by DB King
“Thank you,” Kaiso said sincerely. “I’m very glad to hear that.”
“And now,” Marcus said firmly, “take your folk and go over there to where the others are gathered. I don’t quite know what to do with you yet, but there is going to be a lot of work to do here in the next few weeks, so all willing hands will be helpful.”
Kaiso bowed low to Marcus and gestured to his folk. They all followed him over to where Anja was gathering all the hybrids together at the end of the docks.
“Well,” Kairn said, breathing out slowly. “I guess that’s… Hey, what is that?”
He pointed out over the water, and Marcus turned to look. There was a sail—no, many sails—coming across the water toward them.
“I don’t know what it is,” Marcus said, “but I’m not sure I like the look of it. It’s a fleet, heading straight for the docklands.”
Quickly, Marcus organized the defenses. He flew into the air and found all his commanders. He issued orders that his men be lined up in ranks on the wharves. The catapults were reloaded, and the archers drawn up in ranks behind lines of spearmen. Marcus himself hovered above it all with Ella at his side, looking out over the water at the approaching ships.
They were brightly colored vessels, with sails of gold, blue, yellow, and green. The ships were of many kinds, from small galleys with single sails to great men-of-war bristling with armaments and soldiers. The flagship, the biggest of the whole fleet, was leading, and it was heading toward the King’s docks.
As he watched, the flagship ran up a new flag on its mast—a white flag, meaning peace. Marcus was relieved. Below the white flag, another flag waved in the wind: red, with a golden disk on it—the flag of the Isles of the Sun.
“They are Sun Islanders!” he said, flying down to talk to Kairn and his other lieutenants. “And they are flying a flag of peace. I’ll fly out and talk to them.”
He flew over the water toward the flagship. The captain, a big, black-bearded man in a blue coat, waved to him and smiled. Marcus landed on the deck of the ship.
“We’ve come from the Isles of the Sun,” the captain said before he gestured to the Akhian. “I’m Captain Jak. Our scouts saw the fleet leaving the Dark Isles, and heading for Kraken Island, so we gathered our forces as quickly as we could and gave chase. We hoped to catch them before they reached you, but the winds were against us. Then, we expected battle when we arrived, but it looks now as if you have managed to see off the assault more quickly than we thought possible. How did you do it?”
Marcus smiled at the captain. “It’s quite a long story, Captain Jak, but magic played a part. The fleet was led by the Corsair, an old enemy of the Sun Islanders from the vampire wars. But he is dead now, and we have many folk who were under his sway—Sun Islanders, mostly—on our docks now. The spell has been broken, and they have surrendered, but there is a great deal of work still to be done. We could use your help.”
The captain looked at Marcus with great interest. “I can see that there is more to this story—and more to you—than meets the eye, but I will not ask you to tell me more now. You shall have our help, and gladly. And if it is as you say, and there are many Sun Islanders there, we will perhaps be able to help them return home as well.”
The battle itself had taken less than a night, but the cleanup took a week. And after the immediate chaos of the aftermath had been dealt with, the rebuilding work began.
The ships in the wharves had to be hauled out into the deeper water and either scuttled or repaired. Many were damaged beyond repair, and they were sent to the bottom, but many were able to be salvaged. Once the wharves were clear, the Sun Islander fleet was able to dock up. The hundreds of soldiers and crew became instrumental in the efforts to repair Kraken City’s docklands.
The hybrids, after the initial shock had passed, found that there was plenty of work for them to do, and they set to it, hoping to make up for the part they’d played in the destruction. After a week, most of the dock space had been cleared, and after two weeks, work on fixing the ruined dockland buildings was well under way. Some of the Sun Islander fleet left, going back to their home and taking a good portion of the cured hybrids back with them. The hybrids had been asleep for two hundred years, and their old lives were gone, but they hoped to build new ones on the islands that had always been their home.
Many of the hybrids ended up staying in Kraken City. Since the word ‘hybrid’ was not how they wanted to be known, they simply became called the ‘new folk’, and everyone seemed happy enough with that. They swelled the population of Kraken City, and many of them brought new skills and trades that had been forgotten in the centuries in which they had been asleep.
Amun, Isa, and their two companions returned to Akhi, and took with them the news that Kraken City was open to trade. After a little more time had passed, a few Akhian trading vessels arrived, and over time the trade swelled until there was a steady flow of goods between Akhi and Kraken City, and via Kraken to the lands beyond.
