-Treasure Chambers
A small corridor had led Lara into one of the most beautiful, yet messiest room she had ever come across. Accurate layered bricks she was standing on were of a cream colour, and felt green emerald filled backgrounds, among those were piles of gold stacked everywhere. Different types of treasure were held in these chambers, as Lara saw with her own eyes. The sheer amount that was stored, she could name many of the treasures that were left. Diamonds, rubies, bronze, silver and most of all gold in many shapes and forms. It would have been jackpot paradise.
But Lara was only interested in one object, the Nightmare Stone, so she moved on from the wonders of the treasures, and found an arch doorway leading to yet another room filled with more valuables. But there was something else or someone else through the doorway that was admiring the treasure in the chambers, not just Lara herself. She spied on the other person who was wearing an explorer kit, hat and everything with a bag. He was looting the gold and was marvelling the quality of treasure that was in front of him. Immediately he didn't seem dangerous, but Lara was going to take precautions and drew one of her pistols. With the pistol at the ready, Lara approached the thief holding the gun to one side of his head.
"Don't move please" she stated quite firmly.
The thief stopped in his tracks of looting, turned around and gazed at Lara, with expressing a lot of fear in his blue eyes and mumbling mouth.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?" Lara asked.
"Don't hurt me! I'm just a gold hunter. I don't want any trouble" he quite vastly said.
Believing him but still wary, Lara eased of him a bit.
"How do I get down lower in the temple?"
The gold hunter thought for a bit and came up with the answer.
"The legends say that there is a room with sun and moon statues. You must insert amulets into the statues to continue. But it is too dangerous! I never go near this!"
Satisfied with the new information obtained from the hunter, Lara then pointed to her right as a signal to go somewhere.
"Now get out! The curse has awoken the guardians and you must go NOW!"
Looking like he had just seen a ghost, the hunter made a run for it with his collected gold, and that was the last Lara saw of him. She pressed onwards in the room, wondering how on earth the hunter made it into these chambers. 'There must be an alternative way in' she thought, but it didn't matter too much. Using the information given by the gold hunter, Lara had to find two amulets, and insert them into the sun and moon statues to proceed even further. At the end of the chamber she was in, Lara had spotted a wooden ladder in the corner and ascended upwards into the upper levels of the complex.
She made it to the top, and on the landing where she was standing, there were three passageways. Two of the passages had symbols on the archways above them. One had the symbol drawing of a sun, while the second had the drawing of moon. Using the same principle as she always follows, Lara chose to start in the sun passage. Then move onto the moon path, and finally the one without the symbol on top. Lara began her descant into the sun passageway, she sought out for the sun amulet, which no doubt will be hidden in the room she was about to enter.
In fact it was a different situation then Lara had expected. Straight away in the new room she had just entered, there was a huge statue of a wildcat covered in pure gold and decorated in riches. When Lara investigated the statue from top to bottom, in the mouth of the wildcat had been some sort of amulet. She got up onto the leg for a closer look and saw what it was ... 'The Sun Amulet'!
But it had been enclosed at the edge of the mouth, so there must be a switch somewhere to open it, and allow the sun amulet popping out of it. Lara searched around the room for anything that resembled a switch. While doing this, she came across another ladder leading down to the lower levels, underneath the room she was in. Nothing was where she was, so Lara decided to make her way down to the underground level. This allowed further exploration, and hopefully she would find the switch leading for the wildcat statue to drop the sun amulet.
She made it, and was instantly met with the first trap set up for anyone seeking the associated wildcat switch. On the ceiling in the small passageway where she was standing, there had been 3 slicing blades, few meters apart continuously retracting up and down. These blades had very sharp points at the ends of them, and Lara was nearly tempted to back down away from the passage. But she was able to pluck up the courage, and thought of a way to get pass the blades unharmed. In the end, the only method that Lara can only think of was to see when the blades were retracting upwards away from the ground, then to carefully double roll pass them. This would ensure that Lara was in a low position, and she was able to avoid the sharp points piercing her body. Lara waited until all the slicing blades had started to retract then made her move.
She tucked herself into a ball like shape, and began to roll as quickly as possible. Making sure she passed through the three bladed traps. She had done it successfully, and without a scratch too. Walking through the passageway, Lara was lead into a small room, and at the end there was the switch! But Lara sensed something was not right, she felt not alone.
She drew her pistols, ready to see if her senses had proved her suspicions correctly. Soon, she had her answers as she peered through into the room. At one side of the room, there had been what looked like a ... mercenary! This definitely was not what Lara wanted, as she remembered how they had treated Illiat brutally, they had beaten him and left him for dead. This mercenary was armed with a polished AK-47 and holding it ever so tight, as if his life depended on it. Furthermore, he was wearing ragged clothes and had long jet black hair dangling down combined with a beard.
