Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ The Fall That Brought Me To You ❯ The promise of a livid pharaoh ( Chapter 2 )

The atmosphere was sick, cruel. The walls of golden-slacked ebony rose high and mighty around him, bracing figures of stalwart marble stained and darkened by splatters of dried blood and grime. He hung there, suspended, shackles of relentless chains, holding him in place as they cut deeply into his tanned flesh.

 

Liquid rubies, leaked thoroughly of life, peeled themselves open.

 

Fire danced maddeningly around him-liquid streams holding ghosts of ebony and scarlet spitting rage as they swirled and dispersed around him. Shadows, long-deceased and heirloom to the fortune, insidious and plunging, dancing as the wakes of the four cornerstones of the room expressed their glee.

 

Mocking, they were constantly mocking…

 

He could not remember much. All he could remember was the darkness and the pain. What had happened before that, he had no recollection.

 

The figure lay stripped of all regality, faint whisperings of an expired king existent and breathing in the tattered robes that donned him. Material that had once been soft, reserved only for royalty, hung limply from his battered form, clogged and clotted blood hanging with the remnants of the tattered robes.

 

The view returned to the Pharaoh's eyes. The blood dripped. The rats feasted.

 

Why he had been brought here, he only wished to forget. Why his dignity had been viciously stripped away, why he was being tortured beyond tolerance, why his kingdom lay in ruins, was something he did not entirely understand.

 

The fire burned his unprotected flesh, the flames blazed up in frequent intervals. His lids clenched slightly in pain. He yearned to scream, but he could not give them that satisfaction. His eyes came to tiredly open as the flames died down again. He was strong, he was a leader, he was collected; he was not weak. Ruby simmered to the color of liquid malt, he was a descendent of Ra and in that title he would learn how to prevail.

 

The flames flared up again and in this moment a whip came and burned lacerations into his sides. He screamed.

 

Sadistic cinnamon orbs gleamed in rogue satisfaction, as the man watched the figure's body slump in pain.

 

“Do you not see, Pharaoh? I have won.”

 

Scorched eyelids set into the nastiest of glares, as the figure started to circle around him. Raspy breaths were falling past his parted, blood-encrusted lips, but he refused to give in. The Pharaoh gave the man his complete and utter attention, brilliantly cut ruby eyes alight with the shrewdness and maturity he had come to possess calculating the figure's every step.

 

“Your followers have been ridded of their ugly lives.” The figure's lip curled and his eyes gleamed. “You have no one…”

 

Tarnished ruby set into the nastiest of glares.

 

“All of your friends have been killed, your loyal subjects massacred…”

 

Rusty cinnamon orbs flitted his way.

 

“I have even killed your mother and father…”

 

Ruby eyes emptied. `No…'

 

“Yes” Bakura smirked, the ratty hood that sunk across his right eye shifting in the firelight.

 

“Your loved ones have been massacred, your parents have been discarded, while you hang here in utter defiance. Your palace has been destroyed, your memories tarnished, while you still hang here in utter defiance. You do not tell me anything and in not telling me you do fall, because without the seven items you have no hope for release. By not telling me, my friend, you are making your heart heavy and in doing so your path to purgatory will be granted without release.”

 

Bakura, in all this time, had continued circling the Pharaoh, enunciating this in a sing-song voice that would have normally made the Pharaoh's blood boil as he blindly stared forward. But the Pharaoh couldn't see anything. He could only see the memories that spun back into his vision as the tomb robber spoke the things that he had done without remorse or compassion. He saw his palace destroyed, his mother and father brutally slain in front of him, his servants, followers, and friends taken from him. All he knew in that moment was a pain he never knew existed. But, following this, was a rage that screamed Bloody Mary. He wanted to kill Bakura, make him pay for everything that he had done. All the innocent lives that he had sadistically taken for his own bloody gain. He was lower than filth in his eyes and somehow he would make him feel as such. While he hung there, the Pharaoh's eyes glowed eerily in the light with something that was way beyond fury; it was beyond bloodlust, it was beyond anything that the Pharaoh had ever experienced. It spoke of a promise, a promise for retribution that would only be fulfilled by the blood of the Tomb Robber himself, by the obliteration of everything that the Tomb Robber held dearest to him. It screamed `you may have taken everything that I hold dearest to me away, but I will not fall. I will rise up and fight. I will rise up and save the people that I have been appointed to guard. I will avenge them with all I have and their screams will be echoed by the screams of everyone you hold dearest to you. I will prevail and, in so doing, I will break you. I will break you in half and shatter you into a million pieces. You will not get away with what you have done, that is the promise I make to you. The promise of the last Pharaoh of Kemet. It will be the last one ever made to you.'

