‘Where’s Cor?’ Val asked, nursing a freshly brewed—and strong, if it was anything like mine—tea.

‘Lore said he was just coming,’ Tokas said, having reappeared from the stairs to the room upstairs.

‘What he doing?’ Arzak asked.

‘Putting on clothes. I walked in on him naked.’

Arzak smirked—an expression I hadn’t realised she was capable of. ‘A feast for eyes.’

Lore trudged down the stairs a few moments later, the floorboards creaking with each step. I couldn’t help but notice just how red his cheeks were.

‘Where is Corminar?’ Val repeated.

‘Did something happen to him?’ I added.

Arzak shook her head. ‘No. He get supplies. I explain soon.’ She turned to the still blushing barbarian. ‘Sit. Talking time.’

Lore silently did as suggested by the orc who had definitely sworn off all thoughts of leadership.

Val held her hands out, palms up, as if to say “Go ahead”, though I was more interested in getting some food in me first.

‘I’m just gonna…’ I started, pointing to the bar.

Arzak pulled a half loaf of bread out of her bag and plonked it down on the table in front of me. ‘Eat.’

I shrugged, and then I too silently did as the orc suggested.

‘We travel to Longreach,’ Arzak explained. ‘Big orc population there. I sent bird ahead to ask for records.’

Tokas raised her eyebrows. ‘And records they delivered. Hundreds of them. Far too many for any reasonable person to—’

‘Records?’ Val asked. ‘What records? Arzak, this is why Lore and I usually do the anecdotes; you lot leave out important details.’

‘Records on fire.’

‘The records were on fire?’ Lore repeated, eyes wide.

‘On fire magicks,’ Arzak clarified. ‘On Pyroknights, as this Player is. Not… not on fire.’

‘It might have made for better anecdotal value if they were,’ I put in, and Val nodded her agreement.

‘Records were not on fire,’ Arzak repeated.

‘Can we get back to the point now?’ Tokas asked, her black eyes scouring the group and then landing on me. ‘I thought you of all people might want to know what we’ve found. Or do you have another resurrection artifact on you, for after Jake kills you?’

The smile drained from my face. ‘How do you know they’re called Jake?’

‘They’re always called Jake.’

For the second time on this journey, the Slayers all muttered knowingly about this subject.

‘We get records. Records of fire magick. Of killing people with fire magicks. In this we look for answers to Player problem.’

‘We got ourselves too many records,’ Tokas added. ‘As it turns out, there’s been no small number of pyroknights throughout history. There’s something about the fire that attracts people to it, I suspect.’

‘It’s pretty,’ Lore said, and Tokas nodded.

‘So we ask members of my clan to help. We not tell them we looking to kill Player; even orcish not understand truth of Players. Together, there is eighteen of us—I count—and only two days before we due back here.’

‘I didn’t care much for the other orcs,’ Tokas said, nodding to Arzak. ‘They weren’t like you.’

‘I…’ Arzak narrowed her eyes, assessing whether the tiefling intended this as a compliment to her, or an insult to her people. ‘Thank you?’

Tokas smiled; it was the former, then. I moved to give Val a knowing look, but she had her eyes fixed on Arzak.

‘So we look,’ the orc said, getting back to the matter at hand. ‘All of us, we look and pull out all records where pyroknight killed. We look for similarity. For… what is word?’

‘Themes?’ Tokas suggested.

‘For themes. And when pyroknight die, it turns out there often very similar cause: they run out of mana.’

Val blinked. ‘That’s it?’

‘For this Player to have got as strong as he is, at the level that he’s at, he must have invested heavily into Sorcery,’ Tokas said. ‘His one-handed, while present, has been overlooked—as is often the case for pyroknights, due to the allure of new Sorcery abilities. This man relies heavily on his fire magicks, and not so much—as far as we can tell—on anything else.’

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

‘OK,’ Val said, ‘So we just drain his mana, and that’s that? It’s done?’

Before either of Arzak or Tokas could respond, Val continued.

‘Cos, I can tell you now, it won’t be that simple. If he’s specced into Sorcery—and believe me, I understand that temptation perfectly well—he’ll also have specced into Intelligence. His mana reserves will be through the roof. And at that level? I can’t even comprehend how high that’d be.’

