Chapters It was just rain, Daring thought. She didn’t pause to glance at the cloudless sky. Maybe it was dew off the jungle plants. She didn’t pause to glance at what was dripping down her forelegs.
Here she was again, on the run after narrowly escaping. The temple miles behind her held the wreckage of Ahuizotl’s latest scheme, and at least a few priceless artifacts that had been unfortunate victims of the fight.
She had never learned why he always seemed to show up at every set of ruins she entered. At the moment, she was just focused on getting away.
This was a position Daring had been in before, too often if she was being honest. The sneaking suspicion that it had finally caught up to her kept trying to slip into the back of her mind.
It had started out just like any other expedition. Of course, one of her many recurring adversaries and competitors would probably complicate things, but that was nothing Daring hadn’t seen before. She was going to get into the small jungle temple, find the mysterious Mortal Amulet and get out. Her plans rarely survived first contact with whatever obstacle, monster, or adversary got in her way, but that was almost part of the plan, too.
What was not part of the plan had been coming up short on her research. There was very little information available about the amulet, not even when Princess Twilight had gotten her access to the restricted section in the Canterlot Castle Library as a favor. Other than the amulet was supposedly protected by some extremely powerful magic, there wasn’t much to go on.
“Shrouded by a curse holding a fate worse than death” was one line that had stood out. Whatever that meant.
Now, Daring was beginning to get an idea. She put that out of her mind for the moment, along with her pain, the lethargy in her limbs, and the growing chill she felt.
She wasn’t sure how far she’d gone by the time she finally decided to stop for a breather. Several miles at least. It would have been several dozen if Ahuizotl hadn’t gotten in a shot to her wing. As often as it had happened, Daring was seriously considering body armor. Her aviatrist was growing more and more exasperated with her exploits, each time she returned from an expedition needing a splint.
Based on the setting sun, Daring was sure she was going in the correct direction, towards civilization. She glanced at her back trail. Her legs wobbled, and she more collapsed than decided to sit.
She glanced within her saddle bags, seeing that the amulet was secure. It was a polished black stone, almost seeming to absorb light. Its setting was sliver, engraved and somehow elegant even in its simplicity. A nice-looking piece of jewelry, though not the grandest she’d ever discovered.
Satisfied that it was secure, she closed the flap on her saddlebags and then steeled herself to face what she’d been ignoring for the last few hours. Lowering her head to look down at her barrel and forelegs, her breath caught. She’d never seen so much blood. She’d known she was bleeding, but it was worse than she could have imagined.
Her khaki shirt was completely soaked. Aside from her hoofprints, she’d also probably left an easily identifiable blood trail behind her. If she didn’t stop the bleeding soon, she was in real trouble. As it was, she might not have very much consciousness left.
Doing her best to stay calm, Daring unbuttoned her shirt and looked for the wound. It was high in her chest, and still contained the shard of ancient wood stuck there when the temple had begun to collapse around her.
She was immediately tempted to pull it out, but no, that would only open the wound channel wider. Her previously sandy-colored coat was so utterly sodden with blood that she wasn’t able to tell how fast it was still leaking out of the wound.
Much more calmly than she felt, Daring got up again. The brief rest had left her feeling even more weary, but self-preservation kept her moving. It was still miles more to the nearest settlement. Not city, settlement. There might be a doctor there.
As she turned to resume her trip, a branch snapped in the jungle nearby. Daring froze, but by the time she realized somepony was out there, it was too late. The bushes parted to reveal Dr. Caballeron and half a dozen henchponies surrounding Daring. Would the miseries never cease?
Caballeron smirked, a look Daring had seen far too often. “My my, you’re looking the worse for wear. I don’t even have to beat you up this time before I take what you’ve discovered.”
There was no way she could run. Daring could only hope she was worth more to him alive than dead. And given his previous track record, and the number of times he’d left her to die before, she was going to have to do some quick thinking to prove her worth.
“Have you noticed the temple collapsed?” Daring said. “I was just there and fought Ahuizotl. He was so intent on keeping me from inside that he was willing to destroy it. You’re going to have to dig out.”
Caballeron ran his eyes over her, but quickly looked elsewhere. “But I take it you got the Mortal Amulet before he did? Like you always do?”
“No.” Daring reached into her saddlebag and pulled it out. “I was going to swap this duplicate and leave, but like I said, Ahuizotl was really insistent.”
Caballeron’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying. How could you have known what the amulet looked like before coming?”
In spite of the pain and the blood and the fatigue, Daring forced a smile. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m friends with the Elements of Harmony. They put me in their book.”
She couldn’t push the story too hard. She had to let Caballeron come to her.
“And I suppose next you’re going to tell me that Princess Twilight is expecting you to be back?” he said, rolling his eyes.
“She actually doesn’t know I came,” said Daring. “I had planned to be back before she noticed, but…” She gestured to the jagged piece of wood sticking out of her chest.
Daring took a deep breath, which caused the broken timber to shift uncomfortably amongst her organs. “Look, I’m going to confess to you. I...could use your help. And I could put in a good word about you with Princess Twilight.”
Caballeron glanced at the amulet in her hoof. He glanced up. “If that’s as cursed as I suspect, I wouldn’t want to touch it anyway. You keep it...for now.”
He turned and gestured to his lackeys. “Come on.”
“Wait, where are you going?” said Daring. Forgetting the amulet, she needed help.
“Do I look like a doctor?” said Caballeron. “Well, that kind of doctor?” He gestured to the jungle around them. “Your choices are walk or die right here. If you make it out, then maybe we can find you some help. In the meantime, my History PhD isn’t going to do you much good.”
So she’d gained nothing. Daring grit her teeth and started walking. One stallion, she noticed, fell in behind her. Still carrying the amulet, she slung it around her neck. She might as well wear it; they already knew she had it.
As the sun went down, the forest got darker and darker. Daring’s pain had started to fade, which she welcomed, but a growing hunger had taken its place. That was to be expected, considering the exertion she’d put forth, but it was the strangest craving she’d ever experienced.
When one was mildly injured - stepping on a sharp pebble, for example - the natural compulsion was to lick the wound. Just like a mother kissing a boo boo, the soothing was more mental than anything. The point was, Daring had experienced all manner of scrapes and had tasted her own blood on more than one occasion.
The strange part about it was, the hemorrhaging that covered her front had started to smell good to her. Well of course, she force-rationalized, her body craved what it needed.
The first time she fell, it was a struggle to get up. Daring had tripped over a root or something in the darkening jungle. The second time, it was apparently just over her own hooves.
The thug following her impatiently smoked a cigarette while he watched her struggle. The small glowing end was the only source of light, save the scattered stars that made their way through the jungle canopy above.
The third time Daring fell, it wasn’t even her fault. In the darkness, she ran into the stallion in front of her. Why had they stopped?
“Quiet ,” Caballeron hissed. “I thought I heard-”
There was a scream from just feet in front of her. Daring started to step backwards, but was knocked off her hooves by somepony slamming into her. Something huge whipped through the darkness and there was another cry of pain from behind her. Hooves took off running through the undergrowth, but something with heavy paws bounded after the noise, silencing it.
Daring lay where she had fallen, eyes wide but seeing nothing except darkness and faint patches of sky through the trees. Something large and dark slid over the stars, looming over her. She could barely make out the glint of eyes, catlike and green.
Whatever it was lowered its head and sniffed her. Its nose touched the shaft of wood still poking out of Daring’s chest and it was all she could do to avoid writhing in pain. At least the poke seemed to cause the creature to draw back. Apparently deciding she didn’t smell good enough to eat, it slowly moved away.
There was a scurry to Daring’s side and the creature pounced, taking another life. She closed her eyes and grit her teeth as she heard somepony eaten just feet from her.
There was no way she was getting out of this alive. It was the first time the thought had struck her and finally taken hold. Any help she might have had from an old enemy was now gone. There was no way she could escape from this predator. She sincerely doubted her ability to survive if she had to lie there until morning. In fact, she was wondering if she was going to be able to get up again at all.
Daring slowly reached for her saddlebag. There was exactly one trick she had left to pull.
