I learned something new that evening.

If you need to carry a body—or a body-shaped object—through a crowded city without drawing trouble, just put a cloth over it. Anyone with an ounce of sense would know that it was a body that the burly Lore was carrying over his shoulder, but the fabric gave them an excuse not to check. This applied to the locals, at least—they didn’t want any trouble—but the guards were another matter.

We’d had to keep to the winding alleyways of Westbara that Raelas knew so well, and an elaborate distraction at the gate, to keep out of sight of the guards.

From there, it was simple, and one decently sized bribe later, we were standing in the basement of a traveller’s inn with the Councilman tied to a pillar. We were really starting to get the hang of this “kidnapping and interrogation” thing.

It took Corminar slapping the Player lightly around the face in order to wake him up. When he awoke, he did so with a start, glancing worriedly at the six of us glaring down at him.

‘At last,’ Lore said. ‘Was beginning to think Corminar hits harder than we thought.’

‘I—’ the Player start, but I interrupted him.

‘We got a few questions.’

The Councilman snarled. ‘I don’t answer questions coming from—’

‘Interrupt me again, and Lore here will punch you in the mouth.’

Lore punched him in the mouth.

Both the prisoner and I blinked at the barbarian. ‘I said if he interrupted me again,’ I said.

Lore scratched the back of his head sheepishly. ‘Oh, right. Sorry.’

‘I thought you said you were good at this,’ Ama called out from the back of the room.

I held up a hand to beg her for her patience, then turned back to the Player. ‘You work for the Council’ — the prisoner looked around shiftily — ‘so tell us: what’s their plan?’

‘I…’ the Councilman started, then trailed off.

‘OK, new rule: interrupt me or fail to answer me, and Lore will punch you in the mouth.’

Lore moved again to hit the prisoner, and I held out a hand to stop him.

‘Last chance,’ I said. ‘What’s the Council’s plan?’

‘I… I think it’s…’

‘OK, hit him.’

Lore connected his fist with the man’s face, and this time blood splattered out his mouth.

‘What’s their plan?’ I demanded. Still, the Player didn’t look like he was going to respond. ‘We know they’re after us. We know they’ve put a bounty on us; Niamh saw to that. We know Tana is organising… something. We just don’t know how it all comes together.’

‘It is time for you to fill in our gaps in knowledge,’ Corminar added. ‘Now. Else we kill you.’

‘I…’ the Player spluttered through bloody teeth.

‘Tell us,’ Lore said.

‘Now,’ I added.

‘I… I…’ the Councilman’s eyes flicked around the room, damp and pitiful. He didn’t find a friendly face. ‘I don’t… know?’

‘How can you not know?’ I cried back, exasperated. I kept my volume down so as to not to let any patrons upstairs in the tavern know what was going on down here. ‘You’re the Councilman! You are, therefore, a member of the Council, aren’t you?’

Silence swept over the basement.

‘Oh, gods,’ Corminar breathed.

I shook my head in disbelief. ‘You’re not a member of the Council at all, are you?’

The Player’s voice cracked as he replied. ‘They… rejected my application.’

‘And so you calling yourself “The Councilman” is…?’

‘Have you ever heard the phrase “dress for the job you want”?’ the Player replied. ‘This is like that.’

‘No it isn’t.’

None of this was adding up. First of all, this man’s insane logic—I couldn’t find how he’d come to justify calling himself the Councilman when he wasn’t a member of any council I knew of. But secondly, also… Lore’s visions had lead us to him. And if they’d lead us to him, then us having met him was a vital stage on our journey towards Tana’s grand plan. Yet it was hard to believe that this pitiful soul had—or would have—anything to do with it.

‘When are you gonna ask him about our payment?’ Raelas asked, piping up from the back of the room.

‘...Never? I don’t care about that.’

The Councilman—though maybe we shouldn’t still call him that, all things considered—snarled. ‘Payment? Payment for what?’

‘We did the job!’

‘Well clearly you did not!’ the Player shouted back at her. ‘Considering what just happened.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘What… does he mean, exactly?’ I asked Raelas. ‘Just what was the job you did for him?’

‘Err…’ the half-tiefling replied, non-committedly.

But the Player answered for her. ‘Killing Malae!’ he shouted. ‘Westbara’s been having a bit of a Malae problem lately—you saw it. You were supposed to eliminate the threat.’

‘We thought we had,’ Ama replied. ‘We eliminated the one we found.’

‘One?’ the Player repeated. ‘One? I sent you to kill dozens!’

‘Guess they’ll have to take back that key to the city, huh? Considering that you didn’t save Westbara, like you said.’

‘You didn’t save—’

‘Alright, enough!’ I shouted, risking a loud voice and potentially alerting those above us to the commotion. There was something in this, I could feel it. And, judging by the look I shared with both Lore and Corminar, they saw it too. We wondered why the so-called Councilman was important in getting us to Tana’s great plan? Well, maybe this was the answer.

A few weeks ago, now, we’d stumbled across an abandoned witchfinder village. In that village, we’d seen some strange contraptions, and the witchfinders themselves had seemed to be trapped in a tear between worlds. We’d fixed the tear, potentially trapping them forever—they were witch hunters, so who cares?—and then we’d found the experiment’s notes.

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It had been a Mala that had powered those devices. The same creature we now stumbled across.

What with Lore’s visions having lead us this far, I couldn’t just discount this as a coincidence.

‘Tell me about the Malae,’ I snapped—both at the prisoner and at the Trio.

Both Raelas and the Councilman spoke at once, and I couldn’t understand what either of them were saying.

