Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers #5)(23)
“Julius,” the seer said, his voice little more than air. “Do you remember when I told you that a seer’s first vision is always their own death?”
Julius nodded, scooting away from the shadow’s edge.
“This is it,” his brother whispered. “This is what I saw all those centuries ago. The ice, the shadow, you and me. This moment, right now.” He looked up at the monster in the sky and swallowed. “My last moment.”
The air changed as he spoke, growing sharper. Final. It was a little like when Julius had used Dragon Sees the Beginning’s black chain to beat Estella, only now, instead of every chance miraculously working out in his favor, Julius felt like a train car on rails. There were no more choices, no more chances. Every detail—him and Bob, the Black Reach, Marci and the others, Ghost holding up the collapsing house, even the spirals Svena’s frost left in the air—was part of a static picture, the backdrop of a stage where every line was scripted. Every moment that passed was just another dot on the line leading to this moment, and now that they were finally here, there was nowhere left to go but forward to the end.
“I’d hoped Svena would kill you,” the Black Reach said as he walked down the steps. “There was a high probability, but once again, you skate through on the most unlikely of chances.”
“It was never unlikely if you knew what I know,” Bob replied, his voice only shaking a little as he patted Julius on the head. “My brother has a very good track record for miracles.”
The Black Reach said nothing. He just kept walking through the snow, his steps crunching across the frozen dirt until he was standing over them like a sword.
“You should be proud,” he said. “In all my years as guardian, I’ve never been forced to act so directly. I much prefer to arrange things so that seers die from the consequences of their actions, as Estella did. But you have evaded every payback, sidestepped every threat that you created. No matter how many dragons you step on, you keep getting away with it.” He tilted his head. “If the situation were less dire, I’d be tempted to let you keep going, if only to see how long you could maintain this insanity. Alas, you have not left me that luxury. I am now the one left with no choice, Brohomir, and I cannot permit you to do what we both know you’re going to do.”
“What’s he going to do?” Julius asked.
Both seers looked at him, and Julius fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I don’t know the future,” he reminded them. “Bob’s not perfect by any stretch, but he’s always come through for us in the end. Now we’re up against an enemy we can’t understand who might destroy everything. Bob says he has a plan to stop it, but you won’t even let him say what it is. Why? What could Bob possibly do that would be worse than that?”
He pointed at the black shape of the Leviathan that filled the sky. When the Black Reach failed to answer, though, Raven filled the gap.
“Because Bob has the other one.”
Julius jumped as the spirit swooped down to land on the bloody ice beside them. “There’s more than one way for the world to end,” Raven said. “Algonquin was foolish enough to let herself be infected, but she wasn’t the only one. There’s another interloper here.”
He glanced pointedly at Bob’s pigeon, who was still perched on top of the wrecked house, but Julius was having trouble following. “Wait,” he said, putting his hand to his suddenly throbbing temple. “Wait, wait, wait. You’re telling me this whole thing is about Bob’s pigeon?”
“That is not a pigeon,” Raven cawed. “I don’t know why it chose that form, but it’s no animal or spirit, nothing of this reality.”
“It is an End,” the Black Reach agreed, his voice trembling with rage. “The same End that ended our true home ten thousand years ago. The Final Future.”
“Now, now,” Bob said, holding out his hand to the pigeon, who immediately fluttered over to him. “It’s not polite to name the Nameless.”
Julius ducked as the bird swept in to land on Bob’s arm, scooting as far from his brother as he dared to get away from the pigeon who apparently wasn’t so harmless after all. “That’s a Nameless End?” When Bob nodded, his eyes grew wide. “But what—how did you get—”
“I wasn’t tricked into letting her in, if that’s what you’re implying,” Bob said, turning up his nose. “My ladylove isn’t a lawless glutton like Mr. Dark-And-Broody up there, and I’m not a fool like Algonquin. I invited her to join me here, and I’m continually delighted that she agreed.”
His pigeon cooed happily, but the Black Reach looked angrier than ever. “And that is why you must die,” he growled. “That thing you claim to love is the extra-planar monster who ate our race’s eternity! The ancient dragon seers fed her potential timelines in exchange for certain ones until there was no future left at all! I should have killed you the moment you decided to bring her in, but you had not yet used her power, which meant my hands were tied.”
“Why?” Julius asked, careful not to look at Bob. “Not that I want you to hurt my brother, but if he’d already brought in a Nameless End, well… that seems pretty damning.”
“Oh, it was,” Bob said. “If he made decisions like Chelsie does, I’d be centuries dead. But the Black Reach isn’t like the rest of us. He’s not even really a dragon. He’s Dragon Sees Eternity, a construct created by our ancestors to be judge, jury, and executioner. With powers that vast, the rules governing his actions had to be very strict, and the strictest of all is that he’s forbidden from killing a seer until they actually break the rules.”