Tomb raiding is a dangerous business, any tomb raider worth their salt could tell you that. However, it is also a very lucrative business, when the loot is the adequate one.
In the modern days, the British noblewoman known as Lara Croft is the world´s foremost expert in the recovery of ancient relics, aka, tomb raiding. However, even she, who was one of the world´s most lethal women, had started to notice a pattern in her diverse recoveries, especially the most obscure ones. The ones that are contracted by private collections, to locate very exotic and mysterious relics that bordered on the illegal, due to the abundant connections between those relics and human sacrifices, and other similar ritualistic crimes.
Of course, Lara was a modern woman and did not believe in such nonsense, well, not at the beginning, of course, when she found the most bizarre and twisted abominations that one could imagine loitering the deeper catacombs of some of her objectives, Lara´s worldview changed completely.
For the first time in her decade-long life as relic hunter, or Tomb Raider, as everyone seemed to like to call her, she had to admit that she was quite over her head. Sure enough, her trusted 45. Cal has never failed her, and accurate shots can put down most of the abominations, but Lara has been forced to make like a tree and get lost in the forest way too many times.
The things that protected some of the most bizarre and grotesque tombs seemed unable to die, no matter how much lead did Lara put on them, and do not make her start in the strange contraptions that she had found, things designed to be cruel, lethal, and as painful as possible. Oh, and the deformed baby head that grew from a primitive chainsaw made of stone and metal, that gave Lara nightmares for a while.
The strongest point of Lara was not her physical; Olympic level; capabilities, but her sharp and well-educated mind. Lara was one of the brightest archaeologists of the modern world, and the big library on the Croft Manor spoke volumes of how much did she researched all of her targets, but even then, she was not all-knowing, and when she found the grotesque things, Lara had to seek out anyone on the profession that could have an idea of what on earth was she seeing.
Lara´s contacts were very good. They have to be, otherwise, Lara would have never become the number one of her profession. But even they, who had fingers in all pies, discovered that the Mayan-based inscriptions and symbols were among the most obscure and less investigated fields of archaeology.
Everybody and their mothers knew about the "Egyptian curses" that plagued the Egyptian archaeological expeditions for decades. It was, practically, pop-culture by now. However, in this case, the curse was very, very real. Everybody that had specialized in this particular field, suffered a very gruesome death. Every single one. And we are talking about, "being torn apart by a rabid bear" kind of deaths. That was enough to put all of the curious individuals out of such field, and pronto.
The only remaining expert in such strange, and almost Lovecraftian level of twisted, depictions and archaeological remains, was a lad called Rick Taylor. As it can not be otherwise, the lad had his own rumors hounding him, and no small amount of inexplicable, and gruesome, occurrences following him around.
According to the information that Lara´s contacts picked, Rick Taylor was involved in an inexplicable accident and destruction of property in Arkham city, when he was just a student at Miskatonic University. The West Mansion, property of the eminent, albeit extraordinarily eccentric Doctor Henry West, was completely destroyed overnight, and only Rick survived the inexplicable collapse and destruction of the manor.
Only an empty and charred crater remained.
From then on, a lot of rumors; all of them of nasty tones; surrounded the lad. Since the strange events of the West Manor, Rick Taylor has been involved in all kinds of strange things. And all of them seemed to have ended in blood. Lots and lots of blood. Still, the lad managed to finish his studies and graduate in Miskatonic, with a University Degree in Ancient South American cultures. Before the arrival of Columbus to the Americas, to be more precise. Once he got his degree, Taylor disappeared from the grid, and only appeared in the most bloody business of the relic recovery biz.
In normal circumstances, Lara would have not touched the kind of biz that Taylor seemed to be involved with a ten feet pole, but, the circumstances have changed, and the British adventurer was forced to contact the strange man and ask for his expertise on the matter. Using her contacts, Lara organized a rendezvous with the elusive man, taking advantage of the already organized expeditions to the jungles of Brazil, to seek out a golden totem of some sort; the "Mouth of the Great Corrupter" was its name; that was worth millions, and would twist the South America Myths on their axis.
Through a video conference, Lara spoke with Taylor, and the British noblewoman had to admit that he did not find the guy precisely all that impressive. The American archaeologist was of average built, brown hair and brown eyes, with a thick pair of glasses on his face. Taylor was not ugly, but he was neither handsome, however, as average as the lad seemed to be, Lara was not fooled.
The eyes of Taylor were so very similar to those that have experienced hell on earth, and no longer had the will to give a fuck about anything. The manners of Taylor impeccable, he did not joke around, he did not pretend to be the best expert, always to the point, concise and clear. But the gallows humor that escaped from his mouth during the conference let Lara know that Taylor had blood in his hands, or had seen things that he really should have not seen.
After the chainsaw baby head, Lara could empathize with the American. Some visions will forever haunt her.
The expedition itself was hardly something new. Lara has done the same thing a thousand times already, always bringing some new trinkets and more prestige to her name. The Croft was no longer the laughing stock of the archaeological community, instead, they preferred to point fingers at her, and calling her a Tomb Raider, and a criminal. Considering half of the British Museum's most prized artifacts of the last decade were thanks to her, such accusations and slander tended to fall on dear ears.
Lara meets Taylor in person in the jungles of Brazil, and the moment that she meets the old champ, Lara knew that he was utterly dangerous. Although, and to be completely honest with herself, the guy did not seem dangerous at all. What Lara saw on the video conference was what she got, and average joe, with a small goatee, reading glasses, and slim complexion.
But Lara has been more than a decade prowling dangerous places, and she immediately recognized the danger that the, apparently innocent, lad had around him. A faint smell of blood, his eyes, dull, yet focused, the leather-like texture of his hand when Lara shake hands with him. Clues, here and there, that spoke about how utterly dangerous Rick Taylor really was, and how the gruesome rumors that accompanied him did not seem all that far-fetched.
Focused on getting the gold totem, but always with an eye on Taylor, Lara walked into the jungle with the expedition, eager to collect the trinket as fast as possible and get back to London. Something about this particular object did not sit well with her. The instincts developed after years of expeditions like these told her that something was not right in the jungle.
