Chapter 2: Conquistador Fort
Employment as a mercenary would give one's name a variety of names and titles. Some would call him a killer with neither morality nor soul; still, others would regard him as a brave warrior with riches in his crosshair. However, a soldier remains a soldier, the lone patrol of the Brotherhood of Apep was making his way trekking on familiar patrol pattern with a bored look and less than enthusiastic demeanor guiding his work procedures.
Some moments ago, he had successfully contracted the ire of his employer, being scorned at was one thing, but being demoted to the rank of a grunt and forced to do menial tasks all in one day was a conga of humiliation. Now he is stuck with traversing jungle environment with dense vegetation and loudly complaining about his occupation's disadvantages.
"Damn that drunk blow hard, think he's the best there is with his golden toilet and penthouse in Zootopia. When I get my paws around his neck, oh I'll show him what happens when you mess with a..." He heard the sound of pistol hammer cocking behind him, followed by a female voice of a wolf.
"A tiger? Already learned that." Angie said confidently, holding the tiger mercenary hostage with a single gun in her paw. Consequently, the tiger was forced to switch on the safety catch of his rifle before putting it down on the ground, he raised his paws to the air in a surrendering manner. "And that's what you get for mumbling in a jungle and let a lady hold you up." Said Logan as he deactivated his optical camouflage, revealing himself slowly to the tiger while his liquid metal sunk back behind his armor platings, and confiscated the feline's remaining weapons and gear.
"Thanks for the gear." He said with a proud, somewhat smug expression on his face as he inspects the rifle and brandishing it on his back. Logan chuckled knowing his plan was working out using the camouflage to his advantage. "Don't mention it." The tiger snarled at his remarks, before he himself being poked at by Angie's gun muzzle. "You might want to reconsider your course of action here. Now tell me everything you know about your garrison and its effort here in the Peninsula."
Her pistol was rather convincing on its own, but when wielded by a capable hand and mind with absolute conviction, it became a tool to bend hands and coercion of the weak minded. The tiger saw no way out of the predicament he got himself in, and so he let out a sigh before spilling the beans. "Alright, if you wish. My guys are stationed in an old Conquistador Fort, about a mile North from here. But I warn you, the guys there aren't pushovers and they will shoot you on sight."
"Thanks for info, oh don't worry, your boss won't demote you to six feet under." Angie then hit the back of his head with her pistol, knocking him out in the process. With information regarding their troops disposition in their paws, Angie and Logan then make their way to the Conquistador Fort. About a mile away from the fishing village, sits the Conquistador Fort, built by the aggressive, imperialist conquerors that were the Spaniards, it has four star like corners, signature design from the Renaissance Era of fortification with canon's built on top of the walls to bombard any attackers who dare to lay siege on the fort and its soldiers.
But the fort has never been impregnable, no fort is, there was one enemy that the initial garrison weren't prepared to repel, and that was plagues, diseases of the tropical climates ravaged the initial batch of troops who built the foundations succumbed to the heat and malaria of the jungle, a quiet enemy overran their positions without a blade to the flesh.
Therefore, Spaniards used whatever slaves they can get their paws on to build the fort with their supervision. Now it stands as a ruin, a derelict monument to the Conquistador's dream of imperial glory and prestige oversea, an empire built on the fire of Inquisition and Xenophobia, rotten away when its populace can no longer burden the sufferings and inherent hatred of their overlords.
And yet nothing is sacred, to the Brotherhood, they only see the fort as a location with enough concrete to hide behind. Consequently, the Brotherhood of cutthroats and murderers moved into the fort and set up base of operation there, with guards posted on the walls and automated sentry turrets to fill in for the blind spots.
Conversely, attempts to enter fort must be made elsewhere. One such attempt is the water sewer entrance, with an untapped water supply for the well of the fort, it was perfect for entering the fort. But of course, the cultists were no fools, the mercenaries who formed the bulk of their grunts planted motion sensor along the walls of the sewer in order to prevent intruders from having any bright ideas.
Nevertheless, the sensors and laser detectors failed as deterrent to stop Logan and Angie from infiltrating the fort from the sewer entrance. Before entering it, Logan gave Angie a rebreather equipment, compact enough to put in a pocket and as functional as every high grade rebreathers in the world. "Here. maybe this will block out the smell of this place as well. Just follow me. It's dark as night here." Logan said. As he went under she saw his optic turn green showing he was using more of his robotic bilities. This one being a night vision optic device.
