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After a week of feverishly hunting down the threads of rumors and legends, Seto was ready. The circle and its glyphs had been meticulously copied onto the hardwood of his study floor. One thing that all his sources had been clear on: The demon was dangerous, and those who summoned him should tread cautiously.
He spoke the words of the incantation to summon the demon known as the Pharaoh, careful to recite it exactly and ending with the demon's other name. In the back of his mind, he wondered if it was intended as a warning. After all, there were few who would cavalierly call upon the darkness.
And the darkness came, pouring into his study and swirling around him. It obscured the walls, the window, even the floor outside of Seto's circle. Hints of crimson and gold emerged as he watched, blurry shapes that slowly sharpened until the room came into focus.
He was in a throne room with sandstone walls draped in crimson and gold, torches flickering dimly in the low lighting. And on the throne, the demon himself. Humanoid, but definitely not human. Seto looked him over and was examined in turn.
The demon was attractive, Seto noted dispassionately. Alluring, yes, like the glow of a deep sea predator. Disarmingly short. The black claws at the end of his hands, the demonic energy shifting his hair in an invisible breeze, and the fire burning in his red eyes were far more indicative of the danger Seto was dealing with. Yami carried himself with the confidence of a man who knew how much power he held. It was a posture that Seto recognized in himself.
"Pharaoh," Seto greeted.
"Mr. Kaiba," the demon returned. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I want to make a deal with you."
"Yes, most people who call upon me do." The Pharaoh leaned to the side, bracing his chin on one fist. "What kind of deal has brought you to my hall?"
"I want to use your powers in order to take down a man named Maximillian Pegasus." The demon's eyebrows went up, but he didn't interrupt. "I know that you require summoners to win a deal from you in a game. I understand that a soul is the usual ante?"
"Pegasus is the head of Industrial Illusions. You called upon me for corporate sabotage?"
"Pegasus already has someone — or something — giving him power. I'm just evening the playing field."
"Hm." Yami considered him for a long moment. "I will play for your soul," he decided. "Step up to my table, then, and we'll discuss it over cards."
The demon waved a hand, and an ornate card table shimmered into existence in front of his throne. A second chair appeared on the side closest to Seto. It was by far the simplest piece of furniture in the room.
Seto didn't move from the safety of the circle. "Chess," he countered.
Red eyes narrowed. "I choose the game. If it is not to your liking, you may leave."
Seto grit his teeth but stepped up to the table. He flared his coat dramatically as he sank into the seat, leaning back with arms crossed. He glared at the demon.
Up close, Yami's power was an almost physical aura. The Pharaoh smiled at him and tapped sharp nails against the wood of the table. "The game is Blackjack. You're familiar? Good." A deck of cards appeared in his hands. "We'll be playing it differently, though."
Clearly. "Those are Duel Monsters cards."
"Astutely noticed. If you want my help taking down Industrial Illusions, I want to see how you handle its legacy."
Seto laughed darkly. "I've handled my fair share of legacies. Pegasus' won't be a problem."
Yami hummed and began shuffling. "We'll see about that." He explained the rules as he dealt. "We'll each play from a hand of seven cards. Monster card values are determined by their level. Traps are worth five points and can be added or subtracted from your opponent's played cards. Magic cards allow you to swap one of your played cards with another from your hand. You can play as many cards as you want on your turn; winner of each round is the person with the highest point value up to twenty. You can keep up to two of the cards still in your hand between each round, and the rest are shuffled and redealt."
Before they took up their hands, Yami pinned him with a serious look. "We'll play nine rounds. If you win, I'll accept your terms and lend you my power. But if you fail, I will unleash a torment on your soul from which you may never recover. Do you understand?"
He'd endured plenty of warnings about the consequences of failing to make a deal with the Pharaoh. It was still worth the risk. "I know what I'm getting into."
"Very well." Yami turned to his hand.
Seto picked up his own cards and jolted. Ryu-Kinshin Powered, Magic Removal, Grappler, Cyber Pod, Sword Stalker, The Flute of Summoning Dragon, and Blue Eyes White Dragon. This was his deck, he realized, recognizing the slightest rough edge on the Grappler card. His deck, which he'd left secured in the safe in his office.
