As they returned under the trees and went down the slopes, heading south-east, like if they wanted to bypass the mountain itself, Parker asked where Sherman was leading them:

"Where are we going?"

Cortès, walking between Parker and Sembene, replied in a whisper:

"We will take the Path of the Dead."

The young slayer swallowed when he heard this name.

"You seem to know this mountain," Sembène remarked.

"I have been there when I was a child, with my big brother," Cortès replied after a moment of silence. "We shouldn't have since this mountain is taboo for my people. It is haunted."

"Haunted?" The keeper repeated like if he feared he had heard that word.

"Again that bullshit of ghosts' story…," Faraci mumbled.

"Don't act like a pussy, Reynald! If we encounter ghosts, Gregor will show them his sword and with luck, they won't bother us," Kevin joked.

"But whose ghosts?" Sembène asked.

"You will see," Cortès said laconically.

The presence of two Tun-Si among InGen's troops had surprised a lot the two keepers, given the history between the tribe and the company.

As contact between the Tun-Si people and the mainland had been re-established in the second half of the 19th century, several members of the tribe had started to leave the island, attracted by new horizons, while immigrants arrived from the mainland in the following decades, which explained among other things the presence of Hispanic surnames within the tribe.
But geographical isolation helped it to live in peace and preserve much of its cultural identity, at least until the early eighties when InGen began to search for a tropical island halfway between the mainland and Site B on Isla Sorna to build its dinosaur park.

Isla Nublar perfectly fulfilling the desired requirements, the genetic engineering company approached the Costa Rican government, who agreed to lease the island to InGen while many Tun-Si still lived on Nublar at the time.
The company asked that the whole tribe leave the island and in return, it promised to provide housing, education and healthcare to the displaced islanders.
All did not want to leave the island and the situation escalated, pushing InGen to hire mercenaries to forcefully relocate the resisting tribe members and in 1987, the few remaining Tun-Si were rehoused on the mainland, in the middle of disadvantaged areas on the cities' outskirts where the housings turned out to be slums more than anything while the healthcare and education services were mediocre at best.
Since then, the Tun-Si began to curse the name of InGen.

But the fate of this people ended up being bounded to the one of the prehistoric creatures recreated by the company since later, InGen's rivals hired some as agents or spies, using the Tun-Si's hatred for John Hammond's company to serve their aims, and it also happened that others were found among the poachers that raided in the Five Deaths or, in the opposite, among the Grey Guard's troops, resulting in situations where former schoolmates or people that had friends in common ended up fighting each other during skirmishes.
Between the Jurassic Park incident and the landing of InGen Security forces that preceded the launching of Jurassic World's construction, some Tun-Si, who had heard that InGen had abandoned Isla Nublar, tried to return to the island but the fact that the latter had become a restricted area combined with the dreadful rumours about it discouraged most of them. But those who still went back to the island were never seen again or heard of.

Then came the construction of Jurassic World and the resulting Saurian Wars.
The predators using ways and passages unknown to InGen's employees to move discreetly and having established their lairs in some remote and hidden places, Hoskins realized that he needed people who knew the very secrets of the island in order to solve as fast as possible the crisis he had on his hands.
Like many generals and explorers during the conquest of the Americas, he had the idea of recruiting natives auxiliaries, which pushed him to turn towards those that the company had displaced to the mainland more than sixteen years earlier.
But the Tun-Si's resentment against InGen was lasting and fearing to be lynched at the very moment he would stepped into the neighbourhoods where the former natives of Isla Nublar and their families lived, he decided to use locals as intermediaries, instructing them to spread the information that Tun-Si were sought to help "liberate Isla Nublar" and to tell the few that would be interested by the offer to meet Hoskins in secret.
To them, he pledged a substantial sum of money for their services and in the case they would die, he told them that the sum would go to their families. In addition to this, he also promised to speak with InGen's board of directors and Masrani Global for a reconsideration of their situation.
Cortès and Pizarro were among those who met him.

The first, who had already a few jobs as a security guard and then as henchman under his belt, saw it as a mercenary job like any other and accepted the offer for mainly financial reasons, although the opportunity to see Nublar again had also contributed.

