“Are you sure it's down there?” Todd asked. He was standing in the opening of a mine tunnel. The bottom of the tunnel was flat enough for a set of rails. There was no sign of what was supposed to run on them. Grandmother thought they were just there to make sure visitors knew this was a mine and not a natural cave. It was located directly behind a large pile of stone at one end of the smelter room. Most of the rocks in the pile were flawed with cracks and crumbled easily, but there were some that would be useful in stone crafting.
“No,” Grandmother admitted. “The tunnels on my map look more like natural caves to me, but there are some nearly straight vertical shafts that I could see as part of a mine.”
“The room is still below us,” Ellen observed. “We haven’t found any other way down.” She was looking at her map. Grandmother made copies of the room in the center of the map and handed it out to everyone. It allowed everyone to get a general idea of the direction they were trying to go. The rest of the tunnel system revealed on her map would take multiple vellum transfers. She didn’t think that would help anyone much and skipped it. When she got back to the gallery she would work on transferring the rest of it.
“This seems like a transition to me,” Sarah observed. “I think it is tier five space inside.”
“We will need to be extra careful,” Grandmother agreed. “I suspect we will see more new animals. Something based on animals that tunnel.”
“I don’t remember any from the biodiversity lessons,” Alex said.
“There was a little black furred animal with big front feet,” Companion offered. He took the lesson much more recently than any of the rest of them.
“If there is one of those down here I bet it isn’t little,” Alex replied. “So, are we doing this?”
“I want to take a vote,” Grandmother said. “Companion, Sarah and Alex, your votes count as two because you are the lowest tier here. The choices are we go in now, or we wait until Sarah, Alex or Companion hit tier four and vote again then. I want a secret vote so no one feels pressured. Let me think for a second how we can accomplish it.” Grandmother swung her pack off her back and checked her pockets, trying to decide what she had on her that would work. She came up with a handful of physical coins out of one pocket. They were a mix of iron and silver. She set out one of her violet gathering bags, and borrowed one from Sarah that was yellow. She gave Todd, Ellen and herself one of each type of coin Companion, Sarah and Alex two of each.
“Silver in the yellow bag means go now,” Grandmother said. Put your discarded coins in the other bag. She closed her fist over the coins so no one could see what she dropped where, and made her vote. Everyone else followed.
Grandmother dumped out the yellow bag in front of everyone. It contained eight silver coins and one iron. “We go,” Grandmother said. She handed Sarah her bag and picked up her own returning all the coins to her pocket.
Everyone took up their positions, Sarah recast their cloaking and enhancement spells. They started into the tunnel.
The tunnel almost immediately curved to the right and split into two. They followed the left passage. Ellen spotted a trap. When they paused to let her disarm it, they were ambushed by rats. These rats were smaller but tougher than the rats in the halls. They saw just fine in the dark. The last two rats, instead of standing to face them, disappeared down holes too small to follow. The holes were impossible to see using just sense heat and motion. Grandmother cast night vision on the group. It was a tier four spell. Sarah was too low to cast it. Grandmother noticed there were no covers on these holes that could be secured at night. She doubted they would find many rests in the mine. Spending the night down here could get tricky.
Just as Ellen declared the trap safe, a second wave of rats erupted from the holes the first two vanished down. The second wave included twice as many rats as the first one. When they got down to the last four rats, Grandmother cast ice slick slowing the animals so they could retreat down the small tunnels again.
“Don’t let them get away,” Grandmother called. “I think the first two fetched these others.” The team quickly killed the last four.
“I didn’t see any get away this time,” Alex reported. They waited for ten minutes to see if any more showed up, they didn’t.
The advance continued in this manner for about an hour. There were a lot of traps and rats. Occasionally they passed a rock. Most of them were cracked.
“I feel like we are walking into a trap,” Todd observed when the group stopped to let Ellen dismantle a trap.
“Ellen can handle them,” Alex responded.
“No, like this whole thing is a trap. It is just too easy. I feel like we are being lulled into a false sense of security," Todd explained.
