Chapter 49: The Fight for Kul Elna

Yuugi rolled dice endlessly. It felt eerie for a shadow game, just sitting at a table in a black abyss, rolling dice and counting numbers. The main assault on the thieves' village included too many non-playable characters to have the normal intricacies of roleplay. Instead, it was a game of dice with the devil. Quite literally. For every roll Yuugi cast, Marik tossed one to defend, and they counted the wins and losses in silence. After three re-rolls of a tie that finally ended in a loss, Yuugi reminded himself to breathe.

The first one to ten wins would take the village, and as the defender, Marik got an automatic plus one added to every roll. He had seven wins. Yuugi had five.

Weak, the shadows whispered. They told him the pharaoh would have won already.

With effort, Yuugi relaxed his hand around the dice. He breathed.

And while he rolled dice in an eerie abyss, he tried not to think what the simple gameplay translated to for Yami.

Warfare made Yami sick to his stomach. He shouldn't have expected anything else, and he hadn't, really. He'd never expected to come face to face with it.

The smell of blood was thick in the air, and the morning sun seemed to highlight every pool of it he tried to ignore. Screams and shouts echoed from both sides, his own and the enemy's.

Enemy? It hardly seemed worth designating anyone as an enemy when the entire sickening scenario had been fabricated by Marik for his own enjoyment. It was pointless violence arranged by a madman.

Through their bond, he could feel Yuugi's concentration, so he held himself back from asking about progress at the table. The results would show themselves soon enough. The benefit of being a playable character, at least, was that Yami was able to skirt the battle, and everyone ignored him. This conflict was for the masses. Yami would have his own part to play whenever Yuugi signaled it.

But as he did his best to ignore the raging battle, he noticed something out of place. Just a flash of white between buildings, a shimmer in the air. There was someone else sneaking around just like him.

Marik had his own playable characters. He was surely up to something.

/I think I see one of Marik's characters,/ he told Yuugi. /I don't want to interrupt your mechanics./

/It's fine,/ said Yuugi in response. /Do whatever you think is best. I'm not exactly winning up here./

Yami dared a glance at the hillside. It was a mess of spears and daggers and bodies. He couldn't tell who was winning, but if there was no clear winner, there was no clear loser, either.

/Hang in there, partner,/ he said.

Yami urged his horse off the path and around the side of a deserted house. He slid off and fastened the reins to a post. The odds it wouldn't get stolen in a thieves' village were slim to none, but he had to take the measures he could. Although the animal was useless for sneaking about the village, it was never wise to carelessly dismiss pieces that might be useful later on.

He slipped around the backs of buildings, following the path of the movement he'd seen earlier. For a moment, he thought he'd waited too long and lost it, but then he heard the faint tumble and thump of something knocked over. He looked up. The houses had flat rooftops. He darted inside the closest house and took the stairs up to the roof.

It wasn't Marik's character. It wasn't a character at all.

"Ryou?" Even as Yami said it, he couldn't believe it.

The albino whirled. He was dressed in the ragged shirt and pants that marked a hundred nameless NPCs in the city below, but he was unmistakable as he clutched his heart.

"Yami! Blimey, you scared me out of half my life. I thought I was about to get stabbed!"

Yami held up his hands to show they were empty, though it seemed a pointless gesture. They weren't on opposite sides.

Were they?

"How are you here?" he asked slowly.

"Well, I—see, that's quite an involved answer, actually." Ryou turned redder with each word. "It started with Anzu. It's not Anzu's fault. It just started because she was worried about Marik. The real Marik, I mean. I used the ring, and I . . . I'm not very practiced with it, you understand. So I just sort of . . . fumbled myself here?"

"Into someone else's shadow game?" Every time Yami thought he understood where he stood, someone pulled the rug.

"Into Marik's shadow game, specifically. And, well, he's not exactly . . . whole. Unlike a regular match, it seems like this one was engineered for multiple souls. Otherwise Marik wouldn't fit because he isn't actually Marik. He isn't anybody, actually. He's multiple somebodies. Or multiple bits of somebodies. Anyway." He nodded as if accepting his own reasoning. "I think that's why the shadows let me in on a technicality."

The ground settled back into place, though it was as strange as ever.

"And," Ryou added, "that's why Nakhti and I split."

Yami stiffened. He remembered the thief character on his side of the field.

"Nakhti?" he repeated.

"Oh, bugger! Forget I told you that, seriously. He will stab me. The spirit of the ring is what I meant. He's here—we just have our own separate bodies. It's nice, to be honest. I'd kind of forgotten what it's like."

Yami was still processing. The more his mind caught up, the sicker he felt.

Finally, he swallowed. "I need to speak with him."

Before Ryou could respond, a young boy's voice spoke first.

"He'd rather cut your tongue out."

