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"This night is cold in the kingdom,
I can feel you fade away."
Let Me Down Slowly
Alec Benjamin
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Chapter XXII - A Captain Goes Down With The Ship
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I knew I would never be forgiven. I couldn't imagine forgiving myself for what we had to do. Ben was breaking down by the minute. The stress of losing his best friend only makes his condition worse. The plans were drawn and the preparations were started. The sleepless night's hours went by fast and the time for action came even faster.
It wasn't until the first sail of our Navy's boat dropped that I heard her calling out to me. I turned, she wore all black and emerged from the shadows in a state of mourning. I opened my mouth to explain myself but she filled in the words for me, "Under our orders, Peter and Lucy have been locked in their room. I put my personal guards at their door to assure they stay there."
"Am I doing the right thing, Susan?"
"Just because it doesn't feel right doesn't mean that it is not correct." Susan's eyes were glassy, "I spent so much time hating her that now I regret every moment of it. She had a kind heart and an intelligent brain. She's a prisoner now. And you know what she would want."
"One for the many." I remembered, "She would have called it good politics."
"Ashton was the only person that threatened me. She is stronger than I have ever been and is more fit for queen than I will ever be."
"They are going to hate us."
"Yes." Ben nodded, "But she would hate us even more."
I had gone back and forth all night. The entire country and everyone I loved was counting on me. The same country that she loved. But as someone I loved the most, I couldn't bring myself to think of driving my sword through her heart. Ashton has been with me from the very beginning. I stepped into Narnia a scared greedy boy and we found each other in the caves of ice built by her mother. I remember how the green in her eyes glowed against all the blue that surrounded us. Her mother's eyes were like ice on a pond, deep blue, and hid millions of secrets beneath it. Ashton's resembled the forest on a summer's morning, clear and captured light in the simplest, most natural way.
I could never forget her. She brought me down to earth and made me settle in the dirt. In her, I found someone I could trust before I could trust myself again. She and Ben saved me without even knowing it. I knew that being used and controlled by her mother again was a fear she tried to lock away, she always wanted to seem so strong. We didn't have to speak on it, but with just a few months as Jadis's lab dog, she haunted my nights more than three times that. Surviving those days was agonizing and growing up that way seemed impossible. Ashton lived with it for sixteen years.
There were nights on the road that stormed emerged from clear skies and her bed would catch fire. In the terrors of her own sleep, Jadis was alive, torturing her. Ashton considered many ways to make it stop, including not sleeping at all. One of her most fearful nights, she would sleep curled up to Ben. If she lost control, the paragon diamond would be moved from his neck to hers. She explained to me that losing her power was like losing a lung, she ran off half her energy. Food tasted dull, the sun seemed to be fogged and her bones wanted to break. Even with all of that, it was always close to her. In the possession of her most trusted friend to protect him and everyone else.
I should have reminded her more often than she was accepted by Narnia. That no matter her past, she had made up for it a thousandfold. She was too guilt-stricken to allow herself to be happy. I'm never fully sure if she thought she deserved it.
A raven came to Susan late in the night, her handwriting was rushed but still known:
She plans to attack at dawn by sea. Create a blockade as big as you can without losing strength. Hold the Cair and you'll hold Narnia. Don't engage, just hold her off until I can get back in my mind.
"It could be a trap." Susan looked out the window and had a clear view of the open ocean.
"We don't have many options. The first light is in an hour and we might have less time than that before Peter wakes up and releases what we plan to do. It won't be long until he talks his way past the guards at his door."
"She didn't sign it, with worries of it being intercepted or misplaced. She protected it and us. She knew we would know it was her." I told them, "This is our best lead, and we have to follow it."
"Can she overpower the White Witch long enough to make a difference?"
"She can do it." Ben shook his head.
"How do you know?" I asked, hoping he would affirm my faith.
Ben's eye groped, his fur was yellowing and his voice never raised above a level of casual conversation, "And if I'm wrong, it won't matter. I'll be dead anyway. You'll follow soon after unless the Witch Bitch intends to keep you as pets. But my last acts on this Earth will not be doubting her."
