I am not making any money with this. I do not own Lara Croft, Tomb Raider
etc.
Only to be archived at Fanfiction.net and 'Lara Croft's Tales of Beauty and Power'. All other sites email me first to gain permission.
Disclaimer, Thank-Yous and some other notes at the end of the story.
========================================================= The Last Revelation Part V: Broken Skies by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi) =========================================================
Chapter 2
One day earlier
Giza, Cairo Lower Egypt
Hamshed Bakhti knew he would never get the evening off. So much had happened - even a slight attempt to try and fit it all in his head made it pound like during a severe attack of migraine. Occasionally he shared a moment of horrified amusement with himself by gazing at the sky and looking at his watch. One p.m. Night sky. Bloodred clouds.
The other guards had not left their posts for anything that evening. Very strange, that was. One had brought his Quran with him to his post. Others had cast prayers and bags of sand into the gorges the sudden earthquake a day earlier had ravaged open. No one knew how. Everyone pretended they didn't care. It was in the hands of Allah for these things to happen.
His post was to guide the western corner of the Great Pyramid. As also a kind of a guide to one of the world's wonders, he was used to thousands of tourists wandering around the area. For the last couple of days Giza had been empty.
Strange things happen in the world. Sometimes too strange to comprehend. Neither he or his wife had laughed when locusts had come and ate her wife's laundry, hung from the window.
A sign from the gods, perhaps.
And then the insects. Hideous monsters like in American movies. Scarab beetles the size of lawn mowers. Scorpions big enough to jaw a man in two. They had lost five men. Until all the creatures had suddenly disappeared.
The pyramids were waiting for something. Hamshed felt it very clearly, though he had not addressed this feeling to the other guards.
Crazy or not - he believed he somehow had a kind of a telepathic connection with the pyramid. And now the pyramid was obviously telling him to watch his back that night.
Too late. Hamshed Bakhti fell on his back, creating a dusty thud as he landed. After a moment his guard keys disappeared from his belt.
Into Lara Croft's backpack.
'If I wasn't patriotic, I wouldn't be here.' Lara spared no smile at the thought of what she'd said to Jean crossing her mind. Sacrificing the guard had not been necessary, she knew. Letting her thoughts wander as she started advancing towards the Great Pyramid.
Though a murder charge was the least of her worries. Even if she was to survive this.
Patriotic. Lara continued her jogging towards the pyramid as she dug out empty clips from her backpack.
Patriotic. For what country? The whole world had become her home.
She had always thought that saving the world would somehow feel more glorious.
Another leap across the gorge. No possibility of failing. And she cleared the gap. Taking a look around her, Lara searched for the next suitable block. One stood in a sandy hill next to a smaller pyramid. But it didn't hold enough space to get a sprinting speed. Turning around, Lara staggered backwards as the sight of the enormous pyramid wall fell into her eyes. The wind made her hair flew. Lara closed her eyes. This she could do.
Lara jumped - and landed on a block not slanted enough to make her slide down. 'So this is how it works,' she thought to herself, and looked for another block. It was on the same level, but two slopes left. She needed a long sprint. Making sure her crossbow was firmly strapped into her back, she clenched her fist in determination, and took a running jump. She landed firmly on the light orange block.
A strange noise hummed somewhere above her. Quickly grabbing her crossbow, she released the safety clip and backed up so that her back was against the pyramid wall.
But the danger came from above. A huge beetle, humming and spitting, tried to grab her hair. Lara started and staggered backwards, feeling sand crackle from under her feet. Raising her crossbow, she quickly rebalanced herself on the slender block. The insect was luckily a metre away from her. Aiming quickly but accurately, Lara pulled the triggered and sent an ultra- sharp fibreglass arrow right through the creature. It fell down the pyramid, making a strange zipping sound.
Listening for possible other threats, Lara turned to see the gorge. A shiver went down her spine as she realized she had almost fallen down the slope. Making a mental note to be more cautious, she continued her climb.
