Reaching Through Shadows

Abby Ebon

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Disclaimer: So, I'm fair certain I do not – now or ever - own "Yu-Gi-Oh", and quite positive I only own "Harry Potter" in my more deluding dreams. So that's square, aye?

Note; so, yeah, new story, I do expect someone to say something slightly lecture-sounding, "I should know better" with a vague undertone of "better not forget the other stories!" meh! –my subconscious is very devilish, taunting me like this with new ideas while others simmer on the backburner. Let's hope no one smells something burning.

Anyway, enjoy!

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

"What…is this place?" It was a whisper in the dark. If the truth were told, it was not a question one would have expected an answer to. It was a man who had asked this question, his features were not hidden, even through the darkness and shadows that swirled about him should have obscured. He was still, for he was afraid. He felt things from these shadows, the sort of things that frightened children in the dark.

"You should be dead, does it matter?" This voice sounded as if it came from behind him, though it echoed oddly, rough, as if unused to speaking aloud - so when he spun to look over his shoulder. It did not surprise him to find he was right, that were no one had stood before, someone now did. This stranger was like no one he had known in life. His shape was wrong, stretched strangely as if it had been something forced upon him; unnatural.

Something like black leather stretched over his entire body, from his feet to his fingers to the collar about his neck, three crimson bands wrapped below each of his knees – three more along each of his thighs, three more from wrist to elbow, though only two wrapped about his biceps.

Atop his head was a horned crown with thick ruby vines wrapping thrice about the curving black, though in the center were two emerald eyes – one seemed the source of the pausing rubies, the larger was plainly protected with the ruby vines wrapped about forming two shields on either side, the ruby then spiraling upward to from a point above the black crown.

Wild black hair fell from the horned crown - long enough to reach the knees – though it seemed instead to dance untamed with the shadows that were about them. He could not see the strangers face, though he made out easily the staff he carried of a black metal taller then he was; at its top it entombed a sphere of emerald that seemed the source of the pulsing rubies which glittered along the staff, all of it forming something like a teardrop; the opposite side ended with a wicked looking scythe-like blade. It was plainly a weapon.

"Who…what…are you?" His voice was still richly smooth, though it shook in uncertainty. He did not like these surroundings, and he felt as if he was only at the edge of some great abyss that he could be dragged into and never find his way out of. It all depended upon this person.

"So many questions, you'll not find your dead wife here. I would know if she was in this place. Stop looking with that eye here; you'll waken something that you won't like. This is your only warning." The stranger started to turn away, but the man did not want to see him go – not yet – and called out.

"What can you do to me if I ignore it?" Slowly the horned crown turned and sickly red eyes that glimmered in amber turned to regard him. Those eyes were alien, strange – monstrous.

The stuff of nightmares, pale skin tinged blue – like not long dead flesh, it let off a dim glow, as if all that stood in the way of the smothering power was the pale flesh and black scars. They marked each corner of his eyes, with two long black scars beneath each his eyes, the scythe-like marks etched into his cheeks. The most threatening was the black scar that trailed from his bottom lip to his chin. This was not a creature that ventured into the light.

"I will come for you and you will suffer for it. Waken." It was an order the silver haired man with a golden eye could not disobey. He left that shadowy realm, waking to an empty bed, which some would think worse.

He thought though, that as he woke he heard voices...

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

"Must you be so harsh? You did not have to do that. He does not yet mean us any harm." This was a kinder voice, soft and musical, female. Amber-crimson eyes glanced to the side to regard his companion. He had expected her, in his own way.

She was dressed in soft blues that formed her armor and the light pinks that seemed misplaced in the shadowy world they stood at the edges of. Her hair was copper yellow, matching the belt around her waist that seemed to hold up her skirt. The boots looked the same soft metal that formed her staff of gold spirals at one end and a golden orb at the other.

"Not yet. It was necessary." He did not speak aloud to be understood this time, but she sighed having heard him within her mind, his voice was the same as it had been aloud. His lips quirked upward when she refused to speak mind to mind with him, instead stating her words aloud while frowning at him.

"I know it was necessary, Magician of Black Chaos, that does not mean you should be so harsh." She put her empathies on the last word most of all, her eyes pleading with him to see her reasoning. He was still beside her, musing on her words for a long while as he started unseeing into the shadows. He did not fear them. She did not know if he ever had.

She still was wary of those same shadows. It seemed to her that they had swallowed her up and made her into this likeness, an image of herself that did not fit into the puzzle that was the world outside this shadow realm. He, unlike her, had always been a part of the shadow realm – the most powerful of them, more knowing of its chaos then he had ever let on. They did not know if he had always been a part of the shadow realm, or if he had come first before the shadow realm. They did not dare ask.

"Does it worry you so much, my cruelty?" His harsh echo tones were faint within her mind, almost timid with his question. She blinked at him as if he had slapped her, though he had not stirred from his stillness. He seemed very far away, though he stood next to her.

"You are not cruel. I know you better to think you are that. Still, I do not like what you may become if you continue along this…unhealthy… path." He acted as their protector, as he always had – but he had become harsh with those that attempted to cross the shadow realm from either side.

Where he would once have appeared to a monster and led it elsewhere –deeper into where they sought to escape - as a morbid joke, he now terrified them into the heart of the shadow realm.

Humans that were dead –or lost in their lives – which the shadow realm sought out, he would have once gently let them find out about their mortality while they traveled – protected – at his side; now he told them outright, forcing the knowledge upon them with the memory of their deaths.