‘Not both at once!’ I cried over them.

‘Then perhaps don’t ask them all at once,’ Ama suggested.

‘Yeah, thank you.’ This mismatched group were proving even more dysfunctional than the mismatched group I was used to. I missed Val already, but right then I really missed her. ‘Raelas, you first.’

‘Been a few sightings of those Malae in the area. Mostly around the fringes, picking off travellers and stuff, yeah? And the duke and his cronies here don’t care about that. But then they started coming inside the city, and people started panicking.’

‘Yeah, so they should,’ Lore said.

Raelas raised her eyebrows; she didn’t disagree. ‘Anyway, they put out a bounty on the Malae, this idiot’ — she waved to the Councilman — ‘responded and… what’s the word?’

‘Sub-contracted,’ Corminar said.

‘Yeah, sub-contracted it to us, and the rest is history.’

I tried to resist the urge to put my head in my hands. I failed. ‘Gods alive…’

‘Rather the mess you have put yourselves into,’ Corminar added, echoing my thoughts.

‘Yeah, idiot,’ Raelas agreed, not realising that the elf was including the Trio in that “you”.

I turned away from the prisoner, trying to figure out what was next. It seemed sensible to follow this line of investigation—if the Malae were entering the city, then they were breeding out there. And who was to say that wasn’t being managed by a member of the Council, seeking to power their machines?

‘You,’ I said, prodding my finger into the Player’s chest.

He widened his eyes in surprise.

‘These Malae, what do you know about them? You had to have a plan beyond getting the key to the city, right? You want to be in the Council, and I’m guessing you thought this would get you there. So what is it? Are you clearing up their messes?’

From the lanky Player’s hanging mouth, lip twitching as he struggled to find the words, I realised I was on to something.

‘Don’t make me make him hit you,’ I said.

Lore cracked his knuckles for dramatic effect; we’d practised that particular bit of theatre.

The Player looked hesitantly at the barbarian’s hands before glancing back up at me. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was shaking slightly. Was he really this new to actually being hurt? ‘Alright, alright,’ he said. ‘I tell you, you let me go, though.’

‘As a rule,’ Corminar said, ‘we do not allow Players their freedom.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you kill people,’ Lore answered.

The Player pushed against his bindings, and I got the sense he was trying to raise his hands to protest his innocence. ‘I don’t! I’ve never killed anyone.’

‘This guy just gets more and more pathetic by the minute, huh?’ Raelas mumbled.

‘We don’t believe you,’ Lore said.

‘Err…’ I muttered, and everyone looked at me. ‘I really don’t think he has. He had the chance to kill Corminar, and he had the chance to kill me, and he just… didn’t. I think he might be…’ I looked into the Player’s eyes. ‘I think he might be afraid to kill.’

The man’s eyes widened in fear—not from the fear that we had him tied up and might be about to kill him, but instead due to his greatest fear made a reality. We’d found him out. The secret was out. ‘I… I…’ he stuttered.

I pounced on the opening. ‘Tell us everything about the Malae, and we’ll leave you alive. Otherwise…’

‘Styk…’ Corminar said, grabbing my arm.

I looked around at him. ‘What harm could it do? He won’t kill anyone. And it feels like a bit of a pisstake to kill someone like him, even if he is a Player.’

The elf frowned, but said nothing else on the matter.

‘Tell us,’ I ordered the Councilman. ‘Now.’

The man held my gaze for a moment, running the calculations, before finally realising that giving us what we wanted was his best chance of getting out of here.

‘Alright,’ he said. ‘The Malae. I suppose I can tell you—but if you do run into any other Players, you didn’t hear it from me.’

‘We make no promises,’ Corminar said.

‘Ignore him,’ I said. ‘The Malae.’

The Councilman drew in a deep breath. ‘I came to Westbara because I heard that a member of the Council was here. Yusef, his name was. The leader of the Cult of Ascendancy—do you know it?’

I nodded; we’d had dealings with these Player-worshippers before. In fact, the reason I’d even got access to the Worldbending skill tree had been through a defeat of one of these cultists.

‘I wanted to impress him. I wanted to show him that I could be a valuable asset to the team. So he tested me. He asked me to… To…’

‘Kill someone,’ Carle guessed, from the rear of the room.

The Player gulped, then nodded.

‘So you failed the test,’ I said, ‘your application rejected. What’s this got to do with the Malae?’

‘Because he’s the source. I saw it, when I was there with him, out in the Beached Armada. He is trading in them, collecting them for the Council for schemes unknown. Those that have been seen around the peripheries of Westbara… they are those that escaped.’

I made eye contact with Corminar. ‘So if we wanted to find this Player…?’

‘Then you would follow the Malae,’ the prisoner finished.

Corminar nodded.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘We’re done here.’ I gestured up the wooden steps to the tavern proper, and the Trio were the first to climb.

‘Guess we’re not getting that payment, then…’ Raelas grumbled, just loud enough for me to hear.

Lore, Corminar and I walked away next, leaving the Player to call after us.

‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘Wait! You said you’d let me go!’

From the top of the staircase, I crouched down and made sure to look the Player in the eyes. ‘No, I said we’d leave you alive. I didn’t say anything about letting you go.’ With that, I slammed the door shut, leaving the Councilman in the dark, and tipped the bard upstairs to play as loud as he could until the tavern closed for the night, drowning out the Player's shouting.

Then, we set our sights on the next step: Malae hunting.

"Styk"

Level 18 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 50

Intelligence — 196

Dexterity — 109

Strength — 76

Wisdom — 70

Charisma — 41

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 52

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%