Monsters We Became, the DVD extras.

I am continuing The New Thing, as people seemed to enjoy it the first time.  As a note on today’s installment, my book tour begins tomorrow: these will not generally be posted the same day as story-drop, there just isn’t time.

So!  Welcome to the “DVD extras” for episode two of the Murders at Karlov Manor story, “Monsters We Became.”  This story is copyright Wizards of the Coast, although it was written by me, and can be found in its entirety here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/episode-2-monsters-we-became

Please click the link, even if the story isn’t relevant to you.  Click-throughs are how Wizards knows that Story matters.

So what is this?  This is little excerpts of the story, with my thoughts on them, because, IDK, I thought it was funny.  I’ve also tried to include context for people new to Magic Story, to help you understand what the hell is going on.  If people continue to like it, I will probably continue.  If you don’t care about Magic Story, skip on over, although I’d still like it if you clicked.

And here we go!

The fascinating thing about this story was that it was in ten installments, which meant there was time to let things breathe and happen as they needed to happen, rather than (for the most part) moving faster than I would have preferred.  Pieces fell naturally into 5,000 word chunks, too, which was a gift from the outlining gods.

Kaya ran through the manor as swiftly as her legs could carry her. Teysa still caught up quickly, moving with a speed that Kaya knew would cost her later: for Teysa to be running alongside the much younger, fitter Planeswalker, she had to be drawing deep on her magical reserves. That sort of thing always came with a price.

Again, as someone with a walking disability—my left foot doesn’t always function as a food—I felt it was important to note that Teysa will pay for this tomorrow, but still isn’t hesitating to respond.  The “safer” choice would have been to follow at a slower pace, letting Kaya find and deal with the problem while Teysa refrained from hurting herself.  She really wants this party to go well.

“Well?” Teysa demanded. “Why are you all just standing around?”

“The door’s locked, ma’am,” said one of the servers. “Larysa’s gone looking for the key.”

I got to name somebody!  And wow was that a process, since there are a lot of characters on Ravnica, and I don’t remember all the tertiary characters who were mentioned once in a short story a decade ago.  But we got there.

Seeing that Teysa’s temper was hanging on by a thread, Kaya set a hand on her arm. “Easy,” she said. “I don’t need keys, not even in Karlov Manor.” She caught a flicker of something in Teysa’s eyes and paused. “Unless this door is warded against ghosts?”

“Much of the manor is, as a precaution,” said Teysa. “You might be able to come up through the floor, but even that would be a questionable approach.”

When your predecessor was literally responsible for murdering an entire ghost council, at your behest no less, you get cautious about people who can walk through walls.  It makes absolute sense for Teysa, who can talk to ghosts, to have set wards to prevent Kaya from walking through the walls as she pleases.  And Kaya is sensible enough to know that the wards are intended at least partially for her.

They were still standing there, waiting for Larysa to return, when Ezrim came galloping down the hall, the massive archon easily filling all available space. His mount’s long primary feathers swept household items and bric-a-brac off tables as he passed. “We heard the screams on the balcony,” he said. “It took me a moment to find a door that could accommodate me. What has happened here?”

You know someone’s sending him a bill for all the things he just broke.  But let us enjoy the image of a dude in armor riding a giant-ass bird down the hallway, scratching the floors and trashing the décor.

“If someone is hurt, or a crime was committed here, waiting is not in our best interests,” said Ezrim. He raised a foreleg, looking meaningfully from the door to Teysa as he waited for her acquiescence.

Teysa didn’t hesitate. She could always bill him later.

“Break it,” she said.

We only needed one acknowledgment that someone was going to get billed for the day’s events; two would have been overkill.  At the same time, we needed at least one, because this is Teysa Karlov; she’s going to get her money’s worth, no matter what that means.  Murder is less important than settling your debts.

Two heavy blows and the door snapped off its hinges, breaking clean in two as it fell inward. Kaya rushed forward, faster than Teysa now that the other woman wasn’t using magic to speed her steps. The servants hung back, waiting for the all-clear, while Ezrim, who would dearly love to have accompanied her if not for his size, paced in the hall outside.

Remembering where Ezrim could and couldn’t fit was a great exercise during the writing process.  At one point I built a little cardboard model of the manor, and used a Big Brother Pony as my archon stand-in.

Kaya appeared in the doorway, face grayish with pallor. “I’m fine,” she said. “Teysa, send someone to find Vannifar.”

