"Am I the only one," Mez said, looking around at the nearly empty merchant stalls on their way to the steps, "who feels like these are the last days of an empire?"
With the Weakness rampant, the whole of Kragle Rock felt empty. Even the Runners, who seemed more resistant to it, only left their rooms for the bare minimum. The quiet of the streets had made Tibs uncomfortable.
The quiet of a lack of life.
"Empires do not fall this quietly," Khumdar whispered.
"Empires don't fall," Jackal said, tone forcefully jovial. "It's what makes them empires."
"You're wrong," Don said, nodding to a merchant standing by her booth. "But there's something too...unnatural here for it to feel like one of them ending.
"We are going to fix this," Tibs stated.
They knew how, they just had to hope Sto was going to be listening.
The cleric nodded with only glancing at them. Then they were in and through the doorway to the fourth floor.
"The library," Don said, heading for the stairs.
"The houses first," Jackal replied.
"The library is more important," Don stated, turning to face the fighter. "We can go over the houses after."
Jackal looked at Tibs, who shrugged. This was how they'd agreed to start, but Sto still had said nothing. He just hope his friend remember the advice he'd given him.
"Okay, listen up everyone," the fighter said in a so serious tone even Don closed his mouth. Tibs did his best not to roll his eyes. He'd hopes for something more subtle, but this was Jackal, and the situation wasn't all that dire.
"I know you're all affected by what's happening. I nearly lost Kroseph, so I'm right there with you and wanting to go back to look after your loved ones."
Mez exchanged a look with Don, while Khumdar's lips quivered in restraining the smile.
"But we are Runners first and foremost. It's our duty to explore this floor and bring back loot. They understand that, and all they want from us is to come back to them." He smiled and straightened in pride.
"And," Khumdar said. "With a potential cure provided by the dungeon to the weakness spreading over Kragle Rock, such as the ring, which was vital in saving Kroseph."
Jackal stared at the cleric in surprise. "Right." He shook himself. "We have to hope there'll be more rings like the one that saved my man."
"Nice...speech?" Mez said, sounding unsure.
"Then, the library makes the most sense," the sorcerer said.
"Don," Jackal replied in exasperation. "I just explained how finding the most loot is what we need to do."
"No, you told us how curing what afflicts our friends is important. That might be in the library. It holds knowledge, Jackal," Don said, cutting off the protest. "It might hold records of this sickness. Just because I haven't found anything about it in everything I read doesn't mean it never happened. A library in a dungeon could hold tomes no one has ever seen before."
"And may never see at all," Khumdar said. "One needs remember that not everything in the dungeon is real. As with many things here, the books may be no more than props."
"But we won't know that unless we go and look at them."
"You just want to read," Jackal said with disdain.
"Tibs, help me out here."
"We didn't check all the houses between here and the library," Tibs said. "It won't take so long to look those over on the way."
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.
Tibs wasn't sure he didn't like secrets, or was afraid of them. But there was no denying that they were responsible for many of the problems he had.
"Are you two done plotting?" Jackal called from the bottom of the stairs. Tibs hadn't realized they'd slowed.
"Indeed, we are," Khumdar replied.
"The guild?" The fighter asked when they reached the others, studying Tibs.
Tibs rolled his eyes. "No, just secrets and the realm they live in."
"Don, Tibs," Mez called. "Either of you know why the 'sun' seems to be just over the horizon this time, instead of already in the sky?"
"Maybe the dungeon changed it to match when we enter," the sorcerer replied, glancing at Tibs, who shrugged. Without Sto explaining it, he had no better answers.
"Alright," Jackal said. He motioned to the first house. "How about you get us inside before Don kicks in the door?"
"I don't kick in doors," the sorcerer protested. "I melt them."
"Then hurry to open it," Jackal said. "When he melts something, it stinks."
* * * * *
Tibs cut the guard's hand off, then stabbed her through the chest. The punch staggering him back and leaving his sword in it served as another reminder they weren't like people. His shield took the other punch, and Tibs slid back while he formed the etching and sent it at his sword, exploding it. Shards of ice and metal, as well as pieced of the golem, hit the other guards rushing for him.
Sto had changed something in how the golem people acted. They weren't following the roles they looked like. Instead of coming at them in orderly fashion, the guard had fallen on them in larger numbers, more like the gangs from his Street and others he'd visited in his search. They'd split his team apart, then tried to overwhelm each of them.
Tibs switch to corruption and formed the essence into a sword. Even golem stone like flesh was susceptible to it. All flesh seemed to be weak against it. It was how Don had become so feared, even with as little essence as they all had had back then. A touch, and he could bring down the strongest fighter.
