A/N: i had this idea and i wasn't gonna write it because i thought it would be too similar to the alice/quentin version but, fuck it, "it's been done before, but not by you" and here's me doing it.

this was gonna be a one-shot but i was at 5,000 words and realized i'm barely halfway through so... it was either split it in two parts or wait about a week to post it in its entirety. i'm very impatient.

this half is just gonna scrape the surface. lots of set-up and background because i'm a slut for character development.

disclaimer: there's going to be talk of rape, violence, and suicidal thoughts, so please do not read this if that is triggering to you. your mental state is far more important than my desire to get some kudos.

but if you are reading, good luck.

Julia first met Kady at Brakebills, but to say they were acquaintances would be an exaggeration. The two didn't even exchange more than glances between one another until they were both well into their third years at the school.

Julia was a knowledge student and as far as she knew, "that-weird-bitch-Kady", as her peers tended to refer to her, was a physical kid.

Not that Julia was one to discriminate against someone purely because of their Discipline. She just knew that said Disciplines had a tendency to clique with their own, and she wasn't necessarily keen on being the one to break the conformity.

Still, she often found herself inside a cozy cottage near the edge of the Brakebills campus, mostly to see Quentin, but also because one of the physical kids- she believed his name was Eliot- was almost always providing the cottage's inhabitants with unlimited access to cigarettes and alcoholic beverages.

It was the first place she saw the wild-haired brunette, sprawled out on a couch, one hand clutching a beer by its neck and the other tucked behind her head, lost in the mess of curls surrounding it. Directly beside her, holding an identical drink, was the somewhat well-known psychic student, Penny Adiyodi. His arm was draped around her shoulders, holding her close as if his grip was the only thing keeping her from leaving her spot to find a different guy to lean on.

Julia's first impression of Kady was that her classmates were correct in their lines of thinking. She looked like a Class-A bitch.

Outside of her time spent in the cottage, Julia found herself wasting away the hours in the library, below her room in the attic.

It was, without a doubt, the quietest room on the property, rarely filled with more than the occasional bookworm or overzealous student. Even on the scarce instances when more than a handful of kids entered the doors of the library, they knew better than to cause a ruckus. Julia was nearly convinced that the students assumed talking was prohibited in the room full of books.

That theory was easily disproved by a certain familiar mane of dark curls pushing through the library's wooden doors one night, far past the time she usually expected visitors.

"Is this place still open?"

The question made it difficult for Julia not to break the cool exterior she was wearing, caught off guard at the fact that Kady had showed up in her territory. Generally, it was Julia in the physical kid's cottage, stepping onto Kady's turf, but when Kady did the same, Julia couldn't help but feel exposed- vulnerable, even.

Julia watched the other girl's eyes narrow faintly, in a way that displayed confusion towards the length of time it was taking Julia to answer the question.

"I don't think we ever close." She explained, soon regretting how her use of the word 'we' made it sound like she was an employee, rather than a student who just heavily enjoyed staying up late to read any books that piqued her interest.

Kady nodded, taking a brief inventory of her surroundings and stalking towards one of the endless rows of shelves, skimming her eyes along the titles it held.

She got through half of a bookshelf before she was facing Julia again.

"Do you have those Fillory books?" Her head was tilted, but her expression lacked the curious tone she was asking with, instead holding an indifferent look, like the idea of reading a children's fantasy book was boring to her.

Julia thumbed through the remainder of pages in the book in her hands, pretending to search her brain for something she already knew the answer to. The shorter girl dog-eared the page she was on and pushed the covers together, standing from her chair and stretching slightly to break some of the stiffness forming in her legs. The request did strike Julia as odd, considering Kady didn't fit the typical, bookworm, magic-enthusiast description that usually accompanied those who read the Fillory and Further series, but she wasn't there to ask questions. (She also wasn't there to help random students find books in the library, but somehow that didn't stop her.)

Without having to instruct her, Kady followed Julia up a few steps to a higher level, filled with small, four-seated tables. In daylight hours, the spot was known for its incredible lighting, provided by a large garden window that looked out upon Brakebill's complex campus maze. But in the darker hours of the night, the area held a glum vibe, easily turning to the dimmest place in the room.

Quentin had read and reread the Fillory series so many times, Julia had their location mostly memorized, and when she found the neat row of five black hardcovers, she tapped her fingers along the tops, watching as Kady stepped forward and squinted at the gold-lettered titles.

