For Round 4 of The Yu-Gi-Oh Fanfiction Contest. The pairing is Sealshipping (Mahaad x Atem). WARNINGS: Yaoi, Mahaad x Atem, and Seth x Kisara; character death, mild profanity, creepy!Zorc, and brief necrophilia.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh.

Notes: Narmer united Egypt into one country, and his name in hieroglyphs is written as a catfish and a chisel.Ta-Shema'ew and Ta-Mehew were the names of Upper and Lower Egypt. Iteru was the name for the Nile. Dua netjer en ek was a way of saying thank you. Enjoy!

Eagle Bowl

"Mahaad!" Atem tore through the corridors of the Great Palace, a path to the entrance clearing before him as startled courtiers moved out of his way. "Wait five minutes until I get to you, damn it—"

He crashed into the priest of the Sennen Ring as Mahaad was preparing to mount his horse, dragging him back by his robes until they both tumbled onto the ground in an undignified heap. Atem managed to roll over and pin the older man down with ease born of his wrestling training, swinging one leg over his body so that the clearing dust revealed the hazy outline of him sitting triumphantly on top of his victim.

Mahaad coughed a few times, staring up at the young Pharaoh with a resigned expression on his face. "Is there something wrong, my Pharaoh?"

Atem scowled at him, a smudge of dirt decorating his right cheek. "You were leaving to fight Bakura, weren't you." It was a statement, flat and accusing.

"Yes," Mahaad relented.

"Well, you're not doing that now," he decreed, not getting up, his odd crimson eyes narrowed with the intensity of his words. "You're coming back into the palace with me and teaching Mana how to properly sign 'fire' so she doesn't screw up that spell again—"

Despite his chagrin and increasing lack of breath, Mahaad managed a small smile. "What has she done now?"

Atem groaned theatrically, rolling off his childhood friend and flopping onto the ground beside him, much to the amazement of the watching stablemen. "She's signed 'shadow' by accident, that's what she's done. And now the palace garden is filled with these odd semi-transparent smoke wraiths that blow ashes into the faces of visitors and leave layers of white fluff on all the plants. It seems that the only person they get along with is Mana, so now she's sitting on a rock and trying to figure out how to tell them to leave."

Mahaad, sensing how Atem was attempting to distract him into forgetting his duties, resolutely steered the conversation onto more pertinent topics. "That's precisely why she will never stand a chance if she ever faces Bakura! I need to get rid of the threat he poses now, before he kills anyone else."

Atem propped his head up on one elbow, raising his eyebrows. "All the more reason why you should stay here and teach her more. What if I commanded you not to leave?"

Mahaad didn't miss a beat. "Then I would disobey you and take any punishment that would result, as long as I had kept you and the rest of Kemet safe from harm."

"Would you stay if I threatened to throw you into the Iteru without your magician's staff?"

"No, and my Pharaoh should know by now that I do not need my staff to work magic."

Atem rolled his eyes. "What if I locked you in a room with Seth when he's in a ranting mood?"

"No."

"What if I forced you to parade through the city dressed as a woman?"

"No."

"... What if I told Akhenaten to hug you?"

"No."

Atem sighed and gave up, his eyes staring earnestly into his friend's. "I know you only want to protect me. But you might not win this fight, even with your additional powers"—he held up a hand to forestall Mahaad's protest—"and then who would hide me from Seth when he's searching for me to read the list of imports from Sumer?" His voice dropped lower, his gaze flickering briefly to the stable boys, who were remaining pointedly silent so as to hear what the Pharaoh and his Priest were talking about. "I don't know what I'd do without you by my side. Please, Mahaad, stay. For me."

Mahaad had never been able to resist Atem when he put effort into his coercing. "Alright."

"Narmer," Mahaad said. "Who was he?"

Atem raised his hand, his ten-year-old eyes still sleepy from the early hour. "He was the first Pharaoh who united Ta-Mehew and Ta-Shema'ew, the founder of my line."

Mahaad nodded approvingly. "And how would you spell his nomen, Mana?"

She paused from where she had been chewing on the end of her reed stylus, scratching lines of dashes onto the edge of her papyrus sheet, giving him a look as confused as the one Atem was currently sporting. "Uh..."

