Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 107

"I'm not going to break down," she stated. "It's why I train them. To do the brunt of the fighting." He started walking. "How much further?"

Tibs looked at the coin she left behind, then joined her. "A lot. Sto's in the City Hall, and that's almost on the other side of the city, but it's closer than the king's house, I think. We haven't found that yet."

"So, you know where you have to go, and it's just about surviving the monsters while you get there?"

"We have to figure out where to go. And there are puzzles and traps. A lot of buildings have them. I think those are the important ones. The ones where Ganny put the clues that will lead the teams to the king's house. She likes working with puzzles."

"Who's this Ganny?"

"She helps Sto. Guides him, tries to keep him from breaking the rules."

"So, there's a woman keeping the place in order?" she asked, smirking.

"I don't think she's a woman. I don't know what she is. She isn't a person the way we are, just like Sto is a person in a different way than us. But she sounds like a girl to me, and Sto sounds like a guy. They don't care if you call them it."

"And the dungeon's a boy." Her tone sounded like learning that made something fall into place.

"Sto isn't like anything we understand," Tibs said. "He's all of this. When we break a wall, he feels it."

"So, someone could come in and kill—"

Tibs raised a hand as he sensed something at the limit of his range. He focused through the miasma to work out why they didn't feel like golems. Then he ran as he made out the tint to their essence.

"Runners!" he yelled as a reply to Serba's call. Four of them, one of which was losing essence fast. He reached in this pouch and cursed. He'd left the potions with his armor, since there weren't scheduled for a run today.

"It's Tibs!" he yelled when he thought he was close enough to be heard. He still had to stop to keep from colliding with the etching that formed ine a wall of swords.

"What are you doing in here?" Quigly demanded, glaring. "It's our run."

"She needs help," he replied, reaching into his pouch. "How come she didn't drink a potion?"

"Took all we had for the four of us to get out of that palace alive," the archer said. "Then the abyss cursed place went wild."

If they didn't have one, how was he going to pull this off? Or did it matter anymore if they knew he had more than one element? His fingers closed on something that wasn't a coin and he pulled it out. "This will help." He showed the small crystal and worked at not showing his puzzlement. He had no memory of putting that in there, and it had been a long time since his fingers had found pockets without him noticing.

Or maybe it was just that he'd stop noticing if the coins in his pouch at the ends of a day matched didn't what they should be? It wasn't like he looked in it all that often.

"It's like the dungeon's gone feral again," Quigly said; the wall disappeared into essence.

"It's not that." He put the crystal in Jen's hand. "It's being attacked." He made a splint over her body to keep her essence from leaking, then made a weave of purity.

"Not again," the sorcerer said, her word barely audible through her exhaustion, as the mass of essence rounded a corner.

"They're with me," Tibs said as they got ready for a fight. "Well, with her, but she's with me."

A whistle from Serba and the dogs came to a stop.

"Serb?" the archer called.

"Damon," she replied, returning the greeting in a flatter tone than his had been.