Uroboros: Resident Evil V

Chapter Twenty Five: From Above

"I had no idea that such a place existed here." Sheva commented, her words echoing off the stone walls. "My ancient ancestors once lived in places like this, which demonstrated their wealth as well as their faith to the old gods… it hurts me to see them living is such poverty now."

Scattered among the walls and carved stones, there were pieces of wooden scaffolding, which was basically the trunks of small trees that were tied together to form platforms that were mostly rotted away by now. They would have needed something like that to reach the higher areas while carving, Chris thought as they reached the bottom of the staircase, and he also wondered why if all of this stuff was hidden down there, probably along with a bunch of other places hidden throughout Africa, why the people hadn't tried to reclaim them?

Either way, maybe after this mission was over and the plague doctor was captures, they could report the location of this place to the government, since the people of the Kijuju Autonomous Zone deserved to have their history, but for right now catching Irving's partner and finding out what she knew was the only priority. None of the old history of Africa was going to mean a damn thing to anyone if Uroboros managed to… do whatever it was designed for, which he was pretty sure was bad for everyone, not just this part of the world.

"It kind of looks like this place wasn't finished." The young woman continued, looking at one of the many pillars that lined both sides of the long staircase. "See how some of the pillars up there have an archway between them, but these ones don't? Do you think maybe this place had to be abandoned in a hurry way back… what was that?"

Chris had been just about to reply with his own opinions about what happened to the people building this old temple or whatever it was, when he was stopped by a strange squeaking sound that echoed a little bit before fading away. As strange as it was to hear a sound like that, since there was nothing around them that looked like it would make such a noise, but then it came again while the whole chamber started to get darker. This was strange, because the only way for the place to get dark was for something to be blocking the light, so the Agent looked up…

At first he didn't understand what he was seeing; a large black shape that had not been there before, blocking almost a quarter of the chamber's skylight, but then the thing moved… starting to crawl itself the rest of the way inside, and that was when Chris realized where he had heard that strange squeaking sound before. It was only yesterday, in fact, while he and Sheva were traveling through Kijuju City's old mine, and it was only out of reflex that he was able to grab the young woman and pull her behind one of the decorative walls before the thing dropped down.

Well, it didn't exactly drop, falling only a few meters once clear of the sunroof, and then spreading its huge bat like wings to glide down while the chamber's dim lighting went back up to its normal level. Circling the whole place a couple times on the way down like it was a vulture in search of a dead carcass, the Agent held his hand over Sheva's mouth to keep her from making any noise that might attract the thing, since he knew from the last encounter how bat like the thing really was. But was it really the same creature from the old mine?

It definitely looked like the same one, with the front half being mostly a giant bat with the rear half looking mostly like the tail of a segmented insect, but it couldn't have been the same one, could it? Actually, he wasn't sure what thought was more unsettling; the possibility of there being more than one of those bat things, or that the same one had somehow managed to track him down over such a great distance. Nah, it couldn't have been the same one, but that didn't make the monster any less dangerous as it landed on the other side of the chamber and began moving around.

"This thing's nearly blind, but it's got great hearing." Chris whispered quietly right into her ear while taking his hand off the young woman's mouth. "We can't go back, so we're gonna have to sneak up the stairs without making a sound, okay?"

"Okay." Sheva whispered back, trying to keep herself from breathing too heavily. "Just… give me a moment."

Back in the old mine near Kijuju City, the other bat monster had dropped right on top of her from the ceiling, and since Chris was going to be having nightmares for years about just having to fight the thing off, he could only imagine how traumatic it had been for her. The monster was squeaking and clicking, constantly looking up into the air while sniffing around as if trying to locate its prey through echo-location, but the good news was that it was all the way on the other side of the chamber, so he could afford to wait until the young woman was ready.

Once she had composed herself, both of them took a deep breath while carefully stepping out from behind the decorative wall, and now the long staircase seemed like it was a hundred miles away. The monster had its back to them, investigating the other side of the chamber, which was probably why its big ears hadn't picked up their movement, so the Agent kept going while watching the ground for things that might make noise. So far he had avoided stepping on stone rubble and pieces of broken wood from the scaffolding, letting out a quiet sigh of relief when he finally stepped onto the stairs... only to have part of the edge break off.

