Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 16

"I had wondered," the woman said, tone stern, "if you would come."

Tibs gasped and his hand reached for his breast, then stopped so he wouldn't cut himself on the sword that was...

He wasn't dead.

How could he not be dead? The sword had skewered him. Right through his heart. He looked down, and there wasn't even a rip in his shirt.

"It did not," she said in a definitive tone. "You would not be here otherwise."

He looked around, and the space registered clearer than the speaker. Large and gray, the walls covered in sharp angles. He forced his gaze on her and why it was difficult was due to her being the same gray as the walls. Her curves were much sharper than on the women he'd seen before, but there was something familiar about her.

He glanced at the wall he rested against, and it too looked ready to cut him to ribbons. He'd move away if he could see one place on the floor that looked any safer.

His gaze snapped to her. "Metal. You're Metal." He frowned. "How am I here? How can I have an audience? It's supposed to happen somewhere close to the element and I'm supposed to feel a lot."

She tapped his chest, cutting the shirt and his flesh in the process. "I cannot think of being closer to the living than against that which keeps them living. Any closer and the living would have ended you far too early for you to be ready."

It had been so quick he hadn't realized how he'd felt in the moment, but thinking back, the idea he'd died had shattered the ice and he'd been enraged that he wouldn't be able to make the guild pay. That Carina would go unavenged.

Tibs was on his knees, that pain barely noticeable compared to his emotions. When the scream ended, his throat was raw. He reached for Water. He needed the ice to silence the anger, the recriminations, the guild, the pain. He needed to be numb before the pain ripped him apart.

Where was Water? How could he have lost his element?

"This is me," she stated. "My brethren hold no dominion here. Now, stop whimpering, Thing of Humans. You are supposed to be special. Show me."

He glared at her. Whimpering? His life had been ripped to shred, and she accused him of whimpering. He was going to show her pain. He reached for Fire and...found nothing. It didn't matter. The inferno inside him didn't need Fire to explode.

He launched himself at her, ignoring the pain slicing his feet.

"Stop." The order had no emotion behind it, but Tibs found he'd stopped, held in place by points of metal pressing over him, piercing his clothing, but not his flesh. "Is this what you are? A thing driven by its feelings? A thing without control? Do you bend under the lightest weight put on you? Are you nothing without us?"

Tibs tried to glare at her, but she walked out of his view and if he turned his head to follow her, points dug into him. A reminder of the damage they could do to him.

That he could cause to himself.

She hadn't hurt him. She wasn't who had attacked him. She wasn't even the reason he was here, if Tibs understood how Audiences worked. The situation had caused it to happen. This pain the metal caused him was of his doing, not hers.

He slowed his breathing, forced it to slow. He pushed his anger aside. The pain of Carina death, the guilt at not saving her, his desire for revenge. He needed to be here. He needed to be now.

Anger clawed at him without Water to cool it; made thinking of then and later easier. Why did now matter when all there was in it was pain? The reasons came before, and his actions later. All he could do was endure the now, and focusing on before and after made that easier.