Reality Fracture | Episode 5: I Don't Need to Convince You
THE FIRST ATTEMPT
The Theorist drops his pen as soon as he feels her approach up the stairs. Through the eyes of a statue, through wards in each keyhole doorway, through the singular presence she brings with her psyche—with his many eyes he watches her approach.
He did not know Vraska would be here.
He feels her and the rest of them coming long before he sees them, senses the delicate pottery of their minds as they clatter up the spiral stairs. There he was, building up the courage to march downstairs and kill the oracle with purpose, and of course she shows up the second he's about to work up the nerve. Their feet fall heavy on each step, and as they do, he can tell who they are one by one. Noisy clatter and swirling emotion—Chandra. Dense jungle concealing a protected interior—Garruk. Garruk? Fascinating. And polished, tarnished, polished again bronze stretching in the sun as he ascends the stairs—Ajani, of course. But last in the line is a mind he'd know anywhere, the mind he's spent the most time in. Hers is sharp, shining crystal cemented with a bedrock of stone only she can make.
The four of them burst into his sanctum, and half a second later, three hit the floor.
The most powerful pyromancer he's ever met, the strongest hunter in existence, and a renowned mentor and tactician all collapse on the tile of his sanctum with a united, sickening thud. He snaps his fingers, and they crash to sleep, dreamless, face down. But Vraska—Vraska doesn't flinch. She stands firm, her golden eyes trained on him. The other three breathe softly against the floor, their weapons forgotten, their magic dormant. Mage-rings buzz on all sides. The Theorist doesn't have enough of himself left to smile, but he does lower his hand with a sense of accomplishment.
"They're fine," he says.
He did it so easily, he hears Vraska say in hushed terror to herself. He beat them in a second from the other side of the room.
A version of him with more of him would never have skimmed so cavalierly through another's thoughts, but that part is discarded now. The Theorist keeps one foot in her mind.
"I survived," he says.
"I heard."
The sanctum echoes as he walks toward her. Its tall, cool-toned arches reach overhead, the magelights illuminating its walls with long shadows. He knows it's the chalkboards behind him she's looking at.
"You didn't come to celebrate my survival."
"No, love. We came to ask you to stop."
The word makes him pause. Stirs something within. "'Love.' Am I still that to you?"
The Theorist cannot help himself; he senses something pouring through Vraska's mind—fear. It flows, sputtered and frothing, over dark, mossy stone. The Theorist holds back a scoff. Fear? Why would she fear him? From the way they departed, she ought to be relieved he's alive … or certain she can talk him out of it. But how she feels doesn't matter; he has proved in this very minute he cannot be defeated.
You wouldn't be in this situation if you could kill Jadzi, intrudes a painful truth. The Theorist grimaces. I will, dammit. I'll get to it. I really will.
"Jace," she says, and it takes the Theorist a moment to remember that this was his name when he was whole. "It's time to give it up. We tried, we really did, but I know you know this isn't working. You have the will to stop."
This is what he anticipated. She abandoned him out of an emotional response. She's forgotten that their fight was a righteous one. The Theorist addresses her as a colleague, academic to academic.
"Will and ability exist as a pair," he says. "I have the means to complete the plan. You're here. You see it. You know I have the will."
Her tendrils are flicking, but her face gives nothing away. "Your mother asked me to give you this."
She hands him a small bundle, and his heart jumps. It is his family's colors, a weave of circles and lines, and hidden within the blue cloth is a ruddy iron horseshoe. He drops it with a clatter. It belonged to Pewter. It belonged to the horse that inspired the first illusion he ever made.
He remembers at once—the heaving grief of losing their childhood pet, the stablemaster of their apartment block trying to comfort him to no avail, how in the dark of night the child that was Jace snuck down and created a copy of Pewter to love with his whole heart.
The message is clear. Your endeavor is affection for an illusion. Vraska watches the horseshoe fall. The surprise on her face makes it clear she knows what it is, but not what it means.
"I am not in the hold of a phantasm," the Theorist says with barely concealed frustration, moving toward her. He steps around the helpless sleeping body of Garruk (they thought Garruk could stop him?) and takes Vraska's hand.
