Maya had never traveled by leypillar before. In the hour or so after first learning about the fast-transit system’s existence and before actually experiencing it for herself, she’d somehow managed to build it up in her mind enough that the actual trip was something of a letdown.

“Is it supposed to be that quick?”

Nalana nodded. “What else would it be like?”

“Swirling lights, maybe a sensation of movement?" Maya shrugged. "Anything but. . . just being somewhere else.”

“That’s the point of leypillars. Immediately being someplace else.”

“But there wasn’t even a sound effect or anything. There should have been a crackle of energy, or a swoosh, or something.” The pillar itself, a sheer obsidian obelisk with faint shimmers of electricity running along its length, proved far more dramatic than the travel it enabled.

“I’m just glad we only have to spend a quarter hour walking to reach the dungeon, rather than a full day,” put in Tahpa.

Tahpa, a golden-skinned elf with an equally gold beard and extraordinarily bald head, was one of the highest level players in the group. And the best equipped. His deep red robes shimmered with iridescence, he wore a gleaming amulet of obvious power and Maya's attention kept snagging on a huge pearlescent button on his collar. Carved and embellished with angular symbols, it looked as blatantly magical as his amulet.

“What’s the dungeon like?” Maya asked as they crossed the rocky hills toward a looming crag. “I’ve never been in one before. Honestly, I’d hoped to go a little longer without needing to, but I understand this is important.”

"There are three stages of the dungeon. The first stage, we need to charge fire crystals while being harassed by featherbats trying to make us drop them,” Tahpa explained. “After that, we need to go down the longest stairway in existence. It’ll probably take as long to go down that as it takes us to get to the dungeon. Along the way, we’ll be ambushed at least once and no more than six times by cult fanatics hoping to slay us and drink our blood.

“Once we reach the bottom, we'll be rushed by the more powerful cultists while they try to protect their high priest. In this stage, if we kill the priest first the ceremony will be broken. Each of the remaining followers will become stronger as the feedback of the ritual powers them up. So, if we were going to attempt this dungeon in the standard way, it would be easiest to kill the high priest and only the high priest first, so that each individual remaining enemy would gain the smallest possible fraction of the ritual's power.

"If the ritual is not stopped, the death of the final fighter will trigger the resurrection ritual, which is what we need to do. Then the Phoenix will be reborn and we'll have to fight it and the priest both together. If the priest is killed first, the Phoenix will enrage and double in strength. If we kill the Phoenix first, the priest will absorb its essence and empower himself. That would be technically the next easiest route, but what we need is the Phoenix as the final boss. We're going for the hardest, most rewarding version of this dungeon.

"Fridget and I are both level 30, which is well above what this dungeon is intended for. That should help balance out the fact that you're only level 6."

Maya nodded. “Why are you coming, though? I thought you were part of the research group.”

“I am. This dungeon requires exactly seven players or it won’t let you in. Since I’m one of the newer and less experienced researchers, but one of the higher-level and better equipped fighters, I volunteered to come on this trip instead of forcing someone more important to come out.”

“How new are you?”

Tahpa tilted his head from side to side, considering the question before answering. “This is only my second month at the magic academy. I’ve been playing on World 9352 for about six months now, though, so I’m pretty familiar with the system. I always resisted joining Shardlord, because I didn’t want to get involved in the PVP squabbles with that streamer guy, but I ran up against the hard limits of magic pretty quickly outside.”

“When you say you ran up against the limits, does that mean you have all eight main spells?” Or should that be nine, Maya wondered, counting Spark.

“Certainly," Tahpa replied. He grinned. "It has been a bit of a drawback in learning the underlying principles, since each spell seems to violate them in different ways, but I’m glad I invested in them already. It certainly means I’ll be more useful now.”

“How did you get enough magic?”

“There are plenty of places to find it, if you’re willing to look everywhere and anywhere. It’s scarce, but not impossible to get. Anyplace with a low population, out in the wilds, you can find places where it appears naturally.”

They arrived at the dungeon entrance then, a low archway carved into a rocky hillside. A golden glow emanated from within, brightening the area around the opening even in the middle of the day.

