We didn’t need to win the fight. We just needed to survive it, and to keep the enemies occupied for long enough for the innocent citizens of Tradum to escape the city walls. With Arit and his soldiers training their attention on us, I felt a lot better about Reginald and followers getting out unscathed. Every second that we could maintain this distraction, the better for them.

  The rest of the Slayers—and Zoi—at my side, I stared down the approaching enemies. The two knights of the realm were closest, but they’d come to an abrupt halt as the Player had stepped out of a portal. One of them held flaming sword and shield, his equipment imbued with Sorcery magicks. The other carried a simple great axe, but a leather sash across her chest had pockets for vials, each of them filled with potions or poisons. Behind them stood Arit, the worldbender and member of Tana’s council. He carried no weapons to speak of, his magicks apparently being all the firepower he needed. Either that or he trusted the now thirty or so soldiers stepping out the portal behind him to do the hard work.

  There were too many of them for us to fight for long, weren’t there? A thought occurred to me just then, and I kept chewing on it while Val engaged the enemy in spiteful conversation.

  ‘Is this what you were like in your old world?’ my wife asked, eyes trained on Arit. ‘Did you step on people, kill them, corrupt them, just to get your way? Cos I got news for you: if you did, then you’re a right—’

  I’m not going to repeat the string of words that followed, but I’m sure you can fill in the rest as appropriate. It was pretty nasty, nastier than much that I’d heard Val say before, but as Arit was apparently in charge of corruption operations, he deserved every syllable of it. That’s all I’ll say.

  ‘In my own world,’ Arit replied. ‘I was just a man. In the worlds that my kind created…’ He trailed off.

  ‘Yeah, I’m gonna need you to finish that sentence,’ Val said.

  ‘In these worlds, we’re gods. Gods can do what they like.’

  Arzak groaned. ‘You lot all same! Do they teach you this in Council school? Other Player we meet, Elfric, he not think this. Just Tana and friends.’

  Arit raised his eyebrows. ‘You met Elfric? I’m surprised he’s still out there. I thought he perished long ago, that he was sentenced to live our his days in the ascended world. I suppose I will have to report this back to Tana…’

  Arzak shrugged; though the hermit Player had only helped us, he was still a Player, and that was apparently enough for the orc to not care too much about his wellbeing.

  I caught Lore’s eye, trying to communicate my plan without words. He held my gaze, but I had no idea what he’d understood from it. But he was the least of my concern; Corminar, Val and Zoi were the ones I needed most.

  At that moment, Lore slyly elbowed Val, then nodded over my way. My wife tensed for a moment, but didn’t look at me, knowing that this would draw the enemy’s attention. Still, I saw her flex the fingers of her right hand, and knew that she was ready to cast. Corminar was still oblivious, but he reacted quickly; I could trust him to act the moment he saw the portals open. It was just Zoi that I needed to speak to, but she was on the other side of our group; I couldn’t go whisper in her ear without drawing attention to myself.

  I caught Lore’s eyes again, alerting him to the fact that I was about to need him. The moment I felt like he understood, I strode fast towards Arit and the two knights of the realm.

  ‘You’re a monster!’ I shouted, spitting with rage, putting on enough of a performance that Lore would recognise it as an act, but hopefully the strangers wouldn’t. ‘You deserve to be trapped here. You deserve—’

  Lore—thank the heavens—grabbed me hard by the upper arm, wrenching me backward. I pushed forward against Lore’s grip, but pretended to be overpowered. The barbarian yanked me back towards the team, and I gently nudged us towards Zoi.

  ‘See, worldbender,’ Arit gloated, ‘even your team recognise that you can’t win this one. Why don’t you save us all the trouble and—’

  As I arrived at Zoi’s side, I whispered seven simple words in her ear. ‘Burn them like you did the malae.’ I opened the portals—three fanned in front of each of Val and Corminar, four fanned in front of me and Zoi.

  The tiefling was quick to act, her flames erupting through the portals in the same moment that Val’s lifedrain magicks crackled forth across the unit of soldiers, with Corminar’s rapid-firing of arrows following a fraction of a second after. Some soldiers of the empire fell, but some survived. And those survivors were so in the midst of the chaos that they didn’t notice when I closed four of the portals and reopened them under the soldiers’ feet. As more enemies fell from the sky, Arit tried to catch them with portals of his own, but I had one advantage over an otherwise inevitably more powerful man: I could open more portals than him.

  Perhaps twenty-five seconds after I whispered my instruction to Zoi, Arit’s golden army was severely weakened. Maybe a dozen soldiers remained standing, if barely alive, though the Player and the two knights of the realm remained untouched.

  ‘Arzak! Lore!’ I shouted, pointing to the knights as they charged me. ‘One on each. Protect us from—’

  Fire engulfed one of the knights, these flaming magicks streaming forth from the hands of a screaming Zoi. I wasted not a second for that light shining in the tiefling’s eye, instead portalling over to the aflame knight’s rear. I activated Titan Husk to protect my hands from the flames as I drove my dagger into the woman’s back. Another notification piled up, a Worldbending level-up message among them, but I pushed them aside for now.

