32- Kutna Hora
There is this thick mist that seems to wrap itself around him and suffocate him. He feels his chest tightening, his limbs stiffening, he can't shake off the invisible bond that imprisons him and prevents him from moving. He feels his head buzzing, the pain radiating through every inch of his skin and bones. No matter how hard he tries to struggle, he feels he cannot move. Every muscle, every part of his body feels excruciatingly heavy and amorphous.
He sees violent flashes of light pass before his eyes. There are noises too, quite strange, and oppressive, like hissing noises, but also grunts perhaps. And there is this swirl of darkness in front of him, in perpetual movement, as if this black smoke was trying to engulf and drown him. There is also this tall man, with an imposing build, who emerges from the shadows. His blond hair and bright blue eyes stand out against the blackness. He suddenly recognises him, but the features of his face remain blurred, as if erased by time. He thinks the man is talking to him, or at least trying to, but the words that come out of his mouth make no sound. He reaches a hand towards him through the smoke, trying to catch him, or perhaps, to hold on to him.
But his hand slips and escapes his. The man seems to shout his name, before disappearing as he appeared.
A strange sensation of elevation suddenly pulls him out of this frightening environment, as if he had been grabbed by something, and pulled out of the smoke. He doesn't know exactly what is going on, but he clearly understands that his mind is wandering between two realities, perhaps two worlds. Where is reality, and where is the nightmare, he would rather not know in the end. Once again, he comes to, as if he is coming to the surface to catch his breath. He finds the crypt and its skeletons, but also the table on which he is tied. There are all those eyes, sometimes empty, watching him, and that woman leaning over him, who doesn't let go. He feels her fingers digging into his arm, and her warm breath against his face. Her face is soft, and yet her gaze and expression are evil, penetrating and intrusive. And then suddenly, another pain shoots through his skull. He feels himself toppling over, as if he were falling from a cliff several metres high. The feeling of dizziness is terrible. He falls back into the darkness.
He sees scenes of fighting, but also what looks like monsters, or maybe creatures. Some of them try to grab him, as the man tried to do. And then suddenly another face appears, human this time. Her big, light blue eyes are on him, watching him. It is a woman. Her long, almost black hair blends in perfectly with the smoke she is also trying to fight against. She struggles to escape the smoke that wraps around her and tries to take her away. She looks worried, but strangely enough, not for herself. Her lips move, trying to get words out. He doesn't understand right away.
The woman struggles a little more to free herself from the smoke's grip, but the darkness is far too powerful. She winces, fights a little more. She reaches out a desperate hand towards him.
Don't let her win
The smoke slides down her arm, wraps itself around her neck like a huge snake choking its prey. Her reassuring face gradually disappears, drowned by the smoke that engulfs her for good, before he can do anything.
He wants to scream, but his body, nor even his mind, reacts. He feels the weight of anguish tightening his chest. He turns his head from side to side, resisting the force the shadows exert on him. But wherever he looks, there is nothing, only this immense emptiness, and this darkness.
Soon the shadows begin to ripple again, and give way to something else. Another form takes shape in the darkness. He suddenly discerns someone walking towards him, walking through the smoke. It is a light-skinned woman with long, loose hair. He does not understand what she is doing here, but even if his mind is no longer able to discern truth from falsehood or to understand what is happening to him, he knows at that moment who it is, because his heart recognizes her immediately.
A gentle warmth, strangely soothing in a world of despair, gently rises within him. The woman approaches him, devours him with her large brown eyes and gives him an extremely sensual, sly smile. She walks towards him without hesitation, and comes to rest against him. The warmth of her naked body against his is terribly unsettling, but for a very brief second he feels revitalised.
She slides her hands over his shoulders, then grabs his face. She gently places her lips on his. This is so unreal, and yet, at that very moment, everything seems to disappear around him, even the worst of the underworld.
Suddenly, his breathing stops abruptly. Something hurts him in the abdomen. He recoils slightly. When he looks down, he discovers that the woman has plunged a huge dagger into his stomach. She has driven the entire blade into his flesh. A black blade, with a strangely decorated handle, cut into a light-coloured stone. Slight drops of blood are dripping from the fresh wound. When he looks up at her, he is amazed to see her smiling at him. She pushes the dagger a little further, and raises it slightly, he hiccups with surprise. The penetrating, sharp pain finally comes after a few seconds.
