Chapter 32: Chapter 31

“Is it me,” Jackal said, panting, “or was this last stretch longer than the rest of the climb in its entirety?” He dropped on the bench at the end of the trail, where the flat section leading to the edge of the mountain began. “And why didn’t Kro warn me about how long it would take?”

“And ruin that enthusiasm you had for walking up here?” Carina said, grinning. Of the three of them, she was the only one who wasn’t out of breath.

Tibs looked around, too busy trying to get his breathing back to normal to figure out why she was fine. It wasn’t like she was in better shape than he and Jackal. Jackal fought and Tibs ran. This should have been easy on them, instead of her.

From here, he could see that this wasn’t the tallest mountain, in the distance, he saw much higher peaks. The flat area was fifty paces long before it reached the drop. On each side it was half that, then became uneven, with trees growing and a hostel built among them. If he'd kept track of the twists and turns in the trail correctly, the drop would look over the city, and while Tibs would love to see that view, he couldn’t move yet. He had to catch his breath.

“And it was the shortest leg of our trek.”

“That’s impossible,” Jackal said. “I’d have to walk all day to be this exhausted.”

Tibs looked up. The sun wasn’t even at its zenith, and they’d gotten a late start. He agreed with the fighter. In spite of the evidence, he felt too tired for this to have been a few hours’ walk.

The entire trek up and around the mountain had taken three full days and this morning. Even with Kroseph’s directions, finding where it began had proved difficult and required asking around, and getting strange looks. Finding someone who spoke one of the languages Tibs and his friends spoke was more difficult than they’d expected.

Once on the trail, Tibs had loved the space he had. Trees let him climb to get a view around them, and as they moved higher, he got a better and better view of the city, at least until the trail took them around the mountain. Then what he saw were stony valleys with a road winding between outcroppings. Even when there were no trees for him to climb, he ran further up the trail, then back to his friends.

He’d never felt so free.

With that freedom came one instance of fear. Something had darted out of the foliage and Tibs had screamed as he’d recognized a bunny running in his direction. He’d taken his knife out and stood frozen as the rabbit fled. He was still frozen, waiting for rats to come out of hiding and mob him, when his friends ran to his help.

Jackal laughed as Tibs explained, then vanished in the bushes. He returned a few minutes later holding a furry creature that Tibs recognized.

“Just a rabbit,” The fighter said. The thing he held shook, and Tibs realized it was terrified. “A real one, not created by the dungeon.”

Tibs looked around. “So there aren’t any rats?” He carefully touched the rabbit’s furry forehead, and it tried to wriggle out of Jackal’s grip, its claws digging into the fighter's earth skin.

“There’s probably some around,” Carina said, “but here they’re more likely to run away from you. You should let it go, Jackal.”

It was softer than the rabbits in the dungeon, and when the fighter put it down, it ran away, disappearing under a bush.

Tibs had none the less remained closer to his friends after that.

The first hostel had a store next to it, with a friendly owner who spoke Pursatian with a slight accent, so Tibs did the translating. She sold them supplies for the trek, since like Jackal, they’d expected it to be a short walk. The shopkeeper had been amused at that, and informed them it was a few days walk even if they hurried.

When she offered a selection of dried meats and vegetables, Jackal said he could hunt what they’d need for food, but Carina had been horrified. She forbade the fighter from killing any of the bunnies or other animals they might encounter and bought rations for the three of them.

Tibs exchanged a look with Jackal, then shrugged. She wasn’t Street, so she didn’t know the length they’d had to go to eat or the quality of what they had eaten to survive.

Tibs had to break one of his rules, as the shop was the only one there. They needed the warmer clothing and food, and even Tibs didn’t feel like walking back down the mountain to get what they’d need. So they overpaid. A handful of silver got them two packs along with their supplies; three oiled ponchos, three sets of heavier wool over-clothes, and the dried food for the journey up and then down the mountain. Those went in the packs, and the waterskins they each attached to their belts.

Fortunately, the hostel was free to use, consisting of a large room with a fire pit and cots.

The next day, the ponchos came in use as it rained almost as soon as they set off after their midday meal of hard bread with dried meats, vegetables, and water. They’d stopped at an area with tables made of rough wood under tall trees. Next to them was an outcropping of stones with water coming of its side to land in a stone basin.

