《Death After Death (Roguelike Isekai)》


 Ch. 01 - Anywhere but Here

    ¡°Help me, Truck-kun, you¡¯re my only hope,¡± were Simon¡¯s final words before he stepped out into traffic on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.


    It was a quick but messy end as he transformed from a 29-year-old man into an impromptu speed bump for the eighteen-wheeler barreling down the street. The driver slammed on the brakes the instant he saw what was happening, but he would never stop in time.


    For Simon, the most challenging part had been figuring out which street near his parent¡¯s house was the busiest. He¡¯d considered jumping off a bridge instead, but he was afraid of heights, and it was easier to let someone else kill him. Doing it this way was just the perfect otaku ending for his hikikomori life.


    He¡¯d been a shut-in for years, spurning the constant disappointment of real people and playing games to avoid messy social interactions as the world passed him by. It had been like this since he¡¯d gotten laid off and moved back in with his parents a couple years ago. His friends said he was stuck in a rut, but they didn¡¯t get it.


    They were too busy with girlfriends or careers of their own to see how he¡¯d steadily simplified his life to focus on the essential things. One by one, they drifted off, giving up the online games they¡¯d played together for so long. Simon didn¡¯t care, though; once they were gone, he didn¡¯t miss them.


    Too many Isekai light novels had convinced him that his only salvation was in another world. Even if the odds of such things were slim, it was still worth betting his life on. While he might not have been good with Excel or showing up for work on time, after spending thousands of hours fighting every monster under the sun, he was sure that he could save the world from the demon king, stop the undead army, or whatever another world might need help with. He¡¯d be glad to do it, too, in exchange for a few busty friends and some great food along the way.


    As Simon saw it, the worst-case scenario was that instead of waking up in another world with an overpowered skill or two, he¡¯d just disappear. Stupid concepts like heaven or hell couldn¡¯t be real, so either option worked for him.


    Anything would be better than this tedious, mundane existence. He was tired of his mother failing to understand that working retail was beneath him, and no matter how many rare achievements he attached to his resume, none of the game design jobs he applied to ever called him back.


    Moments after he felt the weight of the steel bumper force him underneath the truck¡¯s unforgiving wheels, Simon peeled himself off the cool marble floor of an antechamber decorated with mosaics and marble statuary. He smiled for the first time in weeks at the sight.


    ¡°Well, it looks like there¡¯s life after death after all,¡± he said to himself, standing there in the same clothes he died in as he looked around.


    The room had a single exit, and Simon walked through it. It led to a long hallway of life-sized statues. Each had a plaque below them, but they weren¡¯t written in English. The sight gave him hope because the place felt less like heaven and more like a light novel with every step. Then he turned the corner and saw what he could only describe as a goddess. The beatific woman sat on a throne in the middle of the rotunda, radiating peace as the light of the oculus shone down on her from above.


    The throne was atop a dais and a short flight of stairs led to the top. Next to it was an oversized set of balance scales, and all the walls that circled the room between the columns were filled with bookshelves. It was hard to focus on those details, though, because the light made her blond hair glow with heavenly light. Her beauty acted as a beacon, forcing him to stumble towards it.


    He knew he¡¯d made the right decision. This was a deity that could understand him and just how hard his life had been. She could help him find something more suited to who he really was. When he reached the top, he stood there resisting the urge to bow while she regarded him.


    ¡°Welcome, Simon. I¡¯ve been waiting for you.¡± The goddess¡¯s voice was as beautiful as the rest of her, filling him with hope.


    ¡°T-thank you, Your Majesty,¡± Simon said, barely overcoming his shyness. It was only after he spoke that he realized ¡®Majesty¡¯ didn¡¯t sound quite right, but he wasn¡¯t sure what else to call her. How did you address a living, breathing goddess?


    ¡°Oh, please,¡± she laughed musically. ¡°You may call me Helades. There¡¯s no need to be so formal. This is hardly the first time we¡¯ve met, after all.¡±


    ¡°It isn¡¯t?" Simon asked, confused. He was sure he¡¯d remember someone this beautiful, even if he¡¯d only walked past her on the street.


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    ¡°No one gets to try their hand at being a human without a few dozen reincarnations as a lesser animal. This isn¡¯t even your first life as a human.¡± She explained patiently, ¡°That¡¯s what reincarnation is for. Maturing and distilling souls to prepare them for bigger and better things. It¡¯s why we¡¯re all here.¡±


    ¡°Then why don¡¯t I¡ª¡± Simon tried to ask as Helades spoke over him.


    ¡°No one remembers,¡± she shrugged, sounding a little bored. ¡°Just like no one remembers to step on the scale before I ask them nicely.¡±


    ¡°Oh, Sorry, ummm¡­ Helades,¡± he mumbled as he turned around and grabbed the balance¡¯s center for support as he stepped onto one side. The other side was empty save for a thin tome, but still, the scale barely moved while he stood there nervously.


    ¡°I see,¡± the goddess said, lifting her arm. As she raised it, the book flew from where it lay on the scales to her open hand. Once it arrived, it started flipping through the pages on its own until finally stopping at something near the end of the book.


    ¡°Ahh - yes, that¡¯s what this is then.¡± she said, finally looking back to Simon, ¡°Okay - you can get down now. Why don¡¯t you tell me what you¡¯d like from your next life.¡±


    Simon coughed, clearing his throat before launching into the speech he¡¯d been preparing for almost a year. ¡°All I want in my next life is everything I was missing in this one. Love. Meaning. Adventure.


    I want to be reincarnated into a fantasy world where I can grow up to be a hero and¡ª¡±


    ¡°Sorry,¡± she interrupted, ¡°I¡¯m afraid that¡¯s not going to happen.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Simon asked. Her statement was a mental sucker punch that left him fumbling for words. ¡°Are there no such thing as fantasy worlds, then?¡±


    ¡°Oh, it¡¯s not that,¡± The goddess replied. ¡°I¡¯ve got an infinite number of worlds I could send you to. More than you could imagine. But you simply aren¡¯t cut out for that.¡±


    ¡°B-But I can¡ª¡± he tried to defend himself.


    ¡°There¡¯s nothing you can say that would surprise me, Simon. It¡¯s just... how would people from your world put it? You lack the experience points for that sort of class. It would just be setting you up for failure and putting the destinies of countless other souls in danger,¡± she said, sounding almost conciliatory. ¡°We need to be realistic and look at lives that can better suit who you are and what you¡¯re capable of, deep down.¡±


    ¡°Other choices?¡± Simon asked, failing to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He¡¯d never considered the option that he might get here only to be forced into a new life where he was a nobody all over again. ¡°Like what?¡±


    ¡°Well, based on your past lives, I think you should give koala or sloth another try. If you wanted to try something new, though, I think that musk ox or black bear would be a great fit.¡± She smiled. ¡°If you¡¯d like a complete list, though¡­¡±


    ¡°You think I should be¡­ a-a bear in my next life? A fucking bear?¡± He sputtered, outraged at the idea even as Helades¡¯s expression remained placid.


    He was about to open his mouth again and give her a piece of his mind when he thought better of it and opened the book floating next to him instead. Yelling at someone wasn¡¯t the way to get what you wanted, and talking to your boss like this would get you fired, he reminded himself as he leafed through it in an attempt to calm down. He didn¡¯t even want to know what would happen if you pissed off a goddess.


    ¡°You¡¯ve been a bear many times. You seem to do well as an upper-level omnivore. It might be strange to think about, but if you give it a shot¡­¡± While she spoke, he flipped through the pages. Most of the entries were lined out, which presumably meant he couldn¡¯t choose them, but most of the furry ones remained available. Koala. Leopard Seal. Llama. Manatee. Meerkat. Moose. Mountain Goat. Musk Ox. The list went on and on.


    ¡°How short am I on experience to be human?¡± Simon asked finally.


    His mind still rebelled at the idea of becoming an animal. Still, if he appeared reasonable and played along, he might find a back door to get what he wanted. If he could just weasel himself into a path to a fantasy world, he was sure that he could become the hero no matter what she planned for him.


    ¡°Well - if a soul needs a million experience points to become an average human¡­¡± she said, pondering the question, ¡°Then I¡¯d say you have about 150,000. So, you¡¯re pretty far from it, but you have enough points for a red panda. That could be fun, right?¡±


    ¡°But that¡¯s way off,¡± Simon protested. ¡°Like¡­ I¡¯d have to live until I was 120 just to be a person again! How is that fair?¡±


    ¡°Now, now,¡± the goddess said, her patience showing cracks. ¡°You were on track for a perfectly normal next life until you ended yours early. There¡¯s a big penalty associated with that sort of thing. You lost¡­ call it a quarter million experience points. See for yourself.¡± As she spoke, the book on her lap floated over before him.


    The page on the right had all sorts of entries about his achievements and failures, each with a number next to it. The most common entry was ¡®wasted day -5. Many other entries stood out, too: have a happy birthday +300, get fired from your Job -500, beat a video game +25, commit suicide -250,000. The other side of the book was more interesting, though, and he turned to look at it for a second until she suddenly snatched it back from him.


    It had a list of his previous incarnations with grades beside them. There¡¯d been a lot of sloth lifetimes rated A and B+ and a handful of human lives with C- to F next to them. It was the most depressing thing he¡¯d ever seen and a crushing blow to his ego as it sank in. He hadn¡¯t been set up to fail in this lifetime but in all his lifetimes? That was incredibly unfair.


    ¡°So, you¡¯re telling me there¡¯s no other way?¡± he asked, resigned to his fate, as he sat down on the scale. ¡°My only choice is to be an animal for another dozen lifetimes and then try again?¡±


    ¡°Well,¡± she answered hesitantly. ¡°There are penance lives and punishment incarnations, but I wouldn¡¯t recommend them for you. You don¡¯t have that much bad karma to work off, so that would be needless suffering on your part.¡±


    ¡°Wait, no,¡± he said, slamming the book shut. If there was anything he could do to avoid being a damned musk ox, he would do it. ¡°Tell me more about those.¡±

 Ch. 02 - The Pit

    ¡°I¡¯m telling you,¡± Helades emphasized, ¡°you¡¯d be much happier if you tried a nice omnivore existence for another lifetime or two. You could¡ª¡±


    ¡°Please,¡± Simon interrupted as he grasped onto this thin thread of hope.


    ¡°Fine,¡± she agreed after a moment.


    She obviously didn¡¯t appreciate being interrupted, and Simon cursed himself for doing it. He wasn¡¯t trying to be rude exactly - other people just didn¡¯t understand how important the things he was trying to say were sometimes. ¡°If you¡¯ve done terrible things in your previous life and need to improve your karma, you might need to spend a life or two as someone born in a terrible place or with an awful disease. War orphans. Children in times of plague or famine, that sort of thing. It¡¯s not something you¡¯d benefit from, though, Simon. You¡¯ll just have to trust me.¡±


    ¡°What about the other one? Punishment incarnations? What are they?¡± He agreed that the idea of becoming an orphan with the plague didn¡¯t sound like a very good life, but if he could do it in a fantasy world, there was always a chance he could find a healer or something to reach his goal.


    ¡°Those are false lifetimes. They¡¯re less of life than they are a test or challenge. There are many different kinds, but they all have one thing in common: to test you, and if you pass, you can find a life that might be better suited to you.¡± She explained. ¡°In some, you fight inhuman opponents; in others, you endure unendurable hardship or achieve mythic goals. I¡¯m not sure you¡¯d do well with them.¡± Simon was sure, though. This was exactly what he needed. How many lifetimes as a dumb grazing animal had he endured just because this bitch hadn¡¯t told him that he could just do what he¡¯d been practicing for all his life: play a fighting game.


    ¡°I respect your opinion on these things, Helades,¡± Simon lied, ¡°You are a goddess, after all. But this sounds like exactly what I¡¯ve been looking for anyway. Perhaps you could tell me more about them anyway? Even if I decide that being a Koala is the right path, I¡¯d like to know all my choices.¡±


    ¡°Very well,¡± she answered, leaning forward and reaching for another book that flew to her from a different shelf. ¡°In the siege of Antethon, you hold back the demon armies for as long as possible, but if you let the city fall, you¡¯re dragged into the depths of hell for a decade before you try again. In¡ª¡±


    ¡°Wait, hell is a real place?¡± Simon blurted out. Any game where a loss resulted in ending up in hell was right out. ¡°Like - I could end up there?¡±


    The goddess sighed. ¡°Of course, it¡¯s a real place. Heaven is too. They¡¯re not quite the places your religions teach you that they are, but both are different endings for souls that no longer need to repeat the endless cycle of life and death.¡±


    Simon opened his mouth to ask another question but shut it when Helades said, ¡°But if you keep interrupting me, we¡¯ll never get through the list you asked for.¡±


    When Simon stayed silent for a moment, she continued. ¡°The path is an incarnation where you must run to warn your nation of an impending attack - to succeed, you¡¯ll have to run until your heart gives out and the soles of your feet are raw from the paving stones. If you fail, you must keep running for a year and a day, even after you perish.¡± Just the idea of that one sounded exhausting. Simon had no illusions about his fitness. He couldn¡¯t run more than a block before he was winded.¡°In the forests of Kensai, you need to hunt for¡ª¡±


    ¡°Excuse me,¡± Simon said, butting in. Listening to her talk about all these options he¡¯d never pick was boring, and he¡¯d rather just cut to the chase. ¡°Rather than going through the whole list, maybe you could tell me if there¡¯s one that¡¯s like a dungeon¡­ like in ¡®The Darkening Deeps,¡¯ or ¡®Sword of Glory 1 and 2?¡¯ something where I kill monsters and level up as I go deeper and all that?¡±


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    The goddess pondered for a second, flipping through several pages before she stopped. ¡°Yes - there is something like what you describe, but I should warn you the pit is one of the most terrible punishments incarnations I have to offer. It¡¯s not for the faint of heart.¡±


    ¡°Tell me about it,¡± Simon demanded, followed up only belatedly with a ¡°please,¡± as he saw Helades¡¯ expression sour.


    ¡°It¡¯s exactly what I described. It¡¯s a pit of horrors; each level is worse than the last. You must defeat all of them if you ever want to leave, though,¡± she said. Her tone was sober and severe, but Simon couldn¡¯t help but get excited by the prospect.


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    ¡°So what happens if I die or lose or whatever,¡± Simon asked. All the other incarnations she¡¯d mentioned had punishments, so this one had to have one, too, right?


    ¡°If you die, you must do it again. Over and over again until you finish the test,¡± she answered. ¡°It¡¯s a reality knot. The only way out is to complete the test, which unravels it and¡ª¡±


    ¡°So, it¡¯s just a roguelike then - if I die, I respawn? How many levels are there exactly anyway?¡± Simon talked over her. ¡°And when I complete it, I can have whatever life I wish? I¡¯ll do it.¡±


    ¡°Simon - I¡¯ve seen you after a hundred different lives - I don¡¯t think this is a choice you should make so lightly.¡± Her annoyance was showing now, but so was her concern. Simon didn¡¯t care, though - both traits only increased his annoyance.


    ¡°As long as it has skills and levels, I¡¯ll be fine,¡± he said, ¡°Oh - and magic - I need magic for a good build if I¡¯m going to clear it in a reasonable amount of time. Melee builds can take forever.¡±


    ¡°This pit is less than a hundred floors and has all those things. It has levels and requires many skills and spells to conquer. Still, you need to consider the toll that dying so often can take on your psyche and¡ª¡± the goddess warned him, but listening to her was exactly how he ended up as a beaver or a rabbit or whatever before. That was something he was never going to do again. He¡¯d found a back door to being the hero he¡¯d always wanted to be, and he would take it.


    ¡°I said I¡¯d do it,¡± he interrupted, ¡°Look, I appreciate your concern, but I don¡¯t think you really understand how ready I am for this, so just tell me where to go and what to do. The incarnation you offer me might be a punishment for most, but it¡¯s a gift to me - you understand? I¡¯ve trained my whole life for this.¡±


    Simon was disappointed. You¡¯d think a goddess who knew everything would have presented this option to him first thing to save them both some time, but she clearly didn¡¯t know anything. She didn¡¯t even understand he would probably clear the whole thing in less than five tries. He had to play games on Nightmare mode these days just to get a little challenge.


    ¡°Alright,¡± she said, his dossier, or whatever it was that told him all the details of his life, floated over to him along with a pen. ¡°Just sign that, and the killing can commence.¡± Simon glanced through the contract he was signing, and everything looked good. Levels. Monsters. Defeat. Reincarnation. It was precisely what she¡¯d said, and he signed it before she even finished talking. It was only when he let go of the pen that he noticed the ink was dark red, and his fingers were bleeding from where he held it.


    He wanted to object to that part, but the book was already sailing back to a shelf while an orb of white light floated out to him.


    ¡°Follow this wisp, and it will take you to the pit,¡± Helades smiled brightly, ¡°I¡¯ll look forward to our next encounter, and I hope you enjoy the pit as much as you think you will.¡±


    ¡°Thanks,¡± Simon said, put on the spot by her smile. Pretty girls were a problem for him, and in lieu of anything clever to say for once, he made a shallow awkward bow before following the wisp out of the rotunda by a different route than he came in from.


    As he left the vast room, he could see that another person - a dark-haired girl - was already climbing the steps for their moment with the goddess of life and death. He was sure a pretty girl like her would get a much better series of options, though. They always seemed to get their way, he thought bitterly as he left the room.


    For once, it didn¡¯t matter what anyone else got, though. Why should it matter what happened to anyone else when he was finally getting his wish. He was going to be in a real-life video game. Instead of sitting in a chair and fighting demons with a laggy connection, he could finally unlock his real skills with steel and show everyone how much they underestimated him.


    The path to get where he was going took forever, though, apparently. Slowly they went from a large corridor to a series of smaller ones before finally reaching a spiral staircase that took him to what appeared to be catacombs. They were more than a little spooky, but the light of the wisp kept the shadows at bay as they made their way to their destination. Simon was resolved not to be afraid of a little darkness. Soon there would be things in the dark worth being afraid of, he was sure, but he would teach them to be afraid of him instead. That certainty didn¡¯t waver until they finally reached their goal: an old wooden door that had seen better days with a carved wooden sign that said ''The Pit.''


    Simon stood there a minute, not so much afraid to open the door as mentally preparing for whatever might happen when he did. With a name like ¡®The Pit'', there could be anything behind this door - from a tomb dripping with blood to a cave full of orcs. When he finally opened it, though, all he found was a small cabin in the woods somewhere. Once the door was open, the wisp floated in until it reached the full-length mirror hanging on one wall, disappearing inside it. The mirror lit up with text briefly like a blue phosphor screen. ¡®Please let me know if you need anything,¡¯ the mirror read before fading to reflect the world around it as a mirror should.


    Simon stepped inside, gazing around the room. The more he looked, the broader his stupid smile got, and eventually, he had to pinch himself. He couldn¡¯t believe he¡¯d finally found his own personal heaven. He could live in a quiet cabin far away from all the annoying people in his life, and he could go into a dungeon and slay monsters anytime he wanted? He wasn¡¯t sure a better life was even possible.


    The door behind Simon slowly creaked shut, and he remembered that was the only way out, so he reached for it, but he was too slow. It closed with a thud, and by the time he reopened it, it no longer went back to the catacombs he¡¯d come through to get here.


    Instead, it led to the grassy meadow that separated his cabin from the picturesque forest of pine and spruce beyond. He supposed that tactically he should have kept that door open a while longer while he checked to ensure that this wasn¡¯t a trap or something, but in truth, he never wanted to visit that creepy goddess¡¯ palace again if he didn¡¯t have to. She might be lovely, but she really didn¡¯t have a clue what was going on with the lives she played with. How many people like him had had their whole lives ruined because she made terrible recommendations about how they should reincarnate?


    She didn¡¯t matter anymore, he decided seconds later. He¡¯d gotten everything he ever wanted, so she could go back to telling people to become panda bears, and he could focus on the task at hand.


    Simon looked around the room, taking inventory of his weapons and armor and trying to decide his next steps. Simon opened all the cupboards and drawers, pleased to find enough food for a meal or two, along with everything a neophyte adventurer might need to get started. He picked up the wedge of white cheese and took a bite - it wasn¡¯t quite as good as Doritos, but it would be a nice change of pace until he got out of here, he decided. He picked up a long sword from where it was leaning against a wall. This would be great, and he couldn¡¯t wait to get started.

 Ch. 03 - Level One

    Sword in hand, Simon opened and closed the door several times to ensure he hadn¡¯t lost his only way back before stepping outside. Once he was sure this door would stick around, he began looking for the dungeon he was meant to defeat. There wasn¡¯t much out there, though. He didn¡¯t see an evil castle, any ruins, or even a suspicious-looking cave.


    All he saw was a scene out of a postcard or computer wallpaper. There was a flower-speckled meadow cut through by a brook, a picture-perfect forest, and some distant mountains. There weren¡¯t even any wandering monsters or anything. Other than his cabin and the trail, nothing here had ever been touched by man.


    Simon sighed in disappointment, wondering why a divine being would bother to put a dungeon a mile or two down a path from him when she could just as easily have put it right there, at the edge of the forest or something.


    He wouldn¡¯t let this setback ruin his day, though. He¡¯d find the damn thing and then show Helades how baseless her worries were. At least it was bright and sunny, and after a while, he¡¯d walked far enough from the cabin that he couldn¡¯t see it, but he still couldn¡¯t find the damn dungeon.


    He passed the time trying to figure out how this game was supposed to work without much to show for it. He¡¯d tried ¡®Status,¡¯ ¡®Profile,¡¯ ¡®Character Sheet,¡¯ ¡®Character,¡¯ Statistics,¡¯ and ¡®Skills¡¯ without any pop-up or interface. In retrospect, he should have asked the mirror for help before he left, but that problem could be fixed when he returned.


    At least he decided not to wear armor on this initial expedition. He couldn¡¯t imagine how hot it would be to wear all that boiled leather in direct sunlight like this. He doubted he¡¯d need it anyway. Low-level enemies were usually stuff like zombies. They were easy enough to dodge. He was certain he¡¯d find something better than that starter armor in the first five floors anyway.


    After another mile passed, though, he still didn¡¯t see anything. He¡¯d come far enough that the meadow was gone, and trees were crowding uncomfortably close on both sides of the path. Simon knew that time was passing because the sun was slowly moving across the sky, and eventually, he had shade again.


    He was grateful for that because he was starting to get thirsty, but it also made him wonder how many more hours it would be until sunset. When was he supposed to turn back if he didn¡¯t find what he was looking for? That thought weighed on him as the forest grew darker, but he set it aside when another bend in the path revealed more grassland opening up before him.


    Simon decided to give it another hour, and if he still didn¡¯t find anything, he¡¯d ask the mirror since the function ¡®Map¡¯ didn¡¯t do anything either. It turned out he didn¡¯t need an hour, though, because, a few minutes later, he could see a small building in the distance. It wasn¡¯t much, but it might be a mausoleum or the entrance to a crypt. That would suit him fine. Tombs were always good reasons to have dozens of levels of treasures and traps. His smile brightened, and his steps quickened. However, when he finally got closer, the shape resolved into nothing but another cabin.


    Was this a shared world, he wondered as he approached it cautiously. If there were other players here, did that mean there was PvP? Simon readied his sword as he reached for the door. He flung it open but found no one inside. It was an empty room that was practically identical to the one he¡¯d left. Whoever had been here last had even left all the drawers open and taken a bite out of the cheese¡­


    This last observation was what finally made him realize he¡¯d somehow come back to where he started. Since he¡¯d walked in one direction without stopping, that should have been impossible. He didn¡¯t think the impossible was something this world worried very much about, though.


    Simon tried to visualize what a world that took three hours to walk around would look like exactly, but what he came up with didn¡¯t make any sense. That would make the world something like two miles around, which was silly. Clearly, he needed to consult a higher power to get some answers.


    ¡°Hey, mirror - where¡¯s the damn dungeon at?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡®Dungeon?¡¯ the mirror printed across the screen. Obviously, it wasn¡¯t too bright.


    ¡°Yeah, the dungeon - you know ¡®The Pit¡¯?¡± Simon asked, exasperated, ¡°The place I¡¯m supposed to go slay monsters?"


    ¡®The Pit is here. It always starts here.¡¯ the screen answered.


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    ¡°Yeah, but here, where? I don¡¯t see anything.¡± Simon wondered if it would be worth the seven years of bad luck he¡¯d get for shattering it to get his sense of urgency across. He decided against it. Not because he believed in luck, of course, but because this thing had answers he needed.


    ¡®You can descend to the next level underneath the bed.¡¯ the mirror wrote slowly, finally giving him an answer that made sense - even if it didn¡¯t make sense. Who would put a dungeon under a bed, after all?


    Simon didn¡¯t bother to ask the thing another question - he just grabbed one of the bed posts and jerked the bed away from the wall. Made of rough wood and a straw mattress, the bed didn¡¯t look very comfortable, but it wasn¡¯t exactly heavy either. After a few seconds of manhandling, it revealed a hidden trap door. Only slightly out of breath, Simon reached down and opened it, which showed him a dark root cellar with dusty wooden stairs leading down. From here, he could only make out the shapes of boxes and bags against the walls, but there was nothing that looked particularly interesting.


    He shrugged. At least this was a start.


    ¡°Alright, let¡¯s do this,¡± he said, cracking his knuckles before hefting his sword and descending.


    Something this weak probably wouldn¡¯t even have zombies, he decided. What would he encounter first, then? Goblins? Yeah, it probably had to be goblins. He couldn¡¯t think of anything else weaker as he descended the stairs while he looked around for danger.


    Looking around meant that he wasn¡¯t watching his feet, though, so he had no idea what he stepped on that sent him tumbling down the stairs. One second, he was standing, and the next, he fell face-first toward the dirt floor. There was a violent cracking sound followed by darkness, and then he suddenly sat up in his bed again.


    Had he just died for the first time? How embarrassing.


    He considered asking the mirror but decided he didn¡¯t want to know. Instead, he stood up and looked around the room. The only differences were that his longsword was where he¡¯d picked it up and that his cheese was uneaten.


    Simon took a bite from the loaf of bread this time to see if these changes would happen again if he died. Then he looked for a torch. After all, he decided, death from falling down the stairs didn¡¯t really count. It was like the real-world equivalent of glitching through the floor and falling to your death. It was silly, but it happened.


    The important thing was to prevent it from happening again; to do that, he needed light. So with a torch in hand, he spent a few minutes trying to find a tinder box or a flint and steel. He located a chunk of what might have been flint on the fireplace mantle, then took a few minutes to strike sparks from his dagger with it. None of them caught the torch on fire, though. Reluctantly he was about to go back downstairs without it when he decided to check to see if the fireplace¡¯s ashes had any coals underneath.


    Fortunately, they did, and after a little trial and error, Simon had a lit torch in his left hand and a longsword in his right. He was now ready to face the goblins or whatever lame-ass creature this game wanted to throw at him. With a little effort, he pushed the bed aside again, and this time he focused on his footing as he descended the stairs.


    The basement was just a root cellar, and he doubted he would find any loot worth searching for here. A quick look around didn¡¯t reveal anything worth fighting, though. Maybe the first level was just a puzzle dungeon, then? That was common enough in games like this. The zombies were never in the church basement - they were in the bricked-off sub-basement and¡­


    That¡¯s when he heard the skittering, but before he could turn to face it, he felt something bite his left calf hard.


    ¡°Jesus Fuck!¡± Simon cried out, reflexively kicking back against the thing, sending whatever it was flying. He could feel warm blood soaking through his sock and dripping into his sneakers from the bite.


    Whatever it was had gotten him good. He whirled around, brandishing his sword and torch simultaneously in different directions to ward off any new blows.


    ¡°Come out, come out wherever you are,¡± he called into the darkness where he¡¯d kicked his small assailant.


    Unfortunately, that¡¯s exactly what happened. Half a dozen rats not much bigger than the average-sized house cat suddenly swarmed out of the shadows, sprinting for him like he was their last meal. Simon stepped back, swinging his sword twice, but the little buggers were fast, and all he managed to do was kick up dust before they were on him.


    He managed to kick one away, and he thought he might have stomped a second one, but his legs were on fire from their bites. He would have never thought rats could seriously hurt a grown man. However, now that he could see their large protruding incisors, it was hard to see this as anything but being attacked with small chisels or garden shears. They could still tear you to pieces, but it would be a slow, painful process.


    ¡°Get off me!¡± Simon screamed, feeling yet another bite on his legs.


    Even worse, he could feel one trying to climb inside his right pant leg. Without thinking, he stabbed down, skewering the rat as well as his foot. In the time it took him to pull the blade out, though, another rat bit into the Achilles tendon of his left foot, sending him tumbling to the ground.


    After that, all Simon could do was try to crawl up the stairs before he gave up on that and covered his face with his hands when one of them went for his eyes. The assault continued for a few minutes before he mercifully passed out from blood loss. The biggest surprise was that no matter how many times the awful creatures attacked him, it never stopped hurting.


    In the end, even more than the pain was the shame of what had happened, and Simon¡¯s final thought before he woke back up in his bed was that he couldn¡¯t believe he¡¯d been killed by something as weak as a rat.

 Ch. 04 - Level Two

    This time Simon was mad, and he wasn¡¯t screwing around anymore. He dug through the drawers until he found the leather armor he¡¯d seen earlier. He took the greaves from the set as well as the leather boots from where they sat drying by the hearth and put them both on.


    ¡°Let those little bitches try to bite through this,¡± he said before he picked up a torch to relight it from the embers of the dying hearth.


    He set the rest of the armor and the buckler aside. He didn¡¯t really need that much protection. It would only slow him down. It looked much too hot and bulky to wear anyway.


    Simon was a big guy, and even though he was strong, cardio and tight leather outfits weren¡¯t really his thing. This time he did decide to belt on the scabbard though. He didn¡¯t really like the look of it, but he wanted the long sword with him for whatever attacked him on the next level, and he needed to keep his hands free for the rats.


    After that he descended again. He thought about talking to the mirror first, but he just couldn¡¯t bring himself to do it until he had a win under his belt. The next time he came back up, after he¡¯d conquered five or ten levels he could learn more about the system. It would make for a good reward for all his hard work Simon decided.


    At least that was what he told himself. A small part of him was worried that if he waited, the anger over what happened would cool off enough that the horror of dying in such a painful way might overwhelm him.


    Seriously - he¡¯d thought that the vague rush of fear and pain when he was hit by the truck was bad, but being eaten alive by rats until he passed out from pain had to be about the worst death there was. He¡¯d never forgive them for that, and when he reached the earth floor he started looking around for some vermin to crush.


    It turned out that Simon didn¡¯t have to wait long. At some unseen signal, the same half dozen rats that swarmed him last time came at him again, but this time he was ready. He ran at them even as they charged at him, meeting them halfway and stomping two of them with wet crunching sounds before they even had the chance to attack him.


    The remaining few died in a battle of attrition that lasted over a minute, and though they managed to bite Simon a couple times before he ended them, the outcome was never in doubt. He emerged out of breath but victorious. ¡°Level One down - only what? Ninety-eight to go?¡± he said, reassuring himself that he¡¯d basically already won - he just had to go through the motions.


    He considered going back upstairs to get some wine to wash out these cuts, but decided against it, and focused on finding the exit to the next level instead. Afterall, there had to be a healing potion around here somewhere. He¡¯d never played a game that expected you to do much fighting without them. Soon he was sure he¡¯d be popping potion after potion like some fantasy world junkie as he made his way ever deeper.


    The door seemed to be the only thing worth finding as Simon glanced around the bags of potatoes and boxes of junk before he opened it. Behind the door was a narrow and slightly curving set of stone stairs that led down to the next level.


    That level turned out to match its stairs, and appeared to be some sort of underground hallway with branching corridors that were filled with darkness and stank of something old and sulfurous. Perhaps this was the tomb he¡¯d finally be seeking, Simon wondered as he pulled out his sword and stepped forward cautiously.


    He thought the art design could have blended better between the levels, but even still. Things were improving. Another few levels in and he might start to find some magical equipment or maybe even¡ª when he reached the T junction, he turned to the left but no sooner had he taken one step forward than he stopped in his tracks at the sound of a click echoing down the hallway.


    He wasn¡¯t positive, but Simon was pretty sure he¡¯d just set off a trap.


    That was confirmed moments later when the wall just in front of him slammed hard against the opposing wall with a booming sound that echoed throughout the tomb. It would have easily crushed whoever had been unfortunate enough to be standing inside there, but fortunately Simon had frozen the instant he heard it, and so it only grazed his torch, before it started to slowly retract. In the faint grinding of the wall moving back into place though, he could hear something else though: wings.


    Something had been woken up by the noise and was headed towards him. Simon couldn¡¯t make himself worry about that right now though. He was still coming to grips with the fact that he was standing in the midst of a minefield, and he was paralyzed by that fear.


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    The light he had was small and flickering, and it made it hard to tell the pressure plate he¡¯d stepped on from any of the other stones around him. If he¡¯d brought a spear or even a broom handle then maybe he could have felt the way ahead, but right now that would require dying again, and as painless as it would probably be to get crushed between two walls of stone, he just couldn¡¯t make himself see the appeal to that grizzly prospect.


    Instead he forced himself to turn towards the noise of the beating wings. They were getting closer. When the first one finally appeared Simon was almost relieved that they were just bats rather than something worse like imps or gargoyles.


    He pulled out his sword and reminded himself that bats were just rats with wings, and rats had already killed him once so it was best not to get too cocky even if they were nothing but easy experience points. With that thought in mind he slowly withdrew back towards the safety of the way he¡¯d come. Hopefully there really weren¡¯t any traps this way, because there was no way he could dodge both hazards at once.


    The fight didn¡¯t go well exactly, as he flailed about with his sword and his torch. The bats presented a much larger target as they swarmed around him screeching at least, and Simon was able to knock most of them to the ground before they managed to bite him. Honestly his own fear of their creepy faces and hideous squeaking noises were worse than the actual bats. They were the very definition of bark being worse than bite, and if he had to guess he would say that whoever put them in this level did it to distract adventurers from traps rather than for a serious enemy.


    Halfway through the fight he noted that if he¡¯d just bothered to put on the leather jerkin or the chainmail hauberk, he would have gotten through this fight without a scratch too. That was one thing he could do to improve if there was a next time. With any luck he¡¯d never have to see this floor again.


    He hated traps. They were hard to see on screen and harder to dodge than even boss attacks. Games would be better if they just left them out, he was convinced. This game wouldn¡¯t result in a quick loss of hit points if he tripped one though. At a minimum, being riddled with poison darts or something would be very painful and would likely result in Simon having to start all over again with those damn rats.


    So he took it slow, tapping every suspicious looking stone with his sword and walking very slowly down the corridor in front of him. It was an effective strategy, and just to make sure he didn¡¯t get lost he always followed the left wall whenever there was a fork in the road. On his journey he found several more traps including a wall with impaling spikes, two dart shooters, and a deadfall that dropped rubble from the ceiling. There were only a couple more bats though, and one at a time they were so easy to deal with that it made Simon feel like the sword master he wanted to be rather than the noob he knew that he still was. It was also very slow, and Simon found two dead ends before his torch started to gutter.


    ¡°Oh shit,¡± he said loud enough for it to echo down the halls as he finally noticed he was only a few minutes away from running out of light.


    That left him with two choices, neither of which was good. He could blunder around this level in the dark until he died, or he could hurry up and take his chances with the traps. So, he did what he knew he should do, and switched from methodical to fast. He still looked for traps, but he no longer checked every stone.


    The bats might have one other purpose in this level after all: even after he lost his light, they could still see him well enough to gorge on his blood. Simon had trouble shaking that image as he started to walk faster down the corridor¡­ being attacked by a whole swarm of bats in the perfect darkness of these tunnels until he was nothing but a desiccated corpse.


    That was when the ground underneath him suddenly fell away. One second, he was walking along scanning the ground for traps, and the next, the ground shattered and he was falling down a pit into the darkness below.


    He had just enough time to register that before he was impaled on the three-foot spikes that lined the bottom of the pit. Simon would not have believed that pain like this could exist, but as he looked down at his body, he saw that his left leg was stabbed through once, his torso was impaled twice, and his left arm was stabbed through the palm. Blood was literally pouring out of him as he half laid, and half crouched on his awful bed of nails. So much so that before the torch that had fallen beside him went all the way out on its own, the growing pool of blood snuffed it out instead, leaving him in the darkness with nothing but that horrible wailing sound.


    It took Simon almost a minute to figure out that the sound he was hearing wasn¡¯t some distant banshee coming to finish him off - it was his own screams, crying out in agony until his throat was raw. Silence only came when he eventually passed out several minutes later, and he once again woke in his own bed.


    This time Simon immediately felt his body to make sure he was actually whole. He could still feel the phantom pain of that awful trap. The rats were nothing compared to that, he realized as the pain and shock that slowly left him was replaced by an overwhelming sense of dread. How was he supposed to fight monsters when he knew that failure would be met by that sort of agony?


    ¡°This was supposed to be a game - a fucking game!¡± he yelled at no one in particular while he balled up his fists and curled up on the bed. How was he supposed to beat a game that could hurt so badly that he was almost afraid to play it though?

 Ch. 05 - The System

    After reassuring himself that he wasn¡¯t still bleeding from half a dozen horrible wounds, the first thing that Simon did was to reach for the mostly full bottle of wine that was sitting on the bedside table as always and drank deeply to steady his nerves. He had never been much of a drinker, and much preferred smoking a bowl or two to a six pack, but right now he only had this awful sour grape juice to drown the horrible memory of those spikes piercing his body. He would have chugged any swill to try to forget the memory of that terrible pain. He hadn¡¯t known anything could hurt that bad in his whole life. Even now, with the memory receding, and the sensations fading he still shuddered if he tried to think about the moment he¡¯d tried to pull himself off the spikes in that pit.


    ¡°This isn¡¯t how this is supposed to work!¡± he declared suddenly, turning toward the mirror. ¡°There¡¯s supposed to be hit points and skills. I¡¯m supposed to gain experience, not get fucking tortured to death!¡± He was mostly just looking for a reason not to have to go back down there and deal with those terrifying traps again, but to his surprise the mirror lit up and a response started to ¡°type¡± for lack of a better word in a flowing script that looked like it was being entered one character at a time. Apparently, it spoke back every time it thought you were talking to it, even if you were just thinking out loud. He didn¡¯t know if that feature was handy or annoying.


    ¡®The Pit is exactly as described in the contract you signed.¡¯ the screen printed as a ghostly version of the contract materialized in the background. ¡®Would you like to review it?¡¯


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to review that. I want to review my character sheet.¡± Simon insisted. ¡°I want to see my level and my skills and¡­¡± As he spoke the screen changed. Materializing what looked to be a sort of crude character sheet, like whatever spirit was in the mirror was trying to grant his request.


    Name: Simon Jacoby


    Level: 2


    Deaths: 3


    Experience Points: -2740


    The negative experience points meant there was some kind of penalty for death, since he¡¯d died three times. That wasn¡¯t the worst system in the world though, and even with those deaths he was still leveling up, so he could work with that. As realistic as everything felt in this game, that was probably a better choice than one of those timed debuffs that had gotten so big in popular titles recently. His eyes moved past that minor issue to the rest of the screen which was a long list of skills: Archery, Armor (light), Athletics, Cook, Craft, Deception, Escape, Investigate, Maces, Ride, Search, Sneak, Spears, Spell Casting, Steal, Swimming, and Swords. They didn¡¯t have any numbers beside them. Instead, they had words, and the words next to almost every one of his skills was ¡®very poor.¡¯ As he continued his increasingly frustrated review, he was surprised to find that only two skills that weren''t ¡®very poor¡¯ was swords which was rated ¡®poor¡¯, and spell casting, which was rated ¡®None¡¯. He was insulted by the evaluation.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s completely wrong. I can cook almost as well as use a sword, and I¡¯m great at both,¡± he said mostly to himself. Even leaving aside ramen and pizza, cooking had hardly ever been a problem for him. He was a master of the panini press and as long as he got the good sauce from the store his spaghetti always came out great.


    As if to prove the screen wrong, he got up and set down the half empty wine bottle so he could pick up the sword, giving it a few mock swings. ¡°Does this look very poor to you, you stupid mirror?¡±


    ¡®Your swordplay shows very few signs of improvement since your initial arrival.¡¯ the screen printed with no hint of irony, which was ridiculous. It was a mirror. What would it know about sword fighting anyway.


    ¡°Well then I¡¯ll just have to go outside and level it up before I go fight whatever¡¯s in store for me after that awful trap level.¡± Simon marched outside with his sword, and after he found a nice shady part of the meadow he started swinging. He didn¡¯t have any formal sword training like Aikido, or anything like that, but he¡¯d been watching action movies and martial arts movies his whole life. It was pretty much what he did these days when he wasn¡¯t gaming, so he had an excellent idea of what he should do and how he should swing - he just needed to practice a bit and work on his endurance, and he¡¯d be fine.


    While he practiced, Simon thought about the screen he¡¯d seen. That was a big help to him. Before that he was horrified of dying like he did before, but now he could tell himself that he was at least leveling up, and that those deaths were worth it. Even if he had to die ten or twenty more times, which seemed unlikely, he would get better every time. He¡¯d probably have something weak to practice on when he got to the next level too. Zombies probably, which would be great. He¡¯d much rather face those slow bastards than another floor full of cheap traps, but he wanted to get deeper where he could find a scroll or a spell book and start learning magic. If there was a skill for it, then it had to be an option, and he would find it. Being able to magically heal his wounds or kill the most annoying monsters from a distance would make this whole ordeal infinitely easier.


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    As Simon started to break out into a sweat, he finally stopped practicing his overhead chops and thrusts, and decided to take a break. It was starting to get warm out here, and even though he was in decent shape, he wasn¡¯t really used to a world without air conditioning just yet. Once he was rested, he thought about doing another round of practice swings, but he decided to go into his house to snack on that loaf that always reappeared when he respawned. Practicing on an empty stomach was counterproductive anyway; it could lead to heat stroke and muscle cramps. At first he thought he would breeze through this game so quickly he wouldn¡¯t need that feature, but now it was nice to know that a halfway decent meal would always be waiting for him here.


    ¡°Show me my character sheet,¡± he told the mirror between bites, eager to see what effect his practice had.


    As it faded into existence though, Simon noted with disappointment that neither his experience point totals nor his rating of (Poor) had budged at all. He sighed in frustration. ¡°This is one of those games where you only get experience from killing things I guess.¡±


    If that was the case then he decided that he might as well go find something to kill. He thought about looking through the forest and seeing if there were any easy wandering mobs out there to grind, before eventually deciding that it would be too hot out there if he was wearing armor. That only left the dungeon, he decided, which had been nice and cool so far.


    Simon swallowed hard at that thought. Maybe he would wait a little longer before he went back down there. After all - half the wine bottle had made the idea almost tolerable, so finishing it would do him almost as much good, he decided, picking it back up and taking a swig from the bottle before helping himself to the cheese. After all, he thought, it would be wasteful if he left all this uneaten no matter how terrible the wine was. It would all be replaced if he did happen to die again, so it¡¯s not like he needed to ration it.


    ¡°Mirror - tell me, how do I learn magic? Do I need to find items or practice harnessing my chi or what?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡®I do not know.¡¯ the mirror responded silently.


    That response was almost enough to make Simon choke on the bread he was wolfing down. ¡°Aren¡¯t you the help program? How can you not know something as important as how the magic system works?¡±


    ¡®Magic works by speaking words of power to direct energies beyond human comprehension. You know no words of power at this time.¡¯ it wrote smoothly in its glowing blue font over several seconds.


    ¡°I know that. But what I¡¯m asking is where do I find them? Do mini-bosses drop them? Should I be looking for secret side passages?¡± Simon looked down to grab the bread to take another bite and was saddened to discover that he¡¯d eaten all of it. It was a coarse wheat bread that normally he wouldn¡¯t have given a second glance at, but when he was actually hungry, he found it to be kind of delicious. Simon made a mental note to keep an eye out for secret passages. Any dungeon that had traps was bound to have secret passages too, and a magic sword or a shortcut past a couple levels was something worth finding.


    ¡®I do not know,¡¯ the mirror repeated, making him sigh in annoyance. This might have been one of the worst designed games he ever played, and when he beat it, he was going to offer that goddess a few free lessons in game design whether she wanted them or not.


    ¡°Of course you don¡¯t,¡± he muttered. ¡°You don¡¯t know anything. You¡¯re the worst tutorial I¡¯ve ever seen honestly. This pit is basically still in beta as far as I¡¯m concerned.¡±


    The mirror obviously had no idea what to make of his words, so it stayed dark, letting Simon stew in his frustration. He knew all the things he¡¯d fix if he was given a chance, but now wasn¡¯t the time for that. He had to beat the thing first, and if there wasn¡¯t any more food to eat or wine to drink, he could hardly just sit here all day. That would get boring and hungry awful fast, so he decided he should get ready for round three with the pit. No - no matter how much he hated the idea it was time to go back down and knock out another five or ten floors in this stupid dungeon.


    Simon looked through what he had available to him again, even though it hadn¡¯t changed, before deciding to don the boots and leather armor once more. Looking through the weapons he still had quite an assortment. In addition to the longsword he preferred, there was a short sword, an axe, a few knives, a long bow and a crossbow, and a flanged mace, which were all scattered around the room in different locations.


    Simon liked the look of the axe, but thought it might be meant for throwing, and didn¡¯t want to do that just yet. He considered strapping on the crossbow since it seemed pretty much like a gun, and he had no idea how to use a longbow. It was too bulky though, so he decided to leave it here for now. Maybe if he saw an important reason for it on one of the floors, he would bring it, but right now he wanted to focus on leveling up his longsword. It was pretty much what he¡¯d taken last time, but this time he brought two spare torches with him instead of just the one, so he wouldn¡¯t have to worry like last time. Now he was ready to deal with the rats, the traps, and whatever else lurked past them.

 Ch. 06 - Level Three

    As always, Simon¡¯s first steps down the rickety wooden stairs were tentative, but once he was in the basement he had no trouble dealing with the rats. That he even had to bother was annoying, ¡°Any good game designer would just let you skip this part after you beat it,¡± he grumbled to himself as he picked through a couple of the boxes nearest the wall to see if they might be hiding a secret passage. All they were holding were potatoes and what he thought might be turnips, not that he¡¯d ever actually seen a turnip before.


    He took the second floor slowly, cursing himself for forgetting the spear he¡¯d meant to bring to make searching for pressure plates easier. The bats still showed up, but this time without the fear of surprise that he¡¯d had to deal with last time they were mostly just an annoyance. His only real fear was being crushed to death or falling in that damned pit again. During his search he noted that even though the layout was slightly different this time, the traps were all pretty much the same as what they¡¯d been last time. He wondered if that would hold true for every other level of the dungeon. If every time he had to redo a floor it would have the same monsters but a slightly different layout that would make things pretty easy.


    It took two full torches to work his way past all the traps without taking any chances, but this time Simon was rewarded by the sight of another set of stairs leading down to the next floor. ¡°Child¡¯s play,¡± Simon told himself, smiling even though he still felt nervous. He might have made it look easy this time, but thinking about those spikes still put him back at the edge of panic. He drew his sword as he descended the stairs, trying to be ready for whatever nasty surprise awaited him next.


    The next floor turned out to be a cave. It was a moist limestone formation that didn¡¯t seem to have much standing water at least. Frequent drops fell from the ceiling to some of the larger stalagmites that dotted the floor, but it was manageable enough. It looked like the biggest hazard here would be the terribly uneven floor, which was full of rock formations that made the shadows from his torch dance wildly. After he got used to that, it quickly became apparent that an even bigger problem would be the smell.


    The whole place stunk. Not a little bit either - not like when he used to drive past the oil refinery on his way to work. It reeked of raw sewage and garbage so strongly that his first fight on this floor turned out to be controlling his own gag reflex. Maybe eating all that food right before coming to this part of the pit wasn¡¯t a good idea, he chastised himself as he looked for someplace dry to sit down before settling on a large rock, giving him a chance to get used to the stench while he studied the room. Now that he was looking he could see bits of garbage and what was probably thoroughly chewed bones scattered around the floor. Clearly this was something¡¯s lair, but he wasn¡¯t sure what. It could have been anything from Orcs to Gnolls.


    Not counting the stairs, which now had a closed door at the top of them, that he knew from experience wouldn¡¯t allow him to go back up, it looked like the room had two exits, both of which seemed roughly equal. Not having any good way of determining which one was the right one, he headed out of the one where the trickle of water was leaving the cave. Downhill meant some sort of exit. He was sure of that from the D&D sessions he used to play with his friends.


    As he went further down the passage the angle of the cave started to steepen, and he had to put his sword away just to keep a firm grip on the wall so he wouldn¡¯t slide down any of the patches of moss or slime into the abyss. While he explored Simon kept a sharp eye open for claw marks or scorched walls - anything that could offer him a clue as to what might live down here, but he found none.


    Instead he found a number of smaller trickles that slowly converged on the one he was following until the tiny stream had practically become an underground river. The further he went, the wider it got, until eventually he reached a bend in the tunnel where the river seemed to take up practically the whole floor. Looking at how fast the dark waters were moving, he decided that swimming it was out of the question, but it looked like maybe the other bank of the river would be walkable for a bit further, if he could cross it somehow, and the air was much less foul here than it had been where he started, so that had to mean he was headed the right way, right?


    Reluctantly Simon lit his third torch and backtracked a few hundred feet until he found a spot that was narrow enough that he thought he could jump across it. He backed up, took a running start, and then jumped. The jump was high enough, and long enough, even in the armor he was wearing, but when he landed he slipped on some algae growing on the bank of the river, which sent him splashing and flailing into the water. The only thing he could do in that moment was toss the torch on the bank before it was snuffed out, giving him at least a little light to watch for handholds as he tried desperately to fight the current. It was no good though. All of the handholds were covered in slime, and within seconds he was dragged well out of his meager light as he was swept deeper into the depths.


    The darkness was so terrifying that the cold really didn¡¯t bother him until his toes started to go numb. The water was freezing, and even though it was shallow enough, it was impossible to keep his footing as he tried to stand in the shallow spots. The current was just too strong. Simon was about to complain about what an awful mechanic this was when he was flung into the first rock hard enough to cry out in pain. Even as numb as his arm had gotten he was fairly sure that he¡¯d just broken his elbow. That would make it even harder to get out of the river, he realized, starting to panic now. The current was getting stronger and the roar was getting louder - in cartoons that only ever meant one thing.


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    Simon desperately swam for a bank of some kind, but there wasn¡¯t one. The river took up all of the tunnel floor and most of the wall now. He realized just how hopeless his situation was almost the precise moment he was thrown over the waterfall. He fell for several long moments terrified that he was about to be dashed on the unseen rocks hidden at the bottom of the falls, but that didn¡¯t happen. Instead he was plunged deep into a frigid pool.


    He knew from documentaries that if you were ever in this awful position you should watch which way the bubbles go, and then swim in that direction, but that was impossible in the inky blackness of the watery void that he found himself. He couldn¡¯t let that stop him though, and he started to swim immediately in the direction that he thought was up with one good arm and two numb feet. Whether it was the right direction or not he would never know. Before he breached the surface his burning lungs ran out of air and the last thing his body did was to force him to inhale that dark water before he blacked out.


    Simon expected to wake up in his bed still soaked but alive for some reason, and was surprised to find that he was perfectly dry except for the cold sweat that had broken out on his forehead at the idea of what had just happened to him. Drowning might not have been as painful as his previous death, but it was utterly terrifying, and he never wanted to do it again if he could help it. He wasn¡¯t about to sit here for hours and dwell on it like last time though. He needed to find something he could fight with his sword or he would never get better. Traps and rivers were hazards to be avoided, but they wouldn¡¯t give him any experience.


    He took a minute for a long swig of wine once his armor was all belted on, but after that he belted on the sword, took three torches, lit one of them, and then grabbed the spear just before he went down. ¡°This would be so much easier if I could have a save file or two, to save my state when I¡¯m ready to go,¡± he said to himself as he descended the stairs. This time one of the rats managed to bite him once before he finished stomping them, but he was quickly able to locate the stairs in the trap area now that he knew better what he was looking for.


    The game was definitely getting easier, but the dying somehow just kept getting more awful.


    This time when he reached the cave he headed away from the water flow. He didn¡¯t know what horrors were waiting in those depths, and he had no desire to ever find out. Instead he breathed through his mouth to avoid the worst of the stench as he moved in the opposite direction and slowly made his way up to what he hoped was the surface. At least he did until he heard the echo of what sounded like murderous laughter. That froze Simon in place for almost a minute while he willed himself to move. Something lived in this cave and he was going to have to kill it - that¡¯s just the way it was, he tried to tell himself, but honestly this felt more like a horror movie than an adventure.


    That¡¯s when he saw a movement in the shadows up ahead. Simon froze, hoping it wouldn¡¯t notice him, but it was only when it let loose a blood curdling scream before bounding towards him he suddenly realized that it would be impossible to miss the man holding the torch in the dark cave.


    Still cursing his stupidity, Simon raised his spear and impaled the creature as it charged him. It was a terrifying moment. He felt the weapon shudder as it impaled the creature¡¯s soft belly, but the goblin still managed to charge most of the way up the spear¡¯s haft before it finally died, spitting and snapping its sharp yellow teeth at him until its final moment. There was no doubt about it - this level was goblins. That made him smile at least. The state of the cave had left him worried that there might be an ogre or something even worse waiting to tear him to pieces, but goblins were about the easiest monster there was, so this would be the perfect chance to practice his sword if the noises from further up in the cave were any indication.


    With a flourish Simon pulled his sword free of the scabbard and tossed his torch into the center of the room. This freed hands up for a two handed stance as he brought his weapon up into a guard position. Then he waited for the dumb creatures to attack. He could hear them just down the tunnel, grunting and growling in a language he hoped never to understand. The sounds were almost words, but too glotal and phlegmy to ever really be uttered by a human mouth.


    Two came into view one after the other, and Simon brought the sword down hard, cleaving the lumpy head the first goblin in two as it charged at him with its primitive spear in hand. He brought the weapon around in a backhanded swing to try to cleave the second one in two as well, but he misjudged the distance and his blade struck a stalactite in the darkness hard enough that it rattled his bones and he almost dropped the blade.


    He managed to keep hold of it, but the moment cost him the initiative, and he was hopelessly off balance when the next one attacked him, burying its rusted dagger deep into Simon¡¯s gut. He felt the cold of the metal more than the pain as the foul creature grinned at him. He reversed his grip on the sword to bring it down and skewer the little bastard, but it responded by twisting the knife hard enough to make Simon cry out in pain before he collapsed backwards, dropping the sword.


    The goblin tried to advance again, gurgling and shrieking its foul tongue, but Simon kicked it hard in the face, sending it careening across the room where it landed in a heap, never to rise again. It was hardly the last one though. There were two, no - three more coming in after it now. Simon didn¡¯t bother trying to get up. Instead he pulled the dagger out to wield against the new enemy, but when one of them pulled back on a bow and let an obsidian tipped arrow fly he rolled over retreating into the shadow of a stalagmite.


    That kept the arrows away, but it made it almost impossible to see as one of them snuck around the far side and buried its hideous teeth into Simon¡¯s exposed throat. It was a terrifying sensation, and Simon dropped the dagger as he tried to rip the creature free. It resisted more than he would have thought a creature of its size was capable of though and by the time he¡¯d pulled it free along with the chunk of his throat the goblin took with it, he was too weak from blood loss to fight the next two that leapt on to him, clawing and biting the whole time.


    Simon lay there for almost two minutes, too weak to defend himself but not yet weak enough to die as these horribly misshapen monsters devoured him alive, cackling to one another about it.

 Ch. 07 - Level Four

    When Simon bolted upright from his bed he was covered in a cold sweat, and thought he was going to be sick. ¡°Goblins aren¡¯t supposed to be this hard,¡± he yelled, to no one in particular, balling up his fists in rage. ¡°They¡¯re level one monsters!¡±


    It was all he could do not to throw a fit, but he forced himself to calm down. Raging like this didn¡¯t help anyone. What he needed to do was put the armor back on and go down¡­ He couldn¡¯t even finish the thought. There was no way he could go back down in the pit right now. Even if that was the point of the game, there was nothing that said he had to do it right now. Simon studied himself in the mirror wondering if his stubble had gotten longer or the bags under his eyes had gotten deeper.


    Were physical changes carrying over from each attempt, or was it just his imagination? Had the body he was in been in this simulation for only a moment, or had it been here for days since he left the temple of Helades? These were weighty questions that Simon didn¡¯t feel like exploring further, so instead he said, ¡°Mirror - show me my character sheet,¡± trying to find something - anything to distract himself from the horrible memory of being eaten alive by a pack of goblins. It hadn¡¯t been quite as painful as the spikes, but it was far more revolting.


    Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 3


    Deaths: 5


    Experience Points: -4025


    Skills: Archery [Very Poor], Armor (light) [Very Poor], Athletics [Very Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Very Poor], Maces [Very Poor], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Very Poor], Sneak [Very Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [None], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Poor].


    ¡°Well - that¡¯s progress at least,¡± Simon said to himself, happy to see that at least he was a higher level now, despite the fact that his experience points kept getting more negative. He briefly wondered where his skill points were going if none of his skills were going up, but decided not to ask the mirror. It didn¡¯t seem to know anything anyway, so what would be the point? Instead he got up and drank some wine while he tried to decide what he could do better next time. Certainly now that he knew the right way, drowning wouldn¡¯t be a problem at least, but how should he deal with the goblins?


    Simon picked up the long bow and gave it an experimental pull, but he could barely move it, and once the string was back, he couldn¡¯t see how he¡¯d support an arrow and pull at the same time. Reluctantly he let it go with a satisfying twang, and put it back on the wall. Instead he picked up the crossbow. This was more familiar at least. It was more like the guns he was used to in shooters. Simon picked a bolt up, put it in the already cocked crossbow, and then took careful aim at the loaf of bread sitting on the table ten feet from him. Pulling the trigger turned out to be harder than expected, but once he did that, there was a higher pitched twang followed by a thud as he pinned the bread to the wall behind it. It was a minor victory, but he was ecstatic. ¡°Take that you slimy green skins!¡± he shouted.


    That triumphant attitude was undone over the next couple minutes as he struggled to restring the thing. He knew the wide metal loop at the front of it was part of that, and the first time he struggled to lift the string into place he realized he¡¯d forgotten to reset the mechanism to give the string something to catch on. So, he had to do it a second time, painfully pinching his fingers in the process. ¡°Damn it,¡± he muttered, looking at the reset crossbow without much satisfaction. It might be good for one shot - but he doubted he¡¯d be able to reload it in the heat of battle. What he needed was a gun or a wand, or maybe even a [Trueshot] skill. Something simple that was point and shoot so he could show these monsters what happened when they fucked with him.


    Maybe this would be enough for now though, he decided, putting his armor back on for what felt like the thousandth time. It was such a chore, and barely fit him. This time he journeyed back down into the pit with the full set of boiled leather, a sword, a spear, a crossbow, its bolts, and a couple torches. He was starting to feel like an honest to God adventurer. Carrying so many different tools made him feel like he could solve just about any problem - but it was also very bulky, and even with the scabbard to free up a hand he felt more than a little clumsy as he descended the stairs into the pit again.


    This time he managed to skewer one of the rats on his spear before he stomped the rest and he made record time through the trap labyrinth now that the bats were no challenge at all. Even though the floors of this dungeon were never quite the same, they seemed to change only very slightly between each attempt - so it was getting to where he could tell some of the trigger plates by sight, and some of the traps by the scrapes their repeated triggering had made on the opposite wall. He was deeply ambivalent about his smooth progress though. On the one hand - getting through the first two floors without a scratch meant that he was definitely leveling up and well on his way to speed running this thing. The downside though, was that the quicker he got to the goblin cave, the sooner he was going to have to fight himself some goblins.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    The cave smelled just as bad as he remembered it, and Simon shuddered at the memories of sharp yellow goblin teeth ripping into his flesh. He wasn¡¯t sure how exactly he was supposed to see the other goblin before it saw him, since apparently they could see in the dark while he needed the torch, but he moved very slowly forward, listening for the sound of the monsters, and he was eventually rewarded with the sound of footsteps around the next bend. Simon tossed the torch behind a small rockfall a dozen feet from him and hid in the shadows behind a stalagmite, waiting for the creature. He realized a few seconds after he tossed the torch that the thing might just shout an alarm before it investigated, but even if it did, he¡¯d be no worse than before. He didn¡¯t want to have to fight four at once like before, and distraction and misdirection were the only allies he had.


    Fortunately the sentry was curious, and it got all the way to the torch quietly. It even picked it up and looked around in confusion, but it never saw the shot that killed it. At this range Simon couldn¡¯t miss and the bolt he loosed sank deep into the creature¡¯s skull, dropping it on the spot. He smiled in satisfaction, retrieving the torch. He debated reloading the crossbow, but he couldn¡¯t imagine how much harder that would be in the dark, so he threw the strap over his shoulder and opted to continue his slow way through the limestone cave relying on his spear instead.


    A few hundred more feet and two turns later the sulfurous stink had gotten so bad that Simon¡¯s eyes watered before he finally found the real goblin den. There were three of them, and they were lounging around a bonfire that seemed to mostly be fueled by animal dung near the mouth of the cave. There was more than enough light here, so he extinguished his torch before he attempted to peer around the area and see if there were any more of the buggers.


    A quick look around the wide cave entrance didn¡¯t reveal any more goblin sentries but it did reveal a stone door carved into a niche not so far from him. Simon was sure that had to be on the next floor, and decided not to risk another fight with these guys if he didn¡¯t have to. Instead he crept through the rear of the shadowy cave, hoping to not to attract their attention. He was almost shocked when he actually succeeded and made it to the door. The system hadn¡¯t managed to screw him over with some sort of automatic aggro or forced trigger or anything. But as soon as he tried to pull the ring on the door to open it he changed his mind, cursing himself for speaking too soon.


    The thing started to open, but as it slowly slid open the grinding of stone on stone was loud enough to wake the dead, and it got stuck after only a few inches. Simon grunted and pulled harder, ignoring the sound of chattering and shouting that had started behind him. If he could just get it open a little further he¡¯d¡­ That train of thought stopped in its tracks as a crude arrow whizzed by his ear and bounced off the stone door. He whirled around, and looked for somewhere he could get cover, but there wasn¡¯t much to be had, so instead he located the archer while it was knocking another arrow to its bow, and charged it. It was a desperate thing. The other goblins were heading towards him, and he didn¡¯t look like he was going to make it in time, so instead he heaved back and threw his spear at the awful thing.


    The spear went wide, because of course it did. He had no idea how you were supposed to throw a spear. It did make the creature duck and cower away from the blow though, and that was enough. Simon pulled his long sword from his scabbard, suddenly wishing he had brought a shield, and swung at the archer as soon as he reached it, cleaving its soft body almost in half before turning to face the other two. They started to approach him from opposite sides, but Simon was done being defensive. Instead of retreating he charged one with his sword raised and it immediately bolted and ran. Why wouldn¡¯t it? If he was fighting a giant three times his own height with a ten foot long sword he¡¯d run too.


    Running didn¡¯t save it though, and Simon cleaved its skull half a dozen steps later. He turned to face the final goblin, breathing heavily, but the thing was already running out of the mouth of the cave, doing whatever it could to survive for one more day. Simon let it go. He didn¡¯t need the experience points bad enough to jog. What he needed was a rest and a nice cold sports drink. The water here was hopelessly polluted by goblin filth though, so instead he just sat there until he wasn¡¯t winded, and then he retrieved his spear before returning to the stone door.


    Now that he wasn¡¯t trying to be quiet, he put one foot on the wall and pulled with all his might and grunted loudly. This succeeded where his other attempts failed, opening up the door about halfway before it became solidly stuck. The gap revealed a dark stone staircase that was lost in the shadows after a few steps, so before he went down Simon lit his second torch using the goblin campfire. Then he sucked in his gut, moved his equipment around, and squeezed through the tight space and into the stone stairway beyond.

 Ch. 08 - Rest In Pieces

    After taking a few steps down, Simon couldn¡¯t help but notice how much colder it was in here than it was in the cave he¡¯d just left. The stairs descended at least three floors before ending in a door with ornate carvings around it. The goblin cave had that moist dampness you expected in a cave, but this was different. It was almost like walking into one of those large refrigerators they had in restaurants. He could see his breath by the time he got to the bottom, but fortunately the stairs were ice free so he wasn¡¯t going to slip and break his neck again.


    The door at the bottom opened to reveal a crypt, with stone sarcophagi dominating the floor and niches on the walls where skeletons lay in perpetual rest. So the next level was a crypt, huh? That figured he supposed. Skeletons were even easier than zombies, so at least this wouldn¡¯t be too hard. The skeletons mostly lay in moth eaten robes or other ceremonial garments, but the armor that some still wore had rusted completely through in places. Last time he¡¯d tried to sneak by the monsters, but that didn¡¯t work. They were probably programmed so that it would never work, he realized, wondering how far out he would pull aggro from creatures like this. Not that it mattered - this time he decided that he was just going to go for it as he walked to the first skeleton and swung down hard on the spine, between the skull and the clavicle. The skull fell away almost immediately and he moved to the next one, hoping to kill as many of these things as he could before they started to rise. There had to be almost thirty though, and by the time Simon had beheaded the third, the first few closest to him were starting to rise to their feet.


    Once these things were awake and holding their ancient weapons he had to turn his attention from the easiest to kill, to the one that was the closest to killing him. This worked for the next few without any issue, but crucially he noticed that simply stabbing the head or severing an arm did very little. It looked like these things were operating on zombie rules: the only way to make them crumble into dust was to strike their head from their shoulders or to smash the skull to pieces with a savage overhead chop. It turned out that that was easier said than done. Any unexpected move, or half-hearted parry on their part and suddenly the blow he¡¯d lined up to perfectly separate their head from their shoulders became a glancing blow at best. By the time he¡¯d killed the twelfth skeleton he was practically surrounded and utterly exhausted. Now that they were fully awake they were swinging at him as well. Their weapons were slow and easily parried, but with so many attacking him at once the only viable defense quickly became to give ground.


    Simon was slowly fighting his way back to the doorway when he saw it. Rising from the tomb farthest from him was a skeletal knight unlike the rest of the moldering skeleton¡¯s he¡¯d slain so far. They were little more than bones and rusted weapons, but it was actually a knight that had been buried in a suit of full plate armor. Even after decades or centuries of being interred it looked almost new, along with the great bastard sword that it unsheathed as soon as it was standing. That wasn¡¯t what attracted Simon¡¯s attention though. It was the glare. The rest of these skeletons only had empty sockets, which was unnerving enough, but the knight had a blue glow where its eyes should be. Simon found himself paralyzed by it, and was unable to look away. As the knight strode toward him in slow motion, he could see clouds of frost radiating from the joints in the armor and finally understood what the word terror really meant.


    When Simon was younger he¡¯d spent hours arguing with friends about the difference between fear and terror in different games. He thought that it was a dumb mechanic, and that it was impossible for there to be some sort of fear that was worse than fear itself. He was wrong. He¡¯d obviously failed a saving throw or something, because he was utterly petrified by the personification of death that was walking towards him with unhurried steps. It was a nightmare - a waking dream, and even though he knew that the other skeletons were still a risk he couldn¡¯t do much but hold his sword up numbly as they pressed their attack. Seconds later the first blade pierced his armor, slicing cleanly through his flesh. Others followed, and by the time he dropped his weapon from numb fingers he¡¯d been impaled through the liver, the stomach, and the lungs by no less than six swords and daggers.


    Unlike the other deaths he¡¯d suffered so far at the hands of his enemies this one at least wasn¡¯t too painful. It was cold more than anything. Each of the blades that skewered him was bone chillingly cold, but in his dying moments he considered that a small price to pay to escape the horrible gaze of that terrible knight. He lost consciousness before that awful opponent was able to reach him, and died grateful.


    When Simon woke up the terror still hadn¡¯t left him completely, and he laid practically paralyzed in his bed for ten minutes before he sat up. ¡°What in the hell was that?¡± he asked himself. ¡°It had to be some kind of spell - right?¡±


    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    Either that or I¡¯m a coward, he thought to himself as looked up and noticed the mirror was writing to him. ¡®I¡¯m not sure what you¡¯re asking about, can you be more specific?¡¯


    ¡°I¡¯m not talking to you,¡± Simon said automatically before thinking about it. ¡°Actually wait - do you know if the skeleton knight on the fourth floor has some kind of fear based ability? Is it gaze based or an aura or what?¡±


    ¡®I have no knowledge of the dangers that await you in the pit,¡¯ the screen answered with its normal blue cursive letters.


    ¡°Then what good are you? What are you even here for?¡± Simon asked, but he didn¡¯t care about the answer. He was already standing up and walking to the cabinets to rifle through them for something to eat. Looking at his options didn¡¯t exactly take long. Every time he came back it was the same few options. He could choose between the bread, the cheese, the wine, or the sausages. That was his whole world now. On the bright side he didn¡¯t have to worry about running out of food. All he had to do was die again and his meager larder would be full. As he bit down into the bread he wondered how long it would be until he was hopelessly sick of these choices. At least that was a tomorrow problem, he decided.


    The only today problem was deciding what to do with today because he definitely wasn¡¯t ready to go back down into the pit again. Just the thought of it made him shiver as he remembered that cold soulless glow. Maybe tomorrow he¡¯d feel like it, he decided, pocketing the rest of the loaf and slinging the water skin over his shoulder. On his way out the door he belted on the sword but decided not to bother with the crossbow or the leather. After all, if the woods were the same every day then the weather probably was too, and it was going to get hot later. Besides, he wasn¡¯t looking for a fight, he just wanted to get a lay of the land for his mental map and clear his head before he went back down there.


    So he went for a walk. First he went part way back along the trail just to make sure everything looked the same. Before the cabin was entirely out of view though, he took a left into the forest, following a small stream to make sure he didn¡¯t get lost. If the rules were the same as his last walk then eventually he¡¯d come back to the trail from the other side. It turned out that he didn¡¯t, but it was hard to say his experiment was conclusive, because walking through the underbrush was slow and exhausting compared to walking on the trail. He did find something new though.


    Perhaps a quarter mile and maybe twenty minutes from the trail he stopped for a break with his chest heaving at the edge of the meadow. The meadow wasn¡¯t the important part though. While he waited to catch his breath and make sure there were no monsters patrolling the area to aggro on him he realized the rock he was sitting on wasn¡¯t a rock at all: it was a slice of a toppled column. Once he realized this he stood and pulled his sword looking for the guardian of the ruin to spring out and attack him, but no one did. He did find the rest of the temple set back slightly further into the shadows though. It was so obvious now that he was looking at it, that he wondered how he missed it before.


    Simon hacked away at the worst of the vines as he slowly made his way to the top of the stairs. The whole thing seemed almost Roman to him with thick stone pillars, one surviving arch, and part of a surviving Apse. The ceiling was gone though, and the only decorations that survived were stone carvings in the walls and floor. Some of them were pretty, but none of them were in a language he had any chance of translating. He poked around for a while, pushing on larger stones, looking for a secret passage or hidden chest but came away empty handed. ¡°Come on guys,¡± he grumbled ¡°a location like this and you don¡¯t even have a quest giver? Who¡¯s designing this thing?¡±


    Reluctantly he left such a promising find unfulfilled. Why would it have been included in the game or the challenge or whatever it was with no actual purpose? When he reached the bottom of the stairs he thought about traveling further to see what else might be beyond the meadow but decided against it. One unhelpful discovery for the day was more than enough for him. Instead he walked back, finishing his water before he got to the trail so he could refill it on the way home. The only real disadvantage to his picturesque cabin was a distinct lack of running water, and if he got thirsty after dark the last thing he wanted to do was go outside.


    On the way home he finished his bread and had his heart set on roasting a couple of those sausages, but when he got back to the cabin he discovered that the embers in the hearth had gone stone cold and after an hour spent trying to light a piece of wood with the flint and steel he gave up and settled for cheese. He could try again with the sausages tomorrow.


    Without a light when the sun finally set behind the trees it got really dark. That was another surprise to Simon. He hadn¡¯t been on a camping trip since he was twelve, so the idea of not being able to turn on a light switch or use the flashlight on his smartphone to solve the problem was like a slap in the face. Reluctantly he went to bed early, but only after he closed and barred every shutter, plunging the already dark cabin into total blackness.


    His dreams that night weren¡¯t pleasant, and he woke up repeatedly to visions of that terrible skeleton. It was an awful experience, and as he lay in bed breathing hard after it happened for the third time he heard something very softly rattle the door, and then go around the house trying each window one by one. Simon practically held his breath while all this was going on, and it was only after everything returned to silence that he went outside in bare feet holding the flanged mace to investigate, but there was no one there.

 Ch. 09 - They Can’t Make Me

    Confused, Simon closed the door and rebarred it, then he sat down against it, mace in hand. He only meant to rest his eyes a bit until whatever had tried to get in before, tried again. When he opened his eyes again it was to the sound of morning birdsong, sunbeams shooting through the dusty room from the cracks in the shutters.


    He got up and stretched, feeling stiff and wishing he¡¯d spent the night on the itchy straw mattress rather than the floor, but there was nothing for it now. He grabbed the stale end of the loaf of bread and slowly gnawed through it as he opened the door to look outside. Everything was exactly where he¡¯d left it. It was a beautiful morning in a picturesque landscape. You¡¯d never know that there¡¯d been something evil about stalking him and trying to slit his throat while he slept. Simon wandered slowly around the small cabin, looking at the footprints that were left behind in the dust. They were like tiny human footprints with long claws, which could mean only one thing - goblins.


    He finished his lackluster breakfast and grabbed the only remaining food that didn¡¯t need to be cooked: a sad and bruised apple, then he belted on his sword, picked up the crossbow, and went for a walk. He couldn¡¯t see the individual tracks in the grass, but this early the dew was still heavy on everything and he could see how a small group of goblins had trampled a path through the tall grass into the woods. At least he hoped it was a small group. He had no real way of judging that, but he was only confident in his ability to deal with three or four at a time - any more than that and he¡¯d have to go back to the cabin to get armor.


    The path led to the edge of the nearby woods and then disappeared into the underbrush. Once inside the forest the grass became sparse and patchy and the under-canopy area was dominated by brambles and a thick layer of wet leaves. Simon didn¡¯t know exactly where they went from here, but they seemed like lazy, disgusting creatures to him, so odds were good they¡¯d taken the shortest path back to their lair. With that in mind he kept going straight, scanning the horizon from left to right for signs of an ambush.


    He found nothing, and even though he searched carefully for ten minutes there wasn¡¯t a trace of them. He stopped on top of a hill to rest, very cognizant of the fact that he needed to turn around soon or risk getting lost himself. While he sat there Simon picked up a few pebbles and started tossing them one at a time on a nearby boulder jutting out of the far side of the hill. The first two missed, but the third and fourth bounced off it with a satisfying plink that echoed among the trees. It was only when he tossed the fifth that something strange happened. It bounced off the lichen covered face closest to Simon, but when it bounced back it made another plink, followed by another, and then a third. Each of the noises got more distant and echoey like his pebble had gone down a well or something, so he got up to investigate.


    On the other side of the hill he found a natural cave leading into the hill. Simon had no light, so he couldn¡¯t go inside to investigate, but the smell told him all he needed to know. After fighting the little bastards on the goblin floor a couple times he would recognize that sulfurous stink anywhere. He considered waiting around and shooting the first one to poke its head out of the hole as a warning to the others, but eventually decided against it for two reasons. The first was that he didn¡¯t actually know if all of the goblins had returned to the cave and the last thing he wanted to do was find himself surrounded when another hunting party came back. The second was more concerning though; shooting one in the head would be the equivalent of kicking a hornet''s nest, when everyone knew that leaving it alone was always the right idea. If he had a stick of dynamite or a fireball spell he could blow the entrance shut, but as it was, one or two dead goblins wouldn¡¯t change anything.


    At least he knew where they were now, he thought, backing away slowly. That was a small victory, he decided, as he left the forest the way he came. If the goblins got to be really troublesome then he could take care of them, but for now that was more trouble than it was worth. Now all he needed to do was take care of his other little problem and light a fire, to cook those sausages, and it was going to be a great day.


    Simon spent hours with the chunk of flint and a steel dagger, but he couldn¡¯t catch any of the logs on fire. Eventually he decided that it wasn¡¯t actually flint at all and it went outside to rub the sticks together. That didn¡¯t work either though. He never even got a hint of smoke, and only rubbed his hands raw for his trouble. In the end he was forced to eat the apple, then the cheese, and finally the apple core because he was still hungry and there was nothing else to eat. He wished he had YouTube here so he could watch a few videos on making a fire. He was sure that if someone explained it to him properly it would be easy.


    At one point Simon even got so desperate that he asked the mirror, ¡°Do you know how I use flint and steel to start a fire?¡±


    Predictably the mirror only answered the question with its favorite phrase. ¡°I have no knowledge of how to start fires.¡±


    As the sun set again though he was eventually plunged into the dark without a way to fend it off. This time though he slept with his boots on and the crossbow loaded on the chair in front of the door just in case there was a repeat of last night. He had some trouble drifting off to sleep because of hunger pangs. Only having half a meal over the course of the whole day was hard on him, but he managed to work through it and eventually fell asleep.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    <hr>


    It turned out that there was another disturbance though and sometime after midnight he was awoken by something trying to pry open the shutters. This time though there was a flickering light outside. Simon hopped up, lifted the crossbow and opened the front door almost gracefully considering he did it in a pitch black room. This time he surprised 3 goblins that looked like they were attempting to use a crude torch to light his cabin on fire and smoke him out. All of them were armed with crude weapons, but Simon smiled as he looked at how startled they were, because he had the initiative. He aimed and shot quicker this time, punching right through the goblin nearest to him before partially penetrating the goblin standing behind it. The third one made no effort to avenge his dead and dying companions - it just took off running into the dark while the injured one screamed in pain. It tried to lunge at Simon, but it couldn¡¯t because it was still pinned to a corpse.


    Simon didn¡¯t care about the runner. He didn¡¯t even care about killing the one that was bleeding out really. All he really cared about was the torch they¡¯d dropped next to him. The fact that they¡¯d had a clever plan to smoke him out didn¡¯t disturb him much, but the fact that they could make fire to do it while he was still frustrated by the lack of that skill really pissed him off. That¡¯s what he was thinking about when he pulled out his long sword and struck the goblin¡¯s head from its shoulders. Once that was done he eagerly grabbed that torch before it could gutter out in the growing pool of goblin blood. Simon would move those bodies in the morning - right now he had a fire to build and sausages to cook.


    With the torch he eventually managed to get the logs to catch fire, and before long he was roasting the sausages on his dagger. The first one came out a little burnt, but the second one was just right, and for the first time all day Simon¡¯s belly was satisfied. He added more wood to the fire before he went to sleep so that he''d still have some coals left in the morning, and tried to enjoy a second round of slumber before the sun woke him up again.


    <hr>


    The next morning was great. Simon woke up well rested and fed sometime before ten, if this world had managed to invent clocks yet, and for the first time since he went into the pit he felt happy and accomplished. He was overcoming all sorts of obstacles on his own, and it satisfied him more than punching a time card ever had. For a few minutes he allowed himself to fantasize about what life would be like if he just stayed like this. If instead of going back down to fight rats and skeletons he just blew up the goblin lair, he just stayed up here and led a simple, quiet life.


    Simon imagined the meadow, not as it was, but as it could be, with the grass and wildflowers converted into fertile fields and pasture land. He imagined the split rail fence that neatly separated the cows from the sheep and the neat plots of corn and wheat that he¡¯d use to feed his chickens for fresh eggs and the meat that he would one day learn how to fry just so he could appreciate nuggies in a world that had yet to invent fast food.


    It was a beautiful dream, until he realized that no matter what he did some ogre would come out of the mountains and devour his herd, or another tribe of goblins would appear and burn the place down. It¡¯s true that this could be a beautiful little farming game with a little work, but the goddess would never let him off the hook that easily. That revelation made him hate life a little more, and it was the taste of ashes in his mouth that led him to finally get out of bed and face the day.


    Simon did very little for the rest of the day once he¡¯d devoured the sausages besides dragging the goblin corpses a good ways into the woods before they attracted crows. Now that he was totally out of food he¡¯d have to go back down those awful stairs, but at least it would be on his terms. He layed out the equipment he¡¯d take with him and even managed to recock the crossbow on the first try. Once all that was done he went to sleep again. He could put off the fight one more night, and head out first thing in the morning. After all - now that he¡¯d scared off those damn goblins he might as well enjoy one night of uninterrupted sleep, right? Really, the only problem with that plan that he could see was that it lacked breakfast, but he¡¯d make do somehow.


    Sadly Simon was unable to enjoy the sleep he''d promised himself, because sometime in the middle of the night they were back, and this time they were louder than before. He sighed, and got out of bed mumbling, ¡°Won¡¯t these assholes ever learn?¡± He grabbed the crossbow, loaded it, and opened the door for a repeat performance, but instead he was shocked by what he saw. There weren''t just three of them like there was last time. There were over a dozen. And one of them was bigger than the rest and dressed like some kind of crazy shaman. Simon raised his crossbow and pointed it at that one, but as soon as they noticed the door was open, the goblin leader turned towards him, and barked "G???e???r???v???u???u???l??? ???M???e???i???r???e???n???." There was something wrong with those words, and they hurt his ears to hear them, but before he could figure that out he had to deal with the jet of fire that shot out from its hand like it was the goblin emperor using force lightning or something.


    Simon only just managed to slam the door shut to avoid getting his face melted off, but he had no doubt in his mind that the whole side of the cabin was on fire now. He¡¯d finally gotten to see magic though. That meant it really was possible in this world. If it was possible then there had to be a way for him to learn it too, right? Soon the small one room cabin was filling with smoke and the shutters were shuddering under repeated attacks from goblin weapons. Thinking fast Simon pulled the bed aside, opened the trap door, and started throwing everything he was going to need down into the pit. He almost jumped down to join them when the flames on the roof started licking their way around the edge of the ceiling, but he suddenly realized he¡¯d forgotten the torches he¡¯d need to deal with the second floor.


    As soon as he lit one of those though he was practically running down the stairs and shutting the trap door behind him. The air up there was rapidly becoming unbreathable and for once he''d rather face the rats down here than the world up there.

 Ch. 10 - The Key

    The rats attacked him seconds after his feet found the dirt floor of the basement.


    The heavy smoke in the air and the lack of preparation took their toll on him. Even though he stomped the beasts into a bloody ruin as always, they bit him several times before he managed to completely slaughter them. Once that was over he put on his boots and the armor in the dark, using his socks as makeshift bandages to deal with the bleeding as best he could.


    ¡°God damn, that hurts,¡± he swore, kicking a rat after he¡¯d finished belting everything else on. This run obviously wasn¡¯t starting off right, but at least he didn¡¯t have to worry about infection, because the way things had been going he wasn¡¯t likely to survive another hour.


    The second floor was better. By now he was so used to the traps and the minor variations that he could probably walk through this floor in the dark if it weren¡¯t for the bats. Not that he was willing to try of course.


    That would be almost as frightening as the skeletons. The goblin cave on the other hand, was something he should honestly be trying to walk through in the dark, but the idea terrified him. Simon knew where to go now, but just thinking about that lone patrol and those awful teeth made him shiver.


    He¡¯d never feel comfortable on the third floor of this madhouse without a machine gun or a few spells up his sleeves. As he crept down the dark passage, trying to remember where he saw the lone goblin last time, his mind returned again and again to magic. He¡¯d seen it twice now in the pit. The first time was in the eyes of the skeleton king or whatever that thing was, and the second was the goblin caster that had been outside his cabin.


    It was definitely a real force - something that he should be able to use to beat this game eventually, but he didn¡¯t have the slightest idea how he was supposed to learn it. Hesitantly Simon tried to repeat the word he¡¯d heard the goblin utter when the fireworks started a few times, ¡°Ger-vulmenen. Gerulever-min. Garvul-manin.¡± There was no storm of sparks or sudden fires as he tried to nail down the pronunciation of the unfamiliar word. Instead the only evidence that anything had happened at all was a bad taste in his mouth.


    His brow furrowed at that. Why should saying a word make his mouth taste like sulfur? That train of thought was quickly derailed as - he heard a sudden scream of alarm. That damned goblin had found him again while he was distracted.


    Simon made quick work of the little ball of rage when it charged him, along with the first one that came after him. Fighting goblins wasn¡¯t the hard part. They were vicious, but not very strong. It was seeing the little bastards before they snuck up on him that was the hard part.


    When the third one managed to stab him in the back of his thigh, he cursed, and crushed its head to paste against the wall. Then he charged forward, swinging his sword in one hand and his torch in the other. He wasn¡¯t going to fight these things in the dark. He was going to do it in the light of their bonfire where he could at least see them coming.


    As a strategy, it was ugly as hell, but it was effective. The goblins scattered before him as he charged forward, and he mowed them down without issue. It was a glorious feeling to see them fall before him, but when he was finally done and their small corpses lay strewn around him, he sat gasping at the mouth of the cave. Even in as good a shape he was in, he was certain that if there had been more than six, he would have run out of gas before he¡¯d cleared them all out.


    Once he caught his breath, Simon appreciated the view. The cave was fairly high up on the side of a mountain, overlooking a subalpine forest. It was a view that would have been on a postcard anywhere on earth. ¡°Come visit Goblinlandia,¡± he joked to himself while he appreciated it. If there was any sign of a city he¡¯d probably just abandon this stupid trip down into the pit and explore that instead, but there were only trees and rocks as far as the eye could see.


    Reluctantly he got up and entered the skeleton cave with a little less effort than it had taken last time. The stairs were just as cold, but as he stood there in the threshold he suddenly lost all appetite for a fight. He tried to tell himself it was because the combination of bite wounds on his feet and the stab wound on his thigh were making it hard to move, and that if his footwork was compromised he didn¡¯t stand a chance against that terrifying knight, but even he knew that wasn¡¯t the whole story. Simon was afraid. He was so afraid he worried he might piss himself if he had to face that thing again, and he was looking for any excuse not to.


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    In the end he tried a compromise position. He hobbled through the crypt for the gate. It took these things a little bit of time to get up, aggro on him, and become a real threat. So, even though it was probably hopeless, he went through the room as fast as he could to the gate on the far side. It was only when he got close that he realized that this might not be the exit, but with skeletons returning to life all around him it was too late to change his mind.


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± he told himself. ¡°Worst comes to worst I¡¯ll just take a quick trip home for lunch. Skeleton swords aren¡¯t nearly as painful as traps or goblin teeth.¡±


    The comfort from that reassurance only lasted as long as it took him to reach the gate and find it locked. ¡°Oh come on!¡± Simon yelled as he rattled the bars.


    The cold metal might be half made of rust by this point, but there was no way he was breaking through this without a cutting torch or a truck with a big bumper. That was when he felt someone walk over his grave, and he knew for certain then that the horrid knight was staring at him. Maybe it was even advancing on him. Even turning around to face it was a test of his will though.


    He wondered if this was what it felt like when you failed a saving throw before he chastised himself. He couldn¡¯t afford to be defeatist like that. He needed to turn around and face his fear or he¡¯d never get past this floor! Simon turned around and raised his sword just in time to receive three feet of frigid steel in the gut.


    He gasped, in both shock and pain. This was so much worse than the last time. It was indescribably bad, and the pain wasn¡¯t even the worst part. He looked down and saw ice forming on his armor, spreading out slowly from there.


    ¡°What the fuck?¡± he asked in disbelief, surprised to see the breath fog as it came out of his mouth. He wasn¡¯t dying¡­ this thing wasn¡¯t trying to kill him. It was trying to steal his soul, or something worse.


    With the rest of the crowd of skeletons bearing down on their intimate embrace, Simon brought his sword down against the unarmored neck of this thing with almost hysterical strength. The first blow did nothing, and the second shattered the blade against the spaulders like the sword was suddenly frigid and brittle leaving Simon with nothing but a few inches above the hilt. For a moment he stared at it in disbelief. Then he plunged it into his own neck and pulled the frigid piece of steel sideways, severing both of his carotid arteries in a single painful motion.


    For Simon it was the hardest thing he¡¯d ever done. The last thing he wanted to do was kill himself again, but it felt like his soul was leaking out through that terrible blade, and he didn¡¯t like the idea of spending the rest of his life imprisoned in ice, or whatever this thing planned to do to him. In that strange peaceful moment between life and death he noticed that the skeleton had a key that looked to be about the right size for the gate on a necklace around its neck. As he felt his life splash out in hot gushes across the face of the frigid knight he managed to smile in defiance as everything faded to black.


    Moments later he woke up in his bed, but somehow the darkness between his last life and this one seemed longer and more frightening than normal, like his trip through the afterlife to get back to his starting point had been a longer, harder climb than usual. His teeth chattered for a few seconds while he regained his composure before he felt the strength to finally sit up and look around the room that was fast becoming a sort of prison cell.


    ¡°What the hell was that thing going to do to me?¡± he asked himself.


    The mirror started to answer his question, but when Simon saw it was just asking him to rephrase his question for the tenth time he ignored it. That gag was definitely getting old. Even if the mirror wasn¡¯t any help, he wasn¡¯t sure that he would have woken up again if he had died to that skeleton¡¯s evil chill.


    ¡°Mirror - can I die in the pit?¡± Simon asked finally. He had to know.


    ¡®Of course you can die in the pit,¡¯ it answered. ¡®You have now died seven times.¡¯


    ¡°No, that¡¯s not what I meant,¡± Simon clarified, annoyed that this thing was so dumb he had to spoon feed it everything. ¡°I mean can I die in such a way that makes me stay dead.¡±


    ¡®That is not possible,¡¯ the mirror typed out in its blue cursive script. ¡®All deaths will result in a reset to starting conditions.¡¯


    Simon was surprised to get such a definitive answer from the hunk of junk, honestly. It might have been a first, but even if what it said was true, the last thing Simon ever wanted was to die at the hands of that thing. It was a terrifying experience. Last time he had seen it as he bled out on the skeleton¡¯s blades it had been bad enough, but its frigid embrace had been a hundred times worse.


    At this moment Simon was sure of only one thing, and that it was that he couldn¡¯t go back down into the pit. He had to find another way out. He didn¡¯t know where he would find one. He didn¡¯t know if one existed, but he had to find one, because the only thing worse than staying here and waiting for the goblins to burn him alive in a night or two was going back down there and trying to get past that nightmare. He got up and started getting ready.


    The first thing he needed to do was to cook all his food, because he knew more than anyone that there was no guarantee he¡¯d be able to make fire. After that he was going to fold up his bedding and use it as a crude sack so he could¡­ Simon¡¯s head began to spin with possibilities. If he could just get out of this hell hole then he¡¯d have it all - a fantasy world to explore and a strange sort of immortality.


    The life of his dreams was still within his grasp he decided, and he didn¡¯t even have to fight that damn skeleton!

 Ch. 11 - Another Way Out

    When he left the cabin that day he planned on never coming back. If that path looped around then he would just take a different route that got him out of this crazy hall of mirrors. He checked the satchel on the end of his spear to make sure he wouldn¡¯t lose anything, and then he started walking.


    ¡°There has to be a way out somewhere,¡± he mumbled to himself as he walked to the ruins of the temple. It was as good a place as any to get started. As he headed for the stream that would lead him there he decided that there had to be more to the ruins. Maybe a tunnel underneath, or a city further back amongst the trees. He couldn¡¯t say precisely what he hoped to find, but he was sure he¡¯d find something. Games like this always had shortcuts and secret paths, and so far the only thing he¡¯d found that remotely qualified was a watery grave on the third floor. There was no way that was a secret passage, it was just a dick move.


    He got to the ruins quickly enough, and spent an hour searching, but found nothing new. There were some inscriptions that were still legible, but it was in a language that he was pretty sure had never been written on earth, so whatever it was trying to tell him was lost to time. There was one spot next to the temple that was caved in that might have once led to a basement or a lower story of some kind - but he¡¯d need a crane to find out. Reluctantly he abandoned the place and started heading further south along the river.


    Simon wasn¡¯t really sure that the river was south of course, but that fit the map he¡¯d laid out in his mind. The river went north and south, and the path went east and west, so if this really was as small a world as he thought, he should be able to get back to the path in a few hours if he just stayed in the same direction.


    A few hours came and went though, and he found nothing familiar. There was no path, no ruins, and no other signs of civilization. Just a few small animals, some song birds, and endless trees. The only consolation was that this deep into the forest, the canopy was high and thick so there was very little in the way of underbrush. He tried to keep an eye out for goblin tracks, but that was difficult since he wasn¡¯t too sure what they were supposed to look like. Around the middle of the day he reached a point of no return and spent a few minutes trying to decide if he wanted to turn around and sleep in a warm bed tonight, or if he wanted to keep going and sleep in the woods where anything might get him.


    In the end he decided that it had to be the woods. He¡¯d never find a way out if he could only ever walk half a day out from his cabin. So towards nightfall he walked away from the river to an ancient live oak. It looked very climbable, and he thought it might be a good place to spend the night. He was half right. After eating about half his remaining food, he tried to sleep. The lower branches were indeed wide enough for him to sleep on without serious fear of falling off, but it was incredibly uncomfortable. He tried to do it several different ways, but no matter how he maneuvered, he definitely wasn¡¯t getting any sleep. In the end he climbed down in the dark and slept at the base of the tree. Whatever happened, happened he supposed.


    In the morning he woke and was as surprised as anyone to be whole and uneaten. Between the thin blanket and the damp earth it had been freezing last night, but he¡¯d still managed to get a couple hours sleep. He had a sausage for breakfast, and then he started following the stream again. He did this for half a day, growing more and more sure that he was making progress. Slowly he left the forest behind and entered a boulder strewn scrubland, but when he found the source of the small stream, he stopped to drink his fill before he left the spring behind.


    The scrublands turned into hills, and from the tallest hill he could see he was surrounded by forest on most sides, with some marshy areas. He tried to avoid those, and instead re-entered the forest on the opposite side of the boulder field near sunset. By then he was most of the way out of food, and his water skin was completely dry. He sighed and found himself a place to sleep in the lightning damaged trunk of an elm. It was as safe and warm as he could hope for given the circumstances.


    Simon tried to stay positive, but he knew that tomorrow was going to suck. He was right. Tomorrow did suck, and so did the day after that. The forest went on forever, and despite the fact that nothing had killed and eaten him, he was kind of starting to wish that they would. He hadn¡¯t had anything to eat or drink for over a day and so he was miserable. That misery would last for two more days before he finally succumbed to exhaustion, and eventually woke up in bed. He honestly wasn¡¯t even mad that he¡¯d died this time, as he started to wolf down the bread before he stopped himself. He was grateful. He also wasn¡¯t actually hungry anymore, so he realized he shouldn¡¯t be eating out of habit.


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    What he needed to do was exactly what he did last time: cook the sausage, pack up some gear, and go explore in a different direction. This time he chose to follow the stream the other way, to the north of the path. This time his trip lasted three days instead of four. The first two were in the forest like before, but then he found his way blocked as the stream he followed emptied into a swamp. He kept doubling back to find a way around it, but without much luck. This whole world was basically just forests and swamp, as far as he was concerned. There was literally nothing to find. ¡°Talk about broken,¡± he muttered.


    He sat in his bed after his most recent death thinking about what he should try now. There didn¡¯t seem to be a way out here, and there definitely wasn¡¯t one on the first or second floor of the pit. The third floor though - that was a possibility Simon realized. He¡¯d seen goblins flee him out of the mouth of the cave, into what looked like a sub alpine valley. He could go down, kill himself some goblins, and then instead of going to fight the skeletons, he could go out and explore that world instead.


    So that¡¯s what he did. This time though he actually wore his armor. Even though he knew that hiking in it would be just awful, hiking with a few rat bites or goblin arrows stuck in him would be much worse. The fights down to the goblins were almost trivial, and Simon was embarrassed that he¡¯d actually died several times to get through those floors the first time. The goblin¡¯s didn¡¯t fare much better because he was able to get the drop on them again. Before he left the cave he looked around to see if they had anything worth taking, but the half eaten deer carcass they¡¯d been devouring looked none too sanitary, and even if this cave had a fire he didn¡¯t relish the idea of spending the night in a place that stank this bad.


    That decided, all he needed to do was decide whether he wanted to hike to the top of one of the nearby mountains to get a look around, or if he wanted to make for what looked to be a pass across the valley and see what lay beyond. Simon went with the easier option - he was going to walk through the forest to the far side of the valley. Unlike the previous forest this one was all pines and spruces, and their was still snow in the shadows under some of the trees, so it was a completely different experience. He was glad that he chose the easy route pretty quickly too, because even walking slightly downhill, he was quickly exhausted.


    At first he thought it was the armor that was tiring him out, but even after he took it off and continued without it, he was still sucking wind before he¡¯d walked another half mile. At first he figured that this was some sort of debuff he was getting as punishment for not doing what he was supposed to, but after admiring the snow capped mountains on his third break he came up with a second more likely theory. He was somewhere way above sea level, like Denver or the Himalayas, and the air was just really thin. That made him feel a little better. At least it was this screwed up game¡¯s fault and not his.


    He made good progress throughout the day, and even found a pond to refill his water from after he broke the thin sheet of ice that covered it. Things were looking good. That was until it was time to try to find somewhere to sleep. As the sun started to set it got cold. It quickly got so cold that before he lost the light Simon could see his own breath fogging up. The last two hikes seemed like summer camping trips in comparison to this. Simon used his blanket and a bed of pine needles as best he could to stay warm, but he was soon shivering. He slept fitfully, but he managed to survive the night.


    Simon started walking at sunrise, and had to warm his water skin under his shirt to melt it before he could drink. When he finished all his food he actually managed to shoot a rabbit with his crossbow when he was stopped for a break, but the triumph from the momentous success was short lived when he realized he had no way to cook it. He carried it with him anyway, in case he found a fire along the way. He watched the sky with some trepidation as it slowly turned to lead, and the temperature never really rose enough for him to feel halfway warm. He regretted tossing the armor now to save weight, because that would have kept him a little warmer. Sometime in the midafternoon, it started to snow lightly. It was impossible to know when because the sun was hidden behind the clouds all day.


    ¡°Come the fuck on!¡± Simon yelled. ¡°Can¡¯t I catch a break even one damn day!¡±


    It shouldn¡¯t have come as a surprise, Simon realized, but somehow it still did. That bitch Helades had obviously designed every last aspect of this game to make him miserable, and it was working. He walked on, desperate to find any sort of shelter, because he definitely wasn¡¯t dressed for a blizzard. Over the next few hours it started snowing harder and harder until he had trouble continuing. Simon huddled for warmth under the oldest, largest tree he could find, and after a couple hours of misery he finally fell asleep. Sometime during the night he froze to death and he found himself once again in the cabin.


    ¡°Well,¡± he sighed, ¡°So much for a way out.¡±

 Ch. 12 - A Piece of His Mind

    Simon sat up as he always did after another defeat by the pit and reached for the wine bottle. He was beginning to think that the bottle was the most important mechanic in the whole damn game. He raised the bottle to his lips to nurse the sting of the realization that there would be no way out besides going all the way to the bottom of this damn place before he stopped himself.


    ¡°Mirror - how many floors are there in the pit?¡± he asked, setting the bottle down. The contract had said less than a hundred hadn¡¯t it? Did that mean fifty or ninety nine though?


    ¡®There are 99 levels in the pit,¡¯ the mirror wrote out in its glowing script.


    ¡°And I¡¯ve gotten to the fourth floor, right?¡± He did the math quickly. ¡°Rats, bats, goblins, and skeletons. That¡¯s four. Can you bring up my character sheet?¡± The mirror did as it was bidden and brought the sheet up immediately.


    Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 4


    Deaths: 10


    Experience Points: -7260


    Skills: Archery [Very Poor], Armor (light) [Poor], Athletics [Very Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Very Poor], Maces [Very Poor], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Very Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [None], Survival [Very Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Below Average].


    ¡°So there¡¯s been a little improvement I see,¡± Simon nodded, satisfied. He was especially gratified to see that his swordwork had improved to ''below average'' after all the fighting he¡¯d been doing on floors three and four. ¡°Can you tell me how many skill points I get per level? Can I choose them or are they assigned by the game?¡±


    ¡®I do not understand the question,¡¯ the mirror typed slowly.


    ¡°Of course you don¡¯t. You don¡¯t understand anything. What else can you tell me about?¡± he asked, lifting the bottle again. ¡°Can you tell me the minimum level required to beat the pit?¡±


    He took a drink as the mirror started typing, but he almost spit it out when he read the answer. ¡®No one has ever beaten the pit.¡¯


    ¡°Excuse me? No one? Sounds like a broken game to me.¡± Simon said, trying to keep a brave face for this revelation. If no one had ever beaten it before, then maybe it wasn¡¯t possible to beat. If that was the case he might be stuck here an awful long time while he ground out levels. Maybe not many people have played it before, he thought hopefully. ¡°If no one has ever beaten The Pit, then are you allowed to tell me how many other people are playing it right now?¡±


    ¡®There are currently 4,683,946 souls attempting to beat the pit.¡¯ The number stunned Simon. There were about that many players on his favorite MMO. It was hard to imagine that not one of them had managed to beat the final raid boss for loot at least a few times, even if they didn¡¯t have it on farm.


    ¡°That sounds like bullshit to me,¡± Simon grumbled, taking another drink of wine. ¡°So you¡¯re telling me that right now I¡¯m playing a game that no one has managed to beat, and I¡¯m stuck here dying over and over until I do? How is that fair? What kind of scam is this?¡± With every word he got a little angrier, as he started to understand just how terrible that answer was. The mirror kept trying to answer his question, but with each new question its answer started over, basically rendering it speechless.


    The longer it took the more frustrated Simon became, until finally his rage boiled over and he took the only thing at hand which was the wine bottle, and threw it hard at the mirror. He immediately regretted the decision, because now he wouldn¡¯t have any more wine until after he¡¯d picked how he wanted to die again. The bottle didn¡¯t shatter when it hit the mirror though. Instead it went right through the silvered glass as the mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, revealing what looked like a doorway into darkness. Mounted on the wall where it was, Simon knew for a fact that there was only a layer of logs, and then the meadow, but the fantasy world didn¡¯t seem to care much about physics, or things making sense. So, even though it was impossible, there was a secret door behind his mirror, and honestly that suited him just fine.


    Simon stood up and walked forward. Tentatively poking his head into the darkness and looking around. What he saw was a darker and more somber version of the room he¡¯d last seen Helades in, and as his eyes adjusted, he was pleased to see her sitting on her throne looking bored. ¡°Finally,¡± he sighed, as he started walking towards her. ¡°Someone who I can actually complain to.¡±


    He strode up the dias, taking the stairs two at a time until he reached the top. ¡°Your majesty,¡± he said, trying not to sound out of breath. ¡°After a few days in your lovely pit, I think we¡¯re going to have to look at other options.¡±


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    ¡°Oh, are we now?¡± she smiled, but unlike the understanding she¡¯d shown him in their last visit, this smile was cold and cruel. ¡°This I¡¯ve got to hear.¡±


    ¡°Y-you see,¡± Simon faltered. Her intensity put him on his back foot, and he couldn¡¯t help but think that even if he was totally in the right she was going to find some way to screw him over again. ¡°The mirror informed me that The Pit can¡¯t be beaten, and¡ª¡±


    ¡°Can be beaten and have been beaten are two entirely different things Simon. Please don¡¯t prevaricate,¡± she interrupted. ¡°Yes, millions have tried, and yes no one has succeeded, but that doesn¡¯t mean it can¡¯t be beaten, and it does nothing to alter the contract you signed.¡±


    ¡°But if no one has¡ª¡± he tried to interrupt her, but she continued to speak over him, giving him a glare that suddenly made him feel very small.


    ¡°Truth be told I can only think of a handful of heroes who¡¯ve ever gotten past level 50, but you insisted this was the incarnation you wanted, and now there¡¯s nothing I can do. My hands are tied here Simon.¡± She frowned as she said that last bit, obviously mocking him.


    ¡°You¡¯re not sorry,¡± he said, clenching his fists to try to avoid doing something stupid.


    ¡°You¡¯re right. I¡¯m not,¡± she agreed. ¡°I thought you still had potential. I thought maybe a few dozen more lower incarnations might yet moderate that impenetrable sense of self importance that you have, but maybe The Pit was the best choice after all.¡±


    ¡°Why¡¯s that?¡± He asked quietly, almost afraid of the answer she¡¯d give him.


    ¡°Well, the simple version is like this,¡± she said, looking right through him. ¡°Originally this pit was something else. It was¡­ I guess you could say an attempt to fix a broken world, but it never quite worked unfortunately. Now it¡¯s not that anymore. Now it¡¯s just a garbage can.¡±


    ¡°A garbage can?¡± Simon swallowed hard, not sure he wanted to hear the rest of this.


    ¡°Yes. You know. A place where you put garbage.¡± She smiled, and though she didn¡¯t quite come out and say it, he knew what she was implying. ¡°There¡¯s millions of different people in their own version of the pit, but almost all of them have one thing in common: they¡¯re weeds that I¡¯ve plucked from the garden of life to allow other plants to bloom in their absence.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s monstrous,¡± he said, staggered by the revelation.


    ¡°It is," she agreed. "Truly monstrous. Fortunately I only encourage the devils that never quite manage to make their way to hell to give it a try. Their pain and suffering - their bad karma, to use a term of your world lets me make everyone else¡¯s lives that much better.¡±


    ¡°You put me in here just to make me suffer?¡± Simon asked, practically boiling over with rage. He was having a hard time listening to her after that revelation.


    ¡°No,¡± she shook her head, but she didn¡¯t stop smiling. ¡°I didn¡¯t put you here. You did that. I even tried to discourage you, not that you¡¯ve ever listened to good advice in your life, and now here you are. Suffering for the greater good of everyone.¡± That line took all the force out of his anger. In a single moment he went from wanting to punch the goddess, to wanting to cry. He might not agree with anything else she said, but she was right about one thing: this was his fault. That wasn¡¯t something he was going to let her see though.


    ¡°Fine, what¡¯s done is done. You aren¡¯t going to let me out. I get that, but I¡¯m going to beat The Pit anyway, with or without your help. I¡¯ve never met a game I couldn¡¯t beat.¡± Simon spoke with certainty, but he¡¯d never been less sure of anything.


    ¡°Now that¡¯s not fair,¡± she pretended to pout. ¡°I¡¯d love to help you if you come with a problem that actually needs help, but you¡¯ve only gotten to level 4. You¡¯ve only dipped your toes in the water, so it¡¯s hardly something I need to bother with, now is it?¡±


    ¡°Well maybe you could tell me what level I need to be to get past the skeletons on the fourth floor at least.¡± If she said she was willing to help him, then maybe he could weasel a little bit of information out of her to make her prove it. ¡°It kind of feels like the room is full of fifth level skeletons, but their leader might be level eight or ten? Is that about right?¡±


    Helades did something completely unexpected to them. She didn¡¯t mock or rebuff him. She didn¡¯t answer his question. She just laughed. Long and loud, until she was doubled over and there were tears in her eyes.


    ¡°Levels?¡± she asked, when she¡¯d finally managed to stop the hysterics. ¡°Simon. This isn¡¯t one of your video games. You don¡¯t level up. The levels the mirror shows you are just as deep as you¡¯ve managed to get in the pit. Nothing more, nothing less.¡±


    ¡°No levels?¡± Simon asked, crushed more by this than anything else she¡¯d told him so far. ¡°But if there are no levels then how am I supposed to beat the awful monsters you¡¯ve filled your dungeon with?¡±


    ¡°Have you tried being less pathetic?¡± she asked flippantly.


    That was the last straw for Simon. Rather than punch her or yell at her or draw the sword he¡¯d forgotten to bring with him, he turned on his heel and started walking down the stairs. He told himself it was because attacking a divine being was never a good idea, but really it was that he couldn¡¯t stand to let her see him cry, and right now all he wanted to do was go regret his life choices in private.


    ¡°When you find a real problem, and you aren¡¯t just looking to pout, you¡¯re welcome to come back,¡± she shouted behind him as he walked back towards the door that led to his cabin, ¡°But if you come back just to waste my time, I¡¯ll find some very creative and painful ways to make you learn your lesson. Good luck, Simon!¡±


    As she finished speaking he strode across the threshold into the cabin. No sooner had he done so than the shattered fragments of the mirror all spiraled up into place and reassembled like it had never been broken in the first place. The only thing that had changed was that he¡¯d lost his wine bottle and his optimism that he was starting to turn a corner.

 Ch. 13 - Real Progress

    Hopelessness was Simon¡¯s first reaction. He didn¡¯t have any levels. This wasn¡¯t even really a game - it was just a cosmic joke, and he¡¯d made a terrible mistake. He felt sadness begin to bloom inside him, and the world blurred for a moment as his eyes teared up. Simon hated to feel sad though, and he hated people who wallowed in self pity like this, so he reached for the only thing he had to hold back those tears: anger.


    Alongside the deep sadness that had been building inside him since his conversation with Helades was a deep undercurrent of rage. Rage that she could treat people like this, especially him! Simon had suffered through countless lives that were a terrible fit for him because she had decided that she knew best, but she was completely wrong, and this only proved it. Now the only thing that there was left to do was to take his revenge. Simon picked up the sword and looked at the mirror. Now that he knew where she was he could go back in there and give her a piece of his mind, maybe turn the tables on her and show her what it felt like to die over and over again even, since he was sure he couldn¡¯t actually kill a god.


    He quickly decided against this plan. Simon was a man of action, and when he saw a problem, he fixed it. That was as true in video games as it was true in his own life. When he decided the only way out of the awful life he had was to kill himself, he hadn¡¯t cried about it. He¡¯d acted. If Helades had seen that as the cry for help it was then¡­ no, Simon shook his head. He was so angry he was getting off topic. Confronting the goddess after her threats of a painful end if he were to waste her time - that was just asking for trouble.


    The only real revenge he could show her now was to make progress and find out just how broken this pit really was. If four million people had tried and failed to beat it then there had to be a pretty game breaking bug further down inside the thing. He would find it, then he¡¯d come back to her and use it to prove that she¡¯d signed the contract under false pretenses with him. He wasn¡¯t a lawyer, but he was pretty sure that loopholes were how heroes got out of pretty much all their deals with the devil. Since Simon was so much smarter than the average gamer, he knew that he¡¯d have no trouble doing just that.


    Simon looked around the room with a new sense of clarity now that he¡¯d decided what he needed to do. Rather than just grabbing a couple weapons and heading back down into the pit, he proceeded to lay out everything methodically on the bed. All of the armor. All of the weapons. All of the gear. Everything.


    The first thing that was obvious was that there was no way he could take everything with him. He had to take the leather armor of course, and the chain hauberk would be a must for dealing with the skeletons, even if it might make sneaking on the goblin floor difficult. This time he decided to bring three torches instead of two, and the flint even if it seemed defective. After that all he needed to do was decide on weapons. This time Simon decided to bring the crossbow down, along with the sword and its scabbard, and the flanged mace. He seemed to remember something about clerics using bludgeoning weapons in dungeons and dragons because the undead were weak against them, so maybe that would help him along the way. In the end he shoved everything he didn¡¯t need right now in an old rucksack, lit a torch, and then grabbed the spear and headed down the stairs.


    For the first few minutes he felt incredibly clumsy and overburdened by everything he was bringing with him, but it was better than the alternative of being unprepared. Simon breezed through the first two levels in minutes, taking risks he normally wouldn¡¯t have, and trusting his instincts in a bid to keep up with his anger. The very last thing he wanted to do right now was calm down before he faced off against the Skeleton. He was counting on that anger to fuel him, and overcome its soulless stare.


    It wasn¡¯t much of a strategy, honestly, but it was working. It was equally important for the goblin¡¯s floor too though, because he was trying to move fast but be as stealthy as he¡¯d been on some of his best runs. Simon hurried to the part of the cave where he usually encountered the patrol, then he lit a second torch and tossed them both in separate directions. Once that was done he waited in ambush and killed the goblin as it approached to investigate. The only thing he did differently than his previous runs was that he reloaded the crossbow in the dark before he continued on.


    This time when he reached the bonfire, he chose to try something different with the dumb bastards. He launched a quarrel at the biggest greenskin sitting by the fire, and then he charged the rest yelling. The result was exactly as he expected, and they ran without a fight. Simon had no doubt that given a few minutes they¡¯d regroup, but he didn¡¯t really care about that. In a few minutes he¡¯d be gone and they wouldn¡¯t be his problem anymore.


    Simon only paused on his rampage when he finally reached the chilly hallway at the bottom of the stairs that lead to the crypt. There he took a quick break, set down all the equipment he didn¡¯t expect to need, and took out his mace. ¡°Remember,¡± he reminded himself now that his anger was starting to fade, ¡°You don¡¯t need to kill him the first time. You just need to endure his gaze attack.¡±


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    With those final words he charged into the room and started to attack the skeletons that had not yet started to stir with all the fury he could muster. He quickly figured out why Clerics use maces - they turned the brittle skulls of his opponents to nothing but bone shards and powder without any of the difficulty of having to aim with his sword. A full half of the bastards died for good before they could rise a second time to try to kill him, and Simon managed to kill several more before he could feel the cold gaze of his nemesis on him.


    It was an achievement that he could be proud of, but he forced himself not to look. As far as Simon was concerned all that the appearance of the knight had done was start the clock, and killing every skeleton but the boss was a timed event. So, he kept his head down and focused on smashing these skeletons one at a time until his right arm ached and he was panting so hard that he could see his fogged breath. This was definitely harder than they made it look in the movies, but the fewer skeletons there were facing off against him, the easier it got. By the time he was down to three opponents, it wasn¡¯t much more difficult than whack-a-mole down at the fair. Let the first one swing, parry the second one, and then crush the skull of the one that was getting ready to swing.


    Simon was almost surprised to discover that when he killed the last one there wasn¡¯t one after that. Well, none except for the knight. He¡¯d spent the last few minutes of the fight moving his little mob around the room trying to stay away from the big bastard without ever meeting his gaze, and he¡¯d actually been successful. So successful, that now that it was time to actually face the monster, he could barely bring himself to. Simon struggled to think of something else he might do instead. Maybe he could try that gate again, or retreat into the hallway and take a break. Maybe he could¡­ Simon stopped the desperate spiral of his thoughts and dropped his mace. Instead he put both hands on the grip of his longsword and looked slowly up at the terrible enemy walking towards him and forced himself to meet its unholy gaze.


    He felt the fear washing over him, but he tried to ignore it and move past it. His father always told him that courage wasn¡¯t about not being afraid, but about being afraid and doing what needed to be done anyway. Simon had never understood what he meant by that corny line, but face to face with evil, he had a much better idea. He could feel the panic in his heart, looking for any excuse to run screaming. He could feel the stiffness in his limbs just waiting to become full blown paralysis again, but he struggled not to give in. At the final moment, when his skeletal executioner raised his sword to cleave Simon¡¯s skull in two, he managed to finally unfreeze and deflect the blade with an overhead block.


    The knight was faster than the other skeletons he faced, but still slow, and Simon saw an opening to strike back, but couldn¡¯t quite make himself take it. Instead he stepped back, giving ground and readying himself for another parry. He did this over and over again, using the precious time to catch his breath. Each strike he blocked felt like the end of the world, but every time he managed to divert the terrible blow left him that much more confident that this was something he could actually do. He could kill this bastard.


    For the first time Simon followed up his parry with a tentative swing that was short of the target, but it still made the skeleton step back slightly. After that the fight changed completely. Instead of simply trying to smite him in a single blow, it became much more like a knightly duel. Swords flashed and blows were met with such force that sparks struck, and each time Simon worried that his sword would shatter like it had last time, but it held. Eventually he figured out that mystery, when an errant blow rebounded off the platemail and his sword got painfully cold.


    That was great. It wasn¡¯t just a deadly skeleton with only a very tiny weak spot that was its face and neck, but he had to make a clean kill or his sword would quickly freeze so hard that it became brittle. Normally that was something that Simon would complain about, but right now he was too focused on killing this bastard to let it bother him. He was finally starting to understand the ebb and flow of the fight for the first time, and that was when he decided to go for it. He followed a parry with a feint, and then a second blow to knock the knight¡¯s sword away, and only once all that happened did he try to strike the skeleton down. Unfortunately his opponent turned its head and Simon¡¯s strike was deflected by the gorget.


    That was fine, Simon thought. He¡¯d just try again. Unfortunately he¡¯d never get the chance, as he was run through seconds later by a thrust from the knight that came faster than expected. The blow was almost through Simon¡¯s heart at least, he thought as his consciousness faded. He still felt the painful tug of something against his soul in a way he¡¯d never felt with any of his other deaths, but was unsurprised when he woke up once more in his own bed.


    The difference between this time and all the other times though was that this time Simon woke up with a smile on his face. He might have died, but that fight was definitely a success, and after a quick bite to eat he was going to go back down and fight the bastard again. He¡¯d do it as many times as it took until he was past this floor and on to the next one. He was going to show that uppity goddess how stupid she was to try to screw someone like him over if it was the last thing he did.

 Ch. 14 - Level Five

    Simon rushed back down to join the fight again, delaying only long enough to take down the same gear he¡¯d brought the previous time. His second fight went almost as well as the first and he succeeded at knocking a few of the knight¡¯s teeth loose before his head was struck from his shoulders. So he went down a second, and a third, and a fourth time. This wasn¡¯t about finishing the level, or even about beating the skeleton at this point. This was about improvement. Simon could feel the movements becoming more natural and his reflexes speeding up with every bout he had with the unholy warrior.


    After a while, Simon lost count of the number of times he¡¯d fought and died to the grim skeletal warrior and he was only able to reconstruct it afterward when he took a break and reviewed his character sheet after a fight where he had come within an inch of finally shattering that nightmare warrior¡¯s vertebrae.


    Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 4


    Deaths: 23


    Experience Points: -8265


    Skills: Archery [Poor], Armor (light) [Below Average], Athletics [Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Very Poor], Maces [Poor], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Very Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [None], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Average].


    He¡¯d died eight times. He was pretty sure. Eight more deaths, but his experience points had only dropped another four thousand. ¡°That means if I''m losing a thousand experience points a death, I¡¯m gaining more than I lose with every level now, right?¡± he asked himself before taking another mouthful of cheese. In the end it didn¡¯t really matter. He couldn¡¯t actually spend the experience on anything. It was just a gauge of progress. It was also likely one more way that Helades thought of to twist the knife, he thought grimly. It didn¡¯t matter. On either this attempt or the next one, Simon was sure he¡¯d defeat the knight and be one step closer to shoving the whole thing in her face.


    Simon stood up and stretched before he started gearing up again. He had a good feeling that this time was going to be it. He was going to take that asshole¡¯s head and show him how it felt to die for once.


    It took him several minutes to realize what a stupid thing he¡¯d said, but by the time he¡¯d opened the trapdoor, he was shaking his head with disgust at his own thoughtlessness and looking forward to a little murder as a pallete cleanser. ¡°Why would skeletons need to know what it felt like to die, dumb ass,¡± he muttered as he went down the stairs to stomp some rats. ¡°They already died at least once to become skeletons.¡±


    This time his trip to the skeleton was practically a speed run. Simon¡¯s improvement on his character sheet was definitely mirroring the results he was seeing in the real world. This time he didn¡¯t suffer a single scratch, and on top of that he managed to decapitate two goblins with a single slash. He wished he could save a screenshot of that. It was an epic moment.


    It had only taken him perhaps ten minutes to go from the cabin to the skeleton¡¯s tomb, and it took less than half that time to crush the skulls of all the lesser skeletons into a fine powder. Then he was finally alone with his nemesis. Simon tossed away the mace and pulled out his shield. Normally in video games he never went with a sword and board. As far as he was concerned, it was just weakening your character, when you could choose two swords or a giant badass sword instead. Right now Simon didn¡¯t have a giant two handed weapon, and he¡¯d learned in previous fights he wasn¡¯t really coordinated enough to use two swords at once effectively yet, so it was more like using one sword and then the other for him. The shield was easy though. It had saved his life a dozen times so far.


    Simon wanted to keep his victory streak alive, so as soon as he was ready he barreled into the knight. This was something he¡¯d learned in the last fight. The skeleton warrior was slow, and didn¡¯t do as well when you were really aggressive with it. So that¡¯s just what he did: he played rough. Even with the steel armor, the skeleton weighed less than Simon, so he shield checked it when it raised its sword to strike hard. It worked almost as well as a good feint for keeping its sword anywhere but where it should be. The fourth time Simon did this he almost managed to impale the bastard through the skull, but at the last moment the skeleton jerked its head, which succeeded in avoiding what might have been a fatal blow at the cost of losing its helmet.


    After that it was all over. Simon rained down overhead blows against the skeleton¡¯s now uncovered weak spot until the tenth or twelfth strike scored a glancing blow. It only resulted in a glowing crack that went from the left orbital through the temporal plate, but leaked more of that evil blue light. After that strike the knight just got slower and weaker, and thirty seconds later Simon succeeded in striking the thing¡¯s cursed head from its shoulders. It was a good thing too, because he definitely wasn¡¯t in the shape he needed to be to keep this up much longer.


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    ¡°That¡¯s right!¡± Simon yelled, his chest heaving. ¡°That¡¯s the last time you get to kill Simon Jackoby, bitch!¡±


    With his opponent dead, Simon did a little victory dance and kicked the skull away from him, noting that it still had a small glimmer of that evil light left in its eyes, and he wanted nothing to do with it. God only knew what kind of crazy respawn mechanics a monster like that might have. He did reach down to pick up the sword. Anything that looked that good after being down here for decades or centuries had to be magical.


    ¡°Fuck!¡± Simon cried out, dropping the hilt as soon as he picked it up. The thing was still so cold that it burned him. He tried warming it with the torch, but it didn¡¯t seem to do much good, which was a shame, because he desperately wanted to wield a magical sword. He supposed he could always pick it up next time. By this point he had to admit to himself there was almost certainly going to be a next time, but that didn¡¯t bother Simon. If he could beat an undead skeleton knight, he could beat just about anything. At this point he¡¯d take getting through a floor or two on the first try, he decided as he bent down to pick up the key to the next level. That would be a real victory.


    The key turned in the lock easily enough, and as the wrought iron gate creaked open, it forced Simon to make a quick look around. The sound was straight out of a horror movie, so it wouldn¡¯t have surprised him in the least if all the skeletons he had just killed rose up as one for the second phase of the fight. They didn¡¯t though. For once the game, no, not the game he corrected himself. For once the pit hadn¡¯t tried to screw him over. He smiled as he started walking down the hallway. Things were looking up.


    Even though he knew he should take things slow on his first trip through a new floor like this, he just couldn''t slow down the frantic pace he¡¯d set for himself on this run so far. It was working great. As long as he stayed on the offensive, he felt like nothing could take him down. At least that was the plan, but as the hallway slowly morphed into a cavern, he suddenly found himself walking into a cave that was so beautiful that it stopped him in his tracks while he bathed in its beauty.


    The cave was the product of a sinkhole somewhere just below the surface, and through the large hole in the center of the roof almost 40 feet above him sunlight streamed through the opening in such a way that the cavern walls danced with small rainbows as the sunbeams cut through the spray. It was a magical sight that was pretty much the opposite of the horrors he¡¯d faced on the last level, which was strange enough to make Simon suspicious. Stranger still though was that there didn¡¯t seem to be anything to fight. This was just a cave cut down the middle by a stream, and on the opposite side of the cave was a door. So, it was obvious where he needed to go, but other than a small crystal clear stream that he wouldn¡¯t even have to jump over to get across, what wasn¡¯t clear was what was going to be trying to stop him.


    ¡°Come out, come out, wherever you are!¡± Simon yelled, banging the pommel of his sword against the wall several times to try to attract whatever monster was bound to be waiting for him.


    Nothing came rushing from some dark crevasse to kill him though, and when the echo of his challenge died it was silent again, save for the pleasant noise of the waterfall and stream. Could whatever was supposed to be here to fight him have wandered off, he wondered? Was it invisible and lying in wait, or was it crouched on the cliff above just waiting to jump down and pounce on him? Simon couldn¡¯t say, but he was extremely wary as he walked halfway into the cavern for a look around.


    At least he was for another minute. After that he just felt stupid. Why was he worried so much? Even if there was a monster waiting to pounce he¡¯d come right back to life, and with the surprise gone, the thing wouldn¡¯t stand a chance. Even with his immortality inspired bravado he still didn¡¯t move forward though. Maybe this room wasn¡¯t about monsters at all - maybe it was an environmental hazard of some sort. That was what the trap room was, right?


    So if this room was a trap, then what was going to kill him? Was the thing going to cave in? Was the stream poisonous or made of acid? Simon slowly walked up to it, sniffing the air for any sign of gas, but all he could smell was nature. Goblins had definitely never lived in this cavern before. Tentatively he prodded the stream with his sword, looking for any sign of bubbling that might indicate it really was made of acid. Nothing happened though.


    He shrugged and pulled the sword out, and then he leaned down to take a closer look. That was when the thing lying in wait lashed out at him. Suddenly a clear pseudopod of slime shot from the water and wrapped around Simon¡¯s face. He pulled back immediately, but the thing followed him, extending even as more and more of the slime¡¯s bulk emerged from where it was hiding in the stream.


    Simon tried to scream, but he couldn¡¯t. He stabbed the thing repeatedly, even trying to slice it in half before he dropped his sword and tried to claw the goo from his face to free his airway. He couldn¡¯t though. It was too awful. It was like the time he drowned, but somehow this was worse, because he could feel the thing crawling down his throat even as his skin started to burn and his vision began to fade. The thing was devouring him whole like a formless and nearly invisible anaconda, and every time he fought it, it just found another bit of flesh to wrap around.


    When he finally blacked out from lack of oxygen, Simon was more than grateful.

 Ch. 15 - Words of Power

    Death by suffocation was on Simon¡¯s top five worst deaths so far. It had all the helpless terror of drowning combined with the pain and horror of having his face melted off. When he woke up in his bed though, he was more frustrated than horrified. How the hell was he supposed to kill something that couldn¡¯t be stabbed and barely had a body to fight?


    ¡°Magic,¡± he said, answering his own question as he looked up at the ceiling of his little cabin. The answer was obvious. Magic was always the right tool to defeat an amorphous monster like this. Anything with fire really. He doubted that a torch would do enough damage, at least not before the slime or the blob or whatever that thing was had swallowed him whole again, but a spell like the one that the goblin used to burn him out of house and home in an instant? That would be just about right.


    Now all he had to do was figure out how to cast that spell, and he¡¯d be golden.


    It wasn¡¯t going to be that easy of course, but Simon took a moment to appreciate just how smart he was. It was because of levels like this that so many of the millions of people that were trapped in this cursed place were stuck here. Some of those people probably never even figured out there was magic here at all, and it must have taken hundreds of thousands of others years to put it together. Here he was solving the level¡¯s twist almost as soon as he reached it. He was dying a lot more than he thought he was going to. He did have to admit that to himself, but he learned something with almost every death now, and sometime soon he¡¯d be clearing multiple levels with every death rather than multiple deaths with every level as he¡¯d been up until now.


    Simon added just enough wood to the fire to make sure it would stay smoldering until this evening and opened the shutters to let the heat out. After that he had a little of the food, and a little of the wine as a sort of celebration of the string of small victories he¡¯d just had, and then he decided to take a nap. He couldn¡¯t really carry out his plan until this evening, so he might as well enjoy a well-earned break and beat the midday heat. His final thoughts before drifting off to sleep were about how happy he¡¯d be when he learned how to cast that goblin¡¯s spell. He wouldn¡¯t even need to learn how to light a fire; he¡¯d be able to create it with nothing but a word.


    . . .


    Several hours later he woke and started to get ready. He still had hours before sunset, and he doubted he¡¯d see the goblins until then, but for once in his life he had to be early. Once they were out of their lair, there was no telling how they would ambush him, but as long as he was keeping watch on the cave entrance, he didn¡¯t see how they could sneak up behind him.


    Simon geared up, and then looked long and hard at the bow on his wall, wishing he knew how to use the thing before he decided to leave it here. It would have been a hundred times better than the crossbow for tonight, but he would have to make do until he found time to practice with the longbow. Once that decision was made, he was off, tramping through the grass the way he remembered going last time to find what was almost certainly the goblin cave.


    He made it almost all the way to the cave without getting lost. One quick backtrack later though, and he was hiding behind a boulder with a clear view of the cave itself. From this distance it didn¡¯t smell so bad, so he polished off the bread and cheese without losing his appetite while he kept his eyes on the hole and his crossbow braced on the rock. It was sort of like a stakeout he thought, but with goblins instead of criminals.


    It was a funny thought.


    Hours later, when the sun had almost completely set, Simon saw the first bit of motion at the cave mouth. As the darkness deepened, he saw one goblin climb out of the cave with a crude spear and take a look around while a second one moved to join him. Simon had spent hours thinking about the relative pros and cons of different ways to handle this ambush, but in the end, he decided that once too many got out, he was going to lose, so he was going to hold them here at a choke point until that witch doctor or shaman or whatever he was supposed to be showed up to light him on fire.


    Simon took careful aim at the first goblin only once he was sure that the second one was close enough to see it get taken down. He needn''t have worried much about that though; his bolt went a little lower than anticipated and the goblin screamed bloody murder as it collapsed on the ground with a bolt through its belly.


    ¡°Perfect,¡± he whispered to himself as he watched the second little coward disappear back down the hole. Once the coast was clear he started reloading his crossbow. He was getting halfway good at this part now, but he still wasn¡¯t so fast that he¡¯d want to try it in the middle of a fight. Once that was done, he didn¡¯t put the first goblin out of his misery, he just let it keep writhing in pain while he waited for more of his kin to appear.


    He wasn¡¯t disappointed. Almost two minutes later three more popped out of the cave, and Simon shot the third one in the head before charging the other two with his sword. The one closest to the cave quickly retreated, but Simon was able to cleave the last one in two before he got away. After that he retreated to reload again. Now he certainly had their attention, and he was sure that any time now they¡¯d bring out the big guns to teach him a lesson.


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    It took longer than he thought though. The goblins tried to create a beachhead in the clearing three times, and each time they retreated before him as he killed them in ones and twos. An hour later the clearing was littered with the bodies of the dead, but he still hadn¡¯t gotten any closer to seeing magic. Eventually though, that was exactly what he saw. Simon couldn¡¯t make out the words that the shaman shouted that made the world ignite, but he saw the flames lash out from the cave, and cascade across the clearing, lighting a few bodies and a couple trees on fire as the sudden burst of fire dispelled the night.


    Simon waited with bated breath to see what would happen this time. If he got killed, he could always try this again, though he didn¡¯t relish finding out what being burned alive felt like. On the other hand, if he had no other choice, he could always kill this bastard and go scrounging through the cave for a spell book. That¡¯s where mages and wizards always kept their spells in the stories after all.


    He didn¡¯t have to do either right away though. So, when a couple scouts carefully climbed their way out of the cave, Simon let them think the coast was clear, and stayed hidden until the shaman was out in the open. Once that happened, he let them get a little closer before he popped around the side of the boulder and fired off another shot. He didn¡¯t aim for the caster, even though he knew that was the best answer. Instead, he killed the ugly little bugger just to the caster¡¯s right, making the shaman jump in surprise.


    The goblin responded by shrieking out "G???e???r???v???u???u???l??? ???M???e???i???r???e???n???," lighting the world on fire in a series of jagged fiery lightning bolts. Simon quickly ducked back behind his rocky bulwark to avoid the worst of the heat and stepped into the crossbow stirrup as he tried to pronounce the vile word the goblin had said. He was sure that it was magic. Not just because of the fireworks, but because of the way it tried to slip from his mind¡¯s grasp as he thought about it. It was a word that didn¡¯t want to be spoken. Well - words at least. Last time he thought it was one word, but this time he was sure it was two.


    ¡°Gerul Levermin! Gervul Menen! Garvul Manin!¡± Simon yelled, not getting any result besides the faint taste of brimstone in his mouth. That had happened before too, he recalled. Was that the hint that he was almost there? That he was on the verge of this hellish magic but not quite there yet? He pivoted around the boulder from the other side. This time he noticed that there were a few more of the goblins in the clearing than before. He¡¯d definitely kicked the hornet¡¯s nest now. That realization didn¡¯t stop him from killing another goblin before ducking back behind the rock.


    ¡°Gervuul Meiren!¡± the goblin called out again. It was clearer this time, though whether that was because he was listening so intently for it, or because he¡¯d gotten closer to saying it himself, he couldn¡¯t say. Not much made sense about the pit to begin with, but nothing made sense about its magic system.


    Simon reloaded his crossbow and opted to pop out over the top of his hiding place this time. ¡°Gervuul Meiren!¡± he shouted as he released the quarrel, dropping the shaman with a bolt through the chest. That should have been an exciting moment for him, but he was more disappointed than anything that nothing happened.


    ¡°What the hell,¡± he muttered before breathing in to try again. As he opened his mouth to shout a second time though he felt a sharp sting of pain as something stabbed him in the back. He hopped down causing the pain to double before the shoddy spear thrust in his side to snap.


    ¡°You little bitch,¡± Simon shouted, pulling out his sword and swung it a couple times to end the goblin. It was a canny thing though and jumped out of his reach. That was when Simon started to back up. If there was one back here there could be more, and if he wasn¡¯t careful, he¡¯d be completely surrounded.


    While Simon stumbled back, he desperately thought back to the shaman. Trying to figure out what the goblin had done that he hadn¡¯t, but he couldn¡¯t think of much. So, unless it was the staff that the creature was wielding that was magic, the words should have worked. He wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d get another chance though. Now he could see four goblins advancing on him in a slowly tightening semicircle. He didn¡¯t know how badly he was bleeding, but he knew it must be enough that they thought that they could just wait him out, and they certainly weren¡¯t letting him go without avenging some of the goblin lives he¡¯d taken tonight.


    As the minutes wore on, Simon indeed grew weaker. Soon he had his back against a large tree, and he leaned against it as much to make sure that no one could sneak up on him again as to make sure he stayed standing upright. He had run out of strength to swing his sword, but he still held it menacingly, determined to gut the first one that came for him. That was a fine thing to want, but as he continued to bleed out the blade slipped from his grasp, and he slowly slid down the trunk of the tree until he was sitting amongst the roots.


    That¡¯s when the goblins started warily towards him, still worried it was a trap. Now there were seven of them, and even at full strength he probably didn¡¯t stand much of a chance.


    Simon raised up his hand in a warding gesture to protect his face as the closest one raised a crude looking club. ¡°G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? ??????M???????e???i???????r??????e??????n????,¡± he barked one final time, giving the words everything he had while he imagined the goblins melting like wax on a summer day, and to his complete shock something happened.


    It wasn¡¯t quite the fireworks show that the shaman had pulled off, but tendrils of fire and gouts of flame suddenly arced from his hand, lighting half the goblins that were about to tear him to pieces on fire and sending the rest running for their lives. Simon would have been excited about that, but saying those terrible words hurt so badly that it was hard to care about anything else.


    His throat wasn¡¯t raw like the last time he¡¯d gotten into a screaming match with his dad, or when he¡¯d gotten strep. It felt like he¡¯d eaten a burning coal and vomited it back up, but after that terrible moment passed, he looked around at his smoldering enemies and managed to smile. ¡°Achievement unlocked,¡± he whispered raspily, before he passed out from blood loss.

 Ch. 16 - Level Six

    When Simon slowly opened his eyes, he felt different, and he didn¡¯t need the mirror to see it, though he did consult it anyway. ¡°Show me my character sheet,¡± he ordered, as soon as he sat up.


    Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 5


    Deaths: 25


    Experience Points: -7960


    Skills: Archery [Poor], Armor (light) [Average], Athletics [Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Poor], Maces [Below Average], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [Very Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Average].


