But while the Golden Empire was hands down the best, they weren’t alone.Allthe dragons were fighting together rather than with each other. Even Gregory was fighting. The clanless dragons were a little far away, but Julius had seen enough of Gregory’s fire to know it anywhere, and it was pushing just as strong as the others. So far as he could see,everyonewas doing their part, including the wing of planes that had just arrived over Lake Erie. The humans had just entered the fight, but already they were shooting down tentacles almost as fast as the dragons were, and—more importantly—notshooting dragons. It was incredible, the greatest display of unity he’d ever seen or heard of.
And it wasn’t working.
No matter how fast they burned them, the Leviathan’s tentacles always came back faster. Destroy one, and two more would pop up in its place, shooting down at the tiny pools of water like kamikaze bombers. For every one they caught before it touched the ground, another got through, sucking up gallons of water before their forces could destroy it. Julius knew their efforts had to be slowing down the Leviathan’s consumption compared to when he’d been drinking unhindered, but he couldn’t shake the horrifying feeling that they weren’t actually making much of a difference, and what progress they were achieving was coming at a heavy cost.
As he’d seen with Amelia and Svena, the Leviathan’s tentacles were no longer just going for water. Several were actively attacking dragons now, swatting them out of the air every time they left an opening. So far, everyone he’d seen get hit had come back up, but the damage was evident in their slowed wings and uneven flight. He’d come into this knowing it would be a battle of attrition, but as he watched it unfold, Julius became more and more worried that they were already on the losing end of it.
Please,he thought silently, turning toward the western edge of the city where he could still smell a hint of Marci’s scent.Please, Marci, hurry.
He was still begging when a huge, slimy tentacle smacked him from behind, sending him spinning through the air.
Chapter 11
The Sea of Magic was even worse than Marci remembered.
It was still black, still nauseating, and still chaos, but there was just so muchmoreof it. Even though her human eyes couldn’t process it, Marci couldfeelthe weight of all that power pushing down on them like they were being crushed at the bottom of the ocean. It was even more terrifying now than it had been when she’d been dead, because while her soul was definitely firmer this time around, the safety zone provided by her spirit was much, much smaller, pushed nearly to her skin by the pressure outside.
“What now?” Ghost said, his terrifying face set in a nervous frown as he stared at the swirling magic above them.
“Find some spirits,” Marci said.
“That won’t be hard. They’re everywhere. But getting them to listen is another matter.” His frown deepened. “I’ve never seen them so worked up, and I was here for the madness that broke out once we realized the Merlins were cutting off the magic.”
“It gets harder, I’m afraid,” Marci said. “You heard what Myron said. If we’re going to make this thing work, we needallthe spirits on board, and we need them fast. That means we can’t do this one by one. We need to talk to everyone, preferably all at the same time.”
“That’s impossible,” Ghost said immediately. “No one can talk to every spirit at once.”
“Just hear me out,” she said, flashing him a smile. “I’ve been doing some thinking about how you got me in here. One of the fundamental rules of all spirits is that they are strictly defined by their domains. Inside your area of influence, though, you’re basically a god.”
“Obviously,” the Empty Wind said. “I couldn’t have brought you here were it otherwise. But I fail to see how the Forgotten Dead can help us in this particular situation.”
“You didn’t see how they were going to get me over here, either,” Marci reminded him. “But we made it work. I’m pretty sure we can make this work too.” She waved her hand at the churning dark. “This is where our souls go when we die. From a human perspective, the Sea of Magic is basically the afterlife, and as a spirit of the dead, that makes it yours.”
Ghost shifted uncomfortably. “I think that’s a bit of a stretch.”
“Of course it is,” Marci said. “But that’s what humans do. We think outside the box and stretch things to make them work. You’re a human spirit, aconcept. Unlike a lake, your borders are defined not by hard lines, but by human ideas. That makes you stretchy by definition.” She grinned at him. “You’ve called yourself a face of death multiple times now, andIknow this place is death because this is where I went when I died. If both of those are true, then you should have special powers here that other Mortal Spirits don’t. Maybe even the power to make your voice heard to every other spirit inside it. I mean, you can speak to all the dead inside your wind, right?”
“I can,” Ghost said cautiously. “But only speak. I can’t make them do things.”
“That’s fine,” Marci said. “Talking is all I want. We’re not here to make anyone do anything, we only need to get their attention so we can explain the situation and hopefully convince them to act in their own best interest. Just give it a try. If it doesn’t work, all we’ve lost is time spent yelling into the void.”
Her spirit still looked deeply skeptical, but he must have had a lot of faith in her these days, because Ghost gave it his best. He set her down in front of the Merlin Gate with a bubble of magic to keep her from being swept away, and then he flew up above her, growing larger and larger until the dark of his body merged with the dark of everything else. Finally, when all she could see of him were two glowing eyes floating like stars in the blackness, Marci felt something shift.
That shouldn’t have been cause for comment. Everything in this place was constantly moving, only this time, it was all moving together. Slowly, like water being pushed by the wind, all the swirling chaos began to flow in the same direction. It wasn’t that the sea grew calmer, just that the violence had a new unity, the nauseating eddies and tangles flowing together like leaves blown on an icy wind Marci felt all the way to the core of her being.
It took a long time. The wind rose quickly, but the sea was enormous. Every time Marci thought they must have reached the end, Ghost’s magic redoubled, and the gale grew larger, blowing into every crook and bend of the surging sea. Then, when his magic was stretched across more of the Sea of Magic than Marci had ever dreamed existed, the Empty Wind spoke.
I am Ghost,he said, the words howling through the dark in a thousand voices.The Empty Wind, Spirit of the Forgotten Dead, bound Mortal Spirit of the first of the New Merlins, Marci Novalli. Algonquin has betrayed us, and the Nameless End is coming to devour all that exists. If you wish to remain eternal, come to the Merlin Gate and hear how we plan to survive. If you do not care, then stay where you are and learn how the deathless die.
His voice was like thunder by the time he finished. It shook through the magic, making the whole sea tremble. When it was over, Ghost collapsed into himself, sinking back down through the chaos to land beside Marci in a heap.
“How was that?” he asked weakly.
“Fantastic,” she assured him. “Just the right balance of threat and promise.”
“Spirits need threats,” he said, pushing back to his feet. “It’s easy to bury your head when you can live through anything. If you want them to act, you have to tell them what is at stake. I just hope it worked.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Marci said, lifting her eyes to the dark, which was already growing crowded. It was hard to make out details through the swirling ink of the unfiltered magic, but there were definitely things around them now that hadn’t been there before. Verybigthings, watching her from the shadows. She was trying to tilt her head back far enough to actually look at them when something spoke.
