A Dragon of a Different Color (Heartstrikers Book 4)

by Rachel Aaron

  “There’s no need for that,” the emperor said idly. “I brought my own supplies.”

  Considering he was barefoot and wearing a robe another dragon had thrown over his naked body when they’d landed, Julius didn’t see how that could possibly be true. Before he could ask what supplies he was talking about, though, the Golden Emperor turned and walked away, processing down the road toward the mountain at a serene, stately pace.

  The other dragons fell into formation around him at once, surrounding their emperor in a wall of brilliantly colored scales and, surprisingly, what appeared to be genuine concern for his well-being. Julius didn’t know if their protectiveness was due to some unknown vulnerability in the Qilin’s luck magic or true respect for him as a leader. He was still trying to figure it out when the Qilin suddenly stopped.

  Every dragon around him froze as well, but while they were watching the desert for threats, the emperor was looking up. Curious, Julius lifted his eyes as well, following the angle of the Qilin’s veiled face up the front of Heartstriker Mountain to the half-moon jut of the throne room balcony at its peak, where a slender figure stood at the edge, watching the drama below.

  Technically, it was too far to see for certain, but Julius knew it was Chelsie. There was no one else who skulked around Heartstriker Mountain wearing all black. But while he wasn’t surprised at all that his sister had been spying, Julius was surprised she’d let herself get caught.

  She fixed the problem at once, vanishing into the shadows within seconds of being spotted, but the Golden Emperor didn’t look away. For a full minute after Chelsie disappeared, he stood perfectly still, staring at the empty spot where she’d been. It went on so long, the dragons around him started to look nervous. The Empress Mother in particular seemed anxious, her bony fingers clutching down like claws on the golden handle of her cane. Even Julius—who had no idea what was happening—could feel the tension in the air like an invisible wire twisting around their throats. And then, just as the pressure was becoming unbearable, the Golden Emperor lowered his head. The terrible feeling vanished a second later, leaving all the dragons gasping in relief.

  All except for the Qilin himself, who simply resumed his procession into the citadel of his almost-conquered enemy as though nothing had happened.

  Chapter 4

  Marci was frozen in the dark.

  It was like the first moments after she’d died. Once again, she was trapped in nothing, stuck in infinite blackness that had no end or beginning, except now, instead of merely a voice in her head or a hand in her mind, Ghost was right in front of her, looming over her in the shadowy soldier’s body of the Empty Wind. But while he looked exactly as she remembered, right down to the ancient Roman Centurion armor, his face was no longer just two glowing blue-white eyes floating in the dark of his helmet. Or, rather, the eyes were still there, watching her fearfully, but the dark behind them was no longer merely shadow.

  It was nothing.

  There was no other way to describe it. Marci had looked the Empty Wind in the face countless times now, and while seeing two floating eyes gleaming in the dark had never exactly been comforting, looking at him now was like staring into death itself. Not the bloody death of the body, either. True death. The nothing that came after all trace of your life was gone and even the dust of your bones had been broken down into its component atoms. His face was what it meant to be utterly forgotten, and the moment Marci saw it, she knew that was her future, too.

  The sudden truth hit her like a dive into cold water. Being dead, she’d thought she understood what it felt like, but she hadn’t known anything. Her death had been a place of warmth and love, a place where she was remembered. It had been a pause, not an end, but this was different. All their fighting, their struggles, the desperate clinging to life, this was what it came to: nothing. Even dragons died. Lakes silted up, and their spirits slowly vanished. The whole human race would eventually be fossils on a tiny speck of rock flinging through the infinite dark of space, and when even that was devoured by their exploding sun, this—this spirit right here in front of her—was what they’d be.

  Nothing.

  Cold, silent nothing, as though they’d never existed at all.

  Marci was still trying to process that—assuming something like this could be processed by the mortal mind—when the Empty Wind turned away, breaking the spell. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, stepping away. “I didn’t want you to see.”

