[Corvid]

(AUTHOR'S NOTE:Part X comes in two sub-parts only because I ran into the upper limit on the number of words allowed in a single Rape Board post. Apparently, if brevity is the soul of wit- I'm fucked.)

The flight crew fed her on the chartered jet to Bolivia, largely because she seemed to have temporarily fallen beneath Defunestro's notice. The cornered animal in her kept glancing around as she tore bites from the roasted chicken breast, expecting anything bringing comfort or sustenance to be snatched away or made conditional at any moment.

Perhaps some tiny part of her had imagined they might release her once the Sigil of Seven was in their possession. But it had never risen high enough in her mind to aspire to the level of “hope”.



A brief interlude at the airport involving some paperwork and a transfer of cash established the group as a “biological research team". From there, a helicopter carried them into the rainforest of the lower Amazon.

And never was such a well-armed biological research team seen, Lara thought.

As the helicopter faded in the distance with a promise from the pilot to return for them in twelve hours, Park pulled a leather collar out of his pack, attached with a padlock to a long chain.

“Didn't think we'd forgotten about you, did you, Croft?” He growled.

From the clearing where they landed, machetes were brought to bear on the local flora (and in one case involving an unusually aggressive snake, fauna.) Defunestro looked down at a GPS device and scowled periodically before directing his team in a slightly revised direction.

The sunset was painting the sky scarlet when they came upon the structure, all but buried within the foliage.

The faded gray stones pierced the ground beneath them at angles that seemed all wrong, creating solid walls that looked as though they shouldn't possibly have endured the elements long enough to earn their apparent antiquity. The group fanned out to continue to attack the vegetation as they cleared a perimeter around the ancient monument, while Defunestro looked back and forth between the sky, the wall before him, and the stone circle he now held in his hand.

“So,” he murmured, not looking at her, “How far did your own inquiries into the Sandura legends take you, Croft?”

It was the first words he had spoken to her in nearly a day; she was caught somewhat off-guard, and struggled to piece words together.

“Ah... The 'great ones'...”

“Yes...”

“...Self-styled, it's believed. While many of the other great indigenous cultures of South America were renowned for their architecture and engineering, the Sandura disdained building pyramids or stadiums or other such sky-reaching structures. Instead, they were miners and stone-cutters, and used their innovations to sink deeper into the Earth.”

Defunestro snorted. “You sound like a fucking textbook. Not that most textbooks even mention Sandura. Ah...!”

At his whistle, the spread-out men converged. Shorn of the hanging foliage that clung to it, a segment of the wall was revealed to be inlaid with a high, intricately carved panel displaying a spiraling motif not dissimilar from the Sigil. The panel did not appear especially remarkable, at first; similar decorations were evenly spaced on each of the tomb-like structure's walls.

But hidden within the design of this panel were breaks in the lines- breaks where seven raised squares could be seen. Defunestro raised the relic, lined the holes in its surface up with the squares, and pushed it in.

A grinding sound echoed through the forest, and the panel collapsed inward, creating a rectangular portal into the structure.

Flashlights and lanterns emerged from the men's packs. Defunestro yielded the entry to allow Binici, Rojas, and Gamble, and Park to pass through, accepting the chain to Lara's collar from the last before following them within.

“Your account makes one major mistake, though- unsurprising, given that most of the published research that was done on these people came to the same mistaken conclusion. Although the word 'Sandura' features frequently in the fragmented written record these people left behind, the term 'great ones' was never a name they applied to themselves.”

The claustrophobic corridor the team passed through abruptly descended into a steep stone stair at the same time the walls on either side abruptly ended, dropping off into a seemingly infinite darkness on either side of that stair. There was nervous muttering among the men; Lara thought she heard a distant grinding sound echoing in the dark.

Defunestro continued lecturing.

“As you said, Croft, the people associated with the word were miners. Their ability to drive into the earth was unsurpassed, and yielded to them a nearly unfathomable wealth of gold, silver, and gemstones. That wealth would lead to their destruction, as envious, less advanced but more numerous peoples declared war upon them, driving their population to extinction, carting off their treasures, and burying structures like this one.”

After at least fifty meters of drop, the stair led down to a narrow walkway. Lara looked around, trying to understand how the thing was supported within the endless darkness, without success. The grinding sound was growing louder, as was the nervous behavior displayed by the men.

“Specifically, they buried six other structures like this one, structures to which the 'Sigil of Seven' and pieces like it were the keys. Those keys were kept by men known as the Akaton. Some of the research defines the word as 'high priests'. Did yours?”

