Path of Destruction
Part Ten: X Marks the Spot
Miss Lara Croft fell rapidly through the pitch darkness toward the eternal realm of afterlife and there was nothing she could do about it. In her mind, she knew that her life as she knew it was over. Never again would she see Winston, her faithful butler or smell the crisp morning air after a night of thunderstorm. Her only regret was that Devon had won the day and that Drake would have cart blanch to use the artifacts in any evil or immoral way he could think of.
And that is when she hit bottom. Not on the hard stone ground as she had expected but into a deep pool of water. It was not much better, however, because at the speed she was traveling the force of the impact was enough to seriously harm anyone.
Fortunately for her, she didn't land anything important. As she hit the water backside first she felt as though she had been heaved into brick wall by a Mac Truck and for a moment believed more than ever that her days of adventuring had come to a very undignified end.
At that moment, however, something told her that this was not the case. Suddenly she felt the soft caress of the cool water gently pouring in over her body as she slowly began to sink into the deep. As it seeped over her head she became very aware that she not dead at all. On the contrary, she was very much alive but how long she would stay that way was quite a different question.
Within the midst of the extreme dark and the depths of the water in which she was now submerged the and still stunned by the fact that she was still alive the explorer suddenly found herself in a quandary. In the ensuing struggle to determine which was actually up she hastily picked a direction in hopes that it would lead her to someplace where she could catch her breath.
It was only when she began to need air, however, that she realized that she must have been going in the wrong direction. Hastily, the explorer made a ninety - degree turn sending herself headlong into her ponytail which had been floating along peacefully behind her.
All of a sudden she was struck by a fantastic revelation, her hair floated. Expediently she reached upward and rubbed her hand along the rough braided locks to see in which direction they pointed. It only took a split second before she was sure. In the remainder of that second she quickly turned herself upward and thrust herself swiftly forward toward the surface.
As she finally splashed through the barrier of the water into normal world once again she opened her mouth as wide as she could gulping up as much oxygen as she could. In fact, it was more than her lungs could hold.
She coughed violently from the sudden rush of air into her body. It felt as though her organs had started to move through her esophagus toward her thought. It was so bad that she wasn't sure she would survive the process of breathing.
When she did, at last, accomplished this the young lady began to explore her environment. That is, at least, she tried. The problem was that she was still enveloped in total darkness and now she had no means of light what so ever to guide her. She did not take much notice of this difficulty, however, for she was still reveling in the mere fact that she was breathing.
For the time being she was content to use her other four senses as best she could. She already knew that she was in another underground stream, perhaps even the same one as before. The one thing that was for sure was that it was a defiantly a river and not a lake. She could feel the small ripples of the current flowing past and moving on out in front her. This was an extremely good sign for her because before she so rudely became the victim of an attempted homicide she had noticed in the dim light of the American's flashlight a small ledge leading off in the same direction.
That being the case she began at once to move her arms and legs around propelling her self forward with the current and did not stop for a long time. So long, in fact, that she began to wonder if she was doomed to die right there in the water before she found some place resembling dry land.
Amazingly, the thought had no sooner entered her head than she knocked her arm hard against something in front of her. Instinctively she stopped her forward progress and reached out with her hand to examine it.
Ever so slowly she stroked her hand along it as if it were Braille trying to get some sort of image in her mind. It felt very much stone but it was not a natural formation like what she had climbed up before. This was much smoother. More than that every now and then there were small grooves that, when she traced them with her fingers, moved around in a rectangular shape. There was no doubt about it, what she had found were man made bricks.
Her moral skyrocketed. If these were man made bricks there was a good chance that a way out would be somewhere close by. It was just a matter of finding it. Cautiously the young lady slid herself along the wall to her right in search of such an exit.
As she moved along she began to get a feeling that the something was digging into her side. At first she did not think much about it because she was still suffering the effects of the hard landing she had made but when it started to push firmly into her ribs she suspected something else.
Intrepidly she ran her hands across the object beside her. From what she could tell it was a flat stone platform of some sort but as for its purpose she could not yet tell. It did not much matter to her either because by now was she exhausted from the frustrations of being wet and cold while all the while being in the midst of an extremely passionate loathing for Devon who had put her there in the first place.
