The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) by Jonathan Brooks (best english books to read TXT) 📗

no less effective with an assortment of weapons at their disposal.  Having asking her parents about them, she knew that these guards were powerful Enchanters in their own right, though not Master-level; instead, they were adept at weaponized temporary enchantments that turned the mundane weapons they carried into an arsenal of death.

“No!  Why can’t we stay together?” she had questioned when the guards separated her from Felbar.

“Don’t worry, Violet!” he shouted as he was led away.  “I’m sure we’ll get this figured out soon!”  That was the last she had seen of him, and now she was stuck in this room without anyone to talk to beyond the few palace servants that came to take her order of food.  Well, “talk to” was a bit of a stretch, since they refused to say a word regarding anything but food.

A knock on the door of her richly appointed room interrupted her despondent musings, and she was surprised enough that she brought her head up in confusion.  I swear I ate only an hour ago; is it really time for another meal?  She didn’t have long to wonder if she had somehow lost track of time, however, because the door opened quickly after the knock.  She got up off of the bed immediately when she recognized who walked in.

“Junipar!  You made it back!”

She went to give the other woman a hug, happy both because Junipar was fine after suffering such a horrific attack by a certain Elf, and because it was nice to see someone familiar.  However, she stopped herself when she saw the morose look on Junipar’s face.

“Wh-what happened?” she asked, instead.  “What’s going on?”

Junipar didn’t say anything, but Violet could see tears starting to form in her eyes.  Shaking her head, the other woman beckoned for the Journeyman Enchanter to follow her, before leaving the room without a word.

Still mystified at what was going on, Violet followed after her, finding that the guards that had been flanking her room whenever she had the opportunity to look outside her door were still there, and they followed behind as she raced to catch up with the other woman.  She was quickly lost as they took a few turns that led deeper into the palace, and before long she was convinced that the inside of the building had been made to confuse and disorient anyone trying to wander around.

They eventually came to a set of double doors that she didn’t recognize – which wasn’t surprising, since she hadn’t been in more than a handful of rooms in the palace before – and there were two more guards stationed there.  As soon as the guards saw the pair walking towards them, they moved to open the doors, allowing them access inside.

The room they entered was smaller than she had anticipated, though nonetheless as richly appointed as her room, if not more so. Cozy would be more like it, with stuffed plush chairs and a large rectangular stone table in the middle of the room, with papers and maps strewn all about in a disorganized mess.  Around the table were a handful of important-looking people, some of whom she vaguely recognized; some quick thinking placed them as advisors to the ruling council, led by the King as the final voice of decision.  There were supposed to be 9 of them in total, though right now she only saw 5 of them.  Actually, there were 6—

Except the 6th person around the table wasn’t a member of the ruling council, but a very sad-looking, grizzled Gnome.

“Felbar!”  She rushed to him, ignoring everyone and everything else in the room, wrapping him in as large of a hug as possible.  She felt him hugging her gently back, and he pushed her away after a moment with a small smile on his face.  The smile quickly disappeared as he looked around the room, however, which prompted Violet to do the same; everyone there was looking at them with serious expressions on their faces, though she couldn’t tell if they were angry, sad, or just normally that unemotional.

“Violet…there’s a lot that we need to discuss.”  Hearing his voice again made her feel safer than she had in days, though his tone made the little hairs on the back of her neck stick straight up.

I have a feeling that this won’t be good….

Chapter 5

“We’ve made a bit of a mess, Violet,” Felbar started out by saying.  “We didn’t intend it, but it’s the end result that matters.”

“I don’t understand.  What happened?”  She looked around at the rest of the room, seeing that the council members there viewed her with looks of resignation on their faces.  One of them – a woman even older than Felbar, if that could be believed – cleared her throat.

“Let me see if I can explain,” the woman said, taking over the conversation.  “From the information we have, Glimmerton – the village you and Felbar were tasked with keeping functioning – was unexpectedly attacked by one of the nearby dungeons.”

“That is correct.”

She held up her hand, indicating plainly that she didn’t need a response.  “There were only a handful of survivors of the attack, and you were – as unbelievably as it sounds – saved by a strange dungeon in the middle of the barren lands. After recovering inside of this dungeon, and after being provided food, healing, and a sampling of materials on a unique form of transportation not unlike our own Haulers, Junipar—” the wizened woman waved toward the younger woman still in the room, to Violet’s surprise— “along with Jortor, Saryn, Lankas, Kasdon, Wilser, and Pomend, journeyed back to the capital to spread the word of this discovery.”

“I’m so glad to hear that they all made it; where are they—?"

“I’m getting to that, so try not to interrupt; this is hard enough as it is,” the older woman warned with a stern voice.