Taking a few deep breaths, Lara jumped out with her pistols raised aimed perfectly at the mercenary. "Freeze"! Lara shouted, the mercenary swivelled round and out of the blue began firing his AK towards Lara's direction. Having to react quickly to the firing, Lara dodged the oncoming bullets from the mercenary's AK, and without any choice Lara had to duel with the mercenary. Maybe she'll have to be forced to kill him in the process. It had to be self-defence though, so Lara had to formulate a plan to attack the mercenary while he was distracted by something. Then it sparked in Lara's mind, she would wait and while he had to reload his AK, she would gain the upper hand. This didn't take long as Lara had to already dodge about 20 bullets manoeuvring around the room as quick as she can. In some short seconds, it had finally happened! His AK clip had ran out of bullets, and the mercenary was in a rush to reload, but didn't see what was coming at him. SWOOSSH!
A loud thud echoed within the room, as the mercenary had been hit hard by Lara's foot in the head. He had fallen down quite violently to a state of unconsciousness. Since the mercenary was down, and there now was of little threat from him, Lara took the AK clips he had and stashed them into her backpack. She was tempted with taking the AK with her, but decided against it. The AK would have slowed her down, and it would have made the journey more difficult. So she took it apart by breaking the muzzle and handles, until it was a broken mess on the floor. Lara went over to the switch waiting for her to pull upon it, which she did, and in the process had heard something drop onto the floor in the above level.
Avoiding the slicing blades using the same method as before, Lara made her way back to the top floor, and had seen that the wildcat statue had now has the mouth wide open. There it was, the sun amulet laid on the floor, wanting to be picked up by Lara, she examined it closely. It was a divine piece of craftwork, shaped as the morning sun, shame it was need to be used later on. Lara made her way out of the Sun room and back into the three passageways. 'Now time to get the moon amulet' and she headed through the moon passage.
Instantly, Lara knew what challenge was going to be ahead of her, when she spotted a diagram to her right wall and the passage leading in the left direction. 'A Maze'! Lara had a fascination, and thoroughly enjoyed mazes. In fact she had one trimmed out for her in the mansion gardens back in 1997, until she converted it into a quad bike track in late 1998, after acknowledging the layout of the maze to well. She studied the diagram to her right, showing where she was starting and where the moon amulet been stored from intruders.
It had been simpler then she had thought it would have been. The moon amulet was located in the centre of the maze. With this information of the layout of the maze in Lara's long term memory, she began the challenge. Making her way turning right, a long narrow passage was in front of Lara. Remembering the diagram, it was supposed to be a first left turn, straight on, second right turn and finally a first left turn. Lara did as the diagram told her, but something arose as she was heading for the final passageway leading to the moon amulet.
The turn was blocked by a soft wall. Lara continuously knocked on the wall, seeing if it would collapse or do something. Then it reminded her, that she still had enough dynamite to blow down this wall. Lara searched through her backpack inventory and found some dynamite. She lit it, and then made a run to the corner, so she wouldn't feel the impact of the blast. BBOOOMM! The soft wall had exploded into rubble, and had formed a new passage leading Lara to the sanctuary of the moon amulet. It had been encased in what seemed to be some kind of jewellery box. Lara opened it and inside was the crafted luminous half moon ornament. Again it was a thing of beauty, just like the sun amulet.
Lara backtracked back through the maze, and into the hall with the three passageways. Since both the sun and moon amulet rooms had been infiltrated and searched through, Lara went through the third and final passageway. Right at the end was a ladder leading downwards, into a room filled with two vast statues, and a massive golden trapdoor in the middle. When Lara got down from the ladder, she observed the two statues. These were exactly the statues that the gold hunter had mentioned earlier. One was shaped in a similar fashion of the sun. It was gold plated and was marvellous to look at, while the other statue was a turquoise blue colour shaped of a whole moon.
Both had offering plates at the lower end of the statues, first Lara inputted the sun amulet to the sun statue. Secondly she placed the moon amulet into the offering plate of the moon statue. Without warning, the golden trapdoor in the middle had flung right open, revealing another lower level within the chambers. Lara judged the trapdoor. No danger was to be seen, only a landing within safe dropping distance, so she leaped through the trapdoor.
Lara landed in between a corridor, one side leading to the left, the other to the right. Quickly making her decision, Lara chose to explore the left pathway. It had led her into a room filled with brilliant sunlight from the ceiling. It was interesting of how the beam of sunlight had made it so deep underground. It then occurred to Lara maybe the mirrors had been set up in the tunnel above, to reflect and bounce off light from one place to the other. Also what was the reasoning to why it was so important that sunlight was reflected into this room? Since what Lara saw was basically nothing except another trapdoor, to where the sunlight was shining from above.
