‘Because that big job he did? The one that saved Westbara, and got him the key to the city? He didn’t do it. We did.’

None of us three Slayers said anything for a moment. Lore, in the end, was the one who opened his mouth first. ‘What job?’

Raelas slouched. ‘You lot aren’t from round here, are you?’

‘Tundras,’ I replied.

‘The Dawnwood,’ Corminar said.

‘I am. I’m from here,’ Lore finished. We all turned to look at him, and he looked back at us, confused. ‘Grew up round here, didn’t I? Well, further west. Northwest, really. In the Beached Armada proper. A little town called Coldharbour. But these sorts of parts, at least. And I thought that would count.’ He looked at Raelas. ‘Does that count?’

‘I…’ Raelas started, then didn’t seem to find an end to that sentence.

‘If you are not here in order to kill us,’ Carle said, in an accent far posher than I had expected, given his whole… vibe, ‘then why are you here? Surely you do not mean to kill a Player?’

‘No, course not,’ I replied, instinctively. Admitting such a thing in any parts—particularly here, under the empire—was a recipe for dying fast. ‘Who’d wanna do that? Even saying that would put the whole city on our case, and we—’

‘Cos we do,’ Raelas interrupted. ‘We wanna kill him.’

I trailed off. ‘Oh, right. In that case, yeah. Yeah, we do too.’

‘Nice. Not often you meet people who want to kill the offspring of the Architects, is it? Some like-minded souls, and all that.’

‘Really?’ Lore asked. ‘This isn’t some kind of trap? You’d really kill a Player?’

Raelas shrugged. ‘We kill all sorts; we don’t discriminate. You wanna team up?’

This wasn’t quite the heroic response it could have been. She could have said they slayed evil no matter who it was, but the way she phrased it seemed to imply that the “evil” bit was optional. Still, with Arzak and Val still missing, we could use all the help we could get.

‘Do you know where he lives?’ I asked.

The half-tiefling smiled. ‘I’m going to take that as a “yes”.’

* * *

I’d suggested going to a tavern and talking through the plan over a pint or two, but this idea had been met with raised eyebrows. Ama had said, ‘We would want a clear head if we are going after a Player,’ in a tone like you’d use to talk to a child. So instead we were sitting in a place that served only food—you couldn’t even buy beer if you wanted!—that had a slightly obscured view of the manor where the Councilman took residence.

‘We’re all clear on the plan, then?’ Raelas asked. After the nods and murmurs of agreement, she reached towards the large breadcrumbs she’d used to mark our positions on the table in front of us. She reached across me, almost uncomfortably close, and swept the crumbs onto the floor. Raelas lingered there to glance at me, surely noticing how rigidly I was sitting in my chair. ‘You OK there, handsome?’

‘I still think we should portal him elsewhere,’ I said, stumbling on my words, flustered. ‘We don’t know how many guards he has inside there with him. Wouldn’t it be better to fight on our terms?’ I didn’t really buy this logic that was coming out of my mouth, but it was better than acknowledging the other worldbender’s question.

‘We don’t know how many guards are inside, correct,’ Ama said. ‘But we also do know how many are outside.’

‘Thousands,’ Lore said, nodding knowingly.

I opened my mouth to defend this point of view further, but snapped it shut again when I realised I’d only be digging myself deeper. Anything else I might have said instead was completely lost when Raelas winked at me.

Lore caught my eye from across the table, and then glanced at Raelas. ‘Why do you wanna kill him, anyway?’

This question drew Raelas’s attention away from me and to the barbarian instead. I smiled my thanks to Lore, though I admittedly wasn’t completely sure this was why he’d done it.

‘We completed work for him, and he didn’t pay. That’s what you three stumbled on to. Thinks he can get the key to Westbara and then bring his new guards with him to tell us he’s not paying. Only reason we took the damned job was because it paid well.’

‘And if we were to let this slide, then of course that might give future employers ideas about not paying us either…’ Carle added.

We’d heard a similar thing from the Red Thorn. Of course, we had been the ones who hadn’t paid up, back then. ‘Yeah, I know a few elves who’d agree with you.’ I gestured to Corminar. ‘He still has one of their bows, actually. Gave it to him after the Battle of Sunalor.’

Ama raised her eyebrows. ‘You were there?’

‘There?’ I repeated. ‘Corminar here was leading the—’

The elf shook his head abruptly, and I changed course. Fair enough really; I probably wouldn’t want people talking about my failures either.

‘We were there, yeah.’

‘You’ve been all around, huh?’ Raelas asked, her eyes trained squarely on me. As she held my gaze, she fiddled with her long hair, adjusting it around her short, curling horns.

I did not know what to do with such unabashed attention.

Lore coughed. ‘Yeah, we were there. Us three, Arzak, Val…’

I had to assume that this comment was for my benefit, even though I hadn’t done anything; it was Raelas who was being so forthcoming here.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

‘And where is this Val?’ the fellow worldbender asked.