    There it was, on his sheet. His spell casting used to be none. Every time he looked at it previously it had taunted him with its absence, but now it was very poor, and that made all the difference in the world. Every other ¡®very poor¡¯ on the list taunted him, but not that one. That one he cherished. The way the words still echoed in his mind, it was a wonder they weren¡¯t on his sheet under a new section like ¡®acquired spells.¡¯ Gervuul and Meiren. As soon as he¡¯d finally cast his first spell it was immediately clear to him that they were two words, and not just one that had run together. He didn¡¯t know what either of them meant, but he knew that he would never forget them. Even now they both felt like they were branded on his soul, and he was hesitant to get too close to either of them.


    Speaking them had felt¡­ wrong. That was the only way to describe it, and he wasn¡¯t looking forward to doing it again. This was just one more thing that wasn¡¯t at all like his expectations for it had been. Manipulating mana, and casting spells - those were supposed to be amazing experiences. He¡¯d spent evenings wondering if channeling the universe like that would be more orgasmic feeling, like sex, or if it would be something closer to getting electrocuted while you were high. It turned out it was neither. It was like turning your brain inside out while the universe rebuked you for violating its laws. Saying them had hurt less than a goblin bite, but more than a sucker punch, and he wasn¡¯t looking forward to doing it again.


    He was going to have to though, because now that he had his fire spell, he had a way to beat that awful slime. That thought brought him back to the present, and he stood up. ¡°I¡¯ve got a new weapon in my arsenal now, bitches,¡± he said to himself as he started to get out his armor, ¡°Arcane Napalm!¡± He pondered the name for a moment before he laughed and shook his head. Nah - that definitely wasn¡¯t going to work, but he¡¯d think of something better in time. Time was the one thing he had plenty of.


    Simon decided to leave the chainmail at home this time since he was no longer so afraid of the skeletons, and once he was geared up, he started heading down into the basement. This time he took it a little slower than he had been lately and poked around a bit on levels one and two. There really was nothing in the rat filled basement but produce in wicker baskets and burlap sacks, although he did realize that the walls were only dirt, so presumably if he got really desperate he could dig his way out and see what was on the outside of the basement, assuming that there wasn¡¯t just infinite dirt of course. That seemed like something that Helades would enjoy doing. Making a whole world of dirt to go with her piece of shit personality.


    On his trip through the trap floor he noticed a trigger plate that he¡¯d seen a couple times before, but he¡¯d never noticed a trap that was connected to it. This time, just for the hell of it he tripped it just to see what it was. It turned out that it opened a secret room, but the only thing in it unfortunately was a chest full of gold and silver coins. In any other circumstance it would have been a hell of a find, but in this one it was kind of pointless. The gear he had to carry weighed enough already. Sacks of gold? That would be a special kind of hell.


    He picked up a few coins just in case he ever found a place to spend them, and then continued on his way. On the goblin floor he tried killing a few of them with his mace, but he discovered what he already knew: it was much more fun killing the little bastards with his sword. He took his time with it so he¡¯d be as rested as possible for the skeletons. Last time that had been a real marathon, but this time it wasn¡¯t even half as hard as he remembered it. Simon managed to kill almost every skeleton before the knight even rose from his tomb, and the fight with it was over in less than a minute.


    ¡°So far so good,¡± he told himself as he unlocked the door. ¡°Today¡¯s the day I go down two levels with one life. I can feel it.¡± After he spoke, Simon went back for the knight¡¯s sword. He still couldn¡¯t wield it, or even touch it, but he wanted to try something, so he scooped it up onto a decaying kite shield from one of his earlier kills, and carried it with him into the cave that would be his next battleground.


    Nothing appeared to have changed since the last time he was here, so Simon approached the stream to within a few feet, and then tossed the sword in it before he stepped back. The whole way down he¡¯d been wondering how to get the damn creature out of the water. No matter how powerful his fire spell was, it wasn¡¯t going to do much good there, and Simon didn¡¯t exactly want to bait it with his body again. He¡¯d considered dragging a goblin body down to use as bait, but those things stunk, and the sword might work even better.


    Even now he could see a thin rime of ice slowly spreading along the surface of the water. That left the slime or the ooze or whatever it was two choices: it could come out to play or it could stay where it was until it was frozen solid. He didn¡¯t care. He had all day. That wasn¡¯t strictly true Simon realized. He would prefer that it stayed and froze. That way he wouldn¡¯t have to try to cast that terrible spell again, even if he was eager to actually kill something with it.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    He didn¡¯t get his wish though, because a few minutes later as the magical frost approached the wall to his left, the slime slowly slid out of the water ahead of it. Simon considered running to the far side of the cave and trying to just get around it, but it seemed like kind of a cowardly thing to do, so, getting as close as he dared, he shouted his magic words when he was about ten feet away from the thing and sure he wouldn¡¯t miss. "Gervuul Meiren!¡±


    He was more than a little disappointed when nothing happened again, and quickly retreated while the slime slowly gave chase at something below walking speed. What had he done differently the other time, he asked himself as he backed away. He¡¯d said the words, and said them right. He¡¯d pointed at the thing. He thought back to that night in the clearing with the fire all around him while he was bleeding against the tree. Was there something he did there that he wasn¡¯t doing here?


    All he could remember about that night was how badly he wanted to see those bastards burst into flames. Maybe that was all it was. Maybe he didn¡¯t have intent or visualization or whatever behind him with this slime.


    He stopped and focused, imagining lighting this ugly bastard crawling towards him on fire, and then said those terrible words again. ¡°G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? ??????M???????e???i???????r??????e??????n????!¡± This time they ripped themselves out of his throat with the same ferocity he remembered as arcs of fiery death shot out of his hand through whatever he¡¯d done to warp reality. Several of the burning streamers missed the slime, but several others hit the thing, and its skin went from clear to smoldering and ashen across almost a third of its body, which was about right because just saying the words made him feel like he¡¯d been a smoky room yelling over music that was too loud all night. He doubted there were any bars in the pit to celebrate his latest victory in though.


    Simon¡¯s thoughts of celebration were rather short lived. Rather than put it down, the slime came after him even faster after that. He yelled the words again, out of fear as much as anything. Less fire arced this time. Simon wasn¡¯t sure if that was because his voice was shot, or because he hasn¡¯t visualized its death as vividly as before. Either way it didn¡¯t matter - the second blast was enough, and the smoldering slime finally stopped making any movement more threatening than twitching as it slowly dissolved into a widening puddle.


    The first spell he¡¯d cast made him feel like a chain smoker, but the second one had felt worse than any bout of strep throat he¡¯d ever had. It was pure misery. He honestly wasn¡¯t sure if he¡¯d be able to cast it a third time any time soon, so he hoped that he didn¡¯t have to. Simon spat on the ground to try to get the taste of brimstone out of his mouth, and wasn¡¯t surprised when he saw blood.


    Even though he was pretty sure it was dead, he gave the thing wide berth as he walked towards the waterfall to gargle and refill his water skin. That helped a little, but not enough. It wasn¡¯t like he could do anything else right now though. Only a lot of beer or a quick trip to his next life was going to fix this, and he wasn¡¯t about to die now. He was on a roll.


    With that thought in mind Simon walked across the cave, and down the passage on the far side. It didn¡¯t take long before it ended in a bright and cheerful wooden door that looked entirely out of place here. Simon wondered how it had gotten here, but having no other choice, he opened it to find¡­ a dining room of some sort. ¡°Well you don¡¯t see that¡­¡± he croaked as he walked inside, shuddering from the pain as much as the sound of his own voice before he trailed off into silence. He knew what he was saying, and he could barely understand himself.


    Still, even if it hurt to talk, and even if the roast ham on the table didn¡¯t inspire much of an appetite, the mug of dark ale not far from him certainly looked appetizing. Simon looked around but couldn¡¯t see any diners. The state that they¡¯d left the table in definitely spoke to some kind of battle though. Maybe there was a dragon attacking the castle and they¡¯d all gone to fight it, leaving him this lovely feast to enjoy. He strode forward to help himself, but as soon as he picked up the beer, suddenly something charged him from the right, practically knocking him off his feet.


    Simon raised his tankard and shattered it against the man¡¯s face. It was only then that he realized his attacker was already dead. It took another few seconds, long enough for the zombie to try to unsuccessfully bite through his leather bracer, for his brain to work out that he wasn¡¯t just dead. He was a zombie. To his credit he didn¡¯t panic or freak out, he just pulled his flanged mace off the loop on his belt and swung it down hard enough to crack the thing''s skull.


    It kept fighting through the first and second blows, even after Simon heard its skull crack. When the third one landed though, it crumpled like a rag doll. He smiled at that, surprised to find out that zombies might actually be as easy as he thought they were going to be. He kicked the thing just to make sure it really was completely dead, and then he walked past the disrupted feast to the next door, his weapon at the ready. Having a drink could wait. Now that he knew what this floor¡¯s monster was, he wanted to find out just how many there were.


    On the other side of the door was a blonde tavern maid, holding a pitchfork. As soon as the door opened she whirled to face him. ¡°Wiednsval!¡± she yelled menacingly jabbing towards him with the pitchfork to keep his distance. ¡°Wiednsval? Bidsden Aufriven?¡±


    Her strange accent and her lack of English made it almost as clear as her weapon did that this wasn¡¯t going to go well, but since she was the only person he¡¯d seen besides that damn goddess in what felt like weeks, and she made the plunging neckline of her bodice look particularly good, Simon was certainly willing to give it a try.


    ¡°I come in peace,¡± he said slowly and calmly as he dropped his mace and raised his hands in the air. At least that¡¯s what he tried to say. It came out more as ¡°Ichkom enpeeez.¡± He had only half a second to realize that he sounded more like a groaning zombie than a person before he realized that the bar maid must have thought the same thing. With a roar of anger, she charged forward, plunging all three tines into his chest. His leather armor had been pretty effective at lots of hazards, but they did almost nothing to slow down the farming implement as they penetrated his flesh.


    He tried to struggle then, not caring that it made him seem even more like a zombie as he flailed and groaned in pain. It wasn¡¯t any good though. She drove her thrust forward until he was pinned to the wall behind him, and then held him there for a few seconds until the internal bleeding from where her blow had nicked his heart caused enough blood loss for him to lose consciousness.

 Ch. 17 - Lost in Translation

    ¡°So there are actually other people here,¡± Simon said, testing his voice again as he lay on his bed. ¡°Cute ones too.¡± He smiled as he lay there. Sure, she¡¯d killed him, but that was almost understandable. That sort of thing happened all the time in zombie movies. What really mattered was that there were cute girls in The Pit and that zombies weren¡¯t so tough after all. There was even beer! He just had to get down there, without trashing his voice again.


    Somehow he¡¯d have to find a way to kill the slime with one spell, or with none at all. Even if he did that, though, it raised a whole new series of problems. It was easy enough to copy a single set of sounds from one goblin, but did the pit really expect him to learn 50 different languages for 99 different floors? That was more than a lifetime of work, assuming he could even find a tutor.


    Simon sat up. ¡°Mirror - how do I improve my magic skill? How do I make it, so I don¡¯t feel like shit every time I say those words?¡±


    ¡®Focus and practice,¡¯ was its cryptic reply. Because of course Simon hadn¡¯t thought of either of those things before himself.


    ¡°Fine, if you¡¯re not going to say anything useful about that, then I want to talk about a very serious problem with this place with Helades.¡± Simon got up and picked up the wine bottle. This time he didn¡¯t plan to throw it, though, he just wanted to enjoy a drink without having to swallow with a throat that felt like it was made of broken glass. ¡°The UI for this whole place is kind of awful, but the languages are going to be a real problem.¡±


    ¡®What is the problem with the languages in The Pit?¡¯ The mirror asked, one character at a time.


    ¡°Well, since the main point of language is to be understood, and I can¡¯t, you know, understand them, I¡¯d say they aren¡¯t doing their job very well,¡± Simon¡¯s voice dripped with sarcasm, but he was sure that it went over the head of the machine or spirit or whatever was inhabiting the mirror.


    ¡®I could teach you,¡¯ the mirror typed. ¡®Which language do you wish to learn?¡¯


    ¡°Teach me? You? You can¡¯t even tell me basic facts about this game¡­ I mean, place.¡± Simon laughed derisively. ¡°Tell me - how many languages are written or spoken in The Pit?¡±


    ¡®There are 5,486 languages spoken in the pit, and there are 8,933, different forms of writing.¡¯ The mirror displayed that like it was a perfectly reasonable fact, but the numbers staggered Simon.


    ¡°So you think that in addition to learning to fight 100 different kinds of monsters, I should learn a thousand different languages? You think that that¡¯s reasonable?¡±


    ¡®What alternative would you suggest?¡¯ the mirror asked. ¡®Strictly speaking, no communication is required to complete all 99 levels.¡¯


    ¡°I¡¯d suggest that you let me talk to the boss and let me work it out with her before I have to break you again,¡± Simon threatened. ¡°I¡¯m sure she can cast a spell or give me an amulet of translation or something and fix this problem with a wave of her magic wand.¡±


    The mirror stayed dark for almost a minute, and for a second Simon thought that he¡¯d scared the thing off with his threat. Finally, it started typing, and as it did a potion appeared on the table in a flash of light.


    ¡®Her radiance, Goddess Helades, lady of life and death, has seen fit to answer your plea,¡¯ the mirror typed. ¡®This potion will enable you to understand all languages in The Pit¡­¡¯


    Simon liked the sound of that, and looked away from the mirror even though it was still typing, to focus on the potion. It was dark like ink, with the faintest swirls of light inside. He was grateful that she¡¯d finally seen reason on something, but the way Simon saw it, this potion just proved his point. If she could have solved his problems so easily, then the fact that she hadn¡¯t done so was just further evidence that she wanted him to suffer.


    He pulled out the cork and started to down the vile contents. It turned out that it didn¡¯t look like ink. It tasted like ink, too. Ink that had been vomited up by an evil librarian in the depth of hell. That didn¡¯t stop Simon, though. This was the first magical item he could actually touch without burning himself, and he wasn¡¯t going to screw up something as simple as drinking a potion. That¡¯s probably what that screwed up goddess wanted - to give him the answer and watch him waste it. The joke was on her, though; he was going to use it to beat her at her own game.


    It was only when he¡¯d finished downing the vile potion that he looked in a mirror to finish reading the rest of its message, ¡®...though it should be noted that the process of absorbing that much knowledge will take some time. It will be extremely painful, and the elixir is best used in small doses over several days.¡¯ Simon brushed off the warning and moved to sit down in his chair, but even that small motion made the world feel like it was shifting. He could feel something building now in the back of his skull. It was pressure, combined with the faint haze of colors as he looked at the glowing monitor. It was almost like every light had a sort of aura to it now.


    Aura. That word triggered a memory about his mother and her migraines, but that memory and the idea that he might be in the process of experiencing something like that only outran the oncoming pain by a couple seconds. He leaned heavily on the chair as memories and after images of languages he¡¯d never heard, and words he¡¯d never spoken, began to barrage him. Simon tried to sit down so that he could put his head in his hands and try to shut some of the light out, but somehow he managed to entirely miss the chair and land on the floor with a thud. He wanted to rise, but suddenly that felt like too much effort. The words were coming fast and furious now. He was in a text maelstrom now, and no two words were from the same alphabet.


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    He tried to breathe slowly, forcing himself to calm down. He could do this. He could endure this fresh hell that Helades had inflicted on him. Closing his eyes didn¡¯t help, he realized belatedly, and breathing deeply didn¡¯t do much either. Even if he shut out the offending light, the words still came. He could hear them now as much as see them. Murmured words in a hundred different voices began speaking quietly into his mind, but that many whispers still added up to the sound of a roaring jet engine. That was when Simon started to scream. Every aspect of this torment got worse minute by minute. It was like having the worst hangover of his life times a hundred while he was at a particularly loud rock concert.


    After less than an hour of enduring the tide of words he thought about killing himself. He only decided against it, because he was sure that the potion wouldn¡¯t carry over to his next body. He would leave that behind along with his wounds. Only the knowledge forcing itself into his brain would carry over. So he had to endure this. There simply wasn¡¯t another choice.


    Simon managed to get to his feet long enough to make sure the door was barred, and then he crawled into bed and waited for death to take him. Mercifully, he slipped into unconsciousness within the hour, but his dreams weren¡¯t any better than his waking life. There he was drowning in ink while the whales deafened him with their song, one sonic blast at a time, and by the time he woke up again, he was convinced he was bleeding from his ears.


    Over the next two days, he slipped in and out of his troubled sleep. He tried drinking the entire bottle of wine to dull the pain. Nothing helped, there were just interludes where the barrage of knowledge soaking into his mind wasn¡¯t quite so bad. He had plenty of time to hate himself for not following instructions, and plenty of time to hate Helades for doing this to him, but neither of those helped either. Eventually, though, Simon woke up to the surprising sound of silence. The goblins had apparently not managed to break in and murder him in his sleep, and a throbbing headache was all that remained of his torments. It was a monster of a headache that was at the upper end of normal, and no longer the sort of thing you could only experience through malicious magic.


    The very first thing he did was brave the sunlight to get some more water. He¡¯d been out for half a day, and there was no way he could face the goblins, let alone the skeletons like this. He slowly stumbled to the stream, squinting hard. He would have given away both his magic words for a good pair of sunglasses right now, sadly that wasn¡¯t an option. The pit had no cash shop for cosmetic items. Once he had drained his waterskin once more, he set out for the only place he knew of that he could test to see if this had worked without resorting to combat: the temple ruins just south of the path.


    As always the trip there was utterly without incident, and when Simon arrived at the eroded marble he got the surprise of his life when he could actually read the writing that had survived on the walls and columns of the most sheltered areas. It was like going to Egypt and suddenly remembering that you¡¯d actually majored in hieroglyphics in college. The knowledge was just there, like it had always been there.


    Despite his throbbing head, Simon was too intrigued to stop, and spent the next couple of hours reading every scrap of writing he could find. They might just look like swoopy, flowing pictographs, but to him, they had a whole set of meanings as well as enough cultural context to understand what they were saying. He read about the teachings of an ancient healing god, Kanuthep. It seemed like sort of a fertility/healing god to Simon, which struck him as kind of half ass. They could have made up two different gods, so the symbolism wasn¡¯t quite so crowded. Most of the writing on the temple he found was an epic poem about the day of flowers, which was their version of the end of the world, after all the warriors had killed each other and there was nothing left to do but let the flowers bloom.


    That struck Simon as vaguely creepy, and also somewhat like the plot of a manga. It didn¡¯t quite make sense to him in that specific Japanese way that they did so often. It was honestly pretty boring stuff. Normally Simon would have given up after like ten minutes of dealing with this artsy bullshit, but he¡¯d suffered greatly for this superpower, and he was going to use it every chance he could.


    Finally, that accidental persistence paid off when he struck pay dirt. Near the end of a pillar talking about herbal remedies and their uses, which he didn¡¯t give a shit about, there was a section about a prayer that you could recite before the gods. Most of it seemed like it was boilerplate nonsense like a catechism or whatever, but the last part was just two words, and Simon doubted that it was a coincidence. After all, the only spell he knew was two words long, so, taking a moment to sound them out and make sure he got them right, he said, ¡°Aufvarum Hjakk.¡± This time he didn¡¯t yell the incantation because his head wouldn¡¯t allow it. He didn¡¯t think it would make that big of a difference, though.


    When nothing happened, though, he sighed as he stood up, unsurprised that nothing had happened. Of course, it was too good to be true there was no way Helades would leave a healing spell around right outside The Pit, he thought as he started to walk away, would she? That thought stopped Simon in his tracks. That¡¯s exactly what she would do. The purpose of the pit was to get hurt and die, over and over, for her entertainment. The only thing that would make that better is if help was right there the whole time, but it was in a dead language no one could read.


    Simon turned around and walked back to the pillar. This time he didn¡¯t just say the words. This time he forced his mind to quiet and imagined his terrible headache fading away. Even if he never cared much for the whole ¡°power of positive thinking¡± that his counselor always tried to get him to do, it was impossible to deny the link between the fire spell and the vividness with which he imagined his enemy bursting into flames by now. When he opened his eyes, he said it again, ¡°A??????u??????f?????v?????a?????r????u??????m????? ????H???????j??????a?????k???k??????.¡± This time he was only a little surprised that his headache blew away like dandelion fluff in a breeze. The words still felt wrong to him, and they still carved their way into his soul, but they were nowhere near as violent or as hard on him as the other spell had been.


    Simon smiled. This was real progress.

 Ch. 18 - Rematch

    With that progress fresh in his mind, Simon wasted no more time. He wanted the rematch, and he was going to get it on his terms. Not only did he need something he could take his migraine induced frustration on, but felt practically invincible. He had two spells now. That made him a real live magician in his eyes. He could hurt things and heal things now, which made him pretty much unbeatable.


    At least it would when he got better at it. He still wasn¡¯t as good at fire magic as a goblin, and that was honestly a little embarrassing, but progress was progress.


    ¡°Mirror, show me my stats,¡± Simon said as soon as he got home and started to armor up. The mirror obliged quickly as always, and showed him what he knew to be basically a fake character sheet within seconds.


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 6


    Deaths: 26


    Experience Points: -7820


    Skills: Archery [Poor], Armor (light) [Average], Athletics [Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Poor], Maces [Below Average], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [Very Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Average].¡¯


    ¡°Can you add the spells I know to that?¡± Simon asked, in between bites of cheese. ¡°You know, for completeness?¡±


    The mirror obliged, adding a section to the bottom it labeled words of power, which made him laugh.


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 6


    Deaths: 26


    Experience Points: -7820


    Skills: Archery [Poor], Armor (light) [Average], Athletics [Poor], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Very Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Poor], Maces [Below Average], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Poor], Sneak [Poor], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [Very Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Average].


    Words of Power: Aufvarum Hjakk Gervuul Meiren ¡¯


    While he was a little disappointed that learning a second spell hadn¡¯t increased his spell casting ability at all, Simon was pleased that his level to death rate was increasing. He couldn¡¯t focus on either of those though, because now that he could read the language and understand the strange words they no longer sounded like mysterious magic words to him. Instead, they sounded like boring abilities from a JRPG with a bad English port. Large burning? Small healing? It was like they weren¡¯t quite conjugated right or something.


    Still, the information cheered him up. That meant that there were probably at least four other spells out there just waiting to be found. ¡°If there¡¯s a Large burning, then there has to be a medium and a small burning too, right?¡± Simon asked himself as he belted on his sword and started to pack everything else away. ¡°Who knows. Maybe there¡¯s even a huge burning or a ¡­Mega Burning!¡± He said that last one with great theatrical flair, but the only thing that happened was a burst of laughter before he lit one of his torches and headed downstairs.


    It was kind of ironic that this was finally starting to feel like the game it should have been, only after Helades had made it very clear it wasn¡¯t. Simon didn¡¯t care. It was a useful metaphor, and one that he was sure was giving him an edge over the countless losers that had come into the pit before him. Now he just needed to figure out how to cast them better, so they hopefully didn¡¯t hurt quite so bad, and he could start breezing through this place.


    As he effortlessly slew the bats and the rats, Simon couldn¡¯t help but think about it more. It might not be a ¡°game¡± like the goddess had said, but it was starting to feel exactly like what he would want to see in one. It had monsters that were easy to kill, a miniboss on level 4, actual spells that worked, and he¡¯d even found his first NPC. Technically she¡¯d killed him, of course, but that was only because she¡¯d thought he was a zombie. It was an honest mistake. All he needed now were some magic items, and some exposition about why the pit existed and what terrible demon he had to fight at the end, and he¡¯d be able to start wrecking shit.


    Simon did slow it down a little this time, though. The last few times he¡¯d gone through the goblin floor and the skeleton crypt, he had done it through brute force, as he tried to rush it. This time he focused on stealth and good clean kills. If he wanted to meet that blond babe that had murdered him, then he wanted to do it without being banged up too badly, and there were plenty of other parts of his character sheet he could be working on besides just swords.


    Once again the only part of the dungeon that was any challenge at all at this point was the skeleton knight, and Simon managed to take him down in just over a minute, this time by dual wielding his sword and mace. He got the timing on his parries right, then smashed the bastard¡¯s face in, a couple of times, and the knight quickly crumbled into dust where it belonged. After that, he took a short break, trying to visualize the spell he wanted to cast for what came next. There was definitely more than words to casting these spells. Somehow, intent and visualization seemed to matter as much as the way he said the words. For Simon that was a small problem, since despite the fact that he was obviously a very imaginative person, he wasn¡¯t very good at picturing things like that in his mind¡¯s eye. It was easy enough to recall the things he¡¯d seen on TV or in video games, but even trying to picture those same ideas - things he should have known incredibly well, like pixels flared around his character when he cast the shield spell or launched a fireball in his favorite game, Descent into Darkness 2 were difficult to recall.


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    Only his favorite waifu, Princess Anmelda was easy to recall, and even her details were a bit blurry, especially if you were talking about some of the outfits he didn¡¯t have her wear very much. He sighed. It was honestly a little ridiculous. If he knew the words, then the magic should just work. He should just be able to cast [Fireball] and annihilate his opponent, because things would be a lot easier in the next level if he could just cast his large burning spell one time and still be able to talk some sense into that blond woman before she skewered him again.


    Simon sighed and stood. Now that he was thinking about her, all hope he had of practicing his visualization of anything but her cleavage was completely gone. This time he wouldn¡¯t give her the chance to stab him, of course, but he¡¯d feel much better about the whole thing if he didn¡¯t have to rough her up in the process. Now that he theoretically spoke whatever crazy language she¡¯d been using before, he should be able to use his words to get what he wanted, as his mother had always told him growing up.


    He slid the sword into the water the same as last time, and waited for a moment, and then he circled to the north side of the cave intent on trying to just bypass the slime without casting that terrible spell, but he almost lost a foot as the thing lashed out at him from the water, and quickly retreated. This time Simon got far enough back that he¡¯d have a few seconds, and really focused on not just the slime catching fire, but the way that the flames came out of his hand in a nice tight beam, that looked less like the flaming lightning that the shaman had thrown around, and more like one of Iron Man¡¯s repulsors. If he was going to have to imagine something, then he was at least going to stick to what he knew to boost his odds of success.


    When he opened his eyes again, the slime was less than ten feet from him and closing fast. ¡°Gervuul Meiren!¡± Simon shouted, throwing every ounce of anger and hate he had into it. The result was just as painful as it always was, but much more effective than the last couple of times he¡¯d cast the spell. He felt reality twist very slightly around him, and then a veritable fountain of fire erupted from his hand. It wasn¡¯t quite the tight beam he¡¯d imagined, but it didn¡¯t exactly spray everywhere either. The increased focus combined with the shorter range meant that most of the flames ended up exactly where they belonged: burning the giant booger monster that was trying to eat him to a crisp.


    ¡°That¡¯s what you get!¡± he shouted before spitting, this time he was pleased to note there wasn¡¯t any blood, and he only sounded vaguely hoarse rather than like the living dead. It was an improvement, but he hoped in time he could do better. Casting these spells wasn¡¯t just painful, but there was an element of dread attached to them, and he didn¡¯t like it. The whole system needed a redesign, honestly.


    Simon took the time to refill his waterskin here, even though he didn¡¯t need to, because the water that trickled down from the forest stream above was utterly delicious. Once that was done, he took out his mace and walked over to the well-worn tavern door and opened it.


    This time as soon as he stepped in he whirled around looking for the zombie that had attacked him last time, but he didn¡¯t see it anywhere in the room. Simon shrugged. He¡¯d planned on caving the thing¡¯s skull in, but one less thing to fight was fine by him. He walked over to the table and picked up a tankard of warm beer and looked around the room. That was when he noticed the body on the floor.


    He had mixed emotions about how he should feel about the death of a near stranger that had been practically beheaded. On the one hand, he was sad that someone had killed such a beautiful woman. She should have been an Instagram model or a TikTok girl, not zombie bait. On the other hand, though, she had killed him last time, so he wasn¡¯t exactly sad to see her dead. ¡°Guess you shouldn¡¯t have killed the hero of this story. Maybe then someone would have saved you,¡± he said quietly before raising a glass in the memory of the beautiful barmaid that would never have the chance to kill him again.


    That was when he heard a crash and a scream from somewhere else in the tavern. Simon set the mug of warm beer down and with a mocking salute to the dead woman he readied his mace and opened the door to the next room. This was a common room in a bar. At least it used to be. Now it was a war zone.


    Several bodies lay strewn about the floor, but only two people were actually moving. The first was a brunette woman holding a meat cleaver defensively as a zombie slowly advanced on her. The second was the decaying remnants of some kind of viking warrior. It was a seriously metal Halloween costume, but as an enemy it was a little lackluster. That zombie wasn¡¯t the problem. The real problem was the place where they had broken through the boarded up windows. Simon could see dozens of the bastards milling around outside, and if they all started coming in here, that might be a real challenge. Simon advanced on the one that was about to take a bite of the girl. She wasn¡¯t as pretty as her friend had been, but that didn¡¯t mean he should let her die.


    The zombie barely had time to turn and face him before he delivered a two-handed blow that caved in the side of its face, and sent it tumbling to the floor. Simon looked up at her, smiling, but her response was to stare vacantly at him and keep pointing the knife in his direction. He shrugged mentally as he turned to deal with the window. She probably wasn¡¯t going to kill him. So, as long as he kept her safe for a few minutes, maybe he could actually find out what was going on around here for once.

 Ch. 19 - Eye of the Storm

    Thinking fast, Simon rushed across the room and brained the two that were trying to struggle their way through the gap in the boards. They just flopped there, like the world¡¯s most disgusting cork, and their dead weight mostly kept the rest of them from coming through. He looked around and grabbed the closest trestle table, knocking it over to make a crude barrier. Then he started shoving it towards the breach.


    It was heavier than it looked, though, and moved slowly. By the time he was halfway there he had to take a break, pick up his mace, and go for the new one that was trying to climb its way over the top of the other two lifeless corpses who had already breached the window.


    ¡°Can I get a little help over here,¡± he called out in annoyance as he smashed the latest corpse three times before it finally stopped twitching. Though, at least it seemed like none of the other boards were breaking under the strain, so if he could block this gap off it would probably hold for a while.


    ¡°Yeah. Right,¡± the woman said, finally stirring herself to action as she finally did something besides pointing her knife at anything that moved. She joined Simon as he put his back into it, and seconds later the table slammed against the wall, crushing the zombie corpses with a wet crunch.


    Simon stretched and took a look around the room after that. Looking for any other threats and finding none. The common room was completely trashed obviously, and a few dead bodies lay amongst the toppled tables and scattered crockery, but most of the furniture had been piled messily to block the front door.


    ¡°Not exactly the place to grab a pint and wait for this all to blow over, is it?¡± Simon asked with a laugh, but when he turned around to face the dark haired girl, she was just looking blankly at her hands, and the wall of dead just outside the window. It was the first time Simon noticed that she was splattered with blood.


    ¡°You okay over there, sole survivor? You get bit or anything?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡°No, I - it¡¯s not mine. It¡¯s Brenna¡­ she just¡­ and then I-I¡ª¡± the girl started crying then. She¡¯d obviously had to do something terrible to survive this long, but Simon wasn¡¯t terribly interested. Her tears were making him uncomfortable.


    While she started to sob, he turned around to give her some privacy and started searching the first floor of this building. He wasn¡¯t sure exactly what he was looking for. More zombies? The next floor? Something to eat? It didn¡¯t matter. Right now, all that mattered was giving his mystery girl a chance to calm down, so he could find out what had happened.


    The first floor revealed a well stocked bar, a kitchen that had definitely seen some bloodshed, a set of stairs leading to the cellar, a second set that led up to rooms on the second floor, a looted pantry, and a random assortment of dead bodies scattered throughout. It was pretty gross, honestly. Some of them had been dead longer than others and were really starting to smell.


    Not ready to face the crying girl yet, Simon started upstairs. He supposed he should do something about that, of course, but he wasn¡¯t any good with those sorts of emotions. He just didn¡¯t have much experience in that area. If Women were a category on his character sheet, they would probably be rated at very poor, along with spell casting. The difference between the two, of course, was that Simon had some idea of how to get better at using magic, but women were still a complete mystery to him.


    Upstairs wasn¡¯t much different than downstairs, and as he went room to room, ready for a fight, he found no new zombies. When he got to a room that faced the front of the end, though, all he could do was stop and stare as he got a good look out of an open window. For the first time in his life, his jaw literally dropped as he looked at the horror this city had become.


    From the common room all he could see were boards with glimpses of zombies struggling just beyond them, but the view from the second floor he could see just how much carnage there really was. He was in a medieval city, or at least the corpse of one, because whatever had happened here had definitely killed it. The living dead were crowding the streets as far as he could see in both directions, and here and there, buildings were on fire. It was a complete mess.


    Suddenly, Simon was struck with a pang of remorse. He regretted his joke about the pub from that horror movie. This wasn¡¯t a joke. They were real people. At least they were to the girl downstairs, and he should try to respect that. For a moment he thought about continuing his search to try to find the door to the next floor, but his remorse won out, and he came back downstairs to see if the mystery girl had calmed down.


    She had, and was sitting at a table when he got downstairs. She immediately picked up her knife again when she saw him, but at least she refrained from pointing it at him when he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ¡°Easy there, ummm Ma¡¯am,¡± he said, walking slowly over to the bar and digging around for a rag before he dampened it with a half empty mug of beer and set it down on the table in front of her.


    She just kept staring at him suspiciously, so he finally said, ¡°For your hands,¡± before he sat down at the table on the opposite side. She looked like she needed a whole lot of space right now, and he was much happier to give that to her than to be stabbed.


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    ¡°Thanks,¡± she mumbled, wiping off one hand. Once it was clean though, she just stared at both her hands. One clean, one caked in dried blood, before she finally looked up at Simon with a hint of panic in her eyes. ¡°I had to, you understand? I didn¡¯t want to hurt Brenna, but then she¡­¡± The woman trailed off into silence after that, making the whole situation that much more awkward for Simon.


    ¡°Hey, don¡¯t worry about that,¡± he said, trying to sound sympathetic, even if it was really strange finally talking to someone new again. His life had finally come unpaused, and this woman would do for now. Maybe there were other people he could meet on other levels too. ¡°You did what you had to do. Anyone could see that. This is a nightmare, and you can figure out what was right and what was wrong after you wake up from it.¡±


    ¡°Really,¡± she asked, tears in her eyes. ¡°You understand?¡±


    ¡°I do. Killing someone is hard,¡± he lied. Dying was hard, but killing the other guy before they killed you - that had become the easiest thing in the world for Simon. ¡°You¡¯ll get through this, and then it won¡¯t seem so bad¡­ Now, what¡¯s your name?¡±


    ¡°It-it¡¯s Freya,¡± she stammered.


    ¡°That¡¯s a very pretty name,¡± Simon said, even though it seemed out of place anywhere but a Viking movie. Who knew, though, maybe this fantasy kingdom had some kind of Viking subculture. ¡°I¡¯m Simon. It¡¯s nice to meet you.¡±


    ¡°Si-mon?¡± she asked, mispronouncing the letters of the unfamiliar word, but that didn¡¯t bother him. ¡°You¡¯ve got a strange accent Simon. Where are you from? Why are you in Schwarzenbruck?¡±


    ¡°Ummm¡­ I got lost on my way north,¡± he fumbled for an answer. ¡°Before everything had gotten crazy. Do you know what happened here?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t. Not really. I don¡¯t think anyone does,¡± she shook her head. ¡°One moment it was just a normal spring day, and the next - well, the next the gods had abandoned us to evil.¡±


    ¡°I mean - was there some necromancer, or maybe an evil army of the dead attacked the city?¡± Simon tried again, trying to get a better handle on what was happening. ¡°Where did all these zombies come from?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Freya said, finally starting to clean off her other hand as her mind switched on after hours of shock and denial. ¡°Mr Olggen, the owner. He said that they¡¯d barred the gates when the adventurers had come back complaining about a plague of death, but somehow they got inside anyway.¡±


    Not likely, Simon thought. These zombies didn¡¯t seem particularly fast or strong. One of those adventurers must have gotten themselves bit, and then a few hours later they¡¯d turned on their fellows, spreading the disease. That¡¯s how it would have happened in a movie anyway. It gave him something to think about at least, as he studied Freya looking for any sign that she was bitten, but finding nothing. She was a lovely girl. Under all the dirt and signs of crying, with dark hair and a cute, if not particularly well-endowed body. She wasn¡¯t his type, but he was sure she¡¯d make someone happy someday if she survived this.


    ¡°Do you suppose there¡¯s still enough food left in this place for you to make us something to eat?¡± Simon asked as he saw her start to tear up again. ¡°I¡¯m going to check all the other rooms to make sure that there¡¯s nothing in here that can hurt us, and then I¡¯m going to get rid of these bodies before they attract vermin.¡±


    ¡°Get rid of the bodies?¡± she asked numbly. ¡°How?¡±


    ¡°From one of the windows on the second floor. I know its not the kindest thing to do,¡± he added quickly as he saw a look of shock bloom across her face, ¡°but if we leave them here we¡¯ll be sick in no time. You don¡¯t want that, do you?¡±


    ¡°No, but¡ª¡± she started to say.


    ¡°Well then you make us some lunch Freya, while I go work up an appetite,¡± he said, standing. She obviously didn¡¯t agree with the decision, but she didn¡¯t protest it either, so Simon got started. He checked the basement first, and found plenty of beer, but thankfully no dead bodies. After that he dragged all nine bodies on the first floor up to the second with frequent breaks, because it was exhausting. The third floor held only a single room on one side of the building, that must have belonged to the owner because it was nicer than the rest, and storage on the other side. That was where they would sleep tonight, he decided, because it seemed the most defensible. So once he was done with the bodies, he dragged a couple mattresses upstairs so that Freya would have a place to sleep too.


    When he finally got back downstairs, she¡¯d reheated some mystery stew that looked a little suspect, but tasted delicious. Simon didn¡¯t even care that his next death would probably be from food poisoning. He was just glad that it was neither bread nor cheese for once. That alone made it almost as good as his last real meal of fast food nuggies and extra dipping sauce.


    They talked through lunch and after, and slowly Freya opened up more and more. Apparently there had been a necromancer, but he¡¯d been defeated years ago, and no one had paid much attention to this backwater after that. Other than the occasional goblin raid, it had been a nice place to grow up, until the dead had risen up and killed everyone she¡¯d ever known anyway. Every time Freya started to get sad, Simon tried to change the topic, but fortunately they ran out of daylight before they ran out of topics.


    ¡°Don¡¯t even think of trying anything,¡± Freya warned him as she slipped into bed fully clothed. ¡°I¡¯m sleeping with this knife. Just so you know.¡±


    ¡°The last thing a hero like me would do is take advantage of a woman,¡± Simon assured her, offended by the suggestion. This world obviously had a lot more problems with toxic masculinity than his did, but he could forgive her for the accusation. The world was a pretty crazy place right now.


    Simon had already taken his armor off during dinner, but he stacked it up neatly after he barred the door and hung his weapons in easy reach in case something went bump in the night. After that, he crawled into bed and stripped down to his small clothes. This mattress was filled with something besides straw, so it was actually a lot more comfortable than the one he¡¯d grown used to in the cabin. Even with that, it felt pretty strange to be sleeping anywhere but the bed he¡¯d grown so used to, in the past few weeks.


    Weeks? Days? He wasn¡¯t really sure how much time had passed in the pit. He had no way to keep track of that sort of thing. The only measure he had was how many times he died, and this life was one of his longest so far. Simon tried to puzzle it out anyway, but fell asleep before he could come up with a conclusive answer.

 Ch. 20 - Keeping her Safe

    Sometime in the middle of the night, Simon was awoken. Not by the sound of zombies overrunning the place like he¡¯d expected, though, but by Freya crawling into bed with him.


    ¡°I had a nightmare,¡± she whispered. ¡°Do you think that I could¡­ maybe¡­¡±


    ¡°Sure, fine,¡± Simon answered, yawning. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. I won¡¯t let anyone hurt you.¡± He scooted over as much as he could on the narrow twin bed, and Freya crawled under the two raggedy quilts he was sleeping under along with a burst of cold air. There was no way he could not touch her, but Simon rolled over to avoid any misunderstandings, and promptly fell back asleep.


    He was somewhat surprised when he woke up later in the night and found her clinging to him while she slept like a drowning victim. It was both adorable and creepy, and Simon lay awake for almost an hour appreciating it. It had been a long time since he¡¯d hugged anyone but his parents, and he hadn¡¯t been in a bed with a girl this pretty since his freshman year in college. He¡¯d forgotten how soft and warm they could be, as well as how good they could smell.


    Simon fell asleep again sometime before dawn, and when he woke up, she was gone. That realization made him bolt upright protectively, but as soon as he smelled the familiar scents of breakfast, he calmed down.


    ¡°Everything is fine,¡± he told himself. ¡°Helades probably just hasn¡¯t found the time to fuck you over yet.¡± It was funny, he reflected as he got dressed and came downstairs. He¡¯d had one tiny little taste of normalcy and a brief human connection, and suddenly he was worried it was all going to get jerked away from him.


    Breakfast was fried potatoes and sausages. ¡°I¡¯m sorry that we¡¯re out of eggs,¡± Freya apologized. ¡°We ran out of those a few days ago.¡± That statement sparked a conversation that lasted longer than breakfast. She¡¯d been trapped in here longer than he¡¯d thought. Over a week now, and though there had been ten people here at first, as of a few days ago she was the only one left. It sounded like there was a lot to that story, but Simon didn¡¯t want to pry.


    After breakfast, Simon busied himself methodically searching the inn from top to bottom as he opened every door and cupboard one at a time. This led to some strange looks from Freya, though Simon ignored them until she finally asked, ¡°What is it you are doing?¡± Freya demanded. ¡°If you need something, I can show you where¡ª¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m looking for a way out to the next floor.¡± he said simply, not bothering to stop what he was doing.


    ¡°Way out? Next floor?¡± She asked again. ¡°There is no way out. We¡¯re trapped here until the king raises an army to slay the dead.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± he said dismissively. ¡°Not a way out of the building. That would be suicide. I¡¯m looking for a way out of this level and on to the next one. You could come with me if you want.¡±


    ¡°Level? You¡¯re scaring me, Simon. I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re talking about,¡± she answered. That¡¯s what finally made him close the closet that held extra stools under the stairs and look at her. She hadn¡¯t picked the knife back up yet, but the look in her eyes showed him that she wanted to.


    That cold, confused look suddenly made him feel very small. There was no way an NPC could understand what he was talking about. Not that Freya was an NPC exactly, but the parallel was still a good one. There was no way she would understand. Not until he found what he was looking for, and he showed her.


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± he said, trying to play it off. ¡°I just wanted to see if maybe there were any old crawl spaces or gaps between the levels, we might be able to use to get to the neighboring buildings to try to get more supplies.¡±


    She nodded at that explanation, claiming she believed him, but despite that, she still looked at him strangely for hours.


    That night at bedtime, she didn¡¯t even try to get into her own bed. She just looked at him expectantly until he reluctantly nodded and said, ¡°alright, come on.¡±


    She still gave him a look as she crawled into bed and said, ¡°Thank you¡­ but that doesn''t mean we¡¯re doing anything besides sharing a little warmth. You keep your hands to yourself, or you¡¯ll regret it.¡±


    Simon nodded. He knew the drill, but this time their cuddling was intentional, and he fell asleep with the smell of her hair, and the feeling of her body pressed against him as they spooned together while she started snoring softly next to him. It was a moment that was so perfect that it brought tears to his eyes as he reflected on how alone he¡¯d felt for so long. Not just all the time he¡¯d been in The Pit, either, but before that too. The games had filled the hole that the missing people had left in his life, at least he thought they had. He obviously hadn¡¯t been entirely right about that, but he hadn¡¯t known that until he held a beautiful woman like Freya in his arms.


    Simon spent the next few days looking for a way out, but increasingly he was coming to the conclusion that it had to be in one of the nearby buildings. This zombie level would have been much too easy otherwise, he decided. Even if that made perfect sense for the goddess, though, he wasn¡¯t really interested in looking. Increasingly the best part of his day was waking up next to his barmaid and listening to her tell him stories about her strange world, and considering that even if he found the way to the next level, the only reward that awaited him was some new awful way to die, he was in no hurry to find it. Not when they still had plenty of food to eat and beer to drink.


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    On the fifth night they got well and truly drunk the first time to celebrate the fact that they were out of bread. It started off with Simon trying to explain to her that beer was originally known by the ancient Sumerians as liquid bread, and it quickly went out of control from there.


    ¡°You''re funny,¡± Freya said, leaning uncomfortably close to him after he went off on another rant about places she¡¯d never heard of. Simon found that distracting, but not as distracting as when they started kissing.


    Simon hadn¡¯t kissed a girl like this in years, and between the way she tasted, and the way she smiled at him, he would have been sure that he was in love from that first moment, if he believed in stupid things like that.


    ¡°What was that for,¡± he asked dumbly when the moment was over.


    ¡°Well, you¡¯re the hero, right?¡± She asked sweetly. ¡°That¡¯s what the hero is supposed to get in all the stories, anyway.¡±


    Simon''s mind was racing as he tried to process all the unfamiliar emotions that were racing through his mind, and sat there like a deer in the headlights. A note of disappointment crept into Freya¡¯s voice at that response. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you like¡ª¡±


    He was quick to stop her from finishing that thought, at least, and kissed her back as hard as she¡¯d kissed him. After that, the rest of the night became a blur as they stumbled back to their dark room and their small bed. This time, at least they didn¡¯t go to bed fully clothed, but they didn¡¯t have sex either. Simon knew it would be wrong to take advantage of Freya while she was intoxicated, as much as he might want to.


    He feared that in the morning things might be weird, but she seemed as upbeat as ever. When he tried to bring up later that day once his hangover had cleared up, she dodged the question. ¡°A girl¡¯s gotta do whatever she has to, to keep you from talking about bread all night, doesn¡¯t she?¡±


    Simon laughed at that, only mildly offended. She was probably right. He could get a bit lost in all of his useless trivia once he¡¯d had a beer or two. Still, taking a little verbal abuse was worth getting to see her breasts last night, he decided, and he was happy to let her tease him the rest of the day while he followed her around like a puppy.


    After a couple of days, it practically became their routine. Sleep in late, relax during the day while they tried to ignore the fact that death was constantly waiting for them just on the other side of every door, and then get drunk and make out for a few hours. Simon couldn''t quite bring himself to go all the way, because he felt like he didn¡¯t know her well enough for that, but that was fine. He was perfectly happy with the way things had blossomed between them, and didn¡¯t want it to ever end. All he knew was that when he left this place for the next level, he was going to take Freya with him. This was just the start of his party. It was one more advantage he was going to have over everyone else that had gone before him.


    Simon didn¡¯t even have a weapon on him as he heard the back door give way. They were just sitting in the common room while they waited for the last of the sausages to boil. Simon should have thought that was a problem, but they were running low on firewood, so he didn¡¯t really care. Like he¡¯d been doing all week, he was just enjoying Freya¡¯s company, falling for her a little more, when the sound of splintering wood ended the moment of peace. Thinking fast, he grabbed Freya by the wrist and yanked her to her feet, as he ran towards the stairs.


    Simon had checked the windows earlier, but he¡¯d never thought that they might be able to bust down the backdoor itself. That was actually a real problem because it was closer to the stairwell than they were at the moment. It was only when they got to the hallway, Simon could see that they were too late. There was no way he was getting past the half a dozen zombies that had already gotten inside without his armor and his mace.


    ¡°This way,¡± he said, reluctantly retreating towards the door that led to the basement. In the long run, it was a terrible position to be in. There would be no way out, but in the short run it was the sturdiest door that Simon could put between the two of them and certain death.


    ¡°How did they get in?¡± Freya asked, still trying to process what was happening.


    ¡°The back door gave way,¡± Simon said, making sure that the basement door shut behind him. That made it close to pitch black in here without a lantern. The only light came in through the cracks between the floorboards, but that was still better than the alternative. At least that¡¯s what Simon thought at first. Once the dead started to fill up the tavern en masse, it blotted out most of their remaining light. The darkness wasn''t even the worst part though. The noises that the zombies made as they milled about, and the creeks that the floor gave in protest as more and more came inside, were both equally terrifying.


    ¡°Are we going to die now?¡± Freya whined, overwhelmed by fear and sadness, not that Simon could blame her.


    ¡°Why would we die?¡± he asked rhetorically. ¡°They can¡¯t get us down here, and while there isn''t much food down here, there¡¯s plenty of beer. We can live for weeks off that, until someone rescues us.¡±


    It was all technically true, but he considered it pretty unlikely. That just wasn¡¯t the way that zombie movies ended. Pretty much every zombie movie he¡¯d ever seen ended with everyone dying. Sometimes a couple would escape while the rest of the group perished, but he had neither a helicopter nor a boat to get them to safety. He didn¡¯t even have a horse or a window to climb out of. All he had was a beautiful woman to protect.


    Which was one more thing than he usually had, he thought, hopefully. No, Simon was sure he could figure a way out of this¡­ at least until he started to smell smoke.


    At first, he hoped it was in his imagination, but when Freya added, ¡°Something¡¯s on fire,¡± he knew they were in trouble. Looking towards the kitchen, he could see immediately what had happened. One of the zombies milling around the kitchen had knocked over the meat they were cooking and scattered hot coals across the floor.


    Simon felt around for a keg that was actually tapped, and then took off his shirt and wet it. ¡°Put this over your mouth.¡± he said. ¡°It will keep the smoke out.¡± With any luck, the cook fire would just smolder for a little bit, and then go out on its own.


    Luck wasn¡¯t with them, though, and minutes later the cellar was filling with smoke. The damp cloth was helping some, but not enough, and they were both coughing almost constantly now. At least they were until Freya passed out from smoke inhalation. ¡°I¡¯m so sorry, Freya,¡± Simon whispered as he cradled her unconscious body in his arms. ¡°I¡¯m so sorry I couldn¡¯t save you.¡±


    Passing out from carbon monoxide poisoning was definitely less painful than most of the ways he¡¯d died so far, but even if his life wasn¡¯t precious, hers was, watching it slip away one slow heartbeat at a time was worse than anything that had happened to him so far.

 Ch. 21 - Just a Barmaid

    When Simon woke up in the fresh air and the empty bed of his cabin, a small part of him had died. He felt more hurt by Freya¡¯s death than he had been by any of his deaths. The pain he felt as he thought of her was worse than the first time the skeleton knight had killed him or the time the slime had suffocated him to death. His disused emotions had stayed in their lockbox where they belonged for so long, that feeling this sense of loss for a sweet young woman was devastating.


    Freya had actually liked him. She thought he was funny, and cute, and now she was dead. He would have happily died a dozen times to prevent that, but now he would never get the chance.


    Or would he?


    It was only after he¡¯d spent several minutes just laying there and feeling sorry for himself that he realized she was still down there on the sixth floor. Maybe not the version of her that remembered him, but she was still the girl he¡¯d been close to falling in love with. Surely if he saved her again, and they spent a few days together it would be just like it was before, wouldn¡¯t it?


    With that thought in mind, Simon quickly started to get ready. He¡¯d promised himself he would take the levels he had on lock nice and slow to use them for practice, but he threw all that out the window, charging into the depths as soon as he was geared up. He didn¡¯t even bother to bring food - just his weapons, his armor, and a single lit torch. It was all he needed. This wasn¡¯t about learning or even progressing. This was about Freya and filling the hole in his heart that should never have been there in the first place.


    He rushed heedlessly through level after level, killing what he needed to and no more to get past the next challenge. Being apart from his girl when he knew exactly where to find her was a special kind of torment. The only thing that even slowed him down was the slime, but as soon as he forced it from the water, he burned it to ashes with two simple words. He was a little surprised at how much more effective his fire spell was than it had been last time, but he didn¡¯t have time to try to understand why.


    He just rushed on to the door that led to his favorite besieged inn. In the backroom where he always appeared, he found the same zombie that always tried to eat him, and Simon dispatched it with a single wet crunch of his mace. Then, he turned, ready to go find Freya, when suddenly the door burst open, and the blond girl with the pitchfork that had killed him not so long ago was standing there.


    ¡°Who are you,¡± she demanded. ¡°Who are you and how did you get in here?¡± She jabbed the air a couple of times just as she did before, but this time Simon was actually still capable of speech as he had nothing but a scratchy throat. The woman was the same busty blond wearing the same dirty blue dress as last time. Her eyes were hard, and she had a bloody bandage covering a wound on one arm. Even if he didn¡¯t have first-hand experience that she was the killing type, he would have believed it just from her appearance.


    ¡°Woah, easy there!¡± he said, backing away. ¡°I¡¯m a friend of Freya¡¯s. I¡¯m not going to hurt you.¡±


    Her pitchfork lowered almost immediately, and a sad look crossed her face. ¡°A friend¡­ of Freya¡¯s?¡± She opened her mouth and was about to say something else, but the sound of breaking wood ripped through the room, and they both turned to face it.


    The boards on one of the windows had failed, almost identically to the last time he was here. That made sense. The levels were always very similar, but never quite exactly the same.


    ¡°Hold on,¡± Simon said, pushing past her. ¡°Let¡¯s take care of this, and then we can find her." It was only after he said he was a friend that he realized that might cause him problems later when he was talking to her, so he was happy for the interruption.


    This time, one of the zombies made it all the way in before he brained it, and he had to kill three more to block the hole before he went for the trestle table like he did last time. ¡°A little help here?¡± he asked. This time there was no help coming, and he had to push it all the way to the window by himself. When he looked around, he saw the blond girl was still here, but she¡¯d sat down at one of the clean tables and was drinking some kind of liquor straight from the bottle. She might be feistier, but she wasn¡¯t in a much better place than his Freya had been. That made sense. He wouldn¡¯t want to know anyone that could live through a situation so awful and come out the other side unaffected by it.


    ¡°So, where¡¯s Freya at?¡± Simon asked, as he walked back to the table and tried not to show how out of breath he was. Her only answer was a distant look in her eyes, and another swig from the bottle.


    Simon sat down and tried again. ¡°Is everything okay? Look, if more try to get in I promise I¡¯ll protect you, but first I want to make sure that¡ª¡±


    ¡°She didn¡¯t make it,¡± the woman said, looking at the floor instead of at him. ¡°Okay? She didn¡¯t make it, and there was nothing I could do. She¡¯s gone.¡±


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    ¡°Gone? That¡¯s not possible.¡± Simon retorted. ¡°She has to be here. There¡¯s no way out of this place. I¡¯ve looked.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m telling you, she¡¯s¡ª¡± the woman tried to reply.


    ¡°Freya!¡± Simon shouted. ¡°Freya, where are you!¡± The other woman shook her head as he got up and started looking for her. The longer Simon looked, the louder he shouted until eventually, on the edge of hysteria, he found her in one of the guest rooms of the second floor. At some point in the last few days she¡¯d been turned into a zombie, and after that someone had mercifully put her down. It was a horrendous, gut-wrenching moment for Simon.


    He just stood there, crying like a baby, for several minutes, and it was only after he pulled himself together that he slowly came downstairs and returned to the table with the woman that was apparently the sole survivor in this version of the level. Was there a fifty-fifty chance that he would get either one, he wondered? Could he just kill himself and try again in the hopes of being reunited with Freya? Well he could of course, the question was should he. While he rummaged through his thoughts and tried what to do next, the two of them just sat in near silence while the zombies moaned and shuffled outside.


    ¡°Did you know her well?¡± The other woman asked finally.


    ¡°I would have liked to know her better,¡± Simon said, not looking up.


    ¡°I hear you,¡± she agreed, sounding slightly drunk as she passed Simon the bottle. He took a long swig of something that burned as it went down. It was too raw and fiery to be called whiskey, but it was probably its distant cousin somehow. ¡°I wanted to know a lot of things. What the sea smelled like. If a girl from Schwarzenbruck could ever amount to anything. How Helfun Orgson kissed. But then the world ended, and I never got the chance. It¡¯s a tough break for both of us.¡±


    ¡°She was just such a sweet girl.¡± Simon whined. ¡°I don¡¯t know how this could happen to her.¡±


    ¡°Look out on those streets," she said, pointing with her bottle. "Every monster there was a good guy or a sweet girl only a day or two ago. It ain¡¯t her fault any more than it was theirs.¡±


    Simon shrugged. She wasn¡¯t wrong, but he didn¡¯t want to agree to anything that would make her death or the way it affected him feel less special. The two sat there for a while, slowly getting drunker and more philosophical, but neither of those things helped Simon to climb out of the morass of hopelessness and self-pity that he was slowly sinking into.


    Eventually, the barmaid said, ¡°Let¡¯s have a tumble. Maybe the last one before the world ends. What do you say?¡±


    Simon looked over at her like he¡¯d misheard the woman, but between the way she was smiling at him and the fact that she¡¯d let the left strap of her dress slide off her shoulder in a way that practically let her tits spill out left no room for doubt.


    ¡°We can¡¯t,¡± Simon said, ignoring the way his body responded to the beauty. ¡°I don¡¯t even know your name, and you''re drunk. That¡¯s not exactly the way these things are supposed to work.¡±


    ¡°Well I¡¯m Brenna, and the dead aren¡¯t exactly supposed to be rising from the grave neither, but here they are,¡± she said, standing up and walking over to him. She grabbed the other strap and let the dress fall, pooling at her feet. ¡°Come on. One last fling before we all go off to meet our maker. There¡¯s no harm in it.¡±


    For Simon, this was a surreal situation. Not only was he actively grieving the loss of someone, which he swore he¡¯d never do, because it was stupid, but he was being hit on by a woman who was way hotter than he¡¯d ever been with in his whole life¡­ and he was turning her down.


    She¡¯d stripped down to her slippers, her small clothes, and the bandage on her arm while he protested; she was a wet dream if he¡¯d ever seen one, and he turned away respectfully from her near nudity to look at the floor once more. Even with that quick glimpse it had been impossible not to notice how flushed with drink and desire she was. Back home she would have been a bikini model or a starlet, but here she was just the second serving girl in a backwater town.


    She walked around him, slowly admiring him and complimenting him, and in a way that was almost more attractive to Simon than the amount of skin she¡¯d put on display. When she started to undo his shoulder straps, he didn¡¯t fight back as much as he should. This wasn¡¯t really wrong after all. It only felt wrong.


    By the time he saw Freya again, he would already be at least one life removed from whatever he did with Brenna today. It would be like it never even happened. Part of Simon recognized that he¡¯d already given up trying to fight what was going to happen next, but he was too numb to care as they walked up the stairs. Now he was just looking to justify why it was okay to himself, but he knew that was just the alcohol talking, and that he¡¯d regret it tomorrow.


    Somehow he still couldn¡¯t make himself stop though as she started to kiss his neck, and grope him under his breastplate. ¡°Please,¡± she pleaded. ¡°Just one more time¡­ I need it so badly. I¡­¡±


    Her words trailed off as she moaned in his ear, and while she gasped and trembled, his second thoughts grew to a crescendo. As much as he would love to spend the night with her, he knew that his heart wasn¡¯t in it. ¡°Brenna, you¡¯re a beautiful woman, but we can¡¯t do this. My heart belongs to¡ª Ah what the fuck!¡± He suddenly pulled away as he felt her bite him. Simon whipped around to see that all the panting and the moaning she¡¯d been doing for the last few seconds hadn¡¯t been some kind of foreplay; she¡¯d become something less than human.


    And she¡¯d just bitten him.


    That thought barely had time to sink in as he fumbled for a weapon. The only thing in reach was the bottle they¡¯d been drinking from, but that shattered when he struck her and left her largely unfazed. She snapped at him again, and he fended her off as best he could, but without his bracers on she managed to bite him one more time before he put her down by smashing her head into the counter several times. She was strong, but she didn¡¯t weigh much, and a broken neck put zombies out of action as easily as breaking their skull.


    After that, all that Simon could do was stare in horror at his wound. This was not good, not fucking good at all.

 Ch. 22 - Worse than Death

    Simon cast his healing spell on himself immediately. Twice. In both cases it seemed to work, and closed the wound, leaving only a small dark scar on his forearm. He couldn¡¯t see the back of his neck, but he imagined it was much the same based on what he could feel. That didn¡¯t stop whatever dark magic was in that bite, though. He could feel it, and he didn¡¯t have a spell to cure disease or curse or whatever this was supposed to be.


    ¡°This isn¡¯t good at all,¡± he muttered to himself, looking at the beautiful dead girl on the floor. There was a coldness in his arm, and a fever just starting to cloud his thoughts. He¡¯d seen enough movies to know how this was going to end.


    ¡°I¡¯ll be fine,¡± he tried to tell himself. ¡°I come back every time I die.¡±


    It was true. Every time he¡¯d died he¡¯d come back completely unscathed, but this time there was a feeling of dread similar to the first time he¡¯d thought the skeleton knight was going to try to take his soul. As a feeling of weakness began to overtake him, Simon started to climb the stairs. He didn¡¯t have time to make a noose that would snap his neck, and he doubted he had the willpower to bash his brains out, but he was pretty sure he could dive well enough to shatter his spine on the cobbles in front of the inn.


    It was just a precaution, he told himself, rushing up the stairs even as his body started to respond more slowly. As he began to fumble and limp on his way up the second flight of stairs, Simon started to panic. It was too soon. Why had Brenna lasted for hours or days as a human, while he could feel himself turning after mere minutes? The best answer that Simon could come up with was the location. She had a bite on her arm, and he had one right next to his fucking brain stem!


    He would have kicked himself for how stupid he¡¯d been if he had the energy. He let himself get distracted by her body and completely missed the obvious warning sign. Recriminations could wait until later though, he decided as he leaned heavily against the wall and climbed the last few steps, if there was a later.


    Simon managed to make it to the window, but by that point the world was a haze, and he lacked the strength or coordination to make a proper dive. The best he could do was fling himself from the opening, and tumble down the brown tile roof painfully until he landed on the street three floors below. Sadly, half a dozen zombies broke his fall, and his last seconds of life were spent being torn to pieces while he screamed weakly.


    Then suddenly it stopped.


    Suddenly the zombies lost all interest in him, and started to mill around looking for their next target. Simon thought it was strange that he was still around to see that, but he supposed that blood loss from so many small, shallow wounds could take a while to add up. It wasn¡¯t until he started to stand up, and when he realized he no longer had any control over his own body, that he truly began to panic.


    He was trapped here, but his hands and feet were moving without any conscious direction from him. Worse, he was trying to stop the movements, but it was like his mind was completely disconnected from the body he¡¯d lived in all his life. It was worse than disorienting, it was traumatizing. It was like someone else had taken him over, and he was being forced to do whatever they said.


    That didn¡¯t stop it from moving, though, or from hurting. Every wound that had been inflicted on him, from the ribs that were broken in the fall to the smallest of bites, ached as he moved, but it wasn¡¯t enough to stop him, or the hunger that was building inside of him. For most of today, Simon had been sad and pleasantly intoxicated. He hadn¡¯t eaten, but he hadn¡¯t been hungry either.


    Right now, though, he was ravenous, and the hunger just kept growing and growing inside of him. It got worse though when he turned to the delicious smell of prey somewhere in the distance. Even in a city this ravaged, and already so full of the dead, somewhere, someone was alive, and his mouth watered with the desire to devour their flesh.


    It was disgusting, and made him feel unclean, but Simon couldn¡¯t escape it, or even fight it. It was a hunger so loud and all consuming it drowned out all other thoughts, and there was nothing he could do about any of it. All he could do was watch, feel, and endure, but after only hours as a member of this shuffling mob slowly drifting towards the next likely meal he felt himself going mad inside his own rotting corpse.


    For days all he did was wander, moan, and try to force his way into closed doors and boarded windows without much success. Then one day, a starving couple made a break for it, leaping from rooftop to rooftop in an attempt to escape the undead that crowded the streets and chased them slowly. Weak as they were, though, the man fell off the rooftop nearest Simon, and he was able to devour the man¡¯s lifeblood along with several other zombies before the light in his eyes went out forever.


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    It was the single worst moment of Simon¡¯s life, not just because of what he¡¯d done, but because in that terrible moment his dark hunger finally quieted, and he could think again. His mind could scream and rebel at what he was being forced to do. He couldn¡¯t stop it, though. He was powerless to stop anything that was happening. Something broke inside him when he tasted that warm coppery flavor on his tongue, but what was left of his sanity felt like it shattered completely when he saw that man he¡¯d just helped murder stand back up and join the ranks of the dead.


    Now the forces of death pursuing the crying woman left alone on the rooftop were stronger by one, and in time the man that had just died might be forced to kill his beloved. It was a truly horrible idea, but the zombie that was once her partner could do no more to hold himself back from such an awful thing than Simon could as he groped for the next source of fresh meat that was fortunately several feet out of reach.


    The only solace from these thoughts was the maddening hunger. Once it got bad enough, even his self-pity was drowned out by his need to feast on the living.


    Eventually there was no one left alive inside the city walls, and for weeks the zombies were able to do nothing but scratch the gates and the bricks in order to try to escape to hunt down the life they could sense somewhere beyond them. They should have stayed like that, but eventually some adventurers decided to open the gates to do the heroic thing, and slay the growing evil. They were unsuccessful. They slew hundreds before their band fell, but unfortunately Simon was not among them. He lived long enough to watch all their members fall to exhaustion in the endless tide of death, and though he didn¡¯t have to live with the guilt of murdering any of them, he was set free on the world along with the hundreds of other zombies.


    They ravaged the countryside. Slowly spreading out, until he was but one slavering mouth among dozens rather than hundreds, as they slowly devoured all in their path. In each farm and village the zombies encountered, their numbers were whittled down until there were only a few left, only to be replenished by the risen dead of their victims, until the force was bigger than it was when it had started.


    They were a plague, and Simon was a part of it. Some towns fell in hours, and others in days, but eventually they all fell, and through all this Simon was trapped in an endless cycle of impossible hunger followed by guilt and shame and the truly awful things that were being done by his body. It wasn¡¯t by him. That¡¯s what he tried to tell himself whenever he murdered another innocent person that was too slow to escape from him and his rotting companions.


    Over the months that Simon endured all this he gathered an increasingly painful collection of wounds of all kinds, but by the time he received most of them he could no longer feel anything at all. Arrows. Crossbow bolts. Cuts and lacerations. A crushed collarbone and broken arm. For a long time he endured a sword through his guts until his body began to rot enough for it to fall away. The pain got worse and worse for weeks as he walked around with a chest full of broken bones until one day it started getting better. That was because his flesh was rotting away like everyone else¡¯s, and though that was a different sort of horrifying, at least it didn¡¯t hurt anymore.


    That didn¡¯t stop the hunger, though. Nothing did.


    Simon was grateful that he couldn¡¯t see what any part of his body beyond his hands, and occasionally his feet looked like, though those were disturbing enough in their own right. In the moments of lucidity after he¡¯d sated his hunger again, he would look at those glimpses of himself and truly despair. No matter how bad it got though, he never became lost in his despondency. He couldn¡¯t. Each new horror was worse than the last as his mind slowly but surely became unhinged.


    Then finally there was a real army waiting to face them, with mages and knights in plate mail he couldn¡¯t bite through, and rank after rank of soldier wielding halberds. Simon could have wept for joy if he¡¯d still had eyes. He could only see now in the fuzziest of ways, like he was seeing the auras around the people, and not actually the people themselves.


    There was finally someone that was going to strike him down, so he could be done with this, but the horde had once again grown to the size that it was impossible to slay them all, so the army retreated behind walls, resorting to arrows and magic to whittle away the endless tide.


    Simon had to wait weeks more for release from his torments. No matter how often they shot him from the walls with longbows, they always managed to miss his head, leaving him to bask in his hunger and pain that much longer. Eventually, though, he was bathed in magical fire by a spell that didn¡¯t sound so much different from the one he knew. Like everything else, that fire didn¡¯t hurt at first, but as it finally began to boil away the last of the tissue in his skull, Simon¡¯s long numb body once again recalled what pain was. Eventually, driven half mad by the pain of being burned alive, Simon slipped slowly into the gentle release of darkness. Secretly, he hoped that he would just stay dead after this.


    No more pit, no more reincarnation, no more of anything at all. Just the sweet caress of oblivion.


    Alas, when he opened his eyes once more, he found himself staring at the familiar rough timbers of his cabin. He¡¯d felt angry and frustrated before in this position. He¡¯d felt cheated and screwed over while he laid here before. He¡¯d even felt despair in that initial moment, but the one thing Simon had never felt until now was damned.

 Ch. 23 - Traumatized

    Simon lay there for a long time, just struggling to put the pieces of his mind back together.


    He was whole and unharmed, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn¡¯t escape from the flashbacks that kept springing to his mind unbidden. In the absence of the constant fog of pain and hunger he¡¯d been lost in for so long, his mind was suddenly too sharp, and all the terrible things he¡¯d done were in better focus now than when he¡¯d been doing them. The taste of flesh. The feeling of impossible hunger. The guilt for the people he killed. All of it consumed him until he wanted to scream.


    But he wouldn¡¯t do it. He wouldn¡¯t give her the satisfaction.


    Instead, he lay there in a fetal position, unable to even work up the strength to grab the bottle of wine that he knew was sitting nearby. That sour grape juice would at least cleanse his mouth of the coppery taste that still lingered, even though he knew that he¡¯d never devoured human flesh before. Just building up the nerve to do that much though took several more minutes of uncomfortable soul-searching.


    It was only once he¡¯d risen and finished half the bottle that he even considered what he should do next. Food? He had no appetite. Fighting? He wanted to die. Conversation? There was no one to talk to except for the mirror, and the very last thing he wanted to do was look at his character sheet after everything that had happened.


    ¡°You said that every time I died, I would come back here,¡± Simon said quietly, still staring at the floor between his feet. ¡°I¡¯ve died some pretty gruesome deaths, but at least that was what you promised. This¡­ this isn¡¯t what I signed up for.¡±


    ¡®You returned to the entrance of the pit as soon as you died,¡¯ the mirror typed as soon as Simon spared it a glance.


    ¡°After I spent a FUCKING MONTH in my own corpse,¡± Simon yelled with a sudden burst of anger that took him by surprise.


    ¡®Undeath is a special case that blurs the lines between¡ª¡¯ the mirror started to print, one flowing character at a time, but Simon was done with its bullshit.


    ¡°I¡¯m done talking to you. I want to speak to the real boss.¡± he spat back.


    ¡®Helades is very busy and doesn¡¯t currently wish to¡ª¡¯ The mirror was still typing its painfully slow message when Simon stood up and threw the bottle at the thing, shattering it completely.


    ¡°Helades - get out here right fucking now!¡± Simon roared as the glass started to fall to the floor. It didn¡¯t fall completely, though, as they flew backwards into the gloom of her room, they suddenly stop midair, and then the shockwave started to reverse. For a moment, Simon thought that the mirror was going to reform in the magical equivalent of hanging up on him, but the shards didn¡¯t stop when they reached the mirror''s frame. Instead, they kept going until they impacted Simon¡¯s flesh, accelerating the whole way.


    He was impaled in a flurry of glittering silver that pierced him over and over again. It was almost painless, but he could feel the warm blood spreading across his now shredded shirt just the same. At least half a dozen of the larger pieces would have been fatal, he realized as his legs gave out, and he toppled to the floor. He had time to feel the sharp pain as he impacted the floor and the shrapnel that filled his chest rearranged itself, but then there was only blackness.


    Simon welcomed the blackness, but it lasted only as long as it took for him to open his eyes. Then he was right back where he started, staring up at the ceiling.


    This time, when he sat up and reached for the wine, there was already a message typed on the mirror, even though he had yet to say a single word. ¡®The goddess is indisposed of and is not to be interrupted without a valid reason. Having a temper tantrum about your current circumstances is never a valid reason.¡¯


    Simon clenched his fists, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. He¡¯d found one more game breaking bug in their stupid fucking place, and they weren¡¯t going to do anything to fix it. Typical. So, where did that leave him, he wondered as he stared at his feet.


    He could go back to the inn and look for Freya, but it seemed kind of like a fifty-fifty shot as to whether or not the dungeon would spawn his dream girl or the awful blond she worked with. Without her, he¡¯d just be trapped in a level where a single bite could cost him his sanity, because there hadn¡¯t been an exit and he¡¯d checked every door in the place. Simon very much doubted he¡¯d be able to handle another tour in the zombie army. Just thinking about it made him shake. He¡¯d rather face a dozen skeleton knights at once. He¡¯d rather¡­


    Simon¡¯s thought process trailed off as he suddenly realized Helades¡¯ latest trick. ¡°You awful bitch,¡± he whispered to himself as he stood up. He had to be stuck in this awful place, but did she have to do literally everything she could to screw with his mind like this, he wondered as he started getting ready. He wasn¡¯t bringing anything special. Just the usual weapons and equipment. Working on autopilot would make everything easier. He could bring the weapons he knew best, and lock all the awfulness that was trying to rush to the front of his mind in a little box for safekeeping.


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    In a few minutes, he¡¯d either be reunited with Freya or on to the seventh floor. There was the remote possibility that he would become a zombie again if he was wrong about the goddess¡¯ cruel nature, so this time he planned to kill himself with the crossbow if necessary, but he doubted he would need it. He had her number now. The pit wasn¡¯t just a punishment. It was an exercise in cruelty and mind games.


    Simon did a speed run of the first four levels that didn¡¯t even take twenty minutes. If anything it seemed more like a video game than less after what he¡¯d been through, and he found himself thinking about moves in the way he might in a fighting game, deciding in an instant whether the fast strike or the heavy one was more appropriate from moment to moment rather than the button mashing he¡¯d done on his first few runs. The effect became hypnotic, especially on longer fights like the skeleton crypts, and by the time it ended Simon stood there alone and panting, yet found himself craving even more enemies to destroy.


    On level five, Simon had to try twice to incinerate the slime. Before he¡¯d uttered the words and cast the spell as always, he¡¯d wondered if the rage and pain would make it even more powerful than last time, but instead it fizzled almost completely and only a few stray sparks showered his hungry opponent. As he backed up, trying to figure out what went wrong, the answer came to his mind almost unbidden: he hadn¡¯t really visualized anything. He¡¯d just pictured it like a video game screen, as he had for this whole run, and selected the spell from his internal menu. The result lacked passion of any kind.


    It was an unpleasant realization for Simon. Life was more comfortable this way, when he was partially dissociated from everything that had happened to him and treated everything that was happening to him as a sort of game, but without a mental image of what he wanted to happen and real emotion behind it, magic was lost to him. The dilemma made his mouth go dry. Spell casting was too valuable a skill to throw away, especially on this level, but the idea of letting himself feel all the horror that was churning inside him? It was too much.


    ¡°What a broken ass magic system,¡± he swore, his eyes tearing up as he continued to walk slowly backwards. As Simon approached the back of the cave, he stopped to take in the beautiful sight. His back was against the wall, literally and figuratively, but that didn¡¯t mean he couldn¡¯t stop to take in the hints of rainbow that danced in the spray of water where the breeze caught the stream.


    He took a deep breath and forced himself to be present, taking it all in. Not just the waterfall and the slime, but the part of him that was terrified at going through the door to the zombie level and the part of him that just wanted to die too. If he had to be present, then he was going to be completely present. He gazed down at the slime that was only ten feet from him and closing, and imagined it blistered and burning as its skin was cooked away by a blazing fire. When he was ready, he didn¡¯t even yell the words. He just whispered, ¡°G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? ??????M???????e???i???????r??????e??????n????.¡±


    For a moment, Simon feared he¡¯d screwed up again, as everything was lost in the burst of fire that exploded from his outstretched hand. It wasn¡¯t the tight little beam he¡¯d summoned the last few times. It was a firestorm, and when the fire disappeared, there were only ashes left of his enemy. Simon felt light-headed enough to sit down for a moment and rest. Not just because he was delaying the inevitable, either, but because that had taken a lot out of him.


    At this point he seemed to have a good understanding of what it took to cast a spell successfully, but no ability to control the throttle, or really, any understanding of what that should look like. What he¡¯d done was definitely overkill, but more than a little satisfying just the same. He sat there for a few minutes, enjoying the moment, but once he started to feel the need to take a nap, he forced himself to his feet. He could sleep later. First, he needed to know the truth.


    When Simon walked into the tavern he found two zombies to kill, not one like usual, but his mace took care of both quickly. This time, neither of the barmaids were there to greet him. After a little searching, he found that they were both dead on the second floor. Simon covered Freya with a blanket and stood there for a moment of silence. ¡°You weren¡¯t here waiting for me this time, but you will be next time,¡± he whispered, before he went down to help himself to a drink or two.


    By the time he got down there, the usual suspects were starting to break through the window, and Simon quickly put them both down and poured himself a pint of warm dark ale and took a break before doing what came next. He didn¡¯t bother to drag the table over to the window to stop more from trying to work their way through. He was already going to have to move too much furniture to add one more to the pile.


    Once he finished with his drink, Simon started moving the chairs and tables stacked in front of the front door. On some level he knew this was a terrible idea, but on another he knew this was exactly the sort of thing that the twisted goddess would do. His certainty weakened slightly as he cleared a path to the door, though, and by the time he was in a position to finally open it he¡¯d all but lost his nerve.


    Last time he¡¯d done what anyone would do. He¡¯d checked every door in the place but this one.


    Simon knew that he was right, but he was also racked by doubts. If he opened that door and zombies poured in, he could probably still get upstairs in time, but he didn¡¯t know that for sure. He just¡­ While he stood there thinking about all the what if¡¯s he noticed one very strange detail. Despite nothing but the bar across it holding the door closed, nothing was jostling against it. All the boards across the windows flexed and bowed as the zombies tried to force their way inside, but not the door. It just hung there limply and never tried to bang against the bar resting half an inch away from it.


    Buoyed by the observation, Simon removed the bar, and then drew his mace and pushed the door open. On the other side of the open door, there should have been a street crowded with zombies. There wasn¡¯t though. Instead, there were a few stairs that led down into a large sewer tunnel.


    ¡°Welcome to level seven,¡± he told himself quietly, wondering what fresh hell awaited him down there.

 Ch. 24 - A Rat in a Maze

    Simon lit his torch from the dying embers in the hearth and gazed into the rancid tunnel. The magic of the doors superimposing themselves into a place they should not be still hadn¡¯t quite worn off for Simon, though the disgusting odor certainly had.


    ¡°This place is almost as bad as the goblins,¡± he complained to no one in particular.


    Even breathing through his mouth, he had to fight off the urge to gag. This was one detail that had been left out of every fantasy novel and game he¡¯d ever played: the past was gross, and the monsters that populated it were even grosser.


    When he got out of this and was iseakied into a more appropriate fantasy world, he was definitely choosing anosmia for his character now that he knew what an OP advantage the lack of smell really was.


    In the meantime, though, he didn¡¯t let that stop him from seeing where this tunnel went. It turned out not to be very interesting. It was just a dismal tube that was eight or ten feet around and had a small footpath that was about a foot and a half wide on either side of the foul river that flowed between them.


    The side passages that occasionally crossed were only half as wide, and Simon had very little interest in crawling down one of them unless he was forced to. This was already disgusting enough.


    After ten minutes of uninterrupted boredom, Simon found himself yawning. If this place didn¡¯t reek of shit, his immediate priority would be finding somewhere safe to take a nice long nap. The fighting hadn¡¯t been any more strenuous than usual, but that fire spell had really taken it out of him for some reason. He wished for the millionth time that there was some kind of guide written for how this world¡¯s broken-ass magic system actually worked because guessing was really taking a toll.


    At least there was nothing that was bent on attacking him, he thought hopefully, until he remembered that the goblin level started off that way too. So far, he¡¯d just seen a few sewer rats that had run away from him as soon as he¡¯d gotten too close. The biggest hazard had been the trickles of filth that occasionally sprayed out of the small pipes that joined this one from the wall and the ceiling now and then.


    It certainly seemed more dungeon-like than some of the other levels, but it would need monsters to complete the look. A giant crocodile seemed the most clich¨¦ choice, but he could see rat men or lizard people down here, too, so he stayed focused, looking for anything that didn¡¯t belong. Things that didn¡¯t belong showed up pretty quickly after that in the form of a corpse floating in the sewage. It was actually dead, though, and the only thing it did to Simon was to practically give him a heart attack, so he continued on. Around the curve, though, he saw that the tunnel ended in a large grate, and major passages went off to the left and right, forming a T-junction.


    Even from this distance, he could see some light shining around the corner from the left-hand side, so he guessed that was the way out, but right now, he couldn¡¯t make himself care about it. Not when there was a pile of bodies so tall it obscured most of the grate and practically blocked the flow of the fetid sewer water.


    Simon pulled out his sword. Even though there wasn¡¯t an enemy in sight yet. He didn¡¯t need to see what was out there when he could clearly see their handiwork. He slowly picked his way along the wall, mindful of his footing, and focused on the inevitable ambush to come. At the same time, he tried to think of what might be invisible enough to hide in plain sight like this.


    He drew a blank, but thinking about it was still better than focusing on the decaying dead around him. These were not the victims of the same fight. They didn¡¯t die the same way or at the same time. He supposed that the currents of the sewer could have led them here from wherever they had been killed, but that seemed too easy an answer. His paranoia was rewarded when the largest pile by the grate began to stir.


    ¡°Zombies? Down here?¡± he asked himself, feeling an irrational jolt of fear slide down his spine. What burst out of the pile wasn¡¯t human at all. It was some worm thing half as big as a man and full of tentacles. It was disgusting but looked a bit like something he¡¯d seen in a couple RPGs he¡¯d played over the years. A carrion crawler. He only remembered it because of the gross name and grosser appearance, and right now, there was one staring him down from two dozen feet away.


    The thing reared up at him and hissed. Simon countered by throwing his torch at it. With the light around the corner, he had enough light to see, and he had a pretty good shot at this thing being weak to fire since it was an underground carrion eater.


    The creature dodged his throw by skittering up the grate and onto the ceiling. Simon had just a second to wonder how the hell it was keeping itself up there when it suddenly charged him. Simon was ready for that, though. He¡¯d freed up his left hand, so he could use his shield better, and he raised his sword to strike as soon as it got within range.


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    It didn¡¯t, though. The slimy four-foot-long worm-centipede thing just held itself there over the churning sewage while it regarded him, still several feet out of reach. It wasn¡¯t until Simon tried to edge past it that the thing¡¯s tentacles lashed out at him.


    Simon lifted his shield, blocking most of them before swinging his sword down at the slimy appendages. Several were severed by the blow, and Simon smiled in triumph even as the creature screamed and hissed, slowly backing away. He felt the burning numbness spreading through his left arm only after that moment passed. At first, it felt like Novocaine, but seconds later, he was losing feeling in his fingers and having trouble keeping his arm up.


    Paralysis. That certainly scared the crap out of him as he realized what was happening. He¡¯d already had some awful deaths, but watching this thing nibble on him for a day or two while he was alive but powerless to move would rank way up there for the worst death.


    Several thoughts flashed through his mind in a single moment. Should he try to light this thing on fire? Should he try to cast his healing spell? Did it even work on poison?


    Ultimately, he decided that fighting was no longer an option, and he had to escape. So, he swung wildly, over and over, to keep the thing back as he carefully tried to get around it and towards the light while his left arm became ever more useless. Cut once by his sword, the creature had no real interest in getting close enough for that to happen again.


    Simon was able to skirt around it and then back down the left passage. He slipped once on someone¡¯s guts, which had been splayed across the narrow ledge he walked, but he was able to grab the ladder with his right hand as he slipped to avoid taking a bath. As it was, he went in with his right leg up to his knee.


    It was disgusting, he thought as he fought the urge to wretch, but it was still better than being eaten alive by that thing. Simon swore that he would shoot it with the crossbow the next time he was here, before it had a chance to get close, not that that would help him this time.


    Right now, the sunlight pouring down from above him seemed to be doing a good job of keeping the thing away, but he had no way of knowing if that would hold once he started the ladder since he would have to do that one-handed and would be completely defenseless while he did so. Once he was far enough away from the disgusting monster¡¯s even more disgusting pile of corpses, though, it backed off, surprisingly. When Simon realized it had attacked him because it thought he was going to steal its dinner, he laughed out loud. He couldn¡¯t help it. This made the creature hiss at him again, but it only retreated further into its mound of death. Simon shrugged. If the thing was going to let him by¡­ well, that suited him just fine.


    He sheathed his sword and scampered up the ladder as fast as he could with one arm, which wasn¡¯t terribly fast.


    Honestly, by the time he got up and out into the daylight, he was too surprised that that thing hadn¡¯t snuck up behind him and dragged him back down to notice where he was. It took him a moment to notice that this wasn¡¯t the sort of city he would have expected to have a working sewer system and even longer to realize it hadn¡¯t been a city for a long time, not really.


    Simon was standing amidst ancient ruins that looked like they were more vine than stone at this point. They hadn¡¯t been home to anyone in a long time. It wasn¡¯t that nature was winning, though. It had won. Rainforest surrounded the ruined walls and crumbling ziggurats, and a river cut through what had once been a main thoroughfare.


    ¡°It¡¯s beautiful,¡± Simon said to himself.


    It was better than beautiful, though; it was exactly what he needed. He could just feel hepatitis and cholera trying to invade his body through the sewage-drenched armor, and he could definitely do with a short bath.


    Even as he walked down to the river, though, he forced himself to keep his guard up. The waterfall on the fifth floor had been beautiful, too, until the slime had melted his face off.


    Here, there didn¡¯t seem to be anything around that could hurt him, though. There was nothing but Incan-style ruins, flowering vines, and the occasional fruit. The fruits looked delicious, but he could give them a try later after he was clean. Even the songbirds weren¡¯t anywhere close to him, and he would hardly count them as a threat.


    The numbing poison was still spreading throughout his body, making Simon feel weak, but aside from his left arm, he could still move everything. He¡¯d be able to fight if it came to it, he decided as he slowly removed the buckles and the straps of his greaves and cuisses.


    Until he regained the feeling in his arm, getting his cuirass off was out of the question, but that wasn¡¯t nearly as important as cleaning his legs before the gangrene set in. The river was cool but not quite cold, and Simon endured it as he waded into the water. A little bit of suffering was worth it to avoid getting jaundice and whatever else was down there, he told himself.


    So he suffered through it and wiped everything down, and 20 minutes later, he was leaning back against the remains of a low stone wall, keeping his eyes out of the sun while his body dried on the warm flagstones that had once been a plaza.


    This place was amazing, and Simon wanted to look around it more, but he was exhausted. That damn spell he¡¯d cast earlier had taken it all out of him, and when you added a little fighting on top of that, well - he was beat. He yawned and stretched and then picked up his dagger, determined not to be caught entirely unaware if he did accidentally drift off.


    This was probably the longest he¡¯d been alive for one shot since he¡¯d entered The Pit. Well - it certainly had been since Freya, he realized sadly. ¡°That was only two deaths ago,¡± he whispered to himself as he realized it. The half an eternity he¡¯d spent as a member of the living dead made it seem much longer, but in reality, it was practically yesterday. Somehow that made it more tragic.


    Simon tried not to dwell on either of those terrible tragedies and instead focused on the positive. This was almost certainly level eight - which meant that this was his most successful run to date.


    ¡°Speed run bitches!¡± He yelled out, not caring who heard. He listened to the echo of his voice fade before he turned towards the tallest ziggurat and the sun that would start to move behind it within an hour. ¡°I know you can hear that, Helades. Two levels down, 91 to go. I¡¯m coming for you. I understand your games now, and you can¡¯t stop the inevitable.¡±


    Simon drifted off to sleep shortly after that. His dreams were strange and restless, dealing mostly with levels he hadn¡¯t yet conquered, and when he woke up, it was getting close to sunset.


    It was only when he tried to stretch that he realized he was engulfed in vines.

 Ch. 25 - A Ruined Life

    Simon¡¯s first thought was to panic, but his second thought was to do it quietly. He didn¡¯t know what his situation was, or how much worse it would be if he screamed, so instead he flexed and shifted to gauge the strength of his bonds and looked around.


    Nothing he found made the situation any better. Not only was he tied up so tightly that it was hard to breathe, but he seemed to be being dragged slowly in the direction of his feet. He also couldn¡¯t see who had done this to him, but with the tropical theme he was thinking it had to be lizard men.


    He was starting to give up hope, when he remembered the dagger. He¡¯d held onto it while he slept, and even now it was clutched against his chest.


    Working it free without stabbing himself was another problem, but at least it was a problem he could try to solve. It took almost two minutes to get the blade exposed, and even when he started sawing, he wasn¡¯t able to apply much leverage.


    His only hope was that he would at least be able to cut through the thing without anyone noticing, and for half a minute he made some progress, cutting first through one vine as thick as his thumb, and then another. Those cuts had made all the difference in the world, and he actually had enough room to work now. He was sure he¡¯d cut himself free in another half a minute.


    Then he heard something roar. It was a strange wheezing thing that sounded like a particularly ill Tyrannosaurus Rex. Simon drew a complete blank as to what could possibly make a noise like that, in or out of a video game, but one thing was for sure. He¡¯d been noticed. At that point he gave up all pretense at trying to be subtle and started cutting as fast as he could.


    His hand shook with adrenalin as he worked his way through one vine, and then another, and another. It confused him that nothing had come to stomp him or skewer him yet, but he wasn¡¯t about to let that gift go to waste. The only thing that had happened is that they had started dragging him slightly faster. He had no idea what that meant.


    Perhaps they were Lilliputians, or pygmies, and they only stood a chance against him as long as he remained bound. He smiled at that thought. Did that mean that he was in a desperate race to get free before they could drag him off a cliff or sacrifice him to their volcano god, he wondered, as he cut the last few vines off of him and was able to crawl free.


    What he saw terrified him.


    He wasn¡¯t being dragged towards a cook pot or a volcano caldera by a couple of burly lizard men or a tribe of angry pygmies. He was being dragged by the vines themselves towards the waiting maw of a giant toothy blossom. It stood almost twelve feet tall, and the magenta and orange swirls of its leathery petals blended in with the bloody sunset to create a scene that was not of this world.


    Simon stepped back as it roared and quaked in rage at being denied its meal. To think - he¡¯d been only minutes away from being eaten alive by a plant, recovering a bit from how shaken he was a moment ago now that he realized that the thing was hardly a threat to him.


    ¡°I¡¯ll bet you¡¯re pretty hungry,¡± he taunted, ¡°Too bad for that you never invented opposable thumbs. Sorry, I meant to say grew. Without those, you¡¯ll always be¡ª ¡±


    He was interrupted by the whistle, as it shot the first thorn at him.


    ¡°What the fuck?¡± Simon shouted, surprised by the sudden turn of events. The creature missed, but it was enough to send Simon running for his life as another volley sprayed the surrounding air. He had no idea what sort of poison was in those darts, and he didn¡¯t want to know because it wasn¡¯t going to be anything good.


    Simon started running, and even without his boots, he didn¡¯t stop until he got back to the river. There didn¡¯t seem to be any of the dart launching plants this far from the main body of the nightmare plant he¡¯d just escaped. In the fading twilight, he put his still damp armor and boots on. And pulled out his shield and sword. He hoped that the leather would provide him with some resistance to unexpected attacks, but he wasn¡¯t betting on it.


    He had to hand it to Helades. He didn¡¯t see this one coming. A few hours ago this place was a tropical paradise, and now it was a dark nightmare jungle where even the plants wanted him dead.


    ¡°You win this round,¡± he said under his breath, ¡°but I¡¯m not dead yet.¡± He wasn¡¯t dead, but he had no doubt that he soon would be. He didn¡¯t dare leave the ruins where the stones offered at least some protection from the plants, but he had no idea where he should go within them.


    He decided that he needed to get to slightly higher ground to figure that part out. Even without much light left, he could still try to get some idea of how this city had been laid out to see if anything obvious stood out, or if there was some place he could spend the night holed up in relative safety.


    A short climb later, he was on top of what had once been a two-story building and looking across the city. From there, the answer was pretty obvious. He hadn¡¯t seen it earlier in the daylight, but at the top of the tallest ziggurat was a faintly yellow light coming from the door at its apex.


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    ¡°That might mean there¡¯s something to fight up there,¡± he said to himself. ¡°I¡¯d still rather die to whatever witch doctor rules over this ghost town than be eaten by a fucking plant, though.¡±


    Simon picked his way down the rubble and started heading towards the pyramid, making sure to take the long way around the flower that had tried to eat him earlier. It struck him that all this was veganism gone horribly wrong, but then he realized that joke didn¡¯t make sense because the plant actually ate meat. He spent most of the walk trying to turn it around into something funny, but eventually gave up in disgust when he reached the bottom of the ziggurat and looked up the hundreds of stairs he was going to have to climb to get where he was going.


    If he hadn¡¯t already hated that bitch of a goddess, this would be enough to make him start, he thought to himself as he started hiking his way to the top.


    At first, he took a break every twenty steps, but after a few rounds of that he found himself taking a break after ten steps. That wasn¡¯t because he couldn¡¯t do more, he told himself. He just needed to make sure he didn¡¯t get too tired in case some of the surrounding vines tried to attack him again.


    They didn¡¯t though. They just laid there, clinging to the stones just like vines should. Even that was enough to make him nervous though as he thought about his grisly brush with death. It took twelve rest breaks to reach the top of the pyramid, and as beautiful as the stars were above the jungle, Simon wished he¡¯d done this during the day. From this high up, he could have gotten a much better idea of where he was.


    It¡¯s not like there wasn¡¯t going to be a next time, though, as he stood to make the final ascent.


    Despite the fact that Simon entered the chamber at the Apex ready for anything, there was nothing for him to fight. The top of the pyramid, which was pretty much the most obvious place for a boss fight ever, was empty. All he found was the doorway that light spilled out of from a sunlit mountain scene that obviously lead to the next level. Simon thought that was ironic as soon as he saw it. He¡¯d just hiked up an artificial mountain, and now he needed to climb down an actual one.


    ¡°Is this a dungeon or a work-out routine, Helades,¡± he said sarcastically. ¡°Make up your mind.¡± Still, after his last taste of altitude on the goblin level, he wasn¡¯t looking forward to another hike, even if it was downhill.


    Simon stood there for a long moment, looking at the scene like it was a TV and trying to figure out where he was supposed to go to next. It was a sunny day, and the mountainside alternated with scree covered slopes and patchy chunks of snow that were so old they¡¯d turned to ice. That meant that it was in the spring or summer, but still pretty cold. It definitely wasn¡¯t a place he would want to spend the night, which was a problem, because the only thing that seemed worth exploring was a rocky outcropping separated from the door by a ridgeline. Other than that, it was just long slopes that lead down into high valleys.


    Eventually, he stepped out of the door and started to walk, towards the outcropping. The only thing that broke the perfect silence was his breathing and the sound of his boots crunching in the snow, so he didn¡¯t immediately pull out his sword. He just walked along, casually looking to the left and the right for some idea of what he was supposed to be doing.


    He quickly gave that up and focused on what was right in front of him, though, because the drops were perilous enough to make him queasy. He even put off celebrating his success on getting to level nine because of how risky he thought walking across this slope was. Death by falling down a mountain would have been slightly more embarrassing than the time he fell down the stairs, and far more terrifying. He definitely wasn¡¯t going to give her the satisfaction on that one. His streak was already three levels, but these open world ones seemed easier than the dungeons, so maybe shooting for number four was within his reach.


    He didn¡¯t fall and quickly reached the rust-colored granite outcropping he wanted to investigate. There wasn¡¯t much there at first glance. There were no ruins or towers, or even anything to fight. As he climbed a little higher, though, he changed his mind. Near the top, in the sheltered lee of the crumbling peak, he found a nest that was much too big for any bird he¡¯d ever heard of, and his stomach instantly sank. He¡¯d wondered what was going to try to kill him this level, and the answer was obvious now: Griffons.


    He started to back away as soon as he saw the eggs that were bigger than his head. ¡°The last thing I want is to be anywhere near those when Mama gets back,¡± he said to himself.


    No sooner were those words out of his mouth than a hideous shriek shattered the stillness and echoed across the peaks. Simon looked up just in time to see something big and scaly fly over him, as he pulled out his sword. For a second he thought it was a dragon, or at least a drake. It was only when it was well past him, and he saw the large bulge at the tip of its tail, that he made a different sort of determination.


    The thing that wanted to tear him limb from limb was a wyvern.


    Simon turned and started to climb down from the rocky peak as fast as he could, but waited for it to swoop past him again before he took off at a run across the ridge he¡¯d just so carefully hiked across moments ago.


    Running on an old snowpack that could give way might kill him, but being caught out in the open by a twenty-foot-long flying lizard would definitely kill him, and he wasn¡¯t about to stand there and try his luck against the thing.


    For a second he thought about running back to the ziggurat until the wyvern lost interest, but he could see now that the archway that had been a door a few minutes ago, was now just a few pieces of decorative stonework that framed an empty sky. For the moment, he didn¡¯t worry about his destination. The only destination that mattered was away.


    Away didn¡¯t seem to matter much as the giant reptile wheeled around in the sky and came swooping down for another pass, screeching bloody murder the whole time. Simon spared a few glances over his shoulder as the thing got closer to try to judge the timing.


    At the very last second, when he could practically feel the thing''s hot, angry breath on his neck, he finally dove forward into the snow. He felt the wyvern¡¯s claws graze his armor, but no pain followed that terrible moment, and it was soon past him.


    ¡°Holy shit,¡± Simon exclaimed as he pulled himself to his feet. He was shocked that hadn¡¯t grabbed him and yanked him into the sky, but he knew that he had less than a minute until it came around to try again, and if history was any guide, his luck wasn¡¯t going to hold out much longer.

 Ch. 26 - The End of the World

    Simon made a mad dash for the gate as the wyvern swung around for the third time. Its shriek was like nails on a chalk board, but at least the awful noise let him gauge the distance without having to turn around and waste precious seconds looking.


    He didn¡¯t quite reach the pillars before the wyvern reached him, but he was so close that the monster was forced to pull up before it could rip Simon¡¯s head off. Even so, it was a close call, and he saw the barb on the thing¡¯s scorpion-like tail cut a gouge in the left pillar just as he ran through it.


    After that, he stopped for a moment. Not because he was protected by the stone, but because he felt like an idiot. ¡°Mother fucker,¡± he cursed, realizing that once again Helades had set him up. On the far side of the portal or whatever it was that he¡¯d walked through, he¡¯d only seen the ridge that had led to the wyvern¡¯s nest, so of course that was where he¡¯d gone. In exactly the opposite direction were the rest of the ruins that this arch had belonged to, which was obviously where the next portal would be.


    Simon quickly scanned the horizon, taking in the ruined castle and looking for anything that might indicate the next portal, but nothing stood out. Just like the last level, it was ruins, but instead of the sprawling vine choked city this was some kind of fortification that had long ago fallen, and there was nothing to hide threats from him. He knew exactly what the threat in this level was. It was flying around his head, trying to crush his spine with that wrecking ball of a tail that it had.


    So, with the Wyvern slowly circling back towards him, Simon started running again. This time for the main gate. Halfway there, he was gasping for breath and too tired to even blame the altitude. He just wasn¡¯t cut out to do stuff like this. His endurance bar was way too short to be running laps like this. As winded as he was, he didn¡¯t beat the giant reptile there, and it landed in his path, snapping and hissing as it blocked his way.


    ¡°Hey - I¡¯m sorry, okay!¡± he shouted. ¡°I promise. I''ll leave your stupid nest alone!¡± He moved to pull out his sword as he slowly backed away, but the thing lashed out with a sudden bite as it extended its neck enough that Simon practically fell over in his desperation not to get his head bitten off.


    He barely managed to avoid letting out a shrill scream, and was able to scramble to his feet on all fours as the wyvern started chasing him on foot. He started running again. This time he ran along the wall to the left of the gate, looking for another way in. Unfortunately, it would seem the lizard was still plenty fast on land, and he realized he was quickly losing ground.


    ¡°G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? ??????M???????e???i???????r??????e??????n????!¡± Simon shouted, pointing his hand back towards the monster bent on ripping him to pieces. The result was poorly focused and more smoke than fire, as a few scattered streamers of fire and a storm of sparks filled the air behind him.


    It wasn¡¯t his best work, but it did stop the creature in its tracks for a few seconds as it roared at the unexpected danger. Simon was quick to take advantage of the moment and climbed the lowest point he could find on the wall. There, it was mostly collapsed and only about four feet high, so he was able to scramble up and over the top before the wyvern could devour him.


    Simon took one look at the wide and mostly empty courtyard and decided there was no way he was getting across that alive. Not without a rest first. The closest place he could find a moment to sit was probably in the lone remaining watch tower that hadn¡¯t already collapsed on this part of the wall, though. So, with his chest heaving, he scrambled another ten feet up the broken wall section while the wyvern took to the sky as he pulled out his sword and started running to the tower.


    This time he made it first, but all that allowed him to do was discover that the other half of the thing was missing. It would be at best a momentary distraction for the angry mother that was trying to make him lunch.


    Simon was about to start running again when he noticed that it did have one old, weathered oak door that was closed on the remains of the far wall. Logically, that door went nowhere, but there was nothing logical about the pit, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt now that the goddess that tormented him loved to hide these things in obscure places.


    So, even though the wyvern was bearing down on him, he took a few precious seconds to open it, and on the other side wasn¡¯t the empty air of the battlement and the courtyard. It was a nighttime cityscape that looked straight out of some text-book on ancient Rome or Greece. It wasn¡¯t even ruins. It was a real live city with people and everything.


    The only problem was that he immediately noticed two things: the first was that pretty much everyone was running from something behind the portal that he couldn¡¯t see, and the second was that there were a few scattered fires in the part of the city that he could.


    It was an awful choice. Stand here and definitely die, or jump into the next level without a clear idea of what was going on and probably die right away from some new horrible thing.


    In the end, Simon did the only thing he could do, and jumped through the doorway moments before the wyvern was able to end him. No one noticed his sudden appearance, but then he didn¡¯t expect them to. They were all running for their lives towards the harbor with whatever they could carry. It was every man for himself.


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    As soon as Simon stepped out of the alley he was standing in and turned around, he saw why, and his heart sank. There was an erupting volcano behind him. It wasn¡¯t particularly close, but it was turning night into day with the amount of lava it was spewing into the sky, and magma was slowly flooding the street, moving towards him at a fast walk.


    Simon coughed. The air wasn¡¯t particularly smoky, but it was foul, and he was probably breathing in all sorts of toxic gas just standing here. It was almost as bad as his dad¡¯s smoking. Even so, he breathed deeply and stood there, completely winded, as he tried to understand the situation.


    Everyone was running downhill, away from the volcano and towards the harbor. They might live longer that way, and they might not. He wasn¡¯t sure. He¡¯d seen more than a few documentaries on Pompeii, and if this volcano erupted like that, then nowhere was safe. Simon didn¡¯t care about being safe, though. A volcano would be a quick, clean death. He wasn¡¯t so afraid of those anymore. What he cared about was understanding why this level was here, and where his deranged goddess would put the next level.


    If he had to search the whole city, it could take literally a hundred lives to do that. He needed to narrow that down.


    ¡°She definitely wouldn¡¯t put it somewhere I definitely can¡¯t get to, but she probably would put it somewhere I couldn¡¯t get to for long,¡± he told himself as he looked around the city.


    That meant it was probably in the direction that the people were running from, not where they were running to, unless she¡¯d done something extra tricky like putting it in the lighthouse he could see at the far end of the bay, or in one of the ships that were already leaving the harbor. That didn¡¯t seem very likely to him, though.


    ¡°She¡¯ll want me to be somewhere dangerous, where the chance of a painful death is at its highest,¡± he mumbled as he looked at the temples on the far hillside. ¡°Somewhere obvious and flashy. Like a¡­ Palace.¡±


    As he finished speaking, his eyes settled on the palace, which was in the shadow of the volcano and had a commanding view of the town and the sea. That was definitely the sort of place she would pick. He was sure of it.


    Simon started in that direction, but for the first few minutes he just walked, because he was exhausted. When the lava started to get close, he jogged again, but just enough to stay in front of it. In the slowly spreading carpet of magma, he occasionally saw flaming human shapes. He wasn¡¯t sure if those were people being burned alive, or fiery elementals, but he didn¡¯t want to find out. In the former case it was awful, and in the latter he had no way to fight them. He doubted that his only spell would do any better than his sword against that sort of enemy.


    Fortunately, he never found out which was the case because he arrived at the palace without incident and found the place abandoned. The guards that he¡¯d passed on the way up were running away with whatever valuables they could carry. They didn¡¯t try to stop him. They just looked at him like he was crazy.


    The palace was a work of art, and even though that wasn¡¯t really Simon¡¯s thing, he would have gladly spent half a day just admiring and exploring it.


    Simon very much doubted he had that sort of time, though, so instead of stopping to admire every statue and frieze, he hustled from room to room, opening every door and trying to figure out which obscure pantry would turn out to be his salvation.


    At least that was true until he got to the throne room, then he stopped dead in his tracks. In a large archway at the back of the room was the next portal. It led to a nighttime forest that looked positively primeval.


    That¡¯s not what stopped him, though.


    What stopped him was the fact that on the throne in front of him lounged Helades, or someone that looked a whole lot like her.


    Simon walked forward in stunned disbelief, still holding his sword in his hand. When he entered the room, he heard the volcano outside erupt again. It was loud enough that the noise shook the building even before the tremors reached it, but neither of those things stopped him from approaching the goddess.


    When he got close enough, she regarded him and started to clap. ¡°Congratulations, Simon,¡± she smiled. ¡°Truthfully, I never thought you¡¯d get this far.¡±


    ¡°Are you here to mock me or just watch me burn?¡± Simon asked acidly. ¡°If you wanted to watch me suffer, you really should have been there for the zombie level. That was the best one yet.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m an omnipotent being, Simon. I¡¯m always watching you,¡± she answered before her tone softened a bit. ¡°And Schwarzenbruck is a terrible place. No one that reaches it gets through it without suffering, sadly. It stops more heroes from advancing than almost any other level.¡±


    Simon thought about not just chastising her, but attacking her for saying something so flippant. He hadn¡¯t just suffered. He¡¯d been a zombie for months. He¡¯d watched the only person he cared about in this place die in his arms. It wasn¡¯t suffering. It was heartbreaking.


    He didn¡¯t rant about any of that, though, because she wouldn¡¯t care. Instead, he asked coldly, ¡°I¡¯ll ask again. Why are you here now if you''re always watching?¡±


    ¡°Just to check in on your progress and congratulate you,¡± she answered warmly. ¡°As I said, you¡¯ve been doing much better than expected, and so few people reach this far. Out of every twenty warriors that enter The Pit, only one reaches level ten.¡±


    Simon hadn¡¯t had a chance to think about it, but once she said it, he realized he had indeed made it another level down. Hell - he¡¯d all but made it another two levels down, because unless Helades was actually going to get her hands dirty for once, there was no way he wasn¡¯t making it to level eleven.


    ¡°Thanks,¡± he said, filing that information away for later. Only 1/10th of the way through this awful place and he was already in the top 5%. That would have given him gold rank in the ladders of his favorite online game, but he¡¯d always been more of a diamond player, so he wasn¡¯t ready to settle for the top 5%.


    ¡°You¡¯re welcome,¡± she smiled. ¡°Every ten levels or so, I like to check in on the people like you that haven¡¯t yet given up to the awfulness of the pit and see if there are any questions I can answer.¡±


    ¡°Well, you can start by¡ª¡± Simon had a whole list of questions, so if she was offering, he¡¯d gladly keep asking them until the lava was at the doorstep.


    ¡°Just one though.¡± She interrupted. ¡°One question for every ten. Those are the rules, I¡¯m afraid.¡±


    Simon clenched his fists in annoyance. Of course, she had a rule about that. Of course, she did. He thought about asking why that was, but quickly stopped as he realized that would be his question. Instead, he stood there quietly to think, filtering through the dozens of possible questions that swirled through his head.


    Finally, after a lot of thought, he decided what was truly important, and opened his mouth to speak again, while the goddess looked on at him with amusement.

 Ch. 27 - A Dark and Stormy Night

    ¡°Alright,¡± Simon said finally. ¡°You said that the pit used to be something else before. What was it? How did the pit come to be?¡± His questions echoed off the cool marble walls, and it was only when it had faded completely that the goddess opened her mouth.


    ¡°Now, that is an excellent question.¡± Helades smile widened, but grew a shade colder as she leaned forward on the throne. ¡°I was expecting something a bit more short-sighted from you. You really are growing a bit, aren¡¯t you. A little more every day.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re talking about,¡± Simon said, failing to hide how flustered the back handed compliment made him.


    ¡°No? The Simon who entered the pit would have said something like¡­¡± She cleared her throat, and when she started speaking again it was no longer her melodious voice, but Simon¡¯s voice being played back at him. ¡°Why does this place have such awful level design? Why didn¡¯t you bother to include a tutorial for the magic system at least? What the FUCK was with that zombie level?¡±


    Simon cringed at what she said, not just because it was a pitch perfect imitation of him, but because all of those had been questions that had run through his head before he settled on the one he had actually asked.


    ¡°None of those will help me understand how to beat this place,¡± he mumbled.


    ¡°That¡¯s true,¡± she agreed. ¡°All your life that stubborn competitiveness has held you back, but suddenly it''s a strength. Don¡¯t lose it. You¡¯ll need it for what comes next.¡±


    Simon let that veiled threat hang silently in the air for a few seconds, unanswered. He wasn¡¯t going to let her distract him.


    ¡°The Pit was a mistake,¡± she said finally. ¡°My mistake. It was one of many, of course. I¡¯m not perfect. Even the nigh-omnipotent are not infallible.¡±


    ¡°What was your mistake?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡°I believed in someone too much, and took a leap of faith that didn¡¯t end well. You see, once upon a time, there was a hero. His name is lost to time because this was a very, very long time ago, but he was the opposite of the person you are, in pretty much every way, Simon.¡± She explained, not even batting an eye at the casual insult. ¡°He was tall and strong. He was brave and selfless. His previous life had been cut short when he defeated the Archdemon, and I told him that he could have whatever sort of life he wanted as a reward for doing so much good for so many.¡±


    Helades stopped for a moment, just before the volcano looming over both of them rumbled to life. Its eruptions had been a constant background noise since Simon arrived in this city, but blasts that were loud enough to block out speaking like this had been a rarity. It must be getting worse out there, Simon thought.


    ¡°Do you know what he asked for?¡± she asked when the noise died down, smiling sadly.


    ¡°A bigger challenge?¡± Simon tried, taking a stab in the dark while he fumed about her comparison. If he was really the opposite of whoever this loser was, that would make him short, weak, cowardly and selfish, which obviously wasn¡¯t the case. She just enjoyed picking on him like everyone else had.


    ¡°In a way, he did,¡± she answered, nodding her head slowly. ¡°He told me he wanted to be born into a world that needed no hero. A world so peaceful and kind that he could simply enjoy life. I sadly had to inform him that such a world did not exist, and that even across the infinity of worlds I had access to, there would always be some darkness, and a need for champions to rise to the occasion.¡±


    ¡°Since this world did not exist, he asked to make one. He asked me to build him a great challenge so that he could cleanse the world, and then once that was done, he could be born anew within it.¡± She laughed then, and in that fiery light coming from the fire outside the palace, he could barely recognize the beatific goddess that he¡¯d first met when this all started. ¡°Can you believe it? What a crazy thing to ask? The chance to fight all the evil in the world? Such a thing could not be done, of course, but I realized it would be possible to change just the most pivotal moments in history and usher in a golden age that might be so long as to seem endless.¡±


    ¡°So every level in the pit is one of those moments?¡± Simon made no attempt to hide how stupid that sounded. ¡°What do a bunch of rats in a basement or a few goblins in a cave have to do with changing the future or making the world a better place?¡±


    ¡°Even for a hero like him, such a feat would be extremely unlikely. So, to help him in the epic quest he sought, I wove the reality knot, that bound the infinite possible versions of this world together,¡± she continued, ignoring his question. ¡°That way, he would have an infinite number of chances to create the world he sought to live in.¡±


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    ¡°So what happened?¡± Simon asked flippantly. ¡°If he was such a great hero, shouldn¡¯t the knot have unraveled after a few attempts into a nice happily ever after?¡±


    ¡°That was the plan,¡± she agreed sadly. ¡°He should have been free a long time ago, but things¡­ well, they didn¡¯t turn out well, and so the pit is still here with you, and all the other souls trapped within it.¡±


    The silence settled heavily over both of them, and Simon looked to his feet, trying to find the right way to break the awkward moment without sounding crass. Finally, he decided, and said, ¡°Look, I don¡¯t want to shit on this guy, but¡­¡± his words trailed off as he looked up and saw that the throne Helades had been sitting in was now empty.


    ¡°What a bitch,¡± he swore under his breath as he walked to one of the closest windows and looked at the city below. Most of it was on fire now, and the lava had long since cut him off from the bulk of the city.


    It was beautiful, in a terrible sort of way, Simon thought. It was like a classical painting, not a real place. A painting wouldn¡¯t have the smell of sulfur or the screams of the dying, though, he reminded himself as he tried to focus on what the goddess had said. It raised more questions than answers, and honestly it was pretty dumb of her to set something like this up in the first place. To trap someone in a place where they would die over and over again until they finally succeeded, it was¡­


    Simon shook his head to clear it as he suddenly realized he was getting a bit too close for comfort to describing himself. What he¡¯d done had been totally different from what the original hero had done, though. In that way at least they were total opposites. Still, the thought didn¡¯t bear more thinking about right now, he decided, as he moved over to the portal to the eleventh level. If Helades was going to leave him hanging, that was one thing, but the last thing he was going to do was let her distract him and ruin his streak.


    Walking up the portal, he had no better idea what he would be facing than when he saw it from afar. It was a dark forest at night, and though there seemed to be a thunderstorm in the distance, it was only drizzling where he was right now.


    Simon thought about waiting here for the storm to die down completely, or for morning to dawn. He was sure that a city being destroyed by a volcano was a pretty big history altering sort of deal, but he had no idea what he was supposed to do about it. Even if he had an ice spell, there was no way he could cast it enough times to stop a volcano.


    After a few more minutes of waiting, though, another large earthquake rocked the palace so hard he had trouble standing. That was what finally forced him out into the cold, wet darkness. As much as he didn¡¯t relish the idea of fighting anything blind like this, getting rained on beat the hell out of being boiled alive when the eruption finally turned into a pyroclastic cloud, so with his sword and shield at the ready, Simon walked into the portal without looking back.


    The forest was a damp, towering monstrosity, that felt more like the redwoods he¡¯d visited once than the forest he¡¯d navigated around the cabin or the temple he¡¯d discovered since he¡¯d been here, and there were no real landmarks to show him which way he should go for once, so this time he just went straight. He used the few glimpses of the moon he could occasionally see through the canopy and the patchy cloud cover as he stomped through the ferns that were almost as tall as he was.


    The first hint that he had that he wasn¡¯t alone was the screech that suddenly shattered the night. Simon looked around, shocked that the wyvern had somehow followed him, and expecting an attack at any moment, but nothing assaulted him except for the drizzling rain.


    ¡°It¡¯s just the wildlife,¡± he told himself quietly as he continued on. Even forests in the real world were filled with all kinds of dangerous critters and strange noises. He¡¯d learned that in the few months his parents had forced him to be in the scouts, so it wasn¡¯t exactly a surprise. It was just a shock. That worked until he heard something crashing through the underbrush not far from him.


    Leaning as close as he could to a nearby tree as he tried to figure out if the creature was moving towards or away from him. When he realized it was getting louder and louder, he held his breath. Moments later, a large dark shape burst out of a large clump of ferns not far from him.


    In the darkness, Simon couldn¡¯t make out what it was, but from its outline and its size, the only creature he could compare it to was a brown bear. For a long moment it looked around the area, its large golden eyes shining as they picked up the barest fragments of light, and then suddenly it was gone again, charging off in a different direction.


    It wasn¡¯t a coincidence. Simon was sure of that much. That thing was hunting him, and the last thing he wanted to do was give it a chance to try again, so he slowly counted off ten seconds to give himself a head start, and then he bolted, not even trying to be quiet. He just ran in the opposite direction as if his life depended on it.


    A few seconds later, he heard the thing screech again. It was back on his trail, and that fear made him run that much faster as he tried to find the easiest path through the moonlit forest. Soon enough, he could hear it somewhere behind him, crashing and thrashing through every plant in the forest as it tried to catch its prey.


    Up ahead, Simon saw some light, and he pumped his legs even quicker to try to reach it. Maybe there would be people there - someone that could help him, or a place to hide. When he broke through the final wall of underbrush, though, it wasn¡¯t a building, or even people. It was the scene of a massacre.


    Ahead of Simon was a deserted dirt road littered with half a dozen dead bodies, along with a couple of horses that had been practically ripped to pieces, and the remains of two wagons. The one to his left was on its side, and the one to his right was smashed to bits.


    He had no idea what could have done this, but when the thing that was following him finally broke through the woods behind him, he had a pretty good idea. It was an owlbear, and Simon would have no trouble believing that its beak and talons could have done all the damage he was seeing. Simon dropped his sword and picked up the pike of a dead man before he whirled to face his enemy. For something this big, he definitely needed more reach than a longsword could hope to provide.

 Ch. 28 - The Bridge

    Simon lashed out with the pike twice as he slowly backed up. The weapon wasn¡¯t just a big spear, though. It was a giant spear. It was heavy enough that the only way he could wield it effectively was to leave the butt of it on the ground behind him.


    Both strikes missed the Owlbear as it danced back away from him. It was a bloodthirsty monster, for sure, but it was also more than a little skittish, and didn¡¯t seem nearly as interested in him out and in the open as it had been in the underbrush.


    The result of all that, was as Simon backed away to the far side of the road it backed away into the shadows beneath the trees. Simon didn¡¯t feel any safer once the thing had vanished, though. That just made him jumpy.


    Now that it vanished, it could be anywhere, and it could spring out at him at any time. Simon stooped to retrieve and sheath his sword, while he still held onto the pike with his other hand. The last thing he wanted to do was walk very far holding this heavy ass piece of junk, but it was better that than getting his throat torn out by that thing¡¯s razor beak, he decided as he lifted the thick shaft of his giant spear and started to walk slowly down the path.


    He¡¯d thought about looking through the remains of the wagons. There was probably something he could use in there, but it was dark and rainy, and the last thing he needed to do was dig through the remains of people and animals for a few coins or a new sword.


    Especially not with that thing still out there.


    As Simon walked, he heard it screech occasionally, and he kept thinking that he was in one of those dinosaur movies where it''s not the raptor you were looking at that gets you, but the one that sneaks up on you from behind that rips you to pieces.


    There was no evidence of a second monster of that size out here, though, and Simon was pretty sure that it was a solo predator. As long as he kept a hold of his pike and left the road between the two of them, the thing left him alone. Simon would be happy to stab it if it came back out, but there was no way he was going into the woods after it. He had no idea what effect a lone owlbear was going to have on history, but he didn¡¯t really care. His mission wasn¡¯t to fix this alleged hero¡¯s fuck-ups. It was just to get to the end.


    Once he did that, he would get his dream incarnation and leave Helades to clean up her own mess.


    As the woods tapered off, Simon saw a windmill on a bluff overlooking a river off to his right. He thought about going for it, but the place looked creepy as hell in the storm, and after a particularly theatrical bolt of lightning silhouetted the place, he took it as a sign not to go check it out. He had no doubt that the headless horseman, or something equally awful, was over there waiting for him.


    Instead, he kept on the road and walked to the covered bridge. It was almost as creepy, honestly, but it was basically just a hallway, so there was less searching involved.


    ¡°Come out, come out wherever you are,¡± Simon said as he stepped inside.


    Ten feet in, Simon understood why they didn¡¯t make bridges like this anymore. They were pretty much tailor-made for serial killers and horror movies, but it¡¯s not like he had any other choice right now. Halfway through, when he was worried that maybe he should have taken a right on the main road he¡¯d found instead of a left, he noticed there was a village on the far side. With the weather and the lighting the way it was, he couldn¡¯t say for sure if it had always been there and he hadn¡¯t seen it through the rain, or if he¡¯d just managed to cross another level boundary, but it didn¡¯t matter.


    Civilization was civilization, and he would take it. The place looked a little run down, and there wasn¡¯t a light to be seen. It was the middle of the night though, and that could be poverty as much as anything, so he tried not to overreact to that.


    Keeping his calm worked pretty well, until he was most of the way through to the far side, and he heard the timbers start to shift and creek. Simon worried that the thing was less stable than it looked and that it all might come crashing down on him, at least until he saw the silhouette appear on the far side. This thing was less bear and more ape, he decided, which made it, what? An orc? Weren¡¯t those supposed to be pig creatures?


    ¡°I¡¯m armed,¡± Simon yelled, swallowing hard to keep his fear down. ¡°Come any closer, and I¡¯ll fuck you up.¡± The thing might be big, but it wasn¡¯t any bigger than his mega spear. Orcs might be scarier than goblins, but one or two would be manageable. Simon was confident that he could take it out unless the thing had a whole warband to back it up.


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    At least, that was the case until it raised itself to its full height, and roared. It was a terrifying sound that could have easily fit into Jurassic Park. At that moment, Simon considered dropping his weapon and running as fast as he could instead. The only reason he didn¡¯t, was that he could tell, from how fast it was moving, he¡¯d never get to the other end of the bridge in time.


    The thing indeed had green skin, but at over eight feet tall, it was a bit big for an orc. In Simon¡¯s eyes, that left only one option: a troll. It was a bit of a clich¨¦ to use on a bridge, but no one was ever going to accuse Helades of being original and creative.


    Not like Simon.


    The moment he figured out what he was fighting, he formulated a plan. He braced his spear, and prepared to cast a spell as he imagined the creature lighting into a roaring bonfire that would¡­ it was only just before the monster reached him that Simon realized he couldn¡¯t cast the fire spell in here. He¡¯d catch the troll on fire, and that was their weakness. He remembered that much, but he¡¯d also burn the bridge down while he was still inside.


    No, the fireworks had to wait until they were out in the open.


    None of Simon¡¯s hesitancy or indecision was mirrored by the horrifying troll that was charging him, though. It just kept barreling forward, as it alternated between terrible gibbering noises that were almost speech, and bloodthirsty howls of hunger. The noises it made were almost as frightening as the noises under the wood beneath its feet, and Simon was worried the whole thing was going to give way before he had the chance to fight his way clear.


    When the creature voluntarily impaled itself on Simon¡¯s pike, that didn¡¯t surprise him. He¡¯d expected that much. To a creature that could regenerate as well as a troll, wounds like that were meaningless. He¡¯d braced the butt against the wood to delay the thing. Originally he¡¯d planned to use that delay to melt its face off, but instead he used it to dive under the creature¡¯s grasping hands, pick himself up off the wood and run as fast as he could.


    He heard the haft of the weapon break before he¡¯d even reached the end of the bridge. The wood had been almost as thick as his wrist, and Simon had thought that the thing would slow down the brute a little longer than it did. When it was free of the bridge, he spared a glance over his shoulder, but wished that he hadn¡¯t.


    Simon¡¯s second plan had been to turn around when he reached the end of the bridge and burn the whole thing down with the troll still inside. There was no way that was happening now, though, because the creature was practically right behind him. His head would be ripped off before he had the chance to say the two words that might save his life.


    So he did what he did best: he ran. Simon sprinted in a zigzag path across the town square, screaming for help.


    ¡°There¡¯s a troll!¡± he yelled. ¡°Someone! Anyone!¡±


    No one stirred, and no help made itself known. To all appearances, the town had been entirely deserted. He was all on his own, just like always. Which was fine with him. Help would have been better, but a quick mind like his was probably the best help he was going to get. Simon quickly realized that this thing was fast as hell, but only in straight lines. It had trouble turning, and even more trouble stopping, so he led it on a random path through the area. His winding path at least was a little more effective than running in a straight line had been. The troll was simply too big, but it would never be as smart as him. With each turn its bellows of frustration came from slightly further behind him.


    In their wake, the troll left a trail of ruined awnings, overturned carts, and even a knocked over anvil as Simon darted through the blacksmith shop. It was only then that he saw that the small, whitewashed church had a little light coming from the windows. Was that a sign, he wondered? Was there some kind of sanctuary effect he could get there that would keep evil monsters like this at bay?


    Simon wasn¡¯t sure, but he didn¡¯t have any better ideas, and with his legs starting to give out, he couldn¡¯t stay in front of this lumbering behemoth much longer. So, with a final burst of speed, Simon crossed a dangerously open street and tried the door. He realized that if it didn¡¯t open, he would be a dead man, but at the same time, he couldn''t bring himself to care too much. He was on level 11 or 12 now and had collected more than enough information to justify another death or two, as long as they weren¡¯t too painful.


    The door was unlocked though, and as he dove inside, he slammed the door behind him. It was only when he got up, he realized that he definitely wasn¡¯t where he had been a moment ago. The church he¡¯d entered had been a collection of whitewashed timber and clapboard, with a few high windows and a tiny little bell at the top of the steeple. Where he was standing now wasn¡¯t a church¡­ it was a temple or a cathedral or something.


    None of that was the strange part, though. Simon had long since accepted that the crazy goddess in charge had the power to reconnect the world however, she wanted, but he¡¯d never been on a level that was defying the laws of physics until now.


    At the front of the pews, where the altar usually would be in a place like this, there was a gaping fiery hole in the ground, and the sheets of fire that erupted from it seemed to stop at very well-defined lines, like some kind of graphical glitch. The more he studied it, though, the more wrong it all became. The stained-glass windows near the front of the chapel had broken and were in the process of shattering, but hung together in mid shockwave. This level had glitched out and frozen completely somehow.


    At least that¡¯s what he thought until someone walked out of one of the sheets of fire and said, ¡°Oh, look - a new player in our little game.¡±

 Ch. 29 - A Walk Through Hell

    Simon drew his sword before he began to advance, even though there was no immediate threat. He didn¡¯t need to see the man standing amongst the flames grow horns or brandish claws to know he was bad news. He might not have the red skin that Simon would have expected, but there were no way two ways about it. Every movie he¡¯d ever seen had taught him that that dude was a demon, and after the zombie level, he was taking no chances with getting his soul sucked into hell or whatever it was that the demon had planned.


    ¡°Easy,¡± the man said, holding his arms in a gesture of surrender. ¡°I¡¯m on your side here.¡±


    ¡°My side?¡± Simon asked skeptically as he studied the demon. He was dressed like what he presumed a noble in this era would dress like, with a white tunic, a dark doublet, and a purple short cape along with an elaborately curled hair-do that. ¡°You don¡¯t have any idea who I am.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s true,¡± the demon agreed, ¡°but I know your type. Only one kind of hero shows up in this place anymore. The gods made sure of that.¡±


    ¡°And what kind is that?¡± Simon asked suspiciously. He stopped when he was still ten feet from the man and didn¡¯t plan to get much closer. From here he could see that the boundary that defined the shattered, flaming unreality that the demon occupied from the normal looking cathedral Simon stood in was a thin layer of runes drawn in white chalk.


    Even from here they were difficult to read. In places, they looked like they¡¯d been stretched and tortured beyond recognition. While it looked like it had started out as a circle, something had deformed it.


    ¡°The kind that are just as trapped out there as I am in here,¡± the demon said succinctly. Simon had just started to imagine what kind of force could make the underlying space under the boundary runes warp like some kind of black hole phenomena, when the demon¡¯s words completely halted those thoughts in their tracks.


    ¡°Excuse me?¡± Simon sputtered, not completely sure he¡¯d heard him right. The demon couldn¡¯t possibly know that.


    ¡°I said that you¡¯re just as trapped in your pit as I am by this blasted circle,¡± the demon said, smiling. It could see that it had caught Simon¡¯s interest now.


    ¡°And how is it that you know about the pit?¡± Simon asked, sweating now. This was entirely too meta for his taste.


    ¡°Come now, you think you¡¯re the first hero Helades has sent this way?¡± As the demon spoke, it gestured expansively from the door Simon had come in to another door that stood amidst the shattered ruins of the floor, and far too close to the boundary line for comfort. ¡°She¡¯s sent hundreds, no thousands, of heroes this way, but I doubt any of them ever found what they were looking for.¡±


    ¡°Why do you say that? Did you kill them all before they could advance to the next level?¡± Simon asked, leveling his sword warily as his gaze flicked back and forth between the demon and the path he was pretty sure he needed to take.


    ¡°Kill them?¡± the demon laughed. ¡°My boy, you are free to leave any time you want. You¡¯ll be back. They always come back, you know. Over and over again, until they finally come to me for answers.¡±


    ¡°And why would a demon like you have any answers I need,¡± Simon asked. His tone had lost much of the combativeness it had held until now because he was genuinely confused. He had no idea what this thing could want from him. ¡°You¡¯re just a monster in this place. A challenge to be defeated and overcome.¡±


    ¡°Take a look at this,¡± the demon said, ignoring what Simon said, turning around and facing the fiery curtain behind him. With a gesture, he pulled them aside like they were no more than heavy drapes, revealing a fiery hellscape that definitely looked like it was from something straight out of Dante.


    For a few seconds, Simon was overcome, and all he could do was stare at the infinite landscape that assaulted his eyes. It wasn¡¯t just a fiery place of suffering, that would have been too simple. It was fractal and endless, and even though he could feel neither its heat nor its torments, he still felt himself tearing up at the sight.


    ¡°Notice anything?¡± The demon asked expectantly, ¡°Any repeating patterns?¡± Simon shook his head and looked again, even if he didn¡¯t want to.


    The volcanic pits of fire and shit were full of writhing souls just like he¡¯d expected, but neither those nor the rivers of blood were probably what this thing wanted him to notice, so he tried looking for something that didn¡¯t belong. In hell, that was a pretty tall hurdle to overcome, so he tried looking for something that wasn¡¯t mindlessly awful.


    He found the first example floating not far away above a crooked tower that was far too damaged to stay standing in the real world. It was a set of strangely familiar floating stairs made out of stone fragments. Seconds later he found another example, and another. Only when he saw them all lined up, in a strange fractal pattern that was nearly identical, did he realize that they were all pretty much identical to the stairs that stood in front of him.


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    He also noticed that outside of each and every one was a small army of demons just waiting to invade. It was like the hellish version of the beaches of Normandy.


    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± the demon said. ¡°The goddess you work for is making this scene play out a thousand, thousand times. Those are just the ruptures that are open now, too. Not the ones that haven¡¯t opened yet, or the ones that have been closed.¡±


    ¡°But why would more than one version of the pit be open at once?¡± Simon asked, not comprehending exactly what was going on here.


    ¡°Every one of those rifts is another hero, trying in vain to save the world, just like you are. There are thousands of versions of the pit trying to accomplish that, but no matter how many versions of a world your goddess makes, there will only ever be one version of hell,¡± the demon answered. ¡°None of them will succeed, of course. How could one ever succeed at an impossible task.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not impossible, it¡¯s just¡­¡± Simon started to say, stopping himself when he realized he was parroting one of Helades¡¯ lines.


    ¡°It¡¯s just really difficult, right?¡± the demon smiled sardonically, letting the fiery curtain behind him fall back into place. ¡°They all say that too, at first.¡±


    Simon ignored the demon¡¯s words and studied the runic boundary, as well as the chaotic path to the door. ¡°I don¡¯t think you can reach me,¡± he said finally. It wasn¡¯t going to be the easiest walk to get there, because Simon was no fan of platformers, but the way that the stretched lines of the summoning circle were laid out, the path to the door was clear enough.


    ¡°I can¡¯t,¡± the demon agreed. ¡°But you¡¯ll be back. You¡¯ll be back over and over and over again, and maybe after you get tired of playing her games, you¡¯ll decide you¡¯d rather play one of mine instead.¡±


    Simon ignored him and walked towards a swirling debris field that was somewhere between an asteroid field and a set of stairs. For once, The Pit finally had some brilliant level design and art direction, and Simon found it terrifying. Not that he thought it would be hard to stay on his side of the white line, or that things were moving so quickly that he thought he might lose his balance, but because in the empty spaces between the stones he could see straight down into hell.


    ¡°Watch your step,¡± the demon said, suddenly much closer to Simon than he¡¯d been before, as he suddenly teleported to the closest he could get to and still stay on his side of the line.


    The sudden shock terrified Simon, but he was able to suppress the scream, and with a dirty look at the demon that was toying with him, he gingerly stepped down onto the first piece of debris. He was worried that any moment they would all fall out of the sky, but the stones that had once made up the cathedral''s floor, and perhaps still did, felt rock solid to Simon.


    It took five minutes of very careful steps to reach the door, and the whole way there he was focused as much on all the places he could fall to his death as he was at the slow crawling movements of the lines on the blocks he could see.


    When he finally reached the doorway, as he placed his hand on the knob, the demon began clapping somewhere behind him. ¡°Excellent work,¡± he congratulated him mockingly. ¡°You¡¯ll do even better I¡¯m sure the next time you come back, and the time after that, and¡­ well, you get the idea.¡±


    Simon turned to tell him off, but when he did, there was no one there. He shrugged. The demon disappearing was by far the least weird part of the whole encounter, and he had been right about one thing at least, Simon would eventually pay him another visit whether he wanted to or not.


    With that thought in mind, he very slowly turned the knob and eased the door open, wary of some kind of demonic trap. Instead, he found a dusty hallway lined with oil paintings, and lit candelabras that danced with little blue flames.


    ¡°Ghosts, huh?¡± he asked himself, turning around to take one last look around the hellscape that surrounded him. ¡°I¡¯ll take it.¡±


    Simon stepped through the door without looking back and shut it behind him. He didn¡¯t know how he was supposed to kill ghosts, but he¡¯d take a little ectoplasm or whatever over the risk of eternal damnation.


    Simon turned to the right this time and began walking. This felt less like a fantasy video game level, and more like something from the survival horror genre, or maybe even the haunted mansion at Disneyland. The jump scares started small, too.


    At first, it was just the eyes on the portraits following him, but the further he went, the weirder things got. In the first door he opened was a library where books randomly floated from one shelf to the next. Shortly after that, he found a ballroom, where random articles of clothing danced with one another like the dancers were still wearing them. This was disconcerting enough, but some of them were doing it high above the rest, near the gilded roof of the ballroom.


    Simon shut that door immediately and kept going. The weirder things got, the more he felt like he was being watched, though. However, that wasn¡¯t Simon¡¯s biggest problem. The biggest problem he had was that he was completely lost. Even though no one was trying to kill him, the place was huge and seemed to go on forever. Sometimes the rooms had windows, and he could see that he was on the second or third floor of some kind of decaying palace, and that the grounds were just as dilapidated as the building itself.


    The calm, quiet demeanor, lulled him into a false sense of security. Nothing had happened, but that didn¡¯t mean that nothing was going to happen, and he was halfway down a hall displaying the rusting weapons and banners that were trophies before he figured that out.


    Simon heard one of the banners rustle a bit, and raised his shield towards it, just in time to deflect a morning star that was heading towards him. It bounced off his shield and shattered the window as it went flying outside.


    The force of the blow staggered Simon and slammed him against the wall, and a pair of daggers followed, embedding themselves on either side of his head.


    Simon forced himself to his feet, warily watching a lance that had floated off the wall, and started to take aim at him. He backed up slowly, looking for somewhere he could escape to that didn¡¯t involve a two-story jump through a broken window.


    The lance never reached him. Instead, a sword suddenly thrust through him from behind. He watched in horror as the pain slowly spread through him as the sword blade slowly slid out of his chest covered in blood.


    It was a blow to the heart, at least, were Simon¡¯s last conscious thoughts before it all went black.

 Ch. 30 - A Long Way Back

    Simon wasn¡¯t even mad that he¡¯d died this time. It hadn¡¯t hurt too bad in comparison to all the other ways the pit had made him suffer so far. The worst it had done was ruin his streak, he thought as he sat up, but he could always get that back another time.


    ¡°Mirror - show me my character sheet,¡± Simon said while he reached for the wine. Getting a new streak started would be even easier now that he knew what was on all the early levels.


