Last Dragon Standing

by Rachel Aaron

  ***

  Marci’s first impression when she entered the Sea of Magic as a living soul was panic. The magic here had always been chaotic, but what she’d seen before was nothing compared to this. Even safe inside Ghost’s protection, the currents were strong enough to knock her around like a bug in a jar. She wasn’t even sure which part of her body was her head and which were her feet anymore when a door suddenly appeared in front of her, the only fixed point in the moving, swirling, boiling madness.

  She dove for it instinctively, nearly burning off her hand in her rush to get to the blessedly stable, normal-looking wood. The moment her fingers touched its surface, the Merlin Gate opened for her, and Marci tumbled inside, landing in a heap on the stone. She was still trying to stop the spinning in her head when a hand appeared under her nose.

  “Bumpy entrance, huh?”

  Marci looked up with a start to see Amelia standing over her, her face grim. “What are you doing here?” she asked, grabbing the dragon’s hand. “You’re supposed to be with Julius.”

  “I was,” Amelia replied, hauling her up. “And I will be again, but this was kind of a crisis, so I bopped over. Shiro was going to kick me out on account of my whole ‘not having a Merlin’ thing, but now that you’re here, you can vouch for me.”

  Marci nodded absently, too distracted by her surroundings to pay Amelia’s explanation proper attention. She was certain she’d come in through the Merlin Gate, but this was not the stone courtyard at the foot of the green mountain where she’d entered last time. Everything looked so different, it took Marci several seconds to realize she was standing on top of the flat peak of the mountain… which was no longer a mountain at all, but a tiny island in the middle of a vast and terrifying black sea.

  “What happened?” she cried, turning in a circle. The mountain, the forest, the stairs, even the gate was gone. The place where she’d come in was just a line scratched into the stone. Beyond that, there was nothing but sea. Not the beautiful blue expanse from before, but a huge, rough, terrifying, tar-black ocean full of giant waves that would have been washing them all under if not for Myron and the DFZ, who were frantically holding the water back with a shimmering barrier.

  “Novalli!” Myron yelled over the crashing water. “Help us!”

  Marci rushed to obey, grabbing a fistful of magic and slamming it into Myron’s spellwork to help keep the ward in place. She was frantically trying to make sense of Myron’s maze-like patterns so she would be more effective when the other mage ran over. “Not like that!” he yelled in her ear, grabbing her fingers and moving them to press against the faint green lines rather than the blue ones. “Green is always ground!”

  Marci shifted her magic accordingly. “Like this?”

  He nodded and ran back toward the center of the island. “Hold that in place while I link it into the rest of the circle.”

  “What circle?” Marci cried as a giant wave crashed into the magic she was struggling to hold up. “Everything’s gone!”

  “Not gone!” yelled another voice. “Just underwater.”

  She jumped at the sound, looking over her shoulder to see Shiro climbing out of the sea where the waves were sloshing under the edge of Myron’s dome. The shikigami caretaker was absolutely drenched, his black-and-white robes hanging like soggy bedsheets from his slender body. Despite his bedraggled appearance, though, he looked extremely pleased with himself.

  “I found this!” he said excitedly, running over to hand a small, battered-looking leaf to Myron. “It should be enough to serve as an anchor.”

  Myron snatched the leaf out of his hand with the barest nod of thanks. After staring at it for a moment, the mage turned the small piece of greenery upside down, placed it carefully on the ground, and stomped on it with all his might, grinding the green leaf into paste under the heel of his shoe. Marci was about to yell at him for being so rough with something Shiro had clearly gone to great lengths to obtain when the stone lit up with the glowing lines of Myron’s labyrinth. As he finished grinding the leaf—and the spellwork baked into it by the ancient Merlins—into the pattern, the whole maze shifted and locked, shutting out the roar of the storm-tossed sea as though someone had just inverted a thick glass bowl over their heads.

  “There,” Myron said, his breathless voice painfully loud in the new silence. “That should keep us afloat for now.”

