Lara Croft
The Hall of Seasons
03:45
Lara held her breath as she fitted the crystal into its socket. The reddish glow flared, winking. For a long time, nothing happened. But then tremors vibrated through the soles of her feet as if a loaded truck passed across from where she was standing. The floor clanked, ancient machinery groaning to life, clockwork, hydraulics, heavy with centuries of rust and neglect.
Dust drifted from the ceiling, coating her shoulders and face. Lamps swayed and threw ghoulish shadows across the walls. Transfixed, Lara could only watch as the exquisite tableaux of gemstone and loving artistry set into the floor began to rise.
Each panel mounted on a column crept towards the ceiling, driven by their engineer's cunning. Just as smoothly, they descended with each pillar bowing to its neighbors. They came to a hovering pause at eye level.
It was a staircase. One that only the most intrepid or foolhardy would dare climb.
Lara approached the nearest pillar. At the dome's zenith, was an opening she had not noticed before. It was an oculus, a circular skylight common in classical architecture from the 1500s.
Some forgotten disaster had claimed the upper balcony and sheared off a section, the size of a double-decker bus, from the architecture. Pale torchlight shone through the hole, beckoning.
The painting could only be up there, somewhere.
It wasn't hard to haul herself onto the lowest pillar. Floating, it adjusted to her weight, and then rose. She kept her center of gravity low, taking care not to slip on the onyx and jet tableau of Scorpio, it's tail poised to strike.
Patiently, she waited for the next pillar to drop into range, then the next and the next. Sagittarius, Taurus, Gemini. Works that any renaissance craftsman would have been privileged to create, and even more distraught to see her tramping all over. At last, the pillars' journey terminated within reach of the great iron chandelier. Without hesitation, she stepped lightly up and threw her arms out for balance. Heat frazzled her senses as she picked her way across the hollow, encrusted metal until she could vault over the low balustrade and onto the balcony.
The wall exploded, and chips of marble sliced her upraised forearms. She had instinctively thrown them up to cover her eyes. Half-blinded by dust, she stumbled to avoid chunks of stone the size of her body.
Coughing, Lara scooted backward on her backside, training her guns on the shambling figure that had broken free of its entombment.
It spotted her, hissed a challenge, and swung its greatsword at her unprotected flank.
I hate feeling unwelcome.
Letting out a war cry of her own, she lashed out with a flailing kick and shattered its kneecaps. Rotting teeth and stinking chainmail toppled forward, descending with a furious gargle. At the last moment, she rolled on one side, emptying her guns through the slit in its helm.
Scrambling, Lara leaped to her feet, not waiting for it to rise.
It clawed at her as she retreated.
A Lux Veritatis arrow flopped from its torn surcoat.
"Persistent bugger, aren't you?" Lara loaded her gun with grim intent, backing away to safety.
The stone walls along the entire length of the balcony rumbled and broke apart as more Lux Veritatis guardians emerged from their slumber. In seconds, the sweeping crescent of the balcony became littered with hunks of masonry. A choking cloud of dust shrouded the approaching figures, their baleful eyes glowing in the shadows.
There were no more stairs, no doorways.
I'm cornered.
The guardian with the broken legs and bullet-riddled skull emerged from the gloom, its splintered bones reattached. Its steps were faltering, but nothing less than rattling hatred powered its movements.
"Krrssss!"
In a heartbeat, the other knights drew their swords and howled, a cry that would have emptied the bladders of lesser men.
Bringing back the dead wasn't difficult. She'd encountered the practice several times in one form or another. But preserving a body's purpose and will was another matter. Whatever power was being employed by the Lux Veritatis, it was pretty high-quality stuff. Only in Egypt and a handful of Chinese tombs had she seen reanimated corpses with such initiative and persistence.
Her thoughts automatically seized on the lamp of C4 still in her backpack, but she doubted even that would slow them down for a long. Her back thudded against the wall. The crossbow dug into her shoulder blades. She unslung it, ready to wield it like a club.
Maybe fighting's not an option!
Cursing, she re-slung the crossbow and scanned for a route upward. The handholds were crumbling and spaced too far apart for comfort, but she wasn't about to argue.
Lara barely hoisted herself up when the nearest corpse reached her. The tiled wall yielded to his rusting sword as easily as butter, his swing missing her by millimeters.
The thing screamed in frustration, but she didn't dare look down.
Higher and higher, she climbed, her spine arching as she traversed the curving face of the dome. More than once her handholds gave way, dissolving into grit that stung her eyes. Gravity smothered her chest, yanking at her burning shoulders. The crossbow thumped against her butt with every motion, its bulk weighing her down.
Why did I think it'd be a good idea to bring it along?
At last, impossibly, Lara dragged her aching body through the oculus and rolled onto the stone.
Excellent, cool, solid stone.
"Never again." Larapanted, too relieved to care about the enraged cadavers below.
It was sobering to feel the difference in her body. Two years ago, she wouldn't even have broken a sweat for a climb like that. Still, there was no sense in being overly critical. She had survived, and her enemies were venting their frustration instead of hacking her into bite-sized pieces. It was something to feel thankful for, at least.
Thankfully, Werner had not attempted to retrieve the painting himself. It would have been suicidal for a man in his condition to even contemplate gaining entry to the tomb, let alone defeat its guardians.
