A/N: This story is rated T, but I wanted to add an extra warning that there is somewhat descriptive violence and gore within a horror tone, so if that bothers you, proceed at your own risk. I didn't want to rate it M since there's no other objectionable content of any kind, but if anyone thinks it's too strong for T please let me know and I will change the rating! I just figured a specific warning would be better than making it look like an immoral story haha, this is still Narnia and I try to make C S Lewis proud.

xXx

CHAPTER ONE: IGNITE

The breeze nipped at Peter's nose as Lucy's laughter rang through the forest, echoed by Susan's softer giggle and Corin's bark.

Pale afternoon sunlight shone through bare branches, casting a kaleidoscope of dancing shadows over the bed of golds and crimsons that crunched under the horses' hooves.

Peter grinned. "Come on, Ed, quit whining, I'm beginning to think you don't even like us."

"It's not you I don't like," said Edmund, his tone less than impressed.

"So it's me?" asked Corin.

"Will you shut up? I said it's fine. See? I'm enjoying myself."

Corin's hand flew to his heart in mock scandal.

Peridan chuckled along with the rest of them. "Don't mind his majesty, we all know he'd rather be up north chasing down that monster that bested him two weeks ago."

"Yes, I would, thank you very much. And so would any of you, if that little vermin stuck you with her knife and got away with it."

"I'm confused, Ed," said Peter, "I thought you were the best swordsman in the land." He fought down his smile and raised an eyebrow at his brother.

"Alright, alright, I see how it is. None of you even care that I got stabbed."

"We do care, Ed," said Lucy, "It's just, you do seem to get stabbed an awful lot."

"I think," put in Susan, "Lucy will soon run out of cordial if she keeps healing you two after every mishap with a hag."

"Hey!" said Peter indignantly. "When did this become about me?"

"Don't make me remind you about last time with the giants," said Susan. "I might believe you were trying to get yourself killed."

Peter opened his mouth to refute her, but couldn't come up with anything. The rest of the party laughed again, and Peter settled into a resigned smirk, catching a playful glint in Edmund's eye.

"I say," said Lucy after a few moments in which the jingle of their saddles filled the silence. "I thought we would have heard music by now."

"How do you mean, Lu?" asked Peter.

"Well, have you ever known the fauns to go a day without dancing this time of the year?"

"She has a point," said Peridan. The knight pushed a stubborn lock of red hair out of his handsome face as he glanced back at Peter (he was riding up at the front of the party next to Lucy), only for the wind to blow it right back again. "I did think we would have heard something. Wasn't that one of the main reasons for our excursion?"

"And we must be close to Dancing Lawn," said Susan, "I know this forest well enough."

"I'd say we were nearly upon it," agreed Peter, "If not for this strange silence."

There was another pause, and then Corin said "It has gone awfully quiet, though, hasn't it?"

And then Peter noticed what had been creeping at the edges of his senses for the entire conversation without ever quite registering. "I daresay the birds have gone."

All six of them looked around at the same time, all noticing at once that they hadn't heard a tweet or a whistle or even the twirr of an insect for several minutes.

Peter didn't remember exactly when the wood had gone quiet, but a strange feeling settled like a stone in his gut, and he saw from Edmund's face that he was equally perturbed, the steel grey of his eyes meeting Peter's blue in a silent question.

"My father always says that if the forest goes silent, you should be on your guard," said Corin. "What about your hag, Edmund?"

"That's still King Edmund to you, young man." He shot Corin a dry look. "And no, we're too far east for anything of that sort. No dark creature could have made it past Lantern Waste without running into trouble. And they don't try, anyway. That lot—what still exists of them, anyway—only ever attempts their mischief in the shadows, on the edge of the mountains."

The horses trotted along diligently, as they were dumb beasts and did not understand the conversation above them, but Peter noticed that even his steed seemed to be flicking its ears to and fro, pricked and alert.

Finally they came into an open stretch of forest: a wide, natural clearing, and Lucy pulled up sharply. Peridan slowed beside her, and the other four halted just behind them, pulling off to either side as each horse avoided running into the one in front.

