"No no no no no!" Hikari growled.
It was a genuine, low, throaty sort of growl, absolutely bestial in nature, as though run through a horror movie voice filter to create the protests of a demon. Bakura had never seen Hikari's light look so dim before, save the night he'd burnt himself to a crisp.
"This is a terrible idea! You need to stop this right away!"
Bakura shook his head, still grinning. "Spooky. But sorry. No go. He already knows I can do this stuff, or at least have the potential to. He saw the eyes, the mark. And he knows things that I don't. I need to do this."
"But you said you would be helping with rituals. How do you know he's not just using you to feed the shadows? It's common enough. Shadowtouched have a long history of using others to empower them. There's just not enough for one body to give in some of these rituals. But with two..." Hikari shivered. "Who knows what evil things he can pull off?"
"It's not all evil-"
"Please," Hikari sighed. He drooped down, hovering mere inches above the carpet. "Please, don't. I beg you. You're already doing more than you should be. Your eyes are proof enough of this. I don't need to leave the house this badly. Too much further, and your soul will be unwelcome in both heaven and hell."
Bakura's lips twisted. "Hmm. That's not something you mentioned before."
Hikari jerked. "I remembered something!" he cried. "I remembered! I did! I did!" He began to bounce left and right.
Bakura stifled a snigger. "Well, as wonderful as it is to see you like this, I think I'll take my leave now."
"Wait!" Hikari cried to Bakura's back. "Bakura, wait!"
He smirked as he closed the door behind him.
He slunk into the classroom with a small flicker of his eyes.
There was a trick Bakura learned long ago, when he was about thirteen. There were times when one needed to see everything at once, without betraying one's own interest. It was a useful little trick. It had already come in handy many times, and now was no exception.
His eyes, dulled to rust by the dark power, ran over the entirety of the room with a quick twitch.
The desk in the far front corner sat empty; Naraki-sensei wasn't in yet. Half of the desks were filled with sleepy-eyed students conversing in low, burbling tones. Ryou Yamata's desk still sat noticeably empty. As for Yugi, he was half-asleep at his own desk, his head canted and weighing heavily on the palm of his open hand. He yawned and slumped further down.
Bakura pursed his lips. If only the brat could have taken a sick day. But Yugi didn't look up when Bakura sat down.
Naraki smirked only once when he entered the room, so briefly that it was scarcely noticeable. He didn't say a thing about yesterday as he started class and worked his way through the first lesson of the day.
It wasn't until after lunch that Bakura got any sign of acknowledgment of yesterday. As Naraki returned graded assignments, Bakura noticed a small slip of paper tucked between a few other sheets. It had an address and a time and nothing else.
Bakura glanced up at the desk at the front of the room. Naraki's face split into a cheshire grin. Bakura resisted narrowing his eyes, choosing instead to fold the slip of paper in half and then quarters and tuck it away in a pocket with a half nod. Seven o'clock at what was most likely Naraki's own home, if Bakura was right about the area of town.
In his gut, he felt a twinge of distrust. His instincts had never let him down before. He would have to be careful.
Yugi tapped him on the shoulder after class.
As he turned, he looked Yugi over once more with a quick flicker of eyes. He didn't seem like much for a shadowwatcher.
"What do you want, Mouto?"
"You look like you're feeling better today," Yugi said with a smile. "I was wondering, after class tomorrow, would you want to-"
"Don't you have detention to go to right now?" Bakura interrupted. He narrowed his eyes, and Yugi sighed.
"Yes. That is true. See you tomorrow, Kurokawa-kun," Yugi muttered, gathering his things. Bakura smiled as he started to go, but Yugi paused.
"Why do you hate me so much?" Yugi asked. His fingers wrung out the air between them in a little flick. Yesterday's conversation with Naraki was still fresh in his mind, but there were many more reasons than that.
Bakura sneered. "A little prat like you? I hate your kind. You think you can fix people who don't need fixing and befriend people who don't want friends. We're different people, Mouto. That's all there is to it."
