Not sensing anything odd with the stone floor close to him, Tibs looked at the clear liquid in the pool.
“Water?” Carina asked.
Tibs reached out with his sense. “Yeah, with some earth in it, and air,” he added, surprised. “I don’t know why that one’s there, but it reminds me of the water when we walked up the mountain.”
She looked to Khumdar and Mez, and Tibs realized that if they’d been paying attention to him, instead of standing on the other side of the platform with Jackal, they could have overheard his comments. The fighter was carefully putting his weight on the part of the ledge that moved away from the path.
He shrugged. They were part of the team; he would not keep it a secret from them. He’d tell them after the run. He had to ask Mez about his audience, anyway.
Carina still lowered her voice when she asked, “you can sense those essences too?”
“I have reserves,” he whispered, “so I know what they feel like. I can feel the other elements too, but they’re all mixed into a confusing mess.”
“So you could tell them apart if someone explained to you what they felt like?”
Tibs smiled to himself. “Tell me what air feels like.”
“Well, it’s…” she trailed off, becoming pensive. “Airy?”
“But that’s not the right description, is it? It’s just the best word you can find for it.”
She nodded.
“I don’t think Mez telling me fire is ‘hot’ would be enough for me to make it out in there.”
“So,” Jackal called, approaching. “Are we walking or swimming?”
Tibs looked into the pool. “I can’t tell how deep it is, and I’ve never swum before.”
“I have nearly drowned once,” Khumdar said. “I would prefer walking.”
“I can swim,” Mez said, “but I don’t see how I could get back up on the other side. The top of the water is too low to reach the edge of the ledge.”
“Best I can do is float,” Carina said. Which earned her a raised eyebrow from the cleric.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tibs said. “If we can’t all do it, it isn’t the solution.” He had his own thought on how it might cross. But if it worked, only he and Carina could use it, and he suspected she wouldn’t manage it until she could sense essence and he didn’t have enough of a reserve to make it to the other side.
He went to where the ledge continued along the wall; where Jackal had put his weight and studied it. Every few paces a new stone was anchored to the wall and were narrow enough it would be easy for a foot to slip off.
They looked to touch the ones on each side, but there was enough of a gap Tibs could move water between them. He could also make the water flow into the gap where the stone attached to the wall and there was open space behind it. He felt no mechanism through his water, but there was more space than it could reach without tapping the amulet.
He studied the pathway again. One seemingly solid block of stone, wide enough for three people to walk side by side from this side of the room to the other, reaching to the bottom of the pool. It looked to be the safest way, which was why Tibs didn’t trust it any more than he did the ledge.
“We’re going to take the path,” he said, “walking in a line in the center of it. I don’t think the dungeon can just drop the edges since they go all the way down, but we’re not taking chances. I’ll be in the lead.”
“Would it not be safer if you went alone and tested the whole way?” Khumdar asked.
Tibs shrugged and looked at Jackal. “Your call.” He placed a hand on the ground before him and spread water, feeling the cracks through it, but more so if he found something through the other essences, he still could explain how he found it. He didn’t enjoy keeping this from Mez and Khumdar, but he hadn’t thought to tell them, and here wasn’t the time.
“We’re going with you. For all we know, the lack of traps is because the dungeon has warrens hidden where rats and rabbits will come out of once we’re in the middle.”
Tibs froze and looked at the expanse before him. “I wish you hadn’t said that.” If rats swarmed while they were on the path, he’d have nowhere to go. He couldn’t suppress the shudder, and the hissing sounded pleased by it.
“I’m right behind you, Khumdar, behind me. Mez and Carina, you have the rear. Be ready for anything. We’ve been surprised by the dungeon before.” Jackal nodded to Tibs. “Khumdar, darkness is about hiding, right? Any chance you can hide us from the dungeon?”
“I will try,” the cleric said, as Tibs took his first steps on the path, “but this is not an environment I have been in before.”
“Where did you train, if you haven’t been in a dungeon before?” Mez asked.
“That is a rather complicated answer, one I believe is better suited to once we are not in danger.”
Tibs paused and looked over his shoulder. “Can you sense danger here?”
Khumdar shook his head. “That isn’t something darkness grants me. I simply don’t expect this floor will be safer than the previous one.”
“Speaking the way a true Runner talks,” Jackal said.
Tibs returned to sensing the floor and moving slowly. He paid close attention, both because he knew there had to be a trap, and because the hiss was gone; as if someone was holding their breath in anticipation.
Was he hearing the dungeon’s breath?
Did the dungeon breathe?
When the click came, Tibs only had the time to notice it came from above him before Jackal grabbed the collar of his armor and pulled him back. He was trying to regain his balance when the stone slammed down where he’d been standing.
The hiss was the staccato of laugher.
He stared at it as it slowly raised back up. Looking at the ceiling, barely visible it was so high, he could just make out the edges of stone blocks following the path. He swallowed. If more than one had fallen, they would all have been crushed.
“Tibs,” Jackal asked, looking worried.
Tibs looked at the floor. “There are no triggers, I swear.”
“Is it possible you missed one, Tibs?” Khumdar asked. “I mean no disrespect, but you are young.”
“He’s still alive,” Jackal replied, harsher than Tibs thought the question deserved. “That makes him one of the best in this town.”
“And the way I do it, if there was something in the floor, I’d have felt it.” He turned and stared ahead. “Which means it isn’t in the floor.”
“You mean liked a wire trap?” Mez asked.
“Except, I’d see a wire,” Tibs mused. “We all would.” Then he chuckled. “Oh, you sneaky dungeon.”
“What?” Jackal asked.
“It tricked me.”
“That is what dungeons do, is it not?” Khumdar asked.
“I should be smarter than it is.”
The hissing sounded offended and Tibs chuckled.
“The first floor trained me to only look at the floor, the trap room, the warren room.”
“The boulders hid the triggers to open the key’s hiding place,” Carina said.
“But the danger came from the floor. So that’s all I was paying attention to here.” He sensed the essence around him and smiled as he felt it. A bundle of essence making a line at knee height. He could make out water, air, earth, and a multitude of others, every essence would be there, he suspected. That way anyone could find it if they paid attention.
Only, as far as he knew, he was the only one who could sense essence. If he was the only one who could see this trap, then his method wasn’t the answer.
“How did it know?” he mused.
“Know what?” Jackal asked, sounding worried.
“We’re safe,” Tibs said. “We can go back if we want to, there’s just some snag in my reasoning I want to work out before we continue.”
“How long will it take?” Mez asked.
“What’s the snag?” Carina asked.
“None of you can sense essence, right?”
“I can sense darkness,” Khumdar answered.
“Alright, but I know you and Carina can’t,” he told Jackal.
“You mean that getting in touch with my essence thing affects this?” Mez asked. “I thought my teacher was just messing with me.”
“But that’s also not the right solution, because it doesn’t let everyone make their way through.”
“It is a trap,” Jackal said. “That’s a Rogue thing.”
“Yes, but if it relies on having received the training I did, how did the other teams make it through? Carina, how many teams made it past this room?”
“I don’t know, but among the Runners only three teams took losses.”
“So there’s a way to do this that doesn’t rely on what I can do.” The hiss sounded particularly smug. He wished he knew why he heard it and not the others, so he could snap at it and not seem crazy. “Jackal, I want to try something.” He indicated the space next to him as he crouched, and the fighter joined him.