“Here we are,” Fridget announced. She stood beside the entrance, blue and white dress fluttering around her in the wind, and gestured for everyone else to precede her. “Step carefully. Check the ceiling. There are steppingstones directly underneath every crystal formation. Try to stay on them if you don’t want to fall under.”

“I hate this part,” Nalana complained, fur bristling. Maya followed her in, unsure what to expect.

They stood on a narrow ledge, facing a glittering cavern. The room spread out wide to either side, high-ceilinged, with golden light from the many illuminated crystals reflecting off thick mud slowly swirling around beneath. Each crystal gave off a distinctive musical tone that thrummed through the air, seeming soft but resonating deep in Maya's chest.

Maya hesitated, not wanting to step into the lake of mud before her. Nalana jumped nimbly to clear the nearest patch and landed with a squelch knee-deep in the mud nearer the center of the chamber. “This way,” she said, gesturing to the massive door that made up the far wall.

The heavy carved stone door held seven crystals, each set into a little cubby conveniently the right height for each of the seven players to grab one.

By the time Maya finished staring, three of their companions had already reached the door.

Nalana jumped from steppingstone to steppingstone, though how she could do so with such confidence when they were invisible beneath the surface of the mud was beyond Maya.

Fridget was the last to enter the room, and came to stand beside Maya where she hesitated.

“You’ll need to go in. Don’t worry, it doesn’t stick to your body or clothes like normal mud. It’ll be uncomfortable, but as soon as you’re out it’ll be gone.”

“Thanks.” Maya nodded, but her clothes getting dirty wasn’t her highest priority. She looked up at the ceiling, checking the location of the crystals. There were dozens spread throughout the room, not forming a single path but scattered so that there were no choke-points.

Then, working up her nerve, she tentatively jumped for the nearest steppingstone.

And missed.

She landed in the thick warm mud, sinking to her waist, then shoulders. She flailed wildly, caught the rim of the stone pillar which formed the submerged stepping stone, and pulled herself up onto it, panting with effort. She was pleased to see that Fridget had been correct - when she glanced at herself, the mud hadn't clung to her at all.

Fridget splashed across the room in a clearly practiced series of jumps, joining everyone else who had reached the door and claimed their semi-translucent milky-white crystals. They each made their way to stand atop a pillars, knee- to waist-deep in the mud, holding the crystals up over their heads toward the glowing golden ones above.

Faint light began to kindle in their cores as the formerly-colourless crystals slowly turned golden.

Maya tore her attention away from the fascinating lightshow and focused on jumping to the next pillar. She could do this.

But before she could attempt the jump, a swarm of shrieking birds came diving at the party, two or three to each player.

Maya immediately cast Wind Whisper to push her attackers away. They fluttered uncertainly for a moment before righting themselves in midair. Then, instead of trying for Maya again, they veered off and joined the attack against Fridget.

That was their mistake.

Fridget had successfully pulled aggro of the entire swarm. She spun in a circle, casting flame spells in a wide arc around herself, and every angry fluttering creature to approach her soon fell limply to the ground.

Maya tried to ignore the sounds of battle and struggled through the muck toward the door and its crystal.

She missed the next submerged pillar as well, wishing she could see them as she muttered and dragged herself up from the mud. Another jump, and Maya landed on the next perfectly. She nearly toppled off it in surprise at her success, but managed to turn her momentum into another jump. She landed, but was going too fast at the wrong angle and slipped off, flailing as she skidded past the pillar and smacked into the muck. She spluttered and grumbled as she hauled herself up onto the ledge in front of the door.

By then, the sounds of fighting had ceased. Maya glanced back. All her teammates held their crystals up undisturbed. Birdlike corpses littered the muddy ground around Fridget, some sinking, others floating for the moment.

She grabbed her crystal from the alcove in the door and jumped back to the nearest pillar, holding up the crystal above her head like the others. The mud still reached above her knees, but at least now she didn’t need to keep jumping from place to place.

Twice more they were attacked by waves of the featherbats, and both times the party repelled them without significant difficulty. Fridget and Tahpa were a deadly combination, between her fire and his lightning.

