Last Dragon Standing

by Rachel Aaron

  “Would we even be dragons anymore?” Bob said, his voice growing heated. “Your Brave New World of Nice Dragons wouldn’t even include our spirit.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I appreciate you adding me as your plus-one at the last second, but if my sister can’t come, I’m not interested. Your salvation sounds boring beyond belief.”

  Terrible as things were looking, Julius couldn’t help but smile. He knew Bob would never give up Amelia. He just wished they had another choice.

  “Well, I don’t like any of it,” Marci said, echoing his thoughts. “Is there a plan C?”

  The two seers frowned in unison. “Nothing I can see,” the Black Reach said.

  “Me neither,” Bob said, running a shaking hand through his long black hair. “It gets pretty dark, doesn’t it?”

  “Quite,” the Black Reach agreed, peering into the Kosmolabe. “Whatever we decide, though, we’d best do it quickly. If the Leviathan gets much bigger, this plane will soon become too fragile to support our end of the portal, and then we really will be trapped.”

  As though to prove his point, the ground began to shake, causing Amelia to gasp in pain.

  “What is it?” Julius asked.

  “Same old, same old,” she replied, her voice shaky. “Just the unpleasantness of having an extra planar interloper rooting through your metaphysical insides. He hasn’t tried to take a bite out of me yet, though, so I think we’ve still got time.”

  “How do you figure that?” Marci asked. “A Nameless End in your insides sounds pretty serious.”

  “Oh, it’s serious,” Amelia said. “He’s forcing his way into our plane like he’s getting paid by the inch, but he hasn’t actually started devouring it yet. Probably because he’s not done with Algonquin.”

  “I’m sorry,” Julius said, confused. “Tell me again why he has to finish Algonquin first.”

  “Because she’s his cover,” Amelia explained. “Remember, this is still a healthy plane. Normally, a Nameless End couldn’t squeeze more than, say, a pigeon-sized amount of themselves through the barrier. Algonquin cheated the system sixty years ago by letting the Leviathan live inside her water. By using her magic to hide his true nature, he was able to get a lot more of himself inside our plane than he should have. Now that she’s given up, he’s eating her wholesale, but it’s still not triggering the plane’s defenses because, technically, he’s still undercover. He won’t have to hide much longer, though. Once he finishes eating Algonquin—and I mean all of her, as in magic, lakes, rivers, the works—he’ll be so big, the barrier won’t be able to kick him out anymore. Once he doesn’t have to worry about getting the boot, he’ll be able to eat the rest of us at his leisure, and our plane will end.”

  That was the grim picture Julius had been worried about since the beginning, but hearing his sister describe the details now gave him a spark of hope. “You’re certain he hasn’t finished eating Algonquin yet?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “If he had, we’d all be dead, which was the entire point of that explanation. Pay attention next time.”

  “I have been,” Julius said. “I just wanted to be sure, because I’ve seen how Algonquin moves around between her lakes. She literally is her water, so if some of that water still exists, then some part of her must still be alive as well!”

  Amelia glowered. “I know that tone in your voice. Don’t bring your optimism into this, Julius. Raven knows a lot more about spirits than I do, and he’s convinced Algonquin is gone.”

  “But how can she be gone?” Marci asked. “She’s an immortal spirit. You were just bragging to Svena that you could come back from anything now. Why shouldn’t that same standard apply to Algonquin?”

  “Because she’s got a Nameless End inside her!” Amelia yelled. “Emphasis on the End.”

  “But she can’t be ended yet,” Julius said excitedly. “Because if she were, we’d all be dead, as you just said. Since we’re not dead, we have to assume that some part of Algonquin is still alive.”

  “Okay, fine,” Amelia said. “Maybe a bit of her is still hanging around being crazy. What does that matter? This whole thing was her idea. We’re in her end game. Even if you could reach her, it’s not like she’s going to change her—hey!”

  Julius sprinted away, not even bothering to stick to human speeds as he jumped onto the railing of his broken porch. He jumped onto the collapsing roof next, clambering over the broken shingles until he was right at the edge of the hole Bob’s landing had punched through the second and third stories. He was about to make a leap for what was left of the Skyway overhead when Marci yelled his name.

