Thankyou, IndyAngel, for reviewing. I'm glad you like this and its predecessors.
Godess-Brigid - Thanks! Kurtis was hard work to begin with but I think I'm getting the hang of him now, I'm glad he's believable. Bryce and Hillary will return shortly, never fear!
Godavari - As ever, thankyou for your feedback. :-) I like to keep people guessing. Hee Hee
Everybody else - Review, or Kurtis gets it! evil laugh
...of Trials...
"So – what do we do now?" Kurtis took out his torch and flicked it on, swinging it around the cave and finding nothing save for the hard, plain floor and rough rock walls.
"Look for something we've missed." Lara strode boldly forward across the area towards the opposite wall as Kurtis turned away and shone his flashlight up into the furthest reaches of the space, squinting into the shadows to try and make out anything hiding within the plain, unyielding rock faces. He heard a sound like crumbling rock and a yelp, and spun, only to see Lara's raised arms disappearing into a hole in the floor. An almost immediate thud sounded as he ran towards her, and he dropped to his knees at the side of the gap and looked down to see her gingerly picking herself up from a dark granite outcrop below, surrounded by the remnants of the floor she had been standing on only moments ago before it had cruelly dropped away from under her.
"Lara! Are you ok?"
She coughed and got to her feet, wincing, before looking up to him, her face marred by rock dust. "Yes, I'm fine."
No sooner had she spoken then the ground beneath her partner cracked, and before either of them could react, Kurtis found himself falling, limbs flailing as he was banged and bruised by the plummeting rock around him until he too made contact with the ledge below, crying out as he hit it with the length of his body with a painful thud. Lara silently pulled him to his feet and together they stared up at where they had been standing only moments before.
"I guess that was supposed to happen."
Lara looked out across the scenery below them which more than answered Kurtis' question. "I guess it was."
From a featureless cave with no discernable way in or out, they had fallen onto a large stable ledge jutting out from a grey cliff face that plunged down into a fast flowing river, crystal clear and visibly cold. The ceiling of the cavern was not far above them, and meeting it in a rough vertical face a few feet across from the ledge was another rock face, that dropped down four or five metres before sloping sharply away above the water, drawing their gaze away towards the far side of the cavern. There, the slanted cliff again became vertical, a wall that housed a small rectangular doorway carved into the rock with a small ledge in front of it by way of a welcome mat, and cold white light spilling in to harshly light the cave. The air was chilled in their lungs as they breathed it in, savouring the cooling oxygen that cleared their heads and left them alert, assisting them in the trials to come. Everywhere was grey, featureless, devoid of feeling or idea.
"I thought Purgatory was cleansing, not boring," quipped Kurtis.
"I'll bet the cleansing begins with this climb. Besides, hell is hot and fiery, heaven is white and cloudy. Purgatory is clearly going to be middle of the road and...non descript."
"Uh huh," said Kurtis disparagingly.
Ignoring him, Lara took a couple of steps back and then launched herself into a flying leap towards the overhang, grabbing onto it at the last second and clinging like a bat. Satisfied that she had her hold, she slowly began to scale the wall downwards, easily coping with the change in gradient and switching to just her hands towards the end as her feet began to slip away. Sighing, resigned to the tough climb that he had no choice but to take, Kurtis followed suit, moving faster and more easily with his superior strength. It was Lara that held the lead in agility, however, and though she dropped lightly and gracefully to her feet at the door, Kurtis landed heavily, wincing as the impact jarred his legs.
"Balls of the feet, knees bent," Lara offered, turning and hopping into the doorway. It marked the beginning of a long thin corridor that was flooded with light, overwhelming her eyes and causing her to squint as she fought to make out details. "I'll wager anything you like that this corridor is not what it seems."
"Joy," said Kurtis dryly. "Tell you what, you go ahead, I'll follow."
Lara looked over her shoulder and smiled, relishing the challenge ahead and amused by Kurtis' lack of a sense of adventure.
It was at times like this that her intense training back at the manor came in handy. With the money to buy custom built equipment and Bryce's almost homicidal control of the traps, every sense that she had was fine tuned to identify and act on danger without her even having to think about it. Which was exactly how, after only three steps in, she found herself jumping back out of the way of a large chopping blade that swung out of the wall and attacked her midriff, thereafter continuing the action with a terrifying metal clanging, the blade glinting sharply in the light. Kurtis, visibly shaken, let out a long shuddering sigh as Lara adjusted her own body to the sudden rush of adrenaline.
"Well," said Lara briskly, eyeing the blade. Rocking back and forth as she gauged the blade's movements, she then took a step forward and jumped high, sailing over the blade as it retracted back ready for another attack. Landing expertly, she turned back to Kurtis. "Be careful there."
Another step forward activated a similar blade, this time at head height, and Lara simply ducked underneath it before hopping off the next section of floor that shook under her weight and then fell away, revealing below a smooth sided pit that dropped metres down to a glistening pool of the same cold clear water, an eventual drowning pool for any unlucky soul not fast enough off the mark. Ahead of her started a whirling, spinning selection of sharp, intricately shaped blades carved out of beautiful but deadly crystal that spun, twirled and thrust in and out of the walls and floors in a shining storm of mortal weapons, too fast, close and complex to dodge or outwit.
Before Lara had time to consider a way through, a swishing sound behind her made her look around, and her fast reactions again took over as she leapt, without thinking, onto an axe swinging down along the length of the corridor. The half-moon head was encased in wood along the top side to join it to shaft, providing safe, stable foothold for Lara, who steadied herself with her hands on the shaft. The axe reached its pinnacle above the centre of the bladed trial ahead and swung back again, giving Lara enough time to realise what it was she had to do and to prepare.
