Given that there is only one Millennium Item left to cover, I'm not going to pretend that this book won't be short. After this chapter, there will be three more to round out the narrative. I originally had a lot of other ideas for how to continue the story, after Seto gained all his magical powers.

That was the springboard from which I originally STARTED my old stories as a kid, after all.

But the longer this took, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I pretty much had everything I needed to say with the journey. This was the important part. Maybe I'll have a sequel someday, maybe I'll explore that old playground I built as a high-schooler, but for now this is it.

Book 6 starts here.

Let us begin.

Verse One.

Seto spent the majority of his time, in the next days, pacing the back gardens of the Kaiba Estate; doing what, no one could guess. Everyone had theories, of course, but there was no way to verify any of them. Whenever they asked, Seto would give a noncommittal answer about needing fresh air, and that was all. It didn't miss Mokuba or Noa that, while Seto spent nearly an entire week doing nothing but this, his work at Kaiba-Corp never faltered. Even though there was clearly no time for him to do anything for the company, he very clearly was.

"Must be the magic," Noa said, and left it at that.

Or, at least, he tried to leave it.

"Maybe Niisama can do telekinesis now," Mokuba suggested, "and he doesn't have to be sitting at his office or his study anymore. Has anybody checked his computers? Maybe he's doing all his work that way." It turned out that no one had, and the young Kaiba resolved to check his brother's office the next time he had the chance.

It was Kisara, in the end, who guessed correctly.

"I believe he is speaking to my king," she said, "hoping to learn all he can of what he must do, once he faces the final trials."

"You've started talking like a new person," Noa noted. "I think even your voice is changed."

Kisara shrugged. "What can I say?" she asked. "I think I am a new person. The dragon has awoken in me, and I have become all that she is, alongside all that I am. I can remember her life, just as easily as my own. When I speak, she speaks." She gesticulated randomly. "It hasn't felt much like a change to me. I think I have always been this way, and I've only just recently remembered."

"So," Noa said, "you think he's talking to Seti. The only king he has access to."

"The only king he can ask without suffering," Kisara corrected.

"Right, right." Noa grimaced. "I guess no matter how much power he grabs, he'll never really see himself as Atem's equal."

"He is not the golden ghost's equal," Kisara muttered. "He would never sink so low."

Noa had been ready to bristle at the insult, but then he laughed, clearly delighted. "All right, you know what? I think I like that." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I wonder what this final trial will be. What will our King of Games cook up, so Aniki can finally prove he's worthy of the Millennium Puzzle?"

"I have never been able to work out the gnarled knots of that man's mind," Kisara said. She could just as easily have been talking about Seto, except it didn't sound complimentary; whatever she saw in Atem's mind, she seemed to be insulted by it. Anathema, in its way, to her king and her prince. It was clear Kisara had chosen her side, and Noa didn't suppose he could blame her.

He wasn't especially fond of Atemhotep, the Ghost of the Golden Age, either.

Verse Two.

"If you want my honest opinion," Seti said, floating alongside his host as he walked, "I believe the answer is much simpler than you are making it out to be; you are simply experiencing the same, shall we call it, itch as young Bakari before you. The desire, the need for—from—the dead of Kul Elna, the spirits who deliver this power, to . . . do something. It's been too long for them to know what it is they wish to see done, but they still wish quite fervently to do it."

"The last thing I needed was another anxiety disorder," Seto muttered.

Seti hummed. He didn't reach out to pat Seto's shoulder, but it felt like he did.

Seto rolled his eyes. "I suppose there's one thing for it," he said. "I already have plenty of experience dealing with . . . that. Fine. We'll move forward with your understanding. It's as good an answer as I'm liable to get, because I certainly don't understand this nonsense any better than I did a month ago."

"Do you truly believe that you've learned naught in the time you've spent on this path?"

Seto groaned. "Oh, I've learned. I just don't know what any of this means." He held out his right palm and let out a pulse of golden light. "What am I supposed to do with that? How am I to refine it? Study it, do anything with it? It's like if someone told me: oh, phantom pain is actually from a real limb, you just can't see or feel it with your other . . . pieces. You have to learn how to harness it. Except now I have six new limbs, and I don't know what any of them do."