  “What?” Julius yelled back.

  “I said, ‘Don’t cross the barrier!’” Marci shouted. “Ghost is the only thing holding back the magic. If you leave his protection, you’ll get squished!”

  That was a terrifying thought, but this couldn’t wait, so with a final bracing breath, Julius jumped as high as he could. For a moment, he thought he was going to miss completely and land face-first on the ground three stories down. But then his fingers caught a piece of steel rebar sticking off the edge of the broken concrete. He hung there for a moment, swinging back and forth as he caught his breath, and then he hauled himself up onto the cracked overpass, pushing his body right to the edge of Ghost’s protective bubble.

  It hurt. Julius had been in strong magic before, but nothing like this. The rising power might have looked like multicolored snow, but it felt like molten lead. Even with the barrier, magic pounded over him like a storm surge. Standing under these conditions felt blatantly impossible, but Julius couldn’t see anything from where he was crouching, so he forced his body to move, breathing out puffs of his own fire as he stoked his magic against the hammer that was still crashing into the world. It took forever, but finally, he made it to his knees, which was good enough to see what he’d come up here to see.

  The city was absolutely silent around him. Smoke still rose from a few of the buildings that had been on fire last night, but the common sounds of the city—the horns and car alarms, the rumble of trash trucks and buses, all the clatter of people living their lives—had vanished. Even the birds were gone from the sky, leaving nothing except the Leviathan.

  The Nameless End hung over everything like a storm front, his black body stretching as far as Julius could see in all directions. Below his floating bulk, huge tentacles hung down like streamers, their tips plowing through the dry riverbed and the empty basin of Lake St. Clair as they searched for every drop of Algonquin’s water. There had to be thousands of them, but apocalyptic as it looked, the news wasn’t all bad. With so many buildings down, Julius could see all the way to the edge of Lake Erie, and while most of the once Great Lake looked depressingly like a drained bathtub filled with dead fish, there was still a pool of water reflecting the Leviathan’s shadow in the far distance, its muddy surface rippling in the breeze.

  “Julius!”

  He looked over just in time to see someone land beside him, and then the horrible weight of the burning magic lifted as Amelia grabbed his shoulders. “Hey,” she said, looking him over with a worried frown. “Are you all right?” When he nodded, she smacked him. “What were you thinking, running up here without protection? You could have spent your last hour alive knocked out cold!”

  “I didn’t know we had portable protection,” he said, looking up in wonder at the radiant shimmer of the magical bubble Amelia was holding over them like an umbrella.

  “Neat trick, huh?” his sister said with a grin. “I copied it from Ghost. I can’t make mine as big as his yet, what with the whole I’ve-only-been-a-spirit-for-less-than-twenty-four-hours thing, but I’m still pretty stoked about my progress.” She looked around with a grimace. “So what did you bolt up here for? I hope it wasn’t something stupid.”

  “It’s not,” Julius promised, pointing at the puddle of water in the distance. “Take a look at that.”

  Amelia winced. “Not much left, is there?”

  “
Actually, that’s a lot more than I’d hoped,” he said. “If I can still see Lake Erie, we still have a chance.”

  “A chance to do what?”

  Julius smiled and jumped back down, falling a good fifty feet to land in a crouch beside Marci. She’d barely recovered from the shock when Julius shot up and grabbed her shoulders, his hands shaking with wild hope as he said the magic words.

  “I have an idea.”

  Chapter 5

  Marci had a feeling she knew where this was going, but she asked anyway. “What sort of idea?”

  Julius grinned down at her. “I’m going to talk to Algonquin.”

  She’d known it.

  “Talk to Algonquin?” Amelia cried, jumping down beside them. “Seriously, that’s your plan?”

  “Why not?” Julius asked. “She’s the reason all of this happened, and she only gave in to the Leviathan because she thought all was lost. There’s still water in her lakes, though, which means we’ve still got a chance to convince her that’s not the case. It might not even be that hard. This is basically a suicide, but vengeful as she is, I’m pretty sure Algonquin doesn’t actually want to die any more than we do. If we can find a compromise, something she can live with, I’m betting she’ll change her mind and choose survival. Once she does that, she’ll withdraw her protection from Leviathan, and the plane will kick him out, just like Amelia said.”

