Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Sunrise ❯ Sunrise ( Chapter 3 )
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Hentai / Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.31.2004 | Pages: 1 | Words: 2.9K | Visits: 312 | Status: Completed
By the time he arrived at the edge of the village, the sun had long since set. The ruins of Kuru Eruna were shrouded in the darkness of desert night. The light from the cold white moon above cast faint shadows, but far more was lit by the eerie glow from the Millennium Ring hanging from Mahaad's neck.
He dismounted from his horse and, patting its neck a couple times, tied the reins to an old, fallen beam. Then, features set in grim determination, he began to venture into the ruined village, holding the burning metal of the ring out before him.
"Bakura" he whispered, and with a faint metallic jingle that rang through the silent night air, the central point on the Ring rose, directing him into the depths of the ruins.
He began his search, moving as silently as possible through the rubble and deserted buildings, leaving smudged footprints in the sand that had blown across the roadways. The village was otherwise disturbingly bereft of other signs of life: no mouse tracks skittered across the sand, no sinuous ripples from a cobra's travels. In the bitter cold of night, he wrapped his cloak a little more tightly around himself.
Long minutes passed as the Ring directed him back and forth through the ghost town, and even though he felt as if he'd seen some of the buldings before more than once, he continued on. His hand went numb and the burning spread in icy-hot tendrils up his arm, forcing him to clench his teeth whenever it flared up. In time, as he rounded one corner, he arrived just in time to see the wind sweep away his own footprints -- he was sure they were his own.
Another fiery pain, this time deep within his chest, and he couldn't stand it anymore. He hadn't come out here to wander around lost in night. "BAKURA!" he yelled to the sky. "Show yourself, coward!" Mahaad trembled in anticipation, adrenaline surging like never before. A chance at vengeance. Fear? Nonsense, he told himself.
A voice whispered faintly behind him, and he whipped around, cloak flaring in the evening breeze.
Nobody was there.
Heart pounding audibly, he yelled again, unable to keep the pitch of his voice under control: it wavered, a faint tremulo of fear mixing with the harshness of anger. "Bakura!"
Something hissed behind him and he turned just in time to see a ghostly visage only inches from his own before it whispered past him, leaving only a brief chill behind. Mahaad's heart skipped a beat, and he whipped his head around to look at where it had gone, behind him. The faintly phosphorecent shape giggled as it lurched through the air and the melted semi-transparent face turned back to stare at him with unseeing eyes, twisting obscenely as it drifted behind the crumbling remains of an old workshop.
Every muscle tense, Mahaad stared after the fleeing ghost. Guardedly, he took a step back, then another. The points on the Ring shifted, pointing off towards the left and so, carefully, Mahaad began tracing his way through the ruins once again.
Every few steps, a new voice seemed to moan or whisper nearby, and the ghosts slowly began to emerge from the ruined town, each with the same half-melted face, the same indistinct blobby form, with blackened gouges for eyes and mouths. They gaped and giggled, whispering past on faint evening breezes, drawing closer to Mahaad with each step he took further into the ruined town.
They were a minor annoyance. "Nehem-k, xer neter aa pui t'ai baiu nesbu aua anx em huait saa keku ami senket sentu-f amu bek," Mahaad began to chant and drew a circle in the air with a fingertip, the familiar thrill of magic surging through him, accompanied by a gloriously painful fire renewed and running through every nerve in the hand holding the Ring. With the circle completed as the cold shadows gathered and began to dart towards him, a sphere of translucent green-gold flame exploded outwards from his body, sending the spirits shrieking as they fled to the darkness.
Bakura was his. The lost souls of the dead were of no consequence to him now.
Mahaad continued to follow the Ring, his circle of flame following his steps through the ruins of Kuru Eruna. A mere few arms' length away, the spirits gathered again, strange elongated faces clustered around his fiery ring of protection, amassing as close as they dared. They moaned and wailed, shrieking when they neared the flickering spiritual flame, the sounds audible only to the trained ear. Mahaad heard them and ignored their cries, focussed on only one thing.
He only had one target. One goal.
The ring brought him into what must have once been the town square, broken shards of pottery from the market still scattered across the bare earth. And yet, Bakura wasn't here either. The ring's spikes all pointed straight at the center of the square as Mahaad paced around it, the iridescent turquoise glow from the ring flickering in his sight.
In fact, it was that flickering that alerted him when Bakura seemed to step out of nowhere, at the edge of his protective circle, and strode through the translucent spiritual flame. The thief snatched the ring out of his grasp, yanking it so hard that the rope around Mahaad's neck pulled the two close together.
