‘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, ‘Weneed 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 finallygotten 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...”
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