Dear Reader,
Thank you for being interested in my fanfic. It is loosely based upon the real "Ancient Egypt Arc" in Yu-Gi-Oh! though the story of Bernarda Nefertina begins a few months before the events of the manga and/or animé. There are a few differences: Tea, Tristan and Joey actually have pasts in Kehmet (or Ancient Egypt) and I still have to decide whether to bring in people from the present or not. My story was originally written in a format like my "Madness of the Magicians" fanfic, only I felt that it needed some description to it so I re-did the first three chapters and am continuing this story as the ideas in my mind take form. It is my first attempt at a serious fanfic with a real plot and all, so there might be some confusions within the first few chapters though I can guarantee you that it shall get better as it goes on. Not all of the characters in "Hidden Encodings: The Prophecy" exist in the real Yu-Gi-Oh! world, but it's a fanfic, so please contribute your opinion(s) to my writings!
Arigato!
Gala
Disclaimer: Obviously enough, I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! Or any of the characters that are originally meant to be in it. However, it was my evil, twisted mind that created Bernarda Nefertina, the Royal Scribe of Ancient Egypt who happens to love tormenting her hikari. And they BOTH own the Millennium Book. Yet I do not own Teanna's stinking cattle because friendship speeches are not the point of this story! Clear enough? Good!
PROLOGUE ENCODINGS OF LIFE
"Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. And those who pay too much attention to history are destined to be repeated in it."
Whether that is the key to the prophecy of life or not, Bernarda Nefertina did not know. Having read them at an early age, they seemed to be embossed within her very thoughts. She also never knew why she was the wielder of the Millennium Book either, not the reasoning behind her being the only female scribe in her generation. It all seemed a little odd to her, a mere teenage girl of fifteen being able to sit in the Pharaoh's court and keep track of the events of time. Most people would give their lives to serve the Pharaoh and Priests in such a manner, and Bernarda would get a shiver up her spine whenever she tried to figure out why promotions came so easily to her. Little did she know that being related to the creator of the Millennium Items, her very soul was in the gamble of past, present and future...
CHAPTER 1 VISION OF THE TAUK
Shading her eyes from the hot Egyptian sun, Bernarda Nefertina sits down on the banks of the Nile River, feeling rather down after just having a stressful argument with the High Priest, just like every other day in her life. As if in a world of her own, she brushes a strand of brown hair out of her face and begins to take off her sandals, taking an unusually long time to play with the leathery fastenings. Done with the sandals, she puts them aside along with her peacock quill and Millennium Book, the sennen item which she carried everywhere with her.
"Why, or why does Pharaoh Atemu trust that High Priest?" she wonders aloud, as if nobody else in all of Egypt would even bother to take a look at a fifteen-year-old girl sitting by the Nile talking to herself. "And is he just called the High Priest because he is taller than me?" She shrugs, still not being able to figure out why he was a decent head and a half taller than her even if he was only four years older. Then again, Bernarda Nefertina did take a little pride in being taller than the Pharaoh, which was sort of silly because half of his subjects had that honor in the first place.
Staring at the cloudless sky, watching as the sun makes its way towards the west bank of the Nile, Bernarda suddenly sees a peasant girl with cattle approaching and she rolls her eyes. Teanna was the last person she wanted to talk to at a moment like this, a friendship speech really did not fit her moods in the slightest.
Teanna comes to the banks of Nile with her cattle and looks at Bernarda, her blue eyes staring into Bernarda's hazel ones in a quite annoying manner. "May you should get to know that High Priest better, be friends after all since you are both in the Pharaoh's service," she suggests with a smile, being her usual self.
That was the last thing Bernarda wanted to hear, as if having to co-operate with the priests every single day and write down every single thing they said was bad enough, yet being friends was totally out of the question! Bernarda raises an eyebrow quizzically and looks back at Teanna. "You have to be fooling me! First of all, priests and scribes do not get along together, Ra made it so," she replies in a rather annoyed tone, hoping that using the Sun God would be a decent enough excuse to get Teanna to leave her alone and give her some time to think.
"And Ra made friendship!" Teanna replies happily, obviously not seeing the scribe's point.
"You just happen to be Ra's personal messenger so you are ALWAYS right, right?" Bernarda interrupts before Teanna could even say something about Ra and friendship. "Do you know what I really think about all this?"
"Friendship!" Teanna exclaims happily, petting one of her cattle.
Bernarda Nefertina just wrinkles her delicate nose, those cattle had the most putrid odor, and the scribe was ready to bet all of the gold coins in her purse that Teanna had not given those cattle of hers a decent wash in years. "If you were actually one of Ra's messengers, you would be related to the Pharaoh. Isn't that just a little obvious?" she asks, deciding to give Teanna a piece of her own mind after all.
