Chapter XCIX: Stars
Yami landed almost silently. The wind was hot and arid, and his scales felt laden with heat as he padded forward. The red stones cast about in pillars against the sky were almost like gaping claws against the brilliant blue. There were no clouds to be found and the sun beat down relentlessly. He shook himself out and glanced around.
It had been almost impossible to find the information he'd needed to locate the female. Sneaking so close while Atem and Yugi spoke to the God Dragons had been more than frustrating. Jaden had initially refused at all to acknowledge her existence and the longer he'd shunned her, the harder it had become to pick through his thoughts.
Jaden did not possess the same obstructions as Atem or Yugi. There had been no mist or brambles to fight his way through, or a lemon tree which grew and rotted before his eyes in an effort to distract him. Instead his mind had been a gaping chasm of fire and ice. The things he refused to think of burned within the blinding pit, and the few he acknowledged were forcefully clawed from the ice. Finding even her name had been all but impossible, though Yami had remembered it from years before.
He'd forgotten it briefly, though time had made him wonder at the likelihood of her survival. When Atem had spoken her name again, his mind had raced with memories. Atem had vaguely pictured her, just enough of a profile with diminished features that Yami had been able to cling to it. Her colors were diluted, and her eyes had been mismatched and burning, with the voice of a viper. She'd hissed and growled, her tones scratchy but soft.
She'd told Atem that Keith was not infallible, that his armor had kinks despite its apparent power. She'd told him he was slow when he used magic, and that would give him the opening he needed.
Atem hadn't needed to use it. He'd gone into that fight with brute force and cunning rather than the patience to wait for an opening as Yubel had advised. He'd known exactly what he planned to do, even if it had taken a little longer than he'd anticipated. But Yubel hadn't known Atem was so powerful, not when the moment they'd shared had been so brief. Their conversation had summed up to maybe fifty words at the most before Atem had flown off without a second look.
And it was not as if Yubel herself were a God Dragon.
Yami cast a small glance around. Where would a female so…loathed take to hiding? He would have chosen the northern region if the other three deities had given chase. No one would have sought him there. He knew that much. He appeared to be a Uria—even if a portion of his features were unfamiliar to the species—and though it would have been hard to properly camouflage, he could have hidden easily. The northern territory was full of mist and snow and ice. He could have found a place to hide and remained there for the rest of his days had he truly been forced into hiding.
But Yami wouldn't have remained there for so long—not with Dimitri as powerful as he was, or with the abilities he exerted now. Yami would have come out to face him at some point, despite how much he wished otherwise, but he would have hidden there. If he was not with his parents, he would not be noticed as easily, and the fact that a Fire Dragon—even if only at first glance—were to go to the northern region would have slowed them down.
It was easy to mislead by going where someone least expected or even most expected.
His idea to hide in the northern region supported the former, and Yubel's presence in Jaden's region proved the latter.
Yami shook himself out again. His flesh crawled beneath the heat and he almost laughed at himself as he continued forward. Am I more Atem or Yugi? I'm heavy beneath the heat, but I'm not slippery unless soaked in water. He grinned to himself, picking his way along slowly, and considered his surroundings. It was all just red dirt and dunes with strange woven lines throughout.
A single small green prickly plant stuck up from the ground.
Cactus, he remembered. Yugi had called them that. He'd said they were full of water and most of the smaller animals were known to break them open to get a drink in the worst of the hot season. He remembered Yugi laughing as he told him about eating one himself when he was famished and the watering holes had dried up too much to drink from. The needles had gotten stuck in his gums and cheeks for a moon, but he had not cared upon his sating his needs.
Atem had stared at him as if he didn't know what to make of the story, eyes huge as he'd considered him sideways in alarm. The Gandora had grinned at him, then launched into a story about eating a turtle. Yami still wasn't sure he believed the tale, because how could anything hurt Yugi's teeth? Yugi could chomp through bones as if they were thin twigs, and he never seemed fazed when he lost one and another grew back.