Under other circumstances, Teysa might have reminded Kaya that she was no longer in charge; allowing a former guild leader to give her orders could undermine her authority in a dangerous way. The look on Kaya’s face stopped her cold.

How you know Shit Is Bad: Teysa allows Kaya to give her orders, despite their reversed positions.

“All of you, go,” she said, looking around at the servants. “Find me Vannifar of the Simic Combine and inform her that her presence is required. If she asks why, say only that I need to speak with her immediately.”

Vannifar and Zegana came to the party together.  Zegana, a traditionalist merfolk wizard, was previously the leader of the Simic Combine, before she was deposed by the more modernist Vannifar, an elf-ooze (seriously, she’s part jellyfish, it’s awesome).  They make a decent parallel to Kaya and Teysa in that they’re a former guild leader and her replacement.

Teysa stepped up next to her and froze, hand tightening on the handle of her cane until it looked like her fingers were going to break.

Personal experience: you can absolutely grip your cane so tightly that you hurt yourself.  It sucks, especially if you’re doing it in response to having already suffered another injury.  Teysa’s hand is going to hurt tomorrow.

Zegana of the Simic Combine was artfully arranged at the center of the pile. While there were signs of a struggle around the edges, there were none around her body; she was posed as prettily as a doll, her left hand raised to the level of her face, which was turned slightly to the side. If not for the fact that she so clearly wasn’t breathing, it would have looked like she was posing for a portrait of herself in repose, fins and hair arranged to their best possible advantage.

I had not seen the art when I wrote this description, but I did a remarkably good job of describing it, and I am pleased with myself.  This has been my moment of smugness.  Also, while not all merfolk have hair, some images of Zegana definitely implied it, so it’s been referenced here.

Our first victim.  Poor Zegana.  Oh, the Simic Combine is gonna be pissed.

“She’s dead,” said Teysa needlessly, and Kaya nodded in silent agreement. There were no visible wounds or signs of foul play, but they were of the Orzhov; they knew death when it was presented to them.

Welcome to the Orzhov.  We’ll teach you how to do accounting and how to recognize dead stuff.

The coats around Zegana’s body were a seeming mismatch, expensive fabrics and cheap linens overlapping with a carelessness that looked almost strange, given the precision of Zegana’s posing.

This is another way of highlighting how unusual this party is: Teysa invited everyone who could reasonably expect an invitation, regardless of socioeconomic status.  So some people are wearing very cheap clothing, and others are going to be much fancier.

“A flower …” said Kaya, bending farther down. “A black iris. Did you use black irises in any of the floral arrangements downstairs?” If Zegana had grabbed hold of a bouquet as she was falling, maybe that could tell them where she’d been killed.

But no: the scream had come from this room. This small, unremarkable, locked room. There hadn’t been time for Zegana to be killed elsewhere in the manor and then moved, especially not with the way she’d been arranged. Kaya realized how foolish her question was even before she saw Teysa shaking her head.

“The body has been moved” is such a common trope in mysteries that it seemed important to eliminate the possibility as quickly as possible, and this was a way to do it in-character, while also playing our first clue token.  Our board state is evolving!

“I tried to avoid arrangements that would strike people outside the guild as funereal or remind them of the Golgari in any way,” said Teysa. “It meant I lost one of our signature colors, but it was worth it for the reactions to the décor. No lilies, no black irises, no mourner’s stars.”

Okay, so we’re not even mentioning the Golgari if we can help it.  The Golgari Swarm is the black/green guild of life and death: they handle food production and composting, garbage disposal and corpse disposal.  The Planeswalker Vraska was (or is) their most recent leader, but fell to Phyrexia during the Invasion, and led the Golgari in an assault against the rest of the city.  They are, understandably, not super popular right now.

Kaya stepped into the hall, where she found not Vannifar but a cluster of Agency detectives and Ezrim. The archon was standing, wings half-mantled, as he glared at Aurelia. Aurelia saw Kaya and turned away from him, waving one hand in a dismissive gesture.

Aurelia and Ezrim are not going to be braiding each other’s hair any time soon.  They both have wings, and so the body language can get pretty avian when they’re butting heads.

“There you are,” she said. “Vannifar is coming, and Ezrim’s people are locking down the building. They say Teysa has forbidden anyone to leave the manor grounds. Something has happened.”

“Yes,” said Kaya. There was no point in lying.

