Chapter Fourteen -- Nightmare Point
"Shadow Exchange."
"What?"
"We can ask Lord Yami to exchange our shadows. For one night you'd bear my sleepless fate, and I'd dream your portentous dream."
"But -- why? Why would you -- do this?" Yugi looked up and tried to read the expression in the Purple Knight's eyes. As always, the spectral glow of the 'eyes' within the knight's helmet stymied him.
"Because, with Lord Yami's help, I can. Because it is so distressing to you. You need a respite from being the one..."
"From being the weakest one," Yugi added bitterly.
"I was going to say from being the one having to bear up under it all," the Purple Knight told him with a note of mild reproof in his voice. "I want to help you, Yugi. Not because you are the Hero, but because you are Yugi. Your concern about these dreams, strong enough to bring you to the notion of hurting yourself by not sleeping, is distressing you so. There's not much I can do." The Purple Knight's lowered head indicated his feelings of helplessness. "So let me do the little that I can, since only I, with Lord Yami's help, can offer you a night free of sleep and dreams." The Purple Knight looked up. "And just so you are aware, there is a benefit for me in this, too. I have not had a single night's sleep since becoming..."
"Let's find Yami," Yugi interrupted. He felt a bit of shame that he'd let himself get so wrapped up in his concerns that he'd forgotten the Purple Knight's condition. He knew the Purple Knight didn't -- couldn't -- sleep. Even if the dream only bided its time and waited for Yugi to sleep again the next night, giving the Purple Knight one night of actual sleep which he'd been deprived of for so long was a good enough effect in and of itself to make the whole idea worthwhile. That the Purple Knight was kind enough to accept Yugi's nightmare --if it should happen to descend upon him during that one night of blissful sleep, reminded Yugi that the Purple Knight, for all his fearsome size and appearance, was one of the kindest beings he'd met since starting this journey.
Yami's touch of magic tingled a little, and the shadow Yugi cast on the ground was far more massive than any he'd cast before, but other than that, he felt no different. It was amusing to see how small his shadow appeared when attached to the Purple Knight. When night fell, Yugi didn't feel the least dulling of his senses toward sleep. He had spent an entire night up before, waiting to watch a cluster of shooting stars with his friends back home, once, but it was a novelty to not feel the pull of sleep at all.
"Come on," Yami whispered. He touched Yugi on the shoulder and tossed his head toward where the Purple Knight's helmet -- or rather his head -- dropped and nodded. Yugi realized the massive knight was falling asleep.
"But," Yugi whispered back. "That can't be comfortable!" The Purple Knight leaned over the arm of one of the chairs in the room. Yami smiled and gestured. The chair softened and spread into a large, flat surface gently taking the dozing knight into a more conventional sleeping position. Yugi blinked and saw the new shape for what it was -- a massive bed. Only then did he remember they were in Yami's shadow-tent.
"I should go and find something to do, so you can get some rest..." Yugi started dubiously. Suddenly, being awake all night while everyone else was sleeping seemed a rather un-fun prospect.
"Don't be absurd. I'll keep you company," Yami said.
"But..."
"I'm not to the point that the Purple Knight is, but my need for sleep is very slight. Besides, do you really expect me to believe you don't want to spend the night with me?" Yami lowered his chin with the last statement. His eyes flashed red and the shadows around him suddenly deepened.
"Oh, is it Lord Yami the faux vampire, again?" Yugi fought to maintain a slightly bored tone in his voice, but a slight tremor gave him away.
"That depends. Do you like undivided attention from a faux vampire?"
Yugi didn't know how to answer that. After a moment Yami grinned, letting him off the hook, grabbed his elbow, and pulled him outside. "Wha-what?!"
"Let's see how you do in a sword fight at night -- in the darkness and shadows. I don't think Joey's gone to bed, yet."
