Breaking Step (Dungeon Runner 3)

Breaking Step, Chapter 98

An inky filament sprung up from a pool that had slid away from the boss creature. Its tip spread to intercept Mez's fire arrow; it exploded, burning some of the ink. With a curse, the archer let loose a volley of fire arrows, and many made it past the strands trying to stop them, but then behaved in a way that confused Tibs.

Some came to an almost stop, while others flared so bright, he felt the heat from the distance, and then were gone. Those still there seemed caught in whatever held Jackal and kept him from moving at a normal speed, but it wasn't only the arrow that was slowed, the fire danced slowly. As if, somehow, Don had been right and that whatever bureaucracy the creature was made of had to power to also affect how Fire itself would behave.

Tibs risked extending his sense. The desire to know what could do that overpowering the fear the risk of touching that thing under the building caused him.

It was, unsurprisingly, essence, but where he'd expected a weave of all of them so it could interact with anything sent against it, all Tibs sensed was a bubble of a raw essence he'd never encountered before.

"Whatever it is, it's ten paces around the boss," he told the others.

The back of its hand was finally connecting with Jackal and didn't seem to have an effect, until Tibs saw the fighter's back crawl into an arch from what had seemed like nothing more than a touch.

Tibs made a knife, added a filigree so tight with Ike it flung itself out of his hand before he was done and shattered against the ceiling. Ignoring Don's stare, he made another one, aligning the knife in the direction he needed it to go and staggering Ike on it so it was tighter at the back and—

It didn't quite stop as it hit the bubble, or even slow as much, Ike imparting so much motion it almost counteracts the essence there, but whatever it was didn't just slow thing. Tibs could barely keep the knife and filigree from shattering as Ike seemed to both increase in intensity and not do anything and want to go and all directions at the same time.

When the essence of the knife broke into nothing, Tibs staggered back as if it had been a punch.

"What happened?" Don asked.

"Everything," he answered, shaking off the phantom pain. "But that's not the right word. I don't know. What can do that?"

"I don't know," the sorcerer replied. "The weave would have to—"

"It's an element," Tibs said. " Raw essence."

"That's impossible. No element does everything."

Tibs glared at the sorcerer. Like he didn't already know this couldn't be. "That isn't helping."

"You two planning on doing something?" Jackal asked, now halfway to the edge of the bubble. The words were slurred, as if his mouth couldn't form them correctly. Or couldn't move at the right speed.

"Not getting caught the way you did," Don replied.

But the question meant he could think normally, so this only affected the outside Jackal, the way whatever had held Don in the permit office had. Had that been the same—no, that had been a weave, this was pure essence.

An arrow, somehow, made it through the bubble, but a seal, an almost circle in dark yellow, moved on the body and once the arrow exploded against it, there wasn't even ash there.

"Ranged attack do not appear to have an effect of significance," Khumdar said, glancing at Tibs, who shook his head. There had been no change in the creature's essence. The weaves on those seals were too tightly woven for him to tell anything about what they might do, other than the obvious.