Phew! Barely made it with this one. I have to remind myself that these aren't supposed to be long but this is me we're talking about XD
Really went overboard with this one, but here is the long awaited sequel to conjure and part 2 of what will become The Conjure Cousins!
Part 14 of 31 Days of Yu-Gi-October Halloween Challenge post/165553173026/31-horrific-days-v2-october-writing-challenge
Prompt 24: Candlelight
Candles
"Hark! The Conjure!"
"Shut up, Ryou," Marik swallowed a snort and playfully shoved his best friend out of the way to keep from laughing. Yugi did not have nearly as much control and barely managed to contain his chortle before he burst into laughter.
"What?" The occult enthusiast shrugged with an innocent smile that Marik knew better than to trust. A classic pretty boy boasting a lithe, slender frame and willowy build with a soft, playfully round face and curved cheeks made for smiling and large, lovely lily soft skin and gleaming eyes just the perfect shade of emerald green, only Marik and Yugi knew beneath the boy's innocent effeminate exterior and polite charm that had all the girls in school wrapped around his fingers (something he used to his advantage at every possibly opportunity) was a mischievous troublesome imp as darkly dangerous as his obsession with occult. It didn't help that his ghost white skin and long, silken mop of silvery, snow white air in combination with his pale pink lips and rich green eyes only added to both his allure and his haunting terror—how many times had he gotten back at his bullied but daring them to sneak into the school at night only to scare them shitless by pretending he was a ghost? Marik never actually counted all the videotapes they kept as blackmail evidence.
"You know what," Malik half-glared, half-grinned, his soft lavender eyes radiant against his burnt ocher skin. Khol outlined their sharp points making them look all the most mysterious like an impish creature that had stolen a boy's skin. His elegant hawk-like features and unruly sandy-blond mane of spiky hair that tended to spike up like wings certainly added to that image.
Ryou handed him their backpacks and watched as Malik, being the tallest and most muscular of the trio, tossed their bags over the stone wall encircling the estate and the graveyard beyond.
"Isn't it a bit…I don't know disrespectful breaking in through the graveyard?" Yugi asked, though the tone made it clear it was not the graveyard part that bothered him. Without having to ask, he stepped forward and the other two bent down and cupped their hands allowing their smallest friend the extra step he needed to ascend the climb. With quick, sure-footed steps, Yugi scaled the massive stone wall and landed clan on the other side, giving a small backyard stretch as he rose and then giving a grand bow.
"Show off," Ryou teased, having glimpsed his friend from the top of the wall—Malik having provided the boost—and reached down to help their third companion up. He could just envision Yugi sticking out his tongue in childish pride behind him.
Though small in stature, Yugi was the quickest and most flexible of the trio, boasting small muscles, lithe frame who acrobatics betrayed its delicate appearance he possessed a natural ability to weave in an out of any situation, a skill learned from a lifetime of dodging bigger, meaner boys who saw him as an easy mark. With his playfully round face, big child-like eyes the deep dark blue color of amethysts made all the prettier when set against his honey-milk skin and sweet smile that curled his rosy cheeks and chin into a point, all framed by a crown of sunshine gold bangs, Yugi looked in every inch the sweet, innocent darling—and in some way he was—but was in the manner that mermaids and fairies appear small and sweet or dolls appear delicate until the mermaid catches you up in her claws and devours you with her teeth and the doll turned out to be possessed by a demon and steals your soul, for Yugi was just as wild as the other too.
"We ready?" Yugi asked his friend arching a brow. That normally sweet faced twisted into one of impish mischief that would not be out of place on a gremlin.
"Lead the way, Ryou," Marik shoved his friend forward.
Ryou grinned and gleefully led his friends along the dirt paths knotting and disappearing betwixt the labyrinth of graves and grassy knolls and skeletal trees that looked black and frighteningly alive in the darkness.
"Think we're gonna get in big trouble for this?" Malik joked to Yugi in a whisper.
"Hmph, no," Ryou responded with a derivative snort, bloated with confidence. "No one's been here since Daddy, closed the museum." He pronounced that noun with a particular hatred, like saying the very word made his tongue twist and writhe as if sucking on a lemon.
"Did they really close it down because 'spooky things' kept happening?" Yugi asked exuberantly, but couldn't resists pronouncing 'spooky things' with the tone of a horror movie commercial.
"Oh! I wish," Ryou whined flamboyantly. "But no, after Mum died, he just didn't wanna deal with the upkeep. Do you have any idea how happy I would've been if this place was actually haunted?"
