It was four days after his return that Tibs managed to leave the village without Joman trailing him. The first two days, he’d woken early to find the man already watching Mother Natril’s house. He spent the next night up, practicing etching, and Joman came to the house with Torus high in the sky.

  He spent that day using Purity to keep the worse of his exhaustion at bay as he helped around the farm and slept early; he woke with the setting sun. He sneaked out with full dark, sensing to ensure Joman wasn’t watching the house and covering himself in an etching of darkness to prevent others from noticing him and reporting his departure.

  In the forest, he used Air for speed, leading to collisions with trees, but he turned that into training; speeding through an obstacle course. He kept the tiredness at bay until the village was well out of his range, then slept.

  He woke with the sun lighting the trees, and it was near its zenith when Tibs sensed Firmen’s walls in the distance. He paid attention as he approached, trying to sense a difference that would mark where the dungeon’s influence started.

  Unlike Sto, who had the gathering area encroaching into his influence, keeping him from making changes, there was nothing to prevent Firmen from extending themself as far as their influence reached.

  “I thought we’d gotten rid of you,” Merka said, unhappily. The entrance was over a hundred paces away. Still the trees and branches forming an arch, instead of a door he’d seen at all the previous dungeons.

  “How about you don’t try to kill me, this time?”

  “We won’t,” Firmen replied, curtly. “Why are you here?”

  “I’d like to do a proper run.”

  Merka snorted. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why?” Firmen asked.

  “Because I haven’t had a dungeon to run in well over twenty years at this point. I’ve tried, but the guild controls them and have processes in place that kept me from doing it.”

  “Why should we let you, if they don’t?” Merka demanded. “What’s the guild? You mentioned them before.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Why should I? Sounds like something you deal with, not us.”

  “They control who goes into the dungeons. Well, those they know about. They’re the people who setup everything about how the Runs happen. The ranks, the classes, even how the audiences are done.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Merka said snidely. “I was taught those class names, so we came up with that.”

  “How about the ranks?” he asked.

  “Never heard of those, so you’re making them up as far as I’m concerned.”

  “And who taught you?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not here to answer your questions. I’m Firmen’s helper, not yours.”

  “Then, one of them told the guild?”

  “People can’t hear us,” they replied with derision.

  Which left the dungeons hearing the names from the runners and…sharing them? Why?

  “Firmen, does knowing what class a Runner is help you with making a proper challenge?”

  “Don’t answer it.”

  “It helps, but only because it lets me include everything needed so they’ll all have to work at it. Without them, I’d miss something and one of the Runner, like you call them, would slip by too easily.”

  “But you don’t need the names for that, do you? All Merka needs to tell you is that there will be people who are strong and fight in the front. Some are smart and throw essence, sneaky ones, those who use range weapons, and those who heal them.”

  “I suppose Merka could have left it at that.”

  “Then why bother with the classes?”

  “Because that’s how it’s done,” Merka snapped. “Unlike you, I do what I’m told.”

  He kept his opinion to himself.

  It wasn’t like he knew anymore than they did. It was simply that it made more sense for the dungeons, or whoever taught the helpers to have heard them from Runners. But it didn’t explain why they’d bother teaching that to the helpers. The only reason for it would be to talk about it with people, and Tibs was the only one who could talk with dungeons.

  “About that run?” The only thing he’d get trying to tease that puzzle apart was a headache.

  “No,” Merka stated.

  “Why not? Don’t you want a chance to eat me?” he teased.

  “Like that’s going to happen, with all the elements you have.”

  “This is the first floor,” Tibs replied. “Omega Runners wouldn’t have an element, so like the previous time, all I’ll use them for is to make tools.”

  “No,” Firmen said. “If, as you claim, those Omega Runners come in without an element, they don’t get to make whatever they need when they need it.”

  “You can not be considering letting that run around you again.” Merka demanded.

  “Asking me to do a run without weapons or tools, or armor, isn’t setting a fair test. Even when I started, they gave us armor and weapons.”

  “If you’re so scared, come back when you have all those things you need,” Merka mocked.

  “I’m not in a position to do that. The village doesn’t have Runner gear.” There was the sword, but armor was out of the question. Even the guard wore nothing more than regular clothing. He hadn’t sensed one metal helmet in the whole of the village. “I’ll make a sword and shield now, along with picks and a few knives. I won’t replace them if they break or I lose them. For the armor, I’ll coat myself in Earth and won’t change that for the run.”

  Merka’s snort told him what they thought of the idea, but Firmen’s stretching silence had to mean they were thinking it over.

  “I don’t trust you not to change what you make,” they said. “You’re too sneaky. So I offer this as an alternative.”

  “I’m listening,” he said in the stretching silence.

  “First, you leave those essence reserves here.”

