Ok, here we are, another chapter, and on time this week too! Thanks for your reviews, everyone. As ever, they are muchly appreciated.
Ms Croft I Presume - Welcome! Welcome! And thankyou! 'And now I'm going to be climbing the walls until you update', your review said as it dropped into my inbox at the exact moment I uploaded the next chapter. LOL - Didn't have long to wait, did you!
Lara is my rolemodel - Hey, I love your smileys! In my defense, I couldn't log in to upload for, like, three days.
theharshlightofday - Thanks, that's the kind of imagery I was going for exactly. Yay, it obviously worked. Don't worry, Iplan to keep writing andPartners In Crime has only just begun. :-) I'm sending hugs your way just for sticking with my work!
Odd Little Turtle - Yeah, I noticed that 'thing' between Maria and Bryce, too.It's not like I planned it, the darn characters just keep running off on their own!
Mystique1515 - Thanks! There will be more of Partners In Crime, as soon as Ican write something that I'm satisfied with. I'm having trouble getting Kurtis' fling with his neighbour right.
Akkon - Thanks, andyou're welcome! Glad you appreciate my sense of humour!
SilverDragon -Actually, you're right, Kurtis is being a bit too nice to Sunderland, isn't he? I think he sees him more as an annoyance thananything - Harding was the focus of his rage - but he should probably be a bit angrier. I'll see what I cando about that.
Facing Destiny
A creak sounded and Lara and her companions, nearing the edge of the village, halted, Lara and Kurtis drawing their guns as Fishman revealed a knife from his belt and Sunderland simply stopped, gasping and looking around in fright.
The creak continued, a drawn out sound, and then Sunderland's eyes fell on the source of the noise and he pointed. A wooden hut door some way up ahead had swung slowly open. No cause for the movement could be seen, no-one stepped into the street.
"What's going on?" Kurtis asked.
"Wait, just wait a second," replied Gareth.
A moment later a slow, quiet figure emerged, coming to stand in the middle of the street and staring at them, expressionless. At last he spoke.
"You are leaving, Mr Fishman?"
Lara turned to Gareth, surprised. He was standing calmly, his weapon lowered, apparently acquainted with the man and knowing him to be no threat.
"I'm not supposed to be here," Gareth said.
"You're needed here."
Fishman shook his head. "I'm sorry." Not taking his eyes off the man, he turned his head slightly towards his friends on his left and offered them an explanation. "Guys, this is Minos. I guess you'd call him the village elder. He's the longest-dead of the few original inhabitants of the Elysian Fields still left, from before those from Tartarus took over."
"You speak English?" Lara asked Minos, confused.
"Languages are constraints the living place upon themselves, like so many other constraints that hold you back. The enlightened dead see and know so much more. She's shown you that already."
"Who?" Lara demanded, her eyes narrowing in a growing suspicion.
Minos just smiled. "There are so few of us left to offer protection against those who would attack," he said, turning back to Fishman. "So few soldiers lived out their lives without falling to Ares and so being consigned to Tarturus, and without his blessing all but three of those who came to these Fields have had their souls destroyed in the wars in this place. Most of the rest of us surviving came here either too old or too young to fight, we need you, Mr Fishman."
"I'm not supposed to be here," Gareth repeated.
"But who told you that?"
"She did. And you know She's right. You can't have me stay here to look after you, Minos, you know it's not my fight."
"Our souls will die."
"There's no such thing as eternity."
Minos blinked, considering Fishman's argument. At last, he sighed and conceded defeat. "Goodbye, Mr Fishman. Thankyou for helping us." He turned and disappeared back into his hut, the door creaking slowly shut behind him.
Gareth let out a long breath, his eyes closing in regret. "Ok," he said, composing himself, "it's time for us to go."
Somewhat taken aback and obviously not going to receive an explanation from Gareth, Lara looked to Kurtis to see his reaction, but he too was only showing calm acceptance as he started off to follow Fishman.
The tunnel from the dig trench started out as modern and man-made, but soon intersected with another at an angle of different construction. Whether it was man-made and just very much older or natural, Hillary couldn't tell. To the left, sloping up towards the surface, the original entrance tunnel was blocked by a rock fall, explaining why the archaeologists had created their own entrance and why the tomb had presumably lain undiscovered for centuries. Hillary followed the tunnel down to the right, getting deeper with every foot.
"Oh," he breathed, as he emerged into the underground cavern at the end of the tunnel. Straightening up and moving forwards to allow Bryce and Maria to exit behind him, he took in the sight around him.
The cavern was small, only twelve feet or so across, and the low roof left little room above his head. The walls and ceiling were wet, droplets of water from the river above permeating through. The floor ended about four feet before the far wall, an underground tributary of the Dnister taking up the space in the floor's absence. It flowed slowly along, quiet trickling filling the cave. A safety rail had been set up along its edge by the archaeologists and a safety report on planned diving lay on a tool box nearby, the papers stained by water droplets.
