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.

Of the creature, the table, the papers… there was no trace. Not even ash. Had Sto absorbed them already? Or had fire simply not left anything behind to be absorbed?

“Did we win?” he asked, dismay at the disappointment tinting his voice. The point of the room had been to work out the puzzle, but there was nothing left.

“You defeated the boss,” Jackal said. “That’s a win in my book.” He looked around. “But I think you destroyed the loot chest, too.”

Tibs looked down. “Sorry.”

“You kept us from dying.” Jackal squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll take that over loot.”

Tibs nodded, trying to feel good about what he’d done. He had kept his team alive. The five of them were—

“Don! Did we free him?” He was on his feet while the others exchanged worried looks, then had to keep from moving, as his equilibrium wasn’t as fast as he was yet. Then they were all moving.

Jackal cursed and shivered as they stepped outside, confirming that how cold the corridor was wasn’t in Tibs’s imagination. Sensing back into the room, it still had a lot of fire essence, so he absorbed that, and, as much as it was, it barely added anything to his nearly empty reserve.

He couldn’t avoid sensing his friends in the process, and like they’d all said, they were in good shape. The purity weaves he’d applied on each had continued their work, and only with Jackal did Tibs suspect it hadn’t been enough to do much for his burns on top of healing the extensive damage it had been working on. He used some of the essence he’d gained to apply more weaves on each of them, but kept them small, preferring to be ready to defend them.

The hallway was devoid of anyone in a way that felt odd.

No doors opened in an ambush masquerading as people not expecting intruders. Tibs couldn’t even sense people golems in the rooms. Carefully opening a door revealed a completely empty room. Not even the desks where the golem people had pretended to work at were there.

By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, where the table and trays were absent, even Jackal was on edge.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Where are all the creatures?” he grumbled as they exited the room.

Running echoing along the walls had Mez bow raised, an arrow flickered, then its essence fell apart, and the archer hurried to pull one from his quiver.

Tibs started to push fire essence into the bow, only for the runner to reach the edge of his tighter sense. Then Tibs was running.

“Tibs!” Jackal called, then they too ran.

Tibs grabbed onto the sorcerer as Don rounded the corner. “You’re okay!”

Corruption bloomed around them, and was immediately absorbed by Don. “Err, yes.” Don sounded unsure, and when Tibs let go, he looked uncomfortable.

“How did you get free?” Mez asked.

“I didn’t.” Don looked them over. “The building groaned, then everyone and everything just broke down and I was free. Something tells me Tibs did it.”

“I might have broken something,” Tibs admitted.

Don chuckled. “I’d say that’s impossible, but it isn’t the first such thing you’ve done.” His expression sobered. “Why haven’t you healed them?”

“I added a weave, but I wanted to keep most of the essence I have left in case we were attacked. We’re all drained.”

“We’ll heal,” Jackal said, urging them along. “But how about we get out of here? Without those tellers jumping out of the rooms trying to kill us, this place feels creepy.”

“Any idea how Tibs breaking one room caused this to the rest of the building?” Mez asked Don, and the sorcerer shook his head.

Outside, the others shielded their eyes. “How is it so strong?” Jackal asked.

“Essence,” Tibs and Don replied in unison.

“But it isn’t that strong,” the sorcerer continued. “It’s simply the difference going from inside to outside. Same as when you leave the inn with the high sun.”

“We’re still inside,” the fighter pointed out.

“What’s our next destination?” Don asked Tibs, ignoring the comment.

“Somewhere to rest and eat,” Jackal replied.

“Is such a place possible within a dungeon?”

“We’ve passed plazas on the way here with nothing in them,” Don said. “Some even had tables and chairs.”

“We’ll need to stay on guard for those dogs.” Jackal shuddered. “But lead us to the closest.”

* * * * *

Jackal dropped on the bench and took packages from his pouch, handing them out and immediately started on his.

“You ate that pastry,” Mez said. “How are you hungry already?”

Jackal snorted. “That was a while back,” he said between bites of bread and vegetables. “Then there was that fighting. How are you not hungry?”

“I am. I just don’t feel the need to be done before I even started.”

“I want to be done before we have to fight,” the fighter said.

“I’m just glad Russel had an alternative to Khumdar’s proposal,” Don said, “as to the kind of food we should pack.”

“Travel bread is a perfectly valid food when one travels extensively,” the cleric replied, sounding slightly miffed to Tibs.

“I nearly broke the side of the table I knocked it against,” Jackal said. “That’s no longer bread.”

“It is made to survive journeys, not appeal to your sense of what bread is. It, in an oiled pack, along with access to water, will ensure you survive to reach the next city.”

“You’ll probably want to die before that,” Jackal commented before returning to devouring the food.