A year before, she’d had one of her most unusual adventures ever, one she was still struggling to write down. It had involved visitors from other worlds, ancient mirror portals, and too many other magical, metaphysical aspects to fully grasp. Part of the deal to use the castle library for research was letting Princess Twilight look at her draft of this story. She was maybe the only pony who had much insight into mirror-focused teleportation, so the deal was win-win for Daring.
There was a mirror in Canterlot that functioned as a portal to another world. It wasn’t the first one, and Daring had stumbled upon several earlier prototypes in a crypt beneath ruins beneath the ancient castle in the Everfree Forest.
After some trial and error, and more than a little guesswork, they’d managed to learn a few things. She’d parted ways with her new friends with an agreement. In an absolute worse-case scenario, there was one option left.
Daring’s hoof found the small mirror in her saddlebag. She couldn’t see it in the darkness, but she knew the feel. She’d carried it with her constantly.
Just as the portal in the castle could be used to travel to other worlds, so could this compact mirror. It looked like an ordinary mirror, but the magic within would find its counterpart, no matter where it was. However, it was only a single use, and only a one way trip.
But there was no other option. Daring could either die here, or take a chance. In the darkened forest, she could see the glint of the mirror as she held it. She couldn’t summon the strength to release the magic inside. It had to be broken open. Her other hoof groped the nearby ground. There wasn’t a convenient rock.
Daring put it in her mouth and bit down.
There wasn’t much left of the old submarine. Lara Croft sighed into her scuba regulator and began to swim for the surface.
It wasn’t as if she expected the wreck to still be there in its entirety. Being over one hundred years old, not to mention lying close to a rocky shore where it could be battered by waves and picked over by salvagers, the old wreckage didn’t have much of a chance.
At any rate, Lara had come to the Mediteranian on holiday, so missing a hulk from the First World War was only a minor inconvenience.
Palagruža belonged to Croatia, and consisted of nothing more than a few tiny rocky islands. They lay in the Adriatic Sea between Croatia and Italy’s east coast. There was a lighthouse, and that was about it. For the purpose of Lara’s dive, the Italian Royal Navy submarine Nereide had fought its last battle there in 1915. Both names were derived from Greek: palagruža meaning “sea” and nereide being a sea nymph.
Another reason Lara had been drawn there was a fascinating connection to a musical. During World War One, Nereide had been sunk by the Austro-Hungarian submarine U-5 , commanded by none other than Georg von Trapp, the man who would later be the real-life inspiration for the father in The Sound of Music .
Lara headed for the surface, brushing her dark hair away from her facemask. She hadn’t been very deep and was able to surface without decompressing. The small chartered boat floated placidly on the blue sea. Lara had always found summer in the Mediteranian pleasant. It reminded her of seaside holidays in years past with her father.
A giant Maori man was there on the transom to greet her, and Lara accepted his offered hand. He lifted her completely out of the water with just one arm.
“Thank you, Jonah.”
“Lunch, Lara?” he asked as she began to remove her gear.
“What did you make?”
He grinned. “Italian subs.”
Not Lara’s usual fare, not by a mile, but at least they would probably be good. There was a reason she was friends with Jonah. Well, several.
Lara finished removing her tank and wetsuit. She went into the small boat’s cabin to dry off and change out of her bathing suit.
The trip was short and they would be back to Italy that evening, so Lara had only packed one bag. It contained everything she needed for a day of diving, plus a few pieces of equipment that she took everywhere she went.
Everywhere Lara had been was...well, all over the world, really. She’d followed in her father’s footsteps in archeology and had stumbled on an unusual knack for getting into trouble. Not her own, but that of other people who would see ancient artifacts used for their own ends. A death cult had been the most recent. That would have been all well and good if they hadn’t actually made a credible run at starting the apocalypse. After that series of encounters, Lara felt that she had more than earned her vacation.
After she finished changing, she went topside and had lunch with Jonah as he set a course back for shore. Lara checked her satellite connection and used her tablet to review some Croft Foundation paperwork. Adventurous globe-trotting was all well and good, but the bills had to be paid.
Back in the small Italian port later that day, they returned the boat to the marina and carried off their gear. The Fiat Doblò cargo van they had rented was waiting in the parking lot on the pier where they had left it. As Lara loaded her luggage into the back, she paused, noticing a strange light coming from within her knapsack. She’d only seen such a thing once before.
Jonah had noticed too and a worried look crossed his face. Large and capable as he was, he was also the more cautious of the two. He kept his distance as Lara opened her bag and took out a small mirror.
“This is…” she said, as she held it in her hands.
That was all the warning she got. The mirror suddenly flashed with much brighter light than before, leaving her seeing spots. There was a sudden rush of wind and Lara beheld the arrival of two figures.
The first was nearly as large as the van and covered in dark fur. It was vaguely feline in appearance, but only vaguely. It yowled in confusion and its eyes fixed straight on Lara.
Her reflexes were nothing if not life-saving. Lara plunged her hands into her bag and leaped away, just ahead of a clawed paw bigger than her face that gouged the van’s door. She rolled and got up, aiming a pair of Heckler & Koch USP Match pistols.
As bulky as the creature was, there was no guarantee handgun rounds would have much of an effect on it, but that didn’t stop Lara from unloading both guns.
Jonah’s reaction had only been a short moment behind her own. He’d already brandished a short shotgun and began to empty it into the creature.
Caught by attacks from two sides, the overgrown panther leaped atop the van, metal groaning under its weight, and then jumped away from the incoming bullets Apparently misjudging the landing, it skidded over the edge of the pier and splashed into the water.
Lara ran to the edge, reloading, but whatever the thing was didn’t look like it could swim, especially with its injuries. Putting that aside for the moment, she turned to look at what else had arrived.
It was a woman, partially clothed. Her hair was shades of grey, which belied her smooth olive skin. She was also totally covered in blood, which seemed to stem from a fragment of wood stuck in her upper chest.
Without a word between them, Lara and Jonah grabbed her arms and legs and hurriedly loaded her into the back of the van. Lara closed the doors. Jonah jumped in the front seat and started the engine. The gunfire would attract authorities, and the monster and mysterious visitor would not be easy to explain.
As they left the scene, Lara checked the woman, starting at her head and working down. Lara kept finding additional and more worrying injuries. There were shards of glass in her mouth, for God’s sake. Lara also realized she wasn’t breathing.
She started chest compressions, but as she made the first push, the woman’s eyes opened. They were a completely unnatural shade of magenta.
It was only just then that Lara realized the full extent of what had just happened. She’d carried the mirror for so long, since an unexpected discovery had taken her to another world, but had been caught off guard by its activation today. Still, despite the appearance, she instinctively knew who this was. Those eyes, that hair…
“Daring Do?” she said.
The woman blinked, and then smiled as best as she could through a mouthful of broken glass. Her voice was strained, but she said, “Good to see you, Lara.”
Lara’s life had in the last few minutes gone from no problems to, well, at least several. For one, they weren’t getting the deposit back on their rental van, what with giant cat clawmarks all over it. Also, she might very well be afoul of the Italian Police for discharging firearms for which she did not have a local permit. Most pressing, however, was the arrival of a pony from another dimension.
It was that last one that was most complicated. While Lara considered herself a reasonable person, she’d had brushes with what most would describe as magic. That might be the easiest explanation for why Daring Do was now human and in Lara’s world.
Brushing off further explanation was easy in the face of the more serious issue of Daring being injured. Lara herself had survived quite a bit of punishment in her life, but she certainly hadn’t been so thoroughly impaled as Daring had.
“We’re going to need a hospital!” she called to Jonah as he drove the van. She reached up and turned on the light in the back so she could see more clearly. Daring was absolutely drenched in blood.
“Who is that?” he asked, glancing in the mirror.
“Her name is Daring Do. Long story.”
“Does she have ID? I didn’t see any pockets where she could keep it.”
That was true. Daring had arrived wearing a shirt, a necklace, her trademark pith helmet, and that was about it. “We’ll have to put her down as a Jane Doe.”