  It took Marci a while to recover enough of her wits to speak. When she did, though, it was in awe. “Dude, that was insane. You’re a walking existential crisis! All that ‘look into the void, void looks back’ Nietzsche stuff.”

  The spirit’s see-through body stilled. “You’re not afraid?”

  “Oh no, I’m terrified,” Marci said honestly. “I don’t think anyone could go face to face with the truth of mortality and not be. But we’ve been together for a while now, so this wasn’t totally unexpected. You don’t team up with the Spirit of the Forgotten Dead without understanding that you’re going to be in for some uncomfortable truths.”

  “But you’re not afraid of me?”

  He asked this as if it were the most important question in the world. For her part, though, Marci couldn’t understand how it was a question at all.

  “Of course not,” she said, insulted. “Everyone’s afraid of being forgotten. That’s why you exist. But while I won’t deny I have a normal, healthy, human fear of the concept you represent, I’m not afraid of you. You’re my spirit, and let’s not forget how we got here.” She smiled at him. “It’s kind of hard to be scared of someone who rescued you from death.”

  After all they’d been through together, she felt this should have been obvious, but Ghost still hadn’t turned around. If anything, his broad back was set more squarely to her than ever. That was when Marci decided it was time to take matters into her own hands. It was hard to move when you had no sense of your body or space, but she managed to inch herself around, scooting forward bit by bit until she was kneeling in front of him.

  “Ghost, look at me.”

  The Empty Wind obeyed, dropping his head to reveal the void of his true face once again. It was impossible not to flinch, so Marci didn’t try. She just focused on his glowing eyes, glaring into them until she was positive she had the spirit’s full attention.

  “I know you,” she said sternly. “I knew you were a face of death before I knew your real name or heard the words ‘Mortal Spirit.’ That’s always been a little creepy, but it’s never changed what you are to me. You’re my cat, my spirit, my partner, and my friend. Always were, always will be. And if you think for one second that anything is going to change that, you haven’t been paying attention.”

  The Empty Wind stared at her for a long time. Then, at last, his glowing eyes closed in relief. “I knew I was right to choose you.”

  “Like there was any doubt,” Marci said, holding out her hands so he could help her up. “We’re a power team, remember? Not even death can break us up.”

  And speaking of death...

  “Where are we?” she asked as he hauled her to her feet. “Amelia said my death was at the bottom of the Sea of Magic, but I don’t—” She stopped, hand shooting to her shoulder. Or where she assumed her shoulder was. “Where’s Amelia?!”

  “She’s here.”

  “Where?” Marci asked, getting more alarmed by the second. “I can’t see anything but you and dark.”

  “That’s because I had to close your eyes again,” the Empty Wind explained. “This isn’t your world. I didn’t want you to have to deal with it and me at the same time.”

  That was thoughtful of him, but Marci didn’t have time to be coddled. She couldn’t actually remember who’d taught her the trick of opening her eyes the first time, but she was already working on doing it again, blinking rapidly until, at last, the dark was replaced by something infinitely more terrifying.

  If the blackness before had felt like endless nothing, th
is was endless everything. All around them, things were in motion, spinning and colliding and bouncing off each other like debris in a tornado. It was still too dark to see clearly what was happening, but just the impression of so much movement was enough to make Marci’s stomach lurch. An impressive feat considering she didn’t technically have a stomach anymore.

  “What is this?” she asked, grabbing Ghost before she fell into the chaos.

  “Magic!” cried an excited voice above her.

  The cry made her jump, and Marci looked up just in time for Amelia to land on her head. “We made it, Marci!” she cried, sparks flying out of her mouth in her excitement as she craned her long neck in every direction. “This is the Sea of Magic! We’re inside the primal power that drives everything magical that happens in the world!”

  That would explain why everything looked so crazy. But while Marci was definitely excited about being inside something she’d previously assumed was a metaphor, she mostly felt like she was going to hurl.

