‘And you think I give out information for free, do you?’

We’d finally reached Birrow and asked around for directions to the supposed magical artifact expert, only to get raised eyebrows from everyone we asked. The problem wasn’t that nobody knew him so much as they knew too much of him. Apparently he was a bit of a scourge on the town, between summoning monsters and accidentally exploding buildings—all things that had been caused, it was said, by the artifacts he was inspecting.

As such, a certain member of our group—no, actually, I’ll name him; it was Lore—was a bit apprehensive when we entered the artifact expert’s small rickety house, and even went so far as to jump when the bells above the door chimed. Val, not at all apprehensive, had told the old man we’d found inside what we were after, and that was what had resulted in the aforementioned response.

‘We have coin,’ Val said.

‘Not huge amounts of it, though,’ I added. It wasn’t strictly true, but I already had the impression that the man in front of us would state extortionate rates if he knew we’d pay them.

‘I do not deal in coin…’ the old man said, sat behind a grand old wooden desk, paying most of his attention to a huge books he gripped in leather hands. He was surrounded by yet more books—quite a collection, in fact—though these were outnumbered by what I could only describe as “trinkets”, including a little brass model of a sheep. Lore had his eye on this one.

‘Right. OK. So what do you deal in, then? Silver? Antique plates?’

‘Favours,’ the man said.

‘What?’

Val looked to me. ‘If you’re after sexual fav—’

‘Stop telling people I deal in sexual favours!’ I interrupted.

The sorcerer shrugged. ‘Sorry,’ she told the old man. ‘Can’t help you.’ After a moment of pause, she turned to Lore. ‘Unless…?’

Lore held her gaze, and slowly shook his head.

‘Nope, you’re out of luck.’

‘I ask not for favours of sordid kinds,’ the artifact expert said. ‘But I will require of you a great debt. A quest, in fact. One so demanding that I do not expect all three of you to return to me—at least not… alive. Should such a payment be too much of you, I understand, but know this: never will you receive the information you—’

‘Alright, cut to the chase, grandpa,’ Val interrupted. ‘What’s this quest? What do you want us to do?’

‘I wish for you to…’ the old man paused for effect, then suddenly picked up a stack of books from behind him, plonking them onto the desk. ‘...return these library books.’

‘Return… library books?’ Val asked.

Sharing the sorcerer’s confusion, I picked up the stack of books and leafed through them, reading aloud their titles. ‘Magicks Through The Ages, Ten Ways To Defeat A Wounded Murlock, Miss Feather’s Great Delights…’

The old man hurriedly took that book out of the pile. ‘Oh, not that one, that one’s mine.’

‘I don’t get it,’ I said, putting the books down where they were.

‘No, me neither,’ Val added. ‘What’s the catch?’

‘If you think this quest too great an ask, then…’ the artifact expert trailed off forebodingly.

‘No, we’re not saying that, we’re saying…’ Val sighed. ‘OK, you win. We’ll complete this great quest for you. Where’s the library?’

‘The other end of town.’

* * *

Our “great quest” took us on a journey that lasted all of, maybe, five minutes—and that was including waiting for Val to finish looking in a shop window at a dress that she described as having “almost enough pockets”. As far as quests go, I hadn’t been on one that required so little travel time since my father sent me on a “quest” to steal the neighbour’s jewellery.

The library itself was a surprisingly grand old building, and I had to guess—from the comparative age of the architecture—that the rest of the town was built around it. We entered through large double doors, into an atrium that itself was larger than most inns and contained bookshelves fully stocked, each about three Arzaks tall. Dwelling amongst the stacks were zero patrons, and a small handful of librarians. At least, I thought they were librarians; having never stepped foot in a library before, I was only basing this assessment on a stereotype—they were all old, wearing dusty clothes, and looked ready to throttle anyone who dared speak.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

‘Looking to return some books!’ Val dared to say, loudly and without a care in the world.

Surprisingly, nobody immediately sought to kill her, though the glares that each of the librarians gave her came close to doing the trick. Of the three librarians, only one of them seemed willing to follow up on Val’s request.

