The Bunnylings were hard. Tibs thought he and his friends had gotten strong enough to make quick work of the Bunnylings. After all, this time, the Ratlings had barely hurt anyone.

He limped through the Ratling camp, helping Carina. One of the Bunnylings had hit her in the head with a club. It had been a glancing blow, but it had left her with a hard time staying up. Khumdar had had to pull Jackal out when a coordinated attack broke both of the fighter’s legs, and with Jackal injured, even with Tibs wrapping his legs in his essence so he could stand, they could no longer hope to win.

So they retreated with only two dead Bunnylings to their collective names and tired.

Carina stumbled again, and Tibs worried. He wanted to do something for her head, but if too much pressure on Mez’s bruises cause him pain, what would too much of it on her head do?

When they reached the pool room, Tibs stopped with his team.

“Tibs?” Jackal asked, leaning against the wall. His features were pained and Tibs wished he could heal with his essence, instead of simply bandaging the injuries. “Can you get us across?”

Tibs stared at the fighter, then remembered he was the one with the water essence. He checked his reserves. He’d lost little in the battles, so that wouldn’t be a problem. “I don’t know. I’m tired and it’s hard to focus.”

“Maybe the bridge is trap-free,” the fighter said, then winced as he motioned toward it. “Like last time.”

Tibs shook his head. “That was a one-time thing. He said he’d have something in place the next time. That we’d have to work for it.” He sat Carina, and she looked around; her eyes were unfocused. He walked to the edge and looked at the water. Freezing his essence once in the water was easy, but he didn’t have enough to spread to the entire pool. In his state, there was no way he could grasp more essence as he worked to keep adding to the pool.

He frowned. There was something there. Something about when he’d frozen it, how he had—

“Tibs!” Jackal yelled.

He was down, knife out, and looking around for the coming attack. If Sto was sending more rats at him, he was going to be pissed. This was a trap room and there were no creatures in trap rooms.

Nothing came at him. It was only him and his team. He looked at the fighter. So why the yell?

“You are definitely out of it, if that’s what it took to get your attention,” Jackal said with a chuckle, then winced again. “Before you walked off, you said the dungeon would have something in place to turn off the traps for our next run.”

Tibs nodded.

“And this is our next run.”

Tibs had to think about it, then nodded.

“Maybe that will be easier than freezing the water?”

Tibs looked around. “I don’t see any levers or buttons or locks.”

Khumdar chuckled, then groaned. He’d received mainly bruises as he covered their retreat, and Tibs’s essence had been too low for him to offer much help after the wrap of Jackal’s legs.

“Would they be something obvious like that?” Mez asked. “If the triggers are made of essence, doesn’t it make sense whatever the dungeon did now would be like that too?”

Tibs nodded, but it was a few seconds later that he understood what the archer meant. He sheathed his knife and stood. He sensed as far as he could. The first trigger registered, the two lines moving at different speeds. He stepped to one side of the platform and looked at the ledge. The stones were still only wide enough for him to tiptoe on them. No essence here.

On the other side of the platform, he felt the essence, two and zero paces along the ledge. He groaned. Of course, it would be there. Sto had wanted to force them to use the ledge. If the traps on the bridge and the size of the pool wouldn’t make it happen. He used this to do it.

He tried to remember what he’d felt when he’d used his essence to feel around the cracks in the ledge, but all he remembered was that there had been no water there. The essence he felt now was part of the wall, not the ledge. He looked at the wall, and it was cracked and uneven.

He could use them to help as he moved, but even if they weren’t injured, he didn’t see his friends managing the crossing this way. Especially if there were traps. He looked at the ledge suspiciously. There would be traps along it; this was a trap room after all.

“This is going to take a while,” he told his friends, who were already seated. Jackal smiled at him and Tibs returned to what he needed to do; reach the essence pattern. It was too far for him to make out details, and it extended beyond what he could sense. Sto had made sure that even Tibs had to step on the ledge to resolve this.

He placed his toes on the ledge and slowly added more weight until it supported him. The likeliest system, if essence wasn’t used, was for a section of the ledge to be too weak to support him. Each section was three paces across, but he couldn’t count on a whole section being in the same condition. Sto was too clever for that.

Fingers in the cracks, he stepped onto the ledge fully.

He made it halfway to the second section before stone gave out under his foot. He’d been feeling for weakness on the ledge, so with holding on to the crack, he stayed on it. This wasn’t a killing trap, the way the triggers on the bridge were. If he fell in the water, at most, Sto would have a good laugh.

