Chapter 38: Chapter 37

With the five of them in the room, it felt smaller, but not too much. Jackal grumbled wordlessly the entire way from the tavern but wouldn’t explain why. The fighter dropped in one of the two chairs at the table while Carina pointed Khumdar to the remaining bed, between her and Mez.

“Alright,” Jackal said, letting out a breath. “Mez, last chance if you want to be in charge of this team.”

Carina glared at Jackal, while Tibs rolled his eyes from his bed.

“I believe Carina when she said you’d just take over again, so I’m going avoid the hassle and let you lead us.”

Jackal looked at the ceiling. “If they ever find out, they will never let me live this down.”

Tibs wondered who the they Jackal meant could be, but didn’t bother asking.

“Alright, the first thing we need to deal with is the entry fee for the dungeon.”

“Shouldn’t we just put everything we have in it?” Carina asked. “To ensure we get in early.”

“If we’re not going to make anything in return for the coins we put in,” Tibs said, “it’s not worth doing it.”

“Street rules,” Jackal said with a nod. “Best way to live. Although this once, I’d be willing to act at a loss to get in as early as we can. The only clue I got about what it means for a dungeon to graduate is that it gets a new floor and that it should have double the number of rooms. Saphina’s dad couldn’t find much about that side of dungeons,” he explained. “I would like an early look to know what we can expect to make out of it.”

“Can you rely on that?” Mez asked. “The dungeon is going to change everything in time.”

“But only to make things harder,” Carina said, “right? That means what we’ll get out of it will only go up with how tough it is to win.”

“And that’s why she’s the smart one,” Jackal said. “If we have a base, we can work out what’s worth investing for the expected returns.”

“How very Street of you,” Carina said dryly.

“The dungeon will also increase our returns,” Jackal said, ignoring her comment, “by removing teams from the roster. Less of them and we go more often, and probably also have to pay less to keep a higher spot.”

“We’re not doing this to get people killed,” Mez said, standing and pacing.

“Maybe you forgot where we are,” Jackal said, and the archer glared at him.

“The dungeon eats Runners,” Tibs said, “it’s what it does.” He pulled his knees to himself. “If you think about it, all that loot is to bring more people in and eat them. Did you see how many people came? The guild didn’t force them, like with us. They came because they want the loot. If the guild didn’t limit the number of teams, we’d probably be overrun by people looking to be rich, and the dungeon would get fat off them.”

“A dungeon with a weight problem,” Khumdar said, chuckling. “That would be an interesting sight.”

“Not everyone is here out of greed, Tibs,” Carina said. “Some are looking to prove themselves. Become stronger. Training in a dungeon is the only way to gain an element, and then the best way to go up in ranks.”

“That’s still a form of greed,” Jackal said, “so Tibs’s point remains. But just to clarify things with you Mez; I might have appeared eager for them to die, but it isn’t like I can do anything to help speed up the process. It’s all going to be the dungeon’s work. Even if we wanted to leave some traps of our own to trip the next team, the dungeon doesn’t only eat us, it eats anything left in it. The one way we can help it is by beating it, so the next team will have a harder time, and I am okay with that.”

Mez sighed and sat on his bed again. “I get your point, but yes, you do seem eager for others to die. Still, it isn’t like you’ve actually killed anyone.”

“I did,” Jackal said, “how do you think I ended up in a cell?”

“Did they deserve it?” Mez asked, glaring.

“I’d like to think so,” Jackal replied with a shrug. “They might disagree.”

“They can’t disagree,” Tibs said, “they’re dead.”

“And that’s why you’re the other smart person on this team.” Jackal grinned at Mez.

“Alright, I get it. We all did something worth being arrested for.” He sighed. “This is not where I had planned for my life to go. But this is where I am. I’m not willing to put all my money into getting into the dungeon early, but I am willing to put most of it.”

“If I may,” Khumdar said, “from what I gather, the order of entry is set by you paying for it? I take it that’s a new procedure?”

“They used to just throw us in at random,” Jackal said.

“Then kept the survivors as a unit,” Carina added.

“Filling the missing position with some random Runners,” Tibs continued.

“Which sucked,” Mez finished with.

The cleric nodded. “And every team has to do so. How high are you hoping to be on the list?”

“The top’s always good,” Jackal said, grinning.

“How are you going to compete with the noble teams?” Khumdar asked.

