I'm not sure how well the pacing of this chapter turned out. I have the ending in my mind, and I think it's great, but I think my brain is having a kindergarten field trip with it (yay! animal graham crackers!). Forgive me if it's a bit everywhere. Also, the baby wouldn't allow me to edit once more, so please excuse those little mishaps as well.

Ra ra Rasputin, baby.

Chapter 11: The Shadows Swallow TIme and Light

The world shifted even as they ran. They leapt out of crashed cars and weaved through people just to have them shift into something else. Walls of alternating hot and cold air burst past them, along with flickers of light and grey. Orange, white, blue, then grey grey grey. Aleah started to wonder if she were living in a dream. Her long legs easily kept up with Yugi, and goosebumps and chills tickled her from the constant temperature changes. Through tears in time she could see dark haired Egyptians staring back at her and the other pale people on the other side. As she passed one even tried to press their hand through to touch the rain on the other side. Buildings melted. The sky was a patchwork quilt.

And ever shining without giving any of its light to its surroundings was the rift, a great tear drop hole sinking from the sky the size of a football field.

She wanted to close her eyes. There was just too much to see, far too much, with too little to think about it. But why Egypt? Why had the time rift blended Ancient Egypt and Japan of all places together? There were thousands of places, millions of times, and that was what it chose?

Yugi pulled her around the last turn into the site of a tall man who looked so much like a pale, modern version of Set. Behind him was the solemn shape of Shadi. They spot each other at the same time and rush to meet each other, leaving Yugi and Seto to meet and watch after them.

"Aleah-" gasped Shadi, looking relieved to the point of faintness. "We must go-"

"Oh no you don't," she snapped, "what the hell is going on?"

He closed his eyes and pressed his forefinger and thumb to his eyebrows. "Not now, please, you've done damage enough."

"Me? How could I have done all this?" she gestured around her. "I was doing nothing with time. If anything all I did was run, and if that is a crime, go figure, this should have started from the day I learned to walk."

"This started when you came here." insisted Shadi. "It is your doing."

But she couldn't accept that. She couldn't fathom that. How could her existing here caused something like this? If her being in the wrong time could do something like this, why hadn't it happened back in Ancient Egypt?

And if it really was her fault for the unraveling of the world…

She shook herself. She'd lose it if she thought on that.

"What do you know, I found her." said Seto, who had caught up with Shadi. Yugi, seeming to sense the tension between them, wrapped his hand around Aleah's arm. He was glaring at Shadi with an intensity Aleah hadn't expected from a face as sweet as his.

"Aleah didn't do it." he said softly. "Something is wrong here. I've been thinking that since the moment you took her away. Shadi," the puzzle against his chest began to glow. "Are you telling the truth?"

Shadi blinked. In that instant his face fell back into it's usual calm, stoic state. Aleah couldn't read anything on it. As she thought on what Yugi was saying, a thought slowly came to her mind.

"You told me rifts were completely random." she said. "Why is it the day after you told me about them one happened to appear."

The millenium puzzles glow died down. A wave of heat passed over them as Egypt phased in and out besides them. Yami stared out from Yugi's eyes, his form grown taller, his stance more confident.

"Shadi, I command you to tell me all you know about what's going on right now. You are not taking Aleah anywhere."

She felt her gut clench at the sight of him with something too warm and twisting. There he was. The Pharaoh, in this time once more. Atem.

Shadi shifted ever so slightly. Before Atem or anyone could do anything, he snatched at Aleah's wrist and yanked her into a tear in the building where a flaming building shown. She could feel the heat pressing in on her like hot metal and she coughed on the smoke. She was falling, falling, to where she didn't know. Shadi's grip on her wrist was like stone.

The last thing she heard was two voices shouting her name-both sounding exactly like Atem.

And after being dragged, half stumbling, through smoke and heat and screaming people, she finally opened her eyes and knew she had officially lost her mind.

#$*&^%$# $%^Y&^

Atem couldn't believe his eyes. Aleah, pulled along by Shadi, burst forth from a burning building right beneath his tower. He felt his muscles stiffen and his heart leap. Even from this distance he could see the gleam of tears streaming down her cheeks from the smoke. Whatever he had been thinking fled his mind as he flew down the stairs of the tower and onto the street below. He could see her through the crowd and shifting reality and sprinted for her.

"Aleah! Aleah!"

