AN: I will admit that I had some of the end-of-the-world prophesies in mind during Full Circle's early conception, but the story only includes the Maya as a vague side-fling, among other reasons, and NOT because it's about their prophesy. Even when I first started writing this nearly a decade ago it wasn't about that.
What it was about was mostly just me processing some things going on in my life. Americans as a culture are a little bit obsessed with the apocalypse - maybe because we built our society on top of one, one we caused, or maybe because starting over seems more appealing than working through our problems. I've learned a lot since then, and I personally feel very differently about the subject than I did a few years ago. But though my opinions have changed, the story has not, and even as I begin to write again I wonder to myself - how am I going to reconcile these two very different points in my life?
We'll find out together, I suppose.
That said, I am taking some serious liberties here concerning actual Mayan ruins. Research on this topic was a real pain, and to be honest the anxiety caused by the looming prospect of figuring it out is probably part of what hampered my writing all these years. Given that, I've decided to take what I can find using standard Google-fu and wing it for the rest. Anything I got wrong is either for the advancement of the plot or because I simply couldn't find any decent research. Hope no one is offended.
Disclaimer: I don't own Yugioh. Neither, in fact, do I own a certain character shown towards the end of this chapter. He and his associates all belong to my beta, nefelokokkygia, who has agreed to let them make a cameo appearance in addition to writing or assisting with several of the DEEP SHIT segments in this chapter.
Chapter Nine: Geimu No Jikan Da
"A timeless and forgotten place,
The moon and sun in endless chase.
Each in quiet surrender
While the other reigns the sky.
The midnight hour begins to laugh,
A summer evening's epitaph.
The winds are getting crazy as
The storm begins to rise."
—Blackmore's Night, "The Storm"
(In the beginning)
there is only darkness.
Is it? There is nothing but it, and so it knows nothing else could be, and yet it is.
And then suddenly, it is Not, because there is Light. And the darkness knows that it is not Light, because it is the darkness, that which the Light is not, and so it is Not.
(And yet it is, for how could it ever be anything else?)
Light without darkness without Light without darkness—
And so that which is Not knew all that it was, and so it came to be.
And so it always was.
There is an intelligence at the edge of infinity, at the horizon of the finite, from the end of all things to the beginning of nothingness. What has been will always be, because it can be nothing else, because it is in all things as all things are in it. The universe is everything and nothing and all things in-between, it is darkness and it is Light. It is Not and yet, it Is. It is many and yet One, a uni-verse, a single multitude whose existence is a mirror unto itself.
And the darkness knows this, because it is Not, and the Light Is, and if the Light is to know what it Is, the darkness must show what it is Not.
Light reveals darkness reveals Light reveals darkness and on and on—
(there are some who would call this God, but the universe knows better.)
-o-
They circled each other like two feral wolves, but only because wolves were the forms they had taken. One had fur of a blinding white light, and the other seemed to blend in with the living shadows all around them. The white one was clearly at a disadvantage in this atmosphere and both of them knew it. She was not, however, going to let that deter her from her purpose in confronting him.
"What did you say to him?" she demanded.
The dark wolf smirked. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."
"You and I both know that's bullshit, now tell me what you said to him!"
He sighed. "For now, nothing. I barely got a look at him—it's difficult to maintain communication that doesn't involve negative emotions."
"He should have plenty of those when you're about!" The Shadows flared, and she fell silent. The white wolf had to remind herself that she was not welcome in this Realm, and could be kicked out—or killed—at any time.
The black wolf took a few steps toward her, as many as he dared before her natural light started to burn him, and glared at her with such intensity that she felt she was the one getting burned. "You know who I am," he said dangerously. "You know the power I can call at a breath, and you know that I have the home-field advantage. I could easily shred your spirit and scatter it to the winds. The fact that I haven't yet should say something."
It took some effort, but the white wolf glared back at her opponent just as fiercely. "And what of the fact that I knew all this, and came here to confront you anyway? What does that say?"
He snorted, almost a laugh. "Mostly that you're very foolish... but then again, perhaps not." The shadow-wolf backed up a step, and sat. "You know who I am, but you also know who I am not."
She remained silent.
After a moment, the black wolf snorted again, then stood and turned to walk away. "We're being mobilized. I expect we'll make our move sometime tomorrow. Tell whoever you think is necessary."
"If you're not who everyone thinks you are," she snarled, "then why did he accept the Ring back just days after speaking to you?"
He paused. "That was not my intention," he said softly, "but it might have been for the best. The Ring's clean now; he won't be posessed again." He started to walk away again.
"Why should I believe you?" she called after him.
To her surprise, he glanced back, grey eyes flashing. The cross-shaped scar on his face seemed very prominent. "Because the enemy of your enemy is your friend."
-o-
In the time of Atlantis, the darkness is small, and in the blueprint of the universe it is (Not yet) a Force.
But the Light of the Orichalcos casts long shadows, bleeding into the edges of eternity, and the darkness grows as it never had before—and how helpless it is to do anything else in the face of such Light.
(the soul, the Soul, calling on its own Light to invite annihilation upon itself, surely—)
The destruction of Atlantis is not the birth of hatred, but it is its first concentrated influx. Humans in mass numbers, cocooning themselves in their own rage—they ought to return to All That Is upon their deaths, but their hate isolates them, blinds them to the truth of their existence, and they can no longer be that which Is.
They cease to exist.
(only they don't, because that which does Not exist still Is)
The Wolves, children of darkness, forgotten souls who died without grace, now extensions of the force that is All That Is Not. They are without thought or memory, swarms of Shadows that form and break and form again at the will of the mind that controls them, hungry for the flesh of the worlds, claws ripping at the belly of the universe. They are everything a Soul is Not, and just as the darkness did not know that it was Not until the Light came to be, so too came the wolves.
And an enormous wound was dealt to the Soul of the world.
Souls, tiny sparks that spread and divide like fire, versions of the Soul all infinitely variable—and yet still a closed system. For that which is Not to take souls away is a blow that cannot heal, and though souls continue to spread and fill the empty space, they are stretched thinner, and begin to forget the shape of the Soul they truly are.
-o-
The Dominion, the Shadow Realm, and every world in between buzzed with the news.
It's happening.
Happening a little ahead of schedule, but it's happening.
