Chapter 13
The first thing Marci did when Julius landed was look for Myron.
She spotted him immediately, sitting up from the ground where the DFZ had left his body when she’d taken him to the other side. The city spirit was nowhere to be seen, though. Just another sign that everything had gone wrong.
“Myron!” she yelled, practically falling off Julius in her rush to get to the other Merlin. “What happened? How did the Leviathan re-form so fast?”
The older mage put his head in his hands, which were shaking so badly his silver, maze-worked rings were rattling like bells. “It was the roots. Shiro, Raven, and I thought they were there so Leviathan could drink the other spirits as soon as he was done with Algonquin, but…” He took a shuddering breath. “We were wrong. So wrong. The tendrils he sank into the Sea of Magic weren’t so he could consume it. He was holding on, making himself a foundation. When the hammer banish blew him apart, he just dug in and pulled himself back together.”
“That can’t be,” Marci said. “I watched him explode into water vapor.”
“And I saw this,” Myron snapped, looking up at her at last. “He was ready, Marci, and why wouldn’t he be? Algonquin’s a spirit who’s been running the world’s largest magical consumer goods corporation for the past six decades. She has a private army of mages. Of course she knows how banishments work! And if she knew, he knew. He was by her side the entire time.” His face grew bleak as he returned it to his hands. “We should have known.”
“What difference would that have made?” Marci said angrily. “Even if we’d suspected he was prepared for a banishment, there was no other way to break up his magic. This was our one real chance to beat him. We had to take it. No one could have predicted he’d survive. We hit him with all the magic there is. It doesn’t get bigger than that!”
As she said them, Marci realized what those words really meant. They’d taken their best shot, and they’d failed. Not missed, not screwed up, not fallen so they could get up and try, try again. No. They’d hit the enemy head-on with everything they had, and it simply wasn’t enough.
“We’ve lost,” she said quietly.
“No, we haven’t,” Julius said. “We’ll think of something else.”
“Not this time.” Marci shook her head. “It’s over, Julius. Everyone went above and beyond anything we could have asked, and it wasn’t enough. Even if I came up with something else to try, I don’t think we have the oomph left to pull it off. Ghost is stuck as a cat, Myron’s a wreck, I’m exhausted, and I don’t even see Amelia—”
“I’m here,” said a small voice, and Marci looked down to see a cat-sized dragon made of fire appear on the ground beside Julius’s foot.
“Just like old times, huh?” the little dragon said with false cheerfulness. “I nipped back to the Sea of Magic to try and scrounge up enough power to get back to my old incredible self, but all that exploding really mixed things up. It’s chaos over there. Even Raven’s not up yet, and he’s normally the first to get himself together.”
“What about the dragons?” Julius asked. “Where are they?”
Amelia shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Like I said, the magic’s all scrambled, including mine. I can still feel their fires, so they’re alive, but I can’t pinpoint my own nose in this mess.” She glanced up at the hole in the ceiling. “If I had to guess, though, I’d say they’re feeling about as peppy as we are right now.”
It was pretty quiet out there. Other than the Leviathan, there was nothing in the sky. No dragons, no planes, no helicopters. The entire counterattack had ceased, leaving the black monster hovering completely unopposed.
“They’re probably taking cover,” Julius said, breaking the grim silence. “Can’t blame them, really. I told everyone from the start that we were only holding out until the banishment.”
“Which didn’t work,” Marci said, her shoulders sinking as the reality of their situation landed hard. “I failed you.”
“You didn’t fail,” Julius said. “You did everything right. It just didn’t work.”
“But I told you it would,” she said, lowering her eyes as her vision grew blurry. “I promised that if you could just keep the Leviathan busy, I’d take care of everything. You all did your part, but I—” She stopped, scrubbing the tears off her cheeks. “I wasn’t enough. I’m the Merlin. I had everything, all the magic in the world, and I still couldn’t do it. Even if I had a plan B, we don’t have the resources left to try it, and we’re out of time. The lakes have to be almost dry now.” She slumped forward, pressing her wet face against Julius’s blue-feathered chest. “I’m sorry. I wasted all our time.”
“You didn’t waste anything,” he said, leaning down to nuzzle her cheek with his soft nose. “You tried your best, we all did, but it’s not done yet. We’re still alive, and I mean to keep us that way.”
Marci looked up at him. “How?”
She hadn’t meant for the question to come out quite that disbelieving. Fortunately, Julius didn’t look offended. “Because I do have a plan B,” he said. “It was my plan A before everyone shot it down, but I see no reason not to try it now. It’s not like we’ve got anything left to lose.”
