Chapter 4
The word rang through the cold air like a shot. Everyone beneath the broken spiral of on-ramps held their breath as Dragon Sees Eternity’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“No,” Julius said again, putting his arms out so that he was blocking Bob. “I’m not letting you kill my brother.”
The construct’s giant claw flicked down, the point stopping less than an inch above Julius’s head. Terrifying as that was, though, Julius had been threatened by giant dragons many, many times. He couldn’t stop his flinch, but he didn’t move out of the way, which seemed to anger the Black Reach more than anything else.
“Why are you doing this?” he snarled. “Your brother has done nothing but use you!”
“He has,” Julius agreed. “But he never tried to hide it. For all his other faults, Bob’s been up front that I was his tool since the very beginning, and he’s never forced me to do something I didn’t already want to do. In fact, the only time he ever tried to give me a direct order was when he told me not to free Chelsie, and I did it anyway. You call me a pawn, but the choices that brought me to this spot were always my own. That makes this my problem as much as Bob’s, but it doesn’t excuse you.” His eyes narrowed. “You stand there and accuse Bob of ruining the future, but he’s the only one who saw this disaster coming and tried to stop it. You’re a seer too! You knew this was coming. Where’s your solution?”
Dragon Sees Eternity frowned, but even though he’d asked the question, Julius was rolling too hard to stop. “At least Bob was trying!” he cried. “He used us, sure, but unlike Bethesda or Estella or anyone else who’s called us pawns, Bob takes what we want into account. I’m sure he didn’t have to help me achieve my dream of changing our clan to get what he wanted, but he did. He helped me and believed in me when everyone else in the world thought I was a failure. It’s because of him that I’m standing here as a clan head instead of cowering in my mother’s basement.”
“You think he did that for you?” Dragon Sees Eternity scoffed. “He was manipulating you. He abused your compassion by playing the kind brother so you’d defend him, exactly as you’re doing now.”
“I’m not defending him because I was manipulated,” Julius said. “I’m refusing to let you kill my brother because he’s my brother. Gregory treated me way worse than Bob has, and I didn’t let him die either, because killing doesn’t fix anything. When will you stubborn snakes get that through your skulls?” He flung his hands up at the blacked-out sky. “The world is ending! Literally! We should be working together to fight that, not wasting what little time we have left fighting each other. That’s how we got into this mess and lost our old home in the first place! Seriously, what is wrong with you?”
In hindsight, lecturing an ancient construct of dragon magic several thousand times older and bigger than he was probably wasn’t the brightest idea, but Julius didn’t care. He was so sick of fighting the same fight again and again and again. Especially with the Black Reach, who, of all dragons, should have known better.
“You told me back at Heartstriker Mountain that you were sick of watching history repeat itself,” he said, leaning toward the construct. “Why can’t you see that you’re doing the same thing? You saw this coming. You knew Bob’s back was against the wall, but did you help him? Did you even try to work with him to find a solution that wouldn’t get him killed? No. You just watched from a distance and judged. You didn’t even act until it was too late.”
“I did act,” the construct snapped. “I gave him warning after warning—”
“Warnings aren’t the same as help,” Julius said stubbornly. “If you really are the guardian of our future, then you should be helping us shape it, not just smacking down every seer who steps out of bounds. I don’t like Bob’s solution any more than you do, but at least he has one. Your answer to this seems to be to kill a seer who can’t fight back and then leave us all to die in the tentacles of an unbeatable monster that you never thought to warn us was coming!”
He was growling by the time he finished, the words coming out in angry curls of smoke, which, if Julius had been calm enough to pay proper attention, would have made him jump. He never breathed smoke, but then, he’d never been this angry before. It was as if everything he’d fought against since he’d realized he could fight had finally come to a head in this one terrifying moment, and Julius was determined to beat it back once and for all, even if he had to use his own head to do it.
“I’m not moving,” he said, wrapping his arms around his brother. “Bob might not be right, but neither are you. I don’t know if there is a right answer, but I’m certain murder isn’t it. So if you want to actually try something new, put your giant claw away, and we’ll talk this out like reasonable dragons. But if you’re determined to kill my brother for a crime he hasn’t committed yet and only planned to attempt because he saw no other way to save us, you’ll have to go through me to do it. I know I’m not enough to stop you, but I’m not moving, and you can’t make me.”
Julius wasn’t actually certain of that last part. If Dragon Sees Eternity’s true form was anywhere near as big as that claw made him look, the construct could easily pry Julius off Bob and send him flying. He was still determined to try, though, so he held tight, clutching his oldest brother with all his strength. But while Julius fully expected that rash decision to be his last, he did not expect Marci to suddenly appear in front of him.