He hadn't. Fighting at night, especially when Yami took away the helpful shadow-sight, was quite a bit different than fighting during the day. Joey's magic, focused on such a small scale, invoked a safe zone around their battle field so that neither one could get hurt. Seto watched from the sidelines for a while before quietly leaving, presumably to go to sleep. Joey, yawning toward the end, asked if they were finished, as he was tired, too. Yugi and Yami stopped their sparring, then, and simply observed as the quiet hours of the night slipped by. The Drakes, Dragons, Knights, and Shadows protecting their camp exchanged their shifts throughout the night so that the guards were always alert.
A few hours toward morning even Yami succumbed to sleep. He'd leaned companionably against Yugi's side a hours before. Gradually, his voice softened as they talked, and their conversation slowed. His head dropped softly to Yugi's shoulder. Yugi didn't mind. He shifted his position gently so that Yami's neck was more straight, otherwise he reasoned Yami would get a crick in his neck or back. Once again he was struck by how young Yami seemed when he was sleeping, and the tension dropped from his face.
Yugi's mind turned toward the events of the night. He couldn't sleep, his body didn't want to, but his mind wanted to reflect on the events of the day, and the night he'd just spent. The Purple Knight's kindness touched him deeply. So did Yami's. He found himself wondering how he would have answered Yami's question if he'd been pressed to do so. Yami, faux vampire or no, had long since ceased to scare him. He wondered when the eerie glowing red eyes of the Lord of Blood and Shadows had stopped being so terrifying. They were still startling, but Yugi hadn't been frightened of, or by, Yami for a long time. Maybe that was it. Yami could still look like some sort of nightmarish vampire lord -- when he wanted to -- but he no longer acted like one.
Perhaps it was because he'd known Yami the longest, but of the Three Kindly Lords, though he considered each a friend, he was closest to Yami. No, it was nothing as simple as the duration of their interaction compared with the others. He was close to Yami in a way that he wasn't close to the others. His friendship with the Lord of Shadows was deeper than the other friendships he'd made on this journey. He pondered that, while the same Lord of Shadows slept with his head carefully cradled against his chest. Yugi sighed softly, and wondered what the new day had in store for them all.
– – – – –
"A dragon of bone and shadows, a white one with icy blue eyes, and a black dragon with fire for a soul are trapped in stone." Everyone in the room was silent as the Purple Knight spoke of the dream he'd had the night before. "I somehow sensed that it was imperative that these dragons be freed from their stony imprisonment to fight against the Lord Dragon of Blackness and Chaos."
"But -- how?" Yugi wondered.
"I heard -- a voice saying 'The Dragons Gain' as the dream faded, and I saw -- the Point?" The Purple Knight's voice softened and reflected his uncertainty about these two facts.
"'The Dragons Gain' -- I've heard that in my dreams before," Yugi admitted. "So I'm sure you really did experience the dream I was supposed to, to show me the next step."
"The Point." The White Knight cupped his chin. "It hasss been yearsss sssince I've heard of it. Do you think it isss ssstill there?"
"There's no reason to believe that it isn't," the Purple Knight replied.
Yami planted himself squarely in front of his Guardian. "Stop being so cryptic. Tell us everything about the Point!"
"Of course, my lord. The Point is a place, at the center of the lands. The Point is where each of the three lands -- yours of Shadow, Lord Seto's of Ice, and Lord Joey's of Fire -- meet at a single spot. It has been surmised that long ago, when perhaps the lords' interactions with each other were even more fractious, this place was reserved from a piece of each land to serve as the ultimate neutral ground between the lands, where no lord's power could overwhelm another -- much less both of the other lords combined. There is supposed to be some sort of structure there."
"Even more fractious?" Joey wondered. "That's really hard to believe!"
Seto and Yami both spared a moment to glare impatiently at the Lord of Fire. He just grinned at them. "See?"
"Do you think that's where these dragons are?" Yugi wondered. "The ones trapped in stone?"
