Atum conceived the king, but the dead king has greater dominion.
._._.
When he awoke, his head was pounding, his body was cold, and the lanyard of the Puzzle was tangled so tightly around his neck that it was only the black leather choker he wore that, ironically, had prevented him from strangling in his sleep. He was having difficulty focusing – had he hit his head, too? A concussion was not a welcome thing, not after the stress of yesterday. He could still hear the gunshots, taste the broken shards, remembered embracing his companion as they cracked and shattered like so much glass.
He groaned, rolling himself out of bed. The eastern rising sun came without mercy and attacked the bed with blinding fury, and though it was early spring, the sun made his face too hot to sleep in, as odd a phrase as that may be. He rose, and changed into his other outfit – the compact leathers, tight and dark. He’d have to wash his quasi-uniform some time today; as awkward as it was to use hand soap and the bathroom sink as his laundry, it was free and worked well enough.
It was as he was brushing his teeth that he noticed something was amiss. A ‘missing, even. Usually at this point, the two of him would start planning what they would be doing that upcoming day, even if for the past week or so it had been the same “okay, we’re seriously getting on a boat this time,” plan. Closing his eyes as he scrubbed the film from his tongue, and trying not to gag, he called out to his counterpart. He was met with silence.
As he spat, he wondered if he should take the lack of response from his companion as a sign of sleep: after all, it was not entirely unknown for one of him to be awake without the other, but such had not happened in awhile. Then again, with a headache this bad and as shitty as he felt in control, he could not begrudge his companion the peace of sleep in comparison.
The day wore on, and the continued silence became a greater matter of concern. Morning had passed without a word between them, as had the afternoon. Hell, sunset was passing as he walked through crime-ridden streets, and still nothing. Had he... had he displeased his companion, somehow? Again he tried calling out, but there was no response.
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, leaning on the battered cage-protected storefront window of an abandoned bakery. He tried again, but it felt as though he wasn’t merely being ignored; he was being blocked.
A bristle of irritation shot through him. All right, so he’d obviously done something to offend his companion: fine then. If he had no other choice, he would force his partner to interfere. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen, certainly not after—
There was nothing for it. Though the streets were dangerous at night, he continued walking into the Wasteland. As though the desire had conjured it, it was only ten or so minutes later that he felt the tip of a knife press into the leather on his back.
“Awfully dangerous for a kid,” growled a voice behind him, husky and low; even a couple weeks ago, this voice would have made the Yuugi who did not know of his other self quake with terror, “out on the streets alone with such a pretty necklace.”
The knife pressed against him a little harder, but did not cut through his clothing. “I think you should give it to me,” said the thief. “Wouldn’t want to get hurt, would you?”
The thief behind him could not see his face, but could easily hear the smile and the jest. “Oh, how kind of you,” he said, “but I think I’ll be fine, thanks.”
The thief grabbed him by the shoulder, fingers digging painfully into the mostly healed but still tender wound, and he was bodily slammed into a chain link fence that rattled under the force of his impact. The knife pressed against him harder, but not enough to yet cut through his shirt.
“No, I insist, little boy. In fact,” the thief hissed into his ear; the thief’s breath was hot and oddly clean against his face. He would have expected his attacker to smell of booze, but the scents he recognized were coffee and waffles and peanut butter. “You’ve got a lot of pretty things I want, and you shouldn’t be so greedy with them...” The grip on his shoulder tightened, and he was once more slammed against the fence; he could feel as the knife pierced and sliced the leather, the blade’s sharp edge tracing lines into the newly exposed flesh of his back. He clenched his eyes shut.
His companion knew what would happen next, he knew, he knew, he knew, and yet had not tried once to steer him from this path, had not once tried to stop what would follow.
His eyes snapped open in terror as the thief’s hand moved from his left shoulder, as the knife trailed almost lazily over his back, scratching in shallow cuts while the thief murmured threats. His partner would not answer his mental calls. His other self would not answer him. Would not, would not, would not, even after all this time, even with this danger to their body.
He slowly slid his right hand to the knife on his belt, praying that his— his— his would stop him, but still his head was empty. Gritting his teeth he swung back his unrestrained left arm, connecting with the thief’s knife-arm and pushing it out of the way. Surprised, the thief did not resist the sudden attack, and his arm was easy to move; once the threat of stabbing was no longer in contact with his back, he spun, holding still the thief’s arm while his hand gripped on his own knife fiercely.
