A/N: Written using the prompts from the 5x10 prompts community, table 23. This is also a pseudo-cross with Yugioh, but any information you need is in the fic itself. Its sequels are a different story.
This is planned as the backstory to a longer (and properly written) fic but can also stand alone as it is now.
The Guardians of the Empire of Sand and Time
01. Silence
The silence echoed in the dark; the fire had levelled the village to the ground and the faint light from their torches illuminated only rubble. The horses pawed anxiously at the ground, and after a moment the army dismounted.
Their young Pharaoh was already on the ground, surveying the destruction.
'They say the black beast was sighted again,' his advisor – his right hand man, his greatest rival and his best friend – stated.
'Yes,' the Pharaoh replied. 'I know.'
The blue eyes took in the village that had once proudly stood at the edge of civilisation. Wood and cloth were amidst the ruins, but he so no burnt flesh among them, nor blood. 'Where were the villagers?'
'They had been given sufficient warning and had fled to the Nile,' was the reply of the female that rode with them.'
'What do you see, Izumi?' the advisor asked.
The blonde woman closed her eyes, listening to the sound of the wind and looking beyond what her eyes could show her. She opened her eyes a breath later with a frown. 'The same as always,' she said. 'Love, yet , yet , yet indecision. Darkness…and yet there is light in that darkness.'
There was silence, and then the advisor spoke again. 'Perhaps it would be wise to invest in a new pair of eyes?'
'Hardly,' the woman snapped. 'I see the truth, and it is the truth I speak, unless it is my virtue you question.'
'Enough,' the Pharaoh ordered, and the pair silenced. 'Izumi, what else can you say?'
'Nothing for certain,' she replied. 'However…' She cut herself off, before starting again. 'It is not my place to say, however I feel this destruction ties directly with both your line and that of your Guardian, and the same goes for your father, the late Pharaoh, before you.'
'I see,' was all the Pharaoh said. What else he thought of the situation, he kept to himself.
02. Trust
That made the third village assaulted that season and the tenth that year.
'Pharaoh,' the advisor called. 'Something must be done about this beast.'
'The beast will be left alone,' the Pharaoh responded.
His court stared.
'May I ask why?' the youngest, the mage's apprentice, asked. 'If this beast is responsible for the destruction of our villages then should we not fight it with all our might?'
'I do not believe it is,' Izumi countered. 'Certainly my inner eye does not show this beast as the cause of their destruction.'
'Is it not possible you are interpreting these images incorrectly?' the true mage asked.
'If I were doing that Master Junpei,' Izumi replied. 'I would know it; these images are as clear as the nose upon my face.'
'Then it comes down to the trust in these images.' The mage bowed his head. 'I trust Lady Izumi's visions.'
'Thank you.'
'If this beast is not against us, than it is a great asset,' the Pharaoh interjected. 'Destroying it with our combine power may or may not bring an end to this destruction, but we would be leaving ourselves defenceless to the greater evil.'
'I still cannot stand idle,' the advisor declared.
'Nor do I expect you to,' the Pharaoh said. 'Instead, I will beseech you to discover the origin of this beast.'
03. Dream
Another village was attacked that night, very close to the previous one and yet moving ever closer to the palace.
It just so happened that Takuya, advisor to the Pharaoh, had disembarked his horse for the night in the same village, and therefore witnessed the events as they unfolded.
But as he recounted the following day upon his return, it was almost dream-like in its occurrence.
'It was as though there was something else in the village,' he explained. 'Something that hides by the night and this beast fights. I was also not the only one who remained behind; the villagers did not linger long after the warning came – from a boy our age Pharaoh – for they feared him as an omen of doom. And the beast and this unseen force did both come soonafter, however –'
'That is no reason to condemn a person for bringing such news,' Izumi responded. 'Where is this boy now?'
'Gone,' Takuya replied. 'I did not see him thereafter so I assume he escaped as well. A few of the villagers stubbornly remained however, and so they learnt a valuable lesson beneath my shield.'
'I hope so,' the Pharaoh said, although his thoughts were elsewhere. 'I wonder…did you find anything of this boy, or anything he touched?'
'But surely everything would be rubble!' the mage apprentice exclaimed.
But the advisor was pulling something from his pocket. 'I thought of that,' he admitted. 'This fell from the horse he rode.'
The locket glinted in the sunlight as the court gazed upon it, but no eyes were more shocked than the young Pharaoh's himself.
'The royal symbol,' Izumi breathed, reaching out to touch it before retracting her hand. 'But how can a peasant boy come across this, for stolen artefacts radiate a taint that could be spotted from miles away.'
'Master Mage,' the Pharaoh said finally. 'I want this boy found.'
