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/thoughts/

-Remembered sentences from the dream-

Ruin

-If the gods won't punish you, I will!- The echo trailed away as turbulence woke Ryou from his short nap on the plane to Egypt. He hadn't really been able to have one decent night's sleep since the dream three days ago. He never got any more than what he'd already dreamt, even if he knew there must be more. Only snippets, sentences, blood splattering over his face, the sun burning hot and making the edges shimmering and soft at the execution square... Bits and pieces of the same dream, over and over, and it was driving him batty.

Ryou groaned as he rubbed a hand over his tired eyes, really hoping he'd be able to find the village and... whatever was there. /If there is anything there./ The shiver down his spine made him hug himself and clouded blue eyes turned to stare sightlessly out the little window, clouds chasing each other with sunlight gilding the edges.

He wasn't sure why he doubted there'd be anything there, but if this somehow was a suddenly awoken leftover from his other, with no way of making it stop, the rest of however long this would continue didn't look too bright. Or restful. Snorting and mentally chiding himself for being such a pessimist, Ryou grinned as the captain announced they would be starting the landing sequence, and that all passengers should please put on their seatbelts.

Finally!

And even if he was here because of a strange dream, he was happy. He liked Egypt and its bright sunlight and endless dunes of sand, the Nile glittering as if studded with diamonds... Shaking his head, Ryou smiled at the memory of visiting Egypt when he was little with mother and father... Amane-chan hadn't been born yet. That he even remembered anything from that trip was rather amazing, but the inner image of the Nile in the sunlight and the intense blue sky was as clear as if he'd just turned away from the sight and not as if it really was a memory from several years back.

The airport was hot and bustling, people hurrying everywhere and for a moment he was over-whelmed. Not by the heat or the people, but the strange image superimposing itself over his vision, that of a market square in ancient Egypt. Shaking his head, white strands flying, Ryou narrowed his eyes. He was getting tired of this.

"Oi, Ryou! Over here!" Malik didn't wait for the Japanese boy to actually turn around and walk up to him, but dodged between wagons piled with luggage, business men carrying suitcases, and families with howling children to come up beside Ryou.

"Isis and Rishid are waiting outside with the car. That's all you got?" Malik indicated the duffel bag and backpack Ryou was carrying with an elegantly raised eyebrow.

"Hi, Malik-kun. And yes, this is all I got with me. Sure, I'm not too sure how long I'm going to stay, but if I need more I'll just wash them or buy extras." Ryou shrugged laconically and grinned shyly. Throwing a sharp glance at his friend before moving closer to the entrance, Malik shrugged.

"Okay. And, Isis got curious as to why you were coming... and since she doesn't like it when I lie..." they both knew Isis and Rishid was keeping a close eye on Malik, but as of yet, there had been no stirring of the darkness within Malik. A darkness that couldn't really be separated from him by the shadow realm, and thus would always lurk within. "I told her what you told me, sorry. So you're gonna have to tell us all."

Ryou shifted his grip on the duffel bag and frowned briefly, biting his lower lip. Well, not much to do about it, and he could hardly blame Malik for telling his sister. Had he lied or tried to worm out of it, Isis and Rishid would have become worried and suspicious over nothing. Besides, maybe Isis could help. She had after all been the wearer of the Millennium Tauk.

"That's ok, Malik-kun. Wouldn't want your sister or Rishid to worry... or become unnecessarily suspicious." Blue and lavender glanced at each other and then they started to laugh at the shared image of Isis sneaking around trying it find out what was up. Of course, Isis wasn't the kind of woman to sneak around; she would just walk up to them and ask what it was. But the thought was funny nonetheless. But at the same time, Ryou decided he wouldn't tell the two older Egyptians what exactly he was here for. He didn't want them with him when he went to look for the village for some reason. Malik, that was alright, but no one else.

The sunlight was bright, and momentarily blinded them as they exited the airport. They took a few moments to blink away the whiteness and black spots covering their vision.

"Isis-san! Rishid-san. Nice to meet you again." Ryou bowed quickly to Malik's sister and heart-brother, smiling softly.

"Ryou." Isis smiled, her dark-blue eyes glinting mischievously. "Malik tells me you've had some strange dreams and needed to come here to sort it out."

The all piled into the car, Rishid driving, and Ryou nodded as the car took them back towards Cairo.

"Yes. I can explain now, and I think just being here will help. At least I hope so..." Trailing off, Ryou smiled, slightly wearily, as Isis turned around, her face now serious.

"Well, let's hear it then, and when we get back, you go rest before we talk further about it. If you wouldn't prefer to wait with the explanation and rest first?" The concern in Isis voice was warming, since seldom did grown-ups take notice to him, or worry for his well-being.