Resigned to the hopelessness of his pupils, Mahaad relented, writing it down on his own paper and showing it to them, braced for the inevitable reaction:

"CATFISH-CHISEL?"

Mana burst out laughing, almost toppling her chair over, and Mahaad sighed. He didn't look up to see Atem staring at the hieroglyphics, his face as blank as an empty page.

The world seemed to be spinning around him in a circle, people passing by in stops and pauses as if everything was a dream. The last few weeks had been hectic and loaded to the brim with danger, to the point that he had begun thinking that it was all some warped nightmare, that he would be woken up by a furious Seth any moment, complaining that Mana had accidentally turned all his furniture into ducks.

Mahaad rested his forehead against a cool stone pillar to his right, trying to resist the increasingly appealing urge to fall asleep then and there. Zorc, after all, would not give them time to rest during the night, since he himself did not need to regenerate his energy. The Thief King also seemed to have unlimited reserves of strength—or perhaps that was just Diabound, Bakura's damned ka creature, feeding its master the life force of the innocents it had sucked into itself.

When was the last time he had seen a bed? It had been days ago, Mahaad remembered, some hours before Shada and Karim had left for the slums of the city on a mad errand led by Priest Seth to capture the strongest kas they could find. They had returned with dozens of prisoners and a strange white-haired girl in tow, and the next thing they knew, Bakura was storming the palace with an army of thieves and ghosts twisting around his ankles, killing them all and kidnapping Akhenaten with them.

Atem, lured by Bakura's promises of the High Priest's freedom, had ridden the miles to Kuru Eruna with the Gods twining invisible at his back and fought the Thief King in an all-out battle that had ended in a tie—Akhenaten reverting last-minute to Bakura's side, the rest of the Pharaoh's guard and priests arriving, Zorc rising up from the depths of the Shadow Realm after Bakura had somehow yanked the Items out of their hands. It was a miracle that they had managed to survive and escape, despite losing Shada and Karim on the way.

Since then, Mahaad had been wandering the desolate city with a hard-eyed and desperate Atem; Aishisu, as calm as ever; Seth, absorbed in comforting the survivors of Zorc's brief destruction with the white-haired girl by his side; and Mana, clinging to Mahaad's arm like the child that he had only just realized she truly was. With each passing day that no more disasters happened, they had grown hopeful that perhaps Zorc and Bakura were content to return to the Shadows from where they had come—until Siamun died in the new barrage of attacks, led by Akhenaten himself.

Aishisu and Mana were killed as Bakura's Diabound squeezed their kas out of them and drank them in like beer. Seth and the white-haired girl were dragged into the Shadow Realm, where Seth, his heart divided between his loyalty and his love, lost the death game that Akhenaten had challenged him to. He had died only moments after the girl released her ka creature in an attempt to protect him, and both their souls were lost somewhere in the Shadow Realm.

At least, Mahaad mused, they had each other for comfort. Mana—or at least her ka, the only part of her soul left—would wander the darkness alone until she found them.

Oh, Mana. Aishisu, Seth, Siamun, Shada, Karim. May you all make your way to Aaru, the Field of Reeds, and wait for us there.

"Do you think there will be more attacks tonight?" a voice behind him asked wearily.

Mahaad turned to see Atem standing there on the balcony behind him, staring down at the ruins of their once-beautiful city, broken and crumbling in the moonlight. "I don't know."

"Is this fair?" Atem murmured, leaning his elbows on the railing and letting the cold night wind blow over him. "Must the sins of the father belong to the son?"

Mahaad opened his mouth to answer—to say what, exactly, he didn't know; he was far too tired to comfort—but Atem beat him to it. "It's not my fault," he whispered, as if to himself, his words almost lost to the waiting gap before him. "It's the debt, and the debt must be paid in full."

Mahaad felt a sharp tingle run down his spine, an instinctive warning at the alien quality of what the young Pharaoh was saying. "Debt?"

Atem nodded, not even looking back. "Oh, yes. To unite such a large realm as Kemet, there must be a heavy price paid to one who would make it happen quickly. My ancestor thought that his descendants would be strong, you see, that they would be able to defeat Zorc once and for all, and I have failed him." He smiled, and it was as empty as the false cheerfulness in his eyes. "You remember his name, Mahaad: Catfish-Chisel. Narmer."

The wars raged on.

"What I would not give for one moment of peace," the leader said, a map spread on the table before him.

