Ying-Yang: *peers over her shoulder at the keyboard* Shouldn't you be working on that 2000-word research paper you have due this Friday?

WSJ: *sweatdrops* Um... Probably?

Ying-Yang: *shakes her head* Well, Fiore's back, but he's still nurcing his wounded ego. I don't know what he's so worked up about. Alex doesn't seem to care that there's an evil Celtic Guardian around.

Voice off-set: Kissama!!! *Alex runs through, chasing Rigel, the evil Celtic Guardian*

WSJ & Ying-Yang: *sweatdrop*

Ying-Yang: Was I just saying he didn't care?

WSJ: *grins* Well, Bakura and Ryou got back just in time for all the "good stuff". Malik's a little miffed that he doesn't show up (concious, that is,) for a few more chapters yet. :D Poor guy...

Elyssa: *pokes her head in* We don't own YGO, but I don't think anyone ever actually reads the authors notes, so what does it matter? On to the show! ^~

()()()()()

Sacrifice of Shadows

Chapter 8 -- Good-bye Brother

Ryou awoke, and the first thing he noticed was pain. It ripppled up and down his body in waves. He started to roll over, and that was when he noticed the second and third things. He couldn't move, and he was laying on something soft, like a bed. It wasn't that he was tied down or something, but that everything from the neck down was completly paralyzed.

He stretched out his mental sences, feeling desperately for Bakura, as he always did first thing upon waking. He was surprised to find that, while he could feel Bakura, he was a long way off. And for the moment unsheilded. Joey was with him. Quickly Ryou reconstructed the sheilds around them, and continued his probe.

He was startled to find Serenity, her white aura, much like his own, dimmed by some sort of spell. He quickly threw a protective barrier over her as well, feeling the pull that maintaining four sheilds was beginning to exhert on his mental energy.

Ryou began to pull in his psycic probes, and tenced as he felt someone coming toward him down the hallway, a deep crimson aura, like it had been stained with old blood. The door to whatever room he was in opened, and the blooded aura walked in, taking a seat in a chair by his bed. It was then that Ryou spoke. "Who are you?"

A deep, feminine voice spoke up, calm like Isis's, but deeper, like Mai's. "A... Friend. Yes, I suppose I could be considered a friend."

"Why can't I move?" Ryou asked, his voice scratchy. He ached for a drink, but he most definately didn't trust this woman. Only killers had auras that colour. Not that he'd ever encountered any killers.

"Temporary paralysis. Firas's electric magic caused your muscles to freeze up. It should wear off pretty soon."

Ryou nodded slightly. He was already beginning to get feeling back into his fingers and toes, and if he concentrated hard enough they would twitch on command.

Suddenly he froze, a vaugue memory coming back to him. That time was all mist and shadows anyway, but he remembered, a little, what had happened during the original Locking Rituals three months ago. He could remember brief flashes of crimson, and he'd just now realized that he'd been sencing this same aura without knowing it.

Ryou's eyes flashed and his awareness flared. "You're Briar-Rose!" he accused. "You're the one behind all this!"

Briar-Rose smiled coily, though there was malice behind it. "Not cheifly behind it, no. But you were correct Ryou-koi, I am Briar-Rose."

Ryou was appauled at the impromptu nickname. "I thought you were in love with Kaib-er, Seth."

"No, not as such. Not love, really. Just the need for power. And, after all, Seth was high priest." she said off-handedly.

Ryou glowered at her. "You're sick Briar-Rose! I could never love someone like you!"

Even without his sight, Ryou could feel the ruthlessness coming off of her in waves. "Oh Ryou, I don't care about love. I told you that before. Just power. Untold fathoms of power. And you have it. And it will be mine."

Helpless in his semi-paralysed state, Ryou could only bite his lip in repressed anger as Briar-Rose snapped a pair of iron shackles around his wrists, binding them together in front of him. A heavy iron chain hung from them, dragging his shoulders into a droop. Briar-Rose held the other end, like a mistress and her dog.

"Come now Ryou-koi," she said, smirking at his fuzzy glare. "Let's go watch the festivities as your friends die, one by one."

And Ryou, in all his anger, didn't notice when she picked something up off the bedside table and slid it into a holster under her robe.