Timaeus walked into the palace atrium where three crystal dragons once stood, frozen in time. Now it was populated by scores of monsters crowding the floor and flitting through the air... most of them congregating around what was looking more and more like a heated argument.
"Their world will die the moment the Door opens if we don't take steps to protect it now!" cried Dark Magician Girl. The white wolf at her side—a Silver Fang, Timaeus noted—growled in solidarity.
The Witty Phantom staring them down bore an expression that, on any other monster, might have been classified as fear. "It's too soon! They weren't supposed to reach this point for years yet—hardly any of us have had time to form the appropriate connections! And I won't make the trip with nothing to protect myself!"
"You swore an oath, Phantom! We all did!"
"Without those bonds, it's suicide!"
"If you're too much of a coward to fight on the front lines," Timaeus announced, stepping in, "then get yourself to the sustaining matrices and add your power there."
For a moment it looked as though he were going to argue, but the Atlantean Knight leveled a glare and let his aura build to visible levels. After a moment longer, Witty Phantom lowered his eyes and walked off toward his assignment.
"Anyone else have an issue with their assignments?" the Knight asked in a tone that brokered no disagreement.
A Raging Flame Sprite who was observing rolled her eyes. "I don't think anyone else was dumb enough to leave finding suitable humans to work through so late, whatever he might have thought."
The King of Skull Servants next to her nodded in agreement, as did several others. Gradually the crowd dispersed.
Dark Magician Girl sighed and gestured to Silver Fang, who nodded and loped away as well. The sorceress turned to her friend. "I had it handled," she said, though without any sting.
Timaeus gave a half-smile. "Of that I've no doubt, but as Witty Phantom just pointed out, time is of the essence. If reassigning him will save some time, then it's worth the hassle. We've more than enough Guardians, but the planet itself is fragile."
"And you're sure your brothers can handle that kind of energy outlay?"
Another nod. "We couldn't have done it before we were released, but... yes, we've worked it out." Under the right circumstances, Critias and Hermos could bounce power between them and amplify it without limit—and thank the Gods for that, because limitless power would be just barely enough to keep the worlds real when it all went down. An incursion of Shadows loomed on the horizon, towering in all their minds like a wave just inches from breaking. As much as it irked all three Knights to be relegated to working in the background, they knew it was the only way. After all, what use would there be in beating back the darkness if Earth was destroyed in the meantime? The Dominion of Beasts would not last long without its parallel.
"Have you figured out how long you can sustain it?" Dark Magician Girl asked him.
Timaeus frowned. They hadn't exactly been able to test that, which was his chief concern. Even if the power they were able to channel was infinite, the Knights' own stamina was not. "We can only guess, unfortunately," he admitted. "I'm confident my brothers could continue for days, perhaps weeks if assisted, but right now there's no way to tell. The only thing to do is complete your mission as quickly as possible. My brothers and I will buy you all the time we can."
Dark Magician Girl's grip on her wand tightened. "We won't let you down," she said. And he believed her. "We won't let any of them down."
-o-
It remembers(/experiences/is) a time when it is formless, because the experience of existing includes visits to physicality, that place where ideas are made Real, and it can only ever be what that which exists is Not. This is not a handicap—it revels in its transcendence of reality and all such bothersome limitations the universe imposes upon itself. It is boundless, endless, timeless and inscrutable.
(He who claims to fear nothing has never seen Its like, which is precisely why Nothing is feared by all.)
But humans always fear something; Its continued existence is proof of that. In their fear, they beat their fists against the walls of life, constantly seeking the power to either control that which they cannot understand, or destroy it. In their foolish belief that they are above fear, they protect themselves from the evils of others by unleashing evils of their own.
In a meaningless little village on the outskirts of the Valley of the Kings, men who pretend to virtue sharpen their wills in blood and aim them like a spear at the fabric of reality. Violent, desperate, and cloaked in chaos, they push—
—and reality
rips
open.
-o-
Yugi had a headache before they even touched down. He supposed he could blame it on the stress of the flight—the last time they had all crossed the Pacific was in much more spacious accomodations, and he had never been comfortable in close quarters to begin with, let alone for 15 hours straight. Still, his discomfort continued to grow even as, one by one, they emerged from customs and gathered their luggage. By the time they reached the front door of the airport to hunt down their ride, some mild nausea had been added to the mix, and every beam of light seemed to bore through him like a drill.
Joey echoed his earlier sentiment as he exited the building. "Man, Pegasus couldn't have booked a private jet like last time? I never knew my own backside could fall asleep!"
Tristan rolled his eyes and fell in step with his best friend. "Well look who's spoiled..."
"Hey, he's got the dough! He could've sprung for it if he wanted, he did it before!"
"Yeah, and drew a lot of attention to himself, too," Duke pointed out. "And remember how that turned out? I don't blame him for staying low this time."
"YUGI!" came a shrill voice from aways down the sidewalk. Before Yugi could even properly turn to see, a small blonde shape tackled him around the middle, knocking him back a few steps. He looked down, and Rebecca Hawkins peered up at him impishly through her bangs. "Darling, why'd you have to get so much taller than me?"
He tried to smile at his younger friend but it was forced. "Probably because it was long overdue. Would you mind not talking so loud? I think I have a migraine..."
"Oh, you poor thing!" she cried in a voice that was only fractionally softer, and latched onto his arm. He restrained a sigh.
"A migraine? Why didn't you say so earlier, Yugi?" Serenity slipped off her backpack and dug around in it until she came out with a small package—a dose of excedrine. "Here," she said, handing it to him. "The caffeine will help with the jet lag too. I don't know about you, but I can never sleep while travelling."
Yugi took the tablets with a grateful smile. He had at least dozed for most of the flight, though fitfully. "You're a lifesaver, Serenity. Thanks."
"God that was exhausting," Téa groaned as she exited the airport and came to meet them... and immediately felt a migraine of her own at the sight of Rebecca's antics. She bit back a scowl. "Is that the rest of the welcome wagon over there?" She pointed.
Strolling in Rebecca's wake were two men, both familiar to Yugi. One of them was immediately recognizable as Rebecca's grandfather, Professor Arthur Hawkins, who was increasingly a fixture in their chaotic lives. The other, slightly hunched man in a medium-brown ponytail Yugi felt he had seen before, but couldn't quite place.
Serenity gaped at the newcomer. "You!" she gasped, covering her mouth in shock. "You were on the train with me!"
