Corvayne raced through the dusty mining town on foot, going full speed as Wick ran beside him and Hari burned spells to follow them. Their goal was a row of houses away on a dune buggy and neither aware of them yet or hurrying. The mercenary with a giant saw-blade on his back was actually driving rather slow with a hand behind him on the nuclear bomb.

Corvayne sprinted and tried his best to keep an eye on the buggy as it dipped in and out of view. He panicked for a moment when he got to the other side of a building and lost track of the cart for just a split second, then saw the red lights and realized it turned, and he kept sprinting, across the black top, legs and his lungs starting to burn. He almost collapsed in relief when he saw the buggy stop at fenced gate leading into the mine. Sawblades was speaking to a guard in a gate house and gestured back at the bomb.

Corvayne was getting mentally prepared to move like a shadow across the ground, reach into the window, pinch the guy's neck, drag the prone form behind a building, and so on, when Wick tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. The man left the booth and just jogged down the road in the direction of where the other dune buggies had been going. With nobody guarding the gate they just jogged in. Ahead, between two large steel buildings, Corvayne could see the red lights of the buggy dip into the ground. Sawblade was taking the freight elevator down into the huge pit.

“Gah!” Wick was huffing, even though she was wearing the magic running boots. “Corvayne, stairs? Elevator?”

Corvayne walked forward to the chain link fence surrounding the pit, trying not to stop as he looked around. “There's gotta be a person elevator...”

Corvayne stood next to the closed elevator door and looked down. The mine was a titanic hole in the ground surrounded by buildings and it looked like there were multiple elevators down and a pair of ramps carved out of the wall that intersected with buildings built along the side. Okay, there was a personnel elevator a few feet over, thankfully on their floor. They piled into the steel framed cage and Corvayne punched down.

Hari was looking all around. “This is very cool!”

Wick meanwhile kept glancing down and to the side at the larger elevator car ahead of them. “Make it go faster!”

Corvayne saw the other elevator was perhaps two hundred feet under them. Looking at metal box the controls were clearly not designed to let the elevators race.

“No luck. We will get to the bottom when the elevator is ready.”

As they went down floors, Corvayne saw that in the helix of paths dug into the walls of the pit, there were still people working at night, perhaps maintenance or third shift. The blue moonlight painting the walls was replaced with sickly green and orange lights. Looking down Corvayne was pretty sure the pit was at least a mile deep. He could see bands of different minerals, and signs that some of the walls of the pit were not worked.

“Wick, was this something they just... found out here?”

“Natural cave they expanded into a mine. Geologists couldn't make heads or tails of how there was a shaft this big in an area that shouldn't form them. That was a hundred years ago, the mines been here for almost as long since the place has heavy metal deposits and that Cascadian Jasper in huge quantities.”

Hari was looking too. “Looks like a dungeon.”

Corvayne considered the huge pit they were sinking into. “It could have been one. Wick talks a lot about deception, that people will do one thing to hide another.” Corvayne started, thinking about the oddities involved with the mine. “So I don't get it, you have hundreds and hundreds of miners, but the big ticket item they were mining was unguarded if Grunt had a sick day. I would keep the crate somewhere secure.”

Wick shrugged, eyes constantly looking down off the platform at the other elevator. “I don't know. It must have been a rush job to get it somewhere hard to get to, given the hostile takeover. We are not the only warehouse for material, it kinda makes sense. Somebody finds this odd object, you realize that psychos are infiltrating the mine, so you send the thing to a place that frequently sends out smaller crates of stuff to get it up and out. I mean, the majority of the mines metal was just stuff they send directly to factories.” Wick said. “I'm more wondering why the hell they are going to blow the place up.”

“Money. Mystery solved? Follow money.” Hari folded her arms and switched to speaking her native tongue. “Whenever there is a mystery, understanding the motive is perhaps the most important task to figuring out why it's happening. Undine called them the big three motivators: Money, Power, Sex.”

“So maybe the party was to make sure just about everyone is OUT of the mine, then what, they collapse a particular tunnel? Irradiate it?” Corvayne thought about the idea Wick had earlier regarding a tower entrance in the mine. “The forest had a bunch of signs to try to keep people out too...”