The dominating presence of the cavern, however, was the tomb of which Lara had spoken. The paper Hillary had found in the library had stated that the tomb contained a body unknown by the townspeople but epitaphed by someone who cared, and the appearance certainly did agree with that. It was a high rectangular stone coffin without the usual engravings that usually graced Greek architecture, as though no-one had been involved with the body enough to produce anything more substantial. Carved roughly into the lid, however, unskilled and hastily done, was the Greek script that the paper had translated.
"And Anubis appeared from the depths of the seas, as tall as the mountains westward and as black as the waters in the storms he brought. He looked upon the bank where the warrior knelt. 'For I am your servant; your voice rouses me from my slumber. Arise, messenger of my lord. The Gates are open.' And the warrior stood, forcing Anubis to his knees, and the waters bubbled as boiling. He was swept deep, taken down into the underworld, and the warrior was seen no more," Bryce recited, supplying the words to Hillary's unspoken thoughts with expert timing as he read from the paper he'd pulled out of his pocket. "Well," Bryce continued, "we were not wrong about this guy opening the gateway to Hades, were we?"
"Something doesn't add up, though," Maria said, moving to the tomb and staring in at the empty interior through the open triangle created by the skewed position of the lid, left half removed. "This is a coffin. Therefore, there must have been a body. There's nothing in here now, sure, but they've probably just taken the skeleton away for testing." She turned to Bryce and Hillary, questioning them with her look. "So where are Lara and Kurtis' bodies? And Sunderland's?"
Neither of the men answered, unwilling to consider Maria's clinical assessment. A body would make Lara's predicament far too similar to the unknown warrior's.
"Hil – y - - Bryce!"
All three jumped as the words, broken by static, rang out without warning, echoing around the cave.
"Over there," Maria said, pointing to something behind Bryce, "the archaeologists' radio."
Bryce turned, quickly finding the communication unit used to talk to those up in the main dig site, where it was set up in a corner.
The radio sprang to life again. "Can - - hear me?"
"Lara?" Bryce called, pressing the Call button as he did so. "Is that you?"
"In the - - er. They're in - - river. Dive. - - t the- p."
"Lara, say it again, we can't hear you."
"Th--- bodi-s. Can't com- --ck with the bod--- in- -- river. Dro-wn."
Any further communication was cut off as a crack of a small explosion sounded, the speaker grille lighting up as sparks flew inside and the smell of burning slowly filling the air.
Bryce eyed Hillary and Maria with a slight expression of worry. "Did she just say that their bodies were in the river?"
Maria clapped her hands, suddenly piecing together what it was Lara had been trying to say to them. "Yes! You're right! And if they come back whilst their bodies are in the river, well, they're going to drown aren't they? We have to recover the bodies."
Hillary's hand moved to cover his mouth thoughtfully. "She said, 'they'."
"What?" asked Maria, neither her nor Bryce catching his words.
"Nothing. Nothing, it's ok." Hillary waved his hand dismissively.
Bryce stood up. "Looks like we'll have to go swimming."
"I'll go," Maria volunteered, already taking off her boots and socks. "You stay, fix the radio in case she needs to talk to us again."
"Are you sure?" Bryce asked. "Me and Hillary, we've seen dead bodies before, if you don't want to…"
"No, it's ok." Maria dug a transparent plastic pot filled with liquid out of her jacket pocket that she'd thrown it to the floor, and took the lid off. Proceeding to remove contact lenses from her eyes, she continued, "Hopefully Gareth will be down there. Besides, I'm no good with electronics, I wouldn't know what to do with the radio." She put the lenses in the pot and screwed the lid back on.
"You wear contacts?" Bryce asked, surprised.
"Yeah, I'm blind without them. Should be ok to see down there though. I ruined my eyes with too many computers when I was a kid. Don't you wear them? You use computers a lot too."
"No, my sight's 20-20."
"Hmm." Maria shrugged, moving to the edge of the river and gasping as she lowered herself into the freezing depths. "Ok," she said, "hopefully I can do this by holding my breath otherwise we're going to have to go and find diving equipment. Wish me luck." With that, she gulped in a lungful of air and disappeared under the surface.
"Did you hear that?" Bryce laughed, turning to Hillary, not noticing the man's suddenly quiet demeanour. "She doesn't know how to fix a radio and she's half-blind! Great!"
Maria dived deep, eyes straining as she looked around. The bodies had to be lodged somewhere otherwise they'd have come to the surface, and some sort of current must have brought them from the sea… She searched, looking for overhangs of rock and feeling for currents. Just as she thought she was going to have to surface for air, her hand feeling along a rock surface suddenly slipped, moving into a pocket of water hidden up behind a bank of the tributary.
