𝐒𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 || Narnia x The Hunger Games Crossover

Chapter Fifteen

A/N: Thank you SO much to every single person reading this story, you have all been so incredibly kind and supportive and I'm beyond blessed to get this kind of response to something that has occupied so much of my life for so long :")

Don't forget to leave a vote if you enjoy the chapter! And buckle in cause this is actually the longest chapter I've ever written up to this point in time... sorry not sorry? 7k words just happen sometimes :)

Happy reading~

xXx

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Lucy's legs burned, skin buzzing from dehydration yet slick with the same cloying humidity that drenched her grimy hair. If they'd come across another golden pool at that moment, she might just have taken her chances.

Her stomach swirled between hunger and nausea, the pain in her head dulling to an ache that never quite went away, and it took far too long to calculate for certain that this was their sixth day in the arena. If you could even call it a day. Time had bled together ever since they'd gotten down into the caves.

Half-delirious, she thought it almost a pity the Capitol so frowned upon eating your competition. Kill each other all you want, but heaven forbid you get a meal out of it!

Even Eustace might have laughed at that. The thought almost made Lucy smile through her madness.

But Edmund had been shockingly quiet today, a stark contrast from yesterday's reckless abuse. He walked ahead of her, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, eventually pulling off his jacket and tying it around his waist in spite of the chill still hanging about the damp stone.

And they continued like this, with several more breaks than they'd taken yesterday despite the fact that the urgency really should have pushed them harder, their lives a mere countdown now without water.

Morning passed like a fever dream into afternoon, and the light never changed, tunnel gradually widening and growing taller, snaking lazily uphill until all at once it opened into a behemoth cavern, neither like Deathwater nor the Cathedral.

The same rough rock and greenish glow rose around them, but in place of pillars or stalagmites jutted a steep and jagged hillside, climbing so high up into the haze that Lucy couldn't make out where it ended, or indeed where the distant ceiling began. Heaps upon heaps of sharp, craggy rock stretched eternally up into staggering heights. The slope of an underground mountain.

Lucy's head spun.

It should have been a welcome sight, and surely would have been, had her muscles and heart been up for it, but the exhaustion sank straight to her bones and she felt as if her blood had dried up, sticking in her veins.

Caspian struck out first, hauling himself up the first incline and catching sturdy footholds as the rest followed one by one in his path, clambering from shelf to jagged shelf.

Splintering shale dug into Lucy's blackened fingers, single-mindedly grasping for every next ledge and dragging herself up before she could think of looking into the endless climb before her.

Jill made good pace just ahead, while Edmund fell steadily behind, slowing or stopping to catch his breath so often that he never passed Lucy no matter how painstakingly sluggish her own movement became.

Her knees scraped the top of a sharp rise as her lungs burned, dry lips longing to beg for respite, and Edmund followed a step behind, bringing his second foot up just as a patch of loose pebbles gave way.

She grabbed his wrist on reflex and he lurched forward, saving himself against the stone, but then her eyes snapped down to his arm.

Feverish, sweaty, a furnace beneath her cool fingers.