‘Yes, we’d need to avoid the attacks,’ Tokas replied.

‘Err…’ Lore put in. ‘You lot might be agile and stuff, but I’ve never really been much for moving fast. I’m a heavy build, guys. I take the damage rather than avoid it. But if this Player’s attacks are as strong as we’ve been saying, then I won’t… I ain’t gonna survive this.’

‘You ask where Corminar is,’ Arzak said. ‘This is why he not here.’

The orc trailed off, causing me, Val, and Lore to impatiently await the next part of that thought.

‘You’re going to need to explain that one a bit further, Arzak.’

‘He is a—’

‘Ranger,’ Lore said knowingly.

Arzak shot him a funny look. ‘Yes, ranger. Also alchemist. Make potions. So he go buy ingredients for potion. Fire resistance.’

‘It should allow us to survive longer,’ Tokas added.

‘Longer, yes,’ Val replied. ‘But long enough? Come on, Tokas; you’re a magic user, you should know better. A lifetime of investing points into Intelligence can result in quite the mana reserves. Do we really think a few potions are going to make a difference here?’

Lore raised his index finger. ‘Especially if I get hit every time he attacks.’

‘Especially if Lore gets his every time the Player attacks!’ Val added.

‘Surely you found something else?’ I asked, suddenly growing worried that this really was all we had to play with. If it was, then I might as well have signed my own death warrant in that moment, for all the difference it made.

‘Only the obvious,’ Tokas said. ‘Water. It puts pyroknights at a natural disadvantage if we can douse any flames quickly.’

‘How often?’ Val asked.

‘How often what?’

‘How often did water help, in those records you found?’

Tokas’s gaze flicked to Arzak, and the moment of silence that passed between them didn’t do much to reassure me.

‘In cases where not exhaust mana… Access to water help in around fifteen percent of cases.’

‘Fifteen per—’ I repeated under my breath.

‘We’ve done more with less,’ Tokas said. ‘Remember the last Player we took down? We had to act fast to stop them killing more innocents. We didn’t have the time on our hands like we do with this one. So we moved in quick, with little prep work, and—’

‘This one’s stronger. You must know that this one is stronger.’ Val rose from her seat and paced the length of the room, hand on chin. ‘Styk, perhaps if you kept dousing us with water, that’s some extra resistance.’

‘The portals?’

‘Yeah, portals.’

‘We’d need to be by a river. Or the Iron Sea, would be better.’ I paused, then added, ‘And I’d need as many mana potions as I can carry; this Player may have had a lifetime to build up his Intelligence, but I haven’t. There’s only so many portals I can summon.’

‘That’s OK,’ Val said, ‘it’s only one tactic.’

‘What are the others, then?’

‘Well, I dunno! Maybe you could come up with something?’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘I was gonna suggest the water thing, you just beat me to it!’

‘We shouldn’t go up against him if we don’t think we can win,’ Tokas said. ‘There’s too much to lose.’

‘We’re not there yet,’ Val said. ‘We’re not getting defeatist yet.’

‘Could drench him,’ Arzak suggested.

‘Do we think that’d work?’

The orc shrugged. ‘No records. Nobody tried this.’

‘More like nobody who tried it lived to tell the tale, more like. Just how much is this all skewed by who came out of it alive, anyway? For every one person who beat a pyroknight by draining their mana, there could be a hundred who drained their mana and then still didn’t win. You think of that?’ Val realised she’d snapped a little too hard, then shook her head and flashed Arzak a smile of apology.

‘No way of know.’ Arzak sighed. ‘This best chance. We get potion satchels each, carry as many potions as possible. Beyond this—’

The tavern door slammed open, revealing the last member of our party.

If the dramatic flourish with which Corminar opened the door wasn’t clue enough—after all, he was prone to drama—the pallid tone of his face told me something was wrong.

‘News,’ he said, forsaking full sentences for about the first time since I’d met him. It wasn’t just the apparent anxiety that had him acting this way, I noticed; he was out of breath, too, like he’d run here. ‘The Player is in the Tundras. Not a day’s travel from here. He’s coming.’

Corminar’s eyes shifted to me.

‘For you.’

"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%