Chapter 109: Chapter 42

“Didn’t any of that even impress you?” Carina asked Khumdar as they entered their room.

Thinking back on the walk from the dungeon, Tibs realized that she’d been fighting the urge to ask questions, and the cleric had been his usual stoic self.

Khumdar sat on his bed and leaned against the wall before answering. “I have realized early on knowing Tibs, that if I allowed myself to be impressed each time he did something new, I would never stop. It seems more productive to simply accept that such things will happen for as long as I am friends with him.”

Jackal chuckled, dropping on his bed.

“Can you teach the rest of us how to do that?” Mez asked, placing his bow down before sitting. “What happened?” he looked at the others. “Who is this Sto, and who’s that other person you mentioned Tibs.”

“Ganny,” Carina said, then stopped looking at the cleric as if his calm was a direct affront to her excitement.

“Ganymede,” Tibs said, sitting on the edge of his bed. So much for keeping that secret, but he’d been angry and he couldn’t expect his friends to just ignore what he’d said. “That’s her full name. Sto’s the dungeon. It’s short for Stone Mountain Crevice.”

“That’s a mouth full,” Jackal said with another chuckle.

“You are joking, right?” Mez asked. “That isn’t a name, it’s more of a…description.”

Tibs shrugged. “It’s the name he picked.” He leaned back against the wall. “I got the sense he isn’t much older than we are. At least the way dungeon measures it. He thought the name was interesting.” He thought back on that long-ago conversation. “More him.”

“So,” Carina trailed off. “There are two dungeons there?”

“No, just one,” Tibs replied. “She’s there to help. Like I said, I think he’s young, and she was sent to him so he’d learn how to do dungeon things. But he’s the dungeon. If he doesn’t want to do what she advises him, there isn’t anything she can do about it.”

When no one commented on that, Tibs looked at his friends. Jackal seemed to be asleep, but the three others stared at him. Even Khumdar looked like he was holding back questions.

“Sent by whom?” Carina finally asked.

Tibs realized he’d let something slip that might have been best kept to himself. “I don’t know. Ganny often refers to some sort of ‘them’ when she feels Sto is abusing or breaking the rules.” He tapped his bracers. “Mez’s bow. I think your staff’s also part of that, but Sto denied it even when she wasn’t around.” He paused. “What he’s been doing since reopening.”

“The robes?” The cleric asked.

“Those he said were random, and I believe him. They’re the same as every other sorcerer’s robes we’ve found, and the colors have varied. They just happened to be black this time.”

“Alright,” Jackal said. “This is all fun and interesting stuff, but does it mean anything for our runs?”

“Don’t you think this is more important than loot?”

Tibs couldn’t see the look the fighter gave the archer, but he expected it was shock and disbelief. Especially with the way Mez rolled his eyes.

“I wish I could speak to this Ganymede,” Carina mused. “She must know so a lot about dungeons.”

“Maybe not as much as you’re hoping.”

“Still, she—”

“Focus everyone,” Jackal said. “Does knowing all this, that the dungeon had a name, has someone who helps it, change anything? Seems to me that it’s going to go back to normal, now that Tibs gave him a talk to.”

“I don’t know if he is going to do that,” Tibs replied. “And even if he tells me he will. I don’t know how much I can trust him. At least if Ganny isn’t there to confirm it. He can only keep her from joining in our conversation, not affect what she’ll say. He wasn’t treating us the way he treated the other teams,” he explained at their confused expression. “That’s why those maps the other teams made didn’t make sense when we were inside. They weren’t going up against the same dungeon.”

He paused, running a hand over a bracer. “I think I talked sense into him. But I can’t force him to do anything.”

“And since you told him to treat you like everyone else,” Mez said sourly, “ if it decides to go on killing, that now includes us.”

Jackal snorted. “Not the way it feels about our Tibs.”

“I told him to stop treating me special.”

“You saved it,” Jackal said.

“You’re the only person it can talk with,” Carina added.

“We’ll know what he decided by the time of our next run.”

“You could go and ask,” Mez said. “You said you wished you’d been there to talk with it more.”

Tibs shook his head. “I don’t want to feel like I’m influencing him.”

“You are, Tibs, that you be there or not,” Khumdar said. “That is the nature of friendships.”

“If nothing changed,” Tibs said, instead of acknowledging the comment, “I’ll find a way not to go in.”

“If you aren’t going in,” Jackal said in a neutral tone, “then neither are we.”

Tibs tried to work out how the fighter felt about it. Not all his need for loot was an act, Tibs thought.

