Val and I kept close to one another as we stepped through the fog, keenly aware how easy it would be to lose one another amongst this great illusion.

A battlefield blossomed into view.

It took me a moment to place it, considering it felt like so long had passed since we were there. But the clear blue waters of the bay, the towering trees, the magick traps exploding against the hulls of the invading ships… this was just as the siege of Sunalor had been. These distressing memories could only belong to one person; the elf who had watched his homeland fall.

‘Cor!’ I shouted over the din of a siege in progress. ‘Cor, where are you?’

Val and I kept our eyes on those charging around us, both elven and Goldmarch soldiers alike, as either could turn out to be a bandit in waiting. A group of elven soldiers ran to reinforce the part of the wall we were standing on, each of them passing through us as though we weren’t even there. Though, I supposed that we weren’t.

And there, along the wall, I saw him. ‘Cor!’ I shouted, waving at him. But this Corminar was busy leading troops, giving orders to a man who looked up at the trees towering overhead.

‘Styk, look,’ Val said, tugging on my sleeve. She pointed down from the wall to the ground outside the inner city, where Corminar—our Corminar—battled his failure. He released arrow after arrow in frantic haste, each of them passing through the soldiers of the Golden Empire unnoticed. Did he know already that there were real, tangible threats amongst these illusions, or was he simply reliving an old trauma and fighting for a different outcome?

I stepped through the vision of Sunalor’s inner wall, expecting to have to jump down to the other side, but the ground came up fast. There was no height difference at all in reality, and the illusion had needed to bend to reflect that. ‘Cor!’ I shouted, charging through the enemy soldiers, having to fight my body’s instinct to move around them with ever step, ‘Cor, there are bandits in—’

I collided heavily with one of the soldiers, and it caught me by surprise enough that I bounced off them, falling backwards to the ground. Before I could react, they had their curved blade swinging down towards me. The blade had just hit the flesh of my right shoulder when crackling lightning magicks soared forth from behind me. The enemy crumpled from the pain of the attack, and my elven friend, having witnessed this, pivoted to fire arrow after arrow into this soldier’s back—each of them, this time, hitting.

Val’s face appeared over me, and she held out an arm to pull me up. I used my left arm, not right, to grab her hand, and only when I was back on my feet did I look at my wound. It was bleeding, sure, but it could have been much worse if Val had been only half a second slower to react.

‘I’ll heal,’ the witch said. ‘No use you being—’

But at that moment, I spotted the eyes of one of the charging soldiers behind her. This man wasn’t looking up at the wall, like the rest of those in Goldmarch uniform; he was looking at Val. He’d seen her. As the soldier swung his blade, I yanked Val out the way of the attack, and brought my knife up with my injured arm.

The attack was weakened by my injury, but it helped that I’d managed to bury the dagger into the man’s stomach. As the man’s eyes bulged, I activated Closed Reach to bend reality and bury the knife even further, and I twisted, just for good measure. That, alongside a couple of well-placed arrows from Corminar, was enough to down the enemy.

Swordsman of the Desert Sons defeated!

Knifework — +2,100xp

Knifework increased to level 46!

Base Points Gained — +1 DEX, +1 STR, +2 Free Points (VIT/DEX/STR)

But there wasn’t time to celebrate this minor victory, because at that moment, Corminar roared with pain. Another bandit had made themselves known in the grand illusion, this time striking at the party member who relied on distance between him and his enemy—and therefore had little in the way of health or damage resistance.

I portaled to Corminar’s side, leaving it open for Val to join us, and hit the enemy with both a Knifestorm and a Closed Reach at the same time, figuring that there was nothing in the wording to say I couldn’t use both at the same time. The power afforded me by the flurry of attacks plus the bended reality, allowed me to hit the enemy multiple times, and deeply, too. Normally, I would have expected any of my knife attacks not to do enough damage to down an enemy, but this time… it worked. My strength really had grown fast over this past year and a half.

Swordswoman of the Desert Sons defeated!

Knifework — +2,350xp

Across the fake battlefield, lightning magicks roared out once more, and Corminar pivoted to fire an arrow at another bandit—one that Val was grappling with. As the third arrow put this enemy down, I heard a distant scream. A familiar voice. Raelas.

I met Val’s gaze, and the witch nodded. Her, Corminar and I charged across the battleground for a moment, before I remembered where we really were—on a platform suspended high in the air above the ground. I slowed the others down with a splayed hand gesture, and we proceeded hesitantly. Who knew if that scream was even real? Could that not have been part of Yusef’s illusion?

Even when I saw Raelas ahead of me, my questions weren’t answered for certain. Strange, warped images of Carle and Ama stood over her, terrorising her, each of them ten, maybe twelve feet tall.

‘You let us die,’ Ama hissed at Raelas. ‘That was your only job, and you failed. You’re alone, now. Alone for all eternity. You think your new travelling companions are your friends? No. They hate you for what you did. They’ll never care for you. Not like we did. And maybe that will save their lives.’

