Co-Authored by doenerkint, check out his profile, he does some great work.

Author's Note: Sorry for the wait. There'll be a bit of a surprise posting someday soon.

If you're interested in a great community, check out the Harry/Fleur discord, discord dot gg / flowerpot

'Thoughts'

(Radio when in conversation)

"Japanese"

SIX - The Curse

Mountain path, Ancient Monastery, Yamatai

Droplets of rain tickled her nose as she gradually let the world around her reel her back into consciousness, letting her limbs get used to moving again but winced when she felt the ghosts of pain punish her weary joints.

At first the pain was too great an inconvenience, urging her to abandon her intentions and return to sleep. She'd have plenty of opportunities to try again after some well-deserved rest. She'd just lay here, on the ground where it wasn't painful, where the pain would not disturb her.

Surely Harry would understand. He was so kind and caring, always concerned for her well-being. He wouldn't fault her for sleeping in some more.

His green eyes smiled down at her, letting his hand stroke her beautiful plaid hair. His mouth spoke words with the white of his teeth letting her know he was saying things she wished she could understand.

'Why is he speaking so quietly?' she said. 'Speak louder, I can't hear you!'

His mouth closed and turned to eye her directly, his hands still busy stroking the top of her head lovingly. He gave her a knowing look and spoke again in his very odd whisper.

At least she felt like he whispered. The words were audible but still lulls and incoherent.

'Louder, Harry. Louder!'

A frown emerged on his face, and she thought she had angered him, guilt building in the pit of her stomach.

Before she could offer an apology, he finally let go of her hair and began moving backwards until he turned away and motioned to leave into the bright light behind the door of the room that was ajar.

'Wait!' She pleaded, her voice that of a scared child who was about to be abandoned. 'I'm sorry I shouted. Please, wait!

But Harry didn't listen and continued to make for the exit into the light. Lara, in her panic, jumped to her feet, an invisible chair toppling over behind her knees, and instantly began to move toward his silhouette. Her arm was stretched out before her, ready to claw at him, to stop him from leaving, from entering the light beyond the door of her room.

"Harry!" she shouted as she jerked up.

Her eyes searched for him frantically, trying and failing to recognize anything that even looked remotely like him. Her breathing was laboured, like she'd run a marathon at full sprint and only just stopped to catch her breath.

The light from her room was gone. The door was gone. The chair she'd just sat on no longer lay behind her on the floor. As a matter of fact, she was on the ground and not on her feet like she remembered mere moments ago.

'Where am I?'

The thought didn't linger for long as her mind finally connected the dots that Harry was never here.

She blinked to clear her vision and wiped the moistness from around her face. Her sight improved with each rub of her knuckle, letting the orange of the sun hue her vision. The rockface on both her sides also came into view and reminded her with painful grit of where she was and how she'd gotten here.

'It was a dream,' she realised with regret marring her feelings. She let a tired arm move up and above her head, allowing a calloused palm to touch the top of her scalp. She tried to seek the warmth his hand had left behind, but she was only greeted by the wetness of mud and dirt interwoven with strands of hair.

"I've got to move," she told herself with truly little faith.

With a torturous slowness, Lara pushed off from the ground and nearly planted her face back into the dirt beneath her as her supporting hand slipped. She readjusted her hold in time and with the grace of a drunk cat managed to get herself up.

Slightly wobbling, she was steady enough to allow herself a first scanning glance around, properly absorbing her surroundings now. When she caught sight of a colossal wall of fallen rocks and boulders, she gasped as memories rushed to the forefront of her mind.

'Harry!'

She jumped into action but pain in her joints denied her any fervour. So, she limped her way over to the blocked path through which she knew to return to him. Her mind filled with the image of Harry's face in those moments before he separated them. Those beautiful green eyes of his, the resignation in them.

'No,' she told herself. 'He's strong, he has to be alive. He won't just die'!'

The words rang hollow. She knew better than to give herself false hope. Harry had told her as much when they'd said their goodbyes to Roth.

Shaking her head at the squeeze of her heart, she pushed down on the fright that tried to force its way into her chest.

'I'll believe it when I see him.'

Having made that choice, she allowed focus to return to her mind and steel herself. Walking over to the fallen stone which separated her from the monastery, and from Harry, she inspected it and found it too loose for her to climb safely. Instead, she'd climb one of the cliff sides and shimmy across the blockade and descend on the other side. With a plan in mind, she scanned the rockface for the safest route, one decided, she placed her hands in grooves in the rock and began to climb.

