The room he sensed, a distance ahead and after a turn, lacked a door, and the mass of life essence that moves about the floor contained no Wood. He couldn’t identify the other major elements, and of those he had, the mix was random, other than being in small pockets that gave the impression of movement.

  A scurrying movement.

  He didn’t let that distract him from sensing for traps, or a manifesting attack, but none came and soon enough he had confirmation his impression was correct.

  He chuckled at the assembly of small woodland animals going about foraging through the grass covered ground of the room. The walls were the same trees as the rest, but had boulders of varying size at their base; with the thickets having partially grown over rocks.

  It gave the whole the air of an innocent glade he had to force himself to dismiss. He was in a dungeon. These creatures would be deadly if he dropped his guards.

  “You didn’t make them out of wood?” he asked, his puzzlement overcoming him. “Sorry. My question is more about how you’re able to do that. Sto was well into his second floor, maybe his third, before he started. Everything before that was stone.”

  “Maybe,” Firmen said, sounding annoyed, “that dungeon just wasn’t clever enough about getting Fever essence.”

  “I didn’t mean to compare you to him.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t.” The tone dripped with disbelief.

  He had to stop doing that.

  But it made some sense. Fever was the element of the flesh; not that he knew why it was called that, instead of Flesh.

  The books he’d read in trying to learn all he could about the elements agreed that Fever was the element that made people and animal alive. Which Tibs knew was wrong. The Life element did that. It reinforced that for as much as scholars studied everything; they didn’t know as much as they liked to believe.

  He’d planned on asking the element, but his attempt at an audience hadn’t been successful.

  Because of what the element was linked to, the first time Tibs heard about flesh parties, he made plans to attend one. It had been hosted by a noble, so crafting an identity to attend had taken time and work. The hardest part had been convincing them he was older than he looked; he hadn’t quite reached the point of looking like a young man by then.

  Why they kept questioning that became apparent once he arrived, but he forced himself to continue even with all the sex going on in plain view. He’d even convinced himself this was better. They’d be distracted, so wouldn’t notice him, slitting his wrist with his obsidian blade. Then it would be about fighting the urge to heal himself until he was too weak to form the etching, and he’d have his audience on the edge of death.

  He knew that one worked.

  The one detail he hadn’t considered, the one that derailed his plan, was that they would touch him. He pushed through that discomfort, and thought he would accomplish his goal, but then someone touched him where no one had any right to, and he’d bolted.

  He’d needed a whole day of scrubbing himself at a private bath before he’d felt clean. He’d decided Fever would be the last of the elements he’d seek an audience with, then.

  A lack of Fever essence, for Sto, could be explained by being in a mountain. There had to be animals there, or that wandered in, since he’d needed a form to base the stone rats and rabbits on, but they didn’t contain much. It wouldn’t be until Runners died there his reserve would have increased. But then would be the problem of making people golems. Sto had said that had been difficult.

  Maybe, in making them more like actual animals, instead of a mass of the essences, Firmen had found a way to simplify the work.

  “There must be a lot of animals that came in for you to copy.”

  “And died in my traps. They aren’t as clever as you are.”

  He studied the walls and floor. Nothing there had the feel of a trigger, and this being the first floor, he trusted that. The room would be about fighting overwhelming numbers. As best as he could sense and observe, the creatures were as close to real ones as a dungeon could make them; the way Sto had made his dogs. That gave him an advantage; so long as he kept them from massing on him at once.

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  Essence would make that easier to accomplish.

  He stepped into the room, and the transition into dungeon creatures was instant. As one mass, they ran at him. He cut, kicked, and bashed with his shield without care, and to little effect. He killed them, but there were so many there was no pause in the biting and clawing on his legs.

  It was pressure, at first, the leather taking the damage. He kicked as best as he could. He cut and killed them, keeping them from climbing atop one another. Then a faint pain as teeth made it through the damaged leather. Claws followed, and more biting. And as hard as he fought them, they were reaching higher. The weight reached above his knees and while kicking paused the attacks, it became harder to do so, and some of the creatures hung on, claws into the damaged leather, or his flesh.

  Each bite and clawing could be ignored, if not added to all the other, and fighting through his exhaustion as well as them became a larger part of the fight. He thought he was in the clear when the pile of finally lowered, but a bite in his inner thigh reminded him the fight wouldn’t be over until he was the only one standing.

  He was on his knees when it ended. Dead creatures in a circle around him. Moss covering nearly the entire floor elsewhere.

