Reaching Through Shadows

Abby Ebon

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Disclaimer: You must be kidding. I do hope you are kidding. To think I – now or ever – could ever own the likes of "Yu-Gi-Oh"….also, the rumors of my playing a part in creating "Harry Potter" have been greatly exaggerated… please don't hurt me?

Note; … this is for Firehedgehog's very belated birthday; hope you had a good one!

Oddly, what started me writing this chapter was a dream. It went something like this;a island on which there were people gathered, a Bakura-spy, and something about the ill people on the island with diabetes neglecting treatment and the Shadow Realm coming to be in reality because of that… (what the hell the connection between diabetes and the Shadow Realm was, I have no freaking clue now, but it sure as hell made scary-sense at the time); there was this doctor-guy who was controlling the island sitting at this desk, glowing this fiery-blue color (Bakura was there, and I was sort of looking over his shoulder as he/we were hiding)...anyway, I got the sense he (the doctor-guy) was connected to the Shadow Realm even as he said;

"Yes, Master Pegasus…"

…. and I just sort of went and thought, as I was waking up….

"Damn-it, Fire', Yu-Gi-Oh….I knew it!"

Mind you, my thought only make sense when you understand who is the driving force behind this bit of story, and consequently understand that my longest friend on this site; Firehedgehog, had been asking about updates persistently...as invading my dreams is where I draw little lines and sharpen pointy sticks, I must then give in….-giggles-

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He knew that he had, whatever nicer words might be used, fled from them. There was a time he would never have. A time he would have thought, harshly, perhaps not wrongly – that he could never be a coward. He could not be so weak. To be so would have meant his death. Now, he thought it not far from the truth of things. With power came weakness, and he was as powerful as he had ever been.

It was the old terror that haunted him now. That forced him to remember what he had been, who he had been. Magician of Black Chaos closed his amber and scarlet eyes, and when they opened – unseeing, unfocused – they were ivory and emerald.

He it himself remember that then. For it puzzled him, and he was always curious.

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"You can not expect to die in peace, Potter." Tom purred the words, gloating, teeth gleaming in the flickering of flame. Real flame, not magic, it was a mockery. Magic, he could have used, could have gained some small amount of strength and warmth from. Tom denied him even that.

"But, of course not, Tom." It was a stranger that answered. Or it sounded like, not his voice, not to his own ears. His voice was rougher then he had ever remembered it being, it hurt to speak. He'd been screaming too long for it to not to hurt. Tom glared up at him – up, only because Harry was pinned up on the wall, bound with rope and barbed-wire, his bruised feet and broken toes did not so much as brush the dirt floor.

Slowly, he was bleeding out – dying, trapped – and bound. Bound by more then mere physical means, his magic was a flickering thing within him, he could see it, sense it within himself – but he could not touch it. Not without some measure of focus that he lacked. In the beginning, he had tried, had reached and screamed and bled for nothing.

Now he was pinned to a stone wall; aching and tired, body and bone numbed, though he knew – logically – he should be screaming from the pain. Even if that magic was a touchable, tangible thing, he would now falter in using it for more then the next breath. He did not even know if he was bleeding uselessly, or if there was some dark purpose to it.

At first, it had looked as if that might be it; the room, it was underground – and in front of him was a single cruel alter, stone worked like something out of ancient times. To either side of it, pillars, the source of the only light was atop them. Harry guessed (because the light, dim as it was, still blinded him) beyond those was the spiraling passage – a decent into this madness.

"Take care of your tongue, Potter. Least you loose it." A shadow that was not supposed to be there, on the ground at Tom's feet, was flickering – blinking and winking up at him, as if amused. Harry glared at it, lopsided and blurry eyed.

"Whatever. Not much more you could do to me, Tom." Harry knows that much to be true. Day by day, it seeps from him, his magic; he had not before realized how he had come to rely upon it being there, living with and within him. He'd gotten used to it, after learning what it was he felt within himself, even come to welcome the comfort it offered him. Now it was being dragged from him; he felt it keenly, that pain. It was as if hooks were tearing into his skin, again and again, until those tiny hooks scraped against raw bone and deeper still.

Tom laughed then, but Harry shook his head, it was wrong-sounding. It did not sound like Tom. And Harry by now would have known that much, what Tom did and did not sound like, if nothing else - having his existence maintained or punished on Tom's whim. It gave him a better idea of Tom's mood, the knowing of his voice, it was a necessary learning – not one he had enjoyed.

"Ah, Harry, you know me better then to say such things…" Tom came closer still, and the wrongness about him that Harry had sensed grew, shifted – changed into something closer to the surface. It was real now in a way it had never been before. Harry did not know it, but that he sensed such things was a credit to him, both because of his current condition, and how his magic had dwindled within him.

