Soundtracks:
Raid on the Castle – Harry Gregson-Williams.
Moment of Respite – Mikolai Stroinski
King Bran's Final Voyage - Witcher III OST
Enjoy!
Lucy could barely make out the sound of light feet approaching her through the white noise ringing faintly in her ears.
She was so used to the undead guards stomping by her cage by now, that she normally would not bother to even look at the creatures that lurked by, but these steps seemed more... Human, and tactical than the otherwise lumbering steps of the creatures stalking by her cage.
She had not seen Kurt since he hobbled off to do Lucy's request to save them both, and their world, and had a small hope inside that it would be him. So, she unsteadily, with blurry eyesight, turned towards the sound of feet, grasping the steel bars with her shaky hands.
It was only now she noticed the room was brighter than usual, for she could make out the face crouching down outside the cage, and it was indeed not Kurt.
"Susan?!" Lucy exclaimed hoarsely after a while, her dry lips cracking as she did. Lucy truly hoped this wasn't another hallucination given from the lack of water and nourishment. Surely, she had gone mad.
"Shh!" Susan hushed her, as a single sound echoed in the large chamber, and could tell them off. Susan bent down to pick at the lock that contained Lucy inside the cage.
Lucy did not know whether she should cry or laugh that her family managed to find her in the moment. She was truly flabbergasted, but she knew having faith was the one thing that kept her sane after all.
"Susan, is it truly you?" Lucy whispered so low Susan barely missed her.
"Yes. Lu, can you walk?" Susan whispered back as she turned the lock in her hand.
She fidgeted with the lock long enough to know that for it to break, she would have to make a ruckus in doing so. They didn't have the time to find the key, time was precious right now.
"I think so..." Lucy replied quietly, just remembering she had not stood up on her own two legs in several days. However, now that she had a chance at being rescued, she would not give up without trying.
Lucy eyed her sister anxiously as she tried to fight the lock with her dagger. She noticed her sister's dark hair was back in a messy braid, some strands stuck to her brow, coated in sweat, blood and dirt. She noticed she had several blotches of blood on her clothes, and in her face. She bled from her temple. Her travelling gear looked worse for wear, and Lucy could tell they had been through a hellish journey to get here. Susan sighed desperately as she attempted to open the lock, with no luck. She would have to use force, and in turn, make a hell of a racket to do so.
"Lu, listen to me. We'll have to move quickly. Once I break this lock, we'll-" Susan started, but was soon interrupted when she saw a light of metal glimmer in her side of her eye. Lucy's startled expression confirmed Susan's suspicion, and she was quick to roll away when a heavy axe fell over her.
She had been seen.
"Susan!" Lucy called weakly from inside her cage. She rattled the steel bars helplessly.
Susan gasped in surprise when an undead minotaur stomped her way, bellowing as he did.
There was no going back now.
The minotaur hacked after the young woman with his axe with heavy snorts. Susan dodged his swings, barely managing to roll away when one of his blows dug into the stone ground. Susan managed to stagger away with her broken body, readying her bow in one hand, and dagger in the other.
The reeking, decaying minotaur with rotten skin, empty eye-sockets and once-white fur dragged his cloven feet after her, and despite it being thrice Susan's size, the Archer Queen was prepared to stand up to this creature, stalling it for as long as she could. Her broken body told her she would not stand a chance against this beast for very long, but she was prepared to defend her sister, and if it meant ending her, then so be it.
Susan managed to parry the minotaur twice, before it shepherded her in front of a staircase, and in the end rammed her over with his horns. He crashed into her and sent her flying to the ground below the stairs.
Susan fell to the ground heavily and felt her vision flicker with black spots as pain engulfed her.
She could not scream, could not breathe.
The decaying minotaur stepped her way with ragged snorts, intending to finish her off. Susan managed to turn over on her side and begin to crawl away when she noticed stumpy feet with leathery skin approach her way in the opposite direction like a locomotive. In reflex, she crouched together on the dusty floor, knowing it would run her over in a moment.
Except for the fact that the creature did not run her over, but stepped over her body with one long stride, before impacting with the undead minotaur by her feet that was just about to hack at her with his axe.
"Kurt!" Susan heard vaguely in the background as she rolled over to her back to witness what had happened in that very moment. The leathery-skinned creature turned out to be a troll, and he wrestled with the undead minotaur, clubbed at it with his wooden weapon. The troll slammed the minotaur back into the cage, creating a large dent in the iron bars. Lucy screamed once as the two large creatures wrestled, but then noticed the dent in the cage was luckily deep enough that she could escape. Susan clambered up on two unsteady legs and approached the stairs she was thrown down below the iron cage.
"Lucy, come on!" she called as she crouched.
