The portals continued opening with increasing frequency, space tearing itself apart in a dozen places simultaneously as more Planeswalkers were yanked from wherever they'd been and deposited unceremoniously in the plaza. Some landed gracefully, others crashed into cobblestones or buildings with varying degrees of dignity.
A pale figure materialized near the eastern edge of the plaza, tall and with aristocratic features. He wore dark formal clothing that showed signs of travel and wear, and his eyes carried millennia of accumulated experience. Vampire heritage was obvious in his pallor and the way he moved with inhuman grace. The moment his feet touched the ground, his head snapped toward another arrival across the plaza with instant recognition that had curdled into hatred.
"Sorin." A woman's voice called from that other arrival point, cold and edged with barely restrained fury. She was Kor, her skin marked with tattoos that glowed faintly with white light. Her clothing was leather and worn. Her hands were already moving through gestures that made the stones beneath our feet tremble in response. "Of course you'd be here. Of course the beacon would drag us both to the same cursed plane."
"Nahiri." Sorin's voice carried the refined cadence of old Innistrad nobility. "I'd hoped our last encounter on my home plane would be our final meeting. That hope, like so many others regarding you, appears to have been foolish."
"You imprisoned me." Nahiri's hands continued their gestures as stone began rising from the plaza floor in jagged spikes. "The Helvault held me for a thousand years while you played lord of your precious Innistrad. I called for help when the Eldrazi prison on Zendikar began to fail. I screamed across the planes for you and Ugin to honor the pact we made. You never answered."
"I had responsibilities to my own plane," Sorin replied, shadows gathering around his form in response to his rising anger. The darkness moved, responding to vampiric magic. "Innistrad needed me. The angels were falling into madness. My entire world stood on the brink of collapse. I couldn't abandon everything I'd built for millennia because you demanded my presence."
"So Zendikar burned instead." Nahiri's voice dropped to something more dangerous than shouting. "The Eldrazi broke free. Thousands died. Entire civilizations were consumed because you were too busy with your own problems to honor the oath we swore together. And when I came to confront you about your abandonment, you imprisoned me rather than face what you'd done."
"You were destroying Innistrad!" Sorin's aristocratic composure cracked. "You manipulated Avacyn into madness. You corrupted the leylines of my entire plane. You lured Emrakul to my world to inflict the same devastation you'd suffered. What was I supposed to do, allow you to annihilate everything out of spite?"
"It wasn't spite." Stone spikes multiplied around Nahiri, dozens of them now orbiting her form with deadly intent. "It was justice. You needed to understand what it felt like to watch your home burn while those who promised to help did nothing. You needed to experience the helplessness I felt for a thousand years."
"Then let me return the lesson." Nahiri's hands slammed together, and the stone spikes launched toward Sorin with lethal velocity and perfect accuracy.
The vampire's form dissolved into black mist before the projectiles reached him, his body breaking down into pure shadow that reformed twenty feet away. The stone spikes shattered against cobblestones where he'd been standing, leaving deep gouges in the plaza floor. He gestured with both hands, and tendrils of darkness erupted from his shadow to lash out at the lithomancer faster than the speed of striking serpents.
Nahiri raised a wall of stone between them, the rock flowing up from the ground faster than thought. The shadow tendrils struck the barrier and recoiled, unable to pierce the magically reinforced stone. She stepped through the wall as if it were liquid, the rock parting for her touch, and launched more projectiles from the rubble around them.
"Stop them!" the Azorius captain shouted, but before anyone could move to intervene, both combatants began retreating from the plaza while continuing their assault on each other. Stone and shadow clashed with devastating force, tearing through buildings and streets as they fought their way toward the city's outskirts. Each strike carried the weight of centuries of betrayal and accumulated rage.
"Let them go," Razia said quietly, his hand on his sword but not drawing it. "We don't have the resources to stop two ancient planeswalkers who've been waiting to kill each other for well over a century. Better they take their grudge away from populated areas than risk casualties trying to separate them."
I watched them disappear into the distance, their battle leaving a trail of destruction. Ancient feuds built on broken promises and mutual betrayal. That kind of thing never really ends until one party is dead, and sometimes not even then.
More portals opened, depositing planeswalkers in various states of confusion and anger. A leonin warrior who immediately went on guard, scanning for threats. A hooded figure whose features I couldn't make out clearly. A human woman with white hair who looked around before stepping back into shadows.
And then a portal opened directly in front of me, depositing someone I absolutely hadn't expected to see.
She was tall, perhaps six feet, with skin that glowed faintly blue. Four arms extended from her torso. Her hair was long and white, floating slightly with no wind to move it. She wore a flowing dress that seemed to contain captured starlight woven through shadow, and a wide-brimmed hat covered in symbols sat atop her head.
Her face was beautiful, features perfect and proportions slightly off from what mortal eyes expected. But what caught my attention more than anything else was the recognition that flooded me.
Ranni the Witch. From Elden Ring. A character from a video game. A fictional character who shouldn't exist, let alone standing in front of me in a city-plane called Ravnica, but then again was I not part of stories too?
She looked directly at me with eyes that glowed with pale light, and a slight smile crossed her features. "Hephaestus," she said, her voice carrying slight rasp. "I have traveled far to find thee. The guidance and visions has proven true."
"You know him?" Razia asked, his hand moving toward his sword with renewed wariness.
"We have not met in this form," Ranni replied, still focused on me. "But the strings of fate hath wound themselves such that our paths must converge. Guidance has lead me here in this moment to find thee as it shall lead me to where I am needed..."
Before I could respond to that cryptic statement, another voice cut through the confusion.