"My friend loves these books." Julia was muttering before she had decided on speaking. Kady's arms were crossed over her chest as she squatted down to the books' height, eyes tracing over the words on the spines.

"Yeah, Quentin. He's the one making me read them." The taller girl responded, reaching up and pushing a wave of hair out of her eyes. Julia didn't quite understand the explanation. She had grown up with Quentin, and unless he had changed drastically in the few days that it had been since she last saw him, the awkward boy would not have the ability to 'make' someone do anything. Especially not someone like Kady Orloff-Diaz.

Even if Quentin had mentioned reading the books to her, it would have to have been Kady who decided to read them. Julia didn't have long to question the words before the girl was talking again.

"There's five of them?" Kady exclaimed, followed by a mostly inaudible utterance about how she didn't have the time to read five books. Her green eyes widened but quickly neutralized, and her hands reached for the book labeled 'Book One: The World in the Walls'.

"Thanks," Kady straightened and trudged back down the stairs, the book dangling from her grasp, and Julia followed suit, returning to her previous chair in the lounge area of the library.

Julia had expected Kady to walk out the double-doors at the front of the room, considering she had her book and there was no longer a reason to stay, but the messy-haired brunette plopped herself onto a couch across from Julia, breathing out a barely noticeable groan as she turned to the first page of the novel.

Julia's first instinct was to feel bothered by someone else occupying the space. After all, the library had become an escape of sorts for her, and the idea of someone frustrating her efforts to get some alone time initially made her want to yell at the girl to go read somewhere else.

But she didn't act on those urges, deciding Kady at least deserved a chance to prove she wouldn't be a nuisance to Julia's favorite time of the night.

Thankfully, that proved to be a beneficial choice. Kady kept to herself, only the sound of turning pages coming from the couch she was laying on. Julia- though she hated to admit it- would even go as far as to say that the company was a welcome change, secretly enjoying when her eyes would catch Kady's face scrunch up in concentration.

The night rolled into the beginning of the next day, and while Julia desperately craved the warmth of her sheets and blankets, the desire to wait for Kady to leave first kept her rooted in her seat.

It must have been two in the morning by the time Kady finally gave in, shutting her book and letting out an exhausted yawn as she stood from the cushions.

Again, Julia expected the brunette to take the book back to her room to continue reading it at another time, but her eyes followed Kady back up the steps to the ledge and stopped when they reached the bookshelf where Kady promptly returned the hardcover to its original location.

She even reset the pillows on the couch in a way that looked as if no one had sat on them in days.

Without a word, Kady disappeared out the doors, leaving Julia in a confused silence.

Kady coming to the library at nights soon became an everyday occurrence, neither of the two exchanging any words, but somehow speaking volumes to each other. Julia couldn't remember when the nonverbal conversations ended, replacing themselves with actual dialogue, but by the time Kady neared the end of the fifth book (a point she reached in just over two weeks), it was rare for the two to go longer than a minute without some comment about what they were reading.

And Kady was funny. The humor came effortlessly to her; she mindlessly read out passages, ending them with a snide remark that never failed to make Julia laugh.

Julia might not have found her own humor as easily, but Kady always giggled at her jokes, despite Julia's knowledge that most of them weren't nearly as hilarious as Kady's.

"So, that's it?" The curly-haired girl asked when she finally closed the last book of the series. "She just hides the button and they never go back?"

Julia pulled her nose from the literature she was browsing (Basics of Animal Linguistics Volume II) and nodded, the slightest of smirks perching on her lips. "That's it."

"That's a lame ending." Kady retorted without much thought, staring into space as if she was still trying to process what she had just read.

As usual, Kady returned the book to its shelf, tidied up the area she had been occupying, and sighed a huff of relief as she turned to face Julia.

"Well, that's three weeks I'll never get back." She scoffed and Julia mimicked the sound. Kady continued past the table the shorter girl was sat at, tucking a few curls behind her ears.

"See ya', Julia."

"Bye, Kady."

Julia didn't think twice about the standard closing to their conversation, but as the days rolled by, Julia never saw the mane of sloppy brown curls again, and she came to realize the words would be the last ones spoken between the two on the Brakebills campus.

It stung a bit at first when Kady stopped coming. Julia felt far too lonely in the empty library and even slightly angry that Kady had just stopped showing up without warning. It felt foolish to think Kady owed her an explanation, but Julia couldn't help but wonder if her original impression of the girl had been right all along.

