Kaze & Chibi-Malik: Oo; *exchange puzzled glances*
Kaze: Sooo... What's up with SJ?
Chibi-Malik: *shrugs*
Mystery voice: Jeez, you two really are pathetic...
Chibi-Malik & Kaze: *turn to see none other then... YamiBakura?*
Kaze: Wait, what're you doing here?
Yami Bakura: *scowls and holds up a CD case* [sarcastic] SJ-sama [/sarcastic] managed to overdose herself on music, and is therefore unable to coherantly write a thing. And since I'm not needed around here for at least a dozen more chapters, I figured I'd help out and get some paid overtime.
Kaze: *leans forward and plucks the CD case out of Yami Bakura's hands* The Phantom of the Opera? Ra, no wonder she passed out... She's completely OBSESSED with this musical... *sweatdrop* Not to mention the fact she hasn't slept in two days...
WSJ: *in the corner, muttering in her sleep* Past the point of no return... (her favorite Phantom song) *rolls over and unconciously adjusts her ear phones*
Kaze: *sighs in relief* At least I'm getting a break from all the glomping...
Yami Bakura: *nods* Disclaimer?
Kaze: Why should I?
Yami Bakura: *smirks* I could send you to the Shadow Realm.
Kaze: ... And that would scare me... why?
Yami Bakura: Good point. *scowls again and crosses his arms* SJ doesn't own YGO. Najib and Karim are hers, but they're weaklings and don't matter. *pauses as a faint cry of "Injustice!" rings through the air and smirks* Anyway, let's move on before Wufei finds out what I did to his hair gel.
Kaze: ¬¬ ....Right. Since SJ is asleep she obviously can't answer specific reviews, but she does have a few of the questions written down, which Yami B and I will answer as best we can. *glances over the paper SJ left for them*
On the matter of Bel um Fal: Hmm... I thought more people would get this hint. ^^; Since some did and some didn't, I'll just say it. In the manga Bel um Fal is supposedly Yami Yuugi's "real name", probably his throne name (Egyptian pharaohs had at least two (sometimes more) names, their birth name and their throne name, which they were given when crowned pharaoh).
On the matter of the buggies: v_v; Evil bugs. I feel your pain HCG. And yes, Haga would be rather mad at them for squishing his "precious pretties". (On a side note: 26 days until Return of the King premieres! YAY!!!! *bashes movie-verse Faramir and watches him fly* ^-^)
On the matter of the carving on the obelisk: Yes, it will be significant. ^^
On the matter of foreshadowing: Yes, there was a ton of foreshadowing last chapter, and there's plenty more where that came from. :p
On the matter of long stories: .....You'd better believe this is going to be a long one! They have to excavate the site, find what they have to find (like it's really hard to figure out what it is they'll find...), go on a couple handy trust-building side-quests, go to Japan, save the world, and all that jazz. YES we are looking at a long fic here. ^^ I've written 7 chapters on the first 4 days, for crying out loud!!!
On the matter of sourses: This is, undeniably, going to be a fic that has a lot to do with archaeology. To make it seem more realistic, I've recently begun reading up on archaeology, most notably the classic text Gods, Graves, and Scholars.
Kaze: *puts down paper and sweatdrops* Jeez...
Yami Bakura: *looks around* Hey, wasn't there a little blond munchkin hanging around when I got here?
Kaze: O_o; *looks around franticly* Oh shit... If we've lost Chibi-Malik SJ's going to kill us!
Yami Bakura: *eyes the sleeping authoress, then gulps very quietly*
()()()()()
Hot Sands Warm Arms
Chapter 7 -- Wonderful Things
"God bless Mommy and Matchbox cars.
God bless Dad and thanks for the stars.
God hears "amen" wherever we are:
And I love you."
