Thanks to all readers and reviewers!
This isn't so much a story as it is, like...one idea for one part of a Last Guide chapter that might get written someday. If we say 2 was Chapter 2 and 21 was Chapter 4, this might be from Chapter 7.
Prompt: Sometimes defeats are personal failures; sometimes defeats are the crumbling of a nation. Sometimes, like Aslan's sacrifice, a defeat can be the truest victory. Write a story about a defeat.
The Guide stood above the sunless sea where a green valley had once rolled. It had grown bitterly cold, though she scarcely felt it. The great time giant had gone—how or where she did not know, but surely it was the work of the Three. In any case, she had not been called to him.
She had never thought to consider what might happen to her at the end of all. Those who had died before, she had seen to as Guide and Witness. Those who still lived when the Door burst open, the Lion had taken charge of. There was no duty remaining to her. Here in the darkness of a world ended, she was alone.
An icy Wind blew around her, and she corrected that final thought. No, of course she was not alone. She had never been alone. But without her duty, what was she to do now?
Firstborn, the Wind said gently, the last enemy to be destroyed is Death.
Oh, thought the Guide. And then with dawning realization, Oh. She held up her hands.
They were transparent.
The Door had shut. Here at the end of all things, her purpose over, she had become a shade. Looking down—yes. A hilt waited there.
None is beyond you, Daughter. Do as thou wert made to.
"None is beyond me," she whispered. Including herself. She was death, and Death must die. A strange thing, to draw her own blade. Yet she could not say it was the strangest of all things she had done; that place belonged to a night long ago at a Table.
It slipped out easily enough, for it was merely a dagger rather than a sword. Silver from end to end, it was simple in form, the only embellishments a hint of swoop to the guard and a small lion's head as the pommel. Fitting enough, she had to suppose, for a being whose purpose had also been simple—excepting the one time it was not.
She did not think it necessary to speak the words. There was none here for her to lead. All that had been laid down, and she was being led herself.
For the final time Adethrel, Last Guide of Narnia, raised a blade high and slashed open a rift.
Light bloomed in the valley of shadow, and she looked wonderingly at it for a few moments. How many such portals had she entered, always knowing where they would lead? And yet this time it was not hers to know, but simply to trust and obey.
She stepped forward, into the light, and whatever might come next.