Last Dragon Standing

by Rachel Aaron

  ***

  The sky was chaos.

  Though it was technically thin enough to move through, the magic still clung to Julius like glue. Flying through it was like trying to swim through molasses, forcing him to fight with all his strength just to stay airborne. Even after he got the hang of it, it was still a struggle to keep from being sent spinning whenever the bigger dragons blew past him, sometimes much bigger.

  So far as he could tell just by looking, the average dragon seemed to be in their mid-hundreds. This meant most of them weren’t much bigger than Gregory, but some were enormous. The Daughters of the Three Sisters in particular filled the sky like a weather front, turning the ruined city into a snowy wonderland as they blasted the Leviathan’s black tentacles with their frosted flame. Conrad dominated as the wing leader of the Heartstriker attack, his enormous size matched only by Bethesda herself, who kept to the center of the pack, shouting orders at her dragons from a safe distance. But as huge as the dragons were, they were nothing compared to the monster they fought.

  The first time Julius had crawled up to look at him, the Leviathan’s black body had filled the sky. Now, though, the Nameless End was the sky. Even this high up, Julius could see no end to him. Not even the memory of sunlight got past him now, leaving the city blacker than any night under his shadow. If it hadn’t been for all the dragon fire going off, Julius wouldn’t have been able to see at all. He had no idea how the human pilots were going to manage, but the military flew night missions all the time, so he assumed they must have a way. He just hoped whatever system they used saw well enough to avoid the dragons, because from some of the near misses going on above him, crashing into each other in the dark posed more danger right now than the Leviathan.

  “Julius!”

  General Jackson’s voice was an explosion in his ear. Her face appeared in his AR a moment later, floating in the sky somewhere off to his left, but she wasn’t looking at him. Her attention was on the screen behind her, which Julius could only see because she’d apparently patched him directly into her own AR.

  “Satellites are up,” she said. “We still can’t see through the Leviathan, but from the heat map data, it looks like Lakes Superior and Ontario are already dry. I’m ordering a flyover to be sure, but you should go ahead and tell your dragons to focus on protecting what’s left of Lakes Michigan, Erie, and Huron so we’re not wasting our time defending already lost territory.”

  “Understood,” Julius said, looking around at the dragons, who’d already fanned out over the DFZ at astonishing speed. “I’ll spread the word.”

  “Roger,” Emily said before her feed cut out.

  Julius took a deep breath. Technically, less territory to defend was good considering how much they had to cover, but it was still disheartening to hear they’d already lost two of the five Great Lakes. What he could see of Lake Erie in the distance didn’t look good, either. When he tried shouting to the others to spread the information, though, he realized within a few words that no one could hear him.

  As the runt of his clan and a firm believer in staying out of trouble, Julius hadn’t spent much time in his dragon form, and practically none in actual combat. His fight with Gregory had been relatively close quarters, so he’d never realized just how fast a voice—even a dragon’s roaring one—fell off over distance. In the two minutes it had taken him to get up in the air and get the information from the general, the dragons had spread out over several square miles, much too far for his voice to carry. He was desperately trying to think of another way to get the word out when a laughing voice bubbled up in his fire.

  Looks like you could use a divine intervention.

  Julius almost sobbed with relief when his oldest sister materialized in front of him, her giant dragon body coalescing out of bright-orange-and-red flame that kept burning even after her red feathers had formed. “Sorry to be fashionably late,” Amelia said, spreading her wings to fly beside him. “I had some business on the other side. What’s the deetz?”

  “Leviathan’s already eaten two lakes,” Julius replied immediately. “We need to focus on defending Michigan, Erie, and Huron, but I can’t—”

  “Say no more,” his sister replied, breathing a lick of fire as she cleared her throat. Then, without warning, she roared, shaking the air and filling his magic with her voice.