"No, that's okay, Isis-san. I'll be alright, and I do want to tell it right away... If just to clear my head a little." Ryou leaned forward in his seat, aware of Malik doing to same and grateful for the familiar warmth, but focusing on Isis dark, gentle eyes as he retold his dream, the images playing up in his brain as he painted the picture with words. Words full of pain, blood and building darkness, all stemming from a crime coldly calculated and executed without a care for the people sacrificed.

-Curse you, nisu! Curse you a thousand times over!-

"Umm, sorry Malik-kun, what did you say? I think I spaced out for a moment there..." Ryou smiled apologetically, having been thinking on this night's most recent dream-snippet. He never remembered the many others, but he knew there had been more than one.

"I noticed," Malik's dry voice sent him back from his thoughts once again, "I asked you why you wanted me to show you around, that's not what you came here for, was it?"

"So, now I'm not allowed to play tourist just because I came here because of a disturbing dream?" Ryou mimicked Malik's dry tone from earlier, letting his amusement coat it.

"But, seriously? Because you're not going to show me around... we're going to go look for what I came here to find. Can your bike handle sand?"

Malik looked strangely at Ryou briefly, before smirking proudly.

"Yeah, she can. This baby can take most anything." Malik's brown hand patted his bike's seat, and Ryou grinned.

"Let's go then... I won't be able to give you all the directions right now, because while I'm sure I can find the place, I'm not exactly sure of the directions and landmarks... we're just going to have to go... that way, first." Ryou made a vague gesture, and Malik grimaced, and then grinned evilly.

"Isis is gonna flip if she finds out. Let's go!" Cackling, Malik sat down and gave Ryou the spare helmet he'd bought a while ago then put on his own. So Ryou hadn't told his sister the whole truth, eh? Now Malik was interested.

Hours burned by in the desert, the sun a white-hot coal in the sky, Ryou occasionally leaning forward to scream new directions in Malik's ear, or gesturing which way he should go. Slowly, they neared the mountains, or large hills that had been lurking at the horizon, or at the corner of their eyes, and only because Ryou knew what he was looking for did they find the almost-buried ruins of a village that had witnessed a tragedy and crime, all within the same space of hours.

The roar of the motorcycle silenced to a hum, like a purring cat, before dying away altogether as Malik turned the engine off and left them in glowing silence, the sand like molten gold beneath their feet and the ruins sticking out of the sand and looking like pieces of the mountains that rose up in front of them, silent and the color of bronze and dried blood.

-Father! Father! Horses coming this way!- The echo tingled down Ryou's spine from thousand of years in the past and he hugged himself, once again seeing the blood spattering over golden sand, bodies falling and screams piercing and shattering air that seemed to be made of glass.

"... Ryou? Oi, Ryou!"

Blinking, blue eyes focused back on the frowning lavender in front of him.

"I'm okay. You can stop shaking me now Malik-kun!" Ryou laughed and was relieved to find it wasn't the least strained. Malik scowled at him and released his shoulder.

"You better not do any more of that. It was as if you were seeing something else entirely than what we're looking a-ack!" Malik stumbled, swearing.

"Are you okay, Malik-kun?" Ryou ran up to him, but Malik waved him off, muttering about the idiocy of stumbling on nothing harder than sand. Ryou looked at the ground and crouched down.

"But you did stumble on something firmer than sand, Malik-kun." Ryou worked the fragment free and held it up for Malik to see. A broken-off piece of a thigh bone. Malik stared down at Ryou, his pale skinned and pinking face from the sunlight framed by soft, spiky white locks of hair, a khaki jacket protecting the rest of him from the sunlight, and then he raised his head to look around the ruins, slowly realizing exactly where they were, even though it should be impossible.

"Ryou... this is the village, isn't it..? The village from your dream." The end of the sentence didn't end in a question. Ryou nodded.

"Yes. It is. That's why I'm here. To find whatever's here."

Malik wanted to scream that there was nothing here, convince the somber-eyed boy that this was just a coincidence, that the dream hadn't been anything more than that, that him finding the village a few thousand years after the fact was just a fluke, that it... But he wouldn't. There was so obviously something more to this, to the fact that what had looked like slightly different versions of Bakura and Atemu had appeared in Ryou's dream. At least, Ryou believed there was something more to it, and now Malik was beginning to think so too.

"... Great. Just Ra-bedamned, fucking great." Malik muttered, fisting a hand in his own hair and jerking a little. "Do you know what you're looking for?"

Ryou shook his head slowly, letting his gaze wander around the ruins.

"No... Not really... wait. That one." Ryou's pale hand pointed to a ruin of a building that looked like any other to Malik. It stood close to what seemed to be the edge of the village, on the other end from where they'd wandered in.

