Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 21

"You don't believe corruption can be good for the world?"

Don snorted. "I know it is. I just don't have a need to scream it in the ears of people who aren't interested in listening." He smiled. "Nice try at sidetracking me. How are you doing it?"

Tibs shrugged. "I just do. I had to learn ways to get around not having much of a reserve when I started. I don't bother questioning most of what I figure out how to do. I can, that's what matters."

Don watched him, placing the book back on the bed. "I guess that makes sense, in a way."

"Aren't you going to tell me everything needs to be done in a specific way for it to be 'real'?"

Don sat next to the book and leaned against the wall. He opened his hand and corruption floated above it, a cloud taking the shape of various animals.

"Why do you think you don't use water the same way as archers, fighters, or sorcerers who share you element?"

"Because we don't think the same way," he answered with a shrug.

Don nodded. "Why does it matter? Water is water, Corruption is corruption. The elements are what they are. So how is it that who you are means it's going to behave differently?" He waved his hand, and the kitten shaped cloud danced around it.

Tibs looked at his hand, made a cloud of mist, and moved his hand through it. It pushed the cloud out of the way, but it didn't dance or move. He took hold of it, made ice crystals that reflected light, and moved that about. Colored lights glinted on the walls as a result.

"I don't know."

"Exactly." Don smiled. "You don't know. Unlike most of us, me included, you aren't letting the guild tell you how it works."

"I listen to my teacher."

"What did he, or she, tell you about suffusing yourself with your essence?"

"That it's a tool." Tibs thought back on the conversation. "That just like the other ways I use my essence, I have to be careful, or I'll end up hurting myself in the process."

"And are you; careful, I mean?"

Tibs remembered the pain as he absorbed more and more of Bardik's essence. What he'd thought of as his limitless reserve cracking open and spilling out into him. Of channeling air, thoughtlessly thinking that it couldn't do much damage, even after seeing Carina use it as a weapon. Throwing himself into the pool of corruption without caring for the consequences because he'd had enough of it getting in the way.

He shook his head.

"That's what I mean. Because you couldn't learn the way I did, the way the rest of us did, you didn't learn to blindly follow your training. I've stopped, but it's hard to let go of it. To risk doing something I've been warned against." The kitten turned into a cloud again, then became a triangle, a spearhead. It lost the cloudiness the previous forms held and seemed more solid. The surface wasn't still, but it looked like the dark purple pool now, with small waves moving over it.

"Corruption isn't hard." Don's breathing was slow; his gaze fixed on the spearhead. "By its nature, it oozes around and through. There are few places corruption can't insert itself, then affect what is there. But being hard, rigid? I've been warned over and over that to go against my element's nature is opening myself up for danger."

Don made a fist, and something happened to the essence. Its structure changed and, in the process, the spearhead became sharper; the surface no longer rippled. Tibs startled when the sunlight glinted off the edge. Don's fist trembled, and he was sweating, but he smiled with pride as he flung it at the wall.