Alex

"Darrrrrling!"

Lara had managed to catch Alex before she was fully out, despite her going "into town" as she had called it, her personal security guard was carrying luggage like she was trying to leave the country.

"Alex," Lara cleared her throat, "I see you don't travel light."

Alex looked confusedly at her own half-dozen bags being carried and rolled around by a small entourage. "Most of this is not mine, darling. I have errands to run before I can enjoy myself."

"And what did you plan to do today to enjoy yourself?" Lara asked somewhat probingly, trying not to glance at her trailing boytoys.

"Vell, I had intended to go visit my horses and do some riding. I vas missing my stallions."

Lara was taken aback for a moment, she wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but it wasn't something even as dangerous as riding around in circles. Assuming that was what Alex intended to do.

"Do you ride, Lara?"

For a moment, Lara was back there, in the base of the Crescent Canyon. A horde of the undead pouring out behind her. She'd never seen a mummified horse before, she'd assumed it had been impossible. Assumed, keyword. She was pushing the poor thing at twice the usual speed, but somewhere in that little buckskin head, it had to understand that its life was in danger too. Of course, it was still sweating like a fountain. Her weight on its own was fine, but that little translator from the nearby village was giving it hell. Even if he'd bolted the second he'd seen his first mummy, she'd scooped him up at the entrance. No way she was letting him get mummified, it was her they were after, he didn't deserve it. Plus he was young, green, and the way he held onto her waist like the world was ending only made him cuter. He was marrying age in his tribe, and he'd introduced himself by asking for her hand. She'd laughed it off, but if they made it out alive, she was going to give him a coming of age present he wouldn't forget.

"Not in while, but I remember the basics."

"Perhaps you vould like to come along for a refresher?"

"That actually sounds lovely, but I'm afraid I didn't pack any riding-"

"Darrrling, I'll be stopping by my tailor anyway, ve can have one of my old suits fitted for you."

"Well then, I suppose I have no excuse." Lara bit her tongue, she hadn't meant to phrase it that passive-aggressively, but it had slipped out anyway.

Alex didn't seem to register any offense, "Excellent! Go grab some real shoes and a change of clothes, the range is near the tomb you've been looking into, perhaps ve vill make our way up there if you feel up to it."

***

Lara Croft was wearing a tent, or at least, that's how Alex's clothes looked on her.

A short, round Russian woman, like a shriveled next-to-last Matryoshka doll come to life, was circling her, pulling spaces of the oversized breeches tight around her legs with a tape measure, then continuing to mutter to herself with her pen tucked between her teeth. For once since arriving, Lara thanked her lack of knowledge of Russian for sparing her either a small encyclopedia of curses about either her own smallness or about Alex's... roundness. Finally, the woman stood back, took a final note, then turned to Alex and sighed.

"You are fucking nonsense customer." She grumbled in English with a voice like she was being interrogated.

"But you can do it?"

The old woman huffed, "Of course I fucking do it, come back two hour, pay double."

Alex nodded and turned to Lara, waiting for the old woman to step out of the room before clapping.

"I got the smallest one I have, but there is still much vork to do."

"Yes, smallest." Lara mused, plucking at the fabric that managed to be tent-wide around her chest but skin-tight around her arms and shoulders. "At a certain point, wouldn't it be faster to simply get new ones made?"

"Lara, darling," Alex tutted, "Even if ve are different vomen, you must understand, ve are both very unique-shaped vomen."

The old woman pushed a mannequin torso on a trolley out from the back, with a jar of modeling clay tucked under her arm. She rested it in place and caught her breath. The model was for, at least it looked like, a wiry, muscular young man. The kind muscular enough to play a superhero, but not muscular enough to play a supervillain.

"Is that really the closest model you had?" Lara asked almost apologetically.

The old woman grabbed a giant handful of clay while muttering under her breath and slapped it onto one of the model's pecs. Then another for the other side. After a pair of larger handfuls for the rear, she put the jar on one of her tables grumpily and started washing her hands.

"Perfect now, undress and fuck off."

***

It turned out that Alex was more than busy enough to have two hours' worth of errands. After the first three went by with Lara standing around awkwardly as important Russian people spoke important Russian at each other, she started waiting in the limo on most of them. At least with that, she could check up on her PDA and take care of a few of the automated Croft Manor tasks. Aside from scaring the daylights out of Winston with a Roomba, she managed to order some replacements for dead plants, hire some hands to repair some of the old wood sections, lots of little stuff. It was almost a little disturbing how many things one found they had been putting off when they had a period of stillness after however many months of constant action. She was in the middle of changing the Roomba's startup sound to something less intimidating when Alex slipped back into the limo.

"Sorry to keep you vaiting, darling. That should be the end of my errands."

"It's really no issue, Alex. I did have a mother that took me shopping before."

"Surely I don't remind you of your mother?"

"Well, you haven't tried to get me to wear a dress, and I do have a phone now."

"You know, you vould look good in a dress."

"And I would look good fighting to keep it off of me all the way to the bitter end."

Alex laughed, "Sometimes, the clothes can make the beauty, vat vould Mr. Darcy be vithout his breeches?"

"He would still be Mr. Darcy, which is why we paid attention to those perilously tight breeches."

"Agree to disagree, darling," Alex scoffed. "Either vay, your clothes should be ready."

***

Whatever magic that tailor had worked in the span of two hours to make Alex's massive old clothes fit Lara as close to tolerably as they had, it would probably cost Alex more than the older woman would ever let on.

Of course, both the breeches and the jacket shirt were designed to fit tight and hold things together. "Tolerably comfortable" meant a very different thing for both horseback riding and exercising then it did for any other kind of clothing. She'd forgotten about the minutiae of actually wearing riding gear, minutiae that existed even when one wasn't wearing a patchwork outfit that was still too tight around the upper arm and a little looser than intended around the stomach. The breeches had been expertly fitted, if she had to guess, Lara would have guessed that the tailor spent the most time on those. As the part that had to endure strain, it was the part that had the highest need to not irritate. The tailor had done her job, but she'd made the breeches vacuum-seal tight. Realistically, Lara could still bend over, but she didn't trust herself to do so twice. So, her movements had to be spare. Something made easier by riding about instead of walking. What the riding did highlight is how truly unfortunate her choice of underwear had been. It wasn't really an issue of a panty line, not when it was just her and Alex. But the breeches made the elastics dig in uncomfortably. It felt awful, and there was definitely going to be a big red set of lines on both the front and back of her thighs to show for it. She'd be lucky if the brand logo hadn't dug in as well.

Alex was seemingly unphased, but it was hard to tell for sure. Her top fit better, and her choice of, and Lara was more sure of this than she wanted to be, a thong to wear under her breeches would avoid a lot of pain down the line. She seemed to approach horseback riding as an excuse to put on a costume and pretend to be somebody else, emblemized by her oversized cossack hat and improperly-held riding crop. For as much as Lara could complain about the minute details, the small inaccuracies. There was at least a dedication to the costume. It was a sizable patch of woodlands and tundra Alex had her hands on, and no small number of horses or people to tend to them. The stablehands treated the horses like royalty, probably because they belonged to a modern equivalent, and refused to let either of them ride if their saddles were so much as an inch crooked. Lara had thrown her own gear on a horse and needed very little supervision. After Alex had set hers on, she'd left it to the people that knew better to straighten things out while she adjusted her clothes.

All that aside, when they were out in the countryside, Alex ran her choice with some expertise. She knew Lara's horse and how it would interact with her own, putting herself in front since Lara's was known to kick, and taking them up through a winding trail of deep green. When they would stop to picnic, or simply take a look around on foot, Alex wouldn't eat until both of the horses had been taken care of. In a fanciful, performative sort of way, Alex did make sure to take the ride when the ticket was paid for. It didn't matter if she held her crop wrong, she was holding her crop, in her patch of the woods, on her horse. And she was going to make sure to find people who would properly tend to both her woods and her horse when she wasn't around.

For as much as things had crept by in the early morning, they sped by out on the range. It was around midday, or as close as Lara could tell in a permanently overcast country when Alex stopped them near a spring for a trail lunch.

"Eat first, tomb nearby."

Lara slowed her horse, "Really? Do you actually intend to go there with me?"

Alex hopped off of her horse, cream-colored breaches straining to compensate for that much person moving that drastically, "Of course, darling. Did you think I vas lying?"

Lara slid off of her horse, trying not to move her legs if possible, "I just wasn't sure you would want to go with me if you did let me go."

Alex snorted, "Let you go? You came here for the tomb, didn't you?"

"Yes, but you seemed to take issue with my wanting to go."

"Vell, if I had let you go before I had finished buying it and something happened-"

"I'm sorry, did you just say that you bought a tomb?"

"It vas bordering my pasture anyvay, and as soon as the new section vas found, the owner vas finally villing to sell-"

"Alex, how did you buy a tomb?"

