Chapter 153: Chapter 87

A slash up, then across, and the Gnoll fell. Arm up, his shield took the overhead blow. A turn, a slash, another creature fell. Tibs carefully pivoted, shield and jagged sword at the ready. Only rubble remained. His friends only had minor injuries.

They had raised their guards the moment the hall had widened to give them maneuvering space. Even Sto’s surprise declaration as to the distribution of the rewards hadn’t caused them to allow Ganny to get the literal drop on them, again.

“Anything drop?” Jackal shifted rubble with his foot.

“Silver,” Mez replied.

The fighter cursed. “Is Sto getting greedy?”

“That’s your job,” Carina said.

“There is…something here.” Khumdar’s eyes were closed as he turned in place slowly. “A secret, but one we are meant to discover. This….” He sighed. “I have never felt such a secret before. Secrets are usually not intended to be found out.”

“So, a cache?” Jackal rubbed his hands eagerly. “Tibs?”

“Looking.”

“I would have… I have never felt the ones in the trap room or the pool. The one holding the key in the boulder room is also not one I sensed.”

“You’re getting stronger,” Carina said, “like the rest of us. Maybe that means you can discern subtle details like intent, now.”

“It’s going to be something with essence again,” Tibs said, sensing the wall before him.

“A puzzle?” Mez asked.

He shrugged. There was mostly Stone and Corruption making up the walls. Unlike the doorway Sto had in place for them to bypass the floors, the ones Ganny used to drop the Gnolls on them vanished once they were used.

“Tibs,” Jackal called. “There’s something here.” The fighter was on the other side, looking at the wall.

Tibs sensed what had caught his attention as soon as he focused on it. The same essences were there, but their structure was different. Something in it led Tibs to think they were meant to interact with it. As he stepped next to the fighter he was already shifting the Earth essence around so they would divide and—

He stopped.

“Hey, Khumdar,” Jackal called, “is this what you felt?”

Tibs knew how to do this.

“I do not know,” the cleric replied as Tibs studied what he sensed. “There is no direction to what I am sensing, other than one of it being here.”

The way it worked didn’t require someone to sense the corruption to undo the lock.

“Tibs?” Jackal asked.

“You can open it.” It was time to have someone else learn something.

“I’m not a rogue.”

“This doesn’t need a rogue, just someone with Earth as their element.”

“The wall is three paces thick,” Carina said, then added, at Tibs’s raised eyebrow. “I can sense the air beyond that. It’s a room, but I can’t make out any details in it.”

“So you can open this?” Jackal asked.

“It’s yours,” Tibs said before Carina replied.

“I’m the team’s dumb fighter, Tibs. If it can’t be done by hitting it, it’s not for me.”

“So, try that.”

With a roll of the eyes, Jackal tapped the stone, then punched it lightly and harder. He made his arm stone and struck it hard enough that the impact sounded like it should have cracked the wall, but left no marks. He put the knuckle wrap on and hit it again, to the same lack of result. “Not for me,” Jackal said.

He motioned for the fighter to lean in and Tibs lowered his voice. “You don’t always have to be the dumb one on the team.”

Jackal looked offended and waited for Carina, who simply chuckled. He let out a resigned sigh. “I hate the two of you sometimes.” He placed a hand on the wall.

“You do realize that anyone who knows you has realized the dumb-fighter is an act, right?” she said.

Jackal snorted. “Not next to the two of you. Now be quiet, you’re forcing me to focus and that’s hard.”

Tibs sensed Jackal’s work. The way his essence radiated into the wall where his hand touched it. How it moved and tightened to push and pull at the other essence. It was…direct, and clumsy, and Tibs wasn’t sure if it was because Jackal wasn’t experienced, or a reflection of how he thought. It wasn’t how Tibs would have done it, but that was the point of the exercise. Jackal needed to learn to do something like this, the way Jackal would do it.

When the fighter pulled his hand from the wall, it looked identical as before he’d touched it. Jackal turned his arm to stone and punched it hard.

Where it had no effect before, the impact left a crack. With a grin, Jackal hit it again. With the third punch, chunks fell off.

“I’m not feeling any fire,” Mez said, watching Jackal work. “Does it mean only someone with Earth can open it?”