At the same time something echoed his call and another man burst forth from the building, arms thrown out in front of his face so he didn't see where he was running until he had crashed into Atem's side. They both sprawled into the dirt, coughing smoke and dust.

"What the-" he started, then froze as he saw the man scrambling to his feet. He had his hair, and his watering eyes-but it couldn't be him. He was wearing different clothes. Rather strange clothes now that he thought about it.

But there was enough strange things going on that he didn't stop to discover more, but left the man where he was and ran after the woman he had thought he had lost. For a brief terrifying second he thought he had lost her, but then a flicker of white hair amongst the black gave him an extra burst of speed. Flaming bits of straw fluttered around him, and ash flew up at his feet. Civilians, pale and cinnamon, stepped out of his way as he senselessly ran through ripples of sunlight and rain, present and what had to be the future.

As she vanished once more, he frantically lifted up his summoning disk. "Mahado! Please! If you can hear me!"

A ripple of darkness broke through the Egyptian light and the Dark Magician appeared, almost instantly. Without needing to ask, he too sped ahead, flying above the crowds through the air with his staff held foreword. .

"I have been watching," he yelled back, "don't worry, I will find her!"

"Wait!" shouted someone from behind him, but he didn't bother to look. Sweat trickled into his eyes and his lungs were burning on the dirty air.

Fire, rain, heat, cold, everything seemed to be blurring together, and still he ran. The Millenium Puzzle thumped against his chest, stinging against his breastbone.

Until suddenly he came upon the prone form of Dark Magician clinging for life upon his staff. His purple ropes were torn and a good portion of his form had already dissolved back into shadows.

"Forgive me, your majesty," he gasped, "Shadi-Shadi attacked me. He summoned a beast I was unfamiliar with."

"Ra, Mahado, are you all right?"

"I'll be fine, your majesty, but you must hurry! She tried to fight free but the beast took her. He opened a portal into the shadow realm."

Atem's blood ran cold. HIs skin suddenly felt clammy against the fire around him. "No…"

"You know the consequences to their souls as well as I do. I can use the last of my power…" Mahado's voice faltered as he weakly swung his staff behind him. Dark, oozing purple shadows seeped out from the building behind him. Atem felt his knees weaken. The shadow realm. He had never been there, and only men who had no souls in the first place trespassed there. Monsters were sure to eat him the moment they smelled him, given that the shadows didn't swallow his mind first.

And then he thought of Aleah being in that place and tar like burning fear threatened to take away his breath.

Mahado smiled at him as he faded, and with him the portal. Atem leaped for it.

"Wait!"

At the last minute a hand caught onto his cloak and his momentum pulled them both in.

#$%^%$ #%&^*%#$

Silence.

That was the first thing Yugi noticed. All the terrible noise, all the smoke, all the smells and chaos-gone. Next was that he was in his own body, though he couldn't remember Yami handing him the reigns. Beneath his hands wasn't something he could call a floor, persay, but it was dark and flat, and yet he could still see himself. Black surrounded him and for a minute he just stared down on all fours, shocked.

Then a familiar heavy pressure pressed in on him, mainly on his mind. Sweat instantly beaded on his forehead as he took a deep, shaking breath.

But Yami-where was Yami?

"Yugi?"

He could almost breath a sigh of relief at the sound of his friends voice and heaved himself to his knees. Before him, looking just as confused, if not more, was Yami as he had only seen him once, maybe twice before. His skin had taken on a cinnamon hue, royal Egyptian linen wrapped about his thighs and shoulders, and gold glinted off of various parts of his body. His eyes were the same crimson, though, staring at him.

"Why do I know you?" he asked, the most peculiar look on his face. "Yugi, I'm not suppose to know you now. All these memories, I…" Yami held his head, eyes wild. "But there's still something missing. Something's wrong."

Despite the pounding pain growing in his head, Yugi felt a bubble of excitement and made his way over to his partner. He put a hand on Yami's arm without thinking.

"You remember? Yami, that's wonderful! Do you know your name then?"

But Yami's crimson eyes, usually so full of confidence and sharp, were now wide with fear. Yugi found himself gripping Yami's wrist harder, unnerved by the lapse in his courage.

"Yami?"

"This is wrong, Yugi. The spirit I was in the future has combined memories with the me of the past. But there's something both of us don't know yet! And I felt something breaking the moment we came in here." he lifted his fearful gaze to the shadows. "You need to get out of here. And oh Ra, Aleah. Aleah Aleah!" in a flash his expression turned from fearful to murderous. "That traitor Shadi is as good as dead."