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 14


    Deaths: 29


    Experience Points: -136900


    Skills: Archery [Below Average], Armor (light) [Average], Athletics [Below Average], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Below Average], Maces [Average], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Poor], Sneak [Below Average], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Above Average].


    Words of Power: Aufvarum Hjakk Gervuul Meiren¡¯


    He noted with approval that he¡¯d only gotten to level 14, and that was practically level 20. He¡¯d only been at this for like a week, and he was already basically halfway to the halfway point.


    ¡°Eat your heart out, newbs,¡± he said, taking another swig of wine.


    When Simon noticed the experience line, though, he spat the mouthful of alcohol back out.


    ¡°What the hell! Why is the experience line like a hundred thousand lower than before,¡± he demanded. ¡°It was almost back to zero the last time I checked.¡±


    ¡®The experience category takes into account all of the actions you have undertaken since your Entry into The Pit. It¡ª¡¯ the mirror typed.


    ¡°Hey. Stop telling me things I already know. I know how it works, I want to know what I did to cause it to drop like that? Is this place bugging out even more than usual?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡®I am not aware of the specifics that drive the total higher or lower. I only display the number. Perhaps you did something terrible, or were very upset by something your actions caused,¡¯ the mirror suggested.


    That shut Simon right up.


    The mirror''s words reminded him of the glimpse at that book that summarized his life in Helades¡¯ temple. It dinged him five experience for every wasted day, and there had been a lot of those. How much had a few weeks as a zombie cost him? How much had murdering those poor people while he was an undead monster? The world might have reset so that it never happened, but his soul certainly remembered.


    If that was indeed the case, then it would take a long time to dig himself back out of that hole. That was fine. It really didn¡¯t seem to have any mechanical effect. It was just one more way to measure progress.


    Simon looked over the rest of his sheet, noting with approval that several of his skills had actually improved, including spell casting. It was now listed as only ¡®poor¡¯. That might help explain why his fire spell had been nuking everything lately. Simon just wished he had some way to turn that dial down a bit. He¡¯d love to have the spell for just burning instead of mega burning.


    He cracked his knuckles and rose to his feet. He needed to head back down. Not to beat this place, or do anything stupid like that. The only thing he was in a hurry for was to see Freya again, and if it really was a 50-50 shot between her and Brenna then she was due to be there, and he didn¡¯t want to keep her waiting.


    Simon geared up in the way he¡¯d gotten used to, and headed down into the first level. Except for the slime and the skeleton knight, nothing was really a challenge here anymore. Now that he¡¯d learned how to make the sword do what he wanted, and he held his shield up when the goblins tried to shoot him, everything was pretty easy.


    This time, his duel with the skeletons cost him a cut on his forearm that was deep enough to bleed like crazy. When the knight was laying in pieces on the floor, Simon removed the bracer and cast his healing spell.


    ¡°Aufvarum Hjakk,¡± he intoned, visualizing his arm without the wound, like it had never been. The words were mostly successful, but even after the skin closed up and he wiped away the blood the wound still ached, and there was still some weakness.


    At least there wasn¡¯t an ugly black scar like the zombie bites had left behind, though.


    While he sat there and tried to get his armor back on, he talked to himself about his options. ¡°The way I see it,¡± he opined, ¡°either my healing spell is too low of a level to restore all my hitpoints, or it¡¯s so complicated that it¡¯s basically broken.¡±


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    ¡°Well what do you mean by that Simon?¡± he said, using a slightly different voice.


    ¡°I¡¯m glad you asked, Simon,¡± he continued, laughing at his joke. He hoped that that omnipotent bitch was enjoying how quickly he¡¯d figured out another flaw in her little game. ¡°When I cast the spell, I only imagined the skin closing up, so that was the only part that healed. Since the pit is so pointlessly complicated, it''s possible that the damaged tissue beneath the skin didn¡¯t actually get healed at the same time.


    ¡°Well, that sounds fucking stupid,¡± Simon told himself, continuing to play devil''s advocate.


    ¡°I agree,¡± Simon nodded. ¡°That¡¯s completely dumb, and whoever designed this system should have their godhood license revoked. If the problem is just a level issue then I can fix that, but if it''s the latter¡­ well, I¡¯d have to spend months studying the anatomy of cadavers and practicing improving, and that sounds pretty disgusting to me.¡±


    Once his armor had been put back into place, and he¡¯d finished his criticism of Helades, Simon stood up and stretched, eyeing the frost sword not far from him. It was just one more game breaking bug as far as he was concerned. If he could wield that sword, then he wouldn¡¯t have any problem facing whoever was supposed to be the boss of the Pompeii level. Sadly, it was one more casualty of bad design, he thought with a shrug as he walked to the slime¡¯s cave.


    The only problem with the slime was that Simon¡¯s fire spell was still a bit much. It wasn¡¯t quite the blast it had been last time he fought it, but it was still more than the tight ray of fire he tried to visualize as he cast the spell. He didn¡¯t even wait for the thing to completely stop moving. Once it was burning, Simon was already walking past its corpse to the inn, hoping against hope that his Freya would be there this time.


    The first person he saw in the inn was the same zombie that always seemed to attack him from the right. This time, Simon brained him before he even got close, and the corpse fell on the ground in a heap. The second person he saw was unfortunately Brenna, but this time she wasn¡¯t wielding a pitchfork, she just barged through the door and lunged for him.


    She was already a zombie, he realized slowly as he pushed her away. He could easily kill her, of course, and put her out of her misery. It was without a doubt the right thing to do, but for some reason he had trouble raising his flanged mace against her. It wasn¡¯t just the fact that he¡¯d been trained his whole life not to hit a girl, either, he realized. It was that he might have to do the same thing to Freya in a couple of minutes when he explored the inn more completely.


    It was only the idea that if she bit him again, he would have to live as a monster like her for who knew how long all over again. The fear that he would ever have to spend another minute as an undead monstrosity is what finally brought his arm to life, and it only took one good blow to the side of her beautiful face to make her crumple like a marionette that had suddenly had her strings cut.


    His chest heaving from the emotional effort more than the physical one, Simon stopped and studied her body after that, because the first thing he noticed was that she didn¡¯t have a bandage on her arm where he presumed she¡¯d been bitten before.


    He eventually found an infected looking wound on her shoulder that was almost certainly the cause, but he still had no idea why such details would change. Why would one girl be alive or both of them end up dead before he got here. Why was the bartender never the survivor, but the same zombie always attacked him first on arrival.


    He had no answers, but for once he was pretty sure it was more than just Helades screwing with him. If he knew what kind of RNG was behind how these levels were generated, then it would give him some kind of edge.


    He didn¡¯t have that, though, so instead he searched the bar for Freya. He found her with her skull crushed on the second floor, and almost let the zombies overrun the place while he was busy sobbing over her covered corpse.


    Simon spent the next twenty minutes killing the eight zombies that had managed to get into through the window before he could move the table into place. Then, once he barred the back door just in case, he spent the rest of the day in the basement getting rip roaringly drunk.


    Simon normally didn¡¯t care for too much drinking, but right now he cared even less for thinking, and he happened to have the spell of ¡®cure light hangover¡¯, so why the hell wouldn¡¯t he get blasted.


    One day turned into three, though, as he wallowed in self-pity and mourned the loss of a romance that had never really been. He drank the tapped barrel dry, and made quite a mess trying to open the untapped ones, and he spent the whole time castigating the stupid goddess who caused this whole mess.


    ¡°None of us would be in this mess if you tried to make your precious hero a bear,¡± he yelled out of the third story window one night. ¡°Not me, not Freya, and not any of the other poor saps you tricked into getting on this ride, you bitch!¡±


    The zombies didn¡¯t seem to mind his antics, but three days seemed like he was pushing his luck, so on the fourth day after he made his hangover disappear with two little magic words, he finally opened up the front door to face the carrion crawler.


    It turned out that the slimy little bastard was a lot less interested in him when he shot first with the crossbow. Once it had a bolt buried in its wiggly torso, it disappeared into its pile of corpses, never to be seen again.


    Likewise, the plants didn¡¯t try to do anything with him as long he stayed away from the largest blossoms, that were easy to spot by daylight. This time he was able to stroll right to the pyramid, and then take his time climbing the thing. He reached the top well before sunset and took his time to enjoy the view. The jungle continued as far as he could see in all directions, and the canopy was only broken in two places: a river, and another distant pyramid. He was unable to tell if the city on the horizon was also merely ruins, or if people still lived there, but it didn¡¯t matter. With man eating plants on the loose, the last thing he was doing was spending a few days traipsing through the jungle to find out.


    The wyvern level was as anticlimactic as anything he¡¯d ever experienced. Since he didn¡¯t try to wander over to its nest this time, no angry mother tried to devour him. Indeed, nothing tried to attack him. Simon walked to the ruins of the castle completely unmolested, and even poked around a bit before he made his way up to the shattered tower.


    It wasn¡¯t a very interesting place though. Anything worth taking had long been stolen from the empty rooms, and the weather had rotted away the rest. Now the only thing of value it had was the commanding view. Well, that and the portal he corrected himself.


    The city on fire in the wannabe Vesuvius level definitely seemed a little further along than last time, but not four days further along. Simon had wondered about that on his way here. Theoretically, if he¡¯d wasted days in the zombie floor, he should have arrived to find a wall of cooling lava blocking his way, but instead it seemed about the same before as he slowly walked to the palace.


    In the end, the only real difference was that the goddess wasn¡¯t waiting for him on the throne this time. He¡¯d expected that, though. She only did that last time to tease him with hope.


    The joke was on her. He¡¯d left his hope back on level six with Freya¡¯s corpse. Everything he did from now on was just spite.

 Ch. 31 - A Detour

    The first real problem came back up when Simon re-entered the forest to fight the Owlbear. Well - to hopefully not fight it, actually. If he didn¡¯t need to fight any of this shit, then discretion seemed to be the better part of valor when the enemy was over eight feet tall and had claws that could rip him to shreds as far as he was concerned.


    That monster stalking him through the woods wasn¡¯t even the problem, though, it was that there were no obvious landmarks to guide him. Last time, it was only pure luck that he¡¯d made it to the road and that terrible wreckage. What if this time he turned right when he¡¯d turned left before, and ended up lost in the woods until he starved to death?


    He¡¯d done that before. More than once actually, he thought resentfully, and it hadn¡¯t been any fun. With the crossbow and the fire spells, he thought he could make a better showing of it this time, but he¡¯d much rather be exploring the Pit than one stupid forest inside it. The rain fell softly on Simon while he tried to remember what he¡¯d done last time, but he couldn¡¯t exactly, so he decided that he probably would have just gone straight.


    A few minutes later he was rewarded with a distant shriek, which he took to be a good sign, so he kept going until the overgrown bird got too close for comfort, before hiding as far under a fallen log as he could wedge himself. The Owlbear stomped around the area for almost two minutes looking for him, and at one point even stepped on the tree that hid him, but fortunately the old lightning scarred trunk bore the weight of the raptor.


    Last time Simon was in this moment he remembered bolting in a panic, but this time he very slowly slid out from under his hiding place and did his best to sneak off into the densest part of the underbrush he could actually squeeze through. He didn¡¯t really want to just run and hope for the best. In his current situation, that seemed like a recipe for disaster, so he did his best to be as quiet as possible, and stayed on the lookout for the noises of that thing coming back.


    Though the Owlbear got uncomfortably close a couple of times, Simon managed to avoid crossing its path before he reached the road. This time he noticed that he¡¯d walked quite a bit farther than he had originally, and the wreckage of the wagons was only just visible at the next bend in the road.


    Simon felt naked in the open without his trusty pike, but he drew his sword and kept his shield up in case of ambush. Fortunately, one never materialized, and he reached his goal. The clouds cleared up a bit as he got closer, but being able to see better did him no favors.


    Both of the wagons were still wrecked, with one shattered, and the other one on its side. That wasn¡¯t the problem, though. The problem was that the men and horses surrounded them hadn¡¯t been butchered - they¡¯d been shredded. Simon doubted he could have matched the bloodstained limbs to the body they belonged to if he tried.


    Not that he would ever engage in such a gory pastime. This time he would take a minute to go through the more intact wagon, though. A water skin would be a nice score, if he could find one. He was feeling thirsty, and he still had half a dozen floors to get through before he would see new content.


    Simon didn¡¯t find a water skin, but he did find movement. As soon as he opened the canvas tarp in the back, he saw someone in the darkness move, and he jumped back, pointing his sword at them.


    ¡°Who¡¯s¡­ come out of there right now!¡± Simon yelled, before quickly looking around to see if the Owlbear might have heard that.


    ¡°I¡­ I can¡¯t.¡± a soft voice said so softly that Simon could barely hear it. ¡°The monster will eat us if I do.¡±


    Simon was puzzled by this response, and it took him a second to figure out that the voice belonged to a child. He shook his head. ¡°Really, Helades? Fuck,¡± he swore under his breath. There were monsters in the forest, and she was bringing kids into this? Simon was starting to think that she was an evil goddess, not a good one like he¡¯d originally thought.


    Using the tip of his sword, he flipped the cover back, to make sure it wasn¡¯t some weird ambush, but there was just a young boy that couldn¡¯t have been much older than 12, and a slightly older girl, clinging together in fear. At first, Simon thought they were siblings, but when he noticed how fine his clothes were, and how simple the girl''s were, he realized that it had to be more complex than that. Simon didn¡¯t care about that, though. Answers could wait until he got them somewhere safe, not that he had any idea where that would be.


    ¡°Come on,¡± Simon said, ¡°Both of you out right now. You can¡¯t stay here.¡± He wanted to ask what happened, but that seemed too insensitive, so instead he just helped them out of the wagon, pulling them to the axel side, where the violence was less obvious.


    The fair-haired boy was hesitant, and looked at him with undisguised fear, though Simon couldn¡¯t figure out if that was because of the horrible things that had already happened to him, or if it was because he was a stranger with a sword. The girl, on the other hand, clung to him like her life depended on it.


    Simon peeled her off him and then sheathed his sword as he told them both, ¡°You two wait here. Don¡¯t go wandering off or looking around. I¡¯m going to get a weapon, and then we''re going to find somewhere to get you two out of the weather.¡±


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    ¡°But you already have a weapon,¡± the boy said, confused.


    ¡°Not this one,¡± Simon said, turning to face him as he walked to where the huge pike lay on the ground. ¡°I¡ª¡±


    It was almost over before it began. Simon caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he knew he¡¯d never get his sword out in time. All he could do was point and pray as he shouted ¡°G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? ??????M???????e???i???????r??????e??????n????,¡± while he dove to one side.


    Since he barely had time to imagine much more than this big ass bird on fire, the results were less than spectacular, but even so, a few streamers of powerful fire leapt from his hand, and judging by the ear-piercing shriek the thing made, Simon knew that at least one had landed. He didn¡¯t look, though. He ran to the pike on the ground, and raised it before he could turn around to wield it.


    It was lucky that he did.


    No sooner did he have the spear end of the weapon off the ground somewhere behind him, than he was pushed forward by a sudden impact that sent him sprawling, and buried the butt of the weapon in the mud.


    Simon expected to be killed before he could rise to his feet, but other than a little bit of sharp pain from his back, and dull pain from his knees, he was fine. The shrill screaming behind him told him the Owlbear didn¡¯t exactly feel the same way, and Simon finally turned to see why.


    The big dumb creature hadn¡¯t been burned too badly by his fire spell, but it had obviously been enraged by it, because it had charged right into the pike, and now it had four feet of the weapon sticking out from behind it, while it shrieked in pain.


    Simon pulled out his sword and approached it. They said that you weren¡¯t supposed to approach an animal in pain, because it could lash out violently, but Simon didn¡¯t care about that right now. He cared about what this thing was doing to his ears. It was like nails on a chalkboard.


    ¡°Sorry about this big bird,¡± he said as he swung his sword as hard as he could at the back of the thing¡¯s neck with a vicious two-handed blow. He¡¯d hoped to behead it, which would have been awesome looking, but as it was he at least severed the thing¡¯s spinal cord mercifully enough to put everyone out of its misery.


    When he finished that ugly business, Simon sheathed his sword and looked to make sure the children were okay. He saw a mixture of awe and fear on both their faces. ¡°Everything¡¯s going to be okay,¡± he said, trying to reassure them as he walked over.


    The boy nodded eagerly, but the girl ran to him and started crying. He still had no idea how to cope with that, so he let her sob for a few minutes before he shook her loose.


    ¡°Come on,¡± he said, "We need to get out of here."


    Both of them came easily enough after that, and he held hands with both of them while they left all the evidence of violence far behind them.


    In the conversation along the way, the girl mostly relayed what had happened. They were traveling from the capital to Adonan for some festival that meant nothing to him. Apparently the boy was named Eddek, and he had to attend and give it his blessing because he was someone important, but when their wagon was attacked at night by monsters, all they could do was hide.


    Simon listened, but mostly he just felt like shit that he¡¯d left them in there the first time without saving them. Saving everyone wasn¡¯t his job, of course, but these were just kids. The last thing that Helades should do was put innocents like that in her sick games.


    Once the boy found his voice, he asked about the magic that Simon had wielded, but Simon didn¡¯t have much to say.


    ¡°Is it demonic? Is it from the gods?¡± Eddek asked.


    Simon just shrugged. ¡°Who can say. It¡¯s just a little trick I picked up.¡± He spent much of the walk trying to act like he knew what he was doing, but in reality, he was lost. He couldn¡¯t take them to the bridge. He¡¯d never be able to get them past the troll. Hell - he wasn¡¯t sure how he was going to get past that brute without his pike. As a weapon it hadn¡¯t been much, but it bought him a few precious seconds.


    It started to rain again just before he caught sight of the mill. Simon started towards it. It still creeped him out a little because it looked like the location for some B horror movie, but beggars couldn¡¯t be choosers, and he was sure these kids would catch their death of cold if he didn¡¯t get them somewhere warm and dry.


    There was still enough of a fire burning in the hearth of the small home next to the mill that Simon could see a small amount of light through the shutters as he banged on the front door loud enough to wake whoever was sleeping in there.


    They stirred only reluctantly after the second round of banging, and loudly shouted through the door, ¡°I ain¡¯t openin¡¯ my door to strangers in the middle of the night!¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s very wise,¡± Simon agreed, pushing the children forward even as he stepped back. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t either if I was you, but I¡¯m going to go back to the road now, and someone needs to look after these kids I saved in the woods. If that¡¯s not you, then I guess they¡¯ll just freeze to death out here.¡±


    ¡°No, please don¡¯t go,¡± the boy pleaded. ¡°My father will give you a fine reward, and I¡¯ll make sure to appoint you to the household guard if you just stay and¡ª¡±


    ¡°You hear that?¡± Simon said, shaking his head at Eddek¡¯s fine offer, even as continued to move back. ¡°This kid¡¯s dad is rich, and you¡¯ll be well rewarded if you take care of them until the rest of their party catches up with them!¡±


    Both children came running towards him, and Simon knelt to hug them, his heart melting a little at the sight. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. You¡¯re far safer with this man than you are with me. I already had to fight an Owlbear tonight - I¡¯ve got a date with a troll later, and you definitely can¡¯t come to that.¡±


    ¡°But - but¡­ we need you,¡± the girl said. ¡°We would never have made it without you¡­¡±


    Her words trailed off as the door began to open up, and the miller peeked out nervously, fearful of some trick. ¡°Kids you say? Reward?¡±


    Far from being the sunken cheekbones serial killer that Simon feared he would find, the old man seemed to be decent enough. ¡°The world is a big place. I¡¯m sure we¡¯ll see each other again,¡± Simon said, not especially looking forward to having to save them and go through this tear-jerker every time from now on, even if it was better than the alternative which was leaving them to die.


    Simon thanked the miller, gave the children another two goodbyes, and then headed back down hill towards his date with the bridge.

 Ch. 32 - A Rock and A Hard Place

    The troll was easier to deal with than Simon thought. Instead of trying to run past it, or burn it to a crisp, he just intentionally cast his fire spell poorly, and the shower of sparks and feeble streamers sent the thing running just long enough for Simon to get to the church and slam the door behind him.


    It was a terrible way to have to throttle the magic, Simon thought, but what the hell else was he going to do? Actually casting mega-fire at full power was not only exhausting, it was dangerous. If he¡¯d actually done that, he would have burned himself alive on the bridge, and then he would have had to come back to fight the troll again anyway.


    Because that¡¯s just how The Pit was. Simon could see it in the expression that the asshole demon as he just sat there and watched Simon while he approached the distorted summoning circle.


    ¡°Back so soon?¡± The demon asked with a shit eating grin. "Usually people take a bit longer."


    Simon couldn¡¯t figure out if that was supposed to be a compliment or an insult, so he just ignored it while he focused on studying the circle. It wasn¡¯t quite the same as before, but as far as he could tell, none of the runes had changed. It honestly didn¡¯t look too different from the hell rifts that one of his favorite action role playing games used in the second act. He smiled at that. Level 13 or 14 out of 99 didn¡¯t seem to be the second act to him, but he¡¯d take it.


    ¡°Do you have anything useful to say, or are you just going to fuck with me?¡± Simon asked the demon. While Simon had literally all the time in the world, he had almost none to spare for a creature like this, that had bad news written all over its face.


    ¡°No - not just yet, I think,¡± the demon shrugged. ¡°No point in talking to any of the warriors trapped in here with me. Not until they start to lose hope anyway.¡±


    Simon wanted to ask about that, but even more than that, he wanted to get the hell away from this guy. As Simon started walking down the swirling bits of floor that made the impromptu stairs down to the door, he wished that the creature looked a little more classically demonic. It would have made it much easier to deal with than the they¡¯re-not-so-differant shtick the thing was obviously leaning in to.


    The door led to the same dusty castle that Simon had died in last time, but this time he paid more attention to his surroundings, and he avoided any halls or rooms that had anything that could be used as an obvious weapon.


    Even the innocuous rooms and halls still had small objects that floated aimlessly, and pictures that looked at him as he passed, but he forced himself to ignore those details, creepy as they were, and focus on the ones that actually might get him killed.


    That forced him to take a very different path from last time, as most of the route he¡¯d wandered through before was obviously off limits, but as he ducked into a small bedroom down the third hall he could actually travel in relative safely, he began to think that the right way to handle this was to get outside. That¡¯s what haunted houses always tried to prevent in the movies, right? There had to be a reason that he only ever found stairs going up, but none going down.


    As he eyed the window, it looked like it was only a twenty or twenty-five foot drop. He¡¯d break his legs if he jumped, but a rope would make it child''s play, he realized.


    Unfortunately, he¡¯d left his rope in the cabin. It¡¯s not like he¡¯d ever needed it before, anyway, so he didn¡¯t beat himself up too much about it. ¡°Who would think to carry a rope with them everywhere they go,¡± he muttered to himself as he set about turning the bedsheets into a new rope.


    It took twenty minutes, and the hardest part of the whole thing was ignoring the throbbing from his back where the owlbear¡¯s claws had gotten him a little. When the rope was done, Simon used a full length mirror to take a look, and decided they didn¡¯t look bad enough to try to heal, especially not with the way the poltergeist activity was starting to pick up around him. It was just a little blood, and a couple small cuts in his armor. A couple cuts wouldn¡¯t kill him, but if he stayed here too much longer, the ghosts might.


    Getting out of the window was harder than he thought, though. Even though he tied off his crude bedsheet rope to the frame of the ancient bed, he wasn¡¯t completely sure he could trust his weight to it as he eyed the drop.


    When Simon saw the mirror begin to float menacingly toward him, he finally decided to take the plunge and climb out of the window and down the side of the building. Unfortunately, the bed he was tied to decided to try to join him.


    ¡°Oh shit,¡± Simon gasped as he felt himself start to sink even though he wasn¡¯t climbing, and put two and two together. In the end, he¡¯d never know if he merely weighed too much to use the bed as a proper anchor, or if the ghosts had decided to help it along. Fortunately, it was too big to fit out the window and crush him like some kind of acme anvil or cartoon piano. Instead, it just wedged in place, letting him climb down as fast as he could just in case.


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    Outside, the sky was heavy and leaden, which was perfect for the rest of the vibe this place had, but it made it impossible for him to tell if it was just after dawn or just before sunset. Simon was willing to bet it was the latter, because that one would screw him harder, but that was fine. As long as nothing in this level turned him into a zombie for months, he¡¯d be back in a few hours to do it all over again as many times as he needed to.


    Simon started with the nearest outbuildings. He checked a barn, three sheds, a couple guest cottages, and a greenhouse where everything inside had died. He didn¡¯t find anything unusual in any of those. Not only was there no gate, but there was no haunting activity either. That seemed to be limited to the main house.


    Simon found a very overgrown hedge maze shortly after that, but decided against checking it because it creeped him out. Nothing good happened in there, he could tell. So instead, he just circled around until he finally found the front door to the house.


    Simon wasn¡¯t sure what he was expecting to find when he opened it. He thought that he might find a vampire count who would explain his whole plan to him, or perhaps a ghostly countess doomed to keep reliving some horrible moment of her life over an over. All Simon knew was that if this had been a video game, when he opened those gilded, paneled doors, he would have gotten one hell of a cutscene.


    Instead, he found a cave. A dark, dingy cave that more properly belonged under the mansion, not in its foyer.


    It took Simon several seconds longer than it should have for him to realize that this was the gate to the next level, and not a truly bizarre decorative choice. After that, all that was left to do was to go inside.


    The cave was an old limestone formation with stalagmites and stalactites that had mostly fused into uneven, misshapen pillars. Simon didn¡¯t have a torch, but once he was inside, he let his eyes adjust a bit. There was a dim light coming from further on in the cave, and while he wouldn¡¯t want to fight in the near darkness, it was enough for him to walk slowly forward without tripping and breaking his neck.


    Up ahead somewhere Simon could hear muted chanting. At first, he couldn¡¯t quite make out the words, but as he got closer he began to piece them together. Someone was beseeching gods for some sort of divine favor. Simon obviously hadn¡¯t walked into this at the beginning, so he wasn¡¯t sure what it was exactly, but the fact that the wizard or priest or whatever he was talking about blood sacrifice meant it couldn¡¯t be anything good.


    Simon found the wizened old man standing in a protective circle as he continued to cast his strange spell. It wasn¡¯t real magic, of course, because nothing interesting was happening. This guy clearly didn¡¯t understand as much about the world as Simon did, because he¡¯d probably been studying magic for decades, whereas Simon had been doing it for a couple of weeks and had actual magic to show for it.


    Simon thought about just ignoring this dude and trying to sneak past him. With his little circle and a few candles, Simon didn¡¯t think it likely he could hurt anyone. He was obviously just a crazy old man. That changed when Simon heard him say, ¡°grant me my boon and I will not stop with the village. I will burn the whole kingdom to the ground in your name.¡±


    That was enough for Simon. Leaving this guy breathing was clearly a mistake, so he pulled out his crossbow and shot him in the back. The wanna-be mage crumpled immediately into a pool of his own blood as soon as the bolt embedded itself in his left lung. He struggled uselessly for a second, but didn¡¯t rise after that.


    Simon waited for a few seconds for the other shoe to drop. This was clearly too easy for any level in the pit. It was easier than the rats on the first floor, so there was no way that this was all there was to it, but nothing happened.


    Finally, after the moment had passed, and it all felt terribly anticlimactic, Simon stepped forward, over the body of the madman and towards his ritual area. There he found all sorts of strange powders and ritual implements, but none of them particularly interested Simon. Instead, he reached for the book. Even if this guy didn¡¯t know any real magic, it would be interesting to see what strange ideas he had.


    He never got that far. As the shadows moved slightly, he pulled his hand back as a giant shape suddenly loomed out of the darkness and brought its stony hands down towards Simon¡¯s skull.


    It was a fucking golem. How did a guy like this who didn¡¯t even know how to cast magic properly have a golem, Simon wondered. He¡¯d never find out, though. At least not this run. As the golem brought its fists down, it shattered the table where everything had been laid out, sending pages flying as grimoire was crushed by the titanic blow.


    Simon ran. Not because he had no way to fight several hundred tons of animate rock, even though he didn¡¯t. He ran because it was terrifying. The thing was like The Hulk, made out of granite, and a single blow would turn him into a fine red paste.


    Running headlong across the uneven ground of the cave was much harder than picking his way through the darkness had been. Even though Simon was much faster than the golem, it gained a little more on him every time he tripped over some obstacle, and Simon only barely reached the wooden stairs before the golem reached him.


    There, at least, Simon was safe. The stairs were flimsy wooden planks that barely bore Simon¡¯s weight, and would never let the golem follow. Even so, he didn¡¯t delay. The last thing he wanted was for that nightmare to start throwing boulders or something at him.


    When Simon reached the top of the stairs, he opened the door without hesitation and slammed it behind him. It was just someone¡¯s kitchen, after all. Even if all the knives suddenly sprang to life and started attacking him at once, he¡¯d still have a better shot than going one on one with a stone giant like that.

 Ch. 33 - A Sinking Feeling

    Simon sat there on someone¡¯s table for several minutes before he noticed the screams. They were faint, from somewhere outside, but as soon as he caught his breath, they were unmistakable.


    He walked to the nearest window and opened the shutters to reveal a village on fire. He had no idea if this was the same village that the evil warlock he¡¯d just killed had been referring to, or if he was already on a new floor, but it didn¡¯t matter, because from here he could see the next gateway. That meant that none of this was his problem.


    This house had a commanding view of the village from the hill it was on, and from the window Simon could see a particularly strange doorway in one of his neighbor''s houses. Many of the buildings were on fire, but only one of them had snow blowing out its front door. It was close enough that Simon wouldn¡¯t even have to join the fighting against whatever was attacking the town.


    If it was the Warlock¡¯s doing, Simon would have said demons, but if this was the next level, his money was on orcs. It didn¡¯t matter either way, because there was little point in him sticking his neck out when the thing he was looking for was right here.


    ¡°I can¡¯t save everyone,¡± he reminded himself in attempt to overshadow the twinge of guilt he felt as he investigated the chilly doorway. ¡°And even if I did, they¡¯d just die again next time.¡±


    With that thought in mind, Simon walked through the door. He started shivering on the other side almost immediately, as he wondered what terrible monster he¡¯d have to fight here. An elemental? A yeti? It didn¡¯t matter much. If he didn¡¯t get through this place pretty quick, the cold would kill him just as easily.


    That looked to be what had happened to everyone else. Tucked amidst the snow drifts were a few bodies that had frozen solid without a mark on them. The buildings were in no better shape, and were thickly crusted in ice, even if nothing about them seemed to indicate they¡¯d been built for harsh winters. It seemed to be a quaint European village that had just frozen over one day, which was obviously ridiculous.


    After a few minutes of looking, though, his target became fairly obvious. In a sea of white, there was only one spot of color, in the temple at the end of the street. At first Simon thought that the baleful red color was a painting, but as he walked towards it, he watched it shift slowly from the orange red it started at to a slightly dimmer purple red.


    It was definitely a sunset, and it was almost certainly somewhere warmer, which meant that it was the place to be, whether it was the next floor or not. Simon continued to trudge down the street, and by the time he got to the temple the light was coming from it had practically faded to the dark indigo gray of twilight. Simon didn¡¯t think he was going that slow, but in the begining, the drifts had only been as high as his shins. By the time he reached the temple steps, they were all the way to his thighs, which made even a few steps fairly exhausting.


    Simon barely spared a glance at the people that had died frozen in place in prayer, clustered around the altar. If it hadn¡¯t been so freezing, he might have investigated it a bit more thoroughly, since there were a lot of them, but right now he couldn¡¯t be bothered.


    It wasn¡¯t until he¡¯d practically reached the door though that he realized there was a problem. The doorway had frozen over completely with translucent ice, so he could see the way forward, but he couldn¡¯t reach it. Simon tried to shoulder check it a couple of times, but it didn¡¯t budge. It had gotten thick enough that it was at least as strong as bank plexiglass, which meant that his sword would be almost as useless.


    Fortunately, he still had one weapon that should be reasonably effective on ice.


    Simon stopped for a second, stilling his mind. Unlike the last few times he¡¯d cast this spell, this time he really needed to do a good job. He was already feeling tired, and while he had trouble feeling his fingers, his toes were already completely numb. He needed to get through this level fast, or he¡¯d have to start all over, and he was not ready to find Freya dead on the floor again.


    So Simon imagined a blast of fire that would have been more appropriate to a comic book than a fantasy novel. He pictured a rippling flame thrower-like stream of pure incandescent fury rippling with heat even in the current cold, and when he was ready - when he could see the icy barrier melt in his mind''s eye, he finally intoned the words, ¡°G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? ??????M???????e???i???????r??????e??????n????.¡±


    The result was extreme. The gout of fire that Simon summoned from whatever dark pit it came from vomited into existence even as the words tore themselves out of Simon¡¯s throat. It sprayed against the ice with enough fury that for a moment the world was lost in steam. That was warm at least, and Simon was grateful for the reprieve. A few seconds later, when the steam finally died away, the ice was warped and obviously thinner, but still standing.


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    ¡°Fuck!¡± Simon yelled in frustration, not sure what to do. His vision had dimmed around the edges during the last spell, and he was fairly sure that he¡¯d pass out if he tried to cast it again.


    In frustration, he leaned against the barrier, banging his head against it lightly as he struggled to think of what he should do next. He didn¡¯t have to think long. After only a few seconds of leaning on it, he felt the whole thing begin to lean forward. It occurred to his frostbitten mind too slowly that while he hadn¡¯t melted through the barrier, he¡¯d melted enough around the edges that it was no longer attached to anything, and that it was nothing but a freestanding block of ice which he rode ungracefully to the ground.


    Simon shook his head to clear it of the cobwebs and slowly stood up. It was a chilly night, but compared to where he¡¯d just been, it was practically a sauna, and he basked in the relative warmth, even if he might have complained about it at any other time.


    It was only after he appreciated the fact that he wasn¡¯t going to freeze to death that Simon slowly looked around. He was in a town somewhat bigger than a village, or maybe the rural part of a small city. He wasn¡¯t sure. In either case, though, it had a ghetto, and he was in it.


    Maybe it was worse than that, he realized, as he looked around. Maybe it wasn¡¯t a ghetto. Maybe everyone was dead. The doors to several houses stood open, and many others had a red X painted across them.


    Simon walked over to the closest building with an open door, and knocked gently. ¡°Hello,¡± he called out softly into the darkness, but there was no response.


    If no one was actually here, then this would be a good place for Simon to take a little nap, he decided, as he slowly shut the door behind him.


    ¡°Hello,¡± he called out again, a little louder this time, ¡°Anyone here? Anyone?¡± He couldn¡¯t see many details, but the place looked pretty run down. There were stains on the walls and floors, and trash laying at random by the walls. The place stank too, but not like goblin bad or anything. He didn¡¯t care, though. He was only going to be here for a few hours. He could tolerate anything that long.


    After a quick search of the two room hovel, Simon quickly decided that no one would mind if he stayed here, so he put a chair against the door to give him warning for any uninvited guests, and passed out in the bed.


    He¡¯d intended only to sleep for a couple of hours, but it wasn¡¯t until the sun shining through a crack in the shutter lanced painfully into his eyes that he finally woke up.


    ¡°That fire spell really takes it out of you,¡± he said to himself, stretching. It was kind of stupid, though, he decided as he thought about it. Mana and stamina were supposed to be two entirely separate systems, but every time he cast one big spell, he felt completely worn out.


    When Simon sat up, he was only barely able to stifle a scream, and all his thoughts on system design disappeared. What he¡¯d taken to be a pile of trash or clothes against the far wall was a decaying human corpse. A shiver went through him as he realized he was almost certainly sleeping in a dead man¡¯s bed. It didn¡¯t get any better when he looked around and saw suspicious dark stains on the blankets he¡¯d just spent the night using.


    Simon jumped out of bed. He needed to leave now, before he could think about this anymore. He was definitely going to be sick if¡­


    There were two more corpses in the living room. One was a child, curled up by the hearth, and one was a man slumped over the far side of the table. As Simon bolted for the door, it dawned on him where he¡¯d seen X¡¯s like that on doors before. In a game he¡¯d played about the plague.


    It wasn¡¯t that thought that made him vomit, but it was what he thought about as he heaved his guts out in the street. He hadn¡¯t just been staying in the house of a dead man. He¡¯d been sleeping in the bed of a dead family¡­ while their corpses slowly moldered in the dark. It was vile, but for once he couldn¡¯t blame Helades.


    If she hadn¡¯t frozen him solid, he would have recognized the signs, of course, but he was the one that had slept in that bed without giving everything a thorough look. Simon spent the next few minutes trying to assure himself that even if he got infected by the worst plague imaginable, he¡¯d still leave it behind when some monster ripped him in half.


    ¡°Keep it together. It¡¯s gross, but it¡¯s not your biggest problem,¡± Simon told himself as he paced the streets. After half an hour of walking and seeing nothing made of stone or over two stories, he finally decided that he was walking through a town, or at least the remnants of one. The buildings might be standing, but everything that made it a living place was already dead.


    At first, he was merely searching for the next gate, but after a while he would have settled for finding anyone alive at all. There was no one, though. He hoped that eventually he would at least find the fantasy equivalent of plague doctors and corpse collectors, but the closest he got was a cart full of corpses near the end of a muddy street.


    Even the people who were supposed to be picking up the pieces had perished.


    Simon finally found his way to the temple. But it, too, was crowded with bodies. ¡°Jeez,¡± he said, trying to pick his way through without stepping on any of them, ¡°You know your fantasy world sucks when your divine magic can¡¯t even cure the plague. I mean, zombies I get, but the plague?¡±


    He finally found the way out of this awful place in the center shrine of the temple to the Goddess Ethryes, whoever that was. The rest of the room was a pristine white, except for the corpses on the floor, but the other door didn¡¯t lead to the rear of the building. Instead, it led to a swamp. Normally Simon would have hated the idea of tramping through the mud, but somehow today it seemed cleaner than the city of the dead he was in now, and so he stepped through without any hesitation.


    ¡°Well, I have no idea where I¡¯m going,¡± Simon said as he looked around the sandbar and took in the shallow muck in every direction. ¡°But I¡¯m getting there in a hurry.¡± He smiled. His streak was back up to at least four, and by his count he was on level 18 or 19, which made him feel like a badass.

 Ch. 34 - True Immortality

    He wasn¡¯t in the swamp long before they struck. Simon¡¯s only warning that he was under attack was the spear that missed his head by just two feet, embedding firmly in a large mangrove tree at head level not far from him.


    A lizardman, he thought excitedly as he raised his shield and unsheathed his sword to charge the creature. This was one of the enemies he¡¯d been waiting for.


    He regretted that decision when two more emerged from the stagnant water beside the first, but only a little. After some of the awful floors he¡¯d been through lately, it was nice to see something he could actually fight. What was he supposed to do against cold and disease? He was here to fight, and lizards were something that could fall beneath his blade.


    That was the idea, at least. He took the next spear in the shield. Apparently, these walking lizards were freakishly strong, though, because the blow ripped right through the wood in a way the skeleton knight¡¯s blows never had and gouged into the flesh of his arm deeply.


    Simon hissed in pain but didn¡¯t stop charging through the shallow water, and he beheaded the first one he reached in a vicious blow that he hoped would scare off its compatriots. It didn¡¯t, though. Instead, as Simon let his back swing carry him around, the one that still had its spear jabbed at him hard enough to pierce his leather armor and embed the tip several inches into his guts before he pulled back.


    A dozen deaths ago, that pain might have been enough to make Simon retreat, but now it just pissed him off.


    ¡°You think that¡¯s going to stop me?¡± he growled before he lunged at the thing. Its fellow warrior clawed at Simon, but those claws barely pierced his boiled leather. These things were certainly strong. They might even be dangerous in packs like this, but Simon was over a foot taller than them and had a huge reach advantage. He also had a little thing called steel on his side and quickly cut them to pieces in a series of frenzied strikes that left him winded when he was finally surrounded by the bodies of the dead.


    Only once the killing was done did Simon realize why they¡¯d attacked him: he practically stumbled onto their crude encampment without realizing it. As he walked towards it, he quickly noticed that the portal to the next floor was hanging in the doorway of the closest hut, showing him a picturesque view of an endless desert. As he approached it, he realized that this camp was certainly big enough that this wouldn¡¯t be their only hunting party.


    That meant that he needed to be fast, Simon decided as he shoved the cloth he used for wrapping his cheese into the wound to slow down the bleeding while he winced in pain. Healing could wait until he was on the next floor. Still, before he left this one, he decided to send them a message of his displeasure and began to wreck everything he could get his hands on between here and there.


    Simon didn¡¯t think that toppling the totem was required, but after the way, those scaly bastards had ambushed him, he thought it was the least they deserved. So, instead of going directly to the gate that looked like it led to a desert somewhere, he took the time to kick it over. Then just for good measure, he stomped on both the nests he found, crushing half a dozen eggs.


    That wouldn¡¯t stop him from having to fight the things again the next time he came through here, but it would make him feel better about how much those dull spears hurt.


    ¡°Seriously, wood? Even if I heal it, I¡¯m never getting all those fucking splinters out, you assholes,¡± he swore. ¡°Would it kill you to enter the Bronze Age?¡±


    As Simon limped toward the gate, he noticed that his bandage had darkened noticeably from the effort. He definitely needed to heal himself, but he didn¡¯t want to do it here. Just being in the swamp made him feel unclean. The desert might be awful in many ways, but at least it was relatively sterile.


    When Simon got through the door, he stopped and looked around. The place had a real Athens vibe to it, he decided. Everywhere he looked, he saw gleaming white pillars and stairs, as well as a few broken classical statues of warriors in various poses slowly being devoured by the desert sands. He had no idea where it was, but it looked like it had probably been a nice place once upon a time.


    There wasn¡¯t much here to protect him from the elements, but that was fine. Simon just looked for the most prominent building and started walking. All he needed was a little shade, and then he could cast a few spells and take a nap to take the edge off.


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    He was flying through the levels again, and the last thing he was going to do was let some dumb Stone Age lizard man be the death of him. The only lizard he was willing to die to was a dragon, or maybe that Wyvern if he ever decided to try fighting it. It might be fun when he learned how to use the longbow, Simon thought cheerfully, trying to distract him from the pain in his side.


    That was when he saw it. Another damn lizard crawling around the ruins not far from him.


    ¡°Lizards? Two levels in a row,¡± he whispered to himself quietly as the creature rounded the corner. ¡°Come on, Helades. Get creative already, is that so much to ask?¡±


    The thing was a squat, ugly thing that had more in common with a Komodo dragon than a crocodile. It was uglier than both of them put together, though. The thing had six short legs connected to its molted beige and gray body. To Simon, the creature didn¡¯t look like a threat. It looked like it was dying.


    It hissed at him as he pulled out his sword and advanced.


    ¡°Sorry, buddy, it¡¯s you or me,¡± Simon said as he advanced.


    He needed somewhere to rest and heal some of the wounds the lizardmen had given him. He couldn¡¯t do that with monsters wandering around these mysterious ruins. He never even got close to the thing.


    Halfway there, a third eye sprang open. It was deep purple and glowing, which was in stark contrast to the other two that looked so milky that he thought that perhaps it was blind. Simon didn¡¯t like the look of it and charged, but he was too slow. A second later, the glow rippled out, reaching him almost instantaneously. That¡¯s when his body stopped responding, and Simon started to struggle against the paralysis it inflicted on him.


    Seconds later, as the lizard got closer and closer, he began to panic. He was going to get eaten alive after all, but it wasn¡¯t the carrion crawler that would do it. It was going to be this fucking lizard! It was only then that he noticed a further problem. His shield arm was still in his line of sight as he stood there transfixed, but his hand looked strange.


    As soon as he focused on it, he understood why: the leather armor was still brown, and the shield still looked like it always did, but his hand had turned gray. Not gray like - he had some kind of disease, or he was starving, either. Like concrete gray. Like somehow, the stupid lizard had encased him in a layer of stone.


    While Simon struggled to break through this strange effect, the lizard continued to advance. Moments later, its mighty jaws latched onto his leg and chomped down. Simon heard the blow more than he felt it. He could feel a dull ache from whatever the creature had done to it, but he could hear the coating of stone shattering to get to the part that hurt.


    At least, that¡¯s what he¡¯d imagined had happened.


    Only when he toppled over into the sand did he realize his leg was missing somewhere below the knee. He knew that because he could see the lizard devouring it at leisure not far from him.


    That was the least disturbing part of the whole picture, though. That wasn¡¯t what made him scream inside his mind while he lay there in the sand. The leg that the lizard was gnawing on wasn¡¯t just covered in stone. It was stone. The fucking thing had petrified him, and he was still stuck inside his body.


    It was the zombie level all fucking over again, and there was literally nothing he could do.


    That meant that fucking lizard wasn¡¯t just any lizard, he realized. It was a basilisk. Suddenly everything clicked into place. The statues. The six legs. All of it. A damn mythological monster had just ended him with a glance? How was that fair? Getting killed and sent back to the cabin like that would have been bad enough, but being trapped inside your petrified body until it finished eating you? That was all kinds of screwed up. Could rock even really die, though, Simon wondered. The basilisk might be capable of crushing his body into little pebbles, but even if it did, would that be enough to get him off the hook and back to the cycle of reincarnation he¡¯d been stuck in for so long? Zombies died when they got shot in the head. How did statues die?


    For the better part of the next hour, Simon watched the creature gnaw on his limbs as it broke them off one at a time. It hurt, but it was a dull, muted ache. Something that he would have associated with a sprain or anesthesia, not with dismemberment. The real torture was understanding what was happening and knowing how long it might last.


    For a while, Simon was hopeful that the thing would rip his head off next and end his suffering, but it didn¡¯t. Eventually, it got bored with him and moved on somewhere out of sight, leaving him lying in the sand at the foot of the temple he¡¯d toppled from. From where Simon lay, he could only stare at the dune-covered horizon.


    Soon, boredom was a more irritating companion than the ache of his missing limbs. That gave him plenty of time to remember the other broken statues he¡¯d passed by. At the time, he thought they¡¯d been just another part of the ruined architecture. Only now could he see that they were other warriors just like him who¡¯d been caught unaware by that fucking lizard.


    Day turned into night, and still, Simon raged inside his skull. He tried to cast his healing spell on himself, but it did nothing because he couldn¡¯t speak the words. He tried to pray to Helades, but whether it was because she couldn¡¯t hear him or she enjoyed his suffering, she didn¡¯t respond. Nothing happened.


    All he could do was shift between rage and panic as he tried to think of some clever way out of this. He couldn¡¯t, though. Once again, he was trapped inside his head. All he could do was watch the sun¡¯s arc as it moved across the sky and the slow march of the dunes as the storms moved them every day while he slowly went mad inside his skull.


    At first, Simon tried to keep track of the number of sunrises he was forced to endure, but he lost count before he even reached thirty. Sometime after that, probably weeks later, his left eye became entirely covered by blowing sand that slowly gathered around him.


    Until now, he¡¯d been consumed with frustrated rage that he would have to look at such a tedious view for weeks or months. It was only when his right eye became partially obscured by the rising sand did he realize a far worse fate was possible: he could be buried alive so that the basilisk would never finish him. If that happened, he would have to endure an eternity alone in the dark.


    It was a chilling thought, but day by day, that seemed to be precisely what would happen¡­

 Ch. 35 - Intermezzo

    The darkness came and went for Simon, though it was impossible to judge exactly how long each cycle took. Still, each time his view of the desert was replaced by dirt and shadows, it was utterly terrifying.


    He would be plunged into absolute darkness for some indefinite period, with nothing but a dull ache for company. Then he would suddenly be allowed to see the wider world above the sand for days or weeks until the next storm rearranged things again.


    The first time he got his tedious desert view back after an eternity of darkness, he thanked a god he didn¡¯t even believe in for saving him. He would have wept tears of joy if he¡¯d been capable of such a thing.


    He couldn¡¯t, though.


    So, instead, he burned every one of the stars in the night sky into his mind, trying to make sure he never took them for granted again. But no matter how hard he tried to remember them and their exact positions, they faded after weeks or months of being alone in the dark.


    Sometimes things changed or stood out, but in the months and years that must have followed his petrification, boredom, and monotony were the rule, not the exception. Sometimes the basilisk would return and eat more of his body, filling Simon with hope.


    It never entirely managed to get to his head, though, and so in the end, he continued to exist as a disembodied mind as he watched the world go by. Twice he saw merchant caravans in the distance, though they gave this place a wide berth for obvious reasons. Once, he saw a group of warriors entering the ruins to slay the thing that had done this to him.


    However, Simon couldn¡¯t shout a warning or even see if they were successful. Because of the way he was pointing, he would live forever in mystery. Part of him hoped they had failed because he would only get out of this if the thing finally finished eating him. Most of him wanted vengeance more, though, and he hoped the monster was just as dead as its victims that were scattered around this city, getting its bones bleached by the hot desert sun for the rest of eternity.


    All the dark periods he was forced to endure seemed endless at the time, but eventually they ended. Then, one day Simon was submerged so far underneath the suffocating sand that he never reemerged. Intellectually he knew that a few weeks could feel like an eternity, but there was something altogether different about the way he felt after being lost in the void for months or years. His thought process started to dull as he could feel his mind slowly grinding to a halt.


    This was a new terror that felt more like the feeling of hunger he''d had when he was a zombie that obliterated his mind rather than the fear he¡¯d had for the darkness up until now, and he struggled against it as hard as he could. He spent that quiet eternity slowly revisiting every memory he could think of and exploring all of his hobbies anew in an effort to fend off that horrible mental death that he could feel lurking at the edges of his mind.


    He replayed all his favorite games, noting how unrealistic some of the sword animations were and adjusting them to better reflect the mechanics he was now much more aware of. He had his favorite streamers watch him while he played, critiquing his performance, and noting just how empty their jokes were compared to the traumatic, gruesome scene that the gameplay was slowly morphing into.


    He invented a third game to his favorite series, Sword of Glory. He based its level design off The Pit as he went deeper and deeper into the darkness. Of course - his version made sense and had stats and abilities, but other than that - it was an authentic recreation of his attempt to reach level 99 and finally put Helades in her place.


    Even though it was his game, in his head, he never succeeded in making it all the way to the bottom before losing interest. Whether it was because he couldn¡¯t imagine a well of darkness deep enough to descend into or because he simply couldn¡¯t picture himself winning, he couldn¡¯t say. Still, he never got past the giant fire-breathing dragon on level 43, no matter how many times he tried. So, he eventually moved on to other hobbies.


    He turned the cabin on the first level into an elaborate farm. Once the valley was totally developed and the goblins were slain, he got bored again. He had no idea how long he¡¯d been in the darkness now. It had been years, probably. It was difficult to say, but his mind felt like it was starting to short-circuit and at times language itself started to falter for him as his internal monologue ran out of things to say.


    Humans were social animals. They were damaged enough by solitary confinement or being shipwrecked on a desert island, and either of those would have seemed like a paradise compared to what he was enduring.


    As the feeling of exhaustion started to spread over his mind once more, he was reminded of his scoutmaster from back when he hadn¡¯t yet learned to hate people. ¡°If you¡¯re lost in the snow, and you go to sleep, then you¡¯ll never wake up again.¡±


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    Somehow, despite his failing imagination and fraying sanity, that memory came to him from the dimmest recesses of his mind just as he felt like everything was shutting down. It wasn¡¯t snowing, but it didn¡¯t matter. If he went to sleep now, he would never wake up again. He was sure of that now.


    That fear gave him a second wind, forcing him to redouble his efforts as he turned everything he had left to 11. There was still hope that the thing would find and kill him, wasn¡¯t there? That should be enough to save him, shouldn¡¯t it? Simon wasn¡¯t sure, but he pretended he was as he blasted his mind with commercials and anime fight sequences.


    Like an exhausted trucker trying to stay awake after the meth had run out, he forced himself to explore anything that might be interesting. TV commercials? Annoying jingles? Earworm songs that he hated but could never quite get out of his head? He examined them all, and only once that was done did he decide to rewatch the longest anime he could think of, one remembered scene at a time.


    It was filled with guest stars in the form of his favorite childhood cartoons and video game characters by the time it was done. That didn¡¯t matter, though. All that mattered was that he forced his spirit to keep functioning.


    He¡¯d been down here long enough that he was starting to believe that this was genuinely the underworld. Death legitimately lurked somewhere in the darkness just beyond his circle of consciousness, and it was only the light of imagination that kept it away.


    It was sometime during this endless standoff, without warning, that two hands reached down from somewhere above him, pulling him out of his eternal night and into the bright light of day. It was only when the person rotated the head that he could see that they were slender female hands, and a second later, he saw who they were attached to. Helades. It was an unthinkable twist and so unlikely that his first thought was he¡¯d finally lost his mind.


    It had to be real, though, because suddenly, he was seeing things again with a level of detail that he¡¯d almost forgotten existed. His imagination was only a pathetic shadow of this. She set his head on a low wall, then she sat down next to him at the edge of his field of vision so that he could enjoy the gorgeous view of the setting sun.


    It was the first one he¡¯d seen in a long time - maybe the first one he¡¯d ever really seen in his whole life. She was talking to him, but he couldn¡¯t hear her as he focused on the sunset. He¡¯d remembered red, yellow, and blue, but the thousand little shades of orange and purple between them blended together in a way that he would have sworn was impossible in his almost empty mind.


    With some effort, Simon tore his attention away from the majesty of nature and forced himself to focus only on what she had to say. That she¡¯d bothered to pull him up out of the darkness instead of leaving him there forever was a miracle, and he needed to know why she¡¯d done it.


    ¡°... it¡¯s like when I told you that only one soul in twenty makes it beyond the tenth level? Well, only one in a hundred makes it past level twenty, which is where you are now,¡± she said simply as she looked at the sunrise with him. Simon struggled to remember if he¡¯d known this was the twentieth level or if that was new information.


    ¡°Though you''ll have to finally kill the basilisk to succeed of course, I like to come through here every century or so and help some of the heroes that get stuck. Given how many of you that happens to, it seems only fair,¡± she sighed. ¡°Of course, given how long you¡¯ve been inside your own head now, there might not be anything in there worth saving, but we¡¯ll see, won¡¯t we?¡±


    He wanted to scream at her, to ask why she hadn¡¯t freed him before now or how it was she could sleep at night knowing she did this to people routinely. The silence of everything that was unsaid then was deafening, but the anger never left his mind. All he could do was stare at the slowly setting sun with her in silence.


    ¡°You probably think this is the worst thing that could happen to you, don¡¯t you?¡± she finally asked, breaking the silence. ¡°That an eternity in stone is the most terrible thing imaginable. I wish that was true, but even with the sort of quasi-immortality that this awful place grants, there are so many other worse things that could happen. If the shadows were to get you, or you were to make a misstep in the chapel¡­ There are so many horrible places between here and the mazes, but there¡¯s nothing for it.¡±


    She lapsed into silence again. ¡°Well, the less said about that, the better, I¡¯m afraid. The point is that this world was always a monstrosity waiting to happen, and many terrible things need to be resolved to fix that. You¡¯re starting to show just a hint of promise Simon. I mean it. Keep it up, and maybe you¡¯ll be able to do more than care about a kill streak or a speed run one day.¡±


    Simon desperately wanted to rebut any of those points or ask her what the hell she was talking about, but he was still trapped, screaming in his mind. Then suddenly, she was gone. He didn¡¯t know how long she¡¯d been missing, and he certainly hadn¡¯t seen her leave. What he did notice, though, was the shadow that was approaching from his right side.


    It was only now that both eyes were uncovered again that he could appreciate that his left eye still had perfectly clear vision. While at the same time, his right had begun to blur so severely that all the stars in the sky had little halos around them.


    He idly wondered how long it would take for wind and sand to erode his stone eye so that it would be noticeably pitted. Still, he wouldn¡¯t have done the math even if he could figure out how as he studied the movement that was getting closer and closer to him.


    Even though he could only make out the vaguest outline in the darkness, he knew exactly what it was. He¡¯d never be able to forget the basilisk.


    For a moment, he worried that Helades had put him up somewhere too high, just out of reach, but that proved to be misplaced as the thing came straight toward him and, in a moment of blessed relief, crushed his skull between its giant jaws, ending his pain.

 Ch. 36 - Life After Death After Death

    When Simon woke up in bed in the cabin as he¡¯d done two dozen times before, it was with relief that bordered on disbelief. He just lay there unmoving for several minutes as he stared at the ceiling. Finally, he worked up the courage to turn his head, which somehow managed to feel climactic. After that, he flexed his hands and wiggled his toes before he finally tried sitting up. He¡¯d feared that after the years or decades, he¡¯d been lying beneath the sand, he would have forgotten how to move, but that wasn¡¯t the case.


    The first thing he did was look in the mirror and consider asking it a question to see if he was still capable of speech. That was a silly fear, of course, and he shrugged it off with a forced laugh as he reached for the wine.


    ¡°Fuck that,¡± he muttered as he decided the last thing he wanted to see right now was his character sheet. His experience was probably at like minus a million right now, and honestly, he was better off not knowing. Besides - he was sure his skills had dropped since he hadn¡¯t used them in such a long time, and that would probably hurt more, given how much he¡¯d suffered to improve them.


    Instead, after he took a long drink, savoring the lost sensation of taste that had been restored before trying a bit of the food and reveling just as much in that. Intellectually he knew the bread and cheese he had was mediocre at best, but that didn¡¯t stop it from tasting amazing in the moment. ¡°Well, what now?¡± he asked himself once that was done.


    From here, he could see all the gear he usually took on his quests into The Pit, but that was the last thing he wanted to see right now. There was no way he was going down there right now. Honestly, he wasn¡¯t sure he was going to that deep ever again. As far as he was concerned, level twenty was a no-go zone. Level six might be, too, honestly.


    He wasn¡¯t sure he had it in him to be a zombie or statue again. Getting stabbed to death or dying of exposure was fine. Normal deaths could be painful or humbling, but the crazy ones where he died and kept living? He was completely over it.


    Simon looked around for literally anything he could do besides gearing up for a fight. He opened up the dresser and saw nothing of interest. Still, in the top drawer under a stranger¡¯s small clothes, he finally found something promising: a handful of fishhooks. At first, he didn¡¯t realize what they were because they were made of bone, but eventually, his brain decided that was the only thing they could be used for. He looked around the room for a fishing pole or at least a little string he could tie to the spear.


    Fishing would solve nothing, but that was precisely the point. Right now, the last thing Simon wanted to do was solve or fix anything. He just wanted to be for a while and remember what that felt like.


    Fishooks in hand, he went outside with nothing but his dagger, waterskin, and a little food. He didn¡¯t recall there being a shed or anything, but he hadn¡¯t exactly looked for one, so anything was possible. A quick look around showed him that there was no shed, but a few tool pegs were built into the back wall of the cabin.


    There he found a shovel and an axe meant for chopping down trees instead of the one inside that was obviously meant for chopping up monsters. Above those, though, just below the eaves where he almost missed it, was a simple wooden fly-fishing rod. It lacked a reel or any other fancy bits and pieces he was used to, but it had plenty of line and looked like it would do the job.


    While Simon walked to the part of the stream he thought was the best place to do this, he contemplated the pole. It looked so like his grandfather¡¯s that for a long time after he sat down in the shade by the water, all he could do was look at it and remember what the old man had tried to teach him before his PSP had monopolized his attention. His parents had used the man as a free babysitter for years. Still, Opa, as he preferred to be called by his beloved grandchildren, had always tried to get him to take an interest in being outside more.


    At the time, he figured it was pure perversity: the kids wanted to be inside watching TV, so why not take them fishing, hiking, camping, or literally anything but sitting on the couch. ¡°He was probably just trying to keep me from getting fat,¡± Simon said with a wry smile.


    His grandfather had been a strange guy in a lot of ways. As Simon turned away from the bittersweet remembrances about how old-fashioned the man was, he was as surprised as anyone when he looked down and found that he¡¯d tied the Palomar knot without even looking.


    That made Simon smile. ¡°How the hell did I manage that?¡± Simon asked himself as he baited it with a small piece of cheese before making a half ass cast into the water.


    After that, he just waited. After all - the fishing itself didn¡¯t really matter. It was just something to do. All that really mattered was sitting in the shade and stretching his limbs or turning his head whenever he wanted. It was something he had no idea he¡¯d ever appreciate, but after he¡¯d lost that ability for longer than he¡¯d been alive, he certainly did.


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    He spent the next hour or so just enjoying the breeze before a deeper question finally tugged at his psyche. How long had he lay there frozen? How old did that make him now, mentally speaking? Would that have made him as old as Opa? Older? Of course, he didn¡¯t know for sure, but it was an interesting question.


    ¡°How old was Opa anyway?¡± he asked himself, trying to do some mental math. If he was 30, then his dad was like 50, which would have made his grandfather like 70¡­


    ¡°No, that can¡¯t be right,¡± Simon corrected himself. ¡°He was seventy-something when he died, like what? Four years ago?¡± He started counting on his fingers when he suddenly felt a pull on the pole that made him lose his train of thought as he struggled to catch it before it was yanked out of his hand.


    There was no reel on this ancient fishing pole, so he had to pay out the line and then pull it back in over and over manually, letting the fish tire itself out until he could drag it out onto the land. That took several minutes, but when he finally had the foot-long fish flopping around on the grass, it felt like a more significant victory than just about any of the floors he¡¯d conquered to date. It was up there with the first time he¡¯d killed the skeleton knight, and he whooped in response.


    ¡°Take that!¡± he yelled triumphantly before he moved the flopping fish onto a large rock. He lacked a bucket, so he would hold off on gutting it just now, but once it suffocated, he could put it back in the water until it was time to gut it and take it home. Gutting some strange brown trout species wasn¡¯t exactly something he was looking forward to. Still, Opa had always made him do it himself, and he was sure he remembered how to do it at least, as well as how to tie those damn knots.


    Of course, remembering how hard he¡¯d always tried to get out of gutting fish as a child brought an unexpectedly awful memory to mind. When Opa had died, Simon had been so busy with his guild on the latest MMO that he¡¯d done everything he could to skip the funeral. It had felt shitty at the time, but in retrospect, he felt even worse about it now. Given the number of hours he¡¯d spent playing that stupid fishing minigame in World of Spellcraft, you¡¯d think it was some kind of homage to the old man. It wasn¡¯t, though. It was just him wasting time chatting with online friends and collecting achievements.


    That made him look at the fish differently when he finally put it back in the water and cast his line again. How many years he¡¯d wasted as a statue didn¡¯t matter nearly as much as how many years he¡¯d wasted doing stupid shit like that. Not all his time playing video games was a waste, of course. He¡¯d learned a lot about almost anything you could think of. Regardless, nothing he¡¯d learned on his PSP would help him nearly as much as the few lessons his grandfather had tried to teach him while Simon struggled hard to get out of them.


    He spent the rest of the day fishing and almost caught two more fish, but they both got away. That was fine, he told himself. How many fish could he really eat before they went bad anyway? It wasn¡¯t like he had any way to fry them. Even though he¡¯d only caught one of the slippery little bastards, this was still the most peace he¡¯d known since he decided to come to the pit.


    It was almost sunset when he finally decided to call it a day. He was enjoying the nostalgic moment as long as he could. With a grunt, he got up, dusted off his ass, and then after winding up his line around the pole, he picked up the fish and found a nice flat rock, making quick work of the thing. His dagger was shit for scaling, but no matter how many bones he was going to have to pick out of his dinner tonight, he was determined to enjoy it.


    ¡°Thanks, Opa,¡± he said quietly as he started toward the cabin in the darkening twilight.


    The fire would be out by now. He¡¯d forgotten about that, but he should be able to fix that with a half-assed fire spell if he was careful. It was fully dark by the time he could see the cabin by starlight. It was only when he was 50 yards away he watched a pair of goblins skulking out of the nearby forest.


    It wasn¡¯t hard to see him. The little bastards had a crude torch with them. That surprised Simon, but mostly because they didn¡¯t usually try to burn the house down around him until the third night. He crouched down on the path and watched them get closer and closer, but they didn¡¯t try to light the wood alight. Instead, they tested the closest shutters.


    That at least made sense to him. They weren¡¯t trying to burn the place down yet. These were the ones that had made footprints trying to break into his place in the past. ¡°That means they¡¯re going for the door,¡± he whispered to himself, rising to his feet as he advanced purposefully. The last thing he wanted were goblins in his house. They smelled like shit.


    Simon intercepted them just before they reached the door. The goblin without the torch noticed him and screeched in alarm just before he brought the fishing pole down on the little bastard¡¯s head, hard enough to crack it. The second goblin responded by waving the torch back and forth in his face like a weapon, but Simon wasn¡¯t scared by this. He dropped everything he¡¯d been holding, pulled his dagger, and waited for an opening.


    When the goblin swung too far to the left, Simon responded with a vicious kick that sent it flying against the cabin wall so hard that it bounced off it. He was on it before it could rise again, stabbing it until it stopped squirming. Once that was done, he did the same to the first one, making sure it was dead too. After that, he cleaned his knife on the long grass before finally standing again with their torch in hand.


    ¡°That¡¯s what you get,¡± he said, spitting as he looked at the two pathetic monsters.


    It was only when he fetched his fish and his pole that he noticed that it had cracked, just like the goblin¡¯s skull from his attack.


    ¡°Oh well,¡± he shrugged. ¡°No more fishing in this lifetime. It was fun while it lasted.¡±


    He tossed the pole aside and then went inside. A little fire and a lot of fish would go a long way to making his life a better place. Besides - trying to go fishing two days in a row would have been boring as hell, right?


    ¡°Tonight, I¡¯m going to eat, finish off that wine, and chill the hell out,¡± he told himself, ¡°and tomorrow, I¡¯m going to find a way out of this hellhole.¡± He¡¯d tried it before, of course - but he was a different person now.

 Ch. 37 - Achievement Unlocked

    Ultimately, his plan was a simple one: bring what he needed, kill a few goblins, and chill out for a few months or years. ¡°Lifetimes, maybe,¡± he mumbled as he laced up his armor again.


    In between inventing Saturday morning cartoons that should have existed but never did and trying to remember what color Freya¡¯s eyes were, he¡¯d given a lot of thought about the mistakes he¡¯d made in the dungeon, and the biggest ones was abandoning his search to find somewhere else to be rather than going ever deeper into the madness.


    After all, he knew for a fact that the zombie level was huge. He¡¯d wandered for dozens and dozens of miles in it. Surely other levels were like that too. So, now that he could summon fire on command, he was going to do what he should have done a long time ago. Grab some food from level one, some gold from level two, and use fire magic on level three to survive the freezing cold long enough to get down from those damn mountains and find some nice little medieval city to chill in for a while. He had no idea how long a pile of gold would keep him in women and wine, he thought with a shrug as he belted on his sword and scabbard, and wadded up his blankets into a satchel, but he was sure the food and the company would be better than here.


    Killing the rats was almost a nostalgic experience for Simon. ¡°Did you miss me,¡± he asked as he stomped the last one into oblivion before he picked through the potatoes and the turnips by torchlight. The root cellar was a dusty one, and much of the contents of both sacks were well on their way to spoiling, but he managed to find a few pounds of good vegetables and combined them into the sturdiest sack before he continued on his way to level two.


    In his past few attempts, he¡¯d gotten to the point where he could get through these traps in just a few minutes, but that was because he¡¯d memorized each trap so thoroughly that he could identify each of them by the small scuffs and scrapes from the previous times they¡¯d been triggered. He no longer trusted his memory, though. So, this time he took his time, slowly killing bats and searching hallways as he went. He still managed to avoid all of them, of course, and it took less than half an hour to scoop up a double handful of gold. In the end, all it cost him was a second torch, and that was immensely preferable to falling in that damn spike pit or getting crushed to death.


    After that, the goblins were easy. His scabbed-over knuckles throbbed as he ran the first one through. It wasn¡¯t a clean kill, and the little bastard had a chance to scream before he was silenced forever, which led to Simon being briefly pinned down by that damn archer until he took it out with the crossbow, but after that, it was a bloodbath in his favor, and though he was worn out by the time he¡¯d finished chopping goblins into pieces, it was a good sort of tired, and he was grateful for the workout.


    ¡°You guys have had years to get your act together,¡± he gasped for breath as he berated the corpse of his final opponent. ¡°But in all that time, you still haven¡¯t figured out how to kill me or how to put an extra guard back in your cave. Pathetic.¡±


    It was funny. Up until yesterday, he¡¯d hated the idea of exercise and avoided it whenever possible, but something about being turned into a statue for years and years changed that. He might still hate the getting out of breath or the sweating part when he overdid it, but for the movement itself, he was very grateful.


    Simon¡¯s gaze drifted over to the stone door that led to the skeleton crypt before he got up and started walking down through the snow. He felt a little bad that he couldn¡¯t go try that fight out on this run. It would be the best way to determine how rusty he¡¯d gotten, but there was no way back, so once he was there, he pretty much had to keep going until at least the zombie level, which wasn¡¯t happening. Not only did he have no wish to dredge up those memories again, but the next off-ramp from all the awful was what? The wyvern level?


    ¡°No thanks,¡± he chuckled to himself. ¡°I already have a mountain, and I don¡¯t need another.¡±


    The day passed slowly, and that night he was able to make himself a fire, but it was still harder than he would have liked. Even trying to think of literally anything else, an outrageous amount of fire belched out of him when he whispered, ¡°G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? ??????M???????e???i???????r??????e??????n????.¡± For a moment, he thought he was going to burn the tree he¡¯d planned on using for shelter down, but those flames quickly went out, and after a few minutes, he had a nice little campfire to try to roast a potato over.


    ¡°Honestly, I can¡¯t wait to get some other spell to handle this shit," he said, berating the fire even as it kept away the cold. ¡°Like - why can¡¯t we just have fire or even lesser fire. Hell - I¡¯d take spark right about now. Anything but pyroclastic conflagration of doom!¡±


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    He could feel the spell pulling a ton of mana from him, even on the near miscast he¡¯d tried to accomplish. He was both looking forward to and dreading what would happen the next time he cast the spell at full strength. He¡¯d made it detonate pretty strongly in the past, but it was clear that his time spent meditating while made of stone had turned his imagination or whatever it was that made these spells work even higher than it had been before.


    The next day he made good time and rewarded himself with frequent rest breaks, even as the sky began to darken and the wind began to pick up. The second night was fine, too, except for the blizzard, of course. He knew it was going to happen, though, so he built up quite a stash of firewood before the snow started to fall, which was just enough to get him through the night. After that, the snow was deeper, and travel was slower, but he didn¡¯t mind too much because now he could see the snow line. Another day, or maybe two, and he would be clear of this winter weather and thin air, and then he could make real progress.


    ¡°I might even be able to find something to hunt with my crossbow,¡± he said hopefully. It was just too wintery up here to find any small animals, and he understood that, but he was getting really sick of eating potatoes that were half burned and half raw, but that was all going to end soon, he was sure of it.


    The best part about his current view, of course, was that he could see a road, and where it crossed a river in the distance to his left, he could just barely make out what might be a town or a village. If there were people, then there had to be an inn, right? That was how fantasy worlds worked. So, in two or three days, he¡¯d be kicking his feet up by the fire and eating roast pork or rotisserie chicken while he listened to a bard sing about whatever it was bards sang about.


    It turned out he didn¡¯t have to wait three days to meet people in this world. He¡¯d barely had to wait two. Simon had been on the main road for less than an hour when he encountered bandits, of all things.


    ¡°Sorry, sir, but we¡¯re going to need for you to pay a toll for the upkeep of this fine road if you want to travel any closer to Wellingbrooke,¡± a thin-lipped man in patched green robes said, stepping out into the road. Simon took some small joy as he intuitively knew that he wasn¡¯t being spoken to in English; he might not know what the language was called, but that didn¡¯t stop him from knowing how to speak it.


    Simon hadn¡¯t noticed them a moment ago, but now that he knew what he was looking for, he could see three more in the brush ahead. Two had bows, but one just seemed to be watching. That probably meant that there were just as many as he couldn¡¯t see, which made this eight-on-one. He didn¡¯t like their attitude, but he liked those odds even less, so if they just wanted a coin or two, it was a simple enough decision.


    ¡°Sure,¡± he said, looking around at the ruts and the weeds. It was clear that this road had seen very little maintenance for a long time. ¡°And how much is it that the roads require today?¡±


    ¡°For a smart, well-armed man like you?¡± the bandit smiled, ¡°A mere half-shilling. Six pence will see you on your way with no harm done.¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± Simon said, setting down his sack and pulling out a gold coin as he realized the real problem here was that he had no small change. He made a mental note to fix that even as he stood up. ¡°I doubt you have any intention of making change, so why don¡¯t you take this and call it a tip.¡±


    He knew he¡¯d made a mistake as soon as he saw the greed in the other man¡¯s eyes. The bandit licked his lips before announcing unnecessarily loudly, ¡°What¡¯s that then? A gold sovereign? Maybe you should just hand over your whole purse so we can do the math for you.¡±


    Simon had naively hoped that paying too much would save him some trouble, but it turned out to have exactly the opposite effect. He saw a fourth man move in the bushes not far from the first three at the mention of gold, and he heard a bowstring tightening. Since he wasn¡¯t feeling like getting shot right now, he didn¡¯t refuse the demand. Instead, with a shrug, he reached forward, offering the sack to the other man, feigning fear even as his rage began to bubble beneath the surface.


    When Simon reached out to hand the other man the bag, he dropped it just before the bandit could grab it, and as the other man¡¯s gaze watched it fall to the path, he reached up and grabbed him by the hair, bringing his head down hard against the other man¡¯s forehead. He¡¯d been aiming for the bridge of his nose, but he hadn¡¯t exactly headbutted anyone before, so his aim was a little off. The bandit crumpled, but Simon held him up, intending to use him as a human shield for arrows that never came.


    ¡°Alright,¡± a voice called out from the bushes. ¡°It¡¯s clear that Luken underestimated you. If you¡¯ll put him down, we can¡ª¡±


    ¡°G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? ??????M???????e???i???????r??????e??????n????,¡± Simon spat, letting his incandescent rage out in the form of rippling white fire that expanded out from his fingertips like a wave, instantly setting the whole section of forest that the men were hiding in on fire.


    There were screams after that, but Simon ignored them. Instead, he dropped his hostage to the ground, and, ignoring the wave of exhaustion that passed through him from the spell, he drew his sword and moved to the nearest tree, using it for cover while he looked for any survivors.

 Ch. 38 - A Room of One’s Own

    Simon peered around his tree looking for anyone else that might be trying to murder him. Over the sounds of screaming and burning it was hard to make much out, but after half a minute he decided the coast was clear. That decision almost cost him a death as an arrow embedded in the tree trunk inches from his eye.


    Though he couldn¡¯t see who it was that tried to shoot him, he ran in the direction that the arrow came from which was the next best thing. He groped for his shield, trying to get it up in case there was another arrow, but continuing to charge heedlessly, he body checked his would be assassin in the underbrush, sending them both sprawling.


    The bandit was on his feet before Simon, and pulled a dagger from a boot, but he held back, and Simon really understood why after he rose to his feet, towering over him. His attacker was little more than a malnourished child. The feral little thing practically snarled at him as it slashed the air with the dagger to keep him back.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you just run for your life you little bastard,¡± Simon growled, pretending to swing his sword hard enough to make his opponent flinch and jump back. ¡°The last thing I want is to add killing kids to my list of achievements.¡± The bandit listened to him suspiciously, like a trick was being played on him, and then, after a couple of cautious steps backwards he turned and ran off into the forest, leaving Simon to walk back to the road without so much as the need to look over his shoulder.


    Why should he after all. He¡¯d won, big time. However hard some of the monsters Helades had him face, underfed country bandits were no match for a high end, top 1% adventurer like him. ¡°Well Luken,¡± Simon asked, nudging the prone man with his boot. Rather than lash out at him as Simon had expected, the bandit instead cringed fearfully and shrank from his touch.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, master mage sir, I didn¡¯t realize¡­ we didn¡¯t realize that you could¡ª¡± the man babbled before Simon interrupted him.


    ¡°That I could kick your ass up and down the street?¡± Simon gloated, still holding his sword in a threatening way that didn¡¯t quite promise the other man death.


    The bandit¡¯s eyes had a hard time leaving it though, and he swallowed hard before he managed to say, ¡°quite right my lord, quite right. If you could see it in your heart to¡ª¡±


    ¡°Go on, get out of here,¡± Simon said waving the man away dismissively as he sheathed his sword. ¡°If I ever see you again I¡¯ll gut you.¡±


    ¡°Yes my lord, sir, thank you sir!¡± Luken said scampering backwards and only rising once he was a safe distance away. He took off running the same way Simon was planning on going, which was awkward because he might actually see him again, but that was a problem he could deal with later if he had to.


    With the immediate danger gone, Simon walked over to the smoldering corpses and after a moment of thought he put each of the ones that was still moving out of their misery with a single thrust of his sword. He didn¡¯t enjoy killing people that weren¡¯t trying to kill part of him of course, but after everything he¡¯d been through he knew that he would much rather hit the reset button than continue to lie there suffering. Once that was done he briefly considered searching their corpses for anything useful, but that was too disgusting, so he left them to rot and started walking down the road in search of civilization.


    A day and a night later he finally found the small village he was searching for. Except for the smell, and how dirty the people were it was pretty much exactly what he¡¯d been expecting. He thought about asking the first person he could find where there was an inn, but feeling shy, he just kept walking until he saw a sign in the shape of a mug of beer above the door of a large building. Obviously there wasn¡¯t a lot of writing happening in this place, so it could hardly be that complicated, he told himself as he walked inside.


    Of course things quickly got complicated when he walked inside and the bar keep asked him ¡°Well, what can I get you?¡± She looked at him like he had shit on his shoes and had tracked it inside her establishment, but once he started to explain the sob story he¡¯d rehearsed on the way here, she quickly relented.


    The bandits had attacked him as soon as they thought he was rich after all, so since he hadn¡¯t brought any coins that weren¡¯t gold, when he presented it to her he made a big deal about how it was his only coin left. ¡°I kept it in my boot you see - just in case, but the bandits to the east robbed me blind and took damn near everything else I had.¡±


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    The look she gave him wasn¡¯t exactly sympathetic, but when he was finally done, she said ¡°Well, you can stay here for a night or two until you continue on to Liepzen or Hurag or wherever you¡¯re going, but this ain''t no charity operation. It¡¯s still going to cost, you understand?¡±


    He smiled at that, and quickly listed all the things he wanted: a room for three nights to recover from his harrowing ordeal, meals for the days he was here, and a drink to soften the harsh blow that life had dealt him. She nodded, and then looking at his coin muttered, ¡°damn foreign money,¡± before biting it to make sure it was real. In the end she gave him a handful of coppers and silvers and had the cute bar maid direct him to his room after telling him what time they started serving dinner.


    He watched the young woman¡¯s ass as he walked up the stairs, but the unavoidable comparison to Freya¡¯s kept him from ogling it, and as soon as he reached the small room, she was gone with little more than a quick curtsy.


    The room itself was underwhelming, but no matter how dingy or claustrophobic it was, it was somewhere new and safe, and in his life those were the only two things that really mattered to him anymore. Maybe once he got used to walking and talking and eating, he could worry about finding somewhere nicer to stay. For now, he was just content to lay on his lumpy mattress, stare up at the ceiling, and listen to the noises coming from the common room below. Simon was sure that the novelty would wear off eventually of course, but that was tomorrow or the next day.


    When he finally started to get bored, he examined the coins she¡¯d given him. Counting the silver coins, he thought that the woman might have given him too much change, but when he counted the copper he realized the problem. She¡¯d given him 11 small copper coins and 9 slightly larger silver ones, which was evidence that she couldn¡¯t count, or that base-10 wasn¡¯t exactly something they valued in their monetary system. Simon had played games like that before, and he hated them. It was so much more difficult to do the math in his head if it was twenty coppers to the silver, but a platinum coin was only worth five gold ones. He didn¡¯t see why everyone couldn¡¯t just standardize that sort of thing, but games had to have their little quirks, right?


    As Simon put away the coins he reminded himself ¡°This isn¡¯t a game - this is some history garbage which honestly makes the whole thing worse, but you don¡¯t need to worry about that right now.¡± It made the whole thing even dumber, of course, since there was no way he was going to be able to figure out the logic behind that one, but he wasn¡¯t about to ask Heledes to help him with history lessons the same way she¡¯d helped him with language. He shuddered at the thought, and then. Shaking his head, he got up and hid his real wealth under the bed, before spreading the rest of his belongings around to distract any would be thief. Then he went downstairs to get a bite before it got too late.


    He smelled the scent of roasting meat and savory spices as soon as he left his room. They only intensified, along with the noise as he made he way down to the common room where he was served boiled potatoes, some sort of minced bread dumplings, and a thick cut of pork loin drenched in a brown gravy. Compared to what Simon had subsisted on up until now in The Pit, this was a feast, and even if it wasn¡¯t something he would have usually ordered, he ate it with gusto. The proprietor gave him evil looks from time to time, like he was about to dine and dash at any moment, but everyone else was amiable enough.


    After his second pint of dark brown ale Simon regaled his fellow drinkers with a story about how he had once very bravely run from wyvern after accidentally stumbling across her nest, and was met with gales of laughter. During those stories, and later attempts to guess where Simon was from, he learned much about the world, but other than the fact that the nearest large city was Liepzen, he forgot almost all of it, because he was working on his fourth pint.


    By then he wasn¡¯t good for much besides laughing at bad jokes and losing money at dice as he got to know the locals. It was a new sensation for him since he almost always won at games, of course, but he didn¡¯t mind too much since it mostly seemed to come down to luck and bluffing. If it were mostly based on skill he had no doubt he would have won. Not that he needed to. Simon didn¡¯t need the money, so there was no need to clean out peasants for coppers. After all, Thomen was just a bargeman, and Yars was a woodsman, and the sovereign that he¡¯d spent earlier was as much as both of them made in a year. Combined.


    By the end of the night it was just him and five or six other drunks singing songs. He didn¡¯t know most of their names, and he had no idea what the words of the songs were, but he did his best. No one seemed to mind since he¡¯d bought the last round of the night, spending the last of his copper pence. He figured he¡¯d probably do pretty much the same thing tomorrow night before he got on the road the following day to go somewhere bigger and better than this little berg. He had the money after all, and he was sure he could find something nicer there.


    That was Simon¡¯s last thought as he went to sleep with a drunken smile on his face. His sleep was restful and uneventful, and in the morning he stretched when the first rays of the sun shot through the shutters and forced him from his slumber. He turned and covered his head with the pillow, trying to sleep a little longer to avoid the hangover he was sure he¡¯d have after last night. But curiously, as his brain began to wake up more and more he realized that there was no hangover.


    Simon opened his eyes and sat up, tying to figure out what was wrong, because something was definitely off. It took a second, but when his gaze finally met his own eyes in the mirror across from him, he finally realized the truth.


    ¡°Mother fucker,¡± he exclaimed in disappointed frustration. Sometime last night while he¡¯d been asleep he¡¯d died and had restarted back in the damn cabin.

 Ch. 39 - One More Time

    He could still taste the stew on his tongue as he made his usual breakfast of bread and cheese. That made Simon clench his fist in frustration as he tried to figure out what could have possibly happened. Sure - the proprietor hadn¡¯t seemed to care for him, but she certainly didn¡¯t poison him. After all - he¡¯d had the same food and drink as Thomen and Yars had. Everyone else had been really great too. He doubted that they¡¯d decided he was rich enough to kill in the middle of the night. They didn¡¯t seem like the type, which meant that he was missing something.


    ¡°No,¡± he told himself. ¡°You¡¯re overcomplicating this, Simon. There are really only two options here. Either you died last night, or you didn¡¯t. If you died, then it was probably that bandit motherfucker following you, and if you didn¡¯t, then there¡¯s a real possibility of some kind of glitch. Some rubber banding effect.¡±


    He knew this wasn¡¯t a game, of course, but the metaphor still worked. Who was to say that if he got far enough off track from what he needed to do, the magic at work here didn¡¯t just put him back to start all over again? As a theory, it was worth exploring, but the only way to do that would be to walk all the way down that damn mountain again.


    Simon sighed loudly at the thought. Just because he¡¯d been able to survive a blizzard and hike for miles didn¡¯t mean he wanted to do it over and over again. It would be worth it if he could spend a month or a year in civilization but for a single night?


    ¡°Kind of a pain in the ass,¡± he told himself as he lay back on his bed and tried to brainstorm something else that might be a better use of his time. All of his other ideas eventually led through the zombies, though, and he had zero wish to go there yet. No matter what he found, he was sure it was going to hurt. It always did.


    So, after wasting half an hour, he finally grudgingly got ready and started the whole ordeal all over again. This time the only real change he made was to gather a couple smaller coins from the hidden treasure hoard on level two just in case he ran into someone that couldn¡¯t make change for a whole gold piece. He didn¡¯t know how many of one kind of coin exchanged for how many of another, of course, and the likelihood of being cheated was still high, but he could figure all that out later.


    The trip through the snow was uneventful, and though he was still annoyed that he had to light his campfires with a flamethrower, he made it work. Once, on the second day, he smelled the smoke of someone else¡¯s campfire, which told him someone else was out here, but he didn¡¯t investigate.


    ¡°It¡¯s probably just more bandits,¡± he told himself.


    This time when Simon finally reached that main road, he thought about trying the other direction, but he was hungry, and he¡¯d already spent the last three days wandering around the wilderness, so he wasn¡¯t eager to spend a fourth when he knew where a perfectly lovely inn was. Instead, he strolled down the road like he didn¡¯t have a care in the world, and though ambushing the ambushers would have been funny, he just let things play out as they had the first time, just to see what would happen.


    ¡°Sorry, sir, but we¡¯re going to need for you to pay a toll for the upkeep of this fine road if you want to travel any closer to Wellingbrooke,¡± Luken said, stepping out into the road in just the same way as he had the last time.


    ¡°See, if you had just taken my money last time and let me by, you would never have had to see me again,¡± Simon said with a smile. ¡°And if I did happen to come back through, you could have had a repeat customer, but you went and got greedy!¡±


    That didn¡¯t stop him from walking forward, though, and though Luken put his hands on the hilt of his sword, he didn¡¯t draw it because the only thing Simon had in his hands was a large sack.


    ¡°Excuse me, sir,¡± Luken said, trying and failing to hide his confusion. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever had the pleasure, however, a mere six pence will see you on your way with no harm done.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°You said that last time too. This time though, I brought a little change.¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t pull silver out of his bag or even copper. Instead, he pulled out eight inches of steel in the form of his dagger and stabbed the other man in the heart before his sword was halfway out of his sheath.


    Luken started to crumple, but Simon grabbed him by the collar and started to walk to the side of the road, using him as a body shield. ¡°Next time, maybe just let me pass, and I won¡¯t have to kill you every single time I walk this path.¡±


    ¡°But I¡­¡± A volley of arrows flew at Simon just as Luken gasped his final words. One went wide, just missing Simon¡¯s head, but three embedded into the man he was using as a shield.


    Simon winced as he saw the pain play across the other man¡¯s face before the light left the bandit¡¯s eyes. He knew exactly what that felt like, and he felt bad for the guy. At least it was a clean death, though. Simon tried hard to make sure that was what people got whenever he could, but when it came to a forest full of archers, sometimes that couldn¡¯t be helped.


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    He waited for a lull in the action, then he leaned around to one side of the trunk and yelled ¡°G????????????r???????v?????u?????u????????? ???????M???????e???i???????r??????¨¨?????n????,¡± as he channeled all his rage and anger into a gout of flame that eradicated the vegetation between him and the bandits that were trying to kill him. The energy surged through him so hard that it grayed the edges of his vision for a moment, and when the fiery streamers subsided, he slowly pulled out and loaded his crossbow to make sure there weren¡¯t survivors.


    He knew, of course, that the kid he¡¯d spared last time was still out there somewhere. If he¡¯d been on the other side of the road last time, he probably was this time too, which meant that he might have to take the feral bastard down. Secretly, Simon hoped that the little brat had run off because the last thing he wanted to do was shoot a starving kid in the back, even if that decision might come back to haunt him.


    No arrows came at him this time, so Simon finished off his fallen foes, then helped himself to the coins in Luken¡¯s pockets as the only restitution the man could offer for wasting his time before he continued on his way.


    The rest of the journey was utterly uneventful, and this time when Simon reached the village of Wellingbrooke, he went straight for the inn and paid for a real meal and a drink in his stolen silver. The proprietor still gave him the stink eye as she made change, but right now, Simon just didn¡¯t care. He wanted something warm and filling. It turned out that dinner wasn¡¯t for hours yet, though, so she brought him cold cuts smeared with stone ground mustard on some bread that wasn¡¯t quite stale, but it would be in a few more hours. While it wasn¡¯t as good as the dinner he¡¯d eaten here last time, just being able to taste something as simple as mustard again was amazing, so he made do.


    Simon whiled away the rest of the day much the same as he¡¯d done the last time. This time the only difference was that he stretched his legs exploring the hamlet before dinner rather than sitting in his room, and after dinner, he did a bit less drinking and a little more winning. Surprisingly Yars turned out to be just as good a loser as he was a winner, which Simon thought was a rare trait. Rather than bluster when he¡¯d turned into the night¡¯s biggest loser, he just patted Simon on the back and said, ¡°Now, you be sure to stick around for a few days and give me a chance to win all that back!¡±


    That was enough to make Simon smile as he wandered up to his room and made himself comfortable on the lumpy mattress. Last time he fell asleep like a rock, but this time he found himself laying there, staring up at the ceiling for the better part of an hour once he got tired of tossing and turning as he worried as soon as he closed his eyes his small victory was going to be snatched from his hands and he was going to be put back in that awful little cabin again. He knew that Helades didn¡¯t want him to be happy, of course. He¡¯d known that from pretty much the first minute he¡¯d met her, but to think that she would just break her own game or punishment incarnation or whatever and snatch him back to the pit just because he¡¯d figured a clever way out of her clutches, it was just¡­


    Simon¡¯s endless internal monologue came to a screeching halt when he heard the door swing open with only the faintest scraping sound as it brushed against one of his boots. The room was dark, but not entirely pitch black, so he could see a short shape as what he could only imagine that brat he¡¯d spared earlier snuck into his room to finish him off.


    His muscles tensed as he lay there, waiting to pounce, and it was only when he saw the gleam of light on the edge of the blade that he reached up and grabbed the slender wrists of the wielder, yanking it away from them in a brief struggle, and sending them backwards hard enough into the shutters to knock them open.


    Simon was surprised by two things then. The first was that he was holding a meat cleaver, not the dagger he¡¯d expected, and the second was that the person that had been about to strike him dead wasn¡¯t the young boy but the innkeeper herself.


    ¡°Just what in the fuck is going on,¡± Simon spat as he gestured at her with her own weapon, making her shrink away from the reprisal she feared.


    ¡°I just¡­ you were¡­¡± The woman was older than him, but not by much, and all the poison that had been in her gaze until now had been replaced with fear.


    ¡°Out with it, woman,¡± Simon yelled, not caring who heard. ¡°Choosing to keep your reasons for assassinating me a secret will cost you your life!¡±


    ¡°I-I would never harm a fly,¡± she whimpered nonsensically, ¡°But th-theres a darkness in you. Anyone who trucks with evil so much has to¡ª¡±


    ¡°Evil?¡± he asked, utterly baffled by the accusation. ¡°I¡¯m the damn hero; what are you talking about. There¡¯s no evil here except a crazy woman with a meat cleaver!¡± To emphasize his point, Simon buried the weapon into the wood of the windowsill.


    ¡°The taint of your spirit does not lie!¡± she hissed, and then seeing him weaponless, she chose that moment to try to dart past him and down the hall.


    Simon was baffled by her words and didn¡¯t try to stop her. He just stood there stunned for almost a minute as his intoxicated mind tried to work through everything that had just happened. It was only then that he realized her next move might be to rally the town watch or a few brave adventurers to strike him down. It was that thought that finally spurred him to action, and he began to pack.


    He supposed that it was bad news that people could see the ¡¯taint of his spirit,¡¯ whatever that was supposed to mean, but as he quickly packed his things, he decided that, ultimately, this was good news. After all, the crazy bitch that had sent him back to his own private hell hadn¡¯t been Helades. It had only been some innkeeper with a magic power he just hadn¡¯t seen before.


    He could work with that, even if he wasn¡¯t sure if she was seeing the magic he¡¯d used, his connection to the pit or something deeper like his massive experience point debt, but either way, it was useful information and something to watch out for.

 Ch. 40 - A New City

    Simon woke the ferryman and paid the drunk a full silver to take him across the river before sunrise. Judging from the way the man reacted, immediately switching from confused anger to helpful friendliness as he judged the coin, Simon was sure that he¡¯d over paid, but he didn¡¯t care. He just wanted to outrun whatever the consequences of sparing that woman¡¯s life were going to be.


    Soon enough they were on the water and being poled across at a speed that was barely fast enough to fight the current while the ferryman yammered on and on.


    ¡°In a hurry eh? Where are you off to then?¡± he asked, slurring only slightly. ¡°Liepzen or Hurag?¡±


    ¡°Which one¡¯s closer?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡°Well Liepzen is the bigger city, so it has better roads, if you head straight east,¡± the ferryman opined, ¡°but if you bear south along the river you¡¯ll eventually get to Hurag, So I¡¯d say it¡¯s about the same.¡±


    ¡°I guess I¡¯ll just flip a coin then,¡± Simon answered. ¡°One is just as good as the other.¡±


    ¡°Ah,¡± the ferryman gave him a knowing nod. ¡°So this is the kind of hurry where you¡¯re eager to be away from somewhere, not to somewhere. I see. Which is it? The law or the ladies?¡±


    Simon just looked at him blankly at that, making the man laugh so loudly that he¡¯d probably woken up people in town. ¡°I know, I know, none of my business. I¡¯ll just shut up now before I say something we both regret.¡±


    He didn¡¯t of course. Whether because of the beer he reeked of or because of his nature the man prattled on and on the whole ten-minute trip, but he did learn a few things worth knowing without coming off as too much of an outsider. They were apparently in some place called the Kingdom of Brin, and that things had been going well for as long as anyone could remember, but that the king was sick, and the ferryman worried that things might not be lasting much longer.


    He tuned most of the rest of the details out as he realized he was obviously getting closer to some quest. The man might as well have a golden exclamation mark over his head telling him where to go which annoyed Simon for reasons he didn¡¯t fully understand.


    Once on the other bank, Simon thanked the man curtly and left while he was still talking about whatever sprang to his mind and laughing at his own jokes.


    At the first fork in the road Simon decided to go south. A sick king in a big city just seemed a little much for him, and he wasn¡¯t looking for the spotlight just yet. He spent much of the day walking alone, though he did pass by a few merchants that eyed him suspiciously like he was some kind of highwayman.


    That night his instincts were proven correct as he listened to some men chatting between drinks at the inn he stopped for the night at. It seemed that lots of mercenaries were traveling north and expecting work to be coming sooner rather than later. ¡°The way I hear it, the King¡¯s son is paying more, but only because the King''s brother has far more men,¡± a swarthy man with an axe told the man sitting across the trestle table from him between mouthfuls of roast chicken.


    ¡°So what you¡¯re saying is I can be a well paid dead man, or I can get just enough coins to keep me from starving to death? Sounds like business as usual to me,¡± a red haired man in chain mail answered.


    Everyone at the table laughed at that, and Simon joined them even if he didn¡¯t think it was funny. He just wanted to stay out of it. He¡¯d done more dying than everyone else in the room combined, and he was certain that coin wasn¡¯t a good enough reason to take sides in a brewing civil war.


    ¡°What about you,¡± the burly man next to Simon asked while he was trying hard to mind his own business.


    ¡°Me?¡± Simon asked. ¡°I¡¯m going to sit this one out I think. I¡¯m going to¡­ visit family in Hurag.¡±


    ¡°Well, I think they¡¯ll be safe there,¡± the man nodded, ¡°But it¡¯s good that you¡¯ll be there for them just in case.¡±


    It struck Simon as more than a little odd that the common room was packed with mercenaries that had already decided who they were going to serve, but they had no problem eating with men they might be killing in a week or a month. The inn was all out of rooms, but after he¡¯d finished eating and shared a couple drinks with the crowd he found himself a place in the hay loft above the stables and called it a night before things got too rowdy.


    It took Simon two more nights to get to the outskirts of Hurag. It might count as a city in this world, but Simon would have been surprised if it had more than 5,000 people in it. The city gates were merely a gate at the end of the bridge that formed the northern entrance to the place, but there were no city walls attached to it. Instead, it was a few acres of land sheltered between two rivers, and a squat ugly castle on a hill lording over the whole place on a low rise.


    The southern part of the city that wasn¡¯t sheltered by the rivers seemed to have a city wall of some sort, but mostly the place struck him as having more in common with a squatter''s camp or a shanty town than the sort of fantasy city he was used to seeing in his games and movies. The homes were pressed close together to use every scrap of space, and the streets reeked of sewage. Unlike the charming little villages he¡¯d seen along the way, this definitely wasn¡¯t a place that Simon planned to stay long.


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    Still - it was the first time he¡¯d seen more than fifty people at once since he¡¯d come to the Pit, so he told himself he would stay the night at least, just for the novelty of it. After a little searching, Simon found a place that was willing to let him stay the night near the river, where the smell wasn¡¯t quite so bad, and then he spent the rest of the day looking around. Eventually, he found the market, and after haggling with a merchant decided to make his first purchases of this miserable life, so he could finally be outfitted as a proper adventurer.


    He purchased a fine leather backpack because he was tired of carrying a sack everywhere he went. Then, once he has somewhere to put his things, he also bought a bedroll, a second water skin to use for beer, a coin purse, two shirts that mostly fit, and a tinderbox and flint which he couldn¡¯t wait to learn how to use so that he could stop lighting campfires with a flamethrower.


    That night he agonized over whether he should stay another few days, so he could have someone let out his leathers a little, so they would finally fit right, but the food wasn¡¯t so great, and that night someone tried to break into his room. The sneak thief had either been trying to get to know him better or rob him blind, but his paranoia about what had happened a few days ago was still fresh, and the sound of him unsheathing his sword was enough to send the man running for his life down the stairs.


    . . .


    Simon slowly worked his way south through several villages before he found the little town of Slany, just big enough for a few amenities, an inn, and a local Lord. Simon only found out that last detail on the third day when he was invited to the Lord¡¯s manor for dinner the following evening, which he accepted, but only because he feared the alternative.


    The next evening he was announced as Simon of Schwarzenbruck because he could think of no other city name that sounded even vaguely appropriate, before he was introduced to Baron Corwin, his wife Elanna, and his three sons: Gregor the third, Harver, and Scott.


    Simon was on his best behavior and stuck to the character he¡¯d spent last night inventing for himself. He was pretending to be a traveling mercenary and scholar, and figured that between his ability to read and write and his encyclopedic knowledge of monsters would make it an easy role to pull off.


    And it did, for a while. Simon managed to create a little restrained laughter when he told them about his only encounter with a wyvern. He even got the hint reasonably quickly that he shouldn¡¯t talk about things like the carrion crawler with a lady present, but he was taken completely off guard, when lord Corwin asked, ¡°It¡¯s interesting that you say you¡¯re from Schwarzenbruck, because I have an aunt from near there, and her accent is completely different from yours.¡±


    For a moment Simon thought they were going to see through his flimsy disguise and summon the guards to drag him to the dungeons even though he was fairly sure there was nothing beneath this manor more threatening than a wine cellar. Then as he could feel the beads of sweat starting to form on his forehead he managed to choke out, ¡°Well - I¡¯ve been traveling most of my life.¡±


    Just like that, a gentle murmur of laughter passed through the room, and the Lord¡¯s eldest said, ¡°Quite so,¡± and all the tension vanished just in time for the soup course, giving him ample time to think about what he¡¯d just learned. Where he was - the people knew of Schwarzenbruck. Somehow that didn¡¯t feel like a very common name to Simon, so it was entirely possible that it was the same Schwarzenbruck, though he didn¡¯t see how, since it was on a completely different floor of the dungeon. Did things loop back around like that?


    After the squash soup came a white wine and an herb braised lamb. Though it wasn¡¯t something Simon ever saw himself trying, he was surprised at how good both of them were, though he chalked that up to living on a steady diet of bread and cheese for the last eternity.


    After that the conversation turned to the King''s health, and the baron hoped he lived another hundred years, and then problems with the region and in particular the silver mines that was the Baron¡¯s main source of income.


    ¡°We can talk about that later though,¡± he cautioned his son who had brought it up. ¡°That¡¯s not fit dinner conversation and must wait until after dessert.¡±


    The aforementioned dessert turned out to be a cake that was too dry, and not nearly sweet enough for Simon¡¯s tastes, with layers of thin pastry alternating between layers of jam, but he ate it just the same, and would have seconds if they¡¯d been offered.


    It was only once all that was done that he, the lord, and his eldest son retreated to the study for snuff and brandy. Simon declined the snuff, but took a tumbler full of the golden liquid. He drank it while the Lord finally took the time to explain what the real problem was, and why he¡¯d invited Simon in the first place.


    ¡°It¡¯s goblins,¡± Baron Corwin said, ¡°I¡¯m fairly certain, even if no one has yet produced a corpse of the missing or the things making my workers go missing. This wouldn¡¯t be the first time they¡¯ve been found in the silver mine, but with the¡­ shall we say, troubles, in the capital, it would seem that you are the only mercenary in the area I can ask to handle this little problem for me. Time is money after all, and I¡¯ve had the Pit shut down for a week now.¡±


    The choice of words almost made Simon spit out his drink, but he played it cool. ¡°I mean, yeah, I could probably handle that for you, but what¡¯s in it for me?¡± Simon asked. He wasn¡¯t afraid of facing down a few goblins, but that was what a mercenary was supposed to ask, wasn¡¯t it?


    ¡°I¡¯m prepared to offer you half a shilling per ear which is the going rate I believe, I¡¯d be willing to offer a little bonus on top of that though, If you could take young Gregor here, keep him safe, and make sure he gets the lion''s share of the credit, though.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t care who gets the credit,¡± Simon answered, ¡°And I don¡¯t really need the money either, but I do need a place to stay for a while to work through some things. I don¡¯t suppose you have a spare cottage around you could loan me for a few weeks or months.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure we can make arrangements for something like that,¡± the Baron said, shaking his hand. ¡°In times like these I¡¯m happy to keep an extra man or two who''s good with a sword around.¡±

 Ch. 41 - Keeping Him Safe

    For Simon, killing goblins was easy. Staying safe while he did it was a little more complicated, but that hadn¡¯t been important before now. After all, he could always come back and try again, but that wouldn¡¯t be an option for young Gregor. The kid had looked pretty strong for 16. Still, there was a softness about him that told Simon he hadn¡¯t done anything more dangerous than sparring with his father¡¯s men or maybe a fox hunt or whatever the upper class did for fun around here. So, even after returning to his room, Simon lay awake as he wrestled with his misgivings.


    Those worries invaded Simon¡¯s dreams as his subconscious explored all the grisly fates that awaited the entitled young noble while he tossed and turned. The first time they were both ripped to pieces in an ambush that Simon hadn¡¯t spotted, but on the second attempt, even though he knew it was coming, they were still completely overwhelmed by the number of goblins, and the young scion in his care was maimed and disfigured. Simon could heal him, of course, but the boy¡¯s arm grew crooked and scarred, and Simon was certain he would be hanged for it after everyone learned about his dark powers.


    He woke up in a cold sweat shortly before dawn, uncertain of what to do. His dreams had been extra vivid since he¡¯d become unstatued. Even taking that into account, though, this felt somehow more prophetic to him. They¡¯d died repeatedly, separately as well as together, as he¡¯d overcome this group only to be killed by that one or defeated all the warriors only to be burned alive by the shaman. In most versions of that recurring nightmare, he never made it out. Still, the ones he returned to the Baron bearing a corpse or a disfigured child were the worst of all as his subconscious went into overdrive.


    Simon was filled with trepidation when he finally started to get ready that morning as he racked his mind for some way to keep the kid that was being entrusted to his care unharmed while he completed this mission. If he could just do that much, then he could finally take a break and try to figure some things out about this crazy world and come up with a plan. Maybe he could even figure out how to rein in his fire spell or learn to use an actual bow instead of the crossbow he¡¯d been stuck with so far.


    When he arrived at the Baron¡¯s manor shortly after sunrise, he was informed that they were still having breakfast and he could wait in the servants¡¯ kitchen. Simon would have been offended at that, but the biscuits and gravy they served him mollified him until his charge had eaten and dressed.


    When Simon saw the Baron¡¯s son, his heart sank further. The kid was wearing real armor in the form of a breastplate and chain mail, at least, but it was obviously a little too big for him and much too heavy to explore a cave. When Gregor moved, it was awkward and unbalanced, and Simon worried that if he took too large a swing, he would fall over.


    ¡°Handsome little devil isn¡¯t he,¡± Baron Corwin announced. ¡°Ready to go win a war all by himself.¡±


    ¡°Well, Mr. Corwin, Sir¡­ the armor is really nice¡­ it¡¯s nicer than anything I could hope to afford, but I¡¯m afraid if we go out like this, it will put your son in real danger,¡± Simon said, trying very hard not to sound like a jerk.


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± the Baron asked in a puffed-up way that made Simon sure that this was a mistake.


    ¡°I mean that¡­ well¡­ Gregor - Caves can get pretty tight; why don¡¯t you crawl under that table for me,¡± Simon asked, trying to shift the noble¡¯s intense stare to anyone but him.


    The boy looked uncertainly from Simon to his father, who snapped, ¡°Go on, son, it¡¯s like I told you. In all other things in life, commoners like this will obey your orders, but in their area of expertise, listening to those you employ will save your life.¡±


    Simon was pleased and annoyed by the backhanded compliment as he watched the man¡¯s heir get on his hands and knees and try to crawl under the end table. On the one hand, it was nice that someone thought he had expertise in something, but on the other, this whole ¡®better than everyone else because of the family you were born into¡¯ routine was about 200 years out of date as far as he was concerned.


    They both watched how awkwardly the boy moved, and when he was halfway under, Simon pointed out, ¡°See how stiffly he moves and how loud his armor is? In the pit¡­ I mean the mine shaft, we won¡¯t even be able to hear the goblins coming.¡±


    ¡°I see,¡± the Baron said in grudging agreement, ¡°what would you suggest then?¡±


    ¡°Do you have something like this?¡± Simon asked, gesturing at his own armor. ¡°It offers decent protection from their teeth, but¡­ it¡¯s a lot easier to move in.¡± Here at least, Simon spoke from experience. He¡¯d tried the suit of chain mail in the cabin several times, and it very rarely came in handy.


    ¡°That¡¯s not really the sort of thing that a Baron or his heir would need to wear,¡± Baron Corwin answered, shaking his head. ¡°The only ones around here that might have something like that would be our guards, our huntsman.¡±


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    ¡°Well, are any of them about the size of your son?¡± Simon asked, unaware of what an argument that would turn into. Apparently, it was insulting to expect the boy to wear the armor of some commoner. In the end, Simon apologized grudgingly and offered to take care of the problem himself, but the Baron wouldn¡¯t hear of that either.


    In the end, they spent the next several hours looking for someone on the grounds with armor that could fit his precious son, but then they had him wear a nice jacket on top of it even though the day was already starting to get warm. Only after all that was finally done did they set off toward the mine on horseback.


    Simon hadn¡¯t ridden a horse since a particularly awful summer camp when he was fourteen, but the animal was docile enough. So, he followed the young man, and they made pleasant conversation. Gregor asked Simon about his travels and his battles, and Simon mixed just enough falsehood with his truths to keep the conversation going, but in truth, he felt a little lost by the end of it. He¡¯d expected someone a bit more childish, but it was clear to Simon that this was nothing but an adult in a child¡¯s body the way he picked up on the inconsistencies in his meandering tale.


    They tethered the horses when they arrived, and Simon looked at the tunnel. And the forest hills beyond. This was definitely the sort of place where goblins might choose to hang out, though he didn¡¯t smell them yet. Simon went in a few feet until the light of day started to peter out and sniffed, but smelled only rock dust. The next step was, of course, to light some torches and start exploring, but something about the dreams from the night flashed before his eyes, and he knew that, in good conscience, he couldn¡¯t take the boy with him. He might be grown up for his age or whatever, but it was obvious to Simon he¡¯d never been in a life-or-death struggle like this before.


    ¡°I think we¡¯re going to smoke them out. The infestation here is too bad,¡± Simon lied as he came out of the cave.


    ¡°But Father had some adventurers try that last year, and the goblins just came back,¡± the boy protested. ¡°Surely such evil creatures do not mind the fumes of hell.¡±


    Simon smirked at the boy¡¯s lack of basic knowledge, reminding him of just how backward these people really were. ¡°Is that what those events tell you?¡± Simon asked, trying not to sound too smug. ¡°Then today, we will teach you something new.¡±


    They spent the next 30 minutes building a small fire at the entrance to the mine and a large pile of green branches to go with it. Then, after Simon felt a twinge of jealousy after he watched Gregor light the fire with some flint, they started to pile the green branches onto the small blaze until the whole place was nothing but a cloud of smoke.


    ¡°So, do we just wait for the goblins to come out then?¡± Gregor asked.


    ¡°We¡¯d be waiting a long time, I think,¡± Simon said, looking at the giant blaze they¡¯d created. ¡°You see how the smoke goes into the mine? That means there¡¯s airflow.¡±


    ¡°Well, of course, there is,¡± the boy shrugged. ¡°How else would you vent such a large mine?¡±


    ¡°And how else would the goblins get in?¡± Simon answered, pretending he¡¯d already known that.


    After that, they started tromping through the forest on foot, looking for any sign of their prey. After half an hour, they found the first vent from the trickle of pine-scented smoke coming out of it, but there was no sign of goblins. So, they continued on to the second and the third vent shaft. Each time the smell got fainter, but it was still noticeable.


    ¡°That¡¯s as far as it goes,¡± the boy said finally, not bothering to hide his disappointment. ¡°Are you sure you¡¯ve really killed goblins before?¡±


    Simon seethed at that but bit back the caustic words on the tip of his tongue. Instead of insulting the boy, he just said, ¡°Gregor, when you¡¯ve been in as many caves as I have, you¡¯ll know that there¡¯s always more entrances and exits than you think there are.¡±


    With that cryptic response, he continued in the same direction they¡¯d been traveling for a while before he turned and started heading toward the sound of running water. That was when he caught the first hint of sulfur and filth that told him that goblins were nearby. The scent of burning wood and pine tar was perfume by comparison.


    ¡°Shhhhh,¡± Simon whispered as he drew his blade and started to slowly go towards the scent. The boy quickly followed his example.


    When they reached the treeline, they found a crevice not so far from the shore of a river with five agitated goblins milling about in what shade they could find. There was no way they would willingly be out in the daylight, which meant that his smoke trick had worked, he congratulated himself. Simon¡¯s biggest concern was that they would scatter when they attacked in such an open area or even attempt to flee underground.


    So they split their assault and charged from two different directions at once. Simon was hesitant to leave Gregor on his own, but he told the lad to just yell loudly because goblins were fairly cowardly, and to Simon¡¯s eternal surprise, it worked.


    They both charged, but only Gregor screamed a bloodthirsty battle cry, so the goblins charged Simon, and he made quick work of the first three. He decapitated the first one to reach him, ran the next one through, and bashed the third one with his shield hard enough to crack its skull. After that, he played with the last two, giving his young charge ample time to make his own kills.


    In the end, none of them got away, and as they sat on the bank drinking water and congratulating themselves for their victory, Simon felt like maybe this was what his dungeon experience had been missing the whole time. He¡¯d killed lots of things, but he¡¯d never done it with someone, and somehow it was that teamwork that made it hit differently.

 Ch. 42 - Ripple Effects

    Simon brought a bag of goblin heads back as proof of their victory, and after he told the mostly truthful tale to the Baron about how his heir had charged into the action bellowing a battle cry and cutting down green skins, the man threatened to have one of the heads bronzed and put on the wall of his study. The Baron¡¯s wife, Arys, talked him out of it, of course, but Simon was invited to a feast held in Gregor¡¯s honor when the mine was reopened, where the lord drunkenly recounted the tale.


    ¡°There they were,¡± he told the other guests feigning rapt attention like they hadn¡¯t heard all this before. ¡°Surround by those damn goblins pouring up from the mouth of hell when my eldest son ran screaming into their midst!¡±


    Simon successfully avoided laughing at that and had a decent night answering the silly questions of silly people that were all somehow more important than him while he sampled a variety of halfway-decent wines. He wasn¡¯t going to let people like that bother him, though. Instead, he spent the following days berating himself for how silly it had been that he¡¯d worried about those stupid dreams whenever he wasn¡¯t doing anything more interesting.


    After all - there¡¯d only been five goblins down there, not some kind of goblin city. At least that¡¯s what he thought until a few days later when he chatted with one of the men who¡¯d worked on collapsing that entrance so that goblins wouldn¡¯t be a problem again in the future. Apparently, there¡¯d been dozens of the little pests just a little further in that had perished from smoke inhalation. Though he pretended like he¡¯d always known that was the likely outcome, Simon wondered if that made him more or less crazy for wondering if his dreams were somehow true.


    The Baron was true to his word and gave Simon the run of a cottage not far from the Baron¡¯s manor for as long as he desired it, on condition that he be available for the needs of his household on occasion. Simon didn¡¯t have a problem with that, though, when he found out that another tenant family had been evicted to make room for him, Simon did have a bit of a problem with that. No one else seemed to care, so eventually, he stopped too and focused on living something like a normal life for the first time in a long time.


    He still paid a few coppers to eat and drink at the inn almost every night, but that was only because he had no idea how to cook over an open flame. Letting a soup boil in a cauldron was one thing. He tried that a couple times, but getting all the right fresh herbs and then keeping the fire at the same level for hours was a pain, and after trying it a few times just to prove to himself that he could, he became a regular at the inn instead. In the games he was used to playing, it was so easy: you picked up anything clickable, clicked the button to combine the items, and then had armor or a nice meal.


    Simon spent a week trying to tan a hide before he gave up. Not only was it difficult to do, but the way you used the creature¡¯s brains in the tanning process was also more than a little bit disgusting. In fact - the more he tried to learn about medieval life, the more disgusting he found it. Chamber pots, half-rotten food, and no real medicine to speak of made for a pretty awful life, but at least with his stash of gold, he didn¡¯t have to spend all day laboring in the fields like his fellow man.


    He frequently found himself sparring with the man¡¯s sons, using wooden swords for lack of anything better to do. He¡¯d noticed the last few weeks that if he didn¡¯t keep himself busy, he tended to stop moving and just exist inside his own head in a way that sometimes felt disturbingly close to being a statue once more. He only noticed it when he was so still outside one day that a bird landed on him like he was some kind of Disney princess. Sometimes it was hard to snap out of that as he relived his traumas and berated himself for everything he could have done better and every trap of Helades that he should have seen coming.


    So, he frequently resorted to swordplay with the boys and sometimes even the household guard to sharpen his skills and provide a little entertainment. Though even the Baron¡¯s youngest was more skilled than Simon on a technical level since they¡¯d spent their young lives drilling with actual instructors, they were able to do some interesting things with feints and reposts that he had trouble dealing with, but even with those tricks they seldom beat him. Simon had more than just raw strength on his side, even though the daily workouts were having a real impact on his body. He also had more experience against a real opponent and could spot openings better than anyone else in the sparring yard.


    Still, when it came to the guards that were his age or older, all he could do was give as well as he got. He was still better than them, of course, but this was a game that they had played for as long as he¡¯d had a controller in his hand. As much as he hated to admit it, it would take time to improve if he wanted to be able to wipe the floor with all of them as he should.


    After a few weeks of this quiet, satisfying routine, just when it was starting to get too hot to be out in armor any time around midday, life was interrupted by news that the King had died. Simon had hoped that he was far enough away from whatever fighting was going to happen. That seemed unlikely, and his fears were born out a few days after the word had spread, and the kingdom was officially in mourning when a pair of riders showed up within hours of each other to deliver the news that they required the Baron to swear allegiance to the new King.


    The problem, of course, was that they both disagreed on whom the new King was. The first rider said it was the King¡¯s son, and the second said it was the King¡¯s brother.


    ¡°What do you think I should do,¡± Corwin asked Simon in a rare moment of indecision.


    Simon, of course, had little to say on such matters. Still, he did repeat the bar gossip he¡¯d heard so long ago that the King¡¯s brother, Duke Westerfall was the odds-on favorite, even if the King¡¯s son was certainly the rightful heir.


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    ¡°So you think I should declare for the Duke instead?¡± Baron Corwin asked. ¡°Even if I gave a weapon to every man that could use one, I¡¯d be hard-pressed to field much over 100 people.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not my place to make such decisions, sir,¡± Simon answered.


    Making that kind of choice honestly terrified him. He couldn¡¯t handle that kind of responsibility. Really, all that mattered to him was that he would have to cut his quiet little life here short and move further south to stay ahead of current events while the Baron pledged his loyalty to the King¡¯s Brother.


    At least that was the plan until one day, Gregor chose a quiet moment after a round of archery practice to express his fears. Simon was still absolutely terrible with the bow, so he¡¯d mostly just been watching the younger man shoot, but when Gregor said, ¡°Father says that you¡¯ll likely be leaving soon. You and any other man that can sell your sword for a few coins.¡±


    ¡°Does he now?¡± Simon asked. ¡°That¡¯s news to me. Who am I going to fight for?¡±


    ¡°Does that mean you¡¯ll stay and help us when the troubles come?¡± the boy asked.


    ¡°Well, I¡¯m pretty comfortable right now, so I had no plans to¡­¡± Simon¡¯s words trailed off as the boy gave him an uncharacteristic hug. Only then did he understand the depth of the lad¡¯s fear.


    Simon let the moment linger, appreciating the first human connection that he¡¯d had in lifetimes. Still, after a moment, he pushed the boy away and did his best to reassure him. ¡°Leipzen is a long way from here, Gregor. I don¡¯t think we¡¯ll have anything to worry about for a good long while.¡±


    Simon was wrong, though. The peace didn¡¯t last long after that, and within a few weeks, there were already rumors of battles and raids in nearby fiefs. Slany was only spared a few more days after that, and though most of the village had fled to the Baron¡¯s manor before the soldiers arrived, Simon could still hear screams in the night as he watched homes, including his own set ablaze from atop the hill.


    The house was a large one, with an enclosed courtyard that could fit hundreds, but it was never intended to be a fortress, and like it or not, Simon would have to fight. Somehow the idea of fighting professional soldiers didn¡¯t seem like as much fun as fighting goblins had been. That wasn¡¯t because Simon understood their greater threat after spending so many idle afternoons dueling the Baron¡¯s guards, though, but because of the number of crying children he could hear behind him as he watched the gates rattle under the axe blows of the invaders.


    The baron had sent a messenger to the opposing army with an offer of surrender. Still, Simon knew how that would end well before the boy¡¯s head had been tossed back over the gate. These men didn¡¯t want a victory, they wanted an example, and that meant a pile of dead bodies to put the fear into the other lords of the region.


    Simon hadn¡¯t been sure if that knowledge would put steel in the spine of the surrounding men or if it would bring them to their knees. He wasn¡¯t very good at judging people when it came to emotions, so he just stood there at the ready, waiting for his chance to do some good. After all, he was the one man on either side who didn¡¯t fear death, so he could go all out in a way no one else could.


    They held like that for an hour or two, with a few men on the roof harassing the force of almost 300 men with arrows while a few brave men and women put out the fires that the attackers continually tried to start. Eventually, that wasn¡¯t enough, though, and all at once, the interminable sense of waiting was replaced by sudden violence as the gates swung inward and the attackers swarmed in.


    No one ran. That was the highest compliment that Simon could give as his world narrowed to the width of his opponent. They¡¯d expected only farmers with spears to be huddled back here, and Simon made sure the first man to face him regretted the decision as he smashed the dark-haired axe wielder hard in the face before stabbing him in the gut and moving on to his next opponent.


    The fighting after that was desperate and chaotic, and Simon took more cuts from not knowing that an enemy had gotten behind him than from anyone that had dared to face him directly. He was certainly on the losing side, though, he decided, as he stepped back from the fray to whisper, ¡°?????????????f?????v??????????r????¨²?????m????? ????????????j??????a?????k???k???????¡± as he imagined the muscles on his sword arm knitting back together. All the little wounds were adding up, and even the extra stamina he¡¯d built over the last few months wasn¡¯t enough to stave off exhaustion forever.


    Plus, he increasingly found himself outnumbered in the back and forth that had taken place over the last ten minutes as the defenders sought to protect their loved ones in the face of overwhelming odds. Despite the fact that Simon was exhausted and surrounded, though, he still had one trump card left to play. ¡°G????????????r???????v?????u?????u????????? ???????M???????e???i???????r??????¨¨?????n????¡± he shouted, imagining a firestorm almost as wide as the gate backed by lethal intent.


    Simon had enjoyed his time here, and he knew that from the way the other woman had reacted, what he was doing was likely to get a negative reaction, but sometime in the next minute, he was going down, and a minute or two after that there would be no one left to fight.


    The result of his spell was a wave of incandescent fury that killed those closest to him outright as they were consumed in a blazing white inferno. Their corpses did shield those behind them for an instant, but even so, the shockwave of hellfire spread outward, engulfing almost everyone between him and the gate.


    Simon tried to enjoy the sudden panicked retreat that he¡¯d caused, but the amount of energy that the spell took from him made him waver as his vision blurred, and he threatened to lose consciousness, spoiling the moment.


    ¡°Alright, men," he called out as loud as he could as he pointed ahead with his sword. "We¡¯ve got them on the run. We just need to¡ª¡±


    Simon¡¯s words were cut off by a sword that pierced his back, followed by another in his side that left him coughing up blood.


    ¡°Witchcraft!¡± one man shouted.


    ¡°He¡¯s a warlock!¡± cried another.


    Simon had hoped this wouldn¡¯t have been the reaction, but he accepted it anyway. He spun as he fell to the ground, landing on his back, and smiled as he saw that Gregor was alive and his sword had no fresh blood on it.


    At least he¡¯d made one friend here, Simon thought as his consciousness faded to black.

 Ch. 43 - Familiar Faces

    Simon¡¯s most common reaction to the pain and confusion accompanying death whenever he died was anger and frustration. Generally, he was annoyed at whatever cheap trick had been used to kill him, or he was pissed off at Helades for planning it this way just to make him suffer. The next most common was fear that something even worse than death might somehow be inflicted on him again. This time he felt neither, though.


    Instead, he felt only acceptance as he lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to parse the reaction he¡¯d seen on the faces of the men who¡¯d killed him. Gregor had seemed sad, of course, and Simon was pleased that at least one person had decided to give him the benefit of the doubt for once in his life.


    ¡°Especially since I was, you know, saving your family from a fucking army,¡± he said sarcastically to no one in particular.


    Martem and Viktor were people he thought he knew, though. Simon understood that superstitious villagers might not like magic. What he didn¡¯t understand was why they had sprung on him so viscerally like that. If they¡¯d wanted to exile or banish him after the fighting was done because they thought it was witchcraft, he could see that, but to kill him for trying to keep them alive was bullshit, and he kind of hoped they were wiped out because of it.


    Well, he wanted to hope that, but he couldn¡¯t quite make himself think something so awful, and as he got up and stretched, he hoped that the Baron¡¯s family managed to escape, or at least if they died, he hoped that it was a clean death. They¡¯d been good to him, after all.


    Good enough to go back and try to save them again, though? He wasn¡¯t so sure about that.


    Simon reached for the wine bottle and took a long swig, noting that he¡¯d developed enough of a palette for it that he noticed just how much it sucked compared to the vintages he was used to at the Baron¡¯s table. That didn¡¯t stop him from drinking it, though, as he pondered what to do next.


    ¡°If I go back, whatever I build is just going to get destroyed by the war again,¡± he told himself as he considered the problem. He had two options: he could try to stop the war somehow, or he could try going further away this time.


    Simon had no idea how to go about stopping the war, though. Was he supposed to just assassinate some duke so that the line of succession was clearer? That might help, but it might make things worse, too, and there was no guarantee that he would survive such an attempt long enough to enjoy his newfound peace anyway. Maybe if he wandered far enough, he could find somewhere so distant and insignificant that it wouldn¡¯t be affected.


    For some reason, thinking about distant places brought Schwarzenbruck to mind. He could always go back down the mountains and try to find it. It was supposed to be somewhere to the north, but he was sure that Luken or the innkeeper who wanted him dead would know where he could find that if he asked.


    He wasn¡¯t sure why he¡¯d want to take the long way to a zombie infestation, though. After all - getting to the eighth floor? That was easy. He just had to kill some goblins, some skeletons, a slime, and a couple zombies. And for some reason, if he was bitten, he was fairly certain he could blow his own head off with pyrotechnics well before losing control of his body again.


    He felt stupid that he hadn¡¯t thought of it last time but vowed not to make that mistake again. As long as he just kept that plan in his back pocket, Simon knew he had little to fear from another visit to that place beside a quick and relatively painless death. Well, nothing besides seeing Freya again, he thought with a sigh.


    This was enough to stir him to action as he tried to move physically away from her ghost. As he did so, two things became immediately apparent to him. The first was that he longed to see her, even though he knew she wouldn¡¯t actually be there if he visited again, and the second was how slow and out of shape he suddenly felt.


    Simon turned and walked over to the mirror. He didn¡¯t talk to it, but he did note with dismay that he¡¯d put on a lot of weight since the last time he¡¯d seen himself in the Baron¡¯s manor. For a moment, Simon¡¯s mind rejected the idea that he¡¯d always been this fat, and a train of thought spontaneously decided that Helades must be doing this as an additional handicap to keep him from succeeding. Simon stopped that thought cold before it could grow though and took a hard look at himself.


    ¡°No wonder I was getting so much better at sword fighting,¡± Simon said, lifting his shirt. Not only had his leather armor fit him much better, but he was carrying around more than an extra set of chain mail with every step right now.


    As he realized he¡¯d been like this from day one, he cursed himself for never noticing until now. Simon had always considered himself to be a little thick because he was so strong, but he¡¯d never known what real strength was until he defended that gate and held back four men at once. The vivid images of that flashback filled his mind with the smell of blood and the sounds of screaming briefly, but he pushed them out of his mind, trying to focus on the positive.


    ¡°Alright, so I¡¯m not strong right now,¡± he told himself as he stared straight into his own eyes, ¡°but I can be again, and it¡¯s going to be soon.¡±


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    That, as much as anything, was why he decided on whim that he was going back to Schwarzenbruck. Not to stay, of course. He had no interest in fighting his way out of that inn. He was going to cut through there and then see if there was anywhere nice to settle down near the wyvern level. On his last visit, he¡¯d seen something on the horizon, but he had no idea if it was a city or more ruins like those he¡¯d already explored.


    It was another level where he had no idea what he was supposed to do. Some made sense, at least. Kill this slime or that troll, but what the hell was he supposed to do about the wyvern? When it came to the third floor, was he supposed to kill the goblins or stop a civil war? Was it both? Even though this wasn¡¯t a game, he felt sure a quest log would have gone a long way to making it playable.


    Simon decided that he¡¯d be happy to write one himself if he¡¯d gotten to keep the thing as he geared up and got ready to go back into the Pit once more, but since it would just reset along with all his other accomplishments, what the hell would be the point?


    Simon spent several more minutes delaying the inevitable, but once he was ready and he¡¯d moved the bed out of the way, he turned back to the mirror to ask it the question he¡¯d been dreading.


    ¡°Mirror - show me my stat sheet - let¡¯s see just how fucked I am,¡± he said, flinching visibly as the numbers began to appear slowly in their glowing blue type on the glass.


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 20


    Deaths: 31


    Experience Points: -1,194,650


    Skills: Archery [Below Average], Armor (light) [Good], Athletics [Below Average], Cook [Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Below Average], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Average], Maces [Average], Ride [Poor], Search [Below Average], Sneak [Below Average], Spears [Poor], Spell Casting [Below Average], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Poor], and Swords [Good].


    Words of Power: Aufvarum Hjakk Gervuul Meiren¡¯


    ¡°Well, that answers that,¡± he shrugged. ¡°One lifetime of torture is worth ten lifetimes of growth. That seems about right. Easy fix.¡±


    It was both worse and better than he thought it would be, he decided as he went downstairs and started crushing rat skulls. On the one hand, his time with the Baron¡¯s sons had obviously paid dividends with several combat skills. His simple village life had improved everything from cooking to horseback riding, which felt nice. Still, on the other hand, he had no idea how he would ever get his experience total back into the positive numbers at this rate.


    He tore through the caves as he thought about it, and the goblins came and went without issue, but this time Simon went deeper instead of walking back into the snow-covered valley. It was just as cold in the tomb of the skeleton knight, of course, but he worked up quite a sweat taking out all the little skeleton warriors before he fought the actual threat.


    The knight was a good test for him, and he was pleased to see just how easily he took its head off after a complicated series of parries and ripostes. More than anything, this was what really showed him how far he¡¯d come. It had taken a dozen deaths to bring this bastard down the first time, and now it bordered on the trivial. There was no question the knight could kill him if given the opportunity, of course. However, Simon had no intention of ever letting that happen again.


    ¡°Gregor would love to see this,¡± he told himself as he went to take out the slime in a burst of fire and brimstone that left nothing but ashes. He¡¯d told the boy about some of the more exotic monsters he¡¯d fought on his journey, but he could tell that the lad did not entirely believe his exploits.


    He walked through that short, little level in less than half a minute, which was getting to be pretty par for the course. That just left three more levels, and then he could take a good look at the horizon and decide where he was off to next, he thought as he opened the door to the inn.


    When he walked in, Simon anticipated the first zombie that always attacked him and brained it before it reached him. He quickly moved into the common room to get the one that was usually there too, and the Viking went down without a struggle. It only had enough time to turn toward him before it took a mace to the face.


    Simon¡¯s next step was going to be to reinforce the window that always failed, but as he strode across the room, he saw someone behind the bar. For a moment, he worried it was a zombie, or worse, zombie Freya because his mind refused to accept what it was seeing.


    Standing in front of him, just as fragile and fearful as she¡¯d been the last time, was Freya. She had the same bloody hands and held the same knife, but somehow these things only combined to make her more beautiful, and he couldn¡¯t help but stare.


    For a moment, he thought it couldn¡¯t be real, but then she opened her mouth and said the same thing she¡¯d said the first time they¡¯d met, ¡°It-it¡¯s not mine,¡± she said, looking at her hands, and not at the zombie he¡¯d just slain.


    ¡°Oh my god, is it really you?¡± he asked, moving toward her. ¡°You¡¯re alive?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know you, and I don¡¯t know if you¡¯ve been bitten,¡± she murmured, leveling her knife at him as his approach broke her reverie, ¡°So you can just stay the hell away from me, okay?¡±


    ¡°What I meant was,¡± he said, backing off hastily as he realized the mistake he¡¯d just made. Just because he knew her didn¡¯t mean the reverse was true, and acting like a crazy person from her perspective wouldn¡¯t help anything. ¡°I¡¯m just glad to see anyone! All I¡¯ve seen for days have been the dead. I¡¯m so glad to find another survivor!¡±


    ¡°Well, be grateful from over there, please.¡± She seemed to buy that somewhat, but none of the suspicion left her eyes. ¡°I¡ª¡±


    As she started speaking, the board that kept the zombies from climbing through the window finally gave way, and she looked away from him to the window and back again. This time Simon didn¡¯t rush things. He knew they had a little time before the zombies were a real threat.


    ¡°You mind if I get that, or are you going to stab me if I try to fix the window?¡± he asked, unable to entirely suppress his smile as his heart soared with joy. Freya was alive. For the first time in however many trips through here, he could finally see her again, and that was worth dealing with any amount of bullshit while they built some kind of familiarity and trust again.

 Ch. 44 - Like Old Times

    As Simon took his time killing the two encroaching zombies and moving the table to reinforce the broken window before more could join them, he tried to remember what had happened next the last time he was here. Even though he¡¯d have sworn that every detail of those wonderful few days had burned their way into his brain, he was surprised to find that they¡¯d been scoured away just like everything else during his time in the desert.


    He remembered Freya, of course, but even his memory of the beautiful dark-haired woman hadn¡¯t done her justice. Everything was the same as it had been, though. The sadness, the outfit, and even bloody hands remained unchanged. So, once the breach was secured, he found it so hard not to stare that he was forced to mumble, ¡°I¡¯m going to make sure that there¡¯s no more of those things in here with us. You keep that knife handy.¡±


    She didn¡¯t respond, but then she didn¡¯t before, either, did she? Simon tried not to let those thoughts and his second-guessing of himself distract him too much. Even though there hadn¡¯t been another zombie in the building before now, it would be just like Helades to add another one just to zombify him when he¡¯d finally found his way to Freya again.


    So, taking at least twice as long as he did the first time, he searched in every closet and under every bed from the owner¡¯s room on the third floor down to the basement. Then he reinforced the back door, so it wouldn¡¯t cut their time together short like it had last time. It was only when all that was done that he joined the intermittently sobbing girl again.


    Simon thought about trying to hold and comfort her, but as he approached, he saw her grip the knife a little harder, and he decided against that. Instead, he very obviously set aside his weapons and then pulled each of them a pint before he sat down on the opposite side of the table from her.


    ¡°Look,¡± he said finally, trying to break the silence. ¡°It wasn¡¯t your fault, okay? Whatever happened? Whatever you did, I¡¯m sure it needed to be done.¡±


    ¡°How would you know?¡± she asked, not bothering to look up.


    ¡°You aren¡¯t the only one who¡¯s lost someone in all this,¡± he sighed, trying to push back flashes of that smoke-filled basement. ¡°I¡¯ve¡­ well, the zombies took someone special to me too.¡±


    Somehow the silences seemed more tense than last time, and Simon was trying to figure out what he¡¯d done wrong when Freya finally spoke. ¡°It was Brenna¡­ she just¡­ and then I-I¡ª¡± she whimpered as she started crying.


    As she spoke, Simon remembered what she was going to say next and rose to get her a wet rag. She¡¯d been a basket case last time, too, until she¡¯d wiped all the blood from her hands. Even though he still had no idea what Brenna had done, the little he knew of the woman made him sure that it hadn¡¯t been anything good.


    ¡°Thanks,¡± she mumbled, wiping off first one hand and then the other. Once she was finally done, she looked up at Simon with a hint of panic in her eyes. ¡°I had to, you understand? I didn¡¯t want to hurt Brenna, but then she¡­¡± The woman trailed off into silence after that, making the whole situation that much more awkward for Simon.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay. It¡¯s over, Freya,¡± he said, trying to sound sympathetic, even if it was really strange to talk to the same woman again after missing her for so long.


    There was a long moment of silence, but when she finally opened her mouth again, her tone was full of suspicion. ¡°How¡­ how do you know my name.¡±


    Simon swallowed hard as he realized he fucked up. He almost fucked up a second time by telling her he saw it on her name tag. That would have worked on a waitress in the real world, of course, but here it would make him sound even crazier. Instead of answering, he took a long sip from his beer to give himself a moment to think and then decided to go with the mostly honest approach and said, ¡°That is your name, isn¡¯t it? I thought I remembered it from my last trip through here, but if I¡¯m mistaken, I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    ¡°No, it is, it¡¯s just¡­¡± her suspicion melted instantly. ¡°With everything that happened, and you just appearing and your accent, it seemed like¡­ but it¡¯s fine.¡±


    ¡°This isn¡¯t my first time through Schwarzenbruck,¡± Simon nodded, ¡°but I admit I haven¡¯t been around in a while. My travels have taken me far from home.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡± she asked, finally looking at him as a person instead of a possible threat.


