Chapter 7

Welcome to the latest chapter, in this chapter I'll be wrapping up the Eldritch Moon arc before I start the Kaledsh arc. Hope you enjoy!

No pov

"May I sit down?" The voice was a female voice. Light, almost airy. Jace might have even said it trilled, in different circumstances. "Not these circumstances, though." Jace couldn't see any lips move through her hood to produce the voice, but it sounded like a normal voice. Normal-ish.

Jace was so busy analyzing the voice it took him a moment to parse what was actually asked. "You're asking me?" Of all the surprises of this day, getting asked a polite question should not have ranked high on the list. But it might be at the top.

"This is your home," a pause, "Jace. Jace Beleren." As she said "Beleren" it came out syllable by syllable.

"I'm very afraid right now. I'm also so very curious. What an odd juxtaposition."

"I am just a visitor here. So, may I?" She stood waiting.

"How much more surreal can this day get?" He was confident he didn't want an actual answer to the question. "Remember what's important—don't die. Figure this out. Beat Emrakul." His mantra. He added another sentence. "Invite Emrakul for a cup of tea." He smiled, and the smile reached his face. "Please, by all means. Please sit down." Jace waved airily at the large stone table, and Emeria—no, I don't know what this is, stop assuming I do, the angel sat down at the table.

She sheathed both of her swords behind her back. When her hands came back to the table they were holding a large scroll, a scroll with iron bands. "I've seen a scroll like that before. Where?"

"You do not mind if I work while we talk, do you?" Her lilting voice sounded like it could come straight from an Azorius guildmage wanting guidance on a point of protocol.

"Embrace this surreality. Stop fighting it. See where it goes." "Of course, please. I would not want to keep you from your work." She nodded and unrolled the scroll. A creeping sensation nagged at the back of Jace's head. "Where have I seen that scroll?" But he could not place it. From somewhere a long stylus appeared, and she began writing in the scroll.

Jace cleared his throat. "Well, since we're, umm...you know, having a talk. Who are you exactly? What is this place? What is going on?" Jace could not afford to be picky about where to get answers from. He could not quell his normal instinct to mind-read, not knowing is so much worse than insanity, but there was...nothing. Nothing he could latch on to. Secrets are no fun when they stay secret. He was going to have to do this in the mundane style everyone else had to. Through words. Words with an Eldrazi titan.

"Everything ends. Everything dies. Wholeness is always behind us. Time points only one way." There were echoes of Nissa's earlier insane comments, but Jace didn't understand it any more coming from the angel. She didn't look up as she wrote, her hood obscuring whatever light voice uttered those strange words.

"Are you Emrakul?" Jace didn't know what he was risking, and increasingly didn't care. Caution is for those with a winning hand. "What do you want?"

She paused her writing, considering the scroll. "This is all wrong. I am incomplete, unfulfilled, inchoate. There should be blossoms, not barren resentment. The soil was not receptive. It is not my time. Not yet." The way she said, yet, sent a shiver through Jace's neck. She resumed her writing, blotting out a large section of dried ink.

"Enough!" Jace shouted. "You are here for a reason! You could kill me any number of ways, with your swords or your tentacles, but you're not. You're sitting here, uttering nonsense...why? I don't understand what you're saying and I don't understand what you want. Help me. Please." As Jace talked his anger cooled, but it was replaced by something even more useful. Focus. He felt a fog clearing, a fog that only in its recession revealed how much it was obscuring.

"Do you play chess?" The voice continued as if Jace had been spouting as much nonsense as she was. Jace was tempted to shout again, but didn't think it would do much good. Besides, he did play chess. He was quite good at it.

"Yes, I play chess."

"Would you play a game with me?" She stopped writing and rolled up the scroll.

"I'm not sure I have time to play..."

"If you win, this all stops. I will give you all the answers you want." She tucked the scroll behind her.

Jace suspected a trap, but he was really good at chess. "And if you win?"

"I am already winning, Jace Beleren. Let us play a game."

"Uh, there is one problem." Jace glanced around. In his real apartments back on Ravnica there was a chessboard, a quite fancy one he had been gifted by the Boros, but in this strange simulacrum, no such board was visible. "I, uh, don't seem to have..."