“I’m not sure how you want me to see something if you don’t.”
“This isn’t about seeing. I don’t see the essence I feel it, but you can’t do that, so what I want you to do is push your essence here.” He indicated the line.
“Won’t that trigger the trap?”
“If it does, we know there’s a click first, so we’ll jump back.”
Jackal put his hand up, palm facing where Tibs had showed and earth formed a small mound.
Tibs looked at that. “Not the earth, just the essence.”
“Tibs, it’s the same.”
“Remember when I told you that isn’t true? I need you to believe me. Earth has essence in it, but it isn’t essence. What you have to do is separate the two.” Out of the corner of his eye, Tibs saw Mez had a flame in his hand and was looking at it intently.
“Okay, earth but not earth.” Jackal shook his head and grumbled softly. “I really thought here was one place I wouldn’t have to deal with that philosophy crap.” Tibs filed the comment for later. His friend had more important things to do than answer his question.
Jackal closed his eyes and creased his brow. For a long minute he looked like he was trying to squish himself smaller, then he swore, forced himself to relax, and breathe slowly. The mound of dirt in the raised palm crumbled and fell, but it didn’t reach the ground, it ceased to be halfway there.
“It’s there!” Jackal yelled.
Tibs jumped to his feet, “Yes! Beat you!”
Mez, Carina, and Khumdar looked at him oddly.
“Don’t you see, the dungeon is forcing us to get better.”
“Yes, through the fighting,” Mez said.
“No, through everything. The trap is slow enough only an idiot would be caught in it.”
“So we can run through,” Jackal said, getting to his feet and looking at his hand with an odd expression.
“Sure, but we don’t know what’s past it. Maybe the next one’s faster. I’m pretty sure that anyone who tries to use their essence to feel where the line is, could do it.”
“It wasn’t exactly easy to reach the point where I knew the essence wasn’t what I thought it was.”
“You don’t need that, I’m pretty sure you could have pushed the earth at the line and felt it.”
“Then why put me through that mental chokehold?”
“I had to know you could do it,” Tibs said.
Jackal looked like he’d protest, then nodded. “If the dumb fighter can do it, then you can show anyone else how to do it.” He smiled. “Clever.”
Tibs kept his comment to himself. He was sure that once he knew what philosophy was, it would be something that needed more smarts than Jackal liked to claim he had.
“Does it mean the lesson’s over?” Carina asked, “or will you ask each of us to do it.”
“No, you don’t need this to practice it,” Tibs answered, looking toward the exit. “And the next time we’re here, someone else can try sensing the line. Jackal, step over and see if there’s another trigger.”
“How about I have them step over and you, our qualified Rogue, go and see if there are other triggers? The trap room on the first floor has a lot of them. I expect this one does too.”
Tibs stepped over the line and sensed ahead of him, the airs and the floor. He’d explain why he wasn’t using water if someone asked about it. He made it to the end without encountering another trigger.
“I guess the next time we can simply run the path,” Jackal said.
“Sure,” Mez replied, “if you trust the dungeon not to mix things up. When it removed the visual clues in the trap room, it cost my team of the day our Rogue.”
Tibs grinned at Jackal. “Didn’t it almost cost us our fighter?”
“Just move along, Tibs,” Jackal replied. “We have another room to go to and hopefully it’s something I can hit.”
The short hallway took them to the other room. Mez groaned on looking in.
“I believe you wished for something to hit,” Khumdar said.
Three golems stood in the center of the room, looking at them.
Jackal rubbed his hands eagerly.
“I know I said me and Carina could take the one upstairs out ourselves, but I said that because there was only one.”
“We’ve got this,” Jackal said.
“Jackal, I can, maybe, give you two explosive arrows,” Mez warned. “I know from experience that regular ones don’t do anything against those.”
“Relax, guys. I told you, we’ve got this.”
“Jackal,” Tibs said, sharing Mez’s worries. “There are three golems. If they see me, being silent doesn’t do me any good.”
“Exactly.” Jackal grinned. “Three golems with a stone whip that can do enough damage to shatter stone.”
“You know what?” Carina said. “I’m starting to agree with you, Jackal. Tibs should be our leader.”
Jackal looked at them. “You really aren’t seeing this?”
“I believe the question is if you are seeing the same thing we are,” Khumdar said.
“This isn’t a ‘us versus them’,” Jackal said. “It’s a ‘how do we trick them into killing one another’ situation.”
“Jackal,” Carina said in exasperation, “that’s the…. You know, that’s actually not a bad idea.”
“Dumb fighter here,” Jackal said, “emphasis on fighter. This is what any pit match where I’ve been pitted against multiple fighters turned into.”
“And there have been many of those?” Khumdar asked.
“Oh,” Carina answered, “considering how talented Jackal is at dealing with other people. I’m sure they were endless.”
“She just insulted you,” Tibs commented, not taking his eyes off the golems. Like the one in the other floor, they didn’t move while they were outside the room. He couldn’t feel any essence triggers, so he wondered how they activated.
“I know, but it’s what a big sister’s entitled to do. So, what do you think, run in and get between them?”
“Do we have to destroy them?” Khumdar asked. “The exit is over there. If we can trick them, why not simply run for it?”
“Because we’re not getting the loot if we don’t kill them,” Jackal answered.
“And we don’t know if they’ll chase us,” Tibs added. “They won’t attack until we enter, but there’s no telling what they’ll do after that if we leave.”
“Why don’t we test it?” Carina asked. “If they chase us, we kill them. If they don’t, we can deal with them later, if we have to. You get your loot that way.”
“That sounds like an overly complicated way of doing it,” the fighter complained.
“It’d be nice to know,” Mez said, “in case it’s something we have to do at some point.”
Jackal sighed. “Fine. Tibs you, Carina, and Khumdar go while Mez shoots normal arrows for the sounds as a distraction. Try to be quiet. I’ll follow Mez in case something goes wrong.”
Tibs took out his knife. “No dying,” he stated, looking at the others. He looked at his little knife, then the golems. He needed something better. He was getting himself throwing knives with his cut of the loot. Maybe he should work on getting stronger too. There had to be a point where he could wield a short sword.
Next to him, Carina squared her shoulders. She gave Jackal a warning glare, then nodded at Tibs. When Khumdar gave him a nod too, Tibs took off. Arrows hit the wall in the opposite distance, but the golems remained focused on them. Carina waved in their direction and the first whip caught in a whirlwind and the other two missed them. Tibs felt confident they’d make it out of the room.
“Jackal!” Mez yelled.
Tibs looked over his shoulder as the fighter charged one of the golems. He cursed and stopped. “Keep going, you have range.” The golem raised its arm for another whip attack, but an arrow with a glowing tip embedded itself in the shoulder joint, locking it in place.
Tibs ran at the golem and slashed at the stone, surprised by how deeply his knife dug in, and how stuck it became. He cursed as a stone fist dropped toward him, to be stopped by a staff, and then explode, sending Khumdar flying and freeing Tibs’s knife. Worried for his new friend, Tibs stabbed the knife over and over while the golem seemed fixated on its missing arm.
