A Dragon of a Different Color

by Rachel Aaron

  The spirit’s anger vibrated through the magic, and Marci shuddered. She had no idea where the DFZ was getting all this power, but for once, the amount of magic was less important than the source.

  As a Thaumaturge, Marci had been taught that magic was magic. No matter where it came from, once it went through spellwork, it was all the same. The more time she spent with spirits, though, the more Marci realized this wasn’t the case with them.

  Spirits weren’t spells. They were magic itself. Their vessels gave them shape, but the type of magic that filled that space determined the spirit’s mindset, or lack thereof.

  She’d seen it happen at least twice with Ghost: once when they were fighting Vann Jeger and once in Reclamation Land. Both times, he’d been consumed by the rage of the Forgotten Dead, and both times, she’d had to pull him back. Now, Marci suspected the same thing was happening to the DFZ.

  This wasn’t just righteous anger at Algonquin for hurting her. This was blind rage, self-destructive madness. The DFZ was willing to destroy her own city, her very self, to strike back at the Lady of the Lakes. Most telling, though, was that this kind of nihilism didn’t match the city Marci knew at all.

  The DFZ was a city of hope and ambition, a place where fortunes were made. People came here to make a new start, not break themselves for revenge. The anger in the air, the rage that shook the girl in front of her—it wasn’t the magic of the DFZ she knew, but it was the magic of spirits angry enough to give their lives for Algonquin.

  It’s more than that, Ghost said, his nose twitching. She’s drenched in old death. Old rage and revenge are all over her like oil.

  That sounded familiar. “It’s the Pit,” Marci said, snapping her fingers. “She’s pulling in magic from the Pit.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” the DFZ cried, her voice taking on a terrifying, desperate edge. “That’s where I was born. Algonquin has always drowned me. From the very beginning, she’s held me under, made me suffer. But now it’s her turn.” The spirit lifted her face to the illusion city’s false sky. “I will bury her lakes and destroy her water! I will make her pay!”

  The word came out in a scream, and the thrumming magic tightened like a fist. The resulting pressure crumpled the buildings and flattened the faceless crowds of her domain. It cracked the ground and shook the air and set Marci’s head ringing. Even Ghost looked pained, his ears pressed flat against his skull.

  The only one who didn’t seem to feel it was the DFZ. She laughed at the cracking pressure, clenching her hands into fists to match. “I will kill her!” she cried joyfully. “I will make her suffer! I—”

  There was more, but Marci had already shut the mad voice out, focusing instead on the magic around them, and how to stop it.

  We have to cut her off, Ghost said in her head, his freezing claws digging into her flesh. She’s not just full. She’s overflowing. I don’t know where it’s all coming from, but no Mortal Spirit can control this much magic without a Merlin.

  “She’s got a Merlin.”

  Not one she wants.

  “But he’s the one we’ve got,” Marci said, mind racing. “And actually, I think that’s why this is happening.”

  She turned back to the DFZ, who was still ranting at the sky. It was a horrifying sight, but Marci forced herself to push past the fear and really look at her, noting all the details of the spirit’s black hoodie and plain clothes, the sort that came from the cheap clothing vending machines that were so popular all over the DFZ. Her streetlight-orange eyes and short, spiky, rat-brown hair. With the LED around her wrists, neck, and ankles shining like neon against the dark of her outfit, she really did look just like the stereotype of the DFZ street rat, and yet—

  “There!” Marci threw out her hand, pointing at the flash of silver that trailed from the spirit’s left pinky. It was so thin, so fine, it was barely visible against all the other chaos, but it was there, falling from her hand to the sidewalk below, where it vanished into the cement like a fishing line into water.

  “Gotcha,” she whispered, hugging her cat tight as she shoved up off the ground and ran across the false square toward the stairwell that, in this version of the DFZ at least, still led to the Underground.

  Where are we going?

  “To where it started,” she panted, racing down the stairs. She was taking them two at a time when the spirit in her arms transformed, leaving her hugging not a cat, but an angry solider with a shadow for a face and eyes that burned with blue-white determination.