Yugi frowned. "Interesting," he said after a long pause. "That's… it?"
"That's it," Bakura said.
Yugi nodded. "I see. You know, contrary to what you might think, the world doesn't hate you, and you don't need to hate the world either. Just… remember that. Please," Yugi said. His violet eyes widened imploringly, flickering to red for the barest instant.
"Detention?" Bakura reminded him, and he shooed Yugi away with his fingers.
"Bye, Kurokawa-kun."
Naraki flicked his fingers at Yugi's back as he walked out of the room. "Kurokawa," he said. "Come here."
"What?" Bakura asked. He leaned against Naraki's desk.
"I want to show you something. Watch," he said, gesturing at the door. It closed. He drew out a circular wooden dish with a shallow bottom and a crystal flask from his bottom drawer. Inside the flask, a translucent liquid sloshed with a faintly golden gleam.
He unstoppered the flask and dumped it into the bowl.
"And this is…?" Bakura asked.
"I said watch. This will be your first lesson. I heard you and the brat talking. You could have handled it better, but it could have been worse too. Let's just see…" He waved his hand over the bowl.
Bakura leaned in. At first, he could only see the mirror-like reflections of himself and Naraki. But the image wavered as Naraki continued to move his hand in circles above it. Their faces faded, replaced by what resembled the school's hallway. Yugi came into sight.
"What!?" Bakura said, and Naraki chuckled.
"Scrying. Planted a bug on the kid. It'll only last a few more minutes but… Aha," he said, as Yugi looked left and right evasively. Yugi ducked into a supply closet and closed the door right behind him.
"But how-"
"Shhh. Just watch for now. I can explain later," Naraki said. "You'll understand everything soon enough."
Yugi checked the door knob and wedged a broom under it so that it wouldn't be able to open from the outside. After this was in place, he shrugged his shoulders and stretched.
"Okay," he said. "You're clear."
"What is he doing…?" Bakura asked, only to be shushed by Naraki. Bakura leaned in closer.
Mist gathered in the room, causing the image to ripple faintly. Inside of the brewing fog, something appeared to be gathering, coalescing into a dark shape lurking within.
Yugi banished the mist with a wave of his hand. A man was left standing behind him.
"How?!" Bakura asked. Naraki shushed him once more.
"Yugi," the man intoned. His voice was pitched a bit deeper than Yugi's, but they could have passed for siblings. Twins, even, if not for the stark difference in their heights. Both had the same strange, spiked and multicolored hair. The man's skin, however, was slightly darker, as though colored by the kiss of the sun.
Bakura peered closer into the bowl. It was just as he thought. The man's eyes were the same shade of red as Yugi's had been a few days ago.
Curious.
Both leaned against the shelving units inside of the utility closet, choosing walls opposite one another. Yugi fiddled with a spray bottle of glass cleaner.
"I don't know what to think, Atem. A part of me wants to just say he's the one we've been looking for, but some things just aren't adding up," Yugi said, twisting the nozzle first one direction, then the next.
The man shrugged. "He did reek of magic the day after your classmate vanished. Then the next day, he did not. He might have been masking himself, especially if he suspects us."
"I know that," Yugi insisted. "But it doesn't necessarily prove anything. Uninitiated fluctuate all the time. It doesn't mean he's come to terms with his abilities. He could know nothing and might never figure it out."
"What's stopping you? A more direct approach would finish this today. He'll be one of us or dead by morning."
"Exactly. If we're wrong and he manages to survive, it might ruin his life," Yugi said hollowly. He set the bottle aside. His foot scuffed along the floor, narrowly missing a broomstick. "We can't decide for him like this. If he's just a mortal, he deserves his quiet life. He doesn't need to be burdened with this."
The man's hard expression softened to something more tender. "Do you regret what you have done?"
"Never," Yugi said firmly. "I want to help. But rushing this won't help anything. We do this right, by the the books. Anyway. I wanted to tell you, Kurokawa-kun wasn't lying when he said he didn't like me for those petty reasons. But he was when he said that those reasons were the only ones."
