Through Ages of Weary Fulfillment: Ch. 31

Appearance of Friends

Notes:

And we continue working to get out of the Phoobs....

*****

When she had sung through it twice, each line becoming more and more tear-filled because of how scared she was, Ilana paused, realizing all the loud noises of fighting had stopped. She removed her fingers from where they protected her ears, waiting until they popped, indicating they were ready to begin hearing again. All the sounds were gone…but it was too quiet, far too quiet. Her stomach clenched in fear: what if her father had managed to kill all the Fangs, but died anyway?

Tears came to her eyes at the thought, but she still didn’t open them, because that would be disobedient, wrong. She listened harder than she ever had before, desperate to hear something, anything!

Then she heard something, a sort of odd shuffling, the sound of shoes against rock. Relief swept over her—shoes! Her father had worn shoes, and Fangs never would. He was alive!

Ilana opened her mouth to speak, to call out to him, but realized her throat didn’t want to do much more than squeak. She swallowed, then tried again. “Daddy?” she asked tentatively. 

“I’m here, sweetheart,” came his voice, low and breathless. The cage shifted a bit—he must have placed his hand on it, perhaps so he could open it? Or maybe so he could rest?

Ilana waited in silence, waited for him to say something about her opening her eyes, for him to open the cage, for any sound other than his shuddery breathing to reach her ears. None of that happened, though, and she was eventually forced to speak up. 

“Daddy,” she said again, hoping just one question would be enough to trigger other thoughts. “Can I open my eyes now?”

There was a bit of a hitch in his breathing, one that turned into a cough, and then he said, “Aye, of course. How could I forget?”

Her eyes flew open and the door to the cage flew open seconds later, and then she was climbing out and hugging her father, who was now sitting on the ground, one leg bent at the knee, the other pulled in closer, like he was sitting half-cross-legged. 

She was sure to be gentle as she hugged him, since she knew by the sounds she had heard that he had been hurt, how many times and where, she didn’t know. Being on the safe side was preferred, though, and she leaned back after several seconds, then shifted her position to where she was kneeling. She stared at him thoughtfully, looking over every inch of him, inspecting him for damage.

“What are you doing?” he asked, smiling a bit, though it seemed like a rather tight smile. Like the sort of smile someone would make if they were hurting. She had read books, so that was how she knew about “taut smiles.”

Ilana picked up his right hand (it took both of her small hands to do so) and inspected it, all bruised and bloodied from having little else to fight the Fangs with before he had taken a sword from one of them (which was the only way she would have heard blades clashing). “I’m checking you for injuries,” she said simply before going on to his left hand. “You were fighting alone, and the Fangs had weapons, so there’s bound to be something wrong with you.”

Artham smiled again, this time boyishly, and a bit of the pain fled. “I know how to disarm my opponent, thank you very much. Fang swords are crude, but they work in a pinch. You needn’t worry. I think the worst of them is my knee, which really isn't bad at all, but I’ve dealt with that before. I’m fine.”

Her brow furrowing a bit, Ilana looked down at her father’s right knee (that was the one bent) but failed to see anything particularly amiss. “What happened to it…before?” she asked tentatively.

Artham held up his hand, asking her to wait. “Let’s walk and I’ll tell you, alright? Getting out of here would be wonderful. If this is my last hour in this dreadful place, I’ll be very pleased about it.”   

Ilana couldn’t help but agree, yet she did feel a pang in her heart when she thought about her journal and her stuffed animal she would be leaving behind if they never came back. The pang distracted her from Artham’s trip from the ground to a standing position, but not so much that she didn’t see the way he had to grab hold of the dangerously shifting cage to get there or hear the barely stifled grunt of pain.

“Are you sure you’re fine?” she asked, growing suspicious he was letting on more than he told her. That same, cheery flash of a smile came again, but Ilana was starting to think it was the sort of smile he gave when trying to convince people of something that wasn’t exactly true. 

“Yes, I am,” he replied. “But are you? You’re looking for something, something you’ve left.”

Ilana started a bit, unaware that her gaze had drifted toward the well-concealed place she called home for several months out of the year. “How do you know?”

Artham smiled again, this time more sadly. “Because I’ve seen the same look many times, in the faces of those I love, in my own reflection. So what is it you’ve left?”

Hesitating, Ilana wondered if she should tell the truth. She couldn’t help but think she and her father were rather similar, and if that was the case and he knew how much she loved the things she had left, he would insist on going for them. She was worried, though, that if they did that, her “mother,” who apparently wasn’t her mother at all, would manage to find them, or Fangs would, or someone would and then they would be right back where they were before, hopeless and fighting to the death with no escape.

“Just…a journal. And a little toy, but they’re not important,” she added hastily, even though it was a lie.

