Chapter 12: Glacial Cavern
I don't own anything. Resident Evil belongs to Capcom and Tomb Raider belongs to Core Design, Crystal Dynamics, and I think Square Enix. The only thing I own is the changes made to the stories of the Tomb Raider games/comics and Resident Evil games/comics/CG movies, the Government branch S.P.E.L.L., the person that has taken over Kathrine Warren's life, and Rose Warren. This story also will be bloody, violent, and have cursing. It's rated T for Teen.
Country: Russia, State: Siberia, City: Siberian Wilderness, Place: Near Kitezh, Area: Mountain Meadow, Month: November, Day: Sunday 26th, Year: 2000, Time: 05:41 KRAT…
Kat and Lara stumbled upon another scroll. This one was from the hunter tracking the Prophet and his people.
The Prophet and his followers have been travelling under cover of night, a crooked trail around the border of the Eastern Empire. I do not know where they are headed, and I suspect they do not either. But they know we will not let them rest until his heresy is purged.
The common folk of the borderlands give him shelter, and I find it curious that none who have aided him will tell me anything of use. Even when I threaten them with the wrath of Trinity, or touch the edge of a knife to their throats, they stay silent. They die, never betraying what they know. The Prophet has a curious sway over people.
All the more reason he must be silenced.
"Asshole." Kat hissed glaring at the writing Lara had read. "They were just people living their lives. Innocents."
"The Tracker pursued the Prophet to the edge of the Empire..." Lara nodded as she put the scroll into her bag.
Lara then lifted the other document they had found. Another note from the Mongolian Trinity spy.
We have told the people of the valley city that we will attack at dawn, but we shall advance behind the kharash at moonrise. The captives we kept from the battles in the West will be our shields as we advance.
Few survived the long march across the mountains, but those that live will serve their purpose to the Horde. The city sparkles, a gift not yet given. We will take what is ours and march home with our spoils.
"The Mongols used armies of prisoners as their frontline...An efficient, horrific strategy..." Lara breathed after translating it to Kat.
"I hate to say it, but it was a smart move. Yet if the people you're going up against have a strong enough faith and your prisoners have the same amount, then it could very easily backfire." Kat voiced.
Country: Russia, State: Siberia, City: Siberian Wilderness, Place: Near Kitezh, Area: Mountain Meadow, Cave, Month: November, Day: Sunday 26th, Year: 2000, Time: 05:43 KRAT…
Lara tossed the stolen can of gas at the blocked wood pile. Kat fired a handgun round. The hot metal cut through the air and ripped into the metal of the can. The pressure, heated metal, and single hole made a mini explosion. This destroyed the wood blocking the tunnel. The two moved inside to make a quick search for mushrooms and anything of the relic or document variety.
Lara found a broken tassel-like thing with the top of a three-pronged spear. "A Mongolian Tug, a banner of sorts to be affixed to a spear." She voiced letting Kat see it.
"Yeah, I've seen them in museums. That one looks like it's seen some battles though." Kat voiced.
The pair then left the cave after getting some museums, quality items. It was time to face the bear again.
Country: Russia, State: Siberia, City: Siberian Wilderness, Place: Near Kitezh, Area: Mountain Meadow, Bear's Clearing, Month: November, Day: Sunday 26th, Year: 2000, Time: 06:07 KRAT…
Kat and Lara came to the edge of the clearing. They shook their heads.
"Damn…" Lara hissed.
"I had hopped we wouldn't see him again. I'd take on a licker with a shot gun any day." Kat muttered.
"I never want to fight what you and the other's do." Lara said as they both switched to their bows and poison arrows.
"We'll have to go in, lure him out. I can't imagine it's super spacious in there." Kat said as they moved to the cave's entrance.
"Yeah. Why don't you stay here, switch to your liberated rifle…I'll draw him out." Lara said as she kept moving.
Kat smiled. "I'll spot you, yeah." She put her arrow and bow to her back and pulled her rifle. She nodded to a bolder to the side of the clearing. It was the right height for her to brace the rifle on. "I'll be right over there so I can get a shot soon as I see him."
