Breaking Step, Draft 1, CH 98 (Patreon)

Khumdar couldn’t hide from Tibs, not that Tibs thought the cleric was hiding from him specifically. Unless Khumdar had to interact with someone, he seemed to always be wrapped in darkness. And that was the skill Tibs needed.

Suffusing himself with the element made him difficult to notice, but that meant he had to rely on his bracers for anything else he’d have to do. And, if only for the kill, Tibs suspected he’d need more corruption than he could fill one of his reserves with. The guild leader had a lot of enchanted items on him, and Tibs couldn’t tell how many were meant to protect him from what Tibs planned.

But no matter what Khumdar did, he had more Darkness than anyone else in town, so Tibs could pick him out easily when he was within his range. Which now stretched over half the town.

“I need your help,” Tibs told the cleric as he stepped out of the alley. There were others there, moving away, once of which had Wood as their element. Green was coming enough as a tint to the essence Tibs knew it, even if didn’t have that element.

“And what may I help you with?” the cleric replied, motioning for Tibs to walk with him.

“I need to know how you make people not notice you. I can’t rely on suffusing myself for this.”

“And will you tell me what this ‘this’ is?”

“Only if you make helping me dependent on it.”

Khumdar nodded. “It is mainly about wrapping myself in my element.” Around them, essence shifted, formed a sheath, and anyone who’d been stepping out of their way as they walked stopped doing so. “As you can see, it comes with a drawback.”

This was different from when Tibs suffused himself with Darkness. Then, people stepped around him. They didn’t notice him, but still sensed something there.

“But you do something to the essence. I can sense that, but I can’t tell what it is; it’s too complex.” It felt like an etching, but had woven essence through it, and even letters. Although, as far as he knew, Khumdar hadn’t taken training from any of the teachers who had Darkness.

The cleric gathered essence in his hand and manipulated it until it was like the sheath.

“What did you do? It was too fast.”

“I…” the essence dissipated, and more took its place, loose at first, then shifting until it was like the weave. It dissipated again, and Khumdar did the same, frowning this time. “I am uncertain.”

“How can you not know what how you do it?”

“Do you know how you unleashed the corruption in the dungeon?”

“I gathered my essence, shaped it and sent it out, then lost control of it.”

“Ah.”

“You’re saying you don’t have to think about your essence when you use it?”

“I must think about it, but it is clear that I do so in a different way than you do. Than those who are not as bound to an element as I am do.”

“But I have more Darkness than you do.”

“Having more does not mean you are bound tightly to it.”

“Okay. Then how about you do it again, but slower? Maybe I can sense enough of it to copy. Well, enough to do something similar. Each class thinking differently and all that.”

“I shall try.” The essence gathered in the cleric’s hand, then shifted, and then was like the sheath.

“Can you go slower?” Tibs gathered essence of his own and tried to shape it the way he felts Khumdar’s essence shift.

“I am trying, but once I will it to be a protective sheet, the changes happen much without my control.”

“That’s strange. We have to think about every step. Where each letter goes, how the strands are set, how much essence to put. We get better the more we practice, and some happen because of how we move. Something about how the motion triggers the knowledge, Alistair said. After I do it enough, and that’s a lot, I sort of know how to make it happen instinctively. Stop it there.”

The shift didn’t stop.

“I seem to have the instinct with little of the time you spend in gaining it.”

“Must be a cleric thing. Could be why the purity clerics manage to do healing as quickly as they do. I don’t think Clara had any training for the weave she taught me. She didn’t know she was teaching me,” Tibs added at the raised eyebrow. “I just played curious Tibs and got her to talk about it, and she made one at the same time. I couldn’t get her to repeat it, but it was much simpler than yours. Slow this part.”

It didn’t slow.

Tibs controlled his frustration. It wouldn’t help figure this out, and Khumdar was doing this without probing. He also should stop talking. “So it’s all you just want to do something, and it happens?”

“No. Anything that I wish to do that is not within Darkness’s nature requires thought. The attacks with my staff forced me to consider what it meant for Darkness to be aggressive. Was it more like Fire that way, or like Metal? Was it unbending? Or more like Water and flowing.”

“Is that how you work out which of the Arcanus goes into it?” Tibs had the start of it, finally. Or something that felt similar. There was a flow to it he couldn’t match yet.

“I do not think of the Arcanus. While I have heard you and Don speak of it, I do not know it.”

“But I can see them in what you’re doing.”

“Then it is something that also happens without me understanding it. I think of the aspects the other elements represent when I train myself.”

“Is that something all the clerics do?”

“I do not know.”

Tibs almost turned to stare at the cleric at the faint light that came with the words. He did lose his concentration enough his weave fell apart. He’d figured Khumdar could lie to him. Darkness was about hiding things, and Tibs had no training with Light. But he’d never even gotten a hint it had happened until now. Was this because of how big the lie was, or because Khumdar wasn’t paying attention to what he said, being too focused on helping Tibs?

