I don't own Yu-gi-oh.
Seto's pov
The dragon growled menacingly, daring me to come closer to its host. I could hear slight crackles as it crouched above her. It was building up an armor of electricity in addition to its diamond-hard scales. Any metal would conduct the electricity and paralyze its carrier. The air smelled of ozone, and when the smell got stronger, I stepped back. It was charging up its White Lightning. I braced myself for a shock; I wasn't sure if my wards would hold against its deadly breath weapon. Sure enough, the beast opened its mouth, and I saw a white glow emerge from its throat, followed by sparks.
It was at times like this that I regretted armor being made of metal. I had to be fast to outrun its breath weapon. I ran behind the corner of the wall just as I heard the electricity surge. I closed my eyes before it hit the carpet (this section had an actual carpet, unlike most of the rest of the castle); I needed not to be even partially blinded if I was going to survive the Blue-Eyes White Dragon's assault. When I opened them again and peeked around the corner, the carpet had caught on fire, and the smell of smoke in addition to the ozone gave me a migraine.
Then I realized that the burning carpet was a double-sided dagger. The flames would spread toward its host, and if its host died, so did the dragon. It realized this as it tried flapping its wings to blow out the fire. It efforts slowed the flames, but they were steadily inching towards the dragon and its host. It touched the girl with the tip of an ivory talon, but its coat of static electricity worked against it when she convulsed. The dragon growled; it seemed out of options.
I smirked triumphantly. It had practically defeated itself for me.
Then something unexpected happened. The dragon's blue eyes glowed as the girl emitted a pale blue aura. She was still unconscious, but she was getting to her feet. Her head flopped precariously from side to side. The dragon looked behind it, and the girl walked in that direction. She didn't have any control over herself.
A heart wrenching realization hit me. Normally, Kas had no control over their hosts. Their hosts would summon and control the Ka using their Ba. The girl in front of me, however, seemed to be a special case. If my suspicions were correct, the pair possessed a dual soul. Half of each's soul existed in the other. She could control the dragon, but it could control her. Those with dual souls often clashed in a battle of wills. Unfortunately, since the girl was unconscious, she had no control over her dragon, so it was free to do as it pleased, including possess her. I had signed up for too much when I agreed to deal with her for eavesdropping.
The dragon tried to turn around, but it was too big. It lashed its tail in frustration and knocked some of the stones in the wall loose. Being a dragon, it realized what it could do with its massive bulk. It leaned to one side then slammed into the wall. An explosion of dust entered the air, and when I could open my eyes again, I saw that it had broken into the library. I groaned when it charged its lightning again. It had realized that there were plenty of flammable wooden shelves and countess books and scrolls that could be incinerated. It released its deadly breath weapon into the library. The ornate tapestries, the antique rugs, and every other piece of fabric in the library were destroyed in the resulting explosion.
I turned my attention back to the girl. She locked herself in a storage room with a metal door.
The White Dragon turned its attention to the door now. To my surprise, it fired up its electricity and aimed at the carpet in front of the door, which ignited immediately. Now, it seemed like the dragon was trying to kill its host. The idea was absurd; surely it knew that if she died, it would die with it. It flapped its wings to draw the flames to the door. After a few minutes, the metal had started to glow. When it rubbed its rounded snout against the hinges and doorknob, I finally understood its logic. It had fanned the flames to make the metal malleable enough to mold. By destroying the only ways to open the door, she was stuck there. She couldn't get out, but we couldn't get in. Now that it was free of the burden of watching over its host, it could turn to more pressing matters, like how much destruction it could cause.
It saw me again and began to advance menacingly. I turned tail and ran. It was my only chance of survival, after all. It rounded the corned and made sure to dislodge the stones in the wall in several places before continuing its pursuit. While it paused to break through the wall again, I ripped a tapestry to open a secret passageway. I ran up the stone steps and grinned when I heard its roar of frustration when only its head and part of its neck could fit through the entrance. It fired at the steps, but I knew that even a Blue-Eyes White Dragon's lightning would have no effect against stone.
While I was running upstairs, I wondered how I would deal with the girl's dragon. The obvious solution hit me halfway through my ascent: Aksira. She too possessed a Ka. Though Aksira didn't possess a dual soul, her dragon could hold off the White Dragon for at least a couple hours. If we were going to dispel her Ka, we needed all the time we could get. I turned through several corridors until I reached Aksira's tower. I remembered that she wasn't at the meeting, but she was my last chance. Duos wouldn't even last a minute against a White Dragon.
