Mistress of the Black Dread

Chapter 6: Once Upon A Dream

Kaiba was having trouble sleeping. He'd been tossing and turning in his bed for the past two hours, he'd downed three glasses of whiskey and that only served to make him dizzy after he exited the hot shower he'd taken to try and relax. His legs were tangled in the sheets and his upper body was left bare for the AC to chill.

~ Priest Seto could feel the scorching heat of Ra's sun disk bathing against his skin, the day was hotter than most - without a cloud to shield those below or a whisper of a breeze to cool them.
He was strolling (for lack of a better word, he was never one to do things without a purpose) through the outskirts of Pharaoh Atem's palace, more specifically the edge of the Pharaoh's Water Gardens.

Pale pink marble paved the gardens and it's surrounding courtyard. With terraces overlooking the numerous pools and fountains of the Water Gardens, that were shaded by blood orange, peach, and pomegranate trees. They could be reached via a fluted pillar gallery that lead to a triple archway. Lotus blossoms and reeds littered the borders of the many pools, while roses, jasmine, anemones, daisies, chrysanthemums, mandrakes and poppies were scattered throughout the gardens. Willow trees grew along the very edge of the larger pools and their leaves offered shade from Ra's scorching heat.

The smells of the various flowers and fruits were present throughout the gardens and provided a sense of immeasurable calm that Seto could never find anywhere else within the palace that had been his home for the past several years. The Water Gardens were his personal sanctuary a place for him to relax and be free - even temporarily - of his duties as High Priest.

He ventured here whenever he needed a break from his numerous duties or the aggravation of dealing with some of his fellow Priests that looked down upon him for no other reason than because his blood was considered of a lower station then theirs. The mere thought of this was enough to cause his blood to boil and his jaw to clench almost painfully to restrict the poison-dipped words that were poised on the tip of his tongue. But he would prove himself to be the better man in such situations and maintain his calm facadé in their presence and only reveal his frustrations to the gardens he so often sought refuge in, and only when he was well and truly alone.

His sandled feet stopped at the edge of his favorite place in the Water Gardens. At first glance it seemed no different than the many other places in the large gardens but it was upon closer inspection that the true beauty of this place revealed itself to the beholder.

There was a small waterfall that fed into the pond, stones and soft sand lay at the bottom giving the water an almost crystal clear look. Reeds lay clustered at the banks and lotus' bloomed in and near the waters edge, three large willows stood proudly to one side, offering shade on the sandy ground and in the cool waters that lay beneath their shadows. An olive tree was on the opposite end to the willows and it's  bounty would often fall into one's waiting hands below. The focal point however was the rose tree that stood nearest to the garden wall, it was a large tree which had long since died and growing over it's dead body were roses, their thorny vines crawled up, up the trunk and wove gracefully through the bare, skeletal branches till nearly the entire tree was covered by the sweet-smelling blanket of thorny roses. So untamed were these roses that they draped down from the branches to create a curtain of sorts that Seto often hid behind, from behind the curtain of roses he could pretend that he too was a part of the garden, rather than just a simple observer.