Isis
The Pharaoh exhaled sharply in obvious irritation, his breath expelling as a curious puff of mist in the unnaturally chilled air.
Despite the pressing cold I warmed as I beheld his distracted expression. Our young king was rarely anything but confident and regal, yet in this moment his focus was torn like that of any other of his age. The development also seemed to keep his mind from the unkind shadows of the past that lingered around us to taunt his noble conscience. Instead of staring forlorn at the echos of a mistake made long ago the Pharaoh's eyes now darted from Seto Kaiba's back to my own face as he swayed between two conflicting desires as surely as the Puzzle swung pendulously around his neck. This I understood to be a result of his budding relationship with Seto Kaiba. I had come to learn full well that being pulled between such compelling extremes was a challenge of early affections that seemed able to catch even the grandest of us like a sparrow in a sandstorm.
I could imagine what he debated, for given their new closeness there were only two sensible options. On the one one hand I believed he wanted to follow Seto Kaiba, but on the other knew it was a better idea to give him space. Our ways were not his ways and any friction would only become worse if the Pharaoh pressed him now.
I had been cautious of the Other Seto and my instincts knew his presence here to hold the potential to yet make a powerful upset in the Pharaoh's afterlife, but despite his coarse personality he was not the threat I had first thought him to be. He was arrogant, thankless and disrespectful of both the Pharaoh and our culture but even so causing him to depart in a brooding sulk was not what I had intended, especially as he was the one best dressed to endure battle in the grip of this spell's icy embrace.
My Pharaoh's face reflected my reluctance to see him strike out on his own.
The Kaiser Sea Horse was slicing in two any of the lingering spirits that came too close to Seto Kaiba as he marched through them with determination, but with a toss of the wind his white garb vanished from our view behind a blanket of the hazy specters.
The Pharaoh opened his mouth, perhaps to call out to him, just as I inadvertently cut the thread of his thoughts with a gentle utterance of "I am sorry, my Pharaoh. This was not my intention."
I had over stepped my bounds.
The Pharaoh's attention finally settled on me and he returned my apologetic smile with one of his own, though it was fleeting and forced. His earnings buffeted against the young Pharaoh's jaw as he shook his elegant head to dismiss my apology.
"You're not to blame." The Pharaoh reassured me, using a softer tone that he often took with Mana. "Kaiba is not predisposed to being outdone, even in trading witticisms." The statement was an irritated one, yet somehow also brimmed with veiled respect.
"He resembles the High Priest so keenly." I noted. Keenly enough that I forgotten to temper my words. "I should have known better than to press him as Mahad and I would have done with Seto."
"It's alright, Isis." The Pharaoh replied, the formality of his words laxer than it would normally have been, yet greater than when he spoke to Seto Kaiba from what I had observed. "In form and basic nature the two are very similar; much more so than Yugi and I." My Pharaoh frowned and softly confided in me that "Yugi would never have condemned these people to their graves – no matter what. He'd have found another way."
I had heard the Pharaoh's tales of this Yugi. He sounded like a kind-hearted and enlightened boy by the Pharaoh's account. A truly pure soul. That was a heavy weight to be measured against. Indeed, life was a much more difficult prospect when one's total worth was evaluated in comparison to others. It was a thought Mahad would have known how to shape and present to the Pharaoh, but I lacked his way with such words. I missed his insight into such things, along with everything else about the Magician.
Despite the Pharaoh's acceptance of my apology I still regretted it nevertheless, particularly as I had managed to offend someone the Pharaoh was coming to develop affections for.
"I shall be more mindful in future." I assured my king.
I only prayed Seto Kaiba did not come to harm while now alone. If he did my words would become a most costly mistake...
Upon awakening in the Pharaoh's afterlife the Pharaoh had soon realized that none of us recalled the events that came after his sealing within the Millennium Puzzle. Only Mahad had dreams and glimpses of foreign battlefields in other, much stranger times and places, but they were fleeting and disjointed. I believed them to be merely echoing visions from the part of him that remained bound with the tablet of the Dark Magician.
The Pharaoh had thought the missing memories of our futures to be a sign to continue our lives where we had left them during his reign, unburdened and without the weight of knowing our fates, yet it was the recollection of what had happened immediately before the Pharaoh's sacrifice that haunted me. Even though in this place we were finally reunited once more, knowing that Mahad had been slain and his Ka sealed, and that after the Pharaoh's passing I had continued to live a life absent of him was a difficult charge to accept. Our courtship had been so tentative and new back then. To think of it being stuck down just as it had begun to grow was grievous.
