Last Dragon Standing

by Rachel Aaron

  “Thank you, Julius,” Bob said, glaring up at the Black Reach. “At least someone has the decency to actually ask about my plans before condemning me.”

  “I don’t ask because I already know them,” the seer snapped. “No one has time for your grandstanding.”

  “But this deserves grandstanding,” Bob argued. “It’s the second cleverest idea I’ve ever had.”

  The Black Reach growled deep in his throat, but Bob had already focused all of his attention on his youngest brother. “I saw this coming before anyone else,” he said, pointing at the Leviathan in the sky. “This scene was my very first vision. It took me a while to understand what I was looking at, but I was blessed with a very clever and well-traveled older sister, and together, we figured it out. A Nameless End was coming. Normally, that would be that. After all, how does one defeat an all-powerful being from beyond our understanding? Answer: with another all-powerful being! And I knew how to find one.”

  “Because it destroyed our old home,” the Black Reach growled.

  “It’s called learning from the mistakes of the previous generation,” Bob said haughtily, but Julius was shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry, Bob,” he said, voice shaking. “But this sounds insane. You’re talking about making a deal with the force that destroyed our old home!”

  “Technically, we destroyed it ourselves,” his brother said. “She didn’t make us sell out all of our futures. We did that. Leviathan’s current actions aside, Nameless Ends aren’t usually aggressive. They don’t plot to destroy planes. They’re scavengers, not hunters.”

  “As a scavenger, I take offense at that,” Raven cawed. “They are the ends of worlds!”

  “They are forces of nature,” Bob snapped. “No more good or evil than the rest of us. What they do have is power on a planar level, and that was what I needed.”

  He lifted his head to the sky again. “I’ve spent my entire life looking as far as I could into the future, but no matter how many millions of potentials I examined, they all ended here.” He swept his hand over the broken Skyways, the ruined house, the Leviathan in the sky, and the Black Reach standing like a dark memorial in front of it all. “For centuries, this moment has been my event horizon. The hard line where all the branching streams of my future ended.” He ground his teeth. “I couldn’t stand it. I was determined to find a solution, but how do you keep going past something that ends everything by its definition? That was the question I had to answer, and like any good seer, I found it in the future itself.”

  “But you just said all futures ended,” Julius said, confused.

  “They did,” Bob replied with a smile. “For me. But contrary to popular belief, I am not the center of the world. Time continues after my passing, and though I couldn’t see it, I knew that somewhere in the infinite stream of the future beyond my death, there had to be a timeline where we survived the Leviathan.”

  Julius’s breath caught. “Did you find it?”

  “In a manner,” Bob said. “My original goal was to find a way to stop the Leviathan from coming into our world at all, but by the time I had my first vision, he was already on his way. Believe it or not, this timeline is the one where we had the most time to prepare, and you wouldn’t believe the hoops I had to jump through to get even these sixty years. I was practically helping Algonquin at times to keep her delusion going for as long as possible.”

  “But you did find a way out,” Julius said hopefully. “A way we survive.”

  “I did,” Bob said, his smile fading. “Though whether you’ll like it is another matter.”

  The way he said that made Julius’s stomach clench. “What are you going to do?”

  “What he should not,” the Black Reach snarled, lifting his hand, but before he could do whatever he was about to do, Julius put up his own.

  “Please,” he begged. “Bob’s my brother, and I owe him my life. If he’s going to die for this, I at least want to know why.” He glanced over at the others, who were still hanging back. Well, Marci looked like she was trying to get to him, but Chelsie had a firm grip on her arm. Amelia was still bound by her own magic, but the Qilin, Fredrick, and the others were all behind her, watching the Black Reach with wary eyes. “We all deserve to know. All of us have been Bob’s pawns without knowing why. If he’s going to explain himself, we deserve to hear it.”

