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]

"I don't die if you set me on fire," he says. "I don't die if you build a fire bigger than I am and throw me in. I don't die if you cut my head off or put a sword through my heart. I don't die if I drink molten lead! I don't die if you lock me in an oven, and I don't die if you crush me under an enormous rock, annnnd I don't die if you hold me underwater and cut my throat, I just end up trapped in ice for a year! Isn't that lovely?"

He does not sound like he thinks it is lovely. These are the emphatically fake-cheerful tones of someone sarcastically remarking that it's just wonderful how their house has caught fire and burned to the ground taking with it all of their belongings and their elderly grandmother and the family pet.

[deepest_magic]

Well, of her options, which largely consist of "talking to him" and "not doing that" -

"What does happen if you cut your head off?"

[jackfrostbite]

"It grows back. I end up with a head made of ice on the ground and a head made of me on my shoulders."

This discussion has taken them to the shore of the lake. There are no creatures around.

His second shoulder wound is starting to heal - he wades the last ten feet to the rocky shore, then puts the queen down on a wet rock and splashes water on the injury so it ices over and stops bleeding.

[deepest_magic]

...He just puts her down?

He'd certainly notice if she started unfolding her pocket house's door to hide in it, and she's not sure he couldn't just beat down the door from its magical freestanding position it gets if she doesn't unfold the house all the way. What if she shot him in the eye - or can she pin him by his clothes to something, long enough to shuffle away -

- no, realistically she can't fight him.

Lighter comes out again. She flicks it on and then flings it at the nearest cluster of plants, some shrubs that start where the shore stones end. Convenient fire. Leave a clue in bright gold to show the knights where she was last able to leave a trail.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter looks at her, and looks at the fire, and makes a thoughtful 'hm' sort of noise, and then picks her up again - removing her bag in the process - and throws her into the fire and her bag into the lake. It catches on a jagged rock and sinks only so far.

[deepest_magic]

Between the armor cloak and the low temperature and politeness of the fire, Isabella is only overwarm, not burned. She picks up the lighter, holds it open with gold flame still burning.

She sits in the fire, hood up, cloak around her, teeth gritted. If she gets out of this she is taking a rose pin and who cares if it's redundant or stupid to be a knight and a queen, have a pin and a scepter, Jamie, Jamie -

[jackfrostbite]

Winter steps into the fire - his clothes catch in a few places, but meltwater from his body puts them out before they can be too badly damaged.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella flings the lighter at a nearby tree.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter grins at her. It is not pleasant to behold.

"Do not doubt that I can find a more effective fire to throw you into," he says, picking her up again. "It was not in my original plan, but you make the option so tempting, with all this foolishness."

The tree catches, but he smothers the fire with a melting hand; the flood of meltwater puts out the bushes, too, on his way through. He stoops to pick up the lighter and flings it into the lake.

From there, he gets under cover of a tumble of tall jagged rocks, and continues carrying Isabella over his shoulder through progressively darker and tighter spaces until there is no light at all and she can only tell the location of the walls when an outlying arm or leg bumps into them. Some sort of tunnel, one must presume.

[deepest_magic]

"What if there wasn't room for your head to grow back?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Such as if I were crushed under an enormous rock?" he asks, crouching in the perfect dark to feel along a wall. "I tried that. I passed the next several years as a very flat, very uncomfortable pile of ice shards."

[deepest_magic]

"Have you tried jumping into a volcano? There's one on the Isles. It would probably evaporate all your meltwater on contact."

[jackfrostbite]

"Clever. But is the erupting volcano not eventually put out by the sea? When I locked myself in an oven I made enough meltwater to drown myself in - which didn't work either - and when I crushed myself under a rock I made rather a large pile of ice. I have not yet found a limit to how much water I can make."

He shrugs, and finds whatever he's looking for. There is a click and a slight draft. He carries Isabella a short way and then, presumably, closes whatever door he just opened, before setting off again along the new tunnel.

[deepest_magic]

"Swim to the bottom of the ocean. Pressure."

[jackfrostbite]

"A long time to spend half-dreaming in the dark, if that doesn't work either."

Either this tunnel is opening up, or he's getting better at not banging Isabella's extremities into the walls.

[deepest_magic]

"Electricity. We don't have it here but just rigging up something to generate a shock couldn't be that much harder than getting an oven."

[jackfrostbite]

"Could it not? How would you do it, then?"

[deepest_magic]

"I'd look it up first, I have books, but it involves magnets, I remember that."

[jackfrostbite]

"And here we come to the reason why I want to irrevocably enrage the King of Narnia."

[deepest_magic]

"You think James will look up electricity and try killing you with it?"

[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?"