. She did not like it, but she knew there was nothing to be done.

It doesn't matter how I act, she coolly reasoned. As long as the job gets done, it doesn't matter. The others are still following me. They don't care. This is how a leader acts anyway. It's fine. Until Bolas is fucking stopped, it's fine. They understand it, I understand it, and I'm sure Nissa understands it…

The inferno surged in strength once again, fiercely pushing out in all directions and threatening to swallow Chandra whole. Getting it back to its former strength would be a much more difficult task this time around, and Chandra knew why. While the constant reminders of Jaya stoked the inferno to roaring heights, it seemed that Nissa was the only person who could fuel it even further.

She hated how she left things with Nissa. It made her angry, angrier than anything else. She knew that, at first, she lashed out in rage when Nissa held her from following Jaya over the edge. After that, when she had adopted this emotionless shell, she knew she had been brusque with Nissa so she could focus on the mission above all else. Even when they parted, she knew she had said little. This was all ample fuel for the inferno, but what truly allowed it to reach its zenith, what really made Chandra's coals burn hotter than anything, was that she did not remember any of the details. She could not recall the words, the actions, or even the expressions that must have passed between them. She knew they occurred, but not the substance, and this made her inconsolably mad. It was bad enough to treat Nissa in that way, but to not even care enough to remember it was almost too much for her to bear.

But she did. Chandra could do nothing else but bear it. Though it took a hefty inhale through her nostrils, along with a dangerously extended expulsion of fire that managed to strike clean through a row of four marching Eternals, she got the inferno to return to its now normalized level.

Not now. Now's not the time for that. I can't do anything about it from here. Right now, this is all that matters.

Chandra looked up from the Eternals clogging her vision, through the torrent of raining firebolts. Her eyes caught Tamiyo, still streaking across the blackened sky, surrounded by whirling wreaths of unfurled scrolls. Chandra watched her for a moment, ensuring that their trajectories were still synced. Once this was confirmed, her eyes followed along Tamiyo's bearing. Up ahead, nestled within the homogenous horizon of spires and fountains, past the clouds of buzzing thopters in the distance, sat a featureless, unobtrusive, three-sided tower. It made no impression relative to the skyline, but as Chandra laid eyes on it, she felt the inferno buck and snort in anticipatory fervor.

Do you see us, Dovin? We're coming for you. I'm coming for you.


Dovin knew that Chandra's presence mattered very little in the grand scheme of things. The power of a planeswalker, even a gaggle of planeswalkers temporarily united in their cause, could not overcome the machination's created by Bolas' mind and instituted by Dovin's hands. That fact was clear as day as his eyes continued to scan the encircling screen displays, flitting back and forth faster and with sharper perception than the thopters whose views he watched. Though he had been confused when he lost sight of a majority of the planeswalkers he had been observing some time ago, their recent reemergence onto the streets of Ravnica changed very little about his outlook for the perfection of Bolas' plans.

He saw other similarly sized groups pass through his surveil. His fellow guild leaders Kaya and Ral Zarek each had their own small band of planeswalkers, though he had lost track of them somewhere in the Rakdos district and Azorius backroads, respectively. Ajani, whom he recognized as a member of the Gatewatch from their intrusion on Kaladesh, led a party out of the city limits, far into the Gruul encampments and past the range of his thopter's communication relays. Gideon, whom he understood to be their leader, had disappeared through the Planar Bridge, with no confirmation from Tezzeret yet as to their survival of the trip. Their other leader, Jace, had not revealed himself, but Dovin knew enough about his illusion magic to not concern himself with his detection. Besides that, there were still planeswalkers scattered about the city streets, either swiftly succumbing to the Elderspell's unexpected might or putting up a fight that only served to prolong the inevitable. Their forces were certainly less fraught with glaring flaws than the mustered armies of Ravnica, but Dovin knew this was owed simply to the raw power of a planeswalker rather than any worthy rivalling stratagem. It was truly of no more concern to him than anything else occurring on the battlefield.

So, he continued to observe them with no more scrutiny than any other man or beast that crossed his purview, knowing they need not be dealt with as anything more than the pesky threat they were. His thopters' lenses showed him their activities, from which he dictated the necessary instructions through his telepathic relay network. Most of his mental faculties were spent ordering the Azorius mages in his employ, but he also had dedicated channels to connect him to Liliana, Tezzeret, and even Bolas so that the Dreadhorde could be properly directed for the efficient harvesting of sparks. Those lines of communication had been one-way since the Immortal Sun activated, with Liliana too haughty, Tezzeret too belligerent, and Bolas too preoccupied with his grand execution to respond. This did not bother Dovin in the slightest, as he could see the evidence of their listening on his displays. He had little need to hear anything from a misanthropic necromancer or a draconian metallurgist, and he knew that Bolas would communicate back with only the most important details of his mission.

Dovin had passed several hours already in this state, readily reading situations on the ground, dispatching his commands to those that required them, and moving on. It was curious, then, that no matter how evenly he tried to circulate through the surrounding video feeds, he found himself spending an inordinate amount of time watching the empty videos of the New Prahv skies for signs of Chandra.

Was the impulse anything more than simple curiosity on his part? What Dovin observed was a slight surprise, as the longer he watched the screens, the more certain he became that Chandra and her associates were coming his way, undoubtedly on a mission to deactivate either the Immortal Sun or his thopters, or perhaps even both. He had no way of knowing what, if anything, they knew about his stronghold facility.

How they managed to pick this location out among all the disruption relays in the area, I do not know. Simple scrying or precognition can't penetrate our dampening matrices. If we've been infiltrated, they would have needed to bypass all the guards, the motion-activated thopter sensors, and the magistrate's rune barriers. Dovin propped his chin upon his thumb contemplatively. It's most likely there's a traitor within the Azorius feeding them information. The chances were negligible, but nonzero. Like anything driven by base emotions, loyalty is never guaranteed. I'll search the databases for possible defectors so that punishment may be dealt immediately. It may be disappointing, but it is the most logical explanation for their current actions.

Dovin waved a precise hand through the floating pool of cerulean runes that served as his controls, summoning a list of the Lyev guards signed for internal protection services. He quickly compartmentalized the task in his head, sorting through the cadre of faces in an isolated corner of his busy mind. While he worked, his main focus returned to the screens, landing inexplicably once more on the path he knew Chandra to be taking.

She was steadily closing in on his location, and based on his calculations, she would be on his doorstep soon enough. Still, even sensing her approach, it stirred next to nothing within Dovin besides the vague surprise that he kept coming back to it.

It is rather unfortunate for these renegade planeswalkers. If they managed to uncover this location, they had all the information they needed to craft a proper plan. I always took Jace as close to an intellectual equal, even though he remains within the throes of wayward emotion. After this, however, I feel I must reevaluate either his prowess or the Gatewatch's chain of command. To send their weakest member on a mission of such consequence is a true oversight, one that will cost them dearly.

From the first time Dovin met Chandra Nalaar, he knew that she could never pose a true threat to him. When he went to the Gatewatch seeking assistance in quelling the Renegade rebellion on Kaladesh, there had been zero consideration for Chandra's help. Dovin recalled how the process of assessing her capabilities and limits had taken far less time than for any of the others, mostly due to how blatantly she left her flaws on display. Impulsivity far exceeding acceptable parameters, complete lack of control or finesse in spellcrafting, next to zero allowance for logic to overcome emotion. Her raw power was great, he could not deny that, but the same could easily be said of the gremlins that stalked the Kaladesh fairgrounds. An annoyance, to be certain, one that would need to be snuffed out, but never a credible threat.

I'm sure she would say otherwise, given the circumstances of our last meeting. Dovin preferred to not think about how the Renegade rebellion had concluded, though not out of any sense of shame or failure. Mostly, he was content that he had syphoned any useful lesson he could from the memory, leaving him with no more use for it.

She most certainly thinks that it was by her effort that my plans were undone. That my retreat was forced by her strength and cunning. On that, she would be mistaken. She could have no way of knowing that those plans were disrupted not by the Renegades, but by Tezzeret and his shortsightedness. To ignore my plans and trust an unsound mind like Baral's… our undoing was no one's fault but his own. Dovin straightened his posture even further, listening to the light rustle of his filigree-adorned vestments in the silence of his sanctum. Unfortunately for you, Chandra, you will have no such luck this day. I have secured a position powerful enough that I control the day. My word is law. These actions are the conclusion of what I learned from Tezzeret's failures, and soon the lesson will be yours to learn as well.

His countenance remained completely still as his eyes languidly followed his projections of their path. The words appearing in his mind carried neither malice nor satisfaction, their attached sentiment nowhere near powerful enough to disrupt the perpetually monotonous tone of his internal monologue. Dovin did briefly wonder if facing a planeswalker who might actually pose a threat would change that, eventually concluding in the affirmative.

Disposing of you, Chandra, will give me no more pleasure than fumigating the gremlins from the Fairgrounds or arresting any of those Gruul anarchists that Domri never cared to control. You present no challenge to me. You never did, and any thoughts to the contrary are your own feeble delusions of grandeur. Like any other planeswalker opposing Bolas, you will fall. It is a simple fact, with the only difference being your own brash ineptitude will bring it about sooner than the average member of your so-called "resistance."

Tenting his twelve fingers just beneath his nose, Dovin abandoned the other screens in favor of following the views that were gradually intersecting with his location. While his eyes absorbed this information, his mind was elsewhere, thinking far past the nuisance that was Chandra Nalaar.

