Disclaimer: This is a Fanfiction Tomb Raider story. I do not own the characters originally from Tomb Raider, they belong to their respectable owners. This is just for entertainment reading.

An Uncertain Futuristic Beginning

'How am I going to make it out of here alive?' A quick catastrophic thought arose in Lara Croft, as her world began to collapse all around. She swiftly glanced at her surroundings, looking for a way out after having been devilishly tricked. The Ancient Egyptian temple complex, which was built underneath the sands of the Sahara Desert, had begun to shudder violently, similar to the style of a pounding earthquake. Grains of sands from above started to pour in, and Lara certainly didn't want to be buried to her death.

'There must be another way out of here!' Lara exclaimed. The entranceway to where she had been to get through here was blown to smithereens! It had seemed that there was no way out of this situation. Out of the blue, Lara caught a glimpse of eclipsing light coming from a small crack on the lower ends of the left wall. Knowing this maybe her only chance of escaping the crumbling temple, Lara hurried over to the wall on the double. Using whatever strength she had left, Lara kicked the lowly cracked wall out of proportion, forcefully causing the bricks to scatter around on the floor. Without hesitation, Lara ducked and dashed through.

Instantly, she was nearly met with the downfall of ceiling pieces, falling down at a high velocity rate. If Lara would have been hit by one of those large ceiling debris, she would have been crushed and flattened to her death! Lara did her best dodging these, but it didn't help with the falling hot sand, nearly blinding her eye sight and slowing her down. Coming across, making a quite a drop further underground, Lara now was in the chamber she had dreaded most, and unintentionally she was right in the centre of it.

Four deep slopes were supporting a middle platform, and as before, when Lara had first made her entrance into this dark hall-like room earlier, she noted that four deactivated boulders were on top of these slopes. Her Amazonian instinct warned her of danger once she had taken her first step onto the platform, and due to her rushing of trying to get out, Lara therefore soon after felt more shudders inside the temple. All four boulders had now become active and were coming down, evermore quickly gaining more speed ready to squash anything within its path. There was no hope for Lara, this was it!

'...No' and with that thought, Lara had always kept with what she had believed, and that was to never give up. Scanning round desperately, after a few heavy breathing moments, a solution had formed as she looked over to the left side of the chamber area. One of the fallen pieces from the ceiling had created a small pile of rubble, of which Lara could possibly climb upon to reach for the platform above.

'It's better than just being a sitting duck' Lara summed up, and not wanting to delay her move for any longer, she sprinted towards the built up rubble. Just missing the oncoming four boulders by a matter of a few centimetres, Lara leapt and grabbed hold of the top first rock piece that had fallen to the floor first. It was of some considerable size, and shrugging off some pebbles and sand that had plummeted from above, Lara, using her strength and rock climbing skills, started her ascent upwards.

Each rock layer that had been uneven and featured a 'stuck out' form, Lara made use of it during her climb and she managed to successfully get to the higher ground. All that was left now were the stairs leading straight up to the temple entrance. Lara began to sprint up the stairs, not looking back behind her, going as fast as her wearily legs would take her. Unbeknownst to Lara however, it won't be as simple as she thought it might have been.

All of a sudden, one of the large pillars connected to the top of the ceiling structure and the bottom of the temple began to pull to one side. Due to the semi seismic activity that was going on underneath and all around the collapsing temple, it thereafter gave up standing upright, and smashed the staircase Lara was on.

"Whoa!" Lara exclaimed, as the terrific weight of the rich hieroglyphics decorated pillar greatly damaged the stairs, and Lara almost fell off the edge of it into a dark chasm, where the shadows would consume anyone if they took plunge in. Shaken by the near fall, Lara continued her venture up the stairs, but as she got midway through, she witnessed the mass effect the pillar has had upon the diagonal self-supported steps. A huge hole was created from the stricken impact, and this would force Lara to make a big leap to get to the other side.

Under pressure, and knowing that this temple structure will not last any longer now as it was in its final stages of self destruction, Lara prepared herself for a running-jump. She stopped in her tracks when near the edge, and took a few steps back on the stairs. Lara exhaled, as the classic Egyptian temple architecture behind her was now destroyed. Before its path of obliteration reached to where she was, Lara moved swiftly, and just as her left footing got to the verge of the last step, she made an attempted jump.

Midway through the air, Lara stretched out her body along with her hands and arms reaching for the ledge of the remaining staircase. However, the newly created gap between the two stairs was wider than she expected so in turn, Lara didn't have enough momentum exerted to get to the other side!

Seeing as this may have been her last chance, Lara pushed her right arm and hand to their limits, and to her delight she managed to grab hold of the ledge. Unfortunately even though she was able to get herself over, Lara was struggling with her one hand trying to support her body hanging over the ledge. But it was not this that worried Lara as much as what she was about to see up ahead. Looking up, bits of golden sand and pebbles started to once again fall from the ceiling, though not a dangerous threat, Lara then saw what may have been her conclusion. A hefty slab became undone, and within a matter of a few seconds it would fall to where Lara was dangling. 'Blast!' Lara cursed, but after seeing these events unfold, she was now suffering a whole lot more.

The more debris that had fallen from the ceiling, the harder it was for Lara to hold onto the ledge.

'I'm...slipping...cannot...hold...on...for...much...longer...'