  Listen up, worms! she bellowed. Thanks to our late start, we’re already down two lakes. Ontario and Superior are Leviathan food, so anyone headed there needs to pick another body of water. I’m not going to bother assigning you all positions because we don’t have that kind of time, so if you’re fighting and you find yourself competing with other dragons for targets, move somewhere else. Likewise, if you’re having trouble covering your area, call for me, and I’ll send someone your way. The humans will be sending us backup in—

  She glanced at Julius. “How long until we get jets?” she asked in her normal voice.

  He frantically brought up the updated maps the general had shared to his AR. “Two minutes.”

  Two minutes, Amelia repeated, the words hammering thorough his fire. Remember, those planes are friends, not food. If I catch any of you being idiots, I’ll snuff your fire on the spot and send you to an idiot’s death. Ignore the Leviathan’s main body as well. Our target is the tentacles. As my brother Justin is already demonstrating—she motioned at Justin’s distinctive flame in the distance, and Julius’s head was suddenly filled with the image of his brother blasting black appendages out of the sky with giant bursts of his green fire—they burn pretty well, but don’t get carried away and waste time trying to turn everything to ash. The only thing we’re up here to do is keep the Leviathan from drinking any more water than he already has, so just focus on stopping the tentacles from reaching the ground, and we should be all good.

  Her voice faded from Julius’s fire after that, leaving the actual Amelia smirking at him from behind a wreath of smoke. “That went well,” she said brightly. “You’ve got a line to the Phoenix, right?” When Julius nodded, Amelia rubbed her claws together. “Excellent. You’ll be my wingman. You feed me intel from the ground, I’ll spread it to the troops in between bouts of being a fiery god of death.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Julius said, looking nervously at the dozen tentacles he could see in the area immediately surrounding them. “We need all the firepower we can get.”

  “Firepower is my middle name,” Amelia said, the words coming out in curls of smoke as fire licked at her fangs. “You might want to get behind me.”

  Julius dove at once, darting behind his giant sister seconds before a wave of fire exploded out of her mouth. It was so bright, it whited out Julius’s vision. By the time he could see again, all the tentacles around them were ash, and Amelia was looking very pleased with herself.

  “Not bad, not bad,” she said, lifting her eyes to the giant above them. “I wonder if that would work on the big one?”

  “But you just told us to ignore the Leviathan’s main body,” Julius reminded her. “And aren’t you the one who said it couldn’t be defeated?”

  “Normally, yeah,” Amelia said. “But as I just demonstrated, I’m a god now. Gods don’t follow normal rules.”

  “Neither does he,” Julius argued. “Remember what Raven said? The Leviathan is using Algonquin’s magic as a cover to hide his true form from the plane. Underneath that, though, he’s still a Nameless End. If you go inside, he could devour your magic.”

  His sister scoffed. “Who said anything about going inside? I’m just going to try and burn a hole in his belly. I bet that would slow the tentacle production rate.” She grinned. “No way to know except to try.”

  The idea of getting any closer to the Leviathan than they already were made Julius’s skin crawl. Even this close, he could already feel how alien it was. How hungry. But when he turned to tell his sister that he really didn’t think this was a good idea, Amelia beat her wings, blasting him away.

  The wind rolling off her flaming fe
athers was hot as a furnace and strong as a hurricane, and it got stronger with every flap. All of her was looking bigger, actually. Julius didn’t know if she’d been hiding her true size this whole time or if she was simply whatever size she wanted to be now, but Amelia’s fiery body was already twice as large as Justin’s, her fiery wings spreading until they lit up the entire DFZ. With one flap, she rose a hundred feet, bringing her flaming body directly below the Leviathan’s as she opened her mouth to unleash the brightest gout of dragon fire Julius had ever seen.

  He almost turned away too late. Even after he closed his eyes, the blast left him blind, lighting up the dark city like an atomic noon. Amelia’s fire was so powerful, the heat of it curled his feathers and made it hard to breathe even a hundred feet away. He couldn’t see what it was doing to the Leviathan, but it seemed impossible that so much fire would have no effect. Then, just as his hopes were starting to rise, the light snuffed out, and his sister vanished, her fiery form going dark as dozens of black tentacles shot through the air where she’d been.