  The Spirit of Dragons pressed a hand to her forehead. “No offense, Baby-J, but that’s the most Julius-y thing you’ve ever said.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” General Jackson added, striding over to join them. “Do you know how many times we’ve tried to negotiate with Algonquin? It’s impossible. She will not listen.”

  “That was back when she still had an ace up her sleeve,” Julius argued. “Things are different now. I’ve lived in the DFZ. I know how deeply Algonquin loves her lakes. She’s been watching the slow destruction of everything she loves for sixteen hours now. If she was ever going to be open to changing her mind, this would be the time, but she can’t listen if no one’s there to talk.”

  “Fair enough,” the general admitted. “But how do you propose we get to her? The Leviathan is drinking her down as we speak, and we’re still stuck in this bubble.”

  “I don’t think he’s going as fast as we feared, though,” Julius said excitedly. “The river and Lake St. Clair are gone, but if the other Great Lakes are anything like Erie, we’ve still got a chance. Before he left, Raven said we had two hours tops before the magic dropped enough to go outside. If the Leviathan doesn’t finish her off before then—and at the rate he’s going, I don’t think he will—we can go out there and buy time to find Algonquin and convince her to stop her monster for us.”

  “Buy time?” Svena asked. “How does one buy time against a Nameless End? What do you intend to do, talk it to death?”

  Julius smiled. “I was actually thinking of something more traditional. We can fight it.”

  “Fight a Nameless End?” Amelia said. “Like, with claws and fire?” When Julius nodded, she threw her hands in the air. “That’s it. You’ve officially gone from crazy optimistic to plain old crazy.”

  “Just hear me out,” Julius said. “I’m not saying we should fight the Leviathan himself. That is crazy. He’s the size of the entire sky. But we don’t actually need to defeat him. We just need to stall long enough to convince Algonquin to do it for us.”

  “Stalling, huh?” Marci said, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on her bracelet. “You mean like make a distraction?”

  “I was actually thinking we should go for the tentacles,” Julius said. “That’s how he’s sucking up her water. If we start cutting them off, it’s bound to have some effect.”

  “Assuming they can be cut,” General Jackson said grimly. “I’ve fought the Leviathan before, and while I was able to damage him, he always healed immediately. The thing above us is infinitely bigger and stronger than the shadow we faced in Reclamation Land. He may not be vulnerable at all now.”

  “I bet he’s vulnerable to dragon fire,” Amelia said with a smoky grin. “I’ve never fought a Nameless End, but until he’s big enough to haul the rest of himself in through the barrier, that thing is ninety-nine point nine percent Algonquin. That makes him spirit magic, and I know for a fact that spirits burn.”

  “It’s true,” Svena said cruelly. “I’ve sent several back to their domains myself. They always burn so prettily.” She looked up through the hole in the Skyways where one of the Leviathan’s tentacles was passing overhead. “I could burn that.”

  “But could you burn enough?” Chelsie asked. “Julius just said the Leviathan was the size of the entire sky. Given the number of tentacles I’ve already seen above us, we’re talking about thousands of targets spread out over hundreds, maybe thousands of square miles. That’s too much even for you, White Witch.”

  Svena growled deep in her throat at the implied weakness, and Julius quickly jumped in. “We don’t have to get all the tentacles. Again, we’re just trying to slow him down, not cut him off entirely, and we don’t have to do it with only the dragons we have here.” He turned to the Qilin. “You said your clan was already on its way, and Fredrick can bring in the rest of the Heartstrikers with his Fang. That’s a lot of dragons if we all work together. More than enough to keep the Leviathan from drinking the last of Algonquin long enough for me to get a chance to talk to her.”

  “Which I still don’t think will work,” General Jackson said. “I like the idea of burning tentacles to buy time, but the end goal of your operation is fundamentally flawed. We could buy you a year, and it still wouldn’t make a difference, because no matter what you say, Algonquin will not listen.”

