A new way out of the temple

Scanning the room for the source of the noise, which was low cracking one that was only just loud enough that she’d been able to pick up on it, Lara’s gaze eventually ended up at the massive circle of stone built into the wall on the far end of the room from the three doorways. As she watched it, she could see two cracks progressing across the circular stone, one going vertically from the top towards the bottom, and the other horizontally from left to right.

“Hmm, this can’t be good,” Lara muttered while the cracks began to grow at a quicker pace while she was looking at them, and she hurried to get her boots on.
As a confirmation of Lara’s statement, not that she needed or really wanted one, a low, dense rumbling sound spread throughout the temple, while the floor of the chamber suddenly trembled violently enough to knock several candles over. The next sound after that that Lara heard was a loud crash as a portion of the domed ceiling slammed down onto the floor not much more than ten metres from where she was standing.

“Bugger!” Lara cried out, emphatically, terror in her eyes when she turned her eyes back towards the three doorways only to see them being blocked off by slabs of stone similar to those of the passageway of the Minotaur coming down to block them off.
Then, the cracking noise reached a crescendo, only to stop as the stone circle fell apart to reveal another passageway. With no other option but to try her luck getting out that way, Lara quickly stuffed the rest of her clothes into her backpack and donned it and her holster before beginning the dash across the chamber, dodging parts of the collapsing ceiling along the way. As she leapt over the lower portion of the collapsed stone that had been mounted into the wall earlier, Lara found herself at the top of a staircase leading downwards, formed by wide, low steps carved out of the stone whilst the walls were left to consist of irregular stone. Beginning her descent down the spiralling staircase, Lara thought that it sounded and felt as though the entire temple was being shaken apart, along with the mountain on top of which it had been erected. She also noted that she was descending into the darkness as she moved further and further down the steps, as there were no candles there to illuminate her path.

Stumbling onwards as her eyes began to adopt themselves to the darkness, Lara wondered where the staircase might lead. The only thing she knew thus far was it continued to lead straight downwards, and that at some point the steps ended, a soft “Click!” being heard as she hurried past the bottom step and went from moving down a staircase to making her way through a corridor or passageway that sloped downwards.
The sounds of the temple collapsing had been getting much less voluminous due to Lara moving further away from them, although they still reverberated through the mountain. However, she suddenly heard a rumbling noise coming from behind her, a noise that she couldn’t quite identify but which sounded distressingly familiar.

“Blast!” Lara cursed when the recollection of the sound of running water coming from beneath the rackety rope-bridge hit her and she realized what was the cause of the rumbling noise.
Despite the darkness and the slippery, uneven ground, she started to run, covering ground as quickly as possible while holding the staff of Xzolotecl tight in her left hand, adamant not to lose what she’d been through so much trouble to acquire.
Lara slipped and stumbled several times on the wet rock floor, bumping her feet against it with enough **** to nearly send her tumbling onto her stomach, but her natural reflexes and her years of training allowed her to never completely lose her footing, and so she pressed on even as the rumbling noise coming from behind her rose to steadily higher levels. The noise had become thunderous by the time that Lara could see a light at the end of the long tunnel, and she ran towards it as fast as she could.

By now, she had no doubt that the noise was that of water flooding through the tunnel behind her, moving at speed as it crashed downwards. Something, possibly the click that she’d heard upon stepping off the bottom of staircase, or the disturbance in the rock caused by the tremors that caused the temple to collapse, had allowed the subterranean river to break through the rock wall, and all that water was now plunging downwards, following the same path that she’d taken.
Knowing full well that the pressure of passing through such a small passageway would mean that all that water would be moving at quite a pace, Lara kept moving as fast as she could while continuously checking her footing.
She could see the exit of the tunnel now, with daylight flooding into it, and from where she was she guessed that she only had a little over a hundred feet left to go.
But the thundering sound of cascading water grew louder still, to the point where it became deafening.

With about fifty feet left to go, Lara threw a glance behind her shoulder and felt a cold chill run up her spine at the wall of foaming water that was now baring down on her.
Twenty feet left, and Lara cried out in frustration when the water caught up with her, lifting her off of her feet and tossing her around like a ragdoll as it carried her out of the tunnel, her respiratory system suddenly becoming flooded with cold water
The mouth of the tunnel was located on a steep slope at the bottom of the tall hill on which the temple had been standing, and when Lara exited it, she flew out of it like a cork, her body spinning as she fell downwards towards the uneven ground.

“Uff!” Lara groaned when she slammed into the ground with her left shoulder taking most of the hit, the momentum with which she’d been tossed towards it meaning that she now started to tumble down along the slope, trying as best as she could to smoothen her descent and avoid slamming into the trees and rocks with which the slope was littered. She’d been **** to let go of the staff, and had no idea of where it might have ended up.
Finally, Lara reached the bottom of the slope and was soon coughing up water as she rolled over onto her side. The beating that she’d taken as she’d exited the tunnel, particularly the shock of having her air supply cut off and her body forcibly immersed in a torrent of ice-cold water, meant that she was having a hard time staying conscious.

“Come on, Lara, you silly girl,” Lara chastised herself as she tried to **** her way up on her feet to go look for the staff. She managed to become upright again, and stumble forwards a few feet, before the **** that she’d just suffered got the better of her and she collapsed onto her stomach, her semi-naked body impacting against the ground as she drifted off into unconsciousness.