I pulled down the first of the boxes, wasting not a moment of the eight minutes of invisibility, eyeslide and lightfoot that we had left. Within the boxes were dozens of folders, some thicker than others, each of which concerned one particular Player. My heart skipped a beat as my subconscious did the maths. There were twenty-four boxes here. And in the boxes I had, there was maybe sixty folders. If they all contained the same, then that meant…

There were over a thousand Players in this world.

Maybe more. Maybe the ones here were just the ones that the Golden Kingdom had noticed. Or just that ones they cared about.

Each, or at least almost all, of the files had a sketch attached—that of the Player in question’s appearance. I supposed this would come in handy if the kingdom of the Goldmarch ever needed to track any of them down, whether to hire them or to inflict justice. Not that justice ever seemed to be served upon these descendents of the Architects.

I pulled box after box from the shelf, skimming through the files for the name Aiwin had given us—Niamh. With time on our active effects fading away, I searched quickly, desperately, almost so haphazardly that I became worried I’d missed her. And then something gut-wrenching happened.

I saw a sketch of a woman I recognised.

The drawing wasn’t quite right—the nose was larger than it had been, and the hair was different to what I’d remembered—but otherwise… It was the same woman that Dad had kept a portrait of all those years.

It was my mother.

I found myself staggering backwards, the record of my mother in hand, and I stared down at it for a moment, urging myself to open it. But my hands didn’t move. Couldn’t move. I gulped, trying to ground myself, trying to force my body to truly realise: this was one of those moments that could change the course of your life. I stared down at the sketch of the woman who had abandoned me all those years ago, abandoned me on a doorstep without even checking my father had still lived there. A woman who had abandoned me. My own mother.

I realised she’d given me one gift, however. Her blood, the blood of the Architects, ran through my veins. It was that very blood that had enabled me to use the Sisyphus Artifact. Without that blood, it would have been just a useless trinket to me. And I would have been dead.

I flipped the folder open.

Her name, the name that my father had never uttered, was Cleo. And Cleo was alive.

According to the file, as member of a “Council”—a term I’d heard a few times now, which worried me—Amira’s spies kept close eye on her. She’d spent a good few years in the Badlands after my birth, on a mission that was redacted from the files. But she’d been back to the Goldmarch since then, and more importantly, she’d even been to the Gentle Tundras. Yet she’d never bothered to check in on her child. I found my stomach churning, my eyes on the edge of watering, trauma falling free that I hadn’t even known was there. It was as if—

‘What you got there?’ Val asked, apparently suddenly at my side. Not that I could have noticed, what with her footsteps silence and her body invisible. Before I could reply, Val suddenly pulled the folder from my hands. ‘You found it? Why didn’t you say anything? We have’ — she paused, presumably to check her active effects — ‘five minutes left.’

‘I got distracted. It was… engrossing reading,’ I said.

There must have been something in my voice, because Val hesitated before replying. ‘You OK, Styk?’

‘Not feeling so good. Must have been something I ate.’

‘You reckon Ted has poisoned us again?’

‘No, I… It’s nothing. I’m fine. Let’s find this record.’

Boxes flew out of the bookshelf at my left as the invisible Val wrenched them free. I considered keeping my mother’s record, but something deep within me was repulsed by the idea. Maybe I’d never been supposed to learn this. Maybe I would have been happier if I never had. But then, that Player blood in me had to have come from somewhere, and it definitely wasn’t going to have come from Dad. I pushed the record back in the box, finished leafing through the rest of it, then moved on to the next.

Niamh was one of the first names within.

‘Val,’ I said.

A box, halfway out of the bookcase, slid back in again. ‘Yeah?’

‘Found it.’

I opened the file and began skimming through. From the gentle breath on my neck, I could tell that Val was reading over my shoulder.

‘Alright,’ I said, reading aloud. ‘Niamh. Another member of this Council. Don’t suppose that means anything good, does it? The Council.’

‘Very foreboding,’ Val agreed. ‘And if the pyroknight was a part of it, then I can only imagine everyone else in it is evil too.’

