Note: Allow me to present to you all my newest and rarest card, The Winged Dragon of Ra. And now here's my evil little story about the God cards and the three foolish children who got their hands on them. The idea came to me after the episode about what happened to the two people who help Pegasus make the God cards. Enjoy!!

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh, but I play the game and could probably beat Yugi in a duel.

Demise

By Xerios

We had seen those three glorious cards posted for sale on the internet, my two friends and I, and they looked every bit as magnificent and powerful as our resources had told us they would be. Those cards were reflective, hypnotic even, reduced to half their size on the computer screen with paragraphs of descriptions written out beneath each one in arial size ten font. We didn't need those descriptions to know that we had struck gold or to tell us what those cards would mean if and when we obtained them, for we were avid fanatics of the television show, the only thing within the otherwise boring world of our daily lives that had held our interests.

All three of us knew the rules by heart and we had adapted each time the deuling style changed, always following the original Japanese version of the show, for it was farther ahead and by far more entertaining than the cheap censored out English version. Each of us had our own meticulously constructed decks and we knew each others strengths and weaknesses so well that we could predict each others strategies before the first card was even drawn. We were, however, only a small fraction of the deulists that populated our school, and we longed to be at the top, to be regarded as the best out of everyone.

We saw those cards decorating that screen and knew right away that we had to obtain them somehow, for we would never settle for cheap english versions of those cards. The cost was rather high, in triple digits for each of them, but we divided the cost into thirds before drawing lots to see which of us would get which card. We ordered them under my uncle's name before returning to our own respective houses to wait out those long weeks until our new prized possessions arrived.

Six weeks came and went, and though I can not speak for my friends on this matter, I myself began to feel a great burden of darkness grow before my eyes. At night when I went to sleep my dreams became tormenting nightmares in which I stood watching the world burn before the feet of three shadows. Of those shadows within my dream, one of them began to grow in clarity, gaining a more tangible form within those weeks, taking the form of one of the monsters featured on the prized cards we had ordered off of that computer screen. The monster that decorated the very card that I had drawn.

And then the package came and none of us smiled when we opened it, taking out our cards, all three of us with grave expressions on our faces. It was as if we had signed our own execution orders, though none of us spoke of anything to that point. We went our seperate ways, bidding my uncle goodbye, the cards within our decks. We each walked back down the street to our houses, the silence hanging over us like an omen of impending doom.

That night the dream returned full tilt, with the monster clearly visible within my eyes, striking down the world as if it was nothing. I woke from that dream with a feeling of horror deep within my gut so strong that I felt sickened. I took my card from the deck and locked it away beneath the floorboards of my closet, and there it stayed though the nighmares remained.

A week passed by and every time I saw my friends their faces looked paler and paler, as I was sure my own was much the same. And then the day came and Dane was not there when I arrived at school. My omenous feeling increased two fold as the day wore on, for he had stayed home sick supposedly, though our friend and I dreaded and knew the truth behind it. I went home that day and did my homework as usual before going to bed where my nightmares awaited me.

That night, however, my nightmare trained and I saw within it the front room of Dane's house, every detail as sharp as if I was standing there myself. Dane was there, his pajamas still on and his hair ruffled, staring at a picture that was nailed to the wall opposite him with bloodshot eyes. It was dark just like it had been when I closed my eyes and I knew that this was actually happening, that I was seeing what was truly real by means of some intangible force.

Dane removed the picture from the wall and pulled something from behind it with his other hand before dropping the frame to the floor where the glass shattered across the hardwood. He held up his prize which he had deliberately found and as I watched a dark shadow begin to form above his head. He looked up, his eyes widening in sudden horror as if he were seeing something other than a simple shadow, something of which was to be feared beyond all reason.

It descended upon him like a curtain and Dane began to writhe as if some creature had him grasped within its clutches. He screamed in terror, a scream that brought his parents running, though they could only see him shaking there and not the shadow that was even now causing him this agony. Then dark lines began to appear upon his arms, widening as blood spilled out, dripping on the floor like some sadistic person's idea of a waterfall. His mother screamed in horror as the lines began to travel up his arm and I knew that she could see the blood falling on her hands as she tried to help her son. Dane stopped writhing as those lines reached his neck and fell, his father catching him before he reached the floor while his mother scrambled for the phone.

