Woop! I'm back!

This chapter was a slow-moving work-in-progress from the very beginning. There was some essential information I needed to include, and I couldn't decide where to put it. Plus, school has sucked. There's been a lot of stress the past few weeks.

Thank you guys for being so patient, though!

I hope you like the finished product!

Disclaimer: I only own Erin.

Chapter 24

I took a deep breath. I should have brought Atem with me.

Yet, as I stood before the Roaring Twenties exhibit at the museum, I felt the whisper of distant, out-of-reach memories brushing at the back of my mind, and I knew that this was something I would have to do on my own. Besides, I was going to tell him about it later.

But what was I supposed to do now? Before, the memory and the familiar speech had just come to me without warning. I was half-afraid that now that I was expecting them, they would be less in-your-face.

I walked slowly along the glass cases of period evening and daywear, staring intently at the fabrics and information plaques. Nothing jumped out to me. After walking around the exhibit for a little while longer, I sighed and left the room, heading for my main destination.

The Ancient Egypt exhibit was just as grand as it had been a couple of days ago. I took time to admire the hieroglyphs on the entryway, though they were hard to translate because of their scrambled forms and the lack of grammar. They were still beautiful, nonetheless, written in formal shapes that would have adorned the palace and temple walls back then.

As I did in the Twenties sector, I tried to take my time and make out every individual detail in the hopes that something would reveal itself to me. Many of the objects were now vaguely familiar in the sense that I had faint recollections of using similar ones, but I couldn't pick one out that I knew for sure I – Sagira – had come into contact with.

A peculiar feeling brought me to the random tablets that were scattered throughout. I read all of ones in the main room at least three times each. A prayer to Isis, the last will and testament of a wealthy merchant, decorative tomb writing. Nothing special, but my ability to translate them gave me a new confidence.

Taking a deep breath, I headed for the place I was bound for at the start of my museum quest: Sagira's tablet. My stomach twisted in knots as I approached the podium in which it rested. What would happen this time? Would I stay conscious now that I had accepted my memories, or would a new one surface because they were still incomplete?

"Hello again." I whispered to the tablet below me as if it were an old friend. Technically, considering many relics from Sagira's past were lost to the modern world, it could be considered just that.

The cold black stone stared up at me, as it would any other museum-goer who had appeared to look upon it. Nothing happened.

My eyes scanned the writing (my writing?), trying to conclude from the words what had been going through Sagira's head at that point in time. From the vision I'd had before, she hadn't been in the best state of mind when she wrote it. Something had been bothering her. I mean, this was basically an I'm-sorry-but-I-might-die-soon note to her friends. There was definitely something up there. But what?

For a brief moment, my mind flashed back to last night, in the sandstone room. The feeling that the figure had sent rushing through my body...that heavy sensation of darkness and depression. There had been thoughts accompanying that feeling, a memory.

Calling out to Mahad for help.

Atem dying.

That was what I had seen. The desperation in my voice when I screamed for Mahad, for anyone, to bring him back. Atem had sacrificed himself.

But for what?

In my thoughts, I remembered knowing that he would be lost to me and the world for longer than I could ever imagine. Past that, however, I had no idea how or why.

Maybe –

"Erin?" A soft voice asked just to my right.

I jumped a little bit, my head jerking up from its position in my arms. Somehow I had ended up slumped over the top of the podium with my arms and face pressed against the glass. Ishizu's serene face greeted me, twisted in a look of slight concern.

"Are you alright?"

I straightened up and tried to look natural. "Yeah. I'm great. Just...curious." Does she know who I really am and how I'm connected to this tablet?

She smiled, though it didn't reach her eyes. "Are you here alone?"

I nodded. "This was a spur-of-the-moment trip."

With an understanding nod, she stepped a bit closer. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

I bit the insides of my cheeks and watched her face for a moment. What can I tell her? What is appropriate to ask of her? "Um...I was wondering if there was anything else connected to Sagira in this exhibit. Like more tablets or something."

Ishizu nodded. "Yes. There are more of her writings on the walls to your right, if you're interested."