"Ugh!" Smack. Something fell heavily into the mud.

Maya jerked around at the sound, wobbled, and nearly lost her balance. She flailed a moment, leaning back, then recovered; the sucking mud around her legs actually helped to anchor her.

"I hate this muck," said Nalana, scrambling back onto her own pillar. "Just our luck that this quest was open today."

"You'd really rather it was the fire hydra?" Fridget asked, grinning. "That's the only other one with the right materials."

"Obviously not. Crazy harpies are bad enough for me."

Maya frowned at her, but several other players nodded in agreement. "Crazy harpies?" she asked hesitantly.

"Aye,” said the player nearest Maya on the other side. A tall elf with blue-black hair and pale blue-tinted skin, Maya thought his name was Rane. He paused a moment before continuing. “Crazy harpies. A cult, seeking to resurrect the great Phoenix. And succeeding, if we don't stop them. Of course, for this to work, we need to let them succeed." He sighed heavily. "I hate that Phoenix. It's very spiky."

"Is there any way to access the wiki while in-game?" Maya asked. "Because there's a lot about this game that I would like to know without having to learn about it first hand on the fly."

Rane shook his head. "World 9352 is off grid. A few worlds have Internet access, but it's insanely expensive. Plus it would go against this world’s whole family friendly thing. Parents want to be sure that if they log their kids into this world, there's no chance they'll be stumbling into certain things. It sometimes sucks living in a censored world, but I can always log into 3399."

"Dare I ask what 3399 is known for?"

"Things I can't even say here. Why, just the––" he stopped talking and moving for long moment, standing unnaturally still, "––are worth the price of admission."

Maya decided she didn't need to know. But when she stopped talking, that returned her attention to her aching arms and constantly dropping stamina bar as she continued to hold the crystal above her head.

"Hey guys? What happens if my stamina runs out? It's getting pretty low."

This time it was Tahpa who answered. "You have a 10 second window before the crystal starts losing charge. Unfortunately, at your level, that means you're going to be bouncing up and down for a while during the last half of it."

"Half?! We're only half done?"

"A little less than half. Almost half."

Maya scowled. "And you have to do this every time you want to run this dungeon?"

Tahpa nodded, stroking his beard with one hand while he held the crystal effortlessly in the other. Maya found it extremely unfair. "It's not bad as far as dungeon entrance openings go. So you need to stand here for 20 minutes charging a crystal, so what?"

It took significant effort for Maya not to groan.

She lost track of time. She counted seconds, nine resting, enough to recover a few stamina. Then hold up the crystal before it loses charge, keep it up for 20 seconds, rest for nine.

It was almost a relief when another wave of feathered attackers flew in. At least then Maya had an excuse to pause and cast spells instead, even if it did set her progress back. She decided she hated this dungeon already.

Everyone else's crystals began to reach full. They slowly moved through the mud-filled chamber toward the gate at the far end to return their charged crystals to their original slots. Within minutes, the gate displayed an uneven line of six fiery crystals. One space remained for Maya's crystal.

Nalana came over to Maya and stood beside her with her arms crossed. "I wish this stupid quest would allow us to help each other. Why should it care if one person charges all seven crystals, or if each person does their own?"

Maya's arms trembled as her stamina ran out, and she brought them down to rest. Her breath was coming in gasps. "I bet… they just want to keep… low-level players… out."

Seven, eight, nine.

She raised the crystal above her head again.

"A lot of mages don't have high stamina," said Nalana. "It wouldn't just be keeping out low-level players. What about players who have stamina-reducing specializations?"

"Like me?" Maya asked.

"I thought you were level six?"

"I am. But I got my specialization in the tutorial."

"Really?"

Down. "I know… it's unusual… I guess… I'm just lucky." Seven… Eight… Nine… Up. "I skipped some of the boring sections, which was probably a mistake. Everyone says that specializations are level 10 though. It wasn't… Normal exactly." And down. One… Two… "It just converts energy and stamina to health. Not a great specialization for a mage, I know. I just needed… an excuse… not to waste level ups on strength."