The angel waved her hand, and a chessboard appeared on the table taking up the space where the scroll used to be. The board and pieces were thick stone, solid with fine detail. Jace raised an eyebrow, but if the angel noticed, she made no sign. I suppose if she just limits herself to creating chessboards, we will be okay. "Shall we play?" She gestured toward the board. Jace's side was white, and he took the first move. Magnanimous of her.

"You will need to move faster, Jace. Time is running out." Faster? He was moving near instantaneously. She did not seem a particularly skilled player, and Jace began to see the outline of a possible checkmate in six or seven moves.

"Communication between us is difficult. I cannot talk to you. I do not even really know you exist. But you, your brain, it is very...adaptable." There, a blunder. He had mate in five moves. Confident of his victory, he paused. She was saying actual information he could use.

"So, then, what is all this?" He waved his hands around them. "What are you? How does my adaptable brain make this happen?"

"You know those answers better than I." She put her hand on a piece, hesitated. "Or, at least, a part of you does. How is your headache?"

"How did she know about my headache?" In truth it was reduced to a low residual throb, noticeable but not debilitating. "It's...it's fine. So you are not Emeria? Are you even real?"

"I was personified a long time ago. Forces cannot be reasoned with. Agency does not exist in propagating waves. If you take shortcuts to try and grapple with what you cannot perceive, cannot even comprehend, who am I to gainsay? No one. You. Perhaps."

The headache grew. Jace and the...whatever it was exchanged several more moves. Checkmate was a move away. The more Jace considered, the more this all possibly made bizarre sense. This was not Emeria. This was not Emrakul. This was his mind's attempt to make sense of whatever pressures or emanations he was feeling from Emrakul. He had to personify it to even have a chance of making sense of it. But to believe in that personification was to invite death. Or worse. The vertigo lurched. Forever and ever and ever and emer and emra...

"Enough." He put his hand on his queen, moved it into position. "Checkmate." He smiled. He was not sure what winning this game meant, but it felt good to win, to win something. She stopped, looked at the board.

"So it is." She put her hands to her hood and lowered it. Jace flinched instinctively, suddenly certain he did not want to know what she looked like...but she looked normal. Like an angel. Like the statue he had seen back on Zendikar. He took a long, slow breath, exhaled.

One of the pawns beside his queen started to writhe and flow. Hands and a small stone sword appeared on the pawn, and it turned to stab the queen. The queen piece shrieked, blood pouring out of its side. It toppled to the ground, bleeding and shaking. Dying. The rest of the board was pandemonium as more of Jace's pieces transformed. Mutated. They attacked one another mercilessly, killing each other, until the few remaining pieces pirouetted to face the other side of the board. They now all held weapons, weapons dripping with blood, and began a slow march towards Jace's king, who now resembled nothing other than Jace himself.

Jace gaped at the chaos. "Wha...buh...tha...that's...that's not fair! You cheated! You can't do that! Those are my pieces!"

The angel gave a small smile, "They are all my pieces, Jace Beleren. They always were. I just no longer want to play."

A noise came from below them causing Jace to remember Damion was sleeping on the floor, the angel smile turned genuine as she lifted the young demon up and rested him on her lap. "Motherhood is such a complex thing, in all my time I never considered the idea till after I created him." She patted his head as Damion smiled in his sleep, she seemed to pull out a grey orb from his head before it broke apart into several chess pieces. Only they were much more detailed, most of them appeared to be Angels, one of them was a large hydra, and one of the angels had black wings, and the last one seemed to be larger than the others. She took the larger Angel and the black winged pieces as well as the hydra and examined them for a moment. "Tell me Jace, what happens to him if you had killed us?"

"What happens to him?" Jace thought it over but was uncertain.

"He will be alone, no one to return to, only to those who killed his family." Jaces eyes slightly widen, Emrakul tapped the two Angel and Hydra pieces causing them to be covered in a purple light. She waved her hand causing the pieces to become an orb again before sinking into Damion. "I will never allow that to happen." The atmosphere in the room suddenly became hostile before going back to normal. "I know you wouldn't want that either." Her smile faded as she looked up at Jace "For as long as I have had him with me, he was happiest when he was with me. But when he was with you and your friends..." She paused for a moment, "I rarely see him so happy when he is away from me. So I will make this very clear in words you can understand." She stood up and set Damion down, "Do not betray him. Or I we will destroy all you hold dear."

