Blood Only Glows in the Dark Chapter 40: 40, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

Yes, yes, you all finally figured out what was going on with Yugi. Hooray for you guys.

Of course, that bit of info will soon be oh-so-very inconsequential...stay tuned and find out how! Oh ho ho ho ho!

Side Note: Has anyone seen GX yet? I have, and I find it quite entertaining in its pathetic-ness. Who else besides me thinks you-know-who in the first episode has finally hit puberty by this point? (It IS him, you know - no puzzle means no pharaoh)

Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh

Claimer: I do own everything I invented, except for the stuff that's borrowed. That belongs to their own inventors (thanks again, Thunderstorm101!)

"So, what were you guys doing fighting all those things in the first place, anyway?" Yugi asked Honda and Ryou.

"Blame that psychopathic jerk, not us," Honda huffed, "First he was all 'Follow me, lowly mortals, I'll see you through alive and mostly uninjured'…then he vanished for a while, came back loaded with treasure or something, and when those things attacked us, left us to fend for ourselves!"

"You sure?" Jou blinked.

"…Bakura said that the rest of the building was going to be too dangerous for, um, us," Ryou said, looking embarrassed.

"Don't try to sugarcoat it, he called us 'whiny little wet-behind-the-ears babies' and said that if we couldn't even kill those clay things - and he called them 'silly little toys' - then it proved we were too weak to hang around with him anyway!"

"What a lousy jerk! No good son of a - I say we go afta him and kick his psychotic ass!" Jou yelled.

"Oh dear," Ryou sighed.

While all of this was going on, Yami examined the exit they were currently standing in front of. The huge room had plenty of archways leading out, but this was the only one that had a staircase leading upwards in it. Unlike the previous sections, this seemed to be a monster-free passageway, and Yami didn't like it one bit. Just thinking about going up there made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end - and he had absolutely no idea why.

Bakurah, with that sixth sense of his - the reason he had always been good at thievery - would have been able to tell exactly what was up there. No wonder he had left his chosen mortal down here, fighting against what must have seemed like relatively weak golems.

"Well, c'mon! What are we waiting for? Lets get going already!" Jou announced, startling Yami from his thoughts as the he started moving towards the steps.

"Are you very sure that we should?" Ryou asked, bringing up the very point Yami himself was about to mention, "I don't know about the rest of you, but something seems terribly wrong about going up those stairs."

"Hey man, don't worry, you can't admit that you're scared, you know," Honda replied.

"I'm not scared," Ryou retorted, "I…just…I just don't think it's a very good idea! That's all!"

"Yeesh," Jou sighed, scratching his head, "I mean, sure, its not dat good of an idea, you know, what with that mega-evil-demon-guy being up there. But dats why we gotta go - how else are we supposed ta kick his nasty demonic butt?"

"I suppose you're right…" Ryou said.

"C'mon, we'll even let Yam' go first," Jou added, apparently on a roll, "He'll know way ahead a time if there's something too dangerous fer us up dere."

And that was how Yami found himself leading the way up the staircase, the four mortals following right behind. It was the position he would have taken anyway, so it wasn't a big deal.

This stairwell was more disturbing than the previous one, but not because it was unusually shaped or of any extended length. The eeriness came from its unexpected normality - aside from how high it went and how wide it was, this staircase was an example of perfectly average human construction. It was even illuminated by regular torches - lit with actual fire - and that was the reason this staircase was uninhabited.

Five long flights up, they reached the top landing. Leading off from the landing were archways that opened off into five separate corridors, all perfectly ordinary and human-looking, all lit with more torches.

This was just wrong.

"Guys, is anyone else starting to get a really bad feeling?" Yugi piped up as they waited, wondering which of the five corridors they were going to head down next.

"Uh…now dat ya mention it…"

Jou and Honda both looked distinctly uncomfortable, and Ryou was especially twitchy. All the while, Yami was reaching out with his senses, trying to figure out exactly what was creating this sense of impending disaster. And why did it seem so eerily familiar?…

Yami couldn't figure it out. Up at this floor, there was so much magic floating around that it was impossible to pinpoint anything. But since there was no point to standing around waiting for danger to find them without warning, they would have to head out and meet that danger head-on.

And by they, Yami really meant himself. The mortals would have to go find a hiding place and stay there until things got safer - no wonder Bakurah had left Ryou downstairs.

When Yami mentioned that this was going to be their next move, there were some complaints from Jou and Honda, but the others reluctantly agreed to wait at the landing while Yami went on ahead.

None of the corridors felt exactly safe, but some felt safer, and Yami chose one of those. No longer having to keep close to any slow-moving mortals, Yami was able to pick up his pace. The sooner he checked things out, the sooner he could get back, after all.

The corridor, like the staircase, was of disturbingly ordinary human construction. No monsters lay in wait in these wooden-paneled passageways - the flickering fires mounted every few meters saw to that. And aside from the oppressive atmosphere, there was nothing to find.

There didn't even seem to be anything remotely dangerous, no matter what twists and turns the corridor made as it intersected other corridors, winding around in this maze-like fashion to no end.

Unless, of course, you ran into a trap someone had set for any passing and unwary mage-demons. It had been hidden in such a way that Yami wouldn't have detected it in a thousand years, though, so it wasn't entirely a careless blunder to set the damn thing off.

One step too many, the walls, ceiling, and floor of the passageway Yami was moving through erupted with light. Yami had just enough time to catch a glimpse of some of the glowing runes carved into the walls - he even thought he recognized a pattern for invoking sleep - before the world went away again.