Curiously enough, the only one that seemed to agree was Taylor. Whenever Taylor was not working on tracing the possible location of the relic, he was on full alertness. Lara sees on him the same alertness that she had. They knew that something was around, something that has not attacked yet. It was not the sensation of being watched only, it was also the sensation of wrongness that permeated the jungle. Everything in the jungle seemed...odd. As if the entire place was constantly holding its breath before blood and violence erupted.
It was very disconcerting and distracting.
Much to their surprise, locating the relic was not all difficult. Both, Rick and Lara, had a lot more pessimistic perspectives, and they were already prepared for a couple of days, at the bare minimum, of digging and rock cleaning to try to make head or tails about the Lovecraftian mixture of Maya´s culture symbology and whatever was the relic they seek. At the same time, when you are, basically, following a very big and wide, series of the equivalent of danger signals all over the jungle, you tend to grow paranoid.
Taylor was the one that seemed more on edge, and that tickled Lara´s danger instincts. The American knew what he was talking about, Lara was knowledgeable enough in Maya myths to see that Taylor knew his stuff, but when the Lovecraftian thingies started to mix, then, was when Taylor started to get very, very focused, and at the same time, oddly at ease.
Whatever Taylor was looking for, he seemed to have found it, and from there on, the man seemed way more sedated. Lara, on the other hand, continued in alert, fearing that something would attack them at any moment.
The expedition needs only a day to reach the stone structure that housed the relic. It was a very ornate stone pyramid of some sort. Very similar to the structures of the Mayan Empire, but with the addendum of several glyphs that hurt the eyes of those that stare at them for too long. The only exception seemed to be Taylor, but even he frowned at the unholy scriptures superposed to the traditional Mayan glyphs.
The expedition set up a base at one of the clearings near the building, and, as usual, Lara moved on her own, eager to get inside of the building, get the blasted thing, and get the hell out of the jungle. It was hardly the first time that Lara has been in Brazil, but there was something on this particular spot of the jungle that put her on edge.
Quickly climbing the distance between the camp and the top of the building, parkour come as a very useful skill in these circumstances, Lara found herself at the top of the Ziggurat, eyeing with an amused stare, a very obvious secret entrance. The vegetation around seemed to have squeezed inside of a crack on the walls, and the growth of the plants had expanded the crack, in such a manner that they broke the fake wall, and revealed the entrance.
With a chuckle, Lara slips inside of the secret tunnel, paying attention to her surroundings, and from time to time, snapping some pictures with a mini-camera that she always carried with her to document the diverse findings that she did during her explorations and recoveries. More than one staff of a museum had promised her to build a bronze statue in her honor due to the diverse findings and recoveries that she had done.
The surroundings of Lara were very different from everything that she had explored before, and Lara could not prevent a small shiver at how similar the structures were to the horrific and bloody contraptions that she found in the worst of her recoveries. Praying it to not be another baby chainsaw situation again, Lara walked deep into the halls of the secret passage of the temple.
The passage led her to a room where a dozen of copper basins stood, all of them surrounding a spiral sun of some sort, with the kind of iconography that hurt her brain only to stare at it, and with way too many sharp protuberances decorating the walls. But what really put Lara on guard was how the basins, and the spikes around, had dried blood caking their surfaces.
Human sacrifices, well, hardly a novelty in a lot of ancient cultures. However, this ritualistic array was different. Not only for the spiral sun on the floor; and that Lara took great effort in ignoring to prevent an even bigger headache; but for the spikes. This room was more a butcher shop than a sacrifice chamber, well, at last from what Lara could see around.
Carefully, Lara explored the room. The walls, once the vegetation was cleared and some light was shed upon them, depicted some Mayan figures, fighting and being slaughtered to feed…
A piercing headache assaulted Lara suddenly. Lara stumbled backward, closing her eyes, and moving away from the hieroglyph that has almost given her an aneurysm. Whatever was painted in the wall was so strange, so impossible to be depicted humanly, that its shape had given Lara a very bad migraine.
Not even aiming the mini-camera in that direction, Lara forced herself to ignore that wall, and seek out an exit of the room, and pronto. Clenching her teeth, Lara stumbled to the opposite side of the basin, after some fiddling with the vines and plants that have covered the walls, Lara managed to break down the remains of a door.
The smell of the jungles and the vegetation had managed to filter the worst of the insides of this place so far, but the moment that Lara walked into the deeper rooms of the temple, the smell of rotten flesh, blood, and other putrid fluids assaulted her nostrils. Only thanks to her previous experiences with similar odors, Lara did not puke her guts.
Ironing her will, Lara put a hand in one of her guns; she never went anywhere without her trusty guns, 45. Caliber semiautomatic guns that had saved her life way too many times; and lightening up her flashlight, she scanned the darkness of the smelling corridors. Much to her disgust, the mangled corpses of several forest animals, from big predators, to monkeys and birds, plastered the walls of the rooms that she was traversing.
Leaving apart the disgusting smell hitting her senses, Lara did notice the mangled state of the corpses, brutalized completely, and how, something, has dragged the corpses there and left them to rot.
That was odd.
Taken into consideration the basin room, Lara had already suspected that the blood of the sacrifices should have gone into the basin; the corpses impaled on the pikes of the wall, so their blood was collected on said basin; but Lara has not seen any corpses, not even skeletal remains, on the sacrificial room.
A gurgling sound echoed in one of the rooms, and Lara picked up her gun, in a blink, aiming for the entrance of the room. The flashlight´s light showered the door and revealed an impossible thing. Lara´s eyes widened at the visage of the monster in front of her.
It was an abomination, akin to a flayed gorilla with bone spikes protuberances in all the wrong anatomical places, whose large and bulging arms ended into chipped lances of bone. Their heads were barely a lamprey-like hole, where blood and flesh, horribly fresh, was being torn apart, albeit, for pleasure or feeding, one could not know, as the thing lacked anything resembling a face. It lacked any expressions, beyond being covered in gore and chewing the remains of their last unfortunate victim.
