Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Tibs turned away from heading to the training room as he saw Brogan Roche step away from speaking with an adventurer. Tibs sensed what the man had on him, and only one item had essence woven through it. It was a disk, small enough to hold in the palm of his hand, but it had too many essences he couldn't identify to hazard a guess as to how it worked.

Now that he has a sense of what the item felt like, he studied the clerks and adventurers they passed as he followed Brogan. Many of them had something of a similar shape with a weave, at least one in each group they passed, and only the clerks. The item felt similar to what Brogan had, but with enough differences in the essences he could identify, he wasn't sure if they served the same function. It might be easier to get one of those, but he couldn't know if it would let him see the door he was seeking.

"Are you lost?" a clerk asked and Tibs looked up to tell her no, only to realize he had no idea where he was in the building. The hall looked the same as every other one, but he somehow was certain he'd never been in this corridor before.

"I seem to be."

Brogan was turning a corner, and Tibs didn't think he'd learn more from sensing the item.

"Are you looking for Tirania's office?" the clerk asked.

"No, why would I be?" What could he work out from how he'd seen Brogan behave?

"Then what are you doing this far in the building?" she asked, studying him. "Runners don't have a reason to be here. And you'd only have one if Tirania called for you."

"I'm trying to figure out the dimensions of the building," he replied.

She chuckled. "Casing the joint?"

"No, just curious." Brogan had done nothing with the item as far as Tibs could tell. He might have activated it beforehand, but Tibs wouldn't know that unless he could sense it outside the building, where Brogan wouldn't have a reason to activate it.

"How about I escort you back to the entrance, then?" She motioned for him to walk, and Tibs did so.

As they stepped into the main hall, Tibs suddenly knew where they were, as if the miasma that Ganny kept on the third floor, but affecting his mind, had been lifted. He even thought he could make it back to where the clerk had found him, but he knew that to be false. If he turned back on his own, within a few paces in the corridor, Tibs would be lost again.

He headed for the training room and entered the one he'd been summoned to.

"I was starting to wonder if you'd forgotten," Alistair said.

"I got lost trying to figure out the size of the building." His teacher raised an eyebrow. "Any time I go to Tirania's office, or when I'm taken to the cells, it's never the same number of paces. I'm trying to understand how it's done."

Alistair nodded. "And what have you decided?"

"Magic."

His teacher chuckled. "But what kind?"

"It could be mind," Tibs replied without having to think about it, "or void. The dungeon makes doorways that let us cross to lower floors, so they could be placed within the corridors and activated at random to change how long it takes to reach a place. Mind can change how I think about numbers while I'm counting my steps. The other elements must have their ways of doing the same thing."

"And you have to remember that strong enchantments combine elements; which increases what's possible to accomplish." Alistair sat and—

"What are the elements?" Tibs interrupted his teacher's instructions. "There are two and nine, but I don't think I've come across more than a dozen of them among the runners, as if that's all guild wants us to know about."