He had a better sense of the pattern now. It took half the wall in height and was nearly the same width. Studying the details as he moved closer, his foot flying out from under him, taking the other with it and he cursed himself, hanging by his fingers, for getting distracted. He got his feet back under him and looked at the ledge. This one hadn’t broken off, but the section Tibs stepped on was as slick as the ice his water created. After testing the rest of the ledge his foot could reach, he stepped over it.

He stopped once he was in the center of the pattern and then studied it.

It was a maze of some sort. Lines crisscrossed each other up, down, and deeper in the wall by two hand-span. He couldn’t tell which essence was needed to solve it, but since people only had one element, this could be solved with water. It had to be, because he didn’t have enough reserve to use any of the others.

He located the end to the multiple lines, and touched it with his essence, only to have that slide around and over it. He moved on to another of the ends, then another one and another.

He found one accepting his water on the one and two tries; he counted four and eight ends. If one was the beginning and the one the end, that meant there were…. He rested his head against the cool stone. Later. Later, he’d ask Carina how many lines that meant.

He pushed his essence into the line and discovered another part of the challenge. The line didn’t hold the essence. He had to keep it in place, guide it around the bends. He needed to fill the line with his essence.

He smiled and filled the entire maze with it. Nothing happened, but he couldn’t sense the bridge from where he was.

“Someone check the trigger,” he called.

“It’s still there,” Mez replied after a few seconds.

So Sto had thought of that. Still, that meant he didn’t have to guide the essence, just place it along the line. He groaned as he realized the complexity of the maze meant he had to follow the line. He couldn’t tell where one was compared to the others otherwise.

He was too tired for this.

But the alternative was the bridge or the water, and his team was too tired for either. Everything Sto did was about forcing them to improve. This was the same, and at least, if he failed, it wouldn’t kill him.

He couldn’t drown.

He didn’t think of how long it took him to trace the line and leave essence along it. Once he reached the other end, he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore. “Mez? Check it.”

“Still there and moving,” the archer replied.

Tibs sighed. What else could it be? It had it from one end to the other, and the essence followed it. Mostly, he realized as he studied it. In places, the essence spilled over onto other lines, being kept out of them only by whatever Sto had in place to force him to find the correct line for his essence.

“Give me a break,” he grumbled. How could Sto expect him to have the energy left after all this? He didn’t get a comment from the dungeon. It was for the best. Tibs didn’t need the distraction.

He mapped the entire maze for his element in his mind. Hopefully, Sto wouldn’t change the layout. Controlling his essence over such a convoluted length was difficult enough.

How long would he need to hold it in place once he had it all within the line?

One problem at a time.

He found the first place his essence leaked through its path’s ‘wall’ and he tightened it. Keeping hold of it, he moved one to the next one, then the next. On the fourth, he realized he’d lost old of the first one. Checking, it had expanded past the wall. He focused on maintaining hold of the other three and brought this one back in. He kept hold of them as he searched for the fifth, and as he worked on it, then added it to them before moving on.

He lost count at some point, only knowing he had to keep them all in his mind at the same time. He didn’t even know how quickly or slowly he worked. Only that each time he finished one, more of the path was visible to his sense. Not only in a way that he could tell there was essence, but he could tell the shape of it as it flowed through the path.

Wait, it flowed?

Click.

With a curse, he focused again. How much had he lost in his distraction? None. He could feel it there, flowing through the path. Connected to something he couldn’t sense. He realized it was out of his control, and the low level in his amulet confirmed it. The path had changed and he couldn’t act through it.

The ground shook, air rushed around him with a sound Tibs didn’t understand, loud, like when he’d fallen off the mountain, the wind rushing past him, but so much louder and there was water in the air too.

He clung to the wall and wondered what he’d screwed up. Maybe this trap was going to kill him after all. Would he get a second chance? Did he have enough essence to do it again? Get it right?

He screamed as a hand fell on his shoulder and he looked over it. Khumdar stood behind him. How did he walk on air like that?

Tibs looked down, his heart barely slowing, and the pool was gone. No water was left. Not even the air over the pool. It was all one floor, even with the ledge and the bridge.

“I believe you have beaten the dungeon’s puzzle,” The cleric said.

Beaten.

Tibs snickered.

If anything had been beaten, it was his head.

The snicker turned into laughter.

Sto had beaten his head so hard, over and over, that Tibs couldn’t think anymore. The only thing in his head now was the maze. And all the essence still held in place, flowing from one end to the other without ever stopping.

Arms wrapped around him. “I’ve got him,” someone said. The voice was familiar, comforting. They lifted him. “I’ve got you, buddy. You can rest.”

