‘It’s her!’ I screamed, instinctively stumbling backwards rather than driving my knifepoint into the woman’s throat. ‘It’s her!’

Both Lore and Arzak, a moment earlier both with hands on weapons, looked both alarmed and confused at one another.

‘It’s who?’ Val asked. ‘That’s Tokas. What are you—’

‘She… No… She…’ I spluttered. ‘She’d cast an illusion spell on me. She’d had me seeing another face.’

Tokas inched slowly towards the entrance of the cave.

I shook my head, my tongue stumbling over the words I wanted to shout. ‘She’s the tiefling from Plainside!’

If I’d expected the rest of the Slayers to suddenly attack her, I would have been sorely disappointed. They all stood very still, and very confused.

‘Styk, what are you talking about?’ Val asked.

‘Don’t you see? That’s why she wouldn’t kill the Player! She’s… she’s… working with him!’

‘I’m not working with him,’ Tokas said, voice shaking, already halfway out of the cave. ‘He’s mad. You’re not going to believe this guy, are you?

‘Why are you walking away?’ Val asked.

‘In case you do believe him.’

‘We’re not gonna…’ Val shook her head, turning back to me. ‘What do you mean she’s the woman from Plainside? How in the hells could that possibly even be?’

‘I’m telling you, she was there! The face I’m seeing now, in front of me, she was there, by his side!’

‘This can’t—’ Arzak started.

‘Why would I lie? What could I possibly gain from this?’

‘She’s a Player Slayer!’ Val said. ‘I’ve seen her help us kill Players with my own eyes. She’d never join up with—’

‘Well, she did!’ I cried. ‘I couldn’t tell you why, ask her that! Val, you remember back in Castle Carn? I told you I thought I saw the Player and the tiefling.’

‘You were traumatised. It was the fire around you that—’

‘No! No, it wasn’t the bloody fire. It was her!’ I pointed at Tokas. ‘I saw her face. I saw her real face through the flames. She must have let the spell slip, or—’

Tokas took another step towards the mouth of the cave.

Corminar raised his bow. ‘Halt,’ he told her. ‘Until we sort this.’

‘Why do you think she’s running?’ I asked. ‘It’s cos she knows I’m right, and sooner or later I’m going to convince you of that. She’s evil, I’m telling you!’

Tokas’s eye twitched. ‘I’m not… That’s not…’

‘If you let her go, who knows what evil she’ll unleash? Maybe she’ll go find the Player. Maybe she’ll tell him where we are. Maybe she’ll—’

‘But, Styk?’ Lore weighed in. ‘She was helping us, in the fight. If she was on his side, then…’

‘I don’t have all the answers, I’m just telling you: she’s evil!’

‘I’m not evil!’ Tokas cried. ‘Stop saying that! I’m not evil, I’m not. I’m not. I’m not. I’m just—’

‘Tell them!’ I shouted over her. ‘Tell them what you are! Tell them what you did! There were children there, Tokas. Children. And you—’

‘You don’t know what it’s like to be a tiefling! Everywhere you go, you’re greeted by stares at best and the wrong end of swords at worst. You people—humans, orcs, elves—you all get a chance at thriving. But us tieflings? We don’t get that chance. There’s no thriving for us, not in this world. We just have to play the cards we’re dealt.’

‘We’ve always treated you with kindness, Tokas,’ Lore said.

‘You? Yes. Yes, you have. All of you are kind. That’s why I tried to save you. That’s why—’ Tokas caught herself when she’d realised what she’d said.

‘Tried to save us? What you mean?’ Arzak asked.

Tokas took another step backwards. Corminar fired an arrow above her shoulder, its head digging into the rock behind her. A warning shot.

‘Why do you flee, Tokas?’ Corminar asked.

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‘Because you mistrust me. Because of… You are kind, all of you. But the kindness of some doesn’t make up for the mistrust of a not inconsiderable minority. There’s people out there who… And when you have children to look after—’

‘Don’t pretend you did this for the kids,’ I spat. ‘I told you. There were children at Plainside. You helped him slaughter innocents.’