"What is it, Lu?" asked Peter, but the moment the words left his mouth, he saw for himself.

The ground was drenched in blood.

He knew the sight from many battles, but its abrupt appearance made his heart skip a beat, glinting crimson blades of grass poking through downtrodden leaves, dark pools mixing with the mud of fresh ruts.

Susan gasped, and Corin whistled as Edmund cursed under his breath.

Peter threw one leg over his saddle and landed heavy on the soft earth, turning to have a closer look as Corin and Edmund followed.

It wasn't just a little blood, as if from some kind of accident. It covered several yards of the clearing, dripping over tree roots and squelching under Peter's boots. And it was fresh, not dried.

"What on earth happened here?" breathed Lucy.

Edmund nudged a bit of churned up earth with his foot. "A fight, I'd say."

"But, with this much blood…" said Peridan, still clutching the horn of his saddle, "Shouldn't there be a body?"

Peter turned around again, realizing that was what unnerved him so much about the whole scene. No creature would have survived this much blood loss. "Maybe it was taken away?" he suggested. But his own voice was faint, unsure.

"Oh, do let's go back," said Susan tremulously.

Peter looked up at her, dark brown eyes glistening, perfect nose tinged with pink. Then he glanced at Lucy, pale against her auburn curls. "You all stay here," he said, "Edmund and I will have a look 'round."

"What about me?" asked Corin, standing up quickly from where he'd been examining the mud.

"You and Peridan stay here with the girls," said Peter. "That's an order, young prince," he added before Corin could complain, "Your father will have my head if anything happens to his only son on my watch."

Corin pouted, but reluctantly swung back up into his saddle and took his position as bodyguard.

Peter glanced at Edmund.

"Looks like it trails off that way," said the raven-haired king, and Peter stepped over to the edge of the clearing where Edmund was pointing.

Trampled foliage, dark smears in the underbrush, even glistening stains on the trees themselves.

"Right then," said Peter.

And with one glance back at the others, the two of them struck out into the thick of the forest, hands on the hilts of their swords, every sense pricked for danger.

The forest only sank deeper into silence—if it were possible—the further they got from the voices of the others, as if the unspoken dread were swallowing them whole.

It was several minutes before they came to a break in the trees; not quite a clearing, but enough for a few patches of pale daylight to splash through the heavy canopy.

And at the same instant, they both froze.

Just beyond the next patch of light, something was standing, silhouetted in the shadows with its back to them.

At first Peter couldn't quite make out what it was, confused by the strange wet gurgling, crunching noises that seemed to be coming from it.

But then it raised its head, and he realized in a thunderclap of horror that it was a deer.

Eating another deer.

The thing it had been bent over was a fresh corpse, flesh torn open, ribs exposed, pooling in blood that caked the standing creature's hoofs and legs.

Every warning bell in Peter's head screamed at once. That's not a carnivore.

Its head snapped around to pin them with a solid white eye.

A corpse eye.

Thick blood dripped from its narrow mouth, down the front of its neck, and that was when Peter realized it was a stag, but one of its antlers was completely torn off—along with a chunk of its skull that hung out at an odd angle—the other drenched in a congealed, dark substance.

For a moment he stood frozen, locked in that gaze, unable to think or move or even breathe.

And then it lunged for them.

All of Peter's muscles stuttered. He just managed to stumble back in time to avoid the flash of its dark antler as Edmund drew his sword and brought it down in one swift blow across the stag's neck.

An unearthly scream split the air as blood spurted down the creature's matted fur, but it swung its head back around and jabbed at Edmund's face, missing only by an inch or so as he lurched backwards into the trees.

It should be dead.

Peter's wits rushed back to him and his own sword flashed into his hands, the strength of both arms driving full force into the creature's skull.

It screamed again, a bone-chilling sound that Peter could never have imagined would come from such a creature, and he swung again, and again, blow after blow into the back of its head until it lurched one final time and crumpled to the ground, its spindly legs twitched at odd angles until Edmund plunged his blade into its eye socket.

All movement ceased instantly.