Rest.

Could he rest? Would the pattern let him?

Rest sounded good.

Yes, rest sounded wonder…

* * * * *

Waking was difficult. With it came an awareness of all the essences around him. Air, fire, earth, and water were everywhere. Then there were the people moving; around, below, and above. Why couldn’t they all just leave him alone and let him rest? He’d earned it. Jackal had said so.

“Here,” a woman said, and the smell of spicy meat registered.

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

She chuckled. “Stew’s easier with a spoon.”

He cracked an eye open. Carina held the bowl his hand rested in. He considered closing the eye again, but his stomach rumbled. Food was a better idea.

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

He licked his fingers clean. “Did we have anything left after paying for Mez’s bow?” the archer had had to use it against the Bunnylings, so the guild would have forced them to keep it.

“Only a few coins and the clothing that wasn’t woven through with essence. I was hoping we could have kept one of the amulets for you.”

Tibs shrugged. “There’s going to be more amulets.” The stew wasn’t as hot as Tibs preferred, but it was still good.

“Tibs.” She hesitated. “Did the dungeon do what you told it to?” she watched him. “You said we needed a bow for Mez, and there was one. A bow made for fire.”

Tibs shrugged again then, spoon to his mouth. “He’s got rules he has to follow, but he doesn’t always like it.” He ate and chewed, hoping that was enough, but her dismayed expression made him continue once he swallowed. “I wasn’t sure he’d do it, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make the suggestion.”

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

She looked thoughtful. “Maybe I can ask—”

“No.”

“Tibs, someone has to know something about this.” He rubbed her face. “None of this is supposed to be possible. Dungeons don’t talk, they don’t think. They certainly don’t have rules. They’re like the mountains they grow from. They just are. If this isn’t something that’s just been out of my reach, if no one actually knows anything about this, we have to study this.”

Tibs looked at her, her confusion giving way to eagerness. She wanted to study Sto, figure out what made him… him. He understood her. Sto was someone she hadn’t known existed, had been told didn’t exist. She was curious, and like him, she wanted to sate it.

Only the damage doing that here would be much bigger than any questions he’d ever asked.

“How are they going to study him, Carina?” He didn’t make it personal. If he could keep this about other people, it would be easier for her to accept, he hoped. “He isn’t going to bother listening to them, and they can’t hear him. I’m the only one who can. When they ask me how is it I can do that, what am I supposed to tell them? Do I tell them about my four audiences, when it’s only supposed to be possible to have one? About my element, that you’d never even known existed? Is the guild going to ever let me go if I’m their only way to talk to the dungeon?”

She stood and paced. “You said that the dungeon doesn’t want to eat us. Its role is to make us stronger, that dying is a consequence of that, not the reverse.” She nodded as she stopped and looked at him. “Once you’ve explained that to them, they won’t have a reason to send so many people to their death when a new dungeon appears.”

“Do you really think the guild is going to change how it does things? It sent us to die. Why would knowing that it’s not what the dungeon wants change anything? The more of us he gets to eat, the stronger he gets. That doesn’t change.”

“But there’s no need for it.”

“I don’t think they care. Sending a lot of Runners to die is how they feed a new dungeon. It’s always been how things have been done.”

“I refuse to believe that,” she replied. “There has to have been a time before the guild.”

“That was when kings fought over control of the dungeons. That’s what my teacher told me. The guild stepped in to stop that. But it happened so long ago they probably don’t remember how it was before the kings fought.”

“But it doesn’t mean things have to remain the way they are. Tibs, you could improve things for all of us.”

He shook his head. “Things don’t improve for folks like us. There’s always going to be someone with their boot on our necks telling us what to do. The only way to avoid that is to stay in the cracks and live off the broken coins and rotten food that fall in it.” He looked at his empty bowl. “We’ve been pulled out of the crack now. And I wouldn’t go back to it.”

“Telling them would give you the power to ask for better things.”

Tibs chuckled. “You trust the guild that much?”

“I don’t mean the guild,” she replied defensively. “They aren’t the only ones out there. There are better people.”

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

“I mean the sages.”

He nodded. “How many of them aren’t sorcerers?”

She hesitated.

“Who else but someone with an element could help? I doubt the kings would go against the guild. Would anyone without an element even understand what it means? How many people out there with an element don’t owe the guild or the clerics?”

She sighed. “It can’t be just us.”

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

“When we’re free,” She said, and her doubtful expression reflected how he felt.

Would they ever be free? How many ways did the guild have to keep them indebted? They had had a long time to perfect their system.

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