Chapter Five

Feni!" With the last yell from Sid, the workmen pried the base open. The stone at the front fell away and suddenly an intense burst of liquor sprayed out from where the seams had just been. Screams of pain filled the air, as the diggers hit by the liquid started to jump away and reel around the room. The skin hit by the liquor—mostly their faces, hands and arms—had started to melt cleanly off. One by one they hit the floor while the liquor burned through the rest of their skin, and, thrashing around for a few seconds, they finally stilled, dead, and what was left of them being half-skeletal already.

Carefully the Americans took a step closer, eying the remains mistrustfully. Only Keith nodded. "Just as you said. No fool indeed."

The dust was slowly starting to settle; Yugi was almost sure he could see something again. Slowly he and his friends got up, eying the room and themselves carefully, wary of another collapse and any injuries which might have been obtained. But the ceiling seemed to be stable now, and once Yugi saw what had literally been dropped into their laps, any thought about possible instabilities flew right out of the window.

It was massive, even lying flat on the ground as it did it nearly reached Yugi's shoulders. The shape was rectangular, with the design and the form of the lid and the sight imitating palace walls, like the musters found on the walls of the Djoser complex. The black stone it was made from, granite most likely, was carefully carved with hardly any hieroglyphs or decorations in sight apart from the palace wall design. But even without them, without the hieroglyphs forming the spells from the Book of the death, Yugi knew what it was. His heart suddenly beat faster.

"Oh my god. Its…it's a sarcophagus."

He took a step towards it, to let his hand glide over the smooth stone. For a moment he could almost imagine to feel warmth under his fingers, as if the stone would still contain the heat of the sun under which it had rested millenniums ago. But the feeling was fleeting, just a passing fancy, and the stone was as cold as the rest of their surroundings, almost freezing.

"Buried at the base of Seth." He looked up at the ceiling in thought. "He must have been somebody very important." That was the most likely explanation. The slaves used to bury and prepare the people honoured here were left to the heat of the desert to mummify themselves, and the soldiers who had killed them in turn also couldn't expect a better burial than them. No, a sarcophagus meant somebody important. Still, there was something wrong about this picture. The sarcophagus was too, well, new for a better lack of word, for the honourable burials in Hamunaptra. They ended at the beginning of the Old Kingdom, yet a sarcophagus as this could only come from the New Kingdom, more than a thousand years later…

His mind went back towards the preparation room, to the iron tools, and a bad feeling started to manifest in his stomach. Somebody had been buried here way later than anybody should have been. But in silence, without his name or title or anything recorded on his sarcophagus. The question was, why?

Joey, stepping up next to him to inspect the sarcophagus a bit closer, seemed to answer Yugi's unspoken question. "Or he did something very naughty." Silence filled the room after that.

Far away from such uncomfortable questions, Kokurano was still happily dropping amethyst scarabs into his pouch. But the next one he pried loose slipped off his fingers, and instead of into the bag, it dropped onto the floor. For a second it just lay there, unmoving and unnoticed by him. Then, suddenly, it began to move, to wiggle, as if something was trying to break free. Tiny cracks appeared on the stone surface, spreading over it—and then with a slight breaking sound it split open, letting a tiny and very much alive scarab run free. And run it did, straight for Kokurano's shoe, to bury itself underneath it.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then suddenly, Kokurano's eyes began to widen, and he screamed, a high, terrified sound. It echoed through the rooms and the corridors as he dropped his knife, and started to claw away on his pant leg, on his shirts, till he finally, in one desperate gesture, tore his shirt open. Jewellery and decorative ornaments scattered over the floor, but he barely noticed that, too occupied with the big lump under his skin which was moving fast over his belly and chest. He started to run, hitting walls at the process, still clawing at the lump, trying to get it to stop. It had reached his neck now, still unconcerned by any of his increasingly desperate tries. Tears appeared in his eyes, and then suddenly, the lump vanished from his neck to dive straight into his brain.

