On ownership: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to Kazuki Takahashi
On ratings: Rated K+
On universes: Set in an Ancient Egypt AU
On warnings: Warnings live at the bottom of the story.
The priests at Taremu (Leontopolis) speak of a great white beast that lives by the lake at Awaina that knows and protects the creatures that gather there... It is a fearsome hunter, faster than the lion or the hawk... [It has] the body of a desert lizard, the head and neck of a serpent, and great wings like a bat... its scales shine with a blue light that illuminates the sky like the moon; even Djehwty (Thoth) is jealous and has asked Sekhmet to strike it down, but she will not... They say that it is an embodiment of Sekhmet, and the one who can gain its heart will receive great strength and will conquer his enemies within[1] and without.
– Papyrus British Museum 437, c. 1315 BCE
[1]Egyptian båt, "devil that causes disease"; a more literal translation of this phrase reads, "defeat the diseases that plague his body and the villains that attack his people."
The Dragon's Gift
They were traveling by night to avoid being scorched by the desert sun when Ra made his daily journey through the sky. They carried water, of course, and food enough for weeks, but the journey was long and the Western Desert was the land of death after all; if the scribes who were mapping out their path by the stars were wrong, there would be neither relief nor destination for them, and they would all perish as forgotten ghosts in the sand.
He led the caravan along with his father followed by the carriage that housed the reason for their journey. The sands and rocks under his horse's hooves refused to change, refused to give them any indication that they were near the lake that was their goal. The ground remained a flat red and white and brown, and the top of every stony ridge only brought him disappointment by showing them another empty valley full of sand. The rhythm of his horse's hooves pounded their mission into his head:
The king is sick.
The king is dying.
The pharaoh needs
a dragon's heart
to cure his illness.
Seto gritted his teeth as the horizon behind them lightened from indigo to green to pink. Morning was approaching too quickly. The priests at the temple of Sekhmet in Taremu had said it would be no more than a three-night journey from Shedyet to Awaina if they traveled smart, and the third was nearly over; they had no time to waste on misdirection and myths. Every moment they spent looking for an obscure lake in the desert, a drop of the pharaoh's ba left him.
This was the reason for their journey; a king plagued by a mysterious illness that had drained him of his life, day by day, since the last inundation of the Nile. He was a vessel that was nearly empty, a dried husk of the strong young man his cousin had once been. He had come with them, riding in a gilded carriage, for this very reason; by the time they could make it back to the City of Amun, it could very well be too late for them to be of any help. The physicians at the temple had been stumped by the illness, and neither the logical nor the magical remedies they had tried had worked. That left them with the desperate chase they followed now: searching for a dragon's heart.
The priests at Taremu had been woefully vague about the whole matter, as priests of their type were wont to be; the papyri that were their source material had been no better. What exactly was it that they were seeking? There was a white monster; that much had been clear when they read the scrolls, and they were supposed to retrieve its heart. His father, and the king's uncle, the High Priest Akhenaten, had decided that killing it and extracting its heart for the king to eat was the obvious answer, and the priests at the temple had agreed with him in a rush to show subservience to representatives of the pharaoh. They didn't actually know, of course. Seto spat into the sand. Morons, all of them. Killing the dragon and extracting its heart seemed logical enough on his first reading, but there were some turns of phrase that bothered him, ones about the dragon's heart being a "gift" that didn't make sense in the context of the whole. He shook his head and put it out of mind. They were three days into the desert; it was too late now for doubts.
He had started to count the number of ridges they would be able to cover before it would be time to stop and set up camp, when suddenly, at the top of a dune, the lake of Awaina appeared in front of them in a valley; it was a greenish-blue smear against the endless orange canvas of the desert. The whole caravan stopped at the sight, and he heard some of the men in the back cheer at the sight. He rolled his eyes at their enthusiasm. The scribes from Taremu rode up next to him.
"See there? That is Awaina," one said to him.
"I could have guessed that myself," he said, narrowing his eyes at the man.
He looked out over the lake again, taking in it. It lay in a depression of sparkling white sand that was of a distinctly different quality than the land surrounding it. The lake itself was a squiggling oblong shape, running north-south, about two kilometers long and one-half wide; the collection of shrubs and palms that framed it made a boundary that couldn't be wider than the throw of a stone. A solitary hawk soared through the lightening sky above it. Seto rounded on the scribes. "And there is a large, white beast living here? Because I do not see any such thing. Where do you suppose is it hiding?"
"It only comes out at night, Lord Seto. We have missed our chance for today,"
"Wonderful," he said, turning away. "A made-up creature that no one alive has ever seen, and it will only show up when we are not around. Where do you suppose it goes during the day? Or is that magic as well?" Seto's horse pawed at the ground, aware of its rider's agitation. "Do you really find it wise to waste our time with this, while every moment your king grows weaker? Do you think we brought him with us because he wanted a vacation?"
