Yu-Gi-Oh: A Past and Future Pharaoh
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
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Mana stopped running almost spinning on her heel to look and address him again, yet her eyes weren't so sad now. They were baffled, confused, but most of all they were angry.
"'Your departure'? The Prince told us about that... That's not what I meant by 'betray'..." The hurt in her eyes and the anger in her voice held him back from taking another step. The airy chamber they stood in seemed to have decided that this conversation was important. For it allowed the words that were transpiring to bounce against the walls ricocheting around so he could hear it on repeat.
Piercing the heat from the flames consuming the fabrics in the room with a sharp chill from Mana's voice. "You came back with that horrible white dragon! You hurt our Prince! He's dying and its 'your' fault!"
The words slapped Set full in the face with their accusation and outrage, as the anger bled back into tears as Mana began to break down emotionally. "You and that horrible dragon, you killed everyone in your way until you got to the Royal Chamber. That stupid dragon sent Master back to his tablet... and even that wasn't enough for you! The Prince needed to conserve his strength, he refused to call the Gods to deal with your treason... And you attacked him physically... You tore out his eye! You... You..."
Mana sobbing, spun away and sprinted off, running from him as though she would run away from the memories of recent events. Leaving Set with the echo of her steps and his horror, his mind bringing back the feeling on his fingers. Raising his hands before him to see the stains of blood on them. This was the 'Pharaoh's' blood? 'He' stormed the palace? The dead charred bodies of guards, soldiers, and servants were due to 'his' actions? He had to wake up, he could spend no further time in this vision, he 'needed' reality!
His fingers pinched his arm as he waited for his eyes to open.
But they didn't despite the pain.
So he twisted the flesh on his arm, as hard as he could until tears sprang from his eyes. Leaving him with a terrible fear that this wasn't a vision. This horrible crumbling, gutted out palace was 'reality'.
Struggling to resume his run after Mana, while his legs moved sluggishly and his knees refused to stablize so he could hold his body upright. He tried to rack his heart for what happened, if she said he came here under his own power. That was 'not' his last memory before waking up in the throne room!
It was at that moment that it sank into him that he couldn't remember the past few days, literally 'days' were now gone from his recollection. Even someone in the throes of illness could recall something from their sickness. But as much as he was clawing at them, those days were mere smoke on the wind.
Struggling for the last memory he had at all only gave him a faint memory of blood and the sound of Aknadins' voice ringing in victorious laughter. A laugh that, now started, refused to stop taking up the space in Set's mind in absence of his memories. Yet he couldn't remember when that laugh took place, for Aknadin never laughed in the way he remembered. It was loud, drowning out the sound of Set's feet as the General stumbled along, and mad. Set recalled that quite well, the sound of a man who had lost his heart. The deep rumbling that got higher pitched the longer air was denied from the non stop laughter.
Torn between his duty to find the Pharaoh and puzzle his own absence of memory, Set placed the Pharaoh's safety first. Pushing ahead to search and regulating his thoughts to just his heart as Set struggled to remember what happened 'after' he arrived at the Temple. He could remember that, at least, the quiet talk he had with the Pharaoh. Slipping into his room and packing light because he expected this to be a small trip...
But after that, what happened next?
He left the palace because Aknadin kidnapped Kisara, returning back to the Temple of Tablets with a threat to extract her Ka beast. While Set was well aware of the process of extraction, to extract a Ka from a criminal was one thing, an innocent woman was another. Not even bothering to mention that the innocent woman in question was under Set's direct protection! He recalled her and the Dragon Ka she carried from his youth. That she braved his homeland again just to protect him had been touching and he more than welcomed her presence.
It was clear to Set that there was something terribly wrong about Aknadin. The man had served as a faithful Priest to Pharaoh Aknamkanon before his death, only to have this sudden change of behavior be both alarming and unsettling. Yet when Set thought of him now, he felt revulsion and shame, but again 'why'.
He lost sight of Mana rather quickly, despite her emotional state and the labor she worked under carrying all those Items. She was still moving far more quickly than the hobbled General trying to figure out her words. The walls suddenly shook all around him, sending grounded down bits of sand and rubble from high above raining over him. A threat strong enough that the Pharaoh would have to call upon the Gods, Mana stated.
Somewhere the Pharaoh was fighting without his High Priests and as Mana said, dying by the hands of his General... The feeling of loss of his fellow High Priests was weight in his stomach that he would never get over. They weren't just priests, they were his friends, the people he could relax around and not have to be 'High Priest Set, General of the Pharaoh's army'. More over 'dying'? Had Set fatally wounded his own ruler? The Pharaoh who he had watched grow up? If it had been anyone else in the palace; any other servant, or soldier he would have struck them in the face for such lies. But he knew Mana since she was a toddling babe herself, she wouldn't lie to him.