“Yes- I-I mean, no. Yes, some of it said that, but I found it uncompelling... it seemed a more accurate reading might be 'guardians'...”

“Or 'appeasers'.”

“Yes.”

The walkway made an abrupt ninety-degree turn, and another. There had to be some sort of walls somewhere in the darkness, visible or not, for when they turned the second corner a pale green light was visible ahead and above them.

“These people delved deeper into the Earth even than most oil drills or geothermic bores reach in the modern day. In the process, they uncovered great wealth, yes, but they also uncovered things far less pleasant.”

“...The 'great ones'?”

“Ah. Sharp girl.”

As the light grew clearer, they saw it spilled down at the top of another, shorter flight of stairs that led up to a dais. The echoing-grinding grew steadily more ominous as they began to scale the steps, now a low bass thrumming that made everyone's back teeth hurt.

“The Akaton eventually discovered that the treasures their people had been digging out of the ground were the key to keeping the 'great ones' submerged within the Earth. That in fact, with the proper cutting, polishing, refinement, and the proper placement, individual large gemstones would be sufficient to keep the true Sandura at bay forever.”

The men leading the line spread out around the platform's top as they reached the stairway's summit. A cylindrical pedestal rising from the dais became visible as they mounted the last few stairs. Set in its very center, a fist-sized emerald glowed with an unearthly green light, surrounded by smaller, lesser stones, some nearly as polished and cut as the prize in their midst, others little more than shards of green rock, almost mistakable for cloudy broken glass.

Defunestro scooped up a handful of the latter, smiling down at them. “Any of these, alone, properly handled by a jeweler, would be enough for a month of good living. Yet in the end, for all their owners' care...”

He flicked one of the shards at Lara with a snort. “Here, tomb raider. A souvenir. You're supposed to give a woman jewelry when you've fucked her up the ass, right?”

She caught the spike of stone to keep it from hitting her in the face, looking down at her feet so they wouldn't see the humiliation his words inflicted upon her.

“In any case, we're not here for a month of good living; we're here for the big prize...”

His hand closed on the Eye of Sandura, and lifted it out of its place.

At once, the lanterns and flashlights were once more the only light in the darkness.

And the grinding sound increased tenfold, accompanied by the rise of an unearthly sound somewhere between a roar and a screech.

The dais trembled and rocked beneath their feet. Defunestro quickly steadied himself against the pedestal; Gamble, who had been too close to the dais's edge to begin with, was not so lucky. His cry as he tumbled backward was quickly swallowed by the darkness.

The men around her called out as they sank down where they stood, trying to hold onto stone. Only Defunestro remained on his feet, smiling as he shoved the Eye into his pack.

“One final thing, Croft!” He bellowed to be heard over the rising noise. “Before the Akaton discovered how to use gems to contain the Sandura, they discovered temporary measures that would keep them docile...!”

He hauled on the chain, bringing him to her, then grabbed onto her shoulders as she stumbled.

“Goodbye, Lady Croft...!”

She screamed as he flung her from the dais.

She fell only a split moment before she was caught around the waist.

The light was a distant thing overhead; she could not see what had caught her, what held her, only feel it. Feel tendrils, smooth and wet, some thick as tree trunks, others thin as cables, sinuous and terribly strong. Feel them twine around her ankles and wrists; feel them sliding up her arms and calves, pulling her limbs apart, stretching her as if to tear her to pieces like a roasted chicken.

As the tension increased, she felt the thing's limbs move up her thighs, press against her crotch; as it explored her body, the deafening screeching suddenly faded and sank into a hiss.

She panted in terror, trying to raise enough breath for another scream as the probing tendrils suddenly surged forward, tunneling into the legs and waist of her pants, the sleeves and collar of her shirt. The unearthly power that moments before had threatened to tear her limb from limb now attacked her clothing, stretching the fabric apart and tearing wool and denim as though they were nothing more than tissue paper.

The elastic of her bra and panties hardly gave a moment's resistance. She felt the slick tentacles encircle her breasts, crushing the mounds with terrible force. Worse, hard, spiny protrusions slid from the ends of the smaller limbs and slid across the jutting tips of her swollen nipples.

“No!” she screamed. There was no reasoning with the thing- the Sandura, she supposed- even if it understood her, it was alien and unknowable, a thing of force and need, a thing that had been trapped in its darkness for untold centuries and now knew only want-

More of the thing's limbs lashed at her pussy and ass, like a hundred rubbery cocks all competing for entrance. Others were spiraling along her hair like a rope, and what they would do when they got to her face-?!

She felt a tentacle push inside her vagina, first tentative, then surging inside her, pushing deep, slamming into her cervix with terrible force- another breached her anus, tunneling up into her as though gravity was nonexistent, plunging into her guts...

