Chapter 6
Chelsie stood at the edge of the wreckage that had been Julius’s front porch, holding her daughter close as the two of them observed the chaos. Fredrick had already left, cutting his way to DC, where Justin, Conrad, and most of the other Heartstrikers were gathered. She’d offered to go with him as backup, but Fredrick had refused. This was his job now, not hers, and he wasn’t going to make her do it even one more time.
If it hadn’t been such a sweet sentiment, she would have told him what a stupid idea it was to go alone into a bunch of nervous, prideful dragons who still thought he was a servant and rally them for war. But while he’d framed it as something he was doing for her sake, Chelsie knew her eldest son, and the hard set of his jaw had told her the refusal wasn’t actually about her at all. Showing up with a Fang and a declaration of war was Fredrick’s first big chance to prove himself among the Heartstrikers as a dragon, not a servant. That wasn’t something she dared to mess with, so she’d just let him go, staying by the Qilin’s side as everyone else scrambled to do their part. She was about to suggest they move closer to Amelia and Svena in case a fight broke out—with those two, it was always a possibility—when she spotted Bob walking toward them
As always, seeing her eldest brother put her on high alert. Even when they’d worked together under Bethesda, she’d long considered the Seer of the Heartstrikers to be her most dangerous enemy. For all Julius’s assurances, Chelsie still wasn’t sure that was no longer the case as Brohomir stopped in front of her.
“I hope I’m not interrupting family time,” he said brightly, giving them both a dazzling smile before turning to the Qilin. “You have a phone call.”
Xian looked rightfully suspicious. “But I don’t have a phone.”
“That’s all right,” Bob said. “I do, and it should be ringing right… about… now.”
Sure enough, something in his pocket began to jangle, and Chelsie rolled her eyes as he pulled out his ancient, battered, brick-shaped Nokia. Bob’s phone was so old, it didn’t even have augmented reality. It didn’t even have a touch screen. He texted using the buttons like a savage. But for all its shortcomings, the antique apparently still worked as a phone, because when Bob hit the button to accept the call, the male dragon voice on the other end came through clear, loud, and angry.
“One moment,” Bob said into the speaker before holding out the phone to the Qilin. “It’s for you. A very pleasant fellow named Lao.”
The emperor’s golden eyes went wide, and then he grabbed the phone from Bob, clutching it to his ear as he began speaking rapidly in Chinese. His cousin replied in kind, his angry voice rapidly transforming into one of great relief as he finally talked to his emperor again.
“How did Lao get your number?” Chelsie asked as Xian stepped away to conduct his call in private.
“I gave it to the Empress Mother,” Bob said flippantly, as though that were a perfectly normal thing to do. “He probably got it from her.”
Chelsie clenched her fists. For a moment, the urge to gut her brother was back strong as ever. But then, as if he could feel her anger building, Julius shot her a worried look from where he was standing beside Amelia on the other side of the dirt yard, and Chelsie forced herself to let it go.
“For the sake of family harmony, I’m not even going to ask what kind of treason you and Fenghuang were cooking up together.”
Bob shrugged. “It was a mutual sort. She was as much my pawn as I was hers. But that’s water under the bridge now, and you know I never look at the past.”
“Because you can’t stomach it?” Chelsie asked, giving him a cold look. “I couldn’t either, if I’d done what you’ve done.”
“If I spent as much time wallowing in the past as you do, my tolerance would be low too,” Bob shot back, and then he sighed. “Let’s not quarrel, Chelsie. Julius wants us to be friends.”
“Julius wants everyone to be friends,” she snapped, getting a tighter hold on her daughter, who was desperately trying to get to Bob. “He should get used to disappointment.”
“He’s very used to disappointment,” Bob said, grinning at the baby dragon. “He just refuses to expect it. That’s what makes him stronger than the rest of us.”
He held out his arms, and Chelsie sighed, releasing her grip on the whelp, who immediately leaped at her uncle.
“There’s my favorite girl!” Bob said, throwing the child high into the air before catching her one handed. “You really should name her.”
“She’s had a name for years,” Chelsie said as Bob tossed her again.
