Chapter 35: Baba Yaga
I don't own anything. Resident Evil belongs to Capcom and Tomb Raider belongs to Core Design, Crystal Dynamics, and I think Square Enix. The only thing I own is the changes made to the stories of the Tomb Raider games/comics and Resident Evil games/comics/CG movies, the Government branch S.P.E.L.L., the person that has taken over Kathrine Warren's life, and Rose Warren. This story also will be bloody, violent, and have cursing. It's rated T for Teen.
Country: Russia, State: Siberia, City: Siberian Wilderness, Place: Near Kitezh, Area: Wicked Vale, Month: November, Day: Wednesday 29th, Year: 2000, Time: 10:19 KRAT…
They started down the stairs and stopped. Flower vines. They hung from the ceiling, gripped the walls, and some had fallen to the floor. They could see the pollen particles in the air. But with how close they were, they were already breathing it in. No hallucinations started up. So, their antidote/vaccine was still in their systems and in effect. For how long, they didn't know.
"Let's be careful. Our weight and body types are different and that could affect how long it takes for the formula to wear off." Lara advised. "Meaning, if you start seeing or feeling off, say something."
"Right." Leon nodded as he looked down at himself.
Kat gritted her teeth. "Let's move. The faster we get through these flowers, the less likely we have to take the next dose."
With that, the three descended the stairs. As they walked onto some wooden bridge, it cracked apart. They let out startled yells and fell into the water of the flooded level below. They surfaced and sucked in air before treading water. That's when Kat hissed and grabbed at her head, she was also coughing more than just getting water up her nose.
"Kat?" Leon asked as he spun in the water to look at her.
"I'm shortest." Kat said as she opened her eyes and saw the world distorting and the purple and green tones. "Shit…"
Lara looked to Leon. "She needs her last dose."
"No." Kat hissed. "We can't…" She shook her head, flicking water around by her hair. "We can't waste it yet. Not until we're…"
Leon shook his head. "Kat, one of us needs a clear head." He told her as he swam over to her and slung one of her arms over his shoulder. "Let's get to solid ground then you take that dose."
Lara nodded and led the way in the flooded corridor. As they turned the corner and started swimming straight, Lara hissed as she started coughing. Leon stiffened up as he and a dazed Kat looked to Lara. Lara looked around, seeing the purple and green hue started to affect her vision.
"Dizzy…" Lara admitted. "Shit…I need that last dose too."
Leon looked ahead of them as Lara forced herself to keep swimming and felt Kat pull away to swim too. "Okay, I see solid ground ahead. We'll all take our doses then. If you both are starting to see shit, I'll start soon too."
With that agreed, they started swimming toward the fires and wooden platforms. Just as they got into the room, Leon coughed and felt his head pound with the purple and green tinting. They pulled themselves up onto one of the platforms and gave themselves a second to rest after the exertion of swimming. Their heads pounded and their lungs burned a bit.
They jolted at the sound of a roar. To Leon it sounded like William from Raccoon, to Kat it sounded like Fenrir, and to Lara it sounded like a crazed human. Looking around they realized they were in some form of distillery for the pollen toxin. There were several boilers on raised wooden platforms, the stone walls that curved around the area were crumbling and there was some sort of scaffold that had been built in areas where repairs might have been in progress. High up along the walls they could see arched openings with the glow of fires lighting up a few, others were just dark gaping holes. They could also see stacks of bricks that may have been for the repairs to the walls. They could see that the boilers had lids on them that quaked with the pressure and fire they were holding back. Kat could also see that there was some kind of steam leaking out around the seals on the closed doors, but not enough to vent off the building pressure.
Lara pulled her bottle and looked to the other two. "This is our last dose…"
Kat and Leon nodded pulling their own. Kat moved to take her dose only to see something roll on the floor. She looked at it and her eyes widened.
"Grenade!"
The warning came too late as, although it was just a flash bang, its proximity sent the three off their feet. Three sounds that made them freeze up hit their ears. Three sets of glass shattering. The fact none of them could feel their bottles in their hands told them everything.
"Fuck!" Leon hissed as he blinked the white from his eyes and shook the ringing from his ears. "We're screwed."
Lara looked from her side to the floor. She saw them. Three shattered glass bottles and the ground stained with the shiny blood mix. She gulped and looked up as her hallucination began to take hold. Leon looked up with Kat as theirs took hold as well.