Peter's lungs screamed for air as if he'd just run a mile, heart pounding, and the moment the creature was dead he felt certain it had been a talking stag. The telltale shape of the face and eyes were unmistakable now that the wild hunger had gone out of it.

Edmund slumped back against a tree, eyes fixed on its lifeless face.

It already looked like it had been dead for days.

Peter opened his mouth, but not a single word could express the ice that settled in his stomach.

Edmund swallowed and made his way across the open space to the second body, squeezing his eyes shut as soon as he got close enough to look at it.

"Free Narnians," he murmured, voice almost too low to hear. He looked back at Peter, a raw pain in his eyes that was almost startling coming from him. "What on earth could've…?"

Peter shook his head slowly, but then another noise pricked up his ears and both brothers snapped to attention.

A faint shuffling, hissing, growling.

They glanced at each other, swords up again in an instant, still glistening with dark rivulets of red.

Peter moved first, pressing into the shadows, toward the muddled noises, and Edmund followed close behind.

Carefully, slowly, they stepped through the suffocating cloud of dread as growling and thrashing became clearer, and at last they came out into a wide clearing.

For a moment Peter didn't even register where they were, taken aback by the sight that lay before him. The bed of leaves was littered with bodies, all gored through, fauns and animals alike, dead in tangled piles where one corpse was almost indiscernible from the twisted limbs of another, the tree trunks glistening dark in the patchy light.

Dancing Lawn.

The thrashing noises ended with a crunch, at the same moment Peter's eyes landed on the single moving form amongst the mangled destruction: a faun, hunched over on the ground, teeth deep in the throat of a twitching cat.

"Valis!" snapped Edmund, his tone somewhere between a shock of horror and the scolding of a disobedient child. And only after he said it did Peter recognize the faun.

Often had Lucy danced with Valis when Tumnus couldn't attend a night in the wood. But the face that turned toward them now bore no recognition, no twinkle of a smile, only the same dead, blank eyes that had stared out the stag's skull too. It didn't even seem to notice them, instead lifting its dripping mouth up as something squealed in the branches above them.

"Your majesties!" a tiny voice cried, and Peter looked up to see a red squirrel and two of her children harboring up in the bare branches of an oak tree. It was one of the children who had squealed, and its mother quickly stifled it with her paw, but not fast enough to avoid detection.

Valis had seen them too, pale eyes wide, dark mouth gaping.

The cat dropped from his hands, landing with a dull thud in the leaves, never to move again, its own eyes white and face bloodstained.

"Valis, stop," snapped Peter as the faun clawed up at the branches, and for a second it seemed as if he'd listened, his gaze turning from the squirrels to the kings. But it was no intelligence that flashed behind his eyes as he stalked one wobbly step closer to them, mouth still gaping, dripping.

Edmund brandished his sword, but the faun only cocked his head, eyes tracking the glinting steel as if only vaguely distracted by it. He loped closer, until at last he thrust a bloodied hand out and Edmund parried it with his blade.

It was only a small, sharp motion, meant to wound, not to maim, but that fresh spurt of red elicited a scream so sudden and unnatural that Peter jumped, and barely brought his sword up in time to strike the faun's hysterical face just inches from his own.

Valis' head bounced off Peter's chest and hit the ground a second before the rest of his body, rolling across the clearing until his curly hair hit someone else's leg, and the body crumpled at Peter's feet, lower jaw still attached to the neck.

Peter's stomach turned.

For a moment he thought he was going to be sick.

"Your majesties!" squeaked one of the small squirrels, "You're alright! You're alright!"

The other baby was crying, huddled against its mother.

"Yes," said Peter breathlessly, though he felt quite the opposite, the world spinning around him. "What- what happened here?"

"Oh it's just awful, awful," cried the baby, and the mother looked around before hopping from branch to branch nearer to the kings, nudging both of her children along with her bushy tail.

"Your majesties," she said, voice small and shaky, "Are you truly alive and well?"

"Yes," said Edmund, tone forced but cool and steady, "Of course we're alive, what do you mean?"

The squirrel shook her head, trembling on the thin branch. "Oh it's too horrible, those poor beasts, and the fauns, and- and-"

"Calm down," said Peter. "It's alright. We'll protect you now."

