CaV: Jace Beleren (Banthabot) VS Eragon (The_Red_Viper) [VOTING!!!!!!!]

@jardinain2: @god_vulcan: Thanks guys! And sure I'll tag you Vulcan.

@the_red_viper: It wouldn't be a Banthabot debate without me saying my classic line...

*clears throat*

CONCEDE! CONCEDE VIPER! HAHA

Round 2: rebuttal

Magic:

Eragon seems to have a very wide variety of ways to attack, however, elemental attacks won't be an effective way of combating Jace. Jace's counter magic will be able to dissipate Eragons attacks. You have yet to display Eragon using any amount of raw power but I think its safe to assume that Eragon's raw power will not trump the level of attacks that Jace is capable of dissipating. Unless Eragon can somehow trump throwing an entire sea, Jace will be able to dissipate Eragon's attacks.

Beyond that you also have to get past magical shields that Jace can raise in order to block attacks. Again I displayed him casually blocking volcanic rock with a shield in my first post. These defenses are going to be something that Eragon struggles with.

Its only after Eragon sneaks attacks past these defenses that he can truly damage Jace. But then Eragon has to get past Jace's natural resilience. And all of this is if Eragon is able to find Jace through the illusions (more on that later).

Eragon may have variety on his side but Jace has defense. Variety wont help when Jace can dissipate attacks on the caliber of throwing a sea. Plus Jace has fought along side/against a wide variety of mages, and in most cases hes snooped around inside their heads. He's seen mages wielding all sorts of different magics, from soul based magics to classic things like hydromancy and pyromancy. Jace has experienced a lot of variety so Eragon is going to have to get really creative in order to come up with an attack that Jace finds truly surprising.

I will address this in several different segments.

1. Blocking direct magical attacks with shields:

So, Jace's shields are quite durable, that much is certain. And that's really nice, but the question is how fast can he raise them? Can he react fast enough to raise his shields before Eragon's magic connects? Here is an example of Eragon using a long-range spell:

Rage swept through the Urgals; their leader howled, gnashing his teeth. "We'll drag you to him, then!" He waved his arm and the Urgals rushed at Saphira. Raising his right hand, Eragon barked, "Jierda!"

No! cried Saphira, but it was too late.

The monsters faltered as Eragon's palm glowed. Beams of light lanced from his hand, striking each of them in the gut. The Urgals were thrown through the air and smashed into trees, falling senseless to the ground.

Eragon

What you read here is Eragon using a long-range spell against a squad of Urgals (Urgals are essentially the orcs of The Inheritance Cycle), one-shotting them all. Can Jace react fast enough? Eragon's reactions are in the speed of thought and even faster, as you will see soon enough.

2. Eragon's magic VS Jace's counter magic:

Eragon can use magic that directly affects his enemy. Example:

The Urgal roared and waved his weapon, but did not charge.

"Brisingr!" barked Eragon, stabbing out with magic. The Urgal's face contorted with terror as he exploded in a flash of blue light. Blood splattered Eragon, and a brown mass flew through the air.

Eragon

Can Jace protect himself against something like that? His raw durability might be able to tank a small blast on that caliber, but this quote is from "Eragon" - the first book in the series. Eragon grew far more powerful since then.

3. Environmental magic:

A lot of times, Eragon can use his magic very creatively on the environment, to use against his enemies. One of his specialties is energy manipulation. He is said to excel at magic that has to do with raw energies:

At spells that dealt with the great energies----such as light, heat, and magnetism----he excelled, for he possessed the talent to judge nigh exactly how much strength a task required and whether it would exceed that of his body.

Eldest

One example of an energy-manipulation spell that I really like is, when he manipulated light and prevented it from entering the eyes of the Lethrblaka, which resulted in a blinding effect:

He only had time for one more spell before he would have to devote himself to stopping the Ra'zac from inserting the sword between his liver and kidneys. In desperation, he gave up trying to directly harm the Lethrblaka and instead cried, "Garjzla, letta!"

It was a crude spell, constructed in haste and poorly worded, yet it worked. The bulbous eyes of the Lethrblaka with the broken wing became a matched set of mirrors, each a perfect hemisphere, as Eragon's magic reflected the light that otherwise would have entered the Ltherblaka's pupils. Blind, the creature stumbled and flailed at the air in a vain attempt to hit Saphira.

Brisingr

There was also one time when he fought a group of soldiers who were protected by wards, making them impossible to be harmed with magic directly. What Eragon did was hurling them 10 feet backwards with a gust of air:

He quickly readied a spell Murtagh had once used on him: "Thrysta vindr!" It was a roundabout way of striking at the men, as he was not actually hitting them but rather pushing the air against them. In any case, it worked.

A howl of wind filled the chamber, clawing at Eragon's hair and cloak and sending the men closest to him flying back into their compatriots, clearing a space of ten feet in front of him.

Inheritance

He has a plethora of options, and he is creative and clever enough to use them. Burying Jace under collapsed buildings, using the water around the city's castle, and many other forms of environmental abuse are easy for him.

Break bones how? Does he speak and bones just snap? Does he speak and a wave is sent forth that breaks bones? How does it work?

Good question. The answer is underlined. Example:

Eragon raised his palm, shouting, "Jierda theirra kalfis!" Sharp cracks resounded off the cliff. Twenty of the charging Urgals fell into Kostha-merna, howling and clutching their legs where shards of bone protruded.

Eragon

So yeah, it pretty much comes down to speaking the word and breaking the bone. In this instance, the direct translation of "Jierda theirra kalfis" is "Break their calves". But here's another example:

Suddenly a Kull jumped at him, club raised for a blow. Unable to lift his shield in time, Eragon uttered, "Jierda!" The Kull's head snapped back with a sharp report as his neck broke.

Eragon

If you wanna know, a Kull is like an Urgal but much bigger. Like 8 feet tall.

Summary on magic VS counter magic:

• Eragon can use long-range magic with incredible speed.
• Eragon can use magic that directly affects the target, such as breaking bones.
• Eragon can use magic on the environment in clever and very effective ways.

Countering the illusions, phantasms and summons:

Unfortunately for you I don't find it in character that Eragon will use this power right off the bat to deduce that the illusions are in fact fake. The instance of Eragon sensing minds that you provided was an active application of him doing so, finding opponents that he couldn't see. From what I saw it did not look like a passive application nor something Eragon does right off the bat while in character.

The problem is that Jace isn't simply going to use illusions and invisibility to hide like a coward...if he were to do so sensing his mind would be the logical conclusion. In stead Jace will use illusions aggressively much like he did against Vraska or Garruk. In his battle with Vraska he mixed his illusions with the environment to trick the gorgon into thinking she knew where he was.

Jace is extremely intelligent with his use of his powers and is more than capable of some convincing misdirection. Why would Eragon be searching telepathicly for someone who he believes he knows where they are?

No, it's not passive, but as I said that's irrelevant because Eragon's opening move will be a mental assault, and he will be able to know exactly where Jace is as long as the mental connection is maintained. For example:

Less than a minute later, Eragon collected a brace of dead rabbits from their nest. It had taken him but an instant to locate the rabbits with his mind and then kill them with one of the twelve death words.

Eldest

As you can see, Eragon knew the exact location of a pack of rabbits by sensing them with his mind. So he will know where Jace is as well. He will know that the illusions are just illusions because they have no minds to sense. If he sees dozens of Jaces coming at him, he will be able to know where the real one is.

What is going to make things even more difficult is that Jace can give his illusions an actual physical presence, making them a legit threat. It was displayed somewhat in his battle with Vraska but it is displayed even better with his battle against Garruk.

Eragon isn't just going to wade through a bunch of illusions while locked onto Jace via TP because these illusions are physical and capable of causing harm.

That is very nice and could have posed a problem for a lesser foe, but not for Eragon. First of all, Eragon has his wards to protect him against any attack the illusions could try to dish out. Second, in both of those examples, is it clearly seen how the illusions can be easily one shotted by any normal attack. With Brisingr, Eragon can attack them with incredible speed. Here's the author's statement of Eragon's combat speed:

Gallery

As stated by Christopher Paolini, Eragon can stab 20 times in one second with Brisingr.

He regularly blitzes his enemies with inhuman strength:

He moved faster than the soldiers could react and, with strength beyond men, splintered shields with a single blow, rent armor, and clove the swords of those who opposed him.

Eldest

As far as reaction speed goes, Eragon is an easy arrow-timer:

Eragon leaned as far to his right as he could and, faster than any normal human, plucked the arrow from the air as Saphira flew past it.

Eldest

A mare’s tail of blood separated Eragon from his enemy as the Ra’zac swept back its sodden cloak, revealing a bow that it held with an arrow already fit to the string. Lifting and drawing the weapon, the Ra’zac loosed the bolt in the direction of Eragon’s chest. Eragon batted the shaft aside with his staff.Brisingr

Another option, of course, would be using magic against the illusions. For example, here he uses an AoE fireball spell against a group of slavers:

Before the slavers could gather their senses, Eragon scrambled out of the commotion and raised his hands, invoking words in the ancient language. A globule of indigo fire struck the ground in the midst of the fray, bursting into a fountain of molten drops that dissipated like sun-warmed dew.

Eragon

So safe to say, Eragon can contend with the illusions, even if Jace gives them physical form. If he feels he is hard-pressed by the illusions, he can just outrun them:

Eragon waited until the two closest sentinels had their backs turned toward him, and then he sprinted with all his might. Within seconds, he traversed the hundred or so feet that separated the rain barrel from the slope of the rampart and dashed up the embankment so fast, he felt as if he were a stone skipping across water.

Brisingr

If he chooses to charge at Jace, then Jace won't be able to defeat Eragon in a melee confrontation.

But it gets worse. Because some of these physical illusions aren't just illusions but instead actual creatures made out of pure magic. These are called phantasms. The thing about phantasms is that to the senses they appear identical to illusions. Just like real illusions you can see them and hear them, but they carry no scent. Pretty much the only way you are going to tell that this isn't an illusion but a creature made out of pure magic is when it hits you.

Here Jace uses illusions on werewolves that are ignored due to a lack of scent. Jace follows this up with a massive phantasmal bear that looks and sounds like an illusion and lacks a scent like one, but is actually a creature made of pure magic.

Nice, but since Phantasms are living beings, they have minds, and Eragon will detect that. He can tell between illusions and real living beings. Example:

Even as he struggled against Galbatorix's Eldunari, Eragon could feel the minds of the children---could feel their terror and confusion---and he knew they were real.

Inheritance

Either way, they can't get past his wards, and Eragon can kill them with his sword or with magic. They might be more durable than illusions that can be easily one shotted, but they are still very killable.

Drakes are only the beginning. Jace's sphinx is his strongest summons. Hide strong enough to withstand tendrils that had previously killed one of Jace's drakes, speed faster than the eye can see, and claws that rip through iron as easily as flesh.

Sphinxes in MTG are also vastly intelligent, often way more so than humans, as well as having particularly powerful magic. She's easily the strongest summons he has at his disposal and is not just a primitive monster but a highly intelligent being with a vast intellect.

First of all, question: how often does Jace summon the Sphinx? Does he do it often, or only in an emergency when he needs a more powerful creature to fight by his side? Or was it just once?

Second, the Sphinx's physical prowess is irrelevant when its claws can't get past Eragon's wards. As far as speed goes, Eragon is also FTE, both in combat speed and in reaction speed.

Here he dodges an attack that was faster than the eye could follow:

Then the last of the black-garbed dwarves was upon him. Eragon parried his dagger twice . . . thrice . . . and then cut through the dwarf’s padded sleeve and scored his dagger arm from the elbow to the wrist. The dwarf hissed with pain, blue eyes furious above his cloth mask. He initiated a series of blows, the dagger whistling through the air faster than the eye could follow, which forced Eragon to hop away to avoid the deadly edge. The dwarf pressed the attack. For several yards, Eragon succeeded in evading him, until his heel struck a body and, in attempting to step around it, he stumbled and fell against a wall, bruising his shoulder.

Brisingr

There are also his multiple arrow-timing feats. As far as combat speed goes:

One of the soldiers seized the opportunity to dart out of formation and stab his spear at Eragon's exposed throat.

Eragon parried the thrust with a flick of his wrist, swinging Brisingr faster than either a human or an elf could follow.

Inheritance

This is made more impressive by the fact that an elf's senses are far more keen than a human's, and swinging at a speed that an elf can't follow is actually a very impressive feat.

Regarding their durability, Eragon's magic has very high destructive potency, as you have seen. Moreover, Brisingr has very good piercing potency as you can see here:

He aligned Brisingr with the hairline crack between the two doors, put his weight behind the sword, and pushed the blade through the narrow gap and out the other side. Then he increased the flow of energy to the fire blazing around the blade until it was hot enough to burn its way through the dense wood as easily as a knife cuts through fresh bread.

Brisingr

Whenever Eragon speaks its name, Brisingr's blade catches fire, which can be intensified at will by Eragon. If Eragon has trouble piercing the Sphinx's hide, he can use this tactic to increase the blade's potency.

Now Jaces drakes are also powerful, as I explained in my first post. But thing that makes them even more dangerous is, again, illusions. In his battle with Tezzeret Jace used his illusions to create exact copies of one of his drakes, making it even more difficult to battle because of the multiple fake duplicates.

As said in the feat you provided, making the drake-illusions physical would devour too much mana, making them a non-threat.

Another point regarding the drakes is, that dragons in the Inheritance Cycle are magical creatures in nature, and when Eragon encounters a drake - which is essentially another name for a dragon - his natural reaction would be assaulting it telepathically. He can either kill it with telepathy or control it into attacking Jace.

Summary on illusions and phantasms:

• None of the above can get past Eragon's wards to inflict harm.
• Eragon can easily one-shot illusions with either melee or magic.
• Eragon can distinguish phantasms from illusions because they are living beings and have minds that can be sensed.
• Eragon can contend with and even blitz large groups of enemies.
• Eragon can outrace the illusions/summons/phantasms and attack Jace head-on, in the old-fashioned way.

The wards:

Let me expand on why I put so much trust in Eragon's wards, and why I am sure they are more than capable of protecting him from anything Jace can dish out.

Here's the most powerful attack that Eragon's wards protected him from:

Eragon had no time for words. Again drawing upon the Eldunari, he cast a spell to drag himself, Saphira, Arya, Elva, Thorn, and Murtagh, and the two children on the dias over to the block of stone where Nasuada was chained. And he also cast a spell to stop or deflect whatever might harm them.

They were only halfway to the block when Galbatorix vanished in a flash of light brighter than the sun. Then all went black and silent as Eragon's protective spell took effect.

Inheritance

Now, please take note that Eragon protected not only himself here: he also protected 6 other people and 2 dragons from that blast. Here's a description of the blast:

The ground rumbled and shook; then the front of the citadel exploded outward in a wall of white and yellow flame so bright, Roran saw the bones within the archer's neck and head, his flesh like a red gooseberry held before a candle.

[...]

The walls of the room were cracked, and the pillars, carvings, and lanterns had been pulverized. At the back of the chamber lay Shruikan's corpse, much of the flesh stripped from his soot-blackened bones. At the front, the explosion had shattered the stone walls, as well as the walls beyond for hundreds of feet, exposing a veritable warren of tunnels and rooms. The beautiful golden doors that had guarded the entrance to the chamber had been blown off their hinges, and Eragon thought he glimpsed daylight at the far end of the quarter-mile-long hallway that led to the outside.

[...]

Piles of broken stone covered the floor along much of the hallway, which slowed the dragons. To either side, Eragon could see into the rubble-filled rooms and tunnels that the explosion had torn open. Within them, tables, chairs, and other pieces of furniture burned. The limbs of the dead and dying stuck out at odd angles from beneath the tumbled stones, occasionally a grimy face or the back of a head.

[...]

As they emerged from the citadel, the air cleared and Eragon was able to see the destruction that the blast had wreaked on Uru'baen. It had ripped off the slate roofs of many nearby buildings and set fire to the beams underneath. Scores of fires dotted the rest of the city.

Inheritance

As you can see, the effect of the blast is described from the points of view of both Eragon (who was inside the citadel) and Roran (who was outside, but far enough to not get harmed by the explosion). Its radius was more than a quarter mile long, it took apart the citadel in which it went off and made the roofs of nearby buildings fly off and the buildings themselves catch fire. THAT'S how powerful it was. It was actually calculated by fans to be equal in power to almost 2 Tsar Bombs, but I won't put to much weight on that, the description alone is enough to determine it was one HECK of a blast. And remember, that Eragon survived the output of energy required to sustain the wards even though he put those wards on 6 other people and 2 dragons in addition to himself.

Now, one more thing to say before you bring it up: in my opener, I said that Eragon has his wards on by default. But here it is evident that he had no wards on, and had to cast new ones. That is because prior to that blast, Eragon was stripped off his wards by Galbatorix with very specific magic. Other than this specific occasion, Eragon always has wards on.

Telepathy:

So yea there is no questioning Jace's raw power. Especially since his telepathic powers are always growing stronger and Agents of Artifice was one of his earliest and weakest incarnations. So Jace is even stronger now.

Yeah, well allow me to still question Jace's raw power. There are numerous points that I would like to bring up regarding Nicol Bolas and Jace's short mental exchange with him:

1. As you yourself said, Nicol Bolas was using only a small part of his power at that time.
2. It is evident that he wasn't assaulting Jace's mind directly, but the defenses that Jace put around Tezzeret.
3. It is specified in the text that Jace held his own not for an extended period of time, but "for just an instant - precious little time".
4. In Nicol Bolas's fight with Ugin, the only mental feat he pulled off was somewhat mind-controlling an unspecified number of dragons. And, if I understand correctly, that was actually the doing of Yasova (whoever she is), not Bolas himself.
5. And even that didn't affect all the dragons. Sarkhan at least resisted it and it's possible that other dragons did too.

All this leads me to believe that Jace doesn't have the mental prowess of Eragon. Even without the Eldunarya, Eragon has pulled off impressive things.

For example, there's Eragon's fight with Durza. Durza, as explained in my first post, is a Shade. His mental powers were so great, that he could control an army of thousands of Urgals, making their rival clans fight alongside one another. When Eragon killed him the effect disappeared and they turned on each other:

“What . . . what happened?” asked Eragon. Arya looked sad. But Murtagh crowed, “We won! It was incredible! When the Shade’s spirits—if that’s what they were—flew across Farthen Dûr, the Urgals ceased fighting to watch them go. It was as though they were released from a spell then, because their clans suddenly turned and attacked each other. Their entire army disintegrated within minutes. We routed them after that!”

Eragon

While Durza was clearly the more powerful one, Eragon did manage to hold his own against Durza's attack. Even when Durza began taking control, Eragon drove him out and later even managed to take a bit of control himself:

His sword whistled through the air. The moment Eragon caught the blade on his shield, a mental probe spiked deep into his thoughts. Fighting to protect his consciousness, he shoved Durza back and attacked with his own mind.

Eragon battered with all his strength against the iron-hard defenses surrounding Durza’s mind, but to no avail. He swung Zar’roc, trying to catch Durza off guard. The Shade knocked the blow aside effortlessly, then stabbed in return with lightning speed. The point of the sword caught Eragon in the ribs, piercing his mail and driving out his breath. The mail slipped, though, and the blade missed his side by the width of a wire. The distraction was all Durza needed to break into Eragon’s mind and begin taking control.

“No!” cried Eragon, throwing himself at the Shade. His face contorted as he grappled with Durza, yanking on his sword arm. Durza tried to cut Eragon’s hand, but it was protected by the mail-backed glove, which sent the blade glancing downward. As Eragon kicked his leg, Durza snarled and swept his black shield around, knocking him to the floor. Eragon tasted blood in his mouth; his neck throbbed.

Ignoring his injuries, he rolled over and hurled his shield at Durza. Despite the Shade’s superior speed, the heavy shield clipped him on the hip. As Durza stumbled, Eragon caught him on the upper arm with Zar’roc. A line of blood traced down the Shade’s arm. Eragon thrust at the Shade with his mind and drove through Durza’s weakened defenses. A flood of images suddenly engulfed him, rushing through his consciousness—

Eragon

A few things to know about this though:

First of all, this is from "Eragon" - the first book in the series. Here, Eragon is still pretty much a novice. He is yet to be taught and trained by Oromis and Glaedr. Second, he didn't have any of his Eldunarya. And as we already discussed, at least half of these Eldunarya are more powerful than Eragon by themselves. Third, it all was after Eragon himself had participated in a large battle and he was already weary. Now, important to note that in the end Durza did win, but Eragon gave him a good fight - much more than "just an instant - precious little time", which is what Jace could muster against an enemy who wasn't attacking him directly and using only a portion of his power.

However, Eragon does bring a very unique challenge with the 132 dragon minds of his. That being said, Jace has an advantage of his own because his mind is shockingly unique. Eragon trying to get inside Jace's head will be confronted with something he will not be expecting. And that is a fractured and broken mind. Something you must know about Jace is that no mind is sacred, including his own. He screws around with his own head almost more than he does with other peoples. This plus his battle with Alhammarret has left his mind just...just f**ked.

You think 132 dragon minds is a lot to contend with? Try having the worse case of multiple personality disorder in existence. That's right, Jace has THOUSANDS of personalities.

Thousands of personalities huh?

Actually, contending with multiple minds simultaneously is not foreign to Eragon. For example, here Eragon engages in mental battle against another Shade, Varaug. Varaug was more powerful than even Durza, and while Eragon was also more powerful and skilled himself than he was when he fought Durza, he still did not have the Eldunarya. Varaug's mind contained countless spirits that were disparate from one another:

Knowing that Arya’s and Saphira’s lives were in peril stripped Eragon of every emotion, save that of implacable determination. His thoughts as sharp and clear as a shard of glass, he drove himself at the Shade’s seething consciousness. Varaug was too powerful, and the spirits that resided within him too disparate, for Eragon to overwhelm and control, so Eragon sought to isolate the Shade. He surrounded Varaug’s mind with his own: every time Varaug attempted to reach out toward Saphira or Arya, Eragon blocked the mental ray, and every time the Shade attempted to shift his body, Eragon counteracted the urge with a command of his own.

They battled at the speed of thought, fighting back and forth along the perimeter of the Shade’s mind, which was a landscape so jumbled and incoherent, Eragon feared it would drive him mad if he gazed at it for long. Eragon pushed himself to the utmost as he dueled with Varaug, striving to anticipate the Shade’s every move, but he knew that their contest could only end with his own defeat. As fast as he was, Eragon could not outthink the numerous intelligences contained within the Shade.

