The shadows were stretching by the time Tibs sensed the oddity at the edge of his range. He’d spent the day walking and sensing, heading for anything that might have been someone, or a mass of animals that would indicate they were feasting or protecting their kill, possibly the missing man. The one such mass had been wolves, but the kill was a deer.

  And now this.

  Even as far as it was, he could tell it wasn’t an animal and certainly not a dungeon creature now that he headed in that direction and the oddity stretched further. He could tell the essence was structured in the unnatural way that happened when buildings were made with magic.

  Was that what caused people who ventured deep into the forest not to return? An old sorcerer’s home, it’s enchantment breaking down and…what? All he had to go by were songs of such places and the danger they represented, but he knew better than to trust bards.

  Still, he could envision a sorcerer using traps to keep intruders away. And after the sorcerer died, over centuries of the weaves degrading, they might let someone wander in, but not let them out.

  And if someone was lost in the forest, any building would seem like a safe place.

  But something in what he sensed made this feel…off.

  If it was a building, it was vast, stretching well beyond what he sensed, both ahead and to the sides. And now that he had some precision, other than the gap he now headed for, there were no windows; where he’d expect to sense the remnant of enchantments. No door or archways.

  Once he was closer still, close enough he thought he should make it out among the trees, what he sense didn’t have the feel of a wall stretching on either side and within, but of uneven columns placed next to each other like a village palisade. It also wasn’t made of stones or bricks, as he’d expect such an ancient structure to be made of.

  Sorcerer’s towers were always made of those in the songs.

  Then he was close enough to see the gap between the large trees. They were so close together they had to hide the structure he sensed.

  “Well, well, well.”

  Tibs froze.

  The voice came from all around him. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, but the pleased tone came through clearly.

  “Merka,” it called, “There’s already another one.” The voice reminded him of Zacharia and others like them, who came across as both.

  He started for the gap again. No, this wasn’t a person the way Tibs was one. Somehow, even though he couldn’t sense the stone of a cliff side beyond the ‘wall’, he was hearing a dungeon.

  “Really?” the new voice sounded like an older version. Was Merka the dungeon? “Wait, this one’s different.”

  “I know.” Somehow, the words carried a smirk. “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know.” Merka replied, tone pensive. “I wasn’t taught they could have more they one element.” It would be the helper, Tibs decided.

  “But it has them,” the dungeon said eagerly. “That means this one’s going to be fun, right? That it’s going to do something, unlike the previous ones. Well, if you don’t count the screaming and crying by the end. I hope this one lasts longer.”

  Tibs now stood before the gap, and those uneven columns were the trees on each side, and stretching as far as he could see, and sense. Branches crossed at about twice his height, giving the impression of an archway. This was the dungeon’s entrance. He was certain of it.

  But where was it? Where was the mountain? The cliff? Could there be a mound? Would that be enough, and then stretched under the ground? Were the tree wall to camouflage that? Except that he couldn’t sense corridors under him.

  And the wall of columns past the entrance were arranged to make halls and rooms.

  He stepped in, smiling. However it had happened, he had a dungeon the guild didn’t control.

  “Hi, I’m Tibs,” he greeted them. “What’s your name?”

  The silence was total, not even the rustling of leaves.

  He chuckled. “I already heard you talking. I know you can hear me. I’d like to—”

  The essence hit him before he could react. Raw, thick, and accompanied by terrified gibberish.

  “I’m not—” His call was cut off by the tree that grew and impaled him. That pain was added to by another growing through his shoulder, and he slammed back against something that hadn’t been there, pinned.

  “Stop—” The leaves were over his face, in his mouth, in his throat. The pain was immense as it ripped, but he couldn’t scream, couldn’t take in air to do so. Things grew into his chest, ripping and pushing part of him aside, causing his life essence to leak out.

  He trashed, tried to use Earth for strength, but he couldn’t focus. He had to do something, anything, to stop the dungeon from killing him this way. He hadn’t avenged—

  *

  He fell to all fours, coughing, and thought he was hacking out his insides.

  “There, there,” a woman said; or possibly a girl. A hand rubbed his back. “It’s all right. You are here now. You do seem to find the most interesting ways to come to us.”

