This chapter is an important one. It not only brings us right up to the doorstep of our big climax, which begins next chapter, but it also re-contextualizes the scene earlier in El's memories, filling in the blanks. It also gives us some character development for James, explaining why he seems so cold when interacting with people in dangerous situations, and setting him on the path toward growing past that habit.
With the posting of this chapter, there are only three more left. That means another two to three weeks of writing Reaper, of writing this story with these characters. I'm going to miss it, but in a way, I'm relieved. This story is heavier than my others, obviously, and, not to sound immodest, the ending of this one comes together really well. I'm really looking forward to sharing it.
The Search
Lying there, unconscious, Max had a nightmare. He often had nightmares about his past, before he had learned to stand up for himself, when he was no more than a slave to a man bent on regaining his former strength so that he could make the entire world suffer, but this dream was different than most. Rather than a compilation of feelings and impressions as the common nightmare might be, this one was a specific memory, one that Max hadn’t thought about in years.
Max was standing in the shadow of a large structure, in the middle of an Egyptian desert. The structure, which was made of sandstone blocks, wasn’t on any maps, and most of it had only recently been unearthed by some of those who were in the employ of Max’s then master, Yami, who were not useful to him in other areas.
“I don’t understand why you brought me here,” Max said, seemingly to no one, as there were apparently no other people with him. In face, an onlooker might wonder if it had even been Max who spoke, or a voice on the wind, as Max’s face was cast in shadow under the hood of his oversized hooded shirt, the same one that had just been destroyed the day before in the waking world, and since he stood perfectly still with his hands tucked into the pouch of his hoodie, giving no indication that he’s spoken at all.
Then, out of the deepest of the shadows at the base of the side of the structure farthest from the setting afternoon sun, a voice spoke out, replying to Max’s words, “I wanted to show you something.”
The voice was cold and calm, but with a hint of a maniacal tone shining through despite the efforts of the speaker. It was deep, and so unpleasant that even Max, who had heard this voice dozens of times before, felt a chill run down his spine.
“And that would be what?” Max asked.
“Well,” the voice replied, “simply put, you are my right hand. My enforcer. Some day soon, I may entrust you to act as my proxy in places like this, and you must understand them. This ruin houses a Shadow Charm, one with magic enough to enhance my powers if it is added to my followers’ ranks. I want you to go in and retrieve it.”
“Why?” Max inquired, flinching at his own words, worrying that his inquisitive attitude might try the speaker’s patience.
“There may be traps,” Yami replied, “kept in working order by magic. I want you to know how to disarm them so that you will be able to supervise similar expeditions going forward.”
“And if I die?”
Yami didn’t even bother hiding it anymore, laughing maniacally outright, “Then I’ll reach into the endless grab bag of other Duelists under my control and pick one to replace you. I just won’t enjoy spending time with them as much.”
Max scowled. He knew Yami enjoyed forcing him to do his bidding through the influence of fear alone, but he still didn’t like hearing the wicked creature vocalize the thought. However, as these thoughts entered his mind, so did another, and he asked, “Wait, can’t you just go anywhere that isn't directly lit whenever you want? And nothing can harm you physically, right? Why not go in yourself and just walk past the traps?”
Yami made a sound like a low growl, “The magic that let’s me appear within unlit places in a sort of travel spell. I am not really there with you in your world, I am only bound to it. To interact with your world, I have to travel my soul across dimensions. Places like this were sometimes blessed by priests to prevent travel spells from allowing outsiders easy access, giving the traps a chance to do their work. This is one such place. Thus I must rely on useless mortals such as yourself. Now stop asking stupid questions and go, before I rend your soul and feed on your life force.”
Max swallowed his nerves, and stepped forward rigidly into the structure before him, worried that he would never come out. He crossed the threshold of the open entryway, into complete darkness.
Max faded slowly back into consciousness. It took him a few moments to realize where he was, helped along by the sight of El kneeling over him. When his eyes opened, she smiled, and Max smiled, too. “You lost your helmet again,” he said, and he let her help him sit up. James was there, too, standing a ways back, but looking on Max with concern.
“I guess It’s becoming a bad habit,” El replied, breathing a sigh of relief. “You okay?”
“No,” Max answered. “Apparently casting that healing spell earlier, and then casting a teleportation spell for the first time within the same twenty-four hours wasn’t such a good idea. My entire body feel weak, and I feel kind of sick and clammy.”
“Rest for a few minutes,” El told him, “Detective James and I can scout around.”
