Standing Steady in the Storms Ch. 64-65

A Way Out

Notes:

So, we've now seen our villian's twisted mindset. Time to go back to Janner and Kalmar^^

*****

“Let me help you!” Kal said, quickly rushing over to Janner’s sword as fast as he could, a glowing lantern in hand.

Janner puzzled at it for a second — he had thought the candles had all burne out — but didn’t have much time to process it. He shook his head and held back a groan of pain. “Get yourself warm first,” he said through clenched teeth. “I can wait.”

Kal, who had already arrived by his side with the sword, without batting an eye stated, “No,” and helped him into a sitting position so he could cut the ropes as easily as possible. Janner sucked in his breath at the movement, wishing that the bruising and cuts on his chest had had a chance to fully heal without getting slaughtered again.

“Seriously?” 

Kal glanced up at his face briefly before concentrating on holding the sword blade at just the right angle — since it could not be held much higher than the hilt — so he could cut the rope.  “Yes, Janner, seriously. We need to take care of each other, and you being selfless all the time is getting on my nerves. I’m tired of you being hurt for my sake.”

The ropes frayed first, then snapped, and Janner immediately got up unsteadily and grabbed Artham’s cloak, wrapping it around Kalmar's shivering shoulders. It hadn't been frosted by cold and snow as his had and was warmer anyway.

Kal stared at him in disbelief. “Did you not hear what I just said? I asked you to look after yourself on occasion! Your wrists are rubbed raw, you’ve been thrown onto the stone floor, and your wound is bleeding again, yet you still make your first course of action getting me warm again.” 

Janner touched his wrists tenderly before glancing down at his one-cream shirt that was indeed stained with fresh blood and shrugged. “That time was my own fault. Shouldn’t’ve asked.”

Kal rolled his eyes. “It was a reasonable question and that certainly wasn’t the response either of us were expecting. But I could’ve told you it was the holoré if you had just asked. She told me she had it a while back when the Bat Fang first brought me here.” Janner felt a little shudder go through him at the thought in spite of himself. Thankfully not registering it, Kal continued. “Speaking of bright things, she threw in some candles, stale bread, and a canteen of water after she threw you in. I don’t know why she wants us to see or live for now, but I’m not complaining. I've been wanting food for a while, even if it is just stale bread.”

Janner looked at the lantern that glowed with a dimmer but warmer light than the holoré. The crystalline facets scattered light everywhere, making the dirty cell glow with beauty.

He realized there was so much he didn't know, so much he did not understand about Kal and Amrah and what had happened during the two months he and his brother had been separated. Kal hadn't spent the entire time in the cell, he knew that. So what had he been doing before? What secrets had Amrah shared with him, what was there to know? Not that it mattered much, considering that their outcome looked bleak.

“Tell me, please,” he said softly, knowing that he was treading on quite possibly shaky ground after irritating his little brother so much.

Kal sighed. “About what ?”

Janner looked him straight in the eyes. “About what Amrah told you when you were alone with her.”

His little brother laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his head with his hand. “That’s a pretty long list.”

Janner smiled. “We have two days. What better way to pass the time?”

Kalmar considered this. "Fine," he conceeded. "But only if you let me put more salve and new bandages on your wound. Again."

Janner groaned but gave in anyway.

As Kal relayed everything Amrah had said to him, Janner found that some things made sense and others did not. Amrah’s survival and Murgah’s death made perfect sense, even if it was a little irritating. Learning that she melded with a person to return to her original state infuriated him because she clearly hadn’t cared about the life of the person she melded with. 

“She’s just another twisted thing then, isn’t she?” Janner said after his anger had become a slow simmer rather than an explosive catastrophe. “She melded with a person, sure, but she did it for one thing, out of selfishness. That would be bad enough, but she also did it  without the consent of the one giving a part of their life away.”

“And that means?” Kal asked, prompting him, twisting the lid back on the jar of salve and putting it away in Janner's pack.

Janner sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “It means we’re dealing with the equivalent of a Fang, but in human form. Amrah’s thoughts aren’t fully her own, someone else is instilling them in her. Well, she’s functioning from thoughts planted years ago and simply carrying them out.”

Kal looked at him with a very puzzled expression on his face. “Wait, so she’s ‘taking’ orders from Gnag even though he’s dead?”

“Sort of. I think she’s using the orders and ideas he put in her mind to fuel her thoughts and actions now. But, no, he’s not actively controlling her. He couldn’t be. That’s not how things work. Remember, we learned at Anklejelly Manor that there is—”

“No such thing as ghosts,” they said in unison and couldn’t help but start laughing.

“Speaking of ghosts though,” Kal began as they stopped. “What are we going to do?”

