Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 53

His control slipped, and the wind nearly threw Tibs off the roof. With a curse, he leaned against the chimney to block it as he regained control through air essence, then it stopped buffeting him about. Having to hold at bay such strong wind as he ran was a strain on his focus. Had he ever had to actively hold on to essence for so long before?

Thunder sounded in the distance, followed by, seconds later, the flash of lightning. He raised his head to the sky and the chilly rain ran down his face and under his armor, cooling him until it got uncomfortable. He iced it over his skin, forming the essence so it wasn't cold, and pushed himself from the chimney. This wasn't about enjoying these new roofs. It was about reaching the Brokerage and figuring out how to get in. Once that was done, he could rest.

He stopped before the building was visible through the rain, as it entered his sense, and he felt something, no, someone, on the roof of a building lining the open plaza around the Brokerage.

The person had no element, which was why their faint life essence only registered now; there wasn't enough of it for him to tell them apart from background essences at the edges of his sensing range. The only reason he could tell that it was a person, instead of a weave or the essence that made out everything around them, was that life essence had something of a glow to it, to his sense, which nothing else had. He didn't know why.

He went around them, to approach from a different direction, and sensed someone else on that roof on the outside of the plaza. He kept going and there was someone on the next roof, and the one after that.

Guards, he decided, once he was back where he'd started. Each roof had one or more of person there. They were close enough that even with the rain, they could make each other out. On a clear night, they would see each other's lanterns and the outlines of those on the roofs next to them. He could feel their fire, protected from the wind. It was strong, so a large wick and plenty of oil.

He approached until he was a roof away. This one had three guards huddled under a makeshift awning against the chimney. The one on its left had one standing under a more permanent shelter that consisted if a roof and a wooden wall that the guard moved to block the worst of the wind, leaving the lantern untended on the small table.

In this weather, even with their attention focussed, all he needed to slip by was to create a gust of wind strong enough to threaten snuffing out the lantern before running along the side of the roof.

He made a disk of water, intent on using them to cross to the Brokerage, and rain clattered surprisingly loud on it to his ear; and that of the guards as voices were raised and two of them forgot about the lantern to come to the side. Tibs let the disk go as he dropped to his stomach and pressed against the parapet.

"What was that?" one asked, the rain making her sound further away than she was.

"It sounded like rain on the roof of the tinsmith," the other replied. He sounded quizzical, more than worried.

"This high? There's no tin anywhere close, and where did it go?"

"Well, whatever it was, it's gone."

Tibs made a bubble of still air around him for the way it kept sound from moving past it and immediately let it go as the rain beaded and ran down the dome. Fortunately, it didn't attract attention. Unfortunately, to workout how to make the water disk silent, he needed the rain to fall through, which might get the guards investigating.

He added that to his never ending list of tasks as he crouched. This was the closest he'd make it; so he'd make the best of the situation.

He focused on the Brokerage's roof and top floor, bringing in his sense to increase the details of what he sensed. Immediately, something felt odd about the weave within those walls and the roof itself. The best term he could fit to how it felt was worn. The way a fabric that saw uses every day became thin in spots until the strands broke.