The thing saw her?. Well, Lara assumed that it worked on sound or smell most likely. And once it detected Lara, it growled and waving its spikes moved to engage Lara, ready to rip her apart with its spikes.
Lara took aim and put a burst of bullets in the chest of the thing, and much to her surprise, the blasted thing only slow down, stumbled, and with inhumane agility jumped straight at her, aiming to dig its bone spurs for hands into Lara´s chest.
Rolling to the side, Lara shot a couple of times more, and getting up with an agility that would make any professional gymnasts nod in approval, Lara put some distance between her and the thing. Unfortunately, another of those things surged from another room, deep on the hall where they were.
Dexterously, Lara secured the flashlight under the cannon of one of her guns, and taking out the other, took aim and shot the already wounded thing, with an eye of the running thing that was quickly shortening the distance.
Any sane person would be screaming for their dear life, but Lara has already experienced similar things, and to be completely honest; leaving apart the abominable flesh things; violence was just Tuesday.
The guns of Lara roared, with a peal of thunder that was music for the ears of Lara. The bullets dug themselves on the skinless body of the wounded flayed ape. But the effect seemed to be minimal. Either they lacked pain, or the resilience and vitality of these things were out of the charts. In any case, Lara changed tactics, and dodging the incoming lunge of the second thing, she kept the second deformed gorilla between her and the first, and aiming at the open mouth, Lara pulled the trigger and emptied her clips on the mouth of the newcomer.
That seems to do the trick, and with a gurgle, the thing fell to the ground, with a good chunk of its head, or so it seemed, painting its fellow flayed ape with his brain matter and innards. By the way, the first gorilla abominations, even if it was bleeding all over the place, kicked the corpse of its fellow abomination, and swung its spur trying to slash Lara.
Quickly giving a step back, Lara released the empty clips, and reloaded with the help of the custom harness on her back, before pointing the guns forward again and shot the last gorilla thing in the mouth. The flayed horror was not entirely without intelligence, and it raised its spurs, blocking some of the bullets. Still, the bullets gnashed its teeth, breaking his mouth and making it howl in either pain or rage, it was impossible to know for sure.
Rolling to the side, Lara gained the back of the gorilla after its blind counter swing, and pressing her guns to the fleshy back of the head of the thing, pulled the trigger, sending twin bursts of bullets into the head of the monster, making its brain erupt violently from its mouth. With a thump, the gorilla joined the other on the floor, and much to the amazement of Lara, their blood was absorbed by the floor, and their bodies started to blacken out quickly as if they were rotting at an advanced rate.
"Bloody hell", cursed Lara in the, now silent, empty hall, watching with horrified fascination how the monsters decomposed very fast, and whose blood was sucked by the floor as if the building itself drained the blood of anyone inside.
"Tough little buggers", Lara sheathed one of her guns but kept the other at hand, and with the flashlight on it. "This is the kind of shit that I wanted to dodge, bugger me". Muttered Lara before advancing forward into the rooms.
It did not take much for Lara to reach the other side of the hall and found a bigger hall inside of the temple of sorts. From her vantage point, Lara watched the crude insides of the building. The room with the blood basin was carved, with hieroglyphs that told a story, but right now, Lara was not seeing any of that. What Lara was seeing was something out of a caveman movie, but with the grotesque addendum of flesh protuberance hugging stone pillars. Flesh tendrils that have eyes, mouths that should not move that way, and purple tongues that rot everything that touched.
Lara was able to see everything perfectly due to the amount of glowing, organ-like lamps and lights that surrounded the ground. Instead of torches, it looked as if someone has shoved an oversize thorax of a firefly into the wall and let it grow like cancer on the wall, glowing the entire time.
"Lovely". Dryly frowned Lara, blinking a pair of times and putting her favorite red glassed on, to take all of that image in, without pointing at it and screaming: What in the bloody fuck is that?.
As if the demented hall had not enough demented architecture with the flesh furniture and pillars, Lara was able to see several, deeper, halls and pathways that went deeper into the underground. There were several underground layers inside of the odd temple, something that really annoyed Lara, who realize that the relic hunting had become something quite more complicated than she expected.
Kneeling at the edge of the stone balcony where Lara stood, she calculated the best route to jump down there and track the bloody relic that she was seeking. However, before she could start her descent, one of the side doors down the main hall opened, and a fleshy ogre thing walked inside, dragging with him a groaning victim.
Lara froze, as she recognized the victim being dragged as one of the guides that she had contracted to bring her to the expedition grounds. The poor man was beaten black and blue, and Lara had to wince at the slashes and brutal treatment that the poor sod seemed to have suffered. The ogre thing was dragging him, the beast was a mixture of transparent skin, spurs of bone over shoulders, chests, and a deformed face with twisted teeth. These beasts are completely unnatural, so much, Lara could gather, she already had experience with the occult and the supernatural, but these things were a step above what she knew.
The ogre was dragging the guy into one of the mouth pillar things, and Lara, after seeing what the purple swinging tongue of the pillar had done to the nearby surfaces, knew that she had to intervene before the guy was necrotized to the bone by the demented purple tongue.
Lara jumped out of the higher ground, twirled in the air, and landing on another balcony, tool aim with her gun and short a couple of bullets to the ogre. Kneeling to couch the fall, Lara pirouetted over the edge of the balcony that she had landed, and twirling a couple of times, shot another bullet and grabbed a stone protuberance to correct her fall and get closer to the layer that she was aiming for.
The first two bullets landed true on the chest of the thing, but it did not affect the ogre at all, beyond making him groan in surprise, and seek out the menace. The third bullet tore a good chunk of the side of the face of the ogre, whose eyes, to call them something instead of pools of putrid green glows, focused on Lara as the ogre finally found what has attacked him.
Lara, whose mastery of parkour was to be seen to be believed, jumped down another level, shooting again, and landing of a straight stone spike that would leave her run all the way over the open space with the flesh pillar and skid down to the ground via some slimy protuberances that seemed petrified around the flesh pillars with twisted mouths.