Lara took a breath and walked into the cave, finding it was more of a tunnel. Her glow stick giving her the needed light to navigate. She reached the lower end of the tunnel where the bear was. It appeared to be resting after their fight before. She drew her bow back more and aimed for the Bear's neck.
She loosed and the poison arrow flew. It hit the side of the bear's neck and the pack of mushroom dust and juice burst out into a small cloud. The bear roared in pain as it stung its eyes, burned its injuries and nose. As it snorted and pawed at its nose, she nocked and loosed another arrow just to really make sure she got its attention. The bear roared again as it turned to her.
Perfect. Lara gritted her teeth and bolted backup the tunnel. She exited with the bear's heavy thumping paw falls. Lara spun on her way out and loosed two nocked arrows at the bear's chest. This only made it mad. Kat however was ready for it as soon as it came out into the clearing. She looked down the sight and pulled the trigger of the rifle.
The bullet cut into the Bear's jaw, knocking a fang and a few teeth loose. She aimed as Lara loosed two more arrows. This time as Kat pulled the trigger, the bullet cut into the chest of the bear as it stood on its hind legs to roar at them and bat at the air.
"Come on, Kat!" Lara called as she loosed two more arrows, making the bear look like Mor'du the demon bear from Brave.
Kat nodded. "Waiting…" She called out.
Then as the bear dropped back to the ground, Kat squeezed the trigger. The bullet cut into the left eye and into the brain of the bear. The bear jolted mid grunt and roar before falling over into the muddy ground. Lara stood from her kneeling position as Kat moved around the bolder to join her.
"So…that was fun." Lara joked.
Kat nodded. "I'm so not skinning that guy."
Lara rolled her eyes. "I don't think we'll need it's skin."
With that, Kat popped the cartridge and slammed another home before they entered the tunnel. They found another document inside as they got to the large room of this cave system. It was another scroll from the hunter.
The fugitive Prophet has crossed out of the Empire, and now turns North.
I am now in unfamiliar territory. The order of Trinity was clear: I am to pursue the False Prophet and his adherents to the ends of the earth, and wash away his heresy, but I believed I could overtake him months ago. Still he eludes me.
He crosses Khazar land, and across the Caucasus Mountains. Here I am at a disadvantage. I speak a dozen tongues of the Empire, but in the hinterlands, I am often left to communicate with little more than a sword. The Prophet, it seems, speaks every language, as if he were born to them.
"The Tracker followed the Prophet into unfamiliar lands..." Lara looked to Kat. "Are there any other languages you knew? In your old lives?"
Kat shrugged. "In my second life, I don't know any more. Maybe I did. But my first life I'm still learning about." She said as they walked to a wall. "I'll give a swing at this."
Lara nodded. "I'll gather some of the salvage in here."
Kat pulled both of her climbing axes and swung at the top of the brick sealed wall with the right one. The second one she swung at the bottom of the wall, careful to have them at angles to miss hitting the points on her arms. She broke off some of the layers of brick surface area. She switched which arm swung where. Her left came at the top of the wall and her right swung at the bottom. Both broke through and deeper into the wall, before being pulled back. The only bit of brick left was a middle piece. Kat grunted as she put her axes on either side of the section, then pulled as hard as she could.
The bricks broke open and gave her and Lara a path through. She hooked her axes to her hip belt then looked to Lara. "That was fun."
Lara nodded and they slipped through the narrow entrance she asked, "So who's face did you picture?"
Kat snorted a giggle. "There was this really condescending guy at the range that was trying to tell me how to shoot and stand. He shut up after he saw my grouping. Then left when he saw Rose's and Sherry's."
Lara laughed softly. "Leon let him talk like that?"
Kat smiled and nodded. "Actions speak louder than words. But he said he would only have stepped in if it looked like I was going to deck him. For his own safety." She added at the end.
They walked down the tunnel and came out of the rock covering to an ice tunnel that then opened to a Glacial Cavern. A mix of rock and ice together with a bit of snow made them feel like they were in a winter wonderland rather than the bad situation they were in. The walls had a blue tint to them with dustings of white snow or white ice that just made Kat think of the shark gummies Sherry loves and Rose hates. There was a small hole to the upper right that had a small waterfall coming from it. It gently splashed into a small pool, then overflowed the edge to fall into another pool and yet another, finally flowing down the side of sloped wall into darkness. The cascade of water was soothing and beautiful. There was an ice wall that they could climb in front of them, that stretched out over a drop off that was too dark to see the bottom.