  “Where?” He stopped, as the expected rawness in his throat didn’t manifest. He looked at his chest, which was fine. Even his armor was undamaged. He wasn’t in pain or dying. He shuddered at the memory of his insides…

  How had he survived?

  “Because you came to me,” she said, and Tibs forced himself to look up, away from his uninjured body.

  She smiled at him, lips of delicate bark, in a face of rougher wood, but lined in a way that Tibs thought men, who like their women younger, would find attractive. Her eyes were the green of fresh summer grass, her hair fronds of willow with all colors of flowers growing through them.

  She stood, and her body was made of different shades of wood with flowers and moss growing in places women didn’t expose to other people unless they had plans for them.

  “You’re Wood.” He stood in surprise at the realization. He was taller than she; her head only went to his chest.

  She chuckled lightly. “Oh, I am so much more. But Wood is what those like you call me.”

  His cheeks burned. “How do you want to be called?” Why had he assumed what her name would be just because it was what everyone else used?

  “Whatever is easier for you to understand.” She motioned to the side, and the leaves that covered the ground rearranged themselves into a table and chairs. “I believe you prefer sitting when having a discussion.”

  “I don’t mind standing,” he replied, not wanting to impose.

  She smiled. “But you prefer sitting.” She motioned to a chair, and a tankard formed on the table. “You also enjoy ale, but that isn’t something I can offer, even if some of me goes into it.”

  He sat. He’d forgotten how the elements knew everything about him since they took the words they used to speak from his mind.

  “I didn’t think I’d have another audience.” A plate formed on the table. He chuckled. “Are you offering a steak to go with the conversation?”

  “That is not something for me to offer,” she replied gently, the plate remaining empty.

  He looked around at the trees and flowers and grass and mounds of moss. He recognized some, but not most. “But you’re all this. You said you’re more than wood. You’re nature, right?”

  “I am all of this,” she replied with a smile. “What do you see?”

  He looked around at the trees and flowers, the grass and mounds. He searched through and around them, trying to understand her question. He was about to ask when what was missing registered.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “There are no animals.”

  “Those are for another.”

  But who would it be if not Nature? The only possibility was Fever, that was the element of the body, the flesh. People tended to think of it as only meaning people, but animal were made of the same stuff as people.

  “Why did it take so long to have an audience?”

  “The right conditions are not always easy to achieve.”

  “But I’ve tried before, many times. I spent months in a forest. There was this cave filled with crystals. Nothing happened.”

  “You stopped before the proper state was reached.”

  “I was fed up with it.” He barely swallowed the anger. He’d tried for the strong emotions that were easy to trigger, but even channeling fire to fuel the anger, he hadn’t been able to build it into the rage the way it had before. He’d contemplated impaling himself on a crystal spire, but hadn’t been able to work up the courage.

  She placed a hand on his. “You are here now. That is what matters, is it not?”

  “I guess.”

  She studied him. “Are you no longer on the path you set upon?”

  “No,” he protested, “I still want…. I still want to make them pay.” There was no point in not being direct. She saw his mind. “I just figured that I couldn’t have an audience without having access to a dungeon.” He frowned. “What’s with this one?” the eyebrow she raised was made of delicate yellow petals. “There aren’t any mountains. How is it here?”

  She shrugged. “Dungeons are not of my making.”

  “Who made them?”

  She smiled, “Who made you?”

  He rolled his eyes. “About the only things scholars agree on is that we’re made of all of you. How that happened? I’ve heard and read more theory than the times I’ve asked. Purity made us, her clerics claim. We came from a dungeon, I heard once…I don’t remember where. We just happened. We made ourselves.”

  “These answers apply to a dungeon as well as you, I expect. All I can say is that I did not make you, and I did not make them.”

  “So they don’t have to be in a mountain to live? They can be under the ground?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Right. I guess Earth is who I have to ask.” He had the tankard to his lips before remembering it was empty. He could do with ale for this. He placed it down. “I guess I should get on with it.”

  He sensed for the shadow, looking around, and was surprised to feel it within her, between her breasts.

  Too easy.

  He paid more attention to their surroundings for any hint where the true shadow hid.

  Then he had no choice but to return to the one within her.

  It couldn’t be it. It was never that easy.

  Well, almost never. Corruption had simply handed it to him.

  “Are you just…letting me have it?”

