The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) by Jonathan Brooks (english readers txt) 📗

Holding her scream in while she took stock of the situation, she could see the Pegasus starting to fade away, dissolving into the ground.  Fortunately, the Specter seemed to be consumed at the same time, because there was no sign of it.  Echo picked herself up and found her bow – which had rolled away from the crash site roughly 20 feet – and it appeared to be undamaged.  The same couldn’t be said for her arrows, as two of them had been bent out of shape with the crash, but she was just glad that one was still fine – and that they hadn’t exploded with such an impact.

Holding the one arrow and bow in her left hand, she stumbled as the ground shook underneath her feet, the sound of a cracking wood resounding from behind her.  She held in her screams from the pain in her left wrist as she landed on it, but she again picked herself up and ran down the relatively short tunnel, hoping that the zombie Giant hadn’t just flattened the rest of her group just a moment ago.

She quickly found herself in a similar-looking room with nearly the same dimensions as the one before, though there were luckily no massive undead there to greet her.  Instead, Echo saw a glowing black crystal-like gem floating in the middle of the room at least a hundred feet above her which reminded her a little of what Sandra appeared like, though the feeling of Nether energy wafting off of the Dungeon Core she was looking at made it much more sinister.  In comparison, Sandra’s Core was bright and almost cheerful, which matched the personality of the voice she had heard inside her head on many occasions.

How am I supposed to destroy it from here?  Normally, hitting something from that distance wouldn’t be a problem, even with compensating for the powerful draw of the bow and the heavier exploding arrow. With her obviously broken wrist, though, she didn’t think she’d be able to hold the bow up, let alone steady it enough to aim.

Echo looked below the Core and saw that she better decide what to do quickly, because there were more skeletons and zombies forming on the ground.  There were already a half-dozen undead and more were appearing every few seconds, and they started to shuffle in her direction.  Looking around the rest of the room for some sort of other solution, she saw that it was empty of anything…except another massive tunnel leading to who knew where.

I might as well try something, otherwise I’m dead…though I’ll probably not survive this either way.  Trading my life for the destruction of this Core would be a worthy endeavor any Elf would appreciate.  She gathered the remnants of her Holy energy that had regenerated and formed another Lightstrike spell, adding what Air she had to help speed it on its way.  When it was as large as she could get it, she released it towards the floating Core.

It flew straight and true, but the farther it got from her, the more it shrunk; she knew that was going to happen, which was why she tried to make it as big as possible to begin with.  Time seemed to slow down as she watched the now-small streak of light hit the undead Nether-Core, and she held her breath as it seemed to splash against the glowing black crystal.  Echo heard a sharp *crack* and she rejoiced for all of a second…before she saw that it was still intact, other than a long crack running up the side of it.

With no other choice, she decided to see if she could hit the Core with her bow by switching hands; however, her left hand couldn’t even pinch the arrow to set it on the invisible string, let along pull it back.  With great pain, she shifted it again and held the bow loosely in her left hand, and then held it up; she let out the scream she had been holding as she pulled back the arrow she had nocked and aimed…then she released.

Her left wrist snapped, and she lost control of the bow almost immediately, which was probably why she could tell right away that her arrow was going to go wide – though just barely.  She sighed and waited for it to miss—

A flash of metal zoomed into her field of vision, aiming straight for the Core in the center of the room – or at least she thought it was aiming for it.  Instead, what she quickly realized was a pair of Sandra’s flying Shears hit her arrow mid-flight, causing it to change the angle of its flight enough that it slammed into the Core.

A familiar explosion engulfed the undead Dungeon Core and it shattered into hundreds of pieces, falling to the ground in a rain of crystal fragments.  Echo stood there in shock at the sight, unable to understand what had just happened.  Looking down, however, made her realize that although she had succeeded, she wouldn’t survive long; the skeletons and zombies were still heading for her and she had nothing with which to defend herself.

“Echo!  You did it!” she heard from far behind her and she whipped around in surprise.  Felbar and Gerold were running towards her down the tunnel without their Deep Delver constructs, but even if they were armed they wouldn’t be able to reach her in time.  The undead were very nearly upon her, and she was too tired and injured to run from them.

* Echo!  Felbar!  Gerold!  Bring the Shieldmen and run up the other tunnel – the dungeon is about to collapse! *

Sandra’s voice precipitated hundreds more Shears flying in and slamming into the skeletons and zombies coming for her; they didn’t do a lot of damage by themselves, but the sheer quantity of them caused bones