"I knew you'd come back for me," Bakura smiled, his red eyes seeming the color of fresh blood in the unearthly light. Mahaad only had time to take in a single breath before Bakura's fist met his stomach and he folded over with a small groan.
"And you brought my trinket. Thanks," Bakura sneered, yanking the dagger from his belt and flipping it in his grip to stab downwards. Mahaad, still gasping for breath, only managed to twist just enough that the blade ripped through the sleeve of his robe and lodged firmly in the rocky soil. He half-crawled, half-staggered to his feet, trying to put some distance between Bakura and himself, but the grave robber was fast and nimble, and it took only a brief moment for Bakura to pull his dagger free.
Mahaad barely dodged another snake-quick strike with the dagger, but he couldn't find enough breath to utter the words to a spell and the following bare-handed blow caught him square in the stomach again, dropping him to the sand. Bakura followed, jamming his free hand across Mahaad's mouth and wedging his knee against the priest's groin. The flat of the bronze dagger slid up Mahaad's chest, and Bakura pointed the tip at his throat with the edge poised to cut the rope holding the ring around the priest's neck.
"Stupid pharaoh's lapdog," Bakura sneered, kneeing Mahaad's groin hard enough to make the priest's eyes water. "You thought you could beat the King of Thieves, even with one of the Millennium Items?"
No. No, no no no NO, Mahaad screamed at himself. It's not going to happen again, this is where it ends! He brought his teeth together, hard, on Bakura's hand, and kicked the thief away, the dagger sliding down against his robe and rasping against the shiny surface of the Ring, just barely missing the rope.
Bakura stumbled back, caught off guard, and Mahaad raised his hand into the air, the fiery ring of protection flaring so brightly that the ruins were illuminated as though it was day, the golden fire tinged with blue-green flickering edges. The translucent ghostly blobs fled, scattering into the ruins of the village. Then in a sudden rush, the flames were pulled back towards his body, power converging in his soul, and Mahaad uttered the chant to bring out the source of his power, the form of his soul, the Magician of Illusion.
The eerily discolored flames converged, and from their depths, the spike-garbed spirit-shape stood tall between him and Bakura and lowered the point of his staff threateningly at the thief. Dark robes fluttered about his shape in nonexistant wind, and his eyes glowed with the green-blue of the Millennium Ring's aura.
Bakura's incarnadine eyes widened for a moment, before he laughed again, crazily. "Do you think you spirit-sorcerers are the only ones to have power like that? I steal more than the purely physical," he added, narrowing his eyes pointedly. Materializing behind him, a white-grey shape loomed, vast and yet only half formed. Mahaad could see the emotions there as though he felt them himself: fear, hatred, malice, desire, revenge. Visible amidst the shape were feathery wings and the long trailings of a snakelike tail behind it. And with the appearance of Bakura's ka, the ghosts of Kuru Eruna regathered, swooping around the monsterous spirit-beast, stroking the creature's form lovingly, like an old, beloved friend.
He didn't waste his breath on scathing remarks or angry retorts. "Destroy him," he ordered, and his ka burned with wrath, sending a burst of fiery energy towards Bakura's spirit-beast. The creature dodged, but the end of its tail was still caught in the blast, and Bakura's knee gave out, dropping him to the sands. Teeth gritted in a disturbingly intent grin, Bakura lunged again at the priest from his kneeling position while his spirit-beast laughed a counterattack.
However, Mahaad's power was strong, and Bakura found himself relying more on the physical to try to kill Mahaad, and found himself rapidly weakening in the face of the powerful hits being taken by his own spirit-beast.
"Energy Wave!" Mahaad called, and this time, the blow caught Bakura's ka dead center. The thief stopped midstep to choke out a gurgle of blood, eyes wide and gaping as he dropped to his knees on the rocky ground. Drops trickled from his lips and sank into the sandy soil.
Mahaad raised his hand, ready to utter the final words and destroy Bakura's soul, his aura blazing with an unholy blue-green tinge, all centered on the radiating spike of pain driven into his own heart, the Millennium Ring. But just then, a stabbing pain ran up from his side, and his arm jerked down involuntarily to cover the sudden new light gash on his side, which was slowly beginning to bleed onto his robes, staining the white linen. The dagger Bakura had thrown clunked against the ground onto a couple paces away.
He looked back up, ready to strike again, but in that moment of distraction, the thief had vanished. He raised his power, drawing on the powers of the Ring without a thought, and a wave pulse of greenish flame seemed to flash through the shadowy ruins. A glimpse of a shape alerted him, and he ran, sending the Magician of Illusion on ahead.
