Slouching Toward Bethlehem
A continuation of Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
Disclaimer:
I do not own any recognisable characters that appear in this piece of fiction. Lara Croft, Kurtis Trent and others are property of Eidos and Crystal Dynamics. The only thing I own is some OCs and the plot. This story was written for pleasure only. I am making no profit from this story.
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» Chapter Twenty Three: The Other Side »
Lit by a number of flaming sconces set along the walls, a circle of figures were bowed as if in prayer in the middle of the circular chamber. A low wall ran along the room's perimeter, decorated with stone pillars and window-like gaps set every so often along its length. The murmured chanting which now filled the air was in a language Lara most definitely did not know.
She recognised the scene before her from her dream so long ago. That knowledge made her mad with fear. Now everything had come true, apart from the one thing she was most afraid of…
She scanned her surroundings for some sign of Kurtis or Karel, but could not make out anything further in the distant shadows. The torches only illuminated the space a few feet in front of her. There was no daylight down here, and so without any lighting the middle of the room was dark indeed.
She looked again towards the chanting figures. She narrowed her eyes in confusion. What were they kneeling before?
On the far side of the room one of the kneeling figures got up from where they knelt. Lara watched as the figure held out their arm, pulling back the sleeve of the long robe they wore. Something glinted in the light of the fire, and Lara's eyes widened as she watched the person cut a horizontal gash across their forearm with a wicked looking knife. The wound was not deep, and the figure held out their arm and let the blood drip onto the stone floor.
Lara now noticed the channels which ran the length of the floor, forming a circle about the middle of the room and running with straight lines into the centre. After the person had let their blood pool into the channel the other chanting figures made their own contribution. Soon enough blood had been spilt to fill the channels, and it flowed towards the centre of the room, filling the grooves with crimson. Lara could now make out the pentagram-like symbol in the centre of the room.
All of the figures remained standing, and extended their arms out towards the symbol. As one they chanted an indecipherable word. Suddenly the blood-filled channels burst into purple flame.
The figures began again to chant, and the flames began to burn even brighter, seemingly awoken by these words. The flames cast long shadows across the room, but they also threw into sharp relief the figure standing amidst their depths.
Lara almost cried out loud when she recognised Kurtis.
He hung limply from his chains; head slumped down onto his chest. Lara could not tell from this distance whether or not he was breathing, but the mass of cuts and blood covering his body did not bode well. His shirt was ripped open from the collar to his navel, with nasty-looking bruises and marks covering the exposed flesh. Lara realised with a dread chill that those were burn marks on his chest.
She would have rushed out from her hiding place there and then, guns blazing to take out anyone in her way, if not for the figure that seemed to emerge from the darkness.
"Karel," she breathed, watching as the Nephilim stepped neatly over the flaming pentagram. He approached Kurtis, grabbing a handful of his hair with one gloved hand and yanking his head back, giving Lara a clear view of Kurtis' face.
This time Lara did not even manage to hide her cry of shock.
Kurtis' face was barely recognisable. A deep gash ran along his forehead, plastering his hairline with dried blood. His right eye was so swelled up that Lara could not imagine anyone ever being able to see out of it again. His mouth, which so many times before had sported his trademark smirk, was no more than a thin pale line matted with blood. More blood ran freely from the gash along his forehead, staining the whole right side of his face with crimson. Lara doubted he could be alive after sustaining such damage.
Karel was running his fingers down the blood covering Kurtis' face, lifting his hand to Kurtis' forehead and smearing a bloody symbol across it. Lara recognised this as the same symbol imprinted on Karel's palm.
Whilst Karel was drawing the sign on his forehead, Kurtis' eyes had suddenly flickered open, piercing blue beneath the mass of crimson. His chest heaved suddenly, and he was racked with coughs as the pain of consciousness returned to him.
The chanting seized, and all eyes in the room were suddenly fixed upon Karel. Everyone's eyes that is, except for Kurtis, who was now peering disbelievingly at the woman standing in the chamber's entranceway.
"Lara?" he whispered.
There was a moment as their eyes met and held, and Lara saw reflected there a spark of hope she realised had long been extinguished.
Kurtis' whisper had been so quiet Lara doubted anyone would have heard it, but Karel was unfortunately blessed with heightened Nephilim hearing. He spun and stared straight at Lara, his features for a moment frozen with shock, then confusion, then anger.
"Miss Croft," he finally said, his voice deathly calm, "How positively delighted I am to see you again." He sounded anything but it.
Lara had not moved an inch from where she stood. She was frozen to the spot, horrified and concerned by Kurtis' condition. It was not until the chanting figures before her threw off their robes, revealing themselves as Gunderson and his men, that she was aware of the danger she was in.
The soldiers quickly armed their weapons and pointed them at Lara, though they awaited the command to shoot. Lara simply stood, one hand resting reassuringly on her pistol. She did not want to risk going for her guns in case an all-out battle broke out. She was extremely aware of the difficult position it put Kurtis in.
Gunderson stepped up so he was just slightly behind Karel. He restlessly held his assault rifle.
"Master Karel-" he began.
The Nephilim silenced him with a wave of his hand.
"Since you are here," Karel said, his gaze never leaving Lara's face, "Why not take me up on that offer? After all, it is the only way you are going to get out of here alive."
Lara raised a stolid eyebrow.
