Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 87

Don's lips tightened, but he nodded.

With a satisfied clap of the hands, Jackal walked by him and down the stairs.

Tibs fell in step with Khumdar. "How did you know what Jackal was supposed to say?"

The cleric shrugged. "Our team leader is not the most complex person, and like him, the secrets he holds are simpler to decipher. It took little on my part to make out the shape of it, and once it was obvious he had forgotten, to say what was needed for him to continue."

"By filling the node of sight with your essence," Tibs said, and had to work at keeping his voice from trembling as the creature from his nightmare resurfaced.

Khumdar glanced at him. "Have you done it again?" Tibs didn't think the hint of accusation was his imagination.

"No, I wouldn't..." he looked away.

"Tibs, I have warned you that you are not ready," the cleric said, with a sigh of annoyance. "All these elements you are tied to do not grant you the connection I share with Darkness. Which did not protect me when I began this."

"I know, I just..."

"What happened?"

"Someone was following me, I think. They were using essence to hide, and they were stronger than I am, so I thought that if I used only a little darkness in the node, it would let me figure out where they were so I could get them to stop. I was careful," Tibs protested before the cleric could voice the accusation. "I thought I was," he amended.

"And?"

He shuddered. The nightmares had finally stopped waking up each night. Would bringing them up give them strength again? He breathed his fear aside. "It must have touched the other node you said, the one that affects my mind, because instead of seeing anyone following me, it was this thing and then I ran and I felt it after me and... I don't know. Darkness was everywhere. And all the shadows reached for me, wanted to pull me apart and it was still there. I don't even know how I made it to the room, but I was finally able to breathe, to remember I controlled the essence and make that nightmare end."

"That one?"

Tibs chuckles dryly. "It's been haunting me each night."

Khumdar nodded. "When was this?"

"After the last run, on the way back from the lake. Have you ever felt something like that?"

The cleric was pensive. "My relationship to secrets is not as it is for you. But what you describe sounds like something I have experienced. When darkness enters the node of the mind, it... I do not know if it grants access, or fabricates it, but there is a...realm, for lack of a better word, of secrets. And seeing it for the first time can be unsettling."

Tibs shuddered. "That's not the right word."

"I expect that for you, it is not."

"Then what was that thing hunting me?"

"A secret you fear, I expect. You need understand, Tibs. In that...place where only secrets can be, they are given..." Khumdar cursed. "I cannot properly express it. It is not life, but it can seem as such. But you are who motivates them. From how you speak of them, I must suspect that you do not hold secrets as I do. That a part of you fears them. Not one specifically, but their existence. That you do not care for secrets to exist."

Tibs didn't know how to take it. He was a rogue, and he had many secrets. He wasn't afraid of them, or even worried about them.

But if Bardik hadn't kept secret what he had been using Tibs to do, could things have been different? Could he have convinced the adventurer not to go through with it? Saved him from where ever he had been sent? If the guild wasn't so secretive, would he be plotting to take it down? Maybe a group would have come forth to help them be better before things became so wrong.