Motionless, unable to move. Unable to breathe, but not suffocating. Able to see in the gloom but only in one way. Able to listen but everything echoing whenever there was noise. Mouth open, but unable to scream.

A million times over and over. Inanimate, silent, duplicated, time after time, cycle after cycle. Day after day night after night week after week... Here forever, coming back here forever, never truly leaving here forever.

No way out: No way to use it even if there was one. Darkness here until the entrance rumbles open once more and then, a million times and one over and over.

Here forever, coming back here forever, never truly leaving here forever.

And then the way in opened. The rumble of rock on rock echoing, more light filtering into the gloomy room, the echo of footsteps as a cloud of disturbed dust and sand floated past, unable to even irritate his inanimate nose. Not one of them. His unmoving eyes could not look to see the figures entering, for he didn't need to.

And that was when he awoke.

***

Moving but subconsciously wishing he wasn't.  He could breath but he felt like he was suffocating. Not able to see in the pitch black even as his eyes darted around. He could hear but all he heard was his own heart pounding.

Ben wished he knew what caused these nightmares. They were always the same, and they always ended when the entrance opened, but somehow he knew the figures entering that cavern or tomb were him and Greg, his partner-in-archeology.

He managed to smile at that thought. Some people regarded what they planned to do when they got to the dig as a crime. But how could any right-minded explorer ignore this? The legend of the Goddess of Plenty. Her statue, it was said, had been buried here deep in the jungle, a tomb to itself, and empty. Legend had it, that it created gemstones, gold, and a hoard of other treasures. All out of thin air, all filling the tomb until at the End of This Time, her Chosen People would locate the tomb and be granted the eternal riches when reborn in the New Era.

Of course, it was merely a myth. Her followers and her whole religion had long died out, and contemporary thought was the tomb was simply a treasury, that had been sealed away for reasons unknown. Getting into it once found would solve those reasons.

And the ability to perhaps find some wonderful examples of ancient art and jewellery was a bonus.

Maybe it was this hotel, waiting for the last of their equipment to arrive by boat. Hopefully this trip would give them enough money for express air mail in future... Especially since the equipment had been the main reason they had to send it by boat.

***

Eight Days later

Finding it was easy with the equipment they had brought, ironically enough a light aircraft laden with hi-tech equipment. Scouring the jungle below with thermal cameras and other modern sensors had made the pair joke about being closer to James Bond than Indiana Jones, but they had still located a likely site for the Tomb of the Goddess.

Previous explorers here had relied on boats, feet, and the last one to visit recently in search of the tomb had been at the turn of the 21st century, using an old propeller plane. The boys had something that made most spy drones look like webcams with wings. It had been worth it. Without it, they would never have located the likely site. As it was, they found it in four days.

Getting to it wasn't so easy. Logging it on a map could see it lost, so a transponder for a satellite navigation system was carefully dropped down nearby. They would return by Helicopter, rope down, and make a clearing so the pilot could land when he was summoned back to get them away.

What had annoyed Greg though, was the argument a few days before, which he had lost. For the four days since they had been dropped into the jungle near the site, they had cleared the landing pad for their exit.

"But what if the tomb's a bust? We spend days clearing this, and there's nothing there?" he had tried, fearing wasting time on clearing the pad when they could end his fear of that worst-case scenario, namely, an empty tomb and wasted journey.

It wasn't losing that annoyed him. It was the fact he had been so stupid. Empty or not, the clearing had to be made. And even if Ben had understood his impatience to enter the tomb, he still felt angry with himself for being so foolish.

But the clearing had been made, and the boys had ventured towards the site. They had found that the suspected area indeed was a cave, a small man-made hill that held a weathered stone door.

A few hours of careful examining determined there were no ancient booby traps, something far more common than people would think, yet perversely not as common as movies and videogames showed.

"Hey, Ben. Remember the first time we ever went into an ancient site and didn't think there would be traps?" Greg said, soliciting a chuckle from Ben.

"Yeah. The first little rumble of a rock shifting after we got in and we thought we were going to get flattened by a boulder."

"Funny afterwards. But I'm glad we've never met any real traps."

They had in fact encountered numerous traps, but they had been designed to keep contemporary raiders out. The centuries-old systems of blowdarts and scythes had one major flaw when sealed into an old tomb, in that they would decay and rust. The pair had heard of a story of a rival marching into a tomb, and would have been sliced into ribbons had he walked in a few hundred years before. As it was, he was bruised by the blunted rust blade that disintegrated as it smacked into his chest.

Their reminiscing aside, the door was able to slide open with some good old fashioned effort. Well, that and a petrol-generator powered pneumatic winch that slid the heavy boulder aside.

Sunlight entered the cavern properly for the first time in centuries. Dust and sand filtered down, and in the murky depths below, a glimmer of something.

"Well... After you, Greg." Ben joked. They would settle who went in first in the traditional manner.

After their sixtheenth draw at rock-paper-scissors, Greg simply tossed a coin and called Tails. It was heads, so he descended the stairs first, flashlight at the ready.

Ben was right behind him, alert for any dangers. But they did not see any as their lights began to be reflected many times over.

"Holy..." Greg breathed. Ben was speechless.

The Tomb was filled with row after row of treasures. Statuettes of Gold, Icons of Gemstones, carved figurines of Gemstone, Idols of Silver or Platinum.

