Crypt Quest: Warrior's Rapture
Lessons in Archaeology
The deafening clamour of a large bronze-infused metal bell racked the tower peaked above Ravenwood University, reverberating its alarm within the academic walls as well as the malleable ears of Reese and Malik. The two pack-carrying adventurers stepped off the city bus to take in the front-facing grandeur of the prestigious institution of which they found themselves, back in Western civilization.
"You know I hate school, right?" Malik Atwell asked, squinting from the characteristic alert noise until it stopped. "I used to be a teacher."
A back-strapped, cloth-wrapped sword carrying Reese shrugged at his stout companion. "And I used to be a student. We've all had lives we weren't proud of."
- - -
The two approached the large Cathedral-inspired front doors to find them latched. Through an articulated window, a man walking passed took notice of them, turned and opened the doors.
"Yes, I'm sorry but Ravenwood locks its front doors during the summer months," the tall proper man in a stuffy, brown suit alerted. "I'm afraid we haven't quite worked out the bell thing."
Reese Hunter immediately recognized the inadvertent host. "Doctor Corrigan. I know you by reputation. Your scientific study of the Shield of King Arthur and the deconstruction of its Knight-Saxon social disparity was enlightening to say the least."
"Correct. I essentially concluded that shields block Knights from bad guys," he touted momentarily. "I won the Jeffrey May Award for that."
Malik interrupted. "First of all, that's brilliant. Second, my colleague Reese and I are looking for a Professor Montgomery Lanstien of the Archaeology division. We have an anonymous contact that we think he may know."
"I used to study under him, years ago," Reese admitted, recalling his past with genuine fondness. "We cracked the H-stone mystery of Puma Punku. Apparently, they were used to form an even bigger H."
Corrigan thought for a moment. "Lanstien? Wait. You aren't that star pupil he had that was expelled for raiding Archaeological sites, are you?"
"They weren't exactly sites per se, as they were newly-discovered-sections-without-status-yet," Reese rationalized in a manner as he had many times before. "The Queen's navy doesn't just Christen a sailing ship without first appraising its colonizational dexterity."
The older man scoffed. "That's the exact analogous double-speak you were known for! You were a disgrace to the University in so much they etched Old West wanted posters of your face on pigskins to deter you within a 10-kilometer radius."
"Yeah, that made getting a haircut and buying pork around here really tough," Reese recalled in slight remiss.
Malik postulated, "Soooo, about that Lanstien?"
"Even if he were around, I wouldn't let you in! But, fortunately, he's gone. No one knows where he is. Professor Lanstien went missing in India months ago to what we suspect was an attempt to dispute his views on Valentine's Day."
Reese was taken aback. "What? That's terrible news! He must've been tracking something. A find perhaps." And then, "What was he researching?"
"You really think you're privy to anything after what you've done? Does 'disgrace' hold any comparative nouns for you?"
The leather jacket-bound man thought for a second. "Redemption?"
"An endeavor worth pursuing outside the established radius!" Corrigan snapped as he flung the door closed in their faces.
Malik and Reese turned to each other. "He's exactly what I didn’t expect," Reese squinted.
"Speaking of expect: What's expected?" Malik threw up his arms while turning back, helplessly, to the closed door. "Lanstien is the only one who could know who your anonymous contact is, so we could know why they directed us to Angkor Wat to find this that points to a 'weapon of the gods'." He took out the Indian guitar from his sack, Suryavarman's Veena, and looked at the inscriptions on it.
When Reese didn't respond in a supposed lack of care for monologuing, Malik turned again to discover the taller adventurer was actually just gone and that there was an open window into a classroom nearby.
- - -
Exiting the classroom out into the massively, empty and eloquently designed hallway, Reese was swiftly reunited with Malik.
"Oh, right. We break into places for a living," Malik recalled. "Except, if this school holds summer programs, then all its side doors are open and all we have actually done is get in the hard way."
Reese continued walking. "I studied under Lanstien for years and never knew him to be impulsive or reckless. I want to check his office for clues. Perhaps I may find something on our contact as well."