"I am, but you're not!" Teanna says, posing so that she catches the sun in a certain angle, as if to prove just how much she was related to Ra.
"Those who pretend to be wise are just more foolish then they seem," Bernarda answers calmly, "That may apply to both yourself and that High Priest." She then picks up her Millennium Book and peacock quill, scribbling down a couple of hieroglyphics into it just for the sake of safekeeping her thoughts.
Not even being able to read but still being the nosy peasant girl that she was, Teanna leans over Bernarda's shoulder and looks at the rows of complex hieroglyphics written on the papyrus of the Millennium Book. "Is that a poem about friendship?" she blurts out.
"Look at me," Bernarda says, closing the Millennium Book for now. "Just look at me. Do I look like your twin sister or something so I give a damn about friendship? No! I understand helping people out and being the best person I can be so that I may get a ride to the afterlife someday, but writing poems about friendship in books for royal documentaries honestly does not help anyone out in any way at all!"
Teanna looks at the closed Millennium Book with very confused eyes, her pea- sized brain probably not being able to comprehend the world any further than friendship and cattle herding.
"Why am I kept at Pharaoh Atemu's court in the first place?" Bernarda asks Teanna, not giving up to a cattle herder so easily. "I am the royal scribe, not a smelly cattle herder. And since you decided to ruin my day, why doesn't the High Priest join us to make it even more complete?" As if she knew what was coming, or perhaps just not being able to control her fury any longer, she bends down and picks up a handful of mud from the Nile, squishing it between her palms as if she had every intention to throw it at someone.
Little did the scribe know that she should be careful for what she wished for, and Priest Seth walks right up to Teanna and Bernarda, almost as if somebody had called for him. "Was somebody requiring my presence here?" he asks, twirling the Millennium Rod between his fingertips.
Bernarda simply pretended not to notice him, yet Teanna decided to take a different approach. "Honorable one," she says with a bow, "tell me, when shall my cattle have their young this moon?"
Upon hearing this, Bernarda chuckles, Teanna was speaking of cattle having young as if they were werewolves or something! /I'm not bowing before him/ she thinks to herself, giving the High Priest and nasty glare. /He is not the Pharaoh/ Refusing to wait any longer, she drops the mud ball, making it land right on the High Priest's sandals.
Hearing a splat and suddenly feeling wet sand upon his toes, Seth looks down at his sandals and sees his toes completely covered in mud. "Someone shall be in big trouble for this," he says with a shake of his head.
"In big trouble for not following friendship!" Teanna adds happily, deciding to agree with Seth for no apparent reason.
"I never recalled Pharaoh Atemu making a law prohibiting the use of our river's bounty to benefit the people," Bernarda points out, after all, she was only defending herself.
"And how exactly might this act of mud-throwing benefit me?" Seth questions.
"Simple," Teanna replies, not noticing that both the Hight Priest and Royal Scribe were looking at her like she had more than just issues. "Mud is frienship!" Upon saying that, she begins to take handful after handful of mud from the Nile and coats her cattle with it.
"Well... that shall never be remembered in history!" Bernarda replies, noticing that Seth's expression to Teanna's friendship outburst was just as confused as her own.
"Why not?" Teanna wonders.
"It shall not be written so none shall see," Bernarda says coldly, seeing that Teanna still would not understand. "And I see that the High Priest is still in his ceremonial robes." She grins mischievously, an idea popping up into her head.
Seth returns her mischievous grin, "And the 'Royal' Scribe still has not taken off her jewelry."
"And my cattle are my friends!" Teanna says with a smile from ear to ear, hugging her stinking cattle, which were now all coated in mud.
"Yes Seth," Bernarda counters, fiddling with her golden bracelets. "I wear jewelry for other reasons besides looking pretty when I'm sitting there writing down every single word you priests and Pharaohs have to say. Yet such a thought would have never occurred to you, would it?"
"No," Seth says with an evil smirk, swiftly picking up a mud ball from the Nile and throwing it at Bernarda.
The mud ball flies through the air and lands on Bernarda's right shoulder, staining her robes. "You want trouble from me?" she asks, trying to the mud off. "Sure, better off for me!" Upon saying that, she stubbornly sits down on the banks of the Nile River once more and starts writing in the Millennium Book about rebellious High Priests traumatizing the Pharaoh's subjects. /Wait until Atemu sees my afternoon's report about the Nile!/
"Oooooh!" Teanna comments, noticing the giant stain on Bernarda Nefertina's robe. "Now you can look like one of my adorable cattle!" She takes some more mud from the Nile and smears it on her cattle, believing that they produce more milk when they are covered with mud.
