“For your information, I was going to goaroundhim,” Svena snapped back. “I am perfectly capable of stabbing Brohomir full of ice without putting a scratch on Julius Heartstriker. However, Katya’s words make me consider the larger picture, and I decided killing your cut-rate seer was no longer worth my time.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Amelia said, shaking her head at Svena before turning back to Bob. “But seriously, whatarewe going to do? I don’t like the sound of a single future with no free will, but I’ll take it if that’s the only choice. I didn’t fight my way out of death just to get killed again the very next day.”
“My original plan is still an option,” Bob said, lips curling into a smile. “But it might no longer be theonlyoption.”
“What do you mean?” Marci asked, glancing up at the Leviathan, who looked exactly the same. “What changed?”
Brohomir turned to grin at the Black Reach. “He did. By making a decision he never would have made before I intervened, the Black Reach kicked off a cascade of shiny new futures. There are so many possibilities in front of us now, I don’t even know where to start, so unless you want me to sit here for a few days while I follow each new path to its conclusion, you’d do better to ask him.” He nodded at Dragon Sees Eternity. “He’s the seer supercomputer.”
That was the best thing Bob had said yet, but when Julius turned hopefully to the Black Reach, the construct’s face was dour.
“My decision to spare Brohomir has indeed created a host of new possibilities,” he said. “Unfortunately, none of them improve our situation. We are still under siege by a Nameless End, a power that acts on a planar level. It’s not something we can simply defeat.”
“Butdoyou have a plan?” Svena said, butting her way forward. “I agree that Brohomir’s idea to lock us all in a static future was unacceptable, but it’s the height of foolishness to shoot down a strategy unless you have an alternative.”
“He has to have something,” Amelia agreed, moving to stand beside her best frenemy. “He’s the guardian of the future, and there’s not much future to guard if we’re all dead.”
Both dragon mages glared at the construct, but where any sensible creature would have cringed before their combined fury, the Black Reach merely looked annoyed. “I have not been idle,” he said irritably. “I saw this coming as Brohomir did and prepared accordingly, but though I am and always shall be the better seer, even I can’t work miracles. Brohomir’s plan was desperate for good reason. There are no good options in this scenario, and while I was not so insane as to court a death of planes”—he shot the pigeon on Bob’s shoulder a nasty look—“I’m not certain you’ll like my solution any better.”
“I knew you had a plan!” Bob blurted out. When everyone looked at him, he shrugged. “I knew he had a plan. What kind of guardian of the future doesn’t plan for the future?”
“If you knew the Black Reach was planning something, why didn’t you go with that instead of messing with our lives?” Marci asked irritably.
“Because I didn’t know what his plan was,” Bob said. “I’m supposed to be dead right now, remember? And I don’t see how you have room to complain. You came out of my plans very well, Miss One-in-a-Million-Chance-Merlin.”
Marci put her hands up in surrender at that one, and the Black Reach sighed. “I would encourage you not to get your hopes up too high. As I said, I did make arrangements for this inevitability, but even I wouldn’t call them salvation.”
“Our options right now are death by Leviathan or spending eternity trapped on Bob’s string,” Chelsie said with a shrug. “What could be worse than that?”
Instead of answering the question, the construct reached into the pocket of his silk jacket and pulled out a golden orb the size of a softball. Averyfamiliar golden orb filled with flecks of golden foil that glittered like tinsel in the glow of the broken porch light.
“Hey!” Marci cried angrily. “That’s my Kosmolabe!”
“A powerful and useful instrument,” the Black Reach agreed, rolling the delicate ball between his fingers until the spellworked gold foil that covered the orb’s interior fluttered like leaves in the wind. “I’ve been angling for this one in particular since I saw Estella bringing it into her plans a decade ago. I would have taken possession of it sooner, but the mage who was most likely to become the First Merlin was quite attached to it. The emotional impact of removing it would have sent inconvenient ripples through a very delicate phase of my plans, so I decided to wait until a more appropriate opportunity presented itself.”
“You mean until you could steal it,” Julius said, unexpectedly angry. “I knew you took Marci’s bag! Did you think about the emotional impact that would have onme?”
“Why did you even want it?” Chelsie asked at the same time.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Amelia growled, crossing her arms over her chest. “Why does anyoneeverwant a Kosmolabe?” She narrowed her eyes at the construct. “He’s going to run.”
The Black Reach said nothing, but he didn’t have to. Now that Amelia had spelled it out, the plan made perfect sense. Why stay in a world that was about to die if you didn’t have to? There was even a precedent since fleeing through a portal was how dragons had arrived on this plane in the first place. The only thing Julius didn’t understand was why the Black Reach was only doing itnow.
“Aren’t you a little late?” he asked. “If you’ve known about the Leviathan for as long as you claim, why didn’t you start evacuating everyone weeks ago? Even with Amelia and Svena here for teleports, there’s no way we can possibly get everyone out before…”
He trailed off. The Black Reach still hadn’t said anything, but again, he didn’t need to. The answer was right there on his face.
“You never planned to save everyone, did you?”
“No,” the Black Reach said quietly, looking down at Bob. “The reason Brohomir’s appeal worked so well on me is because he was right. I was created in our species’ moment of greatest regret. It was only through the absolute destruction of our home that the old clan heads, including your grandfather, the Quetzalcoatl, finally understood the damage their selfishness, greed, and constant war had wrought. In their sorrow, they created my brother to watch over the grave of our old home and myself to make sure nothing like this would ever happen again. You would think that after such a colossal failure, dragons as a species wouldlearn, but it took barely a century before the fleeing clans were right back at each other’s throats.” He shook his head. “I was created to guard our future, but when I looked ahead down the stream of time, all I saw were the same mistakes repeated endlessly. After ten millennia of trying and failing to correct our course, even I, a construct built in hope for a better future, was forced to accept that dragons would always be conniving, selfish, violent beasts incapable of caring about anything but their own self-interest.”
“That’s not true,” Julius said fiercely. “Sure some dragons are like that, but not all of us. Look around! You’re surrounded by dragons who prove the stereotype wrong.”
That was meant to be an argument, but the Black Reach nodded excitedly. “Exactly,” he said. “You are an extraordinary group that represents everything I’ve always hoped dragons could be. Why do you think I allowed Brohomir to gather you all here?”
Julius felt as if he’d just been punched in the stomach. “What do you mean ‘allowed’?”
“I am the world’s greatest seer,” Dragon Sees Eternity said solemnly. “As I told you back in your mountain, the only thing I couldn’t see was Brohomir’s motive. His moves—what he did, how he did it, what he was going to do—were always perfectly clear. I saw him gathering all of you together as clearly as I see you standing before me now. I saw no reason to stop him, though, because he’d already chosen the pieces I myself would have selected, including a brand-new seer.” He smiled over his shoulder at Chelsie’s daughter, who was peeking out at him nervously from behind Fredrick. “Truly, I couldn’t have arranged a choicer group of dragons for our second try at a new beginning.”
