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

her Core hadn’t already been threatened by a group of Raiders (never mind the “faction”), she probably would’ve chosen to select another creature.  As it was, with the threat to her continued existence a real worry, she chose to prioritize the defense of her Core.

It wasn’t exactly exciting, but she would feel safer, nonetheless.

Chapter 18

Sterge felt a little paranoid walking through The Village, almost as if he were expecting to find an arrow buried in his back when he wasn’t looking.  He thought he was starting to look a little like Mordecai with his constant searching for threats; the Scout always seemed to be running his gaze over everything around him.  Although they hadn’t spent a lot of time together since they had delved through the dungeon, he had learned that the Gnome had spent most of his life on the streets of a large city, where he had to keep his head on a perpetual swivel to avoid being knifed in the dark alleyways between buildings.  What the Hill Dwarf wasn’t sure of was what he was doing in those dark alleyways, but then again it wasn’t really his business to know.

“You have to stop doing that, Sterge.  You’re making everyone else nervous,” Gwenda told him quietly while they were walking towards the Delving Supply Store together.

That confused him.  “What?  Why would I be making anyone nervous?”

“Because you’re the Village Chief, if you had forgotten.  To see the one in charge looking fearfully around him at all times isn’t a good sign; if you feel like your life is in danger, then that doesn’t bode well for the others living or staying here.”

He thought about that a little as they walked along, and he had to admit that she was right.  “Unfortunately, that makes sense.  But, after knowing what we know, how could I not?”

“There’s nothing we can do about it right now; besides, there’s no proof that anything was done.  Putting the pieces together, I can see that what we were told by…you-know-who…is most likely accurate, but we can’t expel them from our lands without proof. That’s the impression I get after making some discreet inquiries, naturally; it would cause some serious issues, to say the least.”

Sterge had been living under the constant expectation that the Merchants were going to do something just as drastic as what they had reportedly done inside of the dungeon.  He wasn’t exactly sure what he was expecting to happen, but if they had sent in a secret group of their people to destroy the dungeon, then he thought that just about anything was possible.  It didn’t help that the rumors regarding the disappearance of a group of Merchants around the time the bodies of the Raiders nearby had surfaced along the road to Heftington were still floating around.  Both he and Gwenda were convinced that these mysterious missing Merchants and those that tried to destroy the Core were one and the same.

Granted, that all depended upon whether or not the dungeon up in the mountains was telling the truth.  It seemed like a strange accusation and warning for the dungeon to just make up, however – or they were misinterpreting the message.  The fact that it was in the form of some strange poetry made it a little more difficult to decipher.  Not for the first time, Sterge wished it had plainly written out what had happened; upon further reflection, he realized that the fact that it was communicating with them in the first place was a unique experience.

Luckily, their new groupmates were smart enough not to mention the carved-out message that was given to them during their delve.  Knowing a potentially damaging secret about a powerful member of society such as the Minister wasn’t the most ideal of circumstances, and the less people who knew about it the better.  Something on the magnitude of orchestrating the destruction of a dungeon purely out of spite, especially a dungeon that Raiders had traveled from all over to wait in line for a month or more to delve – the repercussions if word got out would certainly escalate quickly.  That was probably why Sterge had been so jumpy and paranoid as of late, because he was worried the Merchants would find out that he knew about their illicit activity.

He might be a bit of a slow thinker at times, but he wasn’t naïve about how the world worked.  Powerful people, including the members of the Raider Delving Clan, would take action against anyone who knew of those secrets in order to silence them.  Action that would probably prove fatal.

He had briefly considered going to Jesper with the information they had received, as he was the local Clan representative, but he was stopped by his best friend.  “The Clan might be the authority in matters regarding dungeons—” Gwenda had told him— “but they technically have no authority over this land.  Remember what he told us about there being some conflict between themselves and the Merchants? I for one don’t want this place to become a battleground for those wishing to take control of our livelihood.  Besides, all you would end up doing would be accusing the Minister of something that can’t be proven, which could make you the bad guy here.”

He didn’t like that she was correct, mainly because of the implications behind her statement when he really thought about it.  He and the other villagers were essentially only protected by their lease of the land with the crown, which was a flimsy shield against direct attack against them; at any point, either the Raiders or the Merchants could have marched in and killed them all, thereby nullifying the lease.  That they didn’t was probably only a testament to the fact that Jesper seemed to be more of a unifier rather than a conqueror, and the normal Raider presence was preventing the Merchants from assuming control using that