Arena 3

by Logan Jacobs

  A second after I walked to where Aurora stood, Nova sank from the branches of a nearby tree on her harpoon lines and, a moment after that, PoLarr landed in a whoosh of green exhaust from her jetpack.

  “How much you wanna bet there is a loot box in there?” I asked to no one and everyone. “Probably surrounded by booby traps, spider, snakes, and more booby traps. Oh, and did I mention booby traps?”

  “Yes, three times,” Nova answered simply. “I think you like that word.”

  “Boobies? I love them.”

  “What do you want to do, sugar?” Aurora asked as she rolled her eyes. The longer we stood here the worse our odds got of either another group of champions blasting at us from cover or for some hereto unseen jungle monster coming to eat us. As if to punctuate my thoughts a loud explosion erupted from deep within the jungle off to the east of us. Or what I assumed was east anyway.

  “Okay, Aurora and I are going to go into the temple of jungle doom here,” I said and sheathed the machete. I pulled my right handed SVA and stood near the entrance. The time-worn stone was engraved with intricate hieroglyphs and patterns. The opening was at least eight feet across at the bottom and tapered to down to two feet across at the top which was just above the top of my head. The light penetrated about three feet into the dark interior, and then it just seemed to stop as if it hit a big black wall. It didn’t gently fade into shadows. It stopped abruptly like the stone hallway was some kind of black hole where light entered and never left. I gulped hard. “Nova and PoLarr, you guys keep guard.”

  “I’ll take a position at the top of the pyramid so that I can cover the entrance from every angle,” PoLarr said. “Plus the foliage up there will help cover me.”

  “Good idea, PoLarr,” Nova agreed. “I’ll climb up to the top of the entrance and lay in wait to drop down on any unlucky soul who dares come across my vision.”

  “Aw, I love you guys too,” I said as I activated the SVA’s blade. With the flick of another button, the blade began to glow with a bright blue-white light, and I held it before me like a makeshift torch. “I gotta tell ya, I never tire of cool technology that seems to adapt itself to exactly what I need when I need it. So convenient!”

  I put my hand against the stone entrance way and tried to peer into the impenetrable darkness.

  “It is handy, sugar,” Aurora commented as she twirled her Karambits and readied herself to enter as well.

  “Alright, stay about two-feet behind me, Aurora,” I suggested. “In case there are booby traps there’s no point in both of us getting our heads lopped off or--”

  “Skewered by spring-loaded spears,” PoLarr finished for me with a nod of her head.

  “God,” I remarked with a sigh, “we have seriously gotta stop watching so many movies. Okay, team. Let’s get on with this.”

  PoLarr gave her jetpack a quick burst and jumped to the top of the pyramid where she seemed to all but disappear. I had to look very closely to see her little shark fin of bright blonde hair amid the green.

  I took a deep breath, nodded to Aurora and Nova and entered the doorway with a big giant over-exaggerated step.

  The very second I was through the arched entrance a heavy two-ton slab of smooth rock slid down behind me with a loud rumble, and I was plunged into complete absolute soul-crushing darkness.

  Chapter Ten

  “Booby traps, I knew it!” I cursed in the all-consuming black of the pyramid and spun around to feel the smooth cool surface of the rock that now stood where the open entrance had been just a moment before. I held up my SVA and turned up the intensity of the blade-glow. The blue-white light burned away about a three-foot sphere of the darkness all around me. Then I banged on the solid rock slab with my fist but it barely made a sound.

  “Aurora!” I screamed and then put my ear against the granite. I heard absolutely nothing. Not even a muffled reply. I guessed the huge piece of stone had to be at least a foot thick and so expertly carved that I couldn’t even make out a seam where it fit in the doorway. It was as if it had always been there. I tried to engage my comms, but the granite interfered with the signal and all I got back was static. Then I turned and gazed back down the hallway. “Into the great unknown I go first, Indy.”

