Heart of the Gemini

Conspiracy

Sorin’s worst fears were realised the next morning, when Gideon summoned them to a desolate swamp a few hundred miles from the vampire campsite. There, in a circle of magically-petrified flowers, were all the markings of a hastily-made Planeswalker portal. The symbols were etched in dark blood: Anowon’s blood.
No explanations were needed – Sorin, Gideon and Teysa all understood how certain materials could be used to enhance spells. At the top of the list was blood, particularly blood from a vampire as ancient as Anowon. By drawing the casting circle with it, Liliana had opened her portal very quickly, without the need of a suicidal plunge like the one Sorin had once taken of a temple rooftop in Orzhova. Though he now understood why Liliana had needed the blood, he could still not explain how the mind of the Vampire Queen had become so clouded, so utterly lost to what she valued most, that the life of her most trusted adviser could be so easily forsaken.
As long as it was open, a Planeswalker’s portal released mana from both sides. Though Liliana’s portal had long since shut, enough remained to let those that followed know to where she had fled. As they approached the circle, Sorin could taste the Black mana of Ravnica’s darkest depths, which spread all the way through the undercity to the gates of Rix Maadi, Rakdos’ hellish lair. But there was something else in the mana: a different flavour. The mana tasted… Green.
Teysa had been right about everything. Whatever the consequences, Sorin now had every reason in the world to play her little game, and pray that somehow it lead to a way to save Liliana.
“Very well,” he said, the words aching in his chest. “You have a deal.”
Teysa smiled, the particular smile belonging only to an Orzhov getting what she wants.
“Excellent,” she replied. “We leave at dawn.”

The sprawling metropolis of Ravnica was everything Sorin remembered it to be: noisy, cluttered, and utterly breathtaking in the sheer magnitude of activity that could be squeezed onto one plane. All manner of life, from human to the so-very-far-from human, rushed about in an unruly spectacle, all of which seemed to involve a little magic at one level or another. Nowhere was immune, from the skies filled with airborne beasts and angelic fortresses to the deepest depths of Old Rav, where thrived the bug-like Golgari collective.
The vampire priestesses, with the help of Sorin, Gideon and Teysa, had worked through the night to fashion the portal they would need to carry the two Planeswalkers and their human companion back to Ravnica. It would take the combined efforts of Gideon and Sorin to tap into the tunnel the Orzhov had built, to bypass the Blind Eternities and make the journey straight to the City of Guilds.
The city proper was far too crowded for a safe arrival, so instead they chose as their target an abandoned block controlled by the Orzhov reclaimers. Decades of dust blew in every direction as the portals exhaled the wild air of Zendikar, before finally reuniting the conscious minds of its passengers with their bodies.
Teysa was both back under the protection of her mask, making it impossible for anyone who might have seen them arrive to identify her. Immediately she insisted they make their way directly to Orzhova, a motion Gideon seconded. Sorin considered the possibility that the White mage’s contract with the Church of Deals likely expired the moment she set foot safely in the cathedral-made-prison.
“I’m not going to the Temple,” Sorin said, “Not yet. First I have to find Liliana.”
For now, the only clue he had as to the whereabouts of Liliana Vess were the feted rot-farms of the Golgari Swarm – the one place on Ravnica where Black and Green mana co-existed. He was thus determined to pay the secretive guild a visit, even if it meant keeping his Orzhov admirers waiting.
Gideon made to argue, but Teysa silenced him with the barest raise of her hand.
“The Festival of Balance is in 5 days,” she said. Beneath the mask, her voice was as cold and hard as he had ever heard it, but the truth was clear: this was one of the few people in several universes who could order around a Planeswalker, and right now she had not one, but two under her command. “If you fail to appear in time, and do not return to play your part, then our contract is terminated and your Queen will be lost. Is that understood?”
Sorin said nothing. If he could find another way to save her himself, he would, contract or no contract.
Before he could leave, Teysa held up a small object in her palm, away from the eyes of Gideon. It was a small seal, in the shape of a 16-point star, brilliantly carved from precious stone into a small medallion, with a chain to be worn around the neck.
“It’s the sign of the highest rank in the Guild,” she explained. “Only the leaders of the great houses wear them. It’s so you’ll be recognised when you try to enter Orzhova.”
Sorin laughed inwardly at the irony. “The last time I visited the Temple I was a thief. Now you’re giving me the keys to the vault.”
“Many things have changed, Lord Markov.” Under her mask, Sorin suspected the Scion was smiling.
Taking her hands in his, Gideon teleported the ivory-faced woman towards the towering central pillars of Orzhova. Sorin turned to the rapidly descending dusk of nightfall on Ravnica, and the dark, winding trail that lead into the heart of Old Rav.