04. Help
Their meeting with the boy they sought turned out to be a matter of chance more than the result of scrying magic, for while Master Junpei and his apprentice Tomoki laboured in their sanctuary, the advisor was busy trying to situate their suddenly homeless citizens in the main city while protecting the Pharaoh from the misdeeds that lived amongst them.
The Pharaoh rode at the head of the procession, keen eyes seeking out the tasks that needed to be accomplished and ordering them done. What he had the power to do he did himself, riding into scuffles and giving compliments where he could.
And that was how they happened upon the boy they sought, with Takuya giving a sudden exclamation and pointing at a figure on the ground. Many gave the peasant's still form a wide breadth, but there were few who took advantage of the inability to vent their rage against the destruction of their villages with one upon whom they could bestow blame.
'Stop!' the advisor commanded. 'By order of the Pharaoh, this boy is to be left alone.'
The outcry was not easily quelled, for the villagers truly believed the boy was the one who had brought destruction to them, but upon his advisor's declaration the Pharaoh was adamant, and it was he who ruled Egypt and thus his loyal servants could do nothing save obey and believe in their new king.
05. Misplaced
The boy was, understandably, quite shocked to awaken in the royal palace, and at the feet of the Pharaoh at that.
'Tell me,' was the first thing his Pharaoh said to him. 'Who is the beast with shapeless wings that devastates our villages?'
'My guardian,' the other replied, tone weak. 'But he does his best, highness. I am not strong like him.'
'Like who?'
'The one whose rage destroys the homes of those that live in the light,' came the soft reply. 'He is an enemy that comes forth only in night for he fears the sun and the Pharaoh's power. But in the night he hides, and only the creatures of the night can defend.'
'The creatures of the night are creatures of evil,' the two mages said.
'No,' Izumi disagreed. 'The creatures of the night are the same as those of the day; whether they are good or evil depends on the one they protect.'
'Then you shall test this boy,' the Pharaoh decided, standing back and handing the locket to her. 'In the name of my father, the late Pharaoh.'
06. Insanity
He was young, when his father told him of the task.
'But father, I don't understand.'
'You will, one day,' the old Pharaoh said gently. 'But for now, this is all I can say. A great evil exists that threatens our world; this you know. But in this world there are also those whose hearts are pure and incorruptible, and whose Guardians possess the power to stand up to such evil. They appear only to the Chosen Pharaoh and would normally not be a concern, however the blackening sky tells this Pharaoh will soon ascend the throne.'
'The sky blackens because a storm comes,' the boy said naively.
'A storm comes, yes,' his father agreed. 'A very vicious storm, who could uproot the world in its entirety. I regret to say that I had a part in festering this evil, however –' He placed his palms, firm and heavy, on the other's shoulder. 'I believe in you, my son. And your guardian is strong and bright, as is that of the boy placed by fate at your right hand. I believe…and fear…that you are the Pharaoh in the prophecy, and there will come a time where you must own up to your father's misdeeds and a guardian may come to you with your own symbol around his neck.' He touched the locket. 'This symbol, my son. It marks your noble blood, and you must accept the child who bears it only if his heart has remained pure.'
'I don't understand,' the boy said quietly.
'Test him in my name,' his father replied. 'His parents were banished for his father's misdeeds and his life may be a difficult one yet and I wish I could have saved him from it as I did you, but if this too is fate, then this will be his ultimate test.' He breathed, closing his eyes. 'I must believe in him, and you must take him under your name should he pass.'
And so, in the present, he fulfilled the promise he had made to the late Pharaoh.
'I believe my father know more than he said,' the Pharaoh said quietly to the boy. 'However he bid me to accept you in my court as one of the sacred Guardians should you pass this test, and you have passed.' He held the band, the one that enhanced their Guardian's power, out to the other.
He did not take it. 'I cannot,' he protested. 'I am a mere peasant –'
'Who bears the mark of royalty,' the Pharaoh interrupted. 'The mark that only the line of the Pharaoh can carry without taint. And you are needed to fight this nameless beast, for our guardians of light are powerless while he hides in the dark.'
07. Forever
They followed the boy's lead, coming across the nameless beast upon a village at the edge of the Nile. Izumi's half scream was the first indication, for she saw it with her inner eye well before the eyes of her body were lain upon the village itself.
'A beast with no limits,' she breathed with a terrified awe. 'One that could rival even the Gods.'
'If it can rival the Gods,' the Pharaoh said heavily, than we are done. The Gods lie in slumber yet.'
'They will awaken to the Pharaoh of legend,' the advisor reminded. 'You concede too quickly my friend; there is hope yet, and forever while we, your guardians, stand by you and our guardians astride.'
'But how are we to defeat what we cannot see?' the mage asked. 'For only one amongst us has the eyes to see it…or perhaps two.' He half-glanced at the Prophetess.
