Disclaimer –"Yu-Gi-Oh!" and all related characters, events, and concepts belong to Takahashi Kazuki and any other related owners/distributors/producers. The world of Reirinsei and all related characters and concepts belong to Lunnaei. Dragon's just havin' fun. We get no monetary benefit from this. Our benefit is the enjoyment of dealing with beloved characters.
"Otherworld I: The Door"
by Lunnaei and DragonDancer5150
Chapter 9 – Kemet
The Puzzle! It has to be.
How many times over history has that golden box been pilfered from this place? How many people have tried to solve that Puzzle? As many have died as have dared to try, or so they say. And, mysteriously, the box disappears, returning here to await the one truly destined to solve it.
"Now go! Show me where it's safe to step!"
With a growl, I look back over my shoulder at my "guide" who now holds a gun to me. "Look, just . . . don't let your guard down."
My gaze drops for a moment to the carven slabs beneath my feet – five panels set along a bridge of stone spanning a black void. The likeness of an imaginative monster is engraved into the surface of each slab, one more terrible than the last. My mind goes back to the epitaph of hieroglyphics on the wall outside of this room. "The Ka sealed in the stone slabs shall judge you. The cowardly will be eaten by demons. The courageous will be shown the way." What can that mean?
I stand on the border between the fourth and fifth slabs. A few more steps . . . A few more steps and I'll conquer the Shadow Games!
KA-BANG!
The crack of a gun shatters the silence, the echo ricocheting off the ageless walls into the endless blackness above and below. With it, agony explodes through the top of my left shoulder. The force of the shot throws me off my feet, and I am falling. I manage to catch the edge of the bridge with my good hand as the traitorous bastard passes me overhead.
"See you in hell." His chuckling turns almost maniacal. "Heh, heh . . . the gold!"
I try to pull myself up but, with the wound, I have not the strength.
There is a rumbling. An earthquake?
"Wh-what . . . ? What's going on?"
I hear terror in his voice. I am below and cannot see, but I listen as his protest degrades instantly into wild shrieks as the snarl of an unknown horror drowns him out. I watch in sick terror as his forgotten torch throws shadows on the wall behind me, revealing a monster risen from the top surface of the bridge itself to grab and noisily devour the traitor.
'The cowardly will be eaten by demons . . . '
As suddenly as it took form, the demon vanishes, its punishing task complete.
. . . I made it so far . . .
My fingers slip another fraction of an inch, my hand's strength slowly failing.
Is this the end . . . ?
What is this? Someone is standing over me on the bridge. The traitor? No, can't be – I saw him eaten. Well, indirectly.
'The courageous will be shown the way . . .'
A ghost! It must be! There is no color to him but shades of silver-grey even in the yellow torchlight and I can almost see through his cloak billowing on a breeze that does not exist in this world, not in the still, musty air of the ancient tomb. He kneels, reaching out a hand to me, thick, almost star-shaped hair crowning his head, and I can see his face.
"I've been waiting . . . Si-Amun . . . "
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He awoke with a gasp, his struggle to pull back up onto the bridge instead toppling him the rest of the way off the bench. "Y-yugi!"
"Grandpa?"
"Grandfather, are you all right?"
"Mutou-Grandfather!"
Sugoroku looked up at the worried faces around him: Yugi, Anzu, and Mokuba. "Wh-where am I?"
"Are you okay, Grandpa?" Yugi fussed. "You were moaning in your sleep. It sounded terrible!"
"On Kaiba Corp's Seven-One-Alpha," Mokuba offered. "We're on our way to Egypt, remember?"
Sugoroku could hear and feel the muted, rumbling vibration in the floor beneath him. Ah, yes, now he remembered. They were on Kaiba's split-level luxury jet. He had laid down for a nap in the lounge on the upper deck. That dream . . . a memory over thirty years old . . .
"Grandpa?" Yugi pressed, giving his shoulder a light shake.
"Oh! Sorry. Yes, Yugi, I'm fine. I was . . . just remembering something that happened a number of years ago."
"It must have been awful," Anzu worried.
Sugoroku shrugged, unwilling to let the memory bother him. "Not completely. If it had not happened, Yugi wouldn't have this." He jabbed a thick finger at the Puzzle.
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"You're talking about the Tomb of the Nameless Pharaoh." Yugi nodded. For years when he was a child, Yugi had begged his grandfather to tell him what had happened – he knew there had to be a fantastic story behind the gaining of the mysterious, golden box – but, unlike most other stories of his adventures from his days as a globe-trotting adventurer and gambler, Sugoroku would never tell him that one, believing him too young for such a tale. Eventually, Yugi stopped asking. Years later, he solved the Millennium Puzzle and ever since had been too busy with the present to remember to ask again.
Sugoroku nodded, lips pursing in thought. "With the Puzzle no longer in residence, I wonder if the forces of the Shadow Games will still be in place."
"Shadow Games?" Mokuba echoed.
Anzu grimaced. "Yeah . . . like the crazy stuff we were seeing during the Battle City Finals."
"The traps protecting the Nameless Pharaoh's Tomb were animated by the energies of some powerful Shadow Games – "
"So do we still call it the 'Nameless' Pharaoh's Tomb?" Honda wanted to know, speaking up from the door of the lounge. "After all, he isn't 'nameless' anymore. I know I wouldn't want people to keep calling me that – eh, Atemu-sama?" He cocked an eyebrow at Yugi, teasing the spirit within.
Yugi absently fingered the cartouche pendant as he turned inward for a moment, then laughed. "He wants to know if we're getting tired of working his name into every other comment."
Honda shrugged, grinning, and leaned on the doorjamb with his arms folded. "What? Is he getting tired of hearing it already?"
