Jace - Protects his mind from compleation

Jace's body seizes, his eyes are alight, and whatever hold he had on matter and self is severed. He panics, tries to grasp for control, reaching for the reins of his own body, but the compleation is final—Jace, the Phyrexian is here and has no space for trivialities of flesh.

A wall crashes down, and his conscious mind closes off from the waking world, smothering him in the familiar dark.

It's like falling, this disconnection. He blurrily wonders if the sylex worked as he gives way, departs inward and downward, swimming through the warm welcome of phyresis and retreating; not to death, not to a shining cloud with Gideon and Kallist waiting for him, but the vast interior of his mind.

His body remains, but Jace is gone.

As he falls through the interior of his mind, he is sealing himself away, disconnecting from the surface. He can't tell if he wanted to retreat or if the Phyrexian version of himself compelled him.

Strange; this is what compleation feels like? It is familiar. It feels like forgetting.

***

Jace wakes to something like consciousness in an empty plain of his mind, no seam of horizon in the distance, just seamless alabaster stone with a simple well at its center. He has been here so many times before.

The well of Jace's own mind is familiar and unnerving, if he lays his palm on the structure, it is as warm as his blood. He approaches, unhappy (not this again), and kicks his feet over the rim, allowing himself to fall further.

Inward.

Downward.

He safely collides with the surface of a warm sea. He swims to the surface, spits out salt, and blinks in the sunshine. The tide gently pushes him toward the shallows. The water shines turquoise and welcome; around his feet, he sees the shimmer of fish, and under his toes, he feels coarse sand and pulverized coral. There's a soft breeze that carries a lone albatross high above who says nothing but whose presence signals that Jace could only be in one place.

A facsimile of Useless Island rises like a gentle green beacon just behind him. The sight might be cause for alarm, but to Jace's relief he doesn't seem to have amnesia this time. He knows he's in his mind. (How—a bubble? A section of his consciousness kept safe from phyresis? Seems about right; he's meddled with enough monsters.) And he knows this version of himself is untouched. Jace looks down. He has no cabling or injuries; he seems whole. He looks out at the calm, clear ocean; it appears he made, deep inside himself, a holdout for his mind—a small, intact piece, hidden from the glistening oil.

But whatever moment he has to contemplate his existence is interrupted by an immense pull.

A riptide, yanking him violently back the way he came.

Useless Island grows small beneath him, the sea wide and far away. He yells in surprise and anger as he's yanked up. Wait, no, it was nice there—

Out of whatever liminal paradise he had retreated to in his mind.

Away.

Up to the sky.

To a hole up above, a round dark cavern that can only be the base of the well.

Jace is pulled upward still, slamming into the walls of the well, eyes shutting tight as he is jostled through the ice and oil, and he is suddenly … awake.

In the physical world.

Back in his body. His feet stand on true matter, his skin shivers with panic. Breathing real air, blinking his own (two) eyes while still taking in the peripheral through the damned cables in his arms.

He's at the Invasion Tree? What happened? How much time has passed?

His body is not his; it is now compleat. There's action and yelling, his allies shouting nearby—Jace concludes that only moments have passed since he activated the sylex. He's awake, and he's not supposed to be. Panic—everything is about to end, so why hasn't it?

***

He can feel time wasting and the Halo coursing. Jace doesn't know if he'll be cured or if this antidote will just allow him to be conscious of his passing. He's too weak to fight back; the end is still here. But there is hope in the wound in his chest—Jace can't save the Multiverse anymore, but he can save her.

***

The effort of reading Elesh Norn's mind breaks his concentration—Jace feels the tide from earlier begin to pull him back, safe and away, and he feels his consciousness begin to retreat down into the well. He mentally clings, sputters, and feels his body begin to planeswalk to the location Norn has assigned him.

***

He manages to yell "No!" as phyresis reclaims its hold and rips out the pin of Halo. His body exits the aether of the Blind Eternities and steps onto the wet soil of a plane he hasn't seen in years. The riptide yanks Jace's mind away once more, away from consciousness and into the wide inner ocean of his psyche.

The phyresis pushes him away further, and he loses his control, careening back into the recesses of his mind and away from his body—Jace crashes into the mental waters of the shallow sea with a splash.

***

Outlaws of Thunder Junction | Epilogue 1: Bring the End, Part 1