Savior

"Harder! Work harder! Move faster! Harder! HARDER!!!" The guards shouted at the top of their lungs, urging the slaves to work faster with harsh words and a cruel whip. The slaves pushed heavy carts of ore through the tunnel. They were starved and exhausted. Three days earlier, they'd been enjoying whatever lives they'd had. The guards had kidnapped them, whipped them raw and set them to work. Some mined the ore, some piled it into the carts, some pushed the carts down the tunnel towards the daylight, others unloaded it into the carriages. This was part of one of many operations. Some heartless bastard was doing this all over Gielinor. It was a real cheap way to mine and transport ore. He was making millions. At one end, with shackled legs and arms, were the men wielding pickaxes. They wared away at the tunnel. The ore they managed to extract was piled into carts by other slaves. There were fourteen cartlines through the tunnels, with four slaves shoving it along the half-mile. Some wooden rafters had been constructed, slaves atop them attacked the walls with pickaxes, getting at usually impossible ores. Near the cave ceiling, chains had been anchored. Slaves were strapped to them, and put to work mining the ceiling. One particularly sadistic guard was repeatedly lashing the back of a small man. Each lash made him stumble, each stumble invited another slash. The man was bleeding furiously. And he still had a heavy cart to fill. "Faster! Harder!" the guard roared. He pulled back his whip and aimed for the thigh, so that the whip wrapped around and caught him between the legs. The man fell. "Get! Up!" said the guard, pulling back the whip for a furiously brutal blow. As he pulled it back, the tip fell some meters behind him. A blade was pushed down upon it, pinning it to the ground. The guard pulled his arm for the blow with all his might. The whip grew taught, but the blade didn't give an inch. The guard's arm snapped back, the full momentum backlashed against him, tossing him off his feet. The owner off the blade stepped towards the fallen guard. The man in question turned onto his stomach to face his attacker. Clad in a silver armer from the neck downwards, a blade in his hand, shield on his back, he was quite an imposing figure. "How dare yo-" the guard began, rising to his knees. He was interrupted when the armored man booted him in the jaw. His neck snapped back; he arced backward through the air and into a cart. He pulled his blade back, and thrusted it through the guard's stomach, and through the wood. Through deep breathes, the injured guard panted "Whah, you don't, not like, why?" The armored man took the hilt of his sword, notching it upward inside the man's chest. He cried out in pain. "I'm Henry. And what you've been doing here, it's sick and it's wrong. And I'm here to stop it" he shook his head. "You know, that sounded so much cooler in my head" Henry drew the blade from his victim, who fell to the floor, bleeding profusely. A guard ran at him, sword high over his head. Henry drew his blade, batting it aside and pinning it to the floor. He slid the point behind the guard's ankle. Henry took some terrific swings with his metalic hand, smashing his face in. He ended with a powerful shove, and as he stumbled backwards, sliced his foot off. The guard fell to the floor, screaming. Every guard in the tunnel had their weapons drawn, their eyes glued to him. The slaves watched, still and bewitched by their savior. Their was a tense moment, where all of the combatants sized each other up. Then, one from behind Henry, who thought he had an advantage attacking from a blind spot. He moved in with a powerful blow to the back of the neck. Henry parried violently, almost knocking the blade from his attackers hand. Using the opening, he stabbed his attacker through the chest. They all came at him at once, whilst his blade was busy. He slipped the shield from his back and swung it around: most guards ducked, some got hit. Henry gripped his hilt hard, and drew his blade from the corpse, swinging it in a wide arc. Henry lashed out, striking one of them in the stomach. As he buckled over, he caught him over the head with his shield. He swung it at another guard, who ducked, but he managed to slash his back. Henry drew back his blade and just shoved it through a guard. The strike lifted him off the ground. Some guhards moved at him, but Henry blocked, then moved in quickly, placing the edge of his blade against his throat. "Anyone come closer, he dies" People came closer, he died. A guard ran at him, thrusting at him. Henry tried to block, but the blade slid past him and bit into his arm. Henry swung his left arm into his jaw, the guard sprawled to the floor. Henry deflected a slash and shouldered the attacker down. A man from behind kicked out the back of his knee, and hands grabbed his arms, forcing him to his knees. Henry tried to break free, but the men were strong, when they outnumbered him ten to one. One guard drew his blade, and pulled it over his shoulder. "This is what happens when you fight the system. Execution" The guard slipped to the ground. There was an arrow through the back of his skull. The room gasped in shock, and Henry took the advantage. He pulled his arm free from the men, grabbing one with two hands and crashing him into another. Henry took up