  The construct cast a nervous look at the sky. In the end, though, he lowered his hand, motioning for the watching dragons to step forward. Marci was there in an instant. The dragons approached far more slowly, but eventually they gathered, forming a semicircle facing Julius and Bob. Even Svena and Katya came forward. Svena still looked ready to murder the seer of the Heartstrikers, but her curiosity at finally hearing what this was all about must have been stronger than her need for vengeance, because she stood with her arms crossed and her magic pulled in, waiting for him to speak.

  “You really were my best decision, Julius,” Bob whispered, letting out a tense breath.

  “Just keep it short,” the Black Reach warned. “If you can.”

  It was a sign of how serious this was that Bob didn’t even have a comeback for that. He just turned to his new audience and began talking in a quick, intense voice.

  “You’re all veterans of the seer game now. You know how we manipulate individuals into choices that nudge future events in our favor, but what you might not know is just how limited we are when it comes to seeing and manipulating futures not directly related to ourselves. That’s why Estella had to resort to using chains when she tried to meddle in Heartstrikers’ affairs. She was attempting to control pawns that were not within her purview.”

  No one seemed to like being called a pawn, but Bob was clearly on a timer, so they didn’t interrupt.

  “For this particular problem, I found myself in the same boat,” he went on. “It wasn’t enough to merely discover a future that didn’t end with the Leviathan eating us. I also needed the means to secure it, which were far beyond what I had available as a mere Seer of the Heartstrikers.” He glanced down at Julius. “Since it happened on another plane, I never saw exactly what Dragon Sees the Beginning told you, but I’m sure he explained that the exchange rate on buying futures is terrible.”

  “He did more than explain,” Julius said. “He showed us firsthand. When Marci and I were in the dragons’ old plane, I had to buy a future where Estella didn’t kill us. It was just five minutes, but it cost a lot.”

  “Certainty always does,” Bob said, nodding. “It takes an absolutely enormous amount of potential futures to buy even one guaranteed outcome. But Dragon Sees the Beginning didn’t actually sell you anything. He’s only a construct, a tool. He can’t actually trade futures. He merely used the knowledge of past seers to act as a broker for the one who could.” He nodded at the pigeon on his shoulder. “Her.”

  “Wait,” Julius said, voice shaking. “So you mean when we were in the dragons’ old world, when I made the trade for a chain of guaranteed events to defeat Estella, I was actually dealing with a Nameless End?”

  “There’s no one else who could have done it,” Bob said with a shrug. “That’s her End. She’s what remains when every choice is made, the point all the streams of the future eventually flow to, the end of time itself. And before you ask how the end of time can be here now, know that our way of seeing time is very much limited by our perception. We experience time as a line because that’s how we live it, but Nameless Ends aren’t bound by such strict measures.” He smiled proudly at his pigeon. “My lady exists simultaneously in all times at once. That’s how she’s able to trade one future for another, because from her point of view, all possible futures are already done. If we want one instead of another—say, survival instead of death—she can find that possibility, pluck it out of whatever hole it was languishing in, and shove it in front of us so that—from our limited perspective—that future becomes the only path. But this sort of heavy lifting requires an enormous amount of energy. Energy that
she creates by consuming other timelines in bulk, until—”

  “Until there’s nothing left,” Julius said angrily. “That’s what happened to our old world. The ancient seers were so bent on securing the timelines they needed to beat each other, they let her consume all of their futures.”

  Bob nodded. “Ironically shortsighted, wasn’t it?”

  “If you understand that, why are you repeating their mistake?” the Black Reach growled.

  “Because it’s better than the alternative,” Bob replied, his head snapping up to glare at the construct. “There are futures where I don’t use the Nameless End, and you don’t kill me, but in every single one of them—every single one—I die. Sometimes I make it an hour, sometimes I make it four, but every one of them is fatal, and not just for me. Everything in this world dies when the Leviathan wins, which he does in every future I can see where you don’t kill me. That means if there is a way we get out of this, it can only happen if I ask the Nameless End for help, because I’ve seen every path where I don’t, and they all lead to the end of the world.” He cupped his hand gently over the pigeon’s wings. “Given those odds, I’ll take my chances with her.”