“And Corruption,” Tibs replied. “After Bardik’s attack, Sto put Corruption in the walls along with whatever other element make them. It’s to keep someone else to use it again him.”

“Doesn’t making something some teams might not be able to find break the rules of how a dungeon works?” the archer asked.

Sto’s chuckle made Tibs consider who had told him that. “My teacher is who told me that. He believes it, but he also thinks Sto is a mindless creature”

“Which I’m not,” the dungeon replied smugly.

“But,” Tibs continued, “you also think about what we’ve learned of how the ‘rules’ work? They aren’t what we thought they are. And I think that if they are rules, they apply to what we have to do to survive. This feels more like gaining an extra reward. Maybe different cache on this floor will need a different element to open them. We need to remember that Ganny designed this floor. She isn’t as straightforward as Sto is.”

“Got that right,” she said.

“Why do I feel like that’s a dig about how I designed the first two floors?”

“It’s not,” she said. “You have your set of strengths, I have mine. That’s why we’re supposed to work together.”

“Okay, that’s a dig,” Sto replied and Tibs smiled.

“Are they talking to you?” Mez asked.

“Each other.” Tibs frowned. “How did you know?”

“Well, what you told us isn’t worthy of a smile, and you got distracted.”

Jackal had stopped pounding on the wall and looked at Tibs. “You realize that if you’re right, you’re the only one who can open all the caches on this floor.” He grinned. “We are going to get so much loot.”

“I don’t have all the elements, and Don can open them, too, since they all have Corruption mixed in.”

“Oh,” Sto said, and Tibs could hear the grin. “Did you just miss something?”

“Yeah, I did,” Ganny replied, “not that it’s a problem. Unless you want Tibs to be the only one who has an unfair advantage.”

“I never said he should—hey, you made this floor. Hey, don’t you float away with that smirk on your face, Ganny. You’re the one who—” Sto’s voice cut off as if a door closed on it.

Tibs’s chuckle died as the implication of what had happened sunk in. He’d always assumed that when Sto talked about being busy elsewhere, it meant his focus was on another part of the dungeon since he was the dungeon. But this made it sound like he and Ganny could move around, that the dungeon was more a place they lived in, rather than what they were. Were there corridors behind the walls, somehow hidden from his senses?

Had there been more to Bardik flinging the corruption about than just looking to melt the dungeon?

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He realized his friends were looking at him with quizzical expressions. “Later. Are you getting the loot, or do we have enough and can move on?”

When an affronted huff, Jackal went back to punching his way to the cache.

“So, have any of you come up with something to ask the dungeon?” Mez asked.

“I am uncertain I should take the dungeon up on the offer,” Khumdar said. “This staff is already more than I could ask for, and while I understand it was a random item, I am also not one of those who made a suggestion the dungeon is rewarding.”

“I’m not either,” Mez said, “for once. But Tibs said we all get to pick one item, and so long at the dungeon can make it, we can have it.”

Instead of revealing which idea Sto had picked, he had offered the reward to the entire team. One item for each of them, locked to them the way Tibs’s bracers were locked to him. Sto had been surprised when silence was the reply to his offer. Jackal was who put into words how Tibs felt, and by the other’s nodding along, they too.

“That’s too much for me to just blurt something out. I have to think about it. Figure out something that’s going to be useful to me.”

Tibs agreed with Khumdar. He had his bracers. On top of that, Sto had helped him have his audience with Fire, and had tried to help him with the one for Light. Asking for more felt like taking advantage of his friend.

“Yes!” Jackal yelled. He push broken stones out of the way and disappeared into the darkroom he’d opened. The short passage was narrow, barely wide enough for the fighter, but the room that was becoming illuminated as Tibs stepped in after his friend was large enough that they could all fit.

“Okay,” Carina said, looking at the five pedestals on the other end of the room. “Maybe this is worth locking behind a specific element.”

Each pedestal had an item on it. The one on the left had a quiver. Next to it was a book, then a leather roll, a shield, and the last one an amulet.”

“Don’t touch it,” Carina ordered the archer as Mez reached for the quiver.

“That’s clearly for an archer.”