Jackal’s smile fell, and the cursing began. “That is so unfair. How are we supposed to compete with them and their bottomless money pouches?”

Khumdar looked at Tibs.

“I can’t pick every pocket the nobles have,” he said, although the idea of all those coins was appealing. “And there are rules saying I’m not allowed. I don’t think crossing Harry is something I want to do.”

“No, you don’t,” Jackal said.

“So we accept we can’t go before the nobles,” Carina says. “We can still go before the other runners, right? There’s only one other team who managed to beat the boss, so they’re the only ones with the kind of coins we have. Everyone else will be putting up silvers and coppers.”

“We might have more than some of the nobles too,” Mez said. “I can’t believe only the high nobility has come here. For one thing, no one’s taken an entire inn as their own. Or would even want to live in this kind of squalor.”

“Hey, our town is a good town,” Tibs protested.

“Yes, but to a high noble? Unless you have magical servants to take care of every little problem, they won’t want to come.”

“You’re making that up,” Jackal told the archer. “There’s no way you could know something like that.”

“You hear stories about them. But I’m just saying we could still go before some of the nobles, especially if they don’t expect any of us to have more than coppers.”

“How about you Khumdar, do you have coins to put in?” Jackal asked.

The cleric considered the question. “I do, I have a couple of electrum I can add to the pot.”

“Do you still have your two?” Jackal asked Tibs and Carina.

Tibs felt them in his pouch. The idea of losing them hurt, but it was to gain more. With the five of them, killing the boss would be easier and that loot would be worth a lot. He took them out.

“I’m down to one,” Carina said. “There’s a shop owner who brought in a few sorcerer’s tomes she let me read, for a fee.”

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Jackal smiled. “Breaking the rules to attain more power. We will make you street after all. So that’s three, plus my two and Khumdar. Mez?”

The archer dropped a hand full of copper and silver in the fighter’s hands. “Arrows,” he explained when Jackal counted them. “I can’t make fire arrows yet, just make the tips burn. When I tried it, I incinerated the bow and nearly burned down the whole tent. My teacher stopped the fire from spreading. So I’ve had to buy arrows since the dungeon has decided to start eating them.”

“I didn’t realize it did,” Carina said. “When we started, it never ate the ones the archers used.”

“I think the guild did something to their arrows to keep it from happening,” Mez said. “Made them poisonous to the dungeon or some such.”

“Can you poison a dungeon?” Tibs asked. He tried to recall if he’d worked with any archers who’d lost arrows to the dungeon, but while Geoff had had arrows, he never had to use them since his reserve hadn’t run dry. The few other archers who used elements also created their arrows. If the guild could make arrows that the dungeon wouldn’t eat, could they make knives it wouldn’t eat either? And just how much would they demand he pay for them?

“If there was a way to kill a dungeon,” Khumdar said, “I think someone would have done it by now. For all the good they allow, there are a large number of people who would like to see the dungeons destroyed.”

“Probably because they aren’t the ones controlling them,” Jackal added. He looked at the coins. “So we’re good with paying this as our fee and seeing where it puts us?” They nodded, and he placed them in a coin pouch. “I’ll go hand it over once we’re done here.”

“What else do we have to do?” Carina asked.

“Getting a sense of what we have to work with,” Jackal replied. “The three of us have worked together, and I’ve been on a team with another fire archer, but I have to say I’ve never had someone with darkness as their element, let alone a cleric. When they said we’d eventually have clerics on our teams, I was envisioning someone who stays back and only helps heal us. How will you be able to help us against rock rats and rock bunnies, Khumdar? Not to say a golem.

“Are those names descriptive in any way?”

“They’re made of rocks,” Tibs answered.

Khumdar nodded and closed his eyes. “I am not certain how helpful I will be. Because of what I’ve been through, I’ve used it mainly against people to protect myself. I haven’t had any experience against creatures a dungeon made, let alone some based on stone.”

“But you’re about death,” Mez said, “that means decay, right? Stone can decay too, become smaller and ever smaller.”

“I think you mean corruption,” Carina said, sounding unsure.

“And I’m not sure a smaller rock is anything other than still a rock, just smaller,” Khumdar added. “It’s why I’m uncertain. If they move, they could be alive, then I’ll be able to do something, but if they are only animated rocks, I’m not sure I’ll be of any help.”

“But they have to decay into something, right?” Mez asked.

“I don’t know,” Khumdar said. “I expect there are some things that are so basic to be beyond it.”

