I dodged another flaming card as the nearest fire spirit launched everything it had at me, and charged the creature. It flailed out with one limb, and I leaped to one side just in time. The flames passed over me, tickling my skin but doing no damage, and I twisted around the creature just as it swiped at me once more. Now behind the creature, I launched into a Stab, and another, and another, striking as quickly as possible before the surprisingly slow spirit turned to attack once more.

As it swung both fiery arms towards me—apparently taking no chances that I would step aside to avoid one arm—I opened a portal behind me and stepped backwards through it. As I disappeared through it, I reached my right arm to my belt and drew a throwing knife, before launching it at the enemy’s head. I hit square and true, and the impact knocked the spirit’s flaming bonce backward. I let the portal close before it could reach through it.

Around me, the rest of the team had leaped into battle. Arzak and Lore had charged through the entrance, the porch apparently having still been stable enough to support their weight after all, and were already swinging their combined three blades. Of the other four fire spirits, two were currently occupied by the two newest visitors, while Corminar and Val dealt with another, darting around the enemy to avoid being burned. This left one still untouched at the far side of the room, and its red gaze seemed locked upon Val. I would need to deal with this spirit quickly if I was going to intervene.

I was already itching to open that Saved Portal I’d just set, but I could only use that trick once. A few fire spirits we could manage. But a Player? When you fought a Player, you’d be a fool to think it was a guaranteed win. I put that idea to one side as the first fire spirit turned to face me, then roared.

As before, its roar was a dragon-like rain of fire—an attack that my active Titan Husk ability meant I could withstand. But Corminar and Val, right behind me? They could not.

I opened both sets of portals in front of me and made my body as big as possible to block my friends from the attack. The fiery licks erupted from the other side of the portal, back at the enemy’s rear. Unfortunately, they went unnoticed; the fire spirits were immune to the effects of fire, as you might imagine.

But that was far from the only trick up my sleeve. I didn’t stop for a beat, instead closing the portals once more and launching myself upon the enemy. I activated my Knifestorm ability, peppering the enemy with lashes of my knife, and doing enough damage that the spirit’s form seemed to dim, its fire on its way to going out.

I next activated my Portal Relay ability—ten small-scale portals which officially were used to communicate sound between team members. Once they were assigned to someone, the portal would float around their head until I turned the spell off. One thing I’d noticed recently was that I could assign all ten to one target, and then they’d have ten very annoying small portals spinning around them. That’s exactly what I did here.

The enemy spirit tried to bat the portals away, but of course, this was a futile effort. Though the fire spirit could shift each relay away momentarily, half a second later they were floating around its head once more. While it was distracted, I moved in, putting all my weight behind another Stab attack, and following it up by activating my Closed Reach ability, so that the blade sunk deeper into the enemy’s torso of fire.

It howled at the pain, while the wound itself seemed to hiss like the sound of water over a dwindling fire. I growled as I twisted my dagger further, and this was enough—the spirit faded away to nothing.

Fire Spirit defeated!

Knifework — +1,750xp

Worldbending — +1050xp

I turned immediately towards the last of the enemies—the one that was at this very second flinging a flaming limb at Val—and I opened a portal in front of it. The spirit’s momentum carried it through the portal, appearing at my side and away from my wife, who had her hands in front of her as though about to cast a spell.

‘Styk!’ the witch shouted. ‘What are you doing? I had it!’

‘So? I was helping you.’

‘I don’t need your help! I can look after myself. Why do you always—’

‘Remember what the book said?’ I shouted to her. ‘Use your “I feel…” statements!’

‘I feel like you need to stop talking about that bloody book! Not all relationship advice can be contained in one book.’

The fire spirit swept its blistering arm towards me once more, and I ducked under it, spinning around once before Stabbing my dagger deep into its torso. ‘Take it seriously!’ I shouted back to my wife.

‘I feel like you think I’m this fragile thing that needs protecting all the time. Like a flower, or a butterfly. Or a sandwich that Lore’s spotted.’

‘Hey!’ Lore protested. ‘I feel like you shouldn’t be bringing me into this.’

‘See,’ I said, wrenching my dagger down to cut a gash in the fire spirit’s molten side. ‘Lore’s got it and he didn’t even read the book.’ The spirit howled with pain before sweeping its fiery leg out towards me. I wasn’t quick enough to react, and the limb knocked me to the ground—though the Titan Husk ability stopped it burning me. I opened a portal beneath me so that instead of hitting wooden floor, I stumbled back to my feet just behind the enemy Val was fighting.

Unnoticed by this particular enemy, I used my Execution ability and Stealth Attack passive to deal huge damage in my attack to the back of the creature’s head. It began to hiss just as the other one had, but before it could really even get started, the fire deformed.

Fire Spirit defeated!

Knifework — +1,400xp

Knifework increased to level 60!

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

Ability selection unlocked

Select an ability from the list below…

…

Stealth — +1,300xp

Worldbending — +650xp

‘Ugh!’ Val cried out. ‘Stop protecting me!’

‘We’re a team! That’s what we do!’ I turned back to the spirit I’d just escaped. At the other side of the living room, Arzak finished off another enemy while Lore and Corminar contended with the last of them.

‘Then protect the others too,’ the witch exclaimed.

‘They’re doing just fine.’

