I own my deck of dueling cards. Not Yu-Gi-Oh itself.
Foiled Again
I traveled along the walls of the tombs, knowing as if it were my own flesh they were burrowing into where they were. A few dozen, most native Egyptians, but a handful from the North and East, the first people that had found my catacombs in centuries. I'd felt people before, robbers like myself, scholars from distant lands... but they had all stayed tantalizingly just out of my reach. And of course, Maximillian Pegasus, whom Shadi had brought himself. These were well within my influence, so I reached out to start prodding them in my direction.
This was much harder than it should have been. Since the last time I'd found a host, tales of the evil spirit vengefully guarding the mystical items of the kings of old had been blown way out of proportion. At the first touch of my mind, they fled gibbering in panic. Not exactly useful to me, I needed someone who was curious enough to come looking deeper in, to come save me from my own insanity.
There. A mind, old enough to be considred wise by his comerades, young enough at heart to have the curiosity and trust of a boy. It was easy to gently prod him down cooridors, to excite his curiosity. He knew I was down here, or at least knew there was something, and he ran right towards me, rather than away as so many did.
I heard his comerades call out, asking where he was going. He didn't even need my prompting to bring more people down, to quicken his pace. "Solomon, where are you... slow down a moment, would you?"
He called out some vague answer, turning a bend that brought him into my true area. So close, so close...Past the room with the tablets and Shadow Game rules, past the little hidden door leading to the Ishtar home, and just one level to go before my chamber proper...
When he stepped out of the shadows. Not of the direct line of the Ishtar family, charged for so long with guarding the items, but a distant cousin. He was summoned here, by one of the unclaimed items, the Key. And frustratingly enough, once he had his Item, I wasn't powerful enough without a body of my own to influence him to pick me up as well. So Shadi hovered around the temple, sometimes there, sometimes not, and always right where I didn't need him.
Like right now. Solomon Motou ran headlong into him and fell backwards, mere steps from finding the sarcophagus. And then, just to add to my frustration, the puzzle sitting just above me melted away, summoned by Shadi into a box to hold the myriad pieces I knew it broke into. Sure enough, he handed it over to the wide-eyed man who came so close to being my savior. And he left.
One of his companions came barreling around the corner. "Solomon, what in the world are you doing?" he panted.
"I was just talking to..." he began, gesturing, then he noticed that Shadi had melted away again. "That's odd..."
"I think you'd best get back up to the camp, old friend."
I'm ashamed to admit it now, but I threw a bit of a temper tantrum.
I caved in a whole section of the catacombs, trapping the two of them. It would have been useful if, say, the only open way was back towards me. But no, I had to overreact and trap them in a disused corner of the Shadow Games rooms.
They found the inscriptions, of course, as any bored person would do, and being archaeologists, they managed to decipher part of them. Enough, in fact, that they came very close to guessing the nature of the original Games. And of course, they realized the link between Pegasus' cards and the carvings on the wall.
It was entertaining to watch the duel the played, if much less impressive than it would have been in my day. Enlightening, too, for I knew if I ever did manage to get out of here, I would have to learn the rules of today's Games. I watched both their strategies, and picked both brains for bits of rules, although I doubt they noticed anything. In a place like Japan, there is much less regard for the old magics than there was once.
I did reach up above the ground, as difficult as that was, and pulled at one of the other archaeologists once I'd seen the duel completed. I wasn't about to let them die of thirst just because I lost my temper.