Pulling herself past the overhang and into the pocket, she felt blindly around in the dark silt-y water dreading what her fingers might catch onto. Her nails scraped against flesh and the movement dislodged the hideous treasure. Dead, open eyes loomed into view as the pale, wan face of Kurtis floated up in front of her, lips blue and pupils dilated. The corpse stared at her accusingly and Maria panicked, fingers connecting with spongy flesh as she shoved it away and lurched backwards in the water. Terror taking over as her back hit against rock and she realised she wasn't sure where the exit was, all control over her rapidly diminishing oxygen vanished and she found herself drowning, limbs kicking frantically as she desperately sought her escape out of the pocket.
A body floated down in front of her again, the eyes of its female face closed, the long dark braid weightlessly trailing around it. Maria tried to scream but only brought water into her lungs as suddenly the body's eyelids snapped open, the brown eyes behind staring but alive. Frantic from the fear of the living dead around her and the torture of her burning lungs and pounding head, Maria twisted and turned in the water, but the brown eyes appeared before her again, blinking humanly. The body's strong fingers took hold of Maria's shoulders, raising her panic levels even more, but instead of attacking the hands pushed Maria downwards, turning her over so that she was upside down and guiding her forwards until patches of light coalesced into the path back into the main river. She was pushed forwards, back out of the pocket, and then more fingers closed around her wrist and pulled her forcefully up, bringing her up alongside somebody else who then pushed her past themselves, propelling her upwards.
She broke the surface, gasping in desperate air and splashing violently with her arms in an attempt to gain equilibrium as the lungfuls of oxygen slowly relieved the panicked feeling of necessity. A second splash beside her signalled one of her saviours surfacing a moment later, and she looked over to see Hillary taking in his own much-needed breaths, though his were nowhere near as long overdue as hers.
"Are you two alright?" Bryce was saying, reaching forwards to take Maria's hand and pulling her over to the land. "You were down there ages, Maria, we got worried." He pulled her out of the water and then reached forwards to help Hillary too, leaving Maria to fall into a heap and continue breathing heavily, her forehead resting against the cold stone, her eyes closed in relief.
"Hey. Hey, are you ok?" Bryce asked, shaking her shoulders. Wearily, she nodded.
"Where were you?" Hillary asked. "I couldn't see you, then the next thing I know you're down at the bottom in a complete panic."
"I found them," Maria said, not managing more than a whisper. "They're in a pocket underneath us. They looked…oh god, they looked horrible. I couldn't breathe – Lara, she came alive, she helped me back out into the river."
"Lara's back?" Hillary cried, he and Bryce darting to the edge of the water to stare into its depths. "Where? I didn't see her."
"She didn't follow," Maria groaned.
"They might need help," Bryce said quickly, rushing back to Maria and taking hold of her shoulder as he checked she was ok. "You stay here," he said, checking her pupils weren't too dilated and making sure she was breathing well. "We'll go and find her." He disappeared again, he and Hillary leaping into the water.
Seconds that seemed like hours passed, and then they both splashed back to the surface, arms moving across the surface as they trod water. "We found the pocket," Hillary said, swallowing. "We should be able to get them out."
They each took another deep breath and then dived again. Recovered somewhat, Maria crawled to the edge of the river and waited, squinting down into the depths, ready to help anybody that surfaced. She saw something rising slowly, a large, dark shadow. It surfaced with a small splash, bobbing lightly in place. Lara's body. Her eyes caught another movement, another shadow rising, and then Kurtis broke the surface of the water, Sunderland following straight after. Splashing up between them, Hillary and Bryce appeared, coughing from the lack of air. They looked around for a moment, orientating themselves, and then Bryce sent Kurtis skimming over the water towards Maria as Hillary pushed Lara over before sending Sunderland following.
Wincing slightly, Maria pulled the bodies out onto the land, helped by Bryce and Hillary from below.
"Gareth?" she asked. "Where's Gareth? He must be down there."
"Sorry, Maria," Bryce said, shaking his head as he climbed out. "Hillary took his torch down there, there was no-one else."
Taken aback, Maria simply sat and stared.
"Lara," Bryce said, voice croaking from being unused to swimming underwater. "Lara, are you back?" He crawled over and brushed the wet strands of hair from her face, Hillary joining him. "Lara?"
Deciding his help would be more useful elsewhere, Hillary moved to Kurtis and started the same process on him, pulling open an eyelid, slapping him lightly, attempting CPR, simultaneously checking Sunderland.
Neither man found any signs of recent life.
Bryce sighed, dropping his head and closing his eyes.
"They're dead," Hillary whispered.
"If she really had come back – " Bryce began, close to tears, but Maria spoke up, cutting him off.
"I must have imagined it," she lied. "I was panicking, it was dark – I think I imagined it. I probably just…bumped into her. I don't think they've come back yet, there's probably still a chance."
Bryce looked up, knowing exactly what she was doing. He smiled. "I'm sorry about Fishman."
Maria nodded, trying a smile as she bent her head to hide the tears that were about to fall.
"We'll keep trying. To get them all back," Hillary said, bravely tenacious as he moved to sit next to Maria.
"'Course we will," Bryce agreed. He sat down on the other side of Maria and pulled her into a hug. "We'll get them all back."