'We bring it to the light,' the mage apprentice replied, readying his disk. 'Guardian of Water, come forth! Reflect thy light!'
A flipping tail flashed before vanishing into the darkness.
'Light is needed to be reflected my young apprentice,' the master said in amusement. 'And land is needed for a sea to form.' He raised his own arm. 'Come forth, Guardian of Earth!'
The ground trembled a little.
'And Guardian of Fire!' the advisor cried, lighting up the night with his flaming dragon. 'Here is your light to reflect.'
'And here,' the Pharaoh added, summoning his own Guardian. 'Guardian of Light!'
Silence.
A pause.
'The beast still roams,' Izumi said, her own spirit whistling softly. She turned to the one whose Guardian was the night spirit. 'Why does your beast not attack?'
'It is waiting,' the boy replied, equally softly. 'Your guardians are draining its energy; there is no cause to drive it away.'
'Indeed,' the mage nodded, being able to measure the strength by virtue of his magic. 'While it hides in the night, the light that traps it drains its power. Enough so that soon the guardian of the night will be able to wound instead of drive away.'
'Then we will see its true face,' the Pharaoh said quietly.
08. Sleep
They did defeat the invisible beast and therefore learn the identity of the true face behind it. And they were all shocked, for it was a face that united the Pharaoh himself with the strange peasant boy who bore the night Guardian.
But it was another meeting that was fated, one in fact that was planned upon a generation ago and while the sand remembered and held those memories to be unleashed, the time was naught to grasp them.
The man, wild and drowned in evil, shouted out his tale. Of the depths he sunk into to save his Pharaoh and his brother only to turn when the Pharaoh disagreed to his methods. He told of seizing his wife and children in front of the barren queen, while the Pharaoh begged to leave both to him and his tutelage.
In the end, they both won one apiece, and the man had slipped into the darkness of the world when his wife seized their child and abandoned him too.
So he destroyed the homes of those that walked in the light in his rage, those that embraced the Pharaoh's rule who had ripped his own family from him. And his anger grew beyond proportion as he saw his sons standing together, on the side of the Pharaoh.
The six Guardians were no match for the beast he awakened from its slumber. And the first he struck down was the one who had driven him too long from his blood.
09. Dangerous
The Pharaoh stood alone, just as the beast and his master wished him too. His companions, his guardians, lay sprawled and half buried in the sand, their Guardians taken from them and sealed in the tablets he had summoned from the magic that was his birth right.
It was a mockery of his power, for what was a king without his subjects? What was a person without his friends?
And the beast had grown exponentially in its might, devouring the five Guardians of the Pharaoh and of Egypt itself. They had fallen without delivering a scratch, worn from the battle of minds that had come before it in sustaining their beasts against the unseen.
And now they were defeated, in the face of Egypt's greatest enemy, with only the Pharaoh and his Guardian of Light to stand between a thriving land and its destruction.
'It is over,' the man – or not a man now – declared.
But the Pharaoh still stood.
'I cannot allow it.'
For all hope remained in his hand.
'We,' came the unanimous agreement…and perhaps the only reason it was heard, for the five forms barely moved though the struggle was clear.
The man who had become his own beast sneered at them. 'What will you accomplish?' he asked. 'With your Guardians sealed and your souls at the edge of the abyss?'
He soon found out, as the tablets cracked under the magic they were assaulted with, pooling their final energy…
And from the sanctuary in the far-off palace came an answering roar, and the sun rose in the darkest hour as Ra flew to fight the beast of darkness.
And Ra was victorious.
10. Writers Choice (End)
The wind came, brushing the sand to cover the debris of clay. The Pharaoh lay alone in the kingdom within his reach, his Guardian too spent in the effort to call upon Ra. The spirit hung in the air – he felt it – even if the others were gone, and he called upon it one final time.
'Go,' he whispered. 'Go to your resting place.'
It lay where it had fallen, but not before the Sun God who had come to his aid after he had lost all. But he did not need that reminder; he knew the evil had been sealed and not destroyed, for they had not the power to do it with. And thus the evil would one day return.
'And I shall come with you.'
For he now was the only one that lived and knew of the fight, and the sacrifices that had been needless, perhaps necessary. But he had no choice but to trust now to the river of Fate, to collect the power needed and transport it to the future, where this time, they could defeat the evil for eternity.
But they would need his memories, and his own spirit was weary beyond wear, and so together the Pharaoh and his Guardian fell into sleep, until the day would come wherein they would be released.
And that day did not come for thousands of years, but there was no room to despair in sleep.
And he awoke in a new era, unrecognisable, and with no recollection of his past nor understanding of his future. He knew one thing though, and it was this he thought.
I have been waiting for you, MinamotoKouji.