“Look, I appreciate the work that goes into making food that needs to survive for the weeks between towns,” Don said, “and that taste had to be sacrificed for it. But this is just one day. So I wasn’t sacrificing it if I had to.”

“And how would you be aware of what is needed to prepare such foods?” Khumdar asked.

The sorcerer shrugged. “Read a book on it when I was reading everything I could get my hands on.”

“You think the dungeon is going to put bags that keep food good in the loot?” Jackal ask so casually, Tibs glared at him. “What?” He raised a soggy piece of bread. “This is vegetable water. I don’t mind my bread soaked in meat juices, but vegetable water is for the soup other people eat.”

“There’s no way to know how a dungeon makes the loot we find,” Don said while Tibs still glared. “Let alone how it decides it.”

Tibs kicked Jackal in the shin as he opened his mouth.

“Right.”

“Such an item can be purchased,” Khumdar said. “But only the wealthiest of travelers benefits from them.”

“Did you eat a lot of those while you traveled?” Jackal asked.

“I…” the cleric considered something. “I had to. I endeavored to travel with caravans when possible. As part of the payment for guarding it, is our feeding. But circumstances made such impossible on many an occasion. There were more than one journey, early in my travels, when surviving required digging out and eating worms. Discovering travel bread meant never again did I have to experience the…delicacy that is worm.”

“I’d have eaten that,” Tibs said, “on my street. Worm sounds better than some things I had to eat.”

“Then, it’s a good thing we’ll never have to eat stuff like that.” Jackal reached for a non-existent tankard and raised it.

“You think there’s a water fountain somewhere?” Mez asked. “Back home, I could find one every few blocks.”

“Again you forget,” Khumdar said, before Tibs could point out he could make water for them. Even tankards to drink out of, “that this is not a city. It is but a simulacrum of one created by a dungeon. How would a dungeon know to provide water for the creatures it made to exist with in it? They do not need it, as they are not alive.” He chewed. “They are no more than the buildings surrounding us, save that they can move.”

“Well,” Jackal said, wiping wetness off the oiled cloth with a finger. “I still say it’s inconsiderate of it not to think of us.”

“Tibs,” Don said, cutting Mez’s response to the fighter. “I don’t know if you want to talk about this here, since we aren’t alone, but I have questions about something you said before.”

Tibs shrugged. “I don’t have secrets from anyone here.” He ignored Khumdar’s raised eyebrow. He wasn’t keeping secrets from his friends. If he, like any of them, wanted to know something, they just had to ask.

Don also raised one, but his eyes flicked up.

Tibs shrugged again. There was nothing he said he wanted kept from Sto.

“You said that fire hurts you unless you use your essence to protect yourself. How can it be if none of the other elements you have hurt you? You said you had a sword planted through your chest and other than the holes in your armor, there weren’t any marks.”

“I don’t know. The only clue I have is that Fire told me I broke a rule when I had an audience, and that there would be consequences.”

“How could you break a rule?” Don asked. “I’ve never read anything about rules governing how an audience is obtained. It’s just conventions established by the guild.”

“Like books can be trusted,” Jackal said, taking out another package of food.

“I had it inside the dungeon,” Tibs replied, cutting off Don’s angry reply. “He made it happen.”

Don’s head snapped to Tibs, surprised, then his brown furrowed. “How does that break any rules? But then again, it’s not like anyone researched this since audiences are always performed at locations the guild has established.”

“Except for Purity,” Khumdar said. “They have a dungeon where all chosen to serve undergo their trials. Succeeding results in achieving an audience.”

“But those are clerics. Just based on what you told me about how you went about getting yours. It shows they don’t do it the same as the rest of us.”

“Not everyone with purity as their element is a cleric. Fighters and archers will be among them also.”

“Rogues too,” Tibs said. “They just don’t talk about it.”

“Except with you,” Don replied, “it seems.”

Tibs shrugged. “I’m a rogue. I think they expected me to have figured it out by then.”

“So, your audience with Fire was in a dungeon,” Don mused. “Did Purity warn you that you’d broken a rule?”

“I…” He tried to remember the details, but that audience had been a while ago. “I don’t think so.”

“Then, does an attack from a…” The sorcerer trailed off. “Right. Purity is about healing, not hurting.”

Tibs stayed silent. Don hadn’t been at Carina’s funeral. He hadn’t seen the clerics use their essence to reduce her body to nothing but the elements. Purity was like every other element. It could do anything; if someone knew how to etch or weave it.

“I’d like to try some things after the run, if you don’t mind, Tibs.”

“Do they involve using fire on me?”

Don open, then closed his mouth.

“I have enough fire on my own. I’m not interested in adding to it.”

“Aren’t you curious as to what your limits are?” Don asked.

Tibs stared at him. “I broke part of the dungeon. I don’t want to find out that’s not the most dangerous thing I can do.”