They followed the well-trodden path up the hill to the crack in the mountain. Tibs had expected it to be larger, but they had to squeeze in one at a time; except for Tibs, who fit by turning sideways.
The tunnel was rough stone, the same tan-gray as outside. The floor and walls were uneven, but the tunnel quickly widened until the two fighters could stand shoulder to shoulder. Torches illuminated the walls, casting undulating shadows and giving Tibs the impression they were being watched and followed.
“Slow down,” the archer called after the guy hurrying ahead of them, “there might be monsters hiding in the shadows.”
Tibs tightened his grip on the knife. It had been his imagination, hadn’t it? If the archer said there could—
“No there aren’t,” the fighter replied dismissively and pointed to an even glow further down the tunnel. “Don’t you know anything? There’s never anything until the first room.”
By the time Tibs and the others reached him, he stood at the point where the tunnel widened, grumbling in disappointment. The even light came from there, so Tibs squeezed between the two fighters to see.
The room was large; it looked like someone had aimed to make it square, but hadn’t finished, making it round with flattened, uneven, walls, with an opening opposite where they stood. The light came from—Tibs couldn’t tell where it came from. It simply was, but it had to be higher up, based on the shadows the irregularities on the walls caused.
Something caught Tibs attention as the fighter stepped into the room. “Stop!” he called, trying to understand what he was seeing. It was in the shadows. Something darker.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” the fighter replied. “I’m not giving you a chance to steal my kills. If this room’s empty I’m moving on.” He grumbled something about stupid dungeons and not knowing how to do things properly.
There was a click, then the fighter had a pole through his body. Thin, made of stone, Tibs noted, like the shaft of a spear. It had happened too fast for him to see if the tip had been pointed, but it came from one of the shadows, crossed the room to another shadow, holding the unmoving fighter in place.
Then the body moved, pulled by the shaft as it retracted back into the wall it had originated from. Something felt off to Tibs; it shouldn’t be able to support the fighter’s weight. It dragged the body to the wall, and Tibs saw the end of the shaft was flat.
By the time the body slid to the ground, Tibs no longer paid attention to it, the vanishing shaft, or the gasp and retching behind him. He’d seen worse deaths on the street: thugs having their fun with the beggars and urchins; The cold nights stealing the life of anyone without a warm place to sleep. No one survived the street without becoming inured to death.
He was more interested in preventing his and the others from dying the same way the fighter had. The click had been a trigger. The blood was a good indication of where it was.
A louder gasp made him look at the remaining fighter who was looking toward the wall where the body was—had been. Tibs caught the end of the body vanishing; melting away and being absorbed into the floor and wall it rested against.
That, Tibs thought, was different.
“Well, that explains why I was told to retrieve the dead’s equipment,” the sorceress said.
“I wasn’t told anything like that,” the archer replied.
“I was,” the fighter said, “but I have no idea how we’re going to do that. It only took a few seconds for the body to melt away.”
“I think...” The sorceress was silent as she closed her eyes. “I sort of recall reading something about how our lifeforce can keep a dungeon from absorbing anything close to us.”
The fighter pointed to where the body had been. “I don’t think that’s right.” Even the blood was gone. Tibs looked where the click had come from and even that blood had vanished, and he couldn’t tell which tile had been stepped on.
“He was dead,” Tibs told the woman.
“How do you know?” the archer asked. “That didn’t seem like much of an injury. I’ve been shot in the arm before and his chest was bigger. That shaft didn’t go in anywhere near his heart.” She swallowed and began looking greenish. Tibs stepped away, making sure not to enter the room. If she was going to throw up, he didn’t want it on him.
“I know death. There’s plenty of it on the streets. And if you can’t tell it, going through someone who you just think is dead gets you beaten, or killed. You learn quick.”
“And if he’d been alive, he wouldn’t have melted away like that,” the sorceress said. “At least he melted quick and clean. You don’t want to see what a body actually melting looks like.”
Tibs raised an eyebrow at her. He hadn’t expected any of the others to be familiar with death.
She grimaced. “You sneak around sorcerers long enough, you end up seeing their mistakes. None of them are pretty.”
“Is that how you were caught?” the fighter asked.
“Yeah. I was lucky. They could have decided to keep me to experiment on. Instead, they turned me over to the guard.” She looked at where the body had been. “At least I thought I’d been lucky.”
The fighter looked at him, motioning to the room. “This is why you’re here, right? What’s your name? I don’t feel like calling you thief all the time.”
“Tibs,” he answered, going back to studying the room.
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“Okay, Tibs. Any idea how we get across without ending up like mister I’m too impatient to be careful?”
Without being able to tell where the gone fighter had stepped anymore, he studied the walls. Knowing where the shaft had come from, he could make out the hole within the shadow. That was what the darker spot was. Knowing what to look for, he found others around the room, a lot of them. If each one corresponded to a trigger, there had to be almost too many to make it across the room.
He crouched and studied the floor. The first thing the old man who taught them about traps had said about dungeons was that they didn’t cheat. That while they fed on people, they also wanted everyone going through them to get stronger; because that way, when they moved on to the next level, if the dungeon won and ate them, it got more out of it.
Tibs hadn't understood what that meant. It was the next part that he thought applied here.
“A dungeon always gives you a way through. It might be a fight that looks like you can’t win or a puzzle that seems uncrackable. Remember that there is always a way through. Take your time. Think before you act, and you will survive to see the dungeon’s next levels.”
From his lower position, he realized most of the holes in the walls were at chest height, with only the occasional one set to take out someone’s knee. He ran his hand over the closest tiles. They felt like the stone they looked like. Rough and mostly even with random cracks and scratched on them. He tried to wobble a few, but that didn’t amount to anything. He figured he’d have to put weight on them to find the correct ones.