Years of rock-climbing lessons with Roth ensured she was careful to test her grips and footing before putting her weight on them.

She continued to do so for an eternity. Moving one hand, moving one leg, then checking if it holds, then moving the other hand and moving the other leg. Step by step, grip by grip. Seconds into minutes, minutes into hours, and hours into days.

Time became a flux she couldn't measure any longer. The light was traitorous, and the rock face was endless. It was only twenty, maybe a few more metres, but it felt like an eternity to her battered body and mind.

At some point she no longer focussed on the doings of her hand and legs. It grew into second nature and her mind was allowed to take a rest. Fear inducing thoughts returned, imaginings of what she might find, of whom. Images of Harry's dead body in a pool of his own blood came into view of her mind's eye, his eyes open, and dull, and lifeless.

She violently shook her head, almost throwing her out of her steely grip in the rock.

Near the top, the whistle of fierce winds got louder and louder until she could feel the sigh of them on the tips of her fingers and in her hair. Once she was higher than the blockage, she began to move sideways, being extraordinarily careful with her weight placement.

The opportunity came to rest her limbs by placing some of her weight onto the top of the fallen rocks. She did so and used the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the other side in an attempt to find Harry. Instead, she saw the monastery, and the bridge, and death.

She didn't think of it before, but the area was littered with battered and torn bodies, with limbs ripped apart and skin scorched. The bits of armour and shattered blades stuck in the ground spoke a spell of a great battle. Letting her gaze travel, she recognized the Japanese warriors as well as the Solarii henchmen strewn about like lifeless dolls trapped in the never-ending sleep of death.

It was a bloody and sobering sight, and spoke deeply of the lethal danger they had found themselves in. They weren't discovering an extinct culture but a thriving, livid horror of a bygone age.

'Is this what he meant when he talked about curse-breaking?' she wondered. 'Is this the sort of thing he deals with all time. Old evils hidden from the world?'

To her relief, Harry wasn't anywhere among the dead. There would still be a chance to save him. He wouldn't have been caught if she hadn't been a burden to him.

The thoughts of hope revitalised her, and so Lara began her descent, being even more careful to watch her footing. Most wouldn't realise it but it's far easier to make a blunder when climbing down than when traversing up. It was made all the more difficult by the harrowing wind which threatened to dislodge her from the wall. But Lara was a seasoned climber and knew that a misstep would spell the end of her journey – in a broken, unmoving heap... If anything, really worried her, it was that she would never know what became of him.

A loose stone nearly had her lose her footing, but her quick reflexes had her recovering in the nick of time.

The trip down took longer than it had on her way up, she thought. But again, she had no way of knowing without a working time piece. Not very long after, Lara reached the bottom with a small drop. She turned and studied the heavy pile of stone which she'd just overcome, palming them, pulling on some of the smaller ones, testing if they'd ever budge. They didn't.

She hoped there was another way out, because when she'd find Harry and if he were hurt – God forbid – or incapable of finding them a way out, they'd be trapped.

'The only way forward is into the lion's den,' she told herself. "Right."

Turning to face the other way, the weathered bridge leading across a great divide came into view. The winds gnawed visibly at the wood of the bridge and the ancient monastery seated on the other side wasn't looking any better. This sight that would normally fill her avid archaeological mind with excitement filled her with a deep sense of foreboding instead.

'He must be inside.'

Before making her way across the old bridge and to the entrance of the building, the large still form of one of the slain samurai caught her attention with its bullet-ridden armour.

The faces of the samurai warriors were mostly hidden by the warrior's masks, drawing grotesque grimaces that are equalled by the terrified expressions on the other dead. Upon closer inspection, she found a withered and leathery face visible through its broken mask, a bullet having torn straight through its skull and blown the entire temple off. She didn't understand the magic behind it, but perhaps the classic, shoot it in the head worked. Or at the very least, had the best chance at taking one down.

'Fire seems to do them in just fine. Going for the head does the trick too, it looks like.'

She carefully touched the large samurai's armour and found an etching of the sun. She drew in a long breath. 'Stormguard, Himiko's honour guard. Alive? After all this time?'

She looked at the mangled face and shook her head. 'Kept alive. These were undead of some sort, from what I can tell. Even more evidence of Himiko's power.'

For mere moments, Lara pitied the broken samurai. 'Where is the honour in this, Lord samurai? Is this Bushido? Is this the way of honourable servitude? To serve your Lord and Master even in death?'

Anger collected in her midst, in her belly. 'No, this is true cruelty.'

