Lore wrenched on the wheel, shifting the ship a little to the left. ‘How’s that?’ he shouted out.

Val, at the front of the ship with me, narrowed her eyes, staring at the enemy flagship. ‘Yeah,’ she cried back, ‘yeah, that’s it! Hold it there!’

Back at the helm, Elandor plunged a sword—stolen from the soldier we’d killed earlier—through the wheel and buried it into the wooden deck, holding the wheel in place. ‘It is done.’

Lore tested the wheel anyway, trying to nudge it this way, then the other. He nodded to confirm, and then the pair of them joined me at the ship’s bow. We were close now, the flagship well in sight, and I could just about make out one figure standing on the deck. Hopefully Niamh was too distracted by managing the invasion of Sunalor to notice that there was a ship coming for her—one not sailed by Goldmarch soldiers—but I wasn’t going to count on it.

‘Shall we?’ Elandor asked, adjusting the bow on his shoulder and flexing his hands.

‘Not yet. Just a little closer,’ I told him. ‘Unless you want me accidentally dropping us in the water.’

‘With every second that passes—’ Elandor started.

‘I know, I know.’

‘Are you ready?’ Val asked the elf. ‘This isn’t some normal fight. This is a Player.’ When Elandor was about to protest, Val waved him back down. ‘I know you know that. But it’s worth saying. You got any other tricks up your sleeve? Don’t suppose you can throw her into a pocket world, never to be seen again? Or can you only do that with Lore’s sheep?’

‘The power of sheep is near enough the limit of those abilities, alas. I cannot use it on any creature with particular sapience.’

‘Sentience,’ Lore corrected him.

Elandor blinked at the barbarian. ‘No, sapience.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’

‘Worldbender, if you will—’

‘Alright, now,’ I said, opening a portal beneath the four of us. We fell through it and out its partner’s side, onto a balcony of the quarter galley protruding at the rear of the ship. We landed with heavy thumps, and I twisted to look for any sign that we’d been spotted, but when I peered inside, I saw no one.

‘Distracted by the ship coming straight for them, I imagine,’ Val whispered.

‘How long til it gets here?’ Lore asked.

‘Maybe thirty seconds. Let’s go.’

I led the group into the captain’s cabin, finding it deserted. Wherever Niamh was managing the invasion from, it wasn’t here. But what I did see were dozens of maps pinned to the walls, with all kinds of markings on, looking to be plans for different scenarios: for if the elves mustered a sufficient fleet, for if the harbour walls did not fall, for if they needed to blank their enemy, and more. She’d really accounted for every permutation of events. Except, I could only hope, this one—four idiots ramming her ship and trying to take her down.

Wasting no time, I crept forward, Lore, Val and Elandor following closely at my heels. At the exit to the room, I hesitated—the moment we stepped out into the light, there was much more chance of being spotted. I kept close to the door frame as I peered out, looking for signs of trouble. But I saw only three: two Knights of the Realm, and the Player herself.

Niamh stood in the centre of the deck, flanked by her borrowed knights, bow and quiver over her shoulder, and small glowing portals floating all around her. Through these portals, she might hear reports from and give instructions to her commanders in the field—but her attention wasn’t on the portals. It was on the ship now only moments from crashing into her.

‘Alright, ready?’ I asked the team, and I edged onto the deck.

At that moment, an almighty noise erupted—a squeal like a siren’s wail—and Niamh’s head snapped to face me.

‘Ah,’ I said, looking down at the sigil glowing on the floor beneath me. A trap.

At that moment, before Niamh could react, the ships collided.

Splinters of wood shot into the air, some of them burying themselves in the bodies both of the enemies and of myself. I could hear water begin to rush in below, the hull having splintered, having been enchanted against enemy attacks and not against other enchanted hulls. And the flagship itself jolted to one side, throwing six of the seven people aboard off their feet—only Niamh remaining effortlessly upright.

As the flagship jolted back the other way, the knights rushed us.