"Oh, thank you, thank you!"

"Can you tell us how this happened?" asked Edmund. "Why are they all…?"

"I don't know," she said, and one of the babies whimpered again. "We were up here, watching the dance. It was mostly fauns, some dwarves drumming and other animals watching, too, and then suddenly this stag comes charging in and throws one of the fauns on its antlers, and everything turns to chaos."

"The stag attacked them out of nowhere?" asked Edmund, and the squirrel nodded her furry brown head.

"Some tried to fight, I think, but it was such a mess, and then they were turning on each other, biting and gnashing and-" She shivered, as if shaking off a fly. "My babies are too small to leap between trees, yet. We could only watch it all from here."

Numb waves of horror washed through Peter's body, his mind insisting that this couldn't be real, this couldn't be happening.

"We need to go back," muttered Edmund, low enough only for him to hear. "Get the girls and get back to the Cair."

Peter nodded. "Come on down," he said to the squirrels, reaching up to give them something to climb. "We'll take you to the city."

They scurried down at once, tiny claws in his sleeve and then all three little creatures were clinging to the front of his shirt, their slight weight tugging on the fabric and pressing warm against his chest.

He was just about to turn back the way they'd come when something rumbled nearby, bellowing through the forest.

Something big.

The same uneasy dread settled in Peter's gut as the rumble came closer, accompanied now by heavy crashing in the underbrush, and a few moments later the form of a huge blackbear lumbered into the clearing, snorting and groaning and swaying unsteadily on its feet.

For a second he wanted to make himself believe it was an ordinary bear, but then its eyes locked onto him and it roared, teeth already stained dark, mouth dripping with blood.

Both kings turned at the same second and ran.

Branches lashed Peter's face and his boots pounded the earth, haphazardly avoiding roots and nearly twisting his ankles as the squirrels dug their tiny claws into his shoulder and Edmund's footsteps came close behind.

He veered off in one place to take a shortcut, the bear crashing right on their heels, and his heart hammered against his ribcage, his free hand flying up to steady the squirrels as he hacked a vine out of the way, and a moment later burst out into the open place where the others waited on their horses.

"Shoot! Shoot!" he cried.

The others looked up in surprise and the horses shuffled back as the kings rushed to them. But before Peter could swing up into his saddle, the bear burst howling out of the trees, raspy and wild and entirely unnatural.

Lucy gave a sharp cry of surprise and Peridan had an arrow on the string before Susan even had time to react.

Whiz it went over Peter's head as he pulled the squirrels from his tunic and handed them up to Susan before drawing his own sword, turning back to face the beast that stumbled only momentarily with Peridan's arrow in its head.

Another shaft struck it in the shoulder, but this time it didn't even react, as if it felt no pain at all, and then Corin was down with his sword flashing, Peridan only a second behind him.

Corin's blade found it first, slashing across its face, but he was thrown aside by one powerful blow from its paw, landing hard as Susan shrieked his name.

Edmund lodged his sword in its throat, but then it turned on him, yanking the hilt from his hands.

Peridan struck it with his own blade before it could lash out at Edmund, but that did nothing except to turn its attention onto him instead. He swung again as the beast lunged, jaws wide, and sank its teeth into his shoulder just as his sword went straight up through its jaw.

With a mighty lurch it reared back and dropped Peridan as it roared, a squealing, whining sort of roar, and Peridan collapsed to the slick, dark ground, clutching his shoulder, his sword still embedded in the bear's head.

And finally it stumbled, limping backwards and contorting as if trying to drag the blade free from its skull.

It was a horrible sight, the huge beast turning and pulling and dragging and swaying and convulsing, until at last it crumpled its knees and lolled over onto one side, still twitching, Edmund's sword sticking up out of its neck.

Peter rushed out past the huge body and fell to the ground beside Peridan, knees sinking into the bloodstained leaves, eyes flashing over his friend's trembling form.

Blood spurted from just below his neck, drenching the hand that clutched at it as his breaths came fast and short, eyes fluttering back up into his eyelids.

