Tomb Raider: The Amulet of Immortality

Chapter 1 – Risky Business

Cambodia, 2004

A raucous crashing sounded as a large pillar came tumbling to the floor, smashing into a million pieces. As the dust settled, a brown head poked cautiously out from behind the rubble. Lara Croft, her long brown hair wrapped tightly in a functional braid, sat poised on her haunches as she surveyed her newest mess with a slight smirk.

"Well that blows that all to hell!" she chuckled to herself. Hoisting herself to her feet, she dusted off her legs and backpack. She wore khaki camouflage wind-pants and a loose black tank. She had equipped her feet with thick-soled Garmont boots, with laces that wound around the boots and up her ankles. On her back she toted a very old, very worn brown knapsack that looked like it had been put through a paper shredder. It happened to be Lara's lucky pack, and right now she needed all the luck she could get.

She was in Cambodia, after the legendary Monarch Sapphire. The Monarch (as it was affectionately nicknamed) was hidden deep within the myriad of labyrinths underneath the Preah Khan temple. The Monarch was so named for its unusual shape. It looked like a giant Monarch butterfly, and was the richest color blue known to any human eye. It was worth a fortune, and Lara was going to find it. She was by no means the first adventurous tomb raider to go digging in the bowls of Preah Khan for the beautiful bounty. However, none had ever made it back out alive. The temple was rumored to be rigged from top to bottom with fail-proof booby traps. Any unwelcome visitor was usually taken care of instantaneously. So far, however, Lara had only managed a scraped knee, a whack on the head, and a pair of bruised elbows. However, she had destroyed half of the temple's columns and arches trying out Bryce's new mini-bombs. Up to this point, they had performed beautifully. A squawking sound as her headset alerted an incoming signal. Bryce's voice came sharp and shrill.

"Lara! Lara, stop blowing up the temple! We've only got one to work with, you know!" She grimaced as she reached up to lower the volume on the wireless headset.

"Thank you Dr. Bryce. I wasn't aware of that." She leapt over the fallen pillar and looked around her. She was in the main chamber now, gazing at the mazes that lay before her.

"Ha ha, very funny. How are the mini-bombs working?"

"Terrific, Bryce. You're a genius."

"I knew it! Those babies will blow anything up to 17 tons without leveling the place! Call it convenient TNT." Lara scanned the walls to her right. According to her maps, the only entrance to the hidden room where the Monarch was stowed could be reached on the right. The walls were smooth sandstone with ancient carvings and holy symbols etched into them. Chunks of the wall had broken off over time, and it seemed to Lara that there was just enough foot room to maneuver up the wall and into the hidden room high above her. It would take some work, though.

"Lara, come back. Are you alright?"

"Fine Bryce. Do me a favor, would you?"

"As long as it's not joining you down there in the depths of despair, you got it."

"Pull up the ancient maps of Preah Khan and search the section of the last antechamber. Tell me if you find anything unusual."

"What exactly do you mean by 'unusual'?"

"I mean something along the lines of possible footing. The Khmer people got the jewel up there, so they had to have had a way to get down. Now find out where!"

"Alright, alright. I'm on it. Give me a little time. From the maps I have uploaded now, it looks like your best bet would be to start scaling the walls on the right. You've got some stone blocks suspended on the upper levels about 150 feet up. Anything else I might possible find will more than likely take you up past those blocks, so your safest course of action would be getting on top of them."

"Thanks Bryce. I owe you one."

"Ha! You owe me a hell of a lot more than one, Lara Croft!"

Lara took off her knapsack and brushed stray hairs away from her face. Time to get to work. She opened the pack and pulled out a harness, cams and nuts, carabiners, holds, ropes, a rigging plate, a set of pulleys, and a malay of other grappling accessories. She was going up, and she was going to need the works. She outfitted her harness and connected her ropes and pulleys. She grabbed a pair of weight lifting gloves from her back pocket and slipped them on. Time to get to work.

Within twenty minutes, she had scaled more than half of her 150-foot goal. She could see the stone outcroppings more closely now, and they did indeed resemble blocks. Stopping for breath, she belayed a moment, swinging gently in her harness. She snatched her binoculars from the bottom pocket of her pack and adjusted them to the dimly lit room. She focused in on the outcroppings, trying to decipher the symbols carved on them.

"Let's see now. What have we here. 'He who enters this sacred ground must prove their Immortal soul'. Interesting. Somehow, it doesn't sound very Cambodian. Sounds a little more like Greek."

"Come in Lara. I got your specs."

"Lay it on me, Bryce."

"After the stone blocks, you're gonna come upon another small set of outcroppings. There looks to be enough foot space to grapple up there. If you stay to the right, you'll eventually find an outcropping that will lead you right into the hidden room and the Monarch."

"Perfect. Thanks Bryce. Tell me something. What's the timetable for this temple, do you know?"

"Not offhand, no. I'd have to look it up. Why?"

"Well, it's the damndest thing. I'm looking at these ancient symbols carved on the outcroppings about 60 or so feet above me. They're Cambodian in nature, that's for sure, but…"

"But what?"

