Jeon Smythe
The gathering of seven armed men turned to face the doctor, eyes fierce with stress and anticipation as they fell upon him. Their visors were raised, enabling him to see Calamity's men had some range to them. The older men, in their late forties, watched Jeon with more scrutiny.
"The Drac's feet were caught in the snow sir. That is the last I heard." a young guard answered quickly to Jeon's question. "Don't think he'll come back in now, don't know." The young man hesitated.
"There's a trick where someone will leave tracks, and then walk backward in their own footsteps to disguise where they went," Jeon warned. "Is someone following to make sure they haven't suddenly disappeared?"
"What is the state of your operation, apothecary?" one of the older soldiers asked, meeting Jeon as an equal rather than subservient in attitude.
"There were complications," Jeon sighed, sizing up the soldier. He then glanced at the others, then leaned forward. "Is there someplace we can talk privately, you and I? I would hate to be the source of gossip, especially about...?"
The Probe scowled, turning towards the door. What was that fool Zayan doing? Despite its instructions, it was concerned about the idiot. Besides, if he died, what guarantee did it have that whatever force brought them here would be compelled to return it to its own dimension? Taking down people with exposed skin was easier than the ones who wore armor correctly.
In the game of wits, the older soldier lost, visibly backing away, "Our Commander is searching. I'm sure he's tracking all of that." He clapped his hand on the young man who had spoken before, patting metal, "Tell the kitchen women we need flour."
The young man nodded and rushed off in a clatter of noise. "The Marchioness has orders we are not to enter." the man went on to say to Jeon, tone stoic and clear he wouldn't deviate from those orders. "If you want something else, we listen to her, sir."
"Very good," Jeon sighed, giving the man a respectful nod. "The Marchioness has asked that the flour to be dusted between that room and her private chambers. A precaution only."
Jeon returned back to the door and knocked.
Calamity Isis Mae Sensibility, Gina Wright, Jeon Smythe & Panos Lambros
"It's just me," he said.
A scuffling sound and a click indicated Gina pulling the door ajar for him.
Opening it slightly, he slid through the narrow opening and closed the door shut firmly behind him, glancing down at his shoes.
"After this, whoever's in this body will need a new pair of shoes," he said softly to himself.
Gina managed a flicker of a smile before hurrying back to Cal and the king. As Jeon and Gina moved, their shoes had a new stick to them from passing over the trap Gina had poured earlier.
"Your men are getting flour to put on the floor between here and your private chambers. Hopefully this will not take long.”
Calamity gently cleared her throat, reining in her voice to gather the authority needed for her part - for the king and councilman's ears.
"Well done." As she looked up at Panos, who was looking down in return, they shared a short exchange in quiet tones.
"You need to 'faint' soon." the prince reminded the princess.
"We don't know the time the flour will take. I have to wait." Her eyes gestured to the loopy king. "Panos, hold on a little longer." She could easily see that between Gina (though she didn't understand the vitriol in which he had for her) and the events taken place here - he'd want out. An immature part of her complained, hated being the cripple and yet having to be strong for the shining prince who still had his whole body. But the mature, grief-stricken part knew the deep wounding Panos suffered that the others still hadn't been made aware of.
He was acting from that place and she couldn't imagine how the world looked through his eyes now. If she thought losing her legs felt like her dignity was ripped from her, the now-titled Marchioness couldn't fathom what was left of Panos' dignity.
The blanch-haired youth sighed and scanned the other travelers. This was a debacle. Pandemonium. He saw it with every body strewn on the ground, the bastard Kevin with his fat figure on the table, and the drunken, magically stupefied king.
'The stupidity of circumstances is too much.'
Gina twisted her mouth in tacit agreement with the prince’s sentiment, but he only glared at her, waiting for her to come closer. He looked at Jeon with more mercy in his eyes, waiting for the same.
“So what’s the story?” Gina whispered to Jeon once they were all huddled together. “Any sign of the Drac?”
"They found tracks in the snow leading away from the castle - but I've asked them to check them out to make sure the Drac hasn't doubled back or laid a false trail."
“Then we just wait for the guards to come back with the answer, right?” Gina ventured.
Jeon sighed softly. "Either way, we should expect trouble. If the prisoner has actually made his escape, they will undoubtedly tell someone what they've seen - and that includes the possibility that the king is here. Some sort of retaliation is likely - and this time they may all be invisible."
“They can’t all do that, can they?” Gina whispered. All they knew was that the Drac had somehow smuggled ‘arcanium’ into the castle. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder how common the stuff was, or who might have given it to him.
"If they haven't escaped, then they're hoping we'll relax our guard before they strike again. Either way, I see no choice in our next move - namely, wake everyone up and get them out of here."
"No!" Panos stifled his gasp to the low volume of their clandestine conversation, "These people waking up will lead them to asking questions. Those who matter are already awake, it would be our best strategy to take them and secure ourselves." And this was being said all-the-while he despised the councilman, and also wanted Jeon's approval. But the fear of the red-haired magician on the ground was a defining feeling among his many while stuck in this room. If the magician began asking questions, what could he do to get the true answers?
