I said something a while back about not underestimating a young dragon, because their fangs are still sharp. A baby dragon is still a dragon.
Well, here we get a glimpse into why it's a worse mistake to underestimate an ancient one.
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Pegasus Crawford was no stranger to frayed nerves. He had been struggling to maintain any kind of equilibrium ever since that fateful day when a stranger in robes shoved a chunk of haunted gold into his skull. He'd learned to use it, he'd learned to harness it, but that didn't mean he was in control. He knew that. He'd known it from the beginning.
It was, perhaps, the reason he'd latched himself onto Gozaburo Kaiba in the first place.
There was something about the man that exuded a sense of ironclad control that Pegasus couldn't help but appreciate. Even when his plans went sideways, even when everything went to shit, Kaiba-sama was untouchable. He simply moved to the next piece on his gameboard.
Yet this night, as they entered the grounds and left Gozaburo's town car, Pegasus couldn't help but realize that he was doing a better job of containing himself than the master was. He was carrying himself with a kind of confident swagger that he'd been using all his life to mask his uncertainties. Gozaburo, on the other hand, was actively ready to chew glass. He half-expected to watch his . . . associate . . . pull the windshield off his vehicle and bite it.
Pegasus deigned to break the silence. "You seem distracted."
Gozaburo grunted. He grabbed his front door and wrenched it open. Even as he stomped into his sanctum, Pegasus hung back. There was something wrong. Something had happened here, and he couldn't pinpoint it. He didn't know what it was.
But he knew it was there.
He knew the energy vibrating through his bones didn't mean anything good.
"Take care," Pegasus said, as he slowly approached the threshold. "There's something—"
He walked into Gozaburo's brick wall of a back, and any warning died in his throat when he saw what had the master of the manor frozen in place.
Corpses.
Ten, twelve, fifteen. It looked like every member of Gozaburo Kaiba's security team had been flung about the room like cheap dolls. Blood and scorch marks painted the walls. They'd been ripped to pieces, burned past recognition. They were all dangling off furniture and crumpled on the floor, grimaces of pain and terror frozen on their faces. Their weapons lay in pieces near their mangled hands.
"What . . . in the name of . . . ?"
Gozaburo reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol. "Shut up," he growled.
For once, Pegasus didn't have a sharp rebuttal. He clamped his mouth shut in a grimace and stepped lightly, so lightly, behind his partner. The energy in the room felt palpable. It felt sentient. It felt hungry.
They crept through the house, down hallways and up staircases. Pegasus had no idea where Gozaburo was leading him, but eventually he realized that they were following a trail of blood. Not just blood, but offal. Intestines, bones, bits of organs, like a stampede of tigers had run through the place and ripped through every form of defense they'd put in place to keep the Kaiba Estate safe from outsiders.
The dynamic of the past few days flipped back. Now Gozaburo was solidly in control again. He was back in the war that had built his legacy, sweeping an enemy stronghold; Pegasus was a shivering child again, entirely and thoroughly out of sorts and barely managing to hold himself together long enough to make his legs work.
The further into the house they went, the harder Pegasus had to work in order to move, to see anything, to breathe. That energy kept getting stronger, brighter, more, and there still wasn't any indication what it was; the closer they got to the source, the harder it was to see anything past it. It was like diving into the ocean, and having the darkness close in, except it was light.
Pure, unfiltered, blistering light.
Gozaburo stopped at the threshold of a room on the third floor. "Of course," he rumbled. "Naturally, I would find you here. Permit me to guess: you're here to protect him. To extract payment for this trespass on his behalf."
Pegasus stepped up behind Gozaburo and tried to look into the room.
He couldn't see anything past the blinding white.
The figure inside was like a void in reality itself. No features, no limbs, no teeth or eyes or fingers. Just a bolt of sentient lightning standing inside someone's house.
"I must say," came a voice that didn't so much echo in Pegasus's ears as it slammed itself against the inside of his skull and nearly sent him to his knees, "you're quicker on the uptake than I would have anticipated."
"Cute," Gozaburo growled.
"I suppose you must be wondering about the . . . decorations," said the void made of light. The voice was low, smooth, uninterested; the voice sounded like it belonged to a woman, but Pegasus couldn't trust his senses. He couldn't use his senses. "It turns out that I am impatient, and waiting for you was beginning to grate on my nerves."
The light finally lessened, pulled itself inward, and coalesced into the form of a young woman, pale and austere, with white hair flowing down her back. Her eyes, crystalline blue, cut through the air. She was tall, and at first glance she might have seemed dainty. But every piece of her was corded over with muscle.
Pegasus saw the unmoving form of Seto Kaiba, slumped in his wheelchair, behind the woman.
She took a single step to one side, blocking Pegasus's view of the boy.
"Oh," she said, and Pegasus realized she was looking at him. "So young. I must admit, I find myself surprised. How old are you, child?"
Pegasus, too stunned and nervous to be affronted, simply answered: "Nineteen."
