Chapter 3

Lost Valley

The passageway was winding, with the rocks seemingly aging as she went along. The sound of a waterfall was also getting closer, and the air grew more humid. Finally at the opening, she saw a rushing stream in front of her and directly to her right was a massive waterfall, shooting thousands of gallons of water into a pool that continued as a stream underground.

Lying leisurely around the pool were several of the gray wolves. She tightened the band on her braid and made sure her pistols were secure, then jumped in a swan dive position the 70-foot drop into the warm water below. She landed with a small splash, and came up smiling. She crawled out as far away from the wolves as she could and exited the small cavern through a crevice opposite the waterfall. In here the cave got gloomy and misty. There were a few feet of rock to climb, and after she cleared it she saw in the distance several prehistoric looking trees.

"Wait…what?!"

She stood for a moment, puzzled. She ventured further, more carefully. Slowly, a prehistoric, Jurassic valley unveiled itself to her. The sky was crystal blue, with puffy white clouds sparse but dense in the blue canvas.

A low, hot mist floated around the dark green vegetation that covered the valley floor. Unknown sounds hung in the air, made by animals never seen before. She could hear more waterfalls, the sound of water crashing very prominent. Different types of odd shaped trees covered in thick, rope-like vines blocked her view of far ahead. She could see large bugs flying around and scattering across the thick undergrowth and bright, exotic, florescent colored flowers. She stood in awe at this lost valley.

This was all hidden behind or underneath a city made into a Peruvian mountain and had never been found before? She found it hard to believe, and knew that once she made it out of here she would be placed high in the tabloids. She kept her hands resting on the handles of her pistols and walked nervously into the unknown terrain.

From somewhere close, she heard a high-pitched, piercing scream. She jerked her head to the left to see a blur of red run out from some rocks. It stopped to scream again, and Lara froze, paralyzed with fear. It was a scaly red Velociraptor. It stood about 4 foot high, larger than normal raptors, with the large, single black claw on each hind leg reared and ready to catch prey. Its long, upturned snout was twisted into an evil death snarl. Lara slowly pulled her pistols from the holsters, knowing any quick movements would cause it to attack. She raised them slowly-

-and the prehistoric beast came bounding at her with lighting speed, screaming an unearthly howl. She dove sideways, firing several shots, most of them going wide. The dinosaur ran and jutted his hard skull into her hip, flinging her harshly to the ground. She cried out, then turn and kick at the things face, connecting her boot several times with its face.

The raptor shook its head and snorted, and Lara fired from one pistol the last rounds in the magazine. Blood spurted in dark red squirts. She gritted her teeth and heard her own voice bubble up in a growl as she kept firing with the other pistol. Finally, after spasms of pain and poor attempts with its dewclaw, the red raptor fell to the ground, dead.

Lara stood up, wincing several times. She pulled up her tight green tank top to examine where she got the blow. It was already turning colors, but didn't hurt too much to touch. Her ankle ached however. She ejected the magazines from her pistols and pulled two more from the pouch on the side of her backpack to reload. She re-holstered them and stepped out of the crevice the raptor had pushed her in and continued on into the Lost Valley.

It was a place straight from Jurassic Park, with every element from a prehistoric world present. Up ahead the valley widened, and she could see a magnificent waterfall ahead. But she stopped, her view taken to the ground. She was standing completely in a single foot imprint.

"I really hope that thing is dead…"

She thought nervously. She looked up and ahead and saw an old wooden bridge stretching from one rock formation to another. As she marveled at the architecture, she felt the ground rumble slightly. But unlike the movies, there wasn't time for suspense to build. In a matter of seconds the rumbling grew in frightening intensity, and around the rock corner of the valley several feet ahead, a gigantic monster stepped out, blocking out the sun. It roared, the force and wind nearly knocking her off balance. It was a enormous Tyrannosaurus Rex. Its skull was at least 5 foot long, with its length about 45 foot and its height about 20 foot.

Lara was completely paralyzed, frozen with genuine terror. But she kept her game face on, raising on eyebrow in question and then pulled her newly reloaded pistols and open fired into the monstrous lizard. It looked down, as if just now noticing her. She took off sprinting to the left into a dark cavern concealed by several prickly bushes.

The T-rex bounded toward her, its footsteps deafening. It stuck its snout near the opening, and Lara once again open fired. Little wounds opened up, looking like needle pricks on human skin. It turned sideways, and Lara saw a once in a lifetime opportunity. She holstered her guns quickly and ran up the lizard's tail, slipping on the dry, scaly skin. Once she was close enough to its head, she took hold of a lump on its back and put her a pistol as close as she could to its head and emptied the rest of the clip in it.

It roared and threw its head back and Lara was vaulted into the air. The monsters head hook onto the bridge she had been admiring early and broke it in half with a single snapping sound. She tried as hard as she could to land on her feet or bottom, and ended up with a combination of the two. Never the less, she was on her feet and had her second gun drawn and fired at the T-rex.

Finally, it seemed the shots started to take effect. She noticed as she reloaded and the creature turned, one of its eyes was gone. She fired several more shots, and the thing fell down, crashing into the rock wall before settling into a dark place to die. The valley was again thrown into the tranquil sound of something from an exotic paradise.

