The lightning slowly subsided as I stared down at the opening page of the notebook.

If found, please return to Witchfinder Colonel Hara Teramura, it read.

‘What do you mean, “answers”?’ Val asked.

‘I mean… it’s one of the witchfinder’s journals. A senior one, from the sounds of it.’

‘And how’d you get that?’

‘A ghost handed it to me.’

Lore blinked. ‘Ghosts give people presents now?’

‘I don’t think it was a present; it attacked me with it.’

‘A peculiar choice of weapon,’ Corminar commented, walking over to my side and peering at the book over my shoulder.

‘I guess maybe their swords and whatever didn’t get ghostified with them?’ I suggested.

‘And their books did?’ Val replied. ‘What kinda logic is that?’

I shrugged. ‘Fair point.’ With that, I returned my attention to the book, and turned the page. Inside was an inordinate amount of scribblings, the quality of which—as I discovered as I flicked through—got worse with time. The handwriting, the ink blots and the word choices all seemed to grow more manic, crazed, as though the owner of the journal was under a huge amount of pressure.

I read it aloud to the team—and the slowly recovering Aiwin—and they listened in silence. The notebook told of the witchfinders’ tale, of their journey from hunting Val’s kind to being adopted by a group of powerful people in Auricia.

It started with a good deal of money, as all things do. One of these powerful people had donated a large amount of coin to support the witchfinders in their “valuable” efforts (Val rolled her eyes at this bit). The donations kept coming, every month, but more and more they came with requests. Then instruction. Then… orders.

And soon it was that the great monster hunter had arrived—the woman who had taken charge, that we’d seen mentioned in other documentation about the village. Their efforts were torn away from witchfinding, and focused instead on a new goal: breaking through.

‘Breaking through?’ I said again, pulling my gaze from the book and looking at the rest of the team. Most of them looked just as clueless as me, except…

‘Reality,’ Aiwin said. ‘Breaking through reality. Into another.’

The courtyard fell silent as the implications of what Aiwin had just said sunk in.

‘There are… other realities?’ Lore finally asked.

‘No, there’s not,’ Val replied. ‘Aiwin must be mistaken.’

‘The old scriptures do imply that our world is not the only one out there,’ Corminar said. ‘The word of the ancient Architects—’

‘You believe the words of Players now?’ Val cut in. ‘Cos that’s what they were, at the end of the day, wasn’t it? The Architects are Players.’

‘They create this world,’ Arzak said. ‘Why not others?’

‘Are you so arrogant as to think yours is the only world that can be?’ Aiwin asked Val—a question to which the witch did not react. ‘I saw it. If you will take nothing else as proof, take my word.’

I continued to read aloud from the notebook once more, as much to drown out the inevitable argument as anything else. I read Hara’s increasingly mad scribblings about their progress with the experiments, slow at first, excruciatingly so, but just as it seemed they might scrap the whole project, advances were made. These advances grew more often as more time and resources were put into the project, and with new sources of power tested, they zeroed in more and more on success. They went through beasts of all kinds—rockrats, hags, greybacks, and finally one they would not dare name, calling it only The Creature. It was with this last beast that they, eventually, breached the walls in reality.

It was only for a second, for less than a second, and yet it was encouraging to all involved. This was possible—up until this point, they hadn’t been sure—and focus redoubled. That is, until the monster hunter was reassigned elsewhere by her mysterious superiors. It was the monster hunter’s extreme capabilities, Hara speculated, that was to blame—there was another, more desperate situation that needed seeing to.

This left the witchfinders twiddling their metaphorical thumbs, until Hara, who was by default in charge, allowed her eyes to wander to the devices once more. Why not continue the tests without oversight, she thought. Would their new benefactors not appreciate this act of initiative? Did they really need the monster hunter to make such progress?

Hara left the Creature caged; she would not dare release it onto the world. But they’d had success with hags too, and their forest baits meant that they had no short supply. They would use more of them—as many as it took—to replicate the successes of their earlier experiments, and they would do so without incurring the risks associated with provoking the Creature.

As I read on, the scribblings grew less and less legible, and from both this and the few words I could make out, I could tell that Hara was growing desperate. The hags weren’t enough. No matter how many they drained, it was not enough.

And then the journal abruptly ended.

‘That’s it?’ Val asked. ‘I thought we’d get answers.’

‘What, that wasn’t enough for you? We know what they were doing, and we know—’

‘We know what happened to them,’ Aiwin said, cutting me off. ‘Arzak was correct; those are not ghosts.’

‘See,’ the orc said, then frowned and turned to Aiwin. ‘What they then? They not dead?’

