remained, writhing blindly like the tendrils of some obscene jellyfish.
Jace shouted, his words incomprehensible, and gestured. From the floor behind him, the shards of the shattered door rose and spun down the hall, scything blades aimed at Tezzeret's flesh. But telekinesis still was not Jace's strongest suit, and the few projectiles that wove their way through the barrier of metal tentacles were easily repelled by the artificer's personal shield.
He had only just begun to laugh, to mock the feebleness of the assault, when Jace's true attack struck. Pain blossomed through Tezzeret's head, sunk its tendrils deep into his thoughts. His vision blurred, his stomach heaved, and worst of all, his concentration wavered.
For a moment, one ephemeral moment, Jace might have won.
But he was Tezzeret, master of the Infinite Consortium! He had constructed artifacts beyond the grasp of archmages, stood against foes as potent as the great Nicol Bolas and survived! He would not-he would not-let an upstart like Jace Beleren lay him low!
Grasping fingers of midnight black and blinding blue seemed to emerge from the air around the artificer, wisps of smoke wafting from them, as he gathered the mana running like blood through his veins. Power, pure and uncontrolled force of will, burst from Tezzeret's soul, snapping the conduit Jace had established with his mind, sending the younger mage staggering with the backlash of his broken spell. The artificer glared across the hall, panting, nearly spent-and then he allowed his glower to warp itself into an ugly grin. Deliberately, allowing Jace to see exactly what he was doing, he thrust forth his artificial hand, holding it near the conduits that ran through the metal walls of his home.
Those conduits began to glow. A vapor that was not steam burst from the junctions, swirling about etherium fingers, absorbed into the metal and into Tezzeret's lungs. And just like that, he found himself restored, his soul burning with raw mana, ready and eager to be shaped.
For the first time since the assault began, Tezzeret saw fear peeking from behind the curtain of rage that was Jace Beleren's face, and he rejoiced.
Yet while Jace was indeed distraught, he was not daunted. Straightening his shoulders, he raised both hands, palms upright. 'If your home is your power, Tezzeret,' he called out, 'I'll just have to take it from you!'
As though he could see it, touch it-and perhaps he could, at that-Jace reached out with his mind into the walls themselves and took hold of the fluids running through the conduits within. Those that were already steam heated and expanded further until the pipes around them burst, the metal that contained them peeling outward like the blossoming of iron flowers. The liquids flowing through other tubes froze solid, backing up into the heart of Tezzeret's machines until filthy water burst from a dozen seams. Throughout the complex, glowing spheres grew suddenly dim, moving platforms ground to a halt, as the pressures that drove them and the mana that fueled them ceased to flow. Mana-infused vapors evaporated uselessly into the aether, and cables all around the hall began to shudder and snap.
Tezzeret felt his own fury rising. He had hoped simply to keep Beleren busy until Baltrice and more of his guards arrived. Clearly, that was no longer an option. Already the damage inflicted by his spells would take days to repair; he couldn't afford to let his enemy tear apart any more of his home.
But that was fine, too. The thought of finishing the fight in person, planeswalker to planeswalker, brought a wolfish grin to the artificer's face.
Tezzeret took three running steps and leaped. The hall's surviving cables reached out, propelling him along or yanking sheets of steel from the wall to shield him from the bursting metal and hissing steam. Tucking into a forward roll as he cleared the length of the hall, he began to cast. The artificer landed in a crouch mere feet before his enemy, his etherium hand already darting out to parry the shrapnel Jace had telekinetically hurled at him as he came. In that metal grip Tezzeret clutched a fistful of sand, glowing visibly with prior enchantments and the power of the spell he pumped into it now.
His fist tightened further, and the particles sifted from between his fingers, pouring into the air and swirling around both combatants, an embryonic dust devil that swiftly grew into a raging whirlwind. Long after the initial fistful was expended, the sand continued to flow, to whip about them, until cloak and hair thrashed wildly and all sight of the surrounding hall was obscured.
Jace felt the temperature rise into a baking heat that lay heavily upon him and brought an instant sweat to his skin. Even as he readied a counterspell intended to shield him from the worst of the pounding heat, he felt the rigidity of the metal beneath him give way to the unstable shifting of the desert floor. The sandstorm faded to reveal an endless expanse of wastes, only the very tip of Tezzeret's tower visible over the distant horizon. Despite the warmth Jace tugged the hood of his cloak over his face, shielding his watering eyes from the brightness of the midday sun.
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