‘She—’

‘Oh, good heavens, look at the time,’ Corminar said, looking up at the sun hanging low in the sky. ‘Perhaps we should be killing a Player now?’

I smiled to Corminar, thanking him for the interruption, and the six of us rose from our seats.

Raelas threw down a large handful of coins onto the table to pay for our food. ‘It’s on me,’ she said, her eyes fixed on me to let me know that this act was entirely for my benefit.

We strolled along the road, taking care not to glance at the manor in which the Player was staying all that much, and slowed to a halt on the junction.

‘Alright,’ Raelas said. ‘Remember the plan: Styk, you create a distraction. I’ll portal the rest of us inside. Then you’ll join us, yeah?’

‘I’ll join you,’ I confirmed.

‘Don’t be long, now,’ the other worldbender said with eyes that seemed to challenge me.

‘I—’

‘I knew it!’ a voice suddenly shouted.

Our six faces whipped up to face the source of the cry—a window in the manor house overlooking the cobbled street.

‘I knew you would not be able to let it go!’ The Councilman beamed, his tone sounding almost excitable as he looked down on the Trio from up above. ‘Arch-nemesis…es at last!’

‘Nemeses,’ Carle corrected him.

‘Arch-nemeses at last. They always told me you could not rise so high without drawing the envious eyes of the locals, and here we are, about to do battle because—’

‘We ain’t envious!’ Raelas shouted up to him. It was nice for her attention to be fixed on someone else for a moment.

‘Well, what are you then?’

‘Unpaid,’ Ama answered.

‘Yes, well, one and the same, are they not? You are envious of the money that I have not handed over for services that you claim you rendered.’

‘We did render them!’

‘As I say, “claim”.’

‘Are we gonna stand around here bickering all day, or are we gonna fight?’ I interrupted.

The Councilman looked down at me. ‘And who is this? A member of your “Trio”?’

‘You do know what “trio” means, don’t you?’ Ama asked.

Lore raised a hand. ‘Are we still doing the plan, or…?’

‘They’re here to kill you, same as us,’ Raelas informed the Councilman.

‘Well don’t say so that loudly!’ I hissed at her. This was all going off the rails fast. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a plan go so wrong so quickly, in fact.

The worldbender shrugged. ‘Why not?’ She looked around; most of the nearby people were hurrying off since the use of the word “kill”, but a few guards were suddenly very, very interested in this conversation. ‘Oh, right, yeah. You don’t mind a few guards though, do you?’

‘I mean, we’re about to fight a Player, aren’t we? Kinda think we need all the advantages we can get.’

‘He’s right, you know,’ the Councilman said, glancing at me. ‘We should begin. Oh, it’s been so long since I was in a decent fight.’ He flicked his wrist, and blue-white flames engulfed in hand. When they died away, a ghostly blue axe was in his hand.

The Trio had already told me that the Councilman had decent Conjuration and Warrior skills, but it was weird to see a man as small and weedy as this one holding an axe. It almost felt like he should have been a pure magick user.

‘Guards?’ the Councilman called out to the approaching soldiers in golden uniform. ‘Arrest these six for the crime of treason. And kill them if you must.’

Treason—that’s what it was, these day, to seek to kill a Player. The Players were the agents of Amira, Empress of the Golden Empire, and so trying to kill one of them was like hurting the empire itself. It was no wonder, then, that the soldiers jumped to follow his command.

I looked around at those in golden uniform, encroaching on us in a broad circle, about seven of them so far, but more surely on the way. ‘Yeah, maybe we should take this inside.’ I reached one hand to the road beneath our feet, and the other up to the room the Councilman was peering out from, and was about to activate a portal, when—

Screams erupted from the near distance.

All of our faces snapped to the source of the noise, friend and foe alike. Along the road from here we could just about see the western gate—and people running, dragging their children, away from some evil that we could not see.

‘What?’ the Councilman asked, voice suddenly panicking. ‘What is it?’

Only Corminar, using his improved elven vision, could give an answer. ‘Malae,’ he said. ‘Malae are attacking the city.’

All chill ran down my spine, and the soldiers turned away from us. Suddenly, the accusation of treason didn’t seem so important.

"Styk"

Level 18 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 50

Intelligence — 192

Dexterity — 109

Strength — 76

Wisdom — 70

Charisma — 41

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 51

Knifework — Level 39

Stealth — Level 22

Identification — Level 18

Needlework — Level 16

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].

Enhanced Portals — Create a portal to another location within current range of sight or within a thirty yard radius. Support up to two pairs of portals at once. Uses mana to open portals only.

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 III — Passive. 200% 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].

Improved Cloth Armour — Craft a cloth armour of significantly higher quality, dependent on materials, time and skill level.

Active Effects:

Legacy of Sisyphus:

XP gain increased by +1,400%