The dark purple form he had looked like a sword, but as soon as he started his swing, it stretched as if it was made of water essence with a filigree of Bor. More syrup than solid. When the 'sword' hit the guard, it bent, sticking to it and wrapping itself along its back and other side.
Not what he'd aimed for, but it could use it. He made the corruption spread over the golem, weakening the armor, finding cracks through which it touched 'flesh'. He made a rope of corruption and flung it at another guard, but it and those in the path dropped to the ground.
They also adapted faster.
One threw knives at him, and Tibs willed them away and into the other guards. The metal of their blades had no weave, so they wouldn't have hurt him, but his armor wasn't entirely repaired from the damage it had received on his last run, so he wanted to keep it as whole as he could.
This was another change Tibs didn't understand. There were no sorcerers among them, or even one enchanted item. Did Sto consider the increase numbers to be enough to match what one sorcerer did? Was he low on essence and couldn't...how did dungeon made sorcerer get their essence?
Tibs wove light into a bar, then added Fey to make it hard, and Ike so it would hit harder.
The explosion sent him through a house's door.
He pushed himself to his feet with a sigh. Why did he always do this? A fight wasn't the time to try something new.
He stepped outside the house, forming a sword and shield.
He did it because fights were when he thought about it.
Where he'd stood, the ground was caved in. Only two of the guards were left, using the walls they'd impacted to help them stand. Other walls were cracked where guards had hit them, but there was nothing left of them.
He cut the heads off before they were ready to get back into the fight, then turned, ready to strike the new arrival. But it was Jackal, skidding to a stop and looking at the damage.
"I thought that flash of light was you calling for help."
"Is everything okay?" Don asked, running around a house.
"Is there a way to get the Arcanus to act on the essence after I put the filigree in?" Tibs asked as he entered the house and looked around. The usual living area had a chest instead of a low table.
"What?" Don asked, confused.
"I like the explosion I caused." He knelt before the chest. "But it would work better if happened once I was away." He ran a hand along the cover's seam.
"Yes, hasn't your teacher showed you how... never mind. They don't start teaching that until Lambda. Even after I told my teacher what I'd read about them, he said it wasn't time yet."
"See, that's what happens when you read so much," Jackal said, triumphantly. "You get mixed up in what you're supposed to know, and soon enough you're acting like you know more than your instructor and get in trouble for—"
"I'm a sorcerer, Jackal. No teacher of mine will ever complain that I know more than I should."
Tibs located the trigger.
"No," Mez said, joining them. "They're just going to charge you as if they had taught you and call it an early end to the day's training."
"Can your injury wait?" Tibs asked, sensing the break in Mez's leg while he worked the trap's pin out.
"It can. How is your reserve? Did you have enough time to refill it completely?"
"No." The pin came out. "I have about half, but it's going to be fine for the run. So long as I don't do anything like during the last one." He pried the cover up enough to slip his hand in and took the vial before it could fall. With the pin gone, that was the only way the poison would have released. He handed it to Don, who studied it.
A chain mail shirt, with water and fire essence woven through. He focused and made out the Arcanus, but he didn't know how they interacted. The weaves and filigree were loose enough he didn't think it would be something big.
"Did your fight seem...easy?" Mez asked.
"You ended up with a broken leg," Don replied. "I'm going to have bruises the size of Russell's ego, and Tibs looks like he was thrown through that door."
"My explosion did that." Tibs focussed on Don's injuries. The damage wasn't severe enough to affect the flow of his essence. It only had the ... fuzziness all bruises gave to the essence. Someone had to think of better words for the stuff around essence.
"So that's why you want to delay the results. What elements did you use?"
"The bar was light. I made the filigree with Fey and Ike."
"Why those?"
"My reserve of light was full, Fey to make it hard, and Ike so it would move faster."
"And how did you arrange them?"
Tibs stared at the sorcerer.
"Tibs, you need to—you know what, forget it. Just tell me why you keep doing this. You should be testing new etchings under supervision and in a room build to withstand the results."
"I don't have time to sit around thinking of ways to use essence," Tibs replied. "The idea just occurred to me, so I tried it."
"You have to make the time, Tibs," Don replied with a sigh. "One day, something like this could end up hurting the rest of us. It's why I want to test what you're capable of. If you know how far you can push yourself, you'll also know how much to restrain what you do."
Instead of answering, Tibs made a weave of purity and applied to Mez's legs. It seeped in, pushing the essence into place, and the archer sighed in relief as the bone followed suit.
"We good to go?" Jackal asked as Khumdar stepped into the house. His robe was cut and ripped, but the cleric's essence was fine.
"Yes," Don said, eyes locked on Tibs. "I need to see the library."
Tibs stood, stepped outside, and a fog descended over his sense.