Disclaimer –"Yu-Gi-Oh!" and all related characters, events, and concepts belong to Takahashi Kazuki and any other related owners/distributors/producers. The world of Reirinsei and all related characters and concepts belong to Lunnaei. Dragon's just havin' fun. We get no monetary benefit from this. Our benefit is the enjoyment of dealing with beloved characters.
"Otherworld I: The Door"
by Lunnaei and DragonDancer5150
Chapter 12 – The Tomb of the Newly-Named Pharaoh
And so I return . . . gods of the Pharaohs, forgive me.
Sugoroku looked across the barren terrain, taking in a sight he had not laid eyes on in over thirty years. He knew he could not have found again on his own what he sought, even with his restored memories. The guides whom he had hired three decades ago were both dead, perished of their own dark hearts in the Shadow Games that protected the tomb. He nudged his camel forward ahead of the others behind Malik's confident lead, pulling up beside his grandson.
"So . . . eh, just whom should I be addressing, actually, before I say too much?" he teased in a low voice, leaning over a bit across the space between mounts. The rich, confident chuckle told him that Atemu was in charge.
"Has the valley changed much since you were here last?"
"Truthfully, no – not the past few times."
Dark amethyst eyes shifted to meet the old man's. "Do you remember the layout of the tomb and its traps? You designed and oversaw its construction, after all."
Sugoroku allowed a small grin. Speaking of and even entering one's own tomb, especially were one the Pharaoh, was not once such a strange concept as today, but as accepted as the subject of seasonal floods, the fall of night, or the daily needs of running a kingdom. Yet, there was something in the look and tone that reminded Sugoroku that Atemu had also existed for over two years without that experience, that his thoughts were confused more than a little by the modern-day "sensibilities" with which Yugi had been raised – that it was common practice to honor the deceased and visit their graves on certain holidays, but not to actually disturb their eternal resting places, nor delve too deeply into the supernatural crossroads that lead to the Underworld. He himself was struggling with that same confusion. "I remember it well, and Namu knows the way also, Atemu-san. Our passage should be without incident."
"So long as we follow your lead precisely?" Atemu murmured with a chuckle, no doubt recalling Sugoroku's tale of his last visit to the tomb, and the fates of his thieving guides. The old man had recounted that story over dinner, before the cruise ship reached its final port, about an hour's ride behind them.
"For you, passage may be all the easier. No doubt the powers in force will recognize you. It is you whom they are supposed to be protecting, after all," Sugoroku added with a jestful wink.
Atemu only gave a single, mute nod, his eyes returning to the path ahead of them.
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"Here we are!" Malik slid from his camel's back, feet padding lightly into the sandy floor of the ravine. They had followed the twisting canyon for over a half-hour, working their way deep into this section of the valley. The ravine walls met ahead of them in a dead-end, a small carven doorway piercing the crevice of rock at its base. The rest of the company dismounted as well, shouldering packs and lighting torches. In addition, Kaiba carried his ever-present briefcase, which earned him several looks and headshakes of amusement or annoyance from the rest of the group.
Pulling a breath, Atemu tightened the straps of Yugi's backpack over his shoulders and stepped up by Malik's side. "Let's get this over with."
Only Malik was close enough to catch the faint tremor of buried fear in the other's voice. He glanced sidelong but said nothing, reading the hardness in amethyst eyes, the stiffness of posture that bespoke how Atemu would do what must be done no matter what, just as he had always done. Malik nodded and led the way.
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Atemu did not look as Yugi manifested beside him at the entrance. -This is it. The Tomb of the Nameless Pharaoh . . . -
Atemu nodded, not breaking stride as he kept up with Malik at the head of the company, plunging into the suddenly cooler air of the tomb.
The passage beyond the door was a straight-shot corridor that led in and down at a shallow angle, the walls painted with hieroglyphic text and richly-colored scenes of daily life, both royal and common.
Bakura brushed a hand lightly over the painted carvings, awed. "These must be portions of the Pyramid Texts. My father's told me about them . . . "
"Thirty meters," Sugoroku murmured. "There are no traps until we reach the antechamber." Malik nodded in affirmation.