Something changed then, before Nalana could reply. The crystal in Maya's hand began vibrating, giving off a deep humming tone. Like the massive glowing crystal overhead, but a different note; harmonizing.

Finally! Maya rushed forward, momentarily forgetting she was knee-deep in mud, balancing precariously on slippery steppingstones. She lost her balance, toppled over face first, and almost lost hold on the crystal.

"Whoops!" Nalana caught her before she could submerge completely, and pulled her back up to her feet. "Careful there. It's slippery. Remember that you just used up all your stamina. Rest a minute. The dungeon will still be there."

"But what if it isn't? What if someone else comes along?"

"Then it won't matter one way or the other."

Maya was so tired of standing and waiting, but at least this time she didn't have to do so with her hands held over her head. Once her stamina reached half full, she nodded to Nalana. "I'm ready. Let's go."

They walked up to the door. Nalana placed her hand on her own crystal, while Maya placed hers into the door then did the same.

Once all seven of them had their hands on the crystals, lines of fire began spreading out from each crystal like growing roots or cracking ice, subdividing the door into smaller and smaller sections until the whole thing was a spiderweb of gold and orange flames.

The lines glowed brighter and brighter, until Maya had to look away. Then there was a single sudden flash, brighter still, a sound like cracking thunder, and the musty scent of a long sealed room.

One final cloud of the featherbats burst out of the newly-revealed opening, easily three times as many as any of the former waves, and the next several minutes were fully occupied in fending them off. Though individually weak, there were a lot of them and their claws hurt. Maya began to worry about her survival before they finally managed to finish off the last of them.

Beyond the opening, a grand stairway descended into the earth. The smoothly carved stone descent was easily wide enough for all seven of them to walk beside each other without the slightest difficulty, the steps wide and shallow and more numerous than Maya could count.

Fridget held up a flaming torch. It only illuminated a short distance due to the massive scale of the tunnel, but it was better than nothing.

"Down we go!"

The stairs went on and on and on. Maya thought she could sense a vague twisting to them, as though they turned first one way then another in their descent deep into the ground. Darkness had long ago closed in around them once they left the shining entrance behind.

Between irregularly-spaced outcroppings of faintly glowing yellow crystals, Fridget's torch illuminated their way from where she led the group.

Tahpa took up the rear. Maya herself walked in the center of their procession, the most protected spot. Beside her walked another lower level player, a petite elf woman whose name Maya couldn't recall.

The absolute silence of the trip felt more ominous than any atmosphere Maya had encountered before, but it felt even more dangerous to break the silence. Their footsteps made no sound against the stone, even the armor of Rane the battlemage oddly muffled.

The silence pressed on Maya, urging her to breathe quietly, to step softly and speak only at utmost need. No one else spoke, so neither did she.

If the goal of this descent was to thoroughly creep her out, then it was doing its job far too well. Maya found herself jumping at the slightest noise, and by the looks of it her fellow low-level wasn't doing much better. Maya wanted to encourage the elf but couldn't bring herself to break the silence, and her attempt at a friendly smile didn't feel very reassuring.

The attack came without warning. Screeches shattered the quiet, accompanied by the sudden flash of magic and bursts of light and fire. Maya saw the glint of glowing blades in the sudden confusion, blasts of ice and fire, globes blacker than darkness.

There were four attackers, crimson-feathered harpies armed with ivory-glowing knives.They'd surrounded the group on the stairs, two attacking the front, two the rear.

Then Tahpa shouted something and clapped twice, each crack low and hollow, the echoes deafeningly loud in the enclosed space. He pushed his hands out, sending a deep-vibrating wave of sound and lightning that smashed two attackers against the wall and held them there.

Maya's breath caught, the deep rumble of the spell still vibrating in her chest.

She wanted that spell.

The other two ambushers screeched and fought ferociously, blades flashing and spells flying. Maya shook herself from her distraction and started casting Wind Whisper into the fray, though Fridget, Rane, and Nalana seemed more than capable of handling the ambush.

