Sorry everyone for the long wait. A lot of things happening in my life.
I don't anything from Tomb Raider. All OCs belong to me and Fang.
Chapter 8: The Hidden City
The woman led Lara and Owen to a room with a large cloth for a door covering,
"We've prepared some clothes for you, Lara. Once you've finished changing, come find me."
Lara nodded before she went to get changed.
Waiting a minute, and making sure no one was watching him; Owen slipped into the room, just as Lara got off her top.
She had on a black bra underneath, with a sexy lace.
"...Whoa..." whispered Owen as he swallowed the lump in his throat, causing Lara to glance back at him and smirk.
"Like what you see?" she asked.
"I guess you noticed what I was eyeing when I caught you looking at Victoria's Secret," he replied.
Lara laughed at that while Owen walked up to her and kissed the back of her neck, causing her to gasp.
"Owen!" she exclaimed.
"What?" he whispered, playing innocent.
"You know what," Lara said. "Stop it."
"Stop what?" Owen asked before he got closer. "You mean this?" He kissed the back of her neck again, causing her to bite her neck. "Or this?" He gently blew in her ear.
She turned around to face him,
"As much as I want to continue, we ARE guests here, so..."
Owen sighed, "Sometimes I hate it when you're right."
"But later, I promise," she said, pressing her breasts against his chest.
"You owe me," Owen said as he playfully tapped her nose.
She giggled before she went to finish changing.
She examined what she'd been given; it was a blue and gold Paititian tunic.
It was blue with yellow zigzagged stripes that went across horizontally, and it reached down all the way to her ankles. There was also a dark blue cloth wrapped around her chest. It was a bit different from her usual clothing: a bit more modest-looking than what she was normally used to.
There was also a necklace, with bronze/gold medallions clumped together, a gold bracelet and some sandals.
Owen whistled, impressed.
"You look like a Mayan warrior," he said.
"I thought the same thing," Lara replied.
The two of them left the room to meet up with the woman and her son, who led them outside to their village, Paititi.
It was very large.
There were houses everywhere, built along the hills.
"This is incredible," Lara gasped.
"Forget village," said Owen. "This place is big enough to be a freakin' city!"
"Welcome to Paititi," The woman said.
"I...we don't know your name," Lara stammered.
"I apologize," The woman said. "As the rebel leader, I have to be careful. I am the rightful Queen, Unuratu."
"Uh...did you say 'Queen'?" asked Owen.
"That's right," Unuratu answered. "Is that a problem?"
"Oh, no, no, of course not!" Owen defended. "I'm just surprised, that's all."
Unuratu then looked to her son. "Etzli, you still owe me a status report."
"Yes, Mother," the boy, Etzli, answered. "There was one thing, this morning. I saw Hakan debating with his neighbor, he seemed angry. As I came near, they suddenly stopped talking. Then they started laughing, as if one had told a joke."
"He's planning something," Unuratu muttered. "Good work."
"Thank you, Mother!" Etzli replied before he stopped to a man who was picking some plants. "Hey."
"Hi," the man answered while Lara, Owen, and Unuratu walked on without him.
"As you can see," Unuratu began, "Secrets don't stay secret for very long in Paititi. If you were to deviate from the plan..."
"You'd find out quickly," said Lara, just as Etzli caught up to them. "I see that."
As they walked by one man, he looked to Unuratu and spoke to her in a different language.
"Hello, Your Majesty," he said in his native tongue. "Who are the newcomers?"
"They are here to help me find something I lost," said Unuratu.
"They are not spies from the Cult?" asked the man.
"You have nothing to worry about," Unuratu assured.
They walked by a couple women as they kept going down some stone steps.
"Was father a scout like me?" Etzli asked.
"He was a hunter," Unuratu answered.
"Was he ferocious?"
"He could be...but he was also very kind."
"That's what every good hunter should be," Owen said.
Lara smiled a bit, but then she frowned, thinking of Amelia back in the States. She really missed her, right now...but it was important to focus. After all, if Lara didn't do something soon, the whole world would be at stake.
