“Shut up!” she snarled. “You are the worst of all! The others are a cancer, but at least they are a failing of this world. You are nothing but a parasite. A freeloader, feeding on our power. You have no right to be here!”
“But I am here,” Julius said firmly. “We’re all here, Algonquin, because this is the world now. I’m sure you thought things were paradise back when your spirits were the only ones, but that time is gone. Even if your plan works, and the Nameless End does stop where he promised, your ‘victory’ will be a barren rock. Whatever rises from those ashes won’t be the world you knew. It’ll be something else entirely, a new land with new powers struggling desperately to survive on the burned crumbs of a once-beautiful world. That’s what you’re leaving for the future. That’s what you’re calling victory.”
“You think this is what I wanted?” Algonquin roared, splashing cold water onto his feathers as she rose over him. “My plan was to muzzle the magic back to a level where Mortal Spirits wouldn’t rise! I would have done it too, if not for them.” She threw a line of cold water at Marci and Ghost, who jumped back. “They are the ones who ruined my paradise. This was never what I wanted, but it’s all I have left!”
“That doesn’t mean you have to take it!” Julius cried, rising up on his hind feet so he could look her in the face. “Just because you can’t go back to how things were doesn’t mean you have to destroy what we have now. There’s nothing stopping us from making a new paradise except you. If you’d stop hating us for a moment and listen, we could—”
“Why should I listen?” she demanded. “What have dragons done for this world except take? What have humans done except defile the land and fill it with monsters?” Her water opened like fangs. “I have every right to hate you!”
“But what has that gotten you?” Marci asked.
The cloudy water jerked. “Excuse me?”
“No one can argue the damage humans have done,” Marci said, hugging her glowing cat against her chest. “We’ve done terrible things, and you have every right to be mad about them, but hating something doesn’t fix the problem. I’ve had a front-row seat for every one of your sketchy plans to stop the Mortal Spirits, and not a single one has made things better for you or the things you claim to care about. I was willing to work with you in Reclamation Land, but you wouldn’t even listen to a compromise. You tried to use Ghost and me by force, and when that didn’t work, you fed your precious Spirits of the Land into the chipper-shredder to get enough magic to raise the DFZ as a slave to Myron so he could be the first Merlin.”
Her face grew furious. “Do you have any idea the good you could have done with that much power? How much better everything could have been if you’d used your magic to greet the confused, newborn Mortal Spirit of the DFZ in peace instead of stomping on her? The DFZ turned out to be amazing! She could have been an incredible ally if you hadn’t treated her like a fighting dog, but you did. You were so busy hating us, you didn’t even think about trying something different, and now you’re doing it again. You’ve chosen over and over to be the villain, and now you’ve sided with this monster against your own world! Your Spirits of the Land, the ones you claim to be doing all of this for, they’re so afraid of what you’ve done that they willingly gave their magic to me so I could try and stop it!”
Algonquin pulled back. “The banishment,” she whispered. “That was their magic?”
“It was everyone’s magic,” Marci said. “Land, Animal, Mortal—they all volunteered because they were scared to death of what you did! But even though my banishment failed, I’m still happy I tried, because it proved what I’ve been saying all along.”
“That I’m the enemy?” Algonquin said bitterly.
Marci shook her head. “That we’re all the same.” She looked down at Ghost in her arms. “You always talked about the Mortal Spirits like they were aliens, some kind of new invasion completely separate from other spirits, but they’re not. Ghost’s vessel might have been carved by humans instead of geology, but he protects the forgotten dead just like you protect your waters and your fish. If you need more proof, look at Raven. He figured out ages ago that the lines we drew to divide spirit types are nonsense, and he used that knowledge to become something more.”
“Do not speak that traitor’s name!” Algonquin snarled, her watery head turning as she searched the dark around them. “Where is he anyway? Lurking in the shadows for the right moment to swoop down and say something dramatic?”
“He’s not here,” Marci said, her face grim. “He gave up his magic just like everyone else to try to banish you before you destroyed everything. He hasn’t risen again yet. At this rate, he might never do so.”
For the first time since they’d arrived, Algonquin looked sad, her murky water drooping. Then she pulled herself back together. “It does not matter,” she said. “Raven was always against me.”
“You were against you,” Marci said. “Raven was always the one trying to save you.”
“He was a fool,” Algonquin spat. “But it doesn’t matter.” She slipped back into her muddy pool. “Criticize me all you like, mortal, but it’s too late. This world is already finished.”
“But it’s not!” Julius cried, grabbing the water with his claws. “That’s why we risked so much to come here! Because we’re all still alive, and so are you. You’re not dead yet, Algonquin! There’s still time to change your mind.”
The pool of water scoffed. “And do what? Join you? Forget the wrongs I’ve suffered and embrace those who hate me just as much as I hate them?”
“It was you who made us enemies,” Ghost said, his cold voice startlingly soft as he hopped out of Marci’s arms. “The DFZ and I were not born hating you. You taught us to hate through your actions. You killed the hundreds of thousands of people whose anger woke me from my sleep. You enslaved the city you built. Those are your sins, Algonquin. Not ours.”
“Your kind are the ones who taught mine to fear,” the water spirit snapped. “You were so out of control, your own Merlins shut down the magic because they couldn’t deal with you. Where’s the callout for those sins, cat?”
“That’s unfair,” Marci argued. “You can’t blame Ghost for what Mortal Spirits did before the drought any more than you can blame me for what human mages did a thousand years before I was born.”