‘They’re not real!’ I shouted, waving desperately at Raelas. I knew from experience just how convincing these illusions could be; they didn’t just fool the eyes, they fooled the heart as well. ‘They’re not—’

And then Carle pushed his sword downwards, stabbing Raelas in the chest, clean through. He snapped his head towards us, snarled, and I saw his eyes. Yusef’s eyes. The two giants began charging at us.

I opened a portal for Val to step through to Raelas’s side—even with such a deep wound, Val’s Healing abilities seemed to have progressed enough that she might still save the tiefling. This left Corminar and I to deal with the giant Ama and Carle.

‘Cor! Ama!’ I shouted, pointing at the image of the woman who’d been corrupted. The elf understood my meaning; we knew Carle’s image was inhabited by someone who could do damage, but we didn’t yet know if Ama was the same. I allowed myself a sigh of relief when the elf’s arrow passed straight through Ama; it meant we could focus on fighting the Player.

Yusef was probably the weakest of the Players we’d battled, at least in terms of combat ability. His power lay instead in his grip he had on others, afforded him by his Illusion magicks. But even the weakest of Players would be a challenge for a mere ranger and worldbender. I scoured my brain for a plan, and with so little time to think, I circled back to the familiar: portals, portals, portals.

A second later, Yusef was upon me, his sword shimmering, revealing itself as one of the curved swords of the bandits rather than the one that Carle had used. As Carle’s image blinked, I opened a portal beneath myself, putting myself out of range of the Player’s attacks, and when I looked back… Carle’s eyes had changed.

I knew Yusef wouldn’t have great ability with the sword, but I knew that Yusef knew that I knew, too. But the one strength he did have was his illusions. Even a fool with a sword could do real damage if his target didn’t know an attack was coming. Fortunately, there was only one other figure around that Yusef could reasonably inhabit—Ama.

‘Cor! Watch out!’ I shouted, pointing to the giant metal mage. But I was a moment too late; Corminar dived out of the way of the tackling woman, but not before she got a hand around his ankle.

I suffered a flash of realisation, then: if I’d activated my Portal Relay earlier, we’d have been able to keep in touch more easily, using my portals to transmit sound. I activated the ability now as I charged at Ama-Yusef, flinging two of the tiny portals that came with the ability over to Val and Ama. The others, I kept orbiting me for now, at least until we could find the others.

I launched myself into the air with the aid of a pair of portals, and I gripped my dagger in two hands. As I soared down towards Yusef’’s back, I brought the knife arcing down in a stab. It surely wouldn’t be enough to severely hurt the man—he was a Player, after all—but it might have been enough to get Corminar free.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

As it happened, my knife tip met ground. Yusef had left Ama’s form amongst the billowing mist, and Corminar immediately wrenched his ankle free. That was the good news. The bad news was that we had absolutely no idea where Yusef was.

‘No,’ I heard Val say through her mini portal relay, ‘you don’t get off that easily. You have to live with what you’ve done.’ The healing going well, then. I released another of the miniature relays to orbit around Corminar, and as the elf staggered back to his feet, gathering himself, I heard the sound of…

…an army?

The noise of charging army grew louder and louder, and suddenly the first wave of Niamh’s invasion force was upon us. Corminar and I spun around, desperately searching for who among the illusions could deal us actual damage.

‘I…’ the elf said. ‘I don’t…’

We kept turning and turning, pushing our backs up against one another. As we turned, I lost track of Raelas and Val’s positions in the fog; rejoining them was going to need a little bit of luck. ‘Keep looking,’ I said. ‘He could be any one of—’

I cried out with pain as a knife caught my side, slicing a deep gash in the flesh. I grabbed it, pressing the flesh together, trying to stop the bleeding as much as possible. I looked for the person who’d dealt the damage, but they were already lost to the crowd.

‘Are you dead?’ Corminar asked.

‘No.’

‘Good.’ A hand came out at my side—one grasping a glowing vial. I took it from him without worrying about snatching. ‘It is a health potion. Dri—’ This time, it was Corminar’s turn to cry out.

But now I was ready. I turned the moment that the elf stopped talking, flinging my knife forward in a wild knifestorm. Most of my flails of my weapon met only air, but one—just one—hit. But that one cut was enough to tell reality from fantasy. I gritted my teeth through the pain of the wound in my side and pressed the attack, looking at the enemy’s eyes.

Yusef’s eyes.

‘It’s him!’ I shouted, and then activated Closed Reach as I swung my knife forward once more. The tip of the blade met the man’s flesh and he stumbled backwards. Though he didn’t cry out in pain, I could see a thin stream of blood running down his chest.

I’d hoped Corminar would join me in the attack, but I could see him on the ground, the damage he’d suffered being enough to down him. I threw the potion back to him, and in that split-second while I was distracted, Yusef disappeared amongst the charging soldiers once more.

