Monster Mansion 2 by Dante King (best way to read ebooks .txt) 📗

“I’m upstairs,” she murmured to me in my head, sounding distracted. “I just thought of something I wanted to add to your rooms. Come upstairs. Bring Astrid.”

I shrugged. Astrid had not heard our conversation, and she was looking at me expectantly.

“Kyrine wants us to join her in my new bedroom,” I said.

Astrid’s eyebrows shot upward, and her pretty mouth dropped open, but she got control of her expression again swiftly.

“I don’t think she means anything like that,” I said with a laugh. “Though, to be fair, knowing her, it’s hard to tell for sure…”

Astrid’s tongue flicked out and wet her lips. She sounded a little husky when she spoke again. “I’m sure that would be ok with me if she did,” she said frankly.

I smiled at her. “Yeah? That’s good to know. I wonder if Kyrine feels the same. Somehow, I think she’s got something else in store for us just now though.”

We headed upstairs, and the idea of having three-in-a-bed with Astrid and Kyrine was spinning pleasantly about my mind as I pushed open the door to my new rooms. I heard Astrid catch her breath in surprise as she glanced around the bedroom.

“This is really nice!” she exclaimed.

“Come through here,” I called, walking through to the workroom. I tossed the drone on the big desk and looked around. “Kyrine?”

“In here,” came the dungeon avatar’s voice. She sounded pleased with herself.

I followed the sound of her voice through to the training area. Astrid came after me, exclaiming all the while at the luxurious quarters Kyrine had made for me.

Kyrine was standing near the weight training area, pointing to a square panel in the wall. The rest of the room had clean white walls, but the panel Kyrine was pointing at was bright red. It looked like it was made of metal, hastily bolted onto the wall. It was three feet square, and there was an arcane symbol carved into the middle of it.

“What’s this?” I asked. “I’m sure that wasn’t here earlier.”

“It wasn’t,” Kyrine said, sounding immensely proud of herself.

I looked at the metal panel, then at Kyrine. I didn’t want to say it, but my first thought was that it didn’t exactly improve the room. Then I looked closer at it, and a twist of magic caught at me. I felt the symbol tug at me, and I understood instinctively what it was.

“It’s a doorway. A portal to another place,” I said wonderingly.

“I’d completely forgotten that I could do this,” Kyrine said. Her voice was full of excitement. “This is what comes of having a Keeper now. Oh, Jeremy, I’m remembering what it truly is to be a dungeon!”

She embraced me suddenly, then pointed to the red portal panel. “Go on, try it out. We’ll come after you.”

“Okay,” I said. I had no idea what was on the other side of this portal, but I would give it a go.

Kyrine beamed at me, and Astrid stood beside her, looking on with interest and a little trepidation.

I reached a hand forward and touched the cold surface of the portal panel. My fingers traced the rune, and I was transported through.

Reality lurched around me. I felt as if I’d missed a step in the dark. I gasped a breath, and my lungs filled with air that was unexpectedly cold. I took a step, and then dropped to my knees. There was a soft thwomp, and I realized that I was kneeling in a foot of fresh snow.

“Ugh,” said a voice from behind me. “I didn’t like that at all!”

I got to my feet, brushing snow from my hands, and turned around. Behind me, a stone wall rose up about ten feet above, with the same rune inscribed on it that had brought me here. Astrid was kneeling in the snow. Behind her, with her back to the wall, Kyrine stood beaming with pleasure at us.

I looked around me. We were in an extensive walled garden with a network of paths, snow-covered hedges, and frozen streams stretching away in every direction. Fat flakes of snow were falling lightly from a gray sky, and the place was deeply silent.

“What do you think?” Kyrine asked.

 “It’s amazing!” I said, feeling excited by the potential of what seemed to be Kyrine’s ability to create entirely new spaces at will. “And beautiful. How did you do it?”

“I’m not really sure,” Kyrine admitted. “It’s not exactly real, if you know what I mean. Not real like the rest of the mansion is real. It’s a space that only exists because I will it—it’s outside space and time, and I can manipulate it in real time, much quicker than I can with creating new rooms in the mansion or anything like that.”

“Show us,” Astrid said excitedly. She had recovered from the shock of traveling through the portal and seemed blown away by the new place. Snow flecked her hair and shoulders, and she looked around the white-blanketed garden in wonder.

“Oh, uh, okay…” Kyrine said, sounding a little shy. She lifted her hands, closed her eyes, and focused.

I whirled as a rumbling sound began to emanate from the ground behind us. Something was rising out of the snowy earth. It was a humanoid form, taller than a man, and it was rising out of the very earth as if propelled by underground gears. Snow and earth and rock fell from it as it rose out of the ground.

At first, I didn’t recognize it, but then I laughed out loud.

“It’s you, Jeremy!” exclaimed Astrid.

She was right. Kyrine had created a ten-foot-high granite statue of me. I stood on a plinth, shirtless, gazing nobly up to the sky.

“That’s pretty awesome,” I laughed, and Kyrine smiled. “Is that how you see me?” I asked, looking up at the statue’s