This day will be drawing to a close soon enough, if our projections are still holding steady within the predicted boundaries. I cannot wait to leave this awful plane behind. For all Kaladesh's faults, there were at least systems in place that could be corrected, chances to right paths that had veered off course. Here, there is nothing but chaos covered by the flimsiest blanket of governance. It's a city of corruption, subterfuge, and dereliction, built upon a foundation of flaws. Even the Azorius, paragons of order and justice, cannot escape it. I have tried my best to fix what is broken here, but there are far too many to address. Even the greatest craftsman can only patch so many cracks before he must realize his work is unsalvageable. Whether Bolas leaves the plane to rot or burns it to ash, it will be better off. I do hope the next plane he wishes us to correct is more accommodating, and perhaps less filthy.

It was during this state of emotionless daydreaming that Dovin felt a telepathic link pinging for his attention. Brushing aside thoughts of his next assignment in Bolas' employ, he answered.

Yes?

Grand Arbiter, we have a situation.

Dovin immediately recalled the voice. It belonged to a law-rune mage whose name he never learned, one of many enforcers he had stationed strategically around the building's perimeter for full visual coverage without drawing undue attention.

What is it? Dovin asked.

Sir, the man said, you told us to notify you at once of any planeswalker activity in New Prahv. We have encountered a small group of planeswalkers heading straight for us. We've confirmed four bodies: a female pyromancer, a goblinoid artificer, a male cleric of some unknown origin, and a scroll-wielding woman above them. They're approaching fast, and their objective seems to be your location. They seem to be masking their presence from the thopters somehow, as none are responding to their approach. What are your orders?

There is no need for alarm. This is as expected. Rally your unit to engage and send word to the other enforcers for immediate mobilization. I will inform the guardmages for aerial support. You are authorized to engage all four, using any spells, equipment, or otherwise unstated means to contain them. Live capture is preferred, but deadly force should be used when necessary.

He felt the man nod through their telepathic connection. Understood, Grand Arbiter.

Dovin severed the link, his mind already moving to deliver his orders to the awaiting guardmages that patrolled the tower's airspace. While his mind flicked back and forth between the countless drones under his command, his eyes were fixed on the screen display before him, the one that showed him nothing, hiding what he knew was there.

You may have entered my sector, but I will see to it that no one but me leaves New Prahv today.


It was instantly obvious when Chandra crossed into the defensive boundary that Dovin had set up around the tower where she knew he was guarding the Immortal Sun. Not only did the density of Eternals shoot up, but they were now working side-by-side with armored Azorius soldiers to block the planeswalkers' route. Both the sky and ground became a bulwark of bodies trying to push them back, to keep them from reaching their goal that loomed just past them. Chandra, however, had no intention of slowing down.

Still spurred by the roiling inferno within her head, she continued to forge an incendiary path through the oppressive mob, rebuking any attempts to close in on her with an unbroken show of concerted strength. Unarmed Eternals attempting to grasp her with Elderspell-infused hands were met with a fiery end before they could enter her range. Her flames burned hot enough to melt steel in a matter of seconds, rendering any weapon that attempted to reach her useless and their wielders open to a smiting dart of fire. The same was true of the thopters, still blind to their presence from Daretti's tinkering, whose divebombing bodies turned to silvery rain by the time they fell upon her head, a sensation to which she was completely oblivious.

Much of her focus, she found, came with the restraint required to fight against the Azorius law-mages. While their detention magics were formidable, they stood no match against the strength of a planeswalker's spellcraft. She was intermittently daunted by the flying runes forcing her hands together behind her back, or wrapping around her face to block her perception, or even stacking one atop another like a great wall to stop her forward progress, but they quickly disintegrated in the presence of her open flames, becoming more a nuisance than an obstacle. The mages themselves fared even worse, as even an elite soldier within a guild was still no more comparable to a planeswalker than a stray cat to a primordial wurm. As soon as she shrugged off their attempts to detain, arrest, or otherwise inhibit her, she dispatched them effortlessly. She was careful, however, to let them live. This is where much of her concentration lay, with ensuring the firebolts that went to the Azorius guards would be strong enough to stop them from deterring her any further without killing them. Whether by spreading her flames wider to break forcefully over their armor or having them erupt before their eyes in a blinding flash of light, all the Azorius who fell to the ground in her wake did so with only moderate injury.

They don't have a choice, she thought, doing everything she could to shelter these words against the hungry inferno. They're only following his orders. They don't deserve to die for that. The Azorius have always sucked, but it's not their fault right now. It's Dovin's, and Bolas'. Once Dovin is dead, the guild can get itself together, but they should be alive to see that through.

The inferno flared up, provoked by the mention of Dovin Baan. Her memories conjured an image of him to the forefront of her mind, his piercing red eyes staring down at her from behind his nose, his blue features utterly devoid of the smug condescension he so vehemently denied feeling, his twelve fingers held up before his mouth, touching and untouching with infuriatingly metronomic precision. She assumed it was what he must look like now, watching them from within his monolithic headquarters, waiting to see what their next move would be. It was exactly how he had looked at their last encounter on Kaladesh, just before she and the Gatewatch threw his plans back into his face and forced him to planeswalk away with his tail between his legs.

You dodged my fire once before. Not again. You won't get a chance to escape. Not this time. You'll pay for what you've done here. You haven't even paid for what you did to my home. What you let happen to my mom. Your death is long overdue. I will take what you owe me.

Chandra's tirade fed the inferno, letting it grow tall with curling tendrils as wild and untamed as the aether-fed vines of Peema. It was only when she felt a sharp stinging in her palms that she paused, regaining what semblance of understanding she previously carried. A quick glance at her hands confirmed that, as her thoughts of Dovin were spiraling, her fists had clenched harder and harder until her fingernails were pressed hard enough into her palms to break the skin. The pain quickly subsided, the flames around her hands instantly cauterizing the small wounds, but it was enough for her to refocus her mind as best she could in the ratcheting heat.

Reining the inferno in this time was a more difficult task than before, its surging growth and belligerence having exceeded even those stoked by her freshest memories. While she managed to fold the whorled offshoots back into the main body, Chandra could feel that they were not fully incorporated. They were simply waiting, ready to spring forth at the slightest provocation and strangle whoever fell into their burning reach.

She knew this reaction was inevitable. It was the main reason she agreed to take on her position as leader of this mission. Her pyromancy skills might have been better served elsewhere, but as soon as Dovin's name had broached the conversation at the planeswalker summit, she knew it had to be her, no matter what.

Dovin's gotta die, and I gotta be the one to do it. I'll watch him burn with my own eyes, by my own hands. That's why I'm here.

She sensed the inferno starting to unfurl, ready to erupt once more. Acting quickly, she jammed the tentacles back, exerting what control she had over the increasingly obstinate flame.

No, that's not why I'm here. That's not the mission. The mission is to get Dack to the Immortal Sun. He's the only one who can switch it off, and I have to make sure he gets that chance. That's what I'm leading them for.

Glimpsing outside her own head for a moment, Chandra watched as she unleashed a flurry of sparkling explosions into the faces of an assembled Azorius blockade. Their forces crumpled against the intense bursts, their unprotected faces sizzling as they screamed in temporary agony. As she stepped around their stunned bodies, she caught her first full look at the tower.

It was just as Fblthp had described, though Tamiyo's untrained translations of the homunculus' restricted speech could not do it justice. The triangular obelisk loomed over them, walls of smooth grey reflecting the hints of light that flashed from the ground and streaked across the sky. Compared to the buildings on either side, it was unremarkable, almost distractingly so. It was not just that there was nothing noteworthy about it, but it seemed to almost exert its lack of remarkability forcibly upon its viewers. If Chandra did not have her specific directions, she likely would never have noticed the building at all. As it stood, however, the tower now appeared to Chandra like a hulking cyclopean beast, with Dovin serving as its great eye staring over the city.

She looked first at its feet, seeing the front entryway guarded by a swarm of coordinated law-mages, who were already preparing a large wall of runes to keep them out. Then, as if pulled by an unshakable magnetic force, her eyes went up to the top of the tower, meeting the cyclops' stare. Dovin still could not see her, and she could not see him, but somehow, she knew that they were staring at each other.

I'm coming for you. No matter what defenses you've set up, I'm coming for you. You're gonna burn. Burn… after I get Dack to the Immortal Sun. I'm finally gonna stop you. You're finally gonna pay. Get ready.

The fire around Chandra's head and hands suddenly flared, bathing the immediate area in a surge of blinding orange. With a flick of both wrists, she sent a wave of flaming darts flying, with each one burying itself in an approaching Eternal's face and dropping it to the ground. This revealed the law-mages and their wall even further, and Chandra could see the sudden fear flash across their faces.


Grand Arbiter, we have confirmed the security breach. We've located the four planeswalkers that entered the primary outpost pillar through the ground-level entrance. They are currently advancing up by means of the central stairwell. We're marshaling the internal guards now to intercept them at the first landing on your command, and we will await further instructions afte-

Dovin felt his eyelid twitch as the telepathic message was forcibly cut short. Unfortunately, as seemed to be endemic among the members of the Azorius guild, the lead guardmage who had sent the report had been too caught up in his own verbosity to tell Dovin anything he did not already know. While the view from the thopters patrolling outside the tower was still blocked by the lingering effects of the planeswalkers' interference, those stationed within the tower and hardwired into the surveillance network were fully operational.

His eyes darted away from the view of the tower's entrance, which now lay in a state of smoldering ruin, and towards where he had ordered the lead guardmage to set up the troops from his floor. He found it just in time to see what had caused the abrupt end to their psychic communication, confirming Dovin's astute assumptions. From his hidden vantage point, he saw a wave of brilliant fire fly into view, covering the tower's first landing. It succinctly terminated every soldier in the way, preceding the entrance of Chandra Nalaar. She rushed across the screen unimpeded, the other three planeswalkers in tow, before disappearing around the next bend of the enormous central stairwell.

