Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

"Jackal!" Tibs snapped as the ground shook and the disks began to turn at different rates.

The fighter ran out of the building. "Sorry, I didn't think it—"

"That's not new," Mez said, tuning to face the walls growing from the ground to surround the plaza. He cursed when pulling on the bow's string did nothing. "I have a score of arrows," He warned, taking one from the quiver at his hip, "and I don't think they're going to regenerate without essence to feed it. Once I'm out, I'll be useless."

"And I'm already useless," Don said.

Tibs peering into the room to look at the rings' motion and immediately saw he'd been wrong; most turned, but the bottom two didn't. It had to mean something.

"Do I look like I have a staff!" Don yelled, pulling Tibs attention to his team.

"I meant—"

"I'm a sorcerer!" Don yelled at Jackal. "I'm not a fighter, throwing myself into a fight to die!"

"Don," Mez started.

"It's your job to protect me!" the sorcerer looked around, terrified, and Tibs went to him.

"The wall has holes!" Mez yelled, and Don ran for the closest one.

"You aren't leaving me behind!"

"People are coming through!" Jackal yelled as Don fell, trying to stop and turn.

"We aren't going to leave you," Tibs told him, uselessly trying to sense the golem people. "Breathe, Don. Breathe yourself now. You're on my team, and dying's not allowed, remember?"

"How is the dungeon making them work if there isn't any essence in here?" Mez asked, joining Tibs and Don.

The sorcerer's breathing was ragged, but as he looked around at the stout gray skinned golem people, the fear left his eyes, replace by calculation.

"The same way we aren't dead," he said, his breathing steadying. "Tibs says they're filled with the same essence everyone has, so just likes it's protecting us, it's protecting them."

Tibs helped him stand.

"Would that not mean they are as limited as we, if that is the case?" Khumdar asked.

"Except they're golems," Mez replied as the creatures stepped away from the wall and the holes that had let them in closed. "Stone's a lot tougher than most of us."

"People Golem," Tibs said, wishing he didn't need essence to be able to sense through it. If Sto could change the wall, it had to mean there was essence there.

"But the ones made like these," Don said, straightening his robes, "are tougher than the ones that look like us. Like they're made of a mix of flesh and stone. And there are twelve of them."

Tibs pulled his attention away from the wall.

"I'll deal with half of them," Jackal said. "You four deal with the rest."

The people golems were the problem to face. Then, the rings, since they had to be the puzzle, and once that was solved, the walls would go down.

"May I remind our leader he is not currently made of stone?"

They looked like the guards they'd encountered patrolling the streets.

"I didn't have that for any of the pit fights before I came here."

Muscular and wearing armor. Two were slightly taller, maybe matching Tibs, and they wore metal armor where the others looked to be armored in something made of scales, like the dragons, except they didn't glow. If that was because they weren't enchanted or the lack of essence kept the glow from being visible...Tibs would find out when they fought.