Last Dragon Standing

by Rachel Aaron

  “Yes, I can,” she said. “Because this goes beyond normal spirit politics. We’re talking about an end even you immortals can’t survive. I know Algonquin’s poisoned the well, but ‘work with me or we’re all dead’ is a pretty powerful argument.”

  “But you won’t just be dealing with Spirits of the Land,” Myron said, reaching into his pocket to pull out a small slip of paper, or the representation of his memory of a slip of paper since nothing was actually physical on this side. “I suspected you wouldn’t have a proper grasp on this subject, so I did the math for just how much power it will take to hammer banish Algonquin’s magic off the Leviathan before I left. Assuming the standard formula, the answer seems to be just shy of…” He trailed off, checking his equation one last time. “All of it.”

  Marci blinked. “All of what?”

  “All the magic that currently exists on this plane,” Myron clarified. “Give or take a few percent.”

  His Cambridge professor accent rendered every word perfectly, but Marci still couldn’t understand what Myron was saying. “Wait, wait, wait,” she said, putting up her hands. “You’re seriously telling me that banishing the Leviathan is going to take all the magic there is?” When he nodded, she gaped at him. “How is that even possible? Algonquin’s five lakes. She’s not the Pacific Ocean!”

  “If she were an ocean of any sort, we couldn’t banish her at all,” Myron said. “You said it yourself: hammer banishes work by using a blast of overwhelming power to completely disperse a spirit’s magic. But the amount of power required to qualify as ‘overwhelming’ increases exponentially with the spirit’s size. Algonquin’s one of the largest spirits of the land. No one’s ever used the hammer method on something her size before, let alone a spirit that’s currently inside a separate extraplanar being.” He held the paper out so Marci could see. “Frankly, some of these numbers are just guesses on my part. There’s a chance we could swing everything we have, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

  She snatched the paper from his hand, but when she looked the figures over, she saw Myron was right. When she’d come up with this idea, she’d assumed the standard ten-to-one ratio for a hammer banish, which meant that if she could get just ten or twenty big spirits on board, it would be enough. But she’d forgotten about the exponential curve. Under that math, she needed to multiply every number by a power of ten. Once you did that, all the magic in the world started to look terrifyingly short.

  “We can still do it,” she said, hands shaking as she handed the paper back to Myron. “We’re just going to need everyone now. But that’s fine. So far as I know, everyone wants to live, so my argument still stands.”

  “And there are Mortal Spirits now as well,” Ghost added. “Our kind is much more powerful than the land and untainted by Algonquin’s hate.”

  “You are also mad and unpredictable,” Shiro said angrily, pointing at the battles that thrashed the sea. “All the gods humanity learned to fear have risen. I sided with you before because you said you would do it slowly, and that you would find them all Merlins, but there’s been no time for that. Those are all newborn powers, maddened spirits who don’t yet know the destruction they are capable of. They don’t even know their names yet! Forces like that cannot be reasoned with.”

  “Nothing can be reasoned with if you don’t try,” Marci snapped, marching back to the line on the ground that marked the temporary, un-submerged Merlin Gate. “I’m going.”

  Shiro stepped in front of her. “With respect, Merlin, that is suicide. The Sea of Magic is more treacherous than I have ever seen it. The chaos will rip you to shreds.”

  “It will not touch her,” Ghost growled, moving closer to Marci’s side. “You forget, construct. I am a face of death. Nothing shall touch my Merlin so long as she is in my shadow.”

  “But you’re no longer the only god out there,” Shiro pleaded, his face growing desperate. “No one has ever brought the Mortal Spirits to heel, and they are panicked now. They will not be reasonable.”

  “It’s because they’re panicked that this will work,” Marci argued. “And I’m not trying to bring anyone to heel. I’m offering them a chance to save themselves, and no one fears death more than immortals.”

  “That may be true,” Shiro admitted, his voice quivering. “But… we just got you back! This world—I have been without a proper Merlin for so long! Sir Myron is unquestionably skilled, but he doesn’t have your understanding or vision for how the future can be better. I want to see the world you promised the last time you were here, and that can’t happen if you’re dead for real!”

