Tacca had thought that the pain of having a Bond involuntarily broken was bad; that was later eclipsed by the pain of her soul being sucked into a Dungeon Core. This pain she was experiencing was like the two pains combined, though in this case the agony and torture was all mental since she didn’t have a body to experience that pain. Somehow, that only seemed to make it worse.
Her mind almost snapped from the experience, and all she wanted was for it to end. Thankfully, after what felt like an eternity of suffering, every sensation suddenly ceased. She thought she had finally – and officially – died, but the sheer fact that she was actually thinking that put that theory to rest. The abrupt transition from experiencing a whole lot of pain, to nothingness, and then to suddenly seeing stone walls around her probably helped as well.
Where am I? The place where she found herself didn’t look familiar; it was a large, spherical-shaped room that was probably 200 feet across if she was measuring distances correctly – and it was completely bare of any type of decoration. The only distinguishing difference along the perfectly smooth stone walls was what appeared to be a tunnel carved into one section, leading off to…somewhere. She tried to push her awareness down the tunnel, but she quickly found that the whole of her world was confined to the one strange room.
It probably has to do with how hazy and wavy everything in here looks. It was like looking into rippling water running down a stream; everywhere she looked was slightly distorted, almost…warped. Is this what those accounts of Cores trying to access bottomless bags meant by warped? Or is this just an extreme version of it?
She had no way of answering that, and there was nothing she could do to break out or see anything beyond where she was. In fact, she couldn’t even pull up either her Core or her Dungeon Assistant Status screens; when she tried to pick a creature to create, and then a trap to place, nothing happened. Using her Fairy Mana to do anything – if she still had some, that was – produced no results, either. What is going on?
There were only two things that she knew for certain: One, she was still a Dungeon Core; viewing herself from the room, she could see that she appeared as normal as usual, though every single crack in her form was entirely gone, repaired after whatever it was she had gone through. Whether or not everything else was the same still, though, wasn’t something she could tell quite yet.
The other thing that Tacca knew was that her Bond with Shale was still intact. She could feel it still there; it was like standing in an otherwise empty room with your eyes closed, but you could somehow sense that someone was there with you. While she was aware of it still existing, she couldn’t pinpoint exactly where he was and couldn’t communicate with him. It was as if the outside world ceased to exist out of her little bubble.
That’s actually a good description, I guess. I know about other dimensions and how we as Dungeon Fairies can move in between them, but also that it is something that is very rarely done – because it is very dangerous. Could this be some sort of…pocket dimension? Her thoughts went a step further. Are those bottomless bags tapping into another dimension as well? Is that why Dungeon Force and the “synergy energy” react with it so strongly?
She had no answers for any of that, and there were too many unknowns for her questions to be anything more than conjecture. As everything she knew about alternate dimensions she had read in a book that may or may not have been trustworthy – as she had found it in the library section that was usually reserved for more questionable material – she didn’t really know enough about the subject to be confident in her assumptions.
It also didn’t help with figuring a way out of her predicament.
If she had been able to experiment with Dungeon Force or Fairy Mana, albeit that being a bit dangerous with all of the unknowns, she thought she might be able to find a way free. As it was, she was a floating Dungeon Core in the middle of a spherically shaped room with no ability to do anything. I guess that this beats being in that vast expanse with no physical presence and my soul being stretched and shaped in uncomfortable ways. She could at least look around here…at stone, stone, and more stone. Even the tunnel was made from stone, though it was extremely dark, and she couldn’t see more than a few feet. Normally, light levels didn’t matter much to her because she could perceive everything in her dungeon with or without light; that she couldn’t see down the tunnel, likely meant that it wasn’t part of her dungeon.
She didn’t know precisely how long she was stuck in that room, looking at her Core and the stone walls, before something started to change. It was easier to keep track of time there than it had been in the featureless expanse, but without much in the way of external stimuli, it was hard to know exactly how long she was floating there alone. Her best guess, though, was that it was anywhere between 2 and 3 months.
The waviness in the room started to fade gradually, and definition came back to her world that Tacca didn’t even realize she was missing. The stone of her walls quickly became much clearer, she could see just a tiny bit further into the tunnel than she had before, and even her Core appeared different. Where she had seen the cracks having been repaired and completely gone before, now she could see that her Core had some additions to it. While not damaged, per se, there were faint etchings in the crystal-like outer shell of her form, lines that crisscrossed perpendicularly and covered the entire Core. She had no idea exactly what that meant or what it was supposed to be, but it didn’t seem to be harming her.
After what she guessed was about a day, the waviness in her room faded to the point where it stopped – and it stopped abruptly. Like a bubble *popping*, the world slammed into her consciousness so quickly that her mind staggered from the overwhelming onslaught. The first thing she picked out from all of the information flowing into her was that she was located in her dungeon still, right where she had been when facing down that purplish, monstrous person. She couldn’t be exactly sure, but it appeared as though the explosion had been so powerful that it had eaten away all of the stone (and everything else) in a perfect sphere around her Core Room and defensive room where her traps and enchanted armor creatures had been. At some point, the sheer destructiveness of the explosion had faded enough that it didn’t consume her entire dungeon, just anything within 100 feet of its epicenter.