Lucy found the strength to stand up on her legs, but not without support. She fell to her knees once as her legs shook badly, but found support on the bars around her, and managed to flit out through the gap the dent left. Lucy found her sister's outstretched hand, and took it, and got support down the stairs to escape the fight. The two sisters hobbled and stumbled away from the scene. Susan noticed shadows moved before her eyes behind boulders and ruins in the room.
Not waiting to be surrounded by more undead creatures, Susan readied her bow, and pushed her sister behind her, her eyes moving swiftly from one moving shadow till the next.
She heard a screech, and just as a bone-man ran towards them from behind a boulder, a bolt pierced its' skull, making it drop to the floor before her feet in a ragdoll fashion. Lucy gasped.
Their saviour was Edmund, who appeared behind a ruin pillar. Crossbow in hand, he strode towards them as he reloaded his weapon.
"Su! Lucy!" Edmund panted. His eyes flickered behind them at the moving shadows approaching from several directions. He gave both his sisters a quick half-hug before he pushed between them to fire a bolt at another undead creature who came at them with outstretched claws. Lucy yelped at the gruesome sight.
"Go, both of you! Take the stairs down this way, and get to safety as fast as you can! We'll handle this!" Edmund shouted above the commotion as he backed away from them.
Susan, ready to knock an arrow, saw the shimmer of a sword somewhere ahead, and heard the whistling sound of its swing. She recognized the owner.
"Susan, go! Get yourselves out of here!" Peter called in the distance.
Susan gave a sharp sigh in response, and took Lucy's arm, and they made an escape out of there as quickly as their broken bones managed to. Lucy hobbled after Susan's limping run, and they made their way past ruins, up and down stairs, over dunes and the like.
As they passed a large boulder to get to another cavern, a bone-man stretched out from them behind the boulder. Both Susan and Lucy halted abruptly as the blade of a sword quickly severed the bone-man from shoulder to hip, severing it in two. Lucy shrieked as she pulled her sister the opposite direction.
Caspian appeared behind the bone-man, panting as he did, his stature dangerous as he protected them from the bone-men following them. He gave them a sharp nod, before turning towards the three undead fumbling towards them from behind. With a battle cry, he swung at the bone-men and the undead satyr that joined in with a raised scimitar.
"Come on!" Susan pulled Lucy's attention away from the scene behind them, and they scurried on.
. . .
As the sister's made their way through a chamber, they entered a cove, with a flight of eroded stone stairs below, going upwards into darkness.
As they made their way up the flight of stairs, they approached the dark cavern ahead. Susan reached out an arm to stop Lucy behind her, and investigated the cavern, neither making a sound.
It was quiet. All too quiet, Susan thought, as she approached the opening with a single silent step. She slowly readied her bow and took another step.
That was when they attacked – several parts of the stone walls around them caved in, and bone-men clawed themselves out from their coffins and stone shelves. Their shrieks and rattling breaths ran chills down Susan's neck.
"Oh no," Lucy gasped, as she turned her back to Susan's back. After a quick thought, Susan handed Lucy her dagger, and readied two arrows at the same time, and knocked them at two of the many bone-men approaching them.
Lucky for them, some of the bone-men had decayed so badly that they were unable to use the coordination needed to run up stair, which saved the girls some time.
Susan fired arrow after arrow, stabbed some which came too close, and knocked others over to win herself some time. Lucy stabbed at the bone-men coming up the flight of stairs as best as she could, but she was not strong enough at the time to kill all of them in one swing of her blade. Susan knew this would end badly if she did not do anything drastic.
"Lu, they're too many!", she called. Lucy walked backwards up the stairs towards her sister.
"We're trapped!" Lucy agreed, desperately looking for a solution. After looking around the cove, she discovered a weak spot above them in the arch of stone leading towards another cavern.
"Look!" she called, pointing with a finger. Susan gave it a fleeting look before tending to another undead stalked after them. She picked up Lucy's train of thought and knew what had to be done.
"Good, come on!" she called, and urged Lucy inside the cavern, making sure her sister had her dagger at hand. Lucy went in first but turned to wait for Susan.
However, to her surprise, Susan was still standing above the flight of stairs, fending off skeletons and decaying corpses stretching out for her.
"Susan!" Lucy called, and was on her way back, when Susan stopped her.
"No! You go on, Lu, I need to hold them off! Go, and don't look back!" Susan called, and before Lucy could disobey her, knocked an arrow with such a force it made the weak spot in the arch cave in, making a barrier between the sisters.
"NO, SUSAN!" Lucy cried and pushed on the rocks. She could not leave her sister to fend those creatures off by herself, it was suicide!
