Three Goddesses, Three Princesses, and the Influence of Tammam
Chapter One
It started the night Asima Tammam had a vision. Or maybe it started earlier. Maybe it started when she was still Batul Ishtar, a child locked away in a centuries-old underground Egyptian cavern, assigned to guard a dead Pharaoh's tomb.
It was a dusty place, a dark, dim underground series of stone rooms covered in hieroglyphs. The burial room was sacred; the tomb keeper's family lived in the others instead. "The Pharaoh shall return one day," Batul's father told her and her brother. He was a stern man, very traditional, and his wife had passed before Batul could remember her, but he was not a cruel master. That would be an untruth. "We have to be here when he does. Prophecy states that the Pharaoh will return to reclaim his rightful place as a King."
The Ishtar family's rules were strict. They could never go above ground except to gather food, which could only be the most humble. Strict Ancient Egyptian prayer several times a day. Exactly six hours of sleep on a pallet. A garb of simple robes, even during winter, when they had to hunch around a fire in blankets and rub their chests to stay warm. Constant study of ancient scripture, legends, and teachings. And above all, never to touch the olde magic of the Millenium Items. Only the ancient ghost who haunted the cavern could do that. Shadi was his name, and he had been murdered by an Ancient Egyptian thief king millennia ago. He guarded the Item magic.
Not even he guarded the Millenium Puzzle or the Pharaoh's real body, however. No one, including the Ishtars, knew where they had been hidden by the ancients trying to keep the return of the Pharaoh, and its world-threatening prophecy, from coming to pass.
The Pharaoh would return - Batul had already known that, before her father said it. She knew a great many things. When she dreamt, whispers filled her head, whispers of things to come. Sometimes when she was awake, she would be struck with sudden shaking and spells, visions of the future filling her eyes. Her family thought she had epilepsy.
"Protect your sister, for her health is delicate," their father told Batul's brother, Rahman. Rahman said he would do it, he would protect her. Rahman said he would do and protect everything.
Batul eventually realized that what she experienced was magic - powerful magic. She also knew that as an Ishtar, she was not supposed to be magic, not supposed to touch it. The ancient magicians who had created the Items were long gone. This world, she had been told, a world she had never really known, held no place for magicians. Only ancient relics contained magic. And the tomb keeper's legacy certainly did not allow for it.
There were old texts, ancient spellbooks, in a back room of the cavern, which were never touched. When Batul's shaking spells got worse and worse, she realized she was dying. The magic was killing her, eating her from the inside out because she didn't use it. She began sneaking into the back room and reading the magical texts when everyone else was asleep, by the light of the flaming torches on the dark, dusty, carved stone walls. She mastered the magic's exercises, and the more she learned to use her magic in secret, the less it ate away at her.
One day, crouched by a wall torch with an olde magic text, her robe wrapped around her and her feet in white slippers, she had looked up and found the ghost of Shadi floating before her. She gasped, clutching the book closer to her chest. Shadi stood and looked at her. It was hard to tell what he thought. He was a tall Egyptian man in robes and turban. He possessed two Millenium Items, the scale and the key, and wore large fanciful gold jewelry and kohl rimmed around his eyes.
"You are the girl with the magic," he said. "Why do you not seek out a Millenium Item?"
"Not all of us need Millenium Items to be magic," said Batul softly, her voice shaking.
"That is true. Remember that. It has to do with your destiny," said Shadi.
"My destiny?"
"Playing stupid does not suit you," said Shadi. "What do you See when you look into your future?"
"... A place I think must be aboveground," Batul admitted. "A professor's classroom. I believe the country is called Japan. But I don't know anything about being a professor."
"You know about Egyptology," Shadi pointed out. "Several major Tokyo universities have an Egyptology department."
"You know that?"
"I know all," said Shadi.
"But - I can't leave my brother," said Batul. "Rahman is miserable enough here as it is."
"Hm. Speaking of Rahman, he is coming," said Shadi. "See how he reacts. See whether your destiny is with him." Shadi's voice echoed, perhaps only to her, and he disappeared. Batul gasped, shot to her feet, and stuffed the magic book back on its shelf.
She was standing nervously in the room, hands behind her back, when Rahman walked in. His thin face was livid.
