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

despite occurring in the middle of the extremely busy Inn and raucous hubbub of activity, caused the majority of the Inn to go silent.  As nearly all of the Raiders inside turned to see what was happening, the deadly silence was nearly tangible, and the half-dozen Merchants with the loud-mouth Elf stopped their laughter and huddled in with each other.  Their leader, however, seemed oblivious.

One of the servers that Gwenda had hired arrived quickly with another bowl of stew and set it in front of him without being asked…or so he thought.  With a quick glance at his friend, he saw her wink and flash a quick smile at the server before she disappeared into the crowd, who was now staring at the Merchants with anger and disdain in their faces.  Strangely, Gwenda hadn’t said anything through the entire confrontation, which made Sterge a little confused; she usually handled all of the problems between the Raiders and now the Merchants.  For some reason, though, he was glad she hadn’t intervened.

“Seems as though I’m not quite finished yet,” he said matter-of-factly.  He dipped his spoon in and took in a mouthful, relishing the taste again – it really was quite good.  Before he could dip his spoon back in, he saw a hand come in from behind him and aim for his bowl again…but it was stopped by a different, well-muscled hand that didn’t allow it to budge any further.

“Let go of my hand, you filthy Orc scum!” the Elf shouted when he couldn’t extract his appendage from the secure grasp of Sterge’s stew savior.  Out of the corner of his eye, Sterge saw one of the Orcish Raiders he had seen around a lot – but unfortunately didn’t know the name of – with his hand clasped securely around the Merchant’s wrist.  “Don’t you know who I am?”

“I don’t rightly care, brat,” the Orc said gruffly, before visibly squeezing his hand and causing the bones in the Elf’s wrist to audibly creak alarmingly.  Sterge was about to tell his savior to stop, but after a cry of pain coming from the Merchant, the Orc flung the wrist away as if throwing out some trash.  “Don’t you have any idea who this is?”

The Elf was holding his wrist in obvious pain, but Sterge doubted that anything serious had actually happened to it.  “You’ll pay for that, you fool!  How dare you touch me – and injure me, nonetheless!” he practically screamed out, looking for help from his crew.  They, however, were slowly but inexorably putting some distance between them and the Elf causing all of the problems.  They can obviously read the room much better than him.  It’s good to see that not all of them are stupid.

“As for who this is, who cares?  He’s obviously some filthy peasant, based on his attire, and while this girl is dressed a little better, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that she’s his wh—”

An unexpected pop to his face with a closed fist by yet another Raider shut him up before he could finish his statement, and the Elf reeled backwards, caught by his friends before he could be completely knocked down.  Blood was pouring out of his nose, and as Sterge turned around and looked at the Elf better, it was quite obvious that the nose had been broken.  With the amount of wealth the Merchants seemed to possess, however, the Hill Dwarf had no doubt that he would have some sort of potion, or access to a Healer to fix it up well enough that it would be like it had never happened.

“I’ll kill you for that!  I’ll kill each and every one of you—” the Elf shouted in outrage, his voice quite nasal-sounding from his broken nose.

“Keep your threats to yourself and leave, you worthless brat,” the Orc said to the Merchant, backed up by a surprisingly large number of the Inns’ patrons as they stood their ground.  “And next time, don’t mess with the Chief.”

Chief?  What is he talking about?  He looked over questioningly at Gwenda, who only indicated with a wave of her hand that she would talk about it with him later.

The Merchants with the Elf seemed shocked at the title, and appeared ready to bolt.  Unfortunately, they were forced to drag their leader out, who appeared ready to protest his treatment once again – at least, that was what Sterge gathered from the nearly incoherent screams and ramblings as he left.

Then, as if nothing had happened, the Inn picked up its rumbling conversation again.  By all accounts it was back to normal in less than 20 seconds after the Merchants left.  Glancing around the room, he could see that there were a few other small groups of what appeared to be more Merchants scattered around, trying to appear as unobtrusive as possible; even though they received some harsh looks, nobody accosted them.

“Sorry about that, Sterge.  I should have told you sooner.”

“Told me about what?”

Gwenda seemed a little embarrassed for some reason.  “Well, the others and I agreed to let you become the ‘unofficial’ Chief of The Village, as we needed to have a figurehead to represent our interests.”

That was certainly news to him.  He had heard a few people on his construction crew mention “chief” when he was talking to them or giving instructions on what to build next, but he had thought it was just an affectation like “lad” or “boss”.  “Why me?  There are plenty of other people in The Village that would do much better – including you.”

“That might be true in some respects, but you’re the perfect person for the job.  For one, you wouldn’t want the position – even if it’s more of a figurehead than anything – even if we told you about it, which is why we did it secretly.  Second, you’re a Raider – and that makes a world of difference