With a clang that reverberated throughout the processing room, Robin collided with a large processor and left a sizable dent in the side. He dropped twenty feet onto the intake tubes and laid there, motionless.
“Ow!” he moaned in agony. Slowly he pushed himself up onto all fours.
Hearing a howl, he looked up and saw the woman kicking toward him, her foot outstretched for the strike. He ducked, and she sailed over him, leaving another large dent in the processor frame. He spun around to face her again and dodged another kick to his head. Then he ducked as her raised leg hooked toward his head. She nailed him with a roundhouse from the same leg.
She grabbed him, spun around, and threw him against the processor, putting a third large dent in it. He started to take a step forward but was met by a powerful side kick to his gut. Crossing his arms, he blocked two follow-up punches. But she nailed him in the gut again.
He slipped behind her and tried to lock her arms. Instead, she grabbed him, in one fluid motion she ran up the processor, and threw him over her shoulder.
Robin twisted in midair as his wings released, and he flew up to the catwalk to find her waiting for him.
Before he could move out of the way, she leaped onto his back. Grabbing both wings, she twisted him around and sent him hurtling hard to the floor. Still on his back, she drove her knee against the joint of his wing. With a quick jerk of her hands, his wing broke with a snap.
She rolled off to face him as he climbed to his feet. His wings retracting.
“I have to say…” she started, walking forward and throwing a punch that Robin barely managed to block. The next one connected with his cheek. Then she boxed his ears hard enough that he heard it inside his helmet.
Before he could collapse, she gripped him by the throat with one hand.
“The last Dragon Knight I killed put up more of a fight,” she finished, sounding disappointed.
Robin’s eyes opened wide with terror. “Yo-you c-can’t be,” he stuttered through the force of her grip.
She laughed.
“The Black Dragon…” he said, the color draining from his face.
“And if you’re the best the new knights have,” she continued, adding her other hand to his thigh and lifting him high over her head, “I have nothing to worry about.”
Chapter 24
Not Meant to Survive
Before Robin could reply, the Black Dragon slammed him down, back first, over her bent knee. He cried out in agony as he heard and felt something give a loud crunch.
He rolled to the floor with a moan. Pushing his chest off the ground, he looked up at her. Like the predator she was, she was circling her prey.
Suddenly there was cry from behind her. Whipping around, she blocked the pipe Hannah was thrusting at her. With her other hand, she seized Hannah by the throat.
“No!” Freya cried, as the Black Dragon lifted Hannah off her feet. “Let her go, please!” she begged.
After glancing at Freya, the Black Dragon grinned up at Hannah, as she gripped her wrist as she struggled the breath. “I can’t allow dissent among my slaves,” she said. She twisted her wrist. A loud snap followed, and Hannah went still hands dropping tp her side.
“No!” Freya screamed.
Letting Hannah’s body crumple at her feet, the Black Dragon turned back to Robin. He was on his back, pointing his bow at her, string drawn back, arrow in place. And he fired.
Twisting, she dodged the shot. But Robin hit what he was aiming at. The alcove of crystals behind her exploded.
The force of the explosion knocked everyone to the floor. The Black Dragon was flung through the air and came down on the other side of the room. Portions of the ceiling crumbled down around her. When the smoke cleared, there was a gaping hole in the earth where the alcove used to be.
“Let’s get out of here!” Tekmet yelled, picking Kylie up and rushing for the hole.
“Robin, come on!” Freya urged.
“I can’t move my legs!” he called back. He struggled to pull himself along the floor with his arms. His useless legs dragged behind him.
Returning, Freya and Tekmet each grabbed him by the wrists and dragged him across the floor into the gaping maw in the wall. Before the Black Dragon could follow them, a rumbling swirled above them. Part of the ceiling collapsed, sealing them off from their enemies.
When the dust settled and the rumbling stopped, with effort Robin turned over on his back, eyeing the wall of rock that separated them from Balwin and the Black Dragon. In one corner Tekmet held Kylie, who was crying for her mother.
“No wonder the other knight booked it,” Robin muttered. His armor retracted.
“What’s happening?” Freya asked, watching it withdraw into his bracelet.
“Took too much damage. It’s repairing itself. Won’t be able to use it for a while.”
Robin moaned in pain.
“Let me have a look,” Freya said. She gently turned him over to assess how badly he had been hurt.
First, Freya gently ran her fingers along his spine. She pulled back when she touched an indentation at the base of his spine and he barked in pain.
She shifted to speak in his ear. “Robin, your back is broken. If it doesn’t heal right, if we don’t get you proper medical treatment, you may never walk again.”
Dread sank deeply into Robin’s center.
“Freya,” Tekmet said, his voice cutting into Robin’s despair. “You have to.”
“Have to what?” Robin asked, trying to look at them.
“Tekmet…” Freya objected.
“Have to what?” Robin asked again.
“Freya, do you really think you’re in danger of being discovered now?” Tekmet demanded. “They probably think we’re dead.”
“Have to what?” Robin loudly demanded.
Freya finally said, “Robin, whatever you do, don’t move. I’ve never done this before.”
