It was hot. It was dry. And he was incredibly glad to be indoors.

Of course, there were better reasons to be indoors than the one he was currently dealing with. The tour had been at Luxor for several days when the daily tours of the Valley of the Kings had begun, and they were...interesting, but routine. Three days in, and the students were getting restless.

Which was why Tapendra was now following an errant student into a side tomb. This one was huge and appearently empty - the sign at the gate had indicated it was closed to tourists. Muggle equipment was scattered here and there - lights, mostly. A few were on, which gave them just enough light.

Them was what was on his mind at the moment. He walked through the passage with one Aileen Reid, and he wasn't sure what to say, though part of him wanted to say something. Since the pool - which had not been an incident, but sure as hell felt like one - it was hard to talk to her. He either wanted to poke her and watch her squeal, figuratively, or...not. Or find out if she'd actually, figuratively, poke him back. He'd rather liked it when she'd played along.

"How far does this damn thing go back?" He asked the empty, stale air, in an effort to break the awkward silence. The lights from the electronics were getting fewer and fewer and a turn in the passage had meant the bright light from outside was dying down til it was gone completely. It was a rhetorical question, of course.

"Kids," he said to himself, mostly to hear something other than footsteps.

The passage was tilting downwards now, and it was starting to get downright cold. He paused by the only light left, peering into the darkness ahead - and then he looked down. There were fresh footprints in the dust, but they stopped on the block he and Aileen now stood on. He looked at Aileen silently, and then looked down again. The foot prints were on the start of the slab, and then they and the dust were disturbed oddly, as if someone had fallen -

The light went out.

The darkness almost made a sound, it was so sudden. The passage went from dim to pitch black in an instant, the dark so total it felt like his eyes had been shut off.

"Damn it-" he said, and in the darkness his voice sounded louder than it really was. He reached out in the dark - found what he hoped was Aileen's arm, gripping it like an anchor. She might not like it, but frankly, he was trying not to instinctively panic, as his rational thoughts warred with his instinct to run. With his other hand, he scrambled for his wand.

Aileen walked through the dim, cool tomb, silent as Tapendra complained once or twice beside her. Kids indeed. At least it wasn't Abby who had decided to go exploring, though part of her almost wished she would, if only to escape her teasing and 'knowing' glances for a few hours.

Though she could admit (in her head) that none of this was Tapendra's fault, things had been awkward since the pool. Along with Abby's intrusion, Aileen was still adjusting to the startling realization that she'd had fun. Only family and small children could push her into a pool and live to see the next day, or so she'd thought.

She frowned at the footprints on the slab, exchanged a look with Tapendra, and rubbed at the goosebumps on her arms. "What do you-"

Her words were cut off as the light went out.

Aileen froze, blinking in vain at the sudden darkness, and then flinching at the grip on her arm. Normally, she might find his panicked gesture amusing, except in this case she was stuck with him in the same dire situation.

She drew her wand and flicked her wrist, the movement feeling exaggerated in the dark. "Lumos."

Her words were cut off once more as a creaking noise sounded and the ground fell out from beneath them!

Musty air rose up as she landed on a soft, dry, and slippery surface. Aileen's lit wand got knocked out of her hand, a sharp elbow jabbed her in the stomach, and as she tried to catch her breath, an ominous scraping of stone sounded.

Aileen muttered a foul word. She scrambled across the sand for the tiny pinprick of light in the otherwise completely dark room. Ignoring her bumps and bruises from the fall, she grabbed it, then threw her arm up just in time to see the slab slide into place over their heads.

She stared at it for a few seconds, dread building. Aileen had dealt with enough tombs and curses to resist the panic, but she'd also dealt with enough tombs and curses to know that they needed to get out of here, fast.

The light from her wand blinked out, and it was in the pitch black that she could hear a faint trickle surrounding them, light enough to be mistaken for water. But the very sand underneath her fingernails, creased into her clothes, and inside her shoes made her assume the worst.

They were trapped in an hourglass tomb, doomed with every second that passed.

"Tapendra!" She whispered urgently, one hand gripping her wand, too cautious to cast magic a second time. With her other hand she started to crawl back to the area she thought she'd landed, remembering that sharp elbow, and hoping he was in one piece.

His stomach was somewhere above his lungs, he decided, but the throb of everything else was much more noticeable. Aileen had broken his fall - which, lucky for her, hadn't hurt her too badly, if her movements in the darkness were any sort of indication.

