If You Feel Better

Chapter 3

The pharaoh had everyone gathered in the throne room. Dead bodies were still being carried out and servants were cleaning up the drying pools of blood that were scattered absolutely everywhere on the floor.

The pharaoh and queen were panicked about the kidnapping of their daughter and their priests were trying to assure them that they would find the princess.

"Fear not, Pharaoh," Priest Seto stated triumphantly. "We will immediately send out the entire army to find her. Each of the priests will personally lead a group to search different areas for Bakura and Princess Aya. We'll search all of Egypt if we have to!"

"We can't just go randomly exploring," Priest Karim disagreed, clutching one of his arms, injured in the battle. "We'll never find her if we do that. Who knows what Bakura's planning on doing. We may have days or we may have minutes."

"We should gather all the information we have on Bakura," Priest Shada contributed. "And then strategically plan out breaking the military into groups from there. Isis, can you see anything?"

Isis closed her eyes in concentration and held her hands up to the Millennium item around her neck: the Millennium Necklace. It glowed brightly for a few brief moments and then dimmed back to nothingness. Isis lowered her arms and sadly shook her head. "The future of the princess is clouded," she stated. She sighed, reopening her eyes. "I always seem to have this problem when it involves Bakura. There's something about him that makes it difficult for my necklace to see the future. And since the princess is with him, I can't see her future either."

The queen stood, silently crying, as the priests argued amongst themselves about what to do to return the princess safely. The pharaoh noticed his wife struggling to remain composed and he took both of her hands in his, placing a sweet kiss on them and squeezing them tightly. He looked up at the heavens, tears coming down his own face, and thought Aya, wherever you are, please tell me you're safe.

~

Aya thrusted herself forward and side-to-side, trying to wiggle her way out of her restraints.

Bakura had taken her quite far from the palace, overnight in fact. Aya had lost count of the minutes she had been forced to ride horseback. She had attempted to throw herself off of the horse numerous times, but Bakura stayed on top of her, thwarting every effort she made to foil his plan.

He had brought her to someplace underground, deep in the desert, where it was too dark for her to see. He still hadn't even said a word to her yet, preferring to make sure that nothing goes wrong first. He had sat her down in a chair, tied her wrists together around the back, tied her ankles together in the front, and gagged her by tying a piece of cloth around her mouth.

Still too pitch black to see, Aya wiggled her wrists urgently to loosen them and grabbed at pieces of the rope to break apart what she could. All of the friction was chafing her skin rather quickly, but she still didn't give up. She knew she couldn't. The moment she did, she was dead.

Someone then walked in the room with a torch. The torch was so bright in the darkness that Aya actually had to look away, as if she had been staring at the sun itself. The person paused, looked at Aya, and then went around the room, lighting different candles that sat in different places. Aya could only hear their light footsteps until the torch was out of her vision.

The candles dimly lit up the room just enough for her to see her surroundings more clearly without blinding her. She was in a small room of some kind. She saw a bed not too far away, one fit for someone of nobility. Next to her was a wooden table with matching wooden chairs and small, miscellaneous items resting on it. Other than those two pieces of furniture and the candles, the room was pretty empty as far as she could tell.