Dovin remained stoic as ever. Even if he were capable of outwardly showing surprise, he suspected that this turn of events would never be sufficient in rousing such a response. His posture did not shift as he looked away uninterestedly from the soldiers struggling to pull their scorched bodies back to safety. Were it not for the sound of his steady breathing amidst the carefully crafted silence of his control room, Dovin would be indistinguishable from a sapphiric statue.

A disappointment, to be sure, he placidly thought, that the Azorius enforcers thus far could be dealt with so easily, but it is a fact that was well within the parameters of my consideration. They are not perfect, but far more so than any other militia on this plane. Still, even their proximity to perfection left only a slim margin by which they could stop a planeswalker, even one as flawed as her.

He followed the path of Chandra and her companions up the stairs, watching intently as they continued to race upward, ascending into the body of the command tower. Now that he could properly observe them, Dovin could make informed readjustments on his plans for their imminent disposal. Though the four planeswalkers displayed strength and ferocity as they pushed through the swiftly mobilizing Azorius, their flaws readily revealed themselves beneath the vedalken's observance.

The long-haired one lacks the confidence to properly utilize his magics. His spellcasting is sloppy, and his build is far more suited for stealth than this manner of forward assault. The moonfolk as well, it seems almost like she has never used her spells in a manner such as this before now. Finding as gap between should be a simple matter. This goblin is an oddity. I recognize aspects of his mechanistic design from Kaladesh. He must be the one who disabled my thopters, then. No matter, though, as his restricted mobility is a large enough target for even my men to see. Dovin blinked. And of course, Chandra, you haven't changed at all. Still all brashness and bluster, with little regard for anything happening around you. You truly still think you can just burn your way through anything in your path, never stopping to consider any alternative.

On the screen, another battalion of Azorius guardmages stepped into the stairwell, this time with their staffs already primed with rings of arresting magic. Despite this, they stood no chance against another blast of flame from Chandra. As the posse of planeswalkers moved to the next screen, Dovin stared, unimpressed. Is this truly all they think it will take to defeat me? It is an insult to my acumen. They will be dealt with soon enough.

Keeping his eyes tuned to the planeswalkers' ascent, Dovin shifted his focus to delivering his orders to the Azorius. The views and telepathic messages coming from the outside world fell into his periphery as he instructed those residing within the tower to temporarily forgo their assigned stations so they may join with their fellow troops in providing a more substantial defensive barricade for the central stairwell. Though he knew why they were here, it was by no means an emergency. Nonetheless, he felt it consume a non-negligible portion of his attention. It was simply that Dovin had not expected his headquarters to be uncovered and infiltrated, and he would need to gather as much information as he could to address the situation.

Thus far, the planeswalkers were meeting his expectations, battling their way through the assembling Azorius guards so they could continue climbing the stairwell. Then, after a few floors, the seated goblin suddenly broke from the main party, scuttling down the hallway that branched from the stair's landing.

Dovin arched an eyebrow. Hmm, curious.

As with all Azorius architecture, the expressionless exterior housed a complex, intentionally obfuscating interior. The offices and stations were all labyrinthine branches of the main stairwell, and while anyone could find a general direction from this central hub, only those versed in the direction and signage of the Azorius could properly navigate it. When he first arrived, it had been described to him in the same manner as their bureaucratic work, with simple order forms cascading into infinitely complicated stacks of paperwork that left the uninformed utterly at their mercy. While it proved to be no obstacle for Dovin, he appreciated the quiet goal of a perfect bureaucracy for which the old Azorius guard had strived.

As such, the goblin's decision was one whose imperfections within the grand scheme of things screeched loudly in Dovin's mind like sharpened metal scraped against rough stone. He glanced across his screen display to find the hallway down which he had disappeared, finding his mechanized chair skittering almost aimlessly down a deserted corridor.

Immediately identifying its location, Dovin sent word to a detachment of law-mages for interception. As he sent the orders, he watched the goblin's peculiar movement. His chair swayed back and forth, and Dovin could see the goblin looking furtively down every turn or into any door that opened with a simple push.

How interesting. I had thought to know your plans before, but if this is what you're doing…

Holding his idea, Dovin's eyes returned to the main stairwell so he could check his hypothesis against his observations of the other planeswalkers. Sure enough, after watching for only a few moments further, he saw the moonfolk also depart from the main group to investigate another of the many side hallways in the tower. The same soon happened for the long-haired man, and even eventually Chandra, leaving the main stairwell now empty besides the incapacitated bodies left in their wake.

Dovin had to switch his observation lens to the widest angle so he could watch all four planeswalkers at once. As with his initial observation of the goblin, the others all rushed down the abandoned hallways of the tower with an evident lack of direction. All they did was look into every room they could, blasting down locked doors by whatever means needed, offering a single cursory glance, and then moving on. Their pace was frantic and their movements nauseatingly unpredictable, but Dovin easily saw through the chaos, grasping the full situation in an instant. He leaned back in his chair, and he could once again feel the barest threads pulling at the corners of his thin lips.

They're still searching for the Immortal Sun. There are plenty of explanations for their actions, but that is the most salient of them. They somehow found this tower, knowing the Sun was housed somewhere within, but they did not know where. Even if they know of my location, they know disabling the Sun is a massive priority to stem Bolas' growth. And yet, they do not have any actual idea where it is being held within the facility.

Dovin folded his hands, allowing them to briefly fall into his lap. To make it this far and to have all your effort prove utterly futile, I suppose it's only fitting. By simply entering this tower, you've guaranteed your own failure. Even if I were not prepared to detain you all, you would never find the Sun. You thought you could best my intellect, and yet here you are, completely trapped by it.

Reigniting the telepathic connection to the guards of the four floors where the planeswalkers were, he relayed their positions, trajectories, and potential points of capture. After ensuring he saw the Azorius moving along to his specifications, Dovin was prepared to turn his attention back to the rest of Ravnica. Before he did, however, he saw something on the screen displaying Chandra that made him pause. Quickly flicking his lens back to the small magnification, he leaned forward to observe.

While the other three planeswalkers did not break in their behaviors, still racing through the hallways in their pointless search for the Sun, Chandra suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. Then, without seemingly any provocation, she turned around, sprinting back the way she came. Dovin followed along as she burst back onto the central stairwell and, no longer hindered by her teammates, began to climb with a frenzied pace. Catching a glimpse of her face, he saw a mask of concerted rage, and it took little effort for him to understand.

There it is, just as I predicted. It seems you may not know where the Sun is, but you know where I am. No matter how you gained such information, I knew you would be unable to follow your assignment if I was within reach. Those incendiary emotions of yours would never allow it. I see through you, Chandra, I always have. Now, I can finally use that information to put an end to the chaos you sow. While the Azorius were never fully equipped to deal with you specifically, I am.

Dovin turned away from the screen display, his eyes falling on the massive setup of laboratory tables and engineering hoods that took up most of his office. Inert thopters lay in wait, their apparatuses invitingly open.

I suppose it is time that I prepare for your arrival.


This is the only way forward. This is what I gotta do.

Chandra leaned forward, pushing herself as hard as she could to accelerate her ascent. Hot waves of wind broke across her face as she blasted the Azorius troops that stood in her way, darting past them too quickly to even register what new tricks they had planned for her. Even at a reduced speed, however, she would likely not have noticed them anyway. Chandra's mind was completely focused, pigeonholed onto the single goal that lay out in front of her, the only thing that mattered to her now.

She could not hear any of the far-off communications that might be coming through from her allies. She could not hear the screams of agony that rose from every guardmage or enforcer that met with a fiery dose. She could not even hear her own heartbeat, ravenously pumping blood through her numbed body and around her deafened ears. The only thing she could actively perceive now were the rising, writhing coils of the inferno in her mind, stoked higher and higher to match Chandra's own effortful climb. Against its yawning, typhonic force, her own inner voice was practically drowned out, but that could not stop it from speaking.

Need to move faster. It's so close. If I can just get there now, I can finally get this done.

The inferno howled, shooting its tendrils out and down to her fists for an added rush of pyromantic power. She did not fight against it. She let it flow readily into her gloves, causing them to flare and crackle like a raging brushfire. A small squadron of Azorius mages moved to disrupt her path, but she expanded out the sudden influx of flame, catching them all in a vortex of pinpoint sears. They yelled out in scalding pain, falling limply to either side as Chandra blasted past them.

I don't have time to waste with these goons. Not when the real goal is still ahead.

Her eyes, completely immolated, narrowed as she stared ahead. The rest of the tower loomed over her, but she did not pay attention to the remainder of the overbearing structure. All she was focused on was what lay at the very top of her ascent, and what lay immediately beyond that.

This is it. This is right. I need to get there, now. Nothing else matters, not anymore. That's all there is to it.

The inferno blazed in agreement. It pushed past its barrier, surging through her body as readily as her blood. Just beneath her skin, every muscle and tendon was so taut with anticipation that her nerves felt as though they were on fire, swiftly turning to ash. She was cognizant of the feeling, but it was easily lost in the swirling fury inside her head. Bending her head low and throwing her arms back, Chandra let her flames escape behind her like a set of firing engines, ready to thrust her higher, faster, closer to her singularly unchanging goal.


