The Crafter's Dominion: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 5)

by Jonathan Brooks

  Oh, crud! Seconds before they would likely have crashed down, as the Roc didn’t have any feet available for landing, she instructed the giant bird to release its weighty package. Hearing a heavy *thud*, she looked behind her to see that the War Machine had hit the ground. It chewed up a large row of flowers as it dug a furrow in the soft dirt. Her attention was pulled away as the Roc’s wings flapped quickly, slowing their speed and allowing the bird to land, awkward and jarring at the same time.

  When everything finally stopped, Violet shook her head and let out a huge sigh of relief. “Finally! I can’t wait to get off this thing!”

  Looking back, she saw Felbar unstrapping himself from the harness, before attempting to make his way over to her. “Attempting” was the right word, too, because he was having trouble moving. “Uh…I think I had the straps on too tight,” he said sheepishly. “Hold on, the numbness is going away.” Now that he mentioned it, she felt – or didn’t feel, as it were – the same sort of numbness in her lower half, strapped to the only thing keeping her on the Roc.

  She started unstrapping herself, and the tingling as blood flowed through her lower extremities again was practically painful. As it became unbearable at one point, she nearly screamed; fortunately, after a few minutes, the tingling stopped and she was able to move again, though still a little cautiously. Joining Felbar as he made his way down the back of the Roc to the ground, it was only then that she heard the heavy *thump* of familiar-sounding footfalls.

  As soon as she touched the ground, they were surrounded by a ring of a dozen War Machines made by the Enchanters of Gnomeria. All of them had their weapons poised to strike the Roc, who was squatting down on the ground, unmoving, where Violet had instructed it to stay.

  “NO! It won’t harm you!” she shouted, which shocked the Warmasters piloting the War Machines enough that they stopped.

  “What?! Who are you?” From his surprised tone, Violet suspected that the royal guards protecting the palace hadn’t even seen her or Felbar on its back.

  Felbar stepped forward confidently, not even worried about all of the deadly weapons now pointed in his direction. “Vernel? Is that your squeaky voice I hear?”

  There was silence for a moment, before the same pilot opened up the hatch on the front of the War Machine. “Felbar? How in the name of the Creator did you get here? And on the back of a…bird?”

  “It is you, Vernel!” the grizzled Warmaster said abruptly, stepping even closer to the now-opened War Machine. “Listen, we don’t have time to explain, we need to see the King—”

  The others, who seemed to have been relaxing after understanding that there wasn’t as much danger as they had supposed, seemed to tense up as they shifted in place. “You haven’t heard, have you?” Vernel’s voice was harsh, though she could hear some sense of grief in there as well.

  “Heard what? We just came in from the wasteland—”

  The front hatch on Vernel’s War Machine abruptly shut as he and the others stepped forward, threateningly. Violet shrunk back and hid behind Felbar, not knowing what was going on.

  “You’re going to have to come with us.”

  And that was the last “freedom” she had experienced since she had arrived. Surrounded, confused, and with nowhere to go, she and Felbar were led away to the palace. Before she got too far, however, she verbally instructed the Aerie Roc to lift off and stay near, though whether one of them would be able to call it back was a whole other problem; regardless, whether or not they even got the chance to call it back, she didn’t want it to be killed unnecessarily.

  No one would respond to them as they questioned why they were being led away, nor about what was going on. The next thing she knew, she was being led into the palace by a contingent of other royal guards not inside War Machines, but no less effective with an assortment of weapons at their disposal. Having asking her parents about them, she knew that these guards were powerful Enchanters in their own right, though not Master-level; instead, they were adept at weaponized temporary enchantments that turned the mundane weapons they carried into an arsenal of death.

  “No! Why can’t we stay together?” she had questioned when the guards separated her from Felbar.

  “Don’t worry, Violet!” he shouted as he was led away. “I’m sure we’ll get this figured out soon!” That was the last she had seen of him, and now she was stuck in this room without anyone to talk to beyond the few palace servants that came to take her order of food. Well, “talk to” was a bit of a stretch, since they refused to say a word regarding anything but food.

  A knock on the door of her richly appointed room interrupted her despondent musings, and she was surprised enough that she brought her head up in confusion. I swear I ate only an hour ago; is it really time for another meal? She didn’t have long to wonder if she had somehow lost track of time, however, because the door opened quickly after the knock. She got up off of the bed immediately when she recognized who walked in.

  “Junipar! You made it back!”

  She went to give the other woman a hug, happy both because Junipar was fine after suffering such a horrific attack by a certain Elf, and because it was nice to see someone familiar. However, she stopped herself when she saw the morose look on Junipar’s face.

  “Wh-what happened?” she asked, instead. “What’s going on?”

  Junipar didn’t say anything, but Violet could see tears starting to form in her eyes. Shaking her head, the other woman beckoned for the Journeyman Enchanter to follow her, before leaving the room without a word.

