At that, Julius’s attention jumped back to the other source of his anxiety: Marci. She was standing beside Ghost in the ruins of their house. They were too far away for him to hear what they were saying, but Marci looked upset, which, of course, upset him. He wanted to go over and ask what was wrong, but he didn’t want to hover or make her think he didn’t trust her to do her job. She was the Merlin. He’d seen her do the impossible more than anyone else here, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. The stakes were just so high, and there were so many things that could go wrong on every front.
For example, Fredrick wasn’t back yet. Julius presumed he was still in DC, talking to Conrad, Justin, and the others, but he could be facing off against Bethesda for all Julius knew. Not that he could do anything about that if it was true, but the combined stress was enough to make a dragon crazy. Especially since the one part of the plan to stop the Leviathan that Julius was actually involved with wasn’t currently going anywhere.
Since he couldn’t actually help Marci with spirit stuff, Julius had volunteered to help Amelia and Svena bring in the other dragon clans. Seeing as they’d already agreed to work together, he’d assumed they’d get right to the portal making or magic circles or whatever it was they did. But other than moving to a relatively flat portion of Julius’s dirt yard, neither Amelia nor Svena had done anything except stand around staring at each other like enemies on the field of combat. No one had actually attacked yet, but they’d been at it for a good ten minutes now, and with the Leviathan growing more solid by the second, Julius wasn’t sure how much more they—or he—could take.
“Should we do something?” he whispered to Katya, who was standing next to him with Svena’s fluffy whelps clinging to every limb.
“Nothing we can do,” the dragoness whispered back. “They always do this. Don’t worry, though. With mouths and egos as big as theirs, the silence won’t last much longer. Just let them posture. One of them will crack soon enough. You’ll see.”
Neither of the two dragon mages looked anywhere near cracking to him, but Katya had more experience with Svena and Amelia’s unique dynamic than Julius did, so he kept waiting, hopping nervously from foot to foot until, when he was close to cracking himself from the stress, Amelia finally spoke.
“Let’s hear it,” she drawled, cocking her head at Svena. “How does this super teleportation spell of yours work?”
“That is classified information,” Svena said. “This spell is a treasure of our clan, the work of centuries. The fact that I’ve agreed to use it for you is sacrifice enough. I’m not going to hold your hand and guide you through the casting as well.”
Amelia glowered. “You know I could just look through your fire and find out for myself, right?”
“You could try,” Svena said. “But you’ve never understood half my spells. What makes you think you can grasp the workings of my greatest masterpiece?” Her smirk turned cruel. “Also, before you go rooting through my private thoughts like a pig, remember that street goes both ways. You step where you are not welcome, and I’ll shove memories at you that you can’t unsee. I have some very interesting recollections of events in our youth that you were too drunk to recall, not to mention images of Ian that a sister would never want to—”
“Okay, okay,” Amelia said, putting up her hands. “No need to drag out the nuclear ordnance. I was only curious.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘greedy,’” Svena replied with a huff. “Just because you’re the Spirit of Dragons doesn’t mean all our treasures are yours. If you come for me, I will fight you, and when my opponent is a self-styled god, I see no reason to fight fair.”
“You’ve never fought fair,” Amelia grumbled. “But fine, whatever, do it your way. So long as the teleporting gets done, I don’t care if you make the circle out of orphan hearts.”
Svena looked confused. “What are you talking about? The hearts of children without parents are no more magical than the hearts of any other child, which is to say not very magical at all. You know perfectly well that humans are a vastly inferior source for—”
“For the love of—it was a joke,” Amelia groaned. “Just cast your spell before Julius has a conniption.”
Both dragons looked at Julius, who blushed. He hadn’t realized his nerves were showing that badly, but since he had their attention… “We are in a hurry. So please, if you wouldn’t mind…”
“I don’t mind at all,” Svena said, walking into the large, clear patch of dirt beside the crater Bob had made when he’d come in. “Amelia’s the one wasting time digging for other dragons’ treasure. Greedy snake.”
Amelia could only shrug at that one, but Svena wasn’t looking at her anymore. Her ice-blue eyes were fixed on the ground as she carefully paced off a length of dirt between the wall of cracked on-ramps and the broken house. When she’d walked out a circle that was roughly forty feet in diameter, she held out her hand.
“Katya.”
Katya sighed and began plucking the fluffy white baby dragons off her body. “Can you hold them for a moment?”
Before Julius could answer, Katya shoved the entire clutch at him. He was still struggling to keep the squirming whelps from hitting the ground when Katya ran over to take position on the opposite side of the circle from her sister, biting her lip nervously as she held out her hands. She’d barely gotten them up before Svena stomped over and started correcting her form, smacking the younger dragoness’s limbs until they were in positions that—to Julius at least—looked only marginally different from how they’d been at the start. It must have been a critical margin, though, because Svena nodded and walked back to her spot, raising her own arms in a graceful arc until they were a mirror image of Katya’s.
“Just like we do at home,” Svena said, breathing out a long plume of ice-pale smoke. “Now.”
The word was barely out of her mouth when both dragonesses brought their hands down, and the circle Svena had made in the dirt with her footsteps exploded in blue-white fire. The blast that rolled off it hit Julius like a bucket of frozen seawater, and he wasn’t the only one. The ghostly flames lowered the temperature of the entire cavern by a good twenty degrees, making everyone except Ghost shudder. Lacy frost was creeping across the ground in curls when Katya stepped back to cede the ignited circle to her sister, who looked smugger than Julius had ever seen her.
“And that is how it’s done,” Svena said, casting a superior look at Amelia, who was openly gaping. “With a proper magical education and attention to form and detail, even a fire-deaf dragon like Katya can assist in creating masterpieces. You would do well to take note, Planeswalker.” She turned back to the circular inferno of freezing flames in front of her. “Now that the initial base is ignited, all I need is a name and a location to grab any dragon from anywhere on this plane, including from behind wards.”