He's close. He can see a bug bite on her forehead, smell the peat on her shoes. With a deeper read, he can see that she walked here through the Omenpaths, and he curses the indignity of fate for making his captain walk. "I have everything I need to know how to complete it. The theorems are correct, my proofs all confirm our hypotheses."
Vraska is staring at their clasped hands. "Why are you talking like that?"
The Theorist shakes his head. "You were right. Death is a part of life. Completing the cycle is what delivers us to a world without pain."
He watches her blink her confusion into being. Her concern transforms her expression as she meets his eyes. "How many will die, Jace?"
The Theorist doesn't dare move. "The data is inconclusive." He knows without touching her mind that she can read his truth. "We agreed on a grand gesture."
"We agreed on undoing, not killing. This was supposed to be undoing the invasion, that the lives saved would make up for the lives lost. But this isn't undoing. This is, what, making an entire Multiverse? How many will die, Jace?"
"That's not the point, Vraska."
"No, it—"
He fills both of their minds with a memory, but as soon as he does, he can tell Vraska is rejecting it.
Their scars are still fresh; the candlelight of his mother's flat is dim. They huddle at the table before a litter of mathematical proofs. Jace's head is in his hands. Vraska holds him tight.
"Why are you showing me this?"
He sighs heavily, says aloud the number, the number of people who would be overwritten, the number who would die, and Vraska says nothing.
"That isn't what happened!"
They sit there in silence, the time long forgotten (Ranna went to bed hours ago) and their tea long cold. Vraska shifts, she leans over, and she whispers something terrible, something true. "Dying is a part of life," she says. "If we seek rebirth, then that requires death."
"I never said that!" Vraska yells.
She's shaking. They've long stopped holding hands. Vraska doesn't cry. She only shakes her head. Her tendrils rise, her eyes catch the light, and her rage is so potent that it rings as a bell to the Theorist's senses.
"We were supposed to save lives. You said you wouldn't try to make a place like this. You were supposed to be the good one."
"Which part of me is the good part?"
Vraska's lip quivers.
He tilts his head, curious, with what little curiosity is left. "Which part of me is the bad?"
All the versions of himself that aren't here, they would likely point to him, but the Theorist only remembers what belongs scribbled on a chalkboard, enshrined in a textbook. What goodness does there lie in logic? What evil?
"You're a killer, Beleren," Vraska hisses, and it stings, because no, that isn't true for the Theorist. She continues, "But not a murderer. And soon you'll murder billions." Vraska steps forward, taking up space, her tendrils flaring with every dagger she spits. "Stop now, or you'll kill us all for nothing."
The Theorist shakes. There's so little of him left, but even this much is devastated. There isn't any other part left to protect him. By her measure, he is everything he ever hated. The only person who has ever truly seen him sees only his nightmare. This is all going wrong. He needs to try this again. He is logic, he is reason, he is correct by nature of being himself. That is who he is.
"I'm sorry, Vraska," he says, voice breaking.
He allows her to keep one piece of knowledge. You cannot overpower me. You cannot convince me. I will not stop.
He commands the sleeping bodies to wake and rise. They find their balance, and all three—Ajani, Chandra, Garruk—bolt. Vraska doesn't have time to gasp or ask why, because by the time she gathers what is going on, her memory of the last few minutes is resting in the Theorist's hand.
THE SECOND ATTEMPT
He gathers his composure.
They'll be back any minute.
He tries to think of what he wants to say, how he wants this one to go. More than all the gold in the Obzedat, he wants her at his side. As for Vraska, she wants him to stop. But he must not stop.
The Theorist tries to formulate an alternative (they'll be here any minute), and the best one is the one that leaves Vraska unharmed. He must convince her. He is Beleren's logic; she will hear the distilled reason of his position and understand the sacrifice that must be made. She is smart. She will come around.
Their feet bound up the stairs as the Theorist pulls his hood down. The midday sun peering through the skylight above is warm. He takes a deep breath, lifts his right hand, steadies his weight between both feet, just as he learned so long ago.
The second time the group bursts through the entrance, the sanctum erupts with their battle cries, loud and furious, then silent, forced still with a flick of his hand.
All four of them freeze.
He freezes Vraska, too, a statue of his own. With careful timing, he catches her mid-run.
