The arena's lighting problem announced itself during the first words of Brakka's opening speech. He had raised his sword toward the blackened banners, the visiting party had lined up beneath the entrance arch, and every torch on the western wall went out together. One heartbeat later the lowest sconce burst back into flame while the others stayed dark.
The adventurers cheered, apparently convinced the dungeon had arranged the effect for them. Brakka kept his pose and finished the speech by the light of a single crooked flame, although Frank, watching from the staff gallery, could tell he was choosing his steps with more care than usual. The bare stone had made the floor sound safe again, but it hadn't given the minotaur eyes suited to sudden darkness.
"That's the third time today," Vesa murmured.
She stood beside Frank in a narrow booth overlooking the fight, one hand on the curtain release and the other near the emergency shutter. On the far wall, the stage torches reflected in a metal mirror that was supposed to deliver light across Brakka's face. The mirror had been polished beautifully; it could do nothing about the mana feed serving the burners.
"You reported two outages?" Frank asked.
"Three, including that one. Dispatch recorded the first as atmosphere and the second as guest engagement."
Below, a shield bearer adjusted her stance while the mage raised a light spell to see Brakka's feet. The others took advantage of the dark to whisper about the best place to strike him. Frank could hear Vesa counting every pause in the performance and wondering how many minutes the Core would bill to her department.
"He paid for an encounter," Vesa said. "If he has to light it himself, I'd like to know which department sends the refund."
Frank had brought his cart because Vesa requested a maintenance inspection of the concealed hatch and nearby vent. He hadn't expected to find the torch circuit still operating under the same work ticket. A pale flicker ran down the western sconces, briefly revealing a blackened patch above the lowest pipe before the flame sank again.
"You're going to have to stop the scene," he said.
"While the visitors are still fighting?"
"Before somebody mistakes the failure for a trap cue. The flames aren't getting what they're supposed to get."
Vesa watched Brakka exchange a heavy blow with the shield bearer. "I can interrupt between phases. Not while he's swinging."
She signaled Rusk from the gallery. He moved along a marked path behind the backdrop and passed Brakka the agreed pause signal when the boss stepped back from a staged lunge. Brakka broke the encounter with a theatrical declaration that the chamber's ancient fires had been disturbed. The visitors were ushered to a protected alcove with drinking water while Vesa explained that the next act had been delayed by a safety inspection.
The mage, whose light spell was still hovering over his palm, shrugged. "At least you told us. The last dungeon we visited just kept the trap running when the floor collapsed."
Frank wished he could have said that sounded impossible. Vesa offered a sincere apology and promised a choice of rescheduling or continuing once the room was certified. The visitors chose to wait. The shield bearer took a seat where she could keep an eye on the stage, evidently content to rest her arm.
The shield bearer rose before the other three. She had an angry purple stripe down the inside of her wrist where the last blow had driven her shield strap into the skin. "I don't mind waiting," she told Vesa, "but we're paying for the afternoon. We arranged a healer for afterward, and he'll leave at the next bell."
Vesa looked at the schedule. "I'll write the delay on your admission slip. If you choose to stop, it will be marked as our closure, not a retreat."
That mattered to the woman more than the meal voucher. She turned to her companions and they began disagreeing about whether to spend another hour in a dungeon at all. The mage wanted to see the fight through; one swordsman had his hand pressed against a bruised rib and looked relieved by any excuse to sit. Frank stepped back into the gallery. Those four were supposed to be the hazards in somebody else's job description, but they sounded like workers deciding whether an overtime shift would be worth the money.
Tev arrived carrying an isolation key and a coil of measuring leads. He examined the booth diagram without greeting anyone, his attention fixed on a pair of lines drawn too close together.
"Who signed this alteration?" he asked Vesa.
"The stage designer left eight months ago. I have a signature from Construction for the bracket, but not the circuit."
"The torches have a heat-feed supply and an ignition line. The trap controller runs under the same gallery, but it isn't supposed to share a mana channel with either one."
