Cheezus and the archer who’d kited for the Survivors led the escape. In the furious race away from the freeway, he’d learned that her name was Kantala. She had a petite frame that belied her assertiveness on the battlefield; clearly, she was not to be underestimated. Although she wasn’t a rogue, she was remarkably stealthy as well, a fact that Cheezus appreciated as they made their way off the highway and into the backstreets of the city. As frightening as their opponents were and as tempting as it was to just dash through the area at a full retreat, caution was warranted. There were likely other nasty things around here and they needed to find an escape, not another fight.

Normally, once you called it on a boss in an MMO, it was deemed a wipe; however, here they didn’t have the luxury of dying and respawning. Fortunately, there was a work around because they weren’t in an instanced zone. With three of these stegosaur creatures chasing the raid, the two of them led the group through the streets of Berkeley looking for somewhere to hide. While not as heavily forested here as on the other side of the freeway, there weren’t many buildings that had been left intact and certainly none that he’d seen so far that would even slow down the house sized monsters that were chasing them.

Cheezus spared a glance back at the raid and behind that, the tanks that were keeping the mother stegosaurus at bay. He could only guess that it was the mother since she had come the rescue of her mate and when the other two smaller creatures arrived she defended them vigorously as well. Cheezus would have felt sorry for the massive creature they had slain and its now bereaved mate had it not been for the carnage he’d seen the creature deliver upon the Survivors.

They had saved the Misfits once and he was certain that Smash intended to return the favor. He’d seen some of the spark back in his old friend’s eyes during that last fight. Perhaps seeing the reality of what they were up against had pulled him back into being his old self. He had commanded the Misfits and given direction to the entire raid with confidence in much the same way he’d led them all through the last few dungeons up to Cermillion. Given how difficult this game had become it was clear that they needed everyone to be at their best.

As they passed another nearly abandoned block, an idea popped into his head. He’d need to find something first to help them but this could be the chance they were looking for. “Kantala can you buy me a few minutes and keep leading the raid north and east? I’m going to search a few of these buildings for a tool. If I can find us a crowbar or something like that I think we can get out of here safely,” Cheezus said.

Kantala nodded and Cheezus set to work searching the abandoned buildings. Essentially, he knew he needed a lever. Thinking about how they’d overcome the cyclops in San Francisco had given him an idea about how they could use their environment here to get away from these monsters. But first he’d have to do some searching.

About twenty-minutes later he came back with a crowbar and a sledgehammer. He’d never attempted doing something like this before but he’d seen it done. He approached the nearest man-hole cover and set to work: first he used the crowbar to pry up the sewer cover and then he jammed the sledgehammer underneath it. He had to grab a few bricks to allow him to pry it up further and Kantala pitched in. She wasn’t very large but what she didn’t have in size she made up in determination. After a lot of sweating and cursing at a few missteps, they finally managed to get the man-hole cover vertical and rolled it out into the street. It crashed into the curb and Cheezus messaged the raid to come down the street to come east on University to where they were.

A few minutes later the raid was safely filing into the sewers. Cheezus took one last look at the raid and saw Thag off-tanking the enraged stegosaur. He remembered how she’d kissed him earlier and he wanted to pick-up where they had left off. Although it was too soon to see where things would go, she definitely interested him with her tough girl attitude and no-nonsense way of approaching things. He didn’t think he’d ever had a woman make the first move on him and it was definitely a turn on. Unfortunately, now was not the ideal time for romance.

Hoping that she would be alright at the front lines, Cheezus dove down into the sewer to take point. Kantala was to stay above and make sure everyone made it safely. There was no way to reseal the man-hole cover and besides, the entrance was far too small for the stegosaurs to enter. He only hoped that the beasts weren’t so strong that they could smash the concrete lined steel reinforced deck above him as his feet hit the murky, bilge like waters below.

One of the mages had a stick that was lit when he dropped into the sewers, but that was too bright for taking point. Fortunately, he’d thought to grab some of the phosphorescent rocks from the cave on the island and used that to guide him as he crept through the tunnel. He could hear the muttering of voices and clank of armor behind him. There was no way they were going to be able to sneak an entire raid of players through the twisting tunnels down here but he hoped to at least get far enough ahead of the group that he could warn them if there was any impending danger. A few minutes later he came to a sewer grate pulled out his thieves’ tools. He’d picked up a few screwdrivers as part of his kit when they’d started back in Australia since he’d known that lot of post-apocalyptic games had modern elements and such things could come in handy. The screws were bound with rust so he applied some lubricant to them and waited. He felt, rather than heard the rampaging of the stegosaurs when the rest of the guild made it safely into the sewers. Smash was the last one in and he let the raid know he was safe in chat.

