the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[jackfrostbite]

"Not in particular. But I think you have both demonstrated that you are clever people, and you have resources I do not. And of the two of you, the king would have put up a much harder fight on being kidnapped."

[deepest_magic]

"Why didn't you come with those creatures who attacked Cair Paravel if you wanted us to kill you?"

[jackfrostbite]

"When those creatures attacked Cair Paravel I was still trying very hard to kill myself and expected to have a far better chance to do it on my own than the defenders of the castle would in battle. And I'd hardly expect you to kill me after capturing me, especially not if it proved very difficult."

[deepest_magic]

"Is not being the Witch's assassin any longer so unbearable?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Would you enjoy being feared and loathed by every good creature in the world?"

[deepest_magic]

"You were already that. What changed?"

[jackfrostbite]

He doesn't answer immediately.

[deepest_magic]

Well, Isabella has no other pressing engagements.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter carries her through the mysterious dark tunnels for several minutes.

Finally he says, "I was... happy, under her rule. At least, you could call it happiness. I don't know a better word. But it was not a happiness I chose. And I find that now it is gone, I cannot choose to reclaim it."

[deepest_magic]

"And you don't want to - swim across the ocean looking for nations we haven't even contacted yet to see if you can get a job as a refrigerator, because..."

[jackfrostbite]

Silence.

[deepest_magic]

She's waiting.

[jackfrostbite]

An answer does not seem to be forthcoming, this time.

[deepest_magic]

"What if James can't kill you, what if you are just immortal, forever, what then?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Then I am cursed to be miserable for all eternity."

[deepest_magic]

"And during that time what are you going to do?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Continue trying very hard to stop."

[deepest_magic]

"Are you planning to kill me?"

[jackfrostbite]

"I haven't decided."

[deepest_magic]

"You don't make sense."

[jackfrostbite]

"Do I not?"

[deepest_magic]

"No. For all you know James will just capture you and throw you in the dungeon with few to no implements of suicide. For that matter, don't pretend you couldn't have gotten notice to us that you had this problem and wanted help with it. You have enough of a vicious history to justify execution if it would be hazardous to try to take you alive, we could have figured something out, you don't need to add to the list. I don't understand anything about your pattern of behavior."

[jackfrostbite]

"You expect me to believe you would help me? Merely for the asking? You expect me to have heard of your wisdom and your kindness and thought them meant for one such as me? You, Aslan's creature?" He fairly spits the name, as though it causes him great pain merely to speak it. "You're right. You don't understand me at all."

[deepest_magic]

"If helping means killing you? When our citizens flinch at your name, you'd think we'd keep you alive, risk good creatures to take you that way, if you wanted to offer yourself up for creative forms of demise? I'm not saying it wouldn't have been a horrendously awkward negotiation but we don't need or want you alive, not even to punish you!"

[jackfrostbite]

"You own an inescapable fucking dungeon," he reminds her. "At that, you would have to take me out of the inescapable dungeon to try any especially creative means of killing me. The efficient thing to do, if you spare not a thought to my comfort - and I see no reason why you should - is to stab me in the heart and lock me away and destroy the key so I can never be retrieved. Though there be but few things I can think of worse than the life I live now, that same life locked in a forgotten dungeon is one of them."

They have reached another door, or something like it; he's stopping and touching the walls again.