Yugi sat up and winced. Every movement made his head feel like it was about to explode. He looked around, but he couldn't see anything. The room he was in was completely dark.
Yugi groped for a wall. He hand met something solid but riddled with holes. He felt around it for a while, when he realized with horror that the walls were made of skulls. Yugi recoiled and tried to stand, but his head hit the ceiling. There wasn't much room in his cell.
Yugi began to breathe hard. He was trapped and horribly claustrophobic. The ceiling was low, and the room was dark, and he was completely alone. Yugi choked back a frightened sob. He hadn't done anything to deserve such treatment. And his friends were suffering even more badly.
Loramysha were a complex and secretive race. They all had certain aspects about their physiology that they preferred to keep inside their own world. Their extreme agility was once such ability. But Yugi had another trick up his sleeve, a trick that would hopefully keep him from losing his mind.
The Loramys concentrated and clenched his teeth. The state he wanted to enter was called pleij, and it was a difficult thing to obtain. But times were desperate, and Yugi was desperate. It a few moments, Yugi's skin shimmered brilliantly. It was a built-in night light, handy for snow-ins and avalanches.
Yugi could see the walls and the ceiling now, which made him feel better. What he didn't want to see was the age-old skeletons lying in the corners. He shivered. He certainly hadn't been the first one locked in the Caves of Perdition.
The others had to be around here somewhere. Whether they were half-trapped in a minute alcove like he was, or stranded in a giant cavern, they had to be in one of the many rooms. The labyrinthine Caves were pelted with monsters, and the investigators had taken Yugi's Getya sword. But he had to find them. He couldn't leave he friends to such a horrible fate as dying slowly in the darkness that surrounded them.
Yugi cringed as he reached over to one of the human skeletons and plucked off a shoulder blade. It was morbid and dull, but it was the best weapon he would get down here. He crawled out of his alcove and yelped as he fell to the ground. He must have been somewhere above the actual floor.
He sighed in relief. This corridor had much more space to move around in, and the walls glowed with a dim, green light. Deciding not to lose his place, he bit his thumb with his pointed teeth. A luminescent white-blue liquid dripped out, and Yugi drew an X on the wall. It contrasted clearly with the dark metal.
"Left or right?" Yugi wondered. "I guess it doesn't really matter…"
Yugi walked toward the left. "Guys!" he yelled. "Are you guys there!?"
There was no response. Yugi sighed. No one knew how big the Caves of Perdition actually were. He could have to walk for miles to find them. And they could be wandering around looking for him, too. It would make locating them nearly impossible.
Atem sat up and shook the dizziness from his head. The last thing he remembered was being dragged off by those Poya police. Apparently, they thought that Yugi had stolen some sort of priceless artifact. Atem shook his head. Yugi would never do that.
He was situated between two high walls made of some sort of black, shiny metal. "The others would be in here somewhere…" he mused. "I need to find them."
Atem stood and began walking in a random direction. Again and again he called out his friends' name but got no response. A while later, Atem stopped. There was a bright, bluish-white substance marking an X on one of the walls.
"Where have I seen that before?" Atem asked himself. Then he remembered. When Yugi hit his head, his blood had been that same color. Was that Yugi's blood, which he had used to trace his steps?
Atem set off quickly. Yugi's markers could lead him to the Astalan. He stopped suddenly. Another X on the wall. He was going in the right direction.
Atem ran on for a few more minutes. "Yugi!" he yelled. All at once he bumped violently into a short, glowing boy. "Yugi!" Atem exclaimed joyfully, slightly out of breath.
"Atem?" Yugi asked. He jumped on Atem, hugging him fiercely. "You're okay…"
Atem hugged him back. They were a strong team, and next to nothing could stop them when they were together. "We need to find the others," Atem stated after they separated. "They can't be that far, considering that we found each other so soon."
Yugi nodded. "I don't know how we'd be able to find them, though."
Atem looked over Yugi's head. "I think I know how." He was staring directly at a small impression of Tristan's face, written by a red sharpie on one of the walls. He had done something similar back in India, when he had traveled through the maze in the Capsule Monsters universe.
Yugi bit his thumb again because the blood flow had stopped, and drew another X on the wall. "We'll all be able to find each other, this way." And he ran in the direction of Tristan's faces.
"Why does it hafta be your face?" Joey asked angrily. "Mine looks so much better!"
Tristan growled as he sketched his visage. "It'd be hard to try and draw all of your hair, anyways."
"What's dat supposed ta mean!?" Joey yelled.
Tea held her head. "Shut up, so we can get going! We need to find Yugi and Atem!"
"Guys!" Yugi yelled at that precise moment.