All the while he heard Aknadin laughing in the back of his heart, that loud, jarring laughter as though he was right there. Only Set knew that wasn't the case, it was a sense, like how the animals knew when the rains were coming. He knew Aknadin was dead and that his death was deserved, given that Aknadin stole her away. A death brought on by Set himself in judgment for... for... for what? What did Aknadin do besides take her away?
Set was not one to strike down a fellow Priest for anything less than treason against the throne though. So Aknadin had to have done something more to the nation to earn the declaration of 'traitor' from Set. The more he thought on it, the more the memory of those reptilian blue eyes came back to him. Their shade of blue reminding him of the open sky, the freedom of the outdoors, the wild power of lightning during the fiercest of storms.
"Her power is magnificent, truly only you could bring such power to heel by your presence alone!"
The words replaced the crack of lightning that flashed in his memories, returning the barest of slivers of what happened to him. Along with the memory of those words, of bringing power to heel, since she wasn't a 'beast' to him just because she carried the Ka of one. While as powerful as her Dragon was, he couldn't feel the same power that the Three that the Pharaoh commanded from her. Her dragon was mighty to be sure, but compared to that Goddess that the Three came from? From Her Light to Her Power She outstripped even the Dragon.
As he passed the doors into the widen chamber of the receiving area he could not see Mana ahead of him.
He didn't expect to though, and he worried that his presence was spurring her to run faster, something that he found troubling. If what she said was true, then the rest of the palace guards would be alerted as she moved along that he was awake. He could expect opposition from the palace guards as soon as she found some. Meaning more time would be delayed from helping the Pharaoh, if his help was even welcomed at this point. Surely the sight of the Blue Eyed Dragon would elicit a powerful, fearful, reaction from the forces given what Mana had described.
Set just needed to keep walking, those soldiers would be arriving any time now to waylay him from his determined path.
He just had to keep walking...
Someone was going to show up, right?
Where 'were' the guards? Mana said her master was dead... who would have taken command once... how could he even be 'dead'?! How could someone as physically powerful as Kalim be gone? Shada? Isis? Somewhere Shimon had to be working on plans... The more that Set thought on what Mana said the more his heart ached. Where was his confidence? His self assured knowledge that he didn't do as she said? Why 'wasn't' he confident that he was innocent? Where came this feeling as though everyone abandoned him for some unremembered wrong?
His heart hurt with the shame of 'guilt' when he could not recall ever committing such foul actions!
"Oh Great and Mighty Set, You who protects Ra daily and ensure our life giving suns' protection, please protect our Pharaoh. If I have failed to perform my duty, if I have brought harm upon our Pharaoh, place the punishment on me and I will bear it for eternity gladly. But not him, please not him."
Set whispered as he reached the next series of doors and the next room of charred bodies.
The room shook again as though a mighty fist slammed against its roof, an enraged god refused Set's prayer slamming it back into the palace. The rooms were becoming a blur until he finally began to feel the heated breeze from outside. It carried away the stench of burned and charred flesh around him, bringing the smell of burning homes and fires left unattended. It also carried the roar of a beast that was not a God, its voice sending the walls rattling further the closer Set got to the exterior of the palace.
"You are my son, and you WILL be the new Pharaoh!"
It was a sentence that sprung up fully formed in the back of his heart, overlapping the sound of the beast and twisting it to that of Aknadin. While outside the Pharaoh was facing something that Set should have been here from the start to face. The doors were wide open, blasted to the ground it gave a straight visual of the his homeland burning. A wall of orange and gold rose up before him a mighty maw greedily consuming the outer wall of the palace grounds.
The smoke choked his lungs, stealing his breath as the memories of the night his mother died and the Blue Eyed White Dragon took flight rose up before his eyes. The trade was too high, forced to trade the life of his mother and the village just to become General? He would have been happy as just a soldier if this was to be the cost for the Dragon to be his. He didn't want to sacrifice the Pharaoh and his friends just to have the power of the Blue Eyed White Dragon, he didn't want to rule!
There were no slave traders to hold him back, leaving him free to run into the street while he whispered prayers to every God and Goddess he could think of who might lend him an ear. Freeing him to beg Them not to let the Pharaoh die, that He and their country could be saved. Even as his first major duty as General was burning down before his eyes. He was failing them, he was failing everyone who ever put their faith or trust in him!
