6604/Spelunking in Symkaria: Pt 1

Spelunking in Symkaria: Pt 1
Date of Scene:	21 February 2019
Location:	Symkaria
Synopsis:	Lara Croft and Silver Sable explore the tomb of St. Symeon.
Cast of Characters:	Silver Sable, Lara Croft

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Silver Sable has posed:
Light-- bright, white light-- cuts through ancient cobwebs and broken masonry. Crawling things accustomed to years of intense darkness scuttle away in fear. Some have lived entire generational lifecycles never seeing the sun overhead.

A woman in a sleek silver thermal suit steps around the corner, flashing her handheld light towards the darkened hall. She's in a special thermal wetsuit, the sort used by divers or climbers to navigate rough weather with impunity. A headlight sits on her brow to throw a smaller pool of light where she looks and her gear-- climbing axe, rope, slingpack-- indicates she is prepared for a hostile environment of any sort.

The heavy, extremely custom pistols on her hip and the small machinegun under her back suggest she's ready for a few social hostilities, too.

"Lady Croft, I think it's down this way," she calls back down towards Lara. Her light swings in a pendulum to aim down the hall. "More of those marks you spotted," she explains, and points a gloved finger at the scratches in the old masonry. Such marks were spotted early on by the keen-eyed archaeologist, marking a safe path through the bewildering catacombs under the long-abandoned fortress-monastery of Kamen, near the border Symkaria shares with Latveria.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara had been personally invited here for this expedition and she'd made sure to make it a priority. She'd just come off of a trip to southern Tibet where she'd helped a team of archaeologists unearth a very rare Zhangzhung burial site, hundreds of kilometers outside of that ancient Kingdom's thought-to-be territory.

Right now, Lara is dressed in similar attire to that of the woman she's accompanying, a sport top cable of keeping her upper body fair warm under cold water, though it is sleeveless and hued in black with blue trim. Cargo trousers adorn her lower half hiding the rest of that top that disappears beneath the trousers. A utility belt around her waist with a number of items, and a lot of extra equipment strapped around her body onto her back, hidden away in a zip-up drybag.

Lara's booted feet turn her to look in Silver's direction, her half-gloved hands are holding a piece of a shattered wall where a painting is faded and flecked away by time and wear. "More?" Lara replies to Silver Sablinova, moving to catch up with her.

A deep breath is drawn in as she lets the piece she holds rest at her side in her right hand. "This place is remarkable. It could take an entire team of people months to comb through it all." Clearly, the British explorer is impressed. That much is quite obvious on how she's carrying herself at the moment, giddy almost. Restrained though, of course. She is British after all!

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver nods, following in Lara's footsteps closer than her own shadow. The silver-haired woman seemingly has eyes in the back of her head, missing very little with an astute, sharp-eyed gaze.

"Was built around eighth century," she murmurs. "Originally monastery. Then, they dug these catacombs out for the surrounding villages. Went deeper and deeper every year. Castle's built but, local quarries, not so great for tall buildings," she admits in her fluid, glottal east European accent. "So dig more, longer tunnels. Weak rulers put people to work expanding the tunnels in case of invasion. It was abandoned in the eighteenth century when the river shifted and the wells dried up. Then, used briefly by resistance against the Germans and abandoned again. Mostly in the upper levels, though," she says, and aims her hand light at the roof. "The artillery shells destroyed the old tower and buried it. Then with the issues with Latveria..." She shrugs. "We might be the first person in centuries to come this deep. I still am not sure I believe your story about finding that old drainage gate. We've been exploring the grounds for years and found nothing! You found it in a week," she says, with a grudging admiration for the quick-witted Brit.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara makes her way up to the side of Silver's right. She then raises up the tablet she was holding in her right hand and she offers it to the woman to look over as well, to see the faded painting on it while she listens to the other's words.

The final bit of what Silver says to her makes her crack a smile across her lips as she looks away ahead of them at all there is to explore here. "Its not a competition." She softly says back in her thick London-rooted accented voice. "I promise I won't gloat over you and yours for anything here, I simply wish to help, of course. These places... I believe... are calling to us to explore them, to discover the secrets that they hold so that we can know our past better. All of this was built to help the people from this area live into the future, the future that we are in here and now. They intended to still be here, at least in ancestor form." She shows a light grin after that.

With a heavy inhale, Lara steps forward then and she rubs the palms of her hands together. "A lot of the tunnels used in the World Wars are being destroyed by amateur explorers and internet... personalities. At least the ones that are easily reached. These, the ones that aren't? They can still tell us a lot."

Lara looks back to Silver and holds that faint smile on her face as she shakes her head gently from right to left. "Everything wants to be found, Miss Sablinova. Nothing wants to be lost forever."

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver looks at Lara with a closely scrutinizing gaze. Her eyes narrow minutely while she gets a read on the Briton. It's not an easy thing to endure; Silver's one of those people who seems like she can see around corners.

But a small smile cracks her face, and she shakes her head ruefully. "Did not mean it that way, but... you're very right. Things at not meant to stay lost. I don't know what we'll find here. The tombs go very deep and the oldest areas were hardest hit by the bombs."

"You're not what they said online," Silver tells Lara several steps later into the expedition. "'Tomb Raider', they call you. Some archaeologists made some comments about bulldozers and tea cups," she says, mirth in her voice. "And one fellow said some very unkind things. American, I believe. Sounded like a jilted ex?" She swings the light to Lara's face, and a wry expression of sympathy tugs the corner of her mouth. "I know a little about that," she mutters, and they press on deeper, towards a swelling antechamber that rises to perhaps double their arms reach beyond their head and completely fails to relieve the cramped dampness of the tunnels.

