The crate jostled again, and something slid along his leg until its pointed end pressed far too close to Tibs’s sensitive parts for his liking, but he had to keep his hands against the side to keep from being thrown about the, he hoped, sheathed weapons.

Actually, he should have unsheathed them before getting into the crate. Then, all he’d have to worry about was sliced up clothing, and not bruised and painful body parts. He couldn’t suffuse himself with purity since he was concern letting go of darkness would have the guards carrying the crate notice something was amiss.

Unfortunately, he’d reached the hideout ahead of the guard with only enough time to use metal to pull the nails out of a crate’s cover large enough he’d fit, and then bring it back down, pulling the nails in place until it was secured. He hadn’t had time to shift about to make himself comfortable, that the door slammed against the wall.

“Take everything,” A woman ordered. “Brom, go get me more people. Our informant didn’t say anything about there being so many crates.”

Tibs now had confirmation one of his rogues had squealed. He’d figure out how to deal with them once the chaos around Marger’s death had quieted.

The crate he was in had been close to the door, so in no time, it was picked up, to complaints of how heavy it was, and he was being shaken about with that something now pressing where he didn’t want it hard enough he had to let go of the side to grab it, only for the crate to shift with yet more cursing form the guard.

“Abyss,” one of them complained. “What is in this thing, a body?” Tibs held back the pain of something heavy hitting his chest as the crate righted.

“It’s just going to be badly stored equipment,” the other replied. “Way I heard it, that’s a weapon’s stash for a bunch of troublemakers. So it’s not like they’re going to have any idea how to properly store weapons and armors.”

It was lack of time, Tibs mentally complained as he grabbed the sides again. Not lack of knowledge. Training all the Omegas, making sure the equipment was repaired and maintained, and keeping the tally of what was loaned out and missing didn’t leave much time to keep everything in order.

He sensed the guild building’s weave and breathed his worry down. He was only suffused with darkness, something he’d done before without it reacting to. He would be fine. It wasn’t like it could tell he was doing it while being hidden inside a crate with intentions of committing violence on someone inside.

Right?

Even Mind wasn’t that powerful of an element.

Right?

They crossed the threshold to a lack of alarms, and Tibs breathed again.

The guards’ steps echoed, which they wouldn’t do in the main hallway. Carefully extending his sense, the walls were closer, and he realized they had entered through a different entrance. One he hadn’t known about. He’d been certain he had explored the entirety of the building.

The stairs arrived quicker than he’d expected and he was shaken about as the guards complained and adjusted how they held onto the crate. Then more adjusting as they reached the bottom and the sound of their steps changed again. Walking on packed dirt instead of wooden floors.

Tibs had explored all the above ground guild building. But with only one entrance to the basement, he had never had the chance to explore that part. He’d thought all there was were the cells and where the confiscated goods were stored, but there seemed to be more.

They stopped and answered questions from a bored sounding woman. Letters and numbers, the case file, he realized. The clerk stepped to the crate and Tibs readied himself as fire essence pooled to her hand, but before he worked out what had given him away, she ran the hand over the side of the crate, and in the essence left behind with the smell of burned wood, he made out the letters and numbers the guard had recited. She did the same with the top of the crate.

“Row nine,” she said, then they were moving again.

A door opened, then closed behind them, and the sounds of the steps changed, as if they’d stepped into a large room. They walked further than Tibs expected. He remembered the room being large, from his one time making it in, but so large they would walk this long?

They dropped the crate and something stabbed Tibs in the side. The guards complained the entire time they walked away, and Tibs followed them with his sense when he couldn’t hear them anymore, sensing another pair of guards carrying a crate crossing their path. Their crate was dropped next to Tibs’s, and as they went away, he sensed another pair coming.

He cursed. Would he ever get his chance to leave his hiding place and proceed with his plan? That crate went before the one to his left, and more guards brought crates. The second pair hefting theirs on top of Tibs’s.

He glared at their retreating backs. Wasn’t his job hard enough already? They had to add to it? He sensed the content of the crate. Armors, a mix of leather with metal gloves, and a few shields.

It would have to be enough, because anything else he could think of to move it away would draw attention. He took hold of anything metal in the crate with his essence and pushed it until it pressed against the side. He had to apply more essence, and then the crate slid with a racket to wake the town and he stopped.

He held his breath as he sensed the guards. They were still heading away, and the next pair had yet to arrive. Maybe they were deaf.

