Five Switches, Four Doors
Lara reached the top of the staircase only to find that it lead to another hallway to her left. Judging by everything that had been seen so far, it was evident that the legendary Midas took great pride in utilizing the space he owned, assuming he actually used to live in the underground complex. Otherwise, the palace itself might just simply be dedicated to the great king, but it still did not explain the presence of the magical hand that was once part of a monumental statue. The more Lara pondered over it, the more she wanted to know the truth. In ancient history, there have been said to be three individuals with the name Midas, each living during different centuries, though still within the scope of the Greek civilization. The first two were kings, but it was the first King Midas that was popularly remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched with his hand into gold. Lara knew that the Phrygian city of Midaeum was presumably named after this Midas, and that it was probably also the Midas that according to Pausanias founded Ancyra. According to Aristotle, legend held that Midas died of starvation as a result of his "vain prayer" for the gold touch. The legends told about this Midas and his father Gordias, credited with founding the Phrygian capital city Gordium and tying the Gordian Knot, indicate that they were believed to have lived sometime in the 2nd millennium BC, well before the Trojan War. However, Homer (author of the Iliad and the Odyssey) does not mention Midas or Gordias, while instead mentioning two other famed Phrygian kings, Mygdon and Otreus. Lara continued to remember her facts as she continued down the hall, whose lattice-like floor design began to wear off and turn to gravel. It emerged into a much larger room that was flooded with yellowish-orange sunlight from cracks in the ceiling.
"It sure has been a while since I've entered St. Francis' Folly." Lara said as she started looking around the huge room with renewed interest. "If there's one thing I've learned in the time I've been here, it's that there is way more to this place than previously thought. I still can't believe that there's a large hand that can turn anything into gold! Good thing it can't turn everything golden. Had it not been for that gorilla, I probably would've become Pierre's ultimate find or something. But I still wonder whether I'm getting close to the Tomb of Tihocan. My patience is starting to wear thin… Oh, well. Let's see what surprises I can find in this grand hall. Surely nothing can disappoint me at this point."
The large hall that Lara was now standing truly was grand. Ahead of her was high ledge balcony with columns supporting a lower ceiling which was decorated with multiple carvings of the head of a man (possibly Midas himself?). Each of the stone carvings were spread equidistantly from each other along the sides of the structure. On the high ledge itself on the far wall, Lara could see what looked like five lever switches. She pulled out her binoculars and realized that it was true. It seemed as though she had walked into another obscure and tantalising obstacle in her effort to locate Tihocan and his piece of the Atlantean Scion. There were also six large columns surrounding the high balcony in a large semi-circular pattern, each of them reaching up to the ceiling and sustained large cracks in their midsections, another consequence of thousands of years of weathering and erosion. It looked as though they would all crumble to the ground at any time. The orange light from outside was casting vast and eerie shadows around the large room, giving Lara the feeling one would get while standing inside of a haunted asylum. It was a very haunting feeling indeed.
Looking over to the right side of the room, there were two smaller doorways, one on the right wall and the other against the near wall near the lower right corner of the room relative to where Lara stood. They were both marked by two smaller Doric columns, all were supporting a mini entablature that almost resembled the large temple structure she saw earlier. And, to Lara's dismay, each doorway was blocked by a heavy door. Each of the doors also had a set of letters above each of them, but they were unreadable and did not make any sense. The door on the far right had a set of letters consisting of one capital upsilon followed by four capital omegas:
ΥΩΩΩΩ
The door just around the corner from the room entrance had a similar set of letters above it, except the left-most letter had been scratched off. The worn off symbol was followed by the capital letters omega, upsilon, upsilon, and omega:
*ΩΥΥΩ
"Damn! The Greeks sure know how to pick my brain!" Lara said. "Their riddles have been absolutely relentless during this whole adventure, though they haven't completely stumped me yet. Very crafty they are, indeed…"
Lara then turned her attention to the left side of the room, which boasted surprises of its own. She saw another door that was marked by two Doric pillars supporting an entablature just like the other two doors on the right side of the room. And, just like the other two doors she had seen so far, it had a combination of the same two capital Greek letters. This time, it read omega, omega, upsilon, omega, and upsilon:
ΩΩΥΩΥ
On the very right side of the room was a large protruding balcony that was being supported by just two Doric columns. The floor of the balcony was level to the carvings of wrestling Greek men that wrapped their way around the entire hall and was very high above the ground. The balcony was also seen to be enclosed with badly damaged wooden banisters, which somehow managed to survive after thousands of years of torment from Mother Nature's abuse. From the looks of it, Lara could not see any way to reach the top of the balcony, so she decided to walk over to the other side of it to see if she had missed something. Sure enough, when Lara reached the other side, she saw yet another door with omegas and upsilons above it. There were two upsilons on either end of the door, and the remaining three letters were capital omegas:
ΥΩΩΩΥ
"Hmm…I'm starting to think these symbols serve some other kind of purpose." Lara said. "Something of importance, perhaps?"
