Once again, I didn't hold you to your requirement of fifteen reviews. Anyway, here's Chapter ten.
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-gi-oh or any of its affiliates. I just own my character Celestia and any others that I come up with.
Angel of Light
Chapter Ten
Kuruelna
The sun was reaching its peak in the sky as a lone figure rode across the desert. Unfortunately, she wasn't going very fast because of her irritable nag of a-
"Stupid horse!" Celestia glared at the quadruped while trying to spur it on.
"Of all the horses in the stable, I had to pick one with a serious need of an attitude adjustment," she muttered furiously. "Listen, I have to get to Kuruelna preferably before sunset; I know you can go faster so I'm telling you, go!" The horse idly flicked its tail at her and continued to trot at its semi-fast pace. Celestia sighed and sat back heavily.
"Having trouble?" The horse stopped suddenly as Mas-Ne-Ra appeared suddenly appeared in front of her. Celestia was hurled right out of the saddle and at the goddess's feet. She helped the girl up and dusted her off.
"You have no idea," she groaned.
"Tough luck, get over it."
"Considering that most of this trouble was caused by this sudden need to go to Kuruelna, I'd think that you'd be a bit more sympathetic," Celestia grumbled.
"So sorry, but now that you're an official priestess, I don't have to coddle you anymore," she smirked. "You won't always have me at your fingertips, you know. Get used to it."
"I'd like to know what the heck I'm doing in the middle of nowhere on no sleep at all!" Celestia yelled.
Unperturbed, the goddess replied, "Kuruelna is a place where you could learn wonderful defense techniques. The general profession demands it."
"And this profession is...?" Celestia probed for an answer.
"And you'll gain some stealth and lock picking skills." Now she knew what they did.
"You're sending me to a village of thieves?!" she stated incredulously.
"Yes. When you want to learn something that I can't teach, you have to go to the professionals," Mas-Ne-Ra defended herself.
"I don't want to learn that!" Celestia shouted angrily. "I'm supposed to be an advocate of good, and I don't think that mingling with people who steal things is going to present a good image!" The deity sighed.
"Look, do you want to be a priestess or not? I could easily strip you of your powers right now and you could return to being a servant or whatever it was you were before I so generously helped you."
"I do want to be a priestess. It's just that this wasn't what I expected! After all, I thought that I'd be in a temple with plenty of other people."
"You want to be stuck in one city for your whole life?" Mas-Ne-Ra asked, disappointed. "Any daughter of mine has to be ready to keep up with me and that means traveling. I don't mean for you to settle down until you're twenty, at least."
"I've wanted to have wild and crazy adventures for as long as I remember!" Celestia cried. "Just as long as they stayed within the law."
"Visiting with thieves doesn't mean that you're breaking the law. It's only when you do something illegal with them that you do."
Celestia sighed and smiled. "Okay. I'm just nervous; please bear with me."
"Kuruelna is in that direction," the goddess pointed. "If you speed up a bit, you should reach it by sunset. At night is when the town really lives."
"My horse won't speed up," she said, glaring at the mentioned animal.
"You just have to know how to talk to it," Mas-Ne-Ra grinned. She stepped in front of it said loudly. "Shadow, you are carrying a goddess's daughter who could easily blast you where you stand. I'd advise you do what she wishes before I in turn grow furious at you." The girl stared at it as it became increasingly docile.
"I can't kill an animal just because it won't go quickly!" she protested
"You can't. But I can." The goddess said, disappearing.
Screams tore the calm atmosphere of Kuruelna as armored soldiers appeared in the village and began methodically murdering the numerous people. Unseen by the killers, a man and a white haired boy crept away from the massacre.
"Father, have they discovered that we are thieves?" the boy whispered.
"If they have, their punishment has changed. Before, if a thief was discovered, he or she would have a stake thrust through their body or be buried alive in the sand," the man whispered as he led his son to a patch of seemingly normal sand. He brushed it away to reveal a trap door and opened it. "Bakura, you must hide! They will not hesitate to kill a child as they do to adults."
"Won't you stay with me?" he asked desperately. "We could escape together and start a new village! We just have to wait until the others come back from Giza and-."
"No. I have to help them. If I die, I know that you're safe, and that's much better than living when you are dead. You are all I have left in this world. Live and be free!" he pushed Bakura down into the room and closed the door. He was weeping tears of sorrow and fear as he left. Then he drew his knives and ran to help his comrades, leaving his son behind.
The man died minutes later and fell to the ground; eyes wide open looking down at the merciless knife that pierced his heart. A soldier retrieved his knife and was joined by another as they looked for survivors.
Bakura crouched silent on the bottom rung of a ladder, listening to them boast.
"I killed five of them already," one bragged.
"I killed four, not including that old guy I just speared around the corner."
The boy's heart skipped a few beats. "Father..." he whispered.
"How much will the Pharaoh pay us?"
"I don't know. These souls are for him to make some magic things. Not like he's going to give us a share."
"The way the Pharaoh's going, it'll be the Prince who'll inherit all this soon."
"I heard that his cousin, some guy named Seth, is going to get one."
"Let's go, there's no one here."
One thought remained in Bakura's mind long after the soldiers left and the killing was done.
The Pharaoh will pay for what he's done this day.
Celestia slowed her horse down as she approached the walls of Kuruelna. Or what was left of them.
"Oh my god," she breathed softly.
The walls of the town were ruined and pieces of it were scattered around. As she stepped into the town, she saw what happened. Celestia covered her mouth to stop herself from screaming. To make noise at this time would be incredibly wrong.