The Theorist's feet clip the tile as he descends from the dais of his sanctum. The sound echoes up to the rings above, and his shadow cuts across the floor.
Vraska's eyes dart toward him (he left them free; he wants to know she's paying attention), and he releases her tongue and jaw.
"What is wrong with you?" she snarls. The Theorist stands face to face with her. He calmly puts a hand on her cheek.
"I need you to stand down, Vraska."
"I will not!" she hisses. A miscalculation. She distrusts him this time because he overstepped.
He takes a breath. This one isn't going well, either. "Our plan is going to work. We'll all be overwritten. It will be painless. It will be a welcome relief. You cannot stop me."
At the corner of his perception, he feels her eyes begin to charge, and with a swift gesture the urge is snuffed out. She gasps.
"You'd petrify me?" he says, wounded.
"You're not you." She groans, a struggle against the lock he's put on her body. "What did you do to yourself? You wouldn't do this," she says through half-gritted teeth.
"Part of me would," he says truthfully, then pauses. "Will you stand down if I ask you?"
Her lips twinge in anger. "What did you do? How did you survive?"
The Theorist wonders how to put it. "I rebuilt myself, but it wouldn't hold."
Vraska's eyes blow wide in shock. Again, this is not going well. He thinks through the best way to phrase it, then gives up. He puts a hand on her cheek and closes his eyes.
It is the day after he died. He is now they, and they have shattered.
He, they, are without a body, a mind holding itself together by nature of the Meditation Realm alone. Each part of Jace holds the other parts of their spirit tenuously, grasping without hands, the foundation of himself shattered and spread. Jace is an archipelago, a chain of selves, separating slowly and clinging by thin waters. He will not be able to keep himself together. He must act if he wants to live, and it is that thought of not just living but of potential that solidifies what he must do.
His spell failed. He cannot remember why. All he knows is that he cannot let go. If he lets go, he dies, and he's not ready; he isn't.
One of his selves suggests that the Meditation Realm has the power to create. The great dragon Nicol Bolas never noticed (incurious lizard; he never bothered to look), but his brother, Ugin, knew more. Jace thinks of the spirit dragon and replicates what Ugin must have done, shaping a body from the inherent power of this place and pouring his fractured selves inside.
He weaves flesh. He sculpts his own head. He taps the beat to his own heart. And the Meditation Realm breathes it real.
When he is done, he collapses, gasps for air, tries to piece together what happened … but the only certain part comes from two parts of himself. Restart it all, says one. Live, pleads another.
He cannot get the pieces to coalesce. They are too separate, too abhorred by the plan one has insisted they follow. Too repulsed by each other.
They argue, they tear themselves away … but, miraculously, they unite under a common goal.
The Theorist cannot remember exactly why, but he remembers what they did next.
In concert with himself, Jace has managed to create a pocket, a small plane of his own the size of a single room. It was exhausting, enthralling. It took everything out of him. The room is modest, a replica of his personal apartment at the Chamber of the Guildpact. His bed is a tangle, an array of books and bags and notes scattered as leaf litter across every surface. It is a racket of a mess, all save the table at the center of the room—a long, solid pine, whatever was on it shoved to the side. Only a mirror at the far end of the table keeps it from being completely empty.
And Jace, a complete Jace, stands at the head of the table with his feet firm, his palms resting upon its surface, the telepath breathing heavily.
He whispers the beginning of a spell that ought to have been forgotten long ago.
I did it for an important reason, the Theorist explains to Vraska as he shares the memory, but I cannot tell you why.
The room feels constricted, as if the plane created by the mage reacts to the magic he is generating inside of it.
Bolas only used the Meditation Realm to craft it in his image. Ugin knew more. He rebuilt himself from it as I did. But the second spell I needed to perform … I learned of it long ago. At the time, it was the most complicated praestigial spell there was … but I didn't have a reason to try it. There is only one cost to creating a person with magic.
Sweat rolls down Jace's forehead, and he hurls himself forward onto the table, shivering, groaning, still reciting the spell. He looks into the mirror, looks intently at himself, then grabs it with both hands. He stands, the mirror on the table facing up, and calls the rest of the spell with glowing eyes, and the room itself shrinks several feet as he channels as much as he can into his spell.