They came to the edge of the graveyard and Ryou slid across another stone wall, this one only as tall as their waists and they crossed it easily. Their feet landed in a garden, long decayed and overgrown. At one point the roses and honeysuckle had climbed up the walls and hedges alongside moonflowers and ivy but they had long since grown wild and buried themselves in graves of their own making. The boys stepped over a graveyard of dead flowers and the corpses of fallen leaves.
When they came around the corner, their destination appeared through the thicket of trees, dominating the glade in which it was built. The house was a timber-framed cottages boasting sloping thatched gables that formed a hammberbeam roof, at least three brick chimneys and an enormous wooden wheel that must've acted as a mill wheel. Large for a cottage, it boasted an extra two floors including an attic lost in a Victorian style, but the upper floors jutted out over in a German village terrace house style and an additional conservatory sticking out of the back. It must've been a grand structure in its prime, even now the pillars were still firm, the wheel still ran, the roof still held and the structure was still sounds. But the thatching was thick with fungus, the gables chocked with leaves and squirrel nests. The trimmings once a deep burgundy had browns and blackened with exposure and age and the wattle, once pristine white had dulled and greyed. The enormous wooden wheel barely clung stone by decaying nails, the wet wood, thick with fungus and moss and stank of wetness and rot. The glass in the windows had fogged up with dirt and dust giving it a grimy, frosty appearance. Thick woody vines climbed up the walls and intertwined around the entrance among skeletons of ivy. Moss and weeds burst through the stucco. Ferns dominated the rafters and clung to the sills: like the forest was attempting to reclaim it.
They stared at it in awe. In the time of the witches this house would be one of status and wealth, invoking envy from neighbors and friends alike, and yet its location deep in the woods on the edge of a river spoke of an untamed wildness that didn't belong in puritan England. For three hundred years it had been avoided and left to fall to ruin, and then abandoned once again when its curator died and there was no one else to love it. And yet it's was beautiful in its ruin, grand its decrepitness, picturesque in its decay. And yet despite its oddities and age there was a picturesque charm that complimented the antiquarian nature: a wild, untamed house for a wild an untamed landscape, something that was both grounded and yet otherworldly.
"Welcome boys," Ryou said with all the dramatic flare of a circus ringmaster as he climbed up the steps whose railed were made of twisted branches and stood in the hammer-beamed entryway where the bright burgundy pain on the doors was chipped the decorative trimmings were chocked in ivy. "To the house of The Conjure Cousins!"
Yugi and Ryou clapped with excited glee, Yugi managed to jump surprisingly high given the size of his backpack.
Ryou shoved open the door, the locks having long since rotted away and no one ever bothered to replace them and led the trio inside. It was just as eerie and decrepit as the outside. Cobwebs dominated every corner and wove a network between pedestals and guard rails sectioning off different parts of the house and surrounding the enormous cauldron in the heart of the room. Dust caked every surface and spaces. The original floorboards had been replaced but were now starting to rot, the original staircase that spiraled to the second floor now had iron rods for support and all the candles in the enormous chandelier overhead had been replaced with electrical lights that flickered dimly when Ryou flicked on the light switch. The dimness did little in the way of light but the shadows cast an eerie light over everything only adding to the house' natural spookiness.
The three wondered inside like children in a toy store, absorbing every nook and cranny and crevice with the childish wonder of the curious and the excited gusto of the obsessed. It was all here: the U-shaped kitchen adjacent to the massive stone fire place boasting open shelves an rafters for drying herbs and a plethora of bottled still filled with strange liquids. The second floor rooms whose wooden rails were twisted branches and drunks overlooking the second floor. The third floor attic a loft where the three cousin's must've slept. The house seemed surprisingly smaller than it looked from the outside and yet felt bigger as well, like all the rooms had been smashed haphazardly into its space betraying the construction of the outside framework. And yet inside was all things of a traditional cottage one expected of a witch in the woods: a traditional broom, and enormous fireplace, a kitchen full of herbs, a glass conservatory for growing plants, and second floor library overcrowded with dusty tomes, and an enormous cauldron dominating the heart of the room and the space, like the Household God who commanded all and whom all was constructed around.
The three chose there to dump their backpacks as they continued to explore.
"Is this really where the Sennen Sister lived?" Yugi asked, climbing over the rope sectioning off the staircase to the second floor and made his way up, studied the library with its ancient tomes, what must've been a sitting room for the enormous windows looked out over the woods. Leaned as far as he dared over the rotted rails and took in the details of the first floor from the new angle.
"The Sennen sisters, their mother and father, and their sons," Ryou explained, taking in the detailed artifacts along the walls: the traditional witches broom, a set of three; an enormous old fashioned weaver's loom complete with spinning wheel and a rusted spindle. "Three generations of Sennen witches lived in this house according to the legends. Mother was absolutely fascinated by their history." And judging from the breathless awe, as Ryou examined the walls, she had passed on that wondrous fascination.
