A/N: Personal problems are still ongoing folks. Sorry about this. First of all I have the mother of all arguments with my parents, then school starts to get more hectic (it is the worst) and now it appears two family members have cancer. Hard, stressful times... Hopefully though I shall battle on writing, even with time being short and all. Hey, Chapter 10 is up! A couple of days ago I'd have never thought this fic would make double figures. So that's good I guess :)

Last chapter we lost the Bartletts to the Worm, and Lynch decided to sacrifice himself to save the others from the Death Worm's wrath (selfless mercenary that he is). So now Luca, Aaron and Ronnie must venture into the Relic Castle alone, in search of a god who may not be there, and against some horrifically dark secrets of the Castle... I hope you enjoy! On with the show...

Darkness. A musty, dank shroud that spread like thick black treacle throughout almost everything, the stench of ages and decay hanging in the air. The inky black shadows had spread everywhere, seeming to have no end in an ancient world forgotten by time. They had claimed everything. The darkness had left nothing behind.

To Aaron, it was hell. Never mind the fact that it was his idea to flee into the forbidding depths of the Relic Castle in order to escape from the Death Worm, never mind that it was his idea to open up a secret passageway and follow an unexplored tunnel into the bowels of a ruin. He was acutely claustrophobic, and as the darkness surrounded him, hemming him in and trapping him in the tunnel, his breathing became ragged, his heart racing. Beads of sweat dripped from his brow despite the shade of the stairway, despite the fact that it was much cooler than the inferno Desert outside, despite the light breeze that blew from somewhere within the ancient darkness.

Walking through these dark tunnels was proving daunting and terrifying for all concerned though, not just Aaron. Ronnie's hand clasped Aaron's tightly as Luca took the lead, ushering the two forward even though their destination was still unknown. With their other hands, the couple felt along the sandstone walls made bone-dry by centuries of being untouched by anything, yet they did so apprehensively, worried that something on those dark walls would suddenly move, or worse fight back. But in spite of this all there was one way in which their fears were put to bed a little; the Darmanitan, awoken to help them fight off the Worm, seemed to know a way through the labyrinth, and by following the lightly-glowing flames of their eyebrows the humans could see just a little into the otherwise-impenetrable darkness, the flickering facial features throwing odd moving shadows, casting eldritch images on the walls...

The wall disappeared at Aaron's fingertips, and he sighed with relief, breathing a little more of that cold, dusty air in. It was a bonus for him that there was more space, more room to move in, and as all the Darmanitan grouped together around the humans a fuzzy glow illuminated a lot of the walls for him to see. In particular the central pillar... "Wow..."

"Oh my God..." Luca breathed, echoing his awed sentiment. "That is amazing..."

What had caught their eye was situated at something akin to a crossroads, forbiddingly-shadowy tunnels branching out at all angles from a central point at which a large stone pillar was set into the ground. The square sides of this pillar had been used as an art form, images engraved delicately into the sandstone, depicting an ancient scene not seen in millennia. Yet the message of the picture was clear...

"The Worm..." Ronnie breathed, tracing a finger along lines that unmistakably carved out the shape of a giant mutant Scolipede, rearing high above the ground. "It is so old... These carvings must be over two thousand years old!"

"Two millennia of killing," Luca commented, her gaze moving along the mural. "All those little soldiers, all those people, dead at the hands of a monster. And then..." Her finger tapped against the edge, the last part of the pillar. "The flames..."

One of the Darmanitan pressed a paw forlornly against the cold stone, little embers burning brightly and lighting up the carved lines that unmistakably made up a great fire, the stylised humans around it bowing as if in worship. "Dar..."

"It's their god," Luca translated. "The deity of the Castle, the Pokemon who battled the Death Worm and defeated it."

"I guess the fire would make it Reshiram, if the legendary here is one of the Dragons of Unova," Aaron mused, yet he secretly wondered about this; after all, it was common knowledge that Reshiram was in the possession of Hilbert, the Trainer who took down Team Plasma. Would their trek across the Desert to find a Pokemon strong enough to defeat the Worm be in vain?

One of the Darmanitan coughed, having decided on something, and knuckled its way around the pillar in the middle, having decided which of the many paths. "Tan i man."

