Sage and her team scrambled into action, swinging the tramway cart out over the edge of the cliff. "Go, go, go!" Sage shouted as they swarmed aboard. She leapt on last, then lashed out with her lariat, lassoing expertly over the handbrake lever beside the launching tower and giving it a quick, sharp yank.
The lever slid forward. The swinging cart eased away from the cliff's edge. It was an open wooden platform, about six feet on a side, with a pair of triangular wooden braces on both ends coming together just over their heads to form the hoist. A long metal cable ran across the length of the canyon.
The platform slid forward with a lurch. Amaya cried and stumbled. Sage caught her, holding her in place as she looped her own arm around one of the wooden frame pieces.
"Everyone, hold on tight,” she urged. Now they were out over the canyon. The ground was two hundred feet below as they whizzed along toward the opposite side.
Just as she'd feared, the NPCs spotted them. Shouts went up from the camp. A few distant booms as the conquistadors fired off their archaic guns. None of the shot came anywhere near Sage and her team. They picked up speed as they slid forward across the chasm. Some of the conquistadors were racing for the ladders leading up onto the spiderweb of bridges and walkways.
"Be prepared for a fight!" Sage shouted. She and Greta buffed the team with everything they had. Brian and Shawna were, unfortunately, the best suited for a fight. She hoped they would listen to her direction as she called out orders. Sage wanted desperately to put herself in the front, but it made sense for the kids with actual melee combat abilities to be up front. Rok'gar had crafted them armor and shields. "You two, just aim to hold the bad guys in one place for the rest of us," Sage told them.
The cliff face was now only a few dozen yards in front of them. A platform jutted out for the car to dock at. They hit the platform, slid along it and then crashed into the cliff wall on the opposite side.
Everyone stumbled forward and out onto the landing platform. "Go, go, go!" Sage urged. "To the left!" Steps led down off the platform, both left and right. From the look she had gotten as the car approached the walkway, she was pretty sure they could reach the bottom from either. She wanted everyone to stick together.
They raced forward, Sage hearing the shouts and cries from below as the conquistador aliens hurried up to meet them. She craned her neck for a look and spotted a couple 50 feet below and off to the side. Whipping her goo gun out of her inventory, she aimed a shot.
She wasn't a dead eye with this weapon, but she hit one conquistador in the arm. He immediately fell back, screaming as the acid ate through his armor and body. He blocked the stair temporarily for the rest of his party, and they got jumbled up while the four in advance of him kept climbing.
That was remarkably effective. Sage concentrated and threw out Mucking Out the Stalls. She had never before thrown it in an area where she could see its three-dimensional effect. The debilitating area was about two feet deep. It seemed to hover in midair under the platforms. Sage couldn't help but laugh as the conquistador's armor grew dark with filth.
A moment later, the enemy vanguard met with Brian and Shawna's blockade, coming up hard against the pair of rectangular wooden shield. The rest of Sage's team peppered their enemies with spells. One space elf fell shrieking from the narrow walkway. The other smashed his polearm hard down on a shield, splintering it.
Shawna shrieked and stepped backward, giving the enemy an opening. He lunged forward with his polearm. Shawna screamed again, this time in pain.
"Amaya, healing!"
"I'm already on it!" Amaya tossed out a healing spell on Shawna. Sage was proud of her teammates. They'd worked together a lot over the past months, and even though the stakes here were much more intense than anything they'd done in school, they were working well together now.
Brian dropped his shield and pulled a heavy two-handed hammer out of his inventory. He swung it hard against the alien's helmet. The impact rang like a bell. The conquistadors staggered backward. Third Molt had his own goo gun out and followed up with a shot against the conquistador's breastplate. The conquistador tugged at his armor, stumbled, and fell screaming off the walkway.
"Keep going!" Sage yelled.
"Wait!" Third Molt called, "Hold!"
He extended one pseudopod, pointing at a ladder where two more of the aliens were now climbing up. Green spores drifted forward, directed by his waving tentacles. They coated the ladder. A moment later, vines and mushrooms began to sprout from the rope. In seconds, they covered the whole ladder, before twisting apart. The ladder fell into pieces and took the two climbers with them.
"Everyone go right!" Sage ordered, spotting an alternative path down. "Hurry!” There were still two aliens on the walkways and both were too far off for her to use Tame.
With Greta and Amaya in the back, to provide support, the team surged forward. Brian seemed to have succumbed to a kind of berserker rage. He raced ahead, ignoring Sage's urges to stay back and threw himself at the pair of conquistadors. Moments, seconds later, one of them dropped under his assault but the other was swinging on him with a sword.
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Sage tossed her lasso and caught the swordman. She ordered him to turn on his fellow, but it was almost pointless. The conquistador was dead in seconds, his body dissipating in a puff of spores as whatever Third Molt was using took him to pieces. Sage ordered the last conquistador to stand still while her team dismantled him.
"No time for a breather!" she told them as they started to laugh and shout amongst each other. "We're on a timer, remember?"
"Oh yeah." Greta agreed. "Let's get going."
They raced the rest of the way down the ladders until they reached the entrance to the mine. There they faced not a guard, but a gate, closed and locked against them.
"We should have checked them for a key," Brian said.