Akhenaten rode over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Calm down, Seto. It will do no good to bluster around like this. We have many things to do before night comes again, and the dragon will show itself in due time. Go; tell the pharaoh that we have arrived."
Seto snorted but did as he was told. His father was right; they were here already, and tonight the priests from Taremu would have their chance to disprove themselves. He rode over to the pharaoh's carriage and dismounted. The wagon was covered in gold and motifs of the gods; jewels were imbedded in the wood; it glittered in the sun as it had been designed to, but Seto had sat inside it when they had taken it to the palace to retrieve the pharaoh, and it had been an unpleasantly bumpy ride. He tapped on the curtains that shielded the pharaoh from the cold night air. "My pharaoh, the High Priest Seto requests an audience," he said out of custom.
There was no response from inside the carriage. Seto carefully parted the curtains and looked in at the pharaoh, who was curled up asleep on the cushions that lined the floor. Seto pressed his lips together into a thin line. His cousin was a skeletal shadow of his former self; his joints were knobby and his skin had faded from its glossy bronze into a dusty yellow color; Seto could not get used to the sight, no matter how many times he saw it. To think that this teenager had once been able to outrun him. Seto closed his eyes and turned away, unwilling to disturb the pharaoh's slumber.
He returned to the front of the caravan. "Pharaoh still sleeps," he announced to his father and the priests. "Let us camp on the northeast side of the lake. The bank is least steep there and we will have the best view of the entire lake, should the dragon decide to show itself." Seto remounted and set the caravan back in motion, leading them up the right-hand side of the lake. No one questioned the order; as the pharaoh's illness had worsened, he and his father had slowly taken over the royal administrative duties, and, in the past weeks, even some of the minor religious duties as well. His father had enjoyed the change far more than he had; Seto felt guilt instead of pride when he was tasked with a duty the pharaoh had once been able to do.
Akhenaten rode up beside him. "Seto, it will do no good for you to voice your doubts to the other priests. A proper leader does not sow discord amongst his followers."
"I am no leader, father," he said. "I only give orders when the pharaoh cannot."
"You will be a leader some day, though, Seto. Do not consider your duties today a diversion from fate."
Seto stopped his horse in its tracks. It whinnied at him, irritated. "Father, you speak as if the pharaoh has already passed away," he said angrily. "A proper leader also remembers his role in society. Our role is to protect and preserve the pharaoh until the gods decide it is his time to join them. Until that time, I will spend my time fulfilling that role, instead of plotting and scheming in the vain hope that the gods decide to change it."
Seto kicked his horse and it took off down the slope, whinnying and bucking. He concentrated on controlling it and on the sounds of the caravan picking up to follow him instead of on the pangs of guilt he felt for talking back to his father like an unruly child. But the pharaoh came first; they were here to save the pharaoh's life, not to drag him off to an untimely death, and his father's words pierced his heart with their implication. An image of the sickly pharaoh rose up in his mind, and he shoved the specter away. There was camp to set up, land to survey, and an afternoon and evening to sleep away before night fell. It would not do to be distracted.
The first thing he was aware of when he woke up was an odd, bluish glow inside his tent. Seto eyes snapped open to see a girl kneeling over him, and he nearly cried out in shock. She laid a small, pale finger on his lips. The left corner of her mouth quirked upwards.
"Shh," she said.
Seto stared at her, wide-eyed and still panting from being startled out of his sleep. She was the strangest thing he had ever seen, with pale, pinkish-blue eyes, and hair and skin that were pure white; a pinkish tinge graced her cheeks. She was dressed in rags and her hair was matted and dirty; was she some sort of feral child? There was no civilization here that she could belong to. He sat up when she removed her finger, and he grabbed her wrist; she didn't fight back. She smiled again and giggled shyly. He released her, and she ran her fingers through his hair before standing up and walking to the tent flap, beckoning him over her shoulder. The light inside his tent disappeared the instant she exited.
Seto scrambled to his feet and followed her out, slipping on his sandals and not bothering to change into actual clothing. Evening was already gone, he realized unhappily, and the twilight was deepening quickly on the camp they had set up on a flattened part of the slope down to the lake. The girl was halfway to the vegetation already, running across the gravel in her bare feet, surrounded a halo of blue light, and Seto realized with a jolt that it was in fact her who was glowing, and not some torch that she had been carrying. She turned and ran backwards, still waving him on. Seto stepped forward hesitantly, instinctively wary of any living thing that glowed when it shouldn't. Was he being led away by a demon that would murder him in cold blood? He looked around; there were no others wandering the camp, and the girl had taken a path that led them both out of sight of the stations set up around the lake to watch for the dragon. Seto took a deep breath and told himself there was no reason to be afraid of a girl. He started running.
She led him into the shrubs surrounding the lake, hiding them from any passing members of the pharaoh's entourage. As soon as he caught up to her, he seized her wrists again. "Who are you?" he asked, staring into her strange, pale face.
"My name is Kisara," she said.
"What... where did you come from?" he asked her, still at a loss of how to explain this strange girl's existence.
"I live here."
"By yourself?"
"Not by myself. There are birds and mice and serpents and bugs here. I take care of them."
Seto let go of her and let his arms drop to his sides; she straightened out the rags that served as a dress for her, then plopped down on the ground. "Do you have parents? Relatives? Are there any other people here besides you?" he asked.
"No, not anymore. I live here alone because people don't get along with me. But maybe you will. I like trying to make new friends, and you have blue eyes like me." Seto had opened is mouth to mention the important differences in their coloration when she looked up at the sky and frowned. "But I waited too long to talk to you. I have to go already."
"What? Why?"
"I don't know. I just do." She stood up and started brushing the sand off her clothes.
Seto stepped forward, confused. "We've just met. You wanted to talk to me? Why did you call me out here if you are going to leave now? Stay."
"I cannot," she said simply. "I must ask you one thing before I go, though."
"What? Anything," he said.
"Tell your father to stop hunting my serpents."
"What?" said Seto, but she was gone, the blue light fading away.
Seto turned in a circle, trying to see where she had gone. He ran to the left, calling her name, and he tripped on a rock, ripping off his sandal and cutting the sole of his foot terribly. He hit the ground, crying out in pain and clutching his foot. He inhaled a mouthful of sand, and grit mixed with his blood in his hands. Seto rolled and sat up, choking and spitting and cursing his clumsiness. There was a piercing screech, and the sky his west exploded into light.
Seto yelled and jumped to his feet, ignoring the pain that shot through his foot. He stumbled out of the vegetation into the open sand and gaped at the sky. A dragon was circling in the sky above him.
Seto stared at it, entranced. It was white, shining like the moon and lighting up the entire area. It called out to the night, and the noise made Seto's breath hitch and his hair stand on end. Unconsciously, he stepped forward with his arms up, as if he could somehow reach out to it and grab a handful of its majesty.
It made a few of passes over their camp, clearly confused by their presence on its lake, and even as his heart clenched in fear for the pharaoh who sat helpless in his tent, he admired the graceful way it navigated the sky, the intelligent way it investigated their camp, the lines and curves of its body. Men were shouting in fear, and he could see them scrambling for their weapons by the dragon's light, all just as unprepared for it as he had been. The dragon snorted on its final flyover, satisfied that they posed no threat, and it flew east in a streak of light.
The night turned dark again, and the sounds coming from camp turned from terror to jubilation. Seto walked back to camp, dazed, limping now and leaving a trail of blood behind him. Akhenaten ran up to him, looking more youthful and invigorated than he had in years. "Wasn't that thrilling, my boy?" he shouted over the din, a broad smile plastered on his face. "I guess the priests knew what they were talking about after all!" Seto said nothing. "Wouldn't that be a testament to a man's power, to slay a creature like that," Akhenaten continued with a pointed look.
Seto ignored him, still staring off at the horizon where the dragon had disappeared. "Gods, it was beautiful," he whispered.
Nightfall of the second day found Seto sitting in front of his tent, clothed, armed, bandaged, and chewing on the end of a cucumber. He claimed to himself and to his fellow priests that it was penance for his ineptitude the previous night, but his eyes were not trained on the sky or on the point at which the dragon had originated on the east side of the lake; instead they were scanning the grounds around for a pure white girl.
He'd spent the day thinking about her as he helped the soldiers and the priests prepare their weapons for the night's attack on the dragon. She was a welcome diversion from his constant fear for the pharaoh's life and the way his father snuck around the lake, looking under rocks with inscrutable purpose. Seto shook his head. She was odd, certainly, but behind the pale color of her skin she was pretty, and he could think of no reason why he should fear her the way he had the previous night. She said that people did not get along with her well; why not? Her company, while strange and brief, had not been unpleasant. And so he found himself sitting outside his tent, looking toward the shrubs near the lake where she had led him the previous night in hope that she would reappear.
Seto frowned, disturbed by the way he was obsessing over a girl he had met a day ago when there were far more important things to be worried about. They had barely exchanged a handful of sentences. Why did she suddenly occupy so much of the space in his mind? Was it really just his way of escaping his daily stresses?
Seto's musings were interrupted when he spotted a pale figure down by the lake waving at him. He leapt to his feet and immediately scolded himself for acting so eager. He slowed himself down as he picked up his bow and quiver and he forced himself to stroll as evenly as he could down to the lake where she was waiting.
"You asked all the questions last night. I suppose it is only fair for me to ask all the questions this time, Lord Seto," she said. She was hopping in random patterns around a bush, dancing to a beat that he could not hear.
Seto found himself grinning against his will. "And I suppose I should not be surprised that you know my name."
"No," she said simply. "What happened to your foot?" she asked, pointing to the bandages on the foot he was favoring.