Jace nodded before the angel's face began to melt, chunks of flesh sloughing off as the rest of her—wings, swords, ribbons, and all—began to dissipate into a purplish smoke.

There was a huge crackling explosion outside accompanied by a large grinding sound. The top of the room was torn away, revealing the now-familiar sight of Emrakul, the gigantic mushroom cloud with its hundreds of tendrils and flashing lightning, eating away at the room.

Her voice continued, light and airy as a breeze. "It is coming, Jace. I am coming. Keep moving. Find your answers. But quickly. Time points one way, and it does so with hunger."

A door appeared at the end of the room, ornate with a bright blue glow behind it. Jace took another look at Emrakul above, and fled.

Liliana

Liliana did everything she could to stay alive.

She had been using some of her power to hold back the effects of using the Chain Veil. She kept her skin from cracking, her veins from spilling blood. In taking over the Chain Veil completely, she thought she had discovered the secrets to its true use.

She was wrong.

But as agonizing as her skin splitting and her veins rupturing was, it was better than oblivion against the onslaught of Emrakul. She still drew on immense amounts of power, but now all that power was put to one use. Staying alive for another moment.

Her moments were running out. As Emrakul lashed and flayed against her magic, she directed her zombies to attack. They bit, grabbed, struck against Emrakul, like fleas versus a storm, with similar effect. Zombies were destroyed by the hundreds under Emrakul's assault, and hundreds more disintegrated without touch as Liliana instinctively drew upon their animating magic to fuel another moment of survival.

If there was any consolation in her impending defeat, it was the blessed silence inside her head. There were no voices from the Raven Man, no chanting or whispers from the Veil. Even as her reality was blood and pain and a desperate fight to stay alive, her mind was hers and hers alone. There was consolation there, if she chose to take it.

A large tendril, thick as her torso, broke through and grabbed her around the waist. She screamed in rage and blasted through the tendril, its desiccated flesh sloughing off. She coughed up blood, swaying, even as more tendrils came.

She was going to die here.

She looked at the other Planeswalkers, their bodies still protected by the large clearing her dwindling zombies provided. Nissa was no longer screaming, but lay unconscious like the rest of them. Damion had fallen and his hydra seemed to be frozen as purple lines similar to her own covered it. Only Jace stood, the blue shimmer still in place protecting them from...something, but he didn't move, didn't speak.

"Jace!" Her scream produced no response. No sign of recognition.

"Jace, you bastard! You better be doing something useful!" That was all she had time as Emrakul pressed. Each moment mattered. That became her mantra. One more moment. One more moment. One more...

Jace

Jace flung himself through the open portal, seeking refuge from Emrakul's assault.

He was in a small, dark room, a copy of one of his innermost sanctums back on Ravnica. There, standing in front of him, was himself.

With all the other insanity Jace had experienced since first waking up in the tower, facing himself was one of the more benign confusions.

"Oh, this should be good."

The copy didn't smile, didn't move. "You got here. About time. But I don't know you're me." He pondered for a moment. "Answer this riddle."

"What? I'm done with riddles. I need answers. What—"

"First, a riddle," the copy said.

"You must be joking. I'm not going to stand here and get quizzed by either a runaway tyrant version of myself or, worse, some malignant impostor who just wants to waste my time!" Jace ended his rant with an angry shout.

The copy stood there with a smug smile and a raised eyebrow. "Am I really this infuriating? I am this infuriating. I need to work on that."

"It's only infuriating when you know I'm right. I need to know you're me." Jace wondered if there would be permanent consequences to punching himself in the face. Probably.

"How do I know you're me?" It wasn't the snappiest retort, but it was all he had at the moment. His brain was processing a lot right now.

"Because I'm the one with answers. You're wasting time, time we don't have." The copy tapped his foot in a way Jace recognized all too well. "I don't know that I can ever interact with another human again. I'm too annoying to be with."

He slumped his shoulders and waved a hand. "Fine, ask away."

"No bigger than a pebble but my closing covers the entire world, what am I?"

"That? That's your riddle? Your security system to make sure I'm you? You must be an impostor, because I refuse to believe I'm that dumb."

