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Stepping Wild, Draft 2, CH 93
🕑 Added 2025-08-15 13:00:10 +0000 UTCTibs didn’t bother with the gate. Up the city wall, nearly running into a guard there, and in the air on the other side before they could react, their hooded lantern barely piercing the heavy rain caused darkness. He used the same to control his fall, then continued running. A few hours later, the storm had become light rain, and the darkness was that of the night.
By the morning, there was no more rain, and Tibs set out to find the smuggler’s trail.
The map had the Wolf Head trail more sunriseward than Nadir, with a few landmarks to guide him. Even with them, he didn’t know how anyone without an element would have found it. It took him three days of wandering the area until he sensed the worked stone under so much dead leaves stepping on top of it didn’t reveal its existence. He oriented himself and brought in his sense. He gained enough definition to make out the next one when he’d brought it in by half and headed in that direction. He oriented himself again, sensed the next one, and continued on.
He’d used focusing on finding the first marker to avoid thinking about what had happened to end his fight with Alistair, but now, as he made camp well away from the trail, he needed to figure it out.
He channeled Water, and his core reserve turned the its sharp blue. He pulled and pushed the essence around him, and it moved as he willed it.
As it always did.
He let go and channeled Fire and his core reserve became its Orange-red. The essence of the campfire also moved as he willed.
Not letting go is it as he channeled Water proved harder than he expected. It had seemed effortless when it happened during the fight; to cause the explosion. Now, he kept letting go of one before channeling the other. For so long, he had had to let go of an element before channeling the next one that it had become reflex.
When he finally managed it, the explosion he’d readied himself for didn’t happen.
The essences didn’t escape or leak out of him. Other than the two colors moving within his core reserve, they behaved as they should. He released each in one hand, and nothing unusual happened, other than he now willed two elements to move. Even when he brought them together, the expected explosion didn’t happen. The essences floated together without ‘mixing.’
How had the explosion happened then? Why weren’t then ‘igniting?’
What had he done differently?
That was simple. He’d been releasing the essence when he transitions from one element to the other.
That was also hard to cause, and by the time he managed it, he’d forgotten to prepare himself and the explosion sent him through enough trees getting the Fever essence together to heal himself proved a challenge in itself.
The clearing he created with the little essence he used was a dozen paces across.
So, how could he do this?
Nothing had changed before the fight against Alistair, or during.
His old teacher had reacted before the explosion, so Tibs made a mirror from water and watched his blue eyes as he channeled Fire as well.
Blue and orange-red moved within his irises.
That was bad.
Alistair couldn’t dismiss this as a trick of the light. He’d tell the guild and they would search for him even harder. He’d also tell them he’d beaten the brand, so Tibs wouldn’t be able to rely on being dismissed as an ordinary Runner if he tried to join a guild controlled dungeon. His only advantage was that Alistair didn’t know he could let go of the elements entirely and appear to be one of of the normal folks.
But that didn’t explain how it had happened.
Nothing like it ever happened, so there wouldn’t be books to explain—
No, something similar had happened before; to him.
He’d discovered he could channel his elements in the middle of a fight. Jackal had noticed before Tibs. His eyes had turned the orange-red of Fire as he used it in the fight, when his eyes had remained brown before. Afterward, he’d noticed his core reserve had changed colors to reflect the channeled element, instead of pulling essence from the reserves in his bracers.
Fire had pushed his emotions so far, he hadn’t noticed any of that during the fighting. His rage and the need to use it to destroy his enemies had been all there was.
That had happened because Tibs had had the last of the audiences Water had tasked him with getting. She hadn’t told him what would happen, so he hadn’t known to pay attention for any changes.
Just as he hadn’t known to pay attention now.
Only…. He hadn’t accomplished anything special.
Was this something he’d been able to do all the way back then, and simply hadn’t realized? It couldn’t be. He had trained himself to let go of an element before channeling another as part of figuring out who it worked. If he could channel two, it would have happened.
