I charged.
The cultists saw us coming, turning to meet our assault with manic enthusiasm. They moved in a disorganized mob, all aggression and no discipline. Weapons raised, mouths wide open in screams.
Razia sent his dogs around to harass the sidelines and hit them first, his flaming sword cutting through a cultist's guard like it wasn't there. The blade severed the cultist's arm at the elbow, cauterising the wound even as it cut. The cultist screamed and fell, and Razia was already moving to the next target.
I watched the energy flowing through him as I advanced. Red mana, drawn from emotion and passion and the pure aggressive desire to protect. It enhanced his speed, his strength, his reflexes beyond what should be possible natureally. He moved like fire through the cultists' ranks, each strike devastating.
The three Boros soldiers fanned out, engaging cultists in coordinated pairs. They fought with discipline, covering each other's weaknesses, exploiting openings the cultists' chaotic fighting style left exposed.
I targeted the demons.
The lead demon spotted me approaching, its eyes narrowing. It was larger than the other two, perhaps nine feet tall, its wings spread wide and curved enough to block the narrow street. Horns curved back from its skull, each one inscribed with runes that pulsed with sickly green light.
It spoke, harsh and guttural, and gestured toward me with clawed hands. Power gathered around its fingers, the same green energy as its horns.
I didn't wait to find out what spell it was casting. I closed the distance in three long strides, hammer swinging in a horizontal arc aimed at its midsection.
The demon tried to block with its forearm. Bronze met infernal flesh with a sound like a bell being struck. The demon's arm shattered, bone fragments erupting from corrupted skin. It shrieked, stumbling backward, its spell disrupted.
I followed up immediately, bringing the hammer down in an overhead strike aimed at its skull. The demon's wings beat once, hard, propelling it backwards. My hammer struck cobblestones instead, the impact cratering the street.
The demon landed ten feet away, already regenerating. The shattered arm knitted itself back together, bones re-forming, flesh sealing over them. Fast healing, faster than most demons I'd encountered.
It spoke again, and this time I felt the spell take effect. Green energy erupted from the ground beneath my feet, vines made of solidified corruption wrapping around my ankles and calves.
What kind of demon uses green mana!??
I channelled divine fire through my legs. The vines ignited instantly, burning away to ash. The demon's eyes widened and then bared its teeth.
Then it charged, claws extended, moving with speed that belied its massive form.
I met its charge head-on. We collided in the center of the street, the impact sending shockwaves through the surrounding buildings. Its claws raked across my chest, finding no purchase on divine flesh. My hammer caught it in the ribs, and I heard something crack.
The demon wrapped its arms around me, trying to crush me in a grapple. Its strength was impressive, easily enough to pulverize mortal bone. Against a god, though, it was merely inconvenient.
I headbutted it, my forehead connecting with its nose. Cartilage shattered. Black ichor sprayed across both of us. The demon's grip loosened slightly, and I took advantage. I planted my feet, adjusted my center of gravity, and threw it over my shoulder.
The demon crashed into one of its companions, both of them going down in a tangle of wings and limbs and cursing in Abyssal.
I turned to check on the soldiers. They were holding their own against the cultists, steel meeting crude weapons in a brutal exchange. Razia moved through them like a scythe through wheat, his flaming sword leaving cauterized stumps and scorched corpses in his wake, his dogs harassing the others slowly inwards.
But I noticed something about how he fought. Every movement he made was enhanced by red mana flowing through him, drawn from his passionate conviction that these civilians needed protection. The mana responded to his emotional state, amplifying his combat prowess, making him faster, stronger, and more dangerous.
It was an interesting magic system. Power drawn not from divine will or arcane formulae, but from emotions channelled. Red for passion and aggression, and presumably four other colors for different emotional states.
Fascinating.
The two demons I'd knocked down were recovering. The third demon, which had been hanging back, now moved forward with more caution. It raised its hands, and I felt power gathering around it. Different from the green corruption the first demon had used. This Mana was black, dark and cold, carrying the scent of death and decay.
The demon spoke a word that made space shudder. A bolt of pure necrotic energy shot toward one of the Boros soldiers, a young woman who'd just finished killing a cultist.
I moved. Divine speed carried me across the distance, positioning myself between the soldier and the incoming spell. The necrotic bolt struck my chest, cold fire washing over me.
My divine nature absorbed it, metabolizing the death energy and converting it into something harmless. The spell found no purchase as my immortality protected me.
The soldier stared at me, her expression caught between gratitude and terror.
"Stay behind me," I said, and charged the caster.
This demon was smarter than its companions. It didn't try to fight me directly. Instead, it conjured barriers of solidified shadow, forcing me to smash through them while it repositioned. Each barrier I destroyed bought it seconds to prepare another spell.
Clever tactics. Against a mortal opponent, it would have been effective.
I wasn't mortal.
I gathered divine power in my free hand, channelling it into a sphere of compressed fire similar to the 8th-level spell sunburst, with a bit less power, as I didn't want to hit my allies. The temperature in the immediate area rose by twenty degrees. The demon felt it, its eyes widening, and it tried to flee.
I threw the sphere.
It caught the demon mid-flight, engulfing it in flames that burned hotter than the surface of the sun. The demon's shriek cut off abruptly as its form incinerated, reduced to ash that scattered on the wind.
The remaining two demons, upon seeing their companion destroyed, made the wise decision to retreat. They launched themselves into the air, wings beating frantically, fleeing toward whatever hole they'd crawled out of.
I let them go. The cultists were the immediate threat, and the soldiers needed support. I did mark them so I could find them in the future, should I need to.