Continuing to hammer her fists on the boulders blocking the entrance, an undead hand broke through between two rocks, and clawed at her. Lucy dodged it and listened to the hisses and screeches. If the boneman was coming after her, even with the obstacle between them, then…
No, it could not be… Lucy refused to believe it. Tears streamed down her face as the undead managed to push a rock and make a bigger hole for it to grab through.
"Susan!" Lucy sobbed as she backed away. Heartbroken and frightened, Lucy fumbled through the darkness, dagger in hand. She really could not see anything through her tears, but at that point, she did not mind a bit.
What was her purpose now? Her family had rescued her but what of them now? She was alone in this world, she feared.
Walking along the stones and marbles cobbled together into a path, Lucy cried silently. Strangely enough, she had yet to be attacked by anything. Not providing it any thought, her mind numb, her body sore and exhausted, she could think she looked alike one of the bonemen herself.
As she walked on, and found another exit into an empty cavern, Lucy then collapsed onto her knees with a sob, hope nothing but a faint memory now. For what had she hoped for? Her rescue seemed purposeless now. Her life, purposeless. For her life had cost her everything.
Her everything was gone, massacred, slaughtered, just so that she could see the sky one more time.
Lucy had half a mind to go back, and if she were to be slaughtered in the process, then she knew she had taken a few undead down with her.
Just as her mind fogged with sorrow, hopelessness and desperation, her hands limp on her knees with her head bent down in grief, a warm wind washed over Lucy. Her tears running down her cheeks, dripping unto the floor below, she sat on her knees defeated.
Lucy then felt something warm tickle against her forehead. Her hands brushed away at her forehead and felt whatever tickled her forehead.
Fur. It was fur. Her hand stretching outwards, Lucy buried her hand into the warmth, and grabbed a handful of the soft fur, and leant forward.
Without the need to look to have it confirmed, Lucy knew she had fallen against the warm chest of the Mighty Lion. The familiar rumble resounding from his chest filled her with comfort.
"Love and light…" she muttered as she embraced Aslan's chest.
Aslan said nothing, simply sat down on his hind legs, and raised a great paw to encircle it around the daughter hugging him tightly.
With solemn, amber eyes, the Great Lion looked out into nowhere and everywhere.
He sighed deeply as his paw trod back down on the stone floor.
"Aslan…" Lucy piped up, looking up.
"Come, child," the Lion said, interrupting her. Lucy stood on weak legs and followed the magnificent feline into the cavern.
. . .
Caspian, Edmund, Peter, Al-Riyadh, Caine and Rhea struggled greatly. They were overpowered by numbers too great, and the undead came like an everlasting rain shower.
The group had simply accepted that the troll was most likely on their side and were grateful that it could handle the bigger creatures, it gave them a slight hope of survival.
"Peter!" Caspian called to his brother-in-arms. "Peter, we must get out of here, they outnumber us!" he shouted over the cries of the undead.
"Yeah, and before Talulah can get here to strengthen their numbers!" Edmund joined in as he swung at a one-armed bone-man.
"Fall back!" Peter shouted, having the group back away the direction they sent Susan and Lucy, hopeful they had gotten out.
As they fought their way backwards between the ruins, several pillars crumbled down before them. The roof above was on the verge of collapsing. The group halted after they had dodged the pillars crumbling down.
Before them, a large Ettin emerged from the boulders, breaking through the stony walls, its' back knocking down some of the roof. It was as large as a giant, except it had two heads. If the sight of its' club in one hand, and Morningstar in the other was not terrifying enough, it also seemed awoken from death's slumber. Most of its' heads, feet, and arms were skeletonized, and its' body bloated. There was a cavity in its' chest; an infested wound, where worms and other critters fell from the cavity. One of the heads had remains of a spear lodged through one of its' eye sockets.
The undead Ettin gave a roar of rage, and smashed around himself, and pushed down pillars, boulders, anything in its' way between it and the Pevensies. The Pevensies stood astounded, watching it stalk towards them.
"Oh, you've got to be joking", Edmund exclaimed, frozen in surprise.
As the Ettin stomped over a pillar and growled, its' mandible nearly torn off its' skull, the ground beneath them quaked.
"This place'll go down any minute, now!" Caine shouted, struggling to find footing.
"Either the roof will smash us like bugs, or that fella will!" Edmund replied, now readying a bolt. Caspian did the same. Al-Riyadh spat something in his native tongue towards the Ettin and readied his two-handed curved sword. Rhea and Caine backed the group up by fending off undead coming for them.
Peter flung his hook onto the Ettin's leg, the spikes hooking into the flesh of his thigh. The flesh, however, was decomposed beyond the fact that Peter merely tore off the flesh on the ettin's thigh, his hook dropping to the floor.
Peter grimaced at the sight, his insides churning. Edmund and Caspian fired their bolts into the ettin's heads, but it proved little, to not effective. The creature swiped out with its club, causing boulders to scatter.
