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

and Sarah gasped at the sudden pain that shot through her arm. Blood welled up between the steel plates and dripped hissing to the ground where it was absorbed in a cloud of steam.

A groan filled the hall, a woman’s voice, sounding like she was receiving pleasure. Sarah glanced about but saw nothing.

“The dungeon,” she muttered. “The dungeon is enjoying absorbing my blood! Let’s hope she doesn’t get to absorb any more.”

At that moment, she caught sight of something on the other side of the chamber. “A lever!” she said. “Why didn’t I think of that sooner!”

The wooden lever protruded from the wall, half-hidden behind a stack of gold bars on the other side of the chamber. The lizard-like creature was preparing to spring at her again, and Sarah could feel the speed boosts wearing off. The green, yellow, and red lights flickering over her armor were losing some of their brightness. Soon, she would be back to her normal speed, and she did not think that was going to be enough to fight this creature alone.

“I’ll need to make the most of the boost while I’ve got it,” she said.

The monster screamed at her and leaped toward her, but Sarah took a running jump and landed with her feet on the edge of the plinth. She whirled and cracked the monster solidly on the side of the head with her mace as it charged her and it fell back, stunned. Then she jumped for the lever.

It was stiff, and she couldn’t move it at first, even with her whole weight on it. Using the mace, she gave the lever a sharp tap and it moved. She grabbed it and slammed it fully down.

There was a grinding sound, like gears beneath the floor, and the portcullis began to rise. The monster roared, rushing at her again, but she deflected the blows from its tail with her mace and then stepped up to bring the heavy weapon down on its back.

With a heavy crunching sound, the monster’s spine broke. It flopped to the ground, hissing and spitting, the tail flailing, but Sarah roared wordlessly and smashed its head to a shapeless wet mess with two well-aimed blows of the mace.

The weapon shone brightly, but then the plinth shimmered and glowed and another identical monster appeared on top of it.

“Another one?” groaned Sarah. That seemed excessive. If this was the first boss chamber, what the hell would be in the second one, never mind the third? At least the door was open now. She turned and bolted up the corridor, fleeing back to her teammates.

With every step, she could feel the speed boost leaving her, and the monster was following her close behind. She could hear its sharp claws clattering on the stone. Blood dripped thickly from her arm from where the first monster’s blade-tail had wounded her, and the pain was making her feel weaker.

She came to the point in the corridor where she’d fought the goblins and leaped over their corpses, pounding off up the winding passage toward the main chamber.

There were voices at the other end of the corridor, she heard now, shouts and screams, and a percussive crackling that sounded like gunfire, but somehow different.

“They’ve been attacked by more monsters while I was in there,” she panted, sprinting up the corridor. “I hope they’re all right!”

Cursing the deviousness of the dungeon, she tore along the corridor, always a step ahead of the pursuing lizard monster.

As last, she burst out into the central chamber.

Todd and Josh were pinned down under a hail of gunfire. They had taken refuge behind a pile of stone rubble in one corner of the chamber. Josh was winding and firing his crossbow as quickly as he could, and Todd was flinging rocks.

On the other side of the chamber, strung out in a ragged line, a group of goblins armed with magically enhanced MP5 submachine guns was delivering a hail of suppressing fire.

“Goblins with guns!” said Sarah. “Now I’ve seen it all!”

But they had not seen her yet, and that bought her a fleeting moment to turn the tide. There were nine of them, and Sarah counted six dead with Josh’s crossbow bolts sticking out of faces and chests. As she sprinted toward them, a seventh dropped dead, a feathered crossbow bolt sticking from its eye.

The lizard still pursued her, but she paid it no attention for the moment, focusing everything she had on reaching the goblin firing line and breaking it.

She was halfway across the hall when the goblins saw her.

They screamed and turned their guns on her, blasting crackling balls of lightning toward her.

“Storm Spheres!” she said recognizing the spell. The blasts crashed into her armor, but the Kevlar layering under the steel plate caught most of their power. She staggered a little under the impacts and lost a bit of momentum but kept moving.

The second hail of blasts mostly missed her, and then she heard a whoop from behind her and knew that Todd and Josh had broken cover and were running to join her.

“Warrior’s Might!” she heard Todd roar, and felt the impact of his strength-boosting spell hit her like a tidal wave.

The boost was enormous. The pain in her arm left her, and her flagging speed was increased massively.

A fierce battle-lust filled her, and she descended on the screaming goblins like a force of nature, rending and tearing them with mace, short sword, and her gauntleted hands. Blood flew as she tore the head off one. Bone crunched as she demolished another’s skull with her mace.

Then her short sword was in her hand, and she drove it between a goblin’s ribs. It would not come out again, so she dropped it. She turned, seeing the lizard holding back.

Whirling the mace in the air, she flung it and it blasted