The legend of Yamatai and its ruler supreme became less and less a fantastical story, and ever so more a cautionary tale. Another sigh later, Lara put her own judgments aside and focussed back to the task of figuring out how to find Harry.

Lara's finger brushed over one of the many bullet holes littering its armoured torso. Realising herself, she removed one of her guns and slid the mag out. Inspecting it, she found a meagre two bullets remaining, a quick check of the other gun found it to be not much better off.

As the wind made her eyes water, Lara got her hands dirty searching the bodies around for extra ammunition and anything else that could come in handy, like the WW2 era grenade which was in surprisingly good condition.

When Lara rolled a rather heavy-set body over, her eyes widened when she found a familiar looking wooden stick laying underneath it.

'His wand!'

She grabbed it frantically and palmed the smooth dark wood. She was surprised by the warmth it exhibited to her touch; it was almost hot even. She couldn't tell why but the warmth felt like the sort she sought from him. It was as if the wand was letting her know that he was alive and well and waiting for her. The thought made her shake her head at the absurdity of it. Though, it didn't change the fact that Lara clung to Harry's wand like a lost person at sea would a lifeboat.

Careful not to damage it, Lara slid the magical artefact into the waist of her pants. She hoped that Harry would be able to manage well enough without it in the meantime.

With everything she needed on hand, Lara climbed the few steps to the entrance of the ancient monastery. The dark interior visible through the large doorway gave off a malevolent aura. As if something inside her, a survival instinct from an era where superstition ruled the fears of man, screamed at her not to enter.

She remembered Harry's glasses which he'd let her keep. Removing them from her pocket, she was glad they hadn't broken. The signature frames made her heart lurch as she saw Harry's calm and smiling face wearing them.

Steeling herself, she placed them on her face and immediately found it easier to see in the dark. Stepping inside, Lara's first thought about the monastery was that she felt watched, and closely so. The sensation of someone breathing down her neck was disturbingly evident from the second she crossed into it. Yet she couldn't place where the feeling of staring came from. No matter where she turned, the glasses didn't give any indication of someone hiding anywhere in the shadows.

Except, Lara couldn't see it but beneath her clothing, her jade pendant had begun to glow ever so softly, reacting to something lurking in the walls, in the floor and in the ceiling of the ancient construct.

Accepting that there wasn't anything she could do against a feeling of suspicion, she pressed further in but came to a sudden halt when the floor beneath her creaked. Sneaking was not her strongest suit, but she wasn't an elephant in a China shop either. However, when the building was as old as the dust on the ground, and the woodwork was beyond many of its lifetimes, even a shinobi would be hard pressed to traverse without making a single sound.

Wood was the most prevalent material used in its construction and the creaks reminded her of wailing babies. Looking at the neglect the building has seen, the thought was not too out of place. Thankfully, the wind on the outside and the constant random creaking served well to mask her own movements.

There were multiple paths that led out from the entrance hall, and were it not for Harry's glasses, she would have been forced to simply guess the correct route. But with them, she was able to discern a streak of blood close to the farthest passage.

Other than the nagging feeling that made her neck hair stand up, the lack of any sign of life was something she found very disconcerting as she made her way through the numerous, snaking dark passageways. She could tell without taking a look from the outside that the monastery was far larger than she first anticipated.

The fact that it was built into the cliffside would normally have awed any self-respecting archaeologist but knowing now that Himiko was probably in fact, a powerful witch, the marvel of such construction seemed less wondrous. She wondered how long Harry would have needed to build a manor the size of Croft Manor, or if he already had built himself such an abode.

Just thinking about it again made her realise that perhaps her greatest discovery wasn't this island or the legends her father had pursued, but Harry himself. It amazed her that she still hadn't stopped to think about all the possible implications that discovery brought with it.

'Now is not the time,' she reprimanded herself and focused back to the darkness that lay ahead, only giving way to light thanks to Harry's spectacles.

She continued to follow the traces of human blood, navigating the otherwise overly complicated passageways that if allowed to mislead her, would entrap her in a maze. So, she trained her eyes on the red patches marking the weathered wood panels and followed them.

Every few steps she would hear creak under her foot and stop to listen for any commotion following her misstep. She couldn't afford to be discovered by any of the deadly, long-lived warriors who would undoubtedly chase her in their own fort. She would never make it out alive. Her senses were thus reaching new levels of hyper-alertness that would put all her previous experiences in her survival training with Roth to shame.

It was an agonising ten minutes into her exploration when she encountered the first of the undead swordsmen.

