The pressure on the back of his skull was becoming unbearable. He had made himself as small as possible inside of the Pyramid, curling his arms and limbs into a vertical fetal position, with his head tucked down. It hadn't taken him long to realize that it was probably the safest position to be in within the rapidly shrinking cage. He couldn't tell if the air was growing thin, if his lungs were rebelling against the enclosed cage, or if he was simply panicking. Either way his breathing was rapid and shallow, his eyes wide as the pressure grew on his skull. He had nowhere else to move though.

He tried adjusting his legs and moving his rear back so that he could lean his head further down, but it was useless. He had already outmatched the space he had been allotted, and there was nowhere else to go. He could feel tears seeping from his eyes. Of all the ways that he had experienced torture, imprisonment, and madness over the centuries, this was surely the worst. Already he felt the pain forming in his shoulders as the Pyramid walls began to fall on them. He could only hope that his neck would be broken before any other part of his body was crushed. At least then he might not be able to feel the pain, though really the physical pain was only part of this terrible torture.

"Pharoah, I beg you!" He gurgled, his chin digging into his chest like a knife. "I'll do anything, just end this." Sobs tried to rise up out of him, but he could barely breathe deep enough to allow them. He couldn't move, he doubted he could even scream. At this angle, he could merely whimper and plead with his tormentors.

He had to angle his eyes upward completely to see the Pharoah, standing with his arms crossed, laughing as Yugi walked around beneath him. The Pyramid stopped shrinking, and the Thief's panic increased. Surely he wasn't so vicious as to leave him like this. Yes, he had done some terrible things, but did he truly deserve this level of torture? He was hoping it would at least lead to his death, that would be a release at this point.

Beneath him, he could making out the spiky hair of Yugi as he wandered around. "Wow, I didn't think anybody could get into that position."

"I kind of wish you had chosen something other than a pyramid," Kaiba smirked. "I wonder what other positions he would have had."

Pegasus gasped, "Ooh, what about a spiral shape! Now I'd love to see that. We'll turn him into a contortionist at this rate!"

He was sure something was going to break soon from the weight against the back of his skull. He looked up to Ryou, the only person who might want to save him at this point, but he looked the most unmoved. His body was rigid and in the boy's normally soft eyes, he saw only hatred and disgust.

"Ryou…" he whispered.

The Pharoah brought up a hand and made a slight pinching motion with his fingers. The pyramid might have only shrunk a millimeter, but the pain made him scream. Something had broken. It wasn't bone, but some tendon perhaps had snapped finally. His vision was blurry as his body longed to pass out. Whatever magic had trapped him inside of the cage had given him disturbing human limitations as well. He started to let his eyelids slide closed, ready to give up, ready to allow his body to be crunched down like an insect, when he heard a voice in the distance.

"Thief!"

It was so distant, so difficult to make it out from the chorus of laughter below that he almost wrote it off as a hallucination. Pain could do strange things to the mind, especially when it was this intense and prolonged. Then he heard it again, clearer this time.

"Bakura! Thief!"

He furrowed his brows together and tried to figure out why someone was calling his name. No, he recognized that voice. It was Yugi's voice. He looked down at Yugi below, laughing at him with as much malice as the others. That wasn't the one who had spoken, it was coming from somewhere else. But if that were the case, then that would mean…

"It's not real," he whispered through gritted teeth. Realization flowed through him along with a searing hot anger. "It's not real!" He said again, as though the words simply needed volume in order to be true.

"You've got to fight it!" The distant Yugi said, "It wants you out of the way!" This time the voice was loud enough that the others could hear it too. Their laughing was cut off, and brought a fresh burst of fear within him. If they knew Yugi was trying to help him, if they knew the Thief was trying to break free of their control, they could clamp down the torture devices even more.

The Pharaoh lifted his arms up, "Be done with him!" He slammed his hands together and before the Thief could even register his clap, the prison began to close down tighter, pressing down against the torn muscle at the base of his neck, against the bones that felt all too fragile now.

"No," he whimpered, even as something snapped in his hip and pain shot up through him as though he had been sliced with a hot knife. "No!"

Then Yugi appeared beside him, misty and translucent, with a hand outstretched. His face wasn't etched in disgust and spite like the one below, but worry. "Come on, let's get you out of here!"

Yugi reached through the prison, and took hold of the Thief's hand, which was squished up somewhere against his calf. He felt as tangible and real as the prison, and the Thief felt a jolt of energy flow through him. The pain disappeared and the walls of the pyramid fell away and faded. He stood and stretched. Never before had freedom felt so sweet.

Part of him, the sentimentalist that usually got ignored in the back corner of his mind, wanted to pull Yugi into an embrace or buy him a drink or something, but he refrained. Instead he gave Yugi a relieved smile and allowed him to lead them upwards to a gray swirling gap high above the land. He would never have seen it in the position he had been in.

The Thief looked over his shoulder at the figures that had mocked him and tortured him below. They no longer looked like Yugi and his friends, but like shadowy creatures, the same tar-like monstrosities that had separated him from the group earlier. He felt a twinge of humiliation at the realization that he had been duped by the Stranger and his simple, mindless minions. Part of him wondered what it would have been like to be utterly destroyed. He had experienced many deaths, including his own so many thousands of years ago, but he hadn't a clue what absolute destruction would mean. Would he really move on to another world, or would he have been left floating in limbo? Perhaps such an end was the only way he would ever be able to break free of the Millennium Ring. A shudder went through him as he stared down at the Pyramid that had shrunk down completely now so that it was even smaller than the Millennium Puzzle itself.

Yugi must have noticed his hesitation, and squeezed his hand. "Come on," he whispered. "We still need your help!"

He nodded and turned away from his prison, away from his tormentors, and away from his morbid ruminations. He had helped Yugi save the Pharoah, and now Yugi was saving him. Perhaps for the first time in millennia they were even.