"Well, let's check it out then." Malik took Ryou's already raised hand and helped him up, tossing away the piece of bone with a disgusted scowl.

The stairs they'd found in the ruins were hazardous to walk down, since sand covered everything, so they almost-slipped all the way down to what must have been a cellar of some sort. The room wasn't large, but larger than one would have thought. And whatever had been here first had been changed to hold what it did now.

Sand lay in droves near the stairs, covered the floor in a fine coat of sandy-dust and framed the crudely chiseled out dais. A dais that was almost spine-chillingly familiar, if only because it wasn't supposed to be here. Looking up reluctantly, both young men found what they certainly wouldn't have wanted to find; on the other side of the dais the wall was carved into an approximation of a large door, a very familiar one.

Malik and Ryou looked incredulously at each other. This looked like a much cruder and smaller version of the shrine beneath Kuru Eruna, and how was that possible? Ryou frowned as he walked up to the dais and then up on it, Malik silent and shocked at his back. While this was all a surprise, it wasn't really that unexpected. Ryou remembered Bakura's surprise and dark glee when his ka suddenly appeared. Strangely enough, it had been smaller and looked slightly softer than the description he'd gotten from Yuugi… Everyone was clearly surprised and scared as it suddenly formed out of the shadows so he'd have to assume that had never happened before.

So, what did that mean?

Ryou wasn't sure yet, but on the other hand, he was relieved the dream had showed itself to be more than just a severe case of brain ghosts, and had been real. It had felt so real... Stopping at the opposite end of the dais, blue and lavender eyes widened at what they found themselves staring at.

The skeleton stretched over the stone made it hard to see, but it was almost certain. A tablet like the one beneath Kuru Eruna. Ryou stretched out a hand, hesitated, and then, with a grimace of horrified disgust at what he was about to do, dragged the skeleton off the tablet. The robe it had been wearing crumbled into dust and fibers as he moved it down into the stones of the floor. Rubbing his hands quickly on his pants to get rid of the feeling of having touched a skeleton (at least it hadn't been a fresh corpse) in them, Ryou looked up at Malik's hiss, and since he was staring at the now-cleared tablet, Ryou looked there too.

This one was much less detailed than the one beneath Kuru Eruna had been, of course, and, strangely enough, there was only one "socket" in it, right in the middle of the chest. Ryou stepped up to it slowly, as if magnetically attracted. The gold gleamed dully in the light from the torch they had brought with them from the bike, the rope still attached to it spotted and stiff with something else, and Ryou's fingers twitched away from the cord, instinctively knowing it had to be blood, even if there wasn't any logical proof why it should be.

The gold was untarnished, gleaming as clearly as if the pendant had been made yesterday. It was a large circle, reminding Ryou of the Ring, but no pointed bangles hung from the circle, and the only thing within the golden ring was an Eye of Horus... or simply, the Eye, that which decorated every Millennium Item. Ryou inhaled softly, tracing the gold just above it, not really touching.

What was the connection between this strange, smaller replica of the shrine from Kuru Eruna and this single gold item, reminding them so much of the seven Millennium Items?

-Curse you a thousand times over! ... Your soul will feel my vengeance!- The roared words floated inside Ryou's brain suddenly, and Ryou wasn't really sure why. But...

"Ryou... as interesting as this is, don't you think we should call Isis?" Malik thankfully didn't mention Yuugi, but Ryou shook his head determinedly anyway.

"You can go up and wait there if you want to Malik. But this was my dream... I know this is somehow connected to it."

The Egyptian snorted and shook his head, blond strands and the gold that decorated him gleaming in the torchlight.

"Hardly. Go on then."

Ryou knew what he meant, and finally grabbed the golden pendant by the Eye, reluctant to use the cord and lifted the ring-like item up from its slot. The cord crumbled into so much dust as the pendant was moved, so it hadn't matter if he'd used that or not. Ryou clearly felt the shudder in the air, and everything seemed to jerk.

The pendant suddenly glowed brightly, like the Puzzle used to do when switching between Yuugi and Atemu, and shadows twisted into shape before them. The man sitting on the tablet was partly see-through, but the colors were clear as if he was real. Rust-red robe, loin-cloth, dark skin, past the shoulders, white hair strangely jagged, and large blue eyes. The smirk was wide, and so, so familiar.

Malik choked and sputtered.

"Wh... who're..." He trailed off, obviously not wanting, or not being able to state the obvious, even with the differences.

"... Bakura...?" He couldn't help the question, even if he recognized this form from his dream. It was just... his fingers hurt from his white-knuckled grip on the pendant.

Nisu-king in ancient Egyptian

-cackles- Hope you liked it.