"I cut it on a rock after you left last night."
"That's too bad. I hope it gets better soon. Why weren't you sleeping this time?"
Seto paused, and then admitted the truth. "Because I was waiting for you."
She smiled. "That's nice. Why have you people come here?"
"We have come here to kill the dragon."
Kisara stopped dancing and her eyes turned round. "Why do you want to kill the dragon?"
Seto felt a pang of guilt. She had called herself the caretaker of the living things of the lake; she likely considered herself the caretaker of the dragon too, though a beast like that would hardly need it. "Because we have been told that the dragon's heart will make the king strong again. He is dying. It is the only thing we know can cure him."
She shook her head softly at him. "No one can receive the Dragon's Gift by killing a dragon. That is ridiculous."
"Why?"
"Because a dead dragon cannot give," she said simply.
Seto furrowed his brow. "What is it?"
"The dragon or its gift?"
"Its gift."
"Its gift is its heart."
Seto shook his head. "I don't understand."
She cocked her head slightly. "There's really no other way to put it." She smiled a little bit when he continued to look confused. "Slicing it out and putting it on a plate isn't the only way you can give someone your heart."
Seto rubbed his eyes in frustration, feeling like he was being told an impossible riddle. "Has anyone ever received the Dragon's Gift?" he asked, out of a desire to appear less stupid than he felt.
"Maybe," she said slyly. Seto looked at her, startled.
"Who?" he asked. He stepped toward her. "How does it work?"
Kisara smiled and looked up at him. "I might be able tell you, but I am afraid it will have to wait until tomorrow night."
"No," he said. "Stay. Tell me about the dragon's gift so that I may save my pharaoh."
"I cannot stay," she said, "but your pharaoh is not in danger of dying just yet. But." She peered at him from under her bangs. "Your father is still hunting my serpents, and I fear that he may catch one soon."
Seto let go of her. "What does that even mean?" he asked. She started to run away, and he tried to follow her. "Stop!" he shouted, but she disappeared as before, the faint blue light she radiated going out just as quickly.
Seto swore, his chest feeling empty at the loss. He had met with her twice, and he already felt strangely dependent on her. He limped out of the trees, looking for the faint light she emitted; it was dangerous to rely on someone, especially someone as ephemeral as a mysterious glowing girl, when his father had stopped being trustworthy and his pharaoh was about to cross the Nile into Osiris' Kingdom.
Suddenly, the night was lit up by the same the same flash that had heralded the dragon's appearance the previous night. Seto looked up; the dragon launched itself out of the lake and shot into the air. Far away, he heard the signal for the men to attack, and arrows started flying. The dragon dodged them easily, writhing in the air and making a circuit of lake. Seto grabbed an arrow from his quiver and loaded it, aiming at the dragon's heart.
Seto allowed himself a moment to admire it again as it approached him. He felt his breath catch in his throat as it performed its aerial acrobatics; it was just as beautiful as it had been the night before, a perfect harmony of light and sound and motion. It would be an enormous pity for it to die, for there was nothing else like it on earth. He felt his heart ache at the idea; but the pharaoh came first. The pharaoh always had to come first. The pharaoh needed its heart; he needed to be strong again.
He pulled back the string on his bow, ready to strike the final blow, but suddenly Kisara's words leapt through his mind and stayed his hand. A dead dragon cannot give.
Time stood still as the dragon hovered over his head, twisting in mid-air and watching him with its shining blue eyes; Seto realized with a start that it knew he was standing there with an arrow aimed at its heart; it knew that this was the moment when Seto would decide its fate. And yet it did not attack him first. He stared back at it, breathless. The pharaoh must come first. A dead dragon cannot give. Was such a majestic beast really willing to die for a king it knew nothing about? Could it understand that at all? Suddenly, impulsively, he shifted his aim and let the arrow soar over the dragon's shoulder instead of into its chest. The arrow flew off into the night, forgotten, as he and the dragon continued their stare down.
The dragon let out a cry that split the night and echoed off the dunes. Faster than a hawk, it swooped down to the ground and circled him; up close it was a blazing, terrifying thing to behold. Seto yelled and tried to step away from it, but it was everywhere; there was nowhere to run. It spun the world around him into a flurry of light and wind; he was blinded by sand; deafened by its screeches; unable to breathe because of the vise of pure energy surrounding him. His limbs were on fire; his mind was clouded; he couldn't have loaded another arrow into his bow if he had wanted to. He had no choice but to take his turn and accept the fate that the dragon was giving him.
And just as suddenly, it was gone, soaring away from the lake on the same path it took the previous night. Peace smothered the lake again like a blanket; the only sounds were the insects and the wind, and far away men shouting, "Seto! Seto!" Seto's vision was swimming and his skin was clammy. The world was still spinning even though the dragon had left. He could see guards and the priests running up the hill toward him, his father leading them, but his legs were dead weights. He could not run to meet them. He staggered, and the world turned gray and black as he fainted.
