The sail ripped, sending Val and I hurtling towards the deck once more, just as a huge tentacle swept across the ship. Stifling a yelp, I grabbed Val and pushed the pair of us to the deck just in time to avoid it, the wet suckers sliding overhead.

The captain, however, wasn’t so lucky. The tentacle caught her by the torso, flinging her across the ship and crashing her into a splintered wooden wall. She began to cough up blood.

‘Val!’ I shouted at her.

‘What?’ came the response—also a shout.

‘You want healing experience?’ I asked, pointing to the injured captain. ‘Get to it!’

Val nodded, then sprinted across the deck, leaving me to spin my head around to pick out the rest of the team amongst the chaos.

Between screaming passengers, I saw Corminar, staggering to his feet, nursing cuts down one side of his body. The elf pulled his bow up, ready to nock an arrow in it, and then found… that it was snapped in two. He groaned, threw the bow to the floor, then armed himself instead with an arrow in each hand.

‘Corminar!’ I shouted, trying to get his attention, but the elf’s was fixed on the monstrosity—as mine should have been. A tentacle crashed across the deck once again, and while Corminar leapt deftly over it, I was forced to drain my mana some and fall through a portal, landing clumsily on my feet at the elf’s side.

‘Cormin—’ I tried again, but the elf charged into the fight. Following his line of sight, I saw Arzak and Lore standing back to back, swords raised, ready to strike. Not a second behind the elf, I charged across the deck towards my fellow party members, racking my brain for a plan to deal with a creature as large as this. It certainly wouldn’t fit through one of my portals, at least not as they currently were, not without—

A crashing at my rear announced another sweeping tentacle just in time for me to know what was coming, and without enough time to react to it. The great, five-foot-tall limb crashed into both me and Corminar, knocking us from our feet and sending us careering through the air. While I crashed into the deck near Val, Corminar had been hit harder, and so was high in the air when another of the cephalopor’s limbs caught him.

‘Hi,’ I said to Val.

‘Going well?’

‘No.’ I pulled myself back to my feet and watched my elven friend struggling against the smaller tentacle that was wrapping itself around him. A great maw rose from the water below—a circle of teeth, something that should really have been reserved for the deepest circles of Tartarus—and… opened.

‘Ughh! Disgusting!’ Corminar shouted, apparently more concerned with the gooey liquid that coated the tentacle than the fact that he was about to be eaten.

The tentacle released him over the cephalopor’s mouth, and I flicked a hand forwards to open a portal between the elf and his death, causing him to crash into the deck instead.

‘What do you say?’ I asked him.

‘I did not enjoy any part of that.’

‘Correct answer was “thank you”,’ I replied.

Across the deck, Arzak—still standing back to back with Lore—shouted, ‘This side!’ just as a tentacle came sweeping at them. The barbarian pivoted to face the same way as Arzak, and together they planted their legs strong and swung down their weapons as hard as possible. The three blades met the tentacle in the same spot, cleaving their way through about half of the limb. The damage dealt to the enemy beast caused it to scream—or howl? it was somewhere between the two—and the rest of its visible appendages quivered.

Corminar, as ever seizing the advantage, ran and leaped at the damaged tentacle, burying his—presumably poison-tipped—arrows into the cut. If I wasn’t mistaken, this act made the enemy screech some more.

The cephalopor pulled its injured tentacle from the deck, flailing it around in the air until it smashed into one of the masts, cleaving it in two. A great wooden beam plummeted towards the deck, causing Lore and Arzak to dive to one side. A rope from the fallen mast wrapped itself around Arzak’s leg in the process, and as the mast began to fall over the side, the rope dragged Arzak across the deck, towards the deep blue below.

‘Arzak!’ Lore shouted, just as I opened a portal in front of him, its partner at the edge of the ship where the mast had gone over. He understood immediately—nobody had taken to the portals quite like him—and he hopped through the portal, blade swinging. He brought the Bane Sword down towards the deck, slicing the taut rope in two and saving Arzak from a horrific end.

Distracted by the portals and the rope, I didn’t notice when the cephalopor swept the deck once more, this time more force behind the attack. I opened a portal beneath me to avoid the attack, but was too slow, being only halfway through when the tentacle collided with my head and shoulders.

I span through the portal, landing once again beside Val and the captain, who was now looking a lot less likely to die.

‘I’d ask again if it was going well, but…’ Val gestured generally towards me.

‘Thanks,’ I said, then charged back into the fray once more, where Arzak and Lore were back to back again, ready for another strike.

‘We must do more!’ Corminar shouted from across the ship. ‘Our approach is too—’ We didn’t hear the rest as he ran for cover to avoid another of the leviathan’s attacks.

‘Land ahoy!’ Val shouted, from behind me.