  “Amelia!” Julius cried, dodging frantically as one of the spears shot past him. “Amelia!”

  Don’t be dramatic, scolded the voice in his fire. His sister reappeared beside him a few moments later, though in a much smaller form. Her feathers hadn’t even finished firming up when Svena swept in.

  “What was that?” the white dragon panted, lowering the temperature several degrees with her frosty breaths. “And did it work?”

  “Testing the Leviathan’s resistance,” Amelia replied, her own breaths worryingly short. “And no.” She glanced up at the Leviathan’s black shell, which, despite her incredible display of firepower, looked just as glossy and impenetrable as it had before.

  “I don’t understand,” Svena said, pushing back one of the whelps who’d crawled too far up her neck. “I felt that blast all the way to my core. You hit him with the combined force of all dragon fire. Nothing should be immune to that.”

  “I don’t think he’s immune,” Amelia said. “I saw my attack do a little damage before he tried to spear me, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped, and I’m afraid that’s kind of my fault.”

  “How do you figure that?” Julius asked.

  “Being made of sentient magic, spirits aren’t usually bothered by physical weapons,” his sister explained. “For example, you couldn’t hurt Algonquin with a sword. No matter how hard you hit, your blade would just go right through her while she laughed. The reason dragons have never had a problem with this particular defense is because we’re magic too. We’re fighting fire with fire, so to speak, except our fire is from a different plane. That’s why spirits have always seen us as such an enormous threat despite our relatively small numbers. We have a weapon they can’t easily counter: our dragon fire. Unfortunately, when I became the Spirit of Dragons and tied our fire into the magic of this plane, I might have… broken that.”

  “What?” Svena shrieked. “I noticed the tentacles were taking longer to burn than they should, but I thought that was just the Nameless End’s influence. I didn’t realize you’d broken our fundamental advantage!”

  “Not on purpose!” Amelia cried. “And if I hadn’t tied us all into the magic, we wouldn’t be here to fight at all!”

  “We might as well not be,” Svena snapped, jerking her long claws back at the dragons flaming all around them. “Look at how slow everyone’s going! We’re all going to die up here because you neutered our fire!”

  Julius didn’t think the assault was going slowly at all. Maybe it wasn’t up to Svena’s standards, but tentacles were still turning to ash at a perfectly acceptable rate, and in any case, “It doesn’t matter,” he said, shoving his body between the two dragonesses, who were both getting dangerously smoky. “We were never planning to assault the Leviathan directly, and we can still burn the part that matters.”

  He pointed across the city at the bursts of light where Conrad was burning entire clusters of the Leviathan’s tentacles. “Our only job is to stall that thing long enough for Marci to banish it, and our fire still works fine for that.” He turned back to Svena. “We’re still on target, so please go back to your sisters and help protect Lake Erie. Also,” his voice grew pleading, “please put your children down somewhere safe. I know bringing whelps into battle is an ancient dragon tradition, but it’s terrifying to watch.”

  “Terrifying for a weak dragon like you, perhaps,” Svena said with a sniff. “But my children are strong. When we survive, they will treasure this memory. Anyway, there’s nowhere else to put them. The ground is just as dangerous, so they might as well be with me.”

  Julius wasn’t sure about that. Now that the attacks had started, the Leviathan was sending down more tentacles than ever, except this time, not all of them were going for the water. Several were aimed at the dragons, including one that was flying right at Svena’s back. Before he could warn her, a blast of fire scorched the incoming attack out of the sky, and then Ian swooped down beside them.

  At least, it smelled like Ian. Julius had never seen his brother’s dragon, which was oddly dark with deep reddish-brown feathers like a falcon’s. But there was no other Heartstriker with eyes that rich brown color, and if that wasn’t a big enough tip-off, the angry, possessive way he was staring at Svena banished all doubt.

  For several moments, Svena looked just as shocked as Julius felt. Then her eyes narrowed. “I don’t recall asking for your help,” she said icily.

