We walked across the city of Coldharbour back towards the house Tokas and Lambkin were renting with few words shared. I could feel how tense everyone was, including the typically carefree Lore, with Val and Arzak eyeing our new—hired—acquaintances with suspicion, Raelas returning the favour to Val, and Corminar keeping a close eye on both me and Val. When we finally arrived outside the house, it was almost a relief, but as I was about to reach out to touch the door, Corminar turned to the rest of the group.

‘Before we enter, there is something else you should know,’ he said, eyes on Val and Arzak.

‘...What?’ the witch asked.

‘We did not stumble across only Lambkin out there.’

‘What you mean, Cor?’ Arzak asked, glancing nervously at the door. ‘What you mean?’

‘I…’

But before Corminar could answer, Arzak pushed him aside and swung the front door open. Through the hallway, she could see into the kitchen area, and the tiefling standing there, bowl in hand, child at her side.

Tokas froze, meeting Arzak’s gaze.

‘Oh, no,’ Val breathed.

From how tense Val had suddenly become, I’d thought Arzak was going to get violent, that this was going to end in tears. Punnas and Lopas’s tears, mostly. But instead, the orc turned around and slammed the door behind her.

‘Keep her away from me,’ she growled at Corminar, then strode away from the building, showing no signs of stopping.

‘Arzak!’ Lore cried after her, but it made no difference.

‘I’ll check on her,’ Lambkin said, gesturing towards the door. ‘She won’t… have taken that well.’

‘It was a cruel surprise,’ Corminar said. ‘For us to spring Tokas’s presence on her, after all that she did.’

‘She’s not the same woman,’ the other ranger replied. ‘The one who betrayed you, she’s gone. Tokas has grieved. She has done good. She has tried to make amends. She doesn’t deserve—’

‘Let’s not get into what she deserves,’ I cut in, before Corminar could. ‘See to her. We’ll be in the tavern.’

Lambkin nodded then turned away, and I hurried after Arzak.

‘You should said earlier,’ the orc growled as I appeared at her side, Val hurrying after me.

‘We didn’t know how to break the news. We couldn’t think of a good way.’

Arzak turned, scowling, and for the first time I felt on the receiving end of her terror. ‘There no good way! She was best friend. She betray me. Us.’ The orc shook her head. ‘And greater betrayal still to come.’ This last bit was under her breath, as though she couldn’t quite bear to speak it.

‘What do you—’ I started, but Val stepped in, putting her hand on the orc’s arm.

‘Let’s get a drink,’ she said, and led us towards the tavern, having heard my interaction with Lambkin. ‘We’ve… got a lot to talk about.’

I forced myself to meet her eyes, but found that Val was still looking at anyone at me—which included the three members of the Trio. Raelas, Carle and Ama were following at a distance, their scrunched-up body language betraying that they felt they were intruding on this pretty awkward interaction.

‘A drink,’ I said. ‘Good idea.’

* * *

‘So…’ Lore said, with less of his usual cheeriness, ‘anyone wanna go first?’

The eight of us were sat around a large table in the centre of the tavern, the raucous laughter of drunk locals erupting sporadically around us. A drunk woman staggered backwards into Ama, who responded with a swift elbow to the leg.

‘Sorry we didn’t warn you about Tokas,’ I said, though the apology was a little forced; we had a job to do, and I didn’t like apologising for taking all the help we could get.

‘You should be,’ Val snapped, then immediately caught herself, blushing.

‘You said she’s going to betray us again?’ I prodded.

‘Not us. Me,’ Arzak replied. ‘She kill me. I saw it.’

Lore leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. ‘Did Yusef show you this?’

The orc nodded.

‘He showed me things too.’

All faces snapped to Lore.

‘He what?’ Raelas and I asked him at the same time.

Val looked to the tiefling, then back to me, eyebrow raised.

‘What he show you?’ Arzak asked.

‘How to save you all.’

We all grew quiet. Really, this was a great way to dampen the spirits of a conversation; I took note for next time I wanted someone to stop speaking to me.

‘We save everyone by killing the Player,’ I said. ‘That’s why we’re all here. That’s why Tokas is here, because we need every advantage we can get. We’ve never fought anyone this strong before—the pyroknight, Niamh, they were strong in their own rights, sure, but they couldn’t see us coming.’

‘And how do you suppose we get around that?’ Ama asked.

‘Who these three?’ Arzak asked.

‘Hired help.’

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

‘And friends,’ Raelas added. This resulted in her getting a dirty look from Val—one that the tiefling met with a feigned, polite smile on her face.

