Lore and I sprinted through the building, floorboards creaking underneath our feet, the big man’s elbows knocking at the doorframes as he passed through them, and we spilled out into the centre of the witchfinder’s encampment. Across the way, Corminar and Aiwin spilled out of their building, too, alarm plain on their faces. Val stood in the centre, spinning around, as though searching for the source of the scream.
‘Who is it? What was that?’ I asked.
Before I could wonder if it was Arzak who had somehow produced that strange, high-pitched shriek, she too stumbled out of her building, apparently safe and sound.
‘It wasn’t you?’ Val asked.
‘That was a woman screaming.’
‘What, men can’t squeal?’
‘We can,’ Lore said. ‘Mostly around spiders.’
‘Who scream?’ Arzak asked, hurrying over to the rest of us. ‘Styk?’
I blinked at her. ‘No, it wasn’t—’
‘It would appear that it wasn’t any of us,’ Aiwin cut in, their eyes scanning the dark trees that surrounded the secluded village.
‘So someone’s here?’ Val asked. ‘Did any of you find anyone?’
There was a round of unsure head-shaking.
‘Nobody,’ I said. ‘The place is deserted.’
‘Then…’ Val gestured to the woods around us.
We each remained still, silent, barely daring to breathe, our ears open for sounds of movement, or… further shrieks. But nothing came.
‘Is anyone there?’ Lore—sometimes the bravest of us—suddenly cried out.
We heard nothing but the rustling of leaves and the cries of the distant birds.
‘Perhaps it was a fellhawk,’ Corminar suggested. ‘Rather odd for one to be this far from the Dawnwoods, yet… They are said to have cries that resemble human screams.’
There was a moment of pause before Arzak finally nodded. ‘Fellhawk. Must be screaming bird. Yes.’
Others in the team nodded. I didn’t know whether this was just because they wanted to believe that the source of the noise was a bird, or because this was actually likely, but it was a convenient enough truth for me to leap on board. I clapped my hands together. ‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Shall we make camp?’
‘Here?’ Val asked.
‘Might as well. At least we’d have a roof over our heads.’
* * *
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Aiwin said, dealing out the playing cards, ‘the game is six card twist. Buy-in is two bronze, or one item of clothing.’
‘Just the coin,’ Arzak grumbled.
Aiwin shrugged, but continued dealing.
All six of us were sat around the largest table we could find in the secluded village, which had been in the building that Lore and I had checked out earlier. We’d made it to this table to discuss what I’d found: the instructions for the witchfinders to remain here, an order that they clearly hadn’t followed. There was one worrying moment where Val suggested that the witchfinders were still here, and that the scream was the bait in a trap designed to snap shut around us—but this fear was quickly put to bed when we realised that this was a completely bonkers idea.
And so it was that we’d settled into a game of cards, which was precisely the sort of activity that would distract Val from any fears, whether justified or otherwise.
We each put our ante in the centre of the table, Corminar trying to buy in with his trousers until Arzak quickly put a stop to that, and picked up the cards.
‘Wait, how does this work, again?’ Lore asked.
‘Three rounds of betting,’ Val explained, ‘a chance to draw between each one, and the best hand wins.’
‘Oh, right, yeah. And what’s the best hand, again?’
Val sighed, and Aiwin leant in to offer Lore some help.
‘I fold,’ Arzak said, immediately throwing her cards into the middle of the table.
‘Nobody has bet yet,’ I pointed out.
‘I fold,’ Arzak said again.
‘You have a chance to draw different cards?’ Val reminded her.
The orc grunted. ‘I fold.’
‘OK,’ Aiwin said. ‘Moving on. Corminar?’
‘I raise two socks.’
‘We play with coin,’ Arzak reminded him.
‘And what would that matter to you?’ the elf asked. ‘You are already out of this round.’
‘Nobody want see your jollies,’ the orc said, which caused Corminar to pull a face, remove his socks from the table, and throw in two bronze coins instead.
‘Lore?’ Aiwin asked. ‘I assume you now understand how the hand rankings—’
‘All in,’ Lore said, pushing all his coins into the centre of the table.
Aiwin did their best not to wince.
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‘I can change cards still, right?’
Val, next in order, immediately pushed all her coins into the centre to match Lore’s bet, taking full advantage of the barbarian’s lack of understanding of the rule.
‘Styk?’
‘I fold.’ Going up against Lore’s presumably terrible hand was one thing, but I didn’t want to go up against Val’s hand, too.
Corminar, apparently thinking the same thing, threw in his hand.
‘OK,’ Aiwin said. ‘Lore, you are to trade in your hand first. How many cards?’
‘Six,’ he said.
Aiwin blinked at him. ‘That is your whole hand, yes?’
Lore nodded. ‘Yes. Six cards, I counted.’
I tried to resist the urge to put my head in my hands, and ultimately failed.
Val, already laughing and seeming to be counting the money in the centre of the table, traded in just two cards. Lore responded by sticking with his hand this time, while Val traded in one more card again.
‘A rather interesting first hand,’ Aiwin said. ‘If you will please reveal your hands?’
Val threw her hand down on the table—three sparrow cards, three blade cards—and moved to take all the staked coin before Aiwin put a hand out to stop her.
