The Battery and Its Army (COMPLETED)

On The Run

"It's so bright!!" Morgana scowled. All of them were shielding their eyes from the sun. And it just happened to be midsummer. Their complaining was due to the fact that they had been hiding in the emperor's storerooms for nearly a year. Almost nobody had come down there since they had imitated ghosts and scared away the cook's superstitious apprentice who in turn started rapidly spreading a rumor that the room was haunted. The servants had avoided the room ever since. It left them to their plans. Of course, every once in a while someone came down. In cases like this, they had simply hidden.

As their eyes adjusted to the infernally bright sunlight, they all hid in the dense shrubbery of the roadside and waited. Seconds turned to minutes, which became half an hour. Just as they were about to give up a cart drawn by oxen rumbled past, carrying a large load of hay. The trio of adventurers exchanged glances, snuck up to the cart, and jumped soundlessly into the straw. Harim quickly arranged makeshift walls of hay around them so they would not be noticed. They proceeded to converse in whispers and eat a lunch of jujubes and flatbread. After about half an hour they heard the driver of the cart call out that at the next left turn the hay would be unloaded. Realizing what this meant, they all quietly jumped off the cart and got their bearings. The trail the cart had traveled upon was a narrow one which wound through a dark, leafy forest. All at once, it began to rain heavily. They agreed to set camp in the forest. Fighting through the outer layer of the forest's brambles, they glimpsed a clearing in the trees. As they entered it they saw a huge, silver block of metal with giant wires snaking out of it into the ground. The Battery. But this was the actual Battery, and not its control center that they had so carefully studied and planned for. They spun and came face to face with hundreds of grotesque metal warriors.