We retreated back into the cabin as planned, in the case of other soldiers being aboard, and Elandor loosed an arrow that hit one of the knights squarely between the brows. But these were Knights of the Realm; it would take more than a well-placed arrow to stop them.

I swung a hand forward to open a portal in front of the two giant, burly Knights of the Realm, and they and their great axes fell through, coming out the other side to collide with one of the cabin’s walls.

Lore slammed the door to the captain’s quarters shut, delaying Niamh’s entry into the fight, and giving us a few extra seconds to eliminate the knights. We could only hope that out across the bay, Corminar was giving her trouble to contend with—because any further seconds might be the difference between life and death.

The Knights of the Realm regathered themselves, one of them turning to swing their axe at the nearest Slayer. Val dived out of the way of the axe, narrowing avoiding getting hurt, and blasted them with a wave of air that knocked them staggering backwards.

For our plan to work, we needed at least one knight still aboard. And we had two.

‘Oi!’ I shouted to the knights, and then I charged them.

But this was a fakeout; I hadn’t suddenly grown suicidal. As I sprinted across the luxurious cabin, I opened a portal beneath one of them, and they were distracted enough by my feigned attack that they fell through it. I heard a splash in the near distance as they landed in the water.

‘One down…’ Lore said, and suddenly there was a bash on the door. His eyes widened, and he reinforced himself again it. ‘I thought you said this would buy us enough time!’

‘I said it might!’ I shouted back, but my attention was on the other knight.

‘Styk?’ Val prompted me.

‘On it!’ I flung a hand downwards, opening a portal in the deep sea beneath the ship, and I opened its partner inside the cabin, only for the briefest of seconds. A heavy blast of water knocked the Knight of the Realm backwards, against the wooden wall once more, and I breathed a sigh of relief that the wall held. When I closed the portal a second later, we were wading in a thin layer of water, but the enemy was absolutely drenched.

‘Now!’ Val shouted, and the four of us leapt up to grab onto the rafters above, separating ourselves from the layer of water. Except the witch also used her new lightning magicks.

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The knight shook as the lightning shot through them and their wet covering, dropping to the floor as Val released the magicks. Elandor and I released ourselves from the rafters, and I portaled us over to the enemy, meaning to waste not a second. We released attack after attack after attack of arrow and blade, and it didn’t take long the elimination notification to pop up—one that I swiftly minimised.

A heavy thud announced another attack on the cabin door, and Lore grunted with the strain of resisting. ‘Hurry!’ he cried.

The other three of us got to work.

* * *

‘Ready?’ Lore asked.

We nodded, and the barbarian took a deep breath before standing back from the door. The door blasted open immediately, and he, Elandor and I stared at the silhouette standing before us. Niamh was a small, thin woman, and yet we already knew enough of her to know that this was deceiving. Even Jacob, the pyroknight and the strongest person we’d ever fought, couldn’t measure up to the trapper.

‘Knock knock…’ she muttered. ‘You know, I really did hope you would stay out of this. I had sympathy for you before, back when you were only defending your home. But now that you threaten my plans, I am forced to cast you down. For this, I do sincerely apologise.’

‘Yeah, I bet,’ Lore replied.

‘Doubt me all you like, barbarian, but I do mean it. Perhaps as an act of—’ Niamh suddenly stopped talking, her attention diverted by someone talking through one of the portals. She held up an index finger to demand that we wait. It was infuriating, but if the next stage of the plan was going to work, then we had to bite our tongues.

‘No matter,’ she told someone through one of the small portals. ‘Order a fifth of the remaining force to splinter away, to circle the city and approach from the rear. They are few; if we stretch them far enough, the city will fall.’

It was good to know that Corminar was still holding the enemy off, at least.

Niamh turned back to us. ‘Now, where we were?’

‘Something about an act?’

‘Ah, yes. An act of small mercy,’ she said, then stepped aside, gesturing us past. ‘Would you like to bathe in the sunlight one last time before I cut you down?’

