Dungeon Runner
The Tiger Writes
sciencefiction
sciencefiction
31K5
Tibs survived by picking pockets; until he's caught.
Instead of losing a hand, he's sent away and told he must now survive a dungeon.
How is a kid who knew nothing more than his ...Stepping Up, Chapter 104
"You sure the caravan's been taken over?" Tandy held her hands before her, palm facing, two hand-span apart, framing where her essence did... something. Tibs couldn't discern what, but he saw the effect.
Looking between her hands, the distance changed. He could see the horizon as if it was only a few minutes walk, instead of... What had Cross said, ten minutes of horse's gallop? He watched the caravan approaching, wagons appearing over the far-away hills.
He, Tandy, and Quigly stood on the roof for the better vantage point, but the warrior looked as if he'd rather be elsewhere. Anytime he glanced down, his tan skin took on a sickly tint.
"Wouldn't that be a kicker?" Quigly said. "We do all this, and it was all a setup to get us to destroy an innocent caravan."
"You care?" Tandy asked.
"Of course, I care." The warrior's tone was tired. This was a subject Tibs had heard him have to explain over and over. The convicts had been in cells, catacombs, Jackal said, because their crimes had been much graver than what Tibs and those who had been sent here had committed, but even among those, Quigly's history made him someone ever worse. The warrior claimed those weren't true, but someone had made sure they spread through Kragle Rock.
"I didn't end up here by butchering the innocent."
Tandy rolled her eyes and Quigly ground his teeth.
"I killed a tyrant's army. I killed his soldiers. If I'd won, bards would sing of my heroism. Fuck, if I'd died, they'd have done the same. But he wasn't going to let me be a martyr. So he made me a butcher."
"He didn't lie," Tibs said, meaning the rider, but Quigly also told the truth. Tibs saw no light as he spoke. "Harry would have known. And he would have called the rider out on it."
"Because no one's ever tricked him before," Tandy muttered.
Only the rider had nothing enchanted on him, which was what it took to trick the guard leader. That or a really clever mind, and with him, Don and Tibs there, one of them would have noticed something, if the rider had tried to be clever.
"I'd still prefer it if we saw confirmation," Quigly said. "There's nothing easier than to turn the protectors into monsters with a little planning on your enemy's part."
"I wish Cross was up here," Tandy said. "She knows those people. She could tell us if things looked wrong. I wish I saw black or green," she added.
"I couldn't offer her enough coins to climb up with us," Tibs replied. Like Tandy, he was searching for any signs these were Sebastian's people, instead of merchants and the guards they traveled with.
"You didn't offer me money," Quigly said, offended.
"You didn't ask," Tibs replied, grinning at the warrior.
"Can you move what we see?" Quigly asked. "They're probably hidden from anyone looking at them from here."
"This isn't the kind of far-sight you're thinking of," she replied. "I'm nowhere near that strong. I can just change the distance of what's in front of me." She panned left, then right, showing what she meant. "It'd take one of the Attendants to show you any other point along the caravan, or another angle."
"Too bad not one of them stuck around," the warrior said in disgust. "That's the kind of power we could use."
"We could use the power of the guild," Tibs muttered, echoing the disgust. "If they were willing to do more than guard the dungeon." At least that meant the townsfolk were safe. He trusted Sto that nothing could get through his door or the mountain's walls anymore, but the added guards couldn't hurt.