An arrow slammed into its chest and caused the golem to fall to pieces in time for Tibs to see Jackal rip the head off the golem he’d been fighting with, and throw it at the last one; which Carina kept busy with wind blades. Before Tibs could go help, it fell to pieces. With one form unmoving on the ground and nothing else to vent his anger on, he aimed it at the person responsible.
He marched to Jackal as he danced in victory.
“Stupid!” Tibs kicked the fighter in the shin.
“Now Tibs,” Jackal said, stepping away to avoid the next kick, “Calm down, I knew we could beat them. And we did.”
Tibs pointed to the still form. “Did we?”
A groan came from it. “That hurt,” Khumdar said.
“You’re alive!” Tibs was next to the cleric, running his hand over him to make sure he wasn’t too injured.
Khumdar bit back a scream. “Not if you keep doing that.”
“How?” Tibs demanded.
“Armored robes.”
“There’s no essence in it.”
Khumdar chuckled, then groaned. “Done the old fashion way. Leather between the wool for the chest. I’ve been traveling alone for some years now. This isn’t my first fight.” He lowered his voice. “I’m Upsilon without ever stepping into a dungeon, Tibs. Think on that, when you have the chance.”
“Owe!” Jackal held his head as Carina glared at him.
“That was probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever done!”
“Not even close.” Jackal ducked a slap. “Look. We won without even working together. Once we have an actual plan, they aren’t going to be any problem.”
“And I think this showed me I can be of use,” Khumdar said, groaning as Tibs helped him stand. “I can diminish some of whatever they are. Their strength, for lack of a better word. I don’t think I would have been able to keep that fist off you with the staff otherwise, Tibs.”
“Is that why the arm exploded like it did when I shot it?” Mez asked. “I didn’t have enough fire in the arrow for that to happen.”
“Possibly,” the cleric said. “I have never done this before.”
Tibs glared at Jackal, and the fighter tried to wipe away his grin.
“We survived,” Mez said, sounding mildly surprised. “So maybe we should collect the loot and figure out what we’re going?”
Tibs looked around.
“We turn back,” Carina stated. “Khumdar is injured.”
He found three silvers and Mez handed him four more.
“Can we at least see what the next challenge is?” Jackal asked. He handed him two silvers and had an amulet; which he handed to Khumdar.
Carina didn’t look pleased as she turned so he could put it in her backpack. “You’re the one with the injuries, what do you want to do?”
“I can walk,” Khumdar said, “if not very fast. So long as nothing chases us, I think we should get an idea of what we’ll be fighting the next time we come here.”
“Fine,” Carina said, “But if you pull something like you did here, Jackal, I am blasting you and we leave. I’ll deal with consoling Tibs afterward.”
“What about Kroseph?” the fighter asked, worried.
“I’m going to tell him you did something stupid and got yourself killed,” Tibs answered. “He’s going to believe me,” he added when Jackal looked like he wanted to protest.
“Okay, I’m sorry for what I did,” Jackal said, sounding repentant. “I swear I will not start anything. You were acting so scared, I wanted to show you that we aren’t the Omegas who had trouble clearing the first floor anymore.”
“We weren’t Omegas when the boss almost kicked our asses either,” Carina snapped at him. “Neither were the hundreds of Runners it killed. You do not get to scare us like that, am I clear? It’s not just Tibs your death would hurt.”
“I know,” the fighter said, sounding exasperated. “I didn’t do it to—” His yell of pain was such it surprised everyone except Tibs. He’d kicked him in the shin hard, using his reserve of earth essence to make the blow harder, and was pleased with the reaction as Jackal hopped on one leg, holding his other.
“How did you do that?” Mez asked.
“Anger,” Tibs replied, glaring at Jackal.
“I said—” the fighter began.
“I’m going to tell Kroseph you almost got Khumdar killed,” Tibs threatened.
“Now, hold on. There’s no need to involve Kro in this. His life is already exciting enough at the inn.”
“Then behave,” Carina said. “Like a sane man.”
For an instant Tibs thought Jackal would reply, then he showed he had some sanity and just nodded.
Tibs followed Carina out of the room as she helped Khumdar, and after a few steps, they stopped.
“This can’t be good,” Tibs said, looking into the long corridor.
“I am afraid I do not understand,” Khumdar said, looking from one to the other. “It is only a hall.”
“Except that it’s always been a room, a short corridor, and another room,” Jackal said. “Any time the dungeon does something different, we have to worry. Tibs, what do you think?”
“We’re saying it’s a hall because we don’t see any difference, but it could be a room.” He looked behind them, judging the distance. “We’re safe here. We’re not past the ‘threshold’. Stay here and let me check it.”
He stepped forward and felt as far as he could in a bubble around him. Pushing himself like this, he could sense a small section of each wall, and into the floor, but not the ceiling. He didn’t think the stairs had gone down so much the ceiling could be that high, but that was a question for another time.
He made it two dozen steps into the ‘room’ when he felt the line of essence into the wall. He couldn’t tell what essence it was, but on the right side, the outline of a door was traced in the wall. He touched the stone, ready to run at the slightest sound, but even the hiss was quiet.
“It’s safe to come to this point,” Tibs called, “but stay away from the wall, there’s something.” If it was a door, there should be a lock.
“What did you find?” Jackal asked.
“A door, I think.”
“Loot?” The fighter asked, looking excited.
Tibs looked at him. “I’m the Rogue, why are you so much greedier than me?”
Jackal looked offended. “I didn’t know greed was exclusively a Rogue trait.”
“Definitely shouldn’t be a fighter’s,” Tibs grumbled, returning to studying the door.
“It shouldn’t be a trait anyone has,” Carina said.
“Unfortunately, it is a far too common one,” Khumdar added.
“Do you mind being quiet?” Tibs asked. “You’re distracting.”
He couldn’t find a keyhole or a loose stone that might act as one. To be fair to the dungeon, there was also no actual door. It was just the tracing of it into the stone using essence. The dungeon had imbued the shape. It seemed that on this floor the dungeon was having fun with essence. Was it also something it was just discovering now that it had graduated? Was it from watching them use it?
It had used essence as triggers, so why wouldn’t it use it as a lock here? If it had, it made this a door no one but Tibs and possibly Khumdar could open, if the cleric had experience manipulating essence on top of sensing it. He smiled. If he opened this, they would have something the dungeon hadn’t planned on anyone getting until much later. It would have to be good.
He pushed his sense deeper into the wall and encounter something a few inches in preventing him from sensing further, but just before that was something. Essence formed into a channel of some sort. Three of them. Each were composed of multiple essences, and while he couldn’t tell what most of them were, earth, water, and air were there, but not the same way. The top channel had earth and air, the middle one air and water, and the bottom one earth and water.
What it meant was clear, but the implication unsettled Tibs. If he was right, it meant the dungeon knew he had access to multiple essences. He tried to tell himself he was paranoid, it could be meant for multiple people. Jackal had earth, Carina had air, but it was always teams of five. If this was aimed at teams, there would be five channels. Maybe the dungeons would change the composition to match the essence the Runners had, but he was certain there would be five channels.
How greedy was he?
Not that much, he decided, but the why the dungeon would bother with this, with him, nagged at him. And this arrangement told him that what was on the other side was for him. Maybe it was the answers to the why? He wouldn’t know unless he did something.