  “It’s okay,” Ghost said, pulling her tighter against the wall of his mercifully still chest. “Humans never can stand it here. Every soul I’ve rescued hates this part of the journey.”

  “Journey? You mean we’re moving?” Because with all the other swirling, she couldn’t tell.

  “We’re flying!” Amelia said happily, tail twitching. “Your spirit is a freaking jet! I’d always thought they’d be slow and pokey since they were so big and chained to their vessels, but this is something else.”

  “I don’t see why you’re so surprised,” he said grumpily. “Serving the forgotten requires speed, and I am a wind.”

  The little dragon’s eyes grew huge. “Wait, you mean literally? I thought that was just part of your name!”

  “Spirits are always called what we are,” the Empty Wind said authoritatively. “That’s how we know our names without being told. I can’t remember anything from before I woke this time, but I know I’ve always been the Empty Wind. The only one who’s ever called me anything different is Marci, and only because I wasn’t large enough to know my name when she bound me.”

  “You’re definitely more ‘wind’ than ‘ghost’ in this place,” Amelia agreed, leaning out as far as she could off Marci’s shoulder. “Can you go any faster?”

  “No,” Marci said. When they both looked at her, she swallowed. “Please, I can barely take this much. I just want to get back on solid ground.”

  As if it were trying to prove her point for her, the churning chaos chose that moment to lurch in a brand-new nauseating direction. Marci turned back to Ghost with a groan, squeezing her eyes shut as she squashed her face into his freezing skin. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  The answer rumbled through the spirit’s chest. “The Gate of the Merlins.”

  Her eyes popped open again. “What?”

  “That’s a real thing?” Amelia said at the same time.

  “Of course it’s real,” he said, looking down at Marci. “Remember when you were dying, and I told you I could see what we’d been looking for? The way to becoming a Merlin? That’s where I’m taking you.”

  “Wait,” Marci said, still confused. “It’s a place?”

  He nodded excitedly. “I must have flown by it hundreds of times, but I couldn’t see it until your mortal body started to die. The moment you began crossing over into death, the door appeared right in front of me, like it was waiting for us.”

  Marci still couldn’t believe it. “So you’re telling me there’s a literal Merlin Gate, and we’re flying to it? Do I just walk through and get my Merlin license or something?”

  “I’m sure it won’t be that simple,” Ghost said. “Nothing else about this has been. But that’s what it looks like.”

  “Fits what I’ve heard, too,” Amelia added. “The Merlins I knew in the few decades I was alive before the drought hit wouldn’t tell me squat because they were miserly, secretive bastards, but the way they talked made it sound like being a Merlin was more than just being a Merlin. They always acted like they were a part of some kind of larger organization. If that’s true, then having the gate on this side makes perfect sense. Where better to hide the Guild Hall for a secret society of mages and spirits than inside magic itself?”

  “It would also explain why the gate didn’t appear until you started to die,” the Empty Wind added. “This is the realm of immortal spirits. You can’t even move through the magic of this place without one of us to guide you, which I couldn’t do until you got closer to my domain.”

  “Which is death,” Marci finished, glancing up at the nauseating swirls of magic shimmering like the rainbow sheen of oil on whirlpools of black water all around them. “So if I touch this without your protection—”

  “You’ll be burned away.”

  “Right,” she said, remembering how just the brief brush with the circle of pure, undulating magic at the top of her death had been enough to nearly dissolve her hand before Ghost had yanked her to safety. Her fingers looked all right now, thank goodness, but it wasn’t an experience she was eager to repeat. “Guess I’m sticking to you, then. Not that I’d do anything else, but how are we going to deal with the gate? Do you carry me over the threshold or something?”

  Her spirit shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never done anything like this. But we’ll find out soon enough.”