She withdraws the shard with a sudden gesture, he falls to his knees. Despite the pressure he exerts with one hand, he feels the hot liquid flowing in great quantities down his lower abdomen and legs. The woman steps towards him, walking barefoot through the pool of blood that is spreading beneath him. She grabs him by the throat and forces him to raise his head towards her. No expression appears on her face. And without the slightest hesitation, she takes the shard and slides it down his throat. He collapses to one side.
Slowly, she watches him die, before finally turning around and disappearing into the darkness. Her face suddenly twists and turns into a terrifying, hate-filled figure. A creature half human, half monster with big black eyes. It spreads its wings, which are not those of a bird, but those of a huge insect. And then, nothing more.
—
A flash of light suddenly streaked across the sky and a deep, ominous roar echoed through the dark night. The clouds formed a thick, cottony ceiling above them, and the rain had been falling steadily for several hours already, making the atmosphere even more sinister than it already was.
The car left the main road and turned onto a small dirt path. Following Lara's directions, Matēj drove on before stopping a few hundred feet further on. Just above them, lost in the middle of the fields, stood what looked like an old ruined building, perhaps a farmhouse, the frame of which had collapsed in on itself. The first houses of Kutna Hora's village were only a few feet away. A small stream meandered between the trees and the fields, and went down towards the town and its ramparts, on which the church and the Renaissance Palace were perched.
Matēj parked the vehicle against the ruined building, so that it would not be visible from the main road. He immediately turned off the headlights, and all three of them got out at the same time. Lara walked around the SUV and opened the sliding side door. Roman helped her take out the bags. He then took out a small bag, in which there was a kind of electronic screen, like the one on a GPS, with a rather thick protective shell. The device beeped when he turned it on. While waiting for the images and data to load on the screen, Luddick rummaged around in the back of the vehicle and grabbed something. He handed her and Roman some large, reinforced vest: bulletproof vests. The Russian put down his device and grabbed one, before putting it around him, but the Englishwoman hesitated for a moment.
"Just a precaution," added the fifty-year-old, putting on his own waistcoat.
She wasn't used to this kind of gear, but it would be a plus, no doubt. The adventuress took hers and put it on in turn. She fastened it with the straps, before readjusting her turtleneck, then the hat she was wearing, then her gloves. She fumbled with her equipment, her firearms and the straps on her holsters.
Roman's machine beeped again and the three of them gathered round to look at the screen. On the image now appeared a series of strange lines, sometimes red, sometimes dotted. Other, more approximate lines seemed to indicate some specific feature of the landforms in the basement. Roman pointed to something a little further away, based on what was displayed before his eyes.
A few feet away from them, just above the small stream, somewhere in the tall grass of the abandoned field, was a set of stones collapsed on themselves, one of which looked like a sort of cavity, as one might have found in some cemeteries. Lara took a few steps closer, wading through the mud. There was indeed a sort of vault there, large enough to be the entrance to an ancient tunnel. There was an iron gate in front of it. She moved a little closer and took out a small torch, and discovered a wall of stones roughly laid on top of each other and embedded in the bottom of the cavity. A padlock and an old chain blocked the access and the gate. She turned to her friends.
Understanding her idea, Matēj grabbed something from the car and the two men joined her in one step. He passed the young woman and stood in front of the gate. With a precise gesture, the Czech placed the wire cutter on the lock and cut it off. The object fell into the grass with a soft sound, and the gate opened slightly with a creak.
Lara pushed the metal door aside and crawled inside, her head slightly lowered. She ran her hand over the uneven stone wall and could not help but frown. She turned to look again at the map on Roman's device.
"The plans are up to date," he said before the aventuress could make any protest.
"Is the entrance supposed to be there?", Matēj asked from behind them.
The three of them looked at each other for a moment, before turning back to the wall.
"Did you take a hammer with you by any chance?", asked the Englishwoman.
The ex-policeman didn't answer and just went back to the vehicle. He returned a few moments later.
"Sorry, I hadn't necessarily thought of that eventuality," he said, handing the young woman a shovel.
She took it and thanked him with a smile.
"This should do the trick."