“What are you doing?” he hissed, heart pounding in terror.
“Same thing you are,” Marci said, reaching up to shove the Black Reach’s giant claw away from Julius’s head. “Taking my last stand. I’m still not entirely sure what’s going on, but I did not just come back from the dead to lose you over Bob. No offense.”
Bob spread his hands to show that none was taken, but before he could actually say anything, the ice around them turned to steam as the dragon magic binding Amelia broke.
“Finally,” the dragon spirit growled, glaring at Svena as she stomped over to stand beside Marci.
Julius gaped at her. “You too?”
“Of course,” Amelia said, cracking her knuckles. “Bob and I have been partners in crime since before he could fly. He couldn’t tell me exactly how this would go down because of that whole ‘knowing the future changes it’ problem, but I knew it would come to a standoff eventually.” She nodded at Dragon Sees Eternity. “He is called the Death of Seers.”
The construct growled in frustration. “So you’re going to let your sister die for you as well, Brohomir?”
“I’m not dying for him,” Amelia snarled. “I’m fighting you. You might be a construct built by my ancestors, but I’m the first dragon ever to blend with the magic of this plane. I’m something you’ve never seen before, pal, and Marci here’s the First Merlin. She keeps monsters bigger than you for pets.”
“Yeah!” Marci said, her face lighting up. “This is our world! We say who lives and dies around here. I’m not a fan of letting Bob put my future on rails, but I’m a big fan of avoiding the end of the world, and I think Julius makes a very good point. We’ll never get anywhere new if we keep playing by the same old rules.”
“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Amelia said with a grin. “These are crazy times, and crazy times call for crazy plans, not the same old hard line. Isn’t that right, Chelsie?”
Julius jumped. He hadn’t even realized she was there, but the moment Amelia said her name, Chelsie appeared beside them. She had a long piece of broken metal in her hands that she was holding like a sword, and her face was a sour scowl, as though she couldn’t believe it had come to this.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, shoving her way past Amelia to stand in front of Julius. “I’m not on Brohomir’s team, and I refuse to participate in the hell he calls a future, but I owe Julius more than can ever be repaid.” She pointed her makeshift sword at the Black Reach. “If you swing at him, I will swing first, assuming Fredrick doesn’t beat me to it.”
The words weren’t out of her mouth when a cut opened in the air directly behind Dragon Sees Eternity, and the familiar curved blade of a Fang of the Heartstriker slid through the hole to rest on the construct’s back. A heartbeat later, Fredrick followed, stepping through the portal he’d made with the confidence of someone who’d been doing this for decades rather than a day. It wasn’t until he slid the edge of his Defender’s Fang up to the construct’s neck, though, that Julius finally realized what was going on.
Dragon Sees Eternity was completely surrounded. Everyone facing him was doing so for their own reasons, but, like a triggered trap, the moment the Black Reach had turned his claw on Julius, all their disparate elements—dragons, humans, spirits, even the Qilin, who’d moved in to support Fredrick—had suddenly snapped together into one powerful whole. Even Svena and Katya had stepped forward, though Svena mostly seemed to be trying to keep her little sister in place. Ghost was there as well, his grave-cold magic filling the air to bursting as he prepared to fight at Marci’s command.
If it hadn’t been so terrifying, the joy of seeing everyone working together for his sake would have made Julius cry. But while he was fighting back emotions, the Black Reach didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. He wasn’t even looking at the deadly force surrounding him. He was just standing there, staring at Bob with a sad, sad look.
“Is there no depth you won’t stoop to, Consort of a Nameless End?” he asked bitterly. “You’ve built something truly amazing, a web of real connection built on trust and friendship instead of fear. You could change the world with power like this, and you’re throwing it away on a desperate, selfish bid to save your own skin.”
“Am I?” Bob said, letting go of Julius as he rose to his feet.
“That question insults us both,” the construct said irritably. “You know as well as I do that I can kill everyone here. Your forces are children, not even in their mid-thousands. I am a weapon forged from the combined magic of the greatest dragons of our old world. My fire could consume all of theirs without even noticing.”
That sounded suspiciously like bluffing to Julius. The Black Reach had the advantage in age and power, but there was only one of him versus a lot of them. To his surprise, though, Bob nodded rapidly.
“You are stupidly powerful,” Bob agreed. “No living dragon can challenge you, but that’s the most beautiful thing about this. We don’t have to beat you.”
The Black Reach arched an eyebrow. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
“From you,” Bob replied, leaning closer. “You were the one who taught me that the future is never set, old friend, but you wouldn’t know it from how you act. We seers get so focused on what’s ahead, we often forget that the most important decision is the one right in front of us. We forget that we make decisions too. We are part of the stream of time same as everyone else, and just as you told me only minutes ago that I could still choose to change my fate, you have a choice as well.”
