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]

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."

[deepest_magic]

"Yeah. How much of my stuff besides the scepter was retrieved?"

[neverbeatme]

"Both shoes, the lighter, your bag - I don't think anything's been lost."

She contemplates the frozen Winter for a second and then tips him carefully forward at an angle and starts dragging him out of this cave.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella follows, slowly adding to the light.

[neverbeatme]

It's a fairly short walk through a fairly straightforward tunnel, with only one switchback and no branches, before they emerge into a roundish cave that is much like the one the secret door was in except that instead of a secret door it has a wide surface entrance screened by bushes. James has a bit of difficulty getting Winter through the bushes.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella holds branches out of the way as best she can.

[neverbeatme]

There is James's horse, and there is Isabella's.

[deepest_magic]

And there is a griffin knight who nervously agrees to hold the stabbed assassin in her claws and fly him to Cair Paravel, and there is a satyr holding Isabella's belongings, which she reorganizes.

They go straight home. There is no salvaging the music festival. A rat knight and a raven one are studying the bridge to find that it was not sabotaged as Isabella feared; some naiads are breaking up the ice so it will melt quicker; but no one is in the mood for music any more.

At Cair Paravel, based on what they remember from the last time James put a sword through Winter's heart, they think they have about a minute between extracting the king's weapon and Winter being functional again. This is enough time to shove him into a cell and slam a door.