He looked at Yami, affronted, but bit his tongue on the sharp question he'd been about to voice. The demon was watching him expectantly, the hint of a smirk toying at his lips. Yami was provoking him. Trying to set him off-balance. Seto had participated in enough strong-arm negotiations to recognize the tactic, and he wouldn't play.
Steeling himself, Seto played his first card. "Blue Eyes White Dragon and Sword Stalker; fourteen points."
He was rewarded with a tiny pout as Yami turned his attention to his own hand. "Minotaurus; La Jinn, the Demonic Spirit of the Lamp; Judge Man. Fourteen points."
The demon wasn't even trying to be subtle. Seto didn't bother to hide the derision in his voice as he responded. "Grappler; eighteen points."
"Saggi the Dark Clown; seventeen points. I also play Defense Paralysis and add five points to your play."
Which put Seto over the limit. "Hm. I play The Flute of Summoning Dragon, which lets me exchange Blue Eyes White Dragon with Ryu-Kinshin Powered. Nineteen points."
"And the first win goes to you," Yami said, watching Seto with disconcerting intensity.
Ignoring him, Seto reached out to gather his cards —
The stadium was full of the susurrus hush of fans, all staring intently at the two men seated at a lone table in the center. One, American flag bandana around his head, was bristling with rage and offense. The other, silver hair falling over shoulders draped with red velvet, lounged with the languid ease of an apex predator. Seto's lip lifted in a disgusted sneer.
Pegasus turned and met his gaze. Light flashed across the golden iris of the left eye. Seto's disgust flared into a primal flinch, some preternatural awareness of danger, of violation, of threat.
Pegasus smirked.
Seto came back to himself with a gasp and clutched at the edge of the table, grounding himself as his heart pounded. "What was that?" he snarled.
"Your deck is an extension of yourself," Yami replied, unphased. "It reflects your soul. That is Industrial Illusions' — Pegasus' — legacy."
"How fortunate for you, then, that we're playing with my deck and not yours," Seto bit out.
"My soul is not the one at stake," Yami pointed out, and punctuated the sentence with Seto's full name — the one he hadn't heard since he was a child.
It struck him like a fist around his heart, disrupting his tenuous balance and stealing his breath. Seto wheezed, curling over himself as he fought away the disturbing sensation of the magic.
Yami only watched over his cards while Seto regained control of his heart rate and forced his breathing steady.
It took longer than it should have, but Seto collected himself and straightened to his full height to loom as best as he could in a cheap folding chair. "I don't recall giving you that name."
There was a dangerous glimmer in Yami's eyes. "You didn't need to."
"And I’m sure Yami is just another alias."
"The only power you'll find in that name is the power to summon me," Yami agreed. "There hasn't been a record of my true name for millenia. Tell me, are you feeling out of your depth yet?"
Seto grit his teeth. There was nothing for it. The only way out was through. He added his discards to the deck and extended his hand to Yami for his cards. "My deal."
The smile Yami gave him was cruel. "It's blackjack, Mr. Kaiba. House deals." He held out his own hand for Seto to pass the deck. When Seto hesitated, Yami leaned back, smile relaxing into a smirk. "Do you regret calling for me? My powers come at a high price. But I can be generous. If the stakes are too high for you, Mr. CEO, you can walk away now with no consequences. If you continue, we play to the end."
The words were magnanimous, but the tone was derisive. Anger rose in Seto's throat. So what if the odds were stacked against him? He'd been fighting uphill battles all his life. This would be just one more in a long line of unfair disadvantages that he'd overcome.
He slapped the deck on the table in front of Yami. "Deal the next round," he snarled.
Yami raised an eyebrow, taunting. "Are you sure? Surely there are better ways that you could fight this corporate battle."
"Deal the next round."
Yami's expression hardened. He nodded and set a card aside, returning the rest of his hand to the deck and shuffling. "Then let's see what kind of deal your soul is worth."
The second round went quickly, neither of them speaking as they focused on the game. Yami won with Judge Man, bringing his total points to twenty against Seto's eighteen.
"Your win," Seto acknowledged, and this time it was the demon's memory he saw.
Disappointment, resignation, and quiet rage burned inside him.
"I win," the Pharaoh said, gathering up the playing cards scattered across the table. He glanced under his lashes to take in his opponent's reaction.
The latest in a long, long line of summoners straightened, haughty to hide the sheen of fear sweat disappearing into the starched collar of his business suit. "It was hardly a fair win," he wheedled, and the demon's heart burned with disgust.
