by D. R. Rosier
“Good morning,” she said in a sultry and very sated voice.
Andy let out a startled laugh, “Yes, it is. You’re amazing, beautiful, and so damned sexy when you ride me, I couldn’t help myself.”
She smirked, “Your cock is amazing, the jury is still out on the rest…”
She trailed off and giggled, as he started to tickle her mercilessly. They wrestled for a minute, but she was totally outmatched because the bastard wasn’t ticklish, at all.
“Sorry! You’re the most amazing man, ever!” she got out one word at a time between fits of giggling. She was very ticklish.
He finally relented, and said, “Glad you finally admitted the truth of my awesomeness.”
She snorted in disbelief, but the effect of that was ruined by her glowing and bright beaming smile.
She kissed him again, “You are pretty amazing.”
He smirked, “Good to know. So, are we diving alone today?”
She frowned, “Not sure, I think Sophia might show.”
It actually worked pretty well, all three of them were adepts waiting for master level training permission, and Sophia was a very close friend of hers as well. Sophia was a few inches shorter at five foot four, with long bright red hair that fell in ringlets, and vivid green eyes. Her friend was also petite and lissome, but still had healthy proportionate curves for her height. Sophia was a little wicked and mischievous, but a great friend and one of the few she could open up with and complain to without it getting back to the masters. They were both of the same mind on the whole master level training being suppressed thing, it was bullshit.
That was one of the things she really hated, the master training being so regulated meant there were a lot of adepts willing to backstab the rest politically, and they’d rat out any bad behavior according to the church. She refused to play those petty games, and so did Sophia. She only really had four close friends, the rest she held at arm’s length, if politely.
Sophia was an adept level five cleric like she was, but she wasn’t training in the paladin disciplines like Jenny.
Still, it worked out, she got to practice her paladin advancements when they hit level three, and even a little into level four, until it got too hard and she switched back to her cleric spells. Andy would take point then, and the three of them would finish out four, five, and six to keep their skills sharp. The last thing she wanted was to lose her edge as she waited for further training.
Very little in life remained static, she needed to work to keep her status, or her abilities would atrophy. Not quickly, but it would happen. It also kept her life force or magical aura growing, she imagined she’d already have the aura of a mid-level or higher master by the time she got permission.
If she ever did.
She had a couple of other close friends, but they didn’t train in the dungeon anymore, choosing instead to just work their spells in complete safety.
He asked, “Bath and breakfast?”
She nodded, and they shared one more kiss before getting out of bed…
She took point for the first two levels, and she easily took down the skeletons with her sword. It was a little frustrating, with her light spikes or air blasts she could take them down so much easier, but she knew the struggle would pay off eventually. She wanted to master both disciplines, badly.
The first two floors they cleared fast, her speed, grace, and strength even as an apprentice paladin was more than enough to take down skeletons and the weaker zombies. Not without effort, but as long as she maintained focus on a steady lifeforce expenditure to enhance her physical prowess, concentrated on her sword movements, and paid attention to her surroundings, she didn’t have any problems.
The third level was a little different, Andy took point to rush down the skeleton archers, so she could face the undead knights which were a little tougher. She took that even more seriously, because if the knights got past her she’d have failed her job to protect Sophia. Whether Sophia would have been in true danger or not, she’d have hated herself for it.
The knights were much more challenging, and more than suitable enough for an apprentice in the higher levels. She was either a level four or five apprentice, she wasn’t positive since Andy wasn’t a true master to judge it. Still, he was sure he’d know when she’d reached journeyman level and could learn even more difficult and far subtler enhancements. Major advancements of power were a lot more obvious than the subtleties of the five levels within them.
The undead knight charged her to bash her with his shield, and she danced out of his way and swung her sword low at the same time. The knight collapsed to the floor with a clatter, as she cut his right leg off at the knee. She dodged an arrow, barely, and knew she needed all her focus for this level, and then engaged the second undead knight, while Sophia’s spell finished off the first.
It was relatively safe, being a known danger, but her adrenaline still got her heart pumping, and she felt an excitement as her and the knight exchanged several blows which she parried or dodged. Relatively safe didn’t mean safe, she could slip, trip, or step on a rock and lose her balance. If she lost focus, she could miss a parry, or get bashed by a shield. Safe was relative, and it was still a fight for her life, against a foe with armor, a shield, and a very sharp sword which could be deadly.
She exchanged a few more blows as she circled her enemy, and then lunged forward at the opening when her parry sent his sword wide. Her blade impaled the knight’s neck, and she twisted her sword and danced to the side, decapitating her opponent.
That didn’t stop him though, but Sophia’s light spell destroyed the spark of dark magic inside of him, and he fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
Sophia asked, “You like swinging that sword around? It looks like you’re having way too much fun,” she teased.
She grinned, “What? Don’t I look good in armor?”
Sophia chuckled, “Sure, but robes are easier to take off.”
Andy cleared his throat, interrupting their obvious flirting.
They moved on to the next room.
