by LLance, T5 and GoozX
"There's Tobias and Sam!" said Marv Velo, pointing to two figures backed into a narrow, dead-end crevice. They were besieged by several Mastiffs of War, metallic wolves digging furiously into the narrow crevice.
"You have any ideas on how we can best stop those creatures, Lance?" Velo muttered quietly from their hiding spot.
"We can't!" Lance Lorenzo answered. "We have to get them out of there!"
"Stay here! Lance, wait--!" Velo whispered insistently.
Lance, ignoring the advice, ran up to and past the wolves in an intangible state. They snarled and snapped at him. Two of the creatures actually bumped heads and fell over, but only momentarily.
"Grab my hands!" Lance ordered.
"Wh-what?" Tobias Christopher said, somewhat confused. Lance thrust his hands into theirs.
"Touch the wall!" Lance commanded.
Tobias' hand phased through the wall. Sam Dawson was able to do the same thing.
"I'm not sure how I'm doing this, but I do know it's taking a lot of concentration," Lance said. "Run straight through these monsters! Whatever happens, don't let go of my hand!"
The trio dashed out and past the bellowing beasts. Lance phased through a wall to gain some distance from the pursuing beasts. Upon coming out of the wall he fell to the ground, and all were solid once again.
Marv Velo scooped up Lance and yelled at the others to run. It was a futile gesture. Two of the beasts gobbled up three of the four heroes whole! Only Sam had escaped back into the tunnels from which they had come. Velo, Tobias, and Lance could be seen in the belly of the beasts, all alive. Velo and Tobias, in one of the Mastiffs, were stunned, and Lance, in the other, was temporarily unconscious.
Back in the dungeon, the pain Naecken had felt from the presence of familiar darkness had begun to pass, and he stopped to sense the ground all around him, its textures and layers. Then he reached out, and the tunnel expanded both in length and width, and pretty soon (in seconds, in fact) the tunnel reached the surface.
A few expressions of amazement could be heard from the people below him. "Continue to climb up," Naecken said. "I will go down again to see what has attacked our friends." The huge, dark man squeezed past the others, who began to walk up to freedom.
Naecken slid down and landed on the floor where the tunnel began. As fast as he set foot on the floor, a loud growl filled the corridor. Behind him, a huge Mastiff of War prepared for attack. It was not alone. It had a chromium body with red, glowing eyes and a transparent duraplex stomach.
Inside two of the metallic wolves, he saw his friends struggling to get free. The wolf jumped, and Naecken simply hit it in the stomach, sending shrapnel all over the place but freeing Velo and Tobias. Another blow freed Lance. The Mastiffs of War were damaged but still dangerous.
All of the wolves now began to focus on him.
Topside, the remaining heroes were besieged by heavy fire from a rather sizable army. Sonja Ljzavet screamed to jump back into the tunnel, and everyone slid back into the caves.
A grenade was tossed in after the heroes, collapsing the tunnel when it exploded. Thanks to Pete Glover's luck, nobody was harmed in the blast. Unfortunately, they instead found themselves surrounded by giant Mastiffs of War.
Sam Dawson had escaped. Luck had been with him. One of his new teammates, Lance Lorenzo, had been able to give him a door to freedom. Now, twenty minutes had passed, and he could only be sure about two things. First, these tunnels were miles and miles of mazes, and second, he was not alone.
Sounds could be heard all around, even through the walls, sounds of moans, screams of pain. Something was wrong.
Sam formed his hands into knives and squinted his eyes. This time he would be ready for an attack.
"Wat allie we gots here?"
A deep voice with a strange accent rang through the tunnel. A group of savages appeared, led by a skinny white male, a body free of cellulite, with defined muscles and a bald head. His body appeared bruised and scarred with time. Time had not been his friend.
"Mi names Razor, these air mi men. Ya fresh meat."
Sam could smell human flesh and blood in the air. These men were covered in it. These men, he realized, were some sort of savages, cannibals.
"We be da discarded o' Malevilla. We be the unwanted. We BE da prison'ors condemmed to death. Welcome, to air' home, you shall be her' for a lung time."