"Vell, it vas owned by a man named Sergei, and he sold it to me-"

"How did he own a tomb?"

Alex put her hands on her hips exasperatedly, "Lara, most things in the ground are not discovered by archeologists, it's people who own the land and vant something done vith it."

Lara started to say something but took a deep breath instead. Accusing Alex wasn't really the tone she had intended to take with this, but it was the one she had been using.

"Frankly, ve're lucky he didn't find any oil near those ruins, othervise they'd probably be getting demolished."

Lara unfastened her saddlebag frustratedly and pulled out her canteen. "Believe me, I'm already well familiar with the plight of modern archeology."

"But ve avoided that! Vy are you still so agitated?"

"I'm sorry... it's just..." Lara took a long, centering swig of her water, "Do I even want to know how much that cost you?"

Alex grabbed her own canteen, "Oh, relax! It vas on the border of my riding territory. I've been trying to buy it since long before that old cuckold found some ruins in it."

Lara sputtered, "Old cuckold?"

Alex shrugged, "Old man found some oil on his grandfather's land and immediately vent and married the first Eurovision star that vould put up vith him. If you think I'm shameless, you should see her on the town."

"Alex, I've been unable to avoid seeing that you're wearing ass floss since we started riding. And you're more than old enough to know not to wear a black bra under a white shirt." Lara responded teasingly.

"Ven I do it, it's owning it, darling."

"What exactly is the difference?"

"She's doing it to lash out, I'm doing it because I vant to."

"Is self-awareness really the difference between Eurovision brat and... whatever you are?"

"Trollop, darling, professional trollop."

"Wait, you or her?"

Alex laughed, "The power lies in the uncertainty."

There was a slight shift in the air, a tangible darkening of the sky around them, making the horses shudder.

Alex gestured to the sky, "Seems like a storm, ve might vant to delay our lunch until ve're underground."

"How far are we now?"

"Maybe five minutes riding?"

"Then if you don't mind," Lara started as she unfastened another saddlebag, "I'm going to start getting ready ahead of time. If my gear is going to get wet, it should at least be on me when it does."

"Vell, if you-" Alex started, but caught herself as almost without hesitation Lara unfastened her pants and stepped out of them, grabbing her shorts from the saddlebag.

"What?" Lara asked, sliding out of her dress shirt.

"Darling, you are exceptionally comfortable being naked in the voods for a voman so conservative at other times."

Lara unfastened her bra and slipped into her sports binder, "Well, if it's just you and me, it's nothing you haven't seen before."

"That's not my point, darling."

Lara slipped out of her panties last, saving the moment of peak exposure for last. There was a literal level to the phrase "caught with your pants down" that most people hadn't and would never experience. But most of them also didn't change in the jungle. She stepped into her hybrid leotard and swimsuit, then pulled up her shorts. Of course, through everything, she hadn't needed to change her boots, but she really only wore the one pair for any occasion. Finally, she slid her tank top over top, tucked it in, and fished her holster belt out of the bag from under some spare socks she hadn't needed and the emergency, unflattering undergarments.

"Well, you'll rarely find a changing room in the wild. At a certain point, I stopped worrying about if the squirrels or the gods saw me. Can't be picky when you need to get out of clothes that just spent ten minutes in the arctic sea."

"Oh, how vas that, darling?"

"Alex, the English language is remarkable both in its breadth and depth, but at a certain point, even it fails to describe things better than "cold beyond all fucking belief."

Lara tightened her belt, feeling a familiar and far more welcome pinch around the waist. She gave a sort of half-pose and cinched her saddlebags back up. She slid back up into the saddle as Alex hopped her way up, a very faint piddling drizzle starting to hang in the air.

"Come on, darling, let's get there quick and find a dry spot for the horses," Alex called as she took the lead, then broke her horse into a gentle canter.

Lara held back for just a moment, rolling up one of the legs of her shorts and finding the red fabric bite mark on her thigh. She sighed in relief when she couldn't find a corporate logo worn into the skin, then straightened up and took off after Alex.

***

The initial sight of the Kurgan was that it was a hole in the ground with a mound around it. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole. Nor a dry, bare, sandy hole. It was a corpse hole. And that meant horrific testaments to man's desire to be remembered long after his ****.

They tied the horses at the edge of the treeline and hung a massive square tarp around a meter in excess in each direction. When Alex seemed comforted that the horses would be well-kept even if they were gone overnight, she and Lara made a dash for the main hole in the now more steady rain. When they ducked inside, they found a scant amount of electrical lighting still hanging about. Alex made a quick gesture of victory and informed Lara that, since it was hers now, Sergei would pry his floodlighting back from her cold, dead hands. They traipsed carefully down the dirt incline leading out of the stone basin until they reached more solid ground at the bottom. The floodlights were focused around the left wall, where a hole about the size of a workman's errant boot had been placed in the stone, leading sideways and down into a dark corridor. Shining a light down, one could make out a floor a reasonable drop down that lead off in either direction. Unluckily, the discovery of the tomb-within-a-tomb had been of a hallway. While it could be harder to rappel down into a hole made in the ceiling of the main chamber, it was also a lot more convenient. Less searching about, leaving string behind you to avoid getting lost. With a couple more well-placed boot strikes, the hole fit for an arm became a hole more or less capable of fitting a small person. Lara could have done it if she wanted to, but considering Alex still seemed to be tagging along and that Lara didn't love tight spaces, she widened it even more until the light from the entrance painted the new chamber alongside the floodlights.

Lara had stopped looking at Alex for a few moments, focusing on the jobs she'd spent her life getting good at. She wasn't sure why she'd assumed the woman was going to change behind her back, but when Lara finished tethering a rope to a crampon at the base of the hole, she looked up and caught full sight of Alex again. She was still in more or less skintight cream breeches, and her white shirt had wettened enough that it no longer even provided the bare amount of concealment for her black lace bra that it once had. Paired with her cossack hat and tall leather boots, she looked... perhaps simply out of place was the most polite term.

"Is that really what you're going to wear?" Lara sighed.

Alex scrunched up her face, "I didn't bring a change! And come now, it's just as clingy as yours!"

"No, it's-" Lara started before Alex reached out and snapped the shoulder strap of Lara's leotard. Lara casually slapped her hand away and started again, "The leotard is tight because it doesn't cover much or pinch any seams. It covers the essentials while preserving range of motion."

"And vat is wrong vith the breeches and jacket?"

"Alex, we both were wearing the same thing, they shrink-wrap you into it and have to squeeze you out like toothpaste."

"It being slow to take off seems like veird problem."

"Could you squat down to pick something up without those pants tearing?"

Alex cleared her throat nervously, "Probably!"

"More than once?"

"I can't know until I try!"

Lara shook her head, "Stay by me, step where I'm stepping, and do not touch anything."

"You do not need to be doing the babying of me!"

"Alex, once we step through that opening, we're entering a world where touching the wrong thing could cost you your life."

"Are you trying to talk me out of letting you go in even now, darling?"

"I'm being serious, touch nothing, not even the walls if you can avoid it."

Alex tutted, but seemed to accept the gravity of things. Lara sat down, winding the remainder of the rope around her waist and scooting over to the hole. She heard the fabric of Alex's pants straining as she did the same, followed by a pained noise from Alex as something somewhere pinched in exactly the way Lara had warned her about. Lara sighed under her breath and dropped into the wall softly, clicking on her headlamp. A moment later, Alex dropped in behind her, cursing for solid thirty seconds after landing.

"Ankles?" Lara asked sympathetically when Alex paused for breath.

"In my fucking knees, now."

"You get a little more used to it with practice, but it never really goes away."

She gave Alex a moment to compose herself and grab a loose hold of the rope trailing behind Lara before they both set off cautiously down the corridor.

It was easy going into the main chamber. Judging by the decoration and organization, this was a living space, and people didn't tend to boobytrap their own front doors. That didn't mean there was no danger, things were falling apart, they always were. Lara's best estimation put the place in the early bronze age, the kind of stuff that could be brought back and turned into some horrific tourist trap with the right TLC. She quietly thanked the fact that Sergei and his men probably wouldn't have had the balls to come down here and find that particular fact out for themselves. When they hit the main chamber, Lara unwound the rope from her waist and set a new crampon just on the edge of the hall that they'd taken.

It wasn't massive, assuming it was the main chamber and not an antechamber. That and the bare living they'd passed suggested a forward base more than a buried city. That probably put the original occupants somewhere in the realm of demons, magic users, aliens, something like that. If there were any really juicy things left behind, they would be deep underground in the ceremonial chambers, probably guarded by whatever could crawl out of a Hellgate and then survive without a food source for a few thousand years.