Lara almost lost her balance over the spike, when the ogre, in a demonstration of strength, tossed the victim into one of the twisted tongues, that caught the screaming victim and shove it into the biggest mouth at the base of the pillar. Lara's stomach churn in disgust at the sounds of chewing that came from the mouth, as it; as cruelly and gruesomely as it could; reduced the poor man to mulch, and swallowed the gory remains.
Angered, Lara skidded all the way down to the ground, always pelleting the ogre with bullets, making the beast blood and suffer for the murder that he had committed, and when the ogre tried to charge her, Lara dexterously jumped over him, and send a burst of bullets to the top of his head, ripping part of the head and the upper torso of the ogre. Even with its supernatural resilience, the beast fell down to the floor, and proceed to bleed all over it.
Lara stopped mid reload when she noticed the blood flowing under her boots, and into a hole at the base of one of the pillars. The blood climbed to a withered black vein, that suddenly erupted with red pulsating life, and started to beat like a living heart. There is no need to say that Lara was utterly repulsed by everything that she was seeing, having flashbacks of the nightmares that she experienced after the horrid amalgamation of chainsaw and human baby head that Lara encountered in one of her worst expeditions.
An ululating howl came from the other pathways down the open ground where Lara stood, and that took Lara out of her disgust and made her promptly reload her guns. She still had three more clips, forty-five bullets for each gun in total. Considering the amount of firepower that was needed to put down one of these things, Lara was feeling a crept of doubt and fear climbing up her spine.
From the pathways down, another trio of the flayed gorillas run out of their caves and started a run to reach the platform where Lara was already waiting for their arrival. Lara´s eyes widened and felt her blood run cold, when another abomination, a new one, stumbled out of one of the caves.
The horrible thing was like a stretched frog, boar-like eyeless head, hairless white, sick-like, skin, and a round snout like the top of the head of a sperm whale. The abomination was easily ten feet tall, walking on all fours like a dog, but with elongated arms that allow it to palm and scratch the ground that it walked on with nails the size of Lara´s head.
Lara really, really, should have brought a bigger weapon. Shit like this always happened when she was just doing a quick reckon, and with any luck, snatch the objective cleanly before anything could go wrong with the usual traps, guardians, and assorted obstacles that any relic hunter had to face.
With a loud boom, one of the pillars of the room exploded in a shower of gore and flesh chunks that Lara avoided by jumping back, and with an agility that would leave Olympic gymnasts green with envy, she climbed a rock at the edges of the room. The squelches of the meat of the pillars; Lara realized that it was meat, not stone, what conformed the majority of the pillar structure, much to her already big disgust; falling to the floor, covered the gurgling sounds of the frog monster, as it augmented his hurry to reach up.
Blood flowed all over the place, as the broken pillar was a broken faucet, and Lara's jaw hit the floor when several of the flayed gorillas; or the pieces remaining; fell to the ground like a soft, gruesome, and disgusting rain. But such an unpleasant picture was not what has stunned Lara, but the figure standing on the edge of the broken pillar.
Indifferent to the massacre, the blood, and the chunks of broken corpses around, the unholy child of Hulk and Jason Voorhes stood over the hole in the wall, eyeing everything with glowing yellow orbs on the darkness behind his skull-like mask. The eyes of the masked hulking figure widened when he saw Lara standing over one of the rocks.
"Oh, shit". The masked hulk spoke in a very American accent and Lara had to blink in incredulity a couple of times, unable to correlate the voice and the body.
That was Rick Taylor, the average Joe Rick Taylor, who was now seven feet and half-tall wall of pure muscle with a scary white skull-like mask. Now, Lara has seen some twisted things, but it was a good thing that she can be still be blindsided by unexpected occurrences like these. Though, Lara really hoped that Taylor was on her side.
Jumping down to the ground, Taylor tossed to the side the head of the strange zombie-like thing that he had in his hand, and sheepishly scratched the back of his head. Only for that gesture, Lara felt a wave of relief. Any sane slasher-like thing, would not be this socially awkward.
"This is awkward", chuckled Taylor.
"Deal with the other abominations, explanations later?", smiled Lara, staring at Taylor over the rim of her red glasses.
It was quite curious to see how the mask moved almost organically to mimic the action of Taylor raising an eyebrow, before the lad turned around and saw the frog thing, and the other three flayed gorillas. However, Lara soon lost any amusement when the lad saw the mouth on the pillar and froze.
"Fuck, a bloody Mouth Guardian". Taylor growled in annoyance, and Lara would have wanted to make some questions.
However, the things were about to reach them, and Lara readied her guns, but before she could start shooting, a warning from Taylor make her stop, and well, seriously wonder about the sanity of the guy.
"Do not kill them, shove them into the mouth!". Shouted Taylor as he clashed with the incoming gorillas.
Lara stood quiet for a second, not entirely believing what she was hearing, but when Taylor punched one of the gorillas three meters up the air and with a devastating upside-down punch caved the top of the head of the other, Lara raised her guns and watched the spectacle.
Rick was not amused, in fact, Rick was utterly annoyed.
This was supposed to be a very simple job. Find an underground tomb, proving the existence of a Mayan dynasty that was a myth more than a fact, collect the paycheck, and be back at home. There were bills to pay, and as much as TM insisted on going in carnage runs, Rick did not want to kill more than it was necessary.
"Heresy", came the laughing, echoing voice of the mask.
The Terror Mask, a prisoner of the Corrupted ones that flipped them the bird, and screwed completely one of their chances to make a foothold on the material world, had a deal with Rick. And the mask did deliver, Rick can agree on that, unfortunately, after what happened in Arkham, Rick and the mask were fated to be together.
Rick Taylor was a screwed up child, who, since his early days, was able to listen to the whispers of the Corrupted ones. That would have screwed up anyone, but, Rick found his anchor of sorts. During his teenage years, Rick found Jennifer, another student like him, who had a cheerful attitude that Rick loved beyond words. Jenny stabilized him, with her around, the horrors at the corner of his mind, the whispers of twisted madness did not bother him at all.
Then, that motherfucker of West came along, kidnapped Jenny, almost killed Rick, forced him to make a pact with the Terror Mask, and screw Rick´s life forever.