"How about it Lara?" Karel's eyes seemed to gleam with promise, "We can start a new world order – together. You'll never have to feel the burden of mortality again…"
Lara reached for the pistols at her thighs. It was sickening her to her very core to hear Karel speak of such things. Yes, she had been through hell and back, but she had found someone who had been through the same. If Kurtis could survive in this world, then she was going to stay right alongside him. There was no way she would ever team up with Karel and betray him like that. That would be taking the easy way out, and Lara knew that the easy path was not necessarily the right one.
Before her there was a general feeling of unease. Karel had not given the command to shoot yet, and all the men were restlessly handling their weapons.
"You can end all the pain right now Lara," Karel continued, ignoring his men, "You can end it all," He held out a very sharp ritualistic-looking knife. "With one swift stroke." He raised the blade out towards her, offering it openly. With the other hand he indicated the hanging form of Kurtis.
A surge of anger and horror engulfed Lara's being. The image in her dream flashed before her eyes.
Without hesitation she lifted her guns and opened fire at the men before her. She managed to take a few out in rapid succession: partly because they had not expected the attack, and partly because of the ferocity and skill with which she fired.
Her advantage only lasted a few moments however, and soon the men returned fire. She flung herself behind a nearby stone pillar and cursed. Bullets rained down on her, reducing the masonry work to nothing more than crumbling dust.
Quickly she sprinted away, keeping low and shooting at the soldiers through the gaps in the perimeter wall. Another two opponents fell, but she was forced to swiftly roll to the side as an avalanche of fire was thrown her way.
The remaining men had followed her path behind the shelter of the wall. She discarded her pistols and armed her Uzis, leaping to her feet with a new-found vigour. Head on she ran at the men, mowing down the majority with Uzi fire before their bullets found a mark.
Two men were left, and Lara found herself right in between them. They both raised their weapons and fired, and at the last possible moment Lara dropped to the ground. Both men fell, hit by their own gunfire.
She lay on all fours, panting. Her knees were scuffed and her hair was covered in fragments of rock. She licked at her lips and tasted blood.
Uzi clips littered the chamber floor. In the wake of the battle Lara reloaded her weapons. Silence fell for a time, misleading and threatening. Lara broke it as she pushed herself up against the wall, scrabbling against the ravaged stone. She let out a soft cry of pain and looked down at her arm. A bullet had clipped her, just below the shoulder. The wound was not deep or life-threatening, but a healthy rivulet of blood now flowed down to her forearm.
Karel's voice echoed around the chamber. "I really had hoped you would take me up on the offer Lara. Now you are going to have to watch him die by my hand."
Lara peered out from behind the pillar.
She gasped.
Karel had one hand tangled in Kurtis' hair, and the other held the knife he had offered earlier to Kurtis' throat. A thin line of blood decorated the edge of the blade. Kurtis' eyes were closed, but whether out of fear or acceptance Lara could not tell.
"Not everything in this world is black and white Lara," Karel told her, "You may think you are doing what is right, but in the end your efforts are not going to matter. All your life you have just been stemming the flow, but soon enough the dam will break. Evil is just waiting for its time, and if you continue to fight it, then you will be the first to fall…You are going to die, one way or another. Why not just give up and embrace the darkness?"
Lara's eyes narrowed in anger. If she was going to die, she was going to take Karel with her.
She threw herself out from behind the stone pillar, aiming her Uzis and letting loose a short burst of gunfire. She hit her target, and Marten Gunderson was riddled with bullets. She had heard his footsteps and knew he approached her refuge. There was a short moment as he stood, mouth agape in shock, the blood tricking from his parted lips. Then his rifle clattered uselessly to the floor and he fell heavily with a thud.
Lara watched him fall without pity. Quickly she ducked again behind the pillar. She panted, her sweat-drenched hair falling heavily about her face. Now the only person between her and Kurtis was Karel himself.
The Nephilim did not even blink.
"I can easily replace him," he told her, "Gunderson was weak, just like the rest of your pathetic race."
Lara tried to block out Karel's voice as she crouched behind the stone pillar.
"Give it up Miss. Croft," he continued, impatience creeping into his tone, "It is over. You have lost. Time just ran out."
"I gotta say Karel," Lara shot back, emerging from behind the pillar, "You're finally right about something."
She held out her arms so that Karel had a clear view of the timed explosives she now carried.
The timer counted down to 0:00.
TBC…
Author's Notes
What a truly explosive ending! Sorry, sorry, I had to get a really bad pun in there ;) I'm going on an American Exchange to New Hampshire on the 7th till the 17th of April. I'm not sure if I will get another chapter out before then, since I am supposed to be spending the Easter holidays revising for stupid GCSEs… Perhaps a load of reviews will change my mind. :D I have a very long plane journey there, so hopefully I will get a lot of writing done on the plane. I might even get started on the sequel :D
Nikola Argh! New reviewer :D
Lady Lara Croft Am I that predictable? LOL Yes, I wanted to show a bit of the old Lara in the last chapter. Glad you liked!
dtaylor Thanks. LOL Guess you'll hate this cliffie even more :(
Acid-Rush LOL I can and I will. :D Both your guesses were right then. And thank you, I'm always nervous about writing action scenes. Thanks for all your advice. I'm trying not to stress out too much over GCSEs, after all, I did well on my mocks and I hardly revised for them at all…
lara-n-kurtis LOL I wasn't being sarcastic after all :) Thanks for the comments about action scenes. If you ever do want any input at all into your fic/s I would be happy to help. I started reading Love Takes An Angel before but got a bit sidetracked, and I have a lot on my plate at the moment. I will finish it though. :D
godavari LOL I think I've answered some of your questions, but now more have sprung up :s Sorry about that, all will be revealed in time…
Arakanga Thank you. I have to say your English is amazing. :D