Caelum becames very angry and clenched his fist, making the knuckles go hard white.

"You made use of us," Caelum said back to Arthur, his voice steady but spiralling with apprehension." You made us into your pawns"

"No," Arthur cut in and looked at the two men staring at him angrily,"It was your decisions which brought about the deaths of your men. I had no part in that, the tomb was a faithful companion."

And he was right, the old machine was fair formal inexorable. The traps showed no preference.. no respect for self-esteem or money, for ancestors' worth.

These were just the results of old engineering transformed into brutal art. The tomb did not take sides but instead merely taught lessons.

Ravik's scarred hands pushed into the cold stone beneath him so hard they turned white under the flesh.

Arthur looked at them for a moment, letting his words hang like a thick fog in the air before he unfurled the map and let it catch the flickering torchlight.

At the sight of it, Ravik's eyes flamed of unspeakable rage. "You..."

Arthur's hold tightened around the map as he interjected, "This map was a key,an instrument studded with pieces of this tomb's very core. But remember: keys are not mercies; they are tools."

He glanced odly at both men their tattered and battered bodies and then continued, "I took calculation of expense and risk."

"You took the measure of bodies," Caelum burst out, his voice low but suffused with more than just the acute sensation of pain.

"You worked out what it meant to come second."

No change of expression showed on Arthur's face, only a subtle tensing of the muscles in his jaw could have been taken as any sign of strain.

Nut an icy light shone from under those eyebrows as he answered,"You should be grateful someone has learned to tally the costs. Just to find out Vaerion's secret."

His words flooded the air with weight it could feel glacial.

Suddenly, Ravik lunged forward, as if unable to check himself-a half-howling burst of grief and rage, an animal's movement so immediate that the soldiers reacted instantly.

Like a compressed spring Ethan launched into action.

But halfway into his lunge Ravik tripped, his foot caught in a split of the stone floor.

In that moment, Gunner caught him by the collar and held him easily.

"All right, enough" Gunner said firmly in Ravik's ear from on high. "You've got blood to worry about, consider exactly what you have left.Take a seat and do your sums, because that's all the courtesy this tomb will give you".

Ravik spat to one side, the lingering aftertaste of old iron.

He croaked sullen and bitter, "You're a coward."

Arthur's response was eloquent and mute. He gave an oblique glance to his breast pocket, where the map lay hidden before turning away.

The center of the hall stood like some unblinking eye, watching their every move,around them the archeotechnicians picked up their work again, beavering away in quiet, unanswerable murmurs.

Adrian's voice grew more technical as he put question after question, Clara rifled through her notes methodically, as though she were cutting up the very entrails of a live beast.

Dr. Ren talked at length about the potential of extraneous technologies, Martha Sorel sighed with pure pleasure,a scholar come at last face to face with a living Neolothic relic.

The silence that followed Ravik's accusation was different,no longer fear, but thoughtful contemplation.

Here in this cross shaped hall, they became merely human, a flickering of candlelight against the boundless black of history.

A new tension sprang up into the air, like metal files being drawn away from a magnet.

Arthur studied the far arm of the cross, where dark corridors fell away like folded paper,his thumb and forefinger ran over the ink map on it, feeling the raised lines when they came to them,that was the geography of a place built to bury men and all the things which had befallen them.

He'd shaped his own destiny and witnessed the same fate befalling others; It was something he could take as his fate and yet there could be hollows left beneath the surface of his inner self.

Gunner began to give orders to the squad to secure the perimeters as Ethan slumped against a stone pillar, while the hall seemed content to wait and breathe.

Azurian architects had left this area like a mystery cut into stone: magnificent yet ridden with mechanisms and traps, built for both the will power, and quick thinking of the whole being.

Ravik dragged himself off the ground as he press down on the cool stone floors, tasting.

"You will die in here," he breathed raggedly maybe possibly to Arthur or perhaps even to himself.

His voice had this uncanny weight to it, it might be prophecy, or sheer madness.

Caelum only snarled in reply before he limped off and leaned against a pillar, his breath was ragged.

He was silent, but his bold eyes still showed a hunger not for knowledge, but revenge.

For what felt like an eternity, Arthur watched them both with his cold and emotionless eyes.

Then he folded the map and pulled it up slightly to signal the team: time to move.

"We proceed," he announced, his voice as certain as ever.

As the archaeologists closed their devices reverently, Professor Adrian inhaled deep breaths as Clara flashed an admiring glance at Arthur, tinged with fear.

They glided through the hall, as if following an ancient procession of shades,their steps, inaudible against so much stone, were barely visible ripples,just like those slight tremors.

The looming columns cast long shadows that felt almost alive,like hands reaching out from another time, moving toward a future which would never come.

As they moved away from the core of this tomb away from where Ravik and Caelum embraced their broken-down beliefs,Arthur felt warmth radiating from the map in his hands.

It reminded him of the ledger filled with risks and rewards, debts and obligations.

Most compellingly, however, it brought back the names of those who had never come.

He hadn't meant for this trip to be about blood; he had planned it as an intellectual quest and an opportunity to extend the boundaries of what he knew.

But in this tomb plans went askew, they turned like bone. The map, the men around him, their choices, they were all part and parcel of an unbreakable knot.

This vault embraced them all both devotion and sacrifice.

Behind him, Ethan was making a joke about poetry, how tombs seem to play with rhyme.

Mireille emitted an insincere snort while, Gunner gave him a sour look.

Arthur did not say a word,he could not bring himself to smile, so empty words of consolation would be wasted on him.

He kept his eyes straight ahead, his back straight, a beacon in the midst of dark times. For better or for worse, he would lead them forward.

The cruciform hall swallowed them not a large group, but still as small and fine as a needlework cross.

Ravik watched as they departed, as did his companion Caelum: two once-proud lions, now rusted by time but nonetheless filled with pride.

Arthur felt, as they turned the corner at the far end of the hall, that the ancient stones beneath their feet were shifting and grumbling with a sound akin to distant thunder.

History is not a sentimental place, it has rules which require the present moment to obey.

He put his left hand against the cool, ornately carved stone at the entrance of the corridor as he looked back towards his team.

"Ready," he said over his shoulder. "Form up."

He was not just asking, it was an order.

As they left the courtyard, Gunner nodded and Ethan gave a brittle grin.

The archaeologists carefully made notes on parchment, sliding them carefully inside protective envelopes, as torches cast long shadows upon the path before them.

Taking one final look at the map, Arthur studied the lines and symbols which tell information regarding things still unknown.

He turned his face to Ravik and Caelum, once enemies, now only shadows of their former selves driven away by hard luck and harsh reality.

The silence between them was not friendly. Three men spoke no words because none could be found that would be suitable for their situation, which was a place that tolerated no sorts of pretension.

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