Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 92

The hall stretched far ahead of them with lots of doors in it facing each other. Unlike in the lobby, the floor was made of wood slats arranged at an angle to the direction of the hall. The silence made Tibs want to sense around to confirm where the people golems were, but the memory of his sense brushing against what was under them kept that in check.

Each door had a polished metal plaque next to it with words had been stamped into them. The letters were Arcanus, but Tibs couldn't tell what it said. Don shook his head when he glanced at him. Did it mean that they were part of the original building, unlike the plaque to the boss room in the permit office? Of were these rooms not important enough overall to bother having the letters say actual words?

He moved the dust in the process of checking the floor to the closest door on his right, and approached it. The lock was simple, more so than the ones protecting the houses. Unlocking it only took seconds; and wouldn't take much longer with only lockpicks. There was a sense to them of only serving as an indicator people shouldn't enter, instead of actively preventing anyone from doing so.

The room was quite small. A desk of polished stone, a chair behind, two before, a cabinet behind that, and barely enough room to move around them. If they were slightly larger— if they were made for normal sized people—Tibs wasn't sure how anyone would move through the room. Next to the cabinet, a thin but tall window let him look out onto the road that lined the building. The stone floor had no dust and had lost its polish on a path around the desk and to the back.

"Is that what to take," Jackal asked, "or what to avoid?"

"It just shows where people have stepped on repeatedly," Don said. "Like how the floor at the inn is scoffed around tables and to the kitchen."

Tibs studied the floor. Without tiles, there were no simple ways to tell where triggers might be. He extended a narrow portion of his sense before him and there were no essence triggers. He iced the floor.

"Stay outside. I can only sense a two paces ahead with what's under us."

"It's not like we can fit in there," Mez commented.

"Is that thing directly under us?" Don asked.

"I don't know, and I'm not risking sensing to find out."

He took his time, conscious that the smallness of the room could be a way to make him be careless, but in no time he was behind the desk and there had been no triggers. A stack of papers were on the left of the chair, bound between leather. Next to it was a... tube with a tapered end that reminded him of the nib of a quill, but there was no ink pot, so it might be some other tool.

The three drawers were locked, but like the door, easy to open. The top one had papers in neat stacks, with an open wooden box on top containing more of those tubes. The second one was empty, and the third had a pouch.

Tibs barely pulled his hand away, on the way to grabbing it, before the thin blade slammed into the front of the drawer.

Sto chuckled.

Hadn't he just reminded himself not to get careless as he crossed the room? He checked for a second trap before taking the pouch. It contained seven unstamped silver coins and a small brass key with an odd arrangement of teeth. He put the coins back into the pouch and lobbed it at Don, but Jackal caught it, quickly pulling one, grinning as he looked it over.

"Does it mean anything?" Tibs asked as he surveyed the cabinet. He inserted the key in the lock and it clicked when he turned it. With the recent reminder, Tibs took his time looking for traps.

"They could be part of the theme," Don offered.

"Wouldn't every other coin we've found be like those, then?" Mez asked.