Chapter 62: Chapter 61

The bunnylings were hard.

Tibs limped through the ratling village, helping Carina, who’d been hit by one in the head and now had difficulty standing.

Standing on two legs hadn’t made the bunnies any weaker, it had just given them hands they could wield clubs with so that when they jumped at them, a near miss wasn’t enough to avoid injuries anymore.

Khumdar had had to pull Jackal out when a bunny broke both his legs, and after that, it had only been a question of if they could leave the room before any of them died. Tibs didn’t think they’d killed any of the bunnies.

He’d healed Jackal’s legs and had considered Carina, but her injury was different. The essence flowing to her head became fuzzy, diffuse, and he had no idea how he could fix that. Breaks were simple, and the bruising Mez suffered only required him not pressing too hard. How did he fix fuzzy essence?

They reached the trap room with the pool, and Tibs stared at it. Could he freeze the water? Could they cross it? He had the essence, but he was exhausted.

“Tibs?” Jackal asked, leaning against the wall. The splint Tibs made didn’t undo the damage, so walking wasn’t without strain.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ll try, but I have trouble thinking.”

“Maybe we can try the path,” the fighter said. “Maybe it turned it off this time too?”

Tibs shook his head. “No, that was a one-time thing. He said he’d have something in place I’d have to work for the next time I left.” He sat Carina down. She looked around but didn’t seem to see anything. He headed for the edge of the pool. The freezing would be simple, it was changing the surface, so it wasn’t too slick. That took focus.

“Tibs!” Jackal yelled.

He was down, pulling a knife and rolling on his back, ready for any attack, but if it was a rat, he was going to be really pissed. This was a trap room, there shouldn’t be monsters.

When nothing jumped him, he sat. No monsters anywhere. Then why had Jackal yelled? He looked at the fighter.

“You said the dungeon would have something in place.”

Tibs nodded.

“Something to turn off the traps?”

Tibs tried to recall what Sto had said. “I think so.”

“Then maybe you should look for that?”

Tibs looked around. “I don’t see it.”

Khumdar chuckled, then groaned lightly. His injuries weren’t severe, mostly bruising, but he’d gotten a lot of them. He could keep most of the bunnylings that attacked him from connecting, using his staff, and even those who got through hadn’t hit hard as the result of deflecting the blows, but it had left him with a series of small injuries that had taken their toll, especially as he pulled Jackal out.

“The triggers are based on essence, right?” Mez said. “Wouldn’t it make sense whatever this new thing is, it’s like that too?”

Tibs nodded, but it took him a full second to understand what that meant. Then he put the knife away and stood. He needed to sense the room, or this side of it.

He walked along the wall, from the opening to the corner, then back, and felt nothing. He sensed on the floor and was about to give up when he caught something at the edge of his awareness.

He looked toward the wall and moved closer to the ledge. He sensed a pattern in essence there. Of course. Sto had been adamant they’d try the ledge. After all this time of only using the path, he’d make sure he was out of choice.

What had he felt when he pushed his water in the crack? That was so long ago he couldn’t remember. The tiles of the ledge were a little larger than his foot was long, deep enough for his toes and little more. There were cracks in the wall he could hold on to, but if this had ever been something the team attempted, Tibs didn’t see them making it all across, even if there were no traps.

And there would be traps. Sto had been too insistent about getting him to cross that way.

“This is going to take a while,” he said, then placed his toes on the first tile.

The likeliest system, since Tibs didn’t feel essence behind the wall, was pressure. Some of them would be set to only take a little weight, then break. He put most of his weight on it, then looked for cracks to use to keep himself steady.

He made it three tiles before one broke. He felt it give, and barely moved his foot in time, only his fingers in a crack kept him from tipping over. Sto had set this up for laughs, Tibs was certain now; unless he had plans to add something to the water, eventually. Anyone trying the ledge would end up in the water, then they’d have to figure out how to get themselves out. Not deadly, but entertaining, he was sure, for anyone watching.

The pattern went up half the wall, Tibs sensed, and the distraction almost cost him his footing. He looked down at the tile. It looked like stone, but it was as slick as ice. He tested the next one, then stepped over.

The pattern was a maze of some sort. Lines crisscrossing to the point someone would lose track of them. He couldn’t tell what essence they needed, but because people only had one essence, this had to be solvable with his water, which was all he had enough of for something this large. He found one end, and moved his essence to it, only to have it slide around. He tested the next one, and the next.

He found one accepting the water on the twelfth try. He counted five and six ends. If one was the beginning and one the end, that meant…. He rested his head against the cool wall. He’d have to ask Carina later.

He pushed the essence through the path and quickly discovered another challenge. The path didn’t hold the essence in. He had to do that himself. He had to guide it around the turns, feel where it didn’t want to go.

He was too tired for this.

He let out a breath and focused. This was about him improving and focusing when exhausted would do that. At least this wouldn’t kill him. At worse, he’d end up wet and have to use more essence to keep himself from drowning.

Once he had the essence to the other end, he thought this was it, but nothing happened. Maybe the triggers had been removed on the path?

“Someone needs to check the path!”

“I’m on it,” Mez replied. “I can feel the trigger lines moving.”

Tibs cursed. What else could it be? He had the essence from one end to the other. It had taken most of the amulet’s reserve to do it. The pattern wasn’t as clean as it could be. In most places the essence flowed through the path’s delineation and onto the others, being kept out by whatever Sto had in place to prevent the wrong essence from going in them.

Clean.

“Give me a break.”

Sto didn’t reply, which meant he was still off with Ganny dealing with what Tibs had done to the ratling.

