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Well. Here I go again, changing things around at the last minute. See, what I was going to do was keep this on ice for another fortnight. Then come back and see what I really thought about it. But then I told myself I was stalling, and that I just needed to get it out there to see what other people thought. In the end it's not all bad. But I can tell you I rewrote the ending no less than three times. The end of this update that is, the end of the story is waaaaaay off yet. There's a full truckload of good stories being posted in the Tomb Raider section at the moment, which is really great to see!

Okay! So I took another month (with interest) to write this update! You could sue me if you really wanted a few worthless possessions! The truth is that the first draft needed work. So I worked, and worked, and worked. Maybe, damn it, I worked a bit too much and skewed the story out of all sane whack. But! I think not! You be the judge!

Usually I reply to any reviews written. What can I say? I'm a nice guy!

Please tell me what you think. Even if you didn't exactly like what you read. Of course if you did like what you read then I wanna know! :)

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*6*

PREY HUNTER

Part Three

Silent gloom hung about the two human figures like a mist as they stepped carefully along a masterfully crafted passageway, the first people to do so in over four hundred years. Both sweated, despite the fact the human-built passageway took a course through solid bedrock, cooling the air around them to temperatures that reminded Lara of a spirited seabreeze wafting off the ocean along the west coast of Australia. Subtle breathing airflows, typical of large underground labyrinthine networks, strengthened the cooling sensation, a faint wind drifting past their faces and evaporating any moisture found there. The smells of moist earth gave the place an aura of the deeply remote, and a distinct sensation of the long forgotten. Not a single sign of recent habitation could be seen anywhere along the finely-crafted stone walls, nor along the smooth, dust covered pink-granite stone beneath their feet.

With Lara in the lead, and Tezra following a few paces behind, they threaded their way through what could only be described as a bizarre and highly ornate series of underground hallways and narrow vaulted galleries. Along the walls of each, exquisite bas-relief carvings and highly decorative painted frescoes dripped from the stone with such detail that both explorers could not help but linger and glide their torchbeams over every surface contained therein.

Lara was dumbfounded, as if she'd stumbled across the mystical Shangri-La itself. The sheer interplays of colour within the frescoes, and the intricately skilled finesse that shaped the carvings, almost seemed to breathe a living soul into each of the artworks she gazed upon. She felt a deep sense of sadness, however, as each gallery came to an inevitable end, knowing full well that truly appreciative eyes may never gaze upon the wonders just witnessed ever again. Most likely, the works would be chiselled from the walls by enterprising artifact theft rings, and sold to the highest bidder for massive profit. Eventually, a pitiful few would trickle through to those museums with enough funding to pluck them free from the clutches of the black market, but likely having sustained uncaring and careless damage in the process. The rest would simply disappear into the shady rings of unscrupulous art dealers, and wealthy artifact collectors, who held little regard for the world at large. Such people cared only for themselves, valuing the fact that something unique and highly sought after belonged to them, leaving the rest of the world completely unknowing about the wonders they held in their livingrooms.

As the last of the carvings in the current gallery entered the darkness once more, Lara tentatively stepped through a gothic-styled pointed arch doorway at its end, her pointed gaze locked on her LED lightbeam, watching for anything out of place, or even slightly sinister in appearance. Tezra simply stared about himself in open-mouthed wonder, occasionally shaking his head involuntarily, as if suspecting what he saw was somehow not real, or perhaps a shadow of his imagination.

"I simply can't believe," Tezra breathed in awe, "that such a place has lain undiscovered for so long. These treasures buried here, unknown to mankind for centuries."

Lara glanced across to where Tezra had focussed the beam of his torch upon the wall, no more than a few meters from the archway. Illuminated, were three extremely detailed floor to ceiling panels, each depicting scenes of ancient Rome with such accuracy that her breath momentarily stilled to the barest hint. A man stood on the summit of a large hill serenely playing a lyre as flames tore mercilessly through the ancient city surrounding him. The flames almost seemed to move, writhe, and flicker as the moving torchlight created subtle shadows within the many undulations carved into the stone. Lara could not help but become transfixed by such a fine display, a subtle, appreciative smile lighting up her face as she studied the masterworks. The next panel, and the man, with arms upraised, stood within a magnificent street in the process of construction, the last tendrils of smoke from the fire still weaving throughout the streetscape like lengthy ribbons caught in a subtle breeze. The third was a scene of destructive murder; several helpless men fought in vain to fend off muscled lions in the centre of a grand amphitheatre, crowds stood in the background willing the bloodletting to continue to it's grisly end. The man with the lyre stood prominently in the crowds on a raised dais, his rich robes fluttering in the Roman breeze as he looked upon the scene without expression.

