Although the oasis hadn't seemed that large from the outside, once they were inside the thick barrier of trees, it became clear to them all that it was in fact enormous. The palm trees grew to seemingly impossible heights and the tall grass that carpeted the ground was up to their chests at least. With Rick in the lead, the four slowly made their way toward the sound of running water. They had all agreed that was the most likely location, and at the very least it would give them somewhere to cool off just a bit.

As they traveled through the brush, Bianca was struck with an odd thought. From what little she understood of life in the desert, she did know that an oasis should be a bastion of all kinds of life, but other than the sound of the water source, she couldn't hear any other signs of movement. No birds called to each other from the treetops, and only their party's movement rustled the branches. What it meant, she wasn't sure, but it sent a chill down her spine none the less.

Once again, the strangeness of their situation was thrown in her face. A week ago she would have laughed off the thought of traipsing across the desert in an old army vehicle and then crawling through a virtual jungle, following a strange American who seemed to be armed to the teeth every moment of his life. At least she would have something interesting to put in her next letter back home.

"Alright, this is it," Rick shouted over his shoulder from his place at the front of their train.

"Oh thank God," Bianca muttered and tried walking just a bit faster, eager to get out of the weeds. It had been a nightmare getting through the trees without being able to see the ground she was walking on.

The sight that she was met with when she finally escaped the tangle of grass and vines took her breath away. It was the kinds of things that you only ever heard about in children's stories with its sparkling blue water gurgling and lapping at the shore. The sand on the edges was such a pure white, at first glance, Bianca could have sworn that she was looking at snow. Lotus flowers covered the majority of the surface, their pink petals waved slightly in the breeze that flowed past.

"This is more like it! I don't suppose we could just stay here until this whole thing blows over? It could be like a little vacation after all the time we spent in that damned car." Jonathan said as he spun around to appreciate the view.

"Set up a few hammocks and this place could be a regular resort," Bianca said. She took a few steps towards the edge of the water, enjoying the feeling of the cool air and the sand beneath her shoes. "At least we know this is the right place. This is definitely the lotus oasis or whatever the clue called it."

A wave rippled through the pond, making the flowers bob up and down as if in agreement with her.

Out of the corner of her eye she watched as Rick threw down his pack onto the sand and started rifling through it, no doubt looking for one of his many weapons. It seemed that the O'Connell family didn't believe in being over-prepared.

"Yes, it's clearly the right place, but I don't see anything that would indicate that the next clue is nearby. And we still don't understand the rest of the last one." Evy murmured, mostly to herself as she started walking around the perimeter of the clearing.

Bianca slowly made her way closer to the water stopped just at the edge. Now that she was closer she could see that it was only about half a foot deep where she was standing. It was unbelievably clear, almost as if it was made of glass. The chatter of the others seemed to fade away as she inched closer, peering at something on the floor of the shallow water.

Through one of the rare patches where the plant life hadn't dominated the surface, she could see something embedded in the floor. From where she was, she could see that it was some kind of stone, square, large and flat, and bore markings that she recognized as hieroglyphics.

'What on earth?' Bianca thought as she carefully stepped into the shallow water. With a careful hand, she used her cane to sweep away a few of the closest flowers. A glance told her that beneath them were the same stones with more strange markings. The entire floor of the spring had been tiled in them.

"Did you find anything?"

Bianca turned slightly and yelled back at Evy, "I'm not sure. There's something on the bottom here, but I don't know what."

She tapped her cane lightly on the closest stone, noting that it seemed firmly embedded in the sand below it. After pulling her pant legs up enough that they wouldn't touch the water, Bianca took a step forward to see if she could get a better look. It was a shock to everyone in the vicinity when her limb didn't stop when it reached the floor of the pool.

The shriek that she let out was unearthly. Her arms pinwheeled as she fought not to topple over into the water. It was only when a pair of arms wrapped around her middle and dragged her back so that she landed mainly in the warm sand that she allowed herself to breathe.

"Someone tell me what just happened right now." She had meant for her voice to be stern, but it had come out winded and weak.

Evy was already investigating the water, from a safe distance on the edge, and was looking down to where Bianca had stepped with intense interest. "Come over and look at this, Rick! I don't think I can even see the bottom. Grab a stick or something, would you dear?"

