Blast Redux (Wordcount 3345)
Russo slowly crept forward, willing his squeaky joints to be silent. Everything depended on the Gremlins not knowing until it was too late for them.
This was as close as he could get to them, inching up behind a line of crates full of coins they used for gambling. The maroon skinned beasts were the ones behind the enslavement of Russo and his fellow knights these past weeks. They had somehow turned around their trick of summoning monsters to battle and were using it on those of the Spiral Order that they captured in battle. Now those knights held here had no control over where they went, simply being poofed back and forth between captivity and arena fighting.
The Knights didn't want to fight each other but those who refused never showed up again in the battles. The Knights despaired, for they knew not who was pulling their strings.
It was Russo who noticed the gremlins up in the back row during matches. Some of them were always looking at the action, the others looking down at something, and they were constantly talking to each other. The other monsters in the arena did not act like them.
The next stroke of luck was getting out of their cages. Simmon finally got an empty passage under his floor grate. That and his discovery that you could smuggle one of those Gremlin bombs out of the arena in your chest plate led to the current plan. Each Knight made a stockpile of bombs one by one in their cell since no one ever seemed to check them. Eventually the Knights learned they were all relatively near each other and could join together using the stash when the time was right. That was once the Gremlins were located and an exit was found. Problem was those things ended up being in two different directions and there was a lot more than a few Gremlins in this part of the world.
They needed a strike force to go take out the Gremlins while the rest made for the elevator. Once the arguing about it started, Russo volunteered for the Gremlin job. Nobody liked him because he hunted knights in the arena with a passion, but that passion certainly qualified him for a difficult assignment like this. No one talked about going with him but when the time came Angle, the oldest Knight in the group appeared next to Russo.
"Let's get movin'. I've gotta make sure you get the job done." Angle said, but Russo knew he was coming along to make sure the others could get away.
Now here they both were, flanking the enemy as they gathered for one of the matches the Knights were to be put through. There were two ways out of the room, and one of them would have to be cut off after Russo broke cover. He saw Angle creep into sight across the room so he decided to do it.
Russo burst forth from behind the box and ran as close as he could to the gremlins, swiftly planting a bomb as the nearest one turned and began to react. Not stopping, he got two more down before he made it to the door, sliding in and getting a fourth set right on the jamb. Turning, there was a facefull of fangs and Gremlin spanner in his face so Russo fell back through the doorway as the first of the bombs began to go off in the other room. The Gremlin raked at Russo's face, pushing him back, then frantically reached for a dial on a little box on its belt.
'That's how they do it!' Russo realized. He dropped his makeshift bandolier, now almost empty and grabbed the Gremlin's wrist tightly. It got a good whack in with the spanner but Russo held onto its other arm, then ripped the box away from the clasp on the gremlin's belt.
Russo had no time, for these were only stun bombs. He left the Gremlin on the ground as the bomb in the doorway blew and ran back toward the other room. He had to dispatch the rest of them before they recovered and could use their devices to teleport Russo away.
He ran toward the dissipating wake of his blast, but as Russo neared the doorway he heard the hiss of an oncoming blast wave. Because of months in the arena, his senses were honed to a very fine edge. He could hear the difference between someone running from a blast and one rushing to attack him. He could tell from the timing of this blast that the bomb had been placed after all the others, in line to ricochet from Russo's blast back to the doorway. His reflexes had improved to match his new faster senses, he should be better than this but Russo's foot caught the edge of the door jamb and slipped forward, catching the blast wave.
These may have been stun bombs, but they were more powerful than any Russo had seen. Any part of your body that got hit, an elbow sticking out or even a foot would spread paralysis very fast throughout one's body. As Russo fell to the ground, numbness spreading, he could see some gremlins down. Angle had done his job better than Russo yet again, it was good he'd been here. But was the blast toward Russo intentional or just an accident?
There was a Gremlin snarl behind him and Russo sensed a killing blow, then there was a thud and the Gremlin he'd left in the other room fell on top of him, lifeless. It was then that Angle stepped into view. He crouched down and looked Russo in the eyes.
"A Knight should fight with honor, even at the cost of their own life." Angle said after a pause, and Russo realized the bomb had been deliberate.
'You're leaving me for dead in actual combat!' Russo would have said in return, probably with swordplay.
Angle looked as if he was trying to say something else, but ended up saying only, "Don't follow me." Then he was gone.
Ten seconds felt like an eternity until Russo could move again. He'd built up resistance to the stun as well and could get to a sitting position in the time it took others to be able to move, but his joints were creaky from so many blast impacts. Angle had gone back the way they had come, toward the elevator they knew about. The fool. There was an army in the way and he knew it.
Eventually Russo decided to go the other way. Better chance for survival. Yeah. It led, as he suspected to the arena where the monsters made them fight. Angle had taken whatever weapon that Gremlin was using, so Russo managed to avoid an encounter by heading away from the noise of the crowd when he could until he found a stairway down. It seemed like a normal looking basement passage below, in that it was dark and lonely. He walked a long time, finding dead ends and the occasional vent he had to crawl through, but he made progress.