  “It won’t happen if I don’t go, either,” Marci said, surprisingly touched. “Your support means a lot to me, Shiro, but I have to do this. Not because I’m the Merlin, but because I’m the only one who can do the job right now. I want to see that world too. I want to live, and I can’t do that if Tentacle Face out there eats my plane. I’m ready to do whatever I have to to beat him, and I’m betting there’s a lot of spirits who feel the same. We’ve never been able to unite before, but we’ve also never faced a truly universal threat. This is an existential crisis that threatens every sentient being in our reality. The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend, but that doesn’t mean we can’t come together and fight to survive, especially when the stakes are this high.”

  “You are right,” Shiro said, lowering his eyes. “I was being selfish.” He bowed deeply. “Forgive my disobedience, Merlin.”

  “Thank you for caring enough to try to stop me,” Marci said, grabbing his shoulders to gently pull him back up. “But I’ve got this. Just hold down the fort, and make sure Myron doesn’t get so caught up haggling with his spirit that he forgets to mend the seal, because when I come back, I’ll probably be coming in hot. Also, Amelia and Raven are allowed to come and go as they please.”

  “I believe the Spirit of Dragons has already gone,” Shiro said. “But I will not try to kick her out again.” He lowered his head one more time. “Good luck, Merlin.”

  Marci smiled and turned away, sliding her hand into Ghost’s freezing one as they stepped through the door into chaos once again.

  Chapter 10

  General Jackson’s truck convoy arrived with much fanfare.

  Ten UN armored personnel carriers rolled into the sheltered area below the ramps like soldiers charging the enemy line. Each one was covered with what had to be a million dollars’ worth of glowing military-grade wards, which explained how they’d made the journey from the armory in Chicago through the still-dangerous magic levels. They slowed down when they hit the dirt to let the dragons get out of the way, but they didn’t stop until they’d formed a protective circle around General Jackson, who hadn’t even looked up yet from the makeshift war table she’d fashioned from the top half of Julius’s front door.

  When the APCs were in position, the bulletproof doors rolled open, and UN soldiers with ANTI-DRAGON TASK FORCE stamped in yellow letters across their augmented body armor poured out, much to the chagrin of the watching crowd.

  “Are you serious?” Lao demanded, his eyes shining like blue fire as he placed himself between the soldiers and the Qilin. “You dare bring dragon slayers to our aid?”

  “I’m the general of the Anti-Dragon Task Force,” Emily replied dryly, her eyes still locked on the map of the Great Lakes region she’d sketched onto the cracked wood with one of Marci’s sticks of casting chalk. “You go to war with the army you’ve got.”

  Lao growled low in his throat, but the general didn’t even raise her head until the last officer hopped off the trucks, a young man with a confident air and reams of preprinted ward tape attached to holsters to his belt. The yellow band on his arm marked him as a battle mage, but Emily looked much more excited about the sleek, cement block-sized augmented reality receiver he was carrying in his hands.

  “Finally,” she said, grabbing the receiver and setting it down on the door-table beside her. The officer handed her a smartphone in a Kevlar case next. Emily snatch
ed it out of his hand, taking a quick picture of her hand-drawn map before swiping her fingers through the phone’s augmented reality field to bring up an actual map in the air above it.

  “Much better,” she said, smiling at the glowing projection of the Great Lakes region. “Status report.”

  The battle mage saluted and started rattling off a bunch of jargon Julius didn’t understand. It must not have been what the general wanted to hear, though, because her face—the only part of her body that wasn’t currently made of scrap metal—grew dourer by the word.

  “What’s wrong?” Julius asked after she’d dismissed the soldier.

