Stepping Up, Draft 1, CH 83 (Patreon)

Tibs stalked the group of Sebastian’s people through the town. They knew he was there, as demonstrated by how they kept trying to lose him, temporarily splitting up and rejoining, thinking that by forcing him to choose one of them to follow, it would increase the chances they’d all get away from him.

Unfortunately for them, even when he lost sight of someone, their essence made it easy to pick up the trail again. It was unfair, and if not for all the damage they’d done in just that morning and part of the afternoon, Tibs would feel bad about it, but half the town was on fire or burned down, anyone other than him with fire essence was occupied keeping it from spreading.

Those were the only Upsilon still alive. As careful as they’d been, taking on Sebastian’s people had been too much for the Omegas and Upsilons.

Now, Tibs planned on making any of those still in his town suffer for it. This wasn’t the first group he’d tracked and killed since leaving the inn, and it wouldn’t be the last today. Before the sun set, Tibs wanted Sebastian to have no one left to defend him.

Let him try to be any danger to his town then.

The group had a specific goal. Them constantly regrouping made that clear. He didn’t know what it was. They were in one of the few parts of the town untouched by the fire, but it had nothing of value. They were mainly houses with courtyards, and if destruction was their goal, they’d be flinging everburn at them.

Whenever they reached what they were after, Tibs would strike.

* * * * *

Tibs used the alleys to walk around the courtyard where the seven people in green and black were assembled. They were in the center, waiting.

They had to be waiting for him. Was this Sebastian’s attempt at being more dangerous? Have his people led Tibs in an unfair battle? None of them had essence. They looked proficient enough, but could they think there was enough of them to take on someone with essence? Anyone at Rho was deadly with their essence, Sto saw to it.

This felt too much like an attempt at a trap, but none of them carried everburn. Even when he wasn’t on fire, the way it released fire essence was distinctive. If they had carried some, Tibs would have ignited it and moved on. They didn’t even have anything with essence woven through it. Not special armor or weapons. Sebastian hadn’t given the people attacking the town anything good, but at least one person on each team had had something to give them an edge in a fight.

They felt like the sacrificial lamp of stories.

Tibs sensed around him. At the edge, toward the transport platform, there was a fight. Essence was used offensively and defensively. Adventurers stood in alleys leading to the nobles’ neighborhood. Lone people moved about, peppered through what he could sense.

And one stood on a roof three houses behind Tibs. Tibs looked around the alley and gauged the rooflines. They couldn’t see him from there they were, but they’d have a view of the courtyard. He had something with air essence in it, but no essence of their own.

So they were the trap this group had led Tibs into. He smiled and didn’t bother with his weapons. He was going to have fun, and if that meant he had to run after the assassin, to keep him from reporting to Sebastian what he was about to see, he’d do that.

Tibs strode into the courtyard. Other than water, he could only use the other essence in the most basic way, but that would be enough. They turned toward him, weapons drawn, and seemed unsure. Hadn’t Sebastian told them who he was? Had they expected a tall warrior like Jackal? Maybe someone in robes like Carina or an Archer.

Didn’t any of them know he was small and while no longer skinny? Oher than his leathers, he looked unassuming.

Time to demonstrate that he was still dangerous.

He channeled air and sent them back with wind. He switched to earth and tried to have it grow over them before they stood, but he overestimated his control over how much of an area he could hold and they broke through the soft earth.

“He’s not alone!” the woman who seemed in charge yelled.

“I didn’t agree to that!” a man replied and ran for an alley. Tibs had a ball of fire on him before he was halfway there. No one was leaving this courtyard.

He grinned at the others as he approached them. They were all looking at him, comprehension dawning, and with it fear. The eye color of anyone who had an element was difficult to miss.

A fighter ran at him, her sword high and screaming. He switched to earth and suffused himself with it. Her eyes went wide as his skin turned rocky, but she didn’t slow. He blocked the sword with an arm, then punched her hard enough she landed among the others and didn’t stand.

He let go of the essence.

“Stand!” the leader ordered as her people backed away. “Remember your orders.”

They had to be something to the effect of ‘keep Tibs in the courtyard until the assassin gets to him.’ Said assassin had come down from their roof and was moving toward the courtyard, but doing so slowly, cautiously. It meant they couldn’t see what Tibs was doing.

