Chapter 12
The fight against the Leviathan had been raging for just over an hour, but it already felt like a hundred.
The sky was full of fire. Everywhere Julius looked, dragons and jets and helicopters were shooting down the black tentacles that fell from the sky like streamers. There were actually more human aircraft than dragons now. They’d been arriving in a steady stream since the magic had dropped enough to let them fly, and not all of them were military. Between General Jackson and David, everything capable of flight for three hundred miles had been scrambled. The ones that couldn’t shoot served as spotters, helping Julius direct the rest to places where the tentacles were getting through.
“South of the river! Canadian shore of Lake Erie!” a voice shouted in Julius’s ear. “No one’s here, and that thing’s drinking the lake like a damn hose!”
“Copy,” Julius replied, looking up at Amelia. “We need someone on the Erie north shore by the river.”
“Working on it,” his sister growled, hovering on her flaming wings as tentacles shot through her. She wasn’t even bothering to burn them anymore. She was too busy coordinating the dragon half of the world’s biggest, deadliest game of Whac-A-Mole, abusing her ability to turn into pure flame to avoid having to dodge the tentacles that were constantly sailing through the air.
Julius didn’t have that luxury. He was still flesh and blood, which meant he spent most of his time dodging, blasting whatever he could while he frantically tried to keep track of everything that was going on and which locations needed help the most.
“Most” was key, because everywhere was in trouble. When they’d started this, he’d assumed that the Leviathan couldn’t be everywhere at once. After an hour of fighting, though, Julius had decided there was no practical limit to the number of tentacles that thing could produce. They literally filled the sky at times, forcing the dragons to scramble out of the way as the black appendages crashed into the lake beds to suck up whatever water was left. The less-agile human vehicles weren’t so lucky. They went down flaming when the tentacles got thick, the pilots’ voices screaming in Julius’s ears before their radios cut out.
It would have been horrific if he’d had time to process it, but there was no time for anything except the fight. They’d long since given up trying to stop every tentacle. At this point, it was simply a race to slow the Leviathan down enough for Marci to finish. He just hoped they could make it.
“Julius.”
He snatched his eyes off his AR radar display as General Jackson’s face appeared in the air to his left, looking more harried than he’d ever seen her. “We’re losing too many units,” she said. “We can’t keep up like this, so I’m pulling two squads off Lake Michigan and authorizing a bombing run on the Leviathan’s main body. I need you and the Planeswalker to pull someone in to cover their areas during the gap.”
“I don’t know if we have anyone else,” Julius said, flitting to the side just in time to avoid being hit by the flaming end of a tentacle Justin had just chomped in half. “Why are you wasting time on a bombing run anyway? Amelia already blasted that thing with enough dragon fire to melt a battleship, and it did nothing.”
“I know,” the general snapped. “But we can’t keep up with the tentacles and I’m running out of planes. If we don’t start doing some damage back, this fight is going to be over in the next ten minutes.”
Julius swallowed. He’d known things were dire, but he hadn’t realized they were that bad. “I’ll find someone to cover the gap,” he promised. “Good luck.”
But the general had already cut out. A few moments later, Julius saw the jets on his radar tracker peel off their pattern above Lake Michigan and start heading for the Leviathan.
“Fools,” Amelia snorted when he told her. “If I couldn’t burn it, no combination of metal and explosives has a chance.”
“I said the same thing,” Julius replied. “But while I agree it won’t work, the general has a point. Every tentacle we burn pops right back up, but while the Leviathan doesn’t seem to care, we’re taking real damage.” He glanced up at Justin, who was still bathing the sky in green fire despite the blood dripping through his feathers. “We can’t keep on like this. If we’re going to survive until Marci gets here, we have to find a way to start hurting it back.”
“If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m all ears,” Amelia said, the flames that made up her head flickering wildly as she watched the jets fly in. “Here we go.”
That was the only warning Julius got before the bombardment began. He barely managed to cover his ears in time before a halo of white light filled the sky as multiple magical warheads struck the Leviathan’s carapace. The force wave hit him a second later, sending him tumbling through the air. He caught himself with his wings just before he crashed into a toppled building, clutching the wreckage with his claws for balance as he watched, breathless, to see if the attack had had any effect.