Bakura took a deep breath, dipping into long unused stores of Shadow Magic. What no one else seemed to understand was that Shadow Magic was not a trait of a yami, or even an Item Holder. It came along with the person, just like Ryou's psycic powers did. It just happened to be that everyone Bakura had ever met with Shadow Powers had been a yami or Item Holder.

The doors to their cells rattled on their hinges, and then flew open. The ex-tomb robber gulped in a lungful of air, thankful for the oxygen.

"Come on already!" Joey hissed, darting past him and into the hall. "We're gonna have guards breathin' down our necks!"

Jonathon and Pegasus emerged from the cell across the hall, and they followed Pegasus's lead as he ran toward where he'd seen Serenity. Bakura had to use all his will power not to charge in the opposite direction, to where Ryou'd been taken from them.

"There!" Pegasus yelled, screeching to a halt. In front of them the corridor opened into a large room, one that Bakura, Pegasus, and Jonathon recognised all too well. The ceiling soared into shadows overhead, and hiroglyphs were carved into the walls. In the center of the room stood a stone alter, where Serenity lay spralled out. It was the same chamber where Ryou's attempted sacrifice had taken place three months earlier.

"Serenity!" Joey ran up to the alter, gathering his unconcious sister into his arms. Thankfully, she was not chained to it, as Ryou had been. "Come on babe, speak to me!"

Something was nagging at the back of Bakura's mind, and he suddenly realized what it was. He, Joey, and Serenity were very softly glowing white. They were still being sheilded, even out of the detention block! Bakura's spirits rose. Ryou must still be alive and well to still be able to cast his psycic sheilds!

"Come on sis," Joey pleaded, his face and voice desperate. "Please Serenity, wake up..."

To his delight, his sister moaned softly and opened her eyes. "Joey? Onii-san?"

Joey grinned, his eyes filled with delighted tears. "Yeah, it's me sis. I told ya' I'd always be there for ya'."

"Where are we?"

There was a sharp exclamation in Egyption of what Joey thought had to be very naughty words from behind them. "In a lot of camel dung." Jonathon translated for his foul-mouthed brother.

Joey helped his sister off the alter, and then turned around, careful to keep her behind him. In the doorway, cutting off their only line of escape, stood a mass of Dark- and Shadow-type Duel Monsters, with Firas heading the frey. There had to be at least two-hundred demon-Duel Monsters there!

Bakura growled, low in his throat, as his eyes fell on Firas. "Where's Ryou?"

"It's none of your concern anymore." the Dark Magician said, dismissing Bakura with a wave of his hand.

Bakura hissed, his eyes narrowing dangerously as he pulled a card from his deck. "I'll show you whose concern it is! Doma, the Angel of Silence!"

Pegasus, Joey, and Serenity looked at each other and nodded, for once in perfect agreement.

"Red Eyes Black Dragon and Flame Swordsman!"

"Thousand Eyes Restrict!"

"Petite Angel!" (WSJ: I've never seen any of Serenity's cards, but I know she duels, and I'm guessing she has a "cutesie deck" similar to Tea's.)

"Soldiers," Firas yelled, though his eyes never moved from Bakura, "Attack!"

With a roar, the battle was joined.

Briar-Rose crouched next to a large crack in the chamber wall, about twenty feet up from the ground. She watched as the battle began, grinning in anticipation as she watched Firas and Bakura go at it. Ryou stood tense behind her.

His healing abilities had since kicked in, and he was feeling quite better, but extremely anxious. He could easily sence Bakura and Joey in the cavern below, as well as Serenity, and Pegasus and Jonathon, the two familiar silver and sky blue auras he'd felt earlier. He could hear the sounds of battle. The screech of Harpy Ladies, the roar of Joey's Red Eyes, the zap and crackle of Firas's electric magic.

Ryou was so distracted by shunting attacking monsters away from his friends via a simple command incerted into their simple brains, and helping Joey keep his monsters in this realm, since he was both rather inexperienced and rather ambicious (the current count of monsters he had summoned was up to six), that he didn't notice Briar-Rose drawing a pistol from under her robes.

Jonathon felt rather out of place in the melee, having neither Duel Monsters nor the powers to summon them. He stuck close to the wall, his eyes mostly on Bakura.