In less than a second, he had gone from victim to attacker. Without even a moment of pause after the initial thrust he ripped the knife from the stomach of the thief and he ran. Ignoring the memory of the man’s eyes widening in horror, ignoring the feel of blood on his hand he stored the knife away, not even wiping it clean, he ran. He was glad for the dark of night, glad for the dark of his leather to not show the stains of violence even as he wiped his hand upon the already bloodstained Pyramid.
The fact that he’d just stabbed a man was not the distressing part. Within the confines of his cold and empty mind, Yuugi screamed for his other self, and still he received no reply; for the first time, the Puzzle was cold to the touch.
._._.
Two days had passed since that encounter at the Tower, then four. The gamblers in the area were quickly coming to know the kid called Saikoro after he began sweeping through their hidden casinos and easily wiping men dry in only a few hands. It didn’t matter the game, he won, but there was no joy in him, no pride, no greed. The money only went to the bare minimum he needed for meals, and to pay the rent to the motel matron Yamafuku each evening. Even she was worried: he was no longer the cocky little bastard who’d checked in only a few weeks ago. He’d claimed he had no friends or family – at least none with whom he kept contact. Why, she wondered, did he then act as though someone had died?
It was not quite a dream, the place Yuugi saw on the fifth night. He was asleep, he knew that: he was the type of person who always knew he was dreaming. He could never feel the words or winds, and there was never enough detail for reality, never enough stray dust, never enough shadow play, never enough movement.
This was not quite a dream, Yuugi could tell – for even though the details of the bedroom were too numerous and too varied for his standard fare of dreams, it was not the bed upon which Yuugi had fallen asleep, nor the room in which he slumbered. He could hear the street noises of the early morning Mountain district of Titan beyond the curtained window; the orange light of dawn filtered through the fabric to illuminate the room in a pleasant but naturally accurate haze. It reminded Yuugi of his bedroom back home, though this room and that looked nothing alike.
No matter how real the room seemed, he knew it had to be a dream. After all, when Yuugi was awake, his vision was no longer framed by bleached-blond fringe.
As is usually the case in dreams, somehow Yuugi knew that even though he had ‘awoken’ in this room, he was meant to cross the threshold of the open bedroom doorway. Paradoxically, the darkness of the hallway was cast into his room, rather than light being cast out. Finding this paradox a comfort to his mind (after all, paradoxes are perfectly acceptable in dreams), Yuugi crossed the toy-cluttered floor to the doorway. Not awake, but not dreaming, Yuugi walked into the darkness.
The light from the bedroom did not follow him. The hallway was long, it seemed, and without unique detail. Every rough block of stone, be it floor, wall, or ceiling, was of similar size, similar color, and similar texture. The stones were not enough different for any one to stand out, nor were they exact enough to be distressingly identical. The only break in the monotony was the open, well-lit doorway through which Yuugi had passed, and Yuugi himself. Trailing his left hand against the wall, Yuugi walked away from his room.
Father, when he used to tell Yuugi stories from various myths, would sometimes appeal to Yuugi’s sense of game logic and tell him stories of riddles and puzzles. One story had been about a maze – a labyrinth, of a monster hidden within the darkness, of a man who had wandered through the deepest recesses of the maze with only a string to guide him back. “But Dad,” a much younger Yuugi had asked, “what if he didn’t have string, or pens, or bread crumbs?”
“If nothing else, follow the wall. So long as it’s the same wall as your entrance, you’ll eventually come back to it – though you may not find what you were looking for.” Yuugi smiled, though only two of his four fingers pressed against the wall could feel the stone, and only his left foot felt the floor beneath him. It was maybe a minute later that Yuugi came back to his starting point, though he had not once turned a corner. He frowned, looping back the other way. Again, he turned no corners, but thirty seconds later he was back at the door.
I must be on the outside of a circle on this wall, Yuugi thought to himself. Crossing to the wall opposite the open doorway, Yuugi again set off. Minutes later, the fingertips of his right hand tingled, numb against the harsh treatment of the stones. Yuugi yawned; this was a really lousy dream. His hand, in protest, stopped acknowledging the wall altogether, but when Yuugi turned to admonish the limb, he saw a brightly lit doorway. A doorway that should be on the opposite wall.
Apparently cave-logic did not apply to not-quite-dream-logic, but that was all right. Yuugi let his hand drop, and he walked on into darkness.
Time passed, and eventually there were no walls around him and no ceiling above him. Time passed – or maybe it didn’t, Yuugi couldn’t tell. He tried running, but still the darkness was unchanging, or changing fruitlessly. Eventually, he stood still. The darkness changed, or did not change, exactly as it had before. This was not something Yuugi liked. This dream was really, really boring. Sitting, Yuugi crossed his arms petulantly.