Then, he halts.
Something leaves his chest. A wisp, a plasmid trick of the light, some curl of a boundless alpine lake, a clear-water blue that does not belong outside of himself.
It floats out, then downward toward the mirror.
He watches it sink to its own reflection.
And when it makes contact with the mirror, it continues down.
Jace catches his breath, then, brows furrowed, announces the last words of the spell with all the strength of a general.
He thrusts his right hand down through the mirror. It passes through air, not glass, and he leans forward to pull something out.
A person, or rather a person-shaped miasma of blue, emerges. He pulls it out of the mirror, gasping with effort, helps the shape through, and lays it out on the table. It is formless, the suggestion of a body, more gas and magic than true matter.
Jace leans back for a quick swig of water, then returns, visibly noting the time on a clock in the corner of the apartment. He throws a blanket over the top of it in anticipation of modesty.
He chants.
And as he does, the being starts to take form.
It took two and a half days, the Theorist notes. This was the most important part. I had to remain with it, channel enough of myself into it so that it became her.
Time passes. The shape gains form. A face. Ears. Skin.
I did not intend for her to look like a gorgon. That was … subconscious influence.
Tendrils become braids. Green blushes down the person's arms.
It was not what I asked for, but it was just what I needed. I did not try to correct what never needed correction.
Jace watches, chanting still, alarmed at first, then smiling, laughing, and choking back pain all at once.
It was only right that you influenced her, too. How could you not?
His mouth is tight in a smile, and he nods as if in agreement—yes, yes. This is what I want.
I gave her everything she needed to be whole—someday.
His hand is on her forehead, pouring in a lifetime's worth of experience and knowledge so she will wake as an adult, not a child. More than once, Jace slips, falls forward, stands, chants again. He chants until she is complete, and she is complete only when he feels it.
Jace clutches his chest and gasps. He pulls away his hand, and a single wisp of blue, the same as before, comes with it. Then he places a hand over her heart and pushes the magic in with it.
With one final word, the woman on the table takes her first breath of air.
The cost is a part of you that cannot be returned, says the Theorist.
Jace sighs, and his double sighs back.
The Theorist is shaking. He can just make out tears at the corners of Vraska's eyes. Fury. He dares not speak aloud the rest.
"Why did you make her?"
The Theorist blinks. He shakes his head, confused. "I can't tell you."
"Why?"
"There's not enough of me left. I don't remember."
"You made a person," she spits, and a fleck of saliva hits the Theorist's cheek, "and you don't remember why?"
"She's important! And she carries a part of me, but I don't know which! That's all I know!"
Vraska groans. "You need to be stopped!" she yells, wrestling against her own body, locked in place. "This isn't—"
"Me," the Theorist finishes. "It is. I am the part that won. I am the part that knows a future without suffering is worth any cost. It's better if you stand down, love. You can't stop me."
Vraska lets out an anguished cry. "What about her? She'll die, too! She'll die, I'll die, Loot will die—you're dooming us all!"
This is going wrong. Again. Damn it all, it's wrong.
The Theorist puts his hands against her head. "I'm sorry," he says. "I want to try this again. But you need to learn one thing."
And, again, he wipes their memories and sends them out, determined to try once more. This time, he leaves her with one key fact.
I made a person, but this part of me does not remember why. She must be protected.
THE THIRD ATTEMPT
The third time, he decides to at least let them get through the entrance.
He walks to the center of the sanctum, broadcasting as he feels his friends clamber up the stairs.
If I don't follow through, then we lose the chance to fix everything, he sends to each of them. I'm so close, Vraska. I'm so close to securing the structure, to solidifying an eternity without suffering.
The four of them burst in, Vraska in front this time, and she snarls with conviction, "You're not going to convince us to let you do this!"
Oh.
His eyes blaze, his head tilts with understanding. Meaning illuminates his mind, searing away all shadows lurking in its corners. He doesn't quite smile, but he feels lighter. What he realizes now is something he has never understood before.
"I don't need to convince you," he commands, dark and gentle.
All four of them halt in their tracks. They look at one another, then slowly turn back to him.
"You're right, Jace," Vraska says, the instruction clear, her mind unquestioning.