~(Dixie Chicks, "Godspeed, Sweet Dreams")
It was about an hour later when the group who were walking finally stumbled into the camp, which Shen and Rashiid had finally finished setting up. Isis was slightly winded, but was used to walking in the Egyptian heat, so she wasn't nearly as tired as some of the others. Shaadi too was used to walking in the desert, but he was carrying Malik on his shoulders. Pegasus was slightly more tired, but it was quite obvious that Arthur and Sugoroku were pretty close to falling over. Unfortunately, both were stubborn as mules.
"So, Pegasus-san," Arthur huffed, hobbling over to the silver-haired millionaire with Sugoroku just behind him. "Who would you say is more tired out, me or him?"
Pegasus sweatdropped. "Ahhh... I think," he said carefully, trying to be diplomatic. "I do believe that both of you are about to collapse. Perhaps you should take a seat in the shade?"
Sugoroku nodded, almost falling off his feet as he did. "I think he's... *huff puff* right Arthur."
Arthur sniffed and put his nose in the air. "I think you just don't want to admit you're more tired then I am."
Sugoroku smiled wryly as the both of them moved toward the pavilion, where Angeline was sitting hunched over one of the tables. "Could be... Ho, what have you got there Angeline-san?"
Angeline glanced up from where she'd been banding over several limestone fragments. After Shen and Rashiid had gotten over the first shock the three of them had trooped out to the obelisk, and had uncovered a couple more of the chips around its base. There were now four in total, each of them bearing different pictures. The first of them, which bared the pharaoh's name, seemed to be the best of the lot however. The second showed the profiled face of a man with slitted, shrewd eyes and close-cropped dark hair. A few hieroglyphs, which could have been the man's name, ran along the side, but they were too smudged to make out save for the small marking hieroglyph that meant "priest".
The third chip wasn't a drawing of a person, but what looked to be building plans of some sort. The ground floor for what seemed to be a temple was plainly laid out, complete with possitioning of alters and collumns to hold up the ceiling. This would prove to be a valuable asset if they happened to come across the temple in their excavations, but now it was little help, for there was no writing to tell them even which god or goddess the temple was dedicated to.
The fourth and final one was another drawing of the Pharaoh Bel um Fal, a full body one this time. Next to him stood a woman wearing the stair-stepped crown of the goddess Isis, and she had her hands resting on his shoulders. Indeed, the woman seemed to be the goddess Isis, she was even wearing the same robes the goddess was always depicted in, but the face was wrong.
"My god!" Shaadi exclaimed, coming up behind them to see what they were looking at. "Where did you find these?!"
"By the obelisk over there." Rashiid grunted, coming into the pavilion carrying another of the limestone pieces, Shen right behind him. "I think that's all were going to find without doing some serious digging." he said, swiping his hand across his forehead.
By now everyone was crowded around the table, clammering to get a look at the five flat stones. The fifth one which Rashiid had just set down with its mates was of a man with a set of three crossed scars down one cheek, a scowling look on his face. Below him was enscribed the name "Kuru Eruna". As Angeline looked at that one she felt her baby almost tremble inside her, and she put a calming hand against her belly again. Goodness, the baby was very active today.
"Ahh, I see," Arthur said, bending over slightly to inspect the stone which bore the priest's face. "Sometimes artists and relief carvers would use spare pieces of limestone to practice their technique or perseption of a certain subject belore they set it into stone. That obelisk over there must have been a dump of some kind, to judge by all the limestone "practice slabs" you found."
"I'm not so sure," Angeline objected, her hand still rubbing her belly. She could feel her child's heart beating fast, and wondered briefly whether or not she should talk to Isis. It couldn't hurt. "The inscription talks about protecting the pharaoh's city. Maybe a sort of tomb marker?"
"It's inscribed?" Sugoroku and Arthur asked, almost at once. Angeline nodded, and they looked at each other in delight. They were, after all, the language experts of the team.
Isis saw the look in their eyes and tsk tsked them. "No going out there now, it's almost supper time anyway. And it will still be there tomorrow, I can almost guarantee it." The two looked disappointed, but nodded.
