"There she is is," Sherman said, pointing the Indominus in the temple.

Having reached one of the galleries that overlooked it, they had turned off their flashlights and laid down to watch her through their night vision goggles.
The way she was lying on her side, with the upper part of her body straightened and the forelegs stretched forward was reminiscent of felines, and like them, she seemed to like raised spots and thus, her resting place was an octagonal platform in the very centre of the temple and which could be accessed by four stairs, opposed two by two.
At its summit, there were the two pillars depicted in the mural seen earlier, but of the last pyre erected there, time had erased the traces.

The temple was a place of respectable dimensions that had nothing to envy to that of Jurassic World's Discovery Center's rotunda or even those of the largest temples of ancient Mediterranean civilizations.
It had been built in a volcanic pipe as the Haunted Mountain is, like several other mountains of Isla Nublar, an extinct volcano.
Thus, the temple's floor coincided with the top of a lava flow that couldn't had been expelled and that had solidified after the end of volcanic activity in the depths of the mountain following the northward displacing of the hot spot that was behind the very creation of the island.
As for the crater, it still exists and allowed that night to the moonlight to reach the sacrifices' platform and the Indominus.
Above a wide balcony opposite of the entrance, equipped with a throne in carved stone and two passages, including one obstructed, that led to what was believed to be the apartments of the ruling class, the sculpture of the once-revered god's head had dislocated and only half of the face remained.
Dug under the middle part of the balcony and its two extremities, three large arches led to other areas of the troglodyte city, the living areas mostly. The tunnel beyond the middle one seemed to plunge towards the very depths of the mountain.
But the most shocking thing about the place was the number of human skeletons on the ground, in such numbers that they almost littered it.
Among them, there were weapons in large numbers: spears, atlatls, bows, blowpipes, spiked maces, clubs, knives and even some shields made of wood or skin... The impression that this gave was so striking that it was like if the company could get a glimpse of the terrible battle that had taken place there and they thought that it was not impossible that it had seen the death of the last members of Nublar's decadent civilization.

Although they were quite tall and wide, the arches at the back were too small to be able to be taken by the Indominus.
Knowing that she could not go deeper into the mountain, the Slayers thought that she was corned in the temple and would be forced to face them.

After they watched her for a few moments, they left the gallery and went back in the narrow corridors, returning at the previous junction to went down the steps that led to the lowest gallery.

The Slayers lowered their visors and one by one, they entered the gallery, with the first turning on their left and running along it.

No matter how sneaky they were, the sound of their boots skimming the stones was perceived by the Indominus, who turned her head in their direction.

Being able to see amidst the darkness like many predators, she saw them but she did nothing but to watch them deploy.
With the tip of one of her claws, she began to make one of the human skulls that laid near her hands turn on itself.

Once all the Slayers were in the gallery, Sherman gave to the keepers some ear defenders and told them to stay hidden behind a collapsed pillar.

Then, he jumped from the edge of the gallery, and landed two meters below with ease, barely bending his knees.

His men followed his example and they walked slowly and cautiously but surely towards the platform, passing among the skeletons. They decided to remove their night vision goggles off their eyes and instead put on the lights attached to their shoulder pads or on their weapons, showing themselves.

As they passed under the rim of the crater, the signal emitted by the small cameras fixed on the side of their helmet could leave the interior of the mountain and transmit once again footage to the camp and the control room.

While the Slayers converged, the Indominus continued to play with the skull, having fun making it turn faster and faster until, bored of it, she decided to crush it under her hand before slowly raising her gaze towards the intruders.

"No, but look at her!" Méndez exclaimed, exasperated by her behaviour. "She's screwing with us!"

"She won't be a smartass for long!" Faraci said. "It's time to teach you a lesson, bitch!" He shouted to her.

The raise in their voices irritated her and she replied by drawing back her lips and growling.
She finally straightened on her four limbs and prepared to walk down from the platform.