Strange scratching noises filled his ears, and Seto opened his eyes to see pure, strong daylight shining through the cracks in the fabric of his tent; it had to be past noon already. He sat up, trying to remember what had happened, but he quickly laid back down as a splitting headache erupted between his temples. He moaned and laid his arm across his eyes, trying to will away the sunlight and the scritching sounds that were pounding on his ears.
A guard tapped on the flap of his tent. "Lord Seto," he said. "You are awake?" Seto groaned again and managed to make an affirmative noise. The guard opened the flap of the tent, and Seto flinched away from the light that flooded the space. "Your father wishes to speak to you at your earliest convenience," he said.
Seto pushed himself up into a sitting position. He was still wearing the clothes from the previous night, and his quiver and bow had been carelessly tossed in a corner. "I will... I will do that," he mumbled, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. Those sounds... he wasn't really hearing them; they were more like an idea in his mind. Seto froze, staring at his palms and furrowing his eyebrows. It was the sounds of the animals around the lake. A pair of stray gazelles was napping on the south end of the lake, as far from the camp as they could be. Scorpions and lizards were resting under rocks, woodlice hid deep in their burrows. He shook his head, trying to get the sounds out, but they remained. A vulture was circling on an updraft, looking for animals that may have strayed too far from the lake. What on earth was going on?
The dragon, he remembered suddenly, and Kisara. He had refused to kill the dragon because of what Kisara had said, and the dragon had tried to kill him because he hadn't tried to kill it. Or had it? It could have destroyed him easily, and yet here he was. And Kisara knew how to get the Dragon's Gift; she could save the pharaoh if she would just tell him how.
The flap of his tent burst open again, blinding him momentarily. Akhenaten rushed in. "Seto!" he said, breathless. "You have been asleep for hours! What happened?"
Seto rubbed his eyes again, trying to focus on his father instead of whatever a spider was doing near one of the outposts. "I don't know, father. I've just woken up." He blinked. "The dragon tried to attack me last night."
"It was right next to you, and yet you did not kill it?"
He shook his head. A lizard ate a beetle somewhere, and Seto rubbed his temples, irritated. "I fired an arrow and missed," he said. "You saw the way it avoided death by our arrows. It swooped down on me like an eagle; I was completely at its mercy."
Akhenaten grabbed his chin. "A leader is never at the mercy of his enemies. What were you doing before it showed up? You were not in position."
"I was looking for its resting place," he lied. "It appeared earlier than I expected."
Akhenaten let go of his chin and rested his hand on his knee. "Seto, do not forget how important it is for you to slay this creature. It would bring great honor to your name," he said quietly.
Seto lowered his voice to match his father's. "Father, we hunt the dragon for the pharaoh, not for me. Stop with your treasonous talk."
Akhenaten frowned and glared at him. He stood up. "The pharaoh has requested to meet with you as well, this afternoon. Do not keep him waiting." He left the tent before Seto could say another word. Seto took a deep breath, trying to push away his father's words. A sand viper was burying itself in the shade of a bush by the lake, and Seto growled, at a lost for why he should know or care for such things.
He stood up to straighten the covers he had kicked off as the day had started, and a tingling sensation in his foot stopped him. He sat down, confused again; it should still have been hurting. He pulled off the bandages, which had become loose overnight in his sleep, and froze at what he saw. He ran his finger over the sole of his foot; it was perfectly healed. He touched it a little bit more, noting the way his nerves responded to his fingers. He sat there, dumbfounded by his own feet, until more animals distracted them by moving around. He shook his head in disbelief and got up and changed clothes, washed his face, reapplied his makeup, and put his headdress back on, trying for all the world to not believe that he was going insane.
He stepped out into the daylight and squinted; the sun nearly unbearable to his still-aching head. He made his way to the pharaoh's tent as quickly as he could, both out of the urgency trained into him in matters concerning the pharaoh and out the desire to be in the shade. He tapped on the door. "My pharaoh," he said. "It is the High Priest Seto. You have requested an audience?"
"Yes. Come in," said a quiet voice inside.
Seto entered the pharaoh's tent. It was much larger than his own, and he smirked to see that even at his worst, he never failed to travel in style. It was lined with art and furniture the pharaoh could not use in his current state; cushions lined the floor for people to sit on should he call them in; he had caged ibises and vultures for company. The pharaoh lay on a bed in the center of the room, propped up by pillows and looking woefully shrunken under the Nemes headdress. He looked at Seto expectantly.
"I hope I find you well, today," said Seto out of custom, kneeling and bowing his face to the ground.
"I was able to watch the excitement last night. It looked like you had a very dramatic encounter with the dragon," he said with a smile as Seto got up.
Seto swallowed and lowered his eyes. "I am sorry that I failed to kill it when it was so close to me, my pharaoh."