Lara Croft has posed:
"The wars were terrible to what I do." Lara grimly comments as she hears the other speak of the bombs from back then. "So much history was lost throughout them, to the Germans and to... all of it, really. There are still, to this day, priceless artifacts that were lost in the early to mid twentieth century. I am constantly following leads on items that come to me through e-mail or what have you."

Lara progresses forward and she moves toward a staircase that has been battered by time and likely those very same wars. She looks back to Silver and shows another faint smile. "I should hope its not a jilted Ex spreading gossip. I've never been in a relationship to have created one." She says then before she moves toward the foot of the staircase where its darker, and her left hand reaches for a light on her belt. A second later and she has her own light source turned on and revealing a potential new direction for them to go. "Only interested individuals who were... not entirely savvy to my lifestyle of always being on the move."

With a heavy exhale she proceeds further, her eyes scanning the walls. "Most of the negativity surrounding my name go back to when I first made headlines, after Yamatai. AFter Whitman's death. People still blame me for it, even though... well. Yes. Its unfortunate. I wish I could do more to change people's minds, but, we are what we are."

Silver Sable has posed:
A hand rests on Lara's shoulder. A brief, comforting squeeze is delivered and Silver drops her hand before she's over-intruding on Lara's personal space. "I read about Yamatai," she tells Lara, in that characteristically serious tone of voice. Silver takes everything seriously.

"I do not think it was your fault. You came with good intentions and adquate preparation. What you witnessed..." She shakes her head. "I'm not one often inclined to invoke the supernatural. I can't think of a better explanation of the strange weather and unusual inhabitants you encountered. That you survived at all should be praised-- let alone unearthing a centuries-old mystery of a long dead queen."

Silver is walking and not paying a lot of attention to her path. Though it's possible she might miss the counterweights in the corner and the ancient but dangerous trigger stones under her feet. Not being able to read the old Slavic script that screams 'Watch Your Step' in a long-dead dialect.

Lara Croft has posed:
Yamatai was almost half a decade behind her, later this year at least, but it still haunted her dreams and made her lose sleep to this day. Images of the horrors she witnessed there, the friends she lost. Its not easy for her to talk about it, with anyone, really.

She's about to form a response to Silver's kind words though when she spots the counter-weights and the writing. This is when she stops and her forearm extends out to her right so that Silver will step into the back of it and not a step further.

"Careful." Lara says to her, glancing over at her. Then she motions with her flashlight to the grooves upon the walls and floors and the weights themselves. "We might be coming up on something that the owners of this place didn't wish anyone to find."

Lara then crouches down and she picks up two stones. She stands up again and offers Silver one. "Put this there..." She points to the mechanics of the weights. "It'll block it, and disable it." And she does the same with the one to her left.

With a little shimmy and shove the rock is stuffed into place to keep the weights from operating. "It may have been ruined by time, but... I'd rather not take that risk." She shows a light smile to Silver. Lara then steps forward to test it, and find nothing happening, so she progresses further onward. "Tell me a bit about yourself?" She asks then back to her companion.

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver doesn't look like much ruffles her. But she's definitely moving a little more deliberately after Lara literally saves her life-- or at least prevents a career-ending maiming.

"Battlefields on five continents and thirty or more nations, I get killed by a rusty swinging gate," she mutters. The contraption's devilishly clever on examination from a safe side. Counterweights, iron bars, heavy stones. No springs or moving parts aside from simple hinges, and it'd smash a person into giblets with a heavily rusted iron gate concealed overhead.

"Me?" She seems surprised at the question. No one really asks Sable for her life story, either. She shrugs and keeps up, light swinging back and forth in a standard search pattern. "Not very interesting to someone not from the Baltic States," she tells Lara. "I'm a descendent of House Sable. We are a very old, very distinguished family. My grandfather hunted Nazis after the war. Turned into a mercenary operation after the Israelis found Germans living in Argentina, and he was hired to hunt them down. Father was mercenary as well, and advised our regency in defense. When I came of age I joined the Wild Pack and eventually lead them. Then, turned into multinational private security cartel. We now have a presence all over the world. Private security, light infantry, scouts, spies, even some aviators. That largely consumes my time," she admits. "When not serving Symkaria's needs, of course."

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara takes a few steps back the way they'd come to gather up a stretch of copper wiring she'd seen laying on the ground near the staircase. She listens to Silver explain herself some while she moves back toward that trap of a rusty gate and she starts to secure it further so that it won't fire off at all in the future, for anyone who might come down this corridor. "There could be more." Lara quietly says then as she steps back to Silver's side. "We'll be fine though." She shows a light smile.

Her flashlight comes up again from her belt and she shines it forward to a juncture in the corridor ahead of them where one tunnel seems to sweep back in the direction they'd come and the other seems to go on endlessly, just swallowing any light beams that shine down it. "Ominous." Lara quietly comments to that before she keeps walking on ahead, choosing that route, it'd seem.

Her eyes look over to Silver then. "I can relate. At least to the family lineage aspect of what you spoke of. The rest is... a burden I wouldn't wish to have, myself. It sounds as though it likely keeps you quite busy, however, and I can only assume you do it because you enjoy it?" Lara's left hand comes up to brush her bare fingers and covered palm against the wall where there are more markings and engravings, she's clearing off dirt and webs to read them more easily.

