The helicopter roared through the air, through what would be a normal night in the Maya forest. In it’s wake, many of the creatures asleep within it’s brush would awaken, birds would trail into the air, and hunters would lose their prey.
The primary occupant of this vehicle wouldn’t give that notion a second thought, a strange and giddy feeling having taken over his own mind instead.
Raymond Kraus was a man who seemed to never catch a break. Disasters across the globe constantly demanded his attention, his department had the highest rate of death amongst it’s agents in the entire government, and he was the third Director the OOA had in about two decades of being a governmental body. The job wasn’t envied by many. Fire after fire, and only him and his to put them out. His collogues in the other branches made fun of him, and his literal job description of chasing ghosts, and he had to fight auditors every year to not slash his departments funding, ever since the folly of their original Director in 68′ had lost them a lot of trust.
But tonight? He was soon to become one of the most powerful men in the world. And he could hardly sit still. It wasn’t excitement, he’d moved beyond that sort of thing. In his line of work, excitement was something which got you killed. No, instead a sense of nervous fear had taken him over, as his personal helicopter soared over the forest. He knew things like these were too good to be true. So rare was it for his agency to have a leg up.
But he wasn’t about to let his paranoia get in the way of any potential victory. So when he had gotten the call about a ruin being dug up in Central America, one filled with what the missive had called “Anomalous Objects of Unknown Origin” he had gotten the first flight down to Guatemala. The United States had plenty of control down here, enough that they could easily get a few groups of operatives and a lot of equipment to a dig site, especially one so far from any of the fighting taking place in the nation. If they complained, the President or someone else in his administrations would shut them up with another shipment of war machines. Thank god for American Industry.
If some of the limited notes he’d received from his sources here had been true, some of these objects were actually of note. Normally all his department would end up with were trinkets, barely anything of note, and the things of any worth they did find, they locked up due to the consequences they’d have, or given out to certain allies in exchange for the help. The Wheel was a bunch of extortionists, and the System’s head scientist wouldn’t take money as payment, but they were useful, and in the end, magic tended to fold to lead anyways.
But any advantage was an advantage. And an end to his bad luck wouldn’t be remiss either.
It wasn’t long before the full speed ahead approach of the helicopter began to slow, and the mechanisms for a landing started. Director Kraus looked around the body briefly. The other agents with him were seemingly ready at a moments notice, already preparing. He just had his case, and a sidearm. Nothing compared to the large weapons kits those fellows were carting around.
Appropriate security, in this day and age.
Kraus had seen the videos and reports. Lycanthropes, vampires, demons. Rumors of fae making contracts to create superhumans. Creature said to be demons. Sea serpents. Wizards, cultists.
And a flying murderer who acted like a superhero.
It was revolting, really. That these things had existed beneath the surface, beneath notice for this long. A few decades ago, hogwash. Now?
The free world rested on his ability to stop things from storybooks from ripping the world asunder. Things no ordinary man could be expected to stand against. It was a task two previous men, strong men, had failed at. And everyone expected him to follow suit.
The helicopter landed on an area of the forest cleared away for it, the trees cut down around the clearing were fresh, as if cut down within the past few days.
When the landing was complete, the doors were slid open, as the rotors began to slow. A hand reached out to help him through the darkness, and he took it. Whoever it was, had a strong grip.
He disembarked, and he could hear his group moving behind him. They would be a few moments behind. It took his eyes a few moments to adapt to the limited light in the clearing, the only sources of it coming from the vehicle behind him, and something distant past the clearing.
There were three individuals in front of him, including the one grasping his hand. Two stood, armed guards, the one grasping his hand was dressed differently. In a slightly nicer outfit, too nice to be out here, yet here he was, all the same. He spoke, in an accent he recognized as native to the area, but in good English all the same.
“Welcome to the site, sir! Happy to have you here. You work under Director Morrow, yes?” He said, making small talk, as the other agents readied themselves to disembark.
“Director Morrow unfortunately was killed in action twelve years ago. I’m the Director now. Raymond Kraus.” He stuck out his hand to the man with a morose expression one couldn’t see in the dark. He decided not to mention the man between himself and Morrow, it made him seem like he had a bit more staying power then he had so far.