Tapendra got to his knees as the sand  around him seemed to be multiplying. The space they'd fallen into wasn't very large; he found the wall and started running a hand along it, trying not to panic and sort of failing. He, unlike Aileen, had never been into a tomb before - but there was something. Maybe it was his wizard's blood, his Egyptian roots or the amount of times he'd watched Tomb Raider in slow motion, but he was listening to his gut - and his gut was telling him they were in trouble. Big, nasty, becoming-skulls-that-Indy-trips-over trouble.

Aileen's harsh whisper wasn't far from him; he stuck a hand out, found - it felt like hair, so her head. "You alright?" he asked, keeping one hand on the wall, and letting the other fall to her shoulder. He'd barely had time to wait for her response when one of the small bricks under his hand slid back into the wall upon his touch.

The slab underneath them opened again, and this time he did have time to yell as they fell into empty space. This time, it was further, and he landed on what felt like a big pile of sand. It was Aileen's turn to land on him; what felt like her hip landed on his thigh. The sand from the room above was nice enough to follow them a moment later, dumping onto the two of them rather unceremoniously and burying them rather shallowly.

He thrust a hand upwards and pulled himself out, rather roughly - but quickly - yanking Aileen out of the sand too.

"I've got sand in places I didn't even know I had," he said, experiencing that - and all the discomfort it could hope to bring. He still had his wand - luckily for him, it had remained up his sleeve. "You alright?" he repeated, not letting go of her, but certainly softening his grip.

The place they'd fallen into was cold and just as dark, but there was a feeling to it - it felt huge. Unlike the passages above, their voices echoed off what sounded like distant walls.

He took a few deep breaths. "You're the tomb expert," he said, in a tone that betrayed the fact that he was, in fact, not ready to die down here but quite worried about doing so. "Wh-what do we do? Other than not panic."

When the floor dropped out from underneath them a second time, she had just enough time to gasp - and got a mouthful of sand as they landed. Tapendra's gangly limbs offered little cushioning, and she sputtered and coughed, panic flaring as the sand covered them.
 
She'd kept a hold of her wand at least, and felt herself being pulled up, much the same way he'd pulled her out of the water at the pool. Aileen brushed at her face and her hair, and rested a hand on his arm.
 
"Yes, fine," she reassured him with a worried edge to her voice. Luckily he was fine too, judging by his babbling.
 
She paused when he asked her what they should do, glad he couldn't see her frightened expression in the dark. Taking a deep breath, she neglected to tell him that she'd never actually been trapped in a tomb before, having only heard horror stories and helped colleagues while standing safely outside.
 
"I'm casting Lumos again. If it kills us, I apologize in advance." Aileen was kidding. Sort of. She waved her wand. As the light illuminated her pale face and Tappy's in front of her, some of the tightness in her chest eased.
 
Aileen swung her arm around, squinting at the bare outlines of the vast room. Or were those columns?
 
"I doubt we're going to be able to go back the way we came in," she murmured, glancing up anyway. Using magic on those slabs seemed too risky, and there was still the matter of the missing student.
 
Aileen took a few steps, lifting her feet up high above the sand as if she were walking through snow, and freezing up when her foot caught on something. She brought her wand closer to the sand, and lifed her leg, finding a broken backpack strap. Aileen held it in her hand for a moment, then handed it to Tapendra with a grave glance.
 
"Look," she said in a hushed voice, pointing at a narrow opening in the wall closest to her.
 
"With any luck, the student passed through here." It was a better possibility than the thought that some kid had been buried underneath the sand.

"Watch your step, what you touch, what spells you cast. This deep in, we're bound to encounter more traps," Aileen warned matter-of-factly. "But there should be another way out. And at least the other professors have an idea of where we are."
 
Myrni could find their mangled bodies in the morning. There were a lot of thoughts she was keeping to herself.
 
She neared the tiny tunnel, holding her lit wand out as far as she could stretch her arm, and glanced back at Tapendra, reaching for his hand. If he wanted to blush about it, so be it, but the only thing scarier than being trapped in a tomb together was being trapped in a tomb alone.

He got to his feet as well, trying - and mostly failing - to get the sand out of his clothes. Crocodiles be damned, he thought; a swim in the Nile would instantly  fix this. The damn stuff was rough and raspy and...uncomfortable.