The respiratory apparatus enable Logan and Angie to dive beneath the water and swim their way into the fort's underground sections. Like snakes of the jungle, Logan and Angie slowly crept up to the fort's main water body, the place where the well draws its water from; they kept themselves low, beneath the surface, slowly making their crawl across the narrow body of shallow water and cloaked under its murky surface and their sounds muffled by the body of water as well as their own slow and methodical approach. Logan for the whole time used his night vision to scan through the dark colored liquid, and found himself to be slightly grossed out by the murky water. It wasn't his idea of a tropical vacation, but the job had to be done. It seems though with each of their movements in the water they both caused the green foliage and moss to move around further increasing the disguise.
"So far so good, they haven't seen us, yet. Let's just keep it slow until we reach the main lake where the well is located." Logan said, monitoring his digital real time map, the heading and directions show that they were only a minute out from the main underground hub of the fort.
"Okay, let's just hope they don't post any guards or turrets around there." Much to Angie's dismay, the brotherhood did indeed leave one of their fighters to guard the lake. An automated turret with IFF and IR sensors built into its optical system. Once the two wolves have entered the lake, they found the turret to be of great nuisance as it prevent them from surfacing, fortunately, Logan has the ability to hack into its system and deactivate it.
Accordingly, from under the water surface, he hacked into the computer control of the turret, first he pins point the exact IP address of the gun's control system. A dance of green numbers showed up on his wrist mounted computer, he tapped his talon on the highlighted green digital numbers and was able to gain access into the turret's option list of function. "Okay then, show over for this one." He commented just as he selected the Deactivation function. With the function selected and pressed, a power down humming sound can be heard echoing in the underground section of the fort.
Once the lake was cleared of opposition at the moment, both Logan and Angie waded ashore and took off their breathing apparatuses, Angie's clothing has been wet by the water but she didn't mind it, this wasn't a vacation but a business trip with a more...unusual agenda in mind. Logan as well was wet around his body, but he seemed to have tracked the most of the water life onto his frame. "Blech. Gross…" Logan complained seeing moss and algae collected onto his frame. He kept the color of his body a dull grey, and tried to keep the liquid metal conformed to his now wet body. Once done They observed the underground cavern with awed inspiring eyes, their mouths dropped at its sheer size and grandeur.
The sealing was around 30 meters above them, where a single circular hole of the well casts sunlight down to the dark cavern below, the ominous scenery seems to suggest this is a natural cave, one that the Conquistadors built their fort on as a way to have emergency escape underground in case of being overran.
The first thing Angie did after entering the cavern was to stretch her leg a bit. She lighted her chemlight and took an aimless strive across the floor of the cavern followed by Logan, her guide was solely on instinct, following its voiceless call through the cave's narrow passage to a slope of rocks.
On the top side was a spacious corridor with hints of being built by mammals, refraction of light from the liquid from inside of the cavern danced on the wall, giving Angie and Logan a hint of construction effort had taken place there. "Looks kinda slippery up there, you sure you don't need my help for this?" Logan snickered, confidently showing off his athletic and muscular built to Angie.
"No, I can do this on my own. Watch me." She said with uncertainty hidden under a tone of pseudo confident. "Fine, suit yourself then, but I'm keeping up just to be safe." He chuckled as the climbing competition begin, with Angie making head start, she first climbed onto a stone and then jumped up to a series of smaller rocks, Angie climbed it to the top slowly as Logan kept himself up with Angie by staying behind her as a reaction force in case anything might happen.
"You're doing great for a novice, just don't look down." Logan encouraged her as she climbed to the last rock, still one more ledge away from the top. "Maybe I'm a turtle and you're Achilles." She said, leaping up with her feet and grabbing the ledge with her paws.
"Oh let me guess, you can have a head start while I can only start running after you've made a ten meters mark." Logan snickered and smirked at her sense of classical Growlleek humor. He then eventually make his way to the ledge and was pulled up by Angie. "Hope you didn't break your arms back there." Angie simply smiled faintly at him before giving her confident answer, "Oh please, I'm no toothpick on legs." He patted her on the shoulder and hastily gave her a hug.
Once they were inside the secret corridor, Angie was the point woman, taking the lead with her chemical light tucked on her belt. Along the way, they noticed the carvings on the rock was a mixture of traditional European art style of the Middle Age and native Mayan culture hieroglyphics depictions of the history of the site.
"Look at this, the Conquistadors used the Mayans as slave, they put them to work on building forts and roads, paving the way for future settlers. Needless to say, the natives put their own distinct caricatures on the conquerors." She said, dusting off some old murals on the wall shone her chem-light on it to highlight its depiction.