"Imagine, a whole city of people living down here," Alex spoke in awe as she gazed up at the vaulted ceiling, open at the top in a circular hole too perfect to be natural decay but too covered with underbrush and crisscrossed by creeper roots to be properly known about. Luckily, there weren't any skeletons on the ground under the hole, child-sized or otherwise. Solving cold cases was an unfortunate but common aspect of Lara's work.

"Not a city by my guess, an army legion at most."

"Vat makes you say that?"

"Not a lot of living space, but lots of space. Sort of like a military base."

"You saying ve'll find ancient veapons?"

"By my guess, any connection to that Kurgan up there is purely coincidental. Humans were not living this well underground back when this was in use, hell, we're barely capable of stonecutting this precise on this scale now. For this to not only have been done as long ago as it was, but to have been done in effective secret..."

"Vat do you mean, secret?"

It was odd to have a tagalong who was going to ask questions that seemingly obvious. Lara was used to making notes in a journal only she needed to read or understand.

Lara pointed up, "No top structure, for one. And those roots might be fresh, but they aren't cutting through the stone, there's space to allow them. Plus, no bones. The coil covering that hole sloughs off in the rainy season and was probably meant to get repacked in the summer. If I were to guess, whoever used this place was running a skeleton crew down here, probably for a reason."

"That reason?"

Lara shrugged, "That's the question mark. Could be a natural resource vein that a feudal lord in control of a powerful artifact found and wanted isolated. Could be a forward post for an empire that science doesn't support being here. Could be made by and for demons for purposes beyond our comprehension."

"You certainly have a colorful view of history, darling."

"I've seen most of that stuff firsthand. I've got a magic ring in my bag that does a different thing science can't explain depending on what finger you're wearing it on. Don't let the Celtic runes fool you, I found it in Alaska."

"Can I see it?"

Lara fished the ring out and handed it to Alex, "Point it away from us if you're going to try it, some of them are best used on one's enemy."

Lara flinched as Alex immediately slipped it onto her left middle finger. After a moment of silence, the ring began to shake intensely, causing her finger to blur as it shook at around five and a half thousand vibrations per minute.

Alex raised a mischievous eyebrow, "Celtic Magic, you said?"

Lara pried it off of Alex's finger and thrust it onto her own right pinky, aiming it at a wall and heating the stone until it was blackened. She took it off and set it back in her bag.

"Yes, your unfortunate choice in test finger aside, Celtic Magic."

"Vell, if this place is magic like you say, vhere to next?"

Lara pulled out her compass, the needle was jerking erratically. A good sign, oddly enough.

"Well, the bad news is that we don't know for sure if it's demons, aliens, or something in between." She mused as she poked her head into each of the offshoot corridors and then jabbed her compass down it, "But the good news is, we're headed the same way no matter what."

"Vy is that?"

"There's an odd insistence in each that they make the big important room, the one we want, a magnetic point. Something to do with the magic, I understand the principle but not the reason. The short version is, find the passageway where the magnetism is strong enough to override magnetic north, and you find the important stuff. I have a leading theory that the correlation between strong magical forces and magnetic polarity is due to magical attunement leading to the ability to see magnetic fields, but finding people who take my findings on both seriously is one of the greatest challenges of my life. If Natla ever stops trying to kill me long enough for me to sit down with her, I have a lot of theories to test."

"Vait, Natla is alive? As in, Jacqueline Natla?"

"Well, yeah, but she's Atlantean now. Or was she always Atlantean? She didn't die when Atlantis blew up, I don't even know if she can die anymore."

"I'm sorry, Atlantis?"

"Demon city, exploded a few years ago. I was there. She lost, I won, now she spends most of her time in a jar." Lara droned, getting a little bored of explaining the obvious as she found the proper corridor and staked a new crampon in front of the door, fishing some more rope out of her pack.

"Lara, darling?" Came a heavy sigh.

Lara looked up, rope in hand, she'd had to pull it out from beneath the Celtic ring and the emergency unflattering undergarments. Alex looked like she was developing a headache.

"What is it?"

"I think you forget sometimes that not everybody goes on your adventures vith you."

"What?"

"You started this story by telling me that these ruins, situated on land I just bought, might have been built by demons. I ask you how you know, you start talking about magnetic fields, next thing I know, I'm learning that not only is friend of mine alive, she's a demon? Or Atlantean? Or... something? You seem like you follow rules only you know about, and are shocked ven other people aren't familiar with."

"At a certain point, I just stopped asking questions about what I was seeing, Alex."

"Yes, but I haven't! Aren't you respected archeologist?"

"I mean, more respected in some circles than others."

"Vy is everything magic, then?"

"Alex," Lara sighed, "We're both fish in a pond that we think is small, but that might actually be the ocean, or maybe it's a puddle and we're squid and not fish."

"The turn of phrase is lost on me."

"What I'm trying to tell you is that when faced with overwhelming evidence that there are things in this world that could make you die from a dimension over, it's probably best to just... swim. Doesn't matter how big the pond is, however much of it you understand is how big it is and whatever you don't is part of the shore. We don't go up on the shore. The shore is scary."

"And in this case, the shore includes... demons?"

Lara handed Alex the loose rope, "Correct! This way to the demons!"

***

The pair stepped together into a much smaller but fancier chamber. It was a front room, if Lara had to guess, the kind of entryway to the real grand treasure room. Of course, there wasn't a door that said "Unknowable treasures, this way" on one of the walls, in fact, it was a purposely false dead end. Secret passages were the second most common kink for temple builders behind easily avoidable traps.

And the fact that they'd actually started running into traps was a good sign. There was a certain amount of finite complexity to the trap meta for something as bare as this place. Sure, maybe you could justify one or two traps for a dead-end, to bait people into pushing down it, but the big showier traps usually actually guarded the bigger, showier treasures. The mind game didn't matter, the people on top wanted results. Lara had kicked a loose stone onto an obviously breakaway floor and revealed a **** pit about a stride wide. There had probably been wooden spikes at the bottom once, but the biggest threat of it now was a broken ankle. Then there had been a couple of spike jabbers, those were an especially good sign. Hang your hapless tomb raider up somewhere where everybody could see how dead they were. Those, the spikes had actually been replaced somewhat recently. That, more than the trap itself, snapped Lara into taking things seriously.

"Dead end," Alex sighed.

"Fake dead end," Lara explained, turning to Alex and setting the rope down onto the floor gingerly, "The compass is pointing down."

"Yes, but there appears to be no vay to the treasure?"

"Hidden passage somewhere, let me try the obvious ones first."

"Ooh! Like a mystery story!"

Lara turned back cautiously, "Yes, but one where you especially don't touch anything until I say so."

The room was pretty minimal, a single raised dais in the center with a pair of chest-high podiums on either side. The dais was probably for a throne, with the podiums for crowns or some other sort of treasure. Judging by how things were going, probably magical artifacts. Lara stepped forward cautiously, wire-tense and testing each step cautiously before putting her weight down. The worst danger she was usually in at this pace was taking a dart, and applied poison didn't last long enough for those to be much of a threat. It was a lot easier to poison somebody through the stomach than the veins.

The moment she stepped onto the dais, a resounding click pierced the room. Lara dove to the floor and froze, listening and waiting for the slightest other noise.

A soft "Oops" from behind her was that noise.

Lara rolled to look at the entryway as fast as she could. Alex was standing there in horror, having just jerked her hand back from one of the loose stones of the wall, which had pulled back into it and clicked into place. A rumbling shook the caves. For the second time in a short span, Lara braced for some manner of killing blow, but nothing came to her. A moment later, a heavy stone dropped loudly into place in front of the passageway they'd entered from, closing them off from the entrance and flattening the trailing rope against the stone floor. In turn, the falling of that stone caused the rear wall to shift and open, revealing a seemingly endless black passageway. When the rumbling passed and the ruins became quiet enough that Lara could make out the steady drip of water from somewhere again, Lara took a deep, composing breath and glared at Alex.

"What did I say?" She hissed angrily at her companion.

"I'm sorry! I just rested my elbow for moment!"

"I said not to even touch the walls!"

"I should have taken more seriously, I'm sorry!"

Lara sighed, continuing to yell at Alex wasn't going to get them anywhere. She picked herself off and brushed herself off, walking over to where Alex had triggered the door. The stone she had pressed in slid slowly back into place. Lara poked it cautiously and it slid back into the wall with another click. A moment later, the tomb shook and rattled with noise again as the door slid back out of place, while the other door closed itself again.

Lara gave a relieved sigh when the rumbling ended, "It's okay, it looks like the only thing you activated was a door switch, not some kind of trap."

"Vy vould somebody hide door svitch?"

Lara bent down and looked at the stone, "Can't say for sure, it might have been painted once upon a time and not hidden at all. But, judging by the zero-sum nature of it, there's a good chance you just uncovered the passway to the real treasure room."

"Then vas a lucky accident!"

"Yes, but you should know well enough not to press your luck."

