"No, my Pharaoh. The Dark Magic attack Yugi suffered..."
Mahaad couldn't hold Yami's gaze. His head dropped. Yami had never seen the Dark Magician, or Mahaad, wear this sort of demeanor before. He appeared defeated.
"Yugi has been slain, my Pharaoh."
"What?!"
The tablet of the Dark Magician flashed purple. Mahaad turned and placed his palm upon it once more.
"He's very sorry. Of course, I am too. I was powerless in the merge, unable to do anything to stop it. I am..."
Yami chuckled softly, sadly. "Mana, Akai, you...now Yugi. I might have come from a death-obsessed culture, but this is becoming too much even for me!" Yami's appearance blurred, shifting from his Pharaoh mien back to his regular mode.
Mahaad's eyes were curiously soft as he regarded his friend. Things had been rough on him lately. Mahaad could sense the disquiet in Yami and immediately began to plan some way to bring him peace.
"We should find Mana and Akai. You go on ahead. There is something I must do here." Mahaad used his best 'advisor' voice, honed millennia ago in the land of Pharaohs, knowing that Yami usually accepted such suggestions easily.
"What?" Yami asked.
"I can help you better in attaining your destiny if I understand my own better. Once I leave, I won't have this opportunity again," he nodded toward the tablet of the Dark Magician. "So, I best ask my questions now."
Yami nodded that he understood, turned and walked away from the Guardian Dark Magician's hallway.
"This body. It will take you great energy to form another from the stone," Mahaad ventured, directing his attention toward the Dark Magician spirit residing in the tablet under his hand.
"No matter. I trust you will be able to right the wrong I have committed with the power I left for you there. Truly, I am sorry. I should have fully understood the young one's purpose before I struck."
Mahaad waited, agreeing with the spirit of the Guardian Dark Magician, but too mannered to 'say' anything out loud.
The spirit laughed anyway, sensing his agreement. "That tact! You know I mean them no harm."
Mahaad nodded, and agreed internally to share that agreement with the Guardian Dark Magician. "I know. They will know too. Trust me."
"I do. And I will wait patiently for the proper time for us, the First Dark Magician and the Last, to be one and open the way for destiny to end the painful cycle for the Pharaoh."
The spirit paused. Mahaad could tell he was reflecting upon the destiny that would one day merge fully with Mahaad's.
"But for now, take care of him, and his young 'partner' in the outside world, while I tend to and direct his wanderings within."
Mahaad nodded. "Of course. Let me handle it."
The Guardian Dark Magician's spirit sank deeper into his magic, or deeper into the stone, Mahaad wasn't certain which, but he knew further attempts to communicate would be unanswered.
"No matter," he echoed the Guardian. "He's given me all I need for now."
He turned and followed the path Yami had taken, out of the corridor and into the maze of Yami's mind. As always, when he visited here, Yami's presence was a bright beacon that Mahaad could sense and lock onto, giving him an uncanny ability to thread the maze with ease.
"Or maybe that's one of the Guardian Dark Magician's gifts too," Mahaad wondered. He smiled with satisfaction as he found the door that lead to the corridors between minds.
--------
Mahaad paused on the threshold into Yugi's mind. Unlike the pharaoh's labyrinth, which made one want to talk in hushed voices or gesture to communicate so as to not break the somber silence, Yugi's room was bright and airy, making Mahaad think that laughter would be welcome here. It was a play room, filled with toys and games. Yugi's room invited where Yami's forebode.
He entered, carefully stepping around or over the stuffed toys strewn with careless artistry across the floor. He paused at a low table where a chess game in progress waited for players. He itched to reach down and move the knight for the black side, but refrained. Such an action might have a deep significance to Yugi, the consequence of which Mahaad didn't know.
Yami, Mana and Akai were clustered around a bed where they had placed Yugi and hadn't noticed Mahaad enter. He took the opportunity to examine Yugi's mind-room carefully, extrapolating what he could about Yugi from how his mind depicted reality.