Kat shook her head. "That wall doesn't look stable. It looks thin and fragile."
Lara nodded. "I'll have to agree." She peered over the edge. "This looks like it could work like a water slide at a fair."
"Yeah, but we don't know where it goes…" Kat voiced.
"Look, we can't go back. This is our only path." Lara pointed out.
"Oh, I wasn't saying we shouldn't. I was saying we should be ready for anything." Kat smiled. "Last one on the other side, pays for dinner when we all leave here."
Lara snorted. "Shouldn't we hold off on that for when Jonah and Leon are with us?"
Kat shook her head. "Nope. Whoever wins here must pay for the main course, there's appetizers, desert, and drinks left for grabs." She joked.
Lara laughed. "Okay. Then…" She jumped off.
"Oh, you bitch!" Kat laughed as she jumped after Lara.
They both laughed as they tried to slide down both for fun and safety. Only to miss that they needed to pull out their axes and fell over the edge to some rocky ground. Lara hit first and tripped to her stomach on landing. Kat was next and slipped off her feet and fell to her side, hip first. They both huffed out pained sounds before slowly standing up.
"Damnit…that hurt." Lara hissed as she rubbed her stomach.
"Yeah. Shit…" Kat hissed rubbing her hip.
"I won though. You pay for dinner." Lara smirked as they looked around.
They looked from side to side. To the left was a pathway that got cut off. To the right was an ice wall that looked climbable and stable. They both walked to it and pulled their axes. Lara took the lead, going up first. Her axe points cutting and digging into the ice. Hand over hand and then planted her feet into the ice. Once she was pulling herself over the top, Kat began her climb up.
Lara stood and as she hooked her axes to her hips, she saw another scroll container. She walked over and opened it. She pulled the scroll and found it was another one from the hunter.
He has passed through the lands of the Rus.
I cannot shake the feeling that he is taunting me, waiting until I am a day's ride away before moving on. I will not be home before the winter, as I hoped. I have stopped at a small village by a glassy lake they call Svetloyar.
The Prophet spoke here, and now the villagers refuse me lodging. I slept on the banks of the lake, where a young man, bearing a crude version of the Prophet's Icon, tried to kill me as I dozed. I made an example of him, and now the people fix me with the evil eye, spit at me as I pass. I must move on soon. His sickness spreads.
Kat stood from pulling herself up and peered over Lara's shoulder. "The Tracker met resistance from those the Prophet spoke with..." She muttered as Lara rolled it back up. "He really doesn't understand how human's work."
"I don't think so. I get the feeling that the person he killed wasn't attacking him. I'm sure they were offering help." Lara said as she put the scroll into her pack.
"He said in the last one he didn't speak the language. He more than likely heard words he didn't know the meaning of, saw the symbol and attacked. Just assuming they attack people." Kat snarled with her Valkyrie voice. "That means he attacked and killed an unarmed man. That is dishonorable, not a fair fight."
"Let's get moving. Maybe we can find who Trinity was targeting. And get a better look at that installation." Lara said leading the way.
They finally, with some more climbing and crouch crawling, ended up lower underground with the icy blue glow around them. They came to a large area that appeared to have been ruins of some kind. But the ice coating them was just too thick to tell what kind of civilization this once was. Stone bricks were used, that they could see. But the only way ahead was a tunnel that was filled with water.
"Shit…" Lara breathed. "That's gonna be cold." She voiced.
"Yeah…and we don't have a change of winter clothes." Kat shuddered. "We should get moving. The more we move, the longer it'll take for the cold to fully affect us."
Lara nodded and they walked into the water. They both shivered sharply before taking prepping breaths. Somewhat hyperventilating to get their lungs to expand more. They then dove under the water. It was freezing cold, and both fought hard to not let out gasps at the icy chill as the cold quickly penetrated their winter gear and stole the heat from their arms and legs. Their eyes burned from the cold and their vision was blurry as hell, but they pumped their arms quickly to keep moving and try to keep their muscles warm with their movements.