Lara pressed the button and waited for the doors to switch once more, then poked her torch down the hidden corridor. It went on far enough for the beam to fail, but seemed to be going down. Most of the people who had these tombs built assumed that things being deeper underground made them more secure, which was an odd assumption, considering the amount of earth you were throwing on top of your valuables if anything failed.

"I doubt anybody would booby-trap a passageway only they would be going down, but we can't assume anything." Lara mused aloud.

"Probably the same people that vould booby-trap a treasure room."

"I think this was a decoy room. Likely to hold some long-gone valuables but nothing serious. If I had to guess, I'd say that our power-mad ruler here would make sure he was alone, then seal the door behind him. Maybe with one or two of his most trusted guards."

"It vould be a good idea until somethink goes wrong and traps them."

"In my experience, they either didn't even consider the possibility, or there are roughly a hundred escape vents just about everywhere you sneeze. Both have their own problems. Obviously, the first one is more dangerous for us a thousand years on, but the second one usually means there's less left of the ruins to explore. And I would prefer having to break my way out than to break my way in."

Lara took a first tentative step into the secret passage, then a second and third. Alex waited behind her just outside the entryway in the transitionary room. Lara took a fourth step, then a fifth. Alex seemed to be holding her breath, Lara wasn't much more relaxed.

And before the sixth step had even finished, she felt the floor bend under her and a sharp snapping rumble behind her. She had enough time to get down before a security door whose mechanics had seemingly long since failed crashed between Alex and Lara with enough **** to have crushed either of them. It hit the floor hard enough to crack the stone of both door and frame. By the time the shattering and clattering of stone was finished, the doorway was almost completely shut, with only a few arm-width cracks here and there.

"Lara! Darling!"

In the near-complete darkness on the other side, Lara could look back into the transition room and see Alex but the older woman almost certainly couldn't see her.

"I'm okay, Alex, are you?"

"I'm fine darling, but vat are ve going to do?"

The dropping of the slab was still echoing down into the endless maze of catacombs, somewhere immensely deep below them, a churning, scraping rumble was sounding out.

"That blow sounds like it caused a chain reaction of tunnel collapse. That's actually good news. Since we're high up enough that it isn't likely to reach us, we're safe, and the fact that it's happening means there are enough small escape tunnels dotted about that we aren't stuck."

"How can you be so calm about zis?"

Lara reached into her backpack and fished out a radio, "This isn't the first time something like this has happened. Take one of these."

She handed the radio through one of the gaps and Alex took it, they made sure the connection worked and Lara rolled her shoulders, trying to smooth her nerves.

"Our phones aren't going to work down here, if you need to talk to me, talk to me with this."

"Darling, does zat mean-?"

"I'm going to go deeper to find a way out. I need you to stay where you are."

"Vait! I know ze vay out, I can get help!"

"Alex, trust me on this, stay there and don't touch anything. Worst case scenario, I come back in a little bit after not finding anything and then you go for help, okay?"

Alex wanted to protest, but took a deep breath and quietly agreed. A moment after an only slightly embarrassingly sloppy goodbye from the emotional Russian matriarch, Lara tamped in a new crampon with some fresh rope and lightly jogged down the hall, gripping her guns and grinning as she slipped into her element.

***

Alex paced nervously, trying not to touch any floor stones she hadn't already stepped on four or five times at this point. She felt out of her element, obviously, but especially now with her nerves thoroughly frayed, every time the tight collar or waistband of her riding gear bit into the skin she felt more and more like a kid lost in the woods. It was somewhat dark, even with the sun shining down through a hole in the ceiling. The room seemed covered in giant patches of shadow that the light wouldn't reach, probably hiding some tripwire that would drop more rocks on them and bury them alive. There was a disquieting, unending rumble deep within the ruins that wouldn't stop, despite Lara's promises that they were safe, it kept her nerves from settling properly.

She cleared her throat and tried humming to herself, but slowly, it seemed like the rumbling was getting louder.

"Lara, darling, is the rumbling getting louder for you?"

Lara paused for a concerning amount of time, "No, Alex, it's getting quieter for me."

"Oh, is that bad?"

"Don't panic-"

Suddenly, the raised floor in the center of the room began to slide apart. Alex's immediate panic was overcome by noticing that it was sliding into slots that seemed made for it, not a collapse, some kind of contraption.

"Lara, ve may have small problem."

***

Lara sprinted back toward the collapsed door as quickly as she could, disregarding most of the caution she'd used moving down the corridor. If something bad happened to her, she was either going to die, or she was going to handle it. If something bad happened to Alex, there was a good chance the older woman wouldn't know what to do, and that was on Lara to fix.

Lara tried her best to keep Alex talking as she made her way back, "What's happening now?"

"It's still just sliding open, maybe halfvay now. I could probably look down-"

"Don't get near it, Alex! It could be unstable, or you could get caught in the mechanism."

"Vait! There's a platforming coming up out of it, but it seems to have stopped to vait for the floor!"

"Alex, don't get closer-"

"There are people on it! Vait! I don't think those are people..."

Lara slid the radio into her belt and pushed herself to go even faster. Somehow, that was just about the worst thing that Alex could have said.

A tense, quiet moment passed as Lara whipped around stone corners like her hair was on fire, Alex had stopped updating her. Lara could hear and feel the rumbling getting closer, and she was passing odd outset stones she'd made note of. She finally whipped around the corner to see Alex standing back near the slit in the broken stone door, looking past her Lara could see the floor finish opening, then the heads of a pair of jackals slide up over the precipice.

"Alex, get down!" Lara hissed.

Alex slid down and sat against the stone door as the platform continued raising, the jackal-like features ending immediately after the neck, revealing a pair of massive, muscular human shoulders that slowly rose more into view.

"Man-dogs?" Alex whispered confusedly.

"Jackals," Lara whispered back, "Servants of Anubis! What the devil are they doing in Russia?"

The jackal men remained locked, statue-like in place as the platform rose. They were likely automatons of a sort, even if alive they were designed to take a very specific set of orders and do them for eternity if they never got counter orders. They were also fully mortal if one found oneself at odds with their orders. Lara readied her pistols.

"Whatever you do, stay down, I can kill them if it comes to it."

"Vy did Anubis need his servants so tall and muscular?"

"It's intimidation, they can't do much to harm you, they're meant to scare you."

"Vell it's vorking!"

The platform stopped rising, leaving the jackal guards probably standing somewhere around two and a half meters, if she had to guess. That was tall even for the center of the empire, what they were doing a couple of thousand kilometers away was beyond Lara. A moment after the platform slotted into place, the guards turned immediately to look at Alex, Lara could practically feel their looks through the stone. They stepped over to her quickly and towered over her. Lara readied her gun, but before she had unholstered it, one of them pointed their blade at Alex and made her rise to her feet with it tucked under her chin. They might have literally known Lara was there and put Alex between them.

Aside from their towering height, they were also built like Mr. Universe winners. When depicting a god, it was usually good to flatter them. They had bare, tan brown, hairless skin in contrast with the black fur of the jackal head. All they wore was a sash around their waist fastened in place by the scabbard of their blade. It was a common thing in some societies, you couldn't toss your sword away without literally leaving yourself naked. It would probably have helped with the intimidation aspect.

"هل انت من الكاهنات؟" One of them huffed in a voice like stone grating against stone.

"Lara, I don't speak that language!" Alex hissed.

"I don't either! They've probably never heard English before!"

"هي ترتدي زي فتاة الحريم" The other one responded.

"Then vat do I do?" Alex hissed desperately.

"Try some Russian!"

"إذا كانت تتعدى على ممتلكات الغير يمكننا أن نفعل معها ما نريد" One of them barked almost laughingly at the other.

"Uh..." Alex cleared her throat, "Я потерялся, не могли бы вы, большие сильные мальчики, мне помочь?"

"لغة الخادمة" One huffed.

"دعونا نولد هذه الكلبة" The other responded in a tone like he was laughing.

"Vas that good?" Alex hissed back at Lara.

Before Lara could respond, one of the jackals stepped forward toward Alex. While the other kept his blade trained on her, the closer one picked her up and almost effortlessly tossed her over his shoulder. Alex let out a panicked squeal as they started back toward the lift. Lara raised her gun, getting ready to place a shot where the heart would be of the one not carrying Alex.

That one froze, and with lightning speed, whipped around completely and flung his sword at the gap in the stone Lara was poking her gun through. Were it not for Lara's own exceptional reflexes and her heightened anxious energy, it might have buried itself right between her eyes. She managed to duck as it whizzed over her head with enough **** to bury itself in the solid stone behind her. She gulped, then slowly poked her head back through the hole. Ready to duck again.

