(The story of Legend is essentially a reboot of the franchise and makes no references to any prior games)
When Lara Croft was just nine years old, the plane carrying her and her mother crashed into the Himalayas leaving them as the only survivors. After taking shelter in the ruins of an ancient temple, Lara discovers an ornate stone dais holding a sword. Unwittingly activating the ancient artefact, Lara watches in horror as her mother vanishes in front of her eyes.
Years later, Lara travels to the ancient civilization of Tiwanaku in Bolivia, searching for a similar stone dais. However she is not alone as she soon runs into James Rutland and his mercenaries on the edge of Lake Titikaka, where the dais is situated. Old memories are brought back to haunt Lara as Rutland implies that her deceased friend Amanda Evert is still alive.
Lara meets up with university friend Anaya Imanu outside the tomb in Paraíso, where a tragedy befell Lara and her friends many years ago, leaving her as the only survivor. She returns to the tomb and a flashback reveals the events leading up to Amanda's "death". While as a student on an excavation of tomb similar to the one in Bolivia a demon was released and killed most of the team. In their dash to escape the cave fills with water and Amanda is left behind. Then in the Present Lara discovers that her old friend had escaped and the legend of Tiwanaku's Queen who rose to power after meeting a shaman and staff weapon (and was shortly brought to paradise by a woman in a lake). The tomb of the Queen of Tiwanaku is linked to Bolivia and also the incident in Nepal when she was a child (as well as the Arthurian Legend). To her surprise she realises that the artefact she is hunting has already been discovered, and is in the 'care' of Yakuza boss Shogo Takamoto.
Lara's journey takes her to Japan, where she meets with the murderous Takamoto and demands a stolen sword fragment from him. He refuses and retreats to his penthouse, leaving Lara to deal with his cronies. She wipes them out and follows Takamoto to the roof of his penthouse, where she witnesses for herself its terrifying power. Nonetheless, she manages to overcome Takamoto and retrieve the second artefact.
She leaves for Ghana to chase Rutland. He too possesses a sword fragment and he tells her about something called the Ghalali Key, believing Lara to own it. Lara has no idea what he is talking about and this frustrates him and he saves her. She beats him and takes his sword fragment.
Lara now chases Amanda, who attacked her manor whilst she was in Ghana. She traces her to a Soviet lab in Kazakhstan that performed experiments on a sword fragment that led to their peril fifty years ago. Lara catches up with Amanda, who is clearly still angry with Lara about being left behind in Paraíso. Amanda now controls, to Lara's horror, the demon which killed their friends in Paraíso. She fights it off and recovers the sword fragment from the machinery.
Surprisingly, Lara's adventure brings her home to England, where she discovers the real King Arthur's tomb in Cornwall hidden under a corny King Arthur tourist attraction, along with the fourth and final sword fragment.She realises that Arthur and his knights brought the fragments of Excalibur to locations across the world influencing the destinies of various civilizations .After battling a sea creature hundreds of feet underground, Lara returns home to try and figure out how to put the sword back together. Lara realises that the previously unknown Ghalali Key was in fact a pendant that was given to her mother by her father and also the one that her mother took to the Himalayas with her.
Lara is thus forced to return to her past once again, as she tracks the plane wreck she was on and recovers the key before the plane falls off the cliff. She then returns to the temple where her mother lost her life and there she reassembles the sword, Excalibur, and uses its awesome power to escape.
Lara returns to the stone dais of Bolivia and within moments has cut through Rutland's remaining mercenaries and Rutland himself. Furious, Amanda releases her demon once again and merges with it. With the help of the sword, Lara defeats the creature once and for all. Then she approaches the dais...
At last, Lara understands how her mother died, as she looks into the mirror of light and sees her mother. Lara realises that the mirror spans time and what she is seeing is her mother just moments before she was killed by the artefact. Her mother tells Lara (apparently not recognising her) to leave her daughter alone and that she "meant no harm". Amanda wakes up and tells Lara to pull out the sword otherwise the dais she stands on will explode. Believing that Amanda's advice was meant for her, Lara's mother pulls out the sword, the same as she did all those years ago and Lara runs from the dais just before it blows up. Furious, Lara shoots her gun at Amanda, accusing her of killing her mother, but Amanda tells Lara that she is not dead but has gone to Avalon. Lara knocks Amanda out, saying that she will allow her to live, despite what she has done. Lara then makes arrangements to make her finds known worldwide.
.........BACK TO TOMB RAIDER 7
