Mind Your Step, Draft 1, CH 14

Convincing Heather they couldn’t use the transportation platform proved difficult and, ultimately, something Tibs couldn’t manage, but which an Attendant took care of for him. Or rather, Heather’s letter, once the Attendant read it.

The letter granted her passage, but ended when she used it with her prisoner. She tried to argue Tibs wasn’t her prisoner; therefore, didn’t count toward that. The Attendant countered that the letter granted her, and only her, passage. Tibs would have to pay. For as many coins as Heather seemed to have, she didn’t have enough to use the platform without considering the ramifications. And while Tibs didn’t offer, she wouldn’t let him rob nobles to pay for it.

Preparations, once she accepted they’d be traveling on foot, were quick to finish. She’d already arranged for a new pack, so it was simply about having it modified to hold the new tents and extra items she needed for surviving outdoors. Her previous trip, hunting Tibs, with hastily purchased items had taught her the need for quality.

He hadn’t offered traveling by caravan because the route they took to Jisteisteon took longer than the smuggler’s trail on foot. Caravans didn’t cut across the wilderness until someone established a route. The lack of a route meant there was nothing that city officially needed, while the smugglers’ trail said it was simply because traders there weren’t looking hard enough.

Torleris was also too far to find a caravan heading there. He’d have to pick one heading in that direction, then hope he found one at every city they stopped at that would go there or, more likely, in a closer direction. They would get there, eventually, but the long trek could end up even longer.

And there would be the issue of Heather’s eyes. Few caravans saw having an adventurer among them as a boon.

So it had been a few more days in the city while she bought what she needed. Then they were off.

*

“Don’t go too far,” he told Ruppert as the squirrel ran off. “If something eats you, I can’t help.”

“I’ll be fine,” he replied dismissively. “I’m faster than everything out here.”

Heather paused in making the firepit. “I think Ruppert’s sick. He sounds weird. Didn’t you notice the hacking and wheezing?”

He tried to remember. “I tuned out the squirrel sounds a long time ago.”

“Pay attention when he comes back.” She grins. “If he comes back.”

“He will. He isn’t wrong that he’s faster than any other animal. He has essence to work with, if he needs to.” He looked in the direction the squirrel was running, raising his voice. “And if he’s smart, he’ll call for help before he’d devoured.”

“I’ll be fine,” Ruppert replied, annoyed.

“Can he hear you from that far?”

“He doesn’t hear my voice, and I hear him in my head. I think that if I knew how, I wouldn’t even need to speak for him to hear me. So long as he’s—” He stopped, realizing he was about to say too much.

“He’s what?”

He shook himself to add to the effect. “Sorry, I was trying to work out how far he could be.”

“As far as I want,” Ruppert replied, “so long as I pay attention to you. And it’s tempting to stop, with how you’re always talking around what you should tell her. And don’t start with the you’re not friends thing. You’re traveling together. You need to depend on each other. How can she help you when she doesn’t know what you can do? That was something my helper would have made sure to teach me. They wouldn’t have been able to help if I didn’t tell them everything.”

“Ruppert has opinions,” he told Heather. “And he can be rather far and I still hear him.” He placed the wood in the firepit, and Heater lit it.

She had the rabbits Tibs had hunted roasted by the time Ruppert returned, rotund with mostly Wood, Earth, Water and Fever essence. He curled on Tibs’s pack.

“How was the foraging?”

“Good,” Ruppert replied, “lots of bugs, a fox tried to eat me, but he broke teeth on my skin.”

Heather was right. Instead of the squirrelly chattering, he sounded like he had something stuck in his throat.

“Is there something wrong with your body? You don’t sound right.”

Ruppert moved Fever essence around his throat. “What do you mean?” Now he sounded normal.

Tibs puzzled over what he was doing, then gave up. “Be careful not to break it in a way you can’t fix it.”

Ruppert glared at him. “I’m a dungeon. I know what I can do with my body. Breaking it before was because I didn’t understand its limitation,” he added as Tibs opened his mouth to remind him of that incident. “I’ve learned, and tested it since. I’m not going to break it. I mostly like this.”