A vigorous handshake was exchanged.
“Ramiro Soto, I run the dig sites in this region. At your service, Director Kraus.” He said with some conviction.
He figured that was loyalty, right there. Even if it was only to the money that they were providing.
A smile that one couldn’t see in the dark.
“I appreciate that. Would you mind showing me the site? And giving me an overview of what you’ve found?”
The shadow of a nod, as Soto turned and began to walk away, his guards flanking him. Kraus would follow soon after, his agents keeping behind him, as the sounds of the helicopter’s rotors began to slow.
Through the trees, they went down a carved out path that, like the area they had landed in, seemed like it was put together very recently. Which implied a sense of urgency…which was made even more clear, with how Soto spoke.
“We’re a few miles from Tikal. Are you familiar?”
“Vaguely. Mayan ruin, former city, with a lot of religious significance?” Director Kraus had done some homework on the flight over, but this still wasn’t in his expertise. But still, Soto nodded.
“Yes, it’s rather marvelous, over forty temples and other structures in some form of intact. Historically, it’s helped us decipher more about ancient Mayan culture, and their histories, then almost anything else we’ve found in this region for at least a century. We thought, however, that we’d pretty thoroughly uncovered what it had to offer.” His voice hung, clearly anticipating a follow up, but giving the Director time to interject.
“I take it that because I’m here, things have changed.” The Director wasn’t a man for suspense.
“You’d be correct. You see, a week or so ago, there was a bit of conflict over this way. A group of militants from the countryside were trying some kind of plan to seize Tikal. Government saw them coming a mile away, launched a few shells their way, hoping to scare them off. Bombs struck just ahead of just, killed a few of them, and they scurried back off to their rats dens. A few of ours came through to collect bodies, search them for anything useful, when they found that there was stone beneath the dirt. Worked stone, only a few feet down. They called it in, they called us.” Soto recounted his tale with a nonchalant air to him. Business as usual.
“And what did you find?” The Director followed up, noting another pause.
“We started digging, carefully around the exposed elements. Turns out, there’s another pyramid down there! And it’s a real big one. And not just that…this one has some real interesting things in it.”
“How’d it get all the way out here?” That didn’t sound normal. Then again, Kraus wasn’t an archeologist.
“Our guess? They wanted it out of the way. To prevent grave robbing. How it got where it was, we aren’t sure. We think originally the top portion was meant to be exposed, but the archeology of it is getting belayed slightly. Mostly due to the…anomalous nature of it all.”
“Have anomalous objects been discovered in Tikal before?” He hadn’t heard of anything, but bigger things had been covered up.
“A few, back in the 60’s. But they got repossessed under mysterious circumstances. They weren’t all that powerful, from our understanding however.” Soto took a reassuring tone with that, almost nervous. The pair emerged through the trees now, to the site proper.
Construction equipment littered this other clearing, various taped off sites dotting it’s surface. The center had been mostly cleared of dirt, revealing the top of a stone pyramid, a large door in it’s center, seemingly closed for the moment. Tents had been set up, light leaking out from their confines, the people within likely meeting about one thing or another. There were also plenty of soldiers here, from their friends in high places. At the very least they wouldn’t be getting any…surprise guests.
“But these have been untouched thus far, yes?” The Director clarified, tone growing sharp.
“Yes. We verified a few, then evacuated till your arrival.” Soto said, with a level of fear taking his voice for the briefest moment.
“Very good. Show me, please.” He said, simply.
“Would you prefer to see some of our other findings fir-“
“While I’m sure it’s very fascinating, I’m truly only here for one thing, Mr. Soto. I’d like to ensure that first and foremost, those objects are uncovered in full, along with anything else anomalous. Kindly, if you would, lead the way.” He said, gesturing towards the pit, and the door therein. Soto gave a nod.
“Let me collect my assistant, one moment, please.”
Soto split off from the group for a moment, leaving his guards behind as he slipped into a nearby tent. A few sharp words in Spanish spoken, a small back and forth, and he remerged with a young woman of Mayan descendant, with black hair and a cross look. She didn’t seem particularly happy to see Kraus, shooting him a dirty look while Soto walked ahead of her.
