Stepping Up, Draft 1, CH 57 (Patreon)

Tibs groaned as he came awake, which was cut short as pain erupted from his jaw.

“Yeah,” a man said. “Sorry about that.”

Tibs sighed and opened his eyes. Jackal was seated facing the bed, his feet propped up on the end. This was Kroseph’s room. Tibs carefully rubbed his jaw.

“Do I have to point out how utterly stupid what you did was?” Jackal asked.

“I had to keep your father from escaping!” Tibs cursed his painful jaw.

“Oh, now he’s my father and not Sebastian?” Jackal asked mockingly. “Well, he did escape. I got to see him vanish before the fire engulfed the platform and everything around it. You’re lucky no one was close enough to see you. What were you thinking, Channeling fire? You know what it does to you.”

“I was angry.”

“And fire just made it worse, Tibs. You knew it would.” Jackal sighed. “Fuck. I think you caused more destruction with that than my father managed during this little war of his.”

“Did…” realization slammed into Tibs. “Did I kill any of the townsfolk? The Runners?”

Jackal leveled his gaze on him, and Tibs readied himself for the worse. Then it softened. “There weren’t any townsfolk around. The Runners were far enough they only caught the edge of the blast, and the Attendant’s building had protections on it that kept them safe. I was the most hurt by it since I had to reach you in the middle of that conflagration. You owe me a set of armor.”

Tibs nodded, looking his friend over. “Are you hurt?”

Jackal shook his head. “Stone doesn’t burn as easily as leather. Hitting you across the jaw was the only way I could think of stopping you since you were beyond listening to anyone. I’m glad you didn’t pull with fire what you did with earth. If you’d made yourself all fire, I don’t know what I could have done.”

“If no one saw me, what does the guild think happened?”

Jackal snorted. “Abyss if I know that. But I told everyone my father had an enchanted thing to cover his escape. Which I know he does, and I doubt he’s going to come back to claim I’m lying. I also told everyone you were unconscious, just beyond the fire, when I carried you back. How did you keep your stuff from burning up?”

Tibs shrugged. “the clerics?” he asked, wincing as he touched his jaw again. His shoulder was hurting too.

“Gone. The moment Don told them we’d destroyed my father’s house, they ran to the guild. From what I heard, as soon as someone put out the fires around the platform, they were on it and back to that city of theirs. I doubt we’re going to see them before the dungeon opens again.”

“So they’d left by the time we were back.” It would explain why no one had healed him.

“Oh no,” Jackal said, then let out a bark of laughter. “This girl was still here. She even offered to heal you, but I said no. Then she left.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Jackal dropped his feet to the floor. “You destroyed at least two dozen housed, Tibs. I think you deserve some pain for being that kind of idiot.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are, but that’s not going to fix the houses. I want your word that from now on, when you’re outside the dungeon, you’re only channeling water.”

“It’s not like I can do much anymore. I barely have any essence left and without draining Sto’s creatures, it’s going to take a long time for it to replenish.”

“Your word, Tibs. No dodging or misdirecting. The only reason the guild isn’t going to come down on you like one of the dungeon’s ceiling pillars is that my father made for an easy culprit this time. He won’t be around if it happens again, and I’m not sure you’ll deserve our protection at that point.”

Tibs swallowed hard. He tried to look Jackal in the eyes, but the anger there was too much. “Just water, I promise.”

As the silence stretched, Tibs forced himself to look up. Jackal was studying him. Was there anything he could say to show he was being truthful? Right, because Tibs hadn’t lied before when it served him.

Jackal stood. “Come on, Kro made sure there’d be stew left for you. It’s going to be awhile until the inn is back to its normal self again.”

Tibs was dressed in a rough gray shirt and pants. They weren’t his.

“I tried to tell Kro you didn’t care if you slept in your skin, but my man has ideas of what can and can’t be done in the skin.”

“Not sleep I take it?”

“Not sleep alone.”

Tibs chuckled. “So people sleeping in the common room in their skin’s fine?”

“Only sleeping with your special person is fine to do in the skin,” Jackal said. “Easier to have fun that way when—”

“I really don’t want to know.”

Jackal ruffled Tibs’s hair. “One day Tibs. And on that day, feel free to come ask me for all the good tricks.”

Tibs shoved the fighter’s hand away and shuddered.

The eating room was loud with celebration. Tibs was amazed how are quiet the third floor was since no essence was used in the inn’s construction.

“And I poured everything I had,” Don said, standing on a table. “And it felt like it wouldn’t be enough. Me and my amulets against that house’s enchantments, and for an instant, I thought I’d be letting the town down. Then I found more, and those enchantments melted away. And with the protection gone, the entire house came crashing down.”

