‘Alright,’ I said, wiping the blood from my blade and returning to the fallen Player, who had Lore’s foot on his torso. ‘We talk.’

‘Where’s my team?’ the injured Player asked, looking up at me… and at the bloodied dagger.

‘One of them dead. Two of them accepted the deal.’

‘Deal?’

‘A simple one: if I hear their names again, we track them down and kill them. It’s not their fault they fell in with a Player; how are they to know you’re not the gods you pretend to be?’

Corminar coughed pointedly.

‘Cor’s right. That’s becoming less and less of an excuse. After Coldharbour, people are figuring out what you are, you know. Especially you Council members. There shouldn’t be any more repeats of that Dawnwood incident. Try raising an army now and you’re more likely to get stabbed in the back than take a city for yourself.’

‘You knew Niamh?’ the Player asked, and then his eyes widened. ‘Ah, you’re—’

‘The people who killed her, yeah,’ I replied. Val and I high-fived. This was something we were doing of late, and I wasn’t quite sure about it just yet.

The Player gulped. ‘Perhaps we, too, can make a deal? I only have three worlds left to me, you see, and if I die in all of them…’

‘You’ll be forced back to the world you came from?’ Val asked. ‘The one you destroyed, like you want to destroy this one?’ When the Player hesitated, my wife added, ‘Yeah. We’ve done our homework.’

Arzak appeared at our side carrying a glass bottle. Cider. Her and Corminar had got really into cider recently, after learning it was a delicacy of the Sundorn. The climate in this part of the world was perfect for growing apples, and that wasn’t just a marketing exercise; I’d tried them for myself. Of the five of us, Lore was the only one who wasn’t a fan, and the mere mention of cider was starting to stress him out.

‘Maybe after?’ Lore suggested.

The Player’s eyes bulged. ‘You’re going to drink while you kill me?’

Val reached out a hand to take a cup of cider from Arzak. ‘We’ve tried Player-killing sober. It’s not that fun.’

‘So you do mean to kill me? That’s why you’ve tracked me down, these past two weeks?’ the enemy ranger asked.

‘Yep,’ I replied. ‘Or, as you say, we could strike a deal.’

The Player hesitated for only a second. ‘Tell me. What is it you want?’

‘We hear you can remove curses.’

The enemy’s eyes narrowed, then passed over each of us in turn. ‘One of Niamh’s making, I assume? That always was her speciality. Which of you is it?’

Nobody spoke, but enough of us must have looked at Lore to give the Player his answer. The enemy looked up at the man with a boot on his chest.

‘She made me see the future,’ the barbarian said.

‘That… isn’t much of a curse. It’s more blessing than curse.’

‘It is when it gives you crippling headaches,’ Val said, on Lore’s behalf. ‘When you can’t always tell the present from the future. When it makes your ears bleed.’

‘Bleeding ears? I suppose that isn’t a good sign.’ The Player looked up at Lore once more. ‘So that is the deal? I remove the curse, and you let me go?’

I nodded. ‘That’s the crux of it, yeah. Is that a deal or not?’

‘I would shake on it, but…’ the Player gestured to Lore’s foot on his chest.

‘Lore, let him up. And take those arrows out.’

‘I suppose you will heal my wounds?’ the enemy ranged asked.

‘We will not.’

‘Fair enough.’

Arzak shook the cup of cider to get Val’s attention. ‘You want this?’

‘After,’ Lore said again, and his tone was so unlike his typical gentle demeanour that Arzak actually listened. She withdrew the cup.

Once freed from his pinned position, the Player looked up at the barbarian towering over him. ‘If you would… crouch, for me?’ When Lore took a knee, the enemy ranger placed his hands on the side of Lore’s temple.

‘No business that is funny,’ Arzak growled at him.

‘Funny business,’ I corrected her.

‘Is same thing.’

We watched on, hands on weapons, as the Player got to work, blue magicks billowing out from his fingertips and soaring around Lore’s head. My own hands itched to draw my blade, to slash the man’s throat should he hurt Lore. But Lore gave no sign of pain or hurt.

‘Everything going OK in there, Lore?’ Val asked.

The big man offered her a reassuring smile and a thumbs-up.

Moments later, without drama or fanfare, the Player removed his hands from Lore’s head.

‘You’ve done it?’ I asked.

‘Kind of.’

‘What mean, kind of?’ Arzak asked, hand noticeably reaching toward her sword.

‘I mean…’ The Player stood back, and my fingers twitched, but he made no effort to run. ‘Niamh’s ability with traps and curses far outweighs my own.’

‘Outweighed,’ Corminar corrected him.

‘Outweighed, right. She was the strongest of us in this regard. I couldn’t remove the curse…’ The Player gulped when Arzak drew her blade further. ‘But I could hide it from him.’ Arzak sheathed her blade once more, and the Player cautiously turned back to Lore. ‘You won’t notice it’s there. No headaches, no time confusion, no injury… and no visions. As long as you don’t go picking at the barrier I have placed inside, then you’re as good as free. That’s the best that I can do.’

I kept my gaze on the Player, looking for any signs that he was lying. The Player was nervous, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, but perhaps that could be explained by the threat of what would happen if he failed.

Val’s attention was on the barbarian instead. ‘How’s it feel, Lore?’

Lore tilted his head from side to side, eyes looking upward and deep in thought. We watched him for perhaps a minute or two before finally Val—of course—could wait no longer.

‘Lore?’ she verbally prodded him again.

‘I think it’s gone. Or… hidden, like he said. He’s done it.’

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

The Player released a loud sigh of relief. ‘There, see? I’ve done it, so I’ll just be on my way now, right?’

In response I held up my index finger—the universal signal for “Wait one minute there, because I have another surprise for you.” ‘Val?’ I asked the woman at my side..

