‘Go,’ Corminar said to me, face paling, the fire spreading throughout the building behind us. ‘Go.’

‘But the—’ I started, gesturing to the flames.

‘We’ll handle it,’ Lore said. ‘Go.’

I nodded. We were on the same page; there was only one chance to stop the corruption before it claimed Ama’s life. ‘Raelas,’ I told the tiefling. ‘We’re portalling. Get ready.’ Without waiting for a reaction, I opened a portal beneath Ama, dropping her into the sky high above.

And then we ran. We sprinted through the streets of Coldharbour, opening portals beneath the tumbling Ama, magicking her back into the sky once more. Raelas opened portals at our sides so that we could traverse the city quickly, while I focused my own portals on the woman touched by malae. I considered using my Saved Portal once more, but this was a situation where it wasn’t helpful; its location on Coldharbour’s central plaza was about as far from Alenna’s surgery as we were. And, of course, it was surrounded by hundreds or thousands of cultists. For all their idiocy in worshipping Players, they didn’t deserve to be put at risk of being corrupted. Few—if any—deserved that.

And so on we went, Ama’s screaming having long since faded, but thankfully this was due to her getting used to falling rather than the corruption having spread too far already. From what I glimpsed as she tumbled towards the lower of the latest pair of portals, the corruption was still located only on her leg. Hopefully, we still had time. Hopefully.

It wasn’t long until we reached Alenna’s practice, and I opened the final portal facing upwards, not dropping Ama from a height but instead using the momentum to send her up into the air. At the peak of her flight, I whipped open another portal below her, so she only had to fall a couple of feet before she was on the ground.

Raelas was already knocking on the door of the surgery, pounding it with all her might.

‘What?’ a familiar voice cried when the door swung open, and Raelas replied to Alenna simply by pointing at Ama, on the ground outside.

The scientist’s face paled. ‘What happened? Was it…’

I knew what the rest of the question would be. Was it the corrupted man that she’d sent us after? Well, I wasn’t going to lie to her. ‘You can make it up to us by fixing her. Stop it spreading.’

‘She—’ Alenna started.

‘Do whatever you need to,’ Raelas interrupted. ‘Anything. As long as she lives.’

Alenna nodded glumly. ‘Wait there. Don’t touch her.’

For a few moments, I had to stretch out my arms to warn away the crowd that was forming. The crowd were interested in our portal magicks only; as soon as they saw Ama, they backed up. Fast.

Alenna stepped forth from the building again, this time wearing a thick apron and a face mask, and she chucked both me and Raelas an apron each. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘Bring her in.’

* * *

Alenna insisted on doing her surgery behind a curtain, though it seemed this wasn’t so much about protecting her secrets as it was about protecting us from the trauma of watching. When the other three—Lore, Corminar and Carle—arrived, they entered the room in silence that matched our own, and the five of us waiting without speaking for Alenna to enter once more.

At one point, I glanced over in Lore’s direction, and I saw his eyes glowing yellow once more. The visions were coming harder and faster than ever before. Not that you’d know without looking at him—he’d gone from talking about every single one to not mentioning them at all. Was this because their contents had changed? We knew he’d foreseen some of our deaths, and had worked secretly to avoid them, but what else was he not telling us? Was he seeing things even worse than that?

There was a knock on the door as we waited, and when nobody else moved, I dragged myself up from my perch to swing it open, expecting to have to tell people that the doctor was busy. But standing there, in the street, were two familiar faces—Val and Arzak.

‘Hey,’ Val said.

‘Lambkin say you here. We want talk.’

I stepped aside to reveal the rest of the team sitting, heads in hands or face pale, waiting for Alenna to be done. The other two members of the Slayers looked past me and one of them, at least, read the room.

‘We talk outside, maybe,’ Arzak said.

‘No, it can wait, Arz,’ Val said, glancing pointedly to the crowd of glum adventurers further into the building. ‘It can wait.’

The orc nodded. ‘Where you stay? Not with Tokas? We not stay with Tokas.’

‘No, not us either,’ I replied, semi-exasperatedly. ‘You don’t think we’ve forgiven her, do you? After all she did? It’s a means to an end, gotta take all the help we can get.’

Arzak opened her mouth, but I wasn’t in the mood for this to spiral into an argument.