Beside Maya, the small elf woman whose name she didn't know stood with her hands raised, as still as Tahpa, but it took Maya another moment to figure out what she was doing. Then she realized. Though Fridget had tossed aside her torch the moment combat began, the area was lit much more clearly than before. Each of them was glowing faintly, making it very obvious who was an ally, and the glows combined to provide illumination akin to bright moonlight.

Mystery solved, Maya turned her full attention back to the brief fight. In under a minute, Tahpa's two adversaries crumpled to the ground in the same moment. Fridget, Nalana, and Rane had already finished off the other two. And, as far as Maya could see, without significant injury.

Maya felt extraordinarily useless.

"That wasn't too bad," Rane said, putting away the sword he'd been using.

The glow around the group faded, as the low-level elf released her spell with a sigh of relief.

"One down," Tahpa agreed as they set off again. "Just remember, when we get to the cultists, save your energy. We'll need it all for the final boss and there won't be time to recover in between."

"We can trade off," Fridget said. "One stays to hold attention, one leaves to rest."

"We'll probably lose at least a few of the lower levels. So y'all, when you can respawn, just run right back in. The best thing you can do is cause confusion, keep the Phoenix from lining up attacks. There are pillars you can hide behind to reduce the damage, but nothing can completely prevent it."

"Have any of you done this dungeon before, aside from Tahpa and I?" Fridget asked, turning to glance over the group.

Nalana raised her hand. No one else.

"But I've done other dungeons," Ranon said. "I'm sure I can pick it up."

Fridget nodded, picked up her torch, and the group continued downward.

Now the silence felt even more ominous. Maya found herself jumping at every variation of shadow, wondering if it heralded a second attack. But the second attack wasn’t an ambush. A group of six crimson harpies stood waiting for them, blocking the way onward.

This fight took a bit longer. The attackers were more spread out, so Tahpa’s thunder spell only captured one of them. Everyone took on their own opponent - everyone but Maya. She fired Wind Whispers as fast as she could, trying to help out the others who were below level 30. Fridget and Tahpa could take care of themselves.

Nalana seemed to be faring particularly poorly, her opponent hardly injured, so Maya focused her attention there. But Nalana shook her head. “I've got this. Help Rane. He has less heath.”

Maya nodded and switched the focus of her attacks.

Nothing she did was sufficient to draw aggro, which she was grateful for. The battle continued a bit longer than the first, but in the end there were no losses on their side and a complete wipe for their enemies.

She didn’t know what level these enemies were, but they were apparently enough of a problem that once the fight was over the group sat in place for probably ten minutes to recover lost health before continuing.

The group advanced downward once more in silence. The air grew heavier and warmer with each step. Maya wondered how long until it became unbearable. And then, just when she thought it might, they reached the end.

They walked down off the last step and through a small antechamber into a room full of vivid glowing darkness. Maya couldn't think of any other way to describe it.

It was dark, but an active darkness. And then not the sort you couldn't see through either. A thick, slimy, viscous darkness, one which strangled the light in Fridget's hand while also illuminating the area just enough that Maya could see everything from the heavily-polished floor covered in arcane diagrams to the uneven stone walls and the many statues and pillars surrounding the area.

It made her uneasy to look at the weird dark mist filling the room. The impossible juxtaposition of absolute darkness and complete visibility baffled her mind.

"It helps if you pretend it's purple," whispered Nalana. "Tricks your mind into not getting freaked out."

"Thanks." It did help a little. But it was still too dark and too clear to be possible.

Then something moved, a winged shadow at the far end of the room, and Maya's mind had plenty of things to worry about besides the impossible darkness.

"Who dares enter The Convocation? Who comes in the hour of night before The Flame arises?" The voice which rang out was impossible to place. Maya couldn’t be sure if it was young or old, male or female. It stood, black-feathered and larger than any of the harpies they’d faced so far, winged arms held raised slowly to either side.

"Don't bother answering," said Tahpa quietly. "It'll only make the cutscene take longer if you do."