They swam under a sunken arch and came to a blue glacial tunnel. They swam up and gasped in fresh air, trading water for a moment as they looked around.
"Hel's scythe this is cold." Kat gasped as she felt her teeth began chattering.
Lara gave a jerky nod. "I-I see two ways." She pointed with a shaky hand. "Want to split?"
Kat shook her head. "No splitting unless ab-absolutely necessary."
"Rig-right." Lara sighed. "Straight or ri-right?"
"Right. Then we'll doub-double back if it's a-a dead en-end." Kat said, resisting the urge to make a joke.
They did the quick breathes then dove back down. They turned to the right and swam through an ice arch. They swam up and broke the surface. They both swam to a ledge of stone and ice. Together they gripped the icy edge and pulled themselves up and onto it. On this ledge there was a small box, a weak crate, and some scattered old wood bits.
Lara walked to the crate and cracked it open with her axe. Kat walked to the box and opened it carefully. Lara found some metal and ore of some sort. Kat gasped as she unwrapped a small silvery plate pendent-like object.
"La-Lara, I found a P-Paiza." Kat shuttered and held it in her shaking gloved fingers.
"A passport?" Lara asked as she walked over to look at it. "Looks like whoever had thi-this one held some form of authority in-in the Mongol empire."
Kat flipped it around and furrowed her brow at the inscription on the back. "Rusty Mongolian…the- these words are 'heaven'…'the', 'by', and 'guilty'."
Lara took it from Kat's hands and read it out loud as Kat blew hot air on her hands, rubbing her wet gloves together. "By the power of eternal heaven, an order of the empire. Whoever does not show respect will be guilty of an offence." She read.
"That means banishment or death if I remember right?" Kat asked as Lara wrapped it up and put it in Kat's bag.
"We should get going. We've got another path. We need to find a fire to warm up and dry off a bit." Lara said as she walked back to the edge of the ice.
Kat nodded. They both jumped back into the water. They surfaced and practiced the fast breathing before diving down to go back to where they first made the choice to take the right-hand passage. They swam out from this side room under the ice arch, to surface before they continued. They got their breaths, then dove again, this time swimming under the stone arch to continue straight forward.
They surfaced again after a few strong strokes. They could see that this was a fairly large cavern to pass through. They swam then walked onto the shore where it sloped down into the water. They were shivering like mad and movements were a little staggered. They opened their packs and pulled some wood out from salvage and from earlier, the wood was going to be used for arrows, but right then they needed it for a fire. Kat muttered a thank you to Sherry for creating the packs and making them water proof. She quickly stripped off her coat and pants, seeing that Lara was doing the same. Her shirt and long underwear were next. She did about 10 quick jumping jacks to get her heart pumping and the blood moving to her organs again.
It took a minute before the fire really started. Once the fire was going in full, Kat took out her water bottle and placed it right in the fire. Letting the metal warm up and the water inside. She motioned to the fire with her hand.
"Put your canteen in the fire." Her Norse accent back again. "Let it warm a bit." She got out dry socks from her pack as she moved her boots closer to the fire with her wet socks draped over them.
Lara did the same, watching to see what Kat did. "More past knowledge or Discovery Channel?"
Kat smiled. "A bit of both. Taking off the wet clothes and moving is past, but this trick with the water is recent." She took her water bottle and opened it, took a small sip of the warm water. "The water is warm, so it will warm us from the inside. Now put the bottle in one of your dry socks and alternate putting it under one arm, then the fire, then the other arm. Taking a small sip each time of the warm water."
"Really wishing I packed some tea for the warm water." Lara said in a very posh British accent.
Kat chuckled as she sighed with delight as the warmth from the bottle started to push back the chill.
Kat and Lara both relaxed and moved as close to the flames as they dared. They need to rest for a bit and eat something after the fighting and the cold. They had to get their energy back. The rotated their clothes and boots until they were warm and dry and they could put them back on. The water was fresh glacier water so it would be safe to drink. They had drank all the water in their bottles so they refilled them and started to pack up.