‘Three down, ten to go.’ Atem mused as he darted between the
shelves full of prophecies. It hadn’t taken long to start thinning the herd.
Even before he had explained the rules, two of the Death Eaters had tried to
hex his friends and another had aimed his way. All three had earned a Penalty
for doing so.
He
hadn’t had time to weave anything more complex so the rules were really quite
simple. Magic was banned for the duration of the game bar, of course, what held
the game together and all the Death Eaters had to do to ‘win’ was catch him. If
they managed to do that, his life was forfeit.
However
there was no way for the Death Eaters to interact with the world around them,
the Shadows were ensuring that and if Atem made it to the door, the ten
remaining Death Eaters would lose and be trapped in this limbo forever.
That
was if they didn’t cheat.
Atem
didn’t expect them to play fair. They were Death Eaters, vile disgusting scum
who preyed on the weak and ambushed the strong. He couldn’t know for certain
but he wouldn’t have been surprised if some of the men he was facing had been
involved in the attack that had claimed his Grandfather’s life or had been
there the night Kari had been murdered.
“Easy Yami.” Yugi’s voice echoed in his head,
trying to soothe him as he heard footsteps heading his way and darted down the aisle,
“We’ll win and then they won’t be able to
hurt anyone else. But we need to keep our heads in the Game for that.”
The
Pharaoh let out a quiet huff at his other half’s words. Yugi was right, getting
riled up over what they had done would distract him from the Game at hand. They
were horrible wastes of space, worthless rotten souls with power they didn’t
deserve but the Death Eaters were his opponents and while he would much rather
have sent all of them to Shadow Realm without a second glance, Yugi had
insisted that this would give their friends, who could have been caught in the
crossfire if the Death Eaters had tried to fight back, a better chance at
escaping.
He
could hear the Death Eaters trying to co-ordinate. Their voices carried well in
the silence that had fallen over the room once Joey had dragged Harry and
Hermione out of the door. They seemed to lack a way to communicate quietly
without magic, but he wasn’t going to complain. Every time they tried to get a
plan together, Atem could hear them and prepare to counter it. It was,
worryingly, almost laughably easy.
It
was almost, Atem realised with a grimace, as if the Death Eaters he was playing
against were the stupid ones, the cannon fodder, the ones that were sent out
first to wear down the enemies before the big guns moved in.
“You don’t think...?” Atem could sense Yugi paling as the
hikari worked out what was going on in the same moment he did.
‘This is just a diversion.’ The Pharaoh nodded as he changed
direction, narrowly avoiding being spotted by a pair of Death Eaters, ‘We
need to end this and get to the others. They could be in trouble.’
‘Could
be’ was wishful thinking and they both knew it as they darted towards the
entrance to the Hall of Prophecy, only to find that three of the remaining
Death Eaters were covering the door, blocking their exit.
“We need to lure them away.” Yugi’s thought bounced across the
link as Atem pulled away from the door, backing up behind a bookcase so he
couldn’t be seen by the guards. “Or we’re
not getting out that door.”
Atem
was fully aware of that, the question was how. They couldn’t take anything off
the shelves to break them and cause a noise, there were spells in place to
prevent just that even if they’d been able to interact with the world around
them. He didn’t really want to show himself to the Death Eaters, not when he
expected them to attempt to hex him on sight, despite the rules in place to try
and prevent it from happening.
The
choice was taken out of his hands though when a Death Eater came from the other
direction, called, “There he is!” and he had to dart out from behind the
shelving unit before the call attracted too much attention.
It
wasn’t entirely successful. The call had drawn at least three of his opponents
to the nearby aisles and Atem’s earlier suspicion was confirmed when he had to
duck a bolt of green light that narrowly passed over his head as he rolled
under it and struck the Death Eater behind him, killing the man on the spot and
sending the caster into a Penalty.
The
third Death Eater tried to tackle Atem as he rolled to his feet and kept
running, only to miss and tumble into the shelves, which didn’t register the
impact in the slightest.
The
Pharaoh kept going even as he heard the Death Eater who had fallen calling to
his comrades. They converged on the sound, giving Atem a chance to get several
aisles away and regain his breath, listening carefully and grimacing when he
realised that his opponents had finally
gotten smart and were talking in low enough voices that he couldn’t hear them.
With
five of the original thirteen down and three more guarding the exit, covering
all three direct routes to the door, that left five who were actively chasing
him and most likely involved in the quiet conference that was going on a few
aisles over. He was doing well to have taken it down by that many, but he
wasn’t going to relax yet. It only took one to catch him and then he would,
most likely, be killed and Yugi would die with him.
He
needed a way to get the guards away from their posts so he could slip through
the doors but unlike the Death Eaters he wasn’t going to cheat and use magic to
aid him.
“Hey Yami?” Yugi asked as they heard the sounds
of movement, the enclave of Death Eaters breaking up to enact whatever plan
they had come up with to trap them, “I
have an idea...”