The pact with the Terror Mask was very clear and straightforward.
When Rick was about to die, stabbed by one of the many abominations that plagued the West Manor, the mask offered him the deal, the mask can heal him, give him strength, allow him to save Jenny. On the downside, Rick was now the wearer of the Terror Mask.
"Until Jen is safe back in your arms, you are mine".
Those were the words of the Terror Mask, and with hope shining in Rick´s heart, he carved a violent and bloody path all over the haunted mansion; and through some time shenanigans due to the influence of the Corrupted ones; until a dramatic conflict on the cliff behind the manor. Rick ripped the head of one of the avatars of the corrupted ones, but when he had Jenny finally back on his arms and was about to get the mask off him, the mask denied such an event.
After all, Jenny has never been in his hands again.
Since that bad day, the worst of his life, Rick submerged himself in his studies, shunning practically everything that was not his job, and making the crusade to screw with the Corrupted ones as his own.
Terror Mask was more than delighted to have a partner in crime, the Corrupted Ones are eternal after all, and they will try to shove themselves into the world again. The fucker of the West Manor was just the latest attempts of the Corrupted Ones to gain a foothold in the world. It did not work as neither the Corrupted Ones, nor West, wanted, but it had the consequence of creating a monster that will forever oppose them.
When Rick accepted working with the infamous Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider, he was just expecting a cozy job. Put her in the right direction, let her do the job, she would have never believed him, no one does, so Rick no longer bothered by trying to explain to anyone when the Corrupt Ones are close, or their work is nearby.
This place reeked of the Corrupt Ones, but it was faint, frankly, there were sacrificial sites in Mexico that were worse than this place. Sure enough, Rick was convinced that it would be easy to wait for the night, jump in, smash whatever shit the Corrupted Ones had cooked, and be back to camp, just in time to applaud the arrival of Croft with her price.
Of course, Murphy had to oppose such a good plan, and when Rick was enjoying some coffee on the main camp, a bunch of minions from the Corrupt Ones attacked the camp. With the usual unholy amount of violence, they ripped apart the few guys that Croft has hired for the expedition, but when they tried to pull that one on Rick, Terror Mask came to play and, literally, Rick tore their arms and shove it down their throats and up their asses.
Brutal, gruesome, cruel violence was just Tuesday for Rick and Terror Mask.
Using the third minion as a springboard, dodging the savage strike that it tossed at Rick, Rick jumped in the air, grabbed the airborne first minion that he had punched, and tossed it to the Mouth Guardian. The eternally hungry mouth chewed the little shit with ample happiness. During his adventures on the West Manor and other timelines, Rick had to feed a lot of this fuckers, and to make it all worse, only accepted living bodies, corpses did not work.
That´s why Rick had told Croft to do not to shot the incoming beasts, sure some potshots will help to weaken them, but Croft was famous for being a professional, and that means that she was a sharpshooter, and could kill them before Rick could toss them to sate the hunger of the Mouth Guardian.
As soon as Rick landed, he went for the third wanker and punched the spur coming his way. Rick's strength was vastly superior, and the muscles of the minion were reduced to a broken mess. Giving a step forward, Rick grabbed the beast by the upper side of its mouth, and after raising it over his head, Rick slammed the thing a couple of times onto the floor, and toss it to the Mouth Guardian.
The third, and last of the smaller minions, jumped at Rick´s back and savagely clawed his back with his crude natural bone spurs, shredding Rick´s flesh and sending his blood flying all over the place. With a grunt, completely ignoring the chunks of his flesh being torn apart, Rick extended his hand, grabbed one of the hand blades of the minion, and used it to slam the minion on the floor.
With a twist and a pull, the arm of the minion was separated from the body of the minion, and then Rick used it to bitch-slap the minion a couple of times and tossing the torn appendage to the side, Rick kicked the minion onto the mouth, who kept chewing his victims with gusto.
During all this battle, Rick was conscious that the only reason why he had not been forced to deal with the frog bastard, is because Croft has been entertaining the thing, jumping all over the upper floors and showering the monster on bullets. Rick was very grateful for it, but he knew that the 45. Caliber of Croft was lethal against the lesser minions, but the upper layer of these Corrupted wankers can soak an absurd amount of bullets before they fell.
Rick pick up speed and jumped over the beast, before slamming both fists over the bulbous head of the frog beast, forcing it to crush his tusked lower jaw into the floor. The beast tried to emit a howl, but with the sudden impact, he lost any air inside of him, and only emitted a guttural snort.
"Portal is open", informed Terror Mask to Rick. "Kill the motherfucker already".
On the edge of his perception, Rick saw the portal inside of the Mouth Guardian opening and agreed with Terror Mask. Stretching his arm to the side, Rick burn the power that the Terror Mask granted to him with each battle, and two long bone spurts emerged from his forearms, and with a violent swing, Rick sliced the upper part of the bulbous head of the minion, sending the cut flying to the ceiling and splattering it, making blood and brain matter fell all over Rick, much to the laughing approval of Terror Mask.
Raising his arms again; this time sheathing the bone blades; and with a loud shout of effort, Rick crushed the head with a double fist smash, sending the head, and a good part of the chest, flying in every direction, painting the walls, floor, and ceiling of the open room.
"Oooohhh, nice one Rick", chuckled Terror Mask in approval.
Chucking, Rick focused on absorbing the blood into him, feeding Terror Mask, and by so, healing the damages that the minion had done to his back. In time, with more and more blood, Rick has grown quite resilient. However, the minions are creatures of impossibility, abominations that defied logic and common sense, and their natural weapons are capable of shredding steel, even if bone should not be able to do that naturally.
"Having fun?", came the amused voice of Croft behind Rick.
The woman was reloading her guns, she has used a lot of ammo and still has something left?. How much ordinance does this woman carry on a normal basis?. Also, where, with that green, tight, skinsuit there is not a lot of space to store anything.
And then realizing that he has been checking his boss, much to his surprise, as he has not done that to any woman, not since Jen was taken from him. Shutting down that line of thought, and telling Terror Mask to shut up after he called him a pussy for still carrying a torch for Jenny, Rick focus his attention on the British adventurer.