I did not wish that fate upon the Pharaoh and Seto Kaiba, no matter how inappropriate of a match the Other Seto appeared to be.
"Think nothing of it." The Pharaoh commanded. He did not seem surprised that I had run aground on Seto Kaiba's rocky temper by treating him as I did the High Priest. "Their zeal and casual ruthlessness are the same but oddly it is Seto who is the more level-headed of the two." A slight smirk crossed the Pharaoh's face. His lips were beginning to take on a slightly blueish tint. I could not imagine being subjected to such cold while still convalescing would do him good, but for the moment he remained animated, if only by the pleasure he seemed to garner from speaking about the other boy. "Kaiba's modern education has made him more brilliant, but he's more temperamental because of it." The Pharaoh summarized for me.
'Temperamental' indeed.
I inclined my head in understanding. My fingers felt numb and unresponsive as I pulled my garb to cover the large area of my neck and shoulders exposed by the damage done to my robe. I hoped to repel the chill of Call of the Haunted, but it felt as if it had settled straight into my bones. I feared the Pharaoh fared little better as he shifted what remained of his cloak to better cover his exposed skin.
"What of the Other Seto. Shall we follow him?" I questioned, gently.
The Pharaoh's eyebrows rose a fraction at the name, the corner of his mouth turning upwards slightly in a half-conscious smirk before returning to the frustrated expression he had worn as his companion stalked off. "I won't humor Kaiba by rushing to his side to keep pace with him." His expression became stern and stalwart. "But, he's right." The Pharaoh added belatedly, "We need to find a way to end the effects of this spell."
I inclined my head in agreement as he took a step in the direction Seto Kaiba had departed. The phantom corpses salting the ground chilled my heels and ankles as we moved passed them, their closeness bringing a frigid rush of cold sensation as the Pharaoh, his Celtic Guardian and I began to weave around the remaining spirits.
The screams and cries in the distance were growing fainter and less frequent. It appeared the guards were close to finishing the ghostly Pharaoh's unfortunate order.
I side-stepped the senses of one of the haunted men as the fog-soldiers marched around us. They had begun gathering the bodies of the fallen together into heaps as we picked our way through, following in the hoof prints of the other Pharaoh's horse. The path brought us closer to Anubis's spellbound echo than I would of preferred. A blast of freezing wind settled around him like an ambient aura, causing the Pharaoh to shiver violently at my side. As the Pharaoh's spectral projection departed his view with Aknadin far in the distance, Anubis's false pretense of love and loyalty was quickly discarded. His dutiful expression twisted into only evil.
Like an over-large vulture he moved from dying villager to dying villager, chanting the incantations needed to summon forth their Ka. From the body of a barely breathing child he coaxed out a creature that was green, slimy and limbless. "Weak." He assessed and cast the monster aside with a cruel swipe of his hand, ending the child's life.
"Pathetic." Anubis commented again as he lured out something skeletal and rodent-like from one man with arrows in his back, and a large faceless worm from another. "I seek souls worthy of the Pyramid of Light, yet I see only maggots and rats!" He raged to the canyon walls, his shout bouncing around us in an echo of pure anger.
"K..ll...y...this..."
A hoarse whisper drew his gaze back down to the earth.
Curiosity and maliciousness shone in his eyes as he knelt beside the fading body of the woman whose neck he had all but slit, pulling her head up to his ear with a rough yank of her ample hair.
"What was that, wretch? You'll need to speak louder."
"I'll -" Her words were so quiet and disjointed in her last few moments of life "Kill...you... f...this."
Anubis roared with a vicious mocking laughter.
"Mwhahahaha Kill me?" He taunted, sinister mirth gleaming dagger-like in his eyes. "I am but a simple priest, following the directions of the Pharaoh. That is who you should be whispering your threats to." The reasoning was hardly flawless, but that mattered little to those on the cusp of life and death. The final words spoken to and from a departed body held a mysterious magic that could cloud even the most well-adjusted of minds. With a firm hand Anubis jerked her head curtly and whispered into her ear.
"Do you wish to live?"
"Y..s..." the woman desperately struggled to cling to life, as all who died that day appeared to. Life was such a precious thing, after all.
"Then prove your worth!" Anubis barked, and pulled out her Ka.
