A/N: Thanks for the review Julie Togepi. As for Ash being slightly out of character, to be honest I've always liked stories of sieges and do read about them, so perhaps it was a bit forced to give an opportunity to put them in, but I do think that given the circumstances, it was something he would've done.

This chapter is a bit of a break from that and more of what usually happens to Ash in the anime. Sadly, I haven't figured out a way to make that picture any bigger.

Moving the grain out wasn't that big of a problem anymore without the danger of an attack from the citadel, and by sundown the next day all of it was packed and ready to ship back across the border.

The people in Ash's siege party were happy to leave. Even happier than them however, were the people of Aroughs to watch them go. Happiest among them was Sir Edmund, who had quickly defected to Ash's cause, mainly because he knew that if Ash didn't beat Linnea… well, Linnea was probably going to quite literally fry him for the mess he had made during the siege.

As such, Ash had been armed with more knowledge regarding the geography of the region, and had been told that as of yet, Linnea had been in Ponyta City, a city present near the northern coast. As an extra precaution they had taken the only telephone in Aroughs so Edmund wouldn't tattle behind their backs.

Lady Linnea seemed to have recovered slightly, but as to how well she was going to do, only time would tell.

The next morning, Duke Hamnet was well on his way back towards the border with the baggage trains loaded, while Ash and Gulliver and his smaller group moved north along the way towards Ponyta City.

Whenever they encountered a patrol, they would simply hide in the bush, using Ash's Badges to aid them in hiding if necessary.

About two hours before sundown, the almost unbroken plain was interrupted by what looked like a huge rock formation in the distance.

"What's that supposed to be?" Ash asked to no one in particular.

"I think that's the Ruins of Grisigoth!" Gulliver said excitedly.

"What?" Ash asked confused, with his Pikachu echoing with a "Pika?" with the same meaning.

"Uh, you haven't heard of 'em?" Gulliver asked, and then remembering that Ash wasn't from Galea. "Oh, well, there was a Gym Leader named Grisigoth, and he made that monument right there. It's supposed to be really neat and stuff."

'Really neat and stuff,' seemed to be, in Ash's opinion, a gross understatement regarding what they saw.

The ruins were, in one word, beautiful. There were a collection of the remnants of buildings, collapsed and long ago decayed, covered in emerald green moss which draped them like curtains. There were ponds with lilies and Lombre in full number and various Pokemon of all sizes flitted through the grass and flowers scattered there.

Gulliver later told Ash that there had never been anything there, and in reality the whole thing had been built as a ruin. "See, Grisigoth reckoned that if he built somethin' grand, someone else would just go and tear it down. So, instead he decided to make something already broken, so no one would bother breaking it down further."

That sounded crazy to Ash, but not much more crazier than the stories of other monarchs he had heard of in Kanto and Kalos. And after all, the whole thing was still standing there, so Ash was reminded of, 'If it looks stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid.'

It wasn't like there hadn't been any damage to the ruins though. While they had survived being torn down they hadn't survived something else monuments tend to succumb to- vandalism.

It seemed that almost every inch of every wall was covered or carved by tourists form some long era gone by.

Some of them were pretty obscene, so Ash ignored those. Others were drawings of people and their Pokemon, or just stuff like 'Bash wuz here' or 'Suzanne, who wouldn't trade her husband for all of the gold in the world!'

One of them really did catch his eye, which said, 'Ash and Gary, best friends forever.' It seemed to be really old...

Ash did his best to hide his reaction, and the tear that slid down his cheek, from the others.

While the ruins were nice to be around, they were curiously empty, which surprised Ash since they looked pretty cool and from the graffiti and other stuff, he would have concluded that they would be filled with people.

Even Gulliver seemed to be surprised at that. "Huh… it is pretty empty. Wonder why."

"Maybe they heard we were coming and no one wants to be here," Ash said.

It seemed a plausible enough theory. After all, if people in Linnea's domain knew that a gang of soldiers had invaded, they were probably not very keen to go on tourist trips outside.

And, like most plausible theories, it was utterly wrong, as they would soon find out.

Some of the ruins were no more than an outline on the ground and a few bricks, but a few of them were much grander, including a huge castle draped in dead leaves. Parts of it were broken, but knowing that it had been built like that did give them some reassurance when they decided to camp inside it that night.

Now, Ash was a pretty heavy sleeper.

So heavy, as a matter of fact, that if his Pikachu hadn't woken him up, he probably wouldn't have noticed that Gulliver was gone until well after dawn the next day.

As it was, the crescent moon currently shone through a window as his Pikachu smacked him across the face.

"Owww!" Ash said as he woke up. "What happened?"

"Pika pikaa pii!" Pikachu said and went over towards Gulliver's now-empty sleeping bag.

"Oh, he's probably just gone to the bathroom or something," Ash said.

"Pika pii!" Pikachu said and began jumping around as if he had just seen a ghost.