Atem had always been more cautious about his food. His stomach was more sensitive and he'd been sick for so long when he was younger; it made him less likely to try newer foods and he was always reluctant to even lick something that might later make him vomit. It was one of the reasons he still fished even when Yugi hunted and brought food to the den for him. The only time Yami could even recall Atem gorging himself was through Yugi's memories when Atem had first laid Yami's egg.
He'd swallowed almost every organ when he'd hollowed out the buffalo Yugi had brought back. He'd even almost torn more than half the flesh from its immense shoulders in that single sitting.
It was the one and only time Yami had seen Atem so ravenous or so willing to eat. Usually he sat and picked at his food, swallowing fish from the river whole. At least half of his meal was usually water content from the mouthfuls he swallowed, and it likely helped him retain the moisture in his scales later beneath the sun. It seemed a better solution than eating too much red meat in one sitting and vomiting it up, or having too much weighing on his stomach, digesting too slowly.
He wound his way around the cactus, tipped his head up, and considered his surroundings. It seemed endless, and Yami remembered once more why it was so often called the Badlands. It was almost completely dead but for night life and the wind seemed to strip the world of anything but blood. The lore said the sand was so dark because a war had been waged there with such immense bloodshed that the ground was permanently stained.
Yami wasn't sure he believed the story, but he'd listened to any tale he could get his paws on. No one had been truly willing to share stories with him upon leaving the nest. Shizuka had been friendly and nice, taking him under her wing as if he were the offspring she had not raised yet. She'd told him a small set of stories, but never in such detail or with as much fervor as Yugi and Atem. And Jonouchi had always snapped at her to stop, superstitious and fearful of Yami.
He slowed as he continued forward. He didn't know what he expected, but the wind whistling and the shifting sands had not been it. He looked around again, wondering if Yugi had ever unknowingly run into her. It seemed a misadventure he would have had when he was younger.
Of course, between the two of them he wasn't sure who had more. Atem had always seemed hurt at the end of his, but Yugi had always been lucky.
Yami sighed softly as his chest began to squeeze with its all too familiar ache. He couldn't think about them without feeling nauseous. Leaving them again was a miserable experience. He'd wanted to spend more time with them, but with Dimitri's appearance he couldn't find a good reason to stay.
He just had to hope they forgave him for the mess to follow.
He felt as if his paw should have been sinking into the dirt, swallowed as if by mud. He almost imagined the dead might rise around him and attempt to sink their teeth into his flesh as punishment. It seemed fitting. He'd messed up so much already. Why shouldn't the dead roll in their graves and come for him now?
He wanted to laugh but couldn't.
"If you're ever lost, look for shadows on the ground," he remembered Yugi saying when he had come to visit once. The Gandora had looked exhausted and miserable, but he'd been as attentive and soft as ever with him. "They might stretch the wrong way sometimes, but in the mornings, they're positioned to the south. If you must take shelter, head for the north. The desert is spotted then with oases and the rainforest is further ahead."
Yami looked at the sand, considering the shadows. They stretched straight downward. He studied them a moment, then nodded slowly and began to trot forward again. He couldn't imagine Yubel wouldn't be further south to avoid discovery. The fact she was still alive was almost amazing to him.
It would have easier for Jaden to dispose of her than simply allow her to hide.
But it occurred to him then.
Had Jaden healed her? Was that where all the bitterness and pain and instability stemmed from? Had he taken it upon himself? All that rage and distrust and uncertainty?
Was that what colored him so dark and made his every step so ruthless?
Yami remembered Atem saying once that Jaden took others' wounds when he healed someone. Could he have done the same with emotional or mental damage? He'd never asked and no one had thought to tell stories of it. He had to believe if Jaden had done it, he'd kept his mouth shut and his jaws locked about it.
Yubel was rumored dead, after all, though he knew better than to listen to every tidbit of passing words. Yugi had chased them endlessly upon reaching sexual maturity in order to track Atem down, but Atem's rumors had been widespread and spoken with ease for the most part. He had never truly been hiding. Yubel was barely whispered of but in passing and Yami was unsure what to expect but for the fact she was nastier than snake venom from what he'd heard. He supposed it made sense in some manner. Keith had sought her out for a reason, had he not?