After clearing of the sarcophagus top a bit, it was a bit of a relief for Yugi to finally find at last a hieroglyphic inscription. Ok, it was just one—and very big, and pretty much ominous looking, but at least it was not nothing. Or so he thought till he actually read what was written there.

A nervous cough from Joey snapped Yugi out of his thoughts. "So, what's the verdict? Who lies in that thing?" He still eyed the sarcophagus like it was a ticking time bomb.

Normally Yugi would have smiled that at, but he was too confused for that now. "I…don't know." His fingers glided over the inscription again. "The nameless one. That's all what's written here."

Tristan snorted. "Well, that doesn't sound creepy at all."

Again Yugi only nodded. Creepy, yes, that was good word. He would have added ominous as well. And confusing as hell.

For the Egyptians, a name was part of a person, part of their soul. To deny someone their name, to eradicate them from memory, was similar to destroying them and making it impossible for them to reach the afterlife. But then why the hell had they even buried him? If you had the body, you could just destroy it; it would have pretty much the same effect. Preserving the body was the first step of reaching the afterlife, so why did this guy get a very expensive sarcophagus and thus a very expensive burial and still got denied his name on the sarcophagus? Talk about mixed signals.

"Hey, Yugi!" Tristan's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. His friend had continued dusting off the sarcophagus, and now winked at Yugi over-excitedly. "There's a lock or something like that here. Looks like they wanted to make sure he really didn't get out."

Blinking Yugi walked over to Tristan. He was right: there was something on the sarcophagus, which could be a lock. A round shape rose out from the rest of the stone with a star-shaped depression in the middle—the seal of Seti I. Suddenly something clicked in his mind.

"A key! So that's what he meant!"

He looked up excitedly at his friends, who returned his look very questioning. "Huh?"

At Joey's question Yugi started to dig around in his pocket. "You remember, the guy on the boat?"

Joey narrowed his eyes. "You can bet I do."

With a triumphant sound Yugi finally drew out the puzzle-box from his pocket. "He wasn't just looking for a map, he was looking for a key too." Smiling he let the puzzle-boy snap open, unfolding into the same shape of the depression in the lock. Yugi looked up to smile at his friend, but that smile disappeared into shock, when the sound of loud, panicked screams started to fill the air. It took them only one look to run off, in the direction of the scream, Yugi and Tristan first, with Joey a bit behind, a look on his face that clearly spelled out that all his worst suspicions about this city had begun to come true.

They found Kokurano screaming his head off, only a few twists and turns away from them. He was running around in circles, clawing at his head, jumping and throwing himself at walls sometimes, a look of such pure fear and desperation on his face that Yugi couldn't help but feel for him. But he couldn't see what was wrong with Kokurano, or any way to help him.

Carefully he took a step closer, just as Kokurano started to rip his hair out. Joey and Tristan used this moment to try and catch him arms, to hold him down before he could hurt himself even more, but with a strength born of desperation Kokurano threw them off and ran down the corridor they had come from, and then straight against the wall at the end, head first. There was crunching sound when his head hit the wall, and then silence, as Kokurano fell over backwards, all limbs stretched away from him and glassy eyes wide open, his face frozen in an eternal mask of terror. He was dead.

Carefully Yugi and the others took a step closer. Nothing moved in the tunnel; no sound could be heard but their own breaths, and apart from the terror frozen on his face Kokurano appeared completely unharmed. No wounds were visible, nothing that could give any hint as to what had happened to him. In the deafening silence and the freezing cold of the tunnel, the three friends shared a wide-eyed look of horror.

Even hours later, Yugi couldn't forget the sight. Huddled in a blanket he sat in the middle of the city ruins, staring at their campfire. Every crackling of the flames and the wood reminded him of the sound of Kokurano's skull breaking, and every time he closed his eyes he could still see his face, the never ending fright written on it. He shivered.

Truth to be told, he hadn't particularly liked Kokurano, had found him ridiculous, and annoying and arrogant, but now he could feel nothing but grief for him. He may not have been the nicest person around, but he hadn't deserved to die like that. Nobody deserved to die like that.

