Ahhh, here we are! I know I said that this would be up sooner than it is, but it turned out to be much longer than I had expected. Whoops.

(In fact, this and the next chapter were supposed to be one, but then it hit 4000 words and I decided to split them.)

And, to answer princesskitty68's question: no, this is not the last chapter, and neither is Chapter 27!

Anyway… To be honest, I'm pretty terrified to be posting this. So, I'll just pray that you guys don't hate it…

Here you go!

Arabic:

Alhamdulillah- Praise to God

CHAPTER 26

This was it. If any trio were going to defeat Imhotep, it would be Jonathan, Evie and good old Rick O'Connell.

They had made it this far. If they survived, they could claim all the glory that accompanied saving the world. That was their job.

Perry had concluded that her job was an entirely different one. It meant letting Jonathan go, but it was what she knew to be right.

Her job was to make sure Ardeth Bay got out of Hamunaptra alive. Even if that meant somehow hauling his near-dead, half-comatose behind out of the innermost chamber of the City of the Dead.

Luckily, she found him in not nearly quite as bad shape.

"Ardeth!"

Noting that Beni wasn't lurking around the hallways (indicating he had indeed left), she discovered the room of Horus' statue with ease.

A layer of smoke had drifted up to its ceiling, and tiny flames lingered around the massive man-made hole in the wall that served as her doorway.

Apparently, Rick had finally found a chance to use that stick of dynamite.

And Perry could see why he had been forced to do so. The only other exit was filled with mummies, and it was in this darkened hallway that Ardeth was trapped.

"Pyrrah?!"

Through the lack of light, she managed to make out the bandaged limbs and hostile movements of the undead as they attacked the Medjai. He was doing well to hold them off, kicking and punching and throwing them away, but the onslaught was overwhelming.

Perry skidded to a stop at the room's entrance and, as steadily as she could with shaking hands, raised Beni's gun.

The commotion was hard to navigate. If a bullet were to mistakenly land a single inch out of place, it could mean death for Ardeth.

She pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times. The targeted mummies screeched and wailed, unable to be killed but collapsing from whatever sort of shock or pain they temporarily felt.

There was a hollow thud as Ardeth grabbed another by its rotting shoulders and hurled it into the opposite wall. He turned to her as she shoved her way to his side.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, out of breath.

A screaming mummy launched itself onto his back, catching them both off guard. Perry yelped, and nearly dropped Beni's gun as she jumped to his aid. Together, they dragged it off of him, and Ardeth kicked it backwards into two mummies behind it. They toppled like bowling pins, ghastly screaming making the two living people cringe.

"I'm here to help you!" she snapped at him, annoyed by his questioning of her motives.

"You should follow O'Connell and Carnahan," he told her. "Help them save Evelyn and stop the creature!"

Perry fired the last of her shots at the mummies as they clawed their way to their feet, freeing up a bit of space for she and Ardeth. Beni's gun was useless now, so she let it fall to the ground.

"They're on top of things," she said. "I'm here to help you."

He frowned at her, staring as if her facial expression might betray hidden dementia to him and thereby justify her actions.

There was a raw screech from the corridor's end, one that might have belonged to a prehistoric lizard. Of course, they knew it belonged to another gaggle of mummies.

"You are putting your life at risk," he said quietly, eyes shifting between her and the slinking shadows cast by the encroaching undead. "You should flee to the surface."

Perry shook her head, watching him with a frown that was only produced from hiding fear.

"I am a Medjai too, am I not?"

For a moment she expected another protest, a statement of how she had not sworn to any oath, of how he did not need her help and how she should run to safety.

Instead, Ardeth looked at her with faint surprise. A curt nod told her he had accepted that she would fight the enemy at his side.

The mummies poured into the hall in a stumbling wave of uncontrolled limbs and deteriorating grey rags. They moaned and shrieked as they pushed each other up against the walls, clamouring to annihilate the living as their master commanded.

"Na uzo billah," Ardeth said, voice low and foreboding.

Allah protect us.