The jackal guards had made it back to the platform and the one without his sword leaned on a tile near it to start the ruins rumbling again. The one with his sword handed Alex off to the one without and kept his hand resting on the hilt of his blade as the platform started to lower, daring Lara to make a move. Lara kept her gun out but held off on raising it, trying to make a mental chart in her head of where the elevator would lead. The other one held Alex unmovingly and wordlessly. Without his covering, he was still mostly human from the waist down. He certainly had a proportional set of balls between his legs, but the existence of a sheath where his cock should have been meant this might have been a bit more complex of a temple than she'd thought. She pulled her radio out.

"Alex, do you still have your radio on you?"

There was a pause, then a crackling whisper "Yes! Vat's going on?"

"You don't have to whisper, even if they could understand you, they go into a sort of shutdown whenever they aren't moving. While you're on the elevator, they'll probably stay shut down to save energy."

"I don't understand any of this!"

"I know, just... calm down. You aren't in any danger per se."

"Vat does that mean???" Came the angry reply.

"Look," Lara started, then bit her tongue, "You need to understand, they have... anatomy."

There was a long, indignant response, "Lara, vat is that supposed to mean, yopt?"

Lara sighed, "It means they might be taking you back to their bedroom."

The floor sealed fully shut over the elevator and Lara took off down the corridor again, scanning desperately for any downward passages with her headlamp. There was probably some irony in the fact that she was going back through the exact same hall as before looking for passages going in the opposite direction, but the timing wasn't right.

"Really?" Came the eventual, less angry follow-up.

"These are advanced guard, making their placement here all the more strange, but these ones can feel, they have urges. Look, there will be a shutoff word somewhere when you arrive at the main chamber, it will be in hieroglyphics. If you say it, it'll make them stop whatever they're trying to do. Find it and describe it to me and-"

"Vill it hurt?"

"What?"

"If they just vant to fuck, vat's the harm in letting them? Probably been a few thousand years."

Lara almost stopped to process what she was saying, "Alex, they're like three meters tall."

"Lara, dear, vat they say about men vith big feet is not alvays correct."

"And if they're proportional?"

"Then they must be very pent up indeed."

"Alex, I need you to stop thinking with your horny brain for like three seconds."

Alex started talking but was quickly cut off by one of the jackals saying something Lara couldn't make out. A moment later, she heard Alex talking away from the receiver.

"Vat? No, that's just how I talk to Lara, darling. Don't vorry your little head about it-"

There was a sudden harsh click and the grinding in the background of Alex's end suddenly went dead. Lara sped up.

***

"Lara, what is that supposed to mean, for fuck's sake?"

She was getting frustrated enough that her English was lapsing, considering Lara's grasp of Russian, that wasn't going to help anybody. What had formerly been the floor sealed shut over them, leaving them in the pitch black for a moment before the walls began to glow an intense green with bioluminescent lichen. The eyes of the jackal-men lit up bright red, but they always seemed to glow softly. This was clearly different, after standing almost locked in place for so long, one of them circled behind the other, watching Alex fiddle with her radio.

"It means they might be taking you back to their bedroom." Came back as a crackling sigh from the other end.

Alex glanced down the perfectly muscled body of the jackal staring her down. There was a pair of balls easily each bigger than a fist between his legs, but a sort of shriveled pouch where his cock should have been.

"Really?"

"These are advanced guard, making their placement here all the more strange, but these ones can feel, they have urges. Look, there will be a shutoff word somewhere when you arrive at the main chamber, it will be in hieroglyphics. If you say it, it'll make them stop whatever they're trying to do. Find it and describe it to me and-"

The Jackal drew in closer, seemingly alerted by the sound of Lara's relentless prattling. Alex winced back and tried to will herself invisible, but it didn't work. Eventually, she cut Lara off, trying to put "please shut up" as heavily into her tone as she could.

"Will it hurt?"

Lara paused for a breath, "What?"

The Jackal's nose was almost pressed against hers now, but the eyes looked at her blankly, without understanding. If anything, it was drawn to noise, not what they were saying. He reached out and tapped the shoulder of his brother carrying her. A moment later, she was set gently down and both of them crouched in front of her as if trying to make sense of why she was making so much noise. For as big as they were, they were perfectly capable of being gentle when they wanted to.

"Sit," She tried in English, no response.

"Sit," She repeated in Russian, they exchanged a glance, then pulled their noses in closer. Crouched as he was, she could make out the other jackal's balls dangling from his own waist wrap.

"If they just want to fuck, what's the harm in letting them? Probably been a few thousand years." She spoke into the radio, trying to keep her tone disarming to the giants in front of her while watching them for any reaction. They remained stone-still.

Lara made a strangled, exasperated sound, "Alex, they're like three meters tall."

She stepped toward them and they pulled back slightly in response.

"Lara, dear, what they say about men with big feet is not always correct."

She took another step toward them and they pulled back a little more. When she took the step that would have **** them to step back, they didn't. They let her approach close enough to reach out and touch them. The soft jackal fur of their heads felt almost like rough clay, but the skin of their bodies was red-hot and unmistakably real human skin.

"And if they're proportional?"

Alex took a single finger and prodded one of the heavy dangling testicles hanging around chest height. They swayed back and forth, equally hot to the touch.

"Then they must be very pent up indeed." She commented idly.

"Alex, I need you to stop thinking with your horny brain for like three seconds."

"Lara, I-" Suddenly the jackal reached out as if in response to Alex's touch and grabbed the radio out of her hand. She cursed herself slightly, of course they'd let her get close, they were the ones keeping a close eye on her, even if she thought it was the other way around.

The jackal turned the radio this way and that in his massive hand, inadvertently holding down the button and likely cutting off Lara's panicked responses to her incomplete reply. The other jackal raised his sword to the radio, prodding it cautiously. It barked something at her in its language, its voice booming off of the narrow walls.

"What? No, that's just how I talk to Lara, darling. Don't worry your little head about it-" Alex started, interrupted by the jackal throwing it to the ground and stomping it with one of his massive feet. He pulled it away to check the smoldering remains of her lifeline and prod it with his foot.

"Hey! Rude!" She barked, lapsing back into Russian. Both Jackal heads snapped around to look at her with intensity, but also almost apologetically.

"Ah, so you understand Russian?" She asked in English, they didn't move a nanometer.

"Sit," She repeated in Russian, prompting them to look at one another again without response.

The green light slowly started to redden, Alex made a quick darting glance of her surroundings and saw that the elevator had exited the shaft and was lowering into the center of a giant throne room, lit by cozy lanterns and a single great fire behind the throne. A massive assortment of cushions, anachronistically well-preserved for how likely old they were, decorated what was probably the sitting room for whatever royalty's harem this was. Beside the throne, on either side, were a pair of podiums, one with what looked like an ornate golden necklace, and the other had likely held a circlet, but it had fallen onto the steps in front of it.

Perhaps most importantly, standing in front of every support pillar was a jackal-headed man made of stone. Every pillar aside from the two nearest the throne, where stone lay discarded on the ground like a cast-off shell.

"Might not be two of them for very long." She considered, a modicum of panic creeping in.

She glanced back at the throne and the gold on either podium. Realistically, they were either extremely, profoundly cursed, or her best chance to work this situation. It could always be both, but a couple of dozen good boys were more than she was ready to handle, proportional or not.

Alex lurched off of the platform as soon as she was certain it wouldn't break her ankles to do so, hitting the ground running while it was still lowering toward the ground. She took a quick glance back to check on the jackals and saw them frozen seemingly in mid-stride as the elevator made the final drop to the floor. Even with her head-start, the second they were allowed to move, they would cover ground fast. A moment later, she heard pounding footsteps behind her. She had to make a choice for the necklace or the crown, she wouldn't have time for both. Her hand closed around the crown, probably the obvious choice.

A second later, a massive set of hands grabbed her and lifted her. The jackal looked down at her angrily, his friend at his side, but neither of them did anything.

"Sit."

Both dropped back into a kneeling position, now she was getting somewhere. One of them muttered something to the other, but they both didn't move, looking at her and awaiting her next command.

"Set me down."

The one holding her set her down gently. Without much hesitation, she stepped back over to the throne and grabbed the necklace. Probably for the best to double-dip on her "curse or solution" bet. The other one grumbled something back to the other that started as a mush of words but slowly became Russian.

"-told you she'd go for the amulet if you set her down, idiot."

The other one turned his head indignantly, "If we hurt the crown, neither of us are fucking anything, dipshit."

"Way to say our weakness out loud, fuckass."

"So, crown to command you boys, amulet to understand you?"

Their heads snapped toward Alex, "Sort of, your highness."

"Your highness, I think I like that," She purred.

Both of the jackals simply remained frozen.

"So tell me, if I hadn't grabbed the crown, would you have both had your way with me before waking your brothers?"

"Well, we would have fucked you, but-" One started before the other elbowed him.

"Your highness, our desires aside, it is not in our powers to awaken our brothers, only your own."

