Mind Your Step, Draft 1, CH 20

As Tibs hoped, Lian sat himself next to Heather and leaned in to whisper something. That should keep her sufficiently distracted so she wouldn’t react too much to some of the lies he expected he’d have to tell.

Darna was who brought the ale. She set all the tankards down before sitting.

“So,” Rachel said, “who are you?”

There had been a shift in authority while he was away. Where Darna had been the leader of the ‘team’ before. Rachel now led them.

“I go by Tyrone now.”

“Meaning that isn’t your name.”

He shrugged. “If you’re expecting me to give my real name, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“I don’t even know it,” Heather said between giggles at what Lian whispered. Or maybe it was going more with his mouth. Tibs did his best not to think about that.

“I know it,” Ruppert sing-sang in Tibs’s head.

“I’m a thief. I’m not in the habit of telling the truth about who I am.”

“Am I wasting my time asking questions, then? Is me trying to see if you’re a threat to us pointless?”

She wasn’t lying about her intentions, so Tibs gave her an honest answer. “I’m going to be as truthful as I can.”

She wasn’t happy. “Alright, Tyrone. Did you start the rebellion in the city?”

“Rachel,” Korl said in exasperation. “Not everyone who came from there was running because they played a part.”

“I didn’t,” Tibs said once the fighter was done. “But I helped them.”

The man looked stunned and hurt, while Rachel’s satisfaction was subdued.

“And you abandoned them to be crushed?”

The fighter looked like he wanted to come to Tibs’s defense again, but reconsidered. His expression was more confusion than suspicion. He didn’t remember much of his interaction with him, but had he sense he didn’t do subterfuge.

“My involvement in their plan fell apart due to outside interference, and remaining involved wouldn’t have helped them. I thought they’d be fine,” he added.

“I found his hideout,” Heather said. “Then took his money out of the city.”

“You’re a thief too?” Lian asked, smiling.

“Bounty hunter.” The glow was faint. She knew that as much as that was what she aspired to be. She wouldn’t be one until she’d proved herself.

“What are you doing with him then?” Rachel asked, surprised.

Heather looked at Tibs.

“You decided to speak,” he told her. “You might as well keep going. But keep it to you. I’ll fill in the parts about me.”

She pointed to her eyes. “He’s helping deal with that.”

“How does he know anything about the elements?”

Heather looked at him.

“I read a lot.”

“I knew there was more to you,” Lian said, looking at him over Heather’s shoulder.

“You have no idea,” Ruppert said in his mind.

“My thefts are usually to fund my research. I’m Street, so no university will let me in. So I gather the money, create an identity, and spend time researching. Once I’m out of books that interest me, or something happens, I move on to another city.”

“That’s how I found out about him,” Heather said. “I saw the pattern in his thefts and tracked him.”

“And once you found out he knew about the elements, you decided he was more useful for the information he had?”

“No, I didn’t have it when I was chasing him. It’s once I caught up that I got it.”

“How?” The intensity in the one word caught Tibs by surprise. It implied they realized they had a dungeon and knew enough to expect they should have gotten an element, if they didn’t know about the process involved in having an audience.

“I…” she looked at Tibs.

“Heather found me in the middle of an intense fight. She got caught in the exchange. I thought she’d died, but they she woke up and her eyes were silver.”

“It didn’t happen in a dungeon?” Darna asked.

Tibs shook his head, and they exchanged looks that confirmed it was how they thought it happened.

“I didn’t know it could happen outside a dungeon,” Rachel said.

“Everything I’ve read says it can’t, but it still happened to Heather.

“And what is your real name?” Lian asked sweetly.

Heather laughed. “It’s Heather. Unlike him, I don’t have to lie about who I am.”

“And why are you back here?” Rachel asked, suspicion returning.

“We are Traveling to the Force King,” he said, and Heather stared at him, so he had to add, “I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to get your hopes up. What I read isn’t exactly recent, and while people with an element live longer, I can’t know if she’s still alive.”