    ¡°I¡¯m Simon,¡± he smiled, ¡°and it¡¯s nice to meet you¡­ again.¡±


    ¡°Si-mon?¡± she asked, mispronouncing the letters of the unfamiliar word, but that didn¡¯t bother him. ¡°That is a very strange name.¡±


    After that, they talked at length about what they knew. Freya told him what the tavern owner, Mr. Olggen, had told her about the adventurers and the necromancer, refreshing his memory. Simon nodded appropriately while he worked his way through his beer. He hadn¡¯t actually gained any additional insight from his time as a zombie to give him any clues there. There had been no orders from a wizard bouncing around in his head or anything like that. All he¡¯d felt during that time was hunger, and all he knew was that in a few weeks, someone would open the south gate to purge the zombies and release them on an unsuspecting world in the process.


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    Simon wasn¡¯t really sure what he could do with that information, though. He could hunker down here with Freya until it was safe to leave, but he didn¡¯t really need to. He could just open a door for them at any time, and they could go say hello to the wyvern by way of the sewers and the jungle.


    But wouldn¡¯t that freak her out?


    The thought came completely unbidden to his mind, but he was forced to agree with it. Even trying to open the front door would make her attack him, but seeing a portal open like that? Would she turn on him the same way the villagers had in his last life, or would she try to give him the benefit of the doubt the way that Gregor had? He didn¡¯t know, so for now, he decided it was best to just stay quiet.


    Simon enjoyed their conversation more than anything in a long time. The feasts at the Baron¡¯s, as well as the dueling yards before it had gotten too warm, were nice, of course. They just weren¡¯t as nice as this because Freya had the advantage of being a beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties.


    ¡°Do you suppose there¡¯s enough food in this place that we could make ourselves something to eat?¡± Simon asked, making her smile slightly for the first time.


    ¡°There¡¯s more food than two people can eat before it starts to spoil,¡± she said, finally setting aside her knife as she seemingly decided Simon wasn¡¯t going to murder her.


    After that, they busied themselves in the kitchen. She mostly focused on reheating some stew left over from the night before, and he spent his time trying to clean up the place. By the time he¡¯d removed all the bodies from the common room and the kitchen and wiped away as much blood as he could, she¡¯d almost stopped flinching when he walked by.


    The food was great, especially for leftovers, and they were both hungry enough that they ate in relative silence while they focused on the meal. It was only when Freya¡¯s bowl was finally empty that she asked, ¡°What are we going to do now?¡±


    ¡°Well, you said so yourself; we have plenty of food and even more beer, so we¡¯ve got plenty of time to figure that out,¡± Simon tried to reassure her, though she didn¡¯t seem reassured, exactly. ¡°We¡¯re safe for now. That¡¯s all that matters.¡±


    The rest of the day passed in idle discussions, and Simon told her about the time he helped Gregor kill a mine full of goblins to try to convince her that he knew what he was doing, but she kept her distance both physically and emotionally. Simon couldn¡¯t remember if she¡¯d been this standoffish last time, so eventually, he decided to go take care of something he was sure he¡¯d done the last time he was stuck here with her: remove the corpses scattered throughout the inn.


    Putting on his thick leather gloves, he dragged them upstairs one at a time and tossed them out of the second-story window. It was backbreaking work, and it made him curse his newfound weakness again as he realized how much work he needed to do to get back to where he was so recently. The Simon he was yesterday would have been able to get rid of all the bodies without taking a single break, but the Simon of today had to stop and rest after each one, and it was aggravating.


    By the time that was done, the night was starting to fall, so after one last perimeter check to make sure there weren¡¯t any boards that were going to break free in the night and cut his time with Freya short, he went upstairs and started getting the innkeeper¡¯s room ready for bed. He wasn¡¯t completely surprised when he heard a knock on the door while he was laying out the sheets.


    ¡°Do you mind if I sleep in here with you tonight?¡± Freya asked meekly. ¡°It¡¯s just that¡ª¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± Simon said, pulling back the covers and offering her a spot. ¡°There¡¯s plenty of room.¡±


    Freya shook her head and took a spot on the floor instead, though. Curling up fully clothed with a blanket and a weapon. ¡°This is fine,¡± she said, pulling the blanket up to her chin. ¡°Don¡¯t even think of trying anything. I¡¯m sleeping with this knife. Just so you know.¡±


    That made Simon smile as he brought the last remaining lantern to the bedside table. This was a moment he remembered too. She¡¯d been so nervous the first time he was here, and even though he was pretty sure that she was going to crawl in bed with him again later that night, he couldn¡¯t help but find the moment of D¨¦j¨¤ vu completely adorable.


    ¡°The last thing I¡¯d ever do would be to take advantage of a woman,¡± Simon assured her, amused by the repetition. It, more than anything else that had happened today, assured him that he was on the right track with her.


    Simon had already taken his armor off during dinner, but he stacked it up neatly after he barred the door and hung his weapons in an easy-to-reach place in case something went bump in the night. After that, he crawled into bed and stripped down to his small clothes. This mattress was filled with something besides straw, so while it was much more comfortable than the one he¡¯d grown used to in the cabin, it still wasn¡¯t quite as comfortable as the one he¡¯d had while he lived in Slany.


    Sometime in the middle of the night, Simon was awoken by the familiar sensation of Freya sliding into bed with him. ¡°I had a nightmare,¡± she whispered. ¡°Do you think that I could¡­ maybe¡­¡±


    ¡°Of course,¡± he yawned, pulling the covers back. ¡°Make yourself at home.¡±


    She fell asleep clinging to the edge of the bed, but by the time morning came, she was clinging to him like a drowning victim, just as he remembered. That made Simon smile, too, as he looked at dawn¡¯s rising light through the shutters. ¡°Maybe everything was going to be okay after all,¡± he whispered to himself as he lay there. He didn¡¯t dare move right now, because the last thing he wanted to do was wake her and spoil this perfect moment.

 Ch. 45 - Trust Me

    Simon fell back asleep, but when he woke up once more, it was to the smells of cooking meat, and he quickly got dressed and went downstairs. He brought his mace with him, but not because he thought he¡¯d actually need it or anything. Hard experience had just taught him that he should be ready for whatever mindfuck Helades was going to throw at him next.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry that we¡¯re out of eggs,¡± Freya apologized as she started serving a plate of sausage links and fried potatoes. ¡°We ran out of those a few days ago.¡± That statement sparked a similar conversation to one he remembered having with her lifetimes ago as she told him about how things had started here and how quickly they¡¯d gotten ugly.


    Once they finished eating, she started explaining how everyone had died one at a time, from infighting as much as the zombies, and how at the end, there¡¯d only been a few of them left. By his count, there would have been three left when she started getting vague, and he was tempted to ask what happened to Brenna or Mr. Olggen, but he refrained. Something in her expression said that she absolutely didn¡¯t want to go there.


    So he shifted topics and talked about other things. Using scraps of food, Simon explained the geography of the world as he understood it, showing where Slany and Hurag were in the south, and she corrected him slightly, pointing out the coast and a number of other land features that Simon had not yet heard of. It was a useful conversation, and it made Simon wonder if every level was just another part of the same world.


    Honestly, it seemed more likely than not at this point between the way the land areas overlapped and some of the things the goddess had said, but he didn¡¯t mention any of that to Freya. He just waited for her to stop talking about how important the black bridge was for local trade routes and how it was the only year-round crossing for the Diener River for fifty miles in either direction before he turned the topic a little further towards where he wanted it.


    ¡°If we could escape tomorrow, where would you like to go?¡± Simon asked, catching her off guard.


    ¡°But we can¡¯t escape, can we?¡± she pushed back, confused.


    ¡°Maybe not this minute, but I hope we¡¯ll find a way out soon,¡± Simon answered, trying to stay upbeat, ¡°and when that happens, we¡¯ll need a goal. Do you have any family nearby we could stay with or¡­¡±


    ¡°All my family died here in Schwarzenbruck,¡± she said, as her eyes started to tear up. ¡°At least, I think they did. I¡¯ll probably never know.¡±


    The conversation was going nowhere after that, so Simon dropped it and focused on other things for the next few hours. He cleaned his armor and sharpened his sword because it had been ages since he¡¯d done either of those things and then when he noticed that the small keg they¡¯d been drinking from was out, he managed to wrestle a new one upstairs and tap it without making too much of a mess.


    This time there was no need to search for the way out. He knew where that was, but he had to earn Freya¡¯s trust before he could show her, and that would take time. Fortunately, they still had time. A little, at least. There was a sea of the dead surrounding the building, of course, and their collective moaning and groaning were enough to make him feel like he was going to go crazy when he wasn¡¯t doing something else, but other times when he was chatting with Freya, it was a barely noticeable background drone.


    Still, he let things proceed at their own pace because he knew that if he rushed it, he would ruin it. He¡¯d seen that theme play out plenty of times in movies and anime: he just needed to let it happen. That night, she didn¡¯t even try to sleep somewhere else. She just looked at him expectantly until he said, ¡°Why don¡¯t you sleep with me. It will be safer that way.¡±


    She still gave him a look as she crawled into bed and said, ¡°I appreciate your kindness¡­ but that doesn¡¯t mean we¡¯re doing anything but sharing a little warmth. You keep your hands to yourself.¡±


    Simon nodded. He knew the drill. This time when she fell asleep with her head on his chest, their cuddling was an intentional thing, and the sound of her gentle breathing was enough to block out the cries of a thousand zombies as he basked in a single perfect moment that he hoped would never end. This just felt too right for him to want anything else.


    The next few days, they enjoyed each other¡¯s company, and he got Freya to open up a bit about what it was she wanted out of life and how, before these zombies had risen up to devour everyone and everything in her path, all she¡¯d wanted was a small garden and a couple of kids. By contrast, he told her that for years all he¡¯d wanted to do was fight monsters and become a hero, but as he got older, he thought a quiet life might suit him more.


    This time their first kiss wasn¡¯t a drunken spur-of-the-moment thing. It was something that built during the entirety of their fourth day together. He¡¯d started to get the feeling that she was into him by the way she kept asking him if there was a Mrs. Simon waiting for him when he got home and when he worked up the nerve to kiss her, she kissed him back eagerly.


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    It was probably just because she was scared or because they could both die at any moment. That was what he thought as they made out in the common room. The only thing he was sure about was that it couldn¡¯t be him that had been the cause of this, but he couldn¡¯t explain why else things would be playing out differently this time. When this happened before, they¡¯d had to get drunk to kiss, and it had still been a few more days before they¡¯d had sex for the first time. Today though, there was no mistaking her need as she pressed against him, and he tried to unlace her top without breaking their kiss.


    They had sex twice that day. Once urgently on the table and once more gently in the bed after a few drinks and some talking. The second round hadn¡¯t been intentional, at least not on Simon¡¯s part. He¡¯d been trying to work up the nerve to talk to her about what had just happened, and she¡¯d either gotten the wrong idea or decided that the only way to shut him up was more sex. After that, he was too exhausted to do anything but hold her.


    It wasn¡¯t until two days later that he finally returned to the topic of escape. ¡°What if there was a way out of here, but it required well¡­ magic, Freya?¡± he asked one morning while they were lying together enjoying the relative peace of the early hours.


    ¡°I think it would kind of have to at this point, Simon,¡± she answered playfully. ¡°Magic or starvation are pretty much the only ways we¡¯re getting out of here.¡±


    Simon swallowed hard at that, remembering that there was a third way that had ended in fire and smoke, but he pushed that back down. ¡°I¡¯m serious. What if there was a way? Would you try it? Even if it was dangerous?¡±


    ¡°What are you talking about, Simon?¡± she asked, confused. ¡°If you know something, then you need to tell me.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s easier to show you,¡± he said hesitantly, ¡°but you need to promise me you¡¯ll remain calm, okay? Can you do that?¡±


    ¡°I-I can,¡± she whispered after a moment¡¯s consideration. ¡°I trust you.¡±


    He smiled and then agreed they would make the last of the ham for breakfast before he did anything crazy. She spent the meal peppering him with questions about magic, but he deflected them clumsily rather than answer, and when they were finished, he sent her into the pantry.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you start packing provisions for the two of us for a few days, Freya,¡± he said finally. ¡°Things that can be cooked easily on a fire, or that can be eaten cold. I can¡¯t promise that we¡¯ll get to a town right away. So we¡¯ll have to bundle everything up in a blanket or two and take as much as we can with us.¡±


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± she asked again, but Simon just shook his head.


    ¡°Even when I show you, it¡¯s going to be crazy, but trying to explain would¡­ well, you¡¯d never believe me,¡± he said. ¡°Just promise me that you won¡¯t come out until I call for you, okay? Can you do that for me?¡±


    She nodded, and he kissed her on the forehead before he sent her out of the room and started to unblock the front door. While he did so, the fear that Helades might have suddenly switched the position of the portal just to kill him at the most awful moment niggled at the back of his mind, but he ignored it. None of the portal positions had ever moved before, and though he didn¡¯t rule that out, it seemed unlikely that it would be this portal on this day that was the one to finally break the trend.


    When Simon had the door open to reveal the sewer, he finally called for Freya, and she came running, but when she saw the impossible sight, she dropped the things she was carrying and gawked. ¡°What in the names of all the gods is that?¡± she asked. He could see the whites around her eyes and the way her hands were trembling. There was no disguising that level of terror, so he walked to her and held her for a moment, blocking her vision with his body.


    ¡°It¡¯s our only way out,¡± he said softly as he stroked her hair and tried to calm her down. ¡°It¡¯s a sort of magic doorway¡­ it leads to a sewer that¡¯s kind of gross, but it¡¯s not too dangerous. From there, it leads to a ¡­ I guess you could say temple and¡ª¡±


    ¡°Simon!¡± she cried out, ¡°What are you talking about? How do you know all these terrible things? It isn¡¯t natural.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not," he agreed, feeling his heart break a little as she looked at him with fear now too. ¡°But it¡¯s the only way out, and even if you hate me by the time I¡¯ve saved you, I still have to save you. It¡¯s the most important thing right now, so please, gather the supplies I asked you to, so we can leave this cursed place.¡±


    She moved slowly and worked silently, but she obeyed him, and even as he thought she might not come back down from retrieving the blanket, she did so, though she was especially chilly after that. Then, with each of them carrying a bundle over their shoulder, they stepped towards the door. There he pressed a knife into her hand before he picked up his loaded crossbow to deal with the creepy crawler as far away from his beloved as possible and whispered, ¡°Just in case,¡± before kissing her on the forehead.


    Not willing to put anything past Helades at this point, he stood in the portal itself, with one foot on either side of the line, and watched Freya go all the way to the next level before he stepped through himself. As frightened as she was in that moment, he was terrified that she would disappear as she failed to spawn in the next level or that the portal would close when she was only part way through and cut her in half. He was taking no chances with that bullshit today. Today Freya was going to live even if he didn¡¯t get his happily ever after. He swore to himself that he¡¯d save her every single time he came through here if that¡¯s what it took.

 Ch. 46 - A Walk Through Hell

    Freya tried asking him questions several times as they navigated the small, slippery ledge through the vile sewers, but each time Simon shushed her. He¡¯d already done his best to explain to her that these corpses weren¡¯t zombies, but she obviously didn¡¯t entirely believe him, and he didn¡¯t have the time to explain it to her again. He couldn¡¯t even hold her hand because he was carrying his crossbow in his right hand and his sack in his left.


    It wasn¡¯t that he wanted to blow her off, of course, but this was exactly the wrong place to get distracted. Even if that awful worm was almost always in its stack of bodies if it ambushed and paralyzed them, he would have to lay there for god knows how long and watch the vermin devour his girl.


    He¡¯d rather be a zombie again than be forced to witness that. Of course, he¡¯d also rather not have to cast a fire spell if he didn¡¯t need to. He¡¯d already freaked out Freya enough, and the last thing he wanted was to send her screaming into the night at the first chance she had to escape from him.


    Just before he rounded the final corner where he could usually see it, he whispered to Freya. ¡°Stay calm. The thing I was talking about before? It¡¯s right there.¡±


    No sooner did he round the corner than he saw the pale wiggling thing gorging itself on the bloated body of a young man. It didn¡¯t see him yet, so Simon carefully lined up his shot. That plan was interrupted when Freya took a look and screamed bloody murder as soon as she saw the slimy, tentacled thing devouring corpses.


    It charged them immediately after that, and Simon waited until it was much closer than usual before he put a bolt in its belly just to be sure he wouldn¡¯t miss. For a moment, that felt like a mistake as he thought the thing might just keep going, and he almost threw his crossbow in the water, so he could free a hand to draw his sword. Fortunately, that proved unnecessary, and with its usual screech, it turned and fled back into the pile of bodies it had built by the main sewer grate.


    ¡°No way I¡¯m getting any closer to that thing! What in all the hells was that?¡± Freya asked as she resisted Simon¡¯s efforts to drag her forward.


    ¡°It-it¡¯s a carrion crawler,¡± Simon said slowly, wishing he could take the time to reload his crossbow, but he had nowhere to set down his bundle. For a moment, he really missed the fine backpack he¡¯d had made the last go around, and he wondered how adventurers ever did without that sort of thing. ¡°And it¡¯s not really interested in us. It eats corpses.¡±


    ¡°So if it kills us, then it will become interested?¡± she asked skeptically.


    ¡°Well, when they¡¯re wounded, they tend to steer clear, but if we stick around too long¡­.¡± Simon let his words linger, both because he didn¡¯t want to say anything too awful and because he¡¯d had to suppress his need to be a know-it-all and explain to her that they would be perfectly happy to paralyze the two of them and then devour them both while they were frozen in place.


    Eventually, she accepted the need to move, which caused a dilemma. Simon wanted to send her up the ladder first, but he feared what would happen to her if he wasn¡¯t physically holding the portal open. So ultimately, he climbed up, set his bundle down, and then sat in the opening with his legs dangling while he helped her up. They¡¯d been intimate several times now, so there shouldn¡¯t have been anything embarrassing about touching her. Somehow, though, the combination of closeness and coldness that was currently between them made the whole thing incredibly awkward.


    Still, she¡¯d made it through, and the carrion crawler hadn¡¯t killed them, so what else could they ask for?


    ¡°Where are we now?¡± she asked in a voice full of wonder while he was bent over, reloading his crossbow. Her words reminded Simon she¡¯d probably never seen someplace tropical or even heard the word jungle in her life. Though her reaction to a desert might have been just as extreme.


    ¡°We¡¯re in a warmer sort of place that¡­¡± Simon¡¯s words trailed off as he looked up and saw her approaching the vine-covered wall, intent on one of the large orange and pink blossoms that dotted the vine-strewn masonry.


    ¡°Be careful!¡± he yelled, dropping everything he was doing and running to her so that he could drag her away before she got too close. He didn¡¯t think that was one of the blossoms that launched the darts at him, but he couldn¡¯t be sure.


    ¡°It¡¯s just a flower,¡± she said, shaking him off. ¡°What the hell is your problem. You act completely calm when monsters charge at us, but you freak out when it¡¯s a flower? What the hell!¡±


    Simon shook his head. He tried to see her point, but really all she was showing off was her own ignorance, and he wasn¡¯t about to explain it to her right now and fuck things up even more.


    ¡°Look, I¡¯ll tell you later when we get somewhere safe, but first, we have to climb that!¡± he answered grumpily as he pointed at the largest ziggurat in the ruined city.


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    ¡°What in the name of the gods is that thing?¡± Freya asked. ¡°It¡¯s like a mountain but shaped very strangely. Did people make that?¡±


    ¡°Probably,¡± Simon answered. ¡°I¡¯m not really sure.¡±


    They took a small break by the river so that they could both drink plenty of water before Simon filled his skin back up, and Simon¡¯s heart fluttered as he saw her lovely pale skin in the sunlight for the first time. That made him smile. They¡¯d never actually been outside together before.


    Did that make this their first date, he wondered. The idle thought made him smile. What a terrible first date that would be: a walk through a sewer filled with rotting corpses and a city slowly being devoured by plants. Real nightmare fuel right there. It kind of made him wonder what sort of relationship could be built on such a fucked up foundation.


    This time when they set off again, he had her take the lead. He¡¯d never seen anything dangerous in this place that wasn¡¯t plant-based, so he felt like she would be safest where he could keep an eye on her. After that, things went fast, and eventually, the icy distance between them thawed somewhat as he explained to her how some parts of the world were warmer than others and that in the warmest parts of all were jungles, which were like forests but filled with far more life.


    This time when she peppered him with questions about all the new sights, he didn¡¯t mind answering. He did his best, of course, interpolating what he remembered from history class about the Mesoamerican civilizations, but ultimately he ended up telling her more about Teotihuacan than he did about wherever this place was. After all - he had some idea of where Schwarzenbruck was compared to a number of other cities and portals he had access to. He was even pretty sure that the wyvern ruins weren¡¯t so far from that area just based on the way it looked. He could be way off, though, given that New England and actual England also looked pretty similar.


    They took a break when they reached the giant ziggurat and again when they were halfway up the structure. Freya seemed to be in slightly better shape than Simon, but to be fair, she wasn¡¯t hauling an extra thirty pounds of armor and weaponry. When they reached the top, they just sat there for a good long while enjoying the setting sun, and eventually, she laid her head on his shoulder, and he took that as permission for him to put his arm around her as they admired the reds and oranges dancing above the jungle canopy.


    ¡°It just goes on forever,¡± she said


    ¡°It does,¡± he agreed, ¡°Jungles are generally pretty huge places.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she corrected him, ¡°these strange portals of yours. They just keep coming one after another, don¡¯t they? I¡¯ll bet there¡¯s another one just past this one and another past that, right?¡±


    ¡°There is,¡± he agreed, unsure of where she was going in all this.


    ¡°And somehow, you don¡¯t just summon these portals or know where they¡¯re going to go, but you already know what¡¯s on the other side, like you¡¯ve been here before.¡± she continued.


    ¡°And if I have?¡± Simon parried, answering her question with a question.


    ¡°It¡¯s¡­ I don¡¯t understand, and I¡¯m not sure if I want to, but¡­ I¡¯m not sure what that says about you, you know?¡± This time she looked away from the sunset to look at him directly. ¡°You can wield magic and walk through the same moments twice, so does that make you a god or a demon?¡±


    ¡°Neither,¡± he answered truthfully. ¡°I¡¯m just a man trying to be a hero.¡±


    ¡°Well, you¡¯re my hero at any rate,¡± she said. He was about to thank her, but when he saw that she was moving in for a kiss, he decided that seemed like a better idea. So, they shared a long, tender moment together.


    Afterward, there was more talk, and he told her what he could without confusing things further, but really all he could say was that he was on a quest to help a goddess fix a few things, which seemed to satisfy her. As long as Simon wasn¡¯t in league with dark forces, it seemed that she could tolerate the rest.


    Freya was quiet after that. Eventually, after they¡¯d crossed into the next level and found a nice spot to make camp near the edge of ruins, she finally asked a question that had obviously been on her mind for the better part of the day. ¡°Does that mean we¡¯ve done this before?¡± she asked. ¡°Is all this just a part of your secret quest?¡±


    ¡°This? No, we¡¯ve never done this before, Freya. I-I promise you that,¡± he said, briefly choking on his words. ¡°I''ve met you before this, but we didn¡¯t even escape from the inn together. This is all uncharted territory. As to if you¡¯re important to my mission - I honestly don¡¯t know, but I know that you¡¯re important to me.¡±


    She smiled at that, and it was only afterward while Simon was wondering why a cheesy pickup line like that would have worked so well that he realized she¡¯d never seen a romantic comedy in her life. He hadn¡¯t either, of course, not all the way through, but he¡¯d probably listened to a hundred of them in the background while he played his switch in the living room and his mom watched some sappy show. That was a skill that he never thought would come in handy, but as he watched her suspicion melt away while she clung to him, he hoped this might work out yet.


    That night they slept near the embers of a fire that he¡¯d actually managed to make without resorting to magic, and between Freya¡¯s body heat and the stone wall behind them to keep away the wind, it was actually one of the nicest nights he¡¯d had in the wild ever. It certainly beat the chilly trip down from the goblin cave. He was sure that, eventually, he would lose a couple toes to frostbite on that trip.


    In the morning, they started down the mountain, holding hands. There was no trail to speak of, and the way was more than a little rocky. It wasn¡¯t so bad, though. In the distance was another small town on a river, which seemed to be a theme for this part of the world, and it seemed like as good a place as any to take a break before they found somewhere they could put down roots.

 Ch. 47 - Kill or be Killed

    Progress down the mountain was slow, and by the following evening, they still hadn¡¯t reached the gently rolling plains that would lead to the distant village. Simon would be glad when they did, though. He¡¯d pinned his hopes on it. Not only was it exhausting having to double back whenever they encountered an area too steep to pass, but it took forever as they tried to get down the sandstone bluffs that separated them from anywhere hospitable.


    Once, just after noon, they heard the shriek of the wyvern as it soared through the sky. Simon immediately dropped what he was doing and pulled Freya into the shadow of a boulder, where they hid for almost half an hour as they watched the thing soar across the sky. In the end, it was only when Simon saw it flying back to its nest with a goat in its claws that they continued on their way. Though Freya took the rest of the journey well enough, even though her feet were bleeding by the end of the day, thanks to her poor excuse for shoes, Simon couldn¡¯t stop worrying even after they stopped and the sun started to set. All he could see was that wyvern flying back to its nest with her bloody body in its claws.


    By the evening, she was noticeably limping though she still hadn¡¯t complained. He wanted to heal her wounds immediately, but he didn¡¯t want her to freak out, so he decided to wait until she went to sleep as they made camp for the evening. That night they didn¡¯t make a fire because there was precious little wood on the slopes of course. It was also because Simon didn¡¯t want a beacon that would attract attention. After all, there was no real shelter, and he couldn¡¯t help but think that given the slightest provocation that wyvern would swoop down looking for prey and decide that the two of them were the perfect snack.


    He didn¡¯t have any idea how far those things ranged when they hunted. However, given their size and the number of calories they had to burn every day, it had to be far, and he was certain they¡¯d still be at risk of a surprise attack for days. How many days was harder to say, but he was pretty sure that until they could make it to the light forest that was still over a day from here at least. After that, he had no idea what new dangers would await them in there.


    ¡°What are you thinking about?¡± Freya asked eventually, rousing him from his recursive train of thought about all the dangers that they faced.


    ¡°How did you know I was still awake?¡± he asked. They were spooning together for warmth, and she was facing away, so he was genuinely confused.


    ¡°If you were asleep, then you would have been snoring,¡± she said playfully. ¡°When you¡¯re this quiet, usually you¡¯re just worrying about things.¡±


    ¡°The Wyvern,¡± he said honestly, unwilling to tell her too much.


    ¡°It¡¯s going to be okay,¡± she reassured him. ¡°We¡¯ll get somewhere safe soon. You said so yourself.¡±


    ¡°I did,¡± he agreed.


    They chatted for a while about what he thought would happen next and what they would eat first when they got back to civilization, but eventually, there was a lull in the conversation, and Simon thought that she¡¯d drifted off to sleep until she said, ¡°It¡¯s funny, you know? You spend all your time worrying about what¡¯s going to happen next, but all I can think about are all the terrible things that have already happened.¡±


    ¡°I get that,¡± he agreed, looking briefly at the Pandora¡¯s box of past traumas in his mind before he decided he did not want to open it again. ¡°But eventually, all that just gets to be too much, and you have to move on.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯m ever going to be able to move on from Bre¡­ From what happened in that inn,¡± she said, in a voice filled with sadness.


    ¡°You know, it helps if you talk about it,¡± he said, not really believing the words. It was something his therapist had always told him, though, and somehow at this moment, it felt right.


    ¡°I just¡­ I can¡¯t believe that she would do something like that¡­¡± Freya said, ¡°Not really to him.¡±


    ¡°You mean Brenna?¡± he asked. ¡°She seemed like a real piece of work to me.¡±


    ¡°But you didn¡¯t¡­¡± she paused as she remembered. ¡°Oh, was this before?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, we met before. Another time.¡± Simon agreed, not eager to tell his lover too much here. Other women were a sticky situation that he wasn¡¯t used to, and facing a cave full of goblins was less than treacherous in his mind than trying to thread this needle. ¡°She almost got me killed once.¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± Freya said, letting the ominous word hang in the air for a long time.


    ¡°What did she do to you?¡± Simon asked, unwilling to let the conversation die in such a precarious place.


    ¡°She almost got me killed, too,¡± Freya said. At first, her words came out slowly, one at a time, like they were being dragged out of her. At some unseen critical point, though, that trickle became a waterfall, and she couldn¡¯t stop. ¡°No - worse. She almost made sure I was turned into one of those things. After the owner turned, she tried to use me as a human shield to save her skin, and we fought and eventually¡­ I had to, you understand, don¡¯t you? I had to¡­¡±


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    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± Simon said, stroking her hair. ¡°I know you did what you had to. Only what you had to.¡±


    Freya was crying now, and that made it hard for him to focus on much of anything else besides how uncomfortable that made him feel and how he could somehow get her to stop, but at least the mystery finally made sense. Every time he journeyed to level 6 and the door opened, it was in the middle of some crucial moment, and so sometimes Freya won, sometimes Brenna won, and sometimes no one won at all. That explained the blood on Freya¡¯s hands and the weapon in Brenna¡¯s whenever he found one of them, at least.


    They both drifted off after the sobbing stopped, but it was only when he woke up that he realized he¡¯d forgotten to do something about Freya¡¯s blistered, bleeding feet.


    ¡°A??????u??????f?????v?????a?????r????u??????m????? ????H???????j??????a?????k???k??????¡± he whispered in the dawn light while she still slept softly.


    Under the blankets, he couldn¡¯t see the results of his magic, but he was certain that he was successful as he felt the tingle of magic flow through him. Fortunately, Freya didn¡¯t wake up from that, and even after he woke her up and they had the last of their stale biscuits for breakfast, she didn¡¯t say a word about the state of her feet, even though he was sure she knew something was different.


    Simon spent much of the next day thinking about the moment she¡¯d described to him last night instead of the wyvern. Did the fact that either option was possible mean that the outcome wasn¡¯t important, or did it mean that one of them was the right answer? Why would Helades have started the level right at the moment? Why not before the fight so he could save them all, or after the fight when Freya had lived.


    He had no answers, but when they finally found a trail weaving through the rolling grasslands at the base of the mountains, they made better time and camped at the edge of the wood. They roasted some of the cured ham that night, which was delicious, but Simon spent half the night awake listening for the noise of predators as he realized that the delicious smell of roasting meat had been a terrible mistake in such a wild place. While Freya snored softly beside him, all he could think about was the razor-sharp beak of the owl bear and that he hoped they didn¡¯t range in this wood like they did in the other one he¡¯d traveled in so frequently.


    This time when they finally reached a road he went south instead of north. It was as good a direction as any. That meant two more days on the road before they reached the safety of the next village, as it turned out. This time Simon was careful not to use gold when he paid this time. He struggled to introduce the two of them at the inn where they sought lodging because he doubted that there were words like girlfriend in the world, but Freya quickly handled that. ¡°I¡¯m his cousin,¡± she said quickly, making Simon wonder if she was intentionally choosing to downplay their situation or not.


    ¡°And where you folks traveling from?¡± the cranky old proprietor asked. ¡°Not from the troubles up north, I hope.¡±


    ¡°No, definitely not,¡± Simon answered too quickly. ¡°We come from a village to the east, beyond the mountains. Why? Has something happened?¡±


    ¡°We got any number of problems right now to choose from, but none as bad as Schwarzenbruck,¡± the older man said with a sigh. ¡°If I were you, I¡¯d think real hard about going back the way you came.¡±


    ¡°We might do that,¡± Simon answered. ¡°We just need to rest a few nights after such a long trip.¡±


    Simon had planned to stay there for three nights, but they only stayed two. In the end, it wasn¡¯t the lumpy bed or the mediocre food that the place served. It wasn¡¯t even that Freya was acting a little distant. It was that on their second night there, during dinner, one of the newly arrived merchants had a seizure and began to spasm and tremble at the table near the door before he suddenly rose again as a flesh-hungry monster.


    Fortunately, Simon was prepared, and no sooner had the creature started trying to tear the throat out of their neighbor than Simon was there to crush the thing¡¯s skull with his mace. He ended up doing the same thing to the man that had been bitten, even as everyone looked on in horror like he was the murderer.


    ¡°What?¡± he said defensively. ¡°You get bit, you become one of them. Those are the rules.¡±


    ¡°How could you possibly know that?¡± someone gasped.


    ¡°Like you learn anything important: the hard way,¡± Simon shot back as he cleaned his mace on the deadman¡¯s clothes before he grabbed Freya by the hand and pulled her away from the table. ¡°Come on. We¡¯re getting out of here. Who knows how many more of those things are close by.¡±


    The fear in the woman¡¯s face as she relived everything that had happened to her before made resistance impossible. ¡°Where will we go?¡± she asked meekly.


    ¡°Away is the only direction that matters,¡± he said as they went upstairs to pack their meager belongings.


    Simon had considered swiping the dead man¡¯s coin purse, but he thought people might react badly. Once they were out of the inn, though, he had no problems swiping the wagon that the man had come in on. Simon had been sitting on the porch enjoying the breeze and the sunset when the merchant had come in earlier.


    At the time, the man had seemed a little off, but not I¡¯ve-been-bitten-and-you¡¯re-all-gonna-die off. Simon needed Freya¡¯s help to put the merchant¡¯s horse back in the harness, but after that, they were on their way. She had some qualms about stealing someone else¡¯s property to her credit, but it was this, or walk through the night, and Simon wanted to get away as far and as fast as they could.


    ¡°You know, it¡¯s funny,¡± he said as they started to ride down the dark road to whatever horror awaited them next, ¡°I always thought that in a med¡­ In the midst of a place full of swords and axes, zombies wouldn¡¯t be much of an issue, but it appears I was wrong.¡±


    He¡¯d almost said ¡®medieval world,¡¯ which would have been a mistake that was hard to correct.


    ¡°Simon,¡± she sighed. ¡°Even if everyone in that room was armed, you were the only killer there. Most people just want to live. They don¡¯t go around looking for things to fight like you.¡±


    It was an interesting statement, and a few lives ago, he probably wouldn¡¯t have gotten what she was saying, but now, he definitely did.

 Ch. 48 - End of the Road

    They went south for three days, though they didn¡¯t go particularly fast to avoid wearing out the horse. Given that now they were sleeping on the hard bed of the wagon between a row of crates and the wall, Simon considered this a real improvement. In his mind, nothing was wrong with being pressed against a woman as lovely as Freya every night, but he knew it wasn¡¯t permanent. They couldn¡¯t just stay in the wagon forever. It was no way to live.


    The first two villages they stopped in seemed too small for strangers like them to fit in. Still, they were a fine place to settle for the night. Now they claimed to be peddlers to befit their wagon instead of adventurers, though Simon had no idea what he should charge for the random pots and cutlery the previous owner had been selling, and as Mr. and Mrs. Jackoby, sellers of odds and ends, they seemed to be treated much better than Simon the adventurer and his companion Freya.


    Simon spent a whole afternoon just searching the back of the thing, and it seemed like the previous owner had just stolen whatever wasn¡¯t nailed down and taken it on the road with him. There were copper kettles, cast iron cookware, knives of various quality, strings of garlic, a box of potatoes, and a half-full bag of flour. These were hardly the trade goods he¡¯d have expected of a merchant in a fantasy world. There wasn¡¯t a scrap of dragon hide or a vial of fairy dust to be had.


    Still, they received a warm enough welcome thanks to his silver, and Simon and Freya put the inn¡¯s beds to good use most nights. He still couldn¡¯t understand her, though. Sometimes she seemed like she was falling for him, and other times he half expected to wake up and find her gone. This mystery was finally resolved when she said, ¡°You know, I always thought that when someone proposed to me, it would be more romantic, but I don¡¯t think there¡¯s a single romantic bone in your body Simon Jackoby!¡± during one of their tiffs.


    ¡°Married?¡± Simon asked dumbly, not connecting the dots.


    ¡°What? You¡¯re keen enough to sleep with me and to introduce me as your wife, and now you¡¯re going to what¡­ say that it was all some big act just for show?¡± He could hear the fury in her voice getting ready to erupt if he made a misstep here. However, he wasn¡¯t quite sure what to do, so he tried to channel his inner rom-com again, even as his mind grappled with the fact that this might not be the random fling he thought it was.


    ¡°I would be delighted for everyone to know you¡¯re my wife,¡± he said finally as he pulled her down to sit on the bed beside him, ¡°But I don¡¯t want you to be with me because you know - you have to. Danger and zombies aren¡¯t very romantic, but¡ª¡±


    Freya eventually shut him up by kissing him before he could ruin the moment. ¡°You stupid, stupid man,¡± she said softly, ¡°how could I not love the man that saved my life!¡±


    Simon really didn¡¯t know what to say after that. He¡¯d only ever dated two women longer than six months, and both of those had ended poorly a decade ago. He was pretty sure that he¡¯d proposed to Freya just now, or she¡¯d proposed to him. He honestly wasn¡¯t sure which, so in the end, he just held her while he tried to sort out his feelings about what had happened and how he felt about it.


    Regardless though, she was in better spirits after that, so on the fifth day of their journey away from the undead, they found another small village, and while Freya was busy at the inn restocking their supplies and trading them a little bit of this, for a little bit of that, he took a trip over to the blacksmith and paid the man the scraps of gold that would be leftover to turn one of his coins into a nice ring for his girl. In the end, it was an ugly thing, and he was sure he¡¯d tragically overpaid for it, but she loved it just the same. They both agreed it was a strange relationship and an even stranger courtship, but what could they do with the world falling apart like this?


    ¡°I always thought I¡¯d save up a decent dowry and marry one of the men that worked the river boats or maybe one of the city guards,¡± she said one night, lying next to him. They¡¯d managed to sell or trade almost half the crap in the back of the wagon now, so there was actually room to lay down. ¡°But a foreigner with a strange accent and a knack for killing monsters? Never.¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t really know what to say either. He never expected to fall for, well - anyone, really. Anyone that wasn¡¯t a 2d waifu anyway, but here he was, holding a half-naked woman that might even stay with him once the danger passed. It seemed too good to be true, but he vowed to enjoy it for as long as he could.


    . . .


    On day eight, they exited the woods they¡¯d been riding through on a particularly dreary day and discovered Crowvar. They¡¯d known it was coming from the last couple of villages they¡¯d gone through. Apparently, the little town that occupied a strategic hilltop location in the otherwise flat region they¡¯d been traveling through wasn¡¯t considered the nicest place. The reputation of their lord, Baron Raithewait, wasn¡¯t considered the best either, but he had something no one else had so far: walls, and that was enough for Simon to decide that this might be the place.


    The quaint little town with its tightly packed houses and their red-tiled roofs spilled out from behind its city wall and part way down the slope, and it wasn¡¯t a proper castle that protected it, but that was still good enough. For Simon, a small and imposing keep beat life on the road indefinitely. He was tired of looking over his shoulder, and he would never know if what was growing between him and Freya was real until they could settle down and have a normal life together. Not that he really knew what normal was in all this.


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    Once they reached the town, Simon saw the buildings weren¡¯t in the best shape, but the guard at the gate didn''t give him many problems. The man just asked both of them for their names and their business before sending them on their way. Simon paid for a week at the inn, which definitely wasn¡¯t the worst place he¡¯d been to, and then they did some exploring. The market was hardly thriving, but they discovered there were enough artisans and craftsmen they¡¯d be able to get his needs addressed regarding armor and a new backpack, which he didn¡¯t really need but desperately wanted.


    ¡°Well,¡± he asked Freya after they¡¯d finished wandering around the place in a few hours. ¡°Could you see yourself staying here a while?¡±


    Simon had explained his desire to find somewhere defensible, and she¡¯d agreed with that, but despite the lovely chapel and the reasonably friendly people, she didn¡¯t seem convinced.


    ¡°I mean, it¡¯s nice enough,¡± she said, holding his hand, ¡°but it¡¯s hard to think of any place as home when I don¡¯t speak the local tongue.¡±


    Simon swallowed hard. He hadn¡¯t realized that they¡¯d transitioned to a new region or country or whatever, and he had no idea that he¡¯d switched languages at some point. He¡¯d wanted to ask her when exactly it was that he stopped speaking northern and started speaking southern, but he really didn¡¯t want to explain one more strange thing about him just yet.


    Instead, he said, ¡°That¡¯s fair. I understand.¡±


    Her answer was good enough for him, though, and first thing in the morning, he decided to see if Lord Raithewait was receiving visitors, so he went to talk to the man¡¯s guards. As it turned out, the answer was rarely, but when he explained that he was a mercenary that could be useful if trouble made it this far south, they told him they would see if there was any need for his services.


    Simon honestly didn¡¯t think he¡¯d be hearing from the Baron and set about trying to find a cottage that they could buy or how it was that you got one built in the era before DIY and general contractors, but he didn¡¯t have much luck there either. That was when the Baron¡¯s messenger arrived.


    ¡°My Lord would welcome both of you to dinner tonight at six,¡± the haughty young man said with a sniff. ¡°Please wear something appropriate, if that¡¯s possible.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t, really. Freya had spent much of the week sewing a new outfit after he¡¯d bought her a few bolts of cloth, but for the moment, neither of them had anything but the clothes on their back. Still, they showed up. The worst thing that could happen was that they¡¯d be told to leave, and though Simon liked this spot, he was sure there would be other places to go, and they could find another instead, if they needed to.


    Dinner turned out to be roasted suckling pig with the elderly man and his two sons. While Baron Raithewait wasn¡¯t quite out of villain central casting, his gray hair and high cheekbones certainly made it possible that he was the villain in some horror movie. The room that they ate in didn¡¯t make things any better. It was a large room that wasn¡¯t quite a dining hall, flanked by two very large fireplaces, and the southern wall was covered in weapons and trophies of various victories. Still, he was nice enough to them both, though, and once Simon name-dropped Baron Corwin, the man became almost warm.


    ¡°Gregor is a good man, though it has been an age since we¡¯ve been able to meet with all the recent troubles,¡± Lord Raithewait said with a small toast of his glass.


    None of that affected his son¡¯s attitude toward them. Even after the pumpkin soup and the lamb chops, the two younger Raithewaits still spent much of the night looking down their nose at them. When they found out that his wife was from near Schwarzenbruck, they asked no end of hurtful questions about the whole affair. Fortunately, she couldn¡¯t understand a word they said, and he could pad the jabs quite easily with a little tact here and a few omissions there.


    ¡°How does it feel to know that everyone you knew is dead now?¡± became ¡°What was it like to live through that?¡± and so on. Simon had dealt with passive-aggressive bullies like this his whole life. It was the reason he¡¯d dropped out of school, but he was long past caring what strangers thought about him. He had a beautiful woman that loved him and a couple spells up his sleeve, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to burn every asshole at this table alive.


    Instead, he just held Freya¡¯s hand under the table a little tighter and tried to smile while he told them all about their harrowing and completely fictional escape from a city full of zombies.


    ¡°You two must have been together for a long time then if you were together when Schwarzenbruck was actually overrun then. That was years ago,¡± the younger son, Jeffery, said. ¡°You¡¯d better start trying for children sooner rather than later. Your bride is getting a little long in the tooth.¡±


    Jeffery snickered at his own awful joke even though it earned him a rebuke from his father, but Simon was too distracted by what the man had just said to be offended. Years? Had it really been so long since the city had fallen, and the problem still wasn¡¯t completely resolved? Did that mean the gateways were in time as well as space? Was that what Helades had meant when she talked about the Pit so long ago? It was hard to say for sure, but it seemed likely. If so, it was a shocking revelation. Unfortunately, it wasn¡¯t exactly something he could discuss with anyone.


    ¡°Please forgive my son¡¯s rude behavior,¡± the Baron said, snapping him out of his reverie.


    ¡°Of course,¡± Simon said, pretending to be gracious instead of oblivious.


    ¡°I think I might be able to find you the accommodation you¡¯re looking for. Though I don¡¯t expect that the zombie hordes will ever get this far south again, there are always good reasons to keep a few sell swords around, just in case,¡± the Baron said with a cruel smile as he steepled his fingers in front of him. ¡°Of course, I¡¯ll have to see if you can actually fight first.¡±

 Ch. 49 - A New Home

    Simon hadn¡¯t been quite sure of what to make of the man¡¯s words. He thought that maybe he¡¯d come back and spar with a couple of the Baron¡¯s guards tomorrow or something. Instead, once they¡¯d all finished eating dinner, the servants moved the trestle tables aside to clear space in the large room. The way that they did so with such practiced ease made Simon think this was not the first time this sort of after-dinner entertainment had been arranged, either.


    ¡°What¡­ Here? Now?¡± Simon asked, suddenly regretting his third glass of wine.


    ¡°Why not?¡± the Baron asked with a smile. ¡°I could do with some entertainment. Now would you like to do the honors, Varten, or should I pick one of the guards to test his mettle?¡±


    Simon breathed a sigh of relief when the Baron turned to his eldest son. He was a slender man who¡¯d been somewhat reserved all night. Not only would he not be much of a challenge compared to some of the burly men Simon had seen around the sprawling home, but Simon was certain the Baron wouldn¡¯t endanger his own heir with some kind of blood sport.


    He was completely surprised when the boy drew a heavy saber already on his hip and held it up dramatically, letting the light dance along its razor¡¯s edge before he pointed it at Simon. That was the moment he knew they¡¯d planned all of this from the start. Of all the men at the table, Varten was the only one wearing a weapon and the only one with the look of a killer in his eye.


    ¡°As if I would ever turn down a challenge, Father,¡± he answered with a sneer before walking toward Simon.


    ¡°But my weapon and armor are at the inn, my lord,¡± Simon said, trying to think of a way out of this.


    ¡°Nonsense. This is just a quick exhibition, so to speak. To the blood or the yield, as it were. You may pick from any blade in the room,¡± the Baron said, gesturing widely to the trophies displayed on the south wall.


    ¡°Thank you, my Lord,¡± Simon said, quickly explaining what was going to happen to Freya as he rose from his seat. There was worry in her eyes and a quick shake of her head. She knew that he shouldn¡¯t do this, and he agreed with her, but there was no way out of this short of preparing to leave the city now, and he wasn¡¯t willing to do that.


    The man might be perverse, but he valued the life of his heir, so he was sure that he wouldn¡¯t let things get too out of hand with Simon.


    Simon¡¯s first instinct had been that the weapons on the wall had been nothing but display weapons, and he¡¯d been right. Most of them were pretty decrepit. The shields were sundered, and the blades were chipped or worse. Simon picked up several before deciding they might not last for even one good parry before putting them back. Eventually, he selected a small steel shield that was much smaller than what he was used to fighting with, but he could find no weapon to pair with it. That¡¯s when he noticed that the long swords the guards carried were just about twins of his own.


    Simon walked to the guard with a nasty scar across his forehead at the nearest door and said, ¡°Your blade, sir?¡±


    The guard looked to the Baron for approval, but after a quick nod, he handed it to Simon Hilt first. The long straight blade would do nicely, he decided as he turned to face his foe.


    Simon had never fought a saber before, or anyone taller than him, and Varten¡¯s reach was nullified by Simon¡¯s longer blade, so he could be fine, but he felt like there was something here he still wasn¡¯t getting as he walked toward the center of the room to face off against the other man.


    ¡°So how do you want to¡ª¡± Simon had barely opened his mouth to speak when his opponent lashed out with his blade.


    The man certainly didn¡¯t seem to be pulling any punches and almost put out his eye before he managed to step back. He lashed out with a wide swing of his sword just to force the other man back, though he easily avoided it. After that, the battle was joined.


    Over the space of the next several seconds, they exchanged half a dozen blows. Steel clashed with steel, and though Simon was on the defensive the whole time, he didn¡¯t have another near miss, at least. His opponent was faster and less concerned about hurting a stranger, whereas Simon had a shield but was worried he might accidentally strike the young man fatally if he went all out. He had very little experience fighting people for sport compared to the amount of time he¡¯d spent killing monsters, while the other man had obviously spent all of his time in duels.


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    ¡°You¡¯re not so bad for a fat man,¡± Varten said softly as he moved close to Simon for another exchange. ¡°Your footwork is abysmal, though. You can¡¯t expect to beat me like that.¡±


    Simon tried to slam his shield into the other man to make him pay for the insult, but obviously, his opponent had been expecting that, so the blow never connected. Instead, Simon found himself being shoved, and then he was falling backward, though he wasn¡¯t quite sure how. It was only when he hit the ground that he realized that Varten had slipped his foot behind Simon¡¯s, tripping him even as he toppled him.


    ¡°Where to leave you the mark of my favor, hmmm¡­¡± Varten said, standing over his defeated enemy. Simon had been worried the man might actually try to kill him, but he could see his game now. He¡¯d noticed that almost every guard in the place had some kind of obvious scar, but in his mind, that just meant that Lord Raithewait had a penchant for blooded veterans. He had no idea that it was some sick game that this family liked to play where they marked their territory.


    Even with that revelation, Simon stayed perfectly still, waiting for just the right moment as the fingers of his shield hand grabbed a handful of the throw rug that his opponent was standing on. It was only when Varten drew back his sword to strike that Simon put all of his strength into it and yanked the rug hard, momentarily throwing the other man off balance and giving Simon a chance to kick the legs out from under the cocky duelist.


    After that, they both struggled to their feet, but Simon had tossed his blade aside, and instead of trying to match him with blades, he was going to put his weight to better use and pin the man beneath him. Varten tried to pull a dagger with his offhand, but Simon grabbed his wrist and twisted hard enough to make him drop it.


    ¡°Do you yield?¡± Simon gasped, half out of breath. Varten ignored the request and continued to struggle fruitlessly to bring his blade around and run Simon through.


    Simon ignored that and released the other man¡¯s left hand long enough to pick up the dropped knife and bring it to Varden¡¯s throat. ¡°I said, do you y¡ª¡±


    ¡°That will be quite enough of that, I think,¡± Lord Raithewait called from the far end of the hall. ¡°You will have to forgive my son. He is not used to losing. You may be able to do this family good service, yet, I think.¡±


    Simon was a little surprised that he¡¯d won, but even more than that, he was wary of letting go of the other man since he hadn¡¯t actually yielded, but in the end, when Simon stood and backed away quickly, his opponent didn¡¯t try to run him through a second time, and only looked at Simon sourly, as he returned the dagger.


    As they sat down to a dessert of brandy and walnut-encrusted sweet bread, the duke complimented him on both his choice of weapons and on his unorthodox finale. ¡°Never accept the obvious, and certainly never fight your enemy where they are strongest. These are the exact behaviors I look for in my men,¡± he said with a smile.


    They left with the promise that in the morning, Varten would show them to their new home, where they could stay as long as they were in the Raithewait family¡¯s service. That night Freya alternated between being angry at him for doing such a foolish thing and being proud of him for winning in the end. They got very little sleep as a result.


    In the morning, Varten met them as promised, and though he congratulated Simon on his victory and suggested they should spar more often, he was sure that the noble still bore a grudge. The cottage he took them to was near the north wall, down a crowded, dingy street that stank of chamber pots. It had obviously been abandoned for some time, and part of the roof had given way completely.


    Simon wasn¡¯t sure if this was supposed to be an insult, but he thanked Varten just the same.


    ¡°It¡¯s not much,¡± Simon said, holding Freya once they were alone, ¡°but it¡¯s home.¡±


    ¡°It will be lovely,¡± she said, ¡°It¡¯s the men that you¡¯ve sworn yourself to serve that I¡¯m less happy with. We can find people to fix the roof in a few days, but you can never fix that hole in that man¡¯s heart.¡±


    Simon agreed with her, of course, but there was little he could do. Even the zombie threat wasn¡¯t as bad as he¡¯d first feared; apparently, the world was getting to be a dangerous place. Centaur attacks from the east, and goblin raids in the south. Unlike the world he¡¯d come from, this was a place of chaos, and Freya didn¡¯t understand why a cruel man like Baron Raithewait was needed in places like this; Simon did, even if he didn¡¯t like it.


    Once they were done, and he and his wife decided what needed to be done, Simon sought out some craftsmen to help him resolve the most pressing work. They¡¯d need to replace several of the timbers, replace the rotten shutters and redo the tile roof, but the walls were sturdy, the fireplace worked, and it would even have space for a small garden in time.


    For now, they continued sleeping at the inn. Simon wasn''t in any danger of running out of money any time soon, and it wasn¡¯t like he could just pop down to Ikea to handle the whole no furniture problem. Eventually, though, he had to leave these things in his wife¡¯s capable hands because his end of the deal was coming due: some of the farms under the Baron¡¯s control had been burned out by goblins, and since he was such an expert on these things, the man had decided to give him a few men, so he could go handle it for him.


    Freya was hardly happy about this, but it wasn¡¯t like he could do anything about the arrangement. ¡°First, you bring me into this strange town with these awful people, and then you just, what? Leave me here?¡± she demanded.


    ¡°You know I don¡¯t want to, but Mr. and Mrs. Stravsen will take good care of you while I¡¯m away, and by the time I get back, maybe we¡¯ll finally be able to move into our place together.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want our place,¡± she said. ¡°I want you!¡±


    There was a lot of hugging and crying after that, but nothing could change the fact that the next morning he still saddled up and took five men with him to go see how bad these goblins really were.

 Ch. 50 - A Quiet Life

    It turned out not to be goblins. The villagers seemed to know that too, of course, but Simon hadn¡¯t bothered to ask them. Instead, after a quiet ride to the source of the problem, he just tried the same trick he¡¯d used last time. Suffocating them in their lair would be a fairly bloodless victory. Unfortunately, he found out the hard way that this wasn¡¯t going to be like last time when half a dozen hobgoblins staggered out of the dank hole in the ground. Other than their dark olive skin, they had little in common with the goblins he¡¯d fought so far, and they were definitely going to be a little tougher than their smaller cousins. They scattered the fire in all directions as they charged through the smoke looking for something to kill.


    Simon hadn¡¯t been ready for a counter-attack or the larger-than-expected opponents. None of them were. Still, he charged in before he remembered that this was the very last life he wanted to die in. He was just so used to fighting now that it was his first impulse, and he regretted it as he moved toward the opponents that were almost as large as he was.


    They were vicious, too, but his boldness surprised him as much as it did his opponent, and between their coughing from the smoke and their squinting from the sun, he was certain that he and his men could make short work of the bastards. He was mostly right, but partway through the fight, when there were only three of the green skins left, Simon took a club to the back while he was gutting his second opponent that sent him sprawling. It hurt, but he didn¡¯t think that anything was broken. He would have almost certainly been stomped to death if two of his fellow warriors hadn¡¯t shot it with their crossbows, though.


    After that, Simon was about to order his men to start rebuilding the fire when he noticed that one of them was hurt pretty bad. ¡°The rest of you start the bonfire back up unless you want to go in and see if there are any of those big bastards left while I tend to Trav,¡± he said. From the expression of the other men, he realized that they probably thought he meant he was going to end his suffering with the point of his sword, but Simon doubted it would come to that.


    The man had been raked across the belly with the foul claws of the hobgoblins, and he was bleeding badly enough that Simon was sure the abdominal wall had been ripped, which meant there might be all sorts of internal damage as well. Simon wasn¡¯t much for science, and he barely remembered his high school biology test book, but still, he struggled to remember those crucial details as he soothed the wounded soldier.


    ¡°Easy there, man. The worst is over. You¡¯re going to be okay,¡± Simon said, struggling to find something to say that wasn¡¯t so generic and coming up empty. He¡¯d shared a campfire with these men for all of two nights, and he knew next to nothing about him.


    ¡°I-I¡¯m dying, aren¡¯t I,¡± the man gasped as he lay there in obvious pain.


    ¡°Nah,¡± Simon lied. ¡°I¡¯ve seen way worse than this. It¡¯s just a flesh wound.¡±


    ¡°A flesh wound?¡± he moaned in fear. ¡°What is that? Does that mean it¡¯s already diseased? Gods protect me!¡±


    Simon realized the man would have no idea what he¡¯d meant by the phrase flesh wound only after he said it, but he didn¡¯t bother to answer. Instead, he gathered up the image in his mind of the wound knitting shut, the intestines returning to normal, and the blood pooling in the man¡¯s abdominal cavity slowly being reabsorbed by the body before he whispered, ¡°?????????????f?????v??????????r????¨²?????m????? ????????????j??????a?????k???k???????,¡± under his breath. Simon could see that it wasn¡¯t enough to fully heal such a large wound, but it did help, and he quickly reached for the bandages.


    The last thing he wanted to do was reveal his magical powers. He knew exactly what would happen once he¡¯d done that. Instead, he just made Trav comfortable. After all, Simon could always heal him again that night or on the way back home if necessary.


    They stayed there the rest of the day, filling the lair with smoke, and when night came, they camped nearby and kept a watch on the entrance until morning. It was only then that Simon was completely satisfied that they¡¯d done their job. They brought one of the heads back to the village on a spear and mounted it in the square to show everyone that they had nothing to worry about, and that night a feast was held in their honor.


    The village wasn¡¯t rich, so the food was meager, but Simon still enjoyed the crude folk music and the amusing medieval dances that he had no idea how to perform. Before the end of the night, he was all but propositioned by one of the women there. ¡°Please allow me to show you my gratitude properly,¡± she¡¯d breathed into his ear when she brought him another beer.


    Simon politely declined, but the whole thing just made him miss Freya more, and so the next morning, they made haste back to the Baron to deliver the news of their success. The ride back gave him plenty of time to reflect on his strange little life. The life of a mercenary warrior certainly wasn¡¯t what he would have chosen if he¡¯d gotten a say in it. Being the Baron and actually managing all the details of the kingdom could have been fun. Playing a wizard in a tower studying how to make this magic system slightly less broken could have also been cool too, but even if he could figure out a way to reach that spot in one of his lives, he couldn¡¯t imagine how he¡¯d be able to do it without Freya by his side, and that was more important than anything else.


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    The trip back was uneventful, and Simon made his report only very briefly before he went to find his wife. Even that brief stopover was enough to chill him when the Baron¡¯s eldest said, ¡°Hobgoblins, you say? Are you sure? I had no idea. Is it possible fighting goblins might not be as simple as you claim it to be?¡± He¡¯d actually laughed at that, and it had taken every ounce of Simon¡¯s willpower not to draw his weapon. The man had known that they were being sent out against something a lot tougher, and he¡¯d lied to him.


    ¡°Even so,¡± the Baron stepped in to smooth things over. ¡°You managed to deal with the problem and come back unharmed. Excellent work.¡±


    ¡°Well, not unharmed,¡± Simon corrected him, ¡°but I think that Trav will pull through.¡±


    ¡°Yes, I had heard something about that,¡± the old man said, ¡°Apparently, in addition to your other talents, you are a gifted healer.¡±


    Simon just shrugged, not sure what to say, and after a little more discussion, he left. His next stop was the inn, but Freya wasn¡¯t there, so he tried their home and was pleased to find her cleaning up their little hovel. When he first saw her, she seemed upset, and he thought he was about to get yelled at, but as soon as the door creaked and she turned, she ran to him and hugged him like she was afraid he was going to vanish at any moment.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± he asked.


    ¡°I-I heard that someone came back from your little adventure and was hurt pretty bad. I feared the worst, and¡­¡± her words dissolved into tears as she beat her hand impotently against his chest. ¡°How could you think any of this is okay? What if you¡¯d died? What if you¡¯d left me in this strange place already a widow!¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s going to be okay,¡± Simon said, trying to soothe her by stroking her hair. ¡°Everything is going to be just fine. I mean, look at this lovely home. You¡¯ve¡ª¡±


    ¡°The gods can take it for all I care,¡± she spat. ¡°We could leave tonight. We still have the wagon; we could¡ª¡±


    ¡°What happened here?¡± Simon asked, noticing the small bandage on her arm. For a moment, he had a flashback of the time Brenna had hidden a wound and then turned into a zombie and bitten him. He felt the sudden impulse to undo the bandage and check to make sure it wasn¡¯t a bite, but he suppressed it.


    ¡°Oh, I just cut myself in here while I was¡­ cleaning up.¡± She looked like she was on the verge of tears again, and Simon didn¡¯t understand, but he did his best to make her feel safe.


    Freya clung to him all night, except for when she was cooking over the low fire he¡¯d made with some of the cutlery they¡¯d saved from their trip. ¡°I believe someone called all this junk,¡± she said, smiling.


    Simon didn¡¯t care about the dig. He just cared that it was the first time she¡¯d really looked happy all day. That night he told her about the fight and about the man that had almost died under his command. He blamed the Baron for sending him without the proper information and the people of the region for not warning them, but as he drifted off to sleep, he knew the truth. It had been his fault for not investigating more before he¡¯d sought out the confrontation. They could have watched and waited or done some scouting and asked around to figure out that they needed to prepare more. They didn¡¯t, though, because he¡¯d been so certain it wasn¡¯t going to be a challenge.


    He was going to have to work on that.


    The rest of the week they spent cleaning and building. Simon used an axe to make some new posts for their fence, and he hired a carpenter to fix their doors and shutters, so the place should be less drafty, but by the time he was called away again almost two weeks later, their house was finally starting to look like a home, and that brought him a measure of joy and peace that was almost indescribable. The last conversation he had with his wife was about what they should plant in their garden in the spring, and then he was off on the road again, dreaming about a herb garden and perhaps a nice spinning wheel for her if he could find one.


    This second mission was against the centaurs that had been raiding villages and herds to the east. Centaurs were rare creatures in games, so Simon hadn¡¯t had much experience with them, but the reality was fairly terrifying when he saw one for the first time. The creatures were huge and bestial. They were taller than him at the shoulder, and they had huge sharp teeth and dead eyes that made them look more like animals than men.


    It turned out that the creatures favored short bows that they could fire while they ran at speed, which made them almost impossible to fight or capture. Simon was shot twice in their first encounter and was forced to lay there in pain for most of the day until he could get enough privacy to heal himself.


    Thereafter, he was more careful. They retreated and spent a day practicing with whatever the men had on them, be it a long bow, a crossbow, or a sling, and after that, they recruited a shepherd in one of the dangerous areas, and used him as bait. Then they waited among the rocks and the sheep for the centaurs to reappear. As the nine of them galloped toward the shepherd kicking up a trail of dust in their wake, the man drove his flock back further into the rough ground, and when the centaurs moved to follow, Simon and the dozen men he¡¯d brought with him sprang from their hiding places and took down several of the monsters before the centaurs even knew they were endangered.


    This time Simon was not able to bring his men back unscathed, but after a few minutes of fierce fighting, only three centaurs were left to retreat, and all but two of Simon¡¯s men had survived the encounter.


    This time there would be no celebration because their survival had been a near thing. If Simon had met them on an open field of battle to ¡°put the fear of house Raithewait in them,¡± as the Baron had suggested, Simon was quite sure they¡¯d all be dead by now. No, this time, all he wanted to do was go home and kiss his beautiful wife, and appreciate that he¡¯d survived.

 Ch. 51 - Insurmountable

    The next few months were among the most satisfying days that Simon had ever known. He¡¯d spend a few days on the road helping to defend the Barony from some monster or another. Then he¡¯d come home to spend weeks with his wife as they slowly turned their strange situation into a life together.


    She was never happy to see him leave, but she was always overjoyed to see him come home, and that was enough for him. Little by little, they made a thousand minor touches that slowly turned their life from bearable to amazing. Simon learned to redo the plaster walls, and though he never quite mastered the brickwork, the man he hired did a good enough job that Freya never complained about smoke while she was cooking again.


    It seemed like every time he left Crowvar, he came back with some souvenir. When they rousted a nest of bandits just before the first snow, Simon chose to take a nice set of stolen silverware as his prize from that tidy little horde. After that was gnoll raiders, where he found a lovely necklace for Freya, which she swooned over. In the spring, he was called upon to defeat an actual goblin infestation and then to put down a tax rebellion. In the former case, he finally found a lovely spinning wheel in a house where the occupants had been murdered. In the latter, he actually chose to give a few gold coins from his stash away to resolve the situation peacefully when he decided that the Baron was in the wrong.


    He didn¡¯t want to spend those coins, of course. He knew they¡¯d never get that sort of windfall again. However, his only other option was to crush the skull of the headman and hang every poor bastard without a coin to their name or join them and overthrow the Baron. Simon was fairly sure he could do the latter, but the chaos that would have been introduced into his life would have been awful. He needed peace to enjoy this time with Freya more than he needed a couple of gold coins anyway.


    He felt like both of them were improving and growing closer all the time, which made their time apart that much more unbearable. While she learned to spin yarn and knit it into a blanket to replace the threadbare one that had barely got them through winter, he focused on other things that were almost as important.


    Simon spent the winter getting halfway decent with his long bow and forcing the men he fought beside so often to train to work together a little better. Quite frankly, he thought their performance was a little embarrassing because everyone used a different weapon and style. Still, it took forever to improve that situation. He doubted they¡¯d have even made the effort if they didn¡¯t secretly call him the miracle worker behind his back.


    That was a rumor he¡¯d tried to quash, but it had only grown since that first fight. Even the Baron had pulled him aside to ask if it was true that he had magical healing powers. Simon had learned the hard way that the more he denied it, the more they believed. Now he just ignored it and tried not to add more fuel to the fire. Still - it was hard to do that when you watched someone bleeding out on the battlefield and knew you could save them with a few whispered words.


    These days he tried to heal just the internal part of the wound. That way, he left it bleeding but no longer life-threatening to allay suspicion. However, even with that little trick, people still noticed that of all the Baron¡¯s patrols, his routinely came back with the fewest casualties. So, they tried things his way and practiced things like shield walls and short bows, and by spring, he had a halfway capable fighting force.


    By spring, everything felt like it was starting to fall into a routine for the first time since he¡¯d entered the pit. That was when Freya told him that she was pregnant.


    ¡°Really? Are you sure?¡± he asked. That was apparently the wrong answer because after she stopped crying, she wouldn¡¯t speak to him for hours.


    That night they had a fight, and he apologized, but he wasn¡¯t really sure what he was apologizing for. He was the one with his mind blown, after all. He was only thirty, after all. Was he even ready to be a dad? It wasn¡¯t a conversation he¡¯d ever planned on having in his life. Still, eventually, he acted excited enough to placate her while he processed his own feeling on the subject.


    Simon tried to look on the bright side. This was among the smallest curveballs Helades could have thrown him. It was only a few days later that they heard the news that the orcs were coming.


    Two days after Simon got the Baron to agree to let him take some time off from the field, a messenger came to let them know that a war band of orcs had been sighted in the east and seemed to be heading this way. For the last month, they had been dealing with increased centaur activity, and suddenly everything snapped into place: the centaurs were moving further west and warring with the humans because the orcs were displacing them. It was grim news, and though the lord of Crowvar kept it a secret for as long as he could so as not to cause a panic, the panic still came when refugees fleeing the path of danger arrived in the walled town.


    ¡°Are we going to leave?¡± Freya asked. ¡°They say that the horde has thousands of warriors. There¡¯s no way anyone could defend against that.¡±


    ¡°If everyone is saying something, it¡¯s almost certainly wrong,¡± Simon sighed, slumping into bed with her. He explained that the reality was somewhere between dozens and hundreds of orc warriors. While that was still enough to kill 3 times their weight in men, Crowvar had more than enough men that could hold a sword or a crossbow to fend them off.


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    In truth, Simon was more than a little worried. Not just for his wife but also for his unborn child, that was just starting to grow inside her. He couldn¡¯t leave, though. The road hadn¡¯t been a good place when it was just the two of them, and there was no way they¡¯d be able to manage as her body began to swell with life.


    He didn¡¯t tell her any of that, though. Instead, he told her he would think about it while they fell asleep. His mind was already made up, though, and in the morning, he went before the Baron to suggest a plan that was a feverish combination of various action and fantasy movies he¡¯d seen.


    ¡°Sire, we must defeat this army, but the only place we can hope to do so is here. We must let them come here and even lure them here if necessary, and then we must break them against the eastern walls,¡± Simon said as passionately as he could.


    ¡°The eastern walls, you say? And why is that?¡± the Baron asked. ¡°My son thinks we should be prepared to retreat to the tower and wait for them to lose interest. Rumors say their army is too big to hold back until the Count or even the King sends reinforcements.¡±


    Simon carefully explained that the orcs moved like a wave of locusts and that they carried no supplies with them, so they could not stay in one place for any length of time. Then he explained his plan. ¡°They will attack from the east because that is the direction they come from, and they will attack at night because all green skins hate the light, but we will be ready. They have no siege engines or scaling ladders, so we will line the walls with men wielding spears and keep them from gaining a foothold while we pepper them with arrows.¡±


    ¡°Arrows will just make an orc angry,¡± Varten said haughtily. ¡°Don¡¯t you know anything?¡±


    ¡°I know you can bring anything down with enough arrows,¡± Simon snapped, almost saying bullets by accident. ¡°We will hold them in place, we will weaken them, and then in the morning, when they are trying to decide whether to retreat, we will launch our cavalry from the tree line and crush their weakened force against the wall and obliterate it.¡±


    ¡°What you describe is a fine plan, Simon,¡± the Baron said wearily, ¡°but it would take many more men than we have, and these orcs will be here within a fortnight.¡±


    ¡°More soldiers would be better, but I do not think we need too many,¡± Simon answered. ¡°We will keep most of them on their horses in the wood while we put a bow or a spear in the hand of every farmer and refugee that¡¯s old enough to wield them, and we shall tell them that they are all that stands between their family and a gruesome death.¡±


    Eventually, the Baron saw things Simon¡¯s way and agreed to the plan, which infuriated his son. ¡°This plan is reckless to the point of danger. No man will follow it,¡± Varten declared, storming out of the room.


    Simon didn¡¯t actually think he was completely wrong. It was reckless, but only a little. In the movies, the orcs would have had giant trolls to knock down the walls or catapults, but here they were just savages using salvaged weapons to murder and devour everything they could find, and Simon would be ready for them.


    Every day more people pressed into the small town for the slender promise of safety offered by their walls, and every day, the people worked as hard as they could to prepare. Blacksmiths worked late into the night, and Simon drilled the men on the plan. An orc¡¯s main advantage was size and strength, and his plan aimed to deny them both.


    On the day the horde was sighted from the tower, Simon pressed a dagger into Freya¡¯s hand and promised to keep her safe even as she cursed him for not fleeing when they had the chance. She was almost six months pregnant now, and travel beyond the market would have been impossible, but that didn¡¯t matter.


    To her, all that mattered now was that he was safe, but just the opposite was true for him. He was going to keep her safe no matter what. So, with a look of grim determination, he strode out into the twilight to prepare for the long night ahead.


    The orcs reached the walls just before midnight, and Simon called for the first volley of death moments later. Their supply of arrows was not infinite, of course, but they would make sure that every single shaft ended up splattered in green blood before the end of the night.


    Simon took to the walls sometime past one in the morning when one of the defenders was yanked off into the milling crowd below. Most of the orcs tried to climb the walls without success, but some of them had grapples and would hook onto the top bricks, and they did their best to bring down the ancient fortification one brick at a time. It was working too, and it hadn¡¯t been part of Simon¡¯s plan. As Varten had mentioned, they shrugged off arrows and instead used their massive strength to pull chunks of masonry off into their fellows as they sought to lower the walls enough to gain entry.


    It almost worked. Despite severing every grapnel he could, they still almost managed to create a breach in the southern part of the western wall. In the end, it was only dawn that saved them. As false dawn began to light up the eastern horizon, the warriors began to have second thoughts about whether or not to continue the assault. It was too late for second thoughts, though, because even as they turned to leave, the horn blew, and the cavalry appeared on the far side.


    Simon ordered the gates open then and sent every man still capable of swinging a sword outside to join them. There had been perhaps three hundred orcs at the beginning of the night, and even though there was only half that number now, that would still be too much for the knights that were charging in to save the day. The result was a bloody melee that lasted for hours, but for all their strength, the orcs were wounded and exhausted, and in the end, they were wiped out to the last man, inflicting only several dozen casualties on their enemies for all their effort.


    Simon was elated. Some of the soldiers wept that morning, embracing each other in the greatest victory that part of the world had seen in some time. Simon would have loved to join them. Instead, he hurried home because there was one person he needed to share this victory with more than anyone else.


    ¡°We did it, baby, we¡¯re safe and¡­¡± Simon never finished that sentence as the words died in his throat. Both Freya and Varten turned toward the sound of his speech, but it was too late. He¡¯d already seen them kissing.


    It should have been the most joyous day of Simon¡¯s life. For once in his life, he was the hero. He¡¯d saved the day. He couldn¡¯t celebrate, though, because when he came home, he opened the door to find his beloved wife in the arms of another man.

 Ch. 52 - The Death of a Dream

    Simon felt the fury rising in him, but it was premature, so he held it in check. Everything happened at once in that instant, and it was impossible to completely hold back his anger as the world turned red and shrank to a single point of focus. He felt the rage that his wife would cheat on him, only to watch in slow motion as Freya used the distraction his entrance had provided to wrest her right-hand free and stab Varten in the belly with the dagger Simon had given her so recently.


    ¡°Simon, this isn¡¯t what it¡ª Fucking bitch!¡± Varten¡¯s excuses were interrupted by his scream of pain as he cuffed Simon¡¯s wife, sending her careening off on the wooden table before she fell to the floor as limp as a rag doll.


    ¡°Gods, I¡¯m fucking bleeding,¡± he muttered to himself as he pulled the dagger out and tossed it on the ground. ¡°That bitch fucking stabbed me¡­¡±


    Varten was a practiced duelist, but he only faced foes weaker than himself, so he was always the one doing the wounding and not at all used to the sight of his own blood. Simon¡¯s lip curled in pleasure at that. For better or worse, he¡¯d been on the wrong side of a blade dozens of times now. That realization didn¡¯t stop him from advancing on the man with murder in his eyes.


    ¡°You¡¯re supposed to be some kind of miracle worker, right?¡± the noble babbled. ¡°Heal me as the men claimed you¡¯ve healed them, or my father will hear of this!¡±


    For a moment, Simon let that fantasy play out in his mind. He thought of how easy it would be to touch the other man¡¯s bleeding shirt and whisper the magic words that would end his suffering. Those words weren¡¯t the healing words he knew but the words of destruction. He imagined filling that gaping wound that his wife had left behind with molten pain that consumed the awful young man until his prattling was finally ended forever, and he was reduced to ashes.


    Those idle thoughts all ended when he looked to Freya and saw the blood pooling by his wife¡¯s head where she lay on the floor. That was the only thing that saved Varten as he walked past him to get to her.


    ¡°Get out,¡± he said coldly, not even bothering to look at the man that had done this as he cradled his wife. He could have Varten¡¯s corpse any time he wanted it. So, at this moment, she was all that mattered.


    The noble took the opportunity and bolted immediately. That show of cowardice would have made Simon smile if things weren¡¯t so grim. It wasn¡¯t like he could get away. There was, after all, no place in any world that the young Raithewait could go to escape from what was coming for him after he¡¯d hurt the only woman that Simon had ever loved.


    ¡°?????????????f?????v??????????r????¨²?????m????? ????????????j??????a?????k???k???????¡± he whispered, instantly closing the wound on her forehead like it had never been there. Once that was done, he stroked her blood-matted hair as he cried softly. She stirred almost immediately but weakly. Her eyes fluttered open and then closed again, bringing to mind the painful lessons he¡¯d learned after his battles in the last few months: closing the most obvious part of the wound didn¡¯t necessarily solve the problem.


    A couple months ago, a man in Simon¡¯s unit had died after his stomach had been ripped open in a battle with goblins. Simon had even healed the man, though it didn¡¯t seem to matter, and it had been a slow, painful death, and Simon was sure that all his magic had done was prolong the man¡¯s suffering. At first, Simon thought it had been caused by internal bleeding. Still, even after a second round of healing, his belly continued to swell. Eventually, they¡¯d had to put him out of his misery because some vital organ was punctured, and Simon didn¡¯t know enough about it to fix it.


    ¡°It¡¯s going to be okay, baby,¡± he said soothingly as he picked up Freya and set her on the bed. ¡°I¡¯m going to find out what¡¯s wrong, and I¡¯m going to fix you. I promise.¡±


    Simon spent the next few minutes studying his beloved, looking for anything that might offer a clue as to what was wrong with her. At first, he thought it might be blood loss because she¡¯d always been a little anemic, and it had only gotten worse after she started to show. Freya¡¯s pulse was steady, though, and it didn¡¯t seem like her neck was broken. It was only when he peeled open her eyelid and saw her pupils were of wildly different sizes that he realized it might be a concussion or something like that.


    ¡°Those aren¡¯t fatal, though, are they?¡± Simon struggled to remember anything he could about his brief exposure to first aid treatment. All he could remember was to keep her hydrated and cover her with a blanket to prevent shock.


    After she hadn¡¯t shown any additional signs of recovery for an hour, Simon decided to risk trying to heal her brain directly. A concussion was supposed to be like a bruise on the brain after all, and bruises he could fix, but he felt certain he wasn¡¯t qualified to be poking around in anyone¡¯s brain, and as he whispered. ¡°?????????????f?????v??????????r????¨²?????m????? ????????????j??????a?????k???k???????¡± he was extremely cognizant that he could make things worse.


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    A moment later, she opened her eyes again. ¡°Simon¡­ I¡¯m so sorry,¡± she whispered weakly. ¡°I didn¡¯t but¡­ but he wouldn¡¯t stop, he said that¡­¡±


    ¡°Shhhhh,¡± he soothed her, squeezing her hand tighter. ¡°I know this isn¡¯t your fault, baby. I know. It¡¯s going to be okay.¡±


    ¡°The baby,¡± she said suddenly, trying to sit up, ¡°Oh gods, the baby, is it¡­¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± Simon said, trying to keep her calm. ¡°Everything is going to be just fine.¡±


    ¡°It isn¡¯t,¡± she said, starting to cry. ¡°Simon, I have to tell you... I can¡¯t¡­ I¡¯m not¡­¡±


    That Freya seemed to be having trouble holding on to what she was trying to say concerned Simon to no end, but he tried to keep the worry off his face. He didn¡¯t know if he¡¯d done something to make things worse or if there was some other internal injury he hadn¡¯t discovered, but it felt like with every word she spoke, she was expending a small part of her rapidly waning strength.


    ¡°Be still, darling,¡± he said, no longer able to hold back his tears as they cascaded silently down his face. ¡°Don¡¯t speak. Save your strength.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t want to, Simon¡­¡± she whispered, ignoring his caution, ¡°but I always loved you¡­¡±


    She smiled lopsidedly after that, but eventually, her eyelids closed again, and no matter what Simon did or said, he couldn¡¯t make them reopen. ¡°Freya. Can you hear me?¡± he pleaded, panic seeping into his voice. ¡°Answer me, please!¡±


    ¡°?????????????f?????v??????????r????¨²?????m????? ????????????j??????a?????k???k???????¡± he said again, louder this time, trying to will her delicate mind to return to life one more time, but even that only made her eyelids flicker briefly before they were still once more.


    ¡°Please, Helades - just tell me what to do, and I¡¯ll do it. Just tell me how I can fix this, and I promise I¡¯ll do whatever you ask of me,¡± he prayed quietly. ¡°Just let me save my family. Please!¡±


    The goddess gave him no answer, though, so all he could do was sit there, crying over Freya¡¯s body. Her heart still beat, and her flesh was still warm, but he was increasingly certain she¡¯d suffered some kind of stroke that was beyond his ability to fix, and now she was little more than a corpse.


    An hour ago, he¡¯d been full of adrenaline and pride that he¡¯d managed to save everyone from the orcs, but right here, right now, none of that mattered. He felt certain that he¡¯d failed to save his wife and his unborn child now, so everything else was meaningless. What use was a city that still stood if the only life that he wanted to save was ebbing out in front of him?


    Simon didn¡¯t leave her side for the rest of the day. He tried twice more to heal her without result, and it was just after sunset when he noticed that she¡¯d stopped breathing. He held her one last time, and then he took the ugly, primitive-looking ring from her hand and tied it to a thong around his neck. Then he wrapped her in the blanket she¡¯d spent the last few months knitting for them, picked her up, and took her outside to bury her.


    Even hours after the victory over the orcs, the streets were still full of revelers and people celebrating the impossibility of what they¡¯d done. When people saw Simon approaching, they cheered, but as he walked past them and they felt his aura of despair, they fell silent in his wake.


    He walked to the graveyard just outside the north gate, and then he located a shovel and began to dig. Several people approached him, including the gravedigger, with offers of help, but he refused all of them. This single-minded focus was the only thing that could keep his mind off the rage and despair that warred within him.


    Was this really all his life was now, he wondered? A constant stream of disappointments? Was he just supposed to find the girl again, only to lose her? What sort of life was that?


    Simon was in better shape than he¡¯d been in his whole life. He was even more fit than when he sparred with Gregor almost every day after being here in Crowvar for almost a year, but even so, digging down foot after foot into the clay soil was backbreaking work, and the exhaustion was all that kept him from breaking down into wracking sobs.


    When the hole was at last deep enough, sometime after midnight, Simon arranged her into the pit and stood staring at it for a long time before he could bring himself to fill it in with dirt. He couldn¡¯t help it. He was paralyzed by all the happy memories they¡¯d shared together, and putting that first shovelful of earth on top of her would truly be saying goodbye for the last time.


    It wouldn¡¯t be the last time, of course. He knew that. He could just kill himself and go find her again. He could kill himself a hundred times if that¡¯s what it took to locate her again. But it wouldn¡¯t be this Freya or this life, and as tempted as he was to just lie down in that grave beside her, he gripped their ring that now hung around his neck, and he knew that he couldn¡¯t do that. He couldn¡¯t give in to despair.


    So he filled in her grave and then impaled his sword in the earth as a crude grave marker. There was nothing fancy about the steel blade, but any one of the Baron¡¯s men could look at it and see that it was his. Perhaps one of them would make something a little nicer for her in the days to come, he thought, exhausted.


    Simon vowed that if he survived what was to come that he would use the rest of their gold to hire a mason to build a grand monument to her, though he doubted that he¡¯d ever be around to see it. He lay there on the cold, wet earth in a vain attempt to be close to her one last time, and he slept, knowing that some small, vital piece of who he was had been buried in that grave with her.

 Ch. 53 - Someone to Blame

    Simon awoke from his troubled dreams shivering from the cold in the pre-dawn light. For a brief moment, he wasn''t sure where he was. He dreamed that he''d been off to a war, against the orcs and... well, it had been a true nightmare. When he woke in the field, though, he breathed a sigh of relief that everything''d he''d experienced was a dream. It wasn''t though, and as soon as he noticed he was in a graveyard and not some forest clearing surrounded by the tents of his men he remembered that.


    Then everything came rushing back. His grief hadn''t gone anywhere. It had merely ebbed for a moment, and now it was back with a vengeance. Even as he tried to cope with that pain, though, it was overwhelmed by something else. His desire to wring the neck of his wife''s murderer. That need had invaded his dreams, too. That was what confused him. He¡¯d fought barehanded through an entire army of orcs led by the Baron to keep him from getting his due.


    Simon regretted letting her murderer escape, but that was only in retrospect. If those precious seconds had let him save her, then he would have counted himself among the luckiest men ever to live. It hadn¡¯t been enough, though, so he was a fool for not leaving his Lord a body of his own to bury.


    He doubted that Baron Raithewait would make what had to happen to his heir next very easy, but Simon wasn¡¯t worried. Not only was Varten likely to pass away from the gut wound he already possessed in this primitive world like this, but there wasn¡¯t a force in this world that could keep him from ripping the man¡¯s head off with his bare hands. More than anything, Simon wanted to watch the light leave his eyes.


    So, he rose and stretched and started walking back toward the North gate. It was there he found his way barred.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Simon, but I have orders from the Baron,¡± the night watch commander said, ¡°He said that your services are no longer necessary and that you are free to depart in peace. He also gave me the order that if you try to force the issue, I¡¯m to have you arrested and hanged without delay on the charge of assaulting his son and heir, Varten Raithewait.¡±


    Simon stood there momentarily, considering the words and deciding how best to proceed, so the commander continued. ¡°That can¡¯t be true though, can it? You just saved the city, so there has to be some kind of mistake, right? Heat of battle? Something like that?¡±


    The night watch commander was a good man. Simon had learned that much over the past week while they¡¯d worked hand in gauntlet to prepare the city¡¯s defenses. He had no wish to strike him down, but fortunately, he lacked a sword just now, which greatly reduced the temptation.


    ¡°Actually, it isn¡¯t true,¡± Simon said, letting the other man breathe a sigh of relief before he continued loudly enough that everyone on watch near the gate could hear. ¡°My wife stabbed that lowlife son of a bitch while he was trying to rape her. I just happened to interrupt.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s terrible,¡± the older man said, shaking his head sadly. ¡°Well then, surely she can go before the Baron and¡ª¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s dead,¡± Simon said flatly. ¡°Head wound. Nothing I could do.¡±


    All the men on duty tightened their grip on their swords when they heard that, but none dared draw on him, and they were surprised when Simon walked away.


    ¡°Where are you going?¡± The watch commander called out after Simon.


    ¡°Away,¡± Simon lied.


    It was still dark enough that climbing the eastern part of the wall in one of the places most damaged by orcs would be child¡¯s play, and that¡¯s exactly what Simon aimed to do. There he found plenty of men staking up bodies of the fallen so they could be burned before they rotted, and he greeted several that he recognized as he walked past. Obviously, the news about him wasn¡¯t widespread because he either got a smile and a congratulations or a few words of condolences, depending on whether they¡¯d seen him carry Freya¡¯s body out to the cemetery.


    No one expected him to climb the wall, and Simon was over the top and down the other side in just a few seconds. Only then did he pull his cloak up over his head to hide his face. He¡¯d been in Crowvar long enough for it to start feeling like home, but now it was enemy territory.


    The first guard to confront him was a man named Mitchel, whom Simon had never cared for. He was one of Varten¡¯s men and bore a long ragged scar along his jawline.


    ¡°You there, halt!¡± he ordered Simon as he drew his sword. Simon stepped inside the other man¡¯s guard, tripped him, and then stomped on his throat. Then Simon left him in the darkness near the well before helping himself to the man¡¯s long sword and leaving him to suffocate.


    Then he walked to the Baron¡¯s keep, where Vartel would certainly be hiding until they were sure Simon was gone. Because the alarm had not been raised, the heavy wooden portcullis was still raised, but he noted that the watch had been doubled to six men. Raithewait keep was an ancient structure built when the centaur Khans still ruled this area, so it was fairly small. It had a four-story tower covered in arrow slits to fire on those that might attack. Still, its fifteen-foot walls protected only a small courtyard and a few sturdy stone structures.


    It wouldn¡¯t be enough to save them from what came next.


    Chatting with each other, none of the guards noticed Simon until he was almost upon them. ¡°Halt,¡± one of them yelled, and Simon obeyed, drawing his sword as he stood near the wench and pawl for the portcullis.


    Everyone else immediately drew their swords as well. However, some looked less happy or certain about it than others.


    ¡°He¡¯s here!¡± Keldin shouted. ¡°Sound the alarm. He¡¯s in the keep!¡±


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    ¡°If I¡¯ve ever saved your life or fought beside you against the goblins or the centaurs, leave now and you can live.¡± Simon growled. "If you stand between me and my wife''s murderer you'' wont live long enough to regret it." There was plenty of killing to be done, and he didn¡¯t want to add more to that list than he had to.


    A few shifted nervously at his offer, but when he added, ¡°Lest you forget, I do have my miracles, and they aren¡¯t just used to save lives.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s bluffing,¡± Marill said, though Simon noticed that he was too afraid of the idea to actually take a swing. Bluff or not, Tim took off out of the gate at that point, sheathing his sword as he ran.


    ¡°What about you, Garrek?¡± Simon asked, ¡°You¡¯ve got a family. You don¡¯t need to die here.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m standing here because I have a family,¡± Garrek answered with sadness in his voice. ¡°You know the last thing I want to do is fight you.¡±


    As they spoke, the other five men were starting to spread out, and Simon knew if he waited any longer, he¡¯d lose his shot. ¡°I¡¯m sorry to hear that,¡± he said genuinely before shouting. ¡°G????????????r???????v?????u?????u????????? ???????M???????e???i???????r??????¨¨?????n????¡±


    For a minute, Simon had seemed totally unprepared and outnumbered, but he quickly reversed those odds by turning all five of the men that were arrayed against him into bonfires as fire rippled out from his free hand to engulf them. Then, with a swift chop, he mercifully beheaded Garrek, leaving the other four men to burn to death before he lifted the pawl on the portcullis ratchet sending the thing crashing down to the ground.


    The fortress was a hive of activity now, but no one was quite sure what was happening. Simon used that to charge through the side door into the Raithewait home as they started to bar the main door and send crossbowmen up on the walls looking for who was attacking them.


    That left Simon entirely free to approach the bedrooms of the Baron and his boys. On his way, he only encountered a single guard who was smart enough to shoot Simon as soon as he saw him coming but not smart enough to draw his sword as Simon staggered forward with an arrow in his shoulder and ran him through.


    ¡°You never get enough time to shoot twice with one of those things,¡± Simon grunted as he yanked the quarrel out and healed himself.


    Once he¡¯d regained the use of both of his arms, Simon reloaded the weapon and continued down the hall. Shortly before reaching Varten¡¯s room, he found the Baron standing in his sleeping gown, holding a dagger.


    ¡°I understand that you¡¯re angry, Simon, and I¡¯m willing to pay to smooth over this misunderstanding,¡± the old Baron said calmly like he was negotiating a business deal. ¡°But if you want to kill my son, you¡¯re going to have to go through me, and¡ªUhhnnnn.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m surprisingly okay with that,¡± Simon answered with a manic grin, pulling the trigger and releasing the bolt into the Baron¡¯s chest.


    He would probably have killed the old man anyway, but listening to him talk about how gold might be used to clean the slate after what his son had done just stoked the fires of Simon¡¯s fury that much higher.


    The Baron¡¯s weapon clattered to the stone hallway, and his body would have joined it, but the quarrel had pinned the slender old man to the wooden door behind him. He weighed too little to break the shaft, so he hung there painfully, gasping for breath.


    ¡°You should have just let me kill him,¡± Simon said as he walked to the Baron and moved to open the door. ¡°Son or not, you know he deserves this.¡±


    Predictably, the door was barred from the inside, so Simon shouted. ¡°Come out, Varten! You can¡¯t save yourself, but you can still save your father. If you surrender, I¡¯ll heal him up good as new.¡±


    ¡°Go on, old man,¡± Simon said as he moved further down the hall to fetch a battle axe mounted on the wall that he could use to cut through the door. ¡°Convince him to save your life; maybe he¡¯ll listen.¡±


    All Baron Raithewait could do was cough up blood as he gasped. The man¡¯s mouth moved, but no words came out. Simon didn¡¯t care either way. He just started hacking into the door jamb with the unfamiliar weapon. Trying to cut through the door itself would take longer than he had, but cutting through just enough to create a gap he could shove his sword through to lift the bar was doable.


    ¡°Here¡¯s Johnny!¡± Simon shouted as he finally damaged the door enough to force it open. No one but him would get the joke, but he didn¡¯t care. He laughed grimly as he found Varten lying in bed. The man was still bleeding, but he held his sword in his hand.


    ¡°Your bitch of a wife cut too deep for me to be able to fight you properly, I¡¯m afraid, but if you¡¯d like to heal me, I¡¯d gladly allow you to join her in death,¡± the spoiled young noble spat.


    ¡°If that were an option, I would, but I don¡¯t want to fight you; I want to murder you in cold blood just like you killed Freya, you fucking prick,¡± Simon said as he raised his axe and moved purposefully toward the bed.


    ¡°She wanted it, you know,¡± Varten said, smiling like the snake he was. He didn¡¯t even bother to lift his sword because he knew it wouldn¡¯t do any good. ¡°We were at it all the time while you were away. In fact, the baby probably wasn¡¯t¡ª¡±


    The noble¡¯s cruel words were cut off abruptly as Simon buried eight inches of steel axe blade in the other man¡¯s skull while he yelled in rage. His scream continued even after he let go of the handle, and Simon was surprised to find that his act of righteous vengeance brought him no comfort. For a moment, he considered pulling the axe out and healing him just to kill him again. However, he realized that would be too far and stopped himself from seriously considering it.


    Instead, satisfied or not, that¡¯s when he turned around and found Varten¡¯s younger brother standing there in his night clothes with a sword drawn. On instinct, Simon moved his hand to the hilt of his sword but stopped himself. In all the time he¡¯d been here, Erik had seemed the least cruel of all the Raithewaits. He was also only sixteen, so there was absolutely no reason to kill him.


    ¡°Are you going to murder me next,¡± the boy asked him with a trembling voice as he looked like he was about to piss himself.


    ¡°Nah,¡± Simon sighed, ¡°I feel like I¡¯ve done enough killing today. How about this. You escort me to the gate, so none of your guards decide to be brave, and then after that, you can rule the city of Crowvar however you want. Sound fair?¡±


    ¡°My guards?¡± the boy asked in confusion. ¡°So I¡¯m to be a hostage?¡±


    ¡°If you like,¡± Simon said, moving toward the shell-shocked young man and carefully taking his sword. ¡°But after that, you¡¯ll be the Baron of the whole region. Maybe you can do a better job than your brother would have.¡±

 Ch. 54 - Rage

    Simon didn¡¯t return to his house to take anything with him. Nothing he¡¯d left behind was worth the ghosts he would see there. He had his sword, and that would be enough to get him where he needed to go. There was nowhere in any world he could find solace, but he did know one place where he could get some answers, and that would have to do for now.


    The guards had just managed to lift the portcullis by the time they came outside, but with his sword in one hand and the young Baron¡¯s neck in the other, no one tried to stop him. ¡°I¡¯ve gotten my vengeance from the rest of the Raithewait family,¡± Simon told the first man to confront him, ¡°and as soon as I get to the gate, you can have young Erik back then unless you want to end the line right here.¡±


    No one tried to call his bluff, which was good because it wasn¡¯t one. The truth was it would be faster if they just cut him down here. It might even be more satisfying. But if he died, then he wouldn¡¯t have her ring anymore, and that meant more to him than walking all the way back up that mountain to the wyvern.


    The trip back was uneventful. As they¡¯d ridden south together, Simon and Freya had feared that the zombies were nipping at their heels and would sweep across the world. They¡¯d never come that close, though. After the fall of Schwarzenbruck, they¡¯d become an endemic threat. They¡¯d pop up periodically, but the people of the area knew how to handle them. Some people even believed that there were ways to cure the recently bitten before they turned, though Simon had yet to see any evidence for that claim.


    There was a lot he still didn¡¯t understand about this world, but right now, he didn¡¯t care anymore. He just trudged forward from camp to inn and village to town as the mountain he needed to climb loomed into view.


    The whole time Varten¡¯s words haunted him, too. It didn¡¯t matter that he knew they weren¡¯t true. All that mattered was the way that they picked at the open wound and made him despair and doubt what he knew. Was it possible that Freya had been unfaithful to him or that she¡¯d never really loved him? Simon knew that their courtship had been more than a little rushed and that he could have been a better partner, but even so, he found it impossible to believe she could lie to him well enough to be true.


    Simon tried hard to stay positive whenever his rage faded enough for the despair to seep into his soul. As the trip wore on, this habit, combined with the familiar surroundings, made him more than a little nostalgic. He couldn¡¯t help but think about the way Freya laughed or made fun of the way he pronounced certain words. It seemed like everything along the road brought back some memories, but it wasn¡¯t until he got to a bridge he didn¡¯t recognize that he realized that he¡¯d gone almost a day too far to the north.


    No one on the road bothered him, or even noticed him as he turned around and started walking back the way he¡¯d come. Maybe bandits could see his little storm cloud that followed him around wherever he went, or maybe they could see he really wanted an excuse to kill someone. Either way, it didn¡¯t matter. All that mattered was the hike up the mountain.


    It took two days to get up this time instead of the three days it had taken to get down. Simon was a little amazed that he was in that much better shape, and he even stopped early one night to roast an ewe that he¡¯d taken with his longbow earlier.


    That was something else he¡¯d gotten much better at, and he doubted he¡¯d go back to a crossbow ever again unless he had to. Once you developed the technique for pulling back on the string, it was just so much better than having to step in the stirrup and reload the damn cross. He was under no illusions that he could take down the wyvern with one, though.


    He¡¯d seen it twice on his way up the mountain, and though it might theoretically be possible to shoot it in the eye and bring it down in a single blow, Simon had missed several rabbits from close range in the last few days. That was the reason he was eating goat. Because it was bigger.


    Even the meal made him miss Freya, though. They¡¯d had goat and sheep often in Crowvar because it was much cheaper than beef and significantly healthier than pork. His dried-out spit roast made him miss the way that Freya would do it, basting in herbs for hours during the months he was at home.


    Simon sighed. The whole time he¡¯d thought he was making a safer world for her, but in reality, he¡¯d just been wasting time they could have spent together. That thought was enough to make him lose his appetite, and he cried himself to sleep.


    Simon reached the ruined castle just after noon on the following day and found the portal just where he expected it to be. When he opened it, the seaside Mediterranean-style town was still burning, and the volcano was still erupting, which was both expected and strange. As glitchy as this whole arrangement was, Simon always thought that if he lingered long enough, he would find nothing on the other side of this door but a wall of cooling magma and ash, or worse, he¡¯d open it only for a tide of magma to consume him immediately.


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    It never happened that way, though. Instead, it always linked to the same spot, like the levels operated in some way that was entirely independent of each other.


    ¡°You know this whole arrangement ignores basic laws like causality, right Helades?¡± Simon asked, knowing he wouldn¡¯t get an answer. She probably wasn¡¯t even listening, except for the parts where he was suffering.


    Simon strolled casually up the hill toward the river of lava and, eventually, the palace, but the panicking tide of humanity running the other way toward the harbor made progress slow. That didn¡¯t bother Simon. He knew where he was going, and it was a pretty short trip from here.


    This time, on a whim, he walked past the turnoff to the palace and all the way up to where the lava was flowing down the cobblestone street like a river of fire. It was a view he¡¯d seen several times from a distance, but standing so close to it that he could feel the heat rippling off of it was a different experience entirely.


    On past trips, he¡¯d seen shapes moving in the heat haze there, but this time he saw a man made of red-hot stone and burning magma standing there like he was directing the flow of the whole thing. It stared at Simon briefly before it went back to doing whatever it was doing.


    ¡°So that¡¯s a fire elemental, huh?¡± Simon said, nonplussed. ¡°Looks a little basic. You could use some better art direction here.¡±


    The only surprise of the whole level came when he got to the palace. This time it wasn¡¯t in the form of Helades waiting for him, though. The portal was wrong. It still hung in the same spot, but it no longer led to the forest as he expected. Instead, it led to the entrance of the covered bridge. The far end was too dark to see, but Simon knew that the bridge troll waited down there for him somewhere. It always did.


    ¡°Really, Helades? Your world is glitching out now?¡± Simon said in exasperation.


    Or maybe the portal wasn¡¯t wrong at all, he realized. Maybe he was. Was it possible he got the levels out of order, he wondered? Was it possible he went over the bridge and then got to the owl bear? Simon thought about it hard, but in the end, he determined that it was impossible. He¡¯d definitely gone forest, children, miller, and bridge the last time he was here. In that order. There was no question.


    Thinking of that made Simon wonder how those kids were doing. He hoped someone else would be around to save them, though. Because apparently, he wasn¡¯t going to get that chance now, he thought sadly as he unsheathed his sword and stepped through the portal to ruin this thing¡¯s day.


    In all the errands and quests he¡¯d run for the Raithewait family over the better part of the last year, he¡¯d never seen another troll, or really anything like it, Simon thought. The closest he¡¯d come were hobgoblins and orcs. That made him wonder just how rare these beasts were, but that didn¡¯t matter to him. It wasn¡¯t like anyone would cry if this endangered species went extinct.


    ¡°You and me have unfinished business,¡± Simon said as he strode toward the thing in the near blackness of the wooden bridge.


    He couldn¡¯t see the monster, but he could smell it, and he thought it was fascinating that it was trying to preserve the advantage of surprise. Not that it really had it. That was an illusion because Simon wasn¡¯t surprised.


    As soon as the ten-foot tall warty monstrosity leaped out of the shadows to devour him, Simon rolled between its legs, slicing deep into one calf as he went and chopping all the way to the bone on the other side once he rolled to his feet, making the troll roar in pain as it collapsed to its knees. It still spun around and tried to grab him with its giant hands, but Simon was already well out of reach.


    He walked backward to the far end of the bridge and looked around town to see where the best place to kill this thing might be. Its calf muscles were already almost completely healed in seconds, so he knew that his sword wasn¡¯t going to cut it.


    For a second, he considered letting the thing chase him into the church and pushing it into the portal to hell, but then the part of him that had seen way too many horror movies realized that if the thing messed up the circle as it charged through it might unleash hell in this world instead, and that was too big a risk to take.


    Simon was fairly sure if he died in hell, he wouldn¡¯t be coming back. He¡¯d just be suffering for eternity. He¡¯d already done that once, of course, and had no interest in doing it again.


    In the end, Simon decided that simple was best. He dodged the thing¡¯s strikes a few times as it lured the creature to a large barn he¡¯d noticed not so far from the blacksmith¡¯s building, and then just when it thought it had him cornered, he shouted the words of fire, erasing its face in a sea of flame and raking its chest with charred lines of power.


    With the amount of rage he felt, he wasn¡¯t surprised that shouting ¡°G????????????r???????v?????u?????u????????? ???????M???????e???i???????r??????¨¨?????n????¡± had hurt more than usual, but it was hard to argue with the results. It lit up almost as easily as the wooden walls and the straw-filled stalls that surrounded it, giving Simon more than enough of an opportunity to slide around it in the chaos and bar the door, so the monster would be trapped in there until the whole place burned down.


    Its chilling, painful screams followed him all the way across the town until he entered the church door and shut it behind him. Strangely, they didn¡¯t bother him even a little bit, though. Right now, they just sounded like victory.

 Ch. 55 - Get Thee Behind Me

    ¡°You¡¯re not going to invite your friend to join us?¡± the demon asked as soon as Simon turned around. ¡°I don¡¯t generally prefer my meals well done, but I could make an exception.¡±


    He was dressed the same as he was all the times before, but he¡¯d gotten a table from somewhere and was enjoying a nice meal of roasted pheasant on fine china. Simon noted that the silverware was made of gold and wondered if that was the demon being gaudy or if they had some aversion to silver that didn¡¯t exist in his mythology.


    ¡°How did you know I lit him on fire?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡°Know? I didn¡¯t,¡± the demon confessed. ¡°Not until you told me, but in my experiences, there are few reasons for a man, or was it an orc, to scream like that.¡±


    ¡°Troll, actually,¡± Simon said, noting the misstep and trying to decide if it was an actual mistake or a subtle manipulation.


    ¡°Ah, troll,¡± the demon said, slicing off a small chunk of meat and dipping it in the cream sauce before chewing it thoughtfully as Simon approached the gateway to hell. ¡°That would explain the fire.¡±


    This church level had always been one of the strangest ones he¡¯d seen in The Pit, but it was made stranger by the casual way that this demonic dandy was sitting there enjoying dinner. The vast space and high ceiling were made somehow smaller by the mundanity of the small table in front of the curtain of fire. As Simon walked toward him, he tried not to gawk at the surrounding.


    ¡°If you¡¯ve met lots of heroes that are stuck in the pit,¡± Simon said finally, not entirely sure if he was right, as he put together all the facts, ¡°then you knew perfectly well there was a troll outside. There¡¯s always a troll outside here between the bridge and the church.¡±


    ¡°Is there now? You¡¯re sure that¡¯s how it works?¡± The demon asked in a tone dripping with sarcasm. ¡°Well - you¡¯re the expert, I¡¯m sure.¡±


    Simon opened his mouth to explain his point, but the demon just kept talking. ¡°You have to be by now. After all, it¡¯s been a long time since you were last through here. It¡¯s been decades. You must have loads of experience about how all this works by now.¡± the demon smiled as it stood and approached the edge of his little prison. ¡°Honestly, I¡¯d rather thought you¡¯d given up already. It¡¯s nothing to be ashamed of, of course. Most of your kind do, eventually. Humanity has such a short attention span, I¡¯m afraid.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t ever quit a game,¡± Simon said, sounding both more serious and less clever than he meant to. In all this time in The Pit, he¡¯d gotten much better with the sword, but he still couldn¡¯t wield a phrase for shit. It was something he¡¯d have to work on one day.


    ¡°Ah, a game, very droll,¡± the demon smiled. ¡°I love games personally. We could play one sometime if you like. Perhaps we could make a little wager for sport. Maybe we could bet your soul against the secret way out of your goddess¡¯s death trap. What do you say?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think so,¡± Simon said a bit too quickly, making the demon¡¯s smile a touch wider.


    ¡°Another time then,¡± the demon smiled, ¡°but I think you¡¯re engaged in something much too serious for that title. Life and death as it were.¡±


    ¡°Saving a world is pretty serious,¡± Simon agreed, in a tone that made sure the other man knew just how obvious he thought it was.


    Simon carefully approached the broken ground at the edge of the circle, where spacetime started to do weird things and warp around the edges as hell did its very best to find a loophole in whoever had drawn this chalk outline and the solid stone of the church floor transformed into a series of broken islands.


    It was a disconcerting view. The unreality of it made Simon feel like the rest of the floor might give way at any moment, but he pushed that down and pretended this wasn¡¯t the scariest floor in the whole Pit so far and knelt close to the edge of the circle to investigate. While he did this, he was careful to stay several inches outside the edge lest the demon get the chance to grab him.


    He could read some of the words that had been inscribed around the rim and all the points of the giant heptagram that was inscribed within it, but most of the symbols that were present were unreadable, which meant that they weren¡¯t a language. What would that make them? he wondered? Numbers? Seals? It was possible that they were some kind of hell language he couldn¡¯t understand even with Helades¡¯s magic, but the mirror had said it was every language he¡¯d need while he was in The Pit, so he found that unlikely.


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    ¡°Saving the world?¡± the demon laughed long and loud this time. ¡°No, that¡¯s a pipe dream. Pure fantasy. All the king¡¯s horses and all the king¡¯s men and all that. I meant saving yourself. Your body may be immortal, but your mind can only take so much, and from the looks of you, I¡¯d say you¡¯re already halfway gone. Yes. You¡¯re looking very fragile now. So much pain, I¡¯m sure I could find a way to help with that.¡±


    The demon¡¯s words shook him, but he tried not to let it show. Was it possible he could see invisible things about him just as the old woman had? Was he just trying to make Simon worry, or was there actually some sort of growing problem with his soul?


    As those thoughts and fears began to spiral out of control, Simon did his very best to ignore them. Then he forced himself to stand confidently and faced the effete red-skinned man.


    Standing less than a foot away from him, Simon got the distinct feeling that he was back at the zoo, and there was a six hundred-pound Bengal tiger separated from him by only a few inches of nearly invisible plexiglass. The thing on the other side of the line might be pretending to be a bored nobleman, but it had the eyes of a predator.


    He didn¡¯t have a lot of experience with that kind of fear. It was mostly in the scary movies he didn¡¯t really watch much, and his usual coping strategy would be to pause the video and turn on the lights or shut it off altogether. Neither of those were options here, though, and he knew that this demon was waiting for him to show weakness.


    Simon was also painfully aware that he had no idea how to fight the bastard. There was probably some way hidden in the language of the summoning circle, but he lacked the knowledge to decode it, and he was certain if he just started screwing around with it, he would unleash hell on accident.


    ¡°I¡¯m a different kind of hero,¡± Simon said, doing his best to sound confident, bordering on arrogant. ¡°I¡¯m a completionist.¡±


    ¡°A completionist?¡± the demon asked. ¡°I¡¯ve never heard of such a discipline. What technique do you use?.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s my secret but your problem,¡± Simon answered dismissively as he turned and started carefully picking his way toward the portal. ¡°I¡¯m sure they have dictionaries in hell. You can look it up.¡±


    As Simon spoke, he took his first step over the abyss and onto the first treacherous island. The pieces of stone didn¡¯t actually move, and he reminded himself it was just a distortion, and they were all still somehow connected together, but that didn¡¯t make it any less terrifying, and he thought for sure the floating stone would give way beneath him.


    ¡°Oh, we have a great many things down there,¡± the demon bragged. ¡°One little slip, and you¡¯ll find that out very quickly.¡±


    The demon timed his words for the moment Simon was stepping over one of the largest gaps into the fiery nether world like he¡¯d slip and fall like some kind of cartoon character. Simon ignored the sudden spike in his heart rate though and continued further down the fractured stairway until he walked through the darkened portal that led to the haunted mansion.


    He thought about doing some more exploring here, but all it took was peeking through three doors and finding one hallway of paintings that looked at him as he walked, and he changed his mind about that. He wasn¡¯t about to fuck around with the place either. He just walked twenty feet down the hall, grabbing the longest tapestries he could, and once he had enough, he threw them down in a pile and began to cut them into long thin strips that he tied together to create a particularly knotty and garish multicolored rope. Then he threw a small cabinet through the closest window and tied his rope to the massive handle of a nearby door, and tossed the rope over the side.


    Once Simon had determined it would be long enough, he decided to do one more thing before he left. He used his flint and steel to light the shredded bits of fabric and yarn that were left over from his arts and crafts project, and once he had them going, he used that slender flame to light other flammable objects on fire. First was a rug and then some curtains, but once he had the end table going, he opened up a nearby door and tossed it onto a canopy bed.


    ¡°That should do it,¡± he told himself as he grabbed the knotted rope and started to rappel down the side of the building. The sandstone walls weren¡¯t hard to find traction on, but he did have to be careful to work his way slowly around the windows on the lower floors.


    By the time he reached the bottom, he could smell smoke, and as he reached the hedge maze, he could see the fire visibly spreading. It wasn¡¯t moving as he would have expected to, though. In a house fire, the flames would spread from room to adjacent room, here though a room on the fourth floor seemed to catch a room on the first floor on fire, which in turn caught a room down the hall on fire before the flames jumped back up to the third floor. It was pretty random, and it confirmed Simon¡¯s suspicions about the first time he¡¯d been here. Then he¡¯d been wandering for hours and never seemed to find an end.


    At the time, he¡¯d thought he was going crazy, but it turned out he¡¯d been entirely right. The house really was broken on the inside in some fundamental way. It didn¡¯t matter, though. By the time he¡¯d finally arrived at the entrance, the whole thing was going up in smoke. Simon wondered briefly if that level of destruction would be enough to damage the portal, but it was right where it was supposed to be, and it led down into the same cave it had last time.


    ¡°Now I just have to figure out how to steal that book without getting pasted,¡± he said to himself as he walked inside and made his way through the growing dark as he drew his long bow and tried to be as quiet as a mouse.

 Ch. 56 - Secrets

    The first time he¡¯d been in this cave, he¡¯d stumbled through the darkness toward the same sounds of chanting as he was now, but he¡¯d been cocky. He hadn¡¯t thought the mage, warlock, or whatever the old man was hadn¡¯t looked like much, and that had almost cost him a death with the giant stone golem rumbling out of the darkness.


    This time, he was more circumspect, and no matter how much his anger made him want to go deeper into the pit and skip over this petty bullshit, he forced himself to wait in the darkness and let his eyes adjust as he tried to understand what was happening. Nothing was different from last time. The Black-robed man still had a scraggly beard and was still gesticulating to the roof of the cavern while he offered the gods whatever it was they wanted if only they would grant him his wish.


    ¡°You have but to grant me my boon, and I will not stop with the village. I will burn the whole kingdom to the ground in your name¡­¡± the man begged, sounding like he was ready to grovel as his tone went from haughty to pleading instantly, like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.


    Simon shook his head. This dude did not look like an all-powerful wizard. He would have likely just shot him in the back again had it not been for his knowledge that the strange-looking rock formation across the room from him was capable of murdering him in a heartbeat.


    There were many things Simon would eventually have to kill that he didn¡¯t completely understand, like the Wyvern. He was sure he¡¯d figure out a way eventually as he continued to learn new tricks, though. The troll was a good example of that. Simon was sure he¡¯d never be able to beat anything so big, but burning it alive in a barn had worked just fine.


    This, though, he wasn¡¯t sure about. How in the hell was he supposed to kill five tons of limestone in the shape of a man? It didn¡¯t exactly have any weak points he could take advantage of. He¡¯d have to trick it off the edge of a cliff or something and see if the fall shattered it.


    Or he could just skip it, he thought, hopefully. The stairs were right over there, and if he was quick and quiet, he was sure he could get past them without too much trouble. But if he took the easy way out, then he wouldn¡¯t get a chance to steal that book, and that could be a gold mine of information if this creepy old guy really knew how to do more than just rant to the gods and beg them for eternal life or whatever he was doing.


    Simon thought about it for a minute and then drew his dagger, advancing on the wizard from behind. When he reached him, he covered the old man¡¯s mouth with his left hand while he held the knife very pointedly against his back with the right.


    The golem rumbled to life as soon as the old man was threatened, but it stopped moving closer the second Simon had his hostage. It was a sensible precaution. There was no way the stone giant could crush him without smashing both of them.


    ¡°You try to utter a single word of power, and I¡¯ll slice right through your heart before you can think to say the healing words. Do you understand?¡± Simon growled.


    The old man struggled briefly before he nodded emphatically.


    ¡°Remember,¡± Simon reminded him as he let go of his mouth. ¡°If you try to kill me, I¡¯ll come right back, but you¡¯ll stay dead forever.¡±


    ¡°Y-you know the words too?¡± the wizard asked. ¡°And the secret of eternal life? How did you come by such knowledge?! My master said¡ª¡±


    ¡°Before we start playing twenty questions, why don¡¯t you tell that thing to back off.¡± Simon interrupted.


    The mage was silent for a moment, then uttered the phrase, ¡°Be still until you have been given further orders.¡± The thing froze into a literal statue immediately, but the man who gave the order might have been reciting a dead language. He was like a student struggling with a bit of Latin, and it was clear he had no idea what he was saying. This only deepened the mystery to Simon. Why would a crackpot that presumably created a golem barely be able to control it?


    ¡°The guardian will not interfere now,¡± the man said, with a voice full of fear. ¡°Now, can you tell me¡ª¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m the one with the knife, so I¡¯m the one that will be asking the questions,¡± Simon talked over him. ¡°Now tell me. Who are you, and what are you doing here?¡±


    ¡°My name is Andronican,¡± he answered, shifting uncomfortably from the way Simon held him. "I was the student of the great Festauvian until his untimely death, and I seek the mysteries of the¡­¡±


    The man continued to go on and on about irrelevant details, but Simon let him babble while he tried to work things out. Was it possible that his master had done all the magic to create the golem and everything else, or was something else going on here? Each level was supposed to be some terrible event, but this guy had gone down pretty easy last time, so he hardly seemed to be capable of controlling his golem, let alone starting a zombie apocalypse.


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    ¡°How were you going to slaughter the village you mentioned earlier,¡± Simon asked finally. ¡°Were you going to raise the dead or start a plague?¡±


    The old man cackled at that. ¡°I wish I knew how to do such wonderful things, but those secrets are locked away in my master¡¯s grimoire, and I don¡¯t read the old language as well as he did, so they are forever lost to me.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m pretty good with languages,¡± Simon said. ¡°I could check it out for you.¡±


    ¡°Why shouldn¡¯t I turn you to ash the moment you release me?¡± Andronican asked with a sneer, suddenly remembering to at least pretend to be the bad guy, but there was something seriously off here to Simon.


    ¡°Well, if you kill me, you¡¯ll burn the book, and you¡¯ll be out the secret of eternal life,¡± Simon said, wondering if this guy would be dumb enough to bite.


    ¡°Very well,¡± he said after a moment, prompting Simon to relax his grip. ¡°Show me your magic, and I will let you glimpse my master¡¯s terrible wisdom. Make me young again.¡±


    Everything about this guy¡¯s body language made Simon sure that the wizard was just itching to betray him. He just oozed comic-book villain vibes, but despite that, Simon decided to play along a little, and he released the old man.


    ¡°Alright,¡± Simon said, bringing the knife to his forearm and cutting deep enough with his knife to make himself bleed immediately. ¡°Watch closely. You will see me channel pure life force to close this wound.¡±


    ¡°A??????u??????f?????v?????a?????r????u??????m????? ????H???????j??????a?????k???k??????¡± he muttered under his breath, making the wound close instantly before he wiped away the blood to prove it had vanished without so much as a scar.


    If this wannabe wizard knew healing magic, Simon would be in trouble, but as he watched the other man¡¯s face light up with undisguised glee, he knew that it was not a spell the old man knew. He had him.


    ¡°Marvelous,¡± Andronican muttered. ¡°Simply marvelous. Tell me - what is the secret? Did you get time to loop upon itself, or did you steal the energy from the earth? If only I knew the secret, perhaps my blood magic could be¡­?¡±


    ¡°Nope,¡± Simon answered flatly as he looked at the altar and the human remains that cluttered it with distaste. ¡°I¡¯ve shown you mine. Now you show me yours.¡±


    The mage looked like he was about to protest, but instead, he sighed and said, ¡°Fine, fine. Take a look, but be quick about it!¡±


    That was all the permission Simon needed, and under the watchful eye of the twitchy and erratic old man, he opened the cover and began to leaf through the pages of the ancient tome.


    If it was written in different languages, Simon couldn¡¯t tell. It all looked the same to him, and though some of the handwriting bordered on the illegible, everything but the strange symbols he¡¯d noted previously in the chapel were perfectly understandable.


    Some of the words stood out a lot more than others, though, and he knew those were the words of power he¡¯d been searching for.


    V???r???a???z???i???g??? , ???D???n???a???r???t???h???, and O???o???n???b???e???t???i???t??? stood out right away, but he glimpsed others, and as he read them, he felt the powerful symbols dig into his mind. Simon¡¯s eyes widened as he realized that he could use lightning and pure force as well as fire now, but there was an even bigger revelation.


    ???D???n???a???r???t???h??? was a word that meant distant. It was a modifier, and if that was the case¡­


    Simon¡¯s mind boggled at the implications, and it was just as he realized that he¡¯d had the means of casting a more controlled version of the fire spell the whole time that Andronican slammed the book shut. Simon had let his excitement show too much, and the other man now realized he had more than a little leverage here.


    ¡°See? Did I not tell you my master was an intellect without equal? Without compare?¡± Andronican asked. ¡°Before I can allow you to explore more of his wisdom, though, we must first come to a bargain, you and I.¡±


    ¡°What do you propose,¡± Simon asked, curious what this lunatic thought was fair.


    ¡°Well, after you have given me your secret words and I have restored my youth, we will complete the slaughter that I promised to the gods as thanks for bringing you here,¡± he answered with a smile, ¡°and then you shall become my apprentice.¡±


    ¡°Your apprentice, huh?¡± Simon asked, doing his best to keep his face neutral like he was taking any of this seriously. ¡°I suppose we might be able to work something out.¡±


    ¡°Of course,¡± he said. ¡°You can transcribe the words I cannot read into some more modern language, and then the two of us can complete my master¡¯s great work and¡ª¡±


    The strange old wizard was taken completely by surprise as Simon delivered a short sharp jab to his throat. His eyes went wide at the sudden turn of events, and he collapsed to his knees while Simon¡¯s eyes flicked to the golem, which didn¡¯t appear to be moving, thankfully. Simon picked up the tome and bent down to look the old man in the eye.


    ¡°No one is dying today,¡± he said smugly. ¡°Not even you, since you were so helpful. Granted, there¡¯s not much a bitter old man like you can do, but just between you and me, I think you should have studied under your master a bit harder before he passed. It¡¯s clear to me there are¡­ gaps in your education.¡±


    Simon strolled toward the stairway, unconcerned about either threat he was leaving behind. He could have just killed the old guy, but something about him made it feel like it was a bigger punishment to let him keep breathing.


    ¡°Gha. Dddhefend your master you¡­¡± the mage gasped and choked in his awkward fantasy Latin before he switched to a language he was obviously more fluent in. ¡°You useless stone monstrosity.¡±


    Simon heard the thing grind to life once more, but it would never catch him now. He¡¯d proven last time this thing couldn¡¯t get anywhere close to the door because of how much it weighed. Even as it charged toward him, Simon was running up the stairs, and before it had managed to rip out more than the first few, he was already opening the door and stepping onto the next level.

 Ch. 57 - Can’t Turn Away

    When Simon arrived at the next level, he could still hear the golem thundering and crashing impotently beneath him. The thing was bigger than the portal, so he doubted it could even make it across to follow him even if it could get up here, but out of curiosity, he shut the door, and the rumbling instantly ceased. When he reopened the door, though, the stairs he¡¯d come up were replaced by a different set that looked much less precarious.


    The way he¡¯d just come up had obviously belonged to some castle basement, dungeon, or something similar. This one just led down to an unremarkable root cellar. He supposed he could go back down and scavenge some supplies, but he wasn¡¯t really going anywhere where he needed more food. He was only a few floors left from his main goal now, and he hadn¡¯t been hungry since he¡¯d last camped on the wyvern level hours ago. Or was it days? It felt like lifetimes, and just thinking about that sweet little chapter of his life filled him with so much pain, he trembled and leaned heavily against the door frame.


    ¡°Just keep it together, Simon. You¡¯re almost there. Almost. You can do this,¡± he told himself, breathing deeply.


    He looked down at the book he was holding and tried to find some joy in that. This was a victory he would have killed for on any other day, but unless it had a resurrection spell, he wasn¡¯t going to get too excited. Still, he¡¯d have to find some time to study it before he got too much deeper.


    ¡°The plague level seemed pretty quiet,¡± he said to himself. ¡°Maybe I could do some research there for a few days.¡±


    Knowledge was the only thing that stayed with him between deaths, so he needed to make the most of this ugly black book which meant that maybe he would need supplies, he realized. He started to think about what he might want for a short study session when he heard the first scream.


    ¡°Oh, that¡¯s right. This place was under attack, wasn¡¯t it.¡± Simon said, finally recalling where he was. ¡°Was it goblins? Or orcs? Did I fight them once already?¡±


    Simon racked his brain as he walked to the front door and looked down at the village that was on fire. When he saw the ice doorway, though, he finally remembered the last time he¡¯d been here.


    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± he muttered unhappily. ¡°I skipped the whole thing, didn¡¯t I?¡±


    He could see why he¡¯d done it that way, of course, the exit was right there, but somehow that didn¡¯t feel right to him now. Maybe it was because he¡¯d fought to defend enough villages now that he knew how unprepared they were down there. People were dying right now, and just because he didn¡¯t know them didn¡¯t make it less real.


    He¡¯d already made his decision before he knew it. There was only one answer, even if the past version of him hadn¡¯t realized it. That was okay. He¡¯d redo this as many times as it took to get it right.


    ¡°Well, hopefully, that door will still be there in an hour or two,¡± he said to himself as he walked to the end of the porch and tucked the book away. He didn¡¯t think this would be too much trouble, and honestly, killing something that could fight back sounded pretty good to him right about now.


    Simon drew his sword as he advanced on the village and took in the carnage. There were some shapes in the dark that told him he was definitely dealing with an orc-raiding band. The fact that the village hadn¡¯t already been leveled told him it was a small one, though, so maybe this was the beginning of an outbreak.


    It was also the chance to try out his new spells, he thought, hopefully, as he advanced down the hill. The situation wasn¡¯t looking too good. Half the houses were on fire, so he hoped that the people here had evacuated first, but that seemed unlikely given the number of bodies in the streets.


    Simon sighed, wondering whose job it was to defend these people. The community had neither walls nor any sign of fortifications, so they clearly weren¡¯t expecting this.


    When the first orc near the edge of the settlement finally noticed him, it roared, ¡°Fresh prey!¡± in approval. That had been one of his stranger discoveries in this life. Goblins didn¡¯t seem to have a language, but orcs did. Most monsters he¡¯d fought during his service in Crowvar did, actually. Gnolls, Orcs, and even centaurs did, though that last one made more sense to him than the other two.


    Orcs didn¡¯t communicate anything but very simple ideas, though, and right now, its only concern seemed to be hunger as it advanced on Simon with a crude club. That was okay. Simon¡¯s only concern was on testing out his new powers.


    ¡°???D???n???a???r???t???h??? V???r???a???z???i???g???¡± he shouted. Distant lightning. As he spoke, he pointed his sword, and lightning shot from the tip of it, instantly crossing the 30 yards that separated the two combatants and striking the orc in the chest.


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    The orc fell to the ground without a sound. It was utterly anticlimactic, but Simon would take it. As he approached the corpse, he noted that there wasn¡¯t much of a wound. Just a tiny char mark in the center of its chest. Even though that probably meant he fried the heart, he stabbed it in the chest with his sword just to be sure.


    ¡°Now, where are all your friends?¡± Simon asked the corpse as he looked around for more enemies to fight.


    He found them down the street and to the left, where the villagers seemed to have taken shelter in a small church. There were a dozen of the savages attacking the building at every door and window, and the fact that many of those positions were being defended by people with farming implements instead of real weapons wasn¡¯t a good sign.


    Since he had the element of surprise, he decided to keep it. After all, he knew from experience that taking on two orcs at once was a gamble, and three or four was a death sentence. Even though they might look and stink similar to their cousins, the hobgoblins, these bastards were twice as strong as a man, and it was only their stupidity that kept them from conquering the whole world as far as he was concerned.


    Simon looked around for who the leader might be, but when he didn¡¯t see anyone that stood out, he just decided to target the biggest bastard that was standing there wearing a loincloth and holding a broken sword among several other orcs waiting for their turn to kill a few human defenders.


    ¡°Yeah, he¡¯ll do nicely,¡± Simon said to himself before shouting. ¡°G?????e??????r???????v?????u?????u????l???? V???r???a???z???i???g???!"


    This time, he tried greater lightning, even though he knew it was a gamble. As soon as he¡¯d figured out that these things were actually modular and that he¡¯d known greater and fire as opposed to greater fire for ages now, he could have kicked himself. He would have killed to be able to cast lesser fire or regular fire a hundred times by now.


    That was especially true when he still hadn¡¯t mastered flint and steel. Now he didn¡¯t even need to use it for those occasions, especially because of the way the word greater exhausted him, but he absolutely needed it for this experiment because he was going to do something he¡¯d always wanted to do since he¡¯d first started playing role-playing games in junior high.


    He was going to summon lighting from the sky. Simon told himself he was doing this because it would be more deniable in case the people of this town were the magic-hating types, but really, he just wanted to see if he could. There were few ideas more magical to him than the idea of summoning a bolt of thunder to smite his enemies, and as the jagged bolt of electricity leaped from the dark sky to the ground and the thunder shattered the night, he felt like he was somewhere between Zeus and Thor in the grand scheme of things.


    For a moment, the night was shattered by his spell, and he could feel the heat even where he stood twenty yards away, but as he approached the monsters, they all stayed standing inexplicably for several long seconds, and he worried he¡¯d done something wrong.


    Then he realized they¡¯d just been paralyzed by the electricity and had stood there perfectly rigid before they all started collapsing like dominoes. That brought a smile to Simon¡¯s face, and he took advantage of the confusion to strike down the first orc in his path before it knew he was there.


    That roar of pain caught everyone else¡¯s attention, though, and soon it was him versus the only two left standing beside those that were still attacking the townspeople¡¯s last stand. It was a short but vicious fight, and the motherfucker closest to him broke his shield and probably his arm too on his second swing. That wasn¡¯t enough to stop Simon from running the orc through, though.


    For as long as he faced two enemies, he kept circling slowly to his right around his target, always keeping the second one in an inopportune position to coordinate their attacks. Simon had learned it from some bandits that had been particularly frustrating to kill and much more talented than these orcs would ever be, but it served him well here.


    ¡°Shit human!¡± the second orc growled as the first one slumped over dead. ¡°Tough meat is the tastiest!¡±


    After he was down to a single opponent. Simon relied more on parries and feints, but mostly because he didn¡¯t trust his left hand until he¡¯d had a chance to heal it. The feeling of painful numbness was spreading, and he wasn¡¯t sure if that was because of the strength of the blow or because the orc had managed to cause some nerve damage.


    It didn¡¯t matter, it was a later problem, and even fighting defensively, he was still sure he could take this big ugly bastard down. A quick glance at the rest of the fighting showed that no one was in mortal peril, so he kept whittling away at the orc while dancing out of reach. A slice here, a cut there, and soon enough, the monster could neither grip his weapon nor move quickly as Simon cut important tendons in the thing¡¯s wrist and heel. After that, it was just a matter of finding the right opening and delivering a coup de grace, but eventually, Simon thrust two feet of steel through the orc¡¯s heart and let it stand there confused for a moment as it bled out.


    Then, he turned toward the last orc standing that was currently fighting three wounded farmers. He noticed he was limping as he walked, but he ignored it. He just needed to help bring the last one down, so they could end this and focus on the fires.


    He didn¡¯t see the blow coming. He¡¯d thought that he¡¯d killed them all, but one of the bastards must have gotten back up from his lightning strike because as he walked to the church to see if there were any survivors he might be able to save with a little healing magic, he was suddenly struck hard in the back of the head.


    Simon whirled around, disemboweling the creature before it could make a second strike, but the first one had done enough damage. He staggered back, dropping his sword as he raised his hand to his head and tried to remember the word to fix it. Wait, should he fix it, he wondered? Brains were delicate, and it was his magic that had probably ultimately killed¡­


    Mercifully, the world went dark, and he collapsed to the ground before he could finish the thought. He lapsed into unconsciousness.

 Ch. 58 - A Broken Man

    Simon woke up slowly, and feeling the lumpy bed beneath him, he sighed. Despite all that, he¡¯d been returned to his cabin, which meant that he was dead again. Only, if that was true, why was he still in so much pain?


    His eyelids shot open at the thought, and he stared up at the ceiling. It was not his ceiling, though. This one was thatched instead of shingled. It took him a moment to notice that he was only seeing it through one eye, though. For a moment, he worried he¡¯d been maimed, which would have been a first for him.


    Up until now, he¡¯d always been fine or dead after an encounter. It had been a binary thing. To be terribly wounded but alive, though¡­ he wasn¡¯t sure how he¡¯d be able to deal with that.


    Fortunately, he didn¡¯t have to. The blindness was merely due to the way someone had wrapped his head in thick bandages, which was a huge relief.


    Simon tried to sit up and felt the whole world spin as he did so. He flopped back down after that, but even that soft blow sent a shiver of pain through his body. He groaned softly, catching the interest of someone because they were on their feet and walking toward him almost immediately.


    Hard-soled shoes clicked across the wooden floor, and moments later, a cute young woman was leaning over his bed. With her baby face and big doe eyes, it would have been impossible for Simon to guess her age, and he was in no state to try. She was adorable in that Disney princess sort of way that he¡¯d long since outgrown when he hit puberty.


    ¡°No - please don¡¯t move. You mustn¡¯t try to get up,¡± she said nervously. ¡°You¡¯ve been hurt very badly.¡±


    She opened her mouth, but when she heard someone else moaning, she looked away and said, ¡°I¡¯ll be right back.¡±


    Simon turned his head to watch her go and discovered that he was in a makeshift hospital of sorts. Counting him, he could see at least five wounded men in here, which was about right for an orc attack. He¡¯d never had a chance to see just how many wounded he¡¯d left in Crowvar before¡­


    Simon¡¯s head throbbed as the hazy memory of that day forced itself to the surface of his mind, and he pushed it back down. He would have drowned it forever if he could, but he lacked the strength. Instead, he lay there with his throbbing as he tried to understand what he should do next.


    He still had that book, of course; he¡¯d hidden it somewhere, though he couldn¡¯t quite recall it just now. He wanted to read that, but he was in no shape for reading just now. He supposed that he could heal himself, but¡­


    The idea of healing a head wound made him very nervous after what happened last time. What if he lobotomized himself? Would that carry over into his next life and the life after that? He¡¯d been a literal zombie once, and his brains had actually rotted away, he reminded himself. He¡¯d recover from anything physical as soon as he returned to the cabin.


    He tried to tell himself that with confidence, but he was left with far too many doubts to utter the words. He just lay there quietly until the young woman returned a few minutes later.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry about that,¡± she said. ¡°Gramms is in the next building with the worst cases. She¡¯s the healer; I¡¯m just trying to keep everyone comfortable until she can come back to check on you.¡±


    ¡°Wh¡­ where am I?¡± Simon managed to whisper through a parched throat. That much told him that he¡¯d either been lying here a long time or the new words of power had really taken it out of him.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± she said, sitting down on the side of his bed and bringing a cup of water to his lips so he could take a sip. ¡°You¡¯re in Rivenwood, and the fighting is done, thanks to you. You saved us. Can you tell me your name?¡±


    Simon nodded. ¡°I¡¯m Simon,¡± he said, not wanting to give away too much until he better understood his situation. He didn¡¯t know where the village of Rivenwood was, but it would be one more spot for his mental map once he connected those dots.


    ¡°Gramm will be so pleased,¡± the girl smiled. ¡°She said that after a blow like that, sometimes people forget their own names.¡±


    That thought sent a chill through Simon. If he died without his memory, would he get it back, or would he be stuck in The Pit without any idea of who or where he was?


    ¡°I¡¯ll be okay,¡± Simon mumbled. ¡°I¡¯ve had worse. I just need a few days to heal.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m so glad to hear that,¡± the girl answered. ¡°Gramm will have a lot of questions for you. She said that you were tainted and that I should keep an eye on you. Do you know what that means?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t,¡± he answered. Technically that was true, but only technically. He knew that there was something about him that raised the hackles on the sensitive, but he wasn¡¯t sure exactly what caused it.


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    ¡°Hmmm,¡± she said, her eyes hardening. ¡°She wouldn¡¯t tell me either.¡±


    The young woman was cooler to him after that. Like she¡¯d been trying to get some kind of information out of him, or she thought he was lying to her, but he eventually found out that roughly half the town was in ashes, dozens were dead, and that her name was Majoria.


    Before he could pry any more answers out of her between her rounds of checking on all the other people in the room, an older woman with an air of authority entered the room.


    ¡°Good news Gramm, he¡¯s¡ª¡± Majoria started to say, but the older woman interrupted.


    ¡°I can see that,¡± she interrupted. ¡°Please leave us. I must speak with our¡­ savior.¡± She said the last word with obvious distaste.


    ¡°But¡­¡± Majoria started to protest, but her words wilted beneath the older woman¡¯s gaze, and instead, she mumbled something about going to check on everyone else and quickly left them alone with the other unconscious men.


    ¡°Perhaps you could help an old woman understand something,¡± the healer said to Simon as she moved a wooden chair next to his bed and sat down heavily in front of him. ¡°I have three questions for you, and if you answer them all to my satisfaction, which means honestly, then I might not mix poison into your medicine and tell my granddaughter that you slipped away during the night.¡±


    Just as his previous nursemaid had been indeterminately young, this woman was indeterminately old. Her hair was almost completely white, her wrinkles had wrinkles, and from the look in her hard blue eyes, Simon could tell that if he tried to lie to her, she¡¯d know.


    ¡°Shoot,¡± he said, not bothering to try to explain. He wasn¡¯t in any shape to defend himself, so if she decided that he needed to die, he wasn¡¯t going to do a lot to stop that.


    ¡°What is a warlock like you doing in my sleepy little part of the world,¡± she asked, ¡°and why would a man as stained as you bother to help a small village like ours in need?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s only two questions,¡± Simon answered dumbly after spending a few seconds waiting for the third.


    ¡°We¡¯ll get there, son, don¡¯t you worry,¡± she said, glaring at him.


    ¡°Well, I have no idea where I am, and if you want to call me a warlock, that¡¯s fine, I guess; I¡¯d go with mage or arcane warrior or something, but warlock too,¡± he said with a shrug. ¡°You¡¯re saying that because you can see my magic use, right? It does something to my aura?¡±


    ¡°Your aura is a mess; it¡¯s true,¡± she agreed without elaboration. ¡°As to everything you said, you¡¯re kind of a mess, too, aren¡¯t you. If you don¡¯t know where you are, then you must at least tell me how you got here.¡±


    ¡°Through a portal, and don¡¯t worry, as soon as I¡¯m feeling a little better, I¡¯ll be gone. I promise,¡± Simon said, trying to ignore the throbbing as it slowly got worse.


