The High Priest's Secret Tomb
Disclaimer: I do not own 'Yu-Gi-Oh!' Kazuki Takahashi, Warner Brothers, 4Kids Entertainment, and etc. does.
Chapter: Moving Chambers
'Forty nine...fifty...fifty one...fifty-two...and fifty-three!'
"Finally!" Kaiba collapsed in a heap at the top of the stairs. He had just climbed three staircases of fifty-three steps each and he was extremely exhausted. Having an already wounded leg didn't help the case either.
Panting and crawling over to a wall he found yet another pair of stairs going in two different directions that needed climbing.
"Whoever made...this tomb...really liked...walking..." Kaiba huffed, looking over the edge of the elevated floor and trying to find the bottom. It was no longer visible because of the dark even with the flashlight.
Decorations of jackal and eagle headed men in beautiful vivid paints performing a sacrificial ritual were carved perfectly into the stone walls. Stones of lapis lazuli were imprinted on the stone steps and walls as decorations for the honor of the royal.
Though Kaiba didn't really notice or care for any of this. Using the wall as a support he stood and continued ascending up the endless stairs to his right.
'One...two...thre-,' the boy's counting was cut short at the sound of scraping on the stone floor. Quickly turning around he caught barely a small glimpse of something black scurrying down and under the staircase.
"Must be a bat or something." And he continued with his game of 'count the steps as you go'.
You would have thought that Yami Bakura, being uninjured would go extremely fast and Kaiba having a wounded leg would go extremely slow, would have caught up with Kaiba by now.
Yet the Millennium Ring seemed to be having difficulty locating the Rod. Because every time Yami Bakura looked down at his Item while walking he would bump straight into a wall.
"Useless piece of trash! Work correctly already!" he yelled at the pendant. "Ugh, fine! I'll find the Item on my own then!"
He was back to where he had started from, in the big dome like chamber. Empty and cold as it was before he had left it on his wild goose chase for the mysterious Item. "No, it's the other way," he muttered.
He turned to the chamber he had just come from, but to his utter confusion and shock it was not the same room he had walked through.
"Is this some kind of joke?" he exclaimed, storming through and taking a look around for anyone or anything.
This room had a small stairway to the bottom level of the room, a huge golden throne sat at the head of the chamber.
The throne looking big enough for one of the two towering armored Anubis statues on either side of it. Their steel spears were held up menacingly, almost warning any intruder not to further trespass. The Ring then pointed to his right, but when the thief walked in that direction he was met with a wall.
Yami Bakura grit his teeth in annoyance and walked back to the entrance, meaning to enter the dome like chamber. But no, a different room greeted his sight.
People going insane while in the tomb were at a high probability, especially those whose patience were at the lowest of low levels.
"Find any exit yet, Yug?" Joey asked boredly.
"No," Yugi sighed equally as bored.
"Oooh! We've been walking for who knows how long!" Joey burst, pulling at his hair.
Duke paid no attention to his friend, seeing as the boy had done this three times for the past twenty minutes. Wandering over to an entrance to his left he said, "Maybe this room has an exit."
Tristan held his evil laugh in as he snuck up behind the unsuspecting teen. It was time for a little pay back. "Watch out Duke! There's a scorpion behind you!" he warned in mock terror.
"What? Where?" Duke asked in panic as he jumped and dusted himself off from nothing.
The taller boy laughed his head off. "Whoo boy! Wait until I tell Serenity that you sound like a little girl when you yell! She'll crack up!" Tristan sighed, "I crack myself up."
"I'm warning you, you better not!" Duke threatened.
"What are you going to do? Put me in a dog suite or something?" Tristan mocked. "Oh no! Please don't throw one of your dice at me!"
"That's it, you're going to get it!" Duke shouted and chased Tristan into the nearby chamber.
Meanwhile, Yugi and Tea were inside another chamber looking at the carvings on the walls. They were so awed at the beauty around them that they didn't even notice when the chamber's exit momentarily flashed black.
Joey on the other hand was left in the corridor on his own, muttering to himself. "This is all Kaiba's fault! Oh how when I get my hands on his neck, I'll strangle him slowly! Mwahahaha! Gaahhh! My flashlight ran out of batteries!"
