The Quizard Mountains: A Dungeon Core Epic (Station Cores Book 2)

by Jonathan Brooks

  She dropped her air shield long enough to hug him, wiping away the tear that threatened to drop from his eye before it could. “I’m sorry, love, I won’t do anything stupid, idiotic, moronic, selfish, or foolish like that again. You have my word,” she told him, and gave him a big kiss before pushing him away, “now let’s get going – I want to get out of here so that I can grow my ear back.”

  He chuckled at that, the tension draining away from both of them as she reinstated her air shield. She felt much better after the Health Potion and – apart from some drying blood on her skin – she was all healed up. Well, apart from my ear, she thought as she reached up and felt the cleanly-cut and scabbed-over edges.

  After the events of the last couple of minutes, navigating the rest of the room was a breeze in comparison. It turned out that the hallway led them in a bit of a maze, with dead ends scattered throughout that they had to backtrack and choose another direction. She tried to figure out which way to go by using air currents, but after finding that a dead end had a wall with multiple slits in it allowing the air to flow through, they decided to just slowly make their way through while Rosewyn kept a mental map of their choices.

  They encountered another dozen or so instances with the rotating blades along the hallways, but instead of messing with them Mox just carried her through using his enhanced speed. Only once did he mistime his dash across, when the blade hit and sheared through half an inch of the back of his boot, drawing a little blood in the process. His minor wound was easily healed by his ability and they were none the worse for wear.

  There was one other obstacle they had to tackle in the room. Scattered throughout the meandering hallways were uncountable holes the size of Moxwell’s head – most were empty, but others were filled with a new beast.

  The first one they saw was when it shot out of a hole at a speed that almost rivaled her husbands’ in comparison. Fortunately, said husband was made of sturdy stuff, and when the antlered giant rabbit flew out of the chest-high hole it impacted his armor, leaving a sizable dent; it even made a small hole where one of the sharpened points managed to punch through.

  After the initial flight, however, it didn’t have much fight in it. The strange, antlered beast tried to attack Rosewyn after hitting her husband, but it seemed a little woozy and uncoordinated after the horrendous impact. She dispatched it with a quick slice of air, putting it out of its misery.

  She realized that she could faintly feel their body heat inside the walls; however, there was apparently a warren of some type ranging throughout the walls. The rabbits were able to rapidly move from hole to hole, leaving her guessing when and where they would emerge. It didn’t help that she couldn’t accurately pinpoint them when they were hiding amidst the strange black stone.

  After that, Mox made a game of trying to smack the rocketing bunnies out of the air before they could hit either of them. He used the flat side of his sword to deflect them when he saw them emerge, causing them to crash into a wall. Occasionally, they would hit the walls so hard they snapped their necks on impact.

  One time, when Moxwell was preparing to carry Rosewyn through one of the bladed traps, they were attacked by two at once. One ended up being reflected off her air shield, although the impact did make her stagger and fall. The other was smacked out of the air by his sword, only to end up in the way of the rotating blades. The resulting bunny destruction was disturbing, to say the least.

  As they got closer to what she assumed was the end, more and more of the horned rabbits attacked at the same time. Since they attacked simultaneously (again, something she thought strange and uniquely fascinating), Moxwell was only able to intercept one or two at a time.

  Once they were being attacked by three or more, Rosewyn thickened her air shield and added invisible sharpened spikes surrounding most of her body. It siphoned a small amount of her power to maintain her deadly air carapace, but the protection was worth it. After that, when she was hit she was only slightly staggered as the bunnies impaled themselves on her pointed projections.

  So, after her near death at the beginning, the rest of the room ended up not being that hard. She wasn’t sure what they would’ve done if Moxwell hadn’t been as fast as he was; she could think of some other ways to avoid being hurt by the stone blades, but she didn’t want to try any other experiments after what happened the first time.

  When they reached the end, they both practically collapsed with weariness when they entered the tunnel connecting the previous room to the next. Or what she supposed was the next room. I wonder how many rooms this place has? And who built it, and why? The more she thought about it, this type of security was overkill. No one except for them (or some rather lucky people) could get even this far through it without dying. More questions arose in her mind regarding the place they were in, and as soon as she thought of one another popped up.

  With more questions than answers, they picked themselves off the ground after eating and drinking a little bit. Moxwell always kept smuggled rations inside his armor, and that mornings’ breakfast was no exception. They had learned long ago to take the time to eat and drink, even while hunting dangerous beasts. One never knew when they would be able to pause long enough for proper nourishment, and it was hard to kill on an empty stomach.

  Therefore, after being properly rested and nourished, they journeyed forth to finish their job.

  And hopefully find some answers.

  Chapter 33 – Rainbows

  Milton watched the two super-powered Proctans enter room number four. He had been both impressed and worried at their progress. After the first room, he realized that they were better prepared for anything that he might forcibly attempt – like having his Squirrelings attack the column, causing the ceiling to collapse. There wasn’t much that he could do that wasn’t already going to happen, but he did what he could to move things along.