“He’s playing around with the body,” Tibs said. “It’s why he sounded different.”

“Dungeon creatures can do that?”

He shrugged. He didn’t feel like making up an explanation. And as much as he read, she couldn’t think he knew everything.

*

They were on the smuggler’s trail when he sensed the group further along. They were passed Ruppert’s dungeon. He’d arranged it so they’d camped away the night before, and readied himself for either Heather or Ruppert to realize where they were as they walked along the plain. They were well past it when they stopped that night, with neither bringing it up.

He realized Ruppert wouldn’t know. He’d been only the core when Tibs took him out and couldn’t sense anything once they stepped out of the cradle’s influence. Heather, he figured, was too busy practicing with her element to notice this area without trees had held more meaning than the previous ones.

The group didn’t move the rest of the day. Still hadn’t by the time they made camp.

He had Ruppert stay with Heather when he left to hunt dinner for them and used the time to check on who they were.

Instead of a group of smugglers, the camp looked made for an extended period. The seven people he sensed had the thinness of people barely subsisting, and the aggressive behavior he didn’t think meant this was a village in the process of forming.

He used Fever to kill a large cat on his way back and considered how to address the potential situation with Heather.

He started skinning the cat. “When we took on the bandits terrorizing the village, you didn’t have any problem killing them.”

“I was fighting for my life. I don’t think about niceties like just hurting them so they’ll stop.”

He nodded. He’d forgotten that he’d engineered it so that the bandits would attack them. “What do you think of bandits in general? Out here, in there wild, where there are no guards to go tell?”

She studied him. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. Why?”

“I saw fires and tents along the way while hunting.”

“Another group of travelers?”

“I don’t think so. The tents were large, the kind you set up when you plan to stay there for a while. They were also arguing and fighting among each other.”

“I thought you saw fires and tents.”

“I got close enough to check. I think they’re bandits, and they’re just off the trail. If we follow it, we will encounter them.”

“So we can avoid them.”

“Which means whoever comes next will have to deal with them.”

“Smugglers can deal with bandits.”

“If the group is large enough. Not all smugglers travel in groups. Not everyone who travels these trails is a smuggler.”

“And you want to take care of them.”

“I want to make sure no one can fall victim to them.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to kill them.”

“I doubt they’ll give us a choice once the fighting starts.”

“We can subdue them.”

“And then what? We can’t escort them to the city. We’re over a month away. They’re going to spend the time trying to escape, trying to kill us. Hunting for nine people isn’t the same thing as hunting for two. They’re going to slow us down to the point it could double how long it’ll take to reach the city.”

“So you want to kill them.”

The hint of accusation made him study his motivation. “I don’t want to kill them. But I’ve dealt with enough bandits to know that is probably the only way to deal with them.”

“What about those who run off?”

They could return to cause other trouble, so, alone, he’d make sure they couldn’t escape. But how likely was it? Alone in the wild. They’d remove the camp, so they wouldn’t have a place to return to.

“You have to think about it, Tyrone,” she said. This time the accusation was clear.

“Because I’ve dealt with bandits often. On my own and as part of guarding caravans. The rule out here, is that we don’t leave threats alive, but I want to respect your desire not to simply slaughter them.”

“What if you’re wrong about who they are?”

He wasn’t. But he couldn’t convince her of that until she’d dealt with bandits. With enough of them, she understood the kind of…creatures they were.

“It’s just the two of us.”

“Three,” Ruppert said.

“Three,” Tibs corrected with a roll of the eyes. “If they’re bandits, their actions will make it clear.”

“Then, we let them make the first move.”

“Tyrone,” Ruppert said, hesitatingly. “If I help, can I….”

He sighed. “Ruppert wants to know if he can eat some of the dead, if it turns out they’re bandits.”

“Why are you asking her?” Ruppert asked while Heather looked from one to the other, eyes wide. “You’re the one who got angry when I ate people.”

“My problem was with what you did before. We’re going to leave the dead for the animals to eat, so at that point, I don’t mind what you do. Heather, on the other hand….”

She swallowed. “Ruppert wants to eat someone? And it sounds like he’d done it before.”