‘Gods, damn it.’ If we could only land one hit at a time, then for all we knew, Yusef was simply healing himself. And if we kept accruing damage at this slow but steady rate, we could well all fall before the fight was done. We needed to think of something, and fast.

I looked back at Corminar, or where he’d been, and now I saw only figments and fog. Yusef had shifted the illusion between us, keeping us separately. Keeping us weak.

I touched my side, and hissed at the pain. The damage was deeper than I’d thought; I’d been powering through before. My movements would be limited, and without the ability to use my portals in this dense fog, I was going to be slow. I just had to hope Yusef didn’t take advantage of it.

I took a deep breath and pressed after him, part of me hoping that I’d stumble back across Val and Raelas, and the witch could heal me. I lashed out wildly at the soldiers, finding them all to be illusion, and conscious all the while that by pressing on at Yusef, I was leaving Corminar unprotected. I could only hope that he’d drunk that potion and was moving nimbly through the illusion, keeping himself out of harm’s way.

‘She’ll leave again,’ that voice said. My mother’s voice. I looked around for her visage, but found nothing. Still, I backed away from the direction in which I’d heard it. ‘You know she will.’

‘I know no such thing,’ I replied. ‘She’s sorry. I know she is.’

‘And that’s good enough for you?’

The answer was “yes”, but I wasn’t going to dignify this illusion of my absent mother with a reply; there were more important things going on. I heard blade battling blade amongst the oppressive, dense fog, and I pushed towards it.

A beautiful human woman stood at Arzak’s rear, standing back to back with her just as Corminar and I had done moments earlier. They fought off giant rockrats, the size of which I’d never seen before, though I could see that Arzak’s swords passed through the monsters without harming them. Only the woman at her side could kill the creatures.

‘Arzak!’ I shouted, and the orc snapped her body around to face me. ‘Away from her! She’s part of the illusion. She could be Yus—’

A sword point burst from her chest, and this sword very much wasn’t an illusion. The rockrats disappeared in a flash, and only the woman remained. A woman, I noticed, who sported a curved blade.

‘Arzak, no!’ I cried out.

At the same moment, the orc blinked down at the sword protruding out of her chest. ‘...El?’ she asked. Then she dropped to the floor.

I charged. I couldn’t do anything to heal Arzak’s severe wound, but I could at least stop this enemy from inflicting another. I burst into a knifestorm, this flurry of attacks being the most useful ability I had when I struggled to tell real from illusion, and my attacks struck flesh. The woman’s visage faded, revealing herself to be—of course—one of Yusef’s bandit thralls. Powered by fury, I stabbed and I stabbed and I stabbed, even when the woman was falling to the floor. Even when she was on the floor, I stabbed, before remembering myself.

I rushed to Arzak’s side, putting my hand over her chest, doing my best to stem the bleeding. But the wound was too deep. She needed healing, and she needed it now.

‘Val!’ I shouted. ‘Val! Here! Now! It’s Arzak! Val!’ I shouted myself hoarse, but pushed through the pain in my throat—it was hardly the worst thing going on right now.

The fog took shape around us, forming huts and forest, and it took me a moment to recognise it. Arzak’s eyes bulged as she blinked around at the image of the witchfinder village, back where we’d seen the “ghosts” trapped between worlds.

And those ghosts had their eyes upon us.

‘Val!’ I cried out some more. ‘Val, please! We need you.’

The ghosts stepped forward again. My eyes drifted to the curved blades in their faint hands.

‘Val!’

I couldn’t remove my hands from Arzak’s chest, or she’d die. I couldn’t defend myself. I could only watch as the ghosts approached, forcing me towards a dreadful decision: let Arzak die, or save myself.

The closest enemy hovered over me, savouring the moment before finally raising their curved blade.

‘Val!’ I shouted one last time, in vain.

Part of me wanted to remove my hands from Arzak, to save one life—my own—instead of the both of us dying. But another part of me—another more sentimental part—was stronger. If this was it, then I would stare my attacker down all the while.

‘Go on, then,’ I whispered.

The enemy swung their blade. And, with the sound of a clap, a bright red light blossomed behind them. The illusion of the ghosts shattered, revealing the bandits for what they were. All of them turned to face the woman who’d entered the fray.

Tokas.

‘I’m not Val, but I can save her.’

I nodded, removed my hands from the dying Arzak, and drew my blade.

"Styk"

Level 20 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 52

Intelligence — 227

Dexterity — 139

Strength — 84

Wisdom — 76

Charisma — 50

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 61

Knifework — Level 46

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].

Throw III — Throw blades at great speed towards your enemy. Deal considerable damage to armourless area, with addition damage scaling with [DEX] and [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.

Portal Relay II - Up to ten small-scale portals can now be positioned stationary to an entity, and used to communicate sound. In addition, your standard portals may be used to communicate sound.

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%