The Fourteenth Cycle

Back to the Drawing Board

Of all the thirty-nine times Quentin and his friends tried to defeat the beast, they never came as close the fourteenth time. Jane had grown frustrated during the past few time loops and was getting more desperate as each one restarted. She always tried to do something different each loop, like one time she tried to actually go with them to fight the beast. It ended in disaster and she nearly escaped death herself. In another time, she secretly gave each of them all books on high level battle, but three of them accidentally killed themselves learning it and the others were killed on campus during one of their classes. It was sad really, but she had to defeat the beast. Killing Martin is all that mattered, no matter her feelings.

After all her past failures, she finally came up with a new idea. All their failures were because of their lack of knowledge of magic and history. So she began to write the sixth Fillory book. She cleared up a few things, such as how things really were in the house, the importance of the button, and her role as the Watcher Woman, the blade. Once she finished it, she took it and sneaked it into Quentin's room and left it on his bed.

~X~

Quentin rolled his eyes in frustration as he argued with the others over what what they should do next. They found Martin's button, but haven't touched it yet. They were scared and didn't think they were ready to accidentally pop into Fillory just yet.

Margo, Alice, and Elliot wanted to try to use it to bargain with the beast while the others had a different idea. "That is the shittiest idea I've ever heard," Penny shouted, "This thing tried to kill us the first week class, what the hell makes you think we can strike a deal with it?"

"Think about it." Margo crossed her arms, "The beast is only after us because he thinks we're some sort of threat to him, but if we get him to agree to a truce, it'd be a win-win for all of us."

"Yeah good, great idea," Quentin replied sarcastically, "Lets go and try to talk to the monster that cut open our professors throat and wrecked havoc on the school for the past couple months. I'm sure deep down he's a reasonable guy that'll listen to the groveling of a bunch of kids. What could possibly go wrong?"

"Well what? Do you got a better plan?" She arched a brow.

"Yeah, I do actually," He nodded and pulled out the 6th Fillory book, "In this book, Jane mentions that Martin was trying to get this Fillorian blade called the Leo. It's said to have to power to tear to magic itself, like to kill a god so to speak. So imagine if we got our hands on this thing. If it can kill a god it sure as fucking hell can kill an evil mutant magician."

"But the blade is in Fillory, Quentin." Alice objected. "If we go there, the beast will find us and we'll all be dead before we can do anything."

"You don't know that." Julia stepped in, "We've all read the books, I'm sure there are plenty of places we can hide. We just need to get there and lay low until we find the blade."

"Listen," Kady put her hands up, "I'm all for killing this beast, but you're talking about going after a magician that is ten times stronger than all of us put together and on his territory no less. We're just going to get ourselves killed if we go over there half cocked and with out a plan."

"Yeah, but with your help we can take him on!" Quentin replied, "You said it yourself, our battle magic is improving!"

"Yeah, for people who just started learning it a couple months ago! This beast is old! I'm sure he's been doing this shit since before we were even a thought. If we tried to go at him now, he'll probably kill us in less than a minute."