  “What is going on?” Marci demanded, letting go of the now-stable ward so she could face him properly. “Why is the Heart of the World underwater?”

  “Why do you think?” Myron snapped. “You broke the seal and unleashed a thousand years of magic back into the world all at once! Where did you think it was going to go?”

  Marci blinked in alarm. She’d been so busy dealing with the magical fallout in the real world, she hadn’t even considered that the same thing might be happening on this side. Even so. “How was I supposed to know the mountain would sink?” she cried. “There’s the same amount of magic now as there was a thousand years ago when this place was built. It’s not my fault the Merlins made themselves a tiny island!”

  “They didn’t!” Shiro said angrily, pushing his dripping black hair away from his face. “It’s never looked like this before!”

  “How did it end up like this, then?” Myron demanded. “You told us the last time we were here that new magic accumulation over the drought was minimal!”

  “It was minimal,” Shiro said, pointing at the fifty-foot-tall waves that were crashing over the top of Myron’s barrier. “This isn’t new magic. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’ve never seen the Sea of Magic this high before.”

  “Neither have I,” Raven said, finally coming out of his hiding place in the squat little tree at the mountain’s center. “And I’ve been here a long time.”

  “Okay, so what’s going on?” Marci asked.

  “Not what,” Raven said, hopping over to perch on her shoulder opposite Ghost, who was still a cat. “Who.”

  He pointed a wing tip at the waves. Curious, Marci walked to the barrier and pressed her face against the magic, squinting through the glowing maze of Myron’s labyrinth spellwork. No matter how hard she looked, though, she couldn’t see a thing, which didn’t make sense at all. The entire point of the Heart of the World was to translate the Sea of Magic into something humans could understand. It was a lens designed to let humans see the unseeable, but Marci couldn’t see anything at all. The crystal-clear water she’d looked through last time was gone, replaced by murky tides every bit as dark and confusing as the mess outside.

  “I don’t get it,” she said at last. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “Neither can we,” Amelia said, crossing her arms. “That’s the problem. Remember what Raven said earlier about the Leviathan being in Algonquin’s vessel? Well, turns out he didn’t stop there. The entire Sea of Magic has been infiltrated.”

  Eyes wide, Marci turned to look again, and this time, she saw it. It wasn’t the water that was dark—it was the things inside it. The once-bright ocean was filled with thick, black tangles. They stretched as far as Marci could see, bobbing with the waves and carpeting the sea floor in all directions. A few tendrils had actually crawled up to the edge of the Heart of the World’s peak. They were tiny, no thicker than fine black hairs, but the deeper ones were as thick as buildings, and there were tons of them. Possibly millions, which explained how the sea had been pushed so high. It was full.

  “What are they?” she asked, voice shaking. “Tentacles?”

  “More like roots,” Raven said grimly. “They started in Algonquin’s vessel, but they’ve been spreading since she gave in.”

  “Is that why it’s so stormy?” Marci asked. Then her face grew pale. “He’s not attacking spirits, is he?”

  “No,” Amelia said. “If he were, we’d already be screwed. Bad as this looks, though, I’ve seen no evidence that he’s eaten anything yet except Algonquin. The waves you’re seeing were actually here before Leviathan started spreading.
” She grinned. “Turns out, you get a lot of sloshing when you dump a thousand years of magic in all at once.”

  “That is not ‘sloshing,’” Myron snarled, stabbing his finger at the giant waves washing over his protective bubble. “That is the work of spirits, and it’s all her fault.”

  He snapped his finger back to Marci, who sighed. “What are you blaming me for now?”

  “If you didn’t do so many irresponsible things, that wouldn’t even be a question,” Myron snapped, marching over to the giant stone seal at the center of the mountain-turned-island, or what was left of it. The circular slab that had been the seal on a thousand years of magic was cracked right down the middle, the stone blown away as though it had been blasted apart from the inside. But even broken, it was still a huge chunk of rock, and there was more than enough left for Myron to climb on top of.