"No time, we'll batter it down," Sage snapped. "I've got a bomb here somewhere." She pulled one out of her inventory, a small-yield explosive grenade. "Everybody back to the walkway," she urged, and tossed the bomb before ducking around the corner herself.
The explosion shot a cloud of dust and debris outward. Sage didn't wait for it to dissipate before plunging back in. She covered her face with a bandana and raced through the smoke and dust into the mine. They were greeted by a shaft with an elevator platform leading downward.
They quickly swarmed aboard and started down, down into the mine. When they reached the bottom of the mine, shafts led off in five different directions. There was no sign of anyone, though she could hear the distant sound of metal striking rock. She called up her mini-map, but it wasn't helpful. She could see blue and red dots everywhere, but no overlay showing the tunnels themselves.
"What now?" Greta asked.
Sage tried not to panic, even though they didn't have a whole lot of time. She took a deep breath. "This whole place is going to flood in minutes. We've got to evacuate everyone. Failing that, I've got to find the chief and get his token from him."
"Then step one is finding people," Greta said. "Let's split up."
That brought a risk of them getting picked off by guards. Sage could see at least four red dots on her map here, but they were precious low on time.
Third Molt had his tentacles in the air. "I shall perceive for us." Spores wafted away. A moment later, he said, "This, this, and this," while indicating three tunnels. "Prisoners. This," he indicated a fourth tunnel. "Another way out, but a locked gate at the far end."
Sage's heart leaped. It sounded like a possible escape route to her. "All right. Break up into three. Sweep the tunnels. Kill the bad guys. Save the prisoners. Come back here. Don't wait for anyone else. Head down that escape tunnel and figure out how to get out." She rattled off names, taking Amaya with her, leaving Shawna and Brian with Rok'gar and sending Greta and Third Molt as the third party. "Go."
Racing down the tunnel with Amaya at her back. Sage had her goo gun in her hand. When they rounded a tunnel and came face to face with a pair of conquistadors, she was ready. She fired at both. One slashed at her, catching her arm with his halberd before he fell. Amaya's soothing mist spell knit her wounded flesh back together.
Surprised prisoners turned to face her. They had chains on their feet and picks in their hands.
"I'm here to rescue you!" she shouted, scanning them over. All of these looked like NPCs, Native American men and women dressed in simple buckskin trousers or wraps.
The closest to her reminded her of Grandpa with his grave manner and solemn face. He raised a hand. "You are an outsider as well. Why have you come to our aid?"
"It's a long story. Just come with me if you want to live," Sage said. "Wait, are you the chief?"
He nodded. "I am."
"Listen, to save your people and mine, I've got to summon Coyote. The story said you'd have a token for me."
He reached up and took a thong from around his neck. There was a white tooth attached to the leather thong, a coyote fang, or Sage missed her guess. “This.” He held it out. She snatched it up and tossed it in her inventory, then hesitated. She ought to take it to Colin right now, not risk getting shot and killed or drowned, but she wanted to help her team.
"Let's get him free," she told Amaya.
"We don't have a key."
"I've always got keys," Sage said confidently. Pulling a set of enchanted bolt cutters out of her inventory, it took longer than she liked to free all of the prisoners. Amaya chivvied them back down the tunnel as each was free, the chief taking the lead.
When the sixth prisoner was released, Sage raced after them. They reached the conjunction to find confusion. Greta’s party was back and rescued Hester, who Sage knew well, and a bunch of very confused army men.
Sage tried to shout over the hubbub. Finally, she messaged Hester, Get them moving down that tunnel. There's a way out.
"Where's Rok'gar?" she shouted to Greta.
"He hasn't come back yet."
"Is this all of your team?" Sage asked Hester.
"Yes."
So there were none of Shad’s people down there, just NPCs and her classmates. She had the chief's totem already, and they had freed Shad's teammates. She ought to just make her escape good and get the totem to Colin as quickly as possible. But she still wasn't sure whether her schoolmates would be safe and respawn if they died. And Rok’gar wasn’t responding to her messages.
"Get out of here!" she ordered everyone, then turned and raced down the corridor Rok'gar had gone.
She heard the sounds of battle before she reached them, and slowed just in time to spot that a squad of Conquistadors had Rok'gar and his friends trapped in a side tunnel.
It looked like they'd successfully barricaded themselves in, but now had no way of fighting off the bad guys. Sage shouted. She Tamed a Conquistador, turning him on the others. "Get out of there!" she yelled at Rok'gar.
"Brian's been wounded. He can't move his leg."
"Then carry him!" Sage said furiously. "What about the prisoners?”
“Haven't reached them yet."
Sage yelled in frustration as the other Conquistadors killed the one she'd Tamed. That gave her a chance to recast her Tame on another, but this was too slow. She had no idea how much time was left.
The Conquistadors apparently had spotted her as the real threat. Three of them were advancing on her. She couldn't manage her lasso and the goo gun at the same time. If she dropped the lasso, her tamed Conquistador orc would be free.
"I need your help!" Sage shrieked.
"Coming!" Rok'gar yelled, but there seemed to be no movement from up ahead. Sage dithered. She'd made a horrible mistake.
Just then, the teleport beacon attached to her chest by a loop of rope glowed. Her heart leapt. Had Colin changed his mind? Was he coming to their aid?