He nodded to her explanation of the spell, and sort of laughed at her comment; a forced one that sounded more like a cough than a laugh. He was trying to get the sand out of his hair when her wand lit up, leaving him blinking at the bright light.  They didn't die horribly, nor did the walls come down or a dragon turn up or crocodiles swim in, so for the moment it seemed magic wasn't going to kill them (this time). He'd be sure to run if he heard a large low rumble or saw any huge boulders, of course.

Tapendra didn't say anything when the strap got handed to him; his lips simply pressed into a line as he looked at it, turning it over in his hand and trying not to let the panic take control. A few kicks in the sand where she'd found it revealed no sign of a body or the backpack in question. That was a good sign, he hoped. Had the students come this way...well, they were probably till alive. It certainly helped him calm down.

"Watch your step, what you touch, what spells you cast," Aileen said, as they headed towards the opening. Tapendra nodded, realized after a moment she couldn't see him, and said, "Yes'm," as he drew his wand. The light from two wands definetly helped, but they still felt like two tiny candles in a storm of darkness. Or some other poetic nonsense.

When she reached for his hand, he paused, wondering at first what she wanted him to hand her. When it did click, he paused, looked at her blankly for a moment, and look her slender hand in his much larger one with a completely non-embarassed clear of his throat. It...well, it did help. Of course physical contact was a perfectly normal thing and it made total sense that it made him relax - no! Not thinking about it. Ever.

"Yes, well," he said, in an effort to say something. The urge to talk quietly was overwhelming and so his deep voice was only just above a whisper. "What are we looking for, exactly? Any shaft that goes up?" A giant red "Exit" sign? If only they were so lucky...

The walls here and inside the little passage were decorated exquisitely, and likely unseen for eons. He pointed his wand at them as he followed Aileen, trying to read them and only half succeeding, distracted by having to measure his long strides to match her shorter ones.

"Well, where ever we are, and whoever built it, they sure liked birds," he said, as paintings started to go by on the wall he was looking at. This was a nice little thing to note, mostly because it was something that had nothing to do with the awkwardness of the situation. And...yes. Birds were interesting.

Of course, what really chopped through the awkward was their imminent death, so that certainly made him feel rather childish.

"I was hoping for stairs, but any way up would be just lovely," she replied, recognizing the signs that Tapendra felt uncomfortable, and suspecting that the possibility they might suffocate under a heap of sand was not entirely at fault. Though she was oddly reassured by his running commentary and his hand enveloping hers, her sense of calm began to fade with what he said next.

Aileen had been glancing at the brilliant illustrations, but had also been keeping an eye on the sand beneath their feet and the low, claustrophobic ceiling, watching for traps. She paused to study the paintings.

He was right; there were a lot of birds. The same type, in almost every panel they passed, some positioned to watch over the scenes, and others in important, god-like roles. That was not normal. But that was just her luck. If she and Tapendra had stumbled on a potential Cult of the Phoenix tomb, or even a copycat, the traps would be more elaborate, the curses more brutal, all of which she'd already experienced last summer and had no desire to go through again so soon. As interesting as those symbols were... Aileen wrenched her gaze away from the wall paintings and kept moving forward, subconsciously holding Tapendra's hand a little tighter.

A minute or two later, they reached a dead end.

She put her light close to the hieroglyph-covered wall. Aileen stepped back to see the whole area better, noting the grooves in the stone.

"Oh, how kind of them," she muttered dryly. "Several detailed warnings here. If we go any further, we could cause the walls to close in on us. Or..." Aileen shifted the light to the next panel. "The floor to drop out."

She glanced at him, trying to gauge how he was doing. "I'd rather avoid-"

When her wand hovered over a section of the wall, it lit up from within, and just as Aileen turned to look, the wall swung out fast, taking her along with it. She lost her grip on his hand, and almost lost her fingers as the wall slid into place behind her, Tapendra still on the other side.

Cursing under her breath, she thought to raise her wand...

Then ducked with a scream.

The air whistled in her ears and the hairs on her head rustled as something sharp hurtled above her, then swung back. Aileen waited, crouched on the floor. After a few seconds, she cautiously lifted her head and squinted into the darkness.