It was the latter thought that dwelled in her mind the most as she crawled up onto the stone structure in front of her. She promised herself with deep sincerity that she would never again hesitate to kill anyone who got in her way. Until now she had not had as much disdain for Devon as she let on. The truth was that looked on the whole thing as a game. It was, in her mind, a simple race each time. Who could get there first and how long could they keep the artifact away from the other?
Now, however, things had changed. It was not that she was upset about being shoved into the abyss nor was she was angry with herself for letting her guard down but not in particular at the action. The actual root of her rage was more in the attitude of the way in which it was handled. Always before there had been a mutual respect for each other, an unspoken rule between them. Each of them understood that the other would most definitely try to kill them, however, in doing so they would always, either out of respect or a sadistic pleasure let the other see it coming. This time Devon had violated that and it began to fester inside of Lara's head. With every breath that she took her hatred for him grew and with it, her desire for revenge.
She was now sitting upon the platform with her legs crossed in front of her allowing the hatred to build up inside of her until she couldn't stand it anymore, she had to find a way out so that she enact her revenge. After a moment she stood up to think about the situation in more detail. It did not help matters much. All she knew was that she surrounded by water and that she was in total darkness. There was nothing she could do but die?
Stressed by the whole ordeal she reached around to rub the back of her neck firmly rolling her fingers back and forth along the stiff bones and muscles while at the same time lifting her head up and down to get the full effect of the massage.
As she did she happened to notice something strange. High above her was a small white dot. It seemed to dance this way and that throughout the blackness as if it had come for no other reason than to be with her and she wanted to be with it. She did not know why but she was almost certain that the light was the key to her escape. She had to find out.
In near desperation for a way to satisfy her curiosity Lara began search all around her for something with which to test her theory. It did not take long at all for her to find what she was looking for, a small stone. Carefully, she picked it up, took aim, and, with all her strength, launched the tiny projectile into the air toward the tiny ball of light. Seconds later there was a loud thump as the stone ricocheted off of its target.
Croft smiled an incredibly large smile as she heard it. The fact that the sound that emanated back to her as a thump was music to her ears. She had expected to hear the click of stone against stone or, worse yet, nothing at all. Instead she heard another sound, the sound of stone against wood. It was an indication to her that, at the very least her days in the darkness were over for if what was above her was wooden than the tiny dot she had seen may be some form of light leaking through a hole.
Immediately, she employed the use of her pistols and set to work firing heavily in the direction of the small white dot. Happily, with each round she expended another white dot would appear letting more and more light. After only a moment enough damage had been done to allow her, for the first time, to get a dim view of her soundings.
Just as she had suspected the ledge that she was standing on was in the middle of a wide slow moving river. Off to one side a large water wheel, almost identical to the one she had seen before, rolled back and forth in the current creaking silently with each wave. It must have been, she surmised, part of the device that had been responsible for flooded the arena before. From what she could tell simply by looking at it the wheel would scoop up the water and pour it onto a higher platform where it was picked up by yet another wheel and so on until it was dropped into a huge vat where it awaited someone to finally release it into the arena below.
What fascinated her more, however, was something completely different. Directly in front her were two parallel rows of holes etched into the wall leading upward to where she had first seen the bright light. Through the dim light that was pouring in she could now see an old, half rotten, wooden barricade. "Very clever," she said to herself.
Ecstatically Lara rushed to the top of the ladder and peeked through one of the bullet holes that she had created. As she pressed her eye against the wooden barrier she could feel its rough texture digging into her brow. It felt like she was going to get a splinter in her eye socket from being so close. But she ignored this worry completely in favor of curiosity and hope.
To her astonishment the room beyond was so full of light that it nearly blinded her the first time she set her eye onto it. Instinctively, she pulled back with tightly closed eyes to avoid the sudden rush of pain into her head. Not that she minded, however, because it had been so long since she had gazed upon any light at all that she was almost glad to be injured by it.
After a moment when the throbbing had subsided along with several more moments of blinking she once again pressed her eye up to the hole this time being careful not to singe her optic nerves. What she saw was a long wide tunnel. It started far off on her left in the clutches of a dark recess and then flowed along past her for several feet before it curved out of view.
The illumination that had so violently attacked her before came from a large hole in ceiling that had collapsed a long time ago bringing with it a great deal of sod and grass giving the sun cart blanch to light up the entire area whenever it pleased.
