Men were fighting now too, around the castle. She squinted at them, focusing her magically augmented, telescopic vision. Who were they going to fight? Lorians? Monkeys? No, just those beast-people, half animal, half human, the ones Ember’s Tomb had been full of, and a unit of dark elves in shiny black chitinous-looking armor. Where had they been all this time? Josh and Poppy were playing defense, Josh on the battlements, Poppy flying over the press like a leggy Valkyrie, taking some incoming fire in the form of spears and arrows that she was having trouble managing.

There, she was backing off, floating higher, out of range. She’d be all right. She’d better, she and Josh were her ticket out of this shitshow. The last chopper out of magic Saigon.

Janet swept her gaze across the landscape, searching out more bad news. It was all very voyeuristic, like porn. More! More apocalypse! And there was more. Loads more.

The centaurs were coming thundering down from the Retreat where they hung out. Strict formation for these guys, they’d probably been drilling for this shit for generations. They mixed into the fray—they mostly fought two-handed, heavy short swords in both hands, or with bow and arrow—and holy shit! They were going after the talking animals? There—that guy lopped the head clean off what had clearly till moments ago been a talking deer. A spray of blood mounted up over the heads of the struggling fighters, then it weakened and subsided.

Those fucking dicks. Nobody liked them, and now she knew why. They were probably total Nazis—figured if they could take out the other sentient beings they could run everything according to their weird fascist philosophy. Even Janet couldn’t sit back for this. She sent a couple of bolts of lightning into their column, and got back a volley of arrows that the hippogriff evasively maneuvered around, after which it cocked its head back at her, just for an instant, to say with its furious yellow eye: WTF, I did not sign on for this.

“Sorry,” Janet said, and patted its neck. “I just can’t stand those guys.”

For a minute it looked like the centaurs were going to make the difference, but then boom: a spearhead of unicorns rammed into the side of their formation. Jesus. Janet had to turn away. You only had to see a unicorn lay open the side of a centaur once, the ribcage flashing white when the ripped skin flopped down, to swear a mighty oath never to fuck with or even look at another unicorn again. I’m putting down the hearts and fluffy clouds and backing away slowly. Don’t want any trouble here. You can have all the rainbows.