Three planeswalkers were already lost. Their bodies were sat propped against the merchant hall's crumbling walls, still breathing but emptied of everything that had made them extraordinary. The Boros soldiers were barely standing, exhaustion written across every face in sweat and trembling limbs. Another breach had opened in the southern wall, and more Eternals were pouring through.
I'd had enough.
"Everyone listen!" I roared, letting divine authority fill my voice with enough force that it cut through the chaos of combat, explosions, and screaming. Heads turned toward me even in the middle of fighting. "Stop reacting and start thinking! We're losing because we're treating symptoms instead of addressing the actual problem!"
"A little busy here, Pal!" Chandra shouted back, her flames barely holding back a press of Eternals at the eastern breach.
"Then get less busy for thirty seconds and listen!" I reached into my dimensional storage and pulled out my forge tools, manifesting them from the ring I wore on my right hand. The Δακτύλιος Ὑποχώρου pulsed with recognition as I accessed its stored space, drawing out instruments. "The Eternals have one primary weapon against us. It's not their numbers or their armor, nor is it their champions. It is their touch. We are constantly on the defensive. Everything else we can handle. An eternal army against planeswalkers should be manageable, but spark extraction is the one thing turning this from a difficult fight into a slaughter!"
"We know that!" Ajani snarled while driving his axe through an Eternal's chest. "Just say what you are proposing!?"
"I'm going to build a ward that prevents the extraction. A portable field that protects every planeswalker within its range from having their spark torn away by these things." I was already moving toward the center of the hall, finding the most defensible position available while pulling materials from the ring's storage. "What I need is time to forge it. Two minutes, maybe three."
"I think you're asking a lot, two minutes is a lifetime right now," Gideon said, his invulnerable body serving as a human wall against an advancing group of Eternals. "We can't hold this position for another two minutes without losses."
"I'm aware of that," I said, looking directly at Teferi. "Which is why you're going to handle the time problem."
Teferi had been fighting carefully at the edges of the combat, using temporal manipulations to slow individual Eternals or accelerate his own movements. Now he looked at me with visible reluctance. "What you're suggesting would require an enormous expenditure of power. I haven't attempted something at that scale in years."
"Can you do it?"
He was quiet for a bit, which was all the time either of us could afford. "Protect me while I prepare the working. Everyone else, keep the Eternals off me and off the craftsman."
"You heard him!" Razia called out with a commanding voice. "Form a defensive ring around both of them! Boros soldiers on the outside, planeswalkers supporting! Nothing gets through!"
The response was immediate. Gideon planted himself directly in front of Teferi, creating a living wall that no Eternal could bypass without going through someone who couldn't be harmed by conventional means. Ajani and Samut took flanking positions, their weapons moving in sync. Chandra pulled her flames inward, creating a tight ring of fire that gave the defensive formation a perimeter of intense heat. Nissa's roots erupted from the floor, massive wooden barriers that physically blocked the breach points.
Karn moved to stand beside me, his metallic form providing both physical protection and a working surface I could use. "What do you need?"
"Hold still and don't let anything touch me for the next few minutes," I said, already heating materials with divine fire channeled through my hands. "After that, I'm going to give you something important to carry."
I pulled out the core materials I needed from the ring's storage. Astral driftmetal from the Tradegate markets, that solidified thought from the Astral Plane that weighed almost nothing and cut through magical defenses. Stygian iron from my home reality, forged in underworld depths and quenched in river water that understood the boundary between life and death. A fragment of celestial steel left over from the sword I'd given Urgala.
Three metals from completely different magical realms, each one governed by different physical and metaphysical laws. What they all had in common was the concept of boundary. The boundary between worlds for astral driftmetal. The boundary between life and death for Stygian iron. The boundary between holy and profane for celestial steel. A ward that needed to protect the boundary between a planeswalker's spark and the things trying to steal it was built exactly from these materials.
I worked with speed I'd rarely employed before, hammer striking with force while divine fire maintained extreme temperatures. Around me, the battle continued with barely diminished intensity. I could hear the crack of Chandra's flames, the grunt of Gideon as he absorbed impacts that would have shattered normal bones, and Razia calling orders to his exhausted soldiers in a raspy voice.
An Eternal broke through the defensive ring somehow, slipping between the two fatigued Boros soldiers. It lunged toward me with hands extended, that telltale glow beginning to form around its fingers.
Karn caught it by the throat with one hand, lifted it off the ground, and crushed its head against the floor. "Focus," he said to me. "I'll keep them away."
I might not be a Planeswalker but I do not want them touching me either way.
The ward took shape beneath my hammer. A disc approximately six inches in diameter, covered in interlocking runes that spiraled inward from the edge to the center. Each rune addressed a different aspect of the protection I was trying to create. The outer ring established the field boundary. The middle ring defined what the field protected against. The inner ring, the most complex and delicate work, contained the actual protective mechanism that would stop the death touch.