‘So was I! They’re fire spirits, not Players. I can handle a little—’ Val was cut off by the other enemy charging at us. The spirit roared once more, a stream of flames spewing forth from its mouth.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Instinctively, I opened a portal beneath Val that threw her over to Arzak’s side—something that I’d probably have to stop doing once she got a little further along in the pregnancy—and then wrapped both arms in front of my face to shield it from the flames. These enemies were simple creatures, knowing only fire as a means to attack. That I was unburnable didn’t seem to occur to them, as they kept attacking me in the very same way.

That was the logic running through my head when I turned my back on the creature to continue bickering with Val. ‘What sort of partner would I be if I didn’t try to—’

The fire spirit wrapped its fiery arm around my neck, squeezing tight. I gagged. Gasped for air. Flailed around blindly with my knife.

‘Oi!’ Val shouted at the creature, an expression of pure anger warping her usually attractive features. ‘Get off my husband!’ She reached both hands forward, and an arc of green lightning shot forth from each of them, a greater version of the spell than I’d ever seen before. The magicks crackled around me, shifting past me as it did me no harm. But the fire spirit wasn’t so lucky. It cried out as the life was yanked from it by Val’s spell, draining within seconds.

I gasped as the arm around my neck lost its orange form, and only then did Val let the magicks go. She dropped to her knees, her face paling with exhaustion.

‘You know I’m not the one who’s pregnant, right?’ I said.

She flared her nostrils as she looked up at me. ‘I feel like you need to shut up,’ she said, but seconds later a smile crossed her face, one that she couldn’t suppress.

At the same moment, Corminar and Lore landed a killing blow on the fifth and final spirit, the form hissing as it died.

‘Any injuries?’ I called out.

‘Yes,’ Lore said, pulling a box of Corminar’s leftover pie out of his pocket. ‘They burnt my food.’

‘Any actual injuries?’ When nobody replied, I nodded. ‘Good. Nice work, all—particularly me.’

‘Ugh.’ No points for guessing who said that.

‘I see no sign of the Player,’ Corminar said. ‘Perhaps she has moved on? Perhaps Arzak’s informant gave us outdated directions?’

‘Probably,’ I replied. ‘But we’re here now; we might as well look around. Maybe she’s hiding in a cupboard somewhere.’

‘Look around. Check,’ Val replied, and the five of us scattered, scouring the remains of the house from top to bottom. Val and I remained on the ground floor, actually checking the cupboards, just in case—even though it would be the first time a Player had stooped so low as to hide from us. Lore went upstairs to the more fire-damaged floor, while Corminar and Arzak disappeared down a trap door they’d discovered. I suspected that if the Player was anywhere in this house, they would be in the hidden cellar.

As I turned out, though, no such luck. ‘Just dusty farm tool!’ Arzak shouted up at us, before coughing. ‘Very dusty. But keep looking.’

I nodded, then turned back to Val. We were pretty much done down here; there were only so many places a woman could be hiding, particularly one as proud as a Player. She wasn’t exactly going to be hiding under the sink.

I took a quick moment to glance at my latest ability selection. There were only two options this time, it seemed, so it was something I could wrap up pretty quickly without the rest of the team realising I wasn’t helping.

Ability selection unlocked

Select an ability from the list below:

Option 1: Etched Blades II (Knifework) — Upgrade to Etched Blades. Etch spells into the sides of your blades, giving you the ability to activate said spell on a successful hit. Etched spells can be activated up to ten times.

Already I partially had my heart set on this option. My latest Knifework ability, the original Etched Blades, had been pretty good here and there, but the one limiting factor was that I could only activate the spell once. I’d had Val inject my dagger with her new life-draining magicks, and that had worked great! But then it was gone, just like that. If I could now use those magicks multiple times… well, that opened up a whole new world to me.

But there was the second option to review too.

Option 2: Summoned Blades (Knifework) — Use mana to summon a blade directly into your grasp. Uses significant mana per cast.

This one was tempting too—what knife user wouldn’t want essentially infinite blades on hand?—but ultimately, I knew it would be the lesser choice. With my Pocket World ability, I could already carry as many throwing knives as I could possibly need. That storage already had the best part of a dozen cheap throwing knives, gifted to me by those who knew who I was, and the truth of the Players we’d killed. So having the ability to summon knives wasn’t quite as useful as it sounded.

I opted for the first choice.

Ability upgraded — Etched Blades II

Etched Blades II (Knifework) — Etch spells into the sides of your blades, giving you the ability to activate said spell on a successful hit. Etched spells can be activated up to ten times.

Just as I locked it in, a voice cried out from upstairs.

‘You better come look at this!’

Raising my eyebrows to Val, I then turned and did as the barbarian suggested, hurrying up the staircase to find him in a bedroom—the one least touched by the fire. Lore was standing over a bedroll, hands on hips, looking down at it.

‘I take it there’s no chance the fire spirits needed a place to kip?’ I asked.

Val shook her head, then nodded over to the chair in the corner of the room. A pile of dirty clothes was stacked on top of it, complete with a silver locket. ‘They don’t tend to wear clothes or jewellery, either,’ she said. ‘Though I suspect they’re about as good at keeping on top of laundry.’

‘What find?’ Arzak asked, as she and Corminar hurried into the bedroom.

‘She’s sleeping here,’ I told her. ‘This Elinor.’

‘Then we set trap,’ the orc replied.

I nodded, and we got to work.

"Styk"

Level 24 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 68

Intelligence — 285

Dexterity — 190

Strength — 104

Wisdom — 92

Charisma — 76

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 77

Knifework — Level 60

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 II — Etch spells into the sides of your blades, giving you the ability to activate said spell on a successful hit. Etched spells can be activated up to ten times.

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%