Yami turned to see the speaker crouched on the low wall of the roof. There'd been no movement in Yami's peripheral vision. Did the thief character have some kind of cloaking ability?

The thief. The spirit of the ring. Nakhti.

Marik couldn't have predicted Ryou's intrusion on the match. If he'd had a Nakhti character lined up, it wasn't waiting for the rightful owner. It was just an existing role. An existing role in an existing scenario. A child.

99 souls, fresh in harvest, dark in purpose. The creation of the Millennium Items.

Yami felt he already knew the answer when he asked, "Is this how it happened?"

"I owe you nothing, Pharaoh. Answers or otherwise." Nakhti hopped down from the wall, dagger in hand. "You. Cream puff. I found your tombkeeper in distress."

"Marik?" Ryou gave a sigh of obvious relief. "Where is he?"

"And if it wasn't a roll, I would stab you."

"A roll?" Yami frowned. "Why would it be?"

"You're the bloody King of Games. You figure it out."

There was no sense in saying he'd lost the title. Apparently, Nakhti was still a part of Yuugi's team, but Ryou's character wasn't. Was Ryou on Marik's team, or had his intrusion formed a team of his own?

"Ryou," he said. "Can you sit at the game table?"

The poor boy looked around the roof like he might see a table.

"It's a tabletop RPG," Yami clarified. "We're the miniatures on the board."

Below them on the hillside, the battle continued to rage, filling the silence. Yami resisted the urge to look.

"Bloody hell." Ryou gave a weak laugh. "I've never seen a shadow game this complex. 'Course, I've never even played one on my own before."

"Because you're lousy at it," Nakhti said. "If you'd stayed under the sheet acting dead like I told you to, we'd already be ahead."

"Who's 'we'?" Yami raised an eyebrow. "I think you'd sooner kill my team than help me win."

"Not completely clueless, I see."

Ryou had a dawning expression, and when he looked at Yami, his brown eyes were wide and expectant.

"Who's at the table?" he asked. "Is Yuugi . . . is he . . . ?"

Yami smiled. "There's only one person I'd trust in that seat."

Ryou answered with his own smile.

"I'm going without you!" said a cranky Nakhti. He jumped off the roof even as he said it.

"Oops." Ryou shrugged. "Friendship makes him uncomfortable. May I?"

Yami stepped aside to allow him access to the stairs. Without meaning to, he glanced down at the battle. It was no easier to tell which side had the largest body count. After a moment of debate, he closed his eyes and willed himself to the third character under his control—Captain Omari.

The shouting doubled in volume, pressing in from every side. Yami found himself seated atop a horse in the thick of battle, spear in hand. He would have retreated back to the priest character immediately were it not for the group of soldiers to his left. They'd been surrounded by thieves. Two of the soldiers lacked weapons.

Yami set his jaw. He grabbed his horse's reins and wheeled to the left. With a warning shout, he tossed his spear over the thieves' heads to one of his unarmed soldiers. As he did so, he felt a tingle deep in his bones, familiar from when he'd faced an ambush as the priest. He'd thought it was just a sign of the priest's magic, but now he realized—it was a roll.

By the time Yuugi got to six wins, Marik had nine. The dice felt twice as heavy knowing every roll now decided the entire outcome. He held them in a tight fist, paralyzed, willing himself to toss the next throw.

Just as he was about to call out to Yami, one of his player cards illuminated like an activated glowstick. Captain Omari.

I'm an idiot, Yuugi thought. His neck burned.

"I use my character's special ability," he announced. "Captain Omari has a bonus to close combat. I roll with advantage."

He could have been rolling with advantage from the start. It wasn't often he overlooked something like that, but also, Ryou as game master would have pointed it out to him. Yuugi played all of his games with and against friends; Yami was the one who faced the enemies. It was both embarrassing and empowering for Yuugi to realize he wasn't lacking any skills—he was just lacking the confidence and the competitiveness. When he played, he didn't worry about winning. He just wanted everyone to have fun.

But now he needed to win.

Wake up, Yuugi.

He rolled. And he won. Seven to nine.

/Whatever you did,/ he told Yami, /thanks./

Yami's response came readily. /All I did was offload a weapon, but you're welcome./

Yuugi had missed this. His time with Ra had been twice as terrifying because he'd faced it alone, and since solving the puzzle, he hadn't faced anything alone.

For a moment, his mind darkly wondered about the future. He closed the door on those concerns.

/Should I remain as the captain?/ Yami asked.

Yuugi looked at his characters with new eyes. He'd been saving Akhenaden's magic, but what was the point if he lost the village?

/No,/ he said. /Switch back to the priest. I want you to summon his guardian monster./

Nakhti. Nakhti. Nakhti.

