Book I | A Change of Plan

Memory Arc

Part IV

High Priest Seto: 20 years old

Kisara: 18 years old

…

"That is enough from the two of you! Stop." Seto snarled as one of the monsters above him took no heed, but reared its ugly head afresh. "Call off your beasts." His order boomed into the upper levels of the arena to the two prisoners who had survived the thirty-four hour trial by fire. With the Lady of the White Dragon… with Kisara safely behind him, he would have an end to this. Now.

Her name rang strange and familiar through his mind, as though he was sure he had heard it before, while at the same time, he reveled in knowing it at last.

"Seto!" He could hear Lord Akhenaden's panicked voice behind him, interlaced with the whimper of 'Lord Seto!' from Gebelk. For the little man the evening had gone from an excellent opportunity to showcase his work, to a disaster where first the Lady of the White Dragon was put at risk, only to be swiftly followed by the endangerment of the young High Priest himself. His carefully controlled experiments had been thrown out of balance by this pale anomaly.

From levels above him in the underground, rather than the voices of surrender and deference that Seto would have preferred, came the rattling laughter of men so broken that they no longer feared the threats of the Palace. When men had gazed down the throats of Shadow Monsters and into the maws of Ammit itself there was only so much that they would heed in the aftermath. The derision reverberated down the chains to Seto and the girl. "So, a Priest has joined us, eh?" one of the men rasped. "You have a lot of nerve, showing your face here," he leered, swinging back and forth on his chain on one arm. The other, Seto could just make out, was a matted mess of splintering bone puncturing through the skin.

"Now we can pay you back for everything we've gone through. You're the reason we were forced to live in this dungeon in the first place!" the other snarled, the leakage on his stomach beginning to clot now, though the smell oozed through the entire chamber. "Now it's time to return the favor." He turned to his companion. "That woman can't control her ka. If it's two verses one, we have a chance!" His voice was a cocktail of malice and desperate hope. He directed his attention back down to Seto and the girl he was shielding. "Let us show this Sacred Guardian how things are done below the Palace."

Seto gripped into his Millennium Rod, palm sweating. Gelbek had trained these men with quite the palate for bloodthirst.

Akhenaden cried out to him from the safety of the throned platform. "Seto, for the last time, don't do this!" He wanted Seto to retreat to safety. To abandon the girl. As if he ever could.

"Quiet old man!" one of the inmates barked, heady on the power he had accumulated. "The Pharaoh's servant wants to be a hero, so who are we to stand in his way!" Then, booming down to the young High Priest, the convict sneered, "Go ahead, Seto! Save her!"

As if you ever could.

The words that were never spoken sent a mad rage pulsing through the blood in Seto's ears, thumping against his brain like a war drum. He called on Duos to attack. However, it was not the fleshy monstrosities that he had his ka slice through. I was planning to let these scum live, but there's no choice. Neither Gelbrek nor Lord Akhenaden would appreciate that so much effort would have been made in vain, but Seto was past caring. He was going to eliminate the very ground these bastards stood on, on which they'd had so many victories, and which now made them feel that they could challenge a High Priest. "Aura Sword!" Seto's ka attacked the arena. With a screech and a clang Duos's sword sawed through the massive chains that upheld the platform hanging over the abyss. For an instant Seto watched with pleasure, a smile curling his mouth, as the men cried out, stumbled, one desperately grasping at a chain only for it to whip out of his hand as the links snapped, and finally for him to plummet into the darkness below and to his destruction.

However, an instant was all that it lasted. Duos would catch Seto and the girl, Kisara, and take them to safety. Duos would save them. Duos did not come. Instead, the iron platform of spikes gave out beneath Seto and the girl, and to the sickening, squelching sound of broken bodies slipping from the pikes, they fell. It was all drowned out by Kisara's scream.

Seto snatched hold of a dangling chain. With his other hand he grabbed Kisara's narrow wrist, just as he had grabbed it all those years before when he'd hauled her from the slavers' caravan.

"I'm slipping!" she cried out. It was true. His hand, damp with the dungeon air, could not hold her.

"Hang on as best you can," he growled through his clenched teeth, his muscles bulging with the effort of holding them both up. He wove his fingers through the links of the chain, determined that they would break before he let her fall. But what had become of Duos?

"It's no use!" A voice leered from above them. Both Seto and Kisara snapped to look back to where the arena had hung mere moment before, to find that one of the criminals still lived. The massive man's spider-ka had bound him with its web, preventing him from meeting the same fate as his unfortunate companion.

It had also constricted Duos in its web.

Seto's jaw clenched as sweat dripped down his neck and along his hands. He was losing his grip. The man in the webbing laughed and his creature, pincers clicking, prepared to launch upon them. This was not good. Seto was powerless to do anything.