Frank pointed out the dark streak above the lowest sconce. "That burner seems to get the full supply, then drops the others."
"That may be right, but I want a dead test before anybody treats it as an answer."
Tev locked out the torch ignition at the booth panel and tagged the flame supply closed. Vesa secured the performance controls so Rusk couldn't unknowingly restart an effect while the work was underway. Only after both operations were complete did Frank accompany Tev onto the narrow service ledge behind the western wall.
RB remained with Rusk in the empty booth. The rat had already tried to climb into the coil of spare curtain cord, and Frank didn't intend to see what curiosity made of a live stage winch.
The gallery ledge barely took two workers shoulder to shoulder. Below it, the trap shaft dropped past the stage rig. Tev clipped his lantern to a fixed ring while Frank tested the boards ahead with his foot. Someone had replaced one but painted over the warning line; a fastening still stood proud where a cart wheel could catch it.
"You're looking at the wrong thing," Tev said, kneeling at the torch feed.
"I'm looking at the thing that's going to drop us while you look at the other thing."
Tev glanced at the loose board, moved his weight, and set his tool case on sound timber. "All right, you have a point."
They traced the heat line from the shutoff to the first burner. The conduit entered the wall through a glazed collar, where a narrow copper return was supposed to carry surplus feed away from the upper sconces. The collar itself was sound, but the return had been clamped beneath a new decorative iron strip. Each time the circuit warmed, the metal expanded and squeezed the line. Pressure climbed against the restriction until the lowest relief burner took the surge, then the feed collapsed elsewhere.
"It's not a faulty torch," Frank said.
"Not by itself. Somebody bolted scenery over the return, and the relief burner is taking the strain."
The iron strip held the carved dragon head that had been added for Brakka's winter performance. Its mounting bolts ran through the gallery wall, out of reach from the front. Removing it without support could bring the carving down onto the arena floor, which put the repair firmly into Construction's jurisdiction as well.
When Frank reached for the rear bolt, his knuckles struck a lump of iron he'd mistaken for mortar. The whole decorative strip trembled. He withdrew his hand and followed the vibration to a second hanger hidden behind an older piece of scenery, the sort of thing nobody on the current drawing had bothered to include.
"We aren't taking that loose until someone supports the carving," he said. Tev had already started to mark the tubing and stopped without argument.
From the booth below came the sound of Rusk trying to entertain the visitors. He had found a horn and was producing notes that bore no relationship to any anthem Frank had ever heard in the dungeon. One of the adventurers shouted a request. Rusk answered by making the horn squeal even worse, and for a moment the dark room was full of genuine laughter rather than the recorded cheering that usually preceded a boss fight.
Tev wrote the isolation condition on his test sheet. "I can certify the circuit dead. I can't sign off the support for that thing."
"Vesa can hold the room. We can get Pell or Ketha to brace it."
"Then the visitors can have a proper fight instead of being roasted for a special effect."
They returned to the booth and found the Core speaking through Vesa's inspection mirror. The Core had rendered himself in a soft amber glow that made the darkened stage look like part of a very expensive production.
"This is a wonderful opportunity to explore a more atmospheric lighting profile," he was saying. "A little uncertainty adds a memorable edge to any heroic moment."
"There's a mechanically restricted return line behind the burners," Tev replied. "Until the carving is supported and the line rerouted, the torch system is locked out."
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"But surely the lower flame is still working."
"The lower flame is the one receiving the overload," Frank said. "If we use it, it may damage the burner or the fittings around it."
"Perhaps a suitably thrilling disclaimer?"
Vesa set down the clipboard she'd been holding. "A disclaimer won't make Brakka see his floor."
The Core's expression tightened. "I do hope we're considering the visitor experience."
"I am," she replied. "One of them's waiting with a magical light spell. They paid for a boss fight, not permission to fix our stage equipment."
The Core studied Tev's signed lockout sheet before bestowing his approval on a "brief technical intermission". It was hard to argue with a circuit that had already been tagged dead. The mirror returned to its normal, unhelpful reflection.
