Chap 1: Return of the King

Deep in the darkest recess of the evil darkness, known to the ancients as the Shadow Realm, there was a form suspended in place. Not really floating, and not really bound; simply suspended by dark tendrils of amassed shadows so tightly compressed they had a form and nearly a consciousness all their own. They held the form of a man who had no sense of anything around him…. if the shadows moved, he neither saw nor felt them…. His soul long since gone, his body simply existed for them to hold as if it were a trophy on a mantle, barley kept alive, if not at all.

This was the way it had been for an immeasurable span of time… nothing had changed… nothing…. Just endless sleepless night…. And for a moment like so many others, that's what it was…. But then something changed. Something… Felt…

For a moment, nothing seemed to have happened…. but then he twitched. For the first time in what was to be a forever…. The body twitched on its own accord. A weak breath accompanied a small movement from the man's fingers and slowly he began writhing as something found its way back into the empty void that had been his heart, stretching, coiling and binding back into place as his soul found its home once more; finally freed after centuries of imprisonment by the death of the Dark God Zork.

The tendrils had begun spasming as this happened and released the body of Zork's original pawn…. The Thief King of Kul Elna, Akefia; made whole once more.

As he fell, the shadowy area before him seemed to give way and Akefia fell forward and onto the hard dusty floor beneath him; the shadows slithering away from him and vanishing back into the dark portal of the shadow realm, leaving him alone in the dank darkness of what could best be described as a tomb, the air itself stale and ancient.
Akefia felt himself shiver slightly, his body cold and numb, his breathing ragged as he opened his eyes only to observe blackness making him wonder for the briefest of moments if had opened them at all. Carefully, Akefia attempted to sit up, and found himself completely immobile; that fact stunned him really…. it had been some time since he had been so weak… and that was when….

A pained groan escaped him as his body wrenched with a pang of sheer starvation, the pain of it intense enough to make him double up with the very last of his energy…. Akefia could feel it now… he was dying. Dying of hunger.
Looking at his hand that was obscured by darkness, a hand that looked so frail due to lack of sustenance… but how was that possible? Had he not eaten the day before? Prior at best? Akefia found himself scrambling for answers… why was he even here? What had he even been doing to land him here? In any case, he couldn't just lie there and die….

"Help…" the sound that escaped his lips so weak they were virtually inaudible at all, the voice itself alien to his ears, "Help me…" he whispered into the darkness as best he could…. If he could get help and strengthened he would be able to….able to…. what? He couldn't remember… "Help me….!" he cried dryly, his voice still so weak it barley even echoed off the empty walls,over and over in the silence as the minutes began to stretch…..

Several minutes turned into an hour, and the silence persisted its reign when a loud crash echoed off the walls as the once hidden entrance was unceremoniously torn down. Many beams of light then pierced the once undisturbed darkness as fresh air and dusty sand flooded the ancient halls as men with picks and shovels entered the new room, eyes greedily taking up the sights of the new tunnels and the promise of new discoveries. In no time at all, a small rendezvous point was established and the men filled in all directions to search out the tunnels.

One team delved deep and came upon an open room, immediately they all saw promise in the room and began to fan out… but a faint whisper caught the ear of the team head and he prompted the others to silence themselves and listen…. Following the whispers over their echoing footsteps with the aid of their flashlights, they came upon the startling form of a white haired man decorated in golden bracelets and rings, doubled over and nearly dead from starvation, his form hidden under a red wool cloak… when he gave a gurgling cough the head of the team whipped his head around in refrained panic,

"Someone give me a canteen!" the head called. In mere moments he had lifted the man's head and tried coaxing him into opening his mouth, with virtually no response. With the help of one of his associates they managed to stimulate his throat into swallowing as they held his mouth open and carefully tipped small portions into his mouth. The man took one final drink and went entirely slack, still breathing but barely. In a quick scramble, the soon unconscious man had been removed from the room as quickly as they could manage and was air lifted to the nearest hospital.

The darkness Akefia was in was comfortable…. Like many years missed good rest. But it was not to last; Akefia was awakened by strange, faint and seemingly far off noises… slowly he opened his eyes and turned them up towards the ceiling, which glared back at him with rather strange intensity, forcing him to look away with a groan. Blinking, his vision cleared slowly and for a moment he stared at a strange object; it appeared to be made of metal… and it had many strange glowing dots over its face, giving the appearance of eyes. That fact unnerved Akefia and he shifted in place, taking notice of the softness beneath him, a bed. Not only that, he was in strange pale robes.

