The Coming Darkness
by
JamesPicard_007
Chapter 14
Scaraba
The sun was beating down intensely on the Scarabian desert. Even though he was dressed in light clothing Allen was still sweating uncontrollably. Having landed in the desert country only five minutes ago Allen looked like he'd been in a terrible thunderstorm. Bob looked about as bad as Allen, but he seemed to be taking it a bit better.
"Well that wasn't a bad trip now was it?" Bob asked.
"Even though I had to pick off a herd of Krakens it wouldn't have been so bad if they couldn't have flied! Did you know that Krakens could fly? I didn't know that Krakens could fly." Allen said frantically.
"Until recently no, but I have seen pink elephants before." Bob replied.
"Pink elephants!?!" Allen said.
A minute later the pair was standing outside the Hotel of the Desert. They walked inside and Allen went over to the ATM and made a withdrawal.
"Here's ten thousand dollars for your troubles." Allen said.
"Why that's mighty kind of you." Bob said.
"Don't worry about it. Just make sure you get a little shock therapy or something with that because you're crazier than I am." Allen replied.
"Hehehehe. If you ever need a pilot again and I mean ever you just give me a ring alright." Bob said.
"Alright." Allen answered.
"You take care now." Bob said as he left.
"You too." Allen replied as he walked to the service desk.
"Can I help you, sir?" The desk attendant asked.
"Yes. My name is Allen Black. I believe you have a reservation for me." Allen said.
"Yes. You're in room 206." The attendant said after checking the computer.
He reached below the desk and handed Allen a keycard. Allen walked upstairs and slid the keycard through the reader on the door to 206. After the door unlocked Allen walked inside and dumped his stuff by a dresser.
"Who's there?" A voice called.
"Housekeeping" Allen replied in a falsetto voice.
"I didn't ask for housekeeping" A man said as he walked out of the bathroom. He seemed to stand slightly shorter than Allen. He had thick black hair and light green eyes. His youthful face was slightly tanned from the Scaraba sun. He was wearing a white t-shirt and khaki shorts.
"Al!" The man cried.
"Sam!" Allen replied. Dr. Sam Arbagast walked over to his friend and the two men embraced.
"Where the freak have you been, Al? I've been waiting for a while." Sam asked.
"Don't ask. Some weird things have been going on lately." Allen replied.
"Don't sweat it. We've been having some troubles ourselves." Sam said dejectedly.
"What kind of troubles?" Allen said curiously.
"Oh the Scarabian government is worried that we're going to desecrate the Pyramid." Sam answered.
"Yay." Allen said sarcastically.
"Then we mentioned you were coming." Sam continued.
"Oh?" Allen said.
"Yeah. They kept asking why we were bringing a mercenary in." Sam said.
"I'm hurt." Allen said placing his hand over his heart.
"Don't worry. We hopefully have everything straightened out and we can go in tomorrow." Sam replied.
Allen grabbed his bags from beside the door and began to unpack. As he dug through the bag he found the newspaper with the article about the Caron Ruby.
"Hey Sam." Allen called.
"Hmmm?" Sam replied.
"Did you hear what happened in Summers a while ago?" Allen asked.
"No. What?" Sam said. Allen threw him the newspaper and pointed out the article.
"Whoa. That can't be good for the museum."
"What do you know about the legend of the Coming Darkness?" Allen asked.
"What?" Sam replied.
"The Coming Darkness. That article says that it's a Scarabian legend and you're something of an expert in that area." Allen answered.
"I really couldn't say anything more than this article has offhand. However the actual legend does lie within the Pyramid so we can go look it up tomorrow if you want." Sam said.
"Sure." Allen replied.
"Why the interest?" Sam asked.
"Huh? Oh! Just curious." Allen said.
Allen returned to unpacking his bags with thoughts racing across his mind. He didn't have the heart to say that he had seen who had stolen the Ruby. The mysterious stranger and his even stranger words. The stranger's disappearance, but most of all he couldn't say why because he had a feeling that the legend was coming true and that he might have a very big role to play.
Summers
It had been a normal day in Summers. The city was filled with the usual hustle and bustle of the tourists however around noon there was a large explosion. Nothing was destroyed, but Ness, Paula, Jeff and Poo appeared in the middle of the street from nowhere. The group shook involuntarily as their bodies began to adjust to the warm climate.
They rushed over to the sidewalk and began walking to the Scaraba Cultural Museum. Inside they paid the entrance fee and looked around for Mr. Fork. They found him upstairs attending the room where the Caron Ruby had been.
"Excuse me. Mr. Fork?" Ness said warily.
"Yes? Who are you guys?" Mr. Fork asked.
"We wanna ask you some questions." Ness said.
"Are you media?" Mr. Fork asked.
"No." said Paula.
"Cops?"
"I don't think so." Jeff answered.
"P.I.s?"
"Nope." Ness said.
"Alright. What do you need to know?" Mr. Fork said cheerfully.
"Was there a gentleman here within the past week dressed in black?" Paula asked.
"Not to my knowledge." Mr. Fork replied.
"What about the Caron Ruby?" Paula said.
"I've told everything I know to the cops and the papers. You can look in there." Mr. Fork said slightly annoyed.
"What's the Coming Darkness?" Ness asked.
"That I can help you with. Come with me." Mr. Fork said.
Mr. Fork led the group to a new room of the museum which was still under construction. The walls were covered in hieroglyphs and dimly lighted for effect.
"These glyphs are actually copies of the real glyphs found in the Pyramid of the Ancients." Mr. Fork commented as he led them over to a certain area of the wall.
"Here we are. The Coming Darkness. Now according to this legend many millennia ago there was a demon who ruled over a massive empire. Ruled over hundreds if not thousands of worlds. Now as far as I can say I don't know his real name, but this guy was known as the Demon Conqueror. Now as you can guess people weren't happy with this guy and four heroes trapped him here on Earth and defeated him. However his power was so great they couldn't destroy him so they sealed him instead. They erected eight locks and supposedly the Caron Ruby is the key to these locks. Fast forward some years and one of the demon's servants will rise to claim the Caron Ruby and will unlock the seal so his master can return and begin to rebuild his empire and plunge the universe into darkness." Mr. Fork said.
"That's it?" Poo asked.
"Well I'm just reading off of this thing here." Mr. Fork said pointing to an information post.
"Oh." Poo said.
"Well there is more, but you'd need Sam here for that." Mr. Fork continued.
"Who?" Jeff asked.
"Sam. Sam Arbagast. He's our hieroglyph expert. Currently down in Scaraba doing some more research in the Pyramid." Mr. Fork replied.
"Well thanks for your help." Ness said.
The group walked outside and sat on the curb.
"So now what do we do?" Jeff asked.
"Think we should track down this Sam guy?" Ness said.
"Yes. Obviously something is going on here and it seems to be closely related to the legend of the Coming Darkness." Poo answered.
"I agree. We need to learn everything we can about this. If we know what's going to happen then it may give us a better clue to finding Allen." Paula said agreeing.
"Alright. We'll stay here until tomorrow and see if we can get anything better on how to find Allen. If not then it's off to Scaraba." Ness said with a tone of finality.