"You still haven't answered the question. This conversation is going to end quickly if you don't." The copy's eyes glowed blue in a way Jace was perversely glad to find menacing. "It's good to be reminded you can menace now and then."

"Pah. I thought I would have come up with something difficult. Eyes. The answer is eyes." Jace stared at his copy, and then blinked ostentatiously several times to illustrate the point. "I see the whole world. Now I don't. See. Not see. How could this riddle possibly have been useful?" The copy relaxed, letting go of whatever spell he had prepared.

And then Jace understood. The point of the riddle wasn't to see if he solved it. The point was to see how dismissive and incredulous he was at an easy riddle. He nodded. Okay, this is me. He knew the copy was thinking the same thing.

"Fine, I'm me. I mean, I'm...yes, we're each other. Probably. You promised answers." Jace reached out to read his copy's mind, but nothing happened.

"That's not how it works here. Here, we talk." Another coy smile.

"All right," Jace struggled not to clench his jaw. "Talk. Now."

The copy pondered briefly. "I still don't know all the things you don't know. Ask me questions."

"Where are we?" Jace wasn't sure it was the most pressing question, but he had been wandering this forsaken tower for the last hour, and he really wanted to know where he was.

"Really, that's the part you haven't figured out yet?" You condescending...Jace's anger was not abated by the fact that the condescension was coming from himself. And in that flash of anger he understood. Jace remembered.

Emrakul rising, flowering, blooming. Liliana had given them all a momentary relapse from Emrakul's minions with her zombies, but none of them were prepared for the rise of Emrakul itself. The physical signs were apparent, but the mental assault was the real danger. A pressure, a pain, unlike any other he had felt before. Tamiyo's chime trick instantly dissolved. There had been no time for a plan, no time for thought.

The spell he had cast was reflexive. One he had prepared a very long time ago, to shield his mind from imminent dissolution.

I'm not in a tower. I am the tower. Everything snapped into place. The scenes of his friends, the conversation with Emeria, even this conversation right now, all were taking place inside his mind, given sustenance and structure by the power of his spell. Welcome to residence Jace, everyone. Hope you enjoyed your stay. Based on the scenes he had seen in his friends' minds, he was confident no one had enjoyed it. But the alternative was oblivion, or worse forever and ever and ever and emer...

He shook his head rapidly trying to clear the fugue, noticing his copy did the same motion at the same time. The pressure from Emrakul was increasing. Jace looked up and noticed the top of the room shaking. It's attacking. It's coming.

"And you? Me?"

"Innistrad was a weird place. A dangerous place. As soon as I arrived I knew something was wrong. I set up some...fail-safes in the event of something disastrous occurring. Puzzles within puzzles, shadows within shadows. Emrakul is the scariest thing I, we, have ever faced. So I made a contingency plan to keep me separate from me. To work out what was really going on, and be able to stop it. Fix it. You know." And now he did know.

He was so good at self-alteration. He shivered, wondering which him was the real Jace. The better Jace. Nonsense. It's me, of course.

"Hey there," the copy smiled. "Don't get ahead of yourself. You're only the second smartest person in this room."

"Enough." Jace's mind was starting to whir at a speed both familiar and comforting. "The plan. I better not have created you just for you to tell me a dumb riddle. We don't know how to beat Emrakul."

"Talk with Tamiyo. She was in the middle of telling us interesting things when Emrakul attacked."

"That's your useful input? Talk with Tamiyo?"

"No, my useful input is actually figuring out how to have all of us walk and talk and think normally even with the psychic equivalent of a Rakdos-Golgari kill-party times infinity hammering away at us. It's a fairly difficult trick, in fact."

"Oh. Well, thanks, me. Good job."

"Everyone is in pretty bad shape. But at least we will be able to think coherently. It's...not good out there. And there's another problem."

"What's..." even as he asked the question, the answer flowed in his brain. The two parts of Jace were merging, becoming one. There were words, but the words were spoken by each of them at the same time.

"Liliana is about to die." Jace dissolved the spell. The tower faded into reality.

Jace

He came back to chaos. Liliana was on the ground in front of him, unconscious, bleeding profusely from multiple wounds. Above them Emrakul hovered in her full unfolding, a bright lavender light glowing in the center of her body, the eye of her storm. Her tentacles, broad and thick, decimating what was left of Thraben.

