Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 107

Tibs didn't take his eyes off the dogs as he spoke, waiting for the Them to force one to obey. "Sto needs to start with something he's encountered. It was rats and bunnies on the first floor because they were things that had wandered inside when he was getting the floor ready. I think that was before the guild found him. Once he has one, he can try things with it; it's how he made the Ratlings and Bunnylings."

The Them had yet to give an order Tibs could hear, or simply control one of them. Maybe they couldn't do that? He allowed himself to relax slightly.

"As he grew, his influence stretched out. It lets him make larger floor, but it also reaches more than halfway toward the town. Well, more than that really, since Kragle Rock's grown so much." He shook his head. That wasn't import—

"Are you telling me the dungeon can have monsters just appear among the people there?"

Maybe it was to her.

"No. Living things keep him from controlling what's around them. And he wouldn't do that. Unlike what someone thinks—" he glared at the ceiling "—Sto is a good dungeon. He only makes creatures within his walls, to test us, the Runners. But he can listen in and watch, the way dungeons do it, anywhere his influence reaches. He likes watching people when he isn't busy. When he sensed your dogs, he made a copy of one, then played with how it looked until." He motioned to the variety of dogs sitting around them. All watching her.

That the Them didn't respond couldn't bode well.

She continued to look around; the implications seeming to take time to sink in. "So they're all my dogs," she whispered. Then looked at him, awe replaced with annoyance. "That's why you can also bribe—"

"Only when I have jerky."

That did not appease her. She whistled a different sequence and, as one, the dogs laid down.

The Them didn't say anything.

Tibs wasn't sure they were even here anymore. Hopefully she'd be able to use them in the coming fights, because Tibs didn't think the Them going elsewhere meant they were done trying to kill the two of them.

"Can you get them to follow us?"

She whistled, and they stood. A different sequence, and they approached.

Tibs stayed on his guards, but they ignored him, or her. The only animals behaving the way Tibs expected were the dogs that had come in with them, moving among the new arrivals and sniffing them as the dog golems took position.

Serba took a step forward, and the mass of dogs moved with her. She grinned. "You have no idea what I'd give to keep them."

"When this is over, Sto might be able to make you some that'll be able to leave with us."

* * * * *

Serba knelt where the dog had crumbled away, leaving a silver coin behind.

It was the first casualty of a fight. It had taken four until the guard they encountered had one sneaky enough to surprise them by splitting this dog into two using void. Tibs only knew the element it had by what it had done, forming a doorway in the middle of the dog and closing it.

The other dogs had torn it apart before Tibs had gotten over the surprise.

"What happens to them?" she asked, standing.

"I don't know." He thought back to what Sto had told the Them. "They're made of essence, so Sto can remake them. He has templates, but I don't know if it means they'll be like this one, or just look like it." He looked at her dogs. They stayed closer to her than the dungeon made ones. "Something like that's going to happen to those who die here. Sto absorbs everything that's left behind and makes use of it. It's how he grows. Is it going to be a problem? Them dying?"