When the smoke cleared, his heart sank. It was hard to see in the dark, but it didn’t look as though the fighters’ bombs had been any more effective than Amelia’s fire. The bottom of the Leviathan was still a solid wall of shiny black, smooth and impenetrable.
For the first time since he’d taken off, Julius began to feel truly hopeless. They couldn’t hurt it. They must have burned thousands of tentacles by now, and it didn’t seem to have changed a thing. The lakes were almost gone. People were dead. Only a few dragons were down, but that number was bound to rise as more of the UN forces were destroyed or forced to drop out. It didn’t matter how hard they fought—they were failing, and there was nothing he could do about it. If Marci didn’t come through soon, they would all die up here. He would die, and he wouldn’t even get to apologize to her for failing. He couldn’t even tell her goodb—
“Julius!”
The yell came through his com, but it wasn’t General Jackson. It wasn’t even human. It was Bob, and he sounded frantic. Frantic good or frantic bad, though, Julius didn’t know yet.
“Get back to Amelia,” the seer said, raising his voice over General Jackson, who was screaming at him to give her back her com in the background. “Tell her to get everyone out of the sky.”
“Why?” Julius asked, pushing off the ground as fast as he could. “What’s going to happen?”
His oldest brother’s face popped into his augmented vision just in time for Julius to see him grin. “Looks like your human came through.”
That was all he had time to say before Emily Jackson wrestled her com out of his hands, but Julius wasn’t watching his AR anymore. He was flying as hard as he could back to Amelia, whose fire was suddenly looking dimmer.
“Where did you go?” she panted, grabbing on to him as her body flickered. “I need your help. Something’s happening to the magic. I can’t—”
“It’ll be okay,” Julius said frantically. “Marci did it! Bob just called to say she’s on her way. You need to tell everyone to get out of the sky now.”
The radio in his ear was already full of chatter as Emily ordered all human troops to the ground, but Amelia was shaking her head. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m not sure if I can tell everyone. The magic just suddenly started dropping like a stone. It feels like the drought all over again, except way worse because I’m the one drying up this time!”
It was true. Her flaming body was shrinking in front of his eyes. By the time she finished talking, she wasn’t much bigger than he was, and her eyes were terrified. “Help me, Julius!”
“I’ve got you,” he assured her, blowing a lick of flame. “You can shelter in my fire. I’ll give you whatever you need, but you have to tell the others to get down. You’re the only one who can talk to every dragon, and I don’t think Bob would have warned me if it wasn’t going to be bad.”
Amelia nodded and vanished, her orange flames snuffing out only to reappear inside Julius’s, making him gasp as a new power entered the fire that was the center of everything that made him a dragon.
Sorry, Amelia whispered in his mind. You might want to go ahead and land, because this is going to hurt.
Julius nodded and dove for a bit of open roadway below, but he’d barely made it ten feet before a wave of weakness knocked him out of the sky. There’d been no attack, no injury. Every muscle in his body had simply given up, leaving him limp as a ribbon as he plummeted through the air. He was trying to roll over so he’d at least land on his feet when a shout shook the sky above him.
“Julius!”
The roar was so loud it made his ears throb. Then giant sharp claws stabbed into his back as Justin snatched him out of the sky.
“Ow,” Julius groaned.
“Better than hitting the ground,” Justin snarled, the transformed Fang of the Heartstriker on his jaw punctuating each word with a plume of green fire. “What is wrong with you? I didn’t see you get hit!”
Julius couldn’t begin to explain what had happened with Amelia, mostly because he didn’t fully understand it himself. Fortunately, Justin’s questions seemed to be perfunctory, because he didn’t even wait for Julius to answer before dropping him on the ground so he could take off again.
“Wait!” Julius cried after him. “Justin, come back! We need to stay on the ground!”
“But we’re not done!” Justin yelled, blasting another tentacle out of the sky before swiveling his massive head to glare down at his little brother. “Just stay there. I’ll be right—”
GET DOWN!