He’d eyed it suspiciously as Jackal drank from it. Carina explained water springs were normal in rocky areas and completely safe as the water came from an underground river.

Tibs didn’t entirely trust what she said. She was smart, smarter than him, but the dungeon had taught him that not everything people knew was true. He placed his hand under the jet and ran his essence through what accumulated in his palm, feeling for some difference or a way to tell if it was safe or not. Then, just to practice it, he used his earth essence and was surprised to feel some of it in the water. Very little, only a sliver of earth among a sea of water, but it still surprised him.

Figuring it was safe, he drank and refilled his waterskin.

The second hostel had no shop attached to it. Like the first one, it was a large room with cots and a fire pit. They dried their clothing, ate and refilled their waterskin, then slept. Tibs woke to the fire being out and a cold that reminded him of home. He lit the fire again, put on the wool clothing, and went back to sleep. He woke again to frost on his wool and Jackal restarting the fire and hints of light coming from the windows.

They ate and set off in weary silence. It had been a long time since Tibs hadn’t slept well, and it made him miss his town, his bed in their room. He had trouble resolving his emotions. He was Street, he should be fine with nothing more than a box to keep the worse of the weather off him. He’d survived colder nights with nothing more than rags piled on top of him. Could someone lose the Street in them? Would he become like those nobles that looked down on him and those like him? Would he grow to consider slop to be too horrible to endure?

Wasn’t he already at that point? He asked himself. When was the last time he’d had it? That tent was gone now. All Runners slept in rooming houses, ate at inns or taverns. The idea of eating slop, even if only to prove to himself he was still Street, didn’t sit well.

Halfway through the day, even with the sun up and the air dry, it was cold enough the wool over-clothes felt barely enough. By the time they reached the hostel, Tibs wasn’t sure he wanted to keep going. Was trying to get an audience with Air worth all this?

Looking at the clear sky now, he still wasn’t sure, but he thought that the view, the knowledge he had made it to the top, made it worthwhile.

“How are you not out of breath?” Jackal demanded of Carina. “Me and Tibs are used to hard work, and look at us.”

Tibs still had difficulty breathing.

“Are you saying that because I’m a sorcerer, I'm not used to hard work?” she asked, arms crossed over her chest.

“I haven’t seen you spend three hours every morning running around the town with a pack of stone on your back.” Jackal looked at Tibs.

He looked from the fighter to Carina, considering them, then shook his head. “You’re on your own. I’m too tired to get into a fight, and she’s a sorceress.”

“See!” Jackal exclaimed. “I keep telling you that both of you are smarter than I am.”

Carina chuckled and relaxed. “But you aren’t wrong. My training doesn’t lead to physical exhaustion. And right now, you two aren’t tired because you worked hard, but because there’s less air here than at the bottom of the mountain.”

“I can breathe fine,” Jackal replied, frowning.

Tibs took a few breaths. “This doesn’t feel like when I was in your whirlwind. There, it was like the air was pulled out of me. Like Jackal said, I can breathe fine.”

“There’s still less of it. I can feel how thin it is. My guess is that it’s enough for normal things, but it makes exerting yourself worse.”

“And you?” Jackal asked.

“Air is my element. Maybe I don’t need as much,” she said. “Maybe my essence is compensating.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I never read up on mountains and what happens at their top. But as I said, I can feel there’s less air here. Like Kroseph said when he suggested we come. It harder to breathe up here, and that’s why.”

Tibs looked around at the trees and located a tall one thick enough to hold his weight. “So when I jump off that tree, your whirlwind will be more effective.”

Jackal looked at it. “Are you sure that’s the right one? It doesn’t look like it can hold up even your light weight.”

Tibs shrugged. “It’s the tallest, I’m going to jump off it for Carina to catch me, so it doesn’t matter if it’s because I jump or it breaks.”

“It’ll matter if she has to also catch part of the tree, right?” the fighter looked at the sorceress.

She nodded. “If the tree hits you when it falls, it’s not going to help you get your audience.”

Tibs stepped to the tree. “Okay, I’ll stop climbing once it bends too much.” He hurried to climb, then slowed, then stopped. He was barely a quarter of the way up.