How much could he say? He looked at the squirrel. Better yet, was it his decision to make? “How much do you want me to tell her, Ruppert?”

“Are you going to speak around the truth? Or are you going to tell her what I am?”

“Do you understand the trouble that can cause you?”

“I trust Heather.”

Tibs sighed. “Fine. You tell me how much you want me to tell her, and I will. Not lying or obfuscating.”

“Then tell her everything.”

He sighed again. “Ruppert was a dungeon. He lured people into him, killed them and absorbed them. When I found out what he did, I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t have it. He tried to kill me multiple times, failed, and I made my way to his core, ripped it out of his cradle, and almost killed him in retaliation.”

She stared at him, mouth agape. She closed it and needed multiple attempts before she could get words out. “You beat a dungeon?”

He closed his mouth on his reply. The way bards sang about dungeons made them creatures that gave adventurers nightmares. And with her father being an adventurer, she’d also know truths about them. Truths that meant convincing her he’d done that with only Water as his element couldn’t work.

He glared at Ruppert. “You did this on purpose.”

“Did what?” the squirrel asked.

Tibs didn’t have to respect his promise. He didn’t have to tell the truth about how he’d done it. In fact. He didn’t have to say anything.

“I’m not going to tell you lies, Heather. So I’m not going to tell you anything about how it happened.”

“Alright,” she said after considering him. “You beat him. Why didn’t you kill him?”

“Because he’s young. Because I was young too, once. I made mistakes that resulted in people dying. In me killing people. And,” he added with a sigh. “He was willing to admit he didn’t know what to do. My teacher, back when I ran a dungeon, told me that being willing to admit you don’t know something is a good place to start changing. So I took a chance.”

“And he talks? I mean, do all dungeons talk? Why don’t they say anything?”

“Heather. Do you understand what the Adventurer’s guild can do with that knowledge? They think dungeons are no more clever than a trained dog. What do you think they’ll do if they find out they’re people? That they can think the way we do? They can’t talk to everyone, the way they can talk to me. That’s something about me. But if a dungeon wants to, they can talk with the Runners. The fact they don’t has to mean something. I’m not going to be the one who hands the guild that knowledge. Not after I’ve seen the kind of monsters they can be.”

She looked at Ruppert. “Why aren’t you talking to me?”

The squirrel moved Fever essence around his throat. “I’m trying.” It came out wheezing and hacking.

“He hasn’t worked out how to change the body to do it.”

She nodded, then was silent. “You found a dungeon the guild doesn’t know about.” She frowned. “There were no mountains. That means some dungeons can be outside of them.” Her eyes widened. “Abyss, if the guild finds out. They’re going to….”

At least, she looked horrified at the prospect. He didn’t know how her father could be okay still working for them. But he had told her truth about the guild.

“They’ll scour every kingdom for dungeons. They won’t care who or what gets destroyed in the process.”

“But how can they not know? They have magics that tell them when a new dungeon appears.”

He shrugged. “I can’t be sure. One part, I think, is arrogance. The guild thinks it knows everything there is to know about dungeons. So they don’t consider anything outside that. It either means they ignore when the magic points to one that isn’t in a mountain as the magic being wrong, which happens,” he said as she opened her mouth. “It’s not like in the songs. You’ve felt how hard it can be to get your element to do something specific. That’s magic. It could be simpler. Their magic only focuses on mountains, since that’s the only place a dungeon can be, as far as they are concerned.”

“How…. How did you find out?”

“About the guild being arrogant? By surviving them. By seeing them be willing to let people die, when they could easily stop the person trying to take over the town. By being more clever than them often enough.”

“I meant about the dungeons, Tyrone. Even I know the guild’s arrogant. That’s what happens when someone is around for longer than the bards remember without ever being challenged.”

He chuckled. “I went looking for a missing villager in a forest reputed to be filled with monsters.” He gave her a true, if toned-down, version of his first encounter with Firmen. “After that, I started searching for them in books. There are no these are the dungeons the guild doesn’t know about books. So I searched for stories about places with monsters, or reputed to make people vanish. It’s how I found Karliak. They’re the dungeons we’re going to, to continue your training.”

