Stepping Up, Draft 1, CH 73 (Patreon)

Tibs slipped in through the window and two of the rogues already there had knives out before turning to look at him. They sheathed them and went back to looking at the papers on the floor.

“There’s a passage here,” Gerald said, tracing a line with his finger.

“No,” the woman next to him said, “that’s a turn left.”

“So we mark this as another passage that’s triggered,” Armania stated and she wrote letters on that part of the paper.

Eight rogues were crouched on knelt around the papers with what they could work out of the third floor drawn on it. The start, to the first intersection they all agreed on, but after that, the only passage they were all sure of was the one when all triggers were avoided, which lead to the crest with the lion.

The one sure thing.

Tibs had decided it was Ganny’s way of showing them there was something to be reached since any rogue’s reaction on figuring out there were triggers on the floor was to avoid all of them. Because they hadn’t known that on the first run, most teams had triggered at least one, which had changed the layout enough it was agreed one trigger affected more than one wall.

The idea to meet and discuss the third floor hadn’t been Tibs. He was busy enough managing the security of the town and the training of the Omegas he had no time left to think of new things. Armania was who had approached him with it. And after Tibs’s last run, he’d eagerly agreed.

The large room was the attic in an unoccupied house at the edge of the noble’s neighborhood. The papers had been procured from a variety of places that, since no one had come to Tibs complaining they were missing them, Tibs didn’t care about.

“The from the bottom of the stairs to the first intersection,” Tandy said, “is sixteen paces.”

“Twenty-three,” corrected Bronze.

“Nineteen,” said Armania at the same time. They looked at one another and shook their heads. “If we can’t agree on that, this is going to be a lot harder.”

“How many tiles are there?” Tandy asked.

“Seventeen from where they start to the entrance of the intersection,” Tibs answered. “And eight across.”

Armania looked at the others, and ever so slowly they nodded. “Okay, and the tiles don’t change from one run to the other, right?”

“They haven’t yet,” Bronze said. “We know that doesn’t me they won’t tomorrow.”

“I don’t know,” Tandy said. “This entire floor seems predicated on us working out how to get the walls to open so we can reach the three rooms that will unlock the final one. Tibs and your team, Bronze had come across the door with the three crests.”

The room was on a page to the left and away from where Tibs was crouched, but they hadn’t marked how to get there. Tibs and Bronze couldn’t agree on the way. It seemed there was more than one way to reach that one at least.

“My team found the door with the dragon crest here.” Tandy tapped the drawn crest on the right of the papers. The way there was drawn too, but no one had been able to confirm it since she didn’t remember the series of triggers that had opened the way. “I couldn’t open it, it’s seven locks that have to be picked, but even after doing each, the door still wouldn’t unlock. The locks are mechanical, but there is also essence at play. I can’t tell you which, or what it does, although I didn’t get the sense they interfered with the locks themselves. More that they reacted to what I did to the locks.”

“Could you see what’s in the room?” Armania asked.

“No, the dungeon’s learned I can look through doors with my essence and it’s found a way to counter it.”

“Same with me,” Bronze said. “I can’t set up a resonance on that floor so see what’s ahead or through the doors.” He had crystal as his element and had explained on the first meeting that crystals were more than the gems they thought of. There were crystals in a lot of things, not simply the essence, but actual crystals, and he could use his essence to make them resonate and give him a sense of what was around him.

Tibs was realizing that Ganny wasn’t only hindering him, but Runner who had working out how to use their essence to sense ahead of them or through doors.

“How about the colors?” Armania asked. “Anyone worked out a pattern there?”

The shake of the head was unanimous. The tiles came in seven colors. Blue, red, green, orange, yellow, purple, and black, but no one had yet to figure out which did what, if anything.

“Natalie, your team’s next, do you—”

“Don won’t let me do anything,” she replied. “Not yet anyway. He’s certain that the way to do it is to not trigger anything and follow the right wall. If that doesn’t take us anywhere other than the lion crest room, I might be able to convince him to let me test the tiles, but that isn’t going to be on this run.”

“How confident are you he can win the game?” Armania asked.

“He knows is,” Tibs answered. He’d asked the sorcerer how he was so good at strategy and had been able to move the conversation toward the came of Conquest, although Don called it King killer. “He says he’s good at it, but it’s Don, so it’s not easy to know if he’s boasting.” Tibs had wanted to switch to light, but with his eye giving that away, and the sorcerer glaring at him the entire time as if Tibs was already accusing him of being a liar, he had to rely on his instinct. “So if there’s someone else on your team who knows it, they should do what they can to be on Don’s good side so they can make suggestions.”

“My team’s after Natalie,” Tandy said. “I’m going to see about activating all the red triggers. Hopefully, I’ll survive to report the result.”