Dovin returned to his seat behind the control center, wiping the aether residue from his hands with a filigree-enlaced handkerchief. He required only the quickest of glances at the displays screens to reaffirm his predictions. Noting that everything was still acting on the schedule he had divined, he felt comfortable in concentrating his efforts on his cleanliness.

Perfection in one's appearance is one of the easiest to obtain, and yet I have found so few individuals who can aspire to even that meager feat. An inability to project perfection outward betrays a lack of perfection inward. I suspect it is often a consequence of feelings of judgement or embarrassment.

He gave a final cursory inspection of his hands, turning them over against the cool metallic cloth. There were no more bright stains against his blue skin, nor anything unsightly trapped beneath his twelve fingernails. Seeing this, he nodded, then proceeded to delicately refold his handkerchief.

Ah, to be a slave to such emotions is truly the burden of the deserving.

With only a few simple motions, the handkerchief sat in his hand in a tight triangle. Content with its appearance, he slipped it back into his breast pocket. Resting his back against the chair, he allowed his hands to fold into his lap. His eyes stared at the screens, but he took in none of the information they supplied. Instead, Dovin's focus was on the methodical tapping of his pointer finger.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Then, just as his countdown reached its end, the door behind him flew from its hinges with a sonorous BOOM! Dovin did not flinch at the explosive noise, nor at the equally loud sound of the dislodged metal slab falling to the ground just beside his primary workbench. A wave of superheated air wafted over him, breaking across the back of his head left exposed by the chair's headrest. Once it passed, he turned slightly in his chair, only enough so that he could see the occupied doorway out of the corner of his eye.

"Chandra, as punctual as ever."

Seeing her now, not through the lens of a thopter, Dovin could only think that his initial expectations may have been set even higher for the young pyromancer than was accurate. Chandra glowered in the doorway for a moment, fists held before her in a defiant stance of battle. Framed by the bright backlight of the Azorius tower and the flickering flames atop her head, he immediately saw the sorry state she was in. Her face was pulled in a tight, uncomfortable leer, her plate armor was covered in soot-filled scratches, and her chest and shoulder heaved up and down as she fought for breath after her arduous ascension. There was nothing in her appearance to summon even a modicum of concern in Dovin's heart. All he had was the solace that finally removing her from the Multiverse would bring it one more step closer to perfection.

"I'm here to finish you, Dovin," said Chandra. "I'm gonna wipe you and your whole surveillance system off the fucking map."

Dovin cocked his brow at her over his shoulder. "You are more than welcome to try, but I sincerely doubt that you can achieve any of that. Someone as weak and flawed could never stand a chance against me."

He saw her scowl deepen. "We'll just see about that, you pompous blue bastard."

Her fists ignited, the initial flash deepening the shadows that played across her silhouetted face. It looked weaker than Dovin remembered. Perhaps she was restraining herself? Or perhaps her decline into dire imperfection had occurred faster than he expected since last they met. It was unimportant, and the thought quickly evaporated from Dovin's mind.

With a snort of resolve, Chandra bounded into Dovin's sanctum, her flaming fists poised to unleash a heated barrage at him and his control center. His keen eyes waited for any movement, and as soon as he saw her start to move, he raised his right hand from his lap, bringing it above his head with a flourish of his wrist. Delicate lines of periwinkle energy appeared over his hands, intricate patterns that seemed to mimic Kaladesh's swirling eddies of aether, only now they traced out a precise, mechanistic design across his skin.

As his hand rose and illuminated, so too did the formerly lifeless thopters that lay strewn across his workspace. In an instant, their translucent domes filled with blue light, which spread through their wings like lifeblood. Once they matched the magics wrapped around Dovin's extended hand, the wings began to hum. The small mechanisms, nearly indistinguishable from the avian Azorius couriers in both their size and the pageantry with which they displayed their guild allegiance, lifted into the air.

The room filled with the resonant buzzing, driven by the dozen or so thopters now under Dovin's direct control. It was a sound that he found inexpressibly soothing, even if he knew those around him never understood why. Still, even it could not rouse any emotions from him. With his mouth pulled in a joyless line, Dovin ordered the thopters to attack. They dove at Chandra, their freshly polished hulls blitzing across the rooms and their sharpened proboscises aimed at her vitals from all angles.

She clocked them immediately, the sudden assault forcing her to momentarily stand her ground. This change in plans, however, did not seem to disrupt her flow. Pivoting onto the balls of her feet, Chandra let out a series of quick jabs into the empty space before her, each one throwing a carefully aimed fireball at an incoming thopter. She managed to shoot off five precise blasts before the first one landed. It struck a barreling thopter in midair, causing the contraption to violently explode into a cloud of dust and scrap. The heat and force were so powerful, they cascaded to the next thopter, causing it to explode it as well. Along with her other attacks, it took only a moment before all the thopters were blown to smithereens.

Watching from his seat, Dovin nodded. Exactly as I predicted of you, Chandra.

Chandra stood still for a moment, her face unflinching as she watched the miniature ignitions of the hurtling thopters. Then, from out of the smokescreen of the first detonated thopter, something continued flying towards Chandra. It was an amorphous blue blob, nearly translucent in the low light and moving with enough fluctuations to betray its thick viscosity. Chandra moved as if to react, but her fiery barrage a moment ago had left her open. The blob struck her in the chest, causing her eyes to bulge in surprise. It did not hit with enough force to knock her off balance, but it immediately enveloped her torso within its sticky hold.

Before she could properly react to this surprising attack, another blob flew from the smoke. This one landed on her left foot, completely covering her up to the ankle and gluing her to the floor. Then came another, and another, and another. The viscous projectiles battered her, each connecting to the others until she was completely coated in a heavy blue film. The momentum of the impact sent strands of the goo to the adjacent walls, creating a sort of spiderweb to detain her. As they landed on her hands and head, her flames instantly extinguished, smothered by the unsightly gunk.

From his periphery, Dovin could see her struggle against the engulfing ooze. Her arms, legs, and head all pushed and pulled at it, trying to rip or separate a section to free her, but its rubbery consistency could not be overcome, leaving her frozen in her previously donned boxing stance. By chance, Chandra had managed to keep a corner of her face clear, and her mouth painfully contorted to fit into this miniscule gap.

"What… the fuck… is all this?" she growled, her words halting as her jaw fought against the viscid hold. "I can't…"

"Move?" Dovin readily piped up to finish her statement. "Just as astute an observation as I'm come to expect from you, Chandra."

At this point, Dovin finally swiveled his chair fully around to face Chandra and rose to his feet. He took a few steps forward, exaggerating his normally stiff movements as an additional mockery of her stationary state, before eventually stopping halfway between her and the large window that overlooked New Prahv.

"To answer your first question, what you're encased in represents my own experimentation on the binding slime of the Simic. It's a curious substance, one that seems ideal for trapping meddlesome interlopers, but the applications in its natural state are limited. A properly calibrated infusion of aether strengthened the elasticity and magic dampening. Knowing that you were coming, Chandra, I also added a proprietary extinguishing compound confiscated from the Izzet, which, by my own calculations, should ensure almost complete fire retardance."

Dovin paused, watching for Chandra's reaction. He received another fuming stare, distorted through the undulating opaque lens of the slime at which she still vainly pulled. It was like staring at a rat that had wandered into a glue trap, and Dovin could only stare with superior disinterest.

"I'm gonna get outta here," she hissed, "and I'm gonna melt you and every last thopter you ever made until you're nothing but sludge in the gutter."

Dovin shook his head in feigned disappointment. "Unfortunately, I very much doubt that. At every turn, you have made this far too easy for me, Chandra. I already know that I cannot be stopped, but it would have been nice to have at least been challenged."

"Fuck you. Fuck you and that dragon you're sucking up to. You really think that when he destroys Ravnica, he won't destroy you too?"

"Hmm? An interesting question, certainly, and one undoubtedly attempting to incite some sense of either paranoia or guilt within me. An attempt, but a futile one, and I feel no need to answer you." The runes around his hands reignited, summoning another batch of thopters from further in his laboratory. These were the larger set, each with a bronze chassis wide enough that Dovin could comfortably stand atop. As such, he could only activate a few in the confined space, but it was more than enough. Their needlelike noses, javelins compared to the former thopters' darts, turned to Chandra, tips lining up with her vitals even through the obscuring layer of slime. "I believe I have given you enough courtesy, and our business has concluded."

Dovin waved his hand forward, signaling the oversized thopters to attack. They bolted to Chandra, slower than the sleeker initial deployment but still fast enough to fill the air with streaking, shrieking buzzes. As he watched the helpless planeswalker prepare to meet her inevitable end, Dovin's mind had already moved past it, thinking about if the outside surveillance relays had been reestablished or if the other planeswalkers had been detained.

I do hope they can handle them without my intervention. Though I do know what being the Grand Arbiter entails. If this sector is still standing before the end of the day, I'll be sure to bury them in the requisite paperwork for their failures. I'm sure triplicate will be more than…

Dovin's thoughts paused as he was pulled back to what was happening right before him by unexpected movement picked up by his keen eyes. As the thopters closed in, Chandra continued to pull at the slime, fighting against it with all her might. He could not see what was happening beneath the thick blue covering, but something in Chandra's movements had changed. She pushed further and harder than she had before, and then suddenly, the slime began to rip away. With a squelching snap, Chandra's upper body emerged from its prison, sending bouncing bits of slime across the room. Dovin's eyes narrowed in scrutiny, and he motioned as if to step towards her. Before he could, however, Chandra raised her hands and unleashed a geyser of fire directly at Dovin.