“It would be nice if I could wake up soon,” he called out, hoping that the noise would induce the action. No such luck.
“Is there a particular reason,” he finally asked after a long pause, “that I’m dreaming of darkness?” He was not expecting an answer.
So, in the logic of the not-quite dream world, he got one.
“Have you not lost something, little game?” The voice was feminine, familiar, and seemed to bleed out of all and none of the darkness. Yuugi did not stand.
“I... I’ve lost a lot of things.” The voice was a hand that seemed to caress his cheek like lapping waves, but Yuugi did not lean into the touch; it was too cold.
“What things have you lost, little game?” asked the voice, different and older and familiar too; the lapping wave hand was warmer now, but still not the heat of a welcome presence. Yuugi saw nothing.
“I’ve lost my way,” he said, searching plaintively in the darkness of his mind.
Another voice – they were all familiar, all strangers, this one cruel and cracking in the strain of its laughter. “The game didn’t lose the way,” he said, dark cold-water arms tugging at Yuugi’s wrists. Still the dark was unchanged, or changed without his notice. “The game didn’t have a destination, the game didn’t have a way to lose. What have you lost, little game?”
Yuugi closed his eyes, even though he knew they could not become weary, and that if he opened them nothing would change. He left them closed.
“I’ve... lost my disguise,” he said, shivering against the ice-slick water arms now caressing him through his shirt, his ribs freezing in the contact.
“You have recovered your identity,” whispered voices, one and seven and three and fifty, each number separately and simultaneously; waves pushed against him like hose water to fire, and the cold burned him.
“That which was cut away has grown anew,
“The tail of a salamander,
“The head of a hydra.”
The voices that were many and one and not there at all broke off again, and Yuugi knew them all.
“Can he regrow his body, if he cuts it apart?
“Will he regrow his heart, if they cut it away?
“Shall he regrow his spirit, if we cut it asunder?”
Water tore at Yuugi, cut at him, but it was too thick. Was it blood? Poison? Melting glass? Liquid gold? Volcanic lava? Yuugi didn’t know. He cried out but did not cry against the pain that he could feel but could not feel, and the darkness taunted him.
“Too late,” said fifty voices. “Too late,” said one. “Too late,” said seven.
“Here I hold his body, for it was cut apart.
“Here I hold his heart, for it was cut away. “Here I hold his spirit, for it was cut asunder.” All the voices were cold, cold and familiar and painful. “Little game, little game,” called the darkness; “little game, little game,” called the voices.
“Who’s lost the game?
“Where’s the lost game?
“What’s the game lost?”
They circled, and circled, but still Yuugi kept his eyes clenched shut to his private darkness.
“Who’s lost the game?
“Where’s the lost game?
“What’s the game lost?”
He was shaking; he was hurting; he just wanted to wake up.
Three-fifty-seven-one voice spoke. “Who’s lost the game?”
“I... I’m lost,” he whispered, and he could feel their-its-no one’s laughter as the cold swirled around him in an eddy.
“I-we-one-it-they-you-he meant,” he heard, “who no longer has the game?
“Who is gone, no longer with the game?
“Who has failed to win the game?”
The eddy slowed and reversed, the pressure ebbing around him, the axis swaying like a hula-hoop.
“No matter. Where’s the lost game?”
“I’m... I’m here,” he said, anxious for the speed at which the cold-darkness-water-sound spun around him.
“Here, in his mind?
“Here, in his heart?
“Here, in a dream?
“In the dark, in the cold, maybe nowhere at all?”
The spinning was more erratic now, like insects around a light, or sharks around wounded prey, or satellites around a star. “What’s the game lost?” Still the cold cut at him, but he no longer shook or reacted to the pain. He spoke.
“I’ve... I’ve lost... I’ve lost many people,” he said, keeping his eyes shut against the darkness, hiding in darkness (could a person blink in dreams? They must be able to, for this must be a dream, and his eyes were closed), “people close to me. I’ve lost my father, and my friend to death. I’ve lost my grandfather, my mother, my friends to life. I’ve lost my home; I’ve lost my will.
“I’ve lost myself.”
His eyes opened.
“I’ve lost my heart,” he whispered, “because I abandoned my family.”
His voice was unsteady, but with his eyes open he could see the blur of the spinning darkness. It-he-nothing was trying to drown him.
“I’ve lost my body, because I discarded my identity. I’ve... I’ve lost my spirit, because...”