The second, however, was born on the mainland, and the reasons that led her to enlist were more desperate.
Orphaned after the death of her parents during a settling of scores between rival gangs, she had lived in the street and her future looked grim. If Cortès, then a mere acquaintance, had not mentioned Hoskins' offer to her, she would have resolved to live out of prostitution in some ill-famed neighbourhood of San José.
She preferred death to this perspective and even if she highly risked to die, she would on the land of her forebear. Hoskins had been reluctant to hire her because when she had her first clashes against dinosaurs in Nublar's jungles, she was only nineteen years old and had no prior combat experience.
It was only thanks to her cunning and resourceful nature that she managed to convince him, by infiltrating Nublar before having the audacity to go see him in his office in the middle of the camp to ask him to re-examine her case. Cortès then took her under his wing, forming her personally, and together, they survived the Saurian Wars, integrating the Slayers during the conflict.

Once the latter was won and the opening date of Jurassic World fast approaching, Hoskins kept his promise, assuring him the loyalty of those he had recruited.
Masrani Global pledged to improve the living conditions of the Tun-Si on the mainland and InGen employed many Tun-Si at Jurassic World in addition to allowing them to return live on the island, dedicate an exhibition room in the Discovery Center to the tribe and even encourage tribal craftsperson to open a shop in Burroughs.
But the road to total reconciliation was still long and in 2017, the situation of many Tun-Si, including relatives and friends of Cortès and Pizarro, remained very precarious despite Masrani Global's and InGen's commitments, as some of them hadn't yet be fulfilled.

A few minutes later, the company found the team of mercenaries that had left them at the vehicles, the one led by Custer, near the entrance of a gorge that was blocked until then.

The blocks of rock that had prevented anyone from going further had been destroyed with explosives and two of the mercenaries were keeping a watchful eye on the gorge.

Custer came to meet the group.

"No trace of hostiles has been reported in the area," he told them. "The way is clear."

Sherman nodded and as the three mercenaries who had walked with them took their positions next to their colleagues, he led his men and the two keepers in the gorge.

Oriented approximately along a north-east-southwest axis, it was sinuous, narrow, with a width that didn't exceeded ten meters and was even less than three meters in some places. The walls were so steep that they could not be climbed and the more the group moved forward, the more they increased in height and adopted a wave-like shape, ending up joining half-way to form a tunnel whose ceiling was pierced here and there with holes from which hung creepers, whose foliage partially blocked the light of the moon.

At its end, a five-minute walk from the entrance, the gorge widened and the tunnel ended, revealing a dense grove whose trees were covered with vines.
Grady and Sembène had never heard of this place and it was indeed unknown to the employees of Jurassic World.
Looking up at the steep walls that surrounded them in an almost circular way, forming like a natural arena, they saw that the place was overlooked over a large part of its perimeter by large trees with a wide crown. From the sky, it was just another hollow among the many found in the area and therefore, none thought to consider its exploration as useful.
But the surprise created by the discovery of this place was nothing compared to the one that was aroused by the sight of what stood at the end of the gorge.
There, rose a vertical rock wall stormed by creepers and in that wall, a dark arch was opened to them.

"What is this place?" Grady asked.

"We are on the threshold of the Path of the Dead," Sherman answered.

Grady raised an eyebrow, realizing the origin of this name.

"The Path of the Dead, what a joyful name…" Sembène said, half-sarcastically half-apprehensive.

As they approached the arch, the two keepers passed the beam of their flashlights over its frame.
Between the vines that hung from the walls, Sembène distinguished a series of glyphs.

"Glyphs?" He noted with stupefaction. "Are they Tun-Si?"

"No," replied Cortès, who was standing behind the two of them. "My people never carved glyphs. It's older."

Older?

Sembène had never heard of any human presence on Isla Nublar prior to the arrival of the Spaniard settlers and the deportation of those who would become the Tun-Si, and even less of the existence on the island of a culture advanced enough to master a writing system similar to those of the most advanced Mesoamerican civilizations.

Cortès came to stand next to him and began to decipher the glyphs:

"The way is shut. It was made by those who are dead, and the dead keep it. The way is shut," he translated.

A shiver ran down Sembène's spine. He did not believe in ghosts but since that just the arch and its inscriptions were already sinister-looking, he feared what he would see inside the mountain...
He wondered at this moment how the Tun-Si had learned to read these glyphs left there by some mysterious and forgotten civilization.