  “You must take it,” she stated.

  “But you aren’t going to…test me? You’re not going to have me solve some puzzle, or force me to push through pain?” Other than Corruption getting the shadow of the elements had never been pleasant.

  The small smile she responded with made him think he’d missed something.

  She watched him as he stood and stepped around the table, turning so she kept facing him. She didn’t move beyond that. She didn’t present her chest to him, the way women who earned their coins by taking people to their bed would do.

  She watched him with what might be affection or encouragement. The expression was difficult to discern with her face made of plants.

  He hesitated, fingers close to the valley between her breasts; where he sensed the shadow. He took off his glove and immediately felt silly. The glove was no more real than he, or she, was. Everything was nothing more than essence in this place; his mind added the forms he was comfortable with.

  Still, there was something disrespectful about touching her there with his hand covered.

  The skin was softer than he expected, warmer. There was something resembling the roughness of unfinished wood, but also something of how his flesh gave under the pressure of his fingers, and resisted being punctured.

  He frowned.

  He tried again, reminding himself that he, or she, wasn’t solid here. He willed his fingers to be essence that passed through—

  Her wooden flesh wouldn’t let them pass.

  “Are you stopping me from getting it?”

  She considered something. “I am not making it impossible for you to reach it.”

  He smiled. “So, there is a test.” Tests he could work with. It was simply about working out the rules.

  He touched her as he stepped around her. Tested the varying firmness of her flesh. Just because the shadow was close to the skin in front, didn’t mean that was how he was supposed to reach it.

  But, by the time he’d done the circuit, the only ways her flesh varied was in the same way people’s did. Bones close to the surface made it tougher. Muscles were also harder, but not as much. The tests hadn’t told him anything of how to reach it.

  He placed a finger between her breasts again. Maybe this was about testing his determination. He pushed. When his finger didn’t go in, he pushed harder.

  Her breathing hitched with a wince, and Tibs jerked his hand away.

  “Am I hurting you?”

  “Would this not hurt you?” she asked, but without reproach.

  “But you’re an element. You aren’t like me.”

  She placed his hand between her breasts. “I am of this. Do you not think the trees feel when one of you fells one? Do you think them things for you to use and throw away?”

  He pulled his hand away, face burning with shame. There had been no accusation in her tone, but it was exactly how he thought about trees. He’d cut one down for its wood to feed a fire and not consider it or the other plants around. He’d also assumed that because the previous elements had been one way, she’d be the same.

  But they were all different.

  Plants weren’t like stone or metal; or air, or darkness. Plants had life essence through them.

  He was going to have to be careful. Do as little damage as possible.

  “I need a tool, something sharp.”

  She looked at him impassively.

  “All this is you, so you can make me something like that, right?” He’d seen wooden swords cut people.

  “All here is me, but you brought what is yours with you.”

  With a frown, he turned his sense inward. His vast reserve was there, filled with life essence. The small, nearly none-existent ones for his other elements were at its surface. He had his bracers, but they had no reserves here. When he tried channeling metal, nothing happened. He couldn’t bring a new element here. What he already had was what he needed to work with.

  He could make it work.

  He only left a trace of metal essence in the reserve, enough for it not to be empty, and formed a delicate blade with it. He crouched before her and placed the point to her skin. The gentle pressure encountered resistance. As he considered how to proceed, a bead of clear liquid formed around the point and rolled down her skin.

  Her face was a mask of strain.

  “You bleed?” he asked in horror. Of course she did. Trees had sap going through them. When he made a gash in one, the sap bleed out.

  With a curse, he stepped away. “How badly can this hurt you?”

  She shrugged.

  “Has anyone else done this before?”

  Another shrug.

  He wasn’t the first one on this path; Water had told him that. But she hadn’t said how far they’d gone. There was no order to the audiences. Maybe they never made it to her. Maybe she didn’t know how badly this could hurt because she’d never been hurt like this.

  He looked at the wet tip of the blade, and at her again. The tip of her finger was wet as she pulled it away from her injury, and she was looking at it as if she’d never seen the liquid before.

  Could he do this? Hurt her? Take part of her? The shadow was always the prize once he overcame the challenge.

  But this was different…. This felt wrong.

  “What…. What if I decide I don’t want it? Can I just leave?”