“Really?” He looked genuinely surprised. “I never saw that.” He smiled at the little girl. “I hope it’s something grand. Seers need grand names, or we just end up labeled by our epithets. Look at poor Estella. She had a perfectly lovely name, but it was too normal, so everyone just called her ‘The Northern Star,’ including her. Do you know how awkward it is to get clandestine invitations from ‘The Northern Star?’ Not that I got many of those once she realized I’d never be her pawn.”
Chelsie rolled her eyes, “And Brohomir is better?”
“Much,” Bob assured her. “No one ever calls me by common nouns and verbs. I am always myself, which is a lovely thing to be.” He grinned at the little dragon, who was already snapping at him to make him hurry up with the next throw. “So what’s her name?”
Chelsie reached out to shut her daughter’s snapping mouth. The bad habit had to be trained out early, before her jaws got big enough to do real damage. “Felicity,” she said as Bob tossed the little girl up again.
The seer looked so shocked, he nearly missed the catch. “An F?” he cried. “Really? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely name, but if you were going to stick with Bethesda’s system, you should have gone for an A.”
“I didn’t choose it because of Mother’s stupid system,” Chelsie snapped, grabbing her daughter back before Bob could toss her again. “I wanted her to have a happy name. Maybe it will help her lead a happier life than the rest of us.” She threw the whelp up into the air herself, launching her almost all the way to the top of Ghost’s barrier as the little dragon squealed in delight. “Also, all of her siblings have F names, and I didn’t want her to feel left out. Or for the others to feel I favored her over them.”
“How thoughtful,” Bob said, watching Chelsie toss the little dragon higher and higher. “You really are an exemplary mother. I should send you a card.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious,” Bob said, and for once, he actually sounded it. “I didn’t enjoy hurting you, Chelsie.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“I didn’t,” he said again. “I hated what I had to do, but it was the only way I saw to save you.”
“At the beginning, maybe,” Chelsie said bitterly. “But what about later? I can see sticking me under Bethesda’s boot in a pinch, but that didn’t make you leave me under it for six hundred years.”
“That was the only way I saw to save the rest of us,” Bob replied, his face falling. “I know you think I’m the villain, and from your point of view, I suppose I am. But everything I’ve done I did for our greater good. And for the record, I always meant to make it right. In the future I made for us, you spend ten thousand years as the golden apple of the Qilin’s eye. Surely that’s worth a few centuries of unpleasantness?”
Chelsie caught her daughter with a silent glare, setting the laughing whelp on the ground to catch her breath before turning to face her brother head on. “You don’t get to tell me what our suffering is worth,” she growled. “You weren’t on Bethesda’s chain with us. You weren’t there at all. You were always off in the future, leaving those of us in the present to clean up your messes. Ten thousand years of happiness is the least you can offer for what you put us through, especially since it’s not certain we’ll live past tonight.”
“The future is never certain,” Bob agreed. “I was going to make it that way, but now that we’re thirty minutes past my pre-marked expiration date, I’m afraid the future has changed too much for my guarantee to be good anymore.”
Chelsie blinked. “What does that mean?”
“It means the one-in-multiple-billions future I was planning to trade all others for is gone, vanished into the streams of time with all the other timelines from before I convinced the Black Reach that killing me would be shooting himself in the foot. We’re in a new world now, with new futures. Ones I don’t know. But while most of those are very dark, I know we’ll get through this.”
“How?” Chelsie asked, arching an eyebrow. “Got another trick up your endless sleeves?”
“No,” Bob said with a sad laugh. “I’m afraid my tricks and sleeves ended half an hour ago. Frankly, I’m still celebrating the fact I spotted Lao’s phone call in time to make a cryptic comment and maintain my reputation.”
Chelsie rolled her eyes. “Then how can you say you know anything?”
“Because Julius isn’t the only one I needed to be himself,” Bob said, smiling down at her. “Every dragon, spirit, and human in this yard is here because I wanted them to be. Not because I foresaw they’d be useful at any one specific time, but because I knew them. I know you too, Chelsie. A lesser seer, one with more limited vision, would have connived and blackmailed you to bring you to this point, but I didn’t need such blunt tools. All I had to do was choose goals that aligned with your own, and you went after them all by yourself. That’s what separates a good seer from a great one, and it’s why I’m not worried now. I don’t need to see the future to know that we will get through this. Because I see you, and if you can’t do it, it can’t be done.”
