‘He’s in there,’ Val said.

Over the past few days, we’d made our way south, towards the coast of the Iron Sea, and were careful to be seen just enough that the locals would point the Player our way. If we were too obvious about it, the Player might have known that something was up, that we were leading him into a trap, but us running away as soon as we were spotted surely put that idea to bed.

Now, we were at a small fishing village—one small enough that it didn’t feature on the map I had, but large enough at least to have an inn where the Player and his assistant could stay. It was the perfectly place to execute stage one of our plan, yet every member of the Slayers—plus me and Lambkin—were nervous enough that our faces were pale. If this went wrong, this meant that the Player would be upon us once more, and we really, really wanted to eliminate Lev before that could happen.

‘Is the Player with him?’ I asked, hopefully.

‘What do you think?’ the sorcerer replied. ‘Yeah, he’s there. Innkeeper was making a bit deal out of it and all.’

‘It still Plan A then,’ Arzak said, nodding, as though mostly to gather the strength to proceed.

‘You’re all clear on what you’re gonna say?’ I asked Val.

The woman shrugged as she changed her form, her flesh changing shape in a not dissimilar way to how my Ash Husk ability work. Soon, it wasn’t my friend Val, but Lev’s boyfriend who stood before me. Or who seemed to, at least. ‘Like Cor says, I’m not gonna say much. I’m gonna let my eyes do the talking.’

Corminar nodded knowingly.

‘Do you really get people into bed with just your eyes?’ I asked.

The elf ranger replied, ‘I am yet to attempt it without looking at them,’ which wasn’t really a good enough answer in my book, but now wasn’t the time for follow-up questions.

‘Alright,’ Val said with a sigh and an unfamiliar voice. ‘I guess I’ll…’ She started for the tavern, leaving the rest of us under the cover of both the moon-less night and the canopy of the trees.

‘Val?’ I said.

The sorcerer stopped and looked back at me with strange eyes, yet I could read them just as well as I could the real ones.

‘Good luck,’ I added.

Val nodded, and then turned to walk into town, her attention fixed on the tavern.

The moment Val stepped into the tavern and out of sight, I raised my hands in preparation; there was no knowing how quickly she’d retrieve Lev. Behind me, there was a clearing into which we would drop Lev, and potentially Val too—depending on how physically close they were leaving the tavern and whether Val needed to push him through.

The five of us stood, deathly still, eerily silent, ten eyes on the door of the tavern. Minutes passed, and still there was no sign of Val. My arms began to ache, holding them up as I was.

‘You don’t think she…’ I started, leaving the rest of the question to hang in the air.

‘I reckon we’d see if the Player had attacked her, wouldn’t we?’ Lore asked. ‘All he has are fire attacks, and that building’s made of wood.’

I tilted my head in acknowledgement, but it didn’t do much to calm the anxiety in my stomach.

When the door to the tavern opened a few minutes later, I released a breath I didn’t quite realise I’d been holding. Val—in her current form—stepped out first, leading the burly orc by the hand. Lev followed with a furrowed brow, as though he didn’t quite understand what was going on.

And that was fair enough, really. If he hadn’t been so groggy he might have started asking questions we didn’t want him to ask. Questions like “Why are you here?” and “How did you know where I was?”

I prepared myself to open a portal, but while the pair were this close to the tavern, it was a little tricky to aim. I waited as Val led the orc forwards, until… he came to an abrupt halt. Val turned back to face him.

I couldn’t hear the words coming out of the orc’s mouth, but if I was going to put money on it, I would have guessed he was asking either or both of the previously mentioned questions. The questions we didn’t want him asking.

Val faced the orc, feigning a casual stroll to one side, turning Lev so that he was facing away from us. She held a hand behind her, flicking it desperately, and it took a moment for me to realise that it was a signal.

‘Oh, err…’ I said, and opened a portal on the ground just behind Lev.

Val immediately launched herself at the orc, and—as he had his guard down—she had no trouble in pushing the pair of them through, bringing them into the clearing behind me.

As they tumbled across the ground, Lev looked around wide-eyed, and Val scrambled to her feet, immediately shaking off the other form and allowing herself a gag. ‘Gross, gross, gross…’

The rest of the team hurried into action.

Corminar and Lambkin fired the moment Lev was through the portal, though they used their standard arrows—we had planned to save the fancy arrowheads for the Player.

‘The Travelling Stones!’ Val shouted in her normal voice, reminding us. ‘The Travelling Stones!’

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Arzak charged, dual swords in hand, but Lev reacted by pulling his axe up—a real shame he hadn’t left it in his bedroom—to block one then the other. When Lore also joined the skirmish, with his one great sword, Lev swung up a foot to catch him in the chest, knocking him backwards.

Arrows caught him in the shoulder, but his leather armour was thick enough that the damage was minimal enough to ignore. Either that, or he had incredibly high Vitality, like his current employer—he could take some decent hits without having to worry about his health bar.