What an exciting opportunity.

I glanced to Lore and Elandor, who nodded, and then in silence we stepped outside onto the main deck. We’d not intended for this, but we could work with it—more space to fight in was always handy.

‘I am sorry to see that you witch friend has fallen already,’ Niamh said. ‘I once thought she would some day die at my hand, when she finally tracked me down, and yet…’ She shook her head, and turned to face the three of us standing and staring her down—port versus starboard.

The flagship suddenly lurched to one side, as water broke away at one of the lower decks.

‘I suppose I will have to transit to another ship. A shame; a copy of my personal library is aboard, and printing does not come cheap. Especially when you are forced to eliminate those involved.’

At that moment, I saw a flash of movement to my left. It was time.

‘Now!’ I shouted, and the three of us charged. Two of us began to glow with purple magicks, while one of us used the tried and tested strategy of swinging a big sword.

I hopped through a portal to attack Niamh from behind, but the moment I touched her, an invisible sigil glowed into life—one that blasted me across the deck and out over the water. It was only my portal magicks that stopped me falling into the depths, instead stumbling back out onto deck.

Elandor, meanwhile, opened a portal world entrance above the Player’s head, dumping a rain of arrows onto her head. But with the flick of her wrist, more sigils still glowed into life all around the ship, and the arrows diverted towards them, as though compelled.

Only Lore, using the simplest of all the attacking techniques, came close to hurting Niamh. But as he charged, a Knight of the Realm sprinted into action, crossing the deck in a flash and putting themselves between Niamh and Lore, knocking him to the floor with almost performative ease.

A Knight of the Realm with a dead woman’s face, that is.

As Niamh grimaced down at the barbarian, the knight retreated to the Player’s side. And when the knight got close, she grabbed Niamh by the throat and revealed her true face. Val’s face. Val, who Elandor and I had hurriedly help dress in Goldmarch armour, then portalled her across the ship.

Val imbued Niamh’s throat with her lightning magicks. ‘Surprise, bi—’

But any cocky retort was cut short.

The body in her grasp didn’t react to the magick attack at all. In fact, it only smiled at Val, and then… it faded from existence.

Val retreated, stumbling backwards in her oversized armour, blinking at the spot where Niamh had been standing only seconds earlier. ‘An… an illusion,’ she said.

‘But you touched her!’

‘A powerful illusion,’ she said. ‘A decoy.’

The implications sunk in. Niamh really had planned for everything; she’d planned for this too.

And then another Niamh appeared, at the other end of the deck. ‘Surprise, witch,’ she said. But there was no real malice in it, and even a smile on her face. The Player clapped. ‘Oh, very good, very good! I thought I had the constructs of this world all figured out, but you surprise me. You are capable of meaningful thought after all! Of course, this doesn’t change what I have to do, you understand.’

‘Doesn’t change much for us, either,’ Val spat back at her.

Niamh’s smile didn’t fade. ‘So, the witch lives after all. And she still has quite the sharp tongue on her. Is that what all this is, then? Not the defending of a region, but revenge?’

‘No,’ Val replied. ‘Not revenge. Justice. Delivered by Witchcraft.’ She pulled a small, seemingly insignificant flower from her pocket, plucked from the ground with roots intact, and she threw it to the deck. ‘Witchcraft isn’t all that powerful away from nature, you know? And out here… well, I don’t have all my plant life to work with. So I thought I’d bring some with me.’

Val thrusted both hands forward, and they glowed a vibrant green as she worked her magicks. Roots sprung forth from the tiny, limp flower, shooting in every direction. A hundred. A thousand. Each of them buried themselves in the wood of the deck, piercing a hundred trap sigils that glowed as they were shattered.

Finally, the smile faded from the enemy’s face.

"Styk"

Level 16 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 44

Intelligence — 162

Dexterity — 101

Strength — 73

Wisdom — 57

Charisma — 33

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 46

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%