Pegasus had left briefly, but now he returned with his sketch book and several pencils in hand. He took a seat across from Angeline and started sketching out the nearest of the tablets, the one which bore the pharaoh and the goddess.
"Ohhh you," Isis said, frowning slightly. "Jumping into work already?"
Pegasus just shrugged and kept drawing.
Cynthia giggled and pointed to Pharaoh Bel um Fal's image. "Look at his hair! Please tell me that's some sort of headdress."
"I don't know," Isis said, leaning closer. "It's wild, but it does seem to be his hair. Otherwise he'd be wearing the double-crown. He couldn't if that was really his hair, because it wouldn't fit."
"Maybe he wasn't pharaoh," Shaadi suggested. "He could be just a high ranking official."
Angeline shook her head, in agreement with Isis. "No, because if he was just an official his name wouldn't be encased in a cartouge, and he wouldn't be pictured with the goddess Isis either, except perhaps on his coffin or tomb walls, but even then Isis would just have him by the hand leading him to see Osirus, not with her arm around his shoulders."
That stopped Shaadi, and he frowned slightly. "Yes, you're right..." he muttered.
"Hey!" Everyone turned to see Malik, who was pouting a little. "I want to see too!"
Everyone laughed, realizing that they'd been so absorbed in their good fortune of a find that they'd forgotten the fact that the little boy wasn't tall enough to see, and couldn't have anyway, the way they were crowding around the table. Still laughing, Angeline held her arms out to him. "Come here you. In a few months you won't fit on my lap, but I can hold you well enough for now."
Malik happily climbed up onto her lap, but as soon as he caught sight of the tablets he froze, his lavendar eyes wide. Everyone else had gone back to studying the stones, so it was only Angeline that noticed. "Malik, what's wrong?" she asked quietly.
Malik put out a shaking hand to point at the scarred, smirking youth who bore the name Kuru Eruna. "I - I know him!"
Angeline blinked. "You what?"
"Not... not exactly know..." Malik fumbled, trying to put his feelings into words. "But I seen him before! I dreamed once that he was talkin' to me an' another boy who looked like him," he pointed at Kuru Eruna again "But wif longer hair and no scar. It... it was kinda scary, but not in a bad way..." He shook his head, then laid it against Angeline's shoulder and yawned. "I hungrey."
Angeline gaped at the little boy, then carefully got to her feet. "All right then, let's go find something to eat. And... Malik? If you have any more dreams, tell me, okay?" She had no idea why, but Angeline thought that maybe, just maybe, the dreams of a little Egyptian boy could be important.
Malik nodded. "I will, I promise."
After Angeline managed to persuade everyone to leave the tablets alone long enough to eat, she and Cynthia (who didn't have much of an intrest in them other then to laugh at the pharaoh's spikey hair) started unloading the jeep of its boxes and bags and putting them in the owners' tents. Shen and Angeline had a tent to themselves, as did Pegasus and Cynthia. Arthur, Rashiid, Shaadi, and Sugoroku each had a tent to themselves (although admittedly their tents were smaller than the ones the couples had), and Isis and Malik shared the last tent.
Finally everyone conceeded to leave the tablets for the night as the sun began to set. Malik was tucked into bed, and several lamps, hanging from the corners of the pavilion and one on each table, were lighted. As the men sat around the table talking and laughing, Angeline caught Isis by the arm and led her toward her and Shen's tent. Cynthia, her curiosity aroused, followed. Once the three of them were settled in various seats around the tent (ranging from the cots to a metal folding chair to a wooden packing crate) Angeline looked anxiously at Isis. "Isis, how good are you at pre-birth check-ups?"
Isis and Cynthia looked at her in alarm. "Good enough," Isis said after recovering from her initial shock. "Why, what's wrong?"
Angeline shook her head. "I don't know, maybe nothing, but baby's heart's been beating really fast all day, and he keeps kicking and jerking."