For all of them the water in the middle of the room swirled like a vortex. Then a dark cauldron was pulled up from the water. It bobbed there for a moment. It was the liquid the sloshed out that was different for the three. For Leon, it was blood, bubbling frothing blood that steamed. For Kat it was Tar, hot slow bubbling tar that looked like it'd burn and stick to you. For Lara it was cold ink, that dripped out and oozed slowly. They watched as a creature of smoke, shadow, blood, bones, and horns emerged from the cauldron. The face appeared to be a bear's skull with deer antlers. The eyes to all three appeared to be on fire.
"When you are dead, you shall serve me…" The voice of the witch snarled at them before lifting her hands, finger claws clicking. "TAH RO ETTA NA KORRA DE AHN YAH TAY!"
The place seemed to shake as Leon, Kat, and Lara got to their feet and got behind cover. The shadows rushed out like the wind was blowing them. They peeked out of cover and saw shadowy creatures (Lara), Lickers (Leon), and Berserkers (Kat) running around the upper areas of the room.
"Gorra may nah ka et zo, rey at tanna zair yak un…" The witch said with a hand wave.
"They're just men." Lara hissed as she drew her rifle and looked to Kat and Leon. "We can do this."
Leon nodded. "Yeah. They're not moving fast enough to be what I'm seeing right now." He agreed drawing his handgun.
"Want me to Snipe?" Kat asked as she drew her rifle and rested it on the wall.
"Yeah." Leon nodded as he moved closer to her to be her guard.
The first of the possible many men to go down was one that came too close to them. He was wielding a bladed weapon of some sort. Lara turned her rifle on the man and poured bullets into his chest. The man dropped as Kat followed the movement of one of the men. Her eyes glued to seeing through her sight. Leon squeezed off a few shots at the men, trying to keep them back.
He and Lara were forcing them to stay back and not get too close. Kat fired her first shot soon after Leon killed one of the Licker-men. Like the man Lara killed, he burst into blood, bones and vanished into smoke. Looking at the floor, Kat saw cracked bone masks. Three down. Four more to go. Another one ran at them like a berserker and jumped from one of the boxes in the room and held blades up.
They had to change position quickly. The mix of the blade wielder and the other three men. They had to have some form of ranged weapons. They would lift it and then fire would fly at them. Sound wise it was hard to tell if it was a gun of some kind or a very loud crossbow. Once they moved, Leon found himself on the floor on his back as the blade wielder tackled him. He yelled in pain as the blades, too him bone claws, cut his forearms when he raised them up to block.
He hissed as he ducked his head side to side, letting the claws sink into the stonework, getting stuck. He jabbed the man hard in the kidneys, making the man wheeze and loosen his hold over Leon. With that, Leon pointed his gun between the licker mask's eyes. He squeezed the trigger and held it till his clip was empty, partly believing this was a real licker on top of him for a second. He kicked the corpse off and jumped to his feet, switching his empty clip for a fresh one.
"Leon?" Kat asked him as she looked through her sight at the second to last man.
"Later!" Leon called out as Kat fired her shot. "One more, then the Witch!
The man Kat fired at, dropped to the floor. "Okay…"
Lara switched to her dual pistols and pointed them at the last man. He had raised, to her, a hellfire crossbow. He was ready to fire. But Lara's fingers were quicker and pulled back on the triggers. Nine bullets from each pistol flew and ripped into him. He staggered back before falling to his side. He most serenely choked on blood as his chest was torn apart.
"KO CHA!" The witch called and then she threw something at them.
It was either a Molotov cocktail or a firebomb of another sort. Either way, even as they moved to avoid the orange glowing object, they still fell to their sides after it hit the floor. A small shockwave of heat knocked them off their feet and fire blasted outward from it.
"CHI TA!"
"Move!" Leon yelled at Kat as he pushed her to her feet, at least he hoped that was Kat.
Kat indeed was the one Leon had pushed into cover. She turned to the Witch. To her she looked like a Nordic oracle with a bear mask and flames in her eyes. Kat aimed at the witch who was riding around the room seemingly on a flaming Mortar that she stood in like a human Pestle, ready to pull them inside and then grind their bones with her feet. She fired two shots at the Witch. None of them hit her even as the bullets seemingly hit her from her point of view.
"Shit!" Kat yelled as she jumped over some of the water and ducked down behind new cover. "Shooting her isn't gonna work!"
Lara heard Kat's words despite how distorted they sounded. She drew a rope arrow and loosed it at the floating Mortar. She then pulled on the rope when it hit and anchored.
"TEE KA!" The Witch called out while laughing.
"She's on some sort of pully I think!" Lara called out as she ducked behind a covered boiler.
