So this has been sitting in my WIP file half finished for over a year. Today I had a sudden burst of YGO inspiration and came to write it only to discover I couldn't really recall how I intended to finish it. I really love the opening though so I thought I'd fill in what I remembered and post it. So yeah, this is my head canon of how things were in the manga.
Marionettes
The Dark God has always been astounded by the arrogance of mortals.
He was born from the darkness long before their ancestors crawled on hand and knee out of the earth's mud. He had wreaked havoc – caused storms, disease, famine, draught – for millennia before their species had finally evolved to its current (still primitive) form. He had laughed at them as they claimed ownership over the land, as they built dwellings and communities and lives. He'd laughed at the self-important humans who thought that they had conquered this world and all the creatures in it.
It had given him so much pleasure to shatter that illusion.
The mortals had screamed in terror and fled before his might as he rained down death and destruction on them. When panic had set in they had no longer been the proud race they'd claimed to be – they'd shown their true, vile, cowardly colours; they'd proved that they were not gods. They'd bled and died too easily to be called gods. And the horror that had appeared on their faces when they saw the carnage, the horror that had filled him with malicious glee, had also fuelled his desire to drag the impudent mortals back into the dark abyss from which their ancestors had crawled.
It had never occurred to the Dark God that the mortals might devise a way to end his reign of tyranny. Using his own Shadow Magic against him, they had trapped him in the Afterlife. At first he had been unconcerned, certain in the knowledge that the pitiful creatures did not have the power to hold him for long. However, after many human years of trying to escape from his prison (for it had been a prison, complete with his own personal prison guards) he had grudgingly accepted that humans were smarter than he had anticipated. There was only one way to leave his cell and that was through the door he had entered. The door, however, couldn't be opened from his side. The presumptuous mortals had designed his prison so that he could not escape unaided; only a human living on the mortal plane could turn the key to open the Dark Door.
For centuries the Dark God had thought that he would never be free. With his dark presence no longer disrupting the human world life for the mortals had become easier. In his absence civilisation had blossomed and humanity had excelled. A village had been constructed around the door to his prison – the villagers the blessed guardians of the forbidden sanctuary that housed the Gate to the Underworld. His jailers were well cared for, their every need met so that they would not be tempted to release the Dark God in order to take vengeance on the world. The villagers of Kul Elna were happy and the world was at peace.
Then the Dark God's jailers had written down all the knowledge they had collected (including how to release him) in a book of Shadow Magic. The fools had wanted to ensure that their secrets would be safe and that their children would inherit the position of respect that they had enjoyed. They had never suspected that the book would be stolen and handed to the Pharaoh. The citizens of Egypt had respected and feared the villagers of Kul Elna because they had been the only ones with the knowledge of how to release the Dark God. As soon as the Pharaoh possessed that knowledge Kul Elna had lost its power and status. From that point on the village had begun to decay, its people slipping further and further into poverty. Some had tried to leave, to make a new life in the developing capital, but they were treated as outcasts and were forced to return. In the end (desperate for food and corrupted by their proximity to the Dark God) they turned to grave robbing.
From his prison the Dark God had watched all this occur. He had seen how the humans treated each other, had seen how corrupt they were, and had waited for the time when one of them would succumb to the greed in their heart and be tempted by the promise of his power.
Eventually, after many centuries of waiting, it happened. The village of Kul Elna was slaughtered by the Pharaoh's guards and offered up to him as a sacrifice. Their bodies were melted down into gold and became the Millennium Items – the keys to his prison. Finally the Dark God had not only the keys to his freedom, but two perfect puppets willing to use them.
The first was the one who had created the Millennium Items, the Pharaoh's brother Akhenaden. His heart was full of jealousy of his brother, resenting him for being born first; hating that he was able to live in the light whilst Akhenaden lived in the shadows. He resented his brother's son for being born and denying his own son a chance to become Pharaoh. He would do anything to make his own son Pharaoh. His hands were also stained with blood – the dirty deeds he had ordered to maintain the kingdom's stability. The Dark God could see that his greed would make him easy to manipulate.
The second puppet was a young boy, the sole survivor of the massacre of Kul Elna. Although the boy had so far been untainted by evil he was filled to the brim with fear, fear that was driving him towards madness. The Dark God could taste the boy's insanity and knew that a few whispered words would be enough to make the boy his. For during his centuries of imprisonment the Dark God had learned just how valuable humans and their emotions could be. If this boy was nurtured in darkness, if his mind was twisted by the belief that he was avenging his lost family, there would be nothing he could not do.
When Akhenaden took the Millennium Eye he forged a contract with the Dark God, unknowingly selling his soul for the power to make his son Pharaoh. When the young boy, Bakura, curled up beside the Tablet from which the Millennium Items had been made, the Dark God had extended his consciousness into the mortal world. He had spoken to the boy, told him that he could give him the power to avenge his family. He had brought the spirits of the villagers of Kul Elna with him and, predictably, they pleaded with the boy to bring them justice. Shaking, eyes wide with terror and uncertainty, the boy had made a deal – the power to gain his revenge in exchange for the Dark God's freedom. Once made the deal had been binding, and the Dark God had flooded the boy with his consciousness. It had not been a true possession as his consciousness was dormant, but his influence on the boy had been clearly visible. His fear had been replaced by a fiery determination to make the world burn, and the Dark God knew that he had chosen his puppet well.