"So he knows about us and distrusts us?" Atem surmised.
Yugi shook his head. "Again, not necessarily. We know that Kurokawa-kun is, at the very least, an uninitiate. Even if he hasn't come into his powers, he's been exposed to the darkness, knowingly or not. His past is stained by it. That kind of thing… It traumatizes mortals."
Yugi paused and looked at Atem sideways.
"I don't know how it is for your kind, but for us humans… It's a painful thing, being exposed. He could just be lashing out to me as a person, not as a shadowwatcher. He doesn't acknowledge other people any more or less, save for those as rude or crass as him. He's just as likely to dislike Yugi the friendly classmate as he is to be wary of Yugi the shadowwatcher."
"So we're still no closer to resolving this case," Atem said. His expression soured. "Wonderful."
"You're getting much better at sarcasm, you know," Yugi said with a half smile.
Atem chuckled. "Well, thank you, aibou. Wait. Hold on a moment," he said suddenly, sniffing at the air like an animal. Bakura caught a glimpse of something black and shiny peeking out from inside the mess of multicolored hair.
The image inside of the bowl wavered.
"What is it, Atem?" Yugi asked as his voice began to distort. The image grew more indistinct, darkening.
"There's someone watching-" Atem got out, before the reflection winked out of sight like an old cathode tv picture. Bakura was left peering at his own reflection in the now-calm water within.
Bakura was silent.
"Interesting. They don't know if they need to suspect you or not. We should let them keep thinking you're an uninitiate. It works out better for all of us."
Bakura's lips twitched into a snarl.
"Explain," Bakura growled. "Those morons are going to kill me as soon as they realize I want no part with them. I think I deserve some goddamn answers! Like, whatever they called me. Start with that."
"Fine. Uninitiate. A shadowtouched who hasn't come into their powers yet, as in 'not yet initiated', so to speak. These are innocents who've touched the shadows due to some incident or another but cannot manipulate them, and don't even know of their existence at all. They can see some of the effects at the periphery of their gaze, but it is weak and a pale imitation of our current abilities."
"Me before the mark, then," Bakura said, and Naraki nodded.
"Exactly. The mark is your initiation into the world, in a sense. It tethers you to the shadows and lets you access them the way you can now. And while you're an unmarked initiate, we aren't supposed to interfere unless that status changes and you're marked. Every Mark is different. One day, you may even learn what yours means."
"Fine. I understand that. Who was that guy with Motou? That… Atem or whatever."
Naraki wore a look of the purest revulsion. "Aberration and sin, that's what."
"... Care to run that by me one more time?" Bakura said.
"Demon. The most repulsive, disgusting, infuriating creature to crawl out of the pits of hell. And Motou's got one as a goddamned pet."
"A demon!?" Hikari yelped.
"That's what Naraki said. Oh. And my first lesson is tonight at seven. I forgot to mention that."
"Tonight?" Hikari was shaking. "Don't you think you're moving a bit fast?"
"Course not. If these shadowwatchers really want to kill me, I need to learn everything I can as quickly as I can."
"Hold on, there are shadowwatchers too?!" Hikari cried out. "What have you gotten yourself into?"
"What have I gotten myself into? I haven't done anything. Naraki's been here for a while, I bet he's the one Yugi's looking for," Bakura said.
He sat back in his desk chair, thumbing through the Necronomicon once again. He didn't pay it much mind. It still made his head throb vaguely with an indescribable dull ache. But the pictures were interesting. Terrifying, gruesome, and stained with all manner of blood and viscera, but undoubtedly interesting.
Hikari trembled. "Then it's simple, isn't it? We tell Yugi that it's Naraki. Both of them leave, and we can focus on the matter with the chest. Then we're all done here."
Bakura closed the book. "And then how will I learn anything? Naraki wants to teach me. He actually knows this stuff. Off the top of his head, I might add, unlike a certain someone…" He trailed off with a pointed look.
Hikari huffed.
"And if I told Yugi, that would inspire a wide variety of questions regarding how I know this information and why I didn't step forward sooner. Isn't that right?"