his sword and thrusted downward, destroying the chain mail and splitting bones. Another arrow flew, bouncing off a slavers helm. Momentarily distracted, Henry decapitated him, taking his blade and flinging it through another's skull. He caught one in the stomach with the hilt of his blade, and when he hunched over, stabbed down through the back. He kicked the ankle out of the guard, who fell, sliding out of the blade. More armed guards came running at Henry from down the tunnel. From the rafters, a small girl dropped; she landed on a guard's back, stabbed him between helm and platebody with a small knife. They both went down, only the girl came back up. A guard set upon her with his war hammer, she tried to defend but her knife was no match. It was knocked from her hands. The guard relaxed, cocky in the knowledge this girl was defenseless. She was pretty; twenty, twenty-one, brunette, small build. This little girl was so weak. He could do anything he wanted to her, and she could do nothing about it. He raised his hammer, just to scare her. She was unimpressed. She clicked her fingers, a white spark came from them. The guard froze, but when nothing happened, he advanced on her. His hammer was yanked from his hands, before he had time to turn his head the hilt was thrusted through his skull. He fell, dead. The giant Minotaur she summoned bent to one knee, and held out a hand for her. She took it, and it swung her gently through the air in an elegant arc, laying her to rest on it's shoulder. "Elikha, knife, come" she commanded. The knife flickered from existence where it lay, then flickered into the girl's hand. The Minotaur rose to it's feet, grabbing a guard and tossing it into the wall as it did so. He screamed in agony as his skull snapped, and every bone he had fractured The girl summoned her bow as she did with her knife, strung an arrow and released it into a guards's leg. He fell, and tried to crawl away, but the Minotaur crushed it with a footstep. All the guards left Henry to tackle the Minotaur. Twenty jumped on it at once, and try as it might, it could only bat one away at a time. As they scaled the beast's gigantic frame, the girl was constantly moving, kicking and shoving and slashing and firing arrows at the climbers. Henry picked up a fallen guard's blade and tossed through the stomach and head of two side-by-side climbers. The girl leaped from her perch as she became overwhelmed, rolling when she hit the ground. Henry ran to her, but she waved him off, speaking rapidly in a foreign tongue. "Elikha ejahai mornook ceilastif meagnoire somnabulast carumpdon!" A dark ball of shadow erupted from her hand, and it flew to the Minotaur. It grew, took a solid form. It was soon a giant war hammer. The Minotaur took it, and set to work. With dexterity that should have been beyond his clumsy fingers, he whirled the hammer around. When it struck someone, they was broken entirely, blood rained down in congealed splatters of gore and death. The slaves, terrified, fled. It let them past. The guards tried to flee, but the creature had no mercy. It smashed and crushed them at will. Corpses flew around the room, horribly disfigured from the raining blows. One weak man tried to escape, but the Minotaur held his weapon high, bringing it down upon the poor fool. As it fell, it snapped a rafter. A network of cracks spread, and their was a wicked snap and the whole thing collapsed on one side. The ceiling began to shake. "RUN!!!" the girl shrieked, fleeing to the Minotaur. Before it could bend down she scaled up it's back to the shoulder. "Come on!" she yelled to Henry, who scaled to the right shoulder. "Minotaur!" commanded the girl."Flee!" she turned to Henry. "Grab the horn, be careful not to let it poke your eye out! The Minotaur sprinted to the only exit, the tunnel that was just high enough to house it. Along the tunnel were support beams, keeping the whole thing upright. The Minotaur slimmed his hammer alongside the wall, cracking each and every one. "What's your name?" Henry asked the girl. "Evaire. There'll be more outside. You ready?" The Minotaur broke from the confines of the tunnel into the open air. Evaire let loose an arrow, which slipped through the visor of a helm. The guards outside were trying to gather them up. There were only six or so. There were twenty horse-drawn carriages, each with a cart at the back, filled with ore. They were headed to the source of the slavery rings. Exactly the place Henry needed to go. "We'll get the slavers" said Evaire. "Make sure the collectors don't get away!" Henry slipped off the Minotaur's high shoulder and ran at the carriages. Evaire let an arrow loose, it struck a guard at the base of the spine. She drew another arrow, and fired it through a guard's leg, he fell and screamed in pain. She clicked her fingers and said some words in Latin. Two eagles flew from nowhere, after the guards. But the Minotaur was now greatly weakened. Evaire recalled it back into it's pouch, dropping to the ground. Several carts had gone, but a few were only starting to flee. Henry managed to grip the ledge of a cart and hoist his legs inside. An armed collector ran to meet him, ax drawn. He came with a chop, but Henry whipped the shield from his back and deflected the blow, then struck the collector over the head and shoving him off the moving cart.