All right! Here we go with the next chapter of "Dark Angel"! Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, and alerted this story! I appreciate it! :)

DISCLAIMER: Only two of the characters, Salim and Amar, are mine. Everything else belongs to Frictional Games.

Something was wrong.

The Guardian could sense a disturbance in the air as it stirred, waking up for the first time in a long time as it took in the darkness surrounding it. It felt strange to be awake at first, but the Shadow was excellent at adapting quickly, and eventually, it seemed as if it had only slept for a day.

On the other hand, that foreboding sensation it had been experiencing grew stronger as it made its way through the burial chamber and over to the pillar that the Orb rested on.

Only…there was no Orb there anymore.

At this realization, the cosmic guardian let out a loud, terrifying shriek as it quickly swept the rest of the antechamber, desperately searching for the relic it was supposed to be safeguarding. While it did that, it spotted the path that the expedition had carved out earlier and decided to follow it, tracing the stray rocks and the few drops of blood that covered the floor to the exit.

It had been a long time since the Guardian saw the outside world, but it was willing to take that chance in order to recover the Orb, and more importantly, find whoever had touched it in the first place. After many hours of searching, the Guardian picked up its pace a little bit as the sun began to set, bringing a welcome change in temperature and allowing it to move more freely.

Not too long after leaving the tomb, the entity had spotted a lone caravan traveling in the desert, and suspicious, it decided to sluggishly follow in its path, wondering if the person who had taken the Orb was in there. Unfortunately, it had lost track of it when a particularly fierce sand storm blew through the area, but that didn't deter it in the slightest.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, Daniel shifted in his sleep before finally blinking and opening his eyes, rubbing some sleep out of them as he sat up straight on the cot he had been lying on. The last thing he remembered was nearly fainting in the tomb as Herbert and his men managed to rescue him. He reached up and pulled a wet cloth off his head, twisting it in his hands just to have something to do in order to calm his nerves.

Herbert was sitting on another cot in the corner, hastily scribbling something in his journal as a frown crossed his face. Daniel wondered what was on his mind, but before he could ask, he glanced up and sighed as he spotted that ridiculous parasol Herbert had forced him to use when they first arrived in the desert. Once again, it was being used to block out the little bit of sunlight that seeped through the tent, and Daniel just shook his head.

"You really are determined to make me the shame of Algeria, aren't you?" he croaked in a half-joking, half-serious manner.

Herbert shut his journal, chuckling as soon as he heard his research assistant's voice. "Good to have you back with us, Daniel," he replied, standing up and approaching the younger man, "How are you feeling?"

"Like I have the mother of all headaches," Daniel groaned as he felt another wave of pain, "But I'll be all right. It's all my fault, though. I shouldn't have forced the others to keep traveling deeper into the tomb. They had a bad feeling about the whole place and I didn't listen to them."

"Nonsense!" Herbert barked, "You mustn't blame yourself for the accident. You couldn't have possibly known what would happen. Besides, we don't have time for superstitious tales on this expedition. They should have known that when they agreed to join us."

"I guess so," Daniel sighed as he closed his eyes and allowed the cool breeze to blow across his face.

"That being said," Herbert continued, "I don't think it would be wise for you to stay here, Daniel. Not in your current condition. Abdullah and I have arranged for you to return to Algiers tomorrow morning, where you will board a ship back to London."

Daniel's heart sank, and he tried not to let his disappointment show on his face. Going to Algeria was the first time he had ever traveled outside of England. Being a self-proclaimed explorer, he had been excited to get out into the world and see what other continents had to offer, and now that Herbert was forcing him to go home…

"What about the expedition?" he asked, "I thought you brought me along to be your research assistant."

"It will go on as planned, of course," Herbert answered, waving his hand dismissively, "Abdullah and the others are more than capable of making sure things go smoothly in your absence."

But Daniel refused to give up that easily. "I promise that nothing like this will ever happen again," he insisted, "All I need is some extra sleep and then I should be fine by morning-"

"I will not risk your life by keeping you here, Daniel," Herbert interrupted him, "Nor will I risk forfeiting this entire expedition. You are going back to London, and that's final."

And before Daniel could protest further, the professor turned and exited the tent, sealing the flap behind him as he stepped out into the sunset once more. He glanced around at some of the other tents as he moved his fingers to the pistol he always kept with him just in case anything went wrong. He doubted he would need it, but he was the type to make sure everything went according to plan. He had come too far to just throw all that away, and getting Daniel out of Africa would allow him to find what he was looking for without someone asking him a bunch of questions.

Just as he was about to cross over to the tent that Abdullah was in, Herbert suddenly heard a distant growl, causing him to pause as he turned in the direction it was coming from. Out of instinct, his hand flew back to his pistol again, though he couldn't see anything that could have produced such a horrible noise.