"There's only one way to find out," Yami realized.
"Yeah."
Yugi was quiet, more quiet that usual, on the road. Yami slowed his steps a bit so that he naturally fell to the back of the group. Seto, as usual, was as the head of the line. Not only were his strides so much longer than anyone, other than the Purple Knight, but he walked fast, too. Yami admitted to himself that the Lord of Dragons did try to slow down so that Yugi wasn't having to run to keep pace, but he's often forget and charge ahead at his normal speed. Even Yami found it difficult to keep up with Seto at times.
As he expected, Yugi fell back, more comfortable with the somewhat less exhausting pace.
"What's wrong, Hero?" Yami asked quietly. Yugi's head snapped around and he glared at Yami. Yami smirked at him.
"Don't you start calling me that!" Yugi grumbled. "It's not at all friendly."
"Be that as it may, I can tell something's bugging you. Even if I missed it as one of the Three Kindly Lords who's supposed to help the Hero," Yami grinned at him again. "I'd catch it as your friend. So, what's up?"
"I feel a bit -- ashamed," Yugi admitted quietly. "Selfish, even. The Purple Knight took that dream for me, and it was the first time he'd been able to sleep in so long, and the dream must have made it awful, and..."
"I figured it was something like that. I had a chance to talk with him, before we left camp. The dream, which has become so terrifying for you, was not awful for him. Your dream, filled with images and foreboding that upset you -- the dream that seems to be tailor made to upset you -- didn't have the same effect on someone who wasn't you. For him, it was just information only. And --" Yami reached out to take Yugi's shoulder to stop him and face him. "Nowhere in the dream was the place we are going to actually called 'The Point'. Since you've never heard of it before -- none of us has -- only someone like him, who has the knowledge of this place could get us heading in the right direction so quickly."
"But..."
Yami sighed. "I think, if you had dreamed it, we'd have to back-track and go visit the Water Sage to figure out what the image and sense of the place is, instead of just knowing. That would delay us, and who knows what that delay would have cost us. Not to mention, I want to put off, or avoid altogether, any meeting with the Water Sage."
Yugi stared up at Yami. There was something so dark in his voice. "What -- happened?" he asked softly.
"I wasted too much time chasing after what was never mine," Yami replied his voice filling with a soft regret. "If he'd spoken more clearly about which lordship was to be mine, I never would have gone to the Dragon Lands or the Land of Fire. Perhaps the previous Lord of Shadows would have still been alive, and the Cold Shadows still controlled. If it had been that way..." Yami stopped, and looked for a very long moment at the back of his Guardian Knight, as the rest of the group kept walking. "He was such a splendid friend," he added in a whisper. "And my actions, and the delay, cost him his life."
Yugi shook his head. "That's not how he sees it!"
"It's how I see it. I don't know what I will do if I have to meet the Water Sage face-to-face again." Yami shook off his black mood and sighed. He offered Yugi a tremulous grin. "Be all that as it may, you should not worry that your gift to the Purple Knight went awry. He was quite happy this morning to have been able to sleep for once. The dream didn't trouble him in the way you are worrying about."
"It wasn't a gift," Yugi said so softly Yami almost missed it. "I just didn't want to dream. It was entirely selfish on my part."
"Well, then, be selfish more often!" Yami's grin lit up his entire face, and lifted Yugi's mood as well. "You truly must be the Hero if your selfishness carries such wonderful benefits!" He punctuated his obviously back-handed compliment with a light punch on Yugi's arm, and ran toward the others. "Do come along, Yugi. There's hero-ing to be done!"
– – – – –
Yugi stared at the massive construct in front of him. There was no way the thing had been crafted by nature -- the hands of man, and perhaps the use of magic, had made it.