‘What?’ I cried back.

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‘Land a— It’s what sailors say! It means, like, “Look! There’s some land over there!”’

I pulled a face. ‘OK? And how is that useful right now?’

‘Because…’ Val said, throwing me the captain’s spyglass. ‘This is a sea beast.’

‘Ah.’ I understood well and truly where she was going with this, but there was still one problem: this creature wasn’t getting through one of my portals. At least, not without a great force squidging it through.

…Ah.

I ran across the ship, the captain’s spyglass firmly in my grasp, dodging as a tentacle smashed atop the deck in front of me, ducking and weaving to avoid splintering wood and injured passengers, until I arrived at the edge of the boat at Arzak and Lore’s side. ‘The rope!’ I shouted to the orc.

‘The rope?’

‘Get the rope!’

As Arzak ran after the rope that had caused her trouble earlier, I pressed the spyglass to my eye, squinting the land into focus. By know, Val knew my Worldbending abilities very well—and she knew the specific verbiage of their restrictions.

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

And the restriction of this one? “Within current range of sight.” No part of that said I couldn’t improve my vision beforehand. With the flick of my wrist, I willed open a portal high above the distant land, its partner opened above me temporarily, just to hold it in place.

Arzak hurried back to me, pile of rope in hand. I snatched it from her—there was no time for politeness—and hurriedly searched for the end.

‘What doing?’ the orc asked.

I ignored her, finally finding one of the rope’s two ends. In my haste, I dropped it, and had to pluck it from the deck once more before tying it firmly around my belt. ‘You and Lore? Drop your weapons. Find the other end. Hold it tight—it’s going to pull hard.’

‘What are—’

I eyed my mana bar, which was rapidly draining with every second I held the portals open. ‘Just do it, Arzak; there’s no time.’

The orc nodded, unravelling the rope behind me as I turned to face the cephalopor on the right-hand side of the ship—whether that was port or starboard I didn’t know and, frankly, didn’t care.

I glanced back to see Arzak holding the rope tight and Lore plunging his Bane Sword into the deck to do the same. With one nod to the orc, and one deep sigh, I ran.

I charged towards the leviathan, leaping over the side of the ship, remembering to hold my nose shut only moments before I plunged into the freezing water below.

My eyes stung when I opened them, but the salt water wasn’t the most disturbing thing in the sea around me. The body of the creature hovered in front of me, its fleshy pink surface so terrifyingly different to that of any monster I’d faced down before.

In this moment, I fought the urge to panic, shaking my head to rid myself of questions like “And just why in the hells did you think this was a good idea?”. Rather than surrendering to my fears, I reached a hand forward, and shifted the portal above the ship.

Instead, I opened it just behind the creature, illuminating the murky depths with the midday sun.

I felt the current shift immediately, as torrents of water flowed through the portal and towards the land below, pulling anything that was currently in the sea along with it. It was only at this moment that I realised that there could well have been people underneath where I’d opened the portal, but it was too late to worry about that right at this moment.

I lurched forwards, the rope jerking taut behind me, and—thankfully—not splitting from the force. The cephalopor, however, had no such security. It flailed its tentacles desperately towards the ship, failing to get much purchase, as the waters pulled it backward. Soon, it reached the portal, and the rear of its horrifying form, for a moment, plugged it.

I thought, then, that my usual plan of “dropping things from a great height” had let me down. I thought that before long, the beast would notice me, that it would send a tentacle to wrap itself around me and fling me into that terrible maw.

But then it slipped.

It was just a little, at first, the water pressure in front and the gravity behind managing to overcome the creature in some minuscule way. But then it slipped again, more so this time. And again. Then, suddenly, daylight streamed into the water once more as the leviathan fell through my portal towards either its death or, at the very least, to a place far away from us.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I closed my portal and pulled at the rope to drag myself back to the surface, where I gasped for breath just as the notification came in.

Level ? cephalopor defeated!

Worldbending — +4,200xp

Worldbending increased to level 25!

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

Ability selection unlocked

...

"Styk"

Level 11 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 26

Intelligence — 107

Dexterity — 38

Strength — 50

Wisdom — 26

Charisma — 8

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 25

Knifework — Level 23

Identification — Level 10

Stealth — Level 6

Needlework — Level 4

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.

Mana-Fuelled — Passive. Optionally, use mana in place of stamina to activate Knifework abilities.

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.

Shrill Perimeter — Create a perimeter wall of 20 foot radius, invisible to all but those adept in magicks. If an enemy crosses this perimeter, this spell releases the shriek of a banshee.

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

Stitch — Create a basic stitch in common fabrics. Ability scales on [CHA].

Active Effects:

Legacy of Sisyphus:

XP gain increased by +900%