Joey, Tristan, and Duke all whipped around, but before they could say anything the brown-haired man broke out in a broad grin. "Oh, I see!" he exclaimed. "You were the healer!"
"The what?" Joey demanded.
"And the boy from the museum as well! Arthur, you never told me you had such interesting friends!"
Abruptly Yugi remembered where he had seen this man before—he had been at the Domino Museum, looking at the stone tablet replica the morning of Serenity's birthday party.
Professor Hawkins looked faintly abashed. "Miss Wheeler and I have yet to be formally introduced, but yes, these are the young people I mentioned to you before. Everyone, this is my colleague Jason Lugh."
Yugi noted the absence of a title. "Are you an archaeologist too?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing of the sort." Lugh waved a hand dismissively. "I'm a much more generalized philosopher and linguist."
"He does TEDtalks," Rebecca whispered, then giggled as if she had revealed something embarassing.
Arthur smiled indulgently at his granddaughter. "He is a guest lecturer at a number of universities, mostly around the Mediterranean, though he's been known to branch out." He then spared Lugh a similarly teasing look. "Anything to avoid actually finishing that doctorate, eh?"
"Behold as I pointedly ignore you," Lugh responded in a manner so unsuited to his age that Yugi had to laugh. "But where are my manners? Miss Wheeler, was it?" He extended a hand. "Pardon me for not recognizing you right off, though it doesn't surprise me that you had no such difficulty. I expect you'd recognize me at a molecular level after that performance!"
Serenity timidly shook the man's offered hand, though whether her nervousness was due to her being unused to the western greeting or being reminded of what was, by all reports, a rather traumatic experience, wasn't clear. "S-Serenity Wheeler. Pleased to meet you."
"And I'm Yugi Mutou," Yugi said, bowing politely.
"A pleasure to officially make your accquaintance."
A round of introductions occurred, then Serenity stepped forward again and asked, "Sir, if you knew something about what happened to me, why didn't you say anything?"
He looked quizzically at the girl. "I assumed you knew."
Serenity shook her head. "I remember everything about what happened, but I still don't know why or how."
"No knowledge at all? That's... that's very interesting; that's new." Lugh pulled a small notebook and a chewed-up nub of a pencil out of his front pocket and began scribbling. "I've come across this particular gift before, of course, but that kind of broad and immediate effect has always required very focused intention in my experience." He looked at her again. "Would you mind telling me exactly what happened as you experienced it? I know what I saw and felt, but then I was concussed at the time. What was it like from your perspective?"
Serenity told her story again, and halfway through it Ryou exited the airport and joined up with them. His friends greeted him while Serenity and Lugh kept talking.
"Just waiting on the Ishtars now..." Téa commented. "Wait, scratch that—there's Odion."
The tall Egyptian man glanced around as he joined their group. "Master Marik and Ishizu are not with you?"
"We thought they'd be with you," Téa replied, frowning slightly. "You don't think customs is giving them trouble, do you?"
"Ishizu's a diplomat, so I can't imagine," said Ryou. Odion, however, began to look concerned.
Meanwhile, Serenity was still speaking intently to Lugh. "Well if what I did isn't what you've seen before, then how is it supposed to work normally?"
"Actually," Joey interrupted in kind of a strangled voice, "I'd like to rewind to the part where you've seen this sort of thing before at all."
Lugh looked at them curiously. "Does that really surprise you, though?"
Joey swallowed, then shrugged. "I guess it shouldn't. We've certainly seen our share of weirdness—"
"Well so have most people in the world," said Lugh, matter-of-fact.
Yugi whipped around.
"You wanna repeat that, mister?" Joey said, making a show of cleaning wax out of his ears. "'Cause I couldda sworn you just said most people have lives as weird as ours."
"And that's so difficult to believe? Tens of thousands of people had their souls swallowed by the Leviathan. A significant number of them—eight hundred eighty-six, by my last count—" He waved his little notebook, "were awake and aware while inside it. Statistically speaking, that's over two hundred-thousand people who either experienced that phenomenon directly or know someone who has, and that's not counting the millions who probably know someone who remained unconscious while inside and couldn't tell their story. Between that and the global superstorms that come and go without any trace or explanation, increased seismic activity, gravitational polarity shifts, fecking global warming—"
"At least two of those things weren't us," Joey felt the need to point out.
Lugh waved his hands in the air, a combination of frustration and delighted excitement. "It doesn't matter who's responsible, boy—what matters is that people are becoming aware! Changes are coming too quickly for us as a species to adapt to, so we learn, and we watch, and we wait. Or, more likely, we panic and destroy ourselves. Either way, it's the end of an age. And, at some level, every human on this planet knows it—they can't not know it, it's a truth built into our souls!"
Yugi stared, almost disbelieving, but knowing better than to think this could be anything but fact. Truthfully, he hadn't considered that others had been conscious, had experienced what he had and come out of the experience intact enough to talk about it. It was easier to think of people in such numbers as an abstract—valuable in their own right and worth protecting, but having no impact on his life beyond that. But saving someone didn't mean the experience, the magic was gone from their lives. Of course it didn't.
Tristan glanced at Professor Hawkins. "Well I can certainly see how you two got to be friends," he said with a grin.
Rebecca made a face at the brunette, unsure whether to be offended on her grandfather's behalf or not. Arthur, however, just laughed.
-o-
That day, 99 new wolves are born in blood and gold (and how It laughs that humans have learned to utterly shred the soul of another, all in purpose to be able to taint and destroy yet more—) and their hatred creates for it a path. The Stone emerges, full-formed, from the depths of hell. It calls to the remnants of the slaughtered, scalded and pure and pressed into shapes that avow untold power, and promises them rest.
They created a key, and so the universe provides a lock.
(They do not yet know what lies beyond the Door.)
Through the keyhole (theRingtheRingtheRing, left in the Stone and suffused with its power, a perfect channel for encroaching shadows) the darkness flows into lighted existence, and feels itself being compressed into a form that reality can support. The outrage at being forced into a shape, into something that Is, is immediate, and it seizes the nearest being it can find and commands him to release the lock to open the Door to summon its full power into being and LET THIS WORLD'S END BEGIN—
The Priest escapes, mutilated but alive, and the channel is closed (for now). But not healed. It has tasted what lives in the bounds of the finite, and the walls between worlds will never be whole again.
In the shadows, another being watches—a child, wide-eyed and horrified and oh so malleable.