And under the grief and the shock, there was the fear. They didn't know what had happened to him, what had made him so terrified. Whatever it was, it could still lurk inside this city, waiting for them, for anyone else, to catch and kill. Or it could already have gotten another victim. Another shiver passed down Yugi's spine, and he pressed his eyes shut, trying to shock the image raising in his head, about his grandfather running, just as scared and in pain as Kokurano; about his body lying in one of these endless dark rooms under the city, with the exact same look of fright as on Kokurano's face, having died alone and scared, while his grandson had gotten too distracted by strange mysteries and discoveries, heartlessly forgetting what he was looking for, not even caring anymore…

Then your grandfather is already dead… Ryou's words echoed in his head, and Yugi shook it, trying to quiet the voice. No, no, his grandfather wasn't dead, he hadn't died like that. He couldn't…but for the first time it was really hard to believe those words.

He barely looked up when Joey let himself fall down with a sigh next to him. "What do you think killed him?" Yugi's voice was still full of horror, and Joey's shrug clearly conveyed how uncomfortable he felt.

"Hell if I know. But those tunnels down there just got a lot scarier, and they weren't the most reassuring place to begin with." The scrunching of footsteps on the sand announced Tristan's return. He carried a bag with him, which he placed down next to Joey, before he sat down himself.

"And they are still about to get worse. Looks like the Americans had their own accident today. Three of their diggers were killed."

Yugi looked up in horror. "How?" He had known, theoretically speaking, that the city was dangerous, that everything had been done to guard it. But stories of traps were usually just that: stories. No grave or pyramid or temple had ever been turned into a deadly trap for invaders. Suddenly finding out that just this once the stories paled compared to the reality was a very rough thing to swallow.

When Tristan laughed as an answer, it sounded anything but happy. "Salt acid. Pressurised fucking salt acid. Some sort of ancient booby trap." He shook his head, still unbelieving.

Joey stared ahead into the flames, eyes unreadable. "I told you, that place is cursed." As if to prove his words a gust of wind suddenly blew through the camp, making all three of them jump.

Yugi laughed nervously. "That was some perfect timing." He still didn't sound a lot more optimistic.

Joey snorted. "What, you still don't believe in curses?"

Yugi shrugged. "Not really, no. Acid, and what ever happened to Kokurano, that's no curse. Those are traps made by a human mind. A human mind can beat and break them too. You can touch them, see them. I believe in that, not magic."

Tristan nodded along and then determinedly grabbed the bag he had carried here. It was only when he started to dig around in it, that Yugi recognised it was Kokurano's handbag. "Let's see what our friend here believed in. Maybe we'll find some answers there." He put on hand into the bag and started to shuffle through the contents. Yugi and Joey watched him with curious eyes, while he drew some pretty exaggerated grimaces. But suddenly Tristan screamed, making Yugi and Joey jump, drawing his hand out of the bag so fast as if he had been bitten.

"What happened?!"

"Damn it mate, what's wrong?!"

Yugi and Joey screamed almost at the same time, while Tristan, with an irritated look on his face, sucked on his finger and then reached back into the bag to drag out a liquor bottle, with its top chopped off.

"Just cut myself guys, no reason to panic." He looked at the bottle again. "Too bad that this stuff has run out. He may have had a rotten taste in clothes, but he knew his spirits." Smiling at the bottle he turned the rest of the bag inside out, revelling nothing but sand.

With the first real smile this evening, even if it was still week, Yugi shook his head, while Joey just rolled his eyes in an exasperated smile. For a while the mood seemed to lift, the horror of the last day slowly disappearing into the background. Even the constant winds of the city didn't seem to back. Yugi had just settled back into his place at the fire, ready to call it a day and maybe try to catch his sleep, when suddenly the sound of gunfire, screams and the clatter of horse hooves on sand and stone rang out through the air.

Joey was on his feet immediately, angrily shaking his head. "Damn it, not again." With that he took off, straight towards the American camp, with Tristan and Yugi only slightly behind. They arrived to a scene of pure chaos.