  “Come,” he said, snapping his fingers at Marci. “You can’t see them from the ground due to the waves, but come up here, and you’ll see that I was always right.”

  Marci had never heard a less compelling reason to do anything, but Myron was clearly not going anywhere until she complied, so she sucked it up and climbed onto the cracked seal beside him. “There,” she said, tilting her head so she wouldn’t bump it on the zenith of the protective bubble over their heads. “I’m up. Now, what am I looking for?”

  Myron pointed toward the horizon. Marci followed the motion with a sigh, squinting as she tried to see what he was so worked up about. But while it was much easier to see over the waves from up here, the Heart of the World’s interpretation of the over-full Sea of Magic’s chaos was still so rough, it took far longer than it should before Marci realized that the giant breakers peaking in the distance weren’t actually waves. They were creatures. Huge, alien-looking monsters, and they were attacking each other.

  Every direction Marci looked, giant things were breaching the stormy sea like killer whales, flinging themselves at each other in bloody confrontations. There were so many fights, the ocean looked like it was boiling, and those were just the battles that broke the surface. Now that she knew what to look for, Marci could see the creatures clashing below the water as well. Thousands of dark shapes silhouetted against the Leviathan’s deeper blackness, trying their best to rip each other to shreds.

  “Now I see why we had such a rough entrance,” Ghost said, abandoning his fluffy white cat form to appear at her side as the faceless warrior he always turned into when things got serious. “They’re at each other’s throats.”

  “They who?” Marci asked desperately.

  Her spirit looked at her, his glowing eyes terrified. “Everything.”

  “Everything, pah!” Myron scoffed, pointing at one particularly enormous shape on the horizon. “Those aren’t normal spirits. Those are Mortal Spirits! The magic filled them, and now they’re rising and going crazy just like everyone warned you they would!” His face turned scarlet. “We told you this would happen. I told you! But did you listen? No! You just dumped the magic out, and now everything’s going to pieces!”

  “You can’t blame this on me!” Marci cried. “I wanted to let the magic out slowly, remember? Algonquin’s the one who broke the seal and dumped it, and even she only did so by accident. If anyone’s to blame, it’s the Leviathan! He’s the one who cracked the seal in the first place, and I bet all those roots he’s put down are what’s driving everything into a frenzy.” She crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest. “I’m no spirit, but having a Nameless End shove his tentacles into your face sounds pretty panic-worthy.”

  “Actually, I believe Sir Myron is right,” Shiro said, wringing the water from his robes. “This is more extreme than usual, but Mortal Spirits have always been dreadful. That’s why we were willing to sacrifice all magic to stop them, but now they’re back and bigger than ever.” He looked out at the chaos. “Perhaps this is simply the new way of things.”

  “I don’t think you can lay all the blame on the Spirits of Man this time,” Raven cawed. “Humans have a flair for the dramatic that’s truly terrifying when distilled into its purest form, but even Mortal Spirits can’t cause this much chaos by themselves. Look again, and you’ll see there are plenty of Spirits of the Land and Animals in the mix as well.” He fluffed his feathers. “Today’s madness is equal opportunity, it seems.”

  “Because the Leviathan is driving them to it,” Marci said.

  Raven shrugged. “Leviathan, Algonquin’s betrayal, bumping elbows with crazed, newly raised Mortal Spirits. We’re spoiled for choice on reasons to panic, which is why everyone seems to be doing it. This mess is a team effort.”

  “That’s fitting,” Marci said, hopping down off the broken seal. “Because it’s going to take a team effort to get us out.”

  Myron gaped at her. “You can’t be serious. You still want to go ahead with the banishment plan?”

  “What other choice do we have?” she asked, pointing at the black roots that filled the water. “The world is ending, Myron. That’s not hyperbole. Our reality will literally cease to exist if we don’t do something.”