Observing Teanna coat her cattle, Seth simply shakes his head in dismay. This peasant girl was obviously a disgrace to the entire country; he just had to get her out of his sight before he lost his temper. "Will you leave us alone so that I can deal with the scribe without the scent of cattle wafting up my nose?" he asks with a sigh, hoping that Teanna would go away.
"Yes, that would be most appreciated," Bernarda adds to Seth's words, not even bothering to look up from what she was writing in the Millennium Book. "Take this as a token of friendship!" She smears a speck of mud on one of the cattle, just to give Teanna the impression that she was doing the right thing. "Now leave us alone."
"Very well," Teanna says with a smile. "You understand friendship so you are worthy of respect. Just be friends and everyone shall love you! Isn't that right?" she asks her cattle, gathering them up and walking away.
/Ha! Ha! Ha!/ Bernarda thinks to herself the moment Teanna turned around to leave. /Not even the High Priest has mastered the art of bribery as well as I have!/
"Now will you stop writing in that bloody book?" Seth demands. "The past shall not be forgotten without your writings, the gods have told me all there is to know."
"And with a mortal's mind you can hold onto it for eternity?" Bernarda sneers, "I doubt it. But you shall be quite infamous in the far future, I have been told so."
"And a scribe speaks up the future? Who are you bluffing?" Seth asks her.
"Take a look and see," the scribe replies in her most non-chalant tone, opening up the Millennium Book to show the High Priest exactly what she was talking about...
The Pharaoh was sitting in his throne, fiddling with his blond bangs and the throne room was all empty except for the Priestess Isis and the Royal Scribe. Isis appeared to be in a world of her own, not even bothering to know what was going on around her and Bernarda was busy looking over the notes she had taken in her Millennium Book over the ritual which the priests had just completed the other day.
"Priestess Isis," the Pharaoh said with a slightly stern voice, "I regret to tell you this but I fear that the Millennium Items shall not end this peril amongst us but only delay it."
"Honored one, what do you mean?" the priestess replies, bowing down upon the floor, making sure to place her left leg in front of her right one for only the son of Ra was permitted to place his right one forwards. She gulps nervously, afraid that this would be another occasion where Pharaoh Atemu was overly worried about the Millennium Items being dysfunctional just because of a vision which one of the other priests had at odd hours in the night.
"The son of Ra wishes to show you that history shall repeat itself," Bernarda observes, closing her Millennium Book with a slight thud as the pages of papyrus rubbed against one another.
"Not mistaken, but delayed," Pharaoh Atemu corrects the girl, doing his best to hide that he was slightly displeased with her interruption of this conversation; yet he would make efficient use of it when the time came to it.
"With my Millennium Tauk I have been granted the gift of seeing what is to come. The course of time is being delayed and I do not see," Isis objects, attempting to prove that if she could not see it, it would not happen.
"You do not see, yet others might. Only Ra knows all," Bernarda contradicts, partially quoting her scriptures yet making her own point in the process.
"But an end to this threat must be put! Did not my Uncle create these items to help the land of Ra? And with robbers and thieves looting villages and robbers raiding pyramids, what help have they brought? If the priests have failed me, who do I look to?"
"My lord," the priestess says with quivering lips, "Who else may serve you as loyally as the priests? The slaves revolt, the merchants cheat, the farmers fail to tend their fields and the nobles quarrel. Who do you look to in hard times besides us?"
"The scribes," Bernarda answers simply. "Where else would the logic about a subject who is not a priest receiving a sacred item?" She bows her head, expecting a rash punishment for what she had just said.
"They still have to prove their worth in my rein," Atemu tells Nefertina calmly. "My father thought highly of them, yet the reputation of scribes has been known to change during the ages. Perhaps the moment for that has come. Isis!"
"Yes milord?" she looks up with her deep blue eyes.
"Give me your Millennium Item," the Pharaoh holds out his hand for her to hand over the Tauk.
Hesistantly, Isis unfastens the Tauk from her neck and hands it over. "If that is what you wish for."
"What are you planning upon?" Bernarda wonders with confusion.
"You shall see, see within time," Atemu tells her, taking the Tauk from Isis and placing it upon Bernarda's neck.
"No! Milord, you cannot! The power of my item shall diminish this way!" Isis resists, giving Bernarda a sharp glance as if to say 'You'll pay for this one day'.