"The dead do not suffer the living to pass," Grady added, noting that his colleague seemed uneasy.

Sembène turned to Grady and realized that he smirked and was restraining himself from chuckling. Cortès had lost the serious look he had adopted during the reading and seemed amused by the reference made by the raptor whisperer.

"It works every time," the Tun-Si noted in a low voice.

Sembène gave Grady a jaded look.

"It wasn't funny. I never saw that movie."

Sherman turned on his radio.

"Hoskins. Sherman's here. We are about to enter the mountain so don't be surprised by a radio silence from us for the next twenty minutes."

"Copy that, Sherman," the director of the security division replied. "Good luck."

Two of the Slayers crossed the arch and disappeared into the darkness before shouting that the way was clear.

Cortès looked at the glyphs with more attention.

"I can't read them actually. The language of those who carved them has been forgotten since ages I fear. For all I know, these glyphs can either state a warning or indicate the number of steps left before reaching a certain destination or even describe good behaviour instructions."

Grady lowered his gaze to the darkness beyond the arch.

"Well, let's go for some dungeon crawling," he said, comparing their situation to the one of video game characters that were about to explore what was often called a "dungeon", a term that in fact referred to any enclosed place such as dungeons, crypts, labyrinths, mines or caves. "Watch out for the traps!" He added half-jokingly.

"Wait! And what if forcing us to search her in the depths of the mountain was a trap?" The French keeper raised with great suspicion.

"It's undoubtedly one…" Sherman declared in a surprisingly confident tone before drawing his sword and crossing the threshold with a determined look on his face.

"Oh, but she'll be disillusioned, believe me!" Faraci affirmed arrogantly as he entered in his turn. "She doesn't know who she's dealing with. Amateur time is over, make room for the professionals!"

The rest of the company passed the arch and entered in a cave at the bottom of which one could see the entrance of a tunnel that led deeper in the mountain.

Sweeping the path in front of them with the beams of their torches, they saw that the floor was littered in some places with piles of small elongated black droppings.
Having an idea of their nature, the two keepers looked up at the ceiling and saw there dozens of big-eared and snub-nosed bats.

"Vampire bats," Grady recognized. "I hope you are vaccinated against rabies."

Avoiding disturbing them, the company continued and took the tunnel. They soon noticed that the latter was describing several zigzags while gently climbing and for a few minutes, they saw nothing remarkable.

At the exit of the tunnel a little further, the path widened but still sinuated, although in a less pronounced way, and the ceiling was a little higher.

As he was passing his flashlight on one of the walls, Sembène saw human skulls, lined in a long recess dug into the rock all along the way.
The keeper looked on the other side. It was the same thing there and actually, there wasn't one but several recesses on each side, each having its own line of skulls.
Counting them as they walked, he estimated the number of individuals inhumed there at several hundred, if not thousands.
They had a real necropolis under the eyes.

"Who are these people?" Grady asked.

"They are thought to be the descendants of a tribe from the Nicoya Peninsula, who came to colonize this island after being driven out of their homeland by the Chorotega, many centuries before the San Fernandez expedition," Cortès replied. "When the Spaniards arrived, they were already extinct. This necropolis is one of the last traces of this people along with the stairs of the Giant's Fist. The latter is believed to be either a stargazing spot, either a meditation place. Some also claims that each year these people went on a pilgrimage to the summit of Mount Sibo where there should be the remains of an altar. Well, up until recently… The place being the highest on the island, they were there closest to their gods. It's the remains of the peasantry that lies here. It's nothing compared to what you'll see in the next caverns and rooms…"

In some places, the path split in two or three but they continued straight ahead.
The other routes went down or up depending on the relief but they also had rows of skulls.

After a bend in the path they were taking, they saw the entrance to another tunnel and entered in the latter.
Within it, several alcoves had been carved in the walls and in each, was one or several mummies, sitting with legs bent against the body.
Uncomfortable at their sight, Sembène looked away and kept his eyes on the path.

A little further, they came out of the tunnel and ended up facing a stone bridge that spanned a bottomless chasm on the margins of a gigantic cave of which they didn't see all the limits as the light of the torches faded among the darkness before reaching the farthest walls.
The bridge led to a high arch flanked by two cracked high reliefs that depicted human characters.