The pharaoh stopped smiling. "Come here, Seto." Seto carefully walked over to the pharaoh and knelt beside him. The pharaoh eased himself into a sitting position and turned to him, intertwining their fingers. "I have a question that I would like you to answer honestly for me."
Seto blinked. "When would my pharaoh deserve anything other than the truth?" he asked.
The pharaoh looked deep into his eyes. "If that is the case, then tell me: do you really believe that the dragon has to die?"
Seto flinched involuntarily, and he cursed himself for showing that hint of weakness to his king. He looked down at his lap and the pharaoh's grip on his hand tightened. "I... I am not sure, my pharaoh," he said quietly. He found himself unable to tell him about Kisara; he couldn't tell his pharaoh that his disobedience had kept him from attacking the dragon two nights in a row. He could feel the sands on the next ridge shifting in the gusts of a dust devil; he tried to ignore it. "The texts... the texts at Taremu were not very clear on how one acquires the dragon's gift– its heart, rather." Seto cursed himself again for his slip. It was very hard to focus on the situation at hand, when his senses were trying to tell him that a lizard on the other side of the lake was eating a mouse and that a cloud of gnats was hovering around the spot outside of camp they were using as a latrine. What should he care? Why did he even know about it in the first place?
The pharaoh ducked his head lower to look at him from under his headdress, yanking Seto's attention back to the present. "Perhaps I should ask instead," he murmured, rubbing his thumb across Seto's knuckles, "are you willing to kill it?"
Seto stared at him, unable to breathe, as his cousin's eyes bored into his. His cheeks were gaunt and his skin was sallow, and the only hint of life was in the large eyes that peered up at him now; it was his own flesh and blood looking up at him from that face, he reminded himself, his cousin who needed life. But the dragon... and Kisara, she would never forgive him for letting the dragon be slain. But this was his pharaoh, his friend, his cousin whose bony hand was clutching his. Seto swallowed and looked down again. "I will do anything my pharaoh orders me to," he whispered hoarsely.
The pharaoh frowned at the emptiness of his answer. "And if I ordered you to kill the dragon, would you do it?"
Seto closed his eyes. "Yes," he mouthed.
The pharaoh slowly let go of his hand. "It is my understanding that the rest of the party is setting up a station for an attack on the northwest side of the lake," he said. He carefully stroked Seto's cheek. "You had best go and help them."
Seto nodded, his mouth dry. "Yes, my pharaoh," he said. The pharaoh looked at him for a moment more, the turned back around and laid himself back down on the pillows with a tiny, painful noise. Seto stood up and silently exited the tent, not bothering to look back at the ailing young man on the bed.
Seto walked out of camp blindly. Some of the men and the scribes tried to hail him to congratulate him about being so close to the dragon or to inquire about his health, but he walked past them without acknowledgement. His feet carried him down to the lake to the spot where he had met Kisara, and he caught a palm trunk between his hands and leaned his head on it. Tears ran out of his eyes without his permission.
Seto took in a great, shuddering breath. He slid down the tree, not caring that the bark cut his hands and his forehead or that a man of his status was crying like a child. He knew that if one of his men found him like this, he would lose infinite respect from them, but he didn't care. Not right now.
He curled his fingers around the dead stems that made the bark of the tree, shoulders shaking as the stress of the past months finally caught up to him. The pharaoh and the dragon; he could only have one of them, and Kisara was not here to tell him how he could keep both. He only opened his eyes when his palms started tingling in the same way his foot had been. He looked at them and watched in fascination as the cuts the bark made on his hands healed before his eyes.
Seto wandered out into the shrubs by the lake on his own that night, searching for the place where Kisara would be hiding. Wondering if it would work, he searched for her in the same way he could sense the animals around the lake, and he quickly found her in a spot with two downed palm trunks leaning on each other in a V.
"We can sit here," she said when he arrived. "I thought that would be nice."
"It would be," he said, sitting down gently, testing their stability. "It is."
She fussed a little bit with the dried bark on her tree. "Do you still have to kill the dragon?" she asked.
He looked at her guiltily. "The pharaoh has ordered me to. I have no choice, unless he can receive the dragon's gift some other way. Can you tell me how?"
Kisara chewed on her lip. "The problem is that the one who receives it must have love for the dragon. Your pharaoh and your father and all their men hold no true love for it. Your pharaoh sees it as medicine. Your father sees it as a weapon. That is love of a certain type, but they love it for its uses, not for the thing itself."
Seto sighed and looked away. A spider caught a moth in a web to his right. He looked for it automatically, even though he could not see it in the near dark of the clearing.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"No," said Seto. He shook his head. "I've not been well all day."
"Why not?"