That was the most sincere compliment Bob had ever given her. Maybe the only sincere compliment. But while Chelsie didn’t doubt that her brother was telling the truth, something about what he’d said still didn’t sit right. “If that’s how you feel, why do you still have her?”
She nodded at the pigeon sitting on Bob’s shoulder, and he raised his hand protectively, cupping his fingers gently around the bird’s feathered head. “She’s for me,” he said quietly. “My ace in the hole, especially now that I no longer know exactly where all the holes are. The cost of her help will be painfully high now that we’ve moved past the future I’d picked out, but there may come a time when cost doesn’t matter. Besides,” he turned up his nose, “a consort never abandons his lady. What kind of dragon do you think I am?”
Chelsie had a lot of answers for that one. She was about to give him the full, blistering rundown when Xian suddenly came back, his gold eyes bright as he told them to make room. The Dragons of the Golden Empire were coming in for a landing.
***
Julius watched Bob and Chelsie’s conversation with growing dread. It wasn’t that he didn’t like that they were finally talking—he was ecstatic—he just had no confidence it would stay that way. He knew firsthand how infuriating Bob could be, and the seer had only manipulated his life. He’d stomped on Chelsie’s, and from the look on her face, she wasn’t ready to let it go.
But fortunately, and very surprisingly, Bob didn’t seem to be antagonizing her. He actually looked sincere, almost apologetic. Not that he would ever actually apologize—he was too much of a dragon for that—but it was a marked detour from his normal behavior. Julius wasn’t sure if that was because the seer was off his script now or if Bob really did feel bad about what he’d put Chelsie and her children through, but whatever the reason, he was glad of it. One of his biggest motivations for agreeing to take over his clan was the chance to end Bethesda’s culture of violence, something that would be a lot easier if members of his family would stop trying to kill each other. He didn’t think they were there quite yet, but talking instead of hitting was definitely a step in the right direction. He just wished everything else were going as well.
At that, Julius’s attention jumped back to the other source of his anxiety: Marci. She was standing beside Ghost in the ruins of their house. They were too far away for him to hear what they were saying, but Marci looked upset, which, of course, upset him. He wanted to go over and ask what was wrong, but he didn’t want to hover or make her think he didn’t trust her to do her job. She was the Merlin. He’d seen her do the impossible more than anyone else here, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. The stakes were just so high, and there were so many things that could go wrong on every front.
For example, Fredrick wasn’t back yet. Julius presumed he was still in DC, talking to Conrad, Justin, and the others, but he could be facing off against Bethesda for all Julius knew. Not that he could do anything about that if it was true, but the combined stress was enough to make a dragon crazy. Especially since the one part of the plan to stop the Leviathan that Julius was actually involved with wasn’t currently going anywhere.
Since he couldn’t actually help Marci with spirit stuff, Julius had volunteered to help Amelia and Svena bring in the other dragon clans. Seeing as they’d already agreed to work together, he’d assumed they’d get right to the portal making or magic circles or whatever it was they did. But other than moving to a relatively flat portion of Julius’s dirt yard, neither Amelia nor Svena had done anything except stand around staring at each other like enemies on the field of combat. No one had actually attacked yet, but they’d been at it for a good ten minutes now, and with the Leviathan growing more solid by the second, Julius wasn’t sure how much more they—or he—could take.
“Should we do something?” he whispered to Katya, who was standing next to him with Svena’s fluffy whelps clinging to every limb.
“Nothing we can do,” the dragoness whispered back. “They always do this. Don’t worry, though. With mouths and egos as big as theirs, the silence won’t last much longer. Just let them posture. One of them will crack soon enough. You’ll see.”
Neither of the two dragon mages looked anywhere near cracking to him, but Katya had more experience with Svena and Amelia’s unique dynamic than Julius did, so he kept waiting, hopping nervously from foot to foot until, when he was close to cracking himself from the stress, Amelia finally spoke.
“Let’s hear it,” she drawled, cocking her head at Svena. “How does this super teleportation spell of yours work?”
