I roared as I arced my dagger at the closest bandit, my fury seeming to fuel the attack. A beam of glowing yellow-white light passed around me, soaring towards Arzak as Tokas yanked her back from the brink of death.

The bandit brought up their sword to block my attack, clashing against my dagger rather than flesh. I pushed into our tangled blades, holding my knife where it was, not so far from their neck. Close enough to their neck, in fact, that I activated Closed Reach once more. My Worldbending magicks bent reality further, pushing the knife another 8 inches towards my enemy. Knife point met flesh, and the bandit recoiled from our clashed blades. I seized the advantage, opening a portal beneath them, sending them tumbling through the air at my side. I yanked my blade around, using the enemy’s momentum to bury its sharp point deep in their chest.

Swordsman of the—

No. There will be time for notifications later. I pushed them out of mind, and turned to the rest of the attackers, feeling my rage and my strength burning through me.

I kept one eye on each of the bandits with curved blades, using them as a guide for where there would be platform underfoot, and I embraced my portals. Taking inspiration from Yusef’s own strategies, I blinked around the platform, stepping in and out of portals, releasing attacks before my enemies knew what hit them and then disappearing amongst the fog once more. With so many of these attacks having damage boosted by my Stealth Attack passive and my Execution ability, I found these enemies dropping like flies.

I really had grown. I really had become strong. But it had required embracing my strength and putting all qualms of violence aside to see how strong I’d really become. As the last of the bandit-ghosts faded away, I breathed deeply, pushing the oxygen through me, barely feeling the wound in my side—though it had been healed slightly by my charge through Tokas’s magicks.

‘Styk?’ Tokas asked, now crouched over the still-living Arzak.

I turned to her, becoming aware that I was grimacing, my eyes wide, but not quite caring. I’d almost watched a friend die. I was done with Yusef, now. It was time to end him. I didn’t know how we could, but I knew someone who might.

‘Lore!’ I roared through the mist, tone hard, demanding. ‘Lore, where are you?

As I put Tokas and Arzak behind me, the mist encompassed me once more, the sound of the tiefling’s magicks fading to a hush in a second. I heard nothing as I kept putting one foot in front of the other.

‘Lore, he’s killing us. You say you don’t want to watch any more friends die? Well, it’s happening either way!’

I staggered on through the fog.

‘You say Alenna is dead if you betray Yusef?’ I continued, shouting, remembering what he’d told me back in the tower. ‘We’re all dead if you don’t. Deal with that now, and Alenna later.’ I clutched my wound and finding my hand growing wet with thick red liquid.

I pushed on, conscious that I was leaving a trail of blood behind me. Tokas’s healing had been focused on Arzak; if she’d closed my wound, then my attacks on the bandits had opened it again.

‘Lore!’ I shouted. ‘Lore!’

‘He’s not here,’ I heard Val shout through the portal relays. ‘He’s not—’ She cried out as an attack landed on her. But I couldn’t help her when I didn’t know where she was.

‘Val?’ I asked, drawing a breath.

‘I’m OK. For now. Find Lore.’ Her reply was staggered, as though speaking for too long at one time was causing her pain.

‘Lore!’ I shouted again, then thought of the relays. I sent one of my remaining, orbiting relays out into the fog, and I shouted some more. ‘Lore, do you hear me? Do you bloody well hear me? We’re dying. It’s slow, but we’re dying. We need you. We need you now.’

‘I’m here.’ The voice was quiet, but steady. He wasn’t hurt, just overwhelmed.

‘Follow the relay,’ I said, then urged it back towards me. I heard his heavy feet hitting the platform. ‘We need to end him. Now. And we need your help doing it. What do you see, Lore? What future do you see where we escape this alive?’

‘Alenna dies,’ came the response. I heard him both through the portal and through the fog. He was growing closer. ‘If I help you, she dies.’

‘We’ll save her.’

‘Will we?’

I saw the big man emerge through the fog. ‘Look at me,’ I told him.

Lore met my eyes. He met my eyes with his own—soft, brown, gentle eyes. It was really him.

‘We’ll save her, Lore,’ I promised. ‘But right now, we need you to save us.’