Fifteen years later (a breath, a blink, a mere fly speck of time), a thief bent on vengeance throws wide the gates of his heart, and calls the darkness in.
Zorc is released into the world as a physical god of the void.
-o-
Ryou hung around the fringes of the group, noting with satisfaction (and a certain self-consciousness he couldn't help but feel) that Tristan kept glancing his way every so often. Normally talk of the occult was cause for excitement. He could almost hear his mother's voice talking animatedly about the exact same things this Lugh fellow talked about—though the accent was English, not Irish—and Ryou had always shared her enthusiasm, even after her death. But for whatever reason, he just couldn't make himself be interested enough to follow the conversation. Offhandedly he wondered if this weird sense of detatchment and lack of interest in things he normally enjoyed was a sign of possession... but no, even when he'd had cause to suspect lost time, something had always distracted him from pondering it too deeply, and life went on as normal. Until the next blackout, anyway.
Could just be depression, he thought mournfully. Regular old brain chemical imbalances are just as likely as evil spirits at this point.
Leaning back and thinking of nothing in particular, sounds of distant conversations drifted across his ears, identified and then gone again, unimportant. His mind wandered.
"Why wouldn't you tell me something like this?"
I tried to, Ryou thought without thinking. But something always got in the way.
"You knew people had died under my employ, and you knew I employed assassins. I didn't think there was anything to tell."
People die when they're around me. That's just how it is.
"Specifics would have been helpful and you know it. Brother, I can't protect you or help you if I don't know the whole truth!"
They know as much as I do, now. That, at least, is a step forward.
A puff of air like a chortle, dismissive and mirthless. "You did just fine. I don't know how that one was traced back to me, but I knew you'd pull through as soon as you figured out where I was. And I've still got Oshar's number, and he still owes me a favor; I'll have him scrub the record before we leave for home, problem solved."
"Marik." A scuffling sound, like steps taken suddenly and quickly. "That is not what I mean by helping. You had been doing so well, and I know this trip isn't what you wanted, but I hoped—"
Movement ceased. A pained sigh. "Ishizu, I know you'd like to think the things I've done were the fault of my 'evil side' or whatever, but the fact is that I'm the one who went down that road. The choices I made were taken to extremes by something I couldn't control, but they were my choices all the same." A pause. "Today one of them just caught up with me. That's all. We'll handle it, and that'll be the end of it."
Ryou's scattered thoughts were abruptly drawn back together by the sound of sliding glass doors whooshing open almost right by his ear. He blinked and looked around, startled that it had seemed so loud when it was over ten feet away. How had he heard it so clearly?
Marik Ishtar exited the airport at last, his sister Ishizu close behind him. Odion half-walked, half-ran to meet them, though Marik postponed any questions he might have had with a shake of his head.
"There you guys are," Duke greeted them. "What was the holdup? We've been waiting for ages."
"Just some confusion at customs," Marik said with a dismissive wave. "Ishizu made a phone call and took care of it, no big deal. Shall we get moving?"
"Indeed," said Arthur. Then he bowed slightly. "Miss Ishtar, what a pleasure it is to meet you at last."
Ishizu smiled, businesslike and sly. "The infamous Professor Hawkins. I trust you understand why I took pains to avoid you up until now." Arthur's most well-known line of research, the ancient history of the Shadow Games and their ties to a modern-day card game, was one of those all-too-common discoveries that were both widely ridiculed and completely correct. It was also far too close in subject to the many secrets the Tomb Keepers had guarded, and as the functional head of the clan, Ishizu had to make sure Arthur's theories stayed in the realm of science fiction in order to protect her family and fulfill her duty.
The professor laughed. "Ostensibly to save yourself the embarassment of associating with me, I'm sure!"
Ishizu's smile softened. It was good to see that he didn't hold her actions against her. All else aside, she had a lot of respect for someone who could brave the kinds of academic and cultural storms he had. "Neither of us is unfamiliar with controversy, I assure you," she said. "And the pleasure is mine if we are to work jointly on this venture. I know there is much we can learn from each other."
"You bet there is!" Rebecca interjected. She had finally disentangled herself from Yugi and now bore a somewhat cocky stance as she stared down the older woman. "Now if we're finally all here, we can get a move on to our real destination!"
"Which is... where, exactly?" Joey asked, scratching his head.
Yugi nodded. "Yeah, Pegasus didn't give specifics, just the plane tickets and some photos."
"Well," said Rebecca, grinning smugly. "Actually, he did."
Everyone looked toward the youngest, but it was actually Lugh who spoke next.
"The Door of Darkness," he said, holding up a copy of the photo they had been sent. "Or this particular version, anyway; likely there are hundreds around the world. But I know exactly where this one is, and I can take you there."
-o-
(When a hole in a wall cannot be patched, you make of it a Door that can be closed.)
Pharaoh Atem is the immovable object to Zorc's unstoppable force (the universe is never without balance, even if the scales must flip upside down to right themselves again), and the place where they meet is a clash that shakes the very fundaments of heaven. Desperate, and with half of Egypt in ruins, he seizes as much of the darkness as he can reach, and plunges them both down, and down, and down.
Their souls are -final- entangled at -strike- a quantum level, and as long as the Pharaoh remains imprisoned, so too must the Dark One.
Yet Zorc is not a singular being, but the sum of all that is Not in the universe, by dark powers manifested and dark powers bound. Its true power is trapped within the shattered pieces of what was once the Millennium Pyramid (pointed ever toward the sun, the Light, thus an inverted pyramid is a symbol of darkness), but its mind... its mind has other ideas, and retreats through that first and most potent channel, through the Ring. And there it remains, a fragment of what it once was, with only the memories of its last host to give itself shape and purpose.
(The thief? But a pawn in the game of the universe against itself, shredded by the backlash, a wolf in his own right.)
The Pharaoh is consigned to a limbo of his own creation, stripped of life and past and name, a naked soul alone in the dark. And the darkness encroaches on him, but can go no further than where he wills it.
He has made a Door out of his own being, and seals away the darkness.
