What Charlie hadn’t expected was for Zomboy’s axe to fly up off the ground and directly at him.
Charlie managed to pull his backup pickaxe out of his inventory to block the attack, but the impact of the oversized stone axe on his weapon still sent him flying across the cave. He hit the wall with a smack, landing hard on the stone-block floor, right on his bad leg. Charlie let out a holler of pain and clutched his damaged limb in agony, glancing up through his teary eyes to figure out what had just happened.
Zomboy was back on his feet. His stone axe was held firmly in his right hand, Charlie’s pickaxe was still lodged in his chest, and he was staring at Charlie with a grin, no sign of pain on his face at all.
Charlie was perplexed, not sure how it was that Zomboy was still alive, until it hit him. Zomboy was part of the assassin team, and, according to what Stan had told him, each member of their team seemed to be modded to have some sort of special ability. Charlie realized that this player must be modded to have extra HP, and be able to take a ton of punishment before he died.
As the giant beast of a player lumbered towards Charlie, he prepared to kick off the wall, and get out of the way of the incoming attack. Zomboy began to raise his axe over his head as Charlie kicked off the wall, only to have his knee buckle under the pressure. Charlie hardly noticed, though; he was too focussed on the axe raised over Zomboy’s head.
Just as the blow was about to fall, an arrow flew from deep in the cave and lodged itself into Zomboy’s skull, right between his eyes. The giant player gave a yelp of pain, and then proceeded to look down the tunnel towards the source of the arrow, not dead from the blow (somehow) but most certainly angry.
“Hey!” he bellowed down the mine, his eyebrows, with an arrow sticking out between them, knitted in fury. “Wads da big idea?”
Charlie glanced down the cave, and his face lit up in amazement and relief. There, standing in the mouth of the cave, was Sirus, bow raised, and an army of twenty players, all armed with stone weapons, standing behind him.
“Charge!” the crazed redstone mechanic bellowed.
The entire mass of players barrelled through the cave, sending arrows and flying weapons at Zomboy. Sensing that he was overwhelmed, the massive mobhunter turned, the attacks simply sinking into his back to no effect. With his axe in hand, he dashed down the cave and back towards his comrades.
As the wave of freed hostages continued to rush past Charlie, Sirus stopped to help him to his feet. “Hey, Charlie, man, long time no see, how’re you doing?”
“I’m … fine,” Charlie replied. He couldn’t believe his eyes. From what he had heard, Sirus had perished in the Battle for Elementia. “I … I’m really glad to see you. But … I thought you …”
“Oh, I get it, you thought I died,” Sirus replied with a short laugh. “Yeah, I thought that, too, but I respawned, and I saw somebody duck into the woods and I figured that the hill probably wasn’t safe, so I decided that I wanted to go out into the middle of the Ender Desert because I thought that could be fun, but then I got hungry and tried to eat part of a cactus, and it kind of caused me to hallucinate to the point where I imagined that I was at a wedding between a cantaloupe and—”
“I’m sorry, but do we have to talk about this now?” Charlie cut in urgently, jerking his head towards the blasts and shouts of the ongoing fight down the cave.
“Seriously though, dude,” Sirus continued, as he got into position to help Charlie up, “you must have done something pretty bad to that leg of yours, ’cause it’s totally busted, gone south, practically useless, comparable to the poop of—”
“OK, I get it, Sirus,” Charlie cut in, irritated. “I’m already frustrated enough without your commentary.”
Sirus merely shrugged and pulled Charlie to his feet. Charlie attempted to take a step forwards, but his bad foot couldn’t take the slightest bit of pressure without him screaming in agony. Sirus noticed his suffering and placed Charlie’s arm around his shoulder, slowly helping him follow the horde of Adorian Villagers that had surged down the cave and towards the ongoing fights.
Look at me, Charlie thought to himself bitterly. I can’t even walk by myself. I’m nothing but a cripple now.
As they reached the end of the cave, Charlie saw that, to his confusion, there was no fighting. Stan, Kat, Charlie, Cassandrix and Commander Crunch were all standing around, looking exhausted and in various states of injury, but the assassins had vanished.
“Where’d they go?” Charlie inquired to Commander Crunch as Sirus helped him sit down on a loose stone block.
“They warped away, lad,” the Commander replied as he nursed a blast wound on his arm. “As soon as Sirus ’n’ his scallywags arrived, the other scallywags realized that they were outnumbered, ’n’ couldn’t win. Th’ poppet that goes by th’ name o’ Enderchick grabbed her mates, ’n’ they all warped away. T’ where, we can only venture guesses, but I doubt they’ll be comin’ back anytime soon.”
Charlie nodded in understanding and looked around at the scene around them. Sirus and Stan were in deep conversation, Stan’s eyes wide, as if he were talking to a ghost. The hostages were wandering around the cave, some of them tending the wounds that had been inflicted during the fight. Suddenly, there was a commotion in the back of the cave, and two of Sirus’s followers came forwards, holding Leonidas with his arms behind his back.
“Hey, what do ya think you’re doin’?” Leonidas demanded, clearly too tired from the fight to resist them.
“We found another one of them, Sirus,” one of the two players said, and Sirus turned to face them. Immediately, his jaw dropped.
“Leonidas of RAT1! Force him down, men!”
And with that, the two players delivered sharp kicks to the back of Leonidas’s knees, forcing Leonidas to fall to the ground, a grunt of agony escaping his mouth as Sirus loaded an arrow into his bow.
“I’ll take care of this,” he announced heroically, and he was about to let the arrow fly when Stan realized what was happening. He knocked the bow out of Sirus’s hand, sending the arrow flying down the mine.
“President Stan, what’re you doing? This is a dangerous criminal who needs to be executed!” Sirus cried out.
“Sirus, calm down, it’s OK! Leonidas is on our side now. He’s realized the errors of his ways and he’s fighting for Element City.”
Sirus looked at Stan incredulously for a moment, and then raised an eyebrow in scepticism.
“President Stan, with all due respect, this player is responsible for tons of terrible things that happened during the rebellion against King Kev, and he’s killed more people than you’ll ever realize as a part of RAT1, so are you sure you don’t want me to kill him?”
“I am positive!” Stan barked in fury. “I’m granting Leonidas a complete presidential pardon for his past actions. He’s been traveling with me for weeks, and has proved to me time and time again that he’s sorry for what he did under King Kev and the Noctem Alliance. Now, he’s willing to give everything that he has to make up for what he did in the past! So I’ll thank you for not being rude to him!”
Sirus opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He gave a sideways glance at Leonidas, who had pulled himself to his feet and was shooting a dirty look at Sirus. Finally, Sirus spoke again, his voice still sounding suspicious.
“If you say so, President Stan,” Sirus replied slowly, and with that he turned to work on Charlie’s bad leg.
“Thanks, man,” Leonidas said, smiling at Stan for a moment before going to tend to a burn wound left on him by one of Lord Marrow’s attacks.
“Don’t mention it,” Stan replied offhandedly, barely paying attention