Tapendra nearly lost his fingers as well, having at first tightened his grip on her hand and then - in the last seconds - having the presence of mind to let go. He still thudded into the wall as the slab thudded shut, his lighted wand dropping to the floor.

"Aileen!" He yelled, fumbling quickly for his wand - grasping the shaft just before the light dimmed to nothing. He took a deep breath - how did you open doors without winding up where she was when it didn't have a bloody handle? And if she didn't get out he was alone and frankly he'd rather she wasn't dead and neither was he-

Of course, her scream put an end to that sort of scattered thinking - cutting through the panic like a knife. The metallic thunk on the wall had not helped.

"Aileen," he said, though it  was unlikely she could hear him. Lips pressed into a line, he stared at the wall, eyes darting to the symbols and writing, reading quickly, his lips moving as he translated. She'd held her wand like this, hadn't she - he thrust the tip of his wand against the plaster, but it didn't light up.

So, they'd thought of that - what hadn't they thought of...?

Well, when you got down to it, this was basically a door, right?

He stepped back, pointing his wand at the wall. "Aperoio!" he said, and then lept forward again as the wall started to rotate - darting to the opening gap, he reached around and grabbed her arm. "Aileen," he said. "You'd better have your head still atached."

Once she was positive the danger had passed, Aileen stood, wand in her hand, legs a bit shaky. Sand stuck to her hair and skin, and the musty weight of the air clung to her lungs with every shallow breath. She raised her wand and pressed her hand to the wall: smooth, unmarked stone. Aileen couldn't hear Tapendra. Silence encased the room.
 
And then the door swung out and she jumped back, sending a panicked glance over her shoulder at the darkness, and grabbing a hold of him just as he grabbed her and said something about her head being attached.
 
"Get down!" She pulled him to the ground, waiting for the telltale creak, the whistle by their ears, the rush of air just over their heads.
 
Seconds passed. Nothing.
 
She glanced up, feeling rather foolish in this life or death situation. Aileen stood again, brushing off her clothes and frowning.

"Don't mind me. I'd decided our clothes weren't dirty enough, apparently," she muttered, focusing on that instead of what could have happened had the trap worked the second time. A headless Tapendra couldn't fight with her, and that was no fun.
 
A frightening thought suddenly entered her mind. She swung her lit wand over the area they stood and moved the sand around with her foot as nonchalantly as possible, looking relieved when she didn't find any beheaded students.
 
"What did you do?" Aileen glanced at the wall, curious if he'd gotten in a different way or if the trap only worked once.

Hm, well, getting slammed to the floor could have been worse; it confirmed she still had her skull attached, at the very least. Even if it meant he had to sit and sneeze for awhile, eventually taking his glasses off as the coughing and sneezing threatened to send them off his face.

"Wha-" Cough. "A-aperio," he said, sniffing as the fit died down and he tried to brush his clothes off. "Apparently they didn't have a door opening spell or something, or they figured you...er...wouldn't have time to use it." That was an unpleasant thought.

"Should we go back to the main chamber?" he asked, as he wiped off his glasses and put them back on. "If that's the burial chamber, it should have the passage they brought the body down attached to it, right?" He was calling on his knowledge of tombs; that is, the very basic layout of  a pyramid, as seen on their tour of the things. And his mother's rantings from 16 years ago.

He didn't wait for a response, though, and got to his feet, pointedly moving out of the range of the moving door.

"I'm thinking we...might not want to use our wands so much," he said. "Seems half the traps are triggered by them." Of course, they'd leave them in the dark, which was kind of  a toss up - and by toss up, he meant they'd keep the damn lights on. Then he made a sound his his throat - a kind of happy sort of "hmm!" and dug into his pockets.

"You didn't see any sort of torch - nevermind, they'd have been a trap anyway, wouldn't they," he said. "We should have brought a torch of some kind..." And as he said that, a bright white light came on in his hands, which he shone around to make sure it was working. Close examination revealed it to be his cell phone with a bright beam of light emitting from the back.

Aileen gave him a mildly concerned look as he coughed and sneezed, resisting any cracks that came to mind about his glasses or issues with the sand. She'd been the one who had thrown him down, after all.
 
"Not a bad idea," she nodded when he suggested heading back to the main chamber with the pillars. The students might have gone back the way they'd come in if they hadn't been able to get past the moving wall. She peered into the dark corridor ahead, reluctantly agreeing that magic seemed to set off the traps easily, especially Lumos. But spells and magic were the first solutions that entered her head when faced with danger.
 