They were halfway down the passage when several sudden shrieks from right behind had Atemu spinning around in instant defense mode, dropping into a battle-ready crouch.
The entire rest of the company stood staring in utter shock at him. No, Atemu realized as he straightened. Not at me . . . at Aibou!
Yugi, translucent in his spirit form beside his own pharaoh-possessed body, gazed back at his friends in wonder. [Y-you . . . can see me?]
The group jumped again, and it was Jonouchi who found his voice first, after another instant. "Eh . . . y-yeah. Hear ya too, apparently."
"Y-you . . . just kinda . . . suddenly appeared," Mokuba breathed.
"Must be the Shadow power that dwells within this place," Rishid commented, he and his siblings no less amazed than the rest.
Several pairs of eyes jumped back and forth in speculation between Yugi's spirit and his body. If they could see Yugi outside of the body, would Atemu be similarly visible if the two traded places? After all, only Yugi and now briefly Jonouchi, Kaiba, and Sugoroku had ever truly seen what Atemu looked like, the rest only able to interact with him when he possessed Yugi.
Atemu looked at his partner, who grinned with an amicable shrug. [I don't mind if you don't.]
Atemu laughed. "Well, it is your body, Aibou. You do have first say." He paused, then nodded with a shrug of his own. Besides, perhaps it would be best for him to present himself in his purest form here. If Grandpa was right and this place might recognize him . . .
Yugi faded back inside, and they switched places, Atemu emerging an instant later. For the first time since the Puzzle's solving, he stood manifested by his partner's side – nearly a full head taller, his skin once again as light, dressed in matching attire – and his friends turned their eyes to gaze at him, able to see him at last. He did not realize until that moment just how deeply he had longed for that. For the first time, he stood among them, as himself separate from Yugi, and was not cut off from them. Tears pricked the backs of his eyes.
Anzu stepped up before him, her eyes studying every detail of the face of this one she had loved for so long. "You . . . you look just like him." Atemu guessed that she had not meant to speak that aloud, as her hands clapped over her mouth in a moment of mortified embarrassment. "No, I-I mean . . . " Her cheeks flushed hot crimson behind her fingers.
Honda laughed. "What? It's true." He too studied Atemu with incredulous surprise. "I mean, you two are practically twins! You could definitely pass for brothers."
" 'Cept your skin was darker before," Jonouchi muttered under his breath in some confusion.
[Brothers . . . ] Atemu chuckled, his eyes finding Yugi's, a great fondness in their depths. [In a very real sense, we are.]
Yugi nodded. "'Nakama.' Brothers in spirit – just like all of you are family to us anymore." Primarily, his eyes found those of Honda, Anzu, Bakura, both Kaibas and especially Jonouchi, but he made sure to include the three Tombkeepers in that as well. After all, they were just as responsible for the two of them to be standing there now in that place as anyone else.
Rishid nodded with a small smile, and Atemu thought that he must be feeling twice blessed by that, as he had only recently found full acceptance as "family" by the clan that had raised him.
Ishizu hesitated a moment before breaking the silence and mood, her voice soft. "Shall we continue on, everyone?"
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The narrow hallway opened onto a chamber some twenty meters wide and easily double that in length, a row of hypostyle columns lining the way to either side. Not an inch of the walls, columns, or even ceiling had been left uncarven or unpainted with funerary text and images, as would also prove to be the case in subsequent chambers. Skeletal bodies littered the stone floor in piles, so old the rot no longer reeked – Jonouchi managed to control his phobia enough not to flip out entirely but Atemu noted him still hanging to the back and center of the group, his necrophobia reducing his breaths to shallow panting. Honda gripped Jonouchi's shoulder in reassurance.
In each corner across from them, enormous stone vipers reared, coiling up a separate pair of columns, mouths gaping as though poised to strike. Giant rubies had been embedded into each one's eyes.
"Wow, how beautiful," Yugi murmured as they stepped into the room, his tone devoid of greed for the precious stones. Atemu nodded agreement, also appreciating the ancient sculptor's artwork.
Malik held out an arm to stop the group just inside the door. He pointed at the snakeheads. "This is the first trap. The asps are rigged with poisoned metal spikes that will shoot anything that moves in the room, except along a narrow path down the center."