Isis's face had been growing more and more alarmed, and she quickly excused herself to sprint to her tent and grab her medical bag. After listening to the baby's heart with her stethescope and poking and prodding various places on Angeline's belly, Isis sat back and breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm pretty sure nothing serious is wrong Angel, but you've got to take it easy from now on. No more running around in the heat and digging up stone tablets like a dog. From now on I want you to take it easy. Relax, stay in the pavilion, and watch Malik. I mean it Angel! If that baby of yours is born prematurely then there's not much we can do to save it, because this is Egypt and not America or Japan. There's no hospitals worth it within a hundred miles of here, so you've got to make sure that baby's born healthy."
Angeline nodded solemnly. "All right, I promise," she sighed. "Although I don't like it. I'd rather be out there digging things up with the rest of you."
Cynthia laughed and put a hand on Angeline's shoulder. "If it makes you feel better Angel, how about Isis and I take turns staying with you in the pavilion. That way you wouldn't be by yourself with just Malik, and you wouldn't feel so left out. Besides, the way the menfolk are talking it's like they expect artifacts to jump up and wave at them from all over the place. I think soon enough you'll have plenty of pottery to piece together."
Angeline's eyes lit up at the mention of the restoration work she loved so much. "You really think so? Gosh, that'd be great. Thanks a lot you two."
"Hey," Isis asked, winking at her "What are friends for?"
The next weeks passed in a blur, and indeed, Cynthia's prediction came true. Almost immediately they encountered a huge cache of pottery in the remains of what seemed to be a potter's shop just west of the obelisk. They quickly discovered that the marker which had confronted them that first day was not a grave marker, but that of a city gate. And so it was that the archaeologists, Karim and Najib (who joined them at the site the next day) and all their workers found themselves in the middle of an entire ancient city, completely unknown before they began to excavate. They became almost instantly famous, and their discoveries sent huge repercussions through the archaeological world.
The shifty-eyed priest they'd seen on one of the tablets turned out to be Seth, the High Priest of Amun-Ra and also Pharaoh Bel um Fal's friend, it seemed. There was a circle of six priests (as well as an elderly advisor) surrounding Pharaoh Bel um Fal, and it seemed that Seth was the most powerful of them. Or at least the most famous and/or most arrogant, because he was the one most often mentioned in any inscriptions they found (although the Priest-Mage Mahaado was also frequently mentioned).
But with as much as they were learning, almost nothing had been turned up about the scarred youth who'd so frightened Malik the first day. It was discovered, however, that Kuru Eruna was not the boy's name, but apparently the name of a villiage made up mostly of thieves that had lain about twenty miles north-east of the city. Pegasus already had plans to go there to excavate as soon as they finished in the city. Although, the way things were going, it didn't seem like they'd be leaving the city anytime soon. They'd been there for weeks already and had barely even scratched the surface.
The city's name was Ankhara, which roughly translated into "Ra lives". Bel um Fal was indeed the pharaoh of the city, and in fact of all of Egypt. At first the archaeologists had bulked at the idea of an unknown pharaoh, falling back on the fact that no "Bel um Fal" was ever recorded on any of the Kings Lists, the giant lists of pharaohs that sometimes were carved in temples. But it was also pointed out that the names of Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, and Tutankhamun, perhaps the most famous kings of Egypt, were also missing from the Kings Lists. Slowly, the world came to accept the idea of an ancient, unknown ruler who apparently took the throne for a very short time just after Tutankhamon's death but before his sucessor Ay could take the throne. What evidense they'd turned up so far showed that Bel um Fal's reign had lasted roughly ten years and, like Tutankhamon, he'd been crowned when he was very young. His reign was one that was frought with turmoil, but little did Pegasus or anyone else know how frought it had been.
But they were soon to find out.
"I can't take it anymore!" Pegasus complained one night as the archaeologists sat around the table in the pavilion. The sun had just set, and all around them their Arabian workman were beginning to build fires to cook their dinners and talk with each other. It was early August, roughly two months since they'd started digging. Their luck had been amazing, and already museums were beginning to clamour to buy the artifacts they were constantly digging up.