“You’ve left me no choice!” the Black Reach roared, pointing his claw at the pigeon, who was still sitting placidly on Bob’s shoulder. “You deliberately sought out the force whose only purpose is to break the one rule I’ve ever given you! I am the guardian of the future she exists to destroy! What choice do I have?”
“A very simple one,” Bob said. “You can decide not to kill me.”
A visible wave of anger rolled through Dragon Sees Eternity, but Bob wasn’t finished.
“I’ve known you nearly all my life. In all those centuries, I’ve learned that the thing you hate the most isn’t seers who break your rule. It’s us.” Bob pressed his hands against his chest. “Dragons. You’ve been guarding us since we first fled to this plane ten thousand years ago, watching helplessly as we made the same mistakes over and over and over again. You used to complain to me about the endless clan wars filling the future with death everywhere you looked. It got so bad that you moved to China. China! With him!” He pointed at the Qilin, who looked insulted. “You loved to travel, but you sequestered yourself in rural China for centuries because the Qilin’s luck kept it relatively peaceful. That’s how much you hated dragons. You would rather constantly unpick the knots the Golden Wrecking Ball’s luck put in your plans than deal with the pointless violence of the normal clans anymore. But I’m changing that.”
Bob put his hand on Julius’s shoulder. “I found a dragon who didn’t think like the others, and I put my entire clan under his care. I built Heartstriker into an empire bigger than any dragon clan this world has ever seen, and then I gave it all to him. But the best part—the best part—was that after I put Julius on top, he kept it without my help. He was able to stay in command because he understood what you lost faith in long ago: that dragons are not always defined by our lowest common denominator. That we are all different, and that we are just as capable of compassion, reason, and understanding as any other intelligent species. I didn’t manipulate him into being that way, either. Quite the opposite. Julius is Julius despite his environment. He’s living proof of his own concept, your concept, and the moment I realized that, I knew I’d found the lynchpin that would let me break the cycle you’ve always hated.”
“Break the cycle,” Dragon Sees Eternity repeated skeptically. “Brohomir, you just put him in power. He hasn’t even done anything yet.”
“Au contraire,” Bob said. “Julius has changed our clan more in these last two weeks than Bethesda managed in a thousand years. I may have set up the board, but he’s the one who played through. He changed our clan from a dictatorship to an elected Council structure in a matter of days, and he did it without killing. He reconciled our war with the Qilin without bloodshed as well, and repaired our relationship with the Daughters of the Three Sisters. His human also just became the first Merlin, which means we have a real shot at peace with the native species of this plane for the first time since we arrived and started eating them. And it was through his great and selfless service to the Qilin that my sister Amelia received the stroke of magical luck she needed to become the Spirit of Dragons, solving our greatest magical problem on this plane and giving us a new home.”
He pulled Julius closer. “It’s true I pointed him at each of these events, but my brother was the one who actually made them happen. Together, our efforts have reordered the world into a more peaceful, more cooperative, nicer place where the old draconic ideas of might-makes-right, take-what-you-want, step-on-everyone-else are finally seen for the barbarism they always were. That is the future Julius and I have built, and even after I sell everything else to buy the one timeline where we aren’t devoured by the Nameless End, that’s the future that will remain. It can be yours too, Black Reach. All you have to do is make your own decision not to kill the key players, and you can finally have what you’ve always wanted: a better dragonkind.”
By the time he finished, Julius’s head was spinning. He hadn’t realized just how much they’d changed until Bob had spelled it out. But while he was feeling awestruck by everything they’d achieved, the Black Reach looked more furious than ever.
“So that’s your final play?” he spat. “Bribery? I deny my purpose and spare your life, and you’ll give me a future I won’t hate?”
“It’s not bribery,” Bob said, insulted. “It’s incentive. And I’m not asking you to defy your purpose. Why do you think you were tasked with making sure no seer ever sold a future again? It wasn’t because selling possible futures is inherently bad. Let’s not forget that seers were doing it for eons before the end. The only reason it was forbidden is because dragons got irresponsible and sold everything. That’s where we messed up. That is the mistake you were made to prevent, but I’m not doing that. I’m not selling timelines to gain an advantage over another clan or make myself a king. I’m trading millions of futures where we die for the one where we get to live. That’s all it is. Not a horrible crime, not a sellout, but a carefully planned shot at survival with a good dragon at the helm.”
He put his hands on Julius’s shoulders. “That’s the choice I made, Black Reach. Now, I’m giving it to you. You can enforce the letter of the law and kill me simply for the act of trading a future. Or you can honor the actual reason you were made and help me save our species before fear of one End dooms us to another.”