I waded into the melee, using my hammer with care. Cultists weren't trained fighters, just fanatics drunk on violence and whatever drugs the Rakdos fed them. They relied on numbers and aggression rather than skill.
Against disciplined Boros soldiers, that wasn't enough. Against a god with millennia of combat experience, it was suicide.
Within five minutes, it was over. The surviving cultists fled in disorder, abandoning their wounded. The other minor demons were gone, either destroyed or escaped. The street fell silent except for the moans of the injured and the crackle of dying fires. Razia's dogs had chased them away, fighting on their own on the outer edges.
Razia surveyed the carnage, his flaming sword still drawn. "Casualties?"
"There are two wounded, sir," one of the soldiers reported. "And some minor injuries, nothing the healers can't handle. No deaths, thankfully, sir!"
"Good." Razia's sword extinguished, the flames dying as he released the red mana sustaining them. "Please secure the civilians, and check the buildings for anyone hiding. We're pulling back to the safe house in ten minutes."
The soldiers moved to obey. I watched them work, noting how they checked every corner, every shadow, ensuring no cultists had remained behind to ambush them during extraction.
Razia approached me, helmet tucked under one arm. "You fight very well. Those demons should have been a significant threat, and you handled them like they were problem children."
"I've had practice dealing with demons," I said, which was true enough. The monsters Zeus had occasionally sent me to deal with had often been demonic in nature, if not specifically from the Nine Hells.
"I can see that." He studied me with sharp eyes. "What's your name, planeswalker?"
"Heph."
"Just Heph?"
"For now, yes."
He nodded slowly, accepting that. "Fair enough. Most powerful beings I've met prefer anonymity when they can get it. Welcome to Ravnica, Heph. Sorry, your arrival was so violent."
"Not your fault, someone tried to kill me with a meteor."
"That was probably an Izzet mage," one of the soldiers offered. "They've been carpet-bombing suspected Dimir positions all week. No regard for collateral damage, no concern for civilians caught in the blast radius. Just 'advance the experiment' and 'gather the data.'"
I filed that information away. The Izzet League is a guild of mad scientists and reckless experimentation. Michael's memories supplied additional context: They used primary blue and red mana, intellect combined with passion, curiosity mixed with complete disregard for safety.
Sounded exhausting to deal with.
"Everything is clear, Sir! Pull out complete," another soldier reported. "The surviving civilians are secured, and no hostiles are remaining in the immediate area."
"Then we're done here." Razia gestured for everyone to form up. "Okay, everyone, back to base. Double-time."
We moved through the streets at a pace just short of a run, the soldiers maintaining formation around the civilians they'd rescued. I walked beside Razia, watching him constantly scan their surroundings, assessing threats and planning escape routes.
The energy he'd used during the fight still lingered around him, red mana residue clinging to his form like smoke. I extended my divine senses carefully.
It was wrong. Or rather, it was incomplete.
In the Outlands, magic had been drawn from the planes themselves, organized and flowing according to established laws. Here, the magic felt fragmented. Divided into five distinct colors, each one carries different properties and philosophies.
Red mana for passion, chaos and aggressive action. But where was the neutral mana? The colorless energy that should have existed between the extremes?
I could sense it, barely. Colorless mana existed here, but it felt hollow. Empty. Like something was missing from its structure, some fundamental component that would make it whole. I moved my hand up and down through faint streams of different colors.
Strange. Very strange.
"You're studying the mana," Razia observed. "I can see it in how you're looking at everything. What's confusing you?"
"Where I'm from, magic flows through a unified field. Here, it's fragmented into distinct colors. I'm trying to understand why."
"That's just how Ravnica works. Everything's divided by color pairs. The guilds each claim two colors, building their entire philosophy around the combination. Boros is red and white, passion and order working together. Izzet is blue and red, intellect and chaos. And so on."
"What about magic users who don't align with any guild?"
Razia's expression turned complicated. "They exist, but they're rare. Most people are born into a guild or join one early. The guilds control everything: employment, housing, education, and magical training. Going guildless means giving up access to resources most people need to survive."
"Sounds oppressive."
"It is, sometimes. But it also provides structure, community, and purpose. Most people are content with the arrangement." He paused. "At least, they were before the war started."
We turned down another street, which showed less damage. The buildings here were intact, though the windows had been barricaded and doors reinforced. People peered out from behind those barricades, watching our passage with hollow eyes.
"How long has the fighting been going on?" I asked.
"It has been weeks of open warfare as well as six months of escalating tensions and skirmishes and it's been building for a while. The assassination was just the spark that set everything ablaze." Razia's voice carried exhaustion. "We're all tired, Heph. Tired of fighting, tired of watching civilians die, tired of guild politics tearing this city apart. But nobody knows how to stop it without surrendering to enemies they can't trust."
I understood that dynamic. Olympus had been much the same, endless feuds and grudges, everyone too proud to back down, everyone convinced their position was righteous.
At least here, the fighting had a stated goal: restore order, address grievances, rebuild the peace. On Olympus, the fighting had been its own purpose, violence as entertainment for bored immortals.
We reached the safe house without further incident. The soldiers dispersed to their assigned tasks: tending to the wounded, checking equipment, and preparing for the next engagement. The civilians they'd rescued huddled in a corner, still shaking from their ordeal.
Razia pulled me aside, his voice low. "You're going to attract attention, fighting as you did. Word will spread that a powerful planeswalker arrived during the war, and the guilds will try to recruit you, or neutralize you if they can't. You need to understand what you've walked into."
"Then explain it to me," I said. "All of it. The guilds, the war, the magic system. I'm here now, whether I intended to be or not and I might as well understand the situation."
Razia considered that, then gestured to a side room. "Come on then. This is going to take a while, and you'll want to sit down for some of it."