Day 26. Who Ate My Leg?
The day starts with a nice swim in a paradisiacal island in the South Pacific. It's a bright and sunny day for Lara Croft, who changes her usual apparel to green shorts and a light blue tank top. The coast has a pretty steep hill and a village above it. She climbs the cliff, and enters into an innocent looking hut, which leads to an underground tunnel.
"Big, nice jaws," Lara thinks after arriving at a cave at the end of the tunnel. She has to dodge a big crocodile, by jumping from rock to rock to avoid being eaten. She can't swim faster than the beast for sure. She finally manages to land at a rock at a height sufficient to engage in long range combat, without being exposed to those jaws. The crocodile retreats, but doesn't survive the attempt.
Then, it's cave exploring time. After a bit of acrobatics traversal, Lara realizes the danger ahead. The cave has surely been intervened by men, and these ones are pretty good at hiding. She dodges one tiny yellow sharp thing. "Darts!" Lara thinks. "Don't want to figure out if there's poison in them." The locals have surely got a suntan over the years - their skin's pitch black. She manages to spot them and counter. And thus starts a shootout of darts and bullets.
A mist surrounds the exit of the cave, whereby a bridge uniting two caves leads to a complex, and a waterfall. The complex built into the waterfall is heavily guarded by locals, this time wearing feather masks and tridents. They move fast, but not faster than Lara. And so, they fall prey to Lara's lead lust. However, navigation is hard, as flaming torches near the waterfall increase the density of the mist. And, in the mist, Lara picks up some red gems which seem to open a succession of locked wooden doors built into a human carved cave.
The doors lead to a coastal village, and the locals act uninviting. They viciously attack Lara, and she responds with a genocide. "This day was coming sooner or later," Lara thinks. She surely had pretty good luck at Kitezh and Paititi, where locals behaved a bit more welcoming than these coastal villagers. After all, what would happen to Lara if she surrendered?
It doesn't take long for Lara to find out the answer to such a question. An australian soldier lies prisoner at a treehouse. One of his legs is missing. Who ate it, not even the soldier knows. His men, they all disappeared without notice after their plane crash, and he barely managed to get into this village, where he remains maimed and imprisoned, hoping that flies don't eat up the rest of his rotting body. He graciously gives Lara a map to cross a swamp to wherever his plane landed, should she find any other australian soldier and rescue them.
Crossing the swamp would have been a deadly task for Lara without the soldier's map. Beyond the swamp lies a misty valley - with them. "I know who ate your leg now," Lara thinks. A familiar beast comes to attack her at full speed. Quite in line with its name: velociraptor. "Is the Scion mildly related to this?" Lara thinks. She has blown the artifact into shambles two years ago, and now…
She finds the plane, which has become a nest for the raptors. Some soldiers are still trying to recover control of the plane. "What's a lady doing here?" a soldier asks. "I was expecting a thank you," Lara answers. "I found your partner, minus a leg. Told me to order you to head back to the coast. Unless you want to be their meal…" Some big stomps are heard at the distance, and then a mighty roar. "It's coming," Lara says. "You better reload your best gun now!"
Velociraptors flee away from the crash site in clear sign of fear. Their main predator has come. Infamously tall and deadly, the T-Rex makes its appearance devouring a soldier without warning. Lara and the remaining soldiers counter, while backing up. The faster they deal with the beast, the better. That's all they can hope for now.
They manage to somehow take cover in places where those jaws can't reach. In due time, the beast is taken down. "There's some temple ruins underground," a soldier says. "That's what you're looking for, right?" Lara gives the remaining soldiers the swamp map. "Beyond the valley, there's a swamp," Lara says. "Your friend made this map. Follow it or die drowned. If you make it, he's by the treehouse. Then get to safety."
Lara continues her adventure in a tunnel system beneath the crash site. Some soldiers have unfortunately died by a cute herd of compsognathus. Yes, those small, yellowish lizards with lots of hunger. The tunnels lead to yet another temple - the outside of it to be more precise… Some wandering australian soldiers have gotten this far as well. "Entrance's locked," a soldier says. "But the lever…"
Lara looks at the lever underwater. "Piranhas?" she asks. "That might be hard…" A sneaky raptor grabs Lara by the back, and wounds her. Fortunately, the soldiers rescue her. "Now I have bait for those piranhas…" she thinks. She pushes the raptor's corpse into the water, and that does the trick. With the temple door open, a massive flock of raptors start to come out of the temple. Lara sees it, and regroups with the soldiers. "Take the turret out!" a soldier orders by radio.
Some soldiers rush into the plane; others are left behind. Luckily, the soldiers nearby the plane haven't completely packed up, and they use the turrets to hold off the raptors, while Lara and the other soldiers get into safety. A short-lived, but successful battle, allows the soldiers to breathe for a while. "Still wanna go in?" one soldier asks. "Yes," Lara answers.
Inside the temple, torches are still illuminating a mural on the meteorite stones. "The Ora Dagger," Lara thinks. Then, the sounds of a local interrupt Lara. He craves her meat, but she might crave his meat as well. Though first, Lara wonders why they left Antarctica. The local sits down, and shares a tale. There once was a land of great meat, but in exchange of a greater evil. Men were born with missing parts; their sixth leader, Maoki was born faceless. This evil was accompanied by unbearable storms. They escaped this land, but evil came back with a white sailor. "A Darwin sailor?" Lara asks. Now, they feast on the white man's death - the feast of Smaid. And then, the local goes on praying, praying that Lara doesn't die...