“Don’t joke about dying,” Tibs ordered her. For as much as this floor required them to think, mistakes still cost lives. “We need to be careful. If that means it takes months or a year to figure it out, then that’s what it does. Each time one of us dies, it is going to set up back, and there’s no telling we’ll be able to find anyone to replace you.”

“I wish there were more Runners we could bring in to help,” Armania sighed. “But this is breaking the guild’s rules in a big way. We can’t risk someone telling them to get in good with them.”

“It wouldn’t do that,” Tibs said.

She snorted. “There’s always someone who thinks they are special enough they can make anyone like them, with the right piece of information.”

“And them treating Don like they do,” Tandy said, “is making a lot of the Runners who don’t like they were forced to come here think they can avoid going on runs if the guild likes them.”

“Those people are definitely not paying attention to how the guild’s acting,” Bronze said.

“The type of people who think they can swindle their way into other’s good graces tend to only see what they want to see,” Gerald said.

“Which is why we need to be careful,” Armania said. “Is there anything to add to the map?” they shook their heads. “Okay, we’ll meet again after Tandy’s back from her run and go over what she found out. And keep your ears open for any mention of the boar crest. As far as I can tell, no one’s seen it yet.”

* * * * *

“You can’t do that,” Jackal said, taking the Infantry piece and moving it back to the square it started from.

“It’s right there,” Tibs pointed at the sorcerer facing it, four squares away.

“The Infantry is on foot, so they can only move one square, they have a halberd for a weapon, so they can only reach one of the three squares in front of them for their attack.”

“This is a stupid game,” Tibs complained laying his head on arms and wishing he’d never heard of Conquest, or Strategion or King Killer, or however other kingdoms called it. Ganny was evil for using it and forcing Tibs to learn. He already had too many things to do.

“It’s actually a very smart one,” the fighter said. “It forces you to think within boundaries and to maximize your options with each move so that you can win even with you are seemingly losing.”

“Losing to Ganny means one of us dies,” Tibs said dejectedly.

“Then I think it’s even more important you learn the game, don’t you?”

Tibs wanted to glare. He really wanted to. But Jackal was right. He sighed and straightened and studies the board.

He had eight infantry, two sorcerers, two archers, two fighters, the Lord and the Lady. Sixteen pieces with their own set of rules on how they moved or could kill opposing pieces. Except for the Lord and Sorcerers, no pieces had moves that interacted with another one, unless it was to kill it.

Tibs took his infantry and moved it one square ahead. Jackal shook his head sadly and had his sorcerer, the one facing Tibs’s piece, kill it. Three moves later, Tibs’s Lord was dead. Instead of letting Tibs go, Jackal reset the board.

* * * * *

Tibs ran among the tents doing nothing more than enjoying the scents and sights and making sure neither Jackal, Carina, nor Khumdar could find him. Over the last week, the three of them had started working together to ensure Tibs couldn’t escape his daily game of Conquest against Jackal. If the fighter was supposed to not be very good at the game, Tibs would never have a chance considering the way, the fighter so easily killed his Lord each time.

“There—” a hand reached for Tibs and he acted on reflex, pushing the essence through his body, suffusing it with water, and twisting out of the grip. He didn’t know how one of his friends had gotten ahead of him but he wasn’t—Alistair stared at him and Tibs tripped in surprise at seeing his teacher in the bazaar.

“I—” Tibs stammered. Wasn’t suffusing his body supposed to be hard? At least he’d been channeling water. Not that he’d tested it with other essences than his and earth. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for you.” His teacher looked at his hand, and Tibs again. “And enjoying the vendors,” he added as an afterthought. “I think it’s time we went back to regular training.”

Tibs groaned. “Do we have to? I already have so much to do.”

Alistair smiled. “I think your attempts to drive Harry to insanity can wait.”

“I’m not trying to do that.” Tibs stepped to his teacher. “He let the people in the town be hurt, so we don’t trust him to keep us safe anymore.”

“Tibs, things are not as—”

“I don’t care. I’m street, I know better than to trust a guard to look after me, but guards look after the cities. Folks like me don’t matter, but merchants and townsfolk do.”

Alistair sighed. “That isn’t true, Tibs you—”

“I don’t care!” Tibs's yell was loud and caused people to look at them instead of moving away, they paused and watched. “I don’t care what the guild wants, Alistair. What it thinks of me, of us Runners. This is my town. If you won’t keep it safe, I will and the guild can go sleep in the noble’s shit for all I care.”

“Making an enemy of the guild isn’t wise Tibs.”

“I didn’t make an enemy of the guild, Alistair. The guild made an enemy of this town. It made promises that it broke. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to cause the guild problems, but we’re not going to wait on it to let us die either.”