Liliana's zombies were a mere fraction of what they had been before Jace's spell. The humans and beasts infected by Emrakul's madness had started to mass again, threatening to break through. Fending off Emrakul's mental assault was not going to be of much help if her minions tore them to shreds instead.

The other Planeswalkers had regained consciousness a moment after Jace, staggered and disoriented. Jace funneled focus at his friends, clearing away the cobwebs of Emrakul's attack. "Chandra, Gideon, Damion, Liliana's zombies need your help. We cannot let Emrakul's or the other Titans minions through." Gideon moved first, with a soldier's decisive speed. An image of Erebos's whip flashed through Jace's mind, but he shook it away. Damion got to his feet as well as the smaller version of the hydra from Zendikar, Damion and the hydra each let out a roar before charging the broods of Ulamog and Kozilek.

Chandra paused. "I can...I can still try to burn her. I got this." Her hesitation vanished, replaced by a natural confidence Jace found both appealing and mystifying.

"She doesn't play at confidence. It just comes to her. Weird," he thought to himself. Jace hesitated. Trying to burn Emrakul didn't feel right, didn't feel possible. But how could he be sure this wasn't just head games Emrakul was playing with him, with all of them? Emrakul had been in his mind. He had felt her power.

He cast his thoughts to the whole group, his spell of protection keeping their minds linked. "No, Chandra. Emrakul is too big. Too powerful. We can't beat her that way. I'm not sure she can be destroyed."

"Jace is right. Trying to burn Emrakul is throwing a torch into the ocean. It will not work. Even if all the leylines were available. She is too...vast." Nissa's voice sounded odd, distant. She was weaving vines, shoots, and leaves into poultices to wrap around Liliana's wounds, keeping her alive. "Emrakul was there, at my awakening. At the moment of my spark. Perhaps it is fitting she be there at the end."

"Oh, wow, you do not get invited to many parties, huh?" Chandra's playful voice belied her words.

"I regain consciousness and we're talking about parties, there better be one hell of a cake after we're done with this!" Damion said as he and his pet fought the Eldrazi.

"Enough doom talk. More how-we-win-this talk, please. I'm gonna go burn things." Chandra ran to the outer ring of the zombie horde, her flames beating back crazed cultists.

"Jace. Remember what Avacyn said." Tamiyo's voice, a light breeze on a sunlit shore.

An echo chimed in his head, a mad angel saying her last words to her creator. "What cannot be destroyed must be bound."

"Jace, that is the answer. That is what we must do. We cannot destroy Emrakul or the other Titans. We must bind them." Tamiyo's voice was insistent, clear. The Gatewatch had faced this same crux back on Zendikar, and there they had chosen destruction, and look how well that turned out. But that was not a choice on Innistrad. Emrakul was beyond their powers and they didn't have the strength to destroy the other two. The only destruction in question was their own—along with everyone else on Innistrad.

"How? Binding her may not be any more possible than destroying her. What prison could possibly hold her?"

"The same prison that held all of Innistrad's horrors for hundreds of years."

"The Helvault?" Jace was confused. "Wasn't that destroyed?"

"Not the Helvault," Tamiyo responded. "Where the Helvault came from. The moon. A silver moon. I have a binding spell. A powerful one. I can attune it to the moon. But it needs to be linked to Emrakul, Ulamog, and Kozilek..."

Jace's mind raced. They could do it. Jace was confident he could attach Tamiyo's spell to the Titans. But they would need power, fuel for the spell. "Nissa..."

Nissa had been silent as she continued infusing her mana into the poultices wrapping Liliana. Liliana was breathing evenly, though still unconscious. Jace felt a warm surge of gratitude toward Nissa, but now he needed more from her. Far more. "Can you power the spell?"

Nissa's voice was cool, serene. "No. There are so few leylines here I can touch. So few I want to touch." Jace paused, uncertain of what to say next or how to help her. "But I owe you, Jace Beleren. I will try."

"Owe me?"

"My mind was not my own. I was trapped in a darkness brought by her rising. I was subsumed by her, far too easily. It was not...pleasant. You rescued me from that horror. You have a gift for making difficult things so very easy. I will do what I can."