A rumble, like the sound of thunder, filled the darkness around them. An uncomfortable chill like needles ran up Yugi's back. The millenium puzzle, which had vanished from Yami's neck and had appeared around Yugi's, glowed, but it's light did nothing to penetrate the darkness.

Yami pulled Yugi behind him and stood tall. Nevertheless, Yugi could feel the pharaoh trembling beneath his grip.

"Mahado," said Yami quietly, "Mahado, can you hear me?"

"Yes," the Dark Magician formed besides him, not a trace of the previous battle showing upon him. "But what is coming for you is something I'm afraid I cannot help you with. Even I…" Mahado closed his eyes and bowed his purple capped head. "Even I am slave to its whims."

"Slave?" said Yugi. He could feel the first icy touch of real panic now, not just for himself, but for Aleah.

Another roll of thunder rumbled through them. Mahado, tall, majestic, and empowered with his dark magic, cringed at the sound.

"Can you at least tell me what happened to Shadi and Aleah?" he asked.

Mahado's frown was grim. "Oh sire, I am so, so sorry. He has them."

"He?"

"The one who is master of all shadows. The one who comes for you now."

Yami adjusted the gold summoning disk on his wrist. "Then let him come."

"It would like to say it would be better if you could flee, your majesty, but...Ra, there's no where to escape now." Mahado had a hand on his face, his staff hung loose in his limp hand. "Oh, Pharaoh, time was not meant to do this. I do not know if you are prepared, and even if you were, you are alone. There are no priests or any of the other key players here to help you."

"What are you talking about? Are you saying you know what was meant to happen?"

"Only vaguely, your majesty, but enough."

"How?"

More thunder echoed across the black plains. Yugi noticed that the pressure upon his mind was getting greater, and his vision seemed to be playing tricks on him. He saw blurs of red in the distance and Yami's figure seemed to be getting smeared, as though made of water colors. His knees started to hurt.

"Nevermind that," said Mahado, "you need to get Yugi out of here. Your only chance now is to draw him out of the shadow realm and face him outside in the realm of light. I'll open another portal-I'm so sorry for letting you in the first place, I didn't see your future self behind you."

"Weird you should miss that," gasped Yugi, "seeing how much you already know."

At the sound of his breathlessness, Yami and Mahado turned to him, mouths thin with concern.

"Best get your light out of here as well, your majesty." said Mahado. "I'm sorry, if only I had known-I've never heard of time getting torn up like this. I don't even know what it is-but forget that, we must leave, now!"

The Dark Magician swept his staff across the darkness and light broke through. The thunder echoed back across the darkness, somehow sounding closer. The Dark Magician peered through the light and cursed.

"Oh Ra…"

More thunder. With each boom it felt as though a weight were landing on Yugi's back and he finally fell to his knees, panting, body and mind aching as though he had done a five hour test without a break and then run a triathlon.

Yami heaved him up and dragged him to the portal. Mahado hesitated, then lifted a hand.

"Your majesty!"

Yami looked back.

"Time is dying out there."

Yugi had never heard anyone sound so hopeless, let alone someone like the Dark Magician. Yami's grip on him had grown clammy.

"What do I do about it then, Mahado," asked Yami, his voice unnaturally thin, "you know more about this-about everything-than I do. Please, there's got to be something."

Thunder. Yugi's vision was darkening. He remembered having better endurance last time he was in the shadow realm. What was going on?

"I am but a man whose soul is trapped, your grace. How could I know about healing dimensions?"

Yami wrapped his arms around the wilting Yugi. "Come on, abiou, we must get you out of here."

But just as he stepped towards the opening, it slipped closed, taking the light from outside with it. They all stared, and the chill in Yugi's bones deepened. He could see sweat dripping off his fingers and vanishing into the shadows below.

"Do you humor yourselves in thinking that the father of the shadow realm can be escaped so easily?"

Such a voice Yugi had never heard. It was physical pain to his ears and sandpaper against his skin. He cried out and Yami's grip under his arms and around his chest tightened. The voice laugh and Yugi cringed even more.

"Ah, yes, it hurts, doesn't it little light?" it crowed.

"What's happening?" cried Yami.

"Yugi is a personification of the light, your grace, but so much darkness is overwhelming him. He isn't strong enough."

"Then why am I fine? Am I just more use to the shadows?"

