Disclaimer: Guess what? I still don't own Lara or Kurtis. :P

A/N: Thanks for hanging in there, sorry this took so long!

Chapter 10

Into The Abyss

"Well isn't this charming," Kurtis said, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he joined Lara on a ledge leading to nowhere. "What's the next step?"

Lara glowered at him, eyebrows raised. "If I'd thought of that, don't you think I'd have told you already?"

Kurtis backed away, hands up in mock surrender. "There's still the possibility that you don't entirely trust me."

"Right now I have no reason not to," Lara responded, examining the walls. "Although, there is the fact that you've been lying to me all along."

He turned to look at her, forehead creased in astonishment. "I have been?"

"Yes, you have been, Mr. Trencavel," she said, her eyes meeting his in the beam of her PLS.

"When I got home from Prague I had Bryce do a background check on you, see if we couldn't track your movements if you were still alive - that's how we knew about Christian Kline. He found that there was no Kurtis Trent prior to 1991 when you joined the Foreign Legion. I had him keep looking for anyone that might have disappeared, slipped through the cracks, as it were, around that timeframe and voila! There was Kurtis Trencavel. Why all the secrecy? The lies? What are you trying to hide?"

Kurtis closed his eyes, apparently not too keen on taking this unexpected trip down memory lane. He sat down on the ledge, looking out into solid darkness. "Trouble seems to track down any other Trencavel I know. I was just laying low."He looked up to see Lara heading back towards the slope. She ran onto it and kicked off, propelling herself back out towards the ledge, only higher. She's going to go over the edge! Kurtis thought as he watched her fly through the air. At the last second she grabbed onto a barely visible ledge running above their heads.

Lara's strong fingers grabbed onto the smooth stone and latched on. She planted her boots firmly against the wall, a bit disgruntled that there was no footholds below her. The fingers of her left hand reached into the ledge and touched something grainy and powdery.

"Toss me your lighter!" she called down to Kurtis, who complied, sending the small metal object sailing.

She caught it and ignited it, putting it to the powder above her and dropping down from the ledge as soon as it caught. Lara landed softly and looked up as scarlet flames set out , traveling ahead of them and behind, going around a curve above the slope. Kurtis took a few steps forward, his face lit in the harsh red light and there was a low rumbling. He stepped back, expecting the floor to collapse beneath him, but instead, the flames above went out. He turned to look at Lara, who merely shrugged. There was a loud rushing noise and the flames erupted, much higher than this time, shooting out emerald.

A long hallway became visible. There were no traps, no obstacles of any kind, just a highly polished floor of what appeared to be red marble. Lara examined it from a distance, looking for any sign of danger. Kurtis moved over to the edge and had begun to drop down when she saw it.

"Wait!" she exclaimed. "That floor doesn't appear to be entirely stable. Look, there's a crack, just there."

Lara took a glow stick from her pack and activated it, stepping to the end of the platform and dropping it. To their astonishment, it didn't clatter to the floor below, but illuminated the shadow cast by the platform they were standing on, revealing, that it wasn't a shadow at all, but a large gap.

"We'll have to climb down," Kurtis said, noting the roughly hewn rock below. "Got another glow stick?"

She tossed him one and he rigged it into the strap of his shoulder holster. Lara looked down, the dark face of the wall illuminated in the beam of her light.

"Right then, this should be fun." she said, climbing down and placing her foot in the first gap she could reach.

The pair moved quickly, purposefully down the rock face. Lara detached her light to take a better look at the surface below her. She clipped it back in place and took a deep breath, pushing off from the wall, her legs behind her and her arms outstretched. She fell for several long seconds before her fingers latched onto an outcropping. Lara kicked out at the wall, looking for a foothold and finding none. A small cloud of dust and pebbles showered Lara's face and a sickening crack met her ears. She began looking more furiously, finally looking down. It was a long way down, but chances were slight that it would be fatal... The ledge gave way under her fingertips, sending her sailing once more. A few feet before impact, Lara felt a hand grab at her back, slowing her speed and allowing her to roll safely onto the cold stone floor.

Lara sat back, catching her breath, as she saw Kurtis about twenty feet above her. He climbed down a few more feet before letting go, landing in a crouching position at her feet with a smirk across his face.

"Be more careful next time, why dontcha?" he remarked, holding out a hand to help her up.

She gave him irritated look before standing up on her own power and brushing the dust from her clothes. Kurtis took a few steps forwards and the black area before him erupted into the same green fire that burned above and he couldn't believe what he saw. They heard gears begin to grind behind walls and a set of wooden spears sprang up from the floor, met quickly by an offset grouping from the ceiling, blocking their path.

"You have got to be kidding me," he said, gazing through the rapidly moving spears and down the seemingly endless corridor.