The woman's body arched as best it could and she silently gasped. "W'rrrrraaaaaaaroooooow!" A soft pelt of sandy fur, slashing claws and beating wings screamed into being as from her body emerged the Ka of a pale Sphinx. It prowled hungrily, shapely and powerful in comparison to the others.
"Your hatred gives you strength." He complimented the Sphinx as he lowered the woman's human body back to the earth. With a stifled moan the woman expired in his grip, sagging limply and Anubis's expression quickly resolved into anger – the savage irritation of being denied an amusement. He chuffed like a beast, casting his hand over the woman and the wound on her neck held shut by the weakening strength of her own grip.
Anubis chuckled maliciously, "You shall be the first." He sealed her head back onto her neck with a burst of black bubbling necrotic magic that stank of corpses and rot. "I command you to live again!"
As life returned to the woman she blinked, once, then twice, staring up into the face of Anubis as he loomed above her body, offering her his palm.
She gazed at her would be savior in the same wonderment and adoration a child might when receiving a large and much desired gift. In doing so the woman revealed only how little she truly knew of the terrible nature of necromancy. Once returned from the grave the servant was powerless to defy the will of the sorcerer who had raised them. The dark art made slaves of all it touched. That was why it was so wisely outlawed by the previous Pharaoh.
Clearly despite his rank in the priesthood the man who would come to name himself Anubis already had begun to dabble with such grim sorcery. He did so carelessly, without the barest of glances to ensure the Pharaoh's soldiers did not take notice. I could fathom no benevolent reason for his candor.
"Rise up. Become my acolyte and by my hand we shall destroy the Pharaoh!" He demanded of the woman.
I did not know which, but either the compulsion of Anubis's magic or her own lust for vengeance spirited the rawboned woman shakily to her feet.
Loudly, something clattered against the chasm rocks as it fell to the ground.
The eyes of Anubis and the newly raised woman, along with the Pharaoh's and my own cut across the bloody landscape.
There, with a shaking hand pointed squarely at the sorcerer stood one of the palace guard. Blood and filth coated his kilt and the tip of the spear that now lay in the earth at his feet. With the soft sound of sand snatching beneath his simple sandals he scrambled to retrieve his weapon, only to drop it once more from trembling hands. He was a young man, barely older than the Pharaoh beside me, yet knowledgeable enough judging by how he beheld the spectacle of Anubis and his new thrall with wide and terrified eyes. His arm tremored as he kept it leveled upon Anubis and his knocking knees shook with fear.
"N-" He staggered backwards and his words stumbled from his mouth as his feet did the rocks beneath him. "N-Necromancer!" He yelled.
It seemed Anubis's use of forbidden magic had not gone unobserved after all.
"Necromancer!" he shouted again, his cry echoing around the canyon's walls and drawing the attention of ever yet more guards as they halted in their duties of collecting the dead to pay mind to the screaming youth among their ranks.
Anubis merely scowled as several of the Pharaoh's guard rounded on him, fingering their weapons and eyeing him warily.
"Halt priest." One demanded.
"A necromancer? Here?" Came a second voice from the swiftly swelling rabble.
"Who goes there?" A third bellowed.
They exchange worried glances and raised their weapons as the youngest of their number continued to quiver and point.
"Make way." Ordered a final and much gruffer voice.
A Hand of the Pharaoh marched through their ranks with an air of unyielding authority that effortlessly parted the soldiers around him to allow him passage. He was a solidly built, ill-shaven and imposing man, nearing the soaring height of Anubis himself. The gathering of guards deferred to him in apprehensive glances as he encroached upon Anubis and his servant with the bleak and serious expression of a veteran who had survived too many conflicts to bother projecting joviality or good humor.
Surrounded by so many armed men and now a Hand of Pharaoh did nothing to sour Anubis's confidence. He laughed in their faces. "Mwhahahaha. You would dare oppose me?"
The crass chuckle was all the confirmation of guilt the soldiers needed and each of them readied their weapons for battle.
"This is why none of my men returned to the palace afterwards." The Pharaoh commented from my side, crossing his arms and watching with wrath-filled displeasure as Anubis simply smirked at his transgressors. "It was soon after this day that word of an evil sorcerer wielding an unusual Millennium Item reached the palace." He scowled, looking much like Seto Kaiba in this moment, as if the Other Seto's manner was in some way contagious.
The outcome of that tale was one I was much more familiar with than the events unfolding before us.
