‘Pull!’ Val shouted, and the rest of the Slayers pulled an oar. ‘Pull! Pull!’
With every stroke of the oar, our row boat grew further from our anchored ship and closer to the coastline. Around us, dozens—perhaps as many as a hundred—more row boats, filled with members of the Red Thorn, did the same. Though I faced away from the shoreline, I could see the branches of the great elven trees towering overhead. If any of them fell, nobody underneath would survive—though Corminar had assured me that the trees of the Dawnwood never fall; the old magicks running through them were too strong.
I had wanted to crash our ships into the coast—partially because it would have been more immediate, and partially because I liked the drama of it—but that idea had been quickly overruled. Corminar had reminded me that we had no certainty of victory, and with that came a need for an escape route. So we left the ships safely moored off the coast, and not on the beach with their hulls in splinters.
‘And…’ Val said, making a change from the “Pull! Pull! Pull!” that had been echoing around my head for the past half hour. Before she could say any more, the rowboat knocked against the coast. We had landed.
All of us hopped out into the shallows, the water splashing beneath our feet, as the nearest of the Red Thorn did the same. We turned our attention towards the city, through the suburbs had sprawled as far out as us, abandoned homes built out from the trees that towered high above us. There was no time to wait for our full contingent to land; we needed to start carving a path into the city. And between us and the outer city walls, soldiers in golden uniform were waiting, terrorising the citizens simply seeking to flee, robbing them of their valuables, slaughtering those who stood their ground.
Up until now, I’d thought that the new Empress Amira had been having her soldiers pose as bandits, but I’d got that wrong. In fact, it was the other way round: these were bandits posing as soldiers. With that realisation, any semblance of merciful thoughts left me.
‘On me,’ Corminar said, his voice booming with a confidence that was abnormal even for him, as though he was making an effort to project such a thing. We followed him without complaint, even Elandor taking no issue with his order, trudging up the sand onto sturdier ground. With hands on our weapons, we stepped onto the cobblestone road leading into Sunalor, weaving through the fleeing locals. My eyes remained upon the closest of the empire’s soldiers, and so too did those of my allies.
‘Drop it!’ a Goldmarch soldier said, trying to tear an ornate chest from the hands of a young elven man, her allies sneering on, taking great joy in their pillaging. ‘I said—’
The enemy didn’t get to finish that sentence, because in a flash, Corminar had drawn his bow and released an arrow which wedged itself firmly into the soldier’s ear canal.
‘And you say you want better bow?’ Arzak asked, in the same moment that the lot of us charged into battle.
But this was just the first skirmish of many.
* * *
‘Heal him!’ I roared to Val, only two dozen feet away but also separated by the clash of ten Red Thorn elves against twice that in golden uniform. ‘Heal him!’ I grunted as I heaved Lore with all my might, trying to get him out of trouble, unable to drop him through a portal in case he fell onto one of the two swords that were currently sticking out of his abdomen. At least he’d killed their owners already.
A bloodied Val pushed through the clashing soldiers, ducking to avoid a swinging blade before twisting to grab their arm and shock them with her lightning magicks.
‘Like prickled pie,’ Lore mumbled hazily, and I only had the slightest clue what that meant because he’d once before mentioned this delicacy from his home—a pie baked with fruit skewers sticking through it.
‘Stay with me, buddy…’
We’d been fighting for probably around two hours by this point, and even with Corminar’s health, stamina and mana potions, all our reserves had taken a hit. We had lost a good few Red Thorn elves by this point, though—if we thought about only our chances of success and not the loss in life—we at least had more joining us with every moment that passed. The path we’d attempted to carve hadn’t remained clear, what with more Goldmarch soldiers spilling out from ships nearer the capital, so the Thorn elves behind us had still had to battle their way through.
Finally, Val arrived at our side, and immediately set about healing Lore. When she gave the nod, I pulled one of the swords from his stomach, and the witch tried to close the wounds fast enough that the loss in blood wasn’t too great. But her eyes lingered on my arm, and the huge gash thereon.
‘You’re hurt,’ she said.
