Eyes wide, Marci turned to look again, and this time, she saw it. It wasn’t thewaterthat was dark—it was the things inside it. The once-bright ocean was filled with thick, black tangles. They stretched as far as Marci could see, bobbing with the waves and carpeting the sea floor in all directions. A few tendrils had actually crawled up to the edge of the Heart of the World’s peak. They were tiny, no thicker than fine black hairs, but the deeper ones were as thick as buildings, and there weretonsof them. Possibly millions, which explained how the sea had been pushed so high. It was full.
“Whatarethey?” she asked, voice shaking. “Tentacles?”
“More like roots,” Raven said grimly. “They started in Algonquin’s vessel, but they’ve been spreading since she gave in.”
“Is that why it’s so stormy?” Marci asked. Then her face grew pale. “He’s not attacking spirits, is he?”
“No,” Amelia said. “If he were, we’d already be screwed. Bad as this looks, though, I’ve seen no evidence that he’s eaten anything yet except Algonquin. The waves you’re seeing were actually here before Leviathan started spreading.” She grinned. “Turns out, you get a lot of sloshing when you dump a thousand years of magic in all at once.”
“That is not ‘sloshing,’” Myron snarled, stabbing his finger at the giant waves washing over his protective bubble. “Thatis the work of spirits, and it’s allherfault.”
He snapped his finger back to Marci, who sighed. “What are you blaming me for now?”
“If you didn’t do so many irresponsible things, that wouldn’t even be a question,” Myron snapped, marching over to the giant stone seal at the center of the mountain-turned-island, or what was left of it. The circular slab that had been the seal on a thousand years of magic was cracked right down the middle, the stone blown away as though it had been blasted apart from the inside. But even broken, it was still a huge chunk of rock, and there was more than enough left for Myron to climb on top of.
“Come,” he said, snapping his fingers at Marci. “You can’t see them from the ground due to the waves, but come up here, and you’ll see that I was always right.”
Marci had never heard a less compelling reason to do anything, but Myron was clearly not going anywhere until she complied, so she sucked it up and climbed onto the cracked seal beside him. “There,” she said, tilting her head so she wouldn’t bump it on the zenith of the protective bubble over their heads. “I’m up. Now, what am I looking for?”
Myron pointed toward the horizon. Marci followed the motion with a sigh, squinting as she tried to see what he was so worked up about. But while it was much easier to see over the waves from up here, the Heart of the World’s interpretation of the over-full Sea of Magic’s chaos was still so rough, it took far longer than it should before Marci realized that the giant breakers peaking in the distance weren’t actually waves. They were creatures. Huge, alien-looking monsters, and they were attacking each other.
Every direction Marci looked, giantthingswere breaching the stormy sea like killer whales, flinging themselves at each other in bloody confrontations. There were so many fights, the ocean looked like it was boiling, and those were just the battles that broke the surface. Now that she knew what to look for, Marci could see the creatures clashing below the water as well. Thousands of dark shapes silhouetted against the Leviathan’s deeper blackness, trying their best to rip each other to shreds.
“Now I see why we had such a rough entrance,” Ghost said, abandoning his fluffy white cat form to appear at her side as the faceless warrior he always turned into when things got serious. “They’re at each other’s throats.”
“They who?” Marci asked desperately.
Her spirit looked at her, his glowing eyes terrified. “Everything.”
“Everything, pah!” Myron scoffed, pointing at one particularly enormous shape on the horizon. “Those aren’t normal spirits. Those areMortalSpirits! The magic filled them, and now they’re rising and going crazy just like everyone warned you they would!” His face turned scarlet. “Wetoldyou this would happen.Itold you! But did you listen?No!You just dumped the magic out, and now everything’s going to pieces!”
“You can’t blame this on me!” Marci cried. “I wanted to let the magic out slowly, remember? Algonquin’s the one who broke the seal and dumped it, and even she only did so by accident. If anyone’s to blame, it’s the Leviathan! He’s the one who cracked the seal in the first place, and I bet all those roots he’s put down are what’s driving everything into a frenzy.” She crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest. “I’m no spirit, but having a Nameless End shove his tentacles into your face sounds pretty panic-worthy.”
“Actually, I believe Sir Myron is right,” Shiro said, wringing the water from his robes. “This is more extreme than usual, but Mortal Spirits have always been dreadful. That’s why we were willing to sacrifice all magic to stop them, but now they’re back and bigger than ever.” He looked out at the chaos. “Perhaps this is simply the new way of things.”
“I don’t think you can lay all the blame on the Spirits of Man this time,” Raven cawed. “Humans have a flair for the dramatic that’s truly terrifying when distilled into its purest form, but even Mortal Spirits can’t cause this much chaos by themselves. Look again, and you’ll see there are plenty of Spirits of the Land and Animals in the mix as well.” He fluffed his feathers. “Today’s madness is equal opportunity, it seems.”
“Because the Leviathan is driving them to it,” Marci said.
Raven shrugged. “Leviathan, Algonquin’s betrayal, bumping elbows with crazed, newly raised Mortal Spirits. We’re spoiled for choice on reasons to panic, which is why everyone seems to be doing it. This mess is a team effort.”
“That’s fitting,” Marci said, hopping down off the broken seal. “Because it’s going to take a team effort to get us out.”
Myron gaped at her. “You can’t be serious. You still want to go ahead with the banishment plan?”
“What other choice do we have?” she asked, pointing at the black roots that filled the water. “The world is ending, Myron. That’s not hyperbole. Our reality will literallycease to existif we don’t do something.”
“I know, but…” He dragged his hands through his graying hair. “I can’t work miracles. When I told you earlier that I could fix the seal, I was counting on having access to all the spellwork covering the rest of the mountain, but I’ve got nothing to work now! Shiro had to risk his life swimming down to get me a leaf just so we wouldn’t all be washed away.” He pointed at the broken seal under his feet. “What am I supposed to patch this thing with? My hopes and dreams?”
“If that’s what it takes,” Marci said, smiling at him. “You’re one of the greatest modern mages, Myron. You built a barrier against the raging Sea of Magic using nothing but labyrinths and a leaf. If anyone can make this work, you can.”
Myron rolled his eyes. “I appreciate the pep talk, but I’m not just being melodramatic. I reallycan’tdo this without the rest of the Heart of the World. If we have to wait for Shiro to dive for every material I need, we’ll be here all year.”
“Then ask your spirit for help,” Marci said, turning to the DFZ, who’d been oddly quiet this whole time. “Can you get him what he needs?”
“I don’t know,” the city spirit replied, her orange eyes glowing in the dark of her hood as she considered it. “I’ve never tried swimming before, but I should be able to handle the currents. Even when it’s rough, the Sea of Magic is my world, and I’m pretty strong.”
Myron whirled on her. “You mean you could have been helping me this whole time?” he cried. “Why didn’t you?”