"Silence! This is an order! I must know what shall come to pass!" Pharaoh Atemu demands, holding up his hand as if to quiet Isis.
Bernarda's mind begins to grow rather fuzzy as the warm gold of the necklace touches her body. "The High Priest... shall...," she mutters, clouds swirling within her hazel eyes as if she was possessed by a greater being, "rivalry... two pharaohs... past and future... unite... items bring... ultimate de-... chaos!" Her voice gets raspier and raspier as her mind spins within and her vision clouds, resulting in darkness surrounding her as she falls to the floor.
Isis tries to wipe the grin off her face, the Royal Scribe was apparently a complete failure when it came to work where writing was not involved. "I knew that she could not wield the power of the Millennium Tauk!"
Atemu remains quiet, walking up the fainted scribe and removing the Tauk from her neck. He then walks over to the priestess and hands it back to her. "Whatever she saw," he begins, not sure whether Isis should hear all he had to say, "She was under a heavy trance; as if controlled by another spirit. Yet why did she speak of two pharaohs? And what of the High Priest?" He shrugs his shoulders, his royal blue cape swirling with the motion.
"The necklace probably overwhelmed Bernarda," Isis offers. "Items of mystery are not her place."
"But would you get the same response from the Millennium Book in that case? That is the question!" Atemu responds, crossing his arms and motioning for his attendants to get Bernarda back into the light again.
"But how did this history end up in the Millennium Book and who placed it in there?" Seth wonders, noticing that the golden hieroglyphics upon the eerie black papyrus of the book were not written by Bernarda's hand.
"I have been questioning the very same thing, Seth-sama. When I woke up after that trance, I was on the floor of my chamber and the Millennium Book was nowhere in sight.
"Then however did you get it back? The book is rightfully yours for all that I know. Akunadin-sama holds the eye, Shadah holds the ankh, Karim the scales, Isis the tauk, Mahado the ring, Pharaoh Atemu the Puzzle and I the rod. It could not have been any of us who have done it for the law currently states that a person shall own only one item at a given time!" Seth replies with certainty in his tone.
Bernarda considers this for a moment and wonders whether it could all be misleading. After all, ambitious plots were not exactly uncommon in the Pharaoh's palace. "All the more of making it suspicious, High Priest. If I was granted the foresight of Priestess Isis' tauk, then could another wielder of a Millennium Item not have recorded a story of the ages in the book?"
Seth's keen blue eyes look at the inscriptions within the Millennium book a bit deeper, as if he was trying to decipher some sort of hidden code. "These are not standard hieroglyphics, nor hieractic or demotic. How can we read something which we cannot translate?"
Bernarda simply shrugs her shoulders, not knowing the answer herself. "The only logical conclusion is that solely the wielders of Millennium Items can understand the writings of this book. Teanna was unable to read it, yet we all know the education of farmer's daughters..."
"As for your relation to the Millennium book," Seth urges the scribe on.
"That is the confusing part," Bernarda admits, "I have had an uncanny skill at reading scriptures and always understanding what was written. Sure enough, being trained as a scribe I can comprehend things easily if written in our tongue, yet what if the tongue is foreign to all of Kehmet? How can I understand it then?"
"It could be within your blood," the High Priest suggests. "Priest Karim is the only one I know of who can use the scales properly, and the sole person who did it before him was his father."
"Yet that brings up another question," the brown-eyed girl says, "If the Millennium Items were passed down from parent to off-spring, who did I originate from and why is the book within my hands?"
"Ra has made us all, and things happen because the Gods will it," Seth replies in his most regal tone, doing everything he could to restrain himself from telling Bernarda the real truth. /One day she shall have to know, yet how do I tell her without destroying her in the process? Or shall she bring it about in her own ways?/
"You think that I would not have known that living amongst the Pharaoh's nobility and priesthood all my life?" Bernarda asks quizzically. She takes her sandals and puts them on her feet again. "I'm off to find one of the other Millennium Item wielders. Perhaps they can better explain this all to me. Care to come?"
