22) Home invasion

  Before I could even start to do anything with the abilities I could now access through my aligned beast cores, or check out what all I could see on my own in my expanded Dungeon space, burning letters appeared before my eyes.

  [ There is an intrusion near the entrance to your Dungeon ]

  I have an entrance? No wait, that's not the important part. “Viola!”

  The Fairy appeared before me in a flutter of wings, her back turned to my Core as her head swiveled around in all directions, her sword in hand as well as a flicker of blue fire dancing in her other hand…

  I was so going to ask about that later but for now…

  “I have an alert saying there is someone getting close to my Entrance.”

  The Fairy’s head snapped to the door of the library before she rotated in the air to face me. “I can’t get out there Fell! You got the door closed, and we shouldn’t open it if someone is out there!”

  Okay, so she either knew, or guessed better than I did what constituted an ‘Entrance’, and she’s right about keeping the door shut. “We need to see what's going on out there, get over here so we can both use your Gaze.”

  With a nod, the Dungeon Fairy managed to sheath her sword while still in motion, almost diving down to land on her knees in front of me before slapping her hands down on top of my Core. Immediately, I could see myself in front of her with her hands lying on top of me before the Gaze darted and spun to fly across the room and through the door.

  Which, frankly, was a little disorienting while limiting myself to a binocular point of view.

  Outside, the Skeleton stood menacingly at the top of the stairs, its head aligned to look downwards.

  I hadn’t thought to set it on guard or anything like that. The last thing I had commanded it to do was to sweep up the broken glass. It had decided on its own to return to the hall to wait around on guard, broom still in hand.

  Viola’s Gaze swept past him and down the steps, through the illusion, and out into the hall. There I saw it.

  A two foot tall figure dressed in a ragged cloak. A rat that was huge for its kind, and walking on its hind legs, with a worn but sharp looking knife in its hand.

  And it had come to a stop, looking at the illusionary door, as it sniffed at the air.

  Wait. “Viola, does glass have a smell? Would breaking it up make it smell more?”

  Through my Core, I heard the Fairy’s reply, “What? No! ...At least I don’t think so. I’ve never tried to smell anything made out of glass. Why would I?”

  The rat creature winced, almost like he could hear us… Which I hoped wasn't the case. Then it began walking up to the illusionary wall, slowly, with its free hand reaching outwards as it closed in.

  “Viola, show me the skeleton while I get it moving, then go back to the rat.”

  {Skeleton. Go down the steps and grab the invader. Take it alive.}

  If it had a knife and clothes, maybe it could speak. And answer questions.

  The skeleton jerked into motion, running down the steps in a clatter of bone feet on stone and scattering glass shards. As the Gaze returned to the hallway outside, I was surprised to see that the rat person didn’t seem to respond to the sounds, which made me believe the illusion covering the door had to also conceal any sounds coming from the inside.

  Maybe from the outside as well, something to check later on.

  Just as the creature was about to touch the illusion, the Skeleton reached the bottom of the steps and reached out to snatch at the Rat’s hand.

  Even though the Rat had been as slow as the Pit as it had crossed the hall, it was fast now, jumping back out of reach with a shrill scream. It then turned and ran for the shaft that led down.

  {Hawk.}

  Distantly, I heard Viola ask “Hawk?” as the Air Hawk took wing and launched itself down the stairs into the outer hall. Coming to a sudden stop as a gust of wind blowing against it filled its outstretched wings, it shot forward far faster than it could possibly fly on its own to strike the rat in mid air, breaking the creature’s back with a sudden impact before the Hawk suddenly vanished.

  [ Air Hawk has exhausted its magic ]

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  So, that was three Air Jets? Or was it how hard it used its magic rather than how many times? Questions for later. And I’m really wishing I had hands to write down reminders of things to check on.

  “Viola? Could you remember something for me?”

  An unseen hand patted my Core. “Probably not.”

  ...Fair.

  The Fairy sent her Gaze down the shaft without my prompting to find the crumpled body of the rat creature, lying in a circle of scattered burnt Nictob bits.