Beside her, Roman grabbed the cutter with both hands and began to strike the stone with all his might. Lara followed him and did the same. It took them several long minutes before the first blocks finally began to give way. As Roman struck, they heard a crunch, and one of the stones at the top of the wall moved slightly. They paused to catch their breath and see how far they had come. But just as Lara was about to give another blow with her shovel, Matēj stopped her with one hand and stepped into the small alcove. He then began to strike the wall with his foot, tapping on strategic spots. Roman went with him, and after a few seconds this time, several stones slid off the wall in a cloud of dust, revealing something behind.
The two men stepped back, and Lara dropped to her knees to get to the level of the hole that had just formed in the wall. As she shone the lamp into the opening, she saw a wide space on the other side that seemed to go deep underground. She turned round, and the three companions exchanged a satisfied look. They then set about clearing the stones that were blocking their way, and so cleared the way. After several minutes, they discovered a perfectly shaped hole in the ground, which looked rather like the entrance to an animal's burrow. Without showing the slightest sign of hesitation, Lara bent down and stuck her head through the opening, torch held up in front of her. Then, contorting herself one way and then the other, she crawled out and disappeared on the other side.
Roman and Matēj exchanged a look, then leaned forward, before seeing the light from the torch return to the opening. Somewhat doubtful, the fifty-year-old picked up the bags and pushed them through the hole, then knelt down in turn and crawled through. Roman followed him a few seconds later. His feet scraped the damp earth as he pushed his way through to the other side, he felt a strong musty smell come up his nose. Matēj helped him up, he discovered with surprise a real underground gallery that was quite narrow, but in which they could easily stand. The large wooden structure that framed the walls and ceiling left no doubt as to where they were. The young man dusted off his clothes and glanced behind him.
"Some of the galleries have been sealed off as being too dangerous," Luddick explained.
"Let's hope this one isn't too dangerous then," Lara retorted, her gaze as concentrated as never.
"And that we won't get stuck," concluded Roman.
The aventuress turned to the tunnel that opened up before them. At first sight it was a simple gallery dug into the earth.
"You tell us?", replied the young woman, pointing to his electronic device with a chin.
Roman seemed to observe the images on the screen, then, not detecting anything abnormal for the moment, nodded gently. The adventuress turned around, and without a word, the three companions set off.
—
Their footsteps echoed strangely enough in this enclosed area. They had been walking in the darkness for a long time, not knowing exactly how long they had been there, underground, in this strange and stifling atmosphere. They let themselves be guided by Roman's machine, which made them branch off several times from one tunnel to another. The smell of earth and mouldy wood was extremely strong, and tiny streams of water dripped from the ceiling and slid down the walls with a gentle noise. In some places large puddles had formed, no doubt due to the seepage of rainwater, and at times the timber creaked slyly around them, which did not help them to feel completely safe.
They followed another tunnel to the right, and the light from the torch held by Lara, who was leading the way, suddenly reflected on something. Instinctively she slowed her pace and reached for her holster. She grabbed the handle of her 9mm, and took up a defensive position. Behind her, the two men also slowed down, ready to intervene as well. The adventuress took a few measured steps forward, and soon the three friends found themselves at an intersection, with a mound of earth and broken rock in front of them, and two tunnels, one to the right, the other to the left. Lara relaxed, but felt frustration creep over her.
"Feels like déjà vu," she grumbled as she looked at the rockfall in front of them, which was obviously impassable.
She swept the space around them with her lamp. She lit the tunnel on their right, then the second one, before turning back to Roman. The young man was focused on his device, Matēj on the other hand was watching the space around them and watching their backs with his own torch, turning to one side, then the other, as if looking for clues as to which way to go, but he didn't seem worried any more than that.
"The easiest way was to go straight on," the Russian concluded, looking apologetically at the young woman.
"Of course, otherwise it would have been too easy," Lara answered ironically.
She sighed loudly and let the young man think for a moment. He made some manipulations on his screen.
"The one on the right should allow us to find the other gallery a little further on," he finally said.
Following his instructions, they entered the gallery and resumed their progress, concentrating on their steps. But after only a few feet, the lights of the lamps came across something again. All three of them stopped walking in one movement, before hitting the pile of stones and earth in front of them. Lara skidded slightly in the clods of earth that had formed on the ground, and which had accumulated here after the obvious collapse of the ceiling at this point. The wooden beam that had originally been embedded in the upper part of the tunnel to support it had been literally broken in half, and had bent under the weight of the tons of earth under which it lay.