“We can get a different rogue,” Mez offered.

“Only if Tibs dies,” Khumdar said. “I will not be the one attempting to make that happen. Will you?”

Tibs looked at Jackal instead.

“Don’t look at me,” the fighter said, noticing the look.

“You’re the one who’ll miss the loot,” Tibs probed, then thought of something else. “And the fighting.”

“I’m not killing you,” Jackal replied in exasperation. He noticed the others looking at him. “Abyss, do you all think I’m unreasonable or something?”

“I do not believe that is something we think,” Khumdar said. When Jackal stared at him, he continued. “We know you will be unreasonable when it comes to fighting or obtaining your loot.”

“Our loot,” the fighter replied. “I share.”

“That is true.” Khumdar looked at Tibs. “Having settled this, all we can do is wait and hope the dungeon will come to its senses.

* * * * *

The next day, Tibs already knew Sto had made his decision. He didn’t need to wait to hear what the Runners had to say about the runs. Of the six Runner teams who had gone in, only one lost a teammate.

“There you are, Mister Light Fingers,” Cross said, approaching their table through the crowd.

Another change Sto had been quick to make was adding the meat drops. Because the inn had already been the preferred eating place for the Runners, they offered them to Kroseph’s father first, and he had been happy to pay a copper a piece. As far as Tibs could make out, Sto was dropping a lot more meats than he used to coppers, so the Runners were winning from it.

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“Carina, Mez,” Tibs introduced his friends, who were enjoying the first meal with the dungeon meat with him, “meet Cross. She’s the one who gave me the cylinder puzzle.”

“Lent,” the fighter corrected, extending her hand. “Unless you aren’t done with it, still?” Her tone had a hint of suspicion in it, and she barely masked the relief when he handed it to her. She studied it carefully.

“You’re that fighter who’d been going around beating up the others,” Mez said, and Carina frowned, then she was studying Cross. “What’s the point of the metal on your armor? It doesn’t look like it’s there for protection.”

“Makes it heavier.” She detached a pouch from her belt and handed that to Tibs. “And it does help with parrying and blocking swords.” She raised her forearm and showed the metal strip along the bracer, then those on her gloves. “These give my punches more impact. I have some on my boots, too.” She smiled at him. “You should give it a try.”

“I’m an archer,” Mez replied. “I can’t be slowed by all that.”

“She’s pretty quick,” Tibs said, looking at the pieces of wood that fell out of the pouch. He looked at her. “I don’t fix broken…whatever this is.”

“It isn’t broken,” she replied, smiling. “That’s a different kind of puzzle. Instead of figuring out how to open it, you need to put it back together. It’s a cube once you’re done.”

Tibs took a piece from the pile and looked it over. It was the length of his palm, a little thinner than a finger, and had a square notch at a third of the way. He laid it on the table and aligned the others next to it. They were the same, except for where the notch was, and one didn’t have a notch at all.

“What’s the point of something like that?” Carina asked, a mix of curiosity and bafflement in her voice. Tibs was surprised. Of his friends, he’d expected her to appreciate puzzles.

Cross chuckled. “Keeps the fingers busy and the mind sharp.”

“But it doesn’t do anything,” she insisted.

“It’s fun,” Tibs said. “It’ll be interesting figuring it out.”

Carina studied Cross again. “So you think yourself a rogue and a fighter?”

Cross laughed. “I leave the locks and traps to the people who know them, like those who live through the dungeon. I’m just a caravan guard and I need something to keep occupied in the months it can take to travel from one city to the other. These help with that.” She grinned. “And it also causes other guards, who think that because I play with those, this,” she motioned to her armor, “is just for show, so they think they can win fights against me.”

“Why didn’t you leave with them, then?” Mez asked.

“I needed a break. There’s going to be one here in a week or two. If I’m bored of this place, I’ll leave with it. If not, the next one. And I still get to guard stuff, like the booths by the dungeon, so that Mister Light Fingers or his friends don’t liberate any of the items there.”

“I wasn’t going to—” he closed his mouth at her chuckle.

“The other rogues aren’t as considerate as you are,” she said. “Then there are the thieves. Those have been a nuisance, but it keeps me busy, since the guards don’t seem interested in doing anything about them.”

Tibs frowned. “There’s been a lot of thieves?” He’d tried to find out after his encounter in the noble’s house, but while he heard about the increase in theft, he hadn’t been able to figure out how many of them there were. Most of the rogues didn’t care what other thieves did, and in at least two cases, worked with those thieves.

