Standing Steady in the Storms Ch. 72

The Bond of Love

Notes:

This chapter....this chapter still breaks my heart. The entire time this last portion was being written, I was listening to the song, "King and Lionheart." It parallels reasonably well. I highly recommend looking it up. This chapter, though...here are the lyrics.

And as the world comes to an end,

I'll be here to hold your hand.

'Cause you're my King and I'm your Lionheart.

Your Lionheart.

*****

Clouds of thick, gray dust billowed up from the stone floor of Castle Throg. The once-present ceiling was half gone, and in its place soared the cloudless, blue sky. After the tremendous, peak-shaking collapse, nothing could be heard but silence. It was so quiet, not a living thing stirred and not a rock moved from where it had fallen. All was still and nothing breathed, except the reeling bursts of stone-dust that sucked the life out of every living thing.

It was like that for a few minutes, the particles swirling continuously, some slowly drifting down to rest on the floor, blending in with the gray rock floor. Then a gentle whisper of wind blew into the ruined castle and sent the dust and debris flying again. 

The wind did more than that, though. The wind brought awareness and memory of life back into the crushed and crumbled castle. It started out as a brief choke of trying to gasp in air but turned into hacking as the one who lived found no clean air to breathe. After several useless attempts that left him doubled on the floor in pain, he forced himself unsteadily to his feet and took a hesitant step forward. When he tottered but did not fall over, he took another tiny one, and then another.

The last step, though, was the one that made him cry out in grief and fall to his knees, wordlessly pleading with the One who made Aerwiar. 

Because when he looked down, he saw something precious he knew. Something far more precious than his life.

Janner saw Kalmar, face-down, his head mostly-unharmed and tenuously-shielded by other rocks that had fallen above him but not crushed him. The rest of his body was buried. Without stopping to wonder how Kal had gotten into Castle Throg or panic anymore than his initial cry of distress or even to check and see if his brother was still alive, Janner began moving the rocks out of the way, one by one, quickly but carefully, not stopping for a single second, not caring about how his arms were trembling from the constant weight they were carrying or how his legs were shaking from the never-ending effort they were doing.

The continual movement and shifting of rocks spurned the stone-dust onward with a vengeance, and it returned full-force, billowing and roiling as if it were the waves from a tempest out at sea. Janner blinked it out of his eyes and cleared his throat as best he could, then doubled over in a coughing fit, struggling to breathe through the mess while still rescuing his King. 

The dust was clouding his mind, the fatigue was sapping his strength, and the concern was weakening his spirit, but above all the pain and thoughts, one message rang out above the others, clear, crisp, and like a breath of fresh air in the airless mess of the collapse: protect, protect, protect.

 Slowly, ever so slowly, Janner was able to see more of Kalmar’s body. He was still wearing the pack, and though it was a crushed mess, it must have protected him somehow. The lacerations were shallower or non-existence there. But where the pack did not lay, stones had torn through Kal’s clothes and left bruised, torn, and bloodied marks in their place.  It was like the criss-cross of whip lashes and the battering of a beating, and it broke Janner’s heart. 

He pushed aside the grief, though. He refused to let it stop him from rescuing his alive brother, who though he did not move, he breathed, and breath meant life. 

As Janner heaved and lifted the only stones still imprisoning his brother that covered Kalmar’s right arm, he felt his heart stop. Hulling the rubble away with a desperate urgency he had not exhibited before, turning rapidly so he faced the right way, and falling to his knees at Kal’s right side, Janner’s hands fluttered fearfully above his brother’s arm.

It did not look like Kal’s arm. It looked like a torn, twisted, and tortured mess of destruction. It was something that he feared would never heal, something that would never again be used to create beauty for a picture or shoot arrows for a contest or brandish a sword for defense or hurl a ball for zibzy. 

The bones had been crushed beyond any repair; he could see that from the way they had twisted and shifted oddly, grotesque and abnormal in their shape. The falling rocks had crushed not only the bones but the flesh as well, cruelly without considering the implications of their actions, tearing it apart with their hateful teeth as they had come crashing down. 

Janner felt panic rising up in him like a swirling storm, ready to thunder and wail, ready to roil the air and hurl hailstones. He pushed that down as well. He pushed it away frantically, haphazardly, and even as he was reckless with the distress in his mind he was gentle with his brother.

He fumbled with his sword and tried cutting the straps of his crushed pack away from his brother’s right arm in some wild attempt to jar it less, but he could not control it by holding it at the hilt because of the way his body refused to stop trembling. He finally gave up on the hilt and clutched it by the blade, slicing deftly through the leather hide and the palm of his right hand. It didn’t matter, though, the pain he could not feel did not matter, the blood did not matter; none of it mattered.

Kalmar was all that mattered, and keeping an anxious eye on his brother as he opened it, Janner prayed there was something salvageable, something left of the salve that had been there before, some of the bandages, just anything he could use to somehow stabilize Kal’s arm to steady it and keep more precious blood from escaping from his all-the-more precious body. 