The adventuress did not even need to step forward to understand that it was impossible to continue this way. She held back a grunt of frustration, and abruptly turned around to head back the other way. She took a deep breath to keep her composure. Matēj and Roman let her pass and glanced at each other.
"I think the message is pretty clear, indeed," said the Czech as he briefly shone his light on the landslide that blocked their path.
Roman made no comment, and followed in the footsteps of the young woman, still concentrating on his small GPS device. They turned back, and quickly walked the few feet that had brought them here. They quickly found the intersection that had led them there, passed the other cave-in, and consequently gorged themselves in the tunnel they had originally wanted to avoid.
The scenery was just as monotonous and smooth as the rest of the tunnels, going deeper and deeper into the darkness. After several minutes they passed another wooden archway, typical of the mining tunnels, but suddenly noticed a strange detail in the wood. When they were a little closer, and the support beam was above their heads, they discovered a shape stuck in the grain of the wood, right in the centre of the structure. It was an irregular shape, visibly eaten away by the effects of time and moisture; its once white colour had given way to a greyish yellow of the wood in which it was trapped. Its empty eyes stared at the three impromptu visitors.
"Maybe that means we're on the right track," Roman quipped from behind Lara.
The young woman shone the light on the remains of the bone skull hanging above them, before noticing that there were also, on the vertical pillars of the framework, other bones. Two tibias, or perhaps two forearms placed in the shape of a cross, framed each side of the structure. The Englishwoman had a strange feeling as she contemplated this macabre ensemble. She knew that they were undoubtedly approaching their destination and the shrine that Eckhardt had built in the basement of the church. She suddenly had the impression they were about to enter a completely different atmosphere than the one they had felt before, as if this wooden arch symbolically marked the passage to the world the young black alchemist had once left behind. A dark and oppressive world, just like the gallery they were in.
They exchanged a strange look with Roman and Luddick, before resuming their walk in silence. Soon they passed a new wooden archway, again with several types of bones as decoration, fixed in the wood.
If it can be called a decoration, thought the adventuress wryly.
They followed the tunnel for several hundred feet, always under the empty gaze of these skulls, which seemed to keep an eye on them every time they passed under one of these arches. Unpleasantly enough, the environment reminded Lara strongly of the sanctuary in Greece, with the same impression of sliding towards the depths of the earth, but above all, towards a place in which they were not welcome, and which would soon close in on them.
They passed new thick wooden beams, this time covered with hundreds of human bones. In the centre of the arch was a sort of pentacle made entirely of long arm and leg bones, positioned in such a way that they formed lines, sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal, in a strangely sophisticated and organised pattern. The whole thing formed a kind of coat of arms, which Matēj seemed to recognise at once. Despite his detached and neutral nature, the man suddenly seemed uneasy.
"Království Mrtvých," he murmured in a mysterious voice.
Lara and Roman turned towards him.
"The Realm of the Dead," he translated.
The Russian gave him a suspicious look, one eyebrow slightly raised.
"What's with this mysterious, eerie tone?"
"There were a lot of fatal accidents when they were mining the silver, and for a long time afterwards, until very recently. People have gone missing in these tunnels. And given what Eckhardt did there, and what he was capable of..."
"Don't tell me this place is haunted?"
The Czech didn't answer.
"We're not going to be impressed by a few ghosts, are we?", Lara asked in a slightly mocking voice.
The three of them looked at each other without a word, Luddick did not look reassured.
"Where are we?", Lara asked, her mind already focused on something else.
She moved closer to Roman to look at the tablet and the digital maps.
"We're getting closer. There should be only a couple of hundred feet left at most."
The young woman nodded and turned away. Without waiting for her comrades, she started walking again and passed the bone arch. The light of her lamp slowly faded, and Roman, then Luddick, still not at ease, followed. They had to speed up a little, because Lara was now striding forward and had accelerated her pace. She walked with a now confident step, concentrated on their progress and on her breathing, forgetting as much as possible about the oppressive tunnels that surrounded them. She was mentally preparing herself for what awaited them, although she preferred to think ahead and perhaps improvise once they were there. God knew what awaited them at the end of the road, but she was already ready to fight.