Max suddenly tensed up. He couldn’t remember the details of his dream, but he did remember that Yami had been in it, so he already wasn’t sure if his queesiness was from overtaxing himself, or from the experience of the nightmare. Then the mention of El going off without him brought the memory of Thompson’s words to the forefront of his mind.
“No,” he said, struggling not to sound desperate. “No, just help me up, and I’ll come with you.”
He pushed himself up a bit, approaching a standing position, and his arms immediately collapsed out from under him. He caught himself, but, he was breathing more heavily than he would have liked.
“It’s okay,” El told him. She reached into her pack and pulled out a small pistol with an unusually wide barrel. “I have this. I’ve never had to use it, but it’ll work to alert you once we find anything.”
“Is that a flare gun?” James asked, something like impressed and perplexed all at one. “You’re lucky that they didn’t see that at the airport in Westchester, or the one in Munich. Or the one here, for that matter.”
He paused, “Wait, why didn’t they run us through security in Munich, anyway?”
Max and El ignored him, Max replying to El’s suggestion directly instead, “No, we need to stick together. This guy is too tough for any one of us.” He glanced at James, knowing what El would argue next, “He’s probably even too tough for most combinations of any two of us.”
“He’s right,” James told her. “I might have gotten through Munich with my gun...somehow, but it won’t do us much good. I can shoot well enough when I have time to concentrate, but in a heated battle, I don’t know what good I’ll be except to provide a distraction.”
“It’s okay,” El told them both, but mostly speaking to Max, “If we find anything, I’ll send up a flare. You can be there is seconds with your powers. We don’t have time to wait for you to recover and then search. This way we can find wherever it is that we have to find and you can recover all at once.”
Max wanted to argue, but when he tried to push himself up again, he didn’t make any more progress than he had previously. So instead he spoke in a low voice to El, “You have to promise me that you’ll be careful. I said before that this guy has no fear in him. I meant that literally, El. I asked him what his fears were, and he answered me honestly that he fears nothing. A man like that...I’ve never met someone that dangerous before.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised. She leaned in and kissed him softly before she pulled back and spoke again, “After all, I can’t be much more careful. I brought you here with me.”
Max smiled up at her, “Excuse me, If I recall correctly, I was the one who brought you here.”
“Details,” she told him, making a big show of brushing his words aside. She stood up, standing next to James. “Get better,” she said. “I don’t plan on taking too long finding where this guy is hiding.”
She walked off toward the ruins, James following after her uncertainly, leaving Max there to fall onto his back on the warm sand, breathing carefully, willing his strength back with each inhale of breath, waiting for that red flash in the sky that would mean that he had to get going again, better or not, trusting that the woman he loved would do the right thing.
El and James walked together down amidst the protruding ruins. James looked around inquisitively, taking everything in and trying to create a map of the site in his head. El, however, was taking a different approach. She walked amongst the dilapidated old stones almost reverently. At one point she stopped and ran her fingers along a particularly long chest-high wall, stopping when she came to a scorch mark.
“Even this long after what happened,” El said simply, “you can still see the scars of that day.”
James looked at her as if he was surprised that she’d spoken. He took a second to register her words and then said, “Oh, right. It must be hard for you to be back here. Do you-do you remember anything from before that night?”
El looked around, “Yeah, a little, especially now that I’m back here. The actual dig site was further ahead. I didn’t go down there very often. This is where the tents were, up here on this hill almost right where we’re standing. Most of them, anyway.”
She frowned, “Now that I think about it, I remember that my dad moved our tent a lot closer to the dig site about a month before the fire.”
“Those memories must be difficult,” James said, as if he were realizing it for the first time, and almost off-hand, like he didn’t expect to find the response very interesting. It struck El that James didn’t seem to understand people very well, and that he didn’t really want to. Still, it was nice to have someone to talk to, be work through her feelings with.
“All of this is hard, in a way,” she said, “but I don’t really remember all that much. And what I do remember, I don’t really want to, so I just kind of ignore it.”
“Even your parents?” James asked as he stepped up onto a pile of stones and looked out in the direction of the dig site, and El flinched at how casually he had brought them up.
“I have other memories of my parents,” El replied, “ones that don’t involve this place. I’d rather remember those. The truth is, my parents just got more and more distant the longer that the dig went on.”
Suddenly, she had a realization, “I guess now I know why. They discovered the first artifact, and they had to work extra hard to hide the evidence of the artifacts, and still make it look like they were working the dig. They weren’t really neglecting me, they were just trying to do the right thing.”