As interesting as it might be to probe how far Tibs could push this, he respected the cleric’s secrets, and Tibs had more important things to learn about.

* * * * *

Tibs leaned against the wall. The light hurt his eyes, sounds pounded his head hard enough he wanted to scream, and he was hungry. Had he ever trained so hard his whole body hurt? He suffused himself with Purity, and it all went away. The hunger returned as soon as he released it.

Khumdar watched him. “Would it not be more effective if you remained suffused?”

“You can tell I used Purity?”

“I have seen its effect on you often enough to recognize them.”

“I don’t want to depend on it. I might have to use something else.”

“I see.”

“I’ll tell you, if you want.” He at least owed the cleric that after… he looked for the sun. These hours helping him. No wonder he was hungry; it was well past zenith.

“You respect my secrets. I respect your desire to maintain yours.”

“I need to eat.” He headed for the tavern, seeing the tankard and not paying attention to the rest on the sign that would tell him which one this was. He just wanted food and drink.

As he waited for the server to return with his meal, Tibs formed the darkness sheath in his hand.

“It seems you have managed it,” Khumdar said.

“It’s not the same.”

The cleric forms is and placed it next to Tibs’s. “I do not notice a difference.”

“Maybe I see more details because of how I have to think about making mine. You don’t have to know so much about yours.”

“That is indeed a possibility. What do you expect the differences will cause?”

It was the overall shape of the essence that didn’t match. Tibs’s version was definitely an etching. It had nothing of the weave aspects Khumdar had in his. “It’ll need a constant flow of essence. That shouldn’t be a problem unless it needs more than my bracer gathers naturally. Then I’m going to have to shift element to refill it.”

“It will be best you ensure it is filled at the start of your endeavor, in that case.”

Tibs nodded. “I’ll spend the afternoon working with it.” The Arcanus were as close to Khumdar’s, but it only took a slight difference for the overall effect to be different.

The meal was good, and the server smiled at him each time she came by to inquire if he needed anything else.

* * * * *

People glanced in his direction. That was the first thing Tibs noticed as he walked among them sheathed in Darkness. They did so, looked around as if they couldn’t figure out what had caught their attention and most went on their ways. The few, the more curious ones, headed for where he’d been to investigate. Tibs stepped around them easily, and they didn’t notice him doing that. As far as he could tell, the effect only happened when someone wasn’t looking in his direction. His sheath registered in the peripheral vision only, and only if they weren’t focused on something else. Like where he’d been.

In the walk from the tavern to the guild building, Tibs could tell the sheath used up more essence than his bracer gathered, but it was faint enough he couldn’t tell how long until the reserve would be depleted.

He joined the rear of a group of clerks heading for the building so that if the guards noticed his sheath, they’d dismissed that as one of the others catching their attention. About fifty paces from the entrance, the essence in the doorway did something Tibs had never felt it do before. It stretched out toward them.

Toward him.

He turned and walked away slowly. Each step he took caused it to recede. He estimated sixty paces to be as close as he could get before his sheath triggered the enchantment. But was it that? Or had his intense training caused a change in him the building’s security sensed? Mind was an element. Could that be it? It knew his intent against someone inside it?

He only had one way to test that.

He stepped into an alley, let go of the sheath, and stepped out, heading for the entrance. He made it in without a reaction from the enchantment. So he could step in, but he’d be noticed. The guards had looked at him as he approached. Tibs wasn’t the anonymous clerk or Runner the others were. They all knew him.

He’d need a way in without being detected.

But could he use the sheath inside the building? He walked the halls, letting the magic confuse him until he was somewhere and by himself. He kept his senses alert as he formed the sheath. From inside, he wouldn’t have much time to react, and even if he dismissed it, the alarm might already be sounding.

Before he finished the thought, he was sheathed, and none of the weaves reacted.

Had the guild fallen victim to complacency? Or did they count on everyone working here having an element to pick up on things that were out of place? Even the lowliest clerk had been a Runner at some point.

Another thing he could only find out one way.

He took the medallion out of the pouch and headed for the entrance. More than one clerk glances up from the papers in their hands to look in his direction, but even the two with Darkness as their element kept going after looking around. Once he reached sixty paces to the entrance, he stopped. Did someone pay attention to the security magic? Would it pulling within the building immediately trigger an alarm?

Could he afford to find out?

He definitely couldn’t afford to be discovered. However he made it in, he’d stay as far from the entrance as he could once sheathed. Fortunately, the room the guild leader used as his office was on the other side of the building, and there were training rooms he could slip into to sheath himself.

He found such a room, dismissed the sheath, and left the building.

He knew how to reach the guild leader once he was inside.

The problem was how to get inside, and how to ensure the guild leader died.

How much of a disguise would he need to get by the guards? At the library, all he’d needed was to look like any of the other people going in, look like he had coins. Here, if he looked like a clerk, he might slip in, unless the guard recognized him in spite of that.

The downside of being one of the Heroes of Kragle Rock.

So he’d figure that part after he knew how to kill the guild leader.

And for that, he was going to need Don’s help.