  Without another choice, I began to walk into the bowels of the ancient structure. The floor of the hallway began to slope downward, and I felt a noticeable temperature shift. The jungle outside had been humid, hot and stifling and, while still humid as fuck, the interior of the pyramid got chilly real fast. Soon the sweat that had clung to my body outside like a salty, damp sweater, had turned to a cold, salty, damp sweater, and the sides of the hallway grew dark with streaks of condensation the deeper I got.

  It was slow going as I was now completely paranoid about other booby traps. The last thing I needed was some giant circular saw from the demented mind of a strange pyramid building ancient alien race swinging down from the roof to cut me in half.

  While I held the SVA-torch in my right hand slightly out in front of my face to burn away as much of the claustrophobic black as it could, my left hand trailed behind me as I let it play across the cool stone wall of the hallway. My fingers traced across the fine and incredibly elaborate carvings in the solid stone. After a little while, it was almost like I could read what was under my fingers as if it were some kind of alien braille. The idea was absolutely ludicrous, but that didn’t stop a strange image from forming in my head as I walked deeper and deeper into the dark unknown.

  My mind conjured an ancient people whose ancestors had pulled themselves from the mud and muck of the prehistoric forest. They were humanoid in nature, short, stout beings with dark brown-red skin, like the lost tribes of the Amazon. Centuries passed and they evolved, learned how to read the trees, and formed symbiotic relationships with creatures of the jungle. Tribes warred. Famine and disease nearly drove them to extinction.

  But they were tough sons of bitches and they survived. More centuries pass and a ruling society emerged like a phoenix from the flames of a great conflagration that burns away a large portion of the jungle. Like a movie in my mind, I saw a time-lapse flicker image of a city as it was built from the ground up.

  Ages passed, and then the base of a giant pyramid began to form. Craftsmen and women carved huge stone blocks from a quarry that formed at the base of an immense mountain hidden under a forest of thick trees. Generations were born, reached adulthood, grew old and died as more and more layers were added to the mighty pyramid, a monument to a fiery god of the sun that hangs high in the cobalt blue sky. Soon the granite mountain had been reduced to little more than a hill, and soon after that it became a hole in the ground as more and more of the green rock was mined.

  At the same time the pyramid grew. Then, just as the last stone is placed and there was a great rejoicing among the thriving city that had formed all around the mile square base of the imposing structure, darkness crept from the pit of the quarry.

  A deadly plague consumed the city, and many died.

  Whispers and rumors of an angry jungle deity began to spread faster than the plague. A god that had become enraged by the arrogance of those who would dare to build a rock monstrosity where the glorious jungle had once reigned supreme. Brother took arms against brother. Civil war erupted like a violent volcano of violet blood. The ground rans purple with spilled life. And the darkness was happy.

  But it was ever hungry.

  The last of this once mighty people banded together. Mystics chanted and prayed. A mage who could mold a recently discovered silver metal found in thick veins that ran through the green stone at the very bottom of the quarry forges a weapon. A sacred guard taken from the few warriors who remained weaved a spell fueled by the blood of the mage as she infused the weapon with her will and spirit. They lured the spirit of the quarry into the pit of the pyramid. There they fought it to the last of them and finally they trapped it. With a final dying breath the lone warrior, all that was left of the great people, cursed the spirit and what h
ad once been a glorious monument to the bright light of day became a tomb of darkness and despair for all who entered perished and shall perish.

  My hand fell to my side as the wall ended, and I sucked in a sharp inhale of breath like a shock of freezing water.

  I glanced around as if I had just come out of a trance. The light of my SVA now spread out into a large square chamber with a low ceiling only two feet above my head. The walls are scarred with long slashes as if a mighty battle had been waged. They are free of carvings and silent. A plain rectangular sarcophagus sat in the center of the room.

  “This cannot be good, Havak,” I said to myself, and my voice sounded small and insignificant. “Now, you tell me.”

  I was talking to myself. Great.

  “Oh, fuck this,” I spat out and felt a familiar pang of anger rise up in me. I did not like being afraid. So much so that it tended to turn to anger.