  In the second room, the small firebomb traps were supposed to be set off when someone got close enough to trigger them. Filled with a kerosene he managed to create from Organic Material, the wooden bombs were triggered by movement in the nearby grass, causing a simple match to light it. Simple, yet effective; the firebombs weren’t meant to damage anyone, just to light the grass. The heat and fire spread fast enough that unless the party inside the room hurried to the exit (which was cleverly disguised if he did say so himself) they would burn up. His Quakes[28] – the combination of a Lollipop Snake with an Ombre Jaguar, Proctan, and Quizard – were able to move silently and almost invisibly through the dead grass, utilizing their ability to camouflage themselves in the environment to spring out at unsuspecting victims.

  Instead of waiting for the two to trigger the firebombs one-by-one, he ordered his Quakes to set them all off at the same time. He was hoping to overwhelm them with the amount of fire, causing them to use their power to fight it – but they seemed not to care overly much about it.

  While the Caster used her ability to snuff out some of the flames, they left the rest burning. It was a good thing Whisp had designed a low-tech power system utilizing a line of water wheels and the underground river, otherwise the smoke from the fires would’ve suffocated all his defenders. The fans that sucked up the air went through some rudimentary filters Milton produced, eliminating most of the smoke particulates before it exited on the surface. He didn’t want to call even more attention to himself by sending up smoke signals that could be seen from miles around.

  He almost went without the whole fan and filtration system, but he realized that any good Caster with a bit of skill with Air could clean the air around them and their party easily. The drawbacks would all be in the dungeon then, as (most of) his Combat Units needed to breathe. Not to mention Whisp and Brint – whenever he came back.

  With room two a bust, he was looking forward to the third room. He almost got them on the way to the room with one of his acid traps in the tunnel connecting them. Whisp designed a neat little sprayer system that utilized the strong acid he was able to create us
ing his Molecular Converter. He didn’t know much about acid, so he used Brint’s method and just thought about the strongest, “safest” acid he could make. He wanted to be able to transport and store it, so if it was super-powerful he didn’t want to melt a hole through his entire dungeon. He wanted the face-melting acid-blood from the Aliens movies, without the inherent spaceship-dissolving properties.

  He figurately held his breath when the woman caused the blade trap to spin uncontrollably fast. They weren’t necessarily designed to move that fast and normally rotated using the same low-tech underground power system the fans in the previous room used. Either she was abnormally smart doing what she did or extremely fool-hardy, because when it basically exploded inside the ceiling it almost took her out with it. He was a little pissed when it happened, because it was going to take a lot of work to fix it – especially since it destroyed the water wheel connected to it far underground.

  He had mixed feelings about the touching scene after she almost killed herself. On the one hand, he was still mad that she deliberately destroyed one of his traps in a way that they didn’t even plan for. On the other hand, seeing them as something besides Cordpower Company killers-for-hire confused him a little. That they were obviously a couple made it even worse for some reason.

  Either way he looked at it, though, they were here for him. Or, at least, what he represented to them: an alternate source of Power Potions, therefore a rival against the Company. He needed to do what he could to slow them down, if not kill them.

  And the third room didn’t do it either. With his ability to move immensely fast, the Physical Augmenter was able to transport them both through the bladed traps without difficulty. And his Rabbiteers[29] weren’t all that effective – no big surprise by that point.

  Blessed to be combined with a Spiderwolf, Proctan, and a Snappy Turtle, his Jackalope hybrids were able to combine the use of an Air Affinity +1 with their superior running speed to rocket themselves out of their many-tunneled warrens he created within the walls. Normally, he expected them to catch any invaders by surprise and inflict heavy casualties. Unfortunately, with those two Proctans, they never even drew blood, with made their poison-tipped antlers ineffective to the extreme. Still, they required the Elemental Caster to expend even more power to keep them off her. In the end, they played their part well enough.

  And now they were approaching room four. He didn’t have any traps in the tunnel connecting the third and fourth rooms, but the two Proctans didn’t know that. He kept the tunnels dark so that if he wanted to hide a trap in there it would make it easier; although, it wouldn’t work against those two because for some inexplicable reason she was able to create a floating globe of light. He asked Whisp about the Light and Dark affinities when he first saw it on her status sheet, but she had never heard of it before and assumed it was a mistake. He thought there might be something wrong as well – since it was a new function of his sensors – but obviously it was not. He didn’t know what she could do with her Dark affinity and was pretty sure he never wanted to.

  He watched as they cautiously entered the room, noticing the 25-foot wall blocking their way further into the room. Behind them, spikes made from shaped blocks of Weightonite (Whisp really did take my advice to heart and used a lot of the special stone) adorned the wall where the entrance was located. It reminded Milton a little of a recording studio, where the walls would be lined with sound-proofing foam designed to reduce noise and echoes. Of course, this wall would be a bit deadlier than spongy foam.

  They looked confused at first as they stared at the wall in front of them. Milton could understand – they deliberately designed it that way. The wooden wall in front of them had a series of hand and footholds carved into the wood, allowing people to climb up to the top of the wall. What made it confusing was that there was an array of colors painting each carving: one for every color of the rainbow. It was a simple path to the top – just follow the color order to advance safely. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and then violet. Simple, right?