Daring’s teeth were grit against the pain, but she seemed fully aware. “Lara...I think…”
Lara looked at her and Daring seemed to find resolve and said what was on her mind. “I don’t think it’s that bad.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” said Lara, gesturing.
“No, I mean…” Daring started to sit up. Lara put a hand on her chest to hold her down. Daring settled for just raising her head. She clumsily raised one hand and clutched the stub of the wood that was stuck in her chest. It had been there for hours now.
“See? I’m not even bleeding,” she pointed out.
For the first time, Lara realized that most of the blood was in fact dried. “You’re lucky, then. It’s probably holding your wound closed.”
“I really don’t think that’s it.” Daring felt as if she was rambling, a kind of post-fatigue maniac second wind.
“I really don’t think you’re in a position to judge. Just lie back and-”
Daring yanked it out.
Lara grabbed for her bag to get something to stop up the wound, but paused as she saw that no blood came gushing out. In fact, the wound seemed…merely damp.
“Oh no,” murmored Daring, staring at the hole in her chest. “That...doesn’t look right.”
Lara stared at the wound, which was several inches deep and contained fragments of bone and slivers of wood. And sure enough, it didn’t bleed.
Well, it wasn’t the strangest thing that had happened today. Lara swallowed and tore her eyes away from the cavity in Daring’s chest. “Cancel the hospital, Jonah. But do stop by a pharmacy.”
He stared hard into the rearview mirror, but went back to the road after a moment and didn’t say a word.
Lara helped Daring into a sitting position, kneeling beside her in the back of the van. Daring seemed lethargic, but overall remarkably composed for someone who until recently had been doing an impression of a shishkebab.
“How did this happen?” Lara asked.
Daring opened her mouth and then paused. “Give me a second, I’m trying to decide how far back to start.”
Lara had got most of the story from Daring by the time they arrived at the hotel. Jonah had caught most of it, but had stopped to buy some medical supplies. He wore a look that suggested he didn’t particularly wish to hear what he had missed.
“And so apparently I’m not dead,” Daring finished.
Lara had given her some clothes to cover up and she and Jonah smuggled her upstairs in the hotel. Lara nodded goodbye to him and took Daring with her.
The first order of business was a shower. The bathroom was proportioned for humans, but other than that was not too out of the ordinary to Daring. She paused to look in the mirror.
When she’d first met Lara, it had been in Daring’s world. By now, they’d discussed what they knew about the mirror portals ad nauseum and there was no point further dwelling on the how. Lara had experienced being a pony for a while before they’d gotten her home, taking one of the portable mirrors with her.
Now, it was Daring’s turn to see Lara’s world. Daring was a pegasus - or had been - and the mirror magic didn’t make any sense. She wondered if it would to even Princess Twilight. She could at least see what the magic had done, even if she didn’t understand it.
She actually recognized herself. That helped stave off an identity crisis caused by the body dysphoria. From discussions with Lara during the previous go-round, she knew humans were effectively naked apes. The biggest change for her was definitely the hands. Feet to a lesser extent. She missed her wings, but as much time as she’d spent grounded, she could adjust.
Daring got the feeling that the wealth of touch she experienced from her fingers was wasted on the current state of her body. Aside from jungle dirt, she was still caked in dried, flaking patches of blood. Her own. She was still worried about how she just might have lost it all, leaving nothing left to continue bleeding out. Lara had seemed concerned. That was apparently not something of which humans should have been capable, much less ponies.
She tentatively raised a hand to touch her lips. She’d already spit out the broken fragments of mirror, but the shards had left a few cuts.
Daring turned away from the mirror to avoid looking at the crater in her chest any longer and stepped into the shower, turning on the water. She was slow in washing, getting used to the new sensations and limbs.
As the grime came off, Daring rediscovered the Mortal Amulet, still around her neck. There was no place to put it, so she just left it on.
She was well steamed and cleaned when she was finished. If anything, the moisture seemed to have done her some good. She tried not to think about how she was supposed to rehydrate herself without a functioning circulatory system.
Stepping out of the bathroom, she found Lara sitting on the bed. Lara averted her eyes and Daring remembered the human nudity taboo. Lara certainly hadn’t let her forget it in the other world.
There was a set of clothes on the bed beside Lara. “These may fit.”
Daring was slighter than Lara, but the size was close enough. She started to get dressed. Before she finished buttoning the shirt, fingers struggling with the buttons, Lara stopped her. “We should probably do something about...that.”
Her chest wound hadn’t so much scabbed over as simply gone dry. Daring had tentatively cleaned it in the shower and patted away the water. The towels should probably be considered biohazard now.
“I’ll be honest, I don’t know what to do about this,” said Lara. She used the medical supplies Jonah had bought to disinfect and then pack the wound before covering it with a very large bandage.
“That is one advantage to bare skin,” Daring observed as she worked. “Adhesive bandages are no trouble.”
“I’m still trying to figure out how it missed your heart.” Lara paused, and then took hold of Daring’s wrist, putting her fingertips to the underside.
After a moment, she said quietly, “It didn’t miss your heart, apparently.”
“W-well, this is a problem,” said Daring. She verbally stumbled on. “And so is me, a writer, being unable to say anything more eloquent and expressive than ‘this is a problem.’”
She swallowed, not coming to terms, but trying to stay calm, and lifted the amulet. “I’m going to climb out on a cirrus and say this thing is probably responsible.”
“You said it might contain a curse,” Lara said, looking closer but not touching. “What happens if you take it off?”
Daring took a breath. “I don’t know. That’s why I haven’t.” She looked away. “My plan in coming here was because I didn’t have any other options, but it sure would be nice if you knew something about undead curses.”
“Well,” said Lara, “maybe a little.”
She got up and looked out the window, seeing that the sun had gone down. Turning back to Daring, she said, “Other than that, how do you feel? Maybe some rest would help.”
“Not sure if I could sleep,” Daring replied. She moved a little, checking the bandage on her chest. “I’m hungry, I guess.”
“Why don’t we order some room service and have a night in?” Lara suggested. “We can get started on your...issue tomorrow.”
She picked up her tablet. “How about a movie? Do you like musicals?”
Daring lay awake that night. Lara had slept on the sofa, insisting that Daring take the bed. Aside from the sensations of being in a new body, her mind was still reeling from everything.
They’d already had the talk about what humans ate when Lara appeared in Equestria, so Daring was prepared for the room service menu. What she was not prepared for was how much her body wanted Lara’s steak, completely ignoring her own salad.
“Well, if you want to try it-”
Daring had done more than that, not pausing for silverware, and even licked the plate clean afterwards.
Meat was a new experience, but based on Lara’s reaction, Daring had far overdone it. She should have been disgusted, but it felt like she’d found an addicting drug. This, combined with her apparent lack of heartbeat…
She tried very hard to go to sleep and not think about the first word for her condition that had come to mind.
As she rolled over, the amulet fell against her. She touched it in the darkness. How she was going to get out of this mess, whole again, and back to Equestria, she wasn’t sure. Hopefully Lara knew a few good...necromancers? Was that what she needed?
This was not helping her sleep.
In the morning, Lara was up early. Her back was bad enough despite her young age, and sleeping on the couch didn’t help. Still, she tried to be quiet while Daring was still asleep.
Her friend had changed. There was the obvious, that she was no longer a tan pegasus, but both of them seemed taken aback by her reaction to eating flesh. Lara grimaced. At least Daring seemed to still retain her mind, but without knowing anything about the curse, breaking it soonest was a good idea. She couldn’t let Daring be...well, undead.
Italy was not exactly a hotbed of monster mythology. Combing what she remembered, Lara thought that she would have to go back to ancient Roman history before finding something like that. That decreased their chances of success with some long-lost relic or spell to help Daring. Time erased all, and even stone ruins disappeared given enough years.
Still, maybe Lara had overlooked something, so she did a few searches. One early result was Laguna del Mort. However, despite its name, it was actually a nudist beach. Broadening her search parameters turned up a few other leads.
As Lara had suspected, most results were from older mythology. Maybe they would have to do some diving in old dusty vaults. She’d been petitioning the Vatican Library for some time now, though now that there was an urgent need, she might have to take matters into her own hands.