  Nictobits? Eh, no. It’s not like there are going to be so many of his burnt body parts to deal with that I needed a special name for them.

  “We should clean that up.”

  Viola turned her Gaze around to show us that the shaft came down into a larger tunnel with a walkway along one side. The same side as the tunnel. It extended off in two directions before each turned. Both ends of it were clearly visible to the Fairy’s Gaze despite the complete absence of any light source that I could see.

  How? I didn’t care at the moment. I was just glad we could see down there. Especially the wide channel in the ground filled with slowly moving water.

  Filthy water. Very filthy water, perhaps even best described as lumpy. But still water.

  “Undine. Puddle Jump down there and start cleaning things up.”

  The reptilian Summons looked around the library, then back at me with a helpless shrug.

  Ah, right. It needs water to jump into up here as well. Reaching out with my own senses, I could tell that the Corner of Nictob’s bed chamber, and the Goat room, with its still half full water trough, were now within the area I could see on my own.

  As was something behind the far wall of the Library, opposite the door. In that area lay a solid black barrier where my Dungeon came to a sudden stop as it ran up against an area belonging to someone else.

  Oh, that’s not worrisome at all.

  I dismissed the Undine, and resummoned it in the goat’s room, from where it leaped into the animal's drinking trough and vanished into the shallow puddle still remaining in the bottom. It then reemerged from the filthy water in the tunnel down below, nearly flying upwards to land on the walkway.

  At which point I immediately lost all sight of it as Veola raised her hands from the top of my core to excitedly clap them together as she squealed. “Fell, there’s another Undine! We can get ours a friend… that was ours wasn’t it?”

  The Fairy sighed, gave her own hands a surprised look, then slapped them down again on top of me before racing her Gaze back down to where the Undine was collecting Nictobits and tossing them into the flowing water.

  On its own initiative, the Summoned had stripped the dead Rat creature, revealing a set of ragged pants that had been held up with a belt loaded down with little pouches. The Undine had even torn a strip of material from the cloak and began cleaning up the worst of the stains on the floor from where Nictob’s burnt corpse had clawed its way over to the shaft and had fallen down it.

  “That’s enough…” What’s a good name for an aquatic monster? “Nemo. That’s enough Nemo, we don’t want the floor in that spot to be cleaner than the rest of the tunnel down there. That would be as bad as the mess Nictob made.”

  Viola’s tiny fist knocked on top of my Core. “Nemo? Where do you come up with these weird names Fell?”

  In another level of reality, a Fire Lizard bobbed its head before struggling free of a winged woman’s hands and reappeared in the Library. I had realized that I might need him here and ready to react rather than off in the Tower being petted.

  However nice that felt.

  It stalked over to stare at the wall on the far end of the chamber, I could see an open space in the shape of a door behind a paper thing illusionary barrier before my Dungeon came to a stop before the wall of darkness.

  “Oh, I don’t know. They just come to me. My God seems to have loaded me with a lot of information without any context, and I don’t know what I know until I know it.”

  The Fairy muttered to itself in a confused tone. Which was Fair, that sentence was a little confusing to me as well, and it came out of my… How am I talking anyways? I don’t have a mouth. Or lungs.

  Never mind. “Right now we have to get rid of the corpse, or bring it up here, but the skeleton is the only one that could navigate the ladder…”

  As I spoke, Nemo, the Undine, pulled one of the Rat creature's arms over his shoulder, dragged it over to the edge of the channel, and then dropped in. Reappearing as it burst out of the Goat’s trough.

  Sending the goat into a panicked screaming race around the room as Nemo tried to pull the bottom half of the rat creature out of what had to be the “In Between’ the Undine traveled through when it Puddle Jumped.

  I summoned Caesar beside him to help pull the thing out, I didn’t know what would happen if it slipped out of Nemo’s hands and fell down into the In Between. It might be lost forever, end up right there waiting to be pulled back out or just drift away somehow.

  Finding out the hard way was something I would rather skip, but even with it being dead, leaving it unable to answer any of my questions, I still wanted the corpse so that at least I would have a new Totem once I got its core out.