Chapter 26: How to Escape a Trap with Rhymes and Improvisation
After a while in silence — the kind of silence no one admits they're using to process everything — I stood up, stretched my back with the crack of someone aging poorly, and turned to him.
"Alright," I said, in the tone of someone wrapping up a very productive, but undeniably disastrous meeting. "You've told me how rotten the world is, who's holding the reins, and where the poison is buried... great. Now you just need to tell me one more thing."
He looked up, alert like a student who'd missed half the lecture.
"One thing?"
"How we get out of here."
Brelgrik blinked. First with one eye. Then the other.Then he smiled.
That smile of someone who clearly doesn't know the answer — but is going to answer anyway.
"Get out...? Ah... well... yes, getting out. We get out. Definitely. Just not... right now."
I sighed. Loudly.
"I swear on whatever sanity I've got left, if you answer that with a metaphor, I'm leaving you here and continuing on with a map scribbled in rat blood."
He raised his hands, laughing.