Much later Russo came to a wall that hummed with energy. the ceiling was lost in darkness above and there were hallways spreading out to either side on a gentle curve. Russo scouted one side but there were no branching passages. The other side was the same so he picked one at random, the slow curve of the hallway and unchanging scenery becoming mildly hypnotic after a while. Russo didn't know how much time passed, but all at once he came to a small utility room and past that there was a standard elevator lobby, looking out of place with the high walls all around.
Not believing his blind luck Russo approached slowly, checking around every corner. The two chambers were empty though and the control panel was standard Gremlin, which the Knights had been trained to use back in the rescue camp. Russo even found an auto-spanner in the first room and feeling much better being armed, powered on the elevator and started up. He knew better than to think an elevator like this would go to Haven, but as long as he went of his own free will, Russo would meet whatever came with satisfaction.
What came was a clack, clack and and a grinding noise followed by a 'pop' which sent everything into a sickening freefall. It was abruptly halted by the emergency brake and Russo was hurled against the floor, thankful that it was still there.
Then the true wait began. Russo had heard stories about Knights who disappeared. It was said that when the oldest elevator was rotated out of haven the Gremlins simply stranded the Knights on it and left them to rust. Now Russo knew what they felt like. He had a full mist tank by the time anything else happened.
There was a lurch and the platform cranked several feet down, followed by another, then another in a rhythmic pattern. Russo saw a light shining up through the cracks around the platform and as it grew brighter he realized there was someone down there moving the elevator, probably with a hand crank. He readied his spanner as a small, unfinished access hatch was revealed and a short, dirty Gremlin was indeed manning a hand crank, puffing with exertion.
It was tiny even for one of their small race. Russo, who had been trained by months of captivity to hate swung at it with no hesitation. It barely dodged by lunging back faster than one would have imagined, screaming and flailing its hands as it hit a wall and collapsed.
Russo leaped on the Gremlin and gave it a good thwack as it screamed, "No! please don't hurt me!! Auughh huh hu hu!" and curled into a sobbing, pathetic ball.
For a moment Russo was reminded of a Knight from his very first battle in the arena, one who had behaved much like the Gremlin before him now. They had been broken by the stress of a situation that was unbearable to them. Seeing that so clearly represented in this enemy drained the fight out of Russo. He wanted to kill it, yet weren't there peaceful Gremlins in Emberlight? It seemed so long ago that Russo was there.
He looked at his hand, still upraised to strike. "You there, Gremlin. You can understand me right?" It nodded.
"And you don't want to die, right?" The Gremlin shook its head.
"Then fix this elevator and tell me exactly where it goes." Russo said as menacingly as possible.
"Uh, I p-probably can't. F-fix it that is." The Gremlin stammered.
"Well then show me how you can't fix it." Growled Russo, letting the relieved Gremlin up, but keeping a close presence behind it.
"The thing that usually goes out on these is the mainspring," The Gremlin said, looking over its shoulder as it crossed onto the elevator platform. "we don't even try to fix 'em. We just drop 'em and they send another one up from the bottom." The maroon face gave a jagged toothed smile. "There's lots of power down there."
Russo moved to block the terminal. "No way pipsqueak. You expect me to believe-" But of course it was a ruse. The Gremlin had been moving the elevator from inside the access hatch! As he turned, it used one of its patented lunge moves to launch itself back through the hatch. The Knight ran toward the gremlin, never fast enough when they pulled their flying move. It grabbed onto a large lever and braced itself against the wall to pull it down and as it thunked into place Russo launched himself into the air.
As the elevator fell out from him for good this time, he saw that the hatch was still a little out of reach. Russo had aimed for the gear housing that the elevator traveled on however, which was big enouh to seem like a ladder reaching up the whole length of the shaft with its large teeth. He clamped onto it in a bear hug and miraculously held on, considering it was covered with some kind of sticky grease. It seemed like old grease which was probably why he didn't slip off immediately, but Russo knew that he would only get one shot to make it to the open hatch.
The drop awaiting him demanded attention but Russo stilled his mind, planting his feet and pushing off almost in one motion. Slick with grease, Russo hit the edge of the hatchway and threw his leg over before the grease killed him. There was a slow, agonizing moment when he wasn't sure if he would live or die until he inched over the edge and lay flat against the floor.
The coldness of the floor pressed against his chest and Russo lay there for a while, thinking of the fate he had escaped. When he got up there was no sign of the Gremlin down the long hallway, so he set out aimlessly as before. If he came to an intersection, he chose a path without hesitation. Trust your instincts, the instructors had said so long ago.
