Author's Note: I apologize for the long delay. I truly planned and expected to be able to upload these last two chapters long before now. Unfortunately, my health did not cooperate. Lupus flares are no fun! I have been exhausted and in too much pain to finish the final revisions and post. Thanks to a lessening of the flare, and some very helpful beta readers, I finally have these chapters ready for you to read. I hope you will enjoy them.

Chapter 23

Whatever Yugi expected, it wasn't to bounce off the black cocoon that covered Yami. The ghosts had simply shrugged him off. Recalling his earlier wish for ghost repellant, he thought it highly unfair that the evil spirits apparently had some kind of people repeller.

Wincing in pain, Yugi sat up. To his horror, he saw that the cocoon was shrinking, tightening its crushing grip on the man at its center. He had to do something before it was too late!

Jaw set in determination, Yugi shoved himself to his feet. His mind raced. He was unarmed -- and, really, what kind of weapon worked on ghosts? What could he do?

Something hard and cold bumped against him. Looking down, he saw that he still held the Puzzle's chain in his hand. The pendant dangled from the heavy chain, brushing against him as he moved. He eyed it, speculations running rampant through his frantic mind. The ghosts had been trapped in the Item. They apparently retained enough sentience to feel hatred, given their attack on the Items' master. If they felt similar animosity toward the Item that had imprisoned them, perhaps he could lure them away from Yami -- even just for a moment -- with the Puzzle.

Yugi swung the chain, building momentum. With a war cry, he brought the Puzzle crashing down onto the dark shell covering Yami. "Let him go!"

He struck again -- and again, until tentacles of darkness whipped up from the main body to snatch at the Puzzle. Terror and triumph warring for expression on his face, he stumbled backward, yanking the Puzzle away from the ghosts and nearly cheering when they peeled off Yami to follow it.

"Come on," Yugi grated, spinning the Puzzle out of reach. "Come and get it! You know you want it."

Apparently, they did. The ghostly shell shattered, thick coils and thinner tendrils flaring up and out as they abandoned Yami to chase after the Puzzle. Yugi caught a quick glimpse of Yami before the icy lash of a ghost-whip across his ear forced all his attention onto escaping.

Maybe, he thought as he dove for cover behind an overturned wooden chest, his idea had worked a little too well.

Unfortunately, the chest did not offer the same protection that the throne had. The ghosts swarmed around it, and Yugi barely squeaked out of their grasp. He scrambled behind a stack of clay jars larger than he was, unbalancing them. Jars crashed to the floor in a shower of rough clay shards, taking what little shelter they had offered with them. Yugi cursed.

The ghosts howled.

--

Air and light rushed back into Yami's world. He lay where the wraiths had left him, his skin prickling in the aftermath of their arctic touch. His own breath sounded harsh to his ears as he sucked air into starving lungs. The first thing he heard, beyond his own panting and the pounding of his heart, was a mighty crash and the howling of the wraiths.

Shit. Yami flopped onto his back. His limbs felt like overcooked spaghetti, but he forced himself to move when he saw the wraiths swarming toward Yugi.

"Get rid of the damned thing!"

For a second, Yugi looked confused. Then he swung the Puzzle's chain -- once, twice, building momentum -- and flung it across the chamber. The Item clattered against the foot of the gilded throne, power flaring as the Puzzle's magic clashed with the protective spells on the throne.

Yami's eyes narrowed. As much as he wished otherwise, he could no longer deny that the magic was real. The question now was how could he make it work for them?

His gaze darted around the room. Painted scenes of the pharaoh adorned the walls: offering to the Gods, running the circuit of the Heb Sed court, slaying hippos and crocodiles in an underworld marsh, standing before Anubis for the weighing of his heart. In all of them, the pharaoh was young, powerful. In none of them did he wield a Millennium Item.

What Yami needed to defeat these creatures was not the power of the Items, but the power of the Pharaoh -- the magic inherent in his past incarnation as Atem. All he had to do was figure out how to access it. And he had about two seconds in which to do it.

Piece of cake.

As if determined to prove him wrong, the wraiths swooped down on him again like a black vortex as they sought to reform their suffocating cocoon. Yami knew he could not let them regain the advantage. If they killed him, they would kill Yugi next. Yami wasn't going to let that happen.

As the wraith-cloud swirled around him, Yami reached deep inside himself for the power he had once known. Cold wrapped around him as the ghosts closed in, dark tendrils seeking to bind his body like some deadly parody of mummification.

