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

by the blood of their victims) were ripped with abdominal muscles larger than Shale, and their bald heads were sitting upon a neck so thick it could barely be classified as such.  Their eyes were large, completely black orbs set back in sunken eye sockets, and their wide-open jaws that were filled with sharp, jagged teeth seemed to take up half of their skulls as they protruded a few inches out.  If they had a way to smell, Tacca couldn’t tell – because she didn’t see a nose on any of them.

Added to that, each of their hands were wielding a different weapon: a massive 5-foot-long sword in one, a strangely shaped halberd in a second, a thick mace in another, followed by a double-bladed axe, a warhammer, and a trident, of all things.  From the little she saw of the battle outside, they wielded the weapons with great skill, with each arm acting independently of each other; they were a figurative whirlwind of blades and blunt objects tearing through anything in their path.

As for protection, they didn’t seem to have much in the way of armor.  A weird metal-looking loincloth was wrapped tightly around their waists, and there was a grotesque necklace of what appeared to be desiccated body parts such as ears, noses, and even fingers strung up on a leather loop.  Other than that, they were essentially naked, not even wearing boots to cover up their odd three-toed feet.  That didn’t seem to matter to them, however, at least from what she was witnessing; none of the Raiders managed to break through the barrage of weapons coming from the 5…monsters…to land a blow upon them.

The closest to actually do any damage was the Clan representative who was in charge of organization on the mountain.  Tacca didn’t know her name or much about her, as she never actually entered her dungeon, but the Core thought she was a high-level Caster of some sort.  That proved to be accurate, as she reacted immediately to the obviously sudden assault—where did they even come from?—by tossing out spell after spell.  Fireballs as big around as her head were flung out after they formed between her hands, sharp chunks of stone materialized from above and plummeted onto the heads of the blue-skinned monsters, and even lightning crackled over her head before shooting out in a sudden arc.

Sadly, even the powerful and high-level Elementalist couldn’t do anything against the frightening behemoths; the results of her spells connected with the six-armed monsters, but a glow enveloped the enemy upon impact.  What the glow was exactly was hard to tell, because it almost appeared to be some sort of enchantment that negated the damage entirely.  However, after seeing them actually stagger slightly with each spell, it was almost as if the glow was absorbing the energy of the impact.

Regardless of what exactly was happening, the overall effect was the same: The blue-skinned monsters were taking absolutely no damage.  It didn’t take long before even the Elementalist was taken down, neatly bisected lengthwise as an axe-head slammed down on her head with such force that it cut through her entire body and buried itself a few inches into the stone of the mountainside.  Once she and the others were dead, they all ran towards her dungeon entrance with long strides that ate up the distance within seconds.

As the very last monstrous entity passed through her dungeon entrance, she couldn’t help but notice that the last one appeared slightly different than the others.  For one, it was a little darker in color than the vibrant blue of the others – nearly purple, in fact.  Secondly, it had an odd metal object strapped to it, held in place by a weirdly flexible strip of a different kind of metal that wrapped around its chest and back, looping over its right shoulder.  Again, whatever it was exactly was a mystery, but she could feel a change come over her entire domain precisely when the object passed over her entrance threshold.

It didn’t take long to discover what that change was.  Hurry, Shale; they are inside already.  And whatever it is they are, there is now something preventing my Dungeon Force from regenerating. 

“What?  That…that isn’t possible,” Shale responded.  Even his mental voice seemed out of breath as he raced towards her Core Room down below.

As impossible as your not being able to Translocate?  Tacca was just glad that communicating with her wasn’t an Ability that Shale had to activate, but instead was a natural part of their Bond.

Her Dungeon Assistant was silent for a few seconds before he said, “Good point.  What are they doing now?”

The six-armed, blue-skinned monsters were quite tall and wide, and they had needed to crouch and pull in their arms tight to their bodies in order to fit through her tunnel; once they were free of the enclosed space, they ran through the first room, crushing any foliage in their path as they went, before entering the tunnel leading the second room.  Curiously, and potentially a serious problem, when Tacca tried to look past the last in line with the strange metal object strapped to its chest, her view of her own dungeon behind it was faded and extremely dim.  It was almost as if whatever had stopped her Dungeon Force regeneration was also making her ability to affect her dungeon shrink as well.  She could feel that she could still create creatures and place traps – and possibly even do some construction – in her other rooms, but she doubted she could do anything anywhere that had already been visited by these invaders.

This was confirmed moments later when the group passed through the second tunnel and the Dungeon Core tried to restock the Root Foxes in the first room – and it was as if the entire room wasn’t even there for her anymore.  She couldn’t restock her creatures, nor absorb and