Bianca could hear the man huffing under his breath, but he answered his wife's call none the less. Still stranded in the sand, she watched as the couple discussed the find in lowered voices and she tried her best not to feel left out of the loop.

"Need some help there, Bibi?"

She leaned back slightly so that she could face the man speaking to her. The cheeky smile that was displayed on his face would have made her want to smack it right off of him a few weeks ago, but all she could muster at the moment was a small nod and a look of appreciation. Her hand clasped in his soundly as he hauled her to her unsteady feet. She even took his offered elbow with minimal fuss as the two of them walked over to the couple.

"So, what's the verdict, mum? Some kind of ancient death trap? Do we have to cartwheel through the water while singing hymns? Or is it more complicated than that?"

Evy rolled her eyes at her brother's words. "Honestly, you would think that all I do is force you into doing dangerous stunts." She ignored his snort and didn't fail to notice that Bianca elbowed him in the stomach gently to stop his retort. "It's really just a simple puzzle. All of the tiles have a symbol on them, right? So, all we need to do is find the pattern that lets us across without the tiles giving way."

"And do we have any idea what that pattern might be?" Rick asked.

Evelyn faltered for a second, "Well, no. But I'm sure that we can figure it out if we just think about it for a second."

Bianca hmmed in agreement. "Well while you're doing that would you be a dear and see if my cane hasn't been sucked into the depths of the abyss or where ever that pit leads to?"

It was Jonathan's turn to nudge and remind the woman on his arm to be nice to the only two people in the desert who had any hope of getting them out of the whole thing alive. The look that Bianca shot him said that she had every right to be a little miffed about the situation and it would be better for everyone involved if he simply dropped it.

While the two were having their silent conversation, Evy was busy sweeping away at the flowers and revealing the extent of the tiling. Each one was only about one and a half square feet, just enough to hold one person if they were careful enough. "Do you remember what the tile you stepped on was inscribed with? Obviously, that wasn't the answer to the riddle."

"Something like a circle with some lines through it?"

She nodded and looked back to the water. The hole that Bianca had uncovered really was impressive to look at, although it would probably be a bit more if it hadn't nearly drowned someone a minute ago. All of the tiles so far only had a single letter on them and although they were clearly thousands of years old, they were cleanly cut and not worn at all by the water.

"You're sure you don't know what the clue was talking about with the sight?" Her husband asked.

She huffed a bit before turning back to the shore and gathering up Bianca's cane. The woman nodded in thanks and quickly detached herself from Jonathan in favor of standing on her own. "There are hundreds of versions of each myth, maybe even more. If we were back in Cairo and I had my library, maybe I could find that specific one, but right now all we have is my memory to go off of and I have nothing."

"That's all we've needed before, I don't see how this could be any different!" her brother exclaimed as he walked over and took a look for himself. "So we know it's not the circle line one. There are only so many it could be. How about good old squiggly line with a loop?"

Before any of the others could stop him, the man was stepping clear onto the tile without a care in the world. Bianca cried out as she scrambled to grab him when the inevitable fall came. It took them all a second to realize that it wasn't happening.

'My word, how did you know? Evy gasped as she clutched her heart. It felt like it was about to burst.

He grinned and winked at the rest of the party, "I may not have to famous Evy smarts, but I know enough to get by." Seeing that they were not really buying it, he added, "This one has a bit of a chip in the corner. I figured that must mean something."

Jonathan really didn't expect the rather angry reaction his explanation garnered him, although he may have deserved it at least a bit. His sister paled to nearly a deathly level and Rick simply closed his eyes and turned his head up to the sky as if asking God what he had done to deserve anything like this. Bianca looked very close to homicide.

Deciding to ignore them, he asked "So, any clue what the next one would be? I'm getting water all in my shoes and it's really not the most comfortable thing in the world."

Having apparently shaken off her shock, Evy was quick to have an answer, "Well, the hieroglyphic that you oh so aptly described as a squiggly roughly corresponds with the letter O in our alphabet. So, it would have to be a phrase that begins with O." She paused for a moment. "That really didn't help at all."

"It's more than we had a few seconds ago." Rick supplied as he went back to redying himself. Whenever they seemed closer to solving a clue, he knew that trouble was soon to follow and he would be prepared for whatever it was.