The tunnel got smaller after the first few turns so that Russo had to crouch as he went. His instincts proved true as he came to a somewhat large chamber filled with tools. There were so many different kinds of tools that Russo stopped to admire them, forgetting to check all the corners first. The room was empty however. Another door was across the room and whatever was behind it was bright, so bright that light shone through the cracks like there was a blazing inferno behind it.
There was nothing to do but open it. Russo got close and looked into the light, trying to adjust his sight to see through the gap, but it only blinded him. When he did throw open the door, it took the length of two stun bombs for him to be able to see anything in the room.
Finally, after so long, Russo had found a room open to the sky, such as it was inside the clockworks. The environment was one of those sunny springtime ones where there was always blue sky, except for the fact that the sky was just painted on the inside of a giant sphere that was constantly rotating. This had the effect of causing the horizon to reach impossible angles that could be quite disconcerting. One of the features of this space was a fake Sun that battling knights could look up at from afar, and it was there that Russo found himself, Behind the housing for the biggest lamp he would ever see. The light from it spilled out blindingly around the edges but in the large space directly behind it an area was dimmer. This was where the Gremlin was.
Next to it was a Lumber, those hulking constructs that could take a pounding just as well as they gave out. This one was huge, bigger even than a Trojan but it didn't look active. The Gremlin was up on a stepladder, working in the chest cavity. It seemed very focused and gave no indication of having heard Russo fling the door open. The Knight closed to what he hoped was still a safe distance before speaking up.
"You know that was a good move back there with the elevator." Russo said. The Gremlin flinched on the ladder but kept working.
"I mean it." He continued. "Takes a smart one to pull off that kind of ruse. Oh I get it you're going to attack me with that Frankenstein you got there, right?"
A few frantic seconds of the Gremlin's hands working went by, then it slumped against the side of the Lumber. "Not ready." It muttered. "Now you won't let me finish it." The creature seemed disappointed. No fight left after the chase was over. Russo looked at the giant Lumber. No way he could beat something like that unarmored with an autospanner, But that wasn't really what was on his mind.
"It doesn't have to be that way." Russo heard himself say. Another part of him railed against what he was about to propose. "I'm supposed to kill you, and you're not supposed to help me. Well if we do the opposite of what we're supposed to, then you can finish this," Russo gestured to the giant construct, "after you get me down there." He turned and pointed out into the middle of the immense sphere, to where the tiny strip of land was suspended that was used as the battleground against Knights trying to get to the core.
"You Gremlins summon things to battle down there, yes?" Russo asked.
"H-How do you know about that?" The Gremlin responded, surprised.
Russo reached to his chest plate, undid the hatch and took out the little black box he had ripped off of his captors belt during the fight with them. "You can do it with this, can't you?"
The Gremlin, realizing he was serious blurted, "But I could kill you just as easily as send you down there!"
"Maybe," Russo shot back, "I have no armor and a power-wrench. I'm dead sooner or later anyway. One pipsqueak like you is too easy," Russo glanced briefly at the battleground across the gap, "but down there maybe I can die fighting."
The Gremlin looked at Russo, its face unreadable, then held out its hand. Russo put the box in it with no hesitation. After a bit the creature looked up and said, "I hope my monster is the one that gets you." and Russo knew that he might get his wish. He closed his eyes and sensed the summoning, opening them again to find himself in a place he never thought he'd see again, the familiar obstacles and scenery of a proper battlefield.
Russo began searching for an elevator, or the monsters that would likely kill him, whichever came first. However it soon became apparent that no monsters were appearing to block his way. Could this be the work of that Gremlin up there? He looked up at the fake Sun that the goliath Lumber hid behind and wondered if the Gremlin could see him.
It was like that that the party found him, three other Knights rounding a corner to see a lone Knight, completely unarmored staring up at the fake Sun like a blooming idiot.
"What the hell happened to you man?" One of them shouted, running up. "We thought there was no one down here ahead of us! Where's your armor?"
Russo turned, eyes lit with a bright smile. "It's a long story."
-----
He let his rescuers believe that he was the last survivor of a party from a normal expedition and returned to Haven with little fanfare. Russo thanked them and then returned to his Guildhouse for the first time in many months.
"By the core, I'm lookin' at a ghost!" Knot shouted when he saw Russo. "What the hell happened to ye? Ben moonlighting at another Guild? Haha!"
Looking forward to finally sharing his tale with someone he could trust, Russo sat down and began to tell him of his captivity. But after he began, Knot interrupted him. "Wait, ya mean ta tell me you're another survivor of the Blast Arena?"
He hadn't considered the other prisoners in his travels. "So they others made it back safely? That's good to hear." Russo said.
"Nay, there was only one Knight. He came back with the same tale you're telling, got everybody pretty excited. He's a real celebrity over it, they say he'll be put in the Spiral Order elite. Angle's the name."
Russo took a moment to let this sink in. Then he asked to borrow his friend's Divine Avenger.
"Well, you do need new gear. What's it for lad?" Knot asked.
"It's going to live up to its name old friend."