"I guess we go that way then," Aaron muttered, as he rose to her feet, but as he did so he noticed that Luca was consoling Minty the Riolu, who was shivering on her shoulder. "What's up Luca?"

"He's not cold," the fighter girl responded, touching his head. "He must be reacting to the Aura of this place..."

"But why?" Ronnie asked, as they set off following the Darmanitan. "What's wrong with this place? It seems pretty safe, if deserted..."

Luca nodded. "True. But I can feel it too. There's something buried deep within the Aura of this place, something not quiet right, and I think the Darmanitan don't know."

As they walked forward, one of the Darmanitan stooped to the floor to pick up something lying innocuously on the ground, and handed it to Ronnie. "Dar tan!"

"What is it?" she asked, turning the stick-like object over in her hands, but when she held it upright again the Darmanitan summoned a little ember that ignited the top of the stick into a bright, flickering flame. "Ah... It's a sort of primitive torch... Let's see what we can OH MY GOD!"

Aaron's head whipped round as Ronnie yelled out in panic, the torch falling to the floor and nearly extinguishing itself on the sand. "What?! What's up?!" He grabbed the torch from the floor and raised it high, to look at what Ronnie had seen, and his heart skipped a beat. "Oh my God..."

The light from the torch, burning brighter even than the eyebrows of the escort Darmanitan, had given light to the entire corridor, and for the first time the walls in which they had walked down were illuminated. Unfortunately. Rather than sandstone relic carvings, walls of creepy black obsidian had emerged from the gloom, but it was what was in the lumps of translucent black gemstone that unnerved people the most...

Mummies. Hundreds of them. The walls of the Castle were lined with the dead, in various stages of decay, sealed inside the shadowy gemstone as a final tomb. Some had full wrappings, surrounded by ancient goods and weaponry that shone with an ethereal light, whereas others hung suspended in a rotten state, flesh hanging loosely from the bones with rags that were supposed to envelope them and protect their dead bodies. The one in particular that Ronnie had been spooked by had been reduced by some unseen force to a simple skeleton, and a crack in its inky obsidian casing had resulted in air and time being able to work their devastating force on the corpse; what little flesh remained had shrivelled into a dark brown husk, and one eyeball somehow remained, sunken in the socket, glazed over in a defiant timeless glare.

"My God..." Luca said, twitching a little, and Aaron noticed how she attempted to collect Aura around her fingertips; what normally glowed blue was a sinister shade of black. "What happened to this place? These people... Why are they here?" She took a step back in disgust...

*click*

There was a rumble somewhere in the distance back down the dark corridor, and a tremor thudded its way through the ground, the group somehow clinging on to whatever they could find and staying upright. As the flame flickered and the world shook, the end of the tunnel they'd just come through seemed to move, a stone slab descending from somewhere within the ceiling to block off the tunnel, shutting the humans and Pokemon in. And then, as the torch flickered off, there was darkness...

Aaron pulled himself upright as one of the Darmanitan relit the torch. "Luca Aree what have you done?" he murmured.

In the semi-gloom, Luca shook herself. "I have no idea..." There was another rumbling, louder this time. "What was that?"

Aaron lifted the torch and peered down the end of the tunnel, to see something drop from the ceiling in front of the blockade and start to roll ominously towards them. "What the... It's a trap! SPIKE BALL! RUN!"

With a panicked yell, the party started to run downhill down the tunnel as fast as possible, to get as far away as possible from the oncoming terror. What Luca had released was almost a cliché in an ancient treasure-filled ruin, an immense and heavy stone ball from which sharp metal spikes jutted out at every angle. But there was no time to think about this; it was real, and stopping to speculate would mean death, being horribly mashed against the wall or floor by an unstoppable juggernaut that ricocheted off obsidian walls and just kept coming.

Something from the shadows whipped out at Aaron's leg and he stumbled a little, his head instinctively turning to try and see what had done it, but Ronnie was already there to catch him and stop him from falling, pulling him along before he could be flattened. Staggering slightly at the breakneck pace, he kept going regardless, the fear of the trap that Luca had unleashed propelling him onwards as the four Darmanitan knuckled their way ahead and along the passageway. Yet the ball was gaining momentum, and getting ever closer to him, practically snapping at his heels. They needed a way to escape fast...