“Your journal?” he said softly, an eyebrow raised, and for a few moments he looked off into the distance, as if remembering journals of his own. “Well, in that case, we can’t possibly leave it.” 

He began striding (limping, though his stride was still rather impressive) toward the direction Ilana’s gaze had drifted several times, and she ran to catch up to him. “Wait, no!” she said, almost grabbing his hand, but at the last second remembering how battered it looked and how much it had to hurt. “There’s no time, is there? It isn’t safe! We’ll be, we’ll be—”

“Ilana, it’ll be fine,” Artham said soothingly, taking her hand in his. “Those are your memories in your journal. You can’t leave it behind. My precious journals were cared for by those I love, and the least I can do is take a few steps to get yours.”

Resigning because she knew she wasn’t going to get anywhere, Ilana sighed and steered him in the correct direction, leading him toward the rather hidden door of the odd home and opening it, praying all the while that her “mother” was not inside.

At first glance she wasn’t, thank the Maker, but the room was dark, making it hard to see, harder than it normally was with the lights off. Ilana glanced back to see what the reason was and realized it was her father, partially blocking the door.

“I'd like to check the room first, then stand guard,” Artham explained, proceeding to do just that, and after determining Amrah was not inside, took up his post at the door.

Ilana went in after that, positioning herself so she had a straight shot to where she thought she had left her satchel. She had been in the place many times before and knew exactly where she had left her satchel holding the journal and stuffed animal.

Heading toward the sofa, she did manage to stumble over something—several somethings, in fact, the final of which made her fall—and made enough noise to where Artham’s voice came drifting through the darkness. 

“Are you alright?” he asked, sounding more worried than she wanted him to be.

“Yes,” she replied, pushing herself up and dusting off her dress out of habit. “I think my mo—I mean, Amrah—threw a bit of a temper fit and made the place a mess.”

There was a pause before he spoke again, not so much that she became too worried, but enough that she became concerned. The trouble she was having finding her satchel might have had something to do with it. “Alright. Just be careful.”

Ilana began pushing things around when she reached the sofa, squinting, struggling to see in the darkness. She cast her gaze around, trying to identify the items on the floor—book, half of a lamp, beads, tattered cloth, and...there it was! 

Smiling, Ilana bent down and grabbed the body of her satchel, pulling it up close to her, ready to hug it and squeeze it because she cared about it and its contents just that much. It was stuck, though, stuck to where she couldn’t pull it out. She tugged again, then began moving more unidentifiable objects around to try and free it. Slowly, she realized it wasn’t the satchel that was stuck, it was the strap, caught on something. 

Getting rather annoyed and knowing she was making an unpleasant and possibly concerning amount of noise, Ilana called out to her father. “Don’t worry, it’s just stuck!”

In response, she heard a cry of pain, then a thump, then the shadows in the room shifted, then—and this was most horrifying—a honeyed voice came. “It’s not the only thing that’s stuck,” Amrah said, her eyes flashing in the dark. “You are, too.”

“What did you do to my father?” Ilana demanded, mind racing, fear mounting in her heart, knowing that the cry of pain she had heard belonged to him and hating that she knew it so well. She shouldn’t have to know the sound of something dreadful as well as she did. 

Amrah beamed wickedly from where she stood at the door’s entrance, creating a horrifying shadow on the wall. “Oh, I’ve made him permanently indisposed, that’s all. And it’s fine, because you won’t need him where we’re going. And he’ll never need anyone else again, either.”

As if moving on its own, Ilana’s satchel came loose, but the relief and joy she had expected to feel now faded into grey nothingness with the gravity of what Amrah had said. Was it really true? Had she…had her “mother” killed her father, whom she loved dearly? Who had fought off so many Fangs for her? Who had continued loving her even when she said she hated him?

Anger bubbled up inside of her, a sort of anger she had never felt before. Ilana’s fingers slipped along her satchel, making their way towards the strap, squeezing it tightly. “Did you kill him?” she asked, her voice trembling with grief and fury.

Amrah smiled lightly. “I don’t think he’s dead yet,” —a gasping, a horrible, dreadful gasping sound followed her words, making Ilana want to block her ears so she wouldn’t hear it— “But there’s no one to keep that from happening, is there? Even if I did let you go to him, you couldn’t do anything. You don’t know anything, Ilana. You don’t know about the world or anything you think you do. You can’t learn about it from books, just experience. And that is something you have never had. Which, might I add, is exactly why you don’t really love your father, you just think you do. You feel something else, fascination or some sort of other thing that certainly isn’t love.”

“I do love him!” Ilana shouted, furious, without thinking she flew at Amrah with no plan at all whatsoever, only knowing she wanted her gone and wishing she had never existed in the first place, because then…well then, she always would have been with her father and real mother.