They eventually reached a small bridge that connected the two parts of the village.
"Look around if you wish," Unuratu offered. "I will be in the market across the river when you're ready to find the Box of Ix Chel."
Etzli and Owen took a moment to pet a llama, which nuzzled them both.
"Hey there, Cualli!" said Etzli.
"I hope he doesn't spit on me," said Owen.
"How can you tell if a lama likes you? You can't," Lara joked.
Owen laughed, "You remembered that from AFV!"
Etzli and Owen took a moment to pet a llama, which nuzzled them both.
Lara chuckled as she kept walking with Unuratu. Owen followed as well.
They made their way through the marketplace as they followed.
"Wow, beautiful," Lara said.
"The market has everything!" Etzli exclaimed with pride.
"Etzli, I'm sure they've seen many markets before," Unuratu told him.
"Outside?"
"Yes."
"But, ours is the best."
The couple chuckled at that.
"We're not far now," said Unuratu as they approached a crowd of villagers.
"Hakan!" Etzli exclaimed excitedly as he got closer.
"What is this?" Owen asked.
"Cultists, waiting for their "deity" to appear," Unuratu answered. "When the catastrophes come, the god Kukulkan must be sacrificed to power the sun. Otherwise, the world dies."
"Sacrifice a god?" Lara asked incredulously.
"The sacrifice is my duty," Unuratu added. "But this cult leader wants to take my place and attempt to become the god. He believes we can remake the world and live in a paradise of his design."
"...Remake the world..." whispered Lara.
"Lara...you don't think...?" Owen asked.
"Yes, I do," Lara answered.
"What is it?" Unuratu inquired.
"We've heard those words before," answered Lara.
"There he is!" Etzli said.
Four men came across a long stone bridge, carrying someone on a throne. He was wearing a tribal outfit with some feathers, and a tribal mask. However, on closer inspection, Lara and Owen recognized him.
"Wait, that's Doctor Dominguez," Owen said.
"Behold!" Dominguez exclaimed. "The instrument of our unity and salvation!" He held up the dagger. "Soon, our dreams of peace and safety will be realized!"
"...They already call him Kukulkan," Unuratu whispered to Lara and Owen, "But his real name is Amaru. He was born here but raised- lied to- by outsiders. The people believe in him..."
"But you don't?" Lara asked.
Unuratu shook her head, "My late husband, Sayri, was his brother. They had differences over the future of Paititi. When Sayri died, Amaru devoted himself to the Cult."
"Talk about not seeing things eye to eye..." Owen muttered while Dominguez, or rather Amaru, waved to the people.
"You have seen the storms," he addressed. "You are worried about worse to come."
One particular man in the crowd seemed to glare at him.
"I assure you that Paititi will persevere, and thrive, forever," Amaru continued while the crowd cheered.
"I know him well," Unuratu said. "If Amaru is successful, all of us who disagree will never see this "paradise". The rebels will be discarded."
"Not if they don't find the box," Owen said.
"Yes, our best hope is to find it first," Unuratu agreed. "Perhaps Amaru might still be brought to see love and reason."
"Death to the outsiders!" yelled one man in the crowd. "Retribution will come!"
"Hakan!" Unuratu called, harshly. "Enough."
"We must strike while the snake is within reach...!" Hakan whispered.
"Justice will be met in good time," Unuratu assured. "Do not jeopardize our rebellion for the sake of impulse."
Hakan looked like he understood, and walked away. But he stopped, pulled a knife and ran back toward the cultists, but Unuratu grabbed him and pinned him against the wall. One of the cultists noticed them, but paid no mind.
"Etzli, go scout ahead," Unuratu told her son. "We'll meet you at the edge of the mountain."
The boy nodded and left.
"Last warning," she told Hakan, who dropped the knife and walked off.
"Sheesh," Owen muttered. "You'd think people would learn to respect orders."
"Follow Etzli," Unuratu told them. "Your clothing won't hide you long from these guards."