"Whoever built this place had a good reason to keep it hidden," Lara theorized. "This," she nodded toward the carvings, "is most certainly the burning of Rome." She pointed to the man with the lyre in the first scene. "Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus," she identified, "is thought to have orchestrated the burning of Rome in 64 AD." She pointed to the second scene. "From the ashes of the fire rose a more spectacular Rome, a city made of marble and stone with wide streets, pedestrian arcades, and ample supplies of water to quell any future blaze." Mind deep in thought, she then motioned to the third panel without regarding it. "To deflect suspicions away from himself, Nero blamed the Christians, and is said to have thrown many to the lions as scapegoats, others, he crucified and burned to push home the point that he was not the one responsible for the fires."

Tezra nodded, recalling the story from his formative years as a student, simultaneously impressed at Lara's seemingly endless database of knowledge kept hidden away within her mind. "If I recall properly, it was proven that Nero wasn't even in Rome when the fires broke out. Wasn't it? The story of the madman playing the lyre while Rome burned was invented sometime later, after the fact. So why portray this," he gestured at the carvings, " version of events here?"

"It depends who you believe," Lara replied. "We only know about historical events that were recorded in some way; written about, or set down in some picture form like these images here. Who's to say that any one person's version of events is more accurate than another's? Politics, intrigue, and plotting were all alive and well in ancient Rome, you can rest assured of that. Who knows what the real truth was?"

"Point taken, I guess we'll never know."

Lara swept her torchlight up to the ceiling, and then along the floor at their feet in a general search of the area. "What I want to know is," she asked, " who was able to arrive in South America with knowledge of these events, and then record them on this wall?" She pointed at Tezra with her free hand. "If your story is indeed true, about this place being built in the fifteen-hundreds, by your ancestors fleeing the Spanish Conquistadors, then how did they have any knowledge of something that happened in 64 AD? Am I to believe your ancestors could see into the past as well as the future?"

It was a divination that Tezra hadn't expected her to make. He knew that telling Lara too much about his people and the forgotten knowledge they once had could have serious repercussions. Would she become power hungry herself, he pondered? Just like the corrupted Cortez and his minions? Would she attempt to tell the world about her discoveries? Perhaps an attempt at some sort of lion-hearted gesture of goodwill, wanting everybody to gain access to new found technologies, to cure some plight or other. He simply couldn't allow it, and replied to her with feigned frustration.

"It's possible," he began with a sigh that was almost genuine. "There are now gaping holes in our knowledge of the technologies the Guild of Scholars developed before the Spanish arrived. It was all lost with the reed ships that disappeared into the Amazon." No lie had passed his lips. That was indeed the truth; he just left unsaid Thonapa's strong suspicion that their ancestors could indeed open a window into the past, as well as the future, the images before them seeing to add weight to the argument.

Lara didn't reply immediately; her internal musings kept quietly to herself, and her expression subtly unreadable. She stood with feet planted, her free hand resting at her midriff, her eyes locked once again on the image of Nero, but her true sight pensively elsewhere.

Tezra wished vehemently for an insight into her thoughts. He had acted the fool, somewhat, since their first meeting back in the courtyard by the demon heads, and he could only hope that Lara hadn't picked up on the fact. Better to let Lara think of him as her inferior for now, he thought, rather than set her already-suspicious mind further on guard. His own mind had now mostly cleared from the after-effects of the dart poison, Thonapa having prescribed further remedies over the phone to help, and he felt his full mental faculties returning. His leg however, still hurt like the demons of hell. Exactly how far he could toy with Lara, using all his wiles, he simply had no idea; he knew he'd need to be careful.

Lara's lips again curled at the edges into a private, contemplative smile, and she voiced her long-running suspicion. "Surely you must have some idea?"

"Nothing solid I'm afraid."

"That must be pretty frustrating."

"You've no idea," Tezra said with a nod, and his best long-suffering look toward her.

Lara shot him an appraising look, before shining her torch further up the passageway with the intention they get moving again. She was about to suggest they should do so, but something the torch had briefly flashed over had tagged an imprint on the ever-working thoughts in her mind. She frowned, and slowly bought the torchbeam back along the wall, until it illuminated a large fresco with deep and rich colours, once again extending from floor to vaulted ceiling. Intrigue crept through her consciousness, and she almost stalked toward the painted wall, cautiously, and with steps of carefully placed precision.

Catching the interest in her eyes, and putting his reservations aside, Tezra added his torchlight to Lara's, and hastened to keep pace beside her.

"Something caught your eye?" he asked, curious about what made the fresco caught in her torchbeam any different from the number of others they had seen.

