See, the Lorians had made a mistake. On their way down from the Northern Barrier Range they set some trees on fire, and an outlying farm, and they killed a hermit.

Even Janet was surprised by Eliot’s anger. I mean, she was furious, but she was Janet. She was pissed off all the time. Poppy and Josh looked grim, which was how they got angry. But Eliot’s rage was crazy, over the top. They burned trees? His trees? They killed a hermit? They killed a hermit? Where Fillory and the Fillorians were concerned Eliot no longer had any irony. His heart went out to that weird, solitary man in his uncomfortable hut. He’d never met him. They wouldn’t have had much to say to each other if they had. But whoever that hermit was, he obviously despised his fellow man, and that meant he was OK in Eliot’s book, and now he was dead. Eliot was going to destroy the Lorians, he would annihilate them, he would murder them!

Not murder-murder. But he was going to mess them up good.

He was tempted to let them try to cross the Great Northern Marsh, where the sunken horrors that dwelt there would deal with them, with extreme prejudice, but he didn’t want to give them even another day’s march on his grass. Besides, there were a couple more farms in the way. Instead he let the Lorians march part of one day, till noon, till they were hot and dusty and ready to knock off for lunch. Probably it was blowing their minds how easy it was all turning out to be. They were going to do it, lads, they were the ones, they were going to take fucking Fillory, dudes! He let them ford the Great Salt River. He met them on the other side.

Eliot went alone, disguised as a peasant. He waited in the middle of the road. He didn’t move. He let them notice him gradually. First the guys in front, who when they realized he wasn’t going to get out of the way called a halt. He waited while the guys behind those guys got crowded into them, soccer-stadium-style, and they called a halt, and all the way back down the line in a ripple effect. There must have been, he didn’t know, maybe a thousand of them.

The man leading the front line stepped out to invite him—not very politely—to kindly get out of the way or one thousand Lorian linebackers would pull his guts out and strangle him with them.

Eliot smiled, shuffled his feet humbly for a second and then punched the guy in the face. It took the man by surprise.

“Get the fuck out of my country, asshole,” Eliot said.