He definitely never thought he’d see it like this. Far to the west he caught a smeary glimpse of a crash-landed sun like an egg yolk on a skillet, melting and burning in a steaming, boiling sea at the edge of the world. He had a close booming fly-by with a massive object which he only realized after it was gone was the moon itself, spinning low and off its axis. Fires blazed and dark armies surged across the surface of the world. Something colossal was slowly surmounting Fillory’s rim, peering up over it with its enormous curious face: one of the great turtles that formed the foundation of the world, coming up at last to have a look at what it had been carrying on its back all these thousands of years. Fillory, his beautiful Fillory, was ruined and dying.

But it wasn’t dead. Not quite. Not until there was nothing left.

Then he was down. The ground shook under his feet, and the air was full of rumbling and tearing and distant cries and the smell of smoke. Burning ash from somewhere whipped by on a hot wind.

His arm: someone still had hold of it. It was Alice.

“What are you doing?” he shouted over the noise.

“Being an idiot,” she said.

She actually managed a slight smile, her first of the new era. He smiled too.

“Come on then. We have to find Ember.”

The button had set them down outside the city gates of Whitespire. The wall around the city was half collapsed, and one half of the great gate hung askew. Some of the towers of the castle still stood, for now, but they were swaying. Quentin pointed to them; Alice nodded. There was no way they’d find Ember in all this unless He at least halfway wanted to be found, and if He wanted to be found at all that’s where He’d be.

“I’ll do shields, you do speed,” Alice shouted.

They spent an intense minute casting on themselves and each other, then they held hands and ran through the gate together.

The streets were deserted. The town looked like it had been bombed, and the inhabitants were either dead or gone or huddled in their cellars. Quentin and Alice ran carelessly, bounding along with exaggerated magical strength. Sometimes they cut through ruins and leveled lots to save time; once a tremor sent a teetering wall of stone flopping down heavily right onto them, which would have killed them if Alice’s spellwork hadn’t been top-notch. Instead it just slammed them face down into the dust, and they shrugged off the heavy blocks and picked themselves up and caught their breath and ran on.