“It was inappropriate not to summon the ranking legionnaire immediately.”

Traditionally, the guilds have been the final word on Ravnica, and as guild leader of the Boros Legion, Aurelia isn’t wrong to expect to be summoned.  She’s a bit wrong to think she can challenge another guild leader in her own home, but everyone makes mistakes.

Teysa, stepping up beside Kaya, lifted an eyebrow. Kaya glanced at her. The expected explosion, however, did not materialize.

“I’ve been encouraging the house staff to show initiative,” said Teysa. “I’ll have to find out who looked at the situation and correctly intuited a lockdown as my next order. They deserve a bonus for their excellent predictive skills, and a scolding for their arrogance.”

Translation: I’m not taking responsibility, but you don’t get to yell at my staff for doing what I would have wanted them to do.

“So there is a reason to lock down the building?” asked Aurelia. “My people are helping with the lockdown, but they,” she waved a dismissive hand at Ezrim and the detectives, “have no business being involved. They need to let the professionals handle whatever’s happening. What is happening, Teysa?”

So Aurelia doesn’t think of the Agency as professionals.  That’s going to be fun.

“I would prefer to wait for Vannifar before saying anything; you know as well as I do that the walls have ears.” Teysa folded both hands over the top of her cane, and Kaya realized the other woman had positioned herself such that between the two of them, they completely blocked off access to the room behind them. Clever, and easily done.

Teysa is nothing if not strategic.

Footsteps approached down the hall, accompanied by the soft swishing sound of protoplasm brushing against the floor. Everyone assembled turned, watching the approach of Vannifar of the Simic. Three lower-ranked members of the Combine accompanied their leader, who was frowning, looking distinctly unamused.

And with that, the pissed off jelly-elf enters the scene.

“Teysa, what is the meaning of this?” she asked. “Why did you summon me like a common criminal? Why are the Azorius and the Boros telling my people that we’re not allowed to leave?”

“I was hoping to do this in a less open location,” said Teysa. “Would you be willing to step into the library?”

“No. You summon me without explanation, and then you try to delay offering up the same? I’m sorry, but whatever you have to say, you say it here and now.”

Teysa frowned, hands tightening again atop her cane. “Then Vannifar, it is with the deepest of regrets that I inform you that Zegana of the Simic Combine has been killed.”

Teysa was at least trying to be kind, or diplomatic, about the situation.  It’s not her fault that she wasn’t allowed to be.  Although to be fair, we don’t know what’s been going on downstairs, or what Vannifar may have heard before she got up to the hall where everyone was waiting.

“There’s a dangerous killer on the loose!” Aurelia shouted. “This is not a time for amateur detective work. The Legion will take over from here. The guilds will handle this, as we always have.”

It’s natural for Aurelia to feel threatened by the Agency.  Faith in the guilds is unlikely to be at an all-time high in the aftermath of an actual invasion, and the Agency is actively stepping on areas that would normally be handled by the Boros.

The grand balcony where the guests of honor had been acknowledged ran all the way along one wall of the ballroom, tall glass doors standing open. The sky outside no longer lit up with colored fire, and the sounds drifting from below were very different from the unfettered celebration that had been going on when first she went inside. Walking to the edge, she looked down to see the partygoers standing in long, looping lines, each one ending at a member of the Senate and a glowing verity circle. They had cast their spells with admirable speed, making Kaya wonder if they hadn’t been preparing for something to go wrong tonight. Boros legionnaires stood near the casting mages, protecting them from interference.

The Azorius Senate is the blue/white guild of law and regulation.  They work closely with the Boros: think Law & Order, where you have the police and the lawyers working side by side.  Verity circles are an Azorius creation, magical workings which prevent the people they enclose from lying to the mage controlling the spell.  An Azorius verity circle is largely considered a path to an unimpeachable testimony.

And it didn’t take a genius to look at the guest list for tonight’s celebration and see that trouble was all but guaranteed. With eight of the ten guilds represented—she hadn’t seen anyone from House Dimir, and the Golgari Swarm was similarly absent—the chances of rough edges scraping against one another were incredibly high.

So I guess that confirms who the “useless guilds” are, in Teysa’s estimation, if they’re the ones who didn’t get invitations.  And yeah, eight out of ten guilds, with an open bar, is basically saying “let’s throw a riot and call it a celebration.”