"Perfect. The less time we're in this detention cesspool, the sooner we can employ extraction," Malik cursed. "And don't get any ideas about me having a change of heart, either. If you think I'm going to step back into an appreciation of academia, you've got another—"
But as they strolled, Malik's stop in sudden notice of a Languages class loose-leaf posting on the pin-up board prompted Reese to stop as well.
"Holy Hera! There's a Hindi refresher workshop on the second floor in 5 minutes! What an opportunity. I have to go!"
Reese looked at it. "But didn't you say you hated—?"
"Letmeknowwhatyoufind, okaybyyyyyyyyyyeee!" Malik's voice trailed as he was already sped away, down the corridor.
The other man sighed but continued his steady pace. It was a change in the air pressure that tipped him off to the aggression because, seconds later, the weaponized leg of a flying kick by-passed the temporarily domesticated adventurer's head as he dodged it ever so slightly. He then rotated his body entirely to allow a complete circumvention of the other person's locomotive-esque momentum.
"A far cry from tombs of the undead, isn't it?" tagged Yuri, a brown-skinned, South Asian-descent, long-ponytailed, late-20s adventurer with a British accent.
Reese dropped his quickly-guarded stance at the sight of her. "Yuri! We last saw you in the tunnels at Colchester."
"Don't do that," the short-jacketed woman deadpanned. "Don't 'recap' me, because I already gave you that one-liner and doing it again is severely redundant. Also, it appears you owe me a sword." She exhaled onto one hand of her fingernails, as if to dry them despite not needing to. "As I said, previously, if you did not find a place for that, I would come for it."
Reese instinctively grasped the cloth-wrapped handle, behind his head, of the large cloth-wrapped sword slung to his back while Yuri took a fighting stance. "We talked about this," Reese spoke carefully, eyeing her potential next move. "The men of Ceaser's legacy and their gods hid this for its power, so we have to find the right place for it."
"Oh, please," Yuri snarked. "Your travel-hopping has included several museums and collectors since then. You've had more than a chance to leave it with any unsuspecting academia than any other."
She then lunged several repeating fists forward, prompting Reese to lean back and dodge his head left and right, opposite to each hand. "That's typical artifact hunting research!" Reese defended as he structured his arm in front of him and began using it to knock each attack to the side. "And, for the collectors, no one was home."
"Speaking of home, you certainly weren't when you learned how to fight," she leapt momentarily, kicking for his chest before he knocked it away. When she landed, the two began jutting jab after jab, each countering with redirect after redirect.
Reese kicked her in the side, knocking her into the pin-up board. Pins and papers rained down passed her shoulders. "I read the books. I figured it out," the man explained.
"Hold on. You learned martial arts from reading books?" Yuri went all-stop in academic headdress out of pure shock.
Nodding, still in focus, Reese replied, "Those and practice. Teachers don't last forever, Yuri, and we all have skillset origins. What's your point?"
"Point is that you think you can handle that thing, but you can't. Maybe I can't either, but I bet I can better than you," she indicated the sword with a nod as she settled.
But before Reese could respond, the distant, end-of-hallway voice of Corrigan snatched through, prompting a turn of head. "Hey! Did you not see the pigskin!?"
The confused Reese looked back at the pin-up board to see his younger likeness mapped to the drawn-on hide, and Yuri no longer anywhere to be found. "What the hell? They got my nose all wrong!" he observed again before jetting off down a corner.
- - -
Malik took a seat in one of the lecture hall desks in an extravagant, ancient-culture decorated classroom, as early-20s students likewise filed in. The dark-skinned professor began introducing himself and the one-day workshop when suddenly another South Asian man in semi-elaborate purple layered clothing with golden edging sat next to Malik.
"Hey, my name's Malik," he introduced in background of the ongoing class.
The exotically-dressed man turned slowly to look at Malik, offering an icy, serious, 'don't talk to me' gaze. "Pleasure," he simply stated before returning his attention to the class speaker.
- - -
Reese stopped his run when he made it to the older, lower, basement-level corridor of variably forgotten offices to the Archaeology department. He found the wooden door to Lanstien's office partially open, and upon entering, Yuri was leaning back against the large desk in a near-destroyed messy room.
"What the hell did you do?" Reese started.
