He is falling.
He is tumbling, head over heels, falling into the darkness, swallowed up in the space between the stars. There is something coiling around him, something thick and dark andancient , something that could swallow him whole if he isn't careful.
He has had this dream before.
Judai startled awake. Or at least, he was pretty sure he had. Once his head stopped spinning and he found himself staring at nothing, he was no longer so sure.
He sat up and waved his hands back and forth. He could see his hands as clearly as though it were a normal sunny day. But beyond his hands there was nothing but a deep, unfathomable blackness.
He felt something cool curl around his ankles like smoke as he stood. He felt...odd. There was something akin to nostalgia bubbling in his chest, or at least, a sense of deja vu. He'd been here before. Wherever here was...
He turned around a few times, but there wasn't anything to see. Just blackness in all directions, no beginning, no end. He was standing on something, but it didn't look any different than the rest of the world. He was almost afraid to move, worried that he would go off some unseen drop and start falling again.
Falling...again? Had he been falling?
"Welcome back."
The voice came from the blackness itself, rumbling around him as though the world were speaking. Judai winced.
"Ah. And you came too. How curious."
Judai blinked once, and Yusei was there, sitting on the ground next to Judai and looking just as confused and disoriented as Judai felt. Judai jumped, and reached down to help Yusei up to his feet. Yusei shook slightly, and Judai moved his hands to Yusei's shoulders.
"Are you okay?" Judai said.
"I think so," Yusei said. "You?"
"I'm fine."
It was a lie. He was trembling so badly he thought he might fall apart. He knew where they were and he didn't want to be here.
As though sensing his panic, Yusei immediately put his arms around Judai, tucking him against his neck. His fingers curled into his hair briefly.
"Who's there?" Yusei said.
"That's right. We've never been formally introduced. Judai knows me."
Yusei hesitated. He looked down at Judai as Judai pushed back slightly, despite his desire to stay in the hug. Judai licked his suddenly very dry lips, turning around. The darkness was moving, though how it was possible to tell against the eternal black was anybody's guess.
And then it simply settled. A hulking, looming figure appeared over them, shrouded in a thick black cloak that yet somehow still stood out against the darkness. Glowing pin pricks of blue shone from underneath the hood, inside the sockets of an animalistic skull. For the first time, Judai realized just how dragon-like the creature's skull appeared.
"Judai?" Yusei said, tightening his grip on Judai. Judai set himself between Darkness and Yusei.
"Darkness," he said. "So you were the one in my dreams."
"You are very forgetful."
"You took my memories," Judai said. "You took my memories of every loop I went through."
"You knew there would be a price. It was the easiest thing I could take from you in order to facilitate your wish. Would you rather I had taken a life?"
"Judai, what's going on?" Yusei said.
Judai swallowed. He moved his hand up to where Yusei's were on his shoulders, gripping it tightly.
"I don't really know," Judai said softly. "But I have a guess."
Darkness stared at the two of them, unblinking, skull features unreadable. It was huge, looming over them like the specter of death itself.
"This is Darkness," Judai said. "It's...a force that...I think I may have made a contract with to save you."
Yusei's hands tightened protectively on Judai's shoulders.
"You did. You wanted to save the life of that one, and offered anything. You ought to be thanking me for not taking more than your memories."
"How many times have I done this?" Judai asked, his throat tight.
"Why would I know? It all passes in a blink."
"Why are we here ?" Judai asked, his voice cracking. "Why did you bring us here? Has this happened before? What do you want ?"
Darkness stared, unmoving. Judai shook, and Yusei wrapped his arms around him gently, holding him back against his chest. He was so tired . He was tired of being playthings for these huge, unfeeling beings! He was tired of his and Yusei's lives being nothing more than specks of dust in the face of these old, uncaring things.
And then, inexplicably, Darkness sighed. It melted like a shadow in sunlight, and for a moment, Judai almost yelled. Where was it going? Was it leaving without answering a single question?
The shadow reformed, all black, smaller, now, like it was made of oil.
It looked exactly like Judai.
Darkness blinked at Judai, and now, with a human face, it sighed. Exhaustion flickered over its face.
"I did not bring you here," it said. "You both came of your own accord."
"We...what?" Yusei said.
"You were following the melody, weren't you?"
Judai hesitated. That...he remembered hearing it, when the two dragons had been dancing in the sky, and he had wanted to get to Yusei, as fast as possible, running towards him as he skidded back into the pit, and then...
"What is it?" Yusei asked, and his voice cracked with a faint hint of longing.
Darkness blinked at the two of them. Then it closed its oil black eyes.
"You asked me several questions. The first I've answered. The second: no. This has not happened before. Neither of you have ever made it here, in all the times you've done this loop."
It opened its eyes and considered the two of them. Even though it was no longer as hulking and powerful as the dragon-headed skeleton from before, the gaze somehow seemed harder to hold this way.
"The third question you've asked. What do I want?"
Darkness shrugged.
"I accepted your contract the first time because that is what I do. I accept the contracts mortals offer."
