TRAOD-1-EN

"Oh, shit! Don't make a sound, Lara!", she whispered to herself while she felt like shouting or at least swearing aloud. Sam's life depended on her being faster than the preparations the indiscriminately stolen gospels of the Solari commanded. Yet she was here, stalled, lurking behind a stone balustrade, waiting for a regiment of undead Samurai to pass.

They were the priestess queen Himiko's warriors who had pledged allegiance to her nearly two thousand years ago and that vow seemed to still bind them. They took no orders from the leader of the Solari, they must have been summoned by the queen of storms herself. They may have been preparing for the inauguration of the new queen or gathering for some other ceremony, it didn't matter. She knew better than getting in their way. They just kept coming in an endless procession, murmuring ancient Japanese texts. Each line was led by its officer and even one of those invincible Oni giants passed on the other side of the stone rail.

As the vast hall filled by the minute it became clear that she had no chance to sneak nor to cut through the army. She felt trapped in a snake pit and it just got worse. The soldiers kept gathering and grey odorless mist followed around their feet. Lara could only hope that she hadn't already inhaled a deadly dose of some unknown poison while she kept her head down behind the rail.

At last she reached the stairs. She could finally sneak her way up and breathe clean air. She filled her lungs and looked around the hall above the soldiers' heads. She found what she was looking for: a narrow ledge at the feet of the chanting warriors on the gallery. With a bit of luck it looked possible to climb to the other side holding on that ledge.

Hanging above her enemies' heads she had another look around. She hoped that they were absorbed in the ceremony enough to overlook the silently dangling interloper. It didn't take a second to regret her decision. The sight made her body jerk enough to relax her hold for a moment.

What she saw wasn't a disciplined formation of soldiers anymore but toga-clad ascetics with hands folded in prayer, all the same, an army of perfect clones. Their feet lost in the mist above the floor, their faces hidden behind blurry noise, each one being like a flaw in the Matrix. But she wasn't shocked by the sudden change. The familiarity of the sight was much more terrifying. Her instincts she learned to listen to told her that she had forgotten something crucial. Remembering could be the matter of life and death, but her mind was blank.

Se saw a pile of burning wood in the middle of the hall and next to it two toga-clad figures were undressing a third, smaller, more weary looking wraith. His head bobbed in two gruesomely separated halves, a torn toga hung in rags from his emaciated figure. The two other wraiths worked on removing these rags, one by one, gingerly like they were grooming a cruel queen who'd sentence them to death at the first wrong move. Rotting body emerged from the torn clothes. The more decaying flesh and naked bone they revealed the more the figure straightened. Hundreds of ghostly monks watched the dead abbot's transformation in awe.

Then four taller, similarly gaunt figures closed in and grabbed the Abbot by his four limbs. They started to pull while flames crawled from their shoulders to his body. They didn't stop emanating their impossible chant from the gaps at the center of their mutilated heads while they pulled stronger and stronger.

Lara knew that it was high time to leave. Then she would have time to think about collapsing the entire building on them. After these few days on the island she had believed that she couldn't fear anything anymore. Now she had to realize how wrong she had been. As she tried to pull herself up to the only window without monks her sweaty trembling fingers slipped. She found a new hold on the ledge right away but her body struck the wall starting a rain of pebbles on the crowd below. A wraith raised its gaze at her. The compression artifacts around its skull furled up revealing a pair of dark eye sockets with tiny spots of sharp, malicious light inside. It watched the girl for a moment then decided to give a piercing shriek. A whole army of wraiths jerked their heads trying to follow its gaze but that gaze had already ceased to point anywhere. An arrow of amethyst flames stabbed the wraith's head, its skull evaporated in a trail of smoke, and an empty toga collapsed on the floor. Lara saw the slim outlines of a girl, a long trail of dark hair disappearing behind a pillar on the other side of the hall. Grateful for the second gifted to her she pulled herself up on the ledge and ran out of the building, zigzagging in the rain of the wraiths' energy beams.


Her fate finally caught up to her as she ran right into another ravine like she had countless times in the past few days. She crashed into the rocks at the bottom then she drew her bow even before she could get on her feet. As she got a foothold she sent the arrow right into a wraith's head, then into another, again and again as she fled for her life, with searing in her arms and legs. Luckily she ran out of enemies faster than of arrows and strength. Then she collapsed in the cover of a rock and praised her luck and her secret benefactor for letting her get away from the dead abbot - or the Oni, as she had known. She couldn't even walk anymore and she was sure that no arrow nor bullet could kill that monster.

Her vision faded. She saw a little white animal approaching, hopping with long ears and bushy tail fluttering in its wake. Then her stomach sank as the ground jerked under her hands and knees. A ripple swept through her field of vision and she lost her remaining balance. The little white creature turned tail in a flash and scurried away. Lara hit the ground and stayed there, hardly having the strength to turn her face away from the dirt below.

