“How does it know you made changes?” Merka whispered, just as Tibs said.

  “How did you make changes?” He hadn’t meant to reveal he’d sensed what the dungeon had done. “I thought you weren’t allowed to make changes during the day?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be allowed?” Firmen asked. “I’m as likely to have an idea for a new trap during the day than at night; and Merka’s right. How do you know I made them?”

  “Wait, you know about days and nights?” He really should focus on the important things. “How do you know where the sun is?”

  “Are you trying to delay the start of your…run you called it? Do I need to incentivize you by moving the walls until the person you want to rescue is crushed?”

  “Okay. That, I know you can’t do. His presence keeps you from affecting anything close to him. And no, I’m not delaying anything. I’m just surprised. Sto didn’t know what a day was. I tried to explain it to him, but he also had no idea what the sun is.”

  “I don’t sense the sun. Merka explained it’s well beyond my reach, but that it sends essences down that feed the plants, and in part, me. I can sense the cycle of the essence being there, and then not.”

  “Then, if I tell you that one day is the length of the essence starting, ending, and just before it stars again, you understand what that means?”

  “It’s trying to trick you,” Merka said defiantly. “The day is when the sun feeds the plants.”

  “Yes, that’s the daytime.” Tibs tried not to let the annoyance sound. “Nighttime is when it isn’t happening. The two, one after the other, is what we, people, call, ‘a day’. It helps us keep track of time. We also divide the day into section based on how far the sun is from the horizon, but we don’t need that here.”

  “We don’t need that day thing at all,” Merka stated.

  “Maybe not.” Tibs smiled; he’d explain why it would be useful later. “How about I get started?”

  “Yes.” Merka’s smile was audible. “Do get started.”

  He sensed the layout. A maze, with the walls being trees and thickets. Passages, turns, and dead-ends. With seven zones that widened enough to be considered rooms.

  Mazes were about confusing the person in it, making it harder to reach the end. Sto had made his with moving walls, but Tibs had come across some made by people in his travels. Like puzzles, they were things people outside dungeons enjoyed as ways of testing themselves without putting their lives at risks.

  His first had been the most memorable one. It had been harvest time, and the field of corn outside the city had been turned into a maze by crushing the paths among the stalks. They did it every harvest season. He’d spent half the day making his way out, because he couldn’t sense the paths, and he wouldn’t cut across by walking through the standing stalks.

  Where the boss room at the end of the maze Sto had made had been on the opposite side of the entrance, the end of this maze was close to Tibs, but the route would take him away before bringing him back. He suspected that if Firmen had been able to move the man he was here to rescue, they would have placed the room as far as possible.

  Firmen had said nothing about how he was to reach the room, so Tibs walked to the lighter thicket that would let him reach the hall closest to it. He pushed the leaves out of his way and backed, cursing.

  “Abyss, that hurts.” He stared at his cut hand.

  “Did you think we’d let you cheat?” Merka said, laughing.

  How had Firmen managed to get the leaves to cut him? There were no other essences than wood, water, fire, earth, and life through them. He etched Purity and stepped to it—

  “What are you doing?” the dungeon asked.

  “Healing myself.” He pulled the remnant of his sleeve over his hand.

  “You said you were only going to use essence to make tools.”

  “But that—” he motioned to the thicket. “It shouldn’t—”

  “Something thinks that because it has all those elements,” Merka said, gleeful, “it’s too good to get hurt.”

  He undid the etching and absorbed the essence. He had set the terms. The leather over his hand would keep the small cuts from bleeding, since he’s need a life essence wrap to stop that.

  He raised his covered hand to the thicket.

  “Is it too stupid to understand it’s going to happen again?” Merka whispered.

  He took a leaf between covered fingers and turned it over, looking for something to explain how it had cut him, but all it had was the sharpness of the edges. It easily cut through the leather, then the palm of his hand.

  How was it Wood hurt him? He had the element now. No element he’d had an audience with could hurt him afterward.

  No, that wasn’t true.

  Fire still hurt him when he wasn’t careful.

  Wood had said she’d give him a boon to survive his return. She gave it to him because he’d broken a rule. Except he’d come to her the same as every other element.

  “I think there’s something wrong with it,” Merka whispered.

  “I’m trying to understand something,” He snapped.

