I pulled my head up slowly to get a look at the being I’d just crashed into, countless thoughts running through my head, most of them along the lines of “Is this a monster?” or “Can shadows have form?” or “Am I about to die a horrible and painless death, possibly with none of my friends ever knowing where I got to?” Fortunately, the first and last of these questions were answered when I saw a face frowning down at me.

‘You no sleep?’ Arzak asked.

I took a moment to gather myself, trying to calm down my very rapid breathing, before finally being able to answer. ‘No. No, I…’ I looked over my shoulder at the hallway behind me. There was nothing there but shadows. Shadows of the regular kind, that was—though could I trust myself to know for sure? Were any of them about to move?

‘Hmm?’ Arzak prompted me.

‘...Ghosts.’

The orc stared at me blankly, her face barely illuminated in the light of the dwindling torches. ‘No such thing.’

‘Wanna bet? Cos up until five minutes ago, I would’ve said the thing. And yet…’

Arzak’s face remained neutral—just why was she so bad at poker, with this ability?—as she considered what I’d just told her. ‘No such thing,’ she said again. ‘Is mistake.’

‘No mistake,’ I assured her. ‘It was made of shadows.’

‘Ghosts not made of shadows.’

‘You just said they weren’t real, so how do you know what they’re made of? What are they made of, then?’

‘Ectoplasmic matter,’ Arzak said, with no hint at all that she was joking.

I blinked. ‘Ecto-what?’

‘Ectoplasmic—’

I turned past her. ‘We should wake the others. There’s danger out there.’

The orc followed me down the hallway back into the central chamber, where the rest of our group were sleeping. ‘We tell you this already. Witchfinders out there. Not ghosts.’

‘Alright!’ I shouted, clapping my hands together as loudly as possible. ‘Alright, wake up, everyone!’

Val sat bolt upright, eyes wide for a moment before realising it was me waking her, which caused her to glare nastily in my direction. Corminar gently shook Aiwin awake by their shoulders, and Lore continued to snore. We all looked at him.

‘Seriously?’ I asked—the question rhetorical. ‘We haven’t got time for this. I saw a ghost. Two ghosts, actually. Maybe three!’

‘I believe we could defeat three ghosts. Four or five is perhaps our limit,’ Corminar said.

‘Ghosts not real,’ Arzak said again, but her words were drowned out by Lore’s snoring.

I opened a portal beneath his bedroll and spilled him out onto the floor, eliciting a high-pitched yelp from the barbarian in the process. He blinked up at me, confused for a moment, then grinned. ‘You got me!’

‘What?’

Confusion blinked across Lore’s face again. ‘This was a prank, wasn’t it?’

‘No! This was a “we’re under attack” wake-up!’

‘Oh. From what?’

‘Ghosts,’ Corminar murmured, at the same time that Arzak said, ‘Not ghosts.’

Lore scrambled to his feet, reaching for his sword. ‘How many? Not more than three or four, is it? Think we’d struggle against more than that.’

Corminar nodded his agreement.

‘Not ghosts,’ Arzak said again. ‘Must be witchfinders. Using magicks on you?’

‘They were ghosts, Arzak. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotta tell you. It was a person—wearing a long witchfinder coat, sure—but one made of shadows.’ Before Arzak could remind me that ghosts weren’t made of shadows, I continued, ‘And the shadows spread. They eat up some of the building. In them, I saw… I don’t know, another place? I couldn’t open a portal in them, that’s all I know, and…’ I stumbled on my words when I realised I hadn’t taken a breath in far too long.

‘Some of the building’s gone?’ Val asked. ‘Where?’

‘It came back.’

‘What did?’

‘The building,’ I replied. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on, I just know what I saw. Something’s here! The ghosts of the witchfinders, I think, or if Arzak’s right and they’re not ghosts, then it’s what’s left of them.’

The room fell silent for a second, before Val—of course—opened her mouth. ‘Do you know what I’m thinking?’

‘Yes,’ Aiwin said, beginning to pack their stuff, ‘we leave immediately.’

‘No. I’m thinking we need to look into these experiments these witchfinders were doing. It’s clear what’s happened here, right? These… people didn’t just leave, did they? Something happened to them. And I think we’d be idiots not to suspect whatever these experiments were.’

Arzak nodded. ‘We search for information. We look for people before, now we look for parchment. We look for paper.’ She nodded to the elves. ‘You two, go building over—’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re not splitting up when there’s ghosts around. You’ve read the stories; you know what happens when people split up in these situations.’

Corminar nodded. ‘Disembowelment.’

‘Besides, you want information on the experiments? I saw some. I know where it is.’ With my friend grouped behind me, I led the way through the building once more, weapons raised, but this time I encountered no ghosts/not-ghosts. Of course, seeing one might have made the others a little more inclined to believe me.

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‘I saw something…’ I said, leafing through the papers atop the desk, discarding the letters about the monster hunter being reassigned elsewhere, until I saw it: strange sketches of strange devices. Three small towers, almost. Metal columns with gem-filled orbs every few inches up their height. Placed—according to the diagram—in a perfect triangle.

Val leant in as soon as she saw what I was looking at. ‘You found this and you didn’t think to mention it?’