Maybe it was because of how good the acoustics inside the chamber were, but when that piece of carved stone broke off underneath his heel, it crumbled and dropped to the floor with a lot louder of a noise than it should have. Suddenly the monster shrieked from behind, and since it was the only weapon he had to defend himself with, Chris spun around with the flare gun ready, and pulled the trigger. BOOM! Having forgotten how fast the monster was, all the Agent saw of the bat creature was a close up look at its fangs before it and everything around them vanished in a flash of red light, and now the monster was shrieking as if in pain, but all he could see was a red blur from being so close to the explosion.

"Run!" Sheva screamed, pulling his arm after something heavy crashed to the ground. "Chris, run!"

Not questioning the urgency in her voice, especially when it now seemed like the whole chamber was vibrating itself apart, so he allowed her to lead him along while stumbling blindly up the long staircase behind her. Thud! Thud! Thud! Something was crashing to the ground behind him, making the Agent try to run faster due to fear that the whole chamber was collapsing around them, and… and damn the staircase seemed to go up forever as he kept stumbling along toward the door.

Suddenly there was a wall, along with a flash of surprise and pain when Chris ran right into it, then Sheva screamed before one last thud of something crashing down right next to them… and then all was quiet. Well, they weren't dead, but the Agent was still having trouble seeing, so the young woman put some water from her canteen into his eyes, and it seemed to help, although several more minutes passed before he could see anything clearly. When things finally did come into focus, Chris got a better picture of what happened when he saw that it wasn't the chamber itself that had collapsed, just all of the pillars surrounding the stairway that had fallen over.

Way down at the bottom of the stairs, the bat creature's wing could be seen sticking out from under a couple of them, so nearest he could figure what happened was that the monster had been just as disoriented after the flare went off as he had, and it must have ran backwards into one of the pillars and knocked it over. The good news was that the creature wasn't moving, so hopefully it was dead, but now it was gonna be a lot harder to get out of this place if they ended up having to backtrack once they caught the plague doctor.

"Are you all right?" Sheva asked as he kept looking around. "How are your eyes?"

"Better." Chris replied when she helped him to his feet. "Have you tried the door yet?"

She hadn't, and apparently wasn't in a hurry to after being chased by that monster, so they waited for a bit just to calm down again, before trying the door… which actually opened pretty easily considering its age and size. Unlike the rotted wood that made up the broken scaffolding down below, the red colored double doors were in remarkably good condition, allowing the one they pushed to slowly swing open, revealing that this place was a lot bigger than they originally thought.

"My God… it's like a whole underground city." The Agent commented as they stepped through the door. "It must have taken decades to build all this."

"Maybe even longer than that." Sheva replied, left in awe just like he was at the sight before them. "How are we ever going to find that woman in a place like this?"

Where he had been expecting to find a large place of worship, beyond the red double doors was more like a lost city, with many stone roads and pathways carved throughout the chamber, which was even larger than the previous one, like the one with the crushed bat monster was nothing but the old city gates. There were sections where water flowed through canals and small aqueducts, and like in the previous chamber there was a large reflective gemstone that disbursed light from above… wait, actually there were several of them, each placed high up on a carved pillar, and each positioned directly beneath one of the many small holes in the ceiling.

The light level in there was better than the last chamber, but for this place to be so large, it was like the whole mountain had been hollowed out in order to create this hidden city, making the Agent grateful that they had come during daylight hours, or else it would have been really hard to navigate this place with only that flashlight. Hold on, there was something else, too… fire. Yeah, there were lit torches scattered around the city, as well as larger pyres that were guarded by… holy shit, they were guarded by more people from the village.

Covered in ash and war paint like the others, villagers carrying spears could be seen walking around the larger fires, but these ones weren't stumbling around or just standing there confused like the ones near the oil field. In fact, they seemed to be quite well organized, and if they weren't part of the Type 3 trials, that meant they were most likely infected with Type 2 Plagas, meaning that they were going to be a lot harder to get past without incident.