The Black Reach crushed the sandwich in his fists, and Bob sighed. “Really, did you just come up here to waste food or—”
“Why?” he growled, throwing the sandwich aside as he knelt down in front of the younger seer, getting right in his face. “I’ve been watching you every step of the way, waiting for you to reveal yourself. To surprise me. Butevery single stephas done nothing but bring us closer to the inevitable.”
“That’s the problem with inevitable things,” Brohomir said. “They always—”
“WHY?” the Black Reach roared at him, pointing at the pulsing ball of water floating above the dry bed of Lake St. Clair. “Your plans have done nothing but make things worse! You have irritated and agitated and destroyed, and forwhat? The future is still what it always has been. All your work, your cryptic secrets, it’s all been fornothing!”
“Ah,” Bob said, lifting a finger. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
“Tell me,” the older seer demanded, grabbing him by the collar. “Tell me how these things add up to anything but disaster.”
“I can’t,” Bob said, hanging limp in his grasp. “You said it yourself. The end is inevitable.”
The Black Reach bared his teeth. “Then why do you seem to be doing everything in your power to make it comefaster?”
“Because I need it to,” Bob said, growing serious at last. “Ineedthis chaos, becausethis”—he nodded at Algonquin’s ball—“was always doomed to happen. I’ve spent my entire life looking down these paths. I’ve lived through every way this night ends, and the only way we live on to see tomorrow is if I make sure every disaster from here out happens onmyterms.”
The Black Reach let him go with a long sigh. “There’s the fault in your logic,” he said tiredly. “There is no tomorrow for you, Brohomir. Thanks to your actions, there might not be a tomorrow for any of us.”
“You won’t let that happen,” Bob said confidently. “You’re Dragon Sees Eternity, the guardian of the future. If there’s no more future for dragons, you’re out of a job.”
The Black Reach reached up to rub his eyes. “I’ll try,” he said. “But has it ever occurred to you that I’m a construct, not a god?”
“Oh, that’s occurred to me many,manytimes,” Bob promised. “But don’t worry. I wrote in a part for you, too. It’s a bit of a grand one, but I promised my darling a show, and I never disappoint a lady.”
He leaned down to press a kiss to his pigeon’s head, and the Black Reach’s lip curled in disgust. “That’s no lady,” he growled. “That’s a—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Bob said. “Not another word. I will tolerate no maligning of my consort.”
“Your consort?” The Black Reach snorted. “You’reherconsort, and she’susingyou.”
“It would only be using if I weren’t aware,” Bob said, leaning back against his Fang. “But I know exactly what’s going on, because it was all my idea. Not that it’s any of your business, but I askedher, so if you have any ideas of me being an innocent victim, you can toss them. I went into this with eyes wide open.”
“Then you should have seen more,” the Black Reach said coldly, turning to face the ball of compressed water and the enormous shadow that covered it like a cloud. “Last chance, Brohomir.”
The Seer of the Heartstrikers smiled as he stood up, yanking his sword out of the support beam and resting the giant blade on his shoulder. He snagged his bag of sandwiches next. Then, with a polite bob of his head, he stepped backward, dropping off the jutting beam like a stone.
He landed nimbly as a cat a good thirty feet below, hitting the sandy dirt of the dry lake bed without leaving so much as a footprint.
“See you soon,” he called up to the Black Reach, waving at him with his sword before returning the blade to his shoulder and strolling into the Underground, using his Magician’s Fang like a machete as he hacked a path through the thick strands of toxic, glowing magic waving like wheat in front of him.
“One more time,” the eldest seer muttered back, reaching down to grip the strap of the battered messenger bag he’d been carrying since he’d left Heartstriker Mountain. The one that—now that Brohomir had refused his final chance to lift himself from the rails—held their last hope for the future.
With a grim shake of his head, the Black Reach sat down in the spot Brohomir had vacated, settling in to watch as the glowing magic began to swirl around Algonquin’s darkening ball of compressed water like stars around a black hole.
Epilogue
There’d been a time, once, when Algonquin hadn’t believed in losing. After all, when you lived forever, you could never truly be defeated. There were only setbacks, temporary interruptions that would eventually erode, leaving her free once again to do what needed to be done.
But not today.
She crouched at the very bottom of her domain, curled in a ball in the sand with her water drawn in as close as it would go. Above her, the Sea of Magic raged like a typhoon. If she’d been willing to rise, she could have seen it filling the vessels of the Mortal Spirits, but she wasn’t willing. She’d seen too much tragedy already, including hers. It was all gone: her chances, her hopes, her future. It had all been stolen, and no matter how long she waited, how long she persisted, how hard she fought, it was never coming back.
But it can.
She lifted her water to see a familiar shape in the darkness where no one else should ever be.
But this is where I live, too,the Leviathan replied softly, reaching up with his tentacles to smooth her shaking waves.You invited me here. I answered your call, Algonquin. I came to your aid when no one else would, and we made a bargain. For sixty years now, I’ve acted as your second, supporting all your efforts to win back your world from the out-of-control forces of human magic. Not because I thought you would succeed, or because I wished you harm, but because in order for me to truly help you, I needed you to be like this.
