Disclaimers: I don't own anything related to Yu-Gi-Oh! except a deck and some posters. I CLAIM NO MEMBERSHIP TO THIS CRAPPY YGO FANDOM LEAGUE! (grumbles incoherently)

A/N: Sorry; this chapter came out a lot slower than I thought it would.

I'm having my doubts about this being K+ (9+). I mean, I know there's some language used here, the title is a hum-dinger of an example. But just for content, I think. I don't expect the average (note, I said average) 10-year-old to understand that ancient Egyptians weren't modest. I mean, c'mon, they're working in temperatures that can get up to 120-degrees (I think the book said fahrenheit) in summer. Sometimes they worked naked. And dancers (all female) performed either in nothing or barely anything around their hips. Clothes were form-fitting.

On another, note, I am REALLY ticked off at Kazuki Takahashi! Don't get me wrong, I like YGO and everything, but he did a crap-job on researching Egypt, if he really searched anything IN Egypt other than the clothing! And even THAT is screwed up! Even the PRIESTS weren't allowed to speak if the pharaoh didn't grant him permission! I subscribe to Shonen Jump, where they're publishing the Egyptian arc of YGO (which should come to anime soon, I guess). Not only do they use Japanese names ("Seto" is SO NOT an Egyptian name! Egypt DID NOT trade with Japan!) but Seth (Seto's priestly past life) HAS A FRIKKEN' FULL HEAD OF HAIR! Priests did NOT have hair on their heads! And it's the same with Miroku from InuYasha! He has hair! Not supposed to! Okay, I get that Miroku is a special case (he's "cursed" and all... wooo...) but SETH SHOULD BY ALL RIGHTS BE BALD! And Madaho's little apprentice chick? Grrr, I have problems with her. She's supposed to be Egyptian, yet she has BLOND hair. Egyptians had BLACK hair. Robes didn't form cute little mini-skirts, either. I'm not going to point out anything else... (Mana yelled at Saimun! That's a major no-no! You don't yell at anyone of higher rank than you!) AAAAUGH! I'm starting the third chapter now!

Most of the things Damais references in respects to his native land are made up, seeing as how I couldn't find any actual... well, to call them "facts" would be misleading... but in either case I couldn't come up with any cultural stuff for Damais, so I had to invent a few. I just used what I already knew from several cultures, so I hope everyone's okay with it...

Oh! I also realized I should note something! This is NOT set in the YGO Egypt Memory arc! This takes place BEFORE all that! This is ACTUALLY supposed to be ancient Egypt! ... Can this author's not GET any longer!

Heka: Egyptian word for magic

akhet: inundation, the period when the Nile overflowed its banks. Lasted about from June 21 to October 21

peret: emergence, the time when the Nile receded, October 21 to February 21

shemu: summer, February 21 to June 21 (each season consisted of four months of thirty days, plus five days at the beginning of the year, making a 365-day calendar.)

Brier, Bob, and Hoyt Hobbs. Daily Life of the Ancient
Egyptians. Conneticut: Greenwood P, 1999.

00000

Damais was amused at his predicament. He thought it was funny that he had been out-done by a girl of about sixteen years of age. In his culture, she was barely legal for marriage, still considered a child, and yet she outsmarted him. In either case, wether the child had been involved or not, he would have come to the palace anyway. She had just sped along his plans. Tine was still an obstacle, seeing as how he had grown somewhat attached to her, and didn't want her to get hurt. He hadn't intended to accumulate any companions, since they typically only presented complicated rescues for him.

Tine seemed different in this aspect. She was capable of taking care of herself, but she was in a foreign land. She was Gaelic, and in Egypt, a long way from her homeland of Ireland. He didn't ask her intentions at being so far from her home, but then again, she hadn't asked anything of him.

Other than asking for food.

While Damais was tickled pink over the events of the preceeding night, his recent companion was less than pleased. She took it as an insult that she had been caught by a girl two years younger than her. When she was sixteen, she was far better off than this scruffy girl that aided in her capture. She was studying with druids. But then again, the life of a druid hadn't interested her, and she had taken to being a wanderer.

