We followed the locals as they carefully steered the corrupted man the way of the doctor, using thick reams of cloth to hold him upright while preventing risk of getting corrupted themselves. I—and Lore and Corminar, from the looks of them—felt excess to requirements, but this was our only lead on someone who might know a bit more about the Malae, so we stuck with them, trailing some way behind.
The locals led the corrupted man around the outskirts of the city, to a neighbourhood that looked dingier than the rest, with people well armed and watching newcomers carefully. That is to say, my kind of place. But Lore seemed to be right at home here, his eyes lighting up at the sight of old, dirty inn and shops and stalls. He even cried out a greeting to an old cloth merchant who waved back, confused, not recognising the young boy who’d left in the burly barbarian who had returned.
We finally came across a building cleaner than the rest, with fresh paintwork and glowing newfangled light magick bulbs across the top of the front. It was in here that the two women hurried the corrupted man, and then as soon as he was across the threshold, they scurried away—presumably not wanting to be on the hook for any medical costs. But someone inside moved to support the man, a tiefling woman covered from head to toe in a transparent protective material, ready for such a situation.
When she looked up at the three of us, her eyes fixed to Lore, and widened. ‘Lore?’ she asked, voice lilting with joy.
‘Alenna?’ the barbarian threw back at her, equally excited.
The doctor almost dropped her patient as she moved to hug Lore, arms wide, then realised the man needed support. ‘We’ll hug later,’ she said, then began pulling the man deeper into her clinic. ‘He a friend?’
‘No,’ Lore replied, ‘we just stumbled across him.’ Then he came to an abrupt stop and took in the clinic properly. And fair enough, really; this was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
One wall of the shop was lined from floor to ceiling in shelves filled with glass specimen jars. Almost all contained an alchemical ingredients or a monster part or glowing magicks, and only some of them I even recognised, let alone understood what they did. Alenna had a waist-height stone plinth in the centre of the room, upon which she urged the corrupted man. In the corner of the room, hot enough that I could feel it from here, was a stone oven with a raging fire inside—and I got the impression that was where any corrupted body parts went, because it took fire to kill corruption.
‘Will I keep the arm?’ the man asked to the doctor, glancing at the three of us nervously, as though he had no idea why we were there.
‘We’re gonna do our best!’ Alenna shouted, then pushed the man’s shoulder back down onto the stone plinth. ‘Lie still?’
‘Is that a question?’
‘Lie still.’ Alenna turned to her wall of medical supplies and tapped a finger against her chin. ‘What do we need? What do we need,’ she murmured, then suddenly seemed to have a moment of revelation, and pulled a jar full of green-glowing worms from the shelf. She turned back to the corrupted arm, and tossed the worms onto where the Mala had touched him.
I leaned over to Corminar. ‘Do you have any idea what she’s doing?’
‘None whatsoever.’
Alenna put her face close to the corruption, watching the glow-worms closely. As the man began to move, she leaped backwards. ‘Still! Lie still!’
‘...OK.’
‘OK,’ Alenna said, turning away. ‘The glow-worms aren’t working. I’ve had some luck with them before, but I think they might only like elf flesh.’
Corminar shifted nervously.
‘Tiefling flesh? Not so much.’
‘What’s that mean for me?’ the patient asked.
Alenna turned back to him, axe in hand. ‘It means you’re gonna lose the arm.’ Before the patient could react, she flung a hand forward and released a blue magick that emerged as a glowing rope, binding him in place. ‘Sorry,’ she told the corrupted man. ‘But it’s for your own good.’
Then, as if practised in the motion, she brought the axe down on the affected limb, above the spread of corruption. Alenna clearly had more strength that she looked like she had, because she took the arm off in only one strike. As the man screamed, the doctor immediately held cloth to the wound. ‘Lore, would you mind…’ she nodded to the cloth, and the barbarian took it, holding it in place.
Meanwhile, Alenna took the corrupted arm and tossed it into the oversized oven. She sighed when it was done. ‘Phew,’ she said. ‘Hard work, this.’
‘Lenna…’ Lore said nervously.
The doctor jumped. ‘Oh! Right.’ She took the cloth from Lore and began feeding low levels of yellow-white Healing magicks into the wound. The patient, meanwhile, had passed out.
* * *
It was some time before Alenna had stabilised the once-corrupted man, and she had us wait upstairs in her living quarters, telling us to make ourselves at home. Lore clearly took the doctor at her word, because he was immediately looking in her cupboards for snacks and something to drink—both of which he found.