Peter's hand flew to the artery and clamped down over Peridan's own, the knight's face already paler, veins prominent, sweat glistening on his temples

He groaned at the pressure, a sound that nearly turned to a growl, and then only a gurgle deep in his throat.

"Lucy!" Peter cried, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her drop down to the ground and run toward them.

"No!" shrieked a tiny, squeaky voice. One of the squirrels.

But Peter wasn't listening.

Peridan's muscles contracted, and he coughed violently, a trickle of blood flowing down the side of his mouth.

Lucy was already pulling her cordial out as she fell beside him and twisted the stopper.

"Wait," said Edmund, "Lucy-"

But before he could finish, Peridan lurched up and Peter just barely grabbed him back in time for his teeth to miss Lucy's neck, snapping at the air.

Lucy squeaked and Peter's heart jumped, one arm clamping around Peridan's shoulders and the other yanking his head back with a handful of orange hair.

The knight thrashed, eyes white and wide, struggling against Peter's grip, and Lucy poured one drop of cordial onto his wound before jumping back, clutching the vial to her chest as Edmund ran to stand between her and Peridan.

For a moment he still struggled against Peter's grip, gurgling inhuman noises, gnashing his teeth though he couldn't reach any flesh to sink them into, and Peter gripped him for dear life, the coppery stench of blood flooding his senses.

But then his struggle weakened, the thrashing stuttering sporadically into a tremble, and his pale eyes fluttered and slowly filled with color again, blue-green returning like sunlight on a misty lake.

Peridan panted, sweaty, clammy, and the artery stopped spurting, so that only his bloodstained tunic and Peter's hands showed any sign of the wound having existed at all.

His eyes wandered until they met Peter's, and his wits seemed to come back to him, his eyebrows knitting faintly in confusion.

"What was that?" demanded Corin.

Peter loosened his grip.

Peridan struggled into a sitting position, pushing the hair out of his face as he looked around at the rest of them.

Shakily, he tried to form a question. "What… what did I…?"

Lucy peered out from behind Edmund, clinging to his arm, eyes wide in fear and bewilderment.

Nobody said anything. Nobody knew what to say.

Peter slumped back and heaved a deep sigh, all of his muscles begging to give out at once.

Peridan shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing them with the backs of his wrists. "I'm sorry… I don't know what… what that…''

Lucy stepped hesitantly out from behind Edmund, kneeling down to pull Peridan's arms away from his face as she shushed him gently. But her eyes were on Peter, a hundred questions surging behind them.

He shook his head. He had no answers for her.

Corin and Edmund moved to pull their swords out of the bear's carcass, and now that its face wasn't contorted in rage, Peter recognized it. A plain, bewildered creature. He knew its name, knew where it lived. He'd sometimes snuck it the sort of toffee treats it liked from the market at Cair Paravel.

Peridan's voice cracked as he tried to apologize, and Lucy only shushed him again, wiping the blood from his mouth with her handkerchief.

"It's alright," she murmured, "It's alright."

Peter laid a hand on the bear's broad snout, its blank eye staring vacantly up at him as he ran his fingers over the matted fur of its bloodsoaked face.

It's alright, he wanted to say, but it was too late. For the bear, for Valis, for the stag. For so many precious Narnians, lying dead under the pale autumn sun.

His people. His friends. His neighbors.

This was a nightmare.

xXx

A/N: Thank you so much for reading the first chapter of my special October project! I plan to update every six days, so that the climax will land on Halloween (and the seventh and final chapter will be after that). I just couldn't resist combining my two favorite things, Narnia and zombies, so I hope you guys enjoy the adventure!

Also, for anyone wondering about the "only son" line in regards to Corin, this story is set pre-HHB, so his father doesn't realize that Cor is still alive. It's not a very important detail and probably doesn't matter since I already made Corin older than he ought to be (he's 15 here), but I thought it was fun anyway. (And for anyone who cares about the rest of them, Peter is 24, Susan is 23, Edmund is 21, Lucy is 20, and Peridan is around 25.)

Please let me know what you thought of this first chapter in a review, if you want, and thanks so much again for reading! See you in Chapter 2!

-Tricia