“No,” Marci said, her eyes going wide. “No!”
This couldn’t be happening. They’d won. The Leviathan had been gone. How was it back? How was this possible?
He must have re-formed, Ghost said quietly. Banishments are only temporary.
“Not that temporary!” Marci cried. “And re-formed where? He has no vessel! No home! How did he pull himself back together so—”
“Marci!”
The yell came from far away, and she looked up to see a small blue shape racing toward her across the city. A few seconds later, Julius landed panting beside them, his feathered face grim beneath the crown of his Fang. “Are you okay?”
“No!” Marci said angrily, stabbing her hand at the once-again blackened sky. “That should have worked! Why didn’t it work?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Julius said, lowering his wings so she could climb onto his back. “Hop on. The others are waiting back at the house.”
Marci didn’t want to go back to the others. She wanted to return to the Heart of the World and figure out how things had gone so horribly wrong. There was no way she’d screwed up the banishment. It was a one-line spell, and she’d seen it work. But she wasn’t sure how to go back, or if it was even possible anymore. Now that she’d stopped, Marci was starting to feel how tired she was. Ghost was exhausted too, his weariness pulling like a weight on her mind. Already, his transparent body was fading, leaving her spirit a small, sad, cold lump in her arms as she climbed onto Julius’s back.
“The same thing happened to Amelia,” he said as she carefully placed the sleeping cat on her lap. “Right before the banishment landed, she shrank down to nothing.”
“Because I was using all the magic,” Marci said glumly. “I balled the entire sea up and blasted it to pieces, and it didn’t even work.” She clenched her fists. “It should have worked!”
“It did,” Julius said, taking off. “I saw him scatter just like you said he would. But then he put himself back together.”
She slumped over with a groan, and he swiveled his triangular head back around to smile at her. “It’s okay. You tried your best. No one’s mad at you.”
“I’m mad,” Marci said, her body shaking. “We got robbed! Our ace in the hole just blew up in my face. Literally. Now what are we supposed to do?”
Julius’s silence was answer enough as he flew them back through the destroyed city to their home.
***
“I told you so,” the Black Reach said.
“Save it,” Bob muttered, pacing back and forth down the rut he’d worn in front of the wreckage of Julius’s home.
“You knew this was coming as well as I did,” the construct went on. “You knew the young Merlin’s plan would fail, and yet you still encouraged—”
“Likely to fail,” Bob said. “It was likely to fail, which isn’t the same as would fail. There was still a chance.”
“A small one,” the Black Reach said. “Which you had no business betting all our lives on.”
“I don’t see you doing anything!” Bob snapped, startling his pigeon from her roost on his shoulder. “At least I’m trying to save us. Where are your grand plans?”
“Already made,” the elder seer replied, holding up the glittering orb of the Kosmolabe.
Bob turned away in disgust. “Running away isn’t a plan. It’s just another form of defeat.”
“You mean another way to survive,” the Black Reach said, dropping his arm with a sigh. “I am sorry, Brohomir. I know how badly you want your happy ending. It was a big factor in why I decided to spare your life. We’ve always wanted the same future, but unlike you, I cannot be blinded by emotion. I must look only at what will be, and as much as everything else has changed, that one factor of the future that truly matters has not.” He looked up at the Nameless End, which had just finished re-forming itself in the sky. “We were always doomed. From the moment Algonquin let it in, this plane was lost. You should be able to see that as clearly as I can now that you’ve lived past your death. Why can’t you accept it?”
“Because I don’t blindly accept failure!” Brohomir cried, whirling around to face him again. “‘The future is never set until it’s past.’ You taught me that! I didn’t spend centuries alienating everyone I loved trying to snatch my life from your jaws so I could lose now!”
The Black Reach’s eyes narrowed. “Spoken like a prideful idiot. You’re better than this, Brohomir. You know perfectly well that you can’t bully the future. That’s what made you a brilliant seer. Unlike Estella, you understood that draconic bravado means nothing to the cold, hard math of possibility. That hasn’t changed just because you escaped your death.”
“I know,” Bob said, raking his fingers through his hair. “I know, I know, I know. It’s just…”
He wanted things to be different. He’d thought for sure that the moment he cleared his death, he’d spot a way out, because that was what he did. He always found a way. Now, though, the vast, intertwining streams of possibility were drying up before his eyes. With every second that ticked by, the stream of the future got narrower and narrower, leaving fewer and fewer paths, none of which went anywhere good.
“There has to be a way out,” he growled, resuming his pacing. “There has to be.”
The Black Reach turned away with a bitter sigh. “I won’t be part of this sad delusion. Baseless hopes are for the blind. We who can see must deal truthfully with what’s in front of us, or what’s the point of seeing at all?” He waved over his shoulder. “When you’re ready to be a seer again, come and find me. I’ll be waiting where I always am at the end.”
Bob didn’t want to think about endings, but everywhere he looked now, the end was all he saw. Thousands and thousands of roads all leading to the same deadly conclusion. But even with the inevitable staring him in the face, Bob kept searching, frantically rooting through the remaining possible futures for the chance he could grab to keep them all alive. It wasn’t until Julius landed in front of him, though, that he finally found it. His final gamble, so beautiful he could cry.
It’s a long shot, his End warned. You’ve had bad luck with those lately.
“True,” he said, petting her head. “But you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, and as the Black Reach just so kindly reminded me, we don’t have much left to lose.”
The Nameless End leaned into his touch. Are you ready to trade, then? All long shots come in if I guarantee them.
Bob thought a moment, looking down his chosen future as far he could, and then he shook his head. “Not yet. Julius has never let me down so far, and if this plays out the way I think it will, I’m going to need you more than ever before the end.”
I’ll be there, she promised. I am an End, after all.
“You are indeed,” he said, kissing her on the neck as he turned to face his youngest brother, who’d just set his human down beside the suddenly conscious body of Sir Myron Rollins.
Chapter 13