He let it bleed into his laugh. "You're in my realm, playing my game. Did you really think you could outplay me?" He stretched with languid movements, extending his senses into the darkness around them. It hungered, as it always did, and he invited the shadows closer.
His prey could sense the jaws of the trap closing around him. The businessman — young, painfully so — stumbled to his feet, decorum abandoned, voice shaking with terror. "You can't do this to me. I demand a rematch. A fair game!"
Black claw tips click click clicked against the table. "I will give you one more game," he said, voice dark. Before the man's relief could be voiced: "You will play against the darkness in your soul. All that you love will be turned against you, and you will endure. All that you value will be destroyed, and you will endure. All that you are will be reformed, and you will endure. If you endure, you may live."
Only horror and disbelief in the man's face. "I only wanted to win the case. I was protecting my company! You would take my soul for that?"
He didn't bother to hold back the sneer. Disgust, disgust, disgust. "Your soul remains your own, as does your punishment. The wager for this game was high, and you accepted it." Had foolishly accepted it, expecting to cheat a win from the demon just as he had expected to cheat a win from the courts. He waved away the table, lounging on his throne. "The judgment stands."
As the darkness rushed in, the man fell to his knees, screaming and pleading. The demon watched, fury and sadness buried deep beneath resignation, and kicked away the man's hands when they touched his shoes.
"Please! Pharaoh, please! Have mercy!" A last, desperate plea, one hand outstretched.
The darkness swallowed him whole.
Seto choked air into his lungs, reeling. When he looked up, Yami was watching him. The depth of that fury and disgust… Seto could see it, smoldering coals behind the fire of Yami's eyes, directed at him.
A moment more to regain his composure, and Seto returned his cards to Yami. "I could almost be impressed that you've weaponized your memories. Your threats are not very subtle."
"And yet there you sit, unthreatened." Yami shuffled and dealt out their next hands. "I have to wonder if it's naivety or arrogance."
"My days of naivety are long behind me, but you'd hardly be the first to call me arrogant. I know what the risks are; you're not going to shake me by reminding me." He'd been dealt a Blue Eyes White Dragon again. Knowing what he did now, Seto was glad he'd taken it back into his hand in the first round. He laid down the much less loaded Sword Stalker and Rude Kaiser.
"Hm." Yami toyed with a card and watched Seto through his lashes. "You know," he commented, releasing that card and laying down another. "Most people hesitate at least a little at the idea of putting their very souls on the line."
Seto scoffed and played his own. "I hold no delusions about myself. I was damned long before I stepped into your game."
A smirk tugged at the corner of Yami's lips. "So you think to gamble something you've already lost?" He challenged Seto with a trap card. "Five points from your total."
Seto paused before his next play, eyes fixed on Yami from under his bangs. He couldn't risk Yami refusing a deal with him, though surely if they were already playing the game…? "You've already deemed it worth your while."
"Still, it's a high cost, and you're wasting it on — what, taking down your rival? Monopolizing the industry? I could almost pity you."
"Save it for someone who cares. I have my reasons."
Yami shrugged and waved a hand dismissively. "Yes, yes, power, greed, I've seen it all before."
Seto slammed his hand on the table, affronted. "I'm not here for greed."
"No?" Yami looked him over, the slight widening of his eyes the only sign that Seto had startled him. He relaxed into an infuriating smirk. "Then it's control. Can't take knowing that someone else might be able to stand up to you, take you down a peg."
"You don't know anything about me."
The look Yami gave him was derisive, but all he said was, "We'll see."
Seto huffed and turned his attention back to his hand, still simmering. The Blue Eyes White Dragon looked back at him, and he clenched his jaw in frustration. His signature card had been turned into a liability in this game that Yami had rigged. Every win came with a loss. He knew his cards and he knew himself. If he won with Blue Eyes, Yami would see a memory about Mokuba.
He had kept his little brother away from the demon's attention so far, knowing that the Pharaoh would target his weaknesses if Seto failed to strike a deal with him. Mokuba already had one dangerous supernatural entity after him; Seto would not put another target on his back.
Instead, Seto played Gyukaten no Megami and hoped that Yami didn't have another trap card at hand.
His luck held. "Your win," Yami acknowledged, and the memory swept over them.
Within darkness, determination, a pocket of safety carved out between them under threadbare blankets, small hands curled around an even smaller pair as they conspired in the stillness of night.