"Hmm, I'm gonna need a disguise as well," Owen suggested.
"I have an idea," Lara pulled him along as she left.
Then, one of the cultists approached Unuratu,
"You've been warned to keep the peace."
"I was just out for a pleasant stroll with my son," she replied.
"Hmph," the cultist scoffed. "Amaru is losing his patience."
"...It won't happen, again," Unuratu assured, but while she spoke with him, Lara and Owen slipped through the crowd.
"Jonah, can you answer?" asked Lara.
"Yeah," Jonah answered. "We set up camp with Uchu. Everything's okay."
"What's going on your end?" asked Sam.
"Dominguez is here," Owen said. "He's the leader of the Cult of Kukulkan, that's what Unuratu's rebels are fighting."
"What?" Sam gasped in shock.
"He's been here for years," Lara continued. "Trinity controls Paititi."
"Fuck," Tommy cursed.
"We're going to the Eye of the Serpent," Lara told them. "We have to get the Box before the next cataclysm hits."
"Well, good luck you guys," said Sam.
"How's Tsume doing, over there?" Owen asked.
"Restless," Tommy answered. "We're afraid if we take our eyes off him for even a second, he'll bolt off looking for you guys."
"Hang in there buddy," Owen said, hearing a whimper in response.
Soon, he put the radio away. "So, Lara...where should we start from?"
"We have to start somewhere," Lara said as she looked around.
"First, I need a disguise of my own," Owen snuck over to a hidden space where one of the cultists was standing guard.
Once he found a secluded spot, he called out with an accented voice,
"Psst? I found that Croft woman."
The guard turned and walked over to where he heard the voice, only to find nothing.
Owen grabbed him from behind, covering his mouth and snapping his neck.
Then he dragged the body off into the bushes where he wouldn't be seen. After a while, he came back out, wearing the guard's armor.
"What do you think?" asked Owen.
"I can hardly recognize you," Lara quipped, causing them both to chuckle.
"Must be the face paint," he replied.
After a couple hours of exploring the village, and some nearby tombs, the couple went to find Etzli.
He was waiting at the entrance to what looked like a temple.
"Where's my mother?" he asked.
"She's settling matters between the guards and Hakan," Owen answered.
"What's it like, outside Paititi?" Etzli asked.
"Well..." Lara began. "A lot of things. It's a very big world."
"Bigger than Paititi?" asked Etzli.
"Kid, it's bigger than 100 Paititis," Owen answered.
"What?!" Etzli was shocked. "Will you take me there?"
"I think your mother might have something to say about that," Lara told him snidely.
"Yeah, and we don't really need to get on her bad side," Owen said.
"What you're looking for is in there," Etzli told them.
"How will we know when we've found the right chamber?" Lara asked.
"By the smell of death," Etzli replied. "If you survive, you can find your way back through the old irrigation system. I'll meet you there, but be careful; the Cult often patrols there."
"Oh, that's just what we needed..." Owen said. "Thanks for your help, Etzli."
Etzli nodded before he ran off.
The couple went over to the entrance and squeezed through the narrow gap that led inside.
The whole place was lit with the color orange, from the four fires.
"Man...I seriously feel like Indiana Jones, right now," Owen said.
There was a bit of jungle, then the next part of the temple, with more sunlight coming in.
They went left, through a corridor, coming to chasm.
Lara saw a pole sticking out of the rocks, then took a deep breath.
"All right..." she whispered before she soon ran and jumped across, grabbed onto the pole, then swung to the rock wall in front of her, using her pickaxes to climb down, then descended on a rope before swinging onto a cliff.
The way across the next chasm was to swing from two beams.
"Wow, we're gonna have to Spider-Man this," Owen lamented a bit.
Lara went first, swinging her grapple axes while being careful to avoid the spikes on the beams before she reached the other side.
"Your turn, Owen!" she called.
He did the same, more smoothly than she did.
They went up some steps and came to a small tunnel they could crouch through.