He channeled corruption and melted a sword. Light, and he had a blade of it in a man’s shoulder. A ball of darkness formed around a woman’s head and she claws at her face, trying to remove it.

Purity… well, he couldn’t think of a way to use that essence to hurt and scare them.

The leader looked at her people, then at him, in disbelief. She seemed to be at a point where she couldn’t believe what she saw, so he decided to help her. He channeled water and made a ball in one hand and used the essence from his bracers to form a ball of fire in the other.

She stared at him, and this proved too much for her. She bolted as another of her people did the same. He threw the fire at him and quickly etched the ‘x’ attack with his finger, confirming that it didn’t have to be done with a knife and it could be done smaller without affecting the end result.

The last two stood frozen in place as he walked toward them. One dropped his sword and raised his hands in surrender.

It was too late for that. But Tibs gave him a quick death. A lance of light through his eye.

He stood before the last of the group and crossed his arms over his chest. “Now, what should I do with you?” He sensed the assassin approaching. If she noticed him in the terrorized state she was in, she didn’t react. “Maybe I should cut you up and put the pieces in a bag and have that sent to Sebastian. Do you think it would be enough to make him stop?”

The assassin was only a few paces behind Tibs, and he couldn’t hear him. They were good. Maybe that was what the air was for? Carina had come up with a way to use her essence to move silently. Only he didn’t sense any focused air essence around the assassin. He stopped his curiosity. Now was not the time to be distracted, not when the assassin was about to—

Tibs spun and planted the ice knife in the man’s chest. He was older, his face was scarred, and the look of surprise was satisfying. Tibs purposely missed the heart and pierced the lungs instead. The expression became determined and Tibs had ice spines grow out of it.

The man screamed in pain and grasp at his chest, instead of trying to plunge the knife he had been holding into Tibs.

Tibs use Purity on him. “Can’t have you die just yet. You, on the other hand,” he told the last of the bait as he turned, “have outlived your usefulness.” He lobbed her head off with an ice sword. The assassin was on his back when Tibs faced him again, saying something he didn’t understand through gritted teeth.

Tibs crouched next to him. “I hope you speak Pursatian. We need to have a talk.” The man glared at him, and Tibs extended another ice spine from the knife. “Just tell me if you can speak it.”

“I can,” he said, his accent thick. “You are a dungeon-made monster.”

Tibs shrugged. “That sounds like you want it to be an insult, but I know the dungeon, so it isn’t. Did you really think you’d kill me?”

“Yes,” then he let out a bark that could have been laughter, but he was choking on blood.

“Don’t die on me.” Tibs used purity to heal him enough he stopped choking.

“He paid me enough to buy a duchy,” the man said when he could breathe, and continued before Tibs could ask what a duchy was. “But he did not think I would. It is why he gave me this.” The man reached for what was at his neck, but Tibs caught the hand as well as took hold of the essence there. It was an amulet he could now tell.

Tibs pulled it out from under the man’s vest and he held a leather-wrapped stone he was familiar with. Carina hadn’t made much of when she’d gotten the new power stone from Sto, but she had shown him the work the leatherworker had done, and she often held it when she pulled essence from it.

“Sebastian to me that if I found myself in the position I am in, I was to tell you that its owner is enjoying his hospitality. He will be sure that they enjoy it—” the ice ripping out of his chest silenced him.

* * * * *

Tibs marched into Sebastian’s encampment. The few who tried to stop him once he was inside the barricade of wagons were dead, run through by his ice sword. He wasn’t so far gone in range to let go of his one certain advantage over the man. Surprise.

Sebastian sat on a throne-like chair made of wood. Or at least it resembled what Tibs remembered of bards stories where thrones had been described. Big, ornate, and looking uncomfortable. He had a crystal goblet with dark wine in it and smiled as Tibs approached.

Only two others were there.

Carina was attached to a contraption of metal and wood and ropes. Next to that, a muscular man stood, holding a rope and connected to something behind it.

“Run Tibs,” Carina said, then she was screaming as the man raised the hand holding the rope and the contraption creaked and groaned, and pulled her arms and legs further back.

“That’s enough,” Sebastian said. “Tibs isn’t going to run. Are you?”