-o-
Tikal National Park was not as hot as they had expected it to be; though it was technically a rainforest, as high up in the mountains as it was, the weather was pleasantly springlike for most of the year. Nevertheless, it was damp and humid. The downpour they had driven through was past, but water still trailed from the sky in a light mist. A few tall structures loomed over the forest canopy, but most of the pale stone buildings were simpler structures, an ancient city surrounding the pyramid-like temples that Tikal was famous for. The lingering mist made the abundant greenery appear more vibrant than it would otherwise, and the bright colors in turn muted the hues the sun-bleached and weathered stone. The changing tones and unfamiliar sounds of the jungle gave the place an almost mythical feel to it—a city not long-dead, but sleeping, and dreaming of what it once was.
It was also deserted.
"You'd think around Christmas time would be the height of tourist season," Tristan commented as they passed through the ancient empty streets.
"You'd think," agreed Lugh in a low voice, "but tourism has been on a steady decline for the last four months or so, up until that weird earthquake. Then it dropped off entirely. The whole region has been like this for almost a week now, and I can't begin to imagine the impact that'll have on the local economy."
Yugi looked around. Out of place amidst the pale stonework was a wooden gazebo with a bright red roof, situated at the center of a crossroads on the path they were following and boasting a wide array of informative pamphlets. One lonely park employee leaned against the counter inside it, looking simultaneously bored and somehow anxious.
"Even park employees seem to call out sick more often than not," Lugh added, following his gaze.
"It's like they're avoiding this place," the gamer muttered, frowning.
"Or something's driving them away."
Ryou had spoken, but Yugi's gaze snapped of its own accord to the gazebo again—or rather, just behind it, where a curious dark haze in the air, four-footed and lean, slid away just out of view. The attendant inside shivered despite the warm air and hunched slightly, an unconsciously defensive posture.
"...That's new," said Duke, wide-eyed.
"Maybe not," Yugi countered, turning. "Ryou, didn't you say you'd seen one of those before?"
The albino nodded. "Twice, though I'm pretty sure the one I saw was a lot bigger."
Téa considered for a moment, then jogged over to the attendant on long legs. "Pardon me," she asked in English, "but are you feeling alright? You looked a bit sick for a moment there."
The young man looked briefly startled—More terrified than just startled, Yugi thought—at the sound of Téa's voice, then settled into a bout of nervous laughter. "Yes, I am very good," he replied in a thick accent. "You need map?"
"Um. Sure," Téa replied, frowning slightly as she picked up a pamphlet and pocketed it. "Nice meeting you."
They walked on. Lugh or Professor Hawkins would sometimes comment on the history of the buildings or monuments they passed by, but more often they walked in silence. Serenity looked pale and drawn. Marik scowled as his hands twitched restlessly. Ryou breathed shallowly and stared at his shoes as he walked. Even Rebecca seemed subdued. Worse, the silence was incredible, and made every normal sound of the forest seem a hundred times louder, and... threatening, somehow. Every time someone so much as stepped on a twig, half of their number would jump a foot in the air.
After the third such adrenaline spike, Joey put his foot down. "Okay, everyone's noticed how spacey we're all being. Am I the only sucker wondering why?"
"Whatever it is, I think we've happened on why no one's wanted to come here," said Arthur, sounding shaken.
Ishizu's jaw tightened. "There's an energy here, something... I don't have the words. Something similar to Shadow magic, but—"
A howl could be heard in the distance, long and low.
"...Similar how?" Yugi asked after a moment.
She shook her head helplessly. "The source is the same, but the shape of the power is... distorted. I can't understand it at all."
Marik's frown deepened. "Is someone casting a Shadow Game?" And he glanced at the greenery and crumbling brickwork around them as though expecting to see someone menacing them from the treeline.
"Can't be," said Tristan. "All the Items are here with us."
Ryou thought he sort of understood. This feeling of tension in the air, of something taking whatever fear or anxiety they were putting out and reflecting it back at them, was oddly familiar, though he couldn't put his finger on how. Nevertheless, Ishizu was right—it wasn't a Shadow Game, not exactly. But there were Shadows about, that much was clear. Not under orders, not doing anything at all, just simply... there.
Then again, Shadow magic leaking into the world without any sort of conduit to give it shape and purpose presented its own worrying possibilities. Something was stirring, had been in motion for a long time now.
"If it's Shadow magic," he said finally, "then I think we'll be protected."
Ishizu had a hand up to her throat. Odion gripped the handle of his briefcase tightly. Yugi bit his lip, held the Puzzle close, and moved on.
Ryou glanced at his own Item, once more casting his mind out to investigate its edges and skate across the surface of the deep well of power he had always felt inside. But just as it had been when he first touched it again, the Ring was empty, empty, empty.
-o-
From within the Ring, it lies in broken pieces, clinging to the framework of stolen memories to subsist. It drifts, feeling distantly the ebb and flow of the overworld. Many souls pass it by, and with a handful of exceptions each one is more shriveled and thin than the last. The Soul is weak; its individuations wander the earth blindly, seeking of it the strength they know they are missing.
(they burn on contact, their spirits so much ash in the face of even a fragment of the dark, and it is good)
The very connection that allowed it to escape total imprisonment proves to be a cage of a different sort—bound to an imprint of the thief's mind as it is, it cannot act directly through any other soul. Its true power lies dormant under lock and key, and the lock is shattered and the key erased from history. It is as isolated as the corrupted souls that fuel it, an eternally collapsing star that feeds only on its own unending destruction, unable to truly cease for it never truly was.
But perhaps it will one day be again—
A soul makes contact with the Ring, and it does not burn.
Instead, it hums, and the mind inside the Ring recognizes the frequency as identical to its own.
(But how? The thief is dead, worse than dead, cut away from the universe and shredded into nothingness. There can Not be another, and yet there Is, and—)
It churns, coalesces, and slips into the skin that is its new home. The landlord protests, but it delivers the same reassurances it gave the thief (prices bargained, payments made, let all unwanted memories fade) and he falls silent.
Then the ringing scrape of gold sliding on gold is heard across the universe, and another small, brilliantly Light soul collides and converges with everything he Is/Not—
"The Door of Darkness has been opened," says a voice that ripples with power across dimensions, and the opening is brief, a narrow crack quickly closed again, but the mark it leaves burns like a beacon of darkness in this blinding world. It senses its true power in that moment, yearns for it, longs with a desperation it did not know it could feel to reclaim it, to be whole again. (the lock, the lock, the lock is whole, it only needs the key, or else to kill the soul of the pharaoh and undo the binding altogether—)
It had been reckless, impulsive, its drive to complete itself tainted with the imprint of its landlord's personality and flair for dramatic storytelling. In this way, their Shadow Game in Monster World cannot help but mirror their last confrontation, every event circumstantially simultaneous with its counterpart up until the point where the little heir (the pharaoh) retrieves its landlord (the thief) from incorporation into Zorc's being, and—
But no.