The Point. Such a simple title, and yet such a perfect one. Situated on the top of a mountain, a mountain that served as the boundary marker for the one place where all three Lands touched, the Point reached up from the artificially flattened peak and challenged the sky. There were three sides of uniform gray, (perhaps it was stone, but Yugi wouldn't swear to it) one side facing each of the Lands as if staring back with an ageless, impassive aspect.
The Point was a monument of some sort, Yugi reasoned. He wasn't sure where that conviction came from, but it was strong. He stepped back and looked at the Point as a whole. His hand dropped to the Pendant hanging from his neck.
The Pendant hung from its base, which meant the point where each of its four sides met angled down. The Point, even though it had only three sides, was the same sort of shape, with the sides meeting in the same way, at a single point. Both the Pendant, and the Point were, in fact, in the shape of a pyramid.
He wondered about the 'missing' fourth side, even as his mind latched onto the connection and began to worry at the puzzle it presented to him. As he examined it closer, he realized that the side of the Point looming above him wasn't completely featureless. In front of him, etched, or carved, or otherwise worked into the sloping side, there were a strange series of marks -- odd curves flowing one into the other serving as the base for a long, thin, straight line that pointed straight up.
There was another shape etched, carved, into this monument that Yugi recognized instantly. The void in the smoothness of this side of the Point he was unwillingly acquainted with as it was shaped like his Pendant. He glanced at the faces of the three lords and their guardians before slipping the chain over his head and lining the Pendant up with the socket that seemed to be designed for it. He pushed it easily into place. Nothing happened.
Sighing gently in relief that the Point didn't fall apart on him, or open up, or otherwise present some sort of impossible challenge, Yugi regarded the far more shallow swirly lines that were the base for the faint indentation reaching upward along the side of the Point. The odd marks seemed somehow familiar to him. Not instantly familiar as the socket for his Pendant had been, but still...
He turned his head sharply and looked at Joey.
"What?" The Lord of Fire stiffened under Yugi's regard.
Yugi smiled to reassure him. "Doesn't the second set of marks kinda remind you of the Flameblade? If you were to place it flat against the side of this thing?"
Joey stepped closer. "Yeah, it kinda does." He took the Flameblade, glanced uncertainly at his comrades, and placed it against the sloping wall of the Point. That is, he tried to. It wouldn't line up. Joey's faced flushed red at his continued inability to simply place his sword along the matching indentations in the wall in front of him. It wasn't until his sword slid, seemingly under its own power, from his grasp and clattered to the ground that they realized some sort of magic was in play.
Yugi bent down to retrieve the sword, and offered it back to Joey. "No, you try," Joey commanded. "It doesn't want to line up for me."
Yugi shrugged. Certain he was going to drop the sword too, he lined it up and placed it along the pattern in the side of the Point. To his surprise, it stayed. Except for the merest hint of the shape of the sword etched in the stone, there was nothing to hold the weapon to the side of the Point. It was as if Yugi had attached it with some sort of fixative.
"Yeah, I figured at much. Magic." Joey glared at his sword. "Now what?"
Yugi stopped gaping at where the Flameblade somehow managed to stay put against the force of gravity and considered the problem in front of him. No, not a problem -- a puzzle. Both problems and puzzles had to be solved, true, but puzzles were more fun and far less scary than problems were.
His Pendant, a different shape for a pyramid, rested fully in its socket in the Point. Lord Joey's Flameblade -- somehow -- stayed put in the slight etching in its shape just above it. The sword had to be placed hilt down. Something seemed missing. Something tugged at the back of Yugi's mind.
Three. Everything was coming at him in threes. Three lands, three lords, three knights, three swords, three sides to the Point... Yugi found his hand had crept, seemingly on its own, to touch the oddly soothing smooth shape of the Hero's Heartstone. Threes... And the blade of the sword seemed to be pointing up...
"Can you give me a lift up there?" Yugi asked the White Knight. He looked up at the top of the Point. If he was right...
