"NOW!"
Simultaneously, me and THEXIS lunged forward towards the Guardians with our fists, striking their surprisingly frail bodies, stabbing through the flames, before quickly withdrawing and returning to THEROS's side to see the effects. For a moment nothing seemed to happen; the Guardians had stopped before us, but were still covered entirely in fire, eyes locked onto us, but after a moment or two, their movement became staggered, so much so that they eventually fell to the floor in two heaps. The smoke began to subside, the flames died away, and the guards were visible now at the corner of the corridor, looking at us stunned. I was still a little taken aback by how effective that had been, but I was glad THEROS had orchestrated that. I don't think that would ever have occurred to me in a million years, despite us knowing it did work...
"What the... What did you do?!?!"
Me and THEXIS produced the blowpipes that we had concealed in our hands, and then the darts in the other. We had taken a dart from the blowpipe, put it into the palm of our hand, tip facing outwards, and then had lunged at the Guardians with the darts. From the guard's point of view, it would look as though we had just randomly flailed at them, but it was likely they hadn't seen that at all because of the smoke. Looking down, I gently tapped one of the Guardians now laying on the floor with my foot, to make sure it was out cold. It shifted slightly from the force of the nudge, but otherwise made no further movements. The harsh, metallic breathing sound they usually made had also reduced, to a subtle background echo, which told us they weren't dead.
"We came prepared... Somehow I thought you would too... A sedative in dart form, propelled through a blowpipe which has the potential of knocking a Creeper out for a good hour! Want a demonstration?"
"Get them!!!"
The other two guards carrying the swords began to run towards us, attempts at menacing grins plastered to their faces. A swift motion of our arms, and two darts went sailing towards them, stopping them dead in their tracks. One slowed down and then dropped to the floor, whilst the other continued running, eventually losing his balance and tumbling into a sprawled heap... THEXIS bent down and picked up one of the swords that the guard had dropped, and pointed it at the leader in a threatening way.
"Give us any and all Eyes that you possess, or we'll leave you and your men with the Guardians when they wake up! It's very simple: we can do things the easy way, or the hard way..."
I smiled slightly to myself at this strange twist of irony that now played out, all the while watching the leader try to comprehend what had just happened. He looked at at the slumped, unconscious forms of his fellow guards, and then ran. THEXIS began to go after him, but THEROS stopped him.
"He chose the hard way... We can deal with them later, but for now we need to head back to the base camp and take these two Eyes. Check those two guards to see if they're carrying anything we could use..."
Leaving the darts in place this time, almost as a reminder or an insult to them, we checked their pockets but found nothing of interest or value to us. With three Eyes now in our possession, we headed towards the corridor and back out the way we had come.
"We've got some way to go yet before we're in the clear, but I think COLUS will be happy with us. Three Eyes are ours now and it'll be easier to hide them. We'll need to be careful about HoN Co. using guard teams to look for us now..."
I was a little conscious about leaving the guards unconscious beside the two forms of the Guardians, but they hadn't even touched this Eye, so they were unlikely to be harmed... As we followed the passage back, I felt an almost overwhelming sense of pride in myself. We had done brilliantly in a position where we started off with a poor hand. Surprising what we can do when pushed into a corner...
----
We sat around the fire, laughing and talking in excited voices. We had walked a decent way back along the passages and back down the wooden staircase; we hadn't seen the leader since he'd turned tail and ran, so we had had a leisurely walk across to the West, where we would eventually make our way back North to the base camp. We'd settled though for the night with the high spirits and much to talk about, although we'd spent a good half an hour or so just expressing how well we thought the others had done!
"I'm glad you dealt with the talking back there because I think we'd be dead if it had been me..."
"Are you kidding me?!?!?! If it hadn't been for you and Syeonyx with the darts to take out the Guardians and then the guards, we'd definitely be dead!"
We continued to laugh and joke into the night; we made fun of the HoN Co. guard that had ran off with his tail between his legs, back to 'mummy', and how the other two would probably be awake and incredibly disorientated by now. With the slight amnesic effect the sedative had, the guards wouldn't remember anything about their encounter with us, or how they ended up weaponless and surrounded by two totally passive Guardians! They would be freaking out quite badly! Eventually we began to tire, and we settled in for the night. THEROS had found a nice place off the original path we had been walking along to make sure the guards didn't stumble across us. It had definitely been an eventful day, one I wouldn't want to replicate in a million years!
Syeonyx signing off
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