It was a relatively simple story. A cruel sorcerer armed with monsters and the evil magics of the Pyramid of Light had risen to power, purportedly seeking to bring forth the end of all life. Our courageous Pharaoh had stepped up, claiming victory over this so called 'Anubis' using the mystical powers of the Dagger of Fate. Our king was renowned for besting anyone who would dare bring threat to his people or kingdom and so it was a commonplace tale of valor and justice known widely throughout the palace. And yet, even knowing that Anubis would eventually be defeated by our Pharaoh did not ease the disquiet of watching this prelude to the sorcerer's uprising. I felt the fright of the men as easily as if it were my own as I watched the soldiers grip the hilts of their weapons and shift in anxious anticipation of an order to attack.
The Hand of the Pharaoh stepped forward once more, shortening the distance between Anubis and himself and placing his body between that of the sorcerer and his men. "Stand down and surrender so you may be returned to the palace and face the Pharaoh's judgement." He demanded, a flinty look shining in his eyes.
"Mwhahaha." What began as a quiet dark chortle grew in volume and malevolence until it echoed around the canyon as a deafening roar. "MWHAHAHAHA."
"Seize him!"
Anubis's laughter died only as he began to chant a new and nefarious incantation.
With a swing of his sinewy arm he cast his hand over one of the bodies nearest to him as the Hand of the Pharaoh beckoned his men onward with a shout. Scattered all around him the remains of men, women and children writhed and churned, their corpses melting in on themselves and causing the skin of their bodies to bubble and blister before their innards and bones spewed forth, erupting into a black ooze. The stinking abominations slithered into the air, formless for only a moment before new tendrils of necrotic filth lunged free of the sickly pillars to skewer each of the guards through their hearts like the branches of a vile and wicked tree.
"Guuurphf."
"W'raaaaaaah!"
"Hanuuuuuung!"
Each soldier's cry was a unique howl of pain and disbelief as Anubis's foul conjurations speared them through their chests to burst out of their backs in shocking waves of blood and gore.
I did not wish to, but could not repress the urge to wretch.
"Isis?" The Pharaoh called, at my side in an instant as I lost whatever remained in my stomach to the heinous display. I was not usually so tender-stomached as this, but the sight, the smell and the life within me worked in union to disrupt my constitution. The Pharaoh placed his hand upon my arm, and I covered it with my other hand gently as I silently reassured him.
The Pharaoh gazed at me speculatively, and then squeezed my hand before letting me be with a nod of acceptance. The gesture was without doubt one he had learned from Mahad. It was a soft and subtle clasping of hands that Mahad and I had come to share many times under the veil of cloaks or tables. Though I was grateful to have known the reign of not one but two Pharaoh's kind enough of spirit to respect and worry for his priests my heart ached mildly at the reminder of the Magician's inadvertently appropriated habit.
Together our eyes were drawn back upward as the bodies of all but one soldier fell listless and bleeding to earth with the heavy sounds of impacted sand.
"Men?" The Hand of the Pharaoh barked, quickly surveying the bodies of his downed brethren for life and gritting his teeth as he found none. His remaining voice drew our eyes back to the phantoms.
"Dead and ready to serve me." Anubis kicked aside the limp body of the youngest of the soldiers that had perished near his feet, the young man's glassy eyes still wide open in horror as the desert wind whipped grains of sand into them. "As you should be." He added, raising his brawny arm into the air once more and thrusting it in the Hand's direction.
The Hand twirled and pivoted, parrying the strikes of the dripping tendrils as they lunched at him with tips as sharp as knives. The barrage was endless and at my side the Pharaoh's hands tightened into fists as he beheld a loyal soldier fight for his life against much uneven odds. The necrotic limbs attacked from all sides, relentless and unending as each blocked strike only caused them to reform once more and resume their assault. Sweat dripped from the Hand's temples as he side-stepped, dodged and deflected the blows until the back of his heel caught on the arm of one of his murdered men and he fell backwards to the earth.
The waifish woman was at her master's back, grinning as hatefully as Anubis himself as the pair bared down upon the fallen Hand. Defeated but not yet robbed of his dignity the warrior merely clasped the lion-headed amulet strung about his neck in one large hand and closed his eyes in preparation for death.
Anubis drew himself up to his full height, casting his shadow over the Hand of the Pharaoh like an executor's axe.
"KAAAAA-bummmmmmfffff!"