That was certainly true, but… “What plan are you talking about?”
He smiled down at her, his green eyes warm. “The one where we talk to Algonquin.”
Marci stared at him for a good ten seconds before her tact ran out. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“Why would I be kidding?” Julius asked, looking genuinely confused. “Algonquin’s always been the heart of this problem. It only makes sense that she’d be the key to getting us out.”
“B-But you can’t be serious,” Marci stuttered. “I know you’ve talked people into some truly crazy stuff, Julius, but Algonquin wouldn’t even listen to her fellow spirits, and she hates dragons. You could make the best case in the world, and she still wouldn’t listen.”
He shrugged. “I’ll never know if I don’t try.”
“She’ll kill you,” Marci snapped.
“She might,” Julius said. “But I won’t be any more dead than I’d be if I stayed here.” He dug his claws into the ground. “We have to do something, Marci.”
“Yeah, something that will work!” she cried. “Something not insane!”
“I don’t think it’s insane,” he said. “Algonquin’s not some evil overlord. She’s just a spirit who’s hurt and upset and doing stupid things because of it. Look at it that way, and she’s not so different from Ghost, and you talked him around.”
“That was different.”
“It wasn’t,” he said firmly. “We’ve always treated Algonquin as our enemy because that’s how she treated us, but we aren’t the root of her problem. Whatever convinced her to surrender to the Leviathan, it was bad enough that she was willing to abandon her fish and give up immortal life. That’s not anger. That’s desperation, and desperate people want to be helped. If we can figure out how to do that, give her a path out of this corner that doesn’t involve the Leviathan, I’ll bet you anything she’ll take it. But we’re never going to find out what that is if we don’t talk to her. Maybe she’ll listen, maybe she’ll kill us all, but if it’s over anyway, we might as well try.” He leaned down, resting the flat of his feathered forehead against hers. “We haven’t lost yet. I trusted you. Trust me.”
Marci sighed. She still thought it was lunacy, but she couldn’t say no to anything when he asked like that. “Okay,” she grumbled. “I’m with you. How do we do this?”
“I have no idea,” Julius said cheerfully. “But I’m pretty sure our first step is ‘get to Algonquin.’”
“Right,” Marci said. “Just get to the spirit who’s inside the monster we can’t even hurt and whose magic will eat us if we do somehow get inside.”
“Maybe not immediately,” Amelia said, tapping her little claws thoughtfully against her chin. “I’ve never actually seen a Nameless End eat a plane. Maybe it takes a while?”
“Great, we can be digested slowly.” Marci glared up at the Leviathan. “I don’t even see how we’d get in to be eaten. That thing’s nothing but shell and eyes, no mouth or ears, no openings of any sort unless you want to crawl up a tentacle with the water.”
“Could we portal inside?” Julius asked, glancing at Amelia. “Your magic is low, but Svena’s should still be fine. Could she get us in?”
The little dragon thought about that for a moment, and then she shook her head. “No. Don’t get me wrong. Princess Snowflake is the best teleportation expert alive. She can get you anywhere in the physical world if she knows where she’s going, but that thing is ninety-nine point nine repeating percent magic. Metaphysically speaking, that makes teleporting into it the same as trying to teleport into another person’s soul, and there’s not a power in the world—dragon or otherwise—who can do that.”
The group fell silent. Marci was wracking her brain for a solution that didn’t leave them all doomed when she heard the crunch of shoes on gravel. Her first thought was Myron, because the step was far too light for Emily’s metal body, but it wasn’t Myron or Emily, or even a human.
It was Bob.
“Please tell me you’re coming over because you’ve just spotted a brilliant way out of this mess,” Amelia said, flapping up to her brother.
“Alas, we’re not there yet,” Bob said, holding out his arm so the little dragon could land on it. “But I might have a solution to your impenetrable Leviathan problem. First, though, you need to talk to General Jackson.”
“Why?” Amelia asked.
“Because she’s about to authorize a nuclear strike.”
Julius’s eyes went wide, and then he was gone, darting across the cavern faster than Marci had known he could go to tackle the general, who was still standing hunched over her makeshift war table.
“Get off me!” Emily Jackson snarled, shoving at Julius. The temporary body Raven had cobbled together for her must not have been a patch on her old one, though, because she couldn’t even budge him. “I have to do this!”
Julius’s answer to that was to grab her com unit and crush it with his claws. He crushed his own as well, shaking the sleek black headpiece off the crown of his transformed Fang and smashing it into plastic shards.
“Are you insane?” the general yelled. “It’s over, Heartstriker! We tried, and we failed. Now we have to use whatever we have left to blow that thing out of the sky!”