With Arzak and Lore on the attack, and Corminar and Lambkin firing arrows, it was up to me and Val to get the Travelling Stones that we knew he possessed. After all, he’d already escaped from us once this way, and if he was from such a rich and fancy place as Auricia, he probably had the funds for more.

I hopped over to him through use of portal. Was it lazy to use a portal to close twenty feet? Not if I was in a hurry, I decided; that was just good sense.

Arriving at Lev’s side just as he was swinging his axe to block Arzak’s latest attack, I crouched to avoid the swing of the weapon, and then thrust both hands into a pocket each.

The orc paused, blinked at me, and mumbled, ‘Excuse me?’

I threw the contents of his pockets into the air, noting as they soared that absolutely none of the objects were the gemstones I’d expected, instead consisting of a few coins, a scrap of paper, and a ring of keys. But I was acting too dependently on impulse to not follow through with the move, and I opened a portal just below where I’d thrown the orc’s belongings, the other end tossing them into the ocean. It almost seemed rude, though I did suppose we were also about to kill him. The phrase “adding insult to injury” came to mind.

‘Pockets empty!’ I shouted, then portalled myself out of the orc’s reach once more just as he swung the butt of his axe handle to hit me while parrying Lore’s attack.

‘Alright, press!’ Val shouted. Now that there was no chance of Lev escaping, the plan was to eliminate him as quickly as possible—any noise had a chance of attracting attention, and any attention had a chance of waking the Player and having him join the fray. We didn’t want this. Not yet.

‘Hmm,’ Lev said, backing up slowly as he saw yet more people moving to attack him. ‘This not good.’ He suddenly turned and dived backwards, over a fallen, rotting tree, dropping his axe in the process.

It occurred to me and Val what was happening before it did everyone else, because we’d seen it the first time around. There was only one reason this orc would drop his axe; he was fleeing.

Lev grabbed his shirt and ripped it open, revealing a chiselled green chest beneath that Corminar might have commented on in better circumstance.

‘Lovely,’ the elf said.

OK, maybe in these circumstances too.

In the middle of that chest that Corminar was admiring while raising a bow at it was a necklace, and on that necklace was a familiar gemstone. This was why Lev’s pockets didn’t contain any Travelling Stones, then—because it was around his neck.

Lev snatched the gem from his chest at the same moment that Corminar fired, an arrow piercing his hand but doing little to stop the burly orc from yanking the gem free.

I charged towards the enemy orc, opening a portal in front of me to help close the distance. Val, starting to understand how I operated these magicks, anticipated this move, and she jumped through the portal alongside me.

We spilled out at Lev’s side just as he threw the stone to the ground, opening a portal through which I could see the towering, glamorous buildings of Auricia. Only this time around did I notice the purple hue at the edge of this portal—the enchanter responsible for these stones had to be a fellow Worldbender. It crossed my mind that I, some day, might be able to create the same—but now wasn’t the time to think about that.

Val reached forward for Lev as he tumbled through, stepping across continents in the blink of an eye, and instinctively I reached out to grab her, yanking her backwards and to the floor.

‘No!’ she roared. ‘No!’

‘You can’t go through!’ I told her. ‘You can’t! We need you here!’

‘He’s guilty!’ she screamed. ‘He needs to pay. He needs to pay for what he did!’

She scrambled forwards, ripping herself from my grasp, and I was forced to open another portal between her and Lev’s one, in order to stop her.

‘We have to kill him!’ she roared, and I reached out to put a hand over her mouth, muffling her next few shouts.

‘Shh!’ I said, as Lev’s portal to Auricia closed before us. ‘He’ll hear us!’

Worldbending — +400xp

Val screamed into my hand once more, but I couldn’t make out the words.

‘Quiet!’ I said again. ‘It’s done, Val. It’s done.’

Finally, upon realising that I was right, the sorcerer stopped struggling against me. ‘Can I take my hand off your mouth now?’

‘M-mm mm-mmm,’ Val replied.

‘What?’ I repeated, releasing her.

‘I said “yes you bloody well can”,’ she clarified. Val stared on at where Lev’s portal had been only moments earlier.

‘Expensive way to get around, I reckon,’ Lore said, strolling slowly up to us.

‘Perhaps that is some small consolation,’ Corminar mused. ‘Not justice for all that he has done, but I do enjoy knowing that we have cost him a small fortune.’

Val continued to glare at the spot where Lev had been standing moments earlier. ‘He needs to pay.’

‘We’ll get him, Val,’ I said. ‘But later. You gotta remember: this is a victory for us. Auricia is half a world away. The Player is alone now. We’ve given ourselves a chance.’

"Styk"

Level 9 Novice Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 20

Intelligence — 77

Dexterity — 26

Strength — 38

Wisdom — 25

Charisma — 0

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 18

Knifework — Level 17

Identification — Level 8

Stealth — Level 6

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%