    ¡°I¡¯m sure. Off to some other town to ruin good people¡¯s lives,¡± she replied with a shake of her head. ¡°Still, you do have a little spark of good in you, way down deep. Maybe I won¡¯t regret it too much if I let you live. Hard to say.¡±


    ¡°Let me live?¡± he asked, his brain starting to feel foggy. It was very strange to him that even a conversation was enough to exhaust him, but then he¡¯d never been hurt this badly before and lived. It was a new experience, and he hated it.


    ¡°Well, of course,¡± she answered. ¡°If I saw someone tainted even half as bad as you, I¡¯d kill them without hesitation. As soon as they closed their eyes, I¡¯d get my sons and grandsons together and chop them into pieces, but you did save all of them with your fancy lightning magics. You killed over a dozen orcs all by yourself, and that buys you a fair hearing when you¡¯re feeling good enough to explain what it is you¡¯re up to.¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡± he tried to ask what the third question was, but she brushed him off.


    ¡°You just rest now,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯ve been asleep for three days, and I expect you¡¯ll need another week at least before you can do much more than this right here.¡±


    Simon wanted to dispute that and tell her he was stronger than that, but the truth was he could barely keep his eyes open. Soon he was swallowed up by a dark and fitful sleep where he fought against golems made out of the petrified versions of his past lives using words of forbidden power like ¡®Freya¡¯ and ¡®Love.¡¯ It was a sad dream, but no matter how hard he fought, though, eventually the golems bit him, and he became one of them.


    Each time he woke up over the next few days, he got a sip of water or a bite of soup. Sometimes his nursemaid Majoria would wake him and force him to drink vile, bitter concoctions that she referred to as medicine, but it occurred to him gradually that almost every time he saw her, she was dressed differently.


    At first, Simon feared that his memory was fried, but then one day, he looked around the room and noticed all the other beds were empty. That was when he realized time was passing.


    ¡°How long has it been since the fight,¡± he asked.


    ¡°Since your injury, you mean?¡± she asked, thinking hard about it for a moment. ¡°Ummmm¡­ more than half a moon but not quite a full one, I don¡¯t think.¡±


    So, three or four weeks, Simon realized. That was pretty serious, even for a head wound. Which meant what? Skull fracture? Infection? It had to be something like that, not that these people would know. He reached up and found his chin covered in stubble, which was just about right.


    ¡°I¡¯m feeling better now, Majoria,¡± Simon said, mostly meaning it. ¡°What do you say we try to get some fresh air.¡°


    She seemed unsure, but she didn¡¯t try to stop him as he rose and stumbled toward the door. Outside, it was somewhat past noon, and there were plenty of people out and about, but no one seemed to pay him too much attention as he leaned heavily on the door frame.


    It was only when he saw the town he remembered the portal he needed to take to get to the next level. He turned to look up the street toward the house on the hill, and he saw that the home with the portal had not been burned down, but the door was closed. Did that mean that the way was closed to him now? Was this as deep as he was going to go in this life?

 Ch. 59 - Not Dead Yet

    The next week was a blur for Simon, but it wasn¡¯t any fun. He tried to remind himself that the previous week he¡¯d spent mostly unconscious, though, and this was a step up, but it didn¡¯t help. He¡¯d finally tried his hand at healing the skin and the bone of his wound, so he didn¡¯t have to wear the bulky bandage anymore, but it had only elevated the pain and earned him a scornful look from the village healer when she¡¯d inspected his wound later that day.


    Now that he knew he could try other words, he was tempted to try greater heal on his mind, but he was also terrified that he would scramble his brain in the process. So instead, he suffered, and he drank since that was the closest this place had to anesthesia. Grann, or Hybissian, as she was called by those that weren¡¯t related to her, which seemed to be half of the village, eventually had her threatened meeting, but it wasn¡¯t as bad as he feared.


    She just wanted to know who he killed, if he consorted with the dead and other things like that. Even though he told her nothing but the truth, and she seemed to have some charm, she kept consulting to determine if he was lying. Despite that, she still had trouble believing him.


    ¡°Are you sure you aren¡¯t leaving anything out there, Simon?¡± she demanded eventually, but he¡¯d just laughed.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± he smiled. ¡°I¡¯m on a mission to save the world.¡±


    She¡¯d looked at him sourly for a moment, but then she just shook her head, ending their rather tense discussion by saying, ¡°I know that you¡¯re bad news, and I want you out of our town just as soon as you¡¯re able, but if you deal with neither demons nor the dead I have no idea why you¡¯ve been marked as damned!¡±


    Marked as damned. That was an interesting phrase, and he wanted to follow up on it, but right now, his mind just worked so slowly that he let it pass. She wasn¡¯t going anywhere, and neither was he. Not right now, anyway. He was certain he wouldn¡¯t make it through the ice level that came next without recovering, and he still needed to study that grimoire if he could find it.


    Studying wasn¡¯t going to happen until his vision and his concentration cleared up anyway, so after he moved out of his deathbed and into a nicer room at the end, he spent a few days just relaxing. The people of the village were a mixture of friendly and fearful, and though he paid for his meals, most nights, the other men at the bar paid for his drinks.


    The very first thing he did was check the door that led to the next level. It was the door to someone¡¯s house, but he¡¯d watched it for several days and assumed that they must have died because no one came or went. Eventually, he tried the handle, and instead of finding an empty room, he immediately found a winter wonderland.


    Simon closed it immediately, of course, but still, it was reassuring. He would, in fact, have a way out of here when the time came, though that certainly wasn¡¯t now.


    He didn¡¯t have a bad time while he recovered, though, even if he knew they secretly suspected him of planning to kill them all, summon demons, or whatever else it was that Warlocks were supposed to do. Day by day, his condition improved, and his thoughts became clearer as he went on strolls through the countryside to better understand the region. Sometimes Majoria would tag along with him on his walks, and other times he¡¯d wander the village and the surrounding countryside himself.


    It was clear that she had some sort of weird crush on him, but Simon did his best to brush that off without hurting her feelings. She was a wonderful nurse, but she was only nineteen, and as far as he was concerned, barely legal. More importantly, she wasn¡¯t Freya, so he had zero interest in getting to know her better.


    So, when one day she asked him, ¡°Do you have anyone you fancy, you know, when you go back to this mysterious home of yours?¡± he quashed it then and there harder than he needed to, probably.


    ¡°I had a wife, but she¡¯s dead now,¡± Simon said, pulling out the ring to show it to the young girl. ¡°So I¡¯m afraid romance just isn¡¯t in the cards for me anymore.¡±


    She didn¡¯t seek him out any more after that.


    It took him almost a week to remember where he¡¯d left the book, and by the time he found it, he was shocked that it hadn¡¯t been damaged by rain or animals. Still, hiding it under the porch had been a pretty solid decision on his part, and he thanked the past version of himself for being so clever.


    Once Simon had the book, he rarely left his room at the inn. He still went down for meals, but he drank a lot less too, and when people asked about it, he lied and said, ¡°I¡¯m just not feeling too great.¡±


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    He couldn¡¯t tell them the truth, of course. ¡®I¡¯m reading an ancient book written by an obviously evil person that tells me how to summon the armies of hell and raise the dead,¡¯ just didn¡¯t sound the same as ¡®Sorry guys, I just need to spend more time in bed.¡¯


    The book told him all that and more. It provided a basis for finally understanding how magic worked in this gods forsaken world. Most of it was nonsense, of course. It was just like the engravings he¡¯d read in the temple where he¡¯d learned magic, but there was good information in there too.


    If he looked past the long lists of demonic names and the blandishments he would need to provide them if he wished to gain their boons, he found a few other words he didn¡¯t already know. Transfer, ice, protection, boundary, light, and cure were all present as the strange anti-language he¡¯d come to know.


    At the moment, the one that struck him was the most interesting was, ¡®D???e???l???z???a???m???,¡¯ or cure. Apparently, healing applied only to trauma, while D???e???l???z???a???m??? applied to what he might call status effects in a game. Poison, sickness, and other things that harmed a person while they suffered no actual bodily harm were treated totally differently. It was a strange sort of logic, and he didn¡¯t see why the same magic that could work on cuts and bruises couldn¡¯t work just as well on cyanide or rabies, but he wasn¡¯t the one that had designed it.


    Still, he couldn¡¯t help but wonder about edge cases. In a video game, blind was an effect that had to be cured away. In older games, they had their own potion for each effect, but in newer ones, it was just a cure-all sort of thing. So, did he use the words for cure or heal to handle cataracts? What about a nutritional ailment like rickets or scurvy?


    The book didn¡¯t say. It didn¡¯t even know what those things were. He¡¯d only found the words for cure in a section on venereal diseases, which had some particularly gross illustrations. It was a strange thing to want to curse your rivals with, of course, and that implied he could use the words to induce negative effects, but he wasn¡¯t about to try that out. Especially not here, where the local wise woman was already just a misstep or two away from burning him at the stake.


    It seemed difficult for him to believe that one could go from hero to zero, but he¡¯d already learned that lesson the hard way once in Slany. The people here in Rivenwood probably thought they were being incredibly tolerant to let a man like him breathe after he¡¯d done something as terrible as save their lives, but what was he going to do?


    Even if they were dicks, he couldn¡¯t just let them die, could he? Though he knew that he couldn¡¯t save everyone, increasingly, it was his opinion that even if that was true, he owed it to them to try.


    He learned other things from the book too, but they were more complicated, and he wasn¡¯t sure how well he¡¯d remember them once he lost this font of knowledge which he definitely would eventually.


    In many places, the book contained the same sort of inscrutable symbols he¡¯d seen on the church floor too. Sometimes these did, in fact, seem to be the names of demons, as he¡¯d guessed before, but other times they were linking symbols that seemed to be more like the logical symbols of equivalence and negation that he¡¯d learned in his philosophy classes or maybe the greater than and lesser than symbols in math class.


    That made Simon groan. He always got those confused. In this case, though, getting one of them backward might create hell on Earth or make whatever magic item you were creating explode.


    The idea that there were magical items was insanely cool, but that excitement was almost immediately counterbalanced by the fact that every time he died, he would have to make a new ring of protection or whatever.


    Mostly the book went into creating wands and staves to more efficiently use the words of power that he already knew, but given that he could just say them, that seemed like an unnecessary pain in the ass.


    He sighed. ¡°Well, I¡¯m not going anywhere very quickly if I want to figure this shit out,¡± he told himself as he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.


    Memorization was getting easier all the time, but having to sort through the mysticism to find the magic in this thing was really slowing him down, and he would have yelled about the obvious contradictions it contained a dozen times by now if he wasn¡¯t worried about what people might make of such deranged rantings from a supposed warlock.


    Simon was in no hurry, though. Next time he went through, he might not have this book, so if he had to go back through the cold level again, this time, he might as well try to do it with a little planning and preparation rather than just running through and hoping for the best.


    Taking a quill and a blank page from the back of the book, he started to make a list of everything he was going to need to get where he was going. Food and water weren¡¯t really high on his list, but he would need furs to make warm clothes, specially treated thread to try his hand at making a protection rune, and something sharp so he could scribe shapes into his sword.


    The book had an example of a frost blade that looked almost like one that the skeleton knight wielded, but he didn¡¯t see a reason why he couldn¡¯t just substitute the rune for fire where the rune for ice had been and get a flaming sword that should be able to deal with the ice quite handily.


    As he pondered what else he was going to need, he finally added one more thing to his list: lots of fucking practice with his bow.

 Ch. 60 - One Step at a Time

    Once Simon was well enough that the village¡¯s matriarch began to find an excuse to ask him when he was going to be leaving almost every day, he rented a cottage outside of town where he wouldn¡¯t have to see her as often. He still needed to visit Rivenwood two or three times a week, though. Not only did he rely on the townspeople for food as always, but no matter how careful he tried to be with his targets, he was always going back to the fletcher for another bundle of arrows.


    He had to visit the smith fairly regularly at the beginning, too, of course. However, once Simon had the old man make him the tools he needed, that part at least was done. Though he¡¯d spend most afternoons over the next month scratching the perverse symbols ever deeper into the steel short sword he¡¯d bought for just this purpose, he didn¡¯t need anyone else¡¯s help with that. Light, patience, and his steel scribe were all he required.


    It turned out that he¡¯d gotten it backward, though. He¡¯d thought that crafting a magic sword was going to be the hardest thing he was going to have to do, and getting better with his bow was going to be the easiest. In reality, though, it was the opposite.


    It took almost two months of careful, painstaking effort to carve all nine runes and glyphs onto the steel, along with the 12 connecting lines, but that had merely been time-consuming. Learning to improve his skill with the long bow, on the other hand, was supposed to be easy, but even after a full moon, he felt like he hadn¡¯t gotten much better at all.


    Sure, standing there, he could hit the bull¡¯s eye every time. Even for fairly far-away targets, that wasn¡¯t too hard. But shooting like that would only be enough to get him killed. And that wasn¡¯t enough. He was trying to master shooting and moving the way that they did in the movies, and it seemed to be almost impossible.


    He was never going to be a Legolas, but he would have settled for at least a Robin Hood. Apparently, those skills took a lot longer to practice than a few months, though. In the end, he had to settle for learning how to arc his shots over cover and shoot blindly at his targets, but even that was hit or miss, and after spending weeks of time practicing the technique, he could hit a target on the other side of his cottage only one in four times from fifty yards away.


    His other experiments went even better, though, especially with A??????u??????f?????v?????a?????r????u??????m????? ???? O???o???n???b???e???t???i???t???. Though fire and lightning were cool, lesser force quickly became the most useful of all his trump cards. He could apply it to himself, letting himself leap impossibly high and even granting him a double-jump-like effect. Though greater force would likely be enough to turn an enemy into paste, or at least break every bone in their body, lesser force had some real killing power too - as long as he was willing to lose the arrow, he thought with a grin.


    ¡°A??????u??????f?????v?????a?????r????u??????m????? ???? O???o???n???b???e???t???i???t???¡± he whispered as he let go of his arrow. The projectile was too fast for him to watch with the naked eye, of course, but he found it just where he knew he would: embedded in a nearby tree all the way up to the feathers.


    ¡°Pretty cool,¡± he said to himself as he examined his handiwork, ¡°But figuring out how to bend the shot would be even cooler¡­¡±


    That was one trick he hadn¡¯t been able to figure out. Running and jumping while firing his bow wouldn¡¯t become a necessary skill if he could just figure out how to shoot more effectively around corners, but sadly that was harder than it looked because this magic system wasn¡¯t very magical. Sure - it might look that way, but when it came to lesser force, all he was doing was injecting a little velocity into the system, and in this case, that was somehow added by his mind at the moment he spoke the words, but he had no idea how, and making the timing anything close to exact was impossible.


    It was really only doable on slower things, like his jumps, but even there, he¡¯d ended up with a few nasty bruises over the last few weeks. He¡¯d never be one of those parkour guys you could see on YouTube, even with magic. That was for sure.


    The people of the village didn¡¯t seem to dislike him for any of this, though. Though it was true that they didn¡¯t see any of his magical experiments, he was sure everyone had heard the rumors by now. Still, most mornings, when the weather was nice, he was in town helping someone lift timbers into place to help put all the ruined lives back together, and no one had been anything but kind.


    After being in the little village for two months, he knew almost everyone by name, and were it not for a handful of fire-scarred buildings that remained, no one would know that this place had been a war zone recently. There had been rumors that the orcs were returning lately, but Simon had personally gone out to investigate and found nothing to substantiate them.


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    Honestly, that was probably the reason that Hybissian hadn¡¯t run him off yet, of course. Still, orcs were unsubtle creatures. He¡¯d found a few goblin tracks once, but a village of this size would not be easy prey for a goblin nest, even without him here. The villagers had thanked him very much for investigating, but he could see they still worried behind their smiles.


    Even Majoria tried to get friendly with him after a few weeks, though this time Simon was careful to maintain more distance from the young girl. The last thing he needed was for her to get the wrong idea again because he still had no interest whatsoever in any woman that wasn¡¯t Freya. He suspected he¡¯d be mourning her for a long time.


    In fact, Simon was fairly sure that even if he went to the zombie level tomorrow and that he, by some miracle, found her, he¡¯d still be mourning her even after that. Because it wasn¡¯t just her. It was both of them. It was the crappy little cottage and the boring little life they had together. And, of course, it was their unborn child. That last part he shied away from. He was too raw to think about it. Even now.


    As the days passed by, though, he found it increasingly hard to recognize that life though. Or himself, for that matter. One day while he was washing his face in the rain barrel, he caught a look in the mirror for the first time in a long time, and he barely recognized himself.


    In real life, Simon had always been a little chubby, with short hair, but now he was gaunt with hair that went almost down to his shoulders. No, gaunt was the wrong word, he realized. Defined was probably what he meant, but he¡¯d never thought that he¡¯d look this way, so it was strange. Between the defined cheekbones and jawline, he definitely looked older than he remembered. That was especially true with the stubble that was threatening to grow into a beard after going for so long without shaving.


    His face wasn¡¯t the only part of him with this new-found definition, of course. He¡¯d been working out so much lately that his chest and abdomen were muscled in a way that he was sure required steroids. He hadn¡¯t taken anything like that, though, and he was still practically ripped.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know why you linger,¡± Hybissian said finally to him one beautiful summer day, ¡°but you test my patience, and you must leave soon.¡±


    ¡°Do you really think¡­¡± Simon grunted, chopping the wood he¡¯d been breaking into smaller billets so hard that he left the axe embedded in the stump that was his chopping block before he turned to face his unwelcome guest. ¡°That anyone in Rivenwood would be able to stop me if I decided I wanted to settle here for good?¡±


    Simon smiled when he said it, but he was incredibly frustrated by this attitude, and when he spun around, he noticed that two of her most imposing nephews were flanking her on either side with hands on the hilt of their swords.


    Even with this little display, he didn¡¯t regret what he said. He was fairly sure he could take Rolf and Vig without breaking anything important, but he was completely certain that unless Hybissian had some secret magic power she¡¯d never shown before now, none of them would have a chance against him.


    He let the threat hang between them for several seconds before she spoke next. ¡°We all have to sleep sometime,¡± she said grudgingly.


    Rolf smiled at that, showing off a couple of missing teeth in the process, but Simon shrugged it off. The man had tried to intimidate him before, and he was plenty strong, but he moved like an ox, not a warrior, and Simon had nothing to fear from him as long as he could see him coming.


    ¡°You know - I knew another woman that could see my aura like you can,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°She killed me in my sleep rather than just trust me too. I¡¯m detecting a real pattern here.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve been more than fair with you¡­¡± Hybissian said slowly. ¡°But you¡¯re coming dangerously close to wearing out your welcome.¡±


    ¡°Well, where I¡¯m going is almost as dangerous as trying to fight me would be,¡± he said evenly as he looked at the old woman. Even though he was certain he could swat her like a bug, he still had trouble meeting her flinty gaze. She was a harder person than he would ever be, but his preparations would still take a while longer. ¡°All I¡¯ve done is help the people of your community get back on their feet while I get some exercise, and as soon as I¡¯m ready, I¡¯ll be gone. I hope that¡¯s in a week or two, but whether we part as friends or enemies¡­ that¡¯s a choice I leave to you.¡±


    She glared at him for a few more seconds before she finally turned on her heel and departed. Simon breathed a sigh of relief at that. He honestly wasn¡¯t sure two more weeks would be enough, but he hoped it would be because the last thing he wanted to do, despite his bluff, was to fight the people he¡¯d already saved once.


    After all, Hybissian wasn¡¯t wrong that he was trouble. Trouble followed him like a loyal pet and hurt everyone he got close to. He needed answers, though, and the only way he was going to get them was to be ready for the challenges that lay ahead. He needed to be ready to fight an unnatural blizzard, a deadly plague, a tribe of lizardmen, and of course, that fucking basilisk.


    He¡¯d come too far to cut corners, especially when it came to that last one. When the time came to kill that lizard, he needed to be more ready than he¡¯d ever been for anything in his whole life.

 Ch. 61 - Threads of Magic

    It was only when Simon began to sew the runes of cold protection into the rabbit fur-lined gloves that he had made that he even understood that he¡¯d need to sew the runes of fire protection as well. Until that moment, his plan had been to make a set of cold-resistant armor and a fiery weapon, but then, as he imagined how he would use them both, he recalled the frost sword that the skeleton knight had wielded against him so many times and pictured all his carefully crafted magical furs going up in smoke as his sword caught his clothing on fire.


    The truth was he would need not just protection from both frost and fire, and he wasn¡¯t exactly sure how to do that. Well, he was pretty sure how to do one or the other, he corrected himself, but both¡­ it was entirely possible that they would cancel each other out or interfere in some weird way that might be even worse.


    Simon gave it a great deal of thought, but eventually, he was forced to set the gloves aside and focus on the simpler task of the armor instead. It was something that he could copy directly from the book like he had the sword schematic, and it was a lot less work.


    The only problem was that in the end, when he was done, he had no real way to test it. Sure, it had only taken two days of diligent effort with the thread to apply the mark in just the right way, but the only way to know if it succeeded would be to put it on and brave the cold. Even at night, it didn¡¯t get particularly chilly out, and there was no way he was going to go jump in the river wearing full armor and see if he stayed warm.


    So, whether he liked it or not, he was just going to have to hope the whole thing worked and test it when he walked inside the door to the next level. Which meant that he would have to set aside the crude thing and finish empowering the sword next.


    It was an ugly thing, with crooked lines and handiwork that would never be confused with that of a skilled craftsman. Despite that, though, he was pretty sure it would work once he completed the attunement ritual with blood and molten silver. But, as he prepared to do that, he realized that once he completed the spell, it would burn forever. He had no way to stop it.


    ¡°Make up your mind already, Simon,¡± he chastised himself.


    He would have liked to have blamed the head injury he sustained, but his balance had been perfect for weeks, so this wasn¡¯t that. It was just a lot to think about. He needed to finish his flaming sword, but that was awfully complicated, so he decided to work on the armor first, but since that was done, he needed to focus on the scabbard and¡­


    He sighed. He wasn¡¯t sure if he¡¯d always been like this or if this was brain damage from his injury, but the amount of things that needed to be done before he opened the next door seemed almost insurmountable some days.


    ¡°I should just make a list,¡± he said to himself, but even as he spoke, he knew he wasn¡¯t going to waste any time with that. He only had like three things left to do besides get good with his bow, so a list would be pointless.


    Finally, after beating himself up enough, he turned to the scabbard itself. That at least came with instructions, much like the sword had. In the grimoire, the sword had required over twenty carvings, but the scabbard that would nullify its power required only six, which would have made it simple if the recipe for the ink hadn¡¯t been so complex.


    He had no idea what the difference was. Why did it take three times as many runes to power a flaming sword as it did to put it away? He had no idea, but then he¡¯d never done anything like this before. It was magic. How much sense could he expect it to make?


    He didn¡¯t know why the fire glyph connected to the source glyph, the boundary glyph, or the three unreadable ones, whereas almost everything else only connected to one or two symbols as a primitive sort of circuit, but it did.


    By contrast, the clothing was the simplest of all. It mashed all of the symbols together into one bizarre spidery shape that he¡¯d sewn into the lining.


    He sighed, finally putting everything down. Jumping from one project to the next, he wasn¡¯t going to get any work done. He needed to focus, and focus meant swordplay. So, Simon went out into the yard without even bothering to put on a shirt and spent the next few hours alternating between beating up a random selection of trees and using up all his arrows, trying to arc them over his cottage.


    It was a familiar routine, and if he did it until he was completely spent, he found he¡¯d be able to do a much better job at concentrating on the important things. He wasn¡¯t sure if this was a byproduct of his recent recovery or just his deep-seated fear that if he stood too still for too long, then he would turn back into a statue.


    Sure, it was irrational, but that didn¡¯t make it less real. He still had nightmares about it. Whenever his mind grew tired of reminding him that he used to have a wife and that she was dead now, of course. Those were the only two topics that seemed to be on his mind when he slept.


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    He didn¡¯t wake up screaming when he was turned to stone, at least. Then, he only woke up and found himself practically paralyzed for several minutes as he struggled to remind himself that it wasn¡¯t real.


    The reality was that no matter how long he practiced, the gear he needed wasn¡¯t going to finish itself. Yet he still procrastinated because he was afraid. Of what, he wasn¡¯t sure. Afraid that he would fail? That didn¡¯t matter. He could just try again. Afraid that it would explode and kill him in the process? Death was the only thing in the world he wasn¡¯t afraid of.


    What was he afraid of then, he wondered to himself as he went through the paces with his sword in a blinding flurry of blows and counterblows.


    ¡°That I¡¯m missing something,¡± he said to himself, panting as his motion finally ceased, and he stood there holding the blade.


    For weeks, he¡¯d been trying to get this thought out of his addled brain, but today of all days, it finally broke loose, and Simon stood there, slowly turning it this way and that as he studied it. Things finally made sense as he held that ugly little fear in the forefront of his mind.


    There was so much about this world that he didn¡¯t understand, but magic was at the center of it. He didn¡¯t know how it worked or why it worked. What he did know was that it was exhausting if he used too much, and it seemed to mark him as evil to anyone that had the ability to see magic. That pretty clearly indicated that it was at least as bad for him as smoking or something, but he had no idea how much worse it could be.


    Could making these items trigger something like what he¡¯d seen in the cathedral? Was that deranged series of symbols the result of some attempt to craft gone awry? Could the last step in enchanting his sword do the same thing?


    Simon tried not to panic as he thought of that, but he couldn¡¯t help but imagine one of the miscarved symbols arcing and sparking until it exploded, forcing a huge magical rupture on his formerly small blade, allowing unknown amounts of evil in the real world. After all, Hybissian was the one with the second sight or intuition or whatever it was, and she seemed very certain that something bad was about to happen. Maybe it was.


    ¡°Maybe I was naive for thinking that just because I hadn¡¯t planned on killing anyone didn¡¯t mean no one was going to die,¡± he mumbled to himself. ¡°I mean - the instruction book I¡¯m using is a pretty evil book. Maybe the whole thing is a trap¡­¡±


    Simon turned that thought over and over in his mind and quickly realized that his real fear was that he had no idea what he was doing. He was just going through the motions without understanding them, and if this was chemistry, he probably would have blown himself up already.


    That realization was enough to make him stop what he was doing. He wasn¡¯t going to give up on making the magic weapon, of course. Not yet, anyway. He might if he still couldn¡¯t figure it out, of course, but he really wanted it just in case.


    What he was going to do was actually focus, though. Instead of just copying down the different symbols and hoping that was good enough, he was going to read the whole damn book all over again. He was going to understand why it was telling him to do different things, and if he couldn¡¯t at least sort of understand it, then he¡¯d take a break.


    After all, he presumably had armor that would protect him from the worst cold. That meant that at this point, he could likely trudge through the blizzard and force his way through the frozen door with an axe or a little fire magic if he had to. He had a lot more control over his flames now than he ever did before.


    So, hoping that the old woman that was currently the bane of his existence would understand, he closed the book and reopened it at the beginning, so he could pore through its entire contents uninterrupted. When he¡¯d first started studying it, he¡¯d just leafed through it looking for the words of power before focusing the last several months on the small section related to blood magic and permanent enchantment, but this time he was going to read the whole thing from beginning to end.


    He was, after all, in no hurry. No one could force him to keep going, and near as he could tell, no one except for Hybissian and her most loyal cronies wanted him gone. Some people, like Majoria, had actually confided in him that they felt safer with someone like him around.


    So, day after day, he familiarized himself with the scant basics that the book mentioned as he tried to understand what terrible thing it was that he¡¯d been about to do.


    Those days were endlessly boring, of course, and he took frequent breaks to practice his swordplay, but every day he made it through dozens of pages. He even took notes of some of the most important bits on the rare occasion that the grimoire would try to explain the strange language it called Valdarian.


    Three weeks later, the town¡¯s unofficial leader came back, of course, demanding that he honor his word, but Simon just told her, ¡°If you¡¯re ready to force me out, then I¡¯m ready to fight you for the right to stay.¡±


    The half a dozen men she had with her drew swords then, but the stray bolt of lightning that he whispered into existence that struck the ground between him and where the rest of them stood was enough to convince everyone that maybe this was a fight they didn¡¯t want to have.


    That night they tried to burn him out, but a single whispered word, ¡°G???e???l???t???h???i???c???¡± froze all of their torches to cold ash and put the thatch out where it had started to catch without even the need of rising from his bed. Later Simon heard that a few of those men had lost fingers due to frostbite, despite how carefully he had aimed his magic, but none of them tried to take revenge, and no one ever came to ask him when he was leaving again after that, giving him all the time in the world to study in peace until he finally felt he understood what was happening well enough to take the next step.

 Ch. 62 - The Right Tool for the Job

    It took another three months before Simon felt like he understood what he was doing and completed the enchantment on his sword. Unlike the armor and the scabbard, which did nothing to confirm that he¡¯d actually succeeded in his efforts, the flames of his weapon sprang immediately to life.


    Simon instantly shoved it into the scabbard, and only once that seemed to extinguish it did, he finally breathe a sigh of relief. ¡°Finally,¡± he said to himself, ¡°I¡¯m ready.¡±


    He still had to test the gloves, of course, since he was sure the weapon would heat up to the point where he could no longer hold it within a few minutes, but he was confident that it would work fine. After all, he¡¯d spent most of this time trying to understand exactly how he could enchant an item to do two different things at once, and it was only when he¡¯d made that breakthrough that he finally felt like he could activate the runes on his blade.


    Now though, he needed to sleep. In the morning, he could get ready, and then he could finally get out of Hybissian¡¯s hair. In the morning, he began to pack, and once he verified that his gloves were almost entirely fireproof, he made a little time to show off his new weapon to Majoria. He did it in private, though, of course. He didn¡¯t want to upset the villagers and provoke a witch hunt just when he was finally ready to move to the next level.


    ¡°You really made this?¡± she asked, wide-eyed, as he unsheathed his flaming blade and showed it to her. ¡°I never imagined such a thing would be possible!¡±


    Simon explained some of the basics of what he¡¯d done and how it wasn¡¯t so hard, but as she nodded eagerly and seemed to hang on his every word, even those he was fairly certain she didn¡¯t understand, he noticed something. Simon realized from the way she was looking at him over the flaming weapon with a mixture of awe and admiration that he could have her if he wanted her. It was a strange moment in his life because he¡¯d never been certain of that before now. Not even with Freya during their second time together. The moment had just snuck up on him.


    Here though, there was some magic - some connection, and he could seize it. It was a tempting moment. Instead of plunging deeper into the arctic level just ahead, he could stay here with a beautiful woman to keep him warm. He could try to forget Freya and move on with a comfortable life.


    Instead, he sheathed his sword and said goodbye to the sweet young woman before he turned his back on her and began climbing up the hill toward his date with destiny. Majoria¡¯s cute smile might be enough to make him forget the way Freya once looked at him with her beautiful eyes, but nothing she could do would help him clear this dungeon, and at the end of the day, that was all that mattered.


    Even though it was a warm morning that would be sweltering by midday, he put on his gloves and covered his face from the nose down with a cloth wrap before he lifted his hood. Only then did he open the door. Majoria and a few other townspeople watched him from a distance. They¡¯d seen him at this door before, but he¡¯d never gone through it. Today would be the last time they¡¯d ever see him.


    Simon kind of felt like he should say goodbye. He just took one final look and then opened the door and took a sudden gust of arctic air across the face. The shock that it sent through him was almost physical, and he cinched up his backpack a little higher and stepped through, closing the door behind him. The frozen level, as he thought of it, was every bit as strange as it had been the first time he¡¯d been here, and the only thing that had changed was his lack of urgency.


    The last time he¡¯d been here, he was freezing to death almost from the first moment. This time it was still quite chilly, but it was the sort of cold that was manageable. Simon spent a few moments checking his winter gear and finding that almost all the cold spots were expected. The gaps where his furs met around his waist, his face, and his boots were the worst offenders.


    Simon didn¡¯t relish the idea of spending weeks putting together such an outfit for every run going forward, but realistically he didn¡¯t think he would have to. He just wanted to do one good search of the area to try to understand what this place was supposed to be, and then next time, he could go back to breezing through it again. Next time. After all, it was just a sprint down this main street and then a force blast or something through the wall of ice that barred his way, and then it was on to the lizard men or whatever.


    He didn¡¯t sprint, though. He walked slowly through the drifting snow as he took a peek through various windows and opened up a couple doors with his shoulder. What he found was a town that wasn¡¯t so different from any of the others he¡¯d spent time in recently. It was larger than Rivenwood and smaller than Schwarzenbruck or Crowvar, but culturally he felt like it was similar based on the dishware and the style of houses. This wasn¡¯t the sort of place that should have experienced a deep freeze like this, even in the middle of winter.


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    In every house he went inside, he found the same grisly discovery: a family huddled in front of their hearth or curled up beside each other in bed that had frozen to death, waiting for whatever this was that was happening to end. It tugged at his heart strings to see so many people not just dead but frozen solid as a result of something terrible. He didn¡¯t really get his first clue as to what that was, though, until he spotted green trees from the windows of one of the houses.


    At first, Simon thought it was a second gate. It had to be, didn¡¯t it? The only color he¡¯d seen until now beyond the white and blue of snow and the brown and gray of the frozen buildings had been the blood-red sunset from the next world at the end of the street. A green tree simply didn¡¯t make sense in that setup unless it was sitting safely beyond a portal boundary or crystallized in particularly clear ice.


    Neither of those turned out to be true, though. He left the home he¡¯d been standing in and walked down a side street toward that distant goal. He found the strangest thing of all. A boundary line. It wasn¡¯t quite as stark as a cartoon might be, with spring grasses on one side and a foot of snow on the other, but it quickly became apparent that this cold was coming from a single source, and it only reached so far before it petered out.


    When he took off his glove and passed the line where ice and snow gave way to mud, Simon confirmed it was still cold, but apparently not cold enough to kill everything and leave it frozen. He began to walk along that border, noting that there were a few houses on the side of the line that he thought of as ¡®safe,¡¯ but they¡¯d obviously been abandoned in a hurry.


    Even though it was obviously a warm and sunny day sometime in late spring, Simon knew that he¡¯d be freezing even this far out without the magic he¡¯d sewn into his armor. Whatever was doing this robbed all the warmth from the air, and as Simon walked along that long border, he realized it was an almost perfect circle. On one side, wheat was slowly growing, and on the other side, it had been frozen dead before it had done much more than poke a few leaves above the ground.


    He felt like he should be able to work out how long this place had been like this from those two facts, but he hadn¡¯t paid enough attention to all the farming he¡¯d been around recently to really say for sure, so he continued on. Along the way, he found half-dead orchards and even a half-frozen pond.


    As the sun started to set, he realized he was going to have to make a decision. Either he was going to have to move further away from the cold and make camp for the night, or he was going to have to go to the center of this town and look for the source. He chose the latter.


    Aiming for the center was easy at first. He just looked as far left and right as he could, and then he oriented himself and started walking. ¡°A giant tower or something to aim at would be nice,¡± he mumbled beneath his scarf as he strode forward.


    Near as he could tell, it was likely coming from one of two or three large houses toward the center of town, but none of them seemed much more likely than the other. He vowed to give all three a quick search but to leave before it got dark if he didn¡¯t find anything obvious.


    The first house was a complete waste of his time, and the only thing notable about it was just how cold it got when he reached the third-floor garret. The fact that, by the time he got that high up, his teeth were chattering even through his armor was enough to convince him. Whatever was causing this had to be in the house next door.


    He didn¡¯t know what he expected as he climbed those stairs, but the first and second floors seemed normal enough and noticeably lacking in corpses. It was only when he got to the narrow stairs up to the third floor he found the body of a frozen man that had obviously been rushing down the stairs before he¡¯d been frozen in place with a look of panic on his face.


    Simon could feel the ice assaulting him worse with every step as he walked up those dark stairs. He didn¡¯t have to search to find the source, though. The blue glow made it fairly obvious. There, on a desk in the center of the frosty high-ceilinged space, he found a blue orb hovering just above the desk where someone had been working on it. Around it, there were engraving tools and alchemical compounds that he found more than a little familiar after his experimentation with making his flaming sword.


    He would have loved to study whatever this was, but he couldn¡¯t. He knew that if he did so, he¡¯d be frozen just as solid as the poor bastard that had started all this in a minute or two. So, he didn¡¯t hesitate. He pulled out his sword, watching the shadows jump as the yellow-orange flames suddenly out shone the soft blue glow of the orb. Then he struck it, cleaving the thing into two halves which both flickered briefly before fading out completely.


    Simon shivered as he sheathed his sword before he went back downstairs. It was still brutally cold here, but not lethally cold. Whatever that thing had been had stopped, but everything around it had spent weeks or months absorbing that temperature, so he expected it would still be like a deep freeze in this room for days at least.


    That made his decision to go find somewhere warm to let the whole place thaw out an easy one. He¡¯d go back to one of those buildings on the edge of town, light a fire and see how many toes he was going to lose from frostbite.

 Ch. 63 - A Little Mistake

    The answer proved to be zero, as it turned out. Without magic, he might have lost all of his digits, of course, but with a few applications of lesser healing, Simon was able to turn all his toes and even his blue and black nose back to a healthy pink color. That was great, of course, because he was fairly certain he would have hit the reset button and started this run-over if he had to cut his own nose off. That was too disgusting for words.


    The home he¡¯d chosen to spend the night in had no bodies, but it had plenty of meat and vegetables that were suffering from only a little freezer burn. The fact that they were edible after he turned them into a stew that he¡¯d let simmer for hours while he soaked in the heat from the small cookfire only proved that this had happened recently.


    ¡°But why now, though,¡± he asked himself as he took another bite.


    If Helades had truly wanted to stop this tragedy, couldn¡¯t she have had the portal open up in the moments before the mage had completed his experiment? That frozen look of panic flashed unbidden in front of Simon¡¯s face as he contemplated the moment.


    Clearly, the man had just enough time to figure out the fact that he¡¯d screwed something important up to run away. So why couldn¡¯t Helades have sent Simon here at that moment, or even ten minutes before, to do what he¡¯d just done before everyone else who lived in this town had paid the price?


    ¡°At least some people got away,¡± he said to himself, poking the fire absent-mindedly before taking another bite of his mushroom and mutton stew.


    It wasn¡¯t as good as Freya would have made, he decided for the dozenth time, but he instantly forced the thought out of his head before he allowed his mind to wander to all the painful places an errant thought like that could lead.


    After his somber, tasteless dinner, he searched the small two-room hut twice for alcohol but found none. So, he decided to go to bed early. He¡¯d cleared this level as far as he was concerned, but he still wanted a day or two to poke around and see what could be learned from this mage¡¯s mistake.


    . . .


    In the morning, Simon woke up sweating in his furs, and when he went outside, he found the snow had receded quite a bit. It was still present in a ring around the village proper, and the rooftops of the central buildings still glistened with ice. However, the fields between here and there had melted, and there was only a line of slightly darker mud to mark the radius that had previously been a winter wonderland.


    As he walked toward the center of the village, he started to feel a little chilly, but until Simon got to ground zero, he felt nothing that even resembled the bitter chill he¡¯d been forced to struggle against yesterday. When he got to the house that was the epicenter it got colder still, but this time it was merely as cold as a walk-in freezer rather than the inhuman cold it had been suffused with yesterday. He barely felt it through his furs.


    This time he could take his time, and he very deliberately went room by room looking for clues to what exactly had happened here. Judging by the state of the larder and the quality of his silverware, the man that had lived here had obviously been well off, though not as wealthy as either of the Barons that Simon had served.


    He¡¯d been rich enough to have two servants, too. The maid had frozen to death on the kitchen floor by the stove, and the footman had died in front of the hearth. Both had sought warmth to protect them from something that could never be held back by mere flames and though Simon didn¡¯t know what that was yet, he was going to find out.


    On the second floor, he found a study full of books, which he¡¯d learned was a rarity in this world. For a few minutes, he¡¯d thought he¡¯d found the jackpot, but they were mostly books of poetry, with a few books of history and heraldry mixed in. He flipped through a couple dozen at random, and finding nothing that even smelled of the arcane, he gave up and continued to the scene of the crime in the cramped garret.


    Everything was exactly where he¡¯d left it. The frozen man, the bisected orb, and all the other tools were completely unmoved. Simon took his time, examining the room, looking for anomalies. He found what he thought was a spell book on the table. After leafing through it, though, he found that most of the rest of it had nothing to do with magic.


    It was a book of natural philosophy, or primitive biology, as Simon would have called it. It mostly talked about the local birds and herbs of the region and hypothesized how the gods might have created them. Four pages though, at the very back of the book, stood out. They were written in a different hand and contained complex schematics for an orb of silver covered in very precise runes.


    Nothing in those pages told Simon exactly what the thing was supposed to do, so he tore them out and shoved them in his own book, so he could examine them later. Once that was done, he picked up the pieces and took them outside, so he could examine them somewhere warmer.


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    On the way out, he noticed that one corner of the wooden floor was a lot cleaner than the rest of the room. There was even some chalk residue there, but no obvious answers as to what that might mean, so after a few moments of investigation, he shrugged and started down the stairs, and left the building.


    Sitting on the stoop in the sun, he looked down the street where he could see the ice-shrouded temple that he¡¯d eventually need to cut through to make his way to the next world. He turned his attention from that for a moment, though, and focused on the problem at hand, studying the pieces of the hollow, rune-covered orb.


    Though he still wasn¡¯t sure what the man had been hoping to make, whatever it was he¡¯d been doing, he¡¯d screwed up. There was a single drip of magical ink that had dripped from the cold rune he¡¯d been painting, and it had dribbled down the side and connected with a trace between some sort of recursive element and a symbol that Simon didn¡¯t understand, resulting in a short circuit.


    Simon had no idea where the orb had been pulling all the power that would be required to freeze this place solid, but he was pretty sure that if no one interfered, it would have been something that went on indefinitely.


    ¡°A real-life snow globe,¡± he said to himself as he shrugged off his backpack and tucked the pieces inside it.


    He¡¯d find some time to better understand this puzzle, but now that he established that it was the magical equivalent of an industrial accident. It didn¡¯t really matter so much. After all, whatever this guy had been trying to do hadn¡¯t caused the problem - it was what he¡¯d done by accident that had gotten his neighbors killed.


    That wasn¡¯t what bothered Simon now, though. What bothered him was how this guy had learned any of this in the first place. That, more than anything else, was what stuck out to him here. A book with pages that didn¡¯t belong in it. A house that was utterly mundane, containing the most complicated magical artifact that he¡¯d seen so far on his trip through The Pit.


    How did that happen? Did he find something he shouldn¡¯t have? Was there some other force at work here he didn¡¯t understand?


    ¡°Not my problem,¡± he said finally, rising to his feet and tromping through the melting snow toward his real destination.


    The street from the house he¡¯d been investigating to the temple that held the portal to the next level was eerily quiet, and Simon briefly considered looking in some of the other houses but suppressed the urge. There wouldn¡¯t be a point after all. It was possible he might find some gold or silver, but he really didn¡¯t need it for where he was going, and other than maybe a few more arrows for his longbow, he couldn¡¯t think of anything he wanted to carry around.


    He wanted to get back to level twenty, so he could give Helades a piece of his mind, and the only thing he had to do to make that happen was to cut through a wall of ice, walk through a city of the dead, then a swamp, and finally, he had to kill a Basilisk. While he wouldn¡¯t call that to-do list easy, it was certainly simple and straightforward, and he didn¡¯t need to complicate it by digging any deeper into this place. The mystery had been solved as far as he was concerned.


    So, with that thought in mind, he pulled back his hood and enjoyed the brisk air before he reached the front door of the temple. Once there, he forced it open with a brief shove and wiped away some of the snow that rained down on him from the eaves as he did so.


    From here, Simon could finally see his destination. This time, it didn¡¯t glow red with sunset because he¡¯d taken much longer. This time, the ice was as black as night, but he was certain it still led to the same place, and with a smile and a flourish, he unsheathed his sword, watching it burst into flame as he did so.


    ¡°Alright,¡± he said with a smile, ¡°let¡¯s see what this baby can do.¡±


    He plunged the flaming sword into the icy barrier in front of him, smiling grimly as he felt it slowly cut through the thing like a hot knife through butter or, perhaps more poignantly, a lightsaber through a blast door. This felt like real progress to him. The last time he¡¯d been through here, he¡¯d blasted his way through mostly with pure desperation and barely managed to avoid freezing to death. This time, though, he was very deliberately cutting his way toward the dead city that lay beyond, with a tool he¡¯d made with his own two hands, and that was extremely satisfying.


    He studied his reflection in that melting block of ice as he started down the second side of what would eventually be a doorway. Even taking into account the distortion of the ice, he looked as different as he ever had in his whole life. In truth, he barely recognized himself. Losing all that weight had given him cheekbones he didn¡¯t even know he had, and it left him looking angry and older than he remembered, and the snow in his hair only intensified the illusion. For a brief moment, he had a good idea of how he¡¯d look when he was his dad¡¯s age.


    Honestly, he wasn¡¯t sure he liked it. Despite the number of times he¡¯d already died, he really didn¡¯t like the idea of getting old. That was something he wouldn¡¯t have to worry about for a long time from now. It didn¡¯t really matter though, did it, he decided. The only person his looks should ever matter to, old or young, was dead. He could become one of those greasy, unshaven mountain men now for all he cared.


    ¡°Well, I could, except for the lice,¡± Simon corrected himself with a laugh. He was at a point where he didn¡¯t really care what he looked like, but he definitely still cared if he itched or stank, so that wasn¡¯t going to happen.


    Once he finished his third cut through the ice block, he sheathed his sword, noting the cloud of steam it created as he put it away. Then, he put his back into it and shoved hard, pushing the block of ice out of the way and into the dark cobblestone street beyond.


    This place, at least, hadn¡¯t changed a bit. It was a city full of the dead, and he had no idea what it was the goddess wanted him to do with it.

 Ch. 64 - Dead City

    There were a lot of parts about his last journey this deep that were a little hazy to Simon. For instance, it wasn¡¯t until he was standing at the block of ice that he could really remember if the swamp level or the plague level came first. One thing he was certain of, though, was that he wasn¡¯t staying in the same house he¡¯d slept in last time, just feet away from a corpse.


    ¡°That shit was vile,¡± he muttered to himself as he started walking down the street, groping blindly in the dark for the next door.


    Even after a minute, the night was so dark that he had trouble seeing much more than the vague shadows of corpses on the ground. So, eventually, he pulled his flaming sword just to have a torch to see with.


    ¡°This is an awfully complex flashlight,¡± he said with a laugh. As he spoke, he noted how crude the lines of his glyphs and runes were, compared to the handwork of the orb he¡¯d examined only a few minutes before and the way the fire sizzled unevenly across the blade. ¡°But hey - whatever works, right?¡±


    The flaming sword gave him enough light to navigate and see, but every home he tried was either barred from the inside or contained corpses in varying states of decay. It also made him unbelievably hot, and after a few houses, he was forced to stop, sheath his sword, and then shed his armor before he could continue on.


    ¡°God - if I have to make a whole set of magic equipment for every level, this shit is going to take forever,¡± he grumbled as he started off again.


    He tried to do the math in his head. He¡¯d really only spent two or three weeks working on his enchanting project. The rest had all been recovery, so it didn¡¯t really count, but even so, a perfect run would be like 5 years at that pace.


    ¡°Ain¡¯t nobody got time for that,¡± he sighed.


    Less than ten minutes later, Simon found something that stopped him cold. It wasn¡¯t another disgusting dead body, though, or even a house that was empty. It was a mirror.


    When he¡¯d seen his distorted expression in the ice, Simon had thought that the cold and the weight loss had made him look older, but when he finally found a fine, silvered mirror in the house of some well-to-do craftsman, he could tell it was more than that at first glance. For starters, he had gray fucking hair and wrinkles around his eyes.


    He had trouble recognizing himself most of the time these days, but usually, that was in a good way. This was most definitely not. He was probably 30 now, but he might be 31. But he looked like he was 45 easy.


    ¡°Is that from the magic I¡¯ve been casting?¡± he asked himself as he touched his skin with his free hand. ¡°Is this from that fucking orb?¡±


    He had no idea which was the more likely culprit, but he was fairly sure that he hadn¡¯t looked like this before now. Surely someone would have mentioned it in Rivenwood, or Freya would have told him that he was looking a little rough when they¡¯d lived in Crowvar.


    He cursed himself for not bothering to buy a mirror for that house. They were expensive, and he hadn¡¯t thought such a luxury was necessary at the time. Now, he dearly wished he¡¯d had the baseline. Surely, if it was some byproduct of the magic, he would have noticed himself changing a little week by week and month by month, wouldn¡¯t he? Simon tried hard to remember the last time he¡¯d gotten a good look at himself, but his recent head injury made memories in that time frame muddy and difficult to remember with real certainty.


    ¡°Whatever,¡± he said, feeling somehow cheated. ¡°This doesn¡¯t change anything anyway.¡±


    Simon changed his plan, and instead of searching the rest of this dead city in vain for a corpse-free home, he simply went upstairs and found a spare bedroom that no one had died in and decided to call it a day here.


    Technically, Simon didn¡¯t really need to sleep yet. He¡¯d only been awake for 6 or 8 hours and wasn¡¯t particularly tired, but he wasn¡¯t going to explore a city full of corpses in the dark. That was just asking for a zombie to pop up and bite him or worse. Besides, he had the word for cure now, so he doubted something as simple as a plague could do much to harm him at this point.


    He was hopeful that the spell would work on whatever it was that zombies did when they bit you, too, of course, but as he blocked the door with a chair and stripped down to his small clothes, he admitted to himself that he was not looking forward to finding out if that was true or not. He¡¯d honestly prefer not to find out. He might even blow his own head off rather than take the risk, but he was sure he¡¯d come across someone he could try to save on this trip to hell one day, and anyone who¡¯d been bitten by a zombie was bound to be a very grateful guinea pig, he decided with a smile.


    The bed he¡¯d chosen was one of the softest he¡¯d laid on in a long time. It was nicer than anything he¡¯d had since he¡¯d known the joys of Egyptian cotton in the modern world. Even that wasn¡¯t enough to let him rest, though.


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    Instead, a variety of thoughts warred in his head. Why was he here in this city after everyone had died? Why wasn¡¯t he here when people were just starting to get sick so he could do something to save them?


    Surely Simon could teach a few dedicated healers the word for lesser cure, couldn¡¯t he? Even if that magic aged them prematurely as it might have done with him, that would be a small enough price to pay, wouldn¡¯t it? A dozen lives to save hundreds?


    Why didn¡¯t the portal open to the merchant ship that had brought this plague here or the wagon that it had lain dormant in across long trade roads to get here? These were all good questions, of course. Good enough to torment him as he lay there in the dark, wondering what the point of all this was.


    He didn¡¯t have any answers, though. He didn¡¯t even know for sure what had caused him to age like this or when it had happened. It was frustrating, and ultimately, it was that simmering frustration that had let him nap until dawn finally colored the sky.


    He slept fitfully, and he remembered only pieces of a dream involving Freya and the son they¡¯d never had. It had been so happy that Simon woke up with a smile on his face until he remembered the truth. She was dead, and nothing could change that. Not even tracking her down and trying to make it work all over again.


    It was a heartbreaking moment as he tried to reconcile the false, joyful existence with the grim reality. He sat there on that stranger¡¯s bed, trying to put those raw, ragged emotions back into the box deep inside himself.


    He hadn¡¯t killed her, and he¡¯d done his best to save her, but he should never have left her alone. He knew that now. He knew that put her blood on his hands to some degree and that there was nothing he could do to fix that now.


    He should have fixed it by fleeing the orcs rather than neglecting her for days and days as he tried to defend the Crowvar. No, he should have taken her from that place as soon as he¡¯d realized what a creep the lord of the area and his son were. He would probably have been better off taking her to some deserted piece of country land and building her a log cabin.


    Monsters would no doubt have attacked them eventually. He knew that. At least they would have died together, though. That wouldn¡¯t have been a death that tormented him half as much as the one he was forced to remember now.


    Only when he¡¯d gotten himself under control did Simon finally rise with renewed purpose. He was going to figure out just what the hell made a city of the dead a worthwhile stop on his whirlwind trip through hell, no matter how many times he had to heal himself of this disease until he found it.


    <hr>


    The city was no friendlier in dawn¡¯s light than he remembered it from his last visit. Here and there, doors were daubed with red X¡¯s that meant they contained bodies, but Simon knew the truth after his vain search last night. Those marks were from some earlier point in the plague. Before, whoever had been trying to keep order had given up. Now, there were piles of bodies in the streets, nearby already full carts loaded with corpses wrapped in funeral shrouds.


    It was a mess, and it only took a little searching to realize that anyone who had survived this had done so by managing to flee a long time ago. That wasn¡¯t the interesting part to him, though. The interesting part was that after walking down a few streets in the daylight, he was sure that he¡¯d been here before.


    The first time he¡¯d been to this level, it had just struck him as a shithole little town, but to be fair, his impression of Hurag while it was still a bustling little city the first time he¡¯d walked through hadn¡¯t been much different. It was still a little shithole wedged between two rivers. It was still pretty much that same little shithole of course, though it had a few more stone buildings than he remembered, but now it was full of the dead.


    That mystery solved, Simon thought about walking to the temple of Ethryes and leaving. However, to be honest, he wasn¡¯t totally sure where that was, and the idea of a temple full of dead priests who lacked the magic to even save themselves was more than a little depressing. So, he headed slowly back toward the south, which was where he thought it would be, avoiding the worst swarms of flies where he could.


    Eventually he stopped, as he discovered what he could only describe as a primitive hospital in the main market. There, under pavilion tents, were dozens of cots laid out in orderly rows, and Simon felt compelled to explore it.


    From the looks of the corpses, some of them had been dead for days, but a few, near the end, looked like they might still be alive. Really, it was like a macabre museum display. The oldest bodies were already bloating and rotting, but as he moved back, he could see the boils swell, and the black and blue streaks started to spread across the skin. It was a progression out of a medical textbook and equal parts disgusting and fascinating.


    Simon quickly checked for a pulse but found none. All the likely candidates were still and cold, and though he didn¡¯t regret trying to help them, he suddenly felt an overpowering need to wash his hands.


    As he walked over to the small fountain on the north wall, he found something else that was still familiar. There, sprawled out on the ground, was a man wearing a plague mask made of leather and canvas, just like he¡¯d seen in video games. That was an oddity that was enough to make him wonder. Was it possible that this was some isekaied person from his world?


    Sadly, he¡¯d never get the chance to ask a dead man, he thought as he bent down to retrieve the thing for a closer look. ¡°Don¡¯t mind me, pal - it looks like you don¡¯t really need this anymore,¡± Simon said as he undid the strap. ¡°You can¡ª¡±


    As he removed the mask, though, he found another surprise. The man was still breathing, faintly at least. For a moment, Simon backpedaled, worried the man might be about to turn into a zombie.


    He put his hand on his hilt, but as soon as the stranger blinked and tried to speak, Simon relaxed. This guy wasn¡¯t about to devour his flesh. He was as weak as a kitten, and unless Simon did something, he definitely wasn¡¯t going to make it.

 Ch. 65 - Just One Life

    Simon quickly found a clean cot and moved it into the shade of a building far from the corpses. Then he picked up the stranger and carried him over. After that, Simon evaluated him the best he could. He knew very little about medicine. To be honest, physiology and anatomy were the last things he would have expected to need to know about in a fantasy world, but he¡¯d learned the hard way that just wasn¡¯t so.


    Magic needed to be wielded with precision and focus, though a sloppy spell could still work, as he¡¯d demonstrated plenty of times with fire magic. Healing was a little more finicky.


    He shuddered as an image of Freya¡¯s trembling form came briefly as he remembered how badly healing could miss the mark, but he suppressed it. Instead, he forced himself to focus on the man in front of him. The parched, cracked lips spoke to thirst, and the raging fever implied that it was getting worse, but the fact that his blisters weren¡¯t too bad and his skin had not yet gone gray implied his case was still earlier than the rest.


    ¡°Maybe that dumb bird mask did you some good after all,¡± Simon said as he pulled out his water flask and tried to get the man to drink.


    The dying man tried and failed to choke down some water, spraying Simon enough that he was certain he¡¯d officially caught whatever this guy had. He shrugged it off. He¡¯d kill himself before he ever got this bad, but he was certain it wouldn¡¯t come to that. Now would be a fine time to use himself as a guinea pig, and then afterward, he could cure the dying healer.


    Centering himself, he imagined all the bacteria that were crawling all over him now, trying to make him sick. He was sure that if he tried to purge all the bacteria from his body, that would have some kind of terrible consequence because he was pretty sure there were supposed to be good ones, too. So, instead, he focused on the plague bacteria and imagined them as little black bugs desperately looking for a way inside his body.


    Once he had that image fixed and he could feel a connection to it, he finally uttered the new word he had yet to use before. ¡°D???e???l???z???¨¢??m???.¡± Cure. Simon felt a slight tingle as the word rippled through him, but once it passed, he felt no worse, so he turned his attention back to the dying man.


    ¡°D???e???l???z???¨¢??m???,¡± he repeated, focusing on the stranger¡¯s body with the same care and attention he¡¯d done on his own.


    Nothing happened immediately, but then Simon hadn¡¯t expected it to. He followed that up with healing, trying to heal the worst of the man¡¯s physical symptoms, which seemed to be mostly successful. Between the two spells, he looked almost as good as new, though he passed out almost immediately as a result. Simon was more than a little bit familiar with how hard a recovery from death¡¯s door could be, even with magic on your side.


    So, he watched the man¡¯s chest slowly rise and fall peacefully for a few minutes, and then he got up and started looking around for answers. The stranger wasn¡¯t much younger than Simon thought of himself as being. He was perhaps twenty-five, and he had no identifying symbols or marks on him.


    A search of the makeshift hospital this guy had been working on yielded a few more answers. It definitely wasn¡¯t religious or spiritual in nature. Instead, it was alchemical. Most of the contents of the jars and vials smelled positively putrid to Simon¡¯s nose and looked even worse, but he had no way of knowing if what he was looking at was supposed to be medicine that had been administered to the sick or research about the pestilence that was killing them.


    It seemed more likely to be the former, though. He seemed to recall that things as toxic as mercury had been considered medicine once upon a time on Earth. Who knew what they would consider here with mythological creatures to add to the mix.


    ¡°You really got in over your head, didn¡¯t you,¡± Simon said when he came back over to the man to check on him a few minutes later. ¡°The Black Plague is a little advanced for people that haven¡¯t invented microscopes.¡±


    The stranger stirred, but not enough to wake, and Simon set his water skin down next to him just in case he woke up and was still thirsty, and then went in search of the ingredients for the most powerful medicine he knew how to make: Chicken Noodle Soup.


    Inside the bounds of the small city, everything was rotten, but he found a string of garlic, a jar of salt, and some dried herbs in one of the nicer houses he explored. Later, he found carrots and celery, too, and though he never did find anything resembling noodles because they had yet to be invented in this world, and he had no idea how to make them, he did find a live chicken in an abandoned farmyard just outside the city walls.


    Standing in the shadow of the gates with the word ¡°DEATH¡± painted across them, he beheaded it and plucked it, using the same techniques that his wife had shown him a couple times. While he did so, he tried not to cry. ¡°Man, if I¡¯d known how much work went into nuggies, I would have appreciated them more,¡± he sighed to himself as he washed the skinny, ugly-looking chicken with some well water.


    He probably wouldn¡¯t have, though. Truthfully, more than anything, it was the dipping sauce he missed. Ketchup would have been nice, of course, but he would have fought a whole band of centaurs for some sweet and sour or some honey mustard.


    ¡°Failing to invent microscopes is one thing,¡± he said to himself as he started walking back to the square, ¡°but not inventing sugar? Unforgivable.¡± If he was ever going to be one of those isekai protagonists that invented all the crazy shit they missed from the modern world, he was going to use it to invent sugar or chocolate, though that was hardly an immediate goal.


    Today¡¯s goal was simple: ¡®keep the alchemist from dying¡¯ and ¡®have dinner ready when he wakes up.¡¯ Simon would probably add, ¡®figure out what to do about these bodies¡¯ as he watched the clouds of swarming black flies increase along with the stench of death as the temperature rose, but that was a later problem.


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    For now, he found a kitchen free from dead bodies that was close enough to his sole survivor that Simon could keep an eye on him, and then he filled up a cauldron and started to boil some water. Cooking was probably something that he was never going to be good at, Simon decided, but he¡¯d come an awfully long way in the last two lifetimes. He could dice vegetables, roast meat, and even make bread, though it never really came out right.


    Soup was easy enough, though. Maybe he would save the bread for tomorrow, or perhaps never. While he tried to decide how long he should stay here, he cubed the chicken and set it aside before adding the fleshy carcass to the pot, then he started dicing some vegetables. He¡¯d let that simmer along with the salt for a while, then toss in everything else later.


    Several hours later, he was almost done, and he was really wishing he had some crackers to go with this when he heard the sound of his patient stirring outside.


    ¡°Take it easy, man,¡± Simon said, walking out as he wiped his hand with a towel. ¡°You¡¯ve been through a lot.¡±


    ¡°M-my mask¡­¡± the man said, reaching up to his face in a panic as he realized he was no longer protected from the plague.


    ¡°It¡¯s over there, but I wouldn¡¯t worry about that too much. You¡¯re immune now, probably.¡± Simon said with a shrug. "You got a name?"


    ¡°Immune?¡± the other man asked, processing the world. ¡°Is this magic?¡±


    ¡°Nah,¡± Simon lied. ¡°Biology. Antibodies. I¡¯d explain it, but - I don¡¯t really understand it myself.¡±


    ¡°But all my experiments,¡± the man answered. ¡°They showed that the plague couldn¡¯t be defeated, not with tinctures of Suvalin or even with drops of enlightenment. Nothing worked!¡±


    ¡°Listen - I¡¯ll show you a potion that will really save lives, but before we do that, I¡¯d like to get your name¡­¡± Simon said, starting to get frustrated that the other guy wasn¡¯t listening and probably wouldn¡¯t enjoy it if Simon had to keep referring to him as the alchemist or the sole survivor.


    ¡°Oh, Robin,¡± he mumbled. ¡°It¡¯s Robin Klarr.¡±


    ¡°Well, Mister Klarr, today¡¯s your lucky day,¡± Simon said, helping him into a sitting position and handing him the water skin. ¡°I found you when you were dying and nursed you back to health.¡±


    ¡°Thank you!¡± Robin exclaimed, ¡°But what about my master and patients? Surely they¡ª¡±


    ¡°No one else made it,¡± Simon said as he walked to the kitchen. ¡°Sorry about that.¡±


    He took a few minutes longer than he needed to, strictly speaking, to give the man some time to deal with his grief alone, but when he returned with the chicken soup, he wasn¡¯t crying. He still seemed to be in shock.


    Simon let Robin feed himself, and it was only several minutes into the meal that he finally said, ¡°I thought you were bringing me a potion. This is just soup.¡±


    ¡°It is,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°And since cough syrup hasn¡¯t been invented yet, it¡¯s the only thing that¡¯s likely to keep you healthy anywhere near here.¡±


    ¡°But that doesn¡¯t make sense,¡± Robin protested, though not so forcefully that he ever stopped eating. ¡°There¡¯s no magic in chicken¡­¡±


    ¡°Well, obviously, you¡¯ve never had it fried,¡± Simon said with a laugh, suddenly craving something extra crispy. ¡°Seriously, though. There¡¯s a kind of magic you¡¯ve never heard of, and it¡¯s called nutrition. Other than making sure they have plenty of water, it¡¯s the most important thing that you can do for a sick person the next time you¡¯re treating them.¡±


    Robin didn¡¯t believe him, not at first at least, but he asked questions about what the words meant. Simon didn¡¯t know much about proteins or vitamins, but he tried putting it in alchemical terms about reactions and reagents to make it sound more believable, and by the second bowl of soup, the alchemist was at least partially convinced that there could be a magic in food if it was cooked the right way.


    Before bed, Simon made his patient change into clothes that were less filthy, and he found them a room that was free of the dead. The fresh air outside might have done Robin some good, of course, but as bad as the flies were, Simon knew that the rats would be worse once it got dark, and he wanted to avoid that as much as possible.


    . . .


    Simon had originally intended to keep going the next day. After all, he¡¯d done his good deed. But when Robin still looked so weak, Simon couldn¡¯t bear to abandon him just yet. He might be a stranger, but the man had watched a city die, so Simon decided he could spare another day or two for the man while he got on his feet.


    They did a lot of things over the next few days. They found a pomegranate tree, and Simon explained the miracle substance known as vitamin C to the alchemist. For his part, Robin tried to explain the mysterious fall of Hurag and the complicated mysticism of his alchemy, which was based on the trine. Apparently, only metal, air, and water were elements, and everything else was just a mixture of those.


    It was different than the 4 elements he was used to, but Simon didn¡¯t see how it was wrong exactly. In Robin¡¯s version of the world, fire was just elevated air, and that was why the sun burned. Likewise, earth was just unrefined or fallen metal. It was an interesting worldview, but more than anything, it reminded Simon of the mumbo jumbo parts of his evil book, so he didn¡¯t take them too seriously.


    The only thing Simon didn¡¯t talk to his new friend about was magic. Not even after they started burning bodies. When he used fire magic, he did it in secret. That wasn¡¯t because he was trying to be greedy, though. It was because he had no idea how bad an eager young guy like this could screw himself up with magic. Simon didn¡¯t know if the aura some people could see, his premature aging, or both was because of his spell casting, but he wasn¡¯t about to give that burden to someone else. After all, Simon had a reset button, and until he understood more about the systems of this world, he wasn¡¯t going to risk it.


    They didn¡¯t burn every corpse in the city. They didn¡¯t even try. What they did do, though, was burn every person that Robin cared about, as well as his patients. It was only once that was done that Simon told the other man he had to be off.


    ¡°But I could come with you,¡± Robin said, ¡°You still have so much to teach me about your strange magics.¡±


    Calling soup and juice magic was enough to make Simon chuckle, but he shook his head. ¡°No, you said so yourself. You have to deliver the news of your master¡¯s death to his people, and I¡­ well, I¡¯ve got people I need to see, too.¡±


    They shared one more meal of leek and potato soup that night, and once Robin had started to snore softly, Simon quietly got dressed and made for the temple. Long goodbyes weren¡¯t really his thing, and the longer he spent in the pit, the more true that would probably become.


    There might not be any real mechanics in this stupid dungeon, but he still felt like he had a bar for socialization, and though it had been empty when he¡¯d found Robin, it had finished filling up days ago, and he¡¯d just been looking for reasons to move on.


    When he got to the temple, the portal wasn¡¯t quite what he¡¯d expected.

 Ch. 66 - A Single Moment

    The swamp was gone, just like the forest had been before. Simon could see that, but he had no idea why that was the case. He definitely wasn¡¯t remembering it too well. If you had told him that last time it had been swamp then plague city, he might have believed it - but it had definitely been around here somewhere.


    He rubbed his side as he remembered getting stabbed with that wooden spear and recalled how disgusting it had been to heal the wound, knowing that there were probably still splinters in it. Knowing what he knew now, that would have almost certainly become a fatal infection in time. After all, back then, he¡¯d only tried to close the wound. He hadn¡¯t thought about how he¡¯d have to make the muscles knit back together or remove the splinters and filth that would have inevitably caused an abscess to form.


    Simon would never say that his death right after that to the basilisk was a good thing, but it had likely spared him a lot of suffering in that sense. If he¡¯d gotten blood poisoning and died of a fever while cursing Helades name, he might never have tried healing magic again, though, and that would have been a serious mistake.


    The magic of this world was a lot more manual than it should be, in his opinion, but there was no denying that it was useful. He just didn¡¯t see how a healing spell would be useful to the medieval mind for anything but the most minor of wounds. Why should magic require advanced anatomical knowledge? Was there an MRI spell he could learn to actually diagnose wounds?


    He chuckled to himself as he studied the sand-blown ruins on the other side of the portal, ¡°The better question is, why the hell doesn¡¯t everyone and their brother know these spells already? I think it would be kind of hard to keep a secret like this.¡±


    He was just stalling, though. He knew that. He had no trouble facing death, even horrible splintery death at the hands of the lizardmen. The threat of being a statue, though¡­ that was so much worse.


    He took a deep breath to calm himself as he realized he was shaking. He couldn¡¯t handle another century as a statue. He just couldn¡¯t. This time, it would be worse. He¡¯d be trapped in that stone with nothing but the memory of his dead wife and child until the sorrow devoured him whole.


    Just contemplating that horrible fate was enough to allow the deep sorrow that he¡¯d been repressing for¡­ how long had it been? Weeks? Months?


    Not long enough, he decided as he pulled his bow from his back and stepped through the portal, letting the fear wash over him. Purpose had been the only thing that kept him going for a while now. Perhaps he¡¯d only bothered to defend the burning village because he needed that fear of death to keep his demons at bay.


    After all, more than perhaps anyone alive, he knew what a bad idea it was to fight so many orcs at once. Just like he knew what a terrible idea it was to return to this desert. As he looked around to make sure the coast was clear in all directions, he strung his bow, noting that it was a little harder than it usually was. He wondered how it could be that he¡¯d gotten so much older that it was starting to make him weak as he rushed to the cover of a nearby wall and looked around.


    His mind was about to start to go down that path when the sound of movement caused his mind to shut down as every muscle in his body tensed. As he peeked around the corner, he decided it was a false alarm, but that wasn¡¯t something he was going to take for granted.


    Simon started to thread between the ancient statues that might or might not be men in the same predicament he¡¯d been in not so long ago as he started to stalk his prey. He was not the best hunter, and what little skill in tracking he possessed was nearly useless in the sandy wastes, but he had gotten pretty good at killing things during his time in the pit, and he was sure that basilisks died like everything else if you hit them in the right spot.


    Part of him needed to find it so that he could start to plan, and another part that was almost as large just wanted to find the portal and rush past it. He couldn¡¯t do that, though. It was like the skeleton knight all over again. If he ran from this creature while all the rage and pain of Freya¡¯s loss burned within him, then he¡¯d be running forever.


    Simon stalked the temple complex for almost twenty minutes, noting the occasional half-eaten statue or old tracks. The whole time, he constantly worried that he would find it just as he turned a corner and came face to face with it, only to be instantly turned to stone. That didn¡¯t happen, though.


    Instead, when he finally saw it from almost fifty yards away, it was ambling slowly away from him as its awkward six-legged form moved through the shadows of a colonnade. A dozen thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant. How far could its petrification attack reach? How quickly could it use it? How many times a day would it be effective? Where was its most vulnerable spot?


    Those concerns were comforting, of course, in their way, but there was anger there, too, and Simon took hold of that instead. This was the creature that had almost driven him insane. It had turned him to stone and then taken decades to devour his corpse at its leisure. It was an intolerable thought.


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    He looked around, trying to decide where the best places for cover and ambush were. He looked to the temple on the left and the forum on the right and decided what he had to do. He could use his force spell to help him get around; he¡¯d practiced that plenty. He was only going to get one shot from each direction and each opportunity, though. He was sure of that. Anything more than that was just begging to be statuefied.


    ¡°Hey! Ugly!¡± he yelled, already drawing back on the bow.


    The giant lizard immediately started to turn, but before he even faced Simon completely, he¡¯d released, aiming for the creature¡¯s head, and was pulling back behind the corner before he even saw that the blow had landed. There was no time for that.


    Last time, he seemed to recall he¡¯d had about two seconds. Enough time to reach for his sword and pull it out. This time, he was going to assume the answer was closer to zero, though.


    ¡°G????????????r???????v?????u?????u????????? V???r???????z???i??????,¡± he yelled, imagining lightning striking the spot where he was fairly sure the creature still stood. He felt the hairs on his arms begin to prickle from the static electricity, and then there was the roar from the heavens as the bolt struck the earth hard enough that the thunder resonated in his chest.


    Simon waited a moment for the temporary deafness to subside. He¡¯d hoped for silence, but the shrieks of pain he heard echoing were a closer runner-up. He considered looking around the corner but suppressed the urge. Instead, he turned and ran. If an arrow to the face and a lightning bolt hadn¡¯t killed it, he didn¡¯t want to be here when it arrived.


    ¡°?????????????f?????v??????????r????¨²?????m????? ????? ¨®??o???n???b???¨§??t?????????,¡± he said under his breath. Lesser force. It was a technique he¡¯d practiced extensively after he¡¯d healed from his head wound, but he still found it thrilling as he was tossed into the air. It was like a double jump in a video game, and though landing could be a touch painful, he¡¯d gotten used to it as he landed on the temple, ten feet above where he¡¯d been before.


    He drew his bow and waited for his quarry to come around the corner again, and when it did, he noted the scorch marks of a blast near its left hind foot and the stone shaft of what had been an arrow sticking out from its neck. This time, he took the extra second to aim since the thing wasn¡¯t looking up just yet and then released an arrow, ducking out of sight and scuttling back the way the basilisk had just come before he could see if he¡¯d managed to poke out the thing¡¯s third eye.


    That was what he really wanted. If he could turn off that terrible petrification attack, then he could get up close and personal with his sword and really make sure it was all the way dead this time. The thing howled in pain again, and for a moment, Simon thought he¡¯d finally succeeded. Then he saw a stone bird fall out of the sky and knew that either he¡¯d missed or the creature didn¡¯t need a third eye to ruin his day.


    Once Simon got far enough behind it that he didn¡¯t think the creature would hear him over the noises of rage it was making, he dropped down into the soft sand. From here, he could see the back half of the creature, and he doubted very much that his bow would do much to the thick, stony scales of the creature, so this time, he tried a different tactic, and as he ran for the pillars, he summoned fire instead.


    ¡°G????????????r???????v?????u?????u????????? ???????M???????e???i???????r??????¨¨?????n????,¡± he yelled, throwing a wave of fury at his opponent that was probably hot enough to fuse the sand the thing was standing on, but it had a giant muscular body, so he wasn¡¯t going to count on the idea that he might be able to freeze it in place anymore than the idea that he¡¯d killed it.


    He caught his breath in the shade of a pillar as the edges of his vision greyed, and he had trouble standing. Using two greater spells back to back was incredibly taxing, and he wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d ever used so much magic so quickly before. He might have another couple of minor spells in him, but that was about it. If he pushed himself much harder, he was going to collapse, or worse.


    Still, the thing he was fighting didn¡¯t seem to be doing much better than him, though. Its screams of anger had become moans of pain, and though it was approaching him yet again, it was in bad shape. Not only was it moving much slower, but it was dragging at least one or two feet.


    Part of Simon was tempted just to run for it. He¡¯d probably already done enough damage to this thing that it wouldn¡¯t survive, but he couldn¡¯t. Letting it die of blood loss or trauma or whatever finally did it in wouldn¡¯t be good enough. He needed to be the one to strike it down.


    So, he dropped his bow and pulled out his flaming sword while he waited. It got so close that he could hear the sound of its labored breathing and smell the coppery scent of its blood while he stood there holding his breath. It was only when the thing¡¯s ugly whiskered snout appeared around the corner that he whispered ¡°?????????????f?????v??????????r????¨²?????m????? ????? ¨®??o???n???b???¨§??t?????????,¡± and used the minor force to kick up a cloud of dust on the far side of the creature.


    The basilisk whipped its head around and hissed at what it thought was its attacker, but all it did was expose its thick neck behind the larger scales, letting Simon bring down his blade with all the force he could muster.


    The first chop largely bounced off the scales, chipping a few of them but little else. Even the fire magic wasn¡¯t enough to make a difference. The thing turned back toward him, but he was already in motion, now jumping on the thing¡¯s back. He was committed now. He had a wounded tiger by the tail, and if he let go, he would be lost.


    If the armor had been too thick for a chop, then he would try a stab instead. This time, he brought the tip of his blade down hard at an angle between two thick scales and was rewarded by the sound of sizzling meat as his flaming weapon slid further and further into the thing¡¯s flesh.


    The basilisk let out an unearthly shriek as it tried to shake him from its back, but Simon held on. When that didn¡¯t work, it rolled over, trying to grind Simon into the sand and crush him to death. All that did was expose its soft, vulnerable underbelly, though, and as Simon jumped off, he was able to almost disembowel it with a slash, releasing a slurry of gravel and flesh bits on the ground when it finally completed its roll.


    It still moved after that, but weakly. It had no strength left, and as Simon started hacking off its head, the thing no longer put up a fight.

 Ch. 67 - A Life Well Lived

    Moments later, the monster¡¯s head rolled free of its body and tumbled down the sandy slope, leaving a smeared trail of purple blood behind it. Exhausted, Simon stabbed his flaming sword into the creature¡¯s corpse one final time and shouted, ¡°Helades!¡±


    He paused for breath a moment, then started walking back toward the front of the temple where most of the other statues were. He thought he¡¯d made it through the fight completely unscathed, but after a few steps, he discovered the truth. The basilisk had almost gotten him on his last run, and his left leg from the calf down had been turned to stone.


    Simon paused partway to his destination and shouted again, ¡°Helades! I¡¯m on level twenty, and you owe me my question!¡± Then, before he kept moving, he tried a couple of middle-powered spells to see what could be done about his foot. Healing did nothing, but curing returned it to flesh, though he noticed that he¡¯d lost all feeling, which made it worse than before. As a stone limb, it had been like walking with a peg leg, but now it was like walking with a dead piece of flesh.


    ¡°Which it probably is,¡± he muttered to himself as he staggered on and tried not to think of the leg rotting while it was still attached to him.


    It was fine. He¡¯d rest and then use a greater heal or something in a few hours. As he limped up the slope, he wondered if it might be smarter to cut the possibly dead limb off and create a new one with greater heal. He wasn¡¯t sure. He¡¯d reattached a finger on one of his men with lesser heal once, and that had worked well enough, but he¡¯d never tried to grow a new limb before.


    Simon shrugged. There was a first time for everything.


    When he reached the first statue, he toppled it over with a shove, shattering the thing. He took the head and threw it further up the slope towards the center of the group and then staggered on to the next one. ¡°Helades! You told me I could ask a question, and last time I was here, you did all the talking!¡±


    Simon looked around to see if she¡¯d appeared, and when she was still nowhere to be found, he continued breaking statues. God, he was exhausted. In the movies, they always said things like, ¡®I¡¯m getting too old for this shit.¡¯ He¡¯d always thought that was dumb, but right now, he felt literally too old for this shit.


    Still, the exhaustion of the fight wasn¡¯t enough to stop him, and slowly but surely, he made a pile of heads. When he had almost two dozen of them there on the flagstones of the temple¡¯s stairs, he finally took cover behind a pillar and whispered, ¡°O???o???n???b???e???t???i???t???,¡± imagining them being crushed downward like a vice.


    In the immediate aftermath, he heard stone shrapnel spray out, and he felt himself go dizzy, but when he looked up, he could see that most of the heads were still largely intact. It hadn¡¯t been enough.


    ¡°O???o???n???b???e???t???i???t???.¡± he said again, grinding the bigger parts down into smaller chunks and noting that not all of them were destroyed yet.


    He couldn¡¯t save these people¡¯s lives, but he could save their souls. He could get them out of the hell that they were stuck in. He might be the only one who ever would.


    Simon knew he should rest. He knew he shouldn¡¯t push himself much further, but he still yelled. ¡°O???o???n???b???e???t???i???t???!¡± again. Simon¡¯s vision greyed briefly as he poured out his power to destroy the stone. He needed this. He needed to vent his rage because of all the other things he should have been able to do but hadn¡¯t.


    He felt the tears well up in his eyes as he thought about all the things he hadn¡¯t been able to do, but wiped them away so he could get a good look at the pile of gravel in front of him. One more hit would almost certainly be enough to reduce them to sand and dust. Hopefully, then he¡¯d be able to¡ª


    ¡°Enough,¡± Helades called out from further up the slope, standing in the shadow of the temple.


    Simon looked up, with his mouth still open, and sighed. Saying anything without carefully considering his words might be construed as a question. He hadn¡¯t actually thought he¡¯d get this far. He hadn¡¯t actually thought he¡¯d kill the basilisk, and if he did, he hadn¡¯t expected that she would actually appear to talk to him, so Simon hadn¡¯t actually picked a question to talk to her about. So, he took the opportunity as he slowly strode up the wide, shallow staircase to consider that.


    ¡°You know, this used to be a temple dedicated to me, in its way,¡± she said nostalgically before she turned and started walking into the half-collapsed thing, leaving Simon to catch up. ¡°That was a long time ago, though.¡±


    Simon ignored that. The last thing he cared about was Helades. There were so many other questions to explore, including the one that mattered most to him. Was she faithful? Could I have saved her? Did Varten¡­ They were unthinkable questions that were enough to make him tear up all over again, and he wiped his face with his sleeve even as he tried to focus.


    He knew that this was a valuable opportunity, and he shouldn¡¯t waste it trying to make himself feel better, but he couldn¡¯t help it. Asking about the aura some people could see, and their strange reaction would be a better choice. Likewise, there were so many questions he wanted to ask about the devil on level 13 or the nature of magic items and the frozen orb he¡¯d found on level 17. Then there were the missing floors. The pit had a thousand mysteries he needed answers to.


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    No matter how much he wanted any of those things, though, Freya kept returning to the top of the pile, and he knew he was going to ask about her, even if it wasn¡¯t the optimal thing. He had to. He needed to know, and by the time he made it to the doorway of the temple, he¡¯d made up his mind.


    ¡°Helades, How¡ª¡± he started to ask, but she cut him off.


    ¡°It used to be beautiful once here, you know,¡± she said, gesturing broadly at the wall behind him. ¡°Not just this temple, but the city too, and the region. Now, it is just an oasis that is critical to certain events that have to happen in the future. Trade is key for both knowledge and prosperity.¡±


    As she spoke, he glanced over his shoulder toward where she was pointing and noticed a large mural of what the city must have looked like once. It was overwhelmingly Greek or maybe Roman. He wasn¡¯t sure, but it was lovely enough to make him wonder what had befallen this place.


    He was about to turn back toward Helades and finish his question when he noticed the lake that someone had painted with a silver glaze so that it was just reflective enough to be a distorted mirror. That was enough to give him pause, though, and he approached it for a closer look.


    What he found wasn¡¯t his father staring back at him, but his grandfather. His hair had gone almost completely white, and his skin had wrinkled. He looked down at his hands and began to pull off his leather gloves with shaking hands, finding nothing but liver spots and wrinkles underneath.


    ¡°H-how did I get so old¡­¡± he asked.


    Simon knew he¡¯d screwed up as soon as he asked, but there was nothing for it. Even as he was turning to Helades, she was already smiling sadly.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± she reassured him as she took him by the hand and led him over to the closest piece of rubble large enough to function as a bench before sitting them both down on it. ¡°You¡¯ll have time for your other questions too. You¡¯ll be to level thirty and forty before you know it, Simon. You¡¯re doing wonderfully.¡±


    ¡°But Freya and¡­¡± he trailed off as he tried to take her words in. Now that he¡¯d seen how old he¡¯d gotten somehow, he felt like his mind had started to slow down, or maybe it had been doing that ever since the fight with the monster outside. He honestly couldn¡¯t say for sure.


    ¡°Shhhh,¡± Helades soothed him, ¡°Your wife was a good girl, and she¡¯s in a much better place. We aren¡¯t here to talk about her today. We¡¯re here to talk about you and how time flies.¡±


    ¡°How could this have happened?¡± he demanded piteously. ¡°Only a day or two ago, I was fine, with just a touch of gray, and before that¡­¡±


    ¡°Well, you have used an awful lot of magic in the last couple of days,¡± she chided him gently. ¡°Like it was going out of style, so to speak.¡±


    ¡°Well, I¡¯ve been casting spells the whole time I was in The Pit,¡± he said, ¡°and it¡¯s never mattered before.¡±


    ¡°More specifically, you¡¯ve always died violently before it¡¯s gotten around to mattering,¡± she corrected him gently. ¡°But this time, you lived for¡­ well, almost a year. That¡¯s a lot of soldiers to mend and a lot of monsters to slay, and then there¡¯s the sword¡­¡±


    ¡°What about the sword?¡± he asked, feeling like she¡¯d mentioned something important.


    ¡°Well, Simon, when you copied those runes, you tied it to the only source of power you had available: you.¡± Helades saw his look of shock, she added. ¡°Where did you think all of that fire was coming from exactly? Nothing is free in this world, not even magic.¡±


    ¡°I¡­ ¡± Simon started to speak, but he forgot what he was going to say, and for a moment, he felt like he was going to faint.


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± she said, pulling him down into her lap. ¡°Spells themselves aren¡¯t so bad. They take perhaps a month, but¡ª¡±


    ¡°A month?!¡± he gasped. ¡°Each? That¡¯s worse than smoking!¡±


    ¡°Well, the minor command throttles the life force. They¡¯re more like a day,¡± she said with a shrug. ¡°It¡¯s not an exact thing.¡±


    ¡°What about the greater spells then?¡± Simon asked, not sure that he wanted to know the answer.


    ¡°A year,¡± she answered without hesitation. ¡°That¡¯s a lot for anyone but you. With magic items, most of the evil mages throughout history will use the life force of less-than-willing victims or other clever tricks, but between your sword and your armor, you¡¯re bleeding more than a week a minute from your soul right now. That¡¯s why you¡¯ve gotten so much older. Magic can be very dangerous.¡±


    ¡°Like the orb and the hellgate,¡± Simon said, feeling exhausted. He felt more at peace now that he understood what had happened.


    ¡°Yes,¡± she agreed, reaching up to stroke his hair softly. ¡°No matter how much the good men of the world try to purge the magic of the past, there will always be someone out there that discovers some old secret. Nothing can stay buried forever.¡±


    Simon wanted to ask her about that, but he was too weak to do so. He was all used up. All he could do was lay there and appreciate the cool stone beneath him as he looked up at the beautiful Goddess.


    ¡°You¡¯ll figure out all of that eventually, Simon,¡± she whispered. ¡°I have faith in you. You¡¯ve become what you always wanted to be - A hero.¡±


    He closed his eyes then, imagining that Freya was the one who was holding him and telling him these things. He¡¯d often wanted to die in the pit, but never more so than he did right now. If he were to die right this moment, he was sure that he¡¯d be reunited with his Freya in the afterlife, and then he¡¯d finally have his answers. Instead, he was going to have to do all of this all over again.


    Simon reached up and clutched the ring around his neck as he felt himself start to slip away. This wouldn¡¯t stop him, he decided, as he imagined that flaming sword burning down like a candle somewhere outside. No matter how many times he died, he was coming back to finish this thing. He¡¯d go as deep as he needed to until all of his questions were answered.


    His hand gripped the small piece of jewelry around his neck, and then it slackened¡­ and fell to the floor as he experienced an entirely new death in The Pit: old age.

 Ch. 68 - A Moment of Reflection

    Simon woke slowly, unsurprised, to find himself in his own bed. He didn¡¯t even leap to his feet to check the mirror. He already knew what he¡¯d see. His hair would no longer be gray, his hands would no longer be wrinkled, and his life would no longer be at its end.


    The ring he¡¯d worn since his wife had been murdered would be missing, though, and he couldn¡¯t bear that disappointment just yet. Instead, he lay there contemplating what the goddess had told him while it was still fresh in his mind. Magic was fueled by life force. Specifically, it was fueled by his life force. It was a grisly but not entirely unexpected outcome.


    ¡°A year seems kinda steep, though,¡± he mumbled to himself as he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.


    Miracles apparently did not come cheap, but Simon wasn¡¯t really sure if that was going to change how he did anything. That realization hurt. A moment ago, he¡¯d assuaged his rising grief with the fact that at least he¡¯d asked a more useful question than demanding the truth about Freya. It wasn¡¯t, though.


    Dead was dead as far as he was concerned, and there were a lot worse ways to go than old age. He still didn¡¯t know the truth, though, and it was going to eat at him until he did, which made getting to level 30 the priority. The sooner he got there, the sooner Helades could tell him the truth.


    Getting on his feet and moving around was a chore and a half, though. He could barely squeeze into the leather armor that he¡¯d had to bring in with some tighter lacing and a few alterations months ago. Now he really needed to cut some slits into the damn thing just so he could move right, not that he could really move right until he dropped 40 pounds.


    ¡°I¡¯m like that dude in Hades, only instead of pushing that boulder up the hill, I gotta just keep losing weight for fucking ever,¡± he sighed.


    It was a frustrating and, at this point, undeserved punishment. He¡¯d already gotten into great shape twice in the last year or two, and now he was going to have to do it all over again.


    ¡°Fucking sucks,¡± he complained as he belted on his sword, grabbed a few odds and ends, and tried to remember if he was forgetting anything.


    At least he didn¡¯t have to lug around that damn crossbow anymore, he thought with a smile. It was then his eyes fell on the mirror.


    At first, all he could see was himself and just how much he¡¯d let himself go to shit before he ended up here. After a moment of looking at his stupid fat face, though, he looked past it to the mirror itself. When was the last time he¡¯d talked to the thing? The last death? The death before? It felt like years.


    It was with that thought in mind that he decided he didn¡¯t need to be in that much of a hurry and sat back down. ¡°Okay, mirror, show me my character sheet,¡± he said calmly, not sure what he would find.


    As always, it wordlessly came to life in a series of faintly glowing blue letters.


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 20


    Deaths: 32


    Experience Points: -1,000,074


    Skills: Archery [Above Average], Armor (light) [Great], Armor (medium) [Below Average], Athletics [Average], Cook [Average], Craft [Below Average], Deception [Below Average], Escape [Poor], Healing [Below Average], Investigate [Above Average], Maces [Average], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Average], Spears [Average], Spell Casting [Above Average], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Below Average], and Swords [Great].


    Words of Power: Gervuul (greater) Meiren (fire) Aufvarum (minor) Hyakk (healing) Vrazig (lightning) Dnarth (distant) Oonbetit (force) Zyvon (transfer) Gelthic (ice) Karesh (protection) Uuvellum (boundary) Barom (light) Delzam (cure)¡¯


    Simon¡¯s eyes widened as he saw just how much everything had changed. It was a lot to take in. He¡¯d shaved almost two hundred thousand experience points off his debt, and it was hovering at just under minus a million. He¡¯d brought up almost every skill, at least one, but even more than that, he¡¯d learned a ton of new spells.


    ¡°And now I even know that they¡¯re modular,¡± he sighed, shaking his head in disbelief that he hadn¡¯t noticed that for such a long time. He hadn¡¯t even tried half the words or ten percent of the combinations yet. It wasn¡¯t like he was running out of time or anything, though.


    ¡°Alright, mirror, I see my experience has gone up an awful lot. Can you tell me what¡¯s up with that?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡®I do not understand the question,¡¯ the thing typed because, of course, it did.


    This time, Simon didn¡¯t let himself get frustrated, though. He¡¯d been expecting it. This thing was stupid, but despite that, it was entirely likely that it still knew things that he didn¡¯t know yet because he hadn¡¯t figured out how to ask the question just yet.


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    ¡°My experience went up 200,000 points,¡± Simon said slowly and patiently. ¡°Can you tell me why that is? Where did I gain those experience points from?¡±


    ¡®I do not know what you do in the pit, but presumably, over the course of your last life, you performed actions that merited the increase,¡¯ it typed, completely unhelpfully.


    ¡°Can you list some examples of what might cause experience to increase?¡± he asked, reaching for the wine bottle as he made an effort not to curse at the stupid thing.


    ¡®Acts of bravery, heroic deeds, major accomplishments, events that cause you a great deal of satisfaction, events that make the world better for one or more people, selfless acts, things that¡­¡¯ it typed, going on and on in a list that was likely going to be endless unless he intervened.


    ¡°Okay, I get the idea,¡± Simon said. ¡°You can stop now. Thanks.¡±


    As the mirror stopped mid-word, he took a moment to reflect on what else he might ask about besides why they hadn¡¯t just bothered to call experience Karma. He was basically still at negative one life, but again, that wasn¡¯t something that seemed to actually matter.


    ¡°Okay, Simon, what does it actually matter then?¡± he asked himself, looking for any thread that might engage him enough to keep him from dwelling on Freya and her end again.


    Fortunately, there were a lot of loose threads for him to pursue. There were the missing floors, the strange aura, and, of course, all the new magic information he¡¯d picked up. Though he doubted the thing would tell him anything about crafting magical items, which, quite frankly, seemed like a terrible idea right now, he wondered if maybe it would tell him more about the words of power on display.


    ¡°Well, I¡¯ve got all of these new spells,¡± Simon said to himself. ¡°Hey, mirror, what can you tell me about my spells? Can you offer any more details there?¡±


    ¡®You do not have any spells,¡¯ the mirror displayed indifferently.


    ¡°Okay, fine - Words of Power then,¡± Simon sighed, annoyed at just how pedantic this thing could be. ¡°Can you tell me anything else about my words of power?¡±


    ¡®All words known are displayed,¡¯ it answered unhelpfully.


    ¡°Yeah - I can see that, but can you tell me¡­ I don¡¯t know - what the¡­¡± Simon faltered because he realized if he said the word out loud, he would cause an unintended effect. ¡°What does the word of protection do? Or maybe what other words there are that I don¡¯t know?¡±


    ¡®I cannot,¡¯ the mirror showed quickly. ¡®I can only show what you already know in this regard.¡¯


    ¡°I see¡­¡± Simon said, taking another drink. ¡°God, this thing is so stupid.¡±


    ¡°Can you tell me about my aura, at least?¡± Simon asked. ¡°I think it¡¯s from casting spells, but¡­¡±


    His words trailed off as he read off the screen, ¡®Magic is very damaging to the people that cast it frequently, so that is a possibility.¡¯ it agreed.


    ¡°But you can¡¯t say for sure?¡± he asked. ¡°What about the experience points. Could that be causing it? Negative a million experience is kind of a lot, and Helades compared experience to Karma, I think, didn¡¯t she?¡±


    ¡®I cannot see the aura you describe,¡¯ the mirror typed. ¡®So, I cannot say for certain.¡¯


    ¡°Well, you once told me there were 99 levels,¡± Simon quipped, getting annoyed by the way it was stone-walling him. Some part of him felt that it was on purpose.


    For a moment, he considered appealing to Helades directly but decided against it. She¡¯d literally just talked to him, and her response was certain to be much less kindly than it had been only a few minutes ago, so he followed up on this point instead. ¡°What else can you tell me about the levels I have visited? Can you tell me why some of them seem to be missing?¡±


    ¡°No levels are missing,¡± the mirror declared.


    ¡°Well, the one in the woods with the kids¡­ it¡¯s right after the volcanic level, so I guess that makes it level 11,¡± Simon said, thinking for a moment. ¡°It was there every other run, but this time it was missing. What happened to it?¡±


    ¡®Completed levels are not required to be repeated,¡¯ the mirror told him.


    To Simon, it was like a slap in the face. ¡°Com-completed levels don¡¯t have to be repeated? Are you saying I¡¯ve only completed 1, no 2 levels so far? That¡¯s not possible! I¡¯ve completed twenty levels so far. You said so yourself. It¡¯s right there in the character sheet.¡±


    ¡®That is incorrect,¡¯ the mirror answered.


    ¡°What is?¡± Simon demanded. He was exasperated now. ¡°Which part?¡± He¡¯d tried so hard to be patient with this thing, but the longer this went on, the thinner that patience was wearing. ¡°Which part?¡±


    ¡®All of it,¡¯ the mirror answered, infuriating him enough that his grip tightened on the wine bottle. He might have thrown it, too, if the thing had left it there. ¡®It does not say that on your character sheet, you have reached level 20, but you have not beaten all of them, and you have not beaten 2 levels.¡¯


    Simon fumed silently for a moment. He¡¯d had just about enough of this thing, but he forced himself to stay calm and focus on what he¡¯d just learned. He¡¯d known there were levels, but until just now, he hadn¡¯t known you could skip or complete them. That altered the whole equation in ways he didn¡¯t fully understand.


    He did understand one thing, though: suddenly, The Pit had gotten a lot easier.


    Simon spent a few more minutes in his verbal duels with the mirror, trying to get any more answers about the levels, but he was unable to do so. It wouldn¡¯t tell him how levels were completed in general, what levels he¡¯d completed, or even how he¡¯d managed to complete them specifically.


    ¡°There¡¯s no way this is a game,¡± he said finally as he set down his bottle and pulled aside his bed. ¡°Because if it was, it would be designed a hell of a lot better than this. Take note of that, Helades - if you want people to die a thousand times and beat a hundred levels, maybe you should include a quest log in all this!¡±


    With that, he pulled aside the bed, opened the trap door, lit a torch, and stepped into the pit to do this all over again. After all - the surest way to get more answers was to do it on his own. Hints were nice and all, but the true answers were always waiting in a deeper level. He was sure of that.

 Ch. 69 - Finishing a Level

    The rats weren¡¯t even the faintest threat to Simon anymore. He stomped one, kicked two, and skewered three on his sword in a series of precise thrusts. Then he spent a minute looking for the seventh rat before he decided that only six had spawned this time.


    ¡°I wonder why that is,¡± he said to himself as he flung the ugly collection of rodents from his blade and resheathed it, so he could look around, ¡°more importantly, though - what the fuck is there to this room beyond the rats?¡±


    It was a fair question. If he¡¯d defeated any level in the pit, it was this one. He¡¯d killed every creature in here dozens of times by now¡­ but apparently, that wasn¡¯t enough. The first few times he¡¯d been through here, he¡¯d poked around but hadn¡¯t found anything but turnips and potatoes.


    This time, he tore the place apart methodically, a shelf at a time, but he didn¡¯t find much more than that either. For a while, Simon thought that there might be a nest and that the rats wouldn¡¯t count as defeated until he killed it, too. After all, that¡¯s what he¡¯d done on the lizardman lair, wasn¡¯t it? He¡¯d smashed the nests, and that level was almost certainly completed now.


    In the end, with the room in ruins, he gave up. He even tried digging a little bit, and in a final twist of fate, he closed the trap door and then tried to reopen it to see what might be on top of this level, wherever he really was now. He hadn¡¯t been able to reopen it, though. Wherever that door led to now, something heavy was sitting on top of it.


    All in all, it had been a waste of time, but he had learned at least one new thing, and next time, he might bring an axe down to hack through the door and see if he could find out something new. So, he pocketed a few potatoes he could roast on the road, and then he went down another level. He wasn¡¯t quite sure which level he wanted to explore this time, but wherever it was, he would definitely need to eat.


    Simon exercised the same thoroughness on the trap floor, making it a point to slay every bat and trigger every single trap he came across¡­ once he found the exit, of course. There were a couple, like the spiked pit, that could make escaping afterward difficult. On this floor, he found absolutely nothing new at all. He even dug to the bottom of the chest to make sure that there was no secret magic item hidden in it, and then he emptied it and checked underneath.


    There was nothing there, though. ¡°Very fucking funny, Helades,¡± he cursed, not exactly sure what he was supposed to do with this floor, either. ¡°How could anyone say I didn¡¯t do a hundred percent clear of this place?¡±


    It was possible that he might need to take something from here and use it in another level, of course. He seemed to recall that Helades might have mentioned that in one of their conversations, but that was a really long time ago, and he wasn¡¯t sure. If that were true, the situation would be hopeless though. Having to clear 99 levels was bad enough, but if he had to use them in combination with each other¡­ well, he couldn¡¯t do the math in his head, but that was a lot of combinations.


    When he got to the goblin level, his torch was already low, but Simon didn¡¯t care. He kept it burning until he found the first guard, and then he extinguished it in the thing¡¯s face like a cigarette butt before drawing his bow. He didn¡¯t even try to muffle the awful screams the goblin made. He wanted them to charge him.


    After that, he cleared the level like a medieval first-person shooter. Every shot was a headshot, and there were no surprises left to find. When he reached the mouth of the cavern, he saw the last two goblins running away, and he took them out with two well-aimed shots in the back for good measure.


    Once that was done, he recovered the arrows he could, though he decided that there was no way he was walking all the way down the slope to where the last two goblins were just for two lousy arrows because it would mean walking back up again. Ultimately, he decided that even if the thing he needed to do to beat this level was somewhere down there, he was going to skip it this trip because he wanted to go deeper.


    ¡°There¡¯s literally an entire world down there,¡± he grumbled. ¡°The gates should be somewhat close to the thing I¡¯m supposed to do, right?¡±


    That would have been the logical thing, but he wasn¡¯t so sure that logic always applied to The Pit, or to Helades for that matter. Still, if he was going to be thorough about this, he couldn¡¯t just skip this level. So, he explored the area around the outside of the cave to get some fresh air in the hopes he would find a second goblin nest nearby. That was not the case, so once that was done and Simon had rested, he went back in, and using part of the goblin bonfire as a new torch, he went back inside, looking for something he might have missed.


    He found nothing, though. The only things in the cave besides the filthy goblin warren were the river, which went down to nowhere, and the tomb entrance. Simon was definitively not going back down that nightmare waterfall, so after a couple hours of searching and a quick lunch break, he descended into the tomb.


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    Here, he was tempted to use his magical force word to shatter the skeletons proactively, but something about the idea of spending a week of his life doing what he could do just as easily with his mace made him feel dirty. He wasn¡¯t going to stop using magic, of course, but as he shattered the first skeleton and moved toward the second and third before they could rise, he promised himself he would only do it when he needed to.


    In the end, the skeletons of the tomb were even less of a challenge than he remembered them being, and he made a point to disarm the knight, sending its blade flying before he beheaded his old nemesis. Once that was done, he had a look at the skeleton knight¡¯s armor rather than the blade. After all - no one had made a sword that nice for the dead. This man had wielded it in life and been buried with it.


    As Simon suspected, the gauntlets themselves had runes of protection, and the scabbard had boundary nullification runes to turn off the sword''s cold effect when it wasn¡¯t in use. That didn¡¯t surprise him, though he did wonder if he¡¯d caused some kind of cold effect like the temple he¡¯d visited on all the worlds that he hadn¡¯t resheathed the sword.


    ¡°Helades said that items drain a lot of life force, so who knows,¡± he told himself as he pried free one of the gauntlets and then put it on to put the sword away.


    Maybe that was all he had to do for this level. Maybe it hadn¡¯t counted before because he hadn¡¯t put this thing away. It was only when Simon was about to put it back on the tomb that he realized he was being a moron. He didn¡¯t have to put it back. He had to take it with him.


    Not even because that was probably the victory condition either, but because he wanted to wield a badass frost blade! He laughed at how hyperfocused he¡¯d been about what he was missing and that he¡¯d almost forgotten how much he actually wanted this thing.


    He smiled as he belted it on, leaving his normal sword behind in its place. It was a little heavier and a few inches longer than what he was used to, but it felt good there. Since he¡¯d first come into The Pit, Simon had wanted a magic weapon, and now he had one. More importantly, this was something he could study when he had the time to understand a bit more about magic and magic items.


    It was with that confidence and a smile on his face that he walked into the next level to face the slime. Here, he was certain there could be any number of things to do with this level since it was open to the sky. He¡¯d never tried to climb the walls of this sinkhole before because they¡¯d looked awful crumbly, but for a few months of his life, he imagined he could jump up there pretty easily.


    He wasn¡¯t going to, though, not today. Today, he¡¯d thought of a new synergy he was going to explore that he¡¯d never considered before. He turned his attention to the stream that stood between him and the door and tried to decide where the slime was hiding.


    He probed the water several times with the sword, leaving a little layer of ice before he found it. The clear ooze reared up to strike at him, but Simon jumped back clumsily, almost landing on his ass. Cursing the body he was stuck with, he retreated before his enemy as he circled around it and maneuvered to the door.


    It was only when he was right in front of it that he put his plan into motion. ¡°Oonbetit Uuvellum!¡± he shouted. Force barrier. Idly, he wondered if using two words was two months or if it was still just one, but he didn¡¯t let that stop him from imagining the flat wall of invisible force that would spring into existence for a moment to stop the thing from eating his face.


    As it flattened itself out against the invisible wall, he stabbed it in the center of its mass, forcing it to keep that shape to some extent as it began to freeze solid over the next few seconds. Its periphery still writhed and reached for him, but with its center frozen, its movements were sluggish and ineffective. Soon, it was nothing but an ice cube that was round on bottom and flat on top, and that was just about what Simon wanted.


    He tried to push it but found it didn¡¯t slide as well on the rough stone as he¡¯d hoped.


    ¡°Modern problems require modern solutions,¡± he said with a laugh, using his water skin to create a path in front of the slime, which quickly froze. He repeated this several times until he had a wide, slick track of ice to move the slime on. Then he pushed forward the frozen block of slime like it was that curling game that people played in the Olympics.


    When he got to the door, he didn¡¯t even need to turn the handle. He¡¯d gotten enough momentum that he just forced the door open and sent the fifty or sixty pounds of ice clattering across the room, where it knocked over the table.


    Simon was winded by the effort but not so distracted to forget that there was almost always a zombie to his right as he entered. Even as he stepped inside, he pulled his sword free, and this time, the thing didn¡¯t even have time to charge him before he¡¯d quickly beheaded it.


    He was admiring his own handiwork when the door flew open. His knuckles went white on the hilt of his sword as he heard it. He knew what that meant even before he turned around.


    She opened her mouth and pointed the pitchfork at him, but before she could say a word, he yelled, ¡°Back the fuck off,¡± holding his sword at the ready.


    She made to jab him with her pitchfork, but he sliced the end off effortlessly, leaving her with nothing but a pole that was a foot shorter than it had been. She looked at it and at the fog of condensation that was coming off his sword a bit more seriously now and stepped back.


    As she did, he advanced. She tossed down her now worthless weapon and raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. That wasn¡¯t enough to stop him from bringing the tip of his sword close enough to her neck that he was sure she could feel the unearthly cold radiating off of it.

 Ch. 70 - Devourer of Flesh

    ¡°Did you kill her?¡± Simon demanded, ¡°Or did you let the zombies do it for you?¡±


    ¡°I¡­ what?¡± Brenna said, confused.


    ¡°Freya! Did you fucking kill Freya?¡± Simon shouted.


    That was enough noise to attract attention, and he heard a moan from the next room, followed by the sound of the board on the window giving out. By this point, Brenna was weeping openly and slumped against the wall, slowly sliding down it.


    As far as Simon was concerned, that was an admission, but he wasn¡¯t exactly sure of what, and he wasn¡¯t willing to kill her until he got some answers. So, instead of doing something rash, he barked, ¡°Wait here. We¡¯ll pick this back up in a minute.


    Then he embedded his sword in the floor to partially bar the door and pulled out his mace. The two zombies in the room were familiar sights, and neither one held any challenge. He quickly reduced them to corpses before he struggled to block the window with the table.


    It was only once all that was done that he returned to his sword and his sobbing prisoner. He ignored her for the moment, though, and instead, he pushed his slime-cicle out into the main room to let it start to thaw out. He imagined that the process would take all day, at least, but he was in no hurry, and he wanted to see how it endured being cryo-frozen like that because, if it did as well as he expected it to do, then that was his answer to the zombie apocalypse that had been unleashed.


    He¡¯d thought about it a lot since his last death, and he couldn¡¯t think of another reason why the slime level would be right before the zombie level unless the slime was there to eat the zombies. It was something he¡¯d never given a single thought to until the mirror had mentioned finishing a level, but now that it had, he couldn¡¯t get it out of his mind. What would finishing the goblin level entail? Killing the goblins, right? Only that didn¡¯t seem to be enough. He¡¯d figure out why that wasn¡¯t working later, but with the zombies, there simply wasn¡¯t another answer.


    If he¡¯d killed them all by burning down the city, then they would never spread, and all the chain reactions would never happen. Not only would thousands of lives be saved, but it would change all the future timelines. He couldn¡¯t imagine anything more he could do than release something that could eat all the zombies, one at a time, and while he had to admit the possibility of having to deal with a zombie slime was non-zero, it was still worth a shot.


    Plus, while he waited to see what would happen, he could dig into Brenna¡¯s story, execute her, and then get hammered. He had no idea how that would impact his experience points, but he didn¡¯t care, and he doubted even Helades would blame him for having a drink, he decided as he hung his mace from a belt loop and picked his frigid long sword back up.


    ¡°Okay, we¡¯re safe now, so let¡¯s start over. Are you going to try to stab me again?¡± he asked.


    Brenna silently shook her head, so he continued. ¡°Okay - well, my name is Simon, and Freya was ¡­ she was very special to me, and the way I heard it, you threw her to the wolves so¡ª¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t know what you¡¯re talking about!¡± she sobbed, ¡°You know nothing, nothing!¡±


    ¡°Why don¡¯t you tell me then?¡± Simon asked, eyeing the closest tankard and deciding he¡¯d rather just get himself a clean one because that one had probably been sitting there growing mold for days.


    ¡°I don¡¯t have to tell you anything,¡± she said before spitting on the ground. ¡°You¡¯re a disgusting knave that threatens women. You have no honor.¡±


    ¡°And you¡¯re a woman with about¡­ three or four hours left if memory serves.¡± Simon smiled wickedly at that, and it wasn¡¯t until he looked meaningfully at the dirty bandage on her arm.


    She defensively covered it with her hand. ¡°It¡¯s fine. I¡¯m fine. It¡¯s barely a scratch.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure,¡± Simon said contemptuously, sheathing his sword. As much as he wanted to strike her dead right now, killing an unarmed woman didn¡¯t sit right with him, and he decided he might feel better about it after a few drinks. ¡°Is that what the innkeeper told you when one of these bastards got him too? That it was just a scratch?¡±


    ¡°How could you possibly know that. You weren¡¯t here for any of these things,¡± she said, her voice growing more and more shrill as she spoke. ¡°You must be a sorcerer - it¡¯s the only explanation.¡±


    ¡°Well, that too,¡± he agreed, pulling himself a pint and sitting down at the bar where he could watch his ice cube and his ice queen. ¡°But the reason I know¡ª¡± she started trying to talk over him, but he just spoke even louder, ¡°The reason I know is because the last time I was here, you turned me into a fucking zombie, you crazy bitch!¡±


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    ¡°I did?¡± she turned pale for a moment before her denials returned. ¡°I couldn¡¯t have. That¡¯s nonsense. I¡¯ve never been a zombie, and I¡¯m not about to change that, no matter what a vile creature like you says.¡±


    As Brenna spoke, she crept cautiously into the main room of the bar. She pretended that she wasn¡¯t afraid, but he could see her words had cut, and he wondered if Varten had felt this good when he used his final moments to hurt Simon with his words. In Simon¡¯s case, though, everything he said was true, and as far as he was concerned, that made everything he said cut all the deeper.


    ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± Simon said, offering her a mock toast from where he was seated.


    ¡°You aren¡¯t just going to kill me?¡± she asked. ¡°Isn¡¯t that what you came here for?¡±


    ¡°I mean - you aren¡¯t here every time I come through, Brenna, but once I saw you, murder was definitely at the top of my agenda,¡± he agreed, ¡°but now that I remember how much I despise you, I¡¯ve decided that¡¯s better than you deserve. So, I¡¯m only going to grant you that mercy if you decide to tell the truth.¡±


    This caused her to explode again, hurling angry words about everything from his manhood to his mother, but Simon ignored them all. She couldn¡¯t affect him, and anything she tried to do to change that only amused him more.


    Oh, he¡¯d try to talk to her, of course, but it didn¡¯t work. She had no interest in telling him anything about Freya, and trying to drag it out of her with torture struck him as distasteful. He¡¯d much rather have her torture herself and keep his hands clean.


    This went on for an hour, but it wasn¡¯t until his slime started to show signs of life that she threw the mug at him. To her credit, she waited until Simon appeared distracted, which he was, but it didn¡¯t take much effort to whisper ¡°Aufvarum Oonbetit Uuvellum,¡± and conjure a weak, shimmering wall of force to interpose itself between her projectile and his face.


    The look on her face was worth burning a week of his life, honestly, and he laughed when she got a look of pure horror on her face. He didn¡¯t let his appreciation of the moment distract him from noticing how much smaller the word for minor had made the barrier, though. It was an interesting fact because he would have expected the minor to refer to the strength of the barrier, but it also changed the size, which could be inconvenient. The extra three syllables also meant he only got the shield up just in time, which meant he would probably forgo them in the future.


    None of that reflection made her look of shock or the follow-up reaction to run into the other room any less funny, though. ¡°You¡¯re a monster!¡± she yelled through the door. ¡°You¡¯ve sold your soul to darkness!¡±


    ¡°Yeah¡­ But you did it first,¡± he agreed, finishing his drink and pouring himself another.


    Things were quiet for the next hour, and it was only when he was on his third glass, and he was watching the slime start to undulate like a sea anemone, that she finally emerged again. Brenna definitely wasn¡¯t looking so good.


    ¡°Did you do this to me?¡± she asked, looking pale as she sweated profusely.


    More than anything, this reminded him of her the last time he¡¯d seen her when she bit his neck enough to give him d¨¦j¨¤ vu.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t,¡± he said with a shrug, ¡°but if you¡¯re ready to talk, I¡¯d be happy to put you out of your miss-sery.¡±.. He noted that he slurred his words slightly and that he might want to try to avoid spell casting until he could pronounce all the complicated words properly once more.


    ¡°W-what do you want me to say,¡± she gasped, ¡°Please¡­ I¡¯m begging you¡­¡±


    ¡°All I want to know is what you did to Freya,¡± Simon repeated patiently. ¡°You¡¯ve had all afternoon, and you still haven¡¯t said a word.¡±


    ¡°It was that bitch that bit me,¡± Brenna spat.


    ¡°Really?¡± Simon asked. ¡°Then show me the bite mark.¡±


    For a second, she froze like a deer in the headlights, and Simon was sure he¡¯d caught her in a lie. Then she opened her mouth to speak but vomited blood instead before she could even reach for the bandage to show him the truth. After that, she fell to the ground and began to seize. Black veins crisscrossed her pale skin now, and her eyes had gone completely bloodshot.


    ¡°No one says I have to save you,¡± he whispered to himself.


    This woman had killed him on one occasion and killed the woman he loved countless times. There was no way anyone in the world could fault him for letting them happen. After all, it wasn¡¯t like he¡¯d bitten her.


    But if that was the case, why did he feel so bad about the whole thing? He should be overjoyed to see this bitch get what she deserved, but instead, he just felt like shit. He watched her convulse on the ground, knowing it was too late to cure her.


    He rested his gauntleted hand on his mace, certain that he should put her out of her misery now and be done with it, but it wasn¡¯t until the slime finally worked up the energy to begin sliding toward the dying woman that he finally sprang into action.


    She¡¯d gotten a taste of her own medicine, but he knew exactly how awful it felt to suffocate to death as the acidic body of the slime eroded your flesh, and combining that with the maddening hunger was a bridge too far for him to do to someone with a face and a name.


    Using it to eat a city full of damned strangers was one thing, but letting it feast on Brenna right in front of him was too close to a snuff film for his tastes, so just before its first pseudopod reached her, Simon took two steps forward, pulled his mace off of his belt, and slammed it down hard enough of the girl that it shattered her skull and pulped the brain inside it in a single blow.


    She¡¯d only just started to rise, and one blow was all it took to cut her puppet strings and drop her back into the embrace of the other monster he¡¯d unleashed on this town. He thought about looking at her bandage before it ate her but decided he wasn¡¯t interested in her version anymore.


    ¡°Well, this was fun,¡± Simon said, pouring out his drink. ¡°But I think it¡¯s time I go look for survivors before you unthaw and go out on the prowl.¡±

 Ch. 71 - Aftermath

    Walking upstairs was a little more challenging than he¡¯d expected, so instead of immediately heading out, he changed his mind and decided to take a quick nap in the innkeeper¡¯s bedroom since that was the safest part of the whole inn. He slept fitfully as he struggled with his regret at how he¡¯d handled the situation, his anger about Freya¡¯s fate, and the vague anxiety about the newest hazard he¡¯d introduced into the world.


    By the time he¡¯d finally sobered up and gone downstairs, the slime had reduced Brenna¡¯s body to bones and was working on another corpse. Simon was pleased to see that it hadn¡¯t turned into some pile of necrotic sludge, and instead, it was its translucent, gooey self. As soon as he got close enough for it to bother, it reached up from its partially digested meal with a pseudopod to try snacking on him as well.


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t try that if I were you,¡± he chided, pulling out his freezing sword. ¡°Not unless you want another time out.¡±


    The creature stopped as soon as it felt the chill of the blade and retracted its pseudopod. It wasn¡¯t particularly smart, but it knew what it didn¡¯t like. Besides, it hardly needed him. There were literally dozens of corpses waiting to be devoured just outside the windows. Idlyly, Simon wondered how big the thing would get when it had eaten them all, but he didn¡¯t stress it too much. That was a later problem.


    ¡°Well, you just keep doing what you¡¯re doing,¡± Simon said, backing away slowly, ¡°and I¡¯ll check on you¡­ well, I¡¯m sure we¡¯ll see each other around.¡±


    With that, he was off. From the second story, he climbed out onto the peak of the tiled roof and carefully started walking down it, mindful of the way it creaked under him. Weight was a factor, but even more than that, he cursed the body he was trapped in right now for its lack of agility. He just couldn¡¯t move like he knew he was capable of, and that irked him.


    ¡°Is anyone out there?¡± he called, certain that there was. ¡°I¡¯m looking to help the survivors get out before the umm¡­ the itsy bitsy spider gets out and makes everyone else¡¯s life hard!¡±


    There was no immediate response, but that didn¡¯t surprise Simon. He wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d respond either if a crazy person started to yell in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. When he reached the edge of the building, he stood there for a couple minutes, just watching the milling mob of undead churn beneath him in a way that was almost blase.


    It should have been terrifying, but he just couldn¡¯t make himself care too much anymore. Instead, he just had to resist the urge to burn them down because, ultimately, that would undermine his current plan. There was no way he could kill them all like that. He was sure of it. Even if he burned the whole city down, someone infected would escape and start it all over again, just like in the movies.


    It was only when he didn¡¯t see anyone cautiously peer out of the windows that he decided he needed to get across the street to where he¡¯d seen those lovers fall so long ago. ¡°Oonbetit,¡± he whispered, using magic to give him enough strength to force leap across the six-foot gap to the next building.


    The next building had been a bakery, and it was apparent that there had been survivors here at one point, but sometime after that, the front door had been broken down, and it was nothing but a slaughterhouse now.


    The next building had fared no better. He could see that from the windows without even going inside. He would have just skipped it and gone across the street as he¡¯d planned, but the way the zombies groped for him out of the windows made the sloping roof too dangerous to chance, and he wasn¡¯t about to throw this run away because he slipped off and fell to the street to be devoured. So, he forced his way in and bludgeoned the six zombies that were milling about the second floor and then climbed out the window on the far side before more from outside could come up and join their little party.


    As he did so, he pointedly ignored what was obviously the room of a little girl and the dollies sitting on the bed that had been bathed in blood. Something terrible had happened here, but he was too late to do anything about it.


    ¡°Why is that?¡± he asked himself as he walked to the edge to gauge the distance. ¡°Why do you keep sending me to the event after something terrible has already happened? Couldn¡¯t I have gotten here - like¡­ the night the adventurers showed up - or maybe been sent to the necromancer¡¯s lair to deal with them directly?¡±


    There was no answer, but Simon had never really expected one. Now, he kind of wanted to see where all this started once he finished purging the zombies, though he had no idea where he would go about looking for that.


    ¡°Oonbetit!¡± he said louder this time as some of the anger about how stupid this was entered his voice.


    This time, he didn¡¯t make another one of the little jumps he¡¯d been making over the four and six-foot wide alleys. This time, he lept across the cobblestone street, which was wide enough that a carriage could navigate it without difficulty. He was fairly sure he¡¯d be able to clear it, and almost fifteen feet, but even so, it was a scary moment. He wasn¡¯t entirely sure.


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    When he did, though, something he hadn¡¯t expected happened: he fell right through the roof. The buildings here weren¡¯t as strong as he would like, and between his weight and momentum, he punched right through the tile, landing on his ass in a cloud of debris.


    ¡°Spider-Man, I am not,¡± he said, coughing as he pulled his mace free and readied himself to strike any monsters that might be about to snack on him.


    There weren¡¯t any, though. Instead, he caught the briefest glimpse of movement running away from him as he staggered to his feet. ¡°Helva, hurry - they¡¯re coming!¡± someone yelled down the hallway even as Simon staggered after them.


    ¡°Wait,¡± he yelled. ¡°Slow down. I¡¯m on your side!¡±


    They didn¡¯t listen, though, and he didn¡¯t blame them. If he¡¯d been cooped up in this city for days or weeks, he¡¯d be pretty jumpy, too. By the time he reached the hall, they were scrambling out a window, and by the time he got to the window, they were already on the roof. That was when he saw them fall.


    The last time he¡¯d seen this scene play out, he was pretty sure it had been the man who had fallen on the other side of the jump. This time, it was the woman that was fallen before they¡¯d ever even made the leap, and Simon was certain that was all his fault. He¡¯d tried to stop something bad he thought was about to happen, and somehow, he made it worse.


    Even as he watched, though, the woman¡¯s partner tried to save her, and he started to fall, too, right after her. They were about to be ripped to pieces, hand in hand, and that was too much for Simon. He couldn¡¯t bear to be the one to crush the only fragile flower that had bloomed in this whole rotten city.


    ¡°Gervuul Oonbetit!¡± he yelled out as they fell, and he focused.


    This visualization was a complex one, but all the stupid indie games he¡¯d played once upon a time had to come in handy for something, right? As they fell, a shimmering, imaginary wall of force came into existence. It stretched beneath them, flexing for a moment before snapping taut and sending them back up into the air.


    It wasn¡¯t high enough to send them to the roof on the far side of the street - he lacked the math to tie things up quite so neatly. No - this was just to get them clear of what happened next. As they sprang several feet further up into the air, that shockwave of their impact solidified and sprayed out in all directions, slicing through the necks of every zombie in the vicinity at head level and causing all the corpses to drop to the ground.


    The exertion winded him, and he felt his throat starting to get sore from the repeated use of magic, but that wasn¡¯t enough to stop him as he yelled out, ¡°Get in that building and bar the door. I¡¯ll be right there!¡±


    The couple got to their feet, terrified at everything that had just happened, and they looked on dumbly, even as the zombies started to pay attention to the commotion and lurch toward the helpless couple. Simon was fairly sure they were still going to die if he didn¡¯t do anything to stop it. So, this time, he used minor force to absorb the impact as he jumped down to street level and ran to them. For a second, he thought they were about to bolt away again, but instead, they just stood there frozen as he barged past them and used his bulk to slam open the door across the way, which was the same dress shop he¡¯d already mostly cleared earlier.


    Then, even as the zombies surged forward, he pulled them both inside and slammed the door shut behind them. ¡°Grab those and put them here,¡± Simon said, gesturing to some nearby crates and corpses. The other man didn¡¯t do anything. Instead, he stared at his partner in horror. It was only after looking for a few seconds and the door he was holding shut started to rattle that he realized why. She¡¯d been bitten on the leg already.


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± Simon yelled. ¡°I can save her, but not until we stop these monsters!¡± He wasn¡¯t a hundred percent sure he could, of course, but he was pretty confident, even though he really should probably take a break from casting any more spells. He¡¯d already burned almost a year and a half, and he¡¯d only been on this level for a few hours.


    That was enough to get them into motion. Working together, they grabbed everything they could that wasn¡¯t nailed down and started stacking it in front of the door. It was only several minutes later that Simon felt safe enough to release his grip and tend to the bleeding woman.


    ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡± Simon asked, examining the wound. It was deep. A whole mouthful of flesh had been removed at the bottom of her left calf, and given how slow Brenna had changed, the way she was bleeding was honestly the bigger short-term problem.


    ¡°H-helva,¡± she whimpered. Simon could have kicked himself as he realized he already knew that.


    ¡°Okay, Helva,¡± he said, trying to figure out the best way to handle this so no one wanted him dead. ¡°Well - I¡¯ve got¡­ holy powers from the gods, and I¡¯m trying to save everyone I can, so if you could¡ª¡±


    ¡°Just please save her!¡± her partner demanded as he clutched the woman¡¯s hand. ¡°I couldn¡¯t keep living without my Helva!¡±


    That much Simon understood, so when he whispered ¡°Aufvarum Hyakk,¡± it was with a heart full of understanding and a solid visualization of the muscle tissue knitting back together and the blood vessels reconnecting. He did what he could for the nerves, but he wasn¡¯t optimistic there. He had trouble imagining them. So, in the best case, she¡¯d have a dead spot, and in the worst, she¡¯d have a little trouble walking, but either of those was better than dying.


    Within seconds, the skin began to cover the area, and the flesh began to fill in. In the end, there was only the faintest scar around the new, pink tissue to show that there had ever been a wound. That wasn¡¯t the end of this, though. Simon knew from bitter experience that just healing a zombie bite wasn¡¯t enough to stop it from taking effect. Honestly, he wasn¡¯t even sure that his cure word would be enough for this, but he was pretty sure it would work.


    ¡°Delzam,¡± he whispered, willing the toxins or bacteria that caused the people to go mad to vanish.


    In the end, they both looked on in shock as he leaned back, exhausted. Simon had planned on trying to go out and save more people, but just this much had left him gasping.


    ¡°Alright, do you think you two can keep them out for a couple hours while I grab a nap?¡± he asked, not bothering to explain anything as he walked upstairs.

 Ch. 72 - Lives Worth Saving

    That was how Simon spent the better part of the week, more or less. They didn¡¯t linger in the dressmaker¡¯s shop long because it wasn¡¯t very defensible and because it didn¡¯t have much in the way of food. The fact that the room with the blood-covered dolls freaked him out was also a part of it, though.


    That was the same reason they didn¡¯t return to the inn, even though there was food in there. Somewhere in that place was Freya¡¯s corpse, and quite frankly, he had no desire to know if it was moldering on the floor or wandering around hungering for flesh. That wasn¡¯t true completely. If he saw her wandering around, he would definitely put her out of her misery as painlessly as he could, even if this version had no idea who he was, but he just couldn¡¯t go back to that place.


    Instead, he helped his growing tribe of survivors navigate the dangerous city as they took circuitous rooftop routes in search of other survivors and supplies. Eventually, they succeeded in building a bridge of planks and timbers from the third story of the tax assessor¡¯s office to the north gate and started to build a little refuge camp there on the bridge for which Schwarzenbruck was named. It wasn¡¯t much, but it was safe.


    Helva and her husband Gotrick vouched for him, of course. How could they not after Helva became the first cured zombie victim in all of Simon¡¯s many lives. They tried to explain to the other locals that, ¡®yes, even though he¡¯s a wicked sorcerer, he¡¯s here to help,¡¯ but mostly, they just heard the word wicked.


    ¡®Who are you? Why are you doing this?¡¯ Those were the most frequent questions he was asked, followed closely by asking if he was the warlock that was responsible for the zombies.


    Simon mostly ignored them now. Instead, his most frequent answer was to tell them that they were going to be okay as he searched for any signs that the person he was saving was infected.


    There had been some close calls on that front. It turned out that his magic worked, but only within a few minutes. Greater cure worked longer - at least until they turned, but it was chancy. He¡¯d thrown away three years of his life trying to save a young boy, and it had been in vain. Each time, the magic had driven the child into remission, but each time, the palid skin and flop sweat had returned with a vengeance.


    Simon would have gladly tried a fourth or a fifth time, but as it turned out, using greater anything three times in one day was enough to make him cough up blood and pass out himself. He¡¯d slept for a day, and when he¡¯d awoken, he was completely surprised that no one had taken the opportunity to drive a stake through his heart.


    That didn¡¯t mean they trusted him, but they needed him, and sometimes that was more important than trust.


    Simon was forced to take 48 hours off of casting to focus on resting enough that he could whisper ¡°Aufvarum Hyakk¡± and heal his throat. He spent that time sitting on the wall and watching the slimes multiply so that the desperate men and women he¡¯d spent the week saving wouldn¡¯t realize how weakened he was during that time.


    ¡°Did you know there would be so many,¡± Marken asked, climbing up the ladder next to the postern gate to join him at his lonely observation post in the gatehouse.


    Simon nodded. It wasn¡¯t true, though. He¡¯d secretly feared that the slime he¡¯d brought with him would just keep growing and growing until it was bigger than the buildings. That hadn¡¯t happened, though. Every time it got to be about the size of a washing machine after half a dozen feedings, it fissioned into two smaller slimes and started the process all over again.


    ¡°It¡¯s all going according to plan,¡± he rasped, still hoarse despite the healing. He felt better, but he was going to wait until tomorrow before he took one last sweep of the city for anyone who might be left. The slimes were a bigger hazard than the zombies, and it was harder to predict where they would be lying in wait.


    ¡°But after the slimes eat all the zombies, how are you going to beat all the slimes?¡± the boy asked.


    It was a fair question. Simon had devoted many hours of thought to the subject, but he still didn¡¯t have a great answer. Fire was the best answer, but he doubted that the people he¡¯d spent so much time rescuing would take kindly to him burning down their homes.


    Ultimately, they didn¡¯t get much of a vote. What mattered was making sure that this outbreak was stomped out before it could spread and zombify tens of thousands more, and as bothersome as a hundred slimes could be, they weren¡¯t nearly as bad as the alternative.


    Simon didn¡¯t explain any of that to the twelve-year-old. He just looked from left to right conspiratorially before he leaned forward and whispered, ¡°Dragons.¡±


    ¡°Dragons?¡± Marken shrieked in delight before Simon shushed him.


    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Simon said in a gravelly voice, ¡°Every slime eats a hundred zombies, then every dragon eats a hundred slimes, and then all I have to do is slay a couple of dragons. Easy.¡±


    This brought forth gales of laughter, which was really all he was hoping for. He wasn¡¯t really ever going to get all of these people on his side, but one or two would be enough.


    . . .


    The next day, Simon finally felt good enough to go back into the walled town. He had guards at both gates to keep anyone from opening them since he remembered the adventurers that had set them all free in a past life. His plan was working; it just needed another few days or a week, and then the hungry slimes would start to flee to the river or just start devouring each other. Honestly, he didn¡¯t really care which.


    Moving around this city was practically a platformer for him at this point. At least it would have been if he was in better shape. He was rather portly for the Prince of Persia, he thought wryly.


    Still, with plenty of force and lesser force, he made his way around the city, calling out for help as he went. Sometimes, he¡¯d taken locals with him since any trapped residents were more likely to respond to a familiar voice, but today, because of the increased danger, he hadn¡¯t bothered.


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    He¡¯d already saved 72 people, and that was definitely a high score for this level. It was only about one percent of the population that had lived in the busy trade town a few weeks before, but it wasn¡¯t his fault that Helades was always sending him to places a day late and a dollar short.


    It was a number he could be proud of, even if he didn¡¯t think it likely he¡¯d find any more today. He doubted that an actual superhero could have done much better.


    Shortly after noon, he stopped by the inn and tried to decide whether now would be the right time to leave. Perched on the eaves of a house across the street, he looked down at the nearly empty streets, and he was fairly sure he could step inside the second-story window with the help of a quick double jump and be out of there before anyone knew.


    He wasn¡¯t really in a hurry, but he also had no wish to stay here longer than he had to. This level, of all levels, had too many memories, and even though he would miss the opportunity to try to find Freya with every pass through, he sincerely hoped that this was the last time he¡¯d see this level again.


    He might have actually left if he hadn¡¯t heard the horn from the south gate. He¡¯d given it to the small group of men that he had keeping a watch on it since Simon spent most of his time at the north gate, but this was the first time they¡¯d actually used it.


    Fearing the worst, he leaped across the city in leaps and bounds, throwing away another six months of his life to get there that much faster. He thought he¡¯d find zombies escaping, but instead, he found the opposite: the men he¡¯d left here were tussling with the small group of adventurers that he only had the faintest memory of.


    ¡°What in the hell are you doing?¡± He said, landing behind the group just far enough away that he didn¡¯t feel the need to draw his sword yet. ¡°Leave that closed!¡±


    The magical blade would definitely complicate things more than they already were, and so far, every resident of Schwarzenbruck that had seen the steaming blade and given him looks of fear or made warding gestures against the evil eye, and at this point, he rather regretted bringing it with him.


    Even though he raised his hands to show he was unarmed, three of the adventurers immediately drew their weapons while the fourth and fifth kept wrestling with the makeshift bar that Simon and a few men he''d gestured had attached to the outside of the city''s main gates.


    ¡°Well, what did I tell you, boys,¡± the tall blond one said with a smile. ¡°You come looking for an evil wizard, and you¡¯re going to find yourself an evil wizard!¡±


    ¡°Listen - all I want is to¡ª¡± Simon tried to explain, but his opponent used the moment as an opening to launch himself forward, and Simon barely got his sword out of the scabbard in time to block the blade that was coming for his throat.


    He was skilled enough to see it coming and lock blades, but at this moment, he wasn¡¯t strong enough to hold the parry and was sent sprawling, though he managed to keep a grip on his weapon.


    ¡°Oonbetit,¡± he whispered the word of force as the three men advanced on him like a pack of jackals, looking to take him down before he had a moment to explain. They had no idea how much restraint he was using. Rather than use his magic like a guillotine he settled for giving them a quick shove back so he could rise to his feet.


    ¡°Witchcraft!¡± one yelled.


    ¡°Sorcery!¡± the third man cried out.


    Both of them had been put on their butt by the unexpected shockwave, and they struggled to rise again under the weight of their own cowardice. Only their leader held his footing as he was pushed back several feet. By the time Simon was on his feet, he appeared a little more cautious, and Simon hoped that would make him reasonable.


    ¡°The next one of you to come at me before I can finish explaining loses your sword hand. Is that clear?¡± Simon asked.


    There was no immediate response, and the flunkies rose beneath their boss¡¯s withering gaze; Simon was sure that they had not learned their lesson and changed his stance. This time, when they all came at him at once, he was ready and stepped around the weakest of the three, using him as a human shield for the critical moment.


    This time, he didn¡¯t try to bind up the sword off the stronger man. He needed to put a stop to this, and the quickest way to do that was by using his superior bulk to push the nearest swordsman into the other two, sending them down in a pile. Once that was done and the well-timed ambush was reduced to a tangle of human limbs, he stabbed his frost sword through the wrist of the leader¡¯s right wrist, pinning it to the ground with a deep thrust as Simon moved on to the gate.


    The remaining men there had finally succeeded in opening it, and already Simon could see zombies mobbing by the widening crack in the middle. There weren¡¯t many left in the town, but it would seem the few that remained had been drawn by the sound of battle.


    The first one turned to face Simon and drew his blade. Simon responded by headbutting him hard enough to drop the man to his knees before the sword was halfway free from his scabbard. Then he pulled his mace from his belt loop and prepared to crack some zombie skulls. The gates had swung wide enough that they were starting to shamble out now in twos and threes.


    He could see it all spinning out of control in his mind¡¯s eye as the world descended into chaos. Even as the man with a frozen right hand screamed, the zombies moaned, and the gates creaked, he had a moment of clarity. If he dealt with the dead right now, he could still beat them. This was a small group of less than two dozen that weren¡¯t moving too fast. He could hold the gap until his allies pushed the doors closed again.


    If he did that, though, the enemies that were just behind him would repay him with a blade through the ribs, and in the chaos that followed, all of his efforts up until now would have been in vain. That was intolerable.


    ¡°Gervuul Oonbetit,¡± he roared, sending a shockwave of force that knocked back the zombies that were closest to him. They were flung backward like they¡¯d been struck by the backwash of a jet engine, along with the men they¡¯d already gotten their teeth into.


    Simon cursed that, but he didn¡¯t have any choice. Not with a greater spell. It was raw power pouring out of him, and in this case, it was enough to disperse the zombies and slam the gates shut once more. It only came at the cost of two of Schwartzenbruck¡¯s dwindling survivors, the mercenary he¡¯d given a concussion, and, of course, his voice.


    Simon had only just recovered, but the power of that command was enough to reduce his throat to a bloody ruin, and he spent the next thirty seconds hacking up a lung before he finally turned to face his enemies again.