As we sat nibbling on biscuits and sipping some sort of hot, spiced drink I hadn’t had before, the doctor finally arrived upstairs.
‘How about that hug now, big guy?’ she said, arms stretched wide.
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Lore practically sprinted to his old friend, grabbing her in his arms and returning the hug so enthusiastically that he lifted her from the ground. When he finally put her down, the two of them traded stories of what they’d been up to in the years since they saw each other, while Corminar and I sat uncomfortably, feeling like we were intruding.
From the sounds of it, Lore had seen Alenna only once since he’d left home, but before that they’d been close friends. Alenna knew Plyas, too, because she referenced her before Lore did—drawing a confused expression from the ranger in the process.
The tiefling, for her part, had applied herself in the magicks before realising that maybe there was another route to helping people—using the natural ingredients of the world in a way similar to alchemy, but without the magicks element, just using their innate properties. She’d had some success, as evidenced by the clinic, but the growing Malae scourge had brought with it a new challenge.
‘It’s what I’ve been trying to do here,’ Alenna said, ‘come up with a way to make people survive the corruption through a combination of magick and science. I’d had some success with those worms eating up the corruption enough that the host survives—the worms don’t—but they don’t always take. And then the host gives in a few days or weeks later. It’s progress, but it’s not enough. So then we have to resort to more traditional methods.’
‘Cutting it off,’ I said.
The doctor nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘It looks as though people understand you are making progress,’ Corminar said, nodding to the room—as finely decorated up here as the clinic itself had been, if cosier.
The doctor blinked as though caught off-guard. ‘Oh?’
‘I noticed there was no charge for the patient, yet it would require significant funding to have a place such as this. Donations, I would assume? Perhaps from a handful of wealthy benefactors?’
Alenna hesitated before smiling. ‘Right on the money. You have smart friends, Lore.’ She hit the man playfully on the upper arm, and Lore didn’t seem to notice.
‘That’s why we’re here, actually,’ I said, wanting to bring us onto the topic that had put us on Alenna’s doorstep. ‘We’re looking for leads on the malae. As far as we can tell, someone is breeding them, and we think that person might be—’
Lore coughed pointedly; though this woman was a friend, clearly she was still as fooled by Players as most of the world. If I spoke negatively of them in her presence, she would be less likely to help us.
‘We think that person might be in the city,’ I finished, switching up from what I’d originally intended to say. ‘Have you heard anything? Do you know anything that would help us?’
The doctor licked her lips thoughtfully before replying, training her eyes on me in a way I didn’t quite like—what was going on in that brain? ‘What do you intend to do with the malae once you find them?’
‘We are here to exterminate them all,’ Corminar said, sparing no drama.
Alenna nodded. ‘Good. There’s getting to be too many of them—not that one isn’t too many. But, fair warning: many adventurers and mercenaries have tried to wipe them out, and many of them have ended up back in my clinic. Or never shown up at all.’ She turned to Lore. ‘You’ll be careful out there, won’t you?’
The barbarian nodded, kind smile on his face.
‘Good.’ Alenna stood from her seat, and halfway down the stairs, she called out, ‘I’ll be right back; got something that might help you.’ When she returned, she carried a stone in her hand—one with glowing green energy hovering around it. ‘I borrowed some magick to make this.’
‘Witchcraft?’ I asked, noting the colour of the spell.
Alenna shrugged. ‘We do what we must. This spell, here, it looks for Witchcraft magicks. A particular kind of witchcraft, in fact—those associated with the malae.’
Lore held out his hand to take the stone, eyes fixed upon it. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
The doctor nodded. ‘It tracks malae. And you can have it, but I ask one thing in return.’
‘What’s that?’
‘If you do find any malae, give them to me to study. The only way I can save people is if I know what I’m working with.’
Lore met the woman’s eyes and nodded, that kind smile still on his face. ‘We can do that,’ he said.
"Styk"
Level 19 Bladespinner
Base Stats:
Vitality — 50
Intelligence — 198
Dexterity — 114
Strength — 77
Wisdom — 70
Charisma — 47
Skills:
Worldbending — Level 53
Knifework — Level 40
Stealth — Level 22
Identification — Level 18
Needlework — Level 18
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 III — Attack a target while undetected for +300% 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%