"Yugi! Atem!" they yelled back simultaneously. They ran up to each other.
"Is everyone alright?" Tea asked concernedly. "Yugi, you're bleeding."
Yugi stuck his thumb in his mouth. "It's alright," he mumbled. "You guys are okay too, right?"
They nodded. "But I don't like the décor in this place, man," Tristan said. "Actually, I'd kinda prefer to be home."
"Wouldn't we all," Atem said. "But how are we supposed to find an exit? This entire facility was designed to keep us down here."
"We're innocent," Tea stated firmly. "And I'm not going to rot down here just because some crazy alien made a mistake. We will find a way out. Period."
They smiled at her conviction. She really was the glue that held the team together. "Yugi, you would know da most about this place and why da heck are ya carryin' a bone?" Joey asked suddenly.
Yugi held up the scapula. "There are dangerous, wild animals down here. They're starved, so they would eat anything. We need to be careful, so I thought we'd take a weapon." Yugi sighed. "But no one knows a lot about the Caves of Perdition. They were built in the first age, back when Poya didn't keep historical records. There is an exit somewhere, and we'd be able to get out if we could just get to it. But there are going to be a lot of things standing in our way."
An ear-piercing shriek echoed through the corridors. "Somethin' like dat?" asked Joey. Yugi gulped and nodded.
"We should go," Atem said. They ran in down a corridor and tried to avoid the sounds of growls and screeches. At last they found themselves in a room at least three times as large as the others.
"What's this?" Yugi asked. A loud stomping noise interrupted his thoughts. It came closer and closer. Then around the corner of one of the halls trudged a giant, ferocious-looking beast. Its black fur was matted and rank, and gleaming, predatory red eyes shone from its sockets. It reared back and howled, revealing sharp black teeth. There was a dark hole in its abdomen.
Yugi gulped. He knew what that was. It was a creature so horrible that only a few had faced it and lived. Unions and civilians alike were warned to stay away from them with all vigilance. "A Mother Lilitum…" he breathed in shock.
The Mother Lilitum sniffed the air, and looked in their direction. "This ain't good!" Joey yelled, and dove to the side and the beast swiped at them with a gargantuan claw.
Yugi breathed fast. There was no way that he could face something like this. He was a novice. He was the short, skinny kid who was beaten and picked on in high-school. He could never be strong enough to destroy it.
The Mother Lilitum sensed his fear. She roared and rushed over to the boy. "Yugi!" Atem yelled. He could not let his partner die and remember that he had done nothing. He could not live with that. In a split second, he rushed to Yugi's side and pushed him out of the way. The razor-sharp claws meant for Yugi slid into his own stomach.
"Atem!" Yugi exclaimed from the ground. The Mother Lilitum retracted her claws and blood spurted from Atem's mouth. He collapsed to the ground. Yugi choked. It couldn't be real… it couldn't be.
The creature turned back to her original target. She and her children would feast happily today. But Yugi couldn't let Atem's sacrifice be in vain. The beast prepared to strike, and Yugi gripped the human shoulder bone in his hand. As she swiped, Yugi rushed forward with amazing speed and drove the scapula into her jugular.
She shrieked as dark blood gushed from the wound. She held her hands to her neck, trying to dislodge the object, but her claws only made the wound more severe. The beast fell to the ground, never to spawn another Lilitum again.
"Did we win?" Tristan asked. He hadn't seen what happened to Atem. There was no victory here.
Yugi stumbled over to Atem's limb form and knelt. Tears streamed down his face. "What were you thinking!?" he asked in a quiet fury. "You got yourself killed… for a half-breed like me…"
Yugi bent over and placed his head on Atem's blood-stained stomach. Joey was the first to realize. "Oh… no…"
Tea was confused. "What…?" Then she saw it too. "A-Atem?"
Tristan screamed and punched the floor. "It took Atem five thousand years to die and he picks now!?"
Yugi lay in shock on Atem's empty body. Atem was gone. He wasn't going to come back. Tear after tear rolled down Yugi's face, and landed on Atem's gaping wound.
A small cough was heard. Yugi sat up. Atem's chest had just moved. A few more coughs came after, and a wheezing breath. "Atem!?" Yugi asked, shocked.
The ex-pharaoh sat up, taking shaky and rasping breaths. "Yugi?" he asked.
Yugi's breath caught in his chest. "How… how did you…?"
Atem looked down at his stomach, where once before a sucking hole had been. Now there was nothing but blood-stained skin. "Yugi, what happened?" Atem asked. "I don't know… the last thing I remember was being taken to prison." He looked around. "Was I unconscious this whole time?"
Yugi said nothing. He grabbed Atem suddenly. "You're not the type to die, are you?" he laughed while crying.