That one was on the level, no magic. He’d been taking boxing lessons, and he got the drop on the guy with an off-hand jab. Probably the Lorian wasn’t expecting what amounted to a suicide attack from some random peasant. Eliot knew he hadn’t done much damage, and that he wouldn’t get another shot, so he held up his left hand and force-pushed the man back so hard he brought six ranks of Lorians down with him.

It felt good. Eliot had no children, but this must be what protecting your child felt like. He just wished Quentin could have seen it.

He dropped the cloak and stood up straight in his royal raiment, so it was clear that he was a king and not a peasant. A couple of eager-beaver arrows came arcing over from back in the ranks, and he burned them up in flight: puff, puff, puff. It was easy when you were this angry, and this good, and God he was angry. And good. He tapped the butt of his staff once on the ground: earthquake. All thousand Lorians fell down on their stupid violent asses, in magnificent synchrony.

He couldn’t just do that at will, he’d been out here all last night setting up the spells, but it was a great effect, especially since the Lorians didn’t know that. Eliot allowed it to sink in.

Then he undid a spell: he made the army behind him visible, or most of it. Take a good look, gentlemen. Those ones with the horse bodies are the hippogriffs. The griffins have the lion bodies. It’s easy to mix them up.

Then—and he indulged himself here—he made the giants visible. You do not appreciate at all from fairy tales how unbelievably terrifying a giant is. These players were seven-story giants, and they did not mess around. In real life humans didn’t slay giants, because it was impossible. It would be like killing an apartment building with your bare hands. They were even stronger than they looked—had to be, to beat the square-cube law that made land organisms that big physically impossible in the real world—and their skin was half a foot thick. There were only a couple dozen giants in all of Fillory, because even Fillory’s hyperabundant ecosystem couldn’t have fed more of them. Six of them had come out for the battle.

Nobody moved. Instead the Great Salt River moved.

It was right behind them, they’d just crossed it, and the nymphs took it out of its banks and straight into the mass of the Lorian army like an aimable tsunami. A lot of the soldiers got washed away; he’d made the nymphs promise to drown as few of them as possible, though they were free to abuse them in any other way they chose.