"Kaiba Gozaburo is visiting the orphanage tomorrow," he said. "I saw it in the newspapers; he's looking for an heir."
"Kaiba…?"
"He owns a weapons company. Rich. Powerful. He could be our ticket out of here." A ticket to power, if he played his cards right.
Those small hands squeezed his own tighter. "Do you think he'll pick us?"
A grin, invisible in the night. His mind burned, whirling as he pieced together the trap they would lay. "I'm going to make him pick us. And you're going to help, Mokuba."
His little brother pressed in closer, bushy hair scratchy against his nose. "Just tell me what to do."
Seto was already cursing internally when he came back to himself. Avoiding the Blue Eyes had gotten him nothing! Damned if you do, damned if you don't — he was sick of every win being turned against him.
When he chanced a glance at Yami, the demon's eyes were calculating. Seto's heart raced with dread, but he held his expression in a steady glower and refused to give anything else away. Mokuba was off-limits.
After a moment, Yami dropped his gaze and shuffled the cards for the next round. "An interesting association to have with that card," he commented, dealing their hands and playing his opening cards. "I wonder, were you reversing your own fortune, your adoptive father's, or… your brother's?"
Seto poured every ounce of derision he had into his reply as he laid out his own monsters. "I'd say that I definitely reversed Gozaburo's fortune. He's dead, and now I call the shots. I know you can appreciate the satisfaction of conquering your opponent and destroying them with their own hubris." It was an obvious jab, but hopefully enough to turn the demon's attention away from Mokuba.
It struck, and that burning rage flared again in Yami's eyes. Good. Seto matched him glare for glare as they played out their hands.
Despite his best efforts, Yami won with Trap Master. Seto braced himself for the wash of sickening memory, yet another of Yami's past victories and victims playing across the screen of his mind.
Disgust, both the demon's and his own, lay thick and acrid on the back of Seto's tongue when he resurfaced. Yami's victim in the memory had been a monster, seeking demonic power to bewitch and murder a rich man so she could inherit his wealth, but Yami had been monstrous in turn. "Has anyone told you that you're a sadistic bastard?" Seto choked out, unable to banish the vision of the woman's torment when she'd lost Yami's game of Cheat.
"It's been suggested once or twice," came the dry reply. "Has anyone told you that you're not as clever as you think you are?"
Ha. "It's come up before." Gozaburo had said something to that effect, right after Seto and Mokuba had beaten him at chess and won their adoption. It was just as much a threat out of Yami's mouth as it had been from Gozaburo. Seto took a steadying breath and met Yami's eyes in challenge.
In the end, he'd beaten Gozaburo at his own game. He would beat Yami, too.
Yami raised an eyebrow but dealt out the next round without comment. His fury from the previous round seemed to have faded with subjecting Seto to the torture of his memories, and a languid ease crept back into his limbs. They were back to the game of cat-and-mouse, then.
Seto played a card and, sick of being kept on the back foot, took the offensive. "I'm sure you think you're uncovering my deepest secrets, but I wonder if you realize how much you're giving away of yourself in this game too."
"And what do you think you've learned about me?"
"The Pharaoh, the Darkness, these games of yours — you play at enacting justice, but there's nothing just about your trials."
The aura of power around Yami thickened as he glared at Seto. "Tread carefully," he warned.
Seto just raised his chin and glared back, ice to the demon's fire. "You feel such disgust towards your opponents. You want to destroy them, but you play with them first, give them a chance to win your power… except it's not much of a chance at all, is it? You take every advantage, decide their fates before you even start the game, and play executioner when they lose. Where's the justice in that?"
Yami threw his next card down. "And I'm sure you're the expert in justice."
"At least I don't go around pretending I'm something I'm not." Seto played a magic card and replaced Wall of Illusion with Judge Man. "We're both monsters here, but only one of us is wearing a mask. At least be honest about it."
Yami set down another monster and leaned forward, resting his chin on a fist. "Then tell me, Mr. Kaiba," he asked, dripping Seto's name from his mouth like poisoned honey, "if you're so sure that I've rigged the game for you to lose, why did you come to me anyway?"