He finished with a smile, but Julius was close enough to feel the truth. Bob looked confident, but his heart was pounding so hard Julius could feel it through his coat. He didn’t even breathe while the ancient construct considered what he’d said, which was a problem, because Dragon Sees Eternity thought for a long, long time. Then, finally, the Black Reach lowered his arm, his impossibly giant claw shifting back to a normal hand as it fell to his side.
The moment it was clear he wasn’t going to raise it again, Bob collapsed on the ground.
“Bob!” Julius yelled, dropping down beside him. “Are you okay?”
The seer burst out laughing, grabbing his brother in an enormous, joyful hug. “Julius!” he cried, rolling back and forth. “We did it!”
“Did what?” Julius croaked, because he hadn’t heard the Black Reach say anything.
“We lived!” Bob yelled, letting him go at last so he could grin wildly into his face. “Don’t you see? This was my death. I was supposed to die just now, but I didn’t! I’m alive!” The grin fell off his face, replaced by a look of dumbstruck wonder. “I’m the only seer who’s ever beaten the Black Reach.”
“Don’t get cocky,” the construct growled, crossing his arms over his chest. “Just because I’ve decided to give you a chance doesn’t mean I won’t change my mind later.”
“No, no, no,” Bob said quickly, waving his hands. “I am the epitome of humility. But…”
He trailed off, fighting so hard to hide his grin, Julius was surprised he didn’t pull a muscle. “I knew it would work! I knew it. Every seer tries to avoid their death. We all have the vision, and then we all drive ourselves crazy trying to beat the Black Reach at his own game. I spent a good century making the same mistake before I finally figured it out: you can’t beat him. He’s a construct, a magical supercomputer. No born dragon can ever hope to match that. For a while, I was convinced the whole situation was hopeless, but then I realized that didn’t matter. I didn’t need to beat him at his own game. I just had to make sure that, when the time came, my solution would be so good, so in line with his own desires, the Black Reach wouldn’t be able to bring himself to kill me. I knew I couldn’t stop his sword, so I focused on removing his will to swing instead, and it worked! It worked, Julius! I’m still alive, and it’s all because of you!”
He hugged Julius again, his chest heaving with what could have been laughter or sobs or both. “I knew I was right to choose you,” he said, his voice rough. “I knew you’d pull it all together in the end!”
It certainly had come together, but Julius still wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done.
“Wait,” he said, pushing his brother back to arm’s length. “So all that stuff you set up—overthrowing our mother, changing the Heartstriker clan, making Amelia a spirit, freeing Chelsie and F-clutch—wasn’t actually to help the clan or make a better world. It was so you wouldn’t die to the Black Reach?”
Bob snorted. “Is there a nobler cause? He was going to kill me. Of course I did everything I could to prevent it! All those other things were just positive externalities… which I’d always planned from the start,” he added quickly at the Black Reach’s cutting look. “I’m sure a better dragon would have put the world peace stuff first, but as I keep telling you, Julius, I’m not a better dragon. You’re the nice one, which is why you—not me—had to be the lynchpin. No one else would do, because no one else would be foolish enough to spare Bethesda, or to form a council when he could have taken the Heartstriker clan for himself. No one else in our family would have worked with Katya instead of bringing her in, or won the trust of a human mage dedicated enough to become the First Merlin.”
He reached out to pinch Julius’s cheeks. “That was all you, you darling boy, which is why I never told you to be anything but yourself. You were already the Nice Dragon I needed you to be. The only problem was you were too nice to use your power. If I hadn’t been constantly applying pressure, you would’ve happily run a magical pest control company in the DFZ until Algonquin’s purge caught you. But I knew you had the potential to be a lever large enough to move the world. Once I’d tested your conviction to be sure you wouldn’t break, I got you into position and used you exactly as you needed to be used, and just look how marvelously it all turned out!” He hugged Julius again, almost crushing his ribs. “I am a genius!”
“So much for the epitome of humility,” Chelsie said, reaching down to save Julius from Bob’s stranglehold.
“I’m the epitome of many things,” the seer replied, releasing Julius reluctantly. “So,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “What do we do now?”
Everyone gaped at him.
“You mean you don’t know?” Julius cried.
Bob shrugged. “I am unquestionably brilliant, but no seer can see past their own death. All my visions of the future ended thirty seconds ago.”
“What about your plan to keep us alive?” Svena demanded. “You owe me my survival at least after I so benevolently spared you.”
Amelia snorted at her. “Benevolent my tail. You couldn’t bring yourself to kill Julius any more than the rest of us.”