Her mind flowed through the tunnel to find her Boss Room untouched, and as she quickly flowed through the adjacent room she found them just the way she left them – except that all of the Environmental Objects, including rock, dirt, and trees, were completely gone. Not only that, but the Rotating Stone Bridges that she had placed to act as a way to open and close tunnels were missing, having disappeared when she was no longer “connected” to the dungeon as a whole. This also meant that the exit staircase going up to the surface was open, though that didn’t really matter at that point, since no one was inside of her dungeon.
No one alive, at least. The only thing she found in her dungeon other than rooms made from stone were the desiccated and rotting corpses of 5 people in her third room down from the surface. Thinking back, she remembered that the blue-skinned invaders had slaughtered the group of Raiders delving through her dungeon at the time; obviously, no one had come back to retrieve the bodies. She was also glad that there weren’t any others, as it probably meant that Sterge and Gwenda had probably made it out alive.
As she instinctively absorbed the bodies, she realized that all of her access to her Dungeon Force had returned! Her Fairy Mana was also at her figurative fingertips, though both that and her DF were low; apparently, she had been empty of each resource and they were now regenerating. Regenerating normally, and not like a brand-new Core or Dungeon Assistant. A quick look at her Statuses showed that everything appeared to be exactly the same as it had been before she had…well, she wasn’t exactly sure what had happened to her. Regardless, it was almost as if she had left and come back at the exact moment she had disappeared from the dungeon, because her countdown of 15 days was still in effect.
The only diff
erence, however, was how many CIPs she had accumulated…which was far more than she remembered.
Core Improvement Point Awards
Type
Variable Conditions
Potential CIP
Current
Rooms Constructed
Size
1 – 50
0
Traps Installed
Complexity
1 – 20
0
Monsters Created
Levels
1 – 20
0
Rewards Placed
Valuation
1 – 50
0
Raider Presence
Time
1 – 5
258
Raider Deaths
Quality
100 – 10000
26600
26,000?! What? Why? The only thing she could think of was that the six-armed invaders had counted as normal “Raiders” despite them being anything but the norm. If she had to guess, 4 of the blue-skinned ones had been worth 5,000 CIPs and the purplish one was worth 6,000; the other 600 were from the singular death earlier in the month and the complete group wipe caused by those same invaders. The realization that the monstrous people weren’t even worth the maximum amount of CIPs made her question whether or not it was accurate; she couldn’t imagine something even stronger passing through her dungeon.
“Tacca? TACCA? Are you there?”
Shale? Is that you? She had been alone with her thoughts for so long that she latched onto his voice like a lifeline. I’m so glad that you made it out safely. Where are you?
“Where have you been? I couldn’t find you for months,” he responded, sounding a little distracted. “Never mind that, we’ll be there in just a moment.”
We? What are you talking about?
There was no answer, but she found out what he was talking about a few moments later when she felt him suddenly arrive very close to her senses; it was only as he arrived just outside of her entrance that she realized he had been quite a distance away. If she had to guess, he had been at the DPRC.
In through her entrance flew Shale in the lead, followed by someone she recognized and immediately wanted to swat out of the air: Head Instructor Lapis. While he hadn’t been the worst of her Instructors while at DAPS, he was certainly up there on the list of Fairies she despised. What is he doing here?
Shale didn’t answer right away, but she was distracted by the arrival of another Fairy behind the Head Instructor. She recognized him immediately from descriptions of the DPRC Leader back in school, though she had never seen Council Leader Malachite in person before. He was somewhat of a legend, as he was reportedly the longest-living Dungeon Fairy currently in existence. As the figurehead of the Council, Malachite was the only one there was public knowledge about, though even that public knowledge was fairly limited.
If the leader of the DPRC was there, then Tacca had to acknowledge that things were going from bad to worse.
“Tacca…I had to tell them everything. They needed to know what had happened to you – as far as I knew, at least – and about those blue-skinned monsters that attacked you,” Shale told her finally, sounding apologetic in her mind. She couldn’t blame him for revealing everything to the DPRC, especially when she had essentially “died” and was missing for so long.
I understand. You did what you had to do.
“But there’s something else. Apparently, you aren’t the only one to have been attacked; you and I are, however, the only ones that survived to tell the tale. I got lucky, I think, but we still don’t know how you weren’t destroyed.”
I really wish I knew that, too. Tacca had those theories about dimensions and the warping of space around her Core Room, but that still didn’t explain how she wasn’t shattered. It also didn’t explain where the etchings around her Core came from, or why she was stuck in a “bubble” for at least a few months, according to Shale. There were a lot of unanswered questions, and she wasn’t sure if she would ever discover their answers.
It didn’t take long for them all to fly down to her newly expanded Core Room, especially since everything was illuminated again as part of her dungeon. Without the Bridge traps to act as blockages, after passing through her old Core Room their route was almost a straight shot to her location.