"Peace, lord?" the old man sitting across from him said, fingers running over the oracle bones he held in the palm of his hand.

The leader nodded absently, tracing the line of the Iteru before pausing at the third cataract and marking the spot with a reed stylus. "An end to the fighting, oracle, and a united land stretching along the entirety of the Iteru. That is what I wish." He looked up, intense violet eyes studying those of his companion. "Tell me how to achieve it."

"There is a realm that exists parallel to the physical world," the old man began, his voice steady despite the presence of one who was as high as a king. "It was created, not by the gods, but by the demons who lived in the underworld beneath Nun, and one in particular named Zorc Necrophades. The gods will not help you, lord; they will leave you to fight amongst yourselves because they have made rules against interfering in the lives of mortals. But the demon Zorc will not obey those laws, and he will help you, although for a price."

"What is the price?" the leader asked sharply.

"I would not know, lord," the old man said. "I have had no need to make a deal with this demon; indeed, it is a backstabbing creature, and most would not dare to tamper with what power it offers."

"I am not most people," the leader snapped. "Take me to this demon, and let me see for myself whether I will accept its tithe or not."

"As you wish, lord."

"Zorc Necrophades!" the leader cried into the purple-black void. "Show yourself."

There was a long pause, and the clouds of mist writhed on the ground. Then: "Who calls me?"

"One who would make a deal with you," the leader replied fearlessly. "My name is Horus-Narmeru, and I ask: what price would you demand to make me King of all Kemet?"

"Fame, mortal?" The demon's laugh boomed throughout the void. "Is that what you want?"

The sun beat down upon their heads, scorching their skin where their clothes had been torn from days of battle.

"It's true," Atem said hollowly, staring down at the drying, cracked mud beneath their feet. "The inundation has not come."

"It could be late this year," Mahaad suggested halfheartedly.

"Late by three months," Atem said with a short laugh. "Let me tell that to the grain farmers and see what they think of it." He spun on his heel, whirling to face the last of his former High Priests, his eyes flaming with suppressed anger. "Kemet has fallen apart, Mahaad! Ever since Zorc ravaged my land and killed my advisors, there have been no people left to call this a country! How will we continue trade with Mesopotamia and the tribes of the south if we have no grain to give them? How will we survive when my people have lost their trust in me? How will we rebuild our cities and continue the line of the pharaohs when I have no children and no wife and no home? And how am I supposed to stand before the few survivors who remain and say that I have failed them, that they may as well hide like cowards in their broken houses and pray that Zorc doesn't kill them the next time he chooses to show himself? You're the last of my advisors, so tell me!"

Mahaad was unsure of how to react. "My Pharaoh..."

"I have failed," Atem said, ignoring him. He tipped his head back to look into the blinding blue sky as if hoping for the miracle of rain that had last come so long ago that they could not remember it. "Dear gods, I have failed everyone. How will I rule a land of the dead? How can I be Pharaoh if I have failed my most important duty?"

"You have not failed—" Mahaad began.

"Don't lie to me," Atem said, and then with a bitter smile: "You forced me to memorize it, remember? Make it so that none shall hunger in thy years, and none shall thirst in them. Men shall dwell in peace through that which thou wrought; all that thou commandeth shall be as it should be. Cause thy monument, the remembrance of thee, to endure through the love of thee. Evil indeed winneth wealth, but the strength of truth is that it endureth, and that thy father brought thee up in the ways of truth is the best thing that he has bequeathed thee."

"But keep thine eyes open; one that is trusting will become one that is afflicted," Mahaad echoed softly. "Do right so long as thou abidest on the earth. Calm the weeper, oppress no widow, expel no man from the possessions of his father; take heed lest though punish wrongfully. Exalt not the son of one of the high degree more than him that is of lowly birth, but take to thyself a man because of his actions. If thou art a leader and givest command to the multitude, strive after every excellent, until there be no fault in thy nature." He dared to place a hand on the young Pharaoh's shoulder, and for a moment they stood as friend to friend and maybe something closer—as equals. "You have done only what you could, and that is all that the people of Kemet can ask of their ruler."

Atem nodded slightly, but his smile was still sad. "I am a god to them, Mahaad, Horus-upon-Earth. My mere presence is supposed to bring the floods and the harvest. The people need someone to blame, and they can only choose me."

