INCIPIENT ➵ EDMUND PEVENSIE

25 | Telmarine Castle Turned Cemetery

25 | TELMARINE CASTLE
TURNED CEMETERY

She attempts to mask the anxiety that's begun to bud in her veins and speaks once more.

    "Will I die, Edmund?" questions Elliott, her words calm, but cold.

    A moment's silence settles between them both, "I won't l-"

    "Find that lass at all cost! You there, take right! Leave no stone unturned for those roaches!" commands echo from down the corridor and shatter their conversation. The thumps of men's feet thunder within the enclosed space, the accompanying tremors in the ground getting closer and closer to where the wanted maiden and king stood-

    Which disastrously occurs to be a dead end.

    Elliott seizes him by the sleeve and tugs him to the lone doorway in sight, sprinting across a full corridor.

    They enter.

    A corpse welcomes them into the dusty stairwell, laying open-eyed and in nothing but his briefs on algid stone. Elliott leaps over it with expectancy, whereas Edmund, on the other hand, trips over the startling obstacle.

    In his endeavor to regain his footing, he lugs Elliott, who's been fastening the rusty bolt of the lock painstakingly, along to the floor.

    She breaks her fall just before their skins collide.

    Both hiss in agony at the impact and at the gawkiness of falling onto someone, or being fallen onto.

    Edmund keeps his cool under her delicate frame made cumbersome by the oversized suit of armour, having seen one too many of such clichés in romance films.

    Elliott, in juxtaposition, scrambles in a fluster to shift herself off the king with as little additional awkwardness as she can manage.

    "Sorr-"

    The Just King shushes her, "The blame is entirely mine, Elliott. It's all right."

    He gets up soon after she does, and with the pad of his thumb, he swabs a drop of warm blood from her arrow's wound that's landed itself on his lip.

    "The venom, it has to be extracted," says Edmund, "It might've spread, but the fact that you're perpetually unaffected - which is astounding - tells us you've still got a shot."

    "Get rid of it? How?"

    Edmund bites his lip before he provides his input, "Well, it's definitely not the most appealing method, but I've heard that sucking out the polluted blood may just do the tric-"

    "It's at the back of my jaw, Edmund," informs Elliott, her tone faltering, "I can't reach it."

    "I don't exactly remember specifying that you're doing it," counters Edmund.