She sheathed her sword and used magic for the rest of the levels. Generally, she used air magic against the earth elementals, as opposing elements it did a lot of damage, but conversely the earth elementals were the most dangerous to her. Of course, having both a light and air shield certainly helped against magic of any kind.
The fire elementals she mostly chose light magic, to dispel them and banish them from the mortal plane, but air could work on them as well, by starving them of oxygen. Air could feed a fire, but the lack of it could starve it.
The three of them took their time, and they were cautious as they cleared the rest of the dungeon. It was still a challenge for them, especially floor six, and her body was definitely heated when they finished up and had made it to the final room of the dungeon.
She paused and tilted her head before they headed up the stairs.
“Does something feel different to you guys?”
Andy shook his head, “Not a thing.”
She wasn’t all that surprised by that, a paladin’s magic pointed inward.
Sophia frowned, “I don’t know. The dungeon was the same as always, but there is something about this room that’s nagging at my mind.”
Andy shook his head in mock sadness, “It’s all the training.”
She snickered, “No, seriously. I feel… a presence. It’s hard to explain.”
Sophia nodded, “Me too. Should we report it?”
She snorted, “Report what? We got a funny feeling in the dungeon’s core room? The master will just get angry, and we’ll have to endure a lecture about the control spells and that there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong, or he’d already know about it. If he gets annoyed enough, it could even damage our promotion chances.”
Andy grunted, “Agreed, I don’t see anything different, or alarming, and we don’t want to screw ourselves over. The ambient magic feels the same as it always does as well. I can
tell that much at least.”
That was true.
Sophia shrugged, “Agreed, the masters are bastards and knowledge hoarders. Still, we shouldn’t ignore it, should we?”
She tilted her head, “We’ll keep an eye on it, see if it changes again tomorrow. I don’t sense a threat, it just feels… different in here.”
Andy nodded, “Lunchtime.”
The three of them headed out of the dungeon and up the stairs. She needed another bath, she was soaked by sweat, and her libido was off the charts again. She felt a little excitement when they all went to the same bathing room, it was going to be a fun afternoon with the three of them together...
Chapter Seven
I was still a little in shock after my three visitors. Somehow, they’d felt I was awake, or perhaps they detected Astrith’s presence?
But… that hadn’t been the most shocking part. It’d been the soft liquid brown eyes, and the light brown hair framing the face of an angel and running down an athletic, sexy and curvy body, that was the spitting image of my Carolynn.
I’d assumed, had been mourning for my wife and children, but was it possible our child had survived, only to join the very enemy that killed her parents and stole her birthright? Of course, my child had still died, much time had passed, but she’d lived on after the coup.
Just the looks could’ve been coincidence, but if I added in the fact that she had the air sphere from my wife’s line, and the light and dark of mine. No, I didn’t have the light sphere, but it did run in my family, my father’s avatar had all the spheres.
It was just shocking, that I had a living descendent.
I was also beyond angry, that she served our enemies, but the more I thought about their conversation and body language, and thought clearly about it, it was obvious they were under the thumb of the masters of the church. They’re had been disgust present in all their voices, they might have served the church, but at the same time they clearly judged their superiors as wanting.
It’d also been good intel, apparently the number of masters in the church were heavily limited. The girl with her had called them knowledge hoarders. I’d wanted to know more, but I hadn’t dared to reach out. She may have been family, but she worked for the enemy.
Still, it was tempting, she had a lot of knowledge I needed on the current state of the kingdom, and well, I had something to offer too. I set another partition to thinking about it, to consider the possibilities, and then shifted my focus.
After the second full day, my build status for the seventh and eight floors was now at five rooms each. Still right on schedule for five rooms a day. That meant ten more days until it was completed. Beyond the actual rooms with air enchantments and traps, I had made progress on the animals. The mutated wolves weren’t nearly as strong as the bears, but they’d be hunting in packs, so I thought that would work. I also got the squirrels done, which would also swarm in large numbers, they weren’t much bigger, and had small bites, but like the insects they were poisonous and extremely fast.
I’d also managed to create some rather nasty tree, flower, and bush traps, man eating flora, and would place those around the best rewards, potion ingredients, and along the most obvious trail through the large cavernous rooms on those levels. In short, I almost had everything ready to populate those four new levels, and it would be ten more days before I could even start building them.
It would also take twenty-four days to build. Which, put just those six floors at over a month in building time. It wouldn’t be quick, and I had eight more floors to build I hadn’t even started planning yet, which would be another forty-eight days. Well, maybe not, I’d start absorbing almost twice as much once there were twelve levels instead of six, even if they weren’t open yet, and that meant spending twice as much, so maybe twenty-four to thirty more days after that, since my expenditures would go up slightly as well with a bigger dungeon.
The frustrating thing was I had plenty of life force to just build out six levels in under a day, but I was sure the spells containing me would betray such an expenditure. Instead, I was slowly building the rooms at a rate of five rooms a day at a constant trickle, so the spells wouldn’t notice either a significant increase or a decrease in my lifeforce potential.