No, there will be other opportunities. Worthier, calculated, inescapable opportunities, where there can be no interference—not from its landlord, or the pharaoh's little court of games. The darkness is stirring now, as ancient enmities arise from the sands of time and prepare to clash as never before...
(...because how can they possibly do anything else?)
"Open the Door for me," it says to the king, both then and now, "and let the ultimate Shadow Game begin!"
-o-
Yugi shivered as they passed into the shadow of towering pyramid. The shade shouldn't have been that much cooler, but he still grimaced and rubbed his arms a bit. His headache, dulled by the painkillers for the past hour or so, was beginning to make a comeback.
Lugh led them to a secluded part of the structure around the back, to an incongruously modern-looking cellar door built into the far side of the temple bearing a "Staff Only" sign.
"I was part of a research team here a few years back," he explained as he hauled open the metal doors. "I was helping to translate some of the pictograms on the walls, as the writing is surprisingly dense in these chambers."
Underneath the beaten metal cellar doors was a staircase of the same sun-bleached stone as the rest of the buildings here. They led down to what looked like a small antechamber with a low ceiling and three somewhat short archways on the far wall. The place had been wired for electric strip lighting, and under their dim glow they could indeed see that every inch of wall was carved into with blocky images and script.
"Which way leads to the Door?" Yugi asked, indicating the three archways.
Lugh pointed to the leftmost arch. "That one, and a few more turns after it. It gets to be a bit of a maze, going both upward into the temple proper and further down. Lucky for us that most of it is lit."
Joey pulled a face. "Not for nothin', but now the heck were we ever supposed to figure out the right way to go if we didn't happen to have a guide?"
Marik shrugged and glanced around each of the doorways, seeing that they were indeed walled off from each other and led in separate directions. "It's not too different from the tunnels in Egypt," he mused. "The catacombs tended to be expanded in a grid pattern, so even if we had to search the whole thing, I doubt we would have gotten lost."
"And I'm fairly certain you would have been able to find your way here regardless," Lugh added with a half-smile. "I had a look at those photographs you kids sent to Arthur and his granddaughter. Viewed in sequence, they create an almost unbroken path of images, a map to where you need to go. See?" He nodded to Duke, who had pulled the sheaf of photos out of his satchel and was paging through them. "We passed down this exact road through the old city, and here's the back of this very temple. And here," he pointed, "is a shot of these glyphs over here, next to the path we're meant to take."
Téa similarly looked over Duke's shoulder at the photos. "I mean... I guess I get it, but as roadmaps go this is just bizarre."
Duke shrugged at her. "More secrecy, I guess?"
"I guess, but this is kind of extreme, don't you think? It's one thing for other people not to know where we're headed, but this is almost like he didn't want us to know."
There was silence for a moment.
"Yeah, that is weird," Yugi said finally.
Joey sighed and scrubbed at his hair. "Eh, you pile weirdness on top of weirdness, it all starts to look pretty much the same," he said. "And ancient shit is just kinda weird by default if you ask me."
Marik snorted; Ishizu laughed softly at the same time. They looked at each other and smiled.
They began walking along the prescribed corridor, Duke putting the photos back in their correct order as they went. Yugi was mildly annoyed at himself for dumping them out and shuffling them in the first place, but he supposed no harm was done if Professor Hawkins' friend knew the way already. Meanwhile, Joey continued, "Like what you were saying before, Ryou, about how the same stuff appears at the same time in places that had no contact with each other. I saw a documentary once that said it was cuz of aliens, and honestly that would not surprise me at this point."
Rebecca looked at him incredulously. "Joey, you've spouted some stupid things since I've known you, but that might be one of the dumbest."
"Well how would you explain these tunnels and pyramids looking basically the same, Miss Too-Short-To-Ride?"
"Gee, I dunno," said Rebecca, making a face. "It's almost as though a pyramid is the most reliable way to stack rocks really high and not have them fall over for a long time!"
-o-
Years pass, and piece by inexhorable piece its plan is put into motion. Zorc and the pharaoh play one last game, with the pharaoh's fractured memories as the game board. This is its last, best chance to become one again and reclaim its true power, but still it fails. Instead it is Atem who rediscovers himself at long last, and Zorc is purged from the Puzzle and the Ring by an uprising of infinite Light (an invocation of what Is shows it all that it cannot be, and so it Is-Not), banished to the non-existence whence it came.
Yet it knows that even this cannot stop it, cannot keep it from its all-consuming hunger for a world that begs for death. Though it has lost their Game, it is whole again now (but for a tiny piece of its will given to the Eye of a Priest so very long ago), rumbling in the darkness between the stars, and it waits.
(victory over entropy is never anything but a temporary illusion)
It watches the Ceremonial Duel through the Eye, watches as the hated pharaoh opens the Door of his own free will, and it hungers. It cackles, an endless howl that slides beneath the rumbling of the ancient stone, baring its hellhound teeth and endless eyes, ecstasy liquid in the spaces between its ribs and glimmering in the stars long crushed in its mouth. It has braved everything and nothing and here it Is, at the beginning of an end so long denied, ready to use the open Door to throw wide the gates of hell and beat the universe at its own game—
(but he knew)
And just as he walks into the Light (into true death, knowingly and willingly), just before the shadows that lie Beyond can break loose from the Seal that only Atem's living soul holds firm, tear through it like decaying paper, drip between the edges of the horizon to tear the world apart at the seams—
He breaks the spell on the Door, slamming it shut behind him,
(somehow, somehow he knew)
and the darkness, who dared to challenge the King of Games, goes hungry again.
...but—
-o-
As they continued tunnels did not get darker, exactly. The same electrical lighting strips were affixed to the ceiling every few feet, buzzing faintly and providing their cool, colorless illumination. But in every room they passed, the light seemed to reach into the corners less and less, even though the lights themselves were no less bright than at the start. The air was static and unmoving, even the wake of their passage did little to stir it. Yugi wasn't prone to claustrophobia—if anything the opposite was true, wide-open spaces unnerved him more than closed-in ones—but this peculiar feeling of increased density in the atmosphere, of being hemmed in, funnelled down a particular path and squeezed by it, was making him anxious.
