Stepping Wild (Dungeon Runner 04)

"What is combat?" Simtor asked.

"Glad you asked." Tibs smiled, having already come up with a way to explain it. "Have you and Karliak had disagreements where either of you raised their voice at one point out of anger or annoyance at the other?"

"Yes," they both said in a matter of fact tone that surprised him. He couldn't remember any group there those argument were taken for granted. There had always been an element of down playing them.

"Combat is like if one of them gets so bad it turns physical and one of you hits the other."

"Hits the other how?" the dungeon asked.

"With your hand, of course…." He trailed off, looking at his hand. The flaw in his explanation become obvious. "Okay, let's try something different. You said that you sensed a lynx chasing a hopper. Did you sense when it caught it?"

"No."

So not an easy example, then. "If you'd sensed it, you'd have seen the hopper defending itself while the lynx tried to kill it. That's combat."

"Does it get its essence out of killing it? The way I do?"

"In a way. Once the hopper dies, the lynx eats it. It's sort of like when you absorbed a dead hopper, but we need to cut them down to sizes that fits in our mouth." He opened it to show.

"That's much smaller than the hopper," Simtor said.

"I use a knife to cut it down. I'll also cook it, but that's a people thing. The lynx uses its claws and teeth to rend it and eat it."

"Doesn't it care that doing that will hurt the hopper?" Karliak asked. "What you describe sounds a lot like when one falls on a spike. But it can't be as fast."

"Animals don't think the way we do, and I can't talk to them."

"You talked to the lynx you brought," Simtor pointed out.

"But it doesn't understand me."

"Then why do it?"

"It lets me vent my frustration at it not doing what I tell it to."

"But you said it doesn't understand you."

"Yep."

"Then why would you think it would do what you tell it to?"

"Because I'm stubborn. People can be odd like that. The things we feel in here—" he tapped his chest. "—will make us do thing that don't always make sense to those who don't know those feelings, and since we can't feel each other's feelings, it can get really confusing at times."

"Sounds to me like you'd all be better served if you didn't feel anything," Karliak said.

"No, we wouldn't. I did it for a while when I was a kid. I caused just about as much damage that way, would have caused more if my brother hadn't managed to make me see reason."

"So combat is about you getting food, and the food not wanting to die," Simtor said.

"Sometimes."

They groaned. "This is going to be complex, isn't it?"

"Sorry for the headache, but yet. People are involved, so it's going to get difficult."

"I don't know what a headache is, and I don't want to know," they hurried to add. "Just get on with it."

Tibs wondered if the people who'd dealt with him and his reluctance to learn important subjects had been as amused as he was by Simtor's reaction. Considering how they're sometimes reacted, he thought he'd annoyed them much more.

"People will do it to prove themselves."

"With my tests."

"And with each other." How to go about that one? "A lot of people have a need to show they are better than others. It doesn't all result in combat, but for those wanting to show they are stronger, or better fighters, that's how it usually manifests." Not particularly useful for the dungeon. "Make two hoppers."

Two dead hoppers grew out of the ground. They looked real, with the holes the spikes had put in them. Even the way the essence in them felt was how it felts when he sensed rabbits. They didn't have life essence, and the holes were the same.

"Are they the same hopper?"

"You didn't say to make them different."

"But you have different ones, right?"

"I can make any of the ones that died in me."

"If you pay attention to different ones, you'll notice they aren't exactly the same. That means one hopper will be better at something and another at something else."

"How do I tell what they are better at?"

"By pitting them against each other in combat."

"How do I do that?"

He looked at the unmoving rabbits. "The first step is working out how to put life essence back into them so they will move without you controlling them."

"I can control them?"

"They're made of your essence, and you control that. That way, you can manipulate them. But that doesn't help with this problem. You need an example you can follow along." He looked around, considering his options. The lynx was still out there and if Karliak closed the walls with it and a rabbit they'd have to fight, but he'd have no way to control how that went. He sensed for where the lynx was, and had to extend his sense further than expected. Maybe the lynx didn't want Tibs to find it again. It was out of luck, but the larger animal he sensed would serve his purpose better.

"How well do you remember what happens within your influence?"

"I don't forget anything," they replied snidely.

"But something will be harder to find when Karliak had a lot of them," Simtor added.

"Okay, then this should work. I need you to turn your influence into a clearing. I'll enter it with a bear, and—"

"What's a bear?"

"Another kind of animal. I'm going to fight it so you see what combat is. When we enter, I need you to make columns at the edge of your influence leaving a gap of my width between them. Make them as solid as you can, bears are strong. Do you have any questions?"

"Are you going to get hurt?"

