Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 79

Cold.

He was so cold.

Fire had consumed all the heat within him, and left Tibs shivering on his knees. He remembered this feeling well, from that first time. At least, this time, pain wasn't snapping at the heel of the gently retreating cold.

There was nothing to accompany the slowing shivers.

As with that time, Tibs was certain voices had accompanied the roaring of fire. Only now he was terrified they might have been screaming, calling for him to stop. Calling to him in pain, and that when the voices had stopped, it was because his friends had also ended.

Somewhere along that, he'd pulled his sense in, and now he couldn't bring himself to extend it. To find out he was the only person in the room. That his team had paid the price for what he's done.

"Tibs?"

He stared at the hand on his shoulder, blistered, but whole. The burned armor on the arms and Jackal, his face also blistered, looking at him in concern.

"You survived." His voice sounded as hollow as he felt. "You were strong enough." One of them. He should be happy Jackal had survived, but he had been the strongest. And Tibs had still hurt him: what had he left of Mez and Khumdar, if anyt—

Jackal snort broke the thought. "I was in no shape to do anything. You're the one who kept the fire from burning us." The fighter looked at his blistered hands, the mostly burned armor. "But it did get really hot."

He'd tried to keep fire focused on the creature, on Sto, on what made him angry, and away from his team. But fire consumed without care, and Tibs eventually lost himself in the rage he fed it. Somewhere, along with pulling his sense in, he'd forgotten about his friends.

"Tibs." The hand shook him.

Jackal raised Tibs's head so he would look into those earth brown eyes, then turned it to show him Mez and Khumdar, smoking, but looking less burned than the fighter.

He grabbed onto Jackal, held tight. "I thought Fire had eaten you with everything else," he said between sobs in the soot covered armor.

"It got close," Mez said. "But I think that even if I hadn't kept most of it from me and Khumdar, we wouldn't have looked worse than he does right now."

"In your dreams," the fighter replied. "You'll never look this good even after Tibs fixes you up."

"I tried so hard to keep you safe."

"You succeeded," Khumdar said. "It is not how inherently strong each of us is that accounts for our survival, Tibs. You did this to a dungeon room. If your will hadn't been on protecting us as well, there would be nothing left of us."

Tibs shook his head vehemently. He didn't deserve praise. He has stopped thinking about them. He had let them—

His head was pulled away from Jackal's chest non-to-gently. "You controlled it," the cleric said, tone harsh. "Do not let your fear of what might have happened cloud your mind to what you did." He moved aside as he spoke. "You are the one who protected us. No matter how deep your fear of fire is, you maintained control."

There was nothing left in the room. There was barely a room to speak of. The walls were bowed out, black and cracked in place, revealing the deeper parts of the walls, the part that weren't stone, that might be what Sto was made of. The destruction of the floor ended a few paces away from him and his friend. An uneven line marking where each had been. It wasn't clear, fire had bit further in places; close enough to blacken the floor fingers away from where Mez had been. But it hadn't reached him.