Lara hopped out of the hole, preceding Raziel. She dropped out of the wall about fifteen feet from the main door they had left behind only a few minutes before. Kain stood, leaning against a pillar, tapping his foot slowly.
"Tell me, Raziel, why did I come here to help you? It seems this place was made for you and Lara alone."
"Something you hadn't foreseen?" Raziel shot venomously.
"You know, Raziel, I find you more tolerable after you have just engaged in sex. You take much less . . . offense from the world when you have been physically satisfied."
Before Raziel could retort and ignite a battle of wits between the two, Lara interceded by shoving him toward the door.
"We have lots to do and less time to do it in. Open the bloody door before you get shoved into the Spectral Realm again."
With a slight sigh (Raziel swore he would never understand women), he slid the Reaver into the lock and watched as the door slid open. Behind it was a large, long hallway. On the inside of the door to the left was another fount, this one having a wisp of gray-white multicolored energy. Raziel walked over to it and bathed it in the energy, imbuing the Reaver for a time with the elemental power of Air.
"Why'd you change it?" Lara asked curiously.
"It will most likely come in handy. These founts seem to always be strategically placed for my purposes."
Lara shrugged slightly before looking down the hallway. It continued in regal elegance for near a half mile, the columns melding into arcs over forty feet high. She slid her pistols out of their holsters and headed in, glancing left and right at the intricate architecture. When they got to a point of the hall that had mosaics of the wielder of the Reaver, Kain groaned.
"You too are on your own for now. I have many things to do more important than this. I'll find you after you get out."
He concentrated a moment, then disappeared out of existence. Lara looked to Raziel.
"Abandoned again."
"So it seems. Believe me, Lara, it is for the better."
They continued down the hall until a few of the undead guardians rose from the ground in front of them. Lara sighed, but stepped back and watched in amusement as Raziel dispatched the three with ease born of practice.
"How often have you run into these things?"
"Far too many to count. By this point they're only a minor annoyance compared to the task at hand."
"Yes, we're dealing with a major annoyance: the running around solving stupid and pointless puzzles annoyance. I don't know who would ever really bother with such a life."
Everything went dead silent as the two stared at each other. Lara looked around, shrugged, and indicated forward.
"Onward?"
"And upward," Raziel responded, indicating the rising path they were standing on.
Lara fell into step beside Raziel and kept pace with him as he headed down the hall. The walls became a light brown of unworked stone, no designs of paintings of any kind on them. As they traveled, the hours slowly passed. The path kept sloping upward, and it got progressively more and more cool. When Lara could see her breath in the air, she stopped Raziel long enough to pull on a coat from her backpack. About half an hour later, she stopped him again to pull out a pair of thick winter pants to cover her legs, as the temperature had only continued to drop.
"Too bad," Raziel murmured, watching her pull on the pants. "I won't get to look at those shapely legs of yours anymore." Lara smirked at him.
"I have a feeling you'll soon be doing too much fighting to really be paying attention to how much you miss my legs, Raziel."
The two continued on, and the path suddenly twisted steeply. Around the turn, they found themselves looking at a fork in the path, both ways being blocked off by a thin layer of ice.
"Boy, this brings back memories," Lara mumbled to herself. Raziel gently placed a claw on her hip and moved her behind him before summoning the Soul Reaver and aiming it toward the blockage.
"Left or right?"
"Right," Lara responded immediately.
Raziel charged up a single Reaver bolt and released it, watching in satisfaction as the ice shattered, revealing behind it a small room with only another basin in it.
"Hm. Guess it's not that one," Raziel commented blandly. He took aim at the other sheet of ice and smashed it, much more pleased to see another pathway behind the second. He easily walked toward the basin, leaving Lara looking in curiosity at the other pathway and inspected what Reaver basin it was. He was most amused to feel the warmth of a fire basin as soon as he drew near. He bathed the Reaver in its flames and headed back to Lara, not bothering to un-summon it. As soon as Lara's eyes fell on the ethereal burning blade, she quickly jogged over to him and hugged him abruptly. He looked down at her and noticed she had her hands held out toward the Reaver. Smirking to himself, Raziel left the Reaver drift back into the Spectral Realm, dismissing it from the physical one.
"Ooh," Lara groaned. "It was warm."
"You will live," he responded in good humor. Then the humor died as he added dead seriously, "I will make sure of it."
Before Lara could ask any questions, Raziel walked down the path, not glancing back at her. She blinked a few times, gritted her teeth, and followed after him. The walls were now a blue-white from the ice and Lara could see her breath form in clouds of ice particles before her mouth. She almost wondered if they had appeared in Antarctica. The only thing keeping her from thinking she was on Earth was her blue-skinned companion who walked a few feet in front of her, giving her ample view of his backside.
'This . . .' Lara thought to herself, noting her eyes' travels across his body, 'is not helping.' She moved up quickly to walk next to him and viscously suppressed the desire to drop back again. She suddenly decided it might be a better idea to do so when five undead guardians appeared from the ground. These ones didn't look like the ones they had run into earlier. These ones were seven, maybe eight feet tall, looked like they were wearing funeral death masks, and wielded wicked-looking scimitars. Raziel snarled slightly as the Reaver sprang willfully into appearance. Hearing a sound behind her, Lara glanced around cautiously to see about seven more of the guardians converging on them.
