Those of you who have read my Blueshipping project, "Watching the Lights Go Down," might recognize Kisara's nickname for Seto here. The reason for that is twofold: firstly, yes, I drafted both of these stories at the same time, and so there was some bleed-over. But also, the specific variant of Blueshipping that I decided to explore was based primarily on this story.
This was the first project where I brought Kisara into the narrative, after all. And while I ended up making a bunch of changes to her when I moved into a different lens, so to speak, there's still a lot of "Lights" that has its foundations here.
This isn't to say that the Seto in "Lights" has magic powers or any Millennium Items.
But, as Isis Ishtar showed us recently, there are worlds that are very close to our own. Sister worlds. Let's just say that the world of "Lights" and its sister story, "Letting the Cables Sleep," is very close to this one.
After all, another element from this story that bled over to that one is Noa.
I came across a very specific variant of Noa here, and he's stayed with me for a long time.
Verse One.
A figure that Seto cannot fully see, a figure who seems fundamentally trapped in liminality, falls into step beside him as he walks through the black. Their footsteps echo like they're dancing with each other, and Seto has a feeling he'd have a harder time perceiving the figure, if he turns to look at it head-on. So, he doesn't bother trying.
"In this," says the unknowable figure, "you do not command me." The figure is whispering, but the sound is still nearly too loud for Seto to hear. It's like white noise has been morphed into a weapon. "In this, I do not bend to your will. I have chosen you, and I fly your banner, but you have stepped into my domain. This is my work. You understand this?"
Seto draws in a breath, lets it out slowly. "I do," he says. "I would expect no less from you, Obelisk."
"You have learned to trust in your fellows, in your family," says the unknowable figure, which has been named. "In this, you have grown. You have learned that there are things you've disdained which can bring you power. You have learned that the past cannot dictate the future. You have learned that there are limits even to works which you cannot comprehend, and that finding those limits is a task you are well-suited for, whether you find it agreeable or not."
"It would seem so, yes," says Seto.
"You understand, I trust, that my task in this journey is to press upon you the importance of these lessons. You know that struggle, and strife, is the greatest teacher you have ever had. I take no pleasure in this. It is merely that for which I was made. I can no more defy it than you can breathe water."
Seto nods, more to himself than to Obelisk.
"Ra, Osiris, Obelisk," Seto says, quietly. "These tests, these challenges, are to prove that I am fit to hold one of Shadi's two Millennium Items. I would have thought he'd be in control of this game."
Obelisk chuckles, and the world shakes. "In invoking us to test you, Shadi has opened himself to the same gauntlet. He must show himself worthy of us, just as you do."
Seto frowns. "Out of . . . morbid curiosity, what happens to the Item in question, the one I'm hoping to win, if we both fail?"
A soft, dark little chuckle that thrums throughout reality. "I don't think it would be prudent of me to tell you that. Let us, instead, focus on your task. You needn't borrow trouble from the potentialities of the future. This is one lesson that you have already learned, is it not?"
Seto sighs. "Yes," he says, "it is."
"Now, then. It seems that part of my task in this arena is to inform you of the rules, such that you know what you will be vying for. You will be relieved to know that this game is simple. There is no need for long explanations or hypotheticals, no need for longwinded speeches or examples. In my games, there is only ever one rule, one task, to which one must adhere."
"Dare I ask what it is?" Seto prompts, thinking that he already knows the answer.
"Survive."
Pain like Seto Kaiba has never felt, pain that makes his worst memories bleed away into nothing, shrieks through his body like ancient banshees.
Verse Two.
"Do you know what my brother is doing right now?" Mokuba asked Osiris.
The old god shook his head. "Unfortunately, I do not," he said. "The manner by which the cosmos is built, to place it into terms mortal-kind can visualize, forbids it." He stood tall and drew a circle in the air; the line of his movement stayed visible, in gleaming green light. Osiris drew another circle, then a third, in a triangular formation.
Mokuba watched, quite enthralled by the trick.
Osiris pointed to the first circle, directly in front of him. "This, here, is your living world. This is where kings and queens reign, where revolutions are built, and all things are made manifest." He pointed to one of the others, to his left. "This is Aaru, the Sacred Fields of Order." He pointed to the last circle. "This is Duat, the Boundless Dark Beyond. The realm of Chaos."
Noa frowned, his brow furrowing, as he stepped over to listen.
Osiris drew another circle, encompassing the living world. "This is what you will hear called the Barrier. Creatures like my dragon, the Terror of the Skies, reside here."
"Duel Monsters?" Mokuba asked. "Like, all the elves and centaurs and dragons?"
"Do they all live there?" Yugi wondered.
"No," said Osiris. "Think of the Barrier as a great proving ground. Dante would have called this place Purgatorio." He chuckled, green eyes sparkling. "This is not in answer to your question, but simply a bit of a primer."