“My apologies for the delay, Director Kraus. I’ll show you what we’ve found.”
The collection of now seven people, walked down the slope into the pit. Soto, his guards and his assistant in front, Kraus in the center, and the four agents in the back. To the large door. Soto gestured the young woman further. Giving him a look, before sighing, and walking up to the door. Placing a hand on the door, which upon a closer examination, seemed far too heavy to move by conventional means, she simply held it there for a moment. Kraus squinting.
“Am I-” He began, before the door began to move, seemingly on it’s own, pulling open. The woman pulled her hand away, and Kraus saw the reflection of blood on her palm, before she swiftly bandaged it.
“Anomalous item number one, this door. It opens up when blood is given to it. But not anyone’s blood, either. We’ve been doing tests, but my assistant’s the only one whose managed to do so thus far. We’ll be doing some tests as soon as we can get results back.”
The Director gave a nod. Odd, but not unthinkable. Soto took a step forward, into the confines. “The door thankfully remains open for about ninety minutes. Plenty of time to show you around. And it can be opened from the other side by the same methods.”
The group fully entered the pyramid. Taking a moment to adjust to darkness, before Soto clicked a flashlight on, the hallway flooded with light. They stood on a staircase, leading down. As they walked, their footsteps echoed, indicating a larger space soon to be found.
And larger space they did find. A large open room, a stone slab of a table laid out in it’s center, a strip of a material that almost seemed like clay encircling it. Glyphs of some sort marked this stripe, Mayan writing, and it seemed rather intricate at that. The Director most certainly couldn’t read it, and his attention was more focused on the rest of the room.
The slab had various objects on it, was the first thing he noted. They looked out of place, so he presumed that they hadn’t originally been here, and looking over, he saw empty stone cavities in the walls which seemed to confirm that theory.
Seven objects in total.
A pair of stone idols carved in the shape of Jaguars were the first thing to catch his eye. They were big, likely needing to be carried in both hands. Each of them had eyes which seemed to be made from emeralds, and they seemed to be carved expertly. Outside of small points of wear and tear unique to each, they seemed identical.
A tablet, upon it various Mayan’s scripts. When he blinked, he could have sworn that the script seemed to change, the glyphs taking on different forms. The first thing he outwardly could perceive as anomalous.
A necklace, golden squares hanging from it. Each of them having a symbol of a different animal on it. He saw a jaguar, a serpent, a bird, some kind of crocodile, and an armadillo. There was also one of the squares which seemed to be blank.
The fang of some kind of large creature, with apart of it having been worked into a handle, perhaps to be wielded as a blade, though it didn’t have much reach, and the fang itself didn’t even seem all that sharp. That’s when he noticed the small pool of black liquid which laid next to it. Curious.
An urn made from some form of clay, pictures, not glyphs, dotting it’s sides. Depicting a variety of scenes of some kind of battle or war in as much gruesome detail as an engraving could provide. It seemed to be filled to the brim with…well, it certainly looked and smelled a lot like blood.
The final object laid not on the table, but against the back wall, hung up via rope above a chair which looked akin to a throne. The slab also had a few stone stools around it, akin to chairs, making me think this slab was once a table of some sort…now repurposed to splay out their gains. Hung up on the back wall was a spear, shaft made from sturdy and intact wood, tip a sharp obsidian. It was easily a six foot or so weapon, quite unwieldy to the untrained.
The Director surveyed each item with the eye of an expert, even if he wasn’t one inherently. He looked to Soto.
“Do you have an idea of what each of these does?” The Director asked, with a bit less of the hostile and terse sharpness he’d had before.
“A few, yes” He made a gesture towards the idols. “These seem to have heartbeats and are warm to the touch. The working theory is that they are alive in some capacity, we’re just working on trying to find some kind of way to activate them.” He next gestured to the tablet “When we had some of our archeologists try to read this, after enough time, they seemed to gain comprehension of the other glyphs and the Mayan writing system as a whole. One of them described it like taking a language course in three hours. However, the headaches it seemed to give them after and having to send one of them to an emergency hospital has given us a bit of…hesitance before using it again.”