They could see the young noble give away his thinking with a tepid glance to the unconscious elfin man among the citizens and servants.
Calamity drew her brows together. "Panos, it is my responsibility to take care of these people. It's not right, and politically that is what I have to do or I could be challenged later for not protecting them. I would be a bad leader the king couldn't trust."
“I think we should at least wait til we find him before we start waking everyone up.” Gina suggested. “It’s gonna be hard enough to explain as it is…”
She paused to look around.
“With the floor dusted and the door locked it’ll be as safe as we can make it, and we might as well wait til the king’s a bit less pissed and you’re fit to walk again...you said two hours right?” she added, glancing with trepidation at Jeon and Melvin.
Jeon glanced at the Probe, then nodded. "That seems to be the consensus."
Gina slumped down onto the floor, her chin in her hands. “Would he really stay lurking around here?” she wondered aloud, as she pensively watched Kevin and the king over by the table. The foreign advisor had painted a brutal picture of the Draconians, but the escaped prisoner was alone in hostile territory - and horribly wounded too, according to Cal. “Wouldn’t he want to hide, or get back across the border to...to his own country, or wherever the rest of the Dracs are?”
"He was down in that dungeon," Jeon sighed, shaking his head. "Escape seems reasonable, but if he's badly hurt, he may simply hole up somewhere while he recovers. Or he might lash out instead, figuring to take a few of us with him. I'm afraid I'm no expert on these creatures or their habits."
Calamity sighed. “I had his wounds healed.” she reminded them, and Panos ran a hand through his bright hair.
“We should hide in our chambers. Less people...” the royal spoke sharply, impatient and no longer wanting to be in the room. “We should go.” he urged while holding tighter to Calamity’s clothes.
“It shouldn’t be long now.” Gina tried to soothe him, propping herself with one palm against the floor as she craned back to glance at the door. “We just need them to finish dusting the floor...” She turned back to the others. “Someone should stay with the king - maybe me and Melvin?”
"Panos could use a quiet place to rest, and we can then bring the staff in to take care of these people," Jeon said. "I wouldn't mind having a nice long talk about... all of this, but I think we need to bring Kevin and the King with us."
There was a tug on Jeon's sleeve, and the Probe handed the doctor a card.
"What's this.... oh!" he paused, reading the short note. "Cal, you may feel some sensation returning soon, but you need two hours to rest properly before doing any activity."
The teenage girl nodded to the doctor's recommendation, staring at the ceiling and trying to think critically through her throbbing mind. Holding onto Panos' hand, focusing on him, helped her keep more sane somehow. Distracted her from the depths of where her thoughts could take her now.
They needed space to talk as a group of four without the Councilman or the King near, but to leave the Councilman with the King was foolish - even with the wound in the former man's backside. She glanced to the strange child next to Jeon, not quite understanding his role in all of this.
"Thank you for what you've done, we haven't had the time to introduce ourselves." Calamity began to Jeon, "Could you stay with the Councilman and the King? I need to...rest. Panos as well. I will speak to Gina who could return and let you know what we've shared?" the Marchioness asked the two of them desperately.
Gina tugged at her hair, curling and recurling it around her fingers. With everyone asleep, she reminded herself, with a single guarded door, and with wine and flour on the floor to catch any invisible footsteps, the king and the others were safer here than anywhere else. Jeon just needed to watch Kevin - and, preferably, scare the shit out of him so he didn’t get any more ideas of regicide in the future.
“Keep the king safe.” she whispered to Jeon and Melvin. “Otherwise we’ll maybe never get home.”
There was a knock on the door.
"The floor's ready!" A man said through the thick wood.
"Keep the King safe?" Jeon scoffed, raising his eyebrow. "Who's going to keep me safe? Ow! Melvin!"
The Probe lifted its boot heel from Jeon's toes. Without the Zayan, there was no telling what might happen to it. So keeping the doctor safe was its best bet to getting home.
"Okay, I can keep a watch on these two, but at some point we all need to sit down in some safe place to discuss what's going on here, this wasn't the job I volunteered for."
Taking one last fortifying breath, Gina pushed herself to her feet and hurried over to the passive Kinglos. “M’lord…” she began to explain once the king had registered her approach. “The marchioness has a plan to catch the Draconian. Once it’s safe for them we can start reviving your people and explain what happened.”
She excused herself and returned to her small huddle of friends.
“Okay, here goes nothing…” she murmured. “Panos, can you give me a hand carrying Cal?” Panos busied himself nervously braiding some of Calamity’s black hair in an act of solidarity unknown to his character. When Gina spoke to him the prince turned marquess looked offended but a heavy sigh as punishment from Calamity stilled his irate ways.
In the moment the royal male closed his eyes to breathe, Calamity gave Gina a meaningful look about him. ‘Later’ she mouthed, promising to explain.