There! Light, at the end of the tunnel, natural light streaming into a vast and open room from high windows. In other words, safety! With a yell, Aaron leapt down a ledge into the room, before Ronnie pulled him to one side as the viciously-spinning blades of the ball scythed past, narrowly missing him and taking a chunk out of the wall he was hiding behind. As it powered on, the ball clipped the hind leg of the slowest Darmanitan, but more importantly it missed everyone, ploughing into the far wall and embedding itself in it with a crunch, dust and rock fragments flying everywhere as the rumbling finally stopped and as silence fell at long last...

Ronnie, normally terrified of anything sub-lethal that sprang out to attack her, dusted herself off calmly and stepped out from behind a pillar. "Luca?"

"Yeah?" came the hesitant reply from a small stone pedestal upon which a large vase was set, glowing brightly.

"Don't set off any more traps. Please?"

Luca smiled weakly. "I'll watch where I'm stepping." She pulled herself up, her hand still remaining on the vase's surface as she gazed around at the room. "Wow..."

Opulent was an understatement. The room around them glimmered with relics, gold and silver and all manner of gemstones shining happily, a far cry from the sickening obsidian tombs. The vase Luca stood by was one of four, arranged on pedestals that stood in a line roughly in the centre of the room. While ancient dusty scrolls, intricate tapestries and a single, simple stone sarcophagus- seemingly incongruous, dull amidst the beautiful treasures- adorned the walls, the wall at one end that stood before these pedestals was adorned with a great sun in burnished gold.

"Expensive decor..." Aaron remarked, looking around in awe. "This must be a throne room or something."

"Or a shrine room, an entrance to a temple," Ronnie reasoned. "Perhaps the god of this Castle?"

"But this isn't the exact throne room," Luca said, striding over to the shimmering golden sun and tapping the side of the mural. "This is a locked door. Which means to get to the deity, we need to open the door..."

"They never make these things easy, do they?" Aaron sighed, turning to the side to the Darmanitan, huddled in conference. "Well? This is your Castle. Don't suppose you know who to unlock the doors? Or did they change them after they put you lot on permanent guard duty outside?"

The largest one, apparently the leader, tutted at Aaron's sour rudeness, pointing patiently to the glowing vase by Luca. "Dar? Tan i man DAR!"

"He says what about the vases? It's obvious, apparently," Luca said, Minty chirruping to translate. Then a huge smile came across her face. "Ah-ha! Clever girl Luca!"

"Mind sharing?" Aaron asked, as Luca strode over to an unlit vase.

"It's easy really! I touched that vase over there, and it lit up. But these ones aren't lit!" Luca half-yelled in jubilant realisation, before touching another vase to light it up. "Light them up!"

As Ronnie ran over to join Luca, Aaron stood back and noticed that as each vase lit up, a hole opened in the walls of the room and a thin beam of external light shone in, all intersecting in the middle, four beams making a perfect cross as the last vase lit up. That wasn't all though; as the vases all shone, another rumbling made Aaron leap, but it was safe. Another pedestal started to rise in the exact centre of the room, a clear indentation on its surface where something was meant to go, and the light cross' centre hung about two feet above it.

"Bingo," he said to himself, before he raised his voice. "Girls! It's a new pedestal! All we need is a keystone that fits in the slot and we are in!"

Luca smiled as she looked at it, fiddling with something around her neck. "And I know just what will fit it..."

"Is that..." Ronnie started to ask.

Luca nodded. "Uh-huh! That obsidian necklace Minty found in the Castle when Andrea took us in. I knew it would be useful somehow..."

Letting go, the obsidian gem seemed to float in the air above the pedestal's groove, all four beams of light piercing into it and making it pulse and glow as its string trailed behind it. Luca smiled, and outstretched her hand, ready to push it down...

Suddenly, all hell seemed to break loose. Like bombs dropping from the sky three shapes detached themselves from the rafters and zoomed down, sinister blue flames flickering as high-pitched giggling cackles sounded throughout the shrine. As one of the small candle-like beings reached Luca it shot a small ball of fire at her hand, searing the skin and making the fighter girl hiss, before the other two launched shadowy tendrils into her body. Minty the Riolu's Fighting attacks harmlessly shot through the body of the Ghosts, as Luca sighed and grew weak at the knees, the levitating candle-like Pokemon absorbing energy from her in a ball before shooting off.