Beneath him he heard the quietest gasp, as a rustle of wind breezed past him, as though a spirit from the stories was escaping to the afterlife. In the same instant, he felt Kisara go limp. A light came from the darkness. He looked down at her to yell that she must hold on – that he could not bear her weight alone. Seto's voice caught in his throat. Her hair… it was streaking dark streams of blue. She opened her eyes. Kisara was staring up at him, her eyes vacant, light with a blue sheen. The light grew brighter, until the entire ghastly chamber of the underground was illuminated, down to the depths where the other battlers had fallen – until that light was blinding, and the instruments of torture were seared away in its brightness.

"What is that light?!" the wielder of the spider ka cried out, flailing in his bonds.

Seto's gaze remained rooted to her eyes, in which he could perfectly see his own reflection. The light intensified around her, taking on a form of its own, filling the entire cavern, wrapping around the two of them like armor. A roar shook the palace to its foundations, and Seto once more stared up upon the White Dragon that had saved his life all those years before. "That's it," he whispered. "The creature I saw when I was a child." The monster reared its head back and unleashed a deafening cry of freedom.

"No! It's the White Dragon with the Blue Eyes! But I thought it was only a myth!" The man in the webs cried out. He thrashed, trying to get free. The wound on his stomach opened and he whimpered out in pain. What had moments before been his salvation now became his fetters.

"Please," Seto looked down once more at the girl whom he held. "You must use your power to protect us." It was madness– he had leapt into this pit to save her. Now, she was saving him. Yet she did not answer him. She did not even seem to see him. Rather, in answer to his voice, it was the Dragon itself that turned to look at him, its body curled around both Priest and girl.

Gebelk's voice rang through the chamber from beyond Seto's line of vision. From beyond the light. "Lord Seto, you must not wake her!" Seto blinked down at the girl, at Kisara. Wake her? She did not sleep. She was simply… not there. Gebelk's voice continued. "Under normal circumstances, a person's ka – their spiritual guardian – is controlled by their ba – their self, their soul… But I now see the White Dragon is the woman's ba, freed from her body! It only roams when she sleeps! If she wakens, it might vanish!"

Awake, and yet asleep. Realization struck Seto like a thunderbolt. He tore his gaze from Kisara, into whose eyes he had been staring since the moment the light had flared to life, and instead turned his head upwards, to stare into the eyes of the White Dragon. Seto swallowed. They were the same eyes. In them, Seto saw the consciousness that was missing from the eyes of the girl. Almost as though the Dragon had become Kisara. Kisara was the Dragon. Then… the Dragon is the true form of her soul?

The girl shuddered, as though somehow responding to the appeal he had made moments before. His eyes snapped back down to look at her. Her lips moved. "Protect…you." She looked up at him. "Promised …to protect you."

"Gudoul," the criminal snarled at his spider creature, clearly getting over the shock of seeing the Dragon rise before him in a pillar of light, yet desperate to be rid of it before the Dragon attacked. "Cut the chains and send them both to their ends!" The spider ka snapped its pincers and its joints sprang into action. It scuttled down the webbing toward them at sickly speed. Seto looked on in horror, powerless to make the Dragon do anything, as it was not his to command. Duos flexed helplessly against his fetters.

For the first time in this life, he cried out her name. "Kisara!" It was a cry for action. It was a plea for help. And it was the first time he had cried for help since the loss of his mother and the inferno that engulfed his village.

The clank of a thousand scales reverberated in Seto's ear as the Dragon shifted its tail and overlapped it across both Priest and girl, shielding them from the spider's attack. The din then redoubled tenfold as the Dragon itself reared its head back, and opened its jaw. In its maw, Seto could just make out as a ball of electricity began to collect. The hairs stood up on the back his neck as suddenly the air became very dry. The snap and crackle of the sound ripped through the room. Girl and beast raised their heads in unison, and from the dragon's mouth erupted such a surge of power that it incinerated man, monster, and the very walls of the underground, fifteen feet thick though they were.

The scream of man and smell of burning flesh gave way to that all too familiar wave of dry, crisp heat. Dry, crisp… Clear.

…

Seto hauled Kisara up into his arms as his feet regained the level footing of the area beyond the void. The light of the Dragon had blinded them all, then coursed back into her, in his arms, and vanished, as though gone without a trace. Now Kisara, who had been still from the instant of the White Lightning Attack, shifted in Seto's arms, against his chest. Her head lulled, before she pressed her face into the crook of his shoulder.

"You're going to be alright now… Kisara," he said, running through her name, almost as an afterthought, to again hear what it would sound like on his tongue.