The woman made of light turned her gemstone eyes back to Gozaburo, pointedly ignoring the weapon pointed at her chest. "Ever one to turn your attention upon children. I am beginning to see why my prince is so disappointed in you. You seem quite bound and determined to never face an opponent of your own caliber."
Gozaburo grimaced, brow furrowing, but he did not speak.
"As I am sure the both of you are dying to know," she said, "my name is Kisara." So named, Kisara gestured invitingly with one hand; her fingers seemed tipped by claws. "As to why I would dare trespass in your home, well, I think the two of you together should be able to puzzle that out."
"You killed my men," Gozaburo said.
"I did," Kisara said. "They thought to use this boy," she gestured behind her, "as leverage against me. I do not take kindly to such flagrant disrespect, directed at me or those I permit in my esteem. I extracted payment, to borrow your turn of phrase."
Gozaburo shifted his grip on his weapon. "You speak of disrespect, but he sends a woman to face me."
Kisara grinned, and her teeth were as sharp as her fingertips. "Oh, come now," she said, laughter bubbling up in her throat. "You can't expect me to rise to that, can you? You set the rules of this campaign. You don't get to poke jabs at us when we follow them." She gave a nonchalant little shrug. "In any case, I am here because I was asked. That is as much of an explanation as you have earned." She offered a doting little smile, one that neither man could honestly tell was mocking or not, to Pegasus. "As for you, child, I think you're going to be quite surprised when you realize just who your enemy has sent to you."
"Are you interrupting our work for a reason," Gozaburo demanded, "or do you mean simply to waste our time?"
"I have every intention of wasting your time," Kisara said. "I intend to waste quite a lot of things tonight. As you have seen, I've already started. I've wasted blood, intestines, bones. I'm quite indiscriminate." Kisara's eyes flared. "It's a shame, honestly, that you don't understand the gravity of your situation right now. But I suppose that means I'll just have to teach you."
"Teach me," Gozaburo repeated with a sneer.
"Go ahead," Kisara said, holding out both arms invitingly. "Try to punish me for getting in your way. Take the first shot. Make your move. Show me just who I'm fucking with."
Pegasus came back to himself just long enough to pull back his hair and reveal the glittering gold of the Millennium Eye. Kisara watched dispassionately as the magic gathered, shuffling her feet as this man barely out of boyhood found a sliver of his confidence and grinned at her as his mentor aimed his pistol.
Kisara turned her gaze to Gozaburo but did not move any further. She barely seemed to breathe. She might have been a statue, a heat mirage, a painting, for as much as she reacted to what these men were going to do to her.
She waited for the magic of the Eye to flood through her body, and for Gozaburo's gun to click without fanfare, before she brought the smile sliding back onto her face.
"I see," she purred. "This one," she gestured to Pegasus, "uses his eye to keep me pinned in place, unable to move, while you," she gestured to Gozaburo, "deliver the killing blow." She crossed her arms over her chest and took a sauntering step forward; when Gozaburo and Pegasus tried to move, they found that they couldn't.
Kisara's grin widened.
"Except," she said, placing the fingers of one hand on the barrel of Gozaburo's gun, "you aren't aiming for anything vital, are you. Not even center mass. You were going to incapacitate me, weren't you? You wanted to make sure it hurt, didn't you? That's exactly what you wanted to do to me. A lowly woman who dares talk back to you, talk down to you. Gozaburo Kaiba, self-made man of war. You are become Death, destroyer of worlds. Who am I to question you? To step in your way?"
She cast a glance at Pegasus.
"And you," she whispered. "You like it when he does things this way, don't you? You like watching people in pain, knowing that you are instrumental in it. I can almost excuse you. You're grieving, and it's not like your parents ever taught you to critically examine the darker parts of yourself. It's only natural for a boy to collapse into the dark when he first uncovers it, and to start swimming in it."
Pegasus squeaked; it was the most he could do.
"I can almost excuse you," Kisara said. "But you made a fatal mistake. I wonder if you realize what it is yet."
She held up her hand and snapped a finger against her thumb.
The gunfire that Gozaburo's pistol failed to deliver now barked into the darkness, and the man screamed behind his clenched teeth; his right knee shattered and he collapsed into a heap on the hallway floor.
"Millennium Magic," Kisara said slowly, "is a mixture of the energies of life and death. It reaches out from the Boundless Dark and pulls power with it, through the Barrier where my people dwell, through the Sacred Fields beyond us all, and forces it into the world of you living beings." She held up four fingers. "A four-way amalgam of power sources, all focused by the willpower of the item's holder. It is quite potent, one of the most singularly powerful sources of magic that a mortal like yourself can hope to summon."
She grinned again, and this time Pegasus could properly see her fangs.
He realized, all at once, that he recognized her fangs.
"You," she said, "are a boy. Holding a magnifying glass over an anthill. Laughing maniacally as you slaughter their insignificant little lives, sending your sharpened light into their sanctuary."
Kisara leaned in close, as though she intended to kiss him.
Somewhere, far off in the distance, in another world, Pegasus heard a dragon roaring.
"I am the sun."