She had fought many hopeless fights and received a lot of horrible wounds. Yet all of these injuries had faded into faint scars and she hadn't got the time to reflect on this oddity. It was like some divine grace, but she was running out of it. Her luck or God, should it be anything, turned its back on her. Her clothes soaked in blood, she felt the piercing of a bone's sharp end in her leg. She thought that she'd stay here for good but she didn't mind anymore. She had fought hard but the island proved stronger. Perhaps it was about time to learn to lose.

"We can't leave you here with so much darkness! It would attract the wraiths to you, Lara-chan."

She wasn't sure that she had really heard the voice nor the next one. Something softly gurgled then another animal's head peeked out of the thicket. Purple eyes glittered at the girl from behind a dark and scaly lizard snout. The animal seemed to grin as it slightly opened its mouth and flicked out its tongue, as though mocking her. Then it stepped out of the bushes and cheekily pranced to the girl on its hind legs.

A mere twitch was all the move Lara could make. She watched amazed as the slightly oversized crow-like creature stopped next to her and started to theatrically preen its flight feathers, boasting of its peculiarity. Its whole black feathered body played in luminous purple sheen, only its wings sported a pair of white arcs and its long lizard tail had white and purple stripes in its iridescent feather fan. Lara knew quite a few similar animals but their age put the ancient kingdom of Yamatai in shame. She saw stern elderly zoo directors with her mind's eye, queueing for the right to give an arm and a leg for this creature.

The animal took another step and bent down balancing with its long tail to look into Lara's eyes. A mere blink was the only answer so it held out its neck, grabbed one of Lara's fingers with its little reptilian teeth and tried to free her hand from under her head. Then it grabbed the finger with its clawed hands and pulled with all its two-pound weight.

Then straightened and bristled up, chattering like a disappointed magpie. It tapped on the rock with its sickle claw, waiting for the girl to muster all her strength and toss her hand at its feet. Then it bent down again to carefully study the ring on her middle finger. Strangely she couldn't remember how she got this ring but she was sure that it was there during her every adventure.

If she had the strength she would have shaken her head. "This is not an animal."

No, it was more like another entry on the long list of the mysteries of this cursed island. She watched as the creature turned its back to her and touched the ring with the purple gem that hung from a gap between two of its tail feathers. The girl felt pulled out of her body through that very ring. She couldn't even lie on the ground without holding on to something but she didn't have the strength to hold on to anything. She closed her eyes and let her consciousness plummet into the void.


It was dawning when she woke up. The first thing she saw was the little black animal, walking up and down nervously. It was inspecting a hardly visible force field which looked but a pillar of rippling air to Lara - but it was an impenetrable wall to the creature. It carefully looked in every nook and cranny, felt around with its wings in search for the tiniest crack, completely fruitlessly. It even tried to clumsily hook its sickle claw into the force field with the same success. It took a good while for the creature to get tired of trying, its flight feathers were a mess by then. Then it stopped at the center of its high-tech prison and ran its right wing claws through the short feathers of its head and behind, like flipping back some imaginary hair. It promptly seemed to realize the futility of this act and sat on a bunch of grass fretfully, wrapped in its thoughts. Now it seemed even less animal-like, it it was possible at all.

Lara looked away just to notice the other small creature. She decided to keep watching lest she scare it away with a sudden move. While the black one looked like some prehistoric transition between a reptile and a bird this furry creature was definitely mammal-like. Its size, appearance and the way it sat suggested a short nosed white cat with an unusually long and bushy tail. It had only one striking oddity: a pair of extra limbs. Lara didn't know about any earthly creature with ear tentacles that ended in finger-like feelers. And this animal even wore jewelry, not unlike the other that it seemed to observe.

She should have found the sight strange but it hit her with the same uncanny familiarity she had felt hanging above the wraiths' heads.

"Interesting."

A cute, nearly childish voice cheered inside her head.

"You seem to be aware of our presence here. You might be trying to remind us to an earlier failure by this appearance. Or, perhaps, it's a simple disguise. Indeed, our earlier contact with these creatures was a failure. We overestimated their level of development. But we know that you aren't one of them. You apparently use a host body the very way we do. We have learned a lot since then, we have means to judge your abilities. Your intelligence is obviously sufficient for proper communication. Actually you exceed the majority of this planet's dominant species in this respect."

Lara tried to locate the source of this "voice" moving only her eyes. She suspected that these words weren't intended for her at all, that she was accidentally eavesdropping on some private matter.

"What are you? You know and make use of our soul gem technology. You appear at the exact time and place when and where we're about to observe the outcome of two important experiments at once. How can you benefit from the information you gain here? And why did you interfere with one of these experiments? Anyway, I'll make sure you won't influence the other."

The confined creature defiantly cocked its head and ran its claws through its imaginary hair again. Apparently it was the recipient of the questions but it wouldn't cooperate. As an answer, the force field began to contract. The reptilian bird gave its opponent a spiteful look. Then it held out its right wing in a strange uncomfortable posture and put the tip in the air. The white animal glared back, puzzled, but Lara recognized the gesture and couldn't suppress her laughter. She knew that the wingtip the creature held out was actually its richly feathered middle finger.