One Good Dragon Deserves Another

by Rachel Aaron

  This started an exchange of blocks and counters that went too fast for Julius to track, so he didn’t even try. Instead, he focused on doing what Chelsie had said, quietly sneaking around the side of the water prison until he was standing where she’d pointed. When he got to the right spot, he looked back up to see how things were going, and immediately regretted it.

  Despite attacking all out, Chelsie was still getting pushed back. Not because she was slower or less skilled—she and Vann Jeger’s swordwork actually seemed to be pretty evenly matched —but because the spirit didn’t seem to care about getting hit. She was drawing blood with almost every attack, but while that would have been enough to whittle down any other opponent, Vann Jeger’s blue skin just closed right back up. She might as well have been trying to slice up the sea for all the good she was doing, but while Vann Jeger was grinning like he could do this forever, Chelsie was looking significantly worse for wear.

  Other than the arrow wound from earlier, nothing looked major, but she was bleeding from multiple small cuts across her arms, legs, and torso. It had to hurt like crazy, but the pain wasn’t slowing her down at all. If anything, she actually seemed to be moving faster, but it didn’t matter. A fight where one opponent could be injured while the other couldn’t had only one outcome, and Julius was starting to think they’d made a fatal mistake when Vann Jeger’s sword finally landed a solid hit, flinging Chelsie backwards into the wall of water.

  Julius gasped, eyes wide. But though that looked like the beginning of the end, Chelsie was smiling as she flew through the air. Then, just before she should have smacked into the geyser of water and been thrown right back at Vann Jeger, she vanished.

  The spirit jerked, looking around. Even Julius was confused. He was starting to think Chelsie had given up and cut her way back home to the mountain when a boot landed on his shoulder.

  He stumbled, fighting to keep his balance as Chelsie dropped out of the cut in the air she’d made over his head, almost taking him to the ground. It wasn’t until she pushed off him again, though, that he understood. The place she’d told him to be was directly behind Vann Jeger. The spirit hadn’t landed a hit, she’d let him launch her so she could cut to Julius, putting herself in the perfect position for an attack from behind. An attack she clearly meant to be final.

  Julius had never seen Chelsie attack for real before. He’d thought he’d seen it earlier, but now he knew he was wrong. She’d been playing defense this whole fight, doing only what was necessary to stay ahead of Vann Jeger’s one spirit army. Now, though, she attacked in earnest, her magic roaring through the air like dragon fire as she shot toward Vann Jeger. Fast as he was, the spirit didn’t even have time to turn around before Chelsie plunged her sword into his back, burying her Fang’s bone-white blade between his shoulder blades so deep, the point emerged from his chest.

  As soon as he was impaled, Chelsie planted her feet on the ground and yanked the blade up, clearly intending to slice straight up through his neck and into his head. But while Julius could see her muscles straining, Chelsie’s sword didn’t budge.

  For the first time in his life, Julius saw real surprise on his sister’s face. He was sure his looked the same. He’d seen Fangs of the Heartstriker slice through solid stone without even trying. A water spirit should have been nothing. But no matter how hard Chelsie pushed, her sword didn’t move. She was still trying when Vann Jeger’s body flickered like the water had earlier.

  Chelsie let go with a curse, leaping out of the way just in time as the wooden dragon spear Vann Jeger had been carrying when he’d first arrived shot out of the spirit’s body at her face. She landed back by Julius, her heavy boots sinking deep into the sodden ground. Meanwhile, on the other side of the water prison, Vann Jeger reached over his shoulder and calmly yanked Chelsie’s Fang out of his back.

  Julius had seen his sister angry plenty of times. It was always a terrifying sight, but nothing, nothing compared to the fury rolling off her now as she threw out her hand. Magic shot out at the same time, snapping at the sword in Vann Jeger’s hands like jaws. But though the Fang clearly wanted to fly to her, it couldn’t seem to escape Vann Jeger’s grasp, and every time it failed, Chelsie’s fury grew even hotter.

  “How?” she demanded, caution completely forgotten as she stomped toward him. “How are you holding it? That sword belongs to Heartstriker magic! It will never be yours!”