‘We’re in the Crooked Well, towards the western side of town. You want me to show you the—?’ I started to ask.

‘We can find it,’ the witch replied. ‘We’ll… see you there?’

I nodded, then turned away, back towards the rest of the team. Only when I was sure Val was far enough away that she wouldn’t look back, I glanced back over at her, a heavy weight in my stomach.

The best part of another hour passed before Alenna finally appeared once more, pulling back the curtain to reveal Ama. The metal mage was pulling herself upright, and Lore’s scientist friend had to rush back over to help her.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

‘She’s… alright?’ Raelas asked, eyes blinking with disbelief. ‘She’s…’ And then she saw the corrupted leg—the corruption, and foot, sliced away.

‘I stop the spread,’ Alenna said. ‘Isolated the corruption, I think.’

‘You think?’ Lore repeated.

Ama brought her foot down to the ground, and instinctively tried to put her weight on a foot that wasn’t there. The woman grimaced, and for a second I had a moment of sympathy for her.

‘We’ll get you to a healer,’ I said. ‘Maybe Tokas can help, even.’

Corminar glanced at me, and shook his head once. Firmly.

‘Well, someone out there will be able to—’

Ama responded by raising one hand into the air. Metal surgical equipment around the room started to shake, then move towards the air in front of the mage. There, a ball of metal objects formed, shaking, then vibrating with an ever-increasing intensity. The metal began to glow before our eyes, bending and then melting entirely as Ama’s magicks heated it up. She whipped up her other hand to steady her magicks, Alenna having to hold the injured woman upright, and formed the molten metal into shape.

I realised what the shape was only moments before Ama shot it towards her injured limb—it was half of an artificial leg.

Ama screamed as the molten metal hit her skin, but so determined was she that she carried on, morphing the metal into a shape that bound itself to what remained of her leg. The screaming faded as the metal cooled, and everyone else in the room was too stunned to move, or to talk. Even Alenna, who was surely more familiar with this kind of stuff. The mage breathed deeply through the last of the pain, before pushing herself to her feet—one old, one new.

‘Good,’ she said, nodding.

Maybe Ama was a lot tougher than I’d given her credit for.

* * *

‘She did to herself?’ Arzak asked.

We were back in the basement of the inn we were staying in, flagons of ale in hands. Around my table sat Arzak, Raelas and Corminar, while Lore and Val sat at the bar. Carle was at Ama’s bedside upstairs while she got some doctor-prescribed rest. The two at the bar were talking in such hushed voices that I got the impression they were talking about me, but maybe that was just innate paranoia or having too large an ego.

‘Yep.’

‘Maybe need her on our team,’ Arzak said. ‘Can get rid of this one.’ She pointed to Corminar; he was the butt of the joke, this time.

‘Are we still one team, then?’ Corminar asked, as ever going straight for the most awkward and difficult to answer question.

Arzak staggered over her reply. ‘I… Is…’ She almost grimaced at the elf. ‘Maybe not answer for that, yet.’ I couldn’t help but notice she glanced at Val while she said this.

‘Then when?’ Corminar asked, apparently not willing to let the matter drop, despite how awkward it made the vibe at this table.

‘Don’t know,’ Arzak replied, and then—perhaps in desperation to change the subject—asked, ‘How?’

I furrowed my brow. ‘How what?’

‘How this Lenny save her?’

‘Alenna,’ Corminar corrected her.

‘She…’ I started to answer, but then realised I didn’t quite know. We’d seen the end result, the woman being down half a leg, where the corruption had taken hold, but we knew from prior experience that this wasn’t always enough. ‘I guess Ama was lucky?’

‘Hmm.’ The orc nodded approvingly. ‘She good. We have her on team too?’

‘Just how big a team are you after?’

‘Millions of us.’ Arzak smiled, as though envisioning it. ‘How is Needlework going?’

As the night grew dark, I caught up with Arzak and drank probably a tad too much beer. It should have been enjoyable, being able to spend time with an old friend—even if Val seemed to be painstakingly avoiding me—but there was something else casting a cloud over the affair. A thought.

Just what had Alenna done behind that curtain?

"Styk"

Level 20 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 50

Intelligence — 220

Dexterity — 130

Strength — 79

Wisdom — 76

Charisma — 49

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 59

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%