The White Knight smiled his still-disconcertingly toothy grin, stooped, and took Yugi into his arms. It took only a few powerful flaps of his wings to lift them above the Point. Yugi leaned carefully over, so as to not upset their balance, and noted with satisfaction that he had been right. The Point did not come to a complete point at the top. There was a slight concavity instead. He slipped the chain of the Hero's Heartstone over his head. Responsive as ever, the White Knight carefully maneuvered them closer, close enough for Yugi to place the gemstone into the space that seemed to be a perfect fit for it -- and the Point was now a perfect point.
The entire Point lit with brilliant purple energy. The White Knight instinctively lifted them higher, while on the ground the remaining Knights and the two of the lords backpedaled out of the way. Lord Seto sprouted wings and sprang into the air instead.
All watched as the energy pulsed from the base toward the top three times. The glow seemed to brighten along the blade of the sword, but that was all Yugi was able to notice before a powerful red beam erupted from the center of the Hero's Heartstone and stabbed through the air in the direction they had come -- toward the Warrior Lands.
The red beam pulsed three times along that path and then the Point, the entire structure, returned to normal. Yugi blinked uncertainly at it a few times. The magic, the purple of the Point and the red beam had been bright, but not quite blindingly bright. He reached a hand toward the Heartstone, only to have it smacked away, while the White Knight lifted them higher in suddenly alarm.
Yugi turned his head to see Lord Seto's finest blue glare impaling him while the lord hovered nearby.
"Are you an idiot? We don't know what energy was, or if it's safe!"
"It's safe," Yugi replied. "The Heartstone would never hurt me."
"Oh, really? And on whose authority do you have this certain knowledge?" Seto lifted a highly skeptical eyebrow at him.
"It's the Hero's Heartstone," Yugi said. "It won't hurt me. Besides, it's already saved me several times. Or, are you forgetting that in order to recover that," Yugi indicated Seto's Frostblade. "I had to endure your strongest attack? I'm certain it's the Heartstone that protected me."
Lord Seto backed off then, curtly nodding that Yugi could do as he wished. Despite his words, Yugi's hand trembled as he reached toward the gem, but nothing happened when he retrieved it. The White Knight landed them at the base of the Point again.
Halfway toward lifting the Heartstone to place its chain around his neck again, he was struck by a sudden thought. He lifted it over his head instead.
Immediately, a red beam, not quite as intense as before, flared from the gem in his hand and pointed into the Warrior Lands again.
"I think that's our next destination," Yugi said.
"Oh, joy," Seto groused. "Back into the land of belches and farts."
Yugi laughed. "Oh, it's not that bad!"
"Yeah, Yuge, sometimes it really is," Joey said. "Wanna get my Flameblade off of your weird-ass monument?"
"Why do you think it's my 'weird-ass monument'?" Yugi wondered. He nevertheless reached for the sword still unexplainably fixed to the side of the Point. It offered no resistance, requiring only the smallest effort to retrieve it. "Didn't the Knights say the Point was built for you 'Kindly Lords'?" Yugi handed the Flameblade back to Joey.
"Yeah, it might have been, but I'm sure it never did anything like that before!"
Yugi had to admit Joey had a point. Or maybe he had a Point -- one he didn't really understand, just as he had a Heartstone, a Pendant, and companions all helping him unravel a destiny he never asked for, but got saddled with anyway.
"Well, let's see where that red light leads us, now," Yugi finally said. Almost without thinking about it, he pulled the Pendant from the socket in the side of the point, and settled it back in its place hanging from his neck.
– – – – –
Author's notes –
Those paying attention will realize that this chapter, Nightmare Point, is not the one I promised back in December. I struggled for a while as you can see, but I hope it was worth the wait. The next chapter is firmly in the works and should be ready to post soonish.
Next chapter teaser – Chapter Fifteen – For an Honor Greater than Ourselves
Reviews, comments and constructive criticisms are always welcome. Please feel free to PM if you see something awkward that needs to be clarified or fixed.