  “And do what?” Marci asked, stepping forward. “What future are you buying?”

  “The best there could be,” Bob promised. “I’ve been studying the events leading up to this day for nearly all my life. I knew that if there was a future where we lived, I’d have to buy it, but I couldn’t see past my death, which meant I’d have to make my purchase sight unseen. But unlike us born seers, my lady isn’t limited by chance. I can only nudge the events back and forth between likely possible futures, but she sees everything. Any event that could happen, she can make happen, so since I was going to be bringing the Death of Seers down on my head anyway, I figured I might as well go for broke and buy the best future I could possibly imagine. One where everyone lived happily ever after, including me.”

  “How is that possible?” Julius asked. “You just said that every future where you lived culminated in the end of the world.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Bob said. “It wasn’t possible by everything I could see, but again, I can only see what’s partially likely to happen. There are billions of practically impossible futures I can’t see simply because they’re so unlikely, but she can.” He stroked his pigeon again. “She sees every way time can bend, no matter how impossible. All I had to do was tell her what I wanted, and she found it. The only downside was the cost. As you might imagine, turning impossibility into certainty is ghastly expensive, and with only the futures of Heartstriker to work with, I simply didn’t have enough. I needed more. I needed everyone, every single dragon that exists. There was no way to get all those futures under my control through the usual ways—no dragon has ever united all the clans in the history of our kind—so Amelia and I hatched a plan to do it magically.”

  He smiled at his older sister. “As the Spirit of Dragons, Amelia is now intimately connected to every dragon’s fire, and I’m connected to her as her beloved brother.” He swept his hand at the gathered dragons. “The moment she became a spirit, you all became part of my matrix, and your futures became mine to trade.”

  Svena began to growl deep in her throat, but Julius was too shocked to pay it any mind. “That’s why you killed Amelia?” he cried. “So she’d be the Spirit of Dragons and give you the ability to sell our futures? What about restoring our race’s connection to the native magic of a plane? What about giving us a home?”

  “Oh, well, that was good too,” Bob said. “But eyes on the prize, Julius. Everything I’ve done—hooking you up with the human who would become the Merlin, placing you at the top of our clan, reuniting the Qilin with his old flame and then breaking him to weaken Algonquin before restoring him so Amelia would have the luck she needed at the right time to claim her place as spirit—it was all a play to bring us to this moment. This one particular crossroads in time where every dragon’s future is mine to manipulate, which should be just enough sway to purchase the one future in which we don’t die.” He held his hands up with a flourish. “I will now accept your praise and adoration.”

  Silence was his only answer.

  “I can see why the Black Reach wants to kill you,” Svena said at last. “You’re worse than Estella. At least she only sold her own future. You’ve sold us all!”

  “Considering that every other path led to death, I don’t see how you have cause to complain,” Bob said testily.

  “But she has every right,” the Black Reach said, his normally calm voice shaking in fury. “Death is not the only end, Brohomir. You and I would have no quarrel if all you’d done was bring all dragons under your influence to manipulate the species toward a beneficial future. That’s just good seer work. But that’s not what you’ve done. For all your machinations, the future you’ve chosen is still so unlikely as to be functionally impossible. To ensure it, you will have to feed every other potential outcome to the Final Future, which means that even though lives will be saved, they will not be lived. By trimming every branch of the future but one, you will destroy our free will. Dragons will live on, but our choices will mean nothing. No matter what we decide, there will only be one path forward. Yours.”

  Silence fell again, harder this time. “Is that true?” Julius asked at last, looking up at his brother.

  “It’s not a perfect solution,” Bob said, his confident smile slipping. “But what else was I supposed to do? I’ve spent my entire life looking down millions and millions of futures in my search for a way to beat Algonquin’s Leviathan, and every single one ended in death. My death, your death, the death of my family and friends. Everyone I knew or cared about, including me, had no future past this point unless I did something, so I did.” He looked up at the Black Reach. “I know I’m breaking your rules, but I’m doing it to save the future of the race you were created to protect. That has to count for something.”