Smooth nails, manicured and clean, scraped against the rough bristles on his cheek. It almost surprised Harry, this reminder that he was real and solid, still, not yet some spirit knowing only pain and tormented hopelessness. He had also aged, he guessed, usually Tom shaved him. Some twisted sense of perversity within Tom enjoyed "taking care" of Harry while Harry was helpless within his grasp.

It did no good for Harry to struggle or protest, and the first few times he had been cursed to stillness; a mercy Harry had learned too late. Now whatever Tom did, he made sure it was personal – real – without the sway of magic getting in the way to take the edge off the bluntness. The scrape of a blade at his throat, the smoothness of his cheeks afterward, it all stuck to him like some gritty sickness clinging to his memory even long after the hair had grown again. Harry wondered, sometimes, if others (for surely there were others, prisoners, entombed somewhere within here unheard by any who were not meant to hear, when they screamed) could claim such "care" by the hands of Tom.

"Why do you tempt me?" Harry jerked within Tom's grasp, for all that he had learned not to. That it made it worse, that it excited Tom to find Harry still with his spirit unbroken. Perhaps it was a curiosity Tom liked about Harry. But this…it was wrong.

It was not Tom's voice. There were echoes of Tom in it, like the gleaming surface of a river running fast. The true power came from swifter currents beneath. So Harry thought he heard now. He could not be yet sure, but he felt it, welling up within him – a fear, animal and senseless. It had to be faced, while he still had the strength to battle it down, before it consumed him and Harry started to scream. Harry knew he sometimes went mad, but that, he had believed and taken pride in knowing – was only when Tom was not watching, knowing. Harry dared then to do then, here and now, what he avoided save when he was at his weakest, and forgot how Tom didn't like it when their eyes met.

Black eyes. Dull and depthless these shadow eyes glistened down at him, as if they were made of darker stuff then the dark around them, and the dark gave off a light so Harry could now glimpse the true stuff of shadows and monsters.

There were not the fresh gleaming blood-red of Tom's eyes. Harry felt his breath hitch at his throat. This was not Tom at all, this was a stranger riding Tom's body as if it were merely some near-dead thing of flesh and stupid-brains, not a wizard at all; not like Tom.

"What have you done to yourself, Tom?" Harry asked then, knowing he had not the right to ask for all that might be done to him by the hands of this Other, his voice was still scraping and raw. Weak. Not-Tom of monster black eyes laughed again, it echoed in the dark spaces and corners that Tom had never touched with his own manic laugh.

"A deal sealed, Harry Potter, a deal with a once sleeping demon. Is what your attendant has wagered. More power, more strength, for less mortality which is –after all - the stuff we demons crave. A good bargain, he thought at the time. Poor little lost orphan Tom, he did not know that mortality is the stuff humans are made of. It's what makes you, you, more then soul or memory. And Tom…well, the poor fool! He gave it up, all of it, bit by bit until there was nothing much of a wizard left in this body." Tom's lips brushed teasing and taunting against his ear with every other word, whispering the words like some dirty secret. Harry had tensed up as much as he was able, fearing now in a way he hadn't before feared Tom.

"What are you, then – if not Tom? Why keep me here like this?" Harry asked, not as soft or secret. Letting his knowledge be heard by the dark that listened. He didn't hope that any would hear, no – but he did think better, sometimes, when he heard aloud his own voice. It was the only comfort he had grown used to.

"I am the Sleeping One, the demon Zorc Necrophades by Egyptian name; cursed to a millennium of sleep by Pharaoh Atem, he who first wore the Red Crown of Lower Egypt with the White Crown of Upper Egypt. Who sealed my essence into my beginnings, that of the Shadow Realm." His tongue, slick and wet, licked soothingly against Harry's listening ear.

"Alas, I am not at full strength. Fear not, I will bring my full power to wakening, and with it, my wrath I will sweep this land, without mercy and full of wrath, I will make them bow, your people, for the insult of having forgotten the likes of I..." Zorc Necrophades breathed matter-of-fact and clearly very amused with Harry. His lips curled against his neck, unseen, an intimate gesture that chilled Harry, but did not stop him from speaking.

"How..?" Harry asked, pained and feeling keenly his weakness and helplessness, he still had to know; even as he dreaded to know. His voice had gone rough and dry from its use; he was not usually so talkative.

"You, wizard, with your life-blood sacrifice to the Shadow Realm; will be my key to the doors of this world and my freedom. With you, lovely, a spirit unbroken but bound, I will be whole." Harry just breathed as the silence washed over him, cold and tugging, like the depths of a sea. It was trying for a calming, this silence, but as realization settled in under his skin, Harry realized that the calm was too cold and dreadful. Lulling, it would as soon kill as see him calm in life.

Pressed against him in Tom's body, Zorc Necrophades snickered, seeming to sense and know for truth what Harry only now grasped. Well manicured fingers pressed against his navel firmly –forcing the breath out of him, nails scraping his belly with an eager clarity. The skin was raw and red beneath them, Harry felt rather then saw.

