The Heirs

Chapter 27- The Last Familiar Thing

keen as are the arrows
of that silver sphere,
whose intense lamp narrows
in the white dawn clear
until we hardly see, we feel that it is there
-

Seraphina couldn't tell the difference.
Her vision was better than her mother's and her sister's but it had never been stellar- hence why she was a poor archer- but she was ready to bet that even her Aunt Susan wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the soldiers controlled by the djinns, and the soldiers who were fighting against the djinns.
Unless the soldier spoke- unless you got up-close and personal- one would never be able to tell.

It was a smart move, she had to grudgingly admit as she brought her axe down on a faun she had trained with when she had been settling back into Cair.
General Orieus had said, as they were nearing Aslan's How, that the enemy would have power, but they would not have numbers- the Narnian army was diminished, yes, but it still had quite a bulk- or loyalty.
She wasn't sure about the loyalty, but the 'numbers' part had quickly become false. The battle had been going on for all of five minutes, when suddenly some of the soldiers on their side- fauns, minotaurs, centaurs- had begun to fight against the rest of the Narnians.
Seraphina had taken a dagger to her shoulder as the confusion enveloped her- why? Why were her own people fighting their comrades? Had they been enchanted?
Then, as she pulled the dagger out of her shoulder, she had seen a djinn- skin as brown as the earth, hair as white as clouds- wrap their hand around a dryad's throat, pressing their foreheads together. For a moment, she had been confused again- the gesture seemed almost romantic- when suddenly the djinn had disappeared, and the dryad had begun slashing his sword at one of the centaurs he had been fighting with moments before.
The djinns were possessing the soldiers of the Narnian army- effectively reducing their number, as well as propagating hesitation in the minds of the un-possessed soldiers.
Who wanted to kill their own comrade?

She certainly didn't want to.
But she had to. These people were gone. They weren't the people they knew anymore, and Seraphina wasn't going to let the fact that these were familiar faces change her perspective on fighting.
Death was a kinder fate than letting the soldiers remain possessed.
She was going to defend her country, and she was going to kill her soldiers, if need be, and she wasn't going to let the guilt of that overwhelm her.

"Behind you, Princess!" Pleion shouted from somewhere, and Seraphina just managed to get her axe out of the dryad's corpse and wheel around, as a polar bear launched himself at her.

Seraphina was flat on the ground, the painful weight of the polar bear pressing itself down on her- he was snarling at her, his jaw a few inches from her face, and held at bay only by the rod of her axe that she'd thrust between them.
She was suffocating- the polar bear was so heavy and her shoulder burned in pain- and the bear clawed at her armour-clad arms, seeking flesh to sink his claws into- if she could only get at one of the knives she had on her-
There was a dull thud, and the polar bear went slack on top of her, his battered head resting on her good shoulder.
A spectacled bear- one of the Talking Animals on Pleion's crew, the only Talking Animals who still remained in Narnia- stood above her, and then pushed the huge mammal off her.
The bear, standing on her feet, bent down to retrieve the double-headed axe that was stuck into the polar bear's head, before saying, "Watch your back, Princess. Enemy everywhere."

Seraphina bit her lip, and unsteadily got to her feet, clasping her axe tight.
She paused for a moment, and surveyed the rest of the field- while she had fought, she had somehow backed herself near a corner- and all she could think about, was that she had expected the battle to be larger, on a far bigger scale.