She allowed the anger to build inside her until rumors surfaced of the particular girl on her mind. The rumors told that Kady fled the school, narrowly escaping expulsion, and dropped off the grid- one of the only students to ever willingly leave before their five years were finished.

The rumors tore the anger from inside her, filling the hole it left with confusion and sympathy over what could have happened and how terrible it must have felt to leave Brakebills in her last year, just months before she was set to graduate.


Julia left Brakebills, a cacodemon fresh under her skin, ready to face the world with a new notch on her belt. A notch that had been missing from her life since she was a young kid, scribbling doodles of mythical creatures and lands on the underside of an end table.

But the monotonous, dreary world around her made that notch feel more and more like a useless talent; something she spent five years learning, just to throw it away, seldom using it for anything besides a party trick or a convenient way to turn out a light when she was too lazy to get up. She easily lost herself in the grey, succumbing to sheer boredom and depression, before deciding that she had felt sorry for herself for long enough, and needed a new muse to keep her from going insane.

She stumbled upon an online chat room during one of her many dives into the wonders of online magic. It was an average-looking, elementary website- named Free Trader Beowulf for reasons unbeknownst to her- and where she first heard the term 'religious magic'.

The others in the chat knew her under the alias ViciousCirce, somewhat of an oxymoron, representing a goddess of magic, while also maintaining the status that she wasn't to be messed with. Not that anyone in the chat room would 'mess with' her. Everyone in the group was kind, always understanding and supportive of other opinions and ideas. They were truly a perfect team, no matter what the subject of their work was.

The established 'leader' of the group was a man under the pseudonym Failstaff, though everyone knew his true name to be Richard and called him by it. Richard was the one to bring up religion in the conversations, telling Julia about the way that religious magic could potentially fill the void that was consuming her.

The others of the group actively agreed and supported Richards claim, and while Julia would usually laugh in the face of anyone who told her religion could save her, the knowledge student side of her felt incredibly drawn to the new layer of magic being revealed. And while most of the members had their own, important reasons for needing to summon a god or goddess, one girl, Asmodeus- meaning king of the demons, Julia found after a quick online search- claimed to only be in on the project to gain more power as a magician and learn spells that schools didn't teach. While she would never admit it, Julia instantly connected with the reasoning, not having a significant reason why she would need a god's help, other than her own selfish benefit.

Julia and Asmodeus clicked from the beginning, talking into the deeper hours of the nights, often venturing into other channels of chats to discuss irrelevant topics that the other members didn't care to join in on.

Not long into her arrival to the chat, the idea of meeting up was brought into play. Though the proposal initially caused some apprehension on Julia's side, the thought of meeting the people she had been talking to- nearly nonstop- for weeks, outweighed any anxiety that was felt.

Richard arrived inside her apartment before any other guests, greeting her with kind words and a tight hug. It sent sparks of excited electricity up her arms, because for once since leaving Brakebills, she felt purposeful; the grey she had been feeling was long forgotten.

Bender, Silver, and Menolly filed in one after the other, exchanging similar greetings and telling stories of their travels, until all five of them were spread out amongst the couches and chairs in Julia's living room, sipping soda and devouring slices of pizza (Julia couldn't cook and no one liked the idea of her attempting to make a meal, so delivery was the mutual decision they came to for lunch).

"Asmodeus is just coming from uptown." Richard explained a few minutes into the beginning of their greasy feast.

"It must be rush hour." Menolly tacked on, shaking her head at the reminder that, even though Asmodeus was the closest to Julia's home, she had somehow managed to arrive far later than those who came from all the way across the country.

It was all that was said on the topic before Menolly delved into the wonders of her experiences with medical marijuana, Bender interjected at seemingly planned intervals, offering his own two cents on the topic.

It wasn't until the group was lazily reclined on the sofas, bellies full of tomato sauce and pepperoni, that a knock sounded off of the wall that would usually connect her apartment to the one next door, but currently- through the miracle of magic- acted as a portal from any part of the world into Julia's dingy living room.

Her stomach twisted at the sound, suddenly realizing how nervous it made her to meet the girl she would comfortably consider her closest friend at the time.

Richard stood from his seat, wiping his fingers on the denim covering his legs, and mumbled something along the lines of 'if that's not her', starting up the spell he had used every time to pull the wall open.

The edges illuminated with bright blue light, as if a neon laser had started to cut the wall away from itself. Richard placed his hands on the newly detached piece of Julia's house and slid it to the side with little effort, revealing untamed brown curls.