No, not break into the Vatican - the Swiss Guard was nothing to be trifled with - but she had a few contacts that might be of help.
Lara looked up as Daring shifted in bed and sat up. “How are you this morning?”
“Hungry.” Daring looked troubled, even as she said it.
“We can do something about that,” Lara said.
She started to get up, but Daring said, “Could we…” She paused, ducking her head. In a barely audible voice she said, “...try something raw?”
Lara stared at her. “I don’t know what your world’s pop culture had to say about things like this-”
“Zombies?” Daring broke in, flatly.
Lara hesitated, but reluctantly replied, “Zombies.”
They were both quiet for a long moment. Daring took a breath and straightened up. “I don’t want to be ‘that’ pony who tries to hide it and dance around the issue. Lara, if we can’t cure me, then I want you to know that I won’t resent you for putting a bullet in my brain. Don’t let me be a monster.”
This time, it was Lara’s turn to look away. She didn’t reply, just nodded.
They went to find Jonah and then the three of them went in search of a breakfast place that served steak tartare.
“Did you manage to turn up anything?” Lara asked Jonah over breakfast.
“Roman gods and monsters,” said Jonah.
“About what I’d found,” Lara agreed. She showed him her tablet, displaying a family tree of sorts of mythological gods.
“If we’re thinking of-” Jonah glanced at Daring, sitting beside Lara “-flesh eating, then chief offenders are going to be Tantalus and Saturn.”
“Tantalus was Greek,” Lara pointed out, indicating the chart.
Jonah nodded. “Of course, there is some overlap between Greek and Roman gods, often just a difference in name. Tantalus comes up in many myths about food, for example being the one who stole ambrosia from the gods and brought it back to his people. As penance for that, he offered up his son as a sacrifice to the gods - by cooking and serving him as a buffet. That was too much, even by the standards of most gods back then, and they had the boy revived.”
Daring swallowed hard and looked guiltily at her plate, which merely contained traces of cow’s blood.
“We may have to do some more research,” Lara lamented.
Jonah went on. “By coincidence, there’s a museum of ancient history opening tomorrow evening in Salzburg, Austria. We happen to know the generous benefactor who donated his entire collection.”
Lara thought for a moment. “Werner Von Croy?”
Jonah nodded.
Von Croy, the senior, and his son had both encountered Lara at various points in the past. They’d...competed, occasionally. So it was possible that Von Croy would not be pleased to see her.
Still, it was a lead, and if she knew Von Croy’s collection, it might be a good one. Even if they didn’t find what they were seeking, it might yet be an educational visit.
After checking out of the hotel, they chartered a flight to Austria. That avoided trying to get Daring a ticket on a commercial airliner and the consequential security involved. Plus, the small Cessna Caravan gave them a much better view of the Alps as they flew over, some of the taller peaks snowcapped. It was a cloudless day with perfect visibility.
As Lara suspected, Daring appreciated it. Lara had told her of flying machines, but the experience of passing smoothly overhead from a comfortable seat was new. As Daring remarked, however, rather loud by comparison.
In Salzburg, Lara already had them booked into another hotel. She’d been all over Europe and had plenty of connections, not to mention a generous line of credit.
The hotel was much different architecturally than the previous one in Italy. Daring had glanced at a map earlier, and compared the Mediteranian climate with the new one at the foot of the Alps.
“I don’t really do burglaries,” Daring remarked as they prepared for the evening. With a few calls to savvy confidants back home, Lara had gotten her hands on blueprints of the museum building.
“With any luck, it won’t be,” Lara said. She glanced at Daring. “How about dinner parties?”
“Well, I am a celebrity back home. Even if they call me a recluse, I still know my way around.” Daring frowned. “But I don’t know…” She touched her chest.
The wound was bandaged and covered with a borrowed shirt, but that didn’t mean it was out of sight, out of mind.
“There will be hors d'oeuvres to eat,” Lara said.
Daring nodded, still unsure if she could trust herself in a crowd of people. She’d been thinking about zombies a lot lately. Probably too much. There was no way to know if the curse of the amulet would turn her into one of those , but there was nothing to say it wouldn’t, either. Her still, unbeating heart aside, it was the terror of not knowing that got to her the most. Finding and learning things was what she did, after all.
Despite both of them spending their share of rough days in the bush, that didn’t mean they couldn’t clean up. Lara had a sleeveless dress for Daring to borrow. It was made of flowing green fabric and featured a high neckline. Lara herself went with a simple v-necked affair that left her legs loose and drew the eye with a dusky red color.
Jonah, having not brought a suit and disinclined to attend fancy parties anyway, stayed behind to feed information. Lara and Daring both slipped in low-profile earbuds. It was a shame they couldn’t have hacked the museum’s cameras, but there hadn’t been time to involve some of Lara’s more specialized contacts.
Speaking of contacts, there had been some debate regarding what to do about Daring’s distinctive eyes, not to mention her hair. On the one hand, her distinctive features would attract attention. On the other, it wasn’t as if anyone would recognize her. In the end, Lara just bought her a shade of lipstick that was a close match for her eyes and told her the names of a few punk bands to use in conversation if anyone asked.
A taxi dropped the two of them off at the event. The building was stone, and imposing; a proper history museum. Lara found herself excited, just to be seeing a new exhibit, not to mention the operation ahead.
The interior was set for the event, with the artifacts on display dispersed throughout the front room. Dark curtains added ambiance and helped make the space quieter, also likely masking the food service and other support away from the eyes of guests.
Reasoning that Von Croy would be either near the door or near the center of the room, Lara led Daring through the crowd in an evasive route, keeping her eyes open. She’d shown Daring a picture of the man before they arrived.
“Check,” Lara said to her bracelet, miming brushing some hair back.
“Copy,” Jonah replied in her ear. He’d taken up station in another rented van outside.
Lara and Daring ended up near the refreshments. They might as well indulge while they were here. It would also give their hands something to do in order to better blend into the crowd.
Daring found herself fascinated with the shrimp, though Lara had to show her how to peel and eat them. This trip to another world had really expanded her palette, though she had to promise herself that using excuses for her appetite was not going to apply to anything besides food.
Shrimp in Austria, honestly. Lara had thought Von Croy had taste, but he had apparently contracted the catering to someone who didn’t.
Speaking of the man, “There he is,” said Lara, indicating Werner Von Croy across the room. He was dressed in a subtle suit that still probably cost him a few thousand dollars. He was at least ninety, and his skin and what was left of his hair looked the part. He was still standing tall on his own, though, and greeting guests.
Now that they’d spotted him, they could do a better job keeping clear. That done, it was time to see what else the museum contained.
They slowly spiraled out from the food table, examining the collection. There were odds and ends from everywhere, indicative of Von Croy’s worldwide interests. Daring came to a sudden stop, staring at an engraved stone. “I’ve seen this before.”
Lara walked over. The stone featured a rough scene illustrated by glyphs of horses emerging from the ocean. “This looks like one of the legends of Neptune. He was the god of the sea, but somewhat unintuitively, also of horses. It was said that they were created from the surf.”
“Could be both,” Daring said. “In this context, it actually makes sense. I’d seen this pictograph - well, something like it, anyway - in dried-up seapony ruins. Of course, we don’t have any figure named Neptune back home, but maybe the legend itself is common.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t see a clear connection to our problem,” Lara lamented. “The name Neptune - or Poseidon - doesn't mean anything to you?”
Daring tilted her head. “Again, it could be similar to something we have in my world, I just don’t recognize it yet.”
“Well, you remember the Greek story from this morning about Tantalus, who cooked his son. The boy was taken in by Neptune - well, Poseiden to the Greeks. In a connection to the other cannibalism, Neptune was one of the only children not eaten by his father Saturn, or Chronus to the Greeks.”
She saw Daring’s brows furrow in concentration, trying to keep the two naming systems separate. Something else occurred to Lara. “Neptune is actually tangentially related to why I came to Italy. The submarine I told you about was named for the nereids, sea nymphs who were effectively his entourage.”