A short way ahead of us an outward explosion of bright, tumultuous light that burned and raged like the sun itself reverberated through the pass, jostling loose stones and rocks from the canyon walls that surrounded us.
The Pharaoh reacted to without sparing a moment.
With a firm but gentle grip he pulled me to one side as the ghostly echos of Anubis and the Hand parted in a whirl of smoke under a boulder that was shaken free by the deafening feat of spellcraft. Pebbles showered down and the Pharaoh's Celtic Guardian deftly stepped up to slice through another large chunk of stone as it fell toward us - carving it down the middle. The rock fell away at either side of our bodies like the two halves of a neatly severed egg as the Pharaoh raised the peculiar armor he wore on his arm that matched that of Seto Kaiba's own.
In a flash of light magic the Pharaoh called up small golden scripture, written in what I assumed to be the language that our king and Seto Kaiba seemed to share on odd occasions. The foreign tongue was a lingering memento and poignant reminder of our Pharaoh's experiences in another time and place.
"Induced Explosion?" The Pharaoh questioned aloud, his eyebrows knitting together with the begins of irritation as he beheld the writings. "And Kaiser Sea Horse has been destroyed!" He noted with an undertow of concern before defying all sense by beginning to sprint head-long towards the source of the miniature sun's discharge. "Kaiba!" The Pharaoh shouted furiously into the distance as his raw speed made my much slower jog appear lethargic in comparison.
A nearby cave collapsed from the quakes that still pounded the ground beneath my feet and the freezing air stabbed at my lungs as I ran toward the Pharaoh's back. My eyes caught a fleeting look of raw fury that crossed the Pharaoh's face as he passed the crumbling cavern and his features promised a kingly reckoning was soon to come. Indeed, despite warning Seto Kaiba against damaging the Magician, had Mahad's body been hiding within the collapsing cave he could have very easily been crushed to death. I did not know the exact location, but I suspected the same could be said for the late Queen's tomb.
The Pharaoh scowled and scattered the sand around his feet as he came to a halt. As I rounded a final rock to catch up to him our quarry was revealed.
With the swirling and quite recognizable magic of our High Priest's Negate Attack, Seto Kaiba blocked a burst of magic from the stave of one Mahad while a second watched the fight impassively from across the new battlefield.
"Celtic Guardian, help Kaiba!" The Pharaoh commanded with haste, pointing the Ka into battle. The green-garbed warrior's cloak swished like a horse's tail as he intercepted the next blow of Seto Kaiba's attacker. The silver blade and Mahad's staff locked against each other with the sound of clattering and grinding steel as the Celtic Guardian and Illusion of Mahad struggled to overpower one another.
Freed from having to deal with his attacker any longer Seto Kaiba turned on the other Mahad that watched from the sides of the canyon.
"That's the real one." He growled with a piercing look towards the true Mahad. His words still produced billows of haze as he spoke them but his body was not shivering or blue and red tipped in it's extremities as the Pharaoh's and my own had become. I had thought his lengthy garb foolish in the Egyptian sun when I had first laid eyes upon it but here, awash in the deathly chill of Call of the Haunted, the vestments had merit. Perhaps the place he came from was a cold one. Such an environment would stand to suit the Other Seto, from what I had observed of him.
The foe the Pharaoh named 'Andro Sphinx' watched us from behind Mahad's face with unreadable eyes, seeming none the more perturbed for being quickly ousted, or the arrival of Seto Kaiba's reinforcements. Despite being largely unaffected by our appearance he coiled his muscles as though about to attack.
"Move!" Our High Priest's reincarnation bellowed back at us next.
Mahad's true body charged at us, darting straight through the remains of several phantasmal ghosts and doggedly followed by the Other Seto, his white coat flying behind him as he gave chase to the Magician. As he neared me I saw his collar was newly singed on one side but beyond that there was no other indication of damage done to his person. The Pharaoh had intervened quickly enough to prevent it and for that I was thankful.
Seto Kaiba's boots skidded to a stop in the sand, disrupting the fog spirits all around us as his arm sliced through the haze to place a card on his strange and ethereal DiaDhank.
"Shadow Spell!" He beckoned, a void of purple so dark and deep it appeared purest black at a first glance ripping open in the air above him and cutting through the sky above our heads towards Mahad. From its depths hundreds of magical chains swiftly struck downward at the earth like bolts of lightening. Mahad's headdress was knocked from his crown as he ducked under one chain, only to be ensnared by another.