Hikari was silent for a long while, before he grudgingly sighed. "I suppose that's true. But still, is it really that necessary to learn under your teacher? The books have everything you need to know, I think…"
Bakura rolled his eyes. "Because they've helped with everything before. I wouldn't know half of what I do now without Naraki. I wouldn't know what Yugi was or even that there are others like me. I'll use Naraki for as long as it's beneficial, and then I'll figure out a way to throw him under the bus when the time comes. Get rid of both of them at the same time. Two birds one stone, right?"
"Still. I don't think it's a good idea to have so many shadow users in one place. Bad things will happen."
Bakura lifted one eyebrow. "Meaning?" He opened the Compaendium and thumbed through.
Hikari shivered. He was vibrating again, quivering in the air at such a high frequency that it was nauseating for Bakura to look at.
"You don't remember, do you?" Bakura asked.
Hikari puffed up. "If I keep talking I'll remember. It has something to do with demons and…"
Bakura brushed the air away with an errant flick of the fingers. "Have fun with that."
"Misery…" Hikari muttered. He puttered around the room and continued mouthing words to himself until seven, when he looked up and realized that Bakura was long gone.
This was the place.
He looked left and then right up the desolate street. He'd never seen a stretch of road look so empty, and he'd never felt an emptiness with such a heavily sinister feeling of the void.
Bakura clenched his hands into fists and crossed the street. There was no need to check the address. This was definitely the place.
Like Bakura, Naraki seemed to have managed to find a house for himself. It was a ramshackle mess, barely maintained, but it looked like it wouldn't fall down in the next hour or two. Hopefully. At the very least, Bakura had slept in far worse back in England, with much less pleasant company. Naraki seemed exactly the type to stab someone in the back, but he also seemed genuinely excited at the prospect of teaching. Despite Hikari's fears, Naraki wasn't dangerous. Yet.
He rang the doorbell and waited. After a delay, he rang the bell again and then again, only for his hand to freeze in place before he could touch the button a fourth time. The door opened with a creak.
"Would you stop that?" Naraki snapped.
Bakura grinned. "Why, am I annoying you?" he asked. Naraki glowered and stepped aside, holding the door open.
"Just get in here. The brat didn't follow you, did he?" Naraki asked. His eyes shifted along the street's periphery.
Bakura shrugged. "Mouto? Haven't seen him." He'd wondered the same thing himself, but unless Mouto was capable of silently tracking someone who didn't want to be followed in the first place, he wasn't here.
"Fine. Let's get started then." Naraki led Bakura into the house. Just inside, the lights were on but dim. Half of the bulbs had burnt out, and a few others flickered with the threat of joining the dead. The only steady light came from a bottle blue orb in the corner, and everything took on a sickening cast because of it.
Naraki made no attempt to hide what he was and what he did. Unidentifiable metallic objects gleamed in the half light, glinting with the suggestion of arcane runes carved into their outsides. The tables were strewn with detritus and arcana in every direction he turned: half-filled bottles of colored liquid, strangely tinted powders piled on scraps of ragged oilcloth, twigs with unusual leaves and bristling with poisonous-looking berries, and more.
Among the mess were daggers laid out here and there. Some were cleaner than others, and some were crusted over with something of a familiar rusty red color.
"That's no way to care for a knife," Bakura said, grabbing one and turning it this way and that.
Naraki snatched it away. "What do you know about knives, boy?"
Bakura drew a knife from his boot and flicked it open with a small click. He began to spin it through his fingers in motions that made the gesture seem effortless. "Benchmade 62 Balisong butterfly. Sturdy, graceful, nice action in the joints. Stainless steel. Little pricy but worth it." He recited as he played, twirling the blade over his knuckles and again and again through his fingers.
He stopped suddenly with an impish grin.
"I could grab the others from home."
"Hmm. That won't be necessary," Naraki said, giving a lingering look at the butterfly knife.
Bakura gave it a few more spins through his fingers before snapping it closed with a flick.