Brisingr

Varaug overwhelmed Eragon at some point after a while, but then Arya came to the rescue and together they beat him. But Arya isn't close to being as powerful as the Eldunarya, so this is irrelevant. In any case, that shows that Eragon is no stranger to contending with many opponents telepathically, and that he can at least hold his own, even without the Eldunarya.

That being said, Jace is still one man, with one mind. A fractured mind, containing many different aspects, but still just one mind. He can't use each part independently, like Eragon and his Eldunarya. This is a crucial point here.

Damaging Jace's mind is not a threat to him. Infact, in a telepathic duel like you are certain will happen, Jace is more than willing to allow his opponent to damage his brain in order to score the win. Case and point is his battle with Ahlammarret, where Jace deliberately lets a more powerful telepath damage his mind in order to kill the sphinx.

Eragon will have a hard time getting anything useful from Jace's head should he infiltrate it because his mind is a clusterf**k, and im pretty sure Eragon has never faced a telepath willing to take severe damage in order score the win. The 132 dragon minds will pose a unique problem, but Jace's mind is thousands of shards. And Eragon doesn't share nor will he expect Jace's self destructive nature, which is why Jace is better equipped to win a telepathic battle.

Therein lies the difference. Against Alhammarret, it is stated that: "Alhammarret could rip Jace's mind apart. But to do that, he had to read it, and when he read it, Jace could do the same." This is not the case with Eragon and the Eldunarya. Jace cannot afford to take some damage before he tries to deal some himself. Jace hasn't the feats to suggest he can contend with over 130 different minds assaulting him at once, much less when each and every of these minds on its own is quite a force to be reckoned with. Eragon himself is probably weaker than any of his Eldunarya, and even as a novice he could hold his own (for a while) against Durza, who had thousands of Urgals under mind control. It is evident in all of Eragon's telepathic battles, that he is very skilled at attacking as well as defending. He will not leave himself vulnerable to a counter-attack by Jace even if Jace allows parts of his mind to be taken apart, like what happened with Alhammarret. And on top of that, needless to say, he has 132 other minds to help him both attack and defend.

Also, it also is stated when Tamiyo looks inside Jace's head that: "His mind was powerful, but broken. Shattered into a thousand shards, each of them a different man, many of them trying to work together, but some of them..." The pieces of Jace's mind don't work in full cooperation, unlike Eragon and his Eldunarya.

Then, when Eragon gains the upper hand, there's his ability to channel spells through telepathy, like he did with the death-words. Again, his options are limited only by his imagination. For example, he can put Jace to sleep:

Eragon nodded, then murmured, "Slytha." The soldier's eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed limply.

"Did you kill him?"

[...]

"No, he's only asleep."

Eragon

He can immobilize him:

Eragon's temper broke then, and he reached deep within himself and into the torrent of magic. He released the pent-up energy with one of the twelve minor words of binding, crying "Malthinae!" to chain Vanir's legs and arms in place and hold his jaw shut so that he could not utter a counterspell. The elf's eyes bulged with outrage.

Eldest

He is limited by pretty much nothing really. He also doesn't have to channel the magic through telepathy of course, but if he does, it would ensure that no counter-magic would stop the spell from working.

Summary on telepathy:

• Jace hasn't shown the raw telepathic power, neither offensive nor defensive, to compare to the powerful enemies that Eragon has battled, like Durza for example.
• Jace can't afford to sacrifice pieces of his mind because he is now facing over 130 different minds, each capable of attacking and defending independently. The trick he pulled against Alhammarret won't work here.
• Eragon has shown the ability to contend with multiple minds/personalities simultaneously while Jace has not.
• Despite being fractured into many pieces, Jace's mind is still just one mind. He cannot attack/defend with each part independently.
• Eragon can channel spells through telepathy.

Summary - how the fight will play out:

The fight will start telepathically. Eragon will reach out and engage Jace with his mind. Usually, Jace's unique mind might allow him to afford sacrificing fractures of his mind in order to gain an opening and make a move, but it's different when he has to contend with over 130 different minds, each powerful in its own right, that will leave him no opening to exploit. Eragon is powerful and skilled enough to attack and defend himself in a mental battle, and he also has experience contending with an entity that contains many different minds such as Varaug. When Eragon gains the upper hand, he can end the fight quickly by taking control over Jace, channeling a spell, etc. If Eragon sees that he can't win with telepathy, he will use magic. He can either use long-ranged magic, magic that takes instantaneous effect such as breaking Jace's bones, or environmental magic that would affect Jace by using his surroundings against him.

Jace's illusions, Phantasms and summons will be a nuisance, but none can get past Eragon's powerful wards. Eragon can tell apart illusions from the real deal by sensing whether or not they have minds. He can one-shot the illusions and dispatch of anything else easily as well, either with melee combined with his inhuman physicals, with offensive magic, or with telepathy.

If all else fails, Eragon will charge and attack Jace head-on and kill him with his sword. Jace's illusions and invisibility will prove useless since Eragon can know where he is by sensing his mind. Then, Jace will have no chance in defeating Eragon in a melee confrontation.

Your move mate.

@banthabot post is up.

@the_red_viper: good post bro.

However, You still need to CONCEDE

@banthabot: NEVER!!!

T4V. I have never heard of Jace but banthabot is doing a very good job. I have heard and love Eragon and this is one of the best debates I have seen of him, including arguments I have not thought of but agree with, although I do have some arguments of my own that have not been mentioned.

Keep up the good work both of you

@valzaan: Thanks. Will tag you.

@banthabot Have you seen. Somebody special got themselves a new Planeswalker. Post also functions as a bump

@decaf_wizard: I'm interested to read the lore of the next block. What did Bolas do to the 5 gods? How did 3 of the gods go missing? Also I want to see the entire Gatewatch face him as one and loose terribly.

The next block also marks the point where they said they will begin fixing complaints that people have been having, like every set being flooded with the same planeswalker cards over and over again, as well as new planesealkers like Arlin Kord, and Dovin Baan given only short cameos while the staple planeswalkers steal the spot light.

So yea the hype train is chugging along right now

@banthabot: Well I'm equally as intrigued in the lore, as what this planeswalker means for EDH, as its clearly going to be a god tier card there. Control decks kinda bone the decks I play ( Monowhite Bruna The Fading Light and Atraxa Infect when I want to be scummy )

Its also by far the best planeswalker we have seen in standard for ages

Oh yea milling, hand destruction, and burning effects right off the bat with a field whipe as the big whammy. I'd say it's worth the 7 cost

@the_red_viper: ive been working on my reply. I admit I didn't dedicate as much time to it on my days off as I should have... Please don't hate me forever. v.v

But I did get it about half way done. It should be up Sunday night.

Lol no problem.

@banthabot: Bump

@the_red_viper: im really sorry. Real life stuff has been happening which has been keeping me busy. The post is still coming. Its soo close to being done. I promise.

@banthabot: Lol OK.

@the_red_viper:

Round 3

Speed and Magical Shields

So, Jace's shields are quite durable, that much is certain. And that's really nice, but the question is how fast can he raise them? Can he react fast enough to raise his shields before Eragon's magic connects?

You've called into question Jace's speed and the speed at which he can raise his defensive magics.

As displayed earlier Jace is capable of using counter magic to dissipate Chandra Nalaar's pyromantic spells.

During the comic book version of their battle you can again see Jace reacting to Chandra Nalaar's fire with defensive magic.

And during the novel version of the battle Jace raises a magical shied in time to block a powerful attack released by Chandra. Please note that the texts specifically states that she released this attack quickly too.

With a quickness to match her temper, Chandra leaped into the air, an aura of flame surrounding her as she recited a spell. Spreading her arms and expanding her chest like a bellows, all the air in a thirty foot radius went dead as she sapped the oxygen she needed as fuel for her fire. She paused at the top of her breath until it felt like she would explode with the effort, and when she let go, explode she nearly did. With all her might she exhaled, eyes wide, tongue extended like some primal totem. Her breath had the force of a cannon and burned with chemical intensity.

The stranger balled up, shielding his body with his cloak. The force of the blast unsteadied him, but he obviously had been able to conjure some protection. He emerged merely singed when everything around him had been reduced to charcoal.

-Magic the Gathering: The Purifying Fire

Why am I bringing all this up? Because Chandra has been described as releasing spells with hair trigger speed.

With hair-trigger speed, Chandra’s fists lit up like torches as she thrust them toward the stranger, hurling a pair of fireballs like meteors.

-Magic the Gathering: The Purifying Fire

And she has shown the combat speed to compete in h2h with a vampire.

Gallery

And vampires in mtg have super human stats. Here is an example of a vampire moving at blur level speeds.

-Magic the Gathering Card: Uncanny Speed

Another instance of Jace displaying great reaction speed is against the planeswalker Ral Zarek. Ral Zarek is a storm mage whos power is to cause and control storms. Ral tries to strike Jace with lightning from the sky but Jace dodges the lightning.

A bolt of lightning crashed from the storm to the ground, impacting just after Jace darted to one side, but the force of its shock wave blasted him from his feet.

-Magic the Gathering: Dragon's Maze

Jace's reaction time and speed at raising shields and counter magic isn't lacking. Eragon won't be getting by based solely on the speed of his attacks

And that only comes into play if Jace doesn't start the confrontation by layering himself in a bunch of magical shields right off the bat. When Jace and Baltrice thought that Tezzeret might be about to make an appearance Jace's reaction was to put up a sh*t ton of shields.

“Be ready,” he said, low, as he moved cautiously through the doorway, layering shield upon shield around himself until he looked like a man-shaped patch of blue fog.

-Magic the Gathering: Test of Metal

Due to the rules of the battle each combatant knows they are about to face someone powerful in magic. It is possible that Jace might react the battle by layering himself in defensive shields, which would make things a lot harder for Eragon.

Illusions, Summons, and what not

No, it's not passive, but as I said that's irrelevant because Eragon's opening move will be a mental assault, and he will be able to know exactly where Jace is as long as the mental connection is maintained. For example:

As you can see, Eragon knew the exact location of a pack of rabbits by sensing them with his mind. So he will know where Jace is as well. He will know that the illusions are just illusions because they have no minds to sense. If he sees dozens of Jaces coming at him, he will be able to know where the real one is.

I like you. You're a good debater...BUT RABBITS?

Unless one of these rabbits was a powerful telepath who can reduce rooms of grown men to children and is trained in the art of psychic combat, then this feat doesn't prove anything. #psychicrabbit

Jace is an incredibly powerful telepath who is trained to shelter his mind from other telepaths...these are rabbits.

Jace crouched near the ledge of the adjacent Azorius tower, his cloak billowing in the wind. A transparency spell shimmered around him, keeping him concealed from any nearby minds.

-Magic the Gathering: Dragon's Maze

Because Jace can shelter his mind i'd beg the question if Eragon would even be able to sense his mind. Eragon see's a dozen Jace's so he reaches out to sense the presence of a mind, Jace shelters his mind from detection and Eragon doesn't know who to target.

If all Eragon has got is sensing rabbits I find this the much more likely scenario.

That is very nice and could have posed a problem for a lesser foe, but not for Eragon. First of all, Eragon has his wards to protect him against any attack the illusions could try to dish out. Second, in both of those examples, is it clearly seen how the illusions can be easily one shotted by any normal attack.

You seem to be underestimating the lethality of his illusions. Firstly, Garruk may have been one shotting each individual illusion but Garruk also possesses superhuman strength and speed.

Garruk's strikes shatter a stone floor on impact.

Garruk has the reaction speed to swat a cross bow bolt out of the air.

The brute roared like a beast and swung his axe. Vronos stepped back, not daring to parry the heavy blade with his slim rapier. He raised his crossbow and murmured a charm of subdual over the bolt as it flew.

Garruk simply smashed it from the air

-Magic the Gathering Story: The Hunter Cannot Pity

These illusions were also damaging enough to cause Garruk to bleed.

"You're not taking me anywhere." Garruk pulled Jace toward him and head-butted him. Jace exploded into glass, shards flying everywhere, and Garruk could feel blood dripping from his face where the glass had cut him. Illusions could kill.

-Magic the Gathering Story: Monster

Garruk is capable of withstanding Liliana's death spells.

Liliana's death spells are incredibly powerful and she is capable of completely disintegrating three angels with seemingly no strain...

-Magic the Gathering Card: Killing Wave

In MTG Angels are superhuman and beings of incredible power, yet Liliana almost looks bored with them.

Eragon's wards might protect him but they have a limit. More on that later.

Another option, of course, would be using magic against the illusions. For example, here he uses an AoE fireball spell against a group of slavers:

And the illusions will just keep coming until Eragon deals with Jace. Eragon can deal with physical illusions but not without taking hits. Remember with Garruk the air was growing thick which was slowing Garruk down.

Garruk swung his axe through the illusions. Each one shattered like glass. The air around Garruk solidified into an icy goo, his movements slowed, his breathing labored.

-Magic the Gathering Story: Monster

There's no reason why the same thing wouldn't happen to Eragon, and unlike Garruk Eragon doesn't have previous experience with Jace. If Eragon destroys the illusions they will slow him down and make it harder to breath. If they slow him down he will have a harder time fighting illusions. If he has a harder time fighting them he will take more and more hits.

Eragon is going to need to find an invisible Jace and do something to make him stop summoning illusions. They are illusions after all, he doesn't have a limited amount of them, so if they are working he'll keep spamming them.

You'll probably argue that Eragon will sense Jace's mind to locate him in order to get out of this situation, however you already admitted that this is an active application of Eragon's abilities and thusly will take effort and focus to summon and maintain. Focus that will be strained due to thick air, labored breathing, slowed movements, and physical illusions hitting him. And of course im already skeptical that Eragon can locate Jace with his mind because you've only shown him locating rabbits.

So safe to say, Eragon can contend with the illusions, even if Jace gives them physical form. If he feels he is hard-pressed by the illusions, he can just outrun them

So Eragon is going to run. Okay. That is only going to play into Jace's favor because a rest in combat will only give him time to channel his healing magic and restore his mana reserves from the water nearby. MTG mages draw their magic from the land and Jace pretty much only uses blue magic which is drawn from sources of water. Having a water source nearby wouldn't have much of an effect in the middle of pitched combat but should there be a break from combat the water would serve as the perfect source for Jace to restore his mana reserves.

Eragon runs and Jace heals and refreshes his power.

If he chooses to charge at Jace, then Jace won't be able to defeat Eragon in a melee confrontation.

Jace may prove to be a much harder opponent to defeat in close range than you would believe. It comes back to his application of illusions. While being trained by Kallist in sword play Jace was able to floor his teacher by creating fake movements with illusions to cover up his real angles of attack. So while Eragon has the better training and gear Jace has misdirection and power spam integrated into his knife play.

Jace stepped in, slashing down with an overhand strike so clumsy it was laughable. Several of the observers snickered, and Kallist raised his practice sword in a contemptuous parry. He felt nothing in the path of his blade but air, and it was finally his turn to hit the floor, gasping and clutching his aching stomach. He looked up, just in time to see the illusion of Jace’s arm and sword fade away, and the real one—which had slammed rather handily into Kallist’s unprotected midsection—shimmer into view.

-Magic the Gathering: Agents of Artifice

Nice, but since Phantasms are living beings, they have minds, and Eragon will detect that. He can tell between illusions and real living beings

Id like to again point out that you admitted that sensing minds was an active application of his power and not passive which is harder to summon in the middle of pitched combat. And because it isn't passive he needs to know to use it. If none of the illusions have minds why would he keep channeling the power long enough to detect one that does have a mind? It would be a waist of energy and effort. It doesn't seem in character, unless Eragon had more knowledge on Jace than he actually does.

Can Jace protect himself against something like that? His raw durability might be able to tank a small blast on that caliber, but this quote is from "Eragon" - the first book in the series. Eragon grew far more powerful since then.

Jace has withstood blasts from Chandra Nalaar, who ive already shown can one shot 40 foot waves. But if you want more proof of her power Chandra brought down a massive cathedral like building by blowing up one of its four walls. The building was so massive that the shockwave of it collapsing knocked people off of their feet.

Calling on all of her power, on everything she had left, Chandra formed another ball of fire in her free hand and cast it at the wall. The fiery explosion blew out an entire wall of the Sanctum. She squinted against the flying dust and debris, coughing as she inhaled. She ran through the burning chaos and out of the building. Four guards who had survived the explosions were hot on her heels, shouting, “Stop that woman!”

People in the crowded streets were screaming, too terrified by the explosion to pay any attention to one fleeing woman and the bloody, dirty soldiers running after her.

The Sanctum’s structure was more precarious than it looked. Without that wall supporting its fourth side, the building began to cave in on itself.

Chandra heard the tremendous crack of splintering stone and the crash of collapsing walls and floors. Despite the soldiers right behind her, she turned to look. What she saw was so startling, she stopped running and just stood there and stared in shock at her handiwork. So did the soldiers who, moments ago, had been so intent on killing her.

The tall spire of the Sanctum, high overhead, had started to sway. The gargoyles that squatted around it reacted slowly, their wings shuddering uncertainly as they unfolded from their hunched positions and prepared to take flight. Inside the building, all the soldiers and both mind mages were probably already dead; if not, then they would die within moments.

The massive spire toppled and fell. The Sanctum of Stars completely collapsed. It seemed to happen with a horrific slowness. The immense weight of cracking, falling stone created a terrifying roar. People in the streets were screaming in panic and fleeing to safety. Chandra turned and fled, too.

The enormous impact of the Sanctum collapsing on itself hurled rocks, flames, ashes, dust, and debris across the main square and down the length of every surrounding street. Chandra was knocked off her feet when the ground shook and a wave of rock and ash hurled her forward. Someone trampled her prone body as they ran headlong from the disaster. Winded and in pain, Chandra was lying face down in the street, debris still showering down on her as the dust of pulverized stone filled her lungs.

-Magic the Gathering: The Purifying Fire

If Jace can withstand direct attacks from a mage who can topple a massive building by eviscerating one of its walls then im sure Eragon is going to have a hard time beating his durability. Especially since Jace wasn't significantly injured by being blasted directly by Chandra Nalaar's power.

Chandra loathed mind mages. What could be more despicable than poking around in another person’s private thoughts and feelings? The violation, along with the stranglehold of the spell, kindled her rage like phosphorous.

By now, conscious thought was no longer an option for Chandra. The world around her slowed to a geological pace, and she could feel the power of the mountain inside her. Immovable, dominating, volcanic in its fury, it grew from that darkest part of herself, that diamond of rage deep in her core until …

Boom.

An incomparable concussive blast left Chandra at ground zero, leveling everything around her and blasting a hole in the wall where the mind mage had been.

-Magic the Gathering: The Purifying Fire

A lot of times, Eragon can use his magic very creatively on the environment, to use against his enemies. One of his specialties is energy manipulation. He is said to excel at magic that has to do with raw energies:

Raw energy can be dispelled with counter magic. Your quote states that he excels in light heat and magnetism. Light, heat, and magnetism are things that Jace has had significant experience with in the past. Tezzeret, a major villain who's screwed around in Jace's life several times, is a master of metal manipulation and can shape metal to his will, create massive metal beast by dropping a few metal shavings on the floor, and can change the properties of metal on the fly.

Heat, well Jace has known multiple powerful pyromancers, Baltrice and Chandra Nalaar are the best examples. Doesn't need stated that Jace has experience with people who are bringing the heat.

And light is something Jace manipulates as well. After all his illusions have been described as "tricks of light."

One example of an energy-manipulation spell that I really like is, when he manipulated light and prevented it from entering the eyes of the Lethrblaka, which resulted in a blinding effect:

Magic to blind Jace isn't going to work im afraid. The most direct counter to this is the power of Clairvoyance, which is the name given to the magic that Jace uses to give him magical eye sight. Using this power he can increase the range at which he is able to see and he can use it to see around corners and obstacles that his normal vision wouldn't be able to reach.

Here is an example where Jace and Kallist are attempting to infiltrate an estate. Jace casts his vision beyond the outer wall to watch when the guards inside pass.

The outer wall of the estate proved no trouble at all. Jace cast his sight out and beyond the wall, watching until neither guard nor dog nor drake was present. Once it was clear, Kallist tossed a rope—enchanted to grab hold without need of a hook—and they were up and over, Jace somewhat less gracefully.

“That’s a handy trick,” Kallist whispered to him once they stood within the grounds. “Maybe I should learn a spell or two.”

-Magic the Gathering: Agents of Artifice

He's clearly seeing things beyond his field of vision, so blinding him with magic isn't likely to work. But lets just say for the sake of argument that it does. Jace could simply summon one of his mini drake, have it perch on his shoulder and use telepathy to see through its eyes.

Proof that he has these mini buggers.

Baltrice snickered, a sound that transformed abruptly to a shout of pain as the reservoir bulb shattered, spraying glass shards and its caustic contents across her skin. She struggled to clear her eyes with a sleeve as Tezzeret, utterly bewildered, gawped at the ruins of his creation.

And his gaze grew wider still, jaw dropping in slack amazement, as the manablade detached itself from Baltrice’s belt. Carried aloft by a rat-sized drake, it soared upward between the preponderance of tubes. He watched the creature rise, watched until it dropped the weapon gently into the hands of a man who could not be there!

-Magic the Gathering: Agents of Artifice

Jace has actually done the opposite of what I am proposing he could do here. Instead of using another persons (or drake) eyes to see while he is blinded, he has allowed someone else who is blinded to see using his eyes.

Jace was suddenly aware of the light strobing beyond his eyelids. He tried to push the visual sensory input from his mind, but then the whole world seemed to turn white and a sound like the sky tearing open boomed in his ears. He pulled his awareness into his illusion to keep it from failing, though he couldn't ignore the metallic taste that had filled his mouth.

From some distant place, Jace heard his name. There was panic in the sound, which came again and again. He willed his consciousness back into the cockpit, where the world was turned sideways, and where Depala was calling for him.

"I'm here, Depala," Jace said, which was partly true. Part of him was still keeping the fleet intact. "Were we hit?"

"Jace! I'm blind!" the pilot yelled.

"WHAT?!"

"Take the controls!"

Even as the ship banked and juked, Jace didn't like the prospect of him at the helm. There simply wasn't adequate time to pull the necessary expertise from Depala's mind. So instead, he returned a favor. During their freefall descent into the Consulate blockade, Jace had staved off panic by reaching out to the absolute confidence in Depala's thoughts. Now, he pulled her into his mind.

"I can see!" Depala said, and without missing a beat, she pulled Dragon's Smile into a graceful climb.