"You're part of the Sacred Order?" Mokuba guessed.
"I am," said Osiris."
"And Obelisk is in the Sea of Chaos."
"Correct," said Osiris. "Though, if I may be frank with you, to state that Obelisk is in the Sea of Chaos is . . . underselling the truth. Obelisk has built his domain in the Mariana Trench of the Sea of Chaos, if you follow me."
The young Kaiba nodded. "I think I get it," he said. "He's real deep in the darkness."
"Too far into the darkness for light to touch," Noa murmured. "Ra can't see what's happening down there, either, can he?"
"No," said Osiris. "Even other dwellers of Chaos cannot reach the full depths of Obelisk's home. He dwells deep, deep, deep in the eye of a great storm which moves Chaos in a constant maelstrom." He smiled. "Perhaps it will not surprise you to hear this, given its name and context clues, but the waters of Chaos are . . . not what anyone would call calm."
"I think I understand why Obelisk is so strong," Noa mused, "despite not being named for a specific god. Any creature, any structure, capable of standing up to that kind of beating, to the point of making its home in a place like that . . . it's impressive, I guess, is my point."
"Impressive, indeed," Osiris repeated.
"I know you can't guess," Mokuba pressed, "but do you think my brother will earn Obelisk's blessing?"
Osiris thought long and hard before answering Mokuba's question.
Eventually, he said: "I do, my son. Even Obelisk, as cruel as he can be, ultimately wishes for his champion to succeed. Fairness, ultimately, cannot be negotiated."
Verse Three.
It's ironic, in a way, that Obelisk winds time backward. Seto can feel it, in every one of his senses; his body is malleable in a way that it's never been before, and he knows it's because he stands in the Tormentor's home. In this space, where Obelisk is sovereign over all things—including Seto himself—the constant pressure of the deep, deep waters of Chaos are pressing in at all angles. If not for the fact that Seto is not in his physical body, he would surely be a puddle of blood and offal on the god-soldier's floor.
Giving up control over himself, into the hands of this fortress's sovereign leader, is the greatest expression of trust that Seto has ever offered to someone else; he finds it rather telling that he performs this act in deference to a creature made most famous by pain.
He stands within himself—a passenger, a witness—and feels everything he can remember; more acutely, more critically, than ever before. He cannot rely on the painkillers of anger and adrenaline, the way he usually does; since he isn't actually a person, a body,right now, he can't even tighten his muscles in preparation for what's coming.
All he can do is endure.
Seto remembers, with every agonizing detail, the moment his soul was ripped from his body by the magic of an ancient king. He remembers Dartz, that old ghost with so many delusions of his own importance, and Seto knows that returning to this place is going to take everything he has. He can't shut his eyes against the blinding lights; he can't flinch away from the searing fire. He's left awash in something so painful that he almost can't feel it. It's like reality itself can't work out how much this hurts, and so it's shoving him off to the periphery.
It burns. It seethes.
Seto wishes he could scream. He would give away so much to have a voice right now, to let out his frustrations, to roar like the dragon he's always felt coiled up inside of himself. But he can't. There is nothing physical about him right now, except his nerves.
The magic is reaching into him and pulling out every vulnerable piece. His bones splinter, his teeth crack. He feels like water, drifting in agony, and the only thing that makes him exist is the conscious ability to feel it. Seto wonders, in numb delirium, whether he would be able to endure this if he were someone else. Would Yugi Mutou manage to withstand this? Noa? Mokuba? Seto is almost certain that Noa could do it; he didn't build his brother to be sturdy, to be strong, for him to be undone by something as trivial as pain.
He isn't sure about Yugi or Mokuba.
Ryo Bakura, Seto thinks, could stand with him here.
Here in the deepest waters of nothingness.
He wonders where that confidence comes from; it isn't like he knows Ryo very well. He barely knows Ryo at all, actually, despite their having shared many spaces together over the years. They shared classes together; they were both involved in many atrocities together, all stemming from the golden treasures that Seto is now trying to win.
Eventually, if he makes it through this with enough left to count as a man, Seto will have to face Ryo and earn the Millennium Ring from him. Except it won't be Ryo, will it? It will be the spirit that harbors so much resentment, who uses Ryo's body because it's all he's been promised to us.
Seto starts to think that maybe, just maybe, he'll make it through this test.
Then time winds itself backward again. He descends deeper.
He still can't scream.
Verse Four.
In the distant fringes of reality, where nothing exists as a tangible fixture and Seto Kaiba is still capable of thinking anything, it strikes him as odd, alien, that he's had his soul forcibly removed from his body multiple times, from different sources of magic. He isn't capable of working out what it means; he's too far removed from the ability to analyze, but . . . it's strange. Singularly strange.