He pushed water in the top channel. It took little, and once full, something happened to it, it ‘locked’ in place, was what it felt to Tibs. In the middle one, he put earth, and the same thing happened. Air went into the bottom one. A gasp from the others made Tibs look. The door that had only been an essence shape imbued in the wall was now a stone door in a metal frame. With a rumble the door lifted, vanishing into the upper portion of the metal frame, and heat poured out from the opening, increasing as more of it vanished. Tibs stepped back with the others, using his arm to block the heat from baking his eyes.
“What is that?” Mez asked.
“Fire,” Tibs answered, awed.
“No, I got that,” he replied. “Fire essence here. I mean, what kind of room is this? A trap, am I supposed to, I don’t know. Calm the heat? It’s real fire, I can tell you that much.”
Mez was wrong. Tibs had been right. It was the answer to one of his questions, one he hadn’t considered addressing until he’d explained things to Mez. Why the dungeon had done this was beyond him, as was how it even knew he needed it.
“Tibs!” Jackal called as he ran.
He couldn’t let the chance pass. He felt the air essence coalesce around him and was thankful for Alistair’s training as he used his essence to disrupt Carina’s attempt to stop him.
The heat became more than he could endure before he even reached the door, painful when he crossed it, but he kept running. He couldn’t risk them attempting to rescue him and hurting themselves.
The roar of the fire was all there was, eating him alive. His scream of pain didn’t last long as the heat climbed down his throat to eat him from the inside. It was too much. The dungeon wasn’t giving him what he wanted, it had tricked him. He had to turn around, exit before it was too late.
Only he couldn’t move. He wasn’t even sure he could feel his body. He wasn’t going to…
* * * * *
“I can not tell if you are stupid, child of humans, or immensely brave.” The voice was nearly lost in the fire's roar and its pain. “I didn’t think you’d come at all, certainly not this way.”
“I need,” Tibs tried to say. He didn’t know if the words came out. All he knew as in how much pain he was in. None of the other audience had been so painful.
“This.” Before Tibs was the shadow of the shape, and he realized he could make out a form among the fire, flames in something resembling the form of a person.
“Please,” Tibs tried to beg.
“I’m holding it for you, child of humans. It’s all I can do. You must take it from me. And you must do so quickly. There are consequences to breaking the rules. Consequences that are killing you. And as much as I crave consuming you, I crave seeing what you will do even more, so I encourage you to take it.”
Tibs tried, but his body was nothing more than burnt bones. He forced it, pushed through the pain, demanded of himself that he finished what he had started. If he was going to die, he was going to do so having accomplished his goal. He would have his full element.
He fell onto the being of fire, his arms closing around the shadow of the shape. He felt it meld into him, space appearing between water and earth to fill with fire over the void of his reserve.
Only it was no longer a void. There was a spark in its center.
* * * * *
Tibs registered the fall on his side as a sudden pressure against his body. At least the pain was gone, he thought. That was good. The roar of the fire was also gone, as was the heat.
They were replaced by muffled voices, darkness, and a cold like he had never felt before. Worse than the coldest nights on the cold season back on his street.
“Tibs!”
He thought his name was yelled, but it came from so far. He felt pressure. A sense his position changed.
“What’s wrong with him?” someone distant asked, Carina, he thought.
“What’s wrong with him?” someone close echoed her question. He sounded young, Tibs’s age, maybe a little older. Had another team been allowed in?
“How should I know?” another close voice asked in annoyance. A girl, younger than the boy. Voice high and strident.
“Do something!” a distant voice demanded.
“You said Fire would accept him!” the boy exclaimed.
“I am not a purity cleric,” another distant voice replied. “The best I can do is keep infection from setting in.”
“Did he?” the girl asked.
“Would he look like that if—huh? He has fire now. Tibs has his element!” the boy yelled in victory. Tibs tried to recall the voice. If the boy knew him, they had to have met before. And if Tibs hadn’t noticed his voice, he was certain he’d remember the girl's. “Gam, why is he dying if Fire accepted him?” the boy asked, worried.
“How many times do I have to tell you,” she replied, “I don’t know why elements do what they do, I’m not one of them.”
“He can’t die! Not after I went to all this effort to get him to Fire.”
“Then do something,” the girl replied, sounding like Carina when she had enough of dealing with Jackal’s antics.
“Okay, Big Brute is on his way. Are you sure it’s going to work?”
“Yes,” she replied with certainty. “I’m… confident?” Tibs didn’t like how not confident she sounded now.
“What are we going to do if it doesn’t work?”
“Do better if another like him ever comes by again?” she answered.
“Ganymede, I will not have you talk about Tibs like he’s already dead. He’s one of the few Runners I kind of like. I definitely like him more than those new ones.”
“Kind of like the kid?” she asked. “That’s what you’re going with?”
“Can we talk about this after I save him?”
Being saved would be nice, Tibs thought.
“Then Big Brute better hurry. Are you really going to call it that?”
Tibs tried to pay attention to the distant voice, but they seemed even further. He thought they sounded frantic.
“Stop attacking Big Brute,” the boy ordered, then let out an exasperated cry. “Whose bright idea was it that I can’t talk with them? If they destroy him, I can’t use him to save Tibs.”
“Don’t look at me,” the girl, Ganymede, replied. “I don’t make the rules.”
“No,” the boy grumbled mournfully, “you just make sure I have to follow them.”
“Someone has to. We know what happens if one of you is left unsupervised.”
“Shit, shit, shit. Gam, what if Tibs doesn’t reach for Big Brute? His friends are tired enough they’ve backed off, but if they think BB is going to touch him they are going to come at him again. They did a lot of damage. I don’t think he can take another assault.”
“All we can do is hope the essence came with a reflex,” Ganymede answered. “If he touches BB—she sounded like she was rolling her eyes—then the lack of essence should pull his in and do what he needs to do, otherwise…”
“We are not going there,” the boy warned her. “Come Tibs, be a pal and survive this. I don’t want this to be over, okay? Just make the effort. Lift your hand, BB’s right there.”
Tibs wondered what the boy meant. There was no one near him other than the two of them, but as he tried to sense them, he realized he was wrong. He couldn’t sense the boy or Ganymede, but there was something next to him; something massive. Further away were others that he couldn’t make out clearly because the large one’s essence blinded him. It was filled with the same essence the spark was made of. It was like… again he couldn’t describe it, the closest he could come to it, was like the lightning felt, when it struck a few buildings away.
He had a hand, he thought he could feel it, or maybe he was just him remembering what his hand had felt like. Maybe he could make the memory touch what was next to him and it would satisfy everyone.
“He’s doing it!” the boy yelled.
Was he? Maybe he was. He remembered how to move his hand, but now he wasn’t sure the memory obeyed him. It was slow. Then there was a pressure against the memory.
“Yes!” the boy yelled, then fell silent. “Gam, you said it would suck it in, why is BB still standing?”
“I said we’d have to hope there was an instinct,” she replied, exasperation mixed with sorrow.
Tibs felt for the essence within the form. Not only did it match his, but the form itself felt somewhat like when he used the amulet as a reserve. Tibs pulled the essence into him.
“Sto, you have to prepare yourself, he—”
The spark grew to the brightness of the sun, and Tibs yelled at the pain that accompanied it.
