Wings of Time

Swallow

Yami looked around at what could only be described as a wasteland. To his right about a mile away was the desolated city of Thebes, smoking from the fires and silent as the grave. He searched it from his high vantage point on a nearby cliff for life, for anything, but all he could see were the plumes of smoke that had filled up the sky and blocked the sun. He trembled and looked away.

"This is an illusion," he told himself, "I am destined to save Egypt. It is my fate to succeed."

But then caught sight of a foot lying to his left. A black-soled sneaker. As his eyes traced up he saw another pair of feet beside him, bare and bleeding and pale. His chest started hurting with the intensity of his shivering. He didn't want to see those face. He didn't want to.

Yugi and Aleah.

He ran to their sides, tripping from his suddenly weak knees and barely catching himself from falling atop them.

"Yugi, Aleah, speak to me!" he said breathlessly, "what are you doing here anyway? Why are you...why are you..."

Their faces had gone a shade of pale grey he had only seen in corpses. Blood trickled from Aleah's mouth and Yugi's chest was covered in blood. Their hands were inches away from touching and their faces were tipped towards one another.

He didn't have to check a pulse to know they were dead.

He scrambled away as though from a disease. This couldn't be, this was an illusion, a trick of the shadow realm. He couldn't even remember them dying, he couldn't even-

But then he saw more bodies, scattered across the top of the plateau. He recognized and named them one by one in his mind: Joey, Tea, Tristan, Ryou, Seto, Mokuba-

He climbed to his feet, every inch of him on fire. "Zorc!" his throat hurt from the intensity of his scream. "What is the meaning of this!"

The familiar evil laughter filled up the sky. "It is as you see it. While you recovered your energy from your loss, I killed them all."

"Then why leave me!" his voice broke. He gnashed his teeth at that smoggy sky. "Why!?"

"So I can taste of your sweet dark sorrow. Your heart, so noble, so strong-I saved the best tragedy for last. I knew your heart would shine blackest at seeing the rest of them like this."

Yami didn't even hear the last of that sentence. He screamed. Screamed until his voice wouldn't work, till he tasted blood in his mouth and fell on all fours. Then he cursed at the sky, not shedding a single tear, but aching and burning with the intensity of his horror. His rage hurt more than any sorrow he could feel. He had failed them. He had failed them all.

"I was supposed to save them!" his mouth was dry and filled with the taste of smoke.

"Too bad." hummed the sky.

And then it began to rain, acid-like droplets that burned his skin and instantly turned the dry Egyptian dust about him to liquid like mud. He started to sink but he still couldn't stop screaming. Mud was up to his waist by the time his breath finally gave out and he hung from his shoulders, numb, to watch the mud eat him up.

"That's right, little pharaoh, give up. Life in the realm of life is but pain and the sad attempt to flee it. Give it up."

The acid rain and the stinking mud wrapped about his shoulders and up his neck. He watched the bodies of Aleah and Yugi slip away.

"Peace."

Dark mud slipped past his cheeks and past his open eyes.