"Suit yourself. This is your own journey," Seth replies as the Royal Scribe walks away, her long brown hair glistening under Ra's light. /If only she knew how she really got that position, and why. Then she would understand my own ordeal better. With such a heritage as she has, she could bring both chaos and tranquility upon Kehmet at the same time./ With a sigh, he scrapes the mud off his own footwear which Bernarda had so generously piled upon it, puts the sandals on and leaves in the opposite direction to the one which the scribe had set off to.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I apologize once more if my writing is hard to read, my head is chock-full of plot bunnies and other fuzz... Better go and clean it out! (
Thank you for being interested in my fanfic. It is loosely based upon the real "Ancient Egypt Arc" in Yu-Gi-Oh! though the story of Bernarda Nefertina begins a few months before the events of the manga and/or animé. There are a few differences: Tea, Tristan and Joey actually have pasts in Kehmet (or Ancient Egypt) and I still have to decide whether to bring in people from the present or not. My story was originally written in a format like my "Madness of the Magicians" fanfic, only I felt that it needed some description to it so I re-did the first three chapters and am continuing this story as the ideas in my mind take form. It is my first attempt at a serious fanfic with a real plot and all, so there might be some confusions within the first few chapters though I can guarantee you that it shall get better as it goes on. Not all of the characters in "Hidden Encodings: The Prophecy" exist in the real Yu-Gi-Oh! world, but it's a fanfic, so please contribute your opinion(s) to my writings!
Arigato!
Gala
Disclaimer: Obviously enough, I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! Or any of the characters that are originally meant to be in it. However, it was my evil, twisted mind that created Bernarda Nefertina, the Royal Scribe of Ancient Egypt who happens to love tormenting her hikari. And they BOTH own the Millennium Book. Yet I do not own Teanna's stinking cattle because friendship speeches are not the point of this story! Clear enough? Good!
PROLOGUE ENCODINGS OF LIFE
"Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. And those who pay too much attention to history are destined to be repeated in it."
Whether that is the key to the prophecy of life or not, Bernarda Nefertina did not know. Having read them at an early age, they seemed to be embossed within her very thoughts. She also never knew why she was the wielder of the Millennium Book either, not the reasoning behind her being the only female scribe in her generation. It all seemed a little odd to her, a mere teenage girl of fifteen being able to sit in the Pharaoh's court and keep track of the events of time. Most people would give their lives to serve the Pharaoh and Priests in such a manner, and Bernarda would get a shiver up her spine whenever she tried to figure out why promotions came so easily to her. Little did she know that being related to the creator of the Millennium Items, her very soul was in the gamble of past, present and future...
CHAPTER 1 VISION OF THE TAUK
Shading her eyes from the hot Egyptian sun, Bernarda Nefertina sits down on the banks of the Nile River, feeling rather down after just having a stressful argument with the High Priest, just like every other day in her life. As if in a world of her own, she brushes a strand of brown hair out of her face and begins to take off her sandals, taking an unusually long time to play with the leathery fastenings. Done with the sandals, she puts them aside along with her peacock quill and Millennium Book, the sennen item which she carried everywhere with her.
"Why, or why does Pharaoh Atemu trust that High Priest?" she wonders aloud, as if nobody else in all of Egypt would even bother to take a look at a fifteen-year-old girl sitting by the Nile talking to herself. "And is he just called the High Priest because he is taller than me?" She shrugs, still not being able to figure out why he was a decent head and a half taller than her even if he was only four years older. Then again, Bernarda Nefertina did take a little pride in being taller than the Pharaoh, which was sort of silly because half of his subjects had that honor in the first place.
Staring at the cloudless sky, watching as the sun makes its way towards the west bank of the Nile, Bernarda suddenly sees a peasant girl with cattle approaching and she rolls her eyes. Teanna was the last person she wanted to talk to at a moment like this, a friendship speech really did not fit her moods in the slightest.
Teanna comes to the banks of Nile with her cattle and looks at Bernarda, her blue eyes staring into Bernarda's hazel ones in a quite annoying manner. "May you should get to know that High Priest better, be friends after all since you are both in the Pharaoh's service," she suggests with a smile, being her usual self.
That was the last thing Bernarda wanted to hear, as if having to co-operate with the priests every single day and write down every single thing they said was bad enough, yet being friends was totally out of the question! Bernarda raises an eyebrow quizzically and looks back at Teanna. "You have to be fooling me! First of all, priests and scribes do not get along together, Ra made it so," she replies in a rather annoyed tone, hoping that using the Sun God would be a decent enough excuse to get Teanna to leave her alone and give her some time to think.
"And Ra made friendship!" Teanna replies happily, obviously not seeing the scribe's point.
"You just happen to be Ra's personal messenger so you are ALWAYS right, right?" Bernarda interrupts before Teanna could even say something about Ra and friendship. "Do you know what I really think about all this?"
"Friendship!" Teanna exclaims happily, petting one of her cattle.
Bernarda Nefertina just wrinkles her delicate nose, those cattle had the most putrid odor, and the scribe was ready to bet all of the gold coins in her purse that Teanna had not given those cattle of hers a decent wash in years. "If you were actually one of Ra's messengers, you would be related to the Pharaoh. Isn't that just a little obvious?" she asks, deciding to give Teanna a piece of her own mind after all.