Aaron had been stunned by the speed of it all; from start to finish the attack had lasted five seconds at most, and the three attacking Litwick had done what they do best, draining Luca of almost all her energy before leaving her severely weakened. "Luca!" He caught the girl before she fell, the Darmanitan standing helplessly beside her. "Luca, please say you're OK!"

Luca grimaced, her breathing heavy. "Yeah..." she hissed through gritted teeth, a pained expression on her face. "My God... those Litwick... were quick..."

There was a low, booming chuckle from a disembodied voice that appeared to resonate from every dark nook and cranny of the room. "Huhuhuh... At last. You have no idea how long I have waited. Millennia, alone, waiting for somebody to come down here and give me the strength to return..."

Aaron wheeled frantically. "Who are you? Show yourself!"

"Huhuhuh... Very well." The sharpness at the end of the sentence was punctuated by the Litwicks' ball of stolen energy flying across the room to a pile of treasure, slowly being absorbed into something in the pile. The stack of treasure shuddered as something rose from its depths, starting to glow and brighten up, its patterns becoming visible as two red eyes glimmering with malevolence opened for the first time...

The sarcophagus from the pile of treasure pulled itself upright with four shadowy hands on tendril arms that seemed to fade in and out of existence. Gone was its dullness and inconspicuous status- now the stone had been replaced by energised gold, the dull head crowned by ornate patterns of lapis lazuli and gold, red eyes blaring evilly from its front. And beneath the eyes lay recently-appearing vicious fangs, pure white and razor sharp...

The Cofagrigus chuckled, the echoing voice now attached to its Ghost-type form, and the Coffin Pokemon glared at the humans, the three Litwick hovering around it like ethereal cherubs. "Welcome to my palace, humans. I see you brought in the guards. Obsolete as they are..."

One of the Darmanitan's growls increased in volume at recognition of the voice, and Aaron shuddered as those red eyes swung from face to face. "Your palace? Wha... what did you do to Luca?"

Two of the four ghostly hands shrugged. "I have been waiting down here for two thousand years, since the death of this Castle. I grow old, and tired, and I need life energy to further survive, to continue at full capacity. The energy of an apprentice Aura Guardian should do nicely, for this..."

Suddenly the monstrosity flashed, its gold playing catching the sunlight as the front door of the sarcophagus swung open to reveal its insides. The face on the outside momentarily frozen, something stirred within, and slowly, with shuffling, shambling feet, something lurched out of the Cofagrigus, the door swinging shut behind it before its red eyes flared once more, and beneath the ragged bandages of the thing, amidst half-rotten flesh, two red eyes identical to those of the Cofagrigus flashed on in the head of the new being...

The mummy turned from side to side, slowly, as if relishing being sentient and physically capable once more. "Perfect.." it said, though the words were coming from the moving mouth of the Cofagrigus behind it...

"What are you?" Ronnie asked in disgust, yet she was warily backing off the advancing mummy.

"My name is King Tarik. I am.. the last King of this Castle. And..." The white fangs flashed in a malevolent smile. "I am its downfall."

"Downfall?"

"The White Hero left this Castle after he defeated the Death Worm, left it to flourish unthreatened. Yet the King was dying, and the Castle was isolated and on its own... That's where I come in." The mummy's face twitched, what must have been a grin beneath the bandages, as the Coffin Pokemon controlling it smiled savagely too. "I was a Dark Knight, feared across the land for my ability. And I stormed the Castle, killed the King, and enslaved the population as my own..."

"You bastard..." Ronnie said with feeling.

The remnants of Tarik ignored her. "The mummies you saw in the obsidian? My victims. The cursed earth outside? That is what I did to the fertile farmlands that fed this citadel. Civilisation crumbled beneath my feet. And then..." The Cofagrigus' grin evaporated. "The White Hero returned to retake the Castle and defeat me. As a precaution, I locked myself in my ceremonial sarcophagus, to survive the fight; one of my loyal generals would release me once battle was finished."

"Let me guess," Aaron said. "They never released you?"

There was an inhuman snarl from the Coffin Pokemon. "My soldiers were slaughtered! And those who survived left me to starve and die down here, locked in a coffin in a locked shrine room forever! They betrayed me! The Castle was uninhabitable due to my destruction, and soon even the White Hero abandoned it, but I remained, weak enough in death to be incapable of escape, longing for my freedom!"