Daring could see that Lara was grasping at straws to make a connection. To be fair, she had more to go on than Daring, but that in itself didn’t mean they were at a dead end. In fact, Daring had done more with less in her career. Despite everything else that had happened, she knew when a coincidence was promising. Though pony and human mythology were not perfectly aligned, there was a hint of something deeper. “One more happenstance connection like that and I might think we have something here.”
Lara did not totally agree, but did note Daring’s enthusiasm. The two of them read the caption for the engraving, seeing that it had been recovered from northern Italy, near the present day border of Slovenia, while Italian troops had been digging fortifications for the series of battles against Austria-Hungary centered around the Isozno River.
Turning away to look at more exhibits, Lara scanned the room. Von Croy was still greeting guests. A particularly large man stood near him, hands folded. He kept his distance, but his attention was focused like a laser on anyone near Von Croy. It was a good thing Lara and Daring’s path would take them nowhere nearby.
Continuing the theme of old gods, it was not difficult to trace a connection through the artifacts. Some of them Lara had seen before - in books. There were some exceedingly rare pieces here.
She wondered idly about the previous engraving they’d studied. An artifact found in the chaos of war yet somehow preserved must have been a rarity in itself. Pretending to fix her hair, she spoke to her bracelet. “Jonah, can you look something up?”
She described it to him and he got to work. Lara and Daring had nearly completed their circuit of the exhibit when Jonah came back with the news. “Another of Von Croy’s famous collection. He bought it at Sotheby’s three years ago.”
“London, well north of here,” Lara murmured to Daring.
Jonah went on. “Before that, it had been part of a small collection near Marseille.”
“France, to the west,” Lara added for Daring’s clarification.
“The French family that owned it declined to say how they had come by it. The trail between Isozno and Marseille is cold. We only know that it was found near the battle because shortly after being discovered, it was documented by a historian who’d been drafted into the Italian Army who understood what it was.”
“The shortest point between two places is a line,” Daring replied. “Maybe that’s just me thinking how a pegasus flies…”
“No, I think I agree,” said Lara. “This engraving may have bounced all the way to America before coming back to Europe, but the connection between Isozno and Marseille is worth looking into.”
There seemed little else left in the exhibit that they had not already seen. Lara gestured to the door and the two of them began to casually make their way out. Glancing over at Von Croy to ensure he was still occupied, Lara belatedly noticed that his bodyguard had repositioned to block their path.
One thing Lara appreciated, Daring had at least as good a nose for trouble as she. Now that they were cornered, they both noticed Von Croy approaching. Daring slid in front of Lara, though she stayed out of the arm’s reach of the bodyguard.
“Miss Croft,” Von Croy said, part contemptuous, part resignation. His eyes flicked at Daring. “Not like you to bring help.”
“Just a night out,” Lara said. “Lovely display you have here.”
“You should see what we keep in the back,” he said.
The large man started forward. The meaning was clear.
Daring glanced to the door. On the wing, she could probably make it. But she’d noted the heavy security shutters ready to close on a moment’s notice, and now she was seeing other serious-looking men entering the room. Glancing over her shoulder, Lara’s face was intense but composed.
With few other options, Daring let herself be driven away from the center of the room, towards the floor-to-ceiling curtains that blanketed the other side of the gallery. She made sure Lara was at her back, and kept her eyes moving.
On the other side of the curtain, Von Croy turned to them, surrounded by a small contingent of his bodyguards. “What has caused you to grace us with your presence this evening, Miss Croft?”
There hadn’t been time to warn Jonah or otherwise prepare for a confrontation. Given Lara’s history with Von Croy, she was skeptical about the possibility of talking her way out. On the other hand, the man was an avid collector of relics - she had to acknowledge that. Perhaps there was a way to simultaneously stall, obtain information, and not alert him to their true hunt.
“We came to see the collection,” Lara began. “It is a public museum.”
“Though the event is private,” Von Croy remarked. His eyes went to Daring. “I am also surprised at your company.”
“They call me Pita,” said Daring. “I’m a sandwich artist.” It was a secondary identity she had used in the past, in places where Daring Do was unwelcome and A.K. Yearling would be out of place.
Fortunately, Lara seemed to go along with it. “I’m helping her examine ancient food and eating habits.”
Von Croy crossed his arms. “That might be the poorest excuse I’ve ever heard. You’re asking me to believe the great Lara Croft just happens to be in Austria at my event...because she’s a foodie.”
“It isn’t as if there is a great reputation for flavor in the British Isles,” Lara admitted. There wasn’t much else she could say, stalling for time and hoping she could devise a way out.
An idea came to her. “I did want to ask you about the piece with Poseiden creating horses. I didn’t know the Greek civilization had spread to northern Italy.”
“As you and I both well know, the ancients had their secrets.” Von Croy glanced at his watch and started to walk back towards the curtain. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I rather wish you’d take yours to the grave as well.”
The three bodyguards started to move, hands reaching towards their unbuttoned jackets.
Daring stiffened, recognizing malicious intent by instinct, but was taken by surprise when Lara pulled her backwards by the throat and reached into the back of Daring’s dress.
The USP they’d hidden at the small of Daring’s back before the event was a large handgun, but the loose dress had concealed it well. Lara’s hands had been quick, and there was no hesitation in her movement. She’d fought for her life before, and in those moments, it was either do or die.
The men probably wouldn’t have shot Lara and Daring inside the museum, instead quietly coerced them somewhere else before killing and dumping them. The appearance of Lara’s weapon had changed that, and now subtlety and compliance were gone. Her gun came level on the first man even as his eyes were widening and she killed him with two bullets at center mass.
Ignoring the echoes of the gunshots and screams of other guests, Lara swung her arm, lining up on the next man, who’d managed to get his own gun out and had just started to dodge. Her first bullet went through his forearm into his side, but her second struck him in the upper chest.
Even as she began to focus on the third man, Lara knew she was going to be too slow. His weapon was out and level, and he fired. The bullet struck Daring in the center of her chest and she jerked with the impact. Lara swung her gun over Daring’s shoulder and returned fire. Unlike Lara, he didn’t have any cover and caught her bullets himself.
Von Croy was more spry than expected for a man of his age and had gotten out of the way, already back through the curtains. Lara shoved her gun into the holster strapped to Daring’s back and let her go. Daring gave her an irritated look at being used as a shield, but they both knew this was no time for an argument.
Daring wasn’t able to walk in high heels, so the two of them had worn flats to match. That helped as they crashed out the nearest exit door and sprinted down the back street towards where Jonah had parked.
He’d heard the commotion and already had the engine running.
“I should say, leaving town seems rather prudent,” Lara remarked as they hurried into the hotel. They’d already made plans with Jonah and would be checking out immediately after gathering their things.
“Sorry, by the way,” she added.
Daring looked at her, but begrudgingly admitted, “It didn’t hurt too much.”
Having Daring carry the gun at the event was calculated, as if Lara was noticed, attention would be on her. Knowing this, Daring had tried to keep her back to Lara for easy access. Grabbing her to use as an unwilling shield during the gunfight had been spur-of-the-moment, and while Lara felt sorry for doing it, she’d rather the undead zombie be shot than her.
She also felt sorry for thinking of Daring as a zombie, regardless of evidence for the label.
In their hotel room, Daring attempted to pick up the backpack Lara had lent her, but immediately put it down again. “Something’s wrong with my arm.”
Lara gestured for her to undress, which they were going to do anyway before leaving the hotel. Despite just getting into a life-or-death gun battle, it was still somewhat uncomfortable for Lara to see another woman naked. Daring, the pony, did not seem to notice.
In any situation, the shot would have been a good one. “Shattered your sternum, looks like,” Lara said as she examined the bloodless hole in the center of Daring’s chest. “Not sure where the slug ended up.”
“I guess the two halves of my ribcage disconnected would explain why my upper body feels loose,” Daring replied dryly.
“I don’t think we can do anything about that at the moment,” said Lara. “If you can, er, keep yourself together for a bit longer, we’ll need to decide where to go next.”