"Dude look at this stuff!" Marik bragged, walking around the strange kitchen, the cast iron pots and pans that hung on the wall, the open shelves and glass bottles. He observed these with a special scrutiny like a toddler waiting for a butterfly to hatch from a cocoon, as if he expected something to move within the jars. He tapped one lighting, watched with a widening smile as whatever was inside jiggled and bounced like jello. "That is so gross!" he said it with all the excitement of a small child at the age when gross things were more impressive than gold.
"So were the Conjure cousins and the Sennen Sisters actually witches?" Yugi asked finding himself in another upstairs room—this one with walls dominated by windows. The reason for such a bounty of natural light evident in the plethora of glass terrariums, hanging planters and pyramids of pots scattered throughout the room—on tables, windowsills, hanging from the rafters and dominating every spot and corner. The plants had long sense died and combwebs formed a labyrinth between the planters but their fossilized skeletons were like nothing had ever seen, resembling hybrids: beautiful wide blooms with Venus-fly trap mouths, rosses whose hearts seemed to house huge spherical shapes that were now black, moss and lichen that seemed to sculpt itself into odd shapes. He'd never seen anything so fascinating.
"To be fair, the Puritans used the word 'witch' in derogative to describe anyone who was smart, different or they simply just didn't like. According to them if you weren't perpetually miserable at all times then you were clearly a spawn of Satan."
"Well, we'd be fucked wouldn't we?" Malik howled over his shoulder sending the other two laughing. The boy's lack of filter often lead to the funniest of one-liners.
Together, they made an odd little trio. As odd and mischievous and chaotic as their individual personalities and independent obsessions with all things eerie and otherworldly: both beyond the grave and then some. It was how they had met, after all. Malik's older sister ran the Museum Ryou's father owned and often hired Yugi's renowned archeologist grandfather for many of his expeditions: the three had grown up around mummies and ghosts, and skeletons and assumedly cursed artifacts, and necropolis and ancient curses, spells, tomes, and magic and all the things that had made the ancient world so fun and cool and fascinating and ostracized them from their more perky, modern peers. It seemed ironically cruel, that their current predicament was the very work of the three who introduced them to that world, for that reason.
Marik in particular thought it was abysmally hypocritical of Ishizu to say he needed to "get out more" and "broaden his social circles" when she practically lived in her office surrounded by dead things and only remembered she still had to do things like , shower and pay parking meters because their older brother forced her too. Yugi who has virtually no relationship with either his business oriented father or his socialize mother beyond their expectation that he be "normal" whatever the Hell that meant" was this both curious and incredibly betrayed that it was his own usually supportive grandmother that had suggested the whole thing. Despite the terrible fight that had ensured, no amount of tears, shouts, guilt trips or even his infamous puppy dog plead would convince the old man to change his mind that Yugi "needed to grow up" and "not live in a fantasy world." Yugi refused to speak to him when he'd left the house that morning, backpack in hand for Marik's house. Ryou, the most upset about the whole despicable episode, had expected the betrayal from his own father but had been far more crushed that Grandpa and Ishizu had not only surrendered but agreed. He had not the slightest bit of doubt that his father concocted this whole scheme in a desperate want of nothing more than to be rid of him. Ryou would have happily obliged had the bastard not dragged his friends into it—and that it was somewhere other than what was quintessentially Hell-on-Earth.
"As to whether or not they practiced witch craft in the sense of Wicca or were part of some pagan religion," Ryou continued with gusto. "That we may never know. We do know definitively that they were not Satanists."
"Awe, but Satanist have so much more fun?" Marik couldn't say with a Steiger face and bust out laughing halfway through. "No, no, no, no, I'm sorry, I couldn't resist!" He laughed so hard he had to clench both his side and the antique table for support.
"Funny Mare," Yugi said over his shoulder though his focus remained on the flower that looked like it has teeth. "So no grimoires, I'm assuming, Ry?"
Ryou earnestly has to ponder that one. "Hmm, that's actually a good question. I can't speak for any actual spells, but it's not uncommon for healers, scholars and widows to record their thoughts, findings and research in journals and the whole family was of well known intellect. It wouldn't surprise me if they have a few, just don't expect any human-skin leather bound books with an eyeball lock or eternal youth potions that suck the essence from children."
"You did not just make. Hocus Pocus reference!" Yugi half laughed, half retorted. In the end laughter won out.
"Hell, yeah, I did!" Ryou flaunted shamelessly and through back his curtain of white hair.
