The surroundings grew little less silent as we passed through the main gate into the city. Soldiers wearing Goldmarch uniform stood in even measures on both sides of the road, their gazes on us and the messenger. Few citizens were out and about, despite the time of day, and those that were seemed to keep their head down, trying to avoid notice. The spirit of Aptleed had been quashed.
We followed Niamh’s messenger up the main road towards the central castle—where else would she be?—and the longer this went on, the more I wondered if we’d made a mistake coming in here alone. The siege would have been long and arduous, and many of Aptleed’s citizens would likely have died, but… if we failed to negotiate surrender, then that would still be the case. That would be the case and we, probably, would also be dead. Even a team as dysfunctionally functional as us couldn’t handle quite this many enemies.
Only when we reached the keep did I allow myself to breath a sigh of relief; it didn’t look like this was a trap for us, then, as we’d have been attacked by now. The gods knew there were enough soldiers out here to deal with us without any trouble. So this meant instead that Niamh really did want to speak with us.
Some part of me thought that this might even be worse.
Up the tower we went, my heart racing more and more with every step, my every instinct being to grab Val and the rest of them and get us out of there, my brain swimming with thoughts of Val facing down the woman who’d once tried to kill her. This was a mistake. This couldn’t end well. This—
‘Come in,’ a woman said, standing on the other side of a long, dark wood table, one that looked to my untrained eye to be freshly polished. This woman was short, maybe three inches over five foot tall, and she didn’t carry anything I could reasonably describe as a weapon. ‘Please, sit.’ She pointed to the chairs.
Corminar and Lore reluctantly did as suggested, but Arzak and I remained at Val’s side. At the side of the woman who had paled like I’d never seen her pale before, whose arms were shaking, whose nostrils were flaring, and whose eyes were at risk of dealing real damage to the woman she glared at.
‘Yes, I thought it might be you,’ Niamh said to Val. ‘Perhaps we can let bygones by bygones, for the sake of useful discussion?’
Lore and Corminar turned in their chairs, the former raising an eyebrow, to see who Niamh was speaking to—but neither of them commented on it.
‘I’ll stand,’ was Val’s only reply. As an act of solidarity, I remained standing with her, and Arzak did the same.
Niamh shrugged, and she took a seat. An orc drifted from the corner of the room to stand at her side. ‘I don’t wish to hurt anyone.’
Val scoffed.
The Player begged for the witch’s patience with the raising of her hand. ‘Once upon a time, I did. This, I concede. But are we not all capable of change? Of growth? Is that not what the System—so crude in its implementation—seeks to achieve in all of us?’
‘We not here to speak philosophy,’ Arzak said.
The orcish aide at Niamh’s side struggled to suppress a smirk.
‘Very well,’ the Player said. ‘I suppose after all the unfortunate geopolitical tensions of the past two months, it is only right that you do not trust me. You would be a fool to, in fact. But allow me to say it again, nevertheless: I do not wish to hurt anyone. Unlike my colleagues in the Council, that is the last thing I want. But do not mistake that for me saying I will not do what has to be done. I will.’
Niamh’s eyes drifted over us, hovering over Lore, then me, then landing on Val.
‘So you do know about the Council. I suspected as much. Jacob’s murder seemed too targeted. A commoner dies, and nobody bats so much as an eyelid. But when someone as powerful as him is murdered—even if he was the weakest of us—then there is a certain level of planning required. Someone who seeks to take down the Council.’
All five of us remained quiet; Niamh had made a mistake here, and none of us were keen to correct it. We knew of the Council, yes, but our killing of Jacob was his own doing, really. We were happy to kill a Player, but we didn’t know of any greater schemes. We all knew that if we kept quiet, we might learn more.
‘But I talk too much,’ Niamh said, gesturing to the orc at her side, who disappeared into another room, leaving the Player alone. ‘This is to be a two-way street, as it were. Which of you speaks for the team as a whole?’ She glanced at Val. ‘The changeling?’
‘We all speak for ourselves,’ Val spat back at her.
Niamh nodded. ‘Then I shall address you all.’
The orcish aide returned with a cup of steaming tea, which she placed in front of the Player and got precisely zero thanks for.