She almost felt she did not know him anymore, for all that she had known him since he had found her wandering the shadow realm and asked if she was lost – she had not been – then he had let her follow him, until his path crossed with Dark Magician and she found in her nature that she was like them having stayed too long in the shadow realm.

"Nor I…" This voice rumbled from the shadows, as soothing as she had ever known him to be. Dark Magician stepped to stand to the others side of their most powerful and ancient friend, for his part the Magician of Black Chaos only nodded slightly in greeting as if he had expected nothing less then to be met with the two of them at this time and place. Perhaps he had known all along.

"Dark Magician…." She could not help but be relieved to see him, smiling to see the cloth-like soft metal that was his armor was still the same shinning blue, glimmering like a light in the darkness that was the shadow realm. His staff at his side, at ease in a way only he could be around the Magician of Black Chaos. Once, when she had been the girl Mana she had known him as Mahado, but even she did not understand his easy familiarity with the Magician of Black Chaos there was something between them that was like friendship.

"You would abandon me then, if I went along the path you dislike?" This time those same echo tones were curious, like an echo in a cave calling out a question. Dark Magician let out a soft hiss, as if pained – startled, she could only respond as her nature demanded. She was the free spirit of the three of them, the child.

"Never! How could you think that?" She blinked back tears, finding her heart ached for him – he had always been alone – though she had once been foolish to think he was evil. Over time she had learned otherwise and found in him a friend.

"Do not fool yourself, old friend, you know us better then that." Those were the only words the Dark Magician allowed himself to reassure the other. Magician of Black Chaos looked between them, his gaze restless as it fidgeted to either side. For a while they stood in silence, and then he started to fade at the edges, intent on going elsewhere. She found she was not surprised, he never lingered long when he was not comfortable.

"Perhaps I do, perhaps I do not." It was dismissive, but she recognized something familiar in those echoing tones. She spoke thoughtlessly then, in accusation.

"You…you are frightened!" He was gone, swallowed up by the shadows to go elsewhere. Somehow she knew, all the same, that he had heard her and this was his acknowledgment of that fact in his own way.

"Surely it is obvious, he has every right to be so frightened." It was whispered sorrow, though when she looked up she found that the Dark Magician was not looking at her, but into the whirling darkness that surrounded them in a silent stillness.

"Why…?" She murmured softly; she had never known the likes of him to be frightened. It made her, in turn; fear what caused him such distress as to lash out as he had been.

"That man – the human with the gold eye – his name is Pegasus." This was the only musing of the Dark Magician he offered for her to put to logic. Pressing her lips together, she found the pieces did not fit. She still did not understand and felt slow for it.

"So…?" She saw his quiet smile, the tilting of his lips even as she edged him on for more information then what he had offered. It annoyed her that he found her so amusing; though she knew he would never lead her on to purposefully get such a reaction. It was his way to let others learn from what knowledge they gathered. Only their history as teacher-and-student allowed her the lenience from him as she had.

"He will create a game; it will capture the minds of others. It will reshape us. It will mimic us only in form to start with, and then it will become our truth." Those were bitter words, pained with loss. He already mourned the past – what they had been – while he was as unsure as the Magician of Black Chaos to their future.

"What about the Magician of Black Chaos….? Where will he fit into it?" She found herself frightened then, as she considered it. They might be enemies in the uncertain future, if this was the way the Magician of Black Chaos would continue. He had always been there for them, though others considered him an uncertain ally even in the best of times.

"He will be feared; he will be hated. We must not stray from his side, we must watch him." She found herself nodding at his words, finding an ease in them. Magician of Black Chaos had always been distant, but he would not grudge them for following him about like a pair of pups.

"So, we are to protect them from him? We are to become his…wardens?" She looked out into the edges of their shadowy realm and for a moment saw it for what it was; a prison. One which they could shape to their will, with certain strengthens or weaknesses in mind, but still – only a pretty prison in the end. She wondered if the Magician of Black Chaos had always seen this place as such. The thought was gone when the Dark Magician spoke.

"No. We will be to him what we have always been, friends." That word was hissed, resistant to the sway of the shadows that whispered and tugged other less charities thoughts to their minds. They fought those thoughts and inclinations, for they would not be what they were if they gave in so easily to the will of this place; this prison.

"But…the Pharaoh, he will call to us in time, what of the Magician of Black Chaos then?" She worried most of all; what the Pharaoh would think of them? For his thoughts would shape them the most, would become their truth, their laws. His beliefs in their natures would make them solid in a way they had not been since coming into the shadow realm.

"We must wait and see; even I do not have all the answers…" His lips quirked in amusement, and she rolled her eyes as she followed him as he started to walk away. Her last grumbled words seemed to chase them into the shadows.

"I know that."

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Note; so, yeah, the Magician of Black Chaos is one Harry Potter. How? That one is more complicated, but I'll tell you as we go along with this story. It is a love story, sort of. Anyway, I just wanted to stick my tongue out over the fact that –ha, ha – I now have my own little reasoning to why Pegasus seemed to recognize the Magician of Black Chaos in a personal way when the Pharaoh summoned him…

PS; describing the Magician of Black Chaos was a pain in the ass, I know damn well thank-you-very-much that emeralds are not in any way the source of rubies, but I needed a way (which makes sense in only the way that dreams do at times) to make the whole "image" work, thus my logic. So, shush if you don't like it, don't worry this will be the last time I try to describe the Magician of Black Chaos from this sort of perspective.