The mural that Angie inspects showcase the scene of jaguars, tapirs, armadillos, puma and coyotes on their knees with lashes of the whip from their overlords, who were in turn, being depicted as cruel, bloodthirsty monsters with blood dripping out of their mouths, their eyes were fiery red as the flame of Hell itself, but the most striking feature of these pompous, self-righteous murderers were their forked tongues, sticking out their mouths like tentacles hungry for endless blood and suffering. "I have an idea who hitch a ride to this continent with Senor Cortez now." Logan commented as he inspects the mural with the fork tongued Conquistadors. The images gave him an idea that the invading conquistadors were devils to the Mayans here. "So much for taking in mammals and treating them like equals…" Logan said with a gulp on the vicious table turn.
"No, the Conquistadors practiced anything but Christianity." She remarked as they went through the place. It was true in most history books, it wasn't the exciting adventures through the jungle with the noble expedition of Ewerope, but rather a savage and brutal war of conquest and annihilation with the intent to destroy an entire culture and uproot its language.
As the two marched on, they found more murals on the wall, depicting the eventual conquering, subjugation and extermination of Mayan Culture, with their language cut out of their tongue, their traditions erased from their consciousness and their lives broken under the oppressive rule of the Conquistadors. When Angie looked back at Logan she found that both of his ears were dropped down while he looked at the cruel pictures. It seemed that even simple drawing like these gave a strong sense of bitterness to Logan of just how betrayed the Mayans were.
Eventually, they came to a hallway made of carved out stones and one long linear path full of booby traps, no doubt built by Mayan workers. The traps consisted of a mixture of spears thrusting out of walls, dart blowers and spike traps ready to taste the flesh of all those who are unfortunate enough to fall into it. And if those usual tricks weren't nasty enough, there were also other booby traps to deter intruders, namely a pair of pendulums of death, swinging side to side which used a cold steel axe like blade sloped like a crescent. Logan's robotic tail fell down and his ears fell to the sides of his head examining the death traps. Even his optics showed fear as the white pupils seemed to narrow.
The door on the far side of the hallway was unlike anything Angie has ever seen from history books, the crest rested on the door was shaped like a snake, forged from silver to look like a coiling snake with amber gems decorated its eyes. There has been organization with serpent motif on their logos and symbol but none like this one, her experience in Ewegypt would tell her that this must be the symbol of the Brotherhood of Apep.
"Great, we need to get to the other side to deactivate the defensive mechanism, let me handle this." Logan stepped up, he took a deep cyber breath, readying himself for a Herculean task of crossing the hall of death, unscathed! That was until Angie stepped up and held him back. "Let me handle this Logan, I see something you don't in these booby traps." He couldn't raise a word of objection as she leap off far too soon. This was somewhat to his relfie and horror since he had to watch his lover cross a treacherous path on her own.
First she rolled from the first tile to the next, passing the dart blowers just before they can reload and fire the next shots, at the next tile, she jumped off to her left when the floor beneath her crumbles and reveal the spike pit beneath. When the arctic wolf landed on the tile to her left, she jumps forward just as the wall mounted spears thrust their way out to greet her flesh and blood. Logan watched as Angie made her way through the traps with ease, sweats drop from her fur but still her speed was kept at nominal level, his time spent on training acrobats for her was most useful, indeed. Logan covered his face with both hands finding part of him unable to watch while the other part of him opened his fingers over one of his eyes so he could watch Angie move through the death traps.
Just as she came face to face with the pendulums of death, Angie first hopped back when the Pendulum swung to the left, and just when it passes her narrowly to the right, she jumped forward to the next tile and make one last scrambled, she was in safe space to pull a lever to clear the path for Logan to cross over. It seemed after she had pulled the lever the pendulum axes pulled back into a wall to the right and left while the rest of the floor, including the pit was covered with a slew of square concrete tiles that slid over the previous tile and pit to make a safe walking path.
Logan moved his hands away from his face, and made a sigh of relief, seeing Angie safe. Some part of him questioned how the mechanism worked, and just how it could be running for so many years. Instead he shook his head out and went along with what he saw. "I'm blown away! How did you do that Angie?Just how in the heck did you pull all of that off? You were like rolling around like crazy, and jumping! And there was the swinging axe things and you were like 'I ain't havin that since I'm a tough girl!'" Logan said, sounding rather bewildered. Angie simply wiped the sweat off of her face and catches her collective breath, "I don't know, adrenaline maybe. I just followed my instinct and voila, I'm Lara Claws." Logan couldn't come up with his own answer for this phenomenon but that would be left to later. He however muttered under his breath "Yeah and I'm just Nathan Dingo."
Angie and Logan inspect the crest of the snake on the door, and found on its head a series of Latin words inscribed on it by the priests and missionaries, "Fratrum de Serpenti", once translated, it is "Brotherhood of the Serpent" no doubt another alias for Apep in the realm of Spaniard royalties and their empire alike. "You'd think it'd be in Ewegyptain since he's… It's from that region, but no. It's in Latin like some kind of old testimate demon thing…" Logan said nervously.
