Chapter 1: Cambodia- Victory short lived All around was quiet. The tomb seemed to be so peaceful. It was 1993 on a bright, cool day in Cambodia. British archaeologist and adventurer Lara Croft stood in the silent tomb. It was the tomb her father, famous writer, adventurer, "genius", and 10th Earl of Abbington Lord Richard Croft had "disappeared" in when she was at the shy age of 15. Her mother, 10th Countess of Abbington Lady Amelia Croft had vanished when she was nine in Nepal after the horrific plane crash in the Himalayas where Lara and her mother were the only survivors. After her mother vanished in an unknown tomb after removing a sword, Lara took a ten day solo trek to a village called Katmandu where she was replenished and her father was called to come get her. For six years she never left his side, going with him as he traveled, looking for her dear mother. On the trip to Cambodia however he disappeared, his body never found and Lara, at the age of 15, was the 11th Countess of Abbington. With her father's body never found however she couldn't inherit the vast Croft Manor just yet, and she waged a bitter family feud as her uncle Lord Errol Croft tried to take over the Abbington estates that is the Croft Manor. Lara inherited the manor however, and her passion for travelling taken after her father and the winning of the inheritance caused a deep rift in the Croft family and Lara was disowned by much of her living relatives. After the disappearance of her father she continued to do some minor travelling. At one point she became obsessed with a different adventurer, Professor Werner Von Croy. When she was 16 he took her to the Temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia to look for an artifact called the Iris. It was the same thing her father had been looking for. There it she found the brown backpack that she still uses today to store her findings and other items on her trip. They had eventually come across a giant orb that opened up as a sliced onion. Inside was the Iris and Von Croy's eagerness and lust for artifacts was the death of him. The temple collapsed with Von Croy inside. Several months later, her butler, Winston, was talking with Father Dunstan about going to the haunted Black Isle. Lara snuck out and accompanied him. Until the day her father disappeared it was only Father and Winston's secret that she had went. Well now here Lara was in the temple about 45 miles adjacent to the ruins of the Angkor Wat Temple, looking for any signs that may lead to where her father was. Lara crouched down, her brown shorts rolled up to her thighs as far as they would go. Her pistols shifted a little in their holsters. She brushed around the ground near an excavation site that an archeologist group had dug out looking for her father. Her long brunette braided ponytail fell over her shoulder. "Lara! Hey Lara!" She looked up as a good friend of hers, a beautiful African American woman named Anaya Imanu came jogging up. Lara, Anaya, and a group of several other people were all part of an excavation team. "We found some more bones, this time a skull was included!" Anaya finished with a big breath, and she turned and began running back to the others, Lara close behind. Amanda Evert, Kent Billings, and Sarah Wood were bent by a roped off area. Lara stepped past them and knelt down by the skull. "So…?" Amanda asked. Amanda was a good friend of her's. She had a smaller chest, short blonde hair, and piercing, deep icy blue eyes. She had a deep thrill for mystical things and reality. They argued occasionally, but nothing serious, usually politics or rare things found over the world. Lara didn't know whether to be happy or sad. It definitely wasn't her father, the head was to big. Her father had been a handsome man. Well, she was relieved he wasn't dead but now she was back to square one, she still had no idea on the whereabouts of her father. "No." Lara said quickly. "It's not him." She stood up, throwing her braided hair back.

"I think we should call it a day guys." Eva Long said. Lara sighed.

"How are you coming with the site in Peru?" Lara asked. There was a recently discovered tomb there that Lara believed contained the last queen of Tiwanaku. "We haven't been able to get the tomb opened up yet, but progress is great!" said Jason Metric. Lara smiled.

"Good. Well, I'm gonna look around these ruins some more." She said as the other began packing up and leaving. "Okay, be careful Lara." Anaya cautioned her with the thick Jamaican accent. She smiled.

"I will, thank you."

Anaya grabbed her things and followed the others. Lara walked back over to the old tomb. It was really magnificent, with 4 large Asian type granite pillars at the front and arches leading all the way to the back of the tomb. Sets of stairs led bellow the tomb to the offering room, burial area, and a sealed door. Lara walked inside the tomb, her boots making reverberating sounds on the old stone floor. She heard a sound, then stopped. It sounded like a stone moving against another stone. She turned around and saw a section of the floor was moving. She stepped back on top of it until it was down completely and looked around. A section of the stone wall at the back of the tomb opened, revealing a dark hallway. She looked around and saw several crates.

She leaned over as far as she could and pulled some on top of the floor to keep pressure on it and walked over to the secret passage, drawing one of her pistols calmly. She kicked a rock that was at her feet down the hall. A few seconds later she heard the sounds of something swoosh and then the sound of stone breaking as apparently the floor shifted. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a flare and threw it into the hallway. The same thing repeated, only this time Lara saw what was going on. A large blade, almost like a pendulum, swung down from the ceiling, and then the floor split, revealing a spiked pit. "Too easy…" Lara thought. She kicked another rock, and sprinted down the hall as the traps activated. As soon as the blade swept across, she leaped over the section of the floor that opened, avoiding the spike trap. She got up and brushed her knees of, smiling with satisfaction. She continued down the hall, another flare in one hand and her pistol on the other. At the end a large stone casket shaped object was pressed again the wall.

She set the flare down and holstered her gun and then tried to lift the top of the casket. It was extremely heavy. She saw that there was an inscription on the top. It was hard to read, but Lara could make out enough words.

