Dungeon Runner

Bottom Rung, Chapter 23

The archery field was empty in the middle of the night. Tibs and Jackal had encountered a few late-night wanderers on the way there, and Jackal had pushed for the fighter's training field, which was closer, but it didn't offer the bales of hay where all the targets hung to block what they were about to do from the view of yet more late-night walkers, more precisely, other adventurers.

With only Torus and Claria looking down on them from on high, Jackal placed a hand on the ground and the earth moved. Tibs stepped back as a hole formed, with the earth rising on three sides.

"How do you do it?" he asked, awed.

"I push my essence into the ground and use that to move it. Don't you do it with water?"

"Not enough essence to do much," Tibs reminded the fighter. "Why do they teach you that?" He looked unto the hole; it was deep enough that with only Claria for light, he couldn't see the bottom.

"It's part of how I can anchor myself while fighting. Wait, didn't you know I could do this? You're the one who said I'd have to dig a hole."

"I figured I could tell you how to do it, you know with that essence is everywhere thing, but I didn't realize you already knew."

"So you were going to tell me how; even though you aren't supposed to tell me anything about that essence is everywhere thing?"

Tibs grinned. "I'm a rogue. Rules are...flexible around me."

The fighter snorted. "So, now what?"

Tibs dropped into the hole and looked up. Even stretching, he couldn't reach the top. "You said Earth is slow, right? So give me an hour.

"Tibs, you can't breathe the ground, you won't survive that long."

"Then if I don't dig myself out before that, don't bother doing it for me."

"I don't think you're taking this as seriously as you should, Tibs. When I bring the ground down on you, I'm going to try to leave a gap so there's air for you to breathe."

Tibs looked up, Jackal's head and shoulders a silhouette against the stars. "I'm about to do something I've been told can't be done, by someone who knows a lot more about this than I do. Earth might kill me just because I've already told water yes. If I think about it too seriously, I'm going to go crawl under a bed in terror."

"On the plus side," Jackal said with a chuckle, "you're the one who paid for the room. If I end up having to find another team, it's not my silver that's gone. You ready?"

Of course not. He nodded, then realizing Jackal might not see. "Yes." He lied down.

The ground shook, and the stupidity of what Tibs was about to do flashed through his mind. The sides of the hole collapsed in on themselves, and Tibs took a breath and held as the weight of the earth increased over him. He didn't think Jackal had managed to leave him a gap, and even if he had, the weight pressed down on him so hard he couldn't move, not even to take in that breath.

And how was he going to get out of this if it worked? Jackal had dug himself out, but he hadn't told Tibs how he'd done that. He opened his mouth to yell at Jackal to stop, and earth fell in. He was going to drown in earth. He fought against it. It couldn't be packed so tight that he couldn't make his way out.

He didn't want to die. And he pushed harder, but anytime he relaxed, the ground pushed back, was heavier, unmoving. In seconds he found he couldn't move at all, not even to close his mouth, which had filled with earth too, and was pressing down his threat.

He thought he cried.

I'm sorry Mama, I didn't mean for it to end like this.

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