Sly Cooper 5: Promises Made By Thieves

Chapter 27: Slytunkhamen

Being out in the fresh air again, even if it's naturally as hot as ever, is a feeling I don't think I'll ever forget.

It's beginning to flood back to me how to turn invisible. After capture, my ability severely weakened. Maybe it's the fact doing this put Asenath or Pili in danger when I was locked up and now that's no longer the case. Or maybe it was because there was no point to doing it while always locked up in that dungeon. Catra's guards were definitely educated. They'd have assumed if they saw I wasn't there in my cell, they would take all the steps to make sure if I was really gone, I was really gone. Including brutalizing my family.

There's also the fact that jolt of fresh food and a sense we're not going to die in those cells is really boosting my adrenaline. Escaping with some successful loot, stealing to return goods to those who needed it way more always gave me excitement, but I now feel ready to fight a rhinoceros. This plan of Sly's needs to work.

We run through the streets, and those mostly on duty are slaves of the mighty noblemen who live in these palaces. They stop to stare, and Sly and I both grin at them. Maybe there were rumors going around we were dead, diminishing hope and rebellion possibilities.

It's definitely going to take some time getting used to these two blades. I don't know where my pickaxe went after getting captured, but this cane of Catra's, cracked in two, will compensate if and until I find it. A symbol of my enemy or not, these are very, very good weapons.

I catch a glimpse of the town, noticeable from here in the distance. The river we made has dried up, and it looks like things in my home town are a lot more covered in sand. I recognize the marketplace. No one's there. Not even the vendors. I also, with my terrific eyesight, see some raccoons and mongooses walking around who don't see us. They look miserable. I'm not just angry, but I have this funny feeling inside me I can't place.

"So, what's this pyramid like?" asks Sly.

"Just like all the others, I suppose. I've never actually been in it, but I've heard you can enter it. If Catra's guards are going in and out of it, there has to be a way in nice and big." We both laugh a little.

Just a few minutes later, barely breaking a sweat, we arrive at the pyramid, but we hide behind a wall to avoid announcing our presence. It's rather far away and hard to make things out, but we can't be cocky with this.

It's only a minute before we see a guard enter the pyramid from somewhere to the left wall. From how the shadow of the pyramid is facing an angle both also left and forward, and how the guard avoided being under the shadow, we know for sure he didn't just walk behind the big structure. So there's definitely a way in from the left.

Deciding to play it safe, once we run to the front of the pyramid, we both go invisible, and glimpse cautiously. Another one of the guards casually walks through the pyramid, looking like he has to squeeze the tiniest bit.

Sly goes ahead of me, his excuse being he can move while invisible, but he does what looks like what he once described to me as a glitch, blinking in and out. His invisibility is not quite working the best. No surprise. He's malnourished and out of practice too. Sly doesn't seem to be noticing his invisibility break, which really worries me as he walks up to the entrance. If anyone was heading out right now, they'd see him. But he gives me thumbs up, so I guess right now we're good anyway.

That prior guard is still in our sights as he walks down a narrow and long hallway, its end unseeable from not pitch black but foggy orange like there are torches way ahead. I get a whiff of the air from inside and it feels very thin. We begin creeping our way down the hall but we overhear the guard saying something to a guard before he's all the way through, presumably to let someone else by who's coming up. Sly and I manage to scale the wall up near the ceiling and go invisible anyway for good measure. We hear something shut that's up ahead, like a heavy door. It's only when we're absolutely certain no one else is coming or going when we stop, and run down the hall to get away from it as fast as possible.

We get to the door that must have slammed, and when we see the keyhole is the shape of Catra's cane, the two of us know how to unlock it with no hesitation.

We enter into a room so huge I can't imagine there being much more bricking beyond the outside of the pyramid. Lit by only torches, the air as thin as it was in the dungeon, except for a whiff of weird perfume in the air, this is a room filled with rows and rows of bottles with pink liquid. And a giant cauldron with smoke of the same color.

I see a guard walking up to the workers, who look starved, not asking so much as demanding a bottle with snapping fingers. He lathers it around a cutting knife of his, and I swear I see a crack in the blade disappear, the metal growing back or something. Not only that, the knife's shinier now. The torch fire is really glinting off that thing. The guard tests it with a tree leaf he sets fire to by angling the light.

"That must be the juice," I whisper. "The thing your book's supposed to be filled of. The strengthening potion."

"Let's get some," Sly whispers back.