It was then he saw them. As if summoned by some strange magic, both Marik and Yugi turned their heads. The three boys abandoned their individual explorations, beckoned like a siren's song, a mermaid's lullaby, silent, as though the air itself was an enchanted with some seductive spell, calling them like a home they'd never known. Hypnotized, they found themselves drawn instead to the three branches candelabra, both hidden by and dominating the corner of the room. Wrought iron and elegantly carved lotus petals or vines or perhaps claws, unfurled in a dramatic triquetra of ivory candles inscribed all over with spells and tunes in a lost language none of them recognized: one red as blood, one green as emeralds, one purple as the evening sky.
"Wow," Yugi gasped, wonderment urging his fingers to tough. He found himself strangely drawn to the central candle, its crimson runes seeming to shine in the contrasting dullness of the artificial light and the silver glimmer of the moon, as though fierce, dancing flames created the runes. "What are these?"
His eyes transfixed on the left candle's grass green runes, that seemed to shift and slither like serpent scales, Ryou blinked almost having missed the question. He opened his mouth to answer with his usual flare, but found he couldn't. "I'm…not sure, actually." It surprised him. "Mother never mentioned anything like these."
Marik, having not taken his eyes off the right candle, maneuvered around his friends, for a closer look, the purple shifting in shades of violet and lavender like dancing, flickering shadows. "According to the label, these are Black Flame Candles." He wiggled his fingers in a cheesy Dracula horror-movie voice. "Oh, get this, apparently they're made from the fat of a hanged man and can only be lit by a virgin on a full moon on Halloween Night. Well that rules me out."
"Pretty sure that rules all of us out," Yugi added, as the three often likes to brag about their sexual conquest and escapades.
"Plus its neither Halloween not a Full Moon," Ryou added. "That's fine though I guarantee every word on the tag is sheer bullshit."
"In that case," Marik leapt over one of the podiums and dug a lighter and matches out of his bag and spread them out.
Ryou and Yugi arched unsurprised brows. "Do we want to know why you have lighters, matches and what I'm assuming are fireworks in your backpack?" Ryou asked with a grin.
Marik smirked. "It's my sister's fault for not checking, and for stupidly thinking she could ship me off to boarding school and I wouldn't at least try and get expelled on the first day."
"True that," Yugi said striking the long match. His friends followed suit.
"Pick a candle, boys," Ryou ordered. "Unless, of course, you're having second thoughts. No judgement, you know none of us will think less of you if you don't want to—just like we all agreed to never use Ouija boards."
Marik shuddered and Yugi shivered.
"Nope, I'm in," Marik said, flicking opening his lighter. "If we're gonna get dragged off to boarding school tomorrow I wanna go saying I took a chance a lit a Black Flame Candle!"
"Me too!" Yugi agreed. "And to be honest, I feel like we're meant to." His eyes focused on the center candle claiming it for himself,
"I know exactly what you mean," Ryou agreed, gaze returning to the green candle with a sense of awe and wonder, feeling the call rather than hearing it. "Together?"
"Together," Marik nodded, slithering around the purple candle.
"Ready?"
"Ready."
"Ready!"
And they lit the candles together.
For a moment, only simple yellow and orange flames danced to life and continued to glow like soft suns. Expecting the outcome, but unable to resist the hope for more, none of them could hide their disappointment. Then the wind shifted, came to life with a howl and the three candle flames flickered, black centers bursting out to consume the rest of the flame and they came back to life: no longer yellow, but blooming shimmering silver and black.
Black flames.
"What the—" Marik barely got out before the ground shook, a tiny tremor like a funhouse floor and the three screamed more from shock than anything house.
"Guys…" Yugi wine, voice high with terror. "Did the floor just move."
A pop exploded from behind them. Ryou jumped with a scream and whirled around seeing the wall light had popped. A candle flame took its place. Suddenly more tiny pops like fireworks burst all around them. One at a time the flame-shaped lightbulbs of the chandelier and the candle holders popped replaced with flames like fireflies.
Wind that was not there before blew in all directions around them, as if in grand announcement. A huge, wooden groan echoed from the second floor and the house started to move: the wooden beams groaned, the floorboards creaked, the walls seemed to move as if breathing. Suddenly the second floor shook, jutted forward then backward like something out of inception.
Suddenly, a twister emerged in the center of the room sucking everything in. the boys shifted between screaming, ducking and demanding in curses what was happening. They dove under the cauldron, huddled together and used their backpacks like shields, screamed again as the massive living room appeared to be spinning, the invisible wind sucking everything into it: the plants from the second floor, the dusty collection of books, the massive weaver's wheel and everything from the kitchen. The whole house spun and groaned. A musical rhythm to it as if the house was singing, welcoming in them, the apex of the storm seeming to be the massive cauldron they were huddled against.
