Stele
Warnings: None, unless you find a woman talking briefly to a giant rock about unethical artifact acquisition and international transport offensive idk
Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! and its characters are copywritten to Kazuki Takahashi and Konami.
Isis mulled over the fragments of history scattered across the world.
The Dendera Zodiac was in Paris, Nefertiti's Bust was in Berlin, the Obelisks of Heliopolis stood in New York and London, and the Rosetta Stone slept within walking distance of the latter. They had all been created with the utmost care and reverence, were displayed proudly in their homeland, attended to and admired in their prime, left to languish when the dynasties that had guarded them were no more than a distant memory, then studied with scrutiny and admired once more in a country, a continent, an era that was not their own.
She had mixed feelings on the matter, much of it loathing with a shadow of envy she tried not to feed. Before the disaster and donning the Millennium Torque, she had never dreamt of seeing anything beyond the town within the oasis of El Kharga, the glossy covers of the magazines in the bazaar, the sparse events of the national news or glimpses of a musalsal during Pharmouthi flickering across the screen of a television. It had all been foreign to her.
"And here I am taking you to Japan," she said. She looked up at the massive slab before her, the images of the Gods illuminated in the light of the torches lining the chamber.
"I'm a hypocrite," she chuckled, somewhat, placing her hand over her face and rubbing her forehead. "I had a terrible correspondence with the curator of the British Museum not long ago; I almost lost my temper, but my own reasons for taking you aren't unselfish, are they?"
She smiled miserly against the palm of her hand. She was very tired. The visions had gotten worse over the last week, and she had barely slept in the anticipation and anxiety of going back to Upper Egypt to retrieve the Tablet of Lost Memories.
It was both humbling and nerve-wracking to enter the chamber again. She had spent much of her childhood in awe of the space. Her mother, her father, the Spiritualists, the Shamans, the Oracles and Elders, all had raised her to revere the tablet and its importance to the mission of their clan. It was as vital as the scars on her little brother's back.
Malik, she thought. You can still be saved.
She slowly lifted her hand from her mouth and reached for the tablet. Touching it wasn't expressly forbidden, but it wasn't exactly condoned either, and she smiled wryly at her own concern. If she was not meant to do so, Nrt would not have allowed it thus. Tentatively, she brushed her fingertips against the image of Obelisk—
No, not an image, she thought. It is you.
She placed her hand with a practiced deference across the Egyptian God, thumb brushing what was supposedly its cheek. The card was nestled comfortably within the pocket of her sleeve, a power that was unfathomable, something she once thought unattainable in her early adolescence. Yet here it was.
"I wonder if he really felt you," Isis said aloud, thinking about a vision of the past: Shadi leading Pegasus to this sacred ground and watching him run excitedly to the tablet, placing his hands upon it with little regard or respect to its substance, as though it was his property and his right—and Shadi merely looked on.
"Bastard," she said quietly, unsure then of which man she was talking about in that moment.
"… It doesn't matter," she said, more to herself than the stone. It was a waste of time thinking about dead men. Whomever Shadi had really been was gone long ago, and Pegasus was destined to die—which made him as good as dead in all senses.
"What is done is done," she said, anchoring her palm against the image of Obelisk, her fingers splayed outward as though they were a set of claws. What was a phrase she had heard from one of the international students? There is no use crying about someone's hair when their head's been cut off. She needed to think about the future.
"This is for Malik," she muttered, moving her hand from the tablet to the Torque, "and the Pharaoh."
She had been entrusted with, chosen by the Torque, but the Elders had viewed her visions and advice with ample skepticism. In the end, she convinced them it was all to assist the Nameless Pharaoh. They cared not much for Malik, for he was seen as a traitor for leaving his post, and she was treading in muddied water herself for allowing him to break tradition in the first place.
"It won't matter soon," she whispered. She trailed a finger along the golden eye on her necklace and stared longingly at the tablet.
"I know Fate's plan for us all," she said. "There is nothing to fear."
Yet there was still much to resent.
END