"It..." Seto looked at her, with her large, innocent blue eyes, and found himself compelled to be honest with her against his will. He could not lie to her the way he had to his father and the pharaoh, even when this truth was more insane. "I keep hearing... animals, I think," he said, making a little motion by his ear. "Not even hearing them; I just know what they're doing. It doesn't make any sense. There's an eagle roosting in that tree. There are seven lizards between us and that rock over there, all sleeping. I don't know why I know this. I don't know how."
"So you're like me." Seto stared. She looked at him eagerly. "Four ants have crawled across your foot since we started talking, and one is now crawling up your leg," she said. He thought about it; it was on his left leg, just below his knee. He swatted it. "And now it's not," she said with a frown.
"Sorry," he said. He brushed at the spot, trying to pretend it hadn't happened. "So you can hear them all too? Is that why you live here, so you can protect them?"
"No. I live here because people do not like me. I think I scare them."
"Because you are so pale?"
"Maybe," she said. "I'm not sure."
"I like you." The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them. She tilted her head. He nodded earnestly. "I do."
"You are kind," she said. She walked over to him, and Seto felt his mouth go dry. Carefully, she placed her hand on his cheek and briefly pressed her lips to his forehead. Seto drew in a ragged breath; he slid his hands around her waist and buried his face into the crook of her neck and closed his eyes, unable to stop the thoughts of staying here forever, of holding on to her, taking her home, keeping her; keeping her like he wanted to keep the dragon or the lake or the very moment in which they were standing; knowing that they would all slip away from him like sand between his fingers.
He felt her look up at the sky. "I must go now."
Seto held on to her. "No. Don't," he implored her. "Stay with me."
"I cannot," she said.
Seto let go of her waist and held her small hand between the two of his. "Please," he said. "I love you. I do not want you to leave. Come with us back to the City of Amun. I can give you anything you want there. You can eat the finest foods, wear the finest clothes, have as much jewelry as can fit on your body. Your hair will be clean and smooth. Your feet will no longer be callused from running barefoot though the sand. You will live in a palace and be as near as one can be to a queen. Just come with me."
"I cannot," she repeated.
"Why not?" he asked her.
She looked to the side and smiled. "Because I am not a girl." She looked back at him, and in a blink, her pupils stretched into lizard-like slits. Seto gasped and let go of her, and she smiled wickedly. "I am a dragon who likes to pretend that she is a girl."
Before he could even breathe, the light she emitted blazed and seared his eyes, and he found himself face to face with dragon itself. He choked with surprise, and he could swear it was laughing at him gleefully. It galloped around him in a circle and launched itself into the air. Seto ran after it, following it out on to the open sands around the lake; it circled above him joyfully, and Seto found himself laughing out of sheer disbelief as he chased it.
They danced together, one on the ground and one in the air; she nipped at his hair; he jumped and tried to catch her claws, and she took off without him around the lake, racing out her excitement the only way she could. She was the dragon; the dragon was her; he loved them both and they were one and beautiful and his, and he would find a way to have them both if he could only figure out how, and he missed the war cry rising up on the northwest side of the lake until it was too late.
The volley of arrows rose into the night like fire riding the wind. Seto stopped running as he watched fly through the air in slow motion. There were too many; their aim was true; Kisara twisted and shrieked in surprise as one found its mark, and Seto heard himself screaming as he watched her fall to earth. There was a tremendous thud when she hit the ground behind a cluster of palms on the lake's west bank, and her light went out.
Seto screamed again. His feet started running across the sand even before his mind told them to. Victorious cries from the soldiers started to reach him from the attack point; he wanted to strike them all down for their action; they didn't know what they had just done, didn't know who they had just killed. He couldn't run fast enough to suit his heart; he couldn't run time backwards to save her or stop the arrows or tell anyone what he knew. He let out another yell, this one directed at himself for his own stupidity.
Another cry was coming up from the main camp now, one of a distinctly different quality that made his blood run cold. Men who were running to see the dragon turned in their tracks and started running back. Seto hesitated and shifted trajectories, intending only to run through camp on his way to Kisara. He stepped into the camp, and the tense chattering that had been going on stopped immediately. He stopped, panting, and everyone present turned to look at him. Akhenaten stepped beside him and laid a hand on his back to guide him toward the pharaoh's tent. Seto looked at him and then addressed the guard who stood in front of it, who now held his spear lax against his side. He looked around. "What is going on here?" he asked.
"Priest Seto," said the guard. "The pharaoh... the pharaoh is dead."
Seto's throat constricted. He stepped forward into the ring of people that had formed in front of the tent. "What?"
The guard moved back and cleared the way for him to enter the tent. More men were running back to the camp now; the news had reached them, and the death of the pharaoh was far more important to them than the death of the dragon. Seto looked around at them and back up at the other corner of the lake where Kisara now lay. The guards and the priests were looking at him expectantly. Akhenaten pushed him forward.
"Go, Seto. See for yourself."