‘I hope to make a deal. I address you, and not that duchess, because I think you are less… how shall we say it? Emotionally invested? And also because I think I know where I stand with you, and you with me. We understand each other.’
Lore raised a hand. ‘I’m not sure I understand any of this,’ he said.
Niamh smiled at him like an exhausted mother might smile at one of her children. She turned back to address the lot of us. ‘You want Aptleed returned to Cambelny,’ she said.
‘There seems to be a few Goldmarch soldiers standing in the way,’ Corminar said. ‘As well as a Council member. Unless you are happy to relinquish your grasp on—’
‘I rode into town only to speak with you; my interest in Aptleed is over,’ the Player said. ‘It has served its purpose. For all I care, you can claim it this afternoon. I will even ask Amira’s soldiers to stand down—there will be no bloodshed.’
‘And in return?’ Val asked, nostrils flaring.
‘In return, I ask only that you return the favour. No bloodshed. You allow us to leave unharmed. We will leave Aptleed, and even the Gentle Tundras entirely, within the week.’
The room fell quiet as I, and the rest of the team, digested this offer.
‘You’re giving it back to us? Just like that?’ I asked.
‘As I said, Aptleed is no longer useful to me. If I can return the Tundras to their previous status without another drop of blood spilled, then I will do just that. Duchess Yua has given you permission to negotiate on our behalf, yes?’
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‘She’s given me permission,’ Val said, and I didn’t much like that she didn’t seem to trust the rest of the team to do it. Well, actually, I just didn’t like that she didn’t trust me.
‘Very well,’ Niamh said, fixing her attention on Val. ‘Then answer this: do you wish to see more innocents killed in all of this? Or would you rather ride back to the duchess with news that we offer conditional surrender? I think I know which she would prefer.’
The chamber fell quiet once more, Val and Niamh holding one another’s glares.
‘Of course, there is another alternative,’ Niamh continued. ‘I could activate the enchantment placed under this table. A rather complex trap, you see. Upon activation, it emits a poison gas—a cloud which will cover half of Aptleed before the enchantment fades.’
‘You’d kill yourself?’ Lore asked.
‘My dear, of course not. I just drank the antidote.’ Niamh turned to her aide. ‘Sulla, perhaps you should fix yourself a cup, too.’
‘And the Goldmarch soldiers?’ I asked. ‘You’d kill them too.’
Niamh waved a hand. ‘As I said, I will do what must be done. I just won’t take any joy in doing it.’
‘You’re a monster,’ Val said. It wasn’t a shout, and she didn’t spit it at the Player. In fact, it was worse; she said it with her voice level, calm, and matter-of-fact.
Niamh rolled her tongue around her mouth, chewing back her instinctual response. ‘You think I want this? You think anyone but children and man-children wanted to live in these worlds we created? No. If it were possible—if I could step outside without dying, there—I would live in the real world. Not this excuse for one.’
‘Our world is real,’ Val replied.
‘No, no,’ Niamh said, this now her turn to be matter-of-fact. ‘No, it’s not. Do you think the food tastes the same here? Do you think the wind feels the same as it brushes along you skin? No. None of it is real. Not even…’ She trailed off, gesturing to the team who sat opposite her. To me. To Val. To my friends.
‘Oh, I assure you, I’m bloody real,’ I spat.
Val whipped out a hand to get me to back off—something I did after a moment’s rebellion. ‘If we agree to your terms,’ the witch asked. ‘You’ll disarm the trap? Everybody lives?’
‘Everybody lives.’
‘We’d need proof that you’ve disarmed it.’
‘Val, you’re really considering this?’ I asked.
‘Of course I’m bloody considering it!’ she said. ‘If it saves lives, if it saves innocents, then… what kind of person would say no?’
‘A hero would—’
‘Please, stop talking about what heroes do, Styk. You don’t know, I don’t know, none of us will ever know what it is to be a hero. We just do our best, and that has to be enough.’ Val turned back to Niamh. ‘On Duchess Yua’s behalf, we accept your terms.’
Niamh smiled.