Yuri sunk her gaze and slayed him a deadpan look. "Don't tell me you're that dumb. I'm only here to expedite whatever it is you're up to so we can get on with it."
"You're not getting the sword. As for this, someone clearly has made a mess here," Reese redirected, looking around until finding fresh muddy dirt on the floor. "A recent mess."
The woman shook her head impatiently. "Why's your old professor being raided?"
"Looks like he was studying Hindu religion," Reese investigated, picking up old books off the floor. One of them had pages torn out, with muddy edges. "Whoever was here, must have got what they were looking for."
Yuri smirked. "You know, if we were actual detectives, we'd fingerprint that and 'Book em, Danno'."
"We're not a police task force from Hawaii," Reese asserted while examining the literature. "Or faith seekers from the Orient. It looks like he was researching pilgrimages to India?"
The other adventurer got off her lean. "That thing people do when they travel to temples and pray? Yeah, not my thing."
Reese walked over to a wall and pulled a protruding light fixture like it was a lever. The section of wall opened up and lead to a dug-out, dirt passageway. "Travel this way then? The professor and I found this creepy corridor when he took this office long ago. Apparently, the previous owner was decoding Nazi transmissions in secret."
"Seems like they could have just done that in a normal room?" Yuri queried as she followed the cloth-covered-sword-carrying man inside; her own curiosity peaked.
The two reached an end, where a closed, non-descript coffin sat. "We were prepping this passageway as a pretend-discovery, learning-experience for other students. Looks like he didn't get too far in renovations after I left."
"Well, the man's sense of humour is intact," Yuri observed. She opened the lid without hesitation and found a dead man of South Asian-descent, dressed in overly exotic purple robes with golden edging. "As is my sense of smell."
Reese coughed as he used the inside of his leather jacketed arm to cover his nose and mouth from the sudden onslaught of a terrible dead-guy aroma. "Wow, that was one well-sealed coffin. What the hell? Did Lanstien put this man down here?"
"Your sacred professor killed this man," Yuri established as she opened the robe's flaps to reveal a knife dug right into the cold man's chest.
- - -
Malik was, for once, optimistically taking in the delights of school via the overview of the Hindi language as recounted by the South Asian professor in the classroom.
"Of course! It's subject-object-verb, not subject-verb-object," Malik delineated to his ignoring friend. At no-response, Malik added playfully, "But maybe you already knew that?"
Then, a small beeping went off in a large duffle bag next to the dark-skinned, traditionally-robed-man. On the bag, his name was stitched as Anish.
Malik watched as the gruff, out-of-place language groupie nonchalantly pulled back the duffle bag's opening to reveal a signal light on a green circular display, protruding from a large black-box, knob-covered, decades old radar device.
"There is much to know," the mysterious man grizzled. "Excuse me."
All to which Anish merely stood up with, carelessly interrupted an indifferent class, and left.
- - -
"Well, he wouldn't just leave," Reese continued. "Or kill a man," he added. "I should have started with that." And then, "He must've been protecting himself."
Yuri nodded dismissively as she continued her observation of the corpse. She opened one side of his robe to find a stone idol with ancient writing on its bottom. "Maybe you don't know your professor like you thought you did. But if, say, you were right, then what did this dead guy want from Lanstein, and what does this half-statue have to do with it?"
"All questions that are not for you," came the sudden graveled voice and accent of another South Asian-descent man, Anish, dressed in similar clothing as the dead guy. He dropped his large, open duffle bag, exposing the other radar within.
Reese immediately caught on. "Is that a power-sourced-jury-rigged World War II Rebecca Receiver-Indicator?" He turned and unwrapped the other side of the corpse's robe to reveal a large, old rectangular metal-encased box snuggled next to his hip, with the word Eureka etched on it. "You know technology has advanced now, right?"
"What I know is that the man who occupied this office was a heathen and peasant who furthered the sacrilege of Hindu affairs for his own selfishness," the robed opponent took out a larger curved and articulated sword from a sheath strapped to his back, similar to the knife in his companion's chest.
Yuri smirked in amusement as she quickly took a relaxed lean, back upon the side of the coffin while nonchalantly tossing the statue up and down with one hand. "Oh, this is going to be rich. Sword against sword, then, Mr. Hunter?"