Or maybe his nerve had made the sound much louder.

He started pushing again, then realized he was being an idiot. He didn’t have to rely on the guards not hearing what he did when he had essence. He made a bubble of air around the crates and stilled its edge, keeping sound from crossing it. Then he pushed the crate off, and since he didn’t sense guard approaching, he pushed the cover off, exited the crate and put everything back into place.

The crates were in a space between shelves, with enough for dozens, he expected, depending how high they would be stacked. Crates further down were stacked six high. What would they do with what they contained? Would they not bother? Was Irdian just making sure they were out of the ‘wrong hands’ as he had heard the commander state it?

It didn’t matter. Soon there wouldn’t be a guild anymore, and Tibs would have the time to figure out how to handle everything contained here.

He let go of darkness and formed the sheath around him, then headed for the door.

The closed door.

How much protection did his sheath provide if he interacted with objects others could see? He hadn’t thought to test that. On the other side, voices spoke. A pair of them and the clerk. The conversation was more animated, and Tibs made out the fire essence dissipating from the top of the crate on the floor between the guards.

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Great. They’d decided to talk instead of doing their job.

At least it meant they’d open the door, but how long until that happened? Could he do something to hurry them along? He looked at the shelves and the items they contained. Many of them were metal so he could make them fall, and the sound should be loud enough to make it through the door. Maybe he could topple a shelf in its entirely. They were held with metal nails.

The guards lifted the crate, and Tibs pressed himself against the wall. He wouldn’t have much space between them stepping through and the door closing.

It opened, and the pair walked in, the crate between them. As the rear on passed the door, he hooked a foot against the bottom and Tibs was on the other side before he gave it a swing to close.

The clerk was peering into her ledger, and Tibs didn’t move. She could notice him out of the corner of her eye, but it wasn’t certain. There was the hall, then the door, behind which would be the clerk handling the cells and the stairs going to the main floor. Tibs didn’t see another way into the room, but he figured this was the building’s magic affecting him, and something to look into later.

He took a step toward the hall, and when she didn’t react, another, and again until he was out of sight. At the door, he sensed the other side, but before he worried about the clerk there noticing the door opening, he didn’t sense one there. Extending his sense, there was someone walking towards the cells.

He took advantage and was in the room, then up the stairs and confronted the problem again. Only this time, there were people on the other side. Not many, but all it took was one noticing something and investigating and… they all had more experience with their element than Tibs, so he had no idea what they could do.

Which was more dangerous? The chance the door opening would be noticed, or the passage of time while he waited for someone to open the door so he could step out without attracting attention?

Marger often worked late, but not always. He also sometimes left early. The man didn’t seem to have a schedule he needed to adhere to, which made sense. Who would dare tell their leader what he could and couldn’t do?

Time was not on Tibs’s side, so he waited only as long as the flow of people created a gap, then hurried to open the door, step through, and close it.

He froze as a clerk paused to look over her shoulder. “You notice that?” she asked, an adventurer heading in the same direction.

“What am I looking for?” he asked, scanning where she was looking. His element was metal, and he was close to Delta, but he wasn’t using it.

“I could have sworn I heard a door close.”

He rolled his eyes. “In this place, there’s always a door closing.”

“But I heard it close,” she said, peering where Tibs stood.

“Maybe they’re overworking you,” he replied, his tone concerned. “There isn’t a door there.”

There wasn’t?

Of course there wasn’t. Only people with the medallion could see the door, and neither of them had it.

The adventurer went back on his way, and with another look at the wall, she continued on as well.

He allowed himself two breaths, then started walking too, forming his knife and placing it within the sheath at his belt. He reached the meeting room with only distracted glances in his direction, and entered it to find the table bare, the papers in small crates along the walls.

Was he too late?

Breathing became difficult. He couldn’t have missed his chance. He’d—

He relaxed with the next full breath. Panicking now wouldn’t help. He extended his sense. He wouldn’t be able to tell where Marger was this way, the enchantments baffled even that, but—he smiled as he sensed the concentrated wood essence—he could confirm he was in the building.

He took the medallion in hand, and the jumble became orderly. Marger was at the back of the building. With him was someone with crystal at Beta, as well as someone else with Wood and one with Fire, both at Gamma.

He kept his pace steady as he navigated the halls to this new room. Rushing would cause him to make mistakes. He needed to be meticulous, careful and—he stared at the closed door keeping him from entering the room where Marger, Tirania and two others were—patient.