“For your information, I was going to go around him,” Svena snapped back. “I am perfectly capable of stabbing Brohomir full of ice without putting a scratch on Julius Heartstriker. However, Katya’s words make me consider the larger picture, and I decided killing your cut-rate seer was no longer worth my time.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Amelia said, shaking her head at Svena before turning back to Bob. “But seriously, what are we going to do? I don’t like the sound of a single future with no free will, but I’ll take it if that’s the only choice. I didn’t fight my way out of death just to get killed again the very next day.”
“My original plan is still an option,” Bob said, lips curling into a smile. “But it might no longer be the only option.”
“What do you mean?” Marci asked, glancing up at the Leviathan, who looked exactly the same. “What changed?”
Brohomir turned to grin at the Black Reach. “He did. By making a decision he never would have made before I intervened, the Black Reach kicked off a cascade of shiny new futures. There are so many possibilities in front of us now, I don’t even know where to start, so unless you want me to sit here for a few days while I follow each new path to its conclusion, you’d do better to ask him.” He nodded at Dragon Sees Eternity. “He’s the seer supercomputer.”
That was the best thing Bob had said yet, but when Julius turned hopefully to the Black Reach, the construct’s face was dour.
“My decision to spare Brohomir has indeed created a host of new possibilities,” he said. “Unfortunately, none of them improve our situation. We are still under siege by a Nameless End, a power that acts on a planar level. It’s not something we can simply defeat.”
“But do you have a plan?” Svena said, butting her way forward. “I agree that Brohomir’s idea to lock us all in a static future was unacceptable, but it’s the height of foolishness to shoot down a strategy unless you have an alternative.”
“He has to have something,” Amelia agreed, moving to stand beside her best frenemy. “He’s the guardian of the future, and there’s not much future to guard if we’re all dead.”
Both dragon mages glared at the construct, but where any sensible creature would have cringed before their combined fury, the Black Reach merely looked annoyed. “I have not been idle,” he said irritably. “I saw this coming as Brohomir did and prepared accordingly, but though I am and always shall be the better seer, even I can’t work miracles. Brohomir’s plan was desperate for good reason. There are no good options in this scenario, and while I was not so insane as to court a death of planes”—he shot the pigeon on Bob’s shoulder a nasty look—“I’m not certain you’ll like my solution any better.”
“I knew you had a plan!” Bob blurted out. When everyone looked at him, he shrugged. “I knew he had a plan. What kind of guardian of the future doesn’t plan for the future?”
“If you knew the Black Reach was planning something, why didn’t you go with that instead of messing with our lives?” Marci asked irritably.
“Because I didn’t know what his plan was,” Bob said. “I’m supposed to be dead right now, remember? And I don’t see how you have room to complain. You came out of my plans very well, Miss One-in-a-Million-Chance-Merlin.”
Marci put her hands up in surrender at that one, and the Black Reach sighed. “I would encourage you not to get your hopes up too high. As I said, I did make arrangements for this inevitability, but even I wouldn’t call them salvation.”
“Our options right now are death by Leviathan or spending eternity trapped on Bob’s string,” Chelsie said with a shrug. “What could be worse than that?”
Instead of answering the question, the construct reached into the pocket of his silk jacket and pulled out a golden orb the size of a softball. A very familiar golden orb filled with flecks of golden foil that glittered like tinsel in the glow of the broken porch light.
“Hey!” Marci cried angrily. “That’s my Kosmolabe!”
“A powerful and useful instrument,” the Black Reach agreed, rolling the delicate ball between his fingers until the spellworked gold foil that covered the orb’s interior fluttered like leaves in the wind. “I’ve been angling for this one in particular since I saw Estella bringing it into her plans a decade ago. I would have taken possession of it sooner, but the mage who was most likely to become the First Merlin was quite attached to it. The emotional impact of removing it would have sent inconvenient ripples through a very delicate phase of my plans, so I decided to wait until a more appropriate opportunity presented itself.”
“You mean until you could steal it,” Julius said, unexpectedly angry. “I knew you took Marci’s bag! Did you think about the emotional impact that would have on me?”
“Why did you even want it?” Chelsie asked at the same time.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Amelia growled, crossing her arms over her chest. “Why does anyone ever want a Kosmolabe?” She narrowed her eyes at the construct. “He’s going to run.”
The Black Reach said nothing, but he didn’t have to. Now that Amelia had spelled it out, the plan made perfect sense. Why stay in a world that was about to die if you didn’t have to? There was even a precedent since fleeing through a portal was how dragons had arrived on this plane in the first place. The only thing Julius didn’t understand was why the Black Reach was only doing it now.
