Taysir’s Warrior

Erix should really be asleep. They still have a long journey to the dockyards and they all have to be up early. After today, Erix should honestly be out cold by now; but his mind is still racing from earlier. A lot had happened. A lot that Erix wasn’t used to.

Not much grew in the Freezer. Many things change and shift after a thousand year war that kills millions, but a frozen tundra is always a frozen tundra and Erix is grateful that at least that never changes. He’s used to barren cold landscapes with limited resources. He’s never been this far south before and where they’re camped is still considered Northern territory!

Erix had honestly never even heard of truth-spurs before. Just like how he’d never seen so much green luscious flora and fauna before. So when Cyrus and Huriyyah had gotten in an argument that was loud enough to start an avalanche, the three of them had all been sent tumbling down the slope they’d been on. Erix was used to avalanches. He was used to ice splintering under his feet, suddenly dropping into freezing water, or getting caught in a whiteout. He knew how to handle the situation and had done his best to keep Cyrus and Huriyyah alive with him.

He didn’t think it would land him into a bush of truth-spurs nestled just so next to the boulder he’d crashed into trying to keep Cyrus and Huriyyah unharmed. He didn’t much care for the fun little side effect they gave humans along with open wounds all up and down his side and back. As Erix had learned today, truth-spurs make a poison that forces people to tell the truth.

Cyrus had, of course, asked if he was okay. He’d hit that boulder pretty hard and Erix is certain he at least fractured a rib. Erix had meant to say that he was fine; what he’d ended up doing was screaming that he was about as far from okay as his left eye was from seeing the promised land. He’d then continued, because he’d hit an entire bush of truth-spurs that would take days to clear from his blood stream now, about how his entire life since that fire that took his family had been nothing but sorrow and suffering and lonesome anguish.

Every sordid and torrid detail of his life up until now had been shouted and sobbed and when he was done he’d realized what had come out of his mouth and was terrified that he’d send the only two people he’d been around in a decade would leave.

But they hadn’t.

In this whole dangerous destroyed world, two people Erix had only known for a week at most hadn’t run the first chance they’d learned what kind of life he’d lived alone in the Freezer. They had held him and carefully pulled spurs from his flesh and wrapped him up. They’d even listened when Erix had to explain to them how to pitch the tent in his rucksack. Unable to lift his arms past his shoulders.

Cyrus had even apologized for his heavy handed flirting towards Erix. He did it to everyone and Erix hadn’t really minded. He simply had assumed it was just Cyrus’ personality to flirt with anything legal that breathed. No one had ever apologized for making Erix feel uncomfortable before. No one had ever apologized to him for anything and it felt nice to hear one so sincere. Erix had actually smiled at Cyrus as he said thank you. Cyrus had been quiet for a whole five minutes in awe. Shocked that Erix even knew how to smile.

His mother’s heart shaped locket is open in Huriyyah’s tiny hand and chiming it’s little melody. Normally it’s comforting and the song can still put Erix to sleep but his mind is wide awake. He’s not used to having people clinging to him in his sleep. Cyrus is suctioned to him like a galloon. Huriyyah is curled into him like a little lost ice hare kitten. Erix sighs. His side and back are throbbing but he stays quiet out of habit.

It’s strange to be this warm. Cyrus seems to constantly bleed the same heat as the infernal black sun of night in Taysir where Huriyyah is from. Huriyyah is also constantly radiating the same immense heat. Erix has never felt so warm and safe between a failed armada officer and a Taysirian girl that had come looking especially for Erix to save her little island.

Something Erix was still trying to process but she’d mentioned something about returning a favor to him. Anything he wanted. Erix just wanted to know if his family was still alive, if they weren’t, at least he would know, but Cyrus was constantly feeding him hope that they were. That his mother and father and his little sister Siri were alive and that they just had to be missing Erix as much as Erix missed them.

Cyrus squeezes him impossibly closer, nuzzling into Erix’s neck, his black hair tickling Erix’s scared flesh.

