Redemption in a war

Chapter 16: Make Up

The Defenders were all at the entrance of a relatively big cave that they had discovered a while ago. Instead of fighting or rummaging for resources, they wanted to mine raw material and make it into useful stuff. It was quite dangerous and whatever they got would be hard to process but with this cave, they could potentially get quite a lot without having to fight.

So everyone was geared up with old rustly pickaxes, multiple ropes, brought small, half broken metal carts with them to carry any material, wore military helmets that they got..somewhere with flashlights literally just taped to them, thick but ripped and dirty clothing, food and water and enthusiastic smiles on their faces. Wonder how long that's gonna stay.

The twins were back at base with Rax of course as they were too young but at least Red was now old enough to accompany them and seemed pretty excited about it.

With all of them ready, they entered the looming cave with their flashlights - or visor and blue lights in Nexus' case - and split up into small teams of two in order to explore all the smaller tunnels that branched off.

Onyx went with Prax.
Ionix went with Red.
Iocus went with Dionus.

Nexus was left as they were an uneven number today but he insisted that he would be fine alone as his armour gave him the most amount of protection out of everyone so, reluctantly, Onyx allowed him to be on his own but to still be careful.

Nexus took one of the ropes he carried with him and tied it to a rock like the others so he won't get lost and went further down the main tunnel of the cave, while his friends split up and went left and right.

Now he was left alone with his thoughts in a dark cave which honestly makes him more scared of his own mind rather than the dark itself. Nothing can be darker than your own mindset after all...

Going down further and away from the warm laughter of his friends, the first thing he noticed in the eery silence was a quiet, deep and evil laughter behind him which sounded disgustingly familiar like-

"Daxtrus?" he asked quietly but sharply as he turned around to light up his surroundings with his blue-ish glowing visor to find..nothing.

Of course there was nothing, the previous protectors helped him with getting rid of this meanace after all. He should just keep going and carry on with the task and went further down the cave.

But even after two weeks, he still had nightmares about the whole incident and occasionally heard whispers in the back of his head as if the God of evil is trying to convince him to make another deal.

He almost ran into a wall because he was so deep in his thoughts, until his vision was completely filled with a lit up cave wall, making Nexus yelp and jump back in surprise.

"It's just a damn wall.." he pointed out tiredly to no one while placing a hand upon his visor as if trying to drag it down his face in a tired fashion.

After calming down, he threw the rope he had around his shoulder pads onto the ground and lifted the pickaxe, got into a good position and swung it once against the wall which gave off a loud 'clang' and some good sized chunks of stone.

He didn't need more currently so he picked up a nice piece and put in into an open compartment of his left arm, closed it and waited for results to pop up on his visor.

This little procedure gave him the ability to test objects for certain chemicals or metals, etc.
Of course he had such a thing on his armour, he's a scientist, what did you expect?

After a few seconds, the results popped up onto his visor with a satisfying outcome. This area where he stood was rich in coal, iron and manganese.

Time to get to work then, so he placed one of the small carts right next to him but still far enough away to give him space and went on to swing the pickaxe once more.