Dungeon Runner

Stepping Up, Chapter 01

Tibs paid attention to the essence around him as the world materialized. He couldn't sense the details, as void wasn't one of his elements, but he could still tell it apart from all those he couldn't differentiate by the way it stretched from the city he had been in, to this one.

Dry heat slammed into him.

He'd forgotten, in the week he spent in MountainSea, as well as the stop in Kragle Rock, that it was High Heat in the kingdom of Pursatia. Seasons changed much when traveling from one city to the other using the transportation platform.

He stepped down, then to the side, before pausing to look at the column that stood at the bottom of the stairs. He sensed the essence in it, as he had all the others, and he could tell it was connected to the platform, despite standing away at the bottom of the steps. He didn't bother walking around this time. He'd done it enough over his months of traveling to tell all eight columns around the platform had their essence flow similarly to the center. He didn't know what role they played in the attendant moving people from one city to another, but that connectivity indicated they had to play one.

As with many of the cities, this column had a board added to it, with a grid painted on it. Five columns and nine rows. At the top were words on two lines, and in each of the boxes was a number.

He forced himself to decipher the letters of the top line. He'd rather not bother, but he had promised Carina he would work on them while he searched for his city. He whispered each of the letter's names to himself, then pronounced them until he had the name of the city he had arrived in: Zaranka.

Under it was the name of the month, a plaque that was changed each time a new one started and he could already read this one since it had been the same month in the last Pursatier city he had visited, Tameria, and the same names were used in the entirety of the kingdom of Pursatia: Burning Brush.

Listening to the people around him, he could make out those who were from the kingdom, because he understood them, from the visitors. They didn't speak it the same way he did, and that had surprised him the first time he had arrived in Pursatia. He'd expected everyone in the kingdom to speak the same, but they had different inflections; accents, as Carina had explained. This one sounded much like the previous city, since they were both on the west side of the kingdom.

One of the merchants identifying Tibs's language had given him a place to start looking for his city, and he knew it had a transport platform. He'd expected those two pieces of information to make the search simple, especially when one of the attendants told him only the largest cities had platforms because of how expensive they were to set up, but this was the sixth Pursatier city he'd been to.

The accent made him worry if this was the right city, but Carina had told him that in some of the largest cities, accents could vary from one part of it to the other. He didn't remember a specific way the people on his Street spoke, so this could still be the right city. He rejoined the line of people leaving the platform and followed them along the main road.

The pain he'd lived with after waking up from saving the dungeon had dulled into an ache deep within him. As if his body had given up fighting the corruption infecting it, he had to be content with that. He could ignore it most of the time; only sudden movements made it flare-up.

After counting two sets of ten of the larger streets, he turned left.

The area he wanted wouldn't be close to the platform or major roads. He didn't know where his Street was within the city, but there had been nothing like wealth anywhere within sight. The walk to the cells had been long, as had the one to the platform.

Another thing that wasn't within sight was a city wall, so when Tibs saw the tall wall after turning a corner, he turned around and tried a different direction. When he'd asked about it, back in MountainSea after his first Pursatier city, Kroseph's mother had told him that all cities had walls; it was what made them different from towns.