“Never done what?” he asked, trying to look over his shoulder at her, but Tekmet, who was still holding Kylie, kept him in place with pressure on his shoulders.
For a few seconds, Robin heard nothing but silence. “Would one of you just… Arghh!” He screamed in pain as he heard and felt a large scrape and pop in his back.
Pushing he whipped around glaring at Freya. “What the heck…?”
He froze when he noticed that his legs had moved. One knee bent close to him.
“How?’ he asked in wonder. He moved his legs around experimentally before rolling onto his feet.
His hand went to the small of his back. The lump was gone. His spine felt strong and intact.
Slowly he looked at Freya. “That boy’s leg was broken?” he asked.
After a second, she nodded.
“You healed it like you just did with me?”
She nodded again.
“You can use magic?” he asked, eyes opening wide.
Again she nodded.
“Dang… You really do have a healer’s touch. How… how were you able to keep that hidden?” he demanded.
“Very carefully,” Tekmet answered, climbing to his feet. “Otherwise, she also would have been fitted for a clerical collar. The collar would have disabled her magic.”
“It’s the reason it hurts the injured or sick person so much when I heal,” Freya said, standing. “They become too suspicious when I set a bone without screams of pain.”
“I can understand that,” Robin said, looking around.
So now what do we do?” Freya asked.
“Well, we can either stay here in our grave,” Robin said, looking at her, “or dig our way out.”
Working in shifts, they dug higher and higher up. As they made progress, they created small ledges to stand on as they continued to dig. While one or two people worked, the others slept, ate, and drank what food and water they had left. Kylie often sat in a corner of the ledge, stacking the smaller rocks into towers, knocking them over, and starting the process again.
“How long do you thin
k we’ve been working?” Robin in his repaired armor eventually asked, looking at Freya as the plasma sabers he had been using to dig reattached to his hips.
Slinging Tekmet’s drill across her back, Freya shrugged. “Maybe a day, maybe two,” she said, wiping sweat from her brow.
“And how much food and water is left?”
“For them, maybe a day and half,” Freya answered, looking at Kylie and Tekmet.
“And how far do you think we’ve dug?” Robin asked, gripping the rock he had been leaning against to look down at the hole beneath them. It seemed like they had climbed pretty far up.
“Somewhere between two hundred and a thousand feet,” she answered, also looking down. “I haven’t really been keeping track. Found it depressing.” She shrugged.
Nodding, Robin looked at the others on the ledge. “Come on. We can handle it. Let’s try to get an extra shift in.” A plasma saber dropped into his hand.
The pair worked until the others woke. Then, at Tekmet’s insistence, Robin and Freya rested on the small ledge while the Anubis took their shift.
A couple hours later Robin woke with a jerk as he heard Tekmet calling their names. “Robin! Freya!”
Rubbing his eyes, (with a sound of scrapping metal on metal. Reminding him he was in his rmor) he saw that Tekmet was pointing up. “I think we’re near the surface!” he called with excitement. “These look like plant roots!”
They quickly climbed up to the next ledge to look for themselves. Robin’s spirits lifted when he noticed the thick corded roots embedded in the dirt. He ran his armored fingers over them.
As Robin examined the roots, one twitched in his fingers. A series of strange readouts passed over his holoscreen.
“Uh, I don’t think these are roots!” Robin yelled. He scrambled back as the root-like creature moved though the dirt in front of them.
Plasma saber in hand, Robin eyed the dirt and rock walls around them.
“What is it?” Kylie gasped.
Before Robin could answer, the creature burst through the wall next to her with a high-pitched screech. Its pointed head opened wide, revealing a gaping maw with rows of deadly teeth and three toothed tongues waving through the air.
Robin twisted around, aimed, and fired. The creature’s head exploded like a balloon, splattering them all with body fluids and gore.
Before he could celebrate or think of what to do next, a series of screeches reverberated through the air.
“Sounds like it has friends,” Robin muttered, and his other plasma saber shot into his free hand.
“You’re the only one with weapons,” Freya said, covering Kylie. Robin and Tekmet stood back to back.
Without warning, another creature burst from the wall and soared through the air, jaws wide open. As it sailed for Tekmet’s head, Kylie screamed.
Turning, Tekmet blasted it with the drill. Another creature burst through the wall at his side, and its jaws latched onto the drill. The force of the impact knocked the tool from Tekmet’s hand.
Leaping forward, arms outstretched, Freya tried to catch it, but it slipped out of sight into the darkness.
When another monster launched from the wall, Robin raised his arm to block the attack to his face. Its jaws locked around his forearm instead.
“Hey, get your meal somewhere else!” Robin barked. Pointing his other plasma saber, he blasted the bottom half of the creature.
As it stopped flapping, two more burst from the dirt, aimed directly at Freya and Kylie. Freya pushed Kylie down, covering her as the creatures slammed into the rock where they had been standing.
Stunned, the creatures dropped to the ground. Before they could recover, Freya grabbed a big rock and lifted it over her head. She brought it down hard on their heads, flattening them.
“How many more do you think there are?” Freya asked, looking around.
