Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Tibs turned and studied the room.

Visually, all it contained were the stairs, the table, and the two trays; with one containing papers.

Through his sense, there was the wall preventing them from stepping onto the stairs. There was the essence that made up the structure and furniture, but that couldn't be all there was. He hadn't been able to sense the trap that had snared Don until after it triggered, and he only sense what it did, not the trigger itself.

Sto and Ganny were getting clever with how they hid their work, and he wanted to ask how they did it. What they did. He probably wouldn't get answers. Ganny would see to it Sto let nothing slip, since this was about Tibs overcoming an obstacle.

But whenever Sto was done dealing with his problem, Tibs was asking. Ganny would do her thing and Tibs would do his. Asking questions was one way he went about overcoming stuff. And if he could trick Sto into revealing something?

Well, he was a rogue.

But now, he needed to work this puzzle the way Ganny intended it.

He couldn't undo the unseen wall. Even if he was able to, he expected Ganny had set up something in response to show it was the wrong way.

What did he have to work with that could be the puzzle? The table couldn't be moved, it was part of the structure more than a component. On it were two trays. One had papers—he grabbed one, but couldn't take it off the pile. The stack was a whole. He also couldn't move the trays from the table.

He couldn't sense a connection between them, but that meant little.

"Why two trays?" Mez asked.

"Too much paper for just one," Jackal replied dismissively.

That felt wrong, but was that because he couldn't imagine clerks wasting space with two, when a taller one would suffice, or because he knew this was a dungeon created puzzle and Ganny wouldn't leave useless items? Unless they were decoys. He reminded himself of the empty room he'd fallen for simply because there had been no doors.

Then, he needed to remind himself that he didn't know how places like this worked. Had there been such trays in the offices within the guild? He didn't remember them from glancing at in, but Tirania did, and both had been filled each time he'd been there.

Would Runners have talked about that? Did she do it the way everyone else did, or did she not care about taking up more space on her desk? Nobles would know how things like this actually worked. Most Runners came from cells, so would only have being called in to speak with Tirania as a model. The nobles might, or might not, talk about how things worked, but Runner certainly would.

What did that leave him with? Blank papers in a stack. He took one of those that had been left behind after fighting a golem person and dropped it on the pile.

He waited for something to happen, then tested if he could remove it and it came away, while none within the stack could be taken still. He dropped it in the empty tray, and the flash of essence was immediate and fast enough he couldn't make out details. Grabbing the page showed it was now part of the tray.

When he looked at others, Jackal was offering the two pages he'd collected. "I get to kill more of them, don't I?"

Tibs took them and considered his next action.

"If you are not careful," Khumdar said, "it is you who might end up dead."

Jackal snorted. "I'm only surprised once."

"Until the next time you do not know to expect the attack that takes you down." The cleric shook his head. "You rely on your inherent stubbornness to allow you to survive attacks that would kill anyone else."