  “I know, but…” He dragged his hands through his graying hair. “I can’t work miracles. When I told you earlier that I could fix the seal, I was counting on having access to all the spellwork covering the rest of the mountain, but I’ve got nothing to work now! Shiro had to risk his life swimming down to get me a leaf just so we wouldn’t all be washed away.” He pointed at the broken seal under his feet. “What am I supposed to patch this thing with? My hopes and dreams?”

  “If that’s what it takes,” Marci said, smiling at him. “You’re one of the greatest modern mages, Myron. You built a barrier against the raging Sea of Magic using nothing but labyrinths and a leaf. If anyone can make this work, you can.”

  Myron rolled his eyes. “I appreciate the pep talk, but I’m not just being melodramatic. I really can’t do this without the rest of the Heart of the World. If we have to wait for Shiro to dive for every material I need, we’ll be here all year.”

  “Then ask your spirit for help,” Marci said, turning to the DFZ, who’d been oddly quiet this whole time. “Can you get him what he needs?”

  “I don’t know,” the city spirit replied, her orange eyes glowing in the dark of her hood as she considered it. “I’ve never tried swimming before, but I should be able to handle the currents. Even when it’s rough, the Sea of Magic is my world, and I’m pretty strong.”

  Myron whirled on her. “You mean you could have been helping me this whole time?” he cried. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because you never asked me!” the DFZ yelled back, sounding so offended, Marci couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What did you expect?” she asked, trying her best not to let either of them see just how amused she was. “You tied yourself to the spirit of the Detroit Free Zone, Myron. That’s not a place known for volunteering. If you want something in the city, you have to do it yourself or pay someone else to.”

  The city spirit’s orange eyes flashed. “I like being paid.”

  Myron looked horrified. “You expect me to pay my own spirit? That’s ridiculous!”

  “Hey, I got here through a swirling vortex of dead cats,” Marci said with a shrug. “Mortal Spirits are as ridiculous as the human desires that create them. Sometimes you’ve just gotta roll with it. That said, if you two are going to work together, you might want to try understanding how the DFZ does things instead of just giving her orders.”

  Myron scoffed. “Are you a relationship counselor now?”

  “Nope,” Marci said. “Just someone who’s already had to learn this lesson and wants to spare you the trouble. Not that I don’t enjoy watching you suffer, but repetition is inefficient, and we’re crunched enough for time as it is.” She grinned at the city spirit. “I don’t care what it takes. Promise her ownership of the entire DFZ if you have to, but I want that circle up and ready to receive on time. The dragons and General Jackson’s troops are probably in the air by now, an
d I don’t want them in danger one second longer than necessary because you’re bad at communicating.”

  “I’m not bad at communicating!” Myron cried. “I’m a professor! I’ve written fourteen books! I—” He cut off with a clench of his jaw. “You know, never mind. I’ve made a career out of doing the impossible. I’ll do it again now. You’d do better to focus on holding up your end of this bargain, and speaking of.” He folded his arms over his chest. “How do you intend to get enough magic to drop a hammer banish? I let you brush me off before because I didn’t want a bunch of dragons asking questions, but now that it’s just us, I need to know. You said you had a plan. What is it?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Marci said. “I’m going to ask the spirits.”

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  “What?” Amelia said at last.

  “I’m going to ask the spirits for help,” Marci clarified. “They’re sentient magic, and magic is what we need. I know they can give up their magic freely because they did it for Algonquin while she was trying to fill up the DFZ, and since they’re all going to die too if this Leviathan thing goes south, I thought I’d ask them to pitch in.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Myron said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You’re going to ask a bunch of ancient spirits—many of whom see you, a Merlin, as the bringer of a different sort of apocalypse—to commit suicide in order to help you defeat Algonquin’s weapon?”

  “It’s not suicide,” Marci said irritably. “They’ll just re-form in their domains once the banishment is complete. Most of them will be down for a week at the worst, and when they wake up, they’ll still have a world to call home. That sounds like a good deal to me.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you think,” Raven said. “Algonquin’s spent the last six decades teaching them that this was the only way. They’ve already made up their minds. You’re not going to change that.”