“Run, Gwenda, run!” he shouted, grabbing his weapon and standing up moments before the wave of beasts hit him.
This just keeps getting better; what happened to all of that luck from earlier?
Chapter 27
Obviously, their luck took a turn for the worse.
If she could shake her head in disappointment, she would be shaking it after she saw the clumsy Hill Dwarf trip over his own mace and land inside the room. Because she had earlier moved her creatures inside the room away from their hiding places so that they could be easily seen, they all reacted at the same time when the Raider “stepped” into the room with his face. Within moments, he would be dead, and the woman would be chased down and killed as she tried to flee.
Unless, of course, Tacca stopped them.
The action within her Boss Room seemed to slow down as she watched, as the decision she had to make warred within her mind. Should I stop them? What kind of precedent will that set if I do? If I don’t, the two Hill Dwarves are guaranteed to die, crazy “luck” or not; how long will it be until I’m found by someone else?
She took of all of two seconds to decide that she didn’t want the two Raiders to die, so she ordered her creatures to stop and return to where they were waiting; the mace-wielding Hill Dwarf was already up and moving backwards into the tunnel anyways, so she could put her calling them back down to him leaving the room and was therefore no longer a threat to the dungeon. Not that being inside the tunnel would matter all that much to dungeon creatures – they could chase a Raider all the way to the entrance of the entire dungeon if they had their way.
She gave the order and…nothing happened. She tried again to desperately stop the wave of Canines closing in on the two Raiders – the woman decided not to run when told to, electing to stay and fight for some reason – but they didn’t stop; it was like they didn’t even acknowledge that she was their Core. She knew that they obeyed at any other time, such as when she rearranged them into their current positions earlier, but now they were completely ignoring her.
“Shale! All my orders to my creatures aren’t working! What’s going on?” she frantically asked her Dungeon Assistant, hoping against hope that he had an answer. She doubted it, though, because if she didn’t know what was going on, then it wasn’t likely that he did.
She was right. “I have no idea; you should be able to stop them whenever you want to. I’m assuming because they look like they want to leave that you want to prevent the two Raiders from dying?”
“You assume right! What should I do? Wait—can you fly down there and use your Repellant Shield to get the creatures to leave?”
“Uh…I can try, but I’m pretty sure it will only ensure that they don’t attack me, not Raiders.” She could sense that he started to fly down, but he also asked at the same time with a confused tone to his voice. “How do you know about my Repellant Shield? We’re not supposed to give too many details about what we can do to Dungeon Cores.”
As the first of the Frond Coyotes that sprang forward reached the fighter-type Raider and got a mace to its head for its trouble, Tacca replied as quickly as she could. “Tacca explained the basics to me – now get moving!”
Shale arrived just as the bulk of the Canines arrived and she waited for them to clear away…and was disappointed that it didn’t work; all that happened was that they dodged around his invisible form and attacked the Hill Dwarf, knocking him to the ground almost immediately. Tacca could see that the caster had used her slowing spell on the bulk of her creatures, but even moving at a walking pace they were too close and too deadly. A half-dozen Coyotes and Wolves started to tear apart the armor they could reach on the fighter, though they took some damage from his flailing arms and powerful kicks in defense.
It wasn’t nearly going to be enough, though, even as two of them were knocked away by the increasingly exhausted caster and her forceful Magistrike spell. She nearly collapsed afterwards from casting those two after her previous slowing spell, but she managed to get one more strike off before she was knocked down herself by two Root Foxes. They weren’t very powerful, of course, though that didn’t matter as they immediately started biting her incessantly around the arms and legs, tearing flesh off with each chomp.
When the Forest Wolves arrived a few seconds later – having been slowed considerably by the caster’s initial spell – the end was in sight. Even discounting the Mastiffs that were bringing up the rear, the two Hill Dwarfs on their backs weren’t going to last long.
What to do? Should I just let them die?
As much as the smart thing to do was to just let it happen, some instinct told her that might be a bad idea. It wasn’t even that she needed to have her presence known anymore, it went deeper than that; for some reason she still couldn’t explain, she felt a connection with these two Hill Dwarves. Whether it was because of their perseverance despite lack of knowledge – and skill – or if it was because they were her very first Raiders and it might set a bad precedent if they didn’t make it out alive, it didn’t really matter in the end. All that mattered was she would do what she could to keep them alive – even if they ended up killing her in the process.
This is probably stupid, but I might as well try.
Using her Dungeon Force, Tacca used her Teleport Core Option and designated her destination as halfway inside the tunnel just above the two struggling Hill Dwarves. While she had never actually used it before, she knew the basic idea around the Teleport; it actually wasn’t too unlike the Translocation Ability that Dungeon Assistants possessed, though she couldn’t use it outside of her dungeon.
One moment she was in her Core Room and the next she was hovering over dying Raiders being chewed up and ripped apart by her creatures. This close up, Tacca felt that they were in even more dire straits than they had just a second ago, though that could be just because of her proximity.