She was even less pleased that she had been overpowered by a priest. Most of them didn't even do any hard labor.

Damais and Tine were led to the throne room, where the Lord of Egypt awaited their arrival. Along the way they were met with the girl that had outsmarted them. Damais gave her a polite and respectful smile, and Tine glared. Their escorts left them to enter the room themselves.

The younger girl kept her head bowed, her hands clenched in front of her. She almost seemed to tremble. Damais walked ahead confidently, a small smile playing across his features. Tine was uncertain as to how she should be behaving. The girl was obviously a native to Egypt, as shown by her dark hair and eyes, as well as her skin. She seemed physically fit. Her clothing told her that much. It was a form-fitting dress, as most Egyptian clothes were. The style looked like what Damais had called a "tunic dress". It was slightly different than the one that Damais had pointed out to her. The girl's dress didn't have any sleeves, and there were high slits on the sides that would presumably allow her to run.

Following the other two, Tine stopped before the two rows of three that were the king's most trusted priests. The girl laid herself down flat on the floor, a custom Tine thought curious. Damais stood tall, one hand on his hip, and met the king eye-for-eye, still with that same smile. Tine bowed at the waist, watching the girl, but not knowing wether to follow Damais' greeting or the girl's. She felt awkward, and she didn't like it.

"Damais," the king greeted her savior. That was all Tine was able to understand, since she didn't speak Egyptian.

Damais smiled as if he and the king were old friends, which was probably true. There seemed to be an ease about her fellow foreigner, as if he had said the things he was saying many times before.

Tine straightened, unsure of herself, and looked at the priests. All six of them seemed to note her strange eyes. She recieved varying degrees of apprehension and caution, but they said nothing. In Damais' presence, they must have decided to overlook her un-Egyptian appearance, since he wasn't Egyptian, either. She suddenly felt foolish for bowing.

"Ankh," the king said. She knew that word. It was the word for the Egyptian sign of eternal life. The king continued, sounding amused.

The girl seemed to be embarrassed by this. She apparently ammended her mistake by bringing her knees beneath her and bowed with her forehead touching the ground. The pharaoh said something more to her, and she stood, adopting her earlier posture with her head bowed and her hands clenched in front of her.

An amused smile tried to pry its way across Tine's face. It took supreme willpower for her to smother it, but even then she had to cover her mouth with both her hands. The priest that held a gold rod did not approve of her behavior, as noted by his tone when he spoke to Damais.

"Tine," Damais said in a stern voice. The girl immediately sobered. Damais was certainly not happy. If Tine thought Ankh's behavior was funny, they were going to have many serious problems as long as she remained oblivious to the intensity of the respect for the Egyptian king. "Think of the king as an Egyptian god."

"Why?" she wondered.

"Because Egyptians see him as such."

A shocked expression spread across the girl's face, and Damais knew the priests and the king would take it that she had realized the extent of her mistake and lack of manners. "Don't look directly at him, don't speak unless given permission, and just hold still. I'll let you know what's gong on." The ice in his eyes conveyed his annoyance at the incident he had had to smooth out.

Tine copied Ankh's posture, her hands clasped in front of her and her head bowed. Her hood hid her face and kept the others - except Damais - from seeing the amused smile on her features. "Egyptians are insane," she muttered, trying not to laugh.

"What did she say?" the king asked, a bemused lilt to his voice.

Damais turned back to face him. "She says she is very sorry for her intrusion, and that she hadn't expected to be in the presence of such greatness like yourself, sir."

The girl muttered something else that Ankh couldn't understand. Damais shot her a look - that she couldn't see - and hissed something to her that she barely heard.

"What now?" Seth demanded.

"My ward says if there is any way she can repay the court, she would be happy to oblige."

"In that case," the king smiled.