"I'm not sure, but if Anubis can leave Ewegypt into Zootopia, then who's to say Apep couldn't?" She retorted before proceeding to open the door.
Once the door has been opened, Angie and Logan found a meeting room, with a long wooden table draped in a red table sheet, but the coat of arms on the wall wasn't the signature flag of the New Spain authority, but a dark flag with the head of a red snake skulking out at its victim, in its mouth, it held a dagger to amplify the psychological intimidation effect. "Looks like we've found, yet another collection of self absorbing freaks with a penchant for compensation. How typical."
Logan scoffed at the utterly worthless collection of the Brotherhood's trinkets, from busts to seals and emblems of their order and sub-factions throughout the globe. Angie however, was not as dismissive as Logan as she inspect laptops of the local garrison commander. "Logan look at this!" She called out to him, to which he went over to see for himself what did she find. "It's a map of the region and the exact coordinate of the mythical El Dorado. Along with an old journal by the order's Grand Master Alejandro de Aragorn detailing the events of his conquest."
"May 25th, 1556, the subjugation of the heathens continue as planned, though their warriors have the multitude of numbers on their side, we have the fortitude of faith in our Lord above. The Mayans came at us in arms, with clubs, spears, arrows and on occasion Hornet's Hives. But we always return the favor with our musketeers, canons and the steel of our cold swords. The hundreds cut down the thousands, and soon, the land was brought under the holy light of our Lord and Father Apep. The populace of the city of gold fiercely protect their gold from our righteous hands, their primitive ways shall not masquerade the city's true riches from our eyes. For tomorrow we will march on the city and burn it to the ground and most importantly, our warriors shall claim the relic that is the Paw of Midas as it is called. Once that is done, we will return to the Old World with the Paw in tow to enrich the Brotherhood and fulfill the duty set out to us by his Almighty Apep."
Logan's eyes grew big and he felt his jaw drop. For once he seemed right about something with his paw of Midas theory, but what was getting him unnerved was the fact that a near ancient cult was dedicated to Apep's wrath. Not only that it was still happening. "Uh. So. I was right about the paw thing… But… This unholy church of Apep thing has been going on for awhile now Angie. Like a very long time now actually." Logan said seemingly discouraged.
Angie shuddered and put the journal away from their sights, unable to comprehend the depth of Apep's depravity and corrupt influence over others, to the very point that it has now control of churches and religious institutions. "I wonder what else Anubis isn't telling us about Apep. Because by now I better expect that water snake to be having his own franchise and Political Parties." Said Angie as she sighed out before wandering around the room to inspect the furniture and objects inside it. One of the objects that caught her eyes was a modern radio equipment recently put in place by the current occupants, the frequency that the radio tuned in gave them transmission bursts of excavation crew and expedition units.
"All units, come in, does anyone have an eye on the city of gold yet?" Asked a gravelly voice, it was obvious that this was the leader of the group and just by the commanding tone alone, Angie can see that the various mercenary units to chime in.
"Bravo here, we ain't seeing anything but jungle and mosquitoes. Good thing that Johnny isn't shitting his pants at the moment." Said the team leader on the other end.
"Charlie reporting in, absolutely nothing by the lake, except for some aqueducts, wait something is here…" The team leader of that particular group suddenly pause for a moment as the whispering sound of the wind dominates the radio frequency.
"Charlie, report in, what the hell is going on over there?" The commander asked, trying to comprehend the situation of his subordinates.
"Shit! We're under attack! Something is ripping us ap- tornado!" The radio was then filled with the sound of a tornado and the sound of the wind shattering equipment and tossing mercenaries around the place with some of them apparently being thrown into the jungle and breaking the bones. Before long, there was nothing but silence.
"Charlie come in! Come in damn it! Somebody get an eye on the situation right now, expect resistance and expect it hard." The commander ordered.
"Well… At least it wasn't our Charlie right? Right?" Logan asked while his face seemed to carry much terror. Looking back to the radio he tried to figure out what he just heard. He tilted his head finding only the sounds of screaming men and winds. Powerful winds. "Are freak wind storms common here?..." Logan asked trying to find some logical explanation. Unfortunately the lands here were unfavorable for tornados, and not flat enough for them.
Angie shook her head much to his chagrin and gulped, making a hard swallow of facts and logics to make her conclusions. "No, definitely never seen or heard anything like that. If Anubis exists, maybe they have met Kukulkan." She said in a meek tone, devoid of bravery and general toughness, it was a defeated and somewhat frightened girl's voice just by confirming the presence of Kukulkan himself. "At least we know where we're going." She said before looking back into her pocket and picked up the Scarab like badge, it was a passport of sort. One that Anubis gave them so that deities offer protection to them, denoting their affiliations.