 She frowned, scanning the crowd again. Eight of the ten … but she hadn’t seen many Rakdos tonight, had she? Only Judith, glaringly visible in her black and red leathers.

Judith, who had vanished before the killing.

Judith, who has never been one to shy away from carnage, but is definitely smart enough not to openly kill a guild leader.

Barrier wards had been deployed inside the scene, forming lines of protective magic impenetrable to anyone but an authorized investigator.

Basically magical police tape.

The Agency detectives who were already inside were clustered in one corner, all of them looking frustrated and annoyed. Kellan was virtually vibrating with the desire to help the various Azorius members as they tore the room apart, searching every crack and crevice for clues of what had happened here. Kaya winced. Teysa was going to kill them for what they’d done to her wallpaper.

Teysa’s going to kill them, and then Teysa’s going to bill them.  At ruinous rates, no less.

“I saw the verity circles lighting up in the courtyard below,” said Kaya. “With that sort of speed and efficacy, it might seem like the Azorius were planning for trouble.”

“A party at Karlov Manor, with all the guilds invited to celebrate the Agency and a Planeswalker?” Aurelia’s lip curled. “The invitations might as well have said ‘trouble guaranteed.’ Guilds Azorius and Boros both came ready for something to need our attentions.”

This may be the only time we see Aurelia and Kaya agree on something.

“Warleader, with the exception of the people in this room, guildmasters Teysa and Vannifar, and Chief Ezrim, everyone has been questioned,” said the Azorius, anxiously. “Even Grand Arbiter Lavinia has allowed herself to be interrogated. She sent me to ask you to agree to the same. We must all be above reproach.”

Lavinia is the Azorius guild leader.

The woman stepped back, almost stumbling, and lifted her hands, murmuring the incantation to call her circle into existence. It snapped up around both Kaya and Aurelia, something for which Kaya was obscurely grateful. With a guildmaster inside the circle, hopefully the questions would be restricted to ones that were relevant to the situation. It would have been all too easy for a lawmage who had suffered personal losses in the invasion to ask a few more … personal questions before allowing the circle to dispel. The verity circle couldn’t compel speech, but someone who was caught off guard might say more than they intended.

Aurelia being there means the lawmage can’t start asking questions about the Invasion, or prodding into Kaya’s role in the assault on New Phyrexia.  I hate that Kaya has to be grateful for that, but she’s not wrong to be.

The Azorius dropped the circle. “With your permission, Legionnaire, I’ll speak to the investigators?”

“Yes, yes,” said Aurelia, waving her off to begin casting her verity circles on the other occupants of the room.

Aurelia’s permission, not Ezrim’s.  Rude.

“Your guilds did plan this,” said Kaya, suspicions confirmed by Aurelia’s easy acceptance of her role here.

“Were you away from Ravnica so long that you forgot how things work?” asked Aurelia, looking back to her with one eyebrow raised. “There have been changes, yes, but the core of the city remains as it has always been, as it will always be. The Azorius keep the law; the Boros enforce it. A group of amateurs playing at protection will never displace us.”

Kaya isn’t originally from Ravnica, but accepting that she’s from another plane entirely is still a little bit of a stretch.  Remember that we’ve accepted the multiverse, while its occupants haven’t always.  For Aurelia, the guilds are the culmination of all civilization, the higher order toward which all things must inevitably bend.

Kaya glared. “The guilds aren’t everything.”

“Did you feel that way when you led the Orzhov? If you did, it’s no wonder they replaced you at the first opportunity. The guilds are Ravnica.”

“Well, then, Ravnica, do you have any idea what happened here? Or are you as clueless as the rest of us?”

I just love this bit of dialog.  Kaya snottily calling Aurelia “Ravnica” makes me smile every time I read it.

Before Aurelia could answer, someone behind the pair cleared their throat. Both women turned. A human man stood in the doorway, skin a few shades lighter than Kaya’s, hair dark on top but graying at the temples, dressed in a long azure coat. A few of the Azorius who had already been released from the verity circles shot him sour looks. He paid them no mind, attention fixed on Kaya and Aurelia.

“I believe I may have some idea of what happened here,” he said, as calmly as if he were requesting a cup of tea.

Not all grand entrances need to be super dramatic.  Sometimes staying calm is the deeper drama.

“He didn’t have an invitation,” said the Azorius mage who had been casting the verity circles, her tone tight and unhappy. “I would have noticed his name on the list.”

