The guard’s wariness, as Tibs approached the vilge gate, gave way to a smirk.
Those in the street stared at him.
In the half filled tavern, he was ignored only long enough for Joman to notice him, then call a loud greeting. They stared at the man, then Tibs, and kept staring at him.
The leathersmith met him at the counter as he dropped the hides on it.
She didn’t look at them. “Do you need help with shaving that?” Her chuckle was bordering on full-on ughter.
He ran his fingers through his too angur beard. “The caravan left with my shaving knife.”
“Maybe you should let it grow instead of hacking at it with a sword.” She studied it. “Did you just hold tuffs out and cut?”
He shrugged. “I don’t like it too long.”
She smiled. “I have a sharp knife. If you’ll sit down, I can have your cheeks smooth enough everyone will want to kiss them.”
He snorted. “That is reason enough for me to refuse. But thank you.”
She gathered the hides. “I’ll bring the clothing I made you tonight.”
He spent the week working at Mother Natril’s farm, and having to evade her offers for her to shave him. The vilgers left him alone, but Joman’s loud greetings were getting almost as bothersome as his stalking. The man’s woman, on the other hand, only looked at Joman with the kind of love that brought Kroseph and Jackal to mind.
The following mencholy made that meal difficult to finish.
When he told Mother Natril he was going hunting, she ordered him to be back in time for the harvest, and warned him that if he didn’t get rid of the ugly beard, she was burning it off.
That threat had him consider a way to remove his beard.
* * * * *
He rearranged his camp on arriving. With the harvest only weeks away, the cold season would be here shortly and he didn’t want to count on Firmen to protect the items he left there when he returned to the vilge.
With that done, sat and pushed fire essence into his knife.
“Why are you doing that?” the dungeon asked.
He kept his attention on the essence. “Heating up the bde.” Metal reacted oddly with fire essence. It wasn’t consumed, the way most other essence were when there was enough of the fire, but it…absorbed wasn’t even close to what this felt like. The essences mingled, Arcanus formed in each of the element, and so long is there wasn’t too much fire, the metal absorbed its characteristics. If there was too much, the Arcanus broke apart, and the metal behaves like thick water.
“That’s the what you are doing.”
He chuckled. “Sorry. This should let me trim my beard to something less ridiculous.”
“That seems complicated. Just make a bde of Fire essence.”
“But that doesn’t hold the fire back, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to control its hunger as it touches my beard.”
“And putting the essence into the metal controls it?”
“Up to a point, which is why I’m paying attention. I can destroy the bde with too much, and even before that, the fire can run off it if touches something it’s hungry for, like my beard.”
He formed a mirror out of water and carefully cut his beard, bringing the hot bde as close to his skin as he could stand. It cut well, but the stink of burned hair was horrible. When he was done, he had a roughly even beard a finger’s thickness. His hand came away with ash when he ran it through, but a spsh of water removed that. But the stink remained.
He expected the vilgers would still comment on it, but it wouldn’t be to tell him how ridiculous he looked.
“About the next run.” Satisfied, he let the mirror dissolve. “I’d like to talk over a change.”
Firmen’s response was cautious. “I’m listening.”
“I’ve beaten Merka five times now. That means I’ve cleared the floor that often. When I was an Omega Runner, that’s about how many runs it took for me to graduate to Upsilon. To gain my element. I think it’s fair to say I’m there now.”
“You want to do the run with your elements.” The dungeon’s tone wasn’t approving.
“Just one. I’d be an Upsilon Runner. Or as close to one as I can be. I’d have one element, and it would be the only one I’d use.”
“What element?”
He thought it over. “Water. It’s the first one I started with. I’ll pick different one for each run, but I’ll start with this one.”
“I need to think it over. See what Merka has to say; what the rules are regarding Runners with elements.”
“You know they’re just going to refuse.”
“Possibly, but Merka is the only one I know with information on how this should work.”
Without arguments Firmen would care for, he nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.” He headed into the forest to hunt himself food.
* * * * *
He stepped into the dungeon naked, holding his bracers. The cache for them was not empty.
“We considered your suggestion,” Firmen said, as Tibs took the medallion out and pced his bracers in. Its reserve was water. “If you are an Upsilon Runner, not only do you have one element, but the reserve isn’t as deep as yours. Merka didn’t know how much it should hold, just that it isn’t a lot.”
Compared to his deep reserve, this contained nothing.
