The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 2) Jonathan Brooks (online e reader TXT) 📖

“Uh, no; why are you wasting time, we need to—”

“How long after the attack began did your Core dissolve your Bond?  Did you get a good look at the Raiders that did this?”  Lapis was back to his investigation mode, and Malachite could tell he was mentally ticking off all of the questions on his list – all while trying to keep the young Assistant’s mind off the hurt he must be feeling.

“Huh?  Wait, I don’t think you understand—”

“What’s not to understand?”

The young Dungeon Assistant seemed to not really understand what had happened.  “Head Instructor, maybe it would be prudent to give him a few minutes to come to terms with what just occurred.  He just lost his Core, after all.”

“WOULD YOU JUST LISTEN TO ME!” the frantic Assistant shouted so loudly it startled both the Head Instructor and the Council Leader.  It had been so long that anyone had spoken to him at such volume that Malachite was speechless – and so was Lapis, apparently, as the young Assistant continued without interruption.  With a softer voice this time, at least.

“I don’t know what you think happened, but you’re wrong – her Core wasn’t destroyed.”

Malachite finally got his voice back.  “The map doesn’t lie, boy.  We saw the light go out, ourselves.”

“I don’t care what that showed…because my Bond with Tacca’s Core was never broken.  It’s still there, though I can’t sense exactly where she is – which is why I need help.”

That didn’t make sense.  When a Core was destroyed, the Bond was always broken – because it couldn’t exist without both a Dungeon Assistant and a Dungeon Core.  Either the Assistant was delusional from the sudden loss (especially if the Bond wasn’t dissolved before the Core was destroyed), or he was lying.  He had plainly seen the light go out—wait…did he say Tacca?

Before Malachite could say anything, the Council Leader heard Lapis gasp and he figured that the Head Instructor had realized what the young Assistant had said.  When he looked over, though, Lapis and the other Fairy were looking down at the map below them.

Right at the extremely dim light that appeared in the southern mountain range.

“Shale…it looks like we’re going to have a very long conversation.”  Malachite couldn’t help but agree with the Head Instructor.

Chapter 30

Tacca drifted in and out of consciousness for what seemed like years, as her soul was ripped apart and put back together over and over again.  The only saving grace through the whole ordeal was the fact that there was no pain at all, just a vast, empty expanse where her scattered thoughts and awareness stretched out in all directions with no end in sight.  Is this some sort of afterlife?  Is my soul to be eternally ripped apart only to be put back together again?

She experienced a bout of sadness over her situation, because she really was hoping to have survived the explosion.  Who knew that would happen when those bags ruptured?  She had only been hoping that the magic in those innocuous-looking pouches would make the explosion strong enough to kill the invaders, but so much was unknown about them that they were unpredictable when messed with in that way.  The only reports in the past of Cores trying to access them using brute-force applications of Dungeon Force varied in result, and none of them had used as much energy as she had with the DF-based synergy explosion.

Regardless, it had worked, even if it worked a little too well.  All of the blue-skinned invaders – and even the purplish-skinned one – were dead, and that metal thing strapped to its chest was destroyed; not that she had lived long enough to revel in her victory.  Her one consolation was that Shale had managed to get away, and had likely been far enough away to have avoided being hurt by the explosion – though she had no way of knowing how powerful it ended up being.  With how much energy was pushed into the wave, blowing up half of the mountain where her dungeon was located was a distinct possibility.  She wondered if her Bonded Hill Dwarves had survived, but she was also currently in a place where she couldn’t really care about them all that much.

Eventually, something changed in her perpetually bland and strange existence.  Hazy waves like the waves of heat she occasionally saw coming off of stones on a hot and sunny day surrounded her consciousness, and she felt what she considered her…self start to stretch and condense – like someone or something was kneading her soul like a hunk of bread dough.  Again, it wasn’t necessarily painful; if anything, it was weird and uncomfortable.  This went on for she knew not how long, until the “kneading” stopped – only to be replaced by a sudden, powerful contraction.

That was when the pain started.

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