Marci gave him a funny look. “Are you a lamprey fan or something?”
“I studied them in my New Ecosystems of the Great Lakes class,” Julius explained. When this only seemed to make her more confused, he added, “I have a bachelor’s degree in Applied Ecology from NYU Online.”
Marci’s mouth fell open. “You’re an ecologist?”
“Try professional student,” Justin said with snort, brushing the blood off his body like another man might brush off dirt. “If it’s online, undergrad, and useless, Julius has it. He also has degrees in Pop Culture, Art History, and Accounting.”
“Accounting’s not useless,” Marci said.
Justin ripped the final lamprey head off his shoulder. “It is if you don’t have any accounts.”
“I like learning things,” Julius said irritably, though that was only a half truth. He did find school interesting, but the sad reality was that online classes and gaming had been the only things that kept him sane and connected to the outside world during the years he’d spent hiding from his family’s plots. Also, being in school had been a great way to keep his mother off his back, at least until she’d realized he was studying things that interested him instead of properly draconic topics like how to exploit the legal system or become a titan of international finance. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What I want to know is why there’s a lake full of super-sized lampreys below Detroit.”
“Well, if there was a lake of super-sized lampreys anywhere, it would be here,” Marci said. “This place is Ground Zero for weird.”
She crouched down beside one of the black, slimy bodies Justin had severed. Even without its head, the snake-like corpse was easily as long as she was tall, its slick, muscular flesh barely dimpling when Marci poked it. “They must have gotten washed into the storm water system at some point, and then the magic down here caused them to change.” She wrinkled her nose. “It is pretty thick.”
‘Pretty thick’ didn’t begin to describe the cold, pressurized magic Julius could feel pushing down on them from all directions. “I told you we should have turned around.”
Marci shrugged. “Well, at least this explains why the Kosmolabe led us here. A lake full of magically altered wildlife would definitely account for the blip I was seeing.” She looked around at the bodies littering the cement floor. “I wonder if they’re worth anything?”
“Would you stop talking about the stupid lampreys?” Justin growled, flinging the blood off his sword with a flick of his wrist. “We’re not down here for the fishing. Now let’s go find those mages for real before we waste any more— OW!”
His cry was accompanied by a loud whack as he slapped his hand against to the back of his neck. “They spit at me!” he roared, whirling around to face the still-roiling water.
Julius was opening his mouth to inform his brother that lampreys didn’t spit when he saw the streak of smoking black bile coating the back of Justin’s neck. A second lamprey broke the water as he watched, lifting its head above the surface just long enough to spit another line of burning goo at Justin’s shoulder.
His brother ducked just in time. “Oh, that is it!” he bellowed, brandishing his sword at the water. “I’m going to eat every last one of you slimy bastards!”
“Justin!” Julius yelled, grabbing his brother by the shoulder. “Calm down! You can’t kill them all. There must be thousands in there.” Or more, he thought with a shudder. “Let’s just go before—”
Pain exploded over his wrist, and he cut off with a gasp. When he looked down, his whole lower arm was covered in the same black slime that was on Justin’s neck. It burned like hot oil against his skin, but before he could wipe it off on his shirt, a full-scale volley of black goo shot out of the water, coating the wall above their heads.
At first, Julius thought that was because the lampreys had terrible aim, then he looked up and realized the truth. “They’re aiming for the ladder!” he cried, ducking to cover his head. “They’re trying to cut us off!”
Even as he said it, Julius knew it was already too late. He also knew how the ladder’s metal had gotten so pitted. This was clearly not the first time the lampreys had sprung this trap. They’d hit the ladder perfectly, coating the entire bottom half in thick, acidic spit that smoked and hissed against the old steel.
The fumes were even worse. As if the rotted fish smell wasn’t bad enough, the acidic goo also reeked of magic. Dark, fetid, oily magic that was getting thicker by the second. Julius covered his mouth and nose with his hands and looking around for Marci, but she was no longer behind him. This sparked several seconds of panic before he spotted her on her knees at the far corner where the platform met the wall, yanking something out of her bag.
It looked like a collapsible laundry basket, the kind with the plastic ribs that you could fold up into a tiny ball, but would still spring back to its original size the moment you let up the tension. That sight was absurd enough to make Julius forget the danger for a moment to wonder why she would have such a thing. He was still speculating when Marci dropped the basket on the ground.
The plastic ribs snapped open the second she let them go, flattening out in a ring, and Julius realized it wasn’t a basket at all. It was a circle. A collapsible casting circle made of yellow tent cloth with layer upon layer of spell notation written around the edges in Marci’s meticulous handwriting.
“Get in!” she shouted.
Julius didn’t wait to be asked twice. He sprinted across the cement and into the circle just as the lampreys launched another volley of burning goo straight at their prey. It struck the wall behind them in hissing splats, but when the sticky stuff crossed Marci’s circle, it burned up in a white flash, landing in a patter of harmless ash against Julius’s chest.
He let out a long, relieved breath. “Nice work.”
“Always pays to carry an emergency shelter,” she said, nodding at Justin, who had miraculously managed to dodge every shot since the first one. “Is he coming?”
Julius had no idea. He was spared having to say as much, though, because at that moment, Justin swung his sword with a roar that shook the ground. For a second, Julius couldn’t understand why. From what he could see, Justin was swinging at nothing, and then the air begin to change. All at once, the bite of dragon magic was all around them, surging up so fast and sharp, Julius thought he was going to be bitten in half. Just before the pressure became unbearable, Justin finished the strike, and the black lake parted in front of him like the Red Sea.
Thanks to the glare of Marci’s magic, Julius saw the whole thing clear as a lightning flash. Justin’s strike had cut the water and everything in it, slicing through the enormous, tangled mass of lampreys hiding below the surface like a laser. He saw his brother, larger than life, the bloody wounds from the earlier bites already closing. More than anything, though, he saw the sword in Justin’s hands. The sword that wasn’t a sword at all.
It still looked like a sword. It had a hilt and a wide, curved blade that was sharp on one side, like a long scimitar, but the blade itself was bone-white and slightly discolored at the tip, like an old tooth. An ancient fang of something very large and very, very deadly.
His strike finished, Justin stepped back, resting the Fang of the Heartstriker on his shoulder as the bite of the dragon magic faded and the water fell back into place, covering the bodies of the unknown number of lampreys he’d just chopped in two. “There,” he said, his voice thick with self-satisfaction as he turned around to give Julius a superior look. “That’s how it’s done.”