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

able to see very well.  I can start to see how these dungeons can get dangerous quickly.  Lead the way, noble protector!” Gwenda said, gesturing with her stick-staff towards the ferns ahead of them.

Sterge walked ahead slowly, brushing past the newly regrown plant as he ducked down enough not to get smacked in the face by other fronds.  Moving at a crouch was tiring, but actually helped a bit; while his view was still blocked by the bases of the fern plants, he was able to see around him remarkably well.  In fact, as he traveled approximately a dozen feet into the room, his crouch was probably the only reason he saw the form of something moving towards him.  Actually, two somethings, approaching from opposite directions through the foliage.

The beasts were hard to pinpoint, because they were brown with green stripes, and they almost looked like wolves – but were smaller than the ones he’d seen before (at a distance, of course).  Still, their teeth looked like they were sharp enough to tear him apart, so the fact that they weren’t actual wolves didn’t really make much of a difference.  As they slunk near-silently through the plants, he glanced behind him at Gwenda and whispered, “Two…things…incoming.”  He didn’t know what to call them, so he went back to his fallback of calling them “things”.

As he stepped forward between three ferns in an abnormal-looking open space, his sword waving back and forth between the two stalkers, his foot passed through something invisible that caused his leg to tingle briefly.  He tried to pull it back, but it was already too late; a red haze dropped over his vision as unexplainable rage tore through his mind.  He lost all control of his actions as he shot forward with a primal yell, zeroing in on the nearest movement – which just so happened to be the closest green striped not-wolf beast.

Using absolutely no skill at all in his enraged state, Sterge practically threw himself at the creature and he just started swinging.  Blood flew out from where he struck the beast, though he barely even paid attention; he was trying to gain control of his actions again, but it was like he was just an observer in his body instead of an active participant.  He distantly felt a bite land on his right arm, trapping it in place so that he couldn’t swing anymore; whether it actually hurt was a bit beyond him at the moment, however, as he watched himself pull the iron knife on his belt off and stab it right through the eye of the beast holding onto him and not letting go.

He needed it to let go, because he was so angry for some reason.  The jaws of the green-striped creature loosened as his knife went up and into its brain, and it dropped down at his feet.  Sterge watched as his body didn’t even stop, as it turned around to find another victim to sate its rage on.  Just as his frame whipped around at a noise behind him, he was hit by a great weight as something smashed into him; luckily, whatever hit him with a set of sharp-toothed jaws aiming for his face didn’t impact him straight on, but it appeared to be another one of the beasts he had just slain being flung sideways into him.

As soon as he hit the ground, he instantly tried to fling the weight of the body off of him, though it was initially hard to do; apparently, he had his sword pointing straight out from him when he was hit, and the not-wolf thing had been impaled.  A second later, his struggle ceased as the beast disappeared and he felt an object fall on his leather chestpiece.  His raging mind and body didn’t care about that, though, as it picked itself and looked for another victim.

He heard another noise that his internal mind registered as Gwenda talking, but his body only saw a threat to vent his rage upon.  He turned towards the small Hill Dwarf in her blue robe and stepped forward to attack…and then promptly fell on his face as every ounce of anger and rage left his body in an instant.

“Sterge!  What happened?  Are you okay?”  Gwenda sounded panicked as she rushed over to his side.  Sterge felt her hands on him as she helped him get up, and a groan escaped his lips as he felt the soreness and slight pain in his right arm.  As soon as he was standing again – a little wobbly from the after effects from his uncontrolled rage episode – he looked at his arm, expecting it to be mangled.  He breathed a sigh of relief as all he saw were deep bite marks in the leather sleeve and no sign of blood; that’s going to be one heck of a bruise later, though.  It felt that he was going to be a mass of bruises tomorrow if things kept going like this.

“I…don’t know what that just was.  All I know is that I stepped forward, felt my foot pass through something invisible and tingle momentarily, and then…I had no control.  I just felt a rage I’ve never felt before and all my body wanted to do was kill anything that moved.  If it hadn’t ended when it did, I might have…hurt you too,” he said with rising horror in his voice.  He couldn’t even look at her because he didn’t even want to think about what would’ve happened if his extreme anger hadn’t disappeared.  “I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s ok, though – you didn’t hurt me,” Gwenda said, taking his face in between her hands to force him to look at her.  “And it wasn’t your fault; you’d never hurt me like that if you weren’t under some sort of spell.  I think from your description that it was some sort of trap that you triggered;