It was—viewed from a certain detached, clinical angle—like Fillory was playing chess with itself. A band of minotaurs straggled up, panting, having been outdistanced by the centaurs but plainly on their side. But just as they did flocks of griffins and pegasi began crisscrossing the battle space from above, kicking and raking and tearing. Actually the pegasi appeared to be worth fuck-all from an offensive perspective—their little hooves were too light and delicate to do much damage to anybody, and they were too fussy to beat anybody with their wings the way a swan might. But still, total respect to them for showing up. And what did it matter, because the griffins were cleaning house. Jesus, those guys were like flying tanks. Beak and claws. Built for war.

“Hey!” Janet said to the hippogriff. “You want to get in on this? You want to fight?”

But the beast shook its head. Ferrying Queen Janet around was enough for it. Its ambitions went no further. Which she totally got. This would be its war effort.

“What’s your name?”

“Winterwing!” it squawked back at her. She patted its neck again.

“Well flown, Winterwing. Well flown. Fillory is grateful to you this night. Take us higher now.”

No part of Fillory was untouched by the conflict. Here and there along the rivers and streams the nymphs had surfaced, the water around them reflecting the weird mingled light, though they only watched for now. Janet didn’t imagine they’d be drawn into a fight unless their interests were directly threatened. Some of the dryads took the same tack, standing by their trees, leaning against them or twirling their staves the way a cop would twirl a nightstick.

God! She’d totally forgotten about the forests. They were almost into it now. A grove of the forwardmost elms and birch from Corian’s Land (Corian: who he? Another thing she’d never know) had already jumped a big outriding oak from the Darkling Woods. The oak was a monster, and it had uprooted a couple of the lighter trees and was waving them over its head like a kraken, but it was being overrun. A few of its branches were cracked off already, and the leaves were flying. Trees were fucking mental in a fight, it turned out.

Janet looked up to see the moon tumbling overhead. It was still up there but way off course, spinning slowly end over end, aimless, lost in space. For some reason that was what did it. Janet threw her arms around the hippogriff’s neck. She sobbed into its soft feathers, and got snot on them too. Whatever, it probably had bird mites. This was it, she thought. This was my best thing. My best thing. I thought I would always have it, but I was wrong.