Chapter 43: Soul to Spare

After the unexplainable sandstorm, Mai took advantage of the blimp's onboard shower. There were only two stalls, the second occupied by Anzu (with her injured hand sticking out of the curtain to remain dry), so Serenity had to wait for a turn.

"Don't rush," she said anyway. "I think we all need a breather."

Mai wasn't sure there was a breather in the world to recover from witnessing magic, but she smiled to match the girl. And scrubbing the sand from her hair didn't make sense of the world, but at least she didn't have to face nonsense with an itchy scalp. KaibaCorp even had a top-of-the-line hair dryer installed in their bathroom. There were worse things.

While Mai reapplied her makeup, Anzu finished drying and joined her at the mirror. Though they exchanged smiles, they did not exchange words. What was there to say?

Serenity finished quickly and didn't bother to do more than towel her hair before she threw it into a high ponytail. A sports girl for sure.

"You guys didn't have to wait for me," she said.

"What waiting?" Anzu attempted a laugh, though it was clearly strained. "I'm still putting on my eyes."

She offered her makeup bag to Serenity. The girl waved it off, then changed her mind and dug out a pink lip gloss. Mai thought to make a sassy quip about her boyfriend but couldn't piece the words.

"This is quite a tournament," she said at last, and the other girls nodded an understanding that reached beyond speech.

Mai squared her shoulders and shooed them ahead of her into the hallway.

"Come," she said. "To lunch."

The lounge was almost hauntingly empty. At first, it was just the three of them. Tristan and Duke filtered in eventually, but that was all. Anzu kept shooting glances at the door, and Mai could only imagine it was one of several people she wished to see silhouetted in the entrance.

"Two duels to go," Tristan muttered at one point, like a student psyching himself up for the final stretch of torturous exams.

Serenity and Duke huddled together, clearly bumping knees under the table. They spoke in hushed tones of a supported hypothesis, a conversation Mai didn't understand and had no desire to fully eavesdrop on.

Because her thoughts continuously returned to one absent figure.

In the end, she excused herself and carried a wrapped sandwich to room number one.

Déjà vu.

Odion thanked her with the same manners as before, though he also confessed no appetite. He looked healthier at least—more color in his skin. She seated herself at his table.

"There are many things happening," she admitted, "I do not understand."

"I'm not sure I can explain," he said haltingly.

Mai held up a hand. "The explanation is my eyes. That is all I need, to see what I will see and do what I will do." She pinned him with a serious glance. "How fare you, mon cher?"

Odion looked away. After a moment's hesitation, he seated himself at the table beside her.

"My mother . . ." He swallowed, but his voice remained quiet. ". . . abandoned me at birth. It fell to our clan leader to care for me. Although he begrudged the task, his wife was kind. The only mother I knew." In the silence, he drew a breath. "She passed when I was ten. Sometimes I struggle to remember her face."

Mai's heart ached for him.

"Marik is the only family I have," he finished.

"He is not himself," Mai said. It didn't take much observation to determine it; the boy she'd watched interact with Anzu was not the unhinged storm now whirling through the tournament.

Odion dropped his head in his hands, muffling his voice. "It's my fault."

Mai frowned. Gently, she kicked Odion's boot with her own.

When he looked up, she said, "If it is so, will wallowing now fix it? Yes, great stories from history, I remember; those heroes who fixed all that was wrong by wallowing. Marie Curie and Louis Pasteur, wallowing in corners while their chemistry sets alone discovered great things. Oh là là."

Odion blinked. "I don't . . . I don't know those people."

Despite herself, her lips twitched. "In plain words, my friend, lift your head. The duel is not won by passing turns."

Overhead, the announcement came. Not two duels remaining but one. One final championship match.

"I had hoped to fight this battle," she said, her chest pinching at the thought. "I had hoped to make a better life with the prize. But fate has dealt, and I am unlucky. Sometimes it is how the cards fall." She rose elegantly, tossed her blonde curls over her shoulder. "But I will not take my unluck to a darkened corner to hide. Instead, I will cheer my friend to the end. What will you do for your brother?"

As she stepped past him, she squeezed his shoulder.

And when she later stood atop the Duel Tower with her friends, cheering as Joey's match began, she saw the black dome that formed far below on the beach. She thought of brothers, perhaps ghouls in another life but now trying to fight their way to the light.

And she prayed something could be done.

Yami rode with his troops across a harsh yellow desert into a set of rocky hills. When the guide said they were close, Yami called the company to a halt and urged his horse on alone.

"High priest!" his guide called, stricken. "It isn't safe."

"I'm only scouting," Yami assured the man.

"But the thieves—"

Yami continued anyway. The objective of the game had already been made clear—he was to create the seven Millennium Items in order to claim victory. But the way to that victory might be through any number of paths, and while objectives were clear, the board and its rules were still quite obscure.

His horse picked its way carefully over rocks and low, scrubby bushes. He kept its head pointed toward the hilltop. Behind him, the sun sank in the sky, nearing the horizon. That was good for two reasons: to know that in-game days were shorter than days in reality and to hopefully avoid detection. With luck, anyone looking his direction would be blinded by the setting sun.