"Raziel? We happen to have a minor problem."
He glanced around and saw what she meant. In response, he readied the Reaver and jerked his head toward her pistols. She nodded, not caring if he could or could not see it. She knew what they were going to do.
Unexpectedly, two of the undead inexplicably imploded. A third went down after being hit by a lightning bolt. Raziel had taken their distraction to his advantage and had swung in with the Reaver, quickly dispatching another guardian, even as the Reaver began to grow in light and power. Lara emptied a clip into one, and didn't pause to watch it fall as she snapped in another clip and continued working on the next one. That left only six more to go. Raziel destroyed two more, and the ninth followed the first ones' paths and imploded. Lara finished off another two and watched Raziel kill the last. The Reaver was now glowing at full power and he wavered, trying to suppress its bloodlust. He had pushed it to the max. Any closer and the Reaver would be feeding off him right now. Raziel pulled his tabard down and swallowed the souls from Lara's kills, mentally thanking her for not having a soul-stealing weapon. Then he turned to look to see who had helped them.
Sitting up on an icy ledge not more than twenty feet from them was a bored-looking Kain.
"I remembered why it was I was keeping track of you," he deadpanned. "You two both have a rather amazing ability to get in trouble if you aren't watched."
"We were doing quite all right for ourselves, Kain," Raziel shot back venomously. Kain sighed.
"You were, Raziel, but that situation might have proved more than our little mortal to handle, and, annoying as she is, she is important somehow to our problem and I want her to stay alive. I would much rather have to stick my neck out and offer her a hand than lose her currently." He glanced at Lara. "Keep in mind, Lara, this is not giving you unlimited patience with me. Once you prove to be too much trouble or are not of any use to us anymore, I will have no qualms about killing you."
There was a distinctive CLICK in the hall as Lara cocked her pistols. "It's so nice we understand one another. The feeling is mutual, Kain, believe me."
"I think I'm beginning to understand how you feel when Kain and I fight," Raziel commented to Lara quietly.
Kain dropped down from his spot and began to walk down the path, not waiting for the two to catch up. Raziel stepped after him and Lara fell into step beside him. As the halls narrowed down, Lara found an excuse to fall back behind him and watched the muscles under the skin of his back move appreciatively. He suddenly stopped as Kain came to a halt before him. Before them was a large set of double doors with a lock on it similar to the one for the Reaver. However, this one was crafted into the image of a three clawed hand. Above it was an image of a winged creature with horns. Lara recognized the symbol with the one on the cloth that was draped over Kain's shoulder. He studied the image dubiously.
"Apparently it was a wise choice for me to return to watching over you two."
He touched the symbol and watched as the doors opened. Inside was a large chamber with a single mural painted over its spherical wall. The mural was of two planets as a shot from space. Lara recognized one as Earth, but didn't know the other.
"What is this planet?" she inquired, pointing to the one on the right.
"That is Nosgoth," Raziel informed her as he moved next to her. "Do you know what planet the other is?"
"Earth," Lara supplied. "My home."
On each planet was an image that looked like the Pillars. The one on Nosgoth lay to the southwest. The ones on Earth lay to the northeast, surprisingly enough, in what looked like England. A crystal blue strand of what looked like energy arced from Nosgoth to Earth.
"Someone knew this was going to happen long before it did," Lara commented quietly to herself. All three looked to the only other thing in the room, a pedestal which stood relatively between the two planets. Upon the gray stone lay one object; an almost cylindrical shape that Lara recognized immediately as a single bullet.
"How unrewarding. We came all this way for this little trinket?" Lara asked disgustedly. "I suppose it's a little piece to a large puzzle as usual."
"Do not doubt the power of anything that rests in the Ancient's warrens," Raziel chided her calmly.
"Do not put too much faith in them, either," Kain added.
"Thank you for the help, boys, but I believe I will take it. Now, I assume we need to get back to the fortress, correct?"
Raziel nodded and Kain put a hand on both their shoulders and concentrated a moment. A light multi-colored mist surrounded them, then cleared to reveal they were standing in the fortress' clearing. Lara blinked a few times.
"Why didn't you just teleport us into the chamber?"
"Because I didn't know where I was going," Kain responded calmly. "I could have teleported us into the rock wall for all I knew. Were you willing to take that chance?"
Lara ignored him and slipped the bullet they had gotten from the cavern into her pistol. "Aim for the crystal?" When she didn't hear anything in reference to a 'no,' she took careful aim. No use in losing their one chance because of an itchy trigger finger. When she was sure of the aim, she fired once and watched in surprise as the crystal blew up with a huge explosion and an almost shock wave reaction. Lara almost wavered on her feet and demanded, "What was that?"
"Good question," Raziel responded. "I don't know whether that was the crystal shattering, the bullet's power, or a mixture of both."
The gate swung open, almost seeming to wait for them.
"Into the depths of hell," Lara murmured to herself.
"You have no idea how close to the truth you are," Kain responded.