They stepped several paces closer before Lara slowly halted, her crystal clear eyes examining every minute detail contained within the image on the wall before them. Suddenly, she became frozen granite, comprehension dawning within her like a rushing avalanche, borne of many years taunting danger in its purest form.

"Tezra!" she commanded in a low and authorative voice. "Stop! Stay where you are. Don't move a muscle."

Tezra had continued to pace forward after Lara had ceased, and took three additional uncomprehending steps forward, after she had spoken, not having fully heard her.

"What?" he casually threw back at her, his eyes narrowing in askance.

Lara yelled urgently at him this time, to get the message home. "I said stay where you are!" She then moderated her tone, as if abashed at her sudden harshness, but still kept her voice filled with dire warning. "That fresco is dangerous!" Her free hand rose to point at the image as the words passed her set lips, as if to accuse it of some heinous crime.

Tezra abruptly halted, although with skittish steps at the sudden onslaught of Lara's cutting voice. It was a voice he'd never thought possible from a woman with such feminine mystique. He whipped his head back to regard her, saw the granite-hard bent in her shining green eyes, then, like lightening, shot his gaze back to the fresco with knife-edged uncertainty.

"What the – are you – what do you mean dangerous?" He searched the richly precise splashes of skilfully placed colour before his eyes, trying to define the threat, but a sudden unsure panic worked to ruin his usually clear thoughts. He simply wasn't in his element, and his unsure reaction to events out of his control once again frustrated him.

Lara instantly recognised the telltale signs of a mind in unsure flux. "Tezra," she said with icy calm. "Just stop, take a deep breath, and look at what that fresco is depicting. But do – not – move!"

Tezra did as instructed, although he was clearly rankled at being told what to do. Another valuable insight into his character that Lara banked away with barely a flicker of her long-lashed eyelids.

Tezra studied the image after his deep breath had been expelled. "It's Nero again," he said eventually, with mystified thought. "It looks like he's chiselling out Egyptian statues of some kind – or something similar. I don't – I can't – I can't see any threat in that." He looked back into Lara's unwavering centre of calm, perplexed.

Lara drilled the fresco with a hard-edged accusatory stare. She explained, but her eyes never shifted from Nero at his labours. "Correct," she began. "They most certainly are Egyptian statues. More precisely, they are the statues of King Ramesses the Second and his favoured wife, Nefertari, at the so-called 'Small Temple' on the banks of the River Nile at Abu Simbel. King Ramesses had the statues built during his reign over Egypt in the thirteenth century BC, nowhere near the time of Roman Emperor Nero and his stint on the throne from 54 to 68 AD. The statues at Abu Simbel were moved to higher ground in the 1960's after the construction of the Aswan High Dam, which would have left them submerged in their original positions. Once again though, nowhere near the time of, and nothing to do with, Emperor Nero of Rome." Only then did Lara flick her gaze toward Tezra, further pinning him down to the stone beneath his feet. "Dangerously odd, don't you think?"

Tezra was silent a moment, before, "Maybe Nero visited Egypt and decided to make a few changes," he offered with a couldn't-care-less shrug. "Maybe he hated King Ramesses."

"No to the first, and very possibly to the second," Lara replied in the same even tones. "Ramesses statue is unfinished," She turned back to regard the fresco and pointed. "See?"

"Maybe he's building a copy," Tezra theorized, attempting to wrest the discussion back into his favour. "Nero may have wanted to adorn the streets of the new Rome with imposing statues. Why not Ramesses?"

Lara turned a quizzical expression upon him. "He built an exact replica of the cliff face at Abu Simbel then did he?" she asked. "And then dressed people up as Egyptian slaves, and scattered them all around the statues to make them look more authentic?"

"Well…" Tezra stuttered. "He was mad wasn't he? And who's to say that is actually an accurate reproduction of the cliff at Abu Simbel?"

Again Lara turned to the fresco, her eyes appearing to transport her inner sight elsewhere as she regarded it. "Oh, that's the place all right," she said almost mystically. "Once you visit that place, you don't forget it."

"You've been there?"

"Guilty as charged"

"I might have known it," Tezra said with a defeated sigh. He then threw up his hands in an empty gesture. "Why is it dangerous then?" he asked. "It's just a painting over plaster."

"Ludicrous…" was the distant reply he received, Lara's mind still being rooted within another horizon.

Tezra glanced back at her. "What? Ludicrous?"

Lara remained distantly removed from the cavern in which their earthly bodies stood. "There's no way on Earth Nero had the smallest speck to do with the statues of Ramesses and Nefertari at Abu Simbel," She clarified. "And considering there have been no other flights of fantasy depicted in the galleries we've seen so far, I'd say something's definitely up. Wouldn't you?"

