The Magicians: Battle at Nexus

The whole way back from the Neitherlands, we were scared that Quentin, though he wasn't present for Alice's demise, through his emotional connection to her would somehow feel it.  That her death screams would blast through the Lands' Temporal Nexus, a recent discovery within the NLs and where the Beast had just taken Alice's life, and would hit Quentin hard. 

"And if that happens, we're doomed," said Dean Fogg, who had fought the most skillfully against the Beast, yet, Alice aside, had suffered the most tragically by the villain's hand.  The Beast had mutilated Fogg's eyes during his first attack, his first appearance at Brakebills; he did so again at the Nexus.  We all doubted Fogg's blindness would be temporary this time as it was in the past.  The Beast hadn't just gouged Fogg's eyes from his face in the Neitherlands, he'd done so magically, and he had done so using a spell that not even the smartest among us, the late Alice, obviously, could have even identified.

Penny didn't understand; neither did Eliot, Julia, or I, but only he aired his confusion.  We didn't have the strength to challenge our leader's alarmism—what we assumed, hoped, was his alarmism.

"Yeah, I don't get that, Dean," Penny said as we decanted to Brakebills.  "How the fuck would that doom us?"

"The mechanics behind it, Penny," Fogg said as he ran a painkilling spell on his bloody sockets, "would take years for me to explain, but just trust me on this: The psychic impact of Alice's death would take down Quentin instantly, and given ... hnnf ... given Quentin's spiritual connection to the fabric .... gnnt ... the fabric of magic itself ..."

"If he falls," I finished the miserable Fogg's words, "then that's that.  Magic falls.  And then everything falls.  Everything does."

"Exactly, Reginald," the dean confirmed just as the pain of his wounds overcame the power of his spell and he collapsed into Eliot's arms.

So as soon as we returned to Brakebills, we scrambled to find the means to keep the impact of Alice's death off Quentin. 

"Well, obviously, that means not letting him know about it," said Eliot as he poured drinks for Penny, Julia, and me inside the Physical Kids' house.

"Shouldn't be a problem," Julia said.  "I mean, he doesn't know she came back.  He didn't know Fogg had met with her; he thought she was still in Paris for the year.  Just like all of us did, right?  And I won't say anything about that."

"I won't either, yo," added Penny, who shot me a dubious stare—dubious because I'm a fucking big mouth.  "What about you, Reg?"

"No, no, of course not," I swore.  "I won't say anything."

None of us would.  But that wouldn't be enough.  Quentin, as everyone in our group knew, wasn't just in love with his estranged Alice, he was in touch with her, too.  In touch with her in an ethereal way. 

"He's her fucking satellite dish," Eliot had once put it.  "He picks up all her shit."

We had to do more than just seal our lips about Alice dying, is what that meant.  So for the next semester we kept Q drunk practically around the clock, and we ran as long a train of cute first years through his bedroom as we could.  Believe it or not, that idea came from Fogg, who spent the three weeks following our loss to the Beast casting remote emotion blocking spells on Quentin from a secret, off campus hospital—family emergency was Fogg's alibi—while very barely learning how to handle the cranial misery we were all betting he'd suffer for the rest of his life.

The spells, the alcohol, the fucking ... we prayed that stuff would suffice to deflect the vibrations, for lack of a better word, of Alice's death off Quentin for however long they'd need to be.