And then the cauldron moved, shook and bucked behind them sending them lurching forward with three screams of terror. It buckled and shook, glowing with everything inside of it like they were all ingredients for some horrifying witches brew: smoke and light and steam and sparks exploded and crackled within the pot. Above it everything in the house swirled together like it was caught in a tornado. Inside a twister howled and outside a storm rages and lighting flashed and thunder cracked, the house groaned and the world itself seemed to spin and shift. Reality titled on its axis, forcing the three boys to back away into each other until all three of them were back to back in their own triquetra, their backpacks squeezed between them for dear life, as they waited out the storm of reality and magic and madness of which they were they eye.
And then everything was sucked into the cauldron.
For a moment the world was dead silent, still, frozen.
None of them dared to move.
The cauldron exploded.
Wave after wave of fire, water, earth, wind, sparks, light, and liquefied, gold, pink, and rainbow magic exploded out of it in a geyser, spreading everywhere and covering the entire house from the cathedral style roof to down the walls in its power and the three boys screamed together as if they were next.
The hugged each other expecting at any moment to be vaporized but death never came. Instead, the nervously peeked one eye open and found themselves in a house that was both the same and entirely different from the one they' just occupied: bigger, larger, free of dust and glass and cobwebs, like a phoenix dying in the fires of magic and rising from the ashes into something newer, brighter, bigger and more functional, the room they were in was reminiscent of kitchen or a family room, the ceiling was cathedral style boasting massive wooden beams the ceiling cut with skylights that sported magnificent stained glass mosaics. The windows were frosted and free of dust. The podiums and anything resembling a museum were gone: instead grand couches were scattered throughout, bookcase lined the opposite wall, shelves heavy with old leather bound books, exotic plants, and bizarrely shaped bottled filled with strange liquids and other strange oddities. A massive grandfather clock chimed ominously in the corner, though its massive face showed not numbers but the moon in various stages of waxing and fullness. The fire place, massive and stoned, bloomed against the wall and behind the couches on the opposite wall and all along the walls, murals of giant massive mystical beasts glowed and moved as if alive: to their horrified wonderment, they WERE alive: dragons and gryphons flew across the sky, a ship battled a storm-tossed sea, a massive castle glowed in the distance, figurines dances and moved and along one massive wall was an enormous elegantly carved cabinet of curiosities where every glass box and door sported an imprisoned world: a merry-go-round with skeletal horses, mermaids dicing over and over again in to the same tide pool, faeires dancing in a glade, a dragon breathing fire, a clockwork city chiseled into the shape of a mask, a snow globe sporting an herd of running unicorns. Ghostly wisps moving and fluttering about in a glass jar, an oil lamp that burned as if alive, a collection of animal skulls painted in brilliant, bold colors and symbols.
The only thing that remained from the room they were once in and the room they were in now was the massive cauldron hovering like a grand god upon its throne of fire embedded into the ground.
And then laughter echoed behind them: three uniquely different cackles of pleasure and wicked delights that froze their blood. Terror enlarged their eyes and their faces were grimaces of realization: the realization that they were not alone. Slowly, unwillingly, the three boys turned around. Screams chocked their throats as they gasped at the three handsome figures, not standing but sitting behind them—on magnificently carved staffs, like witch's broomsticks, hovering in the air of the room: their three faces mirrors sporting triumphant smirks and bold, brilliant eyes that promised all sorts of wicked glee. All three sets of eyes, various shades of red: crimson like dark roses, russet like dried blood, and the deep purple of blood starved of oxygen.
They hovered in the air, together, laughing, surprised, pleased, triumphant, their cloaks billowing in the wind: one red as blood, one green as emeralds, and one purple as the evening sky.
So this turned out way longer than I expected so instead of continuing it an ending it where I originally planned, I decided this was the best place to end it and then i could expand part three and bring Atem, Bakura and Marik's pov back into the mix ;) Oh man is THIS meeting gonna be fun!
I am definitely gonna continue this one and panse it and have TONS of fun with it! Already that final room i just completely ran with whatever i came up with and now have at least six potential plot points and stories! Ah the beauties of letting your imagination go wild!
Still need help figuring out what animals to make Atem, Bakura and Marik's "familiar/staff heads" though I've decided what i want their "magical talents" to be...we'll learn that in the coming future ;)
so any ideas or suggestions I am ALL ears!
I'm thinking I might do a theme of the letter C with chapter titles too, so...suggestions ;)