The flames engulfed the thopters, smelting them instantly. It roared through his workspace, burning up loose workbench blueprints and distorting leftover sheets of metal. It took less than a moment before the immolating pillar breached Dovin's radius. He stared at it, feeling the waves of heat ripping at his skin, the moisture evaporating from his eyes.

Then, he blinked.

A fine attempt, Chandra, but you still no pose no threat to me.

Dovin raised his right hand, which alit with conjured azure magic. Maintaining his cool demeanor in the face of the overwhelming heat, he first brought his hand close to his chest, allowing the spell to gather further strength from his spark before he swung it out into the falling curtain of fire. Though Chandra's attack was hot enough to reduce his thopters to basest ore, his shielded hand sliced cleanly through the flame. Dovin's spell absorbed her fury, stopping it before it could even put so much as a scorch mark on his immaculate outfit.

As soon as his hand carved out a window in the flame through which Dovin could see to the other side of the room, he peered detachedly at Chandra, who had once again started to charge at him, her mind presumably too hazy with anger to understand exactly what was happening.

"I see you've learned nothing, Chandra," he said, voice hollow with disinterest. "You'd still put a match to something rather than understand it."

By the time his hand returned to his side, the fire was gone, wiped out with the same effort it took for Dovin to put his mark of veto on an Azorius requisition form. He saw Chandra's face begin to morph from rage to shock as the blinding fire died from her eyes, letting her finally see how useless all her actions against Dovin had been. Her reaction was too slow to stop running, but her movement was soon put to an end regardless.

The large thopters that she had destroyed shared more in common with their smaller counterparts than Chandra must have anticipated. As they exploded in response to her flame, they sent their own payloads of binding slime, each exponentially larger than the previous volley. The massive blobs struck her with an unfounded force, instantly stopping her in her tracks and encasing her in a thicker, tougher, and longer cocoon of slime.

As Dovin stared out through the last dying embers of Chandra's impotent attack, he noted that this time, no part of her was visible beneath the suffocating mass of ooze that extended from the floor all the way to the ceiling. She was suspended within, and though the slime jiggled and writhed at her internal provocation, it was palpably weaker than previously.

I do wonder how you managed to escape the first time. I doubt it was physical strength, given your stature. Perhaps you managed to get your fire past the slime's flashpoint. Either way, I will have to revisit my experiment notes after this day has concluded. It seems I still have work to do before the recipe is perfected. He reached into his breast pocket, retrieving his handkerchief. As he remained in his spot, he carefully wiped the leftover soot that had been deposited on his hands from his counter. I could keep you around, Chandra, to test the slime, but that hardly seems necessary Now that you don't have any air holes, you'll suffocate in a matter of minutes. He inspected his hands again and, finding them sufficiently clean, he folded his handkerchief back into his pocket. However, given your unlikely escape the last time, there is little need to give you any further chance to disrupt me.

Another glowing circle of runes appeared around his outstretched hand. At his command, another triumvirate of large thopters buzzed to attention. The fragments of breeze from their gyrating wings that reached Dovin soothed his heated skin, bringing forth a contented sigh from his nose. Once it dissipated, he turned his hand over, and the thopters bolted to Chandra. Even beneath the heavy coating of slime, the thopters could align their proboscises with Chandra's vitals. Trusting the accuracy of his engineering and control, Dovin closed his fist, and the thopters plunged themselves into the gelatinous mass.

First came a series of plops as their pointed tips broke into the slime, a sound akin to breaking the surface of a marshy pond with an exploratory poke of a stick, only to summon a squelching bubble of disrupted air. But then came the sounds more viscerally familiar, the sound of metal piercing a body. The serrated noses of the thopters tore through flesh and broke through bone. The sound still unsettled Dovin slightly, though mostly in his unaccustomed condition to dealing with live subjects. Fortunately, the sounds ended quickly, each followed by another plop as the thopters' skewers reemerged, wiped clean from the slime.

Dovin held the thopters stationary for a moment, checking for signs of movement from within. Seeing none, he withdrew the thopters with another flick of his wrist, bringing with them another chorus of squelches. Dovin, however, was not one to leave things to chance. Waving his hands in a complex pattern, he arranged the thopters' flight paths and, with a clench of his fist, sent them plunging into the unseen body once more.

"That should be more than sufficient," said Dovin as he withdrew the thopters, commanding them to return to their spots and power down in the interim. He looked at the mass, watching it slowly return to equilibrium. "I would say it was a valiant effort, Chandra, and perhaps relative to your abilities, it was. Unfortunately, you were doomed to die as a slave to your imperfections. I am only disappointed that I could not provide your spark to Bolas. Perhaps under his tutelage, your power could have finally amounted to something."

He stepped forward to the slime, stopping just an arm's length from it. "Still, I'm sure your body can be of some use to me. I've never attempted to design a propulsion system for my thopters, but perhaps I will find inspiration floating somewhere within your corpse."

Dovin raised his hand to the slime, summoning forth the same blue magic that had negated Chandra's flames. In its presence, the slime suddenly lost its lusters. The bright color drained from it into his hand, leaving it a dull gray, and its elasticity suddenly gave way. As Dovin ended his spell, the slime degenerated, falling beneath its own weight into a loose puddle on the floor. The body at its center dropped to the ground with a thud, the blood from its wounds mingling with the dull liquid. It was this sight, however, that gave Dovin pause. He had seen Kaladeshian blood before. He had even seen Chandra's blood before when they clashed amid the Renegade revolt, bright red with her misguided conviction. He was thus taken aback by the black, ichorlike substance that bubbled forth from the limp body.

Dovin knelt down, quickly wiping the slime off the body with his bare hand. He first found the body's torso, and as he cleaned it, he did not see Chandra's red plates or silver chainmail, but instead a tattered brown robe cinched loosely around a broad frame.

This… this is not Chandra Nalaar. But how? What has happened…

Feeling a sudden energy seize him, Dovin moved quickly to remove as much of the obscuring muck as he could. Working upward, he found that the robe flowed further out into a massive cloak, one that could envelop the whole body. It was pulled tightly over a head with withered skin and fraying gray hair, revealing only a devilish smile. As soon as Dovin saw it, a sudden realization painfully grabbed his chest.

Lazav!

Dovin stared at the Dimir leader, wearing one of the faces Dovin had seen during several of their guild meetings. He and the shapeshifter had been at odds since his arrival, with his spy network threatening a long overdue exposure of their organization's illicit businesses. Now, seeing their corpse staring up at him with a taunting rictus grin, Dovin felt his heart start to race.

No. No, this can't be. That's simply impossible. Lazav can create a copy of a person, yes, one that is so perfect even I can't see through it, but they cannot mimic their powers as well. Then how, how did she…

He could tell his hands were shaking, but he did not care, instead pushing forward in revealing Lazav's form. Though his work was uncharacteristically sloppy, Dovin swiftly reached the hands. Attached to both hands were wearable Izzet flamethrowers, but these had undergone heavy modification. He traced their fuel line under Lazav's gauntlets and to his back, where a half-empty tank listlessly swished. The craftsmanship on the gloves themselves were unlike anything Dovin had seen before. As he held one up his hand, staring at it beneath the scornful magnification of his lenses, he felt his mind begin to reel.

Have I been tricked? Tricked by that worthless excuse for a pyromancer? I should have seen this. How could I not have seen this? Lazav must have snuck in during the bedlam at the entrance, alongside those others who were checking the tower for the Sun.

Suddenly, Dovin stopped. His neck snapped up from the glove, staring intently into the middle distance, drawn by the malicious magnetism of his realization.

"If Chandra and the others aren't in here searching for the Sun, then does that mean…"


Back in Svogthos, Chandra had been in no state to make up a plan of attack for either herself or her allies. Fortunately, Jace and Niv-Mizzet had concocted a battle strategy that could be easily executed without detection, one that had the potential to secure both of their objectives at once. Despite Chandra's outward frigidity and the inward churning of the inferno, she had listened intently, internalizing every step of the mission that put the fate of their lives, and the lives of everyone on Ravnica, upon her back.

It was difficult for Chandra to relinquish her shot at Dovin to Lazav, an individual whose chilling presence could still unnerve her even through her tumultuous emotional state. They did reach a common ground in their hatred of Dovin and his enthusiasm for panoptic enforcement. From there, it was enough for Lazav, and a posse of his strongest and most loyal Dimir shapeshifters, to stick to the shadows of New Prahv with which they were all well acquainted until the time was right. Daretti, in addition to setting up the jamming signal for the thopter network and modifying the flamethrower gloves donated by Ral Zarek, had built an exclusive pair of communication devices for Chandra and Lazav. While the battle outside the tower raged, Chandra sent Lazav the first signal, letting them slip inside while she and the others held the guardmages' attention.

The Dimir had their orders, ones that were in equal measures necessary for the plan and diametrically opposed to the principles of the guild. Beneath the guises of the planeswalkers, they were to do whatever they could to draw the attention of as many Azorius as they could, with the goal of holding Dovin's attention for as long as possible. This would allow Chandra and the others to enact their side of the two-pronged attack. While the Dimir climbed the tower from within, the planeswalkers took to the skies, ascending to the tower's top from the exterior.

Chandra was the only one in need of flight assistance, which Tamiyo provided with a helpful cloud kirin scroll to let her float through the air and control her acceleration with her flames. Tamiyo continued her usual walking flight, Dack followed suit with a conjured pair of winged sandals, and Daretti had equipped his chair with what he called a magnetic propulsion array. With Chandra at their head, the four planeswalkers were perfectly equipped to ascend the outer walls of the stronghold in a tight cluster, dispatching any mages, thopters, or errant Eternals that came their way.

