The Celestial Mystery

Lara emerged into a spacious medium-sized room where the floor featured a magnificent diagonal "lattice" pattern complete with squares with smaller connecting dark grey rectangles. There were two staircases on either side of the room which started at the room's midsection and worked their way up and back towards the entrance where they lead to two high balconies. On each balcony, there were two Doric pillars that supported the plain brown-coloured ceiling above. And, just like the tall ceiling of the main room, the ceiling in this room had a gaping hole in the middle of it that let in the light of the sun. The walls in the higher part of the room were made from ancient Greek brickwork and fancy protruding vertical carvings that separated each section of "bricks", as well as intricate carved borders around the edges of the walls where they met the ceiling. The lower section of the room was greyish and had realistic carvings of Greek men that were wrestling as far as Lara could tell based on the movements they displayed. The carvings continued into the far end of the lower level into a smaller open area where the ceiling was lower and did not look up into the second level. Even the light-coloured stairways had intricate wavy designs on them. Straight from where Lara stood in the doorway, she could see a protruding square wall section that had a lever switch on the front with two intricate dragon-like depictions carved on either side of it. Not paying attention to her feet, Lara unwittingly stepped on a third omega pressure pad and triggered the wooden door behind her to close. She tried to force it back open, but she her strength was not great enough to do the job. In other words, she was locked inside.

"Great! That's exactly what needed to happen!" Lara said sarcastically. "How am I going to get out of here?"

Lara turned her attention towards the switch straight ahead of her and walked up the two small steps into the lower-ceilinged portion of the room. She pulled it and was suddenly startled by the clanging of metal from above. She turned around and looked up into the second level and saw two rusted metal gates, one on each side of the room, that lead into a small and dark enclosure. The gate on the left side of the room relative to the entrance (or to Lara's right) was now open.

"So, that's what the switch does?" Lara asked. "How odd. I wonder what's hiding behind that gate."

After contemplating her next move, Lara veered right and went up the left staircase (relative to where she initially entered the room) and found another surprise at the top. Standing on top of a short Ionic-style pillar pedestal was a large bronze globe that featured the different constellations of the night sky. On the wall facing away from the entrance, Lara saw a large carved mural of Perseus carrying the decapitated head of Medusa in his left hand while carrying a sword in his right hand above his armoured head. There were also small holes scattered all over the large carved picture, which let in the light from outside. Lara guessed that these holes represented the stars in the night sky that form the infamous constellation of Perseus.

"The Greeks had an affinity for heavenly bodies." Lara said as she examined the carved mural. "It's hard to believe that this managed to survive for all of these years, let alone stay in such great condition! One might think that the Romans would've vandalized it in their initial raid, but they never even touched it. I think it's also surprising to note that no one even bothered to touch or change this place during medieval times."

Lara walked over towards the dark enclosure that was previously blocked off by a metal gate. Inside, Lara could barely make out another what appeared to be another, yet smaller, mural of Perseus. This time, Lara saw that there were two clear gems embedded in the mural. One of them was located on Medusa's eye while the other was located on Perseus' sword near the top of the picture. The other stars were not present in the mural.

"This is interesting." Lara said. "This mural is exactly the same as the larger one, but it only has two of the stars slots found on the larger mural." Lara reached for the gem that was embedded in Medusa's eye and found that it was not completely in the slot, for it fell to the floor upon Lara touching it. She picked up the gemstone and looked out to the larger mural on the landing and started to have an interesting idea.

"I wonder if this corresponds the slots in the larger picture." Lara said. Sure enough, there was a hole in Medusa's left eye, as well as in the tip of Perseus's sword. Lara immediately grabbed the other gemstone in the smaller mural and walked out of the dark enclosure and back onto the overlooking landing with the bronze globe and fitted the gemstones into the corresponding slots of the larger Perseus mural, even though Lara had to step on the tips of her toes to reach the sword. Once Lara did this, she heard the other gate across the room on the other landing open. The light shining through the holes with the gemstones caused the light to refract and cast beautiful rainbows on the nearby walls.

"What a neat puzzle this turned out to be!" Lara said. "Those Greeks sure knew how to impress people!"