Given the party’s focus on honoring the Agency, this is a little odd.  It’s more likely he declined his invitation, and the guest list didn’t include him because he’d already said he was going to do something more interesting, like trimming his toenails and solving cold cases from a hundred years ago.

“I’m sorry. Did I not say? I’m Alquist Proft. Some people call me ‘the great detective Proft,’ and I have some skill in this arena.” He moved closer to Zegana’s body and crouched low to the floor, his eyes flicking rapidly from one aspect of the scene to the next. For all their apparent discomfort, none of the Azorius members in the room objected, while the Agency detectives who had been waiting for the opportunity to assist visibly relaxed, clearly trusting the man. Kaya looked at him with new interest.

Our great detective has arrived!  Time to be smug and insightful, and catch all the clues in the world.  Right after finishing this story, I went and did a full re-watch of Elementary, because I wasn’t ready to stop sharing my head with a detective figure.

“In that case … including the flower in her hand, which we can interpret as being representative of the Simic in this specific instance, she has been arranged such that the sign of each guild is visible on the coats beneath her, and a pattern has been formed.”

Because the guilds are so important to Ravnica, those fortunate enough to belong to one of them tend to wear their sigils on their clothing, often quite prominently.  It’s like wearing brand name clothing, only moreso.  It tells people you can, as well as informing them of your loyalties and position in the world.

“Zegana, and coats,” said Kaya dutifully, searching for the pattern Proft had mentioned. Then she blinked, shifting to the side to get a different angle. No matter how she stood, the Dimir logo failed to appear. “I don’t see Dimir,” she said. “But there aren’t any Dimir in attendance, so that makes sense.”

“This design incorporates all ten guild seals,” said Proft, indicating a panel pattern which occurred, in various degrees of folded-over, on several of the coats. “The Golgari are likewise absent from the invite list, but their seal is visible several times—see the way these buckles form the mandibles? I would wager that, if you move her hand, a folded pattern greatly resembling the Dimir seal will have been covered by the position of her arm.”

I want the fabric he’s describing here.

Kaya shook her head. “That’s a lot of trouble to go through. I can’t believe I didn’t see that,” she said.

“You’ve also failed to spot the one member of House Dimir in attendance.”

Kaya startled, ready to object, only to find Proft already looking at her with an earnest lack of judgment. He wasn’t criticizing: he was describing the situation as he saw it.

“Who?” she asked.

Proft smiled.

It’s important that Proft not come off as an asshole, or like he’s trying to be smug: he’s genuinely describing the world he sees, and enjoying the chance to bring someone along for a few moments.  He is, at this point in the story, very much a Holmes searching for his Watson.  The living rubber duck who can influence the deductions by giving him someone he can talk to.

Although Proft had somehow suspected and followed his suspicions back to their source. Kaya eyed him speculatively as they descended the stairs to the main floor. He didn’t seem to notice. She wasn’t fooled. Only a few minutes with him had been enough to illustrate that he noticed everything, however small or inconsequential it might seem.

Kaya is smart enough to know that a man who notices everything is going to notice her watching him while they walk.

“Where is she?” asked Kaya. “I didn’t see anyone wearing Dimir colors.”

“Did you really think a Dimir agent would make their presence so apparent? I might not have seen her, had she not been taking such exquisite care to avoid interaction with members of the Selesnya Conclave. Given that she was wearing the colors of their guild, they should have been her closest companions, not a reason to step aside.”

Proft has already used “she” to describe the presumed Dimir attendee; Kaya is just following his lead.  But at least he’s explained why no one noticed the Dimir, and why he caught sight of her, being as ridiculously observant as he is.

“Oh,” said Kaya, scanning the crowd with new eyes. She had fallen so quickly back into the Ravnican way of thinking, where no one would wear the colors of a guild they weren’t affiliated with unless they were looking for trouble.

Under normal circumstances, you’re probably not going to get harassed for wearing black and white together while not belonging to the Orzhov.  Doing it at a guild party, however, implies association and could cause issues for the guilds, which means it’s definitely going to cause problems for you.

No reason, save for the lack of any guild logo visible on her person. It was a jarring omission, given the precision of the rest of her attire. Makes sense, Kaya thought. There were no laws against wearing another guild’s colors. Wearing their shield, on the other hand, could come with consequences.