They stared at one another silently.

Alistair sighed. “At least do you understand that I am saying what I am because I want you to be safe?”

Tibs snorted. “I’m a Runner, the guild didn’t take me out of my cell so I’d be safe. You tried to make things better your way. I’m not going to do the same thing, because it doesn’t work. I’m going to make things better for the people I care about, for my town, and the guild can deal with it however it wants.”

“Hope that it never gets to that, Tibs. It is possible the guild broke trust, I do not know what the agreements were, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that this town can survive without the guild.”

“Really? Because it sure as shit didn’t look like it was going to survive with the guild until us Runners got involved.” Tibs let water cool his temper and let out a breath. “I’ll train, Alistair. I have no choice but to be indentured to the guild right now. But I will not be an adventurer for it any longer than I have to. I will do my time, pay what I owe and you will never see me again.” He turned and walked away.

* * * * *

“As far as I could work out,” Tandy said, marking tiles on the map, “stepping only on the red ones didn’t do anything useful. Those I’m marking with an ‘x’ are traps. This one’s a fire explosion, so if you’re going to trigger it for some reason, so it from a distance.”

“Tibs?” Armania called. “Will you be joining us?”

Tibs turned away from the window. “Sorry, just having trouble focusing.”

“After declaring war on the guild, I’m not surprised,” Bronze said, grinning.

“I didn’t declare war,” Tibs protested. It hadn’t taken long for his altercation with Alistair to become the talk of the town. Don had come down on him hard about how Tibs was ruining all the good work the sorcerer did with the guild to make sure the town was properly defended. Like now, Tibs hadn’t had the energy to argue. He wanted his next run so he could deal with problems that had solutions, instead of creating only more problems.

“No, the way I understand it,” Gerald said, “it’s more that you served noticed.” At the confused look, he continued. “It’s a procedure back home. Before you can duel someone, you need to layout why you want to do it and what are the terms for them to avoid it happening.”

“I was just angry.”

“I don’t know if you can afford to be angry like that, Tibs,” Natalie said. “A lot of people have picked up on your anger and are using it. There was a brawl yesterday with some of the guards. From what I’ve been told townsfolk started it.

Tibs groaned. He was just a kid, he was allowed to be angry and say things he wouldn’t mean the next day. Although he still believed what he’d said. “I’ll do something,” He said, not that he had any idea what.

“It might be best if you don’t,” Natalie said. “I think you need to let Don smooth things over.” Tibs snorted. “He has the best interest of the town too, Tibs.”

“I know.” He was so tired. “I just don’t think the guild is taking him with the seriousness Don believes they are. I mean, what has the guild done since we chased Sebastian away?”

“You haven’t exactly let them do much,” Tandy pointed out.

“I didn’t start this,” he protested. “The merchants came to me.”

“Because you’d already done something,” Gerald said.

“Don did,” Tibs said, “We just helped.”

The laughter was mocking.

“No one who’s met Don believes that,” Armania said. “Which includes the merchants. That’s why they went to you and not him. But Natalie’s right. I think you need to leave this be, for now, anything you say will just serve to fuel the town’s anger. Come focus on this, it’ll distract you.”

* * * * *

“Tibs,” Alistair greeted him stiffly as he entered the training room. “I’m glad to see you’re here.”

Tibs let out a breath. “I’m sorry for how I said what I said at the bazaar.”

“But not for what you said?”

“Have you—” Tibs closed his mouth on the anger. “Have you talked with the people? Or are we too Street for you?”

“I haven’t, but not for the reason you imagine.” He walked around Tibs, who felt like he was on display, being evaluated and judged. “I’m an adventurer, there’s nothing I can do to hide that. When an adventurer shows up in a town or a city, it’s either because something bad has happened, or will happen. We are not people the common folk wants to talk with.”

“Kragle Rock isn’t just another town,” Tibs replied. “We live among the people here. They know we aren’t any different than they are.”

“Except that you are. You, Tibs, wield essence. Magic. Something the common folk can only dream of doing because they can’t imagine putting themselves through the hardship it takes to unlock that. You’re right, Kragle Rock is different from most other places, but again, it isn’t for the reason you imagine. It has nothing to do with Runners living about the people here. But with how young the dungeon is. You still remember what it’s like to be one of them. Many of them knew you when you were Omega, but in a few years, after the dungeon has graduated a few more times when the Omegas are lost among the Zeta and Epsilons coming here to further their training or even the Deltas, and, if the dungeon manages it, even Gammas.”

“Not every dungeon graduates to the point where anyone can train there?”