Tine decided she didn't really like that smile. The king said something to Ankh, who looked startled and looked frantically to Damais, who was speaking rapidly to the king, who nodded to Ankh, who looked uncertainly at Damais, who argued more to the king, who ignored him and watched Ankh, who resumed her previous position with a quick glance to Tine.

Ankh didn't like doing this. She knew where Tine, the girl with the man named Damais, was standing, though she hadn't looked, but she had to at least glance at her to see the clasps on the cloak. It was a simple cord looped over an elaborately tied knot. Easy enough.

She was confused at the events going on in the courtroom. The priests were watching her intently, Damais was arguing against something the king had said, and Ankh was looking skittish, focusing intently on the ground before her.

Suddenly, the cloak she had been wearing slipped off her shoulders. The clasp had come undone. Her reddish hair was exposed, and Tine was filled with a sudden sense of doom when the king jumped to his feet.

Ankh forced herself to only take ten steps away from where she was standing, and move away from Tine. The king was absolutely livid about her hair color, not that she could blame him. Redheads were badluck, courted disaster, and overall were not good company. The priests were in an uproar, as against the presence of a redheaded person in the presence of the king as the king was. As she was.

"This destruction of Egypt that you speak of, that you saw," the king spoke, reiterating Damais' prophesy, "how can you be sure that this girl is not the harbinger of this chaos? You know what the presence of a person with red hair means, and yet you would deliberately travel with one, and allow her to be brought to the court?"

Damais clenched his teeth, wishing for the millionth time that certain people didn't jump to conclusions on a first glance. It seemed that the only way he could convince the king of his good intentions was...

"I have never been disloyal to you before, sir. I defied my own king to bring you warning of the western attack so that you may deflect it without incident, even though the takeover of Egypt was in the best interest of NeoAtlantis." He sorely wished it hadn't come to this, that he could have bided his time longer so as to save up the mention of his credentials. "I have never brought you ill will, so why would I do so now when I have nothing to benefit from it? There is nothing I can do in this situation that I can get anything from, so why would I wish for the destruction of Egypt?

"I am already banned from the place that was supposed to be my new home, the one that I poured blood, sweat, and tears into creating, yet someone else has taken my throne. There is no greater disgrace that can be done to me. There is no reason for me to betray your trust, so why would I?" Damais ended his passionate speech with a bow of a noble, something that, from the reaction of the priests, was something that was a rare occurrance. The king was shocked into silence.

The king almost growled. Ankh wanted so badly to glance at him, to see his expression. To do so was a crime, though, so she restrained herself. Out of the corner of her eye, though, she did see his fists shaking at his sides.

"Damais." The king seemed to hiss and growl at the same time. "You have proven yourself to me, and this is obviously something you find important." With a resigned sigh that Ankh never thought she would hear from someone of his rank, the king declared that he would make his decree in the following morning, and they were dismissed.

000

Now that she saw her up close, she didn't really look all that harbinger-of-destruction-y. In fact, she looked like a normal girl. Well, with strange hair and eyes of course. Ankh was curious of her and afraid of her and cautious of her all at once, three things that she never thought she would feel all at once.

Damais was a different story. He was a foreigner, for sure, but a foreigner that the king trusted. He looked blind, but he moved with a grace that was contradictory to this.

"What was your name again?" he asked her. Though she had been observing him discreetly, and obviously without his knowledge, she was embarrassed.

"I-I don't really have a name," she admitted. "I'm just called Ankh."

"How old are you, exactly?"

"This is my sixteenth peret but I was born in shemu," she admitted. She resumed her usual mannerisms, deciding that she could take whatever came with the redhead. Damais chuckled to himself.

"I am amazed that you were able to outsmart me," he announced. "I suppose I could have space-shifted, but I didn't want to leave my companion behind."

"You can space-shift?" Amazing. It was a rare talent, and one that she only vaguely remembered stories about. Damais nodded, and winked.