The harpy cultist paused a moment, then continued its rant uninterrupted when no one answered the challenge. "To me, believers! To me, all who seek the glory of the Phoenix's rise! Stop these intruders lest they bring to naught all that we have worked for! Guard the ritual! Do not let them bring us to nothing."

The darkness brightened, shifting from viscous purple black to something brighter but equally liquidy that glowed with an inner fire. Maya thought it looked like it ought to be hard to breathe in, though it proved no impediment to either breath or movement.

All around the room, the still figures that she had taken for statues began to move. They straightened from their stiff poses, drew weapons with a terrifying shing! in the same moment, then leapt forward in a single unified wave. There were six, all around the room, and they charged straight for the group of intruders.

Maya understood the dungeon's tactics in a flash. Ostensibly, the goal was for six party members to tie up the six fighters while your final party member tried to disrupt the chief spellcaster. But since their particular goal required the dungeon secondary phase to begin, they'd have an extra person to help bring down the fighters more quickly and in so doing accelerate the ritual.

None of the cultists focused on her, their aggro shifting rapidly between the higher level players. Maya started casting as quickly as she could, confident that there was nothing she could possibly do to attract the attention of the enemies.

Somewhat to her surprise, Nalana seemed the favourite target. Though initially Fridget and Tahpa had clearly been the most dangerous, something had shifted partway through the fight and now the felinis mage had three of the six attacking her at once.

The strain began to show. Nalana began to retreat, holding out a flaming shield before her instead of focusing on attacks, while Rane picked up the slack and doubled his efforts to attack.

Maya kept casting until her energy ran out, then backed up and surveyed the battle impatiently waiting for it to recover.

Tahpa glowed with fiery lines that seared through his golden skin, throwing handfuls of flame at anyone nearby, while Fridget alternately threw lightning or frost at anyone close to her.

The moment she had enough energy, Maya resumed hurling her Wind Whispers at the nearest enemies. By then, several of their opponents were down and a rising dread suffused her. The vast overlapping triangles and half-circles of the ritual markings beneath them glowed brighter and brighter with unearthly flame, growing more golden with each enemy the team brought down.

She knew the feeling was deliberate, a warning from the game, but even though she knew this was part of the plan she couldn't quite ignore the feeling. It pressed in on her urgently, making her feel like she ought to - needed to - rush at the leading cultist and somehow disrupt the ritual.

She could at least stab her knives through its chest, if no better plan came to mind. Not that it would do much. The game didn't follow realism as far as damage went. Her knives did three damage, and it was the same whether she hit a vital spot or not. You could stab someone all day long, and as long as their health held out it wouldn't matter. It was reassuring in a way, knowing that she couldn't be taken out by someone with a really good aim in a single shot or anything, but also really brought home how useless she was as a level six in a group of all 20+.

Then the last attacker fell and the ritual's glow reached its vivid peak, white and gold and brilliant. The priest screamed something unintelligible or foreign and the glow left the floor and rose into the air, coalescing and compressing as it drew in the viscous fog with it, shrinking into a bright golden orb.

Maya’s unease continued to steadily grow, screaming at her to run or attack, anything but stand there and wait.

She stood and waited. There was nothing else she could do. This was the plan. She had to let it play out.

The sphere expanded, growing dimmer as it did so, until its surface turned from golden light into a milky yellow-white opaque surface reminiscent of a pearl.

The pearlescent yellow orb then increased in size, expanding until it seemed to fill half of the massive chamber with its presence. It floated in midair, still emitting a faint glow though nothing close to the brightness of the ritual light which gave it birth.

"Get ready," said one of the other players whose name she didn’t know.

Maya wanted to ask him how, but there was no time. The orb – no, the egg – begin to split open, fiery cracks racing along it until it broke into three jagged pieces that fell to the ground with a sharp crack.

Where the egg had been, gold and flaming, slowly flapping wings that would fill Maya's entire room, hovered what could only be the Phoenix.