Not Tapendra! He held up the phone like a beacon of hope, and her mouth twitched up despite herself.
 
"Volunteering to lead the way, Tapendra? Unless you trust me with your phone," Aileen raised her eyebrows at him. It was probably better that he keep it, actually. She could just imagine pressing a wrong button and plunging them into darkness at a crucial moment. And who knew how long the phone's light would last - well, Tapendra probably did, but Aileen would keep her wand in hand just in case.
 
A sudden chittering noise echoed against the walls, coming from the tunnel they hadn't explored yet. That decided it! Aileen casted Arperio on the sliding stone, then urged him back into the passage with a whispered "Go!"
 
She ducked in after him. As the door locked into place behind her with a thud, she only hoped that whatever had made that noise couldn't slip through the cracks.

Any quip about her trying to play Angry Birds while leading with the phone died at the sound of chittering; Tapendra didn't need Aileen's whispered command to make a dive back into the passage proper when he heard that. The slab thudded shut, and the sound faded behind it - but didn't fully vanish. Reassuring, but but creepy as all get out.

He looked at Aileen, his expression echoing hers - whatever that was, it had better not be able to get out. And the logic indicated that 'lop your head off' trap was something of a call for it. Flesh-eating...things. Lovely.

Ugh. Moving on (and away)...

He got to his feet, extending a hand to Aileen and looking back the way they'd come. If they were lucky, they hadn't set off any traps because there weren't any - but, of course, they were now set to find out. The paintings seemed pleasant enough (he tried to ignore the one depicting people on fire or in various states of painful death) and the trapped area had distinctly more magical looking writing and paintings. Right. Sure. That was...that made sense.

He hurried down the hall, those rushed thoughts in mind, and sooner than he'd expected the gap in the wall appeared. The light from the phone seemed especially dim here; instead of reflecting off the stone walls it simply beamed out into the darkness. He stepped out into the huge chamber anyway, frowning as he looked around.

Thankfully, he spotted something in the sand and dust on the floor that was actually a good sign.

"Aileen," he said, pointing to show her; shoe marks headed off into the darkness.

Aileen threw the occassional glance behind her as they hurried back through the tunnel, trusting Tapendra's sense of direction and strangely, his phone. When they reached the open chamber, she could no longer hear the chittering through the walls, though that didn't mean the things had given up. They had to keep moving.

She looked at the small, dusty footprints he pointed out, thankful that the students had chosen a different passageway. But her relief was short lived. Caught on the wall, a blue ribbon hung, and Aileen gently tugged it loose, as if afraid to do it harm. She stared at it, face pale, and silently handed it to Tapendra, unable to form words.

They'd counted. They'd checked. There should only be two missing students, not three. And one of them should not be her sister, who had nothing but - well, she should have her cell phone, Aileen thought with a dry sort of hysteria.

"I thought I saw her. With the group up there," Aileen told him in a calm voice, her still expression looking like it would crack any moment. Some of the girls had braided each other's hair last night, and she distinctly remembered Abby picking out blue ribbon.

"Tapendra," she gripped his hand. "We have to find her." Alive. Panic flashed in her eyes. She was ready to run into that dark tunnel with or without the phone if he didn't move quickly.

He'd been half-knelt, getting a look at the footprints - which looked like three, and not the two they'd expected - when Aileen headed past him. Tapendra stood back up, opening his mouth to ask what she was doing, when she turned with the ribbon in hand.

The massive dark hall suddenly seemed a lot smaller, looking at the ribbon. She handed it to him, and he turned it over, threading it between his fingers. It took him a bit to really grasp what it meant; he was still trying to remember who'd been wearing it when he glanced up and saw Aileen's face.

It was strange, watching her as she spoke. He almost didn't process her words. Aileen was usually so stiff and obstinate; the only emotion one got out of her was annoyance. To see her on the verge of panic...was odd. Very odd. He couldn't find anything to say as she spoke, but when she took his hand, he nodded.

"We'll find her," he said. His tone carried a lot more confidence than he actually felt. He squeezed her hand, reassuringly, and pointed his phone at the tracks before hurrying off after them, around the massive pillars. He'd had to restrain the urge to hug her, which had been an  automatic reflex - or so he assured himself.