"Probably not. I'll make the fight last, so you have a lot to work with, but I have a lot of essence." He grinned. "But I have been known to overestimate what I'm able to do, so it might happen."

"If you die, can I absorb you?"

Tibs rolled his eyes. "If I die to a bear, you had better absorb me so you can learn how stupid I was."

"Don't die," Simtor said. "You still have things to teach me."

"I'll know what he knows," Karliak said.

"But I won't."

"I'll tell you anything you want to know."

Tibs didn't hear the reply as he stepped out of the dungeon's influence. He sensed the trees move there as he advanced toward the bear. When he found it, it was sleeping.

He waited until the dungeon's influence was free of trees before stepping to it, intent on poking it. He'd learned how angry bears were when woken up, and that would serve him here.

It startled awake before he touched it, and looked in his direction with only one sniff. It roared and Tibs stepped back out of the swipe's reach. He backed again, and two steps later he was outside the cave it denned in.

It didn't follow.

"Come on. Not you too." He stepped in and out of the way of the large paw. Out he went again, and it didn't follow. "Okay, I guess I need to properly motivate you." He made a stone the size of his fist and threw it as hard as he could at the bear. It roared and charged in his direction.

"There we go." He ran, and it chased.

For a while.

Then it turned around.

"Come on!"

Two stones in succession, and it was chasing him again. He had to do it a third time before they entered the influence.

The pillars were trunks and went up surprisingly fast. Tibs slipped between two, and the bear bashed against them, reaching to claw him.

"That's a bear. They're big, and angry when disturbed."

And he was outside the dungeon's influence. He'd have to explain things while dealing with the animal.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

A burst of air shoved it toward the center, and Tibs ran in. "That's a bear."

"It's big," Simtor said in awe.

He jumped out of the way of the charge. "And they get angry when disturbed."

"Can you kill it?" Karliak asked. "I want to absorb it."

"That's how this will end." He ducked under a swipe. "But first I'm going to fight it, so you get a sense of how combat goes."

He coated himself in Earth for the added protection and strength, then stepped forward and punched the bear.

"It wants to eat you, and you don't want it to do that," Simtor stated.

"At this point, it's probably angry enough not to be thinking about that." He ducked, punched and stepped out of reach. He didn't hit it hard enough to cause serious damage, only to keep it angry. "People can cause that in others. We can be really aggravating at times."

It swiped and he dodged. He punched, and it got out of the way. Tibs was surprised enough that the next swipe connected and sent him off his feet.

"Are you hurt?" Karliak asked.

"No, and if I was, I'd be able to heal with Purity or Fever."

"It doesn't seem particularly good at this," Simtor said.

"It's not used to fighting someone who can think, but as you saw, it can learn. This isn't so you'll fight the way it does, Karliak. It's so you can see what a fight is like." He moved with the bear, prodding it when it took too long to attack. "Animals fight to survive, kill to eat, fight to escape or to chase rivals out of their territory. People do it for more reasons than we have time to go over."

"I have a lot of it."

Tibs chuckle, ducking under a grapple and punching it in the stomach. "But there isn't much to learn in the reasons why we do it. You will fight to test the runners. That means you will have to learn how they fight; and what works against them. Like this bear is learning about me, but you'll be faster and more clever. There's no way I'll lose against it, but there's always a chance that you will kill me. That you'll kill any runner that walks in."

"But I can't kill all of them," Karliak said. "There's a balance to maintain."

He jumped over the bear, smacking the back of hits head. "You can't set out to kill all of them. But if their mistakes results in all of them dying, that isn't on you. But you'll have to adapt so it doesn't keep happening.

He iced the floor, and the bear slipped. Its huff sounded surprised, and it licked the ice instead of trying to stand.

"That doesn't seem fair," Simtor said. "It doesn't have an element, and you're already harder because of the stone."

"It isn't fair. Rogues never fight fair." He threw a stone at it, and its roar sounded more annoyed than angry. "Come on, you know this isn't over. Just come at me."

"You don't sound frustrated," Karliak said, and Tibs didn't immediately understand why.

"I guess I don't always do it to vent frustration." The next stone he threw harder. "I spent a lot of time traveling alone, and the animals are sometimes the only things I have to talk to.

"But they don't talk back," Simtor said, and Tibs shrugged.

He added essence to the throw, and the bear lumbered to its feet, its claws digging into the ice.

"Any Runner can surprise you. They'll try something you think isn't smart, and manage to make it work. You'll try something you feel is extremely clever, and they'll bypass it in a way that never occurred to you."