  “I can return you to where you are.”

  Which was in the process of trees growing through him, killing him.

  He needed the shadow to be immune to the trees. But doing so could…

  He crouched before her and took her hand in his. “Is there another way? I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not more important than you.”

  “It is where it is.” Her expression was sad. “If you want it, you need to take it.”

  “But it’s going to affect you.” He searched her face. “What do you want?”

  She smiled. “I want what I am. For everything to grow. To change. To flourish.”

  He looked at the prick his blade had made. What was behind there on people. “But I can’t just kill you to get that. It’s not worth it.”

  She shrugged and looked away. “I can send you back.”

  But he didn’t want to die. He still had things to do. So he needed the shadow.

  He placed the blade to her chest again and pressed gently. He looked away at the beading liquid, then forced himself to watch what he was doing. He pressed harder, and she gasped.

  He eased the pressure and looked at her face, at the pain on it as she looked to the side.

  “Look at me,” he said gently. He wouldn’t look away from the pain he was inflicting. She smiled, then winced as he pushed the blade again.

  He had to stop, part of him said. His life wasn’t worth that of an element.

  Except that was the test, wasn’t it? She was an element. She couldn’t die. She was trying to trick him.

  He pushed, and she moved back slightly.

  There was a bone there. He’d hadn’t been able to get himself to break it back then, even to save Sto. Serba had been the one who’d saved him. She’d had the strength to do what was needed, even if it was going to cost her who she was.

  If Tibs faltered here, he’d be the one who paid.

  But was that so bad? Who was he to think he could do this to an element? And what happened if he died? Nothing, really. The world would go on.

  The guild would go on.

  He gripped the blade tighter.

  Mama’s killers would go on.

  With a scream, he slammed the palm against the hilt and the blade sank deep. He ignored her pained gasp and labored breathing. He pushed a finger into the hole and used the little Earth essence he had to increase his strength. The bones broke, and he reached in for the shadow.

  It melded into him, and a new reserve formed between Earth and Air. His vast reserve would be even larger now, but he’d long ago lost any sense of how deep it was.

  And that wasn’t important.

  “I have it. You can undo this.”

  With a wet cough, she slumped forward. He caught her; she was heavier than she looked.

  “You can stop,” he said. “It’s over.”

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered, her voice cracking with a spasm.

  “How didn’t you know?” he demanded.

  She looked at him, confused, and when she coughed, liquid dripped over her lips.

  He pulled her to him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want this.”

  “I know.” She smiled. “I know that you…” the words trailed off and her head slumped.

  He moved away, horrified at what he’d done. He made an etching of Purity, but he didn’t have enough essence, and she was already crumbling away, melting into the ground.

  What had he done? How could he have been so—

  “I’m proud of you.”

  He jerked away from the touch, blade up, ready to—

  She smiled at him, standing before him.

  A glance showed him the little of her left being absorbed. Then he took her in, whole, unarmed.

  The obvious registered.

  “I really hate,” he grumbled, “how I’m always forgetting you aren’t real. I’d even reminded myself of that before….” He motioned to the ground.

  Only, part of him hadn’t believed it. With barely any acting on her part, she’d fooled him completely.

  “What’s the point?” he demanded, standing. He resisted the urge to step away as she approached.

  “Everything begins. Everything grows. Everything ends. It is the way of all that exists out there.”

  “I know that,” he snapped. “I lost too much already not too.”

  Her smile was sad. “You don’t. But that too is the way of those who exist out there. And you are a child of them.”

  Tibs snorted. “I haven’t been a child in a long time.”

  “That is true, but you are still a child to us. All of you.”

  “Fine.” He no longer felt like indulging her. “What happens now?”

  “Now, you go back.” She placed a hand on his chest. “But with a boon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It wouldn’t do for you to end, just as you leave here.”

  “But I have your essence. Wood can’t hurt me.”

  “A rule was broken, and even I am bound by them. But I too am not beyond pushing against rules if I feel so inclined.” She smiled. “And with you, I do.”

  “But—”

  She shoved.

  Bottom Rung is available on KU:

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  Stepping Wild, on Ream Stories where the story is multiple chapters ahead even at the lowest tier, and the support helps ensure I can work with a minimum of real-life interruption.

  Thank you for reading this chapter.

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