Jace - Smothers sound of illusions, Greater telepath than Elesh Norn, Could give Elesh Norn a stroke

Jace glances down and sees a sword sticking through his chest, the Halo within seeping from the wound it just carved.

Oh.

Alarmed, searing pain blooming through his entire body, he follows instinct and puts up an illusion around himself. If he's not dead, then the best option is playing possum. His illusory double easily pulls out the sword while the true Jace, painfully aware of his own faculties, falls to the ground with the sword still in his sternum. He vomits black bile. Spitting, shivering, his heart pounds with oil. He crouches, hands on the hilt, and with pragmatic courage pulls the sword out, invisible and anguished, doing everything he can to stay quiet (though what sounds emerge he smothers with a psychic wave). The sword lands on the ground, and he falls prone beside it, shaking, sputtering, the Halo in the blade pinning his psyche to control over his Phyrexian body. He watches, unseen.

Jace sends the illusion to Elesh Norn's side and is grateful that despite her dominance, she is still a psychic amateur. The Mother of Machines waxes poetic, "They are One. You, too, can be One. Only yield, and it will be over quickly."

He plays the illusion as quiet, controlled, cocky yet submissive, a convenient tool for somebody else's schemes, and Elesh Norn doesn't notice a thing. That's how you see me, isn't it, you telepathic toddler? The illusion smiles with arrogant mirth while the true Jace vomits once more. Oil bleeds through his gritted teeth. She is an arrogant, easy mark. If he weren't stabbed through, he'd give Norn a stroke.

***

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