Chapter 11: A Trade to End All
Atemu struggled to get free from Dartz's cold grasp as the Warlock pulled him further and further down into the ocean and further and further away from his love back on the ship. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you recall, transforming from one thing into another is very trying on one's body, so after two transformations in three days, Atemu felt as weak as a paper doll. Nevertheless he, as the stubborn prince he was, was not about to give up and let Dartz see him hopeless.
"Let…go...of me!" the merprince hissed, fruitlessly trying to pull away from Dartz.
"You listen to him!" Bakura growled as he and Joey swam toward the two. "Or else I'll show you what I do to people who mess with friends of my Aibou!"
Then, out of nowhere, Rex and Weevil appeared and restrained Atemu with their eel tails, shocking him with painful electricity.
"Now, now, you two," Dartz laughed scornfully, "would you rather your friend's soul be mine…or would you rather him die?"
Both Bakura and Joey looked ready to rip the Warlock to shreds, but they knew they had no choice but to stand down.
The turquoise-tailed merman smirked at the two, before facing Atemu and grabbing his chin to make him look at him.
"You made a deal with me, little blackfish, and by that deal, your soul now belongs to me…fortunately for you, it's not you I'm after."
Atemu's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"
Dartz's smirk broadened. "I've got a much bigger fish to fry than you, little prince…"
"You are the one about to get fried, Dartz," snapped a voice behind him.
It was King Aknamkanon. The green magical staff in his hand was glowing to accent his anger, and aligned behind him with various weapons ready to fight was the High Court.
"Father!" Atemu breathed in relief.
"Seto!" said Joey, also sounding relieved.
The blue-tailed High Priest swam over to Joey.
"Are you alright?" he inquired seriously.
Joey nodded. "I'm fine."
Aknamkanon pointed his staff at Dartz, his eyes flashing dangerously.
"Release my son at once," he demanded in a very cold, quiet voice.
Dartz laughed psychotically; the King looked irritated at his amusement to all this, but it was apparent he also was a bit confused.
"King Aknamkanon, I'm surprised at you," Dartz sneered. "I made an agreement with your precious son…and agreements must be honored, particularly when they are ones royalty has made. I agreed to make him a human, and if he did not get his little human Aibou to kiss him by sunset, his soul would be mine…and he did not."
"Father…I'm sorry," Atemu whispered helplessly. "I…I didn't know what else to do…"
Aknamkanon's face did not reflect any anger toward his son; if anything, it was guilt.
"I know," he murmured. "You did have no other choice…had I not lost my temper and destroyed your things…you would never have accepted Dartz's aid."
"It is not your fault, Your Majesty," Seto protested. "I was the one who told you-"
"You were simply concerned for Atemu," Aknamkanon interrupted quietly. "My concern faded away as soon as I heard humans were involved…I let my anger take over…and for that, I am sorry, Atemu."
He faced the Warlock of Orikalkos once more. "Dartz…you like making deals. Take my soul in Atemu's place."
"NO!" the High Priests and Joey yelled in unison.
"FATHER, YOU CAN'T!" Atemu shouted.
Dartz smirked, his eyes bright with triumph. "I accept your proposition."
He snapped his fingers, and purple-black bubbles surrounded them as they had with Atemu and Dartz when the merprince had first agreed to his terms three days ago.
"FATHER!" Atemu yelled, struggling against Rex and Weevil's hold. "FATHER!"
When the bubbles finally cleared, Aknamkanon's body lay lifeless on the seafloor, and a stone tablet with an image of a trapped Aknamkanon stood behind Dartz.
'The stone tablets from his castle…' Atemu realized, '…they're…soul tablets!'
"At last…" Dartz whispered, his eyes full of hunger as he took the magical staff from the lifeless Aknamkanon, "…at long last…it's mine!"
He shot a scornful glance over at Atemu.
"Oh…a deal's a deal, little blackfish…you're off the hook…thank you ever so much for your cooperation."
Rex and Weevil released Atemu, who immediately swam over to the King's soul tablet.
"Father," the merprince murmured, his crimson eyes full of pain.
As he studied his father's face, Atemu suddenly realized that crystal tears were trickling down Aknamkanon's stone cheeks from his carved eyes.
Tears came to Atemu's eyes as well, but they weren't merely tears of sadness; they were tears of fury.
"You…" he growled, his vision shifting toward Dartz, "…you…YOU BASTARD!"
His physical weakness forgotten, Atemu lunged for the Warlock, but Dartz blasted him away from him with the royal magical staff.
"Your Highness!" cried Isis, swimming over and immediately helping him up.
The other members of the Court, as well as Bakura and Joey, swam protectively in front of the merprince.
"You want the prince," Mahaado challenged bravely, "you have to go through us first."