To distract himself he looked at the writings and murals on the walls as they passed. They were blocky, with carved waves and swirls densely packed into 3-inch squares which in turn covered every bit of wall space like tiles. There were skulls and stylized faces with contorted grimaces, floor-to-ceiling murals of what looked like soldiers and beasts, and one particularly gruesome carving of a skeletal-looking man plucking out his own eye.
That last one gave Yugi pause, and he stopped to examine the eyeball in the man's upraised hand. "Odion," he said before he could stop himself, "can I see the Millennium Eye for a second?"
The tall man looked puzzled but did as he was bid. Feeling slightly squeamish, Yugi took it from him and held it up to the carving... but despite the similarities it still didn't seem right.
"Is something the matter?" asked Ishizu.
Yugi sighed. "I thought the guy in this mural was holding a Millennium Item for a second, but... I don't know. I'm grasping at straws here."
Lugh backtracked to examine the mural in question, then glanced kindly down at the gamer. "Perhaps not unsurprisingly, these walls tell stories," he said. "During my stay here we were never able to positively identify this man, but he bears a strong resemblance to a figure in Mayan mythology called Kisin, one of the gods of the underworld. We couldn't say for certain, since there's no known stories about Kisin plucking out his own eye, but I'm pretty sure that's who this is supposed to be."
"Why's that?" Yugi asked absently, still looking between the eye on the wall and the Eye in his hand.
"Because the Door to the afterlife is in the next room."
-o-
It writhes under its last binding like a tightly coiled snake, but there is no anger in its movements, only gleeful anticipation. The pawns approach the point of no return (the Event Horizon, from which not even the Light can escape the pull of limitless darkness, and what an Event it will be on the Horizon of all life on this world) and it can taste them, smell their intent, seeseeseeknow what is to come from the king's own hand.
The vision fades, blue and dark, a pocket of all things, and it laughs. There will be no avoiding it, not this time.
-o-
There was a faint hissing sound, like sand trickling to the ground.
The room was much smaller than the shrine in Egypt, square and plain, almost closet-like, but with a small angular entranceway in each of its unused walls. The group arrived through the entrance across from the Door; the arch to their right was blocked by crumbling debris, and the final entrance was clear but unlit by the familiar strip lighting. The great Door took up almost the entirety of the far wall, and although the glyphs decorating its surface were the same blocky writing as they had seen in the surrounding hallways and the great Eye decorating its upper third was likewise squared-off and bevelled, the image was nearly identical to the place they had last seen the pharaoh alive.
If they thought the atmosphere above was oppressive, it was soon plain that this place was the source. Shadows swirled here, dark and deep, licking at their heels and making the lights flicker and dim. Serenity jumped and clung to her brother as one drew near, but voiced no sound.
"Was..." began Marik, sounding hoarse. "Was it like this when you were here before?"
Dark particles, like black dust motes lit by no sun, trickled and gathered in dark corners, growing.
"No," Lugh croaked. He seemed to want to say something more, and swallowed. "I... No."
-o-
The Seal unravells, faster and faster, and it presses against the fraying boundaries of its nonexistence with abandon, demanding more—more space, more souls, a feast for all time delivered unto it what it has longed for since it first tasted the promise of reality—
open the door open the door DO IT NOW
-o-
"There's something wrong with the Door," said Ishizu, firm but strained.
"Is it cracked open somehow?" Ryou asked. "Look at the way the shadows move, almost like they're—"
"Flowing through," finished Serenity in a tiny voice. "Can you feel them?"
Téa shivered and hugged herself. "Yeah," she said, "it's like there's a draft coming through or something."
Ishizu and Arthur were already at the base of the massive Door, and the woman hesitantly touched its darkened surface. "The spellwork here is... different," she began, "but I can tell it's coming apart. The Seal on the darkness is weak here, it's—" Her breath hitched, and she turned to gaze at them, visbly alarmed. "It's breaking through."
-o-
It heaves, and its bindings stretch, as weak and thin as the Soul it will soon consume, must consume, until nothing and only Nothing remains.
-o-
"I thought so," said Arthur, examining the circular indentation in the center of the Door. He turned. "Duke my lad, you brought your father's board game as I requested?"
The teen in question nodded, opening his satchel and producing the game. It's angular design and snake motif were very in line with the rest of the temple, Yugi realized.
"I wasn't certain when a few photographs were all I had to go on, but I believe this—" he pointed to the indent, "is a locking mechanism. And unless I'm very much mistaken, your father's board game is the lock, Duke."
Duke considered, running his hands over the circular game board. "I guess I'm not surprised. This thing always had ties with death and aging; it drains people's lives away, years at a time. Having it come from a place like this... it makes sense, somehow."
-o-
The Light holds it at bay, but casts its own darkness deeper, a mutually assured annihilation, and it slams at the decaying barrier with total surety of purpose...
-o-
The dark particles streamed in faster now, like black sand slipping through cracks in the stone.
Rebecca swallowed, and nodded at her friend. "Go for it."
With a nod in return, Duke lined his father's board game up against the circular indentation, but behind him the King of Games only shivered and stared. Something was wrong, something was missing—
-o-
...(closerclosercloser) because once the final binding is stripped away, the last frayed strand unwound, it knows, it Knows...
-o-
The Orichalcos stone! It's not embedded in the game anymore—we took it out! It can't power the lock!
Yugi's eyes widened. "Duke, wait!"
The green-eyed boy's head turned to glance curiously at his friend, but he was already too close. The movement nudged his hands just the slightest bit foward and, with a tiny click that was much louder than it should have been, the game slid into place.
-o-
there is no way it can possibly lose
-o-
All sound was gone, all movement stilled, dust particles hung frozen in the half-light as every gaze was tugged inexhorably toward the Door. There was a sense of negative energy there, not only dark but inversed, and it drew the attention of every conscious being on the planet. In an isolated corner of a cemetery in France, a heavily muscled man with short, spiked yellow hair suddenly found himself looking not at four marked but empty graves, but toward the distant southwest, and he clenched his fists. Off the coast of Hawaii, a Japanese airline pilot's grip on his controls likewise tightened as his attention mysteriously was tugged straight down, practically to the other side of the world. In a shopping district in Hong Kong, a beautiful blonde woman violet eyes and matching high-heeled boots dropped her bags as a familiar terror rose in her heart, and faced east across the Pacific Ocean along with everyone else around her, though only she recognized the true nature of what drew their gaze.