Character Maya Starborn Average Androgynous Harpy Level: 6 Affinities: Magical Physical Tier: 1 Class: Trickster Specialization: Path of Life Total Base Items Modifiers Sturdiness: 8 8 0 0 Momentum: 17 12 2 3 Agility: 11 8 2 1 Control: 27 8 19 0 Attunement: 16 15 0 1 Focus: 9 8 0 1 Intelligence: 14 12 0 2 Flexibility: 9 8 0 1 Luck: 59 89 - -30 Unassigned: 0 Health: 121 of 121 Will: 18 of 18 Stamina: 78 of 78 Energy: 4 of 79 Speed: 105% Switch penalty: -33%, 8.3 secs Stealth: 84% Chain bonus: +5% Awareness: 84% Cooldown: 95.5% Max abilities: 3 Abilities Abilities: [5 of 3] Wind Whisper

[5 energy] Blow into cupped hands, then push the air toward the target.

Creates a light breeze, a quick gust, or a damaging slash.

[Overcharge: +5 energy, +0.2 sec cast time, +50% force/duration/dmg] 1.9 sec

5 dmg

(wind) Throw Knife

[5 stamina] Throw a knife at a target with high accuracy. Requires a knife. 0.8 sec

3 dmg

(physical) Spark

[5 energy] Draw magic into palm and snap fingers to ignite into a spark of fire.

Can be used as a light or thrown at a target. 1.1 sec

3 dmg

(fire) Windborne Blade

[45 energy, 5 stamina] Cast Wind Whisper in a loop up and behind, aligning with throwing arm.

Throw knife straight at target with wind as augment. 4.3 sec

33 dmg

(physical) Sense Balance Discern if an area is lacking in or has an excess of any materials, creatures, etc. Equipment & Inventory Item Name Slot Stu Mom Agi Con Att Foc Int Flx Ordinary Gloves of Control Hands 13 Minor Chestpiece of the Dancer Body 1 1 Minor Waistwrap of the Dancer Legs 1 1 Acrobat's Footwraps Feet 2 Lesser Bracelet of Control Arm 1 4 Trickster's Mask (Mage) Special Money: 70 Gold 3 Silver 262 Copper Quality Item name Details Soulbound Trickster's Dice Soulbound Trickster's Orb 2/5 uses remaining Flimsy Shary's Orchard Brochure Normal Apple x2 Consumable Special White and Blue Orb 3/3 uses remaining Special Key - Arrival Plaza Apartment Expires in 29 days Normal Basic Throwing Knife x11 3 damage (physical) Special Key - Room 6, Sapphire Hall Flimsy Newcomer's Tunic Flimsy Newcomer's Leggings Special Arena Equipment Token Registered to Maya Starborn Missions Mission Description

Time Reward [Crimson Flame Dungeon] Defeat the Crimson Flame Cult and prevent the Risen Phoenix from returning. Variable

+50 Western Wilds reputation A Private Grudge Claim Standalone's house in Conquest and hold it for at least 10 hours. Personal House Trickster Day 4 Claim in Conquest the home of the next player you see.

Once claimed, hold it for 24 hours. 6d 8h 11m Trickster's Reward

??? Arena (Shadow) Spend at least one day every week fighting in the Arena. Ongoing Variable Trickster Day 3 Lose a fight to another player in the arena. DONE Ordinary Gloves of Control

+5 reputation with The Trickster Gazebo Construction Construct a new gazebo for Maylon the Poet.

[Optional] Also varnish the entire structure once built. DONE 3 silver 50 copper

+5 reputation with Maylon the Poet Trickster Day 2 Lose a fight to another player in PVP. DONE Lesser Bracelet of Control

+5 reputation with The Trickster Windy Creek Reconstruction Locate the missing workers' tools.

Construct a new dam to redirect Windy Creek to the mill run.

Clear the wreckage of the old Windy Creek Dam.

Complete construction of the new Windy Creek bridge. DONE 5 silver, 80 copper

25 reputation with Windy Creek village Trickster Day 1 Side with a person who is losing an argument or disagreement. FAILED -5 reputation with The Trickster Missing Delivery Find the overdue delivery boy. Ensure his safety and the successful delivery of apples to Shary's Produce Stand. DONE 5 copper

3 apples

+10 reputation with Shary and Elaph