‘Usually we see all hands on the table before claiming victory,’ they said.
Lore placed down his hand hesitantly.
Around the table, three jaws dropped upon sight of the barbarian’s cards, all of which were crowns.
‘This is good, right?’ he asked.
Val visibly slumped in her seat. ‘How in Tartarus did…’ she began to mutter, before shaking her head and rising from the table. ‘I’m gonna go drink my wine.’
Corminar’s head poked up. ‘You brought wine?’
The rounds continued in much the same fashion, with Lore’s somehow incredible luck winning more hands for him than he lost, and the stack of bronze coins in front of him was growing much larger than anyone else’s.
While we played, Aiwin and Corminar reminisced about times long past, and though the latter was initially hesitant to speak of these events in front of the rest of the Slayers, Aiwin eventually won him around. It wasn’t long before Corminar was speaking almost in sonnets about his home, the capital city of the Dawnwoods.
‘Oh, t’was a beautiful sight, those towers that reached for the heavens, the great trees which stood taller still. Orange, not green, was the colour of Sunalor, both for the ash-fed clay and the leaves of autumn for which the Dawnwoods are so famous…’
Arzak had gone out of the game next, but remained at the table to analyse it and work out where she’d gone wrong. After that, a particularly tense final round of betting between me and Corminar had ended with Corminar’s hand just about beating mine, and I sought commiseration in Val’s bottle of wine.
I found her back outside, sitting on a moss-covered bench that faced only the dense woodlands. On the ground in front of her was a pile of sticks in the rough shape of a fire, with the one important distinction being that they… weren’t on fire.
‘Cold?’ I asked, sitting next to her.
‘No.’
‘OK,’ I said, then left for a moment to amble over to my knapsack and retrieve a spare jacket for her. I offered it to Val silently, and she took it immediately, only barely mumbling a thanks in response.
We sat side by side without saying a word for a few moments, passing the already half-drunk bottle of orange wine between us, before I—not Val, surprisingly—shattered the silence. For some reason—one which eludes me even to this day—I’d suddenly found the confidence to have that conversation. ‘You’re not liking it here, are you?’
Val said nothing, but the next swig of wine was a lot larger than the one previous.
‘I don’t suppose you wanna tell me why?’ I prompted her.
Another swig of wine preceded any more words from Val. And then, finally, she sighed. ‘I guess there’s… There’s something I haven’t told you. About who— About what I am.’
I tried to catch Val’s gaze, but her eyes were fixed squarely on the dirt. As the pause extended into a silence, I realised she was going to need some help here. ‘That you’re a witch?’ I asked.
Val flinched. ‘What?’
Even though I knew damn well what kind of “what” this was, I repeated myself. ‘That you’re a witch. I’m not completely clueless, Val, as much as you think I am.’
Now Val turned to look at me, though her expression wasn’t what I’d been expecting—it was one of fear. ‘How… long have you known?’
I shrugged. ‘I had my suspicions back when you set those wolves on me. Quite witchy behaviour, if you ask me.’
‘That was like the day after we met.’
‘Well, yeah,’ I replied. ‘And then it’s not like you’ve done much since then to really dissuade me from that theory, is it? Control over plants, over air… That’s all nature magicks, right? Witchcraft? It wasn’t exactly the hardest thing to work out.’
Maybe I’d been expecting relief from Val, or even perhaps a smile. I don’t quite know now, in retrospect, what I’d been expecting, but I’d thought this was going to be a more positive interaction than it had so far turned out to be.
I could tell from the way Val was looking at me that her brain was working overtime on figuring out the precise best words to follow up with. ‘And this doesn’t change… how you feel about me? We’re still friends, I mean?’
I resisted the urge to laugh. If only Val knew the truth about me, about who—or “what”—I really was. Would she be as generous if she knew about my own Player ancestry? I could only hope she would, but I definitely didn’t want to find out. ‘You are who you are. What you are doesn’t change that.’
The relief broke on Val’s face then, at last. Something brushed at my hand, and I was surprised to see Val giving it a short, gentle squeeze of gratitude.
‘You know,’ she started, but I never found out quite what it was that she knew, because Lore suddenly burst out into the courtyard.
‘Quick!’ he shouted, and the high pitch reminded me on the shriek we’d heard a few hours earlier. ‘Come quick! Trouble!’
"Styk"
Level 12 Bladespinner
Base Stats:
Vitality — 26
Intelligence — 115
Dexterity — 47
Strength — 50
Wisdom — 32
Charisma — 14
Skills:
Worldbending — Level 27
Knifework — Level 23
Identification — Level 10
Stealth — Level 9
Needlework — Level 7
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.
Warped Shield — Passive. If an enemy strikes you with a low-level melee weapon, Warp Shield automatically activates to open a portal that deflects this attack. You must not have any portals currently active. Uses mana on activation.
Stealth Attack — Passive. 50% boost to damage when unnoticed by enemy.
Stitch — Create a basic stitch in common fabrics. Ability scales on [CHA].
Basic Cloth Armour — Craft basic cloth armour, quality dependent on materials, time and skill level.
Active Effects:
Legacy of Sisyphus:
XP gain increased by +900%