  I had an almost forgotten memory of accidentally locking myself in the basement as a little kid. It had been dark and damp, much like this chamber, and at first, I’d been so terrified I could hardly even scream. Then I remembered a wave of anger that replaced the fear. A sheet of pure red that covered my brain. I had kicked the thick, solid basement door again and again until the door frame splintered and I fell into the bright light of my kitchen. My mom found me at the foot of the stairs as I screamed “I am not afraid of you!” into the darkness with wood shards all around my feet. I couldn't have been much more than five or six.

  That same anger now ran through my veins. My alliance mates were outside somewhere and faced who knows what. I was not about to let fear stop me. I walked into the chamber, my hand tight on the handle of the SVA-torch.

  A tiny shaft of light, like a heavenly spotlight, shot down through a hole in the ceiling to illuminate the sarcophagus. That’s when I noticed two things; a loot crate next to it, and column on top of the stone coffin’s lid with a five-fingered star device sparkling in the light.

  I walked to the loot crate and opened the top. There were a few boost cards inside. Without bothering to look to see what they were I grabbed them up and shoved them into one of the cargo pockets on the leg of my jumpsuit. Part of me knew that I should have at least looked to see if one of them could help me out of this mausoleum but another, stronger, part of me was fascinated by the gleaming star thing on top of the sarcophagus.

  It looked like some kind of weapon.

  The center of it was a palm-sized circle covered in dark brown leather with a small purple gem at its heart. Five thumb sized spokes poked out from the center to form the points of the star. They kind of reminded me of the handles of stubby switchblade knives.

  I stood up to my full height from where I’d been hunched over the sarcophagus and glanced all around me. Other than the hallway and the tiny shaft that let the sunlight in, there was no other way in or out of the chamber.

  “Fortune favors the bold,” I whispered to myself, took a deep breath, and grabbed the star thing from out of the shaft of light.

  Three things happened all at once. One, I felt an electric shock go up my arm as three inch bright silver double-edged blades shot out of the spokes of the star like fingers of gleaming retribution. Two, the lid of the sarcophagus cracked and exploded outward in a blast of green granite dust that knocked me off my feet to sail across the chamber until I slammed into the wall and fell on my ass. Three, an honest to god fucking mummy rose from the stone coffin like some kind of an ancient alien Boris Karloff.

  The mummy was maybe six feet tall based on how much of its torso emerged as it sat up. It was wrapped in time-yellowed strips of gauze from head to toe, and I could see patches of black, necrotic flesh as it poked out of gaps in the wrapping. Its chest was broad but tapered to an almost impossibly thin waist while its arms and legs were spindly and overlong. The mummy’s head was roughly triangular with a wide skull that came to a pointed protrusion that I guessed must have been its nose. It reminded me a little like a Predator head crossed with some kind of bat. There was a creak of old, brittle bones as the mummy’s head turned to me. Then its death-leather eyelids opened to reveal horribly empty sockets that glowed with a terrible hellfire. The mummy’s mouth fell agape and a thick, ancient forked tongue slithered over its fang covered jaw.

  In a blink, the mummy jumped from the rubble ruins of the sarcophagus and attached itself to the smooth rock ceiling as if gravity had pulled it there. Its limbs spread out wide as it hugged the ceiling like some kind of undead spider as its head rotated a full hundred and eighty degrees so that it looked right into my eyes. Then it screamed, and a terror from the deepest, darkest bowels of my soul spread over me like a woven blanket of horror.

  The mummy began to skitter across the roof of the chamber in a jerky Japanese ghost movie stop-motion crawl.

  I was frozen in place by an immobilizing fear the likes of which I’d never felt. All I could do was watch, wide eyed, as the mummy got closer and closer. It had scrabbled almost directly over my head with a sound like broken twigs on concrete when my fear finally turned the corner back into anger. I had a blind instinct flash in my brain and flung the star weapon up at the mummy as I rolled out of the way.

  The star spun as if propelled on a wave of magnetism like a razor-sharp pinwheel in a strong wind. It struck the mummy in the chest just as the creaking nightmare leaped from the ceiling. Sparks flew as the spinning blades struck the thing’s mummified flesh, and it flew backward across the length of the chamber.