“No!” Julius yelled back. “If you call in those missiles, everything in North America will die!”
“Better than losing the whole world!” Emily cried, her dark eyes wild. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but this is the only weapon we’ve got left. We have no choice!”
“Incorrect,” Bob said, crouching down beside her. “I’m the local expert on choices, and I can tell you that there are at least twenty left. More importantly, though, it won’t work. The Leviathan is magic, not flesh. His tentacles were vulnerable to physical attack because they were disposable, but nuclear warheads won’t bother his main body any more than your other attacks did. I’ve already seen how that future ends. If you authorize a launch, all you’ll achieve is killing off the rest of us.”
Marci wasn’t actually sure if Emily believed that dragon seers saw the future, but she must have believed Bob now, because she slumped beneath Julius’s hold. “Fine, fortuneteller,” she said bitterly, relaxing into the dirt. “If you see so much, what do you suggest?”
“What I always suggest,” Bob replied, placing a hand on Julius’s head. “Listen to my brother.” He glanced at the smaller dragon. “You want to talk to Algonquin, right?”
Julius nodded rapidly. “We don’t know how to get to her, though,” he said. “She’s inside the Leviathan, and nothing we’ve tried can get through his shell. Even Amelia couldn’t burn him.”
“Hey, I burned him a little!” Amelia said defensively, scampering up Bob’s arm to perch on his shoulder opposite his pigeon. “I could have burned him a lot more if I’d had my old fire, but now that our magic’s hooked into the Sea of Magic, we’re trapped in the same sinking boat as everyone else.”
“Why?” Marci asked, genuinely curious. “I used to use Julius’s magic all the time in my spells. It worked great. Why won’t it work now?”
“Because we’re not casting spells,” Amelia explained. “Humans aren’t picky, so I’m sure you’ve never noticed, but dragon fire is fundamentally different from any other type of magic on this plane. We came from an entirely different system! Our magic was basically alien, which was why we never really integrated into our new home. I fixed that when I became a spirit, but in order to fit our magic into the rules of this realm, I basically had to turn fire into water. That’s great for us in the long term considering we have to exist in a Sea of Magic, but it’s hard to burn a hole in something like the Leviathan when you’ve traded your flame thrower for a fire hose, you know?”
Marci wasn’t quite sure that she did, but Bob was shaking his head. “Don’t bemoan our fate yet,” he said. “You might have changed our fundamental nature, but there’s still one dragon whose fire isn’t connected to yours.”
Amelia blinked at him. “How is that possible? I’m the Spirit of Dragons. If it’s a dragon, it’s mine.”
“Not this one,” Bob said, smiling wider. “He’s got a loophole, because, despite appearances, he’s not actually a dragon.”
He turned to point at the Black Reach standing alone in front of the tunnel that led out of the spiral of on-ramps, his tall body silhouetted by what was probably the last working streetlight in the DFZ, and Julius gasped. “Of course!” the dragon cried. “The Black Reach is a construct, a magical machine! He was built, not born, which means he’s not under your control!”
“Are you sure about that?” Amelia asked, frowning. “My domain is pretty broad.”
“Absolutely sure,” Bob said, giving his sister a flat look. “Do you think I would have put myself through that melodrama with Julius earlier if you could have pulled the Black Reach’s string to save me?”
“Good point,” Amelia said, her voice growing excited as she launched off Bob’s shoulder to flap toward the Black Reach. “Let’s go get our super weapon!”
“I don’t think he’s going to help us if you call him that,” Julius said as he hurried after her.
Marci followed right behind, looking suspiciously over her shoulder at Bob, who was watching the unfolding events play out like a director on opening night. “Are you sure about this?” she whispered, catching Julius’s sleeve.
“No, but it’s the best plan we’ve got,” he said, looking down at her. “What’s wrong?”
Marci shot another glare at the seer. “I just don’t like how convenient it is. Bob’s normally subtler about his tip-offs, but he practically gave us a quest to go talk to the Black Reach.” She shook her head. “I don’t like it. Smells like a plot.”
“Of course it’s a plot,” Julius said, laughing. “He’s a dragon seer. Plots are the air he breathes.”
“That doesn’t make them okay,” Marci snapped. “Bob doesn’t exactly have the greatest track record. He’s already proven he’s fine with killing both of us if that’s what it takes to make his wheels turn. How do we know this time is different?”
“We don’t,” Julius said. “But…” He trailed off, coming to a stop so he could face her properly. “Bob did a lot of things I hate, but he also did things I’d never want to change. He used us and hurt us, yes, but he’s also the reason we’ve made it as far as we have.”
