Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Shadow and Light ❯ Chapter 3

Author's Notes:

PLEEEEAAASE review. Is anybody out there?

 

Warnings: see the first chapter.

 

Disclaimer: I don't own `em. (wanders into the darkness cursing)

 

Chapter 3

 

Malik raced through the ruined streets of the city, and the imperial infantry's hobnailed boots hammered on the cobblestones behind him. He was giddily aware of the world around him, laughing inside that he should notice how the air that rushed past him smelled of jasmine and the sweet rain that the merastoforos had brought for the crops. The breeze blew from inland tonight and carried the stink of the ruined city of Terrestria out to sea with it. Such winds were thought to be unlucky by the people of the city - it kept the men of the city away from shore, and blew unceasingly for weeks at a time, making travel by water difficult.

 

But whatever sort of luck it brought Terrestria as a whole, the breeze was the favor of the gods for Malik - it was a beautiful night for running. The stiff, dry breeze carried the sweat away from his skin, and the cool air added to his endurance, rather than sapping it. Behind him, the armored infantry crashed and labored, cut off from the cooling wind by their protective gear.

 

The infantry were nothing compared to his power, but they were spreading systematically through the streets. Malik could defeat any one of the detachments, but the troops were merely the hounds. The Andra trailed behind the foot soldiers, ready to converge on any sign of the fleeing sorcerer. The cold, dangerous castros wanted him to fight, wanted him to burn soul-strength until he could no longer conceal the divine spirit hidden within him. Or to run, flying heedless and instinctive through the night, until he fell into some ambush they had laid.

 

Minutes later, Malik stopped his flight, and sweat instantly coated his body. He looked behind him and heard the distant clatter of the imperial troops. He had come up short before one of the city's haunted districts. Even centuries after the Black Sorrow, the streets were still strewn with shattered glass and thick with hungry ghosts and evil spirits bred by the horrors of the plague. He walked forward, until the toes of his boots almost touched the place where the Rubylak had ordered a groove cut into the cobbles and filled with cake salt, to contain the evil of the place.

 

The fugitive stared down at the salt barrier glittering whitely in the pavement before him. He remembered hearing stories from the locals around the area, about a child named Aeshanda, who used to skip back and forth over the barrier. She would laugh at the other children in the neighborhood and tease them from hiding places in the ruins. Eventually, Aeshanda had stopped going home, and her mother had stood at the edge of the ward for days, calling out her daughter's name. The other mothers shook their heads and looked away, and even the other children knew that Aeshanda belonged to the ghosts now.

 

Malik had heard a girl-child's voice echoing from the ruins before. Such sounds were common in Terrestria, and Malik had sometimes lain awake at night and wondered if each of the voices had once been a person like Aeshanda, or if some or even most were just sounds the place itself made, the way the ocean roared as the waves crashed into the beach.

 

There was only one way to find out. If the Andra wanted him, they could come find him in the belly of the beast. Malik wiped nagging droplets of sweat from his forehead and stepped deliberately across the warded line. He took a deep breath and was gone, running deep into the ruins, his tread as light as a feather and as fleet as the swiftest wind.

 

It hadn't always been like this. Once, the sylven warrior had been among the most respected of mages, in high regard with the matriarchy that ruled his people. Like most, he had disliked the Andra, but had known better than to speak against the Queen's pets. It was different now. The Andra had been created a hundred millenia ago, to prevent the immortal spirits of those that had ruled the sylvens before the Queen's family from ever gaining power again. Over and over, the spirits had been reincarnated, and every generation the Andra slew them before they had a chance to manifest their true powers.

 

That had changed when Malik had been chosen. Long before the Andra realized a spirit had once again been born, he had dreamed of his past lives, of towers and lovers, intrigues and whirling battles. Awakening, some part of him had said that this was his inheritance, and he had accepted it. And, accepting it, had begun to make plans.