Shock flashed onto Amrah’s face, but before Ilana made contact, the black skirts whisked out of the way. Light poured into her vision in the same moment, but she didn’t care about light or her satchel that now was permanently clutched in her hand or even what had happened to Amrah. None of it mattered, not the slightest bit. Her father was the only thing that mattered; there he was, slumped against the rock wall, eyes squeezed shut, teeth gritted in pain, hand pressed against his side. Something—as she came closer, Ilana desperately hoped it was just scrunched folds of crimson cloth—crept from between the fingers of the hand, first only showing a little, then more as another set of horrendous coughs split the air.

Trembling as she did so, Ilana risked placing her hand over her father’s. Her throat burned when something dampened her fingers, but, unable to actually look, she only squeezed Artham’s hand. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whispered, her eyes now burning along with her throat. “I’m sorry.”

Artham drew in a shuddering breath and, pausing a good deal, murmured, “You’ve nothing…to be sorry for. Those first hours…I said I would die for you.” A ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. 

Ilana shook her head. “No,” she choked out, tears now rolling down her cheeks. “You’re not dying for me, you’re not. I won’t let you.”

“Dearest daughter,” Artham began again, this time forcing his eyes open. “You can’t….control it.” More coughs came with those words, blood in these, and Ilana felt herself panicking, looking around frantically for something, anything to help.

Almost immediately she spotted a tall man, clad all in black, slipping a sword into its sheath, and what might’ve been a girl, also wearing black. That they were agents of her mother—all wearing black, it made sense, didn’t it?—came to mind first, and she stood up quickly, positioning herself in front of her father (as if she could do anything against an attack). 

They came nearer, closer, the shorter, potential girl picking up her pace. The panicked bird in Ilana’s mind broke free of its cage. “Don’t hurt him!” she shrieked. “Please, please, whatever you do, don’t hurt him!”

“It’s alright,” the man said kindly, gently, still advancing, just more slowly. “We’re friends. I need to check on you father, make sure he’s alright. Stay with my daughter Maraly, okay?”

He pressed forward, but Ilana blocked him, not trusting him. “If you were really his friend,” she said fiercely, tears spilling again. “You would already know he’s not alright, and you would already know he needs help right now!”

Just then, she heard her father’s voice, now fainter than it had been before. “They’re friends, Ilana. It’s…it’s alright.” 

Turning back to look at Artham, Ilana saw his face, lines of agony etched in it, then turned to the tall dark man and knew concern swam through his eyes. Genuine concern. Maybe he really was a friend. “Alright,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. “Please, help him.” 

The man rushed forward then, muttering a whole slew of inaudible things that had to be important. Ilana stood there looking on for several seconds before feeling herself being guided away. When she looked up, she saw it was the dark man’s companion, Maraly.

“I can’t leave him,” Ilana whispered, stopping in her tracks. She didn’t want to go another step away from her father. 

“I git that,” Maraly said, her accent rather shocking. “That’s why we’re stoppin’ here, just a bit away, not too far, to give Gammon—he’s me dad—some space to work. Or look. Or check. Or do somethin'.”

Ilana nodded dumbly, a knot twisting itself into her stomach. Her gaze drifted toward the palm of her hand for the first time, the hand she had placed over her father’s. The slow-drying blood there made her skin crawl.

 She knew it was bad; she wasn’t stupid. She knew it probably wouldn’t end well. She knew he was probably going to die, which wasn’t fair when she had just met him! And now she couldn’t even stay by his side.

Since she couldn’t be with her father, she wanted to do nothing more than bury her face in her hands and weep. That was what she did for about thirty seconds, but then Gammon jolted her out of her tears with a shout.

“Maraly! Take your friend, make sure the boat is ready. We’re following soon. I want to get to Torrborro. There may be a chance.”

Maraly nodded curtly, grabbed Ilana’s hand, and began racing. Ilana struggled to keep up, partially because of the speed, but more from the tears flooding her vision and leaving wet, sticky trails on her cheeks. 

Trails like blood.

*****

Notes:

OH NO!!!!!! DISASTER HAS NOW STRUCK!!!! 😨

Was it intense enough, though? I feel like it wasn't...let me know what you think and if I need to find some way to intensify it...

Again...I've referenced the knee thing several times over the course of my stories. There's a little headcanon of mine that out of frustration over having to go to school in Ban Rona, Artham (somewhat rebelliously) climbed to the top of the highest tower of Castle Rysen, proceeding to fall through the roof and wind up with a concussion, a wrenched knee, and the punishment of being grounded. The injury mostly healed but then got worse when Nibbik Bunge, who was in Durgan Guild with him, was a jerk and kicked him right in the knee, etc. I do have this in a story on AO3, but it's unfinished so you might not want to read it. It's also very counter to canon in a few details 😅

And please let me know if I broke canon^^ (in this chapter, not in Times of Change. I know I broke canon there)