Lightning arced between the three towering devices, stray sparks crackling in the air around it, causing the lot of us to stumble backwards. Before our eyes, we watched as the raw magical energy—green, to my eye—grew greater, a power that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. And in the space the power left behind, I saw shadows.
This time, I knew for certain that these were the same shadows as before—the ends of reality, burned into existence by these strange devices. From strands, the shadows grew, until the flickering torches did nothing to illuminate the space before us.
‘This time,’ Aiwin said, their eyes wide, ‘might I suggest we run?’
There wasn’t a single soul upon us who wanted to argue this particular point—even Val seemed to agree—and so all six of us turned on the spot and charged for the stairwell.
And just in time, too.
Figures of unreality stepped forward, out of the darkness, out of the power, out of the walls themselves. Eyes of nothing stared upon us, and though their gazes gave me surely nothing to feel, I felt chilled down my spine nonetheless.
‘Ghosts!’ Arzak shouted.
‘I bloody well told you!’ I cried back, at the rear of the group alongside Corminar, as we reached the stairs.
‘I dunno…’ Val started, apparently now unsure that these really were ghost, but now was not the time for me to start with any follow-up questions.
As I sprinted up the stairs, something caught my leg. I tripped, my mouth colliding with the edge of a step and a splatter of my blood spraying over the dusty wood. I looked down to see two things: Corminar behind me, growing pale, and a ghostly hand, reached out from the wall, wrapped around my left ankle.
They have form after all, then.
I kicked at the unreal hand with my other foot, and Corminar drew his bow in this confined space to loose an arrow into it. His shot passed right through, but in the moment that the arrow would have it, the hand’s form faded, and I was able to slip out.
Corminar helped me to stagger back to my feet, and we continued onwards and upwards, back into the house proper, and towards the screams of our friends up ahead. We burst out of the pantry, back into the kitchen and saw as the rest of the team dodged similar reaching arms emerging from the walls of the corridor. But where, before, Corminar and I had only had to deal with a hand and wrist, now these arms were taking more shape, up to the shoulders, even.
I opened up a pair of portals for Corminar and I to hop through, to catch up to the rest of the team. When we got to the other side, I immediately had to open another portal beneath us, to avoid the reach of the ghostly arms. We fell through the portals and stumbled out the other side, with the enemy hands snatching the air above our heads.
Looking back at the hallway, I could see now shoulders, torsos and legs emerging from the walls, the silhouettes of the witchfinders taking shape just as they had before, when I’d been roaming the walls overnight. The difference now? There were dozens of them.
‘Faster!’ I shouted, opening a portal for the team to leap through. ‘Faster!’
‘We know!’ Val cried back as she fell out of a portal at my side.
Lore and Arzak leaped through next, but Aiwin—still new to my portal magicks—hesitated. And in that moment of hesitation, a shadow snatched them.
‘No!’ Corminar shouted, reaching towards his… whatever Aiwin was to him; I still wasn’t entirely clear on that.
The arms yanked Aiwin into the wall, the impact knocking the wind out of them, and then the shadows began to spread. Just as I’d seen before, the shadows spread across the wall, fading it away from reality, and building a whole new shadow reality—for lack of a better phrase—in its place. And before Corminar could reach Aiwin, they were pulled through.
The elf faded from this reality, yanked into the other—if, indeed, it was even real, and not a Tokas-esque illusion.
‘Styk!’ Corminar shouted, pointing at the spot where Aiwin had disappeared. ‘A portal!’
‘I can’t!’
‘Then I shall press through my—’
‘You do no such thing,’ Arzak shouted back at him, and flashed me a nod.
I opened a portal in the corridor, between Corminar and the other reality, and the elf fell through—saving him from his own notions of heroism.
‘Aiwin!’ he cried, looking frantically up at me.