For the next sixteen years Akhenaden lived his life unaware of the contract he had made, whilst the young Bakura matured into the King of Thieves. The Dark God watched those years play out with a building anticipation of what was to come, knowing that it would not be long before he was released from his prison and could take his revenge on mankind.
It was then that the Pharaoh died and his son ascended to the throne. At last Bakura made his move. The Thief King gathered the keys to the Underworld and, along with Akhenaden, released him from his prison. Unfortunately, the Dark God had not been able to enjoy his freedom for long. The new Pharaoh had stood against him and sacrificed himself in order to seal away the Dark God, as well as wipe his own and the Thief King's memory. The part of him controlling Akhenaden (who he had made the High Priest of the Shadows) was sealed into the Millennium Pendent along with the priest and the soul of the Pharaoh. The part of him controlling the Thief King was sealed along with Bakura into the Millennium Ring. The last part of him was banished to his prison in the Afterlife, where he was forced to wait for the chosen bearer of the Pharaoh's soul to solve the Millennium Puzzle, thus releasing the Shadows and restarting the battle for the mortal realm. Not that any of this daunted the Dark God; he was certain that he would win his rematch with the Pharaoh, as the pathetic mortal would not be able to seal him a second time.
Still, it was a long wait. 3000 years, in fact. And when the Millennium Puzzle finally found its true bearer there were complications the Dark God had not foreseen. The first was that the High Priest had no way of communicating with the vessel. The puppet was powerless and therefore useless to the Dark God. So he turned his hopes towards the part of himself trapped in the Millennium Ring, but here too there were complications. Over time the Thief King's soul had bled into his own, distorting it and infecting it with human emotion. This was not such a terrible complication at first, as the Thief King had not been a man riddled with weaknesses such as compassion. But then the thief's amnesia affected his own memory, and vital knowledge such as the Pharaoh's name and the existence of the High Priest were erased. His goal of finding the Millennium Items in order to unleash a dark power upon the world remained, but the rest of his memories were either suppressed or deleted. The Dark God was frustrated by this turn of events but he was not deterred. This knowledge was enough, for now, and further bleeding was prevented by separating the thief from the parasitic part of the God's soul. While Bakura slept the Dark God's soul in the thief's stolen aspect became Zork's avatar.
However, as more time elapsed in the mortal realm, further complications arose. The true bearer of the Millennium Ring, Ryou Bakura, turned against him and denied him his first victory over the Pharaoh. Precious months were lost trying to regain the boy's trust and cooperation. In the end the Dark God's avatar tricked the boy into placing the Millennium Ring around his neck in order to save the lives of his worthless friends. For a time the boy and the avatar lived in harmony; the boy accepted that he would black out occasionally and did not fight the subtle presence that was forever at the back of his mind. Their arrangement was perfect until Battle City and the avatar's duel with the Pharaoh. That was when the Dark God fully comprehended the extent of the Thief King's influence on his avatar – it was the whisper of the thief's soul that swayed the avatar into forfeiting the duel to protect the life of the host. The Dark God had acted swiftly after that. Whilst the host lay unconscious he had ordered the avatar to purge as much of the Thief King from it as possible. It was impossible after so long to separate them completely, but the avatar had done what he could to cure himself of pathetic mortal emotions. He then doubled the seals on the Thief King's soul room so that he could not interfere in proceedings without the avatar's permission.
Battle City's end marked the commencement of the final confrontation between the Dark God and the Pharaoh. The avatar charmed the host into creating the arena for that final conflict and the boy hurried to build what he thought was the key to his friend's salvation. The Dark God had laughed in the darkness of his prison whilst his faithful avatar kept watch on the boy's progress.
The Dark God had not considered the possibility that the host, in unconsciously weaving magic into his work, might cross into the Thief King's soul room. By the time the avatar had realised what had occurred that door had already been closed to him and he'd been forced to wait until the host returned to the waking world to assess the damage. He should not have worried – the host had been invigorated in his task rather than deterred. The Thief King might care for the boy but not enough to denounce his revenge.
The cycle continued until the work was finished: the host would enter the Thief King's soul room in his dreams and exit when he woke with stars in his eyes and a smile that the Dark God did not comprehend. The boy would spend every spare moment working to bring the diorama to life; sometimes he even spoke with the God's avatar. The avatar played at friendship with the host but it was all a lie – the Dark God made sure that it was a lie.
Now the battlefield is prepared and the Dark God is ready to meet his adversary. His puppets are prepared to play their parts and potentially give their lives for his victory. And what a victory it will be when he is whole again and the world is covered in a never-ending, suffocating darkness!
All it required was the tug of a few strings of his marionettes.
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