As for Marcus, he initially returned to his stronghold with his friends. As he had expected, the dungeons went into a prolonged stasis again after the strain they had been put under during the battle. It seemed that even the power of the Eloran was not enough to bring them back to work quickly. Even his new dungeon—the one that he had created with the Akhian treasures—was closed to him. Marcus thought that seemed a little unfair seeing as it had not been involved in the battle, but that was just a quirk of dungeons, he supposed.
This time, he was not as concerned as before. At least, he wasn’t concerned whether or not the dungeons would awaken. He knew they would open again in time, and when they did they would be even bigger and better versions of themselves than they had been before.
But the Corsair’s words haunted him now. “Your dungeons will turn on you,” the Corsair had said. The Corsair had been one of Eloran’s monsters—and if a legendary dungeon master’s monsters could revolt, Marcus’s could too. The Corsair spoke as if it was a certainty that they would turn on him. Marcus wasn’t so sure, but he had to be prepared if they did.
It was clear Marcus didn’t know as much about the dungeons as he’d assumed. How did Eloran’s monsters turn on him? And why? More importantly, how did they break out and come to roam the real world?
Three weeks after the battle, Marcus was sitting in his study considering these questions when there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” he said.
Dirk entered, looking pleased.
“Well, Dirk?” Marcus asked, pushing his papers to one side. “What is it?”
Dirk sat on a chair and took a breath, obviously relishing the prospect of delivering his news. “It’s the Thun,” he said. “You know how they’ve been helping in the rebuilding of the slums?”
“Yes?” Marcus said, smiling at the thought. The Thun people, created from the purified spirits of the Wasteland wights, had thrown themselves into the work of refurbishing the slum district. The area that had once been a lawless and terrible place was quickly becoming unrecognizable. A steady flow of goods from the docks provided building materials and furnishings, and well-paid work in the docklands and the Merchants’ Town gave people the ability to furnish their houses and eat well, keeping themselves healthy.
The Thun, in the course of helping with this work, had learned the language of Kraken City, though they spoke it with a strange lisping accent that they seemed unable to banish.
“Well, the leader of the Thun came to me this morning and said that his people want to build their own houses on the strip of land between this stronghold and the old slum district,” Dirk continued. “There’s enough of them to create a whole new town, and Kairn has already said that it would be easy enough to drain the wetlands and create decent building areas along the road from here to the town.”
Marcus nodded, smiling. He was about to speak, but Dirk continued.
“And there’s more,” he said. “The new folk—the people who were hybrids—many of them have decided to j
oin the Thun in their building project. By the time they are done, we should have a town of nearly a thousand people on the road between this stronghold and the slums. Kraken City is expanding! The only thing that they need now is your permission.”
Marcus laughed. “My permission? I don’t own the land. They can do what they want, surely. If they need anybody’s permission it’s surely the Tower District nobles—they own the land, if anyone does.”
Dirk’s face darkened. “I’m not sure about that. Since the battle of the docklands, there has been no work from the Tower District. Usually there is at least some traffic between the guild houses and the high nobles, but since the battle it’s all dried up.”
Marcus frowned. That was odd. For as long as anybody could remember, the high nobles of the Tower District had been the ultimate authority in Kraken City. Nobody ever saw them, and their region, high on the top of the mountainous ridge that was Kraken Island, was protected from sight by a magic barrier that none could pass. But for all that, they still collected their taxes. They sent clerks and officials down to Merchants’ Town to collect their tithe, and nobody doubted that they knew everything that went on in Kraken City.
“There’s been no traffic between the Tower District and the rest of the City since the battle?” Marcus said.
Dirk nodded. “That’s right. None at all. And the barrier is closed. No one can even get near it. Everyone likes to complain about the high nobles, but their silence has brought about a strange reaction in the city. People feel the absence of leadership, and in that absence, they have turned to you.”
Marcus was surprised. “Me? What do you mean?”
Dirk laughed. “You’ve been working too hard on your writing work,” he said, “and you’ve lost track of what’s happening outside. But Kairn, Anja, Ben, and I have all been out there, and any chance we get we mention your name. After all, it is entirely because of you and your dungeons that everything has changed so much in the past few months. People’s lives are better, the city is expanding, trade has improved, and people want someone to take the credit for it. We’ve been giving the credit to you.”
Marcus looked at the pile of papers that covered his desk. His hands were blotched with ink, and there was a scattering of sticky cups and dishes around the room. He laughed. “I guess I have been working too hard on this,” he said, “but while the dungeons are quiet I wanted to take the chance to write down an account of all that’s happened.”
He pushed back from the desk and stood up. “Come on, let’s go outside and get some air.”