My head turned immediately in the direction she indicated, almost a bit too excitedly. Maybe a new item from Sagira's time would trigger new memories. I had, after all, had a vision of writing the first tablet. I felt Ishizu behind me as I approached the first specimen, a well-preserved piece of parchment. It struck me as strange; most materials and textiles tended to decay with time, but this one was so intact that I could read the entire thing.

"A black sky to harbor the god of the darkness." I murmured to myself, not even bothering to look at the translation in the bottom right-hand corner of the glass encasing the papyrus. It was probably wrong, anyway. Sagira – I – used to play around with symbols and grammar when I was taking notes of things around me before my final drafts (a habit that never quite went away if one took a look at my school notebooks in modern times), so this transcript would be almost impossible for anyone but a native to read. This was clearly a rough draft, if the inky fingerprints on the corners of the surface were any indication. I wondered if they compared those prints to my fingertips, they would have an exact match.

Good luck explaining that one to scientists.

"I see the Pharaoh, but he is in danger." In my mind, I could hear a worried Isis speaking to me, her voice so clear that I thought for a moment that Ishizu had spoken. But when I looked to her, she was only watching me, like she was waiting for me to give her permission to interrupt my study of the papyrus. I went back to reading, wondering why this "vision" was only enveloping one of my senses. "Something prevents me from seeing his condition further. However, Ira, it is you that I worry for. When I searched for you in the future, there were words echoing. A riddle, almost. About losing something you loved and being punished by the gods for your actions. But you were nowhere to be found. All I found was darkness. Almost as if...you had ceased to exist."

That was all that was written, with Sagira's equivalent of a "what-the-hell?" symbol at the bottom, followed by the traditional date and Isis' name.

I furrowed my eyebrows, puzzled. "That's weird." I mused aloud. This must have been one of Sagira's assignments as scribe: recording Isis' visions. This one had to have been important if it was so well preserved, evident by the content. What was Isis talking about? Could this have anything to do with...me? As in, twenty-first century me?

Maybe I should call Atem. I got this far on my own, didn't I?

But the explanation he had given me last night on the car ride home still rang fresh in my mind. There were limits to what he could tell me and what I needed to learn on my own. Some kind of rule.

Because before she left Egypt forever, Sagira for some reason decided she would make recovering her own memories as complicated as possible. As if I didn't already have enough question marks in my life at the moment.

"Do you know where this was found?" I asked Ishizu, still staring at the papyrus.

Ishizu bowed a bit. "It has been kept in my family for generations. I thought it would be nice for it to see the sun again."

My eyes went to her. In that moment, I seemed to forget that she wasn't Isis. "What do you think the vision meant?"

Her head cocked to the side. "You understood that it was a vision?"

"Well, yeah. It says right here" – I pointed to the symbols as I read them – "'When I searched for you in the future.' I kind of read between the lines, I guess."

"You...You translated those hieroglyphs." She said softly, eyes wide, but a small smile playing on her lips. It wasn't a question.

I raised an eyebrow as I spared a glance to the informational plaque that was nestled in the corner. My own eyes grew larger when I saw that the line I had just matter-of-factly read with ease was replaced with, "(unknown characters)." "Oh no." I whispered. Whoops.

"It's all coming back to you, isn't it?" She asked. Her words carried much more weight than they should have. Was this her hint that she knew about me?

I looked back to her in wonder. "Do you...do you know about me?"

Her smile widened. "My family has waited three thousand years to find the Lost Queen."

My chest contracted. For a moment, I was breathless, floating in space, with no notion of what I should say. Atem had mentioned that Ishizu and Marik were members of an ancient tribe that guarded his tomb, awaiting his arrival back to the world of the living. But I hadn't exactly been sure if they knew about me or not. The car had stopped before we got to that part.

Ishizu watched my expression, seemingly picking up on my speechlessness. "We knew all along, but the circumstances of your return are a bit complicated."

I nodded. "Atem mentioned that part. What about it was complicated?"

She opened her mouth as if to answer my question honestly, but then she closed it again. When she spoke, her voice was almost unsure. "We are not entirely sure what happened after Atem passed three thousand years ago. The events surrounding your disappearance are cloaked in shadow."

