The Crafter's Dungeon: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 1) Jonathan Brooks (sites to read books for free .TXT) 📖

spike of pain that injected itself directly into her consciousness.  She wasn’t exactly sure how her thoughts could be “hurt”, but she didn’t have to contemplate it for more than a moment before even her awareness was swallowed up into the vast expanse of nothingness.

Chapter 4

Her unconsciousness didn’t last long.  The transition from nothingness to full awareness was abrupt; Sandra suddenly went from feeling and thinking nothing at all to being fully aware of her surroundings in less than the blink of an eye.  The experience was jarring to say the least, and it took a few moments for her to get her bearings and figure out what was going on.

The first thing she noticed once she finally focused on it was that she could see.  However, it wasn’t quite the same as looking through two eyes – it was more like looking through hundreds or thousands of eyes at the same time in all directions.  Fortunately, there was no difficulty in taking in all of the information.  Somehow, for some reason she didn’t quite know yet, it felt…normal.

Not that there was a lot to see, of course.  A steady white glow illuminated what appeared to be a small dirt and stone cave all around her, and Sandra could see the same material along the relatively flat surface of the floor.  Just as that fact occurred to her, she realized that whatever she was looking out of was suspended in the middle of the air with no identifiable means of levitation.

But that was it – there was nothing to else to see, nor did anything stand out to her as unusual (other than her presence there in the first place).  She tried to move, and nothing happened as far as motion went; however, she discovered that she could extend out a tendril of her thoughts and “touch” the nearby wall.  It wasn’t the same as touching it with her hand would likely be, but sit was somehow better – she could feel the elements of the material under her touch.  It was almost as if she could see through it to its basic building blocks; the dust-like particles that fit together to form the dirt and stone in her vision suddenly made sense to her mind and she instinctively knew how to manipulate it.

Without conscious thought, Sandra “ate” away at a portion of the cave wall and within moments she saw the part she was “eating” de-materialize into those small particles and flow invisibly into her in a steady stream.  And it “tasted” delicious – which freaked her out for a moment, but her hunger for the cave wall far outweighed any other concern.  She scooped away a little more and she suddenly felt full.  The glow that had illuminated the cave started to dim until it was just a slow flicker of light, and she started to become concerned.  The uncomfortable fullness in her new…whatever she was now…started to fade after gorging herself on dirt and stone, but she was disinclined to try “eating” any more.

“…know, I know – I’ll probably be back soon, though.  Tell Darxie not to take my spot – I’ve waited nearly two centuries for the chance to—”

Sandra was still uncomfortably full, so she watched lethargically as a circular rip in the air appeared halfway from her position and the chunk she had torn out from the wall.  The voice had come through the circular portal and was soon followed by the speaker herself.  A winged fairy-looking creature flew through and stopped her conversation short as she looked at Sandra.  At least, she looked like what the descriptions of a fairy were (she had never actually seen one), but the proportions were all wrong – she was a giant.

With short purple hair, dark-brown skin, and a sleek green dress made from what appeared to be some sort of cloth that was designed to look like actual leaves, the “fairy” was nearly the exact thing she pictured when she had first learned about them as a child.  Even the two pair of wings fluttering so quickly she could barely see them completed the picture, though the glowing purple eyes that matched her hair color were a surprise – and the fact that she was the same height as a human.

“—I’ll see you later,” the fairy changed what she was going to say after looking at Sandra and turned to speak into the rip in the air before it collapsed in on itself.  She couldn’t see anything but a mirror-like shimmer from the portal, but apparently there was someone on the other side of it that she couldn’t see.  “I’m sorry about the delay, but we weren’t expecting any Dungeon Cores to be born around here, particularly because we thought the quota for this year had already been met.”

Delay?  Dungeon Cores?  Quota? Nothing the giant fairy was saying was making sense to her, but it also could be because she was still recovering from her rock-filled meal.

“Hey!  I’ll have you know that I’m perfectly sized for my age.  None of this ‘giant fairy’ nonsense, you hear me?  Otherwise, I’ll just leave you and let you figure all this out on your own,” the gi—fairy said with heat in her voice.

What the…?  Can she hear me? 

“Of course I can hear you!  I’m your assigned Dungeon Fairy, and I’ll be here until you want to get rid of me,” the fairy reacted to Sandra’s thoughts as if she was speaking out loud.  “Which shouldn’t be long, as every Core I’ve ever had the pleasure of assisting wanted to eat me within a day or two.”

Uh…what?

“Yeah, you wouldn’t think that creating Dungeon Cores from the insane and nearly incoherent souls pulled from their lonely existence in eternity’s abyss would be vengeful, homicidal, and – to put it frankly, crazy – would you?  I keep telling the Powers That Be that they