‘Ready,’ came the reply.

I pulled the Sisyphus Artifact out from around my neck, and placed it against the enemy’s heart.

‘What’s this? What are you doing?’ the Player asked, eyes widening once more.

‘We said we’d let you go. We didn’t say you’d be… entirely unharmed.’ I looked to Val. ‘Just like we practised.’

‘We’ve done this before, husband.’ When she said the word like that—in a pointed, irritable tone—it wasn’t quite as romantic.

‘Yeah, and one of those times it killed the woman, didn’t it?’

Val shrugged. ‘No great loss.’

‘What do you mean it killed the woman?’ the Player demanded. ‘What are you doing to me? I held up my end of the deal!’

‘Just something we’ve figured out over the past couple of months. A way to get a little more use out of this artifact. It brings you back to life, you know. That’s very handy—trust me, it’s saved me three times now. But it turns out you don’t just have to use it on yourself, you can use it on others, too. Now, normally when I bring myself back to life, I choose to keep all my progression. But in your case…’ I trailed off; even an idiot could see where this was going.

‘In my case what?’

I sighed, considered answering but ultimately decided that it didn’t matter. ‘Ready when you are, Val.’

At this signal, my wife blasted the enemy with her latest ability, green bolts of magicks extracting the life from him. And making him scream a fair bit. It was a slow, painful death, but it was the best way to not go overboard on the killing. That time we’d killed the woman for good? We’d killed her, brought her back to life, and then she’d immediately died again because she had a dagger through her heart. Our mistake.

When Val felt the last of the life leave the Player, she snapped a hand to my shoulder. Her Witchcraft magicks flowed through me and into the artifact in my grasp, activating it. It was by chance that we’d managed to manually activate it before—I’d got in the way of one of Val’s attacks—but it opened up a whole new world to us. We understood, now, the Sisyphus Artifact’s source of power. It was an old and powerful form of Witchcraft.

The man gasped as the artifact brought him back from the brink of death, eyes widening so much I thought they might fall out. I took a step back and pushed the artifact back down under my shirt.

‘How’s that feel, buddy?’ I asked him. ‘All good?’

The man held his arms out in front of himself, looking at them. ‘I’m… I’m… I’m level 1!’

‘Correct.’

‘I’m level 1! How do you expect me to survive in this world?’

‘Try identifying things,’ I told the Player. ‘That’s how I got back on track.’

‘The Council will kill me! I’m useless to them!’

Val didn’t even seem to try to suppress her smirk. ‘Sounds like a you problem.’

I’d given thought to killing these Players anyway, even if they showed remorse. After all, we’d let the Councilman go all those months ago and it had caused us no end of misery. And every upgrade I could get to my Sisyphus Artifact was more experience in my pocket—even if it only came into effect when I died. But indiscriminate killing when there was a valid alternative was the sort of thing the Council did, and I was determined to show Val that I wasn’t like them. Even if their blood did run through my veins.

‘Well?’ Corminar said to the level 1 Player, eyebrows raised. ‘What are you waiting for?’ He urged the man away with his hands.

‘You want me gone? Just like that?’

‘What are you sticking around for?’ Val asked. ‘We’re not throwing you a party. In fact, if you keep annoying us, we might be forced to—’

‘I’m going! I’m going!’

None of us said a word as we watched the Player fleeing into the distance, jumping at the howl of a distant wolf.

‘Might be good as dead anyway,’ Arzak noted.

I shrugged. ‘That’s up to him. Cider?’

‘Absolutely.’ The orc handed me a cup and then began pouring another, which she handed to the eager Val.

But Lore stood up, strided over, and slapped the cup of cider out of Val’s hand.

‘Hey!’ the witch protested.

‘That perfectly good cider!’ Arzak added.

Lore gritted his teeth together and shook his head, his shoulders tensing for a moment before he finally sighed. ‘I wanted you to find it out for yourself,’ he said. ‘Thought it was only right. But I can’t take it anymore.’

‘Lore, what in Alterra are you talking about?’ Corminar asked.

‘The visions. I saw it a long while back.’ He looked to Val. ‘You’re pregnant,’ he said.

Everyone froze. Myself included.

Val and I looked to one another, trying to feel out each other’s emotions on the subject. But I knew from the work we’d done over the past couple of months that guessing was a fool’s errand; it was much better to communicate.

‘Val,’ I said. ‘How are—’

Arzak stepped forward and knocked the cider from my hand too. ‘If she not drink, you not drink. Only fair.’

Maybe it was better we spoke in private.

"Styk"

Level 24 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 68

Intelligence — 285

Dexterity — 188

Strength — 102

Wisdom — 92

Charisma — 76

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 77

Knifework — Level 59

Stealth — Level 33

Needlework — Level 31

Abilities:

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 III — Passive. Portals can now be spawned within non-sentient objects. Doing so slices through all objects except those specifically imbued with Worldbending protections.

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.

Titan Husk — Warp your flesh to withstand all physical damage effects, including fire, frost, lightning, poison, and corruption.

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.

Needle Dart II — Launch needles through minimised portals. Can be targeted to any location excluding living beings. Uses mana per use.

Stab IV — Put your weight behind your wielded blade and force the tip through all but the toughest hides and armour. Damage scales on [STR]. Damage increased by an additional [+100%].

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].

Etched Blades — Etch spells into the sides of your blades, giving you the ability to activate said spell on a successful hit.

Stealth Attack IV — Passive. 300% 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].

Quality Cloth Armour — Craft a cloth armour of higher quality than materials and time should allow.

Enchantment-Ready — Passive. Light armour you craft can be enchanted.

Active Effects:

Legacy of Sisyphus:

XP gain increased by +1,900%