"That floor there, that's a pitfall. See how it's tiled, not rough like the floor here?" Lara said from his side.

Kurtis let out a deep sigh as he looked towards the pile of rubble from the broken ledge. "Still sure about this?"

"Absolutely," she replied with a smile.

His eyes slid shut and his arms raised, outstretched towards the boulders. The largest of the pieces began to tremble slightly before it shot into the air, hovering half way between the floor and the ceiling. Kurtis brought it around so that it was in position between himself and the spears and made a thrusting motion with his arm, sending the rock flying. It shot through the middle of the spears, leaving behind it a mess of splintered wood that continued to make half-hearted attempts to impale whomsoever might cross the newly forged path. Lara led the way, twisting her way through the shards and coming to a stop at the end, gazing out at the next obstacle.

Lara took a step towards the marble tiles. The emerald fire reflected off of the floor, illuminating a path of green tiles in between the myriad of other colors. She stepped forward and began to take the first step onto the green tile closest to her, stopping as Kurtis stepped closer and the light changed once more.

"It's not marble - those are jewels," he stated as yellow flames flickered high above. "Those tiles that were green before, now they're yellow. Those are probably opal. The stones that are green now are blue without the light. It's still a path, but it'll be a bit tougher."

"Right, I'll go first," Lara replied, stepping lightly on the first green marker with no difficulty.

She leapt to the next one and a whirring noise and a cloud of dust caught her attention. She looked to the right and launched herself onto the next stone, just in time to keep her head attached to her neck as a blade came spinning out from the wall beside her. From there, she marked her path as quickly as possible and leapt to the next marker, jumped a blade as it made a swipe at her feet, and then placed her palms flat on the top of the next blade that targeted her, using it to vault herself into the air, twirling gracefully as she stuck the landing, facing back towards Kurtis on the other side.

"There's no way I can flip like that!" he called across, placing both feet on the first step of the perilous path.

After the first blade, Kurtis noticed something Lara hadn't - the stones split into two possible paths, the other was somewhat more direct, albeit meant for someone with strong, long legs. It also took him closer to the paths of the blades, if he was wrong. Kurtis leapt to the next stone and made it, although his left foot clipped the corner of the stone behind him as he landed. There was a clashing sound and a series of blades swung down from the ceiling. He ran, full tilt, towards the platform where Lara stood waiting for him, ducking and rolling from the blades as the floor behind him crumbled. Lara braced herself and extended both arms towards him as he kicked off from a piece of the floor just before it tumbled away. He caught on with both hands and Lara pulled as hard as she could, sending her falling onto the hard floor beneath, Kurtis toppling down onto her from the force.

"Get off of me!" she complained. "I can't breathe!"

Kurtis rolled off her and sat up, an incredulous look on his face. "Well you weren't complaining about that the other night... Are you calling me fat?"

"Oh no, why would I ever say such a thing?" Lara replied sarcastically. "You're bleeding, but the way. Did you know?"

He raised a hand and wiped up the blood on his arm that flowed from a wide gash just below his shoulder. Lara opened her pack and pulled out a roll of gauze and an antibiotic ointment. She dressed the wound, packed up, and turned back towards the pit behind them. Had there not been any movement, it would have appeared to go on forever.

"What is that shit?" Kurtis asked at the churning black liquid beneath.

Without a word, Lara reopened her pack and pulled out her skirt, lowering it so that it brushed the liquid. When she pulled it out, she saw that the hem was smoking and several inches had burnt off.

"Acid. You don't want to see what this stuff will do to flesh," she replied, a mental image of Jonathan Reiss clawing one last time at Pandora's Box flashing into her mind.

"Ouch," Kurtis replied. "Who was he?"

Lara had, of course, neglected to take into consideration the fact that Kurtis had free entry into her mind. "An evil man with evil motives. He got his comeuppance."

She discarded the skirt in the pool and moved towards a wide section of the hallway, examining it for traps and finding none. As soon as Lara stepped down, the lights dimmed and she could hear the stone scraping against the floor.

"Run!" she called back to Kurtis and they both took off down the corridor.

They made it to the end to find... "Nothing! There's nothing here!" Kurtis shouted.

"That doesn't make any sense!" Lara shouted back, the walls closing closer together around them. "There's got to be something!"
"No! There isn't! It's a dead end!" he said, hopelessly. "We might be able to make it back if we run fast enough."

Lara looked at him through the inky blackness and then turned to face the black wall in front of them. "You can run if you'd like, but I think I'm going to take a leap of faith."

Her arms flew out to her side and she propelled herself forward in a perfect swan dive. Kurtis watched as she vanished into the darkness, hoping to see her roll onto the floor or at least hear it, but there was no trace of her.

"Lara! Damnit, she'd better be right about this," he said, looking back at the narrowing gap before diving forwards into the dark.