“But if you know which kingdom, we could have used a platform.”

“I want the time so you can get stronger. I doubt a king will even look at some Upsilon Runner begging for help.”

The jab about how weak she was hurt. She tried as hard as she could, and she wanted it to mean something. If he’d had another reason for them not to use the transportation platforms, he’d have used it. But she would have been quick to point out she could afford to take them there. He expected she’d been willing to spend all the money she had on the hope of quick progress.

Not that it would happen even with the king to help her. Nothing in what he’d read indicated the king had access to a dungeon.

“Then, you won’t be staying long?” Rachel asked.

“Unless you kick us out, I’ll like to stay until the cold season has passed.”

“Yes, please,” Heather implored.

Tibs smiled. “Traveling in the cold isn’t pleasant.”

“If he—” Darna started, but closed her mouth at the stern look Rachel gave her.

“If the vegetable situation is strained,” he offered, “I can go in the forest to get tubers.”

“It’s the cold season,” Rachel said.

“Wild tubers survive the cold. I’ll have to borrow a fork to break the frozen ground. And they won’t be in the best condition, but I can add to what you have.”

“We’re fine.”

“Rach,” Lian said, “how about you ease up on the paranoia? Tyrone helped us before. And we aren’t fine. The harvest didn’t go as well as we were hoping, if you’ll remember.”

“I noticed there isn’t as many people as when I left,” Tibs said, using the comment to prod in the direction that interested him. “With the rebellion crushed, I’d have expected more people to flee the city. The path here is no longer hidden.”

They exchanged more looks, and even Heather frowned.

“The moved on to other places,” Rachel said, the words glowing.

“We’re also more careful about who we let stay,” Darna added, the word not glowing. “With no longer being hidden, we don’t want the city’s agents coming over to make our lives difficult.” Those glowed, but Tibs couldn’t work out what about what she’d said was untrue.

He nodded. He’d have to find other people to ask and, hopefully, put together what had happened to those vanished refugees.

“I’m okay with letting them stay,” Darna said. “I have a room they can have for a few coppers a night, if you bring tubbers in time for the evening meal.”

Heather glanced at him.

“With a fork, and Heather’s help, I can have enough here well before the sun touches the trees.” It would mean fewer runs, but if Karliak cooperated, it also meant no need to spend time digging for them. He doubted Heather would care about the lack of valuable rewards. She hadn’t even asked about caches or bothered looking for what the creatures had dropped. Although that might have had more to do with how injured she’d been.

Rachel still wasn’t happy, but she agreed to let them stay.

Darna showed them the room. A small bed, a table and a chest for their things. The window was nailed shut for the cold season. Heather put her pack in the chest and left with Lian. Tibs put his in, then left to walk around the town and gather information.

*

When he returned to the room, he’d learned that the Runners were all in on the lie of the missing refugees having simply left the town for other places, even those he recognized as refugees from his previous stay. The townsfolk, on the other hand, didn’t lie when they told him the same story.

He hated what he suspected. He liked Rachel and her team. He’d liked the people he’d met when this was an overcrowded village. If they’d fed those missing people to Karliak so he’d grow stronger in the hopes they gained their element, he wasn’t sure what he would do about it.

It wouldn’t be fair to the dungeon to order it to close its doors and never let them in. He’d covered not sending creatures out to get people in his warnings, but he hadn’t thought to warn them about people being thrown in by other people.

Heather joined him for the meal, along with Lian. The others had become wary of him. Maybe because now that they knew he read about the elements, they were worried he’d figure out their secret?

Liam didn’t seem to care, but the man only really cared about one thing, and Heather was happen enjoying that with him, it seemed. He reminded her they were going tuber gathering in the morning when she left with Lian, then he had to room to himself for the night and a bored Ruppert he wouldn’t let leave.

*

“I thought you were joking about getting those,” Heather said as Tibs used the garden fork to loosen the soil around the tubers he sensed. He’d removed the ice, and softened it with Earth, but he wanted the fork to show the use it had been put to.

