Ascension [A Yu-Gi-Oh! FanFiction]

40: Mirror

When Atem stepped into the shadow of the Great Pyramid, he had never been more relieved to escape the sun's scorching wrath. With Ra's eye at its peak, only a narrow strip of shade was cast on the north side of the pyramid, enough for no more than two people to stand shoulder to shoulder. As the convoy dismounted and started toward the center of the north face, Atem stole a glance to his right to see Satiah staring wide-eyed up at the capstone glinting overhead. He reached out and touched her arm, causing her to jolt and turn to him. She looked around a moment, almost as if she'd been awoken from a dream unexpectedly.

"Is everything alright?" he asked in a light whisper, pulling her eyes back to him.

She nodded, but the hollowness never left her gaze. He slid his hand down to grasp at her palm, holding it as tight as he had earlier that morning. He was relieved to feel her fingers close around his, even though her grip still had a slight tremble in it.

Slowly, he turned and started toward the tomb's entrance, set neatly into the gentle slope of granite slabs running up the side of the pyramid. There, he took a torch from Seto, then bid goodbye to his advisors once again before sinking into the black chill within.

Khufu's tomb was somehow even less inviting than his son's and grandson's. After squeezing down a narrow decline, the pathway steepened upward into the aptly named Grand Gallery, its angled roof rising up to a sharp apex overhead. The light from Atem's torch licked at the jagged walls, painting ghostly images upon the stones with each step they took.

Eventually, the orange glow pierced its way into the narrow opening of the King's Chamber at the very top of the Gallery. The opening was small enough that Atem had to get onto all fours to edge his way through it; after surfacing in the burial chamber, he turned back to help Satiah upright as well.

He then cast his eyes around the understated resting place of the Father of Pharaohs. Khufu was the only one of his lineage to build his tomb within his pyramid, rather than carved from the bedrock below it. Whereas the tombs of his heirs felt close and stifling, Khufu's had a strange precariousness to it — as if, with the slightest careless breath, the entire pyramid might come crashing down around them.

The entirety of the King's Chamber was cased in granite, including the sarcophagus itself. Not a single etching or painting adorned any of the surfaces in the room, but two small niches were carved into the east and west walls, casting thin, angled rays of sunlight onto the coffin lid.

Slowly, Atem made his way toward the Father's sarcophagus, taking a moment to lower his torch to the ground beside it. As he straightened, he turned to Satiah and took her hand once more, gripping it tight. He wanted her to know — to understand that he had no intention of letting her go this time. But when she looked at him, her eyes were still empty, as if she were lost in the maze of her own thoughts.

With one last squeeze of her hand, Atem let out a long, slow breath before finding the will to utter his plea to Ra:

"'Almighty Ra, creator and ender of all things — your fire consumes the impure and casts the world in shining truth. Let us bask beneath the Blaze of your glory, so that we may have the power to burn away the shadows.'"

Jaw clenched, fists tightened, eyes squeezed shut — Atem felt the vastness of the cosmos trying to cleave its way between him and Satiah, but he held firm, straining against his own plunging momentum to pull her even closer to him. Through the stretching and folding of time and space, he barely noticed the soft impact of his feet back on solid ground; it was only when Satiah's weight threatened to buckle his knees that he opened his eyes to find them met with thick, unending darkness.

Staggering upright, he backed away from Satiah a few inches, looking into her eyes long enough to make sure she was unharmed. Her face was cast in a soft glow from the only light source among the cavernous blackness; her eyes sharpened as they focused on it, leading Atem to turn and look upon it as well. Several yards away and suspended some two stories overhead, a large, metallic sphere shone warm against the oppressive dark.