-Magic the Gathering Story: The Skies Over Ghirapur

Against a normal opponent preventing light from entering their eyes would be a devastating move but Jace has ways around it, and using this power would just end in failure to achieve the desired effect.

There was also one time when he fought a group of soldiers who were protected by wards, making them impossible to be harmed with magic directly. What Eragon did was hurling them 10 feet backwards with a gust of air:

This might result in Jace being moved backwards but it wouldn't result in injuring him.

He has a plethora of options, and he is creative and clever enough to use them. Burying Jace under collapsed buildings, using the water around the city's castle, and many other forms of environmental abuse are easy for him.

And all of these attacks can be dispersed with counter magic and would leave Jace feigning interest.

So yeah, it pretty much comes down to speaking the word and breaking the bone. In this instance, the direct translation of "Jierda theirra kalfis" is "Break their calves". But here's another example:

That's a very nice power, however, I highly doubt he has ever used it against someone as durable as Jace. This attack would also be stopped by magical shields. But if it actually does work and the magic does injure Jace, he has healing magic to mend the wounds.

Here is Jace using healing magic after weeks of torture without relief, and then having most of his blood drained from his body by a vampire because Tezzeret had poisoned his blood stream, Jace is able to recover his body despite the fact that he should rightfully be dead already in this scenario.

“Do it,” he said again, voice steadier.

Liliana nodded, once to him, once to the newcomer. He smiled broadly, showing a mouthful of fangs that lengthened even as she watched.

Jace shuddered violently as the vampire pressed its mouth to his arm and began to drink gluttonously of his contaminated blood.

....

“Jace?”

He felt himself afloat, swaddled in the softest darkness, far from the pains and the fears of the light. He drifted on the border, not between waking and sleeping, but on the edge of something greater, something deeper than slumber. It sang to him in the voice of a thousand sirens, a call far easier to heed than to resist.

“Damn it, Jace! Stay with me!”

He tried not to hear the words, not to know the voice. But it nagged at him, even over the restful urgings of the dark.

That’s right; there was something he was supposed to do.

Jace opened his eyes, and even that was a monumental victory. His entire body was a leaden weight, his thoughts mired in painful lethargy, and even his heartbeat felt slowed. He no longer sensed the horrible creature’s lips and teeth on his arm, but when he forced himself to look and make certain, all he could see was the corpse-white pallor of his own skin.

Which made sense, really, given that he was currently rather blood-deficient. For no good reason, Jace found the notion hysterical, but all he could muster was a single giggle.

Liliana frowned, though she couldn’t quite mask her relief that he hadn’t just died on her. Moving swiftly, she pressed the largest tube of the artifact to his face. Jace coughed once as a strange vapor that wasn’t quite steam wafted over him, permeating his lungs. He felt a strength growing within him, a potency he hadn’t consciously realized he was missing.

But it was a vigor of the spirit only, not the body. Though the mana infused his soul, the languor in his limbs refused to fade. He was able, barely, to turn his head—and he noticed, for the first time, that the zombies had dragged him from the cell while he was out—but nothing more.

“Oh, yeah, this was a great idea,” Liliana grumbled. “As long as Tezzeret accidentally trips and falls on something sharp, we’ve got him where we want him!”

“I’m so glad … I don’t have the strength … to pretend to laugh.” Jace closed his eyes.

“Are you sure you—”

“No. Be quiet.”

Liliana glared at him—or at least he assumed so, though he didn’t open his eyes to check. He let the darkness and the silence roll over him once more, not to fall into it as he had nearly done, but to blot out the distractions, the lingering pain, the sound of his own labored breaths.

Carefully, as though afraid his thoughts might topple if he didn’t stack them just so, he cast his mind back to Emmara’s home on Ravnica. As he’d done then, he pushed himself to remember the feel of her magics, the warmth that suffused his body at the elf’s healing touch, the seemingly endless plains that ran beneath Ovitzia where he’d recently spent so much time. He turned it over in his mind, examining the sensation, delving into it, forcing it to become real, more real than the cold floor beneath him, than the burns that had transformed his body into a map of suffering, than the weakness the vampire had left in place of his stolen blood.

The one and only time Jace had done this before, he’d barely felt a tremor in his wounds before his concentration lapsed. This time, he had to literally haul himself from death’s door; to regenerate a loss of blood that should, by all rights, have already killed him.

And then he was going to take on Tezzeret again.

Jace allowed himself to break focus just long enough to wonder if he could cure himself of his obvious insanity while he was at it—and then he bent every last bit of will to a task that he knew he shouldn’t be able to perform, but at which he could not afford to fail.

-Magic the Gathering: Agents of Artifice

If Jace can recover from this then what ever wounds Eragon might inflict with his magic are easily within his capabilities to heal.

First of all, question: how often does Jace summon the Sphinx? Does he do it often, or only in an emergency when he needs a more powerful creature to fight by his side? Or was it just once?

He's done it twice. First is when Tezzeret was training him and attempting to push Jace beyond his limits, Jace was forced to bust it out for the first time even though he'd never summoned a creature so powerful before. Second is during a serious fight against Tezzeret where both mages were trying to kill each other.

Second, the Sphinx's physical prowess is irrelevant when its claws can't get past Eragon's wards. As far as speed goes, Eragon is also FTE, both in combat speed and in reaction speed.

From what I understand about Eragon's wards they withstand damage up until the point that Eragon can't take anymore, and then he dies.

"Wards," said Oromis, "rely upon the strength of your body. If that strength is exceeded, you die. No matter how many wards you have, you will only be able to block attacks so long as your body can sustain the output of energy."

Wards might protect you from a drakes attack, a sphinxs attack, or a physical illusions attack individually but the wards rely on Eragon's physical body. These individual attacks are going to take a toll over the course of a battle, and many of these attacks are very powerful.

Remember Jace's drake who could generate heat that Baltrice would have trouble matching? That's going to hurt. Claws that cut through iron as easily as flesh? That's powerful. Breath that instantly freezes solid groups of soldiers down to there very bones? Another powerful attack. Strength enough to toss Tezzeret around like a ragdoll, even though his physical body is more durable than diamond and he has super strength? Again, very powerful.

Yes, Eragon's wards will protect him from any one attack that Jace can conjure up, but they won't protect him forever.

You went into detail about how fast Eragon is and then you said these things...

Whenever Eragon speaks its name, Brisingr's blade catches fire, which can be intensified at will by Eragon. If Eragon has trouble piercing the Sphinx's hide, he can use this tactic to increase the blade's potency.

As said in the feat you provided, making the drake-illusions physical would devour too much mana, making them a non-threat.

Another point regarding the drakes is, that dragons in the Inheritance Cycle are magical creatures in nature, and when Eragon encounters a drake - which is essentially another name for a dragon - his natural reaction would be assaulting it telepathically. He can either kill it with telepathy or control it into attacking Jace.

All of these points are all fine and dandy, however, Eragon isn't fighting a sphinx one on one then a drake one on one then another, no, hes fighting all of them at once.

Remember Jace summoned the sphinx and two drakes in one go...

And then he was flying; Jace burst from the desert floor and soared into the azure sky, arms outstretched and crackling with power. Behind him the air rippled and split, a gulf from elsewhere, from which appeared a pair of winter drakes and the familiar sphinx. The drakes instantly dived upon the beast of sand, struggling to immobilize it into a lifeless statue with bursts of frigid breath, while Jace dropped onto the sphinx’s back and plummeted in a screaming dive toward Tezzeret himself.

-Magic the Gathering: Agents of Artifice

Eragon is going to have to divide his attention between fighting a sphinx, telepathically assaulting two drakes like you said would be his natural reaction (or fighting them physically if that's what he chooses) and defending against Jace who will be hurling illusions, TK, or TP his direction.

Through out all of this there is no way that Eragon isn't going to take a fair share of hits which will widdle down his wards.

He can either kill it with telepathy or control it into attacking Jace.

Should Eragon take control of one or more of Jace's summon, he will simply dismiss them back across the aether. They won't be serving Eragon in this battle.

As you can see, the effect of the blast is described from the points of view of both Eragon (who was inside the citadel) and Roran (who was outside, but far enough to not get harmed by the explosion). Its radius was more than a quarter mile long, it took apart the citadel in which it went off and made the roofs of nearby buildings fly off and the buildings themselves catch fire. THAT'S how powerful it was.

That is very powerful. However Jace has withstood direct attacks from Chandra who has leveled a massive cathedral like building and one shot 40 foot waves with ease. His magical shields have also withstood direct blasts from her, and he can dissipate her attacks with disinterest. And you have conveniently forgotten that Jace has taken direct hits from Ob Nixilis who is out right stated as being stronger than Gidion Jura, who single handed held back Ulamog from advancing. This freaking guy!

It was actually calculated by fans to be equal in power to almost 2 Tsar Bombs, but I won't put to much weight on that, the description alone is enough to determine it was one HECK of a blast.

I think that wild claim is proof why exactly fan calcs are throbbing cancer. The blast you described leveled a quarter mile, light nearby houses on fire, and blew the roofs off nearby buildings. A respectable and powerful explosion in its own right, but 2 TSAR bombs? Do you even know what a TSAR bomb is? These are nukes, not even on the level of a TSAR which is bigger...

And fan calcs say that your explosion is worth 2 TSAR bombs? TWO? That's like saying a plastic bb gun hits with more force than two RPG's.

And remember, that Eragon survived the output of energy required to sustain the wards even though he put those wards on 6 other people and 2 dragons in addition to himself.

Fair enough Eragon has the better raw survivability, but Jace has respectable raw survivability and two extra layers of defense (shields and counter magic).

And remember that one of Jace's drakes produced heat that even Baltrice would have trouble matching? And remember how I showed Baltrice calling a massive fireball from the sky, summoning an elemental to fight the defenders of the town, and leave a massive path of fire and destruction through out village?

Jace isn't lacking for powerful attacks.

Telepathy

Yeah, well allow me to still question Jace's raw power.

As you yourself said, Nicol Bolas was using only a small part of his power at that time.

Yea. Bolas was only giving Jace part of his attention because he was having a long winded political debate with Tezzeret at the same time as he was assaulting Jace. However, Bolas has a super genius level intellect and has very unique minds. No that wasn't a type. Dragons have extra brain matter located at certain parts throughout their body, giving them an unrivaled multitasking ability. Bolas mastered this ability to its absolute fullest and has subsidiary brains in addition to his main one.

Due to their saurian ancestry, most dragons retained great knots of neural ganglia between their wings and at the base of their tails, so large and complex that they were essentially subsidiary brains; the evolutionary adaptation that allowed them to coordinate their subbrains gave many dragons a multitasking capability far beyond any human’s imagination. And Nicol Bolas’s capabilities were beyond the imaginations of dragons.

His mind was a vast and cluttered place, stuffed with twenty-five thousand years of memories, half-forgotten spells, and disordered remnants of dreams and aspirations. Millennia before, he had begun a process of compartmentalizing his mind, setting up an organized mental structure that allowed him to access information he wanted without having to sift through metaphorical mountains of irrelevancies. In the process, he’d split off functions of cognitive processing, virtual minds whose responsibility was the management of each of their particular sectors of knowledge, experience, and skill.

-Magic the Gathering: Test of Metal

Bolas can use his mind and sub minds to do very complex tasks while his main consciousness doesn't have to worry about them at all. For example...

He assigned one submind to keeping track of Baltrice, and of Jace’s body, while investigating the source of the blue mana spell that had killed his mind while leaving his body intact. Another submind was occupied with examining his recent interactions with Tezzeret, especially with regard to Sharuum and the Metal Sphinx who may or may not be Crucius in whole or in part. A third submind managed the fight on the Metal Island—mostly a function of feeding bits of mana to bolster the defenses of whichever of his dead selves was currently being dismantled, and of monitoring his remaining Lilianas. He wanted to finish the fight with at least one left, because she was both valuable and amusing, and while he valued her as an asset, he didn’t want to go to the trouble that might be required to ensnare another version of her. This left his primary consciousness with nothing to worry about except subduing Tezzeret.

-Magic the Gathering: Test of Metal

Knowing this information about Bolas makes Jaces feat that much more impressive. Yes Bolas was multitasking by talking casually to Tezzeret while assaulting Jaces mind, but Bolas has extra brain matter that he has organized into subminds which he can use for crazy multitasking. And simply having a conversation while unleashing a mental assault isn't even that complex when it comes to what Bolas is shown capable of.

Long story short is Bolas has extra anatomy to allow him to multitask. Bolas only had to split his concentration two ways which isn't even complex for him. One of the things Bolas was doing was having a casual conversation which wouldn't even take much concentration. This would leave Bolas to levy a very large amount of his power against Jace, even if it wasn't his full attention.

It is evident that he wasn't assaulting Jace's mind directly, but the defenses that Jace put around Tezzeret.

Yea? Jace was protecting his own mind and the mind of Tezzeret meaning he was doing twice the amount of effort as usual. This isn't a strike against Jace.

It is specified in the text that Jace held his own not for an extended period of time, but "for just an instant - precious little time".

Even for a short time like that is very impressive. An entire greek pantheon of literal gods might not be enough to stop Bolas.

Here is Kruphix, the god of insight and often displayed as being the most powerful god of Theros talking about the Eldrazi, Bolas, and Phryxians, and how the entire pantheon might not be able to stop one of these threats if it came to Theros.

Yes, I am troubled, and not by Xenagos's ascension, nor by the existence of these world-walkers.

I am troubled by what troubles them.

There it was. The dark, ragged edge around which they'd been tiptoeing.

The merfolk Kiora, said Kruphix, came here from a world whose existence was threatened by something called the Eldrazi. They are vast and terrible, the equal of any god. And they eat worlds, My Oracle. Strip the flesh from the bones of the earth and leave a dead husk, moving on to the next.

It That Betrays | Art by Tomasz Jedruszek

The leonin Ajani has faced an immensely powerful foe, a fellow world-walker and a dragon. He is unfathomably ancient, even to me. He seeks infinite power and immortal life. His plots span worlds and centuries, and he will spare nothing and no one who stands in his way.

Cruel Ultimatum | Art by Todd Lockwood

And the human Elspeth...she came here from a place called Phyrexia, an entire world of flayed skin and twisted metal, ruled over by vicious, monstrous beings who style themselves gods. It is an affront to nature, a dark parody of life that corrupts all it touches and touches everything in time. And it has already made its way from one world to others.

Rout | Art by Igor Kieryluk

Kruphix looked out into Nyx, night staring into night.

If any of these things come here, to our world, he said, even the gods may be powerless to stop them. And all your prayers, all your pleas, will fall on the deaf ears of a silent sky as this world is rent asunder or remade or worse.

-Magic the Gathering Story: Kruphix's Insight

Think that's far fetched? Bolas has shown absolute superiority to gods already. Bolas showed up to Ahmonkhet one day and solo'd all EITGHT of the planes gods at one time. During that battle it was stated that Bolas was at least equal to all eight gods combined. Legit divine immortal GODS.

The gods of Amonkhet roared and cursed, but no blow from their weapons would land. The trespasser's power was at least equal to their own.

-Magic the Gathering Stoy: Hours of Revelation

Bolas made a mockery of 8 gods and he used telepathy to destroy the minds of three of them. Here Bolas breaks the god Kefnet's mind in two simply by dipping his chin a little.

Kefnet, caretaker of the Hekma, was straining to keep the magical barrier together. The dragon tipped his chin and fractured Kefnet's mind in two.

-Magic the Gathering Stoy: Hours of Revelation

One shotting a single god with laughable ease isn't enough for Bolas though, and so he one shots the minds of two gods at the same time with the swipe of a claw

The dragon burst through the mausoleum door. Oketra and Hazoret charged. With a wave of a claw, the dragon sent forward a pulse of magic, and the minds of the two gods went utterly blank.

They fell where they stood.

-Magic the Gathering Stoy: Hours of Revelation

But honestly that's not all Bolas did on Ahmonkhet. He laughed when the gods attacks landed, dissolved their attacks by glaring at them, dissipated all the adults in an entire city out of existence, warped the leylines of the plane itself, and changed the trajectory of a sun. Damn! That just goes to show how much raw power this guy has.

In Nicol Bolas's fight with Ugin, the only mental feat he pulled off was somewhat mind-controlling an unspecified number of dragons. And, if I understand correctly, that was actually the doing of Yasova (whoever she is), not Bolas himself.

The point of displaying that fight was to show his overall raw power by killing a character who posses so much magical power that after his body has been dead and rotting for so long that the only thing left is a skeleton, his bones still have enough magical power to shred people to pieces simply by getting too close.

And even that didn't affect all the dragons. Sarkhan at least resisted it and it's possible that other dragons did too.

The spell only effected dragons, and Sarkhan is a planeswalker who's power is to transform from a human into a dragon. He was effected by this spell but avoided its effects by reverting back into human form. None of the other dragons has this ability and so they all would have been effected by the spell.

All this leads me to believe that Jace doesn't have the mental prowess of Eragon. Even without the Eldunarya, Eragon has pulled off impressive things.

So lets recap. Bolas is feared by an entire greek style pantheon of gods who think that they might be screwed if Bolas ever showed up to Theros, and their fear is justified because Bolas made a mockery of the 8 gods of Ahmonkhet all at one time, fractured one of their minds with a dip of his chin, whiped two other gods minds with a single pulse of magic, dissipated all the adults from a city out of existence, warped the very leylines of Ahmonkhet itself, and changed the trajectory of a sun all in one after noon. But he's also beaten in direct confrontation the spirit dragon Ugin who has so much magical power that after his body has become a skeleton it still has enough power to rip people to pieces simply by getting too close to his rotting corpse.

And here is the big whammy on top of all of this. Bolas caught Jace Beleren off guard. He used a telepathic conversation, droning on about things Jace didn't know about and used it as a diversion to suddenly attack him telepathically while he was distracted.

But when Bolas “spoke” again, he sounded wistful rather than angry. We were gods once, Beleren. Did you know that?

I—what?

No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Not at your age. The dragon heaved what Jace could only call a mental sigh. The Spark burned so much brighter then. We willed our desires upon the worlds, and the worlds obeyed. And then, the catastrophe on Dominaria and we …

We are less, Beleren. Less than we were… The dragon’s mind threatened to burn Jace’s soul with its sudden heat. And less than we will be!

Jace felt his world spinning, overwhelmed at the intensity of Bolas’s fervor. Why … Why are you telling me this?

Why, Jace Beleren? I thought that you would care to know. That, and it made for a magnificent diversion, don’t you think?

Even as Jace froze, a lightning bolt of panic flashing through him, he felt the dragon’s mind sweep past, arrowing for gaps in the “net” of thoughts and notions with which he had surrounded Tezzeret’s mind.

-Magic the Gathering Agents of Artifice

For example, there's Eragon's fight with Durza. Durza, as explained in my first post, is a Shade. His mental powers were so great, that he could control an army of thousands of Urgals, making their rival clans fight alongside one another. When Eragon killed him the effect disappeared and they turned on each other:

Firstly you straight up concede that Durza is more powerful than Eragon. Secondly, influencing an army is not on the same level as shattering the mind of a god simply by dipping your chin a little.

First of all, this is from "Eragon" - the first book in the series. Here, Eragon is still pretty much a novice.

Jace's feat against Bolas was in Agents of Artifice, one of Jaces earliest sources and since then he has been stated as growing more powerful.

Second, he didn't have any of his Eldunarya. And as we already discussed, at least half of these Eldunarya are more powerful than Eragon by themselves.

None of them are as powerful as Bolas.

Now, important to note that in the end Durza did win, but Eragon gave him a good fight - much more than "just an instant - precious little time", which is what Jace could muster against an enemy who wasn't attacking him directly and using only a portion of his power.

"Just an instant- precious little time" against a guy who laughs at gods and one shots them with little effort using TP.

That being said, Jace is still one man, with one mind. A fractured mind, containing many different aspects, but still just one mind. He can't use each part independently, like Eragon and his Eldunarya.

I agree with this point here. But I was never trying to claim that Jace could levy all of his personalities at once. My point was that his minds state would make him much harder too combat. Should Eragon get inside his head for even a small amount of time to mind read then the likelihood of him learning anything useful about Jace is extremely low because of the state of his damaged mind. Also Eragon is going to have to go to much greater lengths to do any significant damage to his mind because it is already broken beyond repair so breaking it more isn't much of a threat. Thirdly is that Jace can erase and or rearrange information and memories. Should Eragon get a foothold in Jace's mind he could just delete that part of his mind without little thought to the consequences. Fourth is the shock value. If Eragon gets inside Jace's head expecting it to be normal and finds the clusterf*ck, it would be unsettling and surprising.

Therein lies the difference. Against Alhammarret, it is stated that: "Alhammarret could rip Jace's mind apart. But to do that, he had to read it, and when he read it, Jace could do the same." This is not the case with Eragon and the Eldunarya. Jace cannot afford to take some damage before he tries to deal some himself. Jace hasn't the feats to suggest he can contend with over 130 different minds assaulting him at once, much less when each and every of these minds on its own is quite a force to be reckoned with. Eragon himself is probably weaker than any of his Eldunarya, and even as a novice he could hold his own (for a while) against Durza, who had thousands of Urgals under mind control. It is evident in all of Eragon's telepathic battles, that he is very skilled at attacking as well as defending. He will not leave himself vulnerable to a counter-attack by Jace even if Jace allows parts of his mind to be taken apart, like what happened with Alhammarret. And on top of that, needless to say, he has 132 other minds to help him both attack and defend.

On the contrary Jace can afford to take damage. He has lived most of his life with a damaged mind that would leave most people destroyed, insane, or both. He is the one who has shown to be able to live functionally with a damaged mind. Eragon cannot say the same. If Eragon get's inside Jaces head he is vulnerable and he doesn't have the feats to suggest that he has the raw power to contend with someone who held Bolas at bay for even a short time.

Then, when Eragon gains the upper hand, there's his ability to channel spells through telepathy, like he did with the death-words. Again, his options are limited only by his imagination.

This is unlikely to happen.

Intelligence

One of the things Jace has over Eragon is his level of intelligence. Im sure Eragon is a pretty smart dude but he isn't on the level of Jace.

As a thirteen year old kid Jace was given a test that purposefully meant to be too hard for him to solve. It was meant for him to display what he knew, but no one was ever meant to pass the test. Jace got a perfect score on the test and displayed the level of knowledge as a high level supervisor when Jace was only a thirteen year old student taking a prerequisite test for a class.

He’d taken a mana dynamics test full of questions he didn’t know how to begin to answer. He thought he’d studied, thought he’d been prepared, but as he stared at the test, he drew a complete blank. Then the answers just…came to him. He knew the formulas. He showed his work. He answered perfectly, and he knew it.