For his part, Lara was quite impressed, and a bit scared, of the hulking lad, and the obvious supernatural abilities that he possessed. Those muscles, the kind of muscles that Lara admitted were perfection incarnate, along with the glowing eyes, the bone blades, and well, how he was absorbing blood through the skin, told Lara that the old song was something else.
"Something like that", chuckled Rick, answering Croft. "Sorry about the expedition".
Rick blinked, and then facepalmed, again, telling Terror Mask to shut up, as the eldritch being was laughing his as off and congratulating Rick for being the smoothest operator ever.
Lara, by her part, shook her head, dispelling a bit the apprehension that she was feeling. The American slasher film reject was hardly the scariest thing on the house, even if he seemed capable of smashing those blasted monsters with easiness. Lara suspected that the lad had a lot of experience fighting these things, and she was curious about the history behind his powers and whatever this demented tomb really was.
"Ey, who is taking my blood?". Suddenly Terror Mask protested, and Rick stiffened. Action mirrored by Lara at the sudden reaction of the masked hulk.
Quickly, Rick scanned the room, and once his eyes fell upon the blood vines that had been feeding on the blood of the monster that Rick has killed. Cursing, an action that Terror Mask mirrored, Rick turned to Croft, and pointing out to the pulsating vines, Rick made the question.
"That was like that when you entered the room?", the urgency of Taylor's question alarmed Lara, that shook her head with a raised eyebrow.
"No, it became like that when I killed that one", pointed Lara to the ogre that she had killed beforehand.
"Shit!, Rick-o, that bitch is going to explode!", announced Terror Mask.
As soon as the eldritch creation, the former slave of the Corrupted Ones, and now their most vicious enemy, the vines started to grow at an alarming rate, pulsating with reddish energy, the kind of red energy that hurt the eyes just by seeing it, a remnant of a touch of the Corrupted, whose source of nourishment is suffering and pain.
"What the…?" was about to ask Lara, when out of nowhere, Rick hugged her, due to his massive arms and body, Lara was like a small child in the arms of an adult, and she was practically blind under the steel-like muscles that hugged her.
The indignant protest of Lara died on her throat when the vines exploded, shoving her and Taylor into the open mouth of the Mouth Guardian creature, the last thing that Lara listened was the pained voice of Taylor, who has soaked the worst of the explosion.
"Close your eyes!", ordered Taylor, and Lara obeyed and they were shuffled into the energy void inside of the Mouth Guardian.
The next Lara knows is both of them landing on a sand surface, rolling for a bit, still carrying the inertia of the explosion with them before they finally stopped. Lara quickly disentangled herself from the arms of Taylor and was about to say something, when her protest died in her throat at the visage of Taylor.
Even with all the impressive musculature that he had, the explosion; the same explosion that would have vaporized her, Lara reminded herself; had torn apart his back, revealing the broken bones under the flesh, the charred organs, and way too many stones and bone debris plunging in his insides.
All in all, Taylor looked worse than roadkill.
Groaning, Taylor shook his head, and slowly started to get up, in front of the astonished eyes of Lara; who noticed that she still had her glasses with her, the red tint was not just the worrying amount of blood cackling Taylor´s body; his body sucked all the blood over him inside and his wounds healed at impossible speeds.
With a final groan, and twisting his neck to sides, making it crack loudly a couple of times, Taylor looked as if he has not been torn apart by an explosion. In fact, Lara studying the exceptional body of the man in front of her, dare to say that he looked even fitter than before.
Taylor shuffled a bit uncomfortable with Lara´s intense stare, and Lara realized that she has been ogling the muscular guy, mentally chastising herself, Lara raised her eyes from the perfect masculine eye candy in front of her, and staring at the glowing eyes under the eye sockets of the mask, she spoke.
"Would you kindly explain now?". Despite the British politeness of the words, it also carried steel, and Rick could not but felt as if he was a boy that has been caught with his hands in the cookie jar.
"It's a long story", sighed Rick, scratching the back of his head. "And we have other problems to worry about". Rick observed his surroundings. "Also, you really need to clean the blood on you".
Lara raised an eyebrow, but with a quick glance, she recognized that she was covered in the disgusting blood of those things, splattered all over her when Taylor smashed the frog thing, and the vines exploded with crimson fury. Also, Lara did not recognize her surroundings beyond the fact that they were on an unknown beach of some sort, with broken totems, and a small cottage in the distance that looked abandoned.
Taylor and she walked to the cottage, as it was the first building nearby, and as Taylor explored the insides, Lara took the chance to get rid of some of her clothes, being left on her undies. Rick exited the cottage, carrying some clothes for her, remnants of an old tourist spot, and informing her that they were on an abandoned tourist resort at Garrido Island, on Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.
The very non-amused glare of Lara, not only for being caught with her pants half-down but for the absurd words of Rick, soon turned into astonishment, when she did take out of her backpack her GPS and confirmed that they were indeed on the northern corners of the Garrido Island.
Rick made a strategic retreat by jumping into the waters on the small port that the abandoned resort had, leaving Croft time to digest the news, and clean herself, along with got some clothes on her.
Now, Terror Mask howling and catcalling on his head did not help, and Rick had no problems in admitting that Croft was quite the bombshell, but this was not the time.
Terror Mask deadpanned; something that made Rick wonder how the fuck an intangible entity inside of his head was capable of pulling that off; and with enough sarcasm to peel the paint off the walls, Terror Mask reminded Rick that he had a kill count the size of the revenue of a small country, yet was unable to speak with the gorgeous British woman without having fucking flashback about Jenny.
It was a common discussion between the two of them. Even after all the time that has passed since the clusterfuck of the West Manor, Rick can not forget about Jenny, and whenever he is in the presence of a beautiful woman, Rick felt as if he was betraying her.
Rick knew that he was not being rational, that he was hurting himself more than anything else, however, Jenny was the only reason why Rick did not go to the deeper end, with the Corrupted influence 24/7 on him, not to mention that Rick did love Jenny with all his heart, and her loss was something that hurt him worse than any wound that he had ever suffered. And due to his crusade screwing up Corrupted One shenanigans, vicious wounds are guaranteed.
