Dungeon Runner (Book 1 and 2)

Stepping Up, Chapter 11

Tibs remembered the damage to the walls of the long corridor as he stepped into it, but didn't let that distract him from potential danger. What Bardik had done to Sto with the corruption had been horrible, but that was in the past. That couldn't hurt him any more than it already had.

He felt the essence ahead and counted his steps. While it still looked like the same corridor, it was a room, and the same number of steps separated what he felt from the room they'd just left as every other room before.

He stopped before entering it, and Jackal stopped next to him. As Tibs tried to make sense of all the essence ahead of them, Jackal extended a hand, then moved it sideways. Tibs watched him move along the closest of the multiple lines of essence.

"What are you doing?" he asked the fighter.

"Unlike you, I can't feel those things unless I'm almost touching them," Jackal answered, then added. "Unless they're in the earth or stone, those I can feel at a distance, like that bundle in the pool room."

"Really?" Tibs looked at the others and Mez nodded.

"I can feel essence through mine," Carina said. "all I need to do is send it out, and I can feel how they interact. There's a lot ahead of us and I can't figure out what we're supposed to do. This feels like it's just there to kill us. Shouldn't there be a way to get through it?"

"There is," Sto said.

Tibs sliced an essence trigger with his hand, and spears traversed the corridor nearly faster than he could follow. It was like a wall of them moving from here and away.

"Yeah," Jackal said. "That's made to kill us."

Tibs tried not to feel as defeated as his friend sounded.

"What is that?" Khumdar pointed to where the spears stopped appearing. It was a pedestal with the top angled toward them, and Tibs thought there was a plaque on it.

"I think," Carina said, studying it, "that it's how we turn the trap off."

"Why put the thing all the way over there?" Jackal asked. "By the time we can turn it off, we've already crossed the room."

"Maybe it's for when we come back?" Tibs said, trying to map out the lines and understand how the trap worked. There was a space behind what was effectively a wall of triggers. It was narrow, and there was an opening in the wall.

"I think that it's for the one among us," Carina said, "who happens to be smaller and agile. He can go through and turn it off so the rest of us, who are large and clumsy, can cross it without danger."

"I'm not—Oh," Jackal said.

Now that Tibs understood the essence wasn't so much triggers as limits, he could make out the path between them, up to nine layers in, which was maybe a quarter of the way. It wouldn't be easy. The path was relatively linear for him, but it would require using the walls, and getting under low triggers. He trusted Sto that there was a path through the whole thing, but that it would—

Tibs was down on the floor as the 'twang' registered and something flew over where he'd been. He looked around for who had been hit, and his friends were looking at Mez, lowering his bow.

"What did you do?" Tibs demanded.

The archer shrugged. "Turned off the trap, I hope."

Tibs looked at the hall, and the essence walls were gone. "How did you know?"

"I didn't. I just figured that wasting one arrow on the chance it would work was worthwhile."

Jackal moved his hand where the essence had been. "It was." He stepped forward.