Meanwhile, Bianca was deep in thought. She could have sworn that something about this was very familiar and it was tugging at the back of her mind. 'Lotus flowers? Why is that suddenly ringing a bell?' She could hear Louis's voice saying those very words but for the life of her, she couldn't remember what he had been talking about. 'Some kind of story. One I had heard before but this was different. It was new.'

It struck her like lightning and she was speaking before she could even think about what she was saying, "Osiris! That's it!" The rest of them looked at her, surprised by her outburst. She rambled on, "I heard it years ago but in one version of the myth of Osiris after he was put back together he grew some lotus flowers and used them as his eyes! Or the flowers were his eyes? It was something like that I swear."

Evy was quiet for a moment while she thought it over, "The lotus is usually connected to rebirth and that particular god. I don't see why it wouldn't work."

"A regular genius, really!" Jonathan said as he quickly went about looking for the next letter. "Should be some kind of line with two dots on them, right?"

His sister blinked in shock, "Why, yes."

"Oh, don't look at me like that, Evy."

The two women held their breath as he stretched out and stepped on the next symbol, slowly lowering his full weight on it until he was sure that it wasn't going to give way. By the time he was completely on it, Evy had jumped up and down and grabbed Bianca in a half-hug in excitement.

From there on it was a simple task of Jonathan clearing away to flowers as best he could and trying his best to remember the little knowledge of hieroglyphics he had retained. Evy had to help him more than once, much to both of their dismay.

"And…S," Jonathan said as he leaped from his current square onto the final one, splashing water up on his now soaked pant legs in the process. He paused and looked around, "So, what now?"

They didn't have to wait long to see what the next step would be. From somewhere below the surface of the water, bubbles began to float to the surface, pushing away the plants and creating small waves that reached the shore. A stone pillar, the same size as the tiles began to rise up until it was nearly the height of his knee.

With a quick glance back to the others for a clue what to do, Jonathan knelt down to look at what had just popped up.

"Looks like some kind of cube? A bit like the key from Hamunaptra actually."

"Well, grab it before it goes back under!" Bianca said.

Without waiting for confirmation from the others, the man swiped up the small box, shaken for a moment at just how heavy the thing was, and slipped it into his pocket. He spun around to make his way back to shore.

The fact that the entire oasis began to shake stopped him for a few seconds.

"Oh, good lord. What was that?" Bianca hissed.

The four of them stood stock-still for a good five seconds before the three who actually knew what they were doing leaped into action. Rick tossed a pistol to his wife who quickly stuffed it in her waistband as she hurried to gather up her bag. Jonathan hopped back to the shore as quickly as he could, collapsing a line of tiles behind him and scrambling to not fall into the depth with them.

Bianca was frozen in place. She watched as the water of the oasis began to bubble up like it was boiling and she saw as the liquid rose up to form a shape. Twisting and turning as if molded by invisible hands, it came together then split apart again until it became something halfway recognizable. It wasn't until the translucent lion roared a deafening roar directly at her that she was broken from her trance and she stumbled backward.

Handfuls of lotus flowers and vines had been sucked in as the creature formed and now floated aimlessly within its terrifyingly large body. It would have been beautiful if it hadn't been in the middle of roaring menacingly in their direction. Easily the size of an automobile, the lion took a few prowling low steps towards the stunned party.

Shots rang out from Rick's direction and small splashes of impact could be seen on the water's surface, but they did nothing to slow the creature. Seeing that the bullets hadn't done any good, Rick holstered the weapon and shouted, "Run!" at the others before following his own advice.

Bianca stumbled on the sand as she made a desperate sprint for the tree line as quickly as she was able. Ahead of her, she could see Evelyn disappear into the brush and dart off to the left, seemingly trying to throw the creature off her scent.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she fought against the terrain, the sound of heavy sloshing steps on the sand ringing through her ears. One misstep sent her falling to her hands and knees, spitting curses all the while.

She glanced around fearfully for the men, but neither of them was anywhere to be seen. Turning her head slowly, she found herself staring back at the advancing creature and completely alone.


AN: I know it's been literally 7 years, and maybe it will take another decade, but I would like to finish this at some point before I die. Thank you so much for reading.