The Theorist's heart is pounding. What does he do next?
I am a scientist, he says to himself.
I test.
There isn't any part of him left to object as his eyes alight once more. "Stop the others from stopping me."
Vraska immediately turns around, tendrils flared, petrification blazing in her eyes.
Chandra screws her lids shut. Her skin blazes into action. She screams at Vraska, "You won't get near him!"
Garruk doesn't hesitate. He swings an axe at Ajani, who meets it with his own.
And the Theorist watches, horrified.
He only has a moment to examine the feeling. He wanted this, so why does he feel conflicted? He excised all the parts that would have objected, so where does this cold and creeping dread originate? A hypothesis—he is human; he cannot help feeling guilt at forcing his friends to fight. Data—how he flinches every time Chandra blasts Ajani with flame, how a man as mighty as Garruk doesn't have the strength to fight off the command, how the Theorist's chest curls with heartache to see Vraska do something she would never choose …
"Enough!" he shouts, waving away the command, returning all four of them to the moment.
They breathe, bruised, burned, sliced, their silence blooming into rage.
The enough is for him, too. The experiment is concluded. He must deter them once and for all.
Chandra rushes him first. He sees her hold out her hand, arched forward and fingers splayed, feels as the temperature in the room rises several degrees, and before she can aim and ignite, he stops her with a flash of his eyes. The Theorist dives in during that nanosecond, reaching for the area at the very front of her mind, just above the eyes, and with a satisfying twist, manages to slide in between the heavy mountains of gaze and the wide pit of risk and find just what he is looking for: a path with many forks, a pole at its center, certainty. He slams a barrier at each of the paths, fills the center with fog, and as quick as he is in, he has left.
The pyromancer slows, grinds to an unsteady halt as if her limbs were thick with syrup. Her eyes are the only parts of her moving quickly. They dart, searching for an answer. She is immobile, paralyzed. "What do I do?" she croaks out to anyone who can hear, unable to make eye contact. "What do I do?"
Garruk seems to know what to do. The lumbering mass charges forward with his axe held high. The Theorist remembers—this one can see through illusion. No matter. There are much worse ways to die. In a millisecond, he's inside the druid's head, sensing for the flashes of electricity that signal where mind communicates to muscle. Each of those flashes, each of those journeymen carrying orders, the Theorist wills them to stop, to sleep. The electricity fizzles wildly, sparks making it through in bursts and starts, and the Theorist is pleased with his calamity, exiting as swiftly as he arrived.
The druid's axe clatters to the ground, his fingers too weak to hold it. He cries out in pain as his muscles cramp, and with suddenly uncertain legs, he falls to the ground. The Theorist can see it from here, how his bare biceps twitch and spasm. If he did nothing else, the brute would be dead in five years.
The Theorist raises his voice. "We won't create a better world by being reasonable. We'll do it by being unreasonable!"
Two down. The leonin is in the back, calling out directions.
"Chandra! Garruk! To me!" Ajani yells, racing toward Garruk. The Theorist knows it will take Ajani no time to find the source of Garruk's wasting if he can ask what he is feeling (Ajani is a purifier, but he is no doctor, no anatomist, no Ranna Beleren).
The Theorist reaches inside Ajani's mind and snatches away an entire language.
"Πες μου που πονάει," says the leonin. His ears flick. "Τι?"
Three are now frozen in everything from alarm to pain to tactical inactivity. The Theorist raises his hands in diplomacy. "The trillions we protect are worth the billions we pay."
The woman who would be his wife only stares.
"You are the worst part of the best man," Vraska says, shaking with fury. "You are a monster."
He glares as she draws near to him, and he sees himself in her furious golden eyes. The fear vanishes, replaced with a slowly growing fire.
She starts off at a distance, her intensity growing as she gets closer. "Listen to my words, you sliver of a person: My love is nothing compared to my hate. I hate who you have whittled yourself down to. I hate that you now resort to the basest, vilest use of your gifts. But what I hate the most is that I fooled myself into thinking you were kind—"
The Theorist flicks up a hand and immediately sends her to sleep.
He keeps her upright, blank, lips parted, suddenly quiet.