Naraki's lips tightened into a smirk. "Anyway. I suppose you must have a few questions, and I imagine you haven't seen almost any of these little toys here, so I'll give you a few minutes to poke around my home and ask any questions you might have. Then we'll get started on your lesson."
Bakura glanced around briefly without moving. The toys didn't interest him half as much as the books had. "Do humans have souls?" he asked.
"Good question. It's a topic that's up for a lot of debate, depending on who you ask and what your particular stance on philosophy is, but as far as you'll be concerned, yes, humans have souls. In a sense. See, what we call souls is an animating force that represents our consciousness. It isn't a tangible concept until you've been exposed to the shadows-"
"So if we have souls, what can we do with them?" Bakura interrupted.
Naraki's orange colored eyes seemed to spark. "Oh? You are a naughty one, aren't you. Soul manipulation is illegal under the shadowwatcher tenants of protocol. Which mean we won't start it till after next week. If you're still interested of course. But why souls?"
"Religious parents," Bakura lied easily. "Always said my immortal soul was damned. Guess they were right."
Naraki laughed. Bakura nodded slowly. Let Naraki think what he would. But it was time to take a step back now, before Bakura was too obvious. Naraki thought him completely ignorant, and who was Bakura to let him down so early? And anyway, there were other questions that needed to be answered, things that were certainly not in any of the books.
"What are the 'Shadowwatcher Tenants of Protocol' you mentioned?" Bakura asked.
"Rules they put out for us to follow. Don't break the rules, they won't usually mess with you. Break the rules, knowingly or not, and they won't be happy."
"Have you been breaking many rules?" Bakura asked with a grin.
"You've broken them too, boy," Naraki shot back. "In fact, following them is nearly impossible. So we're not going to worry about them for now. Any more questions?"
Bakura hummed and began to meander through the house. He poked the strange metal things and fiddled with a few of the colorful phials. There were too many things to ask about all at once.
As he passed a door, he felt a chill race down his spine. He paused. There was an energy inside, just beyond the doorway, that Bakura couldn't describe. It was like an icy fist grabbing hold of his heart and then giving it a vicious jerk. He reached for the doorknob, but his hand was smacked away. Naraki was livid.
"That is the only area of my house that is off-limits," he said sharply. "You're free to wander everywhere else, but downstairs is where I keep my… projects. It's delicate work, and I can't have an apprentice like you messing them up. Maybe someday I'll bring you down there, but not today, and not for the forseeable future. And if I find you down there, you will regret it dearly. Understand?"
Naraki's tone had gotten progressively sterner, until he was finally speaking through clenched teeth. Bakura backed away with his hands up, an attempt at appeasement. "Fine, fine. No basement. So..." He smiled and put down his hands. "What is our first lesson?"
Naraki cracked his knuckles. "You aren't going to be any help to me until I can get a better idea of the limits of your control and your power. We're going to run through a few tests. Now first, I'm going to need you to..."
Three hours later, Bakura was ready to drop. He hadn't been this exhausted since the incident with the sigils and the posterboard, except this time, he was just a bit further from his room. He made it back to his house without a problem, but stopped just outside the front door. It wasn't even eleven yet, but if he awoke his aunt, he'd have to put up with her yelling and disappointment and it was all more than Bakura felt like dealing with right now.
He twisted his key into the lock as quietly as he could. Despite the heaviness in his limbs, he had to keep his footsteps light. Up the stairs, into his room. He closed his door behind him and leaned against it heavily. It was the first time he realized that he was short of breath.
"Bakura! You're okay!" Hikari sounded endlessly relieved. "I was worried you wouldn't come back!"
"Of course I came back," Bakura scoffed, sinking to the floor. He rubbed his fists into his eyes, groaning softly.
"Bakura... what happened to you?" Hikari's voice was softer now, and he drifted close. His light flickered and dimmed a bit, and for that, Bakura was relieved. The harsh brightness was too much after the darkness of the rest of the house.
"It was just a few tests. Had me summon a few shadow balls. Hold them up, move them in directions he wanted me to move them. Then I had to sustain a shadow tear for as long as I could. Hey, know what a shadow tear is?" Bakura asked with a grin.