Jace sputtered. "Um, thank you...it wasn't really me, I mean, I cast the spell, but I wasn't really thinking at the time, and I actually probably made it a bit worse because I didn't..."

"Thank you" suffices, Jace. You also have a gift for making easy things so very hard. I am ready."

Jace didn't know how to respond to that, so he didn't. "Tamiyo, are you ready?"

Tamiyo had pulled out a scroll. Another memory flashed through Jace's mind. The angel took out a long scroll, a scroll with iron bands. That was where he had seen Tamiyo's scroll, in his mental conversation with Emeria. But the scroll Tamiyo had chosen did not have iron bands on it.

Jace had no more time to ponder the mystery. The space around them was shrinking. Gideon and Chandra were each holding off Emrakul's minions by themselves, thankfully the other Titans spawn were being held back by Damion, but they couldn't be everywhere at once, and the zombies were close to being overrun. It was time.

"I am ready," Tamiyo confirmed. She began reading her scroll. Jace couldn't focus on the words, he was lost in the details of attaching Tamiyo's spell to the Titans, two of which were moments away from arriving, using the knowledge gleaned from Ugin and his own hedron manipulations back on Zendikar. A glyph flashed onto the moon, incised lines glowing bright against the silvery reflection. He had to fasten that glyph onto Emrakul, Ulamog, and Kozilek, as well as the presence of the Titans.

But the spell demanded power. Streams, torrents, of power. Nissa strained against the earth, her eyes a bright glowing green as she wove the polluted fragments of mana left on Innistrad into something Jace could use. Jace could feel her draining the leylines, looking for every last bit of energy. It was not enough. It was not going to be enough. Nissa stumbled to the ground, her arms flailing.

They were going to lose the spell.

As Jace struggled to keep the spell going, he lost mental contact with Tamiyo. Where she had been in his mind, there was now just a cloud, a dark gray fog he could not penetrate. Tamiyo pulled out another scroll, a long scroll, a scroll with iron bands, and began reading a second spell. The Glyph on the moon dimmed slightly as the ground beneath Damion lit up as purple markings appeared on his body.

Energy flowed into Jace. He was in a wide river of mana, more magic, more energy than he had ever felt before. It felt wonderful. He took the magic, shaped it, each point on the glyph attaching itself to a node on Emrakul, Ulamog, and Kozilek that Jace created on the fly. Jace unleashed the full power of the spell.

Light erupted from the moon.

A cold, silver beam struck the Titans from on high.

It bathed the creatures, enveloped them...and the creatures stretched. Toward the light, toward the moon.

The distortion was physically impossible. Before Jace's eyes the shape of the Titans arced through the light to the moon, stretching, stretching, and then...snapping.

Emrakul, Ulamog, and Kozilek folded, collapsed. They crumbled like a thin parchment sprinkled with glass, compacting to nothingness in a way no creature their size should. Or could. Tamiyo however wasn't done reading the scroll, in the blink of an eye the light of the moon shot towards Damion, a large purple orb entered his body as the markings on his body lit up.

After a moment the light winked out. The Titans were gone. They had won.

The silver face of the moon glowered with the triangular patterns of the glyph. Branded. Scarred. Sealed.

For a moment, the only sound was the stirring of dry leaves in the wind. Next to Jace were Damion and Tamiyo, Damion was looking at the purple line tattoos all over his skin, "What the fu-" He was cut off when Tamiyo dropped to her knees and vomited.

Liliana felt exultant. She had known delight many times before. The day she had regained her youth. When she killed the demon lords Kothophed and Griselbrand, hearing their death screams. Each of those moments had felt like cheating; the best kind of cheating, where you get away with it and still win at the end.

But this moment was even sweeter. Perhaps it was because she had truly known she was going to die. Perhaps it was because she had so rashly taken on Emrakul in her pride and thirst for control, and yet none of them would be alive had she not done so. Perhaps it was because there was no more Emrakul. Its taint, its taste, was gone from Innistrad, and everything was better in its absence.

Just thinking of Emrakul made her shiver. She had been so close to death. Or worse. She stared at the moon. "May you rot there forever. Know the consequence of opposing Liliana Vess."