A door.

He cursed, looking along the hall for anyone approaching. For anyone who might be heading into this room. His plan was being thwarted by a door.

It was possible his sheath would keep them from noticing the door opening. And, if not for the reminder that the door to the cells had its own magical protection, he would have entered, believing he’d tested it there. Now, it wasn’t a risk he could take. He needed every element of surprise, considering how powerful the people in the room were.

He leaned against the wall and glared at the door, trying to make it understand how annoyed he was at its existence. The only positive thing was that Marger couldn’t leave without Tibs knowing it.

Unless they had someone with void appear in the room to take him away. Could Attendants do that? Didn’t they need the platform? He had talked with some of them during the Siege, but he couldn’t remember the details.

If that happened, Tibs would sense them, and he’d know to act before it was too late.

So he waited.

Marger was probably berating Tirania. One of the others was probably her replacement, and they’d explain how they would be so much more efficient in bringing the townsfolk under their heels. No letting them do however they pleased. They would have no more freedom than the Runners and would be sent in the dungeon if they became unruly.

Fire liked wood, consumed it easily. The door would be gone before anyone noticed him bursting through, and they’d be ready for someone with fire as their element, not Tibs.

He looked left and right. Where was everyone? He could sense them going about their business in the other halls. Why weren’t they in this one?

He paced and waited.

There was nothing else to do. He wasn’t letting this chance pass. If he had to act as Marger left the room, so be it. He’d have the knife in the man’s back and he’d be escaping while the corruption spread. There was enough in it to get through whatever protection the man had.

He froze as someone turned into the corridor, papers and hand and…entered the office five doors early.

How dare they? Tibs was tempted to go there and explain how he needed them in this office, that they had to be the one opening the door so—

He breathed.

He couldn’t let his impatience make him rash. He couldn’t let his anger act before things were ready. And he couldn’t do something stupid that would have him found out early.

And really, there would be another clerk along eventually, and they couldn’t all be destined to other offices, could they?

* * * * *

And they weren’t. There were only four of them.

But it was enough that by the time the fifth one turned into the corridor, Tibs didn’t have much energy left to care. With each previous ones, his trepidation at finally being able to act stole some of it. When the woman had walked by him and past this door, Tibs had nearly yelled at her.

Tibs watched the clerk, bored. Just like the others, he would take a door before this one and—he didn’t. Then he’d pass this one by and—the man knocked on the door facing Tibs.

Tibs nearly didn’t act, not quite believing it was finally happening. Then he suffused himself with purity, and switched to corruption as the door opened and he entered with the clerk, stepping aside and taking in the room.

Marger was standing by a table with only a few stacks of papers, speaking in a tone of giving orders. Tibs didn’t bother with what they said. Tirania was facing him and to the left, the woman with Wood next to her and the one with Fire on her other side.

Guarding her? Tibs wondered before focusing on Marger, as he took the papers the clerk handed him.

He let out the breath and acted as Marger raised his gaze back to Tirania.

“And you,” Marger said as Tibs rushed through the space separating them, knife in hand, “managed to—” his head snapped in Tibs’s direction, and a weave from the broche at his breast extended.

Too late, Tibs taught maliciously, aiming for a spot on the man’s stomach it wouldn’t reach in time. You are not escaping my—

“Tibs!” Sto’s pained yell nearly brought Tibs down and caused his aim to falter. The weave intercepted it and he pushed all the corruption he could into the edge to fight it. He couldn’t think of his friend now. He needed to finish this and the knife was into his—

“Help!” The intensity brought him down to a knee, and he nearly lost hold of the knife as the weave tried to break it apart. Sto’s voice broke in a way even the pain Bardik had inflicted on the dungeon hadn’t managed.

Marger staggered into Tibs and he had to put aside his friend’s pain for now. The knife was in the man’s stomach. The corruption spread through him. All Tibs had to do was ensure enough of it reached the man’s essence, and there would be nothing anyone could do.

“Please, Tibs!” Sto’s voice stretched as if it was spread over all the distance between them, and Tibs cursed the timing. There was only one thing that could do this to his friend and—

He ran for the door, ignoring Tirania’s yells for an explanation. The knife was still in Marger, and by the time it would be removed, the corruption would reach the man’s essence. He had to hope enough would seep in to get the job done because he wasn’t losing a friend to the satisfaction of ensuring the guild fell apart.