  The chuckle escaped through his panting. It turned into a laugh. He fell on his side and rolled onto his back, watching the darkening sky through the canopy.

  “You have odd reactions. You laughed when you nearly fell to the wood plates; you laugh now when I almost had you. Those before you just screamed and cried as soon as the pain started.”

  He chuckled. “I told you, Runners get used to this. Get to liking it. This feels like my first runs.” He motioned to the dead creatures. “Especially the rat. I used to hate those things because of how Sto had them crawling everywhere and their bites hurt. Them and the rabbits. They were the only thing on his first floor, and they were vicious.” He chuckled, rolled, sat, and bandaged his wounds as best he could with what he could rip from his clothing.

  Then he stood and went to the boulder with a tree growing around it. He sensed the cache inside, and running his now gloveless fingers over the surface let him find the barely noticeable crack. If he wasn’t so tired, he’d pull his sense in and unlock it the way he was meant to; by feel.

  He sensed the way the gap was structured and turned the cover, pressing as needed to align the gap and which way to twist, until it was off. He sensed for traps inside, before pulling the fabric bundle out and unrolling it. The cloak was thick, deep green, wool with a plain brass brooch.

  “Did you make this from one of the people who came in?”

  “Yes.”

  Bringing back the entire cloak would be suspicious, but with the right application of corruption on the broach, he could claim to have found it while hunting. Not that he was returning to the village now. He attached the brooch to his armor’s breast and exited the way he’d come, then retraced his steps.

  “Where are you going?” Firmen asked when Tibs turned away from the unexplored corridor.

  “Out. I’m done for the day.”

  “You can’t do that!” Merka yelled. “You haven’t reached the boss room yet!”

  “I’ll deal with it tomorrow, or the day after.” He needed to work out what to do about the ruined lower part of his armor.

  “Firmen, stop it! It can’t leave until it’s faced me for real, this time.”

  “Merka, I don’t think I should—”

  “Stop it!”

  The dungeon sighed, and Tibs felt the trees out of sight move to block his way.

  He stopped. “Don’t do this, Firmen.”

  Merka snorted. “Like you can do anything. You’re inside us, now. We are in charge.”

  So much for them not letting Merka order them about. “This is you, Firmen. Don’t let Merka put you in danger because I’ve hurt their feelings. I’ll be back in a few days, at most, and they can work off their anger on me as much as they want then.”

  “I’m sorry, Tibs. Merka’s a friend and partner in this. I—”

  Tibs channeled fires and let it leak out. “Don’t” keeping it from reaching the walls took a lot of effort in his tired state. “Test.” The surrounding ground charred. “Me.”

  He looked up. “I played by the rules we agreed to, Firmen. This is the kind of essence I can use if I want to. If what I want is to burn you down, I will do it. All I want right now, is to go outside and find a spot to rest for a while. Get something to eat. Sleep and figure out my weapon and armor situation and come back for another run. I don’t know if it’s a rule for dungeons, or just something the guild decided on, but we aren’t forced to kill ourselves trying to reach the boss room. Each team decides how far they go. When they decide they are strong enough, then they face the boss.”

  “You wouldn’t dare hurt us like that,” Merka sneered. “You have no idea what they’d send against you if you did.”

  Tibs snorted. “You mean something like the Them? Did I tell you how Sto survived the one sent to end him? I killed it. I didn’t know anywhere as much as I do now about what I can do with my elements, and I still killed it. So if you force this, you’re welcome to go back wherever you came from to tell them what I did because you were too stubborn to accept I needed a rest, but Firmen will still be dead. Is that what you want? Firmen, what about you? Do you want me to burn you down?”

  The passage opened, and he pulled his essence in.

  When he reached the section with the trapped floor, he nearly screamed his annoyance. Instead, he decided that with what Firmen had pulled after he’d made it clear he was done with the run; he didn’t have to follow the rules. He channeled Water and coated the floor with ice.

  He stopped before the exit. “My bracers, please.”

  The thicket parted to reveal them. He put them on and left. He walked until he thought he was out of the dungeon’s influence before finding a tree to sit against and closed his eyes.

  “Tibs?” Firmen said cautiously. “I’m sorry for that. It’s just that—”

  “Firmen,” he snapped, not having the energy to keep his tone civil, or get up and find a further location. “We can talk about it after I’ve slept.”

  “Right. That’s a thing people do.”

  He waited, and when the dungeon remained silent, Tibs let himself relax and waited for sleep.

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