"And this is where we come in, I guess?" Ronnie asked.

Tarik's Cofagrigus regained his demonic smile, as more Litwick descended from on high to be joined by Yamask, the prevolution of Cofagrigus. "Huhuhuh! Humanity left me to die, but the Ghosts and the darkness are my allies. The Litwick stole your energy to revive me, and I will destroy this wretched ruin once and for all. You will provide me the energy, with your blood and your flesh and your lives; Cofagrigus are quite partial to human meat. And I will rise once more, my army of Ghosts ready to destroy what civilisation humanity has left! They betrayed me and they will pay!"

"No we won't."

The red eyes of the Cofagrigus of King Tarik, boiling with rage and hatred, rose to meet the defiant glare of a weak Luca Aree, holding herself upright against the pedestal with one hand raised in the air. Somehow though, despite the fury of centuries, the Coffin Pokemon couldn't overpower Luca's glare, as blue energy started to glow around her hand. "I beg your pardon?!"

"No we won't," Luca repeated slowly, a determined edge to her voice cutting through the air as the ball of Aura in her palm grew and pulsed. "This is the end of your tyrannical reign, Tarik. This ends now." She flicked her wrist...

The ball of Aura in her hand flew straight and true through the air, sizzling with an edge of anger and determination to beat Tarik. But the Cofagrigus was not the target, and nor was the mummy; Fighting-type Aura would have little effect, and Luca knew that. Instead, she had aimed for the black obsidian gem floating in midair, flickering with the light of the sun, and the impact caused a colossal boom that shook the pillars of the shrine room. From the depths of the crystal the Aura shot was magnified in power, all of the light streaming in and piercing into the obsidian combining with the Aura projectile to form an intense beam of energy, light wavelengths flickering from black to white in a horrifically strong strobe effect. Tarik's red eyes glowed and widened as he realised what had been done, and the demonic Cofagrigus screamed, a terrifying banshee-like wail that proved to be his final act as the beam of energy struck the gold casing of the Coffin and threw a golden light all across the shrine room in a massive explosion which made the treasure glimmer and shine...

Shielding his eyes from the glare as light still shone from the piles of precious metals, Aaron pulled himself up onto his feet to see the scene. Having hit the Cofagrigus head-on, the pure energy had obliterated Tarik, the golden sarcophagus reduced to ash while his mummy, no longer animated by the vengeful spirit within the Coffin Pokemon, collapsed onto the floor, its skeleton snapping and its body disintegrating into barely recognisable fragments.

He said nothing however. No victorious speech, no smart jibe at the defeated enemy; instead, he merely slammed his hand down onto the still-glowing crystal, forcing it down out of the light to land in the slot it was designed for. His hand burned a little from touching the white-hot gem, and he hissed in pain, but it was done, and now the temple would open entirely...

As the door slid back the golden sun gleamed, light streaming in from outside and illuminating the entire room. Tarik's Ghosts, now without a leader to unite them, shivered and shrieked, trying to dissolve back into the darkness they had come from, but most evaporated in the light that came in from the unlocked room, pure white light that pierced every Ghost and left no shadow in the corner behind.

Something was stirring in that light though, and as Aaron shielded his eyes once more, as the last of the Litwick disappeared into the world of spirits, the light started to dim a little. No more would blinding light comparable to the sun fill their world. Now it was time to gaze on the god of the Desert, the deity of the Relic Castle, the ruler of the sands. Now it was time to find the worthiest enemy of the Death Worm and rekindle a centuries-old battle to save humanity from the mutant Scolipede's destruction. Now it was time to turn the tide of battle in their favour...

A/N: Hell yeah! :D mummies galore in that one! I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to write mummies and Cofagrigus, not in an environment like the Relic Castle, where you'd expect that sort of history. Tarik and his evil past were meant to be key features in a future story I was planning, but I want to focus more on this story and the Detective Looker series I am writing, so I incorporated Tarik into it all. Hope you liked him!

Next Chapter: Finally... A god is unmasked... But will our heroes' quest to find a champion to take on the Worm's might be in vain? Coming soon...

Thanks for being patient with me waiting for an update folks, and thanks for reading! A review is always appreciated, and until next time, adios amigos! :D

Sharkness