"What are you doing?!" he hissed, hurrying forward and grabbing her by the arm underneath her robe.
"But Rahman… haven't you ever been curious?" said Batul with eagerness, and Rahman slapped her hard across the face. She stood stiff with shock. It was the first time he had ever harmed her, and her cheek stung.
"Don't you understand?!" he said. "My responsibility is to everything! I am the son! I must keep the tomb! I can never leave! The tomb, the family, my sister, marrying, carrying on the legacy, it's all on me! I will only go aboveground once in my life, and it is to court!" His eyes burned. "And if I have to follow the rules, then so do you!" And he yanked her out of the room.
Batul should have been upset, but all she could think of was Rahman as a child. He had been a very happy, cheerful, smiling boy, a good brother - full of hope. But all she saw in his eyes then was bitterness.
Rahman and Batul became farther apart as they grew. Batul's sickness disappeared and she grew into a slim young woman, thin but not unhealthy, like a reed. Yet because of Rahman, she must study magic in ever greater secrecy. She began getting visions, of ancient monster and magic duels played in the modern day with holographic machines and cards, of legends both Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Atlantean, of prophecy and fate. She spoke with spirits from the Netherworld, the land of the dead, in her dreams, a glowing white air-water realm composed of spirits that were neither creature, Christian, nor Ancient Egyptian. That world led to reincarnation. She had doubts about the religion she was taught. And increasingly, she got visions of a future life - a life outside the tomb - a life she wanted.
She didn't know where her destiny led her. She just knew it wasn't here.
Rahman grew a thick, black beard. His tone became angry and fierce. His hand became harsh where it had once been gentle. He increasingly isolated himself inside the tomb, and was bitter and volatile to everyone he came across. The responsibility of being head tombkeeper, destined to keep the family line going, weighed heavily on him.
Batul realized she was about to take advantage of the fact that he had responsibility and she didn't. She realized she was about to abandon her family, her future nieces and nephews.
Even as Asima, all these years later, she still felt guilty about that.
She slipped a potion into everyone's wine on the night of a rare celebration - her eighteenth birthday. The only one who didn't take the sleeping potion during that feast down the long stone kneeling table was her. When everyone was passed out, she stole all the spellbooks and she fled the tomb.
She spent no time enjoying the sights she had never been allowed before. She went through the village and straight for the docks, the ships ferrying people out of the country. They bobbed, massive, lights gleaming in the salty blue water, the night wind cold and crisp. Everything was so airy and bright here.
She approached the big, burly Egyptian man in sand colored uniform guarding the docks and handed over a piece of parchment she had transfigured into a passport. She made her tone and her eyes desperate, as desperate as she needed them to be. "Please," she said, "my father - my brother - they are hurting me - I need to get away."
The guard in official uniform stared from her face to the passport. He heard and saw the genuine panic. Batul was sure if she was caught, Rahman would murder her.
Then the guard looked around, and shifted a new passport out of his back pocket. "What do you want your name to be?" he said, taking out a pen.
"What?" Batul was caught off guard.
The guard looked up at her like she was an idiot. He was helping her, she realized. But she was not hypnotizing him to.
Suddenly, Batul could have kissed him.
Batul meant virgin - a point of pride for her father and her brother. But Batul didn't want to be virgin, and she did not want to be an Ishtar either. "Asima," she said. It meant protector. She tried to think of a good surname, a common one. "Asima Tammam," she said at last. "And I need passage to Japan."
"You will have nothing there," the guard warned her. "No money, identity, or education. You will be foreign."
"I will start work somewhere humble in a shop, and work my way to university," said Asima. "I want to become a professor of Egyptology."
That, she knew, was where her destiny lay.
She could have sworn she saw the guard smile, just a little, and she knew she'd said the right thing. "Well, Asima," he said, handing her the new passport, "say hello to Japan and goodbye to Egypt."
Asima had achieved her dreams. She had an Egyptology professorship in Tokyo, she was an ex-duelist with several trophies and two retired decks of sage and scholar monsters, and she had a nice house in a Tokyo city suburb. She had mastered the Japanese language. She had made friends. She had overcome the Japanese prejudice against foreigners and made a niche for herself. It had been hard work, but she had done it. And she had seen some of her visions come to pass - Duel Monsters games, for example, had been invented only after she had Seen them. Their American inventor, Pegasus Crawford, must have seen some very forbidden places in Ancient Egypt - who had in turn taken the game from Ancient Atlantis.