Still dazed, he reached up to rub his face and froze as his eyes caught sight of his arms; Vines were embedded in them, directly in his veins it seemed…. Some looked to contain fluid and some…. He felt his hair stand on end as he realized blood was in one… being siphoned or otherwise he hadn't a clue and his heart picked up its pace. A loud beeping made him snap his head to the source and he flinched at the machine as he realized it was mimicking the exact rhythm of his heart… feeling his chest, he felt something there too. Ripping away the shirt he began breathing rapidly as more vines hung from there as well…

Immediately he began ripping them away from his flesh, to which the odd object began wailing loudly making Akefia cover his ears in shock as he yelled for it to shut up.

The sound of a door flying open alerted him to a small group consisting of a man and two women dressed in white as they rushed into the room, the man speaking to him and holding his hands out and the heavily breathing patient, "Sir! Please! Settle down! You are ok! You're safe… please stop that!" he said quickly trying to stop the man from tugging at the IV's.

Akefia did not respond to the man's words in his growing panic at the wailing machines around him and immediately yelled to him, "Who are you?! What is this?! Get this thing off of me!"

The doctor blinked in confusion at the man's words; never before had he heard the language the still thrashing man spouted, "Sir! Please slow down I can't understand you! Sir please stop that!"

Akefia's hand gripped the blood red IV in his right arm and tried tugging it away, flinching at the sensation in his arm as he tried, "SIR STOP!"

Akefia winced as the man was suddenly grabbing his hand and prying his fist open to release the vine, Akefia cursed at him and tried forcing him back, confused as to what he was doing. It wasn't until the man called out in a strange tongue he could not understand that he realized that the odd object was their doing; the two women suddenly joined in in subduing him, to which he began yelling in confused rage as they slowed his movements, also speaking to him in a strange language. More people in white, these men, rushed in and began pinning Akefia's arms and legs down as he fought to free himself, "Stop it! Get your hands off me damn you! LET ME GO!" he screamed angrily, furious that he was easily being overpowered.

"His heart can't handle this stress right now! Keep holding him still!" the doctor said as he rushed out to get a sedative, he hadn't got far as a thoughtful nurse had rushed it over when the screaming began.

Akefia glimpsed the man as he returned, a sharp glinting object with a clear fluid in his hand as he approached, prompting him to struggle harder despite the firm grip the men around him had, his heart racing out of control making his ears deafen slightly as if the pounding was directly in his ears, his teeth gritting out of rage as his heart attempted to hammer its way out his heaving chest. The needle didn't go to his body however, and was instead pressed into one of the vines that was still attached in his arm.

"No! NO!" Akefia growled angrily again, spouting angry and empty threats. For a few moments nothing seemed to be happening as Akefia continued pulling against his captors…. But then Akefia felt his blood run cold as a strange calm began to overtake him, slowly he felt the willingness to fight dwindling and his head growing hazy. Shaking his head trying to rid the growing unnatural calm he found his body relaxing against his wishes, even his breathing and heart seemed to be calming down, which frankly scared him, "What did you do to me?" he managed shakily as the men slowly released him, sweat from exertion glistening on every portion of his skin, "What have you done to me?"

"…. It's alright. Let him go….Easy." The doctor said as the assistants stepped away from the man as he continued to repeat the same sentence as he grew slack, "Restrain him. If he does that again he could hurt himself or someone else…"

"Yes doctor…" A nurse acknowledged as she began setting the now sleeping man back into his original resting position, "Doctor…What language was that? It's not English, Arabic or even Hebrew."

The doctor shook his head, "I don't know… we'll have to look into it. Familiar language will help him keep calm…. I'll call the team that brought him in… he might know." The doctor replied as the nurses secured his wrists, ankles and section across his mid-chest with a leather strap, the nurses re-affixing the machines and IV's as the doctor left the room shaking his head,

"Must be shock…" he muttered sadly.

Well that was Chapter one. There is plenty more to this on the way;) Hope you enjoy.

A heads up i might add is this is a RIPSHIPPING fic, there will be no Yaoi pairings in this whatsoever.

Also, a note. I call the Thief King by "Akefia" and not Bakura because i feel that he deserves his own name, and Akefia sounds far more Egyptian that Touzoku to me(Plus the literal translation of Touzoku is "Thief" so he's literally "Thief Bakura"). So as with all my works he shall be Akefia.