“A lot more than I’d expect for a town like this. Even if it wasn’t a dungeon town, with the Guild being here, the guards are usually better at discouraging thieves.”

They probably didn’t work for Sebastian in those towns.

He hated the kind of influence Jackal’s father had here, and that some of the Runners didn’t mind working with his people. Tibs tried to explain the problem they were causing, but they saw it as an alternative to the guild. And they’d already worked with other criminals before, so that was more comfortable.

“I wish they didn’t bother the merchants,” Tibs grumbled. “If they don’t have items to sell, they don’t get coins to pay us when we bring them the loot we found in the dungeon.” He noticed Carina and Mez staring at him. “What?”

“Where on your street did you learn about the ebb and flow of goods?” she asked.

“Here,” he replied. “Darran explained some of it, and I’d have figured it out just by watching the shops and how the merchants acted when we brought them stuff.”

Cross chuckled. “You get this better than some of the merchants I’ve worked for.”

“And not all Runners care about the town the way you do,” Mez said. “For a lot of them, this is just a different kind of cell.” He paused. “For the latest groups more than us, we had a chance to make friends and form tighter bonds. They didn’t get that, so it’s easy for them to cause Harry trouble, especially if the guards aren’t doing their jobs.”

Tibs nodded. He’d noticed the lack of closeness among those who survived now, and realized he’d forgotten how he was on those first runs, how he tried to keep everyone away. They were more successful because so many had died. And now, it might be too late for them to change their ways, even if Sto wasn’t as deadly.

He was going to have to find a way to change that. He needed every Runner in the town to work toward protecting it.

* * * * *

Tibs watched the men and women being escorted off the platform and kept his distance. He’d overheard the guild was bringing recruits in today, and he’d arrived early, but instead of a group of scared street people. The first group to appear had been a mix of guards in silver and black armor and adventurers with dense essence. They took positions around the platform, shields at the ready and hands on swords.

Then this group had appeared, and the only ones not to step back were the guards and adventurers.

“I think the dungeon might have planted its sword into its foot,” Jackal said with awe.

The people standing on the platform looked around, not scared or confused, but carefully, methodically. Tibs initially thought they looked older because of how mean their expressions were, but the more he watched, the more apparent it became they were older. Not one of them moved, but they were tensed, ready to take advantage of any opening.

“Those people aren’t from the cells,” Jackal said. “Abyss, the kings have to have gone to their catacombs to get this batch.”

One of the guards in silver gave instructions, and for a moment Tibs thought there would be fighting. A few of the guards started drawing their swords, but a woman at the frown stepped down the steps and the others followed, attentive to everything happening around them.

“You think it’s because of how many Sto killed?” It had been a few days since Sto had stopped killing hisa killing spree.

“It’s been devouring the young Omegas like they were sweetmeats,” Jackal answered. “It makes sense that even if the kings have criminals in their cells, the guild might ask for a tougher cut this time around. But I don’t think they expected the meat to be quite this hard.”

Tibs’s stomach rumbled. “Why are you comparing them to meat?”

“Just hungry, I guess,” Jackal said. “I missed breakfast this morning. It was definitely worth it. Kro did this—”

Tibs groaned to stop him and attempt to silence his hunger. Why did he have to try this now that the inn had good meat again? “This is so unfair.”

The fighter patted his shoulder. “You need to practice, so why not do it when all this delicious food is available now?”

Tibs narrowed his eyes at the fighter. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to eat you.”

“Sorry, that’s something only Kro gets to do.”

Tibs opened his mouth to ask what his friend meant and closed it. The grin on Jackal’s face said he didn’t want to hear the answer.

“But yeah,” the fighter said. “Something like them would have been months of work to arrange. My guess is that within days of the last group arriving, this was happening. We’re going to have to be on our toes. If there’s one batch that’s going to try to destroy the dungeon thinking it’s going to set them free, it’s them.”

“They won’t be able to do it,” Tibs said. “Bardik needed concentrated corruption, and Sto has defenses against that now. They’re just Omegas, so they can’t be as tough as they look.”

“Looks can be deceiving, Tibs.” Jackal grinned. “Just look at you.” He moved to follow the group. “Come on, I can’t wait to hear what Knuckles has to tell this new batch.”

Tibs started to follow Jackal when he felt the essence coalesce on the platform. He looked in that direction to get a sense of who the new arrivals were and froze when a new contingent of guards in silver and black armor appeared.

Tibs swallowed. “Jackal,” he called. “There are more arriving.”

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