  “You didn’t need it,” Ian agreed, his voice as cold as hers. “But they did.” He nodded at the whelps on Svena’s back, who were staring at him with huge blue eyes. “You can easily survive a direct hit. They cannot. Therefore, considering the number of tentacles in the sky, I think the best tactical move would be to divide them between us. That way, if one of us goes down, all of our children won’t be lost.”

  “How very practical,” Svena said.

  “Our entire relationship has been practical,” Ian reminded her. “That’s why I treasured you. I thought we understood each other. You were the one who changed.”

  “I did not change!” she snarled. “Your family took my rival and betrayed me! I had every right to be enraged!”

  “But not without me,” Ian said, getting closer. “I would have fought them with you, Svena, and I don’t fear your rage. It’s part of what attracted me to you in the first place. You should have known that and kept me close. Instead, you shut me out. That was your choice to make, but you have no right to keep my children from me.”

  Svena looked extremely distressed by that, and Amelia rolled her eyes. “Can’t you two save the custody battle for when the world isn’t ending?” she snapped, glaring at Svena. “Just take him with you and work it out on the battlefield or something. I don’t care what you do so long as you do it on the move, because while you two were bickering, the rest of your clan was falling behind.”

  The cluster of white dragons in the distance was looking a bit harried, and Svena sighed. “Ian,” she said primly. “Your idiot sister makes a good point. I admit I was hasty in my decisions before, but—”

  “Hasty?” Ian growled. “You freaked out over assumed information, broke our treaties, stole my children, and locked me out in a magical apocalypse after I flew all the way to Siberia to talk to you!” He crossed his short forefeet in front of him. “I deserve an apology, but since part of the reason I admire you is because you never give those, I’ll settle for full reinstatement as your consort and a life debt.”

  Amelia whooped with laughter as Svena’s eyes grew wide. “Scale’s on the other foot now, snowball!”

  “Shut up, fire chicken,” Svena snapped, but she really did look nervous as she watched Ian. Then, finally, she nodded, and the binding magic of the life debt landed on all of them like frozen teeth.

  Ian sucked in a breath as the cold struck him, and his face split into a triumphant smile. “There,” he said, reaching out to the whelps, who happily leaped to him, their little noses quivering as the
y sniffed his feathers. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “That was amazing!” Amelia cackled, grinning at Svena, who looked ready to blast her in the face again. “Svena giving a life debt to her lover! Now I know the world is ending.”

  Julius was feeling the same way, but not because of Svena and Ian. The whole time they’d been talking, he’d been watching the battle—both with his eyes and on the radar screen his com had picked up from the incoming jets. From what he could tell, their end of the fight was going as well as he could have hoped. Justin was having the time of his life blasting endless targets to his violent heart’s content, Conrad was a powerhouse, and the Golden Emperor had all of Lake Michigan on lockdown, leading his dragons in such perfect harmony, it looked as if they’d choreographed the whole thing in advance.

  But while the Golden Empire was hands down the best, they weren’t alone. All the dragons were fighting together rather than with each other. Even Gregory was fighting. The clanless dragons were a little far away, but Julius had seen enough of Gregory’s fire to know it anywhere, and it was pushing just as strong as the others. So far as he could see, everyone was doing their part, including the wing of planes that had just arrived over Lake Erie. The humans had just entered the fight, but already they were shooting down tentacles almost as fast as the dragons were, and—more importantly—not shooting dragons. It was incredible, the greatest display of unity he’d ever seen or heard of.

  And it wasn’t working.

  No matter how fast they burned them, the Leviathan’s tentacles always came back faster. Destroy one, and two more would pop up in its place, shooting down at the tiny pools of water like kamikaze bombers. For every one they caught before it touched the ground, another got through, sucking up gallons of water before their forces could destroy it. Julius knew their efforts had to be slowing down the Leviathan’s consumption compared to when he’d been drinking unhindered, but he couldn’t shake the horrifying feeling that they weren’t actually making much of a difference, and what progress they were achieving was coming at a heavy cost.