The Golgari Swarm was a guild that sought to blur the distinction between life and death. When a hunt ended too quickly, or with too little sport, the target would often been reanimated and released, perhaps even with magically enhanced strength, to be caught again. Many of the sentient creatures that followed the guild were on their second or third lives, their blood frozen in their veins while mana pumped through their fibres, given them the ability to impersonate the living indefinitely. Such was the case with the Golgari’s undead Guildmaster, the necromancer zombie-elf Jarad.
“You realise what it is you’re asking?” The former Devkarin’s voice slid out from between his frozen lips in a hiss. For a few seconds, the rustle of silk was the only reply in the silent room. Then came the voice of a woman, one who was not accustomed to being challenged.
“What I’m asking is necessary if any of us are to survive… even you.” Liliana’s words ended in a sneer at the mockery of life to which Jarad and his kith so veraciously clung. The elf considered being offended, then accepted the comment as truth.
“If the Orzhov want to start a war on Ravnica, so be it. When the Guilds are finished slaughtering each other, the Golgari will be the first to be reborn. We will arise stronger than ever before. I see no reason to interfere, and to risk drawing the ire of the Guilds towards us instead.”
Liliana kept her gaze away from the Guildmaster. Though she shared a mana-source with the undead elf, their magic was very different. His necromancy called upon the very soul of a victim, and not even Planeswalkers were immune. Instead she watched the runes on her wrist dance as she spoke.
“The Orzhov are clever enough not to engage the other guilds in open war. They will mask their true intentions, as they have for millennia: this time under the so-called Festival of Balance.”
Jarad moved one stiff leg in the direction of his less-than-welcome guest. The skin was as dry as petrified tree-bark and his foot was as hard as stone. He filled his voice with the perfect combination of distrust and impatience:
“I’ll say this, one last time… what cause do you have for starting a war here, where none has existed for 10,000 years? For what reward do you call on the strength of the Golgari Swarm?”
Liliana kept her veil pulled low over her eyes as she turned to face the elf, her arm outstretched towards him. He took what she offered in her palm, and then produced a cruel veneer of a smile.
“It is, as always, a pleasure to serve the Original of Black,” he said finally.
“You always were a horrible liar Jarad… even when you were alive.”
The elf-lord laughed, a sickly, throaty sound that no living creature could make.
“You should leave now,” he said, suddenly serious again. “The Orzhov’s new pet will be arriving soon.”
The room filled with black smoke as Liliana vanished, and silence descended once again.

The trip into the fiery pit which the Cult of Rakdos called home was often described as a journey into hell itself. In Sorin’s mind, the descent into the Golgari-controlled Old Rav was something far worse. The Swarm was believed in rebirth following death above all things. The only problems therefore existed for those that were still alive.
Within the depths of the undercity, mana-infused nature raged a ceaseless struggle against the constructed world, tearing it apart inch-by-inch, root-by-root. As he walked, Sorin kept a hand at eye level, to brush aside the hanging vines and dripping organic tendrils. Narrow alleys far below the street level were lit by the faintest of glow spheres, completely void of the natural sunlight that was the prized possession of the surface world. What shops or homes had once existed down here had been long ago abandoned, and the only signs of life belonged to small groups of unfamiliar humanoids that seemed to drift in and out of the shadows.
Before long, Sorin began to sense traces of a familiar mana. Liliana had walked these alleys, recently. Following the trail, he avoided the shadowy figures and the distant wails until eventually he reached the great gate of the Guild Golgari. Unlike the polished marble arches of the Azorius Senate or the emerald glade of the Selesnya Conclave, the Golgari gate was a dark thing, forbidding and unhallowed. The guild believed in the collection of discarded things – food, possessions, even bodies – and its gate was no exception. Each piece had been collected from some long-destroyed building, held together by a mortar of ground bones from long-forgotten creatures.
Stranger than the gate itself was the lack of sentries guarding it. Every guild, however preoccupied with its particular obsessions, saw fit to guard its territories jealously, but somehow Sorin passed through the Golgari portcullis unchallenged.
The tunnel narrowed until his shoulders struggled to pass between the stones. He felt his chest tighten as he climbed deeper – there was no air, no intake of oxygen from the land above: he breathed only what the plants themselves could provide. He was immediately grateful for his White mana, which he used to create lights that floated gently beside him, illuminating his path. Tiny creatures scuttled about his feet, out of reach of the glowing spheres, disturbed by his footfalls or hoping for a new source of food.
Eventually he came to a place where the pathway diverged in multiple directions. A labyrinth, he thought grimly. No doubt countless lurking dangers hungered in the multitude of apply named ‘dead-ends’. Closing his eyes he felt out for Liliana’s mana, hidden beneath the layers of dark Golgari magic. The scent was clear, deliberate: she had wanted him to follow her. Turning towards the strongest scent, he followed the sound of the crawling insects into the all-consuming darkness.