Battle for Zendikar Jace and Nissa excerpt

All right then. Into the elf's mind. Jace exhaled and looked into Nissa's wild, green eyes...and then out of them.

It was as though the whole world was afire—if fire was green. At first Jace thought the hedron ring had finally lit up, but then he realized that it wasn't the circle itself that was glowing. It was the web of leylines that ran between each pair of hedrons. The lines crisscrossed in an intricate pattern too complex to reduce to a simple equation—or to an equation at all...

The pattern lit up the space above the sea, but the hedrons were not the only things that were glowing, far from it. Everything. Everything was connected to something else by a line of power. The Zendikari holding the ropes, Gideon widening his stance before the titan, the skyrider's manta beating its wings overhead, the tree to his right, the rock at his feet. There was too much to process, too much to parse.

Jace's mind spun. He lost his grip and began to fall out of Nissa's mind. He tried to hold on, but how was he supposed to know what to hold on to?

Hold on here. It was Nissa's voice, and with it came what felt like a cradle of support. How was she doing this? Jace gripped the invisible hand and he did not fall out.

Focus, she said. Focus on one thing at a time. She directed his attention down to his illusory diagram.

Jace breathed deeply, concentrating on that one thing, just the illusion. He could still see the chaos of the leylines in his periphery, but he ignored it.

Good, Nissa said. She reached out to touch the illusion. May I?

Why not? They had come this far. Yes.

Nissa pinched two sides of the hedron circle and picked up the illusion. Jace allowed her mind to guide it while his maintained the form. She pulled outward, opening her arms and stretching the illusion, widening the ring and growing the hedrons.

You've made all the calculations? she said. You are relatively confident it is correct?

Yes, Jace said. I'm very confident that everything is where it should be, but—

Then this will work. Nissa launched the illusion out over the sea, expanding it as she did, sending it toward the real ring of hedrons.

Her control of it was shaky and awkward, but Jace understood immediately what she was trying to do. His heart leapt. Brilliant. He took control, deftly directing the illusion into place, expertly growing it until it was life-size, making each of the illusory hedrons as large as its stone counterpart. Nissa didn't know how to line them up, but he did. Each of them found its match—except one.

There. Nissa said, noting it at the same time that Jace did. The hedron was tilted; it must have shifted sometime after being carefully locked into place.

We have to—Jace began, but Nissa was already gone, leaping toward the out-of-place hedron. She released his mind as she sprang off the rock—she released his mind, not the other way around. She didn't exactly kick him out, but he didn't think he could have stayed if he had wanted to. That was a powerful thing. This elf was powerful.

Jace staggered on his own two feet, looking out of his own two eyes at a dull world. The web was gone, the connections had vanished. The chaos had faded away. It was as much a relief as a disappointment. It was an odd feeling to know that there was so little—of the leylines, of the world—that he could actually see.