A strange noise resounded somewhere in front of them, only a few feet away. The Englishwoman reached for her holster and immediately drew her gun, stopping dead in her tracks. The two men behind her did the same. They stood still, as if frozen in their movement. Lara's eyes tried to see through the darkness beyond the light of her torch, but the darkness was thick, slightly veiled and opaque.
"Did you hear that?"
Roman and Matēj did not react. The adventuress felt her pulse quicken, she was suddenly gripped by a bad feeling that she was unable to fight.
The noise resounded again in front of them. This time she raised her weapon and pointed it straight ahead, ready to fire. She heard the ex-policeman take his weapon and load it. The Englishwoman concentrated a little more, squinting her eyes and listening. It sounded like some kind of scratching, or maybe a scraping.
"Do you think Eckhardt would have left any surprises behind?", Roman said suddenly, but the young woman silenced him immediately by turning to him and giving him a dark look.
He shrugged his shoulders in apology. The scratching suddenly resumed, this time a little closer. The three companions stood petrified, waiting to see what would emerge from the darkness. The noise continued to increase in intensity, as if it were getting closer and closer. But there was nothing deafening about it; in fact, Lara found it hard to determine what it was exactly. It echoed in the ground, but also in the earthen walls. It sounded as if something was scraping the earth, or dragging itself through it. And there was something else, too, something she couldn't identify, perhaps a very muffled grunt, or a very low murmur.
"Maybe it's just rats," Matēj muttered in an attempt to reassure himself.
For endless seconds none of the three moved an inch. Then suddenly the noise, which had seemed to be advancing towards them in the darkness of the tunnel, stopped abruptly. The leaden silence fell back into the gallery. A cold, yet almost imperceptible breath blew over them. The air suddenly became extremely heavy, almost suffocating. The three companions held their breath.
A high-pitched howl ripped through their eardrums, and something leapt out of the darkness and onto Lara. The thing that attacked her hit her head on and she dropped her lamp, which fell and rolled to the ground. She didn't have time to see what it was, but she felt its cold, hard touch against her. It had force, she toppled backwards, unable to keep her balance. They fell heavily to the ground, and the young woman then felt something grab her and claw at her from all sides. She could see absolutely nothing but a few snatches of images passing before her eyes. Violent slaps resounded close to her face, and that was when she understood what it was.
"Holy shit!", Luddick shouted from nearby.
The man finally shone his torch on the fallen woman, and he and Roman discovered a pile of jumbled bones wrestling furiously with her. A skeleton.
Roman dropped his electronic tablet and pulled out his assault rifle. But just as he was about to fire, he stopped: he couldn't see what was going on, the thing was moving too fast. If he fired, he risked hitting Lara. Matēj rushed towards her to help her. But when he tried to grab the skeleton or push it away, the thing dodged him nimbly, twisting in all directions. He stood up and gave it a violent kick, which unhooked one of its bones and made it spin around. The Czech kicked again and again, the adventuress trapped underneath pushed it back with all her might with a grunt. The skeleton finally let go and fell backwards and rolled on the ground. It didn't have time to straighten up and counterattack as Roman pulled the trigger with a precise and confident gesture. The skeleton made several sounds that sounded like screams as its bones shattered one by one and it was pulverized. Roman did not stop firing until it was reduced to an indescribable pile of dust and bone fragments.
Silence fell abruptly in the small cavity, but disbelief remained on the faces of the three companions. The Russian finally lowered his gun, and Lara stood up quickly, her eyes still on the skeleton.
"What the hell was this?", Roman choked.
The adventuress picked up the torch that had rolled away, and took her weapons in hand. She returned to the skeleton and leaned over it.
"The little surprises Eckhardt left behind, obviously."
"We needed this...", Matēj grumbled. "I wasn't really serious when I said that-"
A sharp, abrupt slam interrupted his sentence. All three turned their heads in the direction of the tunnel. A little further on, maybe a few feet from where they were standing, the same agonising noise, the same scraping, the same hoarse moaning echoed through the galleries again. They all jumped in surprise when the heaped skeleton at their feet suddenly began to make a noise of its own. One of its bones cracked, and as if driven by an invisible force, snapped back into the one to which it was originally attached.
"What the...?!", Roman gasped as his eyes widened.
"We have to move!", Lara shouted.