The Pharaoh readied his own armament to join his companion's, taking a place at Seto Kaiba's side as though he had done so many times before.
"How did you find him so quickly?" He asked, his pointed gaze not leaving Mahad's body now that he was in our midst once more. I appreciated the Pharaoh's diligence. With an impressive number of spells at Mahad's disposal he would be difficult to locate if he attempted to flee once again. Until Mahad was himself once more that risk was ever-present.
"I activated Induced Explosion and let the detonation find him for me." Seto Kaiba grunted back.
The Pharaoh's expression pinched in irritation at that.
The taller of the pair squared his shoulders and watched through narrow eyes as more and more of his chains successfully coiled around Mahad's body. "Try running away again now." He sneered at the captured Magician.
Mahad's body pulled tight against the chains with finality before stilling and relaxing into their hold.
"Mwhaha. That's it, submit like a beaten dog." The Other Seto goaded, his boisterous laugh drawing the Pharaoh's eyes in a silent reprimand.
The High Priest and he truly were alike. That thought was inescapable as I watched a young man who was not our Seto heckle the Magician as if he was my arrogant young friend's magical duplicate. Much like our High Priest I suspected Seto Kaiba was about to be faced with the humbling realization that even weakened, damaged and drained as he was, Mahad was no novice sorcerer, nor so easily bested.
The Pharaoh's actions echoed my doubts.
Despite his face conveying a growing distaste for Seto Kaiba's actions the Pharaoh nevertheless remained focused upon the Magician as he readied a miniature tablet in his hand, angling his wrist to place it upon the face of his odd DiaDhank with a stiff flourish hampered by the cold.
Far from delighting in long speeches as his master seemed to, the creature that subdued Mahad's virtuous spirit was one of few words. Two alone was all he offered before closing his eyes.
"Another time."
I sensed it as the rapidly exhausting remains of Mahad's magic gathered in great concentration at the center of his being, before lancing outwards in every direction and burning away the chains that bound his limbs as if the metal was but simple papyrus.
With a final backwards bound to free himself he conjured a new spell.
Atem
With one fluid motion Illusion Magic was discarded from the field as Andro Sphinx beckoned the magic of Double Spell to his aid. In a burst of dark light the remaining Illusion still locked in battle with my Celtic Guardian blew apart. My Guardian's blade sailed through now empty air as his opponent vanished mid-swing before the loyal warrior turned and sprinted to return to my side.
A richly colored iridescent pool of pure arcana welled up in the ground beneath our feet, casting tiny spheres of glowing light around us as Double Spell swelled in anticipation of its caster's declaration.
"Swords of Revealing Light." Our foe called out, beckoning forth the protective swords that I had used to temporarily seal Anubis in the throne room from my graveyard. Each of the gleaming ethereal blades flew upward from Double Spell's incandescent depths to hover above over our heads. He was intending to pen us within my own field of mystical imprisonment!
I glanced briefly to Kaiba, suspecting he had something better suited for repelling one of my own spell cards but to my surprise he merely stood in place, glaring at me. His expression was surly but I didn't have time to negotiate his apparently foul mood.
As he made no move to help it was up to me to act.
"I activate Bounce Spell!" I declared in response, the words punctuated by yet another huff of chilled breath. The cold was making my fingers numb and had slightly reddened their tips but that wouldn't prevent me from activating my card.
Rendered quickly by Kaiba's holograms, Bounce Spell's golden surface appeared swiftly at my side, the ebony pupil of the tablet's single eye pointedly focusing the effects of Swords of Revealing Light back on Mahad's body. The blades twirled in the air, reorienting themselves to point instead at Andro Sphinx before swooping down to hover around him, blocking his every side and the open sky above his head.
Imprisoned by the magical confines of my Swords Andro Sphinx went still once more, breathing deeply in heavy exhalations of hot breath that turned to vapor as they met the freezing air, much like my own.
Mahad's fingers tested one of the Swords, the magic of my blades harmlessly buffeting his hand backwards.
Cornered and trapped in a similar situation Sphinx Teleia had turned rabid and feral, thrashing against the boundaries of her prison like a wounded animal. Her reaction was the difference between night and day. As Andro Sphinx instead closed his eyes and folded his legs beneath him he knelt down on the earth and bowed his head, for all purposes appearing to be ignoring everything and everyone around him now that he'd confirmed escape wasn't possible.
