They trailed after Dint and Fen—and what kind of retarded names were those anyway, Dint and Fen? he thought numbly—through the doorway and into the hill. He barely noticed his surroundings. A square stone corridor opened out into a huge open chamber that looked almost as big as the hill that contained it, which must have been mostly hollow. Green-tinted light filtered down through a circular oculus at the room’s apex. The air was full of stone dust. The ruins of an enormous brass orrery stood in the center of the room, its skinny arms stripped of its planets. It looked like a broken, defoliated Christmas tree, the smashed spheres lying at its base like fallen ornaments.

Nobody noticed a large—ten-feet-long large—green lizard standing frozen amid the remains of shattered tables and benches until it abruptly unfroze and skittered off into the shadows, claws skritching on the stone floor. The horror was almost pleasant: it wiped away Alice and Janet and everything else except itself, like a harsh, abrasive cleanser.

They wandered from room to empty room, down echoing stone hallways. The floor plan was beyond chaotic. The stonework changed styles and patterns every twenty minutes as a new generation of masons took over. They took turns putting light spells on their knives, their hands, various inappropriate body parts in an effort to break the tension.

Having tasted blood, Anaïs now tagged after Dint and Fen like an eager puppy, lapping up whatever observations she could get out of them about personal combat.

“They never had a chance,” Fen said, with professional disinterest. “Even if Dint hadn’t taken the second one, even if I had been alone, the quarterstaff is not a collaborative weapon. It simply takes up too much room. Once the tall one is into a form, those tips are flying left and right, up and down. He can’t afford to worry about his friend. You face them one-on-one, and you move on.

“They should have fallen back, waited for us together in that big chamber. Taken us by surprise.”

Anaïs nodded, obviously fascinated.

“Why didn’t they?” she asked. “Why did they come running straight at us?”

“I don’t know.” Fen frowned. “Could’ve been an honor thing. Could’ve been a bluff, they thought we’d run. Could be they were under a spell, they couldn’t help it.”

“Did we have to kill them?” Quentin burst out. “Couldn’t we have just, I don’t know—”

“What?” Anaïs turned on him, sneering. “Maybe we could have taken them prisoner? We could have rehabilitated them?”

“I don’t know!” he said helplessly. This wasn’t how it was supposed to work. “Tied them up? Look, I guess I just wasn’t that clear on what it would actually be like. Killing people.”