Mahaad had no answer for that.

"Zorc will attack again," Atem said, weary certainty in his words. "He will break us down until we will be begging him for death, and then he will trap us in the Shadow Realm to be locked in with him forever." He turned to Mahaad, desperation in his expression. "I ask you a favor, Mahaad, as my closest friend from childhood. If we are taken into the Shadows, or if you know we will be taken, do not fight. Kill me, so that we may avoid an eternity with that demon."

Mahaad's mouth was dry; he had to swallow before he could answer. "Only if you, in turn, will do so for me."

Atem's crimson eyes locked with his. "Dua netjer en ek."

Atem was shaken awake in the middle of the night by Mahaad, and what he could see of the Priest's face was frantic and alarmed. "What—"

"The Iteru," Mahaad said, unveiled horror in his voice. "It has disappeared."

They spoke as they ran down to the Iteru's bank, where masses of people had already gathered and the roar of falling water was nearly deafening. "What do you mean, it has disappeared?" Atem demanded, yelling to be heard.

"The people say there was a great rumbling in the ground, and that the Iteru split down its middle and all the water poured down into the chasm. I did not have a chance to look at it closely," Mahaad reported, stopping short at the edge of the crowd, which parted to let him and the Pharaoh through.

"Dear gods," Atem breathed.

The ground twenty feet before him dropped off as sharply as the wall of a cliff, and the waters of the Iteru were rushing down into the gap, the pale moonlight reflecting on the surface. The very stone under his feet shook with the sheer force of the draining river until Atem was afraid that it would crumble beneath him and drop them all to their deaths.

"BACK!" he cried as loudly as possible. "Everyone, get back!" His voice was drowned out by the sound of a part of the newly made canyon face breaking off under the pressure, sending chunks of rock and soil with half-dead stalks of grain planted tumbling into the water.

Atem closed his eyes as the people around him milled toward the vanishing shore, willing himself to summon the three Gods to carry them away to safety. His hands clenched into fists and he felt his ka stirring, lashing out, freeing itself from his body—

—only to snap back at the last second and fade back into nothing, settling back into the recesses of his chest so that no matter how he searched and prayed for it, he knew he would not be able to summon anything.

"Mahaad," he whispered, barely mouthing the Priest's name but somehow making himself heard despite the din. "Mahaad, I have lost the gods."

He saw Mahaad's eyes widen for the briefest second before the former bearer of the Ring summoned his own ka, and the Dark Magician burst up into the air and aimed his staff into the water, struggling to seal the rift in the earth.

The violet light reflected in Atem's hopeless eyes, and Mahaad had to turn away before he could continue.

He has come unto us and has brought the Black Land under His sway; He has apportioned Himself to the Red Land. He has come unto us and has taken the Two Lands under His protection; He has given peace to the Two Riverbanks. He has come unto us and has made Kemet to live; He has banished its suffering.

There were only a few hundred people left in all of Kemet, and they had congregated in the capital city, demanding that the Pharaoh bring back the peace and prosperity that had existed in the previous decades of rule.

"What do they want?" Atem asked, stepping onto the balcony of the palace with Mahaad and staring down at the crowd. There were sleepless circles under his eyes, and his entire stature was tired.

"They think you have angered the gods," Mahaad said softly, because he knew that Atem would want nothing but the truth from him. "They want you to do something so that they can go back to their lives without fear that the next day they will be attacked by the demon Zorc."

"I can do nothing, Mahaad," Atem said, retreating into the room and sitting down onto a chair, resting his head in his hands. "The gods have truly abandoned me this time. When I pray, I hear nothing; I can't even summon any ka creatures anymore. Is this Zorc's doing?"

"Yes," Mahaad said firmly. "The people loved you when you were a child; they had faith in you during the first months of your reign. Zorc has corrupted their minds."

Atem smiled slightly at him, and Mahaad knew that he did not believe him. "Then let's go out and see if we can do anything."

When they stepped under the glare of Ra's rays, they found that the group of citizens had formed a circle around a man standing on top of a stone garden chair, his back turned to them, saying something about a sacrifice to the gods. It was eerily quiet, the normal background buzz of insects and the rush of water muted, as if nature itself was pausing to listen to him.

The man had white hair.

