The sixth installment of the Reality Fracture story, “The Man Who Kills His Own Ambition”, starts with Tam confronting the Theorist aspect of Jace Beleren. When Tam asks the Theorist what will happen to her friends when the Echoverse overlays the Multiverse, the Theorist tries to read Tam’s mind, but Tam mostly blocks him, surprising the Theorist.
The Theorist learns that Tam made contact with Emrakul in Episode 4. Tam presses the Theorist again about her friends, and the Theorist tries to make her stop, but Tam counters the psychic attack and confronts the Theorist with a vision of the abuse the young Jace Beleren suffered from the sphinx Alhammarret.
This triggers the separation of yet another part of Jace from the Theorist: the Nihilist, a version of Jace linked to the failure to detonate the Filigree Sylex in New Phyrexia and Jace’s subsequent Phyrexianization. The Nihilist expresses despair to Tam, showing her a scene of failure within the Theorist’s mind and bitterly noting that he never learned how to ask for help.
The Theorist banishes the Nihilist, as he has done to all other “aberrations”. Tam flees the Theorist, certain that she must help stop his plan for the Multiverse.
Jace’s Friends Face Their Doubles
In Professor Opal’s office, a defeated and frustrated Chandra lashes out at Vraska, claiming that Jace “half-a**ed his way” through her adventures with him. Yet she also misses the friend Jace was to her, and thinks that friend version of Jace might lead to victory:
I want my friend back so I can kick his a**!
A cryomancer version of Chandra interrupts the pity party. taunting Chandra with a “Dad says hi” and a barrage of icicles. Chandra jumps out a window to escape and puts together that her double is a Chandra who never lost her father to oppression. Chandra calls out Jace for his inconsistency, noting the (cold) anger that her double feels.
Other doubles join the fray, including an Ajani full of rage and without compassion, a Garruk who has embraced the corrupting power of the Chain Veil, and a Vraska who cannot petrify enemies but animates statues instead. The Vraska double, who never knew discrimination on Ravnica, subdues the real Vraska alongside a statue of the Theorist and sends the real Vraska through a portal.
Plans and Portals
After a brief interlude in which Tam collects her thoughts in her dorm room and decides to visit the icebox, Ajani, Chandra, Garruk, and Vraska land in a Hexhaven memory trap that simulates marble. A well lies in the middle of the trap, and the four descend, Garruk first, into an illusion of a military officer’s tent, which leads to a childhood bedroom, which leads to a lecture hall.
In the lecture hall, they meet the Detective, yet another aspect of Jace, who figured out the matter of the Eldrazi on Innistrad. The Detective explains how the Jace who rebuilt himself in the Meditation Realm is unstable, easily fragmented, but that he can fight the Theorist if they are reunited, and that this doesn’t require a body. He also apologizes for the Theorist’s actions.
When the Detective denounces himself as a monster, Vraska tells him what Jace told her long ago: “We are who we choose to be.” The Detective declares himself to be “‘the man who kills his own ambition'”, and warns that stopping the Theorist won’t stop his overlay, though it may buy time to find a solution. Vraska concludes that, for the Multiverse to live, the love of her life must die.
Read Reality Fracture | Episode 6: The Man Who Kills His Own Ambition in full from Wizards of the Coast.
