Look to the Stars

While watching a kaleidoscope of bioluminescent butterflies, Quentin's heart grew heavy. Their beauty is unparallelled, but they are too close to being moths and that reminds him of The Beast. They spiral and dance, flitting to and fro. Anyone else would welcome their sight and experience joy, but not Quentin. He is in the Great Bramble in Fillory.

A total eclipse is in full effect, but not the customary noon time variety. As if that weren't bad enough, the constellations are alive and... lusty. Sagittarius is freely mounting the nearest available body of stars, Orion is parting with his belt and the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades are ravenous as they satisfy their hunger. Looking up currently provides your own celestial porn show. This gives a whole new meaning to "starfucker".

No time to indulge the distractions above. "Where are the others? They should have been here by now," he muttered.

Julia, Penny, Eliot and Alice were stalking a mystical entity in the Darkling Woods. The Fearsome Rask appears sweet, harmless and approachable. Looking similar to a tasmanian devil, it possesses a rare and valuable weapon, its smile. According to lore, its smile can eat a god. The smile is replaceable to the Fearsome Rask; sharing it creates no loss or vulnerability. When unleashed, it starts out resembling a hologram or projection. The smile will appear like a murderous Jack-O-Lantern's grin with glowing white jagged teeth. Then it solidifies into physical form, and with great ferocity and zeal, will consume the nearest god. Upon completion of the divine feast, it simply evaporates.

Today, the Fearsome Rask is requiring amusement. He will part with his smile when he is presented with a waterascendant, consider it a reverse waterfall.

Feverishly, the group begins to hash out expertise and assignments. Alice takes the idea of the ascendant, a grand work that defies physics, and begins casting an elegant transparent template that will be filled in by Julia's work.

Julia sculpts the water to adhere to parameters: length, width, height, acoustics and temperature must all be accounted for. Once formed, just as in nature there is a pleasant spray of mist.

Penny's responsibility is to gather water from The Silver Banks. Instead of travelling hundreds of times, to gather thousands of gallons, he is armed with a Hydromultiplicatus Spell and a thimble. The spell creates a full sized body of water, containing the same composition on all levels, as the source.

Happy to supervise from behind his bottomless flask, Eliot takes a long pull as everyone set about on their duties.

Even they were impressed with the finished product. It sounded so pleasant and let's face it, when was the last time you saw water moving against gravity?

Satisfied, the Fearsome Rask placed his smile in a golden whistle. Just one trill will unleash the smile, and Fillory will have one less psychotic moth faced motherfucker of a god.

"We have to go," said Alice. Nods of sincere thanks were shared with the Fearsome Rask and off they went courtesy of Penny. Julia had a lock of Quentin's hair to guide them back together immediately. "Yes!" proclaimed Quentin triumphantly as he viewed the shiny object that would soon obliterate their powerful nemesis. They set off to lure the Beast to Morgan Downs.

They had barely taken any steps when they begin to hear tribal drumming in the distance. Hypnotically, they are drawn to the music. No sense of time or awareness of purpose, the drums draw them in with urgency.

Beyond a clearing, parapets loom over a torch-lit fortress. As they cross the threshold, laughter, cheering, and jeering are heard. As the daze fades away, they realize they can't leave. The fortress is warded from the inside to keep everyone in. Penny tries to travel, with no success. There's a ward up for that as well.