12. Air
He couldn't breathe.
That suffocating sensation was always first, before the silver binding his wrists, his ankles, his waist. Before her sweetly poisonous voice reached him, even. Rilian struggled to breathe.
The air felt damp in his mouth, his throat, his lungs. Specks of dirt, carried on it, made it impossible to breathe freely. How long had he breathed nothing but the air of the grave when his mind was free?
Too many years to count.
But the first night he broke the surface, emerging from the cave, and breathed the clean, cold, sweet air of Narnia, he thought he'd never take it for granted again.