A Dragon of a Different Color

by Rachel Aaron

  Next to all that, a spirit’s righteous anger was a risk Marci decided she was willing to take. If the DFZ really was bigger than Algonquin, freeing her could prove to be the first real blow humanity had ever struck back against the lake. Even if it backfired, the fallout couldn’t be worse than leaving her to Myron and letting his fear hand Algonquin her victory. That was logic enough for her, so Marci reached out, touching the spirit for the first time as her fingers closed around the silver noose at her neck.

  When Marci touched the metal, several things became immediately apparent, starting with just how big a hornet’s nest she’d shoved her hand into.

  Whatever magic had gone into making the bindings that held the DFZ, it was way more than just Myron’s. The silver labyrinth the metal ribbon had been bent into was definitely his work, but the rest of it—the thousands of layers of overlapping spellwork that covered both sides of the thin-hammered metal, the incredibly sophisticated logic controlling the flow of the DFZ’s magic power—contained multiple magical signatures. It was incredibly sophisticated, the work of hundreds of hands, including what felt like a spirit’s touch, and not Algonquin’s. Which spirit, she had no idea, but one thing was certain: this was not Myron’s spell, and that was where Marci found her way in.

  Proud as she was of her spellbreaking, the binding on the DFZ was far too complicated for her to crack on her own. The good part of that, though, was that Myron was in the same boat. He’d brilliantly manipulated the spellworked silver ribbon into the labyrinth that bound the city, but no amount of aftermarket tweaking could change the fact that this binding wasn’t the spell’s original purpose. Myron’s commands were all layered on, not baked in, which meant that if Marci could locate the bits he’d changed, she could switch them back and revoke his control.

  With that in mind, Marci got to work, hunching over the DFZ as she started meticulously picking her way through Myron’s maze. It was tedious, delicate work, but not nearly as bad as it could have been. Though she hated the man with all her heart, Marci couldn’t deny that Myron’s spellwork was elegant. Even though he’d done some obvious jury-rigging to force the spellwork into a new function, the modifications he’d made were still masterpieces of elegance and simplicity. It was painful to pry such perfection apart, but anger kept her going, and soon enough, Marci found herself at the crux that held it all together.

  The silver ribbon wasn’t just looped around the spirit’s neck. Once the trash bags came off, Marci saw the binding covered the DFZ’s entire body like mummy wraps, only they didn’t wrap around her in circles. Instead, the ribbon had been folded into a prison that was half origami box, half Gordian knot, which the spirit had grown into like a gourd growing into a mold.

  As brilliant as that structure was, though, it had a clear weak point. A single piece of metal—not a ribbon, but a bar that ran like a horse’s bit across the base of the spirit’s throat. Even here, where nothing was physical, it looked old and battered, but one set of markings was new. Myron’s name, scratched deep into the metal’s scarred surface. The place where everything came together.

  The moment she touched the letters, the entire spell unfolded like a flower. For a dizzying moment, she was touching the spirit directly, reaching right into her living magic until Marci could actually see Myron through the DFZ’s eyes. Or at least the orange eyes of the rodent version of her that was still cowering beside him.

  Time inside the spirit vessels must have been different just as it had been inside her death. Marci felt like she’d been in here for hours, but when she spotted through the spirit’s eyes, he was still drawing his maze on the Merlin Gate’s wooden door. He must have felt Marci’s hand on his spellwork, though, because the moment she saw him, he stopped, yanking his hands off the almost-finished spellwork.

  “No,” he said, turning on his spirit with a horrified look. “It can’t be. You can’t be doing this!”

  Marci grinned, placing her hands on either side of the spellwork that surrounded his name. Wanna bet?

  She didn’t realize he could hear her voice in his mind same as his spirit’s until she felt his panic flooding down the thread that connected him to the DFZ. By that point, though, Marci was in too deep to care. She squeezed with everything she had, crushing the spellwork he’d modified to hold the spirit captive. It was a brute-force solution to an incredibly elegant puzzle, and it never would have worked save for one factor: the DFZ was on her side.

