Julius didn’t have that luxury. He was still flesh and blood, which meant he spent most of his time dodging, blasting whatever he could while he frantically tried to keep track of everything that was going on and which locations needed help the most.
“Most” was key, because everywhere was in trouble. When they’d started this, he’d assumed that the Leviathan couldn’t be everywhere at once. After an hour of fighting, though, Julius had decided there was no practical limit to the number of tentacles that thing could produce. They literally filled the sky at times, forcing the dragons to scramble out of the way as the black appendages crashed into the lake beds to suck up whatever water was left. The less-agile human vehicles weren’t so lucky. They went down flaming when the tentacles got thick, the pilots’ voices screaming in Julius’s ears before their radios cut out.
It would have been horrific if he’d had time to process it, but there was no time for anything except the fight. They’d long since given up trying to stop every tentacle. At this point, it was simply a race to slow the Leviathan down enough for Marci to finish. He just hoped they could make it.
“Julius.”
He snatched his eyes off his AR radar display as General Jackson’s face appeared in the air to his left, looking more harried than he’d ever seen her. “We’re losing too many units,” she said. “We can’t keep up like this, so I’m pulling two squads off Lake Michigan and authorizing a bombing run on the Leviathan’s main body. I need you and the Planeswalker to pull someone in to cover their areas during the gap.”
“I don’t know if we have anyone else,” Julius said, flitting to the side just in time to avoid being hit by the flaming end of a tentacle Justin had just chomped in half. “Why are you wasting time on a bombing run anyway? Amelia already blasted that thing with enough dragon fire to melt a battleship, and it did nothing.”
“I know,” the general snapped. “But we can’t keep up with the tentacles and I’m running out of planes. If we don’t start doing some damage back, this fight is going to be over in the next ten minutes.”
Julius swallowed. He’d known things were dire, but he hadn’t realized they were that bad. “I’ll find someone to cover the gap,” he promised. “Good luck.”
But the general had already cut out. A few moments later, Julius saw the jets on his radar tracker peel off their pattern above Lake Michigan and start heading for the Leviathan.
“Fools,” Amelia snorted when he told her. “If I couldn’t burn it, no combination of metal and explosives has a chance.”
“I said the same thing,” Julius replied. “But while I agree it won’t work, the general has a point. Every tentacle we burn pops right back up, but while the Leviathan doesn’t seem to care, we’re taking real damage.” He glanced up at Justin, who was still bathing the sky in green fire despite the blood dripping through his feathers. “We can’t keep on like this. If we’re going to survive until Marci gets here, we have to find a way to start hurting it back.”
“If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m all ears,” Amelia said, the flames that made up her head flickering wildly as she watched the jets fly in. “Here we go.”
That was the only warning Julius got before the bombardment began. He barely managed to cover his ears in time before a halo of white light filled the sky as multiple magical warheads struck the Leviathan’s carapace. The force wave hit him a second later, sending him tumbling through the air. He caught himself with his wings just before he crashed into a toppled building, clutching the wreckage with his claws for balance as he watched, breathless, to see if the attack had had any effect.
When the smoke cleared, his heart sank. It was hard to see in the dark, but it didn’t look as though the fighters’ bombs had been any more effective than Amelia’s fire. The bottom of the Leviathan was still a solid wall of shiny black, smooth and impenetrable.
For the first time since he’d taken off, Julius began to feel truly hopeless. They couldn’t hurt it. They must have burned thousands of tentacles by now, and it didn’t seem to have changed a thing. The lakes were almost gone. People were dead. Only a few dragons were down, but that number was bound to rise as more of the UN forces were destroyed or forced to drop out. It didn’t matter how hard they fought—they were failing, and there was nothing he could do about it. If Marci didn’t come through soon, they would all die up here. He would die, and he wouldn’t even get to apologize to her for failing. He couldn’t even tell her goodb—
“Julius!”
The yell came through his com, but it wasn’t General Jackson. It wasn’t even human. It was Bob, and he sounded frantic. Frantic good or frantic bad, though, Julius didn’t know yet.
“Get back to Amelia,” the seer said, raising his voice over General Jackson, who was screaming at him to give her back her com in the background. “Tell her to get everyone out of the sky.”
“Why?” Julius asked, pushing off the ground as fast as he could. “What’s going to happen?”
His oldest brother’s face popped into his augmented vision just in time for Julius to see him grin. “Looks like your human came through.”
That was all he had time to say before Emily Jackson wrestled her com out of his hands, but Julius wasn’t watching his AR anymore. He was flying as hard as he could back to Amelia, whose fire was suddenly looking dimmer.
“Where did you go?” she panted, grabbing on to him as her body flickered. “I need your help. Something’s happening to the magic. I can’t—”
“It’ll be okay,” Julius said frantically. “Marci did it! Bob just called to say she’s on her way. You need to tell everyone to get out of the sky now.”
The radio in his ear was already full of chatter as Emily ordered all human troops to the ground, but Amelia was shaking her head. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m not sure if I can tell everyone. The magic just suddenly started dropping like a stone. It feels like the drought all over again, except way worse because I’m the one drying up this time!”
It was true. Her flaming body was shrinking in front of his eyes. By the time she finished talking, she wasn’t much bigger than he was, and her eyes were terrified. “Help me, Julius!”
“I’ve got you,” he assured her, blowing a lick of flame. “You can shelter in my fire. I’ll give you whatever you need, but you have to tell the others to get down. You’re the only one who can talk to every dragon, and I don’t think Bob would have warned me if it wasn’t going to be bad.”
Amelia nodded and vanished, her orange flames snuffing out only to reappear inside Julius’s, making him gasp as a new power entered the fire that was the center of everything that made him a dragon.