Tokas broke. ‘I didn’t know! I didn’t know. I didn’t…’

Corminar’s face paled. Arzak staggered backwards at this all-but-admission.

Val and Lore, on the other hand, turned to her with a fury on their faces that I didn’t think either of them capable of. ‘You what?’ Val screamed. ‘You didn’t know? You helped him, but you’re saying you didn’t know, like that would make it all alright?’

‘I didn’t…’ Tokas said, stumbling back. ‘I didn’t…’

‘I saw those graves,’ Val said. ‘I saw how many there were. I saw what you did.’

‘I didn’t hurt anyone! I was there, but I didn’t hurt anyone. My job… my job was to—’

‘You were complicit,’ Val said, grabbing one of Arzak’s swords from the orc’s frozen hands. ‘He wouldn’t have brought you if he didn’t need you. He wouldn’t have done what he did if you hadn’t gone with him.’

‘How could you, Tokas?’ Lore asked. ‘How could you join up with a Player, after all we’ve seen them do?’

‘I’m telling you,’ the tiefling replied through streams of tears. ‘I didn’t have a choice. I had to—’

‘There is always a choice,’ Corminar said, finally finding his voice. ‘You are just as bad as they, now.’

‘We should kill you,’ Val spat.

‘No!’ Tokas screamed, flinging her hands forwards and filling the cave with replicas of herself. Some of them looked to charge us, and the Slayers reacted in kind.

We drew weapons—bows, knives, swords—and sliced at the copies of Tokas that launched themselves at us. The slices of my knife didn’t hit flesh, and as the blade tip passed through the apparitions, they faded away. Lore, Corminar, Arzak—each of them faced the same, defeating the visions of Tokas with just one swipe.

Until there was just one of them left.

In the confusion, the real Tokas had approached Val, wrapping her hands around her neck and pressing her into the wall. ‘I’m not evil!’ she was shouting, desperately. ‘I’m not evil! You’ve got to believe that! You know me. I’m not!’

Corminar raised his bow. ‘Release her, Tokas. Release her now.’

‘You won’t fire. You won’t. It’s me. You won’t hurt me. I saw you deal with those illusions—you barely would’ve sliced my skin. You won’t hurt me. You won’t.’ From the fact that Tokas had asserted this so many times, I could only imagine that she was trying to convince herself, rather than Corminar.

‘Please don’t make us have to find out,’ the ranger replied.

At this, Tokas released her grasp on Val’s throat, stumbling backwards once more. ‘Please,’ she tried one last time. ‘Please believe me. You know me. You know I’d never do anything like this.’

‘We know nothing,’ Arzak said.

Tokas turned her head to the orc, and something her eyes changed. If Arzak, too, was against her, she didn’t stand a chance in convincing the Slayers—that’s what she was thinking.

‘What do we do with her?’ Styk asked.

‘This not about you,’ Arzak replied, her eyes glued to the tiefling.

‘Don’t blame him for it. We wouldn’t have known if not for him.’ Val’s voice was quiet. I’d never heard it like this before.

‘You need a healer,’ Tokas tried. ‘You need me to…’

Arzak began to slowly shake her head, and the tiefling trailed off.

The rest of the Slayers stared the tiefling down, not sure what was to happen next, none of them apparently keen to make the first move. After all, whoever moved first would be the one to decide how all this played out. And none of them wanted this blood—the blood of a friend—on their hands.

It was Tokas, finally, who moved.

She turned and ran, out of the cave and towards the forest.

For their part, the Slayers watched the woman flee, all of them frozen by this horrific revelation. Only Corminar—at times, the strongest of us—moved, raising a bow and pointing an arrow in the direction of the fleeing tiefling.

‘Cor…’ Val breathed, defeat in her tone. ‘You should—’

The elf released the arrow. It soared through the air, across the not inconsiderable distance between him and the woman who had once been his friend. It was some distance, yes, but one over which I knew he could shoot the wings off a fly.

He missed, the arrow soaring a foot or move over Tokas’s head.

‘You missed,’ Lore said. ‘You never miss.’

‘I know,’ Corminar agreed.

"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%