“You okay?” Carina asked.

“Out of breath,” he replied. He pulled himself onto the closest branch. “I’m going to have to rest.” It took him three more rests before he reached the point where the tree bend and creaked under his weight. He was three-quarters of the way to the top, he thought. Well above five stories in height. “I think it’s going to be from here.” He called to them.

“Can you clear the branches?” Jackal yelled back. Tibs had trouble making him out as he walked around, looking up. “If you hit them on the way down, it’s going to hurt.”

“I can jump clear of them,” he replied. “They’re less than the width of the widest alleys between buildings back in town.”

“Are you sure you don’t already have air?” Carina asked. “I don’t think making those kinds of leaps is normal.”

“I’ve practiced a lot. Are you ready?”

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Carina moved until they saw each other. “As ready as I can be.”

Tibs let out a slow breath and pushed himself away from the tree as hard as he could. He cleared the branches before he began falling. He noticed he didn’t feel the initial fear as his feet lost touch with anything solid anymore. Carina would catch him. What did worry him were the branches. If he’d miscalculated and hit one, like Jackal said, it would hurt.

The wind struck him, buffeted him, pushed him off-course, and he grazed branches. Breathing was hard, almost impossible. Then he struck the ground on his back, hard.

“Ouch,” he groaned.

“Are you okay?” Carina was at his side, panting. “I am so sorry. I don’t know what happened. Before I knew it, my reserve was empty.” She looked around. “I… I think it’s because the air is thin here. I needed more of my essence to get enough to form the whirlwind.”

“Does that mean this isn’t going to work?” Jackal asked, pulling Tibs to his feet.

Carina was thoughtful. “No. It surprised me, that’s all. It’s why I dropped you those last few feet. I know what to expect now, and I’ll be able to manage my reserve better. But I’m going to have to recharge first.” She sat on the bench and closed her eyes.

“How long does it take for you to recharge fully?” Jackal asked.

“Ten minutes, give or take. It might take longer here. Is it the same for you?”

Jackal didn’t immediately reply. “What I do doesn’t seem to drain it. Or very little. I’m not sure why it’s different for me.”

“It’s because you don’t let go of your essence,” Tibs said before he thought about it, then decided it didn’t matter. If the guild could overhear them here. They could punish him when he got back: Jackal and Carina were his team, and they came first.

Jackal looked at him. “What do you mean?”

He leaned against the tree. “Our reserve is only affected when we let go of our essence. Remember when I told Walter to draw his water back into him after he froze the floor so he’d still be able to help us after the trap room?” He closed his eyes as saying the sorcerer’s name brought back the pain of losing him. He ran a finger over the amulet in his pouch. “It’s the same for you. Your reserve only gets lower after you’ve been hit, right?”

“Yeah, I figured it was the cost of it taking the damage for me.”

Tibs nodded. “In part, it’s the earth that’s sent flying because of the impact. You lose that so you feel it.” He coated his hand with water. “It’s the same for me. So long as I don’t throw my water, I’m fine.” He turned it to ice. “I can even take a hit, although I don’t have enough for real protection; I'll only feel the little that would break off because of it. Carina has to push her essence outside of her to control the air around us, so she loses it outright.”

“How do you know all that?” Carina asked.

Tibs let out a breath. “My teacher has been having me practice techniques I shouldn’t know in an attempt to get around my smaller reserve. I’ve also had to be more attentive to it because of how little is in it.”

“Should you be telling us that then?” She asked.

Tibs snorted. “Street rules. Family comes first.” He closed his eyes and enjoyed the sounds of birds, the breeze in the branches. The warming sun on his face.

"Wait," Jackal said, "What about when I moved the ground to bury you? isn't that like what Carina is doing here?"

Tibs thought about it. He crouched and placed a hand on the ground and push some of his earth essence into it. He used it to form a small mound, having his essence drawing the earth to it. When it was the size of his fist he stopped and pulled his essence back in.

"I'm not sure. I didn't lose contact with my essence while doing this. Didn't you say you had used something they taught you to anchor yourself when you moved the ground? does that involved pulling your essence back into you?" He looked up.