Her body arched, uselessly, helplessly caught in the things limbs as it sought to penetrate her, to use her, to satiate itself on its precious toy.

As it twisted her in its grip, its movements seemed to become more decisive, more coordinated; another one of the slick limbs found its way inside her cunt, and then a third- after applying an agonizing force to stretch apart her labia. The spines scratching at her areolae moved around the hard tips of her nipples, tapped, poked- and then, stabbed.

She screamed again as she felt the diabolical thing insert herself inside her breasts, an unnatural invasion that brought hideous pain spiking through her flesh as it moved back and forth inside of her delicate mammary tissue-

It's fucking my nipples, She thought, Oh God, it's raping my breasts-

The thought was ripped away as another tentacle shoved into her asshole, and the two limbs began to stretch her rectum, thrusting into her one, then the other, then both in unison, then stretching away from each other inside her as though it would rip her body open-

She squeezed her eyes desperately shut as tendrils slid across her face, bit into her lips, pushed against her teeth. Then she felt one of the hellish spines rise out of one of the squirming limbs battering at her birth canal, felt the spine driven into her cervix, and had to scream again- and with that, the things were flooding inside her open mouth.

Another spine bit into her cervix, and another as the sinuous limbs attacked her tongue, slid over her teeth. She tried to bite at them, only to have a taste like rotting meat and spoiled cabbage fill her mouth- to no apparent deterrant of the encroaching tendrils.

Her guts heaved as the spikes in her cervix began to pull in different directions, sending an agonzing cramp through her belly. Again. Again. It was laying siege to her uterus, it was-

It was pulling her womb open.

The sickening cramps continued as the Sandura heaved inside her. As the tentacles began to push in and out inside her throat. As her body was tilted and twisted in the thing's grip, and up was down, and there was no escape, no light, no way to resist-

The thing wrenched open her cervix to its satisfaction; a fourth tentacle drove into the middle of the other three, wrenched into her vagina, and, breaching her cervix, slammed into the inner chamber of her womb. Her bruised stomach clenched violently, and she vomited.

The acidic contents of her stomach were partly blocked by the tentacles. Liquid began to trickle back down her throat and choke her.

The tentacle imbedded in her uterus whipped around inside of her and slammed against the elastic walls of the chamber again. And again.

It's torturing me-! She thought, struggling to draw breath. There can be no other reason- no other reason--

The tentacles in her ass began to force their way upward, crawling up inside of her, slithering up her intestine, weighing down her guts. The limbs in her mouth moved as if to meet them.

Her breasts shook as the creature plunged the vicious knife-like spines deeper into her nipples, the tentacles encircling them squeezing as if to draw milk- or to jerk at the tentacles embedded in her flesh, to use her soft breasts as some kind of cock-sheathe...

A rush- she was dropping, her body falling, the pounding inside her womb grew ever more violent- she could feel her bosom shaking, her throat contracting, her belly swell and bounce as the limbs inside her pussy and ass surged-

Every wet, horrific cable inside of her pushed into her as she fell as though every tentacle sought to simultaneously pierce her to the core. And then there was fluid- a mucus-like slime with the consistency of shaving foam, filling her mouth, pumping into her guts, swelling her cramping womb, forcing down her throat and into her heavy stomach, even stretching the skin of her breasts.

The falling slowed, stopped, and she felt sudden a grotesque tightness around her feet as some wet, elastic thing enveloped them like a wet rubber sock. Her bloated body twisted as the limbs pulled out of her, but still she continued down, now being sucked into the tight wet embrace, thousands of tiny prickles tickling at her feet and ankles.

It's swallowing me, was her first thought. It's raped me, now it's going to eat me.

Then, worse- No... it's raped me, now it wants to keep me until that foulness it pumped into me can do its job- until I can give birth to its young-

Visions of infant wasps eating their way out of tarantulas came into her mind, and then there was no thought any longer, there was no room, just desperation and instinct.

Her body a sea of pain, she screamed as she drove the shard of emerald still clutched in her hand into whatever flesh surrounded the mouth that was sucking her in.

There was an explosion of hot wind, a screech so loud that she caught only the first instant of it before her hearing gave way to silence and a ringing, high-pitched tone. Her feet spilled out of the orifice containing them as they were ejected. Falling to her knees, she struck out at the thing again, and again.

Something struck her, knocking her sideways, and for a moment she thought it was over. But the creature's move had been as desperate as her own; it was in full retreat, and she could feel the heat of its presence moving away, leaving her aching, slime-bloated body lying on the chamber floor, unknown leagues beneath the surface of the Earth.