"Maybe get her over one of the boiler things!?" Leon called out as he looked at the Witch frowning.
"KU CHA!" The Witch yelled and threw another firebomb.
Leon rushed to a different cover just in time, he wasn't hit by the fire that spread all over the area he was at, but he felt the heat from it. He switched to his bow and nocked a rope arrow. He aimed, waiting for the Witch on a, flaming pole thing, get even with a boiler. He loosed and gripped the rope when it anchored. He pulled on the rope and looped it into one of the turning pulleys.
The Witch started to get pulled from the other end of the room toward the steaming boiler. But she yelled and somehow cut or burned the rope. She was free once again, Leon cursed as he ducked behind a pillar for cover from another firebomb.
"Damn it!" He called out. "We need to stop her from messing with the rope! And just how many firebombs does she have!?"
Lara tried the same tactic that Leon did, just to see if she saw the same thing. Sure enough, after getting the Witch anchored to a pully, she saw a knife and the Witch cut the rope with it. "Crap! She's cutting it for me too!" She ducked into cover behind a crate as a firebomb was thrown her way.
Kat gritted her teeth. If both Leon and Lara saw the same thing, then it was happening. "We have to find a way to stop her from cutting it! Any ideas?"
"Shooting her doesn't do shit!" Leon remained as he peered out from his cover.
"But she hissed in pain for me!" Lara called out.
"But she laughed after!" Kat pointed out.
"Okay, I've got an idea. Kat, shoot an anchoring arrow." Leon called out. "Lara, you and I will shoot at the Witch!"
"Rodger that!" Kat called out as she pulled her bow and a rope arrow.
"Got it!" Lara agreed as she switched to her pistols.
Kat counted to three and stepped out. She aimed down the arrow and loosed it at the Witch's ride. It anchored, so Kat shook the rope sharply back and forth a bit, just to jostle the Witch. It was hard and it hurt her arms. She then attached the rope to the pulley. Seeing the Witch look jostled, Leon and Lara stepped out of their covers and fired at the Witch, stopping her from cutting the rope.
It was working, the Witch couldn't cut the rope in time. The jostling of the rope, then the shooting of Lara and Leon had her too disoriented and distracted. Kat then pulled the lever of the boiler and just like the one they'd used hours ago; the built-up pressure flung the doors open and sent a blast of fire and heat upward. The fire and heat roared up and engulfed the Mortar, forcing the Witch to duck down below the rim. The Mortar flew backwards and wobbled, but steadied quickly. The witch didn't attack the three for a bit as she floated over to the other end of the room.
"TEE KA!" She snarled and threw a firebomb at Kat.
Kat ducked into cover. Thing was, the Witch was now hovering over the boiler where Lara was and didn't seem to notice that there was a threat behind her. Lara grabbed the lever next to her and yanked it down. The Witch noticed too late as she was hit by the blast of fire and heat again. She screamed and the Mortar she was in moved away from Lara.
Leon stepped out and fired a rope arrow at the Witch's ride. It anchored. As she pulled her knife to cut the rope, Lara and Kat started firing at the Witch forcing her to duck down into her Mortar.
"Stay down! Damnit!" Kat called out.
Leon attached the rope to the pulley and waited his hand on the lever for his boiler. "Come on…Closer…" He muttered and whipped at his forehead feeling sweat running from his hair and close to his eyes.
The Witch and her Mortar were over the boiler. Kat and Lara stopped shooting, as they knew Leon was in the line of fire and didn't want to risk hitting him. The Witch clearly thought this was her chance to get out of the situation. But just as she moved to cut the rope, Leon pulled the lever.
The Witch screamed again and pulled away but then started chanting in a pained voice. "Gorra may noh ka et zo, rey at tanna zair yak un…"
The three frowned but looked down and saw something that turned their stomachs. For all three the water had turned to blood and was flooding over the edges of the daises they were on.
"Guys! Is this place flooding with blood to you?!" Leon yelled as he backed up but found that the blood was filling the room fast.
"Zet aw gun kol eh terr zho…" The Witch cackled, but still sounded like she was in pain.
"Yeah, this is the Shining!" Kat called out as they found themselves having to swim.
"If this is real, it's not real blood." Lara called out. "It's just water!"
"Right! Yeah. It's just water." Leon agreed as they swam to the only ledge they could get too now.