That voice was a weapon. Seto kept his reaction from his face and met the demon's eyes evenly. "Because I've beaten rigged games before, and I'll beat yours too. You have a reputation — among those who know of you at all, that is. They say that the Pharaoh is as likely to destroy you as make a deal with you, but if you can win a deal…" He remembered the awed expressions as they described incredible feats and terrible punishments. Yami's own memories had only emphasized it. "You're powerful."
"And so it comes back to power and arrogance, in the end." Yami sank back into his throne, and Seto was shocked to realize the demon was disappointed.
Seto bristled. "I need that power. Whatever Pegasus has backing him, it's strong. I won't apologize for using you for your power, not when you yourself use it as bait for your own prey." He played Defense Paralysis, satisfied when it earned him a frustrated huff out of Yami. "Don't be a sore loser just because the trap caught you instead."
"Point to you," the demon said begrudgingly.
This time, the memory was mostly neutral. Maybe Yami could glean something from watching Gozaburo's tutors snap Seto back to wakefulness whenever he'd started to doze during one of his many multi-day training sessions. Seto was just relieved to have an unweighted memory after the blow of unintentionally revealing Mokuba.
The next round went quickly and left Seto cornered, staring down at the last card in his hand. Yami had dropped Seto to twelve points, and Seto had only one play left to regain a win.
It was the third round where Seto had been dealt the Blue Eyes White Dragon.
Seto knew better than to accuse the demon of outright cheating, but he was equally certain that the Blue Eyes wasn't appearing in his hand by chance alone. Yami had made it clear that the game was stacked against him, and he was playing Seto as much as he was playing cards. If the demon had already seen so much of Seto's weak points from the other cards in his deck, what would he see from the card closest to Seto's heart? It was an obvious trap.
But if he didn't play the Blue Eyes, he would lose this round. Seto was in the lead, but he had no doubt that Yami would overtake him if he gave even the slightest bit of leeway. Seto couldn't afford to hand the demon a win, not with Mokuba's soul on the line.
He'd distracted Yami from a memory of Mokuba once. He could do it again. Deep breaths, steady and even, unlike his pounding heart. Seto played the card under Yami's intent stare. "Blue Eyes White Dragon. Twenty points."
"Your win," Yami agreed, folding his hands under his chin and watching with the focus of a stalking leopard. Seto hid every trace of apprehension and met his eyes.
He saw Yami's lips twitch into a victorious smirk as the memory took hold.
Terror, paralyzing and sickening, froze him to the floor as he watched his little brother on the viewscreen. Hands cuffed behind him, a bruise on his cheek, no sign of his spitfire confidence in those frightened eyes.
"Mokuba," Seto gasped.
"Seto—" Mokuba managed, and then fell silent as Pegasus tsked and nudged him aside.
Seto's stomach sank. Mokuba was never cowed.
"Kaiba-boy!" Pegasus lilted. "So good to see you again, it's been too long."
"Not long enough," Seto snapped back, eyes fixed on Mokuba's. "What do you want, Pegasus?"
"Skipping past the pleasantries, I see. Well, Kaiba-boy, I was very disappointed to see your response to my business proposal last month, and I took the opportunity to speak with your board of directors. They were very sympathetic, I must say! I thought we understood each other quite well."
Corporate takeover, then. And because the Kaiba brothers held the majority interest in the company, Pegasus had resorted to this. Terror ignited into fury.
"You're a fool if you thought this would work. Give him back immediately, and I'll consider letting you keep a dollar to your name after I'm finished dragging you through the courts."
Pegasus laughed. "Oh, no! You don't want to bring the police into this, I promise you. I'm afraid the only way you're getting Mokuba-boy back is through me." He brushed his hair back from his face.
Light, shining from the golden iris and filling the screen. As it faded, so too did the light in Mokuba's eyes. He went limp, sagging from the guard's grip on his bound wrists.
Panic. Seto jolted towards the screen. "Mokuba!" Not his brother, not the only person he had left. Not that.
Pegasus laughed, and Seto swung his eyes up to snarl at him. "Relax, Kaiba-boy! Your brother is safe. For now." He held a card up to the screen — a Duel Monsters card, except…
Seto had always been skeptical of the rumors of Pegasus' magic. Now, as he watched his little brother silently claw at the edges of a trading card prison, he hoped desperately that they were true, and that the magic could be reversed.
"So, Kaiba-boy. Do we have a deal?"
"You bastard," Seto spat. "Fine. What are the terms?"