And it hadn’t happened when he’d used the explosion against the Them. If he could, it would have happened as it had against Alistair.
So, what had changed?
He chuckled. He’d grown older, became better trained. Read more. Become learned. Had more audiences.
Were they the reason?
But Water hadn’t told him to seek more audiences. She said it was his choice how far he went. What he gained.
Didn’t that imply there was something to be gained? Was this it?
Then why now?
He’d become able to channel the elements because Water told him which of them to have audiences with; the rest of the eight core elements. Corruption, Light, Darkness, and Purity. It was because he’d gained the eight core elements that something had changed, not before….
Only, that wasn’t true.
After his audience with Fire, he’d gained control of Life essence. At the time, he’d thought it was because he’d gotten the core elements, since Alistair and…what was the guild leader’s name? They’d talked about there being only four elements that were core. Water, Earth, Air, and Fire. They’d told him they were the only elements that were part of everything.
Except it wasn’t true, and they knew it. She just hadn’t cared for the other elements, even if hers was one of them. Crystal had been her element. She’d pushed him toward those four; had said something about the other being too hard to use.
Water, Earth, Air, and Fire. Then, Darkness, Purity, Corruption, and Light. And now, Wood, Fever, Metal, and Lightning.
Something changed after his first four audiences. Changed again four later.
Fever had been the last of the next four.
And now, he discovered something had changed again.
Did that mean there would be another change after four more audiences?
How many elements were left? Void, Mind, Crystal, Potentia, Force, Binding, Dream, and Stagnation.
Eight. Two sets of four.
Was that confirmation?
He wouldn’t know until he had four more audiences, and, unless he found a reliable method to achieve them, he had no idea how long that would take.
What did it mean that he could channel two elements? Other than he’d have to avoid doing so unless he fought with his eyes closed.
He replaced Water with Earth.
He formed the etching for the fireblast, but didn’t push essence into it. He reproduced it with Earth essence, matching the Arcanus. It wouldn’t work. He’d tried it before, had tried all the etching he knew with all the elements he had and few translated directly. Once he pushed Earth essence into it, the etching would crumble. Earth couldn’t do what Fire did, so it needed a different etching to produce an effect that approached the Fire one.
But what happened if the etching made of Earth essence then received Fire essence to ‘power’ it? Etching could be made of multiple essences; it was at the core of how sorcerers etched, and what make them powerful. They trained to become sensitive to all the elements and could manipulate them.
Some books had contained diagrams for such etching, and Don had showed him others. But they hadn’t explained what would happen. With Don, the etching had just been an example for…something Tibs didn’t recall, and the books that contained them only had Scholar’s opinions, since Sorcerers didn’t share their knowledge.
He pushed Fire through the etching, and nothing happened. It moved with it, but it wouldn’t ‘take’ to it. He let it dissipate and pushed earth essence into the Fire etching.
The reaction was immediate.
It took in the essence, and what blasted out was a mix of them. The Fire of the etching infused the Earth essence and a burning mud stuck the trees it impacted, letting the fire spread quickly.
By the time he overcame the surprise and pulled the fire back, a dozen trees were blackened. What had seemed to be mud had hardened into stone, embedded into the trunks.
Deadly against an attacker, but the stone left behind would mark the attack as essence work unless he took the time to undo it.
He smiled.
But what if he used an essence that was the same as the body it was used against?
He remade the etching with Fire, then Channeled Fever instead of Earth.
He gasped at the need the rising heat brought.
He pulled at the confining clothing; burned them when they resisted without care for the pain he felt. Feeling anything, everything, was good. Was strong. Was needed.
When all he wore were his bracers he screamed with joy, anger, want, pleasure. It wasn’t enough. He needed more. He cast his sense for Fever through the forest, then he went stalking for more to feel.
Comments
Kindar
thank you for pointing them out. they have been corrected
Jim Smith
hers wasn’t[was] one of them. Crystal had been her elements[replace with element].