I banged on the door, but she didn't answer. I could only wait for so long. When I received no reply, I lost all patience and summoned Duos. He understood my intentions and slashed the door away with his oversized sword. At once, I heard a scream of fury as Aksira stormed towards me with every intent to kill written on her face.
"Where were you in the meeting this morning?" I demanded.
She ignored my question. "I thought I made it very clear that you were never to enter my chambers," she spat, pulling a dagger out of her bracer.
"Technically, I'm not in your chambers. I'm outside them."
"Don't push me or else I'll use Rorex to destroy Duos."
"That's sort of why I'm here. I need to borrow Rorex."
"Don't bring me into this. A little bird told me you said you would handle the situation yourself."
"She's your slave, so she's your responsibility."
"Then you shouldn't have tried to deal with her yourself. You reap what you sow, Seto."
"You don't understand."
"Understand what, imbecile?"
"She has a Ka."
She stared at me, so I continued. "Her Ka is a Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and they share a dual soul."
"What? That's impossible!"
"Why do you think she has pale skin, white hair, and blue eyes? Why do you think the dragons were so afraid of her? Her Ka is practically the king of dragons. And since Colan threatened her life and knocked her out while she was summoning her Ka, it's free do to whatever it pleases, including control her. Did I mention that the dragon made her lock herself in a storage closet and then destroyed the only entrance?" I added casually.
She glared at me. "You owe me big time."
"You're right. Are you going to help me or not?"
"Keep in mind that I'm not doing this for you," she said as a dark red glow surrounded her. Her Red-Eyes Black Dragon materialized and roared.
"So, where is her dragon?" she asked.
I shrugged.
"You don't know?" she roared. "How dare you enlist me without that knowledge!"
We both heard an assortment of screeches, roars, and growls outside her window. Without thinking, we both ran to the window to see the cause of the commotion. The first thing I saw was a Kaiser Dragon's snakelike body stream past a White Dragon.
Good. They're subduing it with our dragons.
"Why do none of the dragons have riders?" Aksira interrupted my thinking.
I hadn't noticed that before. Swearing, I said, "It's released the others."
Now that I looked at it more closely, I realized that the Blue-Eyes White Dragon was too small to be the girl's Ka. I was looking at Ibris, our Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
"That's Ibris right there," she said, copying my thinking. "So where's her Ka?"
Her question was answered when another white dragon's head appeared outside the window. Its eyes narrowed in recognition as it charged its White Lightning and aimed at the window. Aksira's dragon, Rorex, roared and breathed its garnet-colored flames at the window. I wasn't taking any chances; I turned and ran. From the resulting shockwave and sound, I knew that the impact was colossal. I chanced a look behind me. There was a giant hole in the wall, and the edges of the stone had melted. The temperature had probably risen fifteen degrees from just that single blast. My steel armor burned my skin from the sudden increase in heat. I could deal with the pain, however. I had suffered much worse before.
The hole in the wall was large enough for Rorex to slide through. He breathed multiple fireballs at the Blue-Eyes White Dragon; the many Inferno Fire Blasts were enough to deter the enemy just long enough for it to squeeze through the hole and take to the sky. The White Dragon started to build up its lightning, so the Red-Eyes Black Dragon breathed another fireball at the developing blast. His experience showed when it hit spot-on. A miniature explosion burned the White Dragon's gaping maw.
Now it was angry. Its blue eyes started to turn dark purple, a sign that it was losing control of itself. It attacked a nearby Kaiser dragon, biting its long, spindly foreleg. Even from my distance, I could hear the crack of broken bones. I had always worried about Stepfather's desire for long legs on his dragons. His logic was that it would make it harder for a sword strike to injure its main torse. The result of selective "breeding", if a fusion spell could be called breeding, was thinner, weaker bones that broke more easily and could barely support the dragon's weight with a rider and armor.
The Kaiser Dragon shrieked and struggled to get away from the White Dragon. The larger beast clamped harder on its leg before letting go. The dragon whimpered and flew towards the mountains like most of its brethren had already done. Ibris wasn't taking any chances with the larger member of her species, and fled towards the mountains as well. The other remaining dragons scattered, except for one I was afraid would stay behind to attack the castle: Fang, the Tyrant Dragon. He roared at the White Dragon, who returned the call but didn't attack. They worked beside each other, decimating the castle walls.
Meanwhile, our soldiers were evacuating the castle residents. I noticed that the guy in the stretcher was absent. I figured that everyone else thought he wasn't worth the effort; he really did look sick.
