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Kel is fighting beside him, swinging the rolling pin with calculated grace. Well, as graceful as one can be while wielding a kitchen utensil. “This is undignified,” he mutters as he smacks a hag’s jaw with a sickening crack.

“Sorry to tell you, Kel, but I think we lost our dignity a long time ago,” Caspian says. He takes in a deep breath, and shadows pool at his feet. A swooping harpy hesitates, eyes widening in fear. Oh yeah, the Prince of the Below is back⁠—

The shadows whip toward the harpy…then blow through her like mist. She lets loose a laugh, a sound like gargling rocks.

Caspian sighs, tilting his head back. “Farron?”

“Hold on!” Farron ducks under a swooping pair of claws and digs in his bag. He tosses an object at Cas.

Caspian sighs deeply, then holds up an electric toothbrush. “Kel’s right. So undignified.” But he jams it forward, stabbing a hag in the eye with the buzzing contraption. A disgusted grimace crosses his face as he wrenches it free with a squelch.

“I knew that would come in handy!” Farron yells. He’s now dual-wielding the ukulele and a… Is that a spatula? Why did you bother packing a spatula?

You’ve been so passionate about your baked goods! he exclaims in my mind.

What, did you think I was going to bake Sira a celebratory cake? “Good job on destroying everything! Here’s some frosting!”

Farron’s lip curls, but another wave of hags and harpies descends on us, silencing any thought but survival.

“Rosie, look down!” I roar.

She steps away, unleashing a vicious spray of Windex at a hag lunging for her throat. The hag gurgles and recoils, clutching her face as blue liquid sizzles in her eyes.

“I think it’s mildly toxic!” she shouts.

A new hag rises from the sludge, bigger than the others, dripping with slime and dragging what looks like a rib cage–shaped harp made of bones. She plucks a string, and a horrible sound ripples out, a low vibration that seems to tug on all the wrong parts of my brain. A scream rips out of me, joined by Rosie’s and Wrenley’s and all the princes.

“What is that?” Wrenley gasps. “Make it stop!”

The harpies are now coming as a flock, dive-bombing us with wild screeches, claws flashing. My skillet knocks one away, but another slams into Ezryn, and he hits the ground hard, losing his grip on the umbrella.

“Ez!” Kel drops to a knee, dragging him back, rolling pin raised to shield them both.

We’re being pushed inward. The circle’s tightening. And for the first time, my arms ache. The skillet’s heavy. The air’s thick. The mud’s grabbing at our boots, sucking us down. And I can barely think straight with that music rattling my mind.

“There are too many,” Wrenley gasps, knees bending under the weight of another attack. “There are too many!”

I’m shoulder to shoulder with Caspian. His toothbrush is broken, just a twitching nub in his hand.

“Out of juice,” he mutters.

“We’re all out,” I say, and I mean more than the toothbrush.

All the jokes and grit and borrowed human junk.

None of it matters.

Without our magic, our weapons, we can’t stop this.

I hear her scream before I see it.

“Rosalina!”

A harpy’s talons sink into her shoulders, yanking her off the ground like a rag doll. Her legs kick, arms flail, and a spray of Windex fires uselessly into the sky as she rises higher. Her mouth is open in a sound I can’t even hear because my own voice is already splitting the air.

“No!”

I launch myself forward, skillet in hand, crashing through sludge and claws and bodies. But I’m too fucking slow.