Jace Beleren held a sheet of parchment up to the window\u30fb Huddled between much taller\ntowers of Ravnica^s Tenth District, the building only reached a few floors up from street level,\nbut a cold, evening light reflected off brick and stone through the glass \u30fb Smudged with ink\nand magically marked with his own unique mage seal, the parchment was covered in notes\nabout the code he'd found\u30fb His handwriting had gotten progressively less sane-looking lately.\nThe walls of the sanctum were papered with pages like this\u30fb Jace wondered when he had last\nwashed his hair or had a full night's sleep\u30fb He hoped the other researcher, a vedalken man\nnamed Kavin, hadn't noticed that he had been staying at the sanctum building, sleeping only\nwhen unable to keep his eyes open any longer, not even walking outside to the marketplaces\nor street vendors in the surrounding district\u30fb His bed was a stacked pile of notes, his furniture\nwas odd pieces of broken architecture collected from around the Tenth, and his main\nnourishment was the gnawed end of his ink pen.\n The discovery\u2014JaceJs current obsession\u2014had come gradually\u30fb He hadn't recognized it as a\ncode when he saw it initially, and in fact had not even recognized any connection at all until\nhe saw it manifest itself a few times around the district\u30fb\n He had almost tripped over it, the first time\u30fb It was not out of the ordinary to see a group of\nIzzet guildmages unearthing a layer of cobblestone from the street\u30fb Their guild was tasked\nwith the maintenance of much of the city's magical infrastructure, and when he happened\npast them working along a road in the Tenth, Jace had all but ignored their work. But Jace\nsaw that the Izzet mages had dismantled an ancient chunk of stone from the curb, and as\nthey toiled away at a length of exposed steam pipes and elemental conduits, Jace noticed that\nthe discarded piece of stone had a pattern carved into its underside. It had been worn from\nage and half-covered with cobwebs, but Jace could see a series of curved impressions running\nalong its length, like a procession of geometrically perfect parentheses.\n It struck Jace as curious that such care had been taken to carve a pattern on the underside\nof the stonework, the side that wouldn't even be visible from the street\u30fb But he didn't think of\n\u8fbb again until the code returned in a new form.\n An old and battered neighborhood of the Tenth was being excavated\u30fb Jace stopped and\nwatched one day as a burly cyclops in crackling mizzium gauntlets demolished the remains of\na textile factory. The cyclops lifted great slabs of stone and hurled them onto a rubble heap,\npresumably making room for some new Izzet experiment\u30fb Jace saw that the discarded stone\nwas carved with a sequence of triangles.\n Recognizing it as the code, Jace had kept the details from Kavin, his confidant and fellow\nscholar who had been of great help in tracking down other instances of the geometric\npatterns, taking rubbings, mapping the locations of their sightings, and occasionally covering\nfor Jace as he snuck into guild-restricted territories to fetch more pieces of the code\u30fb But\nKavin was a logical, practical man\u2014not given to obsessive impulses. If Jace let on how much this code had seeped into every moment of his waking consciousness, Kavin would abandon\nthe project.\n Jace's eyes stung\u30fb He squeezed them shut for a moment and rubbed his eyelids. They had\nplenty of samples, but no answers. The pieces didn't fit. There were regularities and patterns\nwithin the sinuous shapes set in stone, but no sequence, no message\u30fb Something was missing.\n There was a knock at the door downstairs \u30fb\n\n\nIn a forgotten chamber of the undercity, several hours, journey below street level, an ancient\nbrick wall began to glow\u30fb Blue lightning danced along the edges of the bricks\u30fb The old mortar\nsmoked and sizzled\u30fb The wall exploded into the chamber, bricks tumbling into a heap, leaving\na rough, oval\u30fbshaped hole.\n The planeswalker Rai Zarek stepped through the hole he had just made\u30fb Dust curled in the\nsodden, rotting air as the instruments on his gauntlet twittered and spun, the remaining\nmana from his spell flickering out.\n Rai winced and put a hand over his nose\u30fb He kicked a brick with his boot and snorted.\n\u201cUgh. Skreeg, tell me this isn't the place.\u201d\n A goblin in Izzet armor hopped into the chamber, looking around with his hands clasped.\nThe goblin rummaged through his pack and produced a newly-constructed Izzet mana\u30fb\nsensing device that he waved around the chamber.\n \u201cYes!\u201d replied Skreeg\u30fb \u201cThe concentrations are higher in here! This must be it.\u201d\n A group of Izzet mages followed Rai and Skreeg into the chamber, where they began\nscrutinizing their surroundings with analytical spells and alchemical devices, lighting the\nchamber as magical energies shone through the damp haze\u30fb\n Rai moved through the chamber, pushing aside curtains of hanging mosses and stepping\nover ancient, fallen columns\u30fb He knelt down to investigate something covered over with\nsickly roots\u30fb He pried a mossy tendril away from the lump and started backward. The gray\nface of a skull smiled through the foliage with a smattering of jagged teeth\u30fb Rai took a breath\nand let the fight\u30fbor\u30fbflight impulse fade.\n He turned back to the others\u30fb\"Are we ready?\u201d he asked\u2022\u201cSkreeg, the mana coil. Charge it\nup, already\/\u2075\n Skreeg placed a sculpture of spiraling bronze on the floor. The other Izzet wizard\nresearchers surrounded the alchemical device and fussed over its operation. Gems of crimson\nand turquoise lit up along the artifact's edge, and it began to hum quietly.\n \u201cReady soon, si\u300c\u201d said the goblin.\n \u201cSoon? Do you think the Great Firemind would be satisfied with soon?\u201d\n \u201cI'm sorry, my colleague, but it takes some time for the coils to\u2014\u201d\n \u201cConnect it to a richer source\/\u2075 Rai snapped\u30fb \u201cIf this chamber has one of the ley lines \n\nmagic the gathering proxies\n mtg proxy\n proxy mtg cards.\n email ProxyKingmtg@outlook.com if you want to get more details.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jace Beleren held a sheet of parchment up to the window\u30fb Huddled between much taller towers of Ravnica^s Tenth District, the building only reached a few floors up from street level, but a cold, evening light reflected off brick and stone through the glass \u30fb Smudged with ink and magically marked with his own unique … <\/p>\n