“Eri.” He mumbles stupid and sleepy. Ever since Erix had explained that his name meant forever alone, Cyrus and Huriyyah had just been calling him Eri. It meant protector. Is that what they saw him as? Huriyyah he could see, she was sent to find some lone warrior of the farthest North to save her homeland. Cyrus though, he was just some eager and always optimistic failed officer of the United World Armada. Did he really see Erix as someone who could protect an entire small nation?

The heart shaped locket Erix has kept since the fire starts it’s song again. Erix isn’t sure if it’s the pain or the spiced Taysirian tree bark Huriyyah had shared with them on Cyrus’s breath that makes him suddenly feel like he’s drowning in memories. His mother’s voice singing to him and Siri in their shared bed. She had been three, he was five. His father playing his songstone along with the locket’s tune. It’s a beautiful peaceful image. A small family preparing for a quiet evening in their home.

He feels hope bubble up in his chest. Cyrus and Huriyyah are endlessly hopeful and sometimes Erix wonders if hope is contagious. He’s not usually this hopeful. He’s usually full of distrust and self hatred. Somehow Erix has been nothing but hopeful that he can save Huriyyah’s people and find out what happened to his family. It’s been twelve years, he just wants to know if they're okay. He wants to know if they miss him.

He hopes he can be the protector Huriyyah and Cyrus think he is. That he can make them proud. Erix smirks to himself as the realization strikes him that he’s fallen madly in love with both of them. Two very different kinds of love. His love for Huriyyah is like the love he has for Siri. That of an older brother to his little sister. Innocent and sweet.

His love for Cyrus though...That’s different. He likes when Cyrus flirts with him. As strange and awkward as it can be sometimes. He likes how full of hope Cyrus is that he’s destined for greatness and that he’ll find it. He likes how hard Cyrus tries, how he’d handled those bandits in the Klackton Forest because he comes from a family of bandits. He likes even now how Cyrus tries to merge them together. Squeezing harder than the great ugly three horned-thousand eyed tentacle monsters Erix has seen beneath the ice in the Freezer.

Cyrus is everything Erix isn’t and it’s honestly precious. He’s a thorn in Erix’s boot sometimes, but he’s trying. He at least understands that without Erix’s caution and knowledge of survival, his eagerness will get the three of them killed before they get to Taysir. He understands he’s not enough to keep Huriyyah, probably the bravest ten year olds that Erix has ever met, alive and bring her back home.

The locket continues to play. It will as long as it’s open. Erix shifts, bites his lip against the pain to try to raise his arm to shut the locket. He doesn’t want it to play too long. It could get broken that way, and that would utterly kill Erix.

“Stop moving, dummy.” Cyrus grumbles. He stretches over Erix to shut the locket. He leaves it in Huriyyah’s little hand. She’s rather enamored by it.

“I thought you were asleep.” Erix mumbles. Cyrus nestles back into his galloon sleeping position. Head buried in Erix’s neck. Breathing hot air onto his flesh. Practically wrapped around Erix, heavy against his uninjured side.

“I was. Then you moved. Bandits are always light sleepers.” Cyrus mumbles. The vibration of his words against Erix’s skin feels like the time he'd been hit by lightning. Erix shifts uneasily at the memory of how Cyrus had stared at his scars from that event. The pinkish-purplish reminders that the locket Erix used to wear around his neck had drawn white hot lightning to his person. “Stop moving. If your back wasn’t messed up I’d lay on you.” Erix doesn’t reply but he does stop his fidgeting. “Go to sleep, Eri.”

He’s suddenly overpowered by exhaustion again. Drowning in it. It feels like dropping into the icy waters of the Freezer. He misses home, misses the cold and the snow; but he’s got a mission now. He has to protect his friends. When this is over, after he knows what happened to his family...Maybe Cyrus will come back with him to the Freezer. Maybe Erix can finally see what it’s like to have a partner out there in the cold nothingness of his beloved frozen tundra.

Maybe he won’t be alone anymore.