He wipes the minds of the three Planeswalkers behind him, but before erasing Vraska's, he allows one piece to remain: I cannot be defeated by you.
He clears her mind of their encounter and sends the four friends out into the hallway.
The Theorist swears.
He swears again.
The sound of his curse echoes around the sanctum.
I am a sliver of a person, he admits, then grimaces in determination. And that is all I need.
There isn't enough of him to feel full heartbreak, but there's enough of him to know he will fulfill his task with no allies.
He looks back to the illusory chalkboard of equations, but none of them feel like they make sense anymore.
He walks to the center of his sanctum and looks up at the hum of mage-rings, waiting for his former friends to appear again.
"Oh, sweetie. You fought Jace three times."
Vraska takes hold of Professor Opal's desk to steady herself. Her eyes are wide, the room increasingly small and loud. She remembers what he wanted her to remember, retains flashes of truth, and when she glances up at the doppelgänger of a woman she's never met, she sees a face serene with schadenfreude.
"That's not Jace," Vraska concludes with a sick roil of her guts. "It's just what's left."
"The most helpful part," Professor Opal adds with a useless smile.
"Κάνε ησυχία," snaps Ajani as he tries to heal Garruk in the armchair.
Vraska looks at her companions in various states of misery around the office. The truth is more painful than anything the part upstairs could put them through, but she must speak it aloud.
"We can't defeat him." Garruk groans, and Vraska asserts, "We can't. We couldn't get close without him putting you three to sleep."
"Γιατί όχι εσύ?" Ajani says with a clear pointing gesture. Why not you?
"I remember we talked, but not about what. But if we've fought him three times, it's clear we can't win. We can't overpower him. We can't trick him."
Ajani's ears are flat against his head.
Chandra shakes her head. "He can't win," she says. "I still … I still feel him."
"Can you sense the rest of him?"
Chandra furrows her brow, and Vraska clarifies, "He cut out the rest of him. Only the worst part remains."
Ajani and Chandra both gasp. Garruk growls from his chair, "Which part?"
"The academic. The utilitarian. It's why he's so stuck on this damn plan. There was always a part of him that truly valued potential over the present."
"The Theorist!" Professor Opal adds as she packs her smoking pipe.
A person walks with purpose past the doorway, and Vraska's heart jolts with her passing. That person must be protected.
It is a visitation by a ghost.
Without a word to her broken and bruised allies, Vraska follows the stranger just in time to see her walking away, down the long hallway toward the spiral staircase.
She's a gorgon.
No. Not quite.
"You," Vraska yells, rushing out the door and into the hall, and the person at the end of the stone walkway stops. Both sides of the hallway are flanked by stained glass, and the moonlight through the windows bounces strange colors off the young woman as she turns.
I made a person, Jace said. The memory is vague, hazy, incomplete. He showed her, yes. She saw how he did it, how it took days of effort, how he couldn't help that she turned out … like me.
It's like looking at a dream. There's his expression, there's the green of her skin, side by side. Why would he make her? They had Loot; they had their little family. Why would he want to make a person when the cost was a segment of his own soul? What purpose does she serve? Part of Vraska fears that she's looking at a replacement, or a partner, or a malleable pawn, but none of that feels true.
Vraska finds she is trembling. The closer the young woman gets, the more she shakes. She looks like him. She looks like her. Her mind wants to make a simple deduction, but everything in her heart tells her this person was not meant to play the role of a child.
One furrow (his furrow, all her expressions are his) of her brow makes it clear she's putting it together, too.
"Vraska," she says. "I know your name."
The fact seems to confuse the young woman. Gods, Vraska can't handle this. With wet cheeks, she nods. "Vraska," she affirms. "But I don't know yours."
"Tam," the woman replies, drawing close. "You shouldn't be here." Her eyes flash blue for a moment. "He's always listening. Stay close. Stay away from the statues and birds. You and your friends won't be able to stop him."
Then she is an ally.
"I know," Vraska replies. "We've tried."
The gorgon nods uneasily, then shivers.
"I … I had an encounter." Tam's hands twitch at her side. "I'm a little shaken, sorry." She puts her hands behind her neck, letting out a long breath, a gesture Vraska has seen Jace make countless times. "I don't know what to do about the Theorist."
