The question was, where to go to next?
They were really just walking, wandering, even. The landscape would change every now and then like it had before, but they didn't really seem to be going anywhere. They came across small groups of Shinigami, but the death gods didn't seem interested in looking at them for long, turning back to their gambling.
They're not very aggressive, Lawliet thought. It's not their fault what their magic is doing, after all...its this entire world.
They looked around at the barren, bleached landscape, the ooze of black goo that seeped behind cracks like shadows.
Too much corruption was sealed away, and for too long, they thought. The very nature of corruption is that it wears away seals. It can't be contained, it needs to be addressed and healed...like an illness.
They crossed another hill, and found the mountains suddenly stark on the horizon. Against the bone white sky, they cut like obsidian scars into the background. They were close, Lawliet thought. Closer than they appeared, anyway. They had been walking towards them for ages, but now, they could feel their closeness. This world did not play by ordinary rules.
There. That was where they were headed. They weren't sure why or for what, but they knew they had to get there.
Their memory stirred with something from L's past.
"There's a tree," Kaiba Seto said. "There's a tree. That's where the Death Notes come from. That's the source of the death magic."
Ah, they thought, looking towards the mountains. The tree was there.
But what were they to do when they found the tree?
They heard something scrabbling behind them, tiny feet stumbling over the bones that littered the ground. They turned, but without haste or concern. The Shinigami were not violent. They were observers...lazy and unmotivated. The corruption that had created them had sapped them of much of their will to exist, after so long cut off from everything they used to be.
The creature that stood before them, however, felt...different. It was a small Shinigami, no higher than their waist. Its head was more bulbous pustule than head, with bubbly lumps all over the crown of their head. Lank gray hair fell in irregular clumps, mostly covering its eyes, which were nothing more than flat black discs. It was somewhat chubby, its body locked in what looked like a bone white exoskeleton that was flaking off in places.
It stared at Lawliet. The other Shinigami had not looked at them so intently—they had given them a brief flicker of a look, and returned to their games of gambling, or their staring through the holes in the worlds to the human world, with Death Note in hand.
This Shinigami seemed to be waiting for something. Its too small hands were wrapped into fists. The Death Note that hung at its side seemed almost too big for it.
After a few more moments of staring, Lawliet finally chanced to speak.
"Do you need something?"
The Shinigami blinked. Its hands twitched—towards its Death Note.
"I can't see your name," it said. The voice was thin, almost too high pitched. "What is your name?"
Lawliet blinked. Shinigami should be able to see any name. Somehow, they knew this. Something from Seraphina's memories, of a war long gone. Shinigami had the power to see the names of anyone, so that they could kill them.
This Shinigami could not see their name.
"It's not something I give out," they said.
Was the Shinigami...trembling?
"Do I know you?" the Shinigami said.
"I don't think so. I would remember."
"I don't," the Shinigami said. "I don't remember anything. Do you know how a Shinigami is born?"
"I don't."
"Neither do I. I haven't been here long, I don't think. No one can tell me, though."
It touched the Death Note at its side.
"I opened my eyes at the foot of the tree, and the King gave me my Note," it said. "And that's all I remember. Then I was here. And no one remembers me."
It looked at the ground.
"No one remembers me," it said again, voice sounding hollow, then. "Including me."
Lawliet felt their heart clench. They raised a hand to their chest and pressed the heel of their palm against it. That was...that was an odd feeling. It was something that Seraphina had felt before, and even L, once or twice, they remembered. But it was a new feeling for them, in this form.
Lawliet crouched down so that they were eye level with the Shinigami. The Shinigami looked up, met Lawliet's eyes with their own.
"I don't know if I remember you," Lawliet said. "But I can remember you from now on."
Something changed. They felt it, and choked on their own gasp. The...it was coming from the Death Note. The magic in it was warping. It was...spiking.
It was feeling.
The Shinigami put its hands to the sides of its head and moaned.
"It hurts," the Shinigami said. "It hurts."
Lawliet was Nameless.
Lawliet could potentially become anything.
They reached out for the core of the Shinigami's magic, and pulled it into themselves.
It hurt. It hurt a lot. It caused their head to scream with pain, caused them to curl up, double over, choke on a silent scream. The magic pulled through them, dragged through the keyhole of their soul. They thought they heard the Shinigami scream, too—and in midscream, the voice changed, changed into something that was familiar to L and Seraphina both.
And then the pain was over, leaving only ghost images behind.
Lawliet found themselves on the ground, arms splayed on either side of them, staring up at the bone white sky. The Shinigami was gone. When they sat up, they saw the remains of their Death Note: nothing more than a curling black cover, the pages turned to dust.
Where had the Shinigami gone?
Back, Lawliet thought. It went back.
I freed it.
And then they inhaled, as L and Seraphina's memories synced.
Ah, they thought. I did know who you were.
When they looked up again, the mountains were right before them. And between two black shards, an arch was waiting for them. The ironwrought gate hung open.
