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

time – he estimated that they had been dead for at least a few months; despite that, no insects or animals had gotten to them to aid in their decomposition.

Trembling a little at the scene arrayed below him, the first time in nearly 15,000 years that he had been truly frightened instead of just wary or worried, Malachite went to the doors of the chamber so that he could see if anyone else was alive in the Conclave headquarters.  There he found the reason nothing had gotten to the bodies; some sort of field was around the entire room, sealing everyone inside and everything else out.  None of the doors were open and with the field still intact, that meant….

That whatever had killed them was either still in the room or had arrived and left by another means entirely.

He had already looked around and hadn’t seen anything left alive, so he had to assume that the killer had left the chamber by some other means.  Something similar to Translocation, potentially, though he had never heard of anything having an Ability so similar to a Dungeon Fairy’s.

Malachite wasn’t naïve enough to think touching the field was a good idea, so he backed off from the doorway leading out.  Whether or not there was anyone still alive and moving around in the rest of the Conclave of Sages headquarters was going to have to remain a mystery.  Just like the reason behind the deaths of the entire Conclave, though, it was something that he was going to have to find out eventually.  Otherwise, he was no closer to an answer as to why Dungeon Cores were being destroyed under the Council’s care.

The DPRC Leader spent another hour of disgusting investigation looking around the Conclave chamber for any other clues as to what had done this to all of the Sages. Luckily, his Fairy Mana and Abilities weren’t dampened from the Raiders’ presence like they normally were, so he was able to use his various Shields in a way that prevented him from having to actually touch any of the corpses.  After a relatively thorough but unsuccessful search, Malachite decided that he had better leave and let the rest of the Council know what had happened.  He still wasn’t sure what exactly they were supposed to do now, which felt awkward to him because he was supposed to have all the answers as the Council Leader.  This, however, was something for which he didn’t even know he had to prepare an answer.

Malachite flew back into the middle of the room, looked around one more time to see if he missed anything, closed his eyes and pictured his destination, and then Translocated back to the Council’s chambers.  When he felt the Ability activate and his body slipped through neutral space to end up at his destination, he opened his eyes and stared around in confusion.

Everyone who had just been there a little over an hour ago was gone.  Fortunately, unlike the chamber he had recently come from, their bodies weren’t strewn all over the place; nevertheless, their complete absence was more than alarming.  Malachite quickly flew through the entire DPRC headquarters, frantically searching for a sign of any of the dozen Fairies that lived and worked inside the complex.  He found nothing and no one.

There weren’t any visible signs of what had happened to them, either.  No signs of a struggle, a fight, or any type of protracted battle; not that Dungeon Fairies had a lot of expertise when it came fighting, but all of the Council members had similar offensive and defensive abilities that he did.  He was sure they would’ve put up some sort of fight if it came down to it – and yet, there was no sign of any resistance.  In essence, they were just…gone.  He kept hoping that they had all just Translocated somewhere else and were due back any minute, but as time stretched on he began to have his doubts.

What happened here?  Where is everybody?

Malachite went back to the Council chamber and looked at the map there.  Although he couldn’t be completely sure, it appeared as though all of the Dungeon Cores that had been there before he went to visit the Conclave were still there – so that was a good sign, at least.  That wasn’t his biggest concern, though; with the deaths of what appeared to be most or all of the Conclave of Sages, and the disappearance of basically the entire Dungeon Assistant Council, things seemed to be going from bad to worse.

Eventually, he sat on the edge of the map and stared at it for a moment, before putting his head in his hands in defeat.  He tried to think of what – if anything – he could do to stop everything from spiraling out of control and into chaos…and he was at a loss.  What do I do now? 

No answers seemed to come to him, though, so he just sat there waiting for something to happen.  How long it would be, or even what he was expecting to happen, he had no idea.

Chapter 15

Sterge finished hammering the last nail into the roof of the latest – and theoretically last – Inn that he had helped to build, before wiping the sweat from his forehead and looking around.  This place sure looks different from just 6 weeks ago.  The Village center now had 18 Inns crowding the area, all newly built and fully booked by the Raiders that seemed to never stop arriving; when he added in the Raider Supply Store, 2 warehouses that had needed to be built to contain extra foodstuffs that had to be transported in to feed everyone, and the rather ostentatious building that was hastily constructed a few days ago to hold The Village leadership, the once-small village was now the size of a small town.

The exhausted Hill Dwarf had