Where the hell did my summer go? It seems like it just started, and now it's all gone ;-; Thief King Bakura stole it, didn't he, the bastard?! I'LL GET HIM FOR THIS!!
…:::ahem::: Anyway. Enjoy the chapter.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Creation of Destruction
Bakura could remember nothing of being born, but he was sure this was how it must feel. Torn from the very fabric of place and time, pushed and pulled, forced through the darkness and the narrow gate.
He landed on his hands and knees in the night of another world - his own.
Anu was beside him, sitting erect, head high, in the perpetually alert way of the guardian beast. The boy looked at the jackal in surprise, and the jackal looked at the boy in solemnity and vague sorrow. Then Anu turned his head forward again, and Bakura followed the line of his gaze.
Before them, here beyond the village lights of Kuru Eruna, a circle of torches was burning, light in this place where no other light shone. And in this dark clearing lit by fires like fallen stars, human life and human death swarmed.
Priests in their black robes flitted about like carrion birds; soldiers marshaled the perimeter, torchlight glinting off military-issue weapons.
And in the center of the great ring of torches, a massive basin of liquid gold shimmered above a great fire, tall as a full-grown man and a dozen paces wide, with the spider-like shape of a stair and a platform directly above it. Gold, bright as the eye of the sun in the darkness.
Yes, gold. That as much as anything else pointed out the identity of these people to Bakura. Gold was sacred to the Pharaoh's people, a symbol of the Sun God whose children they were, of the day and of the Light. The Kuru Erunans held silver in much the same esteem, the ore of the Moon Goddess, their Mother, being thieves and of the night and Darkness.
And suddenly, Bakura understood. Their plan unfolded before him in the light of the torches.
The Pharaoh's soldiers had driven the people of Kuru Eruna like fish into a net - the net of their bright brethren, soldiers waiting in the night like a pack of wolves, to ensnare the people as they fled beyond the village lights. One by one, Bakura's people were brought to their knees by the ones they hated most. One by one, the nation of Kuru Eruna fell. But they were not prey, no.
They were a sacrifice.
The pool of molten gold shimmered. And suddenly, the richness of the gold seemed tainted with its true intent and purpose.
There was a stirring among those gathered in the circle of light. The soldiers had left, and the priests had formed a ring around the pool of gold.
And up the stairs over that pool, two priests half-carried, half-dragged the first offering.
It was covered in blood, mutilated almost beyond recognition. Its hands had been cut off, its eyes gouged out. But even caked with gore, the man's strong form was unmistakable.
Bakura started forward - he recognized the bloody thing as his uncle. His mother's brother, who had talked with him and made him laugh, and helped raise him from an infant.
The priests and the bloody thing were at the brink of the platform now, on the brink of the shimmering abyss. And the bloody stumps of the man's arms rose up and shook, as if to fend away death - but there was nothing else, for then the priests threw him over the edge, into the boiling gold.
No more than a ripple, and the gold swallowed him up as if he had never been. Bakura choked on his scream.
And he was only the first.
The rest followed, dragged up by the priests. Men, women, and little children - ninety-nine living beings, killed in a single night by this single act.
Bakura knew that they were all alive when they were cast into that vat of boiling gold. And he could only watch, helpless, as his people, his life, all the world he knew…was lost to him forever.
Tears flowed down Bakura's cheeks, mingling with the blood of the God's mark on his face, salting his wounds.
With some sense beyond the five, he seemed to hear their screaming, see their spirits struggling against this force that consumed them. And they would never be free of it.
"Yes, child, you are right. Though it grieves us both, you are right."
Bakura turned his tear-stained face to the God of the Dead, now only a vague suggestion of form and line against the darkness, no more than a ghost here. The dark wells of his eyes were filled with a deep, inhuman sadness as He looked upon this procession of death.
"Have you come for my peoples' souls?" Bakura asked scathingly, tears still streaming down his face.
"No," the Death God said, not looking away from the sacrifice. "That's Anubis's job. Usually I never leave my dark domain, though for you I make an exception. Besides, there are no souls here to take. Look."
Bakura looked.
The presentation of the sacrifice was over. The ring of dark-robed priests was chanting now, calling upon some force that Bakura could not imagine, but that made the blood in his veins tingle and the hairs on his arms stand straight up.
The priests chanted. A wind rose up, and things shifted in the night. Sight blurred. Senses faded. The universe itself was trembling.
Without warning, the chant ended and the dark priests fell to silence. Together, they raised their arms in a unified gesture of summoning. There was a sudden light like a star dying or being born, and Bakura was knocked cleanly off his feet by this explosion of power.
He lifted himself up, opened eyes he hadn't even realized he'd closed…and he saw them before him.
Where the pool of gold had been, there was a stone with the shape of a God carved into it, like a sarcophagus for the immortal - carved with the face of the first Pharaoh, Narmer the King of Kings, from whom a civilization sprung.
And in grooves in this stone, this sarcophagus of a God, there were nestled things the like of which Bakura had never seen.