"Right now, I'll accept protection from Amun, Osiris or bloody Seth, just as long as we get out of this place alive," Perry whispered back.

They didn't have time to say anything further to one another.

Ardeth stepped forward so that the mummies reached him first. He grabbed the skulls of the first two and smashed them together, their fragile bones collapsing inwards like fine china. The mummies wailed and dropped to the ground, their dead brethren trampling forth over their still-squirming bodies.

Rotted fingers began to reach nearer and nearer to Perry's face, so much so that her view of Ardeth and much of the tunnel was blocked.

She frowned and grabbed one of the outstretched arms of the dead, suddenly filled with venomous determination to defeat these damn things.

Giving the arm a yank, it came clean off the mummy's torso, fingers still wiggling in distress. It began to wail, and so she used the detached limb as a weapon of her own. She swung it at the mummy's head, which flew backwards and disappeared into the darkness.

More mummies closed in, and one by one she batted them away with the body-less arm. Until the arm's bones broke, of course.

Nearby, Ardeth was thrashing around, violently unleashing the wrath of a Medjai onto the servants of his people's greatest enemy. This was what he had been trained for since he was young; he certainly wasn't going to pull any punches.

Perry found her own punches doing a deal of damage, but it was trickier for her to hold them off than the well-built swordsman. She yelped in pain when one of the mummies caught hold of her hair, pulling it violently into the swarm of decay that encircled her.

Whilst she struggled against the stinging pull on her scalp, another grabbed her arm. The mummies may have crumbled to no more than shattered clay when opposed by a human, but when they got their hands on living flesh, thousands of years of a curse's work brought about an unquenchable anger.

Rotted fingernails dug themselves into the joint of Perry's elbow, causing her arm to jerk in agony as they tore through skin and agitated nerves.

A hurt groan escaped her throat as they began to capitalize, gripping her wrists and shoulders, tugging at her hair and shirt. Jagged bones, fractured from decay, scratched into her forearms and back and neck, and panic arose when the unlatched, elongated jaw of a bandaged face began to draw closer.

Perry gasped in peril, unable to back away, unable to free herself from the steely grip they had on her body—

And then that unlatched jaw with its horrid broken teeth was yanked away from her face, the scream that followed suggesting that Ardeth didn't take kindly to mummies assaulting his friend.

Wrenching the vile, mindless creatures off of her, Perry found herself with enough freedom to fight back again.

Pulling it downwards, she grabbed a mummy by the shoulders and kneed it in the chest; her kneecap broke straight through the front of its lungs. Dead fingers on her shoulder then sparked an instinctive jerk of her elbow, which flung backwards and cracked the front of a hollow skull.

Ardeth was at her side again within a moment, and suddenly any vulnerability had disappeared. Side by side, they scrapped and clawed, punched and kicked and shoved the undead around, until they were the dominant ones despite the seemingly endless stream of Ancient Egyptian corpses.

Finally, the last body of the mummified throng was defeated, head crushed into the sand beneath Ardeth's foot.

Silence settled in the hallway, but neither of them could recognise it due to the buzz of adrenaline in their ears.

"D— Did we do it?" Perry panted. "Is it done?"

Ardeth's chest rose and fell with shallow breaths as he scoped out the perimeter of the corridor. All was still in the Horus statue room and its hallways.

He shook his head.

"That was one swarm," he said. "More may find us soon."

Perry looked over at him.

He seemed fine. Taller and stronger than before, in her eyes. Battle suited him, but he wasn't so cruel a soul as to enjoy it.

"Are you hurt?" she breathed.

He shook his head, but didn't look at her. He began to turn on the spot, robes swishing around his feet as he looked for an escape route.

His eyes settled on the Horus statue. Apparently he had made up his mind regarding their next move, but then a glimmer of remembrance that Perry was there passed over his face in distraction.

"What about yourself? Are you injured?"

She shook her head to spare him worry, although her shoulder was aching badly and she felt bruised all over.

Giving Ardeth a look of desperation, she let out a sigh when he took her by the wrist and pulled her into his arms. She shut her eyes tight against his chest; they held each other firmly, a strange wave of urgency provoking this embrace.