The two of them glanced briefly at the map of Europe before Lara packed it away. “Perhaps Isozno,” she commented. “Though, that land doesn’t belong to Italy anymore. The river is now in present-day Slovenia, and it’s called Soča in Slovene.”
“What about Marseille?” said Daring, slightly mispronouncing it, but still clear enough for conversation.
Lara paused, and then nodded. “That could be a good idea. We could trace the artifact’s history backwards. Marseille, if I recall correctly, is also a trove of old civilization that could turn up a few clues on its own.”
After stripping the room, they met Jonah back downstairs and headed for the airport. The same private pilot they’d contracted to bring them to Austria had been retained. Calling in the middle of the night may have come as a surprise, but Lara happened to share a common trait with certain comic book superheroes: old money.
Flying overtop the Alps lengthwise this time proved to be a bumpy flight, but with all the globetrotting Lara had done, an intra-Europe trip was a mercifully short.
On the way, Lara and Jonah performed makeshift surgery on Daring in the back of the plane. A pair of pliers and stiff wire were not much with which to work, but there were no preexisting tools made to hold a zombie’s ribcage together.
Daring kept her teeth set and did not try to look. It was unpleasant enough already.
“Tell me more about Von Croy,” she requested, as a distraction.
Lara told her of the previous times she’d met him. “He seems to be looking better than I remember. He gets around very well for a man that must be pushing one hundred.”
“If he deals in things like this, you don’t suppose he might have some help?” Daring gestured at the site of her surgery and wished that she hadn’t.
“Well, I wouldn’t put it past him,” said Lara.
The plane made its approach to the airport just as the sun was rising over the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean. Marseille was located at the water’s edge in the province of Provence. Unable to sleep during the trip, Lara had looked up more information, confirming what she had vaguely remembered, that the city had been founded by Greeks in 600 BC.
Lara and Jonah had the credentials to rent cars all over Europe. Hopefully the sometimes-result of renting cars wouldn’t eventually catch up to them. Though, extradimensional monsters were usually not a problem.
After picking up a nondescript Renault, they found a hotel. While Lara had experienced her share of roughing it in the jungle, she did prefer a good bed as often as possible. Based on Daring’s general reaction, she did, too.
After a quick nap, they had lunch. Lara preferred French food to Italian, though maybe that was due to barely-remembered Julia Child reruns on the telly. Despite being American, something about Julia had struck the young Lara. Finding out she had been a secret agent during the second world war may have had something to do with it.
Lara had always preferred to drive her own escapades, and this one was certainly going to be memorable. While they were waiting for their food in one of the many sidewalk cafes that decorated coastal Mediterranean towns, Lara glanced at Daring, who had started the whole adventure. She paused to scan Daring’s face. She seemed more withdrawn than usual.
Lara didn’t think Daring getting a second hole punched in her chest would make that much difference. Not that she would know personally, but the first must have been the worst, right?
“Is something on your mind?” Lara asked.
Daring knew her feelings must have been written on her face and didn’t pause before confessing. “I’m worried about what’s going to happen.”
“I’m sure we’ll find something we can use,” said Lara, as Daring expected her to.
“But what are we supposed to do with it? Whatever it is? I’m undead .” Daring touched her borrowed shirt, hand resting on her chest. “Suppose we somehow fix that. Does that bring me back to life, or just make me regular-dead? And how am I going to return to Equestria?”
Lara’s lips tightened. “We’re both resourceful.”
Her forced optimism didn’t convince Daring. “There might be some reference in some old book by Starswirl the Bearded, except we’re in the wrong world. There might be some spell that could work, except there isn’t a third of the population here that can do magic.”
“That doesn’t mean there’s no hope. We don’t really have another choice,” Lara reminded her.
That was true. Daring wanted to say something else, but wasn’t sure she could form the words coherently. She didn’t feel like crying, if her body even could in its current state, but Lara’s words couldn’t take away her growing despair and it sat like a lead weight in her gut.
Her attention was distracted by the plate of veal brain that was put in front of her, but her sudden rush of appetite was balanced by the disgust it caused her.
Lara was no stranger to the auction scene. When one could not otherwise obtain an artifact, sometimes the only recourse was to buy it. One of her contacts was able to find some information about where the item in Von Croy’s collection had originated. With an address, they set out that afternoon.
The house sat to the west of the city and was surrounded by green hills. However, it became apparent that the place was empty. The lawns were cut, but not manicured as if the hired service knew someone was watching. Taking a look through the windows, the furniture seemed to be draped in dust covers.
“What else do we have?” Lara said as they got back in the car.
“Not much,” Jonah explained, handing her a tablet. “About the same time as the sale of the artifact, the house went on the market. That’s been a couple of years. Even before then, it’s been a mess of shell corporations owning it. Someone does not want junk mail.”
“Somepony doesn’t want their secrets to be found out,” Daring said.
She and Lara traded a look.
“I’ll run surveillance, then,” Jonah said resignedly.
The group returned that evening carrying tools of the trade. They were dressed all in black, with the exception that Daring also wore her pith helmet. Lara had strapped on her faithful pair of USPs. Daring, completely unfamiliar with firearms, had borrowed a climbing axe and hung it on her hip. She also carried along a backpack filled with a variety of tools, reference materials, and spare magazines, feeling rather like a mule for it.
They left Jonah on a hill with a rifle and a radio. He’d known Lara long enough to accept that she did things her way - and apparently Daring did, too.
There were security cameras, of course, but Jonah gave them some help with a dazzling laser to get them close to the building unseen. If anyone was actively monitoring those cameras, then they might have company shortly. However, as long as the house had sat empty, that seemed unlikely.
Lara led Daring to the corner of the house where they’d located the cable junction box. She didn’t often deal with modern technology compared to all her brushes with ancient, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t plug in a spoofing device. It set all cameras and sensors in the house to a loop, allowing them to slip by but without the telltale sign that just cutting the power would leave.
That done, they simply went in the front door. It was quite a sturdy lock, but they hadn’t brought a bag of tools for nothing.
“You’re quite handy for an heiress,” Daring commented as the lock clicked open.
Lara looked up, a few metal picks between her lips. “I daresay you’re the only author I’ve ever met who goes around breaking into places and stealing their artifacts.”
“It’s not stealing if the owner is long dead,” Daring retorted as they walked into the house’s expansive foyer.
Lara nodded. “ ‘The difference between graverobbing and archeology is time.’ ”
That put Daring in another mood, thinking about graves and time. She hid it, though, and helped Lara canvas the house.
They swept through the quiet rooms with flashlights. It would have taken far too long to search every nook and cranny, so they focused on rooms that appeared to be office-like. Lara was not hoping to find a safe, as they generally were more difficult to crack. Still, they would do whatever they had to in order to find more information on the mysterious carving.
The house, while modern, clearly hadn’t been lived in much. There were no computers or televisions. All the appliances were unplugged. There were no clothes in the closets.
They checked all the usual places - behind pictures and under carpets, the undersides of tables and inside air vents. There was no evidence of a safe, much less anything valuable. There didn’t even seem to be a place for a secret room - none of the bookshelves had books in them.
They had started at the top floor. By the time that and the main floor had been thoroughly checked, Daring had begun to lose patience. That was saying something for somepony who had ventured alone across half the Equestrian continent and sat tediously behind a typewriter to write a dozen books. Then again, the creeping fear in the back of her mind about what might happen if her condition were allowed to fester too long kept her pushing forward.
“This place has to have a basement,” Lara remarked as they concluded their search of the ground floor. “We haven’t seen any utilities.”
Daring paused. Her expertise, like Lara’s, was in the ancient, but she realized there hadn’t been any sign of things like a water heater or a furnace.
They checked again, carefully examining trim on the walls and the cracks between boards. It was Lara that discovered the countertop on the kitchen island was loose.
“Give me a hand with this.” She put her flashlight in the crook of her arm and gave the slab of granite a shove with Daring’s help. The countertop slid back, exposing a hole that had been concealed behind an artificially shallow cabinet in the island. There was a ladder.
Lara grabbed a chemlight out of Daring’s backpack, cracked it, and dropped it down the ladderwell. Happily, it only dropped about ten feet and didn’t illuminate anything unpleasant. It was almost anticlimactic, but better safe than sorry.
