Guinevere raced after the Thief. He had been right; he was a lot faster than her but with Exar’kun’s aerial advantage he wasn’t able to slip away. Guinevere teleported again closing the gap between them slightly. The Thief jumped forwards and disappeared. Exar’kun landed on the ground and Guinevere skidded to a stop.
“Where did he go?” she asked.
“He dropped down this hole,” Exar’kun said. “Fitting that he’s decided to hide like a rat. I can’t fit down there but I’ll do my best to track you both by scent from up here if he tries to resurface.”
Guinevere nodded and jumped down the crack in the ground. She hit the ground toes first going into a role as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She instantly hated the narrow, wet, dark confines, but she pushed aside her fear and pressed on. The ground of the tunnel was wet mud and Guinevere could see a clear set of footprints in them.
She ran forwards keeping a hand on the wall as she ran forwards after the Thief. She charged forward down the long twisting turns and branches of the tunnels realizing it would be easy to become lost in these tunnels. This wasn’t some cave, and these tunnels likely spanned the entire width of the battlefield.
Guinevere jerked to a stop her forearm coming up blocking the tip of a dagger with her bracer, she had barely reacted in time only Foresight warning her of the ambush.
“You’re a quick one after all,” the Thief said fading back into the shadows.
“And your sneaky,” Guinevere said trying to pinpoint his location.
“I try,” Quinn said.
“Curse Crown,” Guinevere said.
A purple crown appeared above her head and the edge of her sword danced with purple flames. This augmented her attack as well as providing light to let her see.
“A neat trick,” Quinn said his voice seeming to come from all directions. “But let’s see how you do without your sword.”
He appeared about ten feet in front of her sword in his hand their standard in the other. Guinevere looked at her hand to find herself holding a rock. The flames along her sword remained for a moment than winked out.
“Disappointing, but to be expected,” Quinn said. “I don’t suppose you’ll surrender now that your unarmed?”
“Kill him,” Guinevere said.
Thirty specters dropped from the ceiling and stepped out from the walls and converged on the thief. He melted back into the shadows, but the specters were able to home in on his life pulse. The Thief started running as the specters hounded him. They were much slower than him but were relentless in their pursuit. Guinevere raced after him, teleporting just in front of him she caught him across the face with a right hook. He slammed back into the wall dropping her sword but keeping hold of the standard. She scooped up her sword and lunged forward to impale him, but he twisted to the side dodging the stab.
He slashed at her wrist with a pair of twin daggers, but her armor easily withstood the weak attacks. She slashed him across the stomach ripping through the leather armor he was wearing. Bright red blood spurted out but he was tougher than he looked and kept to his feet. He rolled past her swiping at her belt, her sword still in hand she watched as he downed one of the health potions Mordred had given her, healing the wound in his stomach.
He disappeared back into the shadows. Guinevere stood still listening as much as looking. Quinn tried to stab her in the back again but with the help of Foresight it was a futile effort on his part. He immediately darted back into the shadows disappearing from all her senses.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You’ve got some method of detecting imminent danger to yourself,” Quinn mused. “That’s a rare ability, where’d ya get it?”
“The Warlord,” Guinevere said swiping in a wide arc around her to try and catch him moving.
“He doesn’t seem the sharing sort to me,” Quinn said appearing from the shadows in front of her.
Guinevere parried his trio of attacks before reposting scoring a deep cut along his shoulder. It would hurt and bleed but wasn’t a vital injury.
“Mordred is far more than he seems,” she said.
“So, you like the fella?” Quinn asked his voice conversationally as if he wasn’t in a fight for his life.
“You could say that,” she responded driving her sword forward.
“Disarming strike,” Quinn said. Her sword was knocked from her hands and Quinn dove past her guard driving his daggers up towards her chin and the lower half of her face that her helmet didn’t cover. Guinevere swept her legs forward scissoring out his legs as she brought him to the ground.
Rolling across the muddy ground she grabbed her sword and drove it up through his gut. He rolled back to his feet and tried to down another potion.
“Void Beam,” Guinevere said, and the blast of magic struck him and the bottle slamming both against the wall.
Quinn screamed and rolled away hiding in the shadows again. Guinevere moved forward after a moment of silence. Analyzing the ground, she saw blood and footprints leading away. Her specters finally caught up again.
“Follow,” Guinevere commanded them.
Racing after the thief she came to a rise in the tunnel. The mouth of the tunnel was lite by moonlight and the Thief stood there his hand on a lever as he looked down on her.
“Better luck next time missy,” he said pulling down on it.
Guinevere stumbled backwards as a blinding inferno of green flames engulfed Quinn. The Thief screamed for only a second before falling to the ground as a smoldering pile of ash. Guinevere felt the itch as the blighted energy from the fire tickled her senses even from where she was.
16 rank points gained, split between surviving contributors to the fight.
Exar’kun landed and turned his head to look down the tunnel at her.
“Took you long enough to flush out the rat,” he said.
“I’m not a terrier,” Guinevere said.
“Good girl,” Exar’kun said. “Want a treat.”
“Very funny,” Guinevere said. “Did you get an ability out of that? All I got was rank points.”
“I did,” Exar’kun said. “But it’s just a stupid one that would let me turn into a human.”
“Good,” Guinevere said. “Next time you can be the one to go down in the tunnels.”
---
Guinevere slid off Exar’kun’s back as they returned to the tower. I was tossing the bodies of all the ghouls and other dead players into the chasm around the tower.
“Don’t want these getting used again,” I said. “I see you got our standard; did you kill the thief?”
“Of course,” Exar’kun grunted. “What’s our plan now?”
“Well one of us will always have to hang back and guard our standard at all times,” I said.
Not necessarily, Ares interjected in my head. If you recall the rules nothing states where you must keep your own standard only where you need to keep enemy standards.
“On second thought,” I said pivoting thanks to the advice of my military expert. “None of us need to stay behind. Did either of you get any abilities that would be useful to us?” I asked.
“I didn’t get any,” Guinevere said watching me. I could tell she was able to read the change in my line of thought and she likely knew the cause.
“I got a dumb one that will let me turn into a human,” Exar’kun grumbled. “So, it will be of no help to anyone.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “You mentioned that one of the reason you were stuck at your rank for so long was because you couldn’t fit inside dungeons.”
Exar’kun tilted his head to the side as he considered my words. “True,” he admitted. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“None of that changes my plan though,” I said. “Just how destructive is your breath attack?”
“Very,” Exar’kun said flashing his teeth in what might have been a smile, it was so hard to tell with him.
“Can it melt stone?” I asked.
“It can destroy enchanted armor,” Exar’kun said.
That told me a lot, just enchanting something made it more durable usually so being able to melt through magical armor meant his breath was likely as powerful as a localized nuke.
“Good,” I said. “There are only a few capture points left that we don’t control. We’re going to change that; they’ll be expecting me or other champions to come and assault them and have likely reinforced and fortified them. They won’t be expecting a radioactive dragon however, so you hit them and destroy the six remaining capture points.”
“And what will we be doing?” Guinevere asked.
“We’re going to take both factions standards,” I said. “Numbers don’t matter when you control the only way of getting points other than just killing other players.”