I tried to stop myself from dwelling on the fact that my mother, too, was in it. And if she was evil, what did that make me? I forced myself to continue reading aloud. ‘Ah look here: she was in charge of the Council’s relationship with the witchfinders. So it’s definitely her. Good performance review from someone named Tara—whoever that is—and it’s that that got her pulled away. Reassigned elsewhere. Reassigned to replace a man called Jacob. In the… Tundras…’

Stolen story; please report.

I paused, and Val remained quiet too. At least, just for a moment. ‘Told you the pyroknight was called Jake,’ she said.

‘Lucky guess.’ Before Val could say anything, I continued, ‘This means he wasn’t just in the Tundras for no reason. He was doing something. On behalf of the Council. We’ve interrupted their plans, and I can’t imagine an organisation as mysterious as this is going to let that go unchecked.’

‘You think they’ll be hunting us?’

‘I reckon it’s safer to assume that they are and be wrong than the other way around.’

From Val’s lack of response, I inferred that she agreed.

‘So she’s in the Tundras, picking up from where the pyroknight left off. Did we ever get the idea that he was working on anything?’

‘Just trying to kill you, I think.’

‘You reckon this whole Council is set up to kill me?’

‘What? No!’ She slapped me around the back of the head. ‘How is your ego this big?’

‘Pretty rich coming from you.’ I read on, scanning the text for a place name, a location in which we might find her, or at least pick up the trail. ‘Lenktra,’ Val and I said at the same time, reaching that point in the text simultaneously.

‘Let’s get going,’ Val said. ‘If she’s still there, we can make this quick.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘We still got to wait for Corminar and Lore, and we’ve still got to deliver this depth raider to—’

‘Well we gotta find her before we can kill her, haven’t we? And the longer we wait, the greater the risk of the trail going cold.’

‘Kill her? We don’t know that she’s done anything wrong?’

‘She’s a Player,’ Val said. ‘Of course she’s done something wrong. And do you not remember the witchfinder village? That in itself is—’

‘Potentially a science experiment gone wrong? We can’t assume she’s guilty just cos she’s a Player, otherwise…’ I didn’t say the end of that sentence, but it would have been “Otherwise you’d have to kill me too”.

Val sighed. ‘Fine. We’ll get some evidence of something she’s done wrong; I’m sure that won’t be hard.’

With a nod, I closed the folder. ‘OK. Fine. Good. We know where to find her. We might not know what she’s up to, but we can head north. We—’

‘No,’ Val breathed.

‘Sorry?’

‘No, that’s…’ If my voice had sounded pained earlier, then it was nothing compared to Val’s now.

‘Val? Are you OK?’ I moved my hand out to grab her shoulder, but missed; the witch had staggered backward.

‘The sketch. On the front of the folder. I… I know that face.’ I could tell Val was fighting back tears. ‘That’s… She survived the… How could she have survived the bogspawn?’

‘Val, what are you…’ I started, but trailed off when I realised exactly what she meant.

‘She’s the Hunter. The one who tried to kill me. The one that exposed me as a witch, the one who ruined my life. It’s her. Niamh is her. I can’t… I don’t think I can…’

I reached out, found Val, and wrapped my arms around her. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK, Val. We’re here. We’ll—’

But the rest of my reassurance was interrupted by the sudden ringing of alarm bells, all around the palace.

They’d found the soldiers.

And we only had one minute left on our active effects.

It was time to run.

"Styk"

Level 13 Bladespinner

Base Stats:

Vitality — 32

Intelligence — 124

Dexterity — 57

Strength — 62

Wisdom — 38

Charisma — 21

Skills:

Worldbending — Level 30

Knifework — Level 26

Stealth — Level 11

Identification — Level 10

Needlework — Level 9

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.

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

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.

Tamed Portals — Passive. Increased efficiency of portal magicks means that your portal glow is reduced by 50%, making them less likely to be detected by enemies.

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.

In Plain Sight — When activated, you have a heightened abilitiy to hide in plain sight, and are able to spot opportunities to break from combat at a higher rate. Scales on [WIS].

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%

Lightfoot:

Footsteps silenced.

Eyeslide:

Dramatically reduces chance of being noticed.

Invisibility:

Renders you and all currently equipped items near-invisible.