Elice did pick up the pace when Cooper said something. To his immense surprise, when they reached the exit to the tunnels, she just kept going, taking the "boat" up the ramp and out onto the wastelands. So. Good to know it could do that.

'There are already people outside,' Moon warned, as Fleck nearly got shot.

She could smell three. Two on the crumbling rock formations outside, and one inside the shack.

Cooper warned the others and grabbed his last smoke bomb potion.

"If one of them launched an attack at us, can you warn me?" Elice asked.

Right. Elice could do something about that, couldn't she?

One of the cult members sent what looked like black shards of glass out at Fleck and Moon, slowing them down in their quest to get to the building. Moon turned and sprayed ice out of her mouth, creating a wall between her and the shards. She heard several of them ting against it, getting stuck in the ice. In places where her wall was thinner, they came through, and she had to shift to avoid getting slicked.

This didn't stop Fleck, who leapt into the air, spread his wings, and ignored the attack as he flew past. Though he still had to have gotten injured.

'Are you alright?'

'Fine. But I have to wonder why that other cult member isn't firing.'

There were three. Even if the one in the building couldn't attack yet, the one who'd first shot at them had a good chance to try again.

'Yeah, I think we're getting into range,' Cooper admitted.

The location they were coming up on looked a lot like what he could see from Moon's perspective.

'So do something about it!'

Cooper dropped his last smoke bomb, and heard, rather than saw, a gunshot go off.

"You might've warned me," Elice said. "I did tell you to."

The good news was, the person who fired missed them. The bad news was, they hit the boat. Cooper heard the air being let out, and felt as it sank lower to the ground. Elice tried to slow them down, but the stop was still sudden.

Cooper briefly rolled on the ground. When he looked up, either someone had cleared the smoke, or he'd moved past it. He saw the cult member with a gun fire down at him. Rasha stood beside him. He could see her try to create a magic shield. He could also see it shatter like glass as soon as a single bullet hit it, but at least they hadn't gotten shot.

Behind them, the other cult member tried to make more shards of not-glass. Moon did her best to intercept again, but again, there were too many.

"Move," Cooper croaked out a warning.

He stood up and back-peddled. He grabbed Rasha's wrist, but she was thankfully already coming along.

Meanwhile, Evin splashed a bucket of his own slime onto the rock formation the shard cultist was standing on. So that was what he'd been doing with the bucket. Wesles grabbed the cultist's leg by stretching his ghost arm out, and yanked. The cultist fell, and trying to get purchase wasn't going so well with the formation dripping slime. At least near the top.

He could probably get his grip closer down, and even if he couldn't, he'd probably live. It wasn't exactly the tallest point.

But Cooper didn't have time to see what more was happening. There was still the gun woman to worry about.

'Not just her,' Moon thought. "Someone else is coming out of the building!"

A fourth person. She could smell them.

Cooper looked ahead. He could see the shadow of a figure in the building, coming closer. More importantly, he could see what looked like three meteors forming above the building. Well, smaller than actual meteors, obviously, but the sentiment was there. Now he knew what happened to Asplenium.

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The meteors flew forward, but then they disappeared, crashing down behind the building instead.

The building was wrecked, wood buckling down or launching out, leaving flattened, flaming rubble in its wake. The figure, Murv, was knocked forward. He fell, slumped, right in front of the porch. Or what was left of it.

Cooper could see the person with the gun out of the corner of his eye. She suddenly seemed a lot more reluctant to shoot.

"He's not dead," Elice warned. "I can't do that, or I'd lose my cleric abilities."

"Well the rest of us aren't bound by that," Evin said. "Let's kill him while he's down."

"We-we can't just do that," Rasha sputtered.

Elice grabbed Cooper's shoulder and pulled him closer. "Moral debates aside, they've got more members than this. Now that they know what they're up against, they're going to bring more people out. And I can't surprise them with that trick again."

Cooper nodded. They might not be able to stop her from doing that, but they'd know it was coming.

"Do you have a way to get into the base unnoticed?" Elice asked.

Cooper nodded again. Maybe she was thinking of the smoke bombs, but he had an even better option.

"Good. Use it. The rest of us can keep them distracted."