"I am, but you're not!" Teanna says, posing so that she catches the sun in a certain angle, as if to prove just how much she was related to Ra.
"Those who pretend to be wise are just more foolish then they seem," Bernarda answers calmly, "That may apply to both yourself and that High Priest." She then picks up her Millennium Book and peacock quill, scribbling down a couple of hieroglyphics into it just for the sake of safekeeping her thoughts.
Not even being able to read but still being the nosy peasant girl that she was, Teanna leans over Bernarda's shoulder and looks at the rows of complex hieroglyphics written on the papyrus of the Millennium Book. "Is that a poem about friendship?" she blurts out.
"Look at me," Bernarda says, closing the Millennium Book for now. "Just look at me. Do I look like your twin sister or something so I give a damn about friendship? No! I understand helping people out and being the best person I can be so that I may get a ride to the afterlife someday, but writing poems about friendship in books for royal documentaries honestly does not help anyone out in any way at all!"
Teanna looks at the closed Millennium Book with very confused eyes, her pea- sized brain probably not being able to comprehend the world any further than friendship and cattle herding.
"Why am I kept at Pharaoh Atemu's court in the first place?" Bernarda asks Teanna, not giving up to a cattle herder so easily. "I am the royal scribe, not a smelly cattle herder. And since you decided to ruin my day, why doesn't the High Priest join us to make it even more complete?" As if she knew what was coming, or perhaps just not being able to control her fury any longer, she bends down and picks up a handful of mud from the Nile, squishing it between her palms as if she had every intention to throw it at someone.
Little did the scribe know that she should be careful for what she wished for, and Priest Seth walks right up to Teanna and Bernarda, almost as if somebody had called for him. "Was somebody requiring my presence here?" he asks, twirling the Millennium Rod between his fingertips.
Bernarda simply pretended not to notice him, yet Teanna decided to take a different approach. "Honorable one," she says with a bow, "tell me, when shall my cattle have their young this moon?"
Upon hearing this, Bernarda chuckles, Teanna was speaking of cattle having young as if they were werewolves or something! /I'm not bowing before him/ she thinks to herself, giving the High Priest and nasty glare. /He is not the Pharaoh/ Refusing to wait any longer, she drops the mud ball, making it land right on the High Priest's sandals.
Hearing a splat and suddenly feeling wet sand upon his toes, Seth looks down at his sandals and sees his toes completely covered in mud. "Someone shall be in big trouble for this," he says with a shake of his head.
"In big trouble for not following friendship!" Teanna adds happily, deciding to agree with Seth for no apparent reason.
"I never recalled Pharaoh Atemu making a law prohibiting the use of our river's bounty to benefit the people," Bernarda points out, after all, she was only defending herself.
"And how exactly might this act of mud-throwing benefit me?" Seth questions.
"Simple," Teanna replies, not noticing that both the Hight Priest and Royal Scribe were looking at her like she had more than just issues. "Mud is frienship!" Upon saying that, she begins to take handful after handful of mud from the Nile and coats her cattle with it.
"Well... that shall never be remembered in history!" Bernarda replies, noticing that Seth's expression to Teanna's friendship outburst was just as confused as her own.
"Why not?" Teanna wonders.
"It shall not be written so none shall see," Bernarda says coldly, seeing that Teanna still would not understand. "And I see that the High Priest is still in his ceremonial robes." She grins mischievously, an idea popping up into her head.
Seth returns her mischievous grin, "And the 'Royal' Scribe still has not taken off her jewelry."
"And my cattle are my friends!" Teanna says with a smile from ear to ear, hugging her stinking cattle, which were now all coated in mud.
"Yes Seth," Bernarda counters, fiddling with her golden bracelets. "I wear jewelry for other reasons besides looking pretty when I'm sitting there writing down every single word you priests and Pharaohs have to say. Yet such a thought would have never occurred to you, would it?"
"No," Seth says with an evil smirk, swiftly picking up a mud ball from the Nile and throwing it at Bernarda.
The mud ball flies through the air and lands on Bernarda's right shoulder, staining her robes. "You want trouble from me?" she asks, trying to the mud off. "Sure, better off for me!" Upon saying that, she stubbornly sits down on the banks of the Nile River once more and starts writing in the Millennium Book about rebellious High Priests traumatizing the Pharaoh's subjects. /Wait until Atemu sees my afternoon's report about the Nile!/
"Oooooh!" Teanna comments, noticing the giant stain on Bernarda Nefertina's robe. "Now you can look like one of my adorable cattle!" She takes some more mud from the Nile and smears it on her cattle, believing that they produce more milk when they are covered with mud.