With the excitement of a schoolgirl, Lara stuck her fingers through the bullet holes as best as she could and attempted to tear away the rotting wood. Unfortunately, the wood was not as weather worn as it had first appeared. She could not get a good grip anywhere at all on the barricade, pulling it apart with her bear hands was apparently not possible.
Not deterred in the least Croft scurried back down the ladder where she hurriedly proceeded to search the platform for a rock or other hard object that she could use to smash her way to freedom. Being such a small surface, however, it was painfully obvious that she would have to look elsewhere for such an object. This was did not make for a more difficult task for, being in a cave, such things were readily abundant. The only problem was that most of them were underneath the river.
Dropping to one knee the explorer swiftly whipped off her pack and in her quest. Gently she removed the precious India stone along with the parchment she had taken from the arena and set them to one side where they would be relatively safe while she delved into the unknown. Once those were secure, she proceeded to simply turn the backpack completely upside down dumping the remaining contents onto the ledge in front of her scattering various odds and ends all over. Some of these things included her sunglasses, a few small books on ancient Latin and Hieroglyphics, in case she was confused by any sort of symbol she might not know, various food stuff packaging, the contents of which by now had been disposed of, and a lipstick for marking her path if she truly felt insecure about what direction to go. It had never been used.
In the midst of all of these one more little thing fell out, a single solitary flare. "Well, where did you come from," exclaimed the young lady as she acrimoniously picked up the instrument of light firmly in one hand. How she had missed it before she had no clue and why it had suddenly appeared now was an even bigger mystery. In the next few minutes the young lady examined both the flare and the insides of her pack in hopes of understanding why she had not found it before when she needed it. Of course, she found nothing and was forced to concede the whole affair to focus on the task before her but not before issuing a few choice words to the object.
In the next moment Miss Croft was underneath the surface of the water once again with a flare in one hand and her empty backpack in the other searching for a suitable rock to break her out of the dark dungeon she was in.
It was not before her eye fixed its self onto a stone that was almost exactly what she was looking for. It was small enough to fit neatly into the palm of her hand with grooves running here and there to act as a contour for her hand. In a flash it snapped up and slipped into the explorer's pack before continuing on.
The next stone that she found was a great deal larger and smoother. It was also heavier. Not that Lara actually even wanted it but she figured that it couldn't hurt to pick it up. After all, she wasn't totally sure that the first one would work and since she was truly on her last flare this time she wasn't about to take a chance.
And so she picked up the overly large stone and placed it gently in her backpack along side the somewhat smaller one. This, of course, brought forth a new problem that the young lady had yet thought of, swimming with so much weight.
Actually, it wasn't that big of a problem, at least, it wouldn't have been had Lara considered the matter to begin with. As soon as she had secured the rock in her backpack she rolled around and pushed herself off the bottom of the river with her feet. It nearly tore her arm off.
That being accomplished the young lady returned to the surface to set her plan into action. Hoisting herself up to the stone platform a second time she carefully exchanged the contents of her backpack with what she had previously removed and replaced it over her shoulders.
Then, with the exuberance of a criminal freed from her cell, the young lady scurried back up the ladder and began to beat the wooden barrier as hard as she could with the rock that she had found. As she pounded the wooden structure small bits began to splinter off and fall to the floor. After a few more hits the pieces started to get a bit larger until she had produced a hole large enough to fit her hand through.
With out a seconds delay she dropped the stone and threw her right hand into it and pulled until there was a loud snap. Suddenly a large portion of the obstacle flipped out sideways nearly taking out the explorer's right eye before floating to the water below.
Now there was a hole large enough to squeeze her body through. It was not an easy fit by any means but after contorting herself this way and that she managed to get her front half through. The rest of her soon followed with much less of a struggle and before she knew it she was standing in the midst of the full, bright, sunlight once again.
It seemed like an eternity since she last felt such warmth and for a moment she forgot everything. Devon, Beeman, the artifact, they were all out of her mind. She could only consider the wonder and power of the sun and how she had missed it.
It reminded her of childhood summers long past in her. Times when her only concern in life was weather to read Dickens or H.G. Wells and she longed for their return. There was no doubt that she loved what she was doing as an adult but now that she thought about it she could not help but wish for the innocence of those days.