"Lara Lara Lara," Tezra accused with a half disbelieving chuckle and shaken head. "Clutching at straws a bit aren't you?" He took a step backward.

Suddenly, swiftly, and without mercy, Lara rushed back to the present and shouted, "NO!" She swiftly spun to face him with an expression that could have frozen the Devil. "Tezra! I told you not to –"

Her words were silenced by a massive thud that sounded from somewhere deep beneath their feet. It was heavy, angry, and sounded like a giant had delivered a massive hammer blow into the sleeping bedrock far below. The entire gallery shook, causing a fall of cracked plaster to rain down around them from the vaulted roof above.

Lara quickly moved her torch over the floor, walls, and roof of the gallery in a highly charged search. "Damn," she chastised into the darkness. "Now you've done it."

A second hammer blow rocked the gallery, with a little more gusto than the first.

Tezra also whipped his torch around in quick, sporadic searches. "Me?" he shot back defensively. "This has nothing to do with me!"

Lara wrenched her torchbeam around to illuminate Tezra's feet. "Trapped floor," she said, cocking her head to the side to listen more intently to the newly arrived sounds of chaos.

Tezra looked down and felt like a useless child. A small square tile had indeed been depressed by his wayward backward-stepping footfall. Almost completely hidden, and nigh on imperceptible, it had been cleverly mixed in with countless other pink stone tiles covering the floor. He ruthlessly, inwardly, berated himself for being so careless; he wasn't used to having to rely on another so completely. Until this day he'd been his own man and self sufficient in all things, but that had now changed, seemingly in one fell swoop.

A loud crack, like thunder, rocked the gallery in a vicious pressure wave. The ground shuddered; the giant with the hammer was nowhere near finished, not yet it seemed.

Tezra had to raise his voice to be heard as they both stumbled for balance. "Well this isn't good is it? What the hell do you suggest we do now?"

Almost as soon as the question was finished, battered sections of the floor surrounding them began to drop away, and disappear into deep voids of blackness amid the sounds of cracking and tortured bedrock. One moment the gallery seemed whole, the next, they were caught in a scene of chaotic turmoil, their ears filled with the sounds of imminent doom.

"Run!" Lara yelled in answer, before she took off herself in a full-blooded sprint toward the far end of the gallery.

Ignoring the stabbing nerves in his leg Tezra could do nothing more than follow suit, death, in a very violent manner, would be the sure consequence if he did not.

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Lara's heart rate flared upward within seconds to fight an adrenalin-fuelled war with the unrelenting chaos erupting around her. The gallery, that had moments before been a picture of quiet, contemplative silence, had now turned on a dime into a dark pit of destructive and shuddering upheaval, threatening to wink the two humans within from existence without a second's extra thought. The speed at which the gallery was destroying itself left Lara with no time to check on Tezra's welfare, and she could only hope he followed behind close upon her heels. Forgiving herself for his death would be a difficult task, she knew, especially if there was even the smallest chance she might be able to prevent it. Although Lara could be ruthless and iron-willed when necessary, there was a human inside her, who could feel pain, loss, and the biting needles of defeat when things went mortally awry. In fact, those emotions, it seemed, bubbled away in various mixes inside her constantly, but healthily mixed with euphoria, indulgence, and the odd bout of deviousness when it was called for. Another death on her shoulders however, Lara thought, may well stretch her current mental balance perilously thin.

The roiling stone floor was now completely unstable, with massive sections cracking like shattered ice before simply dropping away to be forever swallowed into the dark centre of the earth. Lara fought for balance, the upheaval of the remaining sections of solid floor acting to throw her off course like a crash-tackling hit-man with nothing more than violent death on his mind. A section ahead of her violently splintered as if hammered from below by demons of the depths, before it savagely exploded upward in ragged pieces and ceased to exist in an angry swarm of debris. Heartbeat continuing to scream, Lara vaulted the yawing chasm that now stood in place of the floor, but was assaulted by chunks of rock and plaster that dropped from the ceiling like lead-weight depth charges seeking to halt her forward momentum.

Her boots caught the opposite side with a solid thunk despite the assault, but she immediately felt her salvation shift ruinously beneath her feet, certainly also within the throes of disappearing forever. No time existed to take stock, and decisions fired within her like a gattling gun. She vaulted across another three gaping black holes, grimly aware of Tezra's pained shouts from somewhere behind, before she reached what appeared to be the head of the destruction as it worked it's way along the length of the gallery.

