Stepping Up, Draft 1, CH 02 (Patreon)

Tibs paid attention to how the essence stretched, but again he got no details from it, and then he was gone.

He opened his eyes to the late afternoon sky over his town. Nothing had changed, as far as he could tell, since the town had closed with the dungeon. Unlike the previous time, when Sto had graduated, no construction happened, no expansion. No one but him knew Sto was still alive and healing. The guild suspected he was, but they didn’t have his ability to talk with him, so it was more hope, something that few people in the town had shared.

The bored guard leaning against a pillar watched him step down but didn’t stop him. He also didn’t ask for the bracelet on Tibs left wrist, and Tibs didn’t offer it. It told Tibs a few things. Sto hadn’t changed enough to indicate when he’d reopen and the guild was still giving him special treatment. As far as he’d been able to determine, only he had been allowed back without hassles.

The dog fell into step as he started down Dungeon Road, and Tibs looked around for its owner before taking the chunk of dried meat out of a pocket.

“You know Serba hates it when I give you these, right?” he told Thump, who licked its chops. Tibs broke the jerky into two and threw one toward the dog, who jumped to catch it, then chewed happily. “Where is she? Usually, she doesn’t let you wander this far.” For an answer, the dog eyed the other piece pitifully. Tibs threw it too.

They walked a few deserted blocks. Without access to the dungeon, the nobles had left. There was no other appeal for them, and Tibs was happy about it. As far as he was concerned, they could remain away once Sto reopened. He saw a man working a loom and waved at him. The man waved back. A few of the townsfolk had had to remain, not having anywhere to go.

They’d either been brought here by the guild to help build the town or had paid for the privilege. Either way, they have nothing but this, and some were afraid the town would die and take them along.

A whistle sounded, and Thump turn and ran to answer the call.

Not long after that, Tibs left the town proper to step onto what had been dubbed the gathering field. It was where the Runners assembled before entering the dungeon. At first in mass, because the town had only been tents and too small for anything else, and the field much larger. Then, because being on the field meant higher odds one of the adventurers who guarded them initially would assign them to a team and they’d have a chance at a few coppers.

Tibs still remembered seeing his first whole copper coin, the awe at it being unbroken. Or when he’d received the first one he could keep, although that memory was tainted by who had given it to him. Bardik, standing behind the table, smiles and nicknames at the ready. Bardik who taught Tibs how to fight with knives, who got Tibs involved in a plot to kill the dungeon without his knowledge. Who tried to kill the dungeon, nearly succeeded, was responsible for the constant ache Tibs felt.

Tibs had tried to see the adventurer rogue between his trips to locate his home, but no one would tell him where the prison he was kept in was. Only that it was the most terrible place the guild had. Tirania had listened to Tibs explanation. To how he needed to ask Bardik why he wanted to kill the dungeon, why betray him like this when Tibs thought they were friends.

She nodded in understanding and told him what Harry had said, what Alistair told him. Bardik would never get out. He would never see the outside or people from the outside. She’d gone on to explain how some people were never satisfied unless they destroyed things, and Tibs had stopped listening. He knew why Bardik had done what he’d done. He’d known they had never been friends in the other rogue’s eyes. Bardik couldn’t be friends with someone who had secrets.

What Tibs wanted to know was why the adventurer hadn’t told anyone how Tibs had drained his essence until he looked older than Alistair. Everyone thought the dungeon had done it. That it had been its attempt at stopping Bardik. But the adventurer could have enacted his revenge by revealing Tibs secret, or one of them.

He paused at the bottom of the steps and studied them. They were different. Polished and with designs, instead of the rough stone from after Sto graduated, or from Tibs’s last visit.

“Do you like them?” Sto asked.

Tibs looked up at them, then turned and took in the town, confirming he was alone, before looking at the stairs again.

“Did you have to draw rats on them?” Tibs asked. That he had meant to or no, Sto had given him a hatred of all rat-related things. “And you sound better.” He walked up the steps. There were too many rats drawn on them.

“I think it’s good the new Runners know what to expect.”

Tibs stopped on the fifth step. The rats were ratlings now, Sto’s humanoid rat creations, and they were killing people. Tibs shuddered.

“How’s Gany?”

“Not well. She didn’t take almost losing me well. She tried to explain why, but I don’t understand most of it. It seems pretty simple to me. If I die, she’ll go help another dungeon. It’s what her people do.”

Tibs started up again. “Losing someone isn’t that simple, especially if they care about you. You understood how losing Walter hurt me. It’s why you gave me the pouch and the belt.”

“But you’re human. She isn’t. I’m not. I don’t mean to say that to be mean Tibs, but when you die, I’ll go on.”

Tibs nodded. It was the reason dungeons existed, after all. To push the people exploring them to become stronger, if they survived. Tibs didn’t want to die, but he had no illusions about his chances. With his weak essences, the fact he couldn’t ask for help in training any but water, since no one was supposed to have more than one. Or that his one strong essence, he still knew nothing about other than it let him sense other people even when they hid, or that he could heal injuries after a fashion, or, like Jackal liked to call it, splint them.

“Maybe she’s more like humans than like a dungeon.” The slab of stone was as featureless as always. But the columns on each side had new carvings, each section depicting something taking place in the rooms. On one, a fighter was skewered by spears coming from the wall. The one above showed boulders with someone fallen between them and rat—

“Is that me?” Tibs demanded as he noticed the form was small and thin and held a knife.