Everything was pitch black for a second or two before his flashlight came back to life.
"Phew! Hey guys, any of you got extra batteries you can lend me?" asked the blonde. His breathing was the only sound that echoed around him. "Hmmm? Yugi, Tea?"
No reply was given.
"Tristan, Duke?"
Still, no one answered.
Then he panicked as something scratched the wall and scurried down the hall. "Bakura?"
Silence...
"Come on Yugi, we can't stay here all day. We'll never find an exit this way," Tea said, turning towards the hall entrance.
"Yeah, guess you're right. Let's go and see why the guys are so abnormally quiet."
Laughing as they made their way to the hall, the duo fell dead silent. This was not the hall they were in before.
Tea raised an eyebrow. "You guys, where are you? Come out already, we don't need anyone else getting lost!" she shouted. A distant dripping of water was her only reply. "Where are those three jokers?"
"Tea, something isn't right in this tomb," Yugi stated worriedly. Pulling her down to their left, both frantically searched for the missing group.
"Not the hair man!" Tristan complained, smoothing his hair back in place.
Duke tried swiping at it again, but gave up after a while. "Whatever, let's go back and see if the others found anything yet."
Whistling, the two friends strolled over to their supposed destination.
"Uh oh," Duke muttered.
"What do you mean, 'Uh oh', genius?" Tristan asked, shoving past the teen.
"Uh oh...we're lost is what." They had stepped into a completely different room with never ending looking stairs to the top.
"Great going, you got us lost!" exclaimed the raven headed boy.
"I got us lost? You were the one chasing me!" Tristan countered.
"Well, you started it!"
"Oh goody, something different for a change." Kaiba rolled his eyes. Having finished climbing the stairs was a relief, but that didn't change the way he felt about the whole ordeal. Now he was in a room with aisles lined with pillars.
Taking the video camera out, the brunette recorded as much of the room's interior as possible. His brother seemed to be obsessed with all things related to Egypt for the past month, so this would make a nice souvenir for him.
This grated on Kaiba's nerves to no end, but he knew it wasn't his brother's fault. It was theirs.
Hieroglyphic carvings were written up and down the many pillars scattered around. Torches lit up a few parts of the chamber, so he gave the flashlight a momentary rest.
It was times like these that Kaiba was actually grateful that he could read the Ancient Egyptian language.
"Twelve mirrored chamber? Hm, these must be directions through this...tomb." Kaiba scanned through the writing before sighing. "No, of course not. Nothing is ever that simple."
There were no directions for the exit.
Tilting his head sideways, a green glimmer abruptly intrigued his sight. Wondering what on earth it could be, he sauntered over and stood in front of the wall. From the boy's point of view it was, at the most, twenty feet up to the cavern emitting the green glow.
"I wonder how far underground I fell," he muttered.
In the same chamber as Kaiba...
Yami Bakura walked in, calmer than he was a few minutes ago. 'Where is that mirror chamber? What Item has the Ring located? I know it's not the Pharaoh's Puzzle...' the thief silently mused. 'And who is the holder of this Item? Maybe it's the Rod. Yugi and his little friends were saying something about that boy, Kaiba, now having it.'
The Ring was once again pointing to his right.
'Annoying thing, if it is not going to do its job right then why is it doing it at all?'
Not even bothering to take a look at what it was pointing at, he walked on to the next room. Unfortunately, Kaiba had just poked his head out of the hidden cavern to his right at that precise moment.
"Was someone just here...?" he murmured. Shrugging it off, he started climbing back down.
"It's this way!" Duke insisted.
"No, it's that way!" Tristan protested.
"No!"
"Yes!"
"Play you then!"
"Fine!"
"Rock, paper, scissors!" shouted the forever quarreling duo.
"Ha! I win!" Duke shouted triumphantly. Tristan only crossed his arms and mourned his defeat in silence.
Both had been fighting over which staircase they were going to take. Tristan was advising they take the one to their left while Duke wanted to take the one in the opposite direction. The aftermath of their duel was to go to the right.
They ascended at a sluggish pace, still exhausted from the last three staircases they took.