Seven things, seven Items. Made of gold, the stone of the life-giving sun itself, cast in the shape of the things that the Gods Themselves held in their hands.
The Necklace of Auset was there, the jewel of the Lady; the Rod-knife of Set, that He had used against His brother; the Scales of Ma'at, balances of good and evil; the Ring of Nebt-het, symbol of the cycle of light and darkness; the Ankh of Khons, who fashioned mankind on His potter's wheel and breathed into them life; and finally the Puzzle, the Puzzle that was testament to the Highest Power, the shards of the Divine that form the puzzle of the universe and ourselves.
Fashioned in the shape of the symbols of the Gods, Their power was channeled down into these things. And the ones who wielded them would wield the power of Gods.
Yet there was something more. Beneath the glow of firelight on stone, something older and more terrifying even than the Gods lurked.
These things were newly made, but the powers that lived in them were old before the world was formed. Summoned through death, form given to the formless, a whole new dimension of power to the things that created the Gods before the Gods. Even Bakura dared not speak of these things.
It was for this, for this that his people were slaughtered like sheep upon the altar of the Shadows: To bring down the Gods, and to open the gates of the world to destruction.
"They are all dead," he whispered in a voice full of horror, his eyes wide as the cruelty of reality sunk in. "They have all been killed, and imprisoned in these objects. They were my life, my family and my friends…and now they are all dead."
The blood of the child's wounds and the tears of his grief mingled, and fell like a sacrifice to the earth.
The Death God turned to him, the mourning in His eyes as much for Bakura as it was for his people. "Yes," He said quietly. "Their bodies will never be given proper burial, their minds will never be laid to rest, and their souls will never travel the Star Road of those gone before them into the Tuat.
"They are imprisoned in these things, and they are fully aware of it. Their agony, their rage infuses the ore. Their suffering and sacrifice give it power. Their life, and finally, their death - for there is no power greater than that, the fate of all things.
"Besides, it is what these things were created for. War, magic, death. And above all, power."
"Who would do this?" Bakura hissed, his voice shaking.
The King of the Dead looked back at the idol and the Items. "All this that you see can be traced back to a single man. The soldiers may have done the killing, and the priests the presentation of the sacrifice, but they did it on the explicit orders of one person - the Pharaoh of Khemet."
"Why would he do this?" Bakura cried, the trails of blood and tears on his face. "Why would anyone?"
The Death King turned to him with bleak eyes. "Because he could.
"Bakura, this is why I told you the story of Atlantis. Both so that you might know the legend of your own origin when there is none left to tell it to you…and so that you will realize what men can do when blinded by greed and lust for power.
"The Pharaoh may be the son of Heru, the God upon the earth and the glory of Ra, but the screaming of his victims echoes even in the Halls of Heaven, and their suffering chokes the Angels. He has tampered with powers no one should touch, and through cruelty and deceit opened the world to a horrific force. If you are to take your revenge out on someone, let it be on him."
Even through the tears that filled them, Bakura's eyes blazed. "Tell me what I must do."
The Death God looked with strange sorrow at nothing the boy could see. And He said, "Perhaps…perhaps if you gather all these objects together, and if you return them to dust as from dust they came, scattering them to the winds…perhaps then the souls of your people will be free.
"But I cannot tell you what to do with your life, for I am the Lord of the Dead, ad when next I see you, you will not be alive."
His ghostly eyes met Bakura's dark, wet ones, and He laid a hand on the boy's head, a final blessing of the darkest power.
And then He was gone.
Anu remained. Bakura had almost forgotten about him, silent all this time. The phantom jackal padded closer to him. My master, what will you have be done?
The grief-stricken softness of the boy's features hardened, and his eyes filled with something darker than tears.
Perhaps it would have gone otherwise, had it happened to another. Different people will react in different ways.
Some will fall, some will fight. Some will derive a lifetime of compassion from such a thing, others one of hatred. Some will destroy everything in their paths, and some will destroy themselves. Some will live in that moment forever, and some will banish it from the light of day. Some will beat their souls against the impossible, and some will shrink back. Some will blame the world or society or fate or the Gods, and some will blame themselves.
And one would commit himself utterly - mind, body, and soul - to the freedom of a lost people and the annihilation of those who had destroyed them.
"I will make of myself the instrument of the Gods' revenge, and destroy these blasphemous things," Bakura said. "Scatter them to the wind, and return my people to the earth from which they came.
"For among us, vengeance is not a matter of hot blood - it is a duty. An eye for an eye, a life for a life. There must be a balance. My people must be avenged. And even should I die, I could not rest until their killers are all dead. Besides, I could not endure myself if I let my peoples' murderers run free. Grief and guilt would eat my soul. In this, at least, I can make something of that grief - even if it is utter destruction."
Darkness and rage gathered around Bakura like a shroud. "The Pharaoh destroyed my people. And so I will make a new people, a people of the broken and the lost, whose lives he destroyed as he did mine.