  He’d been among her element and had experienced a strong emotion. It had been a long time since he’d been afraid he’d die. Everything had gone as with the other times; down to the audience being unplanned.

  Fire had been the exception in that it had been planned. He hadn’t known Sto had made the fire room for that purpose, but Tibs had willingly walked into the inferno, expecting the audience.

  Hadn’t fire said he’d broken a rule? It had to keep the audience short because of that. He’d returned from it dying. Burned so deeply that if he hadn’t heard Sto and Ganny’s talk of how the essence in the creature could help him, that if absorbing that essence hadn’t been instinctual, Tibs wouldn’t have survived.

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  And without Wood’s boon, he would have died here too.

  The only thing the audiences had in common was that they’d taken place within dungeons. Why would there be rules against that?

  Because dungeons were people?

  It couldn’t be that. His teacher had been next to him when he had the audience with Water; there were always people around for the Runner’s audiences.

  But he hadn’t been inside them.

  Was that it? Being inside a person when the audience happened changed it so he didn’t gain the immunity?

  But why make that a rule and a punishment if it happened naturally?

  The only other reason Tibs could think of was that it was easy for a dungeon to create the circumstances needed to have the audience. Removing the immunity almost guaranteed the Runner would die on returning.

  So, who had made those rules? The same people who send the Them? Who taught the helpers? Didn’t it mean those people were more powerful than the elements?

  He pushed the thought aside with a shudder.

  If it was by having it inside someone, He couldn’t test it. Even if it turned out purity could hurt him, it would only tell him dungeons were part of the reason. He could think of how he might go about testing it inside a person, but the result, even before the audience, was too gory for him to contemplate.

  “Alright. I think I know how this goes.” He turned to face the passage, forming his sword and shield.

  “Is that supposed to scare us?” Merka asked uncertainly.

  He stared at the jaggedness on both.

  When was the last time they’d looked like that? He’d trained himself to make them look normal after leaving Kragle Rock to avoid drawing attention; his jagged swords were well known by the guild. After a couple of years, he hadn’t had to think about it anymore. The only time his sword didn’t look normal was if he wanted to scare someone. And he only did that when he wasn’t planning on leaving survivors to tell stories.

  “I don’t think it’s intentional,” Firmen said.

  Had what he’d worked out unnerved him this much?

  Without making a show of it, he willed them to look normal, then proceeded to the first junction.

  The creature jumped out of the tree trunk and Tibs cut it in two before getting a good look at it. It chattered into kindling as the halves landed on the ground, then the pieces…melting wasn’t the right word, of course. Moss quickly grew as they became smaller. Then flattened until he couldn’t tell them apart from the mossy and grass covered ground.

  It reminded him of when he’d crashed through that moss-covered log, thinking it was a mound. It had been hollow, barely any wood left to indicate it had been a felled tree at one time. There had been insects, and mushrooms, and other things he figured had fed on the tree.

  He’d been surprised to sense traces of corruption in it.

  “What is it doing?” Merka whispered.

  “I’m thinking.”

  they let out a fearful meep.

  “I do that a lot.” He chuckled. “Too much, some people like to tell me. Too many questions in my head. I answer a lot of them by reading books and talking with scholars, but there’s always more of them afterward. Like, why do your creature go away like this, when Sto’s would crumble into rubble and just melt into the floor?”

  “How would I know that?” Firmen replied, sounding offended.

  “Sorry. It wasn’t so you’d answer. You’re just the third dungeon I’ve been in. And the Purity one didn’t have creatures for me to fight.”

  “It didn’t?” Merka asked. “Why not? How was it testing you?”

  Tibs smiled. “See, always questions. Purity is about hard work and determination. It’s what it tested.”

  “Am I supposed to make my tests based on a specific element?” Firmen asked. “You never said anything about that, Merka.”

  “Because it’s not a thing,” they replied defiantly. “It’s making that up.”

  He turned right at the intersection because it was the quickest way to the man. He stepped around the triggers in the floor and over the nearly imperceptible strings. He also ignored the caches he sensed in the walls.

  The next attack was a group of eight Woodlings, and he sensed them forming in the trees ahead of him; one per trunk. They stepped out of them, armed with a sword and shield, all made of wood, and stood half as tall as he was.