The pyramid slopes were like a maze. You had to figure out when to slide down, when to continue the slow, dusty climb upwards. Lara used her binoculars at first but they distorted the distances so badly she had to rely only on her eyesight. It would have been embarrassing to die by falling down to one of the gorges. After a dozen jumps it got tougher, as Lara' soles became a bit tender after all the tirading impacts from her hiking boots hitting the hard stone blocks. A few more beetles had tried to make a meal out of her - a single arrow from her crossbow per capita had been enough. Relieved that she had not encountered any other predators on the small pyramid wall blocks, Lara continued her journey until she found what she was looking for. The pyramid entrance. Gasping as the physical strain of the long climb took its toll, Lara drank from her water bottle, digging out the guard's keys. She used them in the lock near the huge doors, the opening on the outer wall hidden from curious tourists.
Loading her shotgun, Lara stepped into the pyramid.
Hours later, Lara got a premonition of what was to come. Finally having found her route to the Temple of Horus, she didn't know what to expect. Slicers. Triggered traps. Holes full of burning oil. Beetles - lots and lots of beetles.
What she got was very different. Almost an ascetic entrance led to a bluish hallway with torches no one could have lit. Ancient Egyptian tricks.
Lara lit a flare as the torches only managed to cast dim light across the walls. She walked slowly forward - and was taken by surprise.
The chamber she arrived in was bathed in light brighter than she thought was possible in an ancient, undiscovered temple. Wondering if the good old priest Semerkhet had something to do with the torches - as priests were often also architects, Lara cast her flare away and studied the chamber.
Water flowed in two underground fountains, and a large waterskin lay on the floor. At the other end was a large waterscale. Above the fountain there were large, simple hieroglyphics - like wavy lines. Despite her excellent knowledge of hieroglyphics, Lara could not identify the sign. Leaving the riddle for a second, she walked to the other end of the chamber.
The opposite side of the chamber from the scale was not lit. Heavy metal bars separated a dark area from the rest of the chamber.
Lara's hands flew to her pistols.
Something was breathing heavily in the shadows.
Scratchy footsteps and steamy breathing came closer.
What appeared near the bars made Lara stagger backwards. A creature from Hell itself. A brown-orange, long-limbed monster with an alien-looking head and impressive teeth half-crawled in the shadows. The sight made Lara's skin crawl. Taking a look up, she noticed the bars were actually a raisable cage door, strapped into a thin line leading to the waterscale. Lara's brains already sorting out the new-found riddle, she forgot the creature.
She was standing too close to the cage. After a low and mean-spirited growl, the creature attacked. Its forearm reaching from between the bars, it slashed Lara in her shoulder. Lara jumped - and fired.
It was no use. Lara's jaw dropped. As her first spray of bullets hit the creature, it disappeared in a blink of yellow light, only to explode back in sight a second later. Just like the ghost baboons she had watched do cartwheels in a tomb in the mastaba area, shivers going down her spine. Hormone-increased insects and T-rexs she could handle - ghosts were a little out of her field.
Lara jumped even further back from the cage - trying to figure out a way to advance in her quest without running into the hellish creature again. After reappearing in a small, quiet explosion, it had crawled back into the shadows of its cage. Obviously lost its interest in Lara as she was no longer standing within it's reach.
Trying to shake of the horrible feeling of being watched, Lara returned to the waterscale. The adrenaline in her blood wore off, and her shoulder started to hurt. Kneeling down in front of the eastern fountain, she inspected the wounds. They were five inches long scratch marks - deeper and more horrid than any made by tigers or raptors. 'And I thought a velociraptor had unbeatable claws,' Lara raved to herself, washing the wound with the cool fountain water. She covered the marks with a bandage. They burned like fire and blood still trickled from them, but Lara figured a clean and dry bandage would silence them off for some time.
She got up and turned her attention to the hieroglyphics. In the decorative wall carving stood a God pouring water.
Suddenly the puzzle pieces fell into place. The two wavy hieroglyphic lines meant water. Litres. They must've been litres.
Shrugging, Lara picked up the larger waterskin from the chamber floor. It was made of the same leather as the smaller one she'd found from a mastaba. Quickly counting the possibilities in her mind, she filled the large skin, poured water off it to the smaller until it was full. Two litres - two lines. Looking over her shoulder to the shadowy cage, Lara wiped sweat off her forehead and walked to the scale, carefully trying not to spill any water from the large waterskin. Holding her breath, she poured the water into a measuring can on the other side of the scale. Slowly, the scale arm started falling..
Lara still held her breath, overly aware of the burning of the scratch marks..
