Logan and Miyuki parked their Jeep a full kilometer away from the archeologist's camp. As they neared the humans he pushed his internal energy into his senses. He heard the humans talking and snoring, the smells of the jungle and the flow of ambient mana.

  The two agents carefully skirted the camp. While time consuming it was pretty simple. He didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary until reaching the path connecting the camp to the temple. He dropped to hands and knees and took a closer smell. Although complex he was able to pull a newer scent than others.

  “Damn,” he said standing.

  “What?” Miyuki whispered.

  “Someone left maybe twenty minutes ago. We have to hurry.”

  When they approached the structure they could see all the ambient mana being pulled in one direction. The massive flow proved the artifact they’re hunting was far from average. He hoped whoever was unfortunate enough to be in the temple wasn’t stupid enough to unlock anything.

  **************************************************

  Sarah was so excited to finally be on an actual dig. A few weeks ago, she had graduated third of her class at Harvard University in anthropology with a focus on archeology. Before graduating she was already hired by a group of researchers that were mostly unknown. Although unknown, she considered the results of their previous research impressive and knew as a fresh graduate she shouldn’t expect the larger organizations to take her in so easily. When her first job was to accompany the group on a dig of a newly opened temple she was overjoyed. There was supposedly some sponsor that requested the specific location whose identity was over her pay-grade.

  The temple was devoted to the Hindu goddess of justice, Durga. The goddess was considered the mother goddess in Hindu mythology, which was depicted by the crumbling paintings and the collapsing statues that the team had recovered up until then. An unusual aspect of that temple specifically was that there was a high emphasis on her tiger mount and companion Dawon. They didn’t know as of yet why the temple was sealed making it one of their priorities.

  She hoped that she would have been able to assist in the excavation or at least the cleaning of artifacts. Instead, she was always the one sent to retrieve water or get a different tool or lift something for someone. She felt more like a servant than an archaeologist. The latest task was that she had to go into the dark temple in the middle of the night and try to find a brush that one of the doctors forgot. He said he probably dropped it deep down in one of the tunnels. With a forced smile and a beaten down complaint, she followed his instructions and made her way into the temple.

  She hated the dark, especially surrounded with paintings of a woman with ten arms cutting evil people and creatures apart while riding a killer tiger. The only tool she had to maneuver herself with was a single flashlight and a crudely drawn map.

  “It looks like a cat made this,” she said looking at the confused lines and badly drawn figures.

  Though sloppily made, the map was sufficient. She continued following it until she reached where her superior said he last saw his “favorite brush.” The place was where they recently discovered a unique painting of Durga and her tiger Dawon. What made that painting unique was that it wasn’t one of the myriads of her fighting with or riding Dawon, she was bowing to it. Since its discovery it has been photographed, approximated, hypothesized, digitally recreated, sampled, essentially everything but touching it with anything larger than a tweezer.

  She looked around her, searching for the lost brush until she found it under a few small rocks. As she was turning to exit the eerie tunnel she slipped on the uneven ground and accidentally dropped her flashlight, which, of course, immediately turned off. The darkness was all enveloping, all consuming, not even the slightest bit of light existed. She quickly fell to her knees in search of the precious device. If The Lights were on, she would look like the intelligent character from a popular cartoon series looking for their glasses, blindly sweeping her hands back and forth hoping for success.

  After a few more seconds she found it and breathed a sigh of relief. As she stood, she reflexively placed her left hand upon the wall for balance. Once she put her weight on it, she felt an overwhelming sense of dread. Under her fingers she had the sensation as if she put her hand in finely dried mud with dust falling from above it. Her heart immediately stopped in place. With a shaking hand she slowly brought up her right hand with the flashlight and switched it on.

  The light revealed an archeologist’s nightmare. Her hand was pressed against the priceless painting of the goddess and the tiger. Of course not just anywhere but her palm was pressing against the tiger’s head! one of the most detailed and important parts of the entire painting. She had forgotten how to breathe and with utmost caution she removed her hand. All that was left of the tiger’s head was a disgusting smudge and a female hand-print surrounding it. At that moment she knew her professional life was over. Before she had even begun her life, her future was over. No one would ever hire a woman who destroyed a one-of-a-kind artifact. What about her mom? Her reputation would also crash with such a failure of a daughter.

  Before she could spiral further the unimaginable happened, the center of the smudge sank into the wall. She was both confused and amazed at the movement. The tiger continued its way inward until it stopped with a loud click. From behind her from the opposite wall she heard a strange sound. It was like someone was pouring sand onto the stone. She spun to find a part of the wall was collapsing.

  No, it wasn’t collapsing, it was changing. A section of the solid rock wall slowly disintegrated into sand and flowed down onto the floor. This continued until a rectangular passage was created. It was no taller than four feet and no wider than three feet. Once the process ended, she crouched down and peered inside. She directed her flashlight towards the hole and discovered another chamber.

  Her professional curiosity overpowered her fear and previous dread, telling her to push forward. She pushed past the pile of sand and entered the chamber. The ceiling was high enough for her to stand. The second she did there was a flash and in each corner of the room a torch lit itself. She jumped at the sudden light. As she looked around the room her eyes rested on a statue of a tiger standing upon a pedestal against the far wall.