Justin jerked as the command hit him, his whole body seizing as if he’d been electrocuted. Julius wasn’t much better. He was already on the ground, so there was no danger of falling, but the pain was still excruciating as Amelia grabbed his fire and twisted, forcing her will into the flames.
Everyone on the ground NOW, she roared, her voice shaking with effort before cutting out as fast as it had come up. Her presence vanished from Julius’s fire at the same time, making him gasp in relief as the unnatural weakness faded, leaving only good old-fashioned normal pain behind. He was still trying to breathe through it when a tiny voice spoke beside him.
“Whew,” it said. “Sorry about that. Dragons lost in battle lust are notoriously bad listeners, so I had to pull hard to make sure I had enough oomph to get through.”
Julius blinked in confusion. The voice sounded like Amelia’s, but it was so soft he could barely hear it. He couldn’t see her either when he opened his eyes, then something poked his forefoot, and Julius looked down to see a tiny dragon made of fire standing on the ground beside him.
“Hi,” it said. “Thanks for the boost.”
He blinked at the little creature in wonder. “Amelia?”
The dragon was no larger than a kitten, but the annoyed look on her face was definitely his sister’s.
“What is going on?” Justin demanded, setting down beside them. Then he spotted the little dragon. “What the—is that the Planeswalker?”
“Laugh at me and die,” Amelia growled, giving the knight a killing look before scampering up Julius’s leg to perch in the spot between his wing and his neck. “This isn’t a form I wanted to revisit, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Something’s gone seriously haywire in the Sea of Magic. I don’t know what Marci’s doing over there, but it’s big.” She cowered in Julius’s feathers. “You might want to duck.”
Julius swallowed. Now that she’d mentioned it, the world did feel a bit… empty. He’d been too busy to notice before, but now that he was paying attention, he could feel the lack of magic like dryness in the air. If the city hadn’t been so saturated with the stuff only minutes before, Julius didn’t think he could have maintained his dragon. He already felt uncomfortably heavy, like a fish out of water, and he wasn’t the only one. Justin was actually gasping, his green eyes strained as he ripped the cage of his transformed Fang of the Heartstriker off his mouth.
“What is… going… on?”
As though in answer to his question, a cold wind rose, but not winter cold. This was the cold of the grave, and it was coming from the ground, rising up through the dirt like it was blowing in the world below. Under any other circumstances, it would have been the creepiest thing Julius had ever felt, but this time, the dry, death-scented air brought a giant smile to his face.
“It’s Marci,” he said, crouching low, as Amelia had suggested. He was reaching up to drag his gasping brother down as well when the wind doubled, filling the air with the cold anger of the forgotten dead.
***
Marci had never known she was so empty to be so full.
She was holding more magic than she’d ever felt in her life. Keeping it all contained felt like trying to carry the ocean in a thimble, and yet, thanks to Ghost, it worked. Everything she couldn’t hold, the Empty Wind took, letting the magic pour into the abyss of his vessel, which was now floating below them.
Marci stopped, blinking in confusion, but that didn’t change what she saw. With one blink, she was standing on the mountain in the Heart of the World. With the next, she was floating inside the yawning emptiness of the Empty Wind’s domain, the same place he’d brought her when he’d eaten her during the fight with Myron and the DFZ at the Merlin Gate.
“What’s happening?”
You’re blending with me, her spirit replied, his voice as loud as hers in their shared head. The magic is blurring the barriers, making you see as I see.
“This is what you see?” Marci said, horrified. Every time she blinked, she saw something different: the dark, the mountain, her own unconscious body back in the DFZ, their crushed house far below the battle. Hundreds of images flicked past like slides on a sped-up reel. But while Marci found the chaos even more nauseating than the Sea of Magic, a cold part of her mind found the mishmash comforting, even inspiring. It was utterly confusing until Marci realized that bit wasn’t part of her mind at all. It was Ghost. Her spirit was inside her thoughts in a way he’d never been before. Likewise, she could feel herself in him, blowing through the dark as the magic poured in.
“Wow,” she whispered, flexing her hands, which weren’t her hands at all, but his. A soldier’s dark, sure fingers. “And it’s the magic that’s doing this?”
