Mind Your Step, Draft 1, CH 22

Tibs headed toward the bear as soon as he was able to identify the mass of essence in the distance.

“Isn’t the dungeon in that direction?” Heather asked.

“I owe Karliak a bear.”

“You’re going to fight a bear by yourself?”

“No. Just capture it.”

She narrowed her eyes. “How do you capture a bear?”

“Essence.”

*

The bear was curled at the back of a deep hollow. Tibs held it still with Fever, then kept air from entering it. It woke, and he felt how its Fever essence fought his control as it struggled. The struggle intensified before slowing. Tibs waited a hundred heartbeats after the bear stilled to account for its cunning, then let air enter. Its breathing was deep, but it remained unconscious. He channeled Earth and made himself stronger, pulling it over his shoulder, then had to move carefully to avoid being unbalanced.

This was where having Force would be helpful, he decided. As he started the trek to Karliak.

*

He made it to the dungeon’s entrance before Karliak spoke.

“You are an asshole,” the dungeon said.

Tibs grinned. “Told you.”

“That’s a lot more essence than I was expecting. I thought you were going to kill it.”

“And let that essence go back to its element? Oh no. I need the food we agreed on too much.” He placed the bear down.

“You realize I can’t absorb it until it’s dead.”

“But doing this here means you get to absorb the Life essence.”

“I don’t have to absorb it.”

“Are you trying to find a way to ch—” he stopped. He was the thief. He was the one who cheated. Dungeons did too, but Karliak hadn’t, and it would be unfair to claim otherwise. “Are you trying to get out of our deal?”

“No. I just don’t like how you tricked me. I should have expected it.” He sighed. “You can kill it.”

Tibs made a knife and cut the bear’s neck open, quickly stepping away so he wouldn’t interfere with the dungeon’s ability to absorb essence. The life essence flowed out of the bear on the blood. It then floated, and vanished a few hand spans away, where Tibs expected it moved out of the bear’s aura and Karliak could absorb it.

A few heartbeats later, the bear died and melted into the ground.

“That’s a bit disturbing,” Heather said, and Tibs shrugged.

“Instead of giving them as rewards,” he asked. “Do you feel it’s better to just give me a bag of them when we leave? I won’t go for the caches during the run, and you don’t need to have the creatures Heather kills drop anything.”

“That feels more like an exchange,” the dungeon said.

With that settled, they entered the dungeon. He followed Heather as she tested the pavers and those she’d taken the previous day were still safe.

“I was hoping the beams we took out wouldn’t be back,” Heather said.

“Dungeons always reset. Ruppert, go check that the same beams can be moved.”

“It’s the same,” the squirrel said not long after, and they removed them.

Heather stared at the remaining ones. “I don’t know how to go from here. I can’t tell how to use what I sense.”

He shrugged when she looked at him. “I’ve never dealt with this kind of puzzle. All I can think for us to do, is for you to pick one and then we see what happens. Hopefully, you can learn to tell what the way the essence is means.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

Tibs grinned. “This is a dungeon. Everything’s dangerous. It means we need to be careful, and ready to run. Ruppert, you’ll want to be with us.”

Once the squirrel was on his shoulder, he motioned for Heather to pick a beam. With a sigh, she did, and as cautiously as they could, they pulled it out, and were immediately running for the exit as the beams came crashing down.

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Tibs said as they crossed the paver room. He took the bag waiting by the exit, but Heather stopped and turned to look back at the entrance as soon as they stepped outside.

“Do we need to wait until tomorrow?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t dungeons reset as soon as a team leaves? Why can’t we just go back in?”

Tibs opened his mouth and closed it. It wasn’t like she’d exhausted herself the way she had with the fight. And they hadn’t spent a good part of the day with her trying to figure out how to get through the traps and puzzle.

“Karliak? What’s your opinion on us going back in? I’ll leave the bag by the entrance, so you don’t have to make more.”

“My rooms are ready. You can try them for as long as you want.”

“We can go back in.”

He left the bag and followed Heather as she tested the pavers they’d walked over before and found them safe. They removed the free beams, then she looked over the remaining beams before picking one.