Yami wasn't sure that Keith had chased rumors, or if he'd simply known where she was.
He'd been Divine—and a second generation at that.
Yami didn't know what his abilities had been. Perhaps he'd chased her down through one of his abilities, or maybe he'd known who she was through familial ties. Yami didn't want to think of Honda's implications formerly, but he had to wonder all the same.
He looked at his shadow strewn across the sand and shivered. If the shadows marking Atem's future were so terribly dark, what of the pitch black shape he saw before him now? He almost laughed, a soft and bitter noise that choked him, and he shook his head sharply to force the air to continue into his lungs. He shoved the thoughts aside and closed his eyes tightly.
He knew how this ended. He knew exactly what happened at the end of his path.
It was Atem and Yugi's he had to worry about.
He still didn't know what Yugi had set into motion with the decision he'd made. But Yami didn't even know what decision Yugi had truly made. The flash of images and the colors that had crossed through his throbbing skull had not been entirely understood.
The hours stretched. The sun felt unrelenting and heavy, and the sky seemed almost to sag into his scales. Yami wasn't surprised the onslaught failed to slow him more than his racing, horrified thoughts, but he did not care to think too hard about it any longer. He could manage this heat, just as he so often had the cold.
Both temperatures were oddly easy for him.
Ice was comforting and heat was like water on his skin.
He'd gotten the best of his parents' genes in that regard.
Yami looked at the shadow at his paws. It had not lightened, though its position had changed with the sun. He forced himself to keep moving despite the fact the desert seemed the same no matter where he looked. Had he not been moving in a uniform line he would have assumed he was going in circles.
The sun was setting when he reached what seemed the end of the desert. The sky overhead was ribbed with red and orange and fiery yellow. He blinked and glanced about, then saw the waning moon as it hovered in a space between blue and streaks of red. He considered it a moment, then turned away to look around again.
The sand slowly turned into larger granules and he could find chips of rock scattered about. A few small spots of green against the red flesh of the desert colored the landscape. The flatness leveled into a large sheer wall of discolored stone before his eyes. It looked as if a dragon had carved it open to one side, as if the world were shoveled apart so there could be a single large sloping landscape. He could see cacti scattered about the random speckles of greenery and he considered the stone face he stood before. It rose over him like the beginning of a sheer mountain, as if his own home had been cut in half by Atem's tail.
And there, halfway up the wall, were two small circular cavern faces.
Yami shivered and glanced back. His paw prints had been almost swallowed away by the shifting winds and tumbling sand. He turned back and shook himself out, eyeing the caverns once more and wondering at the size of them. If they looked so small at this distance, would they be huge and gaping when he stood before them?
He ignored the change of terrain under his paws as he got closer. The rocks clattered and shook against each other softly with each step, crunching where his claws touched them. He hooked his claws on some of the stone, amazed when they seemed to sink in almost effortlessly. It took a moment to withdraw them from the sheet of rock and he shivered as he continued.
The wind whistled and plucked at the stone, disturbing it enough a spray of dirt came flying toward him. Yami barely blinked and shook himself out, ignoring the second shower of sand. His stomach lurched as he looked around.
He wondered how much of Yubel's answers he'd truly want. Would she give him so much he wished himself ill? Would she say so much he became fearful? He wondered what wisdom she possessed and what darkness existed in her mind. Had Jaden stripped it clean when he'd taken her bitterness and rage? He had to have been the one to do it.
Second generation Gandoras went insane. It was well known. None of them had ever made it past a few years when they were purebred as he assumed she was. She had to be, right? To produce a creature as terrible as Sartorius, she had to be a purebred second generation Gandora. There was no way she wasn't—unless the madness came from Jaden himself. But he didn't understand how.
How could the healer have caused such madness on his own?
