Kingsley Family/Erik/Never Coming Home

A Departure

Vague uncertain shapes swirled around in Erik's mind. He tried hard to make sense of them and to remember their form, but they slipped away as they danced in and out of the darkness of his mind. They frightened him. He knew they meant harm. He thought something, but he couldn't remember what. That slipped away too. All that remained was the fear.

"I told you you wouldn't need that body any more." Said the Voice in the Darkness.

"Sir Erik?" a gentle voice called out in the haze of his dreaming mind.

Erik groaned. His body was entirely stiff and his chest hurt extremely badly, and it stung quite a bit when he tried to breath which was seemed to be much harder than it normally was. In truth, it felt as if he had been stabbed in the chest and in a coma for five days.

"Sir Erik?" The voice said with panic and concern. His eyes opened to the dawnlight streaming in from the window in a room he never remembered being in. He tried to get his bearings and stretch, but moving hurt a lot. Like a lot. Erik groaned.

"Oh you mustn't move so suddenly, Sir.", a woman's voice cautioned him with a soft seriousness. He turned to look at her, red hair glimmering in the sunlight. She wore priestess vestments of some religion Erik had never paid attention to. They weren't like the Orders, or Lord Caravanthian's fire priests. He had become a little wary of priests of late, but this one seemed a good sort. She had a kind face and approached him, leaving enough space, but standing close to the side of the simple bed he lay on.

"Am I dead?" He muttered groggily.

"No Sir," the woman said as she carefully dug through a drawer on the table by the bedside. "You were stabbed, and in a coma for five days."

"I don't remember that..." He muttered wincing as he tried to take a deep breath. The priestess pulled out a jar of powder from the drawer and moved over to another table this time by the window and mixed it with some water in a wooden goblet. "I think I would remember getting stabbed."

She looked at him with worry. "They said you were asleep when it happened. Quite a bit has happened Sir-"

The priestess was cut of by the door to the little infirmary room opening suddenly. In stepped some sort of soldier, lightly armoured in unusual colours.

"Checking on your pati-" The soldier cut himself off as he turned to look at Erik who winced again as he raised his arm to wave to him. He gave a pained smile and the soldier turned to the priestess."Then it's time to go."

"He JUST woke." The Priestess protested. "He's just had the top of his chest ripped open. He's lucky to still have a heart and it's only been FIVE days."

Erik furrowed his brow in confusion as the two continued to argue. He definitely would have remembered that, he grunted again slightly as he pulled his shirt open to reveal his chest entirely bandaged and covered. A line of dried blood was visible along the bandage just above his heart. It was along exactly where it hurt the most.

"I'm just following my orders, miss. First Seeker has orders to watch over this knight. Mission accomplished. Next to bring him back safely. Now it's time for us to do that one."

"If it's to bring him back safely, then he'll need more time to recover."

He raised his hands in exasperation. "I'm telling you lady. I don't make the rules. Talk to the First Seeker."

"I will." She snapped, before looking sympathetically at Erik. He was confused, as he often was. She returned to the mixture she was preparing and poured a bit more powder into the mixture before handing it to him. Erik looked at it skeptically. "It's for pain." She said sweetly. Erik was in a lot of that, so he drank it and quickly the room began to spin and he felt light and breezy. He didn't even notice the pain anymore. "Am I dead?" He asked.

"No dear." She said gently. "They're taking you home."

"Oh." He said loopily. "I am home though. I live here you know."

A few more people entered the room but they were all blurry. He could recognize the priestess because her hair shone bright red. But she was blurry too. They moved him to a floating bed and took him to another floating bed. Their voices got loud and he heard someone say something about 'going with'. He wondered where they were going, but was distracted by birds flying above the grey clouds overhead.

"Am I dead?" He wondered to himself.

Rotizoi

The letter slipped under his door by an anonymous messenger, soft footsteps quickly fading down the hall. No one was stupid enough to reveal themselves to the assassin for fear of their lives.

A brow rose on the unmarred half of Elizorxes's face, and he pushed up from the chair, retrieving the letter and seating himself back in the darkness. A somewhat familiar symbol sealed the parchment, and he remembered it was the same as the banner of the Kingsley knight. He took his time tearing it open, skimming over the contents in the near pitch black room, his right eye reading perfectly fine.

As he drew closer to the end of the letter, his lip curled further and further, and he finally laughed out loud as he finished, tossing it up and throwing his dagger with a quick flick of his wrist, impaling the parchment on the far wall near the door. "How naive," he murmured derisively, standing and stretching out his stiff muscles with leisurely movements. The man made assumptions just like all the rest, tossing about words like they were supposed to hurt him. Only one man had truly seen to the heart of Elizorxes, but that was in the past, and on a different continent.

If the righteous knight similar to a weed that refused to die no matter how many times it was crushed believed he would get a response, he was mistaken. Elizorxes slowly crossed the room, pulling his dagger from the wall and allowing the letter to drift to the ground in torn shreds. Running a finger along the sharp edge, he tucked it away before finally addressing the other figure in the room, dwelling in the shadows of the far corner behind him.

"Yes, yes, I know. I won't fail again."