Leaning forward as the axe began its forward swing once again, she spurred its motion on, adding momentum to further its arc, before setting her best foot forward and, as she reached her highest point, propelling herself forward into a somersault that sent her flying safely over the remaining obstacles, executing a full turn and landing in a dizzying forward roll at the end, coming to a rest on one knee.
The ordeal was not quite over as another half moon blade swept down from her right, forcing her to flatten herself against the floor with a gasp. It cut through the air just inches above her head and carried on up and away to the left, lending respite enough for Lara to scramble out of the way.
Reaching safety as last, she turned back to find Kurtis watching the still swinging axe that she had used for her own escape, timing his actions in order to jump the water whilst the danger was out of the way. Making it across, he followed Lara's lead and hopped onto the axe as it passed, riding it back and then forwards again, diving off it, and, in a show of amazing agility that far surpassed anything expected of him, grabbed onto the horizontal axe as it continued to swing, pulling himself towards it and planting his feet neatly on the head as before, before hopping off and landing in front of Lara with an exhilarated grin on his face.
"Balls of the feet, knees bent."
Lara laughed, impressed and relieved that they'd both made it through. "Come on. Yet more awaits. You can go first this time, if you want."
They exited the corridor into another grey, dull cavern, smaller than the last. Almost perfectly rectangular, its length led up to another doorway, this one dark and foreboding. The traps this time were not so cunningly hidden.
A mass of spikes on the floor from wall to wall provided an easy but time consuming challenge. After that, a huge rolling blade went from side to side across the path, then the floor dropped away into a pit, the bottom of which couldn't be seen. On the other side of that remained only a stretch of floor marked by carvings, the details of which were invisible from their position.
Together, they set off across the spikes, slowly picking their way through. Kurtis swore quietly as he caught his pants leg on one, tearing it, but they both reached the other side in safety.
Lara, taking the remaining obstacles in her stride, hummed a tune to herself as she timed a dash across the path of the rolling blade and then took it, running straight towards the pit. On her approach she saw a slippery slope down to another mass of spikes with the other side of the pit a vertical wall. Without hesitation she continued onto the edge, riding the slope downwards and then, when close enough, pushing off and grabbing onto the top of the vertical face opposite, pulling herself back onto level ground and turning to watch Kurtis as he too took the jump from the slope to the pit edge and climbed back up. Standing, he brushed himself off and then slid his palms over each other to remove the dirt and dust. "Easy," he grinned.
"Good," replied Lara brightly, who then skipped off towards the carved floor. It was marked into octagons, each with a letter on its face.
"Didn't Indiana Jones do this?" Kurtis asked.
"Hmmm," said Lara, taking out and examining the map. "According to this, the final Shard should be through that door. We're still in Purgatory. It doesn't say anything else, though."
She replaced the map and they both looked around, hoping to spot some clue as why the letters were on the floor. "Up there." Lara spied some geometric scratchings in the rock above them that revealed themselves, under the glare of her torch, to be angular letters, forming Latin words. "Call upon the prophet of the Lord to escort you to his presence," she translated slowly.
"Jesus?"
"Maybe," Lara said, thoughtfully. She looked for and found a letter J, and gingerly stepped onto it, keeping her weight centred over the nearer ground, suspicious that something nasty would happen if she were wrong. She was, and it did.
Slowly increasing her weight, the stone eventually gave way beneath her, sinking down below the level of its companions until a gap appeared around the sides. Flames, hot and high, leapt up around the edges in an octagon of fire. Yelping in fright, Lara jumped and tumbled backwards, landing on the ground.
"You ok?" Kurtis ran to her side, one hand on her shoulders to help her sit up and the other on her leg, caught momentarily in the flames. He checked it over as Lara winced, feeling the heat spreading through her flesh at the minor burn.
"Yes," she grimaced. "It barely caught me. I'll be ok."
"Here, flatten it against the floor." Kurtis pushed her leg down, forcing her to straighten it and lay her calf on the cold stone floor, soothing the pain and sucking out the venomous heat.
"Not Jesus," said Lara, staring out over the lettered crossing.
"Didn't Indiana Jones make the mistake of going for a J instead of an I?"
"Jehovah is spelt with an I in Latin," Lara explained. "That's what he was trying to spell. But I don't think either of those are our words."
"Then what?"
"This place was built by the Knights Templar, wasn't it? Well, if I remember my history correctly, they were accused of heretics partly for idolatry – a head called Baphomet. Some historians believe that Baphomet is a lingual corruption of God, wisdom, things like that, even Mohammed. But there's evidence to suggest that he was actually a spiritualist executed for claiming union with God."
"So you think that's our prophet?"
"If they him worshipped as a Martyr, could be." Lara got to her feet, rubbing her burnt calf, and walked the length of the tiles until she came to a B. "Kurtis – your gun."
He obliged, taking hold of the automatic rifle slung around his back and handling the end, stabbing the B lettered tile visciously with the butt. The tile lowered slightly and then popped back up, pushing against the weight of the gun and standing proud of the rest of the floor by a full inch. Kurtis and Lara looked to each other, smiling. "Bingo," said Lara.
She stepped onto the raised tile and looked around for an 'A'. Finding one, she hopped nimbly over to it, continuing her path gracefully all the way over to the shadowy doorway, followed closely by Kurtis.
Stepping into the darkness, they walked blindly through a short corridor before stepping out into a huge cavern, their attention immediately drawn to a stone column in the very centre.
"There it is," Lara smiled.