I shrugged it off; I really hadn’t noticed the pain all that much in all the chaos. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’
‘Still, though, I—’
‘Focus on Lore,’ I replied, ‘he’s the ones looking like prickled pie.’
Val raised an eyebrow. ‘Like what?’
I didn’t have a chance to answer, because a Goldmarch soldier spotted that Val and Lore were vulnerable. I opened a portal beneath me and another over the charging soldier’s head, coming down hard with my knife to wedge it in the top of their head. In the midst of the fight, my approach from the sky went unnoticed this time, and I was able to get the damage boost from my Stealth Attack and Execution abilities. Unlike the fights before this particular soldier, this enemy went down in one hit.
When I returned to Val and Lore’s side, ready to defend them against any more attacks, the witch handed me a health potion.
‘No,’ I said. ‘You need that too. There aren’t many.’
‘Just take it, will you?’ Val snapped. ‘For me? So I don’t have to worry?’
Who would have thought that there would be acts of love at the centre of a battle? I took the potion and drank it, and the familiar warm yellow-white light of Healing magicks wrapped around my wound.
Down on the ground, Lore was looking more with it. ‘Did someone mention pie?’ he asked.
‘You did,’ I reminded him.
‘Oh. Damn,’ he replied, like if there was pie available in this moment then he would take a moment in the middle of his battle for a quick snack. This look faded from his face when I yanked the other sword from him, on Val’s say so. ‘That hurts!’
‘Yes,’ Val agreed, and said nothing more.
* * *
Arzak shouldered the Goldmarch soldier through the portal, and they tumbled out of its other side—far in the sky above. They fell, spinning, until they clipped their arm on the top of the city wall, then impacted against the giant tree root protruding from the mud below. Again, I ignored the experience notification—there were going to be a few of these before we finally secured Sunalor, and there was no time to be reading them now.
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‘Open the damned gate, curse you!’ Corminar bellowed to the elves in green and brown light armour at the top of the city wall.
‘I am under strict instructions not to open this gate for—’ the young elven soldier replied, her voice shaky. This was not someone who had seen battle before; even I could tell that.
‘Do you not see what we are? Do you see that we do not wear the uniform of the Goldmarch? Do you not see the shapes of our ears?’
The soldier on the wall pointed to me. ‘Yet that one is human.’
Corminar blinked and then gestured to the group of perhaps four dozen members of the Red Thorn who had already amassed at our side—with more coming every moment. ‘Perhaps focus on the majority rather than the—’
‘How can I be sure he is not a saboteur? Or one of the other two? Or the orc?’
Elandor stepped forward from the crowd. ‘You are too young to remember the Honey Wars, are you not?’
The elf atop the gate hesitated before responding. ‘I was but a child.’
‘Do you have a superior near you? One who served during the Honey Wars? Retrieve them.’
The elf blinked down at Elandor, weighing up the risk of doing as he said. But the bulk of the Goldmarch attack was on the coastal side of the city, and the walls were high and the gate strong. They could spare one other guard for this interaction, so she waved over an older looking elf with a furrowed brow. He glanced down at the crowd outside the gate, did a double-take when he spotted Corminar, and then his face paled.
‘Open the gate,’ the older elf said, quietly at first, then shouting. ‘Open the gate!’ She turned to the first guard. ‘See that they are escorted directly to Captain Relaar.’
‘But—’
‘You will follow orders immediately, without question, or you will be stripped of your rank. Understand?’
The elf blinked, nodded, and then looked down at Corminar in awe, unable to comprehend who he is that he commanded such respect.
* * *
The city of Sunalor was both beautiful and desolate, and somehow also beautiful in its desolation. The buildings largely stood embedded into the trees, though not so much that the life of the plant was at risk—only cutting into the trees enough for support beams or the intricate artistic carvings that lined any bare bark. Not that I had much time to study it.
We’d been escorted through the empty city by the elf at the gate, Private Ollaria, who I had since learned was a member of the so-called Rooted Guard, the almost ceremonial military service that watched over Sunalor. Though, I suspected, they’d been entirely ceremonial up until about twelve hours ago.