Once, perhaps, he would have done so,- and hired a battalion of thugs to do the dirty work for him. However, with his perceived need for secrecy, and the terror of Eckhardt breathing down his neck, not to mention his physical frailty, it would have been unthinkable for the old man to even try. Regardless of their history, he'd done the right thing by asking for her help.
The ceiling of the oculus is low, a narrow hallway choked with cobwebs. Light came from up a flight of steep stairs, a single torch that only seemed to deepen the shadows. After her experiences in the chamber below, she was surprised by such simplicity. Perhaps she'd come to the wrong place?
At the top of the stairs, Lara gasped and then realized her doubts were unjustified.
Bronze braziers sat between stout granite pillars, giving off cloying smoke that crept over the bowls and trickled across the floor like sluggish ghosts. Their ruddy glow did not extend very far. The ceiling was lost in vaulted, inky darkness. A monk carved in black stood directly facing the door, his hands, as if he were a herald displaying his lord's emblem at a tournament, proffered a polished marble plaque. Four more identical statues stood at intervals around the room, their impassive faces turned to the walls, watching for intruders.
Lara's eyes narrowed. At the center of the choking haze, on a raised dais, stood six more statues upon whose shoulders rested a sarcophagus. They were chiseled from more of the coal-black stone, except for the marble skulls in place of the pallbearers' faces. Perhaps the most striking feature of the room, however, was the trench of smoldering embers that encircled the dais. It cut across the floor like lava through a crack. A boundary that should not be crossed. The glow of firelight made the statues' eye sockets flicker, their lipless smiles stretching into hellish grins.
There was no sign of the painting anywhere.
Impatience isn't a virtue in my line of work.
The trick was to examine every detail, not to jump to conclusions based on a just cursory examination. She'd lost count of the number of archaeological sites that others have visited and disregarded as worthless, only for her to come along and point out the hidden meaning staring them in the face. A hairline crack could be a door, a pebble out of place could mark a trip wire, and a riddle of broken hieroglyphs could warn them not to feed the crocodiles.
No joke. Those ancient Egyptians had a twisted sense of humor. With all this in mind, it came as no surprise that she entered with the utmost caution. Surprisingly, all of the statues' plaques were blank, with nothing to suggest identity or purpose. The sarcophagus was a different matter.
Lara approached with care. Words were carved into the sarcophagus' flanks, under a light covering of dust that she easily brushed away.
"Brother John Obscura, 1455," Lara said. "That's the monk who supposedly painted over the original Obscura Paintings. I wonder if Carvier knew he was buried here…"
What does the rest of the inscription say?
Lara pursed her lips, struggling to decipher the text. "It's in Latin… Ultra Vigilis Unbram, Ecce Veritas." She gasped. "Through the Spirit of the Keeper, Behold the Truth,"
"There are times when-"
Her vision exploded in scarlet, fractured agony. It shoved back, cracking her skull upon stone. The temperature plummeted, freezing her eyelids shut. The air in her lungs crystallized with sickening speed, as though she'd swallowed broken glass.
For a moment, she was back under the Pyramid, lost under crushing darkness, helpless and broken. About to die.
A shriek pierced her delirium, thrusting her back to full consciousness.
She'd done some things she wasn't proud of, but she was sure her afterlife wouldn't contain sounds like that.
Something vaguely man-shaped blurred past, hovering just out of reach. Coldness emanated from it like a doorway to Antarctica. Frost clung to her eyelashes and numbed her outstretched fingers.
It dived at her.
Lara avoided its touch by a whisker, banging against a pillar in her haste. Stars exploded across her eyes. The howling, wailing apparition sailed past, circling to the far side of the chamber as she came to lay scant inches from the smoldering trench. Its warmth caressed her skin, thawing her out. She regained her senses, but one blinking mote of light refused to disappear. It was the plaque of the statue in front of her, its form suddenly alive with a twinkling blue halo.
Lara shook her head. She didn't imagine it. At the center of the radiance was a painting.
The Painting, capital O.P.
Well, wouldn't you know it?
The braziers went out one by one as they floated past. Its unnatural aura sapped the light of the flames.
The fiery trench wasn't there for decoration or defense. It was a prison. The specter couldn't sustain itself without the constant heat.
She had a chance.
The ghost hovered before her. Its tattered robes flapped in disturbing patterns, as though blown by winds, not of this earth. She tried to predict its movements, but there was nothing remotely human about it.
She made the mistake of meeting its burning gaze.
The sour-sweet smell of mold and mildew overwhelmed her, the pitter-patter of rain leaking through rotting thatch. In the space of a heartbeat, she was taken back to a dark and gusty night in a forgotten chapel, lost in the Irish Sea.
She'd seen this ghost before.
There's no time to think about it now.
Lara tore her gaze away, shoving the thoughts aside. She feinted left, dodging into a roll. The specter missed her by inches. A blast of a cold breeze pushed her to her feet and she made a blind grab for the painting.
Her hand tingled as though electrified as she grasped at something solid. The painting was barely the size of Werner's notebook. As her fingers tightened around its frame, the ghost swooped down for another attack.
A wind brushed past her, as if someone was there with her, protecting her from the ghost.
She didn't look back.