"He who open this casket shall not leave"

She snickered at the ancient warning. Of course this would set off some traps, but Lara was getting used to it. She was still rather new at raiding tombs on her own but she knew what she was doing. Lara gave the casket several good kicks and then tried to lift the top again. It moved and she pushed it over. A putrid smell came out, and Lara clipped her nose and looked inside. She gasped. This is what her father had been looking for. The King of Cambodia during the 6th century, Bhavavarman I. In his hand was a long thick staff made of acacia wood overlaid with precious, beautiful gold.

Lara recognized it instantly. It was one of the two wooden bars made to carry the precious Ark of the Covenant. The Ark itself was a box made on the command of God to store the stone tablets that was the covenant to god, basically the Ten Commandments were etched on the tablets. It too was made of the finest acacia wood covered in a decorative sheathing of the purest gold with a golden ring on each corner of the Ark where the two bars would go through to carry the Ark since it couldn't be touched directly. If it was touched directly the skin would boil as if in acid and then the insides of the person would liquefy. This supposedly helped the Israelites defeat their enemies. God or the high priest could only touch the lid or "Mercy Seat". Lara had read the Bible and researched a lot on the Ark. The fate of it is different in many contexts.

She had read that it was just taken away by divine intervention, or stolen and hidden away in the temple it was built at. No one knew for sure. Lara gripped the staff tightly, wishing her father could be here. There was a slight rumble underneath her. It was low at first, but it was growing steadily. Lara started back down the hallway. Opening the casket and taking the staff must have started a timed trap, but deactivated the one in the hall. She stepped back into the large open area of the tomb and saw that the floor was slowly breaking away, the stone squares cracking and then falling into the blackness underneath the tomb. Lara broke out into a sprint across the tomb. A section of the floor broke away as she reached it, and she did a diving roll to avoid plunging to her death. She regained composure and resumed her sprint. As she neared the door the quake cased the pillars to start collapsing, and the entranceway crumbled. She looked around and saw a large opening to her far left. She made a break for it when suddenly the far-left pillar outside fell and broke through the roof of the tomb. The sound was enormous. It would take only a few seconds until this exit would me blocked off. Lara fell to her feet in a baseball sliding position and made it under the pillar before it fell and completely obliterated the rest of the floor and tomb. She jumped out of the exit and began rolling down through the thick jungle of Cambodia. She heard the rushing of water in the distance as she tried to regain her footing.

She heard the explosion of sound as the tomb crumbled behind her. Finally she hit flat ground, landing hard on her bottom. Thankfully she had managed to keep a hold of the staff and it was intact. She smiled. "Ah, if it isn't Miss Croft. Raiding tombs again?"

Lara didn't recognize the voice, but it sounded like it belonged to a handsome Italian man who was probably built well. She looked up. It did. The man was about six foot three with short black hair and very handsome features. His eyes were a bright emerald shade of green. His jaw was masculine and square. Lara smiled as he offered his hand to help her up and she stood slowly on her own to her feet. He shrugged and pulled his hand away.

"My name is Riccardo Bianchi. I'm the leader of an Italian branch of a worldwide expedition team and I've come to this temple looking for a certain object that you have in your hand right there." His voice had a thick Italian accent. His eyes glazed over her body down to the staff. She glanced behind him to see about five well-suited men in sunglasses standing motionless with their hands crossed and M16's strapped to their backs. Riccardo also had one, along with a large black magnum on his belt. "I think I stole this fair and square."
Lara said with determination. Riccardo laughed. The others did as well, like they were ordered to laugh when Riccardo did. She snorted at them. "Now, Lara, I'm going to steal it from you fair and square."

"I don't think so." She replied quickly. His hand started going toward the butt of the magnum. Lara rested her palms on her hips, making sure her fingers grazed her guns as she lightly traced the handle of them. "I have some too Mr. Bianchi." She said, smiling. His face twisted into a disappointed snarl. "Miss Croft I think you need to hand over that artifact there or…" He stopped and looked over toward the forest. Another guard came out with a struggling Anaya, his hand over her mouth and a handgun in the other, the barrel trained on Anaya's head. Lara felt her eye's widen and she drew a pistol and trained it on the man who had Anaya. "Let her go right now." She said. Riccardo stepped in the middle.

"Ah ah, now now Lara. Don't be like that. You just give us the staff and you'll get your friend back." Lara looked over to Riccardo.

"How do I then know for sure that you won't try and kill me?"

He snorted this time. "I'm not gonna kill you."

"I said you'd try." She said with a bit of sarcasm.

Anaya struggled again as the man apparently pressed the gun harder to her head. "This is no time for word games. Just give me that staff. Just trust me." She kept her gun trained on the guard and her eyes trained on Riccardo and she slowly handed over the staff. He reached out and jerked it away from her. He then looked over at the guard. "Let her go…" He did so, and Anaya rubbed her mouth, then walked over toward Lara, glaring at the man. "See, I am a man of my word Miss Croft, but I have a very busy schedule so if you don't mind…" He turned and walked toward the sound of the water, the guards following. A few seconds later she heard the sound of helicopters and she saw two of them lift up from the jungle and fly off. She turned toward Anaya. "Why are you still here?" She asked.

"I left my tool box and bag, and when I came back the tomb was collapsing. I was worried you were still in there, and then that damned guard caught me." Lara sighed.

"What was that thing anyway?" Anaya asked.

"It was one of the staffs used to carry the Ark of the Covenant." Anaya made a small sound.

"The Ark of the Covenant? The one that supposedly has the original Ten Commandments written by God?" Lara nodded.

"And them bloody Italians just made off with my staff and I want it back." She said angrily and turned and began walking over toward Anaya's yellow Ducati Jeep. "I need to go home and talk with Winston and Zip." She said. Anaya followed.

"Why, what are you going to do?" She asked, getting into the drivers seat.

"What do you mean? I'm going after what is rightfully mine." She said with a smile.