  “No. I’m not letting you absorb them. They are too important to me.”

  “I won’t do anything to them. But you say that you want to do this the way those without elements would. If they are without an element, they don’t have a reserve.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He ran a hand over his forearm. Leaving it behind felt…wrong. He could count on one hand the times he’d done so willingly. Beyond needing the essences they contained, they were the last thing he had of Sto.

  But he had no counter. Nothing as a middle ground he could hope Firmen would agree to. He left them in their care, or he simply left to see if there were other dungeons in the wild.

  “Alright. What’s next?”

  “I will provide you with an armor, a sword, a shield, the tools you used last time, and two knives.”

  “You can’t do that,” Merka protested. “You can’t just give it stuff.”

  “He reached the last room. There should have been a worthy reward for accomplishing that.”

  “It was here to get the person back.”

  “Rescuing a teammate doesn’t change that he won. He defeated you. He reached the end. You had me build a list of reward for that chest.”

  “Not an entire equipment list!”

  “That’s a valid point, Therefore, I will make his equipment using no more essence than the strongest item on the list.”

  “No! I forbid you from doing anything it wants.”

  “I am the dungeon,” Firmen said, tone darkening. “You are my helper. I always appreciate your advice, but you do not get to dictate what I do.”

  “Oh really? In that case, see if I speak on your behalf when they come to punish you.”

  “I doubt something this minor will attract anyone’s attention,” they replied dismissively.

  When Merka didn’t respond, Tibs spoke up. “I need the sword and pick to be properly made.”

  “Don’t think you get to tell me how this will go,” the dungeon replied.

  “I’ll forgo the shield and knives, if that’s what it takes,” he continues. “I’m not telling you how this needs to go, but if I was equipping myself for the run, those are the choices I’d make. Sword, pick, then armor. The best I can afford with the money I’d have accumulated. Which is represented by how much essence you’ll use to make them.” It was possible Firmen didn’t know what money was. The Woodlings hadn’t dropped coins after all.”

  “Alright. I accept this compromise.” There was a pause. “You agreed to remove the reserves.”

  Unlacing them proved harder than he expected. He fumbled the cords a few times in his hesitation, and taking them off felt like exposing himself. Leaves in a thicket parted to reveal a shelf. He sensed as the leaves closed over them and sighed in relief when they remained there.

  “You are pulling essence from one of the reserve,” Firmen said, puzzled.

  He ran a finger over the black of his left arm. Could he convince them this had nothing to do with helping him? Would it matter? Merka certainly wouldn’t agree to it.

  How safe was it to expose the brand? As far as he understood how it worked, it didn’t send out essence, just left some behind for adventurers with the right items or etching to track them. It had been years since the etching had failed and left clues as to where he’d been. Longer since he’d even come across an adventurer that looked at him like they thought he might be someone they knew.

  And if one of them came here and found this trail? They’d be more interested in the dungeon than the fact someone they wanted had passed through.

  He let the etching unravel.

  “That is interesting,” Firmen said, thoughtfully.

  “What is that?” Merka asked, awed.

  He wondered what they sensed of it. It was too complex for him to make out anything. “The price of trying to do the right thing.” He rubbed the brand. “I can’t remove it, but it won’t do anything during the run. Can I start?”

  “Reach the first room as you are, and your equipment will be waiting.”

  “I can’t not sense the layout,” Tibs said. He didn’t want either of them to call him out on that and claim he’d cheated.

  “So you know where the room is,” Firmen replied, not sounding concerned. “You still have to reach it.”

  “There can’t be a locked door. Without picks, that would be an impossible challenge.” Unless the key was hidden long the way, but why give the dungeon ideas?

  “There will not be a locked door. I promise.”

  Tibs kept from glaring up. By the sound of it, they already had ideas of their own. But he wanted to do the run, so this was what he had to deal with. If Firmen cheated, Tibs would remind him of their promise while using essence to remove whatever obstacle he’d put in his way.

  He’d sensed the changes being made while they worked out how the run would go, but had been more interested in that, than what he’d have to deal with once inside. He stepped through the archway and stopped. The floor was now tiled, twelve of them across, and too many to count along the distance. He sensed triggers under each of them.

  “Making it impossible for me to reach the room isn’t how this is supposed to go.”

  “There is a way through,” the dungeon replied.

  He studied the corridor. Trees and thickets made up the walls, the trees extending, their branches filling the space above the thickets and making out the canopy that was the ceiling, easily a dozen times his height. He could jump to the closest trunk, then climb and use the branches to move to the next trunk, possibly jump from one trunk to the other. The problem was that he couldn’t tell how ‘solid’ the branches would be. Everything had the same kind of weave, but he knew that didn’t mean everything would be the same. Sto had made stone walls and wooden doors out of the same weave, and they’d each felt like what they looked like. If a branch broke and he fell, or if one of the trunk had spikes in the bark, he’d land on those triggers and who knew what would happen.

