Last Dragon Standing

by Rachel Aaron

  As he’d seen with Amelia and Svena, the Leviathan’s tentacles were no longer just going for water. Several were actively attacking dragons now, swatting them out of the air every time they left an opening. So far, everyone he’d seen get hit had come back up, but the damage was evident in their slowed wings and uneven flight. He’d come into this knowing it would be a battle of attrition, but as he watched it unfold, Julius became more and more worried that they were already on the losing end of it.

  Please, he thought silently, turning toward the western edge of the city where he could still smell a hint of Marci’s scent. Please, Marci, hurry.

  He was still begging when a huge, slimy tentacle smacked him from behind, sending him spinning through the air.

  Chapter 11

  The Sea of Magic was even worse than Marci remembered.

  It was still black, still nauseating, and still chaos, but there was just so much more of it. Even though her human eyes couldn’t process it, Marci could feel the weight of all that power pushing down on them like they were being crushed at the bottom of the ocean. It was even more terrifying now than it had been when she’d been dead, because while her soul was definitely firmer this time around, the safety zone provided by her spirit was much, much smaller, pushed nearly to her skin by the pressure outside.

  “What now?” Ghost said, his terrifying face set in a nervous frown as he stared at the swirling magic above them.

  “Find some spirits,” Marci said.

  “That won’t be hard. They’re everywhere. But getting them to listen is another matter.” His frown deepened. “I’ve never seen them so worked up, and I was here for the madness that broke out once we realized the Merlins were cutting off the magic.”

  “It gets harder, I’m afraid,” Marci said. “You heard what Myron said. If we’re going to make this thing work, we need all the spirits on board, and we need them fast. That means we can’t do this one by one. We need to talk to everyone, preferably all at the same time.”

  “That’s impossible,” Ghost said immediately. “No one can talk to every spirit at once.”

  “Just hear me out,” she said, flashing him a smile. “I’ve been doing some thinking about how you got me in here. One of the fundamental rules of all spirits is that they are strictly defined by their domains. Inside your area of influence, though, you’re basically a god.”

  “Obviously,” the Empty Wind said. “I couldn’t have brought you here were it otherwise. But I fail to see how the Forgotten Dead can help us in this particular situation.”

  “You didn’t see how they were going to get me over here, either,” Marci reminded him. “But we made it work. I’m pretty sure we can make this work too.” She waved her hand at the churning dark. “This is where our souls go when we die. From a human perspective, the Sea of Magic is basically the afterlife, and as a spirit of the dead, that makes it yours.”

  Ghost shifted uncomfortably. “I think that’s a bit of a stretch.”

  “Of course it is,” Marci said. “But that’s what humans do. We think outside the box and stretch things to make them work. You’re a human spirit, a concept. Unlike a lake, your borders are defined not by hard lines, but by human ideas. That makes you stretchy by definition.” She grinned at him. “You’ve called yourself a face of death multiple times now, and I know this place is death because this is where I went when I died. If both of those are true, then you should have special powers here that other Mortal Spirits don’t. Maybe even the power to make your voice heard to every other spirit inside it. I mean, you can speak to all the dead inside your wind, right?”

  “I can,” Ghost said cautiously. “But only speak. I can’t make them do things.”

  “That’s fine,” Marci said. “Talking is all I want. We’re not here to make anyone do anything, we only need to get their attention so we can explain the situation and hopefully convince them to act in their own best interest. Just give it a try. If it doesn’t work, all we’ve lost is time spent yelling into the void.”

  Her spirit still looked deeply skeptical, but he must have had a lot of faith in her these days, because Ghost gave it his best. He set her down in front of the Merlin Gate with a bubble of magic to keep her from being swept away, and then he flew up above her, growing larger and larger until the dark of his body merged with the dark of everything else. Finally, when all she could see of him were two glowing eyes floating like stars in the blackness, Marci felt something shift.

