Dungeon Runner

Bottom Rung, Chapter 57

"Your aim's improving," Tandy said, as they walked away from the archery field. It was the only place with targets, and she'd convinced one teacher to let them use one for knife throwing practice.

Tibs shrugged. "I'm not hitting close to the center." Even his new air knives didn't help him throw accurately. He didn't have enough essence to adjust their course once they left his hand.

"But you're hitting the target every time now." She indicated a tavern with a sign over the door of a hog with his nose in a tipped-over tankard. "I'm meeting Mez there, do you want to wait with me?"

Tibs shook his head. "It's your time, I don't want to get in the way."

She chuckled. "It's just a drink, there's nothing special planned."

"I have other things to do." He had to get back to the slate with the letters on it, and then it was his training in sensing and manipulating. There had been so many new things since returning from MountainSea, he'd hardly practiced that. It didn't matter what he could do with his essence, the guild expected him to do the test with the water essence and he wouldn't pass that without being able to add to his reserve as he manipulated what he'd need to form the attack.

"All right, Tibs, but remember that you need to enjoy yourself too. Don't focus only on your training." She stepped inside the tavern.

Tibs would enjoy himself. He'd walk the roofs once the sun set, get into one of the noble's houses, and look for a copper to take. Or since they were nobles, some other thing they wouldn't miss. That always made him feel better.

But that was for later. Right now he needed to go to the room and his letters before Carina came looking for him. But before that, he needed candy. As Tandy said, he had to enjoy himself, and he had plenty of copper now, from the houses he visited.

* * * * *

He was on Merchant's row when the loud crack echoed over the street. While people froze, Tibs ran in the direction the sound came from, having to push people aside and only once losing the fight against temptation and his fingers extracting a coin from the noble's purse. Silver. It was hidden on him by the time another crack sounded, almost like thunder, but it stretched on, and in the distance, Tibs noticed a roof tipping over. For it to fall to the side like take, it had to be the last building on the row, which meant—he cursed and ran faster against the crowd moving away.

The wind shifted and the smell of rot and putrefaction washed over him and he almost fell as he fought the urge to throw up. He forced himself forward and made out the facade of the Caravan Garden as wood screeched and snapped. Somehow, half the building seemed to sink into a dark liquid.

Guards, in green and black, were pushing people away. A scream came from inside the building as Tibs got close enough to see the door had vanished under the purplish liquid. The sight of it as much as the smell made him want to throw up. There was a sense of utter wrongness about it.

"Everybody move back!" a woman yelled as other guards joined her to form a barricade between the people and that pool, which, Tibs realized, had spread partially into the street.

A man appeared on the top window and Tibs gasped with the people still there as the man stepped out of it.

"Don't jump!" the guard yelled at the man, just as he leaped out.

Instead of landing on the ground with a light coating of whatever that foul liquid was, he splashed as it if was deep, and when he resurfaced, he was rotting away, his skin turning the same color as the liquid he was in as it sloshed off to expose melting muscles and darkening bones. With the man's scream dying off, other people screaming were heard, guards that had been splashed on by the liquid.