“Aren’t you a little late?” he asked. “If you’ve known about the Leviathan for as long as you claim, why didn’t you start evacuating everyone weeks ago? Even with Amelia and Svena here for teleports, there’s no way we can possibly get everyone out before…”
He trailed off. The Black Reach still hadn’t said anything, but again, he didn’t need to. The answer was right there on his face.
“You never planned to save everyone, did you?”
“No,” the Black Reach said quietly, looking down at Bob. “The reason Brohomir’s appeal worked so well on me is because he was right. I was created in our species’ moment of greatest regret. It was only through the absolute destruction of our home that the old clan heads, including your grandfather, the Quetzalcoatl, finally understood the damage their selfishness, greed, and constant war had wrought. In their sorrow, they created my brother to watch over the grave of our old home and myself to make sure nothing like this would ever happen again. You would think that after such a colossal failure, dragons as a species would learn, but it took barely a century before the fleeing clans were right back at each other’s throats.” He shook his head. “I was created to guard our future, but when I looked ahead down the stream of time, all I saw were the same mistakes repeated endlessly. After ten millennia of trying and failing to correct our course, even I, a construct built in hope for a better future, was forced to accept that dragons would always be conniving, selfish, violent beasts incapable of caring about anything but their own self-interest.”
“That’s not true,” Julius said fiercely. “Sure some dragons are like that, but not all of us. Look around! You’re surrounded by dragons who prove the stereotype wrong.”
That was meant to be an argument, but the Black Reach nodded excitedly. “Exactly,” he said. “You are an extraordinary group that represents everything I’ve always hoped dragons could be. Why do you think I allowed Brohomir to gather you all here?”
Julius felt as if he’d just been punched in the stomach. “What do you mean ‘allowed’?”
“I am the world’s greatest seer,” Dragon Sees Eternity said solemnly. “As I told you back in your mountain, the only thing I couldn’t see was Brohomir’s motive. His moves—what he did, how he did it, what he was going to do—were always perfectly clear. I saw him gathering all of you together as clearly as I see you standing before me now. I saw no reason to stop him, though, because he’d already chosen the pieces I myself would have selected, including a brand-new seer.” He smiled over his shoulder at Chelsie’s daughter, who was peeking out at him nervously from behind Fredrick. “Truly, I couldn’t have arranged a choicer group of dragons for our second try at a new beginning.”
The Black Reach held up the Kosmolabe. “This world was chosen at random and in haste, but with the compass of the Kosmolabe and my knowledge of what was coming, I was able to search at my leisure until I located the perfect hospitable plane. A place where we can survive the Leviathan and keep our futures under our control. Those of you gathered here—Svena and Katya of the Three Sisters, Svena’s children, Julius and Chelsie of Heartstriker, and I suppose Brohomir now as well. Also Xian the Qilin and his eldest son, Fredrick, and of course the new seer—you are all dragons who’ve proven you can overcome the inherent evils of our race. Once I move you to a new plane, you will become the foundation for a reborn dragonkind.”
Julius had no idea what to say to that. His sister, however, had plenty. “Your invitation list is missing a pretty big name there, buddy,” Amelia growled. “Where am I in all of this?”
“You were not included,” the Black Reach replied. “You are a selfish alcoholic who was willing to risk the fire of every dragon and this world’s entire magical system in your quest for personal power. Even if you were less typically draconic, however, I couldn’t take you with us because you are now a spirit, bound to this plane. The same goes for you.” He turned to Marci. “You are a Merlin, a human whose magic is inextricably linked to a concept of this world. You can visit other planes, but you cannot survive without this one, which I’m afraid means you can’t come with us.”
“I didn’t want to go, anyway,” Marci said stubbornly. “I’m not running like a coward and leaving everyone else to die!”
“Me, neither,” Julius said, taking her hand. “I’m not going anywhere Marci isn’t. And what about Justin and Ian and all the other Heartstrikers? Don’t they deserve to live?”
“It’s not about who deserves life,” the Black Reach said angrily. “It’s about who is best. I could not put this plan into motion until after I’d done my duty and punished Brohomir, but I wouldn’t have chosen differently even if I’d had centuries. You are all the absolute best candidates to ensure my desired outcome. I don’t need anyone else.”
“Then you’d best come up with a B-list, because I’m not going, either,” Svena snarled. “I will not abandon my sisters to Algonquin’s tantrum now that we’re finally free of Estella and our mothers.”
“I, too, will not run,” the Qilin said, his beautiful voice as steady and immovable as bedrock. “I am an emperor, the pillar of twenty clans. I will not abandon my subjects, or the rest of F-clutch. They are all Chelsie’s and my children. I will not leave them behind.”
