Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers #5)(95)
Chapter 14
After the chaos of the battle and their mad dive through the Black Reach’s kaleidoscope of fire, the sudden stillness inside the Leviathan felt like someone had pulled a plug on the world. The hole they’d flown through closed immediately, leaving Julius gasping in the dark, but while nothing hurt, he couldn’t see or feel his body, or anything else.
“Marci!” he called frantically, feeling around. “Marci!”
“I’m here,” Marci said, her voice surprisingly close. “But I can’t see you.”
“I can’t see you, either,” Julius said, his voice confused and frustratingly disembodied. The Black Reach had said his fire would protect them inside as well, but he couldn’t see a—
Light blossomed around him, making him jump. All over his body, the strange, thick darkness was boiling away to reveal a warm glow that came from below his feathers. It reached Marci a heartbeat later, revealing her face, and then her body in a slow unraveling as the light from his fire pushed back the dark. The change was primal and slow, but eventually it covered them both, surrounding them in a bubble of warm illumination that felt unspeakably old and fragile. The soft glow looked nothing like the brilliant multicolored fire outside, but it smelled strongly of the Black Reach, and when the flames crackled over Julius’s skin, they spoke in his voice.
You don’t have much time, the Black Reach’s fire whispered. I gave as much as I dared, but though he is not yet fully here, the Nameless End eats quickly. He will eat me too if you do not hurry.
“Then we’d better get moving,” Julius said, looking at the wall of liquid dark beyond the circle of the Black Reach’s flickering protection. “Any idea where to start?”
Marci shrugged helplessly, and the Black Reach said nothing. In hindsight, Julius wasn’t actually sure if he’d been talking to the construct himself, or if the words had been a message bottled up for him in the fire. Either way, it seemed they were alone in here for real now, assuming there was a “here” at all.
The inside of the Leviathan was empty in a way Julius had never felt. Even with the Black Reach’s fire illuminating the space directly around them, Julius wouldn’t have known there was a floor if his feet hadn’t been planted on it. It had no texture or temperature, no feeling of any sort. It was just… nothing. He couldn’t even smell the magic anymore, and the lack of it was making his dragon body feel heavier than ever. Much more of this, and he’d be forced back into his human shape whether he wanted it or not. Yet another timer they were going to have to beat to have a prayer of pulling this off. But just as Julius was wondering how one navigated through nothingness, his nose caught the faint scent of lake water.
His head shot up so fast Marci jumped. “I smell her,” he said, breathing deeply. “That way.”
He took a tentative step in the direction of the scent, pressing his foot down on the emptiness beneath them. But while there was no sensation at all—no movement, no solidity, not even the pressure of his own weight—he didn’t fall into the blackness, which was good enough.
“What are we walking on?” Marci asked, tapping her shoe against the blackness. “Leviathan guts?”
“Who knows?” Julius said. “We’re inside a Nameless End. Physics might not even apply here.”
“If that’s the case, why are we wasting time being cautious?” Marci asked, hopping back into position between his wings. “Let’s fly!”
Flying when you couldn’t see where you were going was a terrible idea. Technically, though, this entire journey was a terrible idea. Julius saw no point in being cautious now, so he spread his wings, pushing off the strange emptiness with his claws.
It was one of the oddest experiences of Julius’s life. Flying through nothingness made even less sense than walking on it, but while he felt no wind under his feathers or lift in his wings, it did seem like he was going faster. It might well have been all in his head since, without landmarks or anything to judge distance by, actual relative speed was impossible to determine. But flapping made him feel like he was doing something, so Julius kept it up, pumping his wings as hard as he could as he followed the lake water scent like a bloodhound through the dark.
It took forever. Having just battled it, Julius was painfully aware of how huge the Leviathan was. He’d been flying at what felt like top speed for several minutes now, but the scent wasn’t getting any closer. He was beginning to worry it was all in his head, and they weren’t actually moving at all, when he spotted a spark of light in the distance.
The glow was as faint as a distant star. If everything else hadn’t been so unrelentingly black, Julius would have missed it entirely. As they got closer, though, he realized the spot wasn’t actually glowing. It was simply not dark—a small, muddy circle of cloudy, greenish-brown water no wider than a manhole cover. The puddle didn’t even ripple when he landed beside it, and the scent of lake water was only moderately stronger than it had been at the beginning. He was lowering his snout to the surface to make sure this was the source of the smell he’d been chasing when a woman’s hand shot out of the water and grabbed his nose.
Julius jumped backward, almost knocking Marci off as he frantically scrambled out of reach, but he needn’t have bothered. Unlike every other time he’d encountered Algonquin, the hand that grabbed him now was as weak as the muddy water it appeared to be. It broke the moment he jerked away, falling back into the puddle with a tired, exasperated splash that warped into two wet words.