Walking in front of the others, Sherman stopped in front of the void left in the middle of the bridge.
The latter had not been destroyed or severely damaged but the presence of a decaying hoist near the opposite end and rests of ropes hanging in the air indicated the presence of a drawbridge in the past, that could be lowered over the chasm to allow people to come and go between the peasants' necropolis and the rooms on the other side.
At the feet of the leader of the Slayers, there was a skeleton lying on the ground and some of its bones had been scattered.
As the keepers wondered why this skeleton laid there and not in some alcove or tomb, Sherman took a step back to gather momentum and he jumped over the void.

One by one, the other Slayers did the same thing, throwing the heaviest equipment to their companions before jumping when it was needed, and while he was waiting his turn, Grady looked at the skeleton and noted the presence an arrow stuck between its ribs.

When Parker jumped, he struggled to rebalance once on the other side and small pieces of slabs crumbled under his feet and tumbled into the void. Sherman came to grab him by his breastplate and pull him towards him, preventing the young slayer from falling.
At the same time, they heard a succession of splats at the bottom of the chasm, indicating the presence of a river or a body of water at the bottom.

Grady and Sembene jumped cautiously in their turn and it was the turn of Cortes, who brought up the rear.

They then crossed the arch, an antechamber the size of a post office which they supposed to be a guardroom and climbed a wide staircase.
There too they found some skeletons, lying across their way without any visible reasons but most didn't pay attention to them because once at the top of the stairs, the eyes of some of the Slayers and the two keepers widened.

Like a guard of honour, mummies were lined up on both sides of a long and straight passage, as if to greet the newcomers.
Thus, they were not lying or sitting but standing in niches with their arms crossed against the chest and their feet rested on a base.
The mummies were those of tall men, with many reaching a height of one meter and eighty centimeters, and their slender but solid frame suggested that they were athletic in their lifetime. They had for all clothing only a skin loincloth decorated with leaves and feathers. Resting on their torso's darkened and desiccated skin and protruding ribs, there were two garlands, one of now faded flowers and another of teeth and skulls of birds and small beasts.
Among the latter, Grady recognized teeth of crocodiles or caimans, monkeys, snakes, sharks and even humans.
He assumed fast enough that the dead were once hunters or even warriors.

"More mummies," Sembène noted, shivering, "I hate mummies."

Although most of the aligned mummies were still standing, some had fallen forward in the aisle.
The closest to them had the particularity of having only his upper body and the rest had disappeared for reasons unknown to the two keepers.

A little further, there was another mummy, entire, right across their way.
Faraci, sent ahead, did not seem to want to get around him and when he reached his level, he said:

"Get out of there you dusty!"

He pushed the mummy aside side with a brutal kick in the torso, which earned him a glare from both Tun-Si.

"Reynald," Cortès said, "we are not here to disturb the dead."

"What difference does it make to you?" Faraci retorted with annoyance, indifferent to what he just did. "I thought these guys weren't your ancestors."

"They are not, but it is not a reason to behave like savages in this place. Time and profanations have enough degraded it already."

"This warrior was probably worthier than you'll ever be Reynald," Pizarro added.

"Indians who are calling me a savage! Ironic…" Faraci grumbled. "I think that you still believe in your people's bullcrap of heathen curse."

Grady and Sembène, who were watching the scene with an undisguised embarrassment, saw Cortès clenching his fists while severely supporting Faraci's gaze and they heard Pizarro murmur an insult in her language.

On his side, their Sino-American comrade was sneering.

"And you're the one saying that… To say that just earlier, you couldn't even hide the fact that ghosts gave you the jitters."

"Kevin..." Faraci started, irritated.

Their squabble began to use Sherman's patience.

"Gentlemen, stay focused! Please..." He told them with authority, without shouting though.

The involved Slayers nodded and they proceeded, taking a turn at the end of the aisle.

After the latter, one could see bas-reliefs on the walls and a dozen meters away, the company passed next to regularly spaced windows on their right, carved in the wall itself and overlooking the large cave seen just before.
The windows had the particularity of facing each a passage left of the group and where stairs led into absolute darkness.