The scale stopped. Lara turned like the wind to look at the cage door. It didn't raise. She has succeeded. A floor panel suddenly fell down, revealing an opening.
Without hesitation, Lara jumped in.
For Lara's slight horror the monster followed her two floors down. On each floor a water puzzle was waiting to be solved. Lara's brains aching from a lack of sleep, she managed to solve all the waterskin tricks. Finally, the opening on the floor and a pole in the regular bat grotto lead to a chamber of different sorts.
A blue, heavenly light shone down a ravine. The light almost seemed like a living creature - flowing and dancing like a blinding flow of transparent blue water flowing down the ravine. The walls were climbable, as Lara noticed for her great relief. She didn't have enough rope with her.
She hesitated before starting the climb. A second of her thoughts was filled of a sibilant whisper. Or was it something else? It was like locusts. Inside a pyramid? Hardly!
Lara thought of Jean as she turned her backpack over, a sudden intuition hitting her senses. Jean, probably sitting in that apartment alone, perhaps sipping wine. Lara tested herself - would she be there rather than in the temple? No. Waiting was worse than this. Lara smiled to herself as she thought about Jean sitting on the sofa, sipping a glass of red wine, the balcony door open and sand-scented wind blowing in, moving the long curtains.
Lara started piling the intestines of her backpack into two piles. The pillar of light seemed to lead into an enormous chamber with water - just like the one mentioned in the text about the battleground of Set and Horus. Lara knew she had a better chance to succeed if she carried less gear. Her medical supplies were a certain choice. She would need those more than probably. Guns probably weren't going to do much good. The crossbow was an ultra-light model, so she decided to keep it. It offered plenty of firepower in a compact form. Her pistols stayed - more of lucky charms than anything else. Lara stuffed three flares into her shorts pockets. Compass. The scripture statues. The armour of Horus. That was probably all. She was leaving behind all her other weapons - a Remington 12 gauge shotgun, uzis, the revolver sans the lasersight, and the grenade launcher.
Taking a last look at the small antechamber, Lara jumped, grabbed hold of the climbable wall in the supernatural light, and plunged into her destiny.
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
As always, comments and reviews would be much appreciated - they're the fuel that feeds this creative furnace.
siirma6@surfeu.fi
Only to be archived at Fanfiction.net and 'Lara Croft's Tales of Beauty and Power'. All other sites email me first to gain permission.
Disclaimer, Thank-Yous and some other notes at the end of the story.
========================================================= The Last Revelation Part V: Broken Skies by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi) =========================================================
Chapter 2
One day earlier
Giza, Cairo Lower Egypt
Hamshed Bakhti knew he would never get the evening off. So much had happened - even a slight attempt to try and fit it all in his head made it pound like during a severe attack of migraine. Occasionally he shared a moment of horrified amusement with himself by gazing at the sky and looking at his watch. One p.m. Night sky. Bloodred clouds.
The other guards had not left their posts for anything that evening. Very strange, that was. One had brought his Quran with him to his post. Others had cast prayers and bags of sand into the gorges the sudden earthquake a day earlier had ravaged open. No one knew how. Everyone pretended they didn't care. It was in the hands of Allah for these things to happen.
His post was to guide the western corner of the Great Pyramid. As also a kind of a guide to one of the world's wonders, he was used to thousands of tourists wandering around the area. For the last couple of days Giza had been empty.
Strange things happen in the world. Sometimes too strange to comprehend. Neither he or his wife had laughed when locusts had come and ate her wife's laundry, hung from the window.
A sign from the gods, perhaps.
And then the insects. Hideous monsters like in American movies. Scarab beetles the size of lawn mowers. Scorpions big enough to jaw a man in two. They had lost five men. Until all the creatures had suddenly disappeared.
The pyramids were waiting for something. Hamshed felt it very clearly, though he had not addressed this feeling to the other guards.
Crazy or not - he believed he somehow had a kind of a telepathic connection with the pyramid. And now the pyramid was obviously telling him to watch his back that night.
Too late. Hamshed Bakhti fell on his back, creating a dusty thud as he landed. After a moment his guard keys disappeared from his belt.
Into Lara Croft's backpack.
'If I wasn't patriotic, I wouldn't be here.' Lara spared no smile at the thought of what she'd said to Jean crossing her mind. Sacrificing the guard had not been necessary, she knew. Letting her thoughts wander as she started advancing towards the Great Pyramid.