Ollaria kept us travelling away from the walls, and this was why it had been so quiet—the locals had either fled or were armed with bows on the city walls, giving their lives to protect their home. We cut towards the harbour walls down a wide road which might have one boasted a vibrant market, but now only had wooden frames of stores now abandoned. Our group approached the harbour wall, and the private pointed out where Relaar was.
‘She is a glamorous woman, and should be wearing—’
Corminar raised a hand to cut her off. ‘We are old acquaintances; I will know her.’
Ollaria nodded, then stepped aside for us to climb the steps to the top of the harbour wall. ‘Allies inbound!’ she shouted up, to avoid the rangers on the wall immediately turning around and firing at us.
‘You know Relaar?’ Elandor asked Corminar quietly.
‘She was promoted to captain at the same time that they delivered to me my notice of informal exile.’
The head of the Red Thorn nodded. ‘Good, then she will know your intentions. I am afraid to say that she will know me as well.’
‘I understand.’ Corminar increased the speed of his climb, pushing to the front of the now hundred-plus-strong group of Thorn and Slayers, while Elandor dropped back.
When we reached the top of the wall, we found the apparent captain flanked by two other highly decorated elves, one of whom gripped a wooden staff that glowed gently with the familiar purple light of Worldbending magicks.
‘The Hero of Iranir,’ Captain Relaar said with a nod, speaking clearly but quickly—elsewhere along the harbour wall, the enemy was beginning to raise ladders formed of Tundran wood, and she would need to deal with this sooner rather than later.
‘We learned of the attack. I bring reinforcements.’
‘Yes, I see that,’ Relaar replied, her eyes skimming to Elandor. ‘Red Thorn, if I am not mistaken.’ She turned to one of the men at her side—the one in ornate armour, rather than the elf with the staff. ‘Lieutenant Seralin, just how many of these elves are exiled?’
‘As the humans say, desperate times call for—’ Corminar didn’t finish that sentence, because a spray of red blood washed over him.
Captain Relaar blinked at Corminar, tilting her head to one side in confusion, unsure where the blood had come from. And then, slowly, she looked down, and she saw the giant bolt that had pierced her torso, protruding halfway out the other side.
‘Oh,’ she said, and then dropped to the hard stone of the harbour wall.
The elf she’d called Lieutenant Seralin rushed to her side, cradling her, but my attention shifted to the man who had fired this bolt. A Knight Of The Realm stood behind the dropped captain, holding a weapon mechanical in design, as though someone had taken a bow and rotated it on its side, using a gear mechanism to add more power to the fired bolt than any hand-drawn bow could achieve. And more soldiers in gold poured forth from the ladder resting against the wall next to him.
‘Seralin!’ the elf with the worldbending staff shouted. ‘Seralin!’
But the man was cradling the now dead captain, tears pouring down his face.
‘Lieutenant!’ Corminar shouted, and I rushed to the elf’s side to shaking him back to reality. But nothing changed; he just blinked up at me with glazed-over eyes.
‘Corminar,’ Arzak said, and she met the ranger’s gaze with such intensity that she communicate some pre-arranged elaborate message. It took me only a moment to realise what it was: the orc told him it was time to become the Hero of Iranir once more.
And then, Lieutenant Cladenor took command.
"Styk"
Level 16 Bladespinner
Base Stats:
Vitality — 44
Intelligence — 158
Dexterity — 101
Strength — 73
Wisdom — 57
Charisma — 33
Skills:
Worldbending — Level 45
Knifework — Level 36
Stealth — Level 19
Needlework — Level 12
Identification — Level 11
Abilities:
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.
Knifestorm — Lash out at all surrounding enemies in a tornado of blades, using either one or two daggers. All enemies with arm’s reach receive physical damage worth weapon’s base damage and additional damage scaling on [STR].
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.
Silence III — Create a bubble of 20 yard radius in which sound is eradicated. Uses mana to cast, zero mana to maintain. You may only have one bubble active at any one time.
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%