"Do not breath, little wizard, you will hurt the worse for it." Was the only warning Zorc Necrophades murmured to him, before those nails and fingers and hands sunk into his belly as if his flesh was not there at all. Harry only grunted for answer, he could not scream. There was heat, he realized, within the pain that had him limp and helpless against the body – the murderer of his parents, his tormenter throughout his life. This puppet-body had been a predator that had waited him out, sniffing and surviving for want of Harry to die. Perhaps that relentlessness, that knowing that he'd been hunted – prey – all his life, helped him now in some way to think past the burning pain of hands being where they were never meant to be; Tom's hands, to add to the insult of it.

It was not Tom that held him now, letting Harry lean against him in limp pain, a gesture that likely looked kind for all it was true agony. It was the demon, Zorc Necrophades; and it wanted something of him. Harry had learned all his life that people wanted for many things from others, wanting was a weakness.

It could be used, taken advantage of. Harry closed his eyes, distancing himself from the pain in his flesh and bones, letting himself go into his mind, further into himself then he could safely return from. He found it there, the well-spring of magic that bubbled, keeping him alive. It was a persistent thing, independent with a will of its own - and Harry felt a fondness for it. It worked to keep him moving, keep him breathing and his heart beating, even as Harry would rather die now then life through what pain he was suffering.

It was the thought of what Zorc Necrophades would do with his dying now that kept him from faltering to let the cold silence of death lull him under the tide. He sunk himself furtherer into that well-spring and for the first time was warm and calm and comforted at the rightness of what he was doing.

He reached for what was hurting him, slowly killing him, as the bubbling living-magic was eager to fix and put right. Harry felt those hands, made of flesh and bone, inside his stomach caressing his organs and intestines, bathing those murderous hands in his blood, soaking up his spirit, his mortality, and his magic. Zorc Necrophades would devour him from within his own body. It was almost distractingly funny, that irony.

Harry let himself sink into Zorc Necrophades, almost easy to do, as it was what Zorc Necrophades wanted of him.

Then, unseen, Harry grinned.

Harry pulled back, with all his magic and soul and mortality, he pulled at the invading and devouring demon Zorc Necrophades. Perhaps taken by surprise, Zorc Necrophades realized too late that Harry was dying, yes, but clinging - taking Zorc Necrophades with him. Back into the Shadow Realm, where Zorc Necrophades was birthed and tied. Where the Sleeping One still slept, undisturbed even as Harry joined it within the Shadow Realm – not taking it's place, as he was supposed to, but no – now he was tied there as surely as Zorc Necrophades; the only true guard to what lurked within the prison of the Shadow Realm.

Together they had died.

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Misty shadows stirred, as if sympathetic, alike something with intelligence might as it stretched, disturbed from slumber, with a beating heart of awareness. He did not know if it was an illusion, or if it was truth. That beyond the shadows something slept, stirring rarely – was undoubted truth.

Yet he knew that within the shadows, beings and creatures with varying degrees of awareness, and intellect, thrived. Some were people, others less then beast – and still, more were the dreams of those outside this realm – those who knew the old lore and dreamt still of nightmares. If this was a prison, it was the sort that sought out its victims, snatching them from far spanning worlds the mist of shifting shadow reached, slithering back in forth through time, always searching for - something.

He did not know what it looked for. What it sought. Worse, he knew that at one time, he had known – and now, did not. That knowledge had been stolen from him, and he did not know how - or why.

He only knew that somewhere, in all the worlds and times the shadow mist touched, someone was calling –summoning - for him. A hand curled into a fist, blue flickers burned into a steady glow. He knew he was being called. It was a tug in his navel; he knew it to be a summoning. He could resist, though that was – ultimately - foolish.

At his booted feet, the shadows tugged like the tide, inevitable, far reaching as a sea. It would snatch him from this shore, an undertow that would spill him onto the other side of the shadows, leashed and bound to the shadows. There was no escape from this place, it only let one go at death – and, sometimes - not even then.

Magician of Black Chaos tightened his hand on his staff, and stepped forward, giving into the summoning. Willingly, he let the shadows take him.

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Note; …forgive me, I had a harder time then I thought I would with the death of our Hero. It was, in the end, only that I could not quite figure out how to go about writing it in the most effective way. I've never gotten an idea all on my own, likewise, there are little bits that slip in mysteriously, though for a large part I either make up a "plan of attempt" or seek out certain individuals and subsequently shred a story like a bit of newspaper then have it glued back together for a better whole. All of whom at some point sat me down and forced me to write out what it was I wanted to put into this story, which as my very best friends only they can do. Without them, this would have remained an idea lucking in the darkness with amber-red eyes glinting at me; which is very disturbing, I assure you.

Thus, I can never thank enough these prized individuals who make themselves available at almost every ungodly hour my mind might decide to metamorphosis a long dreaded term – that being my claim of sometimes-dread, "I've got an idea!" – these, my uncertainly sane friends, are my most precious - and they know well who they are.

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