Daring went first, without a word between them. She still wasn’t quite accepting of her role, but reasoned that her body was more expendable than Lara’s, as they’d already discovered.
She stepped off the ladder at the bottom and stood in the green glow of the chemlight as Lara descended. When they were both down, they panned their flashlights around the room.
It was concrete and cinder block, only a little bigger than the kitchen above. There were the expected utilities, with neat wires and pipes.
On the other wall was a timber-framed tunnel that led into the darkness.
Lara called Jonah. “We’re going to be out of communication. We’re going underground.”
The tunnel had stretched further than the beam of the flashlights. It was cut through the rocky soil and seemed to be rising slightly. Daring remembered the hills behind the house that angled upwards and eventually became the mountain range Lara had called the Alps.
She wasn’t sure how long they had been walking. Tens of minutes, she guessed. Whatever was at the other end of the tunnel had apparently motivated someone years ago to create a secure access.
The going was slow. They were fortunate to usually be shorter in stature than the limited height of the ceiling, though occasionally it dipped low or they encountered a broken support beam or other debris. Daring in a horizontal pony body probably would have fit through much better.
For her part, Lara was thinking about stopping for a granola bar. Tunnels were boring. Ruins were the real draw. So when odd, flat stones began to appear amongst the dirt and natural rocks, she took notice.
The tunnel developed a cobblestone floor and seemed to grow larger. And then, they were met with a sudden upheave that terminated in a rough wooden cover.
“Floorboards? Trapdoor?” Daring speculated under her breath. There was no telling what was on the other side and she kept her volume down.
Lara retrieved a small prybar and poked at the wood. Despite its obvious age, it was still sturdy. “I suppose we’ll find out.”
The two of them braced, and then pushed. The wood was heavy, but did move, lifting slowly as trickles of dirt fell into the tunnel.
They found themselves peering out of a hillside from under an otherwise unordinary clump of grass. Across from the trapdoor were a few stones in rough order, tall grass growing over them.
Lara was closest and heaved herself out of the hole, putting a hand back to give Daring a pull. They turned off their flashlights and crouched for a moment, letting their eyes adjust to the darkness of a starry sky.
“Jonah,” Lara breathed into her radio.
“Copy,” he replied. “I have your position nearly two klicks east.” He paused for a few moments. “Map says there’s ruins there.”
“Sure are.” Lara glanced around. She could make out a few foundations of old buildings and scattered other stones and half-walls broken from age. As her eyes continued to adjust, the rocky hillside slowly revealed more. The town was old, certainly, but probably not ancient by the standards of some of the places Lara had been.
“You’re looking at Rocca Sparvièra ,” Jonah advised.
The name rang a bell for Lara, but she couldn’t remember why. Nodding to Daring, the two of them moved into the abandoned town, keeping low. There was precious little to cover behind, but it was better than silhouetting themselves against the sky.
“There’s some...intense history here,” said Jonah, apparently doing research on the fly.
“The written history goes back to the twelfth century. The village had grown to about 350 people by the 1400’s, when there are unspecific rumors of a curse. Locusts, bouts with the plague, wars, and a series of earthquakes.”
“Could be cursed,” Daring agreed.
“Probably because in 1357, the local queen’s children were murdered and, by some accounts, served for Christmas dinner.”
Lara and Daring traded a glance.
“And then, in the 1790’s during the French Revolution, Rocca Sparvièra was a stronghold of counter revolutionaries who captured some French soldiers and forced them to eat their officer’s heart. There was also an arsenic mine nearby, which partially explains some of this story but also only makes it sadder.”
“Dear Lord,” Lara muttered.
Well, they were on the right track, then. If nothing else, the eating of children mirrored the Greek legend.
“Wait one,” said Jonah suddenly. “There are vehicles coming up the driveway.”
“Found us a bit quicker than I hoped,” Lara lamented. “Well, we’ll have to get in and out before they make it here.”
“There are six-no, make that eight armed men.” Jonah paused. “It’s Von Croy.”
“Are they responding to the security system, or after seeing us did he just assume we’d come here looking for the previous owners of that tablet?” Daring asked.
“No time to worry about it.” Lara started moving again through the ruins. “Come on, we need to keep ahead of them.”
They hadn’t gone ten steps forward through the ruins and piles of stone before a shadowy figure slipped from a doorway ahead and stood a dozen meters away, the meager starlight revealing nothing but a silhouette.
Lara froze, her hands dropping to her guns. She heard Daring shift behind her and stole a glance in that direction, spotting another figure that had appeared in the darkness.
Others began to materialize. Some from within the ruined buildings, or ducking out from around corners. Some seemed to even rise up from the ground. They looked human - or at least, human-shaped.
It wasn’t until one crept close enough that Lara could make out its face that she realized what they actually were.
Surrounded by a couple dozen undead Frenchmen, Lara reflected that this was still better than the time she’d discovered a handful of dinosaurs in the jungle.
Daring, too, seemed relieved, but still said more casually than she felt, “Okay, just zombies. Should have expected it, really.”
“Qui etes vous ?” one of them asked, in a voice that sounded better than expected from decaying vocal chords.
Daring glanced at Lara. “Equestria pretty much has only one language, so I never bothered learning anything besides the ancient forms.”
“He wants to know who we are,” Lara replied. Cautiously holstering her guns, she struck up a conversation in French. She turned her headlamp on, to its lowest setting, though upon seeing the crowd, wished she hadn’t.
While she was busy, Daring turned to look back down the hill. In the distance, she could see a few moving lights, probably flashlights from the group that had arrived to the house. They might find the tunnel, or they might just climb up here on the surface. Either way, if she and Lara were going to find a cure for her condition, it was going to have to be soon.
And, though she was trying to stay optimistic, surely there wouldn’t still be zombies in Rocca Sparvièra if there was a cure here.
Lara abruptly turned to her. “We don’t have any wine, do we?”
“Why would we?”
Lara gestured. “The French. Okay, use the water we packed, then. I have a vague plan.”
“How vague?” Daring asked as she took off the backpack to retrieve the bottled water.
“Do you think the curse on that amulet has run its course?”
Daring touched the dark stone of the Mortal Amulet where it rested inside her shirt. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve got some willing volunteers who can help us find out.”
“They...just agreed to it?”
“Most of them are a couple hundred years old. Would you want to live like that for that long?” Lara paused, and then went on in a quieter voice. “It might cure them, or it might kill them. And they’re fine with that.”
Daring looked at the small crowd of badly decayed zombies. She’d had a taste of their condition, but couldn’t bring herself to imagine the full extent they must have suffered.
She still didn’t know what would happen to her if she removed the amulet, so Lara helped her dunk it in an opened bottle of water. There was a definite reaction, a small swirl of angry bubbles illuminated by Lara’s headlamp.
“Well, here goes nothing.” Lara handed the bottle to a man who didn’t have much of a face left. He lifted it to the ragged hole that passed for his mouth and drank.
At first it seemed like he was swelling up, but as they watched, it turned out to be just an effect him regaining his flesh over the course of several seconds. His eyes brightened, missing skin regrew, and teeth even began to come in.
However, the changes almost immediately began to reverse. The man looked down at himself as he began to wizen away again, but this time it was not death, instead age.
Lara hastily grabbed the bottle as the man fell over and apparently passed away from old age in just seconds, his body continuing to decay to dust.
There was silence and stillness for several seconds before the crowd swarmed Lara to get the bottle.
“Que up!” she exclaimed. “Etre patiente !”
Still reeling from what had happened, Daring still maintained enough presence of mind to being dunking the amulet in the second bottle of water. She wasn’t sure there was going to be enough to go around.
It was a strange feeling, having people line up to die. If anything, it only made Daring that much more determined to put things back as they were. She had a feeling her next book was going to be much more soberly introspective.
Lara took the next bottle of treated water from her and finished with the last few zombies, who gratefully crumbled to dust at her feet. She, too, was experiencing some internal struggle with the experience, but was able to turn her mind away and focus on the next task, that of not dying herself as the armed group below began to advance up the hill.