I still wondered why Bakura showed so much interest in the blonde. I knew that he was a captain in the army forming against us, but he didn't seem like much of a threat. However, Bakura assured Stepfather that he was absolutely dangerous. He didn't go into details, but when I had seen him around the blonde, he looked very uneasy. For a necromancer, he seemed unusually keen to keep him alive. The eye with the scar seemed to twitch slightly whenever he was near the patient.
Then I thought about what the Thief King was up to. He was probably out to save his own hide; it wouldn't be like him to stick up for others. Then again, he was probably killing for sport or plundering the treasury amidst the chaos. I wouldn't put either past him.
Aksira interrupted my thought process again. "Well, where's that storage closet?"
I thought for a while before I remembered. "Where the library was."
"Was? WAS? It's your fault the library was destroyed!"
"Her dragon incinerated it, not me."
"You're the one that knocked her out."
"Actually, Colan was."
"Lucky you. You've been demoted to number three on my hit list. Colan, you've claimed the number two spot!"
"Who has the top position?"
"Bakura."
"He was the one that captured you and brought you here, wasn't he?"
She held her dagger to my throat. "Don't. Remind. Me."
"Well, do we have a welder?"
"What do you think?"
"What about a blacksmith?"
"No. Gozaburo's going to salvage everyone he can to build his new castle if he can't get to another hideout soon."
"So how are we going to break in?" I asked.
"Let's think about it once we get there."
"You're being unusually impulsive."
"And you're being unusually stupid, Seto, even more than normal. Move it."
I held my hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Okay."
Running, we headed to the ruins of the library. We had to take several detours due to piles of rubble of missing patches of floor.
"Dragons can be pretty destructive," I commented when he reached what was left of the library.
"No dip, Sherlock. Where's the storage closet?"
I scanned the wall for the area where the Blue-Eyes White Dragon had rubbed its rounded head against the metal. It took a little white, but I finally located it. As we ran to it, a brown tail blocked our path. The White Dragon sent Fang to guard its host. His glowing green eyes showed delight in being able to cause mayhem.
"Go destroy another part of the castle, Fang."
I saw surprise in his eyes. He deliberated the rare command in his head for several seconds before breathing orange flames on a patch of carpet that had survived the White Dragon's assault, snorting in amusement, and leaving.
Unfortunately for us, it was right outside the library doorframe. It had blocked the only easy was to the storage closet.
"Duos is Dark element, not Water," I said.
"Well, have him use his sword to blow the flames away."
I let the familiar dark blue energy envelop me as I released my Ka. He instinctively knew my command and swung his sword back and forth at the flames. They swayed from side to side, but they didn't go out.
"Forget this," Aksira said after a minute of no success. "Firajna!"
I recognized the spell for extinguishing flames.
"Why didn't you use that spell when this whole scene started?" I complained.
"I was going to save my energy for desummoning her Ka, but I'm out of patience."
We ran to the area with the dent in the wall. It was still exuding heat from when the Blue-Eyes White Dragon fanned the flames on it.
"Duos, you know what to do," I said.
The warrior grunted in agreement. He lifted his massive sword and sung at the dent. It left slashes in the wall, but it barely breached the surface of the metal. Then he brought his arm back, charged his sword, and stabbed the wall. It went in surprisingly deep. In fact, half his sword had entered the wall. He started to pull his sword out of the metal, but we ran into a snag there: it got stuck. He struggled to withdraw it, but it was all to no avail.
"I guess I'll have to desummon and resummon him until we've broken through the wall," I said.
"Don't," Aksira said. "You'll waste your Ba."
"Well, what do you propose we do?"
"Pry it open with your bare hands," she said.
"Nice try, Aksira."
"Well, it was worth a shot," she shrugged.
"Why don't you try something?" I asked.
"Fine. I'll show you what I can do because of my Ka."
I raised an eyebrow.
She closed her eyes for a small moment. Seconds later, a ball of Rorex's maroon flames appeared in her hand. It was a tiny thing, so I wondered what she was planning to do with it. She raised the fireball to her face and blew on it. A small stream erupted from the fireball as she cut into the wall. It was large enough for a grown man to squeeze through if he was hunched over. He would still have to step over a small section of the wall to get inside.
"Go get her," she said.
"What?"
"Do you want me to desummon her Ka, or do you want to die trying? I've already used enough magic as it is."
"Fine. You win." I crouched down, cursing my height as I did so.
The girl was covered in soot. The area of her potato sack dress where the White Dragon had touched her was blackened, and I saw a tiny hole in the middle of the patch, but it didn't reveal anything. She had blood on her right temple from when Colan had hit her with the jug. Her hair was stained red from the blood. Injuries this bad often caused extreme amnesia, if not death. She was breathing shallowly, so it hadn't killed her… yet.