“No,” Sto replied, sounded offended. “It’s just a random rogue. They’re the ones who usually panic among the boulders the first time the rats start showing up.”

“I did not panic,” Tibs stated, trying to stop the shudder.

The next one was of the warren room, with bunnies launching out of the hidden warrens and the rat distracting the team of adventurers. After that the boss room, with the golem, whipping an archer into two.

The column on the other side of the door had the same rooms, but different scenes. A rogue on all four, pierced through the side by a spear. An archer being mobbed by rats in the boulder room, a fighter with a bunny bursting through her chest in the warren room, and the boss golem holding a fighter by the neck while a sorcerer had the whip through his chest.

“You made this?”

“Of course. I don’t think there’s another dungeon in here hiding and adding pictures when I’m not looking.”

“You’re good.” Tibs studied the details of the trap room. The floor tiles had marks on them.

“Thanks.”

Tibs sat, his back against the slab of stone. “Do you know when you’ll be opening up? The townsfolk are getting worried.”

“Soon,” Sto replied after a long silence. “Everything looks right, but the corruption seeped in deep. I’m not finished cleaning it out.”

Tibs raised his arm, feeling the ache. “How are you removing it? I thought corruption just destroyed.”

“It can be contained. And I can control anything that isn’t alive within me. If I’d known to expect an attack like that, I would have been ready, but I thought nothing could hurt me. The stone I make is supposed to be impervious to anything.”

Tibs chuckled. “The creatures aren’t all that hard.”

“That’s because I make them that way. Just hard enough to be a challenge, tough enough to kill you if you aren’t paying attention.”

Tibs nodded. It didn’t make the loss he’d experience go away, but knowing it hadn’t been just about feeding the dungeon, like the guild had told them back then, made it easier to accept. Did the guild know the dungeons didn’t just want to eat the Runners? Maybe with the older dungeons, the guild was willing to believe that. The ones the guild thought were wily enough to think beyond eating. After all, they only thought of dungeons as animals.

“So, soon.”

“I can’t give you anything better, Tibs. You know time isn’t something that I can keep track of.”

“I should tell them to set up the schedule here, instead of in the town. That way you’d be able to figure out the nine days of the week, the five weeks of the month. The seasons. It’s how I sort of figured it out, with my team’s help.”

“How are they? They haven’t visited.” Sto sounded disappointed.

“Jackal is with Kroseph in MountainSea. Carina travels, but she stops by to see them every so often. Mez visited them, but he’s spending the time with his family. It sounds like his mother is trying to convince the guild that he doesn’t deserve to be a Runner, that his crime wasn’t that bad.” Tibs rubbed his hand. As if picking a pocket was bad too. Unfortunately, those who made the laws didn’t care why he’d had to do it. He’d been caught, and if not for Sto, Tibs would have lost a hand.

“And the cleric?”

Tibs shook his head. “No one’s seen Khumdar since Harry kicked all the runners out. Alistair said he tried to stay, so he could look after me, but he got in an argument with the lead cleric and after that, he was banned from the guild house, which is where I was healing.”

“Do you think he’ll come back?”

Tibs looked at the bracelet, the yellow gem in it. “If he wants to live, he’ll have to.” If he was still alive. Khumdar had told him he’d been forced to become a runner by people who weren’t guards. Would they appreciate that he was free? The bracelet gave the Runners free access to the transport platforms, but it only took one enemy to find out you were around for them to warn everyone. And if they had enough resources, they could follow you across platforms.

It was one thing Tibs had learned from talking with the attendants. The one who took you places could get back there, even if they weren’t the ones to set the destination, like when Alistair had been the one to set the cavern of Water for Tibs’s first audience. That attendant could return there because while they didn’t know how Alistair’s mind had shaped the path, they remembered the path.

When Tibs had asked how Alistair could shape how their void essence worked, the attendant had motioned to the platform and the pillars. They all worked together with the attendants to allow travel.

“Also, they aren’t allowed back until the gem turns red,” Tibs said. “That’s why they haven’t visited. I get special treatment because I saved you.”

“Your team helped. Jackal took on one of those adventurers that tried to chase you. He was taken down quickly, but it let you get further. Mez let out a bunch of fire arrows. He really likes his bow.”

Tibs chuckled. “It was lucky one of the chests had something so well suited to him.”

“It was, wasn’t.” Sto lowered his voice. “I don’t think Gany’s going to buy it if it happens again.”

Tibs nodded. “Tell her I’m looking forward to seeing what she did with the third level.” He stood.

“Maybe you should get through the second floor, first,” Sto replied.

“I will. I don’t intend on letting you eat me.”

“I’m glad, Tibs,” Sto replied as Tibs walked down the stairs.

Back in town, the man at the loom waved again. “Gone to see the dungeon again,” he said.

“I figure he can use the company,” Tibs replied. He didn’t mind hinting at Sto being more than a beast, because the townsfolk didn’t have their head full of ideas as to what a dungeon should be. And because Tibs was much younger than all the other Runners. He was allowed his fantasies.

“I hope this isn’t going to last long,” the man said. “If I don’t have Runners to buy my clothes soon, I’m not going to be able to pay my rent to the guild anymore.”

Tibs nodded. That was another reason for the townsfolk’s ever falling spirits. The guild cared about them as much as they cared for the people they sent into the dungeon to be eaten. It didn’t care that with the dungeon closed and the people sent away. Those who couldn’t leave had no way to earn a living.

“Soon,” Tibs said. “We’re going to come back soon, I promise.”

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