  Still mystified at what was going on, Violet followed after her, finding that the guards that had been flanking her room whenever she had the opportunity to look outside her door were still there, and they followed behind as she raced to catch up with the other woman. She was quickly lost as they took a few turns that led deeper into the palace, and before long she was convinced that the inside of the building had been made to confuse and disorient anyone trying to wander around.

  They eventually came to a set of double doors that she didn’t recognize – which wasn’t surprising, since she hadn’t been in more than a handful of rooms in the palace before – and there were two more guards stationed there. As soon as the guards saw the pair walking towards them, they moved to open the doors, allowing them access inside.

  The room they entered was smaller than she had anticipated, though nonetheless as richly appointed as her room, if not more so. Cozy would be more like it, with stuffed plush chairs and a large rectangular stone table in the middle of the room, with papers and maps strewn all about in a disorganized mess. Around the table were a handful of important-looking people, some of whom she vaguely recognized; some quick thinking placed them as advisors to the ruling council, led by the King as the final voice of decision. There were supposed to be 9 of them in total, though right now she only saw 5 of them. Actually, there were 6—

  Except the 6th person around the table wasn’t a member of the ruling council, but a very sad-looking, grizzled Gnome.

  “Felbar!” She rushed to him, ignoring everyone and everything else in the room, wrapping him in as large of a hug as possible. She felt him hugging her gently back, and he pushed her away after a moment with a small smile on his face. The smile quickly disappeared as he looked around the room, however, which prompted Violet to do the same; everyone there was looking at them with serious expressions on their faces, though she couldn’t tell if they were angry, sad, or just normally that unemotional.

  “Violet…there’s a lot that we need to discuss.” Hearing his voice again made her feel safer than she had in days, though his tone made the little hairs on the back of her neck stick straight up.

  I have a feeling that this won’t be good….

  Chapter 5

  “We’ve made a bit of a mess, Violet,” Felbar started out by saying. “We didn’t intend it, but it’s the end result that matters.”

  “I don’t understand. What happened?” She looked around at the rest o
f the room, seeing that the council members there viewed her with looks of resignation on their faces. One of them – a woman even older than Felbar, if that could be believed – cleared her throat.

  “Let me see if I can explain,” the woman said, taking over the conversation. “From the information we have, Glimmerton – the village you and Felbar were tasked with keeping functioning – was unexpectedly attacked by one of the nearby dungeons.”

  “That is correct.”

  She held up her hand, indicating plainly that she didn’t need a response. “There were only a handful of survivors of the attack, and you were – as unbelievably as it sounds – saved by a strange dungeon in the middle of the barren lands. After recovering inside of this dungeon, and after being provided food, healing, and a sampling of materials on a unique form of transportation not unlike our own Haulers, Junipar—” the wizened woman waved toward the younger woman still in the room, to Violet’s surprise— “along with Jortor, Saryn, Lankas, Kasdon, Wilser, and Pomend, journeyed back to the capital to spread the word of this discovery.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that they all made it; where are they—?"

  “I’m getting to that, so try not to interrupt; this is hard enough as it is,” the older woman warned with a stern voice. It was then that Violet remembered her name, as a memory of one of her visits to the palace with her parents came bubbling up to the surface: Council Leader Brinda. “After they arrived nearly 2 weeks ago, there was a day of mourning over the loss of life, before the King, Queen, and the council came together to discuss this new development.

  “Honestly, I have to tell you that it seemed too good to be true after such a tragedy. However, the King saw the potential in such an alliance, especially after seeing the samples that were sent along with the return of Junipar and the others. Having access to such material in vast quantities would go a long way to recovering from our recent losses, as well as this ‘Enchantment Repository’ we were told about.”

  She was silent for a moment, and Violet resisted the urge to ask what happened next.

  “Needless to say, if you knew the King and Queen in any respect, you would know that they were more in tune with our Enchanters than anything, and such prospective knowledge was more than they could resist. Not for themselves, of course, but for their people; they well knew the state of our land, and they were getting to the point where they were desperate for any aid, no matter the form in which it came.

  “The Master Enchanters that survived the attack that killed your parents, Violet, were also eager to visit a place where they could share their knowledge; they were aging and knew they weren’t long for this world, and they saw this as the only way to pass on their accumulated knowledge for future generations. Therefore, against the council’s warnings of caution, the King, Queen, four of our council members, all but 2 of the remaining Master Enchanters, and a small contingent of Warmasters and War Machines that we could be spared from our defense, left for the northwest as fast as they could travel. Time was of the essence, so a smaller group was imperative because the more they delayed, the less chance our people would survive in the future. Even I agreed with that, though I still don’t agree with them not considering their safety out in that direction.”

  I have a feeling I know where this is going.

  Council Leader Brinda was silent as she stared at Violet and Felbar. She cleared her throat before continuing. “The morning you arrived, we had just received word that their entire group had been ambushed somewhere just before Benchville; the King, Queen, council members, Master Enchanters, and all but a handful of their personal guards had been killed. The monsters from 2 different dungeons had attacked at the same time, as if they had been coordinating together.”