Sherman raised his fist in the air, commanding the Slayers to stop. He then turned to the keepers and motioned them to put on their ear defenders.

Seeing that her attackers had stopped, the Indominus roared at them from the top of the stairs, challenging them to come closer while Leng approached a hand to the switch of a box that hung at his belt.

Suddenly, a shrill sound ripped through the air, and the Indominus, very bothered by it, stepped back, shaking her head and growling.

However, the intensity of the sound grew and became painful, making her stagger against the pillars, knocking down one of them, before she collapsed.

The Slayers resumed their advance at the same time, marching in a triangular formation, and when Sherman stepped on the first step, the Indominus struggled with all her strength against the torture inflicted on her. She raised her head to let out a succession of hoarse calls that momentarily covered the sound of the device and seemed to spread throughout the mountain.

Hearing them as a background noise in their ear defenders, the keepers froze.
They had already heard them but not from the Indominus' maw. They were neoraptors' calls, used when they were in a distress situation.

"She's calling for help..." Grady realized. "Sherman! We have to leave, it's a trap!" He screamed.

But the Slayers did not hear him and kept climbing the stairs.

"Shit!" He swore.

The soldiers reached the top of the platform and found the Indominus huddled up and panting, with the pupil of her eyes becoming rounder as fear and pain overwhelmed her and the tip of her claws digging the stone.

Like wolves around a moose at bay, they split up and slowly surrounded her, like if they wanted her to be subjected to the inflicted torture as long as possible.

Sembène lost his temper.

"But why are they so long dammit?! They have her at their mercy, they just have to kill her!"

As if to confirm their suppositions, some of the Slayers began to inflict blows everywhere on her body, first at non-vital points.

"That's not hunting," Grady said, half-shocked and half-irritated. "The guards were right: These people have no honor!"

With her tail, the Indominus managed to throw those near it a few meters back, just at the edge of the platform but they got up almost immediately.

Amongst them, Decker rushed forward and leaped towards the dinosaur' rump. She thrusted one of her glaive's blades in it, making the Indominus roar out of pain.

Butu, then a few feet from the maw, began to contemplate the very well filled dentition of their victim.

"Oh, the beautiful teeth!" He exclaimed.

He put down the machete he had in his hand and pulled big pliers out of a pocket of his pants.

"I shall add one to my collection..." he added before moistening his lips.

Initially, he wanted to take one of lower jaw's teeth but soon enough, his gaze turned to one of the big fangs that protruded from her maw.
However, his pliers were too small to extract one of them.
He needed something bigger.

"Reynald! Can I have your mace, please?"

Faraci, who was about to struck the fingers with his weapon, handed it to his Congolese colleague, telling him however to hurry.

Butu took the mace, calculated his striking angle and once he was ready, struck the base of one of the lower jaw's fangs with a powerful blow that threw the fang a few feet further.

All of a sudden, the sound disappeared and a silence fell among the Slayers.

Leng started tapping on his box, letting out a series of swear words, but Sherman, out of cautiousness and especially afraid that the device was broken, shouted to his men to move back.

Struck by fear, Butu dropped the mace, which was immediately grabbed by Faraci who, on the moment, forgot or voluntarily abandoned Butu depending on the versions, for the benefit of his own skin.

The Congolese turned and rushed towards the edge of the platform, trying to retrieve the fang on the way, but he was not fast enough and like a cat pinning a fly on the ground, the Indominus pinned him with her left hand and held him that way while standing up.

Once she was standing, she put her fingers under his body and lifted him under the helpless eyes of the others, grouped at the base of the stairs.

A part of the volcanic plume passed at the same time over the Haunted Mountain, blocking the moonlight.
Total darkness, disturbed only by the beams of the Slayers' lamps, fell in the Temple.

While the Indominus growled and shook Butu in her hand as he screamed, making him lose his helmet, Cortes heard the sound of light footsteps and by listening carefully, he located the sound near the arch under the balcony.
Something was coming from the passage, something quite small.
The Tun-Si perceived several different footsteps. Whatever was coming, it wasn't alone.

