The door to the meeting room burst open as three Captains dashed in, feet slick against the stone floor. For a moment, there was the sound of heavy breathing as they paused to catch their breath. Then their breathing stopped.
A man at the far end of the meeting table lay sprawled in his chair, white robes arranged about him in wrinkled folds, arms hanging limp outside his armrests as he stared up at the ceiling, mouth half open and eyes half closed. He could have been dozing off, or else have been dying of boredom, if it wasn’t for the rigid stillness about him and the paleness in his complexion and the utter lack of movement in his chest that meant that he wasn’t breathing. Clattering broke the silence. Someone’s shades had fallen on the floor. No one moved to pick them up.
Blizzard wanted to call this thing Priest; this limp, sprawled, wax figure statue of a man. But his eyes were so transfixed and his brain so frozen that the only things he could think were flashes of images and memories, none of them even remotely related to the apparition in front of him. And even those chased themselves out the window to his mind as all thoughts slowly drained from his brain. Then Priest sat up in his chair and
screamed and
screamed and
screamed and
screamed and everyone jumped out of their skins, toppling over one another out of the sheer shock of having a wall of sound hitting them out of nowhere. Dye barely managed to struggle to his feet and slam the door to the meeting room shut so that no one else in the castle would have to listen as Priest’s voice blasted his lungs out at full force, swiftly climbing the octaves up to a falsetto and ending with a squeak. For a full ten seconds afterwards, all that could be heard were his echoes, rattling through hallways and out bedroom windows into the evening air. Birds emerged from the surrounding forest at the sound, fluttering off into the darkening sky. Back inside the meeting room, Saint and Dye slowly picked themselves off the floor as Priest sat frozen, almost comically, in the position where he had been screaming, mouth stretched open several times too wide, eyes following their ascent to standing position, while his chest heaved from the pure effort of letting loose. As soon as he had his voice back, Priest was a stream of words.
“WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE AND…”
“Ok Priest, let’s calm down and…”
“…AND HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME AND…”
“…and just try to talk things over alright…”
“AND WHEREAMIWHEREAMIWHEREAMIII!!!” He took a deep breath to scream again and Saint was already across the room, hands firmly holding Priest’s mouth shut. He looked for a moment like he was going to explode, face gone from white to tomato in all the time he had spent exercising his lungs. Then he simply collapsed, sagging back into his chair. Blizzard took this as a good sign. At least he was in a familiar pose. They had all seen him like this during previous incidences, when they were in familiar territory: war, betrayal, lust for power and the likes. It was the pose of utter defeat. The was the cue for them to try to give him the pep talk. Except no one knew where to begin.
Dye carefully approached. “Uh…Priest?”
Priest’s head snapped up to level, looking about with an inconceivably ordinary expression. “Hello. Who called me?”
“Er…” Dye stepped forward so that Priest would focus more on him. “Priest, it’s me. Dye. do still remember me?”
Priest looked at Dye with an amicable smile. “Hello Dye. What a funny name. And…you two are..?”
Saint covered his face and moaned. “Great. He’s lost his mind.”
“No he hasn’t.” Blizzard took a step towards Priest, replacing the usual shades on his face. “He’s just lost his memory.”
-----
Priest sat in the meeting room, preparing for the discussion on how to save Nathan. They had already rescued Soluna, only to find her in a sorry state. It was clear now what was meant by “Inside Soluna”. Whatever had transpired, Soluna was no longer pregnant. But if the trend were to hold true, then Nathan…
Groaning, Priest shut his eyes, rubbing the palms of his hands against his forehead. All the stress piling up on him lately…And he didn’t even have time for it all any more. He wasn’t as young as he once was, and even then, he had wished someone else would come along and take his spot. Now, the responsibilities were getting to the point where he sometimes wished he didn’t have to wake up in the morning and face the reality. He leaned forward, digging his elbows into the table. A thin layer of dust kicked up, clouding the air. They hadn’t used this meeting room frequently enough. Priest coughed, masking the sound of the door squeaking open, then squeaking shut. Silent footsteps moved across the slick stone floor. When Priest opened his eyes again, the room was as it was before. Now, he thought only of the task at hand. Nathan needed to be rescued. Then, they had to worry about the security of their clan. As much as he hated to think about it, their security and defenses were far from good these days…
Oblivious to the dark, hooded figure behind him, Priest began to rise. And that was when it hit. His mind went blank. Sinking back into his chair, Priest suddenly had a powerful thought. He was trying to remember something important. It was something very important, but he felt as if he were always just forgetting what it was... Arms went limp by his sides. The door squeaked open. Then it squeaked shut.