"A boy with a simple and generous heart," Mahaad thought to himself. "And a quick intellect," he added, noticing a partially solved jigsaw puzzle spread upon the floor. The eight foot puzzle was being solved from the edges in. "He might be simple hearted, but he, himself, certainly isn't simple!"
Around the very edges of Yugi's mind, the light faltered, reminding Mahaad quite strongly of Yami's dark and shadowed mind.
He looked closely, deeply into the shadowed outer corners of Yugi's mind, reading, even as they slowly disappeared, some of the deep truths of Yugi's soul. He knew that his was Yugi's favorite card, but here, where no secrets can hide and untruths shrivel and die, he could not flinch from learning exactly what that meant to Yugi.
A nightmare shadow sparked and flared as the entropy of Yugi's death caught it. Mahaad watched as a cold heartless version of himself as the Dark Magician turned and forsook Yugi. Further he could read that it was not the action, but the coldness in the Dark Magician of the dream that held the true horror for Yugi. In another nightmare, Yugi found he wasn't strong enough to help Yami in his destiny, instead dragging his partner down to his final death.
Someone walked up behind him. Mahaad concealed his smile, as without even turning around, he knew it was Yami.
"There are far too many shadows in his mind," Mahaad observed admonishingly.
Evidently, Yami felt a stab of guilt at that.
"My fault..."
Mahaad turned and fixed an understanding, yet chiding eye on him. "No. Don't think that way. It is merely the effect of the destiny you share with him. It is not your fault." Mahaad told him. "However, it is not right to permit such shadows to grow when there is a way to stop them."
Yami glanced up sharply into Mahaad's eyes. Mahaad struggled to maintain his deadpan expression against the hope that suddenly shone like a quiet light in Yami's eyes.
Having seen all he needed to know about Yugi's mind, Mahaad walked toward the bed placed a little bit away from the toy filled section of Yugi's mind. Mahaad could easily extrapolate that the bed is where Yugi would go to wrestle with complicated problems and moral dilemmas, away from the distractions of his mental toys. Or perhaps it was the tool he used to try to calm his mind down from worrying about things. Right now, he wasn't worrying about anything, lying all too still upon the bed where Mana and Akai had placed him. Mahaad's heart twisted that Yugi had suffered so much.
"Mana?"
"Yes, Master?"
"I believe you once said something about teaching me the whimsy of magic?"
Mana gasped. She'd never said that, she'd only thought it while grasping tightly to the thread of Mahaad's magic!
Mahaad smiled gravely down at her before tipping her helmet to one side.
"I am too old and settled to gain any benefit from your...lessons. I've found a place more in need of your whimsical touch."
"Where?" Mana struggled to right her helmet again.
"Right here. Yugi is too absorbed in matters of destiny. There are too many shadows growing in this room. I would ask that you and Akai make it your special task to help Yugi push back these shadows."
"But, but...Yugi's dead!" Mana protested.
"Well, yes. But we are in a place of mind. If Yugi were utterly departed, all of his room would have already ceased to exist, as Yami's would be the only spirit left."
"So you can bring him back?" Akai realized.
Mahaad looked seriously into his eyes and nodded. "I believe I can."
"Why have you not yet done so?!" Yami demanded.
"All of you, look. The center of Yugi's room, the center of his mind, is bright. That is the truest expression of Yugi's soul. Most of his mind is filled with areas of light and shadow, the culmination of the events of his life, which is normal, and finally, only on the outside edges, an area of distressing blackness."
"That area is what I am concerned about. Such blackness is not normal in anyone who is as filled with light as Yugi. And it is recent, which is why it's toward the outside. I've been studying it while I've been here; that blackness is filled with worries, nightmares, and anxieties. I thought..." Mahaad faltered.
"You thought to let the darkest shadows slip away, so Yugi wouldn't have to deal with them anymore," Yami finished softly.
"And Mana and I can make certain somehow that they don't grow again," Akai nodded his understanding.
"How?" Mana asked, as tears filled her eyes. She was upset that Yugi had been dealing with something like this blackness all on his own.
