Thankfully, the writer's block went away. In this chapter, the italics signify Hillary's dream (apart from when they're being the chapter title, of course).
SilverDragon - Thankyou again for your loyal feedbacking!
Lara-is-my-rolemodel - Glad to have made you laugh! I think this chapter has a moment that will make you giggle, too. Let me know when you start your new fic, I want to read it!
Odd Little Turtle - Why, thankyou! I like all this philosophical cultural belief business, it's interesting. You have to try Silent Hill, they're amazing!
Godavari - That phone call is turning out to be a bit of mystery, though it looks as though Kurtis may have figured it out. You'll have to wait and see, though. ;-)
Linzi - Thankyou! It's nice to know my writing can affect you like that.
AKKON - Welcome! Join the fun! I like the word 'wow' and I like it even more when it's directed at me and repeated three times! LOL I've always liked Bryce and Hillary's double act, I try to play it up.
Mystique1515 - Come and join the fun! Thankyou for your review.
Hands On a Window Pane
Hillary yawned deeply, suddenly overcome with tiredness as he picked up an armful of cosmetics from the bathroom counter in Lara's room. Feeling too miserable about Lara's disappearance to fight it, he dropped the cosmetics into the suitcase and then lay down on the bed, planning to rest his eyes and wallow in sadness for a moment.
He found himself surrounded by a thick white mist, choking the air around him and floating past in streaks of thin and thick, obscuring his vision and leaving him feeling confined in an area that could have just as easily been a tiny room as miles of open fields.
He walked blindly forwards, moving slowly and never seeing more than three feet in front of him.
A flash of movement ahead of him made him halt abruptly, frightened by the sudden and unidentifiable source. Standing still and watching closely, the mist thinned out and he began to distinguish the silhouette of a person, arms and ponytail arcing out as they swung left and then right, as though searching for something around them.
"Hillary!"
Lara? Was that her? "Lara!" He called her name and darted forwards, but though it should have taken him only a few steps to reach her, she was always standing just a few feet away.
"Hillary?" She spun towards the sound of his voice and he could just make out her profile turning towards him. "Hillary!"
"Lara!" He continued to run, but still failed to draw any closer. Disheartened, he came to a thudding stop and stared at the shadow still only a short distance away.
"Hillary!" She was turning around again, still searching for him. "Hillary, why did you leave me? Why didn't you save me?" Her voice was imploring, her actions desperate. "Hillary, save me please, don't leave me this time! Hillary?"
"Hillary!" It wasn't Lara's voice that time – it was Bryce's.
Hillary awoke with a start, finding himself on the bed and Bryce standing in the open doorway with his hand still on the door handle. "Hillary, wake up," he demanded. "It's Lara."
"I know." Hillary struggled to sit up, rubbing his eyes to wake himself fully.
"You know?"
"Just now – I must have fallen asleep. I dreamed about her." The butler looked to the technician, worry evident on his face. "She was lost in fog, calling out for me. She begged me to save her."
Confusion flitted across Bryce's features. "I just got a phone call from her. It was static-y and echo-y, like a bad line. I couldn't make out what she was saying mostly, but she definitely said, 'save', and she definitely sounded frightened."
"Oh Lara." Hillary drew his knees to his chest and buried his face in his hands. "What are we going to do?"
"Get Maria," Bryce said, quiet determination in his voice. "Find out from her if Fishman knew anything we don't. And find a way to get Lara back." He turned, sweeping out down the hallway towards Maria's room.
Back down the hill and through a hallway of rock, everywhere dark save for the light of Kurtis' spell, the two adventurers found themselves in a huge, cavernous room, the furnishings and limitations of which lay outside the illumination of their light.
An unlit torch sat in an iron bracket on the wall behind them, and Lara patted her legs, feeling for something within one of the many pockets of her camouflage trousers. Finding it, she fished out a cigarette lighter and took down the torch, setting it alight and walking cautiously forwards along the wall, searching for others like it.
They began to appear from out of the darkness, and she held the torch to each one in turn, illuminating the room slowly with a flickering orange glow.
"You smoke now, Lara?" Kurtis asked humorously.
She quirked a smile. "Remarkably useful, cigarette lighters. And one of the few thingsthat wasn'tthrowndown onto the bank. My backpack is just about empty, I think."
A few moments of silence passed as she finished lighting the room, and then she turned to see what it was her work had revealed. A silent gasp escaped her.