  “But everything that falls in my water belongs to me,” Vann Jeger replied, turning his hand to show Chelsie her Fang as it began to dissolve, turning into water, then to vapor, and then vanishing entirely, just like all his other weapons.

  Standing behind his sister, Julius couldn’t see her face, but it must have been horrible, because Vann Jeger smiled wider than ever. “There it is,” he cackled. “There’s the hate. Poor little snake. You thought you were clever with your bait and switch, but I’ve been jumping around battle fields since the mountains were young. I allowed you to hit me because I wanted your sword, and now that I have it, I’m afraid my interest in this fight is at an end.”

  “Does that mean you’ll let us go?” Julius asked hopefully.

  Vann Jeger looked at him like he was very, very stupid. “It means that if you want to keep living beyond this moment, you’d better figure out a new way to be entertaining.” He flicked his hand, and a new bow—this one longer and heavier than the one he’d used before—appeared in his hands. “Let’s start with something simple, like seeing how fast you can run.”

  “Julius,” Chelsie growled as Vann Jeger summoned an arrow and slowly began to notch it. “Split left. I’ll go right. Focus on weaving.”

  Julius stared at her in horror. Surely she wasn’t actually suggesting they try to stay ahead of the monster who could teleport, summon infinite weapons from any direction, and who’d just eaten one of the Fangs of the Heartstriker before their eyes? But Chelsie just smacked him on the shoulder.

  “Remember the plan,” she growled, darting her eyes pointedly toward the place where Marci was hidden behind the wall of water. “We’re not dead yet. Now,” she shoved him. “Go!”

  Julius stumbled backwards just in time to miss the arrow that sank into the mud where his feet had been. Chelsie was already sprinting away in the other direction. Vann Jeger’s shots seemed to be following her, and Julius took his chance to run the other way. He still thought it was insane, that there was no way they could get out of this mess, but then, they didn’t have to. All they had to do was survive long enough for Marci to drain Vann Jeger’s magic down to a level where they could beat him, which, by his reckoning, should only be about another ten minutes. Of course, considering what they were up against, ten minutes might well be nine minutes too long.

  Please Marci, he thought, running faster than he’d ever run before. Please hurry up!

  That was all the conscious thought he had time for before instinct took over, pushing him faster still as Vann Jeger’s arrows began whistling over his head.

  Chapter 16

  We are so screwed.

  This was the refrain that ran through Marci’s head as she crouched in her circle just beyond the edge of Vann Jeger’s water cage…bell jar…whatever, ignoring the horrible sounds coming from inside as she stared at her spellwork, trying to figure out how her simple plan had gone so wrong.

  It hadn’t started out that way. The beginning was perfect. Vann Jeger had removed her curse and stepped into her trap without a twinge. He’d then proceeded to lock himself inside an even smaller circle right in the middle. She couldn’t have invented a better setup for a banishing, and she’d gotten right to work, stealing his magic in whisper-light touches that rapidly became greedy tugs once she realized the spirit wasn’t reacting. She wasn’t sure if this was because Vann Jeger was simply too caught up in the dragons to notice her, or if he knew what she was doing and was too convinced of his superiority to care, but until he came out of his water palace to stop her, Marci was going pedal to the metal. And, ironically, that
was her problem.

  Marci bit her lip, shaking her head to fling off the sweat that was dripping down her brow. She’d been sucking down magic at top speed without stop for the last twenty minutes. The giant circle she and Julius had drawn was already nearly full, which meant she’d moved more magic tonight than in the entire rest of her life combined. She could do nothing but sit around casting her biggest spells over and over for a year and still not use all the power she’d pulled out of Vann Jeger, and yet, inexplicably, the spirit was no smaller he’d been when she’d started

  “Screwed,” she muttered, glaring at the faintly glowing circle under her fingers. “So screwed.”