The magic is crushing us together, yes, he said. But the fact that we’re handling it is all us. She felt his smile on her face. Our bond is strong.
“We are awesome,” Marci agreed, searching through the confusion of images until she found one that looked down on the DFZ from high above. “There.”
They moved together, sliding through the barrier, which was no longer much of a barrier at all. With so much focused magic near it, the wall between reality and the Sea of Magic was running like hot wax, sliding out of the way easily as Marci stepped out of the Heart of the World and into the high, cold air above the Leviathan.
“Wow,” Marci said, looking over their shoulder at the melted hole in the world they’d left behind them. “It’s just like when the DFZ was pulling in magic through Myron. We’ve blended worlds.”
“We’ve done more than that,” Ghost replied, turning their winds—because they were wind now, a freezing, grave-like wind that blotted out the sun and filled the air with memories—back to the Nameless End below. “The magic of the world, all the spirits and those who rely on them, the life of this plane itself has been shaped into one massive force. The only reason it hasn’t blown itself to bits yet is because the Heart of the World is holding it. We’re hooked into it now too, but if you want to bring it down on him”—he nodded at the dark expanse of the Leviathan—“you’re going to have to grab that mass and swing it.”
That was the part she’d been dreading. There was no turning back now, though, so Marci rubbed the memory of her hands together and reached through their connected magic to the flimsy shadow of her soul, which was still kneeling in the Heart of the World. Using her new double vision, she kept one eye on the Leviathan while the other focused on her spellwork, opening the dam to let the high-pressure magic surge out of Myron’s circle into the banishment she’d scratched onto her bracelet.
Even merged with Ghost, the force nearly blew her apart. The moment she pushed the power into the spellwork, all that magic—that ocean in a thimble—became a living, pounding thing desperate to be free. Controlling it was like trying to hold a dragon with a hair, but every time Marci started to slip, Ghost was there to catch her, his winds shoring them both up. There was more here than any spirit, even a god, could hold, but Ghost and Marci together were greater than the sum of their parts. Somehow, they kept it together, Ghost containing the edges while Marci guided the magic through her spell, folding and winding and condensing the power just as she’d done with Amelia’s flame when Svena had shoved it down her throat. On and on and on it went, until, at last, all the spirits who’d jumped down Myron’s well were crushed into a ball that fit in Marci’s hand.
And it was beautiful.
Short as their time was, Marci couldn’t help but stop and stare. No mortal eyes had ever seen all the magic of the world together in one place. Given how dark the Sea of Magic normally appeared, she’d expected the spell to look like a black hole, but it didn’t. It looked like a star. A shining orb of every color that glowed so bright it hurt to look at. It was heavy, too, dense enough to weigh down even their wind. If she held it for much longer, the weight would crush them against the Leviathan’s back, but Marci didn’t need to hold it. Thanks to the Empty Wind, they were already in position, which meant all she had to do was let go. So, with a triumphant smile, Marci opened her hands and let the magic drop, releasing the spell that was so simple, it had only one word.
Scatter.
True to its form, the banishment fell like a star, picking up speed with every inch until it was screaming through the air. When it hit the Leviathan, the entire world went silent, holding its breath as the condensed magic imploded in a blinding flash, blowing everything apart.
Including them.
The exploding magic crashed into them like a wall. One moment, Marci was flying as part of the Empty Wind. The next, she was scattered across the entire Great Lakes area. For a horrifying moment, that seemed to be the end, but then, as always, the Empty Wind caught her, hauling both of their magic back into the quiet safety of his black-and-white realm.
Marci snapped back together with a gasp. She was still a disembodied soul, but she was no longer in the Heart of the World. Instead, they were back in the basement of the cat house at the edge of town, standing over her unconscious body, which was being kept warm by a purring blanket of stray cats. Outside, the sky was white through the broken windows. Marci couldn’t see more than that from this realm, though, so, without even waiting for Ghost to tell her how, she jumped back into her body.
It hurt a lot more than she’d expected. Not having died this time, Marci expected to just pop back up like Myron always seemed to. But even when you did it the nonlethal way, traveling to the afterlife on the Empty Wind still clearly had deathly overtures, because she woke up with the same horrible heaviness in her limbs as when Raven had taken her back the first time. She didn’t have to claw her way out of her own grave, and the cats had kept her warm, but it was still horrifying. She was gasping the air back into her lungs when Ghost shouted in her head.