Trying to compare it to his bracers didn’t help. Essence didn’t occupy space in a container the way ale did. He could look into two tankards, see how the levels were different and know which had more, and work out roughly how much they had.
Essence was, and wasn’t. While how the reserves were made affected how much it could contain, and told how filled each was, it told him nothing of how much essence each contained. He’d have to be able to sense the details of how the reserves were made, as well as know what what he sensed meant.
He’d yet to come across a book with that information.
The one thing he could tell was that the essence in the medallion wasn’t as ‘dense’. It meant that even if they had been the same size, the medallion would contain less; not that it told him how much it had.
Using it would be how he worked that out, much the same way an Upsilon Runner figured out how to use their reserve.
There was one thing. “Something’s different.” While he couldn’t sense their details, since there were too many elements he didn’t have involved in making reserves, he’d sensed enough of them to get a feel for the structure. “It’s like…harder?” it was the best word he could think of.
“Did you think I was going to let you put essence back in as you use it?” Merka asked with a snort. “Runners can’t do that.”
“We can.” He tried to figure out more about that ‘hardness’. “But you’re right. Upsilon Runners wouldn’t have learned that. They learn around Rho, but most of us work it out by ourselves before that. Upsilon is about working with what we have.”
“There,” they snapped. “You can’t argue for preferential treatment.”
He pulled the essence out as he put the medallion on and studied it. The ‘hardness’ did something to it; it didn’t feel like his essence, or Firmen’s. That was what he changed when he made someone else’s essence his.
He took essence from around him and made it his, then tried to refill the reserve. It resisted. A thread made it in, when he put most of his will behind it, but hardly more than it should absorb naturally. He could speed things up, but nowhere enough to make a difference to his run.
He worked with the medallion’s essence, testing how it ‘not being his’ affected his control, then returned it in. He pulled all of it out and coated himself; the best test he knew to find out how much essence he had. It was thin, and even iced it barely provided any protection. He could will it as hard as he needed, but that left him vulnerable to the dungeon causing him to lose his focus.
He returned it to the reserve, and as expected, it didn’t refill completely. There was always a loss, even when it wasn’t used against anything. He set about pushing water in as he took the sword and shield from the alcoves. It might not be enough to make a difference, but he’d take everything he could get away with.
* * * * *
“So that’s why you took water,” Merka compined as Tibs walked on the path of water, instead of the triggers under it as he made his way to the room’s cache.
“It’s more about how I use the essence. With practice, Runners can work out their own version of other element’s effects with nearly any of them.” He expected there were ways to do so with Purity, but he’d yet to make it do more than heal and destroy.
They snorted. “I’d like to see cross this room with Air as your element.”
He smiled. “If Firmen gives me permission, I can show you.”
“You’re the one who argued for him to be limited,” the dungeon stated.
“It’s boasting. There’s no way it can spread the air like that. Air doesn’t do that. Let it. I want to hear its excuses when it fails.”
“You’re ignoring how clever Tibs is. But, since you agreed. You have my permission to use Air to show Merka how you’d do it.”
It was only a strand of essence he pulled out once he channeled the element. To hold to the spirit of the agreement, he wanted to do this with no more than the water he had access to.
The disk was no rger than his foot, and he needed to apply his will to make it sufficiently hard. He’d learned through many falls that Air was difficult to make solid, but not impossible. The main difference with water was how many he could make and support his weight.
Four was how many he figured he’d be able to do with the essence he had. He put his foot on the first to test it, then moved the three others in line for the cache. They weren’t enough to reach it, but that was simple to fix. As he stepped onto the second one, he moved the first to the next spot ahead and kept doing that until he’d made it to the wall.
“That’s not how you did it with water,” Merka stated.
Tibs absorbed the air to his deep reserve. “It’s the Air’s version of it.”
“You said—”
“Leave it, Merka,” Firmen said. “You were wrong, and he demonstrated it.”
Tibs put the belt on. It would be better once he had pants, but this kept his hands free.
* * * * *
Tibs nded and rolled to his feet as the heat of the fireball that had nearly burned him faded. He threw the spike of ice at the serpent’s head, and it didn’t move fast enough and the ice impaled it. Resisting the urge to grow the ice and rip the head apart from the inside was difficult, but beyond what an Upsilon Runner could manage.
And he didn’t need it.