‘They’re not dead, no. The witchfinders are as alive as they ever were, in some ways,’ Aiwin replied, sparing a glance to watch Val shift uncomfortably on her feet. ‘They are alive, but they are trapped. Trapped between realities.’

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

‘Not totally trapped though, are they?’ Val replied. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t have seen them.’

‘No. But perhaps we should ask ourselves: what does that mean?’

‘Nothing good,’ Val said.

‘Well of course nothing good,’ Aiwin retorted. ‘I meant beyond this.’

From how Val’s face paled next, I could see that the two of them were finally on the same page about something. ‘We didn’t just see them.’

Aiwin nodded. ‘We saw another reality.’

‘What?’ Lore asked. ‘What’s that mean? Do we need to worry?’

‘I would say so,’ the elf said.

‘It means the borders between realities are disintegrating. It means our world is bleeding into another. The consequences could be…’ Val trailed off before finishing the sentence, though in my head I was choosing between “terrible” and “catastrophic”.

‘We must full power down these devices,’ Aiwin said.

‘How?’

I closed the notebook gently, the next few words getting lodged in my throat for a second—I didn’t want to say them aloud. ‘There’s only one magick source we know they even had some success with before.’ I glanced towards Val. ‘Witchcraft.’

If Val’s face was pale before, it was paler still now.

Everyone remained silent but for Aiwin, who said, only, ‘Then it is hopeless; we will never wrangle the hag beasts enough to direct their magicks in—’

Corminar coughed pointedly, glancing from Aiwin to Val, and at that moment I realised something. I wasn’t the only one who knew the truth about Val; the others did, too. She’d already confided in them, and she’d only recently come to trust me enough to tell me the same. I didn’t like the way this revelation weighed heavily in my stomach.

‘What do you—’ Aiwin started, but Corminar cut them off.

‘Go.’

They raised their eyebrows, a confused smirk crossing their face. ‘What do you mean, “go”? We need every capable mind here if we are to…’ Aiwin trailed off, and the truth dawned upon them. ‘Oh.’

The other five of us remained artificially still, painfully quiet.

‘Which of you is it?’ Aiwin asked. ‘Which of you…’ Their eyes landed on Val.

The witch amongst us began to take a step back, but with foot in mid-air, she paused, then placed it gently back down where it had been.

‘I could have you exterminated,’ Aiwin spat. ‘I should.’

‘I would not give you the chance,’ Corminar said, before anyone else could respond. His voice carried a weight I’d rarely heard in it before.

‘You would kill me? For her?’ Aiwin glared at Val. ‘Why? Is she another of your conquests? Is that why?’

Val, this time, did step backward, though this time it seemed more out of surprise than fear. ‘Him? No. No, he’s…’ Val licked her lips as though to stifle a laugh. ‘He’s not my type.’

‘Then why?’

‘Because it would not be just.’ Corminar paused. ‘Go, Aiwin.’

The other elf met his gaze for a moment, before tearing it away. They turned away from us, without another word spoken, and without another glance in our direction. We watched them go, until Corminar suddenly ran after them.

I thought, at first, that Corminar meant to apologise to them. But in the conversation that followed, the body language was stiff—there was no love there. Whatever he told the elf, it had them hurrying away much faster than they had before.

‘I am sorry about that,’ the elf said, looking everywhere but at Corminar. ‘I knew their temperament. Of their values. And yet I saw to overlook it in order to have someone warm my bed roll. Their was no real need for Aiwin to come, and for that…’ He finally managed to look Val in the eye. ‘I apologise.’

The witch nodded, and flashed him a sad smile that was returned in kind. ‘Styk?’ she said, thrusting out an upturned hand.

‘Yeah?’

‘The book. If I’m going to deal with these devices, then I’ve got to figure out how.’

I handed Val the book, and then watched her walk away. Just when she was almost out of sight, into the building furthest from the horrors from earlier, I hurried after her. Because I wasn’t using my Stealth, she heard me coming.

‘Leave me alone,’ she snapped.

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Cos I want to know if you’re OK,’ I replied.

Val scoffed. ‘Of course I’m not. Styk, I’m never OK. I’m forced to hide what I am from everyone, forced to worry in every moment that someone will catch me. You saw Aiwin—an otherwise intelligent…ish elf—and even they would’ve had me exterminated and think it was nothing more than justice.’

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t know what she was going through with this—I couldn’t imagine what it was like. So instead I moved forward, to put a hand on her shoulder.

Val pulled herself away. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Styk, I have some thinking to do.’

I watched her walk away into the darkness, her eyes on the notebook.

"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%