  Except that in all his years here on Proctus, he had never seen a rainbow. Whisp knew what he was talking about because she had seen it created by prisms and artificial light, but for some reason the sunlight that shone down wasn’t able to produce rainbows after it rained. No one could explain it, although he was limited on the people he could ask.

  So, in light of their confusion, Moxwell just went for it instead of standing around all day. Amazingly, he chose red as the first color to step on and advanced from there. Fortunately (for Milton), he chose to go up instead of to the right, grabbing onto a green handhold above his head. Instantly, before he could even move, a portion of the wooden wall sprung out and launched him backwards into the stone-spiked wall. After it had sprung, an automatic winding mechanism Whisp designed coiled the spring back up and the trap reset itself.

  The sound of the collision between his armor-clad body and the stone spikes was like music to his ears. Unfortunately, his head survived any impact, but he was impaled by three of the spikes, which sunk at least two inches deep into his skin once it got past that pesky armor.

  Blood frothed from his mouth as a lung was punctured in the process, and the Elemental Caster helped to pry him off the wall aided by some of her Air affinity. She gave him the rest of her Health Potion (he secretly hoped that was the last of them) – which helped – but he was so injured that he ended up having to use his self-regeneration ability to heal himself the rest of the way.

  As he recovered on the floor, safely out of danger, Milton could hear him lamenting his damaged armor. He wasn’t mad that he was hurt; he was more concerned about the holes in his backplate. The same thing happened when the Augmenter was crushed by the ceiling in the first room – he was pissed that his shield was destroyed. He thought it was a strange way to look at the world, but he guessed that it was common in their line of work.

  The Caster, on the other hand, was staring at the wall with a look of intense concentration on her face. Suddenly, she raised her hand and a ball of light formed in front of her face. She stared at that for a few moments before something extraordinary happened. She placed her hand inside the light and twisted – that’s the only thing he could think of to describe it – and the white light broke apart into different colors, shining up against the ceiling like a rainbow. She somehow created her own prism of light with her abilities, and Milton watched astonished as she observed the colors for a few moments before collapsing the light completely.

  Before the Augmenter could object, she jumped on the wall following in his initial footsteps and started to climb.

  “What are you doing? Get down from there – you know it’s my job to go first!” he coughed out, as he got stiffly to his feet.

  “Hold on, I think I got this – it’s like a puzzle. There’s only one solution to it and I think I figured it out. Don’t worry, I’m not being stupid,” she told him, with a smile on her face as well as in her voice.

  “Well, if you get yourself killed I’m going to kill you again for taking these risks. I swear, I don’t know what’s gotten into you…,” he mumbled under his breath.

  From Milton’s perspective, it wasn’t much of a risk because she had figured it out. He was kind of hoping she would mess up on the way and get bounced against the spikes; however, by the end he was strangely rooting her on. He knew he shouldn’t feel that way and needed these people to die or even just go away. Despite that, he applauded their drive, ingenuity, and adaptability so far. And the strength in their abilities wasn’t anything to sneeze at either.

  Once he was fully healed, the Physical Augmenter followed the pathway she used, joining her at the top within moments. They stared ahead at what awaited them.

  The middle 80% of the room was made up of sloped sides leading to the center, forming a large bowl 60 feet across. It wasn’t that deep – only about 15 feet at its deepest – and the sides gradually sloped down, allowing for maneuverability without worrying about being stu
ck in the middle. On the opposite side of where the two Proctans stood there was an almost identical-looking wall that mirrored the spring-loaded climbing wall they just traversed.

  The concave bowl was made of the same Weightonite that most of the dungeon was made from, which made it both heavy and sturdy. Milton was pleased so far at its resilience and the Caster’s inability to manipulate it. Although, at the rate she’s learning new things, I wouldn’t put it past her to figure it out before long. He just hoped that if he survived this that she was unique and not everyone was as talented as she was.

  “Hey, ALANNA! Are you watching? This is going to be awesome!”

  “Yep! I can’t wait! Ooowee, I just love a party!” she responded, her voice peppy and happy. Which was strange when it came from the normally gruff and sarcastic diminutive figure.

  So weird.

  Chapter 34 – Little balls of fluff

  I can’t believe that worked!

  Rosewyn was feeling elated after she had solved the color puzzle on the wall. When she had first looked at it something nagged at the back of her mind, hinting to her that she should know what it was. It was only when Moxwell had been flung against the spiked wall and almost died that it clicked in her brain. Once she was sure her husband was fine (other than being pissed at his holey armor), she tried out what she had remembered.

  When she had first experimented using her Light affinity, she had accidentally lost concentration with what she was doing and the light ball she had created had fallen apart into different colors before dissipating. It was only for a split-second, but it was enough to prompt her to try to duplicate it – with no luck. Now, however, she thought she knew how to do it.

  After she had successfully created a dispersal of different colors, she memorized the order in which they appeared next to each other. When she started with red – since that appeared to be correct – it was a simple matter to map out the pathway up the wall. She wasn’t in any danger; her Air affinity was more than capable of stopping her from hitting the wall if she was flung off. Fortunately, she was absolutely correct in her solution of the wall and made it up safely.