‘He always going see us coming,’ the orc continued, ignoring the three new faces. This wasn’t like her, she was usually polite. Clearly her brief encounter with Tokas had thrown her for a loop. Though maybe this was fair enough if Tokas really was prophesied to kill her. ‘We cannot kill him.’

‘Nobody is unkillable.’ Except me, sometimes, but I left that bit out. ‘All we gotta do is bake some redundancy into the plan. OK, he might see the first strike coming, but the second? Third? Forth? Fifth? Si—’

‘And so on,’ Corminar cut in.

‘He will see,’ Arzak said.

‘What do you suggest, then?’ Raelas asked. ‘Cos Styk has got us this far, and—’

‘Undo his work,’ Val said, glaring at the tiefling woman now, making absolutely no attempt to hide it. If Raelas was bothered by this, she didn’t show it. Right now, I was regretting sitting next to the tiefling woman.

‘You know about his work?’ Arzak asked.

‘The mala trading,’ Corminar replied. ‘We conducted sufficient investigation to acquire this knowledge, yes.’

‘That, we can do something about,’ Val said.

‘We already did! We took down his operations in the city. Got them all arrested. Job done. So now, we—’

‘All of it?’ the witch seemed suddenly to have the confidence to meet my eyes, but I suspected it was powered by Raelas-inflicted wrath. ‘Because that’s not what we heard.’

‘Well sorry if you didn’t get the most up-to-date information, considering you were prisoners.’

‘This has nothing to do with us being prisoners, it has to do with—’

‘Alright,’ Lore said, standing up and slamming his hands down on the table. ‘You two need to sort this thing out.’ Neither Val nor I needed to look at him to know he was talking about us.

‘Maybe later,’ Val said, as Raelas scooted her chair ever so slightly closer to me. Lore glared at her.

‘There still mala trading in city. Shipment went east yesterday,’ Arzak said. ‘If we stop this, he not get his way. Council not get their way. Almost as good as killing him.’

‘Almost,’ Corminar echoed.

‘We’ll take almost,’ Val said.

I forced myself to keep meeting her gaze. ‘No, we won’t.’

‘I’m with Styk,’ Raelas said.

‘We know,’ said Val and Lore in unison.

Carle raised a hand. ‘Should we be here?’

‘If we aren’t going to kill him, we’ll take our payment now,’ Ama added.

‘Can we talk about that later?’ Corminar asked.

Val began swigging from her beer, and my instinct was to do the same, but I resisted. Lore thumped his head down against the top of the table, while Raelas put her hand on my arm reassuring me, causing me to snap my hand back—but not before Val saw. Ama was still looking at me expectantly, while Corminar slumped his shoulders and sighed.

This reunion wasn’t going like anyone wanted it to.

At that moment—and I almost thanked the Architects themselves for their timing here—the tavern’s door slammed open, revealing Lambkin and a young half-tiefling boy. They looked around, and upon spotting us, the ranger pointed the boy in our direction.

As they approached, Corminar looked up at him, and said under his breath, ‘Oh, thank Hades.’ He put his hand to his mouth when he realised what he’d just said; never before had he been happy to see Lambkin, his rival in Archery.

‘Drink, Lammy?’ Lore asked.

‘Apparently beer is the only positive thing to come out of this meeting,’ Carle added.

Lambkin looked around at us all nervously, though I couldn’t tell if that had to do with the furious expressions on some of our faces, Tokas’s wellbeing, or the reason that the boy was here with him.

‘Who’s this? Your son?’ Val asked.

Lambkin looked down at the young boy.

‘Could it be? Father?’ the kid asked, blinking big eyes up at him.

The ranger hesitated. ‘No, I—’

‘Just kidding. I’m a courier. Got a message for a Mister Lore?’

Lore raised his hand.

‘See, I told you he was here,’ Lambkin grumbled.

‘What’s the message?’ I asked, cutting through whatever bickering was going on between the ranger and the young lad.

‘Alenna needs ya. Says there’s a problem. A mala problem.’

‘See?’ Val murmured.

I sighed, sinking down in my chair. This was not going to be fun.

"Styk"

Level 20 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 50

Intelligence — 216

Dexterity — 130

Strength — 79

Wisdom — 76

Charisma — 49

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 58

Knifework — Level 42

Stealth — Level 26

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.

Saved Portals II — Select a location to “save” for future portals. Until your save point is moved, you may always open a portal here, even if it is beyond your current Local Portal range. Mana is used only upon opening the portal.

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].

Gentle Step — Passive. Your footsteps are dampened on even the hardest of surfaces. Reduce noise of movement by 80%.

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%