Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ A Story about the Past ❯ Kuru Eruna ( Prologue )

Prologue

 

It all started with one fateful decision.

 

When he had first thought of it, it had seemed like a good idea. The country was under attack, and the people were crying out for salvation. Salvation its king wasn't able to offer.

 

So Akunadin had come up with a plan to call upon the ancient powers of the Shadow Realm to defend his country. He had found the book of the dark arts, the book that contained the secret to opening the door to that realm. It required dark alchemy, but that didn't bother the king's brother in the slightest. What did the lives of ninety-nine people matter when compared against the safety of thousands? It was a small price to pay.

 

Now, looking down on the village of Kuru Eruna as the king's soldiers captured the fleeing inhabitants and brought them screaming to the large cauldron of boiling gold in the town square, Akunadin was beginning to have doubts. Any sane person would; no one could watch that horror without feeling sick. The dark alchemy required live human sacrifices. Ninety-nine humans, thrown into the melted gold, still alive and conscious. It was sickening.

 

More than once he started to call out the order to stop. This was madness; it couldn't continue! Yet each time, the order stuck in his throat. It was too late now, too late to turn back. They had to finish. He had to finish. So many people had already been sacrificed; the ritual couldn't be stopped halfway through. This was for the good of his country. These people were dying so that so many others could live. Wouldn't that be an honor to every Egyptian?

 

He could only hope that the memory of this slaughter wouldn't drive him mad, and be glad that no one else was witness to it. The soldiers were all brain-washed, and the few officials that had accompanied him to the ritual would not live to see the sunrise.

 

Little did he know that one member of the village had escaped the massacre. A small boy, hidden around the corner, was watching the ritual with the very height of terror in his eyes. His friends…his family…his elders…his village…his entire life went into that pot, their agonized screams filling his ears. The stench of burning flesh, hair, blood, bones filled the air around him, it and the heat making it so, so hard to breathe.

 

It was an experience that would fill his nightmares for the rest of his too long life.

 

After a long time, the process was finally over. All the villagers had been rounded up and thrown in, Akunadin believed. It was time for the next step in the ritual process: pouring the flesh-tainted gold into the molds. Below the cauldron was a chamber, an ancient chamber with nothing but ancient hieroglyphs on the walls. Akunadin didn't know what the chamber was for, and he didn't really care. It was the perfect place to finish the ritual. Hidden. Secretive. No one would ever find it.

Akunadin felt a sense of overwhelming relief as the attendant priests broke through the molds and took the Items. At last it was over. It was done. There was nothing more to worry about; his homeland was safe.

 

No sooner had he finished that thought than an earthquake struck, a massive ground shattering rumble that the priests had never known before. The chamber's floor split open, darkness pouring from the crack, and two of the priests fell screaming into it.

 

Akunadin backed away, terror flooding his heart as he watched something rise from the depths below the crack, the black shadows shifting around it as they continued to flee from the hole. A stone…a stone tablet, carved into the shape of a robed man. The same hieroglyphs that covered the walls were written on it, and in it were seven holes.

 

Seven Millennium Item shaped holes.

 

In the central one, the one in the man's chest, rested the Millennium Ring. One of the priests who had fallen into the hole had been holding it, Akunadin vaguely remembered as he watched in horrified fascination. It was laying there, as perfectly in its indentation as if someone had gently placed it there. What's more, it was glowing.

 

As if in response to that glow, the shadows in the chamber swirled, condensing and coalescing into a formless shape above the tablet. Two arms reached out from the form, even as two red eyes opened in the middle of the mass.

 

Akunadin was frozen, transfixed, terrified. Those arms, they were reaching for him. He could see right through them, but they were solid, and horrifyingly strong as they picked him up, carrying him closer to the core of the darkness and those awful eyes.

 

“Put them all in,” boomed a deep voice from within the mass of shadows. “Put in all the Millennium Items, and I shall be released.”

 

A chill ran down Akunadin's spine. This monster…it was sealed in the tablet? The Millennium Items could release it? He didn't want that! He couldn't let that happen!

 

He was holding the Millennium Eye…if he could use it…he could put it beyond the shadow monster's reach. Slowly, he reached up, struggling against the shadows to bring the Eye closer to his face, nearer to his real eye. If he could just get it in…

 

A loud squelch sounded from his eye socket, and a burst of dizzying agony drowned out his other senses. Dimly, he was aware of the monster's enraged roar, of the painfully hard ground as the monster dropped him.

 

The last living priest rushed up to him, gasping. “Lord Akunadin!” he cried, pulling his superior closer to the chamber's solitary exit. “We have to go!”

 

The elder priest snapped to his senses at last, and together the men fled up, out of the chamber, out of the village, out into the desert—as far as it took to get away from that horrible demonic darkness.

 

Akunadin vowed that he would never return. Never again would the village of Kuru Eruna have visitors; in his mind, it was doomed to be no more than a ghost town. No one would know of the massacre that had taken place there, and no one would ever know about that tablet, that darkness, that monster. It would stay sealed away forever.

 

Destiny had other plans, though. It would be years before Akunadin found out about those plans, but when he did, he would come to regret the day he had ever known about the dark arts. He had set out to save a country.

 

Instead his actions would bring it to the brink of destruction.