Literally the first attack against their nation and here he was, late, possibly the threat that took out the palace guards... He could never live down this shame, while above him was the deep dark rolling clouds of smoke that rose from the ground, obscuring the divine lights of the sky. Before him was his home land in flames, swaths of the city were gone with only crumbled bits of stone to indicate that there was anything there to begin with.
"-weight wrong so badly!? Because its not..."
Bodies littered the ground like when the Pharaoh was still a prince and upended his toy baskets. Soldiers and civilians tossed aside, the occasional horse and burning chariots with no sign of a living person for as far as Set could see. Though he didn't want to look far, the front walls of the royal city had been crushed to the ground, with a slithering type of darkness writhing over the broken stonework. A monster loomed in the darkness of the night, his pitch black form standing stark pinned between the deep blue of the night sky and the vivid bright orange and golds of the burning capital.
The only light in the sky was that of her white dragon, she soared along the heated thermal air of the fallen capital. White lighting spewed forward from her mouth against the beast she flew against with her pure white body as agile as a falcon. She dipped and dove, rose up and soared yet she stayed in a general location over the city between the palace and the fallen outer distant wall.
Her light dispelled the dark fog that obscured his vision of this abomination amid the smoke and flames. The Demon was, in just feeling alone, unclean and that was just by 'looking' at this beast. It was as strange as any Ka Beast he had ever seen. Even the most depraved criminals could not produce a Ka that affected him in the same way! There was a keening type of sound in the back of his mind that brought to mind the baying of asses and old men laughing intermixed. Yet if it was 'there' than the Pharaoh had to be somewhere between the Palace and the abomination.
Mana left this way, somewhere there was a magician in training and their Pharaoh. Only there were no Gods that the Blue Eyed Dragon soared among, so where were they? Did the Pharaoh not yet call upon them?
Upon the heels of that thought came Mana's unbidden voice, 'needed to conserve his strength', she had said. Set had apparently injured the Pharaoh, so did he even 'have' the strength to call forth the Gods? Or had Set taken that from him?
"Please... Help me find the Pharaoh, help me save him!" Set spoke even as he willed his frozen joints to move. There was so much darkness, and he craved the light to dispel both his internal and external darkness. Even her beautiful white dragon felt as small as the celestial bodies in the sky above, peaking out from behind the thick rolling clouds of smoke.
Pure white in form, she exuded not just light, but his hope that he could find the Pharaoh in time. Her tablet activated once more, releasing another Dragon, though unlike her that was facing the demon, this one looked the way he recalled from his childhood. She soared into the air free of the confines of the tablet or the palace, spiraling upwards over the city that Set called home, letting loose a roar that vibrated the bones in his body. Shaking off the darkness of the monster at the gates of the city.
She sounded proud and strong. Her roar was a challenge against the demon at the gates, her flight a challenge to try and come after her. While the original was before the Demon already fighting, this one with its rounded head and jewel like blue eyes stayed over him, circling like a tamed hawk.
Yet the original was circling as a type of lit marker for him to follow, a light to guide him to their ruler. She didn't respond to the roar of the younger version of herself, and the feeling of needing to call upon this much power was only a minor setback to Set. Yet her presence gave Set hope. If she could split herself into two than her original self was with the Pharaoh, though how he got a hold of her. Or why she was already out and here were questions he would try to ponder later. After the demon was slain.
So long as she was with the Pharaoh, and Set refused to believe otherwise, he would follow her and reach the Pharaoh. It wouldn't even be hard to reach her actually, the streets were empty of anyone alive. Granted he would have liked a horse, but at least there was no one to get in his way. No stampede of terrified civilians, or soldiers struggling against the odds set before them. It was strange though, how there was no demonic army or forces, just this one being. If it was a Ka or even if it was a lone demon, how could one being cause so much destruction on its own? How could the army be frightened of just 'one' demon?
I was so vain to think we were undefeatable when using the demon's own power.
Mana probably could tell him, if he could get her to talk to him without resentment coloring her words.
The air, choked with dust and smoke felt like a physical wall with the flames were sucking away all the breathable air greedily as it consumed the city. It was a heat that surpassed even the hottest days in Egypt, at least when it was just a hot day it didn't take the air from one's lungs. The smoke stung his eyes, blurring his vision making the flames leap and dance farther than they probably were.
The robes of State that he wore with such pride and had kept clean with such dedication was now as dingy and torn as though he was but a beggar. There were stains of blood and sweat, rips that left it flapping like a lone flag on a field.
"His blood pressure is..."