Lara walked down the stairway to the lower part of the room and started making her way up the other set of stairs on the right side of the room where the other gate was located. Upon reaching the top, Lara gazed inside the other dark enclosure and found another miniature mural of Perseus. However, there were four gemstones present on the mural. They were located in Perseus' sword hand, his lower back, and both of his feet.

"This shouldn't be too hard to figure out." Lara said as she grabbed the gemstones from their temporary slots. Going back to the other high landing in the room, Lara placed the gemstones onto the larger Perseus' feet, lower back, and right hand and caused more rainbows to be casted on the walls. The next thing that caught Lara's attention was another loud clicking sound in the main room. Then, the large omega pressure pad near the doorway of the room raised itself from the ground to its original setting when she first entered the room.

"Now what?" Lara said as she started making her way back down the ancient stairs to the ground. Lara stepped on the pressure pad and found that it was much harder to press than before she entered the room. She tried jumping on it, but even then the pressure would only go down about an inch or two and then rise back up to its original position.

"Am I supposed to press this back down?!" Lara said. "If so, how would I go about doing that? There's almost no way I can press it down on my own…Unless…"

Lara gazed up at the large celestial bronze globe and got another idea. "What if the combined weight of me and that globe does it? Hopefully I can find a way out of here soon, because I want to explore the rest of this place! Perhaps the pressure pad is my way of opening that door again."

After a moment of thinking, Lara decided to test her theory. She climbed back up the stairs on the left side of the room and approached the large bronze globe and went to push it off the pedestal. But to her dismay, the globe was attached to a central bar, which in itself was attached to the semi-circular frame that was built into the pedestal. But that did not stop Lara from doing what she intended to do. At the end of the frame, Lara found a rusted metal ring and started pulling as hard as she could to release the metal bar inside the globe. Finally, the metal ring snapped and Lara watched as the bar slid out the end slot and the bronze globe fell from the pedestal and slowly rolled over the edge of the nearby stairway and landed on the ground below with a loud metallic BANG!

"I didn't want to do that, but what other choice do I have?" Lara mused as she trotted down the stairway and approached the detached globe. She then rolled the massive piece of spherical metal onto the pressure pad and was surprised to see that her idea was working. The door leading back out into the main room with the giant columns reopened and Lara was free to explore the rest of the temple once more. She was also surprised to see that the door on the high platform above the grand entrance was wide open.

"So that's what the loud clicking sounds were…" Lara said. "Somehow, I was able to open that door… How does that work? This place is just full of surprises! My next challenge is finding a way to get up there, and I think I know exactly what to do."

Stepping back into the main room, Lara walked back over to the large block inside the rectangular groove and pushed it to the very end so that it was lined up with the large column that reached one-third the height of the room. Once she did that, she climbed on top of the block and faced the column before doing a standing jump to grab the edge of it. Lara then pulled up onto the broken column and found herself standing high above the ground, as well as seeing the interior of St. Francis' Folly in an entirely different perspective.

Hey everyone! Here is yet another installment to Lara's classic globetrotting adventure! For this chapter, I decided to mix things up a little by combining the puzzles from Anniversary with the layout of the original game. The main theme that I used, which most of you already figured, was the constellation puzzle from Tomb Raider Anniversary. However, instead of having Lara shoot the correct star slots, I thought it would make more sense to transfer the gemstones from the clues that were provided to her and insert them into the correct corresponding slots to complete each puzzle. The ultimate result of solving the puzzle was opening the door on the balcony above the grand entrance into St. Francis' Folly, an element derived from the original Tomb Raider for those of you who remember (though the only thing one had to do in the original game was pull a switch). I also included the part from Anniversary where Lara detaches a large bronze globe of the heavens from its pedestal base and uses it open a door by rolling it onto a pressure pad. In the original Tomb Raider, this would have been the part where Lara first encountered the gorillas. Though I never introduced them in this chapter, I'll be sure to include them soon in the upcoming chapters. So far, Lara's adventure in Greece has proved to be both challenging and rewarding. Will it remain this way? Stay tuned as Lara begins her infamous upward climb on the large columns! :)

saturn95