Tibs looked at Carina, who was panting, eyes closed, still visibly in pain, then at Sebastian, who had a satisfied look on his face.

“The trick to beating one of you adventurers is to force you to exhaust yourself, physically, and your essence. So you throw just about everything you have at her and eventually, those you have in reserves, with express orders not to do anything until she’d exhausted, strike. Now, experienced adventurers aren’t taken down just with that. They have more tricks than the most experienced card shark, but you aren’t experienced, are you? All of you here are barely adventurers in the making. You don’t even call yourselves that yet. Runners are what you call yourselves. And Running you do.”

The man smiled. “Running to my music.” He continued before Tibs could work through why he was bothering with this. They both knew what he wanted. “Now, capturing an adventurer isn’t enough. After all, essence is a resource that’s ever-growing. Leave any adventurer along even for a few minutes and they’ll be ready to fight you again. But focus, now that’s something that can be controlled.” He motioned, and the man raised the rope again. Carina screamed in pain; and stopped when the man pulled on it. “Before you consider rushing to kill him, if he lets go of the rope, your dear Carina will be ripped apart.”

Tibs used water to cool his rage. He needed to be able to think. And what he came up with left him stunned.

“All of this was so you could capture Carina?”

Sebastian laughed. “Hardly.” He pushed himself off his throne. “All of that was to keep you busy. To whittle at your little adventurers until you had no choice but to split apart.” He stepped to Carina and caressed her cheek. “So that you wouldn’t even know I had her until I sent someone to tell you.”

“Fine, I’m here. You can let her go.”

Sebastian snorted. “Oh no. She is integral to what I am planning. Not just a method of getting you here.” His expression darkened. “You took what is dear to me, Tibs. I am going to take the thing you love the most in this world from you.”

“This is because I kept you from taking the town?” he asked in disbelief.

Sebastian stared at him. “What the fuck do I care about this miserable town? If I wanted it, would I be destroying it right now? No, this is about how you took my son from me.”

Tibs tried to answer that and couldn’t come up with anything.

“At least you have the decency not to try to deny it,” Sebastian said in satisfaction.

“Jackal ran from you way before I ever met him.”

“He would have come back,” Sebastian said dismissively. “Even with him being here, I would have gotten my son back, if not for you and how he loves you.”

“He doesn’t love me,” Tibs replied before he could stop himself, but shut his mouth on the rest. Redirecting Sebastian’s anger on Kroseph was not something Tibs was going to do.

“You’re his family! You ripped him out of mine and made him yours!” Sebastian had a knife in his hand and was waving it in Tibs’s direction. “I told him I forgave him for running, for letting me think he’d died. I told him how happy I was to have him back again and in the perfect position to finish the dream my grandfather had. My son would have given me the guild if not for you!”

Carina gasped and Tibs stared at Sebastian’s knife hand holding the pommel, the blade embedded in her chest. Even the man seemed surprised at his action.

“Well, fuck,” Sebastian said, then he was hit by water that sent him crashing into the man holding the rope. Before he could let go of it, he too was covered in water. Even a few hand-spans of ropes were soaked and iced in place.

Tibs ran to Carina, who was still; held by the contraption, he told himself, even if he could sense the essence in her dissipating. He pushed purity in her before he reached her, and he felt the wound repair itself around the knife. But her essence kept growing thinner.

He pushed his essence into her. Tried to use it to prevent what was left from leaving, but it was insubstantial to it. Even to his sense, it registered less and less, until there was nothing in her. Even her eyes were back to an ordinary brown.

“No,” he whimpered. “I said there was no dying!” He cut her down and held her. “You still have to help me with my letters. I’m going to stop complaining, I promise. Just wake up, Carina.” She had to be asleep. He needed her to just be asleep. He’d already lost too many friends. He couldn’t lose someone as important to him as her.

The pain was too much like that of losing Mama.

Those men still hadn’t been punished for what they had done to Mama. He raised his head to look at Sebastian in ice from the next down. The other man had been fully encased, and he’d already suffocated.

The men who had caused Mama’s death had escaped him. He’d find them, eventually. One day, they would pay. But he had the man who had killed Carina right here.

And him, he could make pay for taking her. He could make him pay for a very long time.