The extraction the Eternals performed worked by forcing a connection between their necromantic magic and the planeswalker's spark, using the physical contact as a bridge. What I needed to prevent was that bridge forming at all. I didn't want to stop death, nor prevent all harm; it just had to specifically interrupt the extraction mechanism.
"Teferi," I called out without looking up from my work. "Now would be a good time."
"I'm aware," he replied, his voice carrying strain that suggested the working was already demanding significant concentration. "Just a moment longer."
The moment lasted ten seconds, which felt considerably longer given the circumstances. Then Teferi spoke a word, and time stopped.
It was different from how I'd experienced time manipulation before. This wasn't a localized effect or a targeted slowing of specific objects. This was a massive reversal of temporal flow that affected everything within perhaps two hundred yards of our position simultaneously. The Eternals froze mid-stride. Flames hung motionless in the air. Even the dust kicked up by combat stopped falling.
Then everything ran backwards.
Wounds closed as blood flowed in reverse. Shattered bones in Boros soldiers knit themselves back together. Fallen soldiers rose from the ground, confusion replacing unconsciousness. The three planeswalkers whose sparks had been extracted remained seated against the wall, unaffected, their sparks already gone before Teferi's reversal began. Some wounds were too old for even this working to address.
The Eternals were unaffected by the temporal reversal, their undead nature apparently making them immune to the effect. But they were briefly disoriented by the experience, movements stuttering as their animating magic tried to reconcile what had just happened.
That disorientation bought exactly the time I needed.
I drove my hammer down on the ward disc with a final strike that released every bit of divine energy I'd channeled into the working. The disc blazed with light of the combined Olympian gold, Stygian black, and celestial white into something entirely new. The runes activated sequentially from the outside inward, each ring's pattern coming to life as the power spread through the structure.
When the innermost rune lit up, I felt the ward's field establish itself. A dome of invisible protective energy, extending approximately a hundred and fifty meters in every direction from where the disc sat, specifically keyed to interrupt the magical bridge that Eternal touch created between their necromantic power and a planeswalker's spark.
It was rush work. Under normal circumstances, I'd have spent weeks refining the design, testing its properties, identifying weaknesses and addressing them before anyone relied on it for actual protection. The range was limited, and the duration uncertain.
But it was what I had, and the Eternals were recovering from their disorientation.
"Karn," I said, holding out the ward disc. "This needs to stay within the group. As long as you're carrying it, everyone within approximately a hundred and fifty meters should be protected from spark extraction. Don't let the Eternals get it."
Karn examined the disc with rapid flicker of his eyes, his mind processing its structure in seconds. "The craftsmanship is extraordinary, given the time constraints. I can see several areas where the design could be refined for better efficiency, but the core mechanism is sound." He took the disc with careful hands. "I'll guard it."
"The range is limited because I rushed the work," I said, already picking up my hammer again as the Eternals began to advance once more. "Stay near the center of whatever formation we establish and don't get separated from the main group."
"Understood."
Teferi was breathing hard, sweat running down his face from the exertion of the temporal reversal. "That's approximately the limit of what I can do today," he said. "That working cost more than I'd like to admit."
"You did enough." I turned to face the renewed assault, divine power flaring through my limbs as I prepared to fight. "Everyone listen! The ward disc that Karn is now carrying creates a protective field against spark extraction. Stay within a hundred and fifty meters of him and the Eternals lose their primary weapon against you. Don't let them separate you from Karn's position!"
The effect on the assembled planeswalkers was immediate and visible. The desperate edge that had been creeping into their fighting styles, the fear of a touch that could strip away everything that made them who they were, receded with the knowledge that specific protection now existed. They weren't invulnerable, the Eternals were still dangerous and the champions still deadly, but the thing that had been turning a difficult fight into a catastrophic rout was addressed.
Razia looked at his revived and healed soldiers relief mixed relief with seriousness. "We're not going to last forever even healed," he said quietly. "Again, my people are mortal. Eventually exhaustion will take them again, and faster this time because they were already at their limits before Teferi's reversal."
"I know," I said. "Which means we need to end this quickly rather than outlast it." I looked toward the barrier that protected the beacon, visible through what remained of the merchant hall's walls. "We need a new plan."
The Eternals advanced again, their unwavering motion undimmed by temporal reversal or ward protection.
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Next chapter -
The ward changed everything.
The moment the protective field established itself across the merchant hall and the streets beyond, I could feel the psychological shift move through the assembled planeswalkers like a physical wave. The desperate edge that had been driving their fighting, that constant awareness that a single touch meant losing everything that made them who they were, dissolved into something considerably more dangerous for the Eternals pressing against our position.
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