It makes his soul feel like a loose tooth, unable to latch onto his body with proper grip anymore, and he's quite sure he will become nothing but exposed nerves if he can't do something about it.
Watching himself, held back so that he is merely an observer, an audience member to a snuff film, trapped in his own body and unable to do anything but feel, Seto wonders if he will ever witness a more exquisite orchestrator of pain than Pegasus Crawford. There was never a moment in all his life where Seto was more unmade than when he stood on the wrong end of that damnable arena, in that damnable castle, with only his Dark Clown to stand with him. It's funny. People ask him why he uses Saggi, why that monster of all monsters, when Seto is known so far and wide for his dragons.
Seto can't explain it to anyone; not in a way that matters.
But it matters to him, that Saggi was there to die with him at the end of that match.
Standing at his side, ready to leap into the abyss alongside him.
Seto watches as all consciousness leaves his body. He's so young. So vulnerable. The boy standing there, wearing that navy coat and those scuffed loafers. He'd been trying so hard to be taken seriously. Just a boy, a boy with no guidance, a boy barely able to stand on his own two feet, in a world full of predators.
People talk about sharks, and how it feels like the corporate world is a tank full of them.
Seto has never held with that metaphor; Seto likes sharks.
Seto thinks of navigating the business world as trying to swim in a river of crocodiles. Sharks don't want to eat human flesh; they bite because they have no other way of understanding the world, no other way of investigating. Crocodiles, though.
Crocodiles.
Dartz's magic was like being crushed by a mountain. No hope, no wondering if maybe there was a way to make it out. As soon as that great shadow loomed, he knew. There was a kind of peace in the knowing, in passing the torch to Yugi and the King. But Pegasus, he was a crocodile, and that duel was his death roll. Seto watches his body, lifeless but moving, too stupid and stubborn to die, and almost wonders why there aren't bite marks in his flesh.
It strikes him as . . . serendipitous, perhaps, that he's had to keep doing business with a man like Pegasus. He has power over Pegasus now.
Seto could, if he wanted, if he survives this, go back to that island and rip Pegasus's soul from his body. He has that power now. He has that magic now. He can be the crocodile and rip the bastard's head off if he wants.
But Seto isn't a crocodile.
Seto is a dragon.
Verse Five.
Everything about Obelisk's game, such as it is, turns into a physical thing: a singular mass of regret. Everything from the moment when the King defeated him in their first match together—and subsequently broke his mind into pieces—running backward through his years under the fists of his predecessor—the previous Master Kaiba, the old King of Domino—all brings back too many memories for Seto to properly work through. They drown him in a malaise of disgust and something unreasonably close to horror.
The unknowable thing that is Obelisk the Tormentor is not here.
There is no one for Seto to look to, to speak to, to anchor him. He is left listless and adrift as he watches the boy he once was. Lashed and chained to work that he never wanted, lessons he never needed, punishments he never deserved. It's all too much to articulate, too scattered to parse, and Seto has only one tactic left to him.
Like he's always done, he hunkers down and pushes forward.
The pain, the shame, the fear, the grief, washes through him.
He can't grit his teeth, he can't tighten his core, but he endures all the same.
He tells himself: none of this killed him the first time. It won't kill him this time.
Seto Kaiba is a dragon.
He is a dragon.
All at once, Seto feels something. He doesn't know what it is at first, and he almost ignores it. But then he reminds himself that there is nothing he actually can ignore in this space. He is splayed out like a blanket of raw nerves in this space, and nothing escapes his notice. The light, the light, is here.
He bends his consciousness toward it.
He knows this shape.
He knows those wings.
A new voice—not Obelisk, not the unknowable stranger, not Osiris or Ra or the sun—comes to him; except, it isn't a new voice. Not really. It's a voice he's known for years. For decades. It's a voice he's heard in his dreams for so, so long.
It's the voice he dreamed about the first time he was here.
Even the warden of darkness himself cannot keep you from me.
Seto feels heavy, gleaming claws grip him by the shoulders. He feels himself lifted out of the sea of agony, and he feels himself bolstered by great heavy wings that beat in time with his heartbeat. The pain dims, the shame lifts, and Seto is able to see again. He returns to himself, in a way that he hasn't been able to do for what feels like eons.
"How did you find me?" he manages to ask.
A rasping sound, like ripping talons, serves his savior for a laugh.
My prince, says the queen of dragons, I never lost you.
Seto wonders if Obelisk is angered. Does this go against the spirit of the lesson he is supposed to be learning? Will he fail to earn Obelisk's blessing now?
"Is this . . . permitted?" Seto asks, and his voice is young.
So, so young.
That rasping laugh again.
The whims of gods do not move me.
END.