"My...disappearance?" I asked, confused. Just when I thought things were about to work themselves out, they got a helluva lot harder to grasp. But this might explain why the cult was so obsessed with me. Had Sagira been dealing with forces she wasn't supposed to?

With an incline of her head, Ishizu replied, "The writings we found in the archives of our family indicated a period of great sorrow following the Pharaoh's sacrifice. Especially for you. Your last writing, that first tablet you read, seemed to be almost erratic. As if you weren't in your right mind. After that record, there are none further of your past life. Almost as if the Scribe of the Gods had been wiped off the face of the earth."

I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath until it came whooshing out at her last words, almost in a whimper. What Ishizu said almost matched the vision Isis described on the papyrus I just read to a tee. "But...why would I do that? Why would I just leave things like that?"

"One cannot fathom the pain that is felt when one loses someone they love." Ishizu said.

With a sinking feeling, I remembered the memory that the cloaked figure had shown me, and the horrible distress that had pumped through my veins.

"This is not really my place." Ishizu continued. "I should let the Pharaoh help you with the other half of the story. It is only fair to him."

I sighed and nodded. "Right."

So much for doing things on my own.

"Erin! What a pleasant surprise!" Mr. Muto greeted as I made my way to the counter in the game shop. The grin on his face was large and knowing.

"Hello, Mr. Muto." I replied, unable to stop myself from smiling back. "Atem wouldn't happen to be here, would he?"

He nodded. "You picked a good time to visit. The doctor just cleared Atem for electronics use this morning, so the boys are upstairs. Something about a video game war?" With a shake of his head and a chuckle, he continued. "Maybe you can knock some sense into those knuckleheads."

I laughed. "I'll try."

The sounds of machine guns and whoops and hollers from Joey and Tristan reached my ears halfway up the stairs. When I reached the top, I surveyed the scene before me in amusement. Joey, Tristan, Yugi, and Atem were sprawled on the couches and the floor, all with Xbox controllers in their hands. The screen in front of them was split into quadrants. They appeared to be playing the zombie mode on Call of Duty. The only noises came from their fingers on the controls, the shooting in the game, and Joey and Tristan's excited and angry outbursts. I leaned against the doorframe with my arms crossed to watch the show.

"Joey! You're supposed to be killing zombies, not me!" Tristan yelled, fingers moving more aggressively across his remote.

"Sorry Tristan. You were in the way." Joey responded, snickering. "Wh-Yug!"

Yugi shrugged as Joey's screen darkened for respawning. "You were in the way." He mocked with laughter in his voice.

"Watch out behind you, Yugi." Atem said.

"Oh crap!" Tristan cried. "The hellhounds!"

"Crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap." Joey said, pressing frantically on his controller. "I hate this level!"

Tristan threw his head back and dropped his controller when his screen went dark, putting his hands over his eyes in agony. "Noooooo!" He shouted.

"Ah!" Joey cursed, then looked at Atem and Yugi. "It's up to you two."
"Nope, just Yugi." Atem said, his screen dark as well.

"Thanks for throwing me under the bus, guys!" Yugi said with a grin on his face. On the screen, his avatar slashed at a hellhound with a knife to push it away, then ended its life with a shot. However, a new one came up out of nowhere and tackled Yugi to the ground, sending his quarter of the screen into darkness to match the others. The stats for the round popped up, naming Yugi as the winner, with Atem as a close second in terms of number of killshots.

"Impressive." I said. All of the boys' heads whipped around to look at me, equally surprised expressions on their faces when they realized I'd been watching them the whole time.

"Erin!" Yugi said, putting his controller down. "When did you get here?"

"Just a few minutes ago." I looked at Atem and winked. He smirked back. I had originally come to tell him about what I found at the museum, and also to ask if he wanted to go out again sometime next weekend, but the scene at hand suddenly distracted my focus. "I think I need to school you children on how to actually win zombie ops."

Joey narrowed his eyes. "Are you saying you're better than us, Blue?" His expression was lighthearted despite his attempts to look serious.