  “Then let’s go,” he growled, whisking them both off the stairwell and into the shadows of the sprawling Underground as fast as the wind could blow.

  Chapter 16

  “We have to find Marci,” Julius said frantically. “I don’t know what this place is—”

  “I do,” Raven said, hopping around the strange silver circle where Myron was tied down like a spider’s dinner. “This is the DFZ’s domain. Both halves of it, overlapped. She’s pulled in so much magic, she’s torn the barrier, and now the physical world and the Sea of Magic are blending.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s a disaster,” Raven agreed. “But it’s an unsustainable one.”

  “And we’re standing on the weak point,” Amelia finished, kneeling beside the strange silver ribbon. “Pull out the pin, and the whole thing blows.”

  “Still not reassuring,” Julius said, lifting into the air. “If this place is going to blow, I’m going to find Marci.”

  Amelia grabbed his tail. “Relax,” she said, yanking him back to the ground. “Marci’s a Merlin now. That makes her the biggest girl around. She’ll come to us. We just need to make sure we’re ready when—”

  The rest of what she said was drowned out by a sudden roaring wind. It swept through the cavern of the Pit in a freezing gale, blowing the silt into a dust storm. Then, fast as it had arrived, the wind vanished, leaving…

  “Marci!”

  Just like before, she appeared out of nowhere, standing straight and determined in the center of the cloud of falling dust. She was shaking the debris out of her hair when Julius pounced on her.

  “Are you okay?” he cried. “Where did you go? What happened?”

  “I’m fine,” Marci said, staring at him in confusion. “But how did you get here?” She turned to the Empty Wind, whom Julius only now realized was standing right behind her. “Did you bring him?”

  “Not I,” the spirit said out loud.

  Marci frowned. “Then how—”

  “It was me,” Amelia said, walking over with a cocky grin. “Well, team effort, really. Julius provided the fire, and I did the rest.”

  “Amelia!” Marci cried, delighted. “You did it! You’re alive!”

  “I’m way more than that,” the dragoness said with a wink. “But we’ll talk about that later. Right now, we need to deal with him.”

  She turned to point at Myron, and Marci’s face grew grim.

  “I thought so,” she said as she walked over to the silver circle. “I knew the DFZ had to be getting all her magic from somewhere, and the only thing that feeds magic to spirits is a mage. For her, that means Myron.”

  “But how?” Julius asked, hurrying after her. “He’s unconscious.”

  “This is just his empty body,” Marci explained. “His soul is still back in the Sea of Magic.”

  That sounded a lot worse than unconscious. “Can you fix him?”

  “That’s the plan,” she said, getting down on her knees beside the silver circle. “First, though, I have to get him out of…” She faded off, leaning over to peer at the spellworked metal ribbon. “Um, what is this?”

  “My spellwork,” Raven said angrily, flying over to perch on her shoulder. “Myron and Algonquin had nothing that could chain a Mortal Spirit, so they stole my creation.”

  He nodded at the head in Myron’s hands, but it must have taken Marci a few seconds to realize what she was looking at, because Julius could see the moment her curious confusion
turned to horror.

  “Holy—” She jumped back, eyes wide in horror. “Is that…?”

  “It is,” the raven spirit said, his voice dark and angry. “It’s bad enough that Algonquin and Myron altered my Emily to be a vessel, but then Myron was reckless enough to follow the DFZ to the Sea of Magic while leaving his physical body hardwired to her magic. Now the overgrown city’s taking advantage of that to suck magic through that idiot’s empty body like a straw to continue her war with Algonquin, which would actually be pretty brilliant if it weren’t so horrifically destructive.”

  “And dangerous,” the Empty Wind added, looking out at the dark. “The magic of this place is deeply polluted. Taken directly, with no Merlin to help mitigate it…”

  “It’s driving her nuts,” Marci finished, her face pale. “So how do we unplug him?”

  “Very carefully,” Amelia said. “The DFZ’s already pulled in enough magic to overwhelm the barrier that divides this plane, blending her physical domain with her vessel in the Sea of Magic. I didn’t even think that was possible, but apparently anything’s game if you use enough force. Unfortunately, this means we’re basically standing inside a magical pressure cooker.”