“But nothing we’ve tried has worked!” she cried. “The best plan I had bombed. Why didn’t he warn us about that?”
“Probably because there was a chance it wouldn’t bomb,” Julius said. “And warning us might have made that future less likely.”
“Why are you defending him?” Marci demanded. “He’s done nothing but use us! Everything good that’s ever come out of his plots for us has been a side effect, never the main purpose. His previous ‘solution’ for the Leviathan was to sell all of our futures to put us on rails without even asking where we’d like them to go. You hated that as much as any of us, so why are you okay with blindly trusting him now?”
“It’s not blind trust to grab the only rope when you’re drowning,” Julius said firmly. “You’re absolutely right. Bob has treated us horribly, but things aren’t as simple as ‘never trust again.’ He did some very bad things, but I’m convinced he did them for good reasons. That doesn’t excuse how he treated you or me or Chelsie or anyone else, but it doesn’t make him the villain, either. He’s just a dragon who had to make some hard choices, and while I don’t agree with the solutions he came up with, the fact remains that he was always trying to save us.”
“You mean save himself,” she grumbled. “Don’t forget why he started all of this. He admitted to your face that the only reason he picked you was to avoid being killed by the Black Reach.”
“He also found us a way to save us from the Leviathan,” Julius reminded her. “Maybe it wasn’t the one we wanted, but he could have used the Final Future to save himself from the Black Reach, and he didn’t. He used his one sure shot to make sure everyone else was safe and relied on plots to save his own future. If he’d failed and the Black Reach had killed him, we still would have been safe in the future he died to buy. We could still be safe.” He nodded over her head at the pigeon perched on Bob’s shoulder. “His salvation is still on the table. Always was. We were the ones who said no, and when we did, Bob respected that. He let us try to make our own fate, knowing the results weren’t guaranteed.”
“If Bob respects us so much, why does he seem fine with risking our lives?” Marci snapped. “He didn’t have a problem with letting me die.”
“I hate how he handled that,” Julius said. “But I also think he would never have let that happen if he wasn’t sure you’d come back.” His lips curved into a soft smile. “I don’t think Bob actually likes killing.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because I’ve never seen him do it,” Julius said. “I’m sure a lot of his plots would have been much easier if certain pieces were permanently removed, but he never went there. He even tried to save Estella, and she was willing to destroy her entire clan to beat him. That has to mean something.”
“I think you’re being too nice,” Marci grumbled. “Bob hasn’t even apologized for how he treated you, but you already seem like you’ve forgiven everything.”
“Maybe it is too nice,” Julius said, smiling wider. “But it’s what feels right to me. Trusting my gut has worked pretty well so far. I might as well stick with it until the end.”
Marci was pretty sure this was the end, but there was no point in arguing. It’d be easier to kill the Leviathan with a spoon than to make Julius stop being kind. Even now, when his willingness to forgive and forget might be literally the death of them, she couldn’t help but love him for it.
“All right,” she said, reaching out to grab a fistful of his blue feathers. “We’ll trust the manipulative seer, but I’m staying with you every step of the way. The moment I spot a trap, we’re bailing.”
Even as she said it, Marci knew that made no sense. You couldn’t bail from the end of the world. But where any other dragon—including Amelia—would have mocked her mercilessly for that lapse of logic, Julius just leaned down to bump his nose against hers.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
***
“Finally,” Amelia said when Julius and Marci walked up. “What took you guys so long?” She narrowed her burning eyes at the Black Reach. “This cheapskate won’t let me take a look at his fire.”
“You’ll have to get used to disappointment,” the Black Reach said bitterly. “Unlike every other dragon, I am under no obligation to you, Planeswalker.”
“You see?” she cried, turning back to her littlest brother. “Talk some sense into him, would you?”
“Why don’t you go back and wait with Bob?” Julius suggested.
Amelia snorted. “Why would I do that?”
Because convincing the Black Reach to help them instead of running to another plane as he’d planned was going to be hard enough without his impatient sister wheedling them both. “Because I have something private I’d like to discuss with him,” Julius said instead.
Amelia blew out a puff of smoke. “Fine,” she said, flapping onto Marci’s shoulder. “Who am I to interfere with the methods of Julius, Dragon Whisperer? Come on, Marci, let’s leave him to do his thing.”
Marci must have been serious about sticking with him, because her jaw tightened. Before she could tell Amelia to go by herself, though, Julius gave her a pleading look. Amelia would never leave if she thought they were plotting without her. He didn’t know how to explain that to Marci without words, though, so he just looked at her until, at last, she reluctantly let go of his feathers, walking backward so she could keep her eyes on him the whole way as she escorted Amelia back to Bob.