Lara's boots again thunked down, this time on the as-yet solid floor, but only to remain so for seconds at best. With her face gritted, she bolted, her braid trailing through the onrushing air as she went, until she spied the distinctive pointed-arch doorway marking the end of the gallery appear amid the flailing maelstrom. Powder-fine dust, ripped into the air by the anarchy, caught and brutishly killed Lara's torchlight, making the archway only a dim and earthen-coloured feature battling to appear through the mire.

Again, something gatecrashed a warning across her sorely beset thoughts. Schooled to listen to her perceptions, Lara peered at the now rapidly approaching doorway as she sped toward it, focussing on what had fired off the warning in her mind. Another instant, and her question was answered with a crushing realisation that the doorway was solidly barred, by what appeared to be a solid stone slab that had descended down to the floor from the ceiling above and now blocked any passage through.

Panic rose, but Lara pushed it away with a clinical ruthlessness that had saved her countless times before. Even as she slid to a dusty stop before the barred exit, she was examining the wall carvings on both the stone slab itself, and on the wall to each side of the archway it now blocked. There was a message there to be read, subtly present, and easily missed, but to Lara the details screamed across her consciousness in full-formed clarity. First, she heavily stomped down on a barely-raised pressure plate to her left, the quiet noise of its subsidence lost amid the fully-fledged destruction of the gallery around her. Another quick glance at a series of glyphs on the descended stone slab, and Lara bounded catlike to the wall on the opposite side, finding a tile had immeasurably moved out from the painted fresco there. She slammed the tile with a lethal roundhouse kick that would have felled the toughest son-of-a-bitch goon in a biting instant, and left him with expensive facial reconstruction bills to boot. The tile reacted, sliding smoothly into the wall until a square opening was left within.

Tezra shouted with full throated panic from somewhere within the flying destruction further back in the gallery, but Lara knew if she didn't complete the riddle of their locked way out, they'd both end up a beaten pulp at the bottom of the dark abyss opening up below them. The destruction crashed closer as Lara again peered at the glyphs and carvings around the door, before squatting down to reach into the newly opened cavity in the wall. Inside, she felt along the length of the square opening until her gloved hand made contact with a metallic handhold, a pullswitch of some sort. Lara braced her feet against the wall, and, with quick breaths of stressed effort, pulled on the handhold with every ounce of strength she could muster.

The pullswitch moved with an initial jolt, but then stuck fast as if it were welded to the stone inside the cavity. A quick check of the doorway told Lara that nothing was yet happening in regard to the door opening again; the switch must still have further to come. Right arm and both her legs taut as granite, Lara pulled on the switch for all she was worth, until she was sure her muscles would pop and shatter at any moment. Tezra, bloodied, appeared at her back and spoke with stressed words.

"Lara! What in Gods name are you doing? We have to get out of here!"

"Busy!" she gritted out from her strained jawline.

"Damn it Lara! We're both fucking dead!"

Suddenly, with a squealing metallic grind, and a final gargantuan effort on Lara's part, the switch released its deathgrip on whatever had resolutely refused to allow it to move until now. She jolted back and ended up sitting on her behind with the sudden movement, but quickly spun around into a stand with a move borne of pure martial-art technique.

"You can fucking die if you feel like it!" she vented back at Tezra. "But I'm getting the hell out of here!" With that she spun to face the stone slab blocking the doorway, and the ever-widening gap that was now opening up beneath it. Instead of moving to slide under the slab however, Lara reached out and took a precarious rock-climbers hold of the raised edge that ran around the outside archway, forming part of the artistic detail with which it was constructed. Her purchase on the small protrusion wasn't perfect, but, being a better than average rock climber, Lara knew she could hold herself midair for a few minutes with the grip.

"Get your ass under the door!" Lara yelled. "Now!"

Tezra needed no further prodding; he quickly scampered over to the slowly rising slab, squatted down next to it, and waited for what seemed like an eternity, until the gap beneath became large enough for him to wedge himself through. Even as he wriggled beneath the stone door, the entire gallery lurched yet again with violent force, as if the hidden giant had taken to shaking it instead of raining down blows with his giant hammer. The sections of flooring that remained in front of the archway tumbled away before Lara's eyes, and became lost in the blackness of the abyss below, disappearing forever; leaving only a thin ledge remaining by the doorway.

The destructive tremors continued to rampage through the tattered remains of the gallery as Lara hung over the black pit now opened up below her, their intensity ever-building to what could surely only end in a grand finale of complete destruction.

Lara's grip shifted perilously as the wall she clung to began to fall apart, coating her in dust, and showering her with ancient plaster and sizable chips of older-still granite bedrock.