 

Malik saw the Andra approaching long before they came into view. The warrior-mages had spent far too much soul-strength battling the evil of the ruins to conceal their auras. There were only two of them, but they were impressive enough for that. One was clad in red-pearl armor and carried a ruby-tipped spear. His aura roared crimson and orange, billowing around him like a bonfire. His companion's armor was of green-pearl, and he carried a double-bladed axe with an emerald head. His aura was brilliant green, and it flowed like a field of grass in a stormwind. From the sheer power of their auras, it was clear why the Andra warriors did not fight mounted - no horse could have survived the displays that whirled around the two mages.

 

Their escorting infantry had been thinned out considerably by the evil spirits of the ruins - most showed signs of injury, and they all looked skittish and haggard. They shied away even from their mage leaders, and looking into their hearts Malik could see nothing but terror. In the shadows, he smiled and tensed into a crouch. He waited until the hunters passed below his hiding place on a rooftop nearly fifty feet above ground. He slowly drew his throwing knives from his belt and sprang upon the hunters like a cornered lion.

 

Malik fell from the darkness like a star, streaming golden fire as he called upon his own soul-strength. He released his knives in midair, and his magic multiplied them so that they fell like rain upon the soldiers below. The armor of the mages would surely turn his blades, so he aimed his fury at the soldiers who accompanied them. If his enemies were hunters, then let them hunt him without hounds.

 

Thirteen soldiers died instantly, torn to pieces by the hail of blades. Malik's knees flexed slightly as he landed, and the Andra looked at him through narrowed eyes. The street was wet with blood and day-bright with the glare of the mages' auras, though it was close to true night now. He assumed the fluid posture of his personal martial arts stance, and then the Andra were upon him.

 

The Andra were unusually powerful - it took him a full ten minutes to kill them both. He straightened from the crouch he'd taken to cast his final spell, wiped the sweat from his face, and sighed. The pursuit for his head was getting to be annoying.

 

He did not intend to waste any more time in Terrestria; it was clear his life was over there. The Andra could pursue him in other lands. He paused to get his bearing on the west, then he was gone, the gold fire of his aura once again hidden with the perfect, complete, and utter control of the most powerful mage in the sylven empire.

 

 

Many, many millennia ago, the people of the world had been ruled by a different sort of thinking. Peace had reigned then; violence was waged only against those of True Darkness, those whom all called monsters. The royalty, the lords, the wise that ruled the people maintained a delicate balance between the forces of the world, and for a time Chaos had been held at bay by both the powers of the gods and the strength of the spirits of the people themselves.

 

But the more Chaos is fought against, the stronger it becomes. And so struck the Black Sorrow, a plague, a terror beyond all imaginings, death that spared no race. And in the Black Sorrow others rose to power, people among the races that had once been dissenters, disturbing the peace. And from those dissenters was bred distrust, and lies, and intrigue, and betrayal.

 

The family of royalty that ruled the sylvens by right of the gods' favor were almost all murdered in the night by a band of mercenaries, who were then promptly slain by the greediest of those who wished for the crown, who claimed the throne “in great grief.”

 

The humans, once united under a king fully the equal in power to the sylvan mages, were separated, greed and lies making them wage war on both other races and their own alike.

 

The shapeshifters, once the most respected of all mages, healers, and warriors, fell into disrepute, their powers making them the perfect scapegoats for everything that went wrong in the realm. Their families divided by pain and betrayal by those they once had thought friends, most fled into the shadows, taking a single form nearly all of their lives.

 

The sprites and merfolk, the fairies and spirits of nature, those that had been there before the other races, and would be there when they were gone, remained as they had always been, but because of the Chaos, fled deep within their own magical places, rarely appearing again.

 

And the dragons? The most powerful of all the races, and the wisest? They too fell before the Black Sorrow, and the world lost many of the greatest and the kindest beings in existence, and mourned for their loss. The few that were left retreated to highest places in the mountains, and sealed themselves off from the rest of the world, intending to at least preserve the little that was left of what was once the greatest race on earth.