Not sensing anything odd with the stone floor close to him, Tibs looked at the clear liquid in the pool.
“Water?” Carina asked.
Tibs reached out with his sense. “Yeah, with some earth in it, and air,” he added, surprised. “I don’t know why that one’s there, but it reminds me of the water when we walked up the mountain.”
She looked to Khumdar and Mez, and Tibs realized that if they’d been paying attention to him, instead of standing on the other side of the platform with Jackal, they could have overheard his comments. The fighter was carefully putting his weight on the part of the ledge that moved away from the path.
He shrugged. They were part of the team; he would not keep it a secret from them. He’d tell them after the run. He had to ask Mez about his audience, anyway.
Carina still lowered her voice when she asked, “you can sense those essences too?”
“I have reserves,” he whispered, “so I know what they feel like. I can feel the other elements too, but they’re all mixed into a confusing mess.”
“So you could tell them apart if someone explained to you what they felt like?”
Tibs smiled to himself. “Tell me what air feels like.”
“Well, it’s…” she trailed off, becoming pensive. “Airy?”
“But that’s not the right description, is it? It’s just the best word you can find for it.”
She nodded.
“I don’t think Mez telling me fire is ‘hot’ would be enough for me to make it out in there.”
“So,” Jackal called, approaching. “Are we walking or swimming?”
Tibs looked into the pool. “I can’t tell how deep it is, and I’ve never swum before.”
“I have nearly drowned once,” Khumdar said. “I would prefer walking.”
“I can swim,” Mez said, “but I don’t see how I could get back up on the other side. The top of the water is too low to reach the edge of the ledge.”
“Best I can do is float,” Carina said. Which earned her a raised eyebrow from the cleric.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tibs said. “If we can’t all do it, it isn’t the solution.” He had his own thought on how it might cross. But if it worked, only he and Carina could use it, and he suspected she wouldn’t manage it until she could sense essence and he didn’t have enough of a reserve to make it to the other side.
He went to where the ledge continued along the wall; where Jackal had put his weight and studied it. Every few paces a new stone was anchored to the wall and were narrow enough it would be easy for a foot to slip off.
They looked to touch the ones on each side, but there was enough of a gap Tibs could move water between them. He could also make the water flow into the gap where the stone attached to the wall and there was open space behind it. He felt no mechanism through his water, but there was more space than it could reach without tapping the amulet.
He studied the pathway again. One seemingly solid block of stone, wide enough for three people to walk side by side from this side of the room to the other, reaching to the bottom of the pool. It looked to be the safest way, which was why Tibs didn’t trust it any more than he did the ledge.
“We’re going to take the path,” he said, “walking in a line in the center of it. I don’t think the dungeon can just drop the edges since they go all the way down, but we’re not taking chances. I’ll be in the lead.”
“Would it not be safer if you went alone and tested the whole way?” Khumdar asked.
Tibs shrugged and looked at Jackal. “Your call.” He placed a hand on the ground before him and spread water, feeling the cracks through it, but more so if he found something through the other essences, he still could explain how he found it. He didn’t enjoy keeping this from Mez and Khumdar, but he hadn’t thought to tell them, and here wasn’t the time.
“We’re going with you. For all we know, the lack of traps is because the dungeon has warrens hidden where rats and rabbits will come out of once we’re in the middle.”
Tibs froze and looked at the expanse before him. “I wish you hadn’t said that.” If rats swarmed while they were on the path, he’d have nowhere to go. He couldn’t suppress the shudder, and the hissing sounded pleased by it.
“I’m right behind you, Khumdar, behind me. Mez and Carina, you have the rear. Be ready for anything. We’ve been surprised by the dungeon before.” Jackal nodded to Tibs. “Khumdar, darkness is about hiding, right? Any chance you can hide us from the dungeon?”
“I will try,” the cleric said, as Tibs took his first steps on the path, “but this is not an environment I have been in before.”
“Where did you train, if you haven’t been in a dungeon before?” Mez asked.
“That is a rather complicated answer, one I believe is better suited to once we are not in danger.”
Tibs paused and looked over his shoulder. “Can you sense danger here?”
Khumdar shook his head. “That isn’t something darkness grants me. I simply don’t expect this floor will be safer than the previous one.”
“Speaking the way a true Runner talks,” Jackal said.
Tibs returned to sensing the floor and moving slowly. He paid close attention, both because he knew there had to be a trap, and because the hiss was gone; as if someone was holding their breath in anticipation.
Was he hearing the dungeon’s breath?
Did the dungeon breathe?
When the click came, Tibs only had the time to notice it came from above him before Jackal grabbed the collar of his armor and pulled him back. He was trying to regain his balance when the stone slammed down where he’d been standing.
The hiss was the staccato of laugher.
He stared at it as it slowly raised back up. Looking at the ceiling, barely visible it was so high, he could just make out the edges of stone blocks following the path. He swallowed. If more than one had fallen, they would all have been crushed.
“Tibs,” Jackal asked, looking worried.
Tibs looked at the floor. “There are no triggers, I swear.”
“Is it possible you missed one, Tibs?” Khumdar asked. “I mean no disrespect, but you are young.”
“He’s still alive,” Jackal replied, harsher than Tibs thought the question deserved. “That makes him one of the best in this town.”
“And the way I do it, if there was something in the floor, I’d have felt it.” He turned and stared ahead. “Which means it isn’t in the floor.”
“You mean liked a wire trap?” Mez asked.
“Except, I’d see a wire,” Tibs mused. “We all would.” Then he chuckled. “Oh, you sneaky dungeon.”
“What?” Jackal asked.
“It tricked me.”
“That is what dungeons do, is it not?” Khumdar asked.
“I should be smarter than it is.”
The hissing sounded offended and Tibs chuckled.
“The first floor trained me to only look at the floor, the trap room, the warren room.”
“The boulders hid the triggers to open the key’s hiding place,” Carina said.
“But the danger came from the floor. So that’s all I was paying attention to here.” He sensed the essence around him and smiled as he felt it. A bundle of essence making a line at knee height. He could make out water, air, earth, and a multitude of others, every essence would be there, he suspected. That way anyone could find it if they paid attention.
Only, as far as he knew, he was the only one who could sense essence. If he was the only one who could see this trap, then his method wasn’t the answer.
“How did it know?” he mused.
“Know what?” Jackal asked, sounding worried.
“We’re safe,” Tibs said. “We can go back if we want to, there’s just some snag in my reasoning I want to work out before we continue.”
“How long will it take?” Mez asked.
“What’s the snag?” Carina asked.
“None of you can sense essence, right?”
“I can sense darkness,” Khumdar answered.
“Alright, but I know you and Carina can’t,” he told Jackal.
“You mean that getting in touch with my essence thing affects this?” Mez asked. “I thought my teacher was just messing with me.”
“But that’s also not the right solution, because it doesn’t let everyone make their way through.”
“It is a trap,” Jackal said. “That’s a Rogue thing.”
“Yes, but if it relies on having received the training I did, how did the other teams make it through? Carina, how many teams made it past this room?”
“I don’t know, but among the Runners only three teams took losses.”
“So there’s a way to do this that doesn’t rely on what I can do.” The hiss sounded particularly smug. He wished he knew why he heard it and not the others, so he could snap at it and not seem crazy. “Jackal, I want to try something.” He indicated the space next to him as he crouched, and the fighter joined him.
