"Can you see him yet?" Malik clasped his hands impatiently. Beads of sweat trickled down his bangs, and collected on his purple shirt.
"No… but I think I'm getting closer." Ryou answered. He could feel the ring vibrate in his hands whenever he passed over a certain part of the puzzle, as if it was calling to its master.
"You can do it, Ryou. I know you can."
Isis had since excused herself from the room. The day's events were all too much for her to bear in the presence of her brother and Ryou. Instead, she sat in Ryou's gaming room, twirling the White Wizard Bakura figurine in her fingers.
"Oh, Ra…" she sighed. "I really made a mess of things…"
She sat the figure down neatly on the game board. As it hit the square, the castle diorama fell apart, revealing Zorc's throne room.
"I thought I was helping… I really thought I was helping…" she whispered. A tear silently escaped down her cheek, and into Zorc's castle.
Isis scolded herself briefly, and tried to wipe it away. A little of the paint smudged. Ryou must have put on a fresh coat the day before.
"I thought I could do so much good…" she sighed. "After banishing the evil spirit within my brother, I felt…"
She couldn't quite think of the right words.
"I guess I thought I could save everyone…" she finally spoke, again to no one in particular. "And I thought the purification ritual he found could be the perfect tool to accomplish that goal…"
She picked up the White Wizard again. It smiled back at her with a peaceful grin that so resembled Ryou's.
"I… I never stopped to think…" she continued. "I never thought of what might happen if something went wrong… or if the ritual didn't work… or…"
She sat the figurine down, and picked up one that resembled Yugi.
"For all I know, the ritual might have been created as a tool for destruction, maybe it was made for selfish gain…" Isis sighed. "I just don't know…"
She stared at Yugi's figurine for a few minutes. It looked so innocent, and yet, so pained at the same time.
"I warned Malik so many times about not using the powers of the rod that he was unable to understand. And I simply ignored those lessons." Another tear escaped the prison of her dark eyelids.
She stood up, and started pacing around the room.
"What I did was just as dark as what I was trying to expel…" she sighed. "Which is a worse enemy… Doesn't ignorance beget evil? When one is no longer ignorant… do they not dispel their own evil?"
She thought about the pharaoh's temptations by the Seal of Oricalkos. Through suffering horrible defeat and the loss of his hikari's soul, he was able to conquer the darkness within him, all by himself. He needed no ritual to save him from the darkness within. He was strong enough on his own.
And Malik… It was through the pharaoh's guidance that his dark side disappeared. The ritual may have been a worthless endeavor. If the dark spirit returns, it would be because the feelings of hatred and regret inside her brother's soul were still burning brightly. It was his day-to-day struggle with his past that kept the spirit at bay, not an ancient incantation.
She paused.
"But what of the tomb robber?" she sighed aloud.
She had described him as a being without conscience, a wicked spirit seeking retribution. And all the while, Ryou still thought differently.
"Had I been so quick to judge that I missed something?" she whispered, pacing around the game board that Ryou had constructed. "Could he have been right all along?"
The tomb robber, after all, was only acting on a vengeance that he considered justified. She had read his story from several Egyptian scrolls. His entire village was slaughtered while he was but a child, just to produce the seven millennium items. Surely the pain inside his soul was demanding. Perhaps, over time, it was just too demanding to bear.
"Could I really be as dark as what I tried to destroy?" Isis asked herself. "Could I really be as twisted in my own mind as Dartz? Or as the tomb robber?"
She thought of his body, the strange product of the purification ritual, twisted and contorted on Ryou's couch. His flesh hanging loosely over brittle bones, he was nothing but a hollow shell of a human being. Starved to the brink of death, and brought back only long enough so that he could die a more tragic death a few hours later.
It was enough to wrench her heart out, and cast it into the shadow realm.
"I have done so much wrong…" she finally collapsed to her knees. For the first time, her tears flowed freely. "So much wrong… to so many people… I… have failed as a tomb keeper… I… I let the darkness overcome me…"