-----
“Just lost his memory, huh? Well that’s nothing to be worried about. Just give him a tour around the castle and he’ll remember everything.” Dye shot a glance at Blizzard as Priest continued to watch everyone levelly.
“Castle? What castle?” Priest glanced around, as if a castle would randomly emerge out of thin air in a puff of white smoke.
“Great…” Saint pulled out one of the seats around the table and collapsed into it. “This is so bad right now I can’t even laugh.”
“Uh…is there a problem around here?” Priest glanced at Saint, who now mimicked Priest’s earlier defeated pose.
“Yeah. You.” The words were out of Dye’s mouth before anyone could stop him. Blizzard gave him a look of reproach, but the damage was done. Priest’s eyes furrowed, his neutral expression slowly contorting.
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Well, let’s put it this way. Do you remember waking up this morning?” Dye sat down in a chair right next to Priest, eyes glittering intently. Blizzard threw up his hands in frustration and backed off, leaning against the wall with arms folded. The situation couldn’t get any worse, and whatever Priest had once been was now gone.
Gone. How hard was that to accept? They had seen so many people come and go throughout the years; the loss of Priest should have been a dulled sensation. Instead, it was numbing. Because he was right there! He wasn’t really gone, but he was gone! Everything that made him matter to them was missing. They knew him as the quiet, uncertain but unwavering leader of the clan who dealt fair judgment and reasoned out things as far as they could go. They knew him as the one reliable person in the clan who knew enough to keep everything working without knowing so much as to render everyone else useless. The linchpin that held everything together, not the spider who wove the web. And everyone loved him for who he was. But now, here he was, as if he were meeting them all for the first time. Seeing him in all his innocence, free of any knowledge of the wars they had waged over the years, was almost surreal. It was taking an old man and dumping out all of his experiences over the past ten or twenty years, then putting him back in the same spot. Priest truly looked like a shell of his former self, devoid of every experience he had worked so hard to make memorable.
“Well? Do you?”
Priest’s brows were now so furrowed that an amusement park ride could have been modeled after them. Finally, after an agonizing moment, he responded. “No, I don’t.”
“And do you remember what you ate for breakfast? Or lunch? Do you remember why you’re in this room? Why you’re wearing what you’re wearing? Why you’re even alive?”
“Dye…that’s enough.” Blizzard and Saint both moved at the same time, picking up Dye by the arms and hauling him out as he continued his conversation with the oblivious leader of Requiem.
“No, I don’t. Am I dreaming?”
“IDIOT! You’re not dreaming!” Dye had ignited, forcing his comrades to swiftly let go of him and back away. “I’ll tell you who you are! You’re a priest, the Priest of Light, also going by the name of Rafael whenever you go abroad! You were Angel’s right hand man in the Alleble Knights! During that time, you helped to build a clan with more than a hundred members in it! Later on you became the leader of this clan and helped to turn it around! We renamed that clan Requiem! We fought other clans and won! We grew strong! I nearly left the clan! You had a sister, Megan! I killed her, do you remember? Do you remember what she was like? What she looked like? I killed her!” Dye’s fiery aura was scorching the ceiling. But through the flames, glistening drops were running down his face. “You had control over light magic, and could heal anyone of anything! But you couldn’t heal her! Later on, you saved Saint from death after I nearly killed him too! You even healed me! You got rid of the spirit of War inside me, and brought me back to my senses! Come to your senses now Priest, you’re supposed to be the leader of Requiem!”
The flames died down, and Priest was left blinking at a room darkened with soot. Dye’s breaths came in ragged gasps. Blizzard and Saint were waiting outside in the hallway, listening in, but not daring to bear witness to the event. Priest himself sat calmly at the table, taking in everything that had been hurled in his face over the past minute.
Finally, he spoke. “Wow…That’s a…that’s a pretty sad story, actually. I almost feel like I’ve heard it somewhere before. Anyways, am I really the leader of Requiem?”
“Not any more.” Dye slammed the door to the meeting room and walked away. He never looked back.
Subject: Chapter 28: Something Important 
Wed Jun 15, 2011 12:53 am
