Because convincing the Black Reach to help them instead of running to another plane as he’d planned was going to be hard enough without his impatient sister wheedling them both. “Because I have something private I’d like to discuss with him,” Julius said instead.
Amelia blew out a puff of smoke. “Fine,” she said, flapping onto Marci’s shoulder. “Who am I to interfere with the methods of Julius, Dragon Whisperer? Come on, Marci, let’s leave him to do his thing.”
Marci must have been serious about sticking with him, because her jaw tightened. Before she could tell Amelia to go by herself, though, Julius gave her a pleading look. Amelia would never leave if she thought they were plotting without her. He didn’t know how to explain that to Marci without words, though, so he just looked at her until, at last, she reluctantly let go of his feathers, walking backward so she could keep her eyes on him the whole way as she escorted Amelia back to Bob.
When they were out of earshot, Julius turned to find the Black Reach watching him. “That was neatly done,” the construct said, looking him in the eyes, which he was actually tall enough to do. The Black Reach’s human guise was big enough that he didn’t even have to tilt his head back to see eye to eye with Julius’s dragon. Smiling, Julius desperately hoped that was a sign he could convince the construct to see eye to eye with him on everything else.
“So,” said Dragon Sees Eternity, reaching into his long sleeve to pull out the golden orb of the Kosmolabe. “Are you ready to go?”
“No,” Julius said. “But surely you knew that.”
“I did,” the construct replied. “But by mentioning it, I’ve reminded you that there is another way out of this, thus giving you the chance to reconsider.”
That was some slippery seer work, but Julius expected nothing less from the Construct of the Future. “I need your help. I want to talk to Algonquin so I can try to change her mind about all of this, but she’s locked herself deep inside the Leviathan, and you’re the only one whose fire might be able to burn a path to her. You don’t have to go inside with us. We just need you to make us an opening. Please.”
The Black Reach scowled. “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider my offer?”
“I’m sure,” Julius said. “Can you do it?”
The eldest seer looked up at the black expanse of the Leviathan. “There’s a high likelihood that I could burn a hole through the Nameless End’s protective carapace, but the success of everything after that is significantly less probable.”
“Any chance is good enough for me,” Julius said happily. “I just need you to get us in. We can handle the rest. Bob wouldn’t have sent me to you if he didn’t think we had a shot.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” the Black Reach said, his voice oddly bitter. “Brohomir is one of the greatest seers I’ve ever known, but this isn’t like his plans for you before. Those were the careful machinations of a master seer executing his life’s work. This is a desperate dragon grasping at straws.”
“But there is a chance,” Julius said. “It’s not impossible.”
“‘Not impossible’ isn’t the same as ‘possible,’” the construct reminded him. “There are chances for almost everything, but only a small subset of those actually go on to become fact. A proper seer knows to weed out the long shots, not bet on them, and as a proper seer, I cannot support your brother’s delusions. The chance of you successfully convincing Algonquin to banish the Leviathan is so infinitesimally small, it’s barely visible even to my eyes. Assuming she still possesses the ability to send the Nameless End away, the Lady of the Lakes has hated our kind since we came to this plane. She is the patron of Vann Jeger, the Death of Dragons, and the murderess of the Three Sisters. With the purge of the DFZ, she has been personally responsible for the deaths of more dragons than any other being in our history. No matter what logic you bring, what arguments you make, the most likely outcome is that she will not listen, and you will die.”
He spoke this as though it were already past, but Julius knew better. “Is that what you see?” he demanded, digging his claws into the dirt. “When you look at the future, do you see Algonquin killing me?”
“No, but that is merely due to a technicality. Seers can only see the futures of those connected to them, and Algonquin is none of ours. Our inability to foresee her decisions is how we landed in this mess in the first place. If I’d known she was going to bring a Nameless End to our doorstep, I would have destroyed her myself long before the drought. But I did not know, because she was not mine to see. You are, of course, but once you enter that thing, your futures become very hard to follow. Even I cannot peer easily through a Nameless End.”
“So if you can’t see her and you can’t see me, how do you know she’ll kill me?” Julius asked.
“Because it can be no other way,” the Black Reach snapped. “The future is never certain, but there are some things we can safely take as constants, and Algonquin’s hatred is one of them. She didn’t listen to you back in Reclamation Land. What makes you think she will hear you now?”
“Because now is different,” Julius said. “Back then, she had all the power. Now she has none, because she’s given it up to the Leviathan. All I want is to help her get it back, and it’s a lot easier to listen to someone when they’re saying what you want to hear.”
“It will. Not. Work,” the seer growled. “Just like Brohomir, you are allowing what you want to blind you to what is, and what is is over. The Nameless End has won. This plane is doomed. The only statistically likely chance of survival we have left is for you to accept my offer and flee to a new world before this one is devoured.” He leaned in closer, dropping his voice to a whisper. “You refused me before because you said I was leaving too many behind, but thanks to your efforts, almost every dragon in the world is currently in the DFZ. If you agree to run with me right now, there’s a very good chance we could get everyone gathered and through the portal before the planar barrier collapses. You could save them all that way, no long shots needed.”
“But not Amelia,” Julius said. “Spirits are tied to this plane, which means no Marci, either. She’d never leave Ghost behind.”
“There would be sacrifices,” the Black Reach admitted. “But for a much greater good.”
“How good can it be if the only way to get there is by abandoning my friends and family?” Julius said angrily. “I’m not leaving them behind.”
“So you would risk everyone?” the seer said. “Risk your brothers and sisters, all of your kind, to save the world’s most arrogant dragon mage and a single human?”