Chapter 47: Managing the Pieces
Yami threw his arms around his friend without a second thought. Yuugi squeezed him back, his giggle tinged with a bit of what sounded like insanity.
Yami pulled back just enough to grab him by the shoulders. "Are you hurt?"
"I've been a"—Yuugi giggled again, shaking his head—"I've been a ghost. I thought I was crazy, and then I thought I was dead, and then I thought I was crazy again, and also I met Ra. Actual Ra. Head god Ra. And then I really was crazy—"
Warmth spread with every word, but Yami calmly repeated, "Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm—well, define hurt. There was this monster centipede. Like, a real one. And it went right through my chest, and there was blood—"
At Yami's wide eyes, Yuugi only rushed to add more madness.
"Not actual blood I don't think. Ghost blood because I was a ghost, and then I healed. But the monsters—it's insane. Domino is overrun. There are monsters everywhere. I saw Haku! Haku is in Seto's mansion, and he does have a for-real live cobra in his jacket, but that's not even the worst part because the worst part is that he made the monsters, and he's a god!"
Yami's expression had morphed to a point he wasn't even sure what he looked like.
For his part, Yuugi gave a shaky smile and said, "Uh, so, are you hurt?"
It took quite a while to sort through the whole story, and it was a grim one. Yuugi didn't need much catching up at least; he knew more of what was going on in the finals than Yami did. Except for the news about Yori.
"I'm glad she's safe," the boy said, then added grimly, "Ra tried to kill her. He told me I got in the way and he killed me instead, but it was all some elaborate setup to get me to realize the puzzle's true powers."
Yami didn't know if she was truly safe. In the back of his mind, he couldn't shake the image of that darkness right on her heels.
"I never imagined Ra would be my enemy." The pit of his stomach turned cold at the thought. With the scarcity of his identity, he should have known better than to count on anything, but he still remembered the thrill the first time he was called "Pharaoh." Pharaoh was an identity, and beyond just being a leader, it meant something; it meant a symbol of hope to the Egyptians, a representation of the very god that gave light to the day.
But he remembered standing in an elevator with Shadi, realizing the significance of the inverted pyramid. His was a symbol of darkness, not light.
"I don't think . . ." Yuugi shook his head. "I don't know if Ra is our enemy. He said he wanted me on his side. And he . . . he's literally chained to his throne." At Yami's look, he added, "I don't know what it means; I just know nothing was what I expected, so I don't want to make assumptions."
The NPC guide returned as he periodically did, giving the reminder, "We await your command to strike," like he was the bird in a clock, squawking to signal the hour. Yami rubbed his eyes.
"Well, none of this matters if we stay trapped in a shadow game," he said at last.
"Right." Yuugi jumped to his feet, abandoning the log they'd both been seated on. "Yori's safe, so do you think we can just leave it? I know we never thought that was an option in the past, but the puzzle's the strongest item. Can't it just, you know, cancel the game?"
"Hmm," said Yami. He rubbed the knuckle of his thumb across his lips, avoiding Yuugi's gaze. His eyes were on the ridge that separated their camp from the thieves' village. In the blurred edge where ridge touched sky, he saw shadows, and he heard the whispers, distant in his mind. Strongest item or not, he knew better than to imagine he had any real control over anything. Even if he did manage to extract himself, the cost would come from somewhere, and there was nothing Yami was willing to risk.
And there was something else.
You'll have to trust me to manage this one myself, she'd said.
Even so.
"We have to win," he said quietly. If he did manage to cancel the game, if he returned to the real world and stepped onto the blimp and saw Yori lying there just as before, with no change—
He couldn't.
You'll have to trust me.
It was the shadows he didn't trust. And the gods. In truth, he trusted nothing but her and Yuugi. Not even himself. And if he left without seeing things through, without trying everything he could, he would never forgive himself for the result.
"But it's . . . it's a hundred people," Yuugi said.
"It's a game," Yami said in return.
He stood and gestured for the NPC guide. In turn, the man gave the signal to the troops, and each soldier rose to begin their preparations.
"Yuugi."
The boy turned from where he'd been staring at the camp in open-mouthed horror. Yami rested a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"You take the position at the game table," he said.