They pulled themselves up onto it and looked at each other. In the hallucination, they looked horrible. Leon had to remind himself they all were hallucinating as he saw Kat and Lara as very sickly and looked inches from turning undead. To Lara, Leon and Kat looked like they were flickering between cultists and themselves. To Kat, she was seeing Leon and Lara as so badly injured that they could expire any moment and leave her alone.
"Ee kanna gor wan fey ah genn…" The Witch cried out, drawing their eyes.
She was hovering above them, and the ceiling seemed to be swirling clouds of vomit green. It was really looking like a bloody violent Disney villain scene. The climax of the movie where the hero and princesses fight the villain. They climbed the side of some of the ruins and found themselves before a pair of hell wolves and four men. Hallucinations or not, it was best if they fight them.
This time Kat was ready to fight the Wolves. She pulled her handgun and squeezed off a shot at the head of the closest one. She felt a bit angry. These wolves weren't like the ones out in the woods or the ones on Yamatai. On Yamatai they were trained for killing and eating humans. Here in the woods of the mountains, they were normal wolves, only attacking humans if they were really hungry or if they got to close to their territory. In here, in the Vale? They were likely hallucinating just like the humans were. It hurt the animal lover in her. Killing them truly was a mercy right now.
"Way lah noh rah ah go meh." The Witch called and laughed, clearly entertained by the reality of what the three were facing.
Lara fired a rifle blast at two of the men that came too close. They burst into smoking chunky pieces. Leon shot at one of the other wolves and the last man with Kat. Just like that, they killed all their assailants except the Witch that was still hovering around in the center of the room. They ran from another two firebombs thrown by the Witch, jumping onto a wall just as the bombs hit the ground. Driven by the heat and flames blow them, they climbed quickly to the top and onto a floor of the crumbling ruins.
"I'm thinking she's just saying shit to scare people in the hallucination at this point." Leon said as they rested for a moment in cover. "Is that Russian she's shouting or something else?"
"Fin da la terr a meen ago teh atta…"
"Sounds like it but it's not making much sense." Kat voiced as they reloaded weapons. "I think she's saying random stuff to sound intimidating or making it sound like a spell."
"That makes more sense than what I'm hearing." Lara agreed. "Let's keep going forward. I'm sure we're not done fighting her brainwashed soldiers."
Leon and Kat nodded, and they turned the corner. They ran up some stairs and then quickly rolled into cover. Three more men were firing at them with their fire weapons. Moving from cover to cover they killed the attackers until it was once again, just them and the Witch. They found yet another boiler they could use on this level. Kat assumed it must have been part of an indoor heating system. Lara fired a rope at the Witch's mortar and hooked it to the pulley. Leon and Kat shot at the Witch, forcing her to duck down and hide.
Once she was close enough over the boiler, Lara pulled the lever. The fire erupted up and out of the boiler like an angry Smaug blasting out fire at Bilbo Baggins. The Witch screamed and moved away again. But then the floor under them started breaking apart and floating up around her, acting as shields from projectiles. They jumped across the rocks to a different boiler as it seemed the Witch grew weary of the boiler they had just used moments ago. Looking down as they jumped to another section of the flooring, they saw the blood was still rising higher.
They killed two more men before repeating the boiler trick again. Shoot, anchor, pull, attach, fire, pull lever, fire eruption. It was after this boiler trick hit the Witch that their radios beeped.
"Guys!" Nadia's voice came through. "Can you guys hear me?"
Leon pulled the radio as they rushed to cover from a firebomb. "Bit busy out here!" He told her, hoping he'd heard the girl right.
"Grandpa's awake." Nadia informed them. "He says…he says it's her." She sounded heartbroken and scared. "Guys, the Witch is my grandmother. She's alive." She yelled, as Leon moved to a new cover. "Please, you can't…" Nadia paused, seeming unsure and shaky. "Maybe we can get through to her…we have to try." She called out desperately.
"We'll try, but she's likely very beat up or will end up beat up." Kat told her. "We'll try not to kill her. But we have to end this."
They then ran to climb higher up as the blood again was getting splashed over the floor they were on. At the next upper level, they were attacked by four wolves. They might have been real or fake, they didn't know and weren't willing to risk them being real. Leon killed one, Kat killed two, and Lara killed the last one. A man attacked them out of nowhere and Lara yelped as her bear claw wound was recut open on her arm, thanks to a blade slice.
When they looked at the man, he seemed bigger than the others. To Kat he looked like the Nemesis mixed with a frost giant. To Leon it was a demonic version of Mister X. To Lara, it was the entity from Peru.
"Fuck! It's not that!" Lara yelled as she flipped over a crate to get away from the man who swung claws at her. "Just a Hallucination!"