‘I didn’t know it was relevant!’

‘You don’t even know what it is, how are you supposed to know if it’s relevant or not?’

‘Oh, so you do know what it is then, do you?’ I retorted.

‘Please, you two, if you will cease flirting for one moment,’ Corminar said. ‘If there are truly dangers still around, then the sooner we understand their meaning, the better.’

‘Flirting?’ Val replied, mouth agape, and I was about to do much the same before I saw Lore trying to hold back a grin.

‘What this, Val?’ Arzak said, tapping the parchment with the devices sketched on. ‘What you know?’

Val’s eyes remained on Corminar for a moment, who met her gaze, before finally looking up at the orc. ‘I don’t know what they do, exactly, what I know what they channel.’

‘What?’

‘Witchcraft.’

Aiwin raised their eyebrows. ‘It cannot be. You do not know these folk, they would not dare gamble with such—’

‘Oh, so you think they were killing these witches for the fun of it, do you?’ Val replied. ‘Well, yes, maybe they were. But they were getting something in return, clearly.’ Val traced her fingertip over the document as she skimmed it. ‘Look, they were using witchcraft to power the devices, and then…’

‘Then?’ I prompted her.

‘Then… something else. It says only “the creature”.’

‘OK. So they build these devices?’ our orc friend asked.

‘How am I supposed to—’

‘Yeah, they built them,’ Lore chimed in, matter-of-factly. All eyes turned to him. ‘What?’

‘Lore?’ Val asked.

‘Yeah?’

‘How do you know they built them?’

‘Cos they’re in the basement, aren’t they?’ He paused. ‘Did none of you go in the basement?’

‘Did I go in the basement of a creepy—possibly haunted—old building?’ Val replied. ‘Let me think.’

‘Where is basement, Lore?’ I asked, trying my best to steer this investigation back on track.

We followed the barbarian through the building to a small storage room behind the kitchen, where there was an unassuming trapdoor in the floor. He paused before reaching down to open it, hesitating, and though he eventually opened the way for us, I could see he was gripping his sword tight, as though about to use it.

‘You alright there, big guy?’ Val asked.

Lore remained still at the top of the staircase revealed by the now open trapdoor. ‘It’s like you said: dark basement in a creepy house. I only poked my head in before.’

‘Scared?’

‘Sensible.’

Val raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement, and then led the way down into the dark, dingy room.

After she went, I looked up at Lore, but he only gestured for me to go next. ‘Fair enough, mate. Fair enough.’

Val’s torch flickered ahead of me, silhouetting her and casting a dim orange light around the surprisingly large basement. As she crept forward, me not far behind her, the rest of the team slightly further behind me, the first of the seven-foot-tall devices came into view. Unlike in the drawings, this real version was scarred, its metal fixing somehow charred, some of its magical gems shattered, or missing entirely. And unlike the diagrams, this one had a body chained to it.

‘The witchfinders?’ I asked Val.

‘No,’ Val replied, her voice quiet, small. ‘Hags.’ She raised her torch into the air, and the other two devices—each complete with their own chained bodies—became visible. Though they were rotting, I could see that Val was right; the witchfinders had used hags for the sources of power. For their sources of witchcraft.

‘I suppose this explains the one we saw earlier,’ Aiwin said, nodding to the nearest of the beasts. ‘Getting vengeance after all. I did say.’

Val, for her part, didn’t rise to the elf’s bait, letting this dig slide. She came to a stop a few paces away from the nearest device, in its triangular formation, and I and the rest of the group arrived at her side. The flickering torches—one in Val’s hand, one in Arzak’s—were enough for us to get far too good a view of the hags, in fact, and their flames illuminates the walls of the room.

Something on one of the walls caught my eye. A shape. A humanoid shape. My heart skipped a beat, as I thought one of the ghosts had made it down here, that a shadow creature was about to attack, but then I saw it for what it was. The shape was etched into the wall, or rather, the wall had been etched away around this humanoid shape. As though something to do with the devices had eaten away at the walls, except for where its view was blocked by some clueless onlooker.

Val stepped forward again, her eyes fixed on the hag at the nearest tower.

‘Err, Val?’ Lore asked. ‘What’re you doing?’

‘Trying to get a better look,’ the witch replied. ‘You want to find out what happened here, or not?’

‘Well, don’t touch them,’ I added.

This made Val stop, slouch her shoulders, and turn to flash me an irritable glare. ‘Oh yeah, Styk, I was going to touch the things that etched people into the walls.’

‘You noticed.’

‘Rather hard to miss,’ Corminar said, his eyes sweeping across the room’s perimeter. It wasn’t until that moment that I realised there was a good dozen or so of the same shapes.

‘Well, don’t—’

And then, as Val grew close, as though sensing her magicks, one of the devices stirred.

"Styk"

Level 12 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 28

Intelligence — 115

Dexterity — 50

Strength — 54

Wisdom — 32

Charisma — 16

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 27

Knifework — Level 23

Identification — Level 10

Stealth — Level 9

Needlework — Level 8

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%.

Execution II — Attack a target while undetected for +200% damage.

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%