The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5) by Jonathan Brooks (e ink epub reader .txt) 📕

That was the only explanation she received, and unless she wanted to try to make a break for it right then and there, she didn’t really have any other choice but to obey.  She hesitated for only a second while she thought about using her Air elemental energy to run away, but rejected the idea after realizing she didn’t know where she was or how to get back to the capital.  There was a job to be done still, but without some sense of direction and knowledge of her whereabouts, she could spend days running around going in the wrong direction the entire time; given that these people wanted to stay hidden, it was likely they were located somewhere off the normal game trail, so to say.

So, disregarding a potential for escape now that she was free – which she was fervently hoping wouldn’t be something she would soon regret – Echo followed in the footsteps of the Elder and…the other Elder, she supposed.  It didn’t take more than a dozen steps to see that the end of the cave was hiding a nearly impossible to see passageway that was almost folded behind an outcropping, and she found herself walking down a narrow spiral staircase carved from the dirt and compacted into stable steps.  This must have taken some Earth spell users a while to create.

She didn’t count the steps because she was concentrating on keeping her feet in the near darkness, but she approximated that she walked down nearly 100 before it opened into a large room.  As opposed to the practically pitch-black staircase, the 100-foot by 100-foot room was illuminated by small light orbs attached to the ceiling and walls.  By themselves, they weren’t all that impressive; she could make one of them using her Holy energy, and they would last a few hours.  What was impressive was the crowd that awaited them, armed with bladed weapons, bows, and staves not unlike what the Elder was carrying.  Every single one of them appeared to be Elites as well, which only made the whole situation a bit more remarkable.

Remarkable…yet terrifying at the same time.

“I knew it!  What are you trying to do here, Herrlot?  Is this some sort of coup in the making?” Echo loudly blurted out, not thinking about what she was saying as she took in the sight of a veritable army-in-waiting.  “Because if so, I don’t want any part of these political games—”

“This isn’t a coup, girl,” the Elder said softly from her side, which made Echo jump in surprise.  The Ranger hadn’t realized Herrlot had been standing there the whole time.  “That’s already happened, though not many people know it.”  The older Elf walked forward and spread her hands to encompass the hard faces of those assembled.  “No, this isn’t a coup, girl,” she repeated.  “These people are the ones who are going to change things, in order for us to survive.”

How is that not a coup—?

“And you’re going to help us.”

Uh…what?

Chapter 8

“Gerold, you don’t seem to understand what I’m saying.”

I don’t understand?!  I certainly don’t! 

“You weren’t locked down here because you arrived on the back of one of our most hated enemies,” the old Dwarf explained with rapidly evaporating patience, “though that had something to do with it.”

Gerold supposed that it hadn’t helped his cause to arrive on the back of an Aerie Roc, a gigantic monster bird that frequently attacked the few aboveground farming locations the Mountain Kingdom had nestled in a few scattered valleys inside their mountain ranges.  He hadn’t even thought about how it would look, other than possibly as an element of envy; to be able to “tame” one of the massive beasts was a remarkable accomplishment.

The Entrance Guards, all Third-shield rank and above, who surrounded him just outside of the main entrance to Stonebrink Hall didn’t seem to think so, however.

  They had attacked the Roc immediately, nearly bowling him over in the process.  He had been in the middle of unstrapping his Deep Diver suit from the bottom of the harness, and in a panic he had ordered Sandra’s giant monster to fly away.  While it had been an advantageous form of transportation to arrive back home in less than a day, he didn’t particularly care if the bird died or not – it was their hated enemy, after all. Instead, it was the potential for his suit to be destroyed along with the monster that prompted his abrupt order.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure if the suit had stayed secured on its back, or if it had fallen off after he ordered it away.

His highly unusual arrival would’ve been enough of a reason to lock him up for colluding with the enemy despite his protestations that he was controlling the giant bird, but it was Gerold’s lack of something that was the real reason.

“You came back without your armor, Gerry.”  Master Blacksmith Jespin hadn’t called Gerold by that nickname since before the old Dwarf created the armor for him.  It felt like decades ago by that time, but in reality it had only been less than a year since Gerold became an official Shieldman. Hearing the name brought to the forefront the fact that he managed to lose his precious armor faster than almost any other Shieldman in history – at least compared to those who hadn’t lost their life at the same time.

It was the same sort of attitude the Shieldmen led by Bregan in Nurboldar had adopted towards Gerold at first, when the Second-shield had learned of the armor’s loss.  It was dishonorable to be so careless as to let your armor be destroyed so easily, and to survive without a scratch; each set of armor was custom-made to the specific Shieldman and took weeks or months to create in a secretive process by their Dwarven Master Blacksmiths.  A Second or First-shield might lose their armor