It surrounded him everywhere. From Ryou's mouth. From the filthy pharaoh's. From every single memory bleeding onto the landscape around him. Everywhere he looked, he triggered something. That was Hepsut's home. That was where he practiced knife throwing with Menes. That was where he hid from his father when the man told him he was too young to rob a tomb. That was where he met Bo.

When the spirit sat alone in the dark, he revisited his memories. Because of that, he'd thought he remembered everything. He'd thought every edge was already dulled.

He'd overestimated himself.

Just down the hill, his parents were being killed. Half of him wanted to tear the village apart to reach them. Half of him wanted to close his eyes and plug his ears—because every sound of the battle was just one word in his perception, the cry of everyone he'd ever loved and couldn't save. Nakhti. Nakhti. Nakhti.

"Nakhti." Ryou cocked his head like the stupidest of owls. "Are you okay?"

"It's like you don't know what a shadow game is." The spirit glared at him. "Ask me again if I'm 'okay' once the shadows start peeling the flesh from our bones just to hear us scream."

"There's only a punishment if we lose."

"And you expect to win? You'll defeat Yuugi? Cut up your best friend and serve him to the shadows to save your own skin? As if you ever could."

Ryou glanced over his shoulder, even though the pharaoh had never made a move to follow them after the rooftop. He frowned.

"Am I—Is my character on Marik's side?"

Nakhti snorted. "You jumped in here all keen to save him. What do you think?"

Ryou looked at his hands as if they'd suddenly become someone else's.

"You don't think," Nakhti said. "You never do."

He'd meant to lead Ryou into the underground tunnels where Marik was. Somehow, he'd missed the entrance. The sun was scorching on his skin, burning together with the memory of his mother's voice—Nakhti, the sun! Will you never learn?—and the ground was sliding beneath his feet.

He remembered the morning. He remembered the shouts of alarm while the sky was still dark. The way the ground trembled beneath the oncoming wave of horses and soldiers.

It's an attack, Father had said. He said, We'll fend them off.

Nakhti, stay hidden, said Mother. I know you can.

He had no intention to stay hidden. He gripped his pitifully small dagger and smiled like a fool, determined to kill a soldier, to prove himself, to show he was as tough as his father and any other member of Kul Elna.

Until he saw the wave crash down on the cliff, and he saw the bodies roll. Until he realized this was not a skirmish.

It was an extermination.

"Don't touch me," Nakhti hissed, yanking his arm back from Ryou's grip. The ground settled enough to walk, and he doubled back to where he'd meant to go all along.

"He's down there." When Nakhti pointed to the steep, shadowed tunnel, he stared at his hand. A child's hand. Small and powerless. He hadn't saved anyone that day. He'd spent hours hiding, listening to the piercing symphony of death that filled his home. Then he'd spent the next ten years as the lone survivor in the desert, regretting it.

He clenched his fist.

Inside him, a dormant monster stirred.

Yami was accustomed to summoning monsters. It was one of the primary mechanics of Duel Monsters, after all. But even with the realism of Kaiba's holograms, even with the undeniable power conjured by summoning a god card—he could still remember the scorch of Osiris's lightning—it was nothing compared to what the shadows made real in Priest Akhenaden's ability.

The guardian monster was part of Yami's soul, and he felt it as such. The echo of himself outside his body. As it rose from the cracked earth, he felt that part of him had always been missing until this moment. Like he'd been short a lung and it had just returned, and for the first time in his life, he was really breathing.

The monster was sphinxlike, with a human face and the body of a beast. Its blue fur was armored, but instead of a helmet, it wore the striped headdress of a pharaoh. It roared with the fangs and voice of a lion.

And it tore into the battle with all the ferocity of one.

Yuugi felt the turning of the tide. By the shadow's rules, the summoning of his priest's monster amounted to an automatic dice crit. Marik had failed to match it, so that meant two wins for Yuugi.

He was tied with Marik, nine to nine.

One final roll to determine the fate of the thieves' village.

When Yuugi lifted the dice, he glanced at Marik. His opponent had the same lazy smile he'd carried throughout the dice battle, unworried, unhurried. Yuugi had closed the gap between them in an instant, and any player should have been ruffled by losing such a strong lead. Anyone should have been worried when the next set of random numbers decided it all. Yuugi certainly was.

"How are you so calm?" he asked. "You're the one who searched me out. You picked this fight. All of Battle City leading here. Doesn't it matter to you?"

Marik's smile turned to smirk. "Aw, did I hurt wittle Yuugi's feewings?" He straightened in his chair and splayed both hands across the tabletop. "You're right. So I'll tell you." When his single bright eye met Yuugi's again, it was practically dancing, and his voice took on the lilt of a song. "I know something you don't know."

Just as he said it, one of Yuugi's character cards took on a faint glow. He looked down at Nakhti.

"I know who your thief is." All the sickening delight that had been missing from Marik's expression poured in. "I know his ghosts."

