A litany of curses slipped from Zan’s lips as the beam of flame-light displayed him to every enemy within the base.

“Get me down!” Zan shouted, stealth in danger of falling all to pieces if they didn’t do something and do it fast.

Whether they came out of hiding to destroy the patrol or had already destroyed the patrol when they lowered the elevator at his behest, Zan’s platform descended fast.

Near the ground, Zan didn’t wait and jumped off. Hitting the ground, seeing out the edge of his vision several slain golems, Zan said, “I know where we have to go! Follow me and get ready to finish this!”

Zan led his comrades on a wild chase as all over camp guards mobilized, closed gates, and lit all the bonfires capable of holding a flame. Dashing in and out of roads, paths, and even bramble, whatever it took to conceal them at a moment’s notice, Zan and friends barreled like bulls. Sometimes inches behind golems, so close was their sneaking, Zan thanked his lucky stars the golems were of such a lacking creation when it came to picking up intruders. Deciding against slaying the creatures in these circumstances, Zan encouraged his mates to focus on speed and stealth over primitive and violent instincts.

But they came upon a point where a friendship with stealth no longer benefited them; thus, on high alert, the golem guards were closing the gate when Zan gave the order to eliminate them.

Whiskey took one out with an arrow. Retrieving it, she then used the sharpened edge of a combat knife to rip apart the other guard.

With no more labor rising the gate, the gate fell back to the earth.

“Let’s go and keep — crap, searchlights! Get through the gate! Find cover!” Zan said as the lights appeared mere feet behind them.

Rushing ahead at the same time the searchlights moved forward, the lights kept nipping at their heels, always in danger of overtaking their pace and revealing Zan and company’s location for the entire base to see. In the distance, alarms still blared.

At last, reaching a part of the camp where the searchlights no longer followed, and where the bonfire’s radiance did not reach, Zan and company saw a yard. They did not have time to look thoroughly at their new surroundings, but Zan thought they had stumbled onto a labor pen of some kind. Around them were unfinished construction projects.

Dispatching several more guards without the alarm being raised any higher than it already was, the Ranger-Knights now had to lower a gate. Like the gate they previously prevented from closing, the ‘new’ gate had heavy irons or steels as its base. Zan couldn’t tell specifically, nor did he care. It was heavy. That was all.

“How do we get this raised?” Zan said.

Everyone looked around, hyper-aware of how every second they wasted, the enemy might locate them and flood their area with (for them) endless waves of foes. Seeing troopers lumber their way toward the yard, Zan knew he had little time.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Whiskey found the lever. “Over here! Hidden by the guard’s post.”

She pulled the lever, and like magic, the gate dropped with a heavy clang.

No one needed encouragement to run through. Whatever their disagreements, they were all in it together. To save not merely their skins but those of the innocents taken prisoner as well.

The small group entered another labor yard. This one had more enemies than the previous yard and, being closer to a bonfire, the enemies moved at a faster pace than the yard before. This made their dispatching slightly harder; Zan thanked his adrenaline, however, for erasing any sign of tiredness from his veins. Hard to be tired when death was but a moment away!

But the group did the same: once the enemies were de-activated via their swords, they lowered the gate, then advanced into — surprise, surprise! — yet another labor yard.

The new yard was not any different from the previous. The one difference being more enemies; yet that was, strangely speaking, the positive in the negative: though over a dozen enemies patrolled this yard with a bonfire close-by, through the latticework on the fence, Zan saw the final yard leading directly to the prisoner keep.

“I see them!” Zan shouted to his friends as they wrapped up the remaining enemies who hadn’t yet met their fate in the yard. Peering through the fence, Zan saw a final antechamber-like yard just outside their current yard. Beyond that was a wide, open space filled with wagons and people. And golems. So many golems!

“But we need to act fast!” Zan continued. “They’re getting loaded into huge wagons!”

Hearing grunts of renewed passion, followed by a frenzied clatter of blade on wood, with a couple of curses, Zan did not waste time in continuing to observe while his allies slew the remaining enemies — he throw himself to the guard’s post and hacked to de-activation the three guards who hadn’t a clue what was going on.

Pulling the lever just as the others joined him, while waiting for the gate to drop, this gate being the slowest, and perhaps, heaviest, of the gates they encountered, Zan saw to their back's searchlights. Not one light or two, but dozens. This told Zan the enemy’s means of illumination weren’t only tied to the massive bonfires, but they had other means as well.

Leaping over the descending gate, Zan heard Jiehong say, “Go! I’ll watch your backs!” Zan thanked his friend and landed with a rough start as Whiskey daintily climbed over the slowly descending barrier. With Whiskey by his side and Jiehong soon-to-follow, a short but harsh battle with several gold-golems and red-painted golems followed.

With dark and light surrounding them in equal measure, Zan’s eyesight had seen better days. Hence, when he ran into the golems, thinking they were but regular automotrons — as they had been encountering — and discovered they were not, the discovery came with many blows to Zan’s upper body.

Whiskey fired off an arrow which incapacitated the enemy, allowing Zan to finish it with a couple more well-placed slashes from his blade; he thanked his lucky stars he got in that one good ambush hit before he realized it was a gold-golem.

Launching himself at the next golem, the other gold, Zan skidded to the ground and thrust his sword straight up into the golem from beneath, and between, its legs. Strange sounds came from the golem, giving Zan the time he needed to give himself rise to the automotron’s backside, grab his sword, and roughly hew it in two, treating the golem like it was a harvest pumpkin in need of a good cleaving.

His blade left the golem’s body at its head. Both pieces of the golem fell away, splitting apart like a banana sliced perfectly down the middle.

“Deal with the red golems; I’ll lower the final gate!” Zan shouted, seeing Jiehong join up now that the penultimate gate finished its descent.

With the final yard nothing but a checkpoint, Zan easily found the lever and lowered the final gate. With his companions at his back, they crossed over.

Home free, Zan should have known to count his eggs before they hatch, despite his lack of farming knowledge.

Ready to cross over to the prisoner keep, Zan tripped.

An alarm went off. A searchlight followed. And smack dab, the light illuminated all three of them, putting them on blast for the whole camp to see.

This time, there would be no escape.