So, Martin Chatwin. Or - The Beast. Now he and Julia are going to work together to find and kill Reynard the Fox, but these are not people who get along well.  What Martin really wants, however, is to wreak havoc on the wellspring of all Magic in Fillory. If that happened, magic would die - everywhere. Big stakes.

Julia hooks up with her old enemy, Marina the hedgewitch. Turns out they're going to need her to get the revenge on Reynard the trickster god. She reluctantly agrees.

Quentin and Alice went to attack the Beast and kill him, but she was kind of super charged from drinking some god sperm (yep). So she became a niffin and died. Which is also how her brother died, if you'll recall. Quentin was WAY wounded.

Penny and Quentin set off to find the White Lady. As one of Fillory’s questing beasts, finding and capturing her grants the hunter a wish. Eliot is going to get his hands back and Quentin is going to bring Alice back to life. She is pretty unhelpful, and so Quentin just wishes to go back to his old normal not-magic life.

Also, back in Fillory, it turns out that Fen, Eilot's wife - is also pregnant. Eliot as a…dad? Sure!

Quentin, meanwhile, set to work reviving Alice by showing up at her funeral and having a weird fight with her parents. Turns out it was all a plot by Niffin Alice because she's actually been living in the cacodemon tattoo in Quentin's back. She wants out, but until then, she's having some fun living in his body.

In order to get Julia's baby out of her body, they need to pay a Mundang 10 million dollars. And so the gang robs a bank and they're not great at it and Alice makes a deal with Quentin. He'll let her drive his body for an hour a day if she gets them out safely. She does. Deal made.

Still trying to get his hands fixed, Penny continues running errands for Mayakovsky. He ends up at the Library of the Neitherlands. That charming Librarian offers him an alternative to his problem: for a lifetime of servitude, they'll fix his hands. Reluctantly, Penny agrees!

It turns out that Reynard's child is Senator Gaines. He's a demigod who doesn't know that he's a demigod. But he's about to find out when a shadeless Julia kidnaps him. Ultimately, Reynard takes him back under his wing, but…not without some serious bloodshed.

Margo took a meeting with the ambassador to the fairies - who once and for all FIXES the wellspring, which had been on the fritz since Ember pooped in it and in exchange, Margo agreed to give them Eliot’s first born baby. It's not great judgment call.

Unable to box her up for all eternity because of feelings, and not wanting to kill them both by holding her in, Quentin decides to trust that Niffin Alice doesn’t want to hurt anyone and lets her go. And just like that, she sails into the air, leaving Quentin no hope of seeing the real Alice ever again. Or so it would seem.

Julia and Quentin go off to find Julia's shade and they learn that it's in the Underworld. The only way to get THERE is to bring a gift to an ancient one. That's a dragon. Yep. Dragon. She sends them to the Underworld and they sacrifice - the magic button that enables them to travel back and fourth from Fillory.

While Q. and Julia are in the Underworld, though, they find both Julia and ALICE's SHADE! When her body turned into a niffin, her shade must have been brought to the underworld! Because she's feeling big-hearted, Julia sacrifices her own shade for Alice's. It’s against the rules, but, she says, it has to be done.

Penny finds the book that Kady wanted about how to kill a god but it was in a place called "The Poison Room" so now he has something they're calling "Magic Cancer."

Julia and Kady conjure Persephone (AKA Our Lady Underground), who's Reynard's mother! Julia calls her, which attracts Reynard!  Julia's chance to kill him comes and goes however, when Persephone convinces her to spare Reynard's life - she'll take care of her son. Kady is furious, but Julia gets her shade back.

When the gang throw an unwanted reunion for the gods of Fillory, it doesn't go well. Ember goes nuts, kills Umber, and turns on the magicians. Luckily, Julia had the spell she was going to use on Reynard, and uses it on Ember.  So now, the gods are dead and magic is saved.