A woman in black robes—to the others’ grey—sighed, placed down a stack of books she was apparently sorting, and then walked over to the front desk, where we were standing. She held out her hand expectantly. ‘Well?’

Val raised her eyebrows and made a face that I recognised as one of “trying not to stick her tongue out at someone”, then handed the books over to the librarian.

The woman placed them down on the table, and turned to their inside covers. There, in a language I did not understand, was what looked like a list.

‘Hmm…’ she said.

On the next book, she did exactly the same thing.

‘...just as I thought…’

We waited patiently—well, semi-patiently; Val was tapping her foot—for the librarian to finish, and when she did so it was with the thud of covers being closed.

‘You do know that these books are two centuries overdue?’ the librarian asked.

‘Nope,’ I said.

‘Do I look that old to you?’

‘The other guy didn’t either, to be fair,’ Lore added. At a disapproving look from Val, he added, ‘...but still much older than you?’

‘There is a penalty for such a delay in returning these books,’ the librarian said, taking a step back from the front desk. ‘You have incurred the ultimate late fee, in fact: death.’

Me and the two Slayers blinked at her, trying to work out if this was some strange librarian form of humour. There was no sign of a smile.

‘Death?’ Lore asked. ‘What kinda library is this?’

‘Is that a pun? Like on “late”?’ I put in, feeling that this was the most pressing concern in this moment.

‘Yeah, that feels like a stretch,’ Val added. ‘Late? Late fees? I just don’t see it.’

‘This is a weird way to run a library,’ Lore continued, apparently mulling over their business practices.

‘Agatha!’ the librarian in black shouted, and one of her colleagues poked her head around a bookshelf.

‘Yes?’

‘We have a two-century return,’ the woman apparently in charge said. ‘Many two-century returns, in fact.’

The other librarian nodded, and ran off amongst the bookshelves once more.

‘You do know that I’m not the one who borrow these, right?’ Val asked. ‘You don’t seriously believe I’m over two hundred years old.’

‘Why would I not? I’m four hundred,’ the librarian replied.

Val hesitated, looking the woman up and down. ‘You have to give me your skincare routine.’

‘I must give you nothing, except death.’

‘Very dramatic,’ Val replied. ‘Are we really gonna keep pretending you’re gonna kill me for returning some late library books? Ones that I didn’t even borrow?’

‘Val…’ Lore said nervously.

‘They’re not gonna kill us, Lore,’ Val said to him, and then turned back to the librarian. ‘Look. We picked these up from—’

A ball of ice shot across the library, passing the head library by a hair’s breadth, and missing the three of us only because we dived out of the way just in time. Across the library, the woman who the head librarian had summoned was grasping an old book in her hands, both her pages and her eyes glowing.

‘OK,’ Val admitted. ‘Maybe they are gonna kill us. Styk? Lore?’

‘On it,’ Lore replied.

"Styk"

Level 8 Novice Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 16

Intelligence — 65

Dexterity — 23

Strength — 36

Wisdom — 23

Charisma — 0

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 15

Knifework — Level 15

Identification — Level 8

Stealth — Level 5

Abilities:

Slice — Slice the enemy for physical damage worth weapon’s base damage and additional damage scaling on [STR].

Stab II — Put your weight behind your wielded blade and force the tip through tougher hides and armour. Damage scales on [STR], increased by an additional 20%.

Closed Reach — Bend reality to narrow the gap between blade and target by up to 8 inches. Uses mana.

Local Portal II — Create a portal to another location within current range of sight or within a ten yard radius. Uses mana/second.

Portal Slice — Passive. Portals can now be spawned within non-sentient objects. Doing so slices through all objects that are not reinforced by magic.

Ash Husk — Convert your flesh to ash, strengthening it against flame for ten minutes. Gain 50% resistance to fire attacks.

Stealth Attack — Passive. 50% boost to damage when unnoticed by enemy.

Basic Identification — Discover basic attributes for a particular object or person. Ability scales with [WIS] + [INT].

Active Effects:

Legacy of Sisyphus:

XP gain increased by +400%