"I've heard of Nazis still alive today in South America, that they've been folded in HYDRA, and... Trinity. The agency that is often on my heels, when I'm after something of value to them." She looks to Silver again then, hand still gently touching the wall. "Trinity is a sub division of HYDRA, its their branch of artifact reclamation. Like what I do for SHIELD."

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver smiles. It's a humorless expression and the play of light and shadow casts her cold features into a death's head grin for a moment. "There are a lot less of them now than there were," she says, smugly. "My baba-- grandfather-- was very, very good at it."

A brush is produced and Silver helps clear off the mural, and steps back to examine their work after several minutes. She shakes her head, silvery mane tugging back and forth across her athletic shoulders. "I do not recognize this image," she confesses. "History wasn't my strong point. I think these are... that coat of arms, I recognize. That's a Hapsburg crest," she tells Lara. "But I do not know how old it is, and I do not recognize these cavalry here, or the knights." She brushes some dust away from the old image, which depicts a late-era cavalry charge and heavy knights breaking up infantry lines.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara steps aside when Silver produces the brush and she moves to the opposite wall where there are no murals painted to place her back there as she listens, shining her light on the wall to hel provide illumination to the revealing of it all.

Lara grins at the part about her grandfather being good at exterminating Nazis. "I can sense the pride in your voice." She lightly teases the other before she puts her eyes back onto the mural when Silver joins her to observe it.

Lara's right hand raises up and she motions to the men on the horses. "Serbian invaders, likely the fourteenth century. You can tell by their Byzantine-styled armor and the fact that they're wielding crossbows rather than standard archery long bows." Lara steps forward then and she places her left hand agaisnt the mural and taps it with her index finger "King Vukasin's seal." She further indicates and glances back to Silver to show a slight grin.

"History is all I've ever known." She says and the laughs very light, just a exhale really. "A 'nerd' for it, one might say. Which many did throughout my childhood." Her hand falls away from the wall then and she starts ahead. "This whole corridor is filled with these depictions. I believe this is a tunnel leading to an ancient archives. Though I can't imagine we'll find anything left inside it. Its likely all be taken when these chambers were no longer needed."

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver shakes her head in admiration. "Would have taken me weeks to figure that out, I'm sure."

There's a noise from up ahead. Most would turn their lights towards it. Instead Silver smoothly kills her flashlight and steps against a wall. Quiet as a shadow. She holds still for a few moments, then peeks around the corner.

"In full disclosure, Latveria thinks the border is located about five miles back the way we came," she tells Lara, casually. "And there's a possibiltiy they have an archaeologist here leading an expedition." She beckons Lara along, moving much more quietly and steadily. A tricked out pistol appears in her right hand and she stays ahead of Lara with a smooth duck-walking stride that glides over the stones.

The sounds dim, as if moving away, and Silver beckons Lara to hurry. "Come. Let's find this archive," she murmurs. "Best we be quick about it."

The two of them make a good pace to the archive room... which is empty. Silver stumbles, dismay on her face. The bookshelves are all empty. Pedastals lacking statues. A few moldy books are languishing in rot with disintegrated texts and glue melting into dust.

"Damn. Damn damn damn," Sable whispers. Over and over, calm agitation in her voice. "I thought-- I'd hoped--" She trails off, face betraying little of her disappointment.

Only one mural looks relatively unscathed. It's been looted, definitely, and presents an image of an old man holding a monastery in his hands. The name reads 'Stefan' in old Serbian script. Silver kicks over a pile of rotting wood, sending cockroachs scurrying.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara didn't have any visible weapons on her person, but that drypack on her back was long enough that a rifle could even be hidden inside it, and bulky enough that who knows what else she could have inside of it. All the same, she follows after Silver and keeps close, low and moves with an experienced agility that Silver might note and be impressed by, she doesn't seem like a stumbly and fumbly scientist, not even remotely.

"So what you're saying is..." Lara looks to Silver's eyes. "We're trespassing." She flashes a light grin, knowing full well that there are complicated politics behind all of this, but still. "We'll be quick and quiet." She assures the other before moving with her to these archives.

Once inside them, Lara is taking a full scan of the place, she's using her rather advanced looking phone device to record photos and video simultaneously while she scans things with her own eyes as well, not liking to look at the world through a device's screen...

Where Silver might be frustrated at the lack of physical 'treasure', Lara seems to have the opposite reaction. "Remarkable." She even mutters. "This is not King Stefan Lazarevic, this is depicting the elder Stefan, Stefan Nemanja, known better as Saint Symeon."

They might be in borrowed time, but its clear that there's a lot here for Lara Croft to nerd out over. Which she's in the process of. Going on to mutter more of this history, trying to remember bits of it inside her own mind while she walks over the horde of roaches Silver just destroyed the home of!

Silver Sable has posed:
"Saint Symeon?" Silver sounds surprised and walks towards Lara. She shines her light on the icon. "That's ... not right. This is a bural marker," she says. The athletic mercenary glances at Lara. She uplifts her chin, light dancing in a circle. "You see here, the scrollwork? The crosses? That is old tradition. The graves of our kings are still decorated this way."

She frowns heavily. "But Symeon's grave is in the capital. He was moved there two hundred years ago, buried as a king with full honors. This is where... this is the grave marker of a monk. Someone who forsook treasure and power for God."

She crosses herself, almost an act of reflex. She leans forward and narrows her eyes, then points at the dove in his outstretched palm. "His great tomb, he has a-a rod, you know, the ruler," she says, holding a fist aloft. "And in the other, the cross and sphere. Charlegemane, yes?"