She had sunk into true unconsciousness now. Weak enough when the guards had hauled her down to this cavern, her injuries still not fully healed, she was crumpled in his arms. He could even see where, through the white fabric of her dress, metallic smears had begun to blot where her wounds reopened. Seto swallowed. He did not want to let go of her. The realization struck acutely at every fiber of his senses – a heightened experience of what he'd felt in the city street where he had found her. He finally had her in his arms for the first time since that fateful night on horseback, escaping the slavers. She was so light, almost as though she really was a winged creature with hollowed bones. She was too easily lost. Time and experience had taught him that. …What time? What experience? Seto shook his head a little. Regardless, he could not endure the thought of letting her go now.

He endured. "See that she gets some rest," he said, carefully handing her off to one of his guards, not Akhenaden's. Limb by limb, the weight of her left him.

"Sir."

"Change of plan." Impulse took hold of him. "Take her…take her to my chambers," he muttered under his breath, so that none but this one guard heard him. His fingers snagged on her hair as he gently extracted his hand. The hair was already returning to its natural white, the streaks of deep blue coursing back into her scalp, out of sight, like the power that they had harbingered.

"A mighty god indeed dwells within her," Akhenaden growled, coming up beside him, interrupting Seto's thoughts as he watched the guard leave, that white head of hair still visible over the guard's shoulder. "Quite amazing. She released her ba, her very soul, from her body to summon the White Dragon. She has great power. Do you have any idea what we now hold in our hands?" Seto tore his gaze away and gave his mentor his full attention. "The power of the White Dragon might be greater than Bakura's atrocious ka, Diabound."

Seto now became aware of the groans and cries around the chamber, as guards, prison keepers of the underground, and prisoners all coughed up the stone dust that had risen with the Dragon's destruction of the place. Large shards of stone and granite had fallen all about them. The thrones were smashed. There was no denying or refuting the power that she possessed now.

"I know," Seto said quietly. Cautiously. He tried to take control of the conversation. "If we harness this monster, then we can counter Diabound's shadow power."

"No, that's not all," Akhenaden cut him off. His voice dropped to a whisper. Suddenly Seto became very aware of the bodies clawing their way out and scrambling about in the rubble, trying to find survives of the cave-in. He leaned in to catch his tutor's words. "The White Dragon might be stronger than the Pharaoh's three Legendary Gods." As he had before, Seto once more blanched.

"The problem is, of course," Akhenaden continued, "in how to capture the White Dragon…The girl is different from the other prisoners Gelbrek tested, or that I've seen in all my years of significant experience. I've never witnessed a case where the ka appears when the wielder is only semi-conscious, our out-of-body. This can only mean one thing… her ba and her ka are united. Or, in other words, the ba of the White Dragon is possessing that girl's body…using her as a vessel. In that case," Seto felt that Akhenaden now fixed his Millennium Eye on him as well as his natural eye. He felt as though a nail scraped down the back of his neck. "Seto, to become the one whom Isis saw in her vision, you must become the vessel of the Dragon!"

How was it possible for time to stop, and yet for Akhenaden to keep on talking. Seto was unable to blink, unable to breath, and yet his mentor, who had mere days before fiercely reprimanded him for dealing unjustly in the procuration of kas, was now suggesting… this.

"That girl wields a beast with enough power to annihilate Bakura with one blast. Of course… we would need to take it from her. We just need to free her soul from her body." His golden Eye flashed. "Which would mean sealing her soul away in stone. So, I would sug–"

"Have you lost your mind?" It was all Seto could do to keep his voice to a hiss, rather than allowing for Akhenaden's treasonous plans to reverberate through the broken underground, the foundation of Egypt's Royal Palace. But not even treason against the Pharaoh could have riled him into such a state. It would take several more months for him to fully comprehend the implications of that in and of itself. "You'd make her a vessel without a soul?! That would mean her end."

"Don't let your emotions cloud your reason, Seto," Akhenaden spat with derision, as though he denoted whatever it was Seto felt as squalid and weak. He struck where it hurt his pupil most, by ascribing to him the uselessness of feeling. "That girl is your key to the throne! If you sacrifice her, the god will become yours. And then the throne will accept you as the new Pharaoh."

"I think we're getting ahead of ourselves." Seto's voice became dangerously calm. "Firstly, we must discover what has happened to our present monarch. As I have said before, we already have a pharaoh. And I intend to find him, not replace him."

"Don't waste your time," Akhenaden said, taking Seto's hand into his own. "Rumor has it he's long wested. And Egypt cannot survive without a king! Do what is right for your country and take the throne!"

Kill the girl.

"That is enough!" Seto tore his hand from Akhenaden's grip. "I refuse to listen to another world of this. You have disgraced the name of the Pharaoh and I won't be a part of it. My place is beside the throne, not upon the throne. And, when I locate the Pharaoh, that is where I shall stand." He made a stiff and rigid bow to the High Priest of the Millennium Eye. "Now, if you'll excuse me…" He turned, and left his mentor in the rubble of the torture chamber, deaf to Akhenaden's calls for him to turn back. He was going to go and visit Kisara. There would be no waiting another four days, five years, or five thousand for her to wake up this time. He needed answers, and she was the only one who had them.