  They attacked as one, and for each Tibs cut down, another cut him. The injuries he received were light, where he killed them with one swipe. His mistakes were more the result of his annoyance as feeling the pain; he’d grown used to being immune to swords.

  They left nothing behind when they died.

  “Merka, is it there a rule that says what a dungeon should do when I kill one of the creatures?”

  “Why didn’t you ask that of that other dungeon?” they replied snidely.

  “Because Sto always had coins drop. Items from a loot list sometimes. It never occurred to me to ask.”

  “If it did that, it’s because it liked you. Why are you chuckling?”

  “Sto got into a lot of troubles because he liked me. He denied it a lot.” He bandaged the cuts and continued.

  The path he’d picked had one room he couldn’t avoid, but he couldn’t work out what he’d face there from what he sensed. The floor had wooden disks on the ground, but the earth there was different. There was a lot of water woven through it, along with corruption, fire, and other elements he couldn’t identify.

  “Okay. It’s cheating,” Merka announced, as Tibs stepped over another trigger.

  “No,” Firmen said, unhappily. “He’s being sneaky. He can sense more than just what I changed. Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s right.” He ducked as a Woodling launched itself at his head from a trunk. He cut it before it reached the ground.

  “Do something,” Merka ordered.

  “Like what?” Firmen snapped. “I never dealt with someone like him. Those who weren’t terrified of the Woodlings didn’t know where the traps were, so they fell to that.”

  “Just…. I don’t know. Crush him, or something.”

  “They can’t.” He paused before turning left. “For the same reason they can’t threaten to crush the man in that room.” The whole floor of that section was the trigger, and he couldn’t avoid it without using essence. “There’s an area around me that keeps them from doing anything. Anything living has it, as far as I’ve read.”

  He backed to give himself running distance, and took off, shield up and protecting his left side from the wooden slivers that flew at him from that wall.

  He collapsed on the other side, his right side bloody in spite of the Earth essence he’d spread over his body. He hadn’t intended to, but couldn’t have survived otherwise.

  “I think that’s essence use that isn’t making the tools you agreed to,” Firmen stated. “Which breaks the agreement we have.”

  “Just like you putting a trigger that can’t be avoided or disarmed.” Tibs pulled the slivers out and pulled himself to the wall.

  “How do you know you couldn’t disarm it? You didn’t even try.”

  Tibs snorted. “The mechanism is in the middle of the floor, so the trap’s activated before I reach it. There’s enough slivers, I don’t think it ever had to stop.” He sat. “Every trap needs to have a way around it. One the entire team can survive. How about you remind him of that rule, Merka? I didn’t call you out on it. I tried to beat it, anyway.”

  “You used essence.”

  “On an unbeatable trap.” He pushed himself to his feet. “How about we agree none of this happened and I continue with the run?”

  “I suppose there’s nothing else to do,” Firmen grumbled.

  “Look. I’m not angry. You tried something, and it didn’t work. I’m a thief. I break the rules all the time. I get you bending the ones you need to work under.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Merka said, and Tibs froze.

  They weren’t talking to him.

  “You told me to do something about him. That would work.”

  “You can’t know that. And it would break the rules so badly it would be noticed.”

  “Oh, yes. And someone would have to do something about it, I’m sure,” Firmen replied with derision.

  “They’re real,” Tibs whispered, shuddering. Even after all these years. Remember what the Them had done sent shivers down his spines. “However Merka described them to you, they’re real.”

  “And how do you know?” Merka demanded.

  “One came for Sto. Because of me.”

  When Firmen spoke, it was no louder than Tibs had. “What happened?”

  “We won. Sto nearly died. A friend sacrificed herself to keep that from happening. I don’t know if what you’re thinking of doing will draw one, but if is does, you won’t like what happens.”

  “You’re just saying that, so I won’t kill you.” The tremble in Firmen’s voice sounded more like fear than anger.

  “I survived a lot of stuff that should have killed me. If you do this, I’m going to use all the essence I have to defend myself. I don’t know if you can tell, but my reserve runs deep, and I can channel each of the elements you sense I have through that. I’m telling you about the Them, because I don’t want you to suffer like he did. All I want is to finish the run, and take the man home to his woman.”

  Again, Firmen was slow in responding. “But without cheating.”

  Tibs smiled. “I’ll just be sneaky.”

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