Peace Maker - Chapter 196

Annabeth sat by the bed silently as anxiety sounded around her through the footsteps of the nurses in the room. One by one, servant by servant, blood sheet by blood sheet. The seconds were slowly being stretched out into the longest minutes she had ever experienced in her life.

It wasn’t because of how boring it was, or even the length in itself, but the sheer terror that each second carried. The sheer fear that each scream that rang through the room held, the fear in the ends of the one lying in the bed before her.

All of that, all of those seconds and scenes appearing before her before she had time to internalize the last, all the chaos that wrapped them like a blanket, all the helplessness in the room that weighed down on her shoulders.

Everything was going by so fast. People were moving quickly, words were being screamed at her at a speed she couldn’t even comprehend what they were saying, and even the room was spinning. All of these accompanied by the loud rings of a screaming voice in deep agony. Never in her life had everything moved so fast around her, never in her life had she been so… silent.

She was sitting in the middle of it all, beside her brother, who held onto the arm of the girl whose life he ruined, with anxiety and nervousness in his every movement that she couldn’t understand, surrounded by people trying to help someone despite their insufficient knowledge, and being right in front of someone going through such excruciating pain that she couldn’t even fathom.

There she was, right in the middle of it all, right in the middle of the storm. Silent. Unmoving.

Useless.

Everything was overlapping with her, everything just sinking in with every moment as she began more consumed in the chaos. But yet, somehow, her mind was still on the line of limbo. Calm and stable, peaceful but confused. Ignorant. Oblivious.

She felt useless. Out of the people in this room, there was someone that was doing something. Either directing the servants, or reassuring the woman in labor. But there she was, the supposed next lady of the house who couldn’t do anything more than to watch someone in labor while trying to grasp that the situation was even happening.

Despite being so deep into the chaos, it didn’t seem to touch her yet.

“The physician is here!!! THE PHYSICIAN IS HERE!! MOVE ASIDE EVERYONE!!”  yelled a voice, her mother’s voice. At least she thought so… it was blurry now.

A hand clamped down on her shoulder and she was lifted off the chair and pulled away from Alice’s side without a single word leaving her lips. Just being dragged through the wave of movement. Quietly dumbfounded.

“Annabeth,” a voice called to her from the distant corner of her mind. “Annabeth…”

It was somehow getting closer, almost tangible now.

“Annabeth… ANNABETH!!! ANNABETH SNAP OUT OF IT!”

Her head jerked up as she looked up at the voice that was calling out her name. It took a moment for her dazed eyes to focus on the figure before her. “M-mother?”

“Annabeth? Can you hear me now? Are you ok? You seem so out of it…” her mother noted, her eyebrows furrowing in concern as her line of vision shifted quickly from Annabeth to Alice and the physician and then back to Annabeth, “I hope you are because we don’t have the time for you to be so disarranged.”

Annabeth shook her head slowly as slowly, sounds began to seep into her ears, and the concepts, the chaos, the situation at hand that had been pounding on the barrier of her mind. Finally broke through.

She staggered.

“WOAH THERE!” Mrs. Crowly exclaimed, catching Annabeth by the arm, “are you sure you’re ok?”

Annabeth looked up to her with more alert eyes, the blurriness in her gaze seeming to slowly disintegrate. She was returning to earth, she was returning to the room, she was returning back to the mayhem around her. “What- the physician… Alice… Is Alice ok?!” she yelled, her eyes turning back to the bed Alice laid upon.

“I-I don’t know… I thought you were sitting next to her, you should know better,” Mrs. Crowly muttered, a sigh leaving her lips, “sigh… all this commotion just for this it would have been better if…”

Annabeth cocked her head to the side as her mother’s voice trailed off. “What did you say mother?” she asked, her head turning back to the bed again, her eyes taking in more of the situation than she did before. Her eyes squinted as the physician that stood over Alice’s body, muttering some words to her that she couldn’t understand. “Wait a second… ” she muttered, “is that…”

“Yes, yes it is,” Mrs. Crowly nodded her head, her hand running through her hair, “When they went out to look for a physician, he was the first one they found and they brought him here immediately. HIM. A MAN OF HONOR. I really should fire them all when this is over…”

Annabeth ignored the comment from her mother, her words skipping her ears completely as a little smile forming on her face. “Well then, that’s a good thing! Alice would be able to give birth safely if she had someone like him assisting her with her labor!”

Mrs. Crowly flinched, a repulsed expression crossing on her face for a moment before settling. “That’s good? In what way? He’s from the palace and..”

“Right… isn’t the prince supposed to be out right now? Something about him walking around the kingdom to meet the commoners he will be governing in the future after Prince Theodore takes the west side of the Empire?” Annabeth muttered.

“Exactly!” Mrs. Crowly exclaimed.

“But then why would a physician-” Annabeth asked.

“Apparently there was a fire somewhere around here too and some of the palace physicians left to go see if there were some injured people,” Mrs. Crowly muttered with a groan, “so many bloody coincidences in one night.”

“A fire?!” Annabeth exclaimed in surprise, “Where??”

“The outskirts of Vogaria city?” Mrs. Crowly sighed, “I DON’T KNOW! All I know is that now we have to deal with a lot more things now that a palace physician is involv-”

A scream erupted from Alice, startling them both.

“So loud…” Mrs. Crowly uttered. She watched Alice for a moment, taking in the panic that surrounded her. Her eyes wandered a bit away from the bed and her eyes widened, immediately walking towards the bed, past Annabeth.

Annabeth stood and watched as her mother grabbed the arm of Justin, pulling him away from Alice’s side with a stoic expression on her face. It was trembling. But it wasn’t visible to those around her, but only to those that knew those subtle changes in her expression. Like Annabeth.

Annabeth looked over at Alice, her eyes barely making out her figure over the physician that stood over her and the crowd of servants that surrounded the bed like some kind of barricade. There she stood once again and stared, her eyes blurring once more as she began to be lost in the strain on Alice’s face. There she stood once again, getting pushed out of her surroundings.

There she stood again, feeling useless.

In the midst of her maze, she was struck by a thought and immediately turned around, running through the hallways towards the basement where they kept someone.

‘Kalmin.’ Annabeth thought to herself, ‘Kalmin, Kalmin, kalmin, Kalmin, Kalmin, Kalmin.’ His name repeated in her mind as she ran, running to a tunnel that led downwards with a spiral of stairs.

Quickly she rushed down the steps, nearly tripping on one of them as his name repeated in her mind. ‘He can’t miss this… he can’t miss this…he can’t miss this’ Her steps quickened even more when she saw the end of the flight of stairs and the cold ground of the cell room.

“Kalmin!” She called out, her voice echoing off the walls of the long and wide room, “KALMIN!!! KALMIN CAN YOU HEAR ME?!”

Swiftly, she jumped down the last few steps to the ground, a light spark of pain crawling up her legs from the impact. She looked up at the cell, a familiar figure coming to view. It was hunched up into the corner of the cell, shivering.

“Kalmin?” Annabeth called out, rushing to the cell. She reached the bars, picking up the lock and shaking the bars slightly, her eyes looking down at the empty keyhole. Turning around, she walked to a little corner of the room where a spare key was kept in a little spot in the wall in place of a missing brick. She picked up the lock and turned back to Kalmin, her hand reaching for the cell’s lock. Her shaky hands held up the key to the hold. “KALMIN!!”

This time, the ball in the corner responded with a bigger shudder. “A-A… Annabeth?”