"We have to leave this place!" He warned his comrades. "Now!"

"Not without Butu!" Sherman retorted. "And we got her!"

"Ford, roast her face!" Faraci barked.

Butu, hearing him, begged them to not to do that.

"Are you mad?!" Retorted the slayer with the flamethrower. "I risk to burn him by doing that."

Through their night vision goggles, the keepers saw the creatures behind the footsteps sounds.

Crossing the threshold of the arch, came a dozen of small theropod dinosaurs. They were about the size of a wolf but they were too small to be neoraptors and their profiles weren't as upright as theirs, and their gaits not as elegant.
The presence of a crest on the snout betrayed the species' identity. Some individuals had only a small point at the anterior end of the snout, others had a larger one that stopped in front of the eyes. Proceratosaurs, those who had escaped during the attack on the quarantine paddocks.

They began to skirt the sacrifices' platform, obviously intending to flank the Slayers.

The latter began to hear footsteps and McNamara passed the beam of his lamp right of the platform, towards where the sound was coming from.

The light met the tapetum lucidum of several pairs of eyes which then became bright.
One of the animals stepped forward, through the beam, showing itself.

"Ghouls!"

The other proceratosaurs appeared to them as they were surrounding them, passing also behind the platform to flank the Slayers on their left side.
They did not seem to be frightened in the least by the Indominus, and their coming did not seem to disturb her at all, as if they and she knew that a collaboration would bring a great benefit to them, and she allowed them to come closer to the humans.

The Slayers then began to retreat slowly, avoiding to make any abrupt movements.

The Indominus watched them stepping back but she didn't went down the platform and the proceratosaurs came to stand in front of it, growling and hissing at the humans.

The Slayers did not know what the Indominus precisely intended to do to them.
They doubted she would let them go away after what they had done to her but no matter what, their retreat ended up blocked.

Far behind them, something leaped from one of the galleries and gracefully landed on the ground before starting to walk towards the centre of the temple.

The Slayers at the back of the group turned around and saw that, on the rim of the temple, a shape was standing, the one of a biped animal as tall as a man and with a long pendulous tail, a S-shaped neck, powerful legs and a sickle-shaped claw on each foot. A Neoraptor.

Behind it, three other similar shapes appeared, forming a line together, and then the four stepped forward, adopting a triangular formation, treading upon the carpet of bones and weapons.
In its advance, the leading individual, whose foot was illuminated by the beam of one of the lamps, stepped on a skull.

When the beam went up, the Neoraptor stepped across the trajectory.
It was a large female, with a white skin stained with black, beautiful and terrible at the same time, a female iroquoii, and those which followed her were of the same subspecies and gender.

At the opposite end of the hall, four neoraptors with a darker skin, individuals of the hybrid subspecies, came out of a passage that opened on one of the lower galleries and the jumped into the temple, to also head towards the Slayers.

As they watched the groups of neoraptors arriving one after the other and converge towards the middle of the temple, Sembène saw from the corner of his left eye the male iroquoii which had stepped into their gallery by a corridor less than ten meters from them.

He gently tapped his colleague's shoulder to warn him:

"Owen..."

Grady turned his head and saw in his turn the animal which walked slowly with an alert air and its feathers' crest bristled on top of his head.

As quietly as possible, they passed on the other side of the pillar and flattened behind.

From the end of the collapsed pillar, Grady watched the males iroquoii descend one after the other.

Sembène patted his shoulder again and pointed him a group of tigris, coming from the big entrance arch.

They counted the raptors and arrived at the total number of twenty-three, twelve males and eleven females.
They were all there.

Seeing that they were caught between the proceratosaurs and the neoraptors, the Slayers formed a defensive circle and oriented their weapons toward the animals.

However, the neoraptors did not came closer than half a dozen of meters from the Slayers and some of them turned to the proceratosaurs that were hissing at them.