“I’m not sure how you want me to see something if you don’t.”
“This isn’t about seeing. I don’t see the essence I feel it, but you can’t do that, so what I want you to do is push your essence here.” He indicated the line.
“Won’t that trigger the trap?”
“If it does, we know there’s a click first, so we’ll jump back.”
Jackal put his hand up, palm facing where Tibs had showed and earth formed a small mound.
Tibs looked at that. “Not the earth, just the essence.”
“Tibs, it’s the same.”
“Remember when I told you that isn’t true? I need you to believe me. Earth has essence in it, but it isn’t essence. What you have to do is separate the two.” Out of the corner of his eye, Tibs saw Mez had a flame in his hand and was looking at it intently.
“Okay, earth but not earth.” Jackal shook his head and grumbled softly. “I really thought here was one place I wouldn’t have to deal with that philosophy crap.” Tibs filed the comment for later. His friend had more important things to do than answer his question.
Jackal closed his eyes and creased his brow. For a long minute he looked like he was trying to squish himself smaller, then he swore, forced himself to relax, and breathe slowly. The mound of dirt in the raised palm crumbled and fell, but it didn’t reach the ground, it ceased to be halfway there.
“It’s there!” Jackal yelled.
Tibs jumped to his feet, “Yes! Beat you!”
Mez, Carina, and Khumdar looked at him oddly.
“Don’t you see, the dungeon is forcing us to get better.”
“Yes, through the fighting,” Mez said.
“No, through everything. The trap is slow enough only an idiot would be caught in it.”
“So we can run through,” Jackal said, getting to his feet and looking at his hand with an odd expression.
“Sure, but we don’t know what’s past it. Maybe the next one’s faster. I’m pretty sure that anyone who tries to use their essence to feel where the line is, could do it.”
“It wasn’t exactly easy to reach the point where I knew the essence wasn’t what I thought it was.”
“You don’t need that, I’m pretty sure you could have pushed the earth at the line and felt it.”
“Then why put me through that mental chokehold?”
“I had to know you could do it,” Tibs said.
Jackal looked like he’d protest, then nodded. “If the dumb fighter can do it, then you can show anyone else how to do it.” He smiled. “Clever.”
Tibs kept his comment to himself. He was sure that once he knew what philosophy was, it would be something that needed more smarts than Jackal liked to claim he had.
“Does it mean the lesson’s over?” Carina asked, “or will you ask each of us to do it.”
“No, you don’t need this to practice it,” Tibs answered, looking toward the exit. “And the next time we’re here, someone else can try sensing the line. Jackal, step over and see if there’s another trigger.”
“How about I have them step over and you, our qualified Rogue, go and see if there are other triggers? The trap room on the first floor has a lot of them. I expect this one does too.”
Tibs stepped over the line and sensed ahead of him, the airs and the floor. He’d explain why he wasn’t using water if someone asked about it. He made it to the end without encountering another trigger.
“I guess the next time we can simply run the path,” Jackal said.
“Sure,” Mez replied, “if you trust the dungeon not to mix things up. When it removed the visual clues in the trap room, it cost my team of the day our Rogue.”
Tibs grinned at Jackal. “Didn’t it almost cost us our fighter?”
“Just move along, Tibs,” Jackal replied. “We have another room to go to and hopefully it’s something I can hit.”
The short hallway took them to the other room. Mez groaned on looking in.
“I believe you wished for something to hit,” Khumdar said.
Three golems stood in the center of the room, looking at them.
Jackal rubbed his hands eagerly.
“I know I said me and Carina could take the one upstairs out ourselves, but I said that because there was only one.”
“We’ve got this,” Jackal said.
“Jackal, I can, maybe, give you two explosive arrows,” Mez warned. “I know from experience that regular ones don’t do anything against those.”
“Relax, guys. I told you, we’ve got this.”
“Jackal,” Tibs said, sharing Mez’s worries. “There are three golems. If they see me, being silent doesn’t do me any good.”
“Exactly.” Jackal grinned. “Three golems with a stone whip that can do enough damage to shatter stone.”
“You know what?” Carina said. “I’m starting to agree with you, Jackal. Tibs should be our leader.”
Jackal looked at them. “You really aren’t seeing this?”
“I believe the question is if you are seeing the same thing we are,” Khumdar said.
“This isn’t a ‘us versus them’,” Jackal said. “It’s a ‘how do we trick them into killing one another’ situation.”
“Jackal,” Carina said in exasperation, “that’s the…. You know, that’s actually not a bad idea.”
“Dumb fighter here,” Jackal said, “emphasis on fighter. This is what any pit match where I’ve been pitted against multiple fighters turned into.”
“And there have been many of those?” Khumdar asked.
“Oh,” Carina answered, “considering how talented Jackal is at dealing with other people. I’m sure they were endless.”
“She just insulted you,” Tibs commented, not taking his eyes off the golems. Like the one in the other floor, they didn’t move while they were outside the room. He couldn’t feel any essence triggers, so he wondered how they activated.
“I know, but it’s what a big sister’s entitled to do. So, what do you think, run in and get between them?”
“Do we have to destroy them?” Khumdar asked. “The exit is over there. If we can trick them, why not simply run for it?”
“Because we’re not getting the loot if we don’t kill them,” Jackal answered.
“And we don’t know if they’ll chase us,” Tibs added. “They won’t attack until we enter, but there’s no telling what they’ll do after that if we leave.”
“Why don’t we test it?” Carina asked. “If they chase us, we kill them. If they don’t, we can deal with them later, if we have to. You get your loot that way.”
“That sounds like an overly complicated way of doing it,” the fighter complained.
“It’d be nice to know,” Mez said, “in case it’s something we have to do at some point.”
Jackal sighed. “Fine. Tibs you, Carina, and Khumdar go while Mez shoots normal arrows for the sounds as a distraction. Try to be quiet. I’ll follow Mez in case something goes wrong.”
Tibs took out his knife. “No dying,” he stated, looking at the others. He looked at his little knife, then the golems. He needed something better. He was getting himself throwing knives with his cut of the loot. Maybe he should work on getting stronger too. There had to be a point where he could wield a short sword.
Next to him, Carina squared her shoulders. She gave Jackal a warning glare, then nodded at Tibs. When Khumdar gave him a nod too, Tibs took off. Arrows hit the wall in the opposite distance, but the golems remained focused on them. Carina waved in their direction and the first whip caught in a whirlwind and the other two missed them. Tibs felt confident they’d make it out of the room.
“Jackal!” Mez yelled.
Tibs looked over his shoulder as the fighter charged one of the golems. He cursed and stopped. “Keep going, you have range.” The golem raised its arm for another whip attack, but an arrow with a glowing tip embedded itself in the shoulder joint, locking it in place.
Tibs ran at the golem and slashed at the stone, surprised by how deeply his knife dug in, and how stuck it became. He cursed as a stone fist dropped toward him, to be stopped by a staff, and then explode, sending Khumdar flying and freeing Tibs’s knife. Worried for his new friend, Tibs stabbed the knife over and over while the golem seemed fixated on its missing arm.