…

The Pharaoh had been found. This was a disaster.

Akhenaden stumbled along the palace passages, practically frothing with rage. He barreled ahead, toward the holding cell of the Lady of the White Dragon. He would kill the girl. He would hand Seto the Dragon with Blue Eyes. Seto would be Pharaoh. It was his destiny–

The cell was empty. The guard beside it was merely a patrol for the hall.

"Where is she?! The Dragon girl?! What's been done with her?!" Akhenaden gripped his bony fingers into the front of the man's tunic.

"I- I'm sorry sir! I thought you knew! She's been moved! The order came from Priest Seto! I'm afraid I wasn't present when they moved her! I don't know where she's currently being held!" the man spluttered.

Akhenaden snarled. What a waste of time. With one fluid motion he pulled a knife from his robes and sunk it into the man's stomach. He no longer cared about cost or consequence. The power pulsating through him, which had grown since the Thief King's assault on him, removed all such distractions. All such obstacles. His lip curled in disgust as the man groaned and, desperately clinging to him, slid to the floor in a heap. Akhenaden wiped the blade on the back of the man's tunic as he went down.

The man would be written off as a casualty of the Thief King Bakura or one of his minions. Meanwhile he, Akhenaden, had far more pressing matters to attend to. Where are you, little girl? His Millennium Eye gleamed.

Kisara stood on the balcony of the High Priest Seto's private apartments. Before her she saw the Palace and much of Egypt beyond sprawled out before her. The colonnades, obelisks, the temples and, at the edge of the palace grounds, the part of the palace wall that had been decimated by the Thief King.

…Bakura… Kisara thought to herself, conjuring in her mind a name which she had long since tried to forget. Their paths had diverged long ago. He was nothing to her now. She… she may very well have been nothing to him ever and, considering the harm and suffering that she now saw he could inflict on so many people, that was for the best. He had grown stronger. The people and this land are being wounded, she thought. Injury by injury, blow by blow. She had seen it all happen once before.

Kisara swallowed. She had seen it all once before… Did that mean… Could it be… This calamity is perhaps… Had she brought a curse upon this land as she had brought upon the last? Was she truly so pestilent? And the boy who had grown into a man… why was he helping her? Did he not remember that it was her fault that his entire village was destroyed? Kisara closed her eyes and steadied herself on the railing of the balcony. Everything she touched blistered and burned to nothing. And now she had come to this land, and men had discovered the Dragon. Wanted to harvest it. It, which was neither spirit ka, nor monster ka. The despicable little man in the underground had called it 'the demon she carried within her own heart.' The moist and darkness of the place returned with the memory.

They do not know the half of it, she thought, shuddering, her eyes scanning the complex and beautiful horizon of Egyptian accomplishment and architecture. She lowered her head and placed her hand on her heart. She felt it beating. Her fingered curled on her dress. When would it all be too much, she wondered. When would it finally tear her in two?

A guard approached her and, with a deferent bow so unlike the treatment she had received before, politely asked her to return to her room. Her room. Not her cell. Kisara swallowed. Her room… in High Priest Seto's apartments.

From a balcony some twenty feet above hers Seto watched as Kisara was escorted back indoors. She would be safe here, under his care. He did not yet understand what had happened to his mentor, but he would take no chances. Seto would see that she was protected. This was why she was staying in his rooms. No other reason. None.

I will not lose her again, the thought came unbidden to him. Jerkily, Seto turned and left the balcony. He had a meeting in the Throne Room to attend. When he returned, they would talk.

…

Akhenaden slowly wandered among the wreckage of the underground, surveying it all. Centuries of use creating the strongest monsters of the Kingdom, and a single girl had been able to bring the entire structure crumbling down. They were lucky she hadn't dislodged any of the foundations that held up the palace above. This was going to take some explaining. He would have to find a way to blame this devastation on the Thief King as well. The chamber itself was already being scrubbed clean of all evidence, the devises of interrogation being removed from the high walls. The young Pharaoh, when he returned, would never know what its use was. Akhenaden's mind turned to Seto. If you will not seize your destiny, then I have no choice but to seize it for you… my son.

"So, it didn't all go as planned?" someone chuckled. Akhenaden turned to see a cloaked figure leaning over and carefully examining the crumpled body of Gebelk, cleaved by a splinter of stone that shattered from the wall. The man seemed fascinated.

"I think we're going to have to be more convincing," Akhenaden growled as the man straightened out, revealing his ashen skin and false pharaonic violet beard which, even in exile, had not lost its sheen. "High Mage of the Amenhotep Dynasty, Heishin."

…

The scene of Kisara on the balcony is from Yu-Gi-Oh! Bunkoban, Vol. 21, Chapter 312.