“I don’t disagree with you,” Grandmother agreed. Everyone got just a little bit sharper. “Does anyone else hear that pounding?” she asked. “I can just barely hear it. It is more of a vibration in my feet.” Grandmother’s tier six senses were much more sensitive than the rest of the humans.
Companion dropped down on his flipper-hands and put his whiskered face onto the floor. He slid it face right and left, then moved over closer to the center of the tunnel. He felt one of the rails with his whiskers.
“It's coming from the metal,” he reported. Todd reached down and touched the rail.
“I can’t detect anything,” he said. Grandmother looked at how the group was arranged. Ellen was working on removing a trip wire that connected to a faulty support on the right side of the track. Alex shifted back and to the left side to cover her. Everyone else followed their lead, splitting left and right.
“Tracks like that are built to provide a flat surface for a wheeled cart. The carts are used to carry ore out of the mine and can be very heavy. If one were to roll up on us right now, it would separate the group at a minimum. If it hit one of us it could be bad.” Which was Grandmother’s code for instant death. Everyone, except Ellen who was already close to the wall, took a step back from the rails.
“Stay on the right, behind Ellen,” Grandmother instructed. “Alex and Todd, if anything does come at us down the rail, cast group shield. Don’t try to stop whatever it is, instead try to throw it away from us. Railroad carts usually don’t work well off of their rails.” Everyone nodded their understanding and moved positions. They moved off again as soon as Ellen gave the all clear. Their forward progress was slower. It was harder to spot the traps when they weren’t in the center.
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“That six tree spell we just picked up at the grand staircase might be good here,” Alex commented as Ellen worked on the next trap. “It absorbs the momentum of a charge. Unfortunately we only know the tier one version.”
“I can hear it now,” Todd reported, “It seems more like a scraping than a pounding.”
Everyone fell silent, straining their ears. Sarah recast her hear sound enhancement spell. It sounded like scrape, pause, boom, rumble, pause and repeat.
At the next intersection, Grandmother asked Companion to test the rails with his sensitive whiskers. He reported the noise was coming from the left. They followed the left hand passage. After about ten minutes the noise stopped.
“It stopped,” Sarah said, finally detecting it in its absence.
“The air is moving toward us,” Alex reported from the front.
“That means something is coming down the tunnel at us. It is pushing the air in front of it, so it is large, almost filling the tunnel. Everyone hug the wall and look for rat holes where you're standing,” Grandmother commanded. There was a loud crunch, from where Ellen stood.
“There was a hole here,” Ellen reported. “I collapsed it by casting a force shield inside of it.” Grandmother found one of her own, and collapsed it the same way. The method worked well. A humming sound was building, a higher squeal was added or a moment or two. Sarah dismissed her hear sound spell, as the volume of the noise was now high enough to be painful.
“That’s the sound of wheels on the track,” Grandmother explained. “The squeals are probably turns.” She barely got that comment out when she caught a light building on the rock wall. Realizing it would blind them all with the night vision spell active, Grandmother canceled the spell. Sarah immediately began recasting sense motion and sense heat. She let the spells dissipate when Grandmother cast night vision.
Something large, cold and moving fast came around the last corner. It was illuminating the path in front of itself with a single large light, up high. The light was enough to blind them even without the night vision spell. It was big, everyone pressed them tighter against the wall.
Alex’s cast was perfectly timed. The arc of the group shield formed in front of him, the edge of it embedded in the wall. The other rounded edge of it reached out over the edge of the track.
The vehicle hit it with the loud screech of metal and the rumble of shifting stone. The cart rocked up onto two wheels, tilting away from the group. Then it recovered and began to fall back. Grandmother cast another group shield. She cast it ninety degrees from the wall. In a feat of tier six strength she stepped forward, holding the shield and pushing the vehicle away. Its speed slowed, in a shower of sparks, and it tilted wildly, but it did not go over.