"Even if that mortal is me, right?" Judai said wryly.
"Yuki Judai, I am not sure where you come by the conclusion that I dislike you."
Judai stared at it. Darkness did not respond.
"I mean...I kind of ruined your plan to destroy the world."
"Yuki Judai, that time you faced me back then, you saved me."
The silence echoed throughout the blackness. Judai could hear his own heartbeat thrumming in his ears, could hear the hum of Yusei's heart in his neck, too.
"I...what?" Judai said.
Darkness sighed once again, and this time it seemed to come from all around them.
"Follow me."
It wasn't so much following the strange being as it was...simply being where it wanted them to be. All of a sudden there was light. Yusei braced himself, but the light didn't blind him. It simply was, the way that the darkness around them was, the way it didn't obscure anything but rather made it stand out more.
There was a perfect line between the light and the darkness, and Darkness stopped right before it, looking out into the world of light.
"Where are we now?" Judai asked. "Is that...?"
A scream echoed from inside the light. Yusei winced. He felt his heart pick up, and he grabbed instinctive hold of Judai as Judai reached for him, too. They clung to each other as the scream warped. It cut and stabbed through Yusei's ears, bringing tears to his eyes. All at once, the white bubbled. The line between light and darkness shifted briefly, as though there was a tide of white trying to overtake the darkness, trying to bubble around the boundary. Lights and glimmers shone dizzingly like a disco ball somewhere inside the expanse and Yusei had to close his eyes before he threw up. The scream turned into incoherent babbles and shrieks that seemed to come from a thousand different voices— and then just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.
When Yusei opened his eyes, the light was still again.
But something else was at the boundary.
Across from Darkness, something bulged out of the white floor. He couldn't call it human-shaped, but he couldn't call it anything else, either. It dragged itself along the floor silently. There was a protrusion that might have been a head, but a head that was melting; the whole thing was completely white like the world around it, and it looked as though it were melting like wax as it tried to pitifully drag its way towards Darkness.
Darkness, for its part, just looked down at the creature. It stood there, still in that eerie perfect likeness of Judai, staring down at it without expression, as it reached the edge of light and darkness. It opened up what might have been a mouth, but no sound came out.
And then a tired look dragged at Darkness's eyes, and it knelt down to meet it, putting one black hand against the stark white face.
"You should rest," it said. "You should be resting."
"... ... ... ..."
Yusei had the feeling that someone had spoken, but there was no sound; it was like the ringing aftereffect of a voice without any words before it.
"Go to sleep, my friend," Darkness said, and it was surprisingly gentle sounding. Yusei didn't know this creature, but from Judai's reactions, he thought maybe Judai feared it. Yet...it sounded so sad and lonely.
The white creature tried to speak again, but only curled up further into an even more shapeless blob. Darkness looked back up at Judai.
Judai was shaking, still clinging to Yusei.
"What's happening?" he said, white faced.
"Madness," Darkness said. "It came to us all, in the end."
It looked down.
"I was like this, too. You felt my madness, once. You held it within you. Nurtured it; wore it like armor."
Judai flinched and shuddered, as though he had been struck. Yusei rubbed his shoulder reassuringly.
"You're not the Gentle Darkness," Judai said.
"I am. I am all darkness. When you faced me that day, I was at the height of my madness. You, who had been touched by it, freed me from it."
"I don't understand. What are you saying? Why did you do all of this?"
"What do you want from us?" Yusei said.
Darkness looked back down at the shrinking white blob.
"Want? I wanted nothing from you. I knew there was nothing that could be done, but to watch Light waste away from madness, until I, too, vanished with it. I accepted your contract because it was something to do."
It lifted its eyes back to Yusei and Judai, somehow fixing them both with its stare at the same time.
"But you surprised me. The both of you. Each loop, you got a little bit closer. And this time, you are closer than I dreamed imaginable."
"Closer to what?" Yusei whispered.
Darkness closed its eyes. Yusei felt something in the darkness shift, something getting...gentler.
"I do not remember ever feeling this alone," it said.
It stood up, and opened its eyes. Its whole face softened with what seemed an uncharacteristic smile, even though it was on Judai's face. It extended one hand to the two of them.
"You have come to me with wishes. Perhaps it would not be too presumptuous to ask a wish of my own?"
"What wish is that?" Judai said, and his hand tightened in Yusei's.
"Would you perhaps find it within your power to save us?"
The light and the darkness both warped and wobbled. Yusei grabbed for Judai's hand. Before him, the world seemed to bubble, and the oily black Judai melted along with the white lump of light. For just a moment, Yusei saw them— two massive dragons, one on the dark and one on the light. The massive black dragon, so dark that its scales glimmered with prismatic purples and blues, giant eyes staring down at him, and he thought that he had seen those eyes before— Hourglass Dragon. And the other, beautiful and fragile, a slender snake of a dragon with three pairs of wings all down its prismatic length, fractals of light curling in a mane and horns from its head, bleeding red from the ragged hole where its heart should be.
He heard one last, desperate scream from the light, and then he woke up.