Her shrieks were drowned out by the silence and amazement within my mind as I looked down upon the thing that had fallen from Dane's hand when his torture began. Staring up at me from within a blue tinted frame, eyes gleaming in wicked malice and claws dripping with fresh blood, was Obelisk the Tormentor. The very same card that Dane had drawn.

Yet another week passed me by in a shocked daze. My remaining friend and eye went on through school in a grim silence, never speaking but both of us knowing that we had dreamed that same dream. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw my monster destroying the world along with those two other shadows, one of which seemed to have lightened to a color not unlike blood.

On the day of Dane's funeral I stepped up to the front of the church, my own parents walking in ahead of me as I paused to look around for my other friend Trent. But he was nowhere to be found, and somehow I knew that he wasn't coming that day. Later I called his mother and she told me he had been sick in bed for the whole day through and not to worry about him.

That same night I sat in the corner of my room farthest from my closet where that card of mine was hidden, trying futily not to close my eyes. But sleep came for me as it always did, forcing my eyelids closed and tossing me into yet another nightmare that was no work of my imagination but of some cruel power beyond the scope of my sense of reality.

Trent's basement was sparsely furnished, an old couch and a lawn chair the only things there besides the washing machine and the dryer. I was standing by the stairs, having given in to sleep at last and he was sitting in the lawn chair, holding something within his hand. I knew what it was he was staring at and like with Dane I watched as the shadow began to form above him.

He stood, raising his eyes to greet this danger, and a whip of flames came down across his face like a fire brand, burning at his flesh. He screamed at the fire as more lashes came raining down, wrapping themselves around his limbs. His clothes burned away first, followed closely by his skin, crackling in the fire like kindling sticks, charring and crumbling away like his scream which died off soon after.

I wondered if his screams had been heard but the silence told me they hadn't and I remembered that it was Sunday, His mother's shopping day. My stomach gave a hurtful turn at that thought as something fluttered from Trent's burning hand. I knew it was the card and I gave one frightful glance at him before he too fell still burning to the floor.

The card was smouldering as if it too had been charred, but it was intact as I bent down to look upon it, unable to stop myself from staring down into it's red-framed glory. Slypher the Sky Dragon stared up at me with a wicked grin, eyes gleaming with a burning fire within. I stepped away and my eyes opened to the darkness of my own room as a knowing feeling arose within my chest, my time was limited.

The week passed and my mother forced me to stay home from school, insisting that I wasn't myself which was, of course, true. There was a deathly look in my eyes whenever I caught sight of myself in the mirror and I knew it was that dark gleam, as well as the circles beneath them, that caused her worry to be justified. She kept me home that weekend as well, away from Trent's funeral, insisting that it would do me no good and I obviously agreed. She went though, along with my Uncle, leaving me alone in our house.

I stayed in my room, sitting in the corner, staring at the closet where I knew my card was hidden. Then, as if it was destined, I stood, walking over to throw open the doors. Pulling up the floorboards again I grabbed out the card, holding it with two fingers as if it would burn me like Slypher had Trent. It didn't and I took the card outside, grabbing a shovel from the garage before walking out to the feild behind my house.

I didn't want to die like Trent and Dane and I thought I could prevent it, though deep down I knew that I would fail. The handle of the shovel sent painful wood splinters into my hand, but I kept digging until the hole was three feet deep. Then I held the card to drop it in and noticed something wrong, the place where the monster was supposed to be was just an empty frame.

As I stared however, a dark shadow passed over my head, as if the clouds had gathered to shut away the sun. I turned my gaze upwards and saw to my horror where the monster on the card had transferred itself to. There before me, rising high into the sky, was the golden form of the Winged Dragon of Ra, eyes gleaming more maliciously than Slypher and Obelisk combined. Lightning flashed around him, racing towards me like I had never seen before, but I could not move an inch, my feet had turned to lead.

I watched as Ra's jaws opened wide in a roar that I had heard only in my nightmares, though now I knew that it was real and that the world would follow soon after my demise. Lightning flashed again, the card flutter from my hand and everything went black.