When they were out of earshot, Julius turned to find the Black Reach watching him. “That was neatly done,” the construct said, looking him in the eyes, which he was actually tall enough to do. The Black Reach’s human guise was big enough that he didn’t even have to tilt his head back to see eye to eye with Julius’s dragon. Smiling, Julius desperately hoped that was a sign he could convince the construct to see eye to eye with him on everything else.
“So,” said Dragon Sees Eternity, reaching into his long sleeve to pull out the golden orb of the Kosmolabe. “Are you ready to go?”
“No,” Julius said. “But surely you knew that.”
“I did,” the construct replied. “But by mentioning it, I’ve reminded you that there is another way out of this, thus giving you the chance to reconsider.”
That was some slippery seer work, but Julius expected nothing less from the Construct of the Future. “I need your help. I want to talk to Algonquin so I can try to change her mind about all of this, but she’s locked herself deep inside the Leviathan, and you’re the only one whose fire might be able to burn a path to her. You don’t have to go inside with us. We just need you to make us an opening. Please.”
The Black Reach scowled. “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider my offer?”
“I’m sure,” Julius said. “Can you do it?”
The eldest seer looked up at the black expanse of the Leviathan. “There’s a high likelihood that I could burn a hole through the Nameless End’s protective carapace, but the success of everything after that is significantly less probable.”
“Any chance is good enough for me,” Julius said happily. “I just need you to get us in. We can handle the rest. Bob wouldn’t have sent me to you if he didn’t think we had a shot.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” the Black Reach said, his voice oddly bitter. “Brohomir is one of the greatest seers I’ve ever known, but this isn’t like his plans for you before. Those were the careful machinations of a master seer executing his life’s work. This is a desperate dragon grasping at straws.”
“But there is a chance,” Julius said. “It’s not impossible.”
“‘Not impossible’ isn’t the same as ‘possible,’” the construct reminded him. “There are chances for almost everything, but only a small subset of those actually go on to become fact. A proper seer knows to weed out the long shots, not bet on them, and as a proper seer, I cannot support your brother’s delusions. The chance of you successfully convincing Algonquin to banish the Leviathan is so infinitesimally small, it’s barely visible even to my eyes. Assuming she still possesses the ability to send the Nameless End away, the Lady of the Lakes has hated our kind since we came to this plane. She is the patron of Vann Jeger, the Death of Dragons, and the murderess of the Three Sisters. With the purge of the DFZ, she has been personally responsible for the deaths of more dragons than any other being in our history. No matter what logic you bring, what arguments you make, the most likely outcome is that she will not listen, and you will die.”
He spoke this as though it were already past, but Julius knew better. “Is that what you see?” he demanded, digging his claws into the dirt. “When you look at the future, do you see Algonquin killing me?”
“No, but that is merely due to a technicality. Seers can only see the futures of those connected to them, and Algonquin is none of ours. Our inability to foresee her decisions is how we landed in this mess in the first place. If I’d known she was going to bring a Nameless End to our doorstep, I would have destroyed her myself long before the drought. But I did not know, because she was not mine to see. You are, of course, but once you enter that thing, your futures become very hard to follow. Even I cannot peer easily through a Nameless End.”
“So if you can’t see her and you can’t see me, how do you know she’ll kill me?” Julius asked.
“Because it can be no other way,” the Black Reach snapped. “The future is never certain, but there are some things we can safely take as constants, and Algonquin’s hatred is one of them. She didn’t listen to you back in Reclamation Land. What makes you think she will hear you now?”
“Because now is different,” Julius said. “Back then, she had all the power. Now she has none, because she’s given it up to the Leviathan. All I want is to help her get it back, and it’s a lot easier to listen to someone when they’re saying what you want to hear.”
“It will. Not. Work,” the seer growled. “Just like Brohomir, you are allowing what you want to blind you to what is, and what is is over. The Nameless End has won. This plane is doomed. The only statistically likely chance of survival we have left is for you to accept my offer and flee to a new world before this one is devoured.” He leaned in closer, dropping his voice to a whisper. “You refused me before because you said I was leaving too many behind, but thanks to your efforts, almost every dragon in the world is currently in the DFZ. If you agree to run with me right now, there’s a very good chance we could get everyone gathered and through the portal before the planar barrier collapses. You could save them all that way, no long shots needed.”
“But not Amelia,” Julius said. “Spirits are tied to this plane, which means no Marci, either. She’d never leave Ghost behind.”
“There would be sacrifices,” the Black Reach admitted. “But for a much greater good.”