"Not at all." I feigned a hurt demeanor as I made my way to them.

"Then what are you saying?" Tristan challenged.

I sat on the floor next to Atem and shrugged. "I mean, not to brag or anything, but my brother and I have made it to the fortieth round a few times."

"Seriously?" Tristan asked in awe. "We can hardly make it past the hellhounds."

"I see that." I looked at Atem. "Mind if I borrow your controller?"

He held it out to me, smirk still on his face. "Not at all."

Gripping the controller comfortably, I looked back to the boys. "Who's player one?"

"Me." Yugi raised his hand.

I grinned. "Beam us up, Scotty."

The game started, spawning us all in the same part of the manor being attacked. We set up barricades and collected supplies to prepare for the zombies right off the bat, and when they arrived, we made it through the first five rounds with ease. Tristan died a grand total of three times, luckily having one of us around to revive him before his time ran out. Yugi was leading in killshots. When the rounds got tougher, we split into pairs to divide and conquer. Tristan and I covered the main hallway until the hellhounds broke out. It was at that point that Tristan and Joey became spastic, running around and trying to aim at them with no luck. Five minutes later, they were both out of the game, because Yugi and I were busy surviving and they weren't revived in time.

"Hellhound at three o'clock." I told Yugi, who swiveled in the direction I indicated and helped me shoot the beast down.

"You are freaking *killing* it, man." Tristan said, watching the screen intently.

"Years of having no one to play with but my older brother have taught me well." I said as I panned my weapon to another area of the room, where more zombies were making their way towards us.

"I will never get on your bad side while you have a gun in your hand." Joey said.

"That shouldn't just apply to Erin, bud." Tristan retorted.

Within five more minutes, Yugi and I made it to the twenty-fifth round. "Oh god." I said. "I forgot how hard it gets."

Yugi laughed. "I'm just glad that there's someone other than Atem who can even get this far with me!"

My avatar whirled around to shoot down a wall of zombies, all the while avoiding the hellhounds that were running loose. "No..." I murmured as I was attacked from behind. My screen was splattered with blood, indicating that my man was dying. "No!" Still shooting at the zombie attacking me with my feeble little pistol, I wailed as my screen went dark.

Yugi lasted another round, but eventually succumbed to the horde of zombie creatures and turned to me with a grin. "You are awesome."

"Coming from the King of Games, I'll take that as an honor." I replied, grinning back. Yugi blushed red at my comment.

"So, Blue, what's up?" Joey asked, being the first to realize that I had just randomly shown up with no explanation.

I shrugged. "I came to talk to Atem, but playing video games turned out to be a bonus."

"A pretty nice bonus." Yugi said. "You helped me beat my high score!"

"Some people can sing, some can lift entire cars; I just happen to be good at killing tons of zombies in a first-person shooter game." I smiled brightly at Yugi and then turned to Atem. He still had that mind-melting smirk on his face. I wondered if he had told Yugi and the others about what happened last night. Did they even have much to do with it?

"Do you want to talk in private?" Atem asked, noticing my hesitation to speak up.

After a moment of thought, I nodded slowly.

He looked to the others. "Do you guys mind if we talk for a while?"

Joey and Tristan nodded, suggestive smiles sliding onto their faces. "As long as that's all you two are doing." Tristan said, wiggling his eyebrows.

Atem rolled his eyes in mock annoyance, but his smirk grew a bit wider at Tristan's innuendo. He stood. "Let's go back to my room." He said, then looked back to the boys. "Go ahead and play without me. We'll be back in a few minutes."

"A few minutes is all it takes." Joey whispered, earning a slap on the knee and a murmured "Joey!" from Yugi.

Cheeks burning, I followed Atem down the hallway, away from the two goons and Yugi, who quickly became distracted with starting a new level on zombie ops. Did it bother him that they made those comments? Because I wasn't so much bothered as a bit uncomfortable. I made jokes like that all the time when it wasn't me.

