‘On it,’ Lore replied, and then he turned and started running away.

The library doors snapped closed, seemingly of their own accord, and a glowing rope bound them together, locking. A glowing line erupted around the perimeter of the building. Even I knew enough about magic to know that this was a ward; neither flesh nor spell was getting through that.

‘Lore, I meant fight!’ Val shouted.

‘Oh? I thought we could just run away.’ Another bolt of ice soared through the air, and Lore joined us in cowering behind the library’s front desk. The spell just about caught his hair, freezing it. He shivered. ‘Alright, I guess we should fight.’

‘You think?’ Val cried out as another ice ball smashed into the other side of the desk.

‘Strategy, quick,’ I interjected; there was one librarian firing spells at us, another one who surely soon would be, and a third out there somewhere—we didn’t have time to mess about.

Val looked to me. ‘We kill them, the magic lock fades. It’s the only way we get out.

‘Alright. Looks like they’re reading their spells from that book.’ I risked a glance over the desk and almost got hit in the face by a ball of ice. While I was peeking over, I saw that the chief librarian—did librarians have chiefs? Probably not—was moving to the bookcases, possible to pick up a spell book of her own. ‘Val, I’ll portal us to the ice one. Get ready.’

The sorcerer nodded.

‘And me?’ Lore asked.

‘Stop the other one from reading.’

‘Got it.’

I flung my hand over the top of the table, aiming in the rough direction of the air above the casting librarian, and opened the other beneath us. Val, Lore and I tumbled through, the barbarian catching himself on the edge and hoisting himself back up again with ease. I lost sight of him as Val and I fell through the portal and it snapped closed behind us.

Val was quick to move, conjuring up a gust of wind that pelted the librarian’s book and ripped it from her hands.

The aggressor stopped for a moment, eyes widening, and then dived to the floor to grab the fallen book.

‘Don’t let her—’ Val started.

But I was already moving, no Worldbending or Knifework required for this one, sprinting across the floor and kicking the book out of the librarian’s hands. She screamed with frustration, apparently unable to cast without a book to guide her, and that was the moment that the third librarian reappeared.

A ball of darkness floated across the room, bending the light around it and pulling loose objects—books and reading spectacles, mostly—towards its surface. This attack from the third librarian didn’t move as fast as the fireball, but I knew from prior experience that any shadow attacks like this had the potential to do serious damage.

‘Val!’ I shouted, pointing at the new attacker.

‘Yes, I’m trying!’ she cried back as she summoned a blast of wind at the librarian. But just before the blast hit the aggressor, the man read from his book and a shining light in the shape of a shield glowed into life before him, protecting him from Val’s attack.

‘Styk, he’s got a—’

‘Yes, I have eyes!’ I replied.

‘You literally just did the same thing to me.’

I ignored Val’s response and realised I was now forced to split my energies between the two librarians—the other one still being occupied by Lore. To my left, one librarian hurriedly crawled between the aisles of large shelving units towards the fallen book, which was about three feet away from her outstretched hands. And to my right at the end of this particular bookcases-lined corridor, the latest addition to the fight began speaking aloud from the heavy tome he held.

It was quick thinking time.

I drained some of my mana reserves by opening a portal beneath the fallen book and dropping it onto the head of the third librarian, who—while unhurt—was distracted from his spell-reading to instead go, ‘Ouch! What was…’ and look behind him. Only once he spotted the book on the ground did he returned to his reading, and before I knew it, there was another shadowball hurtling towards me.

I dived to the floor, narrowly missing the projectile flying overhead, and had another bright idea—I was full of them today. I opened a portal beneath the fallen book once more, and this time portaled it into the air above me, snatching it for myself as it dropped. I leafed it open to a random page and…

Realised it wasn’t in the common tongue.

I couldn’t read it; this was useless to me. Perhaps not such a bright idea after all, though at least it kept it out the hands of—

‘Styk, watch out!’ Val shouted.

I looked up, saw a shadowform charging at me, and panicked. Not yet was having portal magicks so second-nature to me that I would instinctively use them to get out of trouble, and instead I dived behind the cover of a bookcase, dropping the again-fallen book in the process.

‘No!’ one of the librarians roared, as the shadowball crashed into the bookcase I was cowering behind, tearing up some of the shelves’ contents as it collided.

I poked my head out of cover to see the male librarian, ward still up, resisting Val’s windswept attacks with ease, the dust pouring around the ward but not hitting him. As I watched, the man began the process of conjuring up more shadow magicks.

‘Val!’ I shouted.

‘What!’

‘At me! Aim it at me!’

‘Why?’ the sorcerer cried back.

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

‘Just do it, will you?’

Val sighed, then flung a hand at me, and with it a great dust of wind that collected the ample dust that lined the floors and bookshelves. In the moments before this great cloud of dirt hit me, I opened another portal, pairing it with one behind the librarian’s ward.

The man stopped mid-spell, staggered backwards and clawing at his dust-filled eyes.