There seemed to be people and horses everywhere. Gunshots; panicked workers running around trying to find some safety; the Americans shooting back; it all was just one big mess without easily defined actors. But even through this chaos, Joey could discern the two most important things: one, there were some people on horses, and a dozen, maybe even more, who were attacking them, and two, he recognised the clothes they wore. Ok, it was night, they wore black, all cats are grey in the dark and so on, but fuck it, there were black clothed people attacking them on the ship, and the people now attacking them wore black too. You didn't need to be good at math to come to the conclusion that these two instances might just be the same people. The chances that they had unknowingly managed to piss of two different sets of people with similar cloth styles were really low.

And fuck it, those guys actually knew what they were doing. Even as he watched, trying to dodge the bullets and the horses, he could see the first diggers dropping to the ground, with blood spilling out under them, unmoving. Blood and sand…Who had said that again? Fuck it, it was not important right now. The Americans were shooting back—valiantly, he had to admit—and they actually managed to kill some of the riders too; Joey could see the dead men drop from their horses, but that didn't seem to discourage the attackers. On the contrary, they just rounded in on their targets more.

A painful scream filled the air, and Joey watched in slight shock as Bandit Keith suddenly collapsed, blood splattering from a wound in his shoulder. He was down, but still capable of screaming, or in this case, cursing at his friends to get him the hell out of here. Bonz and Sid actually listened, even though they hesitated a bit before throwing themselves in the line of fire, which just earned them another barge of insults.

Joey shook his head, ducking behind the rest of a stone wall nearby. Damn, this didn't look good. Those riders definitely had the upper hand, with most of the workers already running, or dead, and him and his friends having no weapons. There was a vague hope that, if Yugi and Tristan had the sense to stay behind—which was, knowing them, even more unlikely than those attackers not being their friends from the boat—that he could try and get back to them, maybe hide in the ruins till the attackers had disappeared. Not even they could search the whole ruins. Not a good plan, he had to admit, and it involved leaving the Americans to their fate, which was something he didn't actually want to do either, despite how unsympathetic they had been. There had been enough death for his taste already. But he didn't see anything else he could do—which admittedly made running towards the gunfire the stupidest thing he had ever done, but it wasn't like he actually had time to think about that. And leaving somebody alone under attack…ah damn, he just couldn't do that. Oh well, the Americans must have had some weapons lying around; they brought a whole damn arsenal with them, if he recalled correctly. Maybe he could borrow something. Just for a while, of course.

Standing up, armed with a new plan and the vague idea of finding Yugi and Tristan in this mess, Joey hastened forward, only to stop when he spotted movement among the riders. He couldn't say why it felt familiar, why he was suddenly sure that he knew that particular rider. Maybe it was instinct, a certain sense for danger which had saved his ass countless times before. Or maybe had known, even back when he last saw him, that he would meet that guy again. That had been what his eyes had promised, after all: an unsettled debt. For there, on one of the horses, right in front of him, was the guy from the boat. Joey would have betted his life on that.

Running through the ruins and trying not to die, Tristan was cursing Joey again. It was a constant thing, something that he had done almost daily since meeting Joey, but really, really, in all those years they had known each other, Joey still hadn't learned that you don't run towards a gun fight, but away from it, especially if you were unarmed. Knowing him, Joey was probably just realising that again, now, right in the middle of the fight. And so who had to get both his and Yugi's asses out there again? Right, Tristan.

Locked in his own thoughts, and busy with cursing Joey and trying not to lose sight of Yugi too, Tristan only noted the person running straight at him, while ostensibly trying to stay in the shadows and remain unseen, when he collided with them. It was a short clash, the other person running so fast, that they and Tristan nearly both landed on the sand. Only Tristan's fast reaction and an instinctive grasp for the other's shirt kept them upward, and the collider from running. Tristan had already opened his mouth to either excuse himself or scream at the other person to watch out, when he realised just who he was holding. Under long white bangs, Ryou was glaring up at him, clearly furious. An surprised grin appeared on Tristan's face.