Yuugi picked up the card. Nakhti. Abilities: Unknown. Class: Thief. Could give useful information or could give a knife to the back.

As he watched, the text changed.

The Thief King. Abilities: Diabound. Class: Champion of Ra.

Yuugi's eyes widened.

"You and the pharaoh were busy when we drafted characters." Marik clucked his tongue. "But I made some excellent decisions for you. I gave you the strongest character in the game."

The card flickered along the edges, then faded altogether, leaving Yuugi's fingers grasping empty air.

Marik lifted a hand, the card pinched between his first two fingers.

"Of course"—he grinned—"I also knew he'd betray any team with a royal character."

Yuugi looked down at High Priest Akhenaden. Class: Royal Magician.

On the board ahead of him, a new figure overshadowed the village.

/Yami—/ he started.

/I see it,/ said Yami.

Yami remembered standing in the presence of Osiris. The god had emanated light so blinding, he couldn't even be clearly seen. Just an impression of color and the sound of a voice.

From the center of the hill, that same kind of blinding light flooded the thieves' village, and when he squinted, Yami could just make out the massive image of a winged monster in the sky, gold as the sun itself. He thought at first that Marik had somehow summoned Ra, the Great Sun God, but the silhouette was all wrong. This was no phoenix. It was humanoid in shape, with a set of wings at its shoulders and a set above its hips. Below the hips, it had no legs, just a long tail—and as it whipped down to obliterate a house into dust, Yami saw that the tail itself was a cobra.

The rising dust cast enough of a shadow to make out the man on the ground beneath the monster. He wore a red coat. His gold jewelry caught the light. Yami couldn't see his face, but the white hair was familiar enough, and it couldn't be Ryou.

He remembered a conversation with Shadi where the spirit had told him of the past.

The guards said it was a man who called himself a king, that he'd come to declare war against the pharaoh.

I do remember one thing about the monster that attacked the palace.

It was gold.

The spirit of the ring was spiteful to the core. He manipulated Ryou like a tool, without regard for the boy's life or feelings. Without regard, even, for his health. Through Yuugi's eyes, Yami had seen the scars Ryou carried from the ring. At Duelist Kingdom, the spirit had started a shadow game that had nearly killed Yuugi and his friends.

More than that, Yami remembered his confession. I broke into your father's tomb. Then I rode into your throne room on horseback, dragging that corpse by a rope around its neck.

When Yami had first realized Ra was his enemy, he'd felt betrayed. Then fearful. If Ra was the father of the pharaohs and Yami was the first pharaoh in history the god had turned from, he'd seen it as a failing on his part. He'd believed Shadi's words about the Millennium Puzzle, the inverted pyramid, the symbol of darkness, the opposite of Ra. He'd believed whoever he was in the past must have turned his back on Ra, and he mourned the decisions he couldn't remember making.

Of course I lost bits along the way, but I wasn't as torn up about it as he was.

Ra had given that man his blessing. He'd chosen that man as his champion.

Yami was not the betrayer.

Ra was.

"Pharaoh!" Nakhti shouted. He'd climbed a rooftop, and he stood haloed in the light from his god-blessed guardian monster. "You brought war to Kul Elna, and Kul Elna answers!"

From the sky, the cobra struck, clamping its jaws around Yami's monster. The sphinx howled and twisted but could not escape the colossal fangs. Yami sank to his knees as he felt the piercing pain in his own side.

/Use heka!/ came Yuugi's voice.

With a grunt, Yami extended a hand. The dust and debris strewn across the hillside whipped into a tornado, but before it could hit Nakhti, his monster beat its massive wings, disintegrating the attack into nothing.

The cobra struck again. And again. Yami dropped his face to the path and coughed in the dirt. His limbs trembled beneath his own weight.

/Can you escape?/ said Yuugi.

Yami couldn't even walk. The exhilaration he'd first felt when his monster shared his soul now became a cage, trapping him in place beneath his monster's distress. He willed the beast to disappear.

It did. But the pain did not. Even with it gone, Yami failed to stand.

He looked up into the golden eyes of a poised cobra.

"Success," said Marik, his voice echoing in the darkness, that same darkness reflecting in his face around his missing eye.

On the table before him, his dice showed a critical hit.

And Yuugi's had failed to match.

After the Thief King's attack, High Priest Akhenaden was at zero health. His card faded from the table, leaving Yuugi with the captain as his only remaining playable character. For Yuugi to win, he had to complete the Millennium Ritual by sunset, but he'd lost control of the thieves' village, and his only remaining character had no special abilities beyond inspiring his comrades.

He felt the cold press of the shadows against his spine.

And he saw no path forward.

Note: We only have about six chapters left of part two! Then comes the special chapter. If you have any questions for the ask-me-anything/author Q&A section, drop them in a review or a PM. Thanks, everyone!