The Legends Of Chima: Journey to the Lands Below

Chapter 25- Cragger

"March!" I shouted as I moved forward up the ramp into the rock. The soldiers followed me in and we entered a large room that was littered with wooden crates, some open and new looking, others were barely held together with rusted nails and rotted wood. Once Laval had marched his troops in a shadow began to loom over us, the metal ramp we crossed over began to rise and sealed the exit behind us, a couple soldiers pounded on the gate, calling to be let out.

Just as my eyes had began to adjust to the pitch black room the fluorescent lights on the ceiling flicked to a blinding white and the room filled with a pleasantly cool breeze. A nice break from the shadeless, scorching city below us. Not long after the lights came on, the radio in my backpack pocket came to life with chatter from Ry'Tharr back on the tower.

"Sorry we had to seal ya up in there, due to some possibly dangerous outcomes of this mission, we thought it be safest to remotely steer Charybda over the ocean. Oh and this isn't really important but this rock you're on right now was named Charybda by the first people stationed here, like how your home is named Cavora. Just thought I'd tell ya."

"Ok, so do you have a plan besides "reach the top and kill the dude" or do you have an actual strategy in mind?" I responded.

"Nothing really besides split up and search for a way to the top, from where you're at there's not many ways to go so it shouldn't be to difficult."

"Alright then, we'll get to it." I concluded, taking my finger off the button on the side.

"I'll be heading that way." I said to Laval while pointing to a large, dimly lit hallway.

"And where would I be going?"

"Ry'Tharr said it would be best to split up and cover more ground."

"Alright, well good luck... and stay safe." He wished me. I wished him the same and began to walk back to me troops. Before I could get a step in he pulled me back to him and gave me a peck on the cheek and chuckled, my cheeks visibly blushing. I tried to hold back a smile but failed miserably.

I took head of the group and marched forwards into the dark hall, the light attachment on my rifle was turned on but the visibility granted was minimal. Along the way, empty rooms became more and more numerous so I instructed the men to check the rooms for threats and they listened for the most part. Among other orders was keep your flashlights on but that mainly went unfollowed, probably because the majority under my command were lions but Crug followed them to a T, and with great enthusiasm as well. It was probably because I had led him many times before but either way it was nice to see. The way he scouted ahead of me and kicked down the doors so aggressively reminded me of the old days when we would raid other tribes for their Chi. I hesitate to say good since they were anything but that, but still, they were memories.

I noticed he forgot one so I picked up the slack and checked it myself. I kicked down the door and was blasted in the face with dust, my light illuminating every particle of it made me realize just how long it's been since someone's been in here. Another thing that caught my attention was what looked like a corpse in the corner. I got closer and it looked more like a robot than a person, it's whole face was a curved, featureless screen and the rest of it looked lightly armored and riddled with bullet holes. I touched the tip of my gun to its face and it's head fell to the side before flickering to life. A couple blue shapes arranged like facial features appeared on the screen and turned to face me.

The thing then tackled me to the ground and started hitting me, the thing itself was light but packed a serious punch. I tried fighting back but I couldn't do much against something made out of metal, and my gun was out of reach. Where there looked to be a metal plate covering the internals was gone and all it's wires were exposed. I drew my knife and started hacking away at it, it eventually stopped moving but the soldiers outside the room didn't know that. They filled the room and it got lit up with flashlights and muzzle flash, the sound of five guns rapidly firing in my direction was as frightening as it was deafening. As fast as I could I flung my arms over my face and ears but it did little good. The hot projectiles that didn't lodge itself into the robot completely bounced around inside it and fell onto me, mainly on my body armor, but what didn't seared my scales. After a few seconds the firing stopped, after a minute so did the ringing in my ears. When everyone had regained their bearings Leonidas slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled me out from under the robot, which now resembled a mangled pile of scrap metal the ravens would fish out of their trash heap once a week to sell off.

I saw his mouth moving but no words were coming out. At first it was subtle, like someone's normal speaking voice but then it quickly looked like he was yelling at me, his mouth making big movements and his fangs unintentionally beared at me. Once my hearing began to clear some I could make out what he was saying.

"Cragger! Are you ok!? Can you hear me!?"

"Yeah... I think so."

"So what now?" Another voiced asked.

"We keep going, we still have a mission to do."

We continued down the hallway and took a turn, and saw an elevator, littered with more of those hopefully dead robots. To be safe everyone took turns taking potshots at them, one or two of them reactivated but they were quickly gunned down, one fired a shot and barely graved one of the lions in the group, it too met a similar fate as the others. I saw no blood but he fell to the floor, his hair standing tall and he felt electrical to the touch, like he had been dragging his paws on the carpet. He got up after a moment, his hair still standing on end and with a dazed look on his face

"The hell was that?" He remarked.

"Don't know, I've never seen a weapon like that before." Another person answered

"Well it's over now, let's get these things off of here." I ordered as I grabbed the arms of one and dragged it off the elevator.

It took about fifteen minutes to get them off, with their rigid, hard bodies being littered with hot projectiles and sharp edges there were more than a few small injuries but mainly the problem was moving them with them being difficult to grab hold of. As I hefted two over my shoulders I glanced at some numbered buttons on the elevator meant to be the floor select and counted eight buttons. By the time I heaved them off the lift and thrown them onto a large pile of bodies we made with them the entirety of my squad was already on board. I joined them on the lift and hunched down to the button's level. I pointed my flashlight at them and even had to clear the dust off with my finger just to read the numbers on them. The first one I cleaned beared the number eight so I thought why not cut straight to the top.

"Everyone pray this works." I announced as I pressed it.

The elevator did a slight lurch upwards and to my amazement actually began lifting us. I looked as the floors passed us by and counted a total of five before it stopped moving. We climbed onto the ledge above us onto the next floor and got back into formation.

"Fifth floor, not far from the top now." I said to myself.

I helped a couple others lift what looked like a garage door that led to a large room resembling a big storage room and I was surprised to see the lights were on. I saw a lion from across the room rummaging through a chest and called out to him.

"Is that you Laval?!"

The figure lifted his head from the chest to reveal a blood red face and a hulking beast of a lion, fur white as the fluorescent lights above us and eyes black as night.

That very much was not Laval.

I stayed paralyzed in place as several other animals as savage looking as him emerged from behind shelves and other places, I only moved when they opened fire at us.