"Oh? So as long as I'm wearing this crown, you're all to do whatever I ask?"

"Not quite, you may give us simple commands, but you don't control us per se."

"Dude, you really don't need to tell her-"

"So, like with any of my servants, a relationship of trust is important? You do what I ask in the trust that I don't damage this crown?"

"You currently control the crown, we would ask that you don't destroy it."

"Well," Alex mused, "I think you boys could be very helpful to me, so I don't think this crown will be going anywhere."

The jackals didn't move or respond, but they seemed almost imperceptibly to relax.

"Now, you big strong boys took me down here to have your way with me, did you not?"

"Forgive us, queen." The serious one bowed a little deeper. "In the long ages since our last awakening-"

Alex was already undoing the top button of her dress shirt, "Then you, first, step forward and help me undress, I think we can reach a mutual understanding here."

The two jackals looked at each other almost incredulously before the serious one took a cautious step forward and knelt down in front of Alex, his sheath visibly starting to shift. As she slowly undid the straining buttons of her shirt, the jackal held his hands out in mild confusion for a moment before simply grabbing the sides of Alex's top and pulling them apart swiftly, sending buttons popping off haphazardly and making her jump. Left standing in just a bra and a now-ruined dress shirt. She looked down stunned for a moment, then swiftly lifted her hand and slapped him.

"Rude! That was expensive!"

The jackal raised a stunned hand to his face and took a step back before kneeling again, "I'm sorry, the old queens always wore tearaway-"

"Do you have any of those still around?"

"Yes, I suppose-"

"Then go grab me one of those to replace this! I have to wear something out, you know! Some oil too, while you're at it."

She snapped her fingers and pointed for the serious one to go away, which he sulkily did after a moment, she then pointed to his less serious friend.

"You, you're up first now. Help me out of my clothes without ruining them."

She turned her back to the jackal as he approached, unfastening the button of her biting waistband and unzipping it, feeling her hips scream in relief. A pair of massive, tender hands settled on her shoulders, gently pulling the hem of her shirt down around her shoulders. She lifted her arms to let him slip her jacket off, then grabbed his hands and set them on her chest. It was a new experience to actually have hands on her body big enough to manhandle her substantial breasts, but the almost soothingly soft grasping of the jackal seemed to tell her they were used to servicing a queen. The serious, well-mannered one with the shocking ferocity and the bad boy with the soft side suddenly made a bit more sense. Some things didn't really ever change.

Alex grabbed her waistband and pulled it down, bending down to stick her ass into the jackal's face. She'd chosen a thong for horseback riding, of course, no reason to have proper panties riding up on you or biting into you for hours at a time. Considering it was glorified floss over both her holes, she was giving the jackal a choice. Considering he was the softer one in the moment, she was hoping at any moment to feel a (hopefully) long, slimy tongue lapping between her legs.

She got it and a little more, whoever had made this one had given him an exceptionally long and dextrous tongue. She placed her hands on the arms of the throne as she stepped out of her pants. A hot, wet tongue prodded out from between her legs, flicking all the way up to her navel, before dragging up along her pussy, flicking side to side as it did. It slid up between her ass cheeks and prodded her back door lightly before returning to the start.

"Ooh, what a good boy your maker made you." She purred, the jackal's hands grasping a little tighter as he buried his muzzle between her legs. He let go only long enough to allow her to slide her bra free of her shoulders, giving his massive fingers free rein of her nipples.

When a pair of large feet came padding back up behind her, Alex set one of her hands gently on the jackal's head and pushed him out from between her legs. The other jackal had returned, a bowl holding a bucket's worth of clear oil balanced perfectly in one hand and a wadded clump of semi-transparent silk in the other. Alex gestured for the cloth and the bowl to be set down, and the more serious one set the contents of either hand on the podiums. Alex picked up the clothing, it was a bedlah, belly dancing gear. Probably only fit for a queen that was alone with her personal boytoys. The top half was a glorified scarf to be worn as a chest wrap, one that shadowed but didn't fully mask the anatomy it would cover. The bottom was a gold bangle supporting a similar non-concealing skirt. There was a veil, if that was where one drew the line of modesty, but Alex set it back down.

"What are your names? I'm tired of calling you the serious one and the other one."

"Tanak, your highness." The serious one said with a bow.

"Torran," The other one huffed.

Alex fastened the bangle around her waist and lazily flopped the other half of the outfit around her chest. She gestured to a pile of pillows.

"Torran, lie down and spread your legs. Tanak, oil me while I reward him."

***

It was easier for Lara to do things her way without Alex in tow. Her cautious strides had become longer, more daringly leaping forward without having to worry about the mincing steps of a tagalong on her first expedition. Of course, Alex didn't leave her mind, but it was easy to push her into the corner and try to do what Lara did best. The fact that she didn't hear any screams and the ground didn't start shaking as though some ancient god had just received the last human sacrifice it needed to walk the earth was probably a good sign.

It was a steady, winding downward tread, the natural light quickly giving way to the truly unused and deeply buried corridors, partially collapsed and full of cobwebs. Cobwebs were good, they usually meant no traps. Of course, the ever-present knowledge that Lara was moving downward toward where any chain cave-ins had been happening was there, but that was a problem for future Lara.

The corridor split, well maybe split was the wrong word. There was a ramp leading down on one end and a short corridor with natural light poking through on the other. It shouldn't have been a choice, but Lara could make out the slight glint of gold in the natural light hitting the wall. She swallowed heavily, cursing herself.

"Just a... slight... detour."

***

Alex knelt between Torran's legs, the large jackal golem's head lolling back in almost puppy-like joy as her tongue dragged along his low-hanging balls and up his cherry-red shaft emerging steadily from his sheath. The second so much as a centimeter of cock emerged from the protective sheath, it was bright red and covered in bulging veins like it had been teased for hours. Twitching and drooling pre-cum like he would burst at any second. Despite that, he responded to her touches and caresses with tensionless shudders, his body relaxed and his balls still hanging loosely in his sack.

Tanak had brushed Alex's skirt aside, planting his hands firmly on her pale round ass and smearing warm massage oils around. His hands would draw back for a moment and return with another cupped handful of oil, lathering it softly for a moment before softly slapping or squeezing the soft flesh. He was generous rubbing between her thighs, smearing over her pussy without much hesitation or teasing. The oils mixed with her own juices to slickly smear her inner thighs and make her mind buzz with the heat between her legs. Occasionally, Tanak would prod either her pussy or ass with a sizable finger, threatening to penetrate her, but she would shift her hips and clear her throat pointedly, causing him to go back to massaging.

More and more of Torran kept emerging, seemingly without end. His length was intimidating, but less so in how tapered his width was. The leaky tip of his cock was pointed, an almost pinky-thin fold of dripping red flesh folded together as the thinnest part of a cock that seemed to reach wrist-width at widest. Assuming he was made for personal use, whoever had made him was certainly a capable accommodater, but she was also human. The bulging blue veins that crisscrossed his rod also seemed designed to give a great amount of ridge and texture without making it unwieldy. She rose a hand up from massaging his balls to squeeze his cock around the slightly-thinner base, finding the veins gave to even a little pressure with ease. Nothing that had emerged so far had challenged the width of the sheath, but that had changed when the cock stopped growing and the sheath seemed to bulge almost painfully as it tried to push out a large ball at the base. Alex had owned dogs before, she still did. It wasn't a question of what was trying to **** its way out, it was a question of if that was going to be the part that made this dangerous. She massaged around the base of the sheath with both hands, almost like trying to milk the knot out of him. Torran actually whimpered from the sensation, poor boy.

Tanak pressed one of his digits against her pussy again, but Alex didn't resist him this time. With a little pressure, an arm-sized forefinger slid between her **** red lips. She bit her lip, trying to keep massaging around Torran's sheath and focus on him, but Tanak was getting very good at being distracting. He twisted his hand, priming the tip of his thumb against her less-wet but extremely well-oiled asshole. She bit down a good deal harder as the pressure overwhelmed her backdoor and Tanak's slick finger shot up into her guts, moving inside of her to pinch against the one in her pussy like he was trying to meet the two fingers inside of her.

With a massive, wet popping sound, Torran's knot freed itself from his sheath, suddenly lurching his cock further into the air another few inches in front of Alex's face. The jackal's tongue rolled out of his mouth and he panted happily as his now fully free cock bobbed and twitched relentlessly. His balls shot up eagerly, pulling tight against his skin almost instantaneously.

It was bigger than her fist, that was for sure, but just as malleable as the rest of it and not so much bigger as to be impossible. Still, it seemed like shameless size-queening was a historically contiguous behavior. One would be a challenge, but not impossible. Two though? She might not want to do two at the same time. And she needed to keep it in a different postcode from her throat. That was an actually dangerous situation.