The cold pressed in as the battle calmed with Andro Sphinx's submission but despite the frost and the chill I felt only a flame of pure ire heat my stomach, and it wasn't aimed at our defeated enemy.
"Induced Explosion?" I questioned through gritted teeth, trying to sheath my anger as I waited for Kaiba to explain himself.
How could he play something so intentionally destructive after learning everything this place meant to me? Knowing that my Mother's tomb was here, out of sight? After seeing firsthand everything that I'd done to protect it from harm! The sacrifices made, and lives cut short! Was it simply obstinate thoughtlessness or was he trying to punish me for Isis's words? For my beliefs? Kaiba had reacted very poorly to being called 'worthless' once before and was indeed vindictive enough to do so again.
"Why that card of all choices?" I demanded to know, hoping - if foolishly - that his reply wasn't some arbitrary excuse for his vengeful demolition.
"Because I'll do whatever it takes to win." He deadpanned, sauntering passed Isis and our captive and glancing around the scarred canyon walls, dislodged stone and other marks of destruction that he'd wrought. "Unlike you."
"Kaiba." I warned. His reply was so encumbered by flaws that I didn't have any idea where to begin addressing it.
Kaiba straightened his back, as he often did when wanting to intimidate others. "If the living are worthless then why bother trying to win this whole duel in the first place, Pharaoh? You could've just let him try and kill me." He added, using the edge of his boot to flick sand at the meditative Andro Sphinx who didn't even flinch as the grit sprayed over him.
"What?!" How could he say something so intentionally obtuse?
"If we lose Anubis goes back to the real world in my place. That gets him out of your afterlife either way." He mocked, with an uncaring shrug and a challenging grimace. "So why bother?"
It seemed that Kaiba liked to choose the most inopportune moments possible to ambush me with the full force of whatever thoughts and grievances his mind collected like rainwater. He was likely trying to catch me off guard and in doing so squeeze out some 'true' answer that worked in his favor, or played to his varying disturbances. It seemed to be working. Kaiba's deliberate goading was wearing down what remained of my composure.
"Because you'd be trapped here!" I shouted at the damned oaf.
He smirked at the slip I had made by using the word 'trapped', as though he'd scored a point in a contest that only he knew about.
"And?" He sarcastically parried with an obviously willful ignorance.
"And because you don't belong here." Hammering this through his thick skull was clearly going to be no easy task. No matter how far the bounds of my afterlife stretched I doubted the width or breadth of its expanse could either satisfy Kaiba or hold his attention. This place would be only a prison to him. "You'd go mad in this world, in my time, without your technology and without Mokuba." I countered. His teeth gritted at the mention of Mokuba's name, as I'd expected them too. If it took a mallet with his little brother's name attached to it then so be it! Predictably, evoking his younger brother's name bought me a momentary reprieve from Kaiba's belligerent hissing so I pressed my advantage.
"I respect you too greatly to wish that fate on you." Despite the fact that he had wished exactly the reverse of that fate on me. Had Kaiba's methodology returned me successfully to Yugi's world I doubted he'd care about the blemish kidnapping and subverting my desires would have left on our long term relationship. Suddenly the closeness we'd begun to try to cultivate seemed so fragile, given the knowledge that had Kaiba's plan not failed there would be no way I could ever forgive him or wish us closer.
"There are people waiting for you to return, Kaiba." I all but yelled at him as I saw steeliness return to his posture.
The volume of reply matched mine, the two sentences echoing against each other as they bounced around the canyon.
"For you as well!"
He turned my words on me and stole the breath from my chest.
My friends. In that moment I imagined them all standing beside me, everyone one of them. I could smell the floral perfume that Téa wore and hear the subtle rubbery squeak of Joey's sneakers as he fidgeted behind my back as if they were here with me. The sensation of them lasted only a second and the grip of the frigid temperature seemed to bite ever more sharply as it passed.
"Actual living people, who are alive." Kaiba barked emphatically. His attention cut across me to Isis with a pointed leer. "She can't even tell me if she and the rest of your toadies are real or fake." With a feckless snatch of his wrist Kaiba gestured between the magical phantoms lining the landscape and my priestess. Isis wisely remained silent as Kaiba continued. "The only difference between these ghosts and that one is that she has better graphics." He snapped. "Or is it that Yugi and his gang of dolts aren't enough for you anymore?"
His words delivered a heavy blow and I balked at his brazenness. That wasn't the case and he knew it! I began to reprimand his foolish accusation but something in the way he held my gaze made me think twice.