  “You know everyone on a team needs to be able to pass the trap, right?”

  “I don’t see anyone on your team,” they replied. “But if there were, they too would be able to make it across.”

  Which confirmed the wall wasn’t how to beat this. He could still use it, if he was willing to risk hidden traps there. And if he wanted to do this right, he had to do it with the whole team in mind. He was a Runner right now, not Tibs the thief.

  The tiles were slightly larger than his foot, looking like packed dirt with patches of moss, the thickness of his thumb. The essence in them was Earth for the dirt, Wood for the moss. Firmen wanted him to know the tile itself wasn’t a trap, it was the trigger under it. The mechanical trigger that would most likely react to the tile being pressed down. It would send essence out to trigger the dangerous part of the trap.

  He placed a hand on one and pushed down. It took more force than he expected before it sank, then a series of ‘thunk’ warned of something about to happen. He had the hand off it by the time wooden spears crisscrossed that row of tiles.

  He swallows. Without an immunity to wood, that would rip him apart.

  One and two tile from wall to wall. He shook his head and breathed.

  Twelve tiles. If he held onto the wall and stretched, he could set his foot down four tiles in, maybe five.

  Forty-eight possibilities.

  The delay between the trigger activating and the wall of spear coming out meant he could run it. That was something everyone on a team would be able to do. If they were trained. The Omega Runners that wouldn’t make it would be those too weak to survive.

  If this was Sto, on his first run, Tibs would have bet his team’s life on the run. He’d also have been confident it would be the right decision.

  But while this was Firmen’s first floor, he was older than Sto. The way Merka could inhabit one of the creature told him that. He didn’t know how old Sto was, but his reading had indicated the guild was adept at knowing when a new dungeon woke up. The scholars only had theories as to how they did it, but all agreed that by the time a couple of year had passed, the guild was set up and in control.

  The first disappearance here had been fourteen years ago, but that didn’t mean it was when Firmen had…been born? Some did, he remembered. Something about an old dungeon sending out a spark, and that became a dungeon. But some also appeared…out of nowhere? Ganny had said Sto didn’t come from another dungeon, implied it made him special.

  “How did you come to be?” Tibs asked, pressing down on another tile while sensing for the trigger’s reaction.

  “What do you mean?”

  “People are born of their mother.” He applied more force. “I don’t think the how it comes to be interests you. And I think old dungeons can send out a piece of themselves that becomes a new dungeon. Is that what happened with you?” He had most of his weight on it, this time, before the tile sunk and triggered. He moved off with the ‘thunks’ and sensed as the wall of spear burst forth to block his way, or kill him.

  “Shouldn’t you focus on what you are doing?”

  “Probably.” He tested a third tile. “But the question isn’t going away just because I don’t ask it.” This one took all the force he applied and didn’t move. “And it’s going to distract me. If you don’t want to tell me, at least say that, so I’ll know I’m wasting my time. Knowing that sometimes helps keep them quiet.”

  He stood, placed his foot on it and gently shifted his weight, ready to step off at the first indication it moved.

  “I don’t know how I came to be,” Firmen said as Tibs stepped off it and sensed the trigger, searching for a difference that would let him find the safe ones. “I remember becoming aware of something around me, but I have a memory of that sensation being there long before that. I didn’t know what I was aware of. And even once I understood the difference between the moss, the trees, the thickets and the animals moving through me, I didn’t know what they were until Merka arrived and taught me the names.”

  “They weren’t there when you woke up?” he sensed no difference between this trigger and the previous too. Was it because he wasn’t heavy enough to trigger it, or the differences were minute enough he hadn’t located them yet?

  Well made traps and locks were adjustable. A floor trigger couldn’t be so sensitive a rat running across it would activate it. How they were adjusted varied, but he could always tell by looking at the mechanism.

  “Merka had to travel to reach me. I think it’s always like that.”

  The elements he could identify were identical in the triggers. Which meant the tension was controlled through one of the others. With tools, he’d pry the tile off to look in. Without, this would be slow and tedious work.

  He looked along the length of the corridor. When was the last time he’d had to work that hard at a trap? Back when he was Omega. Maybe in the early days of Upsilon, when he barely had any essence to work with. He had a vague memory of stretching across a tiled floor much like this one. Testing each trigger.

  He shouldn’t have to lie down here, but finding safe tiles for him to set his feet on wouldn’t be any faster.

  Bottom Rung is available on KU:

  here

  Stepping Wild, on Ream Stories where the story is multiple chapters ahead even at the lowest tier, and the support helps ensure I can work with a minimum of real-life interruption.

  Thank you for reading this chapter.

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