Marci!
His excited voice was surprisingly quiet. Softer than it had been in weeks. When Marci looked up to see why, the Empty Wind was a cat again, his fluffy white body smaller and more transparent than it had been since the time she’d accidentally almost snuffed him by taking him out of his domain. As dim as he looked, though, Ghost’s glowing blue eyes were wide and excited as he hopped onto her chest. Come see!
Marci forced herself to her feet. On the way up, her body made it clear in no uncertain terms that moving was a very bad idea, but after all they’d just gone through, she wouldn’t have missed this for anything. It hurt and made her sick, but she kept going, staggering through the blown-off basement door into the grass outside.
Into the sunlight.
She shielded her eyes at once. The winter afternoon sun was hazy with smoke, but after the Sea of Magic and the dark of the Leviathan’s shadow, it felt as strong as a spotlight, primarily because it was there. The sky above their heads was empty. They’d done it.
“It worked,” Marci said, her face splitting into a grin as she blinked frantically in the light. “It worked!”
The Leviathan was gone. Where he’d been, a fine mist of water was falling like rain, but other than that, there was no trace of him anywhere. He was simply not there. Banished, just as she’d promised.
“We did it!” she cried, grabbing Ghost so suddenly he yowled. “We banished a Nameless End! We saved the world! Do you have any idea how famous we’ll be when this gets…”
Her voice trailed off as something clenched hard in the pit of her stomach. Now that she’d blasted all the magic back out into the world, she and Ghost were no longer blended into everything, but she’d have had to be deaf, dumb, and blind to miss the yank that had just happened at the pit of her soul.
“Ghost—”
I felt it too, he whispered, hopping up on her shoulder to look around. But I don’t know what—
He was cut off by the whoosh of thousands of gallons of water suddenly being sucked back into the air. All around them, the rain that had been falling from the banished Leviathan was reversing. The water even left her clothes, the wetness pulling out of the cat-hair-covered fabric like someone was vacuuming it up. In the space of a few seconds, all the magic the banishment had scattered was back in place, and as it coalesced, the hazy sunlight vanished yet again as the Leviathan reappeared.
“No,” Marci said, her eyes going wide. “No!”
This couldn’t be happening. They’d won. The Leviathan had been gone. How was it back? How was this possible?
He must have re-formed, Ghost said quietly. Banishments are only temporary.
“Not that temporary!” Marci cried. “And re-formed where? He has no vessel! No home! How did he pull himself back together so—”
“Marci!”
The yell came from far away, and she looked up to see a small blue shape racing toward her across the city. A few seconds later, Julius landed panting beside them, his feathered face grim beneath the crown of his Fang. “Are you okay?”
“No!” Marci said angrily, stabbing her hand at the once-again blackened sky. “That should have worked! Why didn’t it work?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Julius said, lowering his wings so she could climb onto his back. “Hop on. The others are waiting back at the house.”
Marci didn’t want to go back to the others. She wanted to return to the Heart of the World and figure out how things had gone so horribly wrong. There was no way she’d screwed up the banishment. It was a one-line spell, and she’d seen it work. But she wasn’t sure how to go back, or if it was even possible anymore. Now that she’d stopped, Marci was starting to feel how tired she was. Ghost was exhausted too, his weariness pulling like a weight on her mind. Already, his transparent body was fading, leaving her spirit a small, sad, cold lump in her arms as she climbed onto Julius’s back.
“The same thing happened to Amelia,” he said as she carefully placed the sleeping cat on her lap. “Right before the banishment landed, she shrank down to nothing.”
“Because I was using all the magic,” Marci said glumly. “I balled the entire sea up and blasted it to pieces, and it didn’t even work.” She clenched her fists. “It should have worked!”
“It did,” Julius said, taking off. “I saw him scatter just like you said he would. But then he put himself back together.”
She slumped over with a groan, and he swiveled his triangular head back around to smile at her. “It’s okay. You tried your best. No one’s mad at you.”