"Oh, poor boy!" She pouted, "Have you really had that stuck inside of you for all these years?"

She tried to add more, keep up the sexy talk, but Tanak's fingers freed themselves from inside of her suddenly and she shuddered, almost yelping. She turned and stood, finding herself almost perfectly mouth height with Tanak's cock, his knot still bulging against its own sheath. He set a hand on her head and pressed the leaking tip of his cock against one of her cheeks.

Alex had a momentary flash of him getting a little rough and jamming his knot down her windpipe and it not being able to get back out. That was not a good way to go, nor was it how she wanted Lara to find her if she ever got down here. She nudged his hand away gently and stepped toward him, kissing his sheath and using the same coercing motion as on Torran. Tanak's surprisingly rough grasp hesitated, but accepted his queen's way of doing things and settled on her shoulders. A moment later, his own knot freed with a squelching pop, and his knees shook enough for him to fall back and land seated, panting happily, and waiting for Alex's next step.

Alex gave Tanak's tip a quick kiss and ducked the hand that was likely trying to jam his length down her throat. She clambered onto Torran's massive legs like he was a particularly odd-shaped piece of furniture and climbed up to straddle herself over his twitching cock.

"Do you want your highnesses' pussy?"

Tanak nodded, panting happily.

"Good, now, you're going to do things at the speed your highness wants. She's not used to the two of you, and if you get too rough with her, she's going to decide she's had enough and leave you both high and dry, got it?"

Tanak nodded again, Alex looked behind her long enough to get an enthusiastic nod from Torran she didn't fully believe. In spite of how much it felt like her pussy was begging her to get started already, there was a bloom of apprehension in her stomach. As soon as she actually went and started putting these things inside of her, there was a distinctly higher amount of danger, and reduced capability to escape. Especially if either of them knotted in her, she was pretty stuck and past the point of running to the fire and throwing her crown in. There was also the ever-present knowledge that she was effectively sex-toy sized to the pair of them, which was kind of hard to ignore.

Still, she'd probably been in more intimate danger than this. Neither of them had tied her up or cuffed her. Neither of them had had a political rival eliminated. She just wasn't sure how much power her word had here. And there wasn't much consequence for them if they wronged her, especially if her power of suggestion didn't match what they'd told her.

But, this was the way she did things. And if Lara was going to take her sweet time getting here, it was doing things her way or their way. She could at least be the one controlling when and where the doggy pounding happened. Doing things her way was easier.

***

Lara opened her palm, starting the blow as a judo chop to the head, but when the mummy raised its arms slowly to cover its head she jerked her arm away at the last moment and turned the strike into a hard fingertip jab aimed around the solar plexus. When her fingers wrapped around metal, she jerked her arm back before the mummy could bring his arms crashing down on top of her head. With the golden Ankh removed, the nine-foot-tall mummy crumbled, leaving only a pile of disjointed bones and cloth. She wiped the... rather unpleasantly wet mummy residue from her hand and marveled at the forearm-length golden totem.

"Have you really had that stuck inside of you all these years?" She taunted the bone pile. "I'm shocked it's as clean as it is, considering how nasty your guts just made my glove."

The Ankh was standard, despite the size. Lots of rulers would hear legends of a way to keep the seed of life inside of you, coming back alive as soon as somebody endangered their tomb. Lots of them thought it meant they would actually come back proper, but it was probably for the best that they didn't... considering the desiccation most people walked away from a thousand-year dirt nap with. This Ankh wasn't going to change the plight of archeology, even one of this size. But, the standard size usually fetched a resale check with a half-dozen zeroes on the end. Lara added it to the now-growing collection she had.

"Anybody else had their corpses desecrated and want to be sent back to the afterlife?" Lara called out to the now empty room, stepping over pile after pile of bones and wrappings, "I'm offering an express service!"

Lara could hear the rain letting up outside, however far away they were, the horses were probably wandering to the edge of their ropes to enjoy some wet grass right now, no longer afraid of being soaked and wet. Horses, plural, that being her horse and...

Lara kicked herself slightly, how far down her "slight detour" had she gone at this point? How long was it going to take to pick back up all of the rope she'd left trailing down this corridor? Time not spent going after her friend, last seen being carried away by towering hellhounds? No amount of "Alex is a big girl, she can take care of herself" was really shifting the looming sense of guilt and dread on this one.

"Right, well," Lara hefted her backpack, hearing the Ankhs jingle inside, cushioned by scraps of mummy tissue she'd be taking back for evaluation and the emergency undergarments. "Maybe Alex will accept these as an apology for letting her get **** by fleshy jackal things."

Lara took off down the way she'd come, hurrying back to the crossroads. Trying to remember if Alex had brought a gun like Lara was pretty sure she'd told her to.

***

Alex teased the tip of Tanak's cock inside of her slowly, feeling the intense heat radiating from it split her pussy as it pulsed inside of her eagerly. The slick, pointed tip slid in easily, though her well-oiled and absolutely sloppily wet lips definitely helped. Tanak kicked his head back, panting up to nobody in particular as she teased small bits of him inside of her slowly. Even as he got wider, the intense taper never made it hard to keep going, but the intensity of his length and the heat radiating off of him made her move slowly, unwilling to suddenly gorge herself and jam his pointed tip against her cervix. If he thrust much harder than not at all, he'd be battering it anyway, but she could put that off for a bit at least. And if he never went out of his way to assume control and let her take things at her speed, she could avoid it altogether. It would be for the best medically if they took the whole "your highness" thing as seriously as she hoped they would.

When she was deep enough to shift position, she did, taking the weight off of her crouched knees and heels and settling her hands on his statuesquely chiseled stomach as she set her knees on either one of his hips. She rolled her hips, letting the throbbing rod push up against the sides of her pussy. She was pretty stuffed, but there wasn't a lot left to go aside from the knot. She rocked forward, sinking all but the knot inside of her and kissing Tanak's stomach, then rocked back into a cat-like stretch and let some of his shaft slip back out of her. Okay, so maybe she was just really, really horny, but this was doable.

Torran's hands settled on her hips.

Alex froze, waiting to feel where the tip of his cock prodded her. For a moment, it jabbed right between her pussy and her ass, so she slid her hips downward slightly to rest the tip against her asshole. Tanak didn't press the issue, he was pressing a lot of things against a lot of things, but he wasn't pressing the issue. When he eased himself into her ass with extremely slow, careful presses, she relaxed. Bad boy or not, whoever designed him didn't want to get turned inside-out either. At least not before she got comfortable.

Alex braced her body, trying to relax the clenching, knotted apprehension in her stomach. Neither of them was thrusting, Tanak was resting inside of her, throbbing and pulsing gently but holding still with admirable self-control. Torran was easing himself in slowly, not giving Alex more than her ass was capable of taking at one time.

She felt Torran ease his knot slowly against her asshole, she set her hips down to rest Tanak's against her pussy. Honestly, she'd been more stuffed. Some of her business partners like to see their girls... struggle. Of course, she was still counting on neither of those knots going inside of her in that equation, which was still on the table. Dogs could finish without the knot going in, but dogs also weren't three meters tall with abs like a bodybuilder. It was best not to assume anything with your very literal ass on the line.

Torran gave her ass a meaty slap, not more than she could take, fortunate considering he was probably strong enough to shatter her pelvis. She gave a playful chuckle.

"Oh my, you've made your highness so full, however is she going to bounce on both of these at once?"

Suddenly, Tanak's hands wrapped around her thighs as he started to stand. Not good. She felt the ground, or whatever was closest to serving its purpose at that moment, going out from under her. She grabbed for what she could, wrapping her arms around Tanak's stomach and holding on like she was trying not to fall out of a tree. When Tanak was upright and standing across from Torran, she felt Torran's stomach against her back and his chair-sized hands cradling her ass. She was sandwiched between the two of them, a pale round ball pressed between two flat bronze planes. Their grasp of her kept her full weight from being suspended on their cocks, but their knots still pressed against either entrance ominously. The length of their members piping up into her stomach from both sides.

"Ah! Be careful with your highness! She's not used to how you boys like to play!"

Both of them were panting lightly, she was at the bottom of a well of furry musk and stiff, sweaty muscle. If the mass of cock plugging her wasn't making her head swim, that absolutely was.

Tanak slowly rocked his hips backward and then forward again, dragging his cock out until the widest part of his double-tapered length was the part resting between her pussy lips, giving her a good stretch, then pushing back in until his knot slammed back against the entrance of her pussy and his balls swung up against her ass.

"Slowly!" She yelped.

Torran followed suit, making almost the exact same motion and slapping back into place. Then Tanak repeated his, but as his cock was at the outmost point of its arc and he was starting to thrust back in, Torran began the drawing out motion of his thrust.