Wick shook her head. “The guy getting buzz sawed to death in his remote cabin makes me doubt there's a party to save everyone. I bet that bomb is big enough to collapse the entire mine and kill everything on the surface too.”

Hari tugged on Corvayne's shoulder. “Please explain to me what's going on. I can't follow everything.”

“Oh right. The guy we are chasing probably killed the miner we were looking at earlier. It looks like hes going to plant a bomb here.”

“What's a bomb?”

“Uh, kinda like a really big fireball to kill everyone. Then it poisons the ground.”

Hari looked around. “Why are we here?! Corvayne, we should run!”

Corvayne pointed down. “That guy has to have the switch to set it off. If we wanna save the miners, we gotta get it.”

“You've got a hero complex! That's one of the first things my mentor pushed out of me!”

“It's not about being a hero, we're just the group who can stop it, so we should.” Corvayne didn't think heroism had anything to do with what he was doing.

Wick holds up a finger. “IF we are right, it could be that he's installing a new AC unit that looks like a nuclear weapon.”

Corvayne nodded. “It mean, it would make more sense to use two honestly, one for inside the mine one up in the town.”

Wick nodded and laughed. “They probably would have to use two given the size of the bombs...” She paled. “Oh god, let's go! This is beyond us!”

Corvayne looked at her. “The guy planting the bomb probably has a detonator. We just take him out and the mines themselves are safe. Also... where does your hunch say to go?”

Wick frowned. “Down.”

“So let's save some people, solve the mystery of the crate, and if possible we do it in disguise and slip in and out without anyone knowing we were here.”

“Don't we have to fight this guy? Maybe even kill him?” Wick had her arms folded. “I mean, there's a difference between goblins and street punks and a guy who can and will defend himself to the death, and will come after us if he doesn't die.”

“I am prepared to take a life if it means saving a bunch of other ones.” Corvayne undid the shirt on his spear. “Especially if it's to protect you Wick.”

Wick started slapping Corvanye on the arm. “Damnit don't get fucking sappy!”

The other elevator had stopped. Looking up Corvayne could see they must be over a mile down given the size of the hole above.. It was uncomfortably warm now, and it felt like the lights were dimmer as their own elevator stopped. Sawblade, as Corvayne thought of him, started driving down a tunnel the elevator pointed right to. Moving to the carved stone corner and looking around the bend he saw the red lights of the buggy disappearing around a gentle bend. Corvayne started jogging down the tunnel as it slopped downwards, cool air rushing from within. The faint humming of the engine ahead of them faded as they fell behind the buggy.

It was only a minute later that Corvayne came to a four way intersection in the tunnel. Looking down each dimly lit passage Corvayne didn't see the tell-tale glow of lights. Before he had to start rolling dice he heard sounds of a confrontation. When in doubt, follow the fight. Corvanye walked straight. He turned a gradual bend and spotted the cart, with six armed Miners facing down the Sawblade man.

One of them spoke with his gun aimed at Sawblades. “We knew the party was bullshit. You god damn clowns think nobody would notice you disappearing our managers?”

The man on the cart laughed. “It's worked before. It will work again!” He hopped off the cart. One of the miners fired a burst, and the man had the shimmering glow of a shield around him.

“Oh yes! You guys might have figured it out. But you... just don't have the right tools for the job!”

Sawblade whipped his hand forward, his blade spinning and making a high pitched noise as it flew out and hit the man who fired in the neck. Corvayne backed around the corner as a barrage of fire rang out. Stray shots peppered the wall on the other side of the shaft. It stopped after a few seconds.

“Well that's too bad. Looks like those guns don't work too good, eh friends?” He heard another humming noise and another scream.

“Wick, lead with disrupt please.” Corvayne pulled the cleaver out of his pack. He wasn't going to let a bunch of people get murdered for no good reason. There was a cry of one of the miners trying to surrender, cut short with another buzzing noise.

