The sixth episode of the Tarkir: Dragonstorm story begins with a flashback between Jace, Vraska, and Loot.
Despite still being deeply in love, tensions between Jace and Vraska were mounting rapidly after the events of the Phyrexian incursion and the acquisition of Loot.
Jace, having discovered the bottomless well of knowledge contained in Loot’s mind, had begun routinely putting the creature under hypnosis in order to access it. Despite the understanding that his actions were all an effort to undo what she had suffered through, Vraska had grown attached to Loot and disagreed with Jace treating the Fomori like a tool. Even after losing her spark and enduring phyresis, Vraska pleaded with Jace to let the past stay the past and settle down with her and Loot on Tarkir, but the planeswalker refuses to abandon his goal.
Shifting back to the present, tensions between Jace, Narset, and Elspeth had risen to point where a fight seemed inevitable, but surprisingly, Jace backs down and instead tells the pair that nothing matters, as Loot’s powers won’t work in that realm, and that they’re all trapped.
“We’re trapped in whatever this place is. Even Loot’s knowledge of the Multiverse is useless here. There is no logic. There are no actual roads. Walk far enough in one direction, and you’ll eventually be able to see your own back running down the path. It’s impossible—”
Hearing this from Jace, Narset deduces that the more thought one puts into escaping the realm, the more their surroundings would push back, so she calms herself and begins to clear her mind. After a few moments, she realizes that her efforts wouldn’t be enough, and asks Jace and Elspeth to join her in clearing their minds. Jace protests at first, but finally relents and all at once the fractured realm melds together, and upon opening their eyes, the trio is met with a shocking sight.
“Narset stared in unashamed awe as the mirror-sheen sky, the endless stairs, and the polished surface of the water collapsed together into featureless silver. Then, all at once, it separated again, revealing two figures that Narset would have known even in death, twined around one another, their horns touched, their brows rested together.”
Without realizing it, the trio had functionally broken into the prison realm where Nicol Bolas had been sealed alongside his brother, Ugin.
Realizing they’re no longer alone, Ugin immediately tells the party to leave, as their very being there is a risk to the seal on Bolas. Despite having had his memory wiped, Bolas states he feels a connection to the intruders and asks them for their names. Ugin pleads that they ignore his brother and just make their escape, but Narset refuses to leave without asking the great dragon to help end the dragonstorms, or at least tell her what to do.
Ugin tells Narset that in his current state he cannot do anything beyond keeping his brother sealed, and again tells them to leave. Snapping out of her stunned awe, Elspeth demands that Ugin give them just a moment of his time, but as he begins to reiterate their predicament again, Ugin stops, noticing that Jace had been up to something while he was distracted.
“Too late, Narset registered the rippling in the air just above Ugin’s plated skull and the stillness of the man standing behind her. She’d thought Jace was as overcome as Elspeth and her…” “Even as those thoughts whirled through Narset’s mind, Elspeth was taking wing, arrowing toward that distortion in the air. She heard Jace sigh, his illusionary double melting to embers, the mind-mage corporealizing a hair’s breadth away from the enormous gem suspended between Ugin’s horns.
Now in possession of Ugin’s spirit gem, Jace attempts to explain himself but is forced to go on the defensive as Elspeth desperately tries to stop what they all assume is an attempt to free Nicol Bolas. As Ugin helplessly watches on, he pleads for Narset and Elspeth to stop Jace from giving the gem to Bolas, at which point Jace manages to declare that he has no intention of freeing Bolas or giving him the gem.
Jace’s words manage to pause the archangel’s attack long enough for him to explain that the realm they are in is a “hub” that is a “…substrate to all of reality, touching countless worlds and moldable by sheer force of will…” and that if he takes control of it, he can fix everything and “…make it so that the Phyrexians never did what they did to Vraska—.”
At that moment, a hooded figure calls out to Jace, begging him to stop. Somehow, Vraska had made it just in time to try and reason with the mind mage, but Jace doubles down and declares his intent to fix everything before combining his power with the gem and supercharging the entire realm.
“The world blurred and deepened in hue, becoming the blue of the mind-mage’s magic, a color like the noon sky above a perfect memory of love. Narset heard Jace chuckle shiveringly, and, briefly, it appeared as if Jace might have done the impossible. Narset felt the realm expand like an animal drawing its first breath, and when it exhaled, her vision became kaleidoscopic, filled then with the glimpses of the futures that they’d lost: she saw dead friends alive again, saw worlds unbroken, saw planes made innocent of their pain. All it would take was a thought.”
Although Jace had succeeded in making himself the master of the Meditation realm, the power flowing through his body proved to be too much for a human, even a planeswalker, and “Narset stared in horror as the horizon broke into mirrored fragments, revealing a nothingness that ate at the eye, a void that poured toward them, unmaking reality—Jace included…” and the planeswalker “shattered like glass.”
Now without a master, the Meditation realm begins to rapidly fall apart, leaving no time for anyone to process what happened or time to mourn. Realizing they have no other options, Elspeth screams for everyone to run, and Narset obeys, scooping up Loot before making her retreat.
Read Tarkir: Dragonstorm Episode 6 in full from Wizards of the Coast.