“We need to get out of here,” said Daring.
“We don’t know if there’s something here that caused this,” Lara pointed out.
“It’ll take more time than we have to search.” Daring gestured to the flashlights coming closer and then towards the hills. “And if we don’t leave now to either get to the tunnel or circle around, then our only escape is going to be higher up into the mountains.”
The light from Lara’s headlamp fell on the amulet. “It-” She reached out to touch it, but stopped prudently. “It’s white now.”
“What?” Daring lifted it to look for herself. Sure enough, the stone had changed color from its original bottomless black to a pure white. “How did...well, not that I would expect you to know. I have no idea.”
“Do you think something’s changed about it? After we...helped those people?”
Daring stared at the stone as she rolled it between her fingers. “What if I take it off and I die too?”
Lara lifted a hand. “Taking it from the temple and putting it around your neck may have turned you into a zombie. Something about it apparently removed the condition from these people so they could die naturally as hundreds of years caught up to them. I really don’t have an answer on what happens if you take it off. Maybe you’ll go back to normal.”
“Normal for me is being a pony.” Daring touched her chest. “But even still, what if I come back to life just to immediately die of my wounds?”
Lara glanced down the slope of the hill and turned off her headlamp. Her hands went to her guns. “We’re out of time.”
Daring took a breath. “Alright. I’ll…” She looked at Lara. “This is actually an opportunity. I can’t die.”
Lara held her gaze in the darkness. “That’s… Well, alright then. Get to a position where you can get around behind them. I trust you to know when to come in.”
Daring nodded and rushed away into the night, doing her best to get through the ruins in the darkness. She pulled the borrowed climbing axe from her belt. The lights below were getting closer. Daring worked her way across the slope, trying to flank them.
Premeditated attack was something she had never done before. Sure, she had been in plenty of scrapes, but had never been the one setting up the ambush before. Violence was...unfortunate. She was going to have to explore her inner conflict more once she got behind the typewriter. For now, she had to survive that long - and protect Lara.
Elsewhere among the ruins, Lara crouched, her USP’s held to either side of her head, deliberately taking measured breaths and waiting until the right moment. Jonah hadn’t been able to tell her specifically how her opponents were armed, but it was safe to say she was outgunned. She was going to have to use speed and surprise, plus whatever help Daring was able to provide.
She heard muffled footsteps. The beam of a flashlight went over her head, moving about the ruins. It was time. Lara stood up, raising her guns. Eight flashlights. Aiming at the lights themselves was imprecise, but it was all she had.
Using volume of fire over accuracy, Lara pulled the triggers as quickly as she could, sweeping her sights across the targets, and then tossing herself back behind the stone wall. She estimated she’d fired about half the capacity of her pistols’ magazines, roughly eighteen rounds.
Moving as quickly as she could to reposition, Lara heard organizing shouts from her opponents. Some were still alive, then. Not that she’d been expecting to get them all. Chancing a glance over the wall, she now only saw six lights. Unfortunately, they spotted her and a bullet hit the wall just below her face. Rapid fire started, chipping the stone away all around her as she ducked again. Submachine guns, it sounded like, so probably nothing powerful enough to penetrate her cover, but nothing to trifle with. Lara clenched her teeth and tried to make herself a smaller target.
Daring had heard the shooting start. She’d hid inside a destroyed building and was just about even with the line of advancing attackers. Now that they’d been scattered by Lara’s bullets, she emerged, axe in hand.
Sprinting forward, she saw a weapon lying on the ground, its attached light only illuminating the grass around it. The owner lay nearby, bleeding and gasping. Daring ignored him and aimed straight for the nearest one still on his feet. He was busy shooting at something. Probably Lara, Daring realized, but if he was still trying to kill her then she must still be alive.
Daring burying the head of the climbing axe in his neck would help with that. He went down with a sound that Daring really didn’t care to hear again. She put her foot on the side of his head and wrenched the axe out.
Her distraction in getting her weapon free brought Daring to the attention of another shooter nearby. Daring leaped at him, already realizing she might be too slow. He brought his weapon around on her, but she knocked it away with a wide upward swing of her axe. The move put her off balance even as the weapon pointed away from her. The man grabbed for the sidearm strapped to his leg. The gun pivoted out of the holster, not coming level, but the distance was so short that aim wasn’t a factor.
Getting shot a second time was no less pleasant than the first, but the bullet didn’t slow Daring’s momentum. She brought her axe back down to slam into the man’s temple. The steel blade punched right through bone and she pulled him to the ground by the head.
Lara heard a scream and the flying bullets stopped impacting the stone wall she crouched behind. Daring must have gone into action. She swung up from behind the cover, guns out. The range was still a little long for a pistol shot, but she fired off the rest of her magazines at the flashlights in the darkness before ducking back into cover to reload.
That done, she checked the situation again and took a chance, bursting from cover in a sprint to another nearby wall. There seemed to be some movement in the darkness ahead and she kept going.
In the darkness, Daring was shot again, but it didn’t stop her, either. From somewhere else in the ruins, she saw muzzle flashes that could only be Lara returning fire, which Daring appreciated.
She didn’t see anyone still standing, but wasn’t sure that they were all dispatched. That intuition turned out to be quite correct when someone sprang at her from behind a ruined pillar. Daring got her axe up, but wasn’t able to strike, only to block.
It was Von Croy himself, wearing the same tactical outfit as his men. Daring remembered Lara’s comment about his fitness considering his age. He was more than strong enough to wrestle her to the ground.
There was no time to do anything but brawl. Daring aimed for his face, she threw elbows and knees. He gave at least as good as he got, tearing her clothing and gouging her skin. His hands grabbed for her throat and Daring blocked, feeling the necklace cut into the back of her neck as it was pulled away.
The chain snapped and Von Croy fell off of her, the amulet clutched in his hand. He took one shuddering breath, eyes wide, and then the same as the people of the village, began to crumble away to dust.
Lara arrived just then. She saw the amulet on the ground amid the remains but didn’t pause. She turned to Daring, kneeling beside her. “Are you alright?”
Daring swallowed and put a hand to her chest. Lara flipped her headlamp on.
They watched in silent astonishment as the metal wire around her sternum surfaced, the bone knitting back together. A couple of lead slugs and slivers of wood worked their way out through Daring’s skin, the holes closing after them.
Daring felt an odd writhe in her chest, and realized her heart had begun to beat once more.
She lay back in the grass, letting out a long breath. “Sweet Celestia.”
Lara sat down beside her, and for the moment the two of them simply breathed. It wasn’t the first time either of them had simply paused to appreciate being alive, but this time it was different.
Alive. Well, that was a problem solved. Daring looked at the stars for a moment, but that only reminded her of travel, and her other problem: how she was a long way from home. She sat up. “Well, where do you think we should start on getting me home?”
“I was thinking about that,” said Lara. She reached to Daring’s backpack and inside found the counterpart to the mirror Daring had destroyed to bring her to Lara’s world.
“Do you think it will work?” Daring asked, hushed.
“It either will or it won’t,” Lara pointed out. “We should try.”
“But-” Daring paused. “If we use it, then that’s it. The other one is broken.”
“Don’t you want to go home?” Lara asked.
Yes. There was no reason for reluctance, except…
Daring leaned forward, hugging Lara. “Thank you. For everything you did.”
Lara didn’t reply, but leaned into her.
After a moment, Daring pulled back. “And who knows, maybe Princess Twilight can figure out something to connect the worlds again.”
Lara smiled. “Maybe.”
Daring got up. She removed her shirt, which had at least one other person’s blood on it. Might as well get used to fewer clothes on the way back to Equestria. Using her shirt, she picked up the amulet, which was still white, and wrapped it up.
Lara handed her the mirror. Daring glanced at a nearby stone wall, which seemed ideal to break the mirror against and send her back to her own world. She held the mirror up and paused to look into it, seeing her dirty, tired, human face. Her eyes then went to Lara.
There was so much she wanted to say. Even as a writer, words failed her.
She eventually went with something they both would understand.
“It’s been an adventure.”
