“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Abigail,” I told her, smiling.
She searched my face for a long moment. “You’re an Infernal Dungeon?”
“Sure am.”
“How, though?” she inquired. “I know little of the details, but it is common knowledge that they were all destroyed, plundered, and broken.”
“I’m new,” I told her, a half-smirk touching my face.
Her eyes widened. “How new?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” I admitted, “But I can’t have been at this more than… what, four days? A week, maybe?”
“That’s impossible,” Abigail told me. “You cannot be that young.”
“Why not?” I asked, tilting my head playfully as I enjoyed her gaze.
“Either you’re lying and very old, or your goddess has done something obscene.”
“Like disobey the Pantheon?”
“Yes. Gadrili told me the Pantheon forbade your goddess from creating any more Infernal dungeons.” Abigail’s eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“What’s the matter?” I asked as I touched her face. She didn’t recoil but stared into my eyes, searching there as if she was looking to find my soul.
“Gadrili was my dungeon pixie. She was killed.” Abigail sniffed, and I had to shake the desire to take her to my breast and console her. I was meant to be an Infernal Dungeon, dammit, but a weepy girl had brought out my sensitive side.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“She taught me a lot.” The storm avatar sniffed and then shook off her sadness. “Where is your pixie? She—or he—is obviously an excellent teacher. No newborn core could possibly excavate this much in a week without help from a very knowledgeable pixie.”
“Oh, I don’t have a pixie,” I said. “In fact, I didn’t even know dungeons were meant to have them.”
“What? No pixie?” Abigail’s mouth dropped. “How did you possibly survive?”
I leaned back against my dais’ smooth surface. “Guess I’m a different breed of core. I learn fast, and I work faster. Well, that’s all I can put it down to, anyway.”
She turned, a hand on her hip, her eyes combing over my bare, blood-splattered chest. A soft blush chased her cheeks but vanished as she managed to compose herself. My gut churned pleasantly in response, and I knew picking the Tainted Elf had been the right choice; the attractive blonde evidently couldn’t keep her eyes off me.
“Where are you from, then?” Abigail asked. “You must have been a great builder in your past life. Perhaps a high-ranked adventurer? That would explain your great knowledge of dungeons.”
“I wasn’t born in the Sinarius Realms,” I said plainly. “I came from another world. Lilith brought me here.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Yeah, I thought that too. But here I am,” I said, shifting and rolling a shoulder. The wound I’d caught from that sword had already healed over thanks to a good dose of Infernal Essence. “So, you’re from elsewhere in the Sinarius Realms?”
She nodded, her glance flickering off my arms and back to my face. “From Ciryli’s Lands, to the West.”
“I almost thought you might have come from my own world.”
I now figured Lilith had chosen me from Earth to get around whatever restrictions the Pantheon had imposed upon her. I still wasn’t sure exactly how the goddess had managed interdimensional travel, but that was a mystery to leave for another day.
“I was chosen by her to be a dungeon,” she said. “Lived a perfectly normal life as the daughter of a farmer, until the priestesses brought me to her. She gave me an option – to become her instrument, proclaim her beauty, and grow powerful in in her honor.”
“I take it you said yes?” I said, smiling.
“It’s hard to refuse a goddess,” Abigail told me, and I chuckled.
It sure was. “So how did you come to be here, then?”
“I…” Her voice caught, and her eyes darted down, back to the corpses spread out between us. “I was captured. I failed my goddess. A storm sorcerer named Karlyle stole me from my dungeon.”
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“A dark magic.”
“Infernal?”
“No,” Abigail said. “At least, I don’t think so. I thought Karlyle might have allied himself with sinister forces, but now that I’ve experienced Infernal magic, I know otherwise. Your powers are certainly dark, but this was different—something truly evil.”
“This Karlyle stole you, so how did Alaxon end up with your core?”
“He was among a raiding party that ransacked the storm sorcerer’s tower. I imagine Karlyle is out there looking for me, but I won’t have to worry about him now. Not while I’m under your protection.” Her eyes of pure blue found mine again, settling on my gaze.
Karlyle. God, the guy sounded like a fucking prick. I was probably biased, being a dungeon core and all, but the way Abigail’s voice trembled at his name made me hate the guy all the more. How could he steal someone this precious? What had he forced her to do?
“I thought I was going to be inside that filthy satchel until I went insane,” Abby said.
“Glad to be of service.” I chuckled. “Consider yourself officially free of satchel bags.”
She looked away again, and that same blush colored her cheeks. “I didn’t think that…” Her foot traced a line over my curving design on the obsidian floor. “I thought you’d consume me. You’re an Infernal core. Everything I’ve ever heard about your kind is that you’re twisted, sick, infectious monsters. Not… not heroes, coming to someone’s aid like that.”
“Abigail—”
“Abby,” she corrected me.
“Abby,” I said, liking the way the name slid off the tongue, “I’m certainly no hero. Lilith is my master, and she wants me to become the strongest dungeon in the Sinarius Realms, to fight and destroy Entropy. My running guess is she wants to use me as leverage to restore her own power among the gods.”
“And you agreed?”
I thought back to the decision, how I’d caught it with both hands. “Wanton slaughter isn’t the first of my priorities—it’s to destroy Entropy, simple as that. Scum like this Karlyle; those are my enemies, Abby. Not the other dungeons. Unless they interfere with my goals.”
She exhaled sharply. “They