"Is this not a nice place, except for the darkest shadows?" Mahaad asked. "I believe that with Yami's permission, you and Akai will be able to return here. Not often, since Yugi does have a life, apart from the Shadow Games to live, but every once in a while when we can tell that he's starting to feel down for too long, or worrying too much. I suspect Yugi would welcome your visits. And I trust you two will find a way to help him break the shadows."
"Hmmmm...." Mana walked rather theatrically toward the brightest part in the center of the room. "I wonder..."
She locked her gaze on Mahaad's face with a broadly teasing look and gripped her wand tight. Both Mahaad and Akai could sense that she was trying to do something with her Dark Magic, something neither of them had felt before. She gasped, and redoubled her effort.
Suddenly, Akai had a flash of inspiration. He pushed his staff into Mahaad's arms to hold for him, walked up next to Mana, and grasped her wand around her hands, sending his Dark Magic into it for her to tap.
The strain around her eyes lightened and disappeared as Akai's assistance helped her to complete her spell.
In the very center of Yugi's room, something little, and fuzzy, and purple, appeared.
"What...?" Yami walked over and picked it up. He turned it around, looked closely at it, and started to laugh. He grinned delightedly before tossing it over to Mahaad.
Mahaad, quite curious from Yami's reaction, looked at the thing himself. It was little. It was cute. It was a faithful duplicate of him, armor, helmet, staff, disgruntled look and all, in a fuzzy miniature form.
"Mana?" he asked incredulously.
"A plushie. Of you. For him," Mana replied seriously, pointing to other 'plushies' in Yugi's mind-room before sticking out her tongue at him.
"A little respect, that's all I ask!" Mahaad groaned.
Mana blinked up at him deliberately.
"Will he not like it?"
"I'm sure Yugi will like it."
"Will it not lighten his mood?"
Mahaad looked down at the silly little thing again.
"Alas, I'm certain it will."
"Well then, what's the problem?"
"No problem, you troublemaker!"
Mahaad smiled down approvingly at his impish apprentice, pleased despite his reaction that Mana had grasped the heart of his idea to help Yugi so easily.
He gazed toward the outer regions of Yugi's mind, judging the rate of dissolution of the darkness.
"Come, I think we've let enough of the shadows slide into oblivion. It is time to revive him," Mahaad decided.
He knelt next to where Mana and Akai placed him, stroking his left hand gently through Yugi's hair to come to rest on the top of his head, while his right hand came to rest gracefully over Yugi's heart. He reached down deep into the power the Guardian Dark Magician had left in him specifically for this purpose, triggered it, and poured the restoring Dark Magic into Yugi.
"Return, little one, your time to leave is not yet come."
Yami's eyes widened as the Millennium Puzzle around Yugi's neck, as well as the one around his own, pulsed in time with a glow from Mahaad's hand. Yugi's eyes blinked, then opened. Mahaad helped him to sit up.
"Yugi!" Yami rudely pushed Mahaad aside and grasped Yugi's shoulders. "Are you all right?!"
Yugi just blinked up at him with a vacuous smile on his face.
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Author's notes -
::ducks thrown rocks, bricks and boulders::
I swear this is the last twist of the story and the last character I put into peril! I hope the ending of the chapter was a bit of a surprise. I do so loathe becoming predictable. Cliffhangers? ::laughs evilly:: Dear readers, I've thrown you all into free fall! Nevertheless, I honestly did not intend to write so much with this story. I thank all of you for hanging in there with me.
I also want to thank the person who reviewed my story way back when (or perhaps it was in the reviews for Rebellion) who 'gave' me an Akai plushie. Obviously the image of a Dark Magician plushie very much appeals to me!
The next chapter might be pushing the envelope a little bit (as if the entire story wasn't already doing just that!) but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Next chapter teaser - Chapter Fifteen - Magic Box Duel
Reviews, comments and constructive criticisms are always welcome! Please feel free to email me also if you see something awkward that needs to be clarified or fixed. I need all the help I can get!
stargarde(at)stargarde.com