“That is classified information,” Svena said. “This spell is a treasure of our clan, the work of centuries. The fact that I’ve agreed to use it for you is sacrifice enough. I’m not going to hold your hand and guide you through the casting as well.”
Amelia glowered. “You know I could just look through your fire and find out for myself, right?”
“You could try,” Svena said. “But you’ve never understood half my spells. What makes you think you can grasp the workings of my greatest masterpiece?” Her smirk turned cruel. “Also, before you go rooting through my private thoughts like a pig, remember that street goes both ways. You step where you are not welcome, and I’ll shove memories at you that you can’t unsee. I have some very interesting recollections of events in our youth that you were too drunk to recall, not to mention images of Ian that a sister would never want to—”
“Okay, okay,” Amelia said, putting up her hands. “No need to drag out the nuclear ordnance. I was only curious.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘greedy,’” Svena replied with a huff. “Just because you’re the Spirit of Dragons doesn’t mean all our treasures are yours. If you come for me, I will fight you, and when my opponent is a self-styled god, I see no reason to fight fair.”
“You’ve never fought fair,” Amelia grumbled. “But fine, whatever, do it your way. So long as the teleporting gets done, I don’t care if you make the circle out of orphan hearts.”
Svena looked confused. “What are you talking about? The hearts of children without parents are no more magical than the hearts of any other child, which is to say not very magical at all. You know perfectly well that humans are a vastly inferior source for—”
“For the love of—it was a joke,” Amelia groaned. “Just cast your spell before Julius has a conniption.”
Both dragons looked at Julius, who blushed. He hadn’t realized his nerves were showing that badly, but since he had their attention… “We are in a hurry. So please, if you wouldn’t mind…”
“I don’t mind at all,” Svena said, walking into the large, clear patch of dirt beside the crater Bob had made when he’d come in. “Amelia’s the one wasting time digging for other dragons’ treasure. Greedy snake.”
Amelia could only shrug at that one, but Svena wasn’t looking at her anymore. Her ice-blue eyes were fixed on the ground as she carefully paced off a length of dirt between the wall of cracked on-ramps and the broken house. When she’d walked out a circle that was roughly forty feet in diameter, she held out her hand.
“Katya.”
Katya sighed and began plucking the fluffy white baby dragons off her body. “Can you hold them for a moment?”
Before Julius could answer, Katya shoved the entire clutch at him. He was still struggling to keep the squirming whelps from hitting the ground when Katya ran over to take position on the opposite side of the circle from her sister, biting her lip nervously as she held out her hands. She’d barely gotten them up before Svena stomped over and started correcting her form, smacking the younger dragoness’s limbs until they were in positions that—to Julius at least—looked only marginally different from how they’d been at the start. It must have been a critical margin, though, because Svena nodded and walked back to her spot, raising her own arms in a graceful arc until they were a mirror image of Katya’s.
“Just like we do at home,” Svena said, breathing out a long plume of ice-pale smoke. “Now.”
The word was barely out of her mouth when both dragonesses brought their hands down, and the circle Svena had made in the dirt with her footsteps exploded in blue-white fire. The blast that rolled off it hit Julius like a bucket of frozen seawater, and he wasn’t the only one. The ghostly flames lowered the temperature of the entire cavern by a good twenty degrees, making everyone except Ghost shudder. Lacy frost was creeping across the ground in curls when Katya stepped back to cede the ignited circle to her sister, who looked smugger than Julius had ever seen her.
“And that is how it’s done,” Svena said, casting a superior look at Amelia, who was openly gaping. “With a proper magical education and attention to form and detail, even a fire-deaf dragon like Katya can assist in creating masterpieces. You would do well to take note, Planeswalker.” She turned back to the circular inferno of freezing flames in front of her. “Now that the initial base is ignited, all I need is a name and a location to grab any dragon from anywhere on this plane, including from behind wards.”
Amelia looked impressed despite herself. “For real? Wards too? So you can just grab anyone at any time?”
“It would hardly be useful otherwise,” Svena said proudly, her blue eyes brighter than ever as they reflected the dancing flames. “This is the greatest work of my clan. I was the primary architect, but we all did our share, and that cooperation is reflected in its power. It is an unbeatable strategic weapon, a spell capable of grabbing any dragon, anywhere. The only one we could never get was Brohomir, but only because he always saw it coming and moved.”