An arrow slammed into its chest and caused the golem to fall to pieces in time for Tibs to see Jackal rip the head off the golem he’d been fighting with, and throw it at the last one; which Carina kept busy with wind blades. Before Tibs could go help, it fell to pieces. With one form unmoving on the ground and nothing else to vent his anger on, he aimed it at the person responsible.
He marched to Jackal as he danced in victory.
“Stupid!” Tibs kicked the fighter in the shin.
“Now Tibs,” Jackal said, stepping away to avoid the next kick, “Calm down, I knew we could beat them. And we did.”
Tibs pointed to the still form. “Did we?”
A groan came from it. “That hurt,” Khumdar said.
“You’re alive!” Tibs was next to the cleric, running his hand over him to make sure he wasn’t too injured.
Khumdar bit back a scream. “Not if you keep doing that.”
“How?” Tibs demanded.
“Armored robes.”
“There’s no essence in it.”
Khumdar chuckled, then groaned. “Done the old fashion way. Leather between the wool for the chest. I’ve been traveling alone for some years now. This isn’t my first fight.” He lowered his voice. “I’m Upsilon without ever stepping into a dungeon, Tibs. Think on that, when you have the chance.”
“Owe!” Jackal held his head as Carina glared at him.
“That was probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever done!”
“Not even close.” Jackal ducked a slap. “Look. We won without even working together. Once we have an actual plan, they aren’t going to be any problem.”
“And I think this showed me I can be of use,” Khumdar said, groaning as Tibs helped him stand. “I can diminish some of whatever they are. Their strength, for lack of a better word. I don’t think I would have been able to keep that fist off you with the staff otherwise, Tibs.”
“Is that why the arm exploded like it did when I shot it?” Mez asked. “I didn’t have enough fire in the arrow for that to happen.”
“Possibly,” the cleric said. “I have never done this before.”
Tibs glared at Jackal, and the fighter tried to wipe away his grin.
“We survived,” Mez said, sounding mildly surprised. “So maybe we should collect the loot and figure out what we’re going?”
Tibs looked around.
“We turn back,” Carina stated. “Khumdar is injured.”
He found three silvers and Mez handed him four more.
“Can we at least see what the next challenge is?” Jackal asked. He handed him two silvers and had an amulet; which he handed to Khumdar.
Carina didn’t look pleased as she turned so he could put it in her backpack. “You’re the one with the injuries, what do you want to do?”
“I can walk,” Khumdar said, “if not very fast. So long as nothing chases us, I think we should get an idea of what we’ll be fighting the next time we come here.”
“Fine,” Carina said, “But if you pull something like you did here, Jackal, I am blasting you and we leave. I’ll deal with consoling Tibs afterward.”
“What about Kroseph?” the fighter asked, worried.
“I’m going to tell him you did something stupid and got yourself killed,” Tibs answered. “He’s going to believe me,” he added when Jackal looked like he wanted to protest.
“Okay, I’m sorry for what I did,” Jackal said, sounding repentant. “I swear I will not start anything. You were acting so scared, I wanted to show you that we aren’t the Omegas who had trouble clearing the first floor anymore.”
“We weren’t Omegas when the boss almost kicked our asses either,” Carina snapped at him. “Neither were the hundreds of Runners it killed. You do not get to scare us like that, am I clear? It’s not just Tibs your death would hurt.”
“I know,” the fighter said, sounding exasperated. “I didn’t do it to—” His yell of pain was such it surprised everyone except Tibs. He’d kicked him in the shin hard, using his reserve of earth essence to make the blow harder, and was pleased with the reaction as Jackal hopped on one leg, holding his other.
“How did you do that?” Mez asked.
“Anger,” Tibs replied, glaring at Jackal.
“I said—” the fighter began.
“I’m going to tell Kroseph you almost got Khumdar killed,” Tibs threatened.
“Now, hold on. There’s no need to involve Kro in this. His life is already exciting enough at the inn.”
“Then behave,” Carina said. “Like a sane man.”
For an instant Tibs thought Jackal would reply, then he showed he had some sanity and just nodded.
Tibs followed Carina out of the room as she helped Khumdar, and after a few steps, they stopped.
“This can’t be good,” Tibs said, looking into the long corridor.
“I am afraid I do not understand,” Khumdar said, looking from one to the other. “It is only a hall.”
“Except that it’s always been a room, a short corridor, and another room,” Jackal said. “Any time the dungeon does something different, we have to worry. Tibs, what do you think?”
“We’re saying it’s a hall because we don’t see any difference, but it could be a room.” He looked behind them, judging the distance. “We’re safe here. We’re not past the ‘threshold’. Stay here and let me check it.”
He stepped forward and felt as far as he could in a bubble around him. Pushing himself like this, he could sense a small section of each wall, and into the floor, but not the ceiling. He didn’t think the stairs had gone down so much the ceiling could be that high, but that was a question for another time.
He made it two dozen steps into the ‘room’ when he felt the line of essence into the wall. He couldn’t tell what essence it was, but on the right side, the outline of a door was traced in the wall. He touched the stone, ready to run at the slightest sound, but even the hiss was quiet.
“It’s safe to come to this point,” Tibs called, “but stay away from the wall, there’s something.” If it was a door, there should be a lock.
“What did you find?” Jackal asked.
“A door, I think.”
“Loot?” The fighter asked, looking excited.
Tibs looked at him. “I’m the Rogue, why are you so much greedier than me?”
Jackal looked offended. “I didn’t know greed was exclusively a Rogue trait.”
“Definitely shouldn’t be a fighter’s,” Tibs grumbled, returning to studying the door.
“It shouldn’t be a trait anyone has,” Carina said.
“Unfortunately, it is a far too common one,” Khumdar added.
“Do you mind being quiet?” Tibs asked. “You’re distracting.”
He couldn’t find a keyhole or a loose stone that might act as one. To be fair to the dungeon, there was also no actual door. It was just the tracing of it into the stone using essence. The dungeon had imbued the shape. It seemed that on this floor the dungeon was having fun with essence. Was it also something it was just discovering now that it had graduated? Was it from watching them use it?
It had used essence as triggers, so why wouldn’t it use it as a lock here? If it had, it made this a door no one but Tibs and possibly Khumdar could open, if the cleric had experience manipulating essence on top of sensing it. He smiled. If he opened this, they would have something the dungeon hadn’t planned on anyone getting until much later. It would have to be good.
He pushed his sense deeper into the wall and encounter something a few inches in preventing him from sensing further, but just before that was something. Essence formed into a channel of some sort. Three of them. Each were composed of multiple essences, and while he couldn’t tell what most of them were, earth, water, and air were there, but not the same way. The top channel had earth and air, the middle one air and water, and the bottom one earth and water.
What it meant was clear, but the implication unsettled Tibs. If he was right, it meant the dungeon knew he had access to multiple essences. He tried to tell himself he was paranoid, it could be meant for multiple people. Jackal had earth, Carina had air, but it was always teams of five. If this was aimed at teams, there would be five channels. Maybe the dungeons would change the composition to match the essence the Runners had, but he was certain there would be five channels.
How greedy was he?
Not that much, he decided, but the why the dungeon would bother with this, with him, nagged at him. And this arrangement told him that what was on the other side was for him. Maybe it was the answers to the why? He wouldn’t know unless he did something.