“I’m mad,” Marci said, her body shaking. “We got robbed! Our ace in the hole just blew up in my face. Literally. Now what are we supposed to do?”
Julius’s silence was answer enough as he flew them back through the destroyed city to their home.
***
“I told you so,” the Black Reach said.
“Save it,” Bob muttered, pacing back and forth down the rut he’d worn in front of the wreckage of Julius’s home.
“You knew this was coming as well as I did,” the construct went on. “You knew the young Merlin’s plan would fail, and yet you still encouraged—”
“Likely to fail,” Bob said. “It was likely to fail, which isn’t the same as would fail. There was still a chance.”
“A small one,” the Black Reach said. “Which you had no business betting all our lives on.”
“I don’t see you doing anything!” Bob snapped, startling his pigeon from her roost on his shoulder. “At least I’m trying to save us. Where are your grand plans?”
“Already made,” the elder seer replied, holding up the glittering orb of the Kosmolabe.
Bob turned away in disgust. “Running away isn’t a plan. It’s just another form of defeat.”
“You mean another way to survive,” the Black Reach said, dropping his arm with a sigh. “I am sorry, Brohomir. I know how badly you want your happy ending. It was a big factor in why I decided to spare your life. We’ve always wanted the same future, but unlike you, I cannot be blinded by emotion. I must look only at what will be, and as much as everything else has changed, that one factor of the future that truly matters has not.” He looked up at the Nameless End, which had just finished re-forming itself in the sky. “We were always doomed. From the moment Algonquin let it in, this plane was lost. You should be able to see that as clearly as I can now that you’ve lived past your death. Why can’t you accept it?”
“Because I don’t blindly accept failure!” Brohomir cried, whirling around to face him again. “‘The future is never set until it’s past.’ You taught me that! I didn’t spend centuries alienating everyone I loved trying to snatch my life from your jaws so I could lose now!”
The Black Reach’s eyes narrowed. “Spoken like a prideful idiot. You’re better than this, Brohomir. You know perfectly well that you can’t bully the future. That’s what made you a brilliant seer. Unlike Estella, you understood that draconic bravado means nothing to the cold, hard math of possibility. That hasn’t changed just because you escaped your death.”
“I know,” Bob said, raking his fingers through his hair. “I know, I know, I know. It’s just…”
He wanted things to be different. He’d thought for sure that the moment he cleared his death, he’d spot a way out, because that was what he did. He always found a way. Now, though, the vast, intertwining streams of possibility were drying up before his eyes. With every second that ticked by, the stream of the future got narrower and narrower, leaving fewer and fewer paths, none of which went anywhere good.
“There has to be a way out,” he growled, resuming his pacing. “There has to be.”
The Black Reach turned away with a bitter sigh. “I won’t be part of this sad delusion. Baseless hopes are for the blind. We who can see must deal truthfully with what’s in front of us, or what’s the point of seeing at all?” He waved over his shoulder. “When you’re ready to be a seer again, come and find me. I’ll be waiting where I always am at the end.”
Bob didn’t want to think about endings, but everywhere he looked now, the end was all he saw. Thousands and thousands of roads all leading to the same deadly conclusion. But even with the inevitable staring him in the face, Bob kept searching, frantically rooting through the remaining possible futures for the chance he could grab to keep them all alive. It wasn’t until Julius landed in front of him, though, that he finally found it. His final gamble, so beautiful he could cry.
It’s a long shot, his End warned. You’ve had bad luck with those lately.
“True,” he said, petting her head. “But you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, and as the Black Reach just so kindly reminded me, we don’t have much left to lose.”
The Nameless End leaned into his touch. Are you ready to trade, then? All long shots come in if I guarantee them.
Bob thought a moment, looking down his chosen future as far he could, and then he shook his head. “Not yet. Julius has never let me down so far, and if this plays out the way I think it will, I’m going to need you more than ever before the end.”
I’ll be there, she promised. I am an End, after all.
“You are indeed,” he said, kissing her on the neck as he turned to face his youngest brother, who’d just set his human down beside the suddenly conscious body of Sir Myron Rollins.