  I came up in a crouch, switched the SVA-torch to my left hand and held out my right. I called out to the star with my mind, somehow knowing that was the thing to do, and it heeded my mental call. The star spun and wheeled through the air like a boomerang, and I pulled it from its return arc at the last second. Somehow I instinctively grabbed it in the center and didn’t slice off all the fingers from my hand.

  The mummy rose to its full height on the other end of the room and yelled out in anger. Its voice was like a mausoleum wail full of the dust of dead bones and the fury of ancient imprisonment. It gathered its legs under itself and ran at me in great loping strides that covered the distance between us in a heartbeat.

  “Fuck you too,” I yelled and flung the star out once more. It struck the creature on the side of the skull and cut away the bandage-like wrappings. The hideous skeleton underneath was stretched tight with time aged dead skin as black as night. It howled in pain and the fire where its eyes should have been flared bright. The mummy brought its arm up and knocked the spinning star out of its face with incredible force so that it flew across the room and sank into the stone wall. I called out with my mind again, but it was stuck.

  My right hand flew to my left shoulder and pulled my other SVA out in a wide swing just as the mummy attacked me. The blade cracked the undead thing on the side of its massive skull and knocked it sideways.

  I spun away to put a little distance between us, turned back around, and crouched down low, my legs ready to propel me in any direction, and the SVAs held out at my sides as I glared furiously at the ancient monster. It had recovered from the blow and stood to face me. Its leather-like lips pulled into a sneer, and it attacked.

  For being old as fuck, the damn thing was preternaturally fast and strong as hell. It swung its thin, yellow bandage wrapped arms at me in huge haymakers and it was all I could to block them. The blades of my SVAs, which could normally slice through just about anything, glanced off the mummy’s tough skin and barely left a scratch. Soon sweat poured from my brow even though it was cold as a witch’s tit in the tomb.

  The mummy and I battled from one side of the chamber to the other. The Glima mod fired on all cylinders as I spun, swung, twirled, and kicked at the creature with all my might. I was very glad for the regen upgrade I’d decided on because there was no way I would have been able to keep up this kind of constant, full body onslaught otherwise.

  I crossed my axes above my head just in time to catch a massive double fisted hammer blow from the mummy
, but the force still drove me to my knees. The mummy pulled its arms down and to the left which pulled the SVAs from my grip. Before I could react, the dusty wrathful creature was on top of me. Its fang-filled mouth snapped closed inches from my face, and I could smell its fetid foul breath as it washed over me. It shouldn’t have weight more than a few pounds but it felt like I was crushed under the weight of a hundred boulders from the far reaches of an ancient time. I managed to get my armored forearm up and shoved it into the mummy’s mouth just as it bit down hard. My eyes went wide as I watched the reinforced molded polymer that had withstood bullets and laser blasts crack and crumble under the force exerted by the creature’s mouth.

  A few more minutes like this, and I was pretty sure I was going to lose my arm. I grunted and twisted my body as hard as I could and threw us into a roll. We tumbled across the floor, and I managed to come out on top with my legs straddling the mummy’s torso.

  My Krav Maga upgrade flared to brilliant, violent life, and I began to rain blows down into the mummy’s face like double fisted hail. I screamed out in rage and fury as I smashed punch after punch into its skull. Finally, I felt my arms begin to get heavy as not even my regen upgrade could keep pace with my exertion. With one last wail of anger, I brought both hands down in a mighty hammer blow that actually cracked the stone underneath the mummy’s head.

  I sat on top of it as my chest heaved, sweat dripped from my face, and I had a brief glimmer of relief before the mummy turned its head toward me and laughed. It sounded like a chorus of demons mocking me from the depths of an alien hell I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

  The mummy’s leg bent at an impossible angle and whacked me in the back of the head so hard I saw stars. Then it rolled again, and we tumbled across the ground in a mass of limbs. In the blink of an eye, I’d gone from victory to almost certain defeat as the crushing weight of the mummy bore down on me once again.