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

would be shaking it after she saw the clumsy Hill Dwarf trip over his own mace and land inside the room.  Because she had earlier moved her creatures inside the room away from their hiding places so that they could be easily seen, they all reacted at the same time when the Raider “stepped” into the room with his face.  Within moments, he would be dead, and the woman would be chased down and killed as she tried to flee.

Unless, of course, Tacca stopped them.

The action within her Boss Room seemed to slow down as she watched, as the decision she had to make warred within her mind.  Should I stop them?  What kind of precedent will that set if I do?  If I don’t, the two Hill Dwarves are guaranteed to die, crazy “luck” or not; how long will it be until I’m found by someone else? 

She took of all of two seconds to decide that she didn’t want the two Raiders to die, so she ordered her creatures to stop and return to where they were waiting; the mace-wielding Hill Dwarf was already up and moving backwards into the tunnel anyways, so she could put her calling them back down to him leaving the room and was therefore no longer a threat to the dungeon.  Not that being inside the tunnel would matter all that much to dungeon creatures – they could chase a Raider all the way to the entrance of the entire dungeon if they had their way.

She gave the order and…nothing happened.  She tried again to desperately stop the wave of Canines closing in on the two Raiders – the woman decided not to run when told to, electing to stay and fight for some reason – but they didn’t stop; it was like they didn’t even acknowledge that she was their Core.  She knew that they obeyed at any other time, such as when she rearranged them into their current positions earlier, but now they were completely ignoring her.

“Shale!  All my orders to my creatures aren’t working!  What’s going on?” she frantically asked her Dungeon Assistant, hoping against hope that he had an answer.  She doubted it, though, because if she didn’t know what was going on, then it wasn’t likely that he did.

She was right.  “I have no idea; you should be able to stop them whenever you want to.  I’m assuming because they look like they want to leave that you want to prevent the two Raiders from dying?”

“You assume right!  What should I do?  Wait—can you fly down there and use your Repellant Shield to get the creatures to leave?”

“Uh…I can try, but I’m pretty sure it will only ensure that they don’t attack me, not Raiders.”  She could sense that he started to fly down, but he also asked at the same time with a confused tone to his voice.  “How do you know about my Repellant Shield?  We’re not supposed to give too many details about what we can do to Dungeon Cores.”

As the first of the Frond Coyotes that sprang forward reached the fighter-type Raider and got a mace to its head for its trouble, Tacca replied as quickly as she could.  “Tacca explained the basics to me – now get moving!”

Shale arrived just as the bulk of the Canines arrived and she waited for them to clear away…and was disappointed that it didn’t work; all that happened was that they dodged around his invisible form and attacked the Hill Dwarf, knocking him to the ground almost immediately.  Tacca could see that the caster had used her slowing spell on the bulk of her creatures, but even moving at a walking pace they were too close and too deadly.  A half-dozen Coyotes and Wolves started to tear apart the armor they could reach on the fighter, though they took some damage from his flailing arms and powerful kicks in defense.

It wasn’t nearly going to be enough, though, even as two of them were knocked away by the increasingly exhausted caster and her forceful Magistrike spell.  She nearly collapsed afterwards from casting those two after her previous slowing spell, but she managed to get one more strike off before she was knocked down herself by two Root Foxes.  They weren’t very powerful, of course, though that didn’t matter as they immediately started biting her incessantly around the arms and legs, tearing flesh off with each chomp.

When the Forest Wolves arrived a few seconds later – having been slowed considerably by the caster’s initial spell – the end was in sight.  Even discounting the Mastiffs that were bringing up the rear, the two Hill Dwarfs on their backs weren’t going to last long.

What to do?  Should I just let them die?

As much as the smart thing to do was to just let it happen, some instinct told her that might be a bad idea.  It wasn’t even that she needed to have her presence known anymore, it went deeper than that; for some reason she still couldn’t explain, she felt a connection with these two Hill Dwarves.  Whether it was because of their perseverance despite lack of knowledge – and skill – or if it was because they were her very first Raiders and it might set a bad precedent if they didn’t make it out alive, it didn’t really matter in the end.  All that mattered was she would do what she could to keep them alive – even if they ended up killing her in the process.

This is probably stupid, but I might as well try.

Using her Dungeon Force, Tacca used her Teleport Core Option and designated her destination as halfway inside the tunnel just above the two struggling Hill Dwarves.  While she had never actually used it before, she knew the basic idea around the Teleport; it actually wasn’t too unlike the Translocation Ability that Dungeon Assistants possessed, though