"Ryou! Nice to meet you again. Just where do you think you're going again?" If looks could kill, Tristan could have joined the shot workers and the guy in the sarcophagus they discovered on this day on their long journey into the afterlife; with the way Ryou's black eyes tore into him. He could almost hear him grinding his teeth.

"On a moonlight walk of course, can't you see?" And he had clearly lost none of his bite.

Tristan just grinned more, while he started to drag Ryou back to camp. "How nice, you're a real romantic after all. While we walk you can tell about your friends here? If I recall correctly you know them, right? How did you call them again? Medcinas?"

Ryou tore at his arm, trying to pry himself lose. "Medjay, you cretin. And they are not my friends." He sounded like he wanted to spit every word into Tristan's face. How cute.

Tristan just nodded, with the same grim smile on his face as before. "Good, then they are going to be really happy to see you." No way was he going to let this bastard run away now. He needed answers, and if they would survive this night, he was going to get them.

Joey was still frozen on spot, staring up at his attackers on the boat. He was galloping through the camp, one of the only ones of the attackers not using a guns, opting instead for a scimitar or something similar. Probably normal weapons weren't good enough for this guy. The sight almost glorious, his silhouette lighted by some of the smaller fires having broken from smashed up lamps all over the camp, like a vengeful god of death riding into battle. Too bad that he was really good with his chosen weapons, and that this was no picture-perfect awe-inspiring sight, but just someone on a hose killing people rather bloodily.

Joey's stomach almost rebelled at the sight of diggers being cut down left and right of him like they were just cornrows. Fuck it, he had seen his fair share of violence before; he practically grew up on the streets, thank you. But this…he had never liked to see innocent people paying for what they had no part in, and damn, those people, they had just wanted to earn some money to try and make a living. Whatever the riders were attacking them for, they had the least to do with it. They were just at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Maybe that was what drove him forward, what let the red haze of anger, all too familiar and blowing every sense of self-preservation out of the window, descend over his mind. Joey just ran, tackling some of the ruins and a couple of rocks in stride, till he had reached nearly the same height as the boat guy on his horse…and then he did what had worked once before, he jumped at him, and tackled him right off his horse. Both of them hit the ground in a mess of clothes and limbs, and Joey could feel something sharp fly past his face, feel his skin break, and while the air got pressed out of his lungs he realised, oh right, sharp weapon, should probably do something about that. He tried to fight to get up again, to get into a better position, only to look up straight into a pair of icy blue eyes glaring at him.

"You." The voice was deep and sharp, a low, threatening hiss promising both recognition and pain. Clearly boat guy had remembered their last encounter too. Joey reacted automatically by grinning up at him.

"Hi!" Then he tried to grab the scimitar, to wrestle it out of his enemy's hand. He had a slight advantage here; being a long range weapon it was almost useless as close as they were now. That didn't mean his enemy was out of options though.

The moment Joey made a grab for it, his enemy dropped it, and before Joey could react to that, the boat guy suddenly held a dagger in his right hand, making a very close leap towards Joey ribs. Joey could barely roll away in time, a teasing sound could be heard when the dagger slid through his clothes. He fell backward, kicking at his enemy, trying to sweep him off his balance while struggling to get up—only to nearly fall down again when another rider also armed with a scimitar rode past him and nearly took his head off in one fell swoop. Damn it, did they all had this weapon stowed away somewhere? Joey managed to dive out of the way again, landing on his feet now, and immediately turning around to face his enemy—

Only to discover that where boat guy once stood there was nothing but air now. Gulping Joey turned around, trying to find him, and trying to ignore the feeling that he could cut him down from behind any second now.

It was one of the only times Yugi had ever been grateful for his smaller frame. It made hiding in the dark and among those ruins so much easier. The riders just rode by him without even seeing him. He carefully ducked behind another broken wall and glanced around. The whole campsite was pure chaos: one tent was on fire, and the wounded and the dead of both sides lay strewn around everywhere. It was sickening, and Yugi nearly stumbled over his own feet when he tried to move on. He had lost Joey and Tristan somewhere on the way between their camp and this, and the fear of finding one of them or both among the corpses on the ground was enough to drive him forward.

