All the heavy hitters were checking in now. Up in the Barrier Range the giants—for lack of anybody their own size to pick on, and because they knew they were all going to die anyway—were fighting each other, brawling and weeping huge tears as they did so. Over by Whitespire the battle lines parted to make way for a large flightless bird, proceeding in a stately fashion between the two sides of the Battle of the Animals, and that could only be the Great Bird of Peace, one of the Unique Beasts. It had the gait of a cassowary, or what Janet imagined the gait of a cassowary to be, lifting its feet carefully with its inverted knees and swaying its head backward with every step.

When it reached the center of the field it paused, gazing around it calmly as if to say, now then, my lovelies, isn’t it time to put an end to this foolishness? Do you not feel the love in my heart, and in your own? Then two big cats, a panther and a leopard, swarmed it, and it went down without even a squawk. It might have had love in its heart, Janet thought, but it also had a hell of a lot of blood.

Along with her regular serving of horror Janet felt an extra cold chill. Whatever magic gave the Unique Beasts their mandate, that was the foundation of Fillory, the rebar in the cement. Even the Deeper Magic wasn’t cutting it tonight. If that was failing then all bets were really off.

The Northern Swamp was disgorging its beasts, some real sick fucks, chief among them that snapping turtle, the Prince of the Mud, and some huge wet lizard thing banded in yellow and black, flat and wide and squashed-looking. A grotendous big salamander. Even as she watched it it paused, trying to focus its wide-set eyes on something tiny, or relatively tiny, directly in front of it.

It was a white stag. It was the Questing Beast, standing before it, alone and unafraid. Oh, thank God, she thought. She couldn’t hear, but as she watched it said something. It said it again, and then a third time, like someone trying to strike fire from a wet matchbook. The salamander closed its huge eyes and settled down on its belly. It was dead. The Questing Beast had wished it dead.

It had taken three tries, though, and apparently even the Questing Beast only got three. It had saved its wishes all those years, all those centuries, and now they were gone. It seemed to shrug, if a stag can shrug, and then the snapping turtle snapped, and the beautiful beast’s white legs were sticking out of its mouth for a second, and then it was gone.

That seems unfair, Janet thought. A bad trade. The Questing Beast for some big salamander I never even heard of before. A rook for a knight.