To add to the nostalgia a cool breeze now found its way to the explorer giving her yet another reason to linger on for a while. Gently, it blew her dark brown hair back over her head making each strand frolic to and fro like small children. She smiled heartily as a flood of new images set upon her mind. Life was good.
In spite of all of this, however, she knew that she could not spend all of eternity enjoying the sweet gifts of nature around her. There would be more than enough time for that later. Right now she had a mission to complete not to mention giving Devon his comeuppance.
Setting her sunglasses in place she turned to the right and ambled swiftly down the winding hallway. It swung around in a strange little S like pattern before it emptied out into a small circular room. Like much of the rest of the structures she had come across, this room was made entirely of stone blocks. Starting at the bottom it rolled its self upward smoothly into dome. Just to the left of her a second opening was cut into the wall leading back outside allowing the bright sunlight to shine its light softly onto the stone floor.
None of this impressed the explorer at all, however. In fact, she barley took notice of any of it at all. Something else had caught her attention. In the very center of the room was a stone pedestal. It was made of limestone and stood nearly four feet high above the floor. The rest of it extended deep into the ground below.
Around its top several characters much like those that she had discovered before on the parchment in the arena were carved into the surface. This time, however, she was not encumbered by a lack of lighting which made things infinitely easier to decipher
It took a few minutes for the young lady to explore the letters and a few more minutes to decipher them into something resembling words. Even then, because of the dialect, she was not sure that she was totally correct in her interpretation and even if she was she was not sure that she fully understood it.
"This...is the stone...of the mighty god...Jupiter," she translated aloud as she rubbed her fingers across the pedestal, "Guarded by the...sacred...clan. Heed that all must...succumb to the mightiest. Touch not this stone...lest the truth...be revealed."
"Curious," she said to herself deep in thought. It wasn't even a traditional curse as she was accustoming to finding. There was nothing about death or plagues or anything. The only thing that it mentioned was truth. It was a phrase that stumped her greatly. What truth was it talking about and who was the one it called the mightiest?
But even this was not the full focus of the young lady's attention. The object that she was gazing so diligently at was setting directly on top of the pedestal, a large blue jewel. Her quest was at an end.
In a flash she made her way across the room to the artifact. It was even more beautiful than the India stone that she had previously obtained and even though the sunlight could not reach far enough across the floor to make contact with it there was very bright glow coming from within. Enamored by curiosity she quickly pulled out the first jewel to compare. They were identical. The only difference between the two of them was the picture that was engraved in the top of each.
Lara could hardly believe her eyes. There was no evidence of any hidden doors, puzzles, traps, or anything else to protect the jewel. Something, she felt, was very wrong. Every artifact that she had obtained before was guarded in one form or another. Some were attached to traps while others sat under the watchful eye of a guardian such as a dragon or other unearthly monster. But here there was nothing.
It was enough to send her mind into warp drive. What was she missing? She ran every scenario she could think of around in her head trying to understand where they would have put a trap going so far as to search the stone pedestal from top to bottom but did not find one thing that looked like it would trigger a trap.
That is until she looked down. Extending outward from the pedestal in four different directions she noticed four crevices extending outward toward the wall dividing the room into quarters. Even more curious was the fact that none of these sections were connected to the others in any way.
Throwing herself to the ground Lara peered inquisitively through the gaps in hopes of understanding the nature of the separation. Unfortunately, it was far too dark to see anything let alone make an assumption. Still, she was sure that something was afoot but for now there were other things that she wanted to concentrate on.
Rising to her feet once again Miss Croft returned to the artifact in the center of the room just in time to here a very strong Texas accent echo faintly from the secondary entrance to the room. "Ah, so there you are Devon," she whispered sarcastically, "it's about time you showed up."
With that, she drew her pistols and aimed carefully at the entry point waiting for her foe to rear his ugly head. It didn't take long. The verbal banter between he and Samuel Beeman grew steadily louder by the second. She had not forgotten her adversary's stunt to end her and now it was payback time.
A moment later a small shadow appeared from behind a corner followed soon after by its owner. This was Croft's best chance. Carefully, she took aim at the man's ear with her left gun leaving the right in case she missed. Then, before he knew she was there, Lara Croft fired.
