Heart of the Gemini

Cataclysm

“Do you think there’s any way this situation could get any worse?”
Gideon was a soldier, yet he felt compelled to ask the one question no soldier should ever ask. Teysa never got the chance to reply. Miles away, and yet clearly visible through the great white dome, a fireball was erupting that was bright enough to temporarily engulf the night’s sky. The location of the inferno was as alarming as its existence: it was top-most spire of the Izzet League, home of their ancient Guildmaster, the dragon-genius Niv-Mizzet. Though on happier days it was often joked that the mad guild would one day succeed in blowing itself up, this was definitely something far worse.
The Aerie, the Izzet Guildmaster’s private quarters high above the metropolis, was erupting in dragon-fire. Niv-Mizzet had awakened.

The arrival of a creature as powerful as Niv-Mizzet – a phenomenon for which neither side of the current conflict could account – was the very thing to turn an all-out war into total anarchy. The situation couldn’t have been more exasperated if Rakdos himself had chosen that moment to appear from his demonic hole, and there were those that whispered he still might.
From where he stood, Sorin could not hear the sounds of the surface world plunging back into chaos. He could not feel the heat of the dragon’s fire, or the rumbling earth as Niv-Mizzet’s great weight landed on the cracking cobblestone. In a room seeming separated from the world itself, only one other thing existed.
A room with no doors, windows or any conceivable exits was the bare minimum needed for a prison to contain a Planeswalker. What Sorin found inside the vaults of the Orzhov was far greater. A great, round coffin stood on a raised platform against the far wall. Every inch of its outer surface was covered in magical engineering, culminating in a series of heavy locks and chains across the front. The entire design, from the technological to the purely magical, was intended to keep a mage’s mana below casting strength. The cell itself was hidden from all kinds of magical detection, and enchanted to block any form of telepathic communication. It was a trap designed to capture and hold the most powerful evils in the universe, and right now, it was holding Liliana Vess.
In the dark room where Liliana stood bound to spend her immortal life trapped inside her coffin-made-cell, Sorin held his dagger by its point, feeling its weight, its familiar pull against his fingertips. It was the same one she had held against his throat the first time they had met, and he had used it well these past ten years. It saddened him to think he may now have to use it to try to end her life.
Trapping Liliana was not enough. The spell she had cast over Trostani would not end until either Liliana reversed the magic, or she was killed. Only then would Razia and Augustine be willing to call off their war and abandon the Alliance of Light.
Reaching up with his good arm, he triggered the mental command to unlock the first of more than a dozen seals that kept the Original of Black bound inside. Torches burst to life on either side of the room, and the chamber filled with the sounds of sliding chains. From inside the cell, Liliana was laughing.

Gideon stood next to Teysa, feeding her White mana whenever she needed it, watching the great dragon as he indiscriminately decimated the Alliance of Light and any Orzhov forces he could find. As of yet, the Izzet Guildmaster had not attempted to breach the spirit-dome, but Gideon feared what the consequences would be if the ancient dragon decided to try.
For now, he was contented to let the winged death-bringer gorge himself on those that until recently had been trying to kill him. That being said, one thing above all had Gideon perturbed: creatures as old as Niv-Mizzet rarely did anything without a good reason, but whatever reason existed for the dragon’s strange behaviour, Gideon had yet find it.

Free of her prison, Liliana stood before her former lover and smiled a deranged smile. The woman he had known for ten long years was gone, and in her place was a creature well deserving of the title ‘Demon-born’. It was all Sorin could do not to turn away in disgust.
Taking one step each towards each other, the two Planeswalkers signalled their readiness to fight. One would live, one would die, and the winner would determine the fate of all of Ravnica.
Sorin threw the dagger so it spun horizontally towards Liliana, who vanished in a cloud of thick black smoke, reappearing in place to catch the dagger by the handle. Both mages let the mana of the Dark Temple fill them to the brim, and attacked.

Strange though it seemed, very few people in or around Orzhova were still looking at the apparently psychotic dragon. With the exception of those who found themselves in the process of becoming his next meal, everyone else had their gaze drawn towards the sky, where dark clouds were no longer reflecting the light from Teysa’s spirit-dome. An invisible force was pushing the clouds aside, creating a circular space miles in diameter. In this space, a giant pool of White mana was forming directly above Orzhova.
Gideon felt as though he had failed to breathe even once since the light had appeared and, as far as he knew, the same was true of Teysa. Both were staring at the brilliant white light above the city. It was an unspoken competition to see which of the two would recover their voice first, and eventually, Teysa won.
“That’s... not possible…” she breathed as loud as she could manage. “Even they couldn’t possibly think that’s acceptable… not that… not…”
“The Supreme Verdict,” Gideon finished. The ultimate power of the Azorius senate, unused in over 10,000 years of Ravnican history, was being brought to bear on Orzhova, and neither the shield of a million spirits nor the rampage of a mad dragon was going to save them.