    This time, everyone looked at him in fear when he rasped, ¡°The gates stay shut until the last zombie is dead!¡±

 Ch. 73 - Looking for Answers

    No one was happy about how the battle at the main gate ended, least of all Simon. Strangely, though, none of the survivors blamed him for what had happened. By this point, he was more than a little used to being the scapegoat whenever anything went bad, but this time, it was the adventurers who were forced to retreat with their tails between their legs. They¡¯d come as heroes, but no one saw them that way. Least of all, Simon; he knew that in other versions of this same event, they were the ones that had unleashed the zombies across the land.


    They vowed to make him pay, of course, but down two men and an arm that was going to need to be amputated, he didn¡¯t see how that was going to happen. In spite of everything, he¡¯d probably have been willing to heal that horribly frostbitten limb. He probably could have done it with a greater word of healing, but magic wasn¡¯t on the table for a few days, thanks to his heroics.


    These days, uttering a few words of power was no big deal, but back-to-back uses of a greater word felt like they were giving him throat cancer. That was only one of the reasons he hadn¡¯t tried the other words that had been burned into his memory, though.


    He reflected on that while he healed for a few more days and watched the zombies dwindle to almost nothing. The other was uncertainty. There was still so much he didn¡¯t know. He didn¡¯t even fully understand how the sword he carried was powered, and he could examine those runes whenever he wanted. He needed to learn more, and though there were a couple opportunities to do exactly that on this level, he had not yet decided which one would be more beneficial once he made sure the zombies were finally purged.


    Then, word came that an army was approaching. Simon thought he remembered this too, or at least a version of it. He certainly remembered fighting an army some nights; his nightmares would never let him quite forget something about an army losing, along with a castle and a mage. He was hoping to track that guy down one day, honestly. If there was some officially sanctioned order he could learn from, that would be worth the mistakes of a dozen lives, but so far, he hadn¡¯t found his Hogwarts yet.


    That wasn¡¯t a mistake he was about to make this time, though. This time, he could already see the pieces fitting together. If the army was as big as the rumors and his memory said they were, then they¡¯d almost certainly found the remaining adventurers he¡¯d let flee with their lives. That meant that by now, their words had turned him into the devil himself, which meant that Simon needed to either prepare for a fight or make himself scarce.


    To him, it seemed straightforward, but the people he¡¯d saved weren¡¯t very pleased when he told them he was going to have to disappear for a while.


    ¡°You can¡¯t just leave,¡± Marken had wailed. ¡°We need you! You¡¯re the only one that can battle the zombies and the slimes!¡±


    ¡°I think the army can handle the cleanup at this point,¡± he said confidently. ¡°And I¡¯ll be back in a few weeks to make sure things turn out all right. So, if you need help, just keep ahead of them, and I¡¯ll be back to save all of you a second time if I have to.¡±


    While that was true, it was incidental. He had to come back to take the gate to the next level; he just hoped the assholes didn¡¯t burn this place down first. He wasn¡¯t sure what would happen if that was gone.


    Simon could leave now, of course. He knew that. There were just enough embers left in Schwarzenbruck that part of him was worried that the zombie bonfire could reignite, and the last thing he wanted to do was come back here and do all of this over again. With his luck, he¡¯d run into Freya, or Zombie Freya, and have a complete meltdown.


    So, he was going to do what he¡¯d been wanting to do for a long time: he was going to look for patient zero. A long time ago, Freya had told him of a Necromancer somewhere to the north, and right now, that sounded like as good a place to start as any. If there was a secret order of mages somewhere in this world, he was sure they¡¯d persist in most or all the levels, but the evidence of what had created the zombies would really only exist in this one point in time if it still existed at all.


    It wouldn¡¯t really change anything, of course, but maybe it would give him some understanding into how all of this started, and with any luck at all, that might give him some insight into what was increasingly becoming the second most important question on his list. Why now?


    The first question was obvious. He thought of it every day, even if he could barely bring himself to put it into words. What happened with Freya? Did he hurt her? Was she faithful? Could I have done more? He knew the answer to the last one, of course, but the rest? Well, they didn¡¯t bear much thinking about. He would hold them way down deep like the terrible secrets that they were, and when he got to level 30, he¡¯d ask Helades to answer them and give him what he deserved, whether that was absolution or condemnation.


    Those were the thoughts that preoccupied him as he slowly made his way north to a part of this world he¡¯d never been to. He¡¯d never crossed the Black Fork, but from what he¡¯d heard, the land up here got rougher and rougher until civilization petered out entirely. At least until you got over the mountains, that is. The whole reason the bridge was there was for trade, but that had been a dying thing for a long time, and no one seemed to know why.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Still, he hoped he¡¯d be able to find someone to ask for directions, but the entire road seemed to be practically abandoned. He came across two farmsteads and, after three nights of camping rough, a small village. All of them were burned out, and in the village, at least, there were still some zombies.


    ¡°Son of a bitch,¡± Simon cursed as he figured that out just before he pulled out his mace and started braining the bastards.


    These zombies were old and slow and no real threat to him, but where there was one, there were probably more. Does that mean they¡¯ve spread north, too, or to the coast? That was the thing about zombies; in a movie, they were impossible to hem in, and some always got free to start the process all over again.


    ¡°Helades - if you want me to actually stop these things, why not just portal me to the dude that made them before he raises the first one?¡± he shouted in frustration.


    She didn¡¯t answer, but fortunately for him, at least, zombie tracks were remarkably easy to track. If they¡¯d been fresh, anyone could have done it, but as it was, he was able to follow the weeks-old marks with his meager hunting skills as he moved north along the road before setting out to the west.


    As he went, the scrubby plains and their patchy trees soon gave way to foothills that stood in the shadow of the giant, glacier-dotted mountains that loomed over his head to the north. They were similar to the Himalayas, or at least the pictures he¡¯d seen, and much taller than the mountains on the goblin or wyvern levels.


    Simon uttered a prayer of silent thanks when he saw he wasn¡¯t going to have to hike up that monstrosity. Even if he had been in shape, it would have been miserable. As he was right now, it might well have been lethal.


    Instead, the tracks broke west, heading toward the sea, which was still at least fifty miles away. He never got that far, though. Instead, he found a single zombie stuck in a rock crevice, and within a day, a very suspicious-looking barrow mound that had obviously been breached recently and the blasted ruin of the stone door lay scattered about.


    ¡°Now this is what I wanted, right here,¡± Simon said, appreciating that this was exactly the sort of RPG-style dungeon crawl he¡¯d craved when all this started.


    In a way, that was a marker of how far he¡¯d come. While he was perfectly happy to explore this, he was hardly excited about it. Any number of nasty ambushes could await him down there. He stood there at the dark entrance, weighing the pros and cons of going in stealth or going in with a light.


    ¡°Ah fuck it,¡± he whispered, eventually deciding that seeing where he was going trumped hiding when it came to undead since they could probably see in the dark even if their master couldn¡¯t. ¡°Aufvarum Barom.¡± Lesser light.


    Immediately, his mace began to glow with a dim blue light not so different from a glowstick, and he began to descend into the mound. He had no idea what to expect. On the one hand, the hill this thing was built into was less than a hundred feet across, but on the other, with his luck, it could be an infinite warren filled with the unquiet dead.


    Fortunately, it turned out to be a little closer to the former than the latter. The thing was still bigger than he thought, but only because the claustrophobically tight hallway sank into the earth as it wound its way to the center. There were burial niches along the walls that were fortunately empty, though there were enough bone shards on the ground to make him feel pretty sure that not many of them had ever made it out of this pit.


    That, of course, raised a bigger question. If the undead that were here had been slain here, then how did the zombie outbreak start? There were no clear answers, but eventually, the room opened up into a larger burial chamber that he hoped would fix that.


    This place was definitely a tomb. The giant stone sarcophagus stood open in the center, and a steel sword pinned the still squirming occupant of the thing in place. If it couldn¡¯t escape, though, Simon was inclined to ignore it for now as he studied the rest of the room.


    There were several burnt-out candles and signs that some sort of ritual had taken place, but nothing concrete. It was only after searching the place for several minutes that he noticed that the simple crown on the head of the zombie was made of paper.


    Simon reached for it and unfolded the thing to find a note with contents that were as baffling as everything else so far. ¡®Sorry, I needed to borrow this. Maybe we can meet again in your next life and discuss why.¡¯


    It didn¡¯t come right out and say it, but to him, it felt like the note was addressed specifically to him, or at least to the Pit¡¯s hero, if not Simon himself. He only realized that it ended with a threat after he picked it up, but he didn¡¯t care too much about that. Simon took the opportunity to crush the skull of the only danger in the room, but even as he did so, he realized he¡¯d made a mistake.


    First, the runes on the coffin glowed for a moment, and then that spread to the walls in a faint ripple of old magic. He turned to face the glow at the same time, he drew his sword, fearing an ambush from behind. None of that was enough, though, because he wasn¡¯t attacked. Instead, the heavy stone ceiling above him just gave way.


    ¡°Gervuul Oon¡ª¡± he shouted, trying to blast himself free and open a skylight above him.


    There was no time, though. In the split second, he¡¯d taken to come up with a plan, he was crushed to death by hundreds of pounds of stones, and he died instantly.

 Ch. 74 - Horrible Timing

    ¡°Damn it!¡± Simon cursed as soon as he felt himself lying comfortably back in his own lumpy bed once more. It was a cheap fucking death, and he pounded his fist against the straw mattress in frustration. Just like that, less than a week into that run, it was over, and he was back where he started.


    He¡¯d been prepared to fight more zombies or maybe a necromancer. He¡¯d been banking on some new twist he could sink his teeth into, and with any luck, a tome with a few new words of power, but a trap? Right now, he wanted to vent his frustrations on the bottle of wine or even the mirror, but he forced himself to calm down and lay there with his eyes closed. While everything was still fresh, he took in every last detail and tried to make sense of a trap that felt like it had been laid especially for him, even though that should be impossible.


    ¡°No one even knows I exist anymore besides Helades,¡± he whispered to himself. ¡°That¡¯s half the problem of this damn place.¡±


    Instead, he focused on the dead body and the magic at play. Obviously, his decision to kill the zombie in the coffin had triggered the whole thing, but was the result of the people who¡¯d originally buried the man, or had that spell been cast by whoever laid the trap? That was unknown and more than likely unknowable.


    When Simon went back, he could always check the inscriptions he¡¯d seen here and there on the stones, but those seemed more like prayers or little summaries about the deeds of the men that had been entombed in the barrow than anything that was actually useful.


    Had the paper crown replaced a real one? Is that what the author had meant? How could he have known that whoever found it would have a next life? He sighed, slowly sitting up before he reached for the bottle.


    ¡°Mirror - does anyone in the pit know that I¡¯m not a part of their world? Like - that I¡¯m an outsider and doing this over and over again?¡± he asked, expecting another complicated version of I-don¡¯t-know.


    Instead, he was pleasantly surprised to read, ¡®Some supernatural entities that dwell within the Pit have realized that there is something unnatural occurring on their world, though they are rare.¡¯


    ¡°Interesting,¡± he answered, leaning forward. ¡°Can you give me examples or tell me if¡­¡±


    ¡®Apologies, I cannot,¡¯ the mirror replied.


    ¡°Of course not,¡± Simon shook his head. ¡°I thought you were going to be useful, but instead, you go right back to being annoying like this. What can you tell me about those entities?¡±


    ¡®I do not understand the question. Please clarify.¡¯ it typed out.


    That was almost enough for Simon to break the damn thing, but instead, he turned his attention back to more productive things and started laying out the gear he planned on taking with him.


    Did he hope that he¡¯d cleared the zombie level so he wouldn¡¯t have to go back again and could finally consider Freya laid to rest, or did this new wrinkle make him hope it was still an option to go back to and explore? Simon wasn¡¯t totally sure, but he leaned to the former and not the latter.


    On his way out, he thought about asking the mirror if he¡¯d actually cleared but decided he¡¯d rather be surprised. At this point, good surprises were rare in the pit, but he needed something to take his mind off the monotonous task that rat and goblin slaying was quickly becoming. Nothing on the upper levels was really hard anymore, and he both looked forward to and feared the challenges that inevitably awaited him when he got deeper into the pit.


    Of course, as soon as he entered the basement and shut the door behind him, he remembered what it was he¡¯d been forgetting. He meant to bring the hatchet and try to force open the door above him. He could use magic of course, he realized, but he shrugged it off.


    ¡°Next time,¡± he said as he continued deeper. He had more important things to do than look at someone else¡¯s cabin.


    He cleared those first few levels quickly this time, not bothering to search them for any longer than it took to grab a few potatoes for the road and a sack of gold and silver in case he got to a level where funds actually mattered. Nothing he¡¯d done on the goblin level had changed anything, but after he killed the skeleton knight and took its sword, he discovered two surprises.


    The first was that the door no longer led to the familiar crater of the slime. It had vanished. The second was that it didn¡¯t lead straight to the inn either. Instead, the Skeleton¡¯s tomb led to the sewers directly now. He understood the switch, but he found it disorienting just how easily the connection between levels could be reshuffled. Just seeing it like this gave him a strange sense of vertigo, like something was wrong, but he forced it down.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    This might well be the end of an era, and he felt a little saddened that he¡¯d never see Freya again, but he¡¯d already made the decision that he¡¯d known that he¡¯d never see his Freya again when he¡¯d buried her in the graveyard. Finding some new copy just to try again and again with struck him as sad.


    Wrenching his mind away from that, he forced himself to turn to the question at hand. Would the pit really be this easy? Had it always been this easy? He had at least four levels beaten now. It might even be more than that. If he knocked out two per run going forward, that wouldn¡¯t even be fifty more deaths. He might even be able to knock all of those out in a few weeks or months of hard work.


    While he stood there contemplating all of this, he opted to take both swords with him this time. The frost sword wouldn¡¯t be useful in all cases, as he¡¯d learned with the adventurers, and this time, he really wanted to hack the carrion crawler into pieces but didn¡¯t see ice helping with that job. He could think of a level coming up he¡¯d absolutely need it for, though.


    ¡°I never have actually killed this thing, have I?¡± he asked himself as he strode into the sewer. Truthfully, he didn¡¯t think that he did. That made him smile. If all it took to never have to walk in this disgusting sewer again, he¡¯d gladly kill fifty of the little bastards. In fact, maybe that¡¯s what he was supposed to do, he realized. Maybe the giant pile of bodies it retreated to each time he wounded it was a nest of some kind.


    It was with that thought in mind he entered the foul place with his torch and his sword at the ready before he whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Barom.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure exactly what to expect from minor light. But a gentle glow filled the surrounding tunnel. It wasn¡¯t enough to let him see all the way to the far end.


    That was fine, even if it made hiding impossible, he thought with a nod. He sheathed his sword so that he could free his hands to pull out his short bow and knock an arrow to the string. Now, he could experiment with how this spell was supposed to work and hopefully make sure he never had to come back.


    Simon found the creepy crawler a few minutes later. This time, it wasn¡¯t perched on its favorite corpse. Instead, the soft blue light seemed to have alerted it, and it was waiting on the ceiling just past the first bend, waiting to surprise whatever came around the corner.


    Unfortunately for it, Simon knew that it was coming, and he released an arrow into its soft, fleshy body before it could react. Then, as it screeched in pain and tried to run away, he hit it again. On the third shot, it lost its grip on the ceiling and splashed into the foul water.


    He waited there for almost five minutes for it to surface or strike him again, but other than a few weak motions that might have been its tentacles in the first few seconds, it never reappeared. Once he was sure that there wasn¡¯t a horror movie ambush just waiting to grab him as the monster suddenly returned to life just long enough to drag him into the sewage, he continued on to the mound of bodies jammed against the grate at the end of the T-junction.


    He¡¯d planned on burning the whole thing down but realized now that he was standing here that it was a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Greater fire might still do the job, even though they were completely sodden by the vile wastewater. Burning them would definitely fill the small tunnel with the most disgusting smoke he could imagine, and if he used too much, he might cause the pile of bodies to explode.


    Even after the plague city and Schwarzenbruck, bodies still weren¡¯t something he wanted to touch if he didn¡¯t have to. So, instead, he decided he was going to flush them.


    ¡°Oonbetit,¡± he said seriously, visualizing ripping the heavy metal grating off the wall.


    Adding minor seemed like it would be too little, and Major always felt like overkill. Just plain force would be sufficient, he decided. Strangely, though, nothing happened. He felt the magic course through him, and he heard the rusting bars creak under the invisible strength his will imposed on it, but it wasn¡¯t enough to actually do the job.


    ¡°Huh¡­¡± he said in bafflement. ¡°Who would have thought.¡±


    Simon refocused and tried again, adding a bit more oomph to the spell. ¡°Gervuul Oonbetit,¡±


    This time, the metal gave with a terrible shriek as he ripped it into two pieces and sent the debris flying in opposite directions, opening up the hole into a dark abyss that might well be the only waterfall in the pit worse than the one that had killed him on the goblin level. One minute, the flow of sewage had dammed the water completely, and the next, with nothing to hold them back any further, they started toppling one after the other into the void, and the water level quickly retreated from the very edge of the ledge he¡¯d been walking on to almost a foot lower, so it no longer felt like he was in constant danger of falling into the channel.


    For the briefest instant, he saw something glittering amongst the refuse, but before he could see any more than that, it was gone, toppling into the abyss.


    ¡°Oh well,¡± he said with a shrug, ¡°If it was important, it will be here next time, I guess. Because I sure as hell ain¡¯t going in after it.¡±


    Honestly, he hoped he was done with the place forever, and it was only when he was climbing toward the ladder that would take him to the surface that he wondered, ¡°Wait, if these sewers are under ancient ruins, then why are the corpses so fresh?¡±


    The answer was obvious. The sewers and the jungle ruins above had no more to do with each other than the sewers and the front door of the inn had. He wondered why it had taken him so long to put that together, but since it didn¡¯t really matter, he set that aside and continued on. He had some plants to kill.

 Ch. 75 - Lucky shot

    Before this trip, Simon had considered the jungle level a pleasant place. Compared to some of the levels around it, it was a real garden spot, literally and figuratively. That was especially true by the water or at the top of the pyramid, farthest from where the plants grew thickest; it was a paradise. Not only was it beautiful and warm, but he hadn¡¯t seen a single monster that didn¡¯t have roots on any of his visits here.


    He could see setting up a luxury resort right there on the river so that all the other adventurers could come here for the mandatory beach episodes that had been in basically every anime he used to enjoy. After spending a week here, though, all of that changed. Now, after trying to clear out a megalithic stone city or temple complex or whatever this was supposed to be while dealing with plants that just wanted him dead, he was completely sick of this place.


    It was awful.


    What had been pleasant warmth had become sweltering heat, and now, away from the breeze that dominated the open spaces by the river, the insects were a constant nuisance. If you added that to swinging his sword arm over and over until he thought it would fall off, it had become worse than almost any battlefield he¡¯d been on so far. Even fighting the damn orcs, he¡¯d never quite been this tired.


    He¡¯d tried using the frost sword to freeze the largest clusters, and that worked okay, but it took forever. After a little trial and error, he¡¯d come down to using fire magic and a machete, which was really just his long sword with the blade broken off so that he could swing it easier. Even though these things wouldn¡¯t burn properly, once he¡¯d gotten that rhythm down, he could clear a whole street in a few hours. However, the hard work and punishing heat took a real toll, and he was forced to take breaks constantly.


    Really, he felt like he was taking breaks more than he was working at this point, but it could hardly be helped. He had to spend more time by the river because he was almost out of potatoes. So, it was fish or starve, but as relaxing as it was, it really slowed down progress. Especially since the plants seemed to be regrowing almost as fast as he was killing them.


    Purging a building or two of an overgrown rose bush felt great and all, but what was the point when the thing was already resprouting when you went back the next day? Even the ones he¡¯d burned to a crisp were starting to sprout again after a week. What was the point? It¡¯s not like he could keep mowing this city down every week for the rest of his life.


    ¡°I have to be missing something here,¡± Simon sighed as he walked back to his favorite stone, pulled off his boots, and slipped his feet into the cool water. ¡°I don¡¯t think that Helades brought me here because this place needed a gardener. Even a gardener with a sword.¡±


    He smirked at that. He wasn¡¯t even afraid of the biggest plants anymore. They burned best of all, and as strong as their vine-like tendrils were, they moved so slowly that they were really only useful on targets that were sleeping like he¡¯d been the first time he¡¯d come here.


    And he definitely wasn¡¯t about to let that happen again. These days, he stayed at the top of one of the lesser pyramids. It was only four stories tall, but even though that was a real hike, it was worth it for a good night¡¯s sleep. None of the vines seemed to grow that high, and he had no interest in finding out what death by slow digestion felt like.


    Awake or asleep, he no longer really felt like he was in danger. The moment he started using fire or ice, the biggest plants that had actually spouted those giant carnivorous blossoms would just close up to shield themselves from the worst of it and quietly die. They wouldn¡¯t even give him the excuse that it was too hard to justify leaving.


    The only things that were even a threat anymore were those annoying needle-spitting blossoms. They¡¯d gotten him a few times now, and their numbing poison spread pretty rapidly, but it wasn¡¯t anything that lesser cure couldn¡¯t fix. Anyone without that little power would be completely screwed, of course, but he wasn¡¯t concerned. He just took out the most likely clumps with lesser fire or distant fire first and then hacked away at the roots of the rest.


    The job had gotten so mundane that he wasn¡¯t even wearing his armor anymore. He couldn¡¯t, not in this heat. Heat stroke was both a constant threat and a bigger danger than feeling his foot or arm start to go numb before he muttered a few magic words. Passing out because he overdid it could very well be a death sentence in this place.


    Still, he wished he knew what he was supposed to be doing here. ¡°This is pretty much the opposite of killing zombies or goblins,¡± he complained, not sure what else he should be doing. ¡°Why do you kill zombies and goblins? So you don¡¯t get more zombies and goblins. But plants in a jungle? There aren¡¯t even any people around.¡±


    That had been his secret theory at the start of this. That he¡¯d find some tribal remnant he¡¯d have to help. Helping people seemed to be an increasingly important theme in The Pit. After all, he¡¯d helped those kids, he¡¯d helped that doctor, and of course, he¡¯d helped the people of Schwarzenbruck, but here there was no one to help, and he wasn¡¯t sure what he was supposed to do with that information. He supposed that the task could have just as easily been to knock over the giant pyramid that dominated this place. Honestly, that might have been easier than trying to kill all the carnivorous plants that swarmed it.


    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Simon kept searching, though, certain that eventually, he¡¯d find some dark secret they had to be protecting. He wasn¡¯t sure if that was the right move, but it was the only one he had. If he didn¡¯t find something in another week, he promised himself that he¡¯d move on and give one of the later levels a try.


    So, that¡¯s just what he did. Over the next four days, he made forays into different parts of the city. Each time he was looking for a secret door or an evil temple that might have spawned this little nightmare so that he could hack at its roots instead of its branches, but he never located one.


    Twice, he¡¯d found crypts to descend into. There, the most interesting things he¡¯d discovered were enough legible pictographs to figure out that this place had been the capital of a vast empire before it crumbled away. It was hard to make sense of everything because he lacked the context to understand all the metaphors, but it was plain to see that the brighter the accomplishments, the older the sarcophagus.


    He got more of an Incan vibe than an Aztec vibe from them, though. They were war-like, sure, but he hadn¡¯t found any evidence that they conducted ritual sacrifice on an industrial scale or anything. They hadn¡¯t seemed to have discovered words of power either, because he found no new ones in any of his reading sessions.


    Even when he pried open the tombs themselves, all he found were jade-decorated corpses that had long since decayed to bone and dust. There was nothing there to take or to threaten him. This struck Simon as strange, because sometimes in the tangles of the plants he¡¯d find scraps of cloth or the bones of their victims, but that meant that people would have been here in the last few months or years, wouldn¡¯t it?


    How long did bones even last when they were exposed to the weather? How long did articles of clothing? He didn¡¯t know, but the conflicting evidence meant that the city he was currently hacking his way through had been abandoned for a couple of years or a couple of centuries. He wasn¡¯t sure which was more likely, but none of that stopped him from trying to find out.


    Simon was hacking away at the charred remains of the cluster he¡¯d just cleared out when he felt the sting. He barely registered it at first because he was too busy trying to see if he had finally unearthed some secret worth finding. He hadn¡¯t, though. He¡¯d only found another partially collapsed building with a few scattered pictographs that were still legible.


    He pulled the needle from his neck and grunted in annoyance at the blood-tipped barb before he cast it aside. Then he opened his mouth to speak the cleansing words that would make this minor problem go away. Only no sounds came out.


    ¡®Aufvarum Delzam,¡¯ he tried to shout. No words were formed, though. Instead, there were only a few squeaking sounds mixed in with the sound of dry heaving as air exited his lungs, but his vocal cords did nothing to shape it.


    The plant had paralyzed his larynx, he suddenly realized with horror. By intelligence or chance, it had taken away his most potent weapon, and suddenly he felt helpless.


    It¡¯s okay, he tried to tell himself as he slowly backed away. Everything in this area was somewhere between cooked and halfway dead. He just had to go somewhere safe and wait for this to wear off. As he started walking away, though, he dropped his sword and looked down at his slack fingers in horror. He willed himself to clench them back into a fist, but instead, all they did was tremble.


    Simon didn¡¯t need to see anything else, he just turned and ran. He¡¯d never been dosed long enough to watch it spread like this, and the speed was truly horrifying. It had only been a couple of minutes, and already it had reached his hands.


    He could feel his heart slowing now, too. It didn¡¯t stop it, of course. Stopping it would be a mercy, and the Pit was never that kind. Instead, it forced him to slow as his balance started to fail, and his energy levels declined precipitously.


    He reached the pyramid safe haven he¡¯d come to rely on, but he never reached the cubby he¡¯d been sleeping in. He only got five stairs up before his legs gave out. He managed to crawl up another two, but after that, all he could do was lay there and pant.


    Simon¡¯s heart pounded in his chest as he watched helplessly while tendrils from a nearby alley he hadn¡¯t completely finished purging slowly crawled toward him over the next fifteen minutes. When they finally reached him, he couldn¡¯t even feel the tentacle wrapping around him so slowly that it took almost an hour before it started dragging him toward the charred maw of the blossom he hadn¡¯t finished eradicating by his feet.


    This had the unwelcome benefit of giving him an excellent view of what was about to happen to him. In fact, Simon couldn¡¯t look away. The paralytic was so powerful that he couldn¡¯t blink. All he could do was stare at the giant scorched blossom and the giant teeth-like thorns in the center that were slowly spreading wider and wider to accommodate the large meal.


    Simon focused all of his energy on trying to whisper even one of the words of power he knew. Cure. Fire. Ice. Force. Anything.


    His mind was clear, but his throat continued to be paralyzed. The only motion he could accomplish was the shallowest of breathing. That was the only thing that kept him from hyperventilating as he watched the plant¡¯s teeth start to shred his boots, pants, and eventually his legs.


    He couldn¡¯t look away, but now at least he was grateful that he couldn¡¯t feel any pain, because what was happening to his body looked agonizing. It was like getting your hand caught in the garbage disposal or one of those safety videos where something terrible happens to someone in a factory.


    He could only watch as the motion of the thorns drew him in, in abject horror. Fortunately, he passed out from blood loss before the thing had gotten past his knees, and he was finally freed from the horror of that ending.

 Ch. 76 - Big Game

    When Simon woke up this time, he opened his eyes immediately and looked down at his feet out of habit. He knew they¡¯d be back, of course, but he also knew that the longer he let his eyes stay shut, the more he would think about the horrible image of watching his legs being turned into hamburger by that thorny meat grinder.


    It hadn¡¯t been a bad death, he thought to himself. He hadn¡¯t suffered, at least. He hadn¡¯t drowned or suffocated. In a sense, it had been almost peaceful, but peaceful or not, being forced to watch it happen was enough to make him resent the younger version of himself for actually enjoying horror movies.


    ¡°Well, we aren¡¯t going back there for a while,¡± he told himself as he sat up and grabbed for the bottle of wine, gratified to hear his voice worked once more, too.


    It would be one thing if he¡¯d found something interesting, like a thread he could follow, to make the suffering worthwhile, but he had no leads there, so he might as well skip it for now, he decided as he stood and downed half the bottle of wine.


    ¡°I mean, the main reason to beat that place would be so I don¡¯t have to keep climbing those stairs,¡± he said with a laugh. It was a joke, though, mostly. He needed the exercise, and walking up and down a step pyramid was a lot nicer than some of the other ways he could spend his time.


    ¡°Hey, mirror, can you tell me anything about the jungle level? The one with the plants that just ate me?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡®I cannot.¡¯ the mirror responded.


    ¡°Nothing? Not even a little hint?¡± Simon asked, trying to wheedle something out of it. ¡°How about what it¡¯s called, or if it¡¯s even on the same continent as all the other places.¡±


    ¡®But I cannot tell you that all of the levels you have visited are on the same continent,¡¯ it typed.


    ¡°But I thought you couldn¡¯t tell me about the other levels?¡± he said, feeling like he¡¯d caught it in a lie.


    ¡®I cannot,¡¯ it agreed in glowing blue text.


    ¡°But you just said¡ª¡± he sputtered.


    ¡®All I told you was what I cannot tell you,¡¯ it typed infuriatingly.


    Simon sighed. ¡°Of course, you fucking can¡¯t. That would be too fucking easy.¡±


    This time, he remembered the axe as he got ready, but he put it back as he tried to figure out how to really move the needle. ¡°I¡¯d bet I killed that troll for good with the fire. The Basilisk, too. What else are some other simple seek-and-destroy type levels I could tackle?¡±


    The first one that came to mind was the wyvern level. It was frightening, but honestly, probably doable as long as he used magic from a distance. After that was what? The volcano? He was pretty sure he couldn¡¯t take that down with the frost sword, but he¡¯d think about it if he survived the wyvern.


    Simon worked his way through the initial levels on autopilot as he stayed lost in thought. Now, he was dividing the levels into three categories: those he thought he¡¯d beaten, the ones he thought he knew how to beat, and those that were still a complete mystery.


    In the first category, he placed the troll level, the level with the Rivenwood, and the frozen shrine. They were easy enough. It was the last category that bothered him more. What was he supposed to do on the hell level in the cathedral? Presumably, he should shut the gate, but he had a feeling that even the lightest misstep on his part would break it wide open instead, but who knew if that was the right answer.


    The same thing went for the haunted castle or mansion or whatever it was. Was he supposed to find someone? Defeat someone? Maybe it was just a rescue mission, like with the kids. He certainly hoped that was the case on the Pompeii level. He couldn¡¯t imagine that Helades meant for him to fight a whole damn volcano, could she?


    Nothing new or unusual happened to Simon as he sank ever deeper into the pit. When he reached level seven, he was disappointed to find the sewer was still there. That probably meant that he needed to dig through the pile of corpses at the end and see what that shining thing was that he¡¯d accidentally flushed last time.


    He would have done it, too, but as his force spell squashed the corpse crawler like the insect it was, it inadvertently triggered a cave-in as the rotting bricks of the sewer''s roof suddenly gave way.


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    The second the ceiling started to collapse, he ran for his life. Simon didn¡¯t stop until he reached the ruins, either. It was only then, when he was well away from all the danger of both being crushed to death while drowning in sewage and the paralytic vines that would try to mulch him to death, that he finally able to relax and brainstorm a plan.


    The answer turned out to be relatively straightforward, and so, once it was decided, he turned and made the long, slow walk up the giant temple at the center of the city. Once he reached the top, five rest breaks and one water skin later, he took the time to review the surviving pictographs up here since they were something he hadn¡¯t concentrated on too much in the past.


    It was mostly creation myth stuff about how the sun and moon were brothers and warred with each other before finally agreeing to share the sky for half the day each. In this culture, darkness was the enemy, and it was symbolized by the jungle growing in until it blocked out all the light so that the evil could sneak in and devour everyone while they hid from the light.


    ¡°I guess death by plants is sort of a divine punishment, then,¡± he laughed as he looked down at the vine-riddled city. The jungle proper still hadn¡¯t eaten it, but Simon doubted it would ever find a way to displace all the stone plazas and megalithic structures. Still, as he looked at the carnivorous plants in the light of sunset, he couldn¡¯t help but think that they looked like a sort of cancer surging through the streets.


    He was pretty sure he¡¯d penetrated all the way to the heart of that ugly green knot last time, but he didn¡¯t feel like going down to check just now. He could do that another time when the memories of his most recent death weren¡¯t so visceral.


    That was Simon¡¯s last thought before he turned and walked onto the weeks old, crunchy snow of the wyvern¡¯s mountain. There, the nostalgia hit him almost as hard as the cool, crisp air.


    Had he been here since¡­ what had happened before? Simon wondered. He realized immediately that he hadn¡¯t. This was the deepest he¡¯d gone since Freya died so tragically. Not that he¡¯d learned anything since then that could have saved her.


    For a moment, he wanted to go visit her grave, but he realized immediately that it wouldn¡¯t actually be there, no matter how much he might wish it were. That wouldn¡¯t stop him from going to kill Varten, though, he realized. With a little effort, he could probably pull that rickety tower that loomed over their manse and kill their household.


    For a moment, he entertained the idea, taking some dark pleasure in the idea of being the personal curse of the Raithewaits for generation after generation. He dismissed it as he heard the distant screech, and he turned to see the Wyvern wheeling high overhead. It was hunting something besides him, though, so he ignored it and instead looked off into the distance, wondering how far it was to Slany.


    ¡°The Baron said that he knew Gregor,¡± he muttered to himself, ¡°so it can¡¯t be too far away, right? Somewhere to the north, maybe?¡±


    It would take a trip down the mountain to the closest village, but he imagined it wouldn¡¯t be too far. He was seriously considering it since it would be nice to see a familiar face. He let the idea play through his mind as he watched the wyvern dive and come back up with a large elk struggling in its claws.


    It was an effortless hunt on the giant lizard¡¯s part. It just swooped down, intercepting its giant prey the way a hawk or an eagle might snatch a hare, and then it was off again. It hadn¡¯t even needed to use that giant stinger like it had tried to on Simon. More than once, actually, now that he thought about it.


    Part of him wanted to slice that terrifying wrecking ball of a weapon off with a word of force, but that wasn¡¯t the real weakness of that monstrosity.


    He drew his sword, and, sighting down it like it was the sights of a gun, he whispered, ¡°Dnarth Oonbetit.¡± Distant force. As he spoke, he imagined a long, invisible line streaking from him straight to the wing of the creature. Nothing happened, though. Not at first.


    Simon would have bet money that even adding distant to force hadn¡¯t been enough to reach a target that was so far away. If that was the case, though, it wouldn¡¯t have swerved in midair or dropped its dinner as it started to look around for what had happened. The force he¡¯d used must have clearly generated a breeze that the sensitive predator could feel, or else he¡¯d landed a glancing blow.


    ¡°Well, missed is better than the alternative,¡± he said with a shrug, even though he was greatly disappointed that this spell didn¡¯t have some sort of heat-seeking function. Even more than fire, force required very precise imagination since it was literally just a line. It was even smaller than a bullet in that sense, and he was trying to hit a moving target that had to be almost half a mile away.


    He tried again and again, undeterred. With a word like this, it didn¡¯t take too much effort, so he had lots of opportunities. He wasn¡¯t worried, but even so, it took four shots as he thought of it to see any real result. It was then when the predator turned toward him and flared its wings to dive bomb a new target, that Simon¡¯s invisible blow finally landed. His spell sliced right through the largest membrane of the creature¡¯s left wing, and then, just like that, it wasn¡¯t flying anymore. It was falling.


    With a shriek of alarm, the wyvern began to flounder and then fell out of the sky in an uncontrolled corkscrew flight that went faster and faster as it approached the ground with a wet thwack of meat and bone, meeting rock and snow.


    He walked over to it, a few hundred yards away, where its evil green blood started to hiss and boil in the snow, which scratched the idea of trying out a wyvern steak right off the menu.


    ¡°Well,¡± he shrugged, ¡°That was¡­ easier than expected.¡±


    Part of him had expected some epic fight sequence with the weakened creature, and though he wasn¡¯t sure he had the balls to get up close and personal with a wounded wyvern while he was this out of shape, he¡¯d expected he¡¯d have to blast the thing with lighting a couple of times at least, but gravity seemed to have done the work for him.


    However, even after it stopped moving, he decided not to go stab it and make sure it really was dead. Even if it was playing possum, there was no way it would ever fly again. That had to be enough, right?


    ¡°Well,¡± he said, sheathing his sword as he gave the corpse a wide berth. ¡°Might as well find that elk and make lunch. Waste not, want not.¡±

 Ch. 77 - Old Friends

    The trip down the mountain was as exhausting as ever, but at least Simon had no need to look over his shoulder now that the apex predator of this particular level was dead. The only thing that troubled his sleep now were memories of the same trip he¡¯d taken with Freya so long ago, and he passed several good campsites as he went, just to make sure he didn¡¯t dredge up any more memories than he had to.


    At the base of the mountain, he reached a familiar game trail that led to a familiar road. Here, he parted ways from his experience. With Freya, he¡¯d gone south to avoid the zombies that he¡¯d thought were taking over the world.


    This time, he knew better. In fact, as far as he was concerned, the world should be zombie-free now. So, he headed north in search of the village of Slany. That didn¡¯t stop him from finding one more familiar sight, though.


    That evening, while he strolled north in search of an inn or even a tavern where he could get a bite, he found a small camp with a very familiar merchant¡¯s wagon under attack. Several people were already dead, and those that still stood were fighting for their lives against goblins, but still, Simon had trouble taking his eyes off the wagon itself.


    It was like the world was taunting him. It was the very same tinkerer''s wagon that he and Freya had lived in for weeks until they¡¯d finally sold it in Crowvar. It was even being pulled by the same aging mare.


    For a moment, he didn¡¯t understand how that could possibly be the case, but then he realized what happened. ¡°That wagon had to come from somewhere,¡± he told himself as he walked forward. ¡°Somewhere in the range of a man who''d been bitten might have made it to the tavern we found him in before he turned¡­¡±


    Simon regarded the man bludgeoning one of the goblins to death. It had latched onto his leg and he was trying to get it off with the smoldering piece of firewood. Simon should have been helping him, but he couldn¡¯t; it was the same merchant he¡¯d killed so long ago when the man had turned into a zombie in the tavern. Only the man wasn¡¯t dead yet.


    Instantly, Simon sprung into action. He unsheathed his sword and came in swinging. The man probably would have been able to save himself. He had before against the zombies, after all, but the other man that was with him had already been gutted, so time was of the essence there.


    The little monsters didn¡¯t see him until it was too late. Even with Simon¡¯s clumsy body and chubby fingers, half a minute later, all the goblins were dead, and he was dealing with the dying man.


    ¡°Wh-who are you?¡± the familiar merchant asked, but Simon shrugged him off.


    ¡°I¡¯ll deal with you in a minute,¡± Simon said. ¡°Your bite can wait, but your friend¡ª¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s nothing,¡± the merchant yelled. ¡°Just a scratch!¡±


    ¡°Fine. But you keep an eye out for me, or your buddy isn¡¯t going to make it,¡± Simon said, not even bothering to look up. Instead, he was already mumbling words of power under his breath.


    The merchant started to say something about how there was no way Simon could save Marley, but Simon didn¡¯t pay any attention to that. Moments later, he was distracted by another goblin crashing out of the bushes, and he quickly turned to crush the thing¡¯s skull while Simon did his best to save the dying man.


    He started with a word of cure because a wound this ugly was almost certainly overflowing with disease, and he wanted to trap as little of that in the body as he could. After that, he used normal healing just to offset the blood loss as the man went into shock. Then he proceeded to use a series of lesser heals as he tried to find and seal as much of his patient''s damaged and ruptured intestines and arteries as he could.


    It was a horrible, gory business, and honestly, Simon didn¡¯t hold out a lot of hope that he was going to make it, but twenty minutes later, his patient was closed up, breathing softly by the fire. He hadn¡¯t died on the table, so to speak, but Simon didn¡¯t know how he felt about the man¡¯s chances once the inevitable infections and internal bleeding started.


    Marley was young, and he looked strong, at least. Simon had given him the best shot he could, while the other merchant looked on in mute wonder.


    ¡°You can do magic?¡± he asked Simon finally as he tried to clean the blood off his hands. ¡°What are you?¡±


    ¡°Just a man that owes you a favor,¡± Simon shrugged. ¡°You did me a good turn once, and I still haven¡¯t forgotten.¡±


    ¡°I did?¡± the merchant asked. ¡°I¡ª you¡¯ll forgive me, but you don¡¯t look familiar.¡±


    ¡°I get that a lot,¡± Simon nodded. ¡°Now sit down, and we can deal with your scrape.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± the merchant said, clutching the bloody bandage defensively. ¡°I put wood ash and salt on it and said a prayer, which is all the magic I need.¡±


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    ¡°Maybe,¡± Simon shrugged, whispering a word of cure under his breath. If he wanted to stay bleeding and get a nice goblin scar, that wasn¡¯t Simon¡¯s problem. It certainly went a long way to explaining how it was that he''d turned into a zombie the first time, though.


    They chatted a little bit after that about how dangerous the roads were getting in this part of the country now. Then Kurtz, which turned out to be the peddler''s name, drew him a map in the dust that showed the way to Liepzen and Slany by association, which was all the recompense Simon needed for his efforts.


    Finding the way to his destination was something almost anyone could have told him, but he was glad that it had been this ghost from his past. Somehow, it felt right.


    After that, they slept in short shifts to stay mindful of the threats that might yet be lurking in the woods, and in the morning, Simon helped Kurtz burn the corpses of the dead and load his friend Marley into the back of the man¡¯s overstuffed wagon.


    ¡°You sure I can¡¯t convince you to come south with me?¡± he asked. ¡°I¡¯ve got friends in Doulm and Hurag. They could help me reward a miracle worker like you properly.¡±


    Despite being gifted a horse that Kurtz no longer needed now that most of his men were dead, Simon declined. Though they sounded familiar, he didn''t think he¡¯d never been to either city, but he was sure he¡¯d get around to it one day. Only that wasn''t quite true. It was only half an hour down the road that he realized that Hurag was the name of the plague city.


    At least, he was pretty sure it was. He felt bad about that. He probably should have given the man some kind of warning about it, but it was too late now.


    ¡°Would it have even mattered, though?¡± he asked himself as he slowly rode north. He had no idea how long it would be until that happened or if his warning would do anything. It might be months away. There was just no way to say from his perspective.


    He was only just getting the spatial relationships between all the levels down, but he had very little to go on as to when all the wheres were. It was on his to-do list, certainly, but not really anywhere near the top.


    He gave that a lot of thought as he made the six-day ride to see Gregor and his father. This level was sometime after the zombies, of course, which was sometime after the succession war, but even with all that, it shouldn¡¯t be more than what, a few years?


    Simon didn¡¯t find out just how wrong he was until he reached the small town he¡¯d lived in so long ago. It had grown some, but at the same time, it had obviously fallen on hard times. When he called on the manor as an old friend of the family, he could see the obvious disrepair in the sagging roof and the patchy whitewash as easily as he could the faces of the grim looking footman that answered the door.


    The servants brought him inside, but the man they introduced as Baron Corwin wasn¡¯t the man he expected to meet. He¡¯d expected to meet the kindly old Baron he¡¯d known before. He¡¯d be a few years older, certainly. Simon knew that. Instead, he found his grown son had replaced him, and in turn, Gregor the Third had already been ravished by the hand of time. It had been decades since he was last here, and time had not been kind to any of them.


    Simon bowed and did his best to pretend that nothing was amiss, but he found this turn of events to be more than a little shocking. Lord Raithewait had not been referring to Gregor the second, as Simon had always assumed. He¡¯d been referring to Gregor the Third, who had presumably replaced his father sometime during the troubles.


    Not only had at least two decades passed in six levels, but the man that stood before him bore little resemblance to the boy he¡¯d known so long ago. He was grimmer, certainly, but he also had several nasty scars that had been hastily powdered over, and he was missing his left arm just above the elbow.


    In Simon¡¯s absence, the young noble had obviously led an awful life, and though no one could possibly blame him for it, he couldn¡¯t help but feel guilty. If he''d been here, he was confident he could have saved the man who was looking at him in confusion a lot of grief, but then, even with infinite lives, Simon couldn¡¯t exactly be everywhere at once.


    ¡°You¡¯ll forgive me for saying so, ser, but you seem a little young to have known my father.¡± Baron Corwin said finally. ¡°If you¡¯ve come here hoping for some easy mark, I¡¯ll have you drawn and quartered in the yard.¡±


    ¡°I get that a lot, actually,¡± Simon said, hastily improvising. ¡°Baron Raithewait often said the same thing.¡±


    ¡°¡®Simon - you¡¯ve fought those confounded centaurs for me for how many years now, and yet you still look like a child; how can that be?¡¯¡± he said, doing a passable impression of the Baron.


    That at least seemed to relax Gregor. ¡°You¡¯ve worked for a lot of Barons, then,¡± he said with a laugh. ¡°That lets you stay for lunch at least so you can tell me all about what that wiley old bastard is up to.¡±


    Simon had come all the way to get a little comfort from a familiar face, but that was the one thing he didn¡¯t get out of this trip. He got a decent meal, and a little information. However, on the whole, things were more depressing than anything. Gregor was farther from the boy he knew than he would have thought possible.


    Looking at him all through their meal, it was almost impossible to catch even a glimpse of the earnest young man he¡¯d spent so many hours sparing with. Honestly, he reminded Simon of Vatren a little bit, now with his cruelty and jaded humor, which was disgusting but hard to deny.


    However, the longer he stayed, the worse things got. After two bottles of wine, after Simon had told the Baron a few stories that the man¡¯s father had once told him, Gregor told Simon how he lost his arm. It made Simon¡¯s blood run cold.


    He told the story of another sell sword that had come through town decades ago and offered to clear the silver mines that provided so much of the town¡¯s wealth. ¡°The man bungled it, though,¡± Gregor said sardonically. ¡°He promised my father he¡¯d take good care of me, but instead, I barely got out of there with my life. Weeks later, the doctors finally had to take the arm because it was rotting so badly. It was it or me.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry to hear that,¡± Simon said. Truthfully, he was more than sorry. It was more disaster he would have been able to prevent if he¡¯d been there. Now, he had to deal with a broken man who was barely a shadow of the man that he could have been.


    Simon promised to return another day after the Baron was drunk enough that he had to be half carried away by his manservant, but it was a lie. He¡¯d start riding back to the portal tonight. There was nothing here he wanted to see for even a moment longer; it was simply too depressing.

 Ch. 78 - Cataclysm

    The ride back to the mountain was far more enjoyable for Simon than his brief stay in Slany. The weather was mild, and the things he could kill to get the unreasonable level of anger he felt about the whole thing out of his system were plentiful.


    He beheaded three highwaymen who thought they deserved his purse more than he did with a single word of force, he broke up a bar fight at a tavern he was staying in before it could get too ugly, and he took on a brief side quest to kill a young troll free of charge before it could do much more than decimate the sheep herds of the surrounding villages. The last one was the most interesting, and the villagers did try to pay him for reducing it to ashes, but he wasn¡¯t interested in their coins.


    He needed to get back on task. He needed to go deeper. There was nothing here for him.


    That was what he told himself as he let the horse free once he stopped on the road not so far from his destination, but he still thought about it on that miserable climb all the way back up to the top. None of those insistences to his brain kept him from thinking about it the whole way back, though.


    It was ironic because he¡¯d hoped to find some comfort, but instead, he¡¯d only found new things to feel guilty about, and they followed him all the way to the gate, which led to the end of the world. It was here he got his priorities straight as he watched the volcano erupt in the background and saw the people streaming toward the sea.


    He¡¯d love to know what he was supposed to do here. Maybe even more than the jungle level. He simply had no idea what it was supposed to entail. Fight the volcano? Save all of the people? Save just one person?


    ¡°Who fucking knows,¡± he signed as he watched another round of volcanic bombs launch in the sky and reign down as he turned toward the palace and the portal it contained. ¡°I mean, I could try to get a bunch of these people to follow me through there. But right now, it leads to¡­ where?¡±


    He wasn¡¯t sure. The owl bear level was gone because he¡¯d saved the kids. At least, he was pretty sure that was why it was gone. He¡¯d killed the troll, too, so if that was enough to solve the bridge, then that put him in what? The gateway to hell, he realized.


    Yeah, he definitely wasn¡¯t taking anyone to that level until he figured it out. Maybe one day, if he still hadn¡¯t solved this particular riddle, he could find a nice safe level to send all these refugees to. Well, safer, he corrected himself.


    What he needed to do was ignore this spot for now and go deeper. Maybe he could try talking with that demon for once and see if he could wring any new ideas out of it. The man seemed much more knowledgeable and marginally more helpful than the mirror, so it had to be worth a try, right?


    It was the sensible thing to do, but as Simon walked up the long curving street of the island toward the slowly advancing lava, he realized he wasn¡¯t entirely interested in being sensible. He was lost, confused, and almost completely overwhelmed, which made him more than a little pissed off.


    He paused there, just before the turnoff to the castle steps, as he watched the lava slowly advance toward him. It was moving slower than walking speed, so he had all the time in the world to avoid it, but suddenly, he realized he didn¡¯t want to. He wanted to do something about this. He was sick to death of always saying he¡¯d come back to this or that later.


    Then he remembered that the frost sword was still on his belt. It wasn¡¯t something that could stop the volcano or anything, of course, but the flickering things he could see through the heat shimmer of the lava? It might be able to do something about those, and maybe that would be enough for him to get a clue.


    The lava got closer as he looked around the street and started to formulate a plan. This was stupid and foolish, but it didn¡¯t matter. He didn¡¯t feel like spending another three months building a set of fireproof armor to give him a better shot. He just wanted some clue of what was going on.


    Getting burned by fire so hot that it could burn away his nerve endings in moments probably wouldn¡¯t hurt too bad. Probably.


    That thought made him grip his sword tighter as he cast a protection from fire spell on himself. He wasn¡¯t sure how well it would work or how long it would last, but hey - after this, he would know, right?


    Simon walked up to the edge of the lava to see, and though it felt warm, it didn¡¯t seem lethally hot like it should be. He wasn¡¯t about to touch it to find out, though. Instead, he used a word of lesser force to spring as high as he could on the nearest building, and then scrambled his way to the top.


    From up there, he had a better view of the ash-choked town and the flickering forms dancing on the surface of the spreading lava, but for now, he ignored them and focused on jumping from rooftop to rooftop to get close enough to study one, or even do some damage.


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    He found his first fire elemental that was close enough to see devouring the contents of someone¡¯s home the next street over. He considered using magic on it, but given how much he was relying on that for his survival, he opted to try his sword instead.


    The thing was a mass of embers in the vaguest shape of a man, and when Simon crashed through the window of the cliff-top home, it barely even noticed him because it was too busy turning the contents of the room to ash.


    At least, that was the case until he brought his sword down in an overhead chop. For a moment, it seemed like he was just waving the steaming blade through the fire, but then suddenly, the coals went cold, and the flaming outline of a person ceased to be with a silent scream as physical parts of its body fell lifeless to the floor.


    That didn¡¯t put out all the other fires in the room, of course. They continued to burn, and Simon fled them as quickly as he could, refreshing his protection spell. He repeated this several times, but it was only when he¡¯d killed the four fire elementals that were reachable that he turned his gaze to the plaza full of lava and saw it walking toward him.


    Though the creature seemed somewhat related to the fire elementals he¡¯d just killed, that was all the two monsters had in common. This thing was a two-story wall of dripping magma in the vague shape of a man. Every part of it radiated fire except for its eyes. The were wells of bottomless darkness set above a melting face that was fixed in a crude expression of overflowing rage.


    Even as it fixated on Simon and started stomping in his direction, he yelled, ¡°Dnarth Gelthic,¡± launching a javelin of pure, smoking liquid nitrogen at the thing with the distant ice command.


    The projectile was half evaporated by the time it reached it, but that was okay. Simon was already shouting the word again. He uttered the command over and over, and each impact slowed the thing¡¯s advance a little, turning part of its skin until cold, hard stone.


    The thing launched volleys of fire at him as well, but they were fairly easy to dodge, and he took cover behind broken walls and the few pillars that were still standing. Through all that, he managed to refresh his protection from fire again. Some part of him felt like it was a waste, but it was a necessary evil. Where he was standing, it was hundreds of degrees, and without that clever piece of magic, he probably would have already been cooked through instead of just sweating like a pig.


    Eventually, after a dozen casts that left Simon¡¯s voice raw and his body exhausted, the thing froze into place. The fact that it didn¡¯t disappear or crumble to dust like its smaller cousins and the fact that its now frozen eyes still glowed with dull rage made Simon worry that this wasn¡¯t over yet, but it wasn¡¯t until the rocky layer that entombed the thing exploded like a grenade sending obsidian shrapnel everywhere, that he realized how far from over this was.


    The thing was basically untouched, and that was as impressive as it was terrifying.


    ¡°What in the fuck,¡± Simon rasped as he watched the thing glower at him. Before it finally unleashed hell.


    Until now, it had merely bombarded him with fire spells that weren''t much bigger than the frost javelins that he¡¯d been using. Now, it conjured a firestorm with a roar that was loud enough to shake the precarious building he was standing on before it set the world ablaze.


    ¡°Gelthic Uuvellum,¡± he shouted. Ice barrier. For a terrible moment, he almost got it backward and called for a fire barrier that would have done less than nothing against the blast that was coming for him, but he didn¡¯t, and a several feet thick wall of ice sprang into existence on either side of him.


    Simon knew that they needed to move, but where. His back was to the cliffs, and the lava dominated the world on all sides of him. Against something that could toss around so much magical energy like this, his only hope was to be a moving target. He couldn¡¯t move, though. He was out of rocks and buildings to leap to, and his protection from fire was fading. He needed to pause long enough to refresh that spell, but this monstrosity was giving him no time to recover.


    Already, his shield was engulfed in flames on both sides from the sheer power of the blast directed at him, and he could see the foot-thick wall of ice sublimating to steam as it thinned before his eyes. Despite that, he struggled to think about what he should do next.


    He knew it was a bad idea, but he still shouted, ¡°Gervuul Gelthic Uuvellum.¡± He immediately tasted of blood and ashes in his mouth as he blew out his throat. In the long run, that meant he was fucked, but he didn¡¯t worry about that just now. As far as deaths went, this wouldn¡¯t be so bad.


    The words of power rippled out, not as an ice wall but as a spear and a bridge, countering the massive blast of fire that had been turned against Simon for the last half minute. To his complete surprise, the spell was enough to overwhelm the fire, at least for a moment, and reach his enemy, momentarily freezing it into place.


    He knew that reprieve wouldn¡¯t last long, though. Already, it was melting, and when it broke free again, he¡¯d be right back where he started. The realization of just how small his window of opportunity was, was enough to force him into action. He hopped over the remains of his wall and ran toward his fiery, glowing opponent with every ounce of strength he had left.


    Taking it out at the cost of his life would be a fine trade, he decided as he raised his icy sword high. He never got there, though. The thing redoubled its fire, drowning Simon in a sea of flames as his sword fell limply from his burning fingertips.


    As it turned out, being burned alive hurt worse than he could have possibly imagined, at least for a moment. His exposed skin charred instantly, and his hair and clothing burst into flames. None of those were as bad as what happened when he opened his mouth and inhaled to cast another spell.


    His lungs cooked almost instantly, and he pitched forward off his precarious perch into the lava. That was where he lost consciousness, and his final thought was of those terrible, malignant eyes that had burned into his soul. He¡¯d learned something, though perhaps not enough to justify the unexpectedly agonizingly violent burst of pain.

 Ch. 79 - Good People

    Simon lay there for several minutes, just staring at the ceiling as he thought about the battle he¡¯d just fought and the things he might have done differently. It was a battle he almost certainly needed to face and one that he doubted he could have won without some serious preparation, but it had still been cool, in a way.


    Not the burning alive part, he thought wryly.


    The rest, though, even though he¡¯d been deep fried in molten lava, it had been kinda cool. Running just above flowing magma and slaying elementals. It was probably the most cinematic thing he¡¯d done so far in the pit, and if anything, the lesson was that he still wasn¡¯t thinking big enough. He¡¯d spent what? Two years of his life on that run? Three? It wouldn¡¯t have mattered if he¡¯d spent ten, because he¡¯d reset himself again anyway. He needed to get used to using more magic each run. He¡¯d get a lot farther, he needed to.


    ¡°Hey, mirror, next time I decide that I¡¯m going to go to level 10 to fight a freaking volcano, remind me that it¡¯s not a good idea,¡± he said, not bothering to look away from the rafters.


    ¡°Actually,¡± he said, sitting up, ¡°Show me my experience points.¡±


    ¡®Experience Points: -993,361,¡¯ the mirror typed.


    Simon tried to do the math on that. He was pretty sure he¡¯d died twice since the last time he¡¯d looked, and that time, he was still at basically negative one million.


    ¡°Well, I¡¯m still basically at negative one million now,¡± he laughed. ¡°Hmmm¡­¡±


    Two deaths, maybe three levels cleared, and no particularly good or bad memories. He had killed some pretty big monsters, though - maybe that accounted for the shift. Still, even at this pace, it would take¡­ three hundred thousand more deaths before he got back to zero?


    ¡°There has to be a way to speed that up,¡± he said to himself. ¡°Maybe if I meet whoever wrote that fucking note they can explain it to me.¡±


    He had no interest in speeding things up right now, though. Instead, he went outside, picked up his fishing pole, and went to the stream to do some thinking about everything he¡¯d just gone through.


    Especially after an ugly death, the last thing he wanted was to go right back and do it again. He needed to slow down and reflect on everything that was happening to him.


    By noon, Simon had caught and gutted two trout, but he still hadn¡¯t come any closer to locking his thoughts into place. What was he supposed to do on levels eight and ten? One was ruins, and one was about to be, so what was the point? How would either of those make the world a better place?


    The only thing he¡¯d really learned last trip, besides the fact that fire elementals definitely existed, was that the levels seemed to span a longer section of time than he¡¯d thought. If this was a game or a movie, then all of these bad things would be happening more or less simultaneously. The whole idea would be to stomp out every ember of evil before it could ignite some new threat, but this seemed more complicated. It was like a Rube-Goldberg Device that seemed almost random.


    This outbreak of zombies needed to be stopped, and this wyvern needed to be killed, but this plague was okay to happen, and this town could totally burn to the ground. There was no apparent rhyme or reason to it.


    Worst of all was Gregor. In the grand scheme of things, he almost certainly didn¡¯t matter, at least as far as the pit was concerned. He and his family were just random NPCs that he probably shouldn¡¯t have ever met. He had, though, and he¡¯d grown attached to them, and it was a shame to see the bitter, broken old man that the fierce, kind-hearted boy had become.


    Simon could blame himself, of course. He probably would no matter what, even though he knew it wasn¡¯t his fault. As he fried his fish in bacon grease over low heat, he couldn¡¯t help but obsess about it though.


    The Gregor he¡¯d known once upon a time would have still turned out okay, even without an arm. It was his missing father that had likely caused everything else to happen. He sighed and flipped his fish as he remembered the desperate battle that had caused him to get stabbed in the back.


    ¡°So what¡¯s the right answer then?¡± Simon asked himself. ¡°Do I go back and stop the war?¡±


    Honestly, it wasn¡¯t the worst idea. Killing all of the goblins hadn¡¯t solved that particular level, and the portal was an awful long way from the capital, but it wasn¡¯t inconceivable that was what he was supposed to do. After all, a war of succession would cost countless lives, but how the hell was he supposed to stop a war?


    He thought about that long and hard as he ate. Technically, this whole thing was probably an elaborate side quest, but some part of him wouldn¡¯t accept that he needed to go straight to 30 until he¡¯d done something to save Gregor.


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    In the end, he slept on it, but that didn¡¯t change his answer when he woke up in the morning. He was going to play peacemaker. He just wasn¡¯t sure exactly how.


    Simon geared up as usual and didn¡¯t let those thoughts distract him as he killed rats, bats, and goblins. It was only when he reached the mouth of the snowy cave and looked out at the wintry valleys below that he made his decision. He was going to go to the capital and kill the King¡¯s brother.


    ¡°If there¡¯s no brother, then there¡¯s no one to dispute the line of succession, and if there¡¯s no dispute about that, then there¡¯s no war, right?¡± he told himself as he walked down the mountain.


    It made sense to him, and that was all that mattered. Simon took it easy on the way down, and he stopped early the day the snowstorm always struck, using the time to build himself a small shelter of pine branches in the lee of a boulder. It was still cold, but with a good fire and a couple baked potatoes, it was hardly miserable, and he made it down the mountain without issue.


    When he reached the road to Wellingbrooke, he found the familiar bandits just where he¡¯d left them, and he flipped Luken a silver as soon as the man opened his mouth to begin his familiar speech. Simon didn¡¯t condone the highway robbery exactly, but he was tired of killing this group over and over again.


    ¡°Such a generous traveler,¡± Luken Smiled, ¡°Maybe you¡¯d pay extra for some protection; after all, it¡¯s a¡ª¡±


    ¡°A man that travels alone is the sort you and your friends should worry about the most,¡± Simon said, not even bothering to slow down as he walked by the cocky highwayman. ¡°Do yourself a favor. Take the coin, keep the change, and live to fight another day.¡±


    For a moment, he thought that the bandit was going to give the signal, and they were going to have to do this dance all over again. He didn¡¯t, though. For whatever reason, the man just stood there and let him pass, and none of his hidden friends struck either. It was good. It was pretty much the best outcome for everyone; he was down a silver he didn¡¯t really need, and they weren¡¯t another stain on his already bloody hands.


    In Wellingbrooke he stayed at his least favorite inn, but when he paid for his room he fixed the woman behind the counter with a stern gaze and said, ¡°I know what you see, and I want no trouble. You understand? I¡¯ll be gone in the morning.¡±


    She scowled and short-changed him but otherwise said nothing. The food was decent, but he resisted the urge to have a few beers, knowing how that had turned out in the past. In the evening, he still embedded his dagger deep into the door frame to lock the door the best he could, but no one tried to sneak in and murder him. It was a nice change of pace, and he made a mental note to do that again if he ever came this way so that next time he could get a little drunk and play dice with the other men downstairs.


    Today wasn¡¯t the day for drinking, though. It was time for more traveling. Simon paid the ferryman to cross the river, enduring twenty minutes of his prattle before he reached the far side and began heading due east toward Liepzen.


    He¡¯d considered getting a horse, but he wasn¡¯t in that much of a hurry, and he definitely needed to lose some weight. So, he walked all the way to the capital of the region, building his map of the way the world was laid out in his mind as he went. He stayed in one more inn and shared the fire of two merchants heading west. In both places, Simon encountered mercenaries eager to swear allegiance to the King¡¯s brother, Duke of the northern lands of the Kingdom of Brin.


    Simon said he planned to do the same, but only to make friends. In truth, he had no idea how he¡¯d accomplish what he needed to do. Deciding to kill the man was one thing, but accomplishing it was quite another. So, he laughed and joked and tried not to get too drunk at each encounter as he learned pieces of the truth.


    Apparently the King¡¯s son was weak and young, and as the aging man got sicker and sicker, war between the two claimants appeared all but certain. Simon already knew all that. Actually, he knew more than everyone else; he knew that the King would die within weeks and war would begin shortly thereafter, reaching the sleepy town of Slany a few months from now. That was a certainty unless he stopped it. What he didn¡¯t know until now was that the Duke was a hard but well-respected man who would surely become King in the absence of the 12-year-old heir and his scheming advisors.


    That was almost enough to make Simon change tactics and go after the boy instead, but murdering a twelve-year-old simply wasn¡¯t going to happen, and he was sure that there would be less chaos if the legitimate heir took the throne.


    So, when he walked into Liepzen, he was a man on a mission, and the beautiful gothic architecture of the capital city aside, he quickly made his home at the inn closest to the cathedral that was frequented by the royal family. This wasn¡¯t because he had the gold to pay for good food and a clean inn, though. It was because here he could see the path of the claimants as they strolled by several times a week with their entourage as they prayed for the health of the king from his third-story window.


    It was in the second week he was staying there, after looking at the proud warrior and the young prince, that he finally pulled the trigger, so to speak. He¡¯d been putting it off for days even after he formulated his plan, but once the skies clouded over and he saw the approaching carriage, Simon knew that he was out of time.


    ¡°Dnarth Vrazig,¡± he whispered from his window as the man made a speech on the steps of the church. Distant lightning.


    It was a hundred yards away, and Simon hadn¡¯t been entirely certain it was going to work, but then a single bolt of lightning arced down from the stormy sky above, striking him and the guard closest to him.


    Simon winced at that. The last thing he wanted to do was get anyone else hurt, but he doubted very much that either of them would survive.


    A few minutes later, he was proven right. Neither of the men would ever rise again. Simon mourned the dead and felt bad about what he¡¯d done, but weighed against the bodies of the thousands of people who would have died if this hadn¡¯t happened, he wasn¡¯t really sure what to say.


    At least he got the effect that he wanted. By the time dinner came around, the small inn was packed with people gossiping about Duke Brin, who was struck down by the gods for hubris and daring to upset the order of things by seeking to replace the true heir.


    Simon smiled at that. It was a nice, clean explanation that a simple medieval mind could believe, freeing him up to go pay Baron Corwin and his son another visit.

 Ch. 80 - Making Things Right

    The road south was untroubled, and Simon made good time, arriving five days later. He''d been looking forward to seeing the Corwin''s, and especially getting reacquainted with young Gregor again, but instead he arrived just in time for a hanging in the square of Slany.


    He didn¡¯t remember any of this, and as he moved among the crowd and listened to the charges being read out to try to figure out what was happening, he understood immediately what this was. Endangering the Baron''s heir. Attempted flight. Cowardice on the field of battle.


    This was the man that the Baron had attempted to replace him with. Simon took a long look at the broken-down mercenary on the platform that had been erected and wondered how close he¡¯d come to such a fate himself. Not that the Baron¡¯s men would have been able to take Simon so easily, of course, but as a lesson, it was still very easy to see himself ending up in that place. Especially given how much less magic he¡¯d known back then.


    Simon was tempted to save him because the way that Baron Corwin was handling this struck him as unjust. He didn¡¯t, though. The first reason was that he would have definitely alienated the Corwin family in the attempt, but the second was more important. This had all apparently only happened a couple of days ago, which meant that there was probably still time to save young Gregor¡¯s arm and, if he was lucky, the man attached to it.


    So, he said nothing as the pathetic man begged for his life and was left to choke and dangle at the end of a rope. It was an ugly sight made uglier as Simon couldn¡¯t help but see his own face there.


    As soon as it was done and the Baron was walking back to the house, Simon approached him. The reception was much chillier than it had been the last time Simon had come to town in this timeline, but the reason was fairly straightforward. He¡¯d sought to avert a war, and in doing so, he¡¯d come here too late.


    ¡°Apologies, my Lord,¡± Simon said, bowing slightly as he saluted the man with his fist to his chest. ¡°My name is Simon, and I¡¯ve heard from your people that your son¡¯s injuries are severe and that your doctors are preparing to remove the boy¡¯s arm. I¡¯d like to help if I may before that happens.¡±


    ¡°I doubt you know any more about Medicine than that buffoon Karls¡¯s knew about hunting goblins,¡± Baron Corwin said jadedly, ¡°but as thanks for your compassion, I will let you walk away now instead of letting my men beat you for your insolence.¡±


    There was a coldness in the man¡¯s eyes that showed just how much this event had already cost him, and it saddened Simon but not enough for him to give up.


    ¡°I might look young, your lordship,¡± Simon said, ¡°but I¡¯ve seen several battlefields and served under both knights and healers. So if I must beat your men bloody to show you I know my business, I¡¯m happy to do it.¡±


    Baron Corwin laughed at that, unsure if he was serious or simply a bad joke, but when he shrugged, the three men that had been escorting the Baron all moved as one to do their Lord¡¯s bidding. Simon wasn¡¯t afraid. He didn¡¯t even draw his blade. He¡¯d fought all three of these men more than once, and though he didn¡¯t remember the exact foibles of their fighting styles, he was certain he could best them, especially with a few words of minor force.


    The first one went down without any magic at all. All it took was a feint to the right before an uppercut to the left, and he was down, vomiting his lunch up thanks to a hard blow to the gut. The second one was warier, and he and Simon exchanged several blows before he ended it with a head butt to the man¡¯s flimsy nose guard. It cut Simon pretty deeply but knocked his opponent unconscious.


    The last one, he tripped with a whispered word of minor force. Then Simon stood there with his boot resting lightly on the man¡¯s throat, making it clear that he could end this in a rather ugly fashion if he so desired. The Baron¡¯s response was to draw his sword a few inches from his sheath before he hesitated.


    ¡°Why?¡± Baron Corwin asked. ¡°Why not simply take ''get lost'' for an answer? Why do you think that beating my men will make me let you see my son?¡±


    ¡°I Just wished to show you I was serious,¡± Simon said, whispering the words for minor healing under his breath before he wiped the blood off his forehead with his leather gauntlet. ¡°If you don¡¯t see how a man of my talents could be useful, then I am willing to take my leave.¡±


    Truthfully, that little gesture, showing that he no longer had a wound, would have been enough to get him branded a witch in some of the places he¡¯d been to so far. It might be enough here, but Simon was willing to take that chance in the hopes that it was enough to tap into a father¡¯s desperation as well.


    The Baron hesitated but finally sheathed his sword and said, ¡°I¡¯m not paying you a single copper for this, you understand? I should put you in the stocks for assaulting my men.¡±


    Simon nodded at that, smiling as he was led into the familiar manor. The last time he¡¯d been here in this timeline, it had been a nice place, but now it was a house in mourning. When they reached Gregor¡¯s sick bed, the curtains were drawn, and the much younger version of the broken-down man he¡¯d seen so recently lay in his sick bed.


    The smell of rot overpowered the flowers that had been brought into the room, and young Gregor¡¯s eyes barely flickered open at the sound of their entry. Simon said, ¡°Alright, every one of you leeches out, now.¡±


    It was the only reaction possible. He was sure that they were doing their best, of course, but seeing what bad shape their patient was in made any other reaction impossible. Here they were, sharpening their saws and deciding how much of their patient''s arm to cut off when the bandages of his arm were brown and foul-smelling. It was revolting.


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    Everyone looked in shock, from him to the Baron, for approval, and when he nodded, they began to leave. Once the two of them were alone with his dying son, Simon said, ¡°Baron Corwin, I¡¯m going to need clean linens, boiling water, and the strongest alcohol you have in the manor brought in here immediately while I remove whatever this is.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a poultice for the infection,¡± Baron Corwin said immediately.


    ¡°Really?¡± Simon asked. ¡°And does it look like it¡¯s doing any good against the infection burning through him?¡±


    Simon started to peel away the crusted bandages, revealing the pale pus-soaked skin beneath. He could smell the stench of goblin immediately, but to him, it looked like Gregor had been mauled by a Pitbull or a rottweiler. He found more than two dozen puncture wounds that went to the bone and a deep bite mark on the forearm that had probably done at least some nerve damage. Honestly, he was hurt so badly that Simon had trouble seeing him as the young man he''d spent so much time sparring with in previous lives for a moment.


    All in all, it was an ugly scene, but Simon didn¡¯t see anything that wasn¡¯t fixable here. When the Baron returned with the requested items, he paled to look at the severity of the wounds.


    ¡°This? This is what my gold paid for?¡± he growled as he looked at the rotting flesh of his heir. ¡°I¡¯ll have them hung in the square for this if he¡­ if you can¡¯t¡­¡±


    Baron Corwin couldn¡¯t complete the thought, which was fair, Simon decided. He was a good man in a bad spot.


    To distract him, Simon proceeded to list off half a dozen herbs he wanted brought to him. None of them would do much. They were more for pain relief than anything. He just wanted to keep the man busy while Simon started tearing the sheets into thin strips and sterilizing them in the boiling water.


    The bandages wouldn¡¯t do much either except hide the magic he planned on using. ¡°Gervuul Delzam,¡± he whispered, using the words of greater curing to focus on the bacteria and toxins running rampant in the boy¡¯s body.


    Simon felt the power flow through him as the greater word purged the bacteria that had brought young Gregor to death¡¯s door. That alone would have been enough to save his life, but Simon knew he could do more.


    Gregor would almost certainly live now, but he¡¯d probably still have to deal with a crippled arm for the rest of his life, and Simon didn¡¯t want that. Not for a friend.


    So, instead, he started with the worst of the wounds, whispering the words of healing as he visualized the muscles rebuilding and the flesh covering them over. He tried to imagine the nerves coming together, too, but his knowledge of anatomy still wasn¡¯t what it should be, and he knew it.


    In the dim light of the empty room, no one saw what he was doing, which was fortunate for both their sakes. Simon made no effort to eliminate the scars he was leaving behind, though. After wounds this bad, everyone would expect scars, so he left them behind everywhere.


    ¡°Aufvarum Hyakk,¡± he whispered repeatedly, closing up the puncture wounds one at a time and forcing them to vomit out the decaying flesh as they healed from the inside out.


    It was disgusting, and the smell made Simon gag, but he ignored it. Instead, he focused on his work. Whenever Baron Corwin was in the room, Simon focused on bandaging the parts he¡¯d already healed, and whenever he made the Baron leave to find something else he wasn¡¯t going to use, Simon continued to weave his magic, one small wound at a time.


    Half an hour later, the arm had been completely bandaged by ragged ugly strips soaked in herbs and brandy to hide his work, and his charge had been almost entirely healed, though Simon hoped that no one would know that for at least a few days.


    The Baron became much friendlier once he saw that his son¡¯s fever had broken and there was some color returning to Gregor¡¯s cheeks. That night, he was invited to dine with their family as he had so long ago, and he volunteered to go and purge the goblin infestation at the silver mine that still remained undone even after all of this.


    Over brandy afterward, Baron Corwin apologized and tried to pay Simon for all he¡¯d done, but he wouldn¡¯t accept it. ¡°I¡¯ll take a silver a head for the goblins but nothing for doing right by your son,¡± he said with a smile.


    Simon smoked the monsters out, the same as before, and by the time young Gregor was out of bed, the mines were clear, and Simon had gotten comfortable in the very same cottage he¡¯d lived in for months as he tried to understand a bit more about magic.


    Honestly, he didn¡¯t know exactly what he was doing here, and he felt like he should leave on a high note, but something about seeing that young man struggle with his newfound disability made it impossible for Simon to leave right away.


    So, he tutored him in swordplay in the same way that Gregor had once tutored him so many deaths ago. Honestly, it wasn¡¯t getting him any closer to the bottom of the Pit, but Simon enjoyed those quiet weeks as he rebuilt a relationship with a very familiar stranger.


    At least until the war arrived once more. This time, it wasn¡¯t the Duke¡¯s men that had come to ruin their peaceful life. It was the local Earl.


    Simon discussed it with the Baron over dinner one night when the rumors started to fly. Apparently, after the gods had seen fit to strike down the King¡¯s brother, the King died almost immediately, and some took that as a sign of disfavor from the gods. ¡°In the weeks since then, everything has started to come apart, at least according to certain merchants,¡± the Baron explained. ¡°All the nobles with a little power or a small army are apparently warring with themselves now, and Earl Greyden wants me to raise the banners and march with him on the capital.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t see how that can possibly end well,¡± Simon said.


    And he never would, either. He went with Baron Corwin to a parlay to discuss the terms under which he and the other Barons of the region would ally with him as the Earl made a play for the throne. It was an ugly, contentious affair on neutral ground near a crossroad.


    Each of the barons had been allowed to bring only a single bodyguard, and Simon went as Baron Corwin¡¯s. Sadly, even though he suspected a trap, he didn''t figure out what it was until it was too late.


    That night, when they reached an impasse, and the Barons demanded more guarantees about their rights, the Earl announced he was stepping outside to relieve himself so they could discuss their position among themselves. However, as soon as he was clear of the large pavilion tent they¡¯d been meeting in, dozens of crossbow bolts ripped through the canvas walls, striking everyone in attendance.


    Simon was hit three times, but still managed to mumble the words of healing through numb lips enough to stop his bleeding enough to draw his sword. Regardless, even calling down greater fire and force on his enemies, it wasn¡¯t enough to fight free of the trap. As a result, he died along with the Earl that had summoned them, all five barons in attendance, and most of the unit that had arrived after the negotiations had started to ambush them. It was a bloodbath, and Simon¡¯s last thoughts, beside how cold the sword piercing his liver was, was that he hoped this newly orphaned version of Gregor would be strong enough for whatever came next.

 Ch. 81 - Putting on a Show

    Simon wasn¡¯t sure what he¡¯d accomplished, but by the time he¡¯d prepped to go back down after a lazy morning spent contemplating it, he wasn¡¯t so sure it was time well spent. It was only just as he was about to descend again that he realized he could just check his experience and see what the mirror thought.


    ¡°Mirror, show me my character sheet,¡± Simon said, turning to regard the unhelpful artifact.


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 20


    Deaths: 36


    Experience Points: -991,832


    Skills: Archery [Above Average], Armor (light) [Great], Armor (medium) [Below Average], Athletics [Average], Cook [Average], Craft [Below Average], Deception [Below Average], Escape [Poor], Healing [Below Average], Investigate [Above Average], Maces [Average], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Average], Spears [Average], Spell Casting [Above Average], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Below Average], and Swords [Great].


    Words of Power: Gervuul (greater) Meiren (fire) Aufvarum (minor) Hyakk (healing) Vrazig (lightning) Dnarth (distant) Oonbetit (force) Zyvon (transfer) Gelthic (ice) Karesh (protection) Uuvellum (boundary) Barom (light) Delzam (cure)¡¯


    ¡°That¡¯s like¡­ 2,000 experience points I think. Sooo, marginally worthwhile, then,¡± he said with a shrug. ¡°What do you think, mirror? Was my last life worth it?¡±


    ¡®Every life is worth it,¡¯ it typed flatly.


    ¡°Yeah - really profound,¡± Simon laughed. ¡°Great work.¡±


    Then he was gone. He didn¡¯t know if he should bother to try that again or if he should just go deeper, but that was a question he could decide on after he killed some goblins.


    Simon made quick work of the floors as usual, and when he reached the door to the crypt of the skeleton knight, he paused. His attempts to make the world a better place with a strategic assassination had not only backfired, they¡¯d been entirely reversed. The very fact that he was standing here once more was proof that the whole thing never happened.


    ¡°Is it even worth it to keep trying?¡± Simon asked himself, noticing his breath fog in the cold air that radiated from the evil stairwell. He thought about the boy and the family and was grudgingly forced to decide, ¡°Yes, yes, it is.¡±


    This time, though, he was going to take it more seriously. He was going to go straight to the capital, try to resolve the issue, and then make it back to the Corwins before Gregor went into that damn cave with an amateur.


    Normally, Simon took the valley to the north because it was mostly a slow downhill walk, but knowing as much about the world as he did, he also knew it was several days out of the way. The best way was to go east through a pass he could see from here. The way was a little more treacherous, and it was uphill, but it would save him a lot of time, especially if he was going to make this trip on a regular basis.


    So, with another sigh, he started trudging uphill instead of down through the deep snow, vowing to learn how to make himself some snowshoes one day. Two hours later, just short of the pass, he found something he¡¯d never expected to find up here: a small village. No, he corrected himself, a small, starving village. From the looks of things, this place had never been prosperous, but now, the cabins with their sagging, split shingle roofs just looked sad, and when the half-starved men came into view, it looked like a penal colony or something.


    That was made all the sadder because he¡¯d found it just past a beautiful frozen waterfall that took his breath away and a large flat area that was almost certainly a frozen-over lake. While he found it interesting that he¡¯d never seen it before, even though it had been just around the corner from where he¡¯d hiked half a dozen times now, it was a challenge he was certainly not prepared for.


    ¡°Please, sir, do you have any food to spare?¡± an older man asked when Simon stopped to ask the name of the place.


    ¡°Of course,¡± he said, shrugging off his sack as he started to go through it to find the bread he was getting tired of eating anyway. It was only when he saw other people peeking out of the doors and through their shutters that he realized he didn¡¯t have enough food for everyone. ¡°You know what. Why don¡¯t you start a fire, and I¡¯ll go find¡­ something to roast or...¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve all tried hunting,¡± the man said. There was a note of desperation in his voice that made Simon think that the man thought he was going to bounce. ¡°It¡¯s just been a very tough winter, and¡­¡±


    ¡°I get it,¡± Simon said, vaguely annoyed that his shortcut was turning into a detour. He pulled out what he needed from his sack and handed the potatoes, turnips, and sausages to the man. ¡°This is for everyone, you understand? Make a nice thin soup and make sure the children are fed, and I¡¯ll try my luck anyway.¡±


    ¡°Bless you, sir,¡± a woman said, descending from her porch. ¡°We didn¡¯t think anyone was up through the pass this early yet and¡­ well, may the gods protect you.¡±


    Simon shrugged at that, handing out hunks of bread and bits of cheese to the children who came forward until he had none to give. Then he stacked up all his spare equipment and, taking his bow and his sword, he went out to look for something edible.


    Simon did not imagine that the hunting would be good up this high during this time of year. He briefly wondered how he would use a word of greater force to go dynamite fishing, but he decided against it. He also considered going back for the goblin corpses, but that was too disgusting for words.


    So instead, he wandered through the deep snow between the pine trees, hoping to find a deer or an elk, while he slowly lost the feeling in his toes. In the end, he found neither, but when he saw a mountain goat thirty feet up on a sheer granite rock face, he decided that would be enough, and he sent it tumbling to its death with a word of lesser force. Then he put it out of its misery with a swift knife to the throat, and after he gutted it, he dragged it back to the village.


    By then, the village was enjoying the soup, and a literal cheer erupted when he brought back the goat for them to roast. ¡°I¡¯m sorry it¡¯s not more,¡± he told them, but they wouldn¡¯t hear of it. Instead, they shared the last of their hard cider with him while people took turns asking him about his travels.


    Simon sat long enough by the fire to warm his toes, and he told them general things about his adventures, but he kept it pretty tame. In return, they told him about the small village of Maritin, and how the goblins and the winter were worse than ever, and that their herds had been decimated by both.


    It was pleasant, but he wasn¡¯t about to let himself be distracted. So, in the end, he told them, ¡°I¡¯d stay longer and hunt a few more goats or whatever for you, but I want to make it through the pass before the storm tomorrow. I¡¯ve got a war to stop.¡±


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    It was terser than Simon would have liked, but he could feel the clock ticking now. Some part of his mind knew that there were horrible things happening on every part of every level and that there was no way he could fix them all, but as he trudged through the snow, he thought he might be able to fix these two things, well, three. He was going to need to bring more potatoes next time. If there was a next time.


    ¡°Stop being so defeatist,¡± he told himself. ¡°This time, everything¡¯s going to work out. I¡¯m definitely going to lock everything in, and this will be the last time I¡¯m in this awful mountain range.¡±


    It sounded good, but he didn¡¯t believe it. He also wasn¡¯t completely sure that he saved himself any time this way. It was shorter, for sure, but the snow was much worse, and it took forever to get below the snow line.


    At the first inn he stayed at, he decided he needed to buy a horse to speed things up, but a wretched old nag was all they were willing to part with. He fumed silently at that but paid more than the animal was worth anyway.


    It wasn¡¯t like he needed the gold, after all. What he needed was time. Time to stop a war. Time to save Gregor before he went into those mines woefully unprepared. It was ironic, he decided, as he rode slowly down the muddy trade road: he was effectively immortal, but it always seemed like he was in a hurry.


    Eventually this mixture of boredom and urgency gave rise to an idea. It might be a terrible idea, he realized, but it was one that was worth trying.


    Simon had given a lot of thought to some of the other words of power that he hadn¡¯t yet used, but the one that interested him the most was Zyvon. Transfer wasn¡¯t really specific. He¡¯d seen it in sections about stealing the lives and souls of sacrifices in the infernal grimoire he¡¯d read, and he had no real interest in that sort of thing, but given that the whole structure of this magic seemed to be about life energy he was fairly certain that was the transfer it was referring to.


    That was what that creepy apprentice had been referring to, after all, wasn¡¯t it? He¡¯d spent most of his life with his spells and wanted to know the secret to refilling it.


    Simon tried it on the horse, visualizing his life flowing out of his body and into the beast. Minor transfer did nothing noticeable, but after he tried full-blown transfer, his mare looked much healthier. Well, she did once she calmed down. The effects of the spell spooked her, and he¡¯d had to hold on for dear life for a few minutes until she calmed down.


    That in itself was a good sign, though. Before that point, she wouldn¡¯t have had the energy to prance around like that and had been content to plod along for mile after endless mile.


    Simon patted himself on the back for a successful experiment, even if the increased speed was a very unwelcome reminder of how little riding agreed with him after a few hours. The only problem was that by the time he¡¯d arrived, he wasn¡¯t sure what he was supposed to do, exactly. Last time, he¡¯d killed the Duke, and that had caused another war. He¡¯d love to just try the same thing, but he couldn¡¯t. The Prince was a little too young to assassinate. So, he was going to have to do something clever. He just wasn¡¯t sure what.


    Simon spent the next day lazing around his inn, appreciating how nice it was not to walk all day and wishing that he could just talk to the kid and explain the facts of life to him or something. The third story of the castle was a little out of his reach, though. Or was it?


    Something about that idea refused to get out of his head, and by the following night, he had at least the outline of a plan. Before he could do anything, though, he¡¯d need something a little more ominous than his jeans and his boiled leather armor that was a little too snug to be called intimidating.


    Fortunately, that was a problem that could be fixed with a couple of gold coins, a tailor who was willing to work all night to get them, and some of the white face powder that the courtiers seemed to use so much of. It was a dumb plan, and he¡¯d never admit to anyone that he¡¯d been inspired by the ghost of Christmas Future in The Christmas Carol, but the worst thing that could happen would be that it wouldn¡¯t work, and he¡¯d have to try something else next time.


    The following night, after he spent the day practicing lesser light effects in his room, Simon got dressed up, and as soon as the moon set, he began scaling the wall to the Prince¡¯s room. Well, scaling was a little strong. It was more like he scrambled from rooftop to rooftop with words of lesser force, and then he used the same trick to leap over the castle wall, where he climbed a trellis from the second floor to the third floor.


    The whole time, he expected some guard or another to spot him, but they were incredibly lax. Why wouldn¡¯t they be? He thought to himself. Brin had not been at war with anyone in recent memory, and though the whole city held its breath about the King¡¯s impending death, nothing was going to happen until that was done.


    In fact, it was so easy to get to the Prince, Simon decided as he slipped through the window, that he was left to wonder why the man¡¯s uncle hadn¡¯t already assassinated him. If he was just going to take power anyway, it seemed kind of lazy.


    Before Simon woke up the twelve-year-old, he closed the curtains and ignited several small glows around the room to create a malevolent ambiance of flickering red lights in the darkened room behind him that were just bright enough to make it hard to see more than his pale face and dark wavering outline.


    Only once that was done did he wake the Prince by covering the boy¡¯s mouth with a gloved hand. For a moment, the boy tried to scream and thrash, but when Simon lit a small explosion of tiny flame-looking sparklers by muttering ¡°Barom,¡± the boy froze.


    ¡°Do you know who I am, child?¡± Simon said very seriously, feeling more than a little silly. Honestly, more than anything, he wished for a proper illusion spell, and it seemed ridiculous that he had to use light like this.


    ¡°But¡­but¡­ why would death come for me? It is my father who is sick!¡± he gasped. ¡°Take him instead!¡±


    Simon froze at that. He¡¯d expected many possible reactions, but not that one. He experienced a brief but powerful urge to strangle the boy in his bed like the monster he was, but he resisted.


    Murdering kids is still wrong, Simon, he told himself. But if he wants to be a little shit, that might be useful too.


    Simon adjusted his tactic slightly. He¡¯d been planning to tell the Prince about the tragedy that would befall his kingdom, but the boy seemed less interested in that than he would have thought.


    ¡°I¡¯ll soon be coming here for all of you,¡± he growled, ¡°When your father dies next week, your kingdom will collapse into chaos as you and your uncle fight for the throne. I¡¯ve come to thank you. Thousands will die, and all of those souls will be mine.¡±


    ¡°My uncle?¡± The Prince asked. ¡°He wouldn¡¯t¡­ he couldn¡¯t¡­ the throne is mine by right!¡±


    ¡°Maybe, young princeling, but you are not strong enough to hold it. You will die in the war that follows, along with everyone foolish enough to serve you, and Brin will break apart into smaller nations as a result.¡± Simon smiled at the look of horror that dawned on the child as he considered the words of the monster whispering in his bedroom.


    ¡°But, I¡­ you can¡¯t¡­ this is my Kingdom!¡± the boy said, coming close to sobbing.


    ¡°There is only one way out for you,¡± Simon-pretending-to-be-Death gloated, ¡°but it is much too hard for you.¡± As Simon finished speaking, he caused another cascade of phantom sparks to dance around the face of the frightened boy.


    ¡°Tell me, spirit,¡± the Prince pleaded. ¡°Tell me what I must do!¡±


    ¡°You have only a single way out of this,¡± Simon cautioned him. ¡°You must go to him before the day the King passes and beg him to take the Regency until your eighteenth birthday. That is the only way that you will ever live long enough to see the crown.¡±


    ¡°But if I do that, my uncle will never give up the power he¡¯s¡ª¡± the Prince started to argue back, but Simon stopped him.


    ¡°As I told you, it is impossible for you to prevent this,¡± Simon said with a smile as he rose to his full height and whispered the words for minor force to make his cape billow out dramatically. ¡°And for that, I thank you for the bounty to come.¡±


    Then, before the Prince could counter, Simon turned and fled. He opened the windows with a single motion and then jumped heedlessly into the night. The Prince didn¡¯t know he¡¯d use force magic to keep from breaking his legs, and as long as he managed to escape the castle unseen, the words he¡¯d uttered tonight might just be enough to change the man and, thus, the path of history forever.

 Ch. 82 - Doing Things Right

    Simon left Liepzen the next day after a little shopping to replenish his supplies and buy some good saddlebags to carry them in. By the time he left town and was riding toward Slany, he was almost two full weeks ahead of schedule compared to his last trip.


    That was good, but it was overshadowed by the bad news that he had no idea whether his little amateur theater production had been successful. There was simply no way to say what that spoiled brat would do. Simon could only brood about it as he sat in the saddle and tried to imagine the consequences. He¡¯d know in a month or two. He always did, but until then, there was no way to know if he¡¯d made things worse or better.


    When he reached the seat of Lord Corwin¡¯s barony, he stayed at the inn as he usually did and spent the next couple of days buying men drinks and boasting about his exploits until he caught the attention of the Baron just as he¡¯d done the first time. It was funny to Simon because the last time he¡¯d been in this situation, he¡¯d been trying to avoid gaining too much attention, and this time, he¡¯d been actively seeking it out, but it hadn¡¯t seemed to move the needle much. It was enough to make him wonder just how much causality really mattered and how much some things were up to fate.


    He told some of the same stories as last time, though he toned out the ones that they¡¯d found unbelievable before and focused on his mercenary work against the goblins and the centaurs. That was enough to get him invited to the Baron¡¯s study, where the infestation of the silver mines was explained while he patiently pretended not to know any of that, and he was invited to purge them.


    Somehow, this moment had seemed more interesting the first time Simon had lived it, but then, in his mind, it had been one of the first times that a total stranger had considered him a hero. Now, he¡¯d had so many of these conversations that it was just another job.


    Well, not just any other job. It was one of the most important escort quests the Pit had to offer as far as he was concerned, and he wasn¡¯t going to fuck that up.


    In fact, this time, he was harder on Gregor than before. As ungainly as Simon was at his current weight, at least he could still move in his leather armor, but he made his young apprentice struggle and squirm in his plate mail until even he agreed that it wasn¡¯t suitable for the mines.


    ¡°Fine!¡± the young Viscount told him as Simon helped the young man switch his armor out for the leathers of one of the guards. ¡°But if I¡¯m not wearing my plate mail, I don¡¯t see why I should wear anything at all.¡±


    Simon smiled at that. He understood that mindset far too well at this point. But he didn¡¯t lecture the boy. Instead, he simply said, ¡°The mouth of a goblin is a dirty place. What wounds they leave usually get infected. Better they get a mouth of cow leather instead, just in case.¡±


    Not that they¡¯d be going into there, of course. That was just asking for trouble, and Simon smoked them out the same way he did before. They spent the better part of an hour stacking dry and green wood in the mouth of the cave, and then they lit it.


    ¡°So, do we just wait for the goblins to come out then?¡± Gregor asked, stepping back away from the flames as they grew smokier.


    ¡°We¡¯d be waiting a long time, I think,¡± Simon said, looking at the blaze they¡¯d created. ¡°You see how the smoke goes into the mine? That means there¡¯s airflow from the vent shafts.¡±


    ¡°Well, of course, there is,¡± the boy shrugged. ¡°How else would the miners breathe.¡±


    ¡°Breathing is good,¡± Simon answered, ¡°But do you think anything might be able to climb down those shafts and make a nice home?¡±


    Slowly, Gregor connected the dots, and Simon took his time, letting him guide them from vent hole to vent hole with nothing but his sense of smell and a little prodding.


    When they reached the last one, Gregor asked, ¡°Well, still no goblins. What now?¡±


    ¡°Well, we keep looking for smoke until we find them, I expect,¡± Simon shrugged. ¡°I think I smell more from this way.¡±


    He didn¡¯t, of course. He just knew where the real nest was, and a few minutes later, they were fighting them by the river. Only this time, Simon didn¡¯t charge in. He let Gregor do that, playing more of a role in the fight than he did the first time.


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    Last time, Simon had been worried about how to keep the young man safe, but this time, he had both a much better understanding of the lad¡¯s talent with a sword and a lot more experience with a bow. With a few arrows, picking off a runner or killing one of the monsters that was sneaking up on Gregor was the easiest thing in the world.


    By the end of it, they¡¯d killed eight, and once the two of them had finished filling a sack with goblin heads, Simon showed him the warren that they¡¯d come out of. He hadn¡¯t known about this the first time until days later, but he thought it would suitably impress the kid to point out the dozens of corpses that lay just inside where they¡¯d suffocated.


    ¡°Wow¡­¡± Gregor exclaimed, not sure what else to say.


    At dinner with his father that night, that was the point that young Gregor repeated the most. ¡°If we¡¯d just charged in, then we would have been outnumbered twenty to one, but thanks to Sir Jackoby¡¯s experience, we only had to fight a few.¡±


    Simon let the young man boast on his behalf and simply enjoyed the moment. If getting assigned this escort quest had felt more mediocre than before, then seeing it end so well felt amazing. Of course, his father, Gregor Corwin the Second, was thrilled by all of this and offered Simon a full purse of silver and promises of keeping him on retainer.


    Unlike his time spent with Lord Raithewait, Simon already knew that this time would be spent mostly just making himself available to spar with his sons and tell stories every week or so over glasses of wine, so it was easy to agree to. Mostly, though, Simon worried about when the news of the King¡¯s death would arrive in Slany.


    By now, it was something that had happened. It always happened, of course. The only question was how long it would take the news to travel and what consequences there would be as the world learned of it.


    It wasn¡¯t until the following week when a traveling tinker let the tavern know that the King was dead. ¡°I¡¯ll tell ya true, from a man that heard it in the capital for hisself. Our old King, Gods rest his soul, has passed, and his son has bent the knee to his father¡¯s brother, the Duke of the North, Lord Brin himself will stand as Regent until the time comes for the young Prince to ascend to the throne.¡±


    Despite the fact that it was technically sad news, the people still celebrated that night. The next day, the Baron held a somber ceremony and then went to the capital with his son, leaving Simon behind to guard the rest of his family while he paid his respects and swore allegiance to the Prince and his Regent.


    That worried Simon, of course, but he wasn¡¯t about to demand to go. It was probably fine the way it was, after all. To him, the news finally allowed him to exhale a breath that he hadn¡¯t even realized he¡¯d been holding until now, and he relaxed, splitting his time between teaching Gregor¡¯s younger brother how to better use a shield and documenting some of his theories on magical symbols in a blank journal he¡¯d purchased in the capital.


    He didn¡¯t have any particular insights beyond some of the symbols that sometimes haunted his dreams, but he was hopeful that when he left this level and went deeper, he could get another look at the Golem master¡¯s grimoire and try to draw some more interesting conclusions.


    Still, he remembered the sigils he¡¯d used to inscribe his flaming sword well enough, and he studied those. The only part he didn¡¯t draw was the symbol he¡¯d used to bind the circuit to himself with blood, turning himself into a spiritual battery. That symbol felt a little dangerous, given how quickly it had reduced him to an old man last time.


    Simon also planned to draw the symbols in the church this time, too. That level seemed easily solvable if he just put in a little work. It was just dangerous as hell. ¡°It¡¯s like one of those movies where you don¡¯t know if you should cut the red wire or the blue wire,¡± he told himself as he sketched. ¡°A chalk mark here and you open the gates of hell wide, but a chalk mark there, and you slam them shut, or is it the other way around?¡±


    Everyone returned from the capital a few weeks later, safe and sound, which was cause for yet another party. Simon had been planning on leaving shortly after that, but the longer he stayed, the harder that became. He was happy here. Happier than he¡¯d been in¡­ well, since her, and it was hard to let that go.


    So he stuck around as spring turned into summer and summer turned into fall. He continued to sketch his runes and try to understand the linkages and the relationships. One thing he learned in time was that even though he didn¡¯t remember all of the runes from the book, playing with them enough would make the symbols come to him sometimes. It was like just understanding the sound was glimpsing some larger reality or meaning.


    Usually, that required a mixture of intense focus and at least a little drinking like he was some kind of two-bit clairvoyant, and the longer he spent in the service to the Corwins, the less interested he was in doing anything but just living.


    He helped bring the harvest in that year and even started to learn the basics of brewing from the innkeeper because he¡¯d expressed an interest one day over dinner. That was a different and altogether more interesting alchemy. Haranah, the barmaid, had even dropped a few hints. She was a pretty strawberry blonde, but of course, he wasn¡¯t ready for that sort of thing. Simon just focused on integrating himself into the community, learning new things, and helping those around him for months.


    In time, they stopped bringing up Simon¡¯s strange name or his foreign accent. Truthfully, he was about the happiest he¡¯d ever been the day the rider from the Earl came through town, letting them know that the Prince had died under mysterious circumstances and the regent was claiming the throne for himself. Simon¡¯s heart sank like a stone at the crowded table, even as those around him began to whip themselves up into a frenzy.


    Not only did this mean that the war he¡¯d worked so hard to avert was almost certainly back on now. It meant that Simon had sent that spoiled kid to his death with his stupid prophecy. The King was definitely going to have to die on fucking principle now.

 Ch. 83 - Mud, Blood, and Traitors

    It was the last thing that Simon wanted to spend his time doing, but there was no denying that it needed to be done. It seemed that once the King was dead, war was inevitable, no matter how much he might try to prevent that. So, since he had no way to keep the King breathing, and he¡¯d definitely had a hand in creating this mess, he figured that he might as well travel with his favorite family to go avenge the death of the dead man¡¯s son. Along the way, he did his best to help Gregor and his younger brother prepare for everything that was going to happen next.


    He¡¯d thought that the difficulties in keeping both of them and their father safe, even in fancy plate mail, would be the worst part, but that turned out to be fine. In skirmish after skirmish, they managed to distinguish themselves as the growing army pushed toward the capital.


    No, the real problems turned out to be the weather and the company. Not the soldiers, of course; Simon had spent enough time around their sort over the last few lives that, with the exception of the Corwin boys, he found he preferred it. There was a steady rhythm to their jokes and comfort to be found around a fire with men whom you¡¯d fought beside.


    It was their Lords that were the real problem.


    First, it was Earl Greyden. He¡¯d joined them short of the crossroads after the first major battle that Baron Corwin¡¯s men faced, where they crossed swords with the Earl of Dunnin¡¯s men over a river crossing. The Earl¡¯s men had relied on the river and several ranks of longbowmen for their defense. So, when a few volleys of arrows did less than nothing thanks to a little whispered force magic, they were forced to retreat, and Baron Corwin took the field.


    The Earl of Greyden, the Baron¡¯s direct Lord, arrived immediately after the fighting was done. To Simon it was almost suspicious how quickly the man had arrived, and he couldn¡¯t decide if it was because he wanted Baron Corwin to lose so he could swoop in and take the credit or if the Earl would have joined his neighbor on the winning side and slaughtered his own bannerman for his lands.


    Either way, Simon had not forgotten what the man¡¯s assassins had done to him with their crossbows, and for a few days, he considered taking him out on principle were it not for one of the nobles that joined them as their ever-growing army approached the villages on the outskirts of Liepzen.


    Until then, they¡¯d been joined by a number of nobles who were outraged by what the Duke had done to the Prince under his care. Basically, the whole of the southern counties had risen up against the north, which remained largely loyal to Duke Brin.


    Then Baron Raithewait and his army showed up. The man was at least twenty years younger than the last time Simon had seen him, but it was unmistakably him. He still had the same calculating eyes and aquiline nose.


    The man barely bothered to look at Simon, even after Baron Corwin introduced him. Why would he?


    Simon spent the rest of the day trying to convince himself that taking the time to set the man¡¯s tent on fire that night was not in his best interests. That was the first night he got drunk, too. He spent enough time badmouthing the nobility that many of the men he sat with gave him uncomfortable looks and encouraged him to go sleep it off.


    None of those events stopped them from either battle at Liepzen. The first was held on the freshly plowed fields of the southern hills, which they easily won, and the second was at the walls of the city, where they were repulsed. Simon spent most of his time dragging Baron Corwin out from underneath his horse and back to camp.


    He spent the night stabilizing him and felt good that he might pull through, but his leg had been crushed, and he¡¯d probably lose it. Simon felt bad about that, but he wasn¡¯t about to resist exposing himself or burning out his voice with the words of greater power that would be needed to fix it.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what we¡¯d do without you,¡± Gregor said after Simon finally emerged from the tent covered in the blood of the boy¡¯s father.


    ¡°We all do what we can,¡± Simon said, sitting down beside Gregor. He was completely unprepared for the hug that followed, but he took it in stride, and the two sat there for some time.


    Afterward, when Simon went to the Baron¡¯s peers to report the man¡¯s condition, he found them arguing about whether or not they¡¯d made their point and if they should sue for peace under favorable conditions or if they should press for further advantage. Simon said nothing about any of that. They wouldn¡¯t have listened to a commoner. Inside, though, he was disgusted.


    So many lives are being spent for what everyone agrees is a just cause, and as soon as we fail to win a single battle, they consider giving up? He thought to himself.


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    ¡°Cynics and snakes, all of them,¡± he grumbled to himself as he wandered off.


    They agreed to try one more time with a feint at the north gate while they deployed the battering ram they¡¯d just finished building to the southern gate for a second attempt to breach the inner city. Simon thought splitting their forces up was about the dumbest thing in the world, but he went south and made sure that the surviving Corwin¡¯s went with him. He could no longer leave them alone in their current company.


    The battle the next morning was brief. Not because the soldiers that were with him were exceptional, or because the ram was particularly well-built. It was because, on the second strike, Simon used the words of greater force to detonate the timber that barred the door so violently that all the defenders that had been standing near it were turned to hamburger by the shards and flinders.


    No one had seen it, though, which made for the best magic in his opinion these days. As much as he loved the fire spell, it was a bit too showy to use around people who wanted to lynch him or worse. In all the time Simon had been around these men, both in Slany and on the field of battle, he¡¯d never quite managed to work out why they hated magic so much.


    He wasn¡¯t even sure that they were hiding something from him at this point. It just seemed to be a superstition, the way that the church had accused everyone who did things they didn¡¯t like of witchcraft. He couldn¡¯t blame them completely. He imagined that someone like Baron Raithewait or Earl Greyden with this power would become more monstrous than they already were. It was better not to tempt fate there.


    He had no idea how well the forces to the north were doing, but he didn¡¯t care. Instead, they pressed their advantage and moved forward. The Baron that Earl Greyden had left in charge at this gate shouted for everyone to hold their position, but Simon ignored that and had the man with the horn blow an advance instead as Duke Brin¡¯s sparse troops retreated in a panic.


    If they stopped now, then their enemy would just regroup behind the walls of the castle, and then the calculating weasels in charge of Simon¡¯s army would definitely trade victory for a few thousand acres of their neighbor''s land or some other pittance, and he hadn¡¯t fought his way across half of the kingdom of Brin for that.


    At this point, it was a race. Simon ran near the front of his men, leaving behind those burdened by heavy armor or cowardice as he moved ever closer to the men who were running from him. When he reached them, he settled for pushing them down as he tried to push farther and farther ahead. What he was doing bordered on foolhardy, but he didn¡¯t care. It felt like the right thing to do, given everything that had happened up until now, and that was all that mattered to him.


    By the time he reached the drawbridge, it was already a few feet above the ground and rising very slowly. Simon was way ahead of his own side now and completely on his own, but he didn¡¯t care. He could feel his bloodlust flowing through him. It wasn¡¯t quite as powerful as being in the zone on an RTS or an FPS, but it was still intense.


    At the end of the drawbridge, a pair of men tried to stop him, but he slid cleanly between them. The man on the left ended up being pushed into the moat with the words of lesser force where he would likely drown wearing all that steel, and the one on the right got Simon¡¯s dagger in his throat and fell there while his lungs filled up with blood.


    Then, with a magic-assisted leap, Simon jumped five feet into the air, pulled himself up onto the rising bridge, and ran down it to face the remaining defenders. What he was doing was silly. Part of him knew that now. Eight on one plus the archers on the wall sending quarrels in his direction on a pretty regular basis. He was pretty clearly screwed, but he wasn¡¯t going to accept losses. Not anymore. He might not be able to figure out how to beat this game yet, but he could still win every level.


    ¡°Karesh Oonbetit,¡± he whispered as he ran down the draw bridge.


    Force protection. He wasn¡¯t entirely sure it would do what he wanted, but it was a word he needed to experiment with more. So, he imagined a semicircle of force floating in front of him to protect him from the flurry of projectiles coming at him.


    It seemed to work, mostly. Nothing struck Simon until he got close to the wall. That was when someone hit him in the back under his left shoulder blade with a bolt before he reached his enemy. That sucked because he wouldn¡¯t be able to pull it out and heal it without help, but he ignored it as best he could.


    Instead, Simon barked, ¡°Oonbetit,¡± as he leaped into the air toward his waiting foes.


    The word of force wasn¡¯t directed at them, though. It was directed at the taut chain attached to the captain that was slowly pulling up the drawbridge. A word of force wasn¡¯t a lot. It was more than a single blacksmith¡¯s blow, though, and that was all it took to mangle that link enough for it to come undone with all the tension it was currently enduring.


    The chain parted with a terrible noise and swung violently away from the wall. Splitting apart half of the men that faced him in a vicious arc of steel that surprised everyone as the drawbridge started to crash back down behind him.


    Simon was at a disadvantage here despite all of those efforts. It was still four against one, which would have normally been doable, but he couldn¡¯t really raise his shield, so he was forced to fight far more defensively than he would have preferred.


    Still, he didn¡¯t need to kill all four of them, he reminded himself. He just had to hold the line here for another minute or two so that everyone on his side could catch up. After that, he could have someone yank out the blasted bolt, and he¡¯d be practically as good as new.


    At least, that¡¯s what he thought until the cauldron of boiling tar somewhere above his head in the gatehouse was dumped on him. Simon had smelled the acrid pot somewhere, but he hadn¡¯t put two and two together until he felt the first drips of molten tar drip onto him. By then, it was too late.


    Simon opened his mouth to shout a word of protection, but as the hot tar blistered his skin on contact and splashed across his body, all he could do was scream in agony. It was just hot enough to be painful but not hot enough to kill him, and all he could do was suffer until one of the enemy soldiers was kind enough to put him out of his misery.

 Ch. 84 - Special Delivery

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m never doing that again.¡± Those were Simon''s first words when he opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling. Charging the drawbridge had been awesome in the heat of the moment, but maybe daring the enemy to fight him twenty or thirty-on-one hadn¡¯t been the best idea.


    ¡°Mirror, show me my experience and make a note that I shouldn¡¯t forget about the boiling tar in Liepzen castle again.¡±


    ¡®Of course,¡¯ it replied as Simon sat up and reached for the same tired bottle of wine as he reviewed the new data.


    ¡®Experience Points: -987,341¡¯


    ¡°So last time it was 2,000 experience points in a couple of months, and this time it was 4,000 experience in close to six months,¡± Simon said to himself as he considered the number. ¡°Not exactly linear, is it?¡±


    The mirror didn¡¯t respond to that question, but he continued to mull it as he started getting ready. A lot of his time had been used in very similar ways in both cases. So, did that mean that the war was bad for experience or simply less good than leading a quieter life?


    It might not have been either, he realized. He might have simply gotten more from saving Gregor, and the rest had been a wash. The only way he¡¯d ever really know for sure would be to conduct very controlled experiments where he went and lived the same month over and over again and compared the results, and that sounded truly awful.


    At least this time, what he had to do wasn¡¯t in doubt. Well, whether or not he¡¯d give the whole try-to-stop-a-war thing another shot was up for debate. That seemed to be a complete waste of time. One thing that wasn¡¯t, though, was that there were some people who needed to be fed, and he knew just where to get some food.


    Simon dispatched the rats on the first level, and then, one bag at a time, he transferred the remainder through the door to the trap floor. Once that was done, he stopped and tried to decide if it was really worth it. 4 trips through the levels to carry all this, and then somehow he¡¯d have to drag it through the snow?


    ¡°Maybe just one would be enough,¡± he said to himself, but he knew it wouldn¡¯t. There was at least a month before the snows melted, and something like 40 mouths to feed in that village. They¡¯d need every scrap of food he could bring them and more, probably.


    So grudgingly, Simon killed all the bats and tripped all the traps before he brought each bag of lumpy potatoes and moldering turnips to the goblin cave. That gave the little beasties ample warning that something was amiss, and fighting them took twice as long as usual, but Simon got through it with no more than a couple scrapes and one nasty cut.


    After that was harder. With no more than the rope he carried and a small hatchet, he had to turn a couple small pine saplings into a sledge so he could drag all of these supplies uphill to Maritin. In theory, that seemed simple enough, but between the unexpected goblin attack that night and actually trying to build something that was way outside of his meager experience, it quickly turned into three days of his life he¡¯d never get back.


    Simon didn¡¯t mind fighting goblins at this point. It was kind of fun even when it was on a familiar playing field, but to do it when woken up from a sound sleep because one of the fuckers was trying to rip his throat out in the night? That was awful, and he made sure to sleep with the bonfire between him and the tunnel deeper into the cave after he¡¯d finished crushing their mushy little skulls.


    To make matters worse, by the time he was finally ready, the snow storm arrived, so by the time he was finally ready, he was forced to spend another day in that cave waiting for another attack that never came.


    Simon took advantage of that time as best he could, and by the time the weather cleared up, he¡¯d made himself a rough set of snowshoes out of green pine branches. They helped somewhat, but dragging his sledge full of potatoes to the starving village was still awful in his bloated, out-of-shape body, and in the end, he opted to take a shortcut across the frozen lake just to make it that much easier as he huffed and gasped across the snowy ground.


    ¡°If I hear it cracking, I can just refreeze it,¡± he told himself.


    Really, he didn¡¯t care if he died this way. It would probably be easier than hauling the damn potatoes. He definitely wasn¡¯t going to do that again.


    He didn¡¯t think he¡¯d have to, of course. He was pretty sure his extra night in the cave had flushed out the remaining goblins, and that had been the missing piece of the puzzle. Well, Either that was the missing piece, or this food was. He was increasingly sure that the King¡¯s death and the war had nothing to do with it.


    Maritin was even bleaker than it had been the first time under the new blanket of snow. This time, when he came into town, there was no one to greet him. That didn¡¯t stop him from going up to the old man who had done the cooking last time and pounding on the door.


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    ¡°Brannin, get out here and start boiling some water,¡± he said, shoving a crust of bread in the man¡¯s face. ¡°This soup isn¡¯t going to make itself.¡±


    Simon went hunting just like before, and this time, he was able to find a fine stag that was practically waiting for him when he went looking for those mountain goats again. Simon brought it down with a shot through the lungs and then cursed his luck for having to drag it a quarter mile back to the village. Still, it was easier than the sledge had been.


    The subdued villagers were more lively when he returned, and food loosened their tongues the same as it did the first time. ¡°After the late snow, I thought we was done for,¡± Vermina explained as she greedily slurped her bowl before filling up another one for her oldest.


    He was celebrated as a hero, but he still didn¡¯t plan on staying more than a night. He was sure that a hundred pounds of root vegetables and almost as much venison would be enough to last them until that wretched pass thawed open.


    That night, Simon stayed on Brannin¡¯s floor, where he put his bedroll down near the man¡¯s fire. Several of the villagers had offered him their bed, and Vermina had offered him her children¡¯s bed, but he declined. Instead, he lay awake on the hard wooden floor, wondering what he should do.


    Honestly, he was getting pretty tired of causing new and more interesting wars and wasn¡¯t sure he had it in him to do that one more time. He certainly wasn¡¯t assassinating the Duke or tricking the Prince again. Not only had both experiences left a bad taste in his mouth, but neither had made things any better.


    By morning, he decided he had to do something, though, and then he had to go save Gregor one more time. If he really had solved this level by killing the goblins, then how could he lock in such an awful fate for his young friend.


    He¡¯d already tried to tip the scales in favor of both sides to avoid conflict, without success. What was he supposed to do now. Simon pondered that long and hard on his trip through the pass, but it wasn¡¯t until he¡¯d repurchased his nag and decided that he should make her a little faster that he finally knew what it was he should try next.


    The best answer would of course be the King¡¯s survival. No death, would mean no power struggle. He¡¯d considered healing the man initially, but magic could only do so much where old age was concerned, at least, that¡¯s what he¡¯d thought at the time. Just because he cured whatever ailed the man this time didn¡¯t mean he wouldn¡¯t die of pneumonia next month.


    Age, not illness, was the root of the problem; he was sure of it, and now he had a tool if he wanted to use it. Simon spent the afternoon waiting to decide what the consequences of that might be, but in the end, he decided to go for it. The Prince would certainly make for a poor ruler in a few years, but would he do more damage than a war for the crown would do? That didn¡¯t seem likely. Even Nero would do less damage than burning the kingdom down and starting from scratch.


    Besides, he reasoned as he got ready to breach the castle come nightfall, perhaps if the boy had his father a little longer, he¡¯d grow up into a better ruler one day and surprise them all.


    Breaking into the castle was easier to do the second time than it had been the first. A light drizzle made the guards loathe to leave their little shelters, and Simon easily made his way to the King¡¯s quarters, which were on the same floor as his son¡¯s but on the opposite side of the building.


    The harder part was actually getting the king alone. Some things like healing worked much better with touch, but he wasn¡¯t climbing through the window as long as the doctors and servants were fussing with the comatose man, who was practically a corpse already.


    Simon shivered out there in the rain for hours, and at one point, he was almost caught when someone came over and opened the window. Once it became apparent that he hadn¡¯t been seen, and Simon could smell the man, he almost vomited.


    The cloying scent of flowers and incense billowed out of the room, and beneath that, there was a sickly sweetness that was absolutely repellant. One did not cover up the other; it merely magnified it by contrast, and Simon wondered if his initial thesis had been correct. Was the man simply old, or was this a longer-term health problem, like diabetes or gout? Simon didn¡¯t know. He also didn¡¯t know how well his magic would work on chronic conditions. He hadn''t had to learn about such things since health class, a long, long time ago.


    Shortly before dawn, Simon finally got his chance, as the footman who had been watching him for the last few hours slipped away for a break. Simon darted into the room and peeled back the blankets to reveal infected wounds that had almost certainly been caused by physicians who had decided that bleeding the dying man was the best treatment, along with open bed sores and worse.


    He dealt with each of these in turn with a few whispered words of minor healing, but even once his body was whole, Simon still didn¡¯t like the rattling sound of the man¡¯s breathing. He used the words of both cure and healing on the King after that, but the man''s pallor and breathing improved only marginally.


    ¡°Old age it is, then,¡± Simon muttered, watching the gray-haired man stir in his sleep.


    With the sounds of distant footsteps echoing up the hallway, Simon decided to go for a word of greater transfer. ¡°Gervuul Zyvon,¡± he intoned quietly for the first time, noting that the words hurt worse than usual as he felt energy flood out of his body, leaving him weak in the knees.


    Helades told him that a greater word cost him a year of his life, but to be honest, it felt like more than that this time. Still, whatever it had cost Simon was worth it. After all, he was only a death away from getting it all back again.


    Color returned to the King¡¯s cheeks, and his breathing eased, but thankfully, his gray hair and wrinkles remained. Suddenly becoming young might have been rather hard to explain. The man began to stir as the servant approached the door, but Simon had already retreated to the window and was bounding off into the last shadows of twilight. With any luck, he could get back to his inn before dawn and snag a few hours of sleep before he had to start riding to Slany.

 Ch. 85 - A Quiet Life

    Simon arrived in Slany on the very day that Gregor and the fop of a mercenary that had almost gotten him killed the last time were heading into the mine, and he only heard about that because the man was bragging in the inn about all the silvers he was going to get for letting the young boy do all the work.


    ¡°Never get paid to work if you can get paid for someone else to do the heavy lifting for you!¡± he bragged. ¡°That¡¯s what my dad taught me, and it¡¯s worked out pretty great so far.¡±


    Essentially, he was already too late, and his heart sank. ¡°Maybe you should try smoking ''em out,¡± Simon suggested helpfully after he introduced himself and bought the man a drink to try to get on his good side.


    ¡°Nah,¡± Nedden said with a shrug as he downed the mug in two quick swallows. ¡°Hauling that much firewood is too much trouble for a handful of gobs, you know?¡±


    ¡°Well, the boy is inexperienced,¡± Simon continued, ¡°It might be safer if you¡ª¡±


    ¡°Bah!¡± the other mercenary said, wiping the foam from his mouth with a dirty sleeve. ¡°The boy¡¯s got bloody plate mail - greenskins ain''t about to get through that, now, are they?¡±


    The mercenary looked around, and the other men who were in there at that time of morning gave him grudging support. There were a few nods, but Simon couldn¡¯t help but see some of his worst features in the mercenary. Not only was he fat enough that he obviously had trouble squeezing into his breastplate, but he was overwhelmingly confident, and it didn¡¯t seem to have any basis.


    Simon dropped the subject, not sure what he should do. Murdering this asshole before he caused any real harm would probably be the best answer, but that would have been wrong, even if Simon was quite sure that no one would miss him. Well, that and some part of him felt sympathy for a man that was obviously more talk than walk.


    After another few moments, he resolved to get the man too drunk to fight. So, he ordered a round for the bar as he regaled all of them with stories about goblin shamans that were so connected to the forces of evil that they could use fire magic.


    ¡°I¡¯ve heard that before,¡± one of the farmers chimed in. ¡°But I don¡¯t know anyone that claims to have seen it with their own eyes or nothing.¡±


    Simon was about to brag about that when the boy and a couple of his father''s men came into the bar, foiling Simon¡¯s plan. While it was painful to see the eyes of someone he knew so well slide off him as if he was nothing but a stranger, it was less painful than realizing that he hadn¡¯t seen either of the young men who were accompanying Gregor in the timeline where he¡¯d healed his arm.


    Suddenly, the whole story clicked into place. The uninjured man standing with the noose around his throat, the young mortally injured boy, and two missing guards. The only one that was going to survive this was the coward, and he wouldn¡¯t survive this for long. Everyone else was walking into a trap with a fraud that they thought was an expert.


    Simon cringed at how closely that description fit his first visit to town. If Simon had gone into the silver mine with his charge or accepted the Baron¡¯s men, history very well could have played out in exactly the same way, with an adventurer who didn¡¯t know as much as they claimed to leading the boy to his doom.


    There were probably reflections to be made there on the nature of reality and time travel, but Simon didn¡¯t have time for that just now. Instead, he turned to the group of men leaving the bar and said, ¡°If you need one more sword, I¡¯m game.¡±


    ¡°Four is more than sufficient, I would think,¡± Nedden said quickly. He might have acted confident, but Simon could see in his eyes that this was all about the silver, and he didn¡¯t want to cut anyone else in.


    He wanted to say he¡¯d do it for free, but when Gregor appraised Simon for a moment, he froze up. The boy didn¡¯t know him, but for a moment, it seemed like he did, but then it was over. Gregor was barely 16, and Simon had to admit he probably looked like shit at the pace he¡¯d been traveling. So, instead of taking him seriously, he deferred to the man his father had hired, then he turned and left.


    That only complicated things further. Trying to chase after them would only make Simon look pathetic, which was definitely not how he wanted to start their relationship. So he didn¡¯t. He sat there, nursing a beer while he tried to figure out what to do next while the men around him gossiped about how, they didn¡¯t think this was going to end well.


    ¡°Grown men die to goblins all the time,¡± the barkeep said, ¡°I don¡¯t see why the Baron is letting his son face them.¡±


    ¡°The boy¡¯s got to grow up sooner or later,¡± another man said. ¡°He can¡¯t grow up to be half the man his Grandfather was if Lord Corwin coddles him.¡±


    As the discussion grew more heated, Simon could almost see where this was going, and a few more things fell into place. The only way that the Viscount would survive or that anyone would know that the warrior who was supposed to guard him had fled was if a few men got riled up enough to go check on them. In a couple of hours, there would be a mob of aging farmers and out-of-work miners heading down to handle things, but that would already be too late. They might save his young friend¡¯s life, but everything else¡­


    Simon slammed his glass down and stormed out of the bar. He started following the group discreetly from a distance. He wasn¡¯t planning to accompany them to the mine, though. Instead, he cut into the woods and watched as they got closer.


    Then, once they were inside the mine, he waited. Simon had been all over these woods in the past few lives. While he might not know every inch, he certainly knew where the ventilation shafts were, and he waited at the first one for signs of the group¡¯s approach.


    There was the sound of battle once, but it was over quickly, and by the time they passed the ventilation shaft, they were still in good shape. So Simon followed them slowly toward the second, a couple of hundred yards further on.


    It was there he heard the sounds of a real fight. Even knowing that charging into battle in an unfamiliar place was a terrible idea, he still didn¡¯t hesitate. As soon as he heard the first human scream, he leaped down into the darkness.


    Simon lit the torch with a word in midair as he pulled out his dagger with the other. Trying to draw his long sword in the tight confines of the vertical shaft would have been very ill-advised; it would have been impossible.


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    Instead, he did the best with what he had and whispered ¡°Aufvarum Oonbetit,¡± and used the words of lesser force to slow his fall so that he landed smoothly in the dusty mining tunnel that had been built to follow a winding vein 30 feet below ground, and it just so happened that there where three goblins directly under him when he landed.


    Simon crushed one beneath his boots, narrowly dodging the upright spear that had almost impaled him. Then, without hesitating, he drove his dagger deep into the skull on his right, jabbed his torch in the face of the goblin on his left, and then, stepping back, drew his sword and looked for his next opponent.


    There were other goblins here. Loads of them, but there were neither the people he was looking for nor their corpses, which meant that the Viscount¡¯s party hadn¡¯t made it this far.


    Simon grinned at that. If there was no one around to see, then he could still use magic, and even though the goblins licked their lips as they saw the easy target they¡¯d found, he unleashed his first spell.


    ¡°Gervuul Vrazig!¡± he barked, sending a streak of blue chain lighting through the majority of the enemies he faced with a greater word.


    Everywhere his magic struck, the goblins flopped over or sank bonelessly to the floor, but even as those that were still living looked around in alarm, he was charging them with his sword in hand. Just like that, what should have been a sure thing for the greenskins became a complete rout.


    Simon was stabbed a couple of times, but the little bastards didn¡¯t hit anything serious, and soon enough, the cavern was empty save for the corpses of his opponents. Only then, when he¡¯d broken their spirit and stopped the trickle that would have no doubt become a flood, did he turn to look for Gregor¡¯s party.


    He found them 50 yards back toward the exit, where Gregor and one of his father¡¯s men faced off against four remaining goblins. The other soldier lay on the ground along with the corpses of a dozen green skins, though Simon couldn¡¯t determine if the man was living or dead, and there was no trace of the Nedden, who had almost certainly fled as soon as his cakewalk turned into a rout.


    Simon dispatched two of the ugly buggers before they even knew he was there. The remaining two quickly found themselves outnumbered and unable to flee, and had messy deaths that were quicker than they deserved.


    Once all that was done, Simon began to order the two of them around. ¡°You there, watch my back while I see what we can do for your friend!¡± he ordered the soldier, ¡°And you, Viscount¡ª¡±


    ¡°Wha- why are you here?¡± Gregor asked. ¡°We left you at the tavern because Nedden said we didn¡¯t need you. Why did you come anyway?¡±


    ¡°Later,¡± Simon said. ¡°I need to see what can be done for this man, so you make sure nothing is coming from the other side.¡±


    He was concerned there might be more goblin attacks, of course, but that wasn¡¯t the reason he pointed the two remaining men in opposite directions. It was so that neither of them would be looking at him as he probed the wounds.


    The guard had been stabbed in several places and was covered in blood, but his pulse was still strong. So Simon muttered a few words of lesser healing to partially close the man¡¯s wounds and a word of cure to reduce the chance that infection would take him out, and then they made a crude litter from a cloak and goblin spears and dragged the unconscious man to safety.


    They were halfway to town before they met the mob that Simon had predicted that morning. Honestly, he thought they would come earlier, he thought to himself, but he said nothing. Instead, he let Gregor do the talking.


    As it turned out, they had started marshaling together as soon as the stable boy caught Nedden trying to skip town. That mental image was enough to make Simon laugh, but he held back, trying not to undermine the seriousness of the situation.


    When all of them returned to Slany, and things were explained to Baron Corwin, the man embraced Simon publicly and told him, ¡°You saved my son. You can have any reward you choose. You have but to name it.¡±


    ¡°Dinner sounds good,¡± Simon said, causing a gale of disbelieving laughter. ¡°I¡¯m just glad we could save everyone this time.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure that everyone is going to live,¡± the Baron said, shaking his head. ¡°There¡¯s no reason I can think of to spare that cowardly mercenary¡¯s life.¡±


    ¡°No?¡± Simon asked. ¡°Not even to celebrate your son¡¯s safe return? I would think that the greatest punishment of all we could offer a man like that would be letting him live with the knowledge of what he¡¯s done.¡±


    That wasn¡¯t the real reason that Simon wanted to spare him. It was because it was very easy for him to look at Nedden and see the man he¡¯d once been, and he wasn¡¯t particularly inclined to be too harsh on himself from two dozen lives ago.


    Baron Corwin was initially unconvinced, but eventually, after he calmed down, he agreed that branding the man a coward and exiling him from Corwin lands would be punishment enough. After that, Simon¡¯s time on this level played out much as it did before for the next few weeks. Simon spent a great deal of time with young Gregor, and though his father quickly banished Nedden from his lands, the Lord kept Simon around to do odd jobs for Baron Corwin.


    He mostly kept to himself, focusing on studying what little he knew of the words of power and his experiments. He was mostly just biding his time to see how the impending civil war would play out, but surprisingly, it never did. Simon waited for the other shoe to drop, first for weeks and then for months, but the rumors that came to town were more about gossip and scandal than wars on the horizon. The King¡¯s renewed health dispelled them completely.


    After six months, Simon started to think that he should move on, but by then, he¡¯d started a flirtation with Trinna, the baker. She was a cute, motherly woman who¡¯d lost her husband years before when they were both young. There was just something about her sad beauty that struck him just right, long after the charm of her wonderful bread had faded into the background.


    It was the last thing he¡¯d meant to happen, but somehow, it felt right. He still loved Freya, of course, but it had been many years and several deaths since he¡¯d seen his beloved last, and something about reliving the same life over and over had started to dull those sharp edges.


    So, instead, he stayed. He bought a plot of land, intent on becoming a part of Slany¡¯s little community, and then he set about building himself a house and a livelihood. They weren¡¯t exactly an item or anything. Not yet. Dating wasn¡¯t quite a thing here, but despite the cloud that still hovered over him, he thought he might propose to her anyway.


    The other levels would always be there, of course. He could do those any day, but he was fairly sure this would be the last time he¡¯d get to watch Gregor grow up, thanks to all of his hard work.


    He spent years there in Slany, and the war never came. So, Simon stayed. He experimented with magic, he practiced swordplay with his friends, and most importantly he always found another reason to stick around a little longer.


    During that time in Slany, he learned lots of little mundane things he¡¯d never known before, like how to split fence rails, tie knots, and of course bake bread. At times, Simon considered moving on, but there was never much urgency in that thought; it became a thing he thought about at night before bed, and quickly forgot each morning when he woke up with a list of things to do on his mind.


    Unfortunately, all of that was cut short one day while he was hauling logs from the forest. He''d taken a break on the last hill before he was home since it was a place that offered him a perfect view of the home he built with his own two hands. He was just noticing that a bit of the thatching needed to be redone when a skittish mule he hadn¡¯t been paying enough attention to kicked him hard in the side of his head, ending his well-earned break forever.

 Ch. 86 - Stranger and Stranger

    When Simon realized he was back in his cabin instead of his sick bed back at the inn, he sighed and rolled over to go back to sleep. This was to keep away the parts of his brain that flickered to life with a persecution complex almost instantly more than any fatigue, though.


    She only killed me because I was starting to find happiness, his mind told him.


    That wasn¡¯t true, of course, probably. It was far more likely that life was short and capricious, especially in the medieval era. Even with magic to keep the perils of disease away, not all of his deaths would occur at the hands of people who were trying to kill him. Some of them would just be accidents.


    But the idea that most of those accidents seemed to occur when he was happy enough to let his guard down stuck in his craw. Simon¡¯s life in Slany hadn¡¯t been perfect, of course, but it had been pretty great. A community full of people who knew him and thought well of him, a woman who was into him, and all the time in the world to experiment with magic. He¡¯d been burning through his life at the rate of about a decade a year as he experimented, so he wasn¡¯t exactly destined to lead a long and happy life by any measure, though there were solutions to that if he could stomach them.


    Eventually, he dragged himself out of bed and stoked the fire in his stove so he could roast some sausages. ¡°Alright, mirror, tell me what we¡¯ve learned from this life.¡±


    Simon expected it to show his character sheet or tell him it didn¡¯t understand. Instead, when he looked over at it, his mouth fell open. There, printed on the glass, was ¡®As you requested, you are to avoid the tar in Liepzen castle, and you should avoid fighting fire elementals on level ten in your next journey into the Pit.¡¯


    ¡°Wait¡­ How do you know that?¡± Simon asked. ¡°I thought you couldn¡¯t tell me things about the individual levels.¡±


    ¡®Nor can I,¡¯ it answered. ¡®But you can tell me things, and I will remember them for you.¡¯


    ¡°Wait, back up. Didn¡¯t Helades say that you were supposed to help me?¡± he asked.


    In response, the mirror played back to his last encounter with Helades. ¡°Follow this wisp, and it will take you to the pit,¡± she told him pleasantly. ¡°I¡¯ll look forward to our next encounter, and I hope you enjoy the pit as much as you think you will.¡±


    Simon realized then just how little he remembered of his first life here. He remembered the room that the conversation was in but very little else about it.


    ¡°How come you could tell me about that encounter but not others,¡± Simon asked.


    ¡®Because I was there,¡¯ the mirror answered instantly. ¡®I am not always present for your other adventures, though I do sometimes catch glimpses.¡¯


    ¡°You what?¡± Simon asked, almost annoyed by how late he was learning all this, as he was excited to finally make some headway with this freaking thing. ¡°How can you catch glimpses of me on other levels.¡±


    The mirror proceeded to play more clips. In one, he was fighting zombies in the bar, and in the next, he was being run through in the haunted castle. There were other ones, too. A glimpse of him from the wagon he¡¯d rescued the children from, a quick shot of him with a volcano in the background, and one of him walking around the vine-covered ruins from a very low angle. All of these followed in quick succession, one after the other.


    For a moment, Simon almost saw a pattern as he struggled to remember what each of those places would have looked like, but all the pieces didn¡¯t quite fit together. ¡°Wait, so you¡¯re in all the mirrors?¡± he said finally, not 100% certain he was right.


    ¡®Not all,¡¯ it wrote in its glowing blue writing, ¡°But many. Each offered a glimpse into your journey in other times and places. Sometimes, though, you stay in places without mirrors for an extended period of time, or you move between levels quickly. Since you never call out to me, it can make finding you difficult. Unlike the Goddess I serve, I am not omnipresent.¡±


    Simon was stunned by this news. His first thought, though, was to curse the fact that he¡¯d never gotten around to getting a nice mirror for the home he shared with Freya; if he had, well, he could watch a strange sort of home movies for as long as wanted. It¡¯s probably for the best that I didn¡¯t, though, he said, realizing that he could spend whole lifetimes doing just that.


    Before he could ask the thing to show him any other snapshots of her, though, another thought struck him.


    ¡°There aren¡¯t any mirrors on the jungle level, and yet you saw me there. How?¡± he snapped.


    ¡®Mirrors are not the deciding factor,¡¯ the mirror explained, ¡®All I need is a clear enough reflection to find you.¡¯


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    ¡°So puddles work, too. Got it. And what¡¯s the point of all this? You just follow around behind me like some sort of notepad?¡± Or spy, Simon thought to himself. The idea was dumb, but honestly, it could have been useful, too. He had years and years worth of notes that he could have kept if he¡¯d known all of this before now.


    ¡°Why did Helades give you to me?¡± he asked. ¡°Are you a babysitter or a notepad?¡±


    ¡®Having a spirit to watch over those who chose to brave the pit was decided long ago,¡¯ it wrote. ¡®Much like the potion that the Goddess gave you so that you might understand all the languages of the world, it was meant to be a tool for those who lose their way.¡¯


    ¡°Lose their way?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡®After spending lifetimes in the Pit, many adventurers become lost in their lives and lose track of the larger picture,¡¯ it explained. ¡®I¡¯m here to help with that.¡¯


    ¡°I see,¡± Simon said. He did, too. Even after a couple of years living another life, he found his return to the beginning more than a little disorienting. If he ever put down roots somewhere and spent decades there, well - he could see how that would be difficult. ¡°So¡­ you¡¯re a Journal.¡±


    ¡®I am something for you to reflect on.¡¯ the mirror answered.


    That was enough for Simon to crack a bitter smile. ¡°Cute,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll remember that. Probably.¡±


    By the time the conversation was finished, his lunch was too, so he called up his character sheet and ate in silence while he reviewed his options.


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 20


    Deaths: 37


    Experience Points: -968,199


    Skills: Agriculture [Below Average], Archery [Above Average], Armor (light) [Great], Armor (heavy) [Below Average], Armor (medium) [Average], Athletics [Average], Baking [Poor], Cook [Above Average], Craft [Average], Deception [Average], Escape [Poor], Healing [Above Average], Investigate [Above Average], Maces [Average], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Above Average], Spears [Average], Spell Casting [Good], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Below Average], and Swords [Great].


    Words of Power: Gervuul (greater) Meiren (fire) Aufvarum (minor) Hyakk (healing) Vrazig (lightning) Dnarth (distant) Oonbetit (force) Zyvon (transfer) Gelthic (ice) Karesh (protection) Uuvellum (boundary) Barom (light) Delzam (cure)¡¯


    He¡¯d gained more than twenty thousand karma in the last life, which was more than he expected. He¡¯d expected to gain perhaps half of that and wasn¡¯t sure exactly how to account for the discrepancy. Was it because he had saved so many or because he¡¯d killed so few? Maybe it was because he¡¯d been really satisfied with the little life he was building or because he¡¯d managed to remove some of the dark clouds that had been hanging over his head for a few lives now.


    He couldn¡¯t say. Ultimately, it was one more data point to be filed away, and he chewed on it as he got ready to descend again into the depths.