Another monster burst out of the wall in front of Robin. He caught it in midflight. For a second it squirmed in his grasp. Then Robin squeezed it hard, and it burst.
Breathing hard, Robin shaking the gore off his hand looked between Tekmet, who was against one wall, also breathing hard, and Freya, who was trying to comfort a terrified Kylie.
Robin knelt at the side of the ledge, looking down into the abyss.
“What now?” Freya asked. He looked over his shoulder at her as she continued. “I mean, those creatures must mean that we are near the surface?”
“Or we could still have hundreds of feet left to go,” he murmured.
“Robin—” Tekmet started.
“My bullheadedness nearly got us all killed,” Robin said. He stood and turned to face them. “First by the Black Dragon and now by those things!”
“Hey, you fought the Black Dragon and survived!” Tekmet said, stepping forward.
“Only because she wanted to toy with me!” Robin snapped.
Tekmet stepped back at the force of Robin’s voice.
“She could have killed me at any time during that fight! Just like when I fought Maltanore, probably the least powerful of her followers, which I also barely survived after he toyed with me!”
Robin looked at them and hung his head. “Freya was right,” he said after a moment, and she blinked. “It’s time to face facts.”
He turned back to look into the abyss again. “We ran out of food yesterday. And without that drill, we won’t be able to dig our way out before we run out of air. We aren’t meant to survive.”
Silence echoed his words.
Then Freya spoke up. “Oh, yes, we are!”
Robin turned back and stared at his sister, who glared at him.
She said, “We’re here, aren’t we? How dare you! Out of all of us, you have more of a will to go on!”
Her cheeks were flushed. “And you know the worst of it? Despite the fact that I had resigned myself to my fate at these mines, during the past few days I found myself daring to believe…to hope…that I was needed in the universe! That my fate was to be more than a slave!”
She continued shouting. “And you know what? You were right!”
She stepped right up to his face and yelled, “And I’m going to keep believing it! I, for one, am neither ready or willing to die here!”
Then she raised her hands above her head and jerked them, elbows bent at her side.
As her words echoed around them, her armor expanded from her bracelet. Robin watched in awe as first it covered her body, then her head. The helmet formed into a wolf-like snout with two horns curling back from either side.
Freya looked at her armor-covered hands for a second before she raised her eyes to Robin. Then she spun around and stalked to the wall. She drove her hands and feet into the rock and climbed to the top. Where she drew back a fist and started punching the area with enough force to shake the walls.
Quickly following her lead, Robin climbed to a position across from her. “Let’s bust our way out of here!” he said.
“Now you’re talking, brother!” Together they repeatedly punched the ceiling.
On the ledge below them, Tekmet shielded Kylie from the falling debris that was shaken loose by their blows.
For nearly ten minutes, Robin and Freya delivered punch after punch to the same spot, which slowly expanded. Then, with matching grunts, they delivered two mighty blows. The section gave way, and their arms shot through it.
Drawing back, Robin froze beside his sister and stared in wonder at the starry sky above.
Chapter 25
Reunion
In short order, they expanded the hole so it was wide enough for them all to pass through. In no time, they all stood aboveground, staring at the sight before them.
They had emerged from the underground in the middle of a prairie, bathed in moon shadows and starlight. Not far off was a thick forest, with trees that seemed to reach for the sky.
Smiling, Robin looked over at Freya as she boosted Kylie up on her shoulder. “What is it?” the little girl asked.
“Freedom,” Freya
answered, and the girl stared with tears in her eyes. “It’s freedom.”
Still smiling, Robin nodded. “Let’s find a ship so we can get the heck out of here,” he said, and the group trudged through the open space toward the forest.
Within the shelter of the forest, their progress was slower as they climbed over or around large tree roots and rocks and untangled themselves when they became snagged on a branch or bush.
“Perhaps some of us shouldn’t go too far,” Tekmet said, when they took a break at a spot where a large tree’s branches overhung the rushing river. Vines dipped into the water below.
The Anubis continued, “Unlike you and Freya, me and Kylie still have nanites in our blood. We can be tracked. If we’re lucky, the Black Dragon thinks we all died down there, but we should keep a low profile just in case she does not.”
“I guess you have a point there,” Robin said. “We’ll need to find a good place for you guys to hide until Freya and I find a ship.”
“Why?” Kylie asked innocently.
Robin retracted his helmet to reveal his face. He smiled again as he knelt in front of the little girl.
“Because, Kylie, we don’t know what’s out there. So we have to tuck you away to keep you safe.” He brushed the tip of her nose with his finger, and she giggled.
Suddenly Robin was jerked forward. He fell flat on his face, and Kylie screamed as he was dragged a short distance and lifted off the ground to hang upside down. A thick, vine-like tentacle was wrapped around his ankle.
“Case in point!” Robin quipped. His helmet closed over his face. Freya and Tekmet pulled Kylie to a safe distance as she continued to scream.
Robin realized in shock that part of the tree had separated from the main trunk, revealing some kind of creature. Many of the vines that dipped into the water were actually tentacles, like the one that had snagged him. Others tentacles secured the creature to the tree. If Robin had been standing, he guessed it would have been twice as tall as he was.
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