Peaking around the corner, Lara froze as a maroon-armoured warrior stood with its back towards her. Inching slightly forward to get a clearer angle nearly led to her discovery as she placed too much weight on an especially creaky floorboard.

The samurai turned with a trained reflex, a hand on the hilt of the katana by the hip. Its ominous mask (confirm name) just barely in view when Lara quickly ducked behind the corner, her heart racing as she covered her mouth and kept as still as possible.

She waited with frayed nerves for the tell-tale signs of an alarm ringing throughout the monastery. Her body was plastered against the wall until the sound of heavy thumping footsteps echoed throughout the passage. At first, she thought they were gathering to begin their search for the noise but with growing relief she noticed the sounds getting further away from her than closer. Once it had quieted completely and the only noises were coming from the moving wood beams, Lara let out a breath and rose to press on again.

'Fucking close, that was,' she muttered to herself silently.

As she got deeper into the monastery, the air got heavier with a disgusting mix of mustiness and the thick oily, metallic scent of blood. To Lara's horror, the source became clear as the dry and ruined wood which made up the building's structure was replaced by a bloodstained rockface. This section was clearly carved out of the mountain and held more resemblance to caverns than rooms.

The number of bloodstains meant Lara's initial method of finding Harry was now useless, and not long after that discovery did she come across a forking of pathways, both looking exactly the same except they led in different directions. There was however an additional sign that could point her in the right direction. The left path smelled of death and decay, with a strong odour of putrefaction emanating from it. Before she could make the turn to the other path, the sound of footsteps echoed both from where she came and the path she was about to contemplate taking.

'Shit,' she swore in her mind. 'Death it is then,' she added grimly.

Forced to move quickly, Lara took the only path left to her and escaped into it. Rushing through it as quietly as possible, she took note of the surroundings. She found it to be far more rudimentary, closer to a real cave in appearance than the carved stone of the previous. She also noticed a slight breeze coming from up ahead, carrying the stink of rot and gore with it. Hopefully, there was another exit, one that was safer to reach than attempting to backtrack all the way to the monastery entrance.

The flicker of firelight ghosted across the walls and ceiling from what appeared to be a large room up ahead. As she neared the end of the passage, she held her arm against her nose, trying to block out the smell, which was fast becoming unbearable.

The sight before her at the end of the passage would have put any nightmare to shame. She stood at the edge of a two-metre drop, looking down into a room lit by a single large brazier. It was filled with bodies in various states of decay, naked, and dismembered. Those that weren't laying in pools of blood, or piled onto small stacks, were hung from the ceiling like dead carcasses in a butcher's shop. Some were missing legs, others their entire lower extremities. She felt bile rush into her mouth as the contents of her stomach threatened to escape.

"Harry!" She called into the horror scene, the disgust pushed to the back of her mind as she disregarded everything and dropped down into it.

A response didn't come.

She waded her way through the fresher bodies and frantically looked them over to see whether he had become just one more body in a pile of nameless corpses. The longer she went without finding him in the horrifying room, the more she calmed down. When the last body rolled over, and the face which met her was of some scarred and bearded older man with a missing eye, she nearly slumped in relief.

"You're still alive," whispered a trembling Lara as she looked down at her blood-covered hands, surrounded by death. "But where are you? Where have they taken you? I need you."

A gunshot, followed by a loud guttural roar snapped her out of her slump. She searched for an exit and found a gap in the stone. It was waist high, and on closer inspection, led to another path she hadn't noticed before. A path that also happened to be the source of airflow. It was lower and littered with bits of bone. She crouched to squeeze through, being extra careful to not hit her head on the sharp bits of rock jutting out. With every step came the crunch of old, brittle bones beneath her tough boots.

The sound of wind howled up ahead, and as she turned a bend, she saw the light of the exit. The narrow-tunnelled path had led to the outside, to a stone walkway on the cliffside which housed the monastery. There were remains of old wooden fixtures, handrails and walls which now lay in pieces.

Lara raised an arm to block the wind and caught sight of her bloody hands again. She remembered the refilling canteen and used the water inside to get the blood off, rubbing furiously as she washed them.

Following the walkway, Lara was surprised to find it littered with more old bones, a fact that was not surprising by itself, especially with the room she'd just come from. But the remains of these old bones were notably different from those she'd just encountered in the cavern of butchery. These were covered in torn greenish-brown shirts, some of which had a more noticeable red patch with a golden star on the collar.

'Imperial soldiers of the Japanese Army?' She deduced quickly, going through the breast pockets and pants to look for something that would explain their being here. When she came up empty, she tried to think of a reason as to what might have happened here. 'They're fellow countrymen and yet, they were clearly slain by the Stormguard. Why? Perhaps this is what Harry meant about the statute of secrecy, the fear of magic. Had these soldiers decided to hunt for the secrets of Yamatai?'