The assorted Planeswalkers had gathered at the close of a very long day. After the battle with the Titans was won, there were still fires to put out, eyes to close, grief to console, wounds to heal...or not, in the case of much of the trauma. Liliana didn't much care. Every time she pushed the limits of the Chain Veil she felt empty afterward, as if a part of her was missing. It had happened so many times now she was not even sure she could identify what was absent anymore.

Besides, it didn't matter. She had had her fill of good deeds for quite some time. "None of you would be alive if not for me. You're lucky I don't demand payment for my rescue of this world." Well, she would demand payment, but not now and not from anyone on Innistrad.

It was remarkable what imaginary obligations and loyalty made people do. Take the Gatewatch. They owed each other nothing. Literally nothing. And yet here they stood, fighting for each other, willing to die for each other. Liliana was used to the effect of such relationships; she depended on them, as long as they were with her zombies. That was a reliable power dynamic. But Innistrad had shown the limitations of her approach. Zombies were great servants, but there were certain tasks they couldn't accomplish. And fighting alone was wonderful...until it wasn't. When you weren't prepared for the unlikely, and there was no one to save you from the untimely.

Once upon a time recently she had thought to leverage the emotions Jace had for her. Or had had, if she must admit. "He is just a boy. A boy, and I should know better." Jace had proven reliably unreliable, his recent success notwithstanding. "What were you doing with your spell while I kept you alive? Trying to think Emrakul to death?" While she acknowledged whatever he had done had worked, it did not dramatically improve her opinion of him. "A boy. I should be done with you."

But here was an opportunity far beyond Jace and his limitations. Here was a group. A group of friends. Today was a revelation, a revelation of the power of friends. Manipulated correctly, friends were like better zombies. Helping you and saving your life because they wanted to, not because they had to.

What more could she do, with powerful friends like these? What more could she conquer, what more could she obtain? She smiled at the thought of it. They would not obey her direct orders, but did it matter? Jace wasn't the only child compared to her. They were all children. None of them had her centuries of experience, none of them had tasted the power she had, either before or now, none of them were as ruthless or focused as she was...well, aside from the actual child who was absent at the moment.

She didn't know where the Raven Man was. There was no sign of him inside her head or out. The Chain Veil was subdued. Today had been an extremely painful lesson in how unreliable a weapon it was. "But when I have my own Gatewatch to heal me after every use..." a thought for later. But she liked the sound of that. "My very own Gatewatch."

Gideon had been rambling on and on to Tamiyo. The moonfolk looked sick, and Liliana could hardly blame her. Gideon was nice enough to look at, but she had known zombies who were smarter. Gideon was babbling something about the Gatewatch, and how they were just starting up their do-gooding, and wouldn't Tamiyo like to be a do-gooder too? Tamiyo shook her head, excusing herself, her eyes wide and frightened. It figured that a mind mage would be too fragile. Like Jace, useless.

Jace was looking at her, that puppy-dog look in his eye still. "At least make up your mind, child!" She bit down on her irritation. She needed him and his puppy ways here.

"Gideon." Jace's voice was tentative, slight. They talked quietly amongst themselves, and Liliana made sure to show no hint of the smile she felt. "Yes, cloak boy, bumble your hesitant way toward your sincere desire to help me." It was clear Gideon was not happy about it, though. Though Liliana was not sure Gideon was ever happy about anything. "You should at least delight in your youth and attractiveness while you still have it. Why are children so dumb?"

Eventually the eye-candy approached. There were more do-gooder words about do-gooding, but Liliana was too focused on the oath to pay close attention. She had thought extensively about the right approach to the oath. Too sincere, too sugary, and suspicions would be raised—suspicions that would make her next steps harder. But too cynical, too revealing, and those suspicions would instead be confirmed. She needed a delicate touch, a hint of cynicism but with her heart clearly in the right place.

When Gideon asked her for her oath, she was ready

"I see that together we're more powerful than we are alone. If that means I can do what needs to be done without relying on the Chain Veil, then I'll keep watch. Happy now?"

She said it with a touch of a smile, but just a touch. Besides, her pleasure was genuine. The best lies always contained enough truth to slide through.

She was now a member of the Gatewatch. Futures unfolded in her mind, full of promise and ambition.

