//------------------------------// // Chapter VII - The Lion Roars // Story: The Unicorn and her Boy // by ChudoJogurt //------------------------------// My unexpected attack, even though it failed to reach Caspian, has allowed Peter a second to recover from the sorcerous assault and counter. He rolled, dropping his shield, and lounged at Caspian. His sword weaved in an elaborate double-feint, twisting around the White Sword as if alive, and left a long nick along the Prince’s shoulder, drawing blood that instantly froze in a patch of white ice. I tagged in, my spell burrowing into the ground and summoning roots and grass from underneath the frozen earth to bind the White Prince. They lasted less than a second, the roots turning to ice and to dust at his word, but it made him miss his step, and Peter lunged for the legs, quick and precise. He blocked Peter’s low cut, and leaned in with his shoulder, the pommel of the White Sword smashing into Peter’s face. The High King’s lip broke, his head snapping back. Droplets of blood absorbed by the hilt of the hungry weapon as Caspian raised it again, but now I was upon him, and this time my spell found its mark, enveloping and binding him in green chains of my magic. He shrugged, and the chains that touched him covered with frost and turned brittle. I grit my teeth with effort and pushed more magic into the spell in response, weaving layer upon layer of chains and bindings, fastening him to the earth and the rocks and the weights I conjured out of thin air. “Peter dear, you know you cannot defeat me.” Caspian’s lips were moving, but the voice was not his. The soft, silky tone, the condescending familiarity that would be alien to the well-spoken Prince was that of the Witch. “Why do you not give up?” His eyes narrowed, as he realized his own words. “That mangy cat is coming back, isn’t He?” Peter spat out blood from the broken lip and grinned savagely. He raised Rhindon again. “At the sound of His roar, sorrows will be no more. When he bares His teeth, winter meets its death,” he taunted his foe. “I still say it doesn’t really rhyme, but then, that’s not the point, is it?” He jumped towards the White Prince, sword blazing in a downward arc. Caspian twisted, and his sword, inerrantly finding a weak link in my binding, sliced the chain clean through, like a hot knife through butter. A savage kick sent Peter flying back, his breastplate bent and his legs tracing lines in the earth as he tried to keep standing. “Telmarines!” the immovable soldiers heads whipped up, like puppets to the pull of puppeteer’s strings. “Find the girl! Find the girl and stop her!” They jerked up to their legs - all in step, all without the need of further command - toy soldiers empty of any will save that of their Prince and marched towards the woods. A horn called towards them from the cover of the forest. And then another, and another. Beruna woods have come to the high hill - our army led by Edmund met the Telmarines at the edge of the forest, and while the little King lived, Lucy would have time to find her Lion. Caspian did not react, his face still as cold and impassive as it was before. “That won’t be enough.” he stated simply “My turn now.” He descended upon us with speed and with magic, and instantly we were hopelessly outmatched, our previous score - no more than a fluke born of Caspian's surprise. Peter retreated now, faster and faster, and every time he tried to attack Rhindon would merely glance of Caspian's impenetrable defense, and his own armor would earn a dent or a gash - more often than not adding a wound or a bruise to High King. Not that I was faring any better. For all my powers and all my magic - everything I’ve learned under Celestia’s tutelage, I could’ve just as well been a blank-flanked foal. I lashed at him with the Scourge, and it only whipped back to me, reflected of his gesture, entangling me and cutting my skin, blood marring my orange coat like a mockery of my cutie-mark. Even before I could finish the sleep spell I could feel my own eyelids starting to close, my magic returned to me by his glance. I created a gravity field that would push him into the ground with a weight of a mountain, and he collapsed it into a mess of particles with a stomp of his foot. The winds I’d summon to throw him off his feet split apart rather than touch the blade of the White Sword. He had all the counters, held every key to each binding, knew every weakness in my spellwork and the best of my efforts, the sorcery enough to break beasts and stagger monsters barely slowed him down. If it were not for Peter standing stalwart between the White Prince and me, the White Sword would’ve long since severed my head from my body. Desperate and out of ideas, I screamed in frustration and threw a flare of malformed energy at him, and for the first time, he grunted with effort as he caught it in the palm of his hand. No clever block, no counterspell, just raw power against the raw power. My eyes widened in surprise as the realization hit me when I looked at his hand burned for the first time with the power of my magic. That was the key. The intricacy of his spellwork, the complexity of it, backed by all the knowledge of two worlds, I could not hope to match, but Caspian himself was not a unicorn - or whatever human equivalent would be - and even changed by the White Witch he could not channel as much magic as I