They were out of control, their hold on him weakening, but Yuugi’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth.
“I’ve lost my spirit because... because...”
“Because? Because?” It-they-nothing screamed, clawing at him as it passed, one entity wrapped in fifty condensed into three but really it was seven, seven, seven figures made of ash, seven figures made of gold, but really only one that was made of nothing at all, like—
“I’ve lost my spirit because— I cut it away. No! Because he was cut away! The other me!”
Something shattered, and suddenly there was no cold, no wet, no darkness at all.
Yuugi stood in a bedroom, its soft-carpeted floor littered with toys, sunlight filtering through the fabric curtains to diffuse throughout the room. The street noises of Titan drifted through the window, though muted. Nothing had changed, except the door that had led into the dark and endless dark was closed.
“Not quite right,” whispered a familiar voice affectionately from an item on the floor. In a small gathering, quite distinct from the various toys around Yuugi’s feet, were several human figures made of ash, or blood, or gold, or compressed darkness. They were all these at once, and their numbers shifted minutely as Yuugi gathered them up. Men, women, children, the elderly – all walks were represented in the seven-or-fourteen figures Yuugi placed upon the bed. He did not know why, but the figures on his bed made him smile, and he sat himself too upon the plush covers.
“Not quite?” he asked.
“Not an ‘it’ cut away,” said one made of ash, shaking like an excited puppy.
“Not you that cut away,” said one made of gold, the shining luster of its surface reminding Yuugi. He reached one hand up to cradle the Millennium Puzzle, but found only his own chest. Yuugi closed his eyes, acknowledging the absence and apologizing for not sensing it sooner.
“You... do you know how I can get him back? My other self and my body and my heart?”
The figures – all stationary, all moving, able to contradict themselves in this dream that was not a dream – did not move. They flailed.
“The game grew back his body,” said one made of paper.
“The game grew back his heart,” said one made of stone.
“I know a secret,” said the one made of blood, sounding like a young girl Yuugi recognized from primary school. “Do you want to hear it?”
Yuugi looked at the seven figures, worrying his lip, and gazed at the closed door. How strange this dream, he thought, but not quite.
“How do I get him back?”
“The little game wasn’t little, wasn’t a game,” said the one made of bone. “He was a starfish!” Yuugi frowned. “The other me?”
“And if you cut a starfish in half,” asked the one made of shadow, “what do you get?”
Yuugi scowled. “A dead starfish. How do I get back my other self? Who cut him away?”
The figures walked or rolled or shifted on the bed, grouping together closer yet not moving at all.
“He told you; he was cursed. He’s cut up, just like you,” said the one made of ash.
“But he can’t grow himself a new body or a new heart, like you can,” said the figure of paper.
“All his wounds are bound! There’s no room to grow!” exclaimed the one of bone.
“You have to give him fire,” said the stone, “but only one won’t burn him like that dreadful boy did.” “You have to give him the right fire,” said the one of blood.
Quite suddenly, the figure made of bone sprang up and shouted “starfish!” before vanishing without a bang or smoke or flash of light.
“But how do I find the right fire?” Yuugi asked the remaining six-or-twelve, but the one of stone just shook its head.
“Metaphors, metaphors. Does the game not understand metaphors?” it said before it, too, disappeared without fanfare.
“It’s not a fire you need,” said the one of ash, “it is something more precious than that.” The ash figure vanished too; only four-or-eight remained.
“Wait!” Yuugi called, trying to pin one of the figures to the bed, but though his hand did not pass through the dolls he could not touch them again. “How am I supposed to figure out what I’m supposed to find?”
“Silly game,” laughed the figure of gold, “you have solved Puzzle unsolved for Millennia!”
“The game has already defeated God,” said the figure of paper, “the game can defeat the bindings.” Those two-or-four figures vanished, and Yuugi was left with only blood and shadow.
“The game has already defeated God,” repeated the figure of blood, “but is it the game that controls the god? Or the god that controls the game?”
Only one (or maybe two) remained now, and Yuugi held tight without touching the figurine of darkness. “Please,” he whispered, “I don’t understand this dream.”
The figure of darkness was the only one that turned to smoke. “Whoever said, little game, that dreams are merely dreams?”
With that, Yuugi wrapped himself in the warm blanket, shuddering from the icy chill, and he stared at the sealed door.
“Other me,” he whispered, closing his eyes and letting the dream (that was not a dream but could be nothing save a dream) fade away, “I’m going to find your fire, I’m going to find you.” He yawned, as though he were not already sleeping, “and then we can grow our hearts back, and go...”