A few neoraptors approached, growling in their advance, and realizing that there was a high probability that a fight broke out between the two species, the Slayers regained hope because they could take advantage of the clash to escape.

"Come on, kill each other!" Faraci prompted. "It will be less work for us!"

But they quickly remembered that if that were to happen, they had to find a way to free Butu from the Indominus' claws.
Moreover, to the great displeasure of the Slayers, the tensions between the two groups of carnivores were promptly calmed by the Indominus herself in a way that astonished and struck the humans with fear.

Thanks to the interaction she had with the achillobators earlier by the pool, they knew that she was able to mimic the neoraptors' calls and other sounds and that she knew which ones to use depending on the situation but what they ignored was that she had also learned how to communicate with the proceratosaurs. She adopted one of this species' particular postures, which consisted in spreading arms and hissing at the individuals in conflict, intimating each to calm down.
When she turned to the neoraptors, she of course added the call that had the same function within this species, and not only did all the animals in the temple understood her but above all, and it was the most frightening aspect in all of this, they bended to her will.

When the neoraptors arrived at the level of the proceratosaurs, the latter just moved aside a little and let them mingle with them while some of the crested predators went to stand near the bulk of the neoraptors, between the Slayers and the temple's entrance.
The Slayers looked all around them: All of the dinosaurs had their eyes locked on them and were ready to attack at some signal.

"They have allied!" Faraci mumbled, starting to be struck by fear. "What the hell?!"

Faced with this turnaround, some lost all hope of escape.

"We should never have entered in this mountain. It will be our tomb!" Arana declared.

The Indominus, the bond and leader of this unexpected alliance, moved to the edge of the platform and looked at the scene with an imperious air, not unlike a sovereign who had just survived an assassination attempt and was about to witness the execution of the conspirators by his or her bodyguards.

She lowered her gaze to Butu and his necklace of teeth.
She then noticed the multitude of proceratosaurs' teeth that garnished it.

She brought her right hand to the torso of her prey and touched the necklace with the tip of her second finger's (the one that corresponded to the index in humans) claw. She particularly passed it over the teeth of the proceratosaurs' dead congeners.
She then looked at the proceratosaurs she overlooked and Butu saw her eyes sparkling with malice, like if an idea had suddenly sprouted in her twisted mind.

He knew at that moment what she was going to do of him and as he started to beg for mercy, she closed her free hand around his left arm and then, in the manner of a vicious child that took a perverse pleasure in ripping off parts of a doll or a toy, she pulled and entirely tore it off before throwing it away. Blood began to flow abundantly form the Congolese's torn armpit.

While he cried his eyes out, she tightened her grasp around his body, deforming his skeleton, whose bones pierced the organs, and she stopped once she heard his rib cage break.
His lungs having just been pierced by his ribs, Butu didn't have enough breath to scream and as he gasped, his torturer threw him just in front of the dinosaurs on the Slayers' right flank.

Several of the carnivores rushed to the Ghouls' Bane as soon as he landed on the ground, starting to devour him while he was still alive, in front of the horrified eyes of his own comrades.

"No!" McNamara screamed.

The Indominus laid down in front of the pillars and looked down at the surrounded Slayers, staring at them with cruel eyes while Butu was literally torn to shreds.
One of the orange and black-striped raptors was holding him firmly by having his jaws closed around his throat, half-ripping off his throat, and several proceratosaurs were gathered around his belly, biting and eviscerating him, pulling his innards out.
Butu's fingers were still moving and unintelligible sounds were uttered by his mouth.

His desperate eyes were turned towards his comrades, begging them to put an end to his sufferings and McNamara suddenly pointed the barrel of his rifle at Butu's skull, waited for his line of fire to be clear, as he was aware that shooting down one of the dinosaurs would trigger the wrath of all the others, and he killed the Ghouls' Bane with a headshot.
The weapon's detonation and the bullet's passage so close to the carnivores startled them and they turned to the Slayers to hiss and snarl at them, spitting blood in the process, and at the top of the platform, the Indominus briskly straightened up and put her arms on the top of the stairs.