She tilts her head and examines the dove. "This looks odd, doesn't it?" she murmurs.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara doesn't even seem to notice the roaches scurry past and over her boots. Her focus is entirely upon what Silver is indicating. "Much of that mural is odd, including the Monastery in his arms. But there are no shortage of oddities when it comes to Saint Symeon's life, let alone his death. He died at eighty six, and on his death bed he requested his son, Sava to take his remains back to Serbia. But that was not until 1206." Lara looks over to Silver then. "Symeon passed in 1200."

She draws in a light breath then and points back to the mural and the burial marker. "This could be where his remains were for those span of six years." She softly shakes her head then, lots of thoughts running through her mind.

"Symeon's remains, are meant to hold a special kind of power. They were said to smell sweet, like flowers. Yet also rumored to excrete a substance known as Holy OIl. Some believed it to have restorative powers if they bathed in it, or injested it..." She has a sour expression cross her face after saying that.

"Needless to say, his remains became... sought after. To say the least." She knows all too well the power of seeking way to defeat the Grim Reaper, a quest her father was obsessed with.

Silver Sable has posed:
Sable also makes a face. She reaches a hand towards the painting and pauses. "I should warn you-- this region has a long and mixed history with vampires," she tells the tomb raider. "They sleep until people forget them, then raid villages and kill many. Then, sleep again. Vlad Tepes, a cousin to Count Dracula-- he rampaged across the ancient Ottoman empire."

She lifts a brow. "Be ready for anything." She touches the dove and pushes against it with a thumb and forefinger, leaning her weight. There's a grinding, a *Crack* and the icon depresses into the relief. In turn the panel rotates and slips aside, the image looking as if Symeon is inviting the two women in.

Sablinova readies her light and her gun and heads inside, ahead of Lara. Once there, she pauses and gapes. Light spills from every corner of the antechamber, where the trappings of the monarch are on display. Crowns, scepters, fine weapons, clothing faded into wispy remnants.

And, a man-sized bier at the end of the room. The sarcophogus sits atop a low plinth and is adorned with the icons of a humble religious life in contrst to the scenes of battle and conquest on the walls.

"Holy father," Silver breathes. And it's not mere blasphemy. "Is this... could this be Symeon's tomb? His *actual* tomb?"

Lara Croft has posed:
"Vampires..." Lara quietly says. She's been to Mount Olympus to help Thor retrieve his hammer, she wielded it even. She's been to space to help the Guardians of the Galaxy by giving them a power source she excavated from a temple in a remote tropical island's mountainous caverns. She's seen a lot. But she's never fought any vampires...

"Lovely." She comments on that subject, offering a hollow smile to Silver before she watches the woman move to the dove and press upon it to trigger the mechanism that operates the door.

With a draw of breath, Lara witnesses what lies on the other side and she lets Silver proceed inward first, though she's eying the area closely for more traps like before, yet sees none thus far.

Once they pass within and can take in the sights of it all, Lara looks back to Silver. "If I were to choose between leaving my father's remains somewhere they would likely be more safe, compared to taking them to a territory embroiled in war... risking rumors of armies desperate for ways to heal their injured seeking out my parent's 'life giving oils'?" Lara huffs softly and looks to the sarcophagus, walking toward it with her recording device up still at chest-level to capture footage of this.

"I would leave them here." She finally then says. Which is a long-road toward simply saying that she believes this is the Monk's true burial place!

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver nods slowly, trying to dredge up what history lessons she can recall. "That would have been... in the early 1800s," she says, deliberately. "The Ottomans were frequently making inroads towards Budapest and northwards, into what's now Romania. A military parade to escort a king's bones to the city, in the middle of a military threat?" She shakes her head in admiration. "Clever, clever men. A fake funeral over fake bones."

There are voices from without once again and she freezes, stowing her light. "Damn," she mutters "I heard them more clearly. They must have followed us into here." She checks her weapon to ensure it's ready, turning off her portable lights one by one. Only the faintest of illumination remains, less than a burning matchstick of light near her face. "Run. Out the stairs, to the castle chantry. There may be a door you can open and escape. I cannot let them take Symeon's bones, magical oil or not!"

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara is continuing to record things with her device and she's about to respond to Silver when the voices return and the woman reacts with the cautionary style, preparing for hostility. The camera is put away and Lara moves after her, staying at her side. "We got here together." She tells the other. "I won't be abandoning you to face... whomever these people are."

Her hands dip behind her back and she pulls her gear around to her side, then unzips it and peals the covering off. She slides a thigh holstered pistol out of the pack and crouches down to one knee to secure it around her right thigh with a stretch of material and a clasping of metallic snaps.

Again, Lara raises up, now holding not just a handgun in her right hand but a long knife in her left. "Lets hope they're friendly, right? We don't want to attack them if they don't attack us. We're all civilized people after all." She says in a loud whisper to the other.

Silver Sable has posed:
Sable gives Lara a look of approval. The silver haired mercenary can appreciate somenoe who plans ahead. She nods once at Lara, then goes perfectly still. Her control is so complete that even the silver of her jumpsuit seems more mottled and less glitteringly eye-catching.

Her eyes shut as she tunes her senses to her ears. A disgusted sound escapes her throat. "Claiborne," she growls, almost inaudibly. "Mercenary from Bangladesh. Old money family. Murdering imperialist bastard." She glances at Lara. "Er, sorry," she mouths.

The voices and lights become clearer as a half a dozen armed mercenaries stop inside the archive, looking around. "Yo, what're we looking for?" an American inquires.