It was harmless. For now. Just cards. But if the holograms truly did occur, and the Pharaoh returned and dark Item magic began being used again…
No one would have suspected Asima's past - she had narrow blue eyes, high mahogany bronze cheekbones, and a sensible ponytail of black hair. She was still thin. She wore sweaters whose sleeves were pulled down over her palms and black slacks, but usually padded around silently in her socks. She had rectangular reading glasses, often over a quiet book. She meditated non-religiously often. She was strict on health foods and was currently on a Mediterranean diet, but she indulged herself in red wine and long baths. She as well as her house smelled of sandalwood and musk. She took milk with her tea, in the British fashion. She had boyfriends in the past, but no husband. She was well known among students as being strict and reserved, but not unapproachable and above all, she was calm and fair. She brought a mug of strong black coffee to her first class every morning, a rare indulgence.
The spellbooks were still carefully guarded in a locked chest within her home, written in ancient Arabic. She had never let go of them, and she had never again denied her magic.
Her purpose tonight was to get in touch with it once more. She lit a fire in the fireplace of her home, and filled it with a pink cloudy potion that induced visions, particularly dream visions. It was just her tonight, all alone, to herself, blinds and curtains down and drawn, windows and doors locked. The fireplace lit the living room in the blackened house. She sat back before the fire in a comfortable chair, and had a glass of red wine in preparation - very nice, Rust en Vrede Stellenbosch Ridge from South Africa, a velvety mix of ripe plum and fresh cherry - as a sort of pre-ritual relaxer and sleep inducer. It filled her body with warmth; her muscles loosened. It was a snowy winter outside, and winter nights were perfect for rituals like this. The New Year would come soon - a most auspicious time to search for visions.
The shadows flickered over the house around her. It had a modern yet Arabic design, a blend of the old and the new, and she lived in the vast house by herself and without complaint. She knew what many alternatives were, from living in a tomb to living in a flat above a city shop. She was very austere with money, saving up every bit of her earnings. She had never even spent her Duel Monsters prize money. By now she had about four years worth of money saved up that she could live off of without ever working at all, but Asima lived for her work.
"You could teach online classes instead," a female coworker suggested gently once. "The university offers that. You could travel. Have a life, or even children." Asima was polite, and she did have many sleek silver electronics turned mostly to feminist news sites, but she had never seriously considered the idea.
"I am fine," she said simply.
Nevertheless, her home as well as her food and drink reflected money well spent and elegant tastes.
She preferred flat, low-set, often leather furniture, a black and gold color scheme, dim elegant lighting, postmodern wall decorations, and countless candles. Her bedroom, for example, was low-set and gold-sheeted with flat black pillows, and it was surrounded by candles, while her current armchair was also low-set, carved black leather. The marbled floors were spotlessly clean, as was the marbled fireplace. Everything was eerily neat. Yet there were huge, tasseled tapestries of Arabic colors and patterns on the walls, and potted plants cared for by Asima dotted in every room. There were no doors and the wide floor to ceiling ratios and the yawning square doorways, as well as the long rooms, gave a feeling of space to the abode. Even now, the fairy lights hung by the ceiling were the only things that glowed in the black house besides the ever present scented candles. The neat black wood shelves of her home, with their gold edging, carried solemn Latin choir music and volumes of translated writing from Edgar Allan Poe - a surprise to many of her friends and coworkers, who expected more Egyptology.
"I live and breathe Egyptology," Asima told them dryly. "I do not need to take it home with me. I chose classical music and classical literature as college electives for a reason." She met to sing with a local choir in black garb every Wednesday evening.
In the present, Asima set aside her empty glass of wine on a tiny low-set table, knelt over the heavily fumed fireplace, and breathed deep the white, steamy smoke coming from the pink flames. The scent of the candles mingled with the fumes of the fire-potion, and slowly her vision glazed over until it transformed into… something else.
She was walking down a daylight dirt pathway lined with trees, the sunlight shimmering through the leaves into her eyes. She came to a fork in the forest, which broke off into two different directions. There was a signpost in the center, each sign pointing toward a different path. One sign said What Could Have Been. The other sign said What Is.