"Gentlemen, it's been an honour!" Peter called towards his brother and friends, not really knowing how they would survive this outcome.
The ettin raised his leg high, and was on the verge of trampling them down, when a deafening roar echoed through the chamber, shaking the walls as it did. When the roar sounded, a part of the ettin set ablaze in fast-moving embers.
Another bellow travelled through the caverns, and another part of the ettin was lit in embers. Very soon, along with the growls travelling through the cave, the ettin was set aflame.
The flames consumed the creature till there was nothing but the combusted carcass of the ettin. The remains of the ettin fell over, tearing down another wall of stone. The roof started to cave in, several plates fell from above, the architecture torn asunder.
"Come on, this way!" Caspian called, and the group ran to escape the collapse. As the group ran to escape the chamber, they dodged boulders, escaped the roof and arches raining down, and by sheer luck, managed to not fall down craters in the floor. They climbed, jumped, and ran till their chests burned, tasted blood in their mouth, and pulse beat in their ears.
Oh God, please! Please! Ran repeatedly in Peter's head as he hauled Edmund over an edge as they barely escaped a large rock plummeting down from one of the arches.
Not meeting either Lucy or Susan during their flight, the group assumed they had made it outside and away from there.
Surely, this must be a dream, Caspian thought, as he placed a foot on grass. The adrenaline ran hot through him, he could hardly stay still, even as exhausted as he was.
The group had managed to escape the collapsed temple, it was now crumbling down, ash and debris danced in a whirlwind around the remains. Caspian could not see anything as the ashes rose around them.
There were still ruins of rock surrounding the group as they were left in a gorge, stone stairs embedded into the tall dry grass. Once more alert after their exertion, Peter looked around the gorge desperately.
"LUCY! SUSAN!" he called with his hands around his mouth. He started to pace about restlessly, jogging along a path along the gorge as he called.
The group jogged along the path until they were standing on the hill away from the gorge. They had view of the rocky gorge below, and the remains of the temple above. A dune of rocks and boulders hugged the remains.
"Lucy! Su!" Peter called for the umpteenth time, now desperate.
"Pete-" Edmund voiced solemnly. The thought of his sisters not being able to escape was dreadful, but still a possibility. Peter gave his brother a sharp look, knowing what he was about to say about the matter.
"No, NO, they must be here!" he replied sternly as he looked about them.
Caspian held his eyes downwards to the grass, thinking. Should they perhaps split up and look for them? Should they stay and hope Lilliandil would find them, so they could convey the message, and she could search from the stars?
His train of thought was interrupted as he saw the dead grass underneath his boots turn a healthy green. The grass became alive, a vibrant, lush green washed across the hill, alike a wave coming in with the tide. Caspian looked towards the direction the grass turned lush and healthy; towards the dune of sand, rocks, and boulders above them.
Birdsong, a wash of warm wind and summer leaves danced in the sky above the dune, and from atop the dune, Lucy and Aslan appeared, Lucy's hand in his mane. Susan appeared behind the pair.
"Look," Caspian observed, and the group turned their attention toward the dune.
"Lucy!" Peter called; his voice quivered with relief at the sight of his baby sister.
The group ran upwards the hill to reach them. Lucy, Aslan and Susan carefully tread down the rocky dune.
At the bottom, Lucy ran towards her brother, and crashed into his chest as he lifted her up into the air and twirled her about. He laughed joyously; Edmund gave her a hug from behind when Peter put her down.
The group gathered around her, utterly relieved that she was now safe.
Aslan and Susan shared a warm, knowing gaze, both glad to have the family together again. Susan crossed her arms and gave a tired sigh. Aslan had breathed life into her again as her body had lain broken inside the temple. She had renewed energy, yet she felt broken on the inside.
Susan rarely managed to braze herself when she looked back at her family, for in quick strides, Caspian had engulfed her in his arms, pushing her against his broad chest. A slight 'oof' of surprise escaped her as she was crushed against his frame. His arms hugged around her as her own braced against his firm back. He almost knocked her over as he buried his face into the column of her neck.
Her spirit inside mended, the ice thawed, as she accepted the hug, and rested her head against him, and sighed into his hair. He lifted her short figure off the floor as he hugged her tighter. Her short frame clung to him, as they both chuckled in relief.
In the corner of his eye, Caspian noticed Aslan glancing at them. He was not able to read the Lion's look.
"I thought I lost you," Caspian muttered as he put her gently down on the floor, resting his forehead against hers. She smiled coyly, a tear escaping the corner of her eye. She opened her eyes slightly, the blue shade turning golden in the last rays of sun now setting in the sky.
"I'm not going anywhere", she murmured back, meeting him in another embrace as his nose nudged against her cheek.