  She looked towards Felbar to see if Brinda was telling the truth, and she could see it on his face. “How? How did it get so bad in such a short time?”

  “I don’t know, but the fact of the matter is we caused this; not only because we sent the materials and the story of a dungeon as a potential savior with Junipar and the others, but from the destruction of that Undead dungeon,” Felbar explained. “The effects of that are already being felt with the death of the King and the others, and it will only get worse.” Violet sadly had to agree with him, as the news of the King’s death finally hit her. We’re…leaderless, now, aren’t we?

  “They weren’t the only ones who died during the ambush; Jortor and the others were also with the King,” Junipar suddenly spoke up, her voice cracking.

  “What? Why?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? So that they could help to introduce the King to the dungeon, and because they knew better than anyone where the entrance was located. Plus, if you forgot, they could actually communicate with the dungeon, whereas no one else would be able to.”

  That made sense, but it was also a horrible loss of life. “That’s…I’m so sorry, Junipar.”

  “I apologize for the silent treatment you and Felbar had to endure while we isolated you,” Brinda interrupted. “I’m sure you can understand how distraught we were at learning what happened to our leadership…our friends…” She choked up a little, before composing herself. “And with you coming from that direction, on the back of a giant monster we’d never seen before, we couldn’t take the chance that you might be a threat to the remainder of the royal family, as well as the council. So many strange and horrible things had happened lately that it wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility that you were working with the dungeons to destabilize our government by targeting our leadership. We’re the only thing keeping our people together right now, and if the Princess were to be killed…well, I’m sure you can picture the chaos that would ensue.”

  “Princess Celeste is still okay?” That was good news.

  “Yes, but she’s in a secure location right now until we can figure out what our plans are for the future. I’m not afraid to tell you, it’s not looking good.”

  Violet had a sudden epiphany. “That’s why you’re finally talking with us, isn’t it?”

  If Council Leader Brinda had been surprised at her intuitiveness, she didn’t show it. “Partly. We needed to isolate the both of you for a while to determine if you two were a potential threat. If we had more time to investigate, you’d probably still be held in isolation even now. Unfortunately, time is something we are rapidly running out of; Felbar can fill you in with the situation, but we are going to need all of the assistance we can get. He also mentioned that you had been working on some interesting enchantments, some of which I’m sure could be a big help.”

  “Anything I can do, I’m at your disposal.” With her affirmation of her commitment, the council seemed to lose all interest in Violet. Felbar took her arm and led her to one side of the room while the others continued to murmur and discuss some things on the large table.

  After directing her to a seat, the grizzled Warmaster plopped down in the chair next to her with a big sigh. “I don’t want to lessen the impact that losing the King and Queen will have on our people, but that’s the least of our concerns right now,” he started, looking her in the eyes with a resignation she hadn’t seen before. Even when he had been determined to go into that Undead dungeon to destroy the Core, with the huge possibility of being killed in the process, Felbar hadn’t looked as worried as he did now. “While we have enough War Machines and auxiliary forces to continue holding back the majority of the dungeon monsters throughout our borders – for the time being – the situation to the northwest is only going to get worse.

  “From the careful scouting reports the council received shortly before you arrived at these chambers, there is an equally large army of monsters roaming around the area of the ambush. While the survivors communicated that they had killed hundreds of their attackers, it seems as though they have been replenished – and possibly have been added to. I don’t claim to have a great understanding of dungeons and dungeon cores like Sandra, but I learned enough while we were staying in her dungeon to know that the
deaths of our people helped to fuel this resurgence.”

  That aligned with what Violet suspected, as well. From the conversations she had with Sandra, who didn’t speak about her internal mechanisms as much as she did all facets of crafting, she gathered that Cores grew stronger and larger through two different mechanisms. One was a gradual process, which took in the ambient energy of the world and converted it to usable resources, and which was only beneficial over a long period of time. The second one was through the killing of people, as the life-force of those who were killed was absorbed and used to increase the Core’s power by leaps and bounds. Not only that, but these resources were frequently used to create additional (and more powerful) monsters. That was what had happened in Glimmerton; her friends in the village had been slaughtered for this simple, horrific reason.

  “What if we direct all of the War Machines around the palace, as well as any other forces, towards the northwest. It should be fairly simple to wipe these monsters all out, right?” Violet asked.

  “Not…quite. Just as the King’s group had been surrounded and overrun, so too would most of our forces be overwhelmed within minutes. Even if they were able to beat them back and eliminate enough of them that they wouldn’t be as much of a threat, we’d never recover from our losses. We’re already suffering from lack of our War Machines, and the ambush only made this even worse.”

  “That’s why we needed Sandra’s help, remember?” Violet reminded him. “Let’s just go back to her dungeon, ask her to help create some more, and then come back with them.” It seemed simple enough to her.