Janner felt a sinking dread flow throughout his body and cleared his throat awkwardly. “About what?”

Kal stood up abruptly and looked down at him. “Janner, stop playing dumb, that’s my job! You know exactly what I’m talking about, so don’t pretend not to!” 

Janner looked at his hands for a moment, observing the lines and the way they curved across his palms and ended abruptly at the pale scars that cut through the middle of his hands, just like the length of rope that had created them. He clenched and unclenched his right hand, feeling more than earlier when they were out in the snow but less than he normally did. “I don’t really think it’s a matter for debate or consideration,” he replied softly, rubbing the scar at the same time.

Kal stared at him. “I mean, I guess you’re not wrong,” he muttered finally, plopping down on the stone floor again. “But we’re not just going to let ourselves get dangled off a cliff to our death, right? We’re going to fight back somehow.”

Janner closed his eyes and nodded. They couldn’t just not try. They had to try, even if they died trying. Even if he died trying. He couldn’t let Kal die trying. Preferably, he would make it out alive and as unscathed as was physically possible, mostly because he didn’t want Sara to get angry at whoever hurt him. Farther down on the list were the obvious ones, injury, death, failure. Really, everything was a terrible option. But for Sara and Evnia and Elquinn’s sake, even if not his own, he wanted to live. He wanted to live for them, for Kal, for the rest of their family. He did not want them to grieve again. Sara had done so much grieving in the past three months. Janner would give anything to alleviate her pain, even the slightest, but the trouble was that he was willing to give his life. And dying would not give her relief.

He missed the first part of Kal's rattled list of ideas, and began hearing them at: “ —or we could set up one of those cool ambushes with a trip wire for her to trip on, or make some sort of explode-y thingy with matches and paper, or we could bribe the Fangs to listen to us with…with…uh…Janner, what would you bribe Fangs with?” Kal asked, genuinely curious.

Janner smiled at his little brother. “Power works. But not only do we not have that as of right now, we could also do something so much simpler. It would have to be carefully planned out and thought about and designated backup plans, but it would be much simpler.”

“And what would that be?” Kal asked.

Janner grinned. “We run.”

*****

Notes:

Wow. This is CRAZY! Janner is actually suggesting that they run somewhere! That's near the bottom of his skillset list 😂

Tedious Planning

Notes:

As per my title warning, this chapter has some tedious planning in it. This is largely because unless I explain the plan to you now, it'll seem crazy when they actually try to execute it.

The other reason is because Janner's the sort of person who would want every detail for a plan sorted out.

YOU MUST KNOW WHAT THE PLAN IS EVERY. SINGLE. DETAIL.

— Janner Wingfeather

p.s. he never actually says that, I just feel like his brain would scream it.

*****

Kalmar stared at him incredulously. “Are you serious?” Janner nodded. “You’re not joking with me?” Janner nodded. “Wait, so you are joking with me?” Janner shook his head fervently and opened his mouth to speak, but Kal’s words came out before his did. “Is this or is this not a joke? I don’t get grammar negative issue things.”

Janner smiled. The “not”s and “no”s were a little difficult. “We run and escape. But with a plan.”

It took a little while for him to explain the concept of running with a reason to run and a goal in mind and a plan of action to take if anything failed to his little brother. Kal had always viewed running as a way to escape, which it was. Janner knew he had never looked at it as something that could be planned out and organized beforehand. As such, he ended up spending almost as much time planning as explaining what he was planning, how he was planning it, why the plan would work, and why variables needed to be considered.

By the end of the planning session that lasted seven hours based on how much of the candle had burned, Janner’s voice was a hoarse whisper, Kalmar’s mind was enlightened, and they had a way of escaping Amrah’s wrath without denying the Maker.

Amrah was coming anywhere from dawn to noon on the day after next. Until then, they would keep their minds away from the subject of food because they had none and focus on other, more light-hearted topics. Janner had several in mind such as officially announcing the twins to Kal, but he hadn’t actually said that in the planning session, because if he had, there would be no surprise. 

However, so far as the actual escape was concerned, the perfect sketch was as follows:

They would ready themselves the night before Amrah was supposed to come so they would not be caught off guard, no matter what happened. Thankfully, they didn’t have all that much with them. Janner would wear Artham’s cloak so he could hide his sword (there was another reason for wearing Artham’s cloak, but Janner also failed to reveal this during the session) and Kal would wear Janner’s cloak and pack, solely because he insisted on carrying something. 

Prepared as soon as Amrah unlocked the cell door, they would flee as fast as was physically possible, most likely knocking Amrah to the ground in the process. Kal would grab the key from among Amrah’s cloak, because his hands were the fastest (they had been since their brief stint on the Strand, and they remained so to that day). 