"Excellent! I knew you would see sense." Pegasus placed the card on his desk. "I'll be hosting a Duel Monsters tournament on my private island in two weeks time. Meet me there. That should give you plenty of time to put your affairs in order and arrange the paperwork to sign over your share of KaibaCorp. And once that's taken care of, you and your brother can be happily reunited!"
The guard was taking Mokuba away. Seto clenched his jaw and watched them go. "I'll bring the paperwork, but nothing gets signed until Mokuba is safe." He turned his eyes to Pegasus' and spoke with every scrap of fury in his soul. The words dripped from his teeth. "If you hurt him, I will end you."
Pegasus merely smiled.
Well, hell. Furious and frightened, Seto kept his face turned down. He had never intended to reveal so much about the situation he was in; he knew better than to show weakness in a hostile negotiation, especially one where his opponent already held most of the power. He didn't want to see how Yami would react to learning just how much of a weak spot he had for Mokuba, but he forced himself to look.
For the first time, Yami looked shocked. It quickly faded to pity, and Seto felt his hackles rise even as dread shifted to relief. Pity was far better than glee, and it meant that even if Seto lost, Yami might leave Mokuba out of it. But…
Hatred — of Pegasus, of the demon, of having his vulnerabilities pried out of him — burned on his tongue.
Yami started to speak, but Seto cut him off. "Don't. It changes nothing."
"Kaiba —"
"I want your power, not your pity. So we keep playing." He raised an eyebrow. "Unless you forfeit?"
"I just want to say that I can understand —"
"I don't care what you understand," Seto spat. "All I care about is beating you and getting my brother back. So either forfeit or shuffle the damn cards."
Yami's mouth twisted, posture closing off, and he picked up the cards without comment. It was as good an answer as any, and Seto accepted his hand with grim satisfaction.
Despite that, the silence as they played was less fraught than the previous rounds. Yami's intrigue colored the air around them, and after a few plays he asked, "Just explain one thing to me. If you lose here, you won't be able to help your brother at all. Why take the risk of dealing with me instead of accepting Pegasus' deal?"
Seto played a card, not looking up. "You like games; play it through. I give my share of KaibaCorp to Pegasus, then what?"
"He lets your brother go… but you'd have proof of his powers, something he's managed to avoid so well that even I didn't know about them. And without Mokuba, he has no leverage to keep you silent," Yami realized. "You think he'll make you disappear as soon as he gets the paperwork."
"So here I am," Seto confirmed. "You're my insurance."
"It's still a risk, though. If you lose here, what happens to Mokuba?"
"I'm not going to lose," Seto said, and he played the last card in his hand. Aqua Madoor, bringing him to 20 points exactly.
Yami studied him. "No," he said slowly, "perhaps you're not." He hesitated over his cards, long enough that Seto half wondered if he was going to throw the game after all. A quick, almost furtive glance at Seto, and then Yami dropped Ancient Lamp on the table, pushing Seto over the point limit. "My win."
"Yours," Seto agreed. He set his jaw, readying himself for another vision of Yami's victims being tortured.
But what he saw wasn't a victim of Yami's.
Determination, duty, and soul-deep terror shaped the Pharaoh's voice as he joined the high priests who still lived in casting the spell. He lifted the pendant from his neck — the strongest focus that his priests could conjure in the crisis — and faced down the storm of darkness that the demon Zorc wielded.
The spell took effect, and abruptly the storm was inside him. He was the thin film of a bubble, wrapped around a typhoon, teetering on the edge of bursting into nothing as Zorc tore him apart from the inside. Pain could not begin to describe the agony of his soul being sundered from within, and his determination wavered.
Mahaad had offered to do this in his place, and now he almost wished he'd taken his old friend up on it. But Mahaad wasn't the god-king. He didn't carry the divine blood that was their only hope to contain the monster. It had to be the Pharaoh. He thought of his friends — Set's loyalty, Mahaad's dedication, Siamun's support, Mana's love — and drew the memories close, a reminder as he endured Zorc's whirling fury.
For every shred that Zorc chipped away, the demon lost part of itself too — fragments drifting and mingling and binding in the maelstrom of their minds. So he stood his ground, let Zorc abrade piece after piece from them both until, finally, the storm faded into calm.
He had won. Zorc was no longer.
