Dungeon Runner (Book 1 and 2)

Stepping Up, Chapter 51

"Have you ever heard of a King Barnacle the Just?" Tibs asked Alistair, who was seated before him on the floor, legs crossed over each other in a way that looked to be painful, but his teacher didn't seem to mind. Tibs was seated on the floor too, but his legs crossed the normal way. This was supposed to be another session of him trying to push his essence out of his reserve, but since that had already happened when he'd absorbed some of Bardik's essence, his mind kept wandering.

He really wanted to tell his teacher about that, so they could move on to something useful to him, but...

Secrets weren't supposed to make his life difficult.

"I can't say the name is familiar," Alistair answered, eyes closed, "but the world is large, and there are many kings. Now focus on your reserve, Tibs." For a few seconds, during which Tibs fought the urge to ask why there were so many kings, the only sound was their breathing. Alistair sighed. "Why do you ask?"

"One of the recruits claims to have killed one of his regiments."

Alistair opened an eye. "Did he, now?"

"Is he lying?"

"Do you know how large a regiment is?"

Tibs shook his head. "Jackal told me it's a group of people that fights for a king, and there's a lot of them in one, but he didn't know the number."

"They'll vary in size between kingdoms. The smallest I know of is made out of two hundred and fifty soldiers. Julius of Bastalon keeps his regiments at one thousand."

Tibs didn't bother working out the size of the numbers. Hundreds were enough to boggle his mind, so a thousand would be bigger.

"Then he's lying."

"Exaggerating, at the very least. Did he say if he was alone when he did it?"

"Sort of." Tibs shrugged. "I killed a regiment, is what he said. Maybe he was trying to impress us."

Alistair looked thoughtful. "Criminals are not who I tend to interact with, certainly not any that would be pulled from catacombs. Unlike you and those who arrived before, they aren't breaking laws simply in the pursuit of surviving. They'll be at ease with it. Laws are—"

"Rules," Tibs said. "Like the ones Harry set for the town. I know what laws are. So those recruits, they're all bad people?"

Alistair started responding, but stopped. "The laws they broke are king's laws. That makes them more important, but not all laws are just. If this king Barnacle feels the need to proclaim himself 'the just', I doubt he is. It doesn't mean what this recruit you speak of did was right, if he did it, but he may have felt his reasons for it were good."

Tibs thought about Bardik, who was willing to kill Sto to stop the guild from exploiting people like him. "What happened to Bardik?"

"Who?"

"He was the leader of those who tried to kill the dungeon. He was an adventurer, and he has darkness as his element."

"Right, him. You knew him. He was here because he'd broken guild rules, then trying to destroy a dungeon is among the worse thing he could have attempted. He was sent to Castle Despair."

"I thought he was sent to a prison."

"The castle is a prison, or rather, its catacombs. That's where we send prisoners who are too powerful to be held anywhere else." Alistair studied Tibs. "Put him out of your mind, Tibs. No one sent to Castle Despair ever leaves it."

Tibs closed his eyes. He thought it would be kinder to just kill Bardik instead of sending him to a place like that. "So, could he have killed a regiment?"