“And me,” Katya said, walking over to take the whelps back from Julius. “It’s written into the base magic of the spell that members of our own clan can only be teleported if we’re willing. That was the price of my help. Otherwise, Estella would have ripped me back home every time I escaped.”
“There are a few limitations,” Svena admitted grudgingly. “It takes at least two of us to make the initial circle, and I have to be one. It’s also enormously draining. Given that I just laid a clutch of eggs, I shouldn’t have been able to make it work at all, but there’s so much free-floating magic around right now, I don’t have to worry about collapse, which makes things much easier. Also, Amelia’s connection to our fire might have given Katya and me a tiny boost, which pushed us over the edge.”
“Right,” Amelia said, rolling her eyes. “So what you’re saying is your amazing treasure spell is a giant pain in the butt that you’re only able to cast because I’m helping you.”
“I could cast it any time I liked!” Svena snapped back. “It would just require a few months of set up. With proper planning, though, it is an unstoppable weapon!”
“Then why’d you never use it?” Amelia asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Because once we did, everyone would know we had it,” Katya explained. “If the other clans knew we could grab any of them at any time, they would unite against us. We’d be enemy number one for the entire world, and even we couldn’t stand against that.”
Svena scowled at her sister while Amelia began to howl. “Some super weapon! You can’t even use it without putting a target on your own clan!”
“Which is exactly why I did not wish to reveal it now,” Svena growled. “There will be no putting it back in the bag after this, but it’s too late to turn back.” She looked pointedly over her shoulder at the Qilin’s arriving dragons, who were so busy gawking at the ring of blue-white fire, they almost missed their landing. “The whole world will know soon enough, so we might as well make it count.” She glanced at Amelia. “Whom am I grabbing first?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Amelia said, putting up her hands. “You can’t just start plucking dragons out of their strongholds! All we’ll get is a bunch of terrified, angry lizards, which is more harm than good. We gotta warm them up before we bring them in.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Svena asked snidely. “Send them a letter?”
Amelia’s lips curled in a smirk of her own. “Not quite.”
She stepped up to the edge of the flaming blue circle, and her body began to flicker, her edges rippling in the cold wind coming off Svena’s roaring magic like a candle flame. Then, in a wink, she was gone entirely, replaced by the same dragon made of fire Julius had seen when she’d first come back from the dead. He was still gawking at her flaming wings when Amelia’s voice boomed through his fire, filling his head with the burning bite of her magical teeth.
Hear me, serpents of the Earth, she said, the words throbbing like a physical force inside his chest. Your new god speaks! I am Amelia the Planeswalker, the Spirit of Dragons. As you’ve all felt since last night, our racial fire is now connected to the magic of this world. No longer are we wanderers, refugees in a foreign land. With my life, I have won us a new home, but you must fight to keep it. The Lady of the Lakes has sold us to a Nameless End, a force of absolute destruction from beyond our plane. To avoid extinction, we must dig deep into the magic of our new world and come together as one force against our common foe.
That sounded pretty inspiring to Julius, but Amelia wasn’t finished. This is not a request, the Spirit of Dragons boomed, her magic gripping his flames like a fist. If you refuse to fight, then you are not worthy of our new power. Just as I connected all of you to the magic that is now flooding this world, I will cut you off, leaving you a fireless worm. You will be even lower than we sank during the drought, while those around you who answered my call will be bathed in my power. If you do not wish this to be your fate, accept Svena the White Witch’s hand when she reaches for you, and she will bring you to me. Once we are all assembled, I will explain how we will beat back this invader and defend our new home.
She finished with a flourish, cutting off with a jab so sharp, every dragon in the yard coughed out a puff of smoke. Even Svena’s squirming whelps went still, their blue eyes wide as they stared in awe at Amelia, who looked incredibly pleased with herself.
“Little overdramatic, don’t you think?” Svena said, glaring up at the dragon spirit.
“What’s the point of being a god if you can’t be dramatic?” Amelia said, fluffing her flaming feathers. “And you can’t deny the results. My head is already full of voices. They’re falling over themselves to volunteer!”