I wondered if Ash considered out Narnia's leaders would crumble in her absence. We were boiled down to a mere fraction of us. "Evacuate the city. Get Theo on it. Start with the orphanages and schools. If the Witch has access to her memories, she will know to start there to hurt Ashton the most."
We all went out separate ways a million things to do and less than a hundred minutes to get them done. I sent the Cair into a state of emergency.
I ran through the halls, knocking on the doors of the reserved rooms of the Hood family. Marian opened the door, inviting me in.
The twins were the first I saw, both strapped the teeth in armor and bearing the family crest on a tattoo on their arms. I had seen Allie's once before, it was set at the back of her neck. She came from the other room. Holding a crossbow and counting her arrows.
"Are you sure you're up for this?" I asked them.
The youngest, Luca, only sixteen bounced his throwing knives in his hand. "Our father died with honor. The best we can wish for is the same."
I would not be the one to point out that he was still too young for battle by law. As the acting law, I elected to ignore it.
"We win together or we lose together. Either way, we will mourn together as well." Syler laced his boots.
"We will all meet again in Aslan's country." Adrian nodded, looking beaten down but not broken.
"We ask one thing of you." Allie stepped to me in front of her brothers, she stood with her family above all else. As I expected and respected her. "Leave Mason to us."
They stuttered at the name.
Jaxon straightened his back, "The living are not done with him yet. He will face a traitor's punishment by Loxlian tradition before he meets the gates of Tash."
Marian's hands shook, losing her husband in a battle, and not long after watching her children suit up was not easy on the Lady of Loxley. But she saw it as clearly as I do. They weren't backing down. They teased and fought as all siblings but they were also each other's greatest defenders. The look in their eyes showed no fear and no hesitations. The five siblings would take on the whole army if they needed to.
In the corners of my mind, I could see the pride their father held for them. Though he never intended on leaving so soon, he left them with all the strategies and strength to assure they would prosper with or without him. Loxley was always doing to be in good hands.
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All the years of sword fighting and training. As the battle came into view. I would be one of gunpowder and lead. The blockade was set, and just as they were told the White Witch living inside Ashton's body came from the west.
The ships were stolen from the port off the coast of their camp. Canons were drawn and a lone girl standing at the front of the boat. She shined like the sun in full gold armor. She wore a self-created crown and acted like she had the right to wear it.
It wasn't the ships or the soldiers that rode on them that scared Edmund. It was the storm that followed. If the sun had risen, no Narnian could see it through the black clouds. The only thing that lit the sky was the flashes of lighting. The sails she filled with bone-chilling winds, blowing snow over even the Narnian boats over a mile away.
Edmund didn't wait for the storm to reach him. He signaled into the angry waters. His eyes stayed on the White Witches ships. Sirens arched over her ships, going up, taking a soldier off, and then dragging them to the depths.
The Witch responded by lightning fires across the surface of the water. It rages bright and furiously. The mermaids that had already started their leap, were chard before they got to the other side. The shriek of their flesh rang through or ears like knives.
She gathered all the fire in one direction, battling across the open ocean. Flames shot to the center of my boat.
"Abandon ship!" I ordered. After instructing his siblings to go, Jaxon, the title of Lord of Loxley, comes at a sad time. He stayed with me, assuring everyone was off before we took orders. I threw open the hatch of the below deck, "Up now! Get off!"
The flames had already started to creepy through the wet belly of the ship. "All clear!"
We dove off together. Swimming as fast as we could to the next ship. The Witch did not make it easy, making the water harsher and harsher. I couldn't see the ship I was swimming to between paddles.
Luckily, a mermaid came to our aid, putting us on the next boat and letting us to the ladder. But that was not even the beginning of our problems. With an entire crew of wet soldiers that just faced a long and dreadful swim, we exerted energy we couldn't afford to lose.
