Tomb Raider: The Golden Seal

Chapter 26: The Broken Promise

"A desecration! You hear me, venerable father? A desecration!"

"The holy icon of the Pantókrator stabbed and bloodied!"

What's up with those jerks? Someone should sew their mouths shut. This hurts, let me sleep...

"He's waking up," said a female voice.

Kurtis opened his eyes. A blurred face was bent over him, but soon he recognized it as Lara. He was laying on a cot in his cell. She was washing her bloodstained hands – his blood – in a basin helpfully offered by a melancholic and dejected Minos. The two arguing monks were at the door, and according to the glance they threw to him, they blamed him for everything that happened.

"You've been lucky, soldier," Lara smiled. "Could've been much worse. If the blade had touched the bone, it would've crippled your arm. I'm beginning to wonder myself if you've a guardian angel."

"All mortals have, my child," indoctrinated the hegumenos.

Kurtis laughed bitterly. "All I have is the Grim Reaper lurking over me everywhere. I'm the unluckiest guy on the planet." He dropped his head again on the pillow and closed the eyes. His shoulder was heavily bandaged, but kept giving him fiery pangs. Probably the blade had severed the muscle.

"Who was that man?" the hegumenos asked then.

"Marten Gunderson," Lara said. "He worked for the Cabal, but apparently he'd decided to take justice into his own hands, acting for personal reasons."

"What could've prompted him?"

"I mutilated him. By biting his hand."

Minos stared at her with horror. Could this lovely girl...? But yes, she'd shot him down in cold blood. The other two monks crossed themselves, sickened.

"Good work, Lara," Kurtis said faintly, without opening his eyes. "Real nice of you."

"Self-defense? Survival instinct?" she shrugged. "Why was he that pissed at you?"

"Grudge. I was better than him. The student overcame the teacher and the teacher couldn't deal with it."

As Werner did, Lara thought, sadly. Her mentor always treated her with superiority and condescension, even though she was the best of his pupils.

"We must do something with the body," said a monk. "It's desecrating the chur-"

"Next one uttering the word desecration or derivatives of in my presence will descend to the valley and climb up again without sandals," threatened Minos. The monks shut their mouths at once.

"Hang that fucker on the elevator net and let the vultures eat him," Kurtis said quietly.

"Agreed," added Lara.

Letting out a cry of horror, the scandalized monks fled down the corridor, crossing themselves without stopping.

"Blessed Mother!" Murmured the hegumenos. "Even the wickedest man deserves a Christian burial. I won't have this atrocity in my monastery."

And that afternoon Gunderson was buried on a lost hill in the valley bottom, without ceremony and without a sign to mark his grave, more than he actually deserved. Then the monks cleaned the soiled church and wept for hours over their unrecoverable icon.

At dusk Lara went to the refectory and this time she avoided looking at any monk, not so much to avoid a new fuss - which would be little help for Minos anyway, but because she didn't want to see Karel peering through others' faces again. She sat next to the hegumenos, who kindly said to her: