Ok, I went easy on you this week, there's no nasty cliffhanger. ;-) There's something Bryce says here that won't make much sense if you haven't read my other stories, but it's really not important, so don't worry. Gosh, an awful lot of reviews for the last chapter, the most I've ever had for one. I must have done something right. :-) Thanks everyone!

NFI - Here's your answer!

SilverDragon - Why, thankyou! hugs> Please try not to asphyxiate on me. ;-)

Lara-is-my-role-model - Hey, thanks a lot:-) You do write well y'know, I've read your stuff! I think mytactic is the use of far too many commas and sentences that go on for decades - accidental, but it seems to keep things moving. I love Kurtis. sigh>

Odd Little Turtle - Hi! Not often I hear from you. :-) I wondered if anyone would notice that reference. LOL Anyone who's played Silent Hill has probably noticed a ton of others, too.

harshlightofday - Hello again! I had fun writing Bad Kurtis, I really did. Fishman - probably coming back.

Lady Lara Croft - Wow, what a compliment! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Godavari - giggle> LOVED your chapter 8 review - you're so easy to provoke! friendly grin> I always liked maths, y'know, but I guess each to their own. ;-)

Jordana Trent - Hello there. Not heard from you before, I don't think. Glad you're enjoying it and that the research I'm doing seems to be worth it. Fishman will probably be back, I think. I liked him.

Beyond The Grave

It was dark.

If it hadn't been for the ground beneath her feet, Lara might have fallen into panicked hysteria from the shock of awaking to sheer sensory deprivation. It wasn't warm, nor was it cold. There was no smell. No sound whatsoever reached her ears. It was so black that when she waved her hand in front of her face she could detect no movement nor tell where her limb really was. Aside from the feel of her toes scrunching against the insides of her boots and the soles of feet pressing hard against the lining, it was as if she were just a consciousness floating, bodiless.

She cried out in shock as something brushed lightly against her forearm, her heart lurching. A presence close to her left, completely undetected until now. Lara wasn't used to having people creep up on her. The contact identified itself as a hand searching for hers, and she gave a moan of relief.

"Kurtis."

"Hi." He whispered, the silent blackness around them hushing him.

"Where are we?"

"We're dead."

A quiet, shuddering, prolonged breath was drawn into Lara's lungs. "You said I could trust you," she said quietly.

"Don't worry – we won't stay this way."

"Do you mind telling me what's going on?"

"We're in the underworld." Kurtis' clothing rustled as he moved and then an ethereal orange glow evanesced into view, illuminating them and their immediate surroundings, fading away into the blackness further out.

"Alright, now I know you've been learning new tricks whilst you've been away."

Kurtis turned and grinned at Lara in response. "The disappearing bullet thing was cool, yeah?" Lara couldn't help but laugh, looking down to hide her mirth. "Come on." He tugged her hand and led her forward, the light remaining centred on them as they trudged their way up a slight but crumbling rocky slope, rubble clattering downwards as their steps disturbed it. Everything was dark and shades of grey or black, like volcanic rock.

"I thought that there was supposed to be a white light and all our dead relatives waiting for us," Lara said dryly.

"This isn't Heaven, y'know. Well, ok, it kind of is. Hard to explain. Different aspects of the same place, that kind of thing. We're experiencing it from the point of view of a believer in Hades."

"Even though Anubis let us in?"

"It was Hades you were expecting to find, wasn't it?"

"What, so you're saying that this is all just in my head?"

"It's like…" Kurtis stopped and thought, letting go of her hand and flexing his fingers in frustration as he tried to find the words to explain it. "All the different afterlives that are described by different beliefs all exist in the same place at the same time and which one you can see depends on what you believe, which one you were expecting to end up in when you died. For all I know I could be standing in the flames of Hell right now, or having a dead Muslim walk right through me."

Lara looked a tad incredulous. "So they're alternate realities rather than different perceptions of the same place?"

A pained look crossed Kurtis' face. "Can we save this for after I've got my philosophy degree, please?" He turned and continued on, leaving Lara huffing in annoyance for a moment before hurrying to catch up with him.

"Why are you here, anyway?" Trent asked conversationally. "You don't have a terminal illness you're trying to cure, do you?"

Lara smiled. "Fishman and I were trying to get to Hades to find the helmet of invisibility."

"Fishman?"