“Nor will I,” Fredrick snapped. “Those are my brothers and sisters. We just got free. I haven’t even told them who our father is yet, or that we have a new sister.”
Everyone started talking after that, the whole group launching into all the reasons they couldn’t, wouldn’t, and shouldn’t run away. It was starting to get deafening when Bob’s maniacal laughter broke through the din.
“What are you cackling about?” Svena demanded.
“Nothing, nothing,” Bob said, trying and failing to get a hold of himself. “I’m merely appreciating the irony. The Black Reach chose all of you for salvation precisely because you were the sort of good, compassionate, responsible dragons he’s always dreamed of having. But now that the chips are down, you’re all so responsible, no one will take his out.” He laughed again, turning to grin at the Black Reach. “Surely you saw this coming?”
“I did,” the construct said. “But I’ve also foreseen every one of them will take my offer in the end. Responsible they might be, but there’s a line between doing what is right and throwing your life away for no reason, which is what they will be doing if they dawdle much longer.”
All the arguments cut off like a switch after that. “What do you mean?” Marci asked.
“He means there’s no way out of this corner,” Bob said. “Not unless we’re willing to pay for it.” He smiled sadly at the Black Reach. “I’d really hoped you had something brilliant up your sleeve. Some miraculous plan that would save everything at the last second. Alas, you do not, but I think I actually like this outcome better, because it proves I was right. If even the great Black Reach has been forced to cut and run, that means I really did find the only future where we survived.”
“No one claimed you were incorrect,” the Black Reach said irritably. “I wish I did have something brilliant, but we’re dealing with a Nameless End. Survival of any kind is the best we can hope for against a foe like that.”
“If that’s the baseline, then my way was better all along,” Bob pointed out. “At least in my plan, everyone lived.”
“If the future you’d saved for us could have been called living,” the construct growled. “Your plan would leave us puppets. My way, fewer survive, but they are the best dragons this world has to offer, and their futures would still be full of possibilities.”
“Would we even be dragons anymore?” Bob said, his voice growing heated. “Your Brave New World of Nice Dragons wouldn’t even include our spirit.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I appreciate you adding me as your plus-one at the last second, but if my sister can’t come, I’m not interested. Your salvation sounds boring beyond belief.”
Terrible as things were looking, Julius couldn’t help but smile. He knew Bob would never give up Amelia. He just wished they had another choice.
“Well, I don’t like any of it,” Marci said, echoing his thoughts. “Is there a plan C?”
The two seers frowned in unison. “Nothing I can see,” the Black Reach said.
“Me neither,” Bob said, running a shaking hand through his long black hair. “It gets pretty dark, doesn’t it?”
“Quite,” the Black Reach agreed, peering into the Kosmolabe. “Whatever we decide, though, we’d best do it quickly. If the Leviathan gets much bigger, this plane will soon become too fragile to support our end of the portal, and then we really will be trapped.”
As though to prove his point, the ground began to shake, causing Amelia to gasp in pain.
“What is it?” Julius asked.
“Same old, same old,” she replied, her voice shaky. “Just the unpleasantness of having an extra planar interloper rooting through your metaphysical insides. He hasn’t tried to take a bite out of me yet, though, so I think we’ve still got time.”
“How do you figure that?” Marci asked. “A Nameless End in your insides sounds pretty serious.”
“Oh, it’s serious,” Amelia said. “He’s forcing his way into our plane like he’s getting paid by the inch, but he hasn’t actually started devouring it yet. Probably because he’s not done with Algonquin.”
“I’m sorry,” Julius said, confused. “Tell me again why he has to finish Algonquin first.”
“Because she’s his cover,” Amelia explained. “Remember, this is still a healthy plane. Normally, a Nameless End couldn’t squeeze more than, say, a pigeon-sized amount of themselves through the barrier. Algonquin cheated the system sixty years ago by letting the Leviathan live inside her water. By using her magic to hide his true nature, he was able to get a lot more of himself inside our plane than he should have. Now that she’s given up, he’s eating her wholesale, but it’s still not triggering the plane’s defenses because, technically, he’s still undercover. He won’t have to hide much longer, though. Once he finishes eating Algonquin—and I mean all of her, as in magic, lakes, rivers, the works—he’ll be so big, the barrier won’t be able to kick him out anymore. Once he doesn’t have to worry about getting the boot, he’ll be able to eat the rest of us at his leisure, and our plane will end.”
That was the grim picture Julius had been worried about since the beginning, but hearing his sister describe the details now gave him a spark of hope. “You’re certain he hasn’t finished eating Algonquin yet?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “If he had, we’d all be dead, which was the entire point of that explanation. Pay attention next time.”
