Lev Grossman - The Magicians

Quentin registered first Josh, then Eliot, hunching their shoulders and letting loose their cacodemons. Eliot’s was particularly awesome-looking, banded from head to foot in horizontal yellow and black danger stripes. It slid sideways across the smooth table, scrabbling like a flung cat, then charged into the fray with unself-conscious glee, clinging and tearing and leaping and clinging again.

“Goddamn it!” Janet was screaming. “What else? What the fuck else?”

“This is bullshit,” Eliot yelled hoarsely. “Side door! Pick a side door and go through it!”

There was a moment of premonitory silence, as if some of the creatures actually sensed what was going to happen next. Then the floor jolted, and a giant man made of glowing red-hot iron shouldered his way sideways through the wall.

He took the whole wall down with him. A flying brick nicked Fen’s head, and she dropped like she’d been shot. Waves of heat poured off the giant, warping the air around him, and anything he touched burned. He stood bent over, hands on the floor — he was about a third again too tall for the confined space of the banquet hall. His eyes were molten gold, with no pupils. Dust filled the air. The giant put his foot on Fen’s prostrate body, and she burst into flames.

Everybody ran. Anybody who fell was trampled. The heat coming off the man’s smooth red skin was unbearable. Quentin would have done anything to put distance between it and himself. There were pileups at the nearest exits; Quentin pushed past them and farther down the hall. He looked around for Alice and couldn’t even find anybody human until he risked a look back and saw Josh standing in the middle of the hallway, all alone.

He seemed to be undergoing one of his freakish power surges. He’d summoned another of his miniature black holes, the way he’d done that day on the welters pitch. It had nearly swallowed a tree that day; now as Quentin watched an entire length of tapestry wavered toward it and then flowed into it all at once, ripping free of its curtain rod with a sound like a fusillade of pistol shots. The light in the hall dimmed and became amber. The red giant was momentarily stalled by this. He was squatting down, studying the apparition, apparently fascinated by it. He was bald, and his expression was blank. His huge, hairless, glowing-red cock and balls swung loose between his thighs like the clapper of a bell.

Then Quentin was alone and running along a cool, dark side corridor. It was silent — the noise switched off like a TV. He was sprinting flat out, and then he was running, then jogging, and then, after a while, he was just walking. It was over. He couldn’t run anymore. The air scorched his lungs. He bent over and put his hands on his knees. His back itched painfully, behind his right shoulder, and when he reached back to scratch he found an arrow dangling from the hump of muscle there. Unthinkingly, he pulled it out, and a freshet of blood trickled down his back, but there wasn’t much pain. It had only gone in an inch, probably not even that far. He was almost glad it hurt. The pain was something to hang on to. He held the wooden shaft, grateful to have something solid in his hands. The silence was amazing.

He was safe again. For a few minutes he allowed himself to luxuriate in the simple joys of breathing cool air, of not running, of being alone in the semidarkness and not in immediate danger of dying. But the gravity of the situation kept seeping through, messily, until he could no longer blot it up. He could be the last one alive for all he knew. He had no idea how to get back up to the surface. He could die down here. He felt the weight of the dirt and rock over his head. He was buried alive. Even if he made it out, he didn’t have the button. He had no way to get back to Earth.

Footsteps in the darkness. Somebody was coming, walking. The figure’s hands were glowing with a light charm. Wearily, Quentin started in on yet another Magic Missile spell, but before he could finish he realized it was just Eliot. He let his hands drop and sagged to the floor.

Neither of them spoke, they just leaned together against the wall, side by side. The cold stone soothed the little divot of pain the arrow had punched in Quentin’s back. Eliot’s shirt was untucked. His face was all smudged with soot on one side. He would have been furious if he’d known.

“You all right?”

Eliot nodded.

“Fen’s dead,” Quentin said.

Eliot took a deep breath and ran his glowing hands through his thick wavy hair.

“I know. I saw.”

“I don’t think there’s anything we could have done,” Eliot said. “Big Red back there was just out of our league, that’s all.”

They fell silent. It was like the words had spun off into some void where they had no meaning. They’d lost any connection with the world; or maybe it was the world that had peeled away from the words. Eliot passed him a flask with something strong in it, and he drank and passed it back. It seemed to restore some link between him and his body.

Quentin drew his knees up and hugged them.

“I got hit by an arrow,” he said. It felt like a stupid thing to say. “In my back.”

“We should go,” Eliot said.

“Right.”

“Backtrack. Try to meet back up with the others. Penny’s got the button.” It was amazing that Eliot could still be so practical after everything that had happened. He was so much stronger than Quentin was.

“That big glowing guy though.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe he’s still back there.”

Eliot shrugged.

“We have to get to the button.”

Quentin was thirsty, but there was no water. He couldn’t remember when he’d dropped his pack.

“I’ll tell you something funny,” Eliot said after a while. “I think Anaïs hooked up with Dint.”

“What?” In spite of himself Quentin smiled. He felt his dry lips crack. “When did they even have time?”

“Bathroom break. After that second fight.”

“Wow. Tough break for Josh. But you have to applaud their initiative.”

“Definitely. But hard cheese on Josh.”

“Hard cheese.”

It was the kind of thing they used to say back at Brakebills.

“I’ll tell you something else funny,” Eliot went on. “I don’t regret coming here. Even now that it’s all gone to shit, I’m still glad I came. Could that possibly be the stupidest thing I’ve ever said to you? But it’s the truth. I think I was going to drink myself to death back on Earth.”

It was true. For Eliot there hadn’t been any other way. Somehow that made it a little bit better.

“You could still drink yourself to death here.”

“At this rate I won’t have the chance.”

Quentin stood up. His legs were stiff and achy. He did a deep knee-bend. They started back the way they came.

Quentin didn’t feel any fear anymore. That part of it was over, except that he was worried about Alice. The adrenaline was gone, too. Now he was just thirsty, and his feet hurt, and he was covered in scratches he couldn’t remember having gotten. The blood on his back had dried, sticking his shirt to the arrow wound. It tugged uncomfortably every time he took a step.

It became apparent pretty soon that he didn’t have anything to worry about anyway, because they couldn’t even find their way back to the banquet hall. They must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, maybe several. They stopped and tried some basic path-finding magic, but Quentin’s tongue felt thick and clumsy, and neither of them could seem to get the words quite right, and anyway they really needed a dish of olive oil to make it work properly.

Quentin couldn’t think of anything to say. He waited while Eliot took a piss against the stone wall. It felt like they’d come to the end, but they had no choice but to keep walking. Maybe this is still part of the story, he thought numbly. The bad part right before everything comes out all right. He wondered what time it was on the surface. He felt like he’d been up all night.