However, there was a VERY foul odor coming from that direction.
"Oh, jeez, you smell that?" Owen asked while holding his nose. "Smells worse than when Tsume got sprayed by that skunk that one time."
"Oh, bullocks," Lara muttered.
Still, they pushed through it and crouched into the next room, which led to where the smell was coming from.
They squeezed through a tight gap to the next chamber, where the smell was.
"The smell of death?" Owen muttered. "More like what the inside of a snake's belly smells like."
"I guess this is why it's called "The Belly of the Serpent"," said Lara.
The chamber was fairly dark, the walls were covered in dried up blood and who knows what else, and the reason for the smell; there were hundreds of freshly rotting corpses everywhere.
"Three years of this kind of thing, I might finally puke," Owen muttered, gagging a bit.
"Me, too..." Lara said as she covered her mouth, "But we can't lose our nerve, yet."
Soon, they began to make their way across a beam, but it began to break halfway.
"Whoa!" Owen cried.
"Steady," Lara said before she and Owen jumped off and grabbed onto a rock wall with their pickaxes.
They jumped up, grabbed the ledge and climbed up.
Lara fell against a corpse that was torn in half, was missing both arms, and it's mouth. She crawled away from it, coughing and trying not to throw up.
"Ugh...I feel like I'm in an episode of The Walking Dead," she said.
"Be grateful that these things aren't moving," said Owen.
They crouched along some bones and more bodies till they came to a beam.
They jumped from it, swinging from a hanging wooded bar, and clung to a rock wall with their pickaxes.
Then, using ropes, they rappelled down the wall, then swung across and grabbed onto a wooden cage. When they attempted to jump onto another, which had a dead man inside, dangling from the top by his wrists, the cage almost broke apart.
"Ah, dammit!" Lara cursed as crows began to fly around her.
Despite that, they managed to climb on top of it, then jumped to the next wall in front of them and climbed up it.
They then began to shimmy along the wall.
They knocked off a few skulls as they made their way across, then they looked up at a ledge.
"Ladies first," Owen said, causing Lara to nod as she used her grapple axe to jump onto the ledge, then began to pull herself up. As she did, though, Owen turned upon hearing voices.
"We're about to have company," he said.
"Hurry, Owen!" Lara called to him.
He jumped and grappled up to the ledge, then they both crouched under a narrow crevice, staying hidden as a cultist brought in another dead body.
"Ritualistic sacrifice," Lara whispered.
"Completely barbaric, no matter how or why someone does it," Owen whispered back.
The two continued to crawl through the tunnel, making sure not to be seen.
They climbed up a wall, then used their pickaxes to climb further.
They then jumped across, grabbing onto a ledge, but Lara almost slipped. Thankfully, she managed to keep her grip before they shimmied along the wall, then slowly lowered themselves down to the platform where the cultist had thrown the body off. They could see the trail of blood that had been left behind before they were soon hit by the smell of rotting flesh.
"Oh, god..." Owen groaned as he held his nose, again.
Up ahead, the door was closed, and there was no other way out.
Well, except for a dugout where the smell of rotting flesh was coming from.
What's worse, there were still rotting corpses spilling out. Lara wanted to gag so much, but she forced herself to swallow her vomit, then she glanced at Owen, who nodded at her. They both covered their mouths and crawled their way through, trying their hardest not to puke from the horrid stench.
It didn't help that the space seemed to get smaller as they kept going, but they eventually made it through.
There was a cultist cutting up another corpse on a stone bedding just ahead of them. Owen snuck up behind him and snapped his neck.
"Was this one of the rebels?" Lara wondered out loud.
"He must have been if he was getting cut up like this," Owen said as he looked at the vivisected body. "My god..."
"Normally, I would never use this term, but those cultists are savages," Lara growled.
"I don't blame you," Owen said as they soon moved on.
On the far wall to the right was the familiar drawing of a serpent, and it's eye was made of silver.
"A serpent with a silver eye, we're on the right track," Lara said.