Only one head could spew essence at a time, and he could sense it moving up, warning him when Merka would attack, if not what the attack would look like. Merka could pause the essence, but not send it back. Once started, it had to finish before another head to start its attack.
He ran to the head that had loosed the fireball and slid on the water, cutting it deep as he passed. Absorbing what he slid on, and the ice spike, still left him with less than he’d like. Merka wasn’t attacking to burn him. They were using the heat to take away his water. That essence reacted to fire by moving fast, and the attacks also distracted him from keeping hold of all of it.
He side stepped the head that came at him, maw wide, only for it to jerk, and its side hit him, sending him back. He rolled to his feet; the armor protecting him from the skid, and grinned. “You’re learning.”
Merka snorted and a bundle of essence Tibs couldn’t identify moved up the other head. That one couldn’t take much more damage, and once removed, he’d make quick work of the st head.
He ran toward it as the maw opened, counting on Merka not adjusting the aim in time, and threw himself up. Unfortunately, the ball of essence that left the maw expanded. He couldn’t see it, so it wouldn’t be instantly deadly, but he readied himself for pain.
He wasn’t ready for his hand being pulled away from him as it entered the expanding ball. For his arm to compress as it too joined it. All of him was pulled and pushed at the same time, or so it felt like, and the scream sounded strange, far and close. He couldn’t make sense of what he knew had to be the serpent, but he was still heading toward it, even if it looked kingdoms away.
He still held his sword, that seems shiny new, and rusting apart, so he focused through the pain on keeping his hand closed on the pommel and raising his mangled arm ahead of him.
Whatever element this was, he should still be heading for Merka, regardless of how far they seemed to be.
He was out of the bubble and momentarily surprised by how close he was, but adjusted his sword in time to cut through the neck, then he crashed on the floor.
He couldn’t get himself to move. His body was back the way it should be, but he felt…refreshed, and utterly exhausted. Like he’d been pummeled to pulp and massaged to rejuvenation. He hadn’t lost any essence, but the way his body had been stretched and compressed had caused damage, although not as much as he’d expected.
Going over what he’d read, he’d thought this was what experiencing raw Void essence was.
He did not want to go through that again.
His sword was half as long as it had been before, and the end rusted blunt. But the hilt and a hand’s worth of the bde’s edge was gleaming with how sharp it seemed to be.
“You don’t look so good,” Merka said with a surprising ck of sarcasm.
He forced himself to his feel. “I’ve felt better.”
“I guess that’s one of the more effective attack then.”
“Please tell me you aren’t still throwing them at random and hoping it’ll hurt me.”
“Oh, no.” A bundle of Fire moved up the serpent’s throat. “I know exactly how hurts you. But it’s good to see what other elements do to you. You know, learning, growing, and all that.”
Did he have enough Water essence? Doubtful. This was going to hurt, regardless of what he did, but so long as he could walk out of the dungeon, or just limp out, he’d win the run.
He ran at the fire, etching all the water essence ahead of him. He couldn’t make anything complex, but a few waves to disperse some of the fire and his will to dey it overwhelming his etching, and it should work.
The heat burned him before the fireball. His water shield didn’t seem to reduce its intensity. He couldn’t see beyond it, and still couldn’t once he passed through. He used his sense of the serpent’s essence to adjust his aim, and the sharpness was such that as he wasn’t sure he’d cut through as he fell to the floor, the leather armor cracking and falling off, until he sensed the head fall and roll away, then Wood essence creep over it and Firmen absorb it.
“You could have killed yourself,” Merka said, and Tibs had to be imagining the worry.
“I didn’t.” Speaking hurt. He crawled to the wall and used it to stand. He used it for support to the chest. “I can walk out.” He reached it. “I win.”
“You could have died.”
He was definitely imagining the worry.
Opening the chest hurt. “I’m a Runner. It’s going to happen one day.”
He took the sword and slowly made his way out of the dungeon.
AnnouncementBottom Rung is avaible on KU: https://amzn.to/3ShmXzW
You can read the previous arc in Tibs story here
Do you have opinions and suggestions? feel free to leave them in the comments.
Thank you for reading this chapter.
If you want to watch me writing this story, I do so on Twitch: https://v/thetigerwrites Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 8 AM to 11:30 EST
If you want to read ahead, you can do so by finding Stepping Wild, on Ream Stories where the story is multiple chapters ahead even at the lowest tier, and the support helps ensure I can work with a minimum of real-life interruption.
