Pharaoh did his best to maintain a mask of regal indifference while he desperately tried to piece together what had happened. One moment he had been in the Ishtar's living room, listening to the words of the spell. The next moment he was here, in some sort of grand room, surrounded by people he did not know, all of whom were speaking in a strange language that he had no hope of understanding.

The current speaker was a man lying prostrate on the ground. His words were muffled, but clearly impassioned. Possibly some sort of plea?

To make matters worse, Pharaoh had a horrible feeling that he was the one being addressed by this unknown man. Which was just marvelous. How was he supposed to get out of this one?

He kept his face directed towards the pleading man, but moved his eyes from side to side, looking for salvation. To his right were rather generic looking guards, no help there. Standing to his left, however, were more guards and a short man with far more elaborate robes than any of the guards. An advisor or captain of some sort?

Pharaoh did his best to study the man in spite of the odd angle. What he found surprised him.

That cannot be Yuugi's grandfather, can it? Why would he be here, but not the others?

The thought was quickly dismissed after a few moments of careful study. Though the man looked similar to Sugoroku, it was the similarity one might expect to see in a brother or a cousin, not a true duplicate. The skin alone gave that away. Sugoroku had always shared his grandson's pale, Asian skin. This man had the kind of dark skin characteristic of someone from the middle east. He was also dressed in an entirely different outfit than Sugoroku had been when the spell was cast. It reminded Pharaoh of what he himself had worn when he first awakened in the puzzle, though the cape and swaths of golden jewelry were missing. In their place was far simpler - though still expensive-looking - jewelry and a large pendant. Try as he might, Pharaoh couldn't make out the shape of it from this angle.

The man seemed to sense that he was being watched and turned his head ever so slightly towards Pharaoh. When their eyes met, the old man subtly raised his eyebrows, asking a silent question.

In response, Pharaoh carefully raised his hand to his head as if scratching an itch or adjusting the garment that he now realized was sitting there. When his hand met his head, he gave the briefest of grimaces. Then he lowered his hand and returned to his mask of indifference.

Concern flashed through the old man's eyes and he gave a small nod. Then he stepped forward, interrupting the petitioner. Whatever he said, it appeared to instantly halt the proceedings. Then the old man turned to Pharaoh and bowed.

Taking this as a sign that he could move, Pharaoh rose from his seat, doing his best to look regal. Once he was standing, he expected the old man to lead him from the room, but nothing happened. Instead, the old man stayed bowing, clearly waiting for a sign that he could straighten once more.

After a moment's internal panic, Pharaoh gave a slight cough and then motioned for the man to rise. This seemed to work and none of the people standing around the room appeared confused by the exchange. The same could not be said for the old man. Though his face remained passive, there was concern in his eyes once more.

He said something to the assembled room and then walked through a nearby doorway. Pharaoh and the guards followed. As they made their way out of the room, Pharaoh glanced back at the seat that he'd previously been sitting in and almost tripped over his own feet. Was that a throne?

For the first few minutes after realizing that Pharaoh and the puzzle were gone, Yuugi had been too busy panicking to notice what was going on around him. Eventually, though, his breathing calmed and he began to be able to process his surroundings once more. He glanced around and discovered that he was sitting on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a tree with sprawling branches. Anzu, Jounouchi, Marik, and his grandfather were all sitting in a semicircle in front of him, watching him with worried looks.

After taking a moment to compose himself, he took a deep breath and then asked, "Has there been any sign of Pharaoh?"

They all shook their heads and Marik said, "No, I'm sorry. Honda and Otogi went down into the city to see what they could learn, though. They should be back soon. Until then, you need to focus on breathing slowly and getting yourself in a state where you can walk again. We can't have you collapsing if we need to move quickly."

Yuugi nodded and closed his eyes, doing as instructed until Anzu cried, "There they are!"

He opened his eyes and saw Honda and Otogi coming up out of the city. The looks on their faces made Yuugi's heart begin to race once more. They didn't look happy.

"Hey guys, we've got a problem," Otogi said by way of greeting, earning nothing but concerned looks. "This is just an educated guess because we couldn't understand anything, but I think that everyone in town is speaking Egyptian."

