25) Storm Bringer

  “Seriously! Who steals a pot?”

  My Dungeon Fairy waved both of her hands out of the end of the hole I had managed to Earth Shape into the central stone above the mantle block above the door leading into the Library. “Fell! I can’t fit! The hole’s too small!”

  I called out, “Earth Snake.” The gray scaled serpent turned its head towards me, flicking its darker gray forked tongue out at me. “Keep widening that hole until my Core could fit through it, then keep working on the door.”

  Looking through my Innate Summons eyes, I commanded Nemo to. “Jump down to the tunnel and collect everything but the glass, bring it back up to the Goat’s room, and then Caesar will drag it back out to the drop box. Viola!”

  She waved one of her hands at me through the hole. “Yes?”

  That felt familiar. “I'm going to level up again right now before the invaders come back. The only reason I’ve been delaying it was to have time to figure out what I wanted to get, and I already know what I need next. Tell Caesar as soon as the Rat pack shows up again.”

  The Fairy snapped a finger at me, “Got it round guy.”

  Round guy? ...Roll it with. “Blinky, take me to the tower.”

  The white dot that had been blinking from a dull white dot to a bright one over and over again in a spot to the lower right of wherever I was focusing my attention on seemed to stop pulsing for a moment.

  Then I was back in front of the door of the Tower of Ascension.

  While I was in a hurry, that blinking meant I had at least one message waiting, and I didn’t want to risk missing something that might be important to know about.

  “Lay it on me.”

  [ You have repulsed a minor threat outside of your dungeon ]

  [ You have earned 10 Merit points ]

  Ten? That seemed… Low.

  But then all I did was chase off some God forsaken rat guys, for now. And really, they hadn’t even been after me, mainly because they didn’t even know I existed.

  And I was only a Tier One class. Ten Merits might actually be a lot of Merits points for someone of my Tier and Level. And Blinky was still blinking. “Alright. Go on.”

  [ You have repelled your first intruders ]

  [ You have earned the Title, Dungeon Defender: Least Grade ]

  [ You have gained Skill Ranks ]

  [ Tactics 2 ]

  ...and? No, I guess that was it. Blinky was now just a pale little translucent dot.

  I had left my Innate Summons Caesar the Fire Lizard behind near my Dungeon in order to serve as a means for Viola to contact me to direct my summons, so for once, I had to provide my own means of travel.

  “Air Burst.”

  ...Alright. First, the good part. The spell Air Burst did get me moving, and quickly… along with a great deal of the gray sand that had been around me right outside of the tower. One hundred percent success there.

  Even better, the door of the tower nearly snapped open in front of me as I hurled silently through the air straight at it. Allowing me to fly through the open doorway rather than cracking right into the rather solid wall of four inch thick hardwood and iron fittings.

  The force of the Air Burst even carried me well into the tower. All the way down the length of the short passage and into the great room where I could see the wide eyes of my Liaison Unity as she went from standing behind her desk patiently awaiting my arrival to throwing herself flat behind it as the could of billowing sand with a glowing orangish red Core in its center flying across the room straight at her.

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  At which point, the magic I had thrown into the spell cut out, leaving only my momentum to carry me forward. I skipped off the ground, twice, before hitting the front of Unity’s old wooden desk and passing right on through it in a burst of splintering wood. Next went her stool, as I snapped one leg clear off of it before her seat went spinning off to the side and then I finally came to a dead stop, mid air, in the open doorway of a short hallway leading to a set of stairs that went upward.

  There was now a crack running along one side of, and well into, my Core.

  It didn’t hurt, but it felt... wrong.

  Unity, the feathers of her wings sticking up in all directions, looked up from the floor. “Fell?”

  “…yes?”

  She sighed and began slowly rising to her feet. “Maybe next time I could just come get you at the door? I always know when you arrive, but I gave you a moment the first time to figure out a way to get inside on your own. And since you did, I always left it up to you from then on, but I can…” She paused to lean forward. “I can come and get you.”

  “... all right.”

  After dusting herself off, mainly of splintered wood, she looked at the shattered bits of former furniture fanned out behind her desk, her broken chair, and the sand covering half of the room in another fan arching out of the entrance, and then sighed once more.

  Shaking her shoulders and wings to put most of her feathers in some sort of order, she turned and held both of her hands up towards my Core, hesitating as she asked. “May I?” and waiting until I said, “Yes,” before plucking me from where I was still stuck motionless in the air a few feet off the ground.

  Setting me down in my stand, she seemed to pluck a brand new chair out of nowhere and took a seat behind her desk. “Now. What can I do for you Fell?”

  I began with “I…” then paused as my Dungeon Fairy, which I had left behind to direct the further preparation to defend myself from an armed invasion began commanding my Innate Totem to play ‘Fetch’ in the hallway outside of my lair by tossing a small ball that rattled as she spun around in the air before releasing it to fly down the hallway.

  Fairies…

  “I need a way of seeing what my Summons are doing outside of my Dungeon. Something more than using Viola’s Gaze ability. I know I can command them from a distance, but I have to know what they are dealing with to figure out what the best command to give them is.”

  Unity took in a deep breath. “Alright, that’s a pretty basic Tier one power for Summoners and other minion based classes. It will cost you Magic, and you can only activate it on a summons while it is in your Dungeon, and then the magic is locked up, limiting your Magic Pool until you drop the ability.”

  Suddenly, the winged spirit’s eyes narrowed as she leaned forward, then went wide, “Fell! You’re hurt!”

  Once again, she slid her hand along the top of her desk to produce a sheet of paper and yanked a feather out of her wings to use as a pen. “I am going to recommend giving your Fairy the ability to heal Living Cores. It’s going to be a very niche ability, and it will most likely cost her the ability to heal plants' life, but it seems like it’s going to be vital to keeping Living Cores who like to blast themselves like Meteors across a room from killing themselves.”

  She gave me a narrow eyed look.

  I sighed. “First, sorry. I’m sorry I scared you, and almost hurt you. But in my defense, I didn’t think you or I could be hurt here. My physical Core is back in the Library of my Dungeon, so this isn’t my real body, I just thought it was how my self awareness appeared in a dream.”

  Her face softened up a lot after I said I was sorry, then she began to look confused. “Normally, you would be right, but when you get hurt on this level of reality, or at least if you got hurt by doing something like hitting a floor, the damage normally heals up in mere moments.”

  Reaching out toward me, she stopped with her hand several inches away before miming and running it down the front of my Core. “But, I don’t think you have a built in way to heal from damage. Only living beings have that, and on top of that, a Core is shaped, solidified Magic. I don’t really know if there is a real difference in what your body is here, and what your body is back on Ugualtella.”

  The knowledge that the last word was the name of my word leaked up from the back of my head, as well as the fact that it, like most worlds, was round, also became known to me.

  Round, like a ball, or a Core. A fact that seemed telling somehow, like the universe regarded me being a ball was significant.

  Unity leaned across the table towards me. “Fell?”

  Huh? Oh, yeah. “Level me, and that ability as well, please, Unity, and again, sorry.”