Though a murder charge was the least of her worries. Even if she was to survive this.
Patriotic. Lara continued her jogging towards the pyramid as she dug out empty clips from her backpack.
Patriotic. For what country? The whole world had become her home.
She had always thought that saving the world would somehow feel more glorious.
Another leap across the gorge. No possibility of failing. And she cleared the gap. Taking a look around her, Lara searched for the next suitable block. One stood in a sandy hill next to a smaller pyramid. But it didn't hold enough space to get a sprinting speed. Turning around, Lara staggered backwards as the sight of the enormous pyramid wall fell into her eyes. The wind made her hair flew. Lara closed her eyes. This she could do.
Lara jumped - and landed on a block not slanted enough to make her slide down. 'So this is how it works,' she thought to herself, and looked for another block. It was on the same level, but two slopes left. She needed a long sprint. Making sure her crossbow was firmly strapped into her back, she clenched her fist in determination, and took a running jump. She landed firmly on the light orange block.
A strange noise hummed somewhere above her. Quickly grabbing her crossbow, she released the safety clip and backed up so that her back was against the pyramid wall.
But the danger came from above. A huge beetle, humming and spitting, tried to grab her hair. Lara started and staggered backwards, feeling sand crackle from under her feet. Raising her crossbow, she quickly rebalanced herself on the slender block. The insect was luckily a metre away from her. Aiming quickly but accurately, Lara pulled the triggered and sent an ultra- sharp fibreglass arrow right through the creature. It fell down the pyramid, making a strange zipping sound.
Listening for possible other threats, Lara turned to see the gorge. A shiver went down her spine as she realized she had almost fallen down the slope. Making a mental note to be more cautious, she continued her climb.
The pyramid slopes were like a maze. You had to figure out when to slide down, when to continue the slow, dusty climb upwards. Lara used her binoculars at first but they distorted the distances so badly she had to rely only on her eyesight. It would have been embarrassing to die by falling down to one of the gorges. After a dozen jumps it got tougher, as Lara' soles became a bit tender after all the tirading impacts from her hiking boots hitting the hard stone blocks. A few more beetles had tried to make a meal out of her - a single arrow from her crossbow per capita had been enough. Relieved that she had not encountered any other predators on the small pyramid wall blocks, Lara continued her journey until she found what she was looking for. The pyramid entrance. Gasping as the physical strain of the long climb took its toll, Lara drank from her water bottle, digging out the guard's keys. She used them in the lock near the huge doors, the opening on the outer wall hidden from curious tourists.
Loading her shotgun, Lara stepped into the pyramid.
Hours later, Lara got a premonition of what was to come. Finally having found her route to the Temple of Horus, she didn't know what to expect. Slicers. Triggered traps. Holes full of burning oil. Beetles - lots and lots of beetles.
What she got was very different. Almost an ascetic entrance led to a bluish hallway with torches no one could have lit. Ancient Egyptian tricks.
Lara lit a flare as the torches only managed to cast dim light across the walls. She walked slowly forward - and was taken by surprise.
The chamber she arrived in was bathed in light brighter than she thought was possible in an ancient, undiscovered temple. Wondering if the good old priest Semerkhet had something to do with the torches - as priests were often also architects, Lara cast her flare away and studied the chamber.
Water flowed in two underground fountains, and a large waterskin lay on the floor. At the other end was a large waterscale. Above the fountain there were large, simple hieroglyphics - like wavy lines. Despite her excellent knowledge of hieroglyphics, Lara could not identify the sign. Leaving the riddle for a second, she walked to the other end of the chamber.
The opposite side of the chamber from the scale was not lit. Heavy metal bars separated a dark area from the rest of the chamber.
Lara's hands flew to her pistols.
Something was breathing heavily in the shadows.
Scratchy footsteps and steamy breathing came closer.
What appeared near the bars made Lara stagger backwards. A creature from Hell itself. A brown-orange, long-limbed monster with an alien-looking head and impressive teeth half-crawled in the shadows. The sight made Lara's skin crawl. Taking a look up, she noticed the bars were actually a raisable cage door, strapped into a thin line leading to the waterscale. Lara's brains already sorting out the new-found riddle, she forgot the creature.