  She wouldn’t have been so upset if the problem had made sense. Like any mage worth the name, she’d built contingencies into the spellwork, but all of her fallbacks had been designed assuming Vann Jeger would be fighting her for his magic. Never in a million years would she have dreamed the spirit just wouldn’t care, or that he’d have more than she could fit in a freaking quarter mile circle, or that it wouldn’t be doing any good. Despite losing the equivalent of a municipal power grid’s worth of magic, Vann Jeger was as strong as ever, which should have been completely impossible. No spirit was infinite, especially not one so far from his domain. There had to be a bottom to Vann Jeger’s power somewhere, but damned if Marci could find it, and she was almost out of time.

  With that grim thought, Marci stopped pulling. The holding circle was almost full anyway, and just sitting around sucking more magic out of Vann Jeger clearly wasn’t going to solve the problem any time soon. If she didn’t want to be the reason this whole thing failed, she was going to have to come up with a new strategy that would work, and fast. So, with that, Marci forced herself to quit worrying about how screwed they were and started digging into Vann Jeger’s magic.

  Since there was no way he didn’t know she was here at this point, Marci didn’t bother with subtlety. She just dug in, peeling open the magic she’d just been sucking down to try and find the reason why. Why was it endless? Where was it all coming from?

  But while she’d hoped to find something obvious, Vann Jeger’s magic just looked like chaos. Even Ghost hadn’t been that disorganized when she’d found him. Not being a spirit expert, Marci had no idea if the disarray was normal for spirits this size or if Vann Jeger was in a class by himself. Either way, it was time for a second opinion.

  “Ghost!”

  The spirit had been at her side the whole time, watching the water dome that hid Vann Jeger, Julius, and Chelsie like it was the most interesting thing in the world. She’d specifically kept him out of her spell at the beginning due to Amelia’s warnings, but Marci had passed caring about such things ten minutes ago, and she didn’t hesitate now to shove Vann Jeger’s magic in his face. “What do you make of this?”

  The cat wrinkled his nose. Mess.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, scowling. “Is that the way magic normally looks for a spirit this size?”

  Normal is relative, Ghost said, flicking his ears. But that’s not his magic.

  “Don’t joke,” she scolded. “If that’s not his magic, then what have I been siphoning for the last twenty minutes?”

  Ghost yawned. His weapons.

  “His weapons,” Marci repeated slowly. “You mean like the knife he formed out of water and put against my throat?”

  It wasn’t formed out of water, Ghost said, looking at her like this was all too obvious for words. Water isn’t metal. Vann Jeger is a fjord. The knife was dropped into him long ago. All he did was pull it out again. The cat turned to stare again at Vann Jeger’s wall of water. He has hundreds, all different. His transparent tail began to lash back and forth. They have voices.

  Marci had no idea what that last part meant, but her mind was racing too fast to care. “Are we talking magical weapons?” she asked quickly. “Like Tyrfing?”

  The cat blinked his glowing eyes. Do you know anything else that can hurt a dragon?

  Marci could have hugged him. Despite legends that described them as being forged by gods, magical weapons—like magical anythings—were usually the product of human mages. Like the Kosmolabe and so much else, the knowledge of how to make them had been lost during the thousand-year drought, but Vann Jeger was much older than that, and his domain was a fjord that ran through land that had been settled by humans since Neolithic times. She’d never actually heard of a spirit using human weapons, but if that’s where Vann Jeger was getting his arsenal, then it would also explain why his power seemed limitless, because it wasn’t his at all! The endless magic she’d been pulling on wasn’t just the reservoir of an ancient and powerful spirit, it was also all the powerful magical artifacts that had fallen into him.

  But while that hypothesis, if true, would totally explain everything that had been going on tonight, it actually made Marci’s current problem worse. Unlike spirits, who were loose embodiments of magic, magical weapons were basically super dense spells. The few times Julius had let her poke at Tyrfing, she hadn’t even been able to get past its surface thanks to the enormously complex and powerful enchantments that surrounded it like vacuum-sealed packaging. Even assuming Tyrfing was super high grade and therefore far more powerful than average, it wouldn’t take that many enchanted objects of any caliber to make a pool deeper than Marci could ever hope of draining, not to mention Vann Jeger was stupidly old and seemed to be a collector. Who knew how many magical swords and spears and whatevers he had stashed away?

