Last Dragon Standing

by Rachel Aaron

  “I don’t believe it,” Marci groaned, sitting on the ground with a thud. “We finally built a hammer big enough to smash a Nameless End, and we can’t pick it up.”

  “You can’t pick it up,” the DFZ said. “But we can.”

  Marci blinked. “Say again?”

  The city flashed her a radiant smile. “I’m the city of mages, remember? My entire Skyway system was designed to be a magic gathering funnel for Algonquin. I might know a thing or two about casting big spells, and it seems to me that what we’ve got is a bandwidth problem. The power’s there, but holding all of it even for the second it’ll take to cast the banish will kill you. But what if you didn’t have to hold it all at once? What if someone else could carry it for you? That way, all you’d have to do is point the magic in the right direction.”

  “That’s impossible,” Myron said. “Humans are the only ones who can move magic. Spellwork helps organize and focus, but no matter how fancy you get, sooner or later, someone has to actually cast the spell. That’s why we don’t have spell-casting machines. Without humanity, magic doesn’t work.”

  “That’s true,” Marci said, pushing back to her feet. “But she’s talking about holding magic, not casting it. Casting is just the act of pushing magic at a target, and you don’t have to be able to hold all of something to push it. It just has to be connected, and there’s nothing more connected than a Merlin and her spirit.”

  The DFZ nodded happily, and Marci turned to Ghost, who looked as excited as she felt. “Can you do it?”

  “I won’t know until I try,” he said. “I’d call it a long shot, but you expanded my horizons just now when you showed me that the entire Sea of Magic is a realm of death. That’s a lot of room to work with.” He nodded. “I think I can do it.”

  “Better than I could,” the DFZ said grumpily. “I’m just a city. He’s a whole concept of mortality.” She kicked one of the spellworked pebbles that still dotted the ground. “Stupid Algonquin, making the smallest spirit possible. I’m the city of mages! This should have been our gig!”

  “I’m perfectly happy to let Novalli hog this spotlight,” Myron said. “It was a good observation, though.” He smiled at his spirit. “Perhaps we’re not so badly matched after all.”

  The city snorted. “I wouldn’t have accepted you if we were. But if the Empty Wind’s going to play capacitor, my work here is done.” She reached her hand out to Myron. He shook it gladly, giving his spirit a truly warm smile as she turned and began walking toward the well.

  “Wait,” Marci said as the DFZ neared the edge. “What are you doing?”

  “My part,” the spirit said. “Myron and I already talked about this, and we both agreed. I’m the DFZ, and that thing is right above me. Without my city, I’m nothing, so like everything else, I’m throwing my lot in with you.” She glanced at Shiro, who was watching them with a shocked look on his face. “He says it’s impossible, but mages do the impossible every day. I should know. My city is full of them.” She grinned, pushing her hood back to look at Marci with her bright, orange eyes. “It’s time to live up to your reputation, Marci Novalli. Pull it out of the bag one last time and save us all.”

  She stepped into the well as she finished, her body dissolving into the bright, neon-reflected water that flowed through the gutters of the wilder parts of the Underground. For a split-second, her magic glittered beautifully. Then, like all the rest, it was gone, sucked down into the Heart of the World as the spellwork groaned.

  Marci watched to the end with a lump in her throat. “Are you sure about this, Myron?”

  “It wasn’t much of a choice, really,” he said quietly. “If you succeed, she’ll come right back. If you don’t, we’re all dead anyway, so I won’t be around to regret my decision.” His face grew sheepish. “Though if I may ask you a favor, Novalli, please don’t mess this up. I just got to be a Merlin, and I’d very much like to spend some time here when I’m not in a panic to save the world, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Marci promised, putting out her hand to Ghost. “Ready?”

  A cold wind was her answer. No sooner had she touched her spirit than his body dissolved, his magic settling over her like armor.

  Ready, he whispered.

  Marci nodded and leaned down, pressing her hand against the spellwork Myron had so miraculously repaired. There was so much magic packed inside, it practically leaped into her hand. Marci pushed it back down again, closing her eyes until she was certain of what she meant to do.

  It didn’t take much. Boiled down, a hammer banish was just throwing magic at a spirit as hard as you could. You didn’t even technically need spellwork for that, but Marci still sketched it out in her mind, using one of the rocks Myron had brought up to scratch the spellwork equation for the hardest, densest hammer she could imagine into the plastic of her bracelet. When Marci was certain she had every bit of the spell right, she reached down again, leaning hard on Ghost’s wind as she plunged her hand into the condensed power of the world.

  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.