Ari Marmell - Agents of Artifice

And then he was going to take on Tezzeret again.

Jace allowed himself to break focus just long enough to wonder if he could cure himself of his obvious insanity while he was at it-and then he bent every last bit of will to a task that he knew he shouldn't be able to perform, but at which he could not afford to fail.

The laboratory was neither a room nor a complex of rooms, but a multilevel network of pipes and tubes that, at various points throughout, formed floors and hollows in which people might work. Smoke and arcs of raw mana, in a variety of peculiar colors and pungent scents, wafted between pillars and spheres that emitted strange, multihued auras. The entire chamber smelled strongly of ozone, and when entering one of its many doors, or climbing up from level to level, one had to be careful where one put one's hands, lest one find them violently shocked.

Tezzeret himself, of course, simply willed the various protrusions to lift and carry him wherever he needed to go. Now he stood within one of those hollow "workrooms," Baltrice at his side, as he turned his creation over and over in his hands, inspecting it for impurities.

"There, if you would," he said, indicating a rough seam. She nodded, tensed in brief concentration, and sparks flew as the metal welded itself together.

"Enough. I think that's as done as it's getting."

Baltrice frowned at the pronouncement. "Really?" She reached out and tapped the many thin protrusions, then the glass reservoir filled with a viscous green fluid. "It doesn't look all that sturdy to me, boss."

"I wouldn't take it into battle," he agreed, "but it'll do until I can devise a more portable version. We'll need a brain to test it on first, of course, but barring any unforeseen flaws, I think Beleren's about to find himself moving to slightly smaller quarters."

Baltrice snickered, a sound that transformed abruptly to a shout of pain as the reservoir bulb shattered, spraying glass shards and its caustic contents across her skin. She struggled to clear her eyes with a sleeve as Tezzeret, utterly bewildered, gawped at the ruins of his creation.

And his gaze grew wider still, jaw dropping in slack amazement, as the manablade detached itself from Baltrice's belt. Carried aloft by a rat-sized drake, it soared upward between the preponderance of tubes. He watched the creature rise, watched until it dropped the weapon gently into the hands of a man who could not be there!

"I believe this is mine," Jace called from the level above. Clad in boots and leathers stolen from one of Tezzeret's guards, and his own tattered blue cloak, he loomed over them like a vengeful ghost-and for long seconds, the artificer could only assume that's indeed what he was. He couldn't possibly have escaped that cell alive! He couldn't!

But no, he saw the lingering burns on Beleren's neck, on the arm that had reached to snatch the dagger from the air; saw the mind-reader wince as he moved.

Tezzeret's disbelief burned away beneath the heat of a terrible, volcanic anger. His entire body shook, and he felt as though he couldn't even draw a breath.

And then the little bastard waved at him and produced a damned Infinity Globe from somewhere up his sleeve. It pulsed once, twice, attuning itself to the beating of its wielder's heart. Then Beleren was simply gone, nothing but a few wisps of mana-vapor to show that he'd been present at all.

Tezzeret's cry of rage was bestial, unintelligible. He shoved Baltrice aside, slamming her into the nearest wall as he lunged across the room for his belt of pouches, which he had removed during the course of his work. "Follow when you can!" he snarled at her, yanking another globe from a pouch, almost crushing it in his prosthetic fist.

Baltrice cursed foully as he vanished, struggling to her feet and blinking away the last of the gunk. It would take her longer to reach the arsenal and grab one of the last Globes than it would just to walk under her own power; hopefully, she'd still be able to follow by the time she reached the Eternities.

She had barely begun her concentrations, however, when something black emerged from the wall and passed through her body. Its touch rotted flesh, shriveled away the edges of her soul. Baltrice dropped to one knee, screaming until she thought her throat would bleed.

"Just where do you think you're going?" Liliana asked from above, standing where Jace had disappeared.

Baltrice gaped at her, fire leaking from her eyes and between the fingers of her clenched fist. "You traitor!"

"You have no idea," the necromancer whispered.

Baltrice launched herself upward, carried aloft on wings and jets of flame. Surrounded in an aura of blackest magics, propelled by the touch of a dozen phantoms, Liliana rose to meet her.

Tezzeret appeared in the Blind Eternities, colors and probabilities eddying around his feet, mixing to form liquid dreams. He knelt in the unreal substance, glowing with restrained power, as he searched for his quarry's trail. Beleren couldn't have gotten far, not even allowing for the strange stuttering and skipping of time here in the void; the trail of his Spark should be visible still, if he could only find its end.

And there it was, a wake of aether slowly dissolving into the surrounding essence, a flickering ribbon of liquid fire.

Tezzeret blinked. It didn't lead off into the vastness of the Eternities, as he'd expected, but rather curved, almost as if…

His scream unheard in the pounding of the Eternal winds, Jace Beleren slammed into Tezzeret from behind, his entire body alight with magics. Instantly they left behind them the sheet of light that marked the edge of the world, propelled by Jace's will alone through vast impossibilities where even direction and gravity were matters of mere desire. They hammered at one another, with bursts of unfocused power that might, within the bounds of conventional reality, have taken the form of spells but here were little more than primordial energies burning flesh and mind and soul. They hammered at one another with sheer malevolent intent, their very notions warping the streams of chance around them into stabbing blades and poisonous thorns. And they hammered at one another with fists and knees and elbows, a pair of brawlers rolling among the planes.

Where blood and eldritch essence spilled from their wounds, impossible forms of life arose, creatures that did not and could not exist in any sane world, and died as swiftly, torn apart by the currents of the Blind Eternities.

And in time that was not time, they were there.

Colors flashed past as they plunged through the outer boundaries of another world, appearing high in the air over a thick copse of trees. Still pounding away with fists and what minor spells they could focus enough to throw, the struggling pair plummeted earthward, crashing through a dozen feet of moss and branches. They finally slammed to a bruising halt in the shallow marsh beneath the boughs, hurled apart by the impact.

Both men scrambled to their feet, struggling to catch their breaths, spitting the stagnant water from their mouths, dripping it from their limbs. Jace was covered with cuts and tears, his stolen garb tattered; Tezzeret's tougher leathers had protected him somewhat better, though much of his hair was burned away, and the flesh of his left arm had been seared a deep red by the kiss of Jace's magics.

Jace glanced side to side, trying to determine precisely where they'd landed. Farther away than he'd planned, but thought-he hoped-close enough. His eyes narrowed in concentration and Tezzeret threw up his hands, crossed at the wrists, to repel whatever attack he was conjuring-but nothing happened, save for a faint glow in those eyes that faded as swiftly as it had flared.

The artificer grinned at his foe's obvious weakness. Both were hideously battered by their rough passage through the void, and yes, Jace had landed the first attack, but even a man as blind as the Eternities could have seen that Tezzeret remained the stronger. Jace's flesh was still pale, his eyes sunken and ringed in exhausted circles, the burns on his skin still livid and bright. What mana he hadn't expended in his escape from the cell had been largely drained by his assault on his foe. Clearly he had little resilience left to him, and even less in the way of magic.