I own my deck of dueling cards. Not Yu-Gi-Oh itself.

Foiled

As I listened to the unmistakeable sounds of life invading a place of the dead, as I grew impatient in this tiny, miniscule fraction of my life, my mind drifted back through the ages.

The man who delivered the ultimatum to my clan, the guardian of the Pharaoh's power, I later learned, was named Ishtar. I also saw in his mind that his family had been living down here for five centuries now, put in place after a grand-scale sweep of the Tombs of Egypt. Through the years, they'd been brought up to think that they had no choice but to protect their Pharaoh, that it was their solomn duty, their reason for existence. Pathetic. These fools lived under the sands for their entire lives, serving someone who would probably never return.

Of course, this comes from a man who sealed himself in a Millenium Item to guard against the return of the same someone.

The man was a hero, among his family. There were three children, a grandmother, and his own wife, of course. He was worshipped for fighting down the terrible rebellion and restoring the Ring to the tomb of the Pharaoh. They were so thrilled, in fact, that they decreed that their family would forever be known as Ishtar.

That name, the foolish ingrained duty to protect the Pharaoh, and the purple eyes that cropped up every few generations were passed down, down, down the line until present day.

Once, there was actually a difference in this. One of the children, more sensible than the rest, but still outside my range of manipulation, left. Just up and left, on the eve he was supposed to take the Rod. The family cursed him for it, a really nasty one. "If you leave this building, if you renounce your duty to your Pharaoh, you, and all your descendants to the end of your line, will forever be tortured with visions of what you should have been, and never be able to reclaim your power..." Or something like that. It was two centuries ago, give me a break.

Interestingly enough, apparently one of these descendants got tired of being tortured with visions of what his great-and so on-grandsire should have done. One night, a man walked into the tombs, and knocked upon the Ishtar door. The wife was fast asleep, three months pregnant with her daughter (I checked. I was bored.) but the husband woke immediately.

"I am Shadi," said the intruder, "I am here to pay repentance for the disservice my forefather did to yours."

Now, a record of this little happening had been told to every child in the household, to scare them into obedience. Now, this particular Ishtar happened to be a sympathetic soul. He actually let Shadi pay repentance.

By handing over two Items. Neither of which was mine, by the way. I was just a bit furious. Shadi was given the Key and Scales, and told to watch the flow of magics in the world. I'd felt it too, just the barest stirrings of magic left dormant for millennia.

And what did this Shadi do?

He brought in another person, to donate an Item to.

This didn't work out very well, as he seemed bound and determined to hand out the eye, and it was extremely picky about whose head it sat in. After three dozen, I'd thought he'd give up.

But no... he found an outlander, some rich archaeologist, here looking for a way to restore the dead. Touching.

I reached for him, as he came in, thinking that a man soaked in grief would be all to glad to accept my help. What I didn't expect was for Shadi to have meddled around and given him a ray of hope.

I hate that emotion sometimes. It makes it so hard to take over a mind.

And sure enough, Maximillian Pegasus got the eye. And he saw his beloved Cecelia, immediately, without any training whatsoever. This, of course, put him so high into elation that I would never have been able to touch him in a thousand years. I almost did, when he realized he couldn't touch her, and crashed back down to depression. But then, his busy little mind started working away at some way to use magic to bring her fully back... If only he hadn't been quite so absorbed, he would have heard me offering to help...

Well, I'll just have to get out another way.

Although I did like his idea of gathering all the Items. If I could get them all, their magics are designed to cancel each other out. Once the magic was neutralized, however temporary... well, gold is one of the easiest metals to melt and reform, isn't it? If I can destroy the Items while they're not tied to the Shadow Realm, that will solve my problem of how to prevent the Pharaoh's return nicely.

The real trick, is getting the Puzzle. Naturally, being the Pharaoh's signature item, it can cancel most of the Items on its own. I have to get them all, or at least the other six. If not, that dratted Puzzle will just mess it up.

Author's Note: Wow, a reviewer already. Thanks Savari!