He softly stroked her hair, keeping her head close to him, as if his arms wouldn't let danger reach her again. She could feel his chin rest affectionately on the top of her head.

Perhaps it was from shock, but something about being so close to him felt... natural. She didn't want to let go.

"We must leave this place now," he said, quietly. "Or further risk our lives."

Perry nodded against his robes.

What had become of Rick, Evie and Jonathan, she had no clue. But they didn't have another option. Should another group of mummies attempt to take them out, they might not possess the stamina or strength needed to face them.

"Okay," she said, stepping away from him.

They hurriedly headed to the room of the Horus statue with intentions to flee. No mummies lay in their path: the coast was clear for now. Glancing at the dynamite-hole in the wall, Perry stopped in her tracks and gasped.

"Wait!" she yelped. "The Book of the Dead!"

Ardeth frowned in confusion. He was obviously eager to escape Hamunaptra, but he paused to question her.

"What of it?"

"I took it from Imhotep's resurrection table," she said. "I hid it, so that nobody would find it until I got to you."

Ardeth looked puzzled, his eyebrows raising a tad.

"We must retrieve it. Let us hurry."

Perry led him through the maze that was Hamunaptra, ears perked for any sounds, eyes peeled in the dim light. She prayed Ardeth had a better sense of direction than she did, lest they wonder aimlessly among these halls until an ironic death claimed them.

"Here, this is where I put it."

They had almost missed that odd little room with the black panelled walls. She took him by the hand and pulled him inside, leaving him at the doorway as she scuttled over to the Book of the Dead's location.

Ardeth inspected the stone walls from his spot, eyes narrowing at the golden hieroglyphs that trickled down their fronts.

"Pyrrah..."

Perry crouched, knees hitting the cool sand as she peered into the shadows.

"I left it in one of these gaps..."

"Pyrrah..."

His voice sounded reserved, some kind of suspicion making him tight-lipped. She could hear him step gently towards the panels, perhaps getting a better look at those hieroglyphics.

"Oh, that's right, here it is!"

Perry caught sight of that odd wall-extension, its bronze Anubis head reminding her that she had placed the book below it.

"Pyrrah, I think this room—"

"Got it!"

Fumbling around in the gap in the panels, she finally managed to get a decent grip on the heavy book. Fingers finding the obsidian spine, she dragged it out with a couple of heaves.

"This thing is very heavy, you know," she said to Ardeth, so flustered that she didn't realise she was interrupting him. "You would think they could have made it out of papyrus like a regular book, wouldn't you?"

Before Ardeth could tell her what he had read on the walls, Perry got to her feet.

The Black Book was indeed heavy, however, and so she used that convenient wall-extension to pull herself up.

At least, she was using it, until it gave way beneath her hand.

She jerked her fingers away from the sudden movement. Anubis' ornamental head began to slide downwards, making a mechanically slow descent towards the sand.

"Why is that moving?" she asked Ardeth, who was staring at it with fearful eyes.

"I think," he replied, "that you have just pulled a lever."

A lever? she thought. What type of lever could possibly—

The panels seemed to swallow the Anubis-headed lever, but as it disappeared, a mild rumbling began to broil beneath their feet.

Perry stared at the sand. The grains were vibrating, more so as this rumbling increased. Was it an earthquake? Some strange volcanic eruption?

Hugging the Book of the Dead tighter to her chest, a terrible, terrible thought crept into her mind.

She remembered, the day after Jonathan found the key, the meeting in the curator's office. Jonathan had been babbling on about Hamunaptra and it's myths...

The entire necropolis was rigged to sink into the sand. On the Pharaoh's command, a flick of the switch! The whole place could disappear beneath the dunes.

Horror setting in, she glanced at the spot where the jackal-headed switch had jutted out from the panels, and then at Ardeth.

"You're not thinking the same thing I am... Are you?" she asked, feebly.

Ardeth's eyes shot to the roof. Tiny waterfalls of sand were beginning to leak from it, trickling down and pooling in little mounds on the floor. A loud cracking noise made Perry jump; the ceiling sounded as if it were going to cave in, and the ground give way beneath them.