Dartz sneered. "Very well, then; sacrifice your own souls…it won't change anything."
Karim and Shada swam toward the Warlock, swords raised and yelling battle cries, but Dartz beat them both with two small blasts from his staff, and their souls were trapped by two more stone tablets that appeared beside their limp bodies.
Each of the Court members tried their hand after Karim and Shada, only to fall at Dartz's more powerful magic.
"FATHER!" Seto shouted as Aknadin was blasted into the side of a cave
He rushed to his father's aid.
"Father, lie still…I'll try a spell Shada-"
"No," Aknadin rasped, moving his head to one side in an attempt to shake his head 'no.' "If I am to lose my soul in the service of my brother and nephew…so be it."
"But-" Seto immediately protested.
"We are High Priests, Seto…" Aknadin interrupted him faintly, his eyes struggling to stay open, "…our souls…and lives…were meant to be second…to the royal heirs."
And with those words said, Seto's father's eyes slid closed at last and his soul left his body to be etched in stone.
Seto's eyes filled with angry tears as he looked back at Dartz. He was so furious, he didn't even attempt to use a weapon; he only charged toward Dartz, his blue eyes flashing. It took three blasts for Dartz to finally get him down, but when the determined Seto was down, he was really down.
"SETO!" Joey shouted, swimming over to the lifeless body of the blue-tailed merman.
A stone tablet behind his body now held the image of a furious, yet grieved, Seto, and Joey's heart ached at the look in the etched Seto's eyes. He held the blue-tailed merman's body close to him, trying to hold back tears.
"No…" the blond whispered weakly, his warm brown eyes filling with tears as well. "Seto…no…"
"Accept it, you three, you've lost," scorned Dartz. "The King is gone…the Royal Court has fallen…and you all will be easy pickings. You may as well take your lives and swim away while you can…of course, you won't last long no matter what you do, so what does it matter?"
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a harpoon whizzed through the water and slammed into Dartz's arm. The Warlock roared in pain, yanking the harpoon out of his freely bleeding arm in fury.
"Who are you to interfere with-?"
He stopped his furious demand abruptly at the sight of a merman with narrowed violet eyes, wet tricolor hair falling onto his shoulders and a pure white fishtail where his legs should've been.
"Yugi!" Joey realized.
"Aibou!" Atemu cried, confused, relieved and worried, all at the same time.
Ryou swam along behind Yugi as the two rushed to join Joey, Bakura and Atemu; they were stopped, however, when Rex and Weevil obscured their way, their eel tails sparking with deadly electricity.
But Yugi was not about to let electricity keep him away from Atemu, so he did the first thing he could think of. He leapt onto Rex and began pulling his hair while continuously whacking Weevil on the head with his new tail.
"STAY…AWAY…FROM…MY…PARTNER…YOU…LOUSY…EELS!"
Ryou and Joey didn't know whether to admire Yugi or think he was crazy. Bakura looked ready to laugh at how well an innocent young man like Yugi was handling Dartz's two henchmen. Atemu was grinning proudly. Dartz at first looked dumbstruck, before he started barking at his eel-tailed minions.
"You idiots, don't let a naïve human like that restrain you! Get rid of him!"
Rex and Weevil struggled to obey Dartz's orders, but they just couldn't get their tails around Yugi well enough so they could shock him.
"Fine!" snapped Dartz, losing his temper and pointing the royal magic staff at Yugi. "I'll destroy him myself!"
"NO!" Atemu yelled.
He swam so fast into Dartz that he was able to grab the staff in the Warlock's hands and redirect his magic blast away from Yugi and off a cave wall so it hit both Rex and Weevil, making them explode in tiny bursts of green and purple magic.
"No!" Dartz cried when he realized he'd destroyed his own henchmen.
Atemu grabbed Yugi's hand and pulled him toward the surface, desperate to get his aibou away from danger, and Bakura, Ryou and Joey (who was pulling the soulless Seto with him on his back) swam as fast as they could after him.
Dartz's breathing became slow, loud and enraged. His green and gold eyes glowed with bright magic as he roared wrathfully,
"ATEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEMUUUUUUUUUUUU!"
The Warlock's roar made the waves at the ocean's surface crash violently against the beach just as they would if a giant hurricane were about to arrive and flood the entire world. Atemu paid no mind to the turmoil, however, as he and his friends shoved their heads above the water.
"Aibou…how did you…?"
"The puzzle's wish," Yugi explained quickly. "I wanted to help you."
Atemu put his hands on Yugi's shoulders firmly, his eyes shining with worry. "Aibou, you must get out of here-"
The merprince and Yugi were thrown back away from one another as a powerful blast of water splashed upwards between them. Many other spinning water blasts followed, making almost pillars of whirlpools that trapped Atemu in their grasp, separating him from Yugi and his friends.