  The tiger was standing proud with its jaw open, baring its teeth. She had never seen a statue so realistic. It was only a foot tall, but she could practically see every coarse hair and rippling muscle. It was as if a real tiger was turned to stone, shrunken down, and stood before her. She thought it was only a normal statue until she looked into its eyes. Once she peered into them her mind started to blur, she began to get dizzy, and the overpowering urge to touch one of the incredibly sharp teeth overtook her.

  As if her mind was no longer her own, she reached out and touched one of the tiger’s teeth with her finger. Just as she was about to touch the stone, she heard someone behind her tell her to stop, but it was too late. The tooth barely entered her flesh, but it was enough. It felt like a lightning bolt shot through her system, making her lose control over her body. The shock instantly knocked her unconscious. The last thing she remembered was a large man yelling.

  *******************************

  “Don’t touch that!” Logan yelled in a desperate attempt to stop her. His eyes widened as he watched the girl touch one of the artifact’s teeth, convulse, and fall to the ground. Logan lunged forward and was barely able to stop her head from hitting the stone. Logan looked down upon the archeologist lying unconscious before him.

  He was already too late. He watched as power flowed from the artifact and into her chest. The mana turned into internal energy and condensed into a core. She became beast-bursed.

  Logan wanted to do nothing but massacre every archeologist in the nearby camp and leave. Recognizing the urge was coming from his beast. He needed to focus. To regain control, he bit the inside of his cheek and focused on the iron taste of his blood. He took a few deep breaths and was able to calm himself enough to think uninfluenced.

  After regaining control, he heard Miyuki’s footsteps rushing down the hall behind him. With a clenched jaw he debated what to do with the girl. He could kill her now, it would protect her from immense suffering and pain, or he could bring her and the artifact back and face the consequences. For a quick second his anger and beast pulsed and he started reaching for his knife. After realizing what he was doing he stopped his hand and sighed.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  The human was slightly on the taller side for a woman, looking to stand just under six feet, medium-length red-blond hair tied back in a ponytail, and pale skin. She was an average level of attractiveness, someone you can pass by and never remember them. She was also on the thinner side of humans, most likely from too many books and not enough exercise.

  “This is gonna suck,” he groaned as he started positioning her to rest over his shoulder. As he started toward the pedestal and the artifact, Miyuki entered the room with a revolver drawn. She only needed a few seconds to piece together the scene.

  “Damn,” she said while returning the revolver to its holster. “Let me guess, she,” she pointed at the limp girl draped over his shoulder.

  “Yup.”

  “And the artifact.”

  “Yup.”

  “Dammit! This is why I can’t stand humans!” While cursing and yelling her eyes started to glow.

  “Miyuki,” he said in the strictest tone he could, “there isn’t time for this. We need to get out of here.” She grumbled in response and clenched her fists, the glowing quickly dying down. “Grab the artifact.”

  Without looking back, he left the room with the girl and, after retrieving his flashlight, made his way out of the temple. He was constantly forcing his wolf down while trudging toward the jeep. It didn’t take long for Miyuki to catch up with him while carrying the artifact under her right arm.

  Logan deposited the still unconscious girl in the back seat before getting in and nearly left dents in the steering wheel with how tight he was squeezing it. Miyuki was a few seconds behind when she dropped the artifact in the trunk.

  Normally, he would have criticized her for treating an artifact that roughly, but there were two reasons why he didn’t. The first was because he was too focused on controlling himself to care. The second, and more important, was that artifacts were inordinately durable. Any material infused with mana for a long time, like holding a beast-cursed for hundreds of years, made stone harder than steel.

  They drove for about an hour when the girl in the back seat started to stir and let out a pained moan. Logan muttered to Miyuki without taking his eyes off the rough road, “let’s get some information from her, don’t scare her too much.”

  “Why did this have to happen now?” She groaned while rubbing her eyes.

  “Because the luck gods hate me.”

  He practically heard her roll her eyes. “Fine, but at least let me scare her a little.”

  “Alright, have at her. Get as much as you can out of her. This whole thing stinks worse than year old sewage.”

  “Charming,” she said while turning in her seat to look down on the waking captive.

  ****************************************************************

  Sarah’s headache was unbelievable as her body once again started sending signals to her brain. She tried to move but stopped when her splitting headache said no. She started feeling around herself as her headache began to fade. What surprised her the most was the fact that she wasn’t resting on a solid rock floor but on what felt to be the shaking seats of a moving car. As she was finally able to focus on her surroundings she heard two distinct voices, neither of which sounded anywhere near happy.

  “Good evening princess.”

  Sarah pushed herself up off the seat on shaking arms. As she raised herself the car lurched as if it ran over a large rock making something bang around behind her. She hesitantly glanced over the back seat hoping not to find a dead body. With the little light she got from the moon and was reflected back from the headlights she was barely able to see the cargo. Her racing heart froze as she saw the unbelievable tiger statue bouncing around on the plastic floor. She had to resist the urge to tackle the artifact and cradle it like a hurt kitten. Something so beautiful was being treated like a middle-schooler’s messy art project.