Later he couldn't say why he heard it over all the sounds and shots and screaming, but somewhere behind him the pattern of hooves on the sand suddenly sounded much closer than it should have been. He turned around, just in time to doge a scimitar aimed for his head. One of the riders had spotted him, and this close Yugi could see his face, astonishingly young, barely older than Yugi himself, and a determined look in his violet eyes. It was not hate, nothing so personal, just the clear promise of killing him, and that scared Yugi more than anything else that night.

He tumbled backwards over the wall stifling a scream, and jumped on his feet almost immediately to take off again. The terrain was rough, with stones and broken archways and columns laying around everywhere. That was the one advantage he had, for as long as he could keep moving and stay out of the gunfire, the riders would have a devil of a time trying to reach him. He just hoped his friends realised the same thing.

Tristan had managed to make his way over to the Americans. Ryou had refused to say anything more during their short trip together, but the way he looked at the so called Medjay around them made it clear that he was deeply uncomfortable with them. Honestly, Tristan could almost feel for him here: they were frightfully effective at decimating their enemies. But it was the first time he had ever seen Ryou anything close to frightened, when the boy wasn't playing at that to make others feel more at ease. He definitely had to talk with him about that.

Currently he had shoved Ryou into one of those old temples rising up from the ground here and there, one that seemed to be in comparatively good condition, and had taken his stand with the Americans holding the ground before it. In one hand he still held the sadly empty bottle from Kokurano; in the other hand a weapon borrowed, readily picked up and claimed as his own now from the Americans. Sensing for raiders advancing at him and his new battle mates at once, he really wished the bottle hadn't been broken or empty. He would have given anything for something to drink now.

They opened fire once their enemies were within reach, and when the smoke cleared, Tristan was relieved to see them either dead or gone. He just wanted to say something to congratulate themselves on their good show, when suddenly some of those Medjay landed behind him. They must have been on top of the temple, but there was no time to think anymore, for Tristan, throwing the gun aside, found himself locked in a hand-to-hand combat for his life. Well, wasn't that a reminder of the good ol' days. With angry determination, and the fading regret that he had wanted to leave all that behind damn it, he threw himself into the fight.

It was a thundering sound that first tipped Joey off that his enemy might be about to return. He was still roughly at the same place where he had lost the attacker from the boat from sight, turning around and desperately trying to find a weapon, anything to defend himself against the boat guy, when he heard the sound behind him and turned around just in time to find his enemy again sitting on a new horse, and giving a determined look to kill him.

With a yelp, Joey ducked, grasping the first thing he could, and raising his hands almost instinctively to protect himself against the guy's scimitar. What he had grabbed had been a stone, and predictably the scimitar flipped it out of his hand without even stopping its way once. Joey dived away, feeling a swish of air as the scimitar flew over where his head had just been a second earlier, and hastily grasped at the sand for anything useful. Damn it, there had to be something—a gun, a sword, hell Joey would have settled for one of those guy's scimitars, that would even out the odds… His hand struck something, and he dragged it up to find a stick of dynamite in his hands. The Americans must have brought it with them, possibly to clear a way that might be unpassable. Joey blinked at the stick in his hand for a second, looked up at a small burning fire near him, and made the dumbest, most risky decision he had ever made in his live.

He ran off, dogging boat guys attacks, and with one fast move shoved the stick into the fire, lighting the fuse. Then he turned around, standing up straight to face the man on the horse, hovering now right in front of him.

Ok buddy, let's see what you are going to do now. True, I'm definitely dying with this, but so are you, and are you willing to risk that?

Only, looking at that impassive face glowing down on him, Joey had the sinking feeling that his enemy would actually be fine with dying. There was something there—a determination beyond what was normal—that made Joey think that this was a price his enemy would pay.