Hari held up a hand and vanished. She then appeared back by Corvayne a moment later and proudly dropped off a big box and a paddle.

“Uh Hari... did you just steal the nuke?”

“The little stick there came with it. It's a 'detonator', whatever that means.” The elf looked pretty proud. “The 'Nuck-leer Bomb' is an apex class item!”

Wick tapped Corvayne's shoulder, and he nodded. She popped out and drew her wand, aiming a disrupt at the sawblade wearing killer. Corvayne gave her a clear corridor of fire and saw the green orb fly out, then hit the shield. There was an ear shattering sound and something on the man burst in a shower of sparks. Corvayne saw the man's hand move and the blade was flying at him. He tossed the cleaver into the path of the blade and at the man while his shadow limbs pushed his spear into the hands. He ran through a shower of sparks, saw the spinning blade was in the ceiling. He kept his eyes on the hands.

“You dumb FUCKER that belt cost a LOT!” The man roared as he jerked his hand back. Corvayne saw the hand pull left and he sprang forward and right. He felt something move just past his ear. The man snarled and yelled out “[Chain Frenzy]!”

Corvayne used [Flows Like Water] to dive through a sudden wall of sawblades trying to converge on where he was. He was now in front of the man with a dozen writhing chains arcing around where he was standing, attached to saw blades that were behind him. The man narrowed his eyes, then grinned and pulled his other hand back, no doubt to turn Corvayne into a pile of shredded meat chunks. But yelling his attack out? The big telegraphed moves? What was it that his sword trainer liked to always say? Oh yeah!

“Sloppy!” Corvayne activated [Juxtapose]. In a step he spun past Sawblade as the man stumbled forward. Suddenly the fancy weapon user was in the way of his own saw blades. This was why a 'Hell's Yo-Yo' was a weapon he never bothered to train with. It was too easy to kill yourself with it.

Corvayne kept moving as he didn't really want to get covered in gore. There was a horrible scream and a few moments of wet noises. Turning around, Corvayne saw the guy was somehow still standing, but staggering and losing blood rapidly. The figure turned around, his blade wedged into him with a dozen other cuts. “Mother... fucker... Fine... let's both... die.” He reached into his vest and pulled out a banana, then mashed his thumb into it, grinning madly. Blinking, then a look of confusion. He had just mashed a yellow fruit rather then summoned mutually assured destruction.

Corvayne was not naturally snarky. If you were talking, you were not fighting hard enough. For all the crap the masters gave him before and after a fight, during fights they put everything into combat. They respected even the weakest enemy. It was trained into them, the idea being confidence breeds carelessness. On the other hand, this guy was an asshole for trying to blow everyone up.

Corvayne smiled. “Hey... is that a banana, or are you just happy to see me?”

“Looks like it's bruised, like your pride!” Corvayne added.

“No explosion to stop us from peeling out.” He tried.

The man stumbled and fell over from his own wounds.

Wick approched, arm bleeding. “My god. He's dead... Your puns musa killed him.”

Corvayne guessed Wick had just got one over his head but instead inspected her arm. A glancing cut from a rock. He then turned back and went to see if any of the miners were alive.

Hari followed. Corvanye smiled at her. “Good work guys. Hari, great job stealing the detonator. We'd all be dead if not for that.”

“Why, what's it do?” She said, inspecting it but not pulling the hard cover of both buttons off.

“It sets off that really big fireball that would kill us all.”

Hari held it at arm's length. “Ok not doing that.”

There were two miners still alive. One was bleeding from a missing hand. Corvanye rushed to tie the limb off with a tourniquet using his spear-shirt. The other had a slash on his leg. He grabbed Corvayne's arm as he was leaning in to treat it.

“You gotta help! He said they are... going to set off another bomb... on the surface.”

Corvayne sucked in air through his teeth, but managed to exhale without swearing and schooled his face as he nodded at the miner. “I thought so, but I don't think they'll set it off with this guy down here.”

Hari helped lay the wounded man on the back of the cart. The miner who wasn't wounded too badly accepted Corvayne's help standing up. He looked around. “I dunno how you took that bastard out, but I owe you man. Listen, these guys are mercenaries, nobody bought the mine... all the old managers are missing and probably dead.”