"You'll know it when you see it," Claiborne snaps. "And keep an eye out. Sablinova and the Brit might have circled behind us," he orders a lackey. "You see anyone but us? Put two in their chest and call it a day." He's not a small man by any means, above average height and thick-muscle. All are wearing ballistic vests and carrying rifles slung across their back.

Silver detaches something from her backpack. It's a flashbag. It's primed with a twist and then the object *clicks* audibly, once.

"What was that?"

Silver tosses the explosive device into the archive. "BANGER! GET DOWN!" someone shouts, and then the world explodes in a deafening percussive blast. Silver flows out into the archive as a flickering shadow of silver and motion, guns blazing as she hammers rounds down on the armed thugs. It's a bold, risky move that draws gunfire away from Lara as she advances with rapid dominance in mind.

Lara Croft has posed:
"Sounds like a truly lovely man." Lara replies after Silver speaks of the 'bastard' that he apparently really is. She shows a slight smirk then before she peers out into the archives and can hear the voices of the men speaking. She leans back then. "They're not here to play nice. Unfortunate, really. I'm not terribly fond of fighting in places like this, or fighting in general." Thats not entirely true... Lara doesn't like to fight or harm people, but she's also an adrenaline junkie and the rush of the fight does do a thing or two for her that pleases her, its a bit of a sweet and sour experience.

The knife in Lara's hand is slipped into the sheath on the front of her thigh holster and she watches Silver pull out a flash bang, while her hand disappears behind her back and then pulls forward a rather wicked looking climbing axe with a sharpened spiked tip. "We'll rush them then." She says, showing Silver a small lopsided grin a second before the other tosses the blinding device.

Lara looks away after its tossed, her eyelids clamped shut as she waits for it to go off... when it does, she turns with Silver and is hot on her heels, the two of them running together in tandem, Lara's single gun comes up and she starts to fire with it, several quick shots before she lunges at another man and swipes at his shoulder with her axe! She attempts to drag him back behind a stone outcropping with her, for cover and to disable him behind it!

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver moves like mercury. Or, well-- molten silver. It's not a 'stop and stand' fighting style she uses. Brutally fast, brutally efficient, brutally effective. And with no clearly defined fighting style. It's all improvisation and dynamic motion, sticking her feet to the ground only long enough to really stick a hit. Bullets whip through the air and none come close to her as the mercenaries spray blind automatic fire. One even catches his comrade in the legs and drops him in place with a gory thigh wound.

She hits Claiborne in the chest with four rounds from her heavy-recoiling handgun, dropping him with a grunt of pain and some cracked ribs. Her path is low to the ground, under the line of fire. Silver gut-checks a gunman with her shoulder and wraps herself around his shooting arm. With a spectacular kick of her legs she whips up and over behind him with a poise worthy of a luchadore. The sudden twist and additional mass flips the gunman like a pancake and he lands in front of Silver as her personal shield. Nerveless fingers drop his pistol when his shoulder goes *snap, crackle, pop*. He screams in agony when counterfire smacks into his ballistic vest. It creates some cover for Silver who continues to shoot with both hands gripping her gun tightly.

Lara's target loses his gun as well when she smacks him in the shoulder. With a disabled gun arm he makes a clumsy draw for his holster from the left. It results in Lara getting more than enough advantage to knock him from his feet, and from there it's not much of a contest bludgeoning a one-armed man into silence.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara does indeed disable the man's shoulder and she uses zip-ties to hog-tie him up from behind the cover as she hears the chaos of Silver's exceptional fighting abilities handling more of their foes. With the man struggling beside her, his wrists bound to his ankles now, she draws her knife and rises up again, gun drawn, aimed and fired! Two more quick shots that aim for the shoulders of another man who was bearing down on where she'd gone. He takes one shot which sends him off-balance, the second misses just barely, and he slams into her!

The two of them both go backward into the burial chamber itself again, Lara back pedaling the whole way until she loses her footing and falls over onto her back, in a roll she uses her own body weight to carry him over her and then kick him up and off so that he lands onto his own back, their heads side by side now, both of them quickly moving to get back up.

Lara, back up in a crouch now draws her gun, but finds him slapping her hands away and then moving to grab her shoulders. She cries out in a harsh groan, before grappling with the very large man who's trying to get his hands up over her throat. He pushes her up against a pillar and with a blur of motion she draws her knife from her holster, then slams it up into his stomach and chest!

His eyes flash wide open and he stumbles backward away from her...

Silver Sable has posed:
Lara's accounted for two. Silver's taken two. Claiborne's on the ground, wheezing around what sounds like broken bones. It doesn't matter how big and tough you are, a broken rib is a broken rib. Whatever Silver's firing, it uses big, hard-hitting bullets.

She pistol-whips her human shield and rolls behind a pillar. A reload is accomplished so smooth and fast it looks like an animation, the half-empty magazine skittering along the ground.

There's relative silence for a moment, aside from the persistent tinnitus squeal of loud noises exploding in such close proximity. And Claiborne's wheezing complaints. The last gunman ventures a burst of automatic fire and his Kalashnikov goes *bang-bang-click*.

"Merde!" The mercenary starts fumbling through the process of reloading the weapon. He makes the fatal mistake of looking down while struggling to reload the firearm. When he looks up, it's in time to catch a flying silver-clad knee to the nose. He crumbles bonelessly in place.