Bodies were scattered carelessly around, blood staining the earth beneath. Charred wrecks of homes teetered on the edge of toppling. But that wasn't the worst part.
"These people have no souls," she realized. "Not even a trace of life!"
She stepped around corpses, her horror mounting steadily as she realized that no one was spared. Even little babies gazed into oblivion with their blank eyes.
I have to find out what happened, she thought.
Celestia braced herself and slipped quietly into the past.
Immediately her ears were filled with clashing and screaming while her eyes saw a thousand horrors. The thing which shocked her most was that Akenadin sat calmly on a horse surveying the destruction around him with no comprehension of his death worthy deed.
"The Pharaoh won't like hearing that his subjects were murdered to provide souls for the Millennium Items," a man by his side murmured.
"Subjects?" he asked. "No, these are thieves who've stolen priceless artifacts and even tomb gold. They deserve to lose their only precious thing, their soul."
Celestia couldn't stand it any more to see her father calmly kill people who had their own dreams and hopes. She prepared to step back to the present when she heard a cry from the bottom of a soul.
My son! Who will care for my son?
Looking around, she saw a man's eyes strain to look around the corner, then failing because his soul flew away towards Memphis, where a Pharaoh would direct it into a golden object.
Gasping with the effort of going into the past, she stood up and looked around for the man. He laid face up on the sand; eyes open still with longing. Celestia walked over and gently closed his eyes. His soul would never be judged by Osiris or devoured by Ammit. Instead, it would lie forever in the metal of a cold, unfeeling object.
"I promise I'll try to find your son," she said softly.
Celestia walked around the corner and saw only the sun setting. Soon it would be night, too dark to search for anyone. She quickly walked forward until she heard wood being struck by her sandaled foot.
At that moment, an arm wrapped roughly around her neck and squeezed hard. Celestia fought for breath but it relentlessly cut off her air supply. It loosened a bit for a moment and she felt a prick on her neck.
"What did you do to the villagers?" a rough voice asked close to her ear. To have someone accuse her of murdering them was the last straw for the girl. She flipped him over her shoulder and gasped for air.
"I didn't do anything to them!" she shouted angrily. "I was going to ask them to teach me stealth and lock picking skills when I found this," her arm gestured angrily at the destroyed village. "I was also going to find you," she realized who her attacker was.
"How do I know that you're not one of the soldiers?" the boy asked skeptically. "You look plenty suspicious to me. You won't even show your face; it's hidden under a veil."
"That's because I'm a priestess!" Celestia replied.
"Priestesses don't wear veils or gold headbands, for that matter!" he argued.
"I'm a priestess of Mas-Ne-Ra, to explain the headband. And I'm her adopted daughter, to explain the veil." She didn't say that she had a deranged would-be killer who wanted her blood.
"So you thought that you'd just take a peek at how thieves lived, then," he sneered. "You thought that you'd feel pity for how we lived and then return to your jeweled palace to mock us with your silly noble friends."
"I'm not noble! I was a servant before I trained and I was found in the desert! You probably had more friends than I did." She glared at the offending boy. "I was going to find you and help you reach another city, but now I see that I found nothing but a spoiled, arrogant brat!" Just like Seth, she thought, walking away. He followed ten minutes later after muttering furiously about stuck up girls who claimed to be daughters of goddesses.
He found her in the middle of the village in a trance while shimmering bodies floated into magically dug graves. The boy stood transfixed by the sight while Celestia concentrated on burying the deceased. She finished ten minutes later in pitch-black night since the sun had set while she was conducting a magical ritual.
A light flared into life near her and made its way towards the girl. A torch illuminated the slightly abashed boy and a load of wood in his arms that he turned into a bonfire. They sat in silence until Celestia broke the silence.
"So...I don't suppose you know exactly what happened, do you?"
"The Pharaoh sent soldiers to steal souls for the making of a magical artifact. It's all his fault and I'm going to kill him and the Prince someday for the massacre," he stated blatantly. Celestia hesitated at telling him about Akenadin; she wanted to settle him herself
"Oh," she said softly.
"I didn't get your name, did I?" he asked her.
"Celestia." She said shortly.
"I'm Bakura."
"That's a bit of a mouthful. Mind if I call you Kage?"
"Doesn't matter. Bakura has too many memories in it."
"Your father's over there," Celestia pointed to an unmarked grave. He walked over to it and stayed there for hours. When he had come back, the girl had fallen asleep.
"I know nothing about you except that you're a priestess and that you have brown eyes. The part about being Mas-Ne-Ra's daughter is something I can't believe." He murmured.
"Why not?" he turned but saw no one. "Of course you can't see me if I don't want you to. Listen up. She is my adopted daughter, and you came close to uttering blasphemy a minute ago. I want you to take the horse tomorrow, but leave the saddlebags. I'll spell the horse to take you quickly to Giza where you can meet up with your friends. I'll make sure you prosper at your business." She didn't say what his business would be.
"But what about Celestia?" he asked.
"You care for her enough to ask how she'll get anywhere?" the goddess shot back.
"She cared enough to come looking for me and to bury all the villagers in graves." Bakura answered.
"Good answer; get ready to travel at dawn."
"Where the heck did Kage and my horse go?" an angry cry resounded throughout the village.
"I told him to take it. This is a good opportunity to practice flying on a winged Shadow Monster." Mas-Ne-Ra said, looking amused.
"You always find an opportunity to practice in the worst situations," Celestia murmured.
"I have a feeling that you'll need it," the goddess replied.
You'll need Kage's help too. Don't worry; you'll be seeing him soon.
Please review.
