Tezzeret's grin grew wider still, lips curling like a beast bearing its fangs. Mockingly, he shook his head. "Brilliant, Beleren, absolutely brilliant. It's a shame you're going to make me-"
He never did get to tell Jace what he was making him do, for at that moment the younger mage hit the artificer square in the face- not with a spell, not with a hidden weapon, but with a clod of heavy muck he'd scooped from beneath the water as he stood.
Grunting, struggling to wipe the sludge from his face and spitting it from between his teeth, Tezzeret staggered. He sensed the attack coming, heard Jace's splashing footsteps, and blinked his vision clear just in time to parry the deadly thrust. Etherium grated on etherium, mechanical hand on razor-edged manablade. Each glared at the other as metal screeched and bright sparks flashed, showering to the earth around them.
One entire wall of the laboratory was gone, melted into slag by a blast of heat far greater than it was ever meant to endure. Bits of rod and pipe protruded into the yawning hole, bones around a gaping wound, and the air was choked with acrid smoke.
In the hall beyond, on a meshwork floor that bent and warped beneath their weight, a great serpent of living flame struggled to crush the life from a black-winged angel, curling over and around its foe, searing where it touched. Though unable to fly, the angel battled furiously, sinking the prongs of a jagged trident again and again into the serpent's hide. Each wound was a burst of fire that burned her further still. At the base of the writhing tail, a trio of specters darted about, trying to drive their deadly hands through the flame that singed even their dead and blackened souls with its touch.
Halfway down the hall, on a broad stair that reached high into the levels above, Liliana crouched upon the steps, peering upward through a haze of smoke. Soot and ash coated her face, the vest that had once covered her tunic was nothing but cinders, and she held her burned right arm close to her chest. Black energy flowed and crackled around her, the lingering remnants of what had been a potent necromantic aura. Above, Baltrice sneered down from behind a shield of crystalline, rock-hard fire.
Liliana was quite certain her power exceeded Baltrice's, yet the fight was going poorly. Though she lacked Tezzeret's ability to command and control the machines that made up the great artifact, Baltrice knew its ins and outs well enough. At her whim, pipes overheated, sending bursts of steam or flying shrapnel to tear the flesh from her foe. Worse still, she knew which conduits carried the mana-infused gasses that Tezzeret used to replenish his own powers, knew how to tap into them with a simple spell. Liliana, who could only struggle to leach the ambient energies directly through the walls, found herself growing steadily weaker, while her enemy, though wounded deeply by the touch of dead and deathless things, remained strong.
But neither was Liliana finished. As she peered through the smoke, watching Baltrice's fire-shield crack and split in preparation for blasting another lance of flame her way, she whispered a litany of names, twisted her fingers in impossible patterns. She thought back to what she had seen of the mechanical monstrosity that Baltrice and Tezzeret called home.
With a final cry and a burst of unimaginably dark mana, Liliana slammed her arm down on a twisted hole in the metal wall, gashing her flesh horribly and spilling a torrent of blood upon the steps. And speaking through that blood as it coated the gleaming metal, she called upon the ghosts of every man and woman whose essence had been bound to empower the Consortium sanctum, and set them loose upon her foe.
Kallist would have been proud.
Channeling the last of his magics into keeping his exhaustion at bay, manablade clutched in a competent if not expert knife-fighter's grip, Jace pummeled the artificer with a sequence of lightning-swift strikes. Tezzeret retreated before him, parrying frantically with his mechanical hand, lacking even the split second he needed to cast his spells or draw upon a more effective weapon.
The blade darted in and out, a striking viper of etherium and enchantment. A slash at the face, a stab at the chest, cross-step to keep pace with Tezzeret's retreat; slash again, feint with the left fist, kick to the gut, another step; a twist and sudden spin, a backhand strike against the artificer's temple, an underhand stab at the ribs, cross-step. For these few moments, Jace drew on everything Kallist had taught him, everything he could recall from several months of being Kallist, and allowed all his anger and all his guilt to flow through him. For those moments, he was a mage no longer, but a dervish of deadly edges and pummeling limbs, forcing Tezzeret ever farther back until the trees thinned and they found themselves slowed by the deepening swamp.
It was a punishing pace, however, one he couldn't possibly maintain, and both combatants knew it. His face and tunic were soaked with sweat, and his breathing came in labored rasps. Tezzeret's desperate parries grew smoother and more certain, his retreat more controlled, as it dawned on the artificer that all he had to do was hold Beleren off a bit longer, let him wear himself down, and he'd have the little bastard utterly at his mercy.
And indeed, mere heartbeats later, Jace's attacks faltered. His arm swung wide, a strike took just an instant too long. With a primal cry, Tezzeret slammed an open palm into Jace's chest, his own strength augmented by the magics and the mechanisms of his hand. A pair of ribs cracked as the blow lifted Jace from his feet and sent him hurtling backward to land with a splash in the marsh. The manablade flew from nerveless fingers; even had Jace possessed the breath to stand, he'd have had to scramble to reach it.
"Pathetic, Beleren." Tezzeret strode casually toward him, content now to take his time.
"I thought it was… pretty impressive, myself," Jace gasped between coughs of pain.
"Oh, your blade-work was surprising, I'll give you that." Tezzeret crouched to meet Jace's gaze and raised his hand to show the marring and scoring along the metal. "It'll take me a good long while to repair the damage. But really, to what end? You should have known the moment your psychic attack failed even to materialize that it was over for you, that you were just delaying the inevitable."
And Jace-Jace smiled through the pain, an eager gleam in his eye. "I wasn't attacking, Tezzeret. I was negotiating."
With a shaking, unsteady finger, he pointed over Tezzeret's shoulder. A sudden chill running down his spine, the artificer couldn't help but turn his head to look.
Barely visible in the shadowed depths of the cypress trees, the treehouses of the nezumi ratmen rose like grasping fingers from the marsh.
"They're really not happy with you just now, Tezzeret," Jace taunted.
The artificer screamed, shooting swiftly to his feet. His entire body tensed in indecision as he struggled to choose between ending his enemy's life while he had the chance, and fleeing before he was overwhelmed.
He had time for neither.
Beneath his feet, black roots and dead vines erupted from the shallow waters. From the many trees of the swamp they stretched through the muddy earth, only to rise and wrap tight about Tezzeret's legs. They held him fast, squeezing until the flesh tingled and the blood ceased to flow. Poisons fell from passing clouds and sprayed upward from writhing fungi, drenching him in toxic effluvia that burned the skin and seared the lungs. Any spell he might have cast was stolen from his throat as he coughed up tiny gobbets of flesh and blood, his whole body spasming in agony.
Ignoring his cracked ribs as best he could, Jace rolled to his feet, stooping to dig for his fallen weapon. The artificer watched with rage-filled eyes, struggling even now to break loose of his blood-soaked bonds. Jace held that gaze for two long breaths, then slammed the point of the manablade into Tezzeret's arm, severing flesh and tendon, cracking bone. Tezzeret screamed as Jace worked the blade back and forth, pressing on it like a prybar. A loud crack, a flash of broken magics, and Tezzeret's etherium limb fell to the earth, an inch of bloody bone protruding obscenely from the metal. Wincing in pain, Jace leaned down to retrieve his trophy, leaving Tezzeret to howl wordlessly in his bonds.