The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 2) by Jonathan Brooks (free e books to read .txt) 📗

in the room where the group of Raiders that had been slaughtered in her dungeon were located.  She would’ve used the Teleport option before, but there just happened to be an invader blocking her from moving to another room behind it; now that it was dead, she could move.

Sadly, Tacca hadn’t factored in the boosted speed of the explosive wave when it was amplified by the ruptured bags, because she wasn’t even sure what would happen.  She watched in horror as the thrown weapons started to disintegrate just inches away from impacting her Core, and her Teleport initiated as she felt her Dungeon Force sucked away to power the ability – but it was too late.  She felt herself start to disappear from the room just as the wave of force hit her—

—and the world faded away.

*         *          *

“What was that?”

A blurry streak had shot over their heads and everyone ducked involuntarily, but whatever it was had already flown through the tunnel they had just emerged from.

“I think…that was a Dungeon Fairy,” Jesper said slowly, looking towards the way they came.  “I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve heard that every dungeon has one.  No one really knows what they do, and very few actually see them – because they’re supposedly able to turn invisible.”

“Well, what was it doing here?  And why did it look like it was running from something?” Francha, the Merchant Raider, asked worriedly.

They all looked at each other, and the fear and anxiety Sterge had already been experiencing ramped up to a whole new level.

“I have no idea, but I’d say that it doesn’t bode well for us – or for this dungeon,” the red-clad Clan representative finally answered.  “I think we’ll explore one more room, then I think we should leave.”

“What happened to determining whether or not there is any danger to The Village?” Gwenda asked.

“I’m beginning to think that there is a danger to your village, and it would probably be wise to evacuate immediately.  I don’t know for sure, but I think that whatever killed our people outside is here to destroy this dungeon’s Core; if it is strong enough to do all this, what’s to stop it from continuing its rampage down the mountain.”

That sounds like a reasonable assumption – but I sincerely hope it isn’t true.  Sterge didn’t have any argument against that, however, and the sight of what might have been the dungeon’s Fairy escaping in haste made him even more worried.  No one had any reason to refute Jesper’s words, either, so they agreed with him to explore one more room.  They had already gone through the first room and hadn’t seen anything except some blood droplets where their resident Blood Mage had pointed them out quietly to them all, and other than some trampled plants – which was strange in and of itself, because he’d personally seen that damaged plants inside of the dungeon seemed to regenerate themselves automatically – there hadn’t been anything of interest.

Now the second room was done being checked, and the third room was where they were going to stop if they didn’t find anything.  Sterge was perfectly fine with that, though, because the further they went the more uncomfortable he felt.  What made it worse was the discovery that his Dungeon Sight Ability didn’t work the way it did before; technically, he could activate it still, but nothing really showed up in his vision.  It could’ve been because there weren’t any monsters or traps anywhere near, but he felt there was something else affecting it – though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was.

In the tunnel leading to the third room, he heard some exclamations as those ahead of him found something.  It didn’t take him long to find out what exactly it was they found: A group of Raiders that had been in the middle of a delve.  The scene didn’t affect him as much physically as it had outside, despite there being some gruesome wounds, but the fact that they were still there certainly worried him even further.  Everyone knew that anything left behind in a delve, including the bodies of those that perished, was quickly absorbed by the dungeon…somehow.  No one knew the exact way they did it, but that they did it wasn’t in question.  For these bodies to still be there meant something else was going on.

“You can see from their orientation that they were facing towards the entrance tunnel of this room, so what ended up killing them came from that direction,” Jesper reported softly.  “Though at this point, I really don’t think that is in doubt.  What I still can’t understand or figure out is what exactly is doing this – and why?”

Anders, the other Raider working for the Minister, spoke up.  “Can you confirm that it wasn’t the dungeon itself that did this?”

Jesper thought about it for a moment, before he shook his head slowly.  “Unfortunately, I still can’t rule it out – though this still seems like something way beyond what it should be capable of.  And to do this in the first place doesn’t make sense, especially killing everyone outside; it’s a known fact in the higher Raider circles that dungeons don’t benefit from the deaths of anyone outside of their entrance.  The massacre up there was therefore done for absolutely no reason, as far as a dungeon is concerned.”

Anders hmphed.  It was a strange sound coming from the Hill Dwarf, which he followed up with a statement.  “Not good enough.  I have express orders from the Minister to determine the guilt of this dungeon, and to destroy its Core, if we discover that the dungeon was behind this senseless slaughter.”

The others just looked at him like he was crazy – including Francha.  “What?  Why wasn’t I told about this?”

“You didn’t need to know, that’s why.  Now, I’d rather not