He chuckled, dodging a slow swipe. "Sto made this corridor to test me, and—"

"You said corridors are safe place."

He caught the paw and pulled the bear off balance. It was getting tired. "It was actually a room, but he made it look like a corridor. There had been a section that was safe, and we'd learned enough to expect something when the corridor just kept going. His third floor was almost all a set of rooms and corridors that looked the same, making it hard to tell when we'd be safe and when we'd need to stay on our guards. And it had walls that closed and opened up, changing the route we could take to the boss room."

He followed the bear as it backed away. "But that corridor was to test me. It was a series of triggers with a narrow path between them he wanted me to traverse. Breaking the triggers caused spears to burst out of multiple places. Because one of the rules is that the entire team has to be able to pass a test, Sto put a button at the end that deactivated the triggers. Once I was there, I could let my team through. Even before going in, I could tell I'd have a difficult time making it. But before I even tried, our archer deactivated the trap with an arrow."

"They could do that?"

The bear was trying to escape.

"Yeah, we can. Sto had been so focused on making it for me he didn't consider how the other on my teams could handle it. We had a bunch of runs after that where he kept making changes to the triggers to force me to go through the maze, only for someone on my team to come up with a way to deactivate it."

"It doesn't seem to want to fight anymore."

"Yeah. If it was a people, it would tell me that. If the fight was because of an argument, they'd say they're sorry, or this would mean I'm right. And unless I'm vengeful, the fight would end. We'd go our separate ways."

"Are you vengeful?" Karliak asked.

"I can be. People aren't only one thing. I don't like it when I get like that, but if I'm sufficiently angry, hurting those who caused me to be like that can become more important than ending the problem. I have caused a lot of damage to people who had nothing to do with the fight when I was like that."

"What happens now, since it's not people?"

"If it was just it and me, in the wild, I'd let it run off. It's much bigger than I need so I'd look for something smaller to eat. I never bother bears on purpose. Usually they're the ones bothering me."

"And because of me?"

"I said this would end with it dead." He took hold if the Fever essence in its neck surrounding the channel that went from the head down to its tail. In people that channel ended just above their ass. As far as he could sense, every other channel in people and animals connected to that one. The Fever wasn't one cylinder around that channel, but bundles. The bones that made the spine. Something about keeping people flexible, according to the books.

There was a lot that didn't quite work about that, as far as he was concerned, but what mattered was that if he took two bundles next to each other and pulled them apart like this—

The bear fell, limp.

—the person or animal died.

Its life essence drained rapidly.

Tibs sighed.

"Are you okay?" Simtor asked.

He shrugged. "I wish I hadn't had to do it."

"Then why did you?" the dungeon asked.

"Because I said I would."

"Then why do you wish you hadn't?"

"Because it didn't ask for this. It's just an animal. I don't like hurting them, or people, needlessly, and this feels a bit like that. I told you, people can be strange."

The bear melted into the ground.

"You can practice making it move the way you saw. In time, you'll be able to have your animal act without you manipulating them, but I don't know how you do it."

He sat against one of the column.

"You don't seem…." Simtor trailed off.

"I'm tired. Sometimes feeling can be as tiring as doing." He closed his eyes and arranged essence in a pattern before him. "What's the common element between them?"

"What do you mean?" Karliak asked.

"There is something in common between them."

"I don't see it."

"This is a puzzle. Puzzles are almost entirely about making people think. Even when there's a physical aspect to them, they can't be solved unless the person thinks it through. Or at least can't solve it the way it's intended. In your case. The Runners won't be able to solve them in such a way that they unlock what they want to access."

"And if I work out this one?" Karliak asked.

Tibs chuckled. "You get an understanding of what puzzles are. And Simtor can help. Just like everyone on a team can help the rogue and sorcerer figure out a puzzle. Some times it will be made in such a way it depends on information someone else has. Sto made one based on the geography of the kingdoms. I didn't know anything about them, so I would have solved it by trying all the combinations until the right one worked. It would have been a valid way to solve it, but it would have taken multiple runs. One of us, either the sorcerer or the archer." Tibs was annoyed he couldn't remember exactly which one it was. Don made sense, since he didn't forget anything, but Mez, as a noble, had knowledge about a lot of kingdoms. "And that way it was solved faster. And I got to learn how my town was marked."

"Is that important?"

"I think I have it," Simtor said.

"Let Tibs answer me first," Karliak said.

"It was important to me. Kragle Rock was the first place that was home for me. I'd fought for it a few times already. I thought I'd be there for all my life. Wanted to be there all my life. It hurt to have to leave."

"Did he answer you?" Simtor asked tentatively, and Tibs chuckled.