At the end of the group, Todd stepped forward and cast a third shield. He’d chosen to cast his shield almost vertical. The wheels that were still in the air, rode the shield surface up. A rumple of shifting stone emerged from the cart as it load shifted. Too far over, it could not recover. The cart flew off the tracks. It dragged against the opposite wall, slowing to a stop quickly, wedged between the track and the wall.
Todd reset himself and turned to face the danger. He approached cautiously. The vehicle's light dimmed in the wreck, but it didn’t go out. It was reflecting off the walls of the passage, giving a strange shifting illumination to the scene as dust settled from the ceiling.
“Contact,” Todd yelled. The light was shifting because the source was still moving. The back half of the cart was unfolding. A metallic beast with its single glowing eye dismounted from the remains of the cart.
Alex and Companion sang swift spells, in an effort to join Todd on the front line. As the beast straightened, Todd stepped forward with a perfect lunge and planted his spear in the metal body. He chose the spot a man’s heart would be. There was no noticeable effect other than rob Todd of his spear. When he tried to retrieve the weapon it was firmly set. Before he could cast force tap to help him retrieve it, the machine lifted a huge shovel shaped hand and swatted Todd away. Todd took the loss of his weapon with apparent calm. He picked himself up off the stone floor and rearmed himself with his knife.
Rats started streaming out of holes on the other side of the tunnel and farther away where they’d not closed the holes. The area right around the wreck was free of them. The impact collapsed the passages. Ellen and Sarah both started killing the rats with arrows and crossbow shots. The crossbow worked better in this environment. They were both imbuing the arrows with lightning. When a bolt jumped to the machine it seemed to power it. Giving it a brief boost in speed.
No lightning, Grandmother thought to herself. She started throwing tier five ice-bolts, trying to slow the machine. The machine shuttered and smoked. The top section tried to turn, but Todd’s spear kept it locked in place. Grandmother could see the spear bending and didn’t think it would last. The machine was equipped with two long arms that ended in shovel hands that were armed on the end with large digging spikes. It was shifting on its legs to punch out at the warriors. Grandmother could smell blood in the air from the glancing blow it landed on Todd. His heartbeat was strong and steady. Grandmother hoped he wasn’t injured too badly.
Alex’s sword bounced off the steel of the machine's frame, but sliced through the tubing and wiring that wove through it. A cut tube on a real machine would cause the entire hydraulic system to fail. Here it just slowed it down a little and made it weaker. Todd jumped in with his knife, following Alex’s lead and targeting the wiring. Companion’s ax was making great cuts into the structure of the machine. He was alternatively imbuing his ax with force and sound.
The sound imbued hits did the most damage when he hit structural members frozen by Grandmother’s ice-bolts. Grandmother cast ice-slick, freezing the remaining rats in place for the moment.
“Switch to ice-bolts on the machine,” Grandmother called out to Ellen and Sarah. The woman both switched targets, lowering their weapons to cast. As the machine became coated in ice, Grandmother called out to the warriors, “Use sound.”
Alex stamped his foot, and jumped in close. His cast singing sword. His weapon danced across the machine. The machine stuttered, its huge arms began to sag. Companion stepped in and delivered a solid blow with his sound imbued ax.
The machine’s frame shattered. Its light went out and they were plunged into darkness.
A pillar of light emerged from the floor under Alex. It rose up through him and disappeared into the ceiling above. Grandmother narrowed her eyes, trying not to be blinded. She was plunged into absolute darkness, as all the augmentation vanished from her vision, including the sense motion and sense heat spells. Grandmother widened her eyes and pulled her head back, trying to turn the augmentation back on. The machine might be dead, but there were still rats. The augmentation returned, revealing her team in the act of killing the rats. Grandmother cast night vision so they could see the holes followed by ice slick. Sarah and Ellen were both down to knives by the time the last rat was dead. Several in the first round got away when the machine died and brought back reinforcements. In the pause between waves they were able to exchange heals. Everyone took some damage when the machine exploded.