Yuugi licked his lips. He tried to look stern, but his trembling jaw gave him away. "If you feel like we need to see it through, then I should—"
Yami squeezed his shoulder. "The best of us has to manage the pieces. Welcome back, partner."
Yuugi released a breath that was half-sigh, half-laugh. "Shadow games are always the worst. Games should be fun."
It occurred to Yami that Marik was probably having the time of his life, but he refrained from commenting on it. The outline of the puzzle shimmered to life around Yuugi's neck, but before he left, he looked around the camp once more.
"Do you think this really happened?" he asked. "Is this really what made the items?"
"I'd like to know that myself," said Yami, even though he wasn't sure it was the truth.
Then Yuugi vanished. With a slow, deep breath, Yami set aside all the new information, all the questions without answers, and he focused himself on the game at hand.
Ryou groaned. His skull pounded, and he blinked slowly to clear his vision, pushing himself into a sitting position. The hard ground below him was dusty and gritty, clinging to his clothes and his skin.
"I hope you're happy," said a cranky voice above him.
And then Ryou just stared. In the end, he managed, "Well, at least you have your own legs now."
He was pretty certain Nakhti stood before him, since meeting another albino was such a rare thing, but the spirit was not in his usual form. His white hair had been hacked short and stuck out in jagged angles all around his ears. His scowl was familiar, but it was more cutely petulant on the face of an eight-year-old, and that was Ryou's best guess at the age of the boy he faced.
Ryou looked down at his own hands, pressed them to his face. He didn't feel like he'd shrunk down to a child's size, but anything was possible in a shadow game.
"The shadows should have made you a scorpion," Nakhti said. "Then I would have squished you immediately."
"What did they make me?" Ryou scrambled to his feet, craning his neck in a futile attempt to see all of himself, which looked completely ordinary. He looked around for a mirror and saw only close-set stone dwellings on a steep path of stairs. People bustled on every path, dressed in fraying linen clothing, most of them missing teeth or eyes or limbs and none of them seeming too concerned. Even as Ryou watched, one man took a swipe at another with a dagger and both of them just laughed.
Ryou stared.
"As far as I can tell," Nakhti said, "they made you Menes. Which is more than you deserve."
Ryou stumbled back as a woman pushed past him without so much as a word. Something gold flashed on her wrist in the early morning light, and as she continued down the path, every person's gaze turned slowly to follow her. The glint off her bracelet paled next to the glint from blade after revealed blade.
"Miss," Ryou called. Rising panic strained his throat. "Miss, wait. Look out!"
A man dove at her, and she turned on him with her own bared dagger and teeth. The fight grew while a woman loudly complained about the obstruction to her doorway.
Sharp pain lanced Ryou's shinbone, and he let out a little shriek, certain he'd been stabbed by one of the dagger-waving people—only to find that Nakhti had kicked him and somehow had bare feet like daggers.
"Follow me," Nakhti grumbled, still wearing his little eight-year-old scowl.
"But we have to help—"
"She's the one stupid enough to show off her steal like a bloody peacock. She'll lose a hand and probably steal something even better tomorrow."
Ryou blinked. He rubbed his aching shinbone.
Without another word, Nakhti trotted off toward a house and disappeared inside. Ryou scrambled to follow, mostly because he was afraid there would be yet another psycho dagger on the other side, but the interior was cool, dark, and deserted. Nakhti led him up the narrow stone steps in the back wall and onto a flat roof with a linen canopy.
With a little "hup," Nakhti hopped onto the raised edge of the roof and reached up to tug on the canopy. When it didn't give, he stamped his foot. And then—even though what he was wearing amounted to little more than a flour sack—he somehow produced a dagger from nonexistent pockets.
"Does everyone here have five?!" Ryou demanded.
Nakhti hacked at the linen. His only response was to toss the fallen canopy over Ryou's face. Ryou coughed at the disturbed dust and flailed until he managed to free himself from the rough material.
"Any second now"—Nakhti turned his head to the horizon and raised a hand to shade his eyes—"the pharaoh's army is going to crest that ridge."
"W-what?" Ryou coughed.
"Soldiers. Army. They'll outnumber us, and they won't leave any survivors. Except you, because you're going to wrap yourself up in that sheet and pretend you're dead already."