Marik let out a low curse, slapping his forehead. Then he groaned dramatically and lowered his hand, dragging it over his face in the process. "Of course they're speaking Egyptian. The version of Pharaoh we know might only be fluent in Japanese, but this world is based on his memories . Why would those change the language to something modern just because that's what he speaks now? Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

After a few more moments of angry muttering, Marik stopped, took a deep breath and then slowly let it out. "Okay. Okay, we can work with this. None of you will know the language, but I do and, if we're where I think we are, foreign traders aren't unheard of. The fact that you can't speak Egyptian won't stand out too much. I can claim to be a translator you hired. It means we won't be able to split up and look for Pharaoh like I'd hoped, but that's not the end of the world. Splitting up might not the best call anyway since we don't know how safe this place is."

When he finished these rambling musings, he turned to look at Yuugi and asked, "Do you think that you can walk?"

Yuugi nodded, rising to his feet with a determined look. "I'll be fine. What matters right now is going into that city and finding my partner."

The old man and the group of guards guided Pharaoh down the hallway of what appeared to be some sort of grand building. The style was clearly Egyptian, but it didn't remind Pharaoh of any of the temples he'd seen in his studies. Perhaps this was a palace or some other government building? That would certainly explain the throne.

These idle musings ground to a halt when the old man stopped, calling out to someone coming down the hallway. The figure hurried closer and Pharaoh realized that it was a young woman.

The old man said something to her and she gave Pharaoh a worried look. Then she let out a string of sounds that were most likely a question aimed at Pharaoh. Unsure what else to do, he simply placed a hand to his head and grimaced.

The young woman's eyes widened in alarm. Then she nodded to the old man and began to walk away. The guards followed her and so Pharaoh began walking, too. As they made their way though the building, she kept giving him strange looks. Occasionally she'd even open her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but she'd always close it without speaking a word.

Eventually, they stopped at a doorway. Then the young woman turned to the guards and gave what appeared to be some sort of command. They nodded and took up places outside of the room, allowing the her and Pharaoh to enter alone.

The room they entered appeared to be an elaborate sort of bedchamber. A large, lavishly decorated bed sat in front of them. To the right, a small sitting area was arranged with similarly opulent chairs and couches. Various chests and sets of drawers sat against the walls with art decorating the otherwise empty spaces between these. Pharaoh glanced around the room, admiring the decadence, and then froze.

There, coming around from the other side of the bed, was some sort of giant cat. Not a lion, he knew what those looked like and they didn't have spots. Which ones had sports? Leopards? He didn't know and it didn't matter. What mattered was that the creature was slowly prowling towards them, eyes focused on Pharaoh.

He had no idea what he should do. Should he run? Protect the girl? Call for aid and hope that the guards understood the tone if not the words?

As these desperate thoughts swirled through his mind, the girl spoke. Two things about this stood out to Pharaoh. First, there was no fear in her voice. Second, around halfway through whatever she was saying, he began to understand her .

"-Tem? Why won't you say anything?"

Knowledge and memories flooded Pharaoh's mind, as if a switch had been flipped inside his head. One moment, he was lost. A stranger in a world of unknowns. The next, he was more himself than he'd been in millennia. He knew these rooms. They were his own! And he knew this cheetah , too. She was no enemy to him.

A wide smile spread across his face as he dropped to his knees and cried, "Nedjemet!"

The cheetah let out a contented purr, moving to rub her face against her master's cheek as he wrapped his arms around her neck.

"Oh sure, talk to the overgrown house cat. Not like I've been trying to get you to speak for the last ten minutes or anything." Though the words were joking, the tone was anything but. Clearly his lack of response had hurt this woman.

He turned around to apologize and felt a surge of affection sweep through him. Mana. How had he failed to recognize his own cousin? The girl who had been as a sister to him for as long as he could remember. The favored playmate of his youth. His stalwart companion in terrorizing those who called the harem home.

As he studied her long forgotten face, he felt as if he wanted to cry. When he'd thought about regaining his memories, it had been through the lens of fulfilling his task and saving the world. He had known that there would be more to it than just knowledge, but there was knowing and then there was experiencing. Only now did truly he realize all that he had been missing.

I had a family. People whom I loved and who loved me in return. A whole life forgotten.

He took a shuddering breath, swallowing around the lump in his throat, and then choked out, "I am sorry, Mana. I do not know what came over me, but I am better now."

At the sound of his voice, Mana's hurt look vanished, replaced by one of concern. She knelt at his side, bringing a hand up to cup his cheek as she studied his face with a worried look. "What's wrong, Tem? You sound as if you are going to cry."

He shook his head, closing his eyes as a few traitorous tears fell. "It is nothing. I am simply happy to see you."