The skeleton grunted, and its bones scrabbled fiercely in an attempt to right itself. Roman scrambled to retrieve the fallen touch pad before it grabbed him and knocked him over. The three of them moved again without delay and started running into the darkness, running straight ahead without knowing what was waiting for them. They heard the skeleton they had just left behind hiss, and various unidentifiable noises told them that it had already gotten to its feet.
Lara followed Matēj, who was running ahead. The man was trying to keep the light of his torch shining in front of him to illuminate the passage. The young woman jammed her own torch into the strap of her backpack, freeing her second hand. She reached for her second 9mm. Suddenly three menacing skeletons appeared in front of them, right in their path, and they screamed in unison as the beam of the torch shone on them. They stretched their hooked hands towards the adventurers and literally threw themselves forward to attack them. Matēj fired a first shot, and managed to push the first two back, which crashed into the earthen wall, but the third narrowly escaped. The fifty-year-old deviated slightly to dodge it, but Lara did not have time to move. She fired blindly, and the skeleton exploded right in front of her, just as she was about to hit it. Its bones shattered in the air, leaving the way free for a few fractions of a second.
They ran a few more feet before coming to a new wooden arch and a new fork in the road.
"To the left!", shouted the Russian, his fingers clutching his tablet and his weapon.
Just as Luddick was about to enter the tunnel and make his turn, the young man saw, in the irregular flashes of the flashlights, something fall on him. The man collapsed to the ground with a cry of surprise. The Russian, in coordination with the adventuress, began to fire at the wooden beam that was coming to life, and from which the skeleton that was on Matēj came. They fired the first burst of powerful bullets, the living dead fell one by one, broken into pieces. Roman then heard a particularly unpleasant crunching and scratching at his back. He turned and fired again, pushing back the few skeletons that were in pursuit. Jaw clenched, he fired into the crowd without taking the time to make a distinction. The enemies went down in a single movement, swept away by the powerful bursts of his assault rifle with a deafening noise. But no sooner had he lowered his weapon than the skeletons began to move again.
"You've got to be kidding me," he said with a growl.
Behind him, Lara rushed to help Matēj, who was struggling fiercely with the undead thing that was on top of him. She kicked the thing away, and shot it. It stopped moving for a moment. But soon the skull she'd just blown off was pieced together piece by piece, before it began to move again. The young woman let out an exasperated sigh. Luddick stood up, one hand clutching a wound he had made in his arm. He waved to the young woman, however. Behind them, Roman fired again.
"We have to get out of here before we get trapped!", Lara shouted over the deafening sound of the gunfire.
"Over there! There's something there!", cried the Czech, pointing to something further down the tunnel.
He fired several bullets at the skeleton that had attacked him, and without waiting for his companions, disappeared around the bend in the tunnel.
"Luddick!"
Roman and Lara suddenly turned and ran after him, jumping over the pieces of bone that lay all over the ground. They found themselves in a new gallery, at the end of which a strange orange light was shining. They saw the figure of the Czech moving away at full speed, and they accelerated to catch up with him. The two companions heard the skeletons coming after them again, but this time they did not bother to turn around. They had almost reached the shrine, Lara could feel it. They were very close.
They heard a scream, and suddenly saw Luddick run into two skeletons in his path. He kicked the first one, which toppled backwards, and grabbed the second one by the shoulders, pushing it violently against the wall. His bones broke between his fingers with the impact, but the second living dead grabbed him by the calf to stop him. Before he could get out of the way, the thing had sunk its teeth into his flesh. The man tried to pull away with a cry of pain, waving his leg in all directions.
Then Lara had an idea. She sheathed one of those pistols, and reached into her backpack with one hand, pulling out one of the periapt shards she had taken with her. She struck the skeleton standing in her way with all her might, then rushed at the one still clutching the ex-policeman's leg. She planted the weapon in the skull of the undead man, who stopped moving at once, and collapsed. This time, the two enemies did not get up. The Czech man gave her a slightly bewildered look. Roman unleashed another burst of bullets, knocking down the other skeletons that had been after them.
Lara turned her head, there was some sort of cavity at the end of the gallery, undoubtedly the passage to the shrine and the church.
"Come on!", she shouted.