"That's not how this works," Reese conflated seconds before the downward hack of the other man's curved blade prompted Reese to shift his upper body slightly out of its path.
The elaborately dressed Anish began flying swing after swing from all angles while Reese inched back and back, each time, until a hack split into the edge of the coffin next to Yuri. "Mate. One draw of the Corcea Mors and this guy is done!" she continued. "Don't even argue, bro."
"It's more important we get Malik to translate that thing," Reese suggested as he force-palmed the attacker back and redirected wrist after wrist of each sword attack. "Unless you can read it?"
Yuri squinted, trying. "I usually have a guy who does this too. Though, none that have ever survived. Wait. Your guy is still kicking?" she queried to a coarse glare. "Huh. I'm impressed at his non-deadness."
- - -
After a maze of forgotten corridors, Yuri exited the Archaeology doors to a group of six security guards holding Malik captive, next to Doctor Corrigan.
"Let me guess, another artifact hunter in a school you're not registered with?" the older man with elbow patches peeved. "The Registration office is literally right there!"
Yuri ignored his redirection and responded, "Hey, man. Some of us don't want to be subdued into monotony and existential detachment. School is boring, is what I'm saying."
"Yeah! Some of us are practical learners!" Malik added before recognizing Yuri. "Wait. You make appearances in Western civilization now? I thought you were a rogue, in-the-field type?"
The snarky woman shrugged in response seconds before Corrigan ordered school security to break out into her in an aggravated attempt at seizure. "I like to switch it up," she explained whilst knocking incoming grabby hands away and kicking one guy into another. "Maybe engage in a little sacrilege," she added before handing the small statue to an angry no-name and punching him in the face. "Maybe deep dive a bit of Ancient Sumerian."
The man fell onto his back, sending the statue out of his hands to be caught by Malik and used to break free from the clutches of two guards. It was used again as a blocker for a few obtuse guard-punches. "Ugh!" yowled one. "Agh!" yelped the other.
"Let me guess. You and Reese found this in Lanstien's office?" Malik said, using his free forearm to actively block while he read the inscriptions on it.
Yuri kicked his attacker down, while catching the incoming wrist of another. "Office is such a relative term. And, speaking of terms, perhaps I take these guys out and let you keep that thing in exchange for telling me what's on it? Lanstien was obviously onto something."
"It's only always about you, isn't it, Yuri?" Malik squinted at her as she continued to knock down guard after guard. "You know that's been done to death, right?" Then he read the inscriptions on it. "Seek out the pilgrimage to the holy springs near Gokarna Bay. The instrument plays key."
When the last man was knocked down, Yuri turned her pointed fists to a hold before an out-of-element Corrigan-with-elbow-patches. The older man snapped out of it, registering Malik's revelation instead. "That imbecile went artifact hunting! I knew it! He kept talking about some kind of ancient weapon, instead of being the proper teacher that he was supposed to be."
"Uh huh," Yuri took in Malik's telling-expression, practically hearing the bells chime off in his head. "Well, gentlemen. This has been an absolute pleasure, but I simply must see to some South Asia island hopping."
The short man looked to her exit before realizing, "Wait a minute! You stole Ceasar's Dagger from us on our last thing!"
"You people know this is not what archaeology is, right? That what you're doing is called looting?" complained Corrigan to Malik's deaf ears as the stout man ran off after her.
- - -
Down in the underground school crypt, Reese and his elaborately dressed South Asian opponent redirected punch after jab after palm. Before they realized it, an inner-stick-tied door coated in age-defying embalm began closing from top-to-bottom, on the inside of the chamber, negating the modern one.
"Oh, hell no! I spent days carving that thing, and there was an ancient one this whole time??" Reese's gaze to their eternal entombment was coincided with him blocking a jab to his face.
He and Anish then traded attacks as Anish pouted his curved sword to each and every one of Reese's ducks, dodges and spins. "It would seem your ancient ones are far superior here. I suspect your Wendat culture."
"Holy crap. Nazi intel-ing has nothing on this tomb!" Reese next trapped the sword between his arm and torso with intentions to relinquish it from his enemy, but a hard-shot irregular wooden pole smashed between them, prompting the two to step back from each other.