“How many dungeons have you found?” she asked, awed.

“Four.”

“Just four? How long have you been looking?”

“Years? I don’t keep track. But I don’t think wild dungeons are any more common than those the guild controls. A kingdom is lucky to have more than one. So It’s probably the same.”

“One wild dungeon to a kingdom is still a lot of them.”

“But not easy to find.”

She nodded. “Going by what brought this up. Ruppert wants to eat the dead…why?”

“For the same reason dungeons do it. He’ll absorb their essence and some of the knowledge. It’s part of how a dungeon grows.”

“How is he going to eat a whole person? A few nuts and he’s round. Why can’t he just absorb things? That’s how dungeons do it.”

“But they can’t absorb living people. And it’s not the core that does it. It’s their cradle that makes it possible. I don’t know how. I only worked that out because taking Ruppert out of the cradle’s influence resulted in him losing the sense of what’s around him. That only returned when I put his core in the squirrel, and that isn’t acting like a cradle.”

“Is that why you did it?”

“Outside of his influence. I think that it started when I took him out of his cradle. He started dying. Like if you stop eating you get ever weaker until you die. The core can’t absorb essence. I…took a chance that in a body it could at least eat and survive that way.” The almost-lie didn’t feel good. But he wasn’t bringing Sto into this discussion. “I doubt he’ll be able to eat an entire person, but it’s essence he’ll absorb, and possibly knowledge.”

“Can Ruppert be a danger to us?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t,” Ruppert protested.

“The same way you can be a threat to me, Heather, and I can be one to you. He’s a person. He doesn’t want to, and I believe him. But we change. And that can mean that eventually he will turn against us. Not all dungeons end up wanting to help. Some go feral and have to be destroyed. It’s where Ruppert was headed. Dungeons have rules, and things that enforce them.”

“How do you know that?”

“I found the result. A dead dungeon. Their walls clawed. The core shattered. It wasn’t done by adventurers. Some thing did it.”

She nodded. “So long as they are bandits. That they attack us, and that we don’t have a choice to kill them. Ruppert can….” She grinned. “Nibble on the dead.”Convincing Heather they couldn’t use the transportation platform proved difficult and, ultimately, something Tibs couldn’t manage, but which an Attendant took care of for him. Or rather, Heather’s letter, once the Attendant read it.

The letter granted her passage, but ended when she used it with her prisoner. She tried to argue Tibs wasn’t her prisoner; therefore, didn’t count toward that. The Attendant countered that the letter granted her, and only her, passage. Tibs would have to pay. For as many coins as Heather seemed to have, she didn’t have enough to use the platform without considering the ramifications. And while Tibs didn’t offer, she wouldn’t let him rob nobles to pay for it.

Preparations, once she accepted they’d be traveling on foot, were quick to finish. She’d already arranged for a new pack, so it was simply about having it modified to hold the new tents and extra items she needed for surviving outdoors. Her previous trip, hunting Tibs, with hastily purchased items had taught her the need for quality.

He hadn’t offered traveling by caravan because the route they took to Jisteisteon took longer than the smuggler’s trail on foot. Caravans didn’t cut across the wilderness until someone established a route. The lack of a route meant there was nothing that city officially needed, while the smugglers’ trail said it was simply because traders there weren’t looking hard enough.

Torleris was also too far to find a caravan heading there. He’d have to pick one heading in that direction, then hope he found one at every city they stopped at that would go there or, more likely, in a closer direction. They would get there, eventually, but the long trek could end up even longer.

And there would be the issue of Heather’s eyes. Few caravans saw having an adventurer among them as a boon.

So it had been a few more days in the city while she bought what she needed. Then they were off.

*

“Don’t go too far,” he told Ruppert as the squirrel ran off. “If something eats you, I can’t help.”

“I’ll be fine,” he replied dismissively. “I’m faster than everything out here.”

Heather paused in making the firepit. “I think Ruppert’s sick. He sounds weird. Didn’t you notice the hacking and wheezing?”

He tried to remember. “I tuned out the squirrel sounds a long time ago.”

“Pay attention when he comes back.” She grins. “If he comes back.”

