They set themselves side by side, as if they were getting ready to lift something heavy. Then Dint stepped back, ceding first blood.

“Jesus,” Quentin heard himself say. “Jesus jesus jesus.” He wasn’t ready for this. This wasn’t magic. This was the opposite of magic. The world was ripping open.

Ferret feinted once and snapped a nasty jab at Fen’s face. The two ends of the quarterstaff were now glowing an ominous enchanted orange, like the tip of a cigarette. Somebody shrieked in the silence.

Even as one end of the staff whipped forward, Fen turned away from it, bowing forward at the waist, ducking the jab and turning seamlessly, almost lazily, into a graceful spinning roundhouse kick. She seemed to be moving slowly, but her foot clocked Ferret’s weak chin hard enough to spin its head around a quarter turn.

Ferret grinned, with blood in its big teeth, but it had more bad news coming. Fen was still spinning, and her next kick connected low and hard with the side of its knee. The knee bent in, sideways, wrongly. Ferret staggered and aimed the same jab at Fen’s face, whereupon Fen caught the flashing quarterstaff barehanded—the smack of it hitting her open palm was like a rifle shot. She dropped her slick martial arts elegance and tussled savagely, messily for control.

For a second they froze, vibrating with isometric strain while Ferret, with agonizing, comical slowness, stretched its neck forward to try to bite Fen’s bare throat with its big rodent incisors. But she had it outmuscled. Fen slowly forced the staff up under its chin, right into where its Adam’s apple would be, while her right foot stamped pneumatically on the outside of its hurt knee, over and over again. It gagged and twisted away.

Just as Quentin thought he couldn’t watch anymore, Ferret made its last mistake. It took its paw off the quarterstaff for an instant—it looked like it was going for a knife strapped to its thigh. With the extra leverage Fen flung it down hard on the turf, and the wind huffed out of it.

“Ha!” she barked, and stamped twice on its thickly furred throat, hard. A long, gargling rattle followed, the first sound Quentin had heard it make.

Fen popped up, visibly amped, her face red under her blond buzz cut. She picked up the quarterstaff, braced herself, and broke it over her knee in one try. Throwing the broken pieces aside, she leaned down and screamed in Ferret’s face.

“Haaaaaaaaaa!”

The broken ends of the staff spat out a few feeble burnt-orange sparks on the grass. Sixty seconds had passed, maybe not even that.

“Jesus jesus jesus,” Quentin said, hugging himself. Someone was throwing up on the grass. It had never once even occurred to him to try to help. He wasn’t ready for this. This wasn’t what he’d come here for.