“What are you doing? Get out of there!” Shale shouted after he saw her appear in the tunnel. He was still down low trying to get her Canines to back off with his Repellant Shield and was having only a little luck dodging back and forth, interrupting an attack here and there.
She couldn’t Teleport back even if she wanted to, because one limitation that she couldn’t bypass was using the Option when she was in the same room as a Raider. She could Teleport in – but she couldn’t Teleport out.
Instead, she activated her own Repellant Shield using her Fairy Mana, in the hopes that if it came from the Core that was supposed to be in charge of them, that they would back off. Unlike what seemed like everything else she had tried lately, the daring use of her Assistant Abilities to help the Raiders – and in front of her own Assistant – actually ended up working. Within moments of activating the Shield, she felt an invisible barrier expand out from her much wider than it had ever been when she was a Fairy, forcing all of her creatures away from the Hill Dwarves.
They still tried to get to their victims, so she started to absorb them all; she hadn’t done it before because it took entirely too much time to do so and wouldn’t have made a difference previously, but now that they were held back she could easily remove them. It would still take at least six minutes for them all to be fully absorbed, of course, though time wasn’t that big of a deal now that the Raiders were safe.
At least she thought they were, until she actually looked at them lying on the ground.
“What are you doing? How are you doing that?” Shale asked with a shaky voice, thoroughly confused and perhaps a little frightened now. Tacca was doing something that should’ve been impossible, but here she was doing it; he couldn’t necessarily see her actual Repellant Shield, but he likely recognized its effects.
“Not now, Shale – I’ll explain later.” Ignoring her Dungeon Assistant for the moment, she activated her Healing Aura Ability in the hopes that it would start to heal the two Hill Dwarves – because they were quickly bleeding out from horrendous wounds. The unconscious fighter-type was missing most of his armor, which had been
torn off his body, and a lot of his skin had been ripped off in large patches; he also had a wound on his leg that appeared to have torn into something important, as the blood was freely flowing and not looking like it was going to stop.
As for the still-conscious and obviously in major pain spellcaster, her robe was in shreds and there were multiple minor wounds all over her legs, arms, and torso; the worst, however, was her neck area – where one of the Foxes had started to tear out her throat. Tacca wasn’t an expert on Raider anatomy, but she estimated that both of them had less than a minute to live. She had already discounted trying to create some sort of Healing Paralysis Trap underneath them because she didn’t have enough time, which was why she tried her Assistant-base Healing Aura.
It did absolutely nothing.
Unfortunately, that made sense; it was designed only to heal herself as a Fairy and her creatures – not Raiders. The Aura washed over them with no effect, though just on the edge of her Repellant Shield she saw one of her wounded Wolves – who appeared to have been stabbed by a flailing mace spike – start to heal up…so obviously her Ability was working. It was disappointing after everything she had done to save them that she was too late; she knew she was going to have a lot of questions from Shale already, and she wasn’t going to get anything because of it.
It was all because of one simple thing. I wish there was a way to make my Healing Aura consider them my creatures or even part of the dungeon; that might do it, but I can’t think of anything—
She brought her Dungeon Assistant Information up again and searched for something her mind insisted was there…
Dungeon Assistant Information
Assistant Name:
Tacca GloomLily
Assistant Rank:
Novice
Assistant Stage:
5/5
Experience:
729/800
Experience Pending/Countdown:
27 in 6 days
Fairy Mana (FM):
242/250
Fairy Mana Regeneration:
11 per minute
Abilities:
Bond
Instant – Multiple
50+ FM
Translocation
Instant
1000 FM
Healing Aura
Sustainable
20 FM per minute
Hibernate
Sustainable
1 FM per minute
Invisibility
Sustainable
3 FM per minute
Repellant Shield
Sustainable
2 FM per minute
Aha! There it is! She had no idea what it would do, but she figured it couldn’t hurt now; she activated her Bond Ability and selected both Raiders; she felt 100 Fairy Mana drain from her Core as an invisible tendril shot out towards each of the Hill Dwarves dying on the floor. As soon as they connected, she saw them both twitch uncontrollably – widening some of their wounds in the process – and then her mind slammed to a halt.
Her concentration and awareness felt like the time she unexpectedly smashed into a wall when she was learning to fly as a young Fairy, but instead of pain and shock, all she felt was shock. The feeling lasted for what felt like hours before it slowly ebbed away; by the time she could really concentrate on the world around her again, she found that she was still hovering over the two Raiders, which was a positive. In that state, anything could’ve happened to her Core, and she wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.
What was even better – when she had a chance to check to see if she had inadvertently killed the two Hill Dwarves – was that each of them were starting to heal from their wounds. It wasn’t quite as rapid as her Healing Paralysis Trap, but the bleeding quickly stopped, and the skin started to slowly knit itself back together. The spellcaster had dropped into unconsciousness at some point, so now both of them were essentially asleep as their bodies repaired themselves.
Her mind kept improving after the abrupt halt it suffered from moments ago, until it abruptly snapped back to normal with alarming clarity…along with something unexpected.