He found crushed glass surrounded and covered in healing salve, but just the right amount for use. He found leftover bandage strips, torn and twisted, stretched and shredded but still intact enough to help. 

After cleaning his hands with a bit of water from the canteen — the cut on his right hand stung now, but he ignored it —  Janner set to scooping the salve that was left into his palm, fishing through the glass bits and debris that had invaded it. A few times a piece slipped his mind and cut his fingers, but he barely felt that either. All he felt was Kalmar’s pain, Kalmar’s horrific, horrific pain that he could do nothing about, no matter how much he wanted to. 

Janner spread it across the landscape of lacerations and tears as best he could, hoping beyond hope that it could at least stall any infection that advanced its army. The quiet, guttural groans that issued from Kalmar’s throat as he did so nearly broke his heart and launched fresh tears into his eyes, but shook it away, forcing the emotions, the grief, the agony down. 

Once he had finished he stared listlessly for a minute, not really seeing anything at all, not seeing the rocks around them, not seeing his brother lying unmoving in front of him, and only seeing the storm clouds that loomed on every side, crouching, watching, waiting hungrily. 

A bolt of lightning crashed, but in the same moment the word, splint, flitted across Janner’s mind, bringing him back to reality. He looked helplessly at the dirty and torn bandages, gritting his teeth and hating that he was doing this, hating that he was so inadequate to help his brother, hating that all this had happened. Then there were not enough bandages to wrap it around Kal’s entire arm and it just kept slipping and not being tight enough, and so he tightened it just as was needed and twisted it properly, but, then he panicked that it would be too tight or too loose or that it wouldn’t work or something else would go wrong—

His breathing quickened, he began choking, then coughing, wheezing, unable to stop or breathe, or, or, think, or feel or remember or—

Protect, and be still. Protect, and be still. Protect, and be still, My son.

Amidst the choking, words, panic, and terror, he almost missed the marbled murmurs that whispered into the silence that chased the storm into the recesses of his mind. 

“J’nner?” 

His heart leapt in joy and love and fear and worry and a thousand other feelings and emotions Janner could not think about at that moment. 

“Kal,” he said softly, moving to the other side so his brother could see him. Janner knelt next to Kal’s head and squeezed his left hand tightly with his right. “I’m here. You’re going to be alright, I promise.”

A sound like a strangled bit of laughter came from Kal’s throat, but it ended in a wet cough. “I th’nk we both...know thas’t not true.”

Janner felt his heart breaking and tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “No,” he stated firmly, blinking quickly. “No, you’re going to be fine. Kalmar Wingfeather, don’t you dare think otherwise. It’s…it’s only broken. It’ll be alright.”

Kal shook his head a little. “Is’t not just...my arm. Someth’ng...inside’s wrong, too.” There was an odd gurgle in his words this time, and Janner saw little bubbles of blood around the edges of his mouth.

He swallowed the fear in his throat that threatened to choke him. “Kal, you’ll be okay,” his voice broke when he didn’t want it to and he forced the panic down again. “I can’t lose you. I have to—” Janner closed his eyes and cleared his throat recklessly. “I’m your Throne Warden,” he whispered, cupping Kal’s cheek in his left hand. “I-I can’t let something like this happen to my King.”

Smiling weakly, Kal drew a breath before responding, but it made him cough again and again, and by the time he had finished, tears mingled with blood had spattered on Janner’s hand. “But it was my choice,” he said in a pained whisper.

Coldness not from the high mountaintop but from fear within crept over Janner’s mind and heart. “What are you talking about?”

“I pushed...you so you woun’t...get cr’shed,” Kal murmured, a smile tugging at the bloodied corners of his mouth. “An’ i’ worked.”

The terror and panic and horror and fear and anxiety Janner had tried so hard to quell rushed into his throat and mind at those words, and he could barely think, scarcely breathe, and hardly coax his mouth to move and form the thoughts that jumbled and twisted together in his mind. “Why?!” he finally asked, his voice hoarse and his words strangled. “Kal, why would you do that? I’m supposed to protect you. I’m supposed to keep you safe. I’m supposed to be there an-and not fail you and—”

“Janner,” Kal whispered, his voice briefly clear, though halted. “‘member on the...island you said...‘if th-the Throne Warden...protects the...High King, wh-who protects the...Throne Warden?” Every word came in a pained gasp, and Janner wanted to tell him to not talk, to save his strength, to live for just a little longer. Kal’s eyes grew more and more distant every second before finally sliding shut. “I’m your answer,” he murmured before slipping into unconsciousness again.

A strangled sob burst forth from Janner’s soul and he wept bitterly, his tears showering his King’s battered, bruised, and bleeding body. There on the floor of the ruins of Castle Throg, he wept for the love and grief that filled his heart and the despair and the sorrow that filled his mind, desperately clinging to the hand of his dying brother, as if their bond was all that kept the world from coming to an end.

*****

Notes:

😭😭😭😫😫😫😫😫😫

Oh, my heart hurts right now.