For her, the shot was a provocation and while casting a look so terrible to the humans that it froze them out of fear, making them almost drop their weapons on the ground, she drew back her lips and opened her mouth before hissing loudly and then let out a loud call that echoed against the temple's walls.

With one and common momentum, the procatosaurs and neoraptors swooped on the Slayers but at the same time, they heard several metallic objects being dropped on the ground and suddenly, a pale grey smoke started to rise all around the Slayers. A few moments earlier, Sherman had exchanged a brief look with Pizarro and she had discreetly passed to her colleagues the smoke grenades that had hitherto hung at her belt.
Thus, the dinosaurs became confused and suspicious of the smoke, they stopped at only three meters of the soldiers.

Taking advantage of this, they decided to get out the trap that had closed on them by carving themselves a way among their attackers and the carnivores between them and the temple's entrance where caught by surprise when a jet of flames suddenly appeared before their eyes to roast them.

Although most of them were able to move aside at the last second, with the notable exception of a proceratosaur that was fully bathed by the flames, some of the animals ended up with burns on their back or their tail and as they were yelping out of pain, Ford emerged from the smoke, followed by his comrades, and they passed through the gap left in the ring that the animals had formed.

Their escaping attempt wasn't left unanswered by the Indominus which let out a roar of fury and began to descend from the platform.

Without their night-vision goggles, Grady and Sembène would have seen nothing but the beams of the Slayer's lights, dancing in the entire temple in a manner that reminded those of disco projectors that one would have let function in a disorderly way, and sometimes illuminating the maws of the dinosaurs.
When they saw the Slayers manage to escape, they knew that they too had to leave.

Once the last of his comrades passed him, Ford turned to face the dinosaurs.

The Indominus now walked among the smaller predators and was quickening her pace to catch up the group.

The former marine then pressed again on his flamethrower's trigger, sweeping with a jet all the area between them and the dinosaurs.

Instinctively, they stepped back at the sight of the flames and even the Indominus herself didn't dared to approach and looked powerless the Slayers escaping her.

"Climb down from there and come, quickly!" Sherman shouted to the two keepers, then behind their hiding place, when they were close enough to the base of the wall.

Grady and Sembène jumped off the edge and joined the retreating soldiers. Together, they moved backward toward the entrance arch and the lava tube beyond while Ford continued to project flames toward the growling dinosaurs and Leng was trying to fix the box.

"My tank is not unlimited so hurry up!" The first said.

"I do what I can, dammit!" The second retorted, stressed.

As they went up the gentle slope that was between them and the entrance, Ford reduced the intensity of his jet and waited for the predators to finish hesitating and rush forward again before increasing again the power of his flamethrower and orient it in their direction to push them to back off.

Some of the other Slayers shot at the dinosaurs, forcing them to scatter and shelter themselves from the shots in the galleries or behind the platform.

"Save your ammo!" Sherman ordered. "Shoot only if they are about to overwhelm us!"

The dinosaurs being kept at bay by the flamethrower, they could thus cross the arch and return in the tunnel but as they were almost at the level of the mural, Ford noticed that the level of liquid in his flamethrower's tank had dropped by two-thirds while it was fully filled at the beginning of the mission

"Leng!" He thundered while still looking at the predators, then standing just at the edge of the dark.

"A few more seconds..."

Sherman spoke to the group:

"Once the box fixed and reactivated, we run straight to the necropolis! Stay together at all costs!"

A few tens of seconds later, Leng finally managed to repair the device and suspecting that he was going to restart it as soon as possible, the two keepers put their ear defenders and turned to the leader of the Slayers.

Despite the sound insulation provided by the ear defenders, they heard the characteristic sound of the device increasing and saw the dinosaurs retreat in the darkness. The latter soon enveloped the group once Ford extinguished his flamethrower.

The group immediately turned and with only their lights lighting their way, they ran to the tombs.