Cheers erupted.

“He’s been telling that over and over,” Jackal said, heading for their table. “He’s soaking in the adoration. The hero of Kragle Rock they’re calling him.”

As soon as Tibs sat, Kroseph was at their table, a bowl and two tankards in hand. “How are you feeling?” He placed the bowl before Tibs. The stew looked watery.

“I hurt,” he replied. “Jackal wouldn’t let the cleric heal me before she left.”

Kroseph looked at Jackal, expression serious, then at Tibs again. “I think this is one of those times my man did the right thing. He told me what you did.”

Tibs looked away. “I didn’t mean to,” he whispered.

“Maybe not, but you know how dangerous that element is. A lasting reminder will do you some good.” The server nodded to Don, who was now recounting one of the fights to make it to Sebastian’s house. “Did you know he’d turn into suck a show boaster?”

Tibs listened to Don. His description wasn’t too far off. Don’s role was slightly exaggerated, and Jackal’s diminished, but Don didn’t outright lie about who had done what. Tibs was surprised.

“Being the best if what he thinks of himself,” Tibs said, eating. “Now he gets to be it.”

“Only you’re the one who did it,” Kroseph whispered.

“It doesn’t matter to me. Sebastian’s gone. That’s what I wanted. And if that means the guild’s attention is going to be on Don rather than me, that’s useful too.”

“How long do you think until Don does something to shatter the illusion you’ve let him create?” Jackal asked.

“Longer than you think,” Tibs replied. “Don’s smart.”

* * * * *

Tibs was on the third tankard after his stew. He was relaxing. Don had stopped recounting stories, and he was seated at a table, talking with whoever stopped by. Tibs didn’t think he’d ever seen the sorcerer smile before now.

He straightened as he felt the people approaching. So many essences he couldn’t tell them apart, but as a group, they were powerful.

“What?” Jackal asked.

“The guild’s coming,” Tibs whispered, then the door opened and adventurers entered.

Silence fell in the room, but it was tense. The only ones looking at the arrival impartially were Kro’s family, and Tibs figured that was because, as innkeepers, they couldn’t show how they felt.

The Runners, on the other hand, had no trouble showing their dislike for the guild, even if none voiced it. Tibs recognized Tirania’s essence and, behind her, Harry. The adventurers parted, and the two stepped forward. Tirania walked to Don’s table. The sorcerer stood and smoothed his robe. He looked apprehensive.

“I am here,” she said, tone firm, “to carry the guild and the town’s thanks to you, Don Arabis, for saving so many people and chasing the troubles away.” She inclined her head.

Tibs couldn’t tell if she was happy about what had happened or not. As with any times she spoke, she gave nothing away.

“Thank you,” Don stuttered, then straightened. “I only did what was called of me. What honor required I do for the people who took me in and gave me a home. I couldn’t let what was happening to them continue. I came as quickly as I could once I learned of the town’s plight.”

Too much. Tibs thought. Don wasn’t talking to one of his goons, or even another Runner. Someone like Tirania would see through the bluster. She might even call him out on it and—

She inclined her head again and started turning away.

“But,” Don hurried to say. “This victory isn’t mine.” Maybe he’d realized he’d gone too far? “I was just one person. Everyone here, everyone in this town played theirs, and that’s what allowed us to defeat the monster who would have destroyed us.”

She studied him. “That may be so, but a crowd can do nothing without a leader. You were that leader; you guided and shaped the people of Kragle Rock into a force that defeated that criminal. Accept the praise for them, because without you, this town would have been destroyed.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Jackal whispered before drinking.

Don glowed under her praise.

“Thank you, Guild leader.”

The man was going to be impossible to deal with for a while. Tibs sipped from his tankard. Was Tirania that blind to how the town worked? Did she care so little? Noble popped into his mind and he silenced that anger. Not everyone who had power was a noble, and not only nobles were assholes.

She looked the room over, her gaze passing over Tibs as it did everyone else. “You all have my thanks.” She turned and headed for the door.

“I—” Jackal started, but Tibs shook his head, nodding to Harry, who was approaching.

“If it isn’t the guild high and mighty leader of the guard.” Jackal raised his tankard to the man. “Feeling mighty proud of yourself, I take it?”

“I’m not here to get into an argument,” Harry replied. “I’m here to say thank you. I know the two of you had more to do in saving the town than he did.”

“We wouldn’t have had to do anything,” Jackal snarled. “If you hadn’t made it easy for my father to get his people in here. How many of the guards were his, Knuckles?”

“I didn’t know,” Harry replied through clenched teeth.

“You should have.”

“Jackal, drop it,” Tibs said. Harry’s fists were clenched tight enough they shook.