The thought was absurd if her own experience was anything to go by. Himiko was clearly hostile toward all who were not her subjects.

She knew the Japanese had found the island before, what with the bunkers and other installations scattered around the island. From what she could see here, it seems the soldiers must have tried to hold a position here but were eventually overwhelmed.

With a moment of silence for the deceased, she got up to leave. She continued, careful not to stray too close to the edge and the sheer drop below. To her luck, there was another entrance into the mountain temple, a square window, just within her reach if she jumped to grab the lip.

A loud grunt escaped her as she pulled herself up and dropped to the other side with a groan as her ankles caught most of the fall. With a quick pat down, she dusted herself off.

The first thing she noticed was that her glasses – Harry's glasses – seemed to be having trouble, losing the clear sight they had before. 'Do magical items need batteries?'

She quickly grabbed a piece of dead wood and tore a strip off her clothing, which she wrapped around the top and lit using the lighter she'd taken from that man Harry had interrogated.

With her makeshift torch in hand, she pocketed the glasses and stepped out into the open and found, to her surprise, a tomb and at the far end a large door which was slightly ajar.

The other thing she noticed was that despite a cold draft coming through, she felt really warm, far too warm for it to be the heat of her torch.

The room, she now observed, was large and rotund with a statue of the Sun Queen sitting at the far end, accompanied by two Stormguard statues on each side, which mirrored each other in stance. In the centre of the room was a stone sarcophagus with its lid laying on the side. She stepped forward carefully and bent to check inside and found it empty. The base of the sarcophagus was covered in intricate etchings, the most prominent of them all a depiction of Himiko, the first Sun Queen.

As she turned, taking in the rest of the room, Lara found murals on the walls. Her inner archaeologist screamed for her to take the time out to inspect them, but it was not the time. She still had to find Harry.

There were two ways out of the room, a huge door which was shut with a wooden bar across it. The position and size of that door, coupled with the fact that this room had a window meant it could very well be an exit out of the monastery. If so, then she'd gone from one cliffside to another as she traversed the ancient temple. The other way out was a passage that led back into the temple.

Something caught her eye, a spot of red on the otherwise grey stone of the sarcophagus' lid. She shone the light of her torch onto it, and found a bit of blood, she touched it, and found it still wet. She rubbed it between two fingers and glanced up between the large door and the passage.

Moments Earlier

Somewhere inside the Ancient Monastery, Yamatai

"Okiro!"

Pain, that was what Harry was awoken by, pain, and the imposing samurai's yelled instruction as he was pulled by the hair.

Harry cried out as the samurai dragged him and unceremoniously tossed him out of the cell, he had been held captive in. With his hands bound tightly, it made it difficult to catch his fall, forcing him to land flat on the blood-stained stone floor. The pain was instantaneous, and the pulse went straight through his entire body, down to his toes from his injured shoulder. The arrow, he realised then, was still embedded deep in his flesh. He couldn't turn his neck quite as much but based on how he had fallen, he could summarise that the shaft had snapped. It was a small mercy, the fact that it hadn't been removed had prevented him from simply bleeding out.

He tried to sit up, to get his feet and knees under him and face his captors, only to be kicked by the samurai, knocking the air out of him and leaving him to fall backwards again and then roll onto his side on the floor.

The samurai grabbed the thick coarse rope which was used to bind his wrists. It chafed and scraped, hard enough that pulling on them felt as if his wrists were being scraped raw. Instead of forcing him to stand and walk, the samurai instead opted to drag him across the filthy and uneven stone floor.

The air Harry breathed was thick and heavy, it smelled of blood, earth, and rot. But what was worse than any of the horrid smell, was the magical heaviness of the space around them. The stone on which he was being dragged on felt gluttonous and wrathful, it felt like death, hate, and despair were fighting for supremacy within the tight confines of the carved space. He could feel the angry magic try and latch onto him, invisible hands groping him and trying to drag him into unseen muddy depths but instead latched on and clung to him with an oily quality.

His observations were interrupted by errant dirt getting into his eyes, doing his best now to blink wildly to deny it passage. Eventually, he managed it and was able to continue his involuntary guided tour, taking in the growingly disconcerting sensations. They were soon approaching a very dimly lit hallway where the walls were made of wood but seemed terribly decayed, with the occasional ray of waning daylight filtering through the gaps in the worn fixtures.