Before Yugi could respond, Kaiba's voice sounded over the intercom, another voice murmuring in the background to Air Traffic Control. "Listen up, everyone. There's been a change of plans. A sandstorm has closed Luxor Airport so we're heading to Cairo International, instead. We'll be landing within the next ten minutes but there's a lot of turbulence, so get back to your seats and buckle up now because final approach is about to get interesting – "
Just then, the jet seemed to drop several feet and buck a little to one side. The sudden motion threw Sugoroku off the bench into Yugi and Mokuba. From the level below, they could hear Jonouchi snarl in shock, "'About to'? Thanks for the advanced warnin' there, Kaiba!"
"Quit barking and buckle up," Kaiba snapped. "Mokuba – ?"
"Coming, Big-Brother!" Mokuba helped Yugi pull Sugoroku to his feet, then gave a jestful salute. "Gotta go. Gonna see if Big-Brother and Hamada need a hand in the cockpit. Later!"
The group joined Jonouchi and Bakura, who had already strapped themselves down. The next few minutes vaguely reminded Yugi of a child's roller coaster – not violent, per se, but bumpy enough to raise concerns. Then, it was over, and Kaiba slid the jet down for a smooth landing, settling the craft into a private section of the airport. With docking and maintenance left to the Kaiba Corp. co-pilot, Hamada, the company gathered what baggage they had brought along, descended the wheeled staircase pressed to the plane's side, and crossed the baking tarmac under the midday sun of Egypt's desert heat, grateful to enter the air-conditioned building.
Yugi gazed about in intense interest at the people around him. With the dubious exception of Duelist Kingdom Island, he had never been outside of Japan. The language buzzing around him intrigued him as much as the exotic locale, and he found himself listening closely, trying to pick out meanings from the gestures and inflections of the speakers. It was a form of puzzle, after all – a riddle of words, gestures and interactions. He did the same with American and British movies from time to time, when the dialogue flowed by too fast for his poor English comprehension to follow but no subtitles were available. It was just another game to him, and he had gotten rather good at reading the intended meanings behind unintelligible sounds.
Two figures stood out to him from the crowds, much to Yugi's surprise. He recognized Malik and Rishid, who only days before had been seeking his and Atemu's lives. Freed now of the misunderstanding and the darkness that had surrounded the other's heart, Yugi thought that there was a positive bounce to Malik's gait as he strode through the airport, still a little overwhelmed by the world outside of the dark catacombs in which he and his clan had dwelled since ancient times, disallowed any contact with the outside world. At sixteen, Malik was truthfully only a year younger than he, but Yugi shared a private chuckle with Atemu at the "kid-in-a-candy-store" enthusiasm with which Malik seemed to meet every sight and sound around him.
Rishid spotted the group first, a gentle hand on his little brother's shoulder directing Malik to them as well. Trepidation replaced excitement as Malik's eyes found Yugi's, but he strode forward without hesitation. Jonouchi spotted them at about same time, and his reaction seemed to help put Malik at ease. "Hey, hey! Look, guys! It's Namu. How's it goin', buddy? What's up, Rishid?" Because of the all-too-recent past, Jonouchi could not bring himself to call him "Malik," there being simply too bad a taste in his mouth at the name he had known and hated long before he could put a face to it.
Malik grinned at the use of the false name he had once given Jonouchi and Anzu, relieved that the former seemed truly willing to look past the atrocities he had visited upon him and his friends. Reaching the group, Malik accepted Jonouchi's hand in a warm clasp. "Jonouchi, everyone! It is so good to see you all again, and so soon! Welcome to Egypt!" He laughed brightly as Rishid took a playful punch to the chest from the former street punk, both of them happy to see everyone.
"It's really great to be here, Namu-kun, Rishid-kun." Yugi deliberately used the name as well, if only because Malik had told them that it was okay, that in fact he preferred as well that they use it. Yugi accepted handshakes from both men. "I think you guys have met everyone already, except for my grandfather. Grandpa, this is Namu-kun and Rishid-kun."
Sugoroku bowed with proper Japanese etiquette before shaking each one's hand. "Yes, Yugi has told me all about you." He had finally gotten the complete story during the hours-long flight here. "It is a pleasure to meet you both. But . . . what brings you here? Did you know that we would be arriving?"
"Yeah! I thought Ishizu couldn't tell the future anymore without that necklace," Mokuba laughed.
Rishid shook his head. "Shadi returned, leaving Japan ahead of you to inform us of your pending arrival. When we learned of Luxor's closing, we knew you would have to come here. Ishizu secured your flight information from one of her contacts."
Honda nodded. "Great! Sounds like you guys have everything under control!"
Kaiba merely folded his arms. "Then you know where we need to go from here."
Rishid met his eye without flinching. "Yes. Will you follow me?"
Yugi did so, letting the gang know that he and Atemu trusted them without question or hesitation.
The company crossed the airport and out to a small shuttle which took them to a harbor on the Nile. There, Ishizu stood on the gangplank of a luxurious riverboat. "Greetings and welcome, my pharaoh, my friends. Please, come aboard and make yourselves at home. The trip to the Valley of the Kings will take several hours."
"Wow! Talk about a royal treatment!"
Kaiba glanced sidelong at Bakura, but even he appreciated the rich mode of transportation.
Malik grinned down at Yugi, who did not miss the wince beneath the humor. "Nothing but the best, fit for a pharaoh, after all. And there is no cost to any of you, of course – courtesy of our clan."
Yugi nodded. "This really is great, Namu-kun! Thanks a lot!" Malik's grin widened.
Author's Notes: Please be sure to check my bio page for any updates, etc. Thanks!