"ATEMU!" Yugi cried, struggling to reach his love.
"AIBOU!" Atemu shouted, trying fruitlessly to swim around and past the whirlpool pillars. "AIBOU…JOEY, RYOU…GET AWAY BEFORE- AHHH!"
A huge black claw had reached out of the water, snatched Atemu and raised him into the air as the black reptilian body connected to the claw rose out of the ocean's depths.
"No," said Bakura, his lavender eyes wide in disbelief. "No, it…it can't be…!"
"The Great Leviathan," Joey murmured. "I thought…it was just a legend…"
Almost all merpeople did…until that day.
The Leviathan's eyes were a dark purple that glowed menacingly down at the merprince, and on its forehead was what looked like a purple and black figurine with blue-green hair that had its limbs melted and sewed into the Leviathan's skin. It took Atemu quite a while before he realized the "figurine" was Dartz, and that he had fused himself with the reptile as to increase his power.
"YOU PITIFUL FOOL," Dartz's voice thundered down at Atemu. "YOU THINK YOU CAN STAND UP AGAINST ME? ME, THE MOST POWERFUL WARLOCK IN THE ENTIRE OCEAN?"
Sunken ships of all eras returned to the surface from the depths that they had sunken to amongst purple and green lightning from the Leviathan's mouth."I CAN REVERSE TIME AND SPACE…I CAN DESTROY AND CREATE ANYTHING…I CAN CHANGE YOUR PITIFUL KINGDOM INTO A REALM OF MY CHOOSING…OCEAN AND LAND ALIKE ARE MINE TO COMMAND…ALL WILL BOW DOWN AND BEG FOR MY MERCY!"
The Leviathan's sharp claw tightened around Atemu, and he cried out in pain as the sharp talons made slashing cuts on his tan arms.
"Atemu!" Yugi whispered, his eyes filled with fear.
He looked at the sunken ships now floating above the water, and in an instant, he made up his mind.
The white-tailed human-turned-merman dove beneath the water and swam underneath the whirlpool pillars so that he was next to a ship with a merman figurehead holding a large wooden trident that branched out in front of the ship like a spear. Jumping as high as he could out of the water until he could grab onto the edge of the ship, Yugi pulled himself on board and flapped over toward the helm of the ship.
Yugi grabbed onto the steering wheel of the ship and struggled to turn the ship around so the merman's trident was facing the Great Leviathan.
"WITH THE LEVIATHAN FUSED TO ME, I AM INVINCIBLE!" Dartz's voice continued, not taking any notice of Yugi steering the ship towards him. "WITH ALL OF THE SOULS I'VE COLLECTED IN ALL THE CENTURIES I HAVE LIVED, WE TOGETHER HAVE ALL THE ENERGY WE NEED TO DESTROY THE ENTIRE WORLD!"
As the ship made its way through the crashing waves, Yugi suddenly found himself becoming very, very thirsty, as if he had been journeying through the desert and hadn't had anything to drink in days. He was not a natural merman, so the King of Games couldn't have known that his scales were slowly drying out. Even if he had, however, he was not going to let Dartz kill Atemu.
'I'm coming, Atemu,' he thought determinedly. 'Hold on…I'm coming…'
His vision was flickering in front of his eyes and he struggled to breath steadily, but he knew, no matter what happened to him, he was the only one that could save Atemu now…and that was what mattered.
"AND THE FIRST THING I WILL DO WITH MY POWER," Dartz's booming voice stated as the Leviathan's eyes narrowed evilly at Atemu, "IS OBLITERATE YOU ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
Yugi's violet eyes narrowed, holding onto the wheel even tighter to try and steady both himself and the ship.
"NO…YOU…WON'T!" he shouted as loud as he could as the wooden trident of the ship's figurehead finally punctured the Leviathan's chest.
Both the Leviathan and Dartz screamed in violent spasms of pain. The Leviathan's claw released Atemu and the merprince fell back into the water below. The black sea serpent writhed, trying to pull away from the wooden trident cutting into its body, before it slowly sank into the water, falling down, down, down, down into the dark depths of death.
And unbeknownst to Yugi, Atemu and the other mermen near the surface, the soul tablets were crumbling as the trapped souls returned to their bodies. The Royal Court and King alike gripped their heads as if they were in pain, looking around at each other and smiling, for they knew that Dartz had been defeated.
Seto also slowly opened his eyes, to find himself on Joey's back. Smiling slightly and deciding not to make any movement for fear of the blond letting go of him, he lay still and enjoyed his small stretch of time so close to Joey.
Yugi's mouth went up in a weak smile despite his head throbbing and his vision failing.
"He's…safe…" he whispered faintly.
And he collapsed onto the deck of the ship.