This was when Lara spotted a map of the particular room she was in. It had shown her that there is more to it than meets the eye. It had been a four storey room, with a huge ladder at the corner of the hall-like room, allowing access to each level. Enthralled by the concept, Lara was eager to see what function this room does. She would start at the lowest level and work her way upwards once every storey had been explored.
The lower levels had led Lara into what can be described as a mixture of a dudgeon and a basement. Straight away the first thing that you would see is the bespoke giant snake statue. It looked vicious, as it was a monument of a cobra snake in the colour of indigo blue, with black patterning on the back. Furthermore, its mouth was wide open, and the attention to detail of the inside mouth was immense, fangs, tongue, everything was there. But there was an eye missing above, and where the green eye had been present on the left hand side, there was a small diamond shaped hole, exactly where a key might go in. Lara searched throughout the lower level for some kind of key to go into this hole, until she felt an unstable area in the floor.
Without hesitation, Lara prepared herself for a hard kick into the ground and WHAM! The floor started to collapse into mould and rubble, and a small opening was revealed to Lara. There it was! A key sculpted as a snake was hidden below inside the unstable floor. 'That was strangely easy' thought Lara, and she hurriedly inserted the snake key into the diamond shaped hole. Lara was expecting something big was going to happen. However unpredictably the left eye of the snake statue fell on Lara and bounced on the floor. She came over and picked it up, the eye was shiny emerald green with a small pattern engraved inside it. Not knowing what it may be for, she stored it into her backpack for possible later use. Lara had seen enough of the lowest fourth floor, and decided to move onto the third floor to see what secrets it may behold.
The third floor had a much smaller space compared to the bottom level. With only consisting of a blocked doorway and some sort of puzzle implemented onto the wall. There were a series of small switches on a board, each one having a symbol of x and o on top of them. Then she recognised that those symbols were on top of the blocked doorway, plus these symbols were arranged in some particular order. Scanning across Lara read the order 'X, X, O, X, O, X, X, O, O and X'. She looked at the switches, and initialised formulating which switch to pull down and next.
First she pulled down the switch marked with X, then X right near the end of the board, next O straight in the middle and so on. Until finally after pulling down the series of switches in the order shown on top of the doorway, Lara was prized with the door rising above. Showing her what was hidden pass through. Laying there on the dusty floor was a silver key, 'I wonder where this goes'? Lara picked up the key, and put it straight into her rucksack. The third floor had now been fully explored, so Lara moved onto the final floor above she hadn't been on yet.
The second floor had been the most majestic of the levels. It had contained many properties about it. Firstly in the centre, there was the biggest blue sapphire gem Lara had ever seen. Holding it was a pedestal made out of a mixture of bronze and gold, and it also had a carving of a Mayan figurehead. Surrounding it was a carving on the wall. It looked like a drawing of a rising sun in a dark purple colour. Not only that, but also bolted onto the wall nearby it was another stand, but this time the stand was holding nothing. It had been an oval shape, and it struck Lara, 'Of course, the snake eye would fit into here!'
She gripped the snake eye from her backpack and placed it onto the stand. Moments had passed and nothing had happened. It was then Lara had noticed what she had failed to spot earlier. There was a keyhole beside the pedestal, lured by what function it does, Lara examined the keyhole. It was the same shape as the key she had just picked up on the second floor. She got it out, inserted it, and turned it clockwise.
All of a sudden, the trapdoor above on the ceiling had opened, and the brilliant sunlight from the upper floor had come flooding down, shining upon the sapphire gem. The light began to intensify, and abruptly the gem started to shatter under the pressures of the heat and light. Until it fully shattered, Lara saw that the gem wasn't just a treasure itself but was also was used to hide an object.
The sunlight reflected and had shone brightly the object in question. Lara wandered slowly over to the object and had finally seen what it was. 'Another panel piece'! Before it got too steaming hot from the sun beam, Lara snatched it from the pedestal, and stored it away into her backpack. She had now explored every part of the left side of the corridor, which she had previously dropped into from before. She was now eager to see what other wonders were held in the right side of the corridor.
Glad to have fully explored the left side first, Lara slid down upon the cream/yellow coloured slope. Very nearly, she got muddled up into the deactivated slicing blades that were hung from the ceiling. Without thinking twice, Lara shot pass through them as they became activated once she passed them, continuously swinging up and down. In front of Lara's vision was another long corridor. She embarked upon it, until she stopped right in the middle of it, as something caught Lara's eye.
A bar had been left on the floor by someone. Just stranded there right in the edge of the corridor, Lara picked it up and examined it. Heavy had come to mind first. It was a proper gold bar and it just had been left there, no normal person would do that, 'perhaps something happened right in this corridor'? She shrugged off the suggestion and placed the gold bar into her backpack. She certainly felt her bag getting heavier, but it didn't stop her determination to finding the keys to unlock the Nightmare Stone. She continued her walk along the corridor.