"Another tombraider." Lara stopped, suddenly feeling mournful. "The one who was killed."

At her tone of voice, Kurtishalted and turned back. "I'm sorry," he offered.

Lara sighed and thrust her shoulders back before marching forwards, composing herself. "It's alright. Danger's a very real aspect of the job, he knew that, and it's not like we were close friends or anything."

Kurtis watched her go for a moment and then strode to catch up with her. "Maybe we'll find him, huh?"

The slope levelled off and continued forwards for a few metres before they suddenly found themselves at the edge of a river, the waters trickling along quietly, clear and cold, offering an unobstructed view to the rocky riverbed below. A slight creaking nearby attracted them along the bank until their light fell upon a sagging wooden pier with an ancient rowboat moored and gently bobbing on the waves.

"The River Acheron," Lara realised. "There's supposed to be someone here to ferry us across."

"Mm, Charon," Kurtis said, naming the missing boatman. "I guess he left with the others."

"Where exactly did the other gods go?" Lara asked, turning to Kurtis.

He shrugged. "I don't know. People lost faith in them, they just…left." Trent stepped gingerly onto the rotting pier and then awkwardly braved the boat, sitting down when it didn't sink under his weight. Lara wobbled as she boarded the boat after him and then settled her weight evenly before Kurtis grabbed the oars and began to row them slowly to the other bank, shrouded in darkness. "Once on the other side we'll be able to go through the gate that Cerberus is supposed to guard, except he'll be gone too. From there, you'd originally get judged and then sent to either Tartarus or the Elysian Fields. Hades' throne room is somewhere between, that's probably where your helmet is."

"How do you know all this?" she asked.

"I learnt it in the Order."

"I had no idea." Lara sounded impressed, but Kurtis only quirked a sardonic smile.

"Nor did I. Someone jogged my memory whilst Sunderland had me prisoner."

"Who?"

Kurtis only smiled in reply. "I'm not sure."

Bryce sighed and sat down on the bed next to where Hillary was lying, staring up at the hotel room ceiling. "I think it's time for us to go home."

"Not yet." Hillary sounded weary, drained.

"We haven't heard anything from Lara in a week. I can't find any trace of her, or Kurtis, or the mercenary group, or this Sunderland bloke. She jumped into the River Styx and down into the underworld and the only trace they ever found of the warrior that did that in that account you found was his drowned body. Maybe there's a way back, maybe it just takes time and she's trying, but maybe that crazy bastard finally wanted out and took her with him."

"Kurtis wouldn't do that."

Bryce stamped his feet on the floor and stood, marching over to the window. "He tried to kill her because she'd lost confidence! He kidnapped her and tried to trade her life for an end to his own screwed up guilt trip! Why the hell wouldn't he!"

Hillary sat up, trying to reason with Bryce's worry-clogged mind. "If Lara didn't think there was a way back out then she wouldn't have even come here looking for the helmet."

"Yeah, well we didn't exactly put a lot of thought into that part, did we? She always just assumes that if she can get in then she can get out. It's my fault – " he kicked a chair – "that I told her about it before I'd even checked there was an exit."

"The mythological warriors who took the helmet found a way back to the living."

"Yeah, that was before Hades locked up and buggered off, wasn't it?"

Silence fell on the room, Bryce staring out of the window across the town and Hillary looking at him sadly.

"It's not safe for us to stay here," Bryce said quietly. "The mercenaries took their own dead away but we had to hide Fishman and Sunderland's man and sooner or later someone is going to find them. We're going to have a murder inquiry on our hands, I think it's best if we leave the country first. Besides, someone needs to tell Fishman's family he's dead and we need to get Maria home."

"You think she's truly dead, don't you?"

Bryce sighed and dragged a hand down over his face. "Truthfully – maybe I want to go home so I can start to forget."

Hillary was silent, letting it sink in, and then he swung his legs off the bed and made for Lara's room. "I'll start packing Lara's things. We can keep looking for a way to get her back from Croft Manor." He left and the door clicked shut behind him. Bryce continued to stare out of the window, a shuddering breath escaping as he fought back tears of guilt at his own willingness to give up so soon. Damn, but it was that Trent's fault. If he wasn't so crazy then maybe Bryce wouldn't find it so easy to believe that he'd drag Lara down into an underworld with no escape.