Observing Teanna coat her cattle, Seth simply shakes his head in dismay. This peasant girl was obviously a disgrace to the entire country; he just had to get her out of his sight before he lost his temper. "Will you leave us alone so that I can deal with the scribe without the scent of cattle wafting up my nose?" he asks with a sigh, hoping that Teanna would go away.
"Yes, that would be most appreciated," Bernarda adds to Seth's words, not even bothering to look up from what she was writing in the Millennium Book. "Take this as a token of friendship!" She smears a speck of mud on one of the cattle, just to give Teanna the impression that she was doing the right thing. "Now leave us alone."
"Very well," Teanna says with a smile. "You understand friendship so you are worthy of respect. Just be friends and everyone shall love you! Isn't that right?" she asks her cattle, gathering them up and walking away.
/Ha! Ha! Ha!/ Bernarda thinks to herself the moment Teanna turned around to leave. /Not even the High Priest has mastered the art of bribery as well as I have!/
"Now will you stop writing in that bloody book?" Seth demands. "The past shall not be forgotten without your writings, the gods have told me all there is to know."
"And with a mortal's mind you can hold onto it for eternity?" Bernarda sneers, "I doubt it. But you shall be quite infamous in the far future, I have been told so."
"And a scribe speaks up the future? Who are you bluffing?" Seth asks her.
"Take a look and see," the scribe replies in her most non-chalant tone, opening up the Millennium Book to show the High Priest exactly what she was talking about...
The Pharaoh was sitting in his throne, fiddling with his blond bangs and the throne room was all empty except for the Priestess Isis and the Royal Scribe. Isis appeared to be in a world of her own, not even bothering to know what was going on around her and Bernarda was busy looking over the notes she had taken in her Millennium Book over the ritual which the priests had just completed the other day.
"Priestess Isis," the Pharaoh said with a slightly stern voice, "I regret to tell you this but I fear that the Millennium Items shall not end this peril amongst us but only delay it."
"Honored one, what do you mean?" the priestess replies, bowing down upon the floor, making sure to place her left leg in front of her right one for only the son of Ra was permitted to place his right one forwards. She gulps nervously, afraid that this would be another occasion where Pharaoh Atemu was overly worried about the Millennium Items being dysfunctional just because of a vision which one of the other priests had at odd hours in the night.
"The son of Ra wishes to show you that history shall repeat itself," Bernarda observes, closing her Millennium Book with a slight thud as the pages of papyrus rubbed against one another.
"Not mistaken, but delayed," Pharaoh Atemu corrects the girl, doing his best to hide that he was slightly displeased with her interruption of this conversation; yet he would make efficient use of it when the time came to it.
"With my Millennium Tauk I have been granted the gift of seeing what is to come. The course of time is being delayed and I do not see," Isis objects, attempting to prove that if she could not see it, it would not happen.
"You do not see, yet others might. Only Ra knows all," Bernarda contradicts, partially quoting her scriptures yet making her own point in the process.
"But an end to this threat must be put! Did not my Uncle create these items to help the land of Ra? And with robbers and thieves looting villages and robbers raiding pyramids, what help have they brought? If the priests have failed me, who do I look to?"
"My lord," the priestess says with quivering lips, "Who else may serve you as loyally as the priests? The slaves revolt, the merchants cheat, the farmers fail to tend their fields and the nobles quarrel. Who do you look to in hard times besides us?"
"The scribes," Bernarda answers simply. "Where else would the logic about a subject who is not a priest receiving a sacred item?" She bows her head, expecting a rash punishment for what she had just said.
"They still have to prove their worth in my rein," Atemu tells Nefertina calmly. "My father thought highly of them, yet the reputation of scribes has been known to change during the ages. Perhaps the moment for that has come. Isis!"
"Yes milord?" she looks up with her deep blue eyes.
"Give me your Millennium Item," the Pharaoh holds out his hand for her to hand over the Tauk.
Hesistantly, Isis unfastens the Tauk from her neck and hands it over. "If that is what you wish for."
"What are you planning upon?" Bernarda wonders with confusion.
"You shall see, see within time," Atemu tells her, taking the Tauk from Isis and placing it upon Bernarda's neck.
"No! Milord, you cannot! The power of my item shall diminish this way!" Isis resists, giving Bernarda a sharp glance as if to say 'You'll pay for this one day'.