She hung her head, “And it got them killed.”
“Uh,” James said, unsure what to say.
“It’s okay,” El told him, “you don’t have to say anything. I’m just working through a few things. In fact, I think I just worked something out that might help us. Here’s a question for you, detective: why would my dad up and relocate his entire living space several dozen yards from the rest of the researchers at right about the same time he discovered a dangerous artifact, and potentially a location tied to a dangerous ritual?”
She felt her sadness melt away, replaced by the same almost overzealous excitement that she felt whenever she got closer to finding the mystery man. She stepped up next to James and looked in the direction of what had been her home during the latter part of her time here. As she did, James put the pieces together, “Maybe because he found the entrance to the ritual chamber, and he wanted to make sure that no one else did.”
El nodded, “It’s no guarantee, but it’s worth a shot.”
With the balance and the agility of a practiced martial artist, El made her way quickly down the outcropping of stones toward the dig site, almost recklessly charging ahead.
“Hey wait up,” said James as he tried to follow, and his feet nearly slid out from under him. He had to reach down and grab the edge of the pile of stones at keep himself up, used his precarious grip to lower himself down, and jogged after El’s receding form.
The two of them surged forward. They wove between bits of stone protruding from the sand, pieces of some structure ruined millennia ago, it’s name and purpose lost to time. This was exactly the kind of thing that drew James’ attention, that drove him to learn. He lived for mysteries. However, as he passed the protruding remains of whatever had been here so long ago, it struck him that if El’s parents hadn’t discovered the secret of this place, they and a couple dozen others would still be alive. James had always been someone who believed that curiosity was a responsibility of mankind, but now he wondered if that responsibility didn’t have to find a balance, if sometimes pursuit of that responsibility weren’t itself irresponsible. Either way, as they drew closer to their destination, he realized that he had a lot to think about once this was all over.
“This is it,” El told James, coming to a stop. She stood there, looking out over a tight ring of stone walls protruding from the dunes, leaving an opening inside them that was about thirty-five yards wide. El walked forward slowly, her hands shaking. She reached the center of the open area, and turned, looking all around her.
“They died here,” she said, as if she was realizing it for the first time. Memories of the night that they died rushed back to her. Scream of the other researchers outside as the heat of the flames that had spread to their tent from the others several yards away permeated El’s hiding place. Her father standing up to the mystery man, drawing his attention away from her, even though he hadn’t known at the time that she was there. The sight of her parents being torn apart by the man’s blades, now accompanied by the fresh memory of Arlen Cord at her side, keeping her quiet in order to keep her safe.
El replayed the scene in her head. It was all fresh, thanks to her experience with Max only a few days ago. The entry flap opening and her parents walking in, the man with them. She didn’t remember them any more clearly now than she had then, but their words made more sense now in the context of what she had learned since. She remembered the man speaking in his deep, demonic voice.
“Where are they?” he had demanded. “You said that the documents were here. Show me.”
“How foolish can you be?” El’s father replied back, his voice clear, confident, and reassuring. “I had them with me. I always did. When I saw the fires, when I realized what you were planning to do, I tossed them into the flames. The documents are gone.”
“You must have made duplicates to send back to the university,” the figure in the doorway had said. “Tell me how to find them and you might make it out of here alive.”
"We’ll never do what you ask,” El’s mother had replied, as defiant as her husband, “Especially not after seeing the potential of the artifacts.”
She remembered that the smoke had begun to pour in from beneath the lower edges of the tent about then, partially obscuring El’s view of her parents as they were flayed and cut to pieces while the man laughed, but not enough that the image, and the sound of his laughter, hadn’t been burned forever into her memory. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She restrained herself from that, however, but was unable to prevent her knees bid buckling, and she fell down onto them, breathing hard.
James surged forward and knelt down at El’s side. “Are you okay?” he asked her. He placed his hand on her arm to help her to stop shaking, and after a minute or two, she nodded, and let James help her back to her feet. She pushed him away, gently, and stood on her own, looking around again and steeling herself up.
“It’s here,” she said, “I’m sure it is. It has to be. Spread out and look for anything that could be an opening.”
“R-right,” James replied, and the two of them veered off in different directions. They didn’t coordinate their search. They didn’t need to, just like they did need to remind each other just how dangerous their situation already was, or how much more dangerous it would soon become.
“I guess It’s becoming a bad habit,” El replied, breathing a sigh of relief. “You okay?”
“No,” Max answered. “Apparently casting that healing spell earlier, and then casting a teleportation spell for the first time within the same twenty-four hours wasn’t such a good idea. My entire body feel weak, and I feel kind of sick and clammy.”
