Written by, and characters belong to  perdikitti,  zannah, and  colblackwolf

Previous tie-in to this picture

~~~~~~

“This is all your fault,” the wolf said, peeking around the corner of the corridor, pistol in hand.

After a quick look, he drew back. The clash of metal rang from down the hall, echoing on the sandstone walls. He shot a look at the pair of snow leopards against the wall behind him.

“That’s hardly fair, Mathias,” Azura said, torch in one hand and a rolled scroll in the other.

“Who raised the zombie Roman legion?” he replied flatly.

The leopardess grumped, turning to glare at her brother Carlos. “I only did it because someone woke those undead Carthaginians,” she stated, “There were too many for us to deal with alone.”

“I thought that curse was just an empty threat,” the other man said defensively, “I never believed in mummies!”

The desiccated corpse of a legionnaire, possibly some kind of feline in life though too old to tell for sure, stumbled back around the corner, a large spear protruding from its chest. Mat reacted with reflexes honed in the Great War, his pistol snapping up and firing. The .45 caliber bullet slammed into the undead creature’s head, causing it to explode in a spray of bone dry dust.

“Meirda!” Carlos exclaimed as the corpse collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.

“We need to go now,” Mat said calmly, stepping out into the cross corridor and firing at the whirling melee.

“I do hope Zannah and Sanka are still alright,” Azura commented, moving past the Bavarian’s back towards the passage back to the surface.

“Why did I agree to come here?” her brother lamented as he hustled to follow her.

~~~~~~

There was precious little shade in the ruins they were exploring. Thankfully, the double wings on the plane parked next to Zannah’s provided ample opportunity to rest out of the merciless sun.

“More tea?” Sanka inquired, lifting the burnished silver pot from its place of honor on the small field table.

“No, thank you.” Roxanna’s face seemed permanently frozen in a look of bemusement. “Really, was this necessary?”

Sanka filled her cup with tea and lifted the saucer. “Tea is always necessary.”

“I wasn’t referring to the tea, you goose.”

“No?” Sanka took a sip and allowed herself a sigh of pleasure. Carlos had brought proper tea with him from London. The coffee in Algiers was excellent, but she much preferred tea.

“No.” The vixen’s dark gaze flickered to the Frenchmen whose plane they had borrowed. They were lined up in a neat row against the side of their plane, well in the shade where they would not overheat, even with their limbs bound and their muzzles firmly wrapped in gauze bandaging. Sanka looked at the gentlemen and then back at her friend, raising her cup in a quiet salute. “Truly, Sanka. You go on and on about Azura, but you’re the one who makes me wonder.”

“I have no idea what you might be referring to. Are you certain I can’t interest you in tea?”

“You drugged a party of Frenchmen!”

“Of course I did.” Sanka set her cup down with care, never once causing the saucer to clink. “What else was I supposed to do with them? That hare has a most dreadful case of handsy-feelsy.”

“I offered to shoot them.”

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to staunch the blood of a bullet wound? Heavens, Roxanna!”

“That’s the point.”

Sanka glanced skyward, but there were no heavenly beings come to relieve her of friends who were overly fond of shooting people. It was difficult enough being Azura’s traveling companion. Adding Mathias and Roxanna made it far more difficult to maintain her hippocratic oath. “When do you suppose they will return? It can’t possibly take that long to explore yet another horrid underground tomb.”

Zannah laughed. “It can be months, and you know it.”

“Hardly. In her haste, Azura took only enough water to last three people a matter of hours. I expect they shall rejoin us shortly,” Sanka declared.

The vixen wasn’t listening to her anymore, however. Zannah had an ear cocked toward the ruins. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

Sanka’s ears lifted from her neatly coiffed hair. Something made the very air vibrate, but the sky was free of aircraft. “I hear something, but I have no concept of what it may be.” The sand itself seemed to shake below her feet. The last time she had experienced that particularly discomfiting sensation, she and Azura had been forced to camp in a collapsed tomb for several days until the gentlemen freed them. “You don't suppose there has been another cave-in?”

Roxanna grasped her binoculars from her bag. They were unwieldy things, much heavier than the opera glass Sanka carried for the same purpose. Each of the ancient columns she scanned along the horizon seemed intact. Certainly there were no surface signs of a cave in far below.

“I don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” Roxanna commented. “No clouds of dust, no subsidence, but… Is it getting louder or is that my imagination?”

“I sincerely doubt your imagination is so vivid as to cause mass participation.” Sanka scanned the horizon beyond the ruins. There was a swirling cloud of sand, but its appearance was entirely wrong for a sandstorm. A strange ivory mass lumbered from the center of the storm.

A mechanical click beside her drew Sanka’s attention away from the odd sight for a moment. She set the opera glasses down to see Roxanna calmly checking the ammunition in a frighteningly large revolver.

“Zannah, dear, whatever are you doing?”

The vixen finished inspecting her pistol and tucked it back into its holster. “We’ve already had one upset with the Frenchmen today, and these digs can get somewhat… competitive. Don’t worry, I’ll not shoot anyone who doesn’t deserve it. I just don’t care to be ambushed unprepared.”

Sanka shook her head and raised her glasses again, trying to make out the distant shapes in the swirling dust. There was an ivory mass at the center of the largest cloud of sand. Something about the height and bulk of it as it moved through the dust and wind was familiar.

“Roxanna, are there elephants in this part of Africa?” she asked suddenly.

“In Algiers? Heavens, no, Sanka. We’re much too far north for that.”

“Are you quite certain, Roxanna? Look to the northeast. I do believe it is an elephant. Look at the bone structure -- the size of the eye sockets alone…” Sanka paused, lowering her opera glasses for a moment. “Are African elephants transparent of the skin?”

Roxanna stopped in the midst of chambering a round in her revolver. “Are they what?”

“That’s hardly proper English, Roxanna--”

“There are no transparent elephants. Not here, not Asia, not anywhere else!”

“Then why can I see the elephant’s skull? You cannot argue, Roxanna, that is most definitely an elephant!” Sanka jabbed her finger in the direction of the unmistakable beast. It was getting closer, the skeletal features of its form becoming more and more apparent to the bare eye.

Roxanna had whipped her binoculars back to eye level and was staring in unabashed horror at the approaching elephant. The ground shook beneath its massive feet. “That’s not an elephant. That’s a -- a corpse. A fossil.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s far more likely that it has developed some form of translucent skin. For it to be dead, Azura would have to break her word and resume her necromantic hobbies. She promised me that would stop after that dreadful incident near Shangri-La!”

The vixen nearly dropped her binoculars while she turned to stare at Sanka. “She promised what? What have you girls been getting into while I’ve been off ferrying drunken idiots to dig sites?”

“Zombie monks with necromantic scrolls,” Sanka said promptly. “And harems, and fires, and… oh, there was also the incident with the yeti. Did you know that yeti brew the most delightful tea?” Her brows knit together in concern. The elephant was getting closer. “Roxanna, I do believe we may wish to move the aeroplanes. Azura will simply have to find a way to deal with that horrible elephant on her own.”


~~~~~~

Like this image and want to use it? Check my Art Usage Guidelines for more information.[/sub]
_{Want one of your own? Commission Me! =D}