Wick kicked half of the sawblade guy's radio. “No faking a report in either. We gotta get outta here, unless you want to die when the radioactive remains of the mine fall in here and cook us.”

Corvayne wiped some blood off on his jumpsuit. He took it off, revealing his normal clothes under it. He pulled his fake-wood chain-mail out of his bag.

“By the way my name is Corvayne. Do you have any idea where they planted the bomb? You seemed to guess where mister saw blade was going.” He hopped into the buggy. There was space for four people in the seats with the wounded guy in the back.

“Names Coatz. I was a grunt in the collective navy before this and if I was going to drop a bomb upstairs... I guess as close to dead center in the compound to get everything. Get us on the elevator out I'll try to think about it. Nice fight by the way... I saw you pull off some fancy footwork. Why do you have a spear and armor?”

Corvayne did a 3 point turn and started driving back to the elevator, trying to find a balance of speed and not hitting a bump that would send the critically injured man flying off the back. “I'll give you the short version: I'm a weird desert tribe exiled warrior sneaking into this mine chasing a power shielded duo who probably is not related to this guy who might be here because of a crate they stole. The sender of the crate was dead from saw blade wounds and was a manager at this mine. So got here, snuck in, and decided following the guy with the saw blade who was clearly up to no good with a nuclear weapon would be the best way to get an answer of why the heck someone blew a huge hole into the wall of my home last night.” He left out 'also because it's important to my girlfriend' as there's some things you just don't share with someone you don't know.

Wick was glaring at Corvayne but the man just laughed. “Well, fuck. I was getting real sick of cloak and dagger shit! I'll take the intruder that saved my ass over the one who's lying to me and clearly been killing people down here.”

“We haven't seen the two people we were looking for, but I'd appreciate if you laid out what he was trying to blow up down here since we are probably going to be really busy trying to stop a bomb from cleansing the entire camp with nuclear fire.”

“There's some sort of ruins down here. Like a castle or something. These tunnels lead to a cave system where a lot of weird stuff was going down. We're missing a lot of people who were sent to work down here, they had guards posted here. Part of us coming down was being sure they'd try to sneak something out while we were distracted by the party. As if we'd trust that bullshit sales excuse... Oh yeah they said that the party was that they dumped a bunch of jasper. The mine doesn't sell jasper to anyone directly. The Brines Brothers do the selling, and they got a warehouse guarded by a pro wrestler or something where there's tons of it just sitting around!”

Getting onto the elevator Corvayne stepped out of the seat to hit the button to send them back to the surface. He was building a likely explanation in his head. It felt like the same thing Wick had talked about with the park, but with the secret black ops stuff she peppered into her soup of theories added.

“I'm going to ask a weird question... did some of the people who came back say they saw monsters?”

“Yeah. Things slinking around back there. Good guess. You some kinda monster hunter then?” Coatz was checking his rifle.

“I don't hunt them so much as fight them because they make it a pain in the ass to get treasure.” Corvayne added conversationally.

Wick grumbled. “The fucking bomb means we can't go look at what we CAME here for, the monster tunnel.”

Corvayne let her stew. “Hey... if they found something in the mines that's unusual... where would they store it?”

“Management has quarters over by the north wall.”

“Did anything unusual come out of the section where there was weird stuff going on?”

“Oh of course. Small and light containers. We usually need motorized carts and lifters to pull anything.

Corvanye's own hunches were zeroing in. “Did they ever pull something like an honest-to-god treasure chest out of the mine?”

The man slapped the dashboard of the buggy. “I thought Hank was joking! If he lives through this I owe him a drink.”

There was probably another space like the one at the park here. Wick had said that Cascadia was dimensionally weak. The group got wind of something here, and probably sent miners into the breach to go find stuff then take it back to the mine. Some of the miners might have died in the dungeon, but perhaps a group could go five floors. The mercenaries probably finished off the survivors and took whatever they fished up.