‘We not know we can get back from there,’ Arzak said, grabbing the elf by the upper arm and wrenching him backwards, despite his desperate, flailing limbs. One of the elf’s stray legs kicked me—likely unintentionally, though I wouldn’t put it past him—and I stumbled backwards into the wall.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A ghostly being grabbed me, yanking me once more to the floor by my ankle.
I looked down, seeing the creature without a face somehow staring back at me, and pulled against the creature’s firm grasp. Of course, it wouldn’t budge, but this time I had some idea of how to get out of it. ‘Val!’ I cried. ‘Help! Attack it!’
My witch friend grabbed an arrow from Corminar’s quiver, apparently meaning to use it as a weapon of her own—without a bow.
I glanced from her to the creature of shadows, and I realised that the ghost wasn’t trying to pull me anyway. In fact, it only reached its other hand forward, and in that hand, a small leather notebook faded from unreality into reality, taking shape and form with every second that passed.
I pulled again against the creature’s grip, trying to free myself, but until Val attacked it, it was hopeless. I was trapped.
The ghost pushed the small notebook into my chest, crushing against my ribs as though it didn’t know how hard it was pressing—or perhaps this was its strange form of attack. Either way, I had no option but to bash the notebook, now fully out of this shadowland, away, freeing myself from the attack just as I felt a rib crack.
As I screamed out with pain, my fairly insignificant health reserves draining a good way, Val tossed the borrowed arrow into the air with one hand, and summoned a strong gust of wind with the other. It was enough to propel the arrow down the corridor, it landing squarely in the space that the ghostly arm had been until only a fraction of a second earlier. As the arm faded from reality to avoid being hit—if this was, as I suspected, a conscious move—I wriggled my leg free once more.
I wasted no time in stumbling back to my feet, still clutching the notebook in my hands, and before the shadow-arm could grab me again, I opened a portal. The struggling Corminar, Arzak and I fell through it, pouring out the other side, just through the exterior door.
Corminar moved to charge back inside again, but Lore and Val, who were just now reaching the doorway, blocked her. I say it was both of them—both of them certainly tried—but it was the broad Lore who did most of the heavy-lifting here.
‘They got Aiwin!’ Corminar shouted. ‘We must—’
Arzak grabbed him again by the shoulders. ‘We—’
‘We leave no one behind, is that not true?’
‘We do not know can return!’
The ranger grimaced. ‘And yet we will not learn until we—’
He was interrupted by Aiwin tumbling back into reality from an exterior wall of the building. They took form slowly at first, but with every second that passed, it seemed more and more that they had their feet planted firmly in this reality once more.
Corminar shot Arzak a glare that I interpreted roughly as meaning, “Well, not a one-way trip, then, is it?” even though Aiwin’s reappearance meant that they didn’t actually need saving anyway. The elf hurried to catch Aiwin as their trembling legs gave way, and though Corminar asked them what had happened, they did not respond.
I glanced back to the building, where the shadows were beginning to fade. Whatever we’d done to activate the devices, its power was now waning again. The worst of it, it seemed, was over.
Worldbending — +1,100xp
It wasn’t a bad amount of experience considering we’d only fled, and I hadn’t defeated a damn thing. But this wasn’t the top priority right now.
‘Aiwin,’ Arzak said, ‘what you see?’
The elf blinked, then turned their head to look up at Arzak, gazing at the orc with blurred eyes.
‘Please, Aiwin,’ Corminar said at their side. ‘Tell us: what did you see?’
Still, Aiwin remained quiet, shaking her head, and I think the interrogation might have continued if not for the notebook in my hands beginning to crackle with the same lightning energy as the devices.
‘Styk…’ Val said. ‘Just what in the hells is that?’
Though the sound of the magicks were almost frightening, it didn’t seem to do me any damage, the lightning passing through my hands as though they weren’t there. I looked down at the notebook, glanced up at Val, and then opened it.
‘Huh,’ I said.’
‘What? What is it?’
‘I think it’s… answers.’
"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%