An involuntary smile grazed Julia's mouth, only to fade away when she laid eyes on a face that made her wish she hadn't eaten so much pizza.

Kady Orloff-Diaz stared back at her, mirroring the expression of pure shock, while the rest of the group took to standing from the couches and hurrying to engulf the girl in warm hugs. Silver was the first to notice the staring competition taking place between the two, knitting her brows at the strange reactions.

"You look at each other like you've met before." She intended for it to be lighthearted, but neither of the girls found it funny.

"We have." Julia and Kady said simultaneously, just as Bender untangled his arms from under Kady's.

Julia's eyes were burning, the pain's origin unknown until she remembered how to blink and quelled the stinging.

Before knowing Asmodeus's true identity, Julia had fantasized about hugging her and getting to know her in person, but when she found the girl to be someone she already knew, the idea of doing either of those felt awkward, as if the girl she was staring at was someone completely different to the sarcastic, witty alias she had been speaking to online.

Still, Julia stepped forward and held her arms out, raising her eyebrows in a way that asked 'why not?' A smirk played at the corners of Kady's lips as she gave in, opening her arms and pulling the shorter girl against her chest.

The voices of the others faded from her mind, only able to focus on the tingles shooting up every part of her body that rested on Kady's.

By the time they finally parted (Julia didn't know how long she was holding the brunette, but it felt like only an instant, leaving her wishing for more), everyone had returned to their previous conversations, leaving the two girls to be the only ones left standing.

"You don't look like a king of demons." They held back from joining their friends on the couch, speaking quiet enough that only they would be able to hear. Julia meant for the observation to be humorous, and let out the small breath she was holding in relief when Kady laughed shortly at the words.

"You don't look like a-" Kady cleared her throat, wetting her lips before she started again. "You don't look vicious." She rephrased, as if she had changed her mind, last minute. Julia didn't have to think long on it to realize why, but when she did, her cheeks seared with heat, her lips tugging upwards. She forced her gaze to her feet in an effort to ward off any further embarrassment.

When the redness in her cheeks finally subsided, she brought her brown eye back to the green ones beside her.

"I ordered pizza. There's breadsticks and soda, too." Kady's smirk remained steady as she nodded and ambled towards the cluttered coffee table.

And the memories were flooding back to Julia before she could stop them, drowning her in flashes of a quiet library, somehow turned loud from the conversations between two brunettes as they giggled at silly comments and anything else, simply because their laughs only made them laugh harder.

She didn't know there was a little piece of her heart missing since the days inside the library, but seeing a smiling Kady nibbling on pizza from the couch across from her, instilled a certain weightlessness inside her chest. It was a feeling she definitely wanted to get used to.


Summoning a god proved to be one of the most tireless tasks Julia had ever been given. Smarts were something that came naturally to Julia (she was a knowledge student for a reason), making the spell-casting aspect a breeze, but the tedious, taxing errands her and Kady were sent on almost convinced both of them to ditch the group and the idea of religious magic, as a whole.

Julia received her first 'sign' (in the form of levitation via spirit of a goddess) early into the process, instantly assured that the entire plot was not some hoax made up by a group of gullible religion fanatics, but Kady remained indifferent.

"Real or not, I've learned more with you guys than I learned in five years at that overblown school," was Kady's reasoning for sticking with the others through their efforts. Julia was just glad she wouldn't be losing the girl, again.

The primary tension between Julia and Kady wore off within the first couple days, their relationship reverting to the way it had always been in the lounge area of the Brakebills library. And when the plan had finally fallen into place- when Richard declared they were ready to start the ritual- the two girls had drawn so close, the thought of gaining extra magical power felt like an unimportant detail as long as they were together.

Something felt strangely unnerving as soon as the foreign chant began to vibrate through the walls of Julia's home, but it wasn't until Julia stole a glance at the figurine of the goddess in question and found it dripping blood from its ceramic eyes and nose that she wanted to call the whole thing off.

"Guys, stop. We should stop." She interrupted, disconnecting their hands and stepping into the middle of the circle they had formed. Bewildered gazes shot her way, slowly allowing the chant to taper off until it halted completely, leaving the group to scan their surroundings suspiciously. Before any of them had a chance to question Julia's sudden 'cold feet', the candles surrounding Our Lady Underground's (a name far too lengthy for anyone, even of a goddess, in Julia's opinion) figurine whooshed into grey smoke, as if an invisible breath had been blown in their direction.