  “Everything we already know, plus a bit more,” Emily said, sweeping her hand through the AR to replace the floating map with a circular display of satellite images and magical readouts. “It seems the Leviathan is bigger than our original estimation. I don’t know if Raven was wrong about his size or if he’s grown in the last half hour, but we’re going to be stretched even thinner than planned. The good news is that Canada, the US, and Mexico are all sending their air forces to help. Washington in particular is being extremely generous, though I think we can all guess why that is.”

  She glanced pointedly at David, who was busy schmoozing with the heads of two European clans. The senator smiled when he saw her looking and took his government-issued phone out of his pocket, wiggling it at her before sliding it back into place.

  “The president of the US has preauthorized a nuclear strike and designated Senator Heartstriker as the man on the ground,” Emily continued. “I don’t intend to use it because I’d like to avoid having all of our forces and what remains of the DFZ vaporized, but it’s good to know we’ve got an ace in our pocket.”

  “Would it even work, though?” Julius asked nervously, glancing up at the Leviathan. “Can you nuke something that big without destroying everything you’re fighting to save?”

  “We can damn well try,” the general said grimly. “But if we have to launch a nuclear strike, we’ve already lost, so it’s a moot point.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Julius assured her. “Marci’s plan will work.”

  “It’d better,” Emily grumbled. “Because all our other options are just different flavors of defeat.”

  Another soldier came up to them as she finished, an older woman wearing a bright-orange vest that read LOGISTICS and carrying a heavily armored metal box the size of a picnic basket. Emily grinned when she saw it, clearing the table so the soldier could set the box down. The woman was still saluting when Emily popped the locks and threw the box open, revealing an array of complicated-looking military gadgetry packed inside custom-cut black foam.

  “Here,” the general said, grabbing what looked like the world’s most expensive black plastic headband and holding it out to Julius. “Put this on.”

  “What is it?” Julius asked, taking it from her.

  “Coms rig,” she replied, grabbing a second one to place over her own head. “It’s got a full AR interface, a camera, a phone, and an old-fashioned radio, just in case things go really south. There’s also GPS, though with the Leviathan blocking the satellites, that’s probably useless.” She pointed at the satellite pictures that showed nothing but a wall of black above the entire northern border of the Midwestern US. “It’s also got military-grade mana-contacts that are better than anything on the civilian market, so it should work in your dragon form as well as your human one. Just make sure at least one side stays in contact with your skin at all times, and you’ll have full AR sound and capability.”

  That sounded extremely useful, but… “Why are you giving it to me?”

  “Because you’re in charge,” Emily said, looking at him as if she couldn’t understand how that was a question. “I overheard your dragon powwow. It’s clear you’re the one the others are looking to as the leader of this assault.”

  “That’s only because Amelia told them I was running things!” Julius said quickly, putting up his hands. “I’m not—”

  “It doesn’t matter how you came to be in charge,” the general said brusquely. “You are, and to be frank, I’m delighted. Despite the bad blood between us, you’ve been extraordinarily fair and reliable. Those are rare qualities in a dragon, and priceless traits in an ally.”

  Julius was glad to hear it. He knew the others didn’t share his sentiment, but the UN general was a good ally for them as well. Dragons were powerful but, as he’d recently discovered, not nearly as numerous as he’d been led to believe. If they were going to keep his promise and hold out until Marci was done, they needed all the help they could get.

  “I’m always ready to make an ally,” Julius said. “I’ve already told the others not to attack any of your planes, even by ‘accident,’ but I need you to make sure your soldiers do the same. If a dragon gets shot down, I can’t guarantee this won’t dissolve into a brawl.”

  “Don’t worry,” Emily said. “My people aren’t stupid enough to pick a fight with this many dragons. So long as no one claws a jet out of the sky, we shouldn’t have any problems.”

  She shot a sideways look at Fading Smoke as she said that, and Julius winced. “I’m picking up that you two have history,” he said quietly. “Is that going to be an issue?”