Every one with an exact duplicate on the opposite side of the tomb. There were many designs, from life-sized, to larger than life, down to trinkets. A dog-headed Obsidian statue resembling Anubis faced its clone. It held a silver platter, upon which Greg's eyes were drawn to  a delicate gem-carved man sat on a pedestal of Ivory, alongside many other tiny trinkets.

"This is... Amazing. So much wealth, and everything duplicated. Like a mirror image." Ben finally spoke, as Greg studied two facing statues, idols of grinning Jaguars.

"Everything in this room is exactly opposite the copy. I'd bet there's barely an inch off for the way they're lined up. Just the way this room is... It's an ancient wonder all by itself."

Ben suddenly had a strange idea, strange for him, as his torch landed on the one thing that only existed once in this room, that wasn't human.

"Maybe... Maybe it's better we leave this place as it is?"

Even stranger, he felt it had been said before.

As Greg seemed to digest his words, Ben realised something.

He could breath but he felt like he was suffocating. He could see, but the black statue his torch was landing on seemed to hungrily eat the light.. He could hear but all he heard was his own heart pounding.

And then Greg nodded, a shadow beside him.

"I suppose that's the Goddess herself." He said, looking at Ben's torchlight.

She was a tall female shape, with many arms, and feathered wings. She stood in a symettrical pose, precisely in the center of the room and arms down with hands raised, as if presenting her treasures. Greg silently estimated that the line of her fingertips would be drawn exactly to the walls of the stairway in.

"Yeah... And I really think we should leave this as it is."

Greg felt the anger rise. He had wanted to enter this place for months, if not years. Months of tracking down a likely area, getting the right equipment, and years of the myths and legends always coming back to him even as they worked on other digs.

He was not leaving this place as it was, he determined there and then.

"I don't. We have to take something back to show this exists."

He reached for a trinket, and Ben stopped him.

"Greg... Please. Trust me, I have a bad feeling about this."

Greg's fury was still there, and his determination. Until he looked at his friend and saw his eyes properly in the gloom.

He withdrew his hand.

"Maybe... Maybe pictures will do for now. This site is a treasure of itself, after all.." He relented.

Ben breathed a sigh of relief that felt strangely like the weight of the world was lifting.

And then they heard the grind of stone on stone. They froze.

Then they chuckled.

"Another rock to run away from?"

The boulder had not magically sealed over, nor had any walls caved in. But the sound was unexplained. Until they moved their torches back.

The Obsidian Statue was now flesh.

"Finally, you two realise the truth behind this place. That this is not yours."

They were frozen as the Goddess spoke. She walked down from her pedestal, and grasped two small golden figurines that had faced each other. She yanked their flashlights away, and thrust one figurine each into their hands. Without their command, the statues raised to their faces.

They stared at themselves, in gold, and in miniature.

"The chosen people will descend to this place at the end of this timeline. When the world will be born anew. Those who are not chosen and never learn they are not chosen are doomed to be born again and make the same mistakes again, and again. And you, boys, are not my chosen people. But you have learned. And you shall learn."

She vanished from before them, the two still paralysed. The Obsidian statue was back. And they were utterly paralysed now. Even their hearts seemed to stop.

Motionless, unable to move. Unable to breathe, but not suffocating. Able to see in the gloom but only in one way. Able to listen but everything echoing whenever there was noise. Mouth open, but unable to scream. They felt slight movement from their hands, unwilling. The figurines slid from their grasps, and vanished.

And as the idols that had resembled them vanished, they remembered.

A million times over and over. Inanimate, silent, duplicated, time after time, cycle after cycle. Day after day night after night week after week... Here forever, coming back here forever, never truly leaving here forever until now when they were finally "reborn" anew at the end of the loop, even as they knew with horror this was the first of many "rebirths".

And on it went. As a past life was revisited, a past life as an eternity as an inanimate trinket, the respective icon of that life vanished.

It felt like a million years every single lifetime they looped. It felt like a million lifetimes of a million years.

In fact, the whole process of the vanishing trinkets took less than ten minutes. Ten minutes to empty the tombs and fill their memories with a million nightmare pasts.

And then it was over after an eternity for them. They gasped for air, collapsing to the floor in the empty tomb. It took a further ten minutes for them to recover, exhausted somehow from their paralysis.

It was Ben who sat up first, mouth dry and eyes heavy. He looked around.

The Goddess was all there was, bar him and Greg. The Goddess was all there ever was here, bar him and Greg. They just hadn't known it the last million times.

But the pair knew now, and knew three more things.

First, no one would ever believe their tale. They themselves were subconsciously defending their minds from trauma by starting to think it a hallucination or nightmare.

And second, it was the original worst-case scenario. The tomb was now empty.

The Goddess now held two small nuggets of gold in her palms. Ben and Greg stood shakily, and carefully looked at them.

A million lifetimes ago, each of them taking this nugget as a consolation prize had led to their transformation into gold, the nuggets melting, spreading across them, and then shrinking them to trinkets. Then touching the new trinkets the next lifetime had led to simply transmuting on the spot into tiny gemstones, shrinking down and then being magically carved into the right shapes, and so on.

They knew a third new thing now. That they could refill the tomb with themselves, just by touching those nuggets again.

But they now did not know many things, and this lack of knowledge was a true worst-case scenario.

The two of them did not know if they could resist. They did not know if the Goddess was taunting them. They did not know if it had all been real. They did not have any way to know if they would make the right choice but to risk learning the answers to that which they did not know.

It was a dilemma that could last an eternity. In more ways than one.