Having got to the end of the corridor, it had brought Lara to a large room, which had three passageways coming out of it. One going to the left side of the room, one in the right direction and the final was straight in front. Standing in the middle of the room, Lara decided to check out the passageway that was leading straight onwards. She strolled over to there, and instantly she was barricaded by a blocked gateway. Lara tried to see if she could budge it due to its age, but it was too secure to even move it one centimetre. Because of this, Lara reviewed the narrow passageway she was in. She had discovered a small green carpet on the ground a couple of meters away from the gateway.
The carpet had a stitching pattern of three gold bars, stacked on top of each other like a pyramid. Then suddenly, as Lara was about to touch the richness of the carpet, some writing appeared on the carpet. It was in the Aztec language. Lara read it out to herself. 'Sacrifice the three golden treasures to open the door of a new pathway'. As soon as she read this line, Lara got out the golden bar she had retrieved, while travelling through the past corridor. She'd placed it to one side of the green carpet.
Lara had to find the other two golden bars for the gateway to open, and she betted that the other two passageways in the previous rooms would both lead her into one bar each. Backtracking her way back into the room with the three passageways, Lara first went along into the left passage. Straight away as Lara entered the left passageway, she was met with a dead-end. 'How could this be?' she had a good feel of the wall and a few knocks to make sure it wasn't a hard secured wall.
Reaching out for her backpack, Lara searched for her last few remaining dynamite. She was left with only one stick in her rucksack, and Lara took out 2 sticks to ensure it would blast through. KA-BOOM! The wall foundation was knocked out of proportion, as it revealed a new circular room built right behind it. Skipping a lot of brickwork which was blown onto the floor by the impact of the blast, Lara made her way through into the small circular room.
Right at the edge lying on the floor was another golden bar. Happy that no traps were set out, Lara picked up the bar. She brought it to the green carpet with stitching and placed it beside the other golden bar. 'Last one' Lara thought, and made her way to the final unexplored right passageway.
It must have been a 100 meter corridor, as Lara walked through the right passage. Unknown to her what was going to be at the end, she carried on walking. She was near the end of the passageway, when she heard footsteps in the room it was connected to. Fearing it was another mercenary. She took out her pistols and began to creep forward. She seemingly to have stumbled across a medium sized library, but this wasn't no ordinary library filled with books!
It was instead crowded with treasures, and there, wandering about was a rugged male mercenary! Searching through the treasures, he was armed with a Colt M5 machine gun and had short dark hair with a heavily tanned skin. Lara knew that she would have to duel him, but didn't know what to do. She remembered what the previous mercenary did as she shouted 'Freeze' at him, and for all she know, this one may prove more of a challenge. Undecided, Lara improvised and walked out of the corridor. She'd walked straight behind him with pistols aimed perfectly at his body. He still didn't notice Lara, and out of the blue, he was met excruciating pain in his left leg.
"ARRGH!" He fell to the floor, wondering what had happened to him. He saw he had just been shot in the leg. Quickly, the mercenary turned around and had a good look at his assailant. It had been a woman, with a pistol pointing at him and he was fuming with himself. As a last desperate act, in a rush he grabbed his M5 and was about to shoot the lady to death. But Lara gained the upper hand, and with a good kick to the head, knocked the mercenary out cold. He really didn't know what had hit him. Lara went for his M5, took it apart and had taken his clips into her rucksack.
It didn't take long for Lara to search top and bottom for what seemed less likely a library and more like a treasury room. While doing this process, Lara had spotted a heavily decorated jewellery box at the corner of the treasure room. Interested what it may hold, she went over, opened it and she was stunned at what she saw. Two diamonds, one bright ruby red, the other a dark sapphire blue had been placed inside.
On the lid of this jewellery box, Lara saw an inscription engraved. It had said, 'Entrust these at the bat passage, you will open the way to the snake guardian's lair'. Intrigued by this discovery, Lara stashed away the jewellery box into her backpack, and continued to search for the final golden bar. 'Finally I've found it', the golden bar was sitting atop a pile of fake golden bars. To find out the real one, Lara had to weigh each one. The heaviest was the real one, while lighter ones were artificial ones. Rummaging through for a small amount of minutes, Lara managed to find the actual bar, by comparing it to a counterfeit one.
She made her way back to the gateway for one final time, and placed the last golden bar on top of the two she had already placed previously. As expected, once the all the golden bars were present on the mantle carpet piece, the mechanics of the gate began to lift the gateway. This showed Lara a new passage, which she can now use to pass through in order to continue with her journey.