"Move your behind!" Lara yelled down at Tezra's legs as they scrabbled for purchase beneath the door. She could wait no longer; her handhold was being shaken apart.

Lara, facing the doorway, dropped into space, but her freefall only lived for a second, because her outstretched hands caught the broken lip of the ledge still remaining at the base of the doorway. A second later still, after her long-practised hands gripped, the rest of her body slammed into the jagged rock wall below the door as her downward momentum arched in toward it, raising bruises in places that never ought to cop such a beating. Another pummelling to massage out later, Lara thought grimly.

Tezra called from beyond the blackness on the other side of the crumbling archway. "Lara! You still there? Shift your butt cheeks!" His voice was thick with strain.

Lara heaved herself up to the top of the ledge, then swung a boot up over it as well, and wedged it against the side of the archway. Scrabbling, her other boot caught purchase on a soon-to-disappear boulder that protruded from the abyss wall close by, and, using the support gained, rolled herself over onto the ledge with a heave heavily influenced by her pumping adrenalin. No sooner had she reached the sanctity of the ledge, Lara rolled through the gap under the now-halted stone slab amid a roiling cloud of dust and destructive flying rock pieces.

"It takes more than total chaos to get rid of me," Lara said with an edge, as she sat up under the focussed beam of Tezra's Maglite.

"You look like a damn Yeti," Tezra grinned down at her. "I hope all that muck you're covered with has cosmetic properties?"

"I should be so lucky," Lara muttered.

Picking herself up from the gritted floor, Lara unclipped her LED Lenser from its shoulder mounting, and took stock of their surroundings. She discovered she was almost completely white, face and all, with a thick, sticking layer of powdery dust that reminded her of demolition sites, or the ash fallout from erupting volcanoes. She attempted to brush herself down, but it was a futile effort.

"I think I need a swim." Lara said, inspecting her dust-infused braid, and then shaking it to produce a fall of dust and grit.

"You might just get one." Tezra replied, aiming his torch out into the cavern they had just entered.

Dull rumblings continued to boom at their backs, the sounds seeping through the half opened door and tremoring wall behind them. Ahead was another abyss that swallowed the beams of their torches as if they were no more than playthings, but, heading off into the darkness above it, was a precarious-looking rope bridge. Lara also noted the airborne mist that rose up from the unknown blackness below them, and the faint, echoing sounds of distant rapids that could only signify the presence of an underground river.

Lara ran her torch along the rope bridge as far as the beam would reach; it appeared to continue on into the void beyond the reach of the light. "This could be interesting." She said then at length.

"Suicide was the word that sprang into my mind," Tezra said dryly.

"You had the other way in mind then?"

"What other way?"

"Exactly," Lara replied, glancing across at him with a dusty look.

Tezra sighed. "You're right of course, Ms Croft. I suppose I was hoping for a cable car." Then he motioned across to the rope bridge. "Shall I kill myself first?"

"No," Lara said with half hidden smile. "Ladies first, don't you know."

"I knew there was an upside to being a gentleman," Tezra said with a half smile of his own, but the other half was all grimace.

Slowly, they worked their way out onto the bridge, causing it to sway slightly with their added weight and shifting momentums. Lara noted the 'rope' appeared solid, almost modern, and not the sort made from jungle vines or woven from fibrous jungle plants, like she'd expected. It was smooth to the touch, and could have been nylon, yet it had a texture that pronounced otherwise. Also, instead of the usual rotting boards at their feet, they stood on a strange black metal that seemed to lustre with a resinous quality and reflect their torchbeams as if it were frozen liquid. Neither of them felt like stopping to inspect the materials more closely however, preferring to get a move on while the going was good.

"Seems solid enough," Tezra said with thinly veiled nervousness.

"Whoever built it knew how to make rope bridges, that's for sure." Lara replied, with obvious admiration. "I know several places that could really do with one like this."

"If I'm still alive on the other side, I'll share in your praise." Tezra said. "But for now, I'm not convinced."

Lara led the way across the bridge for several minutes; calling a halt several times to allow the swaying structure to settle, before continuing cautiously forward. They passed through a breezing curtain of mist, and heard angry rapids far below them in the dark, laving Lara in no doubt they were passing over a subterranean waterfall of substantial size and energy. The mist only served to turn portions of Lara's dusty coating to a sticky paste, and once again severely shorten the penetration of their torches.