Bond Results:
Bonded Targets: 2
Abilities(s) Obtained: Magistrike, Sapping Fog, Magibarrier, Forceful Smash, Slam
Abilities(s) Granted: Dungeon Sight, Power Boost +50%
Creature Type Unlocked: Hill Dwarf
Ummm…what? That was thoroughly unexpected, and Tacca didn’t even know what she was looking at. Not only had she never heard of something like this before, but what it was implying was so far out of the norm that she had trouble comprehending it. I unlocked a new “creature type”? How is that even possible? She ignored the “Abilities Obtained” and “Abilities Granted” part of the notification for the moment because she didn’t have any idea what that meant.
Besides that, she could only feel a faint, tenuous Bond between her Core and the two Raiders; it wasn’t anything like the Bond she had with Shale, which was a bit more “intimate” than what she was feeling now. In fact, if she had to classify it, the Bond with her Dungeon Assistant was more like a connection she might feel with a lover – as crazy as that sounded – and the ones with the two Hill Dwarves were more like distant friends. They were acquainted with each other, but there was no sharing of emotions and she instinctively knew there would be no mental communication between them.
Thinking of her Assistant, he had been silent after his earlier questions; when she looked at him, she could see that he had dropped his invisibility and was staring at her and the Raiders with a weird combination of expressions on his face. His Mood Clothes reflected that combination perfectly with a constantly shifting swirl of colors, ranging from red for anger, purple for confusion, and yellow for fear for some reason.
Tacca didn’t say anything, though, as she wasn’t prepared to explain herself quite yet. Instead, she waited for her creatures to disappear a few minutes later and then turned off her Repellant Shield – and then turned on her Invisibility. The two Hill Dwarves were starting to wake up from their injuries – which were healing nicely from her Aura – and she didn’t necessarily want to be visible to them. It was bad enough that she was going to be floating so close above them; there was no point in giving them a target if she could help it.
Shale followed suit with his own Invisibility as soon as he saw the two Raiders starting to stir, before retreating to the middle of Tacca’s Boss Room, where he perched on one of the tree branches to watch. Looking at the two figures struggling to wake up, she couldn’t help but be reminded that their armor and clothes had pretty much been destroyed in the attack that almost killed them; she couldn’t create anything new in either the seventh or sixth room because of the proximity of the Raiders – but she could definitely create something in another room. She didn’t really want to reward them for almost getting killed, but she felt somehow responsible for these Raiders in particular; therefore, she created an extra robe and a full set of leather armor near her dungeon entrance for them, where they would have enough time to be fully created before they left.
She had no doubt now that they would choose to leave, especially after their near-death experience. They had survived and would probably never know why; if it hadn’t been for their bad luck in causing all of her creatures to attack them, then they wouldn’t be in the situation they were in.
Actually, was it “bad” luck that brought them to the brink of death…or was it “good” luck that forced my intervention? She was left with that question as the two finally woke up and looked around in shock at their continued existence.
Chapter 28
Sterge awoke slowly at first, nightmares of being eaten alive by dogs and wolves plaguing his sleep. It was somewhat refreshing, actually, because his usual nightmares originated from when he was very young; the destruction of his home and the deaths of his family back in the Grumblestake Hills had a lasting effect. He tried not to think about it when he was awake, but it frequently popped up in his dreams and
he couldn’t put it behind him.
Why am I dreaming about being eaten by beasts, though?
The memory of an Elf Ranger’s corpse on the floor of his cabin flashed into his mind as he struggled to awake from his nightmare, which was quickly followed by everything that happened since then: becoming Raiders, exploring the mountains, finding the dungeon, fighting dangerous beasts with his best friend Gwenda – the only survivor other than himself from their home back in the Hills – and finally tripping over his strange—but effective—weapon in the last room they had seen in the dungeon. As remembrances of his skin being torn off his living body slammed into him, he woke abruptly and sat up.
Sterge looked around and saw that he was still in the mouth of the tunnel leading to the final room where he had fallen back into – but there was no sign of any beasts ready to continue their meal of his flesh. Thoughts of that trauma caused him to run his hands quickly over his body, checking for the wounds he knew he had sustained; just like what happened in the room full of flowers earlier in the dungeon, though, his skin was whole and unblemished – if covered in sticky, drying blood.
As for his armor, all of it had been ripped off and was nowhere to be seen. Technically, he was still wearing clothes, but they were ripped and torn so much that they barely covered his body anymore. Nevertheless, he was alive…somehow.
Gwenda! Did she run like I told her to? Turning around – and thankfully feeling no pain in the process – Sterge saw his best friend lying on the ground behind him and he was momentarily annoyed that she hadn’t listened to him. However, that soon passed as he saw her struggling awake as well; rather than standing up, he crawled over to his side to see her “new” robe that she had received in the room before was now as ripped and shredded as his own clothes. Fortunately, the skin he could see underneath the rags appeared to be uninjured, though like him it was bloodstained with wet or partially dried red splotches.
The Dungeon Fairy: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 1) Page 27