They both then noticed more sharp, gnarly poles of varying sizes begin firing down upon the dirt floor all around from above. An ancient trap had been sprung.
"The old tribes used to travel from place to place, transporting and reburying their dead, so this location must be protecting a final resting place," Reese observed. "It's a giant burial pit."
Anish arched his sword to clash an incoming wooden pole. Then another, and another. "And you built a school around it. I can corroborate the aggressiveness of your country's ancient ones as justified. Unsheathe your weapon and prove me right."
"Hey, those guys were generally peaceful, and we eventually recognized that!" Reese added before Anish came at him in the chaos of raining stakes, swiping faster and faster with Reese backing and dodging. His will to refuse the power of Crocea Mors drained under the duress of pressure from Anish, his lost mentor, his University banishment, and the ancient burial crypt.
Then, all pressures kicked him into survival instinct, and he spun his backside to Anish's next swipe, over-head-pulling a small part of the wrapped sword near its hilt, by his neck, to open and accept the next Hindu sword attack. But Anish stopped his blade a mere centimetre over the Ancient Roman weapon's exposed edge, suddenly suspecting it to be far greater than it appeared. Both frozen in place, the sounds of the burial crypt's death-throws quickly faded with the depletion of pole-based ammunition.
"Later interactions with Europeans likely heavily modified aboriginal death practices, hence the traps," Reese added in commentary to their predicament. "My professor wasn't a saint, but he also respected other cultures. Whatever happened to your friend, it wasn't that, but I'll make sure he answers for it."
Anish, his heart rate slowing back into pace, leaned out of his attack-pose. "Your willingness for tribal self-correction lauds merit. Perhaps putting up with your kind does not need to mean death."
"Let's honour your dead like they did theirs," Reese offered, turning back around to face his match. "We'll cremate and take your comrade's ashes back to your country."
The other man hooked his sword to his back. "My name is Anish."
"Reese," came the reciprocation. "Now we just need to take down that branch-door."
Anish took out his weapon again as they both turned to address their entrapment. "One of us might as well make use of these. I suspect what you possess is not for such common purpose."
"Trust me. It's not for anything."
- - -
The sweltering, thick summer air struck no relief upon Malik as he approached the shelter of the nearby bus stop which was plastered in pigskin anti-Reese-posters. A workout was not what he expected from academic reacquaintance, and he had hoped his confederate would appreciate what he went through.
"Bloody tall-ie," he lamented. "Probably didn't even break a sweat."
At that, Reese approached in covered wood splinters, and near-complete disarray. "Oh man, did I break a sweat. Tried to get out of a triple re-purposed tomb of sacred burial. But at least Anish did give me this," Reese reported, holding up a small booklet. "Lanstien's contacts, which the avid South Asian tracker found through his many late-night school raids. It confirms the professor and I share the same anonymous connection. Oh, and that I got it from a stalker that something's up."
"You see how locked doors do nothing?" Malik added.
Reese satchelled the auxiliary MacGuffin. "Point is, Lanstien is after an ancient weapon too. Anish will have answers so that we can make sure the Professor is accountable."
"I feel like you had a thing and I had a thing, but we haven't caught each other up yet? Never mind. We're now racing Yuri and whatever this next danger is, we both have to agree that I get it," Malik established while examining his acquired statue. "After which I'm going to sell. For money. You know, that thing we need to live?"
Reese rolled his eyes. "You can't sell a mystical weapon of exponential threat." After observing Malik's blank, contradictory stare, Reese continued, "Never mind, again. We need to get to India. Have we wrapped up our thematic overtones?"
"Well, there was that one lesson by Corrigan that we were merely looters with no sense of right or wrong."
The two adventurers took it in for a moment, before Resse replied, "Yeah, but we knew that. School teaching us stuff we already know, am I right?"
"Hell yeah!" Malik substantiated as they both high-fived in shared resistance to The Man. "So, my Hindi's still a bit rusty. I know basic syntax and half the vocabulary required to make any sense at all."
Reese groaned inwardly as a bus arrived prompting the two to board. Lauding a shared willingness to tackle the next challenge to their livelihoods and that of the world, they set off to the great unknown.