The Garden Path #BattleTheBeast

Ecila shakes her head and agrees to go at the same time. She reminds him of a girl he once knew, someone who constantly contradicted herself. "I'll get my keys," she adds.

When she turns away, Quentin draws a quick power quint in the air and copies the spell into his created glimmer. It will replicate the journal page backwards, but he can deal. Ecila returns with the keys just as he hides the magical image up one sleeve.

Her touch is a cool surprise, her arm slipped through his in an old-fashioned gesture. Ecila leads him past spotted spirals of snakes and gelatinous salamanders in the numerous jars. In its tank, the squid seems to wave goodbye with a lazy tentacle. 

This is way too easy. Quentin hesitates as he reaches for the handle. As if his thought is a catalyst, the door explodes inward to reveal the dark, negative image.

Dapper suit. 

Expensive shoes, a quirky little dance step.

Face composed of large, quivering moths: The Beast.

"Stop," Quentin yelps, and everything stills. The three of them, Quentin, Ecila, Beast, are on the Garden Path again, except this time the walk will be shorter. He and Ecila will get sucked into the Beast's deafening silence, just as they have before. And before that.

Quentin remembers it all in one heartbreaking instant, an endless reflected eternity of failure.

His eyes water in sympathy with Ecila's tears, silvery snailtracks on pale skin. Dr. Nitram's stolen spell still burns in his sleeve. If Quentin successfully uses it – thanks to his intensive training with Mayakovsky – will the power overwhelm them, the way it did to her brother?

The brother of the girl. The girl he once knew on the other end of the Garden Path.

The Beast strolls into the spirits room and stops in front of the long tank. One elegant hand undoes a cufflink and rolls up a sleeve before he plunges his arm into the soup. Reality seems to shift as the dribbling squid is raised out of the tank and pushed inside a nonexistent mouth.

Quentin hears the sound of chewing, and the limp squid twitches.

Will The Beast eat Ecila? Steal her eyes? Plaster her to a board under glass? Thrust her into a jar, where she'll float in sprits forever?

He visualizes Nitram's spell, makes the movements in his mind. They slot into place like nails in a plank.

The Beast halts, tentacles spilling over its shirtfront. Around its shoulders, the moths flutter wildly before streaming into a cloud, a pillar, an arrow, before leaving the slender body in tailored clothes. The moths reform in a cloud over Urashima Taro's glass coffin.

Somehow, Quentin has managed to behead The Beast.

The decapitated thing turns to him, squid slithering to the floor. When Quentin looks at the place where a head of moths used to be, the sight makes him sick. It's like peering into a spiral of mirrors, an impossible tangle of magical insanity.

Its hand drips formaldehyde. One finger wags back and forth: Oh No You Didn't.

Quentin and Ecila watch, lepidoptera pinned to a mat, as The Beast fumbles its way over to the metal desk and sweeps the tree-clock to the floor. Ecoila's little ceramic keepsake splinters, a firework of destruction.

The pieces resolve and a sapling grows from the tiled floor. The Beast shuffles, breaks a branch from the tree, and shoves it into the nub of its neck.

So close. Quentin's breath whistles in his throat. So close this time, I was just so damn close.

Leaves rustle as The Beast turns back to them. For some reason, Quentin wants his last sight in this variant to be of Ecila, the tears on her face, the batwing of black hair. Blonde, Quentin remembers. She's a blonde on the other side of the Garden Path, and once upon a time they rolled together in a welter of snow and fox fur.

"Snow," the leaves on The Beast's neck whisper as he gets closer, closer, closer. "Fox fur. Ripped pages. Ellsworth Downs. My little butterflies. I'll soak you in this very convenient tank until you're soft, open your wings with a teasing needle."

Fine black hair slips through his damp fingers. "Strap you down on a cork backing. I'll watch as your skin dries into timeless beauty. The final pin goes here, see?" 

Oak leaves brush against Ecila's chest. "Right through your thorax into the holding board. And thus we say Farewell."

Farewell, Quentin thinks. Welfare, Ecila, alicE, fare...

Filed under 24th attempt, variant #.837362647485