𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐃 || Tirian of Narnia

Chapter Nine: Cataclysm

Tirian's mouth went dry and his heart skipped a beat.

For a moment it was as if time had stopped, the world around him like an image pressed into his memory, the July afternoon, the tendrils of green snaking up golden walls, the thunder of hooves and the glint of the crown in the stretcher clutched between powerful arms.

And then Gareth's voice, like an echo through his thoughts, thundering "cordial, now," and Tirian crashed back to reality and bolted for the palace.

His heart hammered against his ribcage, ears pounding with every jarring footfall, charging through the gate and up into the healer's wing.

Rooms blurred until he burst at last into a small and sacred chamber.

He barely even knew what he was doing, barely registered the diamond bottle and its last ruby droplets as he tore it from its shrine and bolted back out before anyone could stop him, flying through the halls, boots on stone, back out into the glaring sun, into the courtyard where the lordly centaurs stood over the place where a crowd had already gathered.

Tirian pushed through, stumbling over feet, lungs burning, chest on fire, and then he skidded to a halt before the sight that met him.

Gareth on his knees, head bowed over the figure on the stretcher, Mal's hand flying to her mouth as her eyes rose, shining, to meet his, but he barely saw her.

He looked only to his father's face, ghostly pale, unmoving, and there was something so wrong with that picture that his stomach plunged into ice water.

A creature in the crowd wailed.

Tirian's head spun.

He took another step and moved to unstopper the bottle, diamond etchings pressing sharp patterns into his flesh. But then Gareth raised his eyes, and the sorrow there cut straight to his core, deeper and more terrifying than anything he had ever seen, a knife through his chest, cleaving him in two.

The cordial dropped from his hand, diamond bottle clinking unbroken to the pavers, a distant echo, almost musical in the silence that engulfed him.

Suddenly nothing was real.

There was some mistake. This was all wrong. He needed to tell someone it was all wrong. But the words vanished into a whisper before he could utter them, sinking to the ground, slowly, as if any movement might confirm some terrible truth.

Erlian's ashen face lay statuesque in its nobility under a spray of blood too red to be a giant's.

For a moment a certainty surged within him that he couldn't be dead, the feeling so real and strong that he almost believed it, gazing over the face he trusted more than any other, the face that had never betrayed him before.

But then his eyes fell to the armor: silver metal cloven through, jagged edges shining red in the sunlight, rivulets escaping through cracks in the horrible gash that stretched from his shoulder to his thigh.

Tirian's heart dropped into his stomach.

He reached out, hand shaking, hesitating over the damage, searching for something to do, but he could only brush the sharp steel, fingers slipping over slick blood.

His eyes flew back to his father's face, as if he could find the answer there, like he always did, as if there were some truth he was missing hidden in the lines of those eyes or the strength of that brow. But Erlian's face did not move, did not smile, his eyes did not even flutter, lashes perfectly still, perfectly gentle.

A breath escaped Tirian as the last of his world shattered, piercing his lungs with its force, constricting everything inside him. No sound came out, trembling fingers hovering over the King's face before dragging down through the scratch of his beard, a silent plea, desperation surging hot into his eyes.