It might be for the best. Tibs didn’t know how he’d deal with the distraction. He sensed the entire maze, easily mapped it in his mind, but even if Sto never changed it, the path wouldn’t be the problem. It was keeping the flow tight and tidy within that path. To have the control over his essence needed to manipulate something of this size.

How long would he have to keep it in place?

One problem at a time.

He found one place his essence leaked through the path’s ‘wall’ and brought it back in. Keeping it in his mind, he moved on to the next one. By the fourth, he’d lost the sense of the first fix, and when he checked back, it was leaking again. He forced himself to keep the sense of the other fixes as he corrected this one. He set them all in his mind before moving on.

He lost conscious track of all the places where he’d had to make adjustments, but he could see all of them. It was beautiful, in a way. This clean line moving through the wall, bending over and under itself. Tibs wondered if there was a meaning to the pattern, the way how something was imbued would—

Click.

He froze, then cursed as he lost track of the essence. He regained it and found it was hard. It was locked in place. Calling it to himself as hard as he tried, it wouldn’t move. It was still his essence, but it couldn’t obey him. The path had solidified around it the way he could use his essence to force someone’s broken essence back into place.

The ground shook, water whooshed.

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He rested his head against the wall. Not only had the effort to put everything in place been the cost, but also losing a sizeable chunk of his essence. At least he’d pulled from the amulet, not that he’d have enough in his reserve for this.

A hand closed on his shoulder and with a scream, Tibs turned, then fought not to fall off the ledge, then wondered how Khumdar was standing on air.

He looked down. The pool was now stone. The entire room had one floor, instead of the path and ledge.

“I believe you have beaten the dungeon’s puzzle.”

Beaten.

Tibs snickered.

If anything had been beaten, it was his head.

The snicker turned into laughter.

His head had been beaten over and over by this dungeon. He couldn’t think anymore. All he saw was the memory of that pattern, with all the essence held in place by what was left of Tibs.

Arms wrapped around him. “I’ve got him.” Someone said as they lifted him. “I’ve got you, buddy. You can rest.”

Rest sounded good.

Rest sounded wonderful right now.

* * * * *

Waking was difficult, because with it came the awareness of so much essence. Air, fire, earth, water, everywhere around him, and all the people moving. He wanted them to go away. To leave him alone so he could rest.

“Here,” someone said, and the smell of meat reached him.

He reached and his fingers ended in something wet, hot, and gooey.

“Stew’s easier to eat with a spoon.”

He cracked an eye open and made out Carina holding the bowl his hand rested on. He considered closing his eye, but his stomach grumbled. Food was a good idea.

“How are you feeling?” she asked once he sat and took the bowl from her.

He shrugged. The stew was cool, but still good. “Did Mez get to keep the bow?” he asked when he could slow his eating.

“Yes, but we had to hand over the amulet. The armor pieces weren’t valuable.”

“Good. We’ll get more amulets.”

“Tibs, did the dungeon do what you told it? You said a bow is what we needed, and there was one.”

“He’s got rules he needs to follow,” he said between bites. “But he doesn’t always like it. Sometimes he finds ways to bend them, so I figured I could suggest the bow and see what he’d do.”

“How does a dungeon have rules to follow, Tibs?”

He shrugged.

She sighed. “I need to ask—”

“No.”

“Tibs, this is unheard of. Dungeons don’t talk. They don’t think. They don’t have rules. They just are. Like the mountains they grow from. Someone has to study this.”

“How are they going to study him, Carina?” Hadn’t they had this conversation before? “He’s not going to listen to them, and they can’t hear him. I’m the one who can, and if they ask how I manage that, what am I supposed to do? Tell them about my element? How I’ve had four audiences when no one’s supposed to be able to have more than one? Do you think the guild is going to let me leave when they find out I can talk to the dungeon?”

“You said that the dungeon doesn’t want to eat us, that it’s just trying to make us stronger and dying is a consequence, not the reverse like the guild thinks. You can explain it to them. If they know that, they’re not going to have a reason to send so many people to their death when a new dungeon appears.”

Tibs looked at her. “Do you think the guild is going to change how it does things because I tell them to? It’s used to this. This is how it’s always done things.”

“It can’t be. There was a time before the guild.”

“When the kings fought over the dungeons? My teacher said the guild stepped in and took control of the dungeon to stop that. But that was so long ago I doubt anyone remembers how it was, other than they did it because the kings fought.”

“That doesn’t mean it has to remain like this, Tibs. You could improve things for everyone.”

He shook his head. “Things don’t improve for folks like us. There’s always someone with their foot on our neck telling us what to do. Unless we remain in the cracks and survive on broken coins and rotten food.” He looked in the empty bowl. “I don’t want to go back to rotten food.”

“Then telling them would let you ask for better things in return.”

“I thought you didn’t trust the guild.”

“I don’t,” she said defensively. “But there are other people out there. Not everyone owes them.”

“You mean the Purity Clerics?” Tibs wondered what someone like Hightower would make of him, and his claim of being able to talk to a dungeon.

“There’s the sages.”

“How many of them are sorcerers?” he asked.

She hesitated.

“Who else but someone who has an element could help? Would even be interested in helping? And which one wouldn’t be affiliated with either the guild or the clerics?”

She sighed. “So it’s just us.”

“When we’re free of the guild, you’ll be able to do all the research on the dungeon you want.” He smiled. “You, I’m not going to mind helping.”

“When we’re free,” she said pensively, and her doubtful expression reflected how he felt. Would they ever be free? Or would the guild find ever more creative ways to keep them indebted?

Tibs rubbed his left wrist. How far would he go to be free of them?

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