For a second they just looked at each other, the man on the horse and Joey holding up the burning dynamite with shaking fingers. He didn't want to do this, didn't want to die. But he saw no other way of ending this. He had no idea where Tristan and Yugi where, but if he couldn't see them, then they could possibly be safe from the explosion. Maybe this was what was necessary to drive their attackers off. He didn't want to do this, but if he had no other choice…

His attacker looked at him, face unreadable. Joey could only imagine what a pathetic look he must have offered: exhausted, in clothes he had worn for more than one day, panting from exhaustion, and now shaking all over. Not really a look to strike fear into anyone's eyes. But fuck if he would surrender now.

Raising his head steadily, he returned the man's look with one of his own, full of the determination he could muster. Yes, he didn't want to die, and he was afraid. But fuck it if he would let that stop him. Then suddenly he man's eyes flickered away from Joey, the look in them changing just so slightly, towards their surrounding and the people still fighting there. Towards his people still fighting there, Joey realised, and the first seed of hope took root in his heart. Maybe…if he was very lucky then his enemy might actually be…

Joey had hit the jackpot that night.

His enemy suddenly looked up, and shouted, "Enough. Yallah!"

And the attackers listened.

Astonished Joey observed as they just lowered their weapons and started to ride off, disappearing back into the night where they had come from. The leader…. Fuck this guy was their leader. Joey saw how the Americans stood up to look to them, as confused as he felt, saw Tristan standing with them, with a few cuts but alive, and Yugi ducking out from behind a wall nearby, and relieved flooded his veins. They were all right, they were still alive.

Of course that was the moment when he suddenly felt the cold touch of scimitar at his neck.

Looking back up again, following the trail of the weapon, Joey looked into his enemy's eyes. The emotion in them was unreadable. "We will shed no more blood tonight." He spoke evenly now, the first time Joey could really here his voice, rich and deep, and with a certain sharpness that promised that every word was meant exactly as it was, and that there would be hell to pay if they were ignored. It was slightly unsettling to listen to and impossible to ignore, and Joey had to fight the urge to just nod along with it, but he managed to hold his head still, and return his gaze evenly.

The man's eyes narrowed. "But you must leave. Leave this place or die." He looked towards the Americans, and a look of disgust ran over his features, before he glanced back at Joey. "You have one day." With that he grabbed the reins, turned his horse around, and left, disappearing into the darkness, and leaving Joey behind and shaking in his clothes.

Only when he was sure the man had disappeared did Joey dare to breathe again, to blow out the fuse. Holy shit, this guy…what the hell had that been about?

Yugi was closest to him, and the first to reach him. Joey felt his friend's hand on his shoulder, and he shot him a quick, grateful smile. Yugi just looked at him concerned. "Are you alright?"

A hysterical laugh bubbled in his throat at this question, and Joey had to fight to keep it down. Was he all right? That was good one. Maybe Yugi could ask again in a few hours again, when he didn't feel like he had locked eyes and fought with the human form of a storm and been drawn into it completely, while still living to tell the tale.

He looked up at Yugi, black rings under his eyes from lack of sleep, eyes way too wide and full of worry and swallowing his hysterics. Joey found himself smiling. "Yeah, I'm fine." And to his great surprise he found that it was true. He was still shaken, still so afraid, and cursing every second they spent inside this damned city, but…he was still here, he was alive, Yugi was alive, and there was Tristan scrabbling up to meet them too, and it felt like they had beaten the odds. He had had an odd run of luck over the past couple of days; maybe he could dare to hope that it would hold on, and they—and ideally Yugi grandfather too, if they ever found him—could all leave this city. Not bloody likely, admittedly, but he could still dream.

Joey climbed up to his feet again and looked from one of his friends to the other. "How are you?"

Tristan lifted up his thumb. "Took a few hits, but I'm still standing."

Yugi nodded. "We are all right, it's fine."

A few feet behind them, Joey could hear the Americans scrambling to their feet, with Zygor rambling off excitedly, "See, that just proves it! Old Seti's fortune must be under this sand!"

Seti's fortune… Odd, in all the action over the past couple of days Joey had almost forgotten about that. And apart from the fact that he couldn't leave his friends alone, that was the main reason he had ever come to this city. Money for Serenity and her operation… It was still as important as ever, getting more urgent every day that passed, and yet…that was this guy's take from a near brush with death? That there must be gold? Those were some twisted priorities right there.