Seti nodded sagely. "Yes, yes," he said, "I can see how this would be vexing. If I may offer a suggestion, consider treating this practice the way that you've treated every art you have ever learned. You like to explore, do you not? So, explore. Experiment. Play. This magic is great, and it carries immense power, but there are many such things. There are any number of practices which carry the potential for great harm, but which we approach with laughter and whimsy. The greatest strength of any child is how they learn. You are still young. Certainly, you are a child compared to me. Take that not as an insult, but as an invitation."

Seto grunted. ". . . Huh," he said, rubbing his chin.

He glanced over to one edge of the garden. He spotted a little rock, seated in a bed of soil. He twitched one hand, and the little rock flew into his hand. He held it up, tossed it into the air, and watched it float. He twirled his hand and watched the little rock float in front of his eyes, spinning in place.

Seti smiled. "You see?"

Seto smiled. "Hm," he said. "Maybe you're on to something."

"In the meantime," Seti said, "I would also recommend you ruminate on what you have learned in your time with the gods. You have faced many trials, and they have taught you much."

Verse Three.

Mokuba slipped into his brother's study, saw his keyboard typing itself, mouse moving and clicking of its own accord, and he let out a triumphant little laugh. He choked it down when he saw Seto, lying on a nearby couch, face covered by a huge, open, hardbound book with Esoteric Magic and its Place in African History emblazoned across the spine. The eldest Kaiba didn't look like he was asleep; he did, however, look quite thoroughly done with every aspect of life he might be expected to engage in if he happened to be awake. Mokuba watched his brother silently for a time, wondering if he ought to just step away and leave Seto be.

Then he realized that, based on everything he'd seen Seto do over the past week, there was no way he didn't know that someone else was in the room right now. So, Mokuba decided to just come out with it; he said: "Having trouble adjusting, big guy?"

Seto grunted. "As if my brain didn't move fast enough already," he said, voice muffled by his book, "I had to go and fuck it up worse. Take this as a warning, Mokuba. Never chase down magic. It will only make your life more needlessly complicated."

"Do you . . . have a headache or something?" Mokuba asked. "Should I get you some painkillers?"

"No," Seto said, heaving a sigh. "I'll be fine. I just need to be dramatic first."

"Ah." Mokuba nodded sagely. "I understand."

Seto lifted up the book and tossed it into the air; Mokuba watched it fly toward the bookshelf where his brother kept his favorite works—or else the ones he was currently using for research—and flip precisely into the right position before it slid into place.

Mokuba laughed. "You can just do stuff like that now? What, a side effect?"

"Parlor tricks," said Seto, "are one of the few perks of this bullshit." He pulled himself upright. "Everything is so loud. I've always had trouble drowning out noise, and now my senses are even more sensitive." He gesticulated. "Oh, but isn't it useful? Isn't it good for your senses to be sharp?" He pointed at Mokuba, dramatically. "No. It's not. If this is what it takes to make sure no one shanks me in a dark alley, I'd rather take my chances. I'm vaccinated. I'll be fine."

"You sound like you regret your life choices, Niisama," Mokuba said, "which probably means you're feeling better. That's your default state."

Seto snorted. "You know what, you make a good point." He stood up and stretched.

"Are you omnipotent now?"

Seto shook his head. "No," he said. "I can see what I want to see, hear what I want to hear, be where I want to be. I can bend myself into whatever or whenever or however I want. But I'm still limited to one man. If I wanted to truly expand myself and achieve true apotheosis, I would have to die first." Seto sighed again. "I mean, that's oversimplifying it. A little. But still."

Mokuba's face fell. "Oh."

Verse Four.

"If you can already do all this stuff," Mokuba said, "then why do you even need the Puzzle?"

Seto hummed. "Stability," he said. "That's what Seti tells me, in any case. The Puzzle represents unity; out of many, one. It helps keep the soul intact and cohesive, even while splitting itself every which way."

"So, until you get it, you could . . . hurt yourself? Break yourself into pieces?"

"As an example," Seto agreed. "I am doing my best to remain grounded, so to speak, until the king decides to grace me with his presence." At Mokuba's searching look, he went on: "I'm not going to come crawling to him and beg for him to be done with this. I've learned my lesson. I wanted everything to move more quickly, and look what happened. I upended my entire understanding of reality in a weekend."

