AIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, a blood curling scream echoed across deserted roof tops in the city of the dead. Crouching behind a fallen wall, Stephanie's fingers wrapped themselves almost subconsciously around the hilt of her silver pistol
A cloud of dust heralded a utility vehicle hurtling at full speed towards her, the sole male occupant the originator of the screams, a tomb robber no doubt. Stephanie dammed near chortled at his features, distorted with fear. Amateurs.
The tomb was dark against the grey sky, a seemingly eternal edifice. The legends spoke of unearthly protectors and great horrors for any that dared enter.
Stephanie knew for sure that the great doors were protected by an ingenious form of biological warfare, an ancient but deadly viral curtain. She wasn't going in the door though. She vaulted lithely over stones from the ground to roof top to roof top, arriving at last on the intricately carved roof stones on the top of the Tomb.
Running fingers over the cool sandstone, she breathed more easily. It was mere earth and stone, nothing mystical to fear here. No ghouls awaited her. She scanned the roof. As with everything, age had taken its toll on the old building, and as the earth under it settled, cracks appeared. Defence against humanity is a possibility, defence against time, impossible.
She saw a fissure in the smooth surface and smiled, wasting no time in sliding with alacrity into the dark depths that lay beneath the slitted hole. A torch soon flickered to life and revealed to her seeking eyes an empty room and a great treasure.
Across the walls, as if waiting just for her, ran the inscriptions of the ancients. Languages thought long lost. Words that had not been spoken in centuries. The sheer beauty of her discovery took her breath away.
With trembling fingers, Stephanie took out her camera and began to snap away, the flash lighting up the deepest recesses of the chamber. A little voice in the back of her mind whispered that it was all too easy. Like many others though, Stephanie was in the habit of not listening to that little voice until it became nothing short of a scream. She ignored the warning, too wrapped up with the thrill of her discovery.
A shadow fell over the wall, obscuring part of the symbols. Peering through the viewfinder, Stephanie was puzzled, she could see no obvious cause for the obstruction.
Caww Caww Cawww The shrieking of a Raven startled her, and she dropped her torch, plunging the room into darkness once more.
"Fuck Fuck Fuck" she swore to herself, scrabbling around on the floor, finally recovering the torch.
"Tut Tut Tut, such language dear"
The voice was genteel, refined and deliciously female with a strange accent Stephanie could not place. With a yelp of fear, and hands that shook for a new reason, Stephanie switched the torch back on and swung it around the room wildly, creating a stroboscopic effect, making herself useless in her panic, pistol waving wildly in the air.
"You should really know better than this Stephanie"
Behind her. The voice was behind her. Swinging around wildly again, she came face to face with calm grey eyes, commanding eyes. A woman dressed in long robes of black edged with silver embroidery that flowed along the skirts and slid over the tight bodice. Her arms crossed under her breast in a pose that conveyed her dominance of this realm. Stephanie felt strangely like a child caught in the neighbours back yard.
"W..ho are you?" Stephanie asked dumbly, shock making her wits dull. She pointed the pistol in the woman's direction, but somehow the fates and her shaking contrived to make her look somehow ridiculous before this woman, instead of deadly and menacing as she had planned.
The woman raised one black eye brow, and began stalking slowly towards Stephanie. " I, girl, I am the Mistress of this Tomb - and you, you are a mere robber"
As she drew closer, the torch light reflected weirdly off her eyes, a kind of luminous effect, like one might see in a cat. Shivers ran up Stephanie's spine as a part of her recognised that which her consciousness wouldn't.