“How good can it be if the only way to get there is by abandoning my friends and family?” Julius said angrily. “I’m not leaving them behind.”
“So you would risk everyone?” the seer said. “Risk your brothers and sisters, all of your kind, to save the world’s most arrogant dragon mage and a single human?”
“I’m not risking anyone,” Julius snapped. “I’m refusing to let you sacrifice them to buy an easy out. I still believe we can do this. You’re the one with doubts.” He tilted his head. “Why are you making this my decision anyway? You already have the Kosmolabe. You could open that portal and run whenever you want, with or without me.”
To his surprise, the Black Reach lowered his eyes. “I am not without fault,” the construct admitted quietly. “I was built to guard the future of our species. A perfect seer, uncorrupted by the usual draconic appetites for conquest and domination. But steering the future cannot be done coldly. Guiding our kind to a better place requires a certain degree of optimism, and that leaves me as vulnerable to the beguilement of hope as any other dragon. Hope for the future is why I fell prey to Brohomir’s plan, and why I still linger now. The course with the highest chance of success would have been to open the portal the moment it became clear that your Merlin’s plan had failed, but I could not bring myself to do it, because I knew if I ran away then, the one dragon I wanted to bring most wouldn’t be with me.”
Julius’s skin flushed beneath his feathers. “You don’t mean me, do you?”
“Whom else could I mean?” the Black Reach asked, his ancient eyes pleading when he lifted them again. “You are the opportunity I’ve waited ten thousand years for, Julius Heartstriker. That’s why Brohomir chose you. He knew you were the only one I couldn’t kill, because killing you would mean killing my own hope. I’m certain you’re the one who can push us to a better future. No dragon has ever gotten all the clans to work together, but you did so in under an hour. What other miracles could you work, given the time?”
“But that wasn’t me!” Julius said. “Amelia got them here with threats!”
“But why did Amelia call them?” the Black Reach asked. “And why did Svena help her? Why did the Golden Emperor pledge his support to the Heartstrikers, his sworn enemies for the last six centuries? Why did the Daughters of Three Sisters, the clan who has hated yours more than any other, fly to your aid? That wasn’t because of anyone’s threats. That was you. You forged those bonds just as you took your clan from Bethesda’s poison claws and made it into something better.”
A smile broke over the construct’s face. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for a dragon like you? How many times I’ve tried to engineer the situations Bob created simply by placing you in them? I’ve spent my entire existence trying and failing to make dragons act as they do when you’re around, which is why I can’t leave unless you come with me. Brohomir positioned you well, but you were always the one who chose the better path, and I would risk almost anything to let you keep going.”
Julius was ready to sink into the ground by the time the seer finished. He’d never been praised so much, and it felt all wrong, like something terrible was going to happen if the Black Reach kept talking. That said, everything terrible had already happened, which was the only reason Julius was able to swallow his embarrassment and meet the Black Reach’s gaze once more.
“If you’re willing to risk that much for my sake, then help me,” he said, voice shaking. “Dragons can live in any world, but we’d do best in this one. You called her arrogant, but Amelia became the Spirit of Dragons for the same reason you want to save me. She’s also trying to make a better future. The Planeswalker sacrificed her ability to go to other planes so she could make us a home in this one. We’ve run from one plane already. Let’s do better with this one. We can save this world, I know it. But only if you’ll help.”
The Black Reach looked away with a deep breath. “You ask more than you know,” he whispered. “I stand by my claim that your endeavor is almost certainly doomed, but to be honest, I’m no longer sure that I care. I am sick of watching my charges stupidly repeating the same mistakes. If the duty built into me by your ancestors wasn’t pushing me to save them at any cost, I’d help you in a heartbeat. I’d much rather dragonkind die here nobly defending their home than flee to another plane so they can kill each other pointlessly for another ten thousand years. But duty isn’t the only reason I’ve held back. There’s also this.”
He placed a hand on his chest over the spot where the dragon fire burned when they were in human form. “The reason my fire is still able to burn the Leviathan is because it was never mine at all. I’m a construct. A magical creation, not a living thing, which means I can’t make fire of my own. I survive on the magic your ancestors breathed into me before they opened the portal to this world. As I am now, that combined flame is enough to keep me running indefinitely. But if I spend it to create a path through the Leviathan, the magic I burn will be gone forever, and what is left might not be enough to keep me functional.”
Julius stepped back. “You mean you’ll die?”
