“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, a concept. 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, and I know 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. Very big things, watching her from the shadows. She was trying to tilt her head back far enough to actually look at them when something spoke.
“Who are you?”
Chills ran down her spine. The voice sounded like a knife the size of a cruise ship rasping over a mountain. If Ghost hadn’t been right behind her, Marci would have turned and run. But he was behind her, his cold, comforting weight reminding her that she was not alone, and that gave her the courage to step forward instead.
“My name is Marci Novalli,” she said, speaking as loudly and clearly as she could. “Bound to the Empty Wind, Master of the Heart of the World, first Merlin since the return of magic, and I’m here to ask for your help.”
She reached down to touch the ground at her feet. Thanks to the swirling dark, it looked as black as everything else here, but she knew from what she’d seen in the Heart of the World that the smooth, hard substance beneath her feet wasn’t stone or congealed magic or anything else natural to this world. It was part of the Nameless End, one of the roots he’d set down, and it was everywhere.
“I’m sure you already know what this is,” she said, scraping her nails across the hard, black substance. “Algonquin’s Leviathan is a Nameless End, a devourer of worlds. He’s eating her as I speak, and when he’s finished, he’ll have a foothold in our plane big enough to keep him rooted while he eats the rest of us. He’s already dug in deep. If we don’t want to die, we’re going to have to work together to dig him out again before he ends us all.”
Marci thought that was a pretty compelling argument, but the powers above her seemed unimpressed.
“Why should we fight for you?” asked a growling voice. Then, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, a wolf appeared. Not a normal wolf, but a monster the size of a charter bus, its long tail lashing in anger.
“Why should we fight?” Wolf asked again, his yellow eyes flicking up to the much bigger spirits looming over him. “They are back, which means our world is already doomed. The mortal gods are even bigger than they were before. They will overrun us all!” He bared his bloody teeth. “Why should I fight for a future where I will be trampled?”
“You dare blame us!” cried the enormous, knife-scraping voice, and the magic above them jerked, forming into a painfully thin man covered head to toe in a long, red shroud. No, Marci realized, not a shroud. It was blood. The man was dripping with fresh blood as he stabbed his red hand at Wolf.
“This is your fault!” he cried. “We’d barely woken before you tried to tear us to pieces! I don’t even know my name yet, and you had your mongrel teeth on my throat! Why should we be devoured because your Algonquin could not control her fear? We are spirits just as you are!”