To be continued...
Part Ten: X Marks the Spot
Miss Lara Croft fell rapidly through the pitch darkness toward the eternal realm of afterlife and there was nothing she could do about it. In her mind, she knew that her life as she knew it was over. Never again would she see Winston, her faithful butler or smell the crisp morning air after a night of thunderstorm. Her only regret was that Devon had won the day and that Drake would have cart blanch to use the artifacts in any evil or immoral way he could think of.
And that is when she hit bottom. Not on the hard stone ground as she had expected but into a deep pool of water. It was not much better, however, because at the speed she was traveling the force of the impact was enough to seriously harm anyone.
Fortunately for her, she didn't land anything important. As she hit the water backside first she felt as though she had been heaved into brick wall by a Mac Truck and for a moment believed more than ever that her days of adventuring had come to a very undignified end.
At that moment, however, something told her that this was not the case. Suddenly she felt the soft caress of the cool water gently pouring in over her body as she slowly began to sink into the deep. As it seeped over her head she became very aware that she not dead at all. On the contrary, she was very much alive but how long she would stay that way was quite a different question.
Within the midst of the extreme dark and the depths of the water in which she was now submerged the and still stunned by the fact that she was still alive the explorer suddenly found herself in a quandary. In the ensuing struggle to determine which was actually up she hastily picked a direction in hopes that it would lead her to someplace where she could catch her breath.
It was only when she began to need air, however, that she realized that she must have been going in the wrong direction. Hastily, the explorer made a ninety - degree turn sending herself headlong into her ponytail which had been floating along peacefully behind her.
All of a sudden she was struck by a fantastic revelation, her hair floated. Expediently she reached upward and rubbed her hand along the rough braided locks to see in which direction they pointed. It only took a split second before she was sure. In the remainder of that second she quickly turned herself upward and thrust herself swiftly forward toward the surface.
As she finally splashed through the barrier of the water into normal world once again she opened her mouth as wide as she could gulping up as much oxygen as she could. In fact, it was more than her lungs could hold.
She coughed violently from the sudden rush of air into her body. It felt as though her organs had started to move through her esophagus toward her thought. It was so bad that she wasn't sure she would survive the process of breathing.
When she did, at last, accomplished this the young lady began to explore her environment. That is, at least, she tried. The problem was that she was still enveloped in total darkness and now she had no means of light what so ever to guide her. She did not take much notice of this difficulty, however, for she was still reveling in the mere fact that she was breathing.
For the time being she was content to use her other four senses as best she could. She already knew that she was in another underground stream, perhaps even the same one as before. The one thing that was for sure was that it was a defiantly a river and not a lake. She could feel the small ripples of the current flowing past and moving on out in front her. This was an extremely good sign for her because before she so rudely became the victim of an attempted homicide she had noticed in the dim light of the American's flashlight a small ledge leading off in the same direction.
That being the case she began at once to move her arms and legs around propelling her self forward with the current and did not stop for a long time. So long, in fact, that she began to wonder if she was doomed to die right there in the water before she found some place resembling dry land.
Amazingly, the thought had no sooner entered her head than she knocked her arm hard against something in front of her. Instinctively she stopped her forward progress and reached out with her hand to examine it.
Ever so slowly she stroked her hand along it as if it were Braille trying to get some sort of image in her mind. It felt very much stone but it was not a natural formation like what she had climbed up before. This was much smoother. More than that every now and then there were small grooves that, when she traced them with her fingers, moved around in a rectangular shape. There was no doubt about it, what she had found were man made bricks.
Her moral skyrocketed. If these were man made bricks there was a good chance that a way out would be somewhere close by. It was just a matter of finding it. Cautiously the young lady slid herself along the wall to her right in search of such an exit.
As she moved along she began to get a feeling that the something was digging into her side. At first she did not think much about it because she was still suffering the effects of the hard landing she had made but when it started to push firmly into her ribs she suspected something else.
Intrepidly she ran her hands across the object beside her. From what she could tell it was a flat stone platform of some sort but as for its purpose she could not yet tell. It did not much matter to her either because by now was she exhausted from the frustrations of being wet and cold while all the while being in the midst of an extremely passionate loathing for Devon who had put her there in the first place.