Yami looked into the gaping face of the caverns. They looked endless and the echo his paws produced when he stepped upon the stones made his skin crawl. He bore his teeth and looked around. His eyes adjusted rapidly, as they always had upon merging Yugi's vision with Atem's. Shadows stretched and sorted into colors and the cavern seemed much less a gaping chasm and more a deep scar within the earth's flesh. He looked at the stalagmites hanging from the ceiling like jagged teeth and tilted his head. He searched, stretching his senses as far as they would go within the darkness, and wondered where she could have been hiding.
The walls were utterly smooth, as if carved by water or howling winds. They were red as the sand outside, and he could see where some trickled inward in a small fall of grains. It was almost noiseless and yet deafening all at once. A large stone rose near one of the walls, smooth as his own scales, with ridges which he almost thought might pronounce its age, and the roof sloped in a small tunnel that would have squeezed even a newly hatched dragonet. He listened to the sand as it slowly piled downward and shivered as it settled.
Beyond the cavern opened wider, the tunnel seemingly lost for a moment as it squeezed just large enough to allow passage between two immense walls. He prodded further. The chamber beyond had the smallest pool of water, trickling where its top bubbled and frothed from pressure beneath where the liquid squeezed through. He listened to it trickle for a long moment, blinking as he sought further inside.
The water passage traveled far beneath the earth, carving a wide and elegant tunnel, marked by a roaring river. The chamber was empty but for the gurgling stream. Yami narrowed his eyes and reconsidered, withdrawing his senses and shaking himself out.
The second tunnel was much akin the first, and sand streamed down from a mirroring hole in the ceiling. It was much steadier, however, with a larger opening and a much heavier fall of sand. The wind was louder and echoed as it scraped across the smooth walls. A chunk of stone fell away and tumbled about the red abyss. Further inside the tunnel opened to a huge cavernous system with animals which hung upside down from the stone overhead. They seemed to be asleep, yet another creature that only survived the heat when night came.
Something scurried across the stone, a small bug with claws on its front and a long tail marked by a huge hook-like formation. He counted the six legs and tilted his head, curious as to the resemblance to Bakura's own metal-tipped. He turned away from it after a moment of investigation and focused once more on what might be further inside the cave.
The other chamber was abandoned as well, it seemed, the roomy space uninhabited by any dragon. Yami withdrew and looked around. He glanced at the sky, where stars burned down with brilliant specks against the blackness. Small trails of blue and red-violet framed the moon, and a silvery mass appeared in the center of the sky where it was most crowded by stars.
"That's the Dragon Trail," he remembered Timaeus saying. "It's the opening to Paradise. Souls go there to be judged. That's why it's the brightest and most colorful spot in the sky. All those stars are souls waiting for judgment. From there they get to continue to that constellation over there, Paradise."
Yami tilted his head as he considered them both. The Paradise constellation looked like an immense dragon asleep with its wings tucked into its sides.
He thought it looked like Atem when he sunbathed, but he'd never said so aloud.
He knew it wasn't his father. But it was comforting despite how small and childish it seemed. It warmed him and forced the worst of his loneliness aside, offering limited comfort during the hardest nights. He liked to look up and see that constellation, brilliant and glittering, and think of his parents.
Yugi would have been overjoyed to know he saw Atem there among the stars. He would have likely have loved to hear it and see it alongside him—if he hadn't already noticed and decided something similar. Yami didn't have the heart to share the image, however, for fear of ridicule and crushing loneliness should someone truly mock him.
Abruptly he felt her.
Yami turned his head.
She stood feet away, watching him in such a frozen stance he was almost surprised she was even alive. He stared at her for a long time, blinking, and tilted his head. There was something wrong. Why was she looking at him like that?
Her eyes looked…strange.
He remembered them through Atem's memories as bright and vibrant with cunning, aquamarine on one side and brilliant sunlit gold on the other. But her pupils were slits, just mere jagged lines in the expanse of them. Yami tilted his head.
They looked…oddly pale.
He blinked.
"Oh… you're blind."