Jackal stood. “No. I’m not dropping this. I told you this was going to happen. You know him, you know how he works. The only way you didn’t know what was happening was because you never bothered to look.”

Harry stepped forward and knocked the table into Jackal. He seemed surprised it was there and looked around. “I questioned them all. I asked them if they were loyal to my brother. They all told the truth when they said no.”

“Are you really that dumb, Knuckles?” Jackal demanded. “Loyalty’s not needed when there’s coin involved. Did you even ask if they’d taken my father’s coin? Or did you just assume that because you thought of one question, you got all the answers?”

“Watch your tone, Jackie-boy,” Harry threatened.

“Or what? You’re going to do to me what you should have done to my father the moment he appeared on that platform?”

“I am the authority here, Not you.”

“Then fucking act like it. Where were you when we were under attack? Where were your precious guards, those that didn’t turn out to be working for my father? I didn’t see you come to our rescue. Isn’t that your job? Protecting this town? Oh no, how idiotic of me. The only thing the guild cares about is the dungeon. This measly little town can be rebuilt after my father destroyed it.” Jackal stopped to catch his breath and the two of them glared at each other.

Harry opened his mouth,

“Or were you going to be the one destroying it?” Jackal demanded. “If we didn’t stop him?”

The guard’s mouth closed audibly.

“You wouldn’t have,” Tibs said. He couldn’t. Harry might not have been able to act to protect the town, but he wouldn’t have acted against it. He was its guard. The glance the man gave Tibs, the pain in it, was answer enough.

Harry turned and left before Tibs got over his shock and ordered him out of the inn, out of his town.

“How did you think he’d do that?” Tibs asked quietly. He wanted to scream at Jackal, make him responsible for shattering Tibs’s hope in a man, but Jackal had just done what Harry’s element did. He’d shone a light on a lie.

Jackal sighed as he sat. “When a house is infested with rot beetles, you burn it down, with everything and everyone on it, because if only one of those things survives, they’re going to spread to the next house, and the next and before you know it, the whole neighborhood is rotting and taking the city with it.” He looked through the tankard on the table and found one with some ale left in it. “Of course, my father would have escaped, so ultimately, it would have been for nothing. But the guild would have clean land let people rebuild on.” He snorted. “More coins they could demand for the privileged.” He downs what was in the tankard.

“What is Sebastian going to do now?”

Jackal considered it. “This is going to have cost him. That house, the enchantments, that thing which made using essence difficult. None of that is cheap. We have awhile to regroup, but he’s going to be back. My father doesn’t take defeat well. He’s won too often for that. That you are responsible is going to anger him even more. A kid beat him. If we could spread that story, no one would take him seriously.”

“The whole town beat him,” Tibs said.

“You got the town to resist him. My father knows the difference between the hammer and who’s wielding it. I’m not saying someone else wouldn’t have done it, but you did it first.” He chuckled. “Fuck, you disrespected him from the moment you first met him. You weren’t scared of him, Tibs. That might worry him more and everything else. So yeah, he’s going to come back. But more than that, he’s going to come back to hurt you, specifically.”

Tibs sighed. “So we have to put people on the platform. We need to find a way to keep order in the town, and we have to survive the dungeon.”

“You can always put the hero of Kragle Rock in charge,” Jackal said with a smirk.

Tibs watch Don with the people at his table. He was reluctant to admit it, even to himself, but he had more respect for the man. He’d been competent in most of the plans he made. Hadn’t run away at the first sign of trouble. Fuck, he’d wanted to chase Sebastian. Tibs wouldn’t have expected that from the sorcerer he’d known before.

“I think it’s best if we let him be the guild’s focus. With their attention on him, it’s going to be easier to arrange things without being noticed.”

Jackal smiled. “You have a plan?”

Tibs sighed. “I have Runners. I’m hoping that enough to keep the town standing until we have a plan.”

* * * * *

Guards surrounded the rubble that was Sebastian’s house. They weren’t in green and black, only leathers, with an insignia painted on the front. A white shield with two crossed swords. It had been hurriedly painted. A way to tell them about from everyone else in leathers.

Jackal had suggested painting some of their armors with it so they could pass themselves as guards, but Tibs didn’t want that. He wanted the town to know who protected them. Who they could trust when it came down to it.

And he didn’t care if Harry knew it.

“Move on, kid,” the guard said. “This isn’t a place for you.”

People were working among the rubble. Adventurers with the corruption as their element had arrived the day after Tirania’s visit to the inn, and they were moving the corruption away into barrels especially treated to contain it.