Thing was, he’d been right the first time—he had been prepared for the test—but they were trick questions. He wasn’t supposed to know the answers. He was supposed to get as close as he could, to show what he knew, but he knew too much.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know? What the hell does that mean? Did you cheat or not?”

“No,” said Jace. “I just…knew the answers.”

“They’re saying you solved a six-node mana-pressure equation in your head. If that’s true, you should be supervising a regulator team, not taking lessons.”

Jace shrugged again. “Maybe I should be.”

-Magic the Gathering Story: Jace's Origin: Absent Minds

And then there is the card Omniscience. Card art and flavor text are meant to depict and describe moments that have actually happened in the lore, so looking at the card Omniscience I was very confused for a long time because I had no idea what it was meant to display. However my conclusion from this card is that Jace has a continuously growing intellect and is on the road to achieving omniscience.

"The things I once imagined would be my greatest achievements were only the first steps toward a future I can only begin to imagine."

-Jace Beleren

-Magic the Gathering Card: Omniscience

Clearly Jace is extremely intelligent and he uses this intelligence to quickly grasp understanding of magic, how it works, and how to replicate it.

After watching a Dimir mage cast a spell that allowed him to phase through solid rock just once, Jace believes that he is able to replicate that power on the spot.

He thought back to the way Lazav and his Dimir agents used a spell to push him through solid stone and drop him in that subterranean cell. He could use something like that now.

But somehow Jace doubted that the other teams of mages had spontaneously managed to come up with a Dimir spell on the spot.

-Magic the Gathering: Dragon's Maze

Using this intellect there is a much higher chance of Jace gaining an understanding of Eragon's magic system and how it works than there is of Eragon being able to figure out how Jace's magic system works. Even if Eragon figures out that Jace draws mana from sources of water he wouldn't be able to figure out that Jace is connected to other sources of mana on different planes of existence. He wouldn't be able to figure out the meaning of the planeswalker spark, what it means and what it can do. Jace however would be able to decipher the connection between Eragon's language and his spells and may even be able to gain a small understanding of the language.

Conclusion

With the mixture of Jace's counter magic, magical shields, and physical resilience he is the more durable of the two characters. He has the speed to keep up with Eragon and react to his attacks. Illusions are still going to be a massive problem for you and physical illusions will be extremely difficult to deal with. Jace can protect his mind from being detected by Eragon which will make it difficult for Eragon to tell which are illusions and what aren't. Jace has counters for many of Eragons hax like bone breaking and blinding. Jaces summons will cause massive problems for Eragon, and in a close quarters confrontation Jace's clever use of illusions and wielding an anti-magic user weapon will make him dangerous to deal with. All of this added up by Jace having more raw power in telepathy, a complex and broken mind, as well as less morals while wielding telepathy will make him a pain in the ass to deal with telepathically. And as the cherry on top Jace is more intelligent and is able to understand and replicate advanced magics simply by viewing them once which will allow him to gain a better understanding of Eragon and how his magic works.

All of these reasons are why I believe Jace Beleren would take a majority over Eragon. Your go...

@the_red_viper: I finally got the post up. Sorry that it took so long. I honestly feel bad.

@banthabot: Cool. Will respond as soon as I can.

Round 3: Second Rebuttal

Magic:

You've called into question Jace's speed and the speed at which he can raise his defensive magics.

As displayed earlier Jace is capable of using counter magic to dissipate Chandra Nalaar's pyromantic spells.

During the comic book version of their battle you can again see Jace reacting to Chandra Nalaar's fire with defensive magic.

And during the novel version of the battle Jace raises a magical shied in time to block a powerful attack released by Chandra. Please note that the texts specifically states that she released this attack quickly too.

Why am I bringing all this up? Because Chandra has been described as releasing spells with hair trigger speed.

That's all well and good, but Chandra doesn't seem near as fast as Eragon. As you have already seen, Eragon can operate at the speed of thought, he can attack 20 times in one second, he can both attack and defend faster than human or elf eyes can see, and casually catch and block arrows from close range. Hair-trigger speed is like slow-mo for him. Also, in the novel version of the fight, it is said that Chandra employed her speed when leaping into the air only. Her attack was a lot slower:

"Spreading her arms and expanding her chest like a bellows, all the air in a thirty foot radius went dead as she sapped the oxygen she needed as fuel for her fire. She paused at the top of her breath until it felt like she would explode with the effort, and when she let go, explode she nearly did."

It is explicitly mentioned that she paused. Not too impressive really. Nothing to suggest that Jace can react to beams of energy and such that Eragon can unleash at the speed of thought.

And she has shown the combat speed to compete in h2h with a vampire.

And Eragon has the speed to beat elves in a fight:

He charged Vanir, and the field rang with a furious din as they strove against each other, raging back and forth upon the trampled grass. The force of their blows created gusts of wind that whipped their hair into tangled disarray. Overhead, the trees shook and dropped their needles. The duel lasted long into the morning, for even with Eragon's newfound skill, Vanir was still a formidable opponent. But in the end, Eragon would not be denied. Playing Zar'roc in a circle, he darted past Vanir's guard and struck him upon the upper arm, breaking the bone.

Vanir dropped his blade, his face turning white with shock.

Eldest

As you can see, Eragon and Vanir both dueled in such speeds, that they created gusts of wind which shook nearby trees. The guy can fight as fast as an industrial fan pretty much.

Also:

He moved forward cautiously. With a blur of motion Arya jumped at him, slashing at his ribs. Eragon reflexively parried the attack, and their swords met in a shower of sparks. Zar'roc was bated aside as if it were no more than a fly. The elf did not take advantage of the opening, however, but spun to her right, hair whipping through the air, and struck at his other side. He barely stopped the blow and backpedaled frantically, stunned by her ferocity and speed.

Belatedly, Eragon remembered Brom's warning that even the weakest elf could easily overpower a human. He had about as much chance at defeating Arya as he did Durza. She attacked again, swinging at his head. He ducked under the razor-sharp edge. But then why was she . . . toying with him? For a few long seconds he was too busy warding her off to think about it, then he realized, She wants to know how proficient I am.

Understanding that, he began the most complicated series of attacks he knew. He flowed from one pose to another, recklessly combining and modifying them in every possible way. But no matter how inventive he was, Arya's sword always stopped his. She matched his actions with effortless grace.

Engaged in a fiery dance, their bodies were linked and separated by the flashing blades. At times they nearly touched, taut skin only a hair's breath away, but then momentum would whirl them apart, and they would withdraw for a second, only to join again. Their sinuous forms wove together like twisting ropes of windblown smoke.

Eragon could never remember how long they fought. It was timeless, filled with nothing but action and reaction. Zar'roc grew leaden in his hand; his arm burned ferociously with each stroke. At last, as he lunged forward, Arya nimbly sidestepped, sweeping the point of her sword up to his jawbone with supernatural speed.

Eragon

That was Eragon before he received the amp that made him superhuman, and was just a novice (although he was very skilled already and in great shape for a human). He reacts to Arya (also an elf) who is described to fight at supernatural speeds. The context however is important: this fight took place shortly after Arya woke from a months-long coma, so she was not even close to her peak performance. So what we have here, is a weakened elf stomping a near-peak human. That's just to show you how dangerous elves really are. And as you have seen, after receiving his amp, Eragon defeated an elf. Chandra would be fodder to him.

Another instance of Jace displaying great reaction speed is against the planeswalker Ral Zarek. Ral Zarek is a storm mage whos power is to cause and control storms. Ral tries to strike Jace with lightning from the sky but Jace dodges the lightning.

That is nice, however we don't know how accurate that lightning was. Jace could have just "aim dodged", so to speak.

And that only comes into play if Jace doesn't start the confrontation by layering himself in a bunch of magical shields right off the bat. When Jace and Baltrice thought that Tezzeret might be about to make an appearance Jace's reaction was to put up a sh*t ton of shields.

Due to the rules of the battle each combatant knows they are about to face someone powerful in magic. It is possible that Jace might react the battle by layering himself in defensive shields, which would make things a lot harder for Eragon.

He doesn't have the prep to do it before the fight, and if he tries to do it as the fight starts he will be left open for an attack, either telepathic, magical or physical. By the description you provided, it sounds like a process that takes time, so bad idea for Jace to try that. He's not like Eragon who has wards upon himself by default.

That being said, since you mentioned that both combatants are only aware that they are facing a powerful magician, that also works in favor of Eragon. The mages that Jace usually faces are very straightforward and element-oriented. Chandra is a pyromancer, Ral Zarek is a storm-mage, Tezzeret is a metal-mage, etc. Jace has never encountered and will never expect a magic user as hax and diverse as Eragon and will not understand what the hell he's up against. On the other hand, Eragon has encountered legit reality warpers (and is a reality warper himself), there's nothing, and I mean nothing that Jace can do that Eragon hasn't encountered already.

Illusions and stuff:

I like you. You're a good debater...BUT RABBITS?

Yup. Rabbits.

That was just meant to show you that Eragon can pinpoint someone's location by sensing their mind. Not equating the rabbits to a skilled telepath, but it's the most straightforward and clearly worded example of Eragon pinpointing someone's location with telepathy.

Jace is an incredibly powerful telepath who is trained to shelter his mind from other telepaths...these are rabbits.

Because Jace can shelter his mind i'd beg the question if Eragon would even be able to sense his mind. Eragon see's a dozen Jace's so he reaches out to sense the presence of a mind, Jace shelters his mind from detection and Eragon doesn't know who to target.

Since you asked:

Eragon smiled and said, "Hello, Orik." He opened his eyes to see Orik clambering up the low knuckle of rock where he and Saphira sat. The dwarf, who was fully armored, carried his Urgal-horn bow in his left hand.

Hunkering beside Eragon, Orik wiped his brow and shook his head. "How'd you know it was me? I was shielding myself."

Eldest

The answer is yes.

Also:

Du Vrangr Gata found the first enemy spellcaster. The instant he was alerted, Eragon reached out to the woman who made the discovery, and from there to the foe she grappled with. Bringing the full power of his will to bear, Eragon demolished the magician's resistance, took control of his consciousness----doing his best to ignore the man's terror----determined which troops the man was guarding, and slew the man with one of the twelve words of death. Without pause, Eragon located the minds of each of the now-unprotected soldiers and killed them as well.

Eldest

As you can see, an enemy magician protects the minds of soldiers. Eragon locates them even though they are still protected, kills the magician, and then kills them.

You seem to be underestimating the lethality of his illusions.

You seem to be underestimating the potency of the wards.

Firstly, Garruk may have been one shotting each individual illusion but Garruk also possesses superhuman strength and speed.

Garruk's strikes shatter a stone floor on impact.

Not stronger than Eragon. Here's what Eragon can do with only his fists:

Four soldiers who had dismounted confronted him with drawn swords. They charged. Dodging to the right, he caught the first soldier's wrist as the man swung his sword and punched him in the armpit. The man collapsed and was still. Eragon dispatched his next opponents by twisting their heads until their spines snapped. The fourth soldier was so close by then, running at him with sword held high, Eragon could not evade him.

Trapped, he did the one thing he could: he struck the man in the chest with all his might. A fount of blood and sweat erupted as his fist connected. The blow staved in the man's ribs and propelled him more than a dozen feet over the grass, where he fetched up against another corpse.

Brisingr

He literally punches armored men a dozen feet across, denting their armor and caving their chests in. He killed a man with a punch to the armpit, and snapped peoples' SPINES by twisting them hard enough.

Also here:

The soldier uttered an oath as he struggled to regain his balance. "What's wrong with you, you thrice-blasted----" he said, and then he saw Eragon's face, and his eyes widened. "You!"

Eragon balled his right and and punched the man in the belly, directly underneath his rib cage. The blow lifted the man off his feet and smashed him into the ceiling. "Me," Eragon agreed as the man dropped to the floor, lifeless.

Inheritance

Imagine what he could do with that huge axe like Garruk has. Replicating and surpassing Garruk's feats would be morning exercise for Eragon.

Garruk has the reaction speed to swat a cross bow bolt out of the air.

I trust you didn't miss the 2 arrow-timing feats that I posted in my previous post yeah?

These illusions were also damaging enough to cause Garruk to bleed.

He didn't have wards though.

Garruk is capable of withstanding Liliana's death spells.

That is very nice, except magical resistance is inherently different from physical resistance. It was clearly and explicitly stated that the illusion burst into shards of glass, nothing about it implies that this glass was somehow magical. Garruk bleeds when he is cut but he has magic resistance. Mighty fine for him, but doesn't help your case.

And the illusions will just keep coming until Eragon deals with Jace. Eragon can deal with physical illusions but not without taking hits. Remember with Garruk the air was growing thick which was slowing Garruk down.

OK, they are welcome to keep coming, it's not like Eragon hasn't mowed his way through armies before. He will get to Jace quickly enough, and kill him. If telepathy fails, that is.

There's no reason why the same thing wouldn't happen to Eragon, and unlike Garruk Eragon doesn't have previous experience with Jace. If Eragon destroys the illusions they will slow him down and make it harder to breath. If they slow him down he will have a harder time fighting illusions. If he has a harder time fighting them he will take more and more hits.

Thickening the air with icy goo will be useless. Eragon can either disperse that goo like so:

"Vaetna," he gasped, and waved his hand. With a sound like rustling silk, the thick gray dust parted, leaving the center of the courtyard clear.

Inheritance

And then filter the air around him so that the icy goo won't get near enough to him anymore:

From the moment they entered the cloud, the ever-present moisture began to accumulate on Eragon's skin and soak into his woolen clothes, weighing them down. It was an annoyance he could have ignored had not the combination of water and wind been so chilling, it would have soon drained the heat from his limbs and killed him. Therefore, he cast another spell, which filtered the air around him of any visible droplets, as well as----at her request----the air around Saphira's eyes, for the moisture kept collecting on their surface, forcing her to blink all too frequently.

Inheritance

Or he could just evade them by running with his superhuman speed toward Jace and finish him off, or he can do this cool trick:

Eragon took a half step forward, as if to stop her, then cursed and growled, "Audr!"

The spell launched him into the sky, like a arrow from a bow. He reached out to Glaedr, and the old dragon fed him energy to sustain his ascension.

Inheritance

Eragon isn't limited in mobility like Garruk, and he isn't stupid. If he will see that the illusions hard-press him, he will just avoid them altogether, simple as that.

Eragon is going to need to find an invisible Jace and do something to make him stop summoning illusions. They are illusions after all, he doesn't have a limited amount of them, so if they are working he'll keep spamming them.

Eragon has already found people (and rabbits) that he couldn't see, and has more than enough options to deal with the illusions. That isn't a problem.

You'll probably argue that Eragon will sense Jace's mind to locate him in order to get out of this situation, however you already admitted that this is an active application of Eragon's abilities and thusly will take effort and focus to summon and maintain. Focus that will be strained due to thick air, labored breathing, slowed movements, and physical illusions hitting him. And of course im already skeptical that Eragon can locate Jace with his mind because you've only shown him locating rabbits.

First of all, you seem to be forgetting that Eragon is not alone here. He has over 130 more minds assisting him, most if not all of them more powerful than his own mind. Multi-tasking is not a problem. Eragon can really just focus on fighting off illusions and let the Eldunarya find Jace and liquefy his mind. He is simply inherently different and outright superior to anything Jace has faced so far. What's more is that if Eragon sees he doesn't know where the real Jace is, then he will just expand his consciousness until he finds him:

When he and Saphira were a league or so from the tents, the Eldunari helped Eragon extend the range of his thoughts until he was able to feel the minds of the men, dwarves, elves, and Urgals gathered within the camp.

Inheritance

But kudos for using the Zootopia GIF. I love that movie.

So Eragon is going to run. Okay. That is only going to play into Jace's favor because a rest in combat will only give him time to channel his healing magic and restore his mana reserves from the water nearby. MTG mages draw their magic from the land and Jace pretty much only uses blue magic which is drawn from sources of water. Having a water source nearby wouldn't have much of an effect in the middle of pitched combat but should there be a break from combat the water would serve as the perfect source for Jace to restore his mana reserves.

You seem to be misunderstanding. I was suggesting Eragon running toward Jace, not away from him. Jace will be more hard-pressed by this, it will certainly not give him any respite.

Jace may prove to be a much harder opponent to defeat in close range than you would believe. It comes back to his application of illusions. While being trained by Kallist in sword play Jace was able to floor his teacher by creating fake movements with illusions to cover up his real angles of attack. So while Eragon has the better training and gear Jace has misdirection and power spam integrated into his knife play.

Dude, you have already seen that Eragon has defeated elves and has blitzed squads of soldiers with absolute ease. Jace wouldn't last 5 seconds against him in a melee. Even if he manages to sneak his knife in with an illusion or something, it will not get past Eragon's wards:

A javelin shot from a ballista glanced off his wards and flew spinning down a street.

Brisingr

Eragon will cut him to shreds before he can raise his knife even. Really, Jace is an awesome magician and telepath and he might be Eragon's toughest fight yet, but if Eragon gets within melee range Jace is literally fodder to him.

Id like to again point out that you admitted that sensing minds was an active application of his power and not passive which is harder to summon in the middle of pitched combat. And because it isn't passive he needs to know to use it. If none of the illusions have minds why would he keep channeling the power long enough to detect one that does have a mind? It would be a waist of energy and effort. It doesn't seem in character, unless Eragon had more knowledge on Jace than he actually does.

Yeah it is active, but not harder for Eragon to use in combat that striking with his sword or raising his shield. It's instinctive for him, especially when battling other mages, and especially when he has over 130 other minds backing him up. His mind and the minds of the Eldunarya will be constantly working against Jace himself either way, sensing the summons and phantasms goes along with it. It doesn't even require channeling power. Telepathy is like sixth sense, it doesn't require any more power than looking with his eyes or listening with his ears.

As I said, the fight will start with Eragon and the Eldunarya reaching for Jace telepathically. This telepathic connection will continue for as long as the fight goes on. Jace spamming illusions and summons will not change that. As you have seen, a novice Eragon with no Eldunarya maintained telepathic connection with Durza throughout their entire fight while at the same time exchanging blows with him. Jace is just another day at the office.

Jace has withstood blasts from Chandra Nalaar, who ive already shown can one shot 40 foot waves. But if you want more proof of her power Chandra brought down a massive cathedral like building by blowing up one of its four walls. The building was so massive that the shockwave of it collapsing knocked people off of their feet.

Impressive. How will Jace deal with internal effects though, like breaking his bones? Or a similar blast with the power of the Eldunarya behind it?

Raw energy can be dispelled with counter magic. Your quote states that he excels in light heat and magnetism. Light, heat, and magnetism are things that Jace has had significant experience with in the past. Tezzeret, a major villain who's screwed around in Jace's life several times, is a master of metal manipulation and can shape metal to his will, create massive metal beast by dropping a few metal shavings on the floor, and can change the properties of metal on the fly.

Those were just 3 examples given to us by the narration for energies that Eragon excels at, he is not limited to them. He has shown expertise in tons of other energies as well as you have seen, such as light, electricity, gravity and kinetic energy.

Magic to blind Jace isn't going to work im afraid. The most direct counter to this is the power of Clairvoyance, which is the name given to the magic that Jace uses to give him magical eye sight. Using this power he can increase the range at which he is able to see and he can use it to see around corners and obstacles that his normal vision wouldn't be able to reach.

Here is an example where Jace and Kallist are attempting to infiltrate an estate. Jace casts his vision beyond the outer wall to watch when the guards inside pass.

That's nice, but it still won't help him if Eragon decides to blind him. This magic works like some intangible blindfold, it renders any sort of eyesight completely useless.

He's clearly seeing things beyond his field of vision, so blinding him with magic isn't likely to work. But lets just say for the sake of argument that it does. Jace could simply summon one of his mini drake, have it perch on his shoulder and use telepathy to see through its eyes.

Proof that he has these mini buggers.

Not only will this drake be easily killed, it will also give away Jace's location when it sits on his shoulder, so he's welcome to summon it.

Jace has actually done the opposite of what I am proposing he could do here. Instead of using another persons (or drake) eyes to see while he is blinded, he has allowed someone else who is blinded to see using his eyes.

Good for him? Lol.

This might result in Jace being moved backwards but it wouldn't result in injuring him.

It won't move him backward, it will send him flying backward. His durability is mighty fine, but he doesn't weigh any more than the group of people that Eragon sent flying backwards and he doesn't have good enough poise to withstand that. So while he might remain uninjured, he will still be sent backwards, helpless and open for a finishing blow, not to mention it will probably shock him so his mind will be an easy target for telepathy.

And all of these attacks can be dispersed with counter magic and would leave Jace feigning interest.

How does he disperse being buried under rubble for example?

Also, being buried under the rubble is just one example that I can think of. Eragon himself is smart and creative enough to utilize his environment in astounding ways, that Jace won't even expect. Here for example Eragon just counts 5 different methods of using magic to light fire in completely different ways just off the top of his head:

"There are almost an infinite number of ways to do something with magic. For example, if I want to light a fire, I could light it with heat gathered from the air or the ground; I could create a flame out of pure energy; I could summon a bolt of lightning; I could concentrate a raft of sunbeams into a single point; I could use friction; and so forth."

Brisingr

He is more creative than me, he can do things that I can't even imagine and think of telling you. He's a master of improvising, for example when he improvised the spell that blinded the Lethrblaka.

That's a very nice power, however, I highly doubt he has ever used it against someone as durable as Jace. This attack would also be stopped by magical shields. But if it actually does work and the magic does injure Jace, he has healing magic to mend the wounds.

Jace's durability is not a problem. While he is indeed very durable, and Eragon by himself might not be able to directly injure him, the Eldunarya overpower him with ease. As you have seen already, Glaedr alone is strong enough to shift a pile of rubble that weighs many tons with absolute ease. And Glaedr is only one of the Eldunarya, and not even close to being the strongest. Jace's bones will snap like twigs.

How would it be stopped by shields? It directly attacks the bone, with no external force. There's nothing to block here. The only thing that can block this kind of spell is a ward that protects him from being attacked by magic (like the one that the soldiers that Eragon sent backwards with a gust of air had), and Jace doesn't have that kind of ward. Eragon will know it once he senses Jace's mind, and there would be no reason for him not to use this spell.

If Jace can recover from this then what ever wounds Eragon might inflict with his magic are easily within his capabilities to heal.

Well, there's no healing a broken neck unless Jace can use magic after he's already dead.

