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The stone's scream reaches an unbearable pitch, and then the artifact erupts. Arcs of intense red light and energy leap from it like electricity from a Van de Graaff generator. The red lightning bolts leap up toward the ceiling, then cascade down on those below.

The light rips into the soldiers, and they collapse as one, screaming in agony. Their skin sizzles and then melts, their eyes and hair erupting in gusts of flame. Their deathly screams meld with the angry shriek of the stone.

A sudden gust of heat buffets you on the platform as the fire spreads and consumers the soldiers, filling the cavern with the stench of burning flesh. Then the screams subside as life flees from the men, their liquefying bodies slopping to the ground in red-brown pools of melted matter.

And then everything stops. The burning rage the stone brought out of you subsides into nothing, the stone stops screaming, and the jets of energy fade away. Once more, the stone is dead and inert. Absolute silence shrouds the cavern.

And then the silence ends, replaced by something else. The ground begins trembling beneath your feet, and cracks start to open in the ceiling. The walls shake. One of the vivid blue stalactites comes crashing down, and the blue energy veins in the walls and floor start to waver, flickering on and off erratically.

"The mountain!" yells Zhu. "It's coming down! Follow me!" He dashes down the platforms and past the mangled remains of the Nazi soldiers, and you are hot on his heels. As he races through the archway and into the tunnel, you are just paces behind.

And then the tunnel roof falls in, blocking your exit and burying Jian Zhu under several tons of Himalayan rock.

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