"See, I told you. No more stairs to climb," Duke gloated at his clever, not to mention lucky, guess.
Tristan scoffed, "How do you know if the other way didn't end with the stairs too?" The other shrugged as they stopped at the entrance of a chamber. "Think the others came this way?"
"Don't know, but it's worth a try."
"Ow!" They froze in mid-conversation as someone shouted and landed with a small thud inside the chamber.
There was Kaiba, packing up his gear while holding his leg as if in pain. Duke and Tristan looked at each other, surprised. They hadn't expected to find him here, thinking he was still on the surface and all.
They got ready to call him when, "Hey, Kai-," the last they saw of Seto was of him slipping his backpack on before the chamber entrance in front of them went black and a stone wall appeared, "-ba!"
"Um...what just happened?"
Kaiba turned, thinking he heard his name, yet no one was in the entrance. At the same time the next chamber that awaited him changed as well. "Odd, I could have promised I heard...I'm just hearing things again, that's all." Sighing, he gave one good look around and spotted another floor at the top. "How far down did I fall?"
Moving to the next room, he found pitch black spiraling stairs.
Tea collapsed, sitting against a wall. "Five people are now lost, just great," she growled.
Yugi sat next to her, patting her shoulder. "We'll find them, don't worry," he consoled.
The girl shook her head though, saying, "But we still need to find the exit and our friends are scattered about the tomb which, not to mention, changes rooms constantly! What if we never get out?"
The spiky headed boy looked thoughtful for a minute and after rummaging through his backpack, he found what he needed. "Tea, I have an idea! Look, the compass, we'll use them to direct us around!"
Tea looked skeptical and asked, "But how?"
Yugi merely smiled and let her figure the idea out for herself.
"Um, oh...yeah! If we pinpoint our current location on the compass, we'll always find our way back because the chamber would be right back in the same place after a few minutes! All we need to do is follow the correct direction, right?"
"Exactly," the teen informed. Tea cheered and nearly choked Yugi to death in a tight bear hug. "Tea...I can't...breathe!" She quickly let go, his face was beet red as he collapsed on the floor.
"Sorry!"
Joey in the meantime, was freaking out. Someone or something was following him around the labyrinth like halls.
"Eeehhh! Get away from me!" the blonde screeched. "Ow!" He crashed into a wall, his flashlight had run out of batteries to top it all off. The thing had now touched his arm and one thing he was certain of though, was that the thing was most definitely not human.
"Light!" Joey cried happily and sprinted faster towards the entrance. He hurtled himself inside before the nasty whatever it was could catch him.
The thing seemed to dislike the light for it did not follow any further, but instead stayed in the dark hallway. "Yeah, stay there you coward!"
The thing shuffled its legs around as if in irritation that it could not go get its prey. Joey laughed in glee as he stood, ready to set off in a frenzy, but that was when he saw it.
The hall entrance changed into a different hall.
"Ooookay then," he whistled, "...talk about weird. Well, at least that creepy crawler," as he had named it, "isn't following me anymore, hehe."
"Whoever I come across first shall suffer my wrath!" he heard Yami Bakura's ranting down the next chamber.
"Hey, that sounds like Bakura! No wait." The boy scratched his chin in thought. "Not Bakura, but the other one. Uh oh. Let's see, evil psychopath or creepy crawler? Evil psychopath or creepy crawler?" the frightened boy pondered, now sweating.
"I shall mutilate them and send them to the Shadow Realm!"
Joey sweat-dropped. "Creepy crawlers it is then," he mumbled and ran back down the hall.
Snow lodge...
All students were gathered in the warm lounge, the warm orange fire crackling loudly in the background. After having gotten backthe studentshad quickly hit the warm showers and jumped into warmer clothes.
Everyone but five students were animatedly chatting away without a care in the world now.
"Alright everyone, sit," Ms. Dian's voice ordered. She took a seat in one of the empty sofas, a roll call sheet held in her hands. "Speak up when I call your last name, alright? Andria?"
"Here!"
"Dean?"
"Here!"
"Devlin?" she called,but received no answer.
"Devlin?" she called with exasperation, thinking the boy was probably flirting around with some girl that he couldn't hear her. But when she didn't find him among the mass of children she began to worry. "Mr. Haiahashi, can you check upstairs and see if he's still in his room, please?"