Leon gritted his teeth and ducked to the right. He pulled his combat knife and jumped onto the guy's back. The fact that he was able to do this meant it was a real threat. Just as he moved to slice the opponent's throat, he froze.
"Kat, Lara, shout something!" He called hoping the Mister X look alike wasn't really one of the short women.
"I never faced Nemesis, so I have no idea why the hell this guy looks like him and a Frost Giant had an unholy union!" Kat yelled from behind Leon.
"I don't want to know what that looks like. It's that thing from Peru to me!" Lara called from way ahead of Leon and the thing.
"Great!" Leon yelled as he sliced the thing's neck even at it thrashed around. "It looked like Mister X came back from hell!"
He rode the dying man to the ground and looked up at Kat and Lara as they rushed forward. They came to the next boiler. This time when they got the Witch to it and pulled the lever the platform exploded completely. They all fell from it and into the blood. They sank down, water going up their noses and in their eyes.
Some even got down their throats. They swam up quickly and coughed out water and gasped on the air. Their heads pounded harshly but they saw that the explosion took out a large portion of the wall and fresh air from outside was blowing into the area. This banished the pollen in the air and the water forced the hallucination to end. They all swam to the edge of what looked to be the top of a scaffold and found that the only injuries that happened to them were the cuts on Leon's upper arms, the wolf bite on Kat's arm and the recut slash on Lara's arm. They were beat up though, sweaty, and completely soaked with water.
"Everyone okay?" Lara asked as she whipped water from her nose and mouth.
"For now. Just a sore arm and killer headache." Kat voiced but held her locket for a moment to calm down more.
"The cuts really happened to me, and my head feels like I've been in a car accident…again." Leon voiced.
They heard water sounds and turned to see the woman, Nadia's grandmother pulling herself from the water onto the stone platform they stood or sat on. She was nothing but an old woman in leathers, bone and stick claw gloves, human skulls hanging from her belt with smaller animal skulls, bear skull, wolf fur, and hawk feather headdress with mountain goat horns. She stumbled from the water's edge then fell to her knees. They could see her leather dress was singed in places from the boiler fires. She did have a few second degree burns on her arms as well. She then quickly turned to them and held a clawed hand at them.
"Ch'oll ee ka to-" She tried only to see that none of the three people before her were glass eyed or scared of her.
Lara had her pistols out and pointed at the woman, Leon had his handgun ready as well, but Kat had her bow drawn.
"Just stop." Leon voiced.
"It's over. All of it. The war, the Russian prison camps." Kat informed, switching to Russian, guessing that the woman wouldn't understand English.
Lara also spoke in Russian to the woman. "We know who you are." She told her as she flicked the safeties on and holstered her guns, Leon and Kat following that example. "I can only imagen what you've gone through to stay alive."
The woman chuckled bitterly and brokenly. "You have no idea…" She rasped in Russian, making Kat and Lara's assumption correct and making Leon feel out of the loop.
"It really is over. You don't have to stay out here alone. You can live a different safer way now." Kat told her kindly and kneeled down at her side. "You're family. They are alive. They always have been. Your love and your daughter…" Kat gripped her locket and swallowed down tears of understanding. "They lived. Your love is still alive, and you have a granddaughter."
The woman shook her head. "No. No. They died. I heard they died." She glared at Kat. "You lie."
That's when they heard footsteps. They all turned to the left and saw Nadia and her grandfather run into the room.
Upon seeing his love, Ivan sighed with relief at seeing her alive. "Serafima…" He breathed.
She gasped too as she saw him. "Lattal tee?" She asked as she pulled her headdress off and dropped it to the ground, showing her aged face and gray-white hair fully. "But…you died…they told me you died." She gasped out tears welling at seeing the man she had fallen in love with and had the child of.
Ivan ran over to her and took over Kat's kneeled position by her side. Kat stood again as Nadia joined Lara, her, and Leon.
"Will she be alright?" Nadia asked them then looked to her grandparents.
"I don't know…" Lara said. "But it won't be easy. For any of you."
"Family never is." Nadia said with a sad smile.
"Believe me. We know." Kat said as Ivan helped Serafima to her feet, whispering quiet words to her.
"Thank you. All three of you." Nadia said as Serafima hugged onto Ivan, shaking in silent tears. "You guys should go back to the village. I'll stay here and help them back home in a bit." She sighed. "Let's give them some privacy."
They nodded and left the elderly survivor couple to be alone for a bit.