He's done it twice. First is when Tezzeret was training him and attempting to push Jace beyond his limits, Jace was forced to bust it out for the first time even though he'd never summoned a creature so powerful before. Second is during a serious fight against Tezzeret where both mages were trying to kill each other.

OK, so first was as part of a test and second was when Jace fought his arch nemesis... why would the third be against someone Jace has never even heard of?

From what I understand about Eragon's wards they withstand damage up until the point that Eragon can't take anymore, and then he dies.

Yeah, but Jace can't dish out enough damage.

Remember, Eragon's wards withstood a blast that was triggered from within a citadel, toppled in completely in a radius of over a quarter mile, and created fires all around the city around it. And Eragon was not warding only himself, but also 6 other people and 2 dragons, the smaller of which (Saphira) is the size of a house and the larger one (Thorn) being about 3 times as large as her. So no, Jace can't dish out near enough damage to make Eragon even sweat, let alone die from the output of energy. You are really, really, really underestimating the power of the Eldunarya.

Wards might protect you from a drakes attack, a sphinxs attack, or a physical illusions attack individually but the wards rely on Eragon's physical body. These individual attacks are going to take a toll over the course of a battle, and many of these attacks are very powerful.

None of these attacks are even a fraction of what the wards can take with the power of the Eldunarya fueling them.

Remember Jace's drake who could generate heat that Baltrice would have trouble matching? That's going to hurt.

Remember Eragon being only somewhat annoyed by Thorn's fire-breath, even without the Eldunarya? Or, y'know, that explosion?

Claws that cut through iron as easily as flesh? That's powerful.

Remember Eragon barely even noticing a javelin fired from a ballista even without the Eldunarya?

Breath that instantly freezes solid groups of soldiers down to there very bones? Another powerful attack.

Cold is nothing new to Eragon:

Eragon protected himself against the freezing temperatures by wearing several layers of clothes and by shielding himself from the wind with a spell that split the stream of freezing air so it flowed harmlessly to either side.

Brisingr

And:

From the Varden's camp by the banks of Leona Lake, Saphira set out across the broad expanse of water, angling northwest and climbing so high that Eragon had to use a spell to shield himself from the cold.

Inheritance

As well as:

Eragon, you must amend the spell you are using to warm yourself to include Saphira and me. It is going to grow cold, colder than even the bitterest winter in the Spine, and without magic, we shall freeze to death.

Even you?

I will crack like a piece of hot glass dropped in snow. Next you must cast a spell to gather the air around you and Saphira and to hold it there, so you may still breathe. But it must also allow the stale air to escape, or else you will suffocate. The wording of the spell is complicated, and you must not make any mistakes, so listen carefully. It goes as such----

Once Glaedr had recited the necessary phrases in the ancient language, Eragon repeated them back to him, and when the dragon was satisfied with his pronunciation, Eragon cast the spell. Then he amended his other piece of magic as Glaedr had instructed, so the three of them were shielded from the cold.

Inheritance

Freeze-breath is not gonna work.

Strength enough to toss Tezzeret around like a ragdoll, even though his physical body is more durable than diamond and he has super strength? Again, very powerful.

THAT BLAST.

Yes, Eragon's wards will protect him from any one attack that Jace can conjure up, but they won't protect him forever.

They will protect him for very, very damn long though. Jace's only hope in even engaging Eragon is telepathy and he is severely outmatched there as well.

All of these points are all fine and dandy, however, Eragon isn't fighting a sphinx one on one then a drake one on one then another, no, hes fighting all of them at once.

Remember Jace summoned the sphinx and two drakes in one go...

Three creatures, one of which not even being in-character for Jace to summon so that's two creatures, are morning workout for Eragon. He's one-shotted twenty Urgals without breaking a sweat as a novice with magic,

Eragon is going to have to divide his attention between fighting a sphinx, telepathically assaulting two drakes like you said would be his natural reaction (or fighting them physically if that's what he chooses) and defending against Jace who will be hurling illusions, TK, or TP his direction.

Underlined is one point you keep bringing up and is inherently false. Eragon doesn't have to divide anything. Eragon has 133 minds. He can battle hundreds of foes at once. Are you forgetting that Eragon alone has contained the mind of Varaug who was for all intents and purposes many different beings coiled into one body? Are you forgetting that Eragon constantly blitzes through groups of enemies, even unarmed, with his bare fists? Are you forgetting that Eragon as a novice one-shotted 20 Urgals? All of the above is with no Eldunarya. The Eldunarya themselves can handle hundreds of enemies as well. When Eragon fought Galbatorix, which was his first fight alongside the Eldunarya (and the only one so far, at least until the 5th book comes out), it was stated that Galbatorix had even more Eldunarya that Eragon had, most of them Glaedr's size or larger even, and the two "teams" fought for a very long time with no victor:

Enraged by how easily the king had caught them, Eragon joined his mind with the Eldunarí as they battered at Galbatorix’s consciousness. He felt a vast number of minds opposing them—dragons all, who crooned and babbled and shrieked in a mad, disjointed chorus that contained such pain and sorrow, Eragon wanted to pull himself away lest they drag him down into their insanity. They were strong too, as if most of them had been Glaedr’s size or larger.

The opposing dragons made it impossible to attack Galbatorix directly. Every time Eragon thought he felt the touch of the king’s thoughts, one of the enslaved dragons would throw itself at Eragon’s mind and—gibbering all the while—force him to retreat. Fighting the dragons was difficult on account of their wild and incoherent thoughts; subduing any one of them was like trying to hold down a rabid wolf. And there were so many of them, far more than the Riders had hidden in the Vault of Souls.

Inheritance

And I don't need to tell you how strong Glaedr is. So unless Jace can summon a few hundreds of drakes and other creatures, most of which as strong as Glaedr or even stronger, then he can't really do anything that Eragon has not already encountered.

Through out all of this there is no way that Eragon isn't going to take a fair share of hits which will widdle down his wards.

Again, and for the last time - you are underestimating the wards and the Eldunarya that fuel them.

Should Eragon take control of one or more of Jace's summon, he will simply dismiss them back across the aether. They won't be serving Eragon in this battle.

OK, same effect achieved.

That is very powerful. However Jace has withstood direct attacks from Chandra who has leveled a massive cathedral like building and one shot 40 foot waves with ease. His magical shields have also withstood direct blasts from her, and he can dissipate her attacks with disinterest. And you have conveniently forgotten that Jace has taken direct hits from Ob Nixilis who is out right stated as being stronger than Gidion Jura, who single handed held back Ulamog from advancing. This freaking guy!

You seem to be misunderstanding. I was not equating Eragon's defense to Jace's defense, I was comparing Eragon's defense to Jace's offense, to prove the point that Jace cannot dish out enough damage to even make Eragon sweat, and, well, you have not disproved that.

But since you want to compare defenses, then let's see what we have here.

First of all, Chandra's blast only took out one wall of the cathedral, that was also stated to be "more precarious than it looked", and that made the cathedral cave in. It did not level the entire building and create fires all around the city around it like Galbatorix's suicide spell. Glaedr alone could shift an entire collapsed wall with ease, while Chandra was "calling on all of her power, on everything she had left" to achieve a similar effect. And Jace was injured by it. While Eragon, plus 6 other people and 2 goddamn dragons, were completely unscathed by an explosion SO much more powerful than that.

40 foot waves < more than a quarter mile in each direction.

And being injured by a very strong guy is not as impressive as surviving that expllllllllll... you know what I'm getting tired of talking about that explosion.

I think that wild claim is proof why exactly fan calcs are throbbing cancer. The blast you described leveled a quarter mile, light nearby houses on fire, and blew the roofs off nearby buildings. A respectable and powerful explosion in its own right, but 2 TSAR bombs? Do you even know what a TSAR bomb is? These are nukes, not even on the level of a TSAR which is bigger...

As I said, I'm not putting much weight on that fan calc (although the author, Christopher Paolini, acknowledged the calc and didn't discard it). I don't buy it's really equal to a Tsar Bomba, maybe to a smaller bomb like "Little Boy" that was dropped on Hiroshima. Anyway, that doesn't matter. We do know that it was a VERY powerful blast, and it's far more than anything that Jace had ever dished out or withstood. Conclusion: Eragon's defenses are more than enough to withstand Jace's attacks, and are more powerful than Jace's own defenses.

By the way, it WAS a nuclear blast. Confirmed by Paolini, pretty much:

@1889Lb: Do you have a specific mechanism for how Galbatorix’s last spell sickens people?

Christopher: Radiation. He basically went critical.

Source here.

Fair enough Eragon has the better raw survivability, but Jace has respectable raw survivability and two extra layers of defense (shields and counter magic).

And remember that one of Jace's drakes produced heat that even Baltrice would have trouble matching? And remember how I showed Baltrice calling a massive fireball from the sky, summoning an elemental to fight the defenders of the town, and leave a massive path of fire and destruction through out village?

Jace isn't lacking for powerful attacks.

No, Jace isn't lacking in powerful attacks. But him trying to attack Eragon's wards is like trying to break a concrete wall with a paintball gun. Not lowballing or doubting Jace's power, but Eragon's defenses are just very simply THAT good. And it's not just Eragon; it's 6 other humans/elves and 2 more dragons. It's like Eragon withstanding this very blast 7 times even without counting the dragons. Counting the dragons would make it like... 50 times? I don't know, but bottom line is, Jace can't do jack to Eragon.

Telepathy:

Yea. Bolas was only giving Jace part of his attention because he was having a long winded political debate with Tezzeret at the same time as he was assaulting Jace. However, Bolas has a super genius level intellect and has very unique minds. No that wasn't a type. Dragons have extra brain matter located at certain parts throughout their body, giving them an unrivaled multitasking ability. Bolas mastered this ability to its absolute fullest and has subsidiary brains in addition to his main one.

So Bolas can multitask with his brain and 2 extra psuedo-brains...?

Try 133 independent minds. And Bolas has... 3.

Knowing this information about Bolas makes Jaces feat that much more impressive. Yes Bolas was multitasking by talking casually to Tezzeret while assaulting Jaces mind, but Bolas has extra brain matter that he has organized into subminds which he can use for crazy multitasking. And simply having a conversation while unleashing a mental assault isn't even that complex when it comes to what Bolas is shown capable of.

Long story short is Bolas has extra anatomy to allow him to multitask. Bolas only had to split his concentration two ways which isn't even complex for him. One of the things Bolas was doing was having a casual conversation which wouldn't even take much concentration. This would leave Bolas to levy a very large amount of his power against Jace, even if it wasn't his full attention.

Yes, it is impressive. But not even close, not even REMOTELY close, to dealing with 133 different minds. Heck, just listening to the Eldunarya whispering among themselves can overwhelm even centuries-old, powerful elves such as Arya:

A moment later, the sound of whispering voices seemed to fill the air, and Eragon felt the presence of Umaroth and the other hidden dragons surround them. The elves staggered, and Arya dropped to one knee, pressing a hand to the side of her head as if she had been struck. Orik uttered a cry and looked about, wild-eyed, while Roran, Jörmundur, and Orrin stood dumbfounded.

Inheritance

Now imagine what it's like when they attack you.

Yea? Jace was protecting his own mind and the mind of Tezzeret meaning he was doing twice the amount of effort as usual. This isn't a strike against Jace.

OK, fair enough.

Even for a short time like that is very impressive. An entire greek pantheon of literal gods might not be enough to stop Bolas.

Here is Kruphix, the god of insight and often displayed as being the most powerful god of Theros talking about the Eldrazi, Bolas, and Phryxians, and how the entire pantheon might not be able to stop one of these threats if it came to Theros.

Think that's far fetched? Bolas has shown absolute superiority to gods already. Bolas showed up to Ahmonkhet one day and solo'd all EITGHT of the planes gods at one time. During that battle it was stated that Bolas was at least equal to all eight gods combined. Legit divine immortal GODS.

Bolas made a mockery of 8 gods and he used telepathy to destroy the minds of three of them. Here Bolas breaks the god Kefnet's mind in two simply by dipping his chin a little.

One shotting a single god with laughable ease isn't enough for Bolas though, and so he one shots the minds of two gods at the same time with the swipe of a claw

OK. You seem to put a lot of weight on Bolas defeating those "gods". But let's look at it from an objective point of view.

Thor is a god. Wonder Woman is a goddess. Captain Marvel and Black Adam are powered by the pantheons of Greek and Egyptian gods respectively. Does that mean we're going to assume that they're all omnipotent, or nigh-omnipotent, or anything of the sort? No, of course not, and therefore there's no reason to assume that those "gods" have better telepathic defense than, say... a rabbit. Unless they have proper feats, that is. Do those gods that Bolas fodderized have any telepathic resistance feats? Because if so, you have not posted them, which is too bad. Mentioning that they are :literal gods" is mighty fine, but it does not tell us anything on how potent their minds are. Therefore Bolas defeating them is irrelevant.

But honestly that's not all Bolas did on Ahmonkhet. He laughed when the gods attacks landed, dissolved their attacks by glaring at them, dissipated all the adults in an entire city out of existence, warped the leylines of the plane itself, and changed the trajectory of a sun. Damn! That just goes to show how much raw power this guy has.

Still doesn't say anything on his telepathic capabilities, although that is impressive.

The point of displaying that fight was to show his overall raw power by killing a character who posses so much magical power that after his body has been dead and rotting for so long that the only thing left is a skeleton, his bones still have enough magical power to shred people to pieces simply by getting too close.

But it wasn't even him. It was the dragons, and it's not even Bolas who controlled them.

Bolas didn't do anything there except for surviving.

The spell only effected dragons, and Sarkhan is a planeswalker who's power is to transform from a human into a dragon. He was effected by this spell but avoided its effects by reverting back into human form. None of the other dragons has this ability and so they all would have been effected by the spell.

Fair enough.

So lets recap. Bolas is feared by an entire greek style pantheon of gods who think that they might be screwed if Bolas ever showed up to Theros, and their fear is justified because Bolas made a mockery of the 8 gods of Ahmonkhet all at one time, fractured one of their minds with a dip of his chin, whiped two other gods minds with a single pulse of magic, dissipated all the adults from a city out of existence, warped the very leylines of Ahmonkhet itself, and changed the trajectory of a sun all in one after noon. But he's also beaten in direct confrontation the spirit dragon Ugin who has so much magical power that after his body has become a skeleton it still has enough power to rip people to pieces simply by getting too close to his rotting corpse.

Yeah, sure, let's recap:

• Bolas has tons of confirmed magical power.
• Bolas' only telepathic feats are against 3 people who have no feats of telepathy themselves and their only claim to fame is that they are supposed to be "gods".
• Bolas has fought another powerful dragon, that was killed when Yasova commanded other dragons to attack him as well.
• Bolas, with only part of his power, attacked Jace and outright fodderized him.
• Eragon as a novice has dealt with Durza - a being who has had the telepathic power to control an army of thousands. He held him off for a lot longer than Jace has held Bolas, and even gained the upper hand for a while.
• Eragon, after being better trained, fought pretty evenly with Varaug, who was even more powerful than Durza.
• Eragon has the Eldunarya, 132 minds of dragons, most if not all of them more powerful than Eragon himself.

By hype, Bolas is more powerful than Durza, sure. By feats, though? Real, calculable feats? Durza is leagues more powerful, and in turn Eragon is more powerful than Jace.

And here is the big whammy on top of all of this. Bolas caught Jace Beleren off guard. He used a telepathic conversation, droning on about things Jace didn't know about and used it as a diversion to suddenly attack him telepathically while he was distracted.

While it does add volume to Jace's feat... it still doesn't hold up to Eragon. At all.

Firstly you straight up concede that Durza is more powerful than Eragon. Secondly, influencing an army is not on the same level as shattering the mind of a god simply by dipping your chin a little.

Yeah, Durza was more powerful than Eragon at the time, and yeah Durza would also beat Jace.

And again, what has this "god" done to suggest he is any more resistant to telepathy than a rabbit?

Jace's feat against Bolas was in Agents of Artifice, one of Jaces earliest sources and since then he has been stated as growing more powerful.

Fair enough. But I doubt his development was as significant as Eragon, even without the Eldunarya. Eragon has not only trained and gained new experience and learned new techniques, he has literally been amped to be equal to an elf in all aspects.

None of them are as powerful as Bolas.

I beg to differ.

"Just an instant- precious little time" against a guy who laughs at gods and one shots them with little effort using TP.

You can keep saying that they're gods all you want. Doesn't make it any more impressive.

I agree with this point here. But I was never trying to claim that Jace could levy all of his personalities at once. My point was that his minds state would make him much harder too combat. Should Eragon get inside his head for even a small amount of time to mind read then the likelihood of him learning anything useful about Jace is extremely low because of the state of his damaged mind. Also Eragon is going to have to go to much greater lengths to do any significant damage to his mind because it is already broken beyond repair so breaking it more isn't much of a threat. Thirdly is that Jace can erase and or rearrange information and memories. Should Eragon get a foothold in Jace's mind he could just delete that part of his mind without little thought to the consequences. Fourth is the shock value. If Eragon gets inside Jace's head expecting it to be normal and finds the clusterf*ck, it would be unsettling and surprising.

Why should Eragon try and learn anything useful about Jace? What does he care, he's not writing a biography on him or anything, he's there to kill him, and he will do just that. Once Eragon is inside Jace's mind, it's all over. He won't try to read anything because he doesn't need to. He doesn't care about it. He will just take control of Jace, or channel a spell, or do anything of the sort. Given Jace's tendency to let people inside his mind so he could be all sneaky-sneaky and sacrifice fractions of himself in order to gain an advantage, he will likely let Eragon and the Eldunarya inside his mind, and then... bye bye. As I said, Eragon is so different, and so much above anything Jace has ever encountered, that he can't hope to match him. He won't try to "break" Jace's mind, that's not how he works. He will just take control of him. Like he did here:

Extending himself, he found the mind of a soldier who tended one of the catapults. Though he was sure the soldier was defended by some magician, Eragon was able to gain dominance over him and direct his actions from afar. He guided the man up to the weapon, which was being loaded, then had him use his sword to hack at the skein of twisted rope that powered the machine. The rope was too thick to sever before the soldier was dragged away by his comrades, but the damage was already done. With a mighty crack, the partially wound skein broke, sending the arm of the catapult flying backward and injuring several men. His lips curled in a grim smile, Eragon proceeded to the next catapult and, in short order, disabled the remainder of the engines.

Eldest

He can just as easily make Jace stab himself with the manablade, no sweat. Jace's mind will literally be besieged by 133 powerhouses. Also note how it is said that the soldier was defended by another magician, yet Eragon just literally ignored the defenses and took control of the soldier with ease.

Shock value is nothing. Eragon has encountered things far more shocking than that. Imagine him trying to telepathically assault Galbatorix and finding hundreds of Eldunarya, most of which at least as powerful as Glaedr, who are all practically rabid, standing in his way.

On the contrary Jace can afford to take damage. He has lived most of his life with a damaged mind that would leave most people destroyed, insane, or both. He is the one who has shown to be able to live functionally with a damaged mind. Eragon cannot say the same. If Eragon get's inside Jaces head he is vulnerable and he doesn't have the feats to suggest that he has the raw power to contend with someone who held Bolas at bay for even a short time.

The difference that you seem to be either not understanding, forgetting or ignoring, is that Eragon damaging Jace's mind means he has already won. He doesn't need to break his mind piece by piece, that's not how he does things. He simply takes control and/or channels a spell, and that's it.

Intelligence:

One of the things Jace has over Eragon is his level of intelligence. Im sure Eragon is a pretty smart dude but he isn't on the level of Jace.

As a thirteen year old kid Jace was given a test that purposefully meant to be too hard for him to solve. It was meant for him to display what he knew, but no one was ever meant to pass the test. Jace got a perfect score on the test and displayed the level of knowledge as a high level supervisor when Jace was only a thirteen year old student taking a prerequisite test for a class.

OK, let's see here. In older times, before Galbatorix's revolt, new Dragon Riders were taught how to use magic with very similar "impossible tests". They were given impossible tasks, that can only be completed with magic, in order to instinctively awaken magic within them, after they have learned the proper incantations and the basics of the Ancient Language.

Eragon, however, did not go through these exams due to not living at these times. When he was yet to even know of the existence of magic, he instinctively cast a spell some Urgals:

As he faced the Urgals, images flashed in his mind: dead villagers piled around the spear and an innocent baby who would never grow to adulthood. At the thought of their fate, a burning, fiery power gathered from every part of his body. It was more than a desire for justice. It was his entire being rebelling against the fact of death----that he would cease to exist. The power grew stronger and stronger until he felt ready to burst from the contained force.

He stood tall and straight, all fear gone. He raised his bow smoothly. The Urgals laughed and lifted their shields. Eragon sighted down the shaft, as he had done hundreds of times, and aligned the arrowhead with his target. The enemy inside him burned at an unbearable level. He had to release it, or it would consume him. A word suddenly leapt unbidden to his lips. He shot, yelling, "Brisingr!"

The arrow hissed through the air, glowing with a crackling blue light. It struck the lead Urgal on the forehead, and the air resounded with an explosion. A blue shock wave blasted out of the monster's head, killing the other Urgal instantly. It reached Eragon before he had time to react, and it passed through him without harm, dissipating against the houses.

Eragon

Just like Jace instinctively knew the answers to a test he wasn't supposed to pass in the first place, Eragon did too. Only his test wasn't on a piece of paper, it was in a real, life-threatening situation.

And then there is the card Omniscience. Card art and flavor text are meant to depict and describe moments that have actually happened in the lore, so looking at the card Omniscience I was very confused for a long time because I had no idea what it was meant to display. However my conclusion from this card is that Jace has a continuously growing intellect and is on the road to achieving omniscience.

Well, Jace's intellect constantly growing is nice and all, however Eragon's knowledge is extremely vast as well.

As a novice, while still training under Brom's tutelage, Eragon started mastering magic, swordsmanship and the Ancient Language pretty quickly:

The days followed the same pattern. First, Eragon struggled to learn the ancient words and to manipulate the pebble. Then, in the evening, he trained against Brom with the fake swords. Eragon was in constant discomfort, but he gradually began to change, almost without noticing. Soon the pebble no longer wobbled when he lifted it. He mastered the first exercises Brom gave him and undertook harder ones, and his knowledge of the ancient language grew.

In their sparring, Eragon gained confidence and speed, striking like a snake. His blows became heavier, and his arm no longer trembled when he warded off attacks. The clashes lasted longer as he learned how to fend off Brom.

