Across The Narnia-Verse

Chapter 1: Sigils and Sudden Vengeance

Her name was no longer in the stars of this Narnia she saw as she glanced out and across the open balcony. But there was no David to put it back there. There was nothing left for her here.

Lilith crossed to where the portal-like hole was closing... slowly. Which gave her enough time to kneel beside David's body.

She closed her eyes, tightly, and pressed a kiss to his temple.

"I loved you... and I'm sorry I couldn't save you."

As she stood, she caught a glimpse of a familiar object. Though it laid in pool of blood, Lilith picked up Autumn's arrow. She followed what something odd inside her guided her to do, and held the arrow to the handle of Vita, at which the vines seemed to glow gold and come alive again, encircling the arrow and pulling it against the handle, before setting around it.

"I'll keep it safe..." Lilith promised David for a second time as she stepped back through to her own Universe, "until the next time."

( - Extract from 'I'll Keep It Safe' where this story will continue on from.)

~

"Tyon, my little Prince, it's far past your bedtime."

Lilith brushed her fearful son's cheek with her thumb, her eyes boring so lovingly but deeply into his that she never registered the dark carmine coloured smear she left across his skin.

She led him by the hand across the room to the velveted chaise lounge where he laid obediently. "Sleep in your sister's room tonight. You'll keep her safe, won't you?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Sleep well, sweet Princess." Lilith told her daughter softly, who had settled herself and was dozing peacefully.

Lilith had spent little time in the Library. She'd read everything in there that Edmund had recommended not long after being coronated, and he'd known everything worth reading. Lucy had also been gifted a chess set, carved by a woodworking Dwarf that she kept in her room, so all she and Lilith's chess sessions had moved into there.

But now, with the Kingdom void of the Pevensies, Lilith found herself surrounded by towering shelves and stacked parchment piles once more. She strode towards the back of the library, a flaming torch in hand as she found the books with the thickest dust and deadliest contents.

Sigils. She'd heard the word before. Sigils of the Old Magick. Some had been used by travellers for straight, sure journeys, others by thieves for efficient, protected jobs but many by the White Witch. They'd been found, etched in the ice of her castle walls, carved beneath the floor of her sleigh.

They'd been known to be powerful, powerful markings- and that was before they were at the hands of anyone with power even near to what Lilith could feel within her.

Never had such markings been engraved in skin. Never had a pointed quill end dripped scarlet as the sigils were fashioned with flourishes. Never had they glowed so bright.

Never had they glowed red.

The fabric of her Universe stood no chance. As Vita glistened in the torchlight, the sigils' glow pierced the darkness of the Libary and Lilith's eyes glistened. Reality might as well have split with a tear then and there.

Ignoring how her blood ran down her arm as she did so, Lilith raised Vita and slashed it through the air. Through the new rip came a howling, freezing wind. The landscape that the High Queen could see was suffocated with snow, the stars dim and hardly visible, behind the weighty roof of dense, overspilling clouds. She couldn't see a living soul. Nothing but a desolate landscape and a towering castle of ice that she'd only ever had the misfortune to hear and read about.

Lilith strode through the rip without hesitation.

Taking a moment to scoop up a handful of snow, Lilith let it melt in her hand, but it never fell to the ground. She felt the veins in her wrists burn- cold.

She hadn't dropped the snow. Somehow, she'd absorbed it. Along with the freezing essence of the White Witch's magic, Lilith had absorbed the plea for help- whatever small amount of Narnia that was left in the snow, was screaming.

It's been 200 years.

Help us.

Two hundred years? Lilith knew full well that in her Universe, Jadis had only been in power for one hundred-

But this was not her problem, for this wasn't her universe.

What did fuel her to begin towards the castle of ice, was the possibility that David might be around. She hadn't heard his name in the history the snow had held, she couldn't feel his presence, but she wasn't about to leave a stone unturned- and if the stone was in fact a Universe, then so be it.

-

"Jadis." She proclaimed, stepping over multiple Wolf-Guard corpses and into the White Witch's Throne Room. "It's a displeasure to finally meet you."

"And who are you?" Jadis was on her feet, now, hand on her wand. "How dare you kill my Queen's Guard?"

"Guards? Well, they weren't very good, were they?"

Jadis seethed and raised her wand. "It appears that neither are you."

Lilith flicked her Vita-sporting wrist and with a flash of golden light, Jadis' wand broke in half.

The White Witch's shocked expression contrasted Lilith's emotionless confidence. Quickly, Jadis reached to retrieve half of her staff.

"No." Lilith commanded, and the wand-half that Jadis desperately clawed for was disintegrated instantly. "Where's David? What have you done to him?"

Confusion mixed with intrigue flashed across Jadis' face. "Another Son of Adam? I don't recognize the name, I don't remember killing him, and I doubt he's still alive here, considering my Secret Police would have tracked him down and slaughtered him," the Witch sneered.

Lilith finally smirked. "Then I have no use for you."

Suddenly, Lilith raised Vita and struck Jadis with raw destructive power, glorious and golden as it set Jadis alight. Lilith watched Jadis' flesh melt and soaked in her borderline-inhuman, shrill screams as Lilith saw her fire slowly consume the White Witch- it was a vicious fire that no doubt contained the intensity of several stars, Lilith mused as Jadis continued to burn, the unquenchable fire now spreading easily throughout the Witch's entire castle.

After Lilith took a few seconds to bask in the unholy screams that filled the melting space, she exhaled and raised Vita again, slicing through reality and walking through to the next world in her path- the next stone to be unturned.