Owen used his pickaxe to break apart the wall next to the drawing.
Once he made a big enough hole, he stepped back and gestured to it with mocking politeness.
"Ladies first," he said, causing Lara to chuckle a bit. He appreciated that she still had a sense of humor.
The moment they entered; however, they were hit even harder with the strong smell of rotting flesh.
"Ugh..." Owen gagged as he covered his mouth and nose.
"The smell keeps getting stronger," Lara noted.
"Yeah, I noticed," Owen said. "Jeez..."
Suddenly, they heard Jonah's voice on the radio.
"Lara, how's it going?" he asked.
"Owen and I found another Serpent with a Silver Eye," Lara answered. "We must be getting close. What about you guys?"
"Talking tattoos with Uchu," he replied.
"Tattoos?" Owen repeated in question.
"Yeah, you saw Unuratu's, right?" Sam asked. "It has a Heron and an Eclipse on it. It might have something to do with the Silver Box."
"I don't think so," Lara replied.
As she was speaking, she and Owen grappled across to a cliff on the other side, where they found a wooden barrier blocking their way.
"Got to be a way to burn that," said Lara as she looked around for anything she could use. That's when she noticed some sort of wooden beam on the other side of the room, and it was holding something.
"What is that?" Owen asked.
"Only one way to find out," Lara said as she fired a rope arrow from her bow, then pulled on the beam, which released a mixture of a peculiar fluid. "...Smells like oil..."
"Yeah," Owen said. "Oil and blood."
Then Lara noticed a stone torch in the middle of the room, and she saw that it was connected to the slide from which the bloody oil emerged. She walked up to the pedestal and moved the statue's mouth, allowing the oil to enter the back, and suddenly, it lit up, leaving a trail of fire before it burned the barrier away.
"Sanitary," Owen said with sarcasm.
"Would you have come up with a better idea?" asked Lara.
"Yeah," Owen said. "A flaming arrow."
"...Right," Lara muttered. "Why didn't I think of that one sooner?"
Owen shrugged, "Hey, whatever works."
They headed inside, jumped to another rock wall and grappled down, finding themselves in another large chamber.
"Is this some kind of blood-letting chamber?" Lara wondered out loud.
"There's another barrier, here, too," said Owen as they looked around, and Lara noticed a complex network of channels around two spires.
"It must've taken hundreds of sacrifices to get a lot of blood through these channels," she said.
"This almost reminds me of that chamber where they brought Grigori Rasputin back from hell in Hellboy," Owen said.
"Don't remind me of that, please," said Lara as she looked around and saw ropes around the spires, and there was a handle on one of them. Putting two and two, together, Lara fired a rope arrow and connected the spires together. "Owen, help me push."
"Sure," Owen replied before he and Lara turned to the spire on the left around, causing both spires to turn.
They turned them twice, cut the rope, then turned the one spire once more to create a path along the patterns to the barrier.
"Now for the sanitary part," Owen said.
"Lovely," Lara muttered with sarcasm before she shot an arrow at another mechanism, releasing a whole mess of oil and blood into a pool. Owen flipped the switch with the statue, setting the whole thing on fire, along with the channels.
It burned away the barrier, clearing the path ahead for them.
They went into the next chamber, seeing some kind of miniature of a city.
As the flames surrounded it, a pedestal rose up, revealing a silver statue of a snake that was coiled up.
"A serpent!" Lara exclaimed as she picked it up. "This must be what Trinity is missing."
"You think it's the actual box?" asked Owen.
"No, maybe it's some kind of key," Lara said.
"A key to the box itself?" Owen asked.
"Only way to know," Lara said as she put the Silver Serpent away.
Soon, they walked out of the chamber and found themselves standing in front of a canal of water. Realizing there was no other way out, Lara put her rebreather on and jumped in. Owen was about to follow, but not without glancing back at the model of the city, which was surrounded by flames.
"...I don't know why," Owen began, "But I got a nagging feeling..."
He then put on his rebreather and followed after Lara.
Read and review, please!
