Wonder if the bounty hunter would come along without a bounty as long as I cut him a percentage?
Shay wasn’t sure. Brownstone acted like he only cared about money at times, but his actions with Alison and his obsession with helping his church proved that the self-interest was more act than reality.
The tomb raider prepped her needle gun. She didn’t anticipate a fight under the water, but she didn’t want to get caught flatfooted if some water witch or angry rusalka decided they wanted to drown her ass.
The drone recon had shown that the caves would be large enough for her to enter even wearing all her diving equipment. She might be tough, but she couldn’t free-dive hundreds of feet.
Shay geared up in her full-suit high-pressure wetsuit and diving equipment. It was expensive as hell, but it also let her surface much faster than more commercially available gear.
She waddled into the water with all the grace of an overweight penguin, taking step after step as the hungry waters of Lake Michigan rose higher on her body. Soon the water swallowed her whole.
Shay activated the lights on her mask and her wrist as she swam toward the cave entrance. Something darted past her and she spun, bringing up the needle gun. It wasn’t a rusalka, Nessie, or a mercenary diver, just a large fish.
Seconds blurred into long minutes as she continued downward, now more attuned to the other inhabitants of the watery depths. She still occasionally swept the area with her lights to ensure only finned animals were in the area.
Shay arrived at the cave. The water rippled across the entrance, but none leaked inside.
She expected to feel some sort of jolt or strange warmth as she passed through the obvious magic of the entrance, but instead, her head passed into the cave without any sensation. Soon her entire body was inside.
The tomb raider stripped off her fins and bulkier gear. The Professor had provided coordinates to narrow down the location of the stone, but he hadn’t been able to get it more specific than that. Time for a little exploration.
Shay double-checked to make sure she still had a few watertight pouches on her diving belt before hoisting the needle gun and moving farther into the cave.
Why can’t people hide their shit above the water?
After fifteen feet or so Shay stopped. She’d had to access the cave via the water, which was held back by magic, but she wasn’t having any trouble breathing. Another spell, perhaps, or some hidden access to the surface. It didn’t matter in the end, but given all her adventures since becoming a tomb raider, it was hard to ignore all the subtle ways magic could influence her missions.
The coordinates pointed her to a cave that narrowed into a separate tunnel, and Shay frowned. The low ceiling necessitated crawling, so she’d need to leave her weapon behind.
Shay shrugged. “Oh, well. Sometimes it’s about having knife fights with alien demons, and sometimes it’s about crawling through mud.”
She dropped to her knees to crawl through the tight passage. A minute or two of careful travel brought her to an underground cavern that dwarfed the cave entrance, let alone the narrow tunnel leading to the cavern.
A small silver box sat near the back of the cavern.
“This is promising. Very promising.”
Shay took slow, measured steps toward the box, still half-expecting an angry attack from some magical assassin or strange creature. The Professor had sworn up and down that the job would be simple, but he and his Light Elf buddy seemed awfully spooked by the situation.
If a man who’d been collecting artifacts for decades and a Light Elf were acting that way, there was no way in hell the artifact wasn’t dangerous itself or being protected by someone or something dangerous.
The tomb raider patted her sheath. She’d not been able to bring her needle gun, but at least she still had one of the adamantine knives. She’d thought about bringing the others, but didn’t want to risk the loss of all three under the cold waters of Lake Michigan should anything go wrong.
Shay’s trip to the box preceded without any attacks, surprises, or anything of note. She let out a sigh of relief. Now, it was time for the next test.
She knelt in front of the box and took several deep breaths as her fingers hovered over the lid.
“One…two…three.”
She raised the lid, and nothing exploded or shocked her. No giant boulders rolled out to crush her. She wasn’t teleported to the World in Between. She didn’t even have to deal with a poison dart.
The stone was inside the box and Shay stared at it, taking in all the fine details.
It was less worn than the one she’d recovered from Mexico, and as in the picture she’d been shown some of the glyphs were the same, but there were also several different ones.
Shay gently lifted the stone and settled it inside a pouch.
So what are you and Correk hiding, Smite-Williams? Is this some secret Oriceran bullshit in the end?
The tomb raider stood and shook her head. She wouldn’t be able to just walk away from this job and be satisfied with her money. Whatever the Professor and the elf were doing might involve her stone.
Selling it to the Professor was one possibility but giving away her potentially historic proof for a little money struck her as pointless.
There also remained the question of whether the stone itself had some sort of magical power. She’d collected her knives and the tachi, but they weren’t enough—not with the types of difficulties she had faced on many of her tomb raids.
If Shay didn’t actively seek gear to protect herself from dangerous magical foes, she’d be dead within the year. Yulia had proven that in Antarctica.
I might not be a witch, but by the time I’m done they’ll all be fucking afraid of me.
She slammed the box closed, and a loud rumble shook the room.
“Oh…shit.”
The cavern continued to shake.