  That shouldn’t have been cause for comment. Everything in this place was constantly moving, only this time, it was all moving together. Slowly, like water being pushed by the wind, all the swirling chaos began to flow in the same direction. It wasn’t that the sea grew calmer, just that the violence had a new unity, the nauseating eddies and tangles flowing together like leaves blown on an icy wind Marci felt all the way to the core of her being.

  It took a long time. The wind rose quickly, but the sea was enormous. Every time Marci thought they must have reached the end, Ghost’s magic redoubled, and the gale grew larger, blowing into every crook and bend of the surging sea. Then, when his magic was stretched across more of the Sea of Magic than Marci had ever dreamed existed, the Empty Wind spoke.

  I am Ghost, he said, the words howling through the dark in a thousand voices. The Empty Wind, Spirit of the Forgotten Dead, bound Mortal Spirit of the first of the New Merlins, Marci Novalli. Algonquin has betrayed us, and the Nameless End is coming to devour all that exists. If you wish to remain eternal, come to the Merlin Gate and hear how we plan to survive. If you do not care, then stay where you are and learn how the deathless die.

  His voice was like thunder by the time he finished. It shook through the magic, making the whole sea tremble. When it was over, Ghost collapsed into himself, sinking back down through the chaos to land beside Marci in a heap.

  “How was that?” he asked weakly.

  “Fantastic,” she assured him. “Just the right balance of threat and promise.”

  “Spirits need threats,” he said, pushing back to his feet. “It’s easy to bury your head when you can live through anything. If you want them to act, you have to tell them what is at stake. I just hope it worked.”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Marci said, lifting her eyes to the dark, which was already growing crowded. It was hard to make out details through the swirling ink of the unfiltered magic, but there were definitely things around them now that hadn’t been there before. Very big things, watching her from the shadows. She was trying to tilt her head back far enough to actually look at them when something spoke.

  “Who are you?”

  Chills ran down her spine. The voice sounded like a knife the size of a cruise ship rasping over a mountain. If Ghost hadn’t been right behind her, Marci would have turned and run. But he was behind her, his cold, comforting weight reminding her that she was not alone, and that gave her the courage to step forward instead.

  “My name is Marci Novalli,” she said, speaking as loudly and clearly as she could. “Bound to the Empty Wind, Master of the Heart of the World, first Merlin since the return of magic, and I’m here to ask for your help.”

  She reached down to touch the ground at her feet. Thanks to the swirling dark, it looked as black as everything else here, but she knew from what she’d seen in the Heart of the World that the smooth, hard substance beneath her feet wasn’t stone or congealed magic or anything else natural to this world. It was part of the Nameless End, one of the roots he’d set down, and it was everywhere.

  “I’m sure you already know what this is,” she said, scraping her nails across the hard, black substance. “Algonquin’s Leviathan is a Nameless End, a devourer of worlds. He’s eating her as I speak, and when he’s finished, he’ll have a foothold in our plane big enough to keep him rooted while he eats the rest of us. He’s already dug in deep. If we don’t want to die, we’re going to have to work together to dig him out again before he ends us all.”

  Marci thought that
was a pretty compelling argument, but the powers above her seemed unimpressed.

  “Why should we fight for you?” asked a growling voice. Then, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, a wolf appeared. Not a normal wolf, but a monster the size of a charter bus, its long tail lashing in anger.

  “Why should we fight?” Wolf asked again, his yellow eyes flicking up to the much bigger spirits looming over him. “They are back, which means our world is already doomed. The mortal gods are even bigger than they were before. They will overrun us all!” He bared his bloody teeth. “Why should I fight for a future where I will be trampled?”

  “You dare blame us!” cried the enormous, knife-scraping voice, and the magic above them jerked, forming into a painfully thin man covered head to toe in a long, red shroud. No, Marci realized, not a shroud. It was blood. The man was dripping with fresh blood as he stabbed his red hand at Wolf.

  “This is your fault!” he cried. “We’d barely woken before you tried to tear us to pieces! I don’t even know my name yet, and you had your mongrel teeth on my throat! Why should we be devoured because your Algonquin could not control her fear? We are spirits just as you are!”