They ran at once towards the light they saw, presumably from the large torches hanging on the wall. Behind them, the screams of the skeletons trying until the last moment to reach them, increased in intensity. The three companions made a last effort to reach the end of the tunnel, which suddenly widened, giving way to a large circular room. They passed through a sort of entrance, bounded by a large rusty iron gate, and suddenly arrived in this place in complete contrast to the tunnels of the mine. Matēj and Roman hurriedly pulled the grate down behind them, to block the access of the skeletons, who clattered noisily against the metal, their arms desperately stretched out in front of them to catch the prey that had just escaped them. Lara stepped forward and stabbed the periapt shard into a random skull, the undead suddenly fell silent and fell to the ground in pieces, never to rise again.
The three companions stepped back and stood on guard at the gate. They took a second to catch their breath and look around. There was a high vaulted ceiling, a circular mosaic on the floor. At the other end of the room was a huge door with the same crest on it as they had found in the galleries. Lara felt her heartbeat quicken. She and Roman exchanged a glance.
"Is everything all right, Luddick?", the young woman asked, turning to the Czech this time.
He shook his head gently, more shocked than actually hurt. His trousers were torn where the skeleton had bitten him, there was some blood, but a lot of it superficial.
"This may sound like a silly question, but is it your habit to get into this kind of trouble?"
"Believe me, this is not what I call trouble," the Englishwoman replied with a smirk.
The man tried to return her smile, but it immediately faded from his face. He took a step back and gripped his gun with both hands, aiming at something behind the young woman. She saw the fear return to his eyes. As she and Roman turned to face each other, they realised that the room was rippling dangerously, as if it had suddenly came to life. To their dismay, the three friends realised what they had thought were simple decorations carved into the marble were actually more skeletons embedded in the stone. From the central column to the ceiling, they were all coming back to life, scratching at the walls and twisting in all directions to get out of their stone prison. The grunting and groaning began again.
Lara walked over to Roman and glanced at his tablet. Then she looked up at the large door.
"The lab is just beyond," her friend confirmed.
Lara turned around and walked towards the door. It was sealed by a long, thick iron bar set horizontally, blocking it across its entire width. Underneath, she saw a large rusty lock. She felt her arm being taken.
"I have what we need," Matēj said, handing her a small object.
She looked down and discovered a kind of dark paste, held in place by thick red strings. The young woman couldn't contain her surprise when she realised what it was.
"I don't know if..."
"Maybe we don't have much choice, don't you think?", Roman interrupted her, having moved into a defensive position, ready to face the skeletons coming down from the ceiling and the central column.
The young woman glanced desperately at the Russian, then at Luddick. She tried to stay focused, but the screams of the living dead were omnipresent. She pursed her lips.
"Okay. Let's just hope it doesn't all collapse on us then," she muttered. "Roman, no!"
The young man, who was about to fire on a horde of skeletons, stopped abruptly, unsettled.
"We must stay as quiet as possible!", said the aventuress, pointing to the other side of the wall.
"It will be a miracle if they don't hear us!", protested the young man bitterly.
She then threw him the second periapt shard, which he caught on the fly, and accompanied Matēj as he made his way to the back of the room, towards the large door. She pushed aside one or two skeletons as they passed, and killed another with her shard. Time was running out, they had to act quickly.
For long seconds, Matēj worked on installing the detonator on the iron bar that blocked the door, trying to keep his calm and concentrate despite the hubbub caused by the skeletons' screams. Lara pushed back as best she could those who were arriving by dozen, and who were trying to grab her to topple her over. She struggled hard, elbowing and kicking with her feet. She could barely see Roman, a few feet away, also overwhelmed by the living dead. He was lowering the dagger in all directions, getting rid of the enemies one by one. The power of the periapt shard seemed to keep them at bay and even destroy them, but at this rate neither he nor she would last much longer.
"We need to take cover!", Matēj suddenly shouted as he scrambled to his feet.
Lara cleared the periapt shard of the skeleton she had just hit, and dodged another one coming from the side. She stepped on one that had fallen to the ground, and ran to follow the Czech. They were joined by Roman, and the three of them took cover behind the central column. Until the last moment, they fought off the skeletons that kept coming at them again and again. The Englishwoman and the fifty-year-old exchanged a glance.
"Let's go."
The man then pressed the tiny lever in his hand. There was a deafening bang, followed by a powerful hot breath, which swept over them with force. Everything went white.