Colors, fine, sigil, outside of patterns like the one mentioned before, which incorporate all the seals and are mostly used for jacket linings and the like, going to get you kicked in the head by people who don’t like outsiders cosplaying as insiders.

“Miss Etrata,” said Proft, taking a step toward the woman. “I’m afraid we need to speak with you. Please come with me now.”

Etrata is a vampire assassin and master spy of House Dimir.  She’s known to infiltrate other guilds for fun, and she doesn’t get caught.  This is incredibly sloppy of her.

The woman whipped around, lips drawing back in a hiss which revealed her impressive vampiric incisors. Her entire demeanor changed in that instant, going from bored socialite to cornered predator. Casting a glance at Kaya, she clearly marked the Planeswalker as the greater threat. Charging straight for Proft, she knocked the investigator to the ground and began to cut a straight line through the crowd, heading for the hedge maze.

And down goes Proft!  I do love how physically ineffectual he is—he’s never dedicated himself to any sort of physical art, preferring to focus on the mind.  I also love that we have a hedge maze in play.  Nothing like a good old-fashioned hedge maze for a murder mystery.

“Try not to lose sight of her—I’ll do what I can to help from here,” said Proft, pushing himself into a sitting position without rising from the ground.

Not physical, but capable of helping in some way from his location on the floor.

Kaya was fast. Etrata, however, was faster, and that, in addition to her head start, put her more than halfway to the hedge maze when Kaya began gaining ground, largely by dint of turning herself intangible to avoid dodging around partygoers. Charging straight through them was more efficient.

Kaya is a physical fighter, and she doesn’t depend entirely on her magic to get things done.  Etrata, on the other hand, is a physical master, and depends on speed and stealth for her survival.  It’s natural that she’d be faster.  So Kaya’s going with what works for her: she turns ghost and runs straight through anything that gets in her way.

Still, Etrata was going to beat her to the maze, no question—at least until the world abruptly inverted itself around her, gray cobblestone and gathered revelers being replaced by columns of towering blue light. They were no longer racing toward the hedge maze: instead, Etrata was running down an alleyway that Kaya knew all too well, deep in the heart of Orzhov territory.

…okay, this is new…

She was within ten feet of the vampire when the white landscape collapsed around them and Etrata plowed directly into Kellan. The young Agency investigator looked surprised, even with clasped arms around the runaway Dimir. She struggled and snarled, but he shook his head, not letting go. He was still holding her when Kaya ran up to the pair of them.

New, but apparently helpful, as it’s herded the runaway vampire straight into Kellan, letting him do his best impersonation of a pair of handcuffs.  Boy’s lucky he didn’t get bitten.

“What was that?” she asked.

“That was me,” said a winded voice, from behind her. She turned. Proft, clearly exhausted but back up on his feet, was staggering through the semi-dispersed crowd to join them. A further look told her he wasn’t injured, just exhausted.

I used the word “exhausted”  twice in two sentences, I’m so ashamed.  Don’t look at me.

“What kind of magic is that?”

“I make what’s in here become out there, and I can recreate anything I’ve ever seen,'” he said, tapping his temple as he looked past her to where Etrata struggled to escape from Kellan. “Everything all right, young man?”

Well, that’s a fun new sort of illusion-casting, even if it apparently takes it out of him.

Members of the Azorius guild were already beginning to converge on their position, with Lavinia at the lead of the largest cluster. Kellan tightened his grip, jaw jutting out briefly in stubborn determination. Proft stepped forward, setting a hand gently on his arm.

“This is not the time to stand our ground,” he said. “They found nothing; we found a possible culprit. They didn’t assist in the chase; you captured her. The Agency doesn’t need the glory if we can have the satisfaction of knowing that without us, none of this would have been possible.”

Proft is clearly learning to play the politics of his position, if he understands how to manage the guilds this skillfully.  Still, good call on his part.  Alienating the Azorius could cause a lot of problems for the Agency in general, and for himself and Kellan in specific.  This way, everyone saves face.

Kellan released Etrata, standing next to Kaya and Proft as she was swiftly apprehended again by the waiting Azorius. The three of them remained where they were, watching as Etrata was hauled away.

Well, that was nice and easy, wasn’t it!  One murder, one suspect, one arrest.  We’re done here, and the next eight stories will be a pleasant walking tour of the post-war Ravnica.  I can’t wait to see the Farmer’s Market.  I—oh, wait.  It’s Murders at Karlov Manor, isn’t it?

See you soon, I guess.