Gloom of Last Will

Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters series.

Summary:

The birth of Dark Marik.

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Sterilized over candle's flame, the knife is hot at first cut, the Pharaoh's epitaph scraped by the old Ishtar along his scared pedigree's back. Marik screams through the roped rag in his mouth, cursing the destiny the man he called Father demanded of him.

Nonaggression breeds hatred and anger. They twist and warp inside, a sphere of embryonic malevolence carved out of the child's betrayed identity.

For a halting gasp, Marik believes he has excess limbs. The nausea in his gut is a diseased boil ready to pop.

He doesn't understand it. Doesn't want it. But he can't keep living. The pain is too much.

Was it really the will of the Pharaoh that his clan sequester themselves away from the light of the sun, underground, never to feel its warmth? Were there no new rulers on the surface? Kings whose rites didn't promise skullcap agony?

Help me! Help me! Hell-p! he pleads. His words taste of the grave, Hieratic scrawl of some blind poet sung disastrously into deformed ears.

Spite drills deep. Thornier than the whip Father used when they misbehaved. Piercing like a bowgun bolt and more fatal a poison. Swallowtail edge.

The weight of duty, a dark pendant. A zombie's jewel. Holding arms and legs so the thought of freedom remained hidden beyond. Gods, he'd do anything to be relieved this shocking vise. These plasma-injecting pincers. These paralyzing shackles. Offer his left arm, just to make it stop.

Someone throw him a lifeline.

Execute me, please…

Why did the Pharaoh's memory leech at the Tomb Keepers generation after generation? Marik was beginning to regard him as a devil, not a legend worth guarding.

Blood, lava down his shoulder blades. Father reviving the slimy gashes, repetitious once-arounds on the torture wheel.

Attrition.

The shadow fiend freed.

Remnants of the masked beast, now aware, lick his lips toward the Millennium Rod.

He'd go on to control mind slaves, yet all it would take was Rishid's fall, and he'd be slave to the mind existing beneath his rage.

Ra have mercy if that ever happened.