* * *
I and the rest of the Slayers stood in silence as the Goldmarch soldiers—led by Niamh—marched out of Aptleed, heading to a camp in the north to regroup. Duchess Yua had been ecstatic when Val had delivered the news, going so far as to hug her before she remembered herself, at which point she apologised profusely. But us Slayers couldn’t be so happy—part of the terms of the deal were that Niamh escaped unharmed, and that was out whole purpose: Player killing.
‘It cannot be this easy,’ Corminar said under his breath, and I—the only person to have heard him—nodded my agreement. It was too easy. The campaign had only been going a couple of weeks, and we’d been effective, sure, but Niamh hadn’t seemed like someone who budged that easily. Whatever she’d wanted from Aptleed, she really much have got it.
‘You don’t really mean to let her escape,’ I said to Val. ‘After all that…’ I considered spelling it out: after all that Niamh had done to Val. ‘After all that she’s done?’
‘Of course not,’ Val said. ‘They leave. Cambelny gets back Aptleed. And then we go after her.’
‘Her and her two-hundred-strong army?’ I asked. ‘We were in a room with her. We could’ve taken her then.’
‘Maybe. We wouldn’t have made it out the city, though. We all know that.’
‘What next?’ Arzak asked.
‘We follow,’ Lore replied, with more confidence than we usually expected from the timid if brawny fellow. I turned to look at him, to see him staring into the depth raider’s cage. No, the depth raider’s eyes.
‘What if we get spotted? You reckon Niamh will hesitate to set her army on us?’
‘Trust me,’ Lore said, still meeting the creature’s gaze. ‘They…’ he paused for a moment. ‘It’s about… it’s about the timber. That’s what she wanted from Aptleed, isn’t it? That’s what we’ve seen all around the Tundras. It…’ He paused again while the depth raider grew closer to him, within its cage. ‘We follow the timber, we find what Niamh’s been planning.’
We agreed, though I suspected I wasn’t the only one wondering where this newfound wisdom had come from. Still, this would turn out to be the right move.
The answers that were coming soon would change everything.
"Styk"
Level 15 Bladespinner
Base Stats:
Vitality — 38
Intelligence — 145
Dexterity — 88
Strength — 69
Wisdom — 54
Charisma — 33
Skills:
Worldbending — Level 41
Knifework — Level 34
Stealth — Level 17
Needlework — Level 12
Identification — Level 10
Abilities:
Slice — Slice the enemy for physical damage worth weapon’s base damage and additional damage scaling on [STR].
Stab III — Put your weight behind your wielded blade and force the tip through tougher hides and armour. Damage scales on [STR], increased by an additional 50%.
Execution II — Attack a target while undetected for +200% damage.
Closed Reach — Bend reality to narrow the gap between blade and target by up to 8 inches. Uses mana.
Mana-Fuelled — Passive. Optionally, use mana in place of stamina to activate Knifework abilities.
Local Portal II — Create a portal to another location within current range of sight or within a ten yard radius. Uses mana/second.
Portal Slice — Passive. Portals can now be spawned within non-sentient objects. Doing so slices through all objects that are not reinforced by magic.
Tamed Portals — Passive. Increased efficiency of portal magicks means that your portal glow is reduced by 50%, making them less likely to be detected by enemies.
Ash Husk — Convert your flesh to ash, strengthening it against flame for ten minutes. Gain 50% resistance to fire attacks.
Shrill Perimeter — Create a perimeter wall of 20 foot radius, invisible to all but those adept in magicks. If an enemy crosses this perimeter, this spell releases the shriek of a banshee.
Warped Shield — Passive. If an enemy strikes you with a low-level melee weapon, Warp Shield automatically activates to open a portal that deflects this attack. You must not have any portals currently active. Uses mana on activation.
Pocket Worlds — Open and access pocket dimensions. Storage capacity of summoned pocket worlds scales with [INT] of creator.
Stealth Attack II — Passive. 80% boost to damage when unnoticed by enemy.
In Plain Sight — When activated, you have a heightened abilitiy to hide in plain sight, and are able to spot opportunities to break from combat at a higher rate. Scales on [WIS].
Stitch — Create a basic stitch in common fabrics. Ability scales on [CHA].
Cloth Armour — Craft a cloth armour of higher quality, dependent on materials, time and skill level.
Active Effects:
Legacy of Sisyphus:
XP gain increased by +900%