Chandra was singularly focused as she flew, eyes never wavering for long from the dark roof of the tower. She could still feel the inferno's vines tugging at her, goading her to focus on the space just below the roof, where Fblthp had confirmed Dovin's office sat. Though it took almost all her mental fortitude, Chandra managed to keep the inferno under control. So tight was her focus that she almost missed sending Lazav the second signal, but she got to it before their window closed. If Chandra and the others were to reach the roof undetected, Dovin would need to be distracted when they passed his office's windows. Lazav would intercept him, keep him occupied for as long as they could. Chandra did not know if either one of them would survive the encounter, but she knew there would be time to reckon with those consequences once the true task at hand was completed.

They crested over the rooftop, an enormous black triangle whose pristine surface was only disrupted by the rippling shadows from the clouds overhead and a few access hatches at its vertices. Chandra paused momentarily, allowing the others to regroup. She asked Tamiyo for confirmation, and after a quick chat back and forth with the shy creature still living in her knapsack, the moon sage pointed to an unremarkable space on the roof halfway between the center and the tower's front. Nodding, Chandra led them down to it. As they approached, Dack pulled a spell from his psychometric archive. The palm of his glove began to glow, and a bright green eye appeared on it, inscribed in the center of a broochlike circle of silver. Holding his hand out to the roof, the magical eye blinked, and a small hole appeared on the roof. Chandra was the first through this uncovered entrance, with the others close behind.

Her breath caught in her throat as soon as she entered the space beneath the roof. Rather, the space that was being concealed by the illusion of a roof put into place by Dovin. Even with the extensive report from Fblthp's accidental reconnaissance, Chandra was not quite prepared for the secret held within the triangular tower's center. For the massive tower was not truly a tower at all, but instead a set of three thin, independent towers standing at the corners.

While the walls visible to the street were unblemished and unremarkable, the flat sides that faced into the covert intersection were lined with rows and rows of deployment banks filled with thopters. The blue of swirling aether and flapping wings dotted the space, with thopters either set to patrol the interior or pass into the city through the illusory walls, all at the behest of their great commander and undetectable to the outside world. Without the cloaking provided by Daretti's jamming device, they likely would have been ripped to ribbons within moments of entering, but the thopters completely ignored them, requiring the planeswalkers to stay sharp and avoid any accidental collisions.

Chandra's attention, and likely the attentions of Daretti, Dack, and Tamiyo as well, could not be fully dedicated to the dodging of thopters, not once they saw what truly lay at the heart of Dovin's grand deception. There, suspended in midair at the exact center of the false monolith, was a massive disc of bright, gleaming gold. It was shaped like an octagonal gear, with square gilded teeth cutting through the air as it gradually precessed around an invisible axis. Ancient glyphs and runes protruded from its shimmering surface, creating an untraceable pattern of esoteric arcana. The only part Chandra could recognize was the large triangle at its center, which glowed a bright green that, when covered by the archaic windings of gold, perfectly replicated the eyelike signet of the Azorius.

Chandra did not need any confirmation to recognize the artifact once she saw it. There it is. Finally, we reached The Immortal Sun.

She watched it for a moment as it idly rotated in the middle of nothing, suspended by some unseeable force. Its name, she now understood, was not simply a metaphor, as the Sun projected waves of unfettered heat and light. The climate within the magically confined space had turned practically tropical by its radiating warmth, a sharp contrast to the cool, clammy atmosphere Bolas had brought down on the rest of the city. Her own temperatures made Chandra immune to the climatic shift, but her allies were already beginning to sweat in its overwhelming presence.

What Chandra could feel from the Sun, however, was the shackling magic it had sent across the city. Since arriving on Ravnica, she had felt its hold on her, forcibly latching her to the plane. She had grown accustomed to its presence over the day, but now, staring at the source that was almost within her reach, she was again acutely aware of how trapped she, and every other planeswalker, was on this plane for as long as the Sun stayed lit.

It won't stay that way for long. She stared at the Sun, taking in its magnificent luminescence. She could feel a slight sting in her eyes, one that likely would have been blinding were she not used to constantly staring into white-hot flames, but irritating nonetheless. We'll shut the Sun down as fast as possible. Nothing else matters, not right now.

"Jeez, this thing's hotter than I thought," said Daretti, hovering idly behind her. "I gotta watch to make sure my chair's steam core don't blow a gasket."

Tamiyo nodded. "Its heat is quite remarkable, as is the light it projects. It is making it difficult to get a proper view of the runes inscribed on the top. Hopefully, I can get a proper look soon if I am to sketch it from memory in my notes later."

"With that much gold, I could probably buy my own city," Dack whistled lowly. He leaned the furthest away from Chandra, balancing on his winged ankles while he nervously fidgeted with the strappings on his long gloves. "Yeah, so, what's the plan here, boss?"

Chandra spoke over her shoulder while her eyes bounced around the wide, enclosed space. Fblthp had been unable to provide a detailed description of what to expect in the Sun's vicinity, leaving Jace without much information to formulate a plan. He had entrusted Chandra to lead from this point on, though he relinquished it reticently so, for which she truly could not blame him.

"We need to get to the Sun as quick as we can," she said, "but priority one is keeping Dack safe. The thopters don't seem to be reacting to us, so if we can avoid contact, we might be good. We'll proceed carefully until we're overtop the Sun. That way, Dack can drop down to do his thing while we support him from above. For now, we'll keep the formation tight to lessen any chance of accidental collisions. I'll lead from the front. Dack and Daretti, you stay close behind. Tamiyo, I want you covering our back with those scrolls of yours. Any thopters get too close, you blow them off us as delicate as you can."

Tamiyo nodded. "I understand."

"Daretti," said Chandra, "keep the jamming signal going, and see if you can trace the flight paths of the thopters around here. If we know where they'll be flying, we can dodge them."

"No guarantee they've got a regular routing protocol in here," snorted the goblin, "but I'll see what I can do. If you can spare one of those breezes of yours, Tammy, this might go a bit easier. Hard to work when my brain's startin' to boil in this heat, y'know?"

"Oh, don't bother her with that," chimed in Dack. "If my only job is to sit tight until we get to the Sun, I'll go mad. Here, Daretti, I'll show you a little something I picked up from the king of Karfell on Kaldheim."

As Chandra watched Dack wave a hand over his and Daretti's heads, manifesting an ethereal crown of cobalt icicles atop their brows, she could see his nervousness ebb. She knew that Dack had a difficult task ahead, that everyone was counting on him to perform, and that he was still grappling with the responsibility. She could not help him overcome his anxieties, but as his leader, she could get him into the best position to do so. She could think about Dovin and Jace and Nissa and Jaya later.

"Okay, if we all know the mission, there isn't any time to waste. Fall in behind me, and keep your senses sharp. We don't know what might be waiting for us."

Dack, Daretti, and Tamiyo nodded in compliance. They moved into their assigned positions behind Chandra, and once she felt them waiting for her lead, she let out a small burst of flame from each palm to propel her at a controllable clip towards the Immortal Sun.

Chandra sped through the heated air, weaving around the passing thopters that obliviously crossed their path. She could feel her senses firing on all cylinders. The inferno, so cantankerous on the journey here, now shrunk away beneath the revealing light of the Sun. It refused to be fully extinguished, but Chandra found herself managing it far better now that her goal was directly in her sights. While she left her peripheral vision and her ears open to potential happenings around her, Chandra's attention was mostly consumed by the Sun, her eyes barely wavering from the predesignated spot just above the spinning disc. She knew it would take all her focus to finally accomplish the task for which she had volunteered, but now that it was so close, she knew that success was the only option left available.

Unfortunately, because she was so focused on directing them all to the Immortal Sun, she was slow in noticing the sudden shift in the flight patterns of the thopters around her. It was not until she heard a hard THUD behind her, followed by a shrill shriek of pain, that Chandra could pull herself away from the captivating light of the Sun. She wheeled around in time to see Tamiyo, the source of the scream, clutching at a long spike of metal jutting from her forearm, which she immediately recognized as a thopter's probe. The thopter that had crashed into Tamiyo, easily idenitifiable by its newly smoothed face, had already been rebuffed by Dack, who flung it away from them with a wave of his hand. The thopter spun out into another thopter that was careening towards them, pulled towards it as if magnetized, and the two collided in a brief but effective explosion.

"Tamiyo!" yelled Chandra.

"Oh dear," Tamiyo whimpered. She gripped tightly around her forearm where the spike stuck out, blood seeping slowly through her fingers. "I did not know it could hurt this much. To think that you all have endured injuries like this on your adventures…"

Chandra's eyes flared. She wanted to rush over and help Tamiyo, but she clocked a small group of thopters hurtling towards them. Her instincts kicking in, Chandra unleashed a quick volley of fire, piercing each of their hulls and detonating their volatile cores before they could reach them. Unfortunately, the smoke cleared only to reveal more thopters readily taking their place. Taking a brief look around, she could see, one by one, the thopters were diverting from their prescribed paths to target them.

"What the hell happened?" she roared, letting off another wave of projectiles.

Daretti was already hunching over his desk, reevaluating his dissected test subject. "I don't know! My signal is still operational. It's just that these thopters aren't responding to it no more. Whatever new orders are comin' in, they're too strong for me to override!"

"Well, I'm glad there is at least one among you who can recognize my brilliance."

Chandra stiffened. It was a new voice, a booming voice that sounded like it came from all sides, but it was not truly new to her. Its cold, precise tones instantly burrowed into her head, a fresh spike of fuel to cause the inferno to start to shake itself from slumber. Her focus was still on burning away the thopters that flooded their location, but in between successive bursts of fire, she searched for the source of the condescending voice.