It was the latter thought that dwelled in her mind the most as she crawled up onto the stone structure in front of her. She promised herself with deep sincerity that she would never again hesitate to kill anyone who got in her way. Until now she had not had as much disdain for Devon as she let on. The truth was that looked on the whole thing as a game. It was, in her mind, a simple race each time. Who could get there first and how long could they keep the artifact away from the other?
Now, however, things had changed. It was not that she was upset about being shoved into the abyss nor was she was angry with herself for letting her guard down but not in particular at the action. The actual root of her rage was more in the attitude of the way in which it was handled. Always before there had been a mutual respect for each other, an unspoken rule between them. Each of them understood that the other would most definitely try to kill them, however, in doing so they would always, either out of respect or a sadistic pleasure let the other see it coming. This time Devon had violated that and it began to fester inside of Lara's head. With every breath that she took her hatred for him grew and with it, her desire for revenge.
She was now sitting upon the platform with her legs crossed in front of her allowing the hatred to build up inside of her until she couldn't stand it anymore, she had to find a way out so that she enact her revenge. After a moment she stood up to think about the situation in more detail. It did not help matters much. All she knew was that she surrounded by water and that she was in total darkness. There was nothing she could do but die?
Stressed by the whole ordeal she reached around to rub the back of her neck firmly rolling her fingers back and forth along the stiff bones and muscles while at the same time lifting her head up and down to get the full effect of the massage.
As she did she happened to notice something strange. High above her was a small white dot. It seemed to dance this way and that throughout the blackness as if it had come for no other reason than to be with her and she wanted to be with it. She did not know why but she was almost certain that the light was the key to her escape. She had to find out.
In near desperation for a way to satisfy her curiosity Lara began search all around her for something with which to test her theory. It did not take long at all for her to find what she was looking for, a small stone. Carefully, she picked it up, took aim, and, with all her strength, launched the tiny projectile into the air toward the tiny ball of light. Seconds later there was a loud thump as the stone ricocheted off of its target.
Croft smiled an incredibly large smile as she heard it. The fact that the sound that emanated back to her as a thump was music to her ears. She had expected to hear the click of stone against stone or, worse yet, nothing at all. Instead she heard another sound, the sound of stone against wood. It was an indication to her that, at the very least her days in the darkness were over for if what was above her was wooden than the tiny dot she had seen may be some form of light leaking through a hole.
Immediately, she employed the use of her pistols and set to work firing heavily in the direction of the small white dot. Happily, with each round she expended another white dot would appear letting more and more light. After only a moment enough damage had been done to allow her, for the first time, to get a dim view of her soundings.
Just as she had suspected the ledge that she was standing on was in the middle of a wide slow moving river. Off to one side a large water wheel, almost identical to the one she had seen before, rolled back and forth in the current creaking silently with each wave. It must have been, she surmised, part of the device that had been responsible for flooded the arena before. From what she could tell simply by looking at it the wheel would scoop up the water and pour it onto a higher platform where it was picked up by yet another wheel and so on until it was dropped into a huge vat where it awaited someone to finally release it into the arena below.
What fascinated her more, however, was something completely different. Directly in front her were two parallel rows of holes etched into the wall leading upward to where she had first seen the bright light. Through the dim light that was pouring in she could now see an old, half rotten, wooden barricade. "Very clever," she said to herself.
Ecstatically Lara rushed to the top of the ladder and peeked through one of the bullet holes that she had created. As she pressed her eye against the wooden barrier she could feel its rough texture digging into her brow. It felt like she was going to get a splinter in her eye socket from being so close. But she ignored this worry completely in favor of curiosity and hope.
To her astonishment the room beyond was so full of light that it nearly blinded her the first time she set her eye onto it. Instinctively, she pulled back with tightly closed eyes to avoid the sudden rush of pain into her head. Not that she minded, however, because it had been so long since she had gazed upon any light at all that she was almost glad to be injured by it.
After a moment when the throbbing had subsided along with several more moments of blinking she once again pressed her eye up to the hole this time being careful not to singe her optic nerves. What she saw was a long wide tunnel. It started far off on her left in the clutches of a dark recess and then flowed along past her for several feet before it curved out of view.
The illumination that had so violently attacked her before came from a large hole in ceiling that had collapsed a long time ago bringing with it a great deal of sod and grass giving the sun cart blanch to light up the entire area whenever it pleased.