She had a black eye from where Torik had punched her. I smirked as I remembered that savage kick she gave him in retribution. Her foot broke his knee, and her knee had struck his crotch. Adrenaline worked wonders. I had been beyond surprised when I saw her injure the Thief King's second-in-command. She was very thin and frail looking; no one would expect such strength from someone like her.
Gingerly, I poked her. She didn't respond, so I picked her up. A thought occurred to me. How was I going to get her out without injuring her? And why was I even concerned whether she was injured or not? She was just a slave. She should be no one to me.
"What's the holdup?" Aksira asked.
"How do I get her out without injuring her? The hole's kind of small."
"Try a fireman's lift."
I mentally slapped myself, berating the fact that the obvious answer hadn't come to me. As I swung her over my shoulder, it occurred to me just how light she was. She was short, but she should have been heavier. I could feel her ribcage through my glove. Most people would think she was anorexic.
I squeezed through the hold Aksira had created. It was a second later that I felt a sudden jerk and pounding on my back, so I set her down to see if she had come to.
She hadn't; the dragon's half of her dual soul had taken over. She lashed out at me, but it didn't do much good; I was wearing armor.
"She's just going to injure herself further," I commented.
Aksira thought for a while. "She's afraid of dragons. I enchanted her temporarily so she could clean the dragons' cages without passing out. I'll beacon Rorex, then you wake her up. Her fear and hate should suppress her Ka."
"You're onto something."
Aksira glowed red, and it was only minutes before the Red-Eyes Black Dragon showed up to do his master's bidding.
"Wake her up, Seto."
"Okay," I said. "Nirohai." Awaken.
Her eyes return to normal, but they had a dazed look in them. She was probably taking in her surroundings. She looked right at Rorex several times, but she didn't show any signs of comprehension.
"Oh no. Her concussion gave her amnesia!" Aksira moaned.
A pit formed in my stomach. Her Ka would still be able to control her if her amnesia was as severe as I suspected it was.
"Keep an eye on her and don't let her escape," Aksira said walking off.
"Where are you going?"
"Getting a necklace."
"Now's not the time to accessorize!" I yelled.
"It's not for me, it's for her," she replied.
"She doesn't need jewelry, either!"
"I'm going to enchant it, Seto."
"Why can't you use the one you're wearing?"
"It's pure gold. It would be taken immediately from her."
"Just make it work, Aksira."
She glared at me as she removed her necklace. She chanted several spells, and I saw glyphs for three spells form in a ring, repeating over and over until they would touch each other. She placed the necklace, and I saw a pink glow when the necklace touched the slave girl's skin. I took a closer look at the runes on the choker.
Use wearer's energy to suppress Ka. Bind necklace to skin. Only enchanter of necklace can remove. Use wearer's energy to suppress Ka…
There was a light purple glow, and I heard a distant roar fade away as a beam of white light headed straight towards the girl's chest.
"There. Now she can't use her dragon, and it shouldn't be able to control her."
"Thanks, Aksira."
"You had better come up with something better to thank me for practically doing your job for you."
"Fine. I am eternally indebted to you. Happy?" I said, bowing.
"Quite. Remember what you just said. I'll use it against you forever."
"I'll be sure to conveniently forget about it every time you bring it up."
She stuck her tongue out at me, mounting Rorex."
"I suggest you climb on. The castle could collapse at any moment. And don't expect to ride Rorex any time soon after this."
I stepped towards the great Black Dragon.
"Aren't you forgetting someone?" he spoke telepathically in my head.
He had never talked with me before, so I did my best to remember his voice. I looked behind me and saw Aksira's slave still sitting there, looking out of it.
"Get up," I said.
She didn't seem to understand.
"Aksira, I don't think she can understand us."
"Well, with amnesia that bad, I'm not surprised."
I helped her to her feet, and she walked to Rorex beside me. There was a certain awkwardness to her steps. I pulled her onto Rorex, since she didn't seem to register the fact that she needed to climb on.
The dragon clambered through the halls, looking for an opening in the walls or ceiling where he could take off. In the burning castle, the smoke made it hard to see anything, and the smell probably masked the scent of fresh air.
A sudden bang in front of us made Rorex flinch, and I saw a flash of brown as Fang's torso left the wall. Grateful for an opening, Rorex stuck his head out and scanned the skies for any danger. Sensing none, he took off.
That was when Fang divebombed us…
Wow. Two chapters in 24 hours. That's got to be a record - although I had already written this chapter in a notebook, so it was just a matter of copying it down.
So Kisara finally lost her memory. Things get interesting from here on. Review, please!