“I have to bring back some to justify what we’ve been doing all day.”

Ruppert pulled a smaller one out and ran off with it.

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to gather them on the way back then?”

He smiled. “I have a plan to make it easier on us.”

“By collecting them now?”

He nodded, added them to the bag—eight would be enough—and returned to walking.

“Is one of your elements how you know about the tubers being around through the cold?”

“I had to survive in the wild for years before I had Wood. After my first cold season in it. I read everything I could find about what can be eaten in the wild. There are a lot of books about it.” He chuckled. “From the way they’re written, they’re all from a scholar who ventured out without an idea what the wild was like. They came running back, then set about studying the wild and its plants and animals.”

“Running back? They wrote that in their books?”

“No, but it’s how I felt my first time, and I’d survived my Street during the cold season, so I at least had an idea what I was in for.”

After walking for a while, Tibs covered their tracks the rest of the way. No one had followed them, much to his surprise, but he didn’t want one of the runners to accidentally come across them closer to the dungeon.

Well before they reached it, Tibs had to go gather Ruppert, who’d eaten himself into being enable to walk. The squirrel was still resting in the pocket when they reached the dungeon.

“Karliak,” Tibs called as the entrance came into view.

“Welcome back, Tibs, Heather. The rooms are reset and ready.”

“You have people Runners, now, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

Tibs sighed, trying to figure out how to ask without having Karliak feel like he did something wrong.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No. It’s not you.” So much for that. “But I need to know something. Those Runners. Did they ever some and just throw someone inside you?”

“Throw?”

“Or pushed, or forced in at sword point. Did they ever force someone to go in alone and prevent them from leaving?”

“No, Runners come in teams of five.”

“Sometimes more,” Simtor said.

“Just in the early times,” the dungeon replied. “They really had a tough time then, a lot of them didn’t pass the tests. I know you said teams should only be five, but I felt bad about how so many couldn’t manage, so when they came in with more Runners, I let them. But as they got stronger, they formed teams of five.”

“So no one was forced in against their will?” he asked, feeling better.

“Some were scared,” Simtor said. “But those who walked out weren’t forced to reenter.”

He nodded.

“What was that about?” Heather asked, and Tibs told him about the overcrowding, and how too many people were gone to explain how few were left, and his worry about how the Runner had fed the dungeon.

“I have a proposition, Karliak.” He leaned the gardening fork against a tree and moved to the entrance, placing the bag of tubers in, then meeting Heather halfway to where they’d been. “I’m going to need the gardening fork back when we leave,” he said, noting its absence.

“I know about those,” Karliak said. “They’re all over the place, under the soil.”

“That’s good. I’d like you to replace our rewards with tubers like those and the others you sensed. They should all be different from the others.”

“Isn’t that against the rules?” the dungeon asked. “You said the rewards should be random, from a list I made. This is me deciding what each reward is.”

“How about this, then? Can you make a new list?”

“Yes.”

“Then fill it with one of the tubers in each position. That we, we randomly get different ones.”

“That…feels like it’s not what the rule means.”

“It respects it. It’s all random.”

“Simtor,” Karliak called. “I think is trying to trick me.”

“Maybe he’s getting back for you being an asshole,” the helper said.

“It’s not my fault if I was smarter than he was.”

“This isn’t because you were an asshole,” Tibs said and ignored Heather’s glare. “This is just me trying to solve a problem I have with your help.”

“He did help us,” Simtor said. “We can return the favor.”

“But should we break a rule for him?”

“This isn’t breaking it. Like he said, the items will be random.”

“But they’re all the same items, just different shapes.”

“Which makes them different items.”

“Simtor, you’re the helper. You’re supposed to keep me from breaking the rules.”

“Look,” Simtor said. “Who is going to complain? Tibs wants it this way.”

“What about the other Runners?” the dungeon countered. “What are they going to say then they get this instead of the items they usually get? The ones they like.”

“Only use this list when it’s me and Heather.”

“And me,” Ruppert called from the pocket.

