Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh, but I still lurve Yuugi. :huggles:
A/N: Sorry this took so long. I was really hurting for plot for this chapter, and then one day I just went, OH! By George, I've got it! Whoever George is... I don't know anyone named George... My sister had a stuffed giraffe named George... And then there's that monkey... Curious George... I never liked him.
OK, I realize that the "Takahashis" had to have bent (coughbrokecough) some rules to make their characters characters, but that doesn't mean that it still doesn't bug me. So there.
Vocabulary:
heka: Egyptian word for magic
majick: the way Tine recognizes heka
magic: the way Damais recognizes heka
diaha: Egyptian word for "duel start"
Ka: astral double; requires a place to dwell
Ba: the soul, or in YGO the HP
akhet: June 21 to Oct. 21, Nile overflows
peret: Oct. 21 to Feb. 21, Nile recedes
shemu: Feb. 21 to June 21, summer/spring (calendars add 5 days to the beginning of the year)
Brier, Bob, and Hoyt Hobbs. Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians. Conneticut: Greenwood P, 1999.
00000
Being sure to stay hidden in the shadows of the early dawn, a dark figure loomed around the corners of the port, where sea bandits presently rampaged. The figure's head throbbed, and he shook it as if to clear it. He would not get distracted. He had a treasure to steal back from these brigands, and he'd be damned before he let a little headache get in the way.
It got so bad after a few minutes that he was driven to his knees by the throbbing in his head, and he was almost sick because of it. The lies swimming around the pirates were too numerous. These were most definately not the pirates that hailed from the lands he had been to. They had to have been Roman, the brutal race that was quickly dominating the surrounding area. He pushed aside his weariness under the weight of the dogs' lies and half-truths, but his vision was bleary, and it made him sloppy. And then the captain drew near... his knees buckled and his stomach lurched up into his throat as if to throw itself at the man.
There was a girl slung over the captain's soldier, rendered completely unconscious. The staggering man was soon thrust into a similar state of blissful unawareness, where the pirates' ill deeds could not reach him. He went limp, and when he next became aware of himself, he was in the ship, cast in among some other prisoners. He managed to suppress the weight - that was the only word for it - and release himself from his bonds. He briefly felt guilty about leaving the other prisoners, but reminded himself of why he was there. He sorely wished that he could space-shift to the captain's quarters, but the fact that the ship was moving disallowed that. He could have ended up in a wall or outside the ship. Or worse, inside another person.
Before he realized this, he had been too arrogant. He strode confidantly -- and arrogantly, when he looked back at it -- down the halls of the ship, and when he heard footsteps, he space-shifted into another room. The ship bobbed in the water and he didn't exactly land on the ground. He fell down, thankfully behind several stacks of wooden boxes. Waiting there on his hands and knees while the Roman sea-bandits searched for the source of the sound made him realize just how lucky he had been. It was also when he realized that he was then hopelessly lost. It felt like countless hours before the Romans left the room and he was able to sidle his way between the crates and the wall. He spent the next three hours trying to find the stairs, and another two looking for the captain's quarters. He knew the treasure would be there.
He got to the quarters, and found the treasure right where he thought it would be -- on the bed. A girl with red-orange hair lay on her back, her knees hanging off the side with one hand on her stomach and another by her shoulder. Her eyes were closed, as if she were asleep. So far, she looked unharmed. He didn't want to think of what would have happened if he'd taken any longer in getting there. He was lucky that day. Incredibly lucky.
"Hey," he said, urgency flooding his voice. "C'mon, wake up." He shook the girl gently, patting her face while he kneeled beside her on the bed. "Open your eyes," he whispered. "We've gotta get back to Egypt. C'mon, wake up."
The girl's eyes opened with a slow flutter, as if she was incredibly tired. "Damais," she croaked, almost like her throat was swollen. He winced at the sound.
A painfuly clear vision struck him then, rendering him immobile.
-0-0-0-
Ankh surged into a sitting position on the ground, close to the fire of the camp and covered with the large leaves of an oasis plant. A boy sat opposite from her across the fire, prodding it. His blue eyes looked like a silver liquid in the firelight.
"Is something wrong?" he asked. His voice was heavy with sleep. He didnt' know about her awareness yet, and she didn't want him to worry.
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I'm fine."
The sun and moon flew by in a blur, and the scene smeared together to reform once again, just on the outside of the city, on the fringes of the desert. Ankh was high in the air, wrapped in some sort of bubble of clear blue that attached to a strange flying contraption that hovered thousands of man-heights off the ground. She pounded her fists against the film of the bubble, trying to break free. It was to no avail. She had to watch Egypt, the only home she'd ever known, burn to the ground in some places and crumble in others. Before her very eyes, Egypt turned into the very sand it was built on, never to be rebuilt.
-0-0-0-
The door opened, and the captain stepped in. Damais had barely realized that Ankh was still vaguely aware of what was happening around him and Tine, and their close proximity heightened that awareness. He barely managed to hide himself and Tine in a shadowy corner of the room, hidden by a large chest of drawers that had worked itself away from the wall with the constant movement of the ship.
Obviously tired, the Roman captain flopped onto the bed, disregarding the lack of the presence of the girl on his bed, and oblivious to one of Damais' feet sticking out from behind the tall chest.