She was standing too close to the cage. After a low and mean-spirited growl, the creature attacked. Its forearm reaching from between the bars, it slashed Lara in her shoulder. Lara jumped - and fired.
It was no use. Lara's jaw dropped. As her first spray of bullets hit the creature, it disappeared in a blink of yellow light, only to explode back in sight a second later. Just like the ghost baboons she had watched do cartwheels in a tomb in the mastaba area, shivers going down her spine. Hormone-increased insects and T-rexs she could handle - ghosts were a little out of her field.
Lara jumped even further back from the cage - trying to figure out a way to advance in her quest without running into the hellish creature again. After reappearing in a small, quiet explosion, it had crawled back into the shadows of its cage. Obviously lost its interest in Lara as she was no longer standing within it's reach.
Trying to shake of the horrible feeling of being watched, Lara returned to the waterscale. The adrenaline in her blood wore off, and her shoulder started to hurt. Kneeling down in front of the eastern fountain, she inspected the wounds. They were five inches long scratch marks - deeper and more horrid than any made by tigers or raptors. 'And I thought a velociraptor had unbeatable claws,' Lara raved to herself, washing the wound with the cool fountain water. She covered the marks with a bandage. They burned like fire and blood still trickled from them, but Lara figured a clean and dry bandage would silence them off for some time.
She got up and turned her attention to the hieroglyphics. In the decorative wall carving stood a God pouring water.
Suddenly the puzzle pieces fell into place. The two wavy hieroglyphic lines meant water. Litres. They must've been litres.
Shrugging, Lara picked up the larger waterskin from the chamber floor. It was made of the same leather as the smaller one she'd found from a mastaba. Quickly counting the possibilities in her mind, she filled the large skin, poured water off it to the smaller until it was full. Two litres - two lines. Looking over her shoulder to the shadowy cage, Lara wiped sweat off her forehead and walked to the scale, carefully trying not to spill any water from the large waterskin. Holding her breath, she poured the water into a measuring can on the other side of the scale. Slowly, the scale arm started falling..
Lara still held her breath, overly aware of the burning of the scratch marks..
The scale stopped. Lara turned like the wind to look at the cage door. It didn't raise. She has succeeded. A floor panel suddenly fell down, revealing an opening.
Without hesitation, Lara jumped in.
For Lara's slight horror the monster followed her two floors down. On each floor a water puzzle was waiting to be solved. Lara's brains aching from a lack of sleep, she managed to solve all the waterskin tricks. Finally, the opening on the floor and a pole in the regular bat grotto lead to a chamber of different sorts.
A blue, heavenly light shone down a ravine. The light almost seemed like a living creature - flowing and dancing like a blinding flow of transparent blue water flowing down the ravine. The walls were climbable, as Lara noticed for her great relief. She didn't have enough rope with her.
She hesitated before starting the climb. A second of her thoughts was filled of a sibilant whisper. Or was it something else? It was like locusts. Inside a pyramid? Hardly!
Lara thought of Jean as she turned her backpack over, a sudden intuition hitting her senses. Jean, probably sitting in that apartment alone, perhaps sipping wine. Lara tested herself - would she be there rather than in the temple? No. Waiting was worse than this. Lara smiled to herself as she thought about Jean sitting on the sofa, sipping a glass of red wine, the balcony door open and sand-scented wind blowing in, moving the long curtains.
Lara started piling the intestines of her backpack into two piles. The pillar of light seemed to lead into an enormous chamber with water - just like the one mentioned in the text about the battleground of Set and Horus. Lara knew she had a better chance to succeed if she carried less gear. Her medical supplies were a certain choice. She would need those more than probably. Guns probably weren't going to do much good. The crossbow was an ultra-light model, so she decided to keep it. It offered plenty of firepower in a compact form. Her pistols stayed - more of lucky charms than anything else. Lara stuffed three flares into her shorts pockets. Compass. The scripture statues. The armour of Horus. That was probably all. She was leaving behind all her other weapons - a Remington 12 gauge shotgun, uzis, the revolver sans the lasersight, and the grenade launcher.
Taking a last look at the small antechamber, Lara jumped, grabbed hold of the climbable wall in the supernatural light, and plunged into her destiny.
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
As always, comments and reviews would be much appreciated - they're the fuel that feeds this creative furnace.
siirma6@surfeu.fi