Without knowing why, the entire world stopped in its tracks, just for the briefest of moments, to look in one singular direction.
The briefest of moments was all they had.
The darkness surged as the Doors slammed open as if in a mighty wind. It knocked everyone in the chamber backward from the sheer force of it, off the ground, blowing them back and away and further still, past the point where the walls of the chamber should have stopped them. They could see nothing, touch nothing, only scream in a blind freefall into the dark that never seemed to end.
-o-
On the International Space Station, there is a module called the Cupola, a faceted dome-like structure with seven windows. Officially, its purpose is for experimentation, and to assist in line-of-sight for docking maneuvers and station repair. Unofficially, it is the roughly six feet of space where cosmonauts aboard the ISS spent nearly all of their free time, gazing at the astronomical beauty of planet Earth. It was a little sanctuary from the eighteen-hour work days there above the sky, and a good way to remind yourself why you'd fought to be up there in the first place.
Viktor Nikolayevsk had his eyes closed, however. He lay curled in midair in microgravity, head rocking back and forth slightly to the concert violin orchestra coming in through his earphones as he practiced his fingering in time with the music. He didn't have anything resembling a fret to hold, but he was fairly certain that the fourth movement went something like—
He banged his head on the hard metalic inner frame of the Cupola with a crack, and swore loudly.
Laughter came from two nodes below him where Aleksey was working. "You owe me a thousand roubles!" he called.
"Shut up, I didn't even break anything!"
"Breaking your head counts, and you did it within a week up here, so pay up!"
"That's not—" Viktor fell silent as something out the window caught his eye.
Over Central America, already covering Guatemala and Honduras from border to border and growing fast, was a a patch of what looked, more than anything else, like a blind spot or dark afterimage. Viktor rubbed his eyes, and when he looked back, it stretched from Panama to halfway up Mexico. Another blink and it had swallowed Cuba, Columbia, and Texas.
"Aleksey!" he shouted in a strangled voice, launching himself downward and bouncing toward his partner's work station. "Aleksey are you seeing this?!"
Something in his tone must have gotten the younger man's attention. "Seeing what? Is something going on outside?"
Viktor pulled himself to a halt beside him and pulled up weather monitors. "Go look out the window and tell me what you see!"
Aleksey did. "...What are you getting from the sensors?"
A pause. "Nothing."
"Well something's got to be off! Compare it with—"
"No I mean there's nothing! All incoming data is dropping off! It's like everything just stopped!"
Aleksey floated back over. "Equipment failure?"
"I'm still getting readings for our own stuff, but everything suborbital has just..." His blood ran cold. "I can't contact Earth. We're cut off."
"We can't be." Aleksey leaned over him and pulled on a headset. "Soyuz, come in, this is Major Neva of the ISS. Are you seeing this?"
Viktor looked out the window again, but it was like straining his eyes to see in pitch blackness. The eyes slid over it, seeking input that made sense, and forcing himself to look directly at the darkness made him ache in a way he had no words to describe. Flashes of something that looked like lightning danced over the anomoly's surface, temporarily casting the blackness into a very deep purple. Those brief shifts, and the abrupt instinct that something was moving inside it, were the only ways to differentiate the shadows from the unbroken void of space. It covered the entire western hemisphere and showed no signs of stopping, stretching an unbroken wavefront across the globe like some inverted, impossibly fast parody of dawn.
Viktor's heart seized as all of Russia was gone in the space of a breath—Eva, Dad, oh god! Australia, the far east, and India weren't far behind; the local night made the dark advance no less horrifying as city lights were swept away like so much glittering dust. The visible world shrank and shrank as more land was eaten away, a circle of clear sky hovering briefly over northeastern Africa. Then even that was gone as the enclosing wavefronts met and merged, and at last it was still.
Soyuz, Shenzhou, and Tiangong 2 all reported in with the same readings as the ISS.
In just over twenty minutes, impenetrable darkness had enveloped the earth.
AN: Not gonna lie, I bullshit history and I bullshit science. Probably the only thing I don't bullshit is bullshit itself... which works out, because complete bullshit is what I'm in this fandom for. =P
-o-o-o-
Geimu No Jikan Da
—The chapter title is a blatant reference to Season Zero!Yami's tagline, which translates to "It's game time!"
"Everyone, this is my colleague Jason Lugh."
—Lugh's name is derived from two different legends; Jason of the Aeneid, and Lugh the All-Crafted, of Irish mythology. I chose the latter because I wanted him to be very very Irish, and also because I found stories surrounding him, particularly the one about the confrontation with Balor of the Evil Eye, to be particularly relevant. The former was a throwaway. I just liked the story and needed a given name for the guy.
"Oh I see," he exclaimed. "You were the healer!"
—My interpretation of Serenity Wheeler borrows a lot from MyAibou's interpretation of her, although this will be taking a somewhat different spin on the same idea.
...a thief throws wide the gates of his heart, and calls the darkness in.
—Phrasing borrowed from Jumping at Shadows, a Riku-centric Kingdom Hearts fic by Alyssa2 which I cannot recommend enough!
Ryou ... blinked and looked around, startled that it had seemed so loud when it was over ten feet away. How had he heard it so clearly?
—Hearing distant conversations as though they were up close is a documented ability the Millennium Ring allows its bearer. Granted, it only happened once, and in some anime filler from season 1 at that, but I'm still taking it!
In this way, their Shadow Game in Monster World cannot help but mirror their last confrontation, every event circumstantially simultaneous with its counterpart...
—Circumstantial simultaneity is a narrative phenomenon used to draw attention to similarities between otherwise disparate events. It is widely utilized in all types of storytelling, but is explicitly named and defined as part of the in-universe mythos in Andrew Hussie's Homestuck... also known as the fandom that stole me away from Yu-Gi-Oh! for six years... ^^U
-o-o-o-
God this chapter was like pulling teeth. And I have a sinking feeling it's not going to get any easier... but at least I've finally learned to write by discipline instead of inspiration (as proven by the fact that this is my new longest chapter, and I cranked it out in under a month). So here's the standard FFN-style begging-for-reviews segment, because they give me the dopamine hit I need to keep working. Gotta love that positive reinforcement~