Pell came with a pair of support jacks and spent the first ten minutes correcting the assumption that the carving could simply be unbolted. Its weight hung from two different brackets, only one shown on the current drawing. The crew braced the dragon head at both points, loosened the decorative strip enough to free the copper return, and added a spacer to prevent the iron from bearing on the line when the metal warmed again. Tev then inspected the damaged tubing, replaced a flattened section, and checked continuity with the ignition supply still locked out.
The pressure test happened with Brakka and every visitor outside the room. Tev brought the feed up in stages while Frank watched the return gauge and Pell stood by the supports. The lowest burner lit first, followed by the rest in the correct sequence. The lowest burner took no sudden surge, and they held the cycle through several warmings and cooldowns, checking the line while the carving expanded around its new clearance.
At the final test Tev operated the emergency shutoff. The flames went out together instead of dying down one by one. Vesa made him repeat the test with Rusk at the booth, because Rusk would be the one who actually had to use that control during the show.
Rusk turned to face the arena and found the shutoff by touch. The burners died together. He kept his hand on the handle a moment. "That is what it was supposed to do yesterday," he said. Tev put a fresh marker beneath his fingers so the next shift could locate it just as quickly.
"I was here for the first outage," he said. "I thought I'd pressed the wrong thing."
Tev examined the worn label beneath his fingers. "You pressed the right control. I'm putting a new marker on the handle before we leave. Next time you call a fault, write down what you saw. Don't wait for it to get dramatic."
"It works," Rusk said after the second run, sounding surprised.
"It ought to," Tev replied. "Don't let anyone tell you a failed shutoff is part of the act."
The party returned an hour later, after accepting a meal voucher from the kitchen. Brakka resumed at the start of the interrupted phase rather than pretending they had never paused. When he raised his sword, the four wall torches flared in sequence and cast his shadow across the banners in a fashion that earned a genuine cheer.
The mage let his hovering light go out. The shield bearer adjusted her stance on the bare stone and met Brakka's charge with a solid strike that made everyone in the booth wince. The minotaur grinned when he caught the shield bearer's next strike, his hooves planted squarely on the exposed stone. For once he could see where the blow was coming from.
A ledger panel appeared beside the tested torch-control board as Frank gathered his tools.
MAINTENANCE LEDGER
Employee
FRANK
Classification
RANK 1: DUNGEON CUSTODIAN
Task
Boss chamber lighting isolation and tested repair
Operational credit
+18 XP
Rank 1 experience
154 XP
Vesa signed the test sheet and then held up the compensation bill. "They have charged my performance budget for the waiting party's meal vouchers."
Brakka could fill a stage with a roar, but kitchen vouchers were apparently beyond the dungeon's generosity. Frank glanced at the decorative carving that had caused the fault.
"Put the repair receipt beside it," he said. "At least make them compare the two."
"Did it cost more than the carving?" Frank asked.
"Not even close, which is the aggravating part."
Rusk brought RB back in the collection box. The rat had acquired a short length of scarlet costume fringe from somewhere, and now wore it across the exposed patch on his back as if trying on a cape. Frank inspected the strip for needles before letting him keep it.
STATUS WINDOW
Name
RB (Rat Bastard)
STATS
Shiny Things
47 (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Confiscated by Frank
-4 (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
Collected
+9 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Hidden
14 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Missing Somehow
5 (╥﹏╥)
Found
+3 (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
Familiar
Frank
"You missed a good fight," Vesa told them.
Frank looked through the narrow window at Brakka's carefully timed retreat, the visitors pressing after him under reliable light. "Looks like they're enjoying themselves."
"Even after they had to wait?"
"Might be because they didn't fall through the floor first."
Rusk caught them at the staff stair with his horn tucked under his arm. "My sister says I ought to play music for a living."
Frank remembered the noise Rusk had made during the blackout. "Has she heard you?"
Rusk laughed and went back to the arena. The torches were working now, so he could ruin the music on purpose.