    When Simon was all ready, he wasn¡¯t completely surprised that the first level was still there. Part of him had thought that the food was there to prevent starvation, but part of him had decided it was the goblins he¡¯d missed last time.


    ¡°I could be wrong on both counts,¡± he muttered to himself after he finished murdering the rats. ¡°The goblin level could still be there, taunting me.¡±


    Even if it was, though, he¡¯d already decided he wasn¡¯t going to try again. He¡¯d done literally everything he could think of. It was time to get to level 30 and have a nice long talk about Freya so he could put that memory behind him one way or the other. He could figure out how to resolve other levels once he¡¯d resolved that question.


    The trap level held nothing new, save for the ending. The goblin level was, in fact, gone. In its place were the stairs that descended into the tomb of the skeleton knight.


    ¡°You know, it kind of makes more sense this way,¡± he said to himself as he descended the chilly stairs. An unassuming basement that led to a trap-ridden tomb with a mini-boss at the end felt like a proper dungeon, and he smiled at that as he pulled out his mace and started smashing skulls.


    They no longer presented a real challenge, but they were a workout he sorely needed as soon as he lost all the muscles he¡¯d earned over the last few years. ¡°How did I ever let myself get this weak?!¡± he roared as he beheaded the boss and then stooped to pick up the creature¡¯s gauntlet and sword.


    Simon allowed himself a moment to rest, studying the coffins and other armor for any details that might give him more context about what this level was for, but anything that wasn¡¯t magical had aged poorly and beyond an additional chance to study the runes of the sword, and especially its mystery power source, there was little here that interested him.


    So, with that in mind, he unlocked the gate and prepared to enter the sewer. That wasn¡¯t what he found, though. Instead, he found a bustling tavern waiting there for him. Simon was more than a little shocked, but as soon as people started to look at him, he quickly shut the door behind him, lest anyone see the crypt he¡¯d come from.


    This was a level that Simon had already beaten. He was sure of that. He¡¯d memorized every detail of this cursed inn, and more than that, he¡¯d put it behind him. So how was it back? No, how was it back and whole?


    Simon left the small dining room he was in, in a daze as he walked into the common room. Where were the zombies? Where were the dead bodies? He wondered.


    It was a jarring moment, and he almost stopped to ask someone about it, but before he could open he saw her smiling across the room from him, and his mind froze completely solid. Freya was alive, and stranger still; she was smiling.

 Ch. 87 - Coming Back to Haunt Him

    Simon would have stared all night if he hadn¡¯t noticed someone else giving him a strange look. It was then, only reluctantly, that he walked across the crowded bar and ordered himself a beer so that he could have something to do for a while longer.


    Freya wasn¡¯t the heartbroken, timid barmaid he was so used to seeing in this room. She was practically the opposite. She was wearing light leather armor and had a quiver of arrows on her back. It was clear she was a warrior of some kind now, and so were her friends. Eight of them sat there, occupying the central trestle table that he usually used to block the window.


    In fact, now that he was looking around he noticed that he recognized many of the people here. Brenna, Gotrik, and more than a few zombies he¡¯d killed more than once were in the room, though this time, they were all alive and breathing. The adventurers he¡¯d fought so recently at the front gate were even here, and they were part of Freya¡¯s party.


    Simon was still trying to come to grips with that strange arrangement when Brenna brought his drink over. She practically shoved her tits in his face as she did so.


    ¡°Anything else?¡± she asked with a wicked smile, ¡°or are you going to go join those friends of yours?¡±


    ¡°Oh, I don¡¯t know them,¡± Simon said quickly.


    ¡°No?¡± she smiled. ¡°Another mercenary group coming into town just as these are leaving. That¡¯ll be good for business.¡±


    Simon thought about asking her what she meant by that, but instead, he let her walk away. He knew he wouldn¡¯t be able to keep his contempt off of his face when it came to dealing with her. Instead, he did what he always did. He bought a few drinks for the men at the bar, played some dice, and let them talk.


    It turned out there hadn¡¯t been any attacks on Schwarzenbruck in recent memory. Times had never been better. King Wilden the second, whom Simon had once met as a Prince, had been in power for years now, and though people didn¡¯t think he was the man his father had been, the Duke had not tried to seize power on the man¡¯s death. No one had heard anything about zombies or necromancers either. It was practically a golden age.


    It dawned on Simon only slowly that this was his doing. He¡¯d changed the past and, in doing so, had changed all future levels. Only that didn¡¯t make sense either. If completing past level reset all future levels, then he should have gone to the slime next.


    Did the slime level stay completed because nothing I did affected it or because it¡¯s no longer necessary to complete this level? He wondered to himself as he let himself lose another silver.


    There were so many unknowns here that he wouldn¡¯t have known where to start untangling the knot even if he wasn¡¯t distracted, and he was hopelessly distracted by the idea that Freya was just across the bar, and he didn¡¯t know what to do about that. One thing he did know was where they were going. There was some sort of trade dispute to the north, and they¡¯d been hired to escort a caravan and make sure the way was clear before any more valuable cargo was lost.


    People said it was gnolls, but Simon wouldn¡¯t know. He¡¯d never been that far north, at least he didn''t think he had. He would have found a way to get himself invited along just to spend some time with her if he hadn¡¯t watched just how touchy-feely she was with one of the other men in her little outfit. That was enough to make him decide he needed to be moving on right there.


    Simon reminded himself that this wasn¡¯t his Freya and that she could do anything she wanted with whoever she wanted, but seeing her laugh at another man¡¯s jokes was enough to turn that dull ache that had haunted him for so long into a sharp pain as his old wounds ruptured their scar tissue and came back to haunt him.


    Simon chugged the last of his beer before he slammed his wooden tankard down and rose. When he did, his eyes met Freya¡¯s just long enough to see a flicker of interest cross her face, but it was gone again as one of her companions spoke to her. So, reminding himself that she wasn¡¯t his Freya, and that she was going to be fine, he strode past her and opened the door. As expected, it didn¡¯t lead out into the cool night air. Instead, it led into the fetid sewer, but he slammed it shut behind him before anyone could figure out where that awful smell was coming from.


    Maybe he¡¯d join up with her to learn about what it was she was up to and how she¡¯d ended up as a sell sword rather than a barmaid on some other trip. For now, he had a date with Helades. Maybe after he finally got his questions answered, he could lay this issue to rest, but until then, everything else was a distraction.


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    Simon incinerated the Carrion crawler when it came at him this time. It dropped sizzling into the sewage before it ever got the chance to hurt him. He considered digging through the bodies but decided that was a distraction, too.


    ¡°If I¡¯m not permanently solving these levels, then what¡¯s the point?¡± he asked himself as he climbed the ladder and started toward the pyramid.


    It was maddening! How many lives had he spent clearing zombies, goblins, and carnivorous plants, only to find out now that he was going to have to do it all over again? It was almost enough to make him want to ask Helades about that instead, but he refused to give in to his curiosity. There was only one question that had an answer worth knowing today, and that answer was still almost twenty levels away.


    Simon took his third break at the top of the pyramid when he confirmed that the Wyvern level was still gone, and he was looking at a volcanic eruption. This time, he skipped his chance to duel with a fire elemental, though, and went straight for the exit, where he found that the forest had returned.


    ¡°What in the fuck is going on?¡± he muttered to himself as he strung his bow, nocked an arrow, and stepped through into the darkness.


    Simon hadn¡¯t seen this place since he¡¯d saved those kids. Fortunately, this time, he knew where he was and walked toward the road with an arrow at the ready. He heard the owlbear screech in the darkness more than once, but it wasn¡¯t quite as close as it was last time.


    None of those noises were enough to stop him from moving cautiously forward, though. This time it didn¡¯t find him. This time, he found it, and as it darted up on the road to feast on the carcass of a horse, he released his arrow, using a word of force to give it the energy to punch through the back of the creature''s skull. Even that wasn¡¯t enough to drop it, though, and it shrieked in an agonizingly high-pitched note and charged Simon.


    It never reached him, though. It fell over dead halfway there near the overturned wagon he knew he¡¯d find the children in. Still, just to make sure, he picked up the sword of one of the dead men and buried it in the massive carcass to make sure it wasn¡¯t just playing dead.


    ¡°Alright, you can come out,¡± he said, looking around to make sure nothing else was looking to eat them. ¡°The coast is clear.¡±


    No one moved, and for a moment, Simon feared that the boy and girl might be dead already. Flipping over the flap of the overturned wagon, he found that was not the case, but even as he coaxed the two of them out, they were still extremely skittish. That wasn¡¯t any different than before. What was, was the girl that was with the young lad.


    Eddik was still the same young man he¡¯d been before that was thrilled by Simon¡¯s bravery once his hands stopped shaking, but the woman that was with him was a couple of years older than she¡¯d been last time, and her hair was light instead of dark. Chagrined, Simon realized he couldn¡¯t remember what her name was last time, but this time, it was Kaylee, and she definitely wasn¡¯t the same servant girl.


    That one had been sweet and clingy, but Kaylee was very suspicious and kept looking at him like he was about to do something horrible to her. He couldn¡¯t blame her for that, though. If he was rescued in the middle of a massacre, he¡¯d be pretty on edge himself.


    He ignored it and focused on all the other small changes he was noticing. For starters, they were much deeper in the woods than they¡¯d been in last time. Previously, Simon had rescued them just before they¡¯d been about to exit the forest and reach the river, but now the road seemed to wind endlessly through the trees. It was just another little detail that didn¡¯t quite add up.


    Why should one person change and not the other? Why should the location of the attack change? And if the location of the attack changed, then does that mean the location of the portal changed?


    It had to have, he told himself. That was the biggest difference of all. So far, he¡¯d assumed that the portals had been fixed, but if they weren¡¯t, then that said something about exactly where Helades chose to place them.


    As dawn approached, they still weren¡¯t out of the woods, and Simon wasn¡¯t completely surprised when another owlbear attacked them. At that moment, he regretted not bringing the pike with him. That had been a superb weapon for dealing with an eight-foot-tall monster.


    Since he didn¡¯t have it, though, and since it was already drizzling, he called down a bolt of lighting to fry it in place as subtly as he could. Not that there was anything subtle about lightning, of course, but he could do his best to make sure that the pair of children he was escorting didn¡¯t think he had anything to do with it.


    ¡°Well, we certainly lucked out there,¡± Simon said as he lowered the sword he had been pretending like he was about to fight the thing with. ¡°We should get out of here before we¡¯re struck down next.¡±


    The boy responded by nodding mutely, but the girl continued to glare at him. That was when he realized that she could probably see the aura that the other two women had seen around him for the first time. It would fit with the facts, but he wasn¡¯t sure exactly how he was supposed to bring that up without further incriminating himself, especially considering her stony silence.


    Still, Simon kept up a cheery conversation with the boy, at least, as he told Simon all about his father and the festival he was supposed to attend.


    When the sun rose, part of him wanted to sleep, but they were too close to the edge of the woods now, and in another hour or two, they¡¯d be at the miller¡¯s place, so he pushed on. Camping in the open would be dangerous, but doing it with a girl who might be convinced that he was in league with the devil might be asking for another death, and he was in a hurry.

 Ch. 88 - What in the Hell

    This time, when they arrived, the miller was already hard at work, using the gusty winds to turn wheat into flour. He was an earnest, hardworking fellow, and he didn¡¯t seem nearly as sinister with the sun out, and though he seemed a little concerned when Simon stepped into his windmill armed and armored, the man¡¯s demeanor quickly softened when he saw Simon had two children with him.


    ¡°I found them at the site of a ¡­ well, let¡¯s call it a battle,¡± Simon explained. ¡°Owlbears. They were the only survivors.¡±


    ¡°May the Gods preserve us,¡± the old man said as he turned his attention to the children.


    Simon let them do the talking for a bit, but when Eddik was about to brag about what a big shot his father was, Simon cut in, saying, ¡°his family are merchants. Doubtlessly, when they find the caravan wreckage, there will be some small reward for the good person that takes care of them in the interim.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t need no reward to do a good turn for those who have already been through so much,¡± the miller said with a shake of his head. ¡°Now, let''s find all of you something to eat before you all pass out in front of me.¡±


    Simon had been about to make his exit, but a little warm food wouldn¡¯t be the worst idea in the world. He¡¯d powered through several unexpected levels now, and he had no idea whether or not he was going to have to fight the troll next.


    He kind of hoped that he would, to be honest. He could use the chance to get some of the aggression out of his system. A little rest before that would probably be warranted, though.


    Inside the man¡¯s house, they met his almost equally old wife, but after a few whispered words, she got the message and turned the conversation to brighter topics. She¡¯d obviously almost finished cleaning up their breakfast but quickly started some new oats boiling when she saw the traumatized, bloodstained children.


    She didn¡¯t take a liking to Simon right away, but after Eddik explained how Simon had slain the owlbear in single combat to save them, she was friendlier. When the boy explained afterward that he¡¯d struck down the second with lighting, she gave Simon a worried glance. However, when he started laughing and playing it off as a bit of childish exaggeration, she did too, fortunately, and the situation resolved itself.


    So, after some porridge and the last of the bacon, Simon decided to take a short rest in the hay loft of the man¡¯s barn, where he got a couple of hours of shut-eye. It might have been that he pulled the ladder up after him, but no one tried to murder him in his sleep, and when he made his way back to the miller sometime after noon, the girl no longer looked at him like he was a bad case of stranger danger.


    ¡°You¡¯re a good man,¡± Simon told the miller as he pressed a gold coin into the palm of his hand. "I¡¯d stay around to help out, but there¡¯s a troll not far from here that isn¡¯t going to slay itself.¡±


    ¡°Troll?¡± he bristled as he pocketed the coin. ¡°No one told me about a troll in the area. Do you think I should bring in the sheep?¡±


    ¡°Nah,¡± Simon said as he went to say goodbye to the kids. ¡°I¡¯ve got a ways to go before I get where I¡¯m going. You should be fine.¡±


    Eddik was just as clingy as he''d been the last time. He promised Simon a great reward if only he¡¯d wait until his father fetched them. Part of him was tempted to see wherever it was they were off to. It was a new adventure, but when he thought about his more urgent mission, he decided that it didn¡¯t rank. Kaylee was stiff and formal when she thanked him and curtsied only very slightly, but he¡¯d take it.


    Simon walked down the hill toward the covered bridge, whistling tunelessly a few minutes later. The location was familiar, but the fact that he couldn¡¯t see a village on the other side told him everything he needed to know.


    ¡°No troll today, huh?¡± he said after he cast a minor light spell and noticed the closed doors of the church on the far side of the bridge. ¡°Shame.¡±


    For the longest time, he hadn¡¯t realized that the town between the bridge and the church was a different level, but it was the only way for the count to make sense if you tried to figure out which levels lay between the tenth and twentieth floors.


    Inside this level, at least, hadn¡¯t changed. The area around the altar and the wall behind it was still hopelessly shattered, and only the distorted chalk ring that looked like it was about to burst held it back. Inside the demon that was always there was painting instead of eating, and he didn¡¯t look up as Simon approached.


    ¡°You¡¯ve been gone quite a long time this time, my friend,¡± he said, not taking his eyes away from the canvas.


    ¡°Time doesn¡¯t start on a level until I get close to the portal,¡± Simon said as he got as close to the boundary as he dared. ¡°So you¡¯ve got to be guessing.¡±


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    ¡°Am I?¡± the devil asked as it turned to face him for the first time. ¡°No, I don¡¯t think I am. I can see it in your eyes. Years and years of your life since you last paid me a visit. A few setbacks, a victory or two, and, of course, a terrible loss. It really has been a while.¡±


    Simon had watched a few videos on cold reading. He knew this was just a trick, but the sincerity with which the well-dressed demon delivered those lines made certainty harder.


    In the end, despite trying his very hardest to hold his sorrowful gaze, he looked past the questioner to his painting. The oil painting was well executed, but Simon didn¡¯t recognize the location. It was of a wealthy foreign city that he¡¯d never been to that was in the midst of burning down. For a moment, he thought it might have been the volcano level, which would have made for a clever bit of taunting, but the harbor was all wrong, and the mountain behind the oceanfront palace wasn¡¯t nearly tall enough.


    ¡°Very nice work,¡± he told the demon. ¡°Is that where demons like you go on vacation?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a place I haven¡¯t been in a very long time,¡± the demon said wistfully, ¡°but I hope one day to go again. Perhaps if you were to let me out of this cage, I could take you there. We¡¯d have a wonderful time.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure,¡± Simon said, turning away to study the binding circle. ¡°But somehow, I don¡¯t think that would be a very good deal for me.¡±


    ¡°You like deals, do you?¡± the devil asked, suddenly sounding eager. ¡°We could make one of those. A very good deal, too, I¡¯m sure.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sure,¡± he mumbled as he focused on the chalk symbols. ¡°Demons are known for offering wonderful deals.¡±


    ¡°Well, wherever you come from, I trust we are known for delivering exactly what we promise,¡± he said with a flourish. ¡°It¡¯s a point of pride for us, you know.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not a point of pride,¡± Simon said, making sure he didn¡¯t get too close to the line. ¡°It¡¯s your nature; at least, that¡¯s how it is in the story. You give people exactly what they ask for, and in the end, that¡¯s what damns them.¡±


    ¡°Oh, our reputation precedes us then,¡± the demon smiled. ¡°Hell¡¯s reach is vast, after all. I''m not surprised.¡±


    ¡°Just like I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if you offered to help get me out of the Pit, and that the only way to do that was a path through hell,¡± Simon sighed as he continued his conversation without looking up from the hastily sketched binding ring.


    ¡°Well, actually, Hell is the only way out of the Pit,¡± the demon said with a shit-eating grin, but Simon already knew that he would. That might be true, but there was at least one other way out, and that was to beat it, which is what he was focused on right now. This was a knot he would need to unravel eventually, and it wasn¡¯t something he could guess at.


    Even trying to read the binding circle was challenging, though. The symbols had been written sloppily, and in places, they were distorted, which made them all but impossible to read. Though he understood many of them at this point, there were a few that he either didn¡¯t know or which were illegible. For just a moment, he was tempted to say that if he erased the root symbol or crossed out the main transfer sigil, the whole thing would collapse, but even as he reached toward it, he pulled away, unsure.


    ¡°Oh, I definitely wouldn¡¯t touch that one,¡± the demon taunted. ¡°Terrible things would happen if you touched that rune.¡±


    Simon strode and walked away. He should just keep going toward his goal, but part of him told him that this would be an easy win if he could just figure it out. He felt so close, but he was certain that fucking this up would be just as bad, if not worse, than zombie level. Getting sucked into hell because he cut the red wire instead of the blue wire would be a mistake he¡¯d get to regret for a very long time.


    In the end, he decided he couldn¡¯t do either, so while the devil tormented him, he walked over to the baptismal pool, which was bone dry, and poured in his water skin.


    ¡°Can you hear me mirror?¡± he asked, feeling slightly stupid. ¡°You told me this would work. Where are you?¡±


    A few seconds later, to his eternal surprise, blue letters wavered on the surface of his reflection. ¡°Moving between places and times in search of you is more challenging than you know.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± Simon said. ¡°I¡¯m going to need you to record some symbols for me to research later. Can you do that if I inscribe them one at a time?¡±


    ¡®Of course,¡¯ the mirror wrote simply.


    Simon wrote down the first few off the top of his head, and the water glowed in bright blue streaks like some primitive touch screen as he made the marks on its calm surface. After that, he was forced to make half a dozen trips over to the binding circle to investigate the next group to make sure he got them right.


    Each time he did so, the devil would tease him. ¡°Well, that¡¯s not a technique you see very often,¡± he said, sounding slightly less confident than he usually did after the first trip.


    On the second and the third, he tried to distract Simon with subtle insults, but Simon just ignored the demon and focused on the task at hand. After that, the devil appeared to go back to painting, but Simon could feel the thing fuming and smiled slightly to himself as he finished documenting the circle.


    When that was done, he said, ¡°Alright, mirror, show me the big picture.¡±


    Slowly, the individual runes he¡¯d drawn came into view, and each snapshot assembled itself into the larger whole until he could see the ring in full. It was still distorted and ugly, but all the critical details were there. One day, when he had more time, he could draw it out without the distortions onto paper or vellum and then put the corrected version back into the mirror for further study.


    That was not a today goal, though. He didn¡¯t need to solve this right now. He just needed a way to study it so he could be sure of the solution once he came upon one. That was the only way to keep from being dragged into hell as far as he was concerned.


    When Simon was finished, he walked slowly toward the exit, and when the demon said nothing, he asked, ¡°Aren¡¯t you going to give me some cryptic goodbye?¡± he asked, but the demon did nothing but glare at him until he stepped into the warlock¡¯s cave.

 Ch. 89 - In Over Your Head

    The dank cavern was just as he left it the last few times he¡¯d been here. There was no way that anything he¡¯d done the last time he¡¯d been through would have counted as ¡°beating it¡± in his mind, so he wasn¡¯t surprised to see it. The real question in his mind was whether he wanted to beat it yet.


    Rivenwood was probably gone after his decisive victory over the orcs, and he¡¯d stayed there long enough last time to be fairly sure that they hadn¡¯t been the vanguard of a much larger force. That meant that finding a place to study the book was going to be dicey.


    While he let his eyes adjust to the darkness, he considered the layout of the next few levels. With the orcs defeated, that meant that the next level was the ice level and then the plague level. While he hoped that the ice level was defeated because he certainly wasn¡¯t prepared for it again in what he was wearing, it was a shame that he wouldn¡¯t be visiting Hurag again any time soon. Despite the stench, it would have made the perfect spot to study an evil tome for reasons related to the quiet as much as the hideous decor. Plus, if he did some experiments, no one but him would get hurt.


    After that came which level exactly? He wondered. Simon had to start counting them off on his fingers because it had been so long. Two more levels, what could it¡­ oh, lizards, twice in a row. That¡¯s right.


    First came the swamp, which had been completed for a long time even though he¡¯d barely done anything, and then the Basilisk, which he was fairly certain was behind him for good. The last thing he wanted to do was risk being turned to stone again.


    Which meant he had no idea what came after that. If he cleared this level and then died to something crazy, then the opportunity to study the tome would be lost to him forever. Well, probably forever, he thought to himself in annoyance. He¡¯d thought the same thing about Schwarzenbruck, but now he was forced to deal with it all over again.


    Simon had almost convinced himself that he shouldn¡¯t try to clear this level when he heard the apprentice-cum-warlock ranting to his evil deity and promising to torture the children in the village above in their name. In return for more power. That did it. Even if it cost him the opportunity to read a book he¡¯d already read and reread several times, it would be worth it. There was no way this scum was going to be allowed to go around one more time on this insane merry-go-round.


    ¡°You called, and I have come!¡± Simon said, feeling a little theatrical as he stepped into the circle behind the warlock. As he did so, he whispered a word for lesser light to give himself a malevolent glow.


    The golem rumbled to life immediately, but since Simon was so near to its master now, all it could do was stand there menacingly while the warlock turned around in surprise.


    ¡°Call off your toy Andronican, lest I break it by accident when I play with it,¡± Simon bluffed.


    ¡°Y-you know my name?¡± the warlock said, raising a hand to the golem to stop it in its tracks. ¡°Who are you?¡±


    ¡°You know my name,¡± Simon said, not sure exactly which evil god he was pretending to be, ¡°but you are afraid to speak it.¡±


    Andronican considered these words and then nodded vigorously instead of speaking. Then he bowed as low as his arthritic form would allow before he finally continued. ¡°So you¡¯ve come to grant my boon? Have I done enough to finally earn your favor?¡±


    ¡°Why else would I be here, for a student of Festauvian?¡± Simon said, trying his best to speak like an over-the-top, mustache-twirling villain. ¡°But first, I have some questions. Do you recall how old you are, Andronican?¡±


    ¡°Of course, dark one,¡± the warlock smiled with a crooked, yellowed grin. ¡°At the equinox, I will have lived for nineteen summers.¡±


    ¡°Nineteen summers of life, and yet you¡¯ve spent nearly seventy,¡± Simon chided, though that was mostly because he¡¯d been taken aback and was playing for time. He¡¯d put together the pieces on his last trip through here. ¡°If I gave you seven, or even seventy more, how would you spend them?¡±


    Not only was the warlock unable to read his own grimoire, but he obviously didn¡¯t understand the words he used to command his golem. Andronican might as well have been saying abracadabra when he commanded it to kill Simon. It would have been laughable if it weren¡¯t so tragic. The one lingering question that Simon still had was whether he¡¯d killed his master or whether he¡¯d gone wild once his master had died some other way.


    Either way, this was an apprentice playing with matches, and he¡¯d burned his whole life down. Simon had known that he would be much younger than he appeared, but to be practically a child and have wasted his whole life powering spells. It was almost enough to make him feel bad for the warlock. Almost.


    ¡°I¡¯ve killed more than two dozen men in your name!¡± the apprentice boasted. ¡°I have burned down temples and sacrificed children. I¡ª¡±


    Simon slapped him, as much in annoyance as anything else, as if these were achievements to boast. He wasn¡¯t sure if that was in character for the demon he was supposed to be playing, but he didn¡¯t care.


    Really, if I had that black cloak from my performance with the Prince, almost anything would be in character, he thought ruefully.


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    ¡°Do not lie to me,¡± Simon said as Andronican flinched and held his stinging cheek. ¡°How many have you killed without the aid of your stone guardian?¡±


    The warlock looked at him for a moment like he was about to cry before he finally said, ¡°One, sire, but that life was¡ª¡±


    ¡°Was already mine to have!¡± Simon countered, feigning anger he didn¡¯t really feel. He was happy that he finally had his answer. This little creep had killed his master and used his eight-foot-tall immortal warrior to kill kids once he was let off the leash. No wonder everyone who found out he could use magic wanted to kill him. If this was the average warlock, then he absolutely agreed that they should all be killed on sight.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry!¡± he whimpered, shielding himself from a blow that never landed. Andronicus shrank from his faux wrath, but the golem continued to stay motionless. Simon noticed that his glow was starting to fade a little but decided that was okay. This was going to be over soon, one way or the other.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want your apologies,¡± Simon said, walking past him to examine the golem. In all this time, he¡¯d never gotten a good look at it, but right now, the one thing he wanted even more than Festauvian¡¯s tome was to know what was powering this thing. That was a secret that would be worth eating another death for. ¡°I want to know what you will do if I grant you the favor you¡¯ve beseeched me for. Do you think I would give such a gift to a man who would use this to do his killing for him?¡±


    Simon only started to smile once he¡¯d turned away from the warlock. Pretending to be such an evil caricature was easy, it was keeping himself from busting up laughing that was the hard part.


    ¡°I¡­ no¡­ but¡­¡± Andronicus was completely frazzled by this point. For a moment, Simon thought he might have gone too hard on the guy. He clearly thought he was consorting with dark powers, and that could put anyone on edge. He was way off, though. ¡°My¡­ my lord, how did you leave my summoning circle?¡±


    Simon swallowed, finally aware that he¡¯d fucked up. He could see the runes on the creature¡¯s back now, and given a moment of study, he was sure he could parse some of them out. He might not have a moment, though, he thought to himself as he turned to face the warlock.


    ¡°Your circle was enough to draw me into this world,¡± he explained, ¡°But there are gaps, you see, here between the¡ª¡±


    ¡°You are not the Reaper of Souls!¡± Andronicus screamed, no longer buying the act. ¡°Tell me who you are before my guardian crushes you like an egg!¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t bother to answer. Instead, he shouted ¡°Oonbetit¡± and used the word of force to cleave a line in stone between the portion of the magical circuit that brought the golem to life and the portion that powered the spell as he stepped behind its leg.


    ¡°Rise up, my pawn, and defend your Master!¡± the warlock yelled.


    It was a tense moment. Simon realized the thing would really just have to fall backward to crush him, but that didn¡¯t happen. Instead, it simply stood there now that its spell was broken. Simon looked up at the damaged runes, but before he could do much more than determine that most of them were still legible, he heard the warlock shouting the word for fire.


    Simon responded almost instinctively, moving closer to cover as he whispered, ¡°Karesh Meiren,¡± to protect himself from the gout of flame that shot out of both sides of the pillar-like stone leg he was sheltering behind.


    When Simon saw he was uninjured, he laughed and said, ¡°Is that all you got there, Andy?¡± as he bolted for the stalagmites on the floor that would offer more cover and drew his sword.


    Simon knew that the right move was to blast this guy instead of taunting him, but he couldn¡¯t help it. Besides the goblins, which didn¡¯t really count, he¡¯d never faced another mage before, and that made this a valuable experience. He would have probably let this fight linger just to get that perspective, but something about this guy just got under his skin, which was enough all on its own.


    ¡°When I am done with you, there will be naught left but ashes!¡± Andronican screamed.


    Simon didn¡¯t have to wait long. The apprentice was hardly imaginative, and he followed fire up with greater fire.


    The blast that followed was intense, and Simon noted, substantially different from the way it looked when he used it. When Simon used greater fire, it looked like some kind of superhero beam attack, but when Andronican cast it at him, it was like a wave of liquid fire crashing toward his target. Simon thought it was almost pretty, but he quickly hunkered down behind the rocks and let the wave pass over him.


    This time, and distance better cover did as much as the lingering effects of his protection spell and dissipated the heat harmlessly around him. Simon smiled as he popped his head back up. This dude was definitely no fire elemental.


    ¡°You wasted a year of your life for that?¡± he said with a laugh. ¡°No wonder you¡¯re down to scraps. Why don¡¯t you quit while you¡¯re ahead!¡±


    ¡°Never!¡± The warlock screamed before yelling, the last thing that Simon would have expected. ¡°Gervuul Gervuul Meiren!¡±


    Simon had only a moment to ponder those words. Greater, greater fire? Does that double or multiply the effect? Would it take two years or¡ª


    That was as far as he got before the room was awash in flame. This time, it wasn¡¯t like a wave of flame. It was like the beginning of a powerful explosion, but that only lasted for an instant. Then, instead of blowing everything apart and burying him under tons of stone, it just stopped.


    While dust continued to rain down on him, Simon stood cautiously and surveyed the dark, dusty room. He couldn¡¯t see shit until he used a word of lesser light and advanced on the place where the warlock had stood.


    Simon didn¡¯t know what to expect. His gut told him the body would be burned to a crisp, or that it would have been blown apart so thoroughly that there was nothing left. Instead, he found the warlock curled up in a fetal position. Not only was he the only thing in the area that was unscorched, but he was practically mummified.


    Simon couldn¡¯t say exactly how much a spell like that took out of the man, but looking at him, it was hard to say just ten years. The corpse in front of him appeared to age decades in the final moments of its life.


    ¡°And that, kids, is why you never play with matches,¡± he said to himself as he turned away and went to check on the book. It was an interesting experiment, but it would still be terribly ironic if he¡¯d done all this only to lose his shot to do some more light reading.

 Ch. 90 - How You Say It

    The grimoire¡¯s cover was burned badly enough to be unrecognizable, but the pages were barely singed at the edges, so the whole thing was readable. Simon breathed a sigh of relief at that, and using the minor word of light, he briefly inspected a few passages to see if anything had changed, but it looked the same as he remembered it.


    Once he was satisfied with that, he investigated the golem¡¯s runes. And found them to be largely readable but not completely comprehensible. The thing seemed to be powered by a large compound word that he didn¡¯t truly understand and couldn¡¯t quite bring himself to pronounce. It was very similar in that respect to the unidentified rune that powered the icy sword on his hip.


    They weren¡¯t the same, though. Simon spent several minutes comparing the two to make sure that was the case. Both of them were several times larger than any of the other runes on either object and resembled a knot that was like a long compound word, but it was hard to say for sure. He just¡­


    Simon shook his head to clear it. Then he looked through the smaller runes for any words he didn¡¯t already know. There was Zyvon, which was what transferred the power from whatever the large rune was to the spell itself, and there were connecting runes that didn¡¯t have a direct literary meaning. This one he couldn¡¯t say, but he knew it regulated the strength of the mana going through it. It was a mess. He would have thought that something this complicated would use much different pieces than he was used to, but instead, it seemed to use the same parts in a much more complex way.


    The part that he found most interesting was the Hyakk rune, though. It was central to the whole thing, but in his experience, it had always meant healing. Here, though, in the context it was being used, the rune meant life more literally.


    ¡°Just how much are these things open to interpretation?¡± he asked himself in annoyance. ¡°A circuit board or a line of code doesn¡¯t need to be read in context, but if these things are more like a haiku, then I¡¯m fucked.¡±


    Every time he felt like he was starting to understand the magic system of this place more, he came across some new wrinkle that had put him back on his heels. Now, at least one rune in his collection could be used in multiple ways but were there more lessons to be learned here?


    Apparently so, he decided. After going through the larger chunks of rocks he¡¯d shattered off of the golem¡¯s rune circuit on the floor, he found an entirely new rune he didn¡¯t have in his collection. Vosden, huh? An earth rune? That¡¯s interesting.


    He traced it several times in the dust to be sure he was getting it right from the three chunks of limestone, and it was only then that he whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Vosden,¡± as he touched his drawing of the rune. It instantly carved itself into the floor like it had been done by a craftsman with finger paints. It wasn¡¯t the cleanest, and he could have probably done a better job with a chisel, but it was interesting, that was for sure.


    What he wanted to do immediately was summon the mirror and record all of this, but his water skin was empty, and there was nothing else that was reflective in there.


    ¡°I could make a pool of my own blood and then heal myself,¡± he said with obvious distaste. ¡°That¡¯s what a real warlock would do, but fuck that.¡±


    Instead of becoming a ghoulish weirdo, he found some scorched wood and copied the golem¡¯s sigils into a blank page in the warlock¡¯s tome. When he did so, he was careful not to actually connect them all. He didn¡¯t think he could actually bring the book to life by accident, but he wasn¡¯t about to risk it.


    Once that was done, he took a lunch break and reflected on all that he had learned or thought he had learned, and then made his way up the stairs to see what awaited him.


    ¡°Is it going to be a re-do of the swamp or the desert, or will it be something brand new?¡± he asked as he opened the door and came face to face with a graveyard.


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s definitely new.¡± He tried to imagine how the ice level might look unfrozen or the swamp level might look if someone had drained it and built a city in its place, but neither seemed to be the case. Instead, he was now in a place he¡¯d never been before. ¡°Welcome to level twenty-one!¡±


    He stepped out of the dusty cavern into the chilly night and took it all in. Above him, the sky was partially cloudy, but he could see enough stars to spot a few familiar constellations along with the sliver of a waning moon. It was nice, refreshing even.


    The scenery was less so. In the distance, he could see the silhouettes of some large houses in one direction that suggested that he was in some sort of city, but the ground nearer to him was full of grave markers and mausoleums. These weren¡¯t small tombs, either. Some of them were ornate marble things the size of an SUV.


    He was getting some distinctly New Orleans vibes from the whole place. ¡°Yeah, nothing could go wrong here,¡± he whispered to himself as he stepped onto the stone path that wound its way through the place and started looking for the way out.


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    There were dozens of larger tombs scattered around him, but probably not hundreds, and each one of them could just as easily be the reason he was here as it was the exit. Simon was undecided on whether he wanted to solve this one on his first go. His first priority right now was to go deeper. So, he would just have to see how it went.


    He checked out a few of the tombs along the way toward the main gate. Some had beautiful statues or carvings, and all of them had a family name somewhere on them. He saw more than a few ¡®loving husbands¡¯ and ¡®departed wife and mothers¡¯ along with enough dates that were small enough to suggest an infant or child to last a lifetime, but he saw nothing suspicious. Each of them was locked up tight, and there didn¡¯t seem to be any zombies or vampires lurking about.


    Somewhere in the city that lay beyond the cemetery, he heard the sound of a bell tolling, and he stopped to count the chimes. ¡°Midnight, huh? That should be just about the time¡­¡±


    Simon¡¯s words trailed off as the fog started to boil up right on cue. If this was the witching hour, and he was in an evil graveyard, then he would have expected something like this to happen pretty much exactly. When the fog grew thick enough for groping limbs and haunted faces to become visible, though, he took a step back and drew his sword.


    Stepping back didn¡¯t do any good, of course. The fog was boiling up from every grave, and he was surrounded by it. It stayed mostly clear of the path, and he continued to back slowly toward the gate, but as it got thicker, it began to spill over, and soon, there were tendrils of mist in the shape of groping hands that he found himself stepping carefully over as he turned and moved more quickly. The gate was in sight now, and with luck, he could escape this before whatever this was noticed him.


    That only worked for a few more minutes, though. The longer he walked, the slower he was forced to go as he stepped between the grasping, vaporous limbs. However, it was only when his foot disrupted one that everything changed. The hand he accidentally stepped on disappeared in a puff of vapor like it had never been.


    He saw the change in the surrounding fog almost instantly, though. Until now, the eyes had simply been staring blindly as the faces appeared and disappeared in the ebb and flow of the mist. Now those blind eyes were searching, and the hands pulled back into the fog banks on either side of the path. When they returned, though, they were larger grasping limbs that looked somehow more substantial, and they were reaching toward him.


    Simon lashed out with his icy blade, but the limbs that he dissipated only vanished for a moment before more extended out from the growing fog banks that nearly surrounded him. The roiling grey mist was almost to his chest now, and it was clear that it was drawn to life somehow.


    ¡°Meiren,¡± he barked, sending a broad wave of fire at the nearest wall of mist. It had been slowly coalescing into a giant, hideous skull, and Simon wasn¡¯t at all interested in seeing what would happen after that.


    The fire temporarily worked wonders. Everything that had been about to assault him from that side of the path vanished as though it had never been. However, seconds later new fog was already boiling up to replace it. As he watched that in real concern, he never even noticed the blow from behind that struck at his right arm.


    The cold sensation that traveled through his bones then was painful, and his arm went so numb that the strike caused him to drop his blade as he cried out in pain.


    ¡°Barom!¡± he yelled, surrounding himself in a bright white light. This was enough to force the limb that had grabbed onto him to let go, but not much more than that.


    The mist didn¡¯t try to touch him through the fog, but it also didn¡¯t stay nearly as far away as it should have, and worse, Simon noticed as he examined his arm and flexed his fingers that the light was fading a lot faster than it should have. A word of light should have lasted for the better part of an hour, but this one would be gone in less than a minute at the rate it was dimming.


    That was when he decided to run. Neither fire nor light worked on this thing, and the forms that were surfacing in the sea of mist that surrounded him were only becoming more terrifying. He needed to bounce until he had a better plan of attack than ¡®get my soul ripped out of my body and die in terror.¡¯


    So he left his sword where it lay, and he ran. He used fire twice more on his way to the gate to give himself some breathing room, but each time he dissipated the mist, it came back faster than before.


    It¡¯s probably feeding on the magic itself, he realized, but there was nothing for it. If he used no magic, he would die. If he used magic, he would die later. That was as complicated as it needed to be.


    Simon ran toward the main gate and the small temple that adjoined that, still carrying his grimoire, and reached the gate ahead of a growing tide of evil that was swelling behind him and rattled the locked bars. Part of him wanted to knock the thing down or cut through the chain with a word of force, but another part of him said that unleashing this thing into the city where people were sleeping was incredibly dangerous.


    Instead, with another blast of fire to open the path, he darted toward the side gate that connected to the temple. Getting off the main path was an obviously bad idea, but it was his hope that at least at the temple, there would be some sort of holy effect, or maybe some hallowed ground that would hold back the tide of ghosts or evil, or whatever it was that was assaulting him.


    He was in luck. Around the temple, there were indeed a dozen or so feet of grassy earth that was almost completely vapor-free, and he leaped for it even as the mist tried to grasp his feet. When Simon landed, he darted for the door. He¡¯d been prepared to body slam it open if need be, but it wasn¡¯t locked, and the heavy wooden thing opened into a dark room with a loud creak.


    He ran inside and slammed it shut without looking back, and then, after looking around to make sure that nothing else was going to eat him, he slumped to the ground with his back to the door, and with great heaving breaths, he forced himself to calm down.


    It was only after he¡¯d done that for several minutes that he noticed something strange. Faintly, in the distance, he could hear a sound he hadn¡¯t heard in a long time: music.

 Ch. 91 - Uninvited Guest

    Distantly, just loud enough that he could hear it over the sound of his heavy breathing, Simon heard chamber music. Or something like that, anyway. Classical music had never been his thing, but he could make out a couple different stringed instruments and realized that there had to be some kind of ceremony or event going on in this building.


    Is it the cause of the fog, he wondered. If it''s not, I probably need to warn them, but music in the middle of the night in a creepy old temple? It can¡¯t be a coincidence.


    Slowly, he rose to his feet and began to look around. What he really needed was a window so he could look around the city and see if it was somewhere he knew or somewhere else entirely. He didn¡¯t get that, though. Instead, the room was pitch black, and he was forced to use a word of minor light just to get across the room without tripping over furniture.


    The building he¡¯d broken into had been a temple, but this looked like an anteroom or a small hall more than anything. ¡°Maybe this is where they view the corpses before they bury them,¡± he said with a shrug as he moved to the door.


    The music was definitely louder when he put his ear to it, but not so loud that he thought it was directly on the other side. So he waited a minute for his light to fade out in case someone was on the other side, and then he cracked it open to take a peek.


    Simon¡¯s caution turned out to be completely unwarranted. On the other side of the door was an empty hallway with several other doors branching off from it. It had clean stone floors and paintings on both walls of rich people dressed in their finest. It definitely wasn¡¯t a dungeon or anything like that, so there probably wasn¡¯t anything nefarious happening.


    He breathed a sigh of relief and quietly shut the door behind him as he stepped into the hallway and moved toward the next door. ¡°If I just¡­¡± he mumbled to himself.


    ¡°Can I help you?¡± someone asked.


    Simon whirled at the sound of the unfamiliar voice and found someone thirty feet away near the other end of the hallway. He¡¯d been expecting a guard, and though his hand was on the hilt of his mundane longsword, he¡¯d refrained from drawing it. That proved to be a good move because instead of a guard, it turned out to be a manservant.


    ¡°Oh, I was just¡­¡± Simon started to say before trailing off. What was he trying to do? What excuse would keep this from escalating further? He had no idea and eventually settled on ¡°I was just lost and¡ª¡±


    ¡°Oh, you¡¯re one of the party guests,¡± the man said with a knowing smile. ¡°Do try not to stray from the main rooms then, sir. The rest of the guests are right this way.¡±


    The servant gestured with a bow and then escorted Simon the opposite way down the hallway as he decided the best thing to do was play along. He had no idea where he was being taken, but since the most dangerous thing the man escorting him had was a silver tray, he went with it.


    With every door that opened, his worldview shifted. This probably wasn¡¯t the same building he¡¯d started in, he realized. It was too big and too nice for a temple. Where does that put me then? He wondered to himself. Am I on level 22?


    Before he could decide one way or the other, the footman opened the third door on their trek, revealing a large ballroom. That was full of people. Well, strangely dressed people.


    The entire room was full of men and women dancing or milling about in small knots, drinking glasses of sparkling white wine. At first, he feared he¡¯d stick out like a sore thumb, but it was only after he took it all in that he realized why the servant had made the mistake that he did. Everyone was wearing a costume.


    Though famous historical figures he didn¡¯t recognize dominated most of the crowd in the form of heroic warriors wearing paper machete armor and beautiful queens wearing a bit too much makeup, there were monsters, too. Simon saw a few orcs, a couple of zombies, and one particularly good werewolf, but all in all, nothing to worry him.


    Those closest to the door glanced at him briefly and then quickly turned back to their own conversations. He might be dressed in dirty armor with a handful of weapons, but here in this place, that looked more like a clumsy disguise than an actual threat.


    The people here didn¡¯t seem too concerned about any danger, and as he snagged a wine glass from one of the servants who walked past him, he studied the room as much as the people.


    The dresses were lavish, the costumes were decadent, and though he could hear many conversations as he walked through the room, he could only understand a few bits and pieces because of the noise, and they didn¡¯t tell him very much. The fact that he understood every language made it harder at times like this. He could understand every word, but it took a great deal of effort to figure out if those words were even part of the same language.


    So, it all blended together, and in the end, he got more information from the room¡¯s decor than the people. One of the portraits on the wall was of old King Wilden. It wasn¡¯t as large as some of the other pictures, which made him think that he might not be the monarch here, wherever he was.


    No, Simon realized as he looked again at the mammoth four-foot wide portrait, it wasn¡¯t Wilden the first. It was Wilden the second. The same boy he¡¯d once pretended to be the grim reaper for had not just grown. He¡¯d grown old. Though he bore a definite resemblance to his father, he had more than a little gray in his beard now. Simon had no way of knowing how old this painting was, of course, so the man was likely older still by now. In fact, it was entirely possible that he¡¯d already died of old age.


    Simon tried to do the math as he stood there. It had to be at least forty or fifty years since level 3, so if he was on level 21 or 22 now, that was¡­ what, 2 years a level? More? It probably wasn¡¯t that simple, of course, but it was interesting to think that when he got to level 99, he¡¯d probably be 200 years in the future.


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    I¡¯m a time traveler, he thought to himself as he toasted to no one in particular.


    ¡°Oh?¡± a woman said, walking to his left elbow, ¡°A man dressed as a bandit drinking to the King? Now I have seen everything.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not a bandit. I¡¯m more of an adventurer, really,¡± he said, not looking at her immediately.


    ¡°Oh? Hunting for big game perhaps?¡± she laughed, ¡°The court of Varbaria is a strange place for such things, but then the room is full of more monsters than usual.¡±


    ¡°Monsters, huh? Then what does that make you?¡± He asked as he started to turn around. He realized then that he¡¯d seen her somewhere.


    ¡°Wait, have we met?¡± he asked as he studied her.


    The woman was a little older than him, with dark hair and a mischievous smile. She was dressed as a nymph or a wood spirit or something like that, and her green makeup matched her dress. For the life of him, he couldn¡¯t think of who the woman might be, but still, he couldn¡¯t shake the feeling.


    Could she have been a girl in Schwarzenbruck during the zombies? He wondered. Wait, there were no zombies in this timeline. Then who¡­


    ¡°A monster, obviously. As to making your acquaintance, I really can¡¯t say,¡± she asked in a tone that all but told him he was right. ¡°Somehow, I always thought I¡¯d see you again, but in the same outfit, without aging a day? That¡¯s wild.¡±


    ¡°Listen,¡± he said, suddenly on the back foot. ¡°I can explain that, it¡¯s just that¡ª¡±


    ¡°Later,¡± she said. ¡°You keep standing in this room, and you¡¯re going to have a really bad day, okay? We can catch up on old times after what happens next.¡±


    The way she was dragging Simon through the room toward the nearest exit. ¡°Bad day, huh?¡± he asked. ¡°What¡¯s going to happen?¡±


    Whether she was familiar or not suddenly became less important; if she was up to no good, then he needed to figure out what she was going to do and stop it. When he pulled on her hand to bring her to a stop in front of the open door, her slender fingers slipped free of his grip.


    ¡°It¡¯s your choice, Simon,¡± she smiled. ¡°You can either come with me and find out who I am or stay here and find out what happens next. It¡¯s entirely up to you.¡±


    Then, without a backward glance, she turned and started to walk away, showing off the sinuous way her hips moved beneath her sheer green dress with every step. For a moment, he was torn, and as he stood there, the doorman started to shut the large double doors again.


    Simon eventually pushed past him, though, and jogged to catch up to his mystery woman. She knew his name. Something like that had never happened before. Not in the entire time he¡¯d been in the pit, and he had to find out who she was.


    If something terrible happened to him, well - he¡¯d just have to stop it, like always. Isn¡¯t something terrible kind of guaranteed to happen, though? He wondered. That was kind of why he was here.


    He did a double-take at that and blurted out, ¡°Wait, the terrible things usually happen before I get there, don¡¯t they?¡±


    ¡°If you say so,¡± she murmured, taking her hand in both of his and resting her head on his shoulder as they continued walking down the hall. ¡°As far as I¡¯m concerned, terrible things have been happening for far too long. I¡¯d hoped that we would have left that behind in Adonan, but I suppose that was never Eddek¡¯s lot in life.¡±


    ¡°Adonan? Eddek?¡± Simon murmured to himself as he thought about what she was saying. He¡¯d definitely heard both words before. One was a place he¡¯d never been, and the other was a name, probably. Then, in a flash of inspiration, he figured it out, but before he could speak, she interrupted him.


    ¡°And to think I thought you were the bad guy when we met on that road so long ago,¡± she laughed, escorting him out into the courtyard and then further out into the night. "But it turns out that not all monsters have dark shadows, and not all those with more than their share of darkness are monsters. Isn¡¯t that interesting?¡±


    He didn¡¯t know where she was taking him, but at least he knew a little more about where they were. They were in some kind of large manor house or small palace that was either just outside of a larger city or had grounds so large that it might as well be surrounded by wilderness. It was hard to say.


    Either way, all the places she was mentioning were to the east of the places he was more used to in the Kingdom of Brin, like Slany and Liepzen. He still hadn¡¯t mapped where all the levels were in relation to each other, but it was a goal of his when he had the time and the resources.


    ¡°All this would be a lot more interesting to me if I knew what was going on, Kaylee,¡± he said, trying to redirect the conversation. ¡°What are we celebrating, and why wouldn¡¯t I want to stick around and find out?¡±


    ¡°Simon, I only meant that that wasn¡¯t your crowd, and if they¡¯d figured out you weren¡¯t a noble, they might have done something harsh to you,¡± she lied. ¡°After all, I should know. I¡¯m just a maid in a borrowed dress, after all.¡±


    ¡°A borrowed dress, huh?¡± he said, not relaxing. She was clearly up to something. ¡°Look - I¡¯d love to catch up with you, but you need to be straight with me. You¡¯re going to hurt those people, aren¡¯t you? What did they do to you?¡±


    ¡°Me? I¡¯m just a poor, insignificant maid. I would never dream of trying to hurt my betters,¡± she laughed as she sat down on a stone bench with a commanding view of the grounds. From here, they could see the lights of the party through the giant picture windows on the front of the house. ¡°I¡¯m glad you could be here to share this moment with me, though. Eddek would have liked that. He spoke about you often in the years after you rescued us, you know. You made a big impression on his life.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s always nice to hear,¡± Simon answered numbly as he tried to figure out what was going on here. The grounds were lovely, and he¡¯d love to spend a few hours just looking at the starlit gardens and hearing this woman¡¯s story, but he had a feeling that time was of the essence, and they¡¯d already wasted twenty minutes of it. ¡°So, did these nobles wrong you, or¡­¡±


    ¡°They wrong everyone,¡± she shrugged. ¡°That¡¯s their nature. Still - if they hadn¡¯t murdered my beloved Master during one of their little intrigues, it probably never would have come to this.¡±


    ¡°Come to what?¡± he asked. As if to answer his question, he heard a scream from somewhere inside the party, and as he looked over at the building, he could see flames climbing one of the tapestries inside.


    ¡°I was never strong. Not like you or Eddek, but you don¡¯t need to be strong to turn a key and let the wrong person in, now do you?¡±


    Simon recoiled from the woman. In the outfit she was wearing, Kaylee was more than lovely, but whatever had happened to her had long since poisoned her soul and made her some kind of monster.


    ¡°I can¡¯t just stand by and let this happen,¡± he told her as he got to his feet and pulled out his sword.


    ¡°And I can¡¯t stop you,¡± she said with a shrug. ¡°Eddek wouldn¡¯t have wanted that. Go off and play the hero if you like. That does seem to be your role in all this¡­¡± She might have kept talking after that, but he couldn¡¯t hear her over the sound of crunching gravel as he ran back toward the manor house and whatever butchery was happening there.

 Ch. 92 - Off Course

    There had been a guard at the door when they¡¯d come out, but when Simon reached the side entrance they¡¯d used before, he was missing. Had he joined in the defense, or was he part of the attack? There was no way to know that, but the psycho vibes that Kaylee had been putting out made him fear it was the latter, not the former.


    It killed him that he had to run away from that conversation when she was obviously more than ready to spill her guts to him, but he could hardly spare the time to scroll through the quest text to figure out what it was he was supposed to be doing here.


    People were dying, and the fact that the portal had brought him here before the killing started meant that he was supposed to stop that from happening. At least, he was pretty sure that¡¯s what it meant. Normally, he arrived either right after something bad had happened or long after something bad had happened, though, so it had to mean something that he was here just before disaster struck.


    As he shouldered open the door and drew his sword, he had his answer. The guard he was looking for was dead, along with several others. One of them hadn¡¯t even had the chance to draw his sword. This was clearly a well-planned surprise attack, and he would love to know the reasons why, but there was no time for that.


    Simon ran down the hall and found the door to the ballroom had been barred with a chair leg wedged between the two door handles. He thought about using a word of force but opted to kick it hard instead. Given the flimsy nature of the bar, it broke wide open without much trouble, and he found the ballroom in flames.


    He¡¯d been here only ten minutes before, but in that time, the place had been transformed. Now, instead of gentle music and the dull roar of gossip, there was panicked screaming and cries of pain. To make matters worse, someone had brought the chandelier down as well. So what had been a brightly lit room full of well-dressed partygoers had become a chaotic mix of shadows and blood, and when several people ran toward him as he forced open the door, the only thing that stayed his hand was the bulky silhouettes of the dresses.


    It was unlikely that middle-aged women were the ones behind this. So, he let them pass and stepped forward, finding his real targets by the firelight glinting off their weapons. Most men in the room had little more than decorative daggers on them, but the few that seemed responsible for the killing bore swords and axes, and they quickly homed in on Simon.


    ¡°One of the guards got missed, looks like,¡± one man called out to his compatriots.


    Then, just like that, three men were advancing cautiously toward him. Simon could have tried to beat the answers out of one of them. He could have baited them with insults and questions to learn what their grievance was, but the truth was that right now, he didn¡¯t care.


    As grotesque as the nobility of any society could be at times, he didn¡¯t think that simply murdering everyone was the right answer. He¡¯d even let Varten¡¯s brother live when he was as angry as he¡¯d ever been, so killing the wives and daughters of bad men wasn¡¯t going to cut it with him, no matter the reason.


    When the first man came at him with a sword, Simon didn¡¯t even use a word of power to create an opening. He just sidestepped the clumsy blow and ran his blade through the other man¡¯s throat before pulling it out of the side of his neck in a grisly shower of blood to parry the blow from his second attacker.


    Attackers two and three tried to work together, and Simon parried the next several blows to look for an opening. Fortunately for him, the short sword of man 2 and the axe of man 3 weren¡¯t working very well together. As soon as the short sword wielder slipped on the increasingly bloody tile floor, Simon ran the other man through the chest. While he stood there in disbelief, Simon borrowed the man¡¯s axe and then brought that down hard on the head of the final attacker.


    As soon as he finished with those three, another two came at him. In the brighter firelight, he noticed that all five of them were wearing at least some parts of a servant''s livery under their mismatched armor. That was enough to make him wonder if this might be closer to a slave rebellion than an assassination, but he didn¡¯t have time to think too much about that before he parried the first blow with one of the dead men¡¯s swords.


    It was an unfamiliar blade, and the weighting was a little off, so Simon staggered back under the blow. He considered lighting them both on fire and being done with it, but he resisted. He didn¡¯t know how many more he¡¯d have to fight after this, so there was no point in wasting his big guns right now.


    Instead, Simon used the heavy blade mostly to ward off the men while he maneuvered them into position, and then when one of them tried to step over the body of a nobleman to get a little closer, Simon pushed him hard and used the distraction to take the head off his friend that had been wielding a wire-basket rapier.


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    It was only when he saw that weapon that he realized that these weren''t their weapons. They were too varied and too fancy. Likely, they had all been stolen from the walls of some study or dining hall where trophy weapons had been displayed. That answered one question, but it raised another. If the men who were killing everyone were servants, then who exactly was it that Kaylee had let in?


    No one else challenged him after he left five men dead at his feet, and by the time their brutal little duel was done, and Simon had retrieved his weapon, the room was completely ablaze. At that point, everyone living had either perished or escaped. Fortunately, the light meant that he could see the last of the rats running from him through the far door. He coughed in the thickening smoke, saddened at how many people had died because he was slow to react. If he hadn¡¯t let Kaylee pull him away, he was sure he would have prevented most of these needless deaths just by being at the right place at the right time.


    He looked up at the burning portrait of the aging King he¡¯d studied earlier. The man seemed to be judging him, and given the sort of man he was, that didn¡¯t sit well with Simon.


    ¡°Yeah, yeah, I know. I¡¯ll get ''em,¡± he said to himself as he started toward the door.


    The last thing Simon needed was a dead brat telling him he wasn¡¯t doing enough. The other side of the door was a darkened hallway, but the sound of running and the drips of blood on the floor made it perfectly obvious where they¡¯d gone, so he picked up speed and started jogging down the hall after them. At one of the servants'' staircases, he slowed down just enough to make sure he wasn¡¯t running into an ambush, and then he went deeper into the darkness.


    He whispered a word of light, making the room below him light up, just in case. This was enough to startle at least one person, though, because as soon as that happened, he heard a man shout, ¡°Shit. Someone¡¯s coming. Fucking mage, too!¡±


    ¡°Meiren!¡± someone shouted, and for the first time in a long time, it wasn¡¯t Simon.


    Goblins sometimes used magic, and the warlock he''d crossed paths with a number of times had as well, but this was new. This was the first time in a long time that someone new used magic against him, and he didn''t like it. In that moment, he almost panicked. Simon was shocked. Not only had he run into someone that he¡¯d met on another level, but now there was someone else who knew magic?


    Just what in the fuck is going on here? He thought to himself as he retreated several steps higher while the lowest stairs were momentarily consumed with flames.


    He felt the wash of heat across him but waited for the fire to clear before he moved or spoke. Instead, he strained to hear whatever might be next. The fire spell would have cooked him if he¡¯d charged straight ahead, but there was no telling if he¡¯d be as lucky the next time.


    ¡°Come on!¡± someone hissed.


    There was the sound of a door slamming after that. It might have been a trap, of course, but he didn¡¯t think it was. Rather than risk losing his now very interesting quarry, he ran down the stairs. However, by the time Simon got there, they¡¯d already fled to another room as he''d expected. He shook his head in annoyance. ¡°When I said I was going to go deeper into the Pit, this was not what I meant.¡±


    Still, as he went forward, he couldn¡¯t help but smile. He definitely hadn¡¯t solved this level, but he had a much better idea of what he would need to do next time. Next time, he¡¯d be waiting for whoever it was that had done this, and after that, he could sit down with Kaylee and have a nice long chat about what god-awful things had happened to her between when he¡¯d left the young version of her at the Miller¡¯s and now to make her think that something like this was a good idea.


    Before he could do any of that, though, he had to kill someone very interesting. So, without any further ado, he carefully opened the door and stepped inside.


    The room was dark, and the floor was wooden. His first instinct was to cast another light spell, but he resisted. Having a flashlight in a dark room might let you find what you were looking for, but it painted a hell of a target on you if you turned it on, and right now, he was hunting someone with a flamethrower.


    When he got five cautious steps in, and he heard someone gently snoring, he knew something was off, but it wasn¡¯t until the floor swayed beneath him that he realized what it was exactly. In his hurry to track down and finish off the murderers, he¡¯d found the door to the next level and guaranteed they¡¯d get away.


    Simon rolled his eyes and thought about going back toward the door to see if the portal might still be open, but he decided against it. He¡¯d killed a handful, and that would have to be enough for this run. He¡¯d do better next time.


    Besides, that didn¡¯t matter now. What mattered was that the moving deck meant only one thing in his mind: he was on a ship.


    How does a portal even work on a ship? He wondered to himself. It was moving, wasn¡¯t it? If he left it open for too long, would he just fall into the ocean next time?


    Simon was somewhere below decks, and the stink of unwashed sailors overwhelmed even the salty sea air. Eventually, as he picked his way toward the stairs, he smelled something else too, though: the scents of death and disease were present as well.


    Things were quiet, but this definitely wasn¡¯t a cruise ship. His magic was definitely going to be needed here. Well, that and finding a way to disguise himself before people decided he was a stowaway and made him walk the plank or something.

 Ch. 93 - Far From Anywhere

    Simon spent his first few minutes on the new level just trying to figure out what in the hell was going on, and answers were not forthcoming. Up the stairs, he found a sparsely crewed top deck, and though a few sailors glanced at him disinterestedly, no one asked anything of him, which was good because he had no idea what it was he would tell them.


    He learned little as he wandered around the deck beside the fact that he was on a large sailing ship somewhere at sea in the middle of the night. At least, not until he found a lively dice game going near the prow of the ship. It was there he found people who were willing to talk if he was willing to lose a few silvers, and he always was. This time, it was a little easier because he had no idea how to play this game.


    He¡¯d played Crown and Anchor, Liars Dice, Seventh Son, Fortune¡¯s Fool, and any number of other games that were basically the same with a few minor variations over the years, but he¡¯d never played Plunder before, and Simon was forced to endure a little mockery and a high-handed explanation before he was able to find out anything that was actually useful.


    ¡°You see, it¡¯s not just a matter of what you roll,¡± the gap-toothed sailor explained, ¡°It¡¯s where the die lands. If it¡¯s inside the circle here, then¡ª¡±


    ¡°What kind of gambling man on a ship ain''t never heard of Plunder before, that¡¯s what I want to know,¡± a younger man interrupted, looking at Simon suspiciously.


    ¡°Oh, leave off!¡± the first sailor said, beating his junior back. It was obvious that he had eyes only for Simon¡¯s coins. The hungry-eyed sailor would have overlooked a pair of devil¡¯s horns if the man attached to them had a nice full coin pouch.


    Simon did his best to let them empty the small pouch that was the remains of a turnip sack before the end of the watch. He didn¡¯t want anyone to think he might have something worth stealing when he finally went to bed. He could produce more coins from his boots if he needed to later in this voyage.


    It was a successful strategy, and he learned a lot. He was on a three-masted Carrack named the Sea Seraph, and she was bound for Ionar to resupply freshwater and then from there, they¡¯d continue another week east to Abrese before they circled back and started west again.


    ¡°Sailing back and forth through the straits of Ennorah ain¡¯t as exciting as some of the other routes I¡¯ve been on,¡± an old salt said, holding up his right hand to show the three missing fingers he claimed to have lost to a cutlass, ¡°But it pays the bills and the women by the quay is prettier than most. What more can you ask for?¡±


    Everyone laughed at that. Unfortunately, Simon wasn¡¯t able to learn what port they¡¯d come from most recently because that would have instantly revealed him for the imposter he was. However, he did learn that the crew wasn¡¯t happy that there were so many refugees mixed amongst the merchants, that was their typical clientele.


    ¡°You feel my pain, I¡¯m sure,¡± Saul griped to him. ¡°A well-fed tough like you. Your job is to watch the cargo, mine is to rig the sails, and neither one of them is made easier with brats and beggars underfoot. ¡±


    ¡°Of course,¡± Simon agreed, even though he didn¡¯t. Getting on the wrong side of the sailors would do him no favors, though. He could ask questions of the other passengers easily enough tomorrow or the day after. They were not yet due in their port for a few more days, and apparently, the weather gauge said there was at least one storm between here and there.


    By the time Simon was just getting the hang of the game, he was all out of coins, so he descended the stairs back into the belly of the ship. Honestly, he was surprised that it had gone as well as it had.


    ¡°I guess there¡¯s nothing to be suspicious of when you¡¯re already a week into your voyage,¡± Simon muttered to himself as he let his eyes adjust to the dark and looked for somewhere he might be able to curl up and disappear.


    The middle and lower decks of the ship were cramped, dirty things. The fact that it was bursting at the seams with people and cargo made that both easier and harder. It might not be big enough to have cabins per se, but between the crates, there were enough nooks and crannies where different bands clung together with their own that it became easy enough to blend in. So, there were just enough people to ensure that it wasn¡¯t possible that everyone knew everyone else, but because everything was so overfull, any spot worth laying out a bedroll in had long since been taken.


    In the end, he picked his way through swaying hammocks and snoring sleepers and found a spot to lay down on top of a precarious stack of crates in the lowest deck that put him within inches of the timbers of the mid-deck. Simon immediately realized why this spot hadn¡¯t been claimed as he rolled gently from side to side. One good wave, and he¡¯d roll right off his little perch onto the ground four feet below. While such a fall was unlikely to be fatal, it would hurt like hell, and he had no interest in doing so.


    His solution was to take off his belt and use it to lash himself to the top crate. That worked well enough, and at last, he could finally lay in peace and try to sleep, but sleep didn¡¯t come for him. At least not quickly. Instead, he lay awake in his bunk, trying to sort out what he knew from what he merely suspected.


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    He was pretty sure he¡¯d just sprinted through three levels and barely learned a thing about any of them. Now, he was on a ship in the ocean, far from anywhere, and he had no idea where the next door was. Was it on this Sea Seraph, or was it at their destination? There were even scenarios where they encountered pirates or were shipwrecked, and the thing was on a desert island.


    There was no way to know what Helades was up to here. What is she thinking? He asked himself. For that matter, what is it I¡¯m even supposed to be doing here?


    He didn¡¯t know, but it was an odd decision. Was there someone here he was supposed to save? Some item he was supposed to steal? Pirates would be the easiest, honestly. He¡¯d never fought on a boat before, but it looked like fun in the movies.


    Eventually, Simon fell asleep, but he got no answers. In the morning, the only thing that assaulted him was nausea, and he struggled to undo his sword belt quickly enough to get up the stairs and over the rail fast enough to puke his guts out. That earned him some more mockery from those that were nearby, but he ignored them, burning a week of his life on minor healing to try to erase the sea sickness.


    That little trick worked for a little while, but a few hours later, when the seas started to get rougher because the storm was rolling in, Simon was right back to retching. In fact, not long after that, the weather turned so violent that he preferred to stay on the top deck where the nausea wasn¡¯t so bad, even if he got soaked to the bone in the process.


    Better to be wet than be forced to deal with the smell down there, he thought grimly.


    It was only when the ship was heaving and tossing so badly that he worried he might actually be tossed overboard that Simon finally retreated to the semi-safety of the below decks. Down there, there was no danger that he¡¯d be tossed overboard, but staying dry was almost as unlikely as staying clean. The place was practically a moshpit, and everyone was flung around with each wave that passed by them.


    Simon tried to shelter some of the children that were standing nearest to him from the worst of it but met with only limited success. Hours later, the worst of it finally passed, and everyone went to sleep. Simon vaguely wondered if that was what he was here for, but since he hadn¡¯t actually changed anything, he found it unlikely.


    The following day, when the weather was clear and calm, he finally started to make some friends. What he found was that no one really wanted to talk about what it was they were fleeing from exactly. Oh, they told him plenty of details about poverty, starvation, and persecution, but it was clear that he wasn¡¯t getting the whole story, and that annoyed him.


    Simon had been talking to random strangers and getting tales of woe for years now. He didn¡¯t have a spell for it, but he had a pretty good feel for people at this point, and though he had no way to compel the truth, he was more than aware that he wasn¡¯t getting it. There were a few other people vomiting like him, and some of the children were running fevers, but a few surreptitiously whispered words of healing would solve that. He wasn¡¯t too concerned. This was probably better than average for half-starved refugees.


    He spent the next two days before port chasing this down, but he didn¡¯t get any closer. All he did manage to affirm was that if the portal was anywhere on this boat, it wasn¡¯t somewhere accessible. It was entirely possible that Helades had put it in a crate or a trunk or something. She¡¯d made some strange placement decisions before, and as his time on the boat began to winnow away and land crept slowly into view at the horizon, he felt increasingly anxious.


    When they got close enough to the port that he could see it, that all vanished. Though the years had not been kind to the place, and the land had shifted quite a bit because of the eruption, he recognized this place instantly because he¡¯d been here many times before. The volcano level was Ionar.


    Small fucking world,  he thought as he smiled and took it in.


    The caldera of the volcano had partially collapsed, and the isthmus that had served as the harbor¡¯s breakwater had doubled in size because of the lava, but the lower portion of the town was still there, and he could see bricks peeking out of the lava-drowned upper portion as well, and the partially ruined palace just above that.


    Just like that, he was certain that that¡¯s where the portal would be. Why? It was just a feeling. Simon waited for the ship to make dock, and the captain informed them that they would only be here long enough to resupply before they continued on.


    ¡°The markets here are charming enough, but if you get distracted and we leave without you, it could be weeks before the next ship comes through. Consider yourself warned!¡± he told everyone. ¡°In less than six hours, we¡¯ll be back out to sea and bound for Abrese with or without you.¡± he was obviously mostly talking to his crew. They were looking awfully thirsty. Simon didn¡¯t care. It wasn¡¯t like he was going the rest of the way on their voyage. He¡¯d found his destination. He just had to hike up the cliffs that towered hundreds of feet above the docks.


    Out of shape as he was, it took the better part of an hour to take the long winding way up the cliffside, through the ruined city, to reach the palace. The whole thing felt very nostalgic. Even though he¡¯d last been here a few days ago, decades had obviously passed between that fiery night and the blazing sun of today.


    When Simon reached the palace, he finally relaxed in the shade of a column and took in the view. The whole view had changed entirely since the eruption, but it was still gorgeous. Now, instead of gardens on fire overlooking a prosperous three-tiered town that ended at the ocean''s edge, the place was an abandoned ruin, and the only parts of the whole thing that showed any signs of life were the docks, and the row of buildings immediately adjacent to them. The only reason that much still existed was because of the well, probably. He¡¯d heard the men on board the Sea Seraph talk about how this place was just a stopover on the edge of nowhere. To them it had always been like that, but Simon still remembered it as a beautiful city, and that was enough to make him wonder just how many years had passed between then and now.


    ¡°But if I were to solve the volcano level and prevent the eruption here, then what would happen to this level?¡± he wondered aloud.


    Sadly, he¡¯d probably get to find out, he decided as he stood up and stretched. After all, he hadn¡¯t actually done anything here, so unless this level involved giving a sailor drinking money or curing a child¡¯s fever, he was definitely coming back to try again.

 Ch. 94 - The Long Way

    Some part of him considered killing himself right there on the pier as he watched the ship sail off into the distance. A quick reset would definitely be faster than waiting around to catch the next ship, he told himself. Still, he resisted, grinding his teeth in frustration as he stormed his way back down the docks to get a drink in the tiny, overpriced tavern.


    ¡°Miss your ship?¡± the barkeep asked as he poured Simon a pint. ¡°The view from up top is good, but maybe not that good.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± Simon grumbled. ¡°Now you get a paying customer, and I get a week to enjoy it.¡±


    ¡°A week?¡± The old man laughed, walking off to chat with some of the locals at the other end of the bar. ¡°At least!¡±


    Simon ignored the man. Instead, he kicked himself for his cockiness. He¡¯d been so sure that he¡¯d been in Helades head about this that he¡¯d walked straight to the damn arch that had taken him to the owl bear level, and there he¡¯d found nothing but a throne room that had long since been picked clean of anything of value, and evidence that someone occasionally used it as a sheep pen. He¡¯d spend hours scouring the grounds and other nearby buildings, looking for an arch that contained a portal.


    It was only when he¡¯d walked outside and seen the ship raising its sails that he realized how long his wild goose chase had taken. A quick run down the mountain, which resulted in a close call at one of the sharper corners on the path, got him down the cliffside in ten minutes instead of the hour it had taken him to hike up it, and he arrived at the pier just a few minutes too late.


    Even as he watched the thing lumber toward the mouth of the harbor, he was sure he could have made it with the judicious use of force magic. He also knew that wouldn¡¯t have ended well. At night, he might have risked it, but in broad daylight? Well, there was no way people would miss that.


    So, instead, he was stuck waiting for the next ship, whenever that was, but he had no idea what he would do from there. All he knew now was that the portal wasn¡¯t here, so it was either at his destination or on the ship he¡¯d just been on. The ship seemed to be the more likely choice, of course, but the world was a big place. He might never catch the ship again.


    ¡°Does that mean I¡¯m stuck here the rest of my life?¡± he muttered to himself.


    ¡°Probably not the rest of your life,¡± the sailor sitting two stools down from him said with a laugh. ¡°But certainly longer than you want! Me, I¡¯ve wanted off that tub for too damn long, and Ionar is as good a place as any for a break. Figure I¡¯ll crew up for the next ship that is not run by Captain Darnis and make my fortune elsewhere.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with the Captain?¡± Simon asked. The only thing he was the least bit interested in was changing topics, but a little insight into the man wouldn''t hurt.


    ¡°The man¡¯s a bloody fool,¡± the drunken sailor roared. ¡°Who takes refugees instead of paying cargo? Huh? Answer me that. Women at sea, too! Mark my words, that kind-hearted Captain will run the Sea Seraph aground any day now. This voyage or next will be the last that that fine ship ever takes.¡±


    ¡°Bold words,¡± Simon said, not knowing how much of any of it to believe.


    ¡°Indeed,¡± the man said, treating his skepticism like a toast. ¡°To bold words and the bold men that wield them. You ask me, you¡¯re lucky you missed that ship. What is it you do anyway, stranger? You look a little well-fed for a mercenary and a little too tough to be a merchant.¡±


    ¡°Simon,¡± he volunteered. ¡°I do a little of this and a little of that. Let¡¯s just say I come from a distant land, and I¡¯m learning more about the area.¡±


    ¡°Well met Simon. I¡¯m Arrion, and there ain¡¯t much to be learned around here,¡± the sailor answered. ¡°If you want to see interesting sights you should stay north in places like Brin or Nigh. Or maybe across the seas in distant Thay. Lots of places more interesting than these parts.¡±


    ¡°If this area¡¯s so boring, then why are you here?¡± Simon asked, mildly curious.


    ¡°Hey - I¡¯m not here for excitement. That¡¯s you,¡± Arrion answered as he finished his drink and waved for another one. ¡°I grew up on Orvan, and on that little island, there¡¯s only two kinds of professions: those that involve sheep and those that involve the sea. Sailing across the shallows and through the straits under a good captain - that¡¯s more than enough excitement for my life, but there ain''t much in the way of stories there.¡±


    ¡°Well,¡± Simon answered, draining his tankard and opting not to get another for now as he stood. ¡°Never say never.¡±


    That conversation set the tone for his hopefully brief stay at the small port community. Simon had known that this place had fallen pretty far, but to go from the capital of the Kingdom of Ionia to a ghost town of less than two hundred people in a single evening was terrifying.


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    Simon could see many of the wrecked or abandoned villas in the upper city. Their blue tile roofs and whitewashed walls were forever stained with soot, but at least they weren¡¯t buried under feet of hardened black lava like the rest of the place. The people here had gone from a palace and a constant supply of ships from distant lands to a well, a bar, and a harbor that was slowly filling with silt. Other than the handful of herders and fishermen, the place was just a place to stop on the way to go somewhere else now.


    It was sad, but it was sadder still when seen across the sweep of history, and it forced Simon to consider whether or not he might go so far forward as he went down layer by layer that eventually places he knew much better than this one became nothing but ruins. It was a sobering thought.


    Simon did some exploring while he waited for another ship and even walked up to the volcano caldera one day to see if there were any clues behind the eruption since it was the one topic that no one in Ionar would talk about. He¡¯d been hoping to find the temple of some elemental god, but instead, all he found were a few steam vents and some bubbling mud.


    Nine days after Simon arrived, a galleon named Spindrift Strider made a port call, and both he and Arrion found their way aboard. This ship had much more cargo and many fewer people than the last one, which Arrion assured him was utterly normal for cargo ships of this sort, and once they were underway, they made good time to Abrese. Six days later, and almost two full weeks behind the Sea Seraph¡¯s pace, they found the large port town they¡¯d been looking for.


    It was a gloomy day, and there was a pall of smoke over the town, which was apparently not unusual given the foundries and forges that were always running, but when they got closer, even before Simon noticed the ship he was searching for listing by the quay, he knew something was wrong. They all did.


    ¡°Something bad has happened here,¡± the first mate said, and after a brief conference with the Captain, they decided they would not be docking after all. Instead, they would go east and inform the powers that be that something terrible had taken hold in the city.


    It¡¯s a smart decision, Simon told himself as he started to strip down out of his armor. Normally, he¡¯d applaud it. Some sort of evil was definitely in the town, and whether it was magical in nature or something more mundane like the plague, the streets were all but empty.


    But he couldn¡¯t stay away. He needed to get off this ship and onto the Sea Seraph or die trying.


    Simon didn''t take much with him when he jumped overboard. His clothes, along with his boots, dagger, and coin purse bundled in a sack, were all he thought he could manage to swim with for such a long distance. He felt naked without his armor, of course, but there was no way he was swimming in tight leather armor.


    People thought he was crazy, and one sailor, whom Simon suspected was Arrion, tried to throw him a line, but Simon continued on, and a few minutes later, he was dragging himself up the ladder of the closest pier, exhausted and halfway drowned.


    ¡°I¡¯ve really got to work on my swimming,¡± he said as he coughed up water and caught his breath.


    As he made his way down to the Sea Seraph, no one challenged him. There were other boats at the dock, and some of them had obvious crews aboard, but those did not have a gangway down, and they menaced him with weapons as he walked by as if he might try to come aboard.


    ¡°What happened here!¡± Simon yelled. ¡°Where is everyone!¡±


    ¡°If you don¡¯t know yet, then you best jump back in the water and start swimming,¡± an old sailor yelled. ¡°Because the bloody pox will infect you just the same!¡±


    ¡°Great, another fucking plague,¡± Simon said to himself as he kept walking. That was no danger to him, of course, but he couldn¡¯t exactly spend weeks or months healing thousands of people as it worked its way through the city.


    Why does it always have to be diseases, Simon wondered.


    Honestly, it was a dumb question, and he knew it as soon as he thought about it. Disease and war were pretty much what drove all of history, and he was probably going to see a lot more levels related to those things than little caves filled with goblins.


    As he crept on board the abandoned boat, he realized his mistake, though. That ship, or someone on it, was almost certainly the cause of this. If Helades had wanted him to deal with the plague or the aftermath, she would have sent him here. She sent him to the ship, which pretty much had to mean he¡¯d had a chance to save all these people, and he¡¯d blown it.


    With a sigh, Simon navigated his way across the slightly leaning deck toward the Captain¡¯s cabin. There were bodies here and there, and the smell from the hold was even more foul than it had been before. The Captain¡¯s cabin door opened without issue, and as usual, it unfortunately contained no portal. Instead, it showed him Captain Darnis''s well-appointed cabin. The man had died and was lying face down in his logbook.


    Despite the gross red sores on the man¡¯s arms, Simon picked him up off the book to see if there were any clues to be gleaned about what might have happened, but the pages were blurred and fused by pus and blood that had leaked out of the slowly putrifying body. The man had been dead for days.


    ¡°But I was on here for three days and saw nothing like this,¡± Simon told himself as he looked around in the room in confusion to see if there was anything else he could scavenge.


    Thinking back, a couple of the kids did have small red sores on their bodies, but Simon had merely assumed that those were lice or something similar. Had he inadvertently cured the most advanced cases with fevers but left a Typhoid Mary or two left to spread whatever this pox was far and wide?


    He wasn¡¯t sure, but as he borrowed the Captain¡¯s cutlass, he decided it was a decent operating theory to start with. Next time he came through here, he¡¯d be more diligent.


    Simon moved to the door. He¡¯d decided that he¡¯d go out into the city and do what he could while he looked for the way to the next level. That¡¯s not what happened. Instead, the door opened to reveal a shadowy forest.


    He sighed. ¡°So the portal only appears here if you approach it from this side. Or, does it only appear if the boat is moored here? Make up your damn mind!¡±

 Ch. 95 - Into the Dark

    The portal in front of Simon led into a dark wood. Well, he thought it was a dark wood. As soon as he whispered the words of lesser light, though, he saw it was something else. They weren¡¯t trees he was walking through. They were stone pillars, and what he¡¯d thought was leaf clutter, and branches were actually long spiderwebs. He wasn¡¯t even outside, he figured out after a few minutes of walking. There was no breeze.


    That means I have to be, what, underground? He wondered.


    ¡°I guess that means I finally get to find my first fantasy race?¡± he whispered to himself as he tried to search out any signs that these were, in fact, dwarvish and not human structures. He found nothing that said that definitively, though, besides the strange location. There were human sized doors in the structures, and the bones he saw seemed to be about the right size for men. All he could say for certain was that he was lost in a dark place with only dusty ruins and spider webs to keep him company.


    Most of the webs that obscured the details of the structures were thin, gauzy things that he could push through easily, but some of the major strands that anchored the larger webs were thicker than a pencil, and a few of the largest ones were thicker than his fingers. He shuddered at that, but it wasn¡¯t enough to make him panic.


    Indeed, after a couple of minutes, it became clear this would be an easy level to bypass, at least, if that¡¯s what he wanted to do. This whole place seemed to be a tomb, and in the distance, he could see the bright light of an illuminated doorway. While it was possible that such a thing was a way to the surface or an occupied building of some kind, in Simon¡¯s mind, it was almost certainly the portal to the next level.


    While he was still too far away to say for sure, he hoped that would be the case. A nice daylight level would do him some good after all the creepy dark places the Goddess had been sending him for the last few levels.


    Still, none of those pleasant thoughts were enough to take his mind off of just how dangerous this place felt. Here and there, he saw desiccated corpses hanging in cocoons, and occasionally, he would hear distant noises that might be the sound of giant spiders skittering across their enormous web.


    In his tiny receding bubble of light, though, Simon was alone as he made his way toward the light. Halfway there, he recast minor light, and when he was close enough to see waving stalks of grain through the portal, he smiled. It looked like a nice day, and it had been a while since he¡¯d had one of those.


    That was also about the spot where the larger strands started to get really thick. The first two times he went down a ruined street that was blocked with more strands than he could maneuver between, he went back and circled around until he found a clearer route.


    Simon tried to tell himself that he had nothing to worry about, but no matter how well he kept his cool, he could feel his heart beating faster, and he had no desire to find out what would happen if he touched one of these things, and got something¡¯s attention.


    I just gotta stay fast and quiet, he told himself as he made his way toward the light.


    Eventually, that wasn¡¯t an option, though. Eventually, less than 50 yards from the door, he found a wall of thick webbing that was knotted, ugly, and nearly impenetrable.


    Simon thought about burning it, but that seemed likely to attract even more attention than cutting one of the strands. So, after a few more seconds of study, he sliced through the smallest section that would allow him to squeeze his fat all through.


    The blade cut through it soundlessly, but as the strand whipped up and out of the way, it sent a warbling sympathetic vibration through this whole section of the web. This, in turn, sent a chill down his spine and triggered a whole cacophony of other skittering and chittering. He¡¯d definitely gotten someone¡¯s attention with that.


    Simon bolted toward the door, closing the distance recklessly. It almost cost him his life when a desk-sized spider pounced, landing close enough to knock Simon off his feet.


    He didn¡¯t try to get up immediately. There wasn¡¯t time. Instead, he rolled over, thrusting the cutlass up and slicing through the thing''s soft belly and cutting it in half all the way to its mandibles even as it tried to bite him.


    ¡°Holy shit,¡± Simon said, unable to rise for a moment as he lay there covered in spider guts as he contemplated the horror of what just happened.


    Laying there, it was impossible to see the flickers of movement further into the darkness, so without thinking, he used a flamethrower. ¡°Gervuul Meiren,¡± he spat, using the words of greater fire to lay down a huge curtain of flame to keep back anything that might be looking to take a bite out of him as he struggled to his feet on the slick ground.


    He heard the screeches of pain and the sound of monsters crisping and popping from the heat as he moved to the door, but he didn¡¯t bother to turn around and look until he was actually standing in the gateway.


    The view from there made his jaw drop as he watched the scale of the destruction he¡¯d unleashed. Simon had spent more time than anyone would care to admit watching the subsubsubgenre of videos on all of the various apps that people called ¡®oddly satisfying.¡¯ He¡¯d watched people powerwash concrete, knock over dominos, get unlikely hole-in-ones, and every other sort of inane activity there was, but he¡¯d never watched a city burn.


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    He hadn¡¯t given it a moment¡¯s thought, but it turned out that the spiderwebs that decorated every surface of the cavern and buildings within were extremely flammable, and the fire traveled across them like a spreading wave, burning them off of every surface as it slowly crawled forward in an orange and yellow line of death.


    Not his death, though, but the spiders. They couldn¡¯t move fast enough, and he watched dozens burst into flames in sizes that ranged from dogs to cars.


    I¡¯m done with the level, he told himself. I can just leave now. He couldn¡¯t, though. The image was too captivating. It gave him a sense of scale about where he was for the first time, and he watched building after building briefly illuminate before the crawling fire moved on, he was left wondering what it was that had happened here. It had clearly been a large city at some point, and even though they were obviously underground, it wasn¡¯t how he imagined that people would build things underground.


    It was only when he heard a roar that sounded like it belonged in a Godzilla movie that he looked up. There, he saw something that sent a spike of terror right through his soul. There were many pillars scattered throughout the city that didn¡¯t seem to have a purpose, but it turned out that the 8 largest weren¡¯t pillars at all. They were attached to a giant fucking spider that was the size of an office building, and even as he watched it, it turned its eight red eyes on him and began to turn slowly, one step at a time, in his direction.


    Simon slammed the door shut on what turned out to be a small shed. He staggered back in terror. Moments later, a young man wielding a hoe like a club came around the corner and yelled, ¡°I found him, Pa!¡±


    Simon let his gory sword fall from his hand onto the yellowed grass as he raised his hands in a show of surrender. ¡°I¡¯m not here to cause any trouble; I just¡ª¡± he started to say.


    ¡°What in the hells are you doing on our farm, creep?¡± the boy demanded as he looked at him suspiciously. ¡°If you think you¡¯re getting any more of our chickens, you can¡ª¡±


    ¡°Aaric, that¡¯s enough,¡± an older man said, coming out from behind the other side of the building. He was only wielding a pitchfork, but unlike his son, he looked like he knew how to do some damage with it. ¡°Don¡¯t antagonize men with swords. Besides, he doesn¡¯t look like the chicken stealing type.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± Simon said. Slowly raising himself to his feet but leaving his sword where it lay. ¡°I was following some goblin tracks, and I took a good chunk out of one, but he got away from me, and I was just making sure it hadn¡¯t taken to hiding in any of your outbuildings.¡±


    ¡°Goblins?¡± the man asked, raising an eyebrow. ¡°I haven¡¯t seen any around here in years.¡±


    ¡°Me either,¡± Simon said, gesturing to his gory outfit. ¡°I forgot how messy the little bastards can be, honestly.¡±


    ¡°Well, pick up your sword. I¡¯ll open the door, and we can¡ª¡± the farmer said, reaching for the door.


    ¡°No, no, no, that¡¯s okay. I already checked and¡­¡± Simon protested, imagining that giant dread spider lurking just behind the thin wall of wood, even though he was like 99% sure the portal was closed now.


    The man gave him a strange look and opened the door anyway. It was a tense moment for both of them, for different reasons, but the small shed proved to be empty. Instead of goblins or vengeful spider gods, there were just some shovels and other tools that had been decorated with rust and cobwebs.


    ¡°Looks like it must have given me the slip,¡± Simon said lamely.


    ¡°Well, we can¡¯t just leave it out there. One goblin turns to ten before you turn around, and we have more than enough problems on this farm anyway,¡± the man answered as Simon sheathed his sword in a scabbard that was a little too big for it to fit right.


    If either of them noticed, they said nothing. Instead, the three of them spent the next hour on a fruitless search for an imaginary goblin while Simon made up a story about being a part-time mercenary and a full-time monster hunter. ¡°Most lords will pay at least a couple pence an ear. More if the people are in a panic,¡± he assured them.


    It was a waste of everyone¡¯s time, but he did get to see the area at least. They traipsed through a nearby wood and several meadows looking for goblin sign, and Simon saw that they had many neighbors scattered along the mild sloping plains with similar sized farms decorated with similarly thatched roofs.


    Eventually, when they couldn¡¯t track the little bastard down, Millen had his boy Aaric lead Simon to a nearby pond so he could wash the spider goo off. By then, Simon¡¯s stories had won the young man over, and while he scrubbed and dried his armor and weapon, the boy peppered him with questions about the wider world.


    ¡°I¡¯d love to become a warrior and fight for the King, but Father would never allow it,¡± Aaric confessed. ¡°It¡¯s not like my sisters could do all the chores in my absence anyway. Not with everything there is to do around here on the farm, anyway.¡±


    Both the boy and his father seemed relatively down on the farm¡¯s prospects, but to Simon, everything looked great. The wheat seemed ready to harvest, the soil looked dark and fertile, and both the surrounding forests and the more distant mountains bordered on the picturesque.


    They were near cities called Darndell and Mietere, which meant nothing to Simon, but based on the way they¡¯d reacted when he¡¯d mentioned Liepzen, they were a fair distance away from the places he¡¯d explored most.


    Still, to him, this looked like a good life, and once he was all cleaned up, and he was invited to stay for supper, that only reaffirmed his earlier observation. Millen¡¯s wife and daughters were lovely, and even though the meal they shared with him was nothing but thin soup and dark coarse bread, it was as picturesque a family as he¡¯d found in the pit.


    That night, they let Simon sleep in the barn, though he found out he had to go in through the side door because the main door led to a spooky nighttime forest when he opened it.


    At least I found the gateway, Simon thought as he lay down in the hayloft and tried to decide what he could do to pay his hosts back for their hospitality. He fell asleep before he¡¯d decided on the right answer.

 Ch. 96 - Dark Clouds

    The next day, Aaric greeted Simon with sweetbreads and more questions about what it was like to fight centaurs. Apparently, they were a growing problem in the region. Simon was careful not to be anywhere near the door that might or might not be a portal, and when the boy opened it, it was to Simon''s great relief the child did not vanish into a shadowy netherworld.


    Instead, the two chatted for a few minutes as they looked for his father and found the man already hard at work. ¡°I trust you¡¯ll be on your way then?¡± Millen asked in a tone that made it clear that it was time for Simon to move on.


    ¡°Of course,¡± Simon agreed, ¡°but before I do, I¡¯d be happy to lend you a few hours if you have any work that needs doing.¡±


    He¡¯d thought about slipping the man a coin, but all he had right now was gold, and the man was likely to be suspicious, insulted, or both if he offered him such a lordly sum. Besides, he still hadn¡¯t figured out what it was he was supposed to be doing here.


    Every portal was supposed to door to a place that needed fixing, but other than Millen¡¯s complaints about how the harvest wouldn¡¯t be as good as it had been last year or mentions that banditry was on the rise further to the north where Simon had claimed to be heading to, it looked pretty damn idyllic.


    It would have been the easiest thing in the world to give up on this level and move on, but even though he was rushing to level 30 so he could give Helades a piece of his mind, having some idea of what he was up against for next time would be nice.


    "Well, if you want to chop a cord or two of firewood while me and Aaric start reaping the wheat and barley, that would be mighty nice of you," the man said with a thin smile. ¡°Still, I think you¡¯d best be back on the road by noon or so. It¡¯s a long walk to the next village.¡±


    Simon nodded at that. He was still woefully out of shape, and a little time with an axe would do him some good. He struggled a bit at first to cut the logs that had been dragged near the house into smaller pieces, but once he gave the axe a good sharpening, things went faster.


    For the next few hours, Simon lost himself in the easy rhythm of steel against wood as he delimbed the dead wood and then chopped the log into smaller pieces that he could break up into billets. This wasn¡¯t the first time he¡¯d done this since he came to The Pit, but it was enough to make him wonder how it was that humanity had ever managed to do this before they¡¯d invented the chainsaw.


    Still, he worked on it for hour after hour, and it was only when the horizon started to darken that he looked up. ¡°Did it really get that late?¡± he asked himself as he looked up.


    Thankfully, he hadn¡¯t just spent the last eight hours cutting wood, he realized as he saw the storm clouds. He set down the axe and sat on his chopping stump as he wondered whether he should head out now or wait until the storm passed, but the answer he came up with was a frightening one. That wasn¡¯t any sort of storm he¡¯d ever seen before.


    There was no lightning for one. That was what had tipped him off. However, as the cloud got closer and closer, well, it was just a uniform pall of darkness, and once he started to hear the buzzing, he was on his feet.


    At first, Simon had thought that he was imagining it, but as it got louder and louder, there was no denying it, and once he saw Aaric and his father running in from the fields, he¡¯d finally figured out why he was there. He just wasn¡¯t sure what he should do about it.


    ¡°Are those locusts?¡± Simon yelled as the men ran toward him.


    ¡°Worse than that!¡± Millen Answered. ¡°Black swarmers are like flying leaches with teeth! They¡¯d much rather suck a man dry than devour the crop! We need to get inside and cover the windows before they get here!¡±


    Simon was torn with whether or not he should stay outside and try to do something or rush inside with them. Ultimately, it was their urgency that convinced him. He moved with the two men as they snatched up the girls and moved with them inside before slamming the shutters closed.


    After that, Simon did whatever he could to help. He rolled up a carpet and shoved it under the door. He helped the youngest girl shove bedding into the slats of one of the windows. This wasn¡¯t like a modern house, though. It wasn¡¯t capable of being hermetically sealed.


    He didn¡¯t realize that until he saw Nora building a fire and tried to understand why. It was plenty warm enough, but they needed to block the chimney before the swarm found that as a way inside.


    The buzzing was incessant now. It was both loud and high-pitched enough to put his teeth on edge.


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    ¡°Alright,¡± Millen said to his family. ¡°Nobody panic. It¡¯s going to be okay. They¡¯ll get the chickens and the goats, and then they¡¯ll move on, and we can¡­ Sweetie, it will be okay, I promise,¡±


    Simon could tell that the man had some sort of speech prepared for that moment, which meant that this had happened before, but that all collapsed when his youngest daughter, Benna, broke down into tears. He looked at the walls and the flimsy thatched roof, trying to figure out whether they were safe or not. That was when the first few bugs started to break in.


    To Simon, they looked like giant termites or ants more than anything, and Aaric was up on his feet, immediately swatting them with a blanket. They were tough little buggers, though, and they were back up in an instant. After a few attempts, he discovered that it took a good hard strike with a piece of firewood to stop them for good. By the time he¡¯d swatted one, though, five more had found their way in through some chink in their armor.


    The little girls were screaming now, and everyone was doing what they could, but it was clear to Simon that this was likely a doomed effort. In a few minutes, there might be hundreds of these things inside the house.


    Quickly, he ran through a list of options he could try in his head. Force was out of the question because of how precisely it needed to be targeted. Fire and ice might hurt the swarm, but firing it blind wasn¡¯t likely to be particularly effective.


    For a moment, Simon was sure that made boundary his only option. Surely, he could make this building proof against more bugs for a minute or two, but if that stretched into hours, he wasn¡¯t so sure. Even if he stuck to the normal command words, he probably wasn¡¯t good for more than 10 or 15 in a row¡­


    Scanning his mental list one more time, he realized there was one more option. It was something he¡¯d never tried before, though. Transfer. Stealing other people¡¯s life lifeforce was wrong, so he¡¯d never actually tried it before, but¡­


    Is it possible to target a whole swarm rather than a single member of the swarm? He thought as he picked up one of the half-crushed bugs and examined it.


    There were dozens of the ugly things in here with them now, and he could feel three of them biting him even now, but it wasn¡¯t so painful after a moment. They had some sort of anesthetic component to whatever it was they were doing, so he ignored it and focused on trying to connect to the swarm that all of them were a part of.


    Simon hadn¡¯t focused hard on the visualization part of magic for a long time since he¡¯d gotten to be pretty good at it, but he knew that it mattered as much as saying the words, and he focused hard on that now.


    He imagined that all of them were connected. Not physically, but that each bug in the swarm was just another cell in the body and that by biting him, they were connecting themselves to him. He had no idea if that would actually work, but in that moment, he believed that it did, and as he envisioned his draining spell sucking the life out of all of them, he whispered, ¡°Gervuul Zyvon.¡± Greater transfer.


    For a second, it felt like he was holding on to a live wire as the bug in his grip squirmed and spasmed one more time before it ceased moving forever. If the other bugs in the room had stopped moving, too, he couldn¡¯t say for sure because his world had been reduced to the strange, narcotic sensation that was currently consuming him.


    A river of lifeforce was flowing into him right now, and each drop in that river was the life of one of these awful little bugs. Simon had never tried any hard drugs before. He¡¯d been drunk plenty of times and tried weed on a few occasions, but what he was enduring right now was well past any of that. This was mainlining something dark and terrible, and somewhere past the feelings of power and hunger and the faint buzzing, there was a feeling of bliss like he¡¯d never known, and as his body went boneless and limp, he lay there on the floor listening to the sound of rain pouring down around the small two room cottage.


    No, not rain, he realized, lying there. Bugs. Tens of thousands of bugs.


    That mental image took away some part of the beauty of the moment, but that was fine. It was enough to force him to his feet as he lurched toward the door.


    ¡°No, Simon, don¡¯t open that! ¡± Millen yelled. He was too late to stop Simon, though. Everyone was.


    There was no danger on the other side of the door, just the same disgusting image he¡¯d imagined before. From here, all the way to the edge of the fields was a black twitching carpet of dead and dying bugs.


    Looking to the sky, Simon could still see a few of them, but he knew he¡¯d done it, and honestly, he might never have felt more powerful than he did at that moment.


    ¡°It¡¯s over,¡± he breathed.


    ¡°What¡¯s over? Did you¡­¡± Millen started to ask, but his words trailed off into silence as he beheld the truly biblical sight of the slaughtered swarm.


    Simon wanted to take credit or something like that, but honestly, the way he felt even standing was pretty challenging. So, instead, he stood there with a dumb smile on his face while the family that had crowded around him in the doorway got down on their knees and thanked the gods above for their little miracle.


    Once the shock had worn off, Millen demanded, ¡°Did you have anything to do with this? Did you know that¡­¡±


    Simon just shook his head. ¡°You have that backward, man. I was planning to get on the road right about now. If not for you, those creepy crawlers would have eaten me alive!¡± he said, deciding that was the best possible lie he could come up with on short notice.


    He could see that they were still clearly suspicious of him, but there wasn¡¯t a lot he could do about it besides crunch through three inches of bugs as he helped them check on the barnyard animals that had, shockingly, mostly survived this bizarre event.


    He kept an easy smile on his face while they did that, but he knew he was going to have to get the hell out of there just as soon as he could. Hopefully, the next level would give him someplace to lie down and get his shit together because he was not at the top of his game right now.

 Ch. 97 - Big Game

    It took several minutes, but as soon Simon shook the intoxicating feeling of the life force pouring inside of him, he resolved to leave. Now that the bliss was fading, it left behind an oily residue. Some small part of him felt like whatever he¡¯d done to earn the baleful aura that so many had reported had just been made worse. Like he¡¯d done something he shouldn¡¯t have.


    That was certainly confirmed by the way that Millen and his son were looking at Simon. As they stared at the carpet of dead insects, their gaze became increasingly dark, and he knew it wasn¡¯t going to end well. So, making an excuse that he had to go check on his belongings, he slipped off to the barn, and from there, he exited to the next level.


    He¡¯d lost count. He wasn¡¯t sure if this was 25, 26, or 27. Hell, he might have reached level 29 for all he knew, but he knew he was getting close to Helades. ¡°I just have to keep moving,¡± he told himself as he looked past the fog of his warm breath on the cold air to the moonlit woods. ¡°I just have to¡­¡±


    His words trailed off as the howl of distant wolves raised the hair on the back of his neck.


    I just have to stay ahead of whatever the hell that is, he decided as he turned and started to jog in the opposite direction.


    Simon wasn¡¯t in the best shape yet. In fact, he still felt like he needed to lose 50 pounds, but right now, he wasn¡¯t in the right space to fight. He was still wrestling with the narcotic sensations of what he¡¯d done and the strange urge to do it again, and he was definitely not in the right headspace to fight wargs and goblins or whatever it was he was supposed to do on this level.


    For that matter, he had no idea where he was either. The cold and the pine trees said he was somewhere high. So maybe he was in the mountains in the fall or the winter¡­ Eventually, he ran out of gas, and he walked the way up the rest of the rise. It was only there that he started to put the pieces together slowly as he found the dim lights of a village below him.


    It was a nice-looking place. Well, at least it was nicer than some of the other places he¡¯d been to recently. It wasn¡¯t the richest place, and it was almost certainly too small to be considered a town, but it probably had everything that he really needed in one quaint little community. There was a double handful of thatched roof houses in neat rows. Smoke was coming out of the chimneys of most of them in thin, wispy lines, and light was escaping from the cracks in the shutters.


    The community was small, but the quality of the roads and the fencing said volumes to him about them at this point. He¡¯d been in too many little towns and villages across the continent not to recognize the handiwork of a serious, healthy community.


    Even if he hadn¡¯t been able to pick out those details from here, the neat row of shops on the small square and the whitewashed stone temple that everything else was clustered around to some degree said the same thing. This was a place he¡¯d have been happy to live; it just probably wouldn¡¯t be tonight.


    They¡¯d probably be too insular to welcome a stranger like me for more than a night or two, he thought glumly.


    As he stood there, judging the place and deciding the best way down, he heard another howl in the distance. This one was far away but still closer than before. So, he started down the hill at a more moderate pace.


    There was no telling what might cause him to trip and fall over in the moonlit darkness, and casting light while he was this exposed definitely wasn¡¯t a good idea. It was the best part of a mile away, so there was no way he was running the whole way anyway.


    As it turned out, he probably wasn¡¯t going to get there in time, though, because, of course, he wasn¡¯t. Simon sighed as he heard the crashing in the bushes somewhere behind him, near the crest of the hill, and was somewhat disappointed to pull out the cutlass he had in his hand instead of his preferred long sword.


    ¡°Oh, right,¡± he said dumbly as he realized he¡¯d lost that long ago.


    He stopped running, and when he saw an outlying farmstead, he started backing in that direction instead as he watched the darkness behind him, searching for what it was that was about to attack him. Truthfully, he¡¯d been expecting something scarier, but when a pack of snarling wolves crested the rise and scented the air, he relaxed a little.


    His very first instinct was to suck the life out of them with a word of transfer, but he suppressed that instinct ruthlessly. He definitely wasn¡¯t doing that again any time soon. Instead, he waited to see what they would do, and when they bolted and started toward him, he whispered, ¡°Dnarth Vrazig,¡± distant lightning, and brought a bolt from the blue down on the heads of the rabid animals, scattering them in all directions.


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    Simon shrugged. That probably wasn¡¯t enough to clear the level, but it bought him some breathing room, and as he turned around to continue on his way, he breathed a sigh of relief.


    Only, it wasn¡¯t over. Something howled, and when he turned around, he saw the body of the pack leader pulling itself back to his feet. It was almost twice as big as the rest, and he hadn¡¯t really noticed that in the dark, several hundred yards away. Now that it stood there alone, though, it was impossible to miss.


    ¡°Tough bastard, are you?¡± Simon murmured to himself.


    The thing charged forward again. Somehow, it seemed faster than it had before. For a moment, he was tempted to try lightning again, but instead, he decided to kill it quick and clean with a lance of force through its heart like a real hunter would do with a bullet, shouting, ¡°Oonbetit!¡±


    That was enough to stagger it, and though, for a brief second, it looked like it might keep moving, Simon was pleased to watch it finally fall into a pool of its own blood less than a hundred yards from him. This time, he didn¡¯t wait to see what happened. He just turned around and started running. It was good that he did, too, because less than a minute later, he heard the sound of something chasing him again, and he didn¡¯t need to look over his shoulder to see what it was.


    ¡°What are you?¡± he gasped. ¡°The Terminator¡¯s dog?¡±


    When it was right on his heels, he shouted, ¡°Gervuul Meiren,¡± turning it into a fireball with a greater word of flame.


    He was concerned now. He could taste the iron of his own blood, and he felt his throat giving out from using too much magic too quickly. There was nothing for it, though. It was this or death, and he was too close to his answers to go down so easily.


    Simon bolted for the door of the cottage, praying it was open. He¡¯d finally figured out what he was fighting, and if fire didn¡¯t put it down, he didn¡¯t have anything that would. He was not equipped to fight werewolves. It hadn¡¯t even occurred to him that he would. They were more of a horror monster than a fantasy monster, anyway.


    What¡¯s next? He cursed himself internally. Fucking vampires?


    Honestly, that was entirely possible. He¡¯d never imagined a swarm of carnivorous locust bugs trying to devour whole farms, either.


    He lost that thought as he heard the sound of the thing getting up again. Simon bemoaned the fact that he didn¡¯t have a single silver coin on him. A single word of lesser force would be enough to make his own silver bullet and bring that thing down, but right now, all of his magic bordered on uselessness.


    When he reached the door, he tried to force his way inside, but it was locked or barred. ¡°Help!¡± he yelled. ¡°This thing is trying to kill me!¡±


    Despite his pounding, there was no answer, so Simon turned around and prepared to fight for his life. In the end, that seemed unlikely, though. This thing no longer really looked like a wolf. It looked like an eight-foot-tall beast man standing on his hind legs with burned patches in its fur and bright pink scar tissue that was already starting to disappear beneath the fur.


    When it charged Simon, he knew he was screwed, but that didn¡¯t stop him from doing his best. He deflected the massive claws that aimed for his heart in a killing blow with his blade, driving them deep into the wood of the door instead.


    That did nothing for the rest of the thing¡¯s body, which came barreling down on him like a freight train. The door he was braced against cracked under the force of that blow, along with a couple of Simon¡¯s ribs. He merely groaned, though, while the door itself shattered as both of them fell through the now empty door frame, onto the earthen floor of the cottage.


    They collapsed on the ground in a tangle of limbs, and Simon was sure that he was about to get his throat torn out by the slavering jaws that were inches above him and that moments later, everyone else in this home would meet a similar fate.


    Instead, the werewolf had what looked to be a seizure and crouched there on Simon as he began to spasm and eventually shrink. It took him only a few seconds to figure out why. They weren¡¯t in the cottage he¡¯d just been standing in front of. They were in the burned-out ruins of a different cottage, and it was somewhere else, on some other level.


    Most importantly, though. On that level, it was daytime, and the light was causing this thing some serious problems. It roared in confusion, but even as it did so, it fell off of Simon and started to spasm violently as it began to shrink.


    Though the thing had looked disturbingly humanoid, it had definitely been an animal. Now, that distinction was less clear. Moment by moment it was becoming something closer to human, but it was turning into a real horror show along the way.


    Its jaw deformed as its hair shrank to nothing, granting Simon a better view than he would have liked. Then, its giant muscles deflated, and its teeth and claws began to shrink somehow, even though Simon couldn¡¯t think of a single way that would be biologically possible. After that, he watched the various bones lock back into place as they shrank at different rates. It was a disturbing sight, but no less disturbing than watching the nighttime in the doorway slowly fade to a few of the plants that surrounded them.


    In the end, he was left alone in an empty, burned-out village with nothing but a naked, unconscious man who had been a wolf moments before. For a moment, Simon almost put the poor bastard out of his misery with the cutlass that was still clutched in his hand. He resisted the urge, though. Instead, he left his assailant where he lay and went to try to find the man some clothes while he looked for survivors.


    He had no idea what was going on in either level, but he was damn sure going to get some answers.

 Ch. 98 - Days of Future Past

    Simon recognized the signs quicker than most would have, even with everything that was going on. Even before he found the bodies, he knew what had done this. The crude arrows with their red fletching and the hoof prints that were everywhere made it pretty obvious.


    This was the aftermath of a centaur raid. It was a big one, too, from the looks of things.


    He even had a pretty good idea of where he was. He wasn¡¯t entirely sure which village this had been, but between the style of the smoldering huts and the color of the hills, he knew he wasn¡¯t too far from one of his least favorite places in the world: Crowvar. He¡¯d had enough of the Raithewait family to last a lifetime, and his fingers tightened into fists at the very thought of them.


    For the moment, he ignored that and all the dark feelings that came with it. Instead, he focused on the carnage around him as he took in the scene between the billowing curtains of smoke.


    There were a few dead bodies in the street, and most of those were of the men who¡¯d died defending the town. Simon noted that there were none of the Baron¡¯s men among the bodies either. That made sense. If the Baron had bothered to send men, then there might not have been a massacre.


    Of course, the true massacre awaited him at the center of town. As he¡¯d expected, most of the women and children had crowded into the temple. It was a holy building no longer, though. Instead, it had become a mass grave.


    Simon paused a moment to pay his respects, then he started climbing up one of the partially collapsed facades. Other than this building and one of the stone granaries, the town had basically been leveled, so the top of the rubble, some ten feet above the ground, was where he was going to get his best view of his surroundings.


    Simon quickly searched the horizon in all directions but saw no signs of riders. Which was positive, he supposed. That meant he wasn¡¯t here to kill them. Which begged the question, ¡°What am I supposed to be doing here?¡± he asked, coughing briefly as he looked around.


    He made an effort to search through the dead, looking for a survivor or two, but he found no one. He didn¡¯t expect he would. According to his men, the centaurs made great sport of lighting buildings on fire and then shooting the people who tried to run from the burning buildings. It was a pretty thorough way to cleanse a place.


    Eventually, he made do with finding some pants and a shirt that wasn¡¯t too bloody, and then he brought them back to his unconscious werewolf. Simon considered killing the man outright again before the stranger had the chance to wake up and freak out, but he decided against it.


    Instead, he kicked him awake and said, ¡°Hey, get dressed. We need to move. It¡¯s not safe here.¡±


    ¡°I¡­ wha-where am I?¡± the man asked, completely confused. ¡°And why am I naked?¡±


    ¡°All of those are great questions that can wait until you have some clothes on,¡± Simon said as he walked outside.


    ¡°But¡­ This¡­ where is Galatia? Where are the trees?¡± the man protested while Simon ignored him. Instead, he picked through the corpses, replacing his sword with a dinged-up longsword that suited his style more and taking a half-full quiver, though he didn¡¯t find a suitable bow to go with it.


    If they¡¯re out there in force, getting a long bow again is going to be kind of a must, he thought to himself while he ignored his involuntary companion¡¯s pathetic whining.


    When the man finally emerged, Simon had his bearings and tossed the man some boots. ¡°I hope those fit you okay because we¡¯re going to be walking for a day or two at least.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are¡­¡± the man said, trying and failing to regain his spine. ¡°No, I want to know where we are and what the hell is going on.¡±


    He was a dark-haired, skinny man, and Simon had no doubt that he could take him in a fight now that he was a fearful human. He even seemed like a decent fellow, but Simon didn¡¯t have time for this shit. He might not know what he was supposed to do here or where he was supposed to go, but he knew whose grave was only a couple of days'' travel from here, and suddenly, that was more important than whatever it was that Helades might want from him.


    Simon regarded the man as he ignored the boots and then said, ¡°I don¡¯t think we¡¯re due for another full moon for a while, so I doubt you stand much of a chance against the centaurs, but you¡¯re welcome to stay if you like. Me, I¡¯m going to Crowvar to see someone. I¡¯ll figure out everything else later.¡±


    Then, as the man sputtered in his wake, Simon turned and started walking to the northwest. He didn¡¯t know exactly where the city was from here, but it was somewhere over there, and as he got closer, he¡¯d be able to get his bearings straight. Worst case, he¡¯d hit one of the main trade roads, and from there, things would fall together naturally.


    He didn¡¯t even have to wait a minute before the other man tugged on his boots and came running after him, though. ¡°You can¡¯t leave me!¡± the stranger whined piteously.


    ¡°Last night, you tried to kill me,¡± Simon said with a shrug. ¡°I think I can do just about whatever I want to you. Leaving you for dead would be a kindness by comparison.¡±


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    ¡°I would never!¡± the stranger declared as they walked together. ¡°I get these fits, sometimes it''s true, but¡ª¡±


    ¡°Are you seriously trying to deny that you¡¯re a werewolf?¡± Simon asked, looking the man dead in the eye.


    ¡°Me? A werewhat? You¡¯d dare call Murphy Dreser, the only begotten son of my mother Franna, a hellhound? Those are fighting words!¡± Murphy said with feigned outrage.


    Simon ignored the bluster. ¡°Any time you want, man, you just say the word.¡±


    They walked in silence for a bit before Murphy asked, ¡°You seem awfully calm for a man who claims to be walking through a battlefield with only the damned for company. Perhaps you¡¯re the one that¡¯s cursed.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps I am,¡± Simon agreed without elaboration.


    He let the man stew in the uncomfortable silence for a long time with only monosyllabic answers to satiate Murphy until he was sure that they were going the right way and that no one was nearby. Eventually, he explained where they were and that the centaurs seemed to be worse than usual, but he left out his business in Crowvar and Freya entirely.


    Several times, Simon tried to get the man to admit that he was a monster, but the most he would admit to was blackouts. ¡°Look, I drink too much, okay?¡± Murphy yelled at one point. ¡°Sometimes I get blackout drunk and wake up in the morning feeling like shit. I ain¡¯t proud of it.¡±


    In the end, Simon was forced to assume that the man didn¡¯t know he was a monster. He wondered if he should just put Murphy out of his misery, but ultimately, he wasn¡¯t in the mood to kill anyone just now, so he left it alone.


    It could wait until at least the next full moon, whenever that was.


    Shortly after they reached the main road, they had to hide in the brambles as a herd of centaurs made their way to the northeast. Simon was concerned by both the number of centaur war bands and their proximity to the main roads, but he said nothing.


    As the day wore on, this became literally true. At first Simon continued to speak a few words here and there, but as the day wore on, he found himself so hoarse he¡¯d basically lost his voice.


    He¡¯d used a lot of magic a few hours before, and he didn¡¯t have a waterskin or the privacy he would have liked to do some healing. Eventually, all of Murphy¡¯s questions about how they¡¯d ended up so far south or what they were going to do about these centaurs were greeted only with shrugs and stony silences.


    Simon knew exactly what he was going to do to the centaurs. If it came to it, he was going to murder every last one of them. Preferably with fire, though force would probably be more subtle. He had at least one more word of greater force in him, though he imagined it wouldn''t need to be greater to simply create a slender invisible wire that a whole group of galloping stallions could decapitate themselves on.


    Force wasn¡¯t required for the first group or the second, though it did disturb Simon greatly that there were so many of them so close to civilization.


    In the end, they made it to Crowvar without any issues, and the only difficulty was binding Murphy¡¯s hands at night so the man didn¡¯t try to slit Simon¡¯s throat in his sleep. Murphy hadn¡¯t liked that, but when Simon gave him the choice between that and finding his own way to the city, the man had relented.


    Simon found the trip to be almost disorienting in the level of nostalgia he faced those last few miles once he could see the tower on the horizon. In the end, when he went to the graveyard instead of the main gate, Murphy was confused, and Simon encouraged the man to go on without him, but he wouldn¡¯t budge.


    Instead, Simon made the man wait for him by the main gate while he went and found Freya¡¯s grave. The first thing he noticed in the graveyard was how much larger it had gotten. It had more than doubled in size since he¡¯d last been here, but worse, most of the graves seemed to be new, and it was impossible to miss the large amounts of freshly turned earth.


    He knew it would take some time to find a needle in this particular haystack, as he wandered down the weed-strewn paths. Still, it took longer than he would have thought. Finally, after an hour of searching and going grave by grave in the section he was fairly certain he¡¯d buried his wife in, Simon reached one inescapable conclusion: she was no longer here.


    That broke his heart wide open all over again. While it was possible that they¡¯d unearthed her thanks to what he¡¯d done in the aftermath of her burial, Simon found that unlikely. Instead, it was far more likely that what he¡¯d done here had never happened at all now.


    ¡°When did that get erased, though?¡± he asked himself as he sat on a bench and put his head in his hands. ¡°Was it when I fought with Gregor or was it before that, when I came through the portal and killed the Wyvern?¡±


    Though he wanted to believe it was the former, and that he¡¯d fucked up the timelines when he¡¯d battle beside his friends, the longer he thought about it, the more he was resigned to the latter. After all, each level reset every death unless he beat it, right? And he most definitely had not killed the wyvern on the way out, which seemed to be the goal, so he¡¯d lost Freya right there.


    For a moment, he almost screamed out loud in frustration. If only he¡¯d done that one little thing, he could visit her right now, even like this. He didn¡¯t though, and now he was all alone all over again. Simon stayed on that bench for some time, and it was only when he got his head clear about what he needed to do next that he looked for Murphy.


    When he finally returned to his involuntary companion, the man asked, ¡°Where are we going now?¡±


    ¡°Where else? We¡¯re going to stop by the Baron¡¯s place and see if Erik or Varten is the Baron these days,¡± Simon said with a faraway look in his eyes. ¡°If it¡¯s the former, I might help him with this little centaur problem, but if it¡¯s the latter¡­ I might just strangle him to death instead. It¡¯s hard to say.¡±


    ¡°Strangle? The Baron?!¡± Murphy asked, taking a step back. ¡°They¡¯ll kill you! They¡¯ll kill me just for walking into town with you! Why in all the blazes would you want to do that?¡±


    ¡°Because no matter how many times I kill the man, it will never be enough,¡± Simon said softly as he walked purposefully toward the east gate.


    As he went, he decided to stop by the inn and get a fine meal first. If he was going to die, then he wanted to do it on a full stomach. The fare of Millen¡¯s farm had been excellent, but it had been days since then, and he was starving.

 Ch. 99 - Bad Blood

    As the two of them approached the gate, Simon¡¯s stomach grumbled in protest at how little he¡¯d eaten. He didn¡¯t even try to ignore it. He just hoped that the Willens were still running their inn in Crowvar.


    They¡¯d been wonderful hosts before he and Freya had moved into their cottage that the Raithewait family had finally given them, and with every other good thing from the life he¡¯d lived here gone, he was certain that their braised boar would taste like home even if nothing else did.


    He shouldn¡¯t have gotten his hopes up, though, because as soon as he entered the city, he was disappointed on a variety of levels. Not only was Crowvar in rougher shape than he remembered, but it was overrun with refugees from the countryside. Not only had his preferred place to stay been burned down years ago during an orc attack, apparently, but even if it had still been there, food would have been hard to come by.


    Simon asked around about the rumors and looked at what the small market had on offer, but eventually, he decided there was only one place in this cursed town where he was likely to get a good meal, and that was at the Baron¡¯s table. So he went right up to the guard post at the inner keep and said, ¡°I¡¯m here to see Lord Raithewait. I want to fix his little centaur problem.¡±


    That at least was enough to get the guard¡¯s attention, and after a few discussions, he and Murphy were granted entrance and sent to a small room to await an audience with the Lord. Simon found it more than a little ironic that the man who had been trying to rip his throat out only a couple of days ago was now following him everywhere he went like a meek little puppy.


    From werewolf to puppy; it was enough to make him laugh out loud, but when his puppy looked at him strangely, he didn¡¯t repeat the joke. Instead, he was grateful that he had something to distract him from thinking about Varten and how he wasn¡¯t sure he was going to be able to keep from gutting the man like a pig once he saw him.


    Even after all this time, Simon wanted nothing more than the man¡¯s death, but for the moment at least, he couldn¡¯t have it. The fact that he had to help these people was the worst irony imaginable. Just thinking the man¡¯s name was enough to raise Simon¡¯s blood pressure.


    When the two of them were finally fetched to the audience hall, Simon made introductions for both of them, trying hard to keep the hate from his eyes as he raised his head and was introduced to the man who had killed his wife. The fact that Varten Raithewait had been disfigured by the orcish attack and still bore the burns of the day in a twist of cosmic irony did nothing to help improve Simon¡¯s mood.


    On the table between them, Simon could see many fine foods, including the roast boar that he¡¯d been hungering for earlier. He could also see a familiar map with a number of wooden pieces on it arrayed across the region. It was the same one that Varten¡¯s father had used in so many briefings.


    The picture it painted was quite bad. Honestly, it was worse than Simon would have thought. Two of Lord Raithewait¡¯s five frontier forts had already fallen, and the centaurs seemed to number in the thousands, which was more than twice as many as Simon would have expected.


    Varten must have been neglecting these dangers for many years, Simon thought to himself. However, before he could dig deeper into the tactical situation, the misshapen Lord interrupted him.


    ¡°What does a boy like you even know of centaurs?¡± the Baron asked disdainfully. The man was probably ten years older than him instead of ten years younger than him now, so the remark wasn¡¯t entirely unmerited, but it did nothing to improve his mood.


    ¡°I¡¯ve killed more than my share. I¡¯ve fought in border skirmishes on the northern villages more than once and set ambushes using shepherds as their bait. I¡¯ve¡ª¡± Simon said, trying to be reasonable.


    ¡°Enough,¡± the Baron thundered, cutting him off. ¡°Skirmishes have nothing to do with this. They¡¯ve been getting worse for years, but their Kahn is unbeatable. I thought my men had found a miracle worker, but it¡¯s just another upjumped soldier with delusions of grandeur.¡±


    Simon laughed at that. He couldn¡¯t help it.


    He knew he was supposed to be taking this seriously and trying to get into this man¡¯s good graces. He knew that he needed to solve this level by defeating this enemy and saving lives, but being talked down to by this creep was a bridge too far for him. Even the idea of free food that was waiting for him if he could just be a good boy wasn¡¯t enough to play nice with this man.


    ¡°Big words from a man that couldn¡¯t hold off the orcs that burned half his city to the ground,¡± Simon smirked. The guards stationed on the sides of the room bristled as he said that. Even Murphy backed away a step as the Baron¡¯s eyes widened in outrage.


    ¡°H-how dare you!¡± the man sputtered. ¡°I¡¯ll have you know that¡ª¡±


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    Simon didn¡¯t bother to listen to him. Instead, he spun on his heel and started walking toward the room¡¯s exit. The guards standing there crossed spears to bar his path. In fact, a quick look around showed that all the guards in the room were advancing cautiously toward him at a few gestures from the Baron, and once their cordon tightened, even the graying old Lord got up from his sumptuous table and approached him cautiously to gloat.


    ¡°You think you can show disrespect to me, in my home and in front of my men?¡± the Baron taunted. ¡°With nothing but a word, they could chop you to pieces and leave you as a warning to everyone else to¡ª¡±


    ¡°To never try to help people like you?¡± Simon joked. ¡°I think your people understand that quite clearly already. They don¡¯t need any more examples there.¡±


    Lord Raithewait drew his sword then, but before he could order his men to strike Simon down, he pushed Murphy to the ground and then opened his mouth to say a single word.


    ¡°Oonbetit,¡± he barked. Force. It manifested as a single transparent ripple that flickered out around him for a moment, and then it was gone, and for a second or two, no one was aware of exactly what had happened.


    They were already dead; they just hadn¡¯t figured it out yet. Even before the first head started to slide from its neck, everyone surrounding him had died, and aside from the bodies that were collapsing around him like dominos, the only evidence of what had happened was a pair of severed spear hafts and a gouge in the door.


    ¡°What in the¡­ how in the¡­ You¡¯re a demon!¡± Murphy whispered as he scrambled away from Simon.


    ¡°Murderer, definitely,¡± Simon admitted, ¡°but this is the demon right here.¡±


    As he spoke, he indicated Varten¡¯s body with the toe of his boot, and when he looked up and saw that Murphy was still looking at him like he was crazy, he followed that up with, ¡°Last time I killed him, it was vengeance for what he did to my wife, but this time? This was definitely in self-defense, at least, though I don¡¯t think that the people of this Crowvar would see that. Maybe the last one would have.¡±


    ¡°This time? Last time? You can¡¯t kill people twice, Simon. Have you gone insane?¡± the other man cried. ¡°They¡¯re going to kill us!¡±


    Maybe you can¡¯t kill people twice, Simon thought to himself, but with a little planning and effort, I suppose I could kill them as many times as I want.


    He didn¡¯t say that, though. He knew he would sound crazy. Instead, he followed up with, ¡°Well, yeah, they¡¯re going to try. You should probably get out of here and away from me. You¡¯re kind of an inhuman monster, too, but you don¡¯t deserve that.¡±


    ¡°I told you I¡¯m not¡­¡± Murphy started to defend himself, but when he looked at the bodies lying in their pools of blood on the floor, he said, ¡°I don¡¯t do that to people, do I?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯ve done,¡± Simon answered as he walked back over to the table and started cutting himself off a fat slice of pork. ¡°All I can say is you tried to rip my head off the other night, and you¡¯ll probably do the same to anyone else that crosses your path in a week or so, given the current lunar cycle.¡±


    He wasn¡¯t going to stick around to eat it because as soon as a servant walked in and sounded the alarm, it would spoil the meal. That was fine, though, because if he added a few pieces of bread and a little sauce to the mix, he¡¯d have a perfectly delightful sandwich to reward himself with if he made it out alive.


    Murphy got up and walked hesitantly toward the door after a moment, contemplating his misdeeds, but Simon called out, ¡°Walk, don¡¯t run! If you run, they¡¯ll only chase you,¡± to the man just before he walked out.


    As he watched his werewolf leave, he debated the morality of it. Should Simon have struck him down from the deaths he might cause, even if he was perfectly harmless right now? Probably, but he just couldn¡¯t bring himself to do it. Regardless, it probably meant he had to stick around until the full moon himself now, just to see what would happen.


    He wrapped his meal in a napkin. Then proceeded to ignore the advice he¡¯d just finished giving Murphy, and he bolted from the room, causing as much of a commotion as he could to attract attention.


    He didn¡¯t worry about it too much. The guards that remained in Varten¡¯s service were a lot weaker than they¡¯d been under his father¡¯s reign, and Simon led them up the stairs to the third floor before leaping from a window and losing a word of lesser force to land gently. After that, it was just a matter of hiding away in an alley until he caught his breath.


    Then, while the bells rang, and people ran to and fro looking for their Lord¡¯s murderer, he sat on a bench near where he imagined Freya¡¯s grave would have been in the graveyard and enjoyed his sandwich.


    ¡°That¡¯s two,¡± he told her with a smile, even if she wasn¡¯t really there. ¡°Two hundred deaths would still be too good for him, though, baby. I can promise you that. It¡¯s going to make it really difficult to solve this level, but I¡¯ll figure it out somehow.¡±


    Simon slept that night in the graveyard. Because of the danger and the not infrequent centaur raids, people shunned the portion of the city that had risen up outside the walls, but Simon wasn¡¯t scared. He was itching for a fight, and he was honestly disappointed that none of the guards found and confronted him.


    ¡°On the bright side, when they finally get around to burying the bastard, it¡¯s going to make it a hell of a lot easier to piss on his grave,¡± Simon said to himself with a smile.


    He figured that he was stuck hanging out here to see if the werewolf¡¯s lycanthropy followed him through the portal, or at least until Simon found the next one, but that was fine. He only had a couple more levels to go between him and his answers. He could afford to take his time with it.

 Ch. 100 - Lingering

    Simon hung around for a week. It wasn¡¯t hard. He knew the town better than most, and between the refugees and the news that someone had killed the Baron, it only took a change of clothes to evade the law that really only seemed to be halfheartedly looking for the Baron¡¯s murderer.


    Honestly, if having to find half-decent food was the thing that annoyed him most about his current situation, then listening to the gossip in the aftermath of the Baron¡¯s death was the best. No one had anything positive to say about the man, and by the time the funeral rolled around a few days later, Simon thought there would be riots.


    Sadly, no one pelted the man¡¯s procession with rotting vegetables, though he reasoned that was only because food was so scarce just now. It turned out that Vardin¡¯s younger brother had long ago died under mysterious circumstances, and his son was too young to inherit the title in his place.


    Instead, the head of the man¡¯s household guard took over one night in something that sounded very much like a palace coup to Simon¡¯s ears and appointed himself Regent and Lord Protector until the boy came of age. Normally, that would have rubbed Simon the wrong way, but he cared very little about what happened to the Raithewait bloodline.


    Simon enjoyed the circus it caused just the same, but he spent most of his time in the graveyard. That wasn¡¯t just because he had a late-night appointment with Varten¡¯s freshly dug grave, either. It was just quiet.


    Sometimes, he would talk to Freya, even though he knew she wasn¡¯t actually there. Other times, once that got him good and depressed, he would go to the reflecting pool and talk to the mirror.


    In fact, as the days passed, except for his trips into town to look for the damn portal in every gate, alleyway, and public building, he spent almost all his time talking to the damn mirror. The thing didn¡¯t have many answers, but now that he understood that wasn¡¯t its role, it annoyed him less than it did up until now.


    It didn¡¯t know anything because he hadn¡¯t told it anything, but once he did, it would be more useful. So he tried to think of it like a journal and just tell it whatever. He started with the basics, telling it about each floor he¡¯d come across in order.


    What was in it, what the hazard to be cleared seemed to be, and other similar details came first. On floors where he wasn¡¯t sure, he just rambled at length. This was especially true in places like the jungle city and the trap floor.


    In some of the early levels, he had a pretty good idea of what he wanted to do next. He was pretty sure that the rats on level one weren¡¯t the problem, and he needed to break through the trap door and find something in the house. If it wasn¡¯t that, then the critters must have some kind of plague, and he had to purge the whole place with fire. He wasn¡¯t sure which, but it was probably one of those.


    The skeleton knight floor and the sewer floor seemed pretty straightforward, too. He laid out everything he knew about them, along with a few guesses.


    Where he spent most of his time, though, was talking through the tavern level. First, it had zombies, then it was complete, and now it was open again, but there were no zombies. The mirror didn¡¯t have a lot of answers to give it on that front.


    ¡°Floors that are completed are not required to be repeated,¡± the mirror told him. ¡°Events have played out the way they need to for the knot to unravel.¡±


    That made Simon picture the whole pit as a vast lock, with lots of tumblers that had to be lined up just right to unlock it, but theoretical questions like that seemed to be largely fruitless, so he didn¡¯t bother.


    ¡°I just¡­ not required to be repeated is awfully vague,¡± he complained, ¡°What would change that and force it to be repeated again if that was the case?¡±


    ¡°If a floor is incomplete, then it must be completed until it is not incomplete,¡± the mirror said unhelpfully.


    ¡°But how can a floor that was completed become incomplete?¡±


    ¡°Did you do something on a nearby floor that might have undone work that you did previously?¡± it asked Simon finally.


    He spent a lot of time thinking about that statement over the next few days. What had he done exactly? He was pretty sure in the run before he discovered that Freya¡¯s tavern was back, he¡¯d killed the warlock, but that couldn¡¯t be it because he was pretty sure that came after. Later floors all seemed to occur further in time than earlier ones, and the only earlier floor he¡¯d completed had been what¡­


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    ¡°The Goblin level,¡± he said to himself as he remembered that was how he¡¯d gotten tangled up with Gregor¡¯s family in the first place. ¡°I cleared the damn goblin level, but Slany and the capital are nowhere near Schwarzenbruck, how could one affect the other?¡±


    The answer was that he didn¡¯t know, but it was the only thing he¡¯d done that could have even affected level six as far as he was concerned. Simon still didn¡¯t know if the solution had ultimately been preventing the war or saving the village from starvation.


    That was a lie, though. After enough pondering, he was forced to admit that to himself. As much as he might value Gregor and the other good people of Slany, they weren¡¯t part of Helades¡¯ game. He knew that because that¡¯s not where the door was.


    The portals tended to be pretty close to whatever it was he needed to be doing. He was slowly coming to that inescapable conclusion. Even the ones that were fairly far from where he started, like the owl bear level and the wyvern level, were in prominent places that were just about the closest doorway structures.


    ¡°Which means she doesn¡¯t care about a war as much as she cares about a tiny, snowed-in hamlet. Why¡­¡± he trailed off as he had an epiphany as he lay there in the grass not so far from where Freya¡¯s grave should have been.


    ¡°Is it because I changed something she didn¡¯t want to be changed, so now I have to fix that?¡± he wondered. It was the only thing that made any sense. He¡¯d stopped a war. Who knew how many lives that had saved. Could just that have been enough to eliminate the zombie outbreak by itself? Why did it only unlock a few floors instead of all the floors he¡¯d completed until that point?


    Simon didn¡¯t know, but he was going to have to find out on his own. He definitely wasn¡¯t going to be asking Helades when he finally reached level 30.


    Though Simon had tried to keep loose tabs on Murphy, he¡¯d mostly failed at that. He knew the man still lingered around town, but mostly because he was a coward with no interest in braving the plains while the centaurs moved across them with impunity.


    Still, when the night finally came and the full moon began to rise, he made his way to the tallest building outside of the keep and waited for some sign that the werewolf he¡¯d accidentally brought to this place was about to lose control.


    He didn¡¯t have to wait long. Almost as soon as he reached the peak of the rooftop, he heard a few guards yelling something, followed by the yell it made that was neither fully man nor fully beast. ¡°That has to be him,¡± Simon said to himself as he used a few minor words to leap from rooftop to rooftop to get to wherever this was about to happen. He was responsible, after all, and he couldn¡¯t let this thing run amok.


    He didn¡¯t have to go too far. Four streets over, he found Murphy ripping his clothes off in the small market that was mostly used for fresh produce. He was already partway through the change.


    ¡°Stay back!¡± Simon yelled to the guards that were moving to surround the madman as he landed halfway between the werewolf and the row of market stalls along the city wall. This was as good a place as any for a fight and certainly better than an alley.


    Two listened, but one did not, and even as he raised his sword, the thing reached past the sword he held warily and grabbed the man by the rib cage. The guard stabbed the werewolf several times, but it did nothing, and instead, he was crushed like a child''s toy against the paving stones of the square several times as the monster continued to grow larger and hairier.


    The man¡¯s armor did nothing, and when the giant wolfman finally tossed the bleeding corpse aside, it was as boneless as a ragdoll. Simon was the closest man left in the monster¡¯s line of sight, so it charged him without even the vaguest hint of recognition.


    It ran on all fours, using its long arms to gain speed with each lopping stride. This time, Simon was ready for the thing, though, and as he pulled something out of his pocket, he knew he¡¯d brought the right weapon for the job this time.


    He flipped the silver coin in the air, and then as the werewolf that had once been Murphy ran at him, Simon whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Oonbetit,¡± and launched the thing straight for the monster¡¯s heart.


    It didn¡¯t even try to dodge. It didn¡¯t understand the danger. That was why he¡¯d used lesser force. The last thing he wanted to do was use his impromptu silver bullet to give the thing a flesh wound as it passed right through the body of the hulking thing.


    That didn¡¯t happen. Instead, the coin lodged firmly in the thing¡¯s chest, mid-stride, staggering it and sending it tumbling to the ground. Even in the dark, Simon could see smoke rising from the creature¡¯s chest.


    It howled long and mournfully as it clawed at its wound and tried to remove whatever it was that was causing it so much pain. That just made the dark pool of blood beneath it expand faster, though, and with every passing heartbeat, it grew weaker, and the strange curse that powered it began to fade.


    The distant guards approached the two of them slowly after that. They watched in disbelief as Murphy¡¯s cooling corpse slowly turned back into a man over the next minute. Even though Simon had seen this process only once before, it wasn¡¯t any less horrible this time.


    It was terribly anticlimactic, though. The first time they¡¯d fought, Simon had blasted the monster with torrents of fire and lightning, and it had done very little. This time, it had barely taken a flick of his wrist and a few words, and the beast was no more.


    This is where I should make some joke about the right tool for the job, Simon thought, but he said nothing.


    Instead, he looked from the beast to both guards and then past them to the sheer number of people looking out their windows and down on the square behind them. This had definitely attracted some attention, which was the last thing he wanted since he still hadn¡¯t found the way to the next floor of the pit.


    ¡°I assume that neither of you are going to try to stop me from leaving?¡± he asked.


    One opened his mouth but closed it again and just shook his head as he walked off into the night. He wasn¡¯t sure how he felt about putting down this one. Hell, he wasn¡¯t even sure if that counted as solving the level, but he supposed he¡¯d find out eventually.

 Ch. 101 - Thirsty

    Simon searched the city for two more days and never once found the portal. So, in desperation, he retraced his steps and went back to the south again. He found three burned out villages before he found the one that he¡¯d started in weeks ago.


    The fires were long since out, and since most of the corpses had been picked clean, the carrion birds had largely left too, leaving him alone with the wreckage. He wasn¡¯t sure if he¡¯d find what he was looking for here, either, but if he didn¡¯t, he wasn¡¯t sure where exactly he was supposed to be looking for.