Just before reaching the crest, he dismounted.

"Stay," he told his horse, unsure how effective that would be. It wasn't a dog, but he wasn't a horseman except in roleplay, so he could only hope for the best.

He crept to the ridge and peered over.

Smoke gave the thieves' village away. It sat at the other end of a shallow valley, nestled into the next line of hills. The squat, flat-roofed houses rose in a jagged march up the hillside, lined with unpaved paths, and as the light of the sun continued to dim, more torches and campfires glowed to life within its borders. Blurs of movement crossed up and down the paths, but in the dim light and distance, it was impossible to discern any one individual.

Yami frowned. Where are you, Marik?

He had never fought a game with such a vague opponent. And it seemed out of character for one as openly antagonistic as Marik, who loved to preen before an audience.

There was something he was missing. Something crucial.

Yami backed away from the hilltop. He searched for pockets in his robe but found none. No matter how he waved or gestured in the air, he couldn't open a character sheet or find any statistics or abilities. Even his horse was useless; the saddle was bare leather, padding for a rider but no compartments for storage. How was he meant to know what was possible within this game if it was all a matter of guesswork?

There was a trick at work. Something of Marik's design.

He thought of Ryou leading the others in a game of Monster World. As game master, he always set the stage, communicated with the players. And the players weren't equal to the pieces on the board but much more like a puppet master behind the scenes, rolling dice and creating strategies.

It was wrong. Yami was in the wrong spot. If this was a tabletop RPG, it was as if he were a miniature on the board instead of an actual player in the game.

The outline of the puzzle glowed to life against his chest. Yami closed his eyes to concentrate.

And when he opened them—

—he sat at one end of a long table.

The table existed alone in an abyss of black. Its surface was dotted with rocky hills and golden desert. Marik smirked from his seat at its opposite end. Where his right eye had been was only an empty black socket, and his edges seemed to fade into the shadows behind him.

"Pharaoh! You came to play after all."

"You've been cheating," Yami ground out from between clenched teeth.

"No such thing," Marik said sharply. "This shadow game has many roles; I can't help it if you only have a single soul to fill them with."

Yami glanced quickly at the space before him, the wooden edge of the table. He had three character tokens, the first of which was marked High Priest Akhenaden and held an image of a white-robed, blue-eyed man. When he flipped it, the back had a green bar marked heka and an illustration of a blue, four-legged monster with claws and gaping fangs. It was marked ka. There were a few lines of text beneath each, probably a backstory or abilities, but as Yami tried to read, his vision blurred. The skin along his arms prickled as if feeling a chill.

"You shouldn't abandon your best character." Marik cackled. "Who knows what might creep up on him in the dark."

With a growl, Yami closed his eyes to return to the game.

The scream of his horse reached him first. He opened his eyes to flailing hooves above him and managed to roll away just in time. A thief dragged at the horse's reins while another flashed a knife. Yami rose to a crouch, trying to keep both thieves in sight at once—no, all three thieves. One stood back from the others, holding a torch.

No weapon. What was heka? An ability?

"Use heka," he said. Nothing happened, no matter how he gestured.

The thief with the knife cackled at him in Marik's voice.

"Payment for your horse, priest!" The thief took a swipe at him, catching the edge of his sleeve as Yami tried to dodge. Red blood seeped through the tear in the fabric.

Yami's character wasn't agile. Good to know. Not helpful.

Heka was probably a special ability. No doubt he had to roll for it.

Yami gritted his teeth and closed his eyes once more.

He was at the table. And there were the dice, one red, one white.

"You can't possibly manage it all at once," Marik said, grinning. "But I do love to see you try. Mighty, mighty pharaoh. You decided the fate of every person in the country. This is what you wanted—to run them all at once!"

Yami snatched up the twin d10s. "Heka attack roll."

"You're injured," Marik said. "That makes it a roll under 40 for success."

Before he even finished, Yami pitched the dice onto the tabletop. The tens landed on 00 and the ones on 3. He didn't stay to hear Marik's quip about his success.

Instead, he sank back into the game, and this time, he felt the power coursing in his bones. He tasted the sparks. Heka was magic—good to know. When Yami raised a hand, the thieves' torch erupted into a pillar of fire. All three of his opponents shrieked. The man holding the torch dropped it, slapping at the flames devouring his clothing. The horse reared, catching the knife thief with a flailing hoof, collapsing the man. Yami snatched up the knife just as the final thief rushed at him.

It might have been said the man impaled himself, but the knife was in Yami's hand, and it was his stomach that flipped, his mouth that went dry.

The first thief remained on the ground, his skull seeping blood from the horse's kick. His two companions were silent along with him. The fire died down to quiet torchlight, and Yami's breath was the only heaving sound in the silence.

It was only a game. Strategically, killing the three opponents was best—that way, they couldn't alert the village. None of the thieves were even real. Neither was killing them.

But it didn't feel that way.

As the horse danced by, Yami caught its reins. He focused on murmuring quietly to the beast, on the feel of its coarse mane under his fingers as he stroked its neck.