He held my gaze, and I saw terror in those round eyes. The gift of prophecy was no gift at all; it was a curse. So many times had he foreseen deaths—some illusions crafted by Yusef, others true visions, and the line between the two having grown so blurred. There was something blood-curdlingly awful in that.

‘We’ll save her,’ I said, softly, one last time.

Lore nodded, then turned, his eyes glowing yellow.

‘Lore?’

‘This way.’ He moved with a confidence that the dense fog shouldn’t have allowed, with the edge of the wide platform potentially springing itself on us with every step. But then, there were those glowing eyes he had, yellow with the hue of Divination. Since we’d last spent time with him, Lore had learned to better control Niamh’s curse—that he could use it for this purpose showed that it wasn’t all bad.

I pressed after him, taking care to keep close, unwilling to put one foot wrong, even though I always had portals to get myself back on the platform, should the worse happen. But the worse did not happen, and soon we saw a familiar sight before us.

The strange altar stood before us, those glowing red lines illuminating the fog, and casting a crimson colour over Lore’s face. Through Val’s relay, I heard a cry. ‘Whatever you’re doing, better do it quickly!’ she said.

I met Lore’s eyes. We didn’t need to communicate any further; we both knew what had to happen next. Lore charged towards the altar, throwing himself into the air with his bane sword swinging in an arc above him. I opened a portal in front of him, in mid-step, launching him further into the air above the altar. As he fell, he brought his sword arcing down towards the amplifier of Yusef’s power.

Alone, it might not be enough. But I had one last trick up my sleeve.

As Lore fell through one pair of portals, I stepped through another, bringing myself into the air at Lore’s side. I reached out in the air, twisting my body around as we fell, and I put my hands around the pommel of Lore’s great sword—with its enormous size, there was room enough to spare.

It had taken me far too long to realise the great thing about my Closed Reach ability. It read, only: Bend reality to narrow the gap between blade and target by up to 8 inches.

At no point did it specify that it had to be my blade.

Bane Sword clashed against stone, and the moment I felt the two connect, I activated my Closed Reach ability. The great sword split the stone, creating a gash eight inches deep, causing the red glowing lines to brighten and fade and brighten and fade, more erratically with every second that passed.

Then, the altar exploded.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

All around us, the fog faded in a blink, revealing my allies and the great injuries they’d suffered battling both past and present.

A great, final, wave of red magicks erupted from the etched stone, throwing me and Lore backwards and through the air. Lore fell in a heap on the platform, while I arced through the air, relying on my portals to keep me from falling to my doom. As I blinked through the portal, I landed at Val’s side.

The witch was clasping her stomach, hurriedly healing a wound that had bled profusely over her exposed skin and torn clothes. I stepped over to support her, and looked around. Only one of the bandits was still standing, but that was a matter quickly seen to by Corminar, who was probably the least wounded of us, excluding Lore. Presumably he’d gone through his deep supply of potions to still be looking so well. Raelas was on the ground, bleeding but breathing and being seen to by Lambkin—notably not a healer—while Tokas still worked on Arzak’s once-horrific wound.

And that left only one more: Yusef.

The Player stood at the stairwell, snarling as he stared the lot of us down. He’d lost his advantage; the illusion was shattered. But the team were in no place to battle a Player, even one as weak as him. With only Lore uninjured, it would be a hopeless task.

Unless we could flip the situation on its head. I cast my eyes around, looking for the answer.

‘You lot just won’t stop, will you?’ Yusef spat. The man had once carried himself with a grand presence—one appropriate to his image as, for lack of a better word, a god. But now, the person before us, snarling and tired and spitting as he was, he revealed himself as just another man. A mortal, at least in this world.

Corminar raised his bow.

‘Do you know what you endanger?’ the Player shouted at the elf. ‘Do you know?’

‘We will end the Council’s scheme before—’ Corminar started.

‘Yes, yes, the scheme. But do you even know what that scheme is? Do you understand why it’s important?’

Lore took a step closer to Yusef, his sword still in his hand. This was enough to get the Player’s attention. ‘And you!’ he shouted at his temporary travelling companion. ‘Do you know what you’ve done? Alenna will surely die, now. That’s more blood on your hands.’