Ardeth urgently held out his hand to her, face having turned that grave, serious way it did when he sensed danger.

"We must leave! Now!" he practically shouted.

Keeping the Book of the Dead stowed under one arm, Perry found herself being dragged down corridors, trying to keep up with Ardeth's panicked pace.

Normally she would have taken the lead, been more authoritative in an attempt to get them out of harm's way. But the ceilings were descending, and the ancient necropolis reeked of catastrophe.

It was like a nightmare. Or, in Perry's case, a reminder of a very, very bad childhood experience.

"Are we going to die?" she squeaked.

Her own voice startled her, the childlike, high pitch of it, the shakiness due to fear and oncoming tears. Never before had she been so terrified. Rocks were falling from the ceiling, rubble and dust filling the open spaces of air.

Ardeth didn't respond. He was searching for a way out. At first, he paused by the treasure room, but then thought otherwise.

Holding Perry's hand a little tighter with every rounded corner, at last he brought them to a halt by a small doorway.

And at the end of the tunnel beyond it, there was sunlight.

"Go through there!" he instructed her, guiding her towards the passage.

Its entrance was slowly being cut off by a descending stone wall. There was not enough room for them both to slip through simultaneously, yet the other could get trapped on the wrong side.

"Hurry!"

His voice became hazy, and her pleading eyes and worried expression did nothing to stop him from pushing her through the lessening archway. She ducked and stumbled through, sunlight beckoning her from the end of the passage.

Now, it was Ardeth's turn. He would have to crawl through, quickly, or be crushed or trapped.

"Quickly, Ardeth! Hurry!" Perry begged him, coming to her senses a little now that survival was close enough to taste.

The space between stone and bone was shrinking. She put down the Book of the Dead, reached out and grabbed his arms. Summoning all of her available strength, she heaved until he was dragged clear of the wall.

His feet made it through just seconds before the stone closed shut on the sandy floor.

But there was no time to celebrate quite yet. Ardeth got to his feet in the same time it took Perry to retrieve the book, and then they were out of Hamunaptra.

By the time they stopped running, the desert was all that lay in front of them, and the City of the Dead far, far behind.

Resisting the urge to collapse wasn't an easy one. Perry dropped the Book of the Dead, and stood practically gasping for breath.

"Alhamdulillah," she said, shaking her head at the open blue skies.

For once in her life, no more words would to spring to her mind. She always had a quip to snap at Jonathan, or a joke to snicker to Evie. Now, only the word Alhamdulillah was running endlessly through her head— because she and Ardeth Bay had survived.

She felt him at her side, and without words, her hand found his. Their fingers intertwined as they each watched the City of the Dead fell to pieces. Briefly, she wondered if they had held hands a lot as children.

"Pyrrah."

His voice seemed a million miles away.

Turning to gaze up at that familiar face, Perry found that he was looking at her with a sort of heaviness in his eyes and frown that she hadn't seen before. It wasn't that he looked upset, or angry; it was as if he was watching for some movement she might give, awaiting some sort of gesture on her part.

The crumbling Hamunaptra in her peripheral vision began to lose importance, slipping from her mind as other thoughts took residence there.

Ardeth Bay, the boy who had grown to believe his best friend had died all those years ago, had just saved her life. Saved both of their lives— he could take the credit for that last dash to freedom, during which she was too blinded by fear to perform many heroics.

She imagined how he must have longed for that chance as a boy. To be able to save her life, to do what everybody else had failed to do and change the way fate was cruelly twisted.

He must have entertained such painful fantasies, dreamed of impossible scenarios with her that had long slipped beyond his reach. Perhaps, she thought, she was the reason for his ever-present frown, for that dark look on his face that suggested he was disappointed with the evil in everything.

But now here they were. Here she was, alive and well at his side, and he had saved her life.

For just a moment, Perry understood exactly what was going through Ardeth's mind.

Which was why, when he swooped in close to her, she threw her inhibitions to the wind and met him in a kiss.