Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 109

With the Them busy fighting the dogs, Tibs managed to focus on the etching within the knife corruption to pull it apart. The Arcanus was...odd. Instead of being within a filigree around the threads of essence, they were...forced in? Not the right term again, but it—the etching came undone, and he slumped to the ground, purity finally able to take the pain away.

He absorbed the essence as he stood, and it was the way it always was. It had to be how the Arcanus had been forced into the thread and into each other that had caused the corruption to hurt him. Yet another thing to figure out when he had time.

With a scream that hurt Tibs's ears, the dogs flew aways from the Them. Some stood once they landed, with varying degree of steadiness, some crumbled away, and others remained, unmoving.

Tibs recognized Thumper among those.

"I will—" The Them's threat was buried under Tibs's scream and torrent of fire. They staggered back and Tibs noted, through his anger, that they could be overwhelmed.

They found their footing—not the right word again—and took hold of the essence Tibs was throwing.

Time to change things.

Tibs kept sending fire as he switched to channeling water, the flow of essence pouring out of him changing as its source did, and—

Tibs fought to remain conscious, the pain nearly too much. Around him, buildings were destroyed, and the ground was cracked in its center. He was on the ground in a partially destroyed building. He vaguely remembered being thrown back, hitting something hard as heat nearly more intense than any he'd experienced before slammed into him.

How he'd survived that...explosion, that word felt right for once, was explained by the earth that suffused him.

He had no memory of switching element.

He switched to purity while trying to work out what the Them had done to cause this.

Only, he realized, as his head cleared, they weren't who had caused the explosion. He had.

Something had happened as the fire essence had changed to water.

It had been too fast to make out details, but even now, he sensed essence that he couldn't identify dissipating. Essences that hadn't been there before the explosion.

He was up and running out. What had he done to Serba? If he'd been thrown like that, she wouldn't have—

She groaned, pushing herself to her feet, her dogs helping. She was at the edge of the destruction and he thought she'd been away from the fighting when the explosion had happened. Her essence wasn't leaking out, and where it wasn't as usual, she only had bruises.

He made a weave of purity to—

The roar shook his bones more than his ears, and he suffused himself with earth as he turned in time to face the Them barreling into him.

The impact was nothing like Jackal shoulder checking him, or even grabbing Tibs as he ran. The Them...flowed—why couldn't there be a right word for any of this?—around him, feeling like cushions that caught and lifted him, then hardened and they were both rushing at a wall.

He cursed as he sensed the thickness and suffused himself with air.

The Them did..something—he was giving up on words—to try to hold on to Tibs. The sheets and whatever was inside them moved, as well as how the Arcanus within it were arranged. Then it was moving up while Tibs continued on and through a wall, a luxurious lounge, a dining area, then was out the back.

He looked up at it. Why hadn't it gone through with him? It was essence that it could change. That should have made it easy.

He righted himself and flew to the roof. The Them floated high above him, watching.