His arms shook with the effort it took to break free, but he raised them over his head, palms outstretched as if to gather in the ghostly storm. He could see nothing but shadows, hear nothing but their infernal screeching. His lungs ached as he struggled to draw even a shallow breath. He knew he only had one chance to get this right. Blind, deaf, his body pulsing with the hammering of his heart, he could only hope he was still oriented in the right direction as he brought his arms down in a decisive gesture and aimed his power at the heart of the wraith-cloud.

The magic tore the wraiths from their suffocating hold on him and blasted them across the room -- straight at the painting of Anubis weighing the pharaoh's heart. However, it wasn't to the jackal-headed god that he threw the malignant spirits. It was to the crocodile-headed Eater of Souls, who waited to devour those whose hearts testified against them. Ammut opened her great, fanged maw and caught the phantoms in her teeth. One snap of her jaws and the condemned ghosts vanished down her gullet. It was over.

Yami sagged. He would have fallen, only Yugi was suddenly there, slinging Yami's arm over his shoulders and keeping him -- barely -- on his feet. Yugi gave him a moment to get a grip on himself before shuffling them toward the door.

"Yami?"

"Yes?"

"I didn't just see a tomb painting come to life and eat a bunch of evil ghosts who'd been trapped in seven magical objects for three thousand years... Did I?"

"Would it make you feel better if I said 'no'?"

"Yes."

"All right. No."

"But… I really did, didn't I?"

"Yes."

"Argh."

"That about covers it."

"Let's get the hell out of here."

"Works for me."

--

In the end, Yami discovered he couldn't navigate the narrow passageways while wearing full pharaonic regalia. He attempted to use his newfound powers to return his clothing to normal -- apparently, the magic had transformed his dusty cotton shirt and khakis into gold and linen -- but could not figure out how to go about it. Like his tangled memories, his new abilities were fickle and seemed to have their own agenda. Removing the Double Crown, he abandoned it in an antechamber along with his golden apron and bull's tail belt.

Yami also learned that Yugi could be tricky when he wanted. After catching Yugi daydreaming rather than crawling along the thieves' passage, Yami realized exactly why Yugi had insisted he go first -- it had something to do with the short linen kilt Yami still wore, and the relative skimpiness of ancient Egyptian undergarments.

After that, Yami made Yugi go first... and spent a little quality fantasy time of his own.

--

With Yami's arm once more around his shoulders, Yugi staggered the last few steps down from the rocky outcropping beneath which the lost tomb of the no-longer nameless pharaoh lay buried. The sun was inching over the horizon, dispelling the shadows and warming the earth as it was reborn. Yugi felt a little like he had been reborn as well: he had gone through an ordeal in the underworld, only to emerge with his prize.

He turned his head and smiled at Yami.

Handsome face liberally smeared with dust and sweat, auburn hair spiked up in strange directions from being crammed under that crown, and bare knees scraped from crawling through the rubble-littered tunnels, the Egyptologist still managed to look as if he belonged in the linen kilt and gold finery of a pharaoh. A stray image from his dream of Yami-as-Pharaoh wandered across Yugi's mind, whistling nonchalantly and making suggestive gestures at his libido. Yugi felt a flush start somewhere in the vicinity of his toes and rush upward.

"What are you thinking, love?"

Yugi's smile widened into a full-fledged grin. "Say it again."

For a second, Yami looked confused. Then his own grin blossomed. "My love. Mery-i. Habibi. Koibito." A thoughtful pause. "I can say it in a few other languages, if you like. What would you prefer? German? French? Swahili? Macaroni-ese?"

"...Macaroni-ese?"

"The official language of Noodletopia, home of the Evil Noodle Overlord," Yami said, in what Yugi considered a far-too-reasonable tone of voice, and winked at him. "It's a long story. I'll tell you about it sometime, if you promise to stay with me long enough to hear the whole thing."

Yugi gave him a suspicious look from underneath his bangs. "And just how long would be 'long enough'?"

"Oh... the rest of our lives ought to do it."

"Oh." Yugi gave this the careful consideration it deserved. "I'm not sure. What if we need more time?"

Yami's smile rivaled the rising sun. "Then, I guess we'll just have to stay together forever, aibou."

"I think I can live with that," Yugi said, and pulled Yami down into a fierce kiss.