Eragon

In his time training under Oromis in Ellesmera, Eragon has learned and mastered many subjects in a relatively short amount of time:

When not with Oromis, Eragon supplemented his education by reading the many scrolls the elf gave him, a habit he soon became addicted to. Eragon's reading----limited as it was by Garrow's scant tutelage----had exposed him only to the knowledge needed to run a farm. The information he discovered on the miles of paper flooded into him like rain on parched desert, sating a previously unknown thirst. He devoured texts on geography, biology, anatomy, philosophy, and mathematics, as well as memoirs, biographers, and histories. More important than mere facts was his introduction to alternative ways of thinking. They challenged his beliefs and forced him to reexamine his assumptions about everything from the rights of an individual within society to what caused the sun to move across the sky.

Eldest

And that's all in addition to the lessons on magic, swordsmanship, survival, telepathy, history of the Dragon Riders and so much more that Oromis taught him as part of his formal training.

In fact, Christopher Paolini had stated that in terms of magic, Eragon knows just about everything there is to know with very few exceptions:

And despite being only 18 years old, Eragon has the knowledge and wisdom of the dragons, many of them are thousands of years old:

As they flew, the dragons had, through Umaroth, poured memory after memory into Eragon and Saphira: a cascade of experiences—battles won and battles lost, loves, hates, spells, events witnessed throughout the land, regrets, realizations, and ponderings concerning the workings of the world. The dragons possessed thousands of years of knowledge, and they seemed driven to share every last bit.

Inheritance

So I don't think that Jace has any real advantage on Eragon in the intelligence department,

Clearly Jace is extremely intelligent and he uses this intelligence to quickly grasp understanding of magic, how it works, and how to replicate it.

After watching a Dimir mage cast a spell that allowed him to phase through solid rock just once, Jace believes that he is able to replicate that power on the spot.

Using this intellect there is a much higher chance of Jace gaining an understanding of Eragon's magic system and how it works than there is of Eragon being able to figure out how Jace's magic system works. Even if Eragon figures out that Jace draws mana from sources of water he wouldn't be able to figure out that Jace is connected to other sources of mana on different planes of existence. He wouldn't be able to figure out the meaning of the planeswalker spark, what it means and what it can do. Jace however would be able to decipher the connection between Eragon's language and his spells and may even be able to gain a small understanding of the language.

That's too bold a statement in regards to someone whose best intelligence feat is being really good at math.

First of all, Eragon's magic is inherently different from anything Jace had encountered before or even heard of. Eragon is speaking Mandarin for all he knows, Jace won't have the ability to decipher the language. He will obviously understand that Eragon's magic is connected to the words he speaks, but how would he know the true connection of the Ancient Language to the entire world and the entire fabric of reality itself? How will he begin to understand the fundamentals of magic that even people who read the Inheritance Cycle sometimes don't understand completely? It's a principle that simply doesn't exist in Jace's reality, he can't begin to grasp it.

Second, what good would it do to Jace if he understands how Eragon's magic works? It's not like he can replicate it, not anyone can use that type of magic, you have to be born with the ability for it. And he won't even know what spells Eragon is trying to use because everything Eragon says is complete gibberish to Jace.

Third, why should Eragon try and understand Jace's source of magic? It won't do him any good, he won't even try doing it.

Your main disadvantage here that you keep neglecting:

To put it simply - you're vastly outnumbered.

Eragon, as you seem to neglect constantly, has 132 minds working in unison with him. That is key here.

Jace has never faced so many enemies at once. Even if Nicol Bolas is more powerful than any of the Eldunarya individually, that's still comparing a lion to 133 rottweilers. You seem to be questioning Eragon's multi-tasking constantly, but never once have you presented a feat of Jace contending with over 130 minds attacking him, attacking his illusions and summons, magic constantly being hurled at him in all shapes and sizes that he never even heard of, and a superhuman charging at him with incredible speed and the strength to match, all the while none of his little pets being able to even scratch the surface of his armor due to wards that have stopped the worth of a few dozen near-city-level explosions. You put forth feat after feat of Jace in each category but you don't consider the simple fact that doing all these things together is not something that he can do, while Eragon absolutely can with the aid of 132 dragons' minds as backup.

You keep saying that Jace will spam illusions and summons, however we have only seen him summon up to 3 creatures simultaneously, while Eragon has been constantly fodderizing and one-shotting far larger groups of enemies, even without the Eldunarya. And Jace is supposed to summon dozens and dozens of creatures which he never does, while spamming illusions, engaging in telepathy, using shields and counter magic, and avoid being cut in half by a superhuman warrior with a magic sword, all at the same time? When has he ever done any two of those things together, much less all of them?

Jace will be overwhelmed. Even if he can contend with Eragon and the Eldunarya telepathically - he will have to do it while defending himself from offensive magic of all shapes and sizes. Even if he can protect himself from offensive magic - he will have to do it while his mind is being besieged by 133 powerful telepaths. And you want to tell me he can not only do that, but also spam illusions and summons at the same time? Dude... this is how Jace will feel in this battle:

Summary:

• Jace's counter-magic and magical shields have never protected him from instantaneous internal attacks such as bone breaking. These are attacks that don't have to get past the shields; they are already there.
• Jace has never encountered a magic-user as hax and versatile as Eragon. He will not expect Eragon's array of powers to be so diverse, and he will not expect his ability to use his powers so creatively and in such unison.
• Neither Jace nor his illusions and summons have ever dished out the amount of damage that Eragon's wards had taken.
• Eragon casually blitzes through large groups of enemies, in numbers that Jace hasn't come close to summoning in any of his showings. Should Eragon decide to close the distance to Jace - and there's no reason why he won't - Jace is screwed.
• Eragon, with the power of the Eldunarya, can dish out enormous amounts of damage. Jace has great durability, but even a fraction of Glaedr's power alone can match the effect that took all of Chandra's power to create - and that alone injured Jace. Remember, that is a fraction of Glaedr's power alone, and Glaedr is one among many, and is not even the strongest.
• Eragon has located people with his mind despite them shielding themselves, or being shielded by others. And rabbits too.
• Jace's best telepathic feat is withstanding Nicol Bolas's telepathic assault for less than a second. Nicol Bolas's best telepathic feat is fodderizing gods. These gods' best telepathic feat is, oh wait... they have none.
• Among Eragon's best telepathic feats is, as a novice, he was holding off Durza, a being that mind-controlled an army of thousands, and even gaining the upper hand for a while. And there are other good feats too.
• Jace will allow Eragon into his mind, which will be his undoing. He doesn't know how Eragon works, and Eragon works inherently different from Jace and anything he has encountered. Once Eragon is inside, it's all over.
• Eragon, being only one among 133 minds, has the ability to multi-task, and attack on many different fronts simultaneously. While Jace might be able to contend with Eragon for a while in each front individually, and I don't think that he can - he will be quickly overwhelmed by the need to protect himself from spells, from telepathy, and from a direct melee attack, while trying to spam summons (which he never does) and illusions, and even trying to attack telepathically while being besieged by over 130 independent minds.

Your move. Last post, make it count!

@banthabot Post is up.

@banthabot By the way, there's an Easter Egg in that post, let's see if you can find it =P

@the_red_viper: what was the Easter egg? I wasn't able to find it

@banthabot: Lol, try looking on mobile, it's a bit easier to see on mobile.

@the_red_viper: I still haven't figured it out

@banthabot: Lol. Look around one of the times where I mention rabbits, that's all I'm gonna give you!

@the_red_viper: I give up lol

@banthabot: WELL TOO BAD!!!

Maybe I'll tell you after the debate is over lol.

@the_red_viper: unless something unexpected happens my post should be up tonight

@the_red_viper: I got most of it done.

Final Round

Counters

That's all well and good, but Chandra doesn't seem near as fast as Eragon. As you have already seen, Eragon can operate at the speed of thought, he can attack 20 times in one second, he can both attack and defend faster than human or elf eyes can see, and casually catch and block arrows from close range. Hair-trigger speed is like slow-mo for him.

Hair trigger speed and having the physicals to keep up with creatures that move in blurs. So yea she is pretty fast. And the point wasn't to claim that Jace is faster than Eragon, only to prove that he too has a ver nice level of super human reaction and combat speed.

It is explicitly mentioned that she paused. Not too impressive really. Nothing to suggest that Jace can react to beams of energy and such that Eragon can unleash at the speed of thought.

Sure you can try and debunk this single instance of Jace reacting to Chandra but throughout this debate I have provided several other instances of Jace reacting to her spells. Jace is fast enough to react to and raise his magical defenses against Chandra Nalaar who unleashes spells at "hair trigger" speed and can compete with massively blur level creatures.

That is nice, however we don't know how accurate that lightning was. Jace could have just "aim dodged", so to speak.

Do you have evidence of this being aim dodging or are you just making this up? The text explicitly states that Jace moved out of the way before it hit the ground.

A bolt of lightning crashed from the storm to the ground, impacting just after Jace darted to one side, but the force of its shock wave blasted him from his feet.

-Magic the Gathering: Dragon's Maze

Also the idea of "aim dodging" is that you see where a projectile weapon is being aimed and move out of the way before the projectile is released. This works with things like guns and bow and arrow because they can only release projectiles from their barrels/shaft. However you can't "aim dodge" a storm cloud.

A cloud can release lightning from any part of it at any point in time, so you can't tell where it is "aiming" until after the lightning is released from the cloud. And at that point you aren't "aim dodging" anymore, you are just reacting to lightning.

That being said I understand that you are trying to say that Ral might just be inaccurate with his lightning strikes, but literally nothing about the text implies that he was anything but accurate. Jace was going to be hit by the lightning but moved out of the way before it could hit him. Unless you have evidence of Ral being inaccurate with his lightning strikes then that argument is nothing more than a desperate attempt to claim that Jace isn't a lightning bolt timer.

Nothing to suggest that Jace can react to beams of energy and such that Eragon can unleash at the speed of thought.

And Eragon has the speed to beat elves in a fight:

As you can see, Eragon and Vanir both dueled in such speeds, that they created gusts of wind which shook nearby trees. The guy can fight as fast as an industrial fan pretty much.

Also:

That was Eragon before he received the amp that made him superhuman, and was just a novice (although he was very skilled already and in great shape for a human). He reacts to Arya (also an elf) who is described to fight at supernatural speeds. The context however is important: this fight took place shortly after Arya woke from a months-long coma, so she was not even close to her peak performance. So what we have here, is a weakened elf stomping a near-peak human. That's just to show you how dangerous elves really are. And as you have seen, after receiving his amp, Eragon defeated an elf. Chandra would be fodder to him.

You seem to be operating under the notion that Jace wouldn't be able to keep up with Eragon in combat. Eragon is fast...very fast...but he isn't so fast that he is out of Jaces league. If keeping up with Chandra who has vampire level speed and hair trigger speed when releasing spells doesn't convince you that Jace is fast enough then dodging lightning certainly should. Jace is extremely fast too. He will be reacting just fine too Eragon. You don't need the speed advantage to be able to keep up with someone in combat and nothing that you provided even remotely suggests that Eragon can blitz a lightning timer.

He doesn't have the prep to do it before the fight, and if he tries to do it as the fight starts he will be left open for an attack, either telepathic, magical or physical. By the description you provided, it sounds like a process that takes time, so bad idea for Jace to try that.

Nothing about the quote suggests that it took longer than maybe a few seconds. And its not like something he can only do in the beginning of the battle. If there is a break in combat for a short amount of time Jace can easily layer on the shields then. He isn't going to jeopardize himself just to raise magical shields. Point is Jace isn't limited to just one shield, and if he gets the chance and sees the need to do it he can go bat-s**t crazy layering himself in a bunch of magical shields.

That being said, since you mentioned that both combatants are only aware that they are facing a powerful magician, that also works in favor of Eragon. The mages that Jace usually faces are very straightforward and element-oriented. Chandra is a pyromancer, Ral Zarek is a storm-mage, Tezzeret is a metal-mage, etc. Jace has never encountered and will never expect a magic user as hax and diverse as Eragon and will not understand what the hell he's up against. On the other hand, Eragon has encountered legit reality warpers (and is a reality warper himself), there's nothing, and I mean nothing that Jace can do that Eragon hasn't encountered already.

This statement is wildly inaccurate. While MTG sure has an abundant population of mages who stick only to a single type of magic and don't branch out from their, *cough* Chandra *cough* it also has mages who are extremely diverse.

In fact one of the most influential characters throughout Jaces life is an extremely complex mage with lots of diversity. That is the Tezzeret.

Sure his main thing is metal manipulation, but he also has telepathy, pyromancy, necromancy, illusions, geomancy, electromancy, shadow manipulation, counter magic, energy manipulation, and summons ranging from massive metal monsters to golems made of sand.

That's a pretty diverse power set right? Well that's only the beginning of what makes him complex. Hes replaced most of his body with the magical super metal Etherium. Etherium exists simultaneously in the real world and in the Blind Eternities at the same time and draws power directly from the Blind Eternties. This gives Tezzeret nearly inexhaustible amount of mana reserves because he is pulling mana directly from the Blind Eternities instead of the land. Okay so its getting more complex.

He is also a master of preparation with a genius level intellect and is one of the greatest inventers of artifacts in the multiverse. This means that when Tezzeret has time to prepare (especially if he has access to even a little bit of Etherium) he can pretty much pull any absurd trick out of left field that he wants. Like the Rennometer which is the decapitated head of a mage with unrivaled skill at clockworking, which is like time manipulation on steroids. Tezzeret built a cage around his head out of Etherium, keeping him alive but asleep, and allowing him to control over his brain to wield the powers of this mage. He effectively turned a severed head into his own personal time manipulating device.

I could go on but this was just to prove that Jace has faced mages with extreme diversity and complexity who have a ton of tricks up their sleeves. He hasn't just faced straight forward mages like Chandra who can do fire, fire and more fire, with a little bit of lava thrown into the mix.

But it gets worse because he is also familiar with magic systems similar to Eragons own. Jace has met the planeswalker Tamiyo and the two of them opened themselves telepathically to each other, giving each other intimate knowledge about each other. Tamiyo's magic is also linked to her words just like Eragons, although its a little different. Tamiyo reads a story off of a scroll and each story could have a different effect. Like say she reads a story about an elf sneaking past a giant, then that story would translate into a spell that grants stealth.

So in fact Jace has encountered mages just as complex as Eragon and has intimate knowledge about a mage who's spells are linked to her words, so Eragon really isn't as far out their as you seem to believe.

That was just meant to show you that Eragon can pinpoint someone's location by sensing their mind. Not equating the rabbits to a skilled telepath, but it's the most straightforward and clearly worded example of Eragon pinpointing someone's location with telepathy.

Since you asked:

The answer is yes.

None of those telepaths are as powerful or as skilled as Jace, so all that you have proven is that he can locate lesser minds. Still its a step up from rabbits.

As you can see, an enemy magician protects the minds of soldiers. Eragon locates them even though they are still protected, kills the magician, and then kills them.

Uh no. Eragon did not locate the minds of any of the protected soldiers while they were being sheltered. He only located the mage, killed the made, then located the soldiers.

Bringing the full power of his will to bear, Eragon demolished the magician's resistance, took control of his consciousness----doing his best to ignore the man's terror----determined which troops the man was guarding, and slew the man with one of the twelve words of death. Without pause, Eragon located the minds of each of the now-unprotected soldiers and killed them as well.

If you read your very own quote it states that the minds of the soldiers were now unprotected when he located them.

Not stronger than Eragon. Here's what Eragon can do with only his fists:

He literally punches armored men a dozen feet across, denting their armor and caving their chests in. He killed a man with a punch to the armpit, and snapped peoples' SPINES by twisting them hard enough.

Fair enough

That is very nice, except magical resistance is inherently different from physical resistance. It was clearly and explicitly stated that the illusion burst into shards of glass, nothing about it implies that this glass was somehow magical. Garruk bleeds when he is cut but he has magic resistance. Mighty fine for him, but doesn't help your case.

Except Garruk is a man who was literally raised by wild animals. He was never received formal training in the arts of magic and therefore never developed methods or spells to resist magical attacks. It all falls under his raw durability. I can't bring up new feats but he does have great feats of resistance to physical trauma as well. This magical attack just happened to be the most powerful attack he's tanked.

OK, they are welcome to keep coming, it's not like Eragon hasn't mowed his way through armies before. He will get to Jace quickly enough, and kill him.

Armies is exactly what Jace is capable of producing with illusions, but unlike regular armies illusions are replaceable.

Or he could just evade them by running with his superhuman speed toward Jace and finish him off, or he can do this cool trick:

Did you forget that Jace can fly too? Or burrow through the ground rapidly? Jace has ways of rapidly covering ground too, including teleportation.

Eragon isn't limited in mobility like Garruk, and he isn't stupid. If he will see that the illusions hard-press him, he will just avoid them altogether, simple as that.

Garruk isn't limited in mobility either, nor is he stupid. Garruk has plant manipulation which he can uses to call vines to carry him around, and he is one of the more experienced characters in planeswalker to planeswalker combat. He isn't a dumb immobile brute. Hes a powerful mage who can levy the power of feral breasts in battle.

First of all, you seem to be forgetting that Eragon is not alone here. He has over 130 more minds assisting him, most if not all of them more powerful than his own mind. Multi-tasking is not a problem. Eragon can really just focus on fighting off illusions and let the Eldunarya find Jace and liquefy his mind. He is simply inherently different and outright superior to anything Jace has faced so far. What's more is that if Eragon sees he doesn't know where the real Jace is, then he will just expand his consciousness until he finds him:

And you seem to be forgetting that Jace can hind his mind from detection and is much more skilled and powerful than any mage Eragon has been able to locate, so expanding his consciousness most likely isn't going to end up with Eragon locating Jace.

You seem to be misunderstanding. I was suggesting Eragon running toward Jace, not away from him. Jace will be more hard-pressed by this, it will certainly not give him any respite.

Jace can fly, burrow, or teleport away if Eragon tries to close the distance with super speed.

Dude, you have already seen that Eragon has defeated elves and has blitzed squads of soldiers with absolute ease. Jace wouldn't last 5 seconds against him in a melee. Even if he manages to sneak his knife in with an illusion or something, it will not get past Eragon's wards:

You again miss the point. Im not claiming that Jace will out right beat Eragon in close quarters combat, obviously that's Eragon's game. But Jace isn't completely defenseless in cqc and is capable of using some tricks to prevent himself from being completely stomped right away and will find a way to get out of range.

Those were just 3 examples given to us by the narration for energies that Eragon excels at, he is not limited to them. He has shown expertise in tons of other energies as well as you have seen, such as light, electricity, gravity and kinetic energy.

These are all things that Jace can deal with. He himself wields light in the form of illusions, electricity, and has kinetic energy in the form of TK.

That's nice, but it still won't help him if Eragon decides to blind him. This magic works like some intangible blindfold, it renders any sort of eyesight completely useless.

The quote you provided does not hint at this at all, and infact it makes it sound like it simply prevents light from reaching the eyes by turning the eyes into mirrors. That would simply stop normal vision and your quote doesn't imply that it stops any sort of magical vision.

Not only will this drake be easily killed, it will also give away Jace's location when it sits on his shoulder, so he's welcome to summon it.

Jace can easily encompass his telepathic, invisibility, and magical shield magics to encompass that of a rat sized drake. He can turn the entire Gatewatch invisible, he can surely prevent a small rat sized drake form being detected both visually and mentally.

It won't move him backward, it will send him flying backward. His durability is mighty fine, but he doesn't weigh any more than the group of people that Eragon sent flying backwards and he doesn't have good enough poise to withstand that. So while he might remain uninjured, he will still be sent backwards, helpless and open for a finishing blow, not to mention it will probably shock him so his mind will be an easy target for telepathy.

Jace has been hit with far worse attacks than this without being shocked so that is far fetched. And how exactly with Eragon land a finishing blow when Jace is flying away from him? Also magical shields would protect him from this attack in the first place so that's only if the attack lands.

How does he disperse being buried under rubble for example?

Counter magic dissipates the magic animating the rock. Much like when he dispersed the sea. He dispersed the magic that was animating the water and holding it together, splitting the sea in two over and over again until it was turned to mist. If Eragon tries to bury him in rubble he will disperse the magic that is animating the rubble and prevent himself from being buried in the first place.

He is more creative than me, he can do things that I can't even imagine and think of telling you. He's a master of improvising, for example when he improvised the spell that blinded the Lethrblaka.

Just like Eragon is smarter than you Jace is much smarter than me. Eragon can come up with creative ways to attack and Jace can come up with creative ways to defend. After all Jace is the character that is on the path towards achieving omnipotence.

How would it be stopped by shields? It directly attacks the bone, with no external force. There's nothing to block here. The only thing that can block this kind of spell is a ward that protects him from being attacked by magic (like the one that the soldiers that Eragon sent backwards with a gust of air had), and Jace doesn't have that kind of ward. Eragon will know it once he senses Jace's mind, and there would be no reason for him not to use this spell.

Im pretty sure that a magical shield that prevents you from being attacked directly by magic would be a good substitute. just because they aren't from the same universe doesn't mean something from MTG wouldn't work as effectively as something from Eragon's universe.

Wards just prove that they can be defended against, and Jace's shields while different should cover that requirement quite well.

OK, so first was as part of a test and second was when Jace fought his arch nemesis... why would the third be against someone Jace has never even heard of?

Oddly enough because these are the only two instances where Jace has gone all out in a duel against another opponent. In his other one on one fights Jace has always had anterior motives for fighting them and isn't actually trying to kill them.

Even if Jace doesn't summon his Sphinx its pretty clear that he has no short supply of drakes to summon, and he could easily summon two drakes in place of the one sphinx. Or cloud elementals, phantasms, ect...

Remember Eragon being only somewhat annoyed by Thorn's fire-breath, even without the Eldunarya? Or, y'know, that explosion?

You keep downplaying Jace's drake's breath being compared to Baltrice, but it deserves way more credit than you are giving it. I posted a feat earlier where Baltrice was one shotting building's and utterly annihilating a village. This is ridiculously powerful, and the Sphinx by scaling is even more powerful than this drake.

They will protect him for very, very damn long though. Jace's only hope in even engaging Eragon is telepathy and he is severely outmatched there as well.