"It's..." Hikari muttered. "No, don't tell me... A shadow tear is a rip in reality, isn't it?"
Bakura nodded, tightening his lips. "They're an access point to the shadow realm, where all of our powers come from. Apparently I've got 'real potential'. Naraki looked pretty damned surprised when I kept it up for an hour."
"Gracious gods, an hour?! What if you let something in? There are creatures in the shadow realm, demons and monsters and-"
Bakura lifted his hands, cutting Hikari off. "Hey, I read the book. Something did get through. Naraki lured it through. Apparently he needed a bit of Amaimonette breath for some experiment or another. Little ugly demon thing. Brought it through the shadow tear and imprisoned it in a circle we made up. It was fantastic," Bakura said. His grin was dangerously wide.
"Bakura!" Hikari cried out. "You summoned a demon? You need to stop this immediately!"
"Why?" Bakura asked. He stared up at Hikari with that same crazy grin on his face. "This is great!"
"There are too many shadow users in this area right now. If you, Yugi, and Naraki are all going to stay in Domino, we need to ward the place up or something, because otherwise, we're all going to be overrun. Things will open their own shadow tears and break into this world!" Hikari said.
The glow started to brighten until it was blindingly harsh, even through Bakura's closed eyelids.
"All of these shadows will wreck havoc on the area. You were joking about my forgetting, but I remember this much: all sorts of monsters are going to want to feed off the shadows and the misery and pain of the people who live here. I don't know what Naraki is up to, but he's dangerous. We can't let him continue like this. I won't deny that his uses for magic are appealing to certain people, but you must temper it with control, or none of us will live to see another year. Getting me out of the house won't matter when everyone else is dead."
Hikari's impassioned speech left Bakura silent on the floor.
Hikari started to dim again, and the lashing silver tendrils began to slow.
"Regardless of whether or not the two of them pose a direct threat to you, we must get them to leave, or we might have to go somewhere else. The threat exists for as long as all three of you are in the same vicinity. Apprenticeships among shadowtouched are brief and mobile things, traveling the world constantly to prevent this exact thing. Just please, rethink telling Yugi."
"And you remembered all of this while I was gone?" Bakura asked. "Just what were you before your soul was ripped out?"
"I don't know. That's the one thing I can't remember. And believe me, I've been trying," Hikari said. He sounded sad, so very sad.
"Look, you've got to have some kind of ties to the shadowtouched to know all this. If you remember more and decide to share with the class, then I can ditch Naraki and save the effort of lying to him for gods know how long this will take. But until then, until you're free from this house, until I have a better idea what the hell is actually going on here, I'm going to stick with Naraki. Is that alright?"
Hikari shuffled back and forth without saying anything. "I don't like this," he said. He flickered out of sight.
The next few days passed with no sight of Hikari. It wasn't that Bakura was worried about the disappearance. He just didn't know if something bad had happened or not. He certainly wasn't worried, despite what his mind's constant jumps might have indicated.
He didn't think about Hikari during class, while Naraki lectured about Classical Japanese architecture. He certainly didn't wonder about how exactly Hikari could know all of the things that he did, but couldn't remember how he knew them.
It was another puzzle to crack. Bakura never did like puzzles he couldn't solve. There was an answer somewhere in all of this mess, he knew, but Hikari wasn't exactly forthcoming about these things.
Now that Bakura was on 'probation' or whatever Hikari was planning on calling this when (or if) he came back, he had to admit one thing: it was awfully quiet without the little wisp around.
Naraki's nightly lessons pushed him further than he'd ever expected every night, and when he came back, breathless and clutching his aching head, there was no one to regale with the things he had accomplished.
Oh, and what accomplishments Bakura had made. He absorbed instruction like a sponge, taking in every word Naraki said and filing it away for later use.