Mahaad rounded the corner, only to come face to face with another of Kuru Eruna's ghosts, which screeched harshly and passed through his body, a watery flow of cold trying to possess his body. He cursed, and uttered a brief chant to rid himself of the ghost, sending it fleeing again. Hurriedly, he began to use the ring again, running to follow the pointers.
He ran and ran, until he reached the edge of the town. All was desert beyond, leading down to the Nile to the east. There was no sight of the tomb robber, not even footprints crossing the winblown sand.
It was there, amidst the slowly crumbling ruins, that he collapsed, unable to sustain himself any further.
"Bakura..." he sobbed, pounding his fists into the rocky ground. "...bastard..."
Mahaad opened his eyes and stared down. The sun was just rising, making the blood from his scraped knuckles a brilliant ruby red. Mahaad almost welcomed the throbbing pain.
He'd been so close to catching the thief.. and now what? The edges of the Ring still flickered with an ominous fiery cyan aura, and he stared numbly down at the accursed golden item with a mixture of loathing and despair. It was the thing that had driven his life the past few days, that had caused him such pain and heartfelt grief, that had caused him to act so rashly and... it was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. But if he used his powers to seal away its evil... he would have little left, true, but it would be enough to keep the Ring docile and under his control, instead of it influencing him. He'd felt it in that battle with Bakura, the seething hatred that was not his own -- a far darker, vitriolic wrath that came from deeper wells of the soul than he knew, using him and his motives as a host for destruction.
He let the Ring rest against his chest, and concentrated on blocking it out. The pain flared again, and his eyes watered, but he slowly began to chant, channelling his own powers into subduing the unholy item. It was a long process, long and slow, and Mahaad could feel his energy draining out portion by portion, as he used his own hate and fear to fuel the spirit-energy required.
And then, hours later, it was done. All that remained was a brief flicker of golden orange subduing the green-gold tinged item. And then.. the light went out. When he opened his eyes, he was vaguely surprised, in shock, to find that the metal spikes on the Ring had embedded themselves in his chest, just under the skin, at some point during his incantation. He gingerly pulled them out, and sighed as the weight against his body was only that of chill metal and nothing more.
It was the end. Drained, he sat on the cold sand and watched the sun's bright glare put out the stars as it rose, changing the sky from black to indigo blue. Spattered with blood from his abraded knuckles and other wounds, feeling the faint trickle of blood running wetly down his chest, Mahaad stared numbly into the sun, the sun whose light was bright enough to make the palace far in the distant west invisible beneath the blinding orange rays.
~~~~~~~~~
Mahaad squinted, holding one hand up to shield his eyes from the burning afternoon sun. He held up one hand and the company behind him stopped. The Millennium Ring continued to point slightly to the left and towards the high cliffs of the Valley of the Kings. Mahaad gestured, no longer a magical incantation, merely a signal known to his men. They nodded and split into two groups, one circling around and up the steep cliffs to block off possible escape routes, and the other to flush out the thief who dared to ransack one of the royal tombs.
Two of the remaining mounted soldiers stayed with Mahaad in the minimal shadow cast by an outcropping, and waited.
Mahaad sighed and swept the sweat from his brow. It was hot, too hot to be out here, and he couldn't imagine why the thief would be bold and foolhardy enough to be robbing graves in the day. Bakura, perhaps, but he doubted that. It didn't /feel/ like Bakura, and Mahaad was growing to trust his intuition more, since the loss of all but the most trivial of his magical powers.
In fact, it's too hot out here even for me, he thought wryly to himself. The pale grey-brown rocks reflected the sun's glorious rays, turning the Valley into an oven midday. But it was better than staying back at the palace throughout the day, subject to Seto's constant verbal abuse. Even in front of the Pharaoh himself, Seto seemed obliged to make some remark at his expense, mostly complaints and snide remarks about Mahaad's seeming incompetance at catching criminals. He was trained as a sorcerer and a priest, not as an over-worked and under-staffed guard captain, but Mahaad never spoke a word in his own defence. There was no more hatred in him, not even for the arrogant Seto, and so he merely apologized, then continued his duties.
He needn't have worried about reprisal anyway; Pharaoh Akunamukanon had other problems. Not long after he had told the Pharaoh about what had happened at Kuru Eruna, Akunamukanon had fallen ill. Normally robust and strong, he now looked pale and drawn, faint circles under his eyes. Isis had been spending more time with him of late, trying to aid the pharaoh, but Mahaad suspected that Akunamukanon's ailment was not a physical one, but a spiritual one. Mahaad felt guilty, but what was there to be done? What could he do? Someday, perhaps, he would have the opportunity to redeem himself, to aid the pharaoh instead of causing grief.
Someday, too, perhaps he would find Bakura again. And things would be different than they had been in the past.