  “You are monsters!” Wolf roared. “Fear, impulse, panic, the worst of humanity’s sins made flesh! All of this world’s problems lie at your feet. If you could control yourselves, Algonquin would have never turned to the Leviathan!”

  “You attacked us!” cried a rasping voice as a new figure appeared beside the bloody man. A bent old woman wrapped in animal hides with a bushel of stinging nettles clutched in her bare hands. “We did nothing but wake,” the woman snarled, beating her nettles across the wolf’s nose until it yelped. “You are what is wrong!”

  “The Leviathan is what is wrong!” Marci cried, shoving herself between them. “I know you’ve all got a lot going on right now, but who’s to blame won’t matter when we’re all dead. And make no mistake, we will all be dead if we don’t act quickly.” She turned to glare up at the giant wolf. “You’re the spirit of wolves, right? What do you think is going to happen to all those wolves when Leviathan wins? Because I’ll tell you right now, it’ll be a lot worse than anything they can do.”

  She pointed at the red man and the old woman, but the giant wolf just snorted. “You know nothing, human. Your kind has already hunted mine to near extinction. Why should I tolerate your spirits as well?”

  “I’m not asking you to tolerate them,” Marci said. “I’m asking you to help yourself not die. We’re not trying to solve thousands of years of conflict here. You guys have miles of legitimate reasons to be mad at each other, but if you let all that anger get in your way right now, there’ll never be a chance to fix anything because we’ll all be dead. So if you’re cool with dying stupidly, go on your way. But if you want to hear my plan to save everything, stop yelling at each other for five minutes and listen.”

  That was not how one talked to gods, and Wolf’s glare made sure Marci knew it. But for all his big talk, the animal spirit didn’t leave, and Marci took that as her cue to keep going.

  “I wouldn’t have come out here if I didn’t have a plan,” she said, pointing over her shoulder at the looming pillar of the Heart of the World. “We didn’t mean to let the magic out all at once like that, but having all of it active right now actually works in our favor. The Leviathan is a Nameless End, a scavenger who eats dying planes. But our plane is healthy, which means he’s not supposed to be here. The only way he was able to stay is because Algonquin let him, and now he’s using her magic to dig in deeper still. But the same thing that made his plan work is how we’re going to beat it. By filling himself with magic like a spirit, he’s picked up your vulnerabilities as well, specifically banishment.”

  “What is banishment?” asked the blood-covered man.

  “Ignorant,” Wolf sneered, causing all the Mortal Spirits to boil over in fury.

  “We only woke a few hours ago!” cried the old woman.

  “I remember nothing!” cried another, a giant shadow dripping with something she couldn’t identify. “Even my name is gone!”

  “We are lost, lost,” moaned a third, who was so far back in the swirling void Marci couldn’t even see its shape. “We have no anchors, no help.”

  “We’ll get you help,” Marci promised, giving the creature what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I know things are crazy, but this is actually the beginning of a golden age. There are more humans now than ever before, including millions of mages. That means there are Merlins enough for all of you!”

  “You don’t have to be alone,” Ghost added, putting his hands on her shoulders. “I, too, was alone when I woke, but Marci found me. She calmed my rage and helped me find my purpose. Now we work together to serve the Forgotten Dead, and I am content. You can be too. We are human spirits, and humans are not meant to be alone. We are born in darkness, but we don’t have to remain there. The Merlins are here to help us.”

  “The Merlins betrayed us!”

  The shout crashed through the dark like breaking ice, and Marci froze. She knew that voice. As long as she lived, she’d never be able to forget it. Sure enough, the tall spirit who appeared from the dark beside Wolf was the same blue-skinned, seaweed-bearded Viking she’d seen when they’d ripped the black bag off her head in that interrogation room what felt like forever ago. He no longer had a weapon in his hand, but there was no mistaking the piercing eyes and hate-filled sneer of Vann Jeger, spirit of the Geirangerfjord, the Death of Dragons.

