Wings of Time

Time Folds

Atem couldn't believe his eyes. Aleah, pulled along by Shadi, burst forth from a burning building right beneath his tower. He felt his muscles stiffen and his heart leap. Even from this distance he could see the gleam of tears streaming down her cheeks from the smoke. Whatever he had been thinking fled his mind as he flew down the stairs of the tower and onto the street below. He could see her through the crowd and shifting reality and sprinted for her.

"Aleah! Aleah!"

At the same time something echoed his call and another man burst forth from the building, arms thrown out in front of his face so he didn't see where he was running until he had crashed into Atem's side. They both sprawled into the dirt, coughing smoke and dust.

"What the-" he started, then froze as he saw the man scrambling to his feet. He had his hair, and his watering eyes-but it couldn't be him. He was wearing different clothes. Rather strange clothes now that he thought about it.

But there was enough strange things going on that he didn't stop to discover more, but left the man where he was and ran after the woman he had thought he had lost. For a brief terrifying second he thought he had lost her, but then a flicker of white hair amongst the black gave him an extra burst of speed. Flaming bits of straw fluttered around him, and ash flew up at his feet. Civilians, pale and cinnamon, stepped out of his way as he senselessly ran through ripples of sunlight and rain, present and what had to be the future.

As she vanished once more, he frantically lifted up his summoning disk. "Mahado! Please! If you can hear me!"

A ripple of darkness broke through the Egyptian light and the Dark Magician appeared, almost instantly. Without needing to ask, he too sped ahead, flying above the crowds through the air with his staff held foreword. .

"I have been watching," he yelled back, "don't worry, I will find her!"

"Wait!" shouted someone from behind him, but he didn't bother to look. Sweat trickled into his eyes and his lungs were burning on the dirty air.

Fire, rain, heat, cold, everything seemed to be blurring together, and still he ran. The Millenium Puzzle thumped against his chest, stinging against his breastbone.

Until suddenly he came upon the prone form of Dark Magician clinging for life upon his staff. His purple ropes were torn and a good portion of his form had already dissolved back into shadows.

"Forgive me, your majesty," he gasped, "Shadi-Shadi attacked me. He summoned a beast I was unfamiliar with."

"Ra, Mahado, are you all right?"

"I'll be fine, your majesty, but you must hurry! She tried to fight free but the beast took her. He opened a portal into the shadow realm."

Atem's blood ran cold. HIs skin suddenly felt clammy against the fire around him. "No..."

"You know the consequences to their souls as well as I do. I can use the last of my power..." Mahado's voice faltered as he weakly swung his staff behind him. Dark, oozing purple shadows seeped out from the building behind him. Atem felt his knees weaken. The shadow realm. He had never been there, and only men who had no souls in the first place trespassed there. Monsters were sure to eat him the moment they smelled him, given that the shadows didn't swallow his mind first.

And then he thought of Aleah being in that place and tar like burning fear threatened to take away his breath.

Mahado smiled at him as he faded, and with him the portal. Atem leaped for it.

"Wait!"

At the last minute a hand caught onto his cloak and his momentum pulled them both in.