“You can’t call that ‘volunteering,’” Julius said. “You threatened to take away their fire if they didn’t obey! That’s extortion.”
Amelia laughed out loud. “Sorry, Baby-J! If you want dragons now, this is how we get them. But feel free to apologize for my rudeness when they arrive if it’ll make you feel better.”
“I’m not going to apologize,” Julius grumbled. “I’m just saying you didn’t have to go for the throat right out of the gate.”
“Spoken like a true Nice Dragon,” Svena said, sharing an eye roll with Amelia before turning back to her freezing circle. “Once again, whom am I pulling in first?”
Amelia’s flaming eyes moved rapidly, searching through the empty air as though she were studying something very complicated that no one else could see. “Let’s start with Fading Smoke, the Dragon of Gibraltar. He’s raring to go.”
“You mean old Arkniss?” Svena wrinkled her nose. “You really did get everyone.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Amelia said. “And we’re going to need every dragon we can get.”
As though he’d been waiting for his cue, the Leviathan chose that moment to send a tentacle straight over the hole Bob’s crash had punched in the Skyways. Watching it go past was like having an ocean liner sail over their heads. Even Amelia’s fire dimmed slightly when the shadow crossed her. When it was gone, both dragons turned back to the teleport circle with new urgency.
“Getting Fading Smoke now,” Svena said quietly, her pale face tight in concentration. “Make room.”
Julius didn’t realize that last part was for him until the dragon came flying out of the freezing flames. He was impressively big, a heavyset European dragon with thick armored black-and-green scales, amber eyes, leathery wings, and a mouth full of shining teeth and black smoke. He landed with a crash in the dirt right on top of where Julius and Katya had been standing before they’d managed to jump out of the way, and the moment his claws touched the ground, he started yelling.
“What is the meaning of this?” the old dragon roared. “Planeswalker! How did you…”
His booming voice trailed off as he looked around at the cavern, which was now very crowded. The ruins of Julius’s house were completely overrun with the Golden Emperor’s dragons. The Qilin was still in human form, probably because his giant golden dragon wouldn’t have fit inside the cavern, but it was still unquestionably him. Likewise, Svena’s identity was obvious, and Amelia was a giant dragon made of fire. Even to Julius, who was used to sudden gatherings of powerful dragons, it was an impressive sight. For a newcomer like Fading Smoke, it was enough to render him speechless.
“I see you weren’t exaggerating,” he said, much more calmly this time as his reptilian eyes rolled up to take in the Leviathan filling the sky overhead. “I will tell my sons to follow at once. Who is in charge?”
The Planeswalker pointed a burning claw at Julius. “He is.”
Julius and the giant dragon exchanged a look of mutual disbelief. When they turned back to Amelia, though, she was already calling out their next target to Svena, who yelled at both Fading Smoke and Julius to move. They obeyed at once, pressing themselves into the wall as Svena brought the next dragon through, this one in human form but looking no less upset than Fading Smoke had been. She also started by demanding to know what was the meaning of this and who was in charge, only to fade off when she saw the army of dragons and the monster in the sky. She was still staring at it when Fading Smoke hooked her shoulder and pulled her over.
“They say he’s the leader,” he growled, nodding at Julius when the new dragoness—whose human form was tall, dark skinned, and incredibly striking—smacked his claw away. “But who is he?”
Both dragons looked at Julius then. Fortunately, being stared down at by bigger monsters was something he’d a lot of experience with at this point, and he managed to stare back without flinching. “I’m Julius Heartstriker, and I promise I’ll explain once everyone is here. Meanwhile, please change into your human forms and go wait with the Qilin. We have a lot more dragons coming, and there won’t be room below the barrier if everyone’s their true size.”
He pointed at Ghost’s barrier, which was still protecting them from the thinning—but still present—magic. Fortunately, that plus the Qilin plus the monster overhead was a combination that worked miracles. Despite the painfully obvious fact that Julius was by far the smallest and weakest dragon here, neither of the newcomers questioned his request. They simply nodded and shuffled over to pay their respects to the Golden Emperor, leaving Julius alone beside the portal to greet the next confused, angry dragon who came barreling through Svena’s ring of freezing fire.