"The wording sounds like ancient Greek or Latin. I mean, it's just too archaic to belong to the Khmer tribe, you know what I mean?"

"Sort of. You're not making much sense. I mean, it couldn't possibly be Greek or Latin. That sort of language influence died out long before the Khmer."

"I know. That's what bothers me. If the symbols are Cambodian, why are they reading like Virgil?"

"Don't worry about it, Lara! Just get the Monarch and get out! You know Alex will be right behind us if we don't move it!"

"Ah yes, Mr. West. The tomb raider for hire. Thanks Bryce. I'll call you if I need you." With that, she hooked her picks into the sandstone again and began trekking upward once more.

Another fifteen minutes proved enough to get Lara up to hip level with the stone outcroppings. She pulled herself up onto the nearest one, unhooking her gear from the wall. She dropped her rigging and flopped down, staring cautiously down 150 feet to the floor. Oh well, she thought. She grabbed a thick water bottle from inside her pack. She dumped half over her sweaty head and downed the rest thirstily. It wasn't very hot outside, but the humidity this far under the earth was brutal. She felt like the human sweat rag. But, it wasn't the first time and God only knew it wouldn't be the last. After stowing her water bottle, she sat up wearily and looked about. She was higher now, and the entrance to the hidden room was almost visible. She could see the telltale symbols carved into the stone that warned any passerby not to even think about touching the Monarch Sapphire. She puzzled over the symbols she was sitting on, still confused as to the way they sounded in her head. She considered the possibility that she was translating them incorrectly, but that seemed highly unlikely. She knew her languages, especially her dead ones. The symbols were perfectly Asian, but the way they were assembled, the way they read when splayed out in her mind. They just sounded wrong. Well, not wrong, but not like how they were supposed to sound. The language seemed to follow the rules of ancient Latin and Greek, with the verbs all the way at the end and multiple subjects and adverbs. She decided not to worry about it, seeing as how it didn't really matter… just so long as she could read them. She stood on her feet, which were officially sore as hell, and began to re-harness herself. All of a sudden, she heard a faint rumbling. She quickly hooked her gear and prepared for a rock fall or some other ancient booby trap. She looked up, not seeing anything. The rumbling continued, but this time it grew louder. Sweat began to race down Lara's back as she strained her ears and eyes trying to locate the origin of the rumbling. Suddenly, she heard the pitter patter of falling chunks of sandstone. She listened to the small grating sound they made as they slipped through sand and fell to the floor below. Once she realized what was happening, her heart stopped. With that, she felt the stone block beneath her separate from the wall and begin sliding toward the earth. Without hesitation, Lara grabbed her picks and made a running jump from the outcropping she was standing on to a section of angled stone opposite her. For a single moment, she was suspended in midair with nothing above or beneath her. She forced her mind to clear itself and remain calm. She gripped the picks and opened her mouth slightly to keep from biting off her tongue on impact. As all the stone blocks came sliding out from the outcropping and falling to the ground, she landed with a sickening thud against the wall to her right. She immediately dug her picks into the soft sandstone and used every muscle in her upper body to keep from falling off. Quickly as she could, she used the steel grating on the toes of her boots to dig at the wall beneath her feet, making a temporary foothold. For a split second, she thought she wouldn't make it. But the rumbling ceased as the stone blocks smashed to the floor below.

"Great," she panted between fierce breaths, "I just keep breaking shit in here." A squawking as the headset sounded.

"Lara! What the hell! What's going on in there?" Bryce yelled anxiously.

"Why don't you come down here and find out?" Lara yelled back sarcastically.

"Was it a mini-bomb?"

"No. It was my ass." A pause.

"Is that supposed to be some sort of joke, Lara?"

"No time for jokes, Bryce. I'm hanging for my dear life with nothing but my grappling gear and a prayer in hell."

"What! That's it, I'm sending S.I.M.O.N. down there!"

"Don't you even think about sending that fucking hunk of metal down here Bryce! I'll fire your ass!"

"And just what would you do without me? No one else with a smidgen of sanity would put up with this sort of abuse!"

"I don't need that damn robot, Bryce. I need you to shut up so I can concentrate. I'm so close to the Monarch that I can taste it. I'll be fine. What about those footholds?" Another pause.

"It looks like the only way to get from the outcroppings to the hidden room is straight grappling. From what the maps show, there may have once been an elaborate set of stairs, but they don't exist any more."

"Yeah, and neither do the outcroppings."

"What? You broke the stone blocks! Lara!"

"Keep going Bryce. I'm pressed for time."

"Okay, okay, okay. My suggestion is to scale your way up the far right wall until you come to a statue of Siva. That little beauty should be about ten or so feet directly above you according to your GPS location. Other than that, I'm as much in the dark as you are."

"Yeah, right," Lara replied with a grunt. She switched off her headset and returned to her gear. Looking around, she found suitable footholds not a foot from her current position. She made a risky swing and hooked onto them, securing her pulleys into the sandstone once again. Using every bit of strength she had, she began slowly pulling herself up towards the hidden room and her prize.