  The city was pushing along with Marci, biting and clawing and fighting with all her might against the binding Marci was ripping apart. Alone, neither was enough. Together, though, their combined force was more than any spellwork could hold, and Myron’s was no exception. Seconds after they began, the silver binding snapped like thread, and the DFZ poured out with a scream, leaving Marci alone in a city that suddenly was no longer there.

  With nothing left to hold her up, she plummeted through the dark, but not Ghost’s dark this time. She’d been kicked out of a different spirit, which meant she was now falling through the swirling dark chaos of the Sea of Magic itself. Falling alone, with no protection and nothing to grab on to.

  The moment she realized what was happening, Marci began to panic. Without the Empty Wind to shield her, the raw magic that had burned her arms was now burning everything, eating through what little was left of her soul at a terrifying pace. She couldn’t see anything but swirling, oily dark, couldn’t even scream for help. Whenever she opened her mouth, burning magic rushed in. But then, just when Marci was sure she’d finally reached the end of her train of miracles, a wall of wind slammed into her, knocking her to the ground she’d only just realized was there.

  “Marci!”

  She’d never been so happy to hear a voice in her life. Ghost must have broken a record to get to her, because he seemed as frantic as she was when he snatched her up off the stone, pushing her magic back together as fast as he could.

  “Are you okay? Do you hurt?”

  She hurt everywhere, but she was too excited to care. “We did it!” she cried, laughing in delight at the sound of her voice speaking out loud again. “I broke the binding. I set her free!”

  “I know,” the Empty Wind said. “I felt her leave. She’s on her way to the other side, and she’s mad.” He shuddered. “I wouldn’t want to be Algonquin right now.”

  The way he said that made Marci shudder, too. “Did I just kick something I shouldn’t have?”

  “Probably,” he said. “But we ran out of good options a while ago. All we can do is work now with what we have. But I have to get you back to the Merlin Gate.”

  “Why?” she asked, suddenly terrified. “Did Myron break it? Is it ruined?”

  It was impossible to tell with his empty face, but Marci would have sworn her spirit was smiling. “No, it opened.”

  He pointed down, and Marci turned to see that she hadn’t been lost in the dark Sea of Magic after all. Or, at least, not as lost as she’d thought. They weren’t off in some forgotten corner of the magical plane. They were right beside the pillar of the Merlin Gate, barely twenty feet away from where Myron had been working. The only reason she hadn’t been able to see that before was because the swirling chaos had blocked her vision.

  Now that she was back inside Ghost’s calming winds, though, she could see everything again. Including Amelia, who was curled in a little ball on the ground, surrounded by a bubble of fire. A bubble that popped as soon as she spotted Marci.

  “Never do that again!” the dragon cried, launching herself at them like a fiery arrow. She slammed into Marci like one, too, knocking her back down on the ground.

  “Sorry,” Marci grunted.

  “Don’t ‘sorry’ me!” Amelia snapped, her voice shriller than Marci had ever heard it. “Being alone here is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever been through, and I know terrifying! I was part of Bethesda’s learning clutch, remember? You’re just lucky I’m awesome enough to protect myself, but look what it did to my fire.” She spread her win
gs, which were indeed burning much less brightly than they had been before. “It’s not like I can get more of this stuff!”

  “I’m sorry,” Marci said again, pushing herself up. “I didn’t plan for this to happen. If it makes you feel better, it was terrifying for me, too, but I think it worked.”

  “Oh, it worked, all right,” Amelia said, scrambling onto Marci’s shoulder. “Look.”

  She nodded at the Merlin Gate, and Marci’s eyes went wide. Just as she’d seen through the DFZ, Myron’s incomplete maze of a spell was still glowing on the wooden door. That didn’t seem to matter, though, because just as the Empty Wind had said, the door was now standing open on its own, shedding its golden light into the dark like an invitation. Unlike every other time it had opened, though, there was no smug shikigami standing in the way. Just the open doorway and a clear shot into whatever lay beyond, and on his knees in front of it was Myron.