They were expected.
The world outside was utter chaos. Seto leaned on Ishizu, his legs still weak from having just about died for a moment there. Misa was behind them, still being carried by her ka. Ice Master looked out at the chaos, and tightened her grip on Misa.
"It's worse than I feared," she said. "Apep is eating your world."
Little of Domino City as Seto remembered it remained. Buildings were slowly dissolving into black dust that filtered upwards into a sky that bubbled with toxic colors between bubbles of black. The ground was covered in holes, some of which seemed to have no bottom. He could see white smoke rising up in the distance, from pillars of impossibly high purple flames.
"Gods," Ishizu swore, her eyes going white and face strained.
"Yugi's out there," Anzu said, her voice trembling. "Oh god, Yugi's out in that."
She tried to run forward, but Ishizu grabbed her by the wrist, almost losing Seto. Seto tried to keep his own balance.
"We have to stick together," Ishizu said.
"I'm not—"
"We're going to find Yugi! But together!" Ishizu snapped. "You'll die out there, Anzu—Magician of Faith is a beautiful ka, but she is not built for sustained combat and you know it."
Anzu's eyes bubbled with frustrated tears, her face ruddy and eyes red. But she slumped, and didn't try to pull out of Ishizu's grip.
"Ah!"
The voice was so quiet over the roar of the world falling to pieces that Seto almost didn't hear it. But then Madeleine was zipping down from the sky, shooting towards them so fast that she almost smacked into them. Pudding was on the back of her fork, and she shrieked as she tumbled forward from the sudden stop. Anzu snatched her arm out of Ishizu's grip to catch the tiny girl—wait, she was...fully visible. And without L anywhere in sight. What was...
"L!" Madeleine shrieked at them. "Have you found him?"
Seto could barely keep events together in his head. What was she talking about?
"He's gone!" Pudding sobbed in Anzu's arms. "H-He—that horrible Shinigami tried to kill him, and Sera did something, and he and Sera vanished—"
Ishizu automatically looked to Ice Master.
"You were the Shinigami that was attached to Misa," she said. "Were you also...?"
Ice Master looked down, and Misa blinked, her arms tightening around Ice Master's neck. The girl looked so confused. She had no idea what was happening, did she? Had she forgotten everything related to the Death Note, the way that Seto almost had?
"My memory of my time as Rem is somewhat spotty, yet," she admitted. "But yes. I was the one who write the detective L's name into the Death Note. After that, I recall nothing."
Pudding froze in Anzu's arms. Madeleine's mouth fell open and she almost dropped from the sky.
"YOU!" Pudding shrieked. "It was YOU?"
"You're not a Shinigami," Madeleine said, looking nervous, her face wrinkling up.
"No longer," Ice Master said testily. "I was cleansed from the death magic that infected me after I died, protecting Misa. My ba."
Misa simply blinked and smiled. She looked a little dizzy, and Seto wondered if she was even completely aware of her surroundings at the moment. She was probably as disoriented as he was.
"But then...what happened to L?" Anzu said, looking nervously at Ishizu and Seto. "If...if his name was written in a Death Note..."
"But they both disappeared!" Madeleine wailed. "I've been looking everywhere, but I can't even sense him, or Sera!"
Seto groaned, grinding his palms into his temples. If only everyone would shut up for two seconds. L was missing, the world was falling apart, Yugi was trying to fight out there, the others were probably trying their best, too...
And then Misa screamed.
"Look out!"
Seto's eyes snapped up. Just a little too slow. Anzu screamed, Pudding shrieked, both of them moving in slow motion as a hulking demon lurched out of a hole beside them, swiping a massive club at the two of them—
"Madolche Shuffle!"
It happened so fast that Seto almost didn't see it. One moment, Pudding, Madeleine, and the monster were there. The next second, they weren't.
But someone else was there instead.
Queen Tiramisu stood as tall as a tiny person like her could, her round face set with determination. A single glimmer of light swirled around her in a spiral, sending sparkles across her dress.
"T-Tiramisu!" Ishizu said. "You—but—"
Tiramisu held up a hand.
"Not now," she said. "I was lucky enough to come back when I did. L saved me."
Seto inhaled sharply.
"He's alive."
"In a manner of speaking," Tiramisu said. "I do not quite remember everything of being a Shinigami. But he cleansed me, and sent me back."
She looked up towards the warping sky.
"He's in the Shinigami realm," she said. "I don't know how."
"What is he doing there?" Seto said.
Tiramisu looked back at Seto.
"You know what he's doing," she said softly.
Seto felt his stomach twist.
"The tree," he said. "He's going to destroy the tree."
Tiramisu looked sad.
"The tree isn't something that can be easily dealt with," she whispered. "I saw it, when I became a Shinigami. I fear that..."
She fell briefly silent.
"It hurt him to cleanse me," she said. "I fear that he will attempt the same thing on the tree...and it may kill him."