  Julius might not have known much about magic, but he’d seen enough Internet fail videos to know what happened when a pressure cooker went wrong. “You’re saying this place could explode.”

  “Only if we’re not careful,” his oldest sister said. “Or unlucky.”

  There, at least, Julius had an edge. It wasn’t as overwhelming now, but the golden music of the Qilin’s good fortune was still humming in his bones. If there was ever a time he could count on not being unlucky, it was now. “Let me help.”

  “I was just about to ask,” Marci said, flashing him a warm smile as she motioned for him to come closer. “I need to borrow your magic.”

  “Why his magic?” Raven asked as Julius sat down beside her.

  “Because he’s a dragon,” she said, reaching up to bury her hand in the soft feathers of Julius’s neck. “Amelia might have connected them to our plane, but no amount of spirit representation can ever make them truly native. So long as they have fire, they’re always going to be on a different wavelength from everything else, and different is what I need.”

  She turned back to the silver circle. “There’s so much power running through this right now, I can’t even touch it without cooking myself. But if I can get some dragon magic in there, the disconnect might disrupt the flow long enough to yank Myron out.”

  “Use a foreign element to jolt the system,” Amelia said. “Clever. But does Julius have enough juice for that? I might have made him use up a lot of fire getting in here.”

  “I don’t think I’ll need too much,” Marci said. “Source seems to play a much bigger role in spirit magic than it does for normal spells, and dragons have always been part of the DFZ. Also, Algonquin hates them. That makes dragons a DFZ ally by default, and given how much anger she’s wallowing in, I think some friendly magic would go a long way right now.”

  “And no one’s friendlier than Julius,” Amelia said with a grin.

  “Technically, personality’s not an issue here, but it can’t hurt,” Marci agreed. “I just need something to make her hesitate long enough to let us break the chain without getting fried.”

  “I don’t like all this talk of frying and cooking,” Julius said nervously. “Can’t we just talk to her? We’re all on the same team against Algonquin.”

  “You can talk to her all you like once we knock her out of her cackling madness phase,” Marci assured him. “That’s actually what I’m counting on. Like I said, she’s not bad. She’s just drunk on power.”

  “I think you mean high on revenge,” Ghost said, his eyes glowing brighter as he watched the dark above them. “Be careful. She’s—”

  He never got to finish. There was no sound, no warning—the Empty Wind just doubled over, his glowing eyes wide in shock at the slender hand that had been stuck through his ribs. It vanished a second later, and his warrior’s body crumbled like sand to reveal the figure standing behind him. A figure that appeared to be a human girl in very plain clothes but smelled like madness and death.

  “Ghost!” Marci threw out her arms just in time for a white cat to fall into them, his transparent body panting and smaller than Julius had seen it in a long, long time.

  “Are you insane?” she cried at the newcomer, shooting to her feet as she clutched Ghost to her chest. “I’m trying to help you, and it’d be a lot easier if you stopped hurting my cat!”

  “You’re the one hurting people,” the DFZ replied, her strangely glowing orange eyes flicking to the mage bound in silver ribbons. “Step away from him.”

  “No,” Marci said stubbornly. “You’re using him.”

  “He used me first!”

  “That doesn’t make it right!”

  “That’s how I win!” the DFZ screamed, throwing her hand out like a spear.

  Magic seized at the same time, forming a wave so dense, Julius could actually see the outline of it shimmering in the air. He got an even closer look a second later when he jumped in front of it, taking the full blast before it could slam into Marci.

  In sober reflection, it was a smart move. As his family’s favorite punching bag, Julius knew how to take a hit. He knew how to brace his magic and use it like a shield, just as he had against the giant lamprey in the DFZ storm drain what felt like forever ago.

  But clever as all that was, Julius hadn’t actually considered any of it. He’d just jumped, because whatever happened, it couldn’t hurt more than losing Marci again. The fact that everything else lined up was just happy coincidence. More good luck.

  Or, at least, that was what he’d thought before he realized just how big the spirit’s magic was.