Once, a people had mined in that bizarre chamber that was half temple, half cage. So it was that eventually, even in the dark, Lara found a ramp that workers had used to cart out slag and gemstones as they dug their way unknowingly towards the ancient monstrosities.

Slowly, painfully, she climbed the ramp, pausing every few hours as convulsive cramps overtook her. Her body rejected the slime the creature had pumped into her; yellow-white goo sprayed from her vagina, anus, mouth, and nipples at these intermittent spasms, sending her sprawling to her hands and knees. Sometimes she would faint, waking up an unknown time later to force herself to her feet, force herself to keep walking up the ramp.

So it was that Lara emerged from the last burial chamber of the Sandura, two and a half days later.



An eco-tour group found her, emaciated, dehydrated and bloodied, raving, half-deaf and three-quarters dead.

Lara Croft? The Lara Croft? The adventurer, aristocrat, and fashion icon?

Really?

Calls were made, identities confirmed. She was air-lifted to a hospital at Riberalta. Some of her injuries were obvious in their mechanism; others bizarre in their infliction, unless one believed the stories the raving woman told when she lapsed out of her fevered dreams.

After four long months, her recovery was considerable. Her hearing completely returned. She would bear some of the scars for the rest of her life, her digestion and excretion would frequently trouble her, and pregnancy was likely to bring on complications. But she could walk, and eventually there was no reason she should not run, tumble, fight- fire pistols at beasts in ancient ruins or point them at readers from the cover of fashion magazines.

If her emotional recovery took a similar pace, which it did not.



If you trained for combat. If you lived your life in the public eye, and thus under constant scrutiny. If you possessed fantastic wealth, and were heir to a noble title. If you were the kind of beauty who, in self-knowledge, gained the ability to twist men around your little finger.

Surely, then, you were safe?

Maybe mobbed by paparazzi. Maybe followed by stalkers. Maybe targeted by scam artists who thought wealth and beauty added up to one more vacuous socialite.

But repeatedly gang-raped? Beaten? Tortured? Transported across multiple borders, all eventually to be offered in sacrifice to... to...

She ran to the medicine cabinet for her anxiety medications.



“They” showed up, now and again. Park on the cover of a magazine, showing off his custom-tuned off-road vehicle collection. Kaar advertising an adventure tour that promised to show the real world of Somali pirates to the fearless.

She thought about hunting them down, but every time her thoughts got anywhere beyond the most speculative contemplations she found herself assaulted with nightmares of nineteen men appearing in her bedroom in the dark of the night.

It was mysterious, though, when a castle- in Romania, of all places- was the target of a terrorist bomb.

One East European crime lord held no terror for her; she had been in the presence of real evil.



He couldn't help staring at the way her dress clung to his hostess's hips, though his eyes raced back up to her eyes when she turned back from the balcony.

“I am prepared to fully fund this expedition, Halsey,” she murmured, “if I can have your word of honor as a gentleman that if it proves fruitful, you will carry it through.”

“So... Let me get this straight. I'm to find out if the gem that's shown up on the black market in Hong Kong is this 'Eye of Sandura'. If it is, I'm to acquire it by any means necessary-”

“I can have papers drawn up that prove the artifact is a cultural treasure stolen from Bolivia if it will help acquire the stone legally. But if less above-board tactics are required, yes, I expect you to employ them.”

“Check. And once this gemstone is acquired, I'm to travel to these coordinates in Bolivia and... just leave this immensely valuable rock on a table, somewhere?”

“To paraphrase something I was told once: 'Don't be daft, Halsey, it's never that simple.'”

“All right, all right... What am I missing?”

She sighed. “I've attempted to explain it, but in the past my explanations have been suspected to be the result of high fevers or the interactions of psychiatric medications. Suffice it to say that when you get there, I believe the necessity of replacing the jewel where it belongs may become more apparent.”

“And this expedition. You think it's important.”

“Utterly.”

“Somehow, world-shatteringly important.”

“Possibly so, yes.”

Halsey shrugged, then laughed. “Well, I could never resist a pretty face with far too much money. My team will be assembled by tonight. But I have to say- Bolivian rainforests, black market relics, ancient treasures- once upon a time, I think someone would have said this sounded like a job for Lara Croft.”

She pushed the stone circle across the table to him, eyes downcast.

“Once upon a time... perhaps it would have been.”

She returned to the balcony as he left. Her fingers slid absently along the silk of her dress, moving over her belly, curving up her breast, feeling the ring in her nipple.

“Once, it would have been a job for her.”

-FIN