"Lara? Lara!" Silver shouts loudly, moving sideways and aiming a gun down the corridor into the vault. "Lara, are you all right?" she says, trying to make herself heard.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara was still coughing lightly by the time that Silver finds her. She's gathered up her gun and was actually in the process of going to find HER. "Yes, I'm fine." She tells the other, though her voice does sound effected. She's going to have some bruising around her throat from where she'd been choked while reaching for her knife, but she otherwise seems okay.

The man she'd stabbed is on one knee on the ground and leaning over on one elbow, his other leg is fully extended and he's crawling across the floor behind Lara with the knife rooted up into his torso down to its handle. He's staring right at them both while gasping for air.

"Are you okay?" She asks Silver, searching her visually for wounds or injury, holding her gun aimed down at the floor between them. "Are any of them left?" She asks, quite impressed by Silver's fighting prowess. "Thats... thats not generally how I handle situations like this." She admits, tending to be far more stealthy than brute force!

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver stoops and relieves the crawling man of his sidearm and a combat knife, and casually rips the gun apart and tosses the pieces in two directions. "Put pressure on the wound and crawl to your friends. You can either bleed out here or I can suture you back together in a minute."

She looks to Lara and suddenly steps quite close to the other woman, hands resting on her hips to pull her close. Before Lara can withdraw Silver starts patting Lara up down with a trained medic's efficiency, looking for blood or wounds that Lara might not realize she's had. Silver's had EMT or combat medic training at some point. She tilts Lara's chin up an inch to examine the bruising. Once satisfied the archaeologist will survive she steps politely back out of Lara's space. "You'll have a sore throat, but you seem intact," Silver informs Lara. "And you handled yourself well. These are ex-military if I were to guess," she says, beckoning Lara to follow her back into the archive area. "When boxed into a corner, it's usually prudent to gain the initiative and attack with overwhelming force before they can dig in and start throwing grenades after you."

She follows the trail of blood to the crawling man and starts a quick triage of the others. Claiborne's given a swift kick in the balls which makes him cry out and vomit. It also buys her a moment to toss away his sidearm and a boot knife, before examining the other mercenaries. Two unconscious, one bleeding out, one covered in sick with a broken collarbone or something similar.

"Get their weapons, throw them in a corner," Silver orders Lara with brisk efficiency. She rolls the men onto their bellies and zip-ties their hands behind their necks, attached to the back of their tactical vests. Claiborne's spared this, his good hand only ziptied. Not like he can do anything with a broken collarbone.

Only once the area's secure does Silver attend to the man with the knife in his belly, forcing him to lay back so she can examine the injury. "She missed the artery. You'll live, but you need stitches," Silver advises him. She pulls out a portable trauma kit and eyes the man. "I don't work for free, either," she advises the fellow. "If you don't dig through your friend's pockets and find me some pocket change, I'll take the stitches back out when I leave," she threatens him. He's shoved onto his back and she starts the painstaking process of extracting the blade without doing more damage.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara's eyes are on the man she'd stabbed when Silver moves in for the inspection of her condition. She looks over to her then but complies and just tips her chin up so she can be examined easily. Her face has one nasty scar across a cheek and eye and a few more down near the base of her neck, claw marks of some kind, but those are long since healed and scarred.

"Sore throat, I can handle." Lara says with a light smirk before she looks back to the man and then follows Silver out of the room. She's already moving to gather up weapons and communication devices. "They likely have more who are waiting for them to check in." She replies as she doesn't just take their weapons to a corner, she starts to strip the guns down to basic parts... and she does it with an efficiency that indicates a wealth of experience in doing such a thing, which is surprising since she has no military service on public record beyond her current employment with SHIELD, but she's in the WAND division of that agency... which is not known for its military roots.

Lara looks over to Silver and moves toward her once she's finished. "If they die, its on them. They decided to come in here with... kill orders." She sighs softly and looks back to the burial chamber. "What would you like to do here? More could be on the way. This is too big of a find to leave exposed." Her brown eyes return to Silver's. "I can call for SHIELD assistance. It shouldn't take more than a few hours for them to get here due to the circumstances..."

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver shakes her head. "I don't know how much time we have," she tells Lara. "We're probably not in uncontested territory. A military response from SHIELD might provoke Latveria. I can call in my people but they're thirty minutes away at a minimum, and we'll have to travel light. If there are forces in the area, we won't be able to stay long." She hesitates.

"You're the archaeologist. Should we risk it? Or take Symeon with us? If they're working for von Doom then I'm sure he has nothing unsavoury planned for miracle bones. If they're working for someone else, we might not have even minutes to spare. How much can we carry out between the two of us?"

She turns her attention to the wounded man and starts packing the bleeding knife wound with a dogged efficiency. She's ignoring his screams of pain, and even scolds him for his whimpering. "Stop being baby," she chides the fellow. She packs the wound with gauze to stop the bleeding then uses the machine in her hands to staple his wounds together. Thread pre-loaded into the staples is used to tighten the injury up by hand, fast as a ziptie.

"He'll live. Claiborne, on the other hand, I haven't decided if I want to keep alive or not." She squats down in front of the main, poking his forehead with her handgun. He grimaces up at her, face a white sheet of pain. "I haven't forgotten Marrakech," she tells him. "But maybe I don't want to upset Lara's principles by murdering in cold blood. Give me something useful," she says, 'encouraging' him with a thump to the forehead.

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara looks over the weapons she'd gathered up and she takes one of the knives for herself, it was a better type than the one she'd used on the man that Silver was providing medical attention for anyway. She slips it into the sheath on her holster and walks back toward the burial chamber doorways where she peers inside it. "Not much." She says then to the question about how much they can carry, as she looks back to Silver and shakes her head side to side with the brunette bangs framing her forehead gently waving side to side against her skin.

"Not if we have to worry about getting far with people on our heels, that is to say. "His remains will be impossible to move safely under these kinds of conditions." She walks back to Silver and stares down at the man she speaks to, with the gun pointed at his head.

"We'll have to move him, specifically... Claiborne, that is." She then says. "We can take him away from here, they'll come looking for him after all. So the further we get him from here then the safer Symeon's remains will be. Misdirection. We need to give time to the reinforcements to arrive here so that we can secure this site. The whole -place- is an archaeological treasure trove... Not just the remains of a dead King." She's looking at the broader picture here, rather than just the corpse of a man who may or may not secrete healing Holy Oils.

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver stares at Lara. "Don't take this inappropriately, but I think I want to kiss you," she tells the woman. Claiborne snorts, then yelps when Silver smacks him in the nose with the barrel of her gun. She rummages through his gear and examines his GPS unit. "We don't have to do *anything*. There's no signal in here," she tells Lara. "And intermittent reporting's enabled. It's not terribly hard to throw off a GPS unit," she explains. Silver digs through the looted gear. She smashes apart a magazine holder from a belt and digs out a magnet. It's affixed to the GPS antennae and held in place with a ripped piece of duct tape. "This will report their location as ten miles northeast of here. It'll be hours until anyone finds them. More than enough time for my people to get here."

She rises and zip-ties the bleeding man's boots together, and secures one hand to his belt. The other's left to keep a compress against his ribs. "You move, you will tear the stitches, and you will bleed out," she snaps at the fellow. "Don't even think about doing anything but waiting patiently for my teams to arrive."

She kicks Claiborne onto his belly again. "All right, Lady Croft. This is your dig site as of now," she advises the woman. "What do you want to do?"

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara huffs a light laugh at the first comment as she steps toward Claiborne. "That sort of talk is what lead to all those jilted ex's we spoke of earlier." She fires back, teasing of course since she'd said such a thing didn't even exist! After Silver kicks the man for reacting to their talk, Lara reaches forward onto his vest and she pops open one of the pockets, then fishes around inside of it with her fingertips.

"I know you." Lara says to the man who's bound and at their mercy. "You were at Lake Toplitz in Austria, assisting Doctor Barrett Coleman on his recovery of Nazi-stolen relics from the bottom of that lake." Lara's fingertips dip into another of the man's pockets on his vest and now she finds something and moves to draw it out, a leather bound journal.

"You were writing everything down in this book. I remember because I respected it, the thoroughness." She pulls Claiborne's journal back toward herself and starts to rise up to her full height again, staring down at him. "I'm sorry that these are the choices you've made with yourself." But with that said, Croft turns back toward the Burial Chamber and starts to walk toward it while she flips the man's journal open and begins to read.

"The search for immortality is the single most sought after treasure in all of man's history." She says as she walks and reads. "Its sad how much life has been lost trying, in futility, to find it." She seems to be headed right for Symeon's sarcophagus.

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver follows Lara. Her handgun's holstered again and she lurks right behind Lara's right elbow. She peers over the heiress' shoulder, reading along, then glances at Lara. "Apologies," she mumbles, and backs up half a step so Lara can read without interference.

Silver busies herself with adjusting her gear then starts looking through the inventory of the antechamber. There's nothing inherently valuable, at least beyond the crude gold content. But the significant cultural value is impossible to overstate. Crowns, wax sealing stamps, royal decrees, jewelry, gifts from other nations... they seem things that he might have loved in life, not for their value but for their personal significance.

"Does the journal say anything about who hired him? Where they're working out of?" Silver presses Lara. "Claiborne's a professional, but he's a gun for hire. He isn't exactly self-employed."

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara doesn't seem to even notice the peering over her shoulder, as she's searching the pages with her right hand's uncovered fingers tracing lightly over the handwritten words. "I don't see anything about the location of where they came from, or a direct name of an employer, which would be rather smart of him to keep those things out of something like this--but there are mentions of someone being referred to as 'The Wolf'..." She glances back to Silver and asks. "Ring any bells?"

But she returns to reading the journal then. "He was so close to finding this... if we hadn't been here..." She trails those words off and doesn't see them through to the finish of that thought.

Lara is standing in the center of the room now when she seems to become quiet and lost in the journal, flipping two pages quickly and then turning three back. "Fascinating." Lora looks up then and she searches the area behind Silver's shoulder. "Quickly. Grab that." She points to an ornamental spear on a rack and moves for another on an identical rack behind herself.

"We need to move his sarcophagus... before we can open it. Its in the wrong place." She says, stepping toward it and starting to slide the pole of the weapon into the sides of the King's final resting place.

Once she has it in place she looks over it to Silver. "When you're ready. Its on a guiding track, its going to go backward several feet... and then, up." Up? Really? Either way, Croft gets ready to push the heavy heavy box back.

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver follows orders readily enough. She seizes the spear, runs it through the sarcophagus loops, and braces herself on the other side of the bier.

She braces herself with an explosive grunt of effort and helps hoist the sarcophagus, stone scraping against stone. "Why... would they build it that way?" she grunts at Lara, legs braced. She's no superhuman, but Silver's much stronger than she looks and lifts with a weightlifter's hard-faced focus. The sarcophogus scrapes and grinds in protest, sliding backwards a few inches. True to Lara's word it shifts loose, and Silver staggers at the shift in weight as she braces herself to maneuver the heavy coffin off the plinth under it.