“Tacca, is that really you in there? Young Shale told us what happened to you and I still have trouble believing it. I know you can’t communicate with me—” Malachite started to say as soon as they got close, when Tacca had a thought. Her Dungeon Force had regenerated enough for her to try something she had wondered about for a while…
Bond Results:
Bonded Targets: 1
Locked Abilities(s) Obtained: 13 (select for more information)
Abilities(s) Granted: Core Communication
Creature Type Unlocked: Dungeon Fairy
Hmm…interesting. She wasn’t even sure that would work, because she had secretly tried it on Shale soon after she learned about what her Bond did – but nothing had happened. She had assumed at the time that it was because she was already Bonded with him in a different way, and she hadn’t had a chance to test it out on any other Fairies.
“Tacca?! Was that you?” the Dungeon Core suddenly heard in her head – and it certainly wasn’t her Assistant’s voice.
Um…yes?
“What did you do?! How?” Council Leader Malachite looked shocked as he instinctively backed away from her Core.
I’m assuming that Shale told you how I have the Ability to Bond with the Raiders that delve through here? I just wanted to see if it would work on you, because I couldn’t test it on Shale…and I guess it worked.
Malachite shook his head in disbelief. Out loud he angrily said, “Of all the—didn’t you think that might be just a little bit dangerous?”
“Wait, what’s going on,” the Head Instructor asked, confused. Tacca’s hatred for the Fairy spiked and she had serious thoughts of creating a Root Fox above his head that would snatch him out of the air as it fell past and then eat him. That she didn’t do it was only because she noticed that the two newcomers to her dungeon had a Repellant Shield and some other type of Shield she thought might be defensive in nature. It was likely she wouldn’t be able to hurt Lapis unless she caught him unaware and unprepared.
“She…Bonded with me somehow – like how her Assistant told us she could do with the Raiders. And now I can communicate with her.”
Head Instructor Lapis immediately turned to her Core and demanded, “You must Bond with me, too. I need to be able to communicate with you to get the answers to my questions.”
No, I don’t think so. I hate him.
That got the Council Leader to laugh. “Looks like your treatment of her when she was under your care has come back to bite you in the butt there, Lapis. She’s refusing to Bond with you because she hates your guts.” Tacca didn’t actually say that, but it was a fairly accurate assessment.
“Why, you little—!” the Head Instructor shouted before he approached her Core like he was going to smash her pieces. Fortunately, her Dungeon Assistant was there to stop and even physically pull her hated enemy back out of range.
“Stop, Lapis – that isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Malachite said forcefully to the Head Instructor, who slowly calmed down. Then the Council Leader turned back to her Core and spoke out loud, instead of communicating mentally. “I know how he treated you, and while I can’t excuse his actions, I’m asking you – as a favor for me personally, as well as the Council – to Bond with him as well. As annoying as he can be at times—” he said with a smirk, which caused Lapis to stare angrily at him— “I believe that he is our best chance at figuring out what is going on all over the world. With your help, we can hopefully discover where these things that attacked you came from, and put a stop to future attacks.”
There was obviously some sort of rivalry between the Council Leader and the Head Instructor, which was a bit amus
ing for Tacca to see. They weren’t things – they were people; monstrous-yet-intelligent people, but people, nonetheless.
“Fair enough, but what about my favor?”
As much as she wanted to keep denying him, the seriousness in his voice – from the Council Leader in charge of all Dungeon Assistants no less – and the knowledge that other Cores were being attacked pulled at the Dungeon Fairy in her. She had studied and trained for so long to help Dungeon Cores as an Assistant, that the thought of other Cores and their own Assistants having to suffer what she had just gone through was difficult to ignore. As much as she wanted everything to be about her, her personality was one where she wanted to help everyone. Well, not Lapis, but everybody else.
Fine – but you definitely owe me that favor.
It was distasteful, but she Bonded with the Head Instructor and gained another 4 Locked Abilities – whatever that meant. She would have to discover what that meant later, however, because Lapis immediately started in on his questions. They came one right after another in quick succession, and she answered as fully and honestly as she could – there was no point in holding anything back, as Shale had already shared most of what he knew with them already.
As much as she hated him, Tacca had to admit that the Head Instructor was extremely thorough in his questioning and brought out details of the entire encounter that she hadn’t even thought about at the time. Shockingly, she was even a little disappointed when he said he was finished with his questions and that he needed to get moving and do some research regarding what he had learned. Without even a goodbye, he moved off and Translocated away, and she immediately lost all sense of where he was; the Bond with the Head Instructor and Council Leader were obviously not the same as the one she had with Shale. For which she was thankful, especially when it came to Lapis.
“I must be going, as well. After you were…destroyed or whatever it was that happened to you, there was a complete halt in the attacks for quite a long while. About a week ago, however, we had another one occur under circumstances like yours, so I want to be in the Council Chambers to monitor the map. I’ll definitely be in touch, Tacca.”
The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 2) Page 34