  If it wasn’t for his trademark suit, Marci wouldn’t have recognized him. He’d come in like a conqueror, throwing spells around and treating the Sea of Magic as if it were just another UN war zone. Now, though, his hunched body was even more transparent than Marci’s, and it was getting fainter by the second as he curled into a ball. A position Marci understood all too well, because she’d just been there herself.

  “He’s being eaten by the magic.”

  “Of course he is,” Ghost said coldly. “Without his spirit to shield him, he’s nothing here.”

  “He’s nothing anywhere,” Amelia said, turning up her nose. “Let him dissolve. He deserves it after the mess he made.”

  The Empty Wind nodded and started walking toward the open door, but Marci didn’t follow. When he looked back to see why, she sighed. “We can’t just leave him like this.”

  “Of course we can,” Amelia said. “Just don’t do anything. Easy-peasy.”

  “I agree with the dragon,” her spirit said. “He deserves no compassion.”

  “I know,” Marci said tiredly. “He’s a terrible man who’s done terrible things, but…” She trailed off with a long breath. “He’s still human, and he’s not all bad. He gave me several chances to retreat earlier, if you’ll recall. And anyway, I can’t let him just die in front of me.”

  They both looked at her like she was crazy, but Marci was already walking over to Myron, pushing right out to the edge of the wind in the trust that Ghost would follow. Which he did, albeit grudgingly.

  “This is a mistake.”

  “This is a tragedy,” Amelia said. “Think about what you’re doing, Marci. Leaving someone to suffer the consequences of their actions isn’t cruel. It’s natural selection at work. You’re only encouraging more bad behavior if you spare him.”

  “Probably,” Marci admitted. “But I’d rather deal with that than knowing I walked off and left another mage to die. Besides, it’s not like he can do anything. I mean, look at him.”

  The UN mage was little more than a shadow of himself. His body was even more transparent than Marci’s, and he wasn’t moving at all. He was just kneeling there on the ground, waiting for death to come. It was a truly pathetic sight, and angry as she was with Myron, Marci couldn’t stand to see him end like this. If nothing else, she couldn’t let him die before she gloated her victory over him, so she took one more step forward, forcing Ghost’s protective winds to expand until they covered the older mage as well.

  The moment the Empty Wind swept away the burning magic, Myron collapsed, clutching what was left of his transparent body with a sob. The heartbreaking sound cemented Marci’s belief that she’d done the right thing, but Amelia rolled her eyes.

  “Fantastic,” she said, crossing her forelegs with a huff. “Now we have this to deal with on top of everything else.” She shot Marci a dirty look. “Julius has been a terrible influence on you.”

  Marci didn’t agree with the terrible part, but the rest was true. She certainly hadn’t shown Bixby or his men mercy, but a lot had happened in her life since then, and Marci was no longer so quick to kill. Besides, while he definitely didn’t deserve anything after what he’d done, letting the Sir Myron Rollins die when she could easily save him just felt like a waste. As she’d just seen from the DFZ’s binding spellwork, he was still a brilliant mage. The world needed those, even if they were jerks. Of course, now that she’d saved Sir Myron, Marci had to figure out what to do with him.

  She was turning to ask Ghost if there was a way to just kick him back to his body in the physical world when Myron suddenly rolled over, collapsing on his back to stare up at Marci with a look of absolute incomprehension.

  “You saved me.”

  “I did,” she said, pausing expectantly for the flood of gratitude that usually followed such statements. But not this time.

  “Why?” he demanded, sitting up in a rush. “Why would you do that?”

  “I’m starting to wonder,” Marci grumbled.

  “You know, a little groveling wouldn’t hurt,” Amelia said, hopping off Marci’s shoulder to land on Myron’s head, which she immediately started pushing down toward his lap. “Bow, idiot. You owe her your life.”

  Myron waved the little dragon away furiously. An inconsequential gesture, since his transparent hand went right through her. “Why would I be grateful to Novalli? She just freed a Mortal Spirit!”

