Dragon's Maze

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Jace’s back slammed against the wall of a sealed stone cell. He was trapped in an exitless Dimir prison, miles below the city with two vampires, the assassin Mirko Vosk and the recently-turned form of his compatriot Kavin. He was bait thrown into a shark tank. The two bloodsuckers approached him to drain him, first of the contents of his mind, and then of his veins.

Jace always had one escape open to him, as long as he had time to muster the will to travel. But it meant breaking his mental connection with Emmara. It meant abandoning her. And she was trapped as well.

“I have to leave you,” Jace projected into Emmara’s mind. “But I want you to listen to me very carefully.”

“Don’t you dare give me a moving final speech,” Emmara’s thoughts came back to him. “Whatever plight you’re in, fight it. I have no desire to be witness to your last words.”

The vampires advanced toward him, their faces painted the color of a garish bruise by his globe of blue light. Jace had a momentary thought that his attackers represented an escape of another kind. They would drain him, take away all the responsibility of handling this Ravnican disaster in progress. They would purge him of the knowledge of the maze again, the need to care, the need to persist or strive. He could slowly drown in oblivion, and let others solve the Implicit Maze, stop Lazav, handle Niv-Mizzet’s schemes … Maybe it didn’t all have to fall on him.

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