He jumped as the phone rang, staring at it for a moment before running over to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Bryce!" He fell back onto the bed, his legs unable to support him. Oh god, but it was Lara. "Bryce! Wh – id you – ve me? -y did y- le – Bry – save – e!" Her voice was crackling, syllables obscured by static, like someone trying to speak over a mobile phone with no signal.

"Lara!" he cried back, but there was only static in reply and then the line went dead. Slamming the phone back into the cradle, he raced out of the room, leaving the door banging back against the wall behind him. "Hillary!"

Lara nimbly hopped out of the rowboat and onto the land on the other side as Kurtis held the oars against the flow he had created to slow the boat until it gently bumped against the shore. The ground beneath her feet was still the same grey crumbling rock, the same blackness pervading everything. A massive wall stood just to the edge of their light, strong and foreboding with only a huge decorative crystalline gate for passage, glinting dully.

"The adamantine gateway," Lara breathed as she blindly held a hand out for Kurtis, steadying him as he climbed out of the rocking boat. Together they walked slowly forwards. Long scratches were gouged into the rock in sets of four, angling towards each other and crossing over between their groups and parallel within.

"Cerberus was one damn big dog, huh?" Kurtis quipped, regarding the claw marks.

"I'm glad he's gone," Lara mused.

Pushing hard, they opened the gates wide enough for them to slip through, the massive bars sliding slowly back behind them before clanging shut audibly. They walked forwards, gazing round at their environment. To the left of them the ground fell away in a sheer cliff that curved away, rivers of lava breaking out of the rock faces in random places and sliding thickly down towards a stark floor of granite far below, covered in rubble and rivulets of molten rock, areas of burning providing meagre illumination.

"Tartarus," said Kurtis, leaning over the edge and staring down. "Probably don't wanna go there." Lara only swallowed and pulled him away, unnerved by his proximity to the edge.

Carrying on again, the ground they walked began to swell upwards into a hill, grass fighting its way through the cracked rock in small clumps to begin with before building up to a full luscious lawn towards the top. Trees that began towards the bottom of the hill as dead stumps and skeletons of bark became living, thriving beings with full green leaves and huge, healthy roots.

"We're heading for the Elysian Fields," Lara guessed.

"Yep," Kurtis confirmed. "The Greek heaven is right over this hilltop."

Unable to wait, Lara slid an excited gaze over to Kurtis before breaking into a run and dashing for the top, but she never expected what she saw, and she came to a halt, staring out over the scenery before her.

The sky was dark and stormy, thick clouds billowing out and covering the entire area. Reflecting off them were the red lights of fires lit on the ground below, creating shadows and red hues that made the very sky look as if it was burning. Roughly constructed huts of wood, reeds and mud were dotted around in some kind of village, but there was far from a communal atmosphere. If there was anyone there, they were all inside, and the mud tracks that served for streets were littered with bodies, rubbish and debris. A gallows took the village square, a decaying body with white stringy hair and barely recognisable clothes still swinging from its noose.

Not nearly so eager to see what he knew was not there, Kurtis slowly walked to her side. "After the gods left there was no-one to keep this place in order. No-one to keep the sun shining and the happiness reigning in the Elysian Fields, no-one to keep the wicked and sinful locked inside Tartarus – the dead were abandoned. The damned escaped from Tartarus and invaded the Elysian Fields, the blessed were overrun by people murdering and stealing and pillaging and doing all the things that the good were incapable of, and the whole of Hades became one big, dark, eternal hell. That's why it's so dark here – this place just isn't open for business anymore."

"Oh, Kurtis," groaned Lara.

"There's one other thing I should tell you. Time here, it isn't the same as up there. Sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's slower – it's weird. Bryce and Hillary could still be at the riverbank wondering where we just disappeared to, or they could have been waiting for us months and given up on ever seeing us alive again."

Lara tore her gaze away from the village. "Oh," she said. "Well then I suppose we'd better find the Helmet and hurry back, hadn't we?"

"We should find Sunderland, too. He isn't supposed to be here."

"You're the one who pushed him in the river, Kurtis."

Trent shook his hand, eyes screwed shut in annoyance. "I know, I know, I was angry – but he's not supposed to be here. I'm a Lux Veritatis, the last of the breed entrusted with the key to this place, I shouldn't be throwing people in here."

Lara nodded, composing herself ready for another impossible adventure. "Well," she said, "we have lots to do, we should get moving."