They charged on and up into white cloud, and Fillory vanished. Clouds in Fillory weren’t clammy and disappointing the way they were in the real world, they brushed past you all warm and soft and cottony, just solid enough to be comforting. Fuck love, fuck marriage, fuck children, fuck fucking itself: this was his romance, this fantasy land at whose helm he sat, steering it on and on into the future, world without end, until he died and tastefully idealized statues were made of him. It was all he needed. It was all he would ever need.

When they emerged from the clouds they were over the Great Northern Marsh. Bad shit down there, he knew. In fact there—the water was disturbed over a wide area as the mottled back of some vast living mass sank from view, into the black bogs. Maybe one day, if he ever got that bored, he would lead an expedition in there and see what was what.

Then again maybe he wouldn’t. He stared down into the marsh for a long time, lost in thought, and when he looked up he found that they were no longer two, but three. Ember had joined them, in between him and Janet, flying in formation.

It had been some time since he’d had an audience with the god.

“High King,” the ram said. “I would have words with you.”

Ember’s deep bass voice was clearly audible even over the rushing of the wind. He had no wings, and He didn’t even bother to gallop, though occasionally the air ruffled His tight woolly curls. He just flew along in between them, stiff ram’s legs tucked up under Him like He was sitting on an invisible flying carpet.

“Hi!” Eliot called out. “I’m listening!”

“You have won a great victory for Fillory today.”

“I know! Thanks!”

Maybe this was the time to bring up Quentin. But Ember went on.

“But this was only one battle. A war is beginning, Eliot, a war we cannot win. The last war.”

“What? Wait, I don’t understand. What does that mean?”

This wasn’t the speech Eliot was expecting. He was expecting the one where Ember praised him to the skies, showered him with fatherly approval, granted him a boon.

“What war are You watching?” Janet shouted. “We crushed those guys! Eliot crushed them! It’s over!”

“Have you not wondered how it is that the Lorians could have crossed the Northern Barrier into Fillory?”

“Well, yeah,” Eliot admitted. “A little.”

“The old spells have weakened. This invasion was merely a portent, foretold long ago. The war we are losing is with time.”

“Oh,” Eliot said. “OK.”

Was it? A war with time. He vaguely remembered something like this in the books, but it had been a long time since he read them. And even then he hadn’t read them too closely. Once again he wished Quentin were here.

“The end is almost here, Eliot,” Ember said.

“The end of what?”