With the excitement of a schoolgirl, Lara stuck her fingers through the bullet holes as best as she could and attempted to tear away the rotting wood. Unfortunately, the wood was not as weather worn as it had first appeared. She could not get a good grip anywhere at all on the barricade, pulling it apart with her bear hands was apparently not possible.
Not deterred in the least Croft scurried back down the ladder where she hurriedly proceeded to search the platform for a rock or other hard object that she could use to smash her way to freedom. Being such a small surface, however, it was painfully obvious that she would have to look elsewhere for such an object. This was did not make for a more difficult task for, being in a cave, such things were readily abundant. The only problem was that most of them were underneath the river.
Dropping to one knee the explorer swiftly whipped off her pack and in her quest. Gently she removed the precious India stone along with the parchment she had taken from the arena and set them to one side where they would be relatively safe while she delved into the unknown. Once those were secure, she proceeded to simply turn the backpack completely upside down dumping the remaining contents onto the ledge in front of her scattering various odds and ends all over. Some of these things included her sunglasses, a few small books on ancient Latin and Hieroglyphics, in case she was confused by any sort of symbol she might not know, various food stuff packaging, the contents of which by now had been disposed of, and a lipstick for marking her path if she truly felt insecure about what direction to go. It had never been used.
In the midst of all of these one more little thing fell out, a single solitary flare. "Well, where did you come from," exclaimed the young lady as she acrimoniously picked up the instrument of light firmly in one hand. How she had missed it before she had no clue and why it had suddenly appeared now was an even bigger mystery. In the next few minutes the young lady examined both the flare and the insides of her pack in hopes of understanding why she had not found it before when she needed it. Of course, she found nothing and was forced to concede the whole affair to focus on the task before her but not before issuing a few choice words to the object.
In the next moment Miss Croft was underneath the surface of the water once again with a flare in one hand and her empty backpack in the other searching for a suitable rock to break her out of the dark dungeon she was in.
It was not before her eye fixed its self onto a stone that was almost exactly what she was looking for. It was small enough to fit neatly into the palm of her hand with grooves running here and there to act as a contour for her hand. In a flash it snapped up and slipped into the explorer's pack before continuing on.
The next stone that she found was a great deal larger and smoother. It was also heavier. Not that Lara actually even wanted it but she figured that it couldn't hurt to pick it up. After all, she wasn't totally sure that the first one would work and since she was truly on her last flare this time she wasn't about to take a chance.
And so she picked up the overly large stone and placed it gently in her backpack along side the somewhat smaller one. This, of course, brought forth a new problem that the young lady had yet thought of, swimming with so much weight.
Actually, it wasn't that big of a problem, at least, it wouldn't have been had Lara considered the matter to begin with. As soon as she had secured the rock in her backpack she rolled around and pushed herself off the bottom of the river with her feet. It nearly tore her arm off.
That being accomplished the young lady returned to the surface to set her plan into action. Hoisting herself up to the stone platform a second time she carefully exchanged the contents of her backpack with what she had previously removed and replaced it over her shoulders.
Then, with the exuberance of a criminal freed from her cell, the young lady scurried back up the ladder and began to beat the wooden barrier as hard as she could with the rock that she had found. As she pounded the wooden structure small bits began to splinter off and fall to the floor. After a few more hits the pieces started to get a bit larger until she had produced a hole large enough to fit her hand through.
With out a seconds delay she dropped the stone and threw her right hand into it and pulled until there was a loud snap. Suddenly a large portion of the obstacle flipped out sideways nearly taking out the explorer's right eye before floating to the water below.
Now there was a hole large enough to squeeze her body through. It was not an easy fit by any means but after contorting herself this way and that she managed to get her front half through. The rest of her soon followed with much less of a struggle and before she knew it she was standing in the midst of the full, bright, sunlight once again.
It seemed like an eternity since she last felt such warmth and for a moment she forgot everything. Devon, Beeman, the artifact, they were all out of her mind. She could only consider the wonder and power of the sun and how she had missed it.
It reminded her of childhood summers long past in her. Times when her only concern in life was weather to read Dickens or H.G. Wells and she longed for their return. There was no doubt that she loved what she was doing as an adult but now that she thought about it she could not help but wish for the innocence of those days.