She walked down What Could Have Been. The trees disappeared and on each side of the pathway, amid spiritual whitespace, were little bubbles. Each bubble showed a different scene, a different moment in someone's life.
A little girl with long auburn hair and hazel eyes was told by a doctor, "The injury is degenerative. You are going blind."
The little girl put her face in her hands and began crying. "It's because of my father," she sobbed. "My father used to hurt me…" The doctor didn't look like he knew what to say. He was at a loss for words.
Next the little girl, who was not blind and was now a preteen, was being flirted with by two older teenage boys, and defended by a blond teenage boy. "Will you stop flirting with my little sister?! I didn't get the money to fix her eyesight so she could be bothered by you two!" The other teenage boys seemed only slightly repentant. The girl stared from one to the other in innocent, helpless confusion. She had never been taught to deal with life, especially not on her own.
The girl was seen in another scene, standing on the sidelines of a Duel Monsters battle and cheering uselessly. She was passive.
But then another little girl appeared, with wavy blonde hair and violet eyes. She asked the orphanage matron, tugging on her apron, "Why am I here? What happened to my parents?"
The old orphanage matron squinted down at her sympathetically. "They were having money troubles," she said, and anger and upset formed over the girl's features as she realized she'd been given up.
"Well that will never happen to me!" she snapped, and stormed away.
In another scene, the blonde girl was a teenager, wearing revealing clothes, triumphantly grabbing a check from a Duel Monsters competition. "Here's to my new sports car!" she cheered, lifting the check up for the audience, who thundered with applause.
In another scene, the blonde girl was a woman in her twenties. She asked the blond teenage boy eagerly, "Was I in the dream of your friends? Huh?" The teenage boy blushed in embarrassment, said of course she hadn't been, and hurried away. The woman stared after him, upset and frustrated. She had begun looking for friends too late, and the friends themselves were too young. The blonde woman walked out onto the dueling stage, and in her emotional rage she was defeated in a Shadow Game, her soul taken.
And there was a third little girl, with short brown hair and blue eyes. She stood in a crystalline but sterile house, looking at her parents from a distance, troubled. The mother looked up. "Go play," she said coldly. "We don't have time for you."
In another scene, as a teenager, the girl told three teenage boys of her age - including the blond - intently, "We're friends. And that means we have to be there for each other, always." She sounded slightly self righteous and preaching, but her zeal was sincere. She clung to friends to make up for a lack of family.
She, like the first girl, was seen in the next scene cheering a duel uselessly from the sidelines. She had no incentive.
Asima looked forward, and stopped in surprise. The pathway had come to an end. Before her was just blank, spiritual whitespace.
Curious, she walked back along the pathway to the signposts and went down the other path. Apparently there was no road less traveled by, in the words of Robert Frost. Not in this dream, anyway.
So that was What Could Have Been. Now she was to see What Is.
She saw first on one side of the path, amid the white space, four bubbles right next to each other. The first three bubbles each carried one sleeping baby girl - all the same age. The next bubble showed all three girls, all teenagers of the same age as the three teenage boys from What Could Have Been. They and the boys were grouped together and smiling, in high school uniforms.
"They are all of an age with each other, and infants now," Asima realized. "And they are the perfect age, the same as the teenage boys. But who are they?"
A name appeared above each of the three bubbles carrying the infants, the letters all curling black ink amid the white mist. Kujaku Mai. Mazaki Anzu. Jonouchi Shizuka - then, below that, Soon To Be Kawaii Shizuka. A baby boy lay beside Shizuka - now her twin brother, not her elder. "She will leave her father," Asima said aloud. "Hence the name change." Nothing gainsaid her. A city name appeared above the three sleeping baby girls: Domino City, Japan.
"So. Jonouchi Shizuka, Kujaku Mai, and Mazaki Anzu, all infants of the same age in Domino City, Japan. The ages of two women have been changed by the Netherworld spirits. They are supposed to enter Domino High at fifteen, join those boys, and face Shadow Games. But why show me this? How am I supposed to help them?" Her voice echoed throughout the seemingly empty mist, but Asima wasn't fooled. There were spirits all around her.