  The eldest seer shook his head. “Good intentions do not excuse the crime. Every seer I’ve ever killed thought they were doing what had to be done. You are no different.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” Bob argued. “I’m not Estella, trading my soul for petty vindictiveness. We’re talking about the end of the world. Our world, right now. The scale alone should—”

  “No different,” the Black Reach repeated, pulling himself to his full impressive height. “Selling potential futures was how we destroyed the only true home our race has ever known. It does not matter if you are buying one life or millions, the mistakes of the past must not be repeated.”

  “So you would let us die?” Bob snarled. “You would rather let Algonquin’s tantrum destroy us than bend on this one issue? Have you even looked at the future I chose?”

  “I have,” the construct said. “And I can admit that it is good. Far better than I expected of you, to be honest. But a lovely prison is still a prison, and yours only saves dragons.”

  “Dragons were all I could control,” Bob argued. “Even I couldn’t get my claws in the futures of the entire world.”

  “But what are we without the world?” the Black Reach asked. “In your future, we survive, as does Amelia as our spirit, but everything else gets eaten down to the bedrock. Humans, spirits, plants, animals, they’re all gone. We’ll be stranded in a wasteland no bigger than what remains of the dragons’ old home without even the free will to choose how we will rebuild.” He bared his teeth. “Can such a future really be considered better than death?”

  “Yes,” Bob snarled. “Because we’ll still be alive. There will be new problems, but at least we’ll be around to worry about them. If we stick to your hard line, everything we know will end.”

  As if to prove him right, the ground began to rumble. Deep in the magic, something was shifting. Thanks to Amelia’s new connection, Julius could feel it in the base of his fire. Marci must have felt it too, because her face turned ashen.

  “Hoo boy,” she said, shaking her head. “I think Big
and Ugly up there just bit into something critical.”

  “He must be reaching the end of Algonquin’s physical water,” Raven said, flapping up to the shimmering barrier where Ghost was holding the magic at bay. “I’m going to check the Sea of Magic to see how much time we have left. Phoenix?” Emily snapped to attention. “Get our forces into position. If we get a chance to move, it’s going to have to be fast. And as for you…” Raven turned his sharp beak toward Bob. “Our bargain still stands. Do what you must, but don’t forget what you promised us.”

  Bob nodded, but the spirit was already gone, vanishing with a shimmer into the dark.

  “What did you promise him?” Marci asked Bob.

  “That I would save his world,” the seer replied with a smile. “Raven is very civic-minded. He’ll do anything to save his plane, even if it means working with a dragon against his fellow spirits.”

  “Then he was cheated,” the Black Reach said bitterly. “You sold him something you knew you could never deliver.”

  “I knew nothing of the sort,” Bob replied, staring his death in the face. “You’re right that this ends in a wasteland, but a wasteland is still better than no land. If dragons survive, some part of this world must as well, because otherwise we’d have nothing to stand on. And if the land is still there, there’s a chance the spirits will rise again. A chance, that’s all I promised, but when you’re an immortal spirit, a chance is all you need. We mortals aren’t so fortunate. If we don’t take the future into our own hands, we’re doomed.”

  “We are doomed either way,” the Black Reach growled. “Better to die with this world than repeat the fall of the last.”

  “How can you say that?” Bob cried. “You’re the Construct of the Future! You were created to do exactly what I’m trying to do: preserve our future.”

  “You can’t preserve the future by repeating the past.”

  “I’m not repeating the past!” Bob shouted. “I might be breaking the letter of your law, but when it comes to the spirit, our goals are the same! You’ve been working for ten thousand years to protect dragons from themselves. You’ve fought as hard as you could within the limits of your purpose, not just to stop rogue seers, but to make us better as a species. You’ve bent over backward to foster peace and end the in-fighting that has torn us down for so long. The future I mean to buy does all of that, and it keeps everyone from dying! How can you kill me for it?”