  Too many seemed to be the answer. Now that Marci knew what she was looking for, she could actually feel the different threads of spells that wove through Vann Jeger’s magic. The chaos she’d seen when she first dove in wasn’t actually chaos at all. It was a weave, a complex braid of power made up of far more than just Vann Jeger’s personal magic, and all her efforts tonight had barely been picking at the edges.

  No wonder Vann Jeger hadn’t cared that she was pulling on his magic. She could drain him for a year and barely make a dent, because Vann Jeger wasn’t a simple spirit living off the power of his domain. He was an amalgam, a living arsenal of integrated, super-magical weapons, and she had no idea how to stop him.

  That realization was crushing. She didn’t know how to beat him. She didn’t know how to win. From the sounds coming from inside the dome of water, Julius and Chelsie were clearly fighting him right now. Even if Marci could figure out a way to extract Vann Jeger’s weapons, there was no way she could do it before the two dragons went down. That must have been why Vann Jeger had told her in advance where the fight would be, and why he hadn’t spared her a glance when he arrived. Why be afraid of a trap when you knew you were too big to catch?

  The more she figured out, the lower her hopes sank. Forget being screwed, she’d screwed them all. She’d told them she could handle this, told them to trust her, and she’d failed. She wasn’t sure how much time had gone by at this point, but she had to be over her thirty-minute deadline, and from the sound of Vann Jeger’s taunting laughter from behind the curtain of water, Chelsie and Julius were rapidly nearing the limit of what they could do. Even if they did manage to hold out five or ten more minutes, it wouldn’t matter. She couldn’t possibly do anything to stop Vann Jeger in so little time, which meant they were dead. All of them were dead, and it was all her—

  No.

  Marci shook her head violently, curling her hands into fists above her glowing circle. This was not how great mages behaved. There’d be time for self-recrimination after she was dead. Right now, though, she was alive. They all were. So long as that was true, the fight wasn’t over, and Marci was going to do everything in her power to keep it that way.

  First, though, she had to get power.

  Ghost must have known it, because when Marci looked over, he was already waiting, standing beside her with his head up and his tail swishing back and forth.

  Ready?

  The fact that he knew what she was going to ask before she asked it was a giant warning flag, but M
arci didn’t care. It was amazing how unimportant personal safety became when you had your back to the wall. Besides, at this point, she couldn’t imagine how Ghost could possibly make things worse.

  “Ready,” she replied, staring straight into his glowing eyes. “I want power.”

  His satisfaction was like a warm caress on her mind. No conditions?

  “That depends on if you can give me what I need to beat Vann Jeger,” Marci said firmly. “This is a huge risk for me. I have to know if it’s worth it.”

  You help me, I help you, that was always the offer, Ghost said, pawing at her mental hold on the massive circle stuffed full of the magic she’d stolen from Vann Jeger. Give it to me, he whispered, his glowing eyes narrowing to slits. And I will bring him to his knees.

  Marci took a deep breath. She’d come into this prepared to do whatever it took, but even for someone with her back against the wall, that was a lot. She wasn’t even sure if she could channel that much power back through herself and into Ghost without permanently damaging her ability to move magic in the first place. And then there was the part where, if she lost control at any point during the transfer, she’d set off the magical equivalent of a nuke. But while both of these possibilities were terrifying, what really worried Marci was the fact that, if she fed Ghost all that magic, she wouldn’t have anything left to rein him back in if he decided to go rogue.

  Considering Amelia’s warning, that felt like way more fire than Marci would be wise to play with. As much as she wanted to save Julius and his sister, she didn’t think either of them would thank her for setting off a possible magical apocalypse in the process. Then again, though, there was no guarantee that Ghost was a bad, power hungry sort of spirit, right?

  Marci grimaced. She couldn’t even think that last bit with a straight face. Like she’d said to Julius earlier, though, it all came down to risk and reward. Was beating Vann Jeger really worth possibly setting whatever Ghost actually was free on the world?