The Director gave a nod. Seemed fair.
Soto’s gaze next landed on the necklace. “This was an odd one. We had another assistant wear it, and it seemed to grant him a variety of different properties after clutching that blank square, there. It used to depict a monkey, and after use, it seemed to grant him quite potent strength, speed, climbing…and a fairly loud screech. We think it was a black howler.” Soto took a long pause after that. The Director raised an eyebrow. Waiting for him to go on.
“Unfortunately…he ran off, and we haven’t found him. We have people searching around the clock of cou-“
“No need, I’ll put someone on it. How long ago?” The Director’s tone was back to being cold.
“Two days.”
The Director noted it. “Assuming it does what one would logically assume, however, that’s quite the useful find. A shame it seems one use per animal. The rest?”
Soto took note of the change in demeanor again, treading lightly, as he gestured to the fang.
“We aren’t sure what sort of animal that came from, we’re calling in an expert to help us try and figure that out. But the fang itself seems to secrete a set amount of venom at a given time. We haven’t tested it, but the animals it was used on…they seemed to go into a frenzy, before dying within hours. We didn’t have the means to test dosage out here, so hopefully you can figure it out.”
“…What do you mean by frenzy?” Kraus’s eyebrow went up.
“We struck a local boar with it. That boar killed two armed men, and took about as many bullets as an elephant would have, then seemed to die of a seizure.” Soto seemed almost…scared, at the mention. Good. That meant this was real. And it worked. Soto then looked to the urn. “This one seems both more simple, and less. It’s always filled with blood. With no limit as far as we can tell. We sent a sample to be tested. But this type does seem to work to open the door. Just you have to angle it right.”
Not as outwardly useful. But perhaps it would do as vampire bait, Director Kraus mused. They were always a problem.
Soto seemed to stop his explanation, looking to the Director as if finished. The Director spoke, confused ever slightly in his tone, to the point where he could easily be seen to be insulted.
“And the spear? What of that?”
Soto seemed to freeze, as if he didn’t expect him to notice. Kraus began stepping towards the back of the room where it hung, looking at it with curiosity.
“Oh-completely ordinary, I’m afraid, it’s nothing remarkable-” The man’s voice had taken on a strange bit of…fear. And urgency. The Director narrowed his gaze towards the weapon.
“It’s quite the pretty thing, isn’t it?” Remarked Kraus.
“Yes, I suppose s-“
“I think it’ll look nice on my office wall.” The Director cut him off. And stepped up, onto the throne, and grasped the spear.
When he felt the throne begin to shift, he sprung backwards, spear in hand. His reflexes weren’t that dull. The throne folded backwards, into the stone of the back wall, revealing a path there.
“Well well well. Care to explain this, Mr. Soto?” He said, turning around to face the very frightened looking man. It brought Kraus no small amount of joy.
“No-Nothing of note, there’s just a big pit down there, no need t-“
“Now now, there’s no need for such hopeless talk, perhaps another set of eyes will do you good.” Kraus said, starting down the stairs once more, making a gesture for his agents to follow. Two of them keeping an eye on Soto, his assistant, and his guards, now that this strange half betrayal had occurred.
These stairs wound down a good ways, deeper into the earth then a place like this, built when it was, should have been able to go. The stone at his side grew wet and slick, and soon the stairs beneath took on the same quality. He took extra care not to slip with each step he took.
It additionally got colder and colder, the further down he went. But eventually, the stairs stopped, before a stone platform. Just beyond it, like Soto had said, a large pit. The Director briefly opened his case, fumbling in the dark for a moment, before withdrawing a small lantern, which flared to life with white light. He shut the case, and looked around, just as Soto and his group arrived after them.
“As you can see there’s nothi-” Soto started, as Kraus began to survey the room.
“What’s that?” Kraus said, as his gaze settled on something at the bottom of the pit.
A large stone rectangular shaped thing, with symbols atop it’s lid. A box, about eight feet long and four feet wide. Partially sunken into the ground, but appearing to still mostly be above the ground. It seemed inlined with gold, and more then a few gemstones, which reflected the light from the particularly bright lantern fairly vibrantly. There were also what appeared to be large stone heads carved into the walls on around the same level as the group of delvers, each depicting a jaguar with it’s mouth agape.