"Hm," Mokuba said. "I guess that's fair." His expression softened. "So, you and Seti are getting along good? He's helping you out?"

"He is," said Seto. "Now that we've reached an understanding on just what my path forward looks like, and it just so happens to coincide with what he wanted from the jump, things are much more amicable between us."

Mokuba smirked. "Somehow," he said, "I don't think it's quite that simple."

"Maybe not," Seto admitted, "but I can't pretend that he didn't get the better deal out of the two of us. I did eventually end up doing precisely what he wanted. I could be flippant and say I'm doing it my way, but . . . since I'm not in the mood to lie to myself, and I hate Frank Sinatra, I'd rather not."

"So, like," Mokuba asked, after a time, "what does this mean? Like, obviously you can still do your work." He gestured to the computer, still working at speed. "Are you even paying attention to that? Or is that all on autopilot?"

"Part of me is paying attention," Seto said. "The core of all this, at least so far as I've been able to understand it, is that . . . it's not so much that I can do more, now that this magic has claimed me. Rather, it's that there's more of me."

"Like those movies that talk about what life would be like if you could use more than ten percent of your brain?"

Seto grunted. "I'd make some snide remark about how that factoid is ridiculous and I can't believe you would invoke it in front of me, but actually that's a really good way of explaining it. Yes."

Mokuba flashed a grin. "I'm a genius," he said.

Seto's gaze softened, and he seemed fully present for the first time in a long time. "Yes," he said, "you are."

"We met Osiris," Mokuba said.

Seto quirked an eyebrow. "Oh? What was that like?"

"Kinda weird," Mokuba said. "Kinda nice. He seems cool."

"What did he want?" Seto asked.

Mokuba gestured. "He said something about you earning his blessing, and how he was there to keep an eye on us for you."

Verse Five.

Noa appeared in the doorway, leaning against its frame. "It seems like he needed some kind of conduit to come here," he said, "and you earning his blessing served well enough. I think he was worried that ol' Bakari was going to start trouble if he wasn't there to intervene."

"I see," Seto said, without looking over. It struck both Seto's brothers, in that moment, that it was likely impossible for them to surprise their elder anymore. There weren't going to be any prank wars, or sneaking up on him in the middle of the night when he was too tired to notice their approaching footsteps. "Well. I suppose I ought to thank him for the gesture."

"How did you, ah . . . well, I guess, for lack of a nicer way of putting it, turn Bakari, anyway?" Noa eyed Seto suspiciously. "He was pretty trigger happy about making the royal bloodline pay for what was done to his people. You're part of that bloodline. Yet, here you are, not only having not gotten yourself ganked, but also you seem to be the only person he gives half a fuck about. Except maybe Ryo."

"The dead of Kul Elna . . . have plenty of grief that they've yet to truly work through," Seto said, "not least because they have never had anyone to guide them. It seems they viewed Bakari, their only remaining son, as a traitor; not only for living while they died, but by drawing on their power in his quest for vengeance."

"He did it for them" Noa said.

"And it's not like they were going to do anything about it," Mokuba added.

"Trust me," Seto said. "I know."

". . . You stuck up for him," Noa guessed. "You told them off for treating one of their own like a pariah."

Seto smirked. "Am I so obvious?" he asked. "Yes. I did." With a flick of his wrist, Seto manifested a vision of the moment when he stood his ground against the tribunal of Kul Elna. Mokuba and Noa watched studiously, less surprised than they might have been if they hadn't spent so much time around the creator of Solid Vision.

Seto had been known to perform such tricks with his holograms; he would wear projectors beneath the metal bracers he wore—which, contrary to popular belief, were primarily to prevent carpal tunnel and not because they just so happened to look dramatic—and use them to facilitate what amounted to stage magic.

The only part that stuck out to them about this latest show was that it was obviously not holographic.

"Once a showman, always a showman," Noa said, laughing quietly to himself. "Well played, Aniki. Sometimes, all you have to do is stand your ground, grit your teeth, and call someone an asshole to their fucking face."

"Or a bunch of assholes," Mokuba said.

"That said," Noa went on, "that was ballsy."

"They could have killed you," said Mokuba.

Seto shrugged. "Could have. They didn't. I won."

END.