Lara Croft has posed:
The gratifying sound of the stone on stone movement was one Lara wouldn't likely openly admit to anyone, but she enjoyed it ever since she was a kid and she figured out a puzzle or mystery that her father had setup inside of their family home back in Surrey.

"The same reason they build all of this, generally..." Lara grunts those words out until they reach the end of the line for the sarcophagus' sliding. She steps back as it does indeed start to rise and she looks over to Silver. "Arrogance, generally." She says, showing a light smirk before suddenly the tomb of the Saint shifts, its lower half going downward while its upper half raises until it is almost standing completely vertical... but it stops, gently leaned back now.

Lara glances down to the journal again at this point, then she steps over the track that they pushed the coffin down and she hands the journal to Silver now that they're standing side by side again. "Thats not right." She says. "Oh, yes, of course. Dumb of me."

Lara steps in front of the sarcophagus then and she slides both of the poles out of either sides of it... holding one in each hand, she stares at the Saint's tomb and then slaps them down against the ground. Two hard *CLACKS!* and then the poles sink about half a foot into holes in the floor

Beneath Lara a table starts to rise up, a slab about as long as the sarcophagus itself, raising up with her ontop. It stops a few feet off the ground and Lara releases the pole-weapons, letting them stand upright as she grins down at Silver. "Would you like to do something for me?" She asks then.

Her right hand points to the center of the floor of the room now. "Go close the door that we opened to get in here. You'll find the mechanism there, beside the entrance." She points. This will seal them in here though!

Silver Sable has posed:
Silver blinks at the crisp authority in Lara's voice. It's rare, but so self-assured that Silver doesn't even think of questioning it. Once the bier and sarcophagus are oriented, Silver steps away from the mechanism and glances at Lara. "If their allies get here before the Wild Pack, we're going to be boxed into a corner with no way to escape," Silver tells Lara. She does something near the doorway and then steps back, hand resting on the lever.

"I'd start crawling for help," she advises the wounded mercs, and then jams the lever in place. Heavy counterweights grind and the door swings shut, sealing them in.

"I hope you've some unwholesomely clever design in place, Lasy Croft," Silver advises the Brit.

Lara Croft has posed:
As Silver moves across the room to tend to the doorway, she remains where she is up ontop of that table/slab that had raised up out of the floor. "I have good news, and some bad news for you." Lara says before Silver triggers the door. "The good news is yes, I know an alternative way out of here..." She draws in a breath then. "The bad news is that the Saint's remains aren't here." She says that, knowing the weight of the words and shakes her head gently from side to side.

When the door is triggered and it closes back up sealing them inside, there's a moment of silence... a lingering silence, the kind that makes one doubt their decisions.

But just a second later there comes another sound of more motion of environment. The sliding of hidden mechanisms behind the walls, and beneath the floor. The floor itself starts to spin in circular motions making the artistically designed inlays upon it all change shape and orientation.

The floor then separates down its middle and starts to split apart... pulling open, just as the ceiling above them does the very same thing, letting the orange glow of the setting sun's light into the burial chamber.

The doors on the floor part and a sudden rush of humidity fills the chamber, along with a sweet scent of flowers. "There." Lara says, as the doors on the floor and ceiling both stop moving. Lara points down now at the shimmering waters of a large pool. "They did take his remains into war. Because they had soaked it in... this. A Chrismary Pool. The blessings of God. The Chrismary Pool, to be precise."

Lara drops down off of the edge of the table to stand beside it now, in front of the pool on the other side of it from Silver. She looks across the shimmering waters, glittering in the light from the sun outside bouncing off of the walls inside this chamber. "This is a much bigger discovery than I expected, Miss Sablinova." Lara admits then.

Silver Sable has posed:
Siver staggers when the room moves under her feet. But she keeps her balance, rather ably, and gapes in shock when shimmering blue light and humidity slaps her face. Her thick silver hair starts curling at the tips with the increase in water vapor in the air.

"Istenem," she breathes, and crosses herself again. "I don't know what that is," Silver finally confesses. "What is a Chrismary pool? Why would they soak Symone's bones in it?" she inquries, looking down at the shimmering pool of light with some wary suspicion. "Is this some natural feature opon which they built the monastery? Or was it added later?"

Lara Croft has posed:
Lara walks around the pool while listening to Silver's response and she looks from the glittering waters up to the silver haired woman with the very fitting name. "Right now?" She starts to reply. "I only have guesses. This is all coming at me rather fast, after all." She stops a few feet from the other and stares at her.

"I believe his remains were taken... soaked in this fluid, but also with more of it stored around his body in jugs and skins. I believe they took it there for a specific reason, at that specific time. A territory plagued with war, searching for ways to get an edge over their enemies. But at the same time, desperate not to let this eecret out." Lara starts to crouch then, lowering down to her knees beside the pool's edge. She looks down at it until her reflection is cast back up at her.

"I said 'Arrogance' was why they built things like this. But thats not entirely true. Sometimes elaborate devices like... all of this, are simply made to conceal powerful secrets." She glances back to Silver while she kneels there in front of the water. "The kind I'm hired to discover, and maintain their secrecy and safety." After saying this, Lara does two things. First, she lowers her left hand down into the water, submerging it and then drawing it back up, letting it pour off of her fingers as she parts them.

Secondly, Lara takes that knife out of her thigh holster again. "Though this one is a little unique... for even me." And with a heavy sigh she draws her hand back and she moves to slide the knife right across her own hand!

Nothing happens to her wet flesh. No cut, not even a red mark.