Chapter 6 : Penny

Penny doesn't know why he hangs out with these losers. Probably in self-defence: if he hears Quentin geek out one more time about Fillory being real, he may have to kill the little nerd. At least this way he gets to act proactively.

He reaches over and slaps him on the back of the head.

"Ow!" Quentin exclaims, "What was that for?"

Penny scowls, "If you could keep your Fillory boner in your pants…"

"I didn't say anything!"

"Fix. Your. Shields."

Quentin scowls, and runs off to Julia, no doubt to whine about how hard his life is. Pussy.

Five hours and too many fucking murderous ghosts later, he has to admit he is sort of invested in this now. Quentin's mind is mind is screaming betrayal and horror, and Julia looks quietly devastated. Alice looks like she's ready to travel back in time and murder the paedophile, and honestly Alice, same. That dude was a sick fuck. No wonder the Chatwins got the hell out of there as soon as possible.

OK, he has to admit that he's got a small stake in this now. He has to wonder though whether Martin knew exactly how haunted the house was. Did he know that his childhood trauma was playing on repeat somewhere in the assbum of rural England?

Whatever man. With no regrets whatsoever, Penny Travels to a nearby gas station and fills up a can with petrol, grabbing a lighter as he goes.

"Penny, what are you-"

God Alice's voice is annoying.

Penny's never been great at telekinesis (that was always Eliot), but he manages to crash the can pretty far into the house before sending the lighter in after it, turning it on mid-flight.

The explosion isn't that big, but the fire starts easily enough. Good. It might be petty, but you know what? He can live with that. He feels a flash of triumph to his right, and then Julia is twisting her fingers in an intricate pattern-is that battle magic?-and the house basically implodes. Yeah, they're not salvaging anything from that.

"Julia!" says Quentin, but Alice has a satisfied smirk on her face, and she exchanges a high five with Julia.

"Nice work," Penny says, "Any chance you could teach me that?"

Julia nods at him, looking better than she has for a while, and Penny thinks that this act of destruction has been pretty cathartic. Alice makes a gesture and a small wind starts up, simultaneously feeding the fire and making sure that the sparks are contained to one area.

"Alice!" Quentin says.

"Quentin," Alice replies.

Quentin looks disapproving, but then something in his eyes hardens, and he raises his fingers as if he's conducting an invisible orchestra. The flames rise with him, until they are towering at least twenty feet into the air.

"Nice one nerd," Penny nods at him. He hadn't thought he had it in him to be honest. Quentin nods back, a small vicious smile on his face, and exchanges his own high five with Julia. There's an awkward beat, and then Alice rushes forward and hugs him.

Urgh. Really guys?

The sound of sirens bursts through the air.

"Nice, but dumb." Penny repeats. Kind of sums up Quentin to be honest.

They book it before the first fire engines arrive. And yeah, technically could just Travel directly back to Brakebills. But what the hell. He has no confidence that they will make it back without him, and the fuck he's explaining this to Dean Fogg on his own.

It turns out that this is a good decision from Past!Penny, because Dean Fogg's eyebrows are raised so high that they look like they're going to blast off into the stratosphere.

"So to recap, in the course of your task-"

"-quest," Quentin mutters quietly.

"Your task to retrieve a magical button which is the only way to get into Fillory without the help of two literal gods, a task where you were meant to remain unobtrusive in case Ember and Umber had watchers on the house to alert them of Martin ever came to retrieve the button, you not only got an innocent bystander killed but also literally caused explosions."

Quentin looks up-

"-I think the explosions were justified-"

and dude learn how to take a dressing down-your input really isn't needed.

Fogg looks apoplectic.

Martin, lounging in the corner and looking as if he'd rather be anywhere else, finally speaks for the first time since they'd arrived.

"Leave them alone Henry, what's done is done. And honestly, the thought of that house being blown to kingdom come is the best news I've heard all day."

Fogg subsides, but there is a distinct flavour of expulsion lingering in his glare.

"Now, the most important thing: did you get the button?"

Quentin turns star struck eyes to the older man, and nods, apparently speechless. Penny wishes that he'd shut up like that more often, although with his crappy mental shields it probably wouldn't change much.

He reverently takes the button from his pocket, and holds it out to Martin, who recoils as if he's being handed a live snake.

"Keep that away from me," he rasps, and he's gone pretty pale, even for a white dude. There's a flicker, and for a moment Penny thinks he can see a scared teenager, but then it's gone.

Martin clears his throat and straightens embarrassedly.

"It won't do us much good if I accidentally get transported to Fillory, especially since I haven't trained you lot yet," he continues steadily, ignoring his previous reaction with a feline nonchalance.

"Now, I've had Margo going through some advanced poppers to give her a grounding for a few battle spells-she has been taking to them nicely."

Penny bets she has: with the amount of mental anguish she's experiencing at the moment she could probably ice over the entire school without trying-something he's sure Fogg hasn't overlooked what with not letting her out of the school wards since the beginning of this shitshow.

"Penny."

Oh shit, did he blank out?

"I want you to concentrate on your psychic abilities so that you can attempt to ah, 'incept' Eliot and see if we can't get some intelligence."

Martin fixes him with a hard glance.

"This is going to be difficult because not only is he in a different dimension, you also can't let him know that you're actually there. He has to think that he's dreaming."

"Why not?" Alice asks. "Wouldn't it be easier if Eliot can plan from his end as well?"

"I'm afraid not Ms Quinn. You see, Eliot is unable to say or do anything that would be detrimental to Fillory. He won't be able to say anything at all if he knows that you're not a figment of his imagination. This won't last forever, as Eliot is fairly intelligent by all accounts, but if you get enough of a feel for him that you can Travel, or even astrally project yourself to Whitespire, then that will be incredibly advantageous for us."

"What do you mean that Eliot can't do anything? Like, he literally can't?" Julia looks like she's imagining being that helpless, and that her imagination has a pretty solid basis to work from.

Martin nods gravely.

"You may literally have to knock him unconscious before you can help him. You're definitely going to have to find a way to break the binding."

He points at Julia and Alice.

"You're going to concentrate on that ladies. Henry informs me that you're capable of it. I'll need you to get a solid grounding in different binding rituals. I'm not entirely sure how Jane broke my binding as I was indisposed at the time."

Quentin yelps, literally yelps "Wait, you mean you were-?"

But Martin cuts him off.

"Quentin, I want you to work with Margo on offensive spells. I heard about your showing during the Welters tournament, and if you manage to harness that at will…"

He trails off meaningfully.

"Wait, you want me to learn battle magic? I mean wouldn't Julia, or Alice be better? I mean Jules can already do battle magic-"

"And that's why you need to get you remedial ass into gear and learn some of your own."

Margo is standing in the doorway to the infirmary, looking exhausted with a small patina of frost decorating her unusually rumpled clothes.

"So ovary up Clearwater. We've got a self-sacrificing idiot to save."