Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 74

Talking. They were talking. Or mimicking it, since Sto still couldn't get the golem people to speak. The large room was quiet, except for the sound of footsteps and rustling of cloth. It all seemed so normal it made Tibs uncomfortable.

What was the point of this room?

"What is this?" Jackal asked, his voice hushed and awed, standing next to Tibs.

"It looks like some sort of permit office," Mez answered, then elaborated as Tibs and the fighter stared at him. "My father's second cousin runs a tailor's shop. I was sent to help him during a trade festival. We spent hours in a place like this the day before so he could get the permit for his festival booth."

"It feels highly unusual for a dungeon to make such a place," Khumdar said, "considering dungeons cannot know of them."

Jackal smirked at the cleric's slip, and Tibs elbowed him before he could say anything.

"You better hope this isn't about standing in line until we reach the teller," Don said. "We'll die of boredom before that happens. My family was mercantile before that was taken from them, remember?" He said at the looks directed at him. "I might not have been expected to help run in, but I have had to stand in a line with my father or a brother far too often to ever want to do it again, even as part of a dungeon puzzle."

"There are other doors." Tibs pointed to the ones on each side of the far walls, then jumped to make out the top of the door he sensed in the back wall, and pointed to it. "Maybe we need to reach one of them without disturbing the lines?" He didn't think that was it. While the lines were long enough to reach the blue carpet that went the length, in the center, there was still ample room to walk. Unless the door they needed was at the back. That one Tibs couldn't tell how to reach it without disturbing someone, since they'd have to go over the counter.

He stepped forward, but Mez caught his arm.

"Wait." He searched the crowd. "If this is like the office I went to, there should be agents of order. They're like guards, but work for the institutions. They make sure everything proceeds in an orderly fashion. That one." He pointed to a woman in a gray robe with a golden collar. It was the same as what he could see from the persons on the other side of the counter. The tellers, as Don called them. "There, and there." A man and another woman in the same robes. Tibs thought they were in line too, then realized they stood next to them.

"Those don't look like guards," Jackal said. "They look like the clerks."

"It's what they are, back home. But this is a dungeon. If, like Tibs thinks, the point is to make it to a door, they are what's going to get in our way."

"Those in line can also cause trouble," Don said. "If they think we're trying to cut ahead of them. I've seen it happen. Too many people, not enough time or patience. It didn't make me want to return the next time I was tasked with keeping one of my siblings company."

"Then this is a maze." Now that he knew what to look for, Tibs found two more agents among the lines as he considered how close to the center of the carpet they'd need to remain, to avoid bumping into the back of the lines. The agents moved, and he noticed another one. Seven of them moved through the lines without a pattern Tibs could discern. It would take longer to see that.

"What happens if we step close to a line?" Jackal asked. "I get to kick those agents' asses?"

"Doing that could start a riot," Don replied.

"Tibs, how do you expect a dungeon might force us to join the lines?" Khumdar asked.

"There are a lot of essences that can do it," he replied, sensing for anything out of place among the extensive weaves that made the structure.