It was the most outrageous thing that she had ever felt. Damais was in one place, then suddenly in a completely different place, on the other side of her and slightly ahead. Her gaze turned to him automatically, having senced where he was. The redhead took it in stride, but obviously did not track him as quickly as Ankh did. Damais suddenly stopped, causing the girls to do likewise. His gaze was fixed on Ankh.

"You were able to tell where I was?" he asked.

"Eh," Ankh made a bashful sound. "I am... aware. I pretty much know what's happening when it's happening."

"Ahh," Damais nodded. "That is why you are the dominant aura right now."

Ankh said something, trying to deny what Damais had just said. Tine was rather annoyed that her savior was conversing with a young slip of a girl that was far less interesting, and far less powerful than her. After all, it wasn't like Ankh was a remembrancer or could get vague messages from animals or control and summon fire. Damais actually didn't know about that one, but it still wasn't like the Egyptian girl could do it, either.

"What is she saying?" Tine asked disinterestedly.

"She's saying how she is madly in love with me and wants me to take her away on my travels," Damias said casually.

"You dirty liar!" the Gaelic girl exclaimed.

She proceeded to shout something else that Ankh didn't understand. Damais knew the words to be Gaelic profanities, and nodded sagely, asking her to please not use that language around him, thank you.

"What?" Ankh asked.

"She is professing her undying love for me at this very moment, and is declaring you her rival in love."

"But I never meant anything like that!" Ankh's frantic, misunderstood glance turned to Tine as she said something more that the foreigner couldn't discern the meeting of.

"She is now declaring her eternal devotion to me and announcing formally how she will fight you to the death if that is what it will take for you to leave me to her."

"Impossible!" Tine bellowed. "You're a lying--"

Damais knew Tine's words to be Gaelic curses, but Ankh, having sensed something, blocked her out for a moment. She frowned, and Damais heard something in his mind. His expression turned carefully blank.

Each word was pronounced carefully, and she talked slowly. "He lies," she said in Greek, the one language Damais had not used recently, and couldn't understand clearly. Tine looked to the Egyptian girl, slightly confused by recognizing the words. "He cannot understand presently. He has told me of your... supposed... love for him, but I am not certain that that is what you truely said."

Tine turned an evil glare to her fellow foreigner. He got the message, waved, and he was gone.

"Space-shifter," Tine huffed. "I hate them."

000

It was complicated, but Ankh managed to explain to Tine that she was aware of everything that was happening around her, and how she could somehow stop her thought process at a point where the words going through her head were in English. She was slow speaking it, and slow listening, but at least she and Tine were able to communicate.

"That is what he did," Ankh concluded, finishing retelling exactly what Damais said to the king after the cloak fell to the ground. The two sat atop the palace, having found a hidden stairway that led to a hidden trap door that led to the roof. The warm wind seemed to blow constantly, though Ankh noted that it had cooled, indicating the peret period. They watched the town from their perch, bending the rules, since they were not really allowed to leave the palace.

The foriegn girl was silent for a moment, the wind blowing at her borrowed cloak that was once again clasped at her throat. It wasn't quite so high as last time, and Ankh could see the bronze braided cord that reached almost completely around her neck, leaving her throat open and ending in twin carvings of a raven's head, both facing each other.

She hadn't taken well that Ankh was - what was the word she used? Telekinetic. Judging from her expression, Ankh had guessed that she didn't think highly of her before.

"He really put his neck out for me," Tine said finally. Ankh nodded after a moment, processing the words in her head.

"From the court's reaction," Ankh began slowly, "Damais' attitude was that since he did not hail from Egypt, he did not have to follow some of our customs. He apparently had never bowed to the lord, his doing so meant much."

It took a moment for Tine to swallow something.

"My life is riding on one man's decision," she announced. It sank in as the words left her mouth, and she was suddenly mortally afraid. She could fight and struggle all she wanted, but she was only eightteen, and if the final word was 'no,' she wouldn't stand a chance against the priests that would carry out the execution.

"I cannot bear to think of how this must be to you," Ankh admitted, dangling her legs off the edge of the roof. "The anxiety would kill me before word ever got to me."