Jace

Jace was exhausted. It had been the longest day of his life, and all he wanted was to sleep; a sleep free of dreams or any thinking whatsoever.

But there was someone he had to talk to first.

He found her and Damion in the far outskirts of Thraben, sitting in the ruins of a small church. There were few buildings in Thraben left standing, and this church had not been spared.

She just sat there, her legs crossed over one another, her eyes closed. Damion was sitting on a large rock across from her, Jace felt weird interrupting such a private moment. But he had to know.

"Tamiyo...? Are you...can I...?" Jace didn't know how to ask his question. Tamiyo opened her eyes, her face still full of the sickness and dread she had displayed ever since they finished casting the spell.

"What happened out there, Tamiyo? You were there, mind-linked with me, and then you...weren't. You vanished. What happened to you?"

Tamiyo sat there and began crying. Tears dropped from her eyes, one after another. Plip-plip, as they hit on the stone rubble beneath.

Her words came out staggered, halting. "Nissa had fallen. The spell was in danger of collapsing. I didn't know what to do, how to help."

Jace was surprised. "So Nissa generated that power by herself? Impressive. I had thought it was you, with the second scroll."

Tamiyo looked at him, sadness and scorn both in her eyes. "No. You don't understand. It was me. With the second scroll. That's where the energy came from."

"But that's wonderful! You saved us! You saved all of Innistrad, all of...everything! Is it because it was one of the iron scrolls? One of the scrolls you didn't want to open?"

"Just shut up, Jace! Listen, just listen. It wasn't me. It...she...took me over." Damion tensed up and covered himself in his wings. "Do you understand? It was not me! I was there, in my own body, helpless as she came in and took over. My eyes, my hands, my voice...she took them all over. They were not mine." Her cries became full sobs.

A voice came back to him, her voice as he had watched his chess pieces stab and kill each other. They are all my pieces, Jace Beleren. They always were. I just no longer want to play.

"I...I am sorry, Tamiyo. I don't know..."

"But that wasn't the worst part. The scroll I opened. The second one. You were right. I shouldn't have opened it. A promise made long ago, which one day I'll have to answer for. But the spell she read...it wasn't the original spell. The scroll she used, it cast...a different spell."

Emeria. From somewhere a long stylus appeared, and she began writing in the scroll. Jace began shaking.

"It was changed. How did she do that? How could she do that?" Tamiyo's voice was near panic. "As this monster took over my body and read a scroll, a scroll that should have brought devastation to everything on this plane...instead it fueled a spell that trapped herself in a vessel aside from the moon." Jaces eyes widen as he looks at Damion and the glowing tattoos on his wings. "How did that happen, Jace? Why did it happen? What did we just do?"

"I...I don't know." Jace had no more words for her. None for himself.

Tamiyo took a deep breath. "I told you before, Jace. Sometimes our stories have to end. Yet here we are, each seeking to prolong our story, no matter the cost. But what if all stories are just her story, all in service of some awful destiny waiting to unfold?" Tamiyo looked up at the moon before looking at Damion.

"Did we really win?" Tamiyo's voice was no longer fearful, but plaintive. Jace had no answer. Eventually she rose and flew into the dark sky. There were no parting words.

Jace sat for a longer time still. He looked again at the moon in its silver luminescence, the glyph still brightly inscribed on its surface, a testament to what the Gatewatch had achieved. In that moon's depths were two of the most powerful and destructive force any of them had ever encountered. The final one now inhabiting the young half demon in front of him. The angel's words stabbed in his head, daggers from a destiny unrealized. "This is all wrong. I am incomplete, unfulfilled, inchoate. There should be blossoms, not barren resentment. The soil was not receptive. It is not my time. Not yet."

His spine was cold. "It is not my time. Not yet." He dropped his gaze from the moon, and looked at the wrapped up Damion. "Damion?"

The young hybrid slowly unwrapped his wings and looked at Jace, "Just before you and the other sealed the Titans away, my mother redirected herself to be imprisoned inside of me. She is asleep right now though."

Jace scratched the back of his head, he walked up to Damion and placed a hand on his shoulder, "We can worry about that tomorrow, right now I think we've all deserved some well earned rest." Damion smiled and nodded before Jace went in search of a safe bed to find temporary oblivion.