Jackal had a column of earth as tall as him and was shaping it. "Yes, we're taught to draw it back into us before we start moving. They said a rupture with the earth would hurt us." He was quiet as the column thickened, taking on the overall shape of a person. "And you're right, I'm pretty sure I pulled it back when I was done."

Tibs nodded and closed his eyes to rest for a few minutes.

“I’m ready,” Carina said, shaking him awake, and Tibs had his hand on the pommel of his knife before he stopped the motion.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, rubbing his face, then climbed up the tree, wondering what Jackal had done with the sculpture.

* * * * *

Three hours, and multiple attempts later, Tibs felt like his body was one large bruise, but hadn’t gotten an audience.

“So,” Jackal said, looking into the distance. “We try a higher mountain?”

“I don’t know if we can risk it,” Carina answered. “To reach that, we’d have to walk down, ask around until someone can tell us how to reach it, then get there and climb up it. We don’t even know if there’s a path.”

Tibs looked at the end of the platform.

“We’ve been here almost a week now,” She continued. “The guard—”

“Harry Hard Knuckle,” Jackal said.

“—he said it would be between two weeks and a month until the dungeon reopens. If we’re going up there when the gem turns red, we’re never going to get back on time.”

He walked to it, looking up. Even if his breath still fogged in the cold air, the sun was warming him enough it was comfortable. At the end he looked down, expecting to peer through clouds to see the city, but the air was clear.

Ledges peppered the cliff face, the closest at least two hundred feet below him, he’d need a good leap if he’d want to avoid hitting it, but he looked over it and the sight disappointed him. Instead of a city, what he saw was a small blob with darker lines and brighter dots through it. Roads and buildings, he figured, not being able to make them out. He hadn’t expected to be so high as to not make out the buildings.

On the left and right of the blob, the mountains rose, sheer cliffs, until they fell back enough to be normal mountain sides like he’d seen coming up. Away from Tibs, on the other side of the blob, a never-ending field of gray-blue-green shimmered in the sunlight.

He was disappointed he hadn’t gotten the audience, but this majestic sight made up for it. He’d never been so high as to lose details of a city or watch a sea vanish in the distance. When they were back down, he’d have to see it up close, but this was good. It was something he’d accomplished, even if it hadn’t been the reason to come up here.

And he’d run without walls or people to stop him.

For the first time, Tibs felt he wasn’t on the Street. He rubbed the bracelet on his left wrist. He wasn’t free. The guild still had its noose around his neck, but this was still a sort of freedom, to not have buildings holding him in, people looking at him suspiciously.

And he’d experienced, and survived, a dungeon. He wasn’t a thief anymore. He was a Rogue, a Dungeon Runner. He had a town to call his own, not just a street.

And this sight.

The world was large, enormous even, and Tibs had seen it. Whatever happened now. He’d have this memory to hold on to. The knowledge that of everyone on his street, he had seen the world.

The smile was wide enough it hurt.

“Tibs?” Jackal called. “Do you want to try a few more times, if not we should head back down now so we can reach the hostel before dark.”

Tibs looked up. The sky was so blue, and the sun, a few hours above where the sea vanished, so bright, the colors bleached into it as they approached. “No,” he called back, not looking away. “If this was going to work, it would have by now.”

Mama would have loved to see this, he was certain of it. He wiped a tear. He wished he could tell her about it. That he’d gotten out of the street.

He turned back to his friends, happiness, and sadness mixing. They’d find something else, another way of—

His foot slipped off the edge.

With an annoyed curse at his clumsiness—he was a Rogue after all—he tapped his foot around to find his footing again, as Carina and Jackal ran for him. Realization there was nothing there caused him to reach for his friends as he tipped back; to grab on to something, anything, to pull himself back from the edge, and his hands closing only on air.

Jackal’s hand came within inches of grabbing Tibs’s. Carina slid partially over the edge as she reached for his foot and missed grabbing it.

He was falling, he realized. Wind wrapping around him. He’d get down the mountain a lot faster than his friends. How long would going down along the side take?

Above him Carina screamed, hand extended in his direction and the wind shifted, rolling him over, and instead of moving away from the mountain, he was getting closer to the cliff, but he was still falling. She didn’t have enough reserve, he realized.

Then he saw down, and Tibs screamed.

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