Against the Beast

The fourteenth time, Eliza met him on his way to that fateful noon class after the failed summoning.

"You are going to be late, Quentin Coldwater."

"You're the woman from the coroner's office! I'm sorry -"

"No time for it, Quentin. Come with me." She turned and strode away across the quadrangle toward the fountain, then stopped after a few steps and turned. "Are you coming, or aren't you?"

Quentin followed. What could they do to him for being late?

Eliza stopped at the fountain's rim. "This place has power, Quentin. This fountain is home to a spirit, of sorts. Do you know what that means?"

"From what I've been reading, it means someone died here, doesn't it?"

"That, and that the someone was bound to this place by the manner of his death. In this case, the someone was a magician, a very powerful magician, who died in the act of saving another. He overspent his power, and was changed into a thing we call a niffin, a sort of spirit of magic that exists solely to prey on magicians."

"Why are you telling me this? What does it have to do with me?"

"The niffin tied to this fountain is the remains of Alice Quinn's brother - the spirit you and your friends tried to summon last night." The Englishwoman noted Quentin's incredulity at her knowledge of something she couldn't know. "Oh, yes, I have an advantage over you, I can't go into it just now, but trust me when I say I have your best interest at heart."

Quentin's puzzlement was intense, but that was already starting to seem a normal condition since his "invitation" to the Brakebill's entrance exam.

"I still don't see how this niffin is connected to me. I helped Alice with a spell. It required four people to cast -"

At that moment, the tower clock in the administration building began to chime the hour of noon - began, but stopped, as if the sound had been cut off before the first strike had even begun to decay. Quentin turned; he was supposed to be in class.

"No, Quentin. If you were there right now, you would be dead." Eliza looked toward the lab wing. "Someone is there, someone you and your friends let in, and he is there to kill you."

"What can I do?"

"You can survive, and grow powerful. In time, you will be able to defeat him."

"But, my friends! I have to do something."

"There is nothing you can do, as you are now. If he chooses to kill them, they are already dead. The only thing you can do is survive this day."

At that moment, there was a loud crash from the administration building. The sound of the struck bell resumed, as if playback of a recording, previously stopped, had been resumed.

"That will be Dean Fogg, being a hero. I hope he hasn't died, this time."

Quentin looked around, startled. The woman was gone. A cloud of dust rose above the lab wing of the administration building. Uncertain what he should do, he hesitated a moment before breaking into a sprint. Someone there would need help.

By the time he arrived, the dust was starting to settle. The laboratory was filled with the smell of fresh blood, splintered wood, burnt hair, and an insect smell, like the inside of an old wardrobe. Five people were dead, and no one else was even injured.

One of the dead was Dean Fogg.

Another was Penny, Quinn's roommate in the temporary quarters.

Another was Julia, his best friend since childhood.

Alice and Kady, the other participants in the summoning, were unharmed.

<==>

Four months of intensive study later, Quentin and Kady had found their way into Fillory. Alice had left Brakebill's (rumor was, having been expelled) just after the Beast's attack.

They thought they were well prepared. Quentin's only thought in all of that time was the destruction of the Beast. He'd spent hundreds of hours in the campus library, trying to determine what or who the Beast was, had been in Acting Dean Sunderland's office (formerly that of Dean Fogg) dozens of times asking questions, had virtually given up both sleep and drinking to spend every waking hour in study. The entire staff agreed he was the most driven student they'd ever seen.

Quentin was deeply disappointed at the condition of Fillory; the books had portrayed it as a place of light, music, and magic, but it had much more the character of a badland. Instead of songbirds, there were murders of crows; instead of beautiful hardwood forests, there were dense stands of slender conifers, standing dead around sparse burnt columns that could only be the trunks of once-magnificent oaks and maples destroyed by wildfire.

They walked for nearly a day before they saw another person, who promptly ran from them. They drank from pools edged with green scum, for lack of any running streams, and used magic to purify the water after the first taste revealed it to be brackish. The year-round fruit described in the books was nowhere to be found, and after much searching they managed to dine on the roots of bulrushes, the innermost bark of alder saplings, and sorrel leaves. Something about the combination gave Quentin heartburn - or perhaps it was what had happened to this place he loved.

Eventually, they came to a village, where a smith took pity on them and fed them a real meal. He kept looking at Quentin in a way that made the Earth man uncomfortable, but didn't depart from the kind of courtesy and generosity Quentin had read about in the books. Once they had eaten, and slept in a room he provided, he wished them well before setting them back on the road.

The only clue they had about where to go was Quentin's memories of Book 6, which he'd found among Penny's things after the lab attack - despite Penny's denial of having anything to do with the manuscript's disappearance. The author, writing as Jane Chatwin, had made several references to The Castle that Wasn't There, and for lack of any better place to start, Quentin and Kady made for it.

What was to be the last night traveling before reaching the Castle, Quentin awoke to the sound of hundreds of small pairs of wings, and the insect smell he would never forget from the laboratory, the day of the attack.

"Don't bother trying to move." The voice was refined, with an English accent. "And don't look so hard for your friend; she was useless, and so is already dead."

Quentin tried to move none the less - and found he could move only his eyes.

"I've been waiting for you to show up. Last time, you were much more prompt, and you brought more friends. This is hardly a challenge."

Quentin stared at where the Beast's face should be, behind the swarm of moths, hoping his gaze might burn a hole in the monster's head.

"Oh, right, you can't speak in this condition, either. Well, no matter. I rule this land now, and eventually I will use its power to rule every world." He waved an inclusive gesture that showed that he had too many fingers.

"I guess I should let you loose, so I can enjoy killing you again. Perhaps next time you'll do better."

Quentin felt his fingers and toes twitch. He closed his right hand on the special gift he'd brought for the Beast.

"Well, aren't you going to stand up and die like a man?"

Instead, Quentin flung back the flap of his sleeping bag, raised his right arm and pulled the trigger.

The shock of the bullet smashing into his belly would probably have flattened him, if he'd been standing. The hot blood cascaded over his body, and he felt his consciousness wavering as the Beast held up a quartz crystal wrapped in copper wire and suspended on a silver chain.

"Did you seriously think I'd never dealt with a gun before?"