“Doesn’t seem quite like nothing to me.”
“Just a burial site, we haven’t managed to get anyone down there yet to-“
“Oh we can handle that.” He snapped his fingers. One of the agents messed around with one of his weapons, placing an attachment akin to a bayonet atop one. He took aim down at the bottom, about fifty feet down, and fired. Coiled wire fired down, embedding in the stone below. A faint click, the attachment was pulled off, and planted into the platform sturdily. Another device from the agent’s belt was removed, a few sets of portable climbing gear.
“We always come prepared, Mr. Soto. Why don’t you come with me. This ought to be the discovery of a lifetime, whatever’s down there.”
“I don’t think tha-”
“Shall I put in a complaint to your higher ups? About how you offended your American guests?” The Director’s tone went cold.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Good, now follow me.”
Over the course of a few minutes, the collective group repelled down, with the assistant remaining behind with Soto’s guards.
Once the group of six reached the bottom, the Director approached this strange sarcophagus, still holding the spear. It was almost lighter then air, he hardly noticed he was even carrying it most of the time.
Soto fell in step with him. “Whatever you do, be careful, this might be trapped-“
That did give Kraus a pause. He turned to his agents. “Sweep the room. I don’t want to get buried alive by some centuries old booby trap. Fan out, disarm anything you can, then report back.”
It was a few minutes more then, as the agents swept the room, using their lights to look for any tripwires, pressure plates, anything which might pose them harm. But when they were done, they found nothing. Kraus chided himself about his own paranoia, and approached the box at last. Running his hand down the side idly, a layer of dust coming off with it.
“What might this be…” He mused aloud, casting a glance to Soto. The other man just shook his head. Completely unsure.
He scanned the entire thing. Not finding anything of note, he looked back over to his fearful compatriot.
“Well, shall we open it?” The question hung.
“I’m not sure that’s wise…”
“Why not? Couldn’t more things of value be inside? Whoever this was, he was buried like a king.” His eyes almost seemed giddy.
Soto fell silent. Kraus took that as a yes, and attempted to lift the lid.
It didn’t budge. He sighed, motioning an agent over, both of them attempting it. Nothing. He then surveyed the box again, looking for a mechanism or similar…when he found a strange handprint indentation. Made for a hand bigger then his own, but…
He placed his hand within it. A sharp stabbing feeling. He pulled his hand away, blood falling from it. He felt something move from within. He tried to open it…nothing. Gears turned in his head…before he realized.
He shouted upwards.
“Girl! Get down here, now!”
In the shadow of the lantern, he could see Soto’s assistant tense when he looked at her. She froze, before Soto sighed and spoke.
“Bianca, please?”
With trepidation, the Mayan woman descended to the bottom of the pit, and walked over. When she got close, the Director gestured to the hand print. She hesitated again, before, he spoke.
“Place your hand there. I think that will open it.”
She paused for a moment too long, and Kraus was getting impatient. He grabbed her arm, she struggled, but the quickness of the motion caught her off guard, and her hand was placed into the indentation. Her blood was spilled, and for a moment, things seemed to slow. The girl writhed, and broke contact, stumbling backwards, eyes wide. The box churned again, but didn’t stop as it was before-
As the top of the sarcophagus opened, and a figure floated right out of it.
The Director stumbled, but righted himself. Plucking up the spear from the ground where he’d left it, moments after breaking contact with the assistant, he was on guard right away. In the light, he could see the agents raise weapons. Soto scurried backwards, towards the rope. The assistant froze behind Kraus. The two soldiers at the top of the platform had fled back up the stairs.
The figure emerging from the box was shaped like a man. He had the flesh of one, copper brown skin like many of the people he’d encountered since arriving here. It was somewhat wrinkled in places, as if indicating age. But not much more could be gleamed from that, given that only some of the skin on his arms and legs were visible.