  “You’ve been played for a fool, cat,” Vann Jeger said, sneering at Ghost. “The Merlins were the ones who sealed magic away to destroy your kind. She’s banking on your ignorance now as well, because her ‘plan’ won’t even work. She speaks of banishment as though it’s the end, but she and her pet dragons did the same to me, and here I am.” He pounded his fist against his massive chest. “I was banished by her hand for attempting to slay one of the dragon interlopers, but all she did was send me back to my vessel here. I was too weak to rise again at first, but when the magic came crashing down, I was refilled in an instant. The Leviathan will be no different.” He bared his black teeth. “She thinks she can make fools of us all!”

  “I’m not trying to fool anyone!” Marci cried, stomping forward to face him as anger overwhelmed her fear. “I never said banishment was permanent. I said it was a solution to the Leviathan problem, because while he’s impersonating a spirit, he doesn’t actually belong here. You had a fjord to go back home to. He doesn’t. There is no Leviathan-shaped hole in the bottom of the Sea of Magic. If I banish him, all the magic he’s stolen will go back to Algonquin. She will rise again. He will not. Without Algonquin’s magic, he’ll have nowhere to hide, and our plane will kick him out like it should have done at the beginning.”

  “A convenient technicality,” Wolf growled. “But why should we trust you?” He nodded respectfully toward Vann Jeger. “The lord of the Geirangerfjord speaks the truth. You Merlins started this mess when you stole our magic. You sent us all to sleep so you could keep our world for yourselves. Now you come with talk of unity because you need our help. Why should we believe a word you say?”

  Because she was right. Because they were all going to die if they didn’t. Marci was dying to scream the truth in Wolf’s stupid dog face, but as justified as her rant would be, that sort of anger was how they’d gotten into this mess in the first place. If this was going to work, then Marci had to actually make them listen, and you didn’t get that by yelling. She was trying to figure out how she could get it when a black shape swooped over them.

  “You can believe her because that’s how she became Merlin,” Raven said, flapping down to settle on Marci’s shoulder.

  Wolf snorted. “Why am I not surprised to see you take her side, carrion eater?”

  “Because I’m always on the right side of history, deer-breath,” Raven snapped back, turning his beady eyes to glare at the rest of the spirits hiding in Wolf’s shadow. “I was there when this human b
ecame the new Merlin, and I can tell you that she did so by fighting for us. Sir Myron Rollins, whom I know you’re all familiar with, wanted to seal everything up again. Marci’s the one who stopped him. If it weren’t for her, we’d all be stuck down here asleep again while the Leviathan ate our world at his leisure.”

  “And we’re supposed to just believe you?” Vann Jeger growled. “Trust the trickster?”

  “Yes,” Raven said, fluffing his feathers. “Because unlike you lot, I didn’t panic and surrender all of my authority to Algonquin. I kept my magic and thought for myself, which means I’ve been paying attention to this since it started. I’ve seen the Leviathan with my own eyes on this side and the other, and if you think there will be anything left of this world once he’s done, you’re all idiots.”

  Wolf scowled. “Algonquin said—”

  “Algonquin sold us out!” Raven squawked. “You saw her beg for your magic. You knew how far she’d fallen. Now she’s let her irrational hatred of Mortal Spirits do what nothing else in the universe could. She’s let it kill her, and she’s going to get the rest of us killed as well if we don’t do something.”

  “And this Merlin knows how to stop that?” asked the red man.

  “I think she does,” Raven said, turning his head to peer at the Mortal Spirit. “You’re awful rational for someone covered in blood. Which spirit are you?”

  “I don’t know,” the man confessed, looking down at his gory hands. “I don’t know how I got here or why I’m covered in blood. I don’t even know if it’s my blood or someone else’s. I just…” His voice trailed off as his bloody hands began to shake, and then he raised them to cover his face. “Help me.”

  The terrified sorrow in his voice overwhelmed even the metallic knife-scrape sound, and Marci’s heart broke. “We will help,” she promised. “As soon as this crisis is resolved, I’m going to start recruiting and training Merlins. One of them will be yours. Their entire job will be to help you. We can work it out together, all of us.”