When we reached Atem's room, which was near the end of the hall, he opened the door for me and gestured for me to go in first. A small, somewhat-tidy bedroom greeted me. Sitting against the wall to the left was a desk, a pile of textbooks and discarded homework littering its surface. I almost laughed at how similarly the two of us took care of our schoolwork. Just to the right of the desk was a large window that overlooked the alley behind the game shop, through which one could see the moon at night from its orientation. An unmade bed extended from the wall adjacent to the door, and a shelf to the right was covered in various books, trinkets, and, of course, Duel Monsters cards. As I ventured farther into the room, I could see a dresser tucked into the corner. The only objects occupying the top were two bottles of cologne and a thick, rolled-up sheet of paper, edges yellowed and ripped, as if worn by time.

Wait. That wasn't paper.

I broke away from him to approach the dresser. I gingerly picked up the thing that I now recognized as a scroll. "Is this...papyrus?"

He walked up beside me. "Yes, it is."

With careful fingers, I gently unrolled it, reading the first symbols that showed up. "Almighty Protector of the Sun and Sky..." eyes moving back up to the next column of hieroglyphs, eyebrows coming together at the pang of familiarity, I continued vocalizing them, "I beg of thee, please hear my cry..."

Realization struck me as I glanced up at Atem, who was staring at me in what I could only interpret as wonder. "I wrote this." I told him, as if he didn't already know. I held the papyrus up. I had dreamt about this before I knew anything about Sagira. "I spent a year working on it and annoying the crap out of Mahad with it."

Atem chuckled, nodding. "I remember."

I looked back down to the scroll, then to him again. "Did...did it work?"

With a small smile and no answer, he took one of my hands and led me to the bookshelf parallel to his bed. I watched as he moved a few books aside and pulled a small golden box from behind them. The Eye of Horus was carved on the front. Still not saying anything, he removed the lid and reached inside.

The card he pulled out of it made my eyes go wide in shock. "No way." I whispered.

He held it out to me, and I took it with trembling fingers. Upon contact with my skin, much like when I had first brushed against Atem, I felt like an electric current was running up and down my arm. "This is..." I couldn't even finish. The image on the card was unmistakeable: Ra, shining in all his regal might, his dragon form seemingly glowing. I almost felt as if I were staring down at the god himself. Below the illustration was a series of hieroglyphs. A chant.

My chant.

"Holy crap." Those were the only words my mouth could even form. The fact that my writing survived all this time was incredible, but that it had been put onto the card that embodied the god it was meant to summon all along...I was dumbfounded.

"You asked about the God Cards. This, as you already know, is Winged Dragon of Ra. The second," he took another card from the box, which depicted a long, red dragon, "is Slifer the Sky Dragon. The third God Card is-"

"Obelisk the Tormentor." I cut him off in awe as I stared at the blue humanoid. He had summoned Obelisk before, back in Egypt. Actually, he had summoned all three gods, but Obelisk was freshest in my mind for some reason. With the vague memory of the god came the same heavy feeling in my chest that I had felt last night. I opted to further the conversation to distract myself. "Why do you hide them?"

Atem pursed his lips as he gazed down at the cards. "As you saw last night, there are many people who would love to duel me for them if they knew the cards still existed."

I cocked my head. "What do you mean?"

"These cards are extremely powerful. When I regained my memories, Ishizu, Yugi, and I decided it was best that we pretend they were destroyed to prevent someone from trying to use that power for the wrong reasons. We convinced Pegasus to spread the news that they were no longer in circulation, and I took them out of my dueling deck to keep up the ruse."

Eyebrow raised, I studied Ra once more. "But they're just cards."

He caught my stare and held it, giving me a meaningful look. "I think you know as well as I do that that's not true. Can't you sense the magic?"

I nodded. "They just seem so...ordinary. Not counting the magical tingles."

"That's why they're dangerous. Everyone is so unassuming of their potential that they overlook the ancient monsters they represent."

I handed Ra back to him. "It's funny how much of our past has weaseled its way into the future."

He hmm'd, putting the cards back into their special box and concealing it behind the row of books once more. "You have no idea."

"Speaking of..." I said, glad I could finally get to my main point, "I went to the museum this morning."