His face was covered by a massive jaguar’s head. Not taxidermy or a mask either, it’s eyes were moving as if it was the man’s own, a sickly yellow which cast onto Kraus, the closest individual. It’s fur was well tended to, for rising from a tomb. It was adorned around the neck with a feathered mantle, the feathers resembling that of an owl. A cape with the texture of an armadillo’s shell hung from his back, over a chest piece that was seemingly made of thick cloth, woven in diamond formations across his front. It draped down to his very upper thigh, just barely covering what it needed to. His feet were adorned in some form of vine wrappings, somehow intact after who knew how long.
The man looked down at Kraus. Who looked right back, for a long few moments of silence.
Kraus spoke first.
“And who the hell are you?” He sounded half shocked, half…insulted, as if this person emerging had done so just to spite him.
No reply, from the floating man. Who looked away from Kraus at the entire room. Soto halfway up the wire, the agents with weapons pointed, and the assistant.
Kraus noted she was bowing.
He looked back to it.
“Look at me when I talk to you. I need to know who you are, now”
He spoke. In a language Kraus did not know. His voice sounded like two iron blocks being ground together, combined and punctuated with a long growl. He was looking past Kraus. To the assistant. Who met his eyes…tensed…then shouted.
Something, once again, in a language he didn’t understand. But he knew it wasn’t Spanish. She screamed it like her life depended on it…then ran for the wire.
The Director snapped his head back to the man, leveling the spear at him, now very clearly angry. Whatever the girl had done, whatever she thought she was doing, it had made him mad. He brandished the spear towards the floating man, letting out a snarl of his own.
“Answer M-” He started to shout. And that’s when he moved. He landed in front of him, grabbed his arm, and twisted.
His hands, covered in some form of wrappings, felt coarse to the touch. His grip was that of a bulldog, and when he twisted, he could feel the bones in his arm snap. The spear clattering to the floor as it held him for a long moment-
Until with the sound of roaring thunder, a high caliber round struck him in the side of the head. Kraus was dropped, in shock from the pain. The chamber began to rumble, both from gunfire as the agents struck in defense of their Director, and from something else. Kraus watched, as a viscous black liquid began to pour from the agape mouths of the jaguars on the walls, slamming into the ground like a flood. The floating man was in motion. Some kind of energy flared from his hand, and two of his agents hit the ground. He was dimly aware of the smell of rotten flesh hitting his nose.
He moved his good hand towards the spear, grasping it in his hand, and using the open sarcophagus as a brace, he got to his feet. Soto had been struck from the wire. The platform having come apart into stone chunks which rained down on him. His head had cracked on the ground below. Director Kraus, despite everything, felt a joy in that.
The assistant, though, her body wasn’t on the ground. She was behind Soto, and couldn’t have passed him. The black liquid wasn’t high enough to swallow the body…where had she gone? His eyes scanned the room, eventually settling on the door to the stairwell. She stood there. He caught a glare from her. Before she moved up the stairs again.
How was that possible? He dimly protested the impossibility through the pain.
No time to worry about that. He saw the flying one. Taking another two bullets to the chest, with no real harm done, he landed in front of an agent, and before he could react, kicked him hard enough to send him flying. He heard a faint squish as he hit the wall. The last agent was withdrawing a pair of grenades, throwing them forward.
Brilliant flashes of explosive death did nothing to the floating man. The agent, however, didn’t remerge from the wave of black liquid which seemed to swallow him right after. The jaguar headed freak turned his head towards Kraus then, slowly floating towards him, speaking again in that same intelligible and unknown language. Kraus saw his death coming, and yet, resisted. With his one good hand, he threw the spear, and as the wave of black liquid moved to engulf the center, he dove into the sarcophagus for one last hope of survival. In slow motion, he saw the wave coming, the spear fly through the air, and a crackling black energy forming in the wrapped hands of the jaguar.
Then things flowed together, as he landed hard in the box, he heard the sound of blade entering flesh, and a burst of light right over his head.
A few odd things, he noticed, as he laid against the stone, and the entire world grew dark.
The sarcophagus now had it’s lid back on it.
And the spear was against his chest, as if he had never thrown it.
Oddities of no concern to him now.
Kindling And Miscellany 