Hammer the dog heaved himself up out of his basket by the fire and followed them as they walked through the stronghold and out onto the parapet, looking out over the flat land toward the city. Sunlight shone down from a blue sky dotted with clouds, and a brisk wind carried the smell of the sea.
On the winding road that ran from the stronghold to the slums, small figures moved back and forth. On each side of the road, work was already under way. He gave Dirk an inquiring look.
“I thought you said that you were waiting for my permission to start building?” he asked with a smile.
Dirk smiled back at him. “Well, I may have taken the liberty of telling them they could begin planning. I didn’t think it likely you’d deny them permission.”
Marcus chuckled. “You’re right about that. I don’t deny it. I’m glad to see Kraken City expanding, and it’s good to know that the Thun and the new folk will be living side by side so near the stronghold. I have no problem with it at all.”
Dirk bobbed his head and took his leave. Marcus was alone on the parapet.
He gazed out over the land. The city was thriving again. Despite the darkness of the recent events, all had turned out well. But he had a feeling that it was not over yet. This news about the silence of the high nobles was strange, for a start.
Marcus looked up at the top of Kraken Island, but he could see nothing. As always, a thick mist engulfed the area where the Tower District should be. Sometimes, one could catch a glimpse of the sun flashing off steel and glass up there, but not today. He shook his head.
And there was the matter of Diremage Xeron. He had left Kraken City, destination unknown, but Marcus felt sure that he had unresolved business with that man. After all, Marcus had rescued Ella from Xeron all those months ago, stealing the chance to have the dungeon powers right out of Xeron’s hands. Xeron was a vampire hunter, and Marcus was now allied with vampires.
Xeron might have left Kraken City, but his house was still kept open by his servants, and nobody seemed to doubt that eventually, he would return. When he did, he would find Marcus the master of Kraken City as well as master of dungeons.
“And somehow I doubt he’s going to be very happy about that.”
Hammer leaned against Marcus’s knee, and Marcus leaned a hand down to scratch at the dog’s ears.
He turned his attention toward his sense of his dungeons. Since he had discovered the full power of the Eloran, he had been able to maintain a sense of the dungeons’ presence all the time. They had been sleeping for the last three weeks, but now he felt something stirring.
“Marcus!” Ella cried, flying at him as quickly as she could. “Marcus! Something’s happening!”
Marcus spun. “What is it?”
Ella heaved, trying to catch her breath. “The dungeons… they’re… they’re…”
“Awakening?” Marcus offered. “I can feel it.”
Ella nodded slowly. “Yes, but…”
“But what?”
“They’re not just awakening,” she said. “Something else is happening. You have to come—now!”
Marcus broke into a dash. He’d placed the dungeons within the stronghold, deep in the Underway. Ella flew at his side. And when they got into the Underway, he knew exactly why Ella was in such a rush to find him.
A slow thumping echoed through the tunnels.
He looked at Ella. “Is that…?”
She nodded solemnly.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
And when they reached the dungeons, Marcus saw it with his own eyes. The thumping was coming from one of the dungeons. From inside it.
A dull scraping caught Marcus’s attention. It was from a different dungeon. Before long, all the dungeons’ doors were thumping, scraping, thudding.
Something snapped. Wood was breaking.
The dungeons’ doors wouldn’t last much longer. The monsters were coming—and they were coming for him, their master.
End of Book 2
Did you enjoy Corsair’s Prize? Leave a review and let me know!
Facebook Fantasy Group
Want more books about magic using main characters? Grab recommendations and be with folks who share your love for magical books!
Join the Facebook group
Support DB King on Patreon!
Read books before they’re on Amazon, see exclusive artwork, and check out sneak peeks into the writing process on DB King’s Patreon.
Become a Patron today at: https://geni.us/DBKing-Patreon
Free progression Fantasy Novel!
Join my email newsletter to receive a free ebook of the progression fantasy novel, Hellion Mage.
Facebook Genre Groups
Do you like Gamelit & LitRPG stories? Check out the Gamelit Society Facebook Group for recommendations and fun!
What about Western Cultivation Stories? Check out Western Cultivation Stories.
Fan of Dungeon Core stories? Check out the Dungeon Corps on Facebook.
About the Author
DB King’s stories feature competent main characters, magic and skill progression, and nothing too dark. While he doesn’t shy away from violence, he mostly avoids cursing and doesn’t have any adult scenes. Most of his stories aren't strictly Gamelit/LitRPG, but a lot of his magic and progression systems often feel like something you might find in a video game.
(Dungeon of Evolution Book 2)