Before Harry could make further observations, his shoulder sent a spasm of pain and he had to groan, as the samurai turned down another path, the motion pulling harder on his injury.

He didn't have to wonder about the sudden turn long before they travelled through a hallway that led into a large hexagonal room that was illuminated by more errant rays of sunlight shining through the broken roof. At the other end of the room, there was a large, barricaded door that looked far too sturdy to be broken through by muggle means. He let the thought go as soon as he had entertained it, 'there's too much magic in this space. Without my wand, there's nothing I could do anyway.'

The walls were covered by what he thought were murals which he couldn't get a proper look at, and in the centre was a massive stone sarcophagus, covered in various elaborate carvings. His focus on the engravings didn't last long as his attention was called to a much more pressing presence in the same spot. He wasn't sure but given the overwhelming heaviness of muddled magics coming from that stone coffin, he had little to do to guess who he'd been dragged all this way to meet. It was Himiko.

Beside the sarcophagus stood another samurai. He didn't have to think long but he recognized the same elaborate armour, helmet and moustached mask. It was the samurai lord who had prevented his execution by a hair's breadth. The warrior was accompanied by another two sub-servant samurai who stood guarding their master, each with a hand resting on their sheathed swords and ready to strike at a moment's notice.

Without announcement, Harry was dragged closer and dropped on his knees at the base of the sarcophagus. Looking up, Harry was met by the commanding samurai's piercing stare. The samurai grunted in that deep, grating voice, spurring the others to grab him by the arms and lift him.

He'd been in dire encounters before, each and every one of them possessing the chance to see him dead, so he had developed a sense of control over his faculties despite the fear-inducing undead that stood imposing around him. He was injured, battered, tired, without provisions, with no means to communicate, and worst of all, without his wand. To say he was up shit's creek would be a major understatement.

His thoughts briefly touched upon the woman he had banished, her frightened gaze a lasting memory he hoped wouldn't be his last of her. 'Has she managed to escape and find the others by now?' If she were caught, it would have been entirely his fault. He'd been lax in that encounter.

His stoic and unaffected demeanour toward the figures around him seemed to have had an unexpected effect. The samurai lord let his hidden gaze study Harry, taking measure, so to speak. It was weighing him up, determining his worth.

The commanding figure then turned to the sarcophagus before facing Harry again.

"Himiko-Sama. Shien suru." It ordered him.

Harry blinked confused, failing to understand what the ancient warrior wanted quickly enough.

His unresponsiveness agitated it, inviting the samurai to grab him by the throat and threatening to choke him.

Harry struggled to breathe as his face reddened from the strain.

"Himiko-Sama, shien suru!" It repeated louder and with more grit.

"I— do—n't und—s—and," he tried to say but the words were cut off from making their way out of his body.

The samurai stared into Harry's eyes, the hold on his throat continuing to restrict his breathing. The strain was getting too much to bear. His head throbbed from the restricted blood flow, and his lungs burned for air. Harry's constraints prevented him from acting physically, but he was a wizard, and something all wizarding parents learnt early on, was that magic could at times be very reactive.

As the lack of air threatened his life, his desperate need to be free from the deathly warrior's grip manifested in a wave of raw force which threw everything and everyone nearest to him backwards. The steely grip on his throat disappeared while shortly after, parts of stone and wood fragments from the walls and roof came crashing down around him.

The samurai lord had been thrown backwards and into the heavy stone sarcophagus, pushing the thick stone to the side as well.

Harry fell to his knees, hunched over, and gasped for much needed air. The stale and mouldy air of the tomb had never tasted so good.

Before he could fully pull himself together, he was grabbed from behind again and lifted to his feet. The Samurai then pushed him forward, causing him to stumble and trip over a small stone that had undoubtedly come from his earlier show of magic, falling against the sarcophagus and catching a second clearer sight of the inside.

From what Harry could see of the ancient and decayed ceremonial clothing, the remains of Himiko were nothing more than old, dry, and dusty bits of skin wrapped over darkened bones. But it wasn't what he saw that caused him to pause. It was what vibes the remains gave off. Now that the lid was opened and the insides were left unobstructed, the feeling in the air was more stifling than he had experienced thus far. It was that same presence on the island, the one constantly at the edge of his senses. And it all came from the corpse whose dried and partially decayed face he now stared at.

The signs were familiar to him, he had seen this before in other places, albeit much more purposeful than what he witnessed here. There were records of it all over Egypt, and there were even those in Haiti who still performed something similar. Hell, he himself had witnessed magic of the type in his youth. On the Knight bus, the shrunken head, who would back instructions at the driver, Ernie.