Naraki was blithe and a bit air-headed when it came right down to it. His lessons weren't actually that useful alone. Bakura already knew how to do most of the basic spells Naraki had planned out, which left him wondering how long it would take before they got to anything new. Naraki was much more focused on pushing Bakura to grow stronger, the way a runner trained for marathons. The work was difficult, but left his mind free to analyze every little thing Naraki mentioned.
Naraki was fond of side comments. There were things he'd mutter under his breath, things that Bakura wouldn't really understand always. Whether they were important or just Naraki's mumbled musings, it didn't much matter.
Everything had something to do with the shadows, and Bakura needed to know more. Naraki's lessons weren't enough. They touched on blood-bound promises, which would only be broken by penalty of death, and on the connections of sigils. That had been just last night.
"Is there any way to make the sigils more powerful? Like, make them… I don't know… more efficient?" Bakura had asked.
Naraki's glowing orange eyes flashed consideringly. "It all depends, of course. Sigils alone are powerful, it is true. But it is the way that you can connect sigils which allows you to reach their greatest potential. The connections needed depend entirely on your choice of sigils. Let me show you," he said.
Naraki knelt down in the center of his living room, drawing a few concentric circles with quick strokes of a stick of chalk. The thin lines were joined by a many-pointed star laid over the top. At five points around the circle, he drew half-circles that bubbled up from the outermost ring.
With all of this done, Naraki gestured to the first bubble around the circle.
"Different arrangements mean different things. Think of magic like a language. A circle like this one is a sentence, a way of writing down exactly what you want to say. You can take the same handful words, but it's the order of them that impacts the meaning."
He drew runic characters inside of four of the bubbles, pausing at the last one.
"Only she loves him," he said, and he added in the final few strokes.
A vaguely green aura began to glimmer from the lines. A certain iridescence glittered up, bringing with it a beam of distinct green light to rise all the way up to the ceiling. He let it stand for several seconds before swiping his hand over two symbols, switching their order.
"She only loves him," Naraki muttered.
The light was thrown up once again, but this time the color was less green and more blue. Or perhaps the color was somewhere in between the two shades, a wavering aqua rather like the ocean.
Two more symbols were switched, and the color plunged to a dim violet. "She loves only him," Naraki added. He erased all of them, and then rewrote the same symbols in a completely new arrangement. "He loves only her."
The color of this arrangement was a bright, fiery orange. Naraki pursed his lips as he looked at the flickering hues.
"As you can see, all of these sentences mean different things. Similarly, all of these arrangements have different results when you draw them out. You could be using all of the right words, but if the arrangement is wrong, you'd never achieve much of anything."
"How do I know what the right arrangement is?" Bakura asked.
"Simple. I'll tell you. Really, though, it's all a matter of experience. You don't come out of the womb stringing together coherent sentences, and you don't come into your powers knowing how to arrange sigils in an arcane circle."
Bakura nodded. "Alright. So, say I had made up a circle, and it wasn't working right. I rearrange the symbols, and through trial and error, figure out how they fit together best. Is there rhyme or reason to how they go together?"
Naraki considered his words for several long moments, tapping at his chin as he thought. Finally, he brought his finger down to the circle.
"See here," he said, moving his finger an inch above the line which connected two sigils. "These two are not adjacent, but are tied. This means the symbols refer back to one another. If I erase this line…" he mumbled, breaking one of the points of the star.
The orange color darkened suddenly, pitching into a bloody red color.
"There," he said. "Without the reference, it means yet something else. I may have a book somewhere that talks about… hmmm… I suppose it is the grammar of arcane circles. It tells when to use the lines, when to place symbols adjacent, and so on and so forth, all based off of their meanings."
Naraki rose to his feet and began to pick his way past a heavy bookshelf. The books were moldering and the spines sagged in the few places where they weren't packed tight. His finger ghosted over the faded gold and silver leaf that was inlaid into the leather bindings.
"It's a bit tricky, of course, but this should tell you everything you need to know-" he continued to ramble as he looked. Finally, he drew a rather large and dusty book from the shelf. It was clasped with metal at the corners, and the leather was a dark tan color.