I could open a saved portal, get Lore back to Coldharbour in a moment, but the barbarian’s eyes were on Yusef.

‘Maybe we can still save her,’ the Player said. ‘Come. Join me. Defend me against these others, and I will help you with her.’

I heard this as a desperate bargain, but from the wide-eyed expression on Lore’s face, he heard it as anything but. The barbarian, slowly, reluctantly, sheathed his sword, and ambled over to Yusef’s side.

‘Lore, no,’ I breathed. ‘Really? He—’

‘I told you, Styk. I ain’t gonna watch another one of you die.’

Yusef smiled at this. With Lore still untouched, he was the strongest of us. With the barbarian at his side, we definitely wouldn’t be able to defeat him.

But then Lore made eye contact with me, and for a moment, I thought I saw something twinkling within them. He half-turned to Yusef. ‘What was that, you were about to say?’ the barbarian prodded him.

Suppressing a grin, I understood. With the flick of a hand behind my back, I cast my magicks.

‘About the scheme?’ Lore pressed the Player, stepping in front of him to keep the enemy’s attention on himself. ‘Maybe they should know. Maybe they’d stop chasing us then.’

Yusef, straightening his back and regaining a posture more typical of the man—and more in keeping with his image—smiled. ‘The scheme? Sure, I’ll tell you. It’s simple. Our Ascended World is dead. Let’s not mince words, especially as everyone here knows that. When it died, we were all forced into the games—or, worlds we created as a game, at least. Worlds formed of powerful magicks that only accelerated the destruction of our home.’

‘A game?’ I repeated. ‘Our existence, our world is a game to you? We’re alive! Living, breathing creatures in a living, breathing world! If you cut me, don’t I bleed?’

Yusef shrugged. ‘Well, yes, but it’s not real blood. Not in the way that mine is. Your blood was created by magicks; ours, with the birth of the universe, evolving over millennia. You are… a lower lifeform.’

Well, that’s a pretty cut and dry way of looking at it.

‘And these worlds…’ the Player continued, ‘they turned out to be only a temporary measure. There are only so many, and over the decades… we have died in so many. For some members on the Council, this is the only world left to them. For others, myself included, we are alive in only a handful. These worlds aren’t enough. They could never be enough.’

‘So, what’s the solution?’ Lore asked, pushing the Player for information. We were nearly there. So close now. We just needed a little more detail to seal the deal.

The Player smiled; he took great delight in this scheme, it seemed. ‘Create a new world. Use the magicks of all those other worlds we created to make a new world, one in which we are immortal, and can live out eternity in peace. Not all can come with us, only those surviving members of my kind and a select few locals. That’s what you miss out on, you see. If you stopped hunting my Council, maybe we could reach a deal. Maybe you could join us in heaven, rather than being left here, in a dying world.’

Nobody said anything, letting these words linger in the air for just a moment. This was it. We just needed one final push.

‘So we could buy our way into this new world?’ Lore asked. ‘But you’ll take all your followers with you, right?’

Yusef cast his head back and laughed. ‘Take them with me? No. They’ll stay in the crumbling, magick-stripped hellhole we leave behind.’

It was Lore’s turn to laugh. He stepped away from the Player’s side, ambling back towards me and Val, and he smiled at Yusef. Though I was exhausted, I couldn’t help but join in; there was something infectious about it. And then Corminar, and Val, and even Lambkin began to laugh, all because they knew one thing.

They knew the job was done.

Because, of course, it wasn’t just my relay portals that transmitted sound. All my portals did, now. Everyone in hearing range had heard Yusef’s admission, his truth about the ascended world and the fate of his people—but so too had all those the other side of the saved portal I’d opened two minutes earlier, behind Yusef. So, too, had all those devout cultists the Player had left behind on Coldharbour’s main plaza.

Thousands of them. All staring at the portal that had appeared before them. All silent, because they dare not interrupt the man they worshipped. All hearing Yusef’s plain and simple truth: that he’d lied to them. That he’d told them a great and terrible lie.

A moment too late, Yusef turned. He saw the portal. He saw through the portal, and he realised what he’d done. I took great delight in his smirk fading, in his eyes widening.

From Coldharbour’s dusty streets, the cultist horde charged.

"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%