"Quiet down, you'll wake everyone else up," Ash said. "Huh- that's weird."

One of the torches that they hadn't bothered to light near the wall was blazing with a small, yet dying flame. And there was a similar eerie glow coming from yet another one.

And, the dust one the floor had been disturbed oddly. Almost as if someone had been dragged away…

A chill went down Ash's spine. "It's probably nothing," Ash said to himself. "But we should go and check anyway."

The castle had looked spooky enough during the day, and it was much worse at night. Especially since Ash could have sworn he had seen small flames dancing in the halls before they went out.

"Gulliver!" Ash would shout, with no answer.

After ten minutes, he had gotten pretty fed up of the whole thing, and besides him, he noticed his Pikachu getting more feral and agitated by the minute.

And then there was the scream. A muffled scream that wouldn't have been audible at all to the others from where they were sleeping.

"Under us!" Ash said and began ripping apart the floorboards, which was far harder than it should have been for an old castle… until he remembered that it was only built to look old and that what remembered was probably really sturdy.

He managed to get a hole large enough to peer down, and once his eyes adjusted to the weird light, he saw a horde of shadows moving and oscillating around something outside his vision.

Ash considered breaking the floor, but then again, this was still a very old castle and he wasn't sure if it might bring something else down.

So, instead of using his hands, he used his Badges to cut a clean hole just big enough for him and swung down.

He was sure something scraped him, but he ignored it as he landed a good five feet below.

The shadows seemed agitated, and now Ash got a better look at what they were- Yamask. A huge, huge, horde of Yamask. There must have been hundreds of them!

And, in the center, was Gulliver, bound and gagged.

"Gulliver!" Ash said and helped his friend get out of his bonds. "What happened?"

"Ash! I was sleepin' and suddenly something pulled me from my bed!" Gulliver said. "You don't get it- these Pokemon- they were once human!"

The Yamask had now gotten very agitated and were closing in on them. Pikachu growled loudly at them and released a Thunderbolt.

"But it isn't of much use," Ash said. "There's too many of them…"

"I don't know what they was tryin' to do, but I think it was a sacrifice of some sort!" Gulliver said.

The Yamaks seemed really ticked off now, and had begun swooping at Ash and Gulliver. Ash released his Roserade and Haunter.

His Roserade began dutifully striking down the Yamask, but his Haunter on the other hand, for some reason, looked at Ash with a glum expression and then teetered to the ground, not fighting.

"Haunter? What happened?" Ash asked.

Haunter looked at Ash, and then at his Badges.

Ash suddenly had a vision- of a large field with peasants tilling the soil, of men bringing bricks, and lastly, of a large set of graves.

"They built this place," Ash said. "And Grisigoth wanted no one to be able to make something like he did. So… he killed them."

"Then what do they want?" Gulliver asked.

"I-I think they wanted you," Ash said. "I think they want to possess us."

"Why?" Gulliver asked.

"They- don't like what people have done," Ash said. "I guess- I mean- the graffiti and everything. Grisigoth knew- he knew that people would disrespect his monument eventually, so he killed the workers, and buried them, but not before he used the Fourth Gym Badge to- to-" Ash choked on his words. "I don't get it really, but I think he sealed their souls somehow and made them stay on as this place's guardians."

"Really? How'd he do that?" Gulliver asked. "And why wouldn't Linnea bother to do anything 'bout it?"

"I don't know!" Ash said. "Maybe she didn't care or didn't know that the Tempo Badge was involved somehow, but what do we do?"

Once Ash had explained everything, the Yamask had stopped attacking and were instead collectively wailing- a noise that was much more painful than their attacks earlier.

"So what'd we do?" Gulliver asked. "Can ya free 'em somehow?"

"I don't know!" Ash confessed. "Um, Badges, uh, release whatever seal binds these souls to this place and undo the power of the Fourth Gym Badge, um, please?" His Badges began shining, but he wasn't sure if it would work, This was foreign territory after all, and he wasn't sure how it worked when one Badge went up against another.

Regardless though, the Yamask eventually vanished, though whether they were free or had simply become invisible like Ghost Pokemon could was something Ash couldn't tell.

Haunter was going through the walls and floorboards as if wondering where his friends had gone off to.

"Did ya do it? Did it work?" Gulliver asked.

"Yeah," Ash said. "At least I think it did. Anyway, let's get back, and let's go away from these ruins the moment we get a chance."

"Yeah," Gulliver said. Along the way he asked, "Why'd they want to possess me though?"

"I think they needed a medium to tell people to stop vandalizing the place," Ash said.

"Oh," Gulliver said.

They found that no one besides Courtney had woken up, and they told her that they would tell everyone what had happened the next morning.

Needless to say, neither of them got any sleep that night and were drowsy the next morning when they set off.

A/N: Thanks for reading, as always, and do review if you liked.