  “How do you know that?” Julius demanded.

  “Because Algonquin never listens.”

  The sudden booming voice made Marci jump. She hadn’t even heard him coming in, but Raven was suddenly right on top of them. The true Raven, landing on the muddy ground beside them in all his huge, feathered glory. In this form, his head rose even taller than the Black Reach, and his flight feathers were as long as Marci’s leg, each one shining with a black rainbow sheen like oil on water. He actually looked like a god for once, but his magnificence was undermined by the very mortal look of terror in his black eyes.

  “I take it things on the other side didn’t go well,” General Jackson said grimly.

  “They didn’t go at all,” Raven replied, shaking his huge head. “Algonquin’s not in her vessel.”

  “What?” Marci cried. “But that’s impossible. Spirits are defined by their vessels. It’s what gives you guys your shape. How can she not be there?”

  “I have no idea,” the spirit said. “But I know Algonquin’s shores below the Sea of Magic almost as well as I know my own, and she’s not there. Nothing was, except that thing’s vile tentacles.”

  “Wait,” Amelia said, her voice shaking. “You’re saying he’s got tentacles inside a spirit vessel? As in at the bottom of the Sea of Magic?”

  “He’s got tentacles everywhere. The other side’s filthy with them, and that’s not the worst of it.” The Raven Spirit swung his huge beak toward Julius. “I heard your plan through my Emily’s ears. Your idea of talking to Algonquin is utter rubbish. She’s never listened to anyone who says things she doesn’t want to hear. She’s certainly not going to start with a dragon. Not even you, Julius Heartstriker. I am well aware of your reputation for turning enemies into allies, but this is beyond even your powers. In case her wholesale slaughter of your kind a few days ago in the DFZ wasn’t clue enough, Algonquin hates dragons only slightly less than she hates Mortal Spirits. Even if you could somehow miraculously push through that millennia-old resentment, it wouldn’t matter, because you can’t talk to her. Not where she is.”

  “Where is she?” Julius asked.

  Marci was wondering the exact same thing. She still didn’t buy Raven’s story about Algonquin not being in her vessel. Spirits were always in their vess
els. The hollows at the bottom of the Sea of Magic were the cups that held the magic that made them sentient. Even during the drought, they’d been in there, asleep. Algonquin’s vessel was the outline of her soul, as much a part of her as her water. If she wasn’t inside, where else could she be?

  “There,” Raven said, looking up at the darkness that filled the sky. “The Leviathan isn’t just consuming her lakes. He’s consumed her. She’s withdrawn completely inside him, and there’s no way we’re getting her out.”

  “There has to be a way.”

  “Not without getting eaten yourself,” Raven said. “I know. I just tried. Why do you think I’m in this shape?” He lifted his massive head. “When I realized what had happened, I tried to bash my way inside, but he’s armored himself in Algonquin’s magic.”

  “Then you should step aside and let someone bigger try bashing,” Amelia suggested.

  “It’s not just a problem of power,” Raven snapped. “Out here, the Leviathan can’t eat us until he’s finished off Algonquin and gotten big enough to fend off the planar defenses, but the inside of his shell is his turf. It’s like being in a spirit’s vessel. He controls everything within his own domain, which means he can eat you at any time without worrying about tipping his hand to the rest of the plane, and as I just learned, his teeth are very sharp.”

  Raven lifted his wing, showing them the huge chunk that had been bitten out of the top. “That’s why your plan isn’t going to work,” he went on, turning back to Julius. “The Leviathan might not be done sucking up her water, but Algonquin’s finished. She’s not technically dead yet because of the way spirits work, but she’s buried herself so deep inside her End that she might as well be. Even if you could somehow beat your way to her, the Leviathan would devour you before you could say a word.”

  Julius’s face crumpled, and Marci’s heart went out to him. “It was a good plan,” she whispered, reaching out to squeeze his hand.

  “Parts of it are still a good plan,” Amelia said. “I was never on board with talking to Algonquin, but burning tentacles is still very much on the table.”