Lost
Yu-Gi-Oh! and it's characters © Kazuki Takahashi
I think myself insane to come back to this place.
My brothers would certainly think so if they knew I was here. This place is anathema to us, something unsettling and sickening lurking beneath the ruins on the surface. But I wanted a place to be alone, to contemplate, and there was no where else I could feel...
Comfortable is not the word. Not after everything that happened down here. I can only tell myself this place is familiar. I leave the term at that.
I trail my hand along the walls, ancient and written with hieroglyphs. I see faded speckles of color and note now that these walls must have been painted so brightly at one point, far ago in the past. Tombs were meant to be decorative, almost garishly so. I assume somewhere after the first 1,000 years the Ishtar clan gave up on maintaining the colors. For so many generations after, my family saw little to nothing more than the pallet of raw limestone and dirt. It was befitting of our environment and lifestyles, living underground like termites.
A shame, but I did not come here to resent the scenery. I needed quiet and peace of mind.
I wander the halls, not bothering to light the torches. It was a definitive sign no one lived here anymore. Since that day Malik's darkness took hold and skinned our father alive like a pig, the clan all but disbanded. My father proved to be a pissant of a man and less of a leader during his rule, and our family scattered to the winds the moment Malik and Rishid ran off to their own endeavors. Loyalty was a word that may as well have been struck from the walls and torn from the scrolls.
I now find myself staring at rays leaking from the opening of the faux well high above the tomb. I recall a story told by a relative about weary travelers often dropping buckets down, hoping desperately for water and receiving nothing. When I was younger, I asked what happened after, and one of two things occurred. Some gave up and left. Most looked down the well. After that, the guardsmen and hunters would chase them on the surface and bring them down to the tomb to behead them. The clan's secrets and whereabouts were not public domain.
I could not blame Malik for his curiosity when he constantly asked me about the surface when we were children. Our clan lived underground, isolated from the world, but we did not sever all ties. It was impossible to survive otherwise. It was purely the head of the clan, Malik and our father and our father's father and those that came before them, who were totally forbidden to walk in the sun. They were not to be corrupted by the societies beyond the ground, to be tainted and lose sight of their roles to serve the Pharaoh when his time came to walk into the Afterlife. The few times the lesser Ishtars ventured to the surface was for necessities, things we could not obtain underground.
I sit cross-legged in the center of the tomb under the light and sigh deeply. Necessities. It was a blanket term. More than food and water were needed to keep the family alive. Every now and again, I remember tales of the clan coming to the surface and raiding tribes for their women so the bloodline would not get stale.
I ponder this thought no further. It is an ugly part of my family's history.
Here, I shall choose to remember better days.
I remember my first steps onto the surface, to see the clear blue sky and the sun greeting me like an old friend. My first walk through the bazaar, there were so many sights and scents I had never experienced, and the people. Never had I seen so many gathered in one place. I was in utter awe and the experience struck me to the core.
I remember the time I took Malik to the surface, how much his face must have resembled mine when I saw the world for that first time...
I look to the limestone floor as I come back to the morbid history.
It was my fault my family was broken that day. We reunited in the end, yes, but there was so much damage dealt and blood shed on our way there. Malik's devices to collect the God Cards threatened the fabric of the world, but I find myself only a tinge grateful that it was the path he followed. Fate intended it to be so. Yet even with the guidance of the Millennium Necklace I once wore, I feared for a time that Malik would use his underground society for something more malicious than gathering cards for a seemingly harmless children's game. The Middle East was a powder keg, and he could have very easily gained allies that would have gotten him and Rishid on the radar of Blackwater and the CIA.
I am thankful they did not go down that twisted, fetid road.
My own path to meet my brothers far in the future was a harsh journey. It was painstakingly difficult to gain my position as the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. I was only twenty at the time I attained the title, and what it took was many years of relentlessly serving as raw labor and intel for foreign archaeologists and their excavations. With luck (and the Millennium Necklace), I eventually met Maximillion Pegasus during a trip to Egypt. He was thrown by my knowledge of the ancient world and my recognition of his... ocular replacement.
He graciously pulled strings that allowed me to gain entrance into the SCA. Eccentric as he was, the man had power and he knew where to apply it. Money talks.
Though I knew it was going to occur in advance, I still thanked him. With his assistance, I was welcomed among the archaeological elite and secured a position that would allow me to place everything into motion when it would come time to face my brothers...
I rub my temples. The Secretary General, it was my title once. Stability came to my family for a very long time after Pharaoh Atem ascended. My career flourished while Malik attended classes at the University of Cairo. Rishid, ever magnanimous, chose to work beside me as an assistant in my endeavors. We lived well for a time. Life was very good to us.
Then, the revolution happened.
I do not delve into the political details with myself, even in silence. I have done enough of that with my brothers. Amidst the chaos, I lost my position as the Secretary General, was forced out of my own office. It was a harsh blow, but worse followed. After a year, Cairo became uninhabitable to our family and we fled. For now, we are taking refuge in the south with old members of the clan. We had stumbled upon them by sheer chance and coincidence. It is strange how fate works.
I bow my head and my eyes feel heavy with tears. Even before the revolution, I still felt out of the place with this Egypt, the modern Egypt. The Egypt I had been raised with was the old Egypt, the archaic Egypt, Kemet. For my first tongue was not Arabic, but was that of an age so far gone it was considered a dead language, my gods so old they are thought to be naught more than myths, my world frozen in a time that the country has long since replaced.
This is not the Egypt I know anymore, and at the time of my birth, my brothers' births, perhaps it was an Egypt we were never meant to understand. We lived with thoughts of an Egypt with painted monuments bursting from the sands and sovereign dynasties. We lived in the long dead shadow of an Egypt only seen in historical documents and ruins. It was the Egypt that the world revered and then promptly forgot in the text books after the final chapter mentioning Cleopatra's death. The Egypt we knew, the Egypt we lived with in our youth, does not exist anymore.
This Egypt, the current Egypt, is an Egypt so far gone from what we knew, we do not even think we can claim it as our homeland anymore.
We are lost.
END
A/N: Holy schmoly. Did JAS just write something other than Black Lagoon?
Yes, yes I did. Truth be told, many, many years ago, when I first got into fanfiction, my first story was actually a Yugioh fanfic. It, along with many following abominations to literature, were removed in 2006 and I swore I would never write again. A year later, I saw a quaint, cheery little anime about pirates in Thailand and the spark to write was ignited once again.
Back when I was heavily into Yugioh, one of my favorite characters out of the cast was Isis. There was something about her stoicism I found appealing, and because shut up.
This idea came into my head about a month ago in a dream, and I did have to wonder. The Ishtars may have lived underground, but it was proven they still had to go to the surface from time to time. How would they have experienced the modern world after so many years of living as though things never wholly passed the Middle Kingdom? How would they live after their duty to the Pharaoh was accomplished?
It was very difficult to get back into Isis' mindset after all these years. I still don't think I nailed it, and truth be told, I don't think I ever did have her character pinned down to begin with. But, I still gave it a go. So enjoy this plot bunny I got out of the cage.
Cheers.