Curiously, Croft was the first woman that Rick has ever felt a spark of attraction to. The British woman did share some qualities with Jenny, but she was completely different from the cheerful student that Jenny was. Smart, capable, strong of mind and body, hardly a surprise that Lara Croft was so respected in the archaeological circles and in the relic hunting, aka tomb raiding, business.
After some time cleaning up, they reunited at the beach chairs. They were clean enough to be of use, they even had enough luck to found a bottle of booze that survived the closure of the resort. Sure, the booze was a bit past the expiration date, but at this point, none of the two give a shit about that.
"You owe me a history", smiled Croft, watching with curiosity how Taylor´s mask receded back into his flesh, leaving the man with his broken jeans and snickers.
Lara did notice that even without the mask, Taylor was definitely ripped, at the level that some professional athletes would have love to have abs of half the quality of what she was watching.
"Ha!", barked Taylor in dark humor, "yes, I do".
Taking a swing of the booze, Lara picked up the bottle next, and give time to the man to collect his thoughts.
"Okay, I take that you are familiar with Lovecraft Myths", started Taylor and Lara nodded. "Well, Lovecraft had it half right", dropped the bomb Taylor, and the flat expression of Lara signaled him that a lot more explanations will be needed.
"The idea of the Old Ones, eldritch being beyond human comprehension, all that stuff", continued Taylor, "all of them were relatively right. There is something out there. They are called the Corrupted, and they are basically Cthulhu if the good old octopus head would feed on pain, suffering, blood, madness, cruelty, and dementia, with a side dish of agony and insanity".
"That´s….", Lara found herself at a lack of words. "Difficult to believe".
"Understandable", Taylor took another swing of the shared bottle, frowning at a memory. Speaking about those things must be something painful for him if the body language that Lara was reading was right.
"But they are real". The tone of Taylor was of absolute certainty, and Lara has seen the mask, the monsters, and the portal that had dropped them at the other side of a freaking continent. "And they will not stop until they have consumed us all".
"Where do they come from?", asked Lara, quite surprised about the existence of these things, these eldritch horrors. "How come no one has ever found about them?".
"Well, I can only offer you what West ranted at me when I was pummeling his fucking face", shrugged Taylor with venom in his voice when he spoke about Doctor West, the missing eccentric doctor of Miskatonic.
"They are everything and nothing", started Taylor to repeat the words of the deceased doctor.
"The many-angled ones, unknowable, timeless, eternal. They inhabit the Abyss, the gulf between what´s said, and what´s understood, the place from whence stems all human suffering, Mankind can only trace their jagged silhouette around the shadow they cast across the world. They are famine, conflict, genocide, they are now and forever, amen".
Truth to be told, that was the description that Terror Mask give to Rick when he asked about the Corrupted. But Rick preferred to kept Terror under wraps, for now, the last thing that Rick needed right now, is to tell Croft that his mask was actually another eldritch being with an eternal grudge and hate for the Corrupted and that wanted to make them suffer for eternity.
The same eternity that the Corrupted had Terror Mask as a slave, Terror Mask wanted them to suffer. Quite the crusade, but Rick joined it willingly after the Corrupted took Jenny from him.
"Very Lovecraftian, indeed", nodded Lara drinking her own share of the booze. Quite a strong rum they have found. "Again, how come no one has ever spoken about these things, at least in our small, relic hunting business".
"Because the few that survive the touch of the Corrupted ended up insane or dead", sentenced Rick. "The Corrupted twist everything that touch, whoever starts to dig in the Corrupted becomes part of the problem. Some things should be torched with extreme prejudice and buried forever".
"On what category do you fall?", pointed out Lara with a dry tone.
"The insane", answered Rick without missing a beat. "Just a very functional insane guy".
"And the mask, and the unholy strength?". Asked Lara, very curious about the entire thing, but slowly realizing the kind of landmine that she has stepped on.
Rick made the mask appear on him had, the white mask flow like a biological fluid before it solidified in the hand of Rick. The glowing eyes of the mask stared at Lara, and she could felt the smugness that the glowing eyes irradiated. She really did not like that eyes, something on the mask rubbed her all the wrong way.
"The Terror Mask", explained Rick, making the mask bury itself in his arm again.
"Even after all this time, I am unsure about what the hell is. The best I can offer is that is a weapon, that the ancient Aztecs or Mayans built, that´s what it had traces of being a Mesoamerican burial mask. The mask is, well, a weapon, it grants unholy strength and vitality, natural weapons, regeneration, but always with a cost".
Rick massaged the bridge of his nose and frowned. That gesture was odd, Lara thought, it was as if Taylor was listening to something and he did not like it at all. How curious. Sighing, Taylor focused back on the conversation.
"Blood for power, power for blood, that´s the name of the game", almost barked Taylor, and Lara knew that, that was a verbatim quote.
Someone tell him that, and he repeated it. Lara assumed that West was the one from where the knowledge of the Corrupted comes. Following a line of deductions and logic jumps, Lara supposed that Taylor became embroiled with the Corrupted during whatever happened at West Manor in Arkham, getting the mask, and suffering one of the worst causes of survivor´s guilt, the one that you can not speak of what you have seen without being considered insane, and be put back into an asylum.
"I take that everything came from what happened in Arkham". Lara swirled the liquid inside of the rum bottle, took a swing, and passed the bottle to Taylor, relaxing a bit on the beach chair.
Lara has already given a call to her butler, Winston, to book up a flight for her, and her companion. Winston was a hyper-competent wanker, even if he was already in his eighties. One of these days, Lara will have to hire a new butler, but so far, she feared that none of them would be as good as Winston, neither as utterly loyal to the Craft family as Winston was.
"Yeah", nodded Taylor with a deep sigh. "My girlfriend, Jenny", the voice of Taylor carried deep emotions, and Lara could empathize with him, it was the same kind of tone that she used whenever the topic of her father came along, "wanted to interview the infamous Doctor West, once we reached the manor, that motherfucker just kidnapped her, and after I almost die, only saved by the Terror Mask, I battled the fucker all over the place, along with a cavalcade of abominations like the ones that you have already seen".