“This isn’t going to be fast,” he told them, lying down and making sure none of the holes lined up at knee height near the entrance. The approximate height was the only way he had to tell the trajectory a spear might take.
“Take as long as you need,” the archer said. “I don’t want to die here.” The other two murmured agreement.
He pressed one, then the other; one clicked, and a shaft crossed the room over it, neck height, Tibs estimated as it retracted. Once the tile was even with the others, nothing about it indicated it was a trigger. It was covered with scratches and cracks like every other tile.
“Are dungeons smart?” he asked, testing more tiles and pulling himself further in, making sure not to line up with any low holes.
“More like cunning, I think,” the sorceress answered. “A dungeon is closer to a wolf than a dragon. They can’t reason like we do, but they can still lie in wait and pounce when you think the path’s clear.”
There was a click as he put weight on a stone and a shaft flew over his head, so close he felt the air move as he pressed himself down.
“Tibs?” the fighter called.
“I’m okay.” He’d missed a hole; more than one he expected. There were so many shadows on the wall any of them could hide one. Once it retracted he raised himself so he could study the tile. More random scratches.
Or were they random?
He studied it and the previous one. Among the cracks, the scratches seemed to form a similar pattern. He looked around and noticed a tile with that same pattern among the cracks on it. It was the randomness of the cracks that made it difficult to realize the patterns matched; but did it mean anything?
The next one was far enough only his feet were out of the room, and he made out five holes that seemed to line up over it. One set at foot height, which meant his head while he was lying down. He looked for another, but it required him going even deeper.
“Grab my feet,” he called, “and the instant you hear the click you pull me out.” He paused and looked over his shoulder. “You did hear the other clicks, right? It’s not just because I’m a thief.”
“We heard them,” the fighter said as she took hold of his feet.
He took slow breaths to steady his nerves. This was no different from breaking into a house when someone was still in it, he told himself. It could be just as deadly.
He placed his hand on the tile and pushed down. For a second, he thought he’d gotten it wrong, then the tile moved.
The pull was so sudden Tibs screamed and was ready to berate the fighter; she’d been too fast. Then he noticed the shaft retracting. He swallowed. Foot height. He’d be dead if not for her reflexes.
“You okay?” She asked.
Tibs shook his head. He could have died. If he’d been alone, he’d have been dead. This was nothing like breaking into a house. He shook himself. It was like breaking in, in that he couldn’t sit on his ass because of a close call. He looked at the room’s floor. He thought he had it. But he needed to make sure the pattern wasn't there to distract him from another set.
He crouched at the entrance again, forcing his heart to slow with his breathing. He looked for other repeating patterns and found them, but when he pressed on those, the tiles didn’t move. He stood and, as he let out his breath, he stepped into the room.
“What are you doing?” The archer exclaimed as the fighter grabbed his arm and pulled him out.
“I have the pattern now.” He indicated a tile. “Do you see the wavy circles made by the scratches?” at their confused expression he stepped to it, watching where he placed his feet and traced it. “Ignore the cracks, they’re there to distract from the design.” At their nods, he moved to another tile with the same design. “That’s the mark of the triggers. The cracks are different, so they make recognizing the pattern tough. But if you pay attention, you can make it out.” Again he traced it until they nodded.
“How sure are you?” the sorcerer asked. “Can’t the dungeon have done this to create a sense of false confidence?”
Tibs looked around, quickly noting where the triggers were. “What did your teacher tell you about what the dungeon does?”
“It eats people,” she stated. “That by surviving we become tougher, that by fighting the dungeon we can gain in years the strength it’ll take other sorcerers decades to reach.”
“Mine said the dungeon wants us stronger,” the fighter said. “He more or less agreed with yours, but the way he said it, it sounds like the stronger we are, the more the dungeon gets when it eats us.”
The three of them looked at the archer who shrugged. “He told us not to die.”
“Mine sort of agrees with both of you,” Tibs said. Clearly, not everyone shared the same views on dungeons. “Maybe it’s because us thieves have to consider how things work more, but he also said that the dungeon doesn’t want us dead outright. It’s testing us. Like you said…” he trailed off, looking at the fighter.
“Argyle,” she told him.
“Like you said, Argyle, it wants us stronger, but dying seems to be a side effect of failing the tests, not the reason for them.” He motioned to where their other fighter had vanished. “This room is a puzzle. Once we work it out, we’ve won. And,” Tibs walked around the room, watching where he stepped but making a circuit around it. “I am this confident I’m right.”
“Okay.” Argyle smiled. “Good work, Tibs. You saw the pattern we need to look out for. Be careful, and we will meet up on the other side.” She leveled her gaze on them. “Do not let overconfidence turn you into another dead jerk.”
Tibs watched his companions slowly cross the room, each carefully studying the tiles around them before taking a step. Was it that difficult for them? He could make out the pattern at a glance now that he knew what to look for, both patterns, but he didn’t bother with the false one. It would have made more sense to him if they had behaved as triggers too, even as decoys. He kept up with them until they reached the other side, where they caught their breath.
“Do you think the traps are going to remain active once we’ve cleared all the rooms?” Argyle asked Tibs, who shrugged and looked at the sorceress.
“I don’t know how dungeons work,” she answered. “The little I’ve gathered comes from listening in on conversations I shouldn’t have, and a bit of reading here and there.”
The fighter nodded. “Then we keep that in mind when we leave. It would suck to clear everything and end up dying because we didn’t step carefully.”
Tibs looked at the floor, at the other set of patterns, and wondered if that was the trap he’d have to look out for on the way out.