It did not take long until she got into a position where she could see the back of the obsidian tower they had sent the Dimir to infiltrate. Its hangars were now opened wide, belching forth a cloud of large thopters that filled the air with a shrill hum that set her teeth on edge. They began to fan out into the space, though their targeted sights were still clearly on the four stranded planeswalkers. Guiding them forward, standing firmly atop the foremost thopter with glowing hands splayed out at his sides, was Dovin Baan.

Even though he was still too far for Chandra to make out his fine details, the sight of Dovin's figure was enough to pull her attention away from the Sun. His words had been but an appetizer for the inferno, with his appearance serving as the full meal. She felt its tendrils unfurl with enough voracity that she was forced to vent the energy out through her fists, reducing a wave of thopters before her into a slurry of liquid chrome. The imminent danger helped her rein it in, but she could feel her mental strength being tested.

"So, you're the one who has been mucking about in my thopters?" As Dovin rode towards them, looking like a picture of composure, his staunch voice surrounded them, perfectly emitted from somewhere within the thopters' chassis. Even the autopsied carcass on Daretti's bench had sprung to relative life, delivering the vedalken's words directly to the goblin. "Impressive work, I will admit. Your brute force entry into the idle subroutines indicates an intellect I had not expected to see this day. You've forced me to assume direct control of these thopters, and for that alone, you have my acknowledgement."

"Oh, blow it out yer ass!" Daretti yelled into the dissecting thopter, his scratchy voice barely audible amidst a cacophony of screeching metal as his chair sliced and stabbed at the thopters within its reach. "Yer a mealy fuckin' worm and yer craftsmanship is rudimentary at best!"

Dovin paused. "A shame to see a mind so sharp has been dulled by the influence of others. I should expect no less of the company kept by you, Chandra."

At the sound of her name in his clinical voice, the inferno pounced, retaking all the ground it had lost and poising to take even more. Behind her pursed lips, she could feel a mounting pressure in his jaw.

"I'm not quite sure how you found the Sun," continued Dovin, "but I'm afraid simply having such knowledge means nothing if you cannot properly act upon it. Your gambit was somewhat inspired, as sure a sign as any that you are simply acting under someone else's orders. But I am afraid it was all for naught. It seems all your ploy managed to do was allow me to dispose of one of the peskier thorns in my side on this plane. Lazav was no match for me, and now he and his shapeshifting subordinates have been dealt with before they could buy you the time you needed. You've failed, Chandra, as you always do. Maybe once I neutralize your little resistance outfit, you'll finally understand that."

Chandra could feel the circulation being cut off from her fingers with the strength of her fists balling. The flames covering her head and hands leapt up, their red fringes suddenly overtaken by the bright yellows and whites of the intense heat. While she continued to blast away the incoming thopters, creating a viable path towards the Immortal Sun through which they could keep moving, her eyes were now being pulled to Dovin as if attached by an invisible reel. The arbiter appeared unburdened as he stood on the back of his mechanized mount, waving the golden runes that encircled his hands. Bowing to his domineering command, the sea of thopters parted around him, allowing him and his reinforcements to pass within an unimpeded bubble towards them. Even through her luminous haze, Chandra could tell that, if the divebombing thopters did not get them first, Dovin would catch them long before they reached the Sun.

Refusing to turn her head, Chandra spoke from the side of her mouth to the others. "Dovin's gaining too fast. We're not gonna make it at this rate."

Daretti grunted. "I'm tryna get these thopters off our tail, but I can't seem to overtake his commands. Anytime I think I gotta in, he slaps me back out like I'm a fuckin' foundry hornet. Never seen a defense system this perfect 'fore."

Chandra bit her tongue, which the inferno had attempted to seize when Daretti uttered that dreaded word. Swallowing it back, she directed her voice elsewhere. "Tamiyo, how are you feeling?"

The moon sage was clearly fighting back tears of pain as she continued to fling magic from her dancing scrolls into the pursuant thopters. Her wound had stopped bleeding, but the robe around the embedded probe was stiff with a dried crimson crust. "I am doing okay, I believe. I have utilized a kitsune healing technique to numb the injured area as much as possible, though I must assume the excess provocation is not helpful for recuperation."

"Good. You think you can keep going to the Sun?"

"I do, yes."

Chandra nodded. "Good, I want you up front then. Daretti, you move to the back. The two of you, no matter what, keep Dack safe until he can get to that Sun. I'm going to go and stop Dovin."

"Are you sure that's the wisest course of action?" asked Tamiyo.

"We don't have another option. These thopters will just keep coming until he's taken out. Jace's plan thought we'd have more time, but we don't. Now, you three get to the Sun and shut it down. That's a direct order."

Sensing the urgency behind her callous delivery, Tamiyo, Daretti, and Dack nodded to her, varying portraits of resolution playing across their faces. Tamiyo swung around the party, sidling into Chandra's position. The pyromancer jumped away and, with a forceful grunt, Tamiyo fanned her scrolls into a massive bubble around the three planeswalkers. Daretti turned his chair to face their back, positioning his legs at the edge of the whirlwind of glowing parchment. Together, they pressed closely around Dack, whose gloves still glowed with prepared spells, making him appear like a precious, shielded pearl.

With a quick nod from each of them, they departed from Chandra, pressing through the crush of thopters like a battering ram. She did not watch their progress, as her head immediately snapped around to Dovin. He was now close enough that she could see his face. The blank stare cresting over his upturned nose, the same one that had seen her people attacked and her mother detained, caused her flames roared to life. Still floating on the cloud kirin's spell, Chandra honed the fires in her hands to singular points, rocketing her through the air towards the contemptable artificer and his brood.

She projected her flaming hair in front of her, causing it to wrap around her face and torso. This created a barrier of superheated air, which allowed Chandra to smash through the thopters in her way. The impacts were not as clean as firing off individual bolts, and she could feel cuts and gouges start to appear across her skin with each hit, but she was more than content to trade these bits of flesh for the efficiency of reaching Dovin as quickly as possible. She suddenly looked very much like a comet, other than the chosen direction of her hopefully inevitable crash.

Even though the roaring cloak of flames covered her ears, Dovin's infuriatingly placid voice still managed to filter through.

"Abandoning your charges so soon, Chandra? It's not typically indicative of a winning strategy, is it? But then again, you've never been one to follow the optimal path so long as there was an alternative for your unpredictable emotional state to drag you down."

The inferno snorted, kicking at her skull like an incited minotaur. Chandra did not react to it, keeping her lips sealed and her eyes trained on Dovin.

"Perhaps this is the most optimal path," he continued, "that your inferior mind can scrounge together. You think that, by targeting me directly, you can have our shared past prey on my concentration? That I will be so distracted by my desire to finally snuff out the brat whose tantrum overturned my grand vision of Kaladesh, that it will draw all my power towards you and away from your team? I truly pity your brain, Chandra, if that is the best plan it can generate. Even now, your allies represent a far greater threat to me than you ever could. Both measures pale in comparison to my abilities, but I still have no intention of letting them live longer than you."

Chandra was too focused to look at anything else but Dovin, but she could hear a shift in the buzzing around her. She continued to crash through myriad thopters, but she could tell the numbers were diminishing, and the thopters were rerouting around her to pursue Daretti, Dack, and Tamiyo. She could feel a small fiber pulling her to turn around and assist them, but it was quickly immolated.

At least I know they're still alive. They can do this. I trust them to do this. Just like they're trusting me to take you down, Dovin.

From all around her, she heard Dovin summon a deadened half-chuckle. "I must say, Lazav's replication of you really was perfect. To capture your blinding rage, your frail ego, your inability to think anything through to an extent that would be helpful to anyone. In every form, you're always the same, Chandra. You're rust. Now just as much as you've ever been, you're nothing but rust on the gears of society. They try to turn and grind, to keep the world in perfect harmony, yet you cling to them like a parasite, heedlessly wearing them down until they crack and splinter. I have dedicated my life to keeping those gears clean, to improving their design so they can be as efficient, as perfect as possible, yet your pitiful mind is too beholden to your emotions to do anything but try and corrupt my vision. You call it freedom, but I call it what it is: unbridled chaos. Destruction for destruction's sake. I am fortunate that I may be the one to finally wipe those gears clean of your influence. I'm sure Master Bolas will finally reach the perfection that your spark could never achieve from within you."

The gap between them was steadily closing, and she could see the creases deepening on Dovin's face as he spoke. By the time his voice clicked off, he was practically sneering down at her, the same self-assured look that she had seen on his face many times before. He then swept his hands out in a meticulous pattern, rearranging the runes around his fingers to deliver his orders.

At first, it appeared that Dovin and his thopter mount were slowing down, as if goading Chandra to come to him. The move, Chandra noted, was certainly cocky enough to keep with Dovin's usual strategies. After a moment, however, she realized that his speed had not dropped, but that of the rest of his summoned swarm had suddenly picked up. These thopters surged past him, wings fluttering faster than an eye could catch and needles glinting in the Sun's light. They bore down on Chandra like a flock of ravenous crows, ready to pick her bones clean.

That won't stop me, she thought. I'll burn through all of these if it means getting to you. It's no different than the rest of them, I'll just keep pushing. Wait, hold on…

Peering through the halo of fire, Chandra had been keeping her focus solely on Dovin, even amidst the forthcoming storm of thopters. Her train of thought, however, led her to glimpse something in her periphery that had escaped her notice. She had seen plenty of thopters so far, with many of them coming close enough to reveal their finer details before shattering over her brow. It thus came as a surprise to see that the thopters that came alongside Dovin looked slightly different than those patrolling the ersatz tower's interior. They were bigger, and unless her vision had grown too hazy, the translucent blue shell around their nondescript faces was far murkier.