000
Ankh surged into a sitting position on the ground, close to the fire of the camp and covered with the large leaves of an oasis plant. A boy sat opposite from her across the fire, prodding it. His blue eyes looked like a silver liquid in the firelight.
"Is something wrong?" he asked. His voice was heavy with sleep. He didnt' know about her awareness yet, and she didn't want him to worry.
But the vision Damais had just had, and knowing that Tine had seen it just seconds after it happened compelled her to tell him what she saw.
With a shake of her head, she strengthened her resolve. "I'm aware, Gahiji," she said. "I know exactly what's happening as it's happening. I don't even have to be looking. I just know. Like I know that Shu just opened one eye at me and rolled over to go back to sleep just now." She continued to relate her tale of running, and meeting Tine and Damais, and how she had commited a most terrible sin in slapping the pharaoh, and then the vision.
After a while, Gahiji said, "That's crazy." Ankh groaned wearily, rubbing at her eyes. Just when Ankh thought that he was going to continue, he sighed in resignation. "I believe you're telling me the truth, though." She cast him a sharp glance, but he wasn't looking at her. There was something in his tone that made her uneasy and set her on edge, but she wasn't sure if it was a good or bad tone. She cautiously watched his profile in the firelight, watched him frown into the darkness. After a few long moments of silence -- broken only by the quiet popping of the fire -- Gahiji stood and smiled.
Immediately she remembered that. That smile she didn't like to see him wear. It reminded her of a mask, looking perfectly calm and happy and confident, but it was still a mask, forced into that form, that disguise of nonchalance. He wore that same smile after sunrise, after something... something happened, and she couldn't remember it!
"We just have to get you back to the palace, then, won't we?" he said.
Ankh flew to her feet. She was absolutely beside herself. "You'll go with me?" she asked of him. He nodded. "You'll really help me go?" Again he nodded. That mask-smile faded some, turned more real.
Suddenly he was serious again. "We have to leave well before daybreak," he said. "If we don't, Fukanya will never let us go."
A resolute nod was the reply. As Gahiji settled back down for the night (both of them knowing he would wake every few hours and they would not be late) Ankh smoothed out her nest again. She couldn't bring herself to lay down and try to sleep. Instead, she watched the night sky, and the stars drift in the sky goddess's robes. Her stomach churned with urgency, knowing her time was running out.
Something told her it had started running out long ago.
000
Dawn found Ankh evading the palace guard and infiltrating the pharaoh's quarters. When she hadn't found Tine in her room, she became suspicious. Was it another sin to doubt the pharaoh? Probably, but that didn't matter. Things were taking priority in her mind, and while the pharaoh was on the list, he wasn't the most important. She chalked it up as another sin, and promised every god and goddess she could name that she would atone for it later.
The pharaoh tossed in his sleep, his brow creased and sweat beading on his skin. Ankh breifly wondered if he was having a nightmare.
Did gods have nightmares? Did they even dream?
With a cry of alarm, the pharaoh bolted upright in his bed. Ankh stood calmly nearby. She surprised herself at how calm she was. For a girl that had only seen sixteen harvests, she felt like she had somehow taken too much onto herself. A thought struck her. How many harvests had the pharaoh seen? Maybe seventeen, but he was surely born in peret. He couldn't have even been an entire year ahead of her.
The pharaoh panted several times, shaking his head. In carrying out this motion he noticed Ankh. Exclaiming her name in surprise, he stood and walked over to her.
Before he could say anything, Ankh was talking. "Where are Tine and Damais?" she demanded.
Swallowing past the overwhelming feeling of absolute failure, the pharaoh stared hard at the ground to his side. "They left in search of you. Tine left on the same day you did, and Damais the day following."
Suppressing a wild urge to scream, Ankh growled, "I'm going to go find them." With that she started to make her way out.
"W-wait!" the pharaoh shouted.
"What?" she asked, not turning around.
"You can't go!"
"Why not?"
"B-because you... you're the person that I've come to care most about! The one that... I've come closest to falling in love with!"
Ankh turned around to face him with a dubious stare. There were a few moments of silence. "Would you listen to yourself?" she asked incredulously.
The expression the pharaoh wore was as close to a defensive pout as she supposed anyone had ever seen on him. "I had to say something to get you to stay."
It took Ankh a moment to realize what she was thinking was true. "You're lonely," she said, sounding boarderline surprised. She almost laughed. Instead, she setting on grinning. "Relax... I'll save our friends."
000
That night, Ankh and Gahiji bought their way onto a charter ship, the expenses paid for expressly by the pharaoh. In the passenger holds beneath the deck, several suspicious stow-aways waited for the right moment to spring into action.
When the ship finally caught its quarry, the sea was covered with fog so thick as to be suffocating. The captain relied on Ankh's awareness to steer them in the right direction of the pirate ship.
The deck was eerily empty when Ankh and Gahiji swung aboard.
00000
I'M SO FRIKKEN SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG! Oi, I hate life. Not that I'd trade it for anything. Anyway, I think the plot picks up from here, and it'll take a while to get done. Thank god for Thanksgiving break. I'm pretty sure I'll have something up by Christmas break, if not sooner. I'm getting back in the swing of things, and drawing is finally taking it's rightful place -- BEHIND WRITING!