"You speak as if we have been apart for months, but you last saw me two days ago," she replied, disbelief coloring her voice. "Siamun was right to send for a doctor. One of them should be here soon. You should lay down until then."

He shook his head, opening his eyes and smiling at her. "I am fine. In truth, I feel better than I have in ages. It was merely a moment of weakness."

"Are you sure? I mean, I know that the coronation is soon, but..." she trailed off, biting her lip and studying him with a worried frown.

Pharaoh took a shaky breath and nodded, following her lead. "Yes. Yes, the coronation. That was all that it was. I was sitting in the throne room, listening to a petition, and I thought of father-"

His voice broke and he had to stop speaking, closing his eyes once more and burying his face in his pet's fur. Gods above, he remembered his father . Remember that rich laugh and those smiling, brown eyes. Remembered lessons in leadership and duty squeezed in at meals and on chariot rides to various building sites. A man larger than life. A god on earth whose shoulders bore the weight of a nation. Who, in spite of that, still managed to make sure that his son and heir knew that he was loved.

"Oh, Tem," Mana whispered, sounding a little choked up herself. She began running her hand over his back as she said, "No wonder you couldn't talk. You did an amazing job holding it together. I know you better than anyone and I still couldn't tell that you were upset.

"Uncle would be so proud of you and how you've handled yourself these last few months. Mahado speaks nothing but praises for your actions which, I mean, it's Mahado. You could probably insult the gods and he'd still think that you were perfection incarnate, but still! He would have praised you in that judging tone of his and he hasn't! It's all been happy praise, not judgy praise."

Pharaoh laughed wetly, pulling back and rubbing his eyes. "Thank you, Mana. Would you please go and see to it that the doctor is told that they are not needed. All that I require is a few minutes to myself, then I will return to my duties."

"Of course," she agreed, rising to her feet. "I'll do it right away! And I'll try to let Siamun know what happened, too. Don't want him fretting over your health on top of everything else!"

With that, she hurried from the room, stopping in the doorway for a final wave before disappearing from sight.

Once she was gone, Pharaoh finally let himself cry in earnest. Big, choking sobs muffled to near silence in spotted fur. An old trick taught to him by his mother. He could remember her now, too. The way she glided when she walked. Her endless patience. The games she'd spent hours playing with him. He even remembered the day she'd given him Nedjemet. The gentle advice whispered in his ear as he marveled at the shy cub hiding beneath his bed.

"Now Tem, be gentle with her and treat her with the utmost respect, for she will be your greatest ally. There is no greater confidant than a pet. The people of this world have great expectations for you. They will judge your every word and deed, but this little one will only ever want your love. In return, she will hold all of your burdens and secrets. She will never tell another soul what you say or do in her presence."

Once they arrived in the city proper, Marik guided the group to stand in a deserted bit of space on what appeared to be a market street. All around them people bustled about, talking and making purchases.

At Marik's instruction, the group pretended to engage in conversation, speaking in low voices so that the Egyptian could listen in on what was being said around them. The more he listened, the stranger the look on his face grew. Finally, he moved, walking over to one of the market stalls. Once there, he engaged in a brief conversation and then returned to the group, all of whom were subtly watching him.

When Marik was close enough to hear them, Yuugi asked, "Did you learn anything?"

Marik nodded slowly, briefly glanced back at the vendor, and then said, "Good news: I don't think that we need to worry about fitting in here."

This statement was met with confusion, so he added, "You guys ever played a video game with NPCs? You know, those characters who only have a couple set lines of dialog?"

The entire group nodded as Yuugi replied, "Of course we have. Otogi's a game designer and my family owns a game shop."

"Right, well, they're NPCs," Marik explained, jerking his thumb towards the crowded street. "Or whatever the memory world equivalent is. None of them are talking like real people. It's just the same bits of dialog strung together. I tried to ask that guy questions about stuff that would have been strange, but not too crazy. Instead of answering them, he just kept repeating the same statement about being unable to help me with that, but would I care to buy some of the finest linen in Waset?"

"That's... weird," Anzu said, glancing around with a somewhat creeped-out look. "Should we be concerned? Is something wrong?"

"It's possible, but I don't think so. Remember, this is a world made from the Pharaoh's memories. Fun fact: just like modern rulers don't do their own shopping, Pharaohs didn't really go out to the market. They might go past it and know what it looks like, but they wouldn't really know what goes on there. They probably wouldn't know most of the commoners living there, either."