Understanding struck fast. Dovin knew I was here. He had time to prepare. He wouldn't just send these things at me if he thought I would just blast through them to reach him. She tucked in her chin, leveling her eyes at Dovin beneath her sweating brow. Don't think you can underestimate me.

With a deft flick of her neck, Chandra pulled back the flaming shell from around her. She channeled that heat into one hand, strengthening both its propulsion power and her ability to control it. Shifting her weight onto it, she brought her other hand in front. Her eyes broke from Dovin to size up the thopters that stood between them. She quickly found the one that would reach her soonest, took aim, and let off a precise bolt of fire.

It hit, piercing through the hull in spectacular fashion. She watched it detonate, seeing the same patterns of smoke and metal that she had seen from the others. But then, the pattern changed.

A second detonation from within?

As soon as she saw this subsequent explosion, she reflexively pulled herself out of the thopter's path as fast as possible. She moved just as a wad of slime flew from the smoke, propelled by the secondary blast. It zoomed past her, engulfing another pair of thopters that had crept up from behind.

Her instincts immediately kicked in. Pushing through the inferno's tempestuous whipping, Chandra took aim at the other thopters flying in her way. Quick as a zephyr, she unloaded a volley of fireballs and, as soon as she sensed the thopters ignite, she maneuvered out of the way of the mysterious payloads. She fell into a rhythm, shooting and dodging, ducking and bobbing her way through the swarm with a fierce, concentrated conviction. Explosions lit up her periphery and rocked her eardrums, but these were all shunted into her subconscious, bouncing off her as unheeded as a summer rain.

She saw the flash of disbelief in Dovin's eyes as she grew nearer, clearing a winding, inarticulate path through the trap-laden thopters. Whatever he had done to them, Chandra suspected that he thought it would be enough to stop her. Now, though, Dovin's vision, while ideal for pointing out what he saw as the flaws in everything, were too slow and methodical to catch up to her wild climbing. It was not perfect. It did not need to be perfect. All it needed to be was the best that Chandra could muster. That, she finally understood, was enough.

Dovin regained his senses and began commanding the thopters to follow her, but it was far too late. She burst through the last wave that stood between them, smelting those that were serving as his direct guard and effortlessly dodging the subsequent slime. She and Dovin locked eyes for a moment, close enough that she could fully take in the deep, infuriating condescension that swam in his dead ruby irises. Then, without wasting a moment, Chandra grabbed hold of the inferno within her mind, yanked it down her throat and through her arms, and unleashed its full, unchecked chaos at Dovin.


You really still think this will be enough to defeat me? You are truly just as pathetic as you ever were, Chandra.

Dovin would never admit to the faint shock he felt when he saw Chandra, against most of his mental models, carefully shoot down the first thopter and avoid the binding slime fired by the implanted reactive detonator. He would be even less likely to admit to the mild tremor in his chest as he saw Chandra repeat this process over and over until she appeared before him, ripped and torn by shrapnel but yet somehow unscathed. She was still a picture of chaotic imperfection, but she had defied his expectations. As their gazes met, his mind was already updating his information and grinding through new scenarios that would address this unexpected development. They all paused, however, when he saw what she was planning.

Her hands reared over her head, steadily building with incandescent flames. Her eyes turned to white-hot embers. Her lips finally parted, revealing a curled snarl of aggression. To a lesser mind, Dovin thought, it would be quite the fearsome sight. For him, it was enough to bring his mind back to a confident center.

Lazav's impression really was perfect. It is playing out exactly as that did, exactly as expected. Dovin could feel the familiar itch at the corner of his mouth. Even now, after all that you've done to get here, you can't overcome your flaws. No matter what attempts you made, what effort you put in, it was always going to lead to this.

Dovin's fingers twitched with anticipation. The runic circle on his left hand slowly shifted in color, taking on a clean azure hue.

Your fire will never reach me. I will negate your spell, and you'll be skewered through the back before you can find another. It must be so infuriating, to pour so much rage into your assault and see it wasted. Perhaps you'll learn something from this. As you gasp for your last breath, Chandra, I do sincerely hope you finally learn that you were never anything more to me than a pebble caught in the groove of my sole.

Dovin cocked his arm back, ready to throw it out and cut Chandra's fire from the sky. He had foreseen the entire interaction, and his body was primed to simply execute its winning maneuver. When Chandra finally unleashed her attack, however, Dovin could not help but notice that it was different than the fire he had seen her use before. Her fire had always been distinctly reckless, brazen, and turbulent with amateurish youth. Now, it carried no such traits. These flaws, Dovin saw, were gone, leaving only a rich, red, immolating inferno.

It doesn't matter if you've changed, Chandra. You still cannot stand against me.

The flames approached, and Dovin's arm moved with the speed of his honed reflexes. He could feel the rippling heat stinging his skin, but he ignored it. He swung his hand directly into its center, allowing the blue circle to strike at the inferno's swirling heart. Then, upon the center of Chandra's fire, his spell shattered.

What in the…

Dovin had no time to reckon with his failure. Chandra's attack broke through his defense, immediately swallowing his outstretched hand. Pain on an unimaginable scale seared into his flesh, the silk and filigree of his robe instantly fusing to his arm. He did not scream though. Instead, as the inferno made its way up his arm to his face, his eyes beheld it in its entirety. He stared into the fire, feeling his eyes burn and wither in its presence. No scream escaped his lips, as he was suddenly too shocked by what he saw to do anything.

This… how did you do this, Chandra? This firecraft is exquisite. I've never seen anything like this, not from anyone. It's…

The flames filled his vision, imprinting themselves onto every inch of his mind just before everything went black.


Though her senses were ringing from the strain of her attack, the adrenaline surging in Chandra's veins refused to let her rest. As the summoned flames evaporated in the air, she saw Dovin's feet slip from his thopter, which had partially melted from its proximity to her blast. She watched him fall from his perch, arms flailing in the crosswind. Then, as if suddenly regaining his own sense, Dovin's hand lit up once more. With a sharp turn of his wrist, a thopter broke from its pack to swoop beneath him. He grabbed tight to the nooks of its chassis and began pulling himself up as the thopter turned away from Chandra and started to flee.

That bastard, always so quick to run as soon as he's been beat. You're not gonna get away this time!

Throwing both hands behind her, Chandra unleashed another inferno to her back, vaporizing the thopters that were closing in and jettisoning herself forward at an untenable speed. The thopter was fast, likely enhanced by Dovin's desperation, but Chandra was faster. Before it could reach the safe haven of the tower's hangar, Chandra crashed onto its back. The impact was not enough to stop the thopter, but it did falter, sending Dovin's already hunched frame down into a prone position.

She was not so easily shaken, her feet sticking tight to the slippery hull as soon as she made contact. This close to the thopter's wings, the repetitive buzz was almost deafening. It was not enough, however, to drown out Dovin's voice.

"You won't win this, you know." Despite everything, even through the rasp of heavy burns, Dovin's voice still refused to rise or fall in pitch. "Our plan for this plane, it's far beyond anything you or your Gatewatch can overturn."

"Look around, Dovin. You're done. You've lost."

At this, Dovin let out a low, deep chuckle, one whose unprecedented tenor sent a chill through Chandra's spine. As he started to lift himself only his elbows, the chuckle grew and grew, until Dovin was fully laughing, its sound dry as a burnt-out log. He turned to Chandra, and she saw that, where his eyes once were, now only two black spots of coal and soot remained, surrounded by a canvas of charred blue skin. He stared at her with his empty sockets, and the first thing she thought was that he now bore an odd resemblance to the Eternals.

"No, Chandra, it is you who has lost. You will never reach the Sun. You will never stop Bolas. Perfection will reign on the Multiverse, even if I cannot be the one to see it!"

She glanced at his hands and saw them flicker to life with mana a shade of blue that she did not recognize. As soon as she saw it, Chandra did not hesitate. Gathering all her pyromantic power, she thrust her hands out at Dovin, bathing him in roiling fire. He caught immediately, his clothes erupting in bright offshoots of red and orange. The metal embedded in his clothing sparked in the intense heat, peppering the flame with popping light and acrid smoke. The light around his hands vanished, dwarfed by the flame. He did scream, a horrible, shrill scream like an animal caught in a trap, but it ended as soon as it began, punctuated by the hollow thunk of his lifeless body hitting the thopter's hull.

Chandra stared at the corpse for a moment, wondering if it would continue to move again, to try and weasel its way into another escape. Unfortunately, she did not have time to check its status or revel in her supposed victory. All around her, the holding cell for the Immortal Sun was changing. Almost instantly, the sound of thopter wings ceased. The loss of the omnipresent buzzing brought an otherworldly silence into the space, one that was only disrupted by the sounds of thopters dropping from the air and crashing into either the ground or the towers. This included the one she was on, which began to plummet from beneath her hovering feet, delivering Dovin's limp body back to the Azorius for reclassification.

The other change, however, was far less expected. She had not known what spell Dovin had activated just then, assuming she had cut it off before anything could happen. The mystery was quickly unveiled, as the illusory walls of the tower suddenly dissipated. The nondescript black stone façade left her vision, and the skyline of New Prahv reappeared all around her. It was different, however, from when she and the others had entered. Where before the sky carried only thopters and the occasional guardmages, it was now filled with winged Eternals. Aven, angels, drakes, and dragon charged towards them from all sides, collapsing upon the newly revealed Immortal Sun.