"But Jenny did not make it". That was not a question.
"Jenny did not make it". The deep hurt in the voice of Taylor echoed with Lara.
Lara lost her father to the ridiculous envies of other archaeologists and relic hunters, for years, the scholars laughed at Croft for being nothing more than a fake, however, she proved her father right and enjoyed seeing the non-sayers choke on their words. Alas, the pain of the loss of Lara´s father was a wound that never really healed, and Lara could empathize with the kind of pain that Taylor suffered, so similar to her own.
"But how come no one has ever spoken about these things?", changed the topic, Lara. "These abominations are not something that you could sweep down the carpet".
"Well, a mixture of insanity, indifference, disbelief, and cosmic shenanigans", chuckled Taylor, making Lara frown in silent demand of a better explanation.
"First of all, the Corrupted are impossible to understand", Rick took the rum bottle from Lara, "at best, anyone that has even tried to commune with them has grown completely mad, and that soon destroys any social life, as basic, common sense and decency went through the window".
"Second, the Corrupted are, well, you have seen the flesh thingies, the Mouth Guardians, the monsters, they are things that really should not exist, and believe me, what you have seen is just the tip of the iceberg".
Rick took a deep swing of the rum, sighing, and frowning at the horrible contraptions that West had in his manor and that just the equivalent of a kid playing with clay-doh, as Terror Mask informed him during his quest all over the demented place.
"The technical name is Necrobiology, the study of the dead matter. The basis is that at the moment of death, or in the blood of all living beings, something called Necro energy exists and with the adequate equipment and knowledge, well, biology, life, and death become suggestions more than guidelines".
Lara blinked at the explanations, but let Taylor continue with it. Taylor had yet to explain to her why any of the assholes that she knew from the relic hunting business had not any finger in such a gruesome, yet very beneficial, pie.
"Another reason is that the longer one associates with the Corrupted, the values that ruled over one´s life previously no longer matter". Taylor's voice filled with disgust at a memory of his encounters with other Corrupted sites.
"Money?. Wasting over collecting useless pieces of paper when entire dimensions are at the fingertips?. What need does an immortal have for money?. Blood, death, those are the coins that make the Corrupted economy flow".
"Family?. Love ones?. The flesh is temporary, necrobiology can defy the logic of life and death as we know it. Worry about dying or decaying when with a new infuse of the blood of dead flesh, godly strength and vitality can be achieved?".
"So on a so forth", deeply sighed Taylor, and Lara felt the tiredness in his voice. "That´s perhaps the main reason, whoever gets entangled with the Corrupted, lost sight of anything that is not the demented gospel of the eldritch beings, and, well, that gospel is anathema to the modern life".
"It makes a horrid amount of sense", shared a sigh of her own Lara. "It´s like one of those cults, but with the realization that the gods that they worship are actually real, and the biggest wankers in existence".
"Crude, but tremendously accurate", chuckled Taylor. "Anyone, stupid enough, to dwell into the Corrupted secrets will end, either insane, dead, or twisted into a monstrous parody of themselves".
"Still, I am surprised that I have not found more of these Corrupted". Confessed Lara. "The closest thing that I have found beforehand was an abomination that looked like the unholy child of a chainsaw and a baby".
"Ah, Bighead", simply noted Rick. "I have seen one of those before, they are rare, but not less disgusting".
"They had names?", raised an eyebrow, Lara. She was about to take a swing from the bottle and saw that it was practically ended. With a wave, Taylor offered her to finish the bottle. In the meantime, Taylor continued to name some of the abominations that they have found.
"Classifications, more than names". Corrected Taylor.
"The bone spurs gorillas are Ghasts, the bigger ones Teratoids, and the biggest one a foul beast". Quickly classified Taylor. "There several other monstrosities around, the only thing that they shared is their bestiality, their bloodlust, and the eldritch resilience that they have to all kinds of damage".
"So, bullets are useless, lovely". Dryly commented Lara depositing the empty bottle in an abandoned trash can near them with an accurate throw that would have landed her a spot in any basketball team.
"Not entirely", pointed out Taylor. "You carry a good iron, and it's more than enough to the usual dangers, but against the minions of the Corrupted, you need a lot more punch. Think along the lines of elephant guns".
"Uh". Blinked Lara, having a flashback when she had to run from a dinosaur in the Himalayas. How come has she not started to carry around a big game hunting gun already?. That reminded her that her price has evaporated, and she hissed.
"Ah, shite". Cursed Lara. "The explosion must have wiped out the place".
"Yeah, I have seen those traps before, the explosion is devastating, the entire structure must have collapsed, and I will consider it a blessing, another entry point of the Corrupted closed".
"And with the collapse, the relic that I was aiming for", snorted Lara.
"That reminds me", massaged his chin, Taylor. "You hired me to track down the place, but you never told me what you were after. I thought it was to demonstrate the existence of the Itxizalti Dynasty".
"The golden "Mouth of the Great Corrupter"", shrugged Lara, already giving up in recovering the relic. "Supposedly it was down there, somewhere".
Taylor stared at her, blinked a pair of times, and started to laugh. A bit taken aback by that, Lara observed Taylor over the edge of her glasses, with a very non-amused stare.
"Want to share the joke with the rest of the class?". She suggested, in the very same tone that any general would have issued a terminal order.
"You found it", chuckled Taylor, still holding his laughter. "It was the Mouth Guardian".
"Pardon?", confusion painted the voice of Lara. "What had gold anything to do with the teleporting mouth".
"It was not the golden mouth", cleaned a tear from his eyes, Taylor.
"It was the mouth that eats gold. The Mouth Guardian was offered gold; possibly thinking that it will appease it, but the Mouth Guardians only operate with blood. They have to sacrifice people to the Mouth Guardian, then the Mouth Guardian will open a portal, and the gold was sent all over the place".
The frustrated scream of Lara, only made Taylor laugh harder.