He nodded, leaving the lounge and heading upstairs. Yet returned in a matter of minutes, aworried frown plastered on. "Wheeler, Joseph? Taylor, Tristan? Kaiba, Seto?" she called hopefully.
Of course no one answered, because none of them were there.
The teachers' and students' faces were white as chalk now. Only three girls and two boys raised their hands at that moment. "Yes, what is it?"
"Um...well," Jake began. "Yugi isn't here either."
"Nor Bakura," Jimmy added. At this, the teacher nearly dropped her roll call sheet.
"Neither is Tea, Ms. Dian," Melissa added to the list of bad news.
"S-she told us that she w-would be right back though," Amie sobbed.
"I think she had seen Yugi and the, uh, others..." Lanette stopped as her teacher dropped her sheet.
Ms. Dian being the young teacher she was, had a reputation to maintain. Now she had seven students missing, all whom she had lost track of in one day, which did not bode well for her career. Not to mention that the parents of six students had put their children under her care, which meant she would be facing a lot of suing charges.
Back in a dark hall...
Setowas restinghis leg, letting the aching pain subside into a dull throb.
Then standing up with somedifficulty, hegrudgingly limpedaround a dark corner, only to find himself on the upper part of the room he had previously been in.
The pillars lining the aisles of the bottom part of the room didn't finish goingall the way up to the ceiling, but instead, were crumbled in half, making it simple and easy foranyone to travel across them.
And so Kaiba clumsilyjumped onto the nearest pillar, almost slipping off. He was exhausted all of a sudden, nearly letting his grip slacken. But still, somehow he managed to steady himself and carefully jump onto a monkey bar like part of the ceiling. "Honestly,I feel like a five year old,not to mentiona monkey," he grumbled.
Swinging overto the other side of the room, the boy dropped onto solid ground and continued into the chamber in front of him.
Kaiba didn't evencompliment the interior, just merely gave the place a brief glance.
Gold and blue curtains hung all around the ceiling. Red streamers of cloth hanging halfway to the bottom of the room. Green, mini jungle like palm trees, which took him by surprise,in pots were in each corner of the room.
And in the middle of all the decorations lay a singlestone slab.
Its perfectly smooth surface and evenly shaped rectangle made itseem almost like an altar. For some reason Kaiba felt uneasy in there, even the Rod seemed to agree.
'Leave...leave now...,' a voice whispered.
Taking a step back he turned away, ready to leave in a sprint when he noticed there was no exit anymore. 'Hm, wha-? Where did the exit go? This must be some kind of a joke!' he thought in anger.
Then, with a small chuckle, Kaiba turned around and squared his shoulders. Therewas absolutely nothing there that could hurthim anymore, and with that in mindhe walked towards the altar.
'So why am I so wor-' "Ah!" The ground beneath him gave way to an abyss with big glinting, sharp spikes.
Somebody was holding his hand, for he would have surely fallen to his doom by now. The ends of this person's long hair were tickling Kaiba's face, causing him to shut his eyes. His mind idly processed he twinge of pain he felt as this person's nails dug into his wrist. Thensuddenly he was yankedup.
The brunette dizzily looked over the edge, then over tothis person, only to find mere air.
"Oooh ghosts," Kaiba whispered as a new room suddenly appeared across the room. He sat there glaring for a moment, contemplating a few things over. "Moving chambers, huh?"He perked a brow, letting five minutes pass by to see again the same chamber change into a different one. "So that's the secret."
Cautiously he dragged himself to the entrance, making sure there weren't any other trap floors along the way. Then taking a small peek around the entrance, he saw nothing but an empty dank room. But Kaiba was smarter than that, andbarely put a hand inside before he noted that spike walls on either side began moving in on any intruder.
He put one foot in and to his horror, spike walls on both sides were moving in quickly to trap any intruder. He gagged as the two walls came together, bloody spikes intertwined.
Patiently waiting for another five minutes passed,heset his watch to beep every other five minutes as he snuck a small peek around the entrance, again.
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Copyright (C) 2004 by Rune-Sorceress. All rights reserved.