Himiko was trapped in a mortal prison, a soul in a decayed body, and if her wild and angry magic was any symptom to go by, she was clearly not happy about it.

And exactly that gave him cause for confusion. A trapped soul to be able to exert its will in the manner that occurred on the island was most irregular. Sealed souls were usually the result of a curse, a way to control or torment another through the ritualistic perversion of life, of the soul, with magic deeply entrenched in necromancy. These trapped souls were restricted, able to feel and hear and sense their surroundings, occasionally they could move or speak. However, the whole point of doing so, in dabbling in such dark practices, was to make the subject incapable of doing anything. Perform magic? Influence even the weather?

'Impossible,' he insisted in thought. 'This is a pointless curse. Where's the punishment in all this other than losing your physical mobility? Did she do this to herself?'

Before he had a chance to continue pondering it, the warrior pulled him back and was about to do something he couldn't see. In mere moments, a spark of an idea occurred to him, and he voiced it as fast as he could speak the words.

"You want me to free Himiko."

He felt the motion behind him halt instantaneously, if the sigh of air on his neck was anything to go by.

Of course, he couldn't help them enable such a powerful and clearly malevolent witch, it would be Voldemort all over again, or worse... A witch that could control the weather from within a coffin spoke of unseen, unfathomable powers. It would quite literally be on par with natural disasters.

The task was clear as day now. No longer was this a recovery mission of treasures and curses of a past age, but a duty he had carried out before. A part of his life he had said his goodbyes to for a good reason.

This had become a mission of search and destroy.

Harry glanced past the samurai, at the sarcophagus and began thinking. He needed to burn the body but without his wand, any attempt at conjuring enough fire to get the job done would see his head leaving his body before he'd get the incantation out. He really wished he had Fleur's talent with fire then, anyone who thought Veela were nothing more than a pretty face had never seen the smouldering hot fire they could call upon.

A crack of gunfire echoed through the halls of the ancient temple. The sound caused an instant shift in the body language of the three undead warriors around Harry.

The two subservient samurai looked towards their leader, awaiting orders. He looked at one of them.

"Ike!"

The other kept still until the leader gestured towards Harry and pointed back in the way of his. With another short bow, he grabbed Harry while the other had gone in search of the intruder.

Right before they were about to leave the room though, the commanding officer called out, stopping their departure. The warrior who held Harry's reigns turned.

The samurai lord looked towards Harry and spoke quietly, but the tone was audible enough that he could tell it didn't bode well for him.

Despite being forced along the dark path back to his little prison, Harry could at least note the route this time. Upon reaching his cell, his captor kicked the back of his knees to force him onto them. A sound sent a chill through Harry's body, it was a blade being drawn behind him.

The samurai placed a boot on top of his leg and used the tip of his sword to touch the area behind his ankle.

'Bastards, they don't want me to escape!'

Harry struggled to wrench his foot free, but his bound hands made any leverage difficult. The samurai pushed him back down, as it lifted its sword.

But the whistle of a slash never came. Instead, he saw a body drop beside him with a climbing axe sticking out from the side of its skull.

"Harry!"

Lara stood there in the doorway, her clothes and face filthy with mud and sweat and blood, her hair sticking to her face, illuminated by the flickering orange light of the torch which was held at her side. Despite it all, to Harry at that moment, Lara was the most beautiful woman in the world.

"Lara," came Harry's surprised and breathless reply.

His voice snapped the young woman out of her stunned state, and she rushed forward, dropping to her knees. "You're hurt!" She fumbled a bit, unsure where to start, when she noticed his bound-up hands.

Harry held his hands out to her as she grabbed her knife and began cutting through the coarse rope. "You look like you've been through hell…" He jested, more out of relief than an attempt to be humorous.

"Me?" scoffed Lara as she finished cutting the rope, "You're the one who's been skewered and bleeding!"

With his hands now freed, Harry rubbed his wrists, and looked up when he saw Lara holding out a smooth piece of polished wood.

"My wand!" exclaimed Harry joyously. "Have I ever told you, you're bloody brilliant!" He added with a bright smile which looked out of place in their gloomy venue.

"No, but I could do with hearing it again," she laughed. "Come on, we need to get out of here."

"You don't have to tell me twice," he stood, "Have you seen my bag?"

Lara shook her head.

"One sec," he held up his wand, glad to feel the thrum of its magic in his hands once again.

"Accio bag," he incanted as Lara watched on curiously.

