πTomb Raidersπ
"Let's check for supplies." Layla led the way.
They started raiding the camp, gaining for themselves weapons, flares, snacks and climbing equipment.
"I'll go down first before I belay," Layla decided.
"Okay - what's belay?" asked Steven.
"I still can't tell when you're joking or not." She went down into the tomb.
Eva and Steven shared an excited glance.
"Ready?" Layla's voice called up.
"Yup, ready when you are!" Eva turned back to Steven, giving him a little salute. "See you inside." And she too disappeared into the mouth of the tomb.
"Oh wow," she breathed when her feet hit the ground and her torchlight hit the walls. It had been far too long since she'd done something like this.
"AHH!"
"Steven!"
He had dropped - literally - from above, rolling down across the sand at their feet.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm aces, yeah! Wish you hadn't seen that... I was just too excited to wait - oh, wow, look at you-" His torch and eyes hit the walls as well.
"Gorgeous, aren't they?"
"Yeah!" Steven was all smiles. He was ecstatic. "I can't even - like, if they just sprang to life right now and asked me a riddle for passage I'd be thrilled - I'd shit myself, but I'd be thrilled!"
"What's this?" Markings in the sand, looked fresh. "Did you do that?"
"Oh yeah, it's for my father," Layla explained. "He would have loved to be here."
"Oh yeah? Big history buff then?"
"Oh, so much worse: archaeologist on a mission. And to him it was a dream worth dying for."
"I'm so sorry."
"Thanks." Then she nodded to Eva. "Kind of like your father."
She nodded. "His passion till the very end. I'm sorry for your loss."
"I bet he'd be positively beaming right now, watching you standing in the proof of it," Steven told her.
"Yeah, I think so," she agreed. "Not such a bad way to go, is it? Let's find out."
π π π
Steven responded much less eagerly. "Yeah, let's find out..."
They started heading in, one after the other.
"Ladies first." Steven gave a sweet sweep of his arm and went last.
"It's a maze..."
"It's a-maz-ing!"
"No, like there's six paths..." Layla knelt in the sand. "What would they be shooting at?" Empty shells.
"Six points," Eva mused. She turned to Steven. "Six points - are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Yeah! I-I mean I think so..." He began drawing in the sand. "This whole structure - it's a symbol..."
"The Eye of Horus,"
"The Eye of Horus! The royal symbol, protection in the afterlife."
"Brilliant!"
"I mean the resources that needed to be used to build this thing," marveled Layla.
"Wait, if the royal symbol is used - that means Ammit's final Avatar was a pharaoh," Eva devised.
"A bloody pharaoh!" cried Steven.
"Wow - so do you think it's a map?" Layla suggested.
"Right, so the Eye of Horus is also the eye of mind, yeah? Representing the six senses, six points. So you got the eyebrow that denotes thoughts. Pupil, sight obviously. Hearing, smell, touch. And this long line ending in a spiral is is the tongue." Steven stuck his own tongue out a little for emphasis.
"The Avatar would be Ammit's voice..."
"That's right."
This decoded, they proceeded onward. Forwards, ever deeper into the tomb.
"Heka priests, judging by their masks and ceremonial stance," Eva announced of the paintings on the walls. "They would have been entombed in here to protect the pharaoh. Sorcerers of their time. They've been down here for centuries. And these must have been some of the unlucky souls who cross their path."
"Right, an impressive send off - oh-" Steven suddenly gagged, slapping a hand over his mouth. "Oh my god - oh god. Is that what I think it is? Fresh blood. And isn't that little chunks of meaty bits?"
"Ooo, yeah... These canopic jars are definitely full..."
"Let's keep moving," Layla suggested, and the others were more than happy to agree.
"Uh, just a minute, just a minute - I'm just saying what I see and I see lots of bones and blood going that way... So I'm thinking - and hoping - maybe there's another um, oh, there's an opening up there, you see it?" Steven was saying.
"Yeah, let's check it out. You go first."
"Okay..." Steven hauled himself up onto the ledge. "So according to the ancient texts, Ammit should be bound to an ushabti..."
"How's it looking?"
"Oh it's looking amazing! I mean this, it looks like a freshly filled canopic jar, and snake skins and self-regeneration-"
"Steven?"
"Yeah?"
"The exit," Layla reminded him.
"Oh yeah - yeah we can go this way."
"You next," Layla told Eva.
"All right-" Up she went.
"Up you come-" He helped haul her up. "See, look at that, isn't it brilliant?"
Before she could answer with equal enthusiasm, sudden gunfire echoed through the chambers, followed by a loud clicking, and they were close.
"Harrow!"
"What are they shooting at?"
"I don't know."
"Layla!" But there was no time for her to join them up on the ledge. She ducked behind the bed of stone just as a figure emerged from the shadows, the source of the clicking.
It was one of the priests! Very much not dead. With him, very dead, was a man, perhaps one of Harrow's cult members. Must have been.
The priest dropped the body on the slab of stone and held up a sharp tool. There was a sickening squelch and crunch. The priest was performing an organ-removing ritual right then and there!
She and Steven clung to each other, as if the tighter their fingers pressed into each other's arms, the safer they'd be. Oh, how they wished Layla had gotten up to the landing with them.
Crash! By the looks - and sounds - of it, Layla had thrown something off to the side to hopefully get rid of the priest.
"RUN! We'll find you!"
Steven shoved the table full of ritual supplies down to the chamber below, eliciting a shrill squeal from the priest.
"I squished it... I squished it..."
Eva grabbed his arm and dragged him along, deeper into the chamber and, hopefully, far, far away.
"I think we lost whatever it was."
"Oh god I hope so... Poor Layla!"
They walked on for a while in silence, the tension and adrenaline from their undead encounter slowly fading.
"I had a chat with Marc last night," Eva told him.
"Oh, yeah?" Then he remembered. "Oh, yeah..."
"I thought he was cold at first, but he was sweet."
Suddenly, Steven gripped her hand. "Oh my days..."
They had reached the innermost chamber of the tomb, the pharaoh's resting place.
They exchanged a glance. "First ones in, tomb fit for a pharaoh - together?"
She squeezed his hand in return. "Together."
π π π
"Thutmose II."
"Nefertiti..."
"Oh, it's gotta be one of the big 'uns."
"Oh wow, look at that, look at all these relics..."
"Bloody brilliant!"
They proceeded deeper into the tomb, deeper into the awe of it all.
"Macedonian? No, what - no way, that's not right, that can't be right." Steven knelt down, reading the words carved into the stone at the base of the pharaoh's sarcophagus. "That's Macedonian. I'm seeing that, right?"
"Macedonian," she confirmed.
Steven was stuttering. "B-but the only pharaoh - but he insisted on calling himself Egyptian... Eva, I think we're looking at the long-lost tomb of Alexander the Great!"
Honestly, so cool! I love when these superhero things also feed my love of history! ;) That scene with the undead priest was super freaky!
Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed as always! :)