“He will. He isn’t wrong that he’s faster than any other animal. He has essence to work with, if he needs to.” He looked in the direction the squirrel was running, raising his voice. “And if he’s smart, he’ll call for help before he’d devoured.”

“I’ll be fine,” Ruppert replied, annoyed.

“Can he hear you from that far?”

“He doesn’t hear my voice, and I hear him in my head. I think that if I knew how, I wouldn’t even need to speak for him to hear me. So long as he’s—” He stopped, realizing he was about to say too much.

“He’s what?”

He shook himself to add to the effect. “Sorry, I was trying to work out how far he could be.”

“As far as I want,” Ruppert replied, “so long as I pay attention to you. And it’s tempting to stop, with how you’re always talking around what you should tell her. And don’t start with the you’re not friends thing. You’re traveling together. You need to depend on each other. How can she help you when she doesn’t know what you can do? That was something my helper would have made sure to teach me. They wouldn’t have been able to help if I didn’t tell them everything.”

“Ruppert has opinions,” he told Heather. “And he can be rather far and I still hear him.” He placed the wood in the firepit, and Heater lit it.

She had the rabbits Tibs had hunted roasted by the time Ruppert returned, rotund with mostly Wood, Earth, Water and Fever essence. He curled on Tibs’s pack.

“How was the foraging?”

“Good,” Ruppert replied, “lots of bugs, a fox tried to eat me, but he broke teeth on my skin.”

Heather was right. Instead of the squirrelly chattering, he sounded like he had something stuck in his throat.

“Is there something wrong with your body? You don’t sound right.”

Ruppert moved Fever essence around his throat. “What do you mean?” Now he sounded normal.

Tibs puzzled over what he was doing, then gave up. “Be careful not to break it in a way you can’t fix it.”

Ruppert glared at him. “I’m a dungeon. I know what I can do with my body. Breaking it before was because I didn’t understand its limitation,” he added as Tibs opened his mouth to remind him of that incident. “I’ve learned, and tested it since. I’m not going to break it. I mostly like this.”

“He’s playing around with the body,” Tibs said. “It’s why he sounded different.”

“Dungeon creatures can do that?”

He shrugged. He didn’t feel like making up an explanation. And as much as he read, she couldn’t think he knew everything.

*

They were on the smuggler’s trail when he sensed the group further along. They were passed Ruppert’s dungeon. He’d arranged it so they’d camped away the night before, and readied himself for either Heather or Ruppert to realize where they were as they walked along the plain. They were well past it when they stopped that night, with neither bringing it up.

He realized Ruppert wouldn’t know. He’d been only the core when Tibs took him out and couldn’t sense anything once they stepped out of the cradle’s influence. Heather, he figured, was too busy practicing with her element to notice this area without trees had held more meaning than the previous ones.

The group didn’t move the rest of the day. Still hadn’t by the time they made camp.

He had Ruppert stay with Heather when he left to hunt dinner for them and used the time to check on who they were.

Instead of a group of smugglers, the camp looked made for an extended period. The seven people he sensed had the thinness of people barely subsisting, and the aggressive behavior he didn’t think meant this was a village in the process of forming.

He used Fever to kill a large cat on his way back and considered how to address the potential situation with Heather.

He started skinning the cat. “When we took on the bandits terrorizing the village, you didn’t have any problem killing them.”

“I was fighting for my life. I don’t think about niceties like just hurting them so they’ll stop.”

He nodded. He’d forgotten that he’d engineered it so that the bandits would attack them. “What do you think of bandits in general? Out here, in there wild, where there are no guards to go tell?”

She studied him. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. Why?”

“I saw fires and tents along the way while hunting.”

“Another group of travelers?”

“I don’t think so. The tents were large, the kind you set up when you plan to stay there for a while. They were also arguing and fighting among each other.”

“I thought you saw fires and tents.”

“I got close enough to check. I think they’re bandits, and they’re just off the trail. If we follow it, we will encounter them.”

“So we can avoid them.”

“Which means whoever comes next will have to deal with them.”

“Smugglers can deal with bandits.”

“If the group is large enough. Not all smugglers travel in groups. Not everyone who travels these trails is a smuggler.”