But when he opened blood red eyes with the demon's magic swirling under his skin, he knew: He had lost. In neutralizing Zorc, he had consumed him. The demon's power was his, but with it came the seductive pull of madness as the demon's own affinities colored his thoughts.
A tentative voice reached him over his gasping breaths. "Pharaoh?"
Isis. He turned his face to her, shame and satisfaction warring when she flinched back in horror. She gathered herself, though, the others rallying with her around their once-king, and knelt.
He looked around at them, his most trusted advisors and friends, and knew that he no longer belonged with them. The corruption was too strong, even now settling deeper into his soul. Grief cracked through him, tearing a sob from his chest.
Mahaad took to his feet at once, stepping closer even when sharp teeth flashed in a warning which was quickly retracted. "Pharaoh?" he asked.
The magician was strong, magic visible to his new eyes as a powerful aura that brushed against him, dangerous (no) and a threat (no!) and flaring stronger in response to the snarl that ripped from his throat (I'm sorry).
Mahaad visibly steeled himself, extending a hand.
And he —
— lashed out, startled when he cracked his knuckles on the edge of the table. Seto dizzily reoriented himself in Yami's hall, sucking in shaky breaths.
"Why —" did you let me see that? he started to ask, because there was no way that Yami hadn't known what would happen if he won with that card, but he cut himself off when he saw his opponent.
Yami's head was bowed, fingers limp over the cards as his shoulders trembled. Seto watched, silent, and witnessed the moment of weakness for the olive branch that it was.
Soon Yami gathered himself and straightened, posture proud. His eyes held a challenge in them, and Seto nodded slowly. Yami didn't want his pity any more than Seto wanted his. Instead, they exchanged grim smiles. Gallows humor from the one with a noose around his neck to the one who had already been hung.
They collected their cards, and Yami dealt the next round.
The oppressive atmosphere that had hung over the first seven rounds was gone. It was clear that Seto would still have to work for the win, but Yami had relaxed into his throne, and Seto found his own shoulders dropping in turn. For the first time since he'd summoned the Pharaoh — even before that, since he'd received that video call from Pegasus — Seto felt like he was on even footing with his opponent.
"So, Pegasus's power… It's linked to his eye, isn't it?" Yami mused.
"As far as I can tell. The rumors are less than reliable, but I've witnessed him using some kind of supernatural abilities to win duels. He can anticipate what people are going to play and call out their moves in advance. I thought that he was using cameras or mirrors to read his opponent's hand, but then with Mokuba…"
"He's definitely got access to some kind of soul magic. Binding a soul to a card is much more advanced than reading a soul." Yami glanced at Seto, a flash of red eyes. "You chose well in seeking out another adept at soul magic to counter him."
"Could you reverse it, if Pegasus refuses?"
Yami hummed. "I think so, but it's better if he does it. You should bargain for him to return Mokuba to his body before you give him anything."
"I was already planning to."
"We target the eye after, then, and the rest should be easy." Yami nodded. "I can help with that."
Seto narrowed his eyes. "I just need you to level the playing field."
Yami grinned, sharp. "I can do much more than that." He threw a card down in punctuation.
Crush card. Seto smiled grimly and folded his hand. "Point to you."
The memory this time was of a young boy who had somehow stumbled upon the Pharaoh and won Yami's game. Unlike the rage and disgust from before, Seto felt Yami's pride and satisfaction as he rewrote the soul of a bully who had abused his power over his peers.
The final round was quiet. It should have been tense — Seto's soul and Mokuba's life rested on the outcome — but the danger in the room had passed. It was replaced with a tentative camaraderie, a shared understanding of how far they would go to protect the people they loved.
"Twenty points," Seto announced, adding Lord of Dragon to the table.
Yami folded the rest of his hand. "You win, Kaiba Seto."
There was no flash of memory this time, just a wave of Yami's fingers that magicked the deck into Seto's hands. Seto flipped the top card: Fusion. He smiled.
The table melted away as Seto abandoned his chair, facing the Pharaoh with hands tucked into his pockets. Yami stood from his throne as well and stretched his arms overhead, energy crackling as the shadows flared around him.
Rather than dread, the sight sparked anticipation in Seto's chest. "So we have a deal, Yami?"
Yami met his eyes and held out a clawed hand. His claws pricked against Seto's wrist as they shook. It sent a shiver of sensation up Seto's spine, and the Pharaoh gave him a wicked grin.
"Call me Atem."