  But this left another knight—the one with the flaming sword and shield. I turned, searching the chaos for sight of him, and caught Arit’s wide eyes through the flames. A half second later, a portal appeared at the Player’s side, and the man disappeared through it, out of sight. It seemed he’d never thought so small a team could turn the tide so quickly. It scared him. We scared him. The thought was immensely satisfying.

  A flaming sword arced through the air, and instinctively I opened a portal between myself and the weapon. With my Titan Husk ability activated, I could withstand the flames, but I was still not strong enough to be sliced by a broadsword and escape unscathed.

  Lore barrelled into the knight’s side, shoulder-tackling the enemy to the ground. As they struggled, the barbarian grabbed the knight’s wrist, pushing his flaming blade out of harm’s way, his own arms trembling from exertion.

  I moved to help, raising my dagger high and about to plunge it down into a stab, when the sword’s flames came to life, licking at Lore’s face. The barbarian cried out in pain, stumbling backwards from the scuffle and leaving the knight free to move once more. My blade met nothing but empty air as the enemy rolled out of the way.

  Arrow and lifedrain spell hit the knight, but the enemy struggled against the pain, gritting his teeth and warping his lips into a vicious growl. Despite the attacks, he strode towards Lore, who was still clutching his face. Flames erupted from the knight’s blade once again, a torrent of fire far stronger than the previous attack. Lore’s eyes widened in the split-second before the fire shot towards him, and could only wince in anticipation of the burn.

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  But it never came.

  Zoi had stepped forward, arms raised, her mouth twisted into a growl of her own. Her hands were taut claws, her fingers seeming to be stuck in unnatural positions, as she worked her magicks to turn the knight’s flames back upon him. There was a moment of invisible battle, a clash of will as the two fire-users fought against one another. But it was the tiefling who won this skirmish, and the knight burned.

  When the dust settled, the tiefling continued to stare at the fallen knight. Her eyes didn’t blink, didn’t snap away from the body even for a second while the rest of us gathered ourselves, and while Val worked her Healing magicks on Lore. Only Arzak’s hand on Zoi’s shoulder finally snapped the sorcerer from this daze.

  ‘It not define you,’ the orc said.

  Zoi’s wild eyes looked up at the warrior, meeting the taller woman’s gaze, and she nodded.

  ‘Arit?’ I asked.

  ‘Escaped,’ came Corminar’s reply. ‘Through a portal. Though I did look, I could not determine where the other side was located.’

  I shook my head. We knew where Arit had gone. He’d fled. His job in Tradum was done, or done enough. He had his army, and he had the rest of the malae—that which Zoi hadn’t burned. If I was him, if I thought like him—and I admit, the ability to do so came easier than I liked—then I would take my winnings and ride north. I would head to Auricia, where the Council had made their headquarters. I would give Tana the malae she needed for this ritual, and I would use my corrupted army to make sure that the Slayers never so much as troubled them.

  ‘We’re leaving,’ I told the others.

  ‘We could do with some rest,’ Lore said.

  ‘There’s—’ I started, but Val had reached the same conclusion. We were thinking more alike day by day.

  ‘We don’t have time,’ my wife said. ‘Arit will be fleeing. We have to go now, before it’s too late.’

  * * *

  The low winter sun was setting by the time we found the camp.

  They were based in foothills to the north. It was a clever, tactical location; their presence was hidden by the crests of the hilltops, and few roads came through this mountainous terrain, so there would be few travellers to spot them. We’d found them only by recreating the same logic; if we were Arit, where would we hide? Again, it was me who had been able to habit the Council’s mindset, and me who figured out the answer.

  Corminar and I crawled slowly up the side of a grassy hill, the blades frozen, patches of ice and snow littering the hillside. We kept low, and halted for minutes at a time, to be absolutely sure we were not spotted by the main camp that we knew dwelled just over the other side. We crawled over bramble, uncomplaining, we felt our fingers grow numb, without comment, and we kept our minds focused on the task at hand. More so than ever before, it wasn’t just us who would suffer if we were unsuccessful; beating Arit and destroying the malae could just save the world itself. If we had to suffer a little pain, a little numbness, to save our world? We would do so without complaint.

  The night was pitch black by the time we reached the crest of the hill, and in the minutes leading up to this, I’d wondered if that would mean we wouldn’t see the full scale of the camp. But as it turned out, I hadn’t needed to worry.

  The thousands of torches in the valley below us provided plenty of light with which to see the several hundred-strong army of the Golden Empire, packing up their camp and preparing to leave. Most of the tents were disassembled, or in the process of being disassembled, but the crates filled with the monsters of corruption were already loaded onto wagons. Yet, only half of the soldiers below wore that golden uniform. The other half wore rags, wore basic tunics, wore pretty much anything you’d expect of a civilian, not a soldier. But these two hundred or so soldiers out of uniform did not mind being unarmoured, did not mind being cold. They did not mind much of anything, for that matter, because they were the citizens of Tradum that Arit had already corrupted.

  Arzak had been right; they hadn’t just corrupted a handful of people. There were hundreds of these corrupted pseudo-soldiers before us, hundreds of these super strong beings that we’d struggled to kill just one or two of in Coldharbour. With this many, Arit was surely unstoppable.

  With this many soldiers of corruption between us and the wagons, what hope did we have of destroying the malae?