Tine studied the younger girl for a moment. She seemed to have an experience that defied her age, as if she had seen many terrors, and forgotten them, yet kept the experience with her. She didn't seem as bad as she had first believed.

For her part, Ankh had already reached her conclusions about the Gaelic young woman. She was a mystery to her, since she was from someplace so far away from her that she couldn't even comprehend it. Though she and her kind - redheads - were seen as bad luck, she didn't radiate the danger that she thought she would. She seemed calm, collected, disinclined to let things go bad. She liked that about her. She was unwilling to start things, but more than ready to end them.

000

Tine lagged behind Damais and Ankh, who were conversing on the advantages and disadvantages of the girl's awareness. Though hidden by Damais' cloak, Tine's hands shook. She laced her fingers together, pressed them against her stomach. Nothing ebbed the tide of her tremors.

She had been unable to sleep the previous night. Thoughts of the method of death that the priests would excersize ran rampant through her head. She dared not speak of it to Damais, lest he think she doubted his influence. She tormented herself in silence. The anxiety, as Ankh said, was likely to kill her if the priests did not. It was not a thought she was particularly fond of.

So wrapped up in her thoughts, she did not realize that Ankh kept glancing at her.

-0-0-0-

Ankh trembled at the idea of what she was about to do. She stood outside her lord's room, examining the way the door was put into the holes in the ground and in the hole above it. His name was carved into the door, the wood obviously imported, since it was so glossy and red, except for where his name was forever scarred into the wood.

A few moments passed where she gathered her resolve. With a horrendously shaking hand, she knocked gently on the door, careful not to move it. It was silent on the other side until a voice said, "Enter."

Following the command, Ankh pushed the door open, and stared determinedly at the floor, not daring to look around at the room of her lord, the Horus "Eternal Falcon in the Sky." She knew he was just to the right of her, so she turned that way and bowed, getting to her knees and touching her forehead to the ground.

"Please forgive me of my impertinence, my lord, but I could not bear to see the injustice that could befall an innocent woman," she began, her voice trembling. "The foreigner, Tine, bears no one any ill will. I have spoken with her myself, lord, and she means no one any trouble." By this time she was near tears she was so afraid of what could have been done to her. What she was doing was horribly caddish and discourtious. "If you would please listen to one of your own, one of your loyal followers, you would hear a plea in her favor." Her shaking became more pronounced. "Thank you for your time, my lord."

It was silent for a moment, and the king knew she was waiting for permission to stand.

-000-

Everyone needed permission to stand. It was all very taxing on his mind. He envied the normal people that had something to do every day, a reason to use their bodies. If he got bored, the most movement he got was a visit to his harem, or hunted. There was no need behind his actions for another life, another person. After a while he tired of the unvaried life.

"Stand," he said. She did as ordered, keeping her gaze on the ground. "I trust you, Ankh," he announced, sitting on the edge of his bed. He was terribly bored, and he had already reached his decision about the redheaded girl. He decided to break a few traditions. He had already promoted a common girl to a noble's status, so what were a few more status customs? "You may look at me," he said.

Her reaction was infinitely endearing, and he found himself almost laughing. She hesitantly glanced at his feet, then raised her head enough to glimpse his face for a splitsecond before her face darkened in a blush.

"I-if I may leave, m-my lord?" she asked. He granted her leave, and he didn't see her again 'til morning.

-0-0-0-

00000

Oh. My. GOD! This chapter was a lot more tedious to write than I thought it would be. So sorry about that. I thought about putting that last scene in the beginning of the next chapter, where it's the pharaoh's 3rd-person POV, but I decided against it. I figure you guys have waited long enough.

No ransom for the next chapter, seeing as how I haven't been really into the mood of writing the past few days. I don't know when the next chapter will come out, since it's been so difficult writing this when I thought this would be a short, easy chapter. But nooooo, it's the longest chapter I've written to date! Arg.