The White Witch leaned on her longsword with her right hand, face twisted in savage pain.
Wolf had left a gash running from her cheekbone to her ear. The torn flesh gaped open, the tissue underneath glimmering white with frost. Her mana could no longer shield her from the damage of her own cold, let alone control it.
Bella gripped her staff in both hands. Her expression was calm—no mockery, no contempt. "You've lost."
"I—" The White Witch had just started a word when sheets of ice came crashing over her, blanketing everything. The impossibly low temperature was gnawing away at her life force. She felt her consciousness going hazy, hazier still.
Slowly, she became aware of one fact. Even locked inside layer upon layer of ice, she started to laugh. "You... you can't kill me! You can't kill me!"
Bella frowned hard. If the White Witch had noticed it, then as the spellcaster, she'd noticed it too.
Some force from another plane was sustaining the White Witch's life force. Like an invulnerability cheat in a video game—right now the White Witch simply couldn't be killed outright.
Bella had to think hard about this. Did it involve the Ancient One and some pact she'd signed with a planar demon? Was it possible the Ancient One had deliberately excised the contracted portion so she could break the deal?
Bella didn't know the ins and outs of the way Kamar-Taj made pacts with demons, and the daily mechanics of that weren't something she'd studied. For a moment she hesitated.
"Seal her away, Lady Bella." Aslan the Great Lion appeared beside her at just the right moment.
The Great Lion looked at the ice-bound White Witch, his tone unchanged.
"If this draws further attention, that would be true doomsday for Narnia," Aslan said pointedly.
"Very well. As you wish."
Bella ramped up her psionic output. She destroyed the White Witch's body completely and sealed her soul inside a block of solid ice. Then she sank the whole block into the ocean and pushed the seawater, sending the ice out into deeper and farther waters.
The age of the White Witch was over. At last Narnia had hope.
Bella dismissed the Flying Dutchman first. A day earlier, when she'd summoned Pyramid Head, she'd belatedly realized that the coordinates back to the Material Plane had been right beside her all along—all she had to do was summon the ghost ship once and she'd have them. A pity she'd never put it together...
Now she had. But the urgency wasn't there anymore.
Next, she sent off the Ashina contingent. Bella gifted them a large quantity of Asgardian weapons and armor the Narnians had collected over the years. To the Asgardian warriors—who were filthy rich and wore gold plate into battle—this damaged gear was junk they'd tossed aside. But to Narnia and to Ashina, patched and mended it was still valuable.
Ashina had lost over thirty elite samurai in this campaign, plus more than a hundred rank-and-file troops. Bella felt a little embarrassed. The spoils were really too modest.
"For a samurai, dying on the battlefield is an honor. Lady Bella needn't feel guilty."
Genichiro Ashina's tone was earnest. Bella nodded and, after a private farewell in which she pressed a small crystal vial into his hand, sent the Ashina force on their way.
"Here. For you." Her voice was cool and steady. "Half a vial of Fire-Flower juice. It can heal fatal wounds in an instant. In a pinch, it'll save a life. I think... it should suit Ashina well."
Genichiro looked at her, then down at the vial in his hand. The glowing red liquid seemed to still carry warmth from her body. He took it silently and gripped it tight. He knew how precious it was. This was probably worth more than any prize he'd ever hoped to bring home from a campaign.
He didn't say much by way of thanks. He only looked into her eyes, deep and long, and then let out two hoarse words:
"...Thank you."
...
The last person she saw off was, unexpectedly, Aslan the Great Lion.
On the night of the battle's end, the Great Lion stood alone on the shore, gazing out across the water.
"My task is complete. Narnia will enter a new age of glory. I am no longer needed here."
Before Bella could talk him out of it, he was already pacing slowly down the beach, farther and farther away, until he vanished entirely from her sight.
Aslan was gone. Where he'd gone, to do what, nobody knew. He seemed very much at peace leaving the entire population of Narnia in Bella's care.
Watching Mr. Beaver pick up his little bow and arrow and get ready to shoot a rabbit that had been caught stealing carrots—while a nearby fox was cheering him on—Bella felt a headache coming on.
This wasn't a movie. You couldn't just defeat the White Witch and have the sun come out the next morning.
Three feet of ice doesn't form in a single day's cold. The land Narnia stood on simply couldn't be cured. Not unless she could rewrite reality itself, or lead these little rabbits and turtles all the way to the Frost Giants' home and put Laufey and every last giant in the ground.
Which, obviously, wasn't happening. Something Odin and the whole army of Asgard had failed to do wasn't going to get done by her and these "people" of Narnia.
So what then? The Narnians had asked her to be their queen. She'd politely declined. What was the point of being queen of this handful of survivors who'd all freeze to death in another few days?
She had to find them a way out. She racked her brain.
"I may be able to help you." The dwarf leader, hefting a fresh-cut wooden post, came over to where she sat.
Bella rubbed her forehead and picked up a little rabbit by the ears—it had taken refuge in her chair to escape Mr. Beaver's pursuit—and tossed it back out of the tent.
She looked at the dwarf leader. She hadn't had time during the battle to really study him, but now, in the quiet, her memory was slowly aligning him with something she knew.
"I'm grateful for your help. Forgive me—I never got your name."
"Thorin Oakenshield." The dwarf leader gave a name she actually recognized.
"Son of Thráin?" Bella asked again. "King of Durin's Folk?"
"Yes."
"..." Bella was briefly at a loss for words. How in the world had this character ended up in Narnia?
She collected her thoughts. "So when you said you could help me—what did you mean?"
Thorin Oakenshield gestured toward the allied soldiers outside the tent, still celebrating their victory. "Jotunheim isn't worth holding on to any longer. You should take your people and go. To a warmer place. A place better suited for living."
Your people, Bella thought dryly. When exactly did they become mine?
"A warmer place? You mean where?"
"My homeland. Far from this frozen world. Somewhere with—well, a gentler climate. A world far better suited to your people's way of life."
Bella kept quiet and weighed it. A warrior who only knew how to swing an axe, lecturing her on the differences between planes of reality?
"King Oakenshield—"
Thorin cut her off, his voice stiff. "That isn't my surname. Just a nickname."
Bella had no idea what rules the dwarves had about their names, so she course-corrected. "King Thorin, you don't need to explain planar theory to me—I have some grounding in that area... Can your world really accommodate all of Narnia's peoples? They aren't one kind. Even you dwarves probably can't host this many different races, surely?"
Thorin Oakenshield spoke with stern formality. "The world I come from is called Vanaheim. Many intelligent races live there. It's a vast world, rich in natural resources. There's a region we call Mirkwood—boundless—large enough that your people could settle and make their homes there. And we dwarves live at the headwaters of the River Running. There, in the mountain, we have built a great kingdom. Erebor..."