  “That you raised and bound,” Marci said angrily. “Seriously, what were you thinking?”

  “What are you thinking?” he yelled back. “I had to bind her. Do you not have eyes? She’s a monster!”

  “My eyes work just fine,” Marci said, rising to her feet. “But the only monster I see is you, Myron.”

  “That’s because you don’t understand,” he said, scraping his hands desperately through his graying hair. “You’ve ruined everything. Without the binding, she’ll run rampant!”

  “Yeah, well, whose fault is that?” Amelia asked. “You guys were the ones who got her all riled up.”

  “I had everything under control.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Marci said, exasperated. “You tried to put a leash on something a billion times your size! Of course it went wrong.”

  “Only because of you,” he snapped. “The collar was never meant to be permanent. I just needed to keep control long enough to become a Merlin. If you hadn’t meddled, I’d be one right now, and this whole spirit problem would be fixed.”

  Ghost’s wind grew terrifyingly cold. “You should have let him die,” he growled.

  “Not too late,” Amelia said cheerfully.

  Marci was secretly starting to agree. But as infuriating as Myron was, her decision was made.

  “Done is done,” she said, glaring down at him. “For better or worse, your life is saved. Go home, Myron. We don’t need you here.”

  The haughty look fell off the mage’s face, leaving him with an almost sheepish expression. “I don’t know how,” he admitted, looking down at his hands in his lap. “The spirit brought me here by her own path. I don’t…I don’t know how to get back to my body on my own.”

  Another time, Marci would have laughed herself sick at the irony of the world’s greatest expert on deep magic getting lost in it. Right now, though, it was just one more annoyance.

  “Then you’d better stop complaining,” she snapped. “Because I’m out of time to waste on you.” She turned on her heel, putting her back to him as she walked toward the open door. “Suck it up or get left behind, but I’m going to finish what I started.”

  Myron started to say something, but Marci wasn’t listening anymore. All this talk about Julius and death and things being ruined forever had only reminded her of how much was at stake. She didn’t care what it took or what she had to do—she would become a Merlin, she would fix this, and she would get home. She was going to make this right for everyone, and then, when it was over and she finally got back to Julius, she was never letting him go again.

  With that certainty burning in her like dragon fire, Marci marched across the stone to the wide-open Merl
in Gate, stepping over the threshold without hesitation out of the dark and into the streaming light.

  ***

  At the same time, back in the DFZ, in the sealed-off cavern beneath the Financial District locals called the Pit, Algonquin clutched her water.

  She didn’t even need to look at Myron’s still-unconscious body lying face down in the circle to know things weren’t going well on the other side. Her magic was there, too. She’d felt it just like everyone else. Something had broken in the Sea of Magic, something huge. Myron, however, had not woken up. He was alive, his chest rising and falling beneath the Phoenix’s head, but that didn’t mean much. Whatever was going on, he clearly hadn’t made the jump to Merlin. His spirit, though, was sweeping through the magic like a battering ram, which meant they were now in a worst-case scenario.

  “Lady Algonquin!”

  The human voice was more fearful than usual, so Algonquin forced her water into a passable semblance of a mortal face and turned to deal with the problem, which turned out to be one of her commanders. Which one, she couldn’t say. All mortals looked the same to her, and they died so quickly there was no point in learning their names. Fortunately, she paid her troops enough not to care about such things, and the armored woman didn’t even hesitate before she gave her report.

  “Lady,” she said, saluting. “The mages are reporting that Sir Myron is no longer in control of his binding. The circle itself is holding for now, but no one knows how long that will last. The mage commander is requesting your permission to move the binding circle away from the city center to avoid infrastructure damage and civilian casualties.”

  That was a sensible request. Mortals were easily replaced, but Skyways were expensive. Moving the silver circle made from the Phoenix’s innards would make it infinitely more difficult for Myron to find his body again, but if he’d failed to become Merlin as it appeared, then he was as good as dead anyway. Algonquin was through with him in any case, but as she opened her mouth to give the order to fall back to the wastes beyond Reclamation Land, the ground began to shake.