"Don't you know, your grace? You are of the darkness as well. Why do you think the Millennium Puzzle and the shadows come to you so easily."

Yugi was gasping for air. This place didn't seem to have enough of it all a sudden. His head felt as though it were spinning. The image of Yami's feet were swirling and dimming.

"Yami," he choked, "Yami, this, I can't, please…" his tongue felt slippery.

"Yugi, just hang on!"

"Just hang on," echoed the dark voice, amused. The words grated on Yugi and the colors of Yami bleached out. He was falling, falling, falling…

"No! Yugi! Stay with me!"

"Oh, but why? Pharaoh, you amuse me. Though it's a streak of blessed luck that I can have you today. Luck that time as blurred the lines, giving you back the name you tried so hard to hide and making the seal upon me nonexistent."

Yugi wasn't sure where he was going now, but the shadows wrapped about him like a cold blanket. It's cloth bled around him, filling his mouth and nose with ice, brushing his eyes closed with silk-like fingers.

And then a burst of light broke through his vision. The shadows coiled away and he could once more feel Yami's grip around his arms. He felt colder than he ever had before, though, and shivered as he fought to open his eyes.

The voice in the distance had fallen silent.

"Yugi, my Pharaoh" said a soft voice he recognized, "I found you."

He finally found the strength to pry open his eyes and looked up. Above them, with strange formless wings of light holding her aloft, was Aleah, her arms outspread and radiating a brilliant, but colorless light.

"Just hold on a bit longer," she said, "more are coming."

But her light had lit up the darkness ahead of them and Yugi couldn't register the nightmare before them, leering with a lipless mouth full of fangs. Curved horns framed it's hellish face and eyes darker than black ever could get. Wings of shadows had been swooped about them, and Yugi couldn't see the end of them. They seemed to spread as high and as far as the eye could see, making up the shadow realm itself. From his chest coiled a writhing, ridged neck and head of a dragon by the barest definition. Long strands of gleaming saliva dripped from its mouth. Even as he watched the dragon opened its mouth, doubling the strands.

He now felt light headed for a whole other reason.

"Aleah," said Yugi weakly, "what are you?"

"How did you-ah, I see. You're a time guardian. I thought time was neutral." said the towering monster dryly. Yugi couldn't see how it formed words through its fangs with no lips.

"If you haven't noticed, you've destroyed time. Neutrality can only go so far."

"Oh, but that wasn't me," and Yugi thought he could almost hear sarcasm. "That was a fellow guardian. Wouldn't you agree, Shadi?"

A bubble of shadow appeared before them and popped, dropping a flaccid Shadi onto the incorporeal floor. Unlike Aleah, he didn't give off any light.

"Only wanted to hurry up his exit with his lovely bride, too bad he was already too corrupted with shadow magic." the monster chortled. "I must thank your father for those, pharaoh. The Millenium Items are the most useful gifts I've had yet, now that they can't trap me any longer that is, mind you."

Yami flinched and growled besides Yugi, who tried to feel out his legs to stand. They felt like jello.

"My father meant to have nothing to do with you! If he had known, he would have shattered you where you stand!"

"How quaint." said the monster. "But I have things to do other than argue with a little mortal otherwise."

Great clawed hands rose up into the space beneath those massive wings. Aleah landed between the Dark Magician and Yami and put a hand on both their shoulders.

"Quick, stop him." she said. "We have to stall until they get here."

"They?"

"Just do it, damn it!"

Both of them flinched and the Dark Magician leapt into the air. Yami took his arms out from around Yugi and steadied him.

"Are you okay, Yugi?"

"I'll be fine. Just do your stuff!"

Yami nodded and held up his summoning disk. With a loud voice he called out Slifer, the Sky Dragon. As the shadows burst forth to let loose the great two mouthed, red scaled beast, the Dark Magician carried in Shadi and dropped him within the sphere of her light. Yugi turned to Aleah.

"What in the world is going on?" he asked her.

"You tell me," she said, "when Shadi pulled us in that thing snatched us up like we were his favorite brand of poptarts. Next thing I know, I start glowing, some voice comes in my head about gathering the guardians, and he was throwing me-I mean, he chucked me! Or it...do you know what that thing is?"

Slifer slithered past them and snaked around the demon monster, jaws agape towards the creatures face. The Dark Magician fruitlessly shot balls of bright green magic at the creatures feet, but to no avail. The monster simply lowered its arms and looked down at the Egyptian god and the tiny magician.