Vraska nods. "He just defeated us three times in a row."
"Then he let you come back. He can't be defeated by anyone other than a telepath. It's why they're so valued in warfare."
She doesn't want to know how the gorgon knows this. "So what will you do about it?" Tam blinks in surprise, and Vraska presses. "You're a telepath, too."
"I am. But he's my maker. He cares about me. You know what he's like."
Vraska feels shame. "I thought I knew him. In reality, I knew part of him."
"Yeah, but all people are parts." Tam says it so simply. "Even me. I'm not much, but we aren't all good or all bad."
Her words soak in, and Vraska narrows her eyes. "Then … there are parts of Jace worth saving."
Tam nods. "Oh, many."
Vraska imagines what it would be like if the only part of her that remained was the one that thought up the idea to blind hundreds in the streets of Ravnica. That part was real. That was her, too.
She locks eyes with Tam. "Then you should reassess what power you have. And if you have someone worth saving."
The young woman shifts her weight. "Oh," she says, as if that weren't an obvious option. Her eyes dart momentarily, checking the corners for something. With a flick of her hand, they are briefly surrounded by angles and lines of blue light. She leans in close, their conversation seemingly protected.
"This entire tower is made of his memories. You'll need to pass through them to reach Jadzi. That's why you're here, right?"
Vraska keeps her voice low. "Yes. We had hoped to stop Jace and save her, but—"
"It isn't worth it to fight him directly. You need to rescue Jadzi before he can use her."
Use?
"The tower extends below the grounds of Hexhaven. Jadzi was at the bottom, but this whole space is … complicated. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"
Vraska doesn't need to look around to know that the stone walls are the slate from his mother's house, that the windows are the same ones from the Chamber of the Guildpact.
"How can I trust you?"
At that, Tam looks stung. The expression hits Vraska with the weight of memory, of Jace giving her the same look, all those years ago on The Belligerent.
The future collapses in on itself. Not only can Jace not be stopped, but it also seems as if he's preparing for something beyond the plan she's aware of. Vraska feels as if she's alone in the dark.
"You have no reason to trust me," Tam says, "but I know that part of my maker asked for help."
Vraska scoffs. "He asked for help?"
"I'm going to talk to the Theorist, then I'm going to get the original Liliana for backup. You focus on rescuing Jadzi. I think she's been moved from her cell. But you know him. Use that to find her." Tam peers around her into Professor Opal's office. "Did he hurt your friends?"
"Yes," Vraska says, standing aside to allow a glance.
Tam peeks in, then negates the quieting spell surrounding them. She rounds the corner and enters the office.
Professor Opal glowers from beside the window, a curl of smoke from her pipe encircling her, and the three Planeswalkers scattered around the room look up at the newcomer.
"I'm Tam," she says politely to the guests. "One moment, please."
Her eyes light up with blue, and after a long minute, both Chandra and Garruk relax. Chandra crashes into an empty chair with a relieved obscenity. Garruk tests the obedience of his muscles with a quick push-up. Ajani tentatively stammers, "Thank you?" then repeats it, confident and comfortable. The magic vanishes from Tam's eyes. She flinches.
Tam leaves, but not before she catches Vraska's eye one last time as she walks away.
There isn't a word for what Vraska feels in this moment. Somewhere between the ache of a young adulthood she never had and a vision of the man she knows better than anyone in the world lies a gulf of strange emotion.
"Who was that?" Chandra asks, standing.
Vraska doesn't have the heart to answer. Her certainty that she'll get home to Loot, that he'll come home … both crater next to a more dismal truth.
The druid huffs a breath. "We try again. Round four."
Vraska's heart is heavy. She turns to the window. "He can't be defeated …" She can't finish her thought.
He can't be defeated. Not only because he can put them to sleep from across a grand hall. Not only because he can whisk their minds to pudding, or make them forget to breathe, or because he believes so thoroughly in his task that he would vivisect his own mind to make it easier to accomplish. But because even if they could get close … his plan is too bold, his stance too firm, his zeal for resurrection too hot.
Yet it is the look in his eyes, the one memory she does have of their encounter, that affirms the most horrible truth Vraska can think of.
Jace knows he is going to die.