After freeing the screws from the grate, Cheezus continued on his way through the sewers. His clothing was soon covered with muck as he wound the small raid through the maze down below. While some of the mainlines allowed for standing room, many of the side streets had smaller mains that required one to crouch. He wondered how the tanks in their heavy armor were holding up. He came to a tee intersection and heard a series of clicks and hisses coming from in front of them. The tee section they were in had a small area for standing room that was maybe seven feet by seven feet. This was a collection area for a series of lines and was larger than many other areas. Unfortunately, down here the sound echoed and it was quite possible that whatever was making that noise was pretty far away. Or it could be right next to them. Cheezus continued on but asked the rest of the raid to hold back for now. The sound of rushing water had started to increase in volume. They were probably getting close to a treatment facility or outflow area. The noise should cover the sound of his footfalls as he tried to slosh through the sewer water as quietly as possible but there was no way it would cover the raid.

Soon he reached a treatment facility area that was perhaps fifty-feet-wide and a hundred feet long. Water rushed down below him through various outfalls under catwalks strung between connection service ways. On the other side of the chamber were three massive treatment ponds, on top of which stood massive scum removers that swept over the water. Of course, since the electricity no longer functioned in the city, the treatment facility was not functional. Fortunately, it looked like a manual override had been thrown and the untreated water poured out of the chamber on the other side, probably to a large stream or river.

Cheezus made his way along one of the catwalks and was just about to call to the raid that all was clear when dozens of lizard-like men started filing into the room, bows at the ready. He looked back towards the passage he’d come from but it was blocked by several stouter crocodile men, each carrying their own wicked looking spear. He let the raid know that he was in trouble; however, a few seconds later the rest of the raid chat lit up. There were lizard men everywhere. A couple of minutes later they were all led to a twenty-by-ten concrete area which was had once been used for facility maintenance.

The apparent leader of the lizardmen was wizened with age and carried more feathers, stones, and various decorations than the other lizardmen. “Why have you invaded our lands surface dwellers?” it said. Cheezus was shocked that the creature spoke English. After a few quick discussions in raid chat, the guilds decided to stand down and try to negotiate before they did anything rash. If negotiations failed, things could get ugly since there were probably over fifty of the lizardmen surrounding both their guilds and all of them were high level.

“My name is Smash. Rygor and I sought refuge for our guilds in the sewers from the giant mutants,” Smash said, his voice echoed over the sound of the water rushing through the room. “It is not our intent to invade your lands. We will leave peacefully if allowed to do so but we aren’t afraid to fight if we must.”

The leader of the lizardmen considered his words carefully and said, “Very well. We may allow you to pass depending on what your intentions are once you leave.”

Smash and Rygor exchanged glanced with each other and their officers before he replied, “We were on a mission to avenge Rygor’s guild. They lost many of their friends to the stegosaur creature above. Now that the beast is slain our goal is to find out who is controlling these mutants and stop them. We’ve been told they are controlled by a wizard in a tower somewhere around here.”

“Indeed,” their leader replied. “It seems like we may have a common enemy. Come, let’s discuss this in a more comfortable setting and allow your soldiers to rest. Defeating one such as the mutant ‘stegosaur’ as you call it is not easy.”

With that it seemed like everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The lizardmen took them through a series of passages into an earthen tunnel and inside was a large hollowed out area. It didn’t look like a natural cave and Cheezus imagined it must have taken a great deal of effort to create this space with hand tools. He and the rest of the officers met with the lizardmen’s leader Chief Zracks and discussed the problem that his clan had been having with the mutants and proposed a joint effort to rid the city of this wizard.

They talked late into the night and Cheezus was exhausted. He still had one thing he’d sworn to do once they had survived. He approached Thag, who was sitting by the fire and staring into the flames. Clearly, they had all had a long day. “I know this isn’t exactly the best time to tell you, but I’m definitely interested,” he said, and then pulled her chin up to meet his gaze. They returned to their kiss from earlier right where they had picked off. Despite how tired they both were, when everyone else had gone to sleep they stole away to one of the side tunnels and made love in the dark.