On the one hand, Cooper felt bad about just leaving the rest of them out here to fight a losing battle. On the other hand, they'd held on so far. Without him. He hadn't really helped. And he didn't have anything to use as a weapon aside from his own metal limbs. If this truly was a losing fight, someone had to grab Wren so they could get out of here.

'Moon? You coming with me?'

'Sorry. No,' Moon thought.

She was attacking the gunner with ice shards, forcing her to move.

And she really was sorry. She'd been separated from Cooper before, but this was a far more intense split than usual. They hadn't been able to appreciate their reunion. And now they had to separate again.

But at least one dragon should stay and be a help in the fight.

Cooper couldn't argue with that. In fact, it made him feel better about "bailing." And with the gunner on the defensive, the shard cultist trying to get up, and Murv knocked unconscious, no one would see what he was going to do.

He grabbed what was essentially a sheet out of the robes Evin had given him. But he'd made it out of fur from the invisible bear on Xentron. He tossed it over himself, and disappeared.

He'd have to get underground to get to Wren. The dragons had filled him in on that much. But he'd fixed the rocket boots.

~~~

Fleck ran past, or rather through, the black shards. He flapped, pumping himself into the air and launching himself forward. It wasn't perfect. His scales offered him some protection, but not completely. He was nicked in a few places. He couldn't see anything put blood out of one of his eyes, and he didn't know how bad that was.

But he wasn't cut to ribbons like the cultist had probably been going for. And he didn't need both his eyes.

Fleck hit the ground and skidded forward, not slowing down for his landing. He bounded across the short distance to the shack. The door was closed and had a knob, but it was old and toppling. Fleck jumped through the window and didn't even have to break through the glass. It had already (mostly) come out of the frame.

The dwarven woman was in there. The one with the blond hair Wren had seen earlier. She didn't seem afraid or surprised to see Fleck. She reached a a hand towards him. He opened his jaw, fully ready to tear that hand off.

'DON'T LET HER TOUCH YOU!'

Fleck swerved at the last minute, pumping his wings to move further away from her, and to avoid sprawling on the ground as he turned so sharply.

He'd heard Wren be panicked, worried, and doubtful before. In fact, he was very familiar with those kinds of feelings from her. This was different.

'Why not?'

'I don't remember,' Wren admitted. 'But you can't let it happen.'

'I won't.'

Fleck wasn't like most dragons. He couldn't spray out fire, or ice, or anything. Which meant the only way to attack her was to touch her. Which they'd established he shouldn't do.

But the dwarf wasn't attacking him either. She'd pulled back, standing by the refrigerator. Where the elevator was.

So she was guarding it. Well, there had to be another way down. What if the elevator broke?

Fleck's sense of smell was picking up a lot right now. Most of it was the foul air. There was also the dust. And the blood. Most of the blood smell was coming from him.

But if he actively sought it out, he could smell something else as well.

He slammed into the wall next to the refrigerator, using his wings to jump high, and slam down. The wall broke beneath his weight and power. Again, this building was already old and breaking on its own. He'd just hurried it along. The dwarf reached for him when she realized what he was doing, but when the wall burst apart, she was at least slowed down by the rubble.

The tunnel on this side of the wall wasn't reassuring. It was narrow and dark, and there weren't steps or anything. The way up and down was on rusty ladder rungs. But Fleck didn't need to take those.

He folded up his wings and dropped. And when he could close to the bottom, when he could see light and smell a more used area, he spread his wings out again, slowing to a glide.

It was a bit later when he could smell Cooper, though not see him. He said what Fleck recognized as his name, and a question. Fleck slid closer to where he knew Cooper was, and his friend lifted a sheet up a bit, enough to get it over Fleck.

They squeezed together, Cooper dropping to Fleck's height and putting an arm around his back. It was hard to keep both of them under the sheet, but as long as they were mostly hidden, the cultists hopefully wouldn't notice them. They seemed more preoccupied with the fighting above.

A red light alarm had gone off, and parts of the ceiling buckled, threatening to cave.

The two were hidden well enough. They continued deeper inside, Fleck taking the lead towards where he knew Wren was.