"And we will destroy him."
Anu's eyes widened. My Gods, how can a child think like this?
Bakura looked long and slow at Anu. "I am no child, not any longer. No child should ever have seen what I have seen this night."
What Anu saw in his eyes, the boy never knew and never asked. But Anu shivered and looked away, and did not question him again.
"In any case, I cannot take them now." Bakura gestured to the Items, around which the dark priests gleefully danced. "There are many things to be done. Come, Anu."
Bakura turned his back on this array of death, and began to walk. But he paused for a moment, and whispered on the edge of hearing to the night and the desert wind. "No one will weep for them or for me. It is a cruel fate to be betrayed - and crueler still, to be forgotten.
"But I have wept for them. And I will never weep again as I have for them; I will never love again as I loved them. As they died, so has something died in me tonight."
With that, Bakura walked out of the life he had lived. And he never looked back.
Dawn found a pale-haired, dark-skinned boy wandering alone in the desert. And a pack of thieves found him also, a fresh kill.
There are some who live for death, and death alone. And so it was with these, big, brutal, and war-battered men whose only joy lay in the suffering of others. Long years of death had destroyed whatever humanity was left in them. They had nothing to gain from killing Bakura but the experience of killing - yet that alone was enough.
The one Bakura presumed to be the leader (the biggest, toughest, most brutal of the bunch) drew from his belt a scimitar longer than Bakura's whole body. "Look!" he roared with laughter. "A little kitten wandering in a den of lions!"
The tiny boy looked at the giant men with boredom and slight contempt. "Fools," he muttered under his breath as he turned his back on them.
The leader frowned. He leaped forward, and prodded Bakura in the small of his back with his scimitar. "Fool I might be, but I'll be the death of you! You, and your father, and your mother -"
At the word 'mother,' Bakura whirled to face them, demon fire in his eyes.
Though it was morning, a darkness seemed to descend and grow around the boy - and there seemed to be faces pressing against this darkness, skulls in the desolation. And though it was silent and still, a wind lifted, carrying upon it the sound of a thousand whispering voices.
Bakura extended his left arm to his side, and closed his open hand. An the watching thieves saw that in it was a knife, a strange knife with patterns in its blade like darkness.
"Will you kill me now?" Bakura asked mockingly. "I think not. I think you will not know until it is too late which one of us is the killer, which of us the killed…and which killing."
The bandits milled nervously; the shuffling of feet and the clicking of weapons. There should be a drumming charge and the cries of war. Bakura smirked. It is intoxicating to bring fear into strong men.
But the boy paused for a moment, looking at these ragged killers…and saw in them the key to his destiny.
There are accepted classes in this world; the class of servants, the class of farmers, the class of artisans and masons and scribes, the class of priests, all serving under the great light of the Pharaoh himself.
But there are shadows to this light - the shadow classes of thieves, tomb robbers, brigands, dark magi, prostitutes, assassins; the hunters of the night. The shadow classes that existed outside (yet because of) the light, and sough always to destroy it.
Yet they could win. With the right one to lead them, the shadow people could destroy the classes of the light once and for all.
And who better to lead them than the Prince of Thieves himself? Bakura's smirk grew. After all, his people had been thieves, and thieves were his people still.
"What do you want of us?" the leader of the brigands asked, obviously less sure of himself than he had been before.
Bakura smiled broadly. "I want the loyalty of all of you. You will be my people, and I will be your King. And together we will be the instrument of the Pharaoh's downfall, and we will usher in a new age - one in which all people are free, a utopia. For it is true," Bakura smile filled with darkness; "That the truest utopia is utter chaos."
To be continued…
- 'Narmer' is the name of the king who united the Upper and Lower Kingdoms at around 3100 bc., thus founding Egypt. He was regarded as a mythical figure and something of a God to those who came after him
- The whole scene of the Kuru Erunan sacrifice is shown in the manga, and the Japanese TV show. I probably fucked it up a little…but dat's okay .;;
- I use the ancient Egyptian names of the Gods in this fic (except for Anubis, because His Egyptian name is Anpu, and that just reminded me too much of the guy from the Simpsons). Nebt-het is Nephthys, Isis' sister; Auset is Isis; Heru is Horus, and I think the rest are pretty self-explanatory
- Yes, for all those who've caught it, I did make Bakura left handed. There are a lot of superstitions surrounding left-handed people; They're possessed by the devil, have supernatural powers, etc. And since I'm reading the Da Vinci Code (GO MARY MAGDALENE! W00T!), I also made him left-handed because of his ties to the sacred feminine. His mother, for instance. She's very close to the Gods, and he's very close to her. Bakura is, in essence, a little mama's boy XP
Any other questions, email me or post them in a review. I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
Speaking of reviews…
REVIEW! Or I'll…I'll…I'll make Thief King part of the Pharaoh's harem!
Thief King: . You wouldn't
Oh, you just better damn well hope they review. Or else.