Tibs turned away from heading to the training room as he saw Brogan Roche step away from speaking with an adventurer. Tibs sensed what the man had on him, and only one item had essence woven through it. It was a disk, small enough to hold in the palm of his hand, but it had too many essences he couldn’t identify to hazard a guess as to how it worked.

Now that he has a sense of what the item felt like, he studied the clerks and adventurers they passed as he followed Brogan. Many of them had something of a similar shape with a weave, at least one in each group they passed, and only the clerks. The item felt similar to what Brogan had, but with enough differences in the essences he could identify, he wasn’t sure if they served the same function. It might be easier to get one of those, but he couldn’t know if it would let him see the door he was seeking.

“Are you lost?” a clerk asked and Tibs looked up to tell her no, only to realize he had no idea where he was in the building. The hall looked the same as every other one, but he somehow was certain he’d never been in this corridor before.

“I seem to be.”

Brogan was turning a corner, and Tibs didn’t think he’d learn more from sensing the item.

“Are you looking for Tirania’s office?” the clerk asked.

“No, why would I be?” What could he work out from how he’d seen Brogan behave?

“Then what are you doing this far in the building?” she asked, studying him. “Runners don’t have a reason to be here. And you’d only have one if Tirania called for you.”

“I’m trying to figure out the dimensions of the building,” he replied.

She chuckled. “Casing the joint?”

“No, just curious.” Brogan had done nothing with the item as far as Tibs could tell. He might have activated it beforehand, but Tibs wouldn’t know that unless he could sense it outside the building, where Brogan wouldn’t have a reason to activate it.

“How about I escort you back to the entrance, then?” She motioned for him to walk, and Tibs did so.

As they stepped into the main hall, Tibs suddenly knew where they were, as if the miasma that Ganny kept on the third floor, but affecting his mind, had been lifted. He even thought he could make it back to where the clerk had found him, but he knew that to be false. If he turned back on his own, within a few paces in the corridor, Tibs would be lost again.

He headed for the training room and entered the one he’d been summoned to.

“I was starting to wonder if you’d forgotten,” Alistair said.

“I got lost trying to figure out the size of the building.” His teacher raised an eyebrow. “Any time I go to Tirania’s office, or when I’m taken to the cells, it’s never the same number of paces. I’m trying to understand how it’s done.”

Alistair nodded. “And what have you decided?”

“Magic.”

His teacher chuckled. “But what kind?”

“It could be mind,” Tibs replied without having to think about it, “or void. The dungeon makes doorways that let us cross to lower floors, so they could be placed within the corridors and activated at random to change how long it takes to reach a place. Mind can change how I think about numbers while I’m counting my steps. The other elements must have their ways of doing the same thing.”

“And you have to remember that strong enchantments combine elements; which increases what’s possible to accomplish.” Alistair sat and—

“What are the elements?” Tibs interrupted his teacher’s instructions. “There are two and nine, but I don’t think I’ve come across more than a dozen of them among the runners, as if that’s all guild wants us to know about.”

“There are twenty-four elements. Twenty-nine is the number of letters for writing.”

“So what are they?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Tibs shrugged as he sat. “It came up in conversation a while ago, and I’ve been busy, so I kept forgetting to ask the few times I’ve had a chance. Since we’re talking about weave and other elements doing the same things, the question occurred to me.”

Alistair considered him. “Telling you about all of them isn’t going to be productive at this stage, since you aren’t likely to encounter them all.”

“The dungeon uses more than just those I know about.”

“And knowing the names of those elements isn’t going to add anything to your runs.”

Tibs raised an eyebrow, but stayed silent. Knowing that metal protected against lightning would have been useful to know beforehand. But only if he’d had the time to ask questions about that element. Which he rarely had these days. So Alistair could be right. Knowing all of them might not be useful right now.

“I will say,” his teacher added, “that teachers will come with their preference over which element we believe are best for those we instruct.”

“But you were assigned to me after I picked water.”

“Out of those elements Tirania suggested. I believe you said she told you those other than the core elements weren’t as useful, when you recounted how you came to choose it. She is biased toward the core elements for reasons of her own. Other instructors will recommend those they prefer, so you always end up with a limited representation in young dungeon since most of the Runners there are trained by the guild. The more outside Runners come to a growing dungeon, the wider the visibility of the other elements become.”

“Which ones do you suggest?”

Alistair smiled. “I do not take part in telling graduating Omegas about the elements that are open to them, therefore I don’t have to consider which ones are best. Now,” he added as Tibs started to push for his opinion. “I’ve indulged your curiosity. So you can show me what you’ve practiced using Fel. Make something small.”

Tibs formed an ice dagger; something simple and unornamented. He etched a line of water, adding Fel as he stretched the line and water formed around it. When he stopped etching, the result fell to the floor, and instead of splashing, it oozed flat.

“Good. Now, how would you use this?”