He looked a little taken aback. "Alone? I could have helped you."

I shook my head. "I wanted to see what I could find out on my own. You know, focus on the tablets and try to remember something. I didn't want any distractions. Plus, you would have missed out on fun time with the guys."

"I understand." He said, wounded expression leaving his face. "So did you find anything?"

"Yes and no."

"What?"

"Yes, I found out that there was definitely something messed up about the way Sagira left things. No, I have no idea what it is. Ishizu happened to show up. She said something about it not being her place to tell me too much of the story?" As I spoke, I watched the frown on his face deepen. "What?"

He gestured to his bed. "You might want to sit down for this."

I obeyed, giving him an odd look. "Okay...is there something bad? I mean, besides the whole disappearing-with-no-explanation thing."

He sat beside me. "There was something I forgot to tell you last night in the car."

"What was it?" I raised an eyebrow, watching him expectantly. I didn't like the look in his eyes.

He sighed, then took one of my hands in his. I hardly responded to the action, which reminded me again of how familiar my memories had made me with his touch. "In order for you to understand how we stumbled on this information, I need to tell you how my life in this era began. It's a long story."

"I have time."

With a curt nod, he began. "Three thousand years ago, I ruled as Pharaoh of Egypt, as you already know. This was only for a very short time; my father, Pharaoh Aknamkanon, had just been entombed, and I took over as his sole legitimate heir."

Short glimpses of the past strung together in my mind: Aknamkanon's kind smile, a funeral procession, and Atem's coronation forty days later.

"Soon after I took the throne, a great enemy rose. Zorc, the self-proclaimed god of darkness, stampeded through my kingdom, drawing his power from the fear and poverty he caused in my people. In order to stop him once and for all, and to be sure that he never set foot in this world again, I took matters into my own hands. Using myself as a seal for his prison, I sacrificed my name and my soul so Egypt could be rid of his presence forever. For three thousand years, my soul was lost to the world, trapped inside a relic both my father and I had worn in our lifetimes: the Millennium Puzzle."

The image of a golden, pyramid-shaped necklace hanging from Atem's neck flashed through my head. I remembered it was only worn by the king, and had six accompanying objects of gold, owned by members of his newly-chosen court.

Atem continued. "It shattered into an unrecognizable collection of pieces after my sacrifice, which earned it its name. No one found its remains until Yugi's grandpa managed to stumble upon them in his days as an archaeologist. He gave it to Yugi as a birthday gift, and eight years later, Yugi solved it. He released my spirit, though I knew nothing of my past."

He went on to tell me about all of the adventures he had been on with Yugi and the gang, from competing in a Duel Monsters tournament created just to steal the puzzle, to fighting a secret corporation run by an ancient Atlantian king who was determined to steal Atem's soul. The entire time, he took in my ever-changing expressions, taking time to explain certain situations when confusion crossed them. The tale he spun of the events sounded exhilarating, but terrifying. I couldn't understand how any of the gang had gotten out of them with their sanity intact.

The whole Marik-being-evil thing caught me off guard. Marik had seemed pretty cool when I met him. Of course, he wasn't being possessed by a darker version of himself when I had shaken hands with him. That thought comforted me a bit. The same effect happened with Ryou's involvement in those affairs. Kind, comforting Ryou. What had he done to deserve his possession?

Finally, after telling me about Kaiba's Grand Championship Tournament, he took a deep breath. "Since we had gotten all seven Millennium Items and the god cards, we decided it was time to bring our adventures to a close. I needed to regain my memories, and we had everything we needed to do it. All of us flew to Egypt, where Ishizu and Marik took us to my tomb."

"That must have been weird." I commented. "Standing in a place built for your death."

He hmph'ed at my statement, seeing the irony I did. "It was." He squeezed my hand. "After holding the three god cards up to my tablet of memories as Ishizu had instructed, I was pulled into a world built entirely from my past. I met everyone we knew, but I remembered none of them. And then I saw you."

I smiled a bit at his last words. "Don't tell me it was love at first sight, Romeo." I teased.