He pushed water in the top channel. It took little, and once full, something happened to it, it ‘locked’ in place, was what it felt to Tibs. In the middle one, he put earth, and the same thing happened. Air went into the bottom one. A gasp from the others made Tibs look. The door that had only been an essence shape imbued in the wall was now a stone door in a metal frame. With a rumble the door lifted, vanishing into the upper portion of the metal frame, and heat poured out from the opening, increasing as more of it vanished. Tibs stepped back with the others, using his arm to block the heat from baking his eyes.
“What is that?” Mez asked.
“Fire,” Tibs answered, awed.
“No, I got that,” he replied. “Fire essence here. I mean, what kind of room is this? A trap, am I supposed to, I don’t know. Calm the heat? It’s real fire, I can tell you that much.”
Mez was wrong. Tibs had been right. It was the answer to one of his questions, one he hadn’t considered addressing until he’d explained things to Mez. Why the dungeon had done this was beyond him, as was how it even knew he needed it.
“Tibs!” Jackal called as he ran.
He couldn’t let the chance pass. He felt the air essence coalesce around him and was thankful for Alistair’s training as he used his essence to disrupt Carina’s attempt to stop him.
The heat became more than he could endure before he even reached the door, painful when he crossed it, but he kept running. He couldn’t risk them attempting to rescue him and hurting themselves.
The roar of the fire was all there was, eating him alive. His scream of pain didn’t last long as the heat climbed down his throat to eat him from the inside. It was too much. The dungeon wasn’t giving him what he wanted, it had tricked him. He had to turn around, exit before it was too late.
Only he couldn’t move. He wasn’t even sure he could feel his body. He wasn’t going to…
* * * * *
“I can not tell if you are stupid, child of humans, or immensely brave.” The voice was nearly lost in the fire's roar and its pain. “I didn’t think you’d come at all, certainly not this way.”
“I need,” Tibs tried to say. He didn’t know if the words came out. All he knew as in how much pain he was in. None of the other audience had been so painful.
“This.” Before Tibs was the shadow of the shape, and he realized he could make out a form among the fire, flames in something resembling the form of a person.
“Please,” Tibs tried to beg.
“I’m holding it for you, child of humans. It’s all I can do. You must take it from me. And you must do so quickly. There are consequences to breaking the rules. Consequences that are killing you. And as much as I crave consuming you, I crave seeing what you will do even more, so I encourage you to take it.”
Tibs tried, but his body was nothing more than burnt bones. He forced it, pushed through the pain, demanded of himself that he finished what he had started. If he was going to die, he was going to do so having accomplished his goal. He would have his full element.
He fell onto the being of fire, his arms closing around the shadow of the shape. He felt it meld into him, space appearing between water and earth to fill with fire over the void of his reserve.
Only it was no longer a void. There was a spark in its center.
* * * * *
Tibs registered the fall on his side as a sudden pressure against his body. At least the pain was gone, he thought. That was good. The roar of the fire was also gone, as was the heat.
They were replaced by muffled voices, darkness, and a cold like he had never felt before. Worse than the coldest nights on the cold season back on his street.
“Tibs!”
He thought his name was yelled, but it came from so far. He felt pressure. A sense his position changed.
“What’s wrong with him?” someone distant asked, Carina, he thought.
“What’s wrong with him?” someone close echoed her question. He sounded young, Tibs’s age, maybe a little older. Had another team been allowed in?
“How should I know?” another close voice asked in annoyance. A girl, younger than the boy. Voice high and strident.
“Do something!” a distant voice demanded.
“You said Fire would accept him!” the boy exclaimed.
“I am not a purity cleric,” another distant voice replied. “The best I can do is keep infection from setting in.”
“Did he?” the girl asked.
“Would he look like that if—huh? He has fire now. Tibs has his element!” the boy yelled in victory. Tibs tried to recall the voice. If the boy knew him, they had to have met before. And if Tibs hadn’t noticed his voice, he was certain he’d remember the girl's. “Gam, why is he dying if Fire accepted him?” the boy asked, worried.
“How many times do I have to tell you,” she replied, “I don’t know why elements do what they do, I’m not one of them.”
“He can’t die! Not after I went to all this effort to get him to Fire.”
“Then do something,” the girl replied, sounding like Carina when she had enough of dealing with Jackal’s antics.
“Okay, Big Brute is on his way. Are you sure it’s going to work?”
“Yes,” she replied with certainty. “I’m… confident?” Tibs didn’t like how not confident she sounded now.
“What are we going to do if it doesn’t work?”
“Do better if another like him ever comes by again?” she answered.
“Ganymede, I will not have you talk about Tibs like he’s already dead. He’s one of the few Runners I kind of like. I definitely like him more than those new ones.”
“Kind of like the kid?” she asked. “That’s what you’re going with?”
“Can we talk about this after I save him?”
Being saved would be nice, Tibs thought.
“Then Big Brute better hurry. Are you really going to call it that?”
Tibs tried to pay attention to the distant voice, but they seemed even further. He thought they sounded frantic.
“Stop attacking Big Brute,” the boy ordered, then let out an exasperated cry. “Whose bright idea was it that I can’t talk with them? If they destroy him, I can’t use him to save Tibs.”
“Don’t look at me,” the girl, Ganymede, replied. “I don’t make the rules.”
“No,” the boy grumbled mournfully, “you just make sure I have to follow them.”
“Someone has to. We know what happens if one of you is left unsupervised.”
“Shit, shit, shit. Gam, what if Tibs doesn’t reach for Big Brute? His friends are tired enough they’ve backed off, but if they think BB is going to touch him they are going to come at him again. They did a lot of damage. I don’t think he can take another assault.”
“All we can do is hope the essence came with a reflex,” Ganymede answered. “If he touches BB—she sounded like she was rolling her eyes—then the lack of essence should pull his in and do what he needs to do, otherwise…”
“We are not going there,” the boy warned her. “Come Tibs, be a pal and survive this. I don’t want this to be over, okay? Just make the effort. Lift your hand, BB’s right there.”
Tibs wondered what the boy meant. There was no one near him other than the two of them, but as he tried to sense them, he realized he was wrong. He couldn’t sense the boy or Ganymede, but there was something next to him; something massive. Further away were others that he couldn’t make out clearly because the large one’s essence blinded him. It was filled with the same essence the spark was made of. It was like… again he couldn’t describe it, the closest he could come to it, was like the lightning felt, when it struck a few buildings away.
He had a hand, he thought he could feel it, or maybe he was just him remembering what his hand had felt like. Maybe he could make the memory touch what was next to him and it would satisfy everyone.
“He’s doing it!” the boy yelled.
Was he? Maybe he was. He remembered how to move his hand, but now he wasn’t sure the memory obeyed him. It was slow. Then there was a pressure against the memory.
“Yes!” the boy yelled, then fell silent. “Gam, you said it would suck it in, why is BB still standing?”
“I said we’d have to hope there was an instinct,” she replied, exasperation mixed with sorrow.
Tibs felt for the essence within the form. Not only did it match his, but the form itself felt somewhat like when he used the amulet as a reserve. Tibs pulled the essence into him.
“Sto, you have to prepare yourself, he—”
The spark grew to the brightness of the sun, and Tibs yelled at the pain that accompanied it.