Corvayne had time in the elevator to think. The Mercenaries knew from the dead man, probably, that the crate was bound to Tripic. Maybe they don't know that it was given to Brines to ship under the guise of one of those rock-shop crates. The two aliens did. They went looking for the dead guy after securing the crate.

Wick was thinking along the same lines. “Hey, how long ago did they show up? Not QUITE three weeks ago, but after the new area of the mine was opened, maybe a day or two later... right?”

The miner nodded. “Right on the money.”

Wick started thinking. “There was a manager who TOOK a little break right after they pulled the first shipment out. Brines KNOWS that the crate was different. There was a break-in RIGHT away when that crate landed. Brines could just lift the damn thing, so probably not him. Either our aliens or these Mercs, who were in town and were expecting something unusual to be found. No wait! The Mercs would just send Sawblade at you...”

Corvayne looked back at Wick. “So the Mercenaries or black ops guys or whatever these new guards are, they killed a bunch of people to get the stash at this mine, and are going to ride off into the desert or something with the loot? Why else use a dune buggy when they have a truck they controlled well enough to ferry at least a pair of nuclear weapons around?”

Wick pulled out her phone and hissed. “I need RECEPTION! I gotta look at a map!”

Corvayne poked Hari. “Hey Hari, can you grab my computer out of my bag?”

“Sure! It will cost you a kiss.” She turned around and did a little magic, the computer glowed a little in the bag then flew out to her fingers.

“Your friend just cast a spell.” Coatz said, numbly.

“Yeah. Magic is real. We think that's what's in the other crates and chests. Real magical items.”

Wick started slapping him on the shoulder. “Stop blabbing everything!”

Coatz held up a hand. “Miss, you know why I'm going to help you? It's because this guy is like an open hand of cards. I owe you my life. That means something. I've served with guys like him, and they are the only reason I stayed with that shit pile as long as I did. You ever decide to sign up with the Collective kid, I'll give you the name of my old C.O. You'd love him. Guy was like a rock on the outside but you could tell he loved his grunts.”

“I think I had my fill of gruff military figures for a few lifetimes Mister Coatz but I appreciate the offer.” Corvayne had a few minutes of elevator and barring nuclear fire blasting down the hole and killing them, he had plenty of time to pull up the Cascadia map. Zooming in on the desert, he showed Wick the area around the mine. “There's a stretch of barren and nearly flat rock nearby. Big enough to land a ship on.”

“Any ships land nearby recently Coatz?” Wick adjusted her glasses.

“Miss, no. Any unauthorized traffic you have AFRs or ground resources on it.”

Wick nodded but Corvayne had to ask. “What's an AFR?”

“Aerial Fast Responder. Planets usually have a few fleets off in the middle of nowhere to blow up unauthorized atmosphere breaches. They are probably jet boosted long range helicopters here,”

“There was a UFO crash a few days ago that fit the bill, but we didn't see them.” Corvayne was curious: it seemed like they tracked them.

“Crash implies they didn't slow the hell down. Your not going to see a firefight if a ship breaches and doesn't slow to aircraft speeds to land. There are punch craft that do that, but that's a one way ticket and damn risky. If you track something and it's a punch craft, the people in it are going to ride off on an ATV or something before your planes get there.”

“Grr now I want to talk to these damn aliens already!”

“I want a banana.” Hari added.

Corvayne shrugged. “Well, if there's a flat place for a ship, I think our goal is to disarm the bomb then stop them from leaving without paying the bill. Ideally, paying me the bill. Hari... is there any talents you have that might be able to detect an item you already know... say a different bomb?”

“Only if it's exactly the same type of item. So it has to be a noclear bomb.”

Corvayne tried not to think about the bombs both under and above them going off. “But you can find it?”

She fished around in her side pouch. “I'll learn it from the book... it's in here but it will take me a few minutes, and it only gives me a general direction if it's pretty close.”

Wick rolled her eyes. “I'm annoyed that we are getting dragged into other people's problems. Here I was, hoping we'd get some information outta this.”

Corvayne couldn't help smile at her. “Wick, why settle for that? Let's also steal their ship.”