  She tried to think through her panic. After a quick glance she started to piece together information. She touched a statue, she was shocked and knocked unconscious, was currently being kidnapped, her captors spoke English and sounded like they were around her age, the statue was stolen with her, and she has information they needed.

  It seems like she was caught by a pair of tomb robbers that tased her and is going to hopefully ransom her back to her family. Her middle class education and academic research focused family. Who just had paid the last bill of her obscenely expensive Ivy League education to keep her away from the endless student debt her parents “had to struggle through”…can you get a ransom loan from a bank? Maybe if she was annoying enough they would give them a discount just to get rid of her, or just kill her.

  “Now that you’re awake we can get some work done,” the woman said.

  Sarah looked to the passenger seat. It was dark so she could only tell they had short hair and was of some sort of Asian descent.

  “What do you want?” Sarah asked, trying and failing to keep her voice even.

  “How about we play a game,” she said with a shadowy smile. “We’ll take turns asking and answering questions until I get tired. A nice quid pro quo. How does that sound?” Sarah nodded dumbly. “Good, now I’ll start with an easy one, what’s your name?”

  “Sarah,” she squeaked past the knot in her throat.

  She smiled again. “Nice to meet you Sarah, what’s your question?”

  “Wh-who are you?”

  “I’m Miyuki and this walking brick,” she put her hand on the large man driving, “is Logan. Whether or not you believe that is what our names are is up to you. Now for my second question, why were you there?”

  “I was there with a dig of the temple.”

  “Who sponsored it?”

  Sarah gained a little hope. Whoever was rich enough to sponsor an entire dig had to have enough to pay off whatever her ransom was worth. She stopped when she realized her ignorance of their identity.

  “I don’t know the sponsor,” Sarah answered hesitantly. “This is my first dig and I was told it didn’t matter.” As she answered another part of reality crashed down on her. It was her first dig, the dig in which she irreparably damaged a priceless painting while being stolen alongside a priceless artifact. If she was lucky she may be able to say it happened when she fought against her kidnappers. Her non-existent lying abilities told her otherwise. No company or university would touch her with a one-hundred-foot pole.

  Her entire life she wanted to be like her mother and be an archeologist. As a little girl she would dig up her backyard in search of lost civilizations. It was all over. Tears threatened to spill but her fear suppressed them. These people don’t care that her life was ruined, they only cared about a big payday.

  Miyuki sighed, “damn, we had to get the dumb one.”

  “Hey, ju-just so you know. I graduated third in my class at Harvard.” She said trying and failing to sound confident.

  Miyuki looked surprised before turning insufferably smug. She recognized the look. She saw it too many times in classmates bragging about their families or how many generations of alumni they rode on to get admitted. “An Ivy Leaguer, impressive I guess. I graduated-.”

  “Miyuki,” the man, Logan if she remembered correctly, said interrupting her. “Stay focused.”

  “Fine,” she said before returning her attention to Sarah, “moving on, your turn?”

  Sarah forced herself to think of what to ask next. “What are you going to do with me?”

  Miyuki hesitated before looking at Logan.

  “We don’t know yet,” he answered. “Our job isn’t to make those kinds of decisions. As of now we’ll ask you questions, and you’ll answer them. After that we’ll be taking you to a secure location out of the country where we’ll contact our superiors and receive their instructions.”

  If he was telling the truth it didn’t sound like a worst-case scenario. It turned out instead of random thieves they were more well-trained grunts. If they were professional like Logan she may be able to get out of this with only a little trauma.

  “Wait, did you say out of the country?” There goes the hope of being rescued.

  “Yup,” Miyuki responded, “We’re leaving India behind us. I’ll give you that question for free. Anyway, if you disappeared, who would look for you?”

  She froze. Maybe they weren’t going to ransom her after all. If she didn’t give a good enough answer they may think that selling her off to the nearest sicko would be more profitable. She remembered the human trafficking movie her sociology professor showed the class and all of the nightmares the lucky few to survive had to go through.

  Logan grunted slightly pulling her from her horrified musings. “Dammit Miyuki, was there no other way to put that? She smells like she’s scared enough to pass out.” he sighed before continuing, “who are you close to? good friends, family, stuff like that?”

  “I have my parents and a little brother,” Sarah said with a little hope returning but while the horror stories were still whispering in her ear. “A few friends and my old roommate.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.”

  There was a pause before Sarah remembered it was her turn. She was about to ask her question when a loud explosion shook the car and forced it to spin out. She grabbed onto the nearest door handle and held on like her life depended on it. After the car spun multiple times, it stopped moving.

  After a moment of silence all hell broke loose. They rocked as dozens of impacts slammed into the car. The bangs outside said guns and the increasingly cracked windows said they were screwed. She curled herself into a ball hoping that would make her a smaller target.

  “And that is why we shield our cars!” Logan shouted over the noise.

  “Yea, yea, I owe you ten bucks. I think that’s the least of our worries!” Miyuki yelled back.

  Sarah couldn’t believe it. The car was being turned into Swiss cheese and the two of them are talking about settling a bet.