Tibs studied the unmoving puddle. He willed it into a ball and it resisted it. It wasn’t that it refused to obey him, but the combination of Arcanus made even the essence thick and slow to react. He pressed his finger in, and when he pulled it, the water stuck to it like thick sugar syrup.

“On the floor, it would slow anyone stepping in it.”

“Yes, how else?”

Tibs willed it into his hand, spread it, gathered it again. He turned his hand upside down and watched it stretch until a blob of it dangled from a thinning strand. “I don’t know.”

Thick water splashed over his chest, spreading over his arm and clinging there. It wouldn’t move as he tried to pull his arm away, trapped under the ooze.

“It’s good for subduing an opponent.”

Tibs watched the water spread down his arm. “Isn’t this just slowing them down?”

Alistair chuckled. “I suppose it is.”

“This isn’t going to be useful in the dungeon. Sharp and spiky end fights faster there.” And everywhere. If he was a guard and he had to take prisoners, he could see the use of this etching, but when he was in a fight, his goal was to end it in such a way his opponent didn’t come back later to bother him. Sebastian had taught him what happened if he let one get away.

“You’re limiting your thinking, Tibs. You have to think beyond the dungeon; you will be out in the world soon enough.”

Sooner than Alistair thought, Tibs hoped. Once the guild was gone, he’d be able to see the world if he wanted to. Kragle Rock would be his focus for a while, making sure no one else tried to control it.

Tibs caught the ball of water Alistair threw at him, only then noticing the water trapping his arm was gone. The water in his hand didn’t shift. It was hard and clear; other than not being cold, this could be ice. It reminded him of the ice chairs Alistair had made for them in his early days. The etching wasn’t as tight as he expected, and a filigree of Fey was between the lines of essence.

“Ice is easier,” Tibs commented.

“And if the purpose was to have a ball to throw, it’s what I would have made. This is about training adding the Arcanus to your etching to alter what it will do and moving beyond using only two of them. I’ll remind you that you are the one who insisted you were ready to move on to this stage, so you should take it seriously.”

Tibs nodded. “Is that how you made the mist which kept people outside from listening to us?”

“Yes.”

Tibs turned the ball in his hand, studying the placement of Fey within the filigree. The spacing was important. Just by altering that, the behavior of the etching could be changed. “How does Fey make the water hard, it represent darkness, doesn’t it?”

“What the Arcanus represent isn’t an indication of its effect within an etching. After all, you aren’t manipulating darkness when you trace it. The Arcanus remains water.”

“Then why say Fey represents darkness? Why not leave it at Fey makes the etching hard.”

“I can’t tell you why the Arcanus are linked to the elements. Both have been around for as long as they have been studied, I expect. But to say Fey makes an etching hard is limiting what you can do with it. Even on its own, how Fey is arranged will change the result. It’s one of the few Arcanus where the effect of only one is easy to make noticeable.”

Tibs formed a ball in his other hand, then added Fey in the same configuration Alistair had. “If I add more Fey, will it make it harder?”

“It’s not quite that simple.”

Tibs looked at his teacher over the balls. “It never is.”

Alistair chuckled, then launched into an explanation.

* * * * *

Tibs followed Brogan Roche as best as he could throughout the following days. The man’s position within the guards kept him mainly within the guild. When he stepped out, it was to relay Irdian’s orders, step in when someone higher than a guard was needed to settle a dispute, and the people didn’t warrant Irdian getting involved, or lead guards on important missions.

Tibs learned the man’s duties through the discreet use of his coins, since Brogan hadn’t had to do any of those things. When the man had stepped out of the guild building with Tibs watching, it was to go eat at the Drunk Worm. He went there each day, and Tibs was able to narrow where he kept the item. It was in the pouch at his belt. The pouch with an intricate knot keeping anyone from easily picking it.

As confident as Tibs was in his ability to pick a pocket, or a coin pouch, Brogan was an adjutant within the guards. The man would be attentive. He might manage to get the pouch off, but it wouldn’t be long before Brogan noticed it was missing.

What were the procedures if he lost this item? It was magic, so even if it didn’t need to be activated, there would be a process to render it useless once it was known it had been stolen.

Tibs would have to take it and make use of it immediately, or take it in such a way Brogan couldn’t notice, use it, and return it. But that meant he’d need to arrange it each time until he worked out how it worked and could arrange to retrieve his stuff.

Although he had an option most thieves didn’t, even those who had access to the best forgers. He had access to a dungeon.

Another problem his shadowing of the adjutant revealed was that the man didn’t have the item when he arrived at the guild, or when he returned home. He was escorted by one of the guards, who had an item like the clerks, deeper into the building, and the next time Brogan was in the main hall, he had his item. At the end of his day, a guard escorted him to the main hall, and the man left.

He would have to arrange for Brogan to leave the guild while officially working, then ensure he was sufficiently distracted Tibs would be able to get the item, get it copied, and return it before he could notice it had been missing.

It was a good thing Tibs had a lot of excellent rogues he could make use of for this.