After months of hunting the Beast together, Quentin and Alice came to an ancient watchtower surrounded by the sharp bramble thorns of a monstrous dying hedge. Somewhere on the horizon there was a thunderstorm in Fillory. The air was electric, crackling with potential. It smelled of coming winter, of travel, of death.
The path underfoot was made up of the skulls of birds.
Thousands of birds had flown through the sky overhead, circling Fillory and singing in the trees. Birds that reminded Quentin of better times. Of Brakebills. Now the birds were gone, like so many of his friends, and this crumbling keep was where the last of the birds had come to die.
There was an arch through the hedge, leading to the ruins beyond. The keystone of the arch had Eliot's face carved in stone. Sweet, sardonic Eliot, who'd been the first killed when they'd cornered the Beast outside Ember's Tomb, so many months before.
Quentin held out a hand, and Alice took it. She was ragged, exhausted, determined. She reached up to settle her glasses on her face--a gesture she hadn't been able to shake in their months of travel, though her glasses were broken and forgotten beside the shallow grave they'd dug for Eliot's body. It was a useless gesture, and it reminded Quentin how vulnerable they both were. It made him question why they were so eager to rush into destruction.
Bird skulls shattered under their boots. Fillorian boots, that at any other time in his life Quentin would've laughed to wear them. Ren-Faire chic. His old sneakers had worn out with the miles of travel through the rough, beautiful territory.
A voice boomed out through the dead air, echoing down from Eliot's carved face above them. "After so long, you'd think I'd know every secret this world has to offer, but over and over again you continue to surprise me with cast-off-relics and forgotten trinkets. What is it this time? A ladle? Enchanted slings and talking arrows? Another dagger, perhaps?"
The Beast's words, using Eliot's voice.
"He's here," Quentin said.
Alice looked ready to roll her eyes. She had an ornate compass clutched in her hand, and the arrow, shaped like a silver hummingbird, pointed directly to the watchtower.
"This is it." Quentin said. "For Eliot."
"For all of them," Alice said, "and for Fillory." Quentin's heart nearly broke at the power in her voice. The resolve.
Alice wasn't dicking around.
Beyond the brambles were labyrinthine ruins leading up a hill to the watchtower. The path twisted past cracked stone, tumbled rubble. The chalky, toxic taste of bone dust clung to the back of Quentin's throat. They smelled of sweat and determination.
A pillar of broken marble, carved in Margo's likeness, waited for them at the next corner. She seemed to be suffering, caught for eternity reaching for the stars.
Margo had been lost soon after Eliot. The Beast had impaled her on the iron spire of a tower steeple. It had taken days to get her down because the tower swelled when so close to grief. They were forced to climb and climb as she rose higher and higher. At the end, Penny had ordered them off so he could do it himself. "None of you know how to compartmentalize." He carried her body down so Margo could be laid to rest.
The Beast had moved on. They heard his laughter in the wind as a sky full of birds tumbled one after the other in his wake, their winged bodies broken on the unforgiving ground.
Quentin and Alice tightened their grip. When they passed Margo, she spoke. Like Eliot, it was the Beast's words using her familiar voice.
"You're still finding weaponized nonsense buried in Plover's paragraphs. It gives your obsessive minds a glimmer of hope. The Shield of Heart's Promise. The Pen of Spite and Circumstance. The Sword of Exhausting Optimism."
The Beast laughed, only Margo's musical voice was lost to the hum and shudder of moths. Thousands of them, filling the air. The sounds of batting eyelashes. The whisper of wings.
In his left hand, Quentin held a black stone carved with an eagle's talon. It wasn't a sword or spear, it wasn't a sling or an arrow. It wasn't even a Pen of Spite and Circumstance. It was a rock. Just a rock.
"We're going to die," he said, and Alice squeezed his hand.
"Stop saying that. Julia showed us how to beat him."
Another ruin fallen across their path had Penny's face. He was carved into something curled and cowardly. Broken in a way Penny had never been. The miserable face watched them pass and opened its mouth.
It said, "Patience isn't my strongest suit, you know. I've never let you live this long before. I was curious how many of Fillory's tools you'd find that would promise my destruction. There seems to be a prophecy for every splinter and spindle in this blasted world."
They didn't look into Penny's agonized face. It wasn't him. Penny had died fighting. Turned inside-out. There was still dried blood on Quentin's jeans. Quentin didn't think about it, about how much viscera spilled out.
"What does he mean?" Alice asked. "He's never let us live this long before?"
Quentin could only stare at the rock. A goddamned rock. Shouldn't they have something more than a rock?
"Quentin!"
"I don't know," Quentin said. "I don't understand any of this."
But wasn't there something deep in his mind? In his heart? A disquieting familiarity?
The maze of ruins twisted, and there was a thin silver birch tree stretched to the cloudless, birdless sky. Growing from the tree was Julia's face. Julia was good at finding angles the rest of them couldn't see. She thought outside the box. She'd found the stone and compass, told them how they were to be used.
The Beast had caught her. He'd bit into her. Chewed off her hands. Her shoulders. Her face. Quentin and Alice had been distracted, arguing about dead birds, a trail of breadcrumbs leading them to a trap, and Julia had . . . she'd fought.
In the tree, she shrieked with pain and rage and frustration.
"More tricks," Alice said.
"You have no hope!" Julia screamed.
"This is crazy," Quentin said.
Frustrated, Alice dragged him around the tree, past the turning, violent face of Julia, screaming at them both.
Months, crushed by the burden of time. The Beast ran here to the edge of Fillory, where they'd had no choice but to follow. It wasn't a hunt as much as a long, jacked-up game of hide-and-seek. The cracked birds, a trail of death and helplessness. The Beast was always a step ahead, always right on the horizon.
They had no other options. They could not return home. There was only Fillory and its mad, insatiable god.
They came to the watchtower, and the Beast was there.
Elegant and amused, sitting upon a tumbled monolith in the shape of a dead Ram, the Beast tapped his fingers together. Too many fingers. Thousands of moths twisted and writhed in a shifting cloud, obscuring his face.
Alice did not hesitate. She lifted the compass and turned her fingers just so and the hummingbird needle flitted out and away, aimed at the heart of the Beast. It fluttered in silver light and pierced the Beast's chest. He staggered back, but his buzzing laugh returned and he flicked it away.
"For Fillory," Quentin said. Beside him, Alice's hands moved in a way she'd learned from Julia--a hedge spell. Battle magic. Quentin raised his rock and it warmed under his hand. Glowed amber and ash, like living lava. Power rushed in and it filled Quentin with hope.
The Beast stepped forward and tore Alice in half.
Quentin screamed and brought the rock crashing down into the swarm of moths, over and over again. His eyes blurred and his throat was raw and Alice, his Alice, was on the ground in pieces, two bloody ragged pieces, her sweet eyes milky and dead and unblinking, speckled with her own blood. The rock crashed down upon the Beast over and over again. Quentin's arm ached. His shoulder ached.
When he stopped, Quentin was on his knees. The Beast was laughing on the other side of the clearing, still sitting at the foot of the watchtower.
Quentin stared at the Beast, then down at his bloody rock. His bloody hands. Alice was bloody, yes, but not torn in two.
Beaten to death. With a rock.
From behind the moths, the Beast clucked his tongue. "Destroyed by a simple glamour charm? I'd expected so much more from you this time, Quentin Coldwater." He sighed dramatically, as Quentin lifted Alice's broken body into his arms. "I suppose that even time cannot improve our faults and oversights."
The Beast's fingers splayed and bent, and Quentin was cracked, crushed, and discarded like the bones of the birds in that cold, dead place.