Violet Danderpuff burned with shame. The wizards had not been impressed with his “poor management” of the dungeon and “ineffectual leadership style” that “prolonged and exacerbated” the imprisonment of the dungeon people. Violet had returned abruptly to the area around the core, figuratively slamming the door in the wizards’ face. He watched on a visual scanner as the wizards interviewed Hana and surveyed the human camp. The little raven, in turn, surveyed the wizards. Violet sighed and put his head down on his desk. At least the dungeon has calmed down a bit. He thought. The vines were acting really weird. The spawn fruit rate was lower than normal, but at least the vines weren’t dropping and regrowing their leaves over and over again.
In Violet’s opinion, the wizards were being overly expressive around the dungeon people, likely because one wizard could only partly speak the local language and the other wizard was from a different world entirely. Even without the sound activated, Violet could identify the moments when wizards expressed sorrow for those who died, amazement and pride at all the people had built, and concern and suspicion when they learned about the lost worldlet and the void infection. Violet had meant to tell them all that, but the reprimands had been too much for him to handle in his first conversation in years. The blue wizard teleported straight to the main vine body after learning of the void soot infection.
“FAIRY!” She shouted at the vine.
Violet wanted to ignore her. He wanted to turn off the visual scanner and act like he didn’t care on bit about the opinions of two powerful wizards. Instead, he projected his translated voice outside the vine. “What?” He sounded sulky, even to himself.
In some manner that Violet could not understand, the blue fairy reached through his voice projection, grabbed the front of his shirt, and pulled him outside the vine. “Hey!” He shouted, feeling the red-hot sparks of anger in the back of his mind. “Let go!” He tried to blink away but the wizard’s hand held him in place.
Fairies do not naturally generate much mana inside themselves but they do have innate mana senses and the ability to manipulate ambient mana. Technically, Violet was not allowed to use the dungeon ambient mana without permission, but the dungeon had never objected to him using it to fly, and Violet didn’t care about that at the moment anyway. He reached out and grabbed as much of the ambient mana in the air and the mana radiating from the greater mana vines as he could. With a grunt, he funneled that mana into a simple spell he had developed as a child, called “shove”. The wizard flew backwards across the main worldlet. She tried to brace herself against the mana in the air, but Violet pulled it away from her. The wizard hit the ground and slid through a patch of fallen leaves.
A sudden realization of what he had done hit Violet. He hadn’t expected the spell to do much—the wizard’s protections should have blocked the simple wall of mana projected by the shove spell. The spell originating in the wizard’s grip must have bypassed the defenses. Violet felt himself start panicking as the wizard slowly stood back up. She had not lost her grip on her staff. Violet turned and fled.
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Violet clung tightly to the bark of the evergreen vine, just inside the portal. He panted and sweated as he tried to catch the mana leaking from the vine and wrap it around himself. The captured space was cold, but the real danger to Violet was the lack of mana. His body had no ability to resist losing all his mana, which would kill him. Right up against the vine, there was enough mana to keep him alive, but it felt like his stomach had been pulled out of his chest and tied around a stone.
Violet wiped his sleeve across his face. The captured space was the only place in the dungeon that the wizards could not search with spells. The mana-less air could kill Violet, but it also hid him perfectly. Violet hoped the wizard would stop searching for him after a few hours, then maybe he could get back to the dungeon core and wait for her to leave.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Violet’s heart nearly stopped when the green wizard stepped through the portal. The wizard, Crataz, yelped in pain and stumbled backwards through the portal. Violet scurried to the opposite side of the large vine. A few moments later, Crataz come through the portal again. Violet could feel a wave of heat and mana flowing off the man, who spoke.
“Fairy,” He said. “You cannot stay here. You will die.”
Violet sent a small sound construct through the vine to the other side. “She’ll kill me!” It said.
“She will not.” Crataz said calmly. “She wishes to apologize. She overreacted when the people in the camp told us about the black dust. Please, let’s go back and talk somewhere safer.” After a moment, Crataz spoke again. “I, Crataz Aniquam, guarantee your safety.”
_ Crataz Aniquam has offered you a temporary oath of safety. Accept? y/n _
Yes! Violet accepted the oath. He climbed around the body of the vine and pulled himself through the portal. Violet hovered in place and caught his breath as Crataz came through the portal. The wizard kept one hand on the tall vine stalks and fell slowly toward the bottom of the worldlet. A few minutes later, they were back at the main vine body. Crataz walked right up to Ivira.
“Get on with your apology, Ivira, the fairy just showed me something far more interesting that we must discuss.” Crataz rubbed his hands together like a child about to lay his hands on some sweets.
Ivira bowed low before Violet. “Master Fairy, I humbly apologize for my uncalled-for haste and my extreme rudeness. If you will forgive my actions, I will offer you a reasonably sized favor.” She remained bowed, waiting for Violet’s response.
A favor? A reasonably sized favor? Violet was excited by the offer. What is reasonable? Doesn’t matter, I’ll take any favor from a wizard. “I accept your apology.” He stated clearly.
Ivira straightened up. Before she could speak, Crataz interrupted. “Excellent! Now, Master fairy, what was that horrible place you were hiding in?” Crataz’s eyes were aflame with interest.
Violet took a deep breath and let it out before responding. “That is the reason for the quarantine. It’s a captured space.”
“Captured?” Ivira said. “What do you mean?”
Violet frowned. Surely the wizards knew about captured spaces. Maybe the translation wasn’t coming through. “An unattached, well, probably unattached space already in the void. The dungeon snagged it by accident while claiming void.” Violet stopped explaining when the two wizards began to nod their understanding.
“Ah, I see now.” Crataz said. “I know it by other names. I very much want to investigate further…” He glanced at Ivira. “But my associate was right to want to investigate the void infection. What can you tell us about the infection?”
“First, please,” Ivira said quickly. “Is the infection still present?”
Violet shook his head. “I haven’t seen any evidence of the infection since the humans finished cleaning the borders they could reach. The dungeon avatar,” he gestured to the large vine plant behind him. “and the few remaining dungeon creatures cleared the rest of the worldlets. I don’t know if the infection is still around in the captured space, I can’t see into it and its too dangerous for me.” He shrugged, helplessly.
“Why can you not see into the captured space?” Ivira asked.
“It has no mana!” Crataz answered with excitement. “No mana at all in the air! It was extremely uncomfortable for me at first. The fairy would have died immediately without support from the dungeon avatar.” Crataz gestured at the large vine plant, exactly as Violet had done. “I didn’t have enough time to examine it fully, but the vine mutates at the spatial threshold to a variety that does a remarkable job retaining mana, though a small amount is still lost.”
“The dungeon avatar mutated in just one area?” Ivira said. Her face was a mix of excitement, confusion, and curiosity. “How is that possible?”
Violet didn’t understand what was abnormal about that, but he didn’t really want to hear a lecture about dungeon avatar theory. He pointed up at the towering vine. “The avatar has multiple different mutations around the dungeon. Like that one.”
The two wizards looked up at the towering vine with twin expressions of shock.