Unfortunately he wasn't the only one. Bandit Keith's smile was entirely too greedy and triumphant when he turned around to face his comrades. "Of course. If they protect it like this, you know there must be a fortune hidden here. Bastards just want it for themselves." Joey heard Yugi snort, and in the next moment his friend was already arguing against Keith and Zygusar, annoyance and much more anger that he would usually show in his voice.

"These men are desert people. They don't value gold; they value water." The disdain in his voice at the mere assumption hid confusion so well masked, that even Joey could barely pick it up. And yet, at Yugi's words the face of his enemy from before flashed right before his eyes, the face of a man ready to kill, but also ready to die for something. And he couldn't believe that thing to be gold, but he was actually afraid to know what exactly the reason for this attack was. Because if Yugi was right, and he usually was, then what the hell had they been here for? Why had they followed them since Cairo?

It was Bonz' voice, a little bit shaken and unsure, which tore Joey out from his thoughts. "May-Maybe we could, you know, join forces? For just a night?" Under Keith's glare he visible shirked, but still continued. "We got almost killed right now. It might not be the worst plan."

Joey blinked. Wow, what a surprise. Clearly, at least one of these Americans had more brain cells than he had first assumed. It wasn't a bad idea, and from the looks of the other Americans, they were more inclined to agree with Bonz than with Keith's angry posturing.

He looked over at Tristan, who shrugged, and then at Yugi, who only hesitated for a moment, before he shrugged too. Might as well raise their odds for survival. Yugi glanced at him once, getting the agreement of his friends one last time before he spoke. "Agreed. Tomorrow, we are all going finish the digs we started, and we will help each other out before we leave."

For a tense moment, Keith glared at Yugi like he expected him to drop death any second. But Yugi held his gaze, tired but even and determined, and finally Keith nodded, before he turned around and stormed off, leaving his friends to stumble behind him. Joey shook his head. What an arrogant asshole. This was going to be a long last day.

Even an hour later, when silence had descended over the camp, Yugi couldn't find any sleep. He was overly tired especially since Joey and Tristan had insisted that now was the right time to finally show him how to throw some punches, something they had tried to convince him to learn since he had met them. Though being attacked and nearly killed twice over the span of a couple days offered a very convincing argument.

It had even been fun to learn, he had to admit, and when he finally retired, he had hoped to find at least some sleep, purely from exhaustion alone. But one or two hours of fun couldn't clean the horrors of the day from his mind, and he still saw Kokurano dying in that corridor; still saw the workers and the attackers drop dead in the sand, their blood spilling everywhere, eyes wide open and afraid. Blood and sand, that was what Ryou had said awaited them in Hamunaptra, and he had been so right. Had that been what had happened to his grandfather?

Yugi's fingers wrapped around a small necklace hidden under his clothes, playing with the oval pendant on it. He never took it off, the pictures inside of his grandfather and grandmother being some of the most valuable possessions he had. They had raised him after a train accident had taken his parents' lives when Yugi was so young he could barely remember them.

His grandfather, always so proud of him, who had been so excited about games, who had loved Egypt and adventure in equal parts so much that he had married Yugi's grandmother, an Egyptian woman and quite of adventurer herself. A smile crossed Yugi lips. Probably she was born with that, given that the cellars of the village she had been born in led to old tombs. This circumstance had worked to supplement her village's income for a long time after all. Yugi had grown up surrounded by love and laughter and by stories about old graves, myths and temples … and now his grandfather might actually be dead, and Yugi had just one day, one last chance, to find him. He just wished he had been brave enough, had thought fast enough to actually ask the guy who had attacked Joey about his grandfather. Maybe he and his people would know…but if it was so, Yugi feared the answer.

He clutched the pendant tighter, and turned around once more. Stop that, he told himself. He would sleep and he would make the most of the day tomorrow. After all, he had to. Still, when silence and sleep fell over the city of the dead that night, it was an uneasy, waiting sleep, like the city was holding its breath, waiting for the things to come.