Tomb Raider: The Golden Seal

Chapter 4: Selma's Diary

When Lara woke up, her head hammered and her eyes were cloudy. She tried to sit up, but was too dizzy and fell back down onto something soft and pillow-like.

"Better you don't move." She heard Kurtis' voice.

He was squatted in the corner of a tunnel. He'd lit a small bonfire and was cooking something that didn't smell very good. She saw four shapes in the corner, resembling bodies. "You're not cooking what I think you are, are you?" Lara whispered, putting her hands over her eyes.

"Manticore meat." Kurtis confirmed. "The only antidote for its own poison." He approached and offered her a piece of grey flesh. Lara felt sick. "I'm not eating that." She said, stubborn. "I feel better now. I'm not going to die."

"Maybe." He said. "But you'll be blind in a couple of hours."

Lara growled and put the meat into her mouth. Fortunately, despite its horrible appearance, manticore meat tasted like chicken.

She fell asleep immediately after.

(...)

Kurtis got up and looked around. The incident with the manticores could disrupt his plan, but not if he acted quickly. After killing the last manticore - made easy due to the Chirugai's great accuracy - he'd placed Lara in a secluded corner of the tunnel. However, the manticores' bloodstains, the bonfire remnants, and the corpses would betray them if Gunderson's men didn't discover them before that.

Kurtis' mother, Marie Cornel, was a descendant of the Navajo Native American tribe. Kurtis had spent most of his life with her, and Marie, who was a strong woman like Lara, had taught her son the trade secrets of their people: how to track someone without being detected, to move with secrecy and discretion, and how to erase all signs of having been somewhere. That's how Kurtis was able to move about unnoticed anywhere; he never took part in an event unless necessary and he always remained in the shadows. So he'd been able to take advantage of working among Gunderson's men.

He quickly pushed the manticores' corpses out and put them in the centre of the tunnel, near a junction. He carefully picked up the bloody dirt and spread it over the corpses. Then he buried the bonfire's remains and flattened the dirt, so it looked as if no one had been there. If the plan succeeded, Gunderson's men would take the right hand path, where there were signs of battle. However, according to Selma's map, the path that led to the exit was on the left.

Satisfied, Kurtis came back and sat down next to Lara, put out the flare and waited.

(...)

"Hey!" Shouted one of them. "Here!"

"What the hell is that?"

The mercenaries were looking, shocked, at the beheaded and skinned manticores.

"They're demons!" He shouted again. "I'm leaving!"

"Fuck that!" The other shouted. "You stay here like the others!"

The dead manticores were lying at the right hand tunnel's entrance. There was a trail of blood starting from their bodies that disappeared into the dark.

"They must have fought those creepy things and then gone straight ahead."

But another mercenary hesitated while looking at the left hand tunnel. "What if it's a trick? Better to divide us."

"The boss told us not to do that. The fewer we are, the more dangerous it is."

"But it's only two of them!"

"Two? The woman alone is worth at least four! Look what they've done with those monsters!"

Finally they decided to take the right hand path. Kurtis smiled, hidden in the dark. No problem.