𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 || Narnia x The Hunger Games Crossover

Chapter Fourteen

"The bottom," echoed Caspian.

The bottom of the world.

For all Lucy knew, that could have been true.

She stepped hesitantly forward and let out a staggered breath, chest heavy with the sheer magnitude of the place, plain grey stone running up suddenly into glittering black ocean, cracked glassy surface illuminated in faint daylight as if pouring in from another world, another universe.

"Careful," murmured Caspian, his voice so low it barely registered, small and lonely as if outdoors in the middle of the night.

Their ghostly tunnel ended as abruptly as if it had been cut off with a knife, towering pillars sprawling out before them in the darkness of the gargantuan cavern, some broken or missing or lying flat over stretches of the ground that had not caved in, crumbling under their own weight.

"No way did they build this," breathed Caspian, and Lucy looked at him.

"You think it's…?"

Real. The word hung unspoken in the air, so overwhelming was the thought that it crushed even the smallest tremor of a voice.

He met her eyes, the possibility of it shining back at her, the whisper of stories filled with hidden underground realms too vast to map, too dangerous to explore, swallowing lost souls and dragging them down into the depths never to touch the light again.

"What are we supposed to do now?" asked Jill.

"Cross it, I suppose," said Lucy. "There must be something on the other side, I can see the wall."

"But it's miles across, and that would be bad enough even if it had a floor!"

"It has a— well, it has most of a floor."

Jill shot her a dry look, unconvinced.

"Do you want to go back?"

"I don't think we have a choice," said Caspian. "My guess is all paths lead here, eventually. This place is too good to waste, they'd want somebody to get to it."

"So… it's the only way through," said Lucy.

"That's how I would design it."

"Nobody asked you," muttered Jill, but the aggravation lacing her tone only confirmed she thought he was right.

Lucy inched forward again, slipping her foot over dull rock to place her toes on shiny black stone. "Seems solid enough."

She stepped further and put real weight on it, half expecting the ground to crack or crumble or drop out beneath her, but nothing happened.

She took another step, both feet planted solidly on the strange surface, and glanced back at Caspian.

He scanned her, scanned the stone, shrugged, and stepped out beside her.

Still nothing happened.

"Well…" he gazed out across the staggering expanse, glittering like a night sky sunken into the earth. "Let's get moving, then."

Lucy and Caspian strode carefully over the slab of onyx marble, scattered debris clinking and crunching like glass beneath their boots, and Jill followed a moment later, though she muttered a great deal about heights and kept very close to Lucy's shoulder.

A stone's throw to the right the ground fell away beyond a sharp edge into solid nothingness, but they continued over the flat surface until it ran up against a low ridge and they realized their slab had only been one very tiny piece of the jigsaw, offset as if it had shifted a full two feet lower than its neighbor over the past few centuries, like a tile in a bathroom floor, if the tile were the size of a building.