“That depends on how much I have to use,” the Black Reach said with a shrug. “If I use it all, then yes, I will cease to be. But even if I spend only a portion, what is left will almost certainly not be enough to allow me to continue my duties as guardian of the future, and as much as I wish to help you, that is a sacrifice I cannot make. I can bend the rules if I deem it necessary for the greater good, as I did with you and Brohomir, but I cannot abandon my duty entirely. Every seer tries to sell the future at some point. If I am not there to stop them, it won’t matter if we save this world today, because sooner or later, one of our own seers will end it.”
“You don’t know that,” Julius said. “We can always destroy ourselves, but that’s the price of having choice: we have to choose correctly. I understand why my ancestors created you. They wanted someone to keep us from making the same mistakes they did. But by putting our future in your hands, they took the responsibility for it away from us, and that’s no good. If dragonkind is ever to mature as a species, you can’t make our decisions for us. Our future has to be our own to worry about and protect, not yours.”
The Black Reach stared at him in horror. “You would have me abandon you,” he said. “Give up the purpose for which I was created!”
“I want you to trust us to take care of ourselves,” Julius said. “You’ve said a lot of very nice things about me, but to be honest, the only noteworthy thing I’ve done is convince dragons that they could do what they already longed to. I didn’t make the Qilin choose happiness with Chelsie over suffering for his empire forever. He already desperately wanted to do that. All I did was convince him to go for it. Everything you want dragonkind to be is already inside us. It’s our culture that tells us to dominate and be cruel, not our nature. There are lots of nice dragons in the world. I’m just the only one so far who’s had a chance to show his true colors and live.”
“Because of Brohomir,” the Black Reach said. “If dragons really are as far along as you claim, why did it take the greatest seer in centuries to ensure your survival?”
“Because we’re having to fight against our own stereotype,” Julius said fiercely. “Against what venerable dragons like you are constantly telling us we are! If you really want to make a better dragonkind, start with that. Because the real problem isn’t that seers are selling the future, it’s that they feel that’s the only way. They’d rather face you, their death, than compromise or work together or do any of the other things we’re told from birth that we’re weak and stupid for wanting. That’s the mistake that must never be repeated! Not her.” He pointed back at Bob’s pigeon. “Amelia knew it too, which is why she tied herself to this plane. She was trying to buy us a chance to live long enough to mature past our megalomania stage. That’s the sort of progress you should be fighting to save, not me. I’m just one dragon, but this plane and what we’ve already achieved coming together trying to save it is the best shot you’re ever going to get at actually changing dragon culture. Our better future is already here! I just need you to help me make sure it doesn’t end before it can begin.”
The Black Reach sighed. “And by that I suppose you mean burn a hole in the Leviathan for you?”
“Only if you can do it without dying,” Julius said quickly. “I believe in everything I just said, but it’s still a long shot. Just because I’m willing to bet my life on that doesn’t mean I want to burn up everyone else’s last chance to run. No matter what happens, though, our entire species still came together today. That’s a huge step in the right direction, one you can carry into any other world. Just don’t let what we started today die, and I think you’ll have a better future no matter how this ends. So if you can help me, I’d appreciate it, but if it’ll cost you too much, go ahead and start evacuating as many dragons as you can. I’ll just find another way in.”
By the time he finished, the Black Reach looked almost angry. That wasn’t what Julius had intended. He’d been trying his best to be reasonable, but when he opened his mouth to apologize for whatever he’d said wrong, the construct began to laugh.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Brohomir was feeding you lines,” the Black Reach said, shaking his head. “You truly are a dragon of a different color, Julius Heartstriker. It will be my honor to light your way into the Leviathan.”
“Wait, really?” Julius said, shocked. “You’re sure it won’t kill you?”
“I cannot say,” the Black Reach said calmly, looking up at the Leviathan. “It will take a massive amount of fire to burn through the carapace the enemy has built from Algonquin’s magic, and even more to keep the Nameless End from consuming you once you’re inside. I have no idea if I have enough, but I know I am the only one who could. With the death of the Three Sisters, no dragon remains who is old enough to produce a flame that could challenge a power of this magnitude. But I am Dragon Sees Eternity, one of the two greatest creations of our old realm! Inside me burn the flames of all the ancient clan leaders, including those of your grandfather, the Quetzalcoatl. He was the wisest of all the great dragons, and you remind me very much of him. I believe he would have been proud to know his fire helped you now.”
“But—”
“The decision is made,” the construct said. “And we have very little time left. Now stand back. I will make you a path.”
The words weren’t out of his mouth before the Black Reach began to change, his human body fading as it had when he’d threatened Bob. This time, though, it wasn’t just a claw that emerged from the shadows, but an entire dragon. The biggest Julius had ever seen.
“Whoa,” he said, stumbling back.