They passed in front a certain number of windows and stairs but when the torches' beams showed them the state of the road that they were going to take, a feeling of uncertainty took some: Carried away during an earthquake by the sliding in the chasm of the rocks on which it had been built, the path was gone and all what remained instead were rocky platforms, at once too distant, too small and too steep for the group to jump safely from one to one.

After a brief moment of consideration, they retraced their steps a little bit, up to the last stairs they had left behind them and that they took.
It wasn't that high, about forty steps at most, and the group quickly reached its base. They ended up in a rectangular room and all around them, Grady saw a large number of low and long niches, succeeding each other in length and height and designed to contain each the laying skeleton of warrior.

Grady let out an appreciative whistle.

"It's like being in Skyrim..."

They crossed the room and took a passage that led in a similar room.

As they advanced, they noticed that this area of the necropolis had been organized according to a grid pattern. Despite the similarity between the rooms that could have get them lost, the two keepers were surprised by the ease with which the Slayers guided them in the middle of this maze.

Not far from the exit of the warriors' necropolis, they stumbled across several skeletons on their way and observing them, Grady noticed that some bones had been broken while others had claw or bite marks on them, whose size indicated that they could only have been made by relatively small predatory dinosaurs.

"The work of those of Ghost-Hand's race, defilers..." Cortes said.

The fact that he hadn't looked very closely at the skeletons struck Grady. How could he know that the proceratosaurs were behind the bones' degradations?

This, along with the fact that they seemed to know where to go set him thinking.

"This isn't the first time that you are treading in this place, isn't it?" The keeper asked.

"Indeed," Sherman answered. "We discovered that after the destruction of their former lair, Ghost Hand and his clan settled in this place. When we arrived to try to drive them out, they had recovered strength and learned to know every corner of this mountain. Men have fallen into these tunnels and caves. Now, their remains lies at the bottom of the black chasms," he told him while pointing the beam of this lamp on their right, over the chasm they were walking along.

A few steps behind the leader of the Slayers, Decker noticed that Parker was giving quick and nervous glances at his surroundings.

"You look nervous Damian…" She noted.

"It's nothing. I just want to hunt some ghoul…"

"Keep alert, my son," Sherman told him. "I promised your mother to bring you home safe and sound. Don't be like your father. He was too confident, that's what costed him his life…"

Sherman slowed down briefly to let Grady reach his level.

"The boy's father saved me once," he explained to him. "Without his sacrifice, I would be dead now. Being indebted to him, I helped his wife in raising his son. It was with me that he went to his first baseball game, drank his first beer, went for the first time in a strip club…"

"A chaplain in a strip club? Sounds like the beginning of a joke…," the keeper quipped, half surprised and half amused.

Sherman chuckled.

"Although I am no longer part of the orders, it doesn't prevent me to continue to love and serve God. I only took a different path than my ecclesiastical brethren."

Before Grady could ask him why he was no longer part of the orders, he said more about Parker.

"Damian has potential and I trust him but he shouldn't be here, not on this Christmas Eve at least. I wished that he stayed at his mother's side. She is seriously ill…"

His face became grave, almost saddened.

"She could be healed but they don't have enough money to pay the treatments. After the mission and when we will return home, his bonus and mine will be used to pay them."

Suddenly, they heard stones tumbling down on the other side of the chasm and instinctively, a part of the group turned their weapons in that direction.

They stood still there for a few moments and listened.

No other sound than the one of their breathing was heard in the next moments.

Sherman finally told the group to proceed and increase its vigilance.
Most were aware that something could very well be observing them while being hidden in the darkness.

"What do you think there is in the bottom of these abysses?" Sembène asked Grady as they stared at the void.

"Anything but Goblins and Skavens I hope."

"There is the Indominus, it's already enough. Do you think that they have an idea of where she is?"

"I don't know but it might be…"

Grady then asked Sherman where the path they were taking led.

"It joins the large tube that connects the waterfall to a larger room in the very heart of the mountain, the Temple. The Indominus must be there."

They passed in the middle of a dozen of human skeletons and there, Grady and Sembène had an idea of the causes behind the fall of the people that had built the necropolis.
Spears and arrows were stuck between the ribs of several individuals, and others' skulls had been smashed with blunt weapons.
This was no tomb, it was a battlefield.