"Julia." The uncannily familiar voice came from directly behind her- Julia could have sworn she even felt hot breath fanning over her neck and leaving raised bumps in its wake- despite the knowledge that no one had been there moments before. Julia spun on her heels and gasped when she found a well known woman in a pale, white dress standing on the wooden floors.

"Dumb, little witch," she shook her head deviously, a prominent glare cutting into the shaking girl in front of her. "You can't unring a bell." Laughter followed the phrase, echoing through the apartment.

Julia's heart drummed wildly against her ribs as the woman stepped away from her and began to stalk towards Richard. Julia turned her body to follow the movement.

"Richard." The goddess found her way to Richard's back, lifting two fingers and a cupped hand in preparation for a spell to be performed.

"Move! Richard, move!" The words narrowly escaped her throat before Our Lady Underground was tugging her cupped hand back, revealing a (still beating) bloody, red heart and a deep gash just to the right of the man's shoulder blade.

It was silent first, like her friends from the chat group somehow expected the whole scene to reveal itself as one big joke. It wasn't until the dark-haired woman brought the organ to her teeth and sunk them deep inside- Richard's lifeless body began to crumble under his own weight, eyes rolling back, his mouth a faucet of blood, spilling down his clothing and ultimately landing on the floor in splotches and puddles- when the others filled the silence with their own shouts and heavy breathing.

The room became a hodgepodge of screams and shrieks, begging the carnivorous woman to stop, or for someone to stop her. Julia found Menolly, Silver, and Bender to be huddled together when she averted her gaze to take a hurried body count. Her eyes briefly caught sight of Kady sliding herself under an end table- the same end table that Julia had drawn maps of Fillory on in her childhood- gripping the legs with fear on her face, her eyes squeezed shut as if closing them was enough to make the scary happenings fade away.

Julia wasn't as easily comforted, and when her eyes returned to the pool of blood on her living room floor, Our Lady Underground had vanished, leaving a newly alive Richard to carry her yellow, snake-like eyes.

Again, silence reigned, each of them trying to construct a logical explanation for the chain of events.

"You'll find I've taken away your magic. So, there's no point in trying. You may address me as Reynard the Fox, trickster of the faithful, the pure of heart, the very stupid," were the words that dissolved the quiet. They were in Richard's voice, but Julia knew Richard would never say something like that. Richard would never have ended his sentence with a heinous laugh, lust in his eyes for nothing other than death.

Richard never would have killed Menolly, Silver, and Bender, leaving their conscious bodies to choke and sputter on their own blood.

Richard- not Richard, Reynard- looked for Kady next, but Julia had seen too many people die for one day, and, hell if she was going to lose the closest person she had to a friend.

She stopped him from finding her, and while the decision didn't play out in her own favor, Kady got away. She yelled for Julia to leave, first, as expected. Kady had always been the one trying to protect Julia.

But Julia was the reason they were in the mess to begin with. She couldn't let herself watch Kady take the blame. Not like the others had.

Julia wasn't sure when Kady scurried out of the apartment, but when the disaster was over, and Julia was left lying on the ground, clutching her stomach and crying tears into the pool of blood around her, the space under the end table was empty.

She tried to clean up the mess on her own, attempting spells that failed when they found the emotional state she was in. She didn't want to drag anyone into her problems; she'd caused enough damage. But as soon as her hands brought rags to the pools of blood, the thought of having to clean up the scene unassisted felt incredibly overwhelming.

Every bone in her body told her it still wasn't safe for anyone to be in her apartment. Reynard could be waiting just outside her door, prepared to kill the next thing that stepped beyond the doorway.

But she called the one person she hoped would come back and clean up the mess that was made- and the mess she had become.

Kady's number read across Julia's screen but when she clicked the green button at the bottom of the device, dial tones rung endlessly until they gave up and sent her to voicemail.

Kady didn't answer. Julia was alone.


Next chapter: Kady's eyes shined an electric blue. She was screaming, clawing at her skin as if there was a fire growing underneath it. The fire showed itself moments later, engulfing Kady in it's blinding flame. Julia was yelling, too, begging for it to stop, pleading with whatever was out there to not steal the last glimmer of hope- the only source of happiness- she had left in life. No one answered.

A/N: send me death threats on twitter (callieincali)

to be continued, lovelies! (;