 

In this time of Chaos there arose two kinds of people: the darkest monsters and the brightest of heroes. The spirits of those that had kept the peace of the world before the Sorrow were reincarnated, and a mighty war was fought. In the end, the monsters were driven from the realm, but the damage was already done. The dissenters had grown too powerful, and the reincarnated were hunted down on false pretexts and slain one by one. And after that time, the sylvens that unlawfully held the throne created the Andra, and spread the lies that the people who had once ruled the sylven people were the false ones, not they. The one who was once called king among the humans disappeared, leaving that race to struggle in anarchy.

 

And so time passed, and the world went on.

 

Ryou An'arath filtered into the tomb as gradually and as imperceptibly as dust or the smell of old age. He pulled a cloak of soul-strength about him and faded from the sight and mind of all who beheld him. It was not that he feared the eyes of mortals. The tomb had been sealed for over thirty thousand years, and no normal thing within it was any worry to him.

 

But there were things within the tomb that were not mortal. There were certain to be demons in the tomb, under ancient duress to patrol its halls and slay intruders. Perhaps he could defeat them, perhaps not. It seemed wisest to him to be discreet and avoid the question altogether.

 

He laid his palms flat against the door, and there was a crack that split the night, as the great stone lock within the doors broke loose after centuries of settling. The mechanism grated and popped while the palely beautiful mage focused his powers upon it. “Do not hear this!” his magic commanded as the door swung slowly open. “Do not see it!”

 

He walked into the tomb as softly as a ghost, his eyes alert and ears pricked for the slightest sound.

 

The first obstacle was the hardest, as his memories had told him it would be. Three demons, their eyes sharp enough to pierce even his shrouds of subtlety, stood guard before a great brass door. They forever patrolled the upper level of the tomb, clad in black pearl armor and wielding great brass-bound maces. They were identical triplets, their powers made all the stronger because of their relationship.

 

One blinked, and he slipped between them in the instant that its eyes were closed. One sneezed, and then the great brass door was unlocked. Days later, one heard a sound from beyond the door. Finding it unlocked, the demons departed in a rush of fetid air - they had failed their millenia-long mission.

 

There were other traps as well. There were great crushing stones that would have sealed him eternally, had he triggered them. There were stabbing blades and slashing blades, pitfalls and endless dead-ends, and a great enchanted stone that spellbound any who beheld it. But he evaded the blades, ignored the dead ends, confounded the stone and came, at last, to the heart of the tomb.

 

There, at the center of the tomb, lay a brilliant golden casket that stood taller than Ryou's waist. Worked into the lid was the effigy of a beautiful woman. It was carved from clear diamond and decorated in the most brilliant and lifelike of enamels. Her skin was fair, as Ryou's was, but he was willowy where she curved. She had a grave, kind expression and a slightly tilted nose that gave her face a touch of mischief, and the hair that spilled across her shoulders was as thick and white as his own. She was gentle and lovely, and he both reeled and rejoiced at seeing the face that had once been his.

 

His hands lifted the lid, and he slid it aside and lowered it, slowly, until it leaned upright against the sarcophagus. He looked into the casket and saw the sad dust the effigy atop it had become. And in the center of the casket lay a beautiful golden ring, easily large enough to slip over his head, should he wish it. There was a grip set along the top edge of the ring for a hand to grasp, and golden diamonds hung all around the rest of the ring, and settings were placed around the inner edge, as though a piece of the ring that should have been in the center was missing. Ryou slid a finger across the edge of one of the diamonds and smiled at the deep cut it caused. The edges of the diamonds were so sharp that he hadn't even felt the pain.

 

Ryou An'arath looked into the casket and thought, That was me, once. He reached into the coffin and wrapped his hand around the ring's grip. He drew it out and said aloud, heedless of any danger, “And this is mine, again.”

 

And the great darkness of the land grew just a little brighter, as the hero and his weapon were reunited.