We wasted no time in approaching, charging at the librarian before he could recover, and I raised my knife to stab. I leapt through the air, putting extra weight into my attack, and swung my blade down, into—

A ball of ice smacked at the side of my hand, knocking my arcing knife wide but not quite pushing it from my grip. I spun, eyes wide, to see the other librarian had collected the fallen book once more and was in the process of launching another ball of ice.

It was time to fulfil an earlier promise. Next time we encountered a human attacker, I’d promised, I would try dropping them from a great height.

I opened a portal under the feet of the ice-conjuring librarian and she helped as she fell through it, finding herself dropping from the other end of the portal, which I’d put on the ceiling.

But if I’d expected this to completely dispatch our enemy, I was wrong. The librarian shouted words from her book and the air turned to patches of ice under her feet. She rode these frozen platforms to the floor, hopping from patch to path before they had even finished forming.

‘Aw, hells,’ I muttered, as shouting from behind told me that the other librarian had recovered.

‘The books!’ Lore shouted from the other side of the great atrium.

‘What?’

‘They don’t want us to hurt the books!’ the barbarian clarified, which explained the librarian’s distress earlier when one of their spells had caught the bookshelf.

Val launched a gust of wind at another shadowball, sending it ricocheting towards the ice librarian.

‘Lore!’ I shouted. ‘I got an idea, but I need you.’

‘Is it gonna hurt?’

‘A bit.’

‘And you don’t got any better ideas?’

‘No.’

There was a pause, during which time I heard Lore grunt as he fended off one of the chief librarian’s attacks. ‘Aite, do it!’

The moment I received permission from my friend, I opened a portal beneath him, and another on the ceiling.

‘Styk…!’ he cried as he fell.

But I closed the portals as soon as he was through, and opened another one beneath him. This one opened into the side of one of the bookcases—the one at the end, that the chief librarian was standing next to.

Lore collided with the bookcase with a grunt, and the unit came crashing down, showering the chief librarian with books and then near-flattening them under the weight of the thick wood. From the resulting notifications, I realised I’d incapacitated her.

Level 23 ancient librarian defeated!

Worldbending — +1,000xp

‘Oh, alright, I see,’ Lore said, nursing his arm.

‘You will leave those books alone,’ spat the shadow magic librarian, through gritted teeth.

‘Oh, so I shouldn’t…’ Lore said, pulling a book from a nearby shelf and tearing it in half, ‘...do this?’

I pulled another book from a shelf near me and positioned my hands on the hard cover to do the same, only I couldn’t do it. ‘Think I picked up a particularly strong one,’ I explained, and then settled for ripping pages out of it.

‘You will stop!’ The librarians echoed almost at once, flinging a spell each at Lore and me. While Lore avoided the shadow spell, a frost ball caught my shoulder and I winced at the pain.

‘Oh, will we?’ Val replied. ‘Lore, push another one over.’

The barbarian did as instructed, slamming himself into the side of the nearest shelving unit, and with a strained heaved, slowly toppled it over, sending books spilling across the floor.

Under the streams of light pouring in through the great window at the back of the library, the frost librarian screamed with fury, and at that moment I had yet another—possibly—great idea.

‘Lore!’ I cried out. ‘Push them inwards! Push them inwards!’

‘The librarians?’

‘The bookcases!’

Lore nodded, heaving himself against the bookcase at the end of the column, grunting as he put all his might into it—but it wasn’t enough.

I began running, dodging projectiles, opening a portal in front of me that I hopped through to join Lore at his side. With one eye on my dwindling mana reserves—I’d got careless about how long I left portals open for—I realised that we needed this to work. Otherwise, I was soon going to be useless.

I bashed my shoulder into the side of the bookcase, straining against it, and with my additional strength—not that it was much, compared to Lore’s—the unit began to move. The librarians, seeing what we were doing, began to concentrate their spells upon us, but Val used her wind magicks to skew them off just enough to avoid hitting us.

And then, the bookcase tumbled.

Unlike the others, which had been aimed outwards, at the librarians, this one tumbled towards another bookcase, knocking it over, which hit another, and another…

Lore’s eyes lit up. ‘Dominoes,’ he said.

‘And not just that,’ I replied, running up the slanted bookcase and on to the next. Lore joined me, and I used the last of my magicks to forcefully portal Val to our side.

The three of us ran across falling bookcases, following the path of destruction just a few steps behind. Shadow and ice projectiles flew overhead, but we were charging too fast to hit.

The last of the bookcases crashed through the window at the far end of the atrium just as we were reaching it, sending shards of glowing glass glistening through the air, pane and ward shattering as one.

We leaped through it, limbs scratching against jagged shards, and finally landed on the ground outside. As we gasped for breath, I received notifications of experience points for ending our combat.

Worldbending — +800xp

Worldbending increased to level 16!

Base Points gained — +2 INT, +2 Free Points (INT/WIS/CHA)

‘This?’ Val said as we hurried away from the library before its remaining workers could circle around and find us. ‘This is why I don’t like libraries.’

"Styk"

Level 8 Novice Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 16

Intelligence — 69

Dexterity — 23

Strength — 36

Wisdom — 23

Charisma — 0

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 16

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%