  The attack crashed into him like a cruise ship running aground. It was stronger than his mother’s fire, stronger than anything Julius had ever been hit with before. It hadn’t even finished washing over him before he felt himself start to dissolve. But then, just as he realized he was probably going to die, something in his fire twisted, and a dragon appeared in front of him.

  She’d already done it once before, so Julius wasn’t too shocked to see Amelia suddenly flicker into existence. What was shocking was the fact that there was no fire this time. She was simply there, grabbing the hardened lump of pure, angry magic the DFZ had thrown and tossing it away.

  It landed like a bomb in the dark several blocks over, exploding in a blast wave that sent everyone except Amelia and the DFZ to the ground. Even Raven was knocked to the dirt, flapping and cawing, but Amelia didn’t so much as flinch. She just stood there and took it, watching the DFZ with a sly smile as she lowered her smoking hand.

  “What did you do?” the city demanded, looking nervous for the first time. “This is my domain. How did you do that?”

  “Easy,” Amelia said casually. “I’m bigger.”

  The DFZ narrowed her orange eyes. “You lie.”

  “Try me,” the dragon taunted, blowing out a line of smoke. “You might be all ’roided up on stolen power right now, but that doesn’t change the fact that your domain is nothing compared to mine. I am Amelia the Planeswalker, the Spirit of Dragons, and that”—she pointed at Julius—“is my vessel. I’m no longer a dragon who has fire. I am dragon fire, and I’ve burned better cities than yours.”

  She grinned as she finished, showing the DFZ all of her sharp white teeth. It was pure predator, the essence of what it meant to be a dragon. Even Julius cringed away, and she wasn’t even facing him. But though she couldn’t hide her flinch, the spirit of the DFZ didn’t falter, and she did not back down.

  “This is my world,” she said, clenching her fists. “My one chance to destroy the tyrant that has always held me down. You will not stop me!”

  “She’s not trying to,” Marci said, pushing herself up from the ground.

  “Oh yes I am,” Amelia snapped, keeping her fire-colored eyes on t
he city spirit. “I’m sick of this nonsense. I’ll keep her busy. You cut the cord.”

  “No,” Marci said angrily, glaring at Amelia’s back. “You are not helping.” She turned to Julius. “Tell her.”

  “Don’t you dare sic Julius on me,” Amelia said, but to his surprise and despite her obvious anger, she did step back. A concession that did not escape the DFZ.

  “The Spirit of Dragons takes orders from a human?”

  “I don’t take orders from anyone,” Amelia said flippantly. “But unlike you, I’m smart enough to listen to sense when I hear it. Marci’s never done anything but try to help spirits like us. She’s the one who freed you to go crazy, in case you forgot. If you had the brain of the rat you’re always pretending to be, you’d listen to—”

  She cut off when the ground heaved. Julius’s first thought was that it was the DFZ again, but she looked as surprised as they were.

  “What was that?” Marci asked, clutching the ground.

  “Algonquin,” the DFZ growled, her face contorting in hatred. “She’s landing another wave.” The city shook again, and this time, it was the DFZ. “I will kill her for this! I will—”

  “Julius!”

  His name was the only warning he got. He was still staring at the DFZ’s tantrum when Marci grabbed his left hind foot, and he felt the belovedly familiar—but still extremely uncomfortable—sensation of Marci yanking his magic out of him.

  She grabbed the silver circle surrounding Myron next. As she connected them, Julius felt the full scale of the DFZ’s magic for the first time. How huge she was, and how angry. It was only for a fraction of a second, but in that fraction, he was connected to the magic of the world like never before.

  To his amazement, it really was a sea. A vast, violent ocean of power rocking in a storm, and he was part of it. They all were. Deeply. Intrinsically. How had he never realized this before?

  Because it wasn’t true before, Amelia whispered through his fire. Bob and I did this, and we’ll do a lot more. Just wait and see.

  The last thing Julius wanted was to wait. Before he could demand an answer, though, the incredible connection vanished in a blinding flash as the surging power finally overwhelmed Marci’s interruption, causing a backlash that knocked them both into the air.