Atemu's gaze fell to the floor, studying the perfect gridwork of stone blocks. No, not perfect, he noted.
Yugi saw it, too. "The row of blocks down the very center is marginally narrower than the rest."
Sugoroku pushed his way to the front of the group, stepping up between Yugi and Malik. He had guessed the nature of the trap last time, but now with his own ancient memory fully restored as well, Atemu could see in his eyes that he truly recalled these masterwork statues. "A thief will try to approach the asps to steal their ruby eyes, which will take them away from the center of the room, or else slink along to one side or the other thinking to escape their gaze. One who belongs here will approach with confidence, walking the length of the room in full view."
"Yes." Malik glanced at Atemu, then back across the rest of the company. "We'll go in a straight line. Walk exactly down the center of the room, along the narrow row of blocks. Don't let anything cross the blocks' edges – an elbow, a pack strap, not even a lock of hair." Nods of understanding responded.
The group traversed the room without incident, Malik then Atemu leading, Yugi a step behind his spirit partner, the rest in a file behind him. A few paused briefly to admire the lifelike statues of guards, one on either side of the door, facing one another. The next chamber looked much like the first, but with the conspicuous absence of corpses. And snakes. Instead, the walls rose into darkness, the ceiling lost to the shadows above their heads. Against the wall opposite them stood a colossal statue of a falcon-headed man. The regal headdress bespoke of pharaonic ties.
"Kemwer-Heru," Kaiba breathed, awed in spite of himself.
[The Great Black One, Horus,] Atemu translated with a nod, [god-son of Usir . . . eh . . . Osiris.]
"As a living god, the pharaoh was said to be the son of Horus," Sugoroku put in, "believed then to become Horus upon death, or at least to unite with him among the gods in the Afterlife."
"Guess you missed the boat, huh?" Jonouchi teased.
Anzu gasped, Kaiba glared, and Bakura admonished, "Jonouchi-kun!"
Atemu only shrugged with a wry smile. [More so than you realize, my friend.]
"The souls of the dead were believed to be ferried to the Afterlife on solar barges," Ishizu explained.
Jonouchi gaped, having meant his comment purely in jest. He gave his friend and fellow Duelist a sheepish grin. "Whoa. Then, you really did miss the boat, didn't ya?" Anzu barely restrained herself from smacking him across the back of the head for his insensitivity. Honda, however, did not.
The company crossed the room, finding no doors, windows, even alcoves to break the walls of the room, no apparent way out at all but for the door through which they had entered. Between the great statue's ankles, a small, framed fresco of blank plaster decorated the wall, the upper boundary arched by long feathered wings flanking a solar disk, a deep sill at the bottom jutting out some fifteen centimeters and equal that in depth, filled with pitch. Malik dropped the tip of his torch to the oily, black substance, flames leaping instantly to lick up the face of the fresco. Hieroglyphs burned into existence as the plaster heated up.
Kaiba's eyes narrowed at the warning, even as he remembered the message from previous visits as the priest who helped in the final preparations of the tomb. "'This is a forbidden place. Beyond this point rests the Pharaoh. Beware, you who would disturb him. The gods shall punish you. Your body will rot, and your soul be cursed to eternal darkness.'"
Mokuba shivered. "That doesn't include us, does it, Big-Brother?"
Rishid shook his head with a soft laugh. "You are being guided by no fewer than three Tombkeepers, invited here by the Pharaoh himself. No, you are not trespassers. Do not fear."
[I was 'disturbed' some three decades ago,] Atemu chuckled at the same time, [and, as far as I can tell, Grandpa is not cursed because of it.] He thought for a moment, adding silently, At least, I pray not . . .
"I was drawn to this place. I thought at the time it was simply because of the challenge of conquering the greatest game in history . . . but now I know it was more than that, much more."
Mokuba frowned, discomfort breeding impatience. "Well, where is the entrance, then?"
Even as he asked, a section of stone floor dropped several centimeters and shifted, slowly disappearing under the wall. Those at its edges grabbed and braced those dancing in shock off the moving surface, looking down at the newly revealed staircase leading into darkness.
"Well," Bakura laughed, the tone a nervous tremor, "that answers that, doesn't it? Ah . . . shall we?"
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