She walked on past the bubbles with the words above them, past the group of smiling teenagers. And then she saw a different image. The three teenage girls, now looking quite different, each standing straight and proud, professional duelist identification around their necks, two Duel Monsters cards raised in the air for each, the monsters from the cards behind them.
Asima gasped. Each girl carried one of the three Ancient Egyptian Goddesses of legend. And each girl carried one of the three Ancient Atlantean Princesses of legend.
"Unrealized potential," she whispered. "That is what the first path showed me."
She walked on - and paused, becoming quite still. There was a bubble with her, raising the three smiling girls here in her Tokyo home, as their mother. Then, beside that, the teenage girls at fifteen, entering a high school together in uniforms. The sign above the classroom they were entering said, Domino High - First Year, Class B. In a little bubble off to the side was a dark-haired girl with milky eyes - a different little sister for the blond boy.
"So I raise them… and then they return to Domino, where they meet the boys, as sisters at fifteen," Asima whispered, her voice shaken. "But how do I adopt them? They have families."
She passed by more bubbles. A drunk man throwing an empty bottle at his shrieking pregnant wife in a messy, shabby apartment - Shizuka's parents. Anzu's mother, shrieking amid a wide, fancy house, "I don't want a child! We were not supposed to have a child!" And Mai, languishing by a window as a child in an orphanage, abandoned by parents who couldn't afford her.
"I have to… adopt them. They all live in undesirable circumstances, and I have to find a way to use that and bring them under me - home with me to Tokyo," Asima said aloud, just to confirm. "So I got the vision when they are infants. That's why I'm here." She was stunned. "That is why I was commanded to leave my home as a tombkeeper. But what do I have to teach them…? Obviously they must learn dueling and become professional duelists… And if they are to control the Goddess cards, Egyptology is a must, as is Arabic and its ancient counterpart - That's it. Magic," she breathed, eyes flying open. "Magic and legends! That is what Shadi meant. Not all people with magic have Items. I can teach them magic - help them in the Shadow Games. It's the one thing I have that no one else does!"
The vision pushed her away in a great force, the trails getting smaller and smaller as her feet flew through air. Then it was as if she was coming up for air after dunking her head in the water. She gasped, lifted her head up, her face feeling cold though it wasn't wet. The fire was normal again, and low in the grate.
Asima immediately scrambled for her journal, her thoughts still shaken, a mess. She scribbled down everything she could possibly remember, one hand fisting her hair, her head bent over the paper. Her biggest takeaway?
Here is a summary of what I have learned. There are three infant girls in Domino City, Japan this year who need my help. All are born in terrible circumstances, but the three have the potential to awaken the great Princesses and the great Goddesses. Their names are Jonouchi Shizuka, Mazaki Anzu, and Kujaku Mai. I have to find them, find a legal way to separate them from their parents (I refuse to steal them), and adopt them. I have to raise them here in Tokyo, to be young magicians and professional duelists, learn Ancient Arabic. I then have to send them back to high school in Domino City at fifteen to fulfill their destiny, placing them and their friends in the deadly path of Shadow Games.
My entire life has apparently been leading up to this. No pressure or anything.
Fuck.
Really, it could be summarized in that one word. Fuck. Asima did not lose her cool very often, but right now she put the visions notebook down to be locked away later, sat back and ran a hand through her now-messy black hair, ink stains on her fingers from the fury of the pen. What the hell was she to do?
Asima had never been planning on raising any children, and she'd been perfectly happy with that. Asima was content with being alone. It was why none of her boyfriends had lasted. Letting someone in was hard for her; being alone was easier. Out of all the destinies she had considered for herself, she had considered this one least of all.
"What kind of a mother would I even make?" she whispered, hand to her lips. "Could I really raise three daughters alone? Let alone daughters of a different ethnicity than I am?" It was a lot to ask of someone.
Logistically, her mind spinning automatically, she knew she could do it. Live off of her four years worth of money, then teach online classes from home. It had even been suggested to her. But emotionally, physically, energetically… could she do it? And could she make a good mother? Tammam Anzu, Tammam Mai, and Tammam Shizuka. What kinds of names were those? She was supposed to share secrets with these girls - legends, magic, duel strategies. Asima wasn't good at sharing anything.
It was the first time she had ever truly doubted the Fates.