Three creatures, one of which not even being in-character for Jace to summon so that's two creatures, are morning workout for Eragon. He's one-shotted twenty Urgals without breaking a sweat as a novice with magic,

Three creatures and a powerful mage who has more raw power than Eragon. (I doubt even all 130 combined could deal with a sea being emptied and thrown at their face)

Underlined is one point you keep bringing up and is inherently false. Eragon doesn't have to divide anything. Eragon has 133 minds. He can battle hundreds of foes at once. Are you forgetting that Eragon alone has contained the mind of Varaug who was for all intents and purposes many different beings coiled into one body? Are you forgetting that Eragon constantly blitzes through groups of enemies, even unarmed, with his bare fists? Are you forgetting that Eragon as a novice one-shotted 20 Urgals? All of the above is with no Eldunarya. The Eldunarya themselves can handle hundreds of enemies as well. When Eragon fought Galbatorix, which was his first fight alongside the Eldunarya (and the only one so far, at least until the 5th book comes out), it was stated that Galbatorix had even more Eldunarya that Eragon had, most of them Glaedr's size or larger even, and the two "teams" fought for a very long time with no victor:

The flaw with all of your minds is that individually none of them even come close to Jace in raw power. Dissipated a sea, and held his ground against Bolas. Its not like a single mind is going to hold off Jace telepathically, while another three deal with the creatures leaving 100 some minds free to dilly dally and do nothing. Its going to take a very large amount of minds combining their efforts to even come close to matching Jace's power. Also, just because Eragon starts with 130 minds doesn't mean he will end with them. Jace has no problem destroying minds, hes like a metal smoothie maker, and none of these minds can even come close to matching him individually.

These minds are up for destruction; worse yet, mind reading, and Eragon will be loosing power while Jace is learning more and more about his opponent, his weaknesses and how to combat him. Yes some of these minds are very powerful but they aren't on the level of shutting out Nicol Bolas. Even combined Bolas would probably laugh at all 130 minds and then one shot.

As I said, I'm not putting much weight on that fan calc (although the author, Christopher Paolini, acknowledged the calc and didn't discard it). I don't buy it's really equal to a Tsar Bomba, maybe to a smaller bomb like "Little Boy" that was dropped on Hiroshima. Anyway, that doesn't matter. We do know that it was a VERY powerful blast, and it's far more than anything that Jace had ever dished out or withstood. Conclusion: Eragon's defenses are more than enough to withstand Jace's attacks, and are more powerful than Jace's own defenses.

Little Boy was a legit city buster. It didn't just level a citadel and blow the roof of nearby buildings. It leveled an entire city. A TSAR is even more powerful. Your explosion is partial city busting, nuclear is city busting, TSAR is city busting++.

In your defense that's not the worse fan calc ive ever seen. Ive read that Mace Windu can level a city with a single Force Push because of the way he Force Pushed open a metal gate in TCW. So there are worse leaps in logic out there based on mathematics, but partial city busting> TSAR is still a very big leap.

So Bolas can multitask with his brain and 2 extra psuedo-brains...?

Where are you getting the number 2? Honestly, im genuinely confused.

Try 133 independent minds. And Bolas has... 3.

First off WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THAT HE ONLY HAS TWO EXTRA BRAINS? It was never specified exactly how many brains he has and he has been shown using more than 2 in the very quotes I provided.

Secondly why are you comparing how many brains Bolas has to how many brains Eragon has. There never was a comparison being made between Bolas and Eragon. The whole "Bolas has extra brains" segment was to demonstrate that he is capable of using them for complex multitasking as it was relevant to the feat. It was to prove that Bolas is capable of doing way more complex things with his extra minds than telepathically assault someone while having a conversation, and therefore most of Bolas's power would have been brought to bare against Jace. It was never to say that Bolas is better at multitasking than Eragon or anything like that, so why are you boasting that Eragon has more minds?

Yes, it is impressive. But not even close, not even REMOTELY close, to dealing with 133 different minds. Heck, just listening to the Eldunarya whispering among themselves can overwhelm even centuries-old, powerful elves such as Arya:

Are you seriously saying that blocking out a character who has enough raw power to change the trajectory of a sun is LESS impressive than blocking out Eragon?

No influencing a sun is not a telepathic feat but it is a demonstration of raw overall power. This is relevant because 1) Bolas never does anything small time 2) Telepathy is his most used combative ability. We know how much raw power Bolas has, we know that telepathy is one of his main powers, so why in the world would his telepathy be weaker than Eragon's?

So you think that a planetary level character (probably more than that) who's main power is telepathy has worse telepathy than an at best city leveler?

City level telepaths are nothing to Bolas. He one shots their minds with curt nods. Yes I am referring to the gods of Ahmonkhet who are city level telepaths.

OK. You seem to put a lot of weight on Bolas defeating those "gods". But let's look at it from an objective point of view.

Thor is a god. Wonder Woman is a goddess. Captain Marvel and Black Adam are powered by the pantheons of Greek and Egyptian gods respectively. Does that mean we're going to assume that they're all omnipotent, or nigh-omnipotent, or anything of the sort? No, of course not, and therefore there's no reason to assume that those "gods" have better telepathic defense than, say... a rabbit. Unless they have proper feats, that is. Do those gods that Bolas fodderized have any telepathic resistance feats? Because if so, you have not posted them, which is too bad. Mentioning that they are :literal gods" is mighty fine, but it does not tell us anything on how potent their minds are. Therefore Bolas defeating them is irrelevant.

Ill go over what we know about gods of MTG because it is a lot different than any type of gods you have made an allusion to.

Gods of MTG are immortal, and divine. They are immortal in the sense that they cannot die from old age, disease, and have no need for sustenance.

They are divine in that they are the pinnacle of holy beings, even beyond that of angels.

They hear the prayers of anyone who prays to them.

They are also the embodiment of something. Such as "God of Strength" "God of Horizons" "God of Ambition"

Outside of Nicol Bolas we have only seen other gods as being able to compete evenly with gods. Even powerful planeswalkers, straight up mid tier characters like Gideon, Kiora, and Elspeth, know better than to challenge a god.

But you are questioning their telepathic ability. Well as it turns out the gods of Ahmonkhet have a passive telepathic effect on everyone around them and its been shown multiple times, including one of the quotes I provided, that when one of the gods fall the entire city of people are suddenly struck with an overwhelming feeling of loss.

Kefnet's body and wings went limp and he plummeted to the ground, crumpled and still.

The hearts of the mortals in Naktamun recoiled in immediate pain. Even those who did not witness Kefnet's fall felt panic. The gods in turn cried out for their brother, and for the loss that swept through the people of Amonkhet.

-Magic the Gathering Stoy: Hours of Revelation

These gods are atleast city level telepaths. They are certainly above the level of rabbits. And yet Bolas still one shots with casual ease.

While it does add volume to Jace's feat... it still doesn't hold up to Eragon. At all

And Bolas caught Jace off guard while Jace was sheltering not just his own mind, but two minds. Eragon could not hope to replicate this feat. This is why Jace is more powerful than all 130 minds.

Yeah, Durza was more powerful than Eragon at the time, and yeah Durza would also beat Jace.

I beg to differ.

Prove that any of your minds, even combined, could cast a spell that effects the movement of a sun and then your opinion will be justified.

Why should Eragon try and learn anything useful about Jace? What does he care, he's not writing a biography on him or anything, he's there to kill him, and he will do just that. Once Eragon is inside Jace's mind, it's all over. He won't try to read anything because he doesn't need to. He doesn't care about it. He will just take control of Jace, or channel a spell, or do anything of the sort. Given Jace's tendency to let people inside his mind so he could be all sneaky-sneaky and sacrifice fractions of himself in order to gain an advantage, he will likely let Eragon and the Eldunarya inside his mind, and then... bye bye. As I said, Eragon is so different, and so much above anything Jace has ever encountered, that he can't hope to match him. He won't try to "break" Jace's mind, that's not how he works. He will just take control of him.

He can just as easily make Jace stab himself with the manablade, no sweat. Jace's mind will literally be besieged by 133 powerhouses. Also note how it is said that the soldier was defended by another magician, yet Eragon just literally ignored the defenses and took control of the soldier with ease.

You really think that Eragon is capable of mind controlling Jace? None of his minds are powerful enough to deal with the singularly more powerful mind of Jace.

OK, let's see here. In older times, before Galbatorix's revolt, new Dragon Riders were taught how to use magic with very similar "impossible tests". They were given impossible tasks, that can only be completed with magic, in order to instinctively awaken magic within them, after they have learned the proper incantations and the basics of the Ancient Language.

Eragon, however, did not go through these exams due to not living at these times. When he was yet to even know of the existence of magic, he instinctively cast a spell some Urgals:

Jace has done the same. As a thirteen year old he was casting telepathic spells constantly. He was never taught how to spell cast, he was simply doing it through his intuition at a very young age.

Just like Jace instinctively knew the answers to a test he wasn't supposed to pass in the first place, Eragon did too. Only his test wasn't on a piece of paper, it was in a real, life-threatening situation.

Jace has done the exact same thing. Anyways that's more a showcase of being a magical prodigy than having an advanced intelligence. Jace knowing the answers to the questions is a showing of him being a genius and we know that his intellect is always expanding towards omnipotence. So Jace is even more intelligent now.

As a novice, while still training under Brom's tutelage, Eragon started mastering magic, swordsmanship and the Ancient Language pretty quickly:

In his time training under Oromis in Ellesmera, Eragon has learned and mastered many subjects in a relatively short amount of time:

And that's all in addition to the lessons on magic, swordsmanship, survival, telepathy, history of the Dragon Riders and so much more that Oromis taught him as part of his formal training.

In fact, Christopher Paolini had stated that in terms of magic, Eragon knows just about everything there is to know with very few exceptions.

Again I would attribute all of this to being a prodigy instead of extremely intelligent. Anakin Skywalker is a prodigy with the lightsaber and Force who can learn and master new techniques in a very short amount of time but I wouldn't call him a genius.

And Jace too can learn extremely quickly. Ive demonstrated that he can replicate a new spell after only seeing it been cast once.

That's too bold a statement in regards to someone whose best intelligence feat is being really good at math.

Well I am bold my friend.

First of all, Eragon's magic is inherently different from anything Jace had encountered before or even heard of.

No. Jace has intimate knowledge on the mage Tamiyo who casts spells in a very similar manner as Eragon does.

He will obviously understand that Eragon's magic is connected to the words he speaks, but how would he know the true connection of the Ancient Language to the entire world and the entire fabric of reality itself? How will he begin to understand the fundamentals of magic that even people who read the Inheritance Cycle sometimes don't understand completely? It's a principle that simply doesn't exist in Jace's reality, he can't begin to grasp it.

Jace has utilized and understood advanced concepts before. After only a short conversation with Ugin (a guy who has been studying eldrazi for thousands of years) Ugin told Jace that eldrazi are beings beyond mortal comprehension, using the analogy of a fish in a barrel with a human reaching his hand into the water. The fish sees the hand as the monster but cannot comprehend the rest of the human. Ugin didn't tell Jace that eldrazi could be killed or how to do it. Jace figured that out by himself, and with the help of the gatewatch successfully killed two eldrazi titans.

Jace shouldn't have been able to even comprehend the full existence of the eldrazi yet he was able to figure out how to kill them with only a limited knowledge on them.

Jace understanding the language isn't as far fetched as you might think, especially since Jace could mind read one of your dragon minds to get a large amount of information on it.

Conclusion

This is a battle of quality over quantity. Jace has the more powerful mind, Eragon has more minds. Just because you have more doesn't mean you have better. Jace has proven his metal against Nicol Bolas while caught off guard and protecting an extra mind. If he can do that he can beat the 133 minds of Eragon.

Jace has a counter for nearly all of Eragon's forms of attack. If he tries to attack with the elements it will get countered, if he tries to blind him he will use clairvoyance. Magical shields will block spells and other forms of damage.

Jace is extremely creative with illusions, can give them physical form, and has a plethora of different creatures he can summon to fight on his behalf.

Eragon will be a unique challenge but not one Jace couldn't over come.

@the_red_viper: Post is finally up

@banthabot: Finally. I will have my counter up tonight.

Round 4: closing arguments and summaries

Magic:

Hair trigger speed and having the physicals to keep up with creatures that move in blurs. So yea she is pretty fast. And the point wasn't to claim that Jace is faster than Eragon, only to prove that he too has a ver nice level of super human reaction and combat speed.

Yeah I got that, but what I'm saying was that Chandra is not as fast as Eragon so you can't assume that Jace will be able to react to Eragon too.

Sure you can try and debunk this single instance of Jace reacting to Chandra but throughout this debate I have provided several other instances of Jace reacting to her spells. Jace is fast enough to react to and raise his magical defenses against Chandra Nalaar who unleashes spells at "hair trigger" speed and can compete with massively blur level creatures.

You said that she unleashed the spell quickly, I pointed out that she wasn't. I'm not doubting either Chandra's speed or Jace's, I'm just making a point that Eragon is faster than either of them by a very substantial margin.

Do you have evidence of this being aim dodging or are you just making this up? The text explicitly states that Jace moved out of the way before it hit the ground.

Also the idea of "aim dodging" is that you see where a projectile weapon is being aimed and move out of the way before the projectile is released. This works with things like guns and bow and arrow because they can only release projectiles from their barrels/shaft. However you can't "aim dodge" a storm cloud.

A cloud can release lightning from any part of it at any point in time, so you can't tell where it is "aiming" until after the lightning is released from the cloud. And at that point you aren't "aim dodging" anymore, you are just reacting to lightning.

Yeah I agree and this is why I said "so to speak". I wasn't suggesting that Jace saw where the lightning was "aimed at" and moved. What I meant was that he could have just, y'know, zig-zagged away from the point where he was just standing or something to throw Ral Zarek's aim off. That's what you do when someone's shooting at you, you move away so they have a hard time hitting you, doesn't mean he legitimately reacted to lightning. The text doesn't suggest that Jace perceived the lightning bolt on its way down and moved out of its way, so you can't assume that this is what happened.

That being said I understand that you are trying to say that Ral might just be inaccurate with his lightning strikes, but literally nothing about the text implies that he was anything but accurate. Jace was going to be hit by the lightning but moved out of the way before it could hit him. Unless you have evidence of Ral being inaccurate with his lightning strikes then that argument is nothing more than a desperate attempt to claim that Jace isn't a lightning bolt timer.

No, I wasn't trying to say that Ral Zarek was inaccurate, he might well have been aiming perfectly at where Jace was just standing a moment ago, but Jace moving threw him off his aim. It's like trying to shoot at a moving target.

You seem to be operating under the notion that Jace wouldn't be able to keep up with Eragon in combat. Eragon is fast...very fast...but he isn't so fast that he is out of Jaces league. If keeping up with Chandra who has vampire level speed and hair trigger speed when releasing spells doesn't convince you that Jace is fast enough then dodging lightning certainly should. Jace is extremely fast too. He will be reacting just fine too Eragon. You don't need the speed advantage to be able to keep up with someone in combat and nothing that you provided even remotely suggests that Eragon can blitz a lightning timer.

Except Eragon is faster, more skilled in melee combat, stronger AND more durable. He has every possible advantage he can have against Jace in a melee combat, Jace has no chance of beating him. Even if he could react to a strike or two, do you really think he can last more than a second? As you have seen, Eragon can stab 20 times in one second (and strike 20 times in a second if he had a lighter blade than Brisingr), can Jace react to 20 strikes in a second? Can he react to 10? 5 even? Nothing suggests that he can, especially not when dealing with a superbly gifted swordsman who also has massive reach advantage (longsword VS dagger) as well as a huge strength advantage. I'm not even lowballing, Jace will be fodder to Eragon in a melee fight.

Nothing about the quote suggests that it took longer than maybe a few seconds.

Which is like eternity for Eragon.

And its not like something he can only do in the beginning of the battle. If there is a break in combat for a short amount of time Jace can easily layer on the shields then.

Why would there be a break?

He isn't going to jeopardize himself just to raise magical shields. Point is Jace isn't limited to just one shield, and if he gets the chance and sees the need to do it he can go bat-s**t crazy layering himself in a bunch of magical shields.

He won't get the chance though. Eragon will not give it to him.

This statement is wildly inaccurate. While MTG sure has an abundant population of mages who stick only to a single type of magic and don't branch out from their, *cough* Chandra *cough* it also has mages who are extremely diverse.

In fact one of the most influential characters throughout Jaces life is an extremely complex mage with lots of diversity. That is the Tezzeret.

Sure his main thing is metal manipulation, but he also has telepathy, pyromancy, necromancy, illusions, geomancy, electromancy, shadow manipulation, counter magic, energy manipulation, and summons ranging from massive metal monsters to golems made of sand.

That's a pretty diverse power set right? Well that's only the beginning of what makes him complex. Hes replaced most of his body with the magical super metal Etherium. Etherium exists simultaneously in the real world and in the Blind Eternities at the same time and draws power directly from the Blind Eternties. This gives Tezzeret nearly inexhaustible amount of mana reserves because he is pulling mana directly from the Blind Eternities instead of the land. Okay so its getting more complex.

He is also a master of preparation with a genius level intellect and is one of the greatest inventers of artifacts in the multiverse. This means that when Tezzeret has time to prepare (especially if he has access to even a little bit of Etherium) he can pretty much pull any absurd trick out of left field that he wants. Like the Rennometer which is the decapitated head of a mage with unrivaled skill at clockworking, which is like time manipulation on steroids. Tezzeret built a cage around his head out of Etherium, keeping him alive but asleep, and allowing him to control over his brain to wield the powers of this mage. He effectively turned a severed head into his own personal time manipulating device.

I could go on but this was just to prove that Jace has faced mages with extreme diversity and complexity who have a ton of tricks up their sleeves. He hasn't just faced straight forward mages like Chandra who can do fire, fire and more fire, with a little bit of lava thrown into the mix.

As I said, it's nothing that Eragon hasn't seen or done before. He himself draws power from an interdimensional rift where the Eldunarya are stored and has complete control over any and all elements and forms of energy if and whenever he chooses. I was reluctant to use this definition in the beginning, but you must have noticed that I mentioned Eragon is a reality warper in my last post. That's every bit the truth, really. He isn't just a matter manipulator, an elemental manipulator, or an energy manipulator. He can create, he can erase and he can alter anything he knows the word for. And on top of that, he has 132 other minds who can do everything that he can but to a much greater degree. Add to that his telepathy, his superhuman stats and his skill at swordfighting and he is, as I said, unlike anything Jace has ever heard of.

But it gets worse because he is also familiar with magic systems similar to Eragons own. Jace has met the planeswalker Tamiyo and the two of them opened themselves telepathically to each other, giving each other intimate knowledge about each other. Tamiyo's magic is also linked to her words just like Eragons, although its a little different. Tamiyo reads a story off of a scroll and each story could have a different effect. Like say she reads a story about an elf sneaking past a giant, then that story would translate into a spell that grants stealth.

So she can cast spells in a very inefficient manner. Gotcha. How does that help Jace's case here? Moreover, as you yourself said, it required Tamiyo opening the most intimate parts of her mind to Jace, something that Eragon will not do. I don't understand where you get the notion that... reading stories from scrolls in order to get magical powers... is in any way remotely close to Eragon's powers who can easily be defined as reality warping.

So in fact Jace has encountered mages just as complex as Eragon and has intimate knowledge about a mage who's spells are linked to her words, so Eragon really isn't as far out their as you seem to believe.

"Magic linked to words" is very vague. I could say that about 99% of fictional magic-based characters. Harry Potter needs to speak words to cast spells. Zatanna needs to speak backwards to use magic (actually she doesn't have to do it but you get the idea). Eragon's magic isn't linked to just words, it is linked to the very core and essence of everything. Just to remind you, this is how Brom first explained to Eragon how magic works:

"Brisingr is from an ancient language that all living tings used to speak. However, it was forgotten over time and went unspoken for eons in Alagaesia, until the elves brought it back over the sea. They taught it to the other races, who used it for making and doing powerful things. The language has a name for everything, if you can find it."

"But what does that have to do with magic?" interrupted Eragon.

"Everything! It is the basis for all power. The language describes the true nature of things, not the superficial aspects that everyone sees. For example, fire is called brisingr. Not only is that a name for fire, it is thename for fire. If you are strong enough, you can use brisingr to direct fire to do whatever you will. And that is what happened today."

Eragon

The words that Eragon speaks are not just some weird gibberish. He speaks words in order to describe his control over things.

Illusions, etc:

None of those telepaths are as powerful or as skilled as Jace, so all that you have proven is that he can locate lesser minds. Still its a step up from rabbits.

Considering that the best feat that you brought up of Jace's shields was getting obliterated by Bolas, I definitely think that Eragon can bypass his shields.

Uh no. Eragon did not locate the minds of any of the protected soldiers while they were being sheltered. He only located the mage, killed the made, then located the soldiers.

If you read your very own quote it states that the minds of the soldiers were now unprotected when he located them.

Let's read this quote again:

Bringing the full power of his will to bear, Eragon demolished the magician's resistance, took control of his consciousness----doing his best to ignore the man's terror----determined which troops the man was guarding, and slew the man with one of the twelve words of death. Without pause, Eragon located the minds of each of the now-unprotected soldiers and killed them as well.

So Eragon essentially located them twice: once when they WERE protected, and then once again after they WEREN'T protected.

Except Garruk is a man who was literally raised by wild animals. He was never received formal training in the arts of magic and therefore never developed methods or spells to resist magical attacks. It all falls under his raw durability. I can't bring up new feats but he does have great feats of resistance to physical trauma as well. This magical attack just happened to be the most powerful attack he's tanked.

Garruk has his own magical abilities though, does he not? I saw that you were having another CaV with him and that he can summon animals and teleport and stuff. You also said yourself in this very post that he can summon feral beasts and plants and that he is a planeswalker. Garruk has magical abilities and as such having magic resistance is not out of the question for him.

Armies is exactly what Jace is capable of producing with illusions, but unlike regular armies illusions are replaceable.

Except he never did it. The most he ever summoned (according to your feats) was a dozen, and even that was over a relatively extended period of time. Your quote:

As the stone statues multiplied, they became a cage. She was penned in by a dozen effigies of Jace. He hoped they were real enough to her to make her feel trapped, at least for the moment.

Not much of an army, and they're all literal glass cannons at that. Eragon has one-shotted as many as 20 enemies in one spell as a novice, 12 illusions will not be a challenge for him.

Did you forget that Jace can fly too? Or burrow through the ground rapidly? Jace has ways of rapidly covering ground too, including teleportation.

Except you suggested that Jace isn't going to hide like a coward in one of your very first posts. Besides, I made that point in order to prove that if Eragon can't kill all the illusions fast enough, he can just evade them and get closer to Jace.

Garruk isn't limited in mobility either, nor is he stupid. Garruk has plant manipulation which he can uses to call vines to carry him around, and he is one of the more experienced characters in planeswalker to planeswalker combat. He isn't a dumb immobile brute. Hes a powerful mage who can levy the power of feral breasts in battle.