“I have been,” Julius said. “I just wanted to be sure, because I’ve seen how Algonquin moves around between her lakes. She literally is her water, so if some of that water still exists, then some part of her must still be alive as well!”
Amelia glowered. “I know that tone in your voice. Don’t bring your optimism into this, Julius. Raven knows a lot more about spirits than I do, and he’s convinced Algonquin is gone.”
“But how can she be gone?” Marci asked. “She’s an immortal spirit. You were just bragging to Svena that you could come back from anything now. Why shouldn’t that same standard apply to Algonquin?”
“Because she’s got a Nameless End inside her!” Amelia yelled. “Emphasis on the End.”
“But she can’t be ended yet,” Julius said excitedly. “Because if she were, we’d all be dead, as you just said. Since we’re not dead, we have to assume that some part of Algonquin is still alive.”
“Okay, fine,” Amelia said. “Maybe a bit of her is still hanging around being crazy. What does that matter? This whole thing was her idea. We’re in her end game. Even if you could reach her, it’s not like she’s going to change her—hey!”
Julius sprinted away, not even bothering to stick to human speeds as he jumped onto the railing of his broken porch. He jumped onto the collapsing roof next, clambering over the broken shingles until he was right at the edge of the hole Bob’s landing had punched through the second and third stories. He was about to make a leap for what was left of the Skyway overhead when Marci yelled his name.
“What?” Julius yelled back.
“I said, ‘Don’t cross the barrier!’” Marci shouted. “Ghost is the only thing holding back the magic. If you leave his protection, you’ll get squished!”
That was a terrifying thought, but this couldn’t wait, so with a final bracing breath, Julius jumped as high as he could. For a moment, he thought he was going to miss completely and land face-first on the ground three stories down. But then his fingers caught a piece of steel rebar sticking off the edge of the broken concrete. He hung there for a moment, swinging back and forth as he caught his breath, and then he hauled himself up onto the cracked overpass, pushing his body right to the edge of Ghost’s protective bubble.
It hurt. Julius had been in strong magic before, but nothing like this. The rising power might have looked like multicolored snow, but it felt like molten lead. Even with the barrier, magic pounded over him like a storm surge. Standing under these conditions felt blatantly impossible, but Julius couldn’t see anything from where he was crouching, so he forced his body to move, breathing out puffs of his own fire as he stoked his magic against the hammer that was still crashing into the world. It took forever, but finally, he made it to his knees, which was good enough to see what he’d come up here to see.
The city was absolutely silent around him. Smoke still rose from a few of the buildings that had been on fire last night, but the common sounds of the city—the horns and car alarms, the rumble of trash trucks and buses, all the clatter of people living their lives—had vanished. Even the birds were gone from the sky, leaving nothing except the Leviathan.
The Nameless End hung over everything like a storm front, his black body stretching as far as Julius could see in all directions. Below his floating bulk, huge tentacles hung down like streamers, their tips plowing through the dry riverbed and the empty basin of Lake St. Clair as they searched for every drop of Algonquin’s water. There had to be thousands of them, but apocalyptic as it looked, the news wasn’t all bad. With so many buildings down, Julius could see all the way to the edge of Lake Erie, and while most of the once Great Lake looked depressingly like a drained bathtub filled with dead fish, there was still a pool of water reflecting the Leviathan’s shadow in the far distance, its muddy surface rippling in the breeze.
“Julius!”
He looked over just in time to see someone land beside him, and then the horrible weight of the burning magic lifted as Amelia grabbed his shoulders. “Hey,” she said, looking him over with a worried frown. “Are you all right?” When he nodded, she smacked him. “What were you thinking, running up here without protection? You could have spent your last hour alive knocked out cold!”
“I didn’t know we had portable protection,” he said, looking up in wonder at the radiant shimmer of the magical bubble Amelia was holding over them like an umbrella.
“Neat trick, huh?” his sister said with a grin. “I copied it from Ghost. I can’t make mine as big as his yet, what with the whole I’ve-only-been-a-spirit-for-less-than-twenty-four-hours thing, but I’m still pretty stoked about my progress.” She looked around with a grimace. “So what did you bolt up here for? I hope it wasn’t something stupid.”
“It’s not,” Julius promised, pointing at the puddle of water in the distance. “Take a look at that.”
Amelia winced. “Not much left, is there?”
“Actually, that’s a lot more than I’d hoped,” he said. “If I can still see Lake Erie, we still have a chance.”
“A chance to do what?”
Julius smiled and jumped back down, falling a good fifty feet to land in a crouch beside Marci. She’d barely recovered from the shock when Julius shot up and grabbed her shoulders, his hands shaking with wild hope as he said the magic words.
“I have an idea.”