"Oh," Yuugi breathed, a look of understanding lighting up his features. "If Pharaoh only knew what a market was like in a general sense-"

"-then it makes sense that the memory world would have a generic market full of generic people," Marik finished with a grin. "You're getting it. If I'm right, this is actually the best thing for the spell to do. It means that we won't get confused as to who has useful information. All we need to do is search for people who aren't NPCs, assuming they exsist. If we find some, then they're probably real people from Pharaoh's memories.

"I've got a good handle on the generic dialog, so all we should need to do is walk around and I'll listen in for anything that sounds unique. You guys can try to do the same. You might not understand the words, but you'll probably eventually pick up on the fact that the same sounds keep repeating. That way we can look for information and Pharaoh at the same time. Sound good?"

After a brief discussion, everyone agreed that this was the best course of action and their group took off once more. They wandered through the streets, listening in on the same repeating sounds, looking for signs of true memories. They'd been at it for a while when Yuugi froze. The others turned to look at him, concerned that he was having another panic attack, but that wasn't what had happened.

Instead, he was gazing around with a look of wonder. Eventually, he turned his gaze on Marik and exclaimed, "I can understand them!" in fluent Egyptian.

When his tears finally stopped, Pharaoh pulled back and ran a gentle hand over Nedjemet's dampened fur. "Thank you, dear one. I had more need of you today than ever before. Now we must discuss what I have remembered and how it came to pass.

"I am more myself than I was before, but I do not think that I am complete. There are gaps in these memories of mine. A puzzle only partially finished. Much of what I have regained focuses on my childhood. My family. Though I now have more knowledge of magic and the items, that which we came to find is still lost to me. We must discover how I was restored to this state so that we might finish the process."

The cheetah purred lightly, nuzzling her head against his face.

"An excellent point. I will consider it closely," he praised. Then he fell silent, petting Nedjemet as he considered what had happened between him and Mana. After a while, he frowned.

"Could it be that simple?" he muttered. "No other answer comes to mind and this is a spell of my own fashioning. That which makes the most sense to me is the most logical choice and might well be impossible for another to guess."

He thought over the issue once more and then nodded. "Yes, that must be it."

Now that his mind was made up, he rose to his feet and walked across the room to where a pitcher sat next to a golden basin. He poured the pitcher's continents into the basin and then splashed the cool water over his eyes. When that was done, he picked up a gold and silver hand mirror, using it to check his appearance.

What he saw made him frown. His eyes still had a telling redness to them and the kohl that he'd apparently been wearing was now ruined. He sighed and then repeated the process several more times, wiping his face with a cloth between each washing. Soon enough, the makeup was gone and the telling redness was faded enough as to not be obvious.

He nodded at himself and then grabbed a nearby wooden box, revealing various makeups and brushes for applying it. Though he knew that he now had servants to apply these things for him, he remembered how to do a basic kohl liner from the days of his childhood. With careful strokes, he made himself presentable once more.

When that was done, he studied himself, taking in the complete picture. The simple shendyt he'd copied from Yuugi was gone. In its place was a far more elaborate outfit. A white, linen tunic draped down to just above his knees. Over top of this was a blue-and-yellow striped overskirt that wrapped around his hips and backside, though it hung slightly open in the front. A golden belt cinched around his waist, keeping the overskirt in place. On his feet were a pair of sandals that he knew bore the image of his enemies so that he might trod on them as he walked. In addition to all of this, his body was adorned with familiar golden jewelry, including the millennium pendant, though the item on his head was new. A nemes headdress decorated with a golden uraeus.

He reached up and touched the ancient equivalent to a crown, smiling softly. I always hated this ridiculous thing. It was so hot to wear and I often had a headache by day's end, but I wore it. My little compromise with Siamun. I would wear this and look the part as long as I was allowed to keep my hair.

This memory of the esteemed grand vizier of upper Egypt made Pharaoh's eyes widen. How long had he been gone from the audience chamber? How many petitioners had he insulted by giving the appearance that he refused to hear their appeal? Of course, Siamun was more than capable of tending to such things, it was his job when the Pharaoh was otherwise occupied.

"But I am not otherwise occupied," Pharaoh muttered. He turned to face Nedjemet and smiled softly at her, "I am sorry, dear one, but I must leave you once more."

Then he strode from the room, head held high, ready to take on his role as The Living Horus, Ruler and Uniter of Upper and Lower Kemet.