Ruppert beat them out of the room as the beams came crashing down.

*

And down.

*

And down.

*

And down.

“Okay,” she said, panting. “I think I have enough for today.”

“Getting a sense of what the essence means?”

She glared at him. “If I did, we’d be doing this again.”

The trek to the town was uneventful. He handed the tubers to the barkeep, and they ate. Heather spoke with the others and eventually left with one of the men, while Tibs explored the town.

*

The next day went much the same, although Heather persevered long enough the sun was only a few hand spans over the trees when they left the dungeon. The one after that also the same, although Tibs noticed she was taking for granted the path through the pavers was safe, so stayed closer as they crossed it, ready for when Karliak changed things.

The next room, they stood in the beam room’s entrance after their run out, looking back at the still standing beams.

“What was different?” Tibs asked.

“I…. I’m not sure. I kind of stopped paying attention, just picking a different beam. Each time.”

“That isn’t how you learn, Heather.”

“Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to focus all the fucking time? Abyss, my dad’s training wasn’t that hard.”

“Your life didn’t hang in the balance.” He looked at the beam on the floor. “Okay. We know the one that won’t cause the rest to fall. We let Karliak reset it, then you spend the time needed to figure out why it’s like that.”

They exited, and unlike what Tibs expected, the path through the pavers was still safe.

They removed the beams, and she stood looking at the next one they could safely remove. He waited.

“I think…. I don’t know.”

“Say it. Being unsure is part of learning.”

She didn’t look happy. “Okay, I think that what I sense is that Force accumulates more on the other beams than this one. Since it’s stronger in the direction it would move, I think these beams press more against each other instead of this one.”

“Okay, now we test that.”

“How? We know this beam is safe.”

“Can you sense another beam that is in a similar situation?”

She looked at the wall of crisscrossed beams, then closed her eyes.

Tibs sat and threw pieces of meat in the air for Ruppert to jump and catch, sending them ever higher until he reached the highest the squirrel could reach; nearly Tibs’s height.

“This one,” Heather said, adding, “I think.”

It looked no different to him than all the other ones. “We pull it off, then we run.”

They did, they ran, and they reached the entrance to the silence of standing beams. Which came crashing down as they turned.

She cursed. “I thought they’d stay.”

“What happened?”

She glared at him and motioned to the collapsed beams.

“With the essence, Heather. What happened to it? They didn’t fall immediately, so something happened.”

“I don’t know. I was running for my life.”

He rubbed his temple. “Heather. You practiced paying attention to your essence while doing other things. This is why. You have to stay aware of it at all times so you can tell when the dungeon changes things on us.”

“I don’t see you always sensing stuff,” she snapped.

He stared. “Heather, when I can sense the town from all the way in the forest, what do you think I’m doing?”

“I don’t know focusing?”

“I sense all my elements, all the time. I can’t stop. The only thing I can do is pull my sense close to me so I only sense this far.” He extended his arm. “Like I’m doing now.”

“Why are you doing that now? We’re in a dungeon.”

“Because I don’t want to know what Karliak has in his other rooms. Runners don’t know that until they’re there. I do it the rest of the time because it’s exhausting sensing all of that all the time. But it’s also tiring holding my sense in. I can’t win, Heather. I’m going to be exhausted no matter what I do. But you need to learn to always pay attention. Your element is your advantage over everyone else. Even other adventurers,” he said as she opened her mouth. “They’ll know you have Force, but it’s unlikely they’ll know what you can do with it. What you can sense. So you have to learn to rely on it. One day, it’s going to save your life.”

Was this how Alistair had felt teaching him? This exasperation at something so simple not being understood? At least she looked properly chastised.

They exited and returned, with the path through the pavers still safe. They removed the beams, and after the one to test, they hurried out of the room.

He looked at her once the beams were done falling.

“The essence changed,” she said. “It moved along the edges until one of the beams fell and the others followed.”

“Did you notice which beam?”

She shook her head, so they retried it. She needed two more times before she could point to the beam before they started. Then three more before she was able to track what its essence did.