Seto gave another glance to Kisara's resting place, and then forced himself to enter the tent. The pharaoh was sprawled out on his bed in a bizarre position, robes and headdress askew, as if he had struggled against death and tried desperately to cling to the last of his life force before it left him. Seto sniffed the air inside the tent. A cobra. Even as he approached the dead pharaoh's bed, he tried process this information on top of everything else that was happening. There should not be a cobra inside the pharaoh's tent; he should not be able to smell a cobra inside the pharaoh's tent. It was hiding behind the white vulture's cage; he could sense it already, watching him carefully. Seto knelt down and inspected the pharaoh's body; the progression of his disease would not have indicated a writing death, and yet his body showed a slow and endless agony; sweat was still beaded around his hairline and his upper lip. A cobra, though... Seto lifted his robes and found the puncture wounds on the inside of his upper thigh. He pressed his fingers against them; they were hidden where no one would have found them without knowing to look. Seto replaced the pharaoh's robes and covered his eyes. After all they had gone through, this was the he fate had met?
Seto punched the ground, and a sob escaped his throat. They had traveled all of Egypt to find physicians who could help; they had ridden for days through the desert to find a cure, had hunted down a lake and a dragon on a hunch; his father had had killed her in hopes that it would cure the pharaoh, and disease was not the hand by which his cousin would die.
Kisara...
Seto stood up abruptly with a noise that was somewhere between a howl of rage and howl of misery. He grabbed the top of the vulture's cage and seized the frightened cobra behind the head; the vulture was thrown against the bars of the cage and it squawked at him; the snake hissed and curled around his arm, trying to flare its hood and bite him in retaliation. Seto stormed through the flap of the tent to face the crowd gathered outside, seeking someone other than himself to blame for what had happened. The men outside gasped when he appeared, and before he could open his mouth to scold them for their carelessness, they fell on their faces in worship. A murmur rippled through the crowd. "Pharaoh..."
Seto stood there, chest heaving, immobilized by the subservient men before him. He worked his mouth wordlessly, realizing too late that he was the cousin of the now former pharaoh and that he had just walked out of his tent carrying earthly incarnations of Nekhbet and Wadjet. He had all but declared himself king when it was the last desire in his mind. His father peeked up at him from his prostrate position; the vulture in his left hand started preening its feathers; and somewhere on the other side of the lake there was an anthill that didn't care about any of this.
"Get up," he croaked at them. They looked up, shocked. "Get up!" They scrambled to their feet, looking at each other. "Who amongst you would allow a snake to enter the pharaoh's tent?" he snarled. He held up the cobra that was still struggling in his hand and turned on the guard who had been standing in front of the pharaoh's tent when he'd arrived at the camp; he backed away, terrified. "Who would be so careless as to allow this creature into his tent when he was sick and weak and unable to defend himself?"
"Seto! Seto, my son. My pharaoh," Akhenaten corrected himself. He stepped forward and held Seto's shoulders. "What does that matter anymore?" he asked him quietly. "The past is gone, and the future is dawning with you as king." Akhenaten's eyes were shining with poorly concealed happiness, and Kisara's other warning came to mind.
Tell your father to stop hunting my serpents.
Seto choked and stepped back from him. "No." He shook his head violently; the tears he had been holding back finally spilled out. "No. I would not be son to a murderer." Akhenaten blanched. Seto held up the cobra again and released his hold on its neck. It reared up on his palm and hissed in Akhenaten's face.
"Seto..."
More soldiers were running in to camp now; one was carrying a bundle in his arms. "Lords Akhenaten and Seto!" he shouted. His superiors quickly reprimanded him, and the group fell to their knees as well.
"What?" Seto barked impatiently.
"We did not find the dragon where it fell. We only found this girl." He dumped the bundle on the ground, and Kisara's lifeless form rolled out of it, an arrow piercing her heart.
The camp gasped, but Seto did not hear it. He dropped the vulture and snake and clutched his head; the vulture squawked again and the snake hurried away as fast as it could. Blue light started filling the camp again, and the men started backing away from him in terror, but he did not care. He did not care how they shrank beneath him when they actually turned around and ran, or that his tail knocked over the pharaoh's tent, or that his wings cut through the cold night air with tornado-like wind. He did not care that his howl of despair was inhuman. He threw himself into the air and sailed over the Western Desert, crying a song of grief to the night sky.
...[Egypt is] a land without invaders... they fear our king, for he is a fearsome and just ruler... He burns our enemies with the light of the sun before they can step on our land; he lights up the sky at night so that none can sneak in under the cover of darkness... He knows the sound of your feet before you step into the city; he will know everything about you before you enter the palace... If you ask him how, he will say: I am a man who pretends that he is a dragon.
– Papyrus Morrison 23, c. 1280 BCE
Written for the Yu-Gi-Oh Fanfiction Contest, round two: Mizushipping.
Author's note: The text of the papyri is, of course, entirely made up.
Warnings: Character death, poorly defined pedophilia