"Mahado!" cried Yami.

"Foolish." the monster rumbled and kicked aside the Dark Magician, who went flying into the darkness. Slifer screeched out in its hawk light cry and recoiled back from the demon as it buried its claws through its flesh. Yami gritted his teeth.

"How can this be?" he said. "Slifer isn't strong enough? Well, then, we'll just have to try two gods!"

As Yami lifted his summoning disk once more, Yugi felt himself wobble once more and fall to his knees. Yami hesitated.

"Just do it!" cried Aleah, "I'll watch him!"

Give Yugi one more look over, Yami turned back to the monster and cried out, "I summon thee, Obelisk the Tormentor!"

The shadows split apart once more and the great hulking blue form of obelisk slipped through, it's fists clenched. It grappled its arms about the monster, who growled and fought to shake off the gods restraining him.

"Are you all right, Yugi?"

"Yeah, this place just isn't the bahamas for me, that's for sure."

"That is Zorc Necrophades, the creator of the shadow realm."

Yugi, Aleah, and Yami looked to Shadi, whose arms were beneath him and his head lifted. He looked winded, and his eyelids drooped.

"My attempts to keep the timeline unaffected failed. He will destroy us all."

"What do you mean, Shadi," asked Yami, his expression hard, "that beast up there said you set it free because you crashed time!"

"Which means you lied! It wasn't Aleah's fault!" said Yugi.

Shadi closed his eyes, looking pained. "I didn't know urging a rift forward would-"

Yami stopped him with an upraised hand. "Forget it, what's more important now is who is he? What am I fighting? Is this the darkness I sensed behind Akifa?"

"Yes, my pharaoh. That is he. If time had played out as it should you would have sealed him within your memories and locked them away in the millenium puzzle before he had a chance to achieve his ends."

"Which are?" asked Yugi.

"To destroy the realm of light, leaving nothing but the shadows."

"Well, apparently he's forgotten about one other realm," Aleah looked up at the hulking creature flailing within the grips of the gods. "What I'm wondering is: how? And this whole guardian thing."

"Time is a neutral realm that mixes with light and darkness. He probably thought it would be unaffected if one overcame the other."

"And apparently as a tool as well." muttered Yami.

Slifer gave another cry as the dragon in Zorc's chest bit at its neck. With a deep breath it breathe out a great pillar of violet shadows at Slifer, who writhed and disintegrated in a flurry of red scales. Obelisk's great arms were then easily thrown off and Zorc turned on him with a great whirl of neverending wings.

As the dragon breathed out shadows at Obelisk as well, Yami collapsed to the ground with a yelp, clinging to his chest. Shadi just continued to moan into the floor and Yugi and Aleah closed in around him.

"Yami-"

"Atem-"

"The gods," gasped Yami, "the gods. He blew them off as though they were mere play. Is this really what I have to defeat? Why is this happening so quick?"

"Time is broken," said Aleah. "So there's no time for you to get stronger or learn how to beat him." she looked up into the eye of the creature. "We just got to hope that those voices in my head were right, and others are coming."

"Other what?"

"I'm not entirely sure."

"Is that all you have, Pharaoh? Go ahead, summon your Winged Dragon of Ra, then I can complete my destruction of you and get on with my life." said Zorc, his words booming across the shadow realm. His voice rolled across Aleah's light like a wave and for a moment her wings flickered, but she clenched her teeth and the light stayed on.

"How are you even doing that, Aleah?"

She laughed dryly. "You're asking me?"

Yami tried to get back to his feet, but his legs shook like reeds in the wind and he collapsed again, barely able to keep his hands beneath him. Yugi gripped onto his arm.

"Give me that thing you used to summon the gods."

Yami panted against the floor and weakly glared at Yugi. "No."

"Come on, Yami, your exhausted. I can summon the gods too."

"My answer is no, Yugi! If it weren't for Aleah your mind would already be lost to the shadows, do you honestly think you could support a monster, let alone a god, with that tenuous strength?"

Yugi scowled. "Stop worrying about me Yami! If Shadi's right, that thing is going to destroy the world!"

"And you are becoming quite the pest, little light."

And from nowhere a mammoth hand appeared and the clawed fingers wrapped about little Yugi, tearing his hand from Yami and swallowing him completely. As the shadows wrapped about Yugi so utterly and completely and dragged him from the protective light of Aleah, Yugi slipped away and knew no more.