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"Your hair," she says, reaching out and touching a lock of his hair. "It's changed."
What once was a mane of thick brown hair became a silky curtain of violet, the color just a shade darker of his armor.
"A side effect of my fusion," he replies, combing his hair with his fingers and looking at it speculatively. "My body is not as physical as it once was and can be rather... malleable, so to speak." He chuckles, letting go of his hair. "The color change was gradual, I looked ridiculous when it was half-violet, half-brown."
"I'll take your word for it," she says, smiling at that image. "I wish I could have seen it." She frowns. "I wish I could have seen more of you, all of us did."
"Isis..."
"Two years," she says, bringing up two of her fingers to emphasize her point. "Two years since any of us saw you, two years since-" she takes a breath. "-since he died. You just disappeared the moment the sealing was complete, we had no clue as to where you were and what you were doing."
"I-"
"We thought you were sealed with him," she presses on. "Be it out of guilt, or duty, or loyalty." She sighs. "We couldn't find any traces of you, so we thought..."
Silence.
"I wanted to," he admits quietly. "I wanted to go with him, I wanted to share his suffering, even just a bit." He looks away. "He didn't let me."
"He forbade you to do it?"
He recalls the red-violet eyes that looked up at him, begging and pleading him not to. Remembers that soft voice asking him to live a life beyond duty, asking him to keep this promise. Remembers how small and vulnerable he looked without his usual regal garb, how he looked so scared for him. "He didn't have to."
"Ah."
He looks around, curious at the tablets surrounding the temple he was in. "This isn't his temple." The spirits carved on the tablets were different, they weren't the spirits his prince had used.
"No, it's Set's," she says. "Or Mana's, or Bakura's, it depends on which of them claims ownership that day." She chuckles. "It drives many of the priests and apprentices crazy, trying to make sense of the items that enter and leave this place. This is both their personal storage room and training ground."
"I suspect there's a story to that."
"You missed two years worth of it," she says. "Where were you, Mahad? All of us tried to summon you but it didn't work."
"I only serve one master and the nature of that oath is absolute," he says. "I can't be summoned unless he's here."
"Then how are you-?" She gestures at all of him. "You can't have summoned yourself here, that's not how it works."
Mahad hesitates, he looks away and grips his staff. "He left all of you parts of his possessions, didn't he? He had a list of instructions on what to do with them when he died, on who had the right to keep them, on the conditions to be held when using them."
"He did, it was a little unsettling how prepared he was," she says. "But I suppose as king, he had to plan for any worst-case scenario."
"Right, as-... as king," Mahad repeats weakly. "He left several items for me too, some of them were," he closes his eyes. "I needed time to take all of that in."
"For two years?"
"I needed time for myself as well," he says softly, and Isis wants to snap at him again, but then she remembers the seal. She remembers that he had designed the seal their king has used. Did her friend believe he was responsible for their king's death? Did he blame himself for not being strong enough to not resort with the sealing? Did he regret creating it? "He left me something that could help me keep in contact with this world, even for a brief period of time." He reaches behind his back, looking for something.
She wonders where he keeps anything in his outfit, as there doesn't seem to be any places for pockets. He didn't have a bag with him either, and his armor didn't seem like it had any compartments. Perhaps it was a magician thing.
"This one," he shows her a blood red stone with silver etchings. "The pin for his cape."
"It's a graduation badge, not a pin," one she personally gave him. It was proof that he had mastered the basics of magic, be it because of his years of observing Mahad or because he loved reading books about magic, she doesn't know. Their king has always had an interest in magic, a child-like wonder that never faded away. "What does this have to do with you being here?"
"He stored his heka in it," he explains. "Every day, he stored a large portion of it inside." He touches the silver emblem on it. "He never used it, it was for-"
"Emergencies," she finishes. "For performing spells that demand a high amount of energy, for amplifying his strength, for having more stamina during battle," she shakes her head. "I didn't know his stories had truth in it."
"I've come to learn that all the stories he knew, fantastical as they were, have a possibility of truth in it," he says wryly, clasping the stone tightly. "He told you stories?"
"Of healers," and other things, things he had said when he was a child and she was a student who didn't know she was talking to the prince. "Healers with strange names and stranger powers," she tilts her head. "In his stories, Tsunade and her apprentice, Sakura, used a seal to store large amounts of energy in a point of their foreheads."
"Yin Seal," he says. "That's what he called it," he looks at the stone. "I manipulate the heka inside it to simulate himself summoning me, and I can stay here as long as the pin has his heka."
She raises an eyebrow. "You tricked your own body into thinking you're being summoned?"
He shrugs.
"By using a graduation pi-badge?"
He shrugs again, his pauldrons make him look ridiculous.
She raises her arm, puts it down, raises it, and puts it down. She raises it one last time and points at him firmly. "How do people believe you're the sensible and logical one?"
"I stand beside Set and let him be his dramatic self."
"Set wasn't with you when you were a child."
"I had my father for that period."
He did, by the gods she remembered the loud and boisterous eccentricity that was Mahu. "He's still alive, if you were wondering," she says. "He misses you."
Mahad's fingers twitch, the stone gleams against the artificial light coming from the tantere lamps. He wonders who's in charge of maintaining them, it could be Mana. It would explain the pink glow in the bulbs.
"It's been two years," she murmurs, reaching out and holding his wrist gently. "Perhaps now is the time to catch up on what you've missed?"
"Perhaps," he mumbles.
"You've gotten paler too," she tuts, dragging him. "How long have you been cooped up in who-knows-where?"
"Isis, I'm sure my lack of sunlight wouldn't drastically lighten my skin like this."
"But you admit you are lacking sunlight."
Silence, another twitch in his fingers.
"Honestly," she sighs. "I'm afraid to ask if you've been eating or sleeping well, I feel like I know the answer," she shakes her head. "Are you eager in losing your second life as well?"
He wasn't, he promised he wouldn't. He had to live. His two years in that other world had helped, had given time to digest what his prince's journals was telling him, had given time to establish some kind of life in the world of... spirits? Ka? Duel Monsters?
He doesn't want to think of the journals again.
"You are going out and you are going to socialize and I will forcefeed you the healthiest onions I can find, healer's orders."
He missed them, all of them.
Mahad,
I've left this for you so that you can still visit them without needing me, I hope it's enough.
This was how Kuriboh and his siblings popped out from time to time without my knowledge.
It took me a while to figure out why I felt tired and sleepy at random times.
Adorable little furry leeches.
I'm unsure how they did it, but I know you'll figure it out.
- A