What was that? he silently asked himself. He listened for the growl again, but he didn't hear it anymore, which made him a little more nervous as he hurried to Abdullah's tent and asked him and some of the others to do a quick sweep of the area. He would not be left unguarded in a place that he was not familiar with, and it was better to be safe than sorry.

Perhaps it was a distant lion, he thought, squinting his eyes as he tried to see if he could spot one prowling around. But he couldn't, and he realized that all he could do now was wait for Abdullah and the others to return with their verdict.

He was sure they would say the same thing: that it was only a lion, and that they would make sure it didn't try to attack the camp.

But deep down inside, Herbert had a bad feeling that it was something else.

Later on that night…

Now that the sun had officially set, the Guardian's vision increased in strength, allowing everything to become clearer as it managed to find the path the caravan had taken earlier. Although there were no more tracks from it after the afternoon's fierce sand storm, it could still sense that it had been there.

Eventually, the entity came across a group of white tents, some shrouded in darkness while others were lit with lanterns. Three men were still awake, patrolling the camp grounds before they rested for the night. Although they were whispering to each other in Arabic, the Guardian could still understand everything they were saying.

"I suppose we can tell Professor Herbert that there's nothing out here," one of them, Amar, announced as he refilled his lantern with more oil.

"So what could have made that noise?" another one, Salim, asked as he faced his other friend, "Any ideas, Abdullah?"

Abdullah shook his head. "I don't know," he said, "But I've been having bad feelings about this whole expedition even before Daniel got trapped in the tomb. The whole time he was forcing us to keep going in the chamber, I kept getting this feeling like…like we shouldn't have been there."

Amar sighed. "I know what you mean. I felt the same way, but you see that everything turned out all right. We were able to rescue Daniel with no other incidents, so maybe there's nothing to be paranoid about."

"Maybe," Abdullah echoed, though his voice was still tinged with uncertainty, "Come on, let's go back."

The Guardian watched in silence as the three of them turned and went back to the camp, hurrying their footsteps so that they could get out of the darkness. Once they were gone, it remained where it was, contemplating what they had just been talking about as it surveyed the rest of the tents in the area.

So a man named Daniel had gotten himself trapped in the tomb? And nobody else in his group had been stuck with him? That could only mean one thing…

He must have been the one who had taken the Orb from the burial chamber!

Feeling invigorated, the Guardian began to search every tent for the Orb, being careful not to alert the men of its presence. That was all it wanted, really: to reclaim the relic it was supposed to protect. It wasn't there to bring harm to anyone, unless somebody intended to misuse it.

After checking two of the lit tents, the Shadow entered one that was dark, and it was in this one where it found Daniel at last. The young man, who looked to be in his early to mid twenties, was sleeping fitfully, tossing and turning on his cot as a sweat broke out on his forehead. His chin length, dark brown hair was plastered to his face as he tried to curl up in the blanket that was covering him, and although humans would not be able to see it, there was a dark red slash on the nape of Daniel's neck. It was the mark of the Guardian, which removed any previous doubts it might have had before, as did the fact that the broken pieces of the Orb were poking out of Daniel's bag.

For a second, the Guardian was incensed: why had Daniel been so careless with such a precious artifact? Why had he even taken it in the first place?

Unless…had he touched it because he thought that was the only way out of the tomb, and ended up breaking it by accident? Did he even know what the Orb was or what it was supposed to do? For the first time in centuries, the Shadow found itself questioning everything, despite the fact that it was usually good at reading people and their intentions. Something was different about Daniel, and it was determined to find out what made him stand out from all the others.

Before it could dwell on these questions any further, the flap to the tent suddenly opened, and the Guardian watched as another man made his way inside. Judging by the way he carried himself, it could only guess that he was the professor Abdullah, Salim, and Amar had been talking about earlier.

The Shadow watched with curiosity as Herbert made his way over to Daniel's bag, but that curiosity soon turned to anger when it saw him reach for the Orb pieces. There was a flash of greed in his eyes, which disappeared almost as quickly as it had come as he simply rewrapped them in cloth and stuffed the whole package further into Daniel's bag. The whole time he did this, Herbert figured his assistant could have the broken one; it wouldn't be worth much like that.

As soon as he finished hiding the Orb pieces, the Guardian suddenly felt a strong force pull it out of the tent and kick it back across the desert, sending it through a minor sand storm as it ended up close to the burial chamber once more. Once it got its bearings again, it let out another loud, ear-splitting shriek at the thought of someone trying to keep the Orb out of its sight, especially someone like Professor Herbert. There was a darkness in his heart that the Guardian didn't see in Daniel, which made it worry that the professor would try and influence the young archaeologist to misuse the relic, broken pieces and all.

And although Herbert himself would never know it, he had now been officially marked as well.