  “That depends on how much stock you’re putting in Arkniss,” Emily said, her mechanical eyes whirring as she refocused on Julius. “I know saying a dragon is untrustworthy is like saying the sky is blue, but Arkniss is special. A decade ago, my superiors in Copenhagen made a deal with him for safe access to airspace over the Mediterranean. He invited us to his fortress under the Rock of Gibraltar, signed the treaty, and then betrayed us before the ink was dry. All of my subordinates died, and I was taken captive and tortured for four months before Raven got me out.” She looked down at the scrap-metal hands Raven had rigged up for her with a sigh. “Bastard cost me my last real limb.”

  “I’m sorry,” Julius said, horrified.

  The general shrugged. “Price of being a dragon slayer. Point is, Fading Smoke is not someone I trust with my soldiers. Normally, that wouldn’t even need to be said, but since we’re enemies of an enemy together, I feel it would compromise mission integrity if I didn’t warn you.”

  “I’ll make sure he’s positioned as far from you as possible,” Julius promised. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “Thank you for caring,” she said, turning back to her maps. “I have to stay down here and coordinate UN forces, so I’ll be counting on you to be my eyes in the sky. I’ll be feeding you real-time positions for all human units, so make sure you keep that headpiece on at all times. I’ve instructed my pilots to obey any orders from you the same as they would from me, so don’t be afraid to send in the jets yourself if you need them.”

  Julius swallowed. Being in charge of a dragon clan was one thing, but he was used to Heartstriker. Ordering military air strikes felt much scarier, somehow.

  “Don’t make that face,” Emily said. “I know you’re not a killer, because if you were, I’d be dead. But I like that in an ally. I know I can count on you not to waste my soldiers’ lives.” She lifted her head, giving him a sincere smile. “I’m glad you’re the one I ended up with. We didn’t get off to the best start, but if we die today, it’s been an honor to work with you, Julius Heartstriker.”

  Julius had no idea how to reply to that. He felt obligated to say “You too” or something similar, but he couldn’t, because even though she’d come back, he still hadn’t forgiven the general for killing Marci. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to look at her without that old hurt and anger coming up, but there was a practical, eyes-on-the-prize honor to Emily Jackson that he couldn’t deny. She wasn’t kind or compassionate, but Julius trusted her to fight for humanity’s survival—and by extension, all of theirs—to the bitter, bitter end.

  “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  The general nodded and turned back to her map, using her fingers to redraw the battle lines on the projected maps that she’d
originally drawn in chalk on the door-turned-table. Duly dismissed, Julius stepped away to fiddle with his new piece of military hardware. The headpiece was easily the coolest gadget he’d ever used. The mana contacts barely needed to touch his skin to hook into his personal magic, and the AR interface was the fastest and most responsive he’d ever seen. He was poking through the floating menus when he felt something loom over him. That was all the warning he got before a giant arm wrapped around his neck.

  “Ack!” he cried, hands flying up instinctively to fight off his attacker before he realized the arm belonged to his brother. “Justin!”

  The knight of the Heartstrikers cackled in reply, lifting Julius off the ground with a wicked grin. “Look at you,” he said, grinding the knuckles of his free hand into Julius’s scalp. “Got the Phoenix herself eating out of your hand. I knew I’d make a dragon out of you someday!”

  “Justin…” Julius gasped, slapping his hands against the vise of his brother’s arm, which was still locked around his neck. “Air…”

  Justin released him, and Julius doubled over, coughing as spots danced in front of his eyes. He was still trying to catch his breath when Justin slapped him on the back hard enough to send him sprawling on the ground.

  “I always knew you’d pull it off,” the knight said proudly as he yanked Julius back to his feet. “Everyone said your coup against Mother was a fluke, but I knew you had fire in you. You had a weird way of showing it, but you still beat the Qilin and kept our clan from getting conquered. I just got the whole story from Fredrick, and it was awesome. I can’t wait to rub this in the rest of our clan’s faces forever. They told me I was stupid for wanting to be your knight, but who’s looking stupid now?”

  He yelled that last part at the gathered group of Heartstrikers, who rolled their green eyes, and Julius winced. “Could you not?” he said, dusting himself off. “I still need them to listen to me, you know.”