Naraki held it up for Bakura to examine. The front cover read 'The Grammaerian for Basick Magycks' in a curling, elegant hand.
"This will have information on everything you need to know, plus a dictionary of sigils for reference."
"Great," Bakura said, and he clenched his teeth. "Can I put this down now?"
Naraki looked at the large box which was hanging, suspended, in the air, rippling faintly with curling tendrils of shadows holding it up. He clucked his tongue and set the book aside on an open swathe of coffee table.
"Nope, keep holding it up. Only way to get stronger," Naraki said.
That was last night though.
Bakura sighed and tapped his pencil against his desk.
After that session with Naraki, he'd rushed home, but there was no Hikari anywhere to be seen. He recounted the story to open air in an attempt to draw Hikari out, but even after an hour of explaining exactly how the book would help get Hikari out of the house, Bakura had given up.
He spent the rest of the night reading by lamplight through the chapters, finding the definitions of each of the individual sigils and the right ways to string them together. There were two possibilities, and Bakura wasn't sure which was better.
There was enough posterboard left to try both out, so it wasn't the issue that Bakura was concerned about. No, his only concern, and he wasn't concerned, was where Hikari had gone.
If the little wisp didn't return…
Well, what would even be the point of all of this? Aside from the fun of it all, of course. Bakura kinda liked having the little guy around to talk with, and messing with him was pretty fun too.
There were only so many places that Hikari could hide. Bakura would bet anything that the little ghostie was hiding up in the attic. If Hikari wasn't going to come to him, maybe he would have to go to Hikari.
He left the classroom in a hurry that afternoon, not even sparing Yugi a glance as he snagged his bag and rushed towards the school gates.
He was panting when he unlocked his front door, having run all the way from the train station. His aunt called out to him, but he ignored her. He needed to find Hikari and try this out. He twisted his fingers and jerked them down, and the shadows did his bidding, pulling down the attic ladder before he had even made it all the way into the room.
He tossed the bag aside and clamored up. "Hikari, get down here. I'm sorry, alright? Is that what you want me to say? Come out here and talk to me," he said as he poked his head up.
The deathly chill was heavy in the air. He threw up a ball of light into the air, and the rays of light caught on the thick motes of swirling dust. His eyes narrowed.
"Hikari," he barked sharply. "Come on, you wisp, you know this isn't that big of a deal, right? Come on out. You really want to hear this. Don't you want to leave this place?"
He looked the room over carefully, trying to find some trace of Hikari's presence. The lines were still carved deeply into the old wooden floor, winding this way and that in strange loops and whorls. A few of the symbols looked vaguely familiar in a new way, something fresh in his mind. One symbol, he was sure he recognized. The primary meaning, out of many lesser implied meanings, was something approximate to 'cloaked, hidden, secret'.
He narrowed his eyes at the chest. There was nothing for it. He clenched his hand into a fist, and the light suddenly extinguished. The darkness swooped in from the edges of the attic, devouring everything faster than the blink of an eye. He closed his eyes. The slow dilation of pupils was a necessary evil, but when he finally opened up his eyes, the all-powerful darkness had lessened by faint degrees. The hard edges of the boxes and storage had softened in the gloom.
And there, nestled in the deepest crook near the chest, was a faint silver glow. Bakura smirked and felt his way over. He stuck his head into the shadows, bringing himself face to face, or rather, face to silver tendrils, with the little wisp.
"There you are, Hikari. Hey, I told you I was sorry. I know you aren't happy with me, but I think I found a way to get you out of here, if you're willing to try?" he let his voice curl up questioningly.
Hikari looked shocked. "Are you talking to me?" he asked, but his tone wasn't accusing. In fact, it was curiously light. Pure surprise.
"Of course I am. You see anyone else up here?" Bakura asked, laughing. He threw a light ball up behind him, bringing the attic back to the edge of darkness. As expected, they were completely alone.
Hikari drew himself out slowly, turning this way and that, and then looking up at the light with undisguised fascination. "I suppose..." he muttered. "But... I- I'm sorry. Who are you?" he asked.