The Dungeon Fairy: A Dungeon Core Escapade (The Hapless Dungeon Fairy Book 1) by Jonathan Brooks (read novel full .txt) 📕

Assistants into dungeons, as well as laying down rules and suggestions for how Dungeon Cores were encouraged to operate.  The DPRC didn’t enforce the rules or inflict any type of punishment (though they could choose to pull their support of a particular Core that was reluctant to fall in line), but if you ended up bending or breaking some of those rules, then the Dungeon Raiders that delved through dungeons would inflict their own measure of punishment.  In most cases, punishment meant destroying the Dungeon Core – and any Fairy Assistants bonded to that Core for longer than a year.

From her schooling, she knew it was dangerous to be bonded to a Core that tended to disobey some of those rules.  The DPRC could break a bond between Assistant and Core if need be – which was a clear indication that “support” was being removed – but it took a measure of time and distance for that to happen; if Cobalt refused to allow his bond to be broken, however, then he would instantly die if the Dungeon Core was shattered. Their obviously strong bond was beneficial to assisting a Core, but it had some major drawbacks as well.

She wanted to wriggle out of the crevice she was shoved into to tell him not to be stupid and break his bond before it was too late, but she was caught fast against the cold stone and couldn’t move; even trying to call out was next to impossible, because she could barely catch a breath from the tight quarters, let alone speak loud enough that he might be able to hear her.  Besides, the sound of metal banging against metal – and even something that she pictured as stone exploding outwards from a wall – made it unlikely he would hear her anyway.

Not being able to see what was happening was driving her crazy, as she kept expecting the stone around her to start exploding.  In a panic, Tacca tried to use her Translocation ability again, but she could tell that she was still dreadfully short of Fairy Mana; struggling to get out of the crevice and flee, she heard and felt a portion of her dress tear along the side and she felt something warm running down her side.  A moment later she felt the intense sting as the cut that must’ve been caused by her struggling made itself known…and as she concentrated on that, she realized that she couldn’t hear anything coming from the Core Room or beyond.

She jumped in shock – as much as her body was able to in that enclosed space – as an impact coming from outside her crevice shook the room, followed by the pained screams of a few somethings – or someones – other than a Goblin.  Their screams were so close that Tacca thought that they were coming from right outside her hidden refuge, but they were also blessedly short; as she was shivering in fright at such an unexpected sound nearby, she somehow felt a massive amount of Fairy Mana being used from right outside of her hiding place.

That’s…a lot.  I’ve never felt that much being used all at once—

She heard and felt more painful-sounding impacts, cutting short the few screams that managed to come out before they were silenced.  What is going on?  Why is this happening?  She was starting to seriously freak out and suddenly didn’t care about hurting herself as she tried to escape her stone prison; for some reason she didn’t want her Mentor to die so soon after meeting him, and any sense of self-preservation she had went away as she tried to get free.

“…Emmalynn, I think we did it—NOOO!”

At Expert Assistant Cobalt’s heart-wrenching primal scream, Tacca froze just as she got one of her legs free; the sound of breaking glass echoed through the Core Room and the glowing light that was leaking into her crevice was abruptly extinguished.  Oh no!  Maybe I’m not too late to save him—

“Gather up the shards and grab the Fairy’s corpse; on the way out, we’ll strip this place bare and leave nothing behind – including our own.  It looks like this’ll be a big payday, boys,” Tacca halted her efforts to get out again as a throaty, guttural voice in Common Tradespeak called out loudly in the otherwise deafening silence.  Tears of impotent rage ran down her face as she heard some of the others in the room comment at how light her Mentor’s body was when they picked him up, and all she wanted to do was rush out and enact revenge for his slaying.

Some rational part of her mind took over at that point and kept her silent and unmoving, knowing that she had no way of hurting any of them.  At higher Assistant Ranks she would likely obtain more abilities that would be of a more offensive nature, but at the moment she knew she had no hope to hurt one of them, let alone kill them.  In less than a minute, the sounds of Dungeon Core shards being picked up, heavy stone being shifted around, and bodies being dragged away faded into the distance, and within another ten it was completely silent in the dark and – hopefully – completely empty dungeon.

She had regenerated enough Fairy Mana to use her Translocation ability, but she knew it would be extremely stupid to do it while she was still trapped in between two stone walls; not only would it likely kill her, but it might be dangerous for anyone near where she emerged, flinging out stone shards in a wide sphere that could be almost as deadly.  She had to admit that she wouldn’t mind if there were some of her graduating class there to receive a face full of sharp stone shards, but it would more likely be someone innocent nearby that would suffer as a result of such an action.

Instead, Tacca