An ornate throne of onyx and stone stood to one end, massive in proportions so that as Kurtis stood next to it, running his hands over it admiringly, the top of his head didn't even reach the seat. Running along the centre of the room was a long, ornate wooden table, laid out with the remains of a magnificent banquet. Plates were missing, the food had either rotted or been eaten, goblets lay fallen with their long-since dried contents now staining the wood beneath them and the candles that had been set at regular intervals had burnt down completely, leaving only trails of wax down the spiralling candlesticks. Opposite to the throne, on the other end of the table, a small wall of stone bricks was built up in front of the rock wall of the cavern, curving outwards to create a semi-circular area that was filled with water, still and calm.
"It looks like somebody pillaged the meal," she said, walking towards the table and reaching out to touch the massive tableware, finding it to be pewter or something similar. "Do you suppose it was the Shades?"
"Shades?" Kurtis turned, interrupted from his wondering examination of the throne. "Oh, that's what the Greeks called the souls of the dead, wasn't it? Yeah, probably."
"But they're dead. Surely they don't need to eat?"
Kurtis strolled over, poking the remains of the meal as he went. "How long has it been since you ate? Are you hungry?"
"A little, yes," Lara replied, rather taken aback by the apparently unrelated question.
"You're dead," Kurtis said matter-of-factly. "You don't need to eat. But, you've spent your whole life needing to eat to stay alive. You've spent your whole life needing to breath to stay alive. You don't need to do either anymore, but if I held you under that water over there you'd probably still think you were drowning. I'm guessing that's why we saw dead bodies in the Elysian Fields. The Shades think they can kill, they think they can die."
He continued on, moving to the pool where he trailed his fingertips lightly over the surface. "This is nice."
Lara looked over, a thought suddenly occurring to her. She hurried to his side, staring down into the waters. "Some legends say that the gods had a pool of water which they could use to see other realms." She swished her fingers through the water, frothing it up as though she could make an image appear. "Do you know how it works?"
Kurtis shrugged. "Don't look at me, I thought this was just décor."
"Ah, so you're not a fount of all death-knowledge, then."
"To be honest, I did spend a lot of time in class at the Order day-dreaming about the girl who lived over the street."
"Oh yes?" Lara said deprecatingly, not at all surprised by that admission.
"Yeah," Kurtis sighed, smiling dreamily into space. "Jennifer…my bedroom looked directly into hers. I used to sit on my window-seat with my fingers on the glass, watching her dance to Simple Minds on the radio. My first love…I was twelve, she was eighteen…," he laughed to himself, coming back down to earth. "I don't think she even knew I existed. 1984…damn good year."
"Pathetic," Lara giggled, and she raised her wet hand from out of the water and flicked several droplets at his face. He laughed in response and then sat on the wall, looking down at the now-rippling pool.
His sudden calm rubbed off on Lara, and she found herself staring deep into the depths, completely unaware of anything around her. Bryce and Hillary found their way into her thoughts, and before her eyes the waters began to ripple from an unseen disturbance, their clear blue-tinged surfaces taking on colour in form as Lara and Kurtis' reflections were lost in a picture of Bryce, Hillary and Maria.
The butler was lying on her hotel bed, hands clasped at his chest, eyes closed. Bryce sat at the bedside, laptop open, and Maria was dropping pills into a glass of water and dissolving them with a furious mix from a biro.
"The Ancient Greeks believed that the dead could talk to the living through dreams," Maria said, her voice quiet and sad. "Drink these sleeping pills, close your eyes and think of Lara in the fog." She handed the glass to Hillary, who downed the mixture. "Ask her what we should do."
Several minutes passed, Lara and Kurtis staring intently into the waters at the rippling image before them. Hillary's eyes began to flutter, signalling dream-state, and Bryce sat forward intently.
"Lara…" Hillary breathed, and Bryce tapped on his keyboard, apparently having the good sense to transcribe the experiment.
The butler twitched slightly, rolling his head and muttering something incomprehensible.
"Hillary," Bryce whispered harshly. He opened his mouth again to say something else but Maria pushed him back into his seat, silencing him.
"Shh," she scolded, "do you want to wake him up?"
The butler continued to fidget, apparently dreaming intensely, and then with a gasp his eyes flew open and he sat bolt upright, breathing heavily.
"What?" Bryce demanded. "What did she say?"
"We have to go to the river," Hillary answered. "Take the comm. sets. She'll try to talk to us, like she did to you over the phone."
"Was…Gareth there?" Maria asked, tentatively.
Hillary looked up, apologetic. He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Maria."
Back in Hades' throne room, Lara was shouting at the floating image. "Hillary! Bryce! Hillary! Listen to me!" It was no use and she thumped her palm against the wall in frustration. She looked away from the pool and the image faded, her reflection returning to show her looking at Kurtis in confusion.