He’d known for a long time now that Dragon Sees Eternity was big. He’d seen his brother, after all. Despite Amelia’s all-clan roundup, Dragon Sees the Beginning was still the largest dragon Julius had seen by several orders of magnitude. At least, he had been until now. Julius wasn’t sure if the twin constructs had started out unequal, or if ten thousand years of being the only thing keeping a plane from collapsing had shrunken Dragon Sees the Beginning, but as huge as the bone-white construct of the past had been, he was nothing compared to the dragon that appeared now.
Dragon Sees Eternity was as long as his name. Like his twin, his overlapping scales looked more like stone than anything organic, and each one was marked with a symbol in the ancient magical language of dragons that only experts like Svena could still read. But where Dragon Sees the Beginning had been white, Dragon Sees Eternity was as black as the void, his snaking body so enormous, Julius could no longer see the Leviathan behind him. He was trying to make sense of how something that big could even be alive when Marci ran up and grabbed his neck.
“Oh man,” she said, clutching Ghost to her chest as she clambered onto Julius’s back. “This is going to be epic!”
“I just hope it’s fast,” Amelia said, clinging to Bob’s arm as the two of them walked over. “I don’t know if you looked up during that enlightening conversation, Julius, but things are starting to get extra apocalyptic.”
It was getting rather dark. “Are we the only ones going?” Julius asked, looking at Marci on his back.
“Yes,” Bob said. “Or rather, there are plenty who would come, including me, but you’re the only ones who should. You’re going to Algonquin with a human Merlin, a dragon, and a Mortal Spirit. That’s already a combo pack of her least favorite things. Let’s not make it worse by piling on.”
“I really wanted to go,” Amelia said grumpily. “When else am I going to get a chance to see inside a Nameless End? But Bob convinced me that a Mortal Spirit who was also a dragon would be a bridge way too far, so I’m taking one for the team.”
“Good call, Amelia,” Marci said. “I’ll tell you how it is.”
“Make sure you take notes,” the dragon spirit pleaded. “If we survive, I’ll need a full report.”
Marci crossed her heart and crouched down low on Julius’s back, Ghost tucked safely under her arms. “Ready when you are.”
“I’m ready,” Julius said, looking up at the giant dragon floating above them. “But what do I do? Do I just fly up?”
“I have no idea,” Bob confessed. “There are so many ways this goes wrong, we’re down to picking the least bad. Whatever you choose, though, I’m sure it will be fine.”
Julius swallowed. “That doesn’t sound very seer-like.”
“It’s not,” Bob agreed. “But I’m still confident, because it’s you.” He looked at Julius, his green eyes surprisingly serious. “You’ve only known me a short while, but I’ve known you almost my entire life. I’ve watched these last few months unfold in a million permutations, and in all those potential outcomes, even the tragic ones, you’ve never done less than your best. That’s all I could ever ask of my cornerstone piece, and it’s why I believe in you now. I know you, Julius. I don’t have to see the future to know that so long as there’s the tiniest chance of making this work, you’ll find it. And if you don’t, we’ll all be dead, so I’ll never know I was wrong. It’s called being an optimist.”
Julius would have called it crazy, but he never got to say so because Bob had already stepped back. “Time to go,” he said, lifting his Magician’s Fang. “Good luck!”
The seer hauled back as he finished, swinging his sword like a bat. The flat of the blade whacked Julius right across the middle, knocking the much smaller dragon high into the air just as the giant construct above them took a deep breath. The magic was so thick now, Julius could feel his feathers curling as the heat built and built and built. Finally, just when it seemed the air itself was about to combust, the construct of the future opened his mouth to release a gout of flame so huge and bright, it whited out the sky.
Julius went still so fast, he nearly fell out of the sky. The Black Reach’s fire was the most beautiful he’d ever seen. It was burning hot, but in that heat were more colors than he’d known existed, including the Quetzalcoatl’s famous green. If he hadn’t been in danger of melting, he could have happily watched it forever, but the lovely plume of deadly fire was already flying away, arcing like a solar flare to crash into the black underbelly of the Nameless End.
“NOW, HEARTSTRIKER,” Dragon Sees Eternity roared, his mouth dripping fire. “GO WITH THE FIRE NOW!”
Julius obeyed, pressing his wings tight to protect Marci as he shot into the geyser of fire like an arrow. As his vision went white, Julius closed his eyes, certain they were about to be burned to a crisp. There was just no way anything could survive fire this hot, and yet the magic didn’t consume him. It lifted him, carrying his snaking body like a leaf in a stream up to the Leviathan and through, past the melting wall of black congealed magic and into a deeper dark.