"Silence! This is an order! I must know what shall come to pass!" Pharaoh Atemu demands, holding up his hand as if to quiet Isis.
Bernarda's mind begins to grow rather fuzzy as the warm gold of the necklace touches her body. "The High Priest... shall...," she mutters, clouds swirling within her hazel eyes as if she was possessed by a greater being, "rivalry... two pharaohs... past and future... unite... items bring... ultimate de-... chaos!" Her voice gets raspier and raspier as her mind spins within and her vision clouds, resulting in darkness surrounding her as she falls to the floor.
Isis tries to wipe the grin off her face, the Royal Scribe was apparently a complete failure when it came to work where writing was not involved. "I knew that she could not wield the power of the Millennium Tauk!"
Atemu remains quiet, walking up the fainted scribe and removing the Tauk from her neck. He then walks over to the priestess and hands it back to her. "Whatever she saw," he begins, not sure whether Isis should hear all he had to say, "She was under a heavy trance; as if controlled by another spirit. Yet why did she speak of two pharaohs? And what of the High Priest?" He shrugs his shoulders, his royal blue cape swirling with the motion.
"The necklace probably overwhelmed Bernarda," Isis offers. "Items of mystery are not her place."
"But would you get the same response from the Millennium Book in that case? That is the question!" Atemu responds, crossing his arms and motioning for his attendants to get Bernarda back into the light again.
"But how did this history end up in the Millennium Book and who placed it in there?" Seth wonders, noticing that the golden hieroglyphics upon the eerie black papyrus of the book were not written by Bernarda's hand.
"I have been questioning the very same thing, Seth-sama. When I woke up after that trance, I was on the floor of my chamber and the Millennium Book was nowhere in sight.
"Then however did you get it back? The book is rightfully yours for all that I know. Akunadin-sama holds the eye, Shadah holds the ankh, Karim the scales, Isis the tauk, Mahado the ring, Pharaoh Atemu the Puzzle and I the rod. It could not have been any of us who have done it for the law currently states that a person shall own only one item at a given time!" Seth replies with certainty in his tone.
Bernarda considers this for a moment and wonders whether it could all be misleading. After all, ambitious plots were not exactly uncommon in the Pharaoh's palace. "All the more of making it suspicious, High Priest. If I was granted the foresight of Priestess Isis' tauk, then could another wielder of a Millennium Item not have recorded a story of the ages in the book?"
Seth's keen blue eyes look at the inscriptions within the Millennium book a bit deeper, as if he was trying to decipher some sort of hidden code. "These are not standard hieroglyphics, nor hieractic or demotic. How can we read something which we cannot translate?"
Bernarda simply shrugs her shoulders, not knowing the answer herself. "The only logical conclusion is that solely the wielders of Millennium Items can understand the writings of this book. Teanna was unable to read it, yet we all know the education of farmer's daughters..."
"As for your relation to the Millennium book," Seth urges the scribe on.
"That is the confusing part," Bernarda admits, "I have had an uncanny skill at reading scriptures and always understanding what was written. Sure enough, being trained as a scribe I can comprehend things easily if written in our tongue, yet what if the tongue is foreign to all of Kehmet? How can I understand it then?"
"It could be within your blood," the High Priest suggests. "Priest Karim is the only one I know of who can use the scales properly, and the sole person who did it before him was his father."
"Yet that brings up another question," the brown-eyed girl says, "If the Millennium Items were passed down from parent to off-spring, who did I originate from and why is the book within my hands?"
"Ra has made us all, and things happen because the Gods will it," Seth replies in his most regal tone, doing everything he could to restrain himself from telling Bernarda the real truth. /One day she shall have to know, yet how do I tell her without destroying her in the process? Or shall she bring it about in her own ways?/
"You think that I would not have known that living amongst the Pharaoh's nobility and priesthood all my life?" Bernarda asks quizzically. She takes her sandals and puts them on her feet again. "I'm off to find one of the other Millennium Item wielders. Perhaps they can better explain this all to me. Care to come?"
"Suit yourself. This is your own journey," Seth replies as the Royal Scribe walks away, her long brown hair glistening under Ra's light. /If only she knew how she really got that position, and why. Then she would understand my own ordeal better. With such a heritage as she has, she could bring both chaos and tranquility upon Kehmet at the same time./ With a sigh, he scrapes the mud off his own footwear which Bernarda had so generously piled upon it, puts the sandals on and leaves in the opposite direction to the one which the scribe had set off to.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I apologize once more if my writing is hard to read, my head is chock-full of plot bunnies and other fuzz... Better go and clean it out! (