"Someone want to explain what's going on?" The red-haired pyromancer who'd arrived first, Chandra based on Michael's memories, stalked toward our position with flames still dancing around her hands. "I was minding my own business on Kaladesh when that beacon grabbed me and yanked me here. Now I'm trapped, my planeswalking isn't working, and I'm about thirty seconds from setting something on fire just to feel better about it."
"That won't help," I said, keeping my voice calm. "We're all trapped by the same suppression field. Setting fires will just make the locals more hostile."
"Locals?" Chandra's eyes swept over Razia and his assembled Boros soldiers. "What plane is this anyway? I've never seen architecture like this, and I've been to a lot of places."
"Ravnica," Razia supplied before I could answer. "Is the city-plane controlled by ten guilds currently engaged in a civil war. Fortunately you arrived during what we're tentatively calling a temporary truce to investigate the beacon that pulled you here."
More planeswalkers were approaching our position now, drawn by the conversation or perhaps just seeking answers in the midst of confusion. I could feel the tension building as powerful beings realized they'd been trapped against their will and didn't know by whom or for what purpose.
"We need to move," I said quietly to Razia. "This plaza is too exposed, and too many planeswalkers in one place is going to attract attention from whoever set this trap. We should find somewhere more defensible to discuss what's happening."
He nodded agreement. "There's a merchant hall three blocks east. Been abandoned since the war started, but the structure's sound and it has only two entrances. We can secure it easily."
"Go ahead and lead the way."
Razia called orders to his soldiers, who began forming up in a protective cordon around our growing group. Chandra looked like she wanted to argue about being herded anywhere, but after a moment she just shrugged and followed along. Ranni glided forward, maintaining her focus on me with an intensity that made my senses tingle pleasantly.
We moved through streets that showed increasing signs of combat, passing burned buildings and makeshift barricades as we traveled. More planeswalkers joined our group as we went, either following out of curiosity or because they recognized that staying isolated in an unknown city during a war was poor survival strategy.
The merchant hall Razia had mentioned was a three-story structure built from stone and reinforced wood, its windows boarded up and its doors barred. His soldiers made quick work of the barriers, establishing secure positions at both entrances while the rest of us filed inside.
The interior showed signs of hasty abandonment. Tables still set with merchant samples, ledgers left open mid-transaction, personal items scattered where their owners had dropped them when the fighting started. We gathered in the main trading floor, a large open space that could accommodate our growing numbers without feeling too cramped.
"Alright," Chandra said once everyone had settled. "Someone tell me what's happening. Who created the beacon? Why are we trapped here? And what do they want with planeswalkers specifically?"
"We don't know," I admitted. "The beacon appeared less than an hour ago. It's protected by a barrier we can't break through despite combined efforts from the strongest mages present. The suppression field prevents dimensional travel away from Ravnica, though apparently it's still allowing travel toward it."
"A trap," Ranni said, her voice carrying certainty. "A hidden power seeketh the realm-striders for purposes cloaked in shadow. They have fashioned a lure too wondrous to withstand, and a cage too fierce for easy sundering"
"Great," Chandra muttered. "Just great. I was supposed to meet Nissa tomorrow. Now she's probably worried sick, and I'm stuck on a plane I've never heard of with no way to leave."
One of the other planeswalkers who'd joined us, an elf woman with green-tinged skin that suggested close connection to nature, spoke up. "If we can't break the barrier from outside, perhaps we could disrupt the beacon from within. There must be a control mechanism, a central point where the caster maintains the spell."
"The problem is reaching it," Razia said. "The barrier extends two hundred yards from the beacon's base in all directions. We'd need either a way to bypass it entirely or enough sustained force to overwhelm its defenses."
"Or we could wait for whoever set this trap to reveal themselves," I suggested. "They didn't go to this much effort just to collect planeswalkers. They want something from us, which means eventually they'll need to interact with us directly."
"I like the burning things approach better," Chandra said. "Waiting just means giving them more time to prepare whatever horrible thing they're planning."
Ranni turned her full attention to me, her four hands coming together in a gesture. "Thou art the key to breaking the strings that bind me. The guidance spoke true when it led me across realities to find thee. I require thy craftsmanship, thy understanding of how to forge bonds between beings and planes."
"What strings?" I asked, genuinely curious despite the chaos surrounding us.
"The Greater Will," she said, and I felt the capital letters in how she spoke the name. "An outer god that shaped my original reality, that bound all life to its purpose and design. I sought escape through death, through divesting myself of flesh and becoming spirit. But the strings remained, pulling at me even in my reduced state. Then I became as you are, a walker between worlds, and I thought perhaps the strings had finally broken."
"But they didn't," I finished for her.
"They stretch thin across realities, but they do not break. I have sensed them pulling at me, trying to draw me back to service of that which I rejected." Her eyes glowed brighter. "The guidance suggested that one who works in bonds and bindings, who knoweth the craft of connection between disparate things, might comprehend how to sever what cannot be broken through mere force."
I processed that information, trying to reconcile a video game character standing in front of me asking for help with metaphysical strings that bound her to an outer god.
"I might be able to help," I said carefully. "But not here and not now. We need to resolve the immediate crisis first, then we can discuss more complex matters."
Ranni inclined her head in acceptance. "As thou sayest. I shall wait, as I have waited through ages before. But know that the guidance does not mislead, and our paths are bound together whether we will it or no."
Chandra had been watching this exchange with growing impatience. "That's great, really touching, but can we focus on the part where we're all trapped and someone's collecting planeswalkers? Because I'm pretty sure that's the more immediate problem."
"She's right," Razia agreed. "Whatever personal matters exist between you can wait. Right now we need to establish what resources we have available, what intelligence we can gather about whoever created the beacon, and what our options are for either breaking free or neutralizing the threat before it becomes worse."
More planeswalkers were arriving at the merchant hall now, word spreading through the trapped walkers that this was where people were gathering for answers.