"Can't take what dear?" Cynthia asked from her place behind her husband, where she was standing and absently playing with his hair.
"There are too many artifacts for me to accurately record and sketch them all." Pegasus complained. "We need another trained artist. That way they can concentrate on all the mundane things, and I can work on these monsters that keep popping up in the carvings."
About two weeks ago, in the hottest part of July, Malik had been wandering around when he came across what he thought to be a cave. Thinking it would be cool inside, and after first checking to be sure no snakes or scorpions had decided to take up residence within, Malik had headed in to cool down a little. Sure, the pavilion was shady, but it was still above ground. Caves were much cooler, being underground.
What Malik had found was a whole labyrinth of chambers and passages, all deliberately built and carved. These tunnels were kept a secret from the workman, only the archaeologists, Malik, Karim, and Najib knew of them. It seemed that the chambers were some sort of underground temple, and almost all the carvings on the walls made reference to monsters, or something called the "Dark Games". Pegasus had taken a special intrest in these monsters, and once he read that the priests had sealed said monsters into stone tablets and then used them to duel each other, he'd been hit by inspiration. Now he used the monsters as models for a card game of his own devising, and it was quickly becoming his pet project.
Another reason the workman hadn't been told of the underground labyrinth was that many of the chambers were unplundered, and were sometimes almost literally heaped with gold. Apparently these secret underground passages had also doubled as the pharaoh's treasury. And let's face it, no matter how kind and scrupilous an Arabian thinks he is, put him in a room with large amounts of money and his primal, tomb robbing instincts will spring to the surface.
Shaadi looked up from where he was playing solitaire with a deck of playing cards and looked over at Isis, who was looking back at him with a sly smile on her face. "A trained artist, you said?" she asked. "Shaadi's cousin, who lives just over in Luxor, is a very good artist. She's in Cairo right now for school, but she should be able to come back without a problem. I'm sure Kaela would be happy to come and give us help!"
And to the surprise of the entire table (save Shaadi and Isis), at the other end of the table where he'd been writing down the day's finding in the log book, Rashiid's face went beat red.
()()()()()
WSJ: *still asleep, but is starting to wake up*
Kaze: *almost frantic* Yami B! That munchkin could be anywhere by now! We're dead if SJ thinks we lost him!
Yami Bakura: X_x; ... Bai! *runs out the door*
Kaze: Oo; *face faults*
A few notes on the chapter:
Mwahahaha..! Yes, Kaela is the OC I'm planning on hooking Rashiid up with. ^^ You'll get to meet her next chapter.
Yes, the Kings Lists exist, yes, Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, and Tutankhamun aren't on it. Yes, I'm trying to make this as acurate as possible. No, there was no pharaoh between Tut and Ay, but where else am I supposed to stick Yam-Yam? Oh, and that's another thing. According to Kazuki Takahashi, Yami really did rule sometime in the 18th Dynasty, so I'm accurate on that too.
Yes, the youth with the scar that freaked Malik out is who you think he is. Yes, Kuru Eruna was really a villiage of thieves in Yami's Egypt. Yes, this fic will contain spoilers for the Egypt Arc of the manga. Speaking of the Egypt Arc, if anyone has any info at all, let me know. I already know a good deal, but I still want to make sure I'm as accurate as possible.
If anyone caught the archaeological pun in the chapter title and correctly names the source, Chibi-Malik will personally deliver them a cookie. ....Once I FIND him, that is.
Yes, Pegasus's card game is what you think it is. Mwaha.
Oh hey, anyone know if Cynthia, Rashiid, Shaadi, and Amane have official birth dates? I have Malik's, Isis's, and Pegasus's, (and a few other people that haven't shown up yet, such as Jou & them) but I need the others. Particularly Shaadi's. *sigh* Help? Anyone?
God bless minna-san!