I was beginning to understand the non-verbal cues that Kaiba wove into his words as thoughtlessly as his own breath. He was testing me somehow; perhaps this whole argument was part of it. Wary calculation and a grim expectation battled across his features. I'd missed something, some greater meaning to his words.
Ah.
There was a second question hidden beneath the first one.
"Of course they're enough, and so are you." I pressed, easing my tone toward the second half of that statement. The anticipatory disappointment in his gleaming eyes was eased for a moment before they hardened again as I finished what needed to be said. "But that isn't my destiny. Fate has led me here, Kaiba."
I was running out of ways to rephrase that for him.
Kaiba jerked a finger at the ghostly bodies lying all around us and sneered, "Just like it did all of them?"
I returned his petty scowl with one of my own.
"Everyone's 'destined' to die, Pharaoh." He spat my title at me as though the word was dirt coating his tongue. "The bit before that's called 'life' and that's what matters." With that conclusion in place Kaiba crossed his arms and leaned back from his hips, the planes of his body echoing the tall and immovable declaration.
I felt Kaiba was touching on something profound, but couldn't place what and I didn't care to with the shear annoyance he currently represented. It stung the depths of my mind, the irritating uncomfortable feeling like a stray grain of sand caught in an eye.
Though short compared to my Father's and Mother's my life had been important. My reign had been just a fraction of theirs, but in that time I'd defeated many evils and sealed away the dark magics of the Shadow Realm, Shadow Games and Zorc the Dark One with my own name and memories so that they could never threaten the world again.
"I lived a good life and left behind a worthy legacy." I contested. Despite everything around us and all of the specters the Call of the Haunted had willed into being I didn't doubt that. Kaiba scoffed, attempting to interrupt me with a dismissive jeer of something but I didn't allow his words to impede my own. "The modern world as you know it may not have come to be if it weren't for that!"
"And thanks to me you could cash in all that store credit for a free do-over, but you won't?" Kaiba argued back.
My patience snapped like a dry tree branch under the weight of his petulant heckling.
"I don't owe you an explanation!" I roared, finally losing my temper with him. "This debate is over!" I flashed the open palm of my hand at him and held it in front of his face, demanding his silence. Kaiba had riled me with such precise intent that I was surprised when he snapped his mouth shut and promptly stopped speaking. Besides the rage-filled echo of my own voice around the rocks everything else fell silent, almost as if Kaiba really would leave the topic alone.
"Tch!" A defiant "For now." Was all he had left to throw in my face as we stared each other down like the rivals we truly were. Abruptly Kaiba's expression darkened to become frustrated again. "Screw last night, and this morning! We're too different for 'this'!"
Of that I was acutely aware.
"Isn't everything supposed to be different now? It's that how this works?" He snarked but there was a hint of real and true upset was beneath the sarcastic and vague question.
I was surprised by how comfortable Kaiba was discussing this topic with Isis and one of our enemies as active bystanders. He seemed to ignore them completely, as though both were beyond being acknowledged. Isis's own attention was elsewhere, staring intently at Mahad's body as Kaiba regarded her with the critical passing glance he gave his own holograms.
"We didn't even manage to put twenty-four hours on the clock." His rueful smirk was so bitter I could almost taste it. Was he proposing an end to whatever this young and terse thing we were nurturing was? Already? I was annoyed with him but that wasn't what I wanted and giving up so easily wasn't in either of our natures.
"Kaiba. You're an ass." I declared, still enraged with him but feeling my hot uncomfortable emotions be cooled by his odd and roundabout way of demanding reassurance. "No new courtship can magically erase that." His eyes narrowed at me like those of an angry cat. "But just because you can't have your way doesn't make everything a loss." I settled upon.
"Hnh." He grunted back, throwing his head to one side so he wouldn't have to look at me.
I was still exasperated by him and fortunately it looked like he could sense that, which was the first display of intelligence I'd seen from the pig-headed cretin since he'd picked this ill-timed fight.
"My Pharaoh."
Isis's calm voice was a soothing breeze compared to Kaiba's unruly tempest, although it carried a hint of urgency and unrest that wasn't normal.
My priestess's eyes drew mine to Mahad's kneeling stolen body. Andro Sphinx was still bound within the limits that Swords of Revealing Light would allow him, but after a second I sensed as she did the thing that had drawn her attention.
Through shear concentration Mahad's body was channeling the last of its energies into something unknown.