"It almost was." As he elaborated, I tried my best to keep the blush from crawling up my face. "I had felt connections with everyone when I saw them for the first time. But you...when I saw you standing beside my throne at my reconstructed coronation, there was this feeling right here, in my chest." He took my hand that he was holding, and pressed it to the left side of his torso, just above his heart. "I knew you were different than the others."

Oh no. The blush was in full effect. I felt my face go completely hot. "What happened next?" I managed to breathe beneath his intense stare.

He explained that the memory world he had entered wasn't exactly as things had really been in the past – which I had caught on to the further he got into the story – and that there was a reason behind it. The spirit of Ryou's Millennium Ring had set it up like a shadow game, using all of us as pawns. He, too, had shared a past with Atem, as a tomb robber who turned out to be the human embodiment of Zorc himself.

By the time Atem had gone to face Zorc, Sagira had left (more on Atem's bidding than her own) to make sure her family was safe in her home village of Ba'Yt during all of the chaos. This explained why, though Kaiba had also been sucked into the memory world, he hadn't seen me like the rest of the gang had.

The story carried on, ending with Zorc's defeat, and Atem's duel with Yugi upon returning to the present.

"But when I looked into the afterlife, I didn't see you." He said. I held my breath. "Mahad stepped forward, and told us that you had somehow purposefully evaded fate. I needed to find you, and help you reclaim your memories in order to bring balance back to the afterlife."

"Balance." I whispered, feeling my chest tighten. Mana's words last night echoed in my head once more. "We can't keep fighting your battles in the afterlife for you." "But I don't remember everything. What am I supposed to do?"

Atem shook his head. "I wish I knew. Mahad said you must find out on your own. He restored my past body and left us with a riddle."

I bit my lip. At least Mahad had been kind enough to give us hints, right?

Atem cleared his throat and recited the words Mahad had given him:

"When Ra rose for the last time in eyes of blue

Her fortunes were counted, though she saw few

Death still rung fresh in her heart

The wound she bore that tore her apart

For the ultimate sacrifice brought the ultimate pain

Left one behind so the other could save us again

Grief had turned to despair

When she stumbled upon a mage's lair

Deals with demons never end well

A lesson to be learned from a life-ending spell

Now time is nothing to her, though it still rules her fate

A hundred lifetimes, thousands to wait

The gods have no patience; she must be returned

Must regain memories that brightly once burned

Her own mind is her only hope

On her own she must learn to cope

Forced to fight the horrible odds

Is her millennial punishment for fooling the gods."

"That's morbid." I squeaked, slightly on edge.

"Do you know what any of it means?" He asked.

I shook my head, gaze turning to the floor. Why did I feel such a deep sense of shame welling up in my heart? It felt like I had disappointed him. Like I had disappointed myself. "Only the lines that talk about your death and my stupid decisions."

He seemed to pick up on my sudden change in mood. He turned my chin back to face him, leveling my watery gaze with his own gentle one. "You are many things, but stupid is not one of them. Whatever you did all those years ago, you did it for a reason. And we'll find that reason together."

I felt my lips tremble. Ignoring the tears that threatened to fall from my eyes, I gave him a short, apologetic kiss, then threw my arms around his shoulders.

He held me there, rocking me back and forth as I took comfort in his scent and the feeling of his protective arms around me.

"We will do this together." He murmured into my hair. "I promise."

There it is, the information you've all been waiting for! The riddle that began this grand adventure! Please keep in mind that I wrote it before I even wrote the first chapter, so it's not as polished as everything else in AHL.

And yes, convenient rhyming riddle is convenient...

What did you guys think of the video game war? Should there be more in the future? Do you think Erin could beat Atem at Mariokart?

Things seem to be getting more complicated, and that's the point. Sagira was a bit of a butthead with the way she left things.

So, what did you guys think of this chapter?

Also, has anyone seen Dark Side of Dimensions yet? I would love to know how it was. No spoilers, just on a scale of 1-10. I might not be able to wait until the English dub comes out!

Anyway, thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter! I've read all of them about fifteen times each.

See you guys next time (hopefully soon)!

-creativelybored