Massive stone columns began to materialise within the limits of their torchlight, their shape and structure making it clear to Lara they were ages old stalactites and stalagmites that had met mid-chamber in ages past, and then continued to slowly build into the imposing monoliths they now were. It was clear they were now inside a massive subterranean river chamber, that rushing water had been working at chiselling out for thousands of years. Lara surmised that the ancient builders of the carved galleries, along with the rope bridge itself, must have discovered the river chamber during their excavations long ago and thought it useful for some purpose or other. Exactly what that purpose was, she couldn't even begin to fathom.

Although it creaked and protested at various points, the rope bridge held firm, and the beckoning cliffs of the opposite river chamber wall eventually appeared through the misty gloom. Lara stepped off the bridge and onto the solid ground of a wide manmade ledge that had been somehow cut into the solid bedrock lining the sheer cliffs of the cavern wall. For builders working so long ago, Lara mused, the construction logistics of such work must have been a nightmare. Tezra sighed with resplendent relief when his boots hit solid ground.

"Ahh, sweet Mother Earth," he said as a bucketload of stress lifted from his shoulders. "How I love thee."

Lara arced her torch out across the open expanse of blackness through which they had just come, dimly illuminating the stone columns they had passed by earlier, but otherwise only catching the rope bridge within the massive void. The chamber roof was also lost above in the blackness, simply nowhere to be seen when Lara angled her torch upward. Inescapable, was the fact that the river chamber in which they now stood was nothing short of immense. The question, however, that immediately hit Lara, was how much of it was natural, and how much man made? She thought back to the cavern containing the cathedral façade, and how regular and smoothly shaped it had been, almost appearing too regular to be natural. Was that also the case here, she pondered? If so, then the technology used to create such a place must surely be a sight to behold.

Lara couldn't help but wonder at the extent of the cavern, and how many other subterranean worlds sprawled through the earth nearby, enveloped in their blankets of eternal darkness just waiting for explorers to arrive and be blown away by mind boggling sights of grandeur, or the intricate calcite structures typical of an underground Karst landscape. Her spirit for adventure never faded, or even dimmed the barest iota, not when places such as this simply lay waiting to be found.

Not Tezra. The freedom of adventure, and the thrill of discovering something truly unique and unexplored seemed lost on him. He looked across at Lara with an extremely relieved I'm-glad-to-be-alive smile and said, "This place seems fit only for trolls and demons of the dark. As that clearly isn't us, can I suggest we get out of here, and as far away from that rope bridge as possible?" He hiked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the bridge behind him.

"You'd rather go back to your office?" Lara queried. She turned from the void, somewhat reluctantly, clipped her torch back to her shoulder, and regarded him with her ghost-like, dusty features.

"Just aboveground in the sunlight will do perfectly fine," Tezra replied.

"Don't you want to live a little?"

"Not buried alive I don't." Tezra's smile slowly morphed into an expression that hinted at a darker mood returning.

"Scaredy cat," Lara accused him. Then she turned to shine her light along the walkway hewn into the cliff face. "I guess we go that way," she said.

For the first ten minutes, they made good progress. There wasn't much to see, except the vast expanse of the river cavern off to their left, and the smoothly shaped limestone wall to their right. They hopped over the odd fallen rock, and manoeuvred around stalagmites, slowly, but surely in the process of reaching up toward the cavern roof, wherever that was. They came upon a series of calcite straws dangling from the darkness that seemed clustered with stunning crystals that glinted and sparkled under the light of their torches. Lara lingered, as if studying a Van-Gough. Tezra was impatient to get moving.

They then came to a series of places where the walkway had collapsed, and where only a much thinner ledge remained for passage; they needed to flatten their backs to the wall and inch slowly along to get past. Another section required a running leap, as the collapse had not only taken out the walkway, but a large section of limestone wall as well. Lara nimbly vaulted the gap without a second thought, her white-dusted form, it seemed to Tezra, appeared to float across the void as if she had wings. Tezra took a running leap and landed heavily, painfully tweaking his already injured leg that never felt completely happy in the first place.

Eventually, after several more such traversals, Lara noted the rock type change suddenly along a distinct horizon, into an almost night-black basalt, which also featured crystals that created pinpricks of reflected light when bathed under torchlight.

Not long after the change into basalt, Lara came to a fluid stop; switched off her torch and asked Tezra to do the same. "Turn off your torch a second."

Tezra did so, and their world changed.

It was as if the cavern had suddenly opened out into the vast starfield of heaven. Pinpoints of blue light shone in the distance, some large, some the merest tiny specks of sparkle, almost hidden amongst the subterranean dark. They slowly paced forward, awestruck, their eyes taking in the panoramic display that appeared to spread throughout the vast cavern space around them. Soon, the unearthly blue light began spidering through the dark basalt stone beside them, seeming to drift down from above as if someone had tipped liquid crystal throughout the wall and it had streamed down in erratic tracks before solidifying. Lara was in no doubt it was the same crystal she had first seen in the trapped passageway, and later in the subterranean forest. It glowed with the same crystal-blue that seemed generated from within, and spilled out to illuminate the wall close by.