"Slowly! Oh! Fuck! Oh god!" Alex yelped, her insides twisting in knots as the jackals started to pump into her like two opposite clockwork cogs. She dug her fingers into Tanak's back, trying her best to take slow, even breaths to regain her composure, but the off-synch stuffing and unstuffing seemed to not give her any opportunity. The pathetic, sloppy stirring sounds her pussy made with each inward thrust was a public testament to how completely soaked she was getting. Tanak's face was a mixture of puppy happiness and focused concentration. She suspected that, even if she wasn't looking down the face of several thousand years of blue balls, she was at least looking down somebody determined to get his nut before going back to sleep.

"Fuck!" She let out a sputtering gasp that had probably been a real sentence at some point, but her body was starting to quiver so much with each overlapping thrust that it was turning her head into the same wet mush as her pussy.

Tanak and Torran continued wordlessly, slowly picking up pace. Each time their knot would slam against one of her entrances, Alex was half-convinced that it would pop in and suddenly flood her with an intense, painful over-fullness. Instead, each time, it would slam against her as an exclamation point to that same, overwhelming mostly-fullness, building pressure inside of her. Dammed pressure, compressed at the exit and unable to leak out and escape, even as it would pass in waves and the moment of anticipation would pass fruitlessly, that pressure didn't subside. It built and built, stacking a tightness in her throat and an almost floating weightless tension in her whole body. With each thrust, another wave, another crashing stack onto the tower.

"F-fuck." This one came out as more of a sloppy, slurring purr. She could get a lot of experiences from a lot of different people, but she hadn't gotten anything like this before. As if spurred on by her lust-drunk voice, the jackals only continued to pick up the pace.

***

It was getting hotter, that was a good sign. Hellgates, secret lairs, panic rooms, it didn't matter really. Most people chose warmth alongside their main lair. The fact that she was far enough underground now for her ears to have popped helped. Hotter and wetter air was denser air, and heat and moisture tended to be a good sign of life.

Lara stopped, leaning up against a wall and sucking down slow breaths. She was winded, which was an impressive feat considering her conditioning. Moreso than distance or speed, it was a matter of alternating incline and decline, as well as the speedy caution she needed to exercise. It was a "hurry up and wait" kind of pace. Erratic, almost without rhythm. She wouldn't attract the worm this way if that was a thing she had to worry about, but it also gassed her faster than covering twice as much ground on open, trap-free terrain.

The added weight in her bag also didn't help, but that was hardly a new experience for Lara. Unfortunately, the mismatched sizes and weights of the Ankhs meant that they shifted a lot, cushioned poorly by her spare undergarments. She regretted for a moment leaving her riding clothes in one of the saddlebags, but cloth was space-intensive even if it wasn't weight-intensive. A quick calculation in her head told her that she would have been able to fit one fewer Ankh.

In the distance, a female voice shrieked, then a pair of howls shook the ruins.

Lara froze, panic shooting through her for a moment. It wasn't a **** rattle. But there was definitely a non-zero amount of pain in it. It was also unmistakably Alex. Lara hefted her backpack and took off again.

***

Alex was so busy circling the drain of pleasure that she didn't even notice when Tanak gave a hearty push of his knot on the inward thrust and almost broke the plain of her pussy. She definitely noticed when Torran did the same to her ass.

"W-wait!" She shrieked.

Tanak thrust again and Alex's whole body lit up like a lightbulb as the fat knot at the base of his cock popped inside of her.

It had pushed her over the edge, words frozen on her lips and reduced to a yelping shriek of delight as the dam burst and her legs shook. Her whole body was suspended somewhere between drumskin tight tension and jello as the waves of her pleasure came both down from out of her head and up from her pussy at the same time, crashing in the middle and rattling her on the tide. A moment later, a crack of pain shot through her core as Torran thrust his knot into her ass and plugged her other desperately twitching hole. For a moment she could hear her own juices splattering the floor before both jackals threw their heads back and let out a primal howl, adding their voices to the chorus of light and ecstasy as they began to unload inside of her.

With a single massive throb, each of the knotted cocks filling her guts unloaded a massive splash of white-hot cum. She felt a twisting pressure as her organs contorted around the massive intruders, then as each of them continued to unload, a new agonizing pressure took over as they stuffed and stuffed her body beyond what she would have thought possible, the plugging knots keeping their seed in as they filled her like a balloon. Even as the pressure became unbearable, her body continued to contract almost pitifully around the cocks, milking more and more seed from them that she would struggle to take.

As she let out a shuddering breath and regained the ability to form coherent thoughts, Alex wasn't certain she wasn't about to burst. Somehow, for as large as the fist-sized balls of each jackal had been, they seemed to have even more than that actually in them, and they just kept spraying even as she regained her breath.

Finally, after a minor eternity, both of their cocks let out a small, sputtering twitch and dribbled out the last of their load. Both jackals dropped their heads and started to pant exhaustedly. She felt both of them try to pull their cocks out of her but found themselves unable to get the knot free. They both growled at each other as if the other was responsible.

"Well, what the fuck did you think was going to happen, you big dummies?" Alex scoffed, slapping each of their stomachs playfully.

They both looked down at her, then back at each other. She felt each of them shift their hips, making their still-hard cocks shift inside of her, sloshing the massive load of cum she was full of about. They each started to thrust minorly, moving their knots as much as they could. The excited twitching starting up inside of her from both of them again.

"Wait! No!"

***

The massive, overbearing redness of the light in the main chamber made itself known to Lara long before she was even close to it. When she finally slipped into it, it was almost beyond shocking her. Almost.

It was massive, properly. A vaulted ceiling that stretched what seemed like all the way up to the surface. Considering the square shaft that the elevator had descended from vanished into hazy darkness, that look was deceptive. Distantly set square pillars held up the lower un-vaulted side ceilings, a torch hanging from each behind a stone-bound jackalmorph like the two that had **** Alex. It was a t-shaped chamber, Lara had entered from the bottom of the long end, the cross at the top was dominated by a large throne on a raised dais and a pair of empty podiums on either side. It was a mirror of the fake dead-end, almost definitely intentionally. Behind it, a massive wall of fire like some kind of biblical message. The red light made the room soft, warm-looking, and warm-feeling. Lara advanced to the throne, looking to either side. On both of the split-ends of the bar of the t, there was a massive pile of pillows, likely for a harem. One of them was empty, one of them was not.

Alex was lying on the chest of one of the jackals, the other curled at his partner's feet like a sleeping dog, both frozen in place in sleep but not cast in stone like their brothers. Lara might have mistaken all three for dead if not for Alex's snoring. Alex was half-dressed in some sort of **** dancer uniform, haphazardly wearing a gold circlet and necklace and leaking... a concerning amount of white fluid from between her legs... from both ends.

Lara tiptoed over, trying her best not to step in or on the copious amounts of questionable and dangerous things. She prodded Alex and whispered her name a few times. Around the eighth time, the older woman woke up.

"Hmm?" She asked sleepily, "Oh, Lara. Vat time is it?"

Alex glanced at her watch, "Five pm, are you alright?"

"Oh," Alex groaned and straightened up, stretching with almost comical lackadaisicality. "You took your sveet time getting here."

"Sorry! It's a long way from the surface, we should be able to use the elevator to get back up faster."

Alex half-rose and immediately winced and grasped between her legs, "Shit, that is sore."

"Did they...?" Lara stared somewhat embarrassedly, "With you...?"

"Vell, ven ve arrived at the bottom, I made a break for the throne and grabbed the crown, vich gave me partial control of them."

"Wait, then why would you...?"

"Vell, like anything, it's a relationship of trust. I figured if you didn't get here in time, I needed to have a backup plan."

"Didn't you bring a gun with you?"

"I thought the vorst ve vould find is a cave-in!"

When Alex stumbled her way over to Lara, she braced herself against the more reasonably-dressed girl.

"And what happened to your clothes?"

"Pants, undervear, and bra should be near the throne. They ruined my jacket though."

Lara helped Alex gather her things, handing off her backpack to the now bow-legged older woman. She had expected Alex to slip into her old clothes and put the new digs in the bag, but Alex cited "an amount of soreness unfit for tight breeches" as a motivating factor and Lara didn't follow up on it.

"If that crown is what controls them, you should probably destroy it before we leave. Trust me, you do not want that kind of stuff lingering around."

"And vat about the necklace?"

"Hard to say, I would leave it up to you."

Alex slipped the necklace into the backpack without much hesitation, sliding it in alongside an assortment of golden Ankhs. She took the crown off, considering it in her hand for a moment before looking to see if Lara was preoccupied, and when she was taking pictures of the offshoot chambers for later documentation, Alex slid it into the bottom of the bag, underneath the oversized granny panties. She slid her thong and undershirt back on under her harem clothes, then hoisted the backpack over her shoulders and followed Lara to the elevator. Watching the red light of the jackal's home fade beneath her as they made the long ascent back to the surface.