“Water,” Tibs said, recalling a conversation with Alistair, and something Water had said; or had it been Tirania? “Earth, air, and Fire.” They’d said they were the basic elements.

“I suppose that’s possible,” Khumdar said. “I suspect sorcerers would be better at answering that question, or any other we might have on the subject.”

“Okay, that’s not exactly what I was hoping to hear,” Jackal said, sounding annoyed. “So, if we forget the Dungeon run, how can you be of help to the team.”

The cleric pointed to Jackal’s hand, where the black web had almost completely vanished. “Like with your hand, I can keep infection from setting it. I can render poisons ineffective, although that’s more a theory based on how they are usually made, than practice. What the sorcerer did to you was turn your blood into rot, therefore poisoning you.”

“Isn’t rot what you do?” Carina asked. “Death and all that?” Tibs glared at her for the mocking tone she’d use, and she blushed.

“Death is decay. It’s a natural process. If I were to use that on Jackal’s hand, I would make it wither as I took away the life from it. Rot is a corruption of that process, twisting it into something poisonous. Corruption never brings anything good about. It will never stop spreading, while death brings an actual end. That is why the undead aren’t something I’d get involved with, but someone corrupt would.”

“So if you brought back someone from the dead,” Carina asked, sounding genuinely curious. “Would it be real life?”

Khumdar thought about it. “I don’t think I can bring the dead back. To truly bring them back requires putting something back in them, and I take away. Maybe once I’m at my strongest, I might be able to keep that last breath from leaving, but I’m not sure I’d want to. There might be nothing left of me by the time I am that powerful, I might be my element entirely. I haven’t been able to find out much about the upper echelons of cleric-hood.” He looked at Carina. “It’s a much guarded secret.”

“It’s not like purity clerics can do it either,” She spat. “All they can do is heal over and over, and the moment one of them can’t keep up, the patient dies.”

“That is because those oh so wonderful clerics are so full of themselves they forget darkness isn’t their opposite, corruption is.”

Her face lit up. “Light! It would take a cleric of light to bring back the dead.”

“Possibly, we’ll never know.”

“We just have to find one,” She said.

“You mean find a cleric those of purity claim are charlatans?” Khumdar asked. “Tell me, when you were raised with those stories, did they say what they did with those so-called clerics they found?”

She played with the hem of her sleeve. “They’re imprisoned.”

“Really?” Khumdar chuckled. “Then where were they? When all the cells were emptied to feed this dungeon, where were all those so-called clerics?”

“They said clerics have their own dungeon,” Tibs answered.

Khumdar looked at Carina.

“That’s for purity clerics, Tibs.” She looked at the cleric. “They wouldn’t.”

“I simply asked why they weren’t here. You have rogues, fighters, archers, and sorcerers, but no one arrested for claiming to be a cleric was sent?”

“How did you end up here?” Jackal asked, sounding suspicious, while Carina grew pale. Tibs sat next to her while listening. She looked like she needed a friend right now.

“I’m here more or less willingly. Unlike the nobles, I didn’t pay.” Khumdar fell silent.

Carina smiled at Tibs and wrapped an arm around his shoulder.

“It wasn’t anyone from purity, who caught me. And they offered me a choice between coming here or suffering a fate far more likely to kill me. So here I am.”

“Won’t the guild report you when they find out you’re a cleric?” Mez asked.

“I don’t think the guild cares about it,” the cleric answered. “As far as I know, everyone actively hunting down the charlatans are either purity or work directly for them.”

“So we might get to see other kinds of clerics here?” the archer asked.

“I’m guessing that depends on if they can avoid getting caught,” Jackal said, “and if they know the guild wouldn’t care. It isn’t like they can advertise themselves as a safe-haven for people the purity clerics consider criminals. I’m not sure the guild could survive the clerics pulling their support entirely.”

“This is getting too depressing,” Tibs said, standing.

Jackal laughed, then frowned as Tibs offered him the Sea Drop candy. “I need you to break this. So we can all have a piece. It’s candy, it’s going to make us feel better.”

Jackal laughed again and squeezed the lump of candy between his fingers, having to draw on his essence, coating his hand in earth before he was strong enough to shatter it. A lot of the fragments flew across the room, but enough pieces were left for each of them to have one.

“Don’t bite into them,” Tibs warned.

Mez looked at Jackal’s still earth-covered hand. “I wasn’t going to even try it.”

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