She noticed several droplets of blood on her leg from minute cuts and a single tear along the waistband of her brown shorts. She looked up and saw that the bridge had been broken in half, with one part of it hanging down against the rock, creating a makeshift ladder. She walked over to it, stepping over the T-rex's tail, and tugged on it a little.

The thick vines used to secure the wood to the rock held. She climbed up, and pretty soon was at the top with no problems. Up here was an indention in the rock, and inside was a cogwheel just a little bigger than her palm and made of bones tied together.

She stuck it in her backpack and climbed back down the bridge. She rounded the corner the Rex came from, and saw in the distance the silhouette of a building. She proceeded with caution, and slowly an ancient stone building came into view. It had a structure similar to the White House, only smaller.

The pillars holding the front of the structure looked old and ready to fall, and there were several jagged windows near the top. Stone steps had been built to get up to the entrance. The stone was covered in a layer of green vegetation, and large exotic colored butterflies were resting leisurely on it. Lara instantly wish she had a camera of some sort, but shrugged the thought away and stepped up to the building. Inside was amazing, with two small waterfalls in the back of the single stone room, with decorative carvings on the walls. She went over to the square pool that the waterfalls emptied into and took off her glove to stick her hand inside the water. It was really warm.

A small smile crept onto her mouth. She opened her eyes and saw that off to one side the pool continued on. She unholstered her pistols and took off her backpack and set them on the edge and put back on her glove and slid into the water. She found she could keep her eyes open easily. She propelled herself forward in the clear liquid and found that a darkened path winded behind the waterfalls. Here she could surface into a tiny opening and a small ledge.

Sitting on it was another cogwheel underneath a broken machine, probably used to stop the water. She picked it up and swam back into the main area of the temple and climbed out.

Her wet braid clung to her back as she wiped the cog on the bottom of her shorts, then placed it in her backpack with the other one. She gathered her equipment began to leave the temple, but was halted by the screams of several raptors. She immediately drew her weapons and aimed them forward, keeping her eyes peeled. She heard the quick footsteps come up from a dark corner to the right outside the temple, and hopped back as a raptor crashed into one of the crumbling pillars.

The whole building shook and the pillar collapsed to the side, knocking into the other ones. She holstered her weapons and sprinted forward, jumping into a dive roll as the temple collapsed in a cloud of dust and deafening crash. She jumped up on her feet and began firing at the raptors that circled her, three in all. She fired as quickly as her fingers would allow, the silver pistols jumping lightly in each of her hands. One raptor went down, and the other two cried out as it fell to the ground.

They ran over to it and began to eat on it, pulling thick strips of blood rich meat off of the dead carnivore. Lara holstered her guns and began running back toward the entrance to the lost valley, still amazed at the prehistoric beasts that occupied it and wondering how in the world they were there and was still there after millions of years. She decided she had checked upstream from the first waterfall she had come to after leaving the City of Vilcabamba. She climbed back over the rocks and saw that the wolves that had been there before were now gone.

She saw some rocks stacked up to the left of the waterfall she could use to climb back up. She shivered once from her dip earlier in the temple and made her way back up the rocks. The rushing water got louder, and she saw up ahead a gigantic contraption spinning around. It was at least several stories, and looked like giant versions of the cogwheels she carried in her backpack. They were spinning from the larger waterfall spinning the biggest one. It wasn't working properly though, cause on each level of the puzzle was a smaller place for a cog. She smiled, and treaded carefully up the stream on rocks protruding from the surface of the rushing stream.

She saw a gate that was closed, allowing the water to flow freely. If she could open it, which is probably what the cog machine was used for, then she could stop the waterfall downstream. The first cog turning was made of wood and tied together with vines. She waited until it one of the sticks spun around and grabbed onto it.

Spinning just like on a Ferris Wheel, she held on with both hands as the water moved the giant cog around. As she neared the first ledge, she began moving herself and swinging like a gymnast on steel poles and finally got one revolution and let go, landing haphazardly on the ledge. She stood up and brushed her knees off, then reached inside her backpack and pulled out one of the cogs and placed it into the mechanism. One of the notches from the larger cog caught onto it, and it began spinning, starting a chain reaction of several more.

On a level high than the one she was on now, the last cog would have to be put into place. The wall had breaks in it, and she used them as handholds to scale the wall upward and to the right, pulling herself up on the ledge. Here she inserted the last cog, and the entire puzzle began moving. She heard from deep within the mountain something moving, and the gate opened, allowing the flowing water to go somewhere else.

Lara smiled and dusted her hands off, then made her way back down to the rocks where the wolves had been. Just like she had thought, the water had stopped and now only the pool remained. She dived from the top of the rocks into the water below, and surfaced just as gracefully. She looked over to where the waterfall had been, and saw a perfectly squared shaped opening. A low breeze made a whistling sound from deep within.

Lara waded over and pulled herself up and lit up a flare, nervous and excited about this area, which had probably never had another human being inside for hundreds of years. This must be what Natla had said would be here, the ancient Tomb of Qualopec.