Gina nodded quietly, before scampering away across the hall to look for something to build a makeshift stretcher with. The guards slumped against the wall still had their halberds scattered across and around their sleeping bodies, all iron spikes and wicked-looking axe blades. Gina tugged one free in a clatter of iron. She remembered seeing polearms like these when her dad had taken her round the Leeds Armoury, the year before her move to America, but she hadn’t expected the wooden shaft to be quite so heavy. Still, she managed to carry two of them across the hall, and then after a few minutes of tugging and pulling, she succeeded in relieving several of the comatose guests of their fine coats. She carried them back and dumped them in a pile next to the halberds. On the way over Calamity bit her lower lip before deciding to act unconscious.
With Panos’ help, Gina threaded the coat sleeves over the halberd shafts, and knotted the trailing ends as tightly as she could to make something resembling a hammock. Then, with the stretcher laid next to Cal, she hesitated. Everything she had been told as a first aider had warned her not to move the casualty at all, and to simply leave it to the professionals when they arrived. There wasn’t much chance of finding a paramedic in Greywall.
“Um...okay.” she said at last. “Very gently, on three.”
“Yes.” Panos finally said and went to grab the amethyst eyed young woman’s shoulders.
"What the hell are you doing?" Jeon roared, pissed. "That's a back injury! You don't just pick her up like a sack of flour and sling her about like that! She needs to stay still as possible!"
(Jeon might not be so angry, but he would know that if you have to move a casualty without medical braces that you should drag them in a straight line, rather than risk anything like a sideways lift that could twist the spine)
Gina flushed. “Right. Sorry.” Stupid. She dragged the stretcher over to above Cal’s head, and made ready to try again.
"Melvin, best check her out, let me know if anything's shifted and damaged the spinal cord," Jeon growled once they had finished. The probe nodded, running over to trace its puppet hands over the injured area while it scanned.
Gina watched nervously until the probe gave Jeon a silent nod. “Okay, Panos. The guards outside will probably want to hear an explanation from their marquis rather than a random like me. Let them know that the Drac’s arcanium caused all this, but Cal’s only asleep, and that they need to keep on guarding the door until we can wake her up.”
She slid her fingers under the bladed ends of the halberds by Cal’s feet, feeling less than comfortable around the metal spikes, compared to the relatively safe wooden butts that Panos would be holding. The metal sockets that ran down from the axeheads were nearly a foot long, and cold against her palms.
“On three.” Gina said for the second time. “Jeon, can you get the door for us? One, two, three.”
"Melvin?" Jeon called, walking over to the door to open it for the stretcher bearers to get Cal out of the room.
Together, she and Panos slowly lifted the play-acting Cal off the floor, to the accompaniment of a rustle of fabric from the coat hammock. With Panos leading, they shuffled across the hall, across the sticky patch of wine-stained stones, and out through the door.
Jeon shut the door firmly after them. "Well, won't this be fun?" he asked. "How are you feeling now, my lord?"
Glancing down at the Probe, he nodded towards the people on the ground. "Best to check them all out, I don't want any avoidable accidents."
Calamity Isis Mae Sensibility, Gina Wright & Panos Lambros
As a ragtag collective, the sad urgency of their improvisation panicked the guards who saw Calamity downed and still. Panos was struggling, his shoes getting soiled by the wine which only attracted more flour with each step. The difficulty of the physical task was keeping some flame of life in his eyes, unable to focus on the inner pains and thoughts driving his vitriolic behavior.
Men and metal rushed to the scene and one tried to take the handles of the hammock from Panos but he held tighter. "STOP!" By yelling he was able to gain some degree of respect; as the man stepped back.
"Sir marquis, what has happened to your wife, our leader?" Panos shut his eyes, imagining the lie and taking his pain to create a convincing act as his face warped in pain.
"The Draconian bastard, did some magic with the arcanium." He spilled tears and like a snap of fingers the guards observing were taken by pity and loyalty. Watching him intently for every detail he had to say, Panos continued "She needs to rest. Without doctor Bonadio’s help we wouldn't have awakened from the spell." His eyes aimed to Gina, but she saw him quickly look away from her with a flicker of frustration on his face.
"Marquis we will find the snake." the older of the entourage promised with a deep seriousness.
"Guard the door." Panos, with tears rolling down his cheeks, looked away with a dramatic flair of defeat and heartache before tugging the hammock and leading them to the quarters he had woken up in.
The hallway leading to the left direction was littered with white powder, the only footsteps on the edge and human in shape. Gina and Panos’ added to it as they shuffled along, their feet kicking up small puffs of white. Gina was on edge for claw-shaped prints to suddenly appear and come bounding towards them, but she saw nothing as they made their way along the winding passageways. She could hear the echoes of armoured men clattering distantly, still hunting down the prisoner, but not a soul crossed their path as they followed the line of flour past faded tapestries and flickering, bracketed torches.
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