Atem paled despite his tan, and Mahaad felt his stomach take a sickening swoop. "Is that—?"

The man turned around with the Thief King's face.

"Bakura!" Atem demanded, striding through the circle that had formed with the first spark of life in his eyes that Mahaad had seen for days. "What are you doing here?"

The Thief King tilted his head, and his eyes gleamed as bright as flames in the sunlight. His hair was dirty and tangled, his face scratched with black lines of dirt that were not bleeding, a long gash on his arm open and festering. He grinned wickedly at them, and Mahaad could see that some of his teeth had been broken in two and were lying forgotten inside his mouth; his lips were cracked and dry. "Who is Bakura?"

Atem faltered, shock on his face. "You're dead."

The Thief King (or, at least, the demon wearing his body) shrugged, and Mahaad saw with new disgust how his arms hung limp and unmoving at his sides, how each movement of his muscles set off a wave of uncontrolled spasms in the others. "No, I'm not." His irises flashed iridescent red as he raised his hands, dark crescents of dirt trapped underneath his fingernails. "People of Kemet," he said, his voice alight with barely suppressed gloating, "our Pharaoh has done nothing but lose us a war and let the angry gods ravage the country. They demand a sacrifice that he will not give. So let us sacrifice ourselves in his place, and we will be remembered as a people who died so that their cowardly leader would not."

And, as the crowd walked to the side of the chasm and leapt off without hesitation, Mahaad could only grip the collar of Atem's shirt and jerk him into a hug to prevent the young Pharaoh from running after them—probably to throw himself into the pit himself, as if to prove his innocence to whoever remained to watch.

"What now?"

Mahaad looked up from where he was kneeling by the chasm, squinting down to see the subterranean river despite the spray that occasionally flew into his face. The mud beneath his bare feet was still somewhat damp from the water that had resided over it not six days ago. "What do you mean, my Pharaoh?"

Atem was staring out at the desolate land, not even noticing how he was sinking an inch deeper into the mud every minute. "How must we live in a place where the only inhabitants are us?"

Mahaad felt a pang of hurt somewhere in the region where his heart was. "Do I not count as interesting enough company for you?"

"Oh, it's not that," Atem assured him quickly. "It's just that..." He waved a hand at the empty banks, at the complete silence where other days there would have been boats sailing up the Iteru and merchants shouting their bargains in marketplaces. "It's too much of a pointless existence. What will we do, now that Zorc has no interest in fighting us and the people are gone?"

"We could move to Mesopotamia or join the Phoenicians overseas," Mahaad said, a rare smile appearing on his face at the thought of the Pharaoh and High Priest of Kemet finally, truly defeated by boredom.

But to his surprise, Atem shook his head. "They're gone too."

The world burned. Ashes and liquid coals flowed from the smoldering, collapsed tops of tall mountains, thick black clouds choking the air and blocking out the sun. Chunks of hot white rock rained down from the sky, and lightning forked through the air before hitting trees and splitting them neatly in two. Fires raged from parched forest to forest despite the pouring rain, and the people were too busy saving themselves to save each other. Mesopotamia was a land of competition, and survival would always come first.

Houses caved in as the ground shook with earthquakes; people ran through the streets with pillows and shirts covering their mouths so they would not inhale the poisonous gases strewn through the clouds. Mothers screamed for their sons and daughters; children curled up in balls behind walls and sobbed, only to be crushed when the stones collapsed on top of them.

The river, with its water coming from the killing mountains, was dark and thick with soot and debris, and there was no escape from the destruction except the impassable peaks to the north and the empty desert to the south.

So, really, when the mudslides of trees snapped like sticks and boulders the size of houses came, they didn't mind, because they were already doomed.

The ocean was going mad. Ships sank as ripples no taller than a foot swept under them and ripped out their bottoms before rearing up into fifty-foot waves once they reached the shore. The wooden houses were razed to the ground and swept into the sea as fish lay gasping for breath on the dry sand. The ocean, which they had worshipped as their lives for so long that they could not remember when they had started, was turning against them.

And then the very sky became black in the middle of the day and ashes fell gently from the gathering storm clouds, peppering the land with soot. It was a sign that the gods were angry—and perhaps they were, for then the ground split open before their eyes and the dirt beneath their feet liquefied under the pressure as spurts of molten rock oozed over the sides.

Oh, yes, the gods wanted them to die.