“Rest for a few minutes,” El told him, “Detective James and I can scout around.”
Max suddenly tensed up. He couldn’t remember the details of his dream, but he did remember that Yami had been in it, so he already wasn’t sure if his queesiness was from overtaxing himself, or from the experience of the nightmare. Then the mention of El going off without him brought the memory of Thompson’s words to the forefront of his mind.
“No,” he said, struggling not to sound desperate. “No, just help me up, and I’ll come with you.”
He pushed himself up a bit, approaching a standing position, and his arms immediately collapsed out from under him. He caught himself, but, he was breathing more heavily than he would have liked.
“It’s okay,” El told him. She reached into her pack and pulled out a small pistol with an unusually wide barrel. “I have this. I’ve never had to use it, but it’ll work to alert you once we find anything.”
“Is that a flare gun?” James asked, something like impressed and perplexed all at one. “You’re lucky that they didn’t see that at the airport in Westchester, or the one in Munich. Or the one here, for that matter.”
He paused, “Wait, why didn’t they run us through security in Munich, anyway?”
Max and El ignored him, Max replying to El’s suggestion directly instead, “No, we need to stick together. This guy is too tough for any one of us.” He glanced at James, knowing what El would argue next, “He’s probably even too tough for most combinations of any two of us.”
“He’s right,” James told her. “I might have gotten through Munich with my gun...somehow, but it won’t do us much good. I can shoot well enough when I have time to concentrate, but in a heated battle, I don’t know what good I’ll be except to provide a distraction.”
“It’s okay,” El told them both, but mostly speaking to Max, “If we find anything, I’ll send up a flare. You can be there is seconds with your powers. We don’t have time to wait for you to recover and then search. This way we can find wherever it is that we have to find and you can recover all at once.”
Max wanted to argue, but when he tried to push himself up again, he didn’t make any more progress than he had previously. So instead he spoke in a low voice to El, “You have to promise me that you’ll be careful. I said before that this guy has no fear in him. I meant that literally, El. I asked him what his fears were, and he answered me honestly that he fears nothing. A man like that...I’ve never met someone that dangerous before.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised. She leaned in and kissed him softly before she pulled back and spoke again, “After all, I can’t be much more careful. I brought you here with me.”
Max smiled up at her, “Excuse me, If I recall correctly, I was the one who brought you here.”
“Details,” she told him, making a big show of brushing his words aside. She stood up, standing next to James. “Get better,” she said. “I don’t plan on taking too long finding where this guy is hiding.”
She walked off toward the ruins, James following after her uncertainly, leaving Max there to fall onto his back on the warm sand, breathing carefully, willing his strength back with each inhale of breath, waiting for that red flash in the sky that would mean that he had to get going again, better or not, trusting that the woman he loved would do the right thing.
El and James walked together down amidst the protruding ruins. James looked around inquisitively, taking everything in and trying to create a map of the site in his head. El, however, was taking a different approach. She walked amongst the dilapidated old stones almost reverently. At one point she stopped and ran her fingers along a particularly long chest-high wall, stopping when she came to a scorch mark.
“Even this long after what happened,” El said simply, “you can still see the scars of that day.”
James looked at her as if he was surprised that she’d spoken. He took a second to register her words and then said, “Oh, right. It must be hard for you to be back here. Do you-do you remember anything from before that night?”
El looked around, “Yeah, a little, especially now that I’m back here. The actual dig site was further ahead. I didn’t go down there very often. This is where the tents were, up here on this hill almost right where we’re standing. Most of them, anyway.”
She frowned, “Now that I think about it, I remember that my dad moved our tent a lot closer to the dig site about a month before the fire.”
“Those memories must be difficult,” James said, as if he were realizing it for the first time, and almost off-hand, like he didn’t expect to find the response very interesting. It struck El that James didn’t seem to understand people very well, and that he didn’t really want to. Still, it was nice to have someone to talk to, be work through her feelings with.
“All of this is hard, in a way,” she said, “but I don’t really remember all that much. And what I do remember, I don’t really want to, so I just kind of ignore it.”
“Even your parents?” James asked as he stepped up onto a pile of stones and looked out in the direction of the dig site, and El flinched at how casually he had brought them up.
“I have other memories of my parents,” El replied, “ones that don’t involve this place. I’d rather remember those. The truth is, my parents just got more and more distant the longer that the dig went on.”