“No, but we are not getting sidetracked this time, this isn’t about dungeons, it’s about the reality you are still too young to understand. A Zeta adventurer can level a house with a thought. It doesn’t matter what element they have, even a Purity fighter can cause it to happen. Stories speak about us as heroes traveling the world to stop monsters, but they leave out the destruction doing that causes. Monsters are rare, and for that everyone is grateful, because when one shows up, and adventurers have to deal with it, there isn’t often much left of the area where it happened. Part of it, I will admit, is a lack of care on the part of certain adventurers. The better ones are given more latitude in how they work and they will make use of it. But another part is simply the level of power required to bring down such monsters.

“You say the people here are different, but they all come from a city away from here. They have heard the bard’s tales, but also the whispered stories of a town simply vanishing in the aftermath of a group of adventurers showing up to end the threat of a monster. We are both saviors and destroyers. And the people who have to flee their destroyed cities tend to forget that it happened in the process of saving their lives. So the stories that are whispered about us often make us no better than the monsters we are sent to deal with.”

“Is it really that bad?” Tibs asked. He had trouble believing a group of adventurers could destroy a city. A building? Yes. He had brought down Sebastian’s house by himself, using only corruption. He had no idea how someone with purity would do it, but he could think of ways to use water and fire and earth. Darkness and Light were tougher, but Tibs was creative.

“You’ll find out for yourself in time. There is a reason most adventurers stay with the guild once they have repaid what they owe. There are not many places out there that accept us with open arms. Now,” he said, as Tibs opened his mouth. “This is a training session. Why don’t we start with how you worked out how to suffuse your body with your essence?”

Tibs swallowed his question and nodded. “You said I could do it, and that it would make me tougher to be hit.” Tibs had thought about how he was going to answer his teacher since the bazaar. “So I’ve been trying. I don’t like getting hit. There’s also this maze on the second floor, just before the boss room.” He’d confirmed with Runners still doing the second floor it was still there and mostly unchanged. “The walls are essence and touching them triggers a series of spears in the entire maze. They hurt.” He shuddered at the memory. “We were able to out-think the dungeon for a while, but it adapted. It was great motivation for me to figure it out.”

“And how do you make it happen?”

“I just push it out of my reserve,” Tibs said then corrected himself at the raised eyebrow. “You mean the first time.” He hadn’t thought about that. It had been simple for him to suffuse his body with water because it was already suffused with his own essence, ever since Bardik. “I forced more essence in my reserve than it can contain.”

“Really?”

Tibs nodded. “I couldn’t figure out another way. I thought that if I can overfill it, it would have to spill over, and that’s in my body.” He bit his lower lip. “That isn’t how I was supposed to do it?”

Alistair laughed. “Tibs, it should be apparent by now that there is no fixed way to achieve a result. You did go one that is considered among the more dangerous ones, but you made it work. Once you had done it that way, did you have to overfill it again?”

“At first. But then it got easier, then I could just make it happen. How did you do it?”

“What is essence, Tibs?”

Tibs felt like groaning at the question, but at the same time, it was such a family technique from Alistair that it comforted him. “It is and isn’t the element.”

His teacher nodded. “If it isn’t, how do the walls of your reserve contain it?”

Tibs opened his mouth, then closed it to consider it. How did his reserve contain something that was and wasn’t? “I don’t know.”

“You forced your will on it. I realized that my reserve was my will. I willed it to be contained, therefore, I could will it to let the essence through, in part or in whole.”

That didn’t feel right. Or maybe it simply was Tibs’s situation that made his reserve different? He couldn’t affect his small reserves, other than to channel them, at which point the central one converter into them. He rubbed his temple.

“Yes, essence never stops being confusing,” Alistair said, then became serious. “Tibs, why didn’t you have me contracted when you were able to do it? You clearly have practiced for some time and I applaud you for it, but you know I was waiting on this to continue your training.”

Tibs was happy he’d prepared for that question too, not that he’d be lying, just skirting the truth here and there. “Jackal, he’s my team leader. He’s an earth fighter, and he’s Lambda. He told me that when he was able to suffuse his body with his essence, he was able to graduate.”

“That’s correct. It’s the clearest measure that you are ready for the next stage.”

“My team can’t have two Runners at Lambda. We’re only allowed one who’s one level higher than the dungeon. I don’t want to lose my team.”

“And you’re willing to hold yourself back to ensure that.”

Tibs nodded. “I haven’t had a family in a long time, Alistair. Not until Jackal, Carina, Mez, and Khumdar. I know you’re going to tell me that even if I’m on another team, they’ll still be my family, or that I’m going to lose them no matter what I do, so I might as well get used to it now. But I have them now. And I’m going to stay with them.”

Alistair nodded. “I know you believe the guild is uncaring in how it does things, but you’ll find that dungeons force even it to bend. But I don’t see a problem with keeping this from them. My methods for training you have been unorthodox from the start, why should they change now?”