They would race up the narrow halls that led to the dining hall and use the key to get outside. Kal had said there weren’t many Fangs actually posted at Castle Throg, so at most they would have to deal with three. He relayed that there only ever seemed to be one Fang, a Grey Fang he hadn’t asked the name of because…it made him uncomfortable.

Once the door was unlocked and the heavy doors pushed open, they would run through the courtyard and to the cave where Uncle Artham would (hopefully) be waiting to help them and signal the dragons in whatever fashion he saw fit.

Unless something went wrong. A million things could go wrong and most likely would, but the most dire and expected errors were as follows:

If more Fangs were posted than expected, Janner would fight them as best he could and Kal would either run for the exit or for another weapon from the armory. Janner wanted him to only have the option to run away, but Kal insisted on having the option to help fight.

If Uncle Artham was not in the cave when they reached it, they had several options, one being wait until he arrived, the second being continuing to run — the poorest choice, in Janner’s opinion, considering that it was not logical and the likelihood of either of them (Kalmar was included in this statistic since he had not done much physical excerise in the past three or so months) managing to actually run much distance fast through snow was near zero — the third being waiting at the back of the cave until Artham came (similar to number one, but this was in the event of being chased), and lastly, being spotted by Artham as he flew reconnaissance overhead. This was by far the most pleasurable. 

And, of course, what to do if Amrah caught up to them? Well, in that case Janner would fight her, Kal would run and rather than staying behind to help, he would find Uncle Artham to help. 

This touched on a secret point of Janner’s plan, the purpose of Kal wearing the better-fitting cloak. Uncle Artham’s was warm and delightful, but it was heavy and nearly impossible to wear without it slipping strangely. And it was impossible to run in it and keep it from slipping onto the ground. That meant that in the face of the need to utterly abandon ship and bail all sensible escape ideas, Kal could run away as fast as he could and as easily as he needed to, while Janner would stay behind and do what needed to be done, no matter what the cost.

But Kalmar didn’t know all that. He didn’t know because Janner never told him.

*****

The dead of night was upon the mountain again, and above it flew Artham P. Wingfeather, searching, hoping, observing, and praying. 

He peered keenly at every swath of mountain landscape, even though every section looked the same. Artham knew his nephews and knew they would find a way to escape together and that leaving each other behind was out of the question. “Thank goodness,” he murmured aloud, not wanting to make much noise but understanding the necessity of creating some sound to keep any lingering guilt at bay. He had been wonderfully free for years, but sometimes it would sneak out, just a trickle of it at a time. Not enough to overwhelm him or send him into a state anything like the one he had been in, even as “recent” as the lapse in Dugtown. 

But whatever guilt his mind managed to conjure up while on the mountain, Artham knew it did not matter. What mattered was the state of the escape, the state of the location, and the state of the escapees. In this case, Janner and Kalmar. It mattered if they were physically alright or not. Someone back in Anniera would have a toothy cow if even a single hair on their heads had been harmed. Though I am almost certain that one or both of them is or will be harmed and that it is or will be far more than a single hair on their heads.

As Artham circled dangerously close to Castle Throg and down the cliff face to the beginning of the abyss, the frigid night air flowed through and around every one of his feathers in the most invigorating way possible. Something regarding the abyss tugged at him memory, but it was muddled and Artham was not certain what it was. It must have been a memory from his time with Esben in the Deeps of Throg, because the idea of the abyss was no more than a whisper. Throg memories were whispers and disjointed words and pictures charged with fear, shame, and grief.

Whatever it had been used for before, Amrah could be using it again. Just as she could be using the Deeps or the castle itself or some other network of accessible dungeons.

“Actually,” Artham whispered. “That last idea makes more sense than it did in my head. Perhaps that is what she is doing. If that’s the case, Janner and Kal’s attempt at escaping unscathed— assuming that they are trying — went up by twenty percent.”

Now the Throne Warden and High King had a twenty five percent chance of escaping without any damage done to them. Artham prayed something like that wold be the case. He would rather they returned to Anniera alive and whole.

The truth was that he was growing weary of doing nothing. He felt as though he should have been doing more than simply flying reconnaissance. But how could he storm the castle? That had the potential to end terribly. It wasn't as though he didn't enjoy testing the limits every-so-often. But there was a fine line between testing the limits and foolishness. He prayed the Maker would give him discernment to know when and how to act according to His Will.

Maker, please guide me.

*****

Notes:

I know the planning section was tedious, but, if I'm being totally honest, I really wanted to know what their plan actually was, and this was the best way of finding out 😂

And that's my reasoning behind why Artham hasn't done much in terms of rescuing, because he doesn't want to do anything foolhardy when he only has one shot at this.