“The leather roll has lock picks,” Tibs said.

“The shield is for a fighter,” she added, “the book for a sorcerer and that leaves the amulet for the cleric.”

“We don’t need to fight over who gets what,” Jackal exclaimed.

“Don’t touch it,” she ordered him.

“Why would I touch a shield?”

“Don’t you think five items is a little excessive?” she asked. “Considering the fight wasn’t that hard.”

“No,” Jackal replied flatly.

Carina was right, Tibs realized. Each item had some essence in them and looked to be of good quality. That was a lot for that one fight.

“Khumdar,” she said, not taking her eyes off the fighter, “tell me there isn’t a secret to this room.”

The cleric opened his mouth, then closed it, surprised. “You are correct. There is something hidden.” He frowned, closed his eyes, and looked thoughtful. “No, not a thing. This is more of a thought or an idea.” He shook his head. “Has gaining strength in your element confused you as much as this does me?”

“Nope,” Jackal replied.

“Not really,” Mez said.

“You have no idea,” Tibs said, rolling his eyes.

Carina chuckled. “You and Tibs are the only ones without a preexisting system governing how they learn. We’re just doing what, we’re told when we’re told, as we grow stronger. With an exception here and there,” she added, smiling.

“Why is there a trap in here?” Jackal whined. “It’s a cache, they’re supposed to be about getting rewards.”

Tibs decided not to mention how some caches could come with traps, or creatures protecting them.

“How did you know?” Mez asked.

“Something Tibs said in combination with this being too many items,” she replied. “Ganny isn’t straightforward, and she is who designed this floor. She’s taken what we expect and used it to trick us. We expect that we know what a cache means, so, she added something to it. Tibs, what can you sense?”

“Essences,” he immediately replied. Then focuses on gaining more information. “I think they’re all there, at least my eight are. I don’t know enough about weaving to tell what they do.”

“So this might be a death trap?” Mez said, annoyed. “Great. Let’s just leave then. It’s not worth risking it since we don’t get to keep it anyway. Not that I have a use for a quiver. Tibs doesn’t need picks. Like he said, Jackal doesn’t use shields. What do you think the book’s about? The amulet’s a reserve.”

“The book will be about learning something,” Carina said. “That’s what books are for. Amulets have only been reserved to date, but is that all they can be?”

“So, you’re all agreed on not taking anything?” Jackal asked.

She nodded. “Mez is right. Without knowing what this is about, we shouldn’t risk it.”

Jackal looked at Tibs, who shrugged, then at the cleric.

“Nothing on display matters to me.”

“Good.” The fighter turned and grabbed the shield off the pedestal before Carina could object.

“Jackal!” she yelled.

Tibs was distracted from the surge of anger by the shifting essence. The air around the four other pedestals shimmered and the items on them vanished.

“What kind of stupid move that that?” she demanded.

“Tibs said I don’t always have to be an idiot.”

“And that’s how you prove him wrong?”

“The dungeon wasn’t going to kill us,” Jackal said. “This is a cache, not a death trap. You didn’t want any, so I took mine and now we know what happens.” He motioned to the empty pedestals.

“That’s the secret you sensed,” Tibs told the cleric. “We only get one item, but we can pick which one it is.”

“Unless we’re fast enough to pull them all off at the same time,” Jackal said, a gleam in his eyes.”

“I am not attempting that,” Mez said.

“Not a death trap,” Jackal repeated with the certainty of the inexperienced.

“Having your hand disappear with the item isn’t going to kill you,” Mez replied. “Immediately.”

“Enough,” Carina snapped. “Alright. What you did wasn’t entirely stupid, but pushing for more, that is being an idiot. Don’t put your greed before our safety.”

“Okay, I won’t.” Jackal motioned for the exit. “Let’s move on to the next one so Tibs can find us another cache.” He attached the shield to Khumdar’s pack.

“You are agreeing to this too easily,” Carina stated.

“I know when I’ve lost a fight,” Jackal replied cheerily.

“No, Jackal, you don’t,” Mez said. “That’s why to end up on the ground, unconscious so often.”

Tibs stared at the archer.

He didn’t know Mez went to watch the pit fights too.

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