Maybe he awoke then, or maybe he had been awake the whole time. It didn’t matter. When Yuugi opened his eyes, it was as if he had merely blinked, though the room around him had returned to the motel room – no toys or ominous doors or whispering darkness remained.
“... go home.”
._._.
There were five men with guns surrounding Yuugi’s bed. They were all that sort of generic henchman with whom Yuugi was getting all too familiar: close-cut hair, dark glasses, and strong builds hidden under business suits. Modern day goons; he was getting somewhat sick of this sort of thing. Yuugi wanted to reach for the Millennium Puzzle, but even through his cotton and leather he felt its weight, cold and heavy as iron against his chest and just as impenetrable. Again, Yuugi was harshly reminded of his other’s continue absence: after all, if the other Yuugi were capable of taking in the situation and responding, Yuugi would have woken the moment the men walked into the hallway, let alone the room itself.
Yuugi looked at each man in turn for a leader, but made no move to approach the men or rise from the bed itself. “Ah... who are you?” he asked. “What do you want? How did you get in?” He was trying to subdue his panic of waking up facing down five unexpected guns and was failing quite spectacularly.
The blandest and most generic of the six men – so bland and generic was he that Yuugi hadn’t even realized there was a sixth man – adjusted his sunglasses with his pistol-bearing hand. “Honda Saikoro?” he asked, no dialect betraying his origin or social class – he sounded the way legal documents would if they were given accurate voices. Even without inflection, the words seemed aimed to harm.
Yuugi winced, shifting under the covers to find the exact position where he could dodge all the gunfire with little thought for the fact the guns could be moved. And why is it always guns?!
“What do you want?” he asked, finally moving the cold, heavy Pyramid away from pressing all its painful weight against his sternum. “Who sent you? Why are you still pointing guns at me?”
“Sir, there’s no need to get agitated,” said the Captain of the Goon Squad, and he did not even have to make a gesture for the other men to lower their weapons; even though the guns were not now pointed at Yuugi’s face, he was not set at ease. “We have merely been sent here on behalf of the Titan of the Marsh to escort you to the Tower.”
Futilely, Yuugi shuffled backwards on the mattress, kicking away the sheet and obnoxious orange quilt. “Why would she send for me?” he asked with a nervous laugh, “I’m just a street kid in the Mountains. I should mean nothing to her. She doesn’t even have jurisdiction here!”
The goon nearest Yuugi, almost bear-like compared to the others, wrapped one beefy, hairy paw of a hand around Yuugi’s upper arm, the man’s fingers nearly coming back to his palm. He squeezed in a manner that could be considered light, if a light squeeze precursors a groan of pain and the development of a future hand-shaped bruise in an appealing shade of green. The bear gently pulled Yuugi off of the bed, nearly caressing his shoulder to pop screaming out of its socket.
“The Titan of the Mountain does not care either way for the fate of a street rat,” said the bear; the other goons were watching the walls and single exit.
“The Titan of the Marsh does not yet wish you harmed,” said Monotony Man, “so struggling is unwarranted. We shall escort you via bicycle convoy. Do not give us reason to force our hands, Honda Saikoro.”
Yuugi gasped in pain, his eyes watering. I’m so sorry, other me, Yuugi thought to the Puzzle as the bear and a goon with hands as sweaty as a mouth is wet roughly pulled him out of the “Why Yes, We Do Wash Our Linens!” motel, I’m going to fix everything, I promise, I promise.
The ride to the Tower was suitably awkward, surrounded as he was by six men on pedal bicycles who probably wanted to kill him, but eventually Monotony Man and the goon with the harried tie escorted Yuugi through the lobby, past the Antichrist, onto the lift, and to the proper floor. Yuugi was glad that he was so short in comparison to all the guards, so not even the security cameras could catch the fact that he hadn’t even had time to get proper shoes on, let alone brush his hair or any other morning grooming; his teeth felt disgusting.
Monotony Man disabled the door in one turn, too quickly for Yuugi to even see the code he had input. They frog-marched Yuugi through the door, but both fled the apartment rather than take him all the way to the Titan herself. Yuugi hesitated, and scrubbed his teeth half-heartedly on his sleeve.
She will be unhappy that I did not reclaim her loved one’s stolen item, Yuugi thought, somewhat worried, I didn’t even play him for it, and it’s been a week, but...
The Pyramid, still lifeless, pulled more heavily on his neck than ever before.
“But... she said... so maybe she...” A small bit of hope in his heart, Yuugi made for the final door.
._._.