“I…guess. I think I prefer dealing with Runners who don’t tell me what to do.”

“Sorry.” He had trouble believing Karliak had managed to make him feel guilty without even trying. “I won’t ask for anything else.”

“The dungeon was an asshole to you?” Heather asked in the silence.

“No, I called Karliak an asshole. What they were, is clever.” She kept looking at him. “I told him that when he made a second room, I’d get him a deer to be a Runner. Karliak had very little essence then, and I figured I had months before they’d be able to expand enough for a second room. Only, when I came back from the village, they’d divided the space they had into two rooms.”

“That’s….”

Tibs nodded. “Clever. I was annoyed, called them an asshole and got them a deer.”

“Alright, I made the new list. You can go in.”

“Can I get the bag back?”

“It’s in the list.”

Tibs swallowed his protest. If it came down to it, he could claim the bag was damaged during the gathering.

“Do you think you can manage without me in the lead?”

“Isn’t it the rogue’s job to deal with traps?”

“This is just about being patient and testing each paver before stepping on them. I think anyone can manage it.”

“So you’re leaving me in there without help?”

He smiled. “No. While you’re doing that, I’m heading to the cache over there for the hidden reward.”

“Your tubers.”

“The town’s tubers.”

“So this is what you meant when you said you had an easier way.”

He shrugged. “Everyone’s happy about it.”

“Not everyone,” Karliak said.

“Almost everyone.”

“So, telling a dungeon what to do is part of what your elements let you do?” she asked, testing the first paver with her foot before stepping onto it.

“No, I can’t tell Karliak what do to.” Tibs tested his own. “Just talk and hope to convince him, the same way we do with anyone else we’d like to help us.” He tested the next one.

He reached the cache and had it open. All he needed was to find the camouflaged latch, then took the two tubers. He returned where he’d started and put them down.

“Can we agree this are still ours?” he asked. “Without a bag, carrying them is going to be cumbersome.”

“Isn’t that a problem you should deal with during your run?” the dungeon asked, in a sharper tone than Tibs expected.

“You sound angry.”

Heather wasn’t halfway to the other side, so he had time.

“I’m not angry,” Karliak said harshly, then grew silent. “Tibs. You told me there are rules, and if I break them, I could bring the Them on me. And now, you’re telling me to break one of them because it’s convenient to you. And Simtor’s siding with you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Is that going to keep me safe?”

“No, you’re right. I don’t have any right to ask you to break the rules. I just— I wasn’t thinking of the consequences.”

“I want to help you, Tibs. I owe you, for all the help you gave us. But I don’t want to put myself and Simtor in danger for it. I like being a dungeon, and I want to be one for as long as possible.”

Tibs nodded. “How about an exchange, then?” he asked when he found his voice speak.

“What do you mean?”

“I get you something in exchange for the tubers.”

“Something like what?”

Tibs shrugged. “What do you need? What would you like to have?”

“I could use new animals. Since becoming a proper dungeon, they don’t really come close anymore.”

“What animal would you like?”

“A bear would be nice.”

Tibs stopped his protest. “If I get you one of those, I get a bag of tubers each of my visits in return, for the rest of the cold season.”

“What’s a cold season?”

Hadn’t any Runners complained about the cold? “You can sense all the water that’s on the ground? The snow?”

“Yes.”

“When it appeared, that was the start of the cold season. In a few…. In a while, it will go away. It’ll get absorbed into the ground. That’s the end of the cold season.”

“How many visits will that be?”

“I don’t know. I’m planning on coming once a day, but I don’t know how long the seasons are here. Probably twenty or thirty visits.”

“At one bag full, that a significant amount of essence. Is a bear enough?”

“You don’t know what a bear is?”

“The runners have talked about it. Said it’s savage and big. I think it would make a good boss on my second floor.”

Tibs sensed and located a concentration of essence large enough to be one. “How about I bring it tomorrow, and we can work out the details of the arrangement?”

“That seems fair.”

“You coming?” Heather called from the other side of the room, and Tibs joined her.