Lara awoke to a cold, hard floor. She could feel the hard surface underneath her, although she could not see it. Before opening her eyes, she used her arms to push herself up, and felt the ground below her. The ground was definitely dirty, not like the warm duvet she had fallen asleep in.
Opening her eyes revealed a dimly lit passageway in which she could see little. She stood and picked up a nearby torch, conveniently lit for her. "God," Lara let out with a gasp. "What the hell is this?" The light from the torch revealed a rotting corpse laying right next to Lara; the stench and state of the body told her it was likely killed just recently. All of its limbs had been torn from the torso; the head remained, but the neck was cut halfway. Her eyes widened as she covered her mouth and nose.
She turned away from the grisly sight and held the torch up higher in an attempt to expose an exit. Nothing but darkness lay ahead of her, she noticed. The torch's brilliance only illuminated a small area around Lara, everything else in front of and behind her was pitch-black. She breathed and took small strides forward. "I've got to get out of here," she said, her voice tinny and weak with fear. Claustrophobia had always been a problem for Lara, and wherever she was now induced that fear more than ever before. In an instant, Lara found herself faced with a wall of rock blocking her path. She reached out to touch it - it was solid. Lara turned around, but the path from where she came was nonexistent. She was surrounded by rock walls on all sides. "No, no, no…" She tried to reassure herself, "This isn't happening, Lara, get hold of yourself."
Lara looked up and could see daylight shining through a small opening. The only difficulty was that the opening was directly above her, quite high up, and she would have to climb the rock. She breathed deeply and set down her torch so as to have both hands free for climbing. She grabbed hold of an outcrop and placed her foot on the rock. She pulled herself upward, struggling to maintain her footing.
The opening was now but a short length away; she could easily reach it if she could just grab that rock - no! It was too far. She pulled her arm back and regained her composure. Lara breathed and jumped with force to reach that rock. "I made it!" Lara grunted and yelled with relief, her voice echoing throughout the rocky space.
Relief abruptly turned to panic as her hand slipped from the rock. Her feet began to slip now, too. Lara desperately clawed at the rock with her fingernails, leaving trails in the rock as she fell. One by one, her fingernails peeled away from the skin - she screamed in agony and in fear, for she couldn't hold on. The only way Lara could save herself was to spread her arms and legs against the walls so that gravity would stop pulling her toward the ground. The space was small enough that she could stop her momentum, her feet skidding to a halt against the sides of the enclosure.
It was difficult, but Lara could hold herself steady in this position if she focused. She dared to look down for just a moment, and what she saw caused a surge of adrenaline to pulse through her veins. The light from the torch still burned brightly, and there she saw the unmistakable figure of a man - a horribly disfigured man. Lara tried to focus on it, but there was no question regarding the man's motives. It was clawing at the rock like a savage beast, attempting to climb the rock wall with a startling ferocity. It gained a footing, and began climbing quickly up toward Lara. "Oh… shit," Lara said in a low voice.
Lara turned her attention away from the creature climbing rapidly toward her, and looked up to the light that flooded the cavern through the opening at the top. She pushed with all of her strength to move her legs and hands, grabbing cracks and rocks to help guide herself up. She could feel her eyes adjusting to the light; she was close to the opening. "Come on… come on," Lara mumbled. She gasped as she grabbed the rocks, pain from her freshly-torn-off fingernails pulsing through her hand.
Lara felt a tug at her leg, and heard a snarling below. She gasped, grunted and screamed. "No!" she yelled out of fear and frustration. "No! I'm too close now!" She kicked the creature on its head, and struggled to keep moving up. "Fight…" she whispered to herself.
There it was - she was ripped from the rock walls. Everything seemed to move at a slow pace as she fell down into the black abyss below her. Lara knew what was coming, and although she feared it, she didn't fight it. The impact shattered her body, her skull, her mind.
"Oh, my God!" I half-screamed, half-whispered as I awoke in a cold sweat. I placed my palm on my forehead and held it there, then wiped the sweat off my forehead with my arm. Remembering what had happened, I promptly checked the fingers on both of my hands - fingernails were still present. I sighed with relief and laid back down in the cot, closing my eyes. I had never felt so thankful to have a warm place to sleep. Then I remembered - today is the day. This is it. I smiled and thought, I, Lara Croft, will finally find adventure.