By then, Tibs suspected Karliak didn’t know to change which pavers were safe to step on.

“The essence shifts, like I said, and when most of it no longer has a beam to press against, that’s when it falls.”

“The essence leaves the beam?”

“No.” She pressed her fists together. “The beams are like this. And the essence is mostly where they touch, but after we remove it, it shifts to the side, not just on one of the beams, but on all those it had touched. Then, on the next one to fall, it moves to where there isn’t a beam. That’s when it falls, and that cause the others to fall too.”

“So the essence needs to press against other beams to keep them standing.”

“I don’t think there’s any where that won’t happen.”

He nodded. “What we need to do is give that beam support, while not blocking our access.”

She rubbed her temple. “How do we do that?” she asked tiredly.

“By trial and error. But tomorrow. It’s enough for today.”

“Thank the abyss.”

*

Heather went to their room as soon as they were done eating, and she was still sleeping there when Tibs returned from exploring the town’s roofs in the night. It had reminded him of the early days of Kragle Rock being a town. Enough roofs to run unhindered, and not a lot of the runners taking to them yet. He didn’t know if Rokania would have to worry about that, without officially having a dungeon, but as it grew, it would gain more thieves and more of them would discover roofs make moving about easier.

*

Tibs threw himself forward as Heather screamed. He caught his arm and planted the knife down. It scraped over the pavers before catching in the gap between two of them.

Ruppert ran up his arm, eyes wide in terror, and along his back then was by the room’s entrance.

“I’ve got you,” He said, straining. “Heather, you need to climb up my arm.” He so wanted to use Earth, but the only time Karliak had agreed to let him use an element was in that first run, and it had been water. He wasn’t using any until he’d talked it over with the dungeon again.

“Heather!” So long as she snapped out of it, he didn’t need them.

She looked up at him, eyes wide, face pale. Beyond her, spikes of metal lined the ground.

“I need you to climb my arm. I don’t have the leverage to pull you up.” She just stared. “Heather, snap out of it. I can’t hold on forever!”

Her eyes focused, then she pulled herself along his arm, his back, and was out of the hole. He let go of the knife once she was off him and let his arm rest. That had been harder than he’d expected. When he stood, she was by the entrance, knees to her chest.

“Are you okay?”

She shook her head.

He sat facing her. “You fell victim to the same thing that—”

“I nearly died!”

“We’re in a dungeon, Heather. That’s always a possibility.”

“It was safe! I tested it over and over and it was safe!” she sobbed.

He waited. He didn’t remember his first runs. But he remembered the fear. The realization that the danger was real. The pain of losing Runners he’d gotten to know.

“It was the safe path,” she said, drying her tears.

“There are no safe paths, Heather. You took for granted the dungeon wouldn’t change things. That’s how a lot of Runners die.”

“You knew this was going to happen?”

He shrugged. “I figured Karliak would notice you’d grown overconfident and would change things.”

“Why didn’t you tell me!” she demanded.

“Because this is a more effective lesson. I don’t think you’re going to take that for granted anymore.”

“I could have died.”

“I made sure to stay close so I could catch you.”

“You didn’t look like you could hold on for much longer.”

“I forgot about all the metal in your armor. They make you much heavier than I anticipated.”

“Why didn’t you use your elements? Earth makes you stronger.”

He motioned around them. “I’m not asking Karliak to bend to rules for me again. This is a run. If we aren’t both attentive, someone can die.”

She pet Ruppert. “My dad never properly explained what doing a run was like.”

Tibs chuckled. “We can’t. The best we can to is say that if we weren’t careful, we could die. But that doesn’t mean much to someone who hasn’t experienced it.”

“I thought the most dangerous thing in here would be the creatures.”

“The most dangerous thing is our inattention. Our complacence. We’re going to be reminded of that often.”

She moved Ruppert to her shoulder, and the squirrel gripped it with his claws. She stood, noticed her hands trembled, and shook them until they stopped. “Okay. Let’s get back to this.” She hesitated. “You take the lead this time.”

He did. And he was pleased she didn’t take for granted a paver would support her, just because he could walk on it. She checked each one before stepping on it.