I Will Be the Greatest Knight
Chapter 236: Survive

Chapter 236: Survive

Survival was all they knew. It had been hell. Those left in the Duke’s Tower knew they couldn’t last for much longer.

They were all so emaciated, so slowed down by the poison that, even though they could look out the windows of the Duke’s Tower and see a camp forming as all the knights in the kingdom banded together to battle these monsters, there was nothing they could do to reach them.

How miserable it was to know that help was just outside of your reach. But they were too weak to yell, unable to run out of there themselves and not get slashed down by the monsters who had taken over the tower before.

They knew the monsters were different than before. The way they communicated with one another was perhaps one of the most alarming parts about them. If the people went down to the second level, they could hear the clicks of goblins talking to one another as if they knew what they were saying.

Clicks and shrill screams struck fear into the prisoners’ hearts each time they heard them. It was one of the many reasons the third floor became their haven.

Sir Phillip, Rosalind, and two other maids, Annie and Thyra, lived in squalor for months. Outside of the seasons changing, the only other indication of how long it had been was the marks on the wall in the Duke’s former quarters. They scratched into the wall with a dull knife they found discarded in the hallway.

The prisoners no longer considered who might live there in the future or if someone would have to deal with their mess eventually. It was hard to be considerate at all during those times.

They started updating the marks on the third day of living there, tallying it up in fives so that they could count how long it had been.

Sometimes, they weren’t sure if they even remembered to count it. There were likely days missed or too many days counted. From what they could tell, in only a couple of short months, it would be an entire year until their imprisonment had begun.

After a while, it became a bitter reality to look upon the marks. All they did was serve as a reminder that they were forgotten and as good as dead... Yet they somehow managed to keep surviving.

Survival was all they wanted, and yet all they did was grow weaker and weaker. It felt like they could all visualize their endings.

What a pity it would be to never know if the duchy retook the Duke’s Tower or ever won this war.

The people grew to curse the King and his lack of decisiveness.

Surprisingly, they had plenty of water because they melted plenty of snow or collected rainwater and cleared the pitchers on the stoves all throughout the Duke’s Tower’s second and third floors. Each drink was a silver lining in their otherwise constant hell.

A few times, they had been able to tie one of them to a rope and lower them into the busted open storeroom that went underneath the kitchen to quickly grab sustenance. But the meals dwindled, and they had practically cleared out the entire place. By that point, they were eating handfuls of dried oats and wild rice. Potatoes had long since gone bad.

In fact, a bad potato was what killed Annie months before. She was a maid in her early forties. They could only helplessly watch as sickness took her. Their only choice was to shut her in one of the former maid’s bedrooms and pray as they sealed off the door so the smell wouldn’t reach them.

Sir Phillip still had nightmares about leaving her behind. They took what was usable off of her body, including clothing, and shut her away like she hadn’t been part of their support system. Each one of them heavily relied on the others. There was no way to become callous about death because that one felt like it hit them as hard as possible and showed them what could be their reality in the future.

The three left were almost all the way through furniture by that point as well, because all that was keeping them warm was lighting that on fire. However, the chimney where they would normally let out the smoke had long since been plugged by only God knew what. There was a room where they could find warmth for only a short while before they were forced to escape, or they would suffocate to death.

Occasionally, they would open one of the windows to let out the smoke when it got too much, but it seemed the knights who camped across the field thought that it was occasionally poison since there were other parts of the Duke’s Tower that were releasing poison.

No one took note. No one rescued them.

It seemed that everything that could have possibly gone wrong did.

If hunger wasn’t enough to nearly kill them, they also couldn’t escape because of the sheer number of goblins they could hear at nearly all hours of the day.

It was amazing that none of them had gotten eaten the few times they made it into the store room. A small victory for an otherwise uncertain time.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

They could smell the poison seeping through the floors in the upper levels. There was a constant, putrid smell that reminded them of death and told them that they were trapped.

The longer they were exposed, the more purple marks developed around their lips and their throats. They were constantly coughing, trying to find solace on the third floor, which felt like the furthest place from the poison, but they were undoubtedly going to die if it continued.

That was when they sent Rosalind to get help. So far, she was the least affected by the poison and seemed to have the most strength still. They had oftentimes given her more meals and supplies than the others because she was the youngest. It was a secret decision by those older than her to make her survive at all costs.

Yet she was gone for nearly a month. They didn’t realize their healthiest person had nearly succumbed to the poison in the tunnels, which was why they assumed that she had died. Their last hope was gone.

If she couldn’t survive, none of them had any hope. They couldn’t believe otherwise.

If it weren’t for the Knights of Hydrogia finding her, no one ever would have known about them.

On a particularly dreary day, they heard the monsters stir from down below.

Phillip and the last remaining maid, Thyra, sat in the small guest room they had claimed as their own with their hands clasped together. They thought it would be the last day they lived as monsters screamed and disturbances were heard throughout the place.

Thyra was in tears, and Phillip pressed his hands and face against hers, praying for her to find comfort in his touch. They had grown close in this imprisonment. When it was only the two of them left, they began to seek one another for comfort in ways they would never mention to anyone else.

However, as the woman cried, Phillip pleaded for her to stop. His thoughts were different than what they normally would have been if he saw a woman crying at other periods of his life. She was wasting precious resources on tears. By that time, that’s all they saw it as.

The door of their hideout was busted open. They thought for sure that was it for them.

However, when Commander Lothian came to their rescue, it was time for both of them to cry as they looked up at the only good thing to happen to them in nearly a year.

A phenomenon that many people in the history of the world have witnessed was someone’s body giving in the moment it was finally allowed to. Whether it be someone dying once everyone in their family was there, or a serious illness truly presenting itself once someone was able to relax. There were strange occurrences such as that all the time.

For Phillip and Thyra, this phenomenon presented itself as they were taken to the encampment and placed on beds in the infirmary. The two of them were finally allowed to rest, and rest they did.

Even though they were breathing badly because of the poison, the two fell into a deep sleep. If it wasn’t for their occasional gasps for breath or unconscious wheezes, their appearance would make someone think they were dead.

They were skin and bones with lips purple from exposure to poison.

As the apprentices who knew them best entered the tent, they couldn’t hold themselves back.

The sight of the maid and knight they were familiar with was as alarming as it was relieving. They looked terrible, but they somehow instilled hope.

"Tell us everything, Commander," Gunnar requested.

"Later," Commander Lothian responded. "For now, we must go and find Rosalind and Henry. They fell into an old well underneath the kitchen."

A few eyes widened at that.

The Commander didn’t seem even remotely worried about it.

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