 

The strength of the gaze that the Pharaoh held with Bakura, the intensity of the fire that embedded itself within his dark corneas, could not be broken easily. It spoke and screamed of this promise. Bakura could tell, even though he never let it show or admitted it to anyone, that, if it was the last thing the Pharaoh did, he would keep this promise and that secretly terrified him. Those eyes looked into his very being, scoped out the truth, they found the people that mattered the most to him. They measured how he ticked, what could break him again and again. The fire in the Pharaoh's eyes pulsated as a smirk grew wider and wider on his dark, full lips. When his eyes had stopped pulsating, but the smirk stayed in place, Bakura knew that he had found what he needed. This terrified Bakura more than the promise had previously terrified him, so much, that the emotion actually showed on his face.

 

“My, my, Bakura, it seems as though you are not as demonic as I once thought. You are capable of love.”

 

His eyes shined sadistically.

 

“…and that is what will be your downfall.”

 

His smirk widened.

 

“I will tear them to pieces, and watch you die along with them…”

 

An enraged cry was heard as Bakura mastered his fear. He took the whip that had previously been forgotten in his hand and lurched it towards the only place he could think that would cause the Pharaoh pain at the moment. The whip wrapped around the Pharaoh's neck and the fire that had previously been in the Pharaoh's eyes scattered as he realized what the tomb robber was doing to him. He started to choke forcibly.

 

“Well, well, well, not so high and mighty now, are you Pharaoh?”

 

The taunting tone of voice that utterly disgraced the Pharaoh was forgotten as the tears started to pool at his eyes. He could not breathe. Just as he felt the looming darkness of unconsciousness about to swallow him, he was released. The shackles that held him in place were unlocked and he was forced to topple unceremoniously to the floor, clutching his neck the entire time, breathing with a great deal of strain, as he choked slightly.

 

“Get up Pharaoh! The last thing I'm going to do is kill you with a whip. If I was going to kill you, it would be with my bare hands. Now, get up!!!”

 

Bakura forcibly kicked him in the side, making him tumble over the dirty floor, until he hit the far wall, his head coming to painfully be smashed against the hard stone. A spluttered growl made its way to the surface as he reached up to clutch his head where he could already feel blood pooling. One eye painfully began to open as another growl spluttered out of his throat and he glared death at Bakura.

 

“It looks as though you were just a talker Pharaoh. Your mouth is much larger than your actual abilities. It seems that my suspicions were right. All your life you hid behind your contemporaries and, when the time actually came for you to fight, you broke like a withered stalk in the wind!”

 

A cacophonous laugh followed this speech, as Bakura threw his head back and let the entirety of it echo around the confining chamber and through the vast hallways of the place he had come to take refuge. Gleaming cinnamon orbs came to stare back at him levelly.

 

“However, since I am a gentleman,” he smirked at this supposed fact, “I will forgive you for your weakness and put you out of your misery before you can cause yourself any real harm.”

 

Smirking more at this, Bakura continued.

 

“I will even be so nice as to send my whip to the shadow realm so you only have to fight little ol' me.”

He said the last part of this mockingly, knowing full well that he was a very capable fighter, even unarmed.

 

Unbeknownst to Bakura, his goading all this time had been making him stronger and stronger. Each disrespectful word that left his uncaring mouth, fueled the Pharaoh further. So much so, that his body seemingly forgot all the blood loss. It forget the wounds and the emotional pain fueled him even stronger. He was slowly returning to the prideful ruler he had once been before everything had been taken from him. As he had promised, he would not give up. He would not fall. He would fight and win. He would conquer Bakura and return his kingdom to its former glory. He would remember those that died and, in their memory, he would fight, honoring them every step of the way. He would not give up; he could not give up. He was Pharaoh. He was the role, it was him. His duty beat with his very heart. Abandon the role and abandon himself. He would fight; he would win.

 

A new light and resolve alighted in his eyes at this statement and he found himself slowly standing up, keeping his eyes trained on Bakura the entire time who was clearly in shock. After all, what weakling would be able to stand up after such a significant loss of blood?

 

He smirked. What weakling could stand up after such a significant loss of blood? But, he was no weakling. He was the Pharaoh of Kemet. He had the strength to stand up and return his kingdom to its former glory. He had the strength to defeat this weakling. He had the strength to prevail.

 

Getting himself at the ready, he glared death at Bakura, while he assumed a stance that clearly said that he meant business.

 

“Let's do this, Bakura!”

 

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