Then, she remembered the five lever switches on the central balcony and looked up at them with renewed interest. It never occurred to her that they would possibly be the solution to opening the doors. But after all of the crazy things she had seen all day, the possibility did not seem remote at all. Since all of the adjoining rooms in the hall had doors with five symbols (with the exception of the one of them) and there were five switches, it seemed logical for Lara to conclude that each of the symbols were referring to the setting of each of the five levers on the central balcony. Based on their combined settings, the levers would, in theory, open a different door. Lara decided to test her theory. Luckily for her, there was an open gate leading to a staircase which lead directly up to the central balcony. She wasted no time to get up there. Emerging on top, Lara was immediately drawn to the view of the entire hall from her new standpoint. Somehow, everything around her seemed much larger than it did from the ground, making it all the more dramatic to see. As breath-taking as the view was, there was no time to waste. Turning around to the switches, Lara remembered the symbol combination above to the last door she saw and slowly pulled the three middle switches. Looking back down towards the base of the right side balcony, she was dismayed to see that the door was still closed.
"Well, now what?" Lara asked. "Wait a minute…"
She looked at the switches again.
"Did I misinterpret the meanings of those letters? I wonder if upsilon means 'down' and omega means 'up' instead of the other way around. Maybe I should try it in case I did it wrong."
She switched the three middle levers back up to their original positions and pulled the first and fifth levers into their down positions and heard a faint sound coming from the ground below. Lara checked the door below the other balcony once again and saw that the door had opened. She smiled and climbed back down the staircase inside the hollow base of the central balcony and out the open metal gate to the newly opened door. The Greeks have failed to stop me yet again. Their game is just plain too easy to play.
Moving down a small dark hallway, Lara entered another room that had a staircase wrapping its way around and up to where the other balcony in the main hall was situated. But there was another room about halfway up the stone steps and straight ahead that seemed to catch Lara's attention. Being the curious archaeologist she was, Lara quickly made her way up the steps and stepped inside the rather dimly-lit medium-sized room and was perplexed at what she saw next. There were three small inlets straight ahead, each containing a rectangular slot situated on the wall. Above these tiny slightly-raised areas near the ceiling, there was a large engraving on the wall depicting what appeared to be a gold bar. Upon further examination, Lara could see that the picture had tarnished gold encrusted on it, suggesting a rare use of the casting technique. On the right side of the seemingly random depiction on the wall, Lara saw the ancient version of the capital Greek letter gamma, Γ, engraved into the wall. On the right side of the room was a tall door that Lara was unable to open. Looking back to the three rectangular slots and based on the fact that the door was locked, she knew that she had walked into another puzzle. She interpreted the engraved capital gamma on the above wall as the Greek numeral for 3 and came to the conclusion that she needed three bars to open the door.
"Seems as though I need three gold bars to get through this door." Lara said. "What would be so important behind this door for the Greeks to just lock it up like this? Could it be the very thing I've been searching for this whole time? Hmm…Now where would I find three gold bars in a palace dedicated to a king that could turning anything to gold with his bare hands? I might just have to try the other doors in the main hall and see what I can find in each of those areas."
Before she decided to go back to the main hall, Lara continued from where she left off on the stairway in the adjacent room and continued to the top where it emerged on to the right-side balcony overlooking the main hall. She was amazed yet again from this new perspective on the giant hall, since it seemed even larger than it did from the main balcony. The ancient wooden banisters that once kept people from falling over the edge were still relatively stable and were evidently enough to keep the weight of the lower protruding ceiling above from crashing down. From what she could tell, there appeared to be carvings on the ceiling above her, but Lara was unable to tell what they were meant to represent. Still, it was great to just take in the scenery. Once she checked everything out, Lara left the balcony and walked back down the staircase and re-emerged into the main before making her way back up to the balcony with the switches. Looking down and around at the three remaining doors, she decided to open the door located to the right of the large entryway she came from. Lara then turned back towards the switches and entered in the appropriate combination: up, up, down, up, down (ΩΩΥΩΥ). Once the door was open, she went back down and made her way towards it where more secrets awaited her.
Hey everyone. Sorry for such a drastic gap. I got caught up in college and I was also busy with another story that I started earlier this year. But now that I'm on break and the gears in my head are turning once more, I am now getting back into the groove of this story.
For those of you who are familiar with the original layout, you would know that this chapter focuses on the large main hall with the five switches at the top of the balcony that were responsible for the opening four different doors with different combinations (hence the name of the chapter). There were a few things I changed, particularly the platforms that surrounded the switch balcony. I decided to change them into columns for the sake of simplicity and I did not want to make the story sound like I was just following every move that is required to beat the game...that would be boring. Also, in the original game where Lara had to place three gold bars, the inscription above the three slots had the gold bar pictograph, but instead had the Roman numeral for three beside it to indicate the number of required gold bars. I changed it over to the Greek numeral for three to keep things Greek, but also to make things more interesting.
Again, I do apologize for the long wait for those who are still reading this. May there be more chapters in the near future! See you then :)
saturn95