Why didn't he do it then? Guess he is kinda stupid after all if he could have done it but chose not to. Eragon, as proven, has plenty of ways to deal with illusions.

And you seem to be forgetting that Jace can hind his mind from detection and is much more skilled and powerful than any mage Eragon has been able to locate, so expanding his consciousness most likely isn't going to end up with Eragon locating Jace.

You have failed to provide any feats of Jace's shielding actually working against a skilled telepath, let alone 133 of them. Let me remind you of the first feat I provided for Umaroth in this debate:

Before he could react, the mind stabbed through his defenses and seized control of his thoughts. For all the time he had spent practicing with Glaedr, Arya, and Saphira, he could not stop the attack; he could not even slow it. He might as well have tried to hold back the tide with his bare hands.

[...]

How? he thought. Who? To capture both of them at once, and Glaedr as well, he assumed, was something he did nor believe even Glabatorix was capable of.

Inheritance

So Umaroth by himself has completely fodderized the mental defenses of Eragon, Saphira AND Glaedr combined. And as you already know, Umaroth is only one among 133 independent minds and is not even the most powerful one. As you have seen that he himself described, he provides the bridge between the older, more powerful Eldunarya, and the younger, less powerful (but still damn powerful) ones.

Jace can fly, burrow, or teleport away if Eragon tries to close the distance with super speed.

Trying to burrow through the ground is like saying "Yo Eragon, go ahead and bury me under the ground here with magic". Also I don't recall you ever posting a feat of Jace's teleportation but I might as well be forgetting, your other posts happened so long ago =P

You again miss the point. Im not claiming that Jace will out right beat Eragon in close quarters combat, obviously that's Eragon's game. But Jace isn't completely defenseless in cqc and is capable of using some tricks to prevent himself from being completely stomped right away and will find a way to get out of range.

Look, I completely understand how powerful Jace is. Which is extremely powerful. Him and Eragon might be somewhat comparable in telepathy, or magic, but not in melee. The gap here is ridiculously large. Just as Samuel L. Jackson said:

Jace won't last a second against Eragon in a melee fight.

These are all things that Jace can deal with. He himself wields light in the form of illusions, electricity, and has kinetic energy in the form of TK.

Of course he CAN deal with it, but will he?

The quote you provided does not hint at this at all, and infact it makes it sound like it simply prevents light from reaching the eyes by turning the eyes into mirrors. That would simply stop normal vision and your quote doesn't imply that it stops any sort of magical vision.

Your quote however did not imply that this magical vision made it so Jace doesn't depend on his eyes anymore:

The outer wall of the estate proved no trouble at all. Jace cast his sight out and beyond the wall, watching until neither guard nor dog nor drake was present.

That sounds like Jace still used his eyes, only to a greater distance. He still perceived an image of his surroundings through them as far as we know.

Jace can easily encompass his telepathic, invisibility, and magical shield magics to encompass that of a rat sized drake. He can turn the entire Gatewatch invisible, he can surely prevent a small rat sized drake form being detected both visually and mentally.

So it again comes down to whether Eragon can detect Jace's mind, which I firmly believe he can and have backed it up with feats.

Jace has been hit with far worse attacks than this without being shocked so that is far fetched.

I didn't mean "shocked" as in "OMG what the hell just happened" kind of way, but more as in, knocking his concentration off, if only for a moment, in order to allow Eragon to penetrate his mind and finish him off.

And how exactly with Eragon land a finishing blow when Jace is flying away from him?

Also magical shields would protect him from this attack in the first place so that's only if the attack lands.

Did you miss the part where it was described how this spell is meant for the exact purpose of indirectly affecting people who are protected from magic?

Counter magic dissipates the magic animating the rock. Much like when he dispersed the sea. He dispersed the magic that was animating the water and holding it together, splitting the sea in two over and over again until it was turned to mist. If Eragon tries to bury him in rubble he will disperse the magic that is animating the rubble and prevent himself from being buried in the first place.

Except Eragon won't animate the rubble, he will just blow up the castle wall or something so it collapses on him.

Just like Eragon is smarter than you Jace is much smarter than me. Eragon can come up with creative ways to attack and Jace can come up with creative ways to defend. After all Jace is the character that is on the path towards achieving omnipotence.

That is only your interpretation. Anyway, no Jace's powerset seems very straightforward the way you described it. As I said, Eragon is essentially like Green Lantern but in the form of a reality warper. He is limited just by his imagination.

Im pretty sure that a magical shield that prevents you from being attacked directly by magic would be a good substitute. just because they aren't from the same universe doesn't mean something from MTG wouldn't work as effectively as something from Eragon's universe.

Wards just prove that they can be defended against, and Jace's shields while different should cover that requirement quite well.

That's a no-limits fallacy, but let's roll with it. Jace's shields have only ever stopped external attacks, like how an actual shield will block a sword or an arrow. They have never defended him against an internal attack, Eragon just tells the bone to break and it does. Anyway, Jace needs to cast these shields first. He doesn't have them by default like Eragon.

Oddly enough because these are the only two instances where Jace has gone all out in a duel against another opponent. In his other one on one fights Jace has always had anterior motives for fighting them and isn't actually trying to kill them.

Great, so no reason to assume that he will summon a sphinx here too. He has no reason to go all out because Eragon isn't his arch nemesis, Jace has never even heard of him.

Even if Jace doesn't summon his Sphinx its pretty clear that he has no short supply of drakes to summon, and he could easily summon two drakes in place of the one sphinx. Or cloud elementals, phantasms, ect...

As explained and proven, Eragon will have no problem dealing with them.

You keep downplaying Jace's drake's breath being compared to Baltrice, but it deserves way more credit than you are giving it. I posted a feat earlier where Baltrice was one shotting building's and utterly annihilating a village. This is ridiculously powerful, and the Sphinx by scaling is even more powerful than this drake.

I'm not downplaying anything, I just compare it to things that Eragon has survived in the past and it really pales in comparison. Look at that blast, it leveled everything in a quarter-mile radius and had other effects on the rest of the city, and Eragon not only survived it but also protected 6 other people and 2 goddamn dragons along with himself.

Three creatures and a powerful mage who has more raw power than Eragon. (I doubt even all 130 combined could deal with a sea being emptied and thrown at their face)

Yeah, Jace might have more magical power than Eragon. Maybe. But it's not the point because it was never about raw power, it's about how you use that power. Jace's offense, according to what you have thus far provided, cannot achieve any level of potency that Eragon has not encountered and withstood in the past. And his defense won't protect him from many forms of attack that Eragon has.

The flaw with all of your minds is that individually none of them even come close to Jace in raw power. Dissipated a sea, and held his ground against Bolas. Its not like a single mind is going to hold off Jace telepathically, while another three deal with the creatures leaving 100 some minds free to dilly dally and do nothing. Its going to take a very large amount of minds combining their efforts to even come close to matching Jace's power. Also, just because Eragon starts with 130 minds doesn't mean he will end with them. Jace has no problem destroying minds, hes like a metal smoothie maker, and none of these minds can even come close to matching him individually.

These minds are up for destruction; worse yet, mind reading, and Eragon will be loosing power while Jace is learning more and more about his opponent, his weaknesses and how to combat him. Yes some of these minds are very powerful but they aren't on the level of shutting out Nicol Bolas. Even combined Bolas would probably laugh at all 130 minds and then one shot.

You seem to be confusing magical power with telepathy. They are not the same thing. You boast the telepathic power of Nicol Bolas and he really doesn't have anything to suggest that he is above Eragon, let alone his Eldunarya, in any way as far as telepathy goes. And Jace couldn't last more than a split second against him. Bolas's feats are not even as good as Durza's, who actively mind-controlled an army of thousands, and Eragon as a novice not only held him off but even got the upper hand on him for a while.

I'm not saying that 100 minds will do nothing, that's exactly the point; they will ALL fight together. Every single one. It can be, I dunno... 100 against Jace and the rest taking care of summons and stuff? 130 against Jace and the other 3 taking care of illusions and stuff? All 132 Eldunarya against Jace and Eragon alone taking care of illusions and stuff? Not a problem. Either way, as you explained, it is fairly in-character for Jace to let them inside his mind, he will allow himself to sacrifice parts of his mind in order to try and get an upper hand. That will be his undoing. The moment they're inside his mind he is dead. He won't be able to catch Eragon off-guard like he did Alhammarret, because Eragon has 132 minds watching his back.

Fact remains that Jace has never fully taken a mental attack from a powerful mind. Bolas fodderized him in less than a second. He has never penetrated a powerfully shielded mind either, he had to use a clever trick to get into Alhammarret's mind, which will not work here. Your best arguments are scaling from Bolas who you only assume would be more powerful due to hype because he never did anything to suggest he is a powerful enough telepath to defeat Eragon and the Eldunarya, let alone laugh at them and one-shot as you put it, and to make things worse he utterly fodderized Jace. Feat-wise, Jace is tremendously screwed.

Little Boy was a legit city buster. It didn't just level a citadel and blow the roof of nearby buildings. It leveled an entire city. A TSAR is even more powerful. Your explosion is partial city busting, nuclear is city busting, TSAR is city busting++.

In your defense that's not the worse fan calc ive ever seen. Ive read that Mace Windu can level a city with a single Force Push because of the way he Force Pushed open a metal gate in TCW. So there are worse leaps in logic out there based on mathematics, but partial city busting> TSAR is still a very big leap.

Yeah as I said, it doesn't matter because I don't put much weight onto these calcs, equate it to whatever you want, or don't, makes no difference. The damage it caused is very explicitly described in the text: complete annihilation of everything in a radius of at least a quarter mile, and other varying levels of damage all over the surrounding city. It's far more than Jace can dish out and therefore Eragon can take it with no problem.

Telepathy:

Where are you getting the number 2? Honestly, im genuinely confused.

From your very own quote:

Due to their saurian ancestry, most dragons retained great knots of neural ganglia between their wings and at the base of their tails, so large and complex that they were essentially subsidiary brains;

One main brain (in his head I guess), one pseudo-brain between his wings and one pseudo-brain at the base of his tail. Judging by how he looks, he only has 2 wings and 1 tail:

Therefore, 2 pseudo-brains.

First off WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THAT HE ONLY HAS TWO EXTRA BRAINS? It was never specified exactly how many brains he has and he has been shown using more than 2 in the very quotes I provided.

Secondly why are you comparing how many brains Bolas has to how many brains Eragon has. There never was a comparison being made between Bolas and Eragon. The whole "Bolas has extra brains" segment was to demonstrate that he is capable of using them for complex multitasking as it was relevant to the feat. It was to prove that Bolas is capable of doing way more complex things with his extra minds than telepathically assault someone while having a conversation, and therefore most of Bolas's power would have been brought to bare against Jace. It was never to say that Bolas is better at multitasking than Eragon or anything like that, so why are you boasting that Eragon has more minds?

OK, fair enough, but the point still remains that Bolas has no feats to suggest that he is a more powerful telepath than Eragon and the Eldunarya. Add to that the fact that he didn't use ALL of his power, and then add to that the fact that Jace was completely fodderized by it. Conclusion - Eragon still wins.

Are you seriously saying that blocking out a character who has enough raw power to change the trajectory of a sun is LESS impressive than blocking out Eragon?

How does magical power/telekinesis translate to telepathy? And Jace didn't block him out, he was murked by him.

No influencing a sun is not a telepathic feat but it is a demonstration of raw overall power. This is relevant because 1) Bolas never does anything small time 2) Telepathy is his most used combative ability. We know how much raw power Bolas has, we know that telepathy is one of his main powers, so why in the world would his telepathy be weaker than Eragon's?

So you think that a planetary level character (probably more than that) who's main power is telepathy has worse telepathy than an at best city leveler?

City level telepaths are nothing to Bolas. He one shots their minds with curt nods. Yes I am referring to the gods of Ahmonkhet who are city level telepaths.

Because that's just an assumption. Telepathy being his most commonly used power doesn't mean that it is his most powerful one. Not saying that you're not making sense, but making sense isn't enough to prove your point.

We'll see about these city-level telepathy though.

Ill go over what we know about gods of MTG because it is a lot different than any type of gods you have made an allusion to.

Gods of MTG are immortal, and divine. They are immortal in the sense that they cannot die from old age, disease, and have no need for sustenance.

They are divine in that they are the pinnacle of holy beings, even beyond that of angels.

They hear the prayers of anyone who prays to them.

They are also the embodiment of something. Such as "God of Strength" "God of Horizons" "God of Ambition"

Outside of Nicol Bolas we have only seen other gods as being able to compete evenly with gods. Even powerful planeswalkers, straight up mid tier characters like Gideon, Kiora, and Elspeth, know better than to challenge a god.

Yeah, they're a generic pantheon of Gods, like the Greek Gods, Norse Gods etc. We knew that already.

But you are questioning their telepathic ability. Well as it turns out the gods of Ahmonkhet have a passive telepathic effect on everyone around them and its been shown multiple times, including one of the quotes I provided, that when one of the gods fall the entire city of people are suddenly struck with an overwhelming feeling of loss.

Ah, but that is different. Affecting someone's feelings/emotions is not telepathy, it's empathy. It's a completely different sort of power (which Eragon has used too by the way but we agreed to not use it here because it'd one-shot most anyone, it's really OP).

In any case, city-level is impressive, but not nearly enough. Durza was easily city level and even above, and Eragon alone as a novice could contend with him.

These gods are atleast city level telepaths. They are certainly above the level of rabbits. And yet Bolas still one shots with casual ease.

Eh, I'm willing to give them the benefit of doubt and concur that they are indeed above rabbits ;)

And Bolas caught Jace off guard while Jace was sheltering not just his own mind, but two minds. Eragon could not hope to replicate this feat. This is why Jace is more powerful than all 130 minds.

Eragon has already surpassed that feat against someone who has better telepathy feats than Bolas (Durza, and also Varaug).

Prove that any of your minds, even combined, could cast a spell that effects the movement of a sun and then your opinion will be justified.

They certainly can't, but as I said, it doesn't translate to telepathic ability. You admitted so yourself, and your argument as to why it could translate to that didn't really work due to lack of evidence.

You really think that Eragon is capable of mind controlling Jace? None of his minds are powerful enough to deal with the singularly more powerful mind of Jace.

Even if they weren't, all of them together certainly are.

Jace has done the same. As a thirteen year old he was casting telepathic spells constantly. He was never taught how to spell cast, he was simply doing it through his intuition at a very young age.

Cool, they're equals in that aspect then.

Jace has done the exact same thing. Anyways that's more a showcase of being a magical prodigy than having an advanced intelligence. Jace knowing the answers to the questions is a showing of him being a genius and we know that his intellect is always expanding towards omnipotence. So Jace is even more intelligent now.

It's not being a genius, it's working on instinct. He figured out something that he didn't really know, and he couldn't explain how it happened. Being a genius is figuring out the solution to a very complicated problem and being able to explain how you did it.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know? What the hell does that mean? Did you cheat or not?”

“No,” said Jace. “I just…knew the answers.”

Jace evidently didn't know how he solved the questions, it just sort of happened. Same with Eragon not knowing how he cast his first spell, it just happened. Pure instinct. The difference, as I said, was that Jace solved math questions on a piece of paper while Eragon acted on instinct in a life-or-death situation.

Again I would attribute all of this to being a prodigy instead of extremely intelligent. Anakin Skywalker is a prodigy with the lightsaber and Force who can learn and master new techniques in a very short amount of time but I wouldn't call him a genius.

And Jace too can learn extremely quickly. Ive demonstrated that he can replicate a new spell after only seeing it been cast once.

I think you missed the points where Eragon has thousands of years worth of knowledge and wisdom in him, and the author's statement that Eragon knows almost everything there is to know on magic.

Well I am bold my friend.

I'm willing to give you that much.

No. Jace has intimate knowledge on the mage Tamiyo who casts spells in a very similar manner as Eragon does.

I still fail to see how Tamiyo is in any way even close to resembling Eragon. She reads stories and poof, something happens. Eragon is a reality warper. Couldn't get any more different than that.

Jace has utilized and understood advanced concepts before. After only a short conversation with Ugin (a guy who has been studying eldrazi for thousands of years) Ugin told Jace that eldrazi are beings beyond mortal comprehension, using the analogy of a fish in a barrel with a human reaching his hand into the water. The fish sees the hand as the monster but cannot comprehend the rest of the human. Ugin didn't tell Jace that eldrazi could be killed or how to do it. Jace figured that out by himself, and with the help of the gatewatch successfully killed two eldrazi titans.

Jace shouldn't have been able to even comprehend the full existence of the eldrazi yet he was able to figure out how to kill them with only a limited knowledge on them.

Jace understanding the language isn't as far fetched as you might think, especially since Jace could mind read one of your dragon minds to get a large amount of information on it.

Jace had basic information on the eldrazi who still come from the same verse as him. Eragon operates with rules and concepts that Jace has never heard of, in a language that Jace will not understand, with the help of 132 dragons that Jace can't see. Even if he does understand how the Language works, which is too far fetched to begin with, it still won't help him. He doesn't have the ability to use that kind of magic because he was not born with it, and he won't be able to understand the language and learn spells because it's gibberish for him, Eragon might as well be speaking Mandarin or Thai or Klingon.

Summary:

First of all, I must say that I enjoyed this very much. I never even heard of Jace and I didn't even know that MTG was anything more than a card game until we started this debate. You clearly have vast knowledge on Jace and MTG as a whole and you clearly love that fandom very much, which showed in your debating. Just as I love Eragon and the Inheritance Cycle. I never used Eragon in a straight up CaV, I only used him 2 or 3 times in tournaments as part of a team so this was really fun for me.

In any case, these are my final points:

As far as telepathy goes, Jace is clearly powerful and skilled. But he has never successfully dealt with as many minds as he has to in this battle, and let us not forget that each and every of those minds is a powerhouse in itself. Eragon, as a novice, contended with Durza - a being who actively mind-controlled an army of thousands. Add to that the fact that now Eragon is far more powerful than he was, and that he has 132 extra minds with him - each of them on its own even more powerful than Eragon himself. Eragon and his Eldunarya have shown to be able to locate people (and rabbits) who were shielding their minds, so they will be able to locate Jace as well. Jace's tendency to let people into his mind in order to exploit an opening will be his undoing: it will make Eragon's job of entering his mind much easier. At the same time, Jace will not be able to exploit an opening because Eragon's Eldunarya will provide him with back-up against that kind of thing. Your main argument for Jace's telepathy was his encounter with Nicol Bolas. Bolas doesn't have feats of telepathy that equate to the likes of Durza for example, and he still completely murked Jace's mind in less than a second while not even using his full power.

As far as magic goes, Eragon is fast enough on the draw to suggest that he can tag Jace before Jace can raise a shield. Even if not, Eragon has ways to bypass that. He can use internal attacks such as bone-breaking, he can cast spells designed to indirectly affect people who are shielding themselves from magic, and he can use the environment to his advantage.

Jace's summons and illusions will be dealt with very quickly. Eragon's wards have taken a lot more damage than these illusions and summons can dish out and he is strong and fast enough to blitz and one-shot them. He also has the means to avoid them altogether if he chooses, with his sheer speed and his magic.

As far as melee goes, it's really not a contest. Eragon has every possible advantage on Jace: Strength, speed, skill, experience, durability, gear and reach, and probably more things that I'm not even aware of.

To top it all off - all of the above has to happen simultaneously if Jace has any sliver of hope to win. And Jace, being one person, can't achieve that. He has never done any two of the above simultaneously, let alone all of the above. Eragon, on the other hand, has 132 minds backing him up that can cast spells and engage in telepathy. He is more than capable of multi-tasking and outright overwhelming Jace.

One last time allow me to say that I enjoyed this very much and you did a great job. It was one hell of a debate!

@banthabot: Final post is up. I'mma tag the voters.

@foxerdes: @valzaan: @god_vulcan: @tparks: @asgardianbrony: @zetsumoto: @major_hellstorm: @blackestnight93: @cerberus369616: @decaf_wizard: @jardinain2:

Voting is finally open!!! Your votes and feedback will be much appreciated. Please make sure to explain your vote and provide reasoning so we can avoid biases. Thanks!!!

I gotta read through it, I'll vote l8r today.

@banthabot: @the_red_viper: That was soooooo sweet. You two are fantastic debaters the read was an absolute treat, especially with Bantha repping someone from MtG.

That being said, my vote goes too.....

Once again, major props to both of you, especially for keeping this up for so long. Pat yourselves on the back, for realz.

Oh and Banthaboo, you don't even have to ask to tag me for your next MtG debate. Your knowledge of magic lore is probably the best on this site, so I'm in on anything you do with it (but srs when you gonna use Best Girl Elspeth???)

@joewell911: Thanks, man! Means a lot.

@the_red_viper: Anytime! (Plus a free bump, because this deserves more votes)

As much as I like Magic lore, I feel as though things could've been presented better, I also feel some examples of in universe magic scaling were not properly addressed on both sides. In partucilar I think Bolas was underestimated as even post mending he is practically a herald level character. All in all I think I will have to give this to Eragon and because although I belive Jace could win here a good enough argument for Illusions and summons keeping him at bay while he was assaulted with spellcasting and TP was not provided and instead the argument was more focused on the magic aspect of the duel. TP was Jayce's only chance with the Elundari amping Eragon and I was more convinced by TRV's arguments inolving that, although I'm mildly triggered by arguments that every mind Eragon has can all act as independently as he can with magic, as that is not the case. Lastly, in my mind most flaws here were on the lack of knowledge on both sides instead of from the debaters themselvs

Also just bringing it up, but Eragon wouldn't have been able to use empathy here. It was basically a one off so there was no need to have it restricted. It also wasn't empathy in the strictest sense

@the_red_viper ^

Thank you mate. As for the part in bold, well that isn't true, they are all independent. In the book for example they started mind-battling Galb's Eldunarya before Eragon engaged in it himself. There are more examples.

@banthabot: You still haven't found my Easter Egg by the way. Last hint - it's somewhere in here:

Illusions and stuff:

I like you. You're a good debater...BUT RABBITS?

Yup. Rabbits.

That was just meant to show you that Eragon can pinpoint someone's location by sensing their mind. Not equating the rabbits to a skilled telepath, but it's the most straightforward and clearly worded example of Eragon pinpointing someone's location with telepathy.

Now you can find it.

@the_red_viper: still don't get the Easter egg

@banthabot: Well you should!

@the_red_viper: I don't see it either...