Crypt Quest #2: Warrior's Rapture

Melody of Madness

The shrieking wail of fuel-injected aircraft engines blasted a dollop of ferocious wind through Reese and Malik. The two fortuitous commuters stood off to the right of their own small plane upon the runway of Cambodia's Siem Reap International Airport as a larger one sauntered passed.

    Hair now tussled, 6-foot tall, late-20s, brown leather-jacket-bound Reese Hunter glanced over to his 4-foot high, mid-30s, companion Malik Atwell. The stout man glared, annoyed at his energized colleague as if the discomfort was somehow the height-stricken adventurer's fault.

    Malik gritted his teeth before relaxing again. "Sorry. I'm falling way too easily into the man-always-angry trope."

    "You know who else fell into predictability?" Reese replied. "The great kings of the Khmer Empire, who warred and built the largest civilization of their time. It led to an oversaturated population wrought with religious conflict and invading enemies that ultimately brought a vegetable-building society to its knees."

    "Dude. Do you ever switch off?" Malik asked rhetorically.

    Reese shrugged. "Once. When I saw a guy being chased by a boulder."

- - -

Reese and Malik staggered with their travel bags through the exit of the large airport doors into an infestation of omni-directional rickshaws driven by desperate men, picking up hapless passenger after hapless passenger.

    "Alright, leave the haggling to me," Reese issued. "The scam-oriented types in this country are money-hungry desperate scavenger-dirt mongers who wouldn't hesitate to take you for all your worth."

    Malik eyed him. "Uhh, you're thinking of Mumbai."

    "Anak tow brasaeat te? Mphei dollar. Phlauv muoy," said a Cambodian man as he drove up to them in his local tuk-tuk rickshaw.

    Reese hesitated, when suddenly an early-30-something dark skinned woman in a more colourful and brightly decorative tuk-tuk rickshaw rolled up behind the two. "He's ripping you off. Just so you know." She smirked.

    "Anak now chhngay! Strei min kuor thveukear now tinih te!" the man shouted in anger at her.

    The woman quickly shot back. "Jomrai! Mteay robsa anak sliek kraneat kantob teark haey aupouk robsa anak sravung!" Her aggression prompted the man to be so put off that he drove away. The woman then laughed to Reese and Malik's shocked looks. "I insulted his parents. They're probably dead."

    "Your English is really—" Malik started before being shoved by the woman.

    She spat. "—Shush, Disoriented Unknown Traveler! My name is Sophea Helea, and you're both taking my taxi because you understand that in a sand-obsessed country, people like myself struggle. The pay is terrible and the respect next to nothing. We're decades behind with no visible end in sight." She then smiled. "Westerners always get it. You guys get it."

    "I can confirm your assessment of us 'getting it' —Is that the term the kids are using these days?" Reese asked. "I'm not old, just deep-dove into ancient historical affairs." He then shook his head out. "Anyway. What I'm trying to say is we're not going with you, but for reasons other than stated."

    She narrowed her brow, sunk her head and focused her gaze on him. "You're a bunch of snarky artifact hunters, aren't you?"

    "What? No!" countered Reese in an overly-denial way. "Those guys are basically thieves, violators of history and foodless hungry people."

    Malik raised a finger. "And they smell bad."

    "Then what's that wrapped in a cloth over your back?" Sophea pointed with her lips. "Appears to be a sword. Possibly an artifact you uncovered previously."