The sky was choked with the black clouds. The plants withered without sunlight; the people woke to days as dark as nights; the air grew thicker and thicker until it was easier to die than to take another breath.

The embers suffused their every breath, and they took the easy way out.

The sunrise was bloody red and dusky purple. Mahaad sat with Atem on the balcony of the crumbling palace, watching Ra's first rays touch the Pharaoh's skin.

"I think we're the only people left," Atem said suddenly, turning to face him.

"What?" Mahaad said, startled.

"I... I saw the rest of the world fall apart," he said, his voice hesitant.

"When?"

"Last night."

If Mahaad had had something in his mouth, he would have choked. "Last night?"

"I dream about it." Atem didn't look at him. "Zorc—he sends me nightmares and dreams and visions, sort of as a warning. Maybe he just wants to frighten me, but I know they're true."

"You should have told Aishisu and me," Mahaad said, almost horrified. "We would have helped you with them—"

Atem shook his head. "No, they taught me something. They showed me Zorc's true power, and where he came from." He paused for a long moment before forging ahead. "He's really the darkness, Mahaad—the darkness that used to stretch over Nun before Ra came to be. He wants to remake the world back into what it was originally, to start over again like a cycle of events. There's a land far to the west that believes so too, although we've never come into contact with it, and they actually came up with a way to predict these rebirths..."

"So... you're giving up?" Mahaad asked, not quite believing it. Atem was stubborn; he was a fighter and a survivor, and the very thought of him so much as giving up a game was ludicrous.

Atem nodded earnestly. "We'll have a chance next time, I swear we will. The events of this year will happen again, whether in a million rebirths or not, and eventually we'll be able to do it over and win. You promised me before that if we were going to be swallowed up by the Shadows, you'd kill me if I killed you." He took a deep breath. "I'm holding you to that promise."

Mahaad looked at him, and he saw for a brief moment the true god-on-earth, the true spirit of a boy whose very body was sacred—someone who saw his imminent defeat and accepted it in peace, knowing that if he had a chance at redemption later, he would solve the problem with the same resoluteness as before. "Alright," he said, and he smiled as Atem grinned at him, the weight of the past months lifted off his chest—if only for that small moment before everything began again, there was nothing to pull him down.

Light with the new sensation of freedom, neither of them felt the blade.

"Mahaad!" Atem tore through the corridors of the Great Palace, a path to the entrance clearing before him as startled courtiers moved out of his way. "Wait five minutes until I get to you, damn it—"

He crashed into the priest of the Sennen Ring as Mahaad was preparing to mount his horse, dragging him back by his robes until they both tumbled onto the ground in an undignified heap. Atem managed to roll over and pin the older man down with ease born of his wrestling training, swinging one leg over his body so that the clearing dust revealed the hazy outline of him sitting triumphantly on top of his victim.

Mahaad coughed a few times, staring up at the young Pharaoh with a resigned expression on his face. "Is there something wrong, my Pharaoh?"

Atem scowled at him, a smudge of dirt decorating his right cheek. "You were leaving to fight Bakura, weren't you." It was a statement, flat and accusing.

"Yes," Mahaad relented.

"Well, you're not doing that now," he decreed, not getting up, his odd crimson eyes narrowed with the intensity of his words. "You're coming back into the palace with me—"

There was a pause, and Atem tilted his head, staring at the man beneath him with a strange sort of dignity despite his undignified position. "On second thought, you may leave."

Mahaad stood as the Pharaoh helped him up, hugging him tightly and whispering in his ear, "Let's try this again, shall we?"

That time, they won.

End

A/N: This fic was originally inspired by the tale of the Indus River Valley, where civilization died out because the Saraswati River dried up.

Endnotes: Eagle Bowl refers to the Mayan calendar that predicts the rebirth of the world. The stuff about the duties of the Pharaoh came from Guidelines for the Ruler (c. 2400 B.C.E.) and Hymn to the Pharaoh (c. 1880-1840 B.C.E.). The subterranean river underneath the Nile really exists.

It's implied that Narmer was the pharaoh who made the deal with Zorc, and that the world ended with Zorc's victory but started again in the canon AE, where Atem locked away his memories but eventually won in Memory World.

Reviews are greatly, greatly loved; concrit is especially appreciated. So review, please! :]