One day. Tibs ground his teeth. One day was all it took for her to bring them in. And she hadn’t done anything about the pool that was where the Caravan Garden had used to be. Even now. Not one of them had gone there.

They were only here because the guild was after the same thing Tibs had hoped to get. The crystal that had been under the house.

There were still pieces. Tibs could feel it, this close to them. A change in the essence, a drop and raise in the ease it could be manipulated. It meant multiple pieces.

He walked away. He’d come back at night.

* * * * *

The guards were still there. The rubble was lower, workers carrying them away under globes of elemental light.

The only Tibs would get closer was to channel darkness, but he’d promised he wouldn’t. If he knew what to expect from it, he might do it anyway. It wasn’t like Jackal would know.

Unless he destroyed something or was caught.

He didn’t think Darkness would make him destructive, but getting caught was a possibility.

He walked away along the roof. Maybe stealing a piece from the guild would be simpler.

Right, like that building would ever be a place he could break into.

He smiled.

Now, why did it have to be him that broke into it?

He needed to make plans.

More plans.

* * * * *

“How much?” Tibs asked the man seated at the table, feet on it, balancing on the back legs of his chair. He was dressed in old leathers was had so much essence woven through it Tibs wasn’t sure there was actual leather. His hair was the color of sand, his eyes the purple that used to make Tibs sick, and his skin was a deep tan. The concentration of his essence placed him around the Delta level.

The man looked at the tankard in his hand. “One of these is a copper, but you’ll want something weaker. Don’t start on the hard stuff if you can avoid it. The good one’s going to ruin you.”

“How much to buy you services.”

“You’re way too young to be needing my services, kid. Run along and go play at being an adventurer.”

“I’m a Runner,” Tibs said through greeted teeth. “I don’t fucking care what you think of my eyes,” he continues at the raised eyebrow. “Go ask the guild. I want to know how many coins it’s going to take to get you to remove the corruption that’s in my town.”

The man dropped his feet. “You aren’t talking about the house, are you?”

“Merchant Row. Corruption got there and ate a building. It’s not growing anymore, but the guild’s done nothing to remove it. So I want to hire you to do it.”

“Can’t be done.”

Tibs leaned forward. “I can get the coins. The dungeon’s going to open soon. He has a third floor now. The loot’s going to be better.”

“You’re doing a third floor?” the man asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” Tibs growled. He so wanted to channel water and show him, but he needed to stay angry at this man for not wanting to help.

The man sighed. “It’s not going to help.” He raised a hand as Tibs started protesting again. “It’s not the money. I already looked it over. I was planning on talking with the guild, offering them a cut-rate to remove it. That thing’s a danger to people. But it can’t be removed.”

“It’s your element. You just need to be strong enough, right?”

The man smiled. “You know your stuff; good on you. Only you’re wrong in this case. That pool’s different. Something happened there. You’d be in a better position to know what, since you live here, but that pool got connected to the element.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“You’re doing a third floor, so I’m going to take a guess that you had your audience, no matter your eyes show.”

Tibs nodded.

“That place you were taken for it, it’s one with a direct connection to your element. It makes things like getting an audience easier. It also makes the essence there more powerful. You’ll replenish your reserves as fast as you use them even without training.”

“Alright.” Tibs hesitated. “Doesn’t that mean you wouldn’t run out of essence to remove the pool?”

“No. It means the pool will never run out of essence.”

“Because something happened there.” Tibs was getting a bad feeling.

The man nodded. “Something the caused the element to be connected to the pool.”

“What could make that happen?”

The man shrugged. “No idea. The ones we use are so old no one knows how they were made. This is the first one to ever appear, as far as I know.” Eh chuckled. “If you want my advice, find out who owns that land and buy it from them for cheap. Because it’s only a question of time before one of the corruption sorcerers realizes what it is and they’re going to want to set research there.”

“You realized what it is.”

“Yeah, but I don’t stay in one place. I’m the wandering kind of adventurer. Not the stay in place and study things.”

“You said you don’t know what happened. But what do you think could have happened?”

The man shrugged again. “No idea. But whatever it was, it caused corruption to take an interest in that place specifically, because I can’t see how that kind of connection happens with it deciding it will.”

Tibs nodded and left.

The pool of corruption couldn’t be removed because of him. He’d been in it when he had his audience.

Did that mean somewhere behind the archery field there was a connection to the earth? At the mountain near MountainSea for air. In Sto for fire. No, that was couldn’t be since the fire was gone. Maybe that was how Sto had broken the rules? Again, no. Tibs had his audience with Light there, too.

He cursed. He didn’t care about the other places. All he wanted was to get the corruption out of his town. If the guild had acted before he had his audience, this wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

Something else the guild had failed his town on.

The list was getting way too long.