My teeth chattered. While dripping wet and shivering in their temperatures, we might not even last the hour before hypothermia kicked it. That's what she despised about us, that we were human. She sought out the part of us that could be killed and exploited it. The Hood siblings and I would fall first, the spring animals next, and then, if she didn't finish them off herself, the thickly furred animals.
Fires were lit in barrels, but could barely raise a flame above three inches in this cold. That wood was too wet and the cold was overpowering the flame before it lit.
She embodied the very monster Ashton feared becoming. Her power seemed limitless and never-ending. She didn't care who she hurt, no matter man, woman, or children. In her mind, we were the only thing standing between her and the thrown.
She waited. She wanted to see my next move, so she could laugh at it before ending us in one swoop.
Narnia's hands were once again in Ashton's. Both literally and morally. I began to curse myself for all the pressure that was put on her. She was the most exceptional member of the Narnian leaders and I wish I could apologize for that. I don't think anyone ever thanked her for it.
The tide slowly pulled out from under neither of us. Inch by inch we sunk into the sea until there was a massive wall of a wave in front of us.
She was just toying with us before, wanting to show her power before she came off unscathed. She wanted to show us she was untouchable, to starve us of hope before wiping us all out.
I felt Allie's hand slip into mine. With the push of her hands, the White Witch would send the Tsunami crashing into us.
"I'm sorry."
She gripped my hand tighter, "Nothing could stop that amount of power. Not even kings."
We had no choice but to stare at it, it climbed higher and higher, touching the sky and dropping water onto us from a mile above.
A pause in time. For a second the whole world was quiet. There was nothing to say. Not gods to pray to just from a row seat to our death. But that pause dragged out, turning into seconds and then I realized that we hadn't frozen, the wave had. It started descending. It picks us back up and scooped us back onto the top of the water.
I was handed a spyglass, closing one eye to look through. I saw her clear as day, take the crown of her head and throw it into the water. In one move of her hand, she cleared the top deck. Sending all the Witches supporters into the water. She picked up one individual body, throwing it particularly far.
In the next movement, she took the wind and filled our sails, pushing away from her. I hung onto the railing so I didn't topple over.
The snow had turned to rain, it was still cold, but not as it once was. She poured her heart into guiding us all the way to the shore. I saw her start the breakdown, the energy of it all starting the break her system. She always believed that no one person was supposed to wield that much power.
I heard the confusion from the crew behind me but I couldn't take my eyes off Ashton. My heart knew what she was going to do before my brain processed it. The shine of tear trails flickered on her cheeks.
She manipulated the tides to send her mother's boats crashing into one another. The masts of the ships, tangling in each other. We could hear their screams from here, some took their chances with the sirens and dove in the water instead of face her.
My knees crumbled underneath me as I watched her close her eyes. I had seen her conjure it once, and if Benvolio wasn't as fast as he is. I wouldn't have survived it.
Her fingers twitched under the pressure.
"No!" I screamed.
She was too far to hear me. I wondered if she intended it that way. To get me far enough that I couldn't stop her or be forced to watch.
Her shaking hands came to her head, a soul-crushing sob leaving her lips. It crushed head between her hands, all the energy building up into one spot and set to explode. She screamed loud enough for me to hear even with the distance across the crashing sea. With it came an outburst of energy. It wasn't just a flame or a spark. She detonated the most powerful eruption possible. She turned herself into a bomb, one loud crack of four boats came with it. Sails were blown away, and the decks of the ships cracked in two if not three. Anyone within a hundred feet was dead instantly. The blow was taken straight to the chest, caving in their ribs, heart, and lungs all in one go.
She toppled over next, completely unconscious, all the power officially breaking her. And the captain went down with her ship.
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I know, I know, I suck because i didn't upload for a hot minute. I'm sorry. i didn't wanna have to do this. I might start the next chapter right now so you won't have to wait again. this story has been a part of my life for so long, i'm afraid to see it end. these past two books are the best things I've written. and i'm pretty sure i peaked with them. it's been a hell of a ride, i'll see you in the next chapter.
always, always, with all my love, B