I have no one to blame for this but myself, and the fact that I mainlined most of the Tera-verse stories over the last two weeks. This is currently without permission from Ms. Castle, mostly because I'm not sure if it'll go any farther, but for your consideration....
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
Quote:“Bonjour, Dr. Curry!” The grinning man with the French accent stood behind the ring of hard-bitten toughs, peeking around the shoulders of a scarred and dangerous-looking brute to look down at Arthur from where he crouched in the runoff from the water trap he had just escaped. “Still the excellent swimmer, I see.” He stepped into the ring of men – not too far, but just enough to be within arm’s reach of Arthur – and extended a hand. “The idol, if you please.”Ebony the Black Dragon
Arthur looked up at the Frenchman. “Dr. Belloq,” he said, exhaustion from the gauntlet that he had just run in his voice, “I thought you had given up.”
“Non, Curry,” Belloq replied. “I simply required the right resources for the job.” He gestured to the dozen men surrounding them. Arthur could see that they were all armed, with blades and guns, and most of them seemed quite eager to use the weapons on him, should he give them an excuse. “Several of these fine gentlemen were in that bar last week. They were happy to work for me, if the price was right. The opportunity for revenge on the handsome red-headed man who had busted up their favorite drinking establishment was simply… dessert.”
Arthur groaned internally. He had never met Rene Belloq, but Dr. Jones had told him of the irritating French tomb robber (and his untimely end at the hands of the Nazis, on that little island in the Atlantic). His grandson, Simon, had certainly inherited his ancestor’s arrogance, as well as his lack of scruples. “This piece belongs in a museum, Belloq. Not in the private toybox of whoever happens to be signing your paycheck this week.”
Belloq shook his head, an expression of mock-pity crossing his features. “Poor Dr. Curry. So handsome, so athletic, so intelligent. The very model of one of these… what did the newspapers call you? An Orphan?” He grinned, and added, “It is a great shame that you have so little idea of how the world truly works. Now, give me the idol, or these gentlemen will have to get violent.”
Arthur looked down at the small statue that he still gripped in one hand. He had held onto it with a white-knuckled grip ever since he had retrieved it from where Sapito’s body had fallen, skewered by the deathtrap that they had avoided when they had entered the temple. Sadly, in his haste to leave and avoid the flood of seawater released by the trap they had not avoided, he had failed to avoid the trigger, and the spikes had caught him on the way out. With the rest of the ruin now under more flooded, the remains of the Central American treasure hunter would soon be fish food. Arthur would feel worse about it, if Sapito hadn’t tried to steal the idol for himself and leave him trapped to drown.
It was fortunate that Arthur was difficult to drown. He had avoided the spikes and retrieved the idol, and made it almost all the way out of the temple when the water had caught up with him. The turns and twists of the passages of the underground ruin made it difficult to move quickly – to say nothing of the strange shadows that made the walls seem to sway and bend in nauseating ways if you looked too closely – and he hadn’t made out of the long straight tunnel at the entrance before the water had come rushing up behind him, driven by the narrowing of the passage into a pressurized torrent. Arthur had taken one glance over his shoulder and legged it, hoping to outrun the flood, but the water was up around his ankles and knees before he could get more than thirty feet. Throwing caution to the wind, he had dived into the current and body-surfed his way out. Fortunately, he’d been raised on the New England shore, and had been swimming in the surf from the age of five. He’d kept his head pointed toward the daylight at the end of the tunnel and held his breath. The surge had battered against a wall or two, but he’d been propelled out the cave mouth on a wave of water mostly intact.
Unfortunately, it had left him at the feet of Belloq and his goons. Arthur looked down at the idol. It was about seven or eight inches in height, and its age could not mask the exquisite workmanship of the original sculptor, surprisingly delicate for something as old as it was supposed to be. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers; a scaly, rubbery-looking body; prodigious claws on the hind and fore feet; and long, narrow wings behind. To Arthur, it seemed a thing of fearsome and unnatural malignancy, and it squatted on a block or pedestal covered with characters in a language that he did not immediately recognize. Still, it was worth study, if only because the island temple in which it was found had been all but unknown, nestled in a small coral atoll in the middle of the Marshall Islands, home to only seabirds and the occasional insects and shellfish.
“Come, Dr. Curry,” said Belloq, not unkindly. “It is not worth the pain these gentlemen would inflict. What was yours is now mine; the game is lost.”
“Indy told me that your grandfather used to say that,” replied Arthur, rising to his feet slowly. “It didn’t end well for him, you know.”
http://ebony14.livejournal.com
"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."