Suddenly, she had a realization, “I guess now I know why. They discovered the first artifact, and they had to work extra hard to hide the evidence of the artifacts, and still make it look like they were working the dig. They weren’t really neglecting me, they were just trying to do the right thing.”
She hung her head, “And it got them killed.”
“Uh,” James said, unsure what to say.
“It’s okay,” El told him, “you don’t have to say anything. I’m just working through a few things. In fact, I think I just worked something out that might help us. Here’s a question for you, detective: why would my dad up and relocate his entire living space several dozen yards from the rest of the researchers at right about the same time he discovered a dangerous artifact, and potentially a location tied to a dangerous ritual?”
She felt her sadness melt away, replaced by the same almost overzealous excitement that she felt whenever she got closer to finding the mystery man. She stepped up next to James and looked in the direction of what had been her home during the latter part of her time here. As she did, James put the pieces together, “Maybe because he found the entrance to the ritual chamber, and he wanted to make sure that no one else did.”
El nodded, “It’s no guarantee, but it’s worth a shot.”
With the balance and the agility of a practiced martial artist, El made her way quickly down the outcropping of stones toward the dig site, almost recklessly charging ahead.
“Hey wait up,” said James as he tried to follow, and his feet nearly slid out from under him. He had to reach down and grab the edge of the pile of stones at keep himself up, used his precarious grip to lower himself down, and jogged after El’s receding form.
The two of them surged forward. They wove between bits of stone protruding from the sand, pieces of some structure ruined millennia ago, it’s name and purpose lost to time. This was exactly the kind of thing that drew James’ attention, that drove him to learn. He lived for mysteries. However, as he passed the protruding remains of whatever had been here so long ago, it struck him that if El’s parents hadn’t discovered the secret of this place, they and a couple dozen others would still be alive. James had always been someone who believed that curiosity was a responsibility of mankind, but now he wondered if that responsibility didn’t have to find a balance, if sometimes pursuit of that responsibility weren’t itself irresponsible. Either way, as they drew closer to their destination, he realized that he had a lot to think about once this was all over.
“This is it,” El told James, coming to a stop. She stood there, looking out over a tight ring of stone walls protruding from the dunes, leaving an opening inside them that was about thirty-five yards wide. El walked forward slowly, her hands shaking. She reached the center of the open area, and turned, looking all around her.
“They died here,” she said, as if she was realizing it for the first time. Memories of the night that they died rushed back to her. Scream of the other researchers outside as the heat of the flames that had spread to their tent from the others several yards away permeated El’s hiding place. Her father standing up to the mystery man, drawing his attention away from her, even though he hadn’t known at the time that she was there. The sight of her parents being torn apart by the man’s blades, now accompanied by the fresh memory of Arlen Cord at her side, keeping her quiet in order to keep her safe.
El replayed the scene in her head. It was all fresh, thanks to her experience with Max only a few days ago. The entry flap opening and her parents walking in, the man with them. She didn’t remember them any more clearly now than she had then, but their words made more sense now in the context of what she had learned since. She remembered the man speaking in his deep, demonic voice.
“Where are they?” he had demanded. “You said that the documents were here. Show me.”
“How foolish can you be?” El’s father replied back, his voice clear, confident, and reassuring. “I had them with me. I always did. When I saw the fires, when I realized what you were planning to do, I tossed them into the flames. The documents are gone.”
“You must have made duplicates to send back to the university,” the figure in the doorway had said. “Tell me how to find them and you might make it out of here alive.”
"We’ll never do what you ask,” El’s mother had replied, as defiant as her husband, “Especially not after seeing the potential of the artifacts.”
She remembered that the smoke had begun to pour in from beneath the lower edges of the tent about then, partially obscuring El’s view of her parents as they were flayed and cut to pieces while the man laughed, but not enough that the image, and the sound of his laughter, hadn’t been burned forever into her memory. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She restrained herself from that, however, but was unable to prevent her knees bid buckling, and she fell down onto them, breathing hard.
James surged forward and knelt down at El’s side. “Are you okay?” he asked her. He placed his hand on her arm to help her to stop shaking, and after a minute or two, she nodded, and let James help her back to her feet. She pushed him away, gently, and stood on her own, looking around again and steeling herself up.
“It’s here,” she said, “I’m sure it is. It has to be. Spread out and look for anything that could be an opening.”
“R-right,” James replied, and the two of them veered off in different directions. They didn’t coordinate their search. They didn’t need to, just like they did need to remind each other just how dangerous their situation already was, or how much more dangerous it would soon become.
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