Ryou stared at the sheet. He stared at the horizon.
"Nakhti . . ." His voice came out hoarse, and not just from the dust. "Where are we?"
Nakhti swept an arm, including every house on the hillside in his gesture.
"This is Kul Elna," he said. "And this is what it looked like on the day the pharaoh's army wiped us out."
The streets below had men swinging daggers at each other, but it also had women hanging laundry, kids pushing each other into baskets. There was a hobbling granny leaning on a stone wall for support. There was a dad carrying his son on his shoulders while the toddler babbled.
Ryou swallowed. "Is this your home?"
"This," said Nakhti, "is a shadow game. And it seems the pharaoh's lost his edge. He should have been here with the first streak of dawn."
The day the pharaoh's army wiped us out.
Ryou thought of Nakhti's hatred for the pharaoh; he thought of listening while the spirit bragged about mutilating the body of Yami's father in front of him.
He swallowed again, and he whispered, "Did everyone here die?"
Except Nakhti.
And Ryou knew the pain of being a sole survivor.
Nakhti's eyes remained on the horizon, and when he spoke, Ryou looked up to see the oncoming dust cloud: "Get ready. Here they come."
Yuugi loved tabletop role-playing games; he loved imagining what a specific character would do in a situation, and he loved being forced into corners where he had to get creative with his problem solving. Ever since he'd befriended Ryou, the albino had been their group's game master, and he was the best of the best—somehow he always knew how to orchestrate scenarios that played to everyone's strengths while still challenging them. And he did the best villain voices, everything from a wheezing wizard to a creaking skeleton to a monocle-wearing bat who was, for some reason, Scottish. That one was Joey's favorite. He tried and failed every single time to mimic Ryou's Scottish accent. No one could do accents like Ryou. He could have sounded native Japanese if he wanted; he kept his British accent because it meant something to him.
"Are we going to play a game," Marik drawled, "or are we wool gathering in the dark for the rest of eternity?"
Sitting at a game table with Marik, Yuugi really missed Ryou.
Yuugi took a slow, deliberate breath. The table top spread before him, suspended above the darkness, its surface rising and falling with the recreated landscape of an ancient Egypt. On Marik's side, dozens of homes marked a hillside in jagged formations. On Yuugi's side, he had the army camp. And in front of each of them were the familiar dice and character tokens of Yuugi's favorite tabletop game.
He'd played so many campaigns in the past. He could play this one.
"First," he said, and his voice didn't shake, "I'll use my spy character to evaluate things in the thieves' village."
/Yami?/ It felt strange to be directing the game when that was usually his partner's role. /Switch to the Nakhti character./
But only a moment later, Yami said, /I can't./
"Oh dear." Marik smirked. "Technical difficulties? You were dead for a while. Maybe the rigor mortis kicked in after all."
/Something's blocking me,/ Yami said.
Yuugi frowned. "If you're using an ability, you have to announce it."
Marik scoffed. "Quite the ability, since it isn't my turn. Stop making excuses. If you can't figure out how to move the pieces, get the real player back in the hot seat."
Heat rose in Yuugi's face. He grabbed the Nakhti character and flipped it over. Abilities: Unknown. Class: Thief. Could give useful information, or could give a knife to the back. Not very helpful to begin with—especially because the character was a child—but he'd just hoped not to make an attack on the thieves' village completely blind.
But if he was down a character, at least Marik was, too. Yami had already killed one of his thieves when the character had tried to steal High Priest Akhenaden's horse. Yuugi wished he knew the abilities or traits of the remaining two characters, but all he could see from his side of the table were the two character illustrations—scruffy man number one and scruffy man number two.
There was nothing for it. He had to advance the game, especially because Marik had held the upper hand the entire time Yami was alone. Yuugi couldn't let any more time go to waste.
/Stay as the priest,/ he told Yami.
To Marik, he said, "Akhenaden uses the army to attack the thieves' village."
Marik grinned, his tongue darting across one exposed canine.
"At last," he said, "we can play."
Note: RIP, Takahashi-sensei. Thank you for the incredible world you created and all the friendships and happiness it's brought me through the years (and continues to bring me). Thank you for sharing your sandbox.