"What a wonderful place to celebrate our wedding anniversary!" Alex scoffed and remarked sarcastically, as we looked around in the empty cavern that formed the Royal Tomb of the Sun Pyramid.
I laughed a little, ignored Alex's snide remark, and looked around the massive tomb. I needed to find some encryptions or code that I could decipher to open the portal, but no matter how hard I tried, I saw nothing but a plain and cold empty tomb that once housed the mummified Teotihuacan King.
"It must be here, but I can't see anything!" I shouted out in frustration.
"What exactly are we looking for?" Alex asked.
"Inscriptions or something. Something like this image" I said. I took up my phone and showed Alex the picture I had of Martin Al-sham's tattoo, which I took, when I was in Jerusalem.
Alex shook his head and replied. "It's definitely not here. If it were, we would see it, the tattoo ink on the hologram is luminescent, and I see nothing glowing in here."
I felt devastated. The portal had to be here, and besides, we had the villain Pierre Beaumont and his accomplices coming after us. "So, what do I do?" I shouted out in panic.
"Why don't you try your magical Zeto Crystal?" Alex suggested.
I realised that it was my only option. I closed my eyes and clutched the Zeto Crystal to my chest. Suddenly, it gave me a flashback in a vision. It showed an image of what the dark room had looked like, centuries ago, before lava had flowed in to form tubes and destroyed the subterranean parts of the pyramid. I could clearly see the inscriptions on the wall. "True Maker, please reveal the code of the ancient Zetan civilisation", I thought. When I opened my eyes, the dark room had suddenly transformed to the way it originally was, a beautiful and undamaged majestic royal palace filled with golden walls and gemstones!
"Wow!! I don't believe it!" Alex exclaimed, and I could only agree. What a beautiful sight it was. I had seen the Zeto Crystal perform miracles, but this was the biggest one yet.
Suddenly I could hear a muffled gunshot and a loud thump. The door opened, and Pierre Beaumont entered the Royal Tomb, accompanied by a group of four armed agents. "Impressive! I love what you did to this room!" Pierre said with his villainous Swiss-French accent.
"Why did you shoot our guide, Javier?" I asked angrily.
"Javier? Oh, you mean your bugger of a guide. Well, we cannot leave any witnesses. It matters little if we eliminate tiny specks of dust. By tomorrow this country will descend into chaos and civil war," Pierre responded with his thick Swiss accent.
"So, are you starting a civil war in Mexico just because I am here?" I asked.
Pierre shook his head and spoke to me with a mocking voice. "Don't be ridiculous, little girl. The war in Mexico happens because the Mexican government refused to pay what they owe us. We cannot have that, nations must fear us."
"But they won't be able to pay you back, if the country is ruined by war," I replied.
"What an idiot, how could we have lost so much money to this clueless woman," Pierre muttered to himself and then spoke to me: "The money doesn't matter. Money is just an artificial symbol to signify power. When war occurs, it causes creative destruction and pushes humanity to do better. Human progress is not caused by peaceful altruistic people, economic developments are caused by greedy and power-hungry people, such as I."
"But why would you choose to make money from funding wars and destruction, yet you said there was no money to be made from cleaning up the oceans to save the world," I remarked.
"When there is a major war, like the coming civil war in Mexico, every major nation will get involved one way or the other. They'll buy and develop weapons, which we do. To make weapons, you must mine ore and be ready to do some damage to the planet, which we are. Once the war is over, there will be a rebuilding effort, which we will finance with money for the world to keep developing. Every step of warfare is benefitting the World Bank and its benefactors, and thus, we will continue to support them." Pierre Beaumont explained.
"So why are you coming after me? Cleaning up the oceans doesn't interest you, but it doesn't harm you either. Why are you pursuing us on our private mission?" I asked.
"We didn't come after you. You came after us. Did you really think we would let you beat us in our own game, and take our money doing shady online trades?" Pierre replied.
"And what about the monocles you wear? What is up with that?" I asked.
"Oh, you mean this one?" Pierre said, tapped his monocle lightly on its side of the rim and took it off effortlessly. "We found a few of these monocles many years ago. They are amazing out-of-the-world technology, which we believe is of alien origin. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to reverse-engineer them, so we couldn't make them ourselves." Pierre disclosed.
I looked at Pierre's face. His right eye, that had been covered by the monocle, was glowing in a purple voracious luminous glow. It reminded me of the eye colour of Rangda, my ultimate enemy that destroyed the entire Milky Way Galaxy, which forced me to be born during this epoch to change the destiny of humanity. I decided to tackle the issue head-on. "How is Rangda these days? I take it, you must be one of her worshippers?" I asked mockingly.
Pierre shrugged his shoulders and replied. "I am afraid I cannot answer that question. There were nine of us, and you caused the deaths of Ben Yehuda, Szymon Yehuda and Sandra Santiago. Ask Martin Al-Sham when you see him in the afterlife!"
Pierre was interrupted when one of his accomplices addressed him: "Pierre, we need to wrap this up, Mexico will descend into chaos within hours." Pierre nodded, turned towards me and said, "While I enjoyed talking to you, I am afraid our time is running out. Give us your magical artefact, the Zeto Crystal, or I'll kill your husband!" Pierre said with a menacing grin and aimed his pistol at Alex.