The Seven Swords of Diya: An Indiana Jones Fan Fiction Part 1

Chapter 12: Shorty's Flashback: Ruin Unknown Location, Northern Wilderness, 1944

Alfie tended the fire with his uninjured arm, a fresh bandage on his chest, the wound in his shoulder still leaking blood.

Jeff was studying the maps, trying to plot where their route had gone wrong.

"Any luck?" Ned asked. He leaned closer to Shorty and Jeff. "Alfie's lost a lotta blood. I don't know what's holding him together, or how long he'll last. We've gotta get out of here - the sooner the better."

"Best I can figure is somewhere on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Russian territory," Jeff looked up from the map. "Don't know if that makes any of us feel better. We'll be facing grizzly bears instead of the Japanese though."

"I'll take it," Alfie winced. "The bears won't take us prisoner."

"They'll just invite us to dinner!" Pete entered the ruin, setting extra wood down. "Its getting dark, and this is all I could find locally."

"We can gather more tomorrow," Shorty instructed. "Then we'll figure out how to get out of here. Jeff, what about the radio?"

Jeff shook his head. "The light was dim, and the box was dented and on the floor. I'll have to look at it in the light. But the plane's stable - so we should have that to gather more supplies from. Maybe I can fix the radio in better light."

"Cap, what is this place?" Pete lifted a torch revealing a plastered dome ceiling with a painted hunting scene on it.

"I don't know," Shorty replied. "It doesn't feel... right, to be here... but we've got no choice."

Alfie was staring at the ceiling. "What are those?"

All the men turned staring up at the ceiling. The hunting scene appeared to be moving in the dancing flames of their fire. It seemed to spin... as the warrior armed only with a spear went after a strange massive beast which looked sort of like a man, but failed to be human.

Things flickered at the back of Shorty's memories along with the fire. He had seen something like that. Something from the temple. Something deep in the mines. Something from deep within the earth.

"Cap, you all right?" Ned asked.

Shorty shook himself away from the dark memories. "I was just thinking... I wish I could have spent more time with..." he tried again. "For awhile I traveled with an archaeologist. He was sort of a dad after a Japanese bombing raid killed my parents. We ended up in India, where we were held captive by a cult. And there's something that reminds me about that place and this one. It's like we've invaded the realm of the dead."

"We're at war," Jeff replied. "As a bomber crew we signed on to be consistently invading the realm of the dead. We're lucky we all made it through the crash... plus the flights."

"Indy would know," Shorty mused. "He claimed to not believe in the supernatural, but... my traditional Chinese upbringing tells me to respect the dead."

Alfie spoke quietly, staring up at the ceiling. "Hopefully we won't offend if we stay here one night."