"That wasn't me talking to them. Hillary must have really dreamt it."
Kurtis turned away, hiding his face, thinking but not wishing to be seen. "Maybe," he said.
Lara considered asking what he meant, but thought the better of it and instead turned back to the pool.
"Fishman," she whispered, closing her eyes and focusing her thoughts. Once again her reflection morphed into somebody else's, and when she opened her eyes, she saw him. "Kurtis," she barked, "look."
He spun back, looking down into the waters. "Damn," he whispered.
Fishman was with Sunderland, the two hurtling through the slum-like village in the Elysian Fields with a mob of bedraggled, barbaric souls chasing close behind, brandishing sticks and swords and bows and arrows, some dead soldiers still in their armour, others just civilians with a streak of black in their hearts.
Sunderland looked much the same as he had when Kurtis had thrown him into the river, his face a picture of terror. Fishman, however, had clearly been a victim of the strange time alteration that Kurtis had said affected the underworld. Though he had been killed only minutes before Lara had jumped into the river, it looked as if he had been dead a good while longer than they had.
His clothes were ragged, his hair longer and tangled, his skin dirty and his previously fit and muscled frame now thinner and more lithe, as though life had been lacking in food but full of fight and flight. He had Sunderland's wrist in his hand, pulling the terrified man after him as they flew through the streets. Fishman's eyes were darting left and right, looking for an escape. He pulled Travis around a corner with him and then dived into a small alleyway created by the proximity of two shacks, the area no more than a rubbish dump. They scrambled through the rotting food and dirt and lay flat, out of sight as their pursuers rounded the corner and continued straight on.
"Thankyou," Sunderland panted.
"Oh shut up," Gareth Fishman spat. "You're the reason I'm here in the first place, remember? I only saved you because no-one deserves to be caught by those barbarians. Now shut the fuck up, keep your Rolex watches and gold jewellery out of sight before anyone else tries to mug you, and follow me."
Lara shook her head, willing the image in the pool away.
"How long has he been down here?" she wondered, a tone of distaste in her voice.
Trent turned, marching for the doorway. "Come on," he called over his shoulder. "We have to take Sunderland back with us and we can't leave Fishman down here. Not in this place."
It was nearing sunset as Hillary eased the Jeep Wrangler to a halt on the riverbank of the Dnister. Throwing open the doors and dropping the soft-top, they set up their equipment. Maria booted up her and Bryce's computers as Hillary unpacked the communication headsets Lara always used to keep in touch during her raids and Bryce set up the electronics he'd hastily designed to try and boost the range of the radio signal.
The trio arranged themselves across seats with limbs and wires hanging out of the vehicle as necessary in order to achieve some sort of workstation, and then, taking a deep breath, tried to contact the dead.
"Lara?" Bryce said into his headset. "Lara, can you hear us?"
The radio only crackled in reply, no signal being received.
"I'm not picking anything up," Maria said, scanning for radio signals on her laptop.
Bryce tried again, almost demanding an answer. "Lara! Lara!"
The radio crackled again, but then a snippet of a voice broke through on Bryce's headset and the external speaker, tinny and distorted by the electronics.
"—yce—"
"Lara!" Bryce started tapping away feverishly on his computer, trying to cut the noise on the signal. "Hillary, grab that antennae, move around, try to get a better reception."
Hillary did as he was told, and another snatch of speech broke through again. "Br-yce!"
"I've got it," Maria shouted, fingers flying over her keyboard. "There's no signal as such coming through, she's not using a radio – in essence we shouldn't be picking anything up at all…but from the variation of the noise on the signal as Hillary's moving around, I've triangulated the best place to pick her up, she must be directly under there. Hillary, go about two feet to your left. Good, now hold the antennae as high as you can."
It seemed to work, the static quietened and this time when a voice came through, it was possible to make out the whole sentence. "Bryce, are you there?"
"Lara!" Bryce almost jumped in joy, Hillary gasped and grinned in delight. "Lara, are you ok?"
"Bryce, they need your help. Go to the ruins of Tyras, to the tomb of the Lux Veritatis."
"They?" Bryce asked, confused. "Who's they? What about you? Where are you?"
"The tomb, Bryce. Hurry."
"Lara!" Bryce shouted again, but suddenly the static tripled in volume, drawing a cry of pain from him as he tore the earpiece from his ear.
All three looked to each other, taken aback by Lara's words.
"I think she's gone," Maria said quietly. "Maybe in more ways than one."