The only problem I had was the monkeys. They weren’t quite ready, and I wasn’t even sure if I could succeed in my plans for them. I could just make them incredibly strong and fast, and larger of course, but I wanted to go another way with it. I already had melee fighters in the wolf packs and bears, and poisoners in the insects and squirrels. I was trying to make the monkeys smarter, and to give them limited magic casting capability. Idea being they could jump from tree to tree, and attack from above or at a distance with magic. Kind of annoying and deadly, like the imps were in my father’s dungeon.
Needless to say, it was much harder to increase intelligence, and bestow a set spell they could wield. They could never be true mages or anything, but I should be able to imbue a magical attack or two.
Astrith popped out of her home, and she was wearing a different dress again. This new one was quite conservative, save the open back for her wings. It was layered, the bottom layer was a dark blue that conformed to every one of her sinful curves, but the outer layer was a slightly lighter blue and done in flowing sheer silk that hid those tantalizing curves except for sensual hints. She also had on red shoes, with high heels.
Perversely, she’d never been sexier, and all it did was make me want to see what I already knew was below that dress. She was stunning, with her liquid midnight hair running down her body like a waterfall, and that angelic face had a coy knowing smile on it. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said she was trying her absolute best to seduce me.
Guilt struck in my grieving partition, she really was that alluringly, sinfully, and exquisitely stunning. I’d have probably been drooling and brain dead if I wasn’t a rock.
“Nice dress.”
Yeah, a total understatement, and it made her face fall. If I’d had a throat, I’d have cleared it.
I tried again, “You look stunning Astrith, truly gorgeous.”
She beamed, “Thanks.”
I asked, “Have a good rest?”
She nodded, and her piercing green eyes were sparkling.
“How’s everything going? Did I miss anything?”
I took the time to give her the building update, and then I explained about the encounter earlier and my thoughts that my line might still be alive and well.
She tilted her head in thought, it was adorable.
“Any contact would be extremely dangerous. On the other hand, it could solve a lot of problems.”
“Like what,” I asked.
She frowned, “You could use her, if she was willing to take down the church. That would also prevent you from needing to be a runaway dungeon. Let’s face it, if you take down a kingdom on your own, the guild will come and destroy you. It also isn’t really possible, your aura might be able to grow to encompass Tenemin just two miles away, given a few centuries, but the crown city is over three hundred miles north. Or whatever they call it now, since there’s no crown.”
I felt frustrated at that truth, there were ways around it, there were mobile dungeons out there in the world after all, but I also saw her point. The real question was, did I care about that? This was a new strange existence, being a dungeon, but I wasn’t sure anymore if I wanted to follow my late wife into death after I’d achieved revenge.
Before Astrith had popped up and entered my life as a whirlwind, I’d have said I was ready to die after revenge. But… the sexy little imp was good company, and I’d even felt cheered a few times by her antics. What would happen to her if I was destroyed? In truth, I wasn’t sure if I cared all that much yet, but I knew time would change that.
“What would you suggest?”
She smirked, “What’s the one thing stopping her from confronting her masters over the church’s corruption, or for that matter the nobles from
staging their own counter-coup.”
Knowledge, and power. I laughed, on the inside.
“I’d considered that already, for her anyway, but not the nobles. You’re suggesting I offer the master level knowledge, through the knowledge transfer spell, for intel and their agreement to overlook my interference?”
My mother had taught me with the knowledge transfer spell, in stages of course. I’d only achieved master level three in life, but I’d had the knowledge of a master level five, just not the practice, control, and power. Still, even with all the knowledge, it would take them months perhaps just to gain master level one status, and then about eight years to get to master level five, about two years per level. Knowledge wasn’t everything, it took understanding, practice, control, and raw talent. Master levels were the slowest for gains.
She tilted her head, “Actually, I was thinking books, you can use the dark and earth magic combined, create books of master level concepts, magic sphere base configurations, and a few spells maybe. Six large tombs. Use the girl to smuggle them out, if you can turn her to your cause. I suppose as long as she knows your true nature, and that you’re really a human soul trapped in a dungeon crystal and her ancestor, you can give her the knowledge directly. But I wouldn’t advise having hundreds of nobles march in here to get mind spell lessons. If you do it that way you can keep the secret, the girl can just claim she found a trove of books somewhere else, you know? Keep your secret.”
“That’s brilliant, but it assumes my descendent would be willing to turn on the church. Sure, technically she is the rightful heir and duchess of Tenemin, but after two thousand years I’m not quite sure how much weight that would carry. If she did it, she would be judged an usurper by history.”
I wasn’t positive, but that seemed right, there had to be a point where a counter-revolution just wasn’t a counter revolution at all, and simply another revolution. Two thousand years was a long ass time.
She swayed over closer to the bier, damn she was sexy. I hadn’t even noticed the long slits in the sides of the dress’s skirt until she moved, which offered brief and tantalizing views of her toned and sexy legs. It was maddening, I’d seen them in their totality not long ago, but the allure of the hidden was shockingly strong. Guiltily, she also reminded me of my wife in that moment, not her looks, they couldn’t have been more different, but the demure allure and teasing dress and poise. The teasing confidence, and bright smile and outlook on life. I was so going to hell.