“And you want to take care of them.”

“I want to make sure no one can fall victim to them.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to kill them.”

“I doubt they’ll give us a choice once the fighting starts.”

“We can subdue them.”

“And then what? We can’t escort them to the city. We’re over a month away. They’re going to spend the time trying to escape, trying to kill us. Hunting for nine people isn’t the same thing as hunting for two. They’re going to slow us down to the point it could double how long it’ll take to reach the city.”

“So you want to kill them.”

The hint of accusation made him study his motivation. “I don’t want to kill them. But I’ve dealt with enough bandits to know that is probably the only way to deal with them.”

“What about those who run off?”

They could return to cause other trouble, so, alone, he’d make sure they couldn’t escape. But how likely was it? Alone in the wild. They’d remove the camp, so they wouldn’t have a place to return to.

“You have to think about it, Tyrone,” she said. This time the accusation was clear.

“Because I’ve dealt with bandits often. On my own and as part of guarding caravans. The rule out here, is that we don’t leave threats alive, but I want to respect your desire not to simply slaughter them.”

“What if you’re wrong about who they are?”

He wasn’t. But he couldn’t convince her of that until she’d dealt with bandits. With enough of them, she understood the kind of…creatures they were.

“It’s just the two of us.”

“Three,” Ruppert said.

“Three,” Tibs corrected with a roll of the eyes. “If they’re bandits, their actions will make it clear.”

“Then, we let them make the first move.”

“Tyrone,” Ruppert said, hesitatingly. “If I help, can I….”

He sighed. “Ruppert wants to know if he can eat some of the dead, if it turns out they’re bandits.”

“Why are you asking her?” Ruppert asked while Heather looked from one to the other, eyes wide. “You’re the one who got angry when I ate people.”

“My problem was with what you did before. We’re going to leave the dead for the animals to eat, so at that point, I don’t mind what you do. Heather, on the other hand….”

She swallowed. “Ruppert wants to eat someone? And it sounds like he’d done it before.”

How much could he say? He looked at the squirrel. Better yet, was it his decision to make? “How much do you want me to tell her, Ruppert?”

“Are you going to speak around the truth? Or are you going to tell her what I am?”

“Do you understand the trouble that can cause you?”

“I trust Heather.”

Tibs sighed. “Fine. You tell me how much you want me to tell her, and I will. Not lying or obfuscating.”

“Then tell her everything.”

He sighed again. “Ruppert was a dungeon. He lured people into him, killed them and absorbed them. When I found out what he did, I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t have it. He tried to kill me multiple times, failed, and I made my way to his core, ripped it out of his cradle, and almost killed him in retaliation.”

She stared at him, mouth agape. She closed it and needed multiple attempts before she could get words out. “You beat a dungeon?”

He closed his mouth on his reply. The way bards sang about dungeons made them creatures that gave adventurers nightmares. And with her father being an adventurer, she’d also know truths about them. Truths that meant convincing her he’d done that with only Water as his element couldn’t work.

He glared at Ruppert. “You did this on purpose.”

“Did what?” the squirrel asked.

Tibs didn’t have to respect his promise. He didn’t have to tell the truth about how he’d done it. In fact. He didn’t have to say anything.

“I’m not going to tell you lies, Heather. So I’m not going to tell you anything about how it happened.”

“Alright,” she said after considering him. “You beat him. Why didn’t you kill him?”

“Because he’s young. Because I was young too, once. I made mistakes that resulted in people dying. In me killing people. And,” he added with a sigh. “He was willing to admit he didn’t know what to do. My teacher, back when I ran a dungeon, told me that being willing to admit you don’t know something is a good place to start changing. So I took a chance.”

“And he talks? I mean, do all dungeons talk? Why don’t they say anything?”

“Heather. Do you understand what the Adventurer’s guild can do with that knowledge? They think dungeons are no more clever than a trained dog. What do you think they’ll do if they find out they’re people? That they can think the way we do? They can’t talk to everyone, the way they can talk to me. That’s something about me. But if a dungeon wants to, they can talk with the Runners. The fact they don’t has to mean something. I’m not going to be the one who hands the guild that knowledge. Not after I’ve seen the kind of monsters they can be.”