"That's all the answer I will give."

"Then, this symbol in all of this is made with Fire Essence, that symbol is—"

"That first one is called Jir, the one you're making is Ank."

"It's Water essence." They made another symbol.

"That's Kha."

"It's Earth essence."

"Yes, and that tells me you got it. There's a second level to it, but you won't get it since you don't know the Arcanus, and it's not as effective since I don't have all the elements."

"What's the second level?" they asked.

"The essence I made the symbol with, is the one that represented by the next symbol. Ank represents Fire, Kha, Water, Bor, Earth, and so on. I haven't learn them in order of the Arcanus, so after Wood, which is Xy, it doesn't really work. There's Gur, Par, before Rys, which is lightning. Then Ool, which is Fever, I don't have Crystal, Sah, but I have Metal, which is Ike and none of the others. It's a puzzle for sorcerers I read about in a book."

"You said Runners solve those to get access to something," Karliak, said. "What do they get access to?"

"Whatever you decide is worth giving them as a reward. Or to the next room. Sto had a puzzle in each of his first floor room."

"You said each room was about one of the aspects. Traps, combat, and puzzles."

"Yes, and they were, but they were about more than one thing. Ganny liked to make us think, and she encouraged Sto to always do that. The first room was a bunch of trigger tiles, if one activated, a stone pole crossed the room and almost always killed the person standing on it. That was about testing each tile to know which had a trigger and which didn't. But for those who were attentive, there was a pattern. The trigger tiles were made in such a way that they looked almost like the others, but not exactly. So if you solved the puzzle of how to identify the tiles, I didn't have to spend time testing them."

He smiled. "Until Sto changed things up on us and nearly killed me. The second room was about fighting among boulders about this high. There were rats in there and they'd take bites out of us. Took me a long time to stop being afraid of rats after that. But there was also a secret to the room. Certain boulders could be twisted, unlocking a hidden container with the key that unlocked the hidden door in the next room. The one that led to the boss fight. That room forced us to first realize there was a door to find, then find it, then workout how to unlock it. I had water then, so I could make picks to unlock it. Another team found the key and told us about it. Made it easier."

"And I'm supposed to do all that?" Karliak asked in dismay.

"No. That's how Sto went about doing it. And Sto had time before the first Runner arrived to try things. You'll also have time, and by then you'll have worked out how you want to do it. As I said. Your first floor should first teach the Runners what to expect going forward, while testing them. So at least one room for combat, one for puzzles and one for traps."

"And we can mix them," Simtor said.

"So long as it doesn't make it too hard. Traps and combat is a dangerous combination on the first floor."

"I can understand that," Karliak said, musing. "You weren't really paying attention where you were stepping while fighting the bear, if there had been drop tiles there you could have falling in at any time."

"Or the bear. But on a later floor, once the Runners are used to the basics of how you do things, then adding different element makes things more challenging. They can be about making them more complicated, or like the puzzle I showed you, and those Sto used, about a second level that, if the Runner works it out, makes things easier, or lets them bypass a dangerous room entirely."

"How would we use a puzzle to unlock a room?" Simtor asked. "What you showed us doesn't seem like it does anything."

"It doesn't. That's an example of a puzzle that's entirely about thinking, but you could take that and make it into something for Runners. For example, you could have a door with places to put tiles in them. Then you have tiles in the room they can gather, each with a symbol on it. Like the Arcanus. And they need to place them in a specific order. If you use the Arcanus, it could be in the standard order."

"There's an order?" Simtor asked.

"More than one. Every kingdom uses the same letters, but they'll arrange them in different orders so they sound different, making multiple languages. Don't ask me which one we're speaking. You understand me no matter which one I use, and I understood Sto from the moment I gained the ability. I think something about it just makes it we understand each other, like the way we got magic was used when we were set to Kragle Rock to be Runners that made us all understand each other. The first order I was taught is Dhu, Jir, Ank, Kha, Bor, Fey, Maur, Zy, Gur, Par, Ryx, Ool, Sah, Ike, Eif, Ner, Qu, Ssy, Ter, and Lyl. I learned it from someone who came from the kingdom where the Purity clerics are based, which is why I think they put Dhu first, the letter for Purity, and Lyl last, the one for Corruption."

"So the order doesn't matter?" they asked.

"I don't know. You find them in etching and weaving, and Sorcerers claim there is a 'true' order, but I read about six of them from sorcerers, so even they don't agree."

He chuckled. "Scholars love arguing over who's right almost as much as figuring out how they think things work."

"Can you show me other puzzles?"

Tibs stood. "I need to head back. I'll bring a few as examples when I return."