Ari Marmell - Agents of Artifice

Fully prepared for the teleportation, Tezzeret was of course far less unsettled by the sudden shift than was his enemy. Even as Jace reeled, blinking away his disorientation, the artificer raised fists of metal and flesh. A wall of molten glass burst from the sands between them, sending Jace tumbling away as it slashed at his flesh and burned away the tips of his hair and the ragged hem of his cloak.

He staggered to his feet, fighting for balance on the shifting dunes, and the desert came alive behind him. A dozen tiny metal orbs rained earthward, bursting as they fell, and from beneath them rose a lumbering giant made of nothing but sand. Its limbs didn't bend so much as constantly reshape themselves to any desired angle as it glided across the desert to smash the artificer's foe.

Jace sank swiftly beneath the sands, plummeting through a tunnel burrowed by telekinetic force akin to the spell he'd used to fly, back on Ravnica, and the sand-golem's fists struck nothing but earth. And then he was flying; Jace burst from the desert floor and soared into the azure sky, arms outstretched and crackling with power. Behind him the air rippled and split, a gulf from elsewhere, from which appeared a pair of winter drakes and the familiar sphinx. The drakes instantly dived upon the beast of sand, struggling to immobilize it into a lifeless statue with bursts of frigid breath, while Jace dropped onto the sphinx's back and plummeted in a screaming dive toward Tezzeret himself.

Tezzeret let them come, watching, waiting. He hurled a few projectiles, spinning discs that crackled with necromantic energy and would have sucked the life from the sphinx as swiftly as one of Liliana's spells. The beast avoided them easily, but then he'd expected her to. Only at the last, when her claws were instants from his flesh, when she was rolling back into line after dodging the last of his attacks, did he cast once more.

The sands erupted into jagged blades of glass and stone, teeth sprouted by the earth itself to feed a ravenous hunger. The sphinx shrieked as the barrier tore through fur and flesh, ripping her apart even as it held her fast. Jace tumbled over her head and slammed hard to the ground. He looked up, dazed; and the sphinx stared down, her expression vaguely accusing, before the life drained from her eyes and her body faded slowly away.

Jace tried to rise and failed, toppling over when his arm simply refused to support him. The entire left side of his body was horribly bruised, and he wondered how many bones he might have cracked in the fall. Exhaustion threatened to blind him, and he knew that his reserves were sufficient for only a few more spells.

Beyond the nearest dune, the golem of sand had cracked apart beneath the arctic assault, but one of the drakes had given its life, and even as the other raced to aid its master, it flew an erratic path on torn and battered wings. And stalking across the sands came Tezzeret, arcs of power crackling between his mechanical fingers; tireless, relentless, seeming no weaker now for all his spells than he had been the moment Jace attacked.

And Jace knew, even through his burning rage and down to the core of his soul, that this was no longer a fight he could win.

He could, however, survive. He knew where the bastard's sanctum was, now, and knew as well that he had nobody he could trust on his side. With time to recover, to lick his wounds, to find new weapons, he could come back-he would come back.

Jace focused his attentions on the space around the artificer, and a trio of winter drakes dropped from the sky. That they were merely illusory, for he dared not spend the mana necessary to summon them afresh, was irrelevant. Tezzeret couldn't afford to ignore them, for among them was the surviving drake, a very real threat. And indeed he halted his advance, casting spells of protection against the cold he knew was coming.

It bought time, that was all, but that was all Jace needed. Distracted as he was by the drakes, Tezzeret could not see his opponent cast a net of illusion over himself, blending in with the desert sands. Then, summoning the last of his reserves, Jace had the long moments he needed to draw together the surrounding threads of mana and begin to walk.

Slowly, too slowly, the curtain of haze materialized before him and Jace stumbled through. His last sight was of Tezzeret standing amid a whirling wall of illusory wings, and removing a dark globe from a pouch on his belt, doubtless a weapon he'd never get to use.

As the chaos of the Eternities pummeled him, Jace breathed a sigh of relief. Even if Tezzeret had seen him go, even if he'd slain the drake the moment Jace vanished, it would take him minutes if not hours to follow, and by then Jace would be long-

Tendrils of entropy and probability rippled, coiling upward and in on themselves, and Tezzeret stood before him, a vicious grin on his face and a vile gleam in his eye. No hesitation, no delay-he was simply there. In all the Blind Eternities, nothing had ever shocked Jace more thoroughly. He stared at the artificer's soul, an abomination of blood and metal, of hatred and greed, and he could not move.

It wasn't possible, it wasn't…

Tezzeret clutched Jace by the collar and shoved, muscles and magic working in tandem to carry them back through the barrier of worlds. They reappeared a dozen feet above the desert floor and crashed painfully to the ground.

Jace, too stunned by the sudden assault even to draw breath, felt the remaining air rush from his lungs, felt fire flash across the back of his head at the impact, and then the blinding light of the desert went mercifully black.

As Jace gradually, awoke, an armada of aches and pains laying siege to his body, his first thought was to wonder if he should be surprised that he still lived. He decided it wasn't worth the effort, and cracked open his eyelids.

He lay on a pallet of old straw, its needles poking him unpleasantly. He was naked, save for his trousers, and so badly bruised and beaten that he looked as though he'd been rolling in purple paint. One side of his current quarters was a solid wall of metal; thick bars of a matte-gray alloy formed the other three. Other than the pallet and a cracked clay chamber pot, the cell was featureless. He couldn't even see an obvious door, locked or otherwise.

The place probably smelled, too, but over his own stale sweat, he couldn't tell.

The cell itself stood at one end of a large metal chamber, equally featureless, with a single heavy door on the far wall. Jace was pretty certain he was somewhere within Tezzeret's sanctum, but beyond that, he couldn't be sure of a damn thing.

Staggering to his feet with a series of pained grunts, Jace wobbled over and tapped a knuckle on a bar. Solid, very solid, but not as cold as he'd have expected. It wasn't etherium, but neither was it typical iron or steel.

But of course, Tezzeret wouldn't have been even remotely so stupid as to try to keep a planeswalker in a normal cell, would he?

Just to be sure, and because he felt as though he should at least make the effort, Jace summoned his will, to walk, to cast a spell, to do something.

Nothing. He might as well have harbored no Spark at all, might as well never have heard of magic or mana.

"Ah, excellent. You're awake!"

The door had slid open without a whisper, and Baltrice stood framed within. She sauntered to the cell, wearing perhaps the cruelest grin Jace could ever recall seeing.

"Fascinating, don't you think?" she said, tapping on the bars with Jace's manablade before replacing the weapon at her own waist. "Another little secret we, um, borrowed from the Church of the Incarnate Soul. The bars are enchanted to absorb mana, Beleren. Inside, for all practical purposes, magic doesn't exist."