Dungeon of Chance: Even Odds: A Dungeon Core Novel (Serious Probabilities Book 1) Jonathan Brooks (book recommendations txt) 📖

he noticed that they weren’t breathing, though none of them appeared too hurt – even the woman who had slammed against the ceiling of his BOO.  Looking at the back of her head, he couldn’t see any particular damage to it; then again, he wasn’t an expert in head wounds, so there might be something seriously wrong.

Regardless of that woman, the other two had barely impacted against anything when they were pushed away, and he doubted they had hit their heads hard enough to knock them out, let alone kill them.  How am I supposed to help these people if the first ones that visit me I kill without even trying?

 Looking around his dungeon in desperation, Clay basically wandered around lost and confused.  What am I supposed to do now?  It was only when he got to the entrance and looked out that he noticed that the sun was still setting outside, so he reasoned that it hadn’t been that long since the visitors had arrived at his dungeon.  He went to turn away, trying to figure out a way to clean up dead bodies, when he noticed something strange: The water in the distance wasn’t rippling like it did before.

Now, he was probably the farthest thing from an expert on oceans and large bodies of water, but he couldn’t understand how the water had stopped its movement in such a short amount of time.  Even the boats he saw in the water near the city had to make a few waves when they bobbed up and down in place, but he couldn’t see anything moving.  In fact, is that a kid jumping off the side of that boat and frozen in the middle of the air?  There were a few other children underneath the jumper in the water, and though it was quite a distance away, he didn’t think they were moving either.

Everything…everything…was frozen in place as if time had stopped.

What have I done?

As if it were waiting for him to acknowledge the phenomenon, Clay sensed a sudden change fall over his little world.  The waves in the ocean started to move infinitesimally at first, though it slowly began to speed up.  The kid that was jumping from a boat in the distance started to fall down into the water below, and a sudden rush of sounds suddenly crashed into his awareness, making him wonder for the first time why he didn’t notice it had been entirely silent.

“—that you will be fine.  WHAT HAPPENED?!” he suddenly heard shouted by his Core, and he sped his focus back to his BOO.  Dwight was unfrozen, flapping her wings steadily to keep her afloat and was looking around in shock – which looked very strange on the face of a flying lizard.

That’s what I would like to know!  That woman touched me, and something erupted out of my Core, and now I think I killed them—  He couldn’t help the whine that seemed to accompany his voice, but he shut up when the woman who touched him began to stir.

She abruptly sat up, her eyes open wide but unfocused. She got to her feet in a crouch and started leaving his BOO without a word, and it was at that point that he saw that the man, Arcen, was doing the same.  The woman that had slid all the way down to his “Boss Room” stirred last of all, but by the time the others arrived near her, she was on her feet and joining them as they walked back down the hallways and other rooms toward the exit.  Clay could only watch in confusion and mounting horror as they continued not to say a word to each other or acknowledge in any way what had happened to them.

Ok, Dwight, I need some explanations.

“So do I, Clay.”

Chapter 8

Strange dreams filled with visions of ever-burning torches and strange glowing stones plagued Jeska’s sleep, though what finally woke her was something even more odd – and frightening.  She dreamt that she was running along the beach right outside of Chardelia, and something massive was slowly making its way over the horizon, set on destroying her beloved city…and the rest of Sunfall Island afterwards.  While she wasn’t quite sure exactly what this threat to her city and island was, what was even odder was the sense that she was running toward this threat, instead of away from it like any sensible person should do.

It was all too much for her mind to comprehend, and she found herself waking up in her bed drenched in sweat – and it wasn’t from the constant heat that wafted through their open windows, even in the middle of the night.  Looking down at herself, she realized she had slept in her clothes last night, which probably had something to do with her current sweaty condition, as well as stinking like a catch left out on the dock for a few days.  What in the world happened last night? 

Jeska wasn’t one for drinking spirits like many of the sailors working out of Chardelia, so she doubted she had blacked out after too much drink.  Besides, her head felt fine, unlike the one time she had experimented and indulged a bit too much one night; when she had woken up on the floor of her room in the morning, having very little memory of the night before, her skull had felt like it had been trying to explode.  Seriously, though, I don’t even remember coming home.

As she sat up in bed gingerly, worried that staying still had kept a potential headache at bay, she tried to go over what she could recall of the day before.  I remember coming back to shore with our catch of Golden-scaled Hornblowers – after Arcen destroyed another one of our nets accidentally – beaching our skiff, seeing Rosara coming towards us, and then…nothing.  Everything that had