He tried not to think about the smell of burnt flesh.

After he'd gathered himself, he picked up the thieves' torch and mounted his horse. Slowly, he rode back to the army camp.

Somehow, Marik was able to be at the table and in the game simultaneously. Yami had only managed a similar trick once—during the duel with Pegasus. In order to avoid the man's mind-reading, he and Yuugi had switched minds at random moments, both of them dueling at once even though it came with the danger that neither of them knew every card on the field.

If Yuugi were here, he could be in the player's seat while Yami managed characters in the game. Or vice versa.

But he wasn't.

Three character tiles. Yami hadn't even had a chance to see the other two. Thinking back, there may have been some golden tokens in front of him as well, but what they stood for, he couldn't guess. Marik had every advantage in this game, to the point it was laughable. Any time Yami tried to sit in the player's seat, the fiend would take the opportunity to attack in-game, and while Yami was in the game, Marik had endless opportunity to strategize and plan ahead as a player.

But Yami couldn't afford to lose, so if it was the price required, he would play the balancing act until it split his soul in half.

He saw the camp ahead. Within its boundaries, he would be much safer.

So first things first: He would return to the table long enough to learn his three characters. If Marik had more soul to spare, Yami would be quicker with every piece of his.

He had to be.

Like a fading whisper behind him, he thought he heard Yori's voice say: Learn fast or die.

But when he turned, there was nothing there but empty night.

Anzu was too late. She should have skipped her shower, skipped lunch—everything had escalated into an avalanche before she was ready.

And now Yami was in a shadow game with Marik, and she hadn't been able to speak to him at all.

She stood before the black dome, the sand sucking at her feet, something else pulling her heart. In Duelist Kingdom, she'd stood outside Yuugi's fight with Pegasus. Helpless. She'd already seen Yori face Marik just the same way. Mokuba had been her one hope, but he never left his brother's side; she'd been a fool to ever think he would. And his brother was self-absorbed. And busy.

She glanced up at the Duel Tower in the center of the island. She saw the blurry figure of towering holograms, but nothing detailed. Joey had friends and family pulling for him.

Marik had no one.

If Anzu could do nothing else, she could stand by and hope, as useless as any bystander pacing in a hospital—and yet miracles happened in hospitals. Yuugi and Joey believed in "the heart of the cards," a mystical force in dueling that led to drawing the right card exactly when needed. If there could be a mystical force to win a stupid card game, there had to be something to win back a soul. Something.

So Anzu planted her feet, and she glared into the sky, into the heart of the universe itself and told it in no uncertain terms that she would never abandon a single one of her friends, that Yami and Marik had both better come out of that duel unscratched, no exceptions.

And then she started when someone spoke behind her.

"Anzu?"

She whirled to find Ryou.

"Meant to support Joey," he said, "but I was dragging my feet a bit, and . . ."

He looked past her, to the dome.

She looked at the Millennium Ring around his neck.

Ryou's item wasn't like Yuugi's or Yori's. It was far from harmless.

But what was the point of begging the universe if she didn't also use all her options?

Anzu pointed at the dome. "Can you reach through that? Can you talk to him?"

Ryou blinked. "To Yami?" He rubbed the back of his neck. "Yori probably could, but mine's . . . different."

"What if I took her bracelet?"

Ryou's eyes rounded. "It doesn't work like that. Even unconscious, if you tried to pull it off, she'd probably fry you without realizing. And anyway, not just anyone can use it, you know."

Anzu curled her fist. She looked back at the dome, a slice of night beneath the burning sun.

"Can I try yours?" she asked, hating the crack in her voice.

Ryou crossed a hand over his chest. "This one does more than fry people, even people it . . . likes. Anzu, what's happening?"

She sighed. "I want to save Marik. The real Marik." She raised her chin stubbornly. "I know he's done some terrible things, but that isn't who he is. He deserves help. He needs it."

Since Ryou didn't rush to contradict her like everyone else, she spilled the whole story from the beginning. The things she'd seen in Marik's mind, the way he'd reached out, the way he'd apologized.

"He's just lost," she whispered at last.

Ryou swallowed. He looked up at the dome. His fingers curled around the ring.

"There's a lot my item won't do." He set his jaw. "But it can always find what's lost."

Anzu threw her arms around him. He patted her back.

"I know how it feels," he murmured.

When he stepped away, his ring was already glowing. The pointers trembled. Specks of red touched his brown irises.

"Be careful." Anzu bit her lip.

He gave a faint smile and closed his eyes, raising his hands to circle the ring. The pointers danced against his chest, bumping into each other with the tinkling of icicles.

The middle spike split from the rest, rising to point at the dome. Anzu held her breath.

—And Ryou collapsed.

Note: Hey guys. It has been a long while, and I apologize. Life update: I'm pregnant. So that has been a big adjustment for me to make in all areas of life, haha. I'm going to just write at the pace I can and thank my wonderful readers for all of your patience to this point and moving forward. I'll be sure to announce when baby boy comes; my husband and I are very excited!

Hope you enjoyed the chapter. ^^