"In all my life," Tezra breathed, "I have never once seen the likes of this." He turned on the spot slowly, gazing in astonishment at the ethereal beauty of the crystal light display.

Lara stood silently, her body completely stilled, her eyes being all that moved as they went from one light cluster to the next, drinking in their splendour. Moments like this were exactly the ones that drove her onward, and gave her life purpose. Again she wondered what other spectacles might yet remain to be found within this network of passageways and caverns, and vowed to return to find out once this whole shady business was finished with. "You should explore a little more," she replied after a moment. "There's more to life than latte strips and the maddeningly mundane you know."

"Oh I know," Tezra agreed. "My life is far from mundane, I'll tell you right now. But I can't afford to risk it on a heck of a lot right now, there's simply too much at stake. When I do choose to risk it, there has to be a decent enough pay off, either for me, or for my people. Grand spectacles don't quite cut it I'm afraid."

"Your loss Mr Tekkara," Lara said with a hint of sorrow. "But I understand your predicament, just don't let life pass you by without at least a little sightseeing."

Tezra nodded at Lara's sage advice, before they both continued along the pathway cut into the subterranean cliff. The mystically glowing crystal continued for some minutes as they went, but ever the wary explorer, Lara resumed scanning the ground with her faithful LED torch, along with the smooth stone wall to their right. She wasn't about to let her guard wane, no matter what the distractions were that might seek to take her focus elsewhere.

They soon came upon such a large cluster of crystal-tracks within the dark basalt wall that they no longer needed their torches in any case. The entire wall seemed to glow from a tangled mass of lines, some haphazardly jagged, others smooth and fluid, as if a drunken spider had spun several crystal webs throughout the rock, and changed tack half way through. They rounded a gently curving corner, and as Lara's gaze glided over the new sections of wall coming into view, her mouth fell open in unabashed astonishment.

There was another pointed arch doorway cut into the rock, the passageway, or room beyond, leading directly off into the basalt cliff. Around the doorway, the glowing crystal lines no longer appeared haphazard; they had been specifically shaped, into a scrolling pattern of Celtic-style patterns. Added to that, the stone, complete with intruded crystal, had been carved into bas-relief to produce raised patterns and identifiable shapes. A flowering vine appeared to twist and weave around the perimeter of the archway, as if a living forest plant guarded the doorway in a frozen bubble of time. Lara slowly stepped to regard the archway from directly in front, and tingling spines of disbelief suddenly skewered throughout her entire body.

"Jesus Christ!" The words spilled from her lips as if she'd peered through a window into the chaotic underworld of the tortured dead.

Tezra stopped beside her, his breath suddenly freezing within his lungs. "Now," he stammered, "there's a damn twist."

Lara stood, rigid, desperately searching for a logical explanation to what she saw. A sick joke? A trap? Some Goddamned elaborate hoax perhaps? Her mind dismissed each option even before the thoughts were fully formed. The place was clearly too old for any such theories to hold water. Either that, or somebody had gone to great lengths indeed to lure her to this very point, carefully crafting everything up until this location to appear genuine. Somehow, maddeningly, Lara's ever sifting mind dismissed that thought also.

Lara rounded on Tezra. "Okay," she pressed him. "Talk! What the hell is going on?"

"You think I have something to do with this?" he rebutted with firm resolve. "No, no and again – no! I told you – Thonapa told you – that you were expected here. You were supposed to come here! This is proof of that!"

Lara fixed him a high-tensile-steel stare, devoid of any hint of forbearance. "Did you ever stop and think that even with modern thinking and technology, what you're asking me to believe is considered impossible!"

"I think about it every day Lara! Every goddamn day! I don't know how, and I don't know why, but those Inca scholars discovered a technology, and made devices that have never been seen, or even theorized about since. Did you think this was a damn picnic or something! This has massive consequences Lara! Massive! And if this technology gets into the wrong hands – then only Armageddon can result!" Tezra did not smile, or seem to concoct the words. He was deadly serious.

Lara spun back to the archway, not sure what on Gods Earth to believe. Inescapable however, was the fact that the name 'Lara Croft' was carved into the crystal above the point of the arch. Her own name glowed, as if chiselled and crafted into the rock by mystic hands. No words existed then to describe what she felt, and, for the first time she could remember, she found herself hesitant to go any further, fearful that something beyond the door might dig into her past and open old wounds.

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