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

[deepest_magic]

"I will keep my cordial. I suppose I'd rather be carried more than trip into a mineshaft."

[jackfrostbite]

"So."

He picks her up and carries her out of the dead-end tunnel.

[deepest_magic]

Which is not the most comfortable Isabella has ever been, but she doesn't complain. Ringhugs - three in succession, just to differentiate them: something has changed.

[neverbeatme]

Ringhug, ringhug, ringhug.

[jackfrostbite]

When next he opens a door, there is a strong draft that smells faintly of the sea. He keeps going, turning away from the source of the draft soon afterward.

The path he takes corresponds exactly with the path that the ring says would lead to James.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella notes the draft, tries to keep loose track of step count and twists and turns but not doing a particularly good job of it.

[jackfrostbite]

Onward, onward. Sometimes the tunnel slopes up, sometimes down. There are a lot of turns, and he varies the length of his stride for unclear reasons.

And then he opens another door, and goes through, and shuts it, and carefully puts the queen down on her feet.

"It's safe enough for you to walk from here."

[deepest_magic]

So she finds the wall with one hand, and she walks, slowly, carefully.

[neverbeatme]

The direction to James seems to be changing awfully... fast.

[deepest_magic]

That's... interesting.

Isabella goes on following the wall in James's direction. She keeps her hood down over her face.

[neverbeatme]

After only a few more steps, the wall is no longer headed for James. The direction to James is perpendicular to this wall.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella doesn't really want to try to walk in the dark away from the wall.

Ringhug. If you've got an idea, Jamie...

[neverbeatme]

Ringhug.

And the faintest, faintest little bit of light - so little you could almost think you imagined it - and a shadowy figure in the imperfect dark, sword in one hand and scepter in the other, lunging for Winter where he walks several steps behind Isabella.

[jackfrostbite]

He does absolutely nothing to stop her putting her sword through his heart.

[neverbeatme]

And now it is safe for James to turn and give Isabella the scepter.

[deepest_magic]

Which Isabella takes, squinting against even its tiny light. Sureness comes back to her feet. And now she can marginally relax, leaning on her scepter.

[neverbeatme]

"I have her, she's safe," James murmurs, presumably to some knights - the staff of the orders of knighthood is in its usual position on her backpack, close enough to speak to if she turns her head just like so. "No one else here but Winter and he's dealt with for now."

[deepest_magic]

"I should get a pin," says Isabella. "As soon as we get home I'm taking one of those pins. ...He wants to die. He's tried most things but not literally everything."

[neverbeatme]

"...And his latest trick was 'kidnap the queen'?" guesses James. "And then...?"

[deepest_magic]

"He wanted to make you angry enough to figure out a way to kill him."

[neverbeatme]

"And he doesn't seem to have been pursuing that goal just now, so what changed?"

[deepest_magic]

"He didn't want to kill me. ...And I was very clear that I didn't think we had any strong reason to keep him alive per se."

[neverbeatme]

"We're close enough to Cair Paravel that I might not even need to ask a knight to haul him to the dungeon for me... I did not know there were secret tunnels under Narnia. I'm a little alarmed that Winter did."

[deepest_magic]

"Apparently they're very dangerous. He carried me through most of them."

[neverbeatme]

"We're going to have to have these entrances filled in or something... but the first thing I need to do is get Winter into the inescapable dungeons of Cair Paravel and then publicly announce that I have done so."