  He nodded ahead of them, and Marci turned to look before she remembered that any movement in this place made her ill. Sure enough, she had to fight not to hurl as the asymmetrical whirlpools filled her vision, making the whole world spin in five different directions. Awful as she felt, though, Marci didn’t close her eyes. No amount of magical seasickness was going to keep her from getting her first glimpse of whatever a Merlin Gate was. She forced herself to keep looking, straining to see through the liquid chaos of the constantly moving magic.

  It really was like trying to look through the deep ocean. Other than Ghost’s glowing eyes and Amelia’s fire, there was no light in this place. Thankfully, that didn’t seem to be too much of a problem now that she’d shed the limitations of physical eyes. She couldn’t do anything about the churning chaos, but eventually, her vision adapted, filtering out the waves and swirls and black-on-black motion of the magic rushing by to see what was actually changing.

  Just like before, the first thing she saw was Ghost. The real Ghost, not the human-shaped shadow she clung to. That must have been just for her comfort, because the longer Marci looked, the more she realized that the cold calm surrounding them wasn’t coming from the Sea of Magic. It was all him. She wasn’t standing next to Ghost—they were inside him, inside the shelter of the Empty Wind’s own magic as he cut through the black depths like a shark toward a much larger, darker shape Marci could now see looming in front of them.

  Ghost had called it a gate, so that was the shape Marci had been expecting, but the reality looked more like a column. A huge, round, black pillar rising straight up like a post from the rolling expanse of the sea floor. It got even bigger as they flew closer, which explained why Ghost had seen it the moment it appeared. Even in a place as big, dark, and chaotic as this, something that big was hard to miss. Still, Marci didn’t understand how anyone could possibly call it a gate until Ghost landed in front of it.

  “Stay close,” he whispered as they set down on the flat, seemingly rocky ground that formed the floor of the Sea of Magic. “The currents are strong here.”

  She could feel them. Now that they’d stopped moving forward, she realized that the black swirls were more than just nauseating movements. They were forces, swirling balls of magical torque that wrenched and pushed against her spirit’s edges, bowing the faintly glimmering barrier of his wind inward.

  “What are they?” Amelia asked, her voice excited as she leaned perilously close to one of the bulges. “I mean, clearly, they’re disturbances in the magic, but what’s causing them?”

  “I don’t know,” the Empty Wind said, tightening his grip on Marci’s shoulder. “The
Sea of Magic is always restless, but it’s been especially volatile since Algonquin’s attempt to raise a Mortal Spirit from dragon blood in Reclamation Land failed.”

  “Guess she made waves in more ways than one,” Marci muttered, crossing her arms over her chest to keep as far as possible from the chaotic flows of power banging on Ghost’s edges. “Where now?”

  The Empty Wind pointed at the column in front of them. This close, the curving surface looked more like a flat, featureless wall, its face polished smooth by the constantly battering currents. Between the dark and the swirls of magic that rolled through it like thicker shadows, it was nearly impossible to make out what Ghost was trying to show her. Eventually, though, she spotted a gap in the pillar’s flat stone face.

  It wasn’t what Marci would have called a gate. The small, rectangular dent in the pillar’s surface was neither grand nor obvious. It was no taller than she was, a hole that was cut less than an inch deep into the stone and blocked by a door that looked as if it had been stolen from a medieval kitchen: a tight-set slab of rough-hewn wooden planks held together with tar and iron banding. There was no knocker, no handle, no knob, no announcements or decorations of any sort. If it weren’t for the fact that it was so clearly out of place in this world of swirling, nonphysical chaos, Marci wouldn’t have thought it was special at all.

  “Is that it?” Amelia asked skeptically.

  “I think so,” the Empty Wind said. “I’ve never been closer than this, but it feels right.”

  Marci thought it felt like a letdown. Still, if there was anything she’d learned from Ghost, it was to never judge on appearances. Especially if that appearance happened to be the only opening in the base of what was clearly an artificial, man-made structure poking out of the otherwise flat floor of the Sea of Magic.

  “Guess we should give it a try,” Marci said, holding out her hand to Ghost.