She looked at Ruppert. “Why aren’t you talking to me?”

The squirrel moved Fever essence around his throat. “I’m trying.” It came out wheezing and hacking.

“He hasn’t worked out how to change the body to do it.”

She nodded, then was silent. “You found a dungeon the guild doesn’t know about.” She frowned. “There were no mountains. That means some dungeons can be outside of them.” Her eyes widened. “Abyss, if the guild finds out. They’re going to….”

At least, she looked horrified at the prospect. He didn’t know how her father could be okay still working for them. But he had told her truth about the guild.

“They’ll scour every kingdom for dungeons. They won’t care who or what gets destroyed in the process.”

“But how can they not know? They have magics that tell them when a new dungeon appears.”

He shrugged. “I can’t be sure. One part, I think, is arrogance. The guild thinks it knows everything there is to know about dungeons. So they don’t consider anything outside that. It either means they ignore when the magic points to one that isn’t in a mountain as the magic being wrong, which happens,” he said as she opened her mouth. “It’s not like in the songs. You’ve felt how hard it can be to get your element to do something specific. That’s magic. It could be simpler. Their magic only focuses on mountains, since that’s the only place a dungeon can be, as far as they are concerned.”

“How…. How did you find out?”

“About the guild being arrogant? By surviving them. By seeing them be willing to let people die, when they could easily stop the person trying to take over the town. By being more clever than them often enough.”

“I meant about the dungeons, Tyrone. Even I know the guild’s arrogant. That’s what happens when someone is around for longer than the bards remember without ever being challenged.”

He chuckled. “I went looking for a missing villager in a forest reputed to be filled with monsters.” He gave her a true, if toned-down, version of his first encounter with Firmen. “After that, I started searching for them in books. There are no these are the dungeons the guild doesn’t know about books. So I searched for stories about places with monsters, or reputed to make people vanish. It’s how I found Karliak. They’re the dungeons we’re going to, to continue your training.”

“How many dungeons have you found?” she asked, awed.

“Four.”

“Just four? How long have you been looking?”

“Years? I don’t keep track. But I don’t think wild dungeons are any more common than those the guild controls. A kingdom is lucky to have more than one. So It’s probably the same.”

“One wild dungeon to a kingdom is still a lot of them.”

“But not easy to find.”

She nodded. “Going by what brought this up. Ruppert wants to eat the dead…why?”

“For the same reason dungeons do it. He’ll absorb their essence and some of the knowledge. It’s part of how a dungeon grows.”

“How is he going to eat a whole person? A few nuts and he’s round. Why can’t he just absorb things? That’s how dungeons do it.”

“But they can’t absorb living people. And it’s not the core that does it. It’s their cradle that makes it possible. I don’t know how. I only worked that out because taking Ruppert out of the cradle’s influence resulted in him losing the sense of what’s around him. That only returned when I put his core in the squirrel, and that isn’t acting like a cradle.”

“Is that why you did it?”

“Outside of his influence. I think that it started when I took him out of his cradle. He started dying. Like if you stop eating you get ever weaker until you die. The core can’t absorb essence. I…took a chance that in a body it could at least eat and survive that way.” The almost-lie didn’t feel good. But he wasn’t bringing Sto into this discussion. “I doubt he’ll be able to eat an entire person, but it’s essence he’ll absorb, and possibly knowledge.”

“Can Ruppert be a danger to us?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t,” Ruppert protested.

“The same way you can be a threat to me, Heather, and I can be one to you. He’s a person. He doesn’t want to, and I believe him. But we change. And that can mean that eventually he will turn against us. Not all dungeons end up wanting to help. Some go feral and have to be destroyed. It’s where Ruppert was headed. Dungeons have rules, and things that enforce them.”

“How do you know that?”

“I found the result. A dead dungeon. Their walls clawed. The core shattered. It wasn’t done by adventurers. Some thing did it.”

She nodded. “So long as they are bandits. That they attack us, and that we don’t have a choice to kill them. Ruppert can….” She grinned. “Nibble on the dead.”