To add to the nostalgia a cool breeze now found its way to the explorer giving her yet another reason to linger on for a while. Gently, it blew her dark brown hair back over her head making each strand frolic to and fro like small children. She smiled heartily as a flood of new images set upon her mind. Life was good.
In spite of all of this, however, she knew that she could not spend all of eternity enjoying the sweet gifts of nature around her. There would be more than enough time for that later. Right now she had a mission to complete not to mention giving Devon his comeuppance.
Setting her sunglasses in place she turned to the right and ambled swiftly down the winding hallway. It swung around in a strange little S like pattern before it emptied out into a small circular room. Like much of the rest of the structures she had come across, this room was made entirely of stone blocks. Starting at the bottom it rolled its self upward smoothly into dome. Just to the left of her a second opening was cut into the wall leading back outside allowing the bright sunlight to shine its light softly onto the stone floor.
None of this impressed the explorer at all, however. In fact, she barley took notice of any of it at all. Something else had caught her attention. In the very center of the room was a stone pedestal. It was made of limestone and stood nearly four feet high above the floor. The rest of it extended deep into the ground below.
Around its top several characters much like those that she had discovered before on the parchment in the arena were carved into the surface. This time, however, she was not encumbered by a lack of lighting which made things infinitely easier to decipher
It took a few minutes for the young lady to explore the letters and a few more minutes to decipher them into something resembling words. Even then, because of the dialect, she was not sure that she was totally correct in her interpretation and even if she was she was not sure that she fully understood it.
"This...is the stone...of the mighty god...Jupiter," she translated aloud as she rubbed her fingers across the pedestal, "Guarded by the...sacred...clan. Heed that all must...succumb to the mightiest. Touch not this stone...lest the truth...be revealed."
"Curious," she said to herself deep in thought. It wasn't even a traditional curse as she was accustoming to finding. There was nothing about death or plagues or anything. The only thing that it mentioned was truth. It was a phrase that stumped her greatly. What truth was it talking about and who was the one it called the mightiest?
But even this was not the full focus of the young lady's attention. The object that she was gazing so diligently at was setting directly on top of the pedestal, a large blue jewel. Her quest was at an end.
In a flash she made her way across the room to the artifact. It was even more beautiful than the India stone that she had previously obtained and even though the sunlight could not reach far enough across the floor to make contact with it there was very bright glow coming from within. Enamored by curiosity she quickly pulled out the first jewel to compare. They were identical. The only difference between the two of them was the picture that was engraved in the top of each.
Lara could hardly believe her eyes. There was no evidence of any hidden doors, puzzles, traps, or anything else to protect the jewel. Something, she felt, was very wrong. Every artifact that she had obtained before was guarded in one form or another. Some were attached to traps while others sat under the watchful eye of a guardian such as a dragon or other unearthly monster. But here there was nothing.
It was enough to send her mind into warp drive. What was she missing? She ran every scenario she could think of around in her head trying to understand where they would have put a trap going so far as to search the stone pedestal from top to bottom but did not find one thing that looked like it would trigger a trap.
That is until she looked down. Extending outward from the pedestal in four different directions she noticed four crevices extending outward toward the wall dividing the room into quarters. Even more curious was the fact that none of these sections were connected to the others in any way.
Throwing herself to the ground Lara peered inquisitively through the gaps in hopes of understanding the nature of the separation. Unfortunately, it was far too dark to see anything let alone make an assumption. Still, she was sure that something was afoot but for now there were other things that she wanted to concentrate on.
Rising to her feet once again Miss Croft returned to the artifact in the center of the room just in time to here a very strong Texas accent echo faintly from the secondary entrance to the room. "Ah, so there you are Devon," she whispered sarcastically, "it's about time you showed up."
With that, she drew her pistols and aimed carefully at the entry point waiting for her foe to rear his ugly head. It didn't take long. The verbal banter between he and Samuel Beeman grew steadily louder by the second. She had not forgotten her adversary's stunt to end her and now it was payback time.
A moment later a small shadow appeared from behind a corner followed soon after by its owner. This was Croft's best chance. Carefully, she took aim at the man's ear with her left gun leaving the right in case she missed. Then, before he knew she was there, Lara Croft fired.
To be continued...