Off to the left, near the doors, Joey and Serenity were fighting back to back, the Swamp and Lava Battleguards, Flame Swordsman, and Petite Angel forming a protective ring around them while the Red Eyes Black, Thousand Dragon, and Time Wizard went on the offensive.

Pegasus was off to the right, in the back corner, his Thousand Eyes Restrict and several of his Toon creatures tearing furrows through the attacking monsters.

"By Ra!" Bakura growled, dancing past Jonathon and ducking under a swing from Firas's crackling staff, "There's enough Harpies here to saticfy a whole boat-load of Mai Valintines!"

Jonathon swept his eyes over the walls as his brother scrambled back after the Dark Magician. His green eyes widened as he found himself facing the mouth of something cold and hard. He'd never seen one before, but he'd heard enough about them to know he was facing a gun, protruding from a gash in the wall about fifteen or twenty feet up. Jonathon could dimly see the figure of the gunman behind the pistol.

It was not, however, pointed at him, but at his twin's head. Jonathon scrambled to reach his brother in time, and his last coherant thought was that this was going to hurt. Over all the noice of battle, Ryou's voice rang.

"Bakura! Watch out!"

That was an instant before the gun fired.

(WSJ: I was going to end it here, but I decided I'd be nice and keep going. ^_^ You still won't like where I really ended it though, I can gurentee.)

Everything seemed to freeze as the sound of a gunshot ripped throught he cavern. Bakura whirled around in time to stare into Briar-Rose's eyes as she smirked triumphantly at him.

"Thomas!"

Bakura's eyes widened as Jonathon slid in front of him, the bullet planting itself in the Egyptian's chest. Jonathon fell, and Bakura caught him, kneeling down with his brother cradled in his arms. To his surprise, there were tears running down his cheeks. "Jonathon?"

The ex-slave opened his eyes, looking up at his brother with pain filling every ounze of those green orbs. "Thomas," he wheezed in their native Hebrew, "Why did you always hate me so?"

"I-I do not know," Bakura answered truthfully. "You always seemed better then me, even when we were children. And the Ring warped my thinking further. I am sorry."

"Forgiven." Jonathon answered. "Maybe, in another world, things turned out differently."

"I hope so," was Bakura's answer as he gently lay Jonathon's still form on the floor. "Good-bye brother."

As soon as Ryou senced Briar-Rose's intentions, he screamed. "Bakura! Watch out!" and leaped at the preistess. Unfortunatly, he wasn't quick enough, and the shot of the gun came an instant before Ryou's manacled hands slammed into the back of her head.

She shreiked and fell forward, out of the wall and to the floor of the chamber. Ryou followed, levetating himself down and bathing the room in a feirce white light that caused the demon-monsters to flinch back, his still-chained hands hanging in front of him.

He stretched out his sences, and was thankful to find his friends all alive and well. Except...

He caught the anger coming off of Bakura in waves, felt that his other had snapped, and knew that Jonathon was dead.

()()()()()

WSJ: There, I told ya'! You're really going to hate me next chapter though!!!

Okay, two notes. I've started a mailing list for this fic, and any sequels that I might make after this. (I already have at least one in the works) Just send me your e-mail address at yamatos_fangirl@hotmail.com. I'll then send out an alert every time I update. I tend to do it quickly, and I know some of you are complaining that you keep missing two or three chapters, so maybe this'll help. When you do e-mail me, it'd help if the subject line was "Unseeing Hearts Mailing List".

2nd note. I've started another mailing list. *sweatdrops* Yes, seperate from the other one. This is for people like Brood, who're intrested in all my work, not just this trilogy. Basicly, I'll send out a notice whenever I post or update anything, including SoS. Again, just e-mail me with a subject line reading "WSJ Mailing List".

So basicly, you can go for the first one, and just get updates on SoS and it's sequels, or you can go for the deluxe package on all my works, which expand over several genres, including (but not limited to) YGO, Gundam Wing, Ranma 1/2, and Lord of the Rings. ^_^;; I hope I'm not making a big mistake here... *chuckles nervously*

Chapter 9: The death of Jonathon has caused Bakura to snap. He goes after Firas, and then makes a decission that could save the lives of Serenity, Joey, and especially Ryou, but at the cost of his own.

God bless minna-san!