could. I reached within me into every reserve that I had and summoned all of my magic. Not the magic Celestia teaches in the school for Gifted Unicorns - I’d already expended all I’ve prepared towards the precise formulae and perfected schema of the academic wizardry of Equestria. Not the desert magic of Saddle Arabia I’ve been using before; the wind and sand wielded like a whip, elegant and piercing, lightning-quick and razor-sharp. From the deepest pools of my mind, I summoned all the raw energy I had. All of my anger, all of my fear, all of the horror at the battle unfolding behind us in the woods, slamming it through my horn. I became magic. I became fire. Energy flowed through me like a torrent, twisting into walls and streams of fire, that in itself was like a living thing, coiling around the White Prince like a dragon, looking to melt and devour. Caspian… The White Prince weaved and spun between the flames, deft and fluid, pirouettes and dodges, avoiding and deflecting flame and steel alike. His sword became like a whirlwind only materializing when it clashed with Rhindon or intercepted the flame of my magic. Still, for all his prowess, he was retreating, step by step, as we pushed him uphill towards the battle in the woods. More than once either blade or fire penetrated the spiderweb of defenses he has weaved around himself, leaving a gash or a burn on his snow-white skin. But still he stayed one step ahead of us, escaping the final strike time and time again and we could not keep it up forever. Time stretched, each minute like an hour, as we now battled in in the trees of the forest, making soldiers of both armies part around us and my endurance was coming to an end. My knees turned to jelly, and black dots swam in my vision. Exhaustion kept hitting me like an incoming tide with a myriad of little nauseating waves. Peter was on his last leg as well - his left hand hung limp, his shield long since left behind, and the steel of his armor was stained with his blood. His breath was ragged and wheezing, even if he still held on to his sword with dead man's grip, as he rained his attacks on his foe. The White Prince’s strength seemed inexhaustible. He was even taller now, his hands becoming slender and feminine, his features softer and ever more alien, and despite the burns and the long, ice-patched scars that we managed to score, he seemed ready and willing to go another twenty rounds. “All over, but the heroic last stands”, was what Peter said then, an eternity ago. Seemed apt to this situation, and so I took few ragged breaths and tried to straighten up, grasping all I had left for one final spell. And then He came and the lion’s roar shook the world. I could feel His presence even before I turned and saw them. Behind us, on a small bridge across the Beruna, two girls stood beside a monster. It was a lion, bigger than life itself. His golden coat shone with the light of the dawn, His emerald eyes pierced me even from across the battlefield with their sheer intensity, His frame full of heavy, world-rending power. Reality rippled under His heavy roar and the petrified Telmarines, awoke to His call, turning on their Prince-beholden comrades. The White Prince faltered for a second, his eyes widening in surprise, and my final spell crashed into his defences like a battering ram, crumpling the protective layers of his magic with a sickening crunch. And in the exact same moment, Susan’s arrow found its mark, right above his Adam’s apple. He stopped to touch it, looking at his red-stained hand as if unable to believe that he was killed. He made a step towards me. Then another. And then he fell, blood finally flowing freely from his wound. A puddle of red with disgusting strands of white within it flooded the ground that would not accept it. With every drop of red and white he lost, the White Prince turned back into Caspian. His clothes, stained with grime and blood, were no longer pristine white, his eyes and hair returned to their natural brown so very slowly, and he smiled. He knew that he was dead already, and yet he smiled because he felt that even death, even the eternal nothing was better than what he almost became. *** The untouched pizza had grown cold and silence hung over the table while Sunset took a breath before talking again. “That was the third hard lesson I have learned, of all the life’s teachings that made my heart black and cold. Celestia had always said that showing mercy and kindness cannot be a mistake. I now knew that she was wrong. Miraz was a murderer, a thief, and a tyrant. If only I’ve let Caspian kill him, then the Battle of Beruna would never have happened, the White Witch would not have been free, and my first friend, the noblest, kindest person in the whole of that cruel world would have lived.” Sunset’s eyes burned with the dark fires and her hands clenched into fists. “If I knew that then as I know it now, I would have murdered Miraz myself. I would have pulled him apart, limb by limb, tendon by tendon, bone by a bloody bone, kicking and screaming in front of his wife and child if need be. And I would not feel a single drop of remorse if it gave Caspian the peace of mind he tried to bargain from the White Witch. “But I didn’t. So I did all I could do now - I stayed with him until the very end, holding his hand in my hooves, and when the last light left his eyes, I stood up and turned to Aslan. "