"I'd step aside if I were you," commented Harry as he kept his attention split, and right as she did. His mokeskin bag came flying through the air, into his open hand.

"Do you need help with that?" asked Lara pointing towards the arrow shaft which was still stuck in his shoulder.

He shook his head, "I've got this," and tapped his wand against the tip of the shaft, flinching slightly. A wordless vanishing charm, and the piece of wood disappeared, leaving a bleeding hole. A bit of further spellwork and some scratching in his mokeskin bag and Harry was rubbing a mended, but still tender shoulder.

"Come on," said Lara, half in the process of turning to leave when Harry grabbed her and turned her back.

He surprised her when he threw his arms around her in a tight hug. "Thank you… For coming for me."

Lara smiled a soft, sad smile and wrapped an arm around him and placed her hand on his shoulder. "You'd have come for me."

Neither Harry nor Lara said another word for several moments, merely holding each other in the nightmare that they'd found themselves in.

Comforted, they separated, and Lara was so glad to see Harry's bright green eyes. "We should go."

"There's a chamber not far from here, with Himiko's tomb, we need to burn her remains," said Harry.

"The sarcophagus?" asked Lara, to which Harry nodded, already moving.

"I was just there, it's empty."

"Empty?" Harry stopped, surprised. "How– You're sure?"

"Mhm," she nodded. "It was open and there was nothing inside."

"That can't be," said Harry with a thoughtful expression as he sped up, before his eyes widened in realisation. "The gunshot? Was that you?"

Lara frowned and shook her head at his enquiry before his implication dawned on her, "You don't think–"

"–That someone, probably the islanders, used it as a distraction?" He finished for her.

"Whatever for? What's a dead body meant to do for them?"

He gave her a wry look that spelled worry. "It's more about who it is. Not quite dead, that one. Himiko's living, magic wielding soul is trapped in those remains."

"Her soul? Magic? Living?" Lara repeated, startled.

"That's right, I don't know what exactly they want with the remains, but it's the root of everything that's happened on the island. I'm certain of it," said Harry as they reached the crypt. "And if they somehow get her back on her feet. That would be bad."

At her questioning look, Harry repeated with emphasis. "Really bad."

Lara nodded her understanding silently and walked to study the empty Harry went and checked the sarcophagus, Lara took the opportunity to inspect the murals which she wanted to have a look at earlier.

"Incredible, Himiko lived in the Yayoi period… The condition of these…" She was left breathless at the clarity and vibrant colours still visible in the ancient murals.

Lara lifted her torch higher to better illuminate the painting. 'A burning woman surrounded by fire. Sacrifice? No, her feet are together, pointed downwards and her arms and hands outstretched to the sides. She's floating? No… She's ascending!'

Quickly stepping to the side, Lara inspected the other murals.

'A boat approaching land, the same woman climbing a mountain. Pilgrimage?'

'The Sun Queen with light radiating from her, she's pouring water from a vase into another that is held by the pilgrim woman. What could this mean? Giving life? A blessing? A pilgrimage to seek the blessing of the Sun Queen?' No, it doesn't make sense.'

Lara furrowed her brow and inspected the final mural. In it, the woman stood in the centre with her arms outstretched as she looked down, it was as if she was saying, "witness me." Behind her was the Sun Queen standing in the heavens, mirroring her stance.

It all clicked, and Lara rushed back to the other murals and confirmed her findings. "It was a succession ritual, the transference of power from one Sun Queen to the nex–"

"—What did you find?" asked Harry from behind her. Lara explained and showed Harry the murals.

"It's not power…" he whispered fearfully. Himiko had accomplished something Voldemort had to resort to tearing his soul apart in his attempt to reach. Immortality.

"It's the soul… From one vessel to the next."

"But then," pondered Lara, "A vessel…"

"Lara?" He prodded after her face paled.

"My God," she breathed. "Sam!"

Harry's brows furrowed at the exclamation.

"Harry," she lurched forward toward him, grabbing him by the arm with frantic eyes searching him. "It's Sam. She's the vessel."

"The vessel?" He parroted, still not seeing the connection. But then he remembered what their Japanese friend had told them when they first met on the Endurance.

"A descendent of Himiko," he mouthed, which Lara followed intently.

"Merlin, they'll revive her after all," he cried in equal horror to Lara's earlier outburst.

Harry clenched his jaw as he thought of their friend, he glanced at the ajar exit. "We can't let that happen. Let's go."

END CHAPTER SIX

Okiro! - Wake!

Himiko-Sama. Shien suru - Help Lady Himiko

Ike! - Go!