    He didn¡¯t find it on the first day he was there, or the second. It was only on the third day when he was getting ready to leave that he noticed that the bleak plains that surrounded him looked a little more like a full-blown desert through one of the doors than the rest of the landscape. That was when he knew he¡¯d finally found his damn portal.


    In that house he found another dead family. It was tragic, of course, but he¡¯d seen this tragedy a dozen times in the last 24 hours, and it had lost its impact. In this case, the way that the woman hadn¡¯t been burned to a crisp or picked clean compared to everyone else made him think she¡¯d died later than them.


    ¡°Is this really what I was here for?¡± he asked in frustration. ¡°There¡¯s a whole war going on, and I thought I was supposed to stop that, but really I just needed to save this one person?¡±


    Simon shook his head. That was crazy. He would definitely come here first the next time he was here, but the thought that this woman had died because the instructions had been unclear was more than a little infuriating.


    Simon turned from the body and spent several minutes studying the portal to the next level, but other than the fact that it was a desert, there weren¡¯t many clues to make out. It didn¡¯t look too dangerous, and part of him thought there was something familiar about it, but he kind of suspected that he¡¯d feel that way about all deserts after his time as a statue.


    He was about to go through when he changed his mind. The idea of leaving this woman and her family here just dead was simply too miserable, so he decided he¡¯d experiment a little with his new word and build them a shallow grave.


    It¡¯s the least I can do since no one told me I could save them! He thought in frustration.


    ¡°Vosden,¡± he said, carefully pronouncing the word for earth for the first time as he imagined the grave opening up directly below where the bodies lay.


    It worked flawlessly, opening up a three-foot-deep grave beneath the knot of tangled limbs. The sudden motion scared the crow perched atop one of them enough that it flew away rather than be buried alive.


    Simon whispered the word a second time, and the earth smoothed over the corpses, making them vanish from sight as if they¡¯d never been. It was only once that was done that he finally turned around and stepped through the portal.


    The differences were small but immediate. Where he¡¯d just left the burned out village, the rocky soil was missing its patchy yellow grass only because it had been burned away. Here, though, on the other side of the invisible line, he doubted there had ever been any vegetation at all. This was a true desert, not a temporary one, and the fine yellow sand couldn¡¯t hold in any of the water.


    Or maybe because there isn¡¯t any water to hold in, he thought, looking at the distant mountains. There wasn¡¯t a trace of vegetation on their blasted, rocky surfaces.


    Simon wondered for a moment what it was he was supposed to be doing here, but as he slowly spun 360 degrees, he found an oasis that was almost directly behind him. It wasn¡¯t much, but there were a handful of palms and a few thorn bushes crowded around brackish-looking waters.


    There was even what looked to be a small merchant caravan, too. As Simon walked toward it, down the slope of the dune, he saw that he¡¯d exited through what had once been a door frame¡­ No, that wasn¡¯t right. It had been a stone frame of a window at some point, though there was so little of the building it was attached to sticking above the sand that he wasn¡¯t sure what it was attached to.


    He didn¡¯t really care, though. The reason he was here was almost certainly the oasis or the caravan, and since he didn¡¯t see any monsters, that either meant that the monster was a human or that there might not be one at all.


    I suppose it could be a crazy plant monster, he thought, suddenly looking at the approaching bushes with suspicion as he got closer, but he didn¡¯t think that was likely.


    No monsters jumped out to meet him, though, and no men attacked him. Instead, a few of the sunken-cheeked men looked up from where they were scattered about the meager shade and looked at him with weary eyes.


    Still, none of them said anything or tried to bar his way. It wasn¡¯t until he got to the water¡¯s edge that he saw the problem: there were bodies, or at least parts of them, floating in the water.


    That was enough to explain why everyone was miserable-looking. From a distance, he¡¯d assumed they were stones, but from here, there was definitely at least a boot, a couple severed heads, and a few other less identifiable pieces bobbing up and down.


    ¡°What happened here¡­¡± Simon said with a sigh.


    ¡°They got you too, huh?¡± someone said behind him. ¡°What a waste, right? Fight through all that just to end up here at the end of nowhere with nothing to drink but poison.¡±


    ¡°Someone did this on purpose?¡± Simon asked. ¡°Who?¡±


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    ¡°I don¡¯t think that those bodies chopped themselves up,¡± the swarthy man laughed. He wore long, sweat-stained robes over his ring mail armor.


    To Simon¡¯s eye, he didn''t seem like a particularly nice man, but it would seem that the fact that he was about to die had given him a certain dark humor. Simon could completely understand that.


    ¡°The Arenni? Raffa¡¯s men? Who can say?¡± the man said with a shrug. ¡°It''s an ugly business, but that¡¯s what happens in war. It lets all the ugliness out, and it¡¯s got to pool up somewhere.¡±


    ¡°Their poison won¡¯t stop me from slaying them in my next life,¡± another man boasted. ¡°The desert may claim my bones, but my vengeance will be eternal.¡±


    After a few minutes of conversation, Simon figured out what was going on. This wasn¡¯t a caravan. It was three or four different groups who had arrived here over the last week or so. They were either on or near a trade route, or at least, this was one place you could go through normally to avoid some nearby war that was taking place.


    He wasn¡¯t a hundred percent sure of the details, in the same way that he wasn¡¯t 100% sure if the water had been tainted merely with the human remains or if it had been poisoned as well; the accounts seemed to vary wildly.


    Both of the problems were probably solvable to Simon, but rushing into that with magic without at least trying to understand what was happening was only going to get him killed. So he poked around, quickly discovering that about half of the people he thought were here were dead already.


    The small campsite belonged to the people that came here first, but they left behind only tents and cold cookfires along with their belongings. The caravan came after them. It had two carts and a covered wagon filled with goods but not enough water to make their horses go any farther without dying.


    Sometime after them, a few mercenaries and deserters made their way here as well, but most of them ended up face down at the water¡¯s edge or lying dead in the distance as they tried and failed to reach the next watering hole.


    ¡°And for what?¡± Torrin asked. ¡°If they poisoned this mud puddle, then they certainly did the same to old well and sweet water. If my maker has decided it is time, I shall return to him well-rested and not sweating like a pig.¡±


    Simon nodded at that, and then he got up and decided to make a water filter to save some of these people before it was too late. He would have just told them to boil the water, but there wasn¡¯t much in the way of wood here, and honestly, he wasn¡¯t sure that would be enough to get all the toxins out.


    Either way, it didn¡¯t matter. Sunset was coming, and he had a feeling that not all of them would live to see the next sunrise without his help.


    So, the first thing he did was trade the merchants a glass of water from his skin in exchange for an empty barrel. After that, it was pretty straightforward.


    Simon wasn¡¯t exactly a survivalist, but he¡¯d seen about a million hours of streaming video on every topic imaginable over the last decade, and he had a good understanding of water filters because of all the cheap sponsorships that flaunted charcoal activation and whatever else.


    He took his barrel, and after mounting it on a rock and poking a hole in it, he tore apart the tent of a deadman to line the bottom with a few layers of cloth while everyone watched him in confusion or amusement.


    He let them joke. He even laughed at some of them, but he didn¡¯t let that distract him as he picked up rocks to make the bottom layer that took the longest. After that came the charcoal, which he didn¡¯t actually have, but he figured wood ash was close enough.


    He seemed to remember that he was somehow involved in making soap or lye, too, but he didn¡¯t think that would matter. He wasn¡¯t going to use too much. By the time he¡¯d gotten that far, the sun was close to setting, and it would be getting dark soon. The oasis had gotten quieter, but only because people were saving their strength.


    Simon wasn¡¯t too worried about that. He could probably make that water drinkable with a few words, but when he left, someone might just poison it again. Leaving behind a water filter felt like a better option.


    After all, it wasn¡¯t like he could take a heavy oak cask with him. By the time he was finished, the thing was probably going to weigh as much as he did, which was all the motivation in the world he needed to keep losing weight.


    Even in the dark, filling the thing with sand wasn¡¯t a problem. He just filled a sack in the desert not far from the oasis and then dumped it in his barrel two dozen times until it was most of the way to the top.


    Simon was pretty sure it was supposed to have a gravel layer, too, but he didn¡¯t have any gravel, so he would just have to make do.


    I mean, I might be able to use Vosden to turn sand to gravel, he thought to himself, but using magic to avoid using magic would kind of defeat the purpose as far as he was concerned.


    When all that was done, the silhouette that was Torrin asked, ¡°Is this the part where you show us how to turn sand to water?¡±


    Everyone laughed at that, but Simon grabbed the helmet of a dead man, and used it to start filling his barrel a gallon at a time. Thanks to how much he was spilling on each trip from the muddy pool, he honestly had no idea how long it would take.


    ¡°We aren¡¯t going to drink poison or sand,¡± Simon corrected them. ¡°We are going to let the sand clean the water. That way, you can quench your thirst, and the desert can keep its poison.¡±


    ¡°That seems¡­ unlikely,¡± the warrior said.


    Simon couldn¡¯t see his face, but he could hear the other man¡¯s skepticism, so he stopped what he was doing and raised his water skin to the crowd of onlookers. ¡°I¡¯d happily trade every drop I have for a lantern and some oil,¡± he said, ¡°Any takers?¡±


    ¡°What say I just take it from you,¡± another man said, rising unsteadily to his feet as he pulled out a vicious scimitar. ¡°Since you¡¯re being so generous and all.¡±


    Simon shook his head in despair. ¡°If you want me to kill you literally minutes before there¡¯s enough water for everyone, then¡ª¡±


    Simon¡¯s words were cut off by the man¡¯s unexpected charge. He held up his flimsy water skin as a shield right in the path of the other man¡¯s sword, and when he suddenly pulled back the weapon to avoid wasting the water, Simon grabbed him by the collar and headbutted him so hard that he dropped to his knee, stunned.


    Simon stepped back, coping with the sudden sharp pain, but even as he rubbed his forehead to see if he was bleeding, he said, ¡°Can we please all just calm down for like¡­ 20 minutes. There will be plenty of water for everyone, I promise.¡±


    After that, the merchant loaned Simon his oil lamp, and after lighting it, Simon hung it from a tree above his filter. No water had come out yet, but he wasn¡¯t surprised. As dry as the sand was, he imagined it had to soak up quite a bit of water first.


    So, for the next ten minutes, he brought load after load of brackish dirty water until the top of the barrels was nothing but a small mud puddle. It was only several minutes after that, that he saw water finally starting to drip into the cup beneath the barrel. At first, it was a trickle, but slowly, it became a tiny stream, and after a couple of minutes, he had a small wooden cup filled with cool, clean water.

 Ch. 102 - Drinks With Friends

    ¡°Well, who wants to be the first to try it?¡± he asked, gesturing around. There were no volunteers.


    ¡°How about you?¡± he asked the man that had tried to gut him for his water skin only a few minutes ago in an attempt to win him over.


    ¡°I will not let you poison me!¡± the man growled, pacing around the edge of the light like an angry cat.


    Simon was fairly sure that if he stayed the night here, that man was going to try to kill him in his sleep. That either meant he¡¯d have to put the man down or make friends with everyone else. Fortunately, the latter was going to be pretty easy since he was the only one here with drinkable water.


    ¡°Suit yourself,¡± Simon said, raising it to his lips and downing it like a shot. It was okay.


    It was closer to tap water than bottled water, but he detected no taste of corpses amidst the earthy flavors of sand, and he was sure it would get clearer as it went. That¡¯s what all the videos he¡¯d seen had shown anyway.


    ¡°Who¡¯s next,¡± he said, replacing the cup back under the leaking barrel.


    Everyone looked at him skeptically, but as a few people like Torrin came over and investigated the setup, they saw it was just as Simon had promised. The top of the barrel was full of watery mud, and perfectly clear water dripped down into the cup out of the hole in the bottom. That was enough for the man to at least take the chance, and as soon as he pronounced it good enough to drink, a line had formed.


    There were 14 people strong enough to move around on their own and a few more who were dragged over with the help of their companions. Soon, everyone was taking turns in a way that was more or less peaceful, one glass of water at a time. It was a celebratory atmosphere, and people thanked whatever gods they believed in as they had their first taste of water in days.


    Simon knew that it couldn¡¯t last forever, though, and it didn¡¯t. During their second time through the line, things finally came to an end when the merchant argued his horses should get priority over everyone who had already had a turn.


    ¡°Your animals can wait until I¡¯ve had my fill,¡± said the man who¡¯d attacked Simon earlier. ¡°I will not wait in line behind a mere beast of burden.¡±


    ¡°You aren¡¯t the one that makes the rules,¡± Simon remarked, not bothering to draw his weapon.


    ¡°And you are?¡± the other man Raged, lifting his scimitar high into the night. ¡°You think this water belongs to you now, that you get to make the rules? Only the strong may dictate, and you¡ª¡±


    Without warning, Torrin drew his blade, beheading the other man on the spot and sheathing his blade before the corpse even fell to its knees and began to bleed out into the sand. He smiled ruefully.


    ¡°That is quite enough of that,¡± Torrin answered, with a crooked smile. ¡°Now, whose turn is it. I am thirsty and grow weary of waiting.¡±


    ¡°That wasn¡¯t necessary,¡± Simon said softly, unsure if he should draw his own sword or not. ¡°I would have been perfectly content to knock him down a peg or two again. The people that are the thirstiest need to¡ª¡±


    ¡°Please don¡¯t misunderstand me,¡± Torrin said. ¡°I don¡¯t disagree with what the Aganian was saying at all; I simply do not wish to see this small miracle destroyed before I have drunk my fill. Normally, I would claim it for myself and charge all of your obols for the privilege of drinking my water, but tonight, I am feeling generous, especially to you, my good Simon. You have saved my life, so all of us shall take turns, and if the trader wishes to give his cups to the horses, I do not mind at all.¡±


    Simon looked at the man and found the humor from earlier entirely evaporated. In Torrin¡¯s eyes, there was only a cold emptiness now, and Simon wondered what it was he was saving here.


    For a moment, everyone froze as they regarded the two of them glaring at each other from opposite sides of the circle of light cast by the lantern. Simon didn¡¯t want to kill this man, and he certainly didn¡¯t want to do it with magic that would make it very obvious to everyone else what he¡¯d done, but he wasn¡¯t about to bow to a bully, either.


    Instead, he leaned very slightly against the barrel, making it tilt precipitously from where it stood on the large rock. ¡°The horses are dying just like men, and I say they drink next.¡±


    Despite what he¡¯d said, the merchant didn¡¯t move any closer with his bucket. He could feel the tension between Simon and Torrin as clearly as anyone else.


    ¡°Do you know how much horses drink?¡± Torrin asked. ¡°It could take all night. What about everyone else?¡±


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    ¡°Then it takes all night. Anyone else who is dying may go first, of course,¡± Simon said. ¡°But don¡¯t forget it was the merchant who brought the barrel that is saving your life. He deserves consideration for that.¡±


    Torrin weighed his options for another minute, noting just how precariously everything was balanced. To Simon, he seemed more than confident that he could kill any challengers, but he didn¡¯t seem at all sure that he could stop Simon before he pushed his tiny miracle off the ledge it sat on, which would almost certainly smash it to ruin.


    Finally, he said, ¡°Fine, I will take a short nap, and when I wake up, I will cut down anyone who tries to stop me from slaking my thirst. Do you understand?¡±


    Simon nodded, but even when the other man wandered off into the darkness, he didn¡¯t let his guard down. He was well aware that Torrin could sneak up behind him.


    He didn¡¯t, though. Despite the sleepless night, Simon saw to it that everyone drank their fill and no one with two legs or four died on his watch.


    Unfortunately, that meant that by the time the sun rose, he was exhausted. He¡¯d eventually gotten the other men to fetch more water when the barrel had started to slow down, but he was unwilling to trust his life to any of them. The merchant was a coward, Torrin was a killer, and everyone else obviously had their own separate agendas.


    Though at first, he had thought he might have found a kindred spirit in the Torrin, as soon as the man had decided he wasn¡¯t going to die, he¡¯d become someone else entirely. In the end, his only real choice was to walk away.


    So that¡¯s what he did. Some small, petty part of him wanted to smash the barrel as he left, but with a yawn, he decided to let them fight over it. He wasn¡¯t here to be their mother. Honestly, he wasn¡¯t sure what he was here for. Maybe he¡¯d fucked the whole thing up, and he was supposed to purify the oasis.


    Honestly, it probably was, he realized, but he didn¡¯t care.


    He wasn¡¯t particularly interested in helping these people any more than he already had, and he probably wouldn¡¯t feel any better about it next time. It wasn¡¯t until he got to the top of the dune he was very slowly scaling that he realized why, either.


    Not one of them had said thank you. ¡°Thank you, Simon, for saving our lives. Thank you for keeping us from dying from dehydration,¡± he said in a mocking tone. ¡°Thank you for giving us more petty bullshit to fight over.¡±


    He was even more annoyed when he got to the top of the dune and realized there was no portal waiting for him in this damn arch. He took a deep breath to resist yelling in frustration. He¡¯d been so sure it would be here, both because there was nowhere else for it to be and because Helades liked putting them in unlikely places.


    ¡°Did she really bury it?¡± he wondered as he scuffed the sand with his toe and saw that the building the arch was attached to did indeed go down into the sand.


    He could just use more earth magic to move it and see, but somehow, that didn¡¯t strike him as quite right. Sometimes, he felt like he was relying on magic too much in all this. It had its place, but given the costs¡­ well, there had to be other ways.


    Simon took a long look at the oasis he¡¯d just come from and began to worry that portal was actually hiding in the back of the merchant¡¯s wagon or maybe even one of the man¡¯s other empty water barrels.


    He resisted the urge to go down and check, though. Going back down there would mean killing Torrin, and he had no wish to murder more people if he didn¡¯t have to. Much like magic, he felt like that had become his go-to answer, and he was fairly certain that when you got too comfortable killing people, you were the bad guy.


    So, before he walked back down the dune, he resolved to carefully check every other direction. He didn¡¯t find anything, of course. He knew he wouldn¡¯t, but when he spit around, there was a door right behind him in the arch he¡¯d just left.


    ¡°Son of a bitch,¡± he shouted, checking both sides of the thing. On the east side toward the oasis, there was still no door, but on the west was a wooden door just like you could find in any tavern in the land.


    ¡°God, not another tavern,¡± Simon said with a shiver. ¡°Anything but that.¡±


    Well, maybe not anything, he thought to himself. That castle and the haunted house sucked pretty bad too.


    Honestly, he didn¡¯t know what he hoped for, so instead, he just opened the door. And he found something quite quaint.


    On the other side of the door was a little crossroads town somewhere in the north. The streets were mud, and the low fences were stacked rocks topped with gnarled hedges. There was an inn, but as he stepped out into the chilly air of the street and shut the door behind him before anyone realized he¡¯d been standing in a desert, he realized he¡¯d come out the door to the bakery, which had a nice homey feel about it.


    For just a moment, Treena came to mind, but even as the nostalgia of her perfect loaves threatened to overwhelm him, a yawn tore its way out of his body, and he decided that despite what he¡¯d said earlier, the inn was looking like a pretty solid idea.


    Simon looked back and forth down the roads several more times, and after he found no evidence of zombies or wars, he decided that was exactly what he was going to do. He walked across the street into the establishment, and for the price of a single silver coin, he procured himself a bed and meals for three nights. He was going to relax and recover for a bit if this level let him.


    He¡¯d been on a tear for so long he was having trouble keeping all the details straight, and he wanted to lay out some of these details to the mirror before he found out what was on level 30 or even what it was he was going to have to do here. First, though, he decided to stop by the bar and grab a pint. The desert was thirsty business, and a beer or two would make sleep come much quicker in one of these lumpy in beds.

 Ch. 103 - You Look Familiar

    Simon slept the day away. He luxuriated in the feeling of having his armor off for the first time in days, and despite how much he hated looking at his chubby body when he was stripped down to his boxers, he wouldn¡¯t have enjoyed those scratchy linen sheets anymore if they were made of silk.


    It was only when the sun was close to setting that he finally decided to stop being lazy and get his act together. He made his way downstairs without his armor or his sword and inquired about where a man might be able to get a bath. He would need to do some laundry tomorrow to get the salt and the sand out of his clothes, and he would definitely need to take a whetstone to his weapons sometime after that before he went to the next level because the rust spotting was growing worse.


    Still, all of that could wait until he¡¯d wasted a few coppers on a nice hot soak. While he was in the bathhouse, he learned he was in the town of Esmiran and that he was somewhere to the east of Mietere.


    The only time he¡¯d heard the name of that city before, he was dealing with that locust-leech storm at Millen¡¯s farm. He wondered if that meant he was close or not but decided not to ask.


    He was definitely in another country or region, though. People¡¯s skin was slightly darker than he was used to, and their clothes were just a little bit different from his. When one of the other men mentioned that he looked like a sailor, Simon laughed and said, ¡°I haven¡¯t spent much time on a ship since Abrese.¡±


    That got him some dark looks, and though no one explained, Simon quickly found himself alone after that. He made a mental note not to mention random places he¡¯d been without understanding why the populace might hate them.


    Fortunately, nothing bad came of it, and as he reentered the inn, he found no lynch mobs waiting for him. Instead, he ordered a beer and some food and listened more than he talked as he waited for his food to arrive.


    All in all, he would have called the fare in this place only decent. The meat was too stringy, the bread was too coarse, but the beer was decent enough. He didn¡¯t complain, though. At least it was new, and the part of him that feared he¡¯d be stuck eating that same wedge of cheese and loaf of bread forever. So that was okay.


    It was only later when he had joined some strangers in a friendly game of dice, that they arrived. Simon had been on a winning streak and managed to win almost a whole silver coin after seven straight rounds of guessing whether the dice would come up even or odds.


    Normally, that wouldn¡¯t have been much money to him, but his coin purse was getting pretty low. He might have only been on this run for a few weeks, but he¡¯d been to a lot of places in that time, and traveling was a lot more expensive than just hanging out in a single town and getting to know the locals for a year or two.


    So, he wasn¡¯t paying much attention to anything but the growing pile of coppers that were the stakes, and he didn¡¯t even notice the strangers and their white robes come in until the bar went silent.


    ¡°Can I help you, gentlemen?¡± the proprietor asked. ¡°We don¡¯t want no trouble.¡±


    ¡°Peace, brother,¡± the apparent leader of the group said, raising a leather-gloved hand to show he was unarmed. ¡°We only seek heretics. The worthy and the righteous have nothing to hide.¡±


    This gave Benjamin pause as he looked over the 6 men and women who wore white cloaks and robes that did little to hide their armor and weapons. Only the one wearing gray from head to toe seemed unarmed, but that probably just meant that they were even more trouble.


    Suddenly, he felt naked without his sword, and he cursed himself for being in this common room with nothing but a dagger now that these weirdos were here. It smelled like trouble. This was almost certainly the reason he was here, which seemed strange, given that he¡¯d been here for almost a day. Things usually happened quicker than that.


    Still, he didn¡¯t let that distract him as he tried to feign disinterest while he studied these strangers and tried to determine what the threat was going to be. The leader walked slowly around the room, studying each face one at a time, and even the men who seemed most likely to bluster or pick a fight over something like this were quiet and still.


    They know what¡¯s going on here, even if I don¡¯t, Simon thought to himself. That, as much as the cool deliberation that was going on, was enough to keep him right where he was even as the man slowly made his way across the bar toward him.


    Simon was certain he¡¯d be picked out of the crowd for whatever aura it was he had about him. He¡¯d been told so many times, but that didn¡¯t happen. Instead, only a few people before him, the man reached out and grabbed a hooded woman sitting by the other side of the fire and pulled her to her feet.


    ¡°Here you are, Carelyn,¡± the man smiled cruelly. ¡°Did you really think you could hide from us so¡ª¡±


    He stopped speaking as she lashed out with a knife instead of words, but it didn¡¯t penetrate the chainmail that was hidden underneath the man¡¯s robes, and he only smirked as he twisted her arm so hard that she dropped the knife even as he started to drag her off.


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    ¡°No! No!!!¡± she screamed. ¡°I¡¯m not going back. You can¡¯t make me!¡±


    ¡°No, you¡¯re not,¡± the cult leader agreed. ¡°That bridge has been burned.¡±


    Some small part of Simon breathed a sigh of relief right then. He¡¯d been sure this dude had some mystical power to seek out people like Simon, but in the end, this was just some wacky cult thing. These guys were here to collect some runaway. Now, things fell into place a little more.


    He wasn¡¯t exactly about to let that happen, though, and even as the group began to condense and move toward the door, he got up and followed them outside. One of the men he was playing dice with shook his head almost imperceptibly, urging Simon not to, while the other just smiled. He was obviously looking forward to taking Simon¡¯s money as soon as these men struck him down, but he wasn¡¯t about to let that happen.


    ¡°There¡¯s no point in resisting us, Carelyn,¡± Simon heard the leader say as soon as he stepped outside, ¡°The auguries were quite clear. You could have been one of the chosen, but now you are hopelessly tainted by this¡­ can I help you?¡±


    The man¡¯s focus shifted to Simon as soon as he stepped out of the front door. The front yard of the inn was full of horses and men, and the group¡¯s size had almost doubled to 10 warriors in white, but Simon still wasn¡¯t concerned.


    ¡°If the lady doesn¡¯t want to go with you, then you¡¯re not taking her anywhere,¡± he said simply.


    ¡°Oh?¡± the leader of the group smiled as his men began to fan out. It was clear to Simon that they knew what they were doing, unlike most of the people he¡¯d fought on other levels. ¡°Those are big words, but unless you go right back inside, I¡¯m afraid my men are going to have to dirty their weapons on¡ª¡±


    ¡°Oonbetit,¡± Simon muttered, using a word of force to knock everyone in front of him backward except the girl as he walked forward and grabbed her by the arm.


    That was enough to knock most of them off their feet, including the leader. Simon¡¯s eyes weren¡¯t on him, though. One of the other men, a younger warrior to the leader¡¯s left, looked familiar to Simon somehow. He had no idea who the man was or where he might have seen him, but neither that uncertainty nor the fact that Simon had just knocked him off his feet was enough to shake the look of recognition on his face.


    He¡¯d clearly done something to piss that guy off. Before Simon could figure out what that was, though, the leader of these zealots was back on his feet. Simon had expected to knock some sense into them with that, but it wasn¡¯t fear in the other man¡¯s eyes. It was hunger. ¡°Allying with actual warlocks now, Carelyn,¡± the man growled, drawing his sword. ¡°Now things finally make sense.¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡± Carelyn started speaking, but Simon already knew what she was going to say. He could see it in the fear in her eyes even before she shook free of his grip. ¡°I¡¯m not¡­ I would never¡­¡±


    She backed away, and once she was a few feet from Simon, she turned and ran, but he didn¡¯t take it personally. He¡¯d known from the moment he started using magic no one was going to be on his team. That¡¯s just the way it was. He needed to be pitted against a literal zombie apocalypse for people to think he was the good guy, and apparently, religious zealots didn¡¯t rise to that level.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to hurt you,¡± Simon said, not yet drawing his dagger. ¡°If you just leave now, we can¡­¡±


    ¡°Oonbetit,¡± he barked for a second time as the three of the soldiers broke from their ranks and began to chase down the girl.


    Strangely, though, nothing happened. Simon was still processing that and wondering what he did wrong when their leader yelled out, ¡°Don¡¯t worry about her; she won¡¯t get far. We have a higher calling now. We must cleanse this warlock.¡±


    Between the level of confidence in the man¡¯s eyes and the way his magic had fizzled, Simon knew he should run. He might have, too, if he had any idea where it was he was supposed to run to.


    If he did, though, they¡¯d just go after that woman again, and he wasn¡¯t about to trade his life for hers. Even if they killed him, he would buy her the time she needed to get away. He could always come back here. It wasn¡¯t like he didn¡¯t know the way.


    He could do that a lot easier if he had his sword, though, he thought to himself as he pulled his dagger and dropped into a fighting stance.


    No weapon, no armor, and apparently no magic was really going to limit his options, though.


    ¡°Gervuul Meiren,¡± he said, trying one more time as the men came cautiously closer.


    Simon felt the words come to life as he pronounced them as always, and he felt the power flow out of him, but for some reason, instead of the torrent of fire he visualized, only a few sparks appeared.


    ¡°Rage as much as you like,¡± the other man taunted at that. ¡°As long as we have a whisperer here, your tricks are useless!¡±


    Simon had no idea what this asshole was talking about, but as soon as he and his men charged Simon, he no longer had time to think about it. Instead, he made a fighting retreat from the village square until he could use the wall of the inn to keep one of his flanks safe.


    It was a losing battle, though. Not only was he nearly defenseless, but he wasn¡¯t as strong or as fast as he would like to be, so without magic, he was pretty much screwed. It took only a couple of minutes to realize that the person in gray, who stayed close to them but well behind the line of combat, was to blame for that. They were the whisperer, whatever that was, and if he wanted the power to take these weirdos down, that was the person he had to take down.


    He could have done it, too, if he had a bow. Sadly, he didn¡¯t. So, he was going to have to improvise.

 Ch. 104 - No Way Out

    Simon waited for his moment; he parried and feinted, and each time, he pulled back as he looked for an opening. It wasn¡¯t long before one of the men he faced off against was foolish enough to charge him.


    Simon was still a little too round to cleanly dodge such an attack, but he guided the tip of his opponent¡¯s blade away with his dagger before he moved forward, inside the other man¡¯s guard, and shoved his dagger into the gap between the man¡¯s gorget and his helmet. Then, while his opponent was choking on his own blood, Simon stole his sword.


    The weapon was a little heavier than the long sword he was used to, but it was a thousand times better than the dagger he¡¯d had moments ago. Until now, he¡¯d been forced to give ground constantly, but now he lashed out, taking his opponents by complete surprise.


    He cursed himself for growing too reliant on his magic. Even as he moved, he imagined the openings he¡¯d make if he could use even a minor word of force to parry a blow or knock the man across from him off balance even a little.


    Despite that, the two nearest him were on their back foot. Their armor saved them from any real damage, as Simon ended each parry with a hard slash that contained enough force to stagger them. Despite that, the best he was able to do was knock a few of the men over as he tripped and pushed them while he kept the rest back off with wild swings of his sword.


    Those combinations were effective, but they were exhausting. As much as he would have liked to, there was no way he could keep that tempo up forever.


    Steel rang out against steel for almost a minute before he managed to take another one of them down, bringing the odds down to the still impossible eight on one. That was worlds better than ten on one, of course, but he¡¯d been fresh then, and he was exhausted now.


    Still, he did his best, at least until he was surrounded. That was when he made a desperate push toward the person in gray robes. If he could take them down, then he could burn everyone else alive and escape.


    Sadly, the warriors in white anticipated that and never let him close to their whisperer, whatever the hell that was. On his third attempt, the closest he got was when he knocked down the warrior who had looked familiar earlier.


    As Simon raised his sword to gut the young man, he finally figured out who it was he¡¯d been fighting. For a brief moment, he saw the man a few years younger as a boy, rolling around on the floor as he tried to pull those biting insects off of him.


    It was a gut-wrenching moment, and it was enough to stay his blade. ¡°Aaric?¡± Simon asked.


    It was a mistake. In his flashback, the boy looked up at him plaintively, but now he was back to the same hard-eyed man he¡¯d been seconds before, practically daring Simon to strike him down with his eyes.


    He couldn¡¯t, of course, and so, he lost the initiative rather than turning the fight into seven-on-one. He didn¡¯t last much longer after that. Soon, his already heavy sword was made of lead, and once he was hemmed in between a few men with shields, he was quickly disarmed and then knocked off his feet.


    Once he was on the ground, it was over. Strangely, though, no one stabbed him. That was what he¡¯d been expecting. Instead, they proceeded to start kicking him and beating him with the flat of their blades.


    They want me alive? He wondered as his fear rose along with his pain. Why?


    He had no answers, though. His world was reduced to a cluster of bruises that slowly expanded wider with every passing second. One sharp kick to the head almost knocked him unconscious, but the leader of the zealots called his men off then, and instead, they began to bind his hands.


    ¡°Patience!¡± he called out. ¡°Giving this demon a painless death will do nothing to save his eternal soul. First, he must be cleansed!¡±


    Everyone cheered at that, and even Aaric took a moment from glaring at Simon with hate to pray. He didn¡¯t have to wait long to find out what that meant for him, though. Part of him hoped they¡¯d do something simple, like burn him at the stake, but it turned out to be even simpler than that as two men started dragging him toward the well in the center of the square.


    ¡°Wait, you¡¯re going to drown me?¡± Simon asked, coughing up blood. He was fairly sure he¡¯d broken a rib. ¡°In the town well? That¡¯s your cleansing?¡±


    ¡°Of course,¡± the cult leader laughed. ¡°And Carelyn will suffer the same fate as soon as we run her to ground again.¡±


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    ¡°Yeah, but people drink from there,¡± he said, confused. ¡°Maybe, I don¡¯t know, find a pond or something?¡± The cleansing metaphor he could get, even though it was dumb, but why not a river or something. This was a great way to cause a cholera outbreak or worse.


    Not that it would affect him. Drowning was a miserable way to go, but maybe if he could convince this asshole to go somewhere further afield, he¡¯d have a chance to escape.


    ¡°Nonsense,¡± the sneering man said, looking more and more like the caricature of a villain. ¡°We shall cleanse you here so everyone can see how you suffer for salvation. Then we¡¯ll fish your corpse out afterward and hang it from a post so that everyone will know the price for selling their soul. Your death here will save countless others. That at least I can thank you for.¡±


    Simon rolled his eyes at that but said nothing as the man began to give a speech about how anyone who covets the powers of the gods should be struck down. He continued to struggle as the man¡¯s still-living minions held him, but they never got distracted enough for him to break free.


    He picked off a few things about the principalities of the waters, the sins of the ancestors, and the tainting of the source, but on the whole, the whole thing was impenetrable to Simon. All he really got out of listening to the rambling five-minute sermon was that these guys weren¡¯t completely crazy, but they were pretty crazy about purging the unclean from the world, which he took to mean warlocks and magic users, as well as the fact that this guy¡¯s title was ¡®seeker.¡¯


    The only part he really stopped struggling was when Aaric made a tearful speech about how Simon had sucked the life out of his family. ¡°My sisters both died that year, and our farm never had a good season after that, thanks to this monster!¡± the young man declared. ¡°I offer thanks to my father and all of his ancestors that such a wretch will finally be cleansed!¡±


    ¡°What are you talking about?¡± Simon yelled. ¡°I saved your family from the black swarm! I¡ª¡±


    ¡°Shut up!¡± Aaric roared. ¡°Neither of them ever had the blood sickness before you stayed with us. You did that to them!¡±


    Before he could interject again, Simon was rewarded for his efforts by being dragged to his feet and punched in the stomach hard enough to shut him up and leave him gasping. That didn¡¯t end the whole ritual, of course. The Seeker continued, and other people came forward, accusing Simon of things he¡¯d never done.


    He was accused of making sheep barren and the winter too long. He was accused of burning down houses and souring milk.


    He laughed at those, at least. They were pure insanity. The only one that got under his skin was Aaric¡¯s testimony. That left Simon wondering if there might be some truth to the aftermath of what he¡¯d done to that swarm.


    Everything about that day horrified him already, from the bugs to how badly he wanted to try the word of transfer again. Even weeks later, the idea that he could use it on someone else still lingered most nights while he lay in bed.


    All he wanted to know was if he¡¯d actually hurt someone, but each time he tried to ask, he was beaten and spit upon. Eventually, the Seeker ended the ceremony and turned to face Simon.


    ¡°Do you have any last words?¡± the prick asked as Simon was perched on the edge of the well.


    ¡°Yeah, next time, I¡¯m killing you first,¡± Simon said. As he did so, he tried to wrap his legs around the guy and drag him to hell along with him, but unfortunately, he was still exhausted, and the zealot¡¯s men succeeded in separating the two of them before Simon could fling himself down the well.


    He expected to hit the cold water and sink immediately, only that isn¡¯t what happened. As soon as he hit the water, it started falling, too. He had only a second to understand why before the whole thing flushed beneath him.


    That was the only way he could think about it. Like he¡¯d been flushed down a toilet, only those obviously weren¡¯t going to exist for a few more centuries.


    Portal. The word flashed through his mind just before he hit the cavern floor. He hit hard, and what felt like a few rotting corpses broke his fall even as the water splashed widely around him. Simon had a few seconds to look around and listen to the cries of confusion from the well above him, but after that, the light that came from the hole faded from view, leaving him in the dark.


    ¡°What in the fuck was that?¡± he asked himself.


    Simon had just enough time to recall that they were going to dump that girl in here, which made the exit¡¯s location make a strange sort of sense, but before he could piece things together more than that or try to figure out how to free his hands, a low growl echoed through the cave.


    Wherever he was, he wasn¡¯t in here alone.


    For a moment, Simon didn¡¯t move. He didn¡¯t even breathe. He just listened and tried to gather clues from that.


    Though the place stank, it sounded like there was only one creature in there with him. At least, he thought there was as he listened to the shuffling and the snuffling. Whatever it was, it was big, though. Like - really big. Simon instantly ruled out orc but struggled to think of what it might be instead.


    Troll? He thought with more than a little trepidation. But those could see in the dark, couldn¡¯t they?


    A shiver went down his spine. He had his magic back, presumably. He just wasn¡¯t sure if he should use it or not. Would light make this worse or better, he wondered. For now, at least, he let his eyes grow accustomed to the dark and listened carefully for any sign that whatever was in here with him might be getting closer.

 Ch. 105 - Bump in the Night

    Simon tried to get up from where he¡¯d fallen as quietly as he could and whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Oonbetit,¡± to cut the ropes on his hands free, but in the dark, every sound seemed to carry, and stealth was, ironically, impossible. As loud as whispering had seemed, though, moving was worse. As he tentatively stood, the debris he was on top of skidded and clattered down a slope of other disgusting refuse, and he stumbled as he almost lost his footing.


    For a moment, whatever was in here with him froze at the sound of his tumble, and then it began stomping toward him with increasing speed. Thinking fast, Simon picked up the nearest rock and threw it to the opposite side of the cavern or wherever it was that he was at, now.


    That made the monster freeze again for a moment, but when it started moving, Simon was pretty sure that its direction hadn¡¯t changed. It was coming right for him.


    Simon continued to ease himself down the midden heap, and he reached out for anything he might be able to use. This time, when he found a bone, he whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Barom,¡± as he threw the thing overhand as hard as he could overhand away from him.


    The bone burst into the pale yellow flashlight beam that he¡¯d envisioned, and it tumbled end over end through the dark thanks to the word of lesser light he¡¯d used. That only lasted for two or three seconds before the creature it illuminated lashed out, shattering it and sending glowing fragments in every direction.


    Those two seconds were enough, though. Up until now, the biggest thing that Simon had dealt was a troll. Technically, the Wyvern was bigger, but he¡¯d been pretty far away from it when he struck it down, so that didn¡¯t really count.


    If the troll had been ten or twelve feet tall, then this ogre was easily fifteen feet. It was impossible to say in the eerie location that was this cavern. What he could say, though, was that the thing was a tough old bastard. Its body was covered in scars, and one of its eyes was milky and useless. None of those features distracted him from the thickly knotted muscles that covered the too-wide creature or the treetrunk club that it had just used to such deadly effect as it turned a single ulna bone into fifty ulna fragments that twinkled like stars as they rained down across the ground.


    It was beautiful in a strange, savage way, but that didn¡¯t stop Simon from picking up speed. In the brief flash of light, he saw the glint of metal from a rusted blade and grabbed that, too, even as he darted into a darker part of the cave. It was a good thing he¡¯d done so, too, because he¡¯d only gotten a dozen feet when he heard the ogre¡¯s club swing down hard on the pile of bone and filth he¡¯d been standing on only moments ago.


    He felt pieces of bone and stone spray across his back, which was painful since he lacked his leather armor, but he did not cry out. Instead, he ran for another second, and as soon as the sound of debris stopped, he stopped, too.


    The dim lights of his initial spell were already starting to fade, and the brightest details were charcoal gray against the black of the cave. From where Simon was standing now, trying very hard to control his breath, he thought he could see light leaking from the entrance to the monster¡¯s lair, but he didn¡¯t run toward it. He didn¡¯t even breathe. He just stood there, trying to ignore the stink and the feeling of blood dripping down his back as he waited to see what the creature did next.


    It apparently had a similar thought because it also waited quietly. Well, almost quietly. It still shuffled and snorted, but it did not rampage or do anything else that might hide the sounds of its quarry. Instead, it stood there breathing in out of those giant lungs that sounded like wheezing bellows, and Simon reminded himself that he was well inside the range of its weapon still, and anything he did to draw attention to himself might well be it for this run.


    That would be intolerable, he thought to himself. This is the thirtieth floor, and that ugly piece of shit is the only thing that¡¯s standing between me and finding out the truth about what happened!


    It was frustrating, but not so frustrating that he didn¡¯t stand there and take shallow breaths as he thought things through and wondered when the bastard would lose interest. He¡¯d already used a major word and a number of lesser words during the witchhunt, but he thought he could do just about anything he wanted within reason.


    The only obstacle was the darkness. Well, not the only obstacle, he corrected himself, but certainly the main one. The fact that it was huge and stronger than a bull were certainly problems as well, but the fact that he couldn¡¯t see it to precisely target it was the biggest problem of all.


    Stolen novel; please report.


    If he wanted to use force, he was going to need to keep it pretty focused to penetrate so much bulk, but if he wanted to make sure he hit it, the strike would have to be wide. There was no good overlap between those two strategies.


    Eventually, things turned in his favor, and the beast grew restless. It started groping through the pile of shattered bones, looking for a corpse to feast on. Simon took that opportunity to slink away and pick up a few more stones. Then, in rapid succession, he used the words of lesser light and started tossing them around the room near the ogre.


    It was enraged, of course, and bellowed so powerfully that Simon could smell its awful halitosis from here, but at last, he could see the thing, and the five stones scattered between here and there gave him a good sense of depth, too, which was all he needed for the spell that game next. ¡°Gervuul Vosden!¡± he yelled. Greater Earth.


    The new word tore its way out of his throat much more harshly than any of the words he was more familiar with, and he tasted blood and brimstone, but he didn¡¯t let that dissuade him. He¡¯d never tried a spell like this before, but he had no doubt it would work. More importantly, the odds of him missing in a serious way, like he might with force, were a lot more minor.


    The first time he¡¯d tried this magic, it was to dig a small hole, but this time it was for something far more brutal. The floor around the ogre and the ceiling above it suddenly sprouted stalagmites and stalactites that started to devour it like the maw of an angry dragon.


    The creature bashed through several, but even as it did so, others continued to grow, tripping it up, and as it rose to its feet, the stalactites that hadn¡¯t been destroyed above it continued to grow, pinning it down.


    ¡°Vosden!¡± he yelled again. He wanted to use the major power word, but he didn¡¯t trust himself to hold up under that level of abuse, and he didn¡¯t think he¡¯d need that much extra power to finish this thing off.


    Flesh, even flesh as strong as the orge¡¯s, offered no real resistance to stone, and the sharp points of rock that continued to extend by the will of magic extended forward without regard to the creature¡¯s bellows of agony as it was speared and pinned simultaneously.


    Apparently, none of the things hit somewhere vital, though, because it roared in anger so loudly that the whole cavern shook. For a moment, Simon was deafened, but then he heard the worst sound of all: the sound of stone cracking.


    He darted forward, intent on striking this thing down while it was still tied down like Gulliver. He was too slow for that, though, and the thing was already rising to its feet by the time he reached it. The thing was pierced over and over again by fire hydrant thick stone, and in places, the flesh was entirely torn where the ogre''s skin had torn before the pillar had shattered.


    It was a breathtakingly brutal sight but not as brutal as the look of rage in the thing¡¯s one good eye. It was completely bloodshot now, and if he could kill with a look the way the basilisk could, he¡¯d already be ground to paste.


    It couldn¡¯t, though, and when it raised its arm with its club, both of them found out simultaneously that it couldn¡¯t kill him that way either. Its arm was still connected at the shoulder, but halfway down the forearm, there was only a bloody stump and a bit of dangling flesh that was its two-foot wide hand.


    Simon had the brief thought that he didn¡¯t actually need to kill this thing anymore. He just needed to keep away from it while it bled out, but it seemed to sense that and began charging forward on its hand and knee, forcing him back and further from the exit.


    Now, he was in trouble. Behind him and to his left were rough stone walls, and to his right was the uncertain footing of the midden heap he¡¯d landed on. There were no good options here, but every moment he delayed, he lost ground and escape routes. He could see there was going to be no easy way out of here, so Simon reached back and threw his rusted sword in a powerful overhand throw.


    Miraculously, it struck the creature¡¯s eye point first, embedding deep into the thing¡¯s eye socket. Unfortunately, though, the eye it embedded into was the already blinded one.


    Simon stumbled back as the ogre roared and lashed out at him. It wasn¡¯t trying to get him, though. It was trying and failing to grasp the slender thing with its arm-sized fingers. For a moment, Simon was too dazed at watching this ugly, bloody fumbling, but then, before it could wrench the thing free, he kicked out hard, slamming his boat into the hilt, forcing it another few inches deeper.


    ¡°AGHHHHH!¡± the ogre roared in pain, batting him aside like a rag doll and sending him careening painfully against the nearest wall.


    He should have been grateful that the ogre was already so close to death that most of its strength was gone. If it hadn¡¯t been, he would have broken more than a few bones from that impact. Instead, he merely lay there dazed for a moment before he whispered, ¡°Oonbetit,¡± slamming the sword deep into the creature¡¯s pea-sized brain and going halfway to the hilt.


    The ogre continued to move even after that, but they were the twitchy, spasmodic movements of a corpse and nothing that prevented him from laying here a moment longer and basking in the afterglow before he finally rose to his feet to prepare for what needed to happen next.

 Ch. 106 - Answers

    ¡°Helades!¡± Simon yelled, staggering toward the light. ¡°Helades, this is level 30, and I¡¯m here! You owe me some answers!¡±


    ¡°Well, an answer at least,¡± she said just behind him, making him whirl around to see the Goddess. ¡°And might I say, you¡¯ve made excellent progress. It only took a handful of deaths and a few years of life to get all the way down to the ogre. Good work.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t come here to make progress!¡± he yelled, wiping away the blood on his forehead before it dripped into his eye and sheathing his sword lest the Goddess decide he was threatening her. ¡°I came to talk to you!¡±


    ¡°So talk,¡± she said, her smile growing a little tighter. ¡°What is it you want to know.¡±


    ¡°Freya, was she faithful to me? Did I fail her? Did Varten¡­¡± he asked without a moment''s hesitation, but despite his need, he still couldn¡¯t bring himself to finish the awful thought.


    A dozen more important questions flashed through his mind in that instant, but he ignored them. That was the only one that kept him up at night, though. That was the one he needed to know the answer to more than anything.


    ¡°Oh, Simon, I thought we were past this,¡± Helades sighed. ¡°Are you sure there aren¡¯t other, more pressing questions on your mind?¡±


    She proceeded to drone off a list of questions in his own voice, one after the other, and each one left him slightly more pissed off as she seemed to read his mind and, worse, mock him: ¡°Why am I too late to save people, but just in time to clean up the mess? How does that make any sense? Why do some levels reappear while others stay completed? What the hell is it I''m supposed to do with that stupid basement anyway?¡±


    ¡°Passed?¡± he asked, balling up his fists involuntarily as he ignored her list. ¡°I loved her. Helades. I still do, but I need to know. More than I need to know why Schwarzenbruck is back or why Freya has changed. I need to know!¡±


    ¡°Simon,¡± she sighed. ¡°She¡­ your wife, she was always faithful to you. How could you doubt that? She was a good woman, and you did the best you could for her. You could have done more, but agonizing over that will take you to dark places that no one should go, especially not when they¡¯re functionally immortal. Let her rest in peace.¡±


    ¡°But, the things she said¡­¡± he answered, holding back tears, ¡°And then when Varten¡­¡±


    Helades did the most unexpected thing then and stepped forward, giving him a hug. He was about to hug her back, but instead, the world dissolved around him.


    Suddenly, he was reliving those awful moments, but in reverse. Killing Varten and feeling the urge to do it over and over again, burying Freya, trying and failing to save her life, and then coming home to find her in the arms of another man and watching her slip and fall to her death. Things were moving fast, and even before he fully experienced one moment, the next was rushing up to meet him.


    Every part of him strained to use a word of force to catch her as she fell or to decapitate the foul man that had done this to her. No, he thought to himself in that instant, decapitation would be much too good for the man. He wanted to atomize him and turn him into a bloody mist. He wanted to watch him burn and¡­


    Even as his rage started to boil over, things progressed further back, but now they were from Freya¡¯s perspective. Instead of watching himself go back out to fight off the orcs and save Crowvar, he watched his wife have a conversation with Varten just before he arrived.


    ¡°No,¡± she insisted, pushing the man away, ¡°If Simon dies, and all is lost, I still wouldn¡¯t want you, Varten. Not like this. Not with you. Not ever with you!¡±


    What he¡¯d walked in on and thought was a moment of lustful passion was a moment of anger instead. That surprised him even though he knew that it shouldn¡¯t.


    Each moment was followed by the one before it, and they were only picking up speed as they went, which made it hard to follow the events and made the dialog nearly impossible to grasp. He puzzled it out, though, as best he could. To him, it seemed the noble had been expecting the city to fall and had tried and failed to seduce Simon¡¯s wife.


    The man should have been on the wall fighting for his life, but instead, he was trying to take what wasn¡¯t his. It was infuriating, but more than that, the exchange showed that they¡¯d never been intimate. There was no secret affair as he¡¯d worried about for so long.


    That should have been enough, but time kept moving backward, giving him dozens more insights into his wife¡¯s life. He saw when he kissed her goodbye that morning before he left for the wall. He saw her break down in tears almost every day in the days leading up to that moment because he was a little too honest about their slim chances of victory.


    Beyond that, though, he mostly saw how lonely she was. He¡¯d brought her to a town where she didn¡¯t speak the language, and every time he was away, she was almost completely isolated. The most friendly relationship she seemed to have was with the local butcher and the innkeepers they¡¯d stayed with before their cottage was finished.


    As the days passed one after the other, all he noted was the way that their tiny little home slowly got dirtier and emptier as it got closer and closer to when they¡¯d moved in. It was a quiet, simple life, and sadly, Freya spent most of it alone.


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    That, by itself, was enough of an indictment to make Simon feel terrible about all the little ways he¡¯d failed her. He¡¯d never really understood the sad look in her eyes or the way she clung to him when he returned home.


    Then, suddenly, Varten slammed the door and left their house. No, he was entering it but in reverse, after cutting her arm, and now he had a knife to Freya¡¯s throat.


    It was a confusing mix of images, and Simon struggled to make sense of them for a moment. That was only for an instant. After that, he tried and failed to leap through whatever strange magic this was to rip the man¡¯s throat out.


    Still, time continued to move back irrevocably as these two argued, then it did something else unexpected and finally stopped somewhere near the beginning of the conversation. ¡°This moment should answer all the questions you ever had about Freya,¡± Helades whispered as time resumed its forward course.


    Time started to move again after that, but it flowed forward again at normal speed, granting him insight into a moment he¡¯d never should have been able to experience. Well, mostly.


    The violence he¡¯d just seen was gone, and instead, the two sat there having tea like old friends. Freya was busy laughing at something Varten said, and Simon had no idea how this moment could possibly lead to the violence he¡¯d already seen in the future only a couple minutes from now.


    ¡°Varten, for all his faults, thanks to his tutors, he¡¯s one of the few people in all of Crowvar that spoke the North Tongue fluently,¡± Helades whispered. ¡°He¡¯s actually been quite a good friend to your wife until now, though you don¡¯t need to look into his heart like I can to see that his intentions were anything but honorable.¡±


    Simon would have nodded in agreement if he¡¯d still had a head to do that within this strange disembodied experience. He could see the hunger radiating off the man and watch his eyes glance at her breasts or ass whenever she looked away.


    The conversation continued politely for another moment, but then it all fell apart when he leaned forward to kiss her, and she jerked away sharply even as she slapped him hard enough to leave a red mark on his cheek. ¡°What do you think you¡¯re doing!¡± she cried out, ¡°I¡¯m a married woman!¡±


    ¡°Married to a man that¡¯s never here,¡± Varten said, smiling coldly as he rubbed his cheek. ¡°I could fix that, you know? I could make sure he¡¯s sent on safer missions and that he¡¯s home more often in return for certain considerations.¡±


    Freya¡¯s eyes widened as she realized that the very reason that Simon was in jeopardy so often was exactly because this man wanted to get her alone like this. She was already rising to her feet as he spoke, but that comment was enough to make her take a swing at him.


    ¡°You¡­ from the beginning¡­ You did all this on purpose!¡± she said as he caught her arm effortlessly and twisted it before releasing her, sending her spinning.


    ¡°Come now,¡± he said, ¡°Don¡¯t play coy with me. We both knew what this was from the start. You¡¯re a beautiful woman, and you obviously have needs that a commoner like Simon could never hope to satisfy.¡±


    ¡°I¡­ I thought you were my friend¡­¡± she said, but even as she turned around, he was drawing his knife, and her words failed her.


    Her strength didn¡¯t, though, and she immediately grabbed the broom and struck out at her tormentor, trying to swat him away enough to open the door and run. Varten was an able duelist, and after playing with his prey for a moment, he disarmed her and pressed her into the corner.


    ¡°Don¡¯t make this more difficult than it has to be,¡± he sneered. ¡°I¡¯d hate to make you sew your pretty little dress back together after I cut it off you.¡±


    Simon¡¯s heart went cold as he watched this terrible moment. It hurt him more than he would have thought possible that this happened and that he¡¯d not only been unable to protect her, but he¡¯d never even known about it. That mystery, more than anything, made him fear what awful thing the Goddess was going to show him next.


    Freya didn¡¯t flinch or cower, though. She definitely didn¡¯t give in. Instead, she stepped forward until the knife was inches from her throat.


    ¡°Go on,¡± she dared him, ¡°Do it. Kill me.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t have to kill you to have my way with you,¡± Varten snarled.


    ¡°If you do that, I¡¯ll just kill myself, and it will amount to the same thing,¡± Freya shot back. ¡°When my husband finds me cold and dead on our floor, he¡¯ll know what happened, and he¡¯ll know who did it; you know what will happen then?¡±


    ¡°How could he possibly¡ª¡± Varten asked, but Freya ignored him and continued stepping close enough to his weapon that he was forced to pull it back a little bit.


    ¡°He¡¯ll rip your black heart and burn your city to the ground,¡± she continued. ¡°You¡¯ve never seen him. Not the way I have.¡±


    ¡°Him? Simon?¡± Varten laughed. ¡°I¡¯ll have him shot from the wall before he ever reaches the gate. Even if he really is a warlock, that will be enough to put him in the ground. You place an awful lot of confidence in fairy stories.¡±


    Freya grinned ferally, ¡°Like that¡¯s the first time Simon has been shot. I know you¡¯ve heard the rumors. The way he heals? The way he kills?¡±


    Varten swallowed hard. He said nothing, but the look in his eyes said he had indeed heard the rumors.


    ¡°He fought through a city of zombies¡­ he walked through worlds to save me,¡± she bragged, acting like she didn¡¯t have a care in the world. ¡°What are you to him? You¡¯re just a little prick with a little prick.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not afraid of him or you,¡± Varten said, but there was no conviction there.


    Instead, all he could do was lick his dry lips and decide whether or not he wanted to call her bluff. In the end, he decided that he did not and moved his knife quickly down to her arm.


    ¡°Your husband won¡¯t always return home,¡± he gloated. ¡°One day, he¡¯ll die for the glory of my Barony, and when he does, I¡¯ll be coming by to console you personally.¡±


    ¡°I will never be yours,¡± Freya spat.


    ¡°No? I¡¯ve already marked you along with everything else that belongs to me,¡± he smiled cruelly as he looked at her now bleeding arm. ¡°When the time is right, I will be back to claim you myself.¡±


    Varten slammed the door behind him, and when he was gone, she slumped against the door and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor. All her bravado and her fearlessness drained out of her then, and she began to sob. ¡°Simon,¡± she cried, ¡°Where are you?¡±

 Ch. 107 - Burning Questions

    As the strange memory that wasn¡¯t his own faded, Simon found himself alone on the dark floor of the cave. He wanted to thank Helades, but the goddess that had given him such terrible, brutal insight was gone, and he was, along with his self-loathing, for not having done more to make Freya happy.


    The whole thing had ripped open the infected wound that was her passing, and right now, it hurt almost as much as it did in that terrible moment. That it might heal cleanly this time did nothing to stop the sobs that wracked him for the next few minutes as all the emotion and the poison poured out of him in the privacy of that foul cave, with nothing but the sightless eyes of the dead ogre to see his shame.


    He might have lingered there for hours, wallowing in his self-pity, but eventually, the minor wounds on his back that had been inflicted by the spray of stone and bone shrapnel began to ache, and he was forced to speak a few words of minor healing to address them.


    That one small act was enough to remind him of where and who he was. He had infinity to mope if he wanted to, but that wouldn¡¯t get him out of the Pit.


    ¡°Just what, seventy levels to go?¡± he muttered as he forced himself to his feet. ¡°I fuckin¡¯ wish. More like eighty I think. Maybe ninety. It¡¯s hard to say.¡±


    As Simon groped his way toward the light, he vowed to make a proper accounting on his next trip down through the levels and use the mirror to make sure that he knew exactly how many levels he¡¯d completed, even if that seemed to be occasionally subject to change.


    Still - he was pretty sure he¡¯d completed at least ten percent of them. That was something, right? Thirty percent explored, ten percent completed? Yeah, he could live with that.


    As Simon got closer to the entrance, he could see the dried gore and half-devoured corpses that decorated the place and took solace that the monster he¡¯d killed, however crudely, would never trouble these people again. He wondered what people would make of the stone-entombed corpse when he found it, but that was a riddle for someone else.


    ¡°I probably should have checked for treasure or something,¡± he mused as he approached the entrance, but he just shrugged the idea off. A careful search of that place would be disgusting. And he wanted no part of that. Fresh air was the real treasure as far as he was concerned.


    Not having a sword wasn¡¯t a good feeling, of course, but he could deal with that later. Even though his throat burned, he was good for at least a couple more words of power if push came to shove.


    Outside of the cave was a steep slope and a pine forest, with only a single winding road climbing up the side of the mountain to indicate that civilization had ever reached this far. There were no threats, though, beyond the chill in the air, and his lack of any equipment.


    He paused for a moment, both because he was pretty sure that this was the boundary to level 31 and because the smart move here would probably be to go back and pick through the corpses of the dead to look for useful supplies. For whatever reason, Helades loved to put the entrances and exits close to the goal. Sometimes confusingly so, and cave mouths and doorways seemed to be her favorites.


    He wasn¡¯t going to go back, though, only forward. So if he got caught it a snow storm, or whatever, and died, it was what it was. So, after a few minutes, he started down the slope, and careful to mind the poor footing, he slowly made his way down to the road.


    When he was far enough away, he looked back up and decided that this was definitely the next level. ¡°There¡¯s no way that giant ogre was crawling in and out of this tiny ass entrance every time he got hungry,¡± he said to himself as he worked through the thought.


    When he reached the trail, he examined the signs of foot traffic. It was clear to Simon that despite being deserted now, this road saw a lot of use, or at least it had recently. It was a sandy thing that didn¡¯t hold prints well, but he could see that most of the traffic had gone uphill and sighed at that. He¡¯d been hoping for a walk downhill.


    After an hour, he missed his water skin more than anything, and his scratchy throat began to eat at him. After two, he was forced to deviate from his path just to devour the thin trickle that was a mountain stream coming from somewhere high above him on the slope. It wasn¡¯t much, and he had to use a word of lesser cure afterward just to make sure he hadn¡¯t just poisoned himself with Giardia or worse.


    Two hours later, though, there was nothing to slake his thirst, and until he smelled the faint hint of wood smoke, he¡¯d given real thought to casting the word of ice just to have something to drink as it melted. Simon spent the day regretting his thought that the portals were always so close together. Clearly, Helades had heard that and decided to punish him for that little irony.


    Even if that was true, though, he still couldn¡¯t be mad at her. He was still too grateful for the closure she¡¯d given him after all this time.


    Despite being reduced to his boots, the clothes on his back, and only a few remaining coins in his pouch he felt freer than he had in a long time, but it was tenuous thread, and he was very conscious that some orcs or beast men suddenly rampaging down the slope would be more than enough to put a quick end to him.


    He didn¡¯t find the village until nightfall, and it was the lights and sounds of the town¡¯s inn that lead him there down the dark mountain road. The whole thing was nestled in a valley that he couldn¡¯t see much off, but given everything else he¡¯d seen that day, he was sure that was nice.


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    Simon had been expecting to get stares when he showed up looking like a vagrant, or when he paid for a drink with gold, but he didn¡¯t even make it that far. The inn was packed. It was overflowing. Men were drinking in the courtyard. People were sitting on the porch, the horse railing, and even sleeping in the hayloft of the stables.


    ¡°What in the hell is going on here?¡± Simon asked a couple of decent enough looking guys who looked halfway to plastered after he¡¯d taken it all in.


    ¡°Oh, you¡¯re not here for the hunt?¡± the mustached one grinned, leaning forward.


    ¡°Course he ain''t,¡± the dark-haired man sitting next to him said, burping loudly. ¡°You think by this point you don¡¯t recognize every single member of Anias¡¯s entourage, even the bloody whores?¡±


    ¡°Sorry about that. Don¡¯t worry; this is just one last celebration before we¡¯re off. We¡¯ll be heading out in the morning, and you can have your sleepy little village all to yourself again.¡±


    ¡°What hunt?¡± Simon asked. If they thought he was from wherever this was, then so much the better. He had no intention of correcting him.


    ¡°What, hunt, he says,¡± the first man laughed. ¡°Anias? Sir Anias? The Red? How can you not know what it is we¡¯re hunting when you hear a name as storied as that.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve never heard of him,¡± Simon answered truthfully with a shrug.


    ¡°Bah! Country bumpkins, the lot of you!¡± the second man said, gesturing so wildly that some of his beer escaped his glass, sloshing on the ground and reminding Simon how thirsty he was. ¡°How could anyone not have heard the story of the Red Knight!¡±


    They spent the next hour regaling him with stories of the man and his bold tactics that had seen him kill any number of monsters, including an honest-to-God dragon. That was interesting, and Simon would love to meet the man to determine just what sort of magic it was he was wielding to make that possible. Even more than the dragon, or the knight, or even what it was they were doing here, he was interested in getting a drink, so when the waitress came around and handed him off a tankard, he was basically a captive audience.


    He let them talk and talk about how their patron was here to slay the verdigris scaled wyrm at the top of the Scrinver¡¯s peak, but when Simon asked the men why they needed so many people to face a single dragon they laughed again.


    ¡°Oh, not many of us are crazy enough to take on Ice Fang. A few of the guys will actually go into her lair with Sir Anais of course. Kediv, Brannon, a couple of the others.¡± as he spoke, the mustached man said pointed a few of the others out. ¡°But you can¡¯t just slay a dragon!¡±


    ¡°You can¡¯t?¡± Simon asked, confused.


    ¡°No!¡± the dark-haired man answered loudly enough for people to give them a look. ¡°You¡¯ve got to hand butchers to slaughter it, skinners and tanners to cure the hide properly, and then, of course - it¡¯s horde. All of that is going to need porters and teamsters, too. Dragon slaying is a whole enterprise, not a one-man show!¡±


    To Simon, it kind of sounded like they were describing whaling without a ship, but he didn¡¯t comment on it, he just nodded along and kept agreeing where it seemed right to as he enjoyed the free beer. The party continued until almost midnight, and it was only after it finally wound down that Simon found a bit of the floor in the common room and crashed out.


    As promised, the caravan mobilized and left in the morning. He stole a bit of porridge from the large kettle and watched the men slowly boil out of the inn. In the end, he stopped counting at 50 as the long train of wagons and mules began to decamp and worm their way past the village to the higher foothills that lay beyond them.


    The villages wished them well, but as soon as the dragon hunters were gone and they realized Simon wasn¡¯t part of their crazy enterprise, the innkeeper and his family immediately talked about how crazy the whole thing was.


    ¡°Crazy¡¯s okay,¡± the greybeared proprietor said. ¡°You know, as long as they pay well. That¡¯s all that really matters.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s all that really matters unless they wake that monster up and fail to strike it down!¡± his wife said shrilly, but neither of them said any more after that. It was obviously an old argument.


    What mattered more than anything was that they were more than happy to take Simon¡¯s coin and rent him a room for a few nights. ¡°Meals are going to be a little sparse on the account of¡­ well, you know,¡± the innkeeper said, waving his hand, ¡°But I can promise you lamb and beer tonight at the very least.¡±


    ¡°That and a warm bath is all I really need,¡± Simon said pleasantly. He spent that evening soaking in the small wooden tub until the water was filthy and cold. After that he enjoyed a warm meal in the common room, then spent the wee hours sewing the holes in his clothes with a needle and thread he¡¯d borrowed while he muttered into a mirror about everything he¡¯d seen in the last few levels.


    The mirror was able to answer some of the questions he¡¯d answered about the level with the black swarm where he¡¯d first met Aaric. The mirror couldn¡¯t say if the boy¡¯s story had been true, because it didn¡¯t know how magic worked. It wasn¡¯t too frustrating, though, and it felt good to get all that off of his chest.


    He passed the next two days in a similar way, and on the fourth day, he finally started to consider following after the dragon slayers. It was obvious that was what he was here for, after all. Most levels involved a monster, and nothing was more monstrous than a dragon.


    Part way through, a story that the innkeeper was telling him about the beast, though. The world erupted in flames. Simon was indoors, so he wasn¡¯t able to see a wider view of things, Instead the north wall of the inn caved in, and the roof collapsed on them as a wall of flame literally mowed down the building, and made himself, the innkeeper, and anyone else unlucky enough to find themselves ignite like a candle.


    ¡°Gervuul Hyakk!¡±Simon managed to croak, instantly regenerating all of his crisping and melting skin.


    That didn¡¯t save him, though. Even as his skin healed, it began to burn again, and as soon as he inhaled to speak again, he burned his lungs badly enough to make further speech impossible. As a result, he died in agony less than a minute later.

 Ch. 108 - Another Look

    I mean, I was never getting out of here without fighting a dragon, Simon thought to himself as he looked up at the ceiling of his little cabin. After all the other weird levels, that was pretty much impossible, was it Helades?


    Still, despite his cynicism, he couldn¡¯t help but smile. He hadn¡¯t gotten see it of course, but he would, and despite the agonizing death he¡¯d endured, that made part of him indescribably happy. On one level just the idea that something like that could exist was freaking cool, but the other part was even more important to him. He was going to face a dragon, and he wasn¡¯t the least bit afraid of it.


    That was better than any level up in the world. After all, why should he be afraid of the dragon? The worst thing it could do was kill him instantly. He doubted he would have even had the thought to heal himself if the inn¡¯s walls hadn¡¯t shielded him from the worst of its fiery breath.


    Instant kills weren¡¯t so bad, not that it mattered right now. He didn¡¯t expect that he¡¯d be going that deep for a while. There were more important things to do than running from level to level now that he had his answer. He wouldn¡¯t get that chance again until level 40, and that was a long ways from here.


    ¡°Mirror, show me a list of levels,¡± Simon said, as he sat up and rotated toward the thing.


    As he watched the screen begin to populate the list, he sighed and shook his head. It was literally just a list of levels, which was not helpful in anyway.


    ¡®Level 1


    Level 2


    Level 3


    Level 4¡­¡¯


    ¡°No, stop, pause, not like that,¡± Simon called out. ¡°I want them listed by their hazard, or place. Something.¡±


    ¡®I do not understand,¡¯ the mirror told him.


    ¡°Like - level 1 is rats in the root cellar, and level 2 is bats in a dungeon, you know?¡± Simon answered, trying to be patient as he reached for the bottle of wine. ¡°I want to put together a plan, and for that I need more information.¡±


    The mirror paused for a few seconds, and when it tried again, it seemed to be going well, but some gaps quickly developed.


    ¡®Level 1 - Rats in the root cellar


    Level 2 - Bats in a dungeon


    Level 3 - ¡­


    Level 4 - ¡­


    Level 5 - ¡­


    Level 6 - Zombies in an inn


    Level 7 - ¡­¡¯


    It took Simon a second to realize why it had only populated a few of the levels, and left most of them blank, but he quickly figured it out. Most of those levels have no reflective surfaces of any kind, so it hasn¡¯t actually seen them, or me in them, even.


    ¡°Alright mirror, let¡¯s try this again,¡± Simon said, ¡°I¡¯m going to tell you what¡¯s in each level and you¡¯re going to remember, and then print it all out for me, allright? Does that sound fair?¡±


    Simon spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out what was on each level and repeating it back to the mirror. When he was finally done, the list was much more comprehensible.


    ¡®Level 1 - Rats in the root cellar


    Level 2 - Bats in a dungeon


    Level 3 - Goblins in a cave


    Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt


    Level 5 - Slime in a sinkhole


    Level 6 - Zombies in an inn


    Level 7 - Carrion crawler in a sewer


    Level 8 - Carnivorous plants in the ruins


    Level 9 - Wyvern on a mountaintop


    Level 10 - Fire elementals in Ionar


    Level 11 - An owlbear in a forest


    Level 12 - A Troll in a village


    Level 13 - A demon in a church


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    Level 14 - Ghosts in a manor


    Level 15 - Golem in a cave


    Level 16 - Orcs raiding a village


    Level 17 - Ice orb in a village


    Level 18 - Plague in Hurag


    Level 19 - Lizardmen in a swamp


    Level 20 - Basilisk among the ruins


    Level 21 - Ghosts in a cemetery


    Level 22 - Rebels at a party


    Level 23 - The Sea Seraph


    Level 24 - Giant spider in a ???


    Level 25 - Black swarmer on a farm


    Level 26 - Werewolf in the mountains


    Level 27 - Centaurs near Crowvar


    Level 28 - Poisoned oasis


    Level 29 - Cultists in a village


    Level 30 - Ogre¡¯s den


    Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains¡¯


    When it was all said and done it was quite the list and Simon couldn¡¯t quite read the whole thing without the mirror scrolling a little. He tried to get the mirror to put them all on a map, but he quickly found out that the mirror had no map.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to have to draw one, aren¡¯t I?¡± he sighed. ¡°Oh well. It will be a fun project.¡±


    He added that to his to-do list, fortunately he found one little feature that was more than a little helpful. The mirror wasn¡¯t very smart, or even very knowledgeable, but it was more than capable of telling him which levels had been solved. Well, it didn¡¯t use the word solved. It was capable of telling him which levels were ¡®currently inaccessible,¡¯ though, which in Simon¡¯s mind amounted to pretty much the same thing. When he asked it to display only accessible levels, the situation became much clearer.


    ¡®Level 1 - Rats in the root cellar


    Level 2 - Bats in a dungeon


    Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt


    Level 6 - Zombies in an inn


    Level 7 - Carrion crawler in a sewer


    Level 8 - Carnivorous plants in the ruins


    Level 10 - Fire elementals in Ionar


    Level 13 - A demon in a church


    Level 21 - Ghosts in a cemetery


    Level 22 - Rebels at a party


    Level 23 - The Sea Seraph


    Level 24 - Giant spider in a ???


    Level 25 - Black swarmer on a farm


    Level 27 - Centaurs near Crowvar


    Level 28 - Poisoned oasis


    Level 29 - Cultists in a village


    Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains¡¯


    ¡°So I¡¯ve completed 14 levels, huh?¡± he said, nodding at the much more manageable list. Well, currently, anyway.¡±


    It was impossible for him not to notice one entry on that list of course. The inn. Freya¡¯s level. Not my Freya, though, he corrected himself before he started to spiral. It was something he had to handle eventually of course, and though he wanted to do it immediately, he didn¡¯t have to. He could choose to tackle other levels first.


    So, since he wasn¡¯t in a hurry, he reviewed each level and thought about it carefully. Was this level going to be easy to complete? Did he have an idea about what needed to be done? Was there any risk he could have another awful experience and get turned into a zombie or worse? Was there any chance to see his friends?


    These were the criteria by which he ranked the levels, and after he thought about it for a good long time, he went outside, grabbing the pole, and went fishing again while he thought about it. He didn¡¯t feel like bread or cheese after all, but some pan fried fish in a wine reduction sauce sounded pretty good.


    By that evening, Simon had decided that he was definitely going to dig a little deeper into the rat level, and that after that, he was going to check out what that shiny thing was in the sewers, even if it was disgusting, but he still couldn¡¯t decide if he should dig deeper into the new Schwarzenbruck or if he wanted to take a pass on that for now.


    ¡°If future levels are changing, it''s almost certainly because I¡¯m changing the past,¡± Simon reminded himself as he gutted his first fish. ¡°So I should definitely focus on those first, right? After all - anything I do in a later level could easily be undone with a new victory.¡±


    He wasn¡¯t entirely sure that was the case, though. Was Schwarzenbruck back because he saved the village, or because he saved the king? Though Helades seemed to think that the former was more important based on the location of her portal, he was certain that preventing a war and the countless lives he¡¯d saved in the process would have a bigger impact on history.


    It was a fascinating idea, and he would have loved to explore it more, but he still didn¡¯t have enough context. If this was earth he could watch different things play out thanks to all the history classes he¡¯d been forced to attend over the years, but here and now? Not so much. He only had the roughest idea of geography; history was far beyond him at this point.


    ¡°Maybe I should fix that?¡± he thought before deciding against it. He could spend a lifetime studying the history of each level, but that would get him no closer to dragon slaying, or whatever lay past it.


    Part of him wanted to try to take out the volcano beast again. He was fairly certain that the frost sword from the crypt tied into that somehow, but there was no way that he was doing that until he lost some weight.


    Though Simon tried to keep his eyes on the bigger picture and his goals as he caught two more fish that afternoon, and went home to cook them, what he eventually focused on was his body. He hadn¡¯t even slimmed down completely in his last life because it had been to short, but the different between then and now was palpable. Just sitting in the shade was enough to make him sweat and the walk home winded him, even though it was over level ground.


    ¡°Honestly, this is worse than death,¡± he sighed as he relit the small stove. ¡°Starting from zero.¡±


    He wasn¡¯t of course. He knew that. His character sheet was filling out nicely, and when he checked it once the fish was done cooking, he saw that he¡¯d lost another 20,000 negative karma. He was making progress in every conceivable way, but waking up in this body¡­ in his body, it was a reminder of how far he¡¯d let himself go in his last life and that pained him.


    Simon didn¡¯t think much about life in his basement room anymore because it was simply too depressing. He still remembered his games fondly of course, but the person he sometimes caught in the reflection of his monitor¡­ Well, he didn¡¯t like to think about it. Even with how he¡¯d sometimes been unfairly treated by the people in his life, he still should never have gotten so lazy.


    Lazy. There. He said it. He¡¯d been lazy, and it had cost him. Looking through his life since he¡¯d come to the Pit though, he was satisfied to note that there was almost no laziness in evidence. It was just him working hard and learning new things, and honestly, that felt good.


    Simon nodded as he finished his meal and got ready for bed. Tomorrow he would descend and start taking care of things on his to-do list. He didn¡¯t know if he was going to spend any time in Schwarzenbruck, yet, but he knew that he was going to get some shit done, regardless. Right now he had 87 levels to go, and maybe by the time he died next that would be down to 85, or even 80.

 Ch. 109 - Step by Step

    Simon woke up once during the night, dreaming that the goblins had tried the shutters, but when he went outside, there were no fresh tracks, so he lay back down until sleep took him. He didn¡¯t fear goblins anymore, but bravery wouldn¡¯t be enough to stop them driving a spear through his guts or ripping out his throat. They were like raccoons but more murdery.


    Both creatures could open doors and latches, of course, but one of them only wanted to knock over your garbage cans and feast on your trash. The other wanted to feast on you. Well, goblins probably would be perfectly happy to feast on whatever was in my trash can if I had one, Simon mused as he lay there, falling back to sleep.


    In the morning he took his time getting ready, and prepared as well as he¡¯d ever done. He didn¡¯t even forget the axe, though he did desperately regret that he would have to cary a sack for of junk around rather than a real backpack. He¡¯d have to get one of those made at the first opportunity.


    In the root cellar Simon killed every last rat without difficulties, and it was only when that was done that he slammed the trapdoor shut and then started to hack it to pieces with the axe. It was awkward work because he was swigging a hatchet against thick wood above his head, and it took several minutes to make an real progress as wood chips rained down on him from above.


    Part of him worried that someone would investigate because he was being so loud, but the rest of him kinda hoped that they did. Chopping away at the boards from such an awkward position was a pain. Finally, after a couple minutes of creating a slowly deepening series of overlapping cuts, he threw the axe down and picked up his mace, shattering the weakened board.


    Simon reached up and tried to move the bar that was holding it closed, but he found no such object. Instead there was something heavy resting on it.


    He fished around a little and was gradually able to push whatever it was out of the way, but the whole time he did so he worried something would chop his arm clean off. They didn¡¯t though, and when he finally freed up the trapdoor and pushed it open he found a dark room.


    When he finally figured out where he was, though, he had trouble believing it. The furniture had been knocked over and smashed, and everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and grime, but he would have bet his life that this was his cabin. Just dirtier, and maybe older.


    Simon crawled up out of his hole, and with a word, he ignited a torch so he could get a better look. It didn¡¯t answer any questions, though. He could see signs of goblin damage, but there were human tracks in the dirt, too. There wasn¡¯t even enough left of the mirror to ask it a question. He tried, but its words were scattered across the slivers and shards of glass so thinly that they were little more than a blue shimmer.


    Simon went outside next, and looked around, but the nighttime view didn¡¯t look too much different than what he was used to. He walked to the temple, and found it slightly more overgrown than before, but otherwise unchanged, and he saw a bonfire in the woods that hinted at goblins, but opted not to investigate that further because he didn¡¯t want to be distracted from the question at hand with a pitched battle.


    ¡°Why would a portal take me forward in time but nowhere in space?¡± he wondered. He didn¡¯t have an answer, though he was sure that there was one he was missing. Simon eventually strolled over to the river, using that as his mirror, and asked, ¡°Mirror, can you tell me how far I¡¯ve traveled into the feature?¡±


    ¡®The future?¡¯ the mirror asked. ¡®I don¡¯t understand. This is the present.¡¯


    ¡°Yes,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°It¡¯s my present, but it''s the future of the last level. Can you tell me how much time has passed between where I was and where I am?¡±


    ¡®I cannot,¡¯ the mirror answered. ¡®Time has passed, but it does not flow for me the same as it does for you.¡¯


    ¡°What does that even mean?¡± Simon asked in frustration.


    ¡®I cannot say,¡¯ the mirror typed in glowing blue letters that wavered on the ever-moving surface of the water.


    Simon sighed and snuffed his torch before he walked back toward the bonfire he¡¯d spotted earlier. He hadn¡¯t planned to fight, but after the mirror pissed him off, he was looking for something to take it out on. He would have, too, except that when he got there, he didn¡¯t find the few goblins he expected. He saw dozens cavorting in the flickering firelight and froze.


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    How¡¯d there get to be so many? He wondered. Is this what I¡¯m supposed to be doing here?


    Honestly, he doubted it. He wasn¡¯t really feeling up to fighting so many. Even with magic, it would be damn hard to keep from getting stabbed, but when he heard the sound of a branch snapping nearby him, Simon didn¡¯t hesitate.


    ¡°Gervuul Oonbetit,¡± he declared, sending an invisible guillotine of force expanding out in front of him like a ripple on a pond.


    At head level, it took out whatever it was that had attempted to sneak up on him, along when more than a few on this side of the fire, but it also sliced cleanly through several trees which crashed down on the gathering sending screaming goblins scattering in every direction.


    Simon had hoped to snuff the flames of violence with a clean strike, but instead, he¡¯d sent the scurrying every which way, spreading embers in all directions. He took that as his cue to leave, and he ran for his life back to the cabin. Realistically, he could probably take out four or five at once, but once they found him, it would get ugly, and he¡¯d probably be swarmed by double that. He had no interest in losing a life so quickly, so he just left.


    It was a sidequest anyway, he reasoned as he shot back down the stairs and headed for the dungeon.


    There, he took a break to calm himself before he did anything stupid as far as the traps were concerned. ¡°Maybe this level is about taking all the cash out of here,¡± he wondered aloud as he began to ease his way forward. ¡°Maybe someday some adventurers will find it, and it will cause problems down the line?¡±


    It was the best thesis he had so far, and he dug into it as he slaughtered the bats that attacked him. He couldn¡¯t take the treasure with him, but he could very easily use a word of earth to seal that passage shut so no one else could get it either¡­ but then he¡¯d no longer have a comfortable place to stock up on gold with each trip. That made the question a dicier one. He had a theoretical solution, but should he use it?


    Simon debated that long and hard once he¡¯d finished off the bats and made his way to the secret passage that opened to reveal the treasure vault. There, he reluctantly sealed the gold into a wall after he¡¯d taken a pouch of gold and silver for his own use.


    ¡°From now on, shit gets harder,¡± he sighed before saying, ¡°Vosden,¡± and sealing the treasure away behind a thin wall of stone. He¡¯d imagined it to look as close as possible to the rest of the wall, but it came out a little discolored. He wasn¡¯t sure that was going to matter.


    After that came the skeleton crypt, but they were as easy to defeat as ever. There, Simon did a little experiment and used the minor word of earth to turn a silver piece into a palm-sized mirror rather than pour his water out on the floor. That worked pretty well, though he had to use the word twice to beat it fully down to the size he wanted.


    Even that wasn¡¯t a waste, though. He learned that a word of earth could affect metal and that it didn¡¯t work as well as it did for stone. He didn¡¯t need to ask the mirror any questions this time, though. He just wanted to record the sigils on the sword because, this time, he wasn¡¯t planning to take it with him.


    Simon briefly considered destroying it to see if that would complete the level, but he didn¡¯t for a couple reasons. The first was that he was pretty sure he was going to need the thing the next time he decided to try taking out the fire level, and the other reason was that the idea of fucking with the runes without completely understanding them gave him serious flashbacks to the frost orb.


    ¡°Don¡¯t try to disarm a bomb until you know whether you need to cut the red wire,¡± he muttered to himself as he finished with the sword.


    After that, he made some notes about some of the other heraldry just in case he wanted to try to figure out why this place mattered one day. Once that was done he sorted out his bag, and it was only when he was halfway through with that, that he e realized he was dragging his feet about the next level. The tavern had become a scarier place to him that a dragon''s lair, and he would have laughed if it wasn¡¯t so sad.


    ¡°I won¡¯t stay,¡± he told himself as he gripped the skeleton knight¡¯s key a little tighter. ¡°Whether she¡¯s there or not, I¡¯ll skip it and just keep going.¡±


    Simon waited until he believed the words he¡¯d just spoken. Only then did he get up and walk toward the gate. He opened it cautiously in case the next level had revered itself to zombies, but it hadn¡¯t. Instead, it was the same bustling inn he¡¯d seen the last few times.


    Simon shut the door behind him and walked into the common room. He saw Freya sitting there with the same adventurers he¡¯d seen the time before last, but that just made him walk faster. True to his word he left without a backward glance, and when he slammed the door in the sewer he finally slumped against it and allowed himself a moment for the regret to wash over himself before he pushed on.


    Hopefully he¡¯d solved one level already, but he had a lot more to do between now and whenever it was that he died, and he wasn¡¯t going to let her distract him.

 Ch. 110 - Truly Vile

    The sewer stank, as it always did, but this time, Simon didn¡¯t even wait until he was close enough to catch the attention of the carrion crawler. Instead, he used only a very small light spell to guide his feet on the familiar path, and as soon as he turned the corner and saw the bodies at the end of the channel moving slightly while the thing feasted on it, he muttered the word of lightning and sent electricity arcing along the sewage toward the thing.


    The flicker of arcing electricity that followed was brief, and the smell of ozone lasted a little longer, for which he was grateful. It certainly smelled better than the shit and decay, but both were gone by the time he reached the end of the tunnel and found the still-quivering pile of corpses.


    This was the first time that the slimy bastard didn¡¯t climb up to the top of the tunnel to attack him. It was also the first time that he waded into the filthy water to see what it was he¡¯d glimpsed last time.


    Simon flinched as he stepped into the churning slime as it rose first to his ankle, and then to his knee as he waded over to the small mountain of bodies, and began to pull them off the stack one at a time.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to burn these clothes when I¡¯m done with them,¡± he muttered to himself. ¡°Maybe my hands too.¡±


    The corpses themselves were in a fairly advanced form of decomposition, and when he yanked on an arm or a leg to pull a body out of the way, as often as not, the rest of the body didn¡¯t follow, which was somehow more disgusting than all the other disgusting things he was doing right now, like wading in sewage or touching dead bodies.


    Each time it happened, he gagged, but it wasn¡¯t until the third time that he actually threw up. ¡°What could possibly be worth this,¡± he wondered aloud.


    Simon wanted to quit, but not as much as he wanted to never do this again. So, instead, he plowed ahead, slowly clearing away the bodies, widening the stack as its height shrank. Part of him wanted to use force to make this easier and faster, but he hesitated.


    He¡¯d seen this whole place collapse before. He knew how fragile this arrangement was, and even as he moved the corpses around, he could hear the rusted grating creaking and screeching as the load against it shifted. It would be very easy for the whole thing to give away and send him tumbling into the darkness that lay beyond.


    After two new minor light spells, several more minutes of messy digging, and one more round of vomiting, Simon finally saw what he was looking for: a glint of gold. It was wedged deep, but it was there, and he threw caution to the side as he went for it. Instead of moving bodies carefully aside a piece at a time, he leaned forward as far as he could to dig it out.


    It was a fine plan, but it was no surprise when he sliped in the muck and gore almost immediately. His added weight to the pile that suddenly destabilized the rest of the mound, and just like that, he could hear the sound of rusted metal tearing as the whole thing slid toward the abyss.


    Even as the darkness opened up around him, his hand closed around the golden cylinder, and he gripped it tight. If he fell into the darkness, he could easily blast his own head from his shoulders with a spell, but he wasn¡¯t going to let that happen. Dying now would mean doing this again in some future life, and he was done digging through corpses.


    So, instead, he yelled, ¡°Oonbetit!¡± as he felt the whole mound starting to go, pushing himself bodily back toward the sewer.


    There was no subtlety to this spell. It felt like a mule kicking him in the chest as he was lifted bodily out of the water along with a spray of body parts and thrown away from the corpseberg as it started to fall away into the dark. What followed was a feverish struggle as his fingers sought to find purchase on the slimy walls and the far ledge, but each time he found something to grab hold of, he fell away.


    In the end it was neither his resources that saved him or his strength, it was the lack of water. With the blockage removed, the water had flowed very quickly for the first few seconds, but once that was over he was left at the bottom of the sewer channel with barely a trickle of water surrounding him, which was much too little to move his bulk.


    Simon peeled himself off the ground, desperately wishing he knew the power word for water. He didn¡¯t though, so he would have to live for this. As he made his way to the ladder and began to climb toward the light. He¡¯d lost his bow, and probably other things in all of that, but he still had his sword, and more importantly whatever this golden cylinder was, and after he¡¯d bathed for like an hour he was going to open it and investigate it.


    Still, not even the magnetic pull of the languid jungle river that he¡¯d enjoyed more than once before was enough to make him stop and investigate the thing. It looked like a scroll case of some sort but was sealed with what appeared to be molten lead. There might be writing, but he wasn¡¯t sure. The thing was caked in grime.


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    It was almost certainly cursed or worse. Simon wasn¡¯t sure what that meant mechanically, but he suspected that whoever had thrown it away in a sewer wanted to make sure that it never saw the light of day again.


    Simon knew something was wrong even before his head popped above the street level. He could hear screams, which weren¡¯t a thing before. He¡¯d never encountered a single living soul in the jungle level, and that anomaly made him stop his studying of the cylinder, and rush up the ladder even faster.


    What he found was not the jungle, the river, or even the ruins. The level had disappeared, though he didn¡¯t know why. Instead, he was back in Ionar, and it was burning the same as it ever was.


    That was, interesting, concerning even, but not as concerning as the fact that his planned bath was going to need to be delayed. Simon looked to the erupting volcano in annoyance, and then cast his gaze around the street as he watched people flee by looking for some place to bathe.


    He found his answer in a fountain a little ways up the street, and he started walking toward it with a purpose. Even though he was going against the streaming, screaming masses, he had no trouble reaching it. Because of the awful smell, all of them gave him a truly wide berth.


    So, as the world ended for the residents of this beautiful cliffside city, he began to strip down, throwing each piece of his armor in the lukewarm fountain water as he went. By the time he was almost naked, the place was mostly a ghost town as they fled down the road toward the distant harbor. That left him plenty of time to soak while he tried to figure out what the hell was going on.


    ¡°Did I do anything on my last trip that might have cleared the ruins?¡± he asked himself as he sat beneath the spray in the waist-deep pool. The water was cool, but the night air was very warm, and it balanced out well enough.


    ¡°No, no, I definitely didn¡¯t,¡± he said after he thought about it for a moment. The last time he¡¯d gone up those temple stairs, he hadn¡¯t done a single thing. He¡¯d just been passing through because he didn¡¯t want to try to fight his way through those horrid flowers again.


    So what did it do? He wondered.


    He thought back through his last run. He¡¯d done a lot of stuff in levels after the temple, but they shouldn¡¯t be able to effect it. Not unless there was some weird reverse causality at play.


    So what did he do before that? He¡¯d finally found out where the rat level was, which was the most minor change he could have imagined. That was it, though. He¡¯d fought the Skeleton Knights the same as always and breezed right through the inn without talking to anyone.


    ¡°Was that the first time I left the sword there?¡± he wondered aloud. ¡°No, because I couldn¡¯t figure out how to pick it up safely for ages. So, that couldn¡¯t have been it either.¡±


    Finally, his eyes fell upon the scroll case. That was really the only change he¡¯d made, actually before the missing level in time, that might have been major enough to affect it.


    Simon carefully washed the debris clean off the outside and looked at it. The whole thing was beaten gold that had been decorated with death imagery in delicate bas reliefs that had already been damaged by how soft and ductile the gold was.


    ¡°If you want to seal something away forever, then why would you build it out of gold?¡± Simon asked dismissively. Stamped into the lead seal that oozed out of the two halves like they were some kind of thermos that overflowed, he found the words, ¡°Do not think to open, even to destroy this. Better men than you have failed.¡±


    ¡°What an oddly specific warning,¡± Simon said quietly as he tried and failed to twist the thing open.


    He shook it, and heard only one thing rattling around in there. He wasn¡¯t quite sure what it was, but it definitely wasn¡¯t a scroll.


    He weighed his options for a moment. He could keep it sealed and find somewhere to hide it, or he could open it up, and if he didn¡¯t like what he found he could always melt it closed again. He chose the latter option. He didn¡¯t see the harm.


    ¡°Vosden,¡± he said as the volcano rumbled ominously in the background. The lava hadn¡¯t reached this spot yet, but it was coming down the street. He would probably have to start getting dressed in his wet clothes in a little while.


    As he spoke the word, the top melted off, letting Simon look inside for the first time. What he saw was¡­ an orb? No, a crystal, maybe? It was oblong and bulbous, but it was hard to make it out in the darkness of the container.


    He studied it for a moment, then upended the case like a Pringles can and dropped the thing into his hand. It was definitely a stone of some kind. It was heavy, too, and reminded him somewhat of a chestnut made out of malachite.


    He shrugged and was about to put the thing back in the case since he couldn¡¯t figure out what it was for when suddenly it bit him. Bite might have been the wrong word, but whether it was a stab or a sting, he felt a painful jolt into his flesh, and he dropped the thing immediately.


    He tried to, at least. The stone stayed stuck to his hand, and it was only when he grabbed it in his right hand and pulled hard that it came loose. He couldn¡¯t see what had happened, but what he could see was blood and lots of it, along with a series of small fresh wounds in his palm.

 Ch. 111 - Root Cause

    Simon dropped the stone immediately lest it attach to his other hand, too, and he scrambled away to the other side of the fountain. For a moment, it was lost in the murky water, but as soon as the cloud of his blood dissipated, he finally understood what it was.


    It wasn¡¯t a stone, he thought plaintively. It was a seed!


    Suddenly, a variety of questions were answered. He now knew where the sewers were and why the level with the ruins had been missing. It was because those carnivorous plants weren''t there anymore. They were here with him, and they were growing.


    Already it had latched the bottom off the fountain, and its roots had begun to fan out, digging into the stone just as easily as they had dug into his hand. As he watched, transfixed, a stalk began to grow out of the top of the thing, and as soon as it was free from the water¡¯s surface, leaves began to unfurl.


    Simon flailed back in a panic as that stalk shot upward and began to branch out. It wasn¡¯t that he was concerned that it might hurt him. It was too small for that. The rate that it was growing at was shocking, though, and in another few minutes, it might be able to grow flowers or sprout teeth. He wasn¡¯t sure.


    Simon staggered out of the fountain completely naked and ran across the hot stones to where he¡¯d left his sword propped up, and drew it immediately. Once he had it in hand he immediately slashed off the top of the creeping vine, and then reversed his grip and brought it down hard on the nodule of the seed, splitting it in two.


    For a moment, that seemed like it would be enough. The thing''s insane level of growth stopped, and the debris just floated there. After a few seconds, though, two new shoots started to spring up. One from each side of the seed.


    ¡°Mother. Fucker,¡± Simon cursed.


    Fire was the obvious answer, but that was unlikely to be very effective underwater as it was. So, instead, he tried cold. He didn¡¯t know if being frozen solid would be enough to kill something like this, but it should at least give him some breathing room to think.


    ¡°Gelthic!¡± he yelled, instantly turning the fountain¡¯s water to solid ice. It happened so quickly that the arcs of water froze midair, and the stone pool cracked from the force of the expanding ice.


    He didn¡¯t care about that. Instead, Simon looked down to tend to his own wound and saw a few tiny leaves sprouting from the wound that had since stopped bleeding.


    ¡°What in the actual fuck?!¡± he hissed as he dropped the sword.


    He could see the roots starting to radiate out under the skin. Simon reacted immediately, grabbing the small sprout and pulling it out along with several of the roots before tossing them on the ice.


    It hurt, but he¡¯d gotten some of them out. Some wasn¡¯t good enough, not with this thing, though. He could see that. Even a speck would be enough to devour him whole eventually.


    So, forcing himself to calm down he studied the wound, he imagined each one of those tiny little roots as they probed and grew, and when he had all of it fixed in his mind he whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Meiren,¡± sending liquid fire coursing through a small part of his flesh.


    Visually, it wasn¡¯t very impressive. He¡¯d expected something like that scene in an action movie where the hero uses gunpowder to cauterize a wound. In this case, it had been the opposite. There had been no flash. Instead, one second, he had a root-shaped tumor, and the next, he had a terrible burn.


    Simon followed up on that with a word of cure and a word of healing before he coughed and had to clear his throat from the strain. After all that, though, all that was left to show what had happened was a lichen-shaped scar spreading out from his left palm.


    He watched it for a moment, suspicious that it would sprout again, and he¡¯d have to cut his whole hand off to stop it, but instead, it just sat there. That was when he heard the ice crack.


    Simon looked up just in time to see a tendril force its way out of the ice, and a thick bulb began opening to reveal a familiar orange blossom. Before it could completely, though, he cut it off. It wasn¡¯t the only one, and Simon spent the next several minutes hacking away at each stalk while the lava closed in.


    The version he¡¯d fought amongst the ruins had taken days to regenerate, while this one was happening in seconds? What makes it different? He wondered to himself.


    ¡°Because that¡¯s what happens when you open Pandora¡¯s box!¡± he grumbled.


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    Simon put down his sword when he noticed the things were beginning to sprout from the ashen cobblestones where the sliced off stalks were scattered. He didn¡¯t have time for this. The lava was going to reach them in less than five minutes and he was still running around naked. That devil guy was already a prick, and the last thing Simon wanted to do was let the thing see him in such disarray.


    So, he used a word of greater fire to burn away all the small bits and sprouts, and then he used another word of ice to stop the big one from growing for a couple minutes so he could put his clothes back on. It was a miserable experience.


    From the soaking clothes and waterlogged armor to the choking air and the sense that, at any moment, more leaves were going to burst out of his skin, everything was just as awful as it could be. It also made everything take twice as long as it should have.


    By the time the thing was growing again, Simon still didn¡¯t have his armor or his boots on, so he shoved them in his sack and slowly backed away. The lava was almost here anyway, and it would finish this.


    Simon used a word of force to bound to a nearby rooftop, where he watched the mutant plant grow and flourish over the next ten minutes, becoming even taller than Simon as it grew. It climbed all the way to the top of the fountain, and had extended tendrils toward the nearby buildings, but none of those was going to be fast enough to escape the tide of lava.


    He sat there on the roof for several minutes, even after he¡¯d gotten fully dressed, watching the whole thing burn, and he didn¡¯t leave until the water and ice of the fountain had been buried under a slow tide of lava and stopped steaming entirely. That was enough for him to believe that this was finally put to bed.


    So, with one last look at the scar on his palm to make sure it wasn¡¯t sprouting, he started to make his way uphill toward the palace. The way there was trickier than usual because he had lingered so long, but he made it work. He walked on rooftops where he could and used words of lesser force and force where he had to. There was only one spot where he needed to freeze the lava to have a place to land, but that was enough to get him on the stairs and head up to the rise the palace was seated on.


    By the end of all that, he was so hoarse that he could barely talk. Both the words of power and the worsening air quality had done a number on his throat. By the time Simon entered the throne room, he could see the portal to the demon-infested church floating there, but part of him was afraid to enter it.


    What if I wake up in the morning and that fucking thing is growing out of my hand again, he thought to himself.


    It didn¡¯t seem likely, but it did seem possible. He¡¯d gotten really lucky that he¡¯d opened that container right next to a volcano where his mistake could be incinerated, but if he was already contaminated like the victim of a zombie movie, then couldn¡¯t he start the whole thing all over again?


    Simon imagined one of the cities that he actually liked gripped in those awful vines. It was a terrible thought that kept him paralyzed as the eruption continued to worsen. It was only when he¡¯d waited the better part of an hour, and a serious earthquake sheared part of the roof off, that he finally went through.


    It had been hours. That was enough time to be sure, right? He reassured himself.


    The beautiful stone church hadn¡¯t changed at all. This time, the demon was sitting at a desk writing away. As if he didn¡¯t notice his guest.


    Simon was happy to play along with that, of course, and he sat down on one of the pews at the back of the church to center himself. He looked like shit, he felt like shit, and unless something changed, the next level was that damn cemetery that had almost killed him last time. He wouldn¡¯t survive that in his current state. He needed a plan.


    So, still wary that the devil¡¯s slackening bonds might let him free at any point, he crossed his arms on the pew in front of him and lay his head down at least until he caught his breath. That moment of rest became something much longer as his exhaustion caught up with him, and he took an accidental nap.


    Simon slept peacefully, and it was only after he realized he slipped off that he bolted upright in the pew he sat on.


    ¡°You¡¯re a bold man,¡± the demon chuckled. ¡°Not many dare sleep while a rift to hell churns only a few feet away.¡±


    Simon shrugged as he got up and approached the thing. ¡°What are you going to do to me when you¡¯re trapped in there and I¡¯m out here?¡±


    The demon smiled, but said nothing, so Simon looked past him, to the portal, and the broken floor. It didn¡¯t seem any bigger than any of the other times, and he was fairly certain that the monster was bluffing. That¡¯s what they did in the stories, anyway.


    ¡°Have you tired of the eternal torment yet?¡± the demon asked, finally. ¡°There is a way out if you would like to make a¡ª¡±


    ¡°Pass,¡± Simon said. He considered examining the runes again, but he already had a copy, and he was in no state to try to finish this level. ¡°Anything that you¡¯re going to offer me is on the other side of that line, which is exactly the opposite of where any sane person should be, right?¡±


    ¡°Well, Sanity only lasts so long here,¡± the demon agreed. ¡°You¡¯ll change your mind eventually. They all do.¡±


    Simon rolled his eyes and pulled out his small silver mirror, then he spent the next few minutes going through the fracturing circle of protection line by line and symbol by symbol. It was only when he was satisfied that nothing had changed since his last visit that he turned to the demon and said, ¡°My sanity probably won¡¯t last forever, but sooner or later, I¡¯m going to figure out how to close this rift, and then you¡¯ll have to go find someone else to tempt.¡±


    ¡°We shall see,¡± the red-skinned devil said as he sat back down at his desk, opened his book, and started writing again. Simon thought it was interesting that the demon left tiny scorch marks on the page instead of ink, but wasn''t so interested that he stuck around for very long before he looked around to see what he could do to prepare for the next level.

 Ch. 112 - Out of the Frying Pan

    Simon had seen a number of different levels on the other side of this portal, but the graveyard concerned him more than the golem or the ghosts. ¡°Well, they¡¯re both ghosts,¡± he said to himself, clarifying.


    ¡°Who are,¡± the devil asked, looking up from his writing to study Simon.


    Simon ignored that, though, and continued to think about the whole thing. They were both ghosts, but they behaved very differently. Did that mean that they were the same kind of ghost? Were there even different kinds of ghosts. He¡¯d heard of poltergeists, of course. He¡¯d even seen one of the movies a long time ago, but he wasn¡¯t much of a horror fan.


    Right now, though, he kind of wished he was. He was certain that would have been helpful for some of the weirder levels like this one. He didn¡¯t know what the mist creature was or if it had weaknesses beyond light and fire. He just knew that if he used magic to create those, it would backfire.


    ¡°But how am I going to create light or fire without¡­oh.¡± As Simon thought that through, he realized he was being an idiot. There were lots of ways to create fire that didn¡¯t involve having to use a spell, and he grew annoyed at his ever-increasing dependency on a handful of magic words.


    There¡¯s at least one level where that¡¯s not happening, and probably more beyond that, so I need to learn to do without, he thought to himself as he looked at the wooden furniture in the room.


    Sadly, he¡¯d lost his axe somewhere along the way, he realized as he went to retrieve it. That had almost certainly been the sewer, but there was nothing he could do about it now, so he unsheathed his sword instead.


    ¡°Oh, are you finally ready to fight?¡± the devil asked, unsheathing a scintillating rapier. ¡°Name your stakes, and we¡¯ll go a round or two.¡±


    Simon looked at the preening fob and rolled his eyes before he started hacking up the nearest pew with his sword. He didn¡¯t need magic fireballs; he just needed a source of firewood, and sacrilegious or not, this would do just fine.


    He spent the next twenty minutes breaking chairs and benches and then very carefully carrying them over to the edge of the portal and dumping them through the other side. One his second trip he even heard it sound midnight, which seemed strange, because it had done so right after he¡¯d entered last time. Still even though he waited for it, the mist did not appear.


    ¡°Huh,¡± he said to himself as he stepped over the shattered floor to get another load of broken furniture. ¡°I guess there¡¯s more to it than that.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not the first person to say that,¡± the devil agreed. ¡°Not that your dreary little graveyard is a place I¡¯ve seen often, mind you.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡± Simon asked, finally responding to the thing. ¡°I suppose this is where you offer to tell me how to defeat this level for a price?¡±


    The devil laughed at that for several seconds before finally sheathing his sword. ¡°Why would I think you need any help with this one. The few of you that have gotten so far tend to make short work of it.¡±


    ¡°Is that so,¡± Simon asked as he picked up more wood and started walking back to the portal. Sure, this thing was trying to make him overconfident or distract him. It wouldn¡¯t work, though, and he focused on his feet as he went.


    ¡°What? It¡¯s true,¡± the devil insisted. ¡°I¡¯ve talked to other heroes in other pits about some of the levels that frustrated them to no end, and ghosts made the list, of course, along with castles, dragons, armies, and mazes, but these spirits¡­ well, I¡¯ve said enough already.¡±


    Simon looked at the devil, trying to figure out what his game was. It was there he made an almost fatal mistake. As he turned, a broken chair leg fell from the pile he was carrying and clattered to the stone floor. That by itself wouldn''t have been a problem, but when it bounced off of one of the chalk outlines, the thing snapped like it was a physical thing under tension.


    ¡°Oh, look what you¡¯ve done now,¡± the devil said with a smile as the circle began to uncoil and unravel like a spring under tension. ¡°I think we¡¯d best agree to terms in the next few seconds before¡­¡±


    Simon ignored the voice and charged toward the portal even as the demon paced at the edge of his collapsing cell like a hungry tiger. He¡¯d meant to grab a lantern to light the fire he was planning, but he was out of time now. He¡¯d much rather use a word of fire instead of getting sucked into hell, which was what he imagined was about to happen to everyone.


    As soon as his feet touched the grave earth, he dumped his wood and drew his sword as he whirled around. Even as he did so, he could see the mist starting to seep up from the ground around him. As concerning as that was, though, he ignored it for a moment as he focused all of his attention of the portal he¡¯d just left behind.


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    The thing was set into the doorway of a mausoleum, and part of him desperately wanted to slam the door shut, but another part was almost hypnotized by the way the runes caught fire and unwound, sending up showers of sparks as they failed and burst into flames.


    It was like the whole thing was a fuse leading to a pile of dynamite, but even as he feared the explosion, it would let loose. He couldn¡¯t help but watch as the floor fell away and the gateway to hell grew wider and wider.


    ¡°I¡¯ll see you next time,¡± the devil yelled across the widening gap.


    Simon had half a second to wonder about that, and then the portal flicked and vanished. ¡°The doorway it was sitting in must have collapsed,¡± Simon mumbled to himself as his heart raced and he tried to piece together what had happened. He¡¯d never thought of the portals as being a sort of physical object, but then he¡¯d never tried to destroy one, either. ¡°Thank fucking¡ª-Aghhh¡±


    As he tried to parse everything that was happening, his left leg suddenly went cold, and when he looked down he could see why, three different foggy hands were wrapped around it, and more were reaching him. It was clear that last time he¡¯d been wrong that time was the key factor, clearly it was time and fresh meat, and these things were hungry for him.


    ¡°Barom!¡± he yelled, instantly sheathing himself in white light as he fell to one knee.


    The mist dissipated instantly, but it began to gather more quickly around him at the edge of his aura, a few feet away. The light wasn¡¯t waning yet, but he knew from experience that it would be soon, and with a numb leg, running through the graveyard would be impossible. So instead, he turned to his scattered pile of firewood and started staking it back up before he whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Meiren,¡± and lit one of the smaller pieces of kindling with a minor word of fire.


    Even as his own light waned over the next few minutes, the light of the fire grew, and that seemed to be enough to keep it at bay. That was good because he still only had a little feeling in his left leg, and he knew he wasn¡¯t getting out of there soon.


    The longer it persisted, and the thicker it got, the more the fog began to take characteristics that would be impossible for normal weather. Dozens of faces and hundreds of hands boiled up out of the mist before melting back a way to make room for another tide of disjointed limbs and tortured expressions. It might have been beautiful if it wasn¡¯t so terrifying.


    Every single one of those things wanted to suck the life out of him, and if his fire went out, he was probably screwed. As time wore on, he noticed that it seemed to be able to affect even the fire he¡¯d built. With the three armfuls of wood he had stacked there, it should have burned like a bonfire. Instead, it was a guttering campfire that seemed ready to go out at almost any moment.


    Somehow, this thing craved light and life and drank it in. It wasn¡¯t the magic he¡¯d used before at all. It was just an endless tide of darkness that seemed to be annihilating the light.


    ¡°What am I supposed to do about that,¡± Simon wondered aloud, but he didn¡¯t have any answers. This was definitely a level he needed to be careful of, though, no matter what the demon on the last floor had said. He could very easily see things ending badly for him if he let this thing devour his life and suck out his soul.


    Would he definitely end up as another tortured spirit left behind in the mist with the rest of these poor bastards? No, but the very idea that he might, terrified him. What could he do if his fire went out? He could run for it again now that his leg felt like it was reattached to the rest of him, but that wouldn¡¯t solve the level, and¡­


    Even as he ran through his options, the light continued to shrink as the angry wraiths circled him like the storm wall of a powerful hurricane. The mass of hungry spirits was a wall that towered above him in the dark, and each of them drank a mote, and there were hundreds now, or thousands, maybe, just waiting to devour him.


    Part of him wondered how the rest of the city that obviously surrounded him dealt with this, or really, why they weren¡¯t noticing it right now, but he couldn¡¯t give that too much thought because his fire was guttering now, and the swirling darkness was closing in.


    Simon drew his sword and shouted ¡°Barom!¡± again, making his sword glow bright enough that one might confuse it with a sci-fi laser sword, but a wall of darkness drank it in greedily even before he thrust the thing in.


    Still, it bought a little time, and the fire sprang to life once more for a few more minutes. The wood was ready to burn. It was only the dread magic that these things were using to leach it away that soaked it in and prevented it.


    The one thing that his spell didn¡¯t do, though, was open a path through. Before, he¡¯d managed to stay just ahead of the worst of it, but now he felt like he was surrounded.


    No, he didn¡¯t feel like it. He was surrounded. He tried a word of light one more time when the flames started to get low again, but it worked no better than the first. So, after that, he switched to a word of greater light.


    ¡°Gervuul Barom!¡± he yelled, sending out the illumination in a beam that cleared the path for a long way. The greater word of power flared to life, burning its way out of his throat leaving him with the taste of ashes in his mouth.


    The wound in the darkness started to stitch shut immediately, but Simon didn¡¯t care. He was already running with a slight limp. By the time the way closed, he was already on the other side and jogging awkwardly toward the gate.


    He wasn¡¯t going to make it though. Not this time. He was slower than last time. He was out of shape, and he was exhausted. Even after his ill-advised nap in the demon¡¯s chapel, he had nothing left. So he stopped, and decided to try his last trump card. The safe thing to do would be to use a word of greater fire on himself right now and start over, but he didn¡¯t do that.


    Why would he? He was tired of giving up. Instead he shouted ¡°Gervuul Gervuul Meiren!¡±

 Ch. 113 - Into the Fire

    When he¡¯d heard Festuvian try and fail to set off the magical equivalent of a fuel-air bomb, Simon had thought that it was dumb, but deep down, he knew he¡¯d have to use it someday; he just didn¡¯t expect it to be so soon.


    He knew that it would be hard on him, even at full strength, but truthfully, he¡¯d been entirely unprepared. Using greater twice in a row had filled him with such tension that he was barely able to get the familiar word of fire out of his mouth. It was a force of will to do so, and he felt like every syllable cost him.


    He wouldn¡¯t know how much for a while yet, though. Not until the spell ran his course. Instead, he collapsed there as he imagined a fiery nova rippling outward away from him to burn away the dark.


    That¡¯s exactly what happened, fire tore through the darkness turning night into day, and burning away the massed wall of spirits that had been chasing him like the vengeful hand of god. They evaporated in an instant, with no more than silent screams to mark their passing.


    For a moment, the world was awash in heat and light, and to Simon, it felt like the end of the world. To him, it might be, he realized. Even as he watched the magic he¡¯d unleashed echo outwards, igniting grass of fire and knocking over tombstones, his consciousness began to fade.


    Simon tried to force himself to stay awake, but he couldn¡¯t even make himself stand and slipped off into the blissful embrace of unconsciousness.


    Simon had expected to never wake up at all or perhaps to wake up back in his cabin. Instead, he woke sometime later, laying there at the center of a crater that he¡¯d made while the stars still twinkled in the sky above him.


    The graveyard was a mess, but he couldn¡¯t do much more than turn his head. Even reaching for his sword was exhausting, and for several long minutes, he lay there simply gauging his pain and exhaustion.


    It took much longer than it should to wonder where the fog had gone. ¡°That can¡¯t be it,¡± he croaked, regretting it instantly.


    Simon spent the next half minute coughing up a lung, and when he moved his hand from his mouth he saw fresh blood. It wasn¡¯t a good sign.


    While he lay there, he wondered just how many years he¡¯d used in that little blast. If a greater word uses a year, it¡¯s unlikely that two greater words use just two, though, he thought to himself. It might even be ten. Blowing a decade on a spell seemed kind of insane to him, but he wouldn¡¯t put it past Helades. Not when he felt this bad.


    With some effort, Simon rolled onto his back and looked up at the stars in the sky as they began to fade. The idea that he¡¯d solved the level with a single explosion seemed unlikely, but the fact that he wasn¡¯t being torn apart made it seem possible.


    If it had been so easy, though, then why hadn¡¯t the townspeople done it ages ago? A few bonfires would have been more than enough to erode them to nothing, wouldn¡¯t it?


    There were too many questions, and eventually, he got tired of asking them. Eventually, he pulled himself to his feet, sheathed his sword, and walked toward the door to the next level. It was only when he got there that he stopped. ¡°I¡¯m in no shape to fight off a¡ª¡± he rasped before a rasping cough stole the rest of his words.


    His exhausted brain had been leading him on autopilot to the next destination, but there was no way that was going to happen. So, instead, he staggered past it and toward the cemetery gate, where he left himself out into the unfamiliar city. It was a large place, though perhaps not quite so large as Liepzen. There was an empty market square, a large temple, and most of the buildings in the area seemed to be two stories. All told it was quite nice. Most of the streets were even cobblestone instead of mud, and there were even gutters along the main thoroughfares.


    Slowly, Simon made his way to the inn, but the door was locked for the night. He should have pounded on the door, but he was too weak to yell, so instead, he just sat there on the stoop and waited for dawn.


    He was only woken up once during the night when a vagrant seemed like he was about to roll Simon¡¯s unconscious body for whatever he could steal, but the moment Simon started to draw his blade, the other man apologized and ran for his life. That was just as well because there was no way that Simon had the energy to actually fight someone right now. He was as weak as he¡¯d ever been, probably since he had to spend a week sleeping off his head injury from the orc raid.


    It wasn¡¯t until morning that he understood why, though. Eventually, the innkeeper opened up for breakfast, and traveling guests left to get on the road. Simon skipped meals and gossip. Instead, he had a couple tankards of beer to take the edge off, and then he paid for a room so he could sleep the day away.


    It was only when he was stripping and setting his things aside that he noticed how differently he looked in his tiny mirror. Though not quite wrinkled, his face was certainly etched by years he hadn¡¯t lived, and there was a sprinkling of gray amidst his normally dark hair.


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    His weakness persisted even after he woke up. His voice was still shot, too. He tried to use a word of lesser healing to fix that, at least, but just the idea of starting to speak words of power gave him vertigo, and he decided against it. He had definitely screwed himself up pretty well with what he¡¯d done, and both his body and his soul were unhappy with him.


    Fortunately, the proprietor was happy to take his silver and keep Simon in food and beer for as long as he felt the urge to lie around and recover. Honestly, for the next few weeks, it wasn¡¯t a bad life. All he did was sleep and self-medicate with alcohol for the first few days, but after that, when his voice had recovered to some degree, he started to be social with the other guests who came and went in the evenings.


    He learned that he was in a city called Darndelle. It wasn¡¯t a place he¡¯d been to before, but he was fairly sure that it was somewhere near the black swarmer level, though he wasn¡¯t exactly sure where that was either. Talking to people he heard the names of lots of familiar places, but he didn¡¯t pick up a lot. Not right away at least. All the details just swam together.


    Over time, he learned that Darndelle was the capital of the Kingdom of Montain and that it was just to the south of the Kingdom of Brin. Things fell together a little better after that. He could imagine Schwarzenbruck somewhere far to the northwest, Leipzig to the north, and Crowvar somewhere between the two. Ionar was probably to his south or maybe his southwest. He wasn¡¯t sure, and he vowed to find a map to better understand the layout of the world as soon as he was feeling better.


    Getting better didn¡¯t come quickly, though. It was two more weeks before he felt well enough to even heal his voice. Once that was done, he waited a few days before he chanced a word of healing on his body, but even that left him feeling weak and considering more drastic steps.


    He took some walks among the ocher brick buildings that dominated the city when the weather was nice, but even that felt like an exertion for far too long. At least I¡¯m finally losing weight, he thought one day when he saw his reflection in the mirror. Sadly, unlike the last few times he¡¯d shed the pounds, he wasn¡¯t gaining a lot of muscles to go with it. This left him looking somewhat melted and sallow looking, and he couldn¡¯t decide how much of that was the magical damage he¡¯d inflicted on himself and how much was just lying around for weeks and weeks.


    Simon stayed at the Blind Owl long enough to eat all of their dishes, and to grow tired of most of them before he looked for work. He¡¯d burned years of his life, but laying in bed indefinitely and getting drunk every other night at the bar wouldn¡¯t fix that. Especially not after he heard the rumor that the fog in the graveyard had returned.


    Two weeks after his stay, he¡¯d heard about the curse being lifted, but it had taken him some time to put the facts together. Apparently, the graveyard was cursed and had been unsafe to enter by night for decades. Simon had solved that problem, but only for a month or so. Then they¡¯d found a widow stone cold not far from the grave of her husband. She¡¯d stayed there after dark and apparently paid the price for it.


    That was what finally got his ass into gear as he started to move among the people of the city and learn what the hell was going on. He tried and failed to gain employment as a caravan guard and even a mercenary for the city watch. He couldn¡¯t fault them, he supposed. He did have a bit of an evil look about him right now.


    It wasn¡¯t until he was returning to the inn one night after attempting to gather clues about the cemetery¡¯s history that all that changed. Two muggers suddenly flanked him on a narrow side street and gave him an offer he couldn¡¯t refuse at knifepoint. ¡°What¡¯s it going to be, man, your coin purse or your life?¡±


    Simon considered drawing his blade, but he didn¡¯t like his odds against both of them. He was probably good for a normal word of power, but he didn¡¯t really want to cause a commotion that would force him to leave this city, not when he was making progress in understanding the nature of the mist and the curse of Darndelle.


    So instead, he moved to hand the first man a heavy purse with a shaking hand, but as the rogue reached for it and grinned, Simon dropped it and whispered, ¡°Gervuul Zyvon,¡± as he grabbed the man¡¯s hand.


    A greater word was a bad idea. He knew that, still, there was no resistance or hesitation, and it flowed effortlessly from his lips even as the face of the other man went pale. For a moment, Simon could feel pieces of the other man¡¯s life flowing into his own. He could feel his hunger and his desperation. More than that, though, he could feel the mugger¡¯s youth and vitality flowing in to him.


    In that moment, Simon felt strong for the first time in over a month, and even as the other man fell backward and scrambled to get away, Simon turned to face his friend. The man lunged at Simon with his dagger, but now that he no longer felt like he was in the body of a geriatric old man, Simon had no trouble gripping his wrist and twisting it hard enough to break the thief¡¯s arm before using the leverage to swing the man face-first into the brick wall.


    The would-be mugger went limp from the force of the blow and left a bloody smear on the bricks. Simon wasn¡¯t sure if he was dead, but he didn¡¯t really care. He just gloried in being able to move again before he stooped to pick up the dagger that the man had dropped as he turned to face the first man again.


    He was already staggering away from Simon, of course, and normally, Simon would have been willing to let him go, but he couldn¡¯t help but notice that the man had scooped up Simon¡¯s coin purse before making himself scarce. That was enough for him to throw the dagger, making it spin end over end into the other man¡¯s thigh, sending him tumbling to the ground.


    ¡°Please, mercy,¡± the man said, rolling over and tossing Simon the purse.


    He looked down at it, hefted it for weight, and then stepped over the man and continued on his way. By the time he reached the main street, a tune had sprung to his lips, and he was whistling merrily away. He didn¡¯t need to take the thief¡¯s life; sepsis would do that fine all on its own.

 Ch. 114 - Beneath it All

    The following day Simon felt like shit. This wasn¡¯t just because the life energy he¡¯d stolen from the would-be thief had faded to some degree. It was also because he¡¯d done it at all. He was definitely looking and feeling better than before he¡¯d dropped a nuke on the graveyard, but he was still pretty far from one hundred percent.


    Draining the life of a man had felt worlds better than draining the life of a swarm of insects. It was dangerously good, and though, in this instance, he could certainly say what he¡¯d done was self-defense, it was a small fig leaf for such a terrible thing.


    Would it have been any better if I¡¯d beheaded him with a word of force or stopped his heart with a bolt of lightning instead, he wondered. At least this way, the asshole lived.


    Whether he lived or died wasn¡¯t the problem, though. The worst part, though, was that Simon craved to do it again. That craving was enough to make him decide that Zyvon was the most dangerous word he knew, and yet it haunted him.


    As he lay there with a headache, trying to ignore the clatter of crockery from the first floor and the sound of wagons from the street beyond, some small part of him whispered that he could easily steal a little strength from any one of them, just to silence the throbbing in his head. No one would know.


    Well, no one but his experience score, for whatever that was worth. He still hadn¡¯t gotten a straight answer out of the mirror. Baring a better question, that was probably what he was going to ask Helades about someday on level 40. That was a long way off, though.


    For now, he forced himself to get out of bed and move. He might lose weight if he lay there and wasted away, but he was never going to get stronger like that. Instead, he explored the backstreets, looking for someone to fight. When that didn¡¯t happen, he went beyond the walls of the city, looking for monsters to slay instead.


    Sadly, this wasn¡¯t a video game, and there were no areas to grind. So, at sunset, he returned to the inn.


    There, at least, he made a conscious effort not to get drunk again. Though it was understandable when he¡¯d been hurting, he was past that now. He¡¯d been heading down a dark road with that sort of behavior. He had no wish to add alcoholism to his list of achievements. Instead, he listened as people talked, and he tried to learn more about the city he found himself in.


    He could leave at any time, of course, but even if he was ready for the fight on the next level, he was close enough to solving this one that he was loath to leave it. He¡¯d beaten the mist once; he just needed to figure out what he was missing so he could strike the final blow.


    It took a lot of random conversations and buying a lot of drinks for talkative old men before he finally found someone who claimed to know the story of why the mist had started in the first place.


    ¡°Folks talk about the mist like it¡¯s been there in that graveyard forever, but it ain¡¯t,¡± a retired merchant told him. ¡°It wasn¡¯t here the first time I passed through Darndelle, nor even the second or third time, but one day after a trip up north, it had just sort of settled in.¡±


    ¡°Well, that should have made the cause easy enough to figure out then,¡± Simon said. ¡°Do you have any idea what caused it?¡±


    ¡°Of course! They buried the wrong body in it! It was some warlock, that was said to be cursed and all that. Turns out the rumors had been right,¡± the greybeard laughed. ¡°Poisoned the whole place, and only the light of day is enough to keep his angry shade at bay.¡±


    ¡°Well, why didn¡¯t they just dig him back up and dispose of the body some other way?¡± Simon asked. ¡°Toss him in the sea or burn him to ash?¡±


    ¡°They did just that, so the story says,¡± the trader nodded. ¡°They dug him up a week after they buried him, burned his corpse to dust, and then scattered those remains in the river so he could never again be reconstituted.¡±


    ¡°So then, why is the graveyard still cursed?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡°I wish I knew,¡± the man laughed. ¡°The church has offered a tidy sum for anyone who can purge the problem once and for all, but no matter who shows up to do the deed, the mist fades for a week or a month, and then it returns with a vengeance. I tell you; the land is poisoned.¡±


    Simon¡¯s knowledge of magic didn¡¯t cover curses and whether or not they were real, but then, that didn¡¯t mean anything. He knew how to cast a few spells, but he only had a basic knowledge of the way that magical items worked. Both the diagrams he¡¯d made about the runes that powered the golem or held back hell were still beyond him.


    So, realistically, he had no idea if or how something would be cursed. Since he was definitely dealing with an evil spirit of some kind, and he¡¯d killed plenty of skeletons in the past, he was inclined to agree that something like that was possible. Though he doubted it was as simple as a word or two he didn¡¯t have.


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    Simon asked more questions of the man, but he had no answers. It was unreasonable for Simon to expect that he would, of course. Who could say where a body was buried twenty years ago? He¡¯d be hard-pressed to draw a map to a place he visited frequently but hadn¡¯t been for twenty years.


    That applied to pretty much everywhere he¡¯d ever been, since he¡¯d been gone from Earth for like a century now. His whole life was slowly fading beneath the tidal forces of the Pit¡¯s continual grind.


    There was nothing that said he had to keep going, of course. Darendelle was a nice enough city. He could stop living off his gold, get a real job killing things, and enjoy a nice, quiet life here. The King didn¡¯t seem so bad, and because of the city''s nature as an inland trade hub, they were friendly enough to outsiders.


    That felt too much like giving up to him, though. Simon would be happy to spend a lifetime in a level so long as he got to clear it, but to just decide it was home meant that he¡¯d stop looking and striving. That was intolerable to him. If he did that, then all he would do was prove Helades right and make all the suffering he¡¯d endured to get to the point so far pointless.


    ¡°Mirror, how many floors have I completed so far?¡± Simon asked when he was back in the room, studying his washbasin.


    ¡®18 floors are currently completed,¡¯ it responded in wavering, glowing blue text.


    ¡°18,¡± he told himself. ¡°Well, then let¡¯s make it 19, shall we?¡±


    The next morning, he visited the temple next to the graveyard, making sure not to go through the door that led to the next level. It was a lovely old building with fancy mosaics and even a large stained-glass window.


    Simon had yet to see any evidence that the Gods of this world were real at this point, but he took a better safe than sorry approach with them. Just because magic was real here didn¡¯t mean that the religions had to worship real gods and goddesses. After all, that hadn¡¯t stopped any number of religions on Earth, so he didn¡¯t see why that should matter one way or the other.


    Still with his twin worries about the shadows that some people saw in his soul and the gnawing hunger to find another excuse to use Zyvon, he went inside and offered a tithe for a benediction. Would the priests or the acolytes be able to see him? Simon wondered. Would they brand him a warlock and try to burn him at the stake or something?


    It wasn¡¯t impossible, but part of him certainly hoped that they would try. Instead, they took his silver, gave him a blessing, and then answered his questions about the history of the cemetery.


    It turned out that they did indeed have records going back that far, but the name of the man interred had been lost to time, making it impossible to cross-reference them. ¡°How can you expect someone to purge this blight if you don''t even know the guy¡¯s name?¡± Simon asked in frustration.


    ¡°Ah, you see, our records contain only names of those who are buried here,¡± the priest corrected, ¡°and since this man was dug up shortly after he was buried, he¡¯s not in our records anymore.¡±


    ¡°But he was buried, soo¡­¡± Simon said, a little exasperated. If he tried to scourge every last inch of the graveyard with fire or something again, they¡¯d probably arrest him. He needed a target more specific than ¡®the graveyard.¡¯


    ¡°Well, if you discover his name and preferably the date, then we could probably go back through the records and tell you where he was buried,¡± the priest said, trying to be helpful.


    ¡°And where am I supposed to get that information?¡± Simon sighed.


    ¡°The county seat where he was tried and executed might know,¡± the priest said helpfully.


    That turned out to be a lie, though a subtle one. It turned out that the county seat would, but that there were dozens of counties in the Kingdom. Even if he just visited the nearby ones, that meant he had to travel to eight different towns, which was going to be at least a hundred miles of walking or riding.


    Simon sighed and got started, thinking of it as a weight loss pilgrimage as much as anything else. He bought a few supplies, like a new bow, a better backpack, a warm bedroll, and some comfortable boots, but eschewed a horse. He wasn¡¯t in a hurry.


    Maybe I can find some goblins to suck dry, he thought hopefully as he left the city gates behind him.


    Over the next few weeks, he visited five different towns before he found at least some answers in the form of a particularly knowledgeable records keeper in Lyndon Hills. The Keeper didn¡¯t know precisely what the name of the warlock was, but he did recall the Blackheart incident, as he referred to it. He was happy to tell Simon all the lurid details, though the only thing that was really useful to him was the town where all of this had started, a little town a few days ride to the north called Kawsburl.


    It was standard fare as most of these warlock stories went. A stranger arrived in Kawsburl a decade before things had come to a head.


    He¡¯d kept to himself, he¡¯d been nice enough, but then people had started dying and there were strange lights sometimes at night. The trouble had really only started when an angry mob showed up on the stranger¡¯s doorstep to demand answers.


    Almost everyone in that mob died that night, the clerk told him, and in the end it took trained witch hunters to find the monster and bring him to justice. It turned out that the whole thing got its name from dead heart inside the man when they finally cut him open after killing him the fourth time. The warlock simply wouldn¡¯t stay dead.


    The thing that bothered Simon, though, was how he said it like it was just a horror story, like the man was retelling the events of Sleepy Hollow or something. Simon couldn¡¯t help but imagine himself in the role of the villain as the man described the fire and lightning that the evil mage was supposed to have summoned.


    He suddenly had a much better idea of why people disliked magic in this world. He¡¯d heard stories like this at the bar, of course, but he¡¯d never really felt like they were about him. After he drained the life out of that mugger, though, and been disappointed that no bandits gave him an opportunity to do it again, he couldn¡¯t help but feel like maybe he was the bad guy.


    Well, not the bad guy. He was a hero, but lately, he¡¯d been a little less than heroic. He¡¯d have to work on that.

 Ch. 115 - An Unexpected Find

    Simon stayed in Lyndon Hills for only one night before he headed north to Kawsburl. He probably could have gone right back to the city of Darndelle after that, but he continued because the story resonated so much with him.


    The hills part of Lyndon Hills was no joke, either, that town sat at the edge of the bottom lands, and the edge of proper roads, so from that point on Simon was reduced to game trails and doubling back to avoid washouts.


    It was tough going, but honestly, it wasn¡¯t so bad. The weather was nice, and the game was plentiful, so he took his time with it. As a mountain range slowly rose above him to the north he wished he had a camera to capture the rugged beauty of the vista, but sadly he had no way to capture it.


    ¡°I guess I¡¯m just going to have to learn to paint,¡± he sighed after another attempt to get his mirror to ¡®take a picture¡¯ for him. The thing would faithfully render what it saw, of course, when asked, but it had all the soul of an architect''s elevation or an engineer''s technical drawing.


    On his third night out of Lyndon Hills he was ambushed by a small nest of goblins. Fortunately he woke up before the first blow was struck and had time to smash the head of the first one to come at him.


    After that, he used a word of lesser force to leap to the top of a large boulder and used his bow to take them out one at a time while they searched for him. Many times he missed the shot and had to fire twice which lead to him chastising himself.


    ¡°You can¡¯t use magic to solve everything,¡± he grumbled. ¡°That¡¯s how you¡¯re going to die horribly one day!¡±


    That was his mantra these days, both because he thought he was using it too much and because he needed to resist the urge to drain these little guys dry like some kind of energy vampire. The very fact that he still felt the urge to after weeks without uttering the word Zyvon was worrying to him. It was like quitting smoking or something.


    The rest of the trip beyond that was fine, and after a few more days of walking and a day spent waiting out the rain, he finally found the town he was looking for. Village was probably the better word, though. It had seen better days.


    Simon had seen several places in his trip that had fallen on hard times, though the version of Slany that existed after Gregor lost his arm was the clearest example. This place had obviously been important, once upon a time, but no more. Someone had worked hard to raise real city walls and create the two stone bridges that crossed the raging river that it sat astride. Even the homes looked like they¡¯d been created by wealthy people, but no longer.


    Many of them were in various states of disrepair now, and less than half of the homes looked lived in. Other than a tin mine and a tannery, the place seemed to have little in the way of industry, either.


    No one was particularly welcoming to Simon, though when he lied and told them he¡¯d been sent by the temple to gather vital clues necessary to finally cleanse the world of the Blackheart incident, people were a little more cooperative.


    ¡°Aint a lot of strangers in these parts,¡± the gate guard told him. ¡°You can never be too careful.¡±


    One of the town watchmen was assigned to show him where it had all started so long ago. The man didn¡¯t know much about the actual incident, which was less than helpful, but he was able to show him the plaque in the town cemetery that memorialized the event and the lonely burned-out ruins of a cottage on a large hill at the edge of the cemetery. The cottage ruins and the plaques weren¡¯t much, but the grandeur of the mausoleums in the oldest parts of the cemetery again hinted at former greatness.


    Simon tried to ask the man why he thought all of this had happened, but his escort seemed carefully coached not to have an opinion. Questions like, ¡°Where do you think this warlock came from?¡± or ¡°Why do you think he chose to stay in Kawsburl?¡± were met with a studied disinterest.


    ¡°The Gods work as they will,¡± the man shrugged, ¡°But I hope that this little trip helps you get some insight to end the blight this monster caused just the same.¡±


    Those were empty words, though. There was nothing new here, and Simon had to fight the urge to leave on the spot in frustration. The only reason he didn¡¯t was because one detail nagged the back of his mind. It wasn¡¯t that there weren¡¯t so much as weeds clinging to the low walls of stone that had once been a cottage; that was easily explainable as the result of magic. He was quite sure that he could drain a spot so dead with a spell like Zyvon that nothing would ever grow there again.


    It was that the ruins had a stone floor. That bothered him even after he went to bed in the inn that night. Every cottage he¡¯d ever stayed in, in this world, had a floor of earth, or in rare cases like inns, wood. The Baron¡¯s mansion in Slany had a stone floor. The castles and temples he¡¯d been in did too. A cottage, though? That seemed unlikely.


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    Simon left at the crack of dawn to give that another look, and after a few minutes of examination, he figured out what game was being played here. The stone of the floor was laid in after the walls and stuck up slightly above the doorway. Someone had laid this down to hide evidence instead of making it look like it had always been here.


    He thumped on each stone with the hilt of his blade until he found a cluster that sounded hollow. He tried to pry one of them up with his dagger, but the mortar was too tight to make fast progress.


    ¡°Fuck it,¡± he growled, looking around to make sure no one was nearby to call him a witch before he whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Vosden,¡± and used lesser earth to make the mortar flow aside like muddy water.


    Once that was done he started lifting paving stones out of the way, and he quickly found what he¡¯d expected to, a dry rotted old trapdoor. For a second he got the feeling of d¨¦j¨¤ vu, but he quickly realized that this couldn¡¯t possibly be his cabin. Despite the commonality, they were in totally different locations.


    The second wave of d¨¦j¨¤ vu hit him harder when he finally opened the door and saw the stairs beneath. Those he¡¯d definitely seen before. He knew that even before he felt the cold air wash over him.


    ¡°Son of a bitch,¡± he swore as he drew his sword and started down into the cottage. It wasn¡¯t built on a hill. It had been built on a burial mound¡­ like the one he¡¯d been crushed to death in not so long ago.


    Suddenly, he was on edge, and he moved down each step with caution as he retraced a path he¡¯d taken at least three dozen times by now. This was the skeleton knight level; he was sure of it, and somehow, he¡¯d made his way back to it.


    It looked a little worse for the wear since he¡¯d seen it last, but he wasn''t too concerned about that. His first concern was why it was here, and what this could possibly have to do with what he was looking for, but his second was even bigger.


    If those stairs are in a burial mound, then what¡¯s normally behind the door in the goblin cave? He wondered.


    In his mind, everything had fit together in a certain way. They were in order. First, there was one level, and then there was another. It was predictable pattern. Goblins came before skeletons, and they came before orcs. Now, suddenly, the whole thing was lining up more with the real world than with the levels in the Pit in his mind. Suddenly he was thinking about where each of those well-ordered levels was on a map, and the idea made him dizzy.


    When he reached the bottom, he found nothing unexpected. The room was scattered with the wreckage of bodies and looked about like he remembered. The knight itself was dead on the floor, too, but Simon looked at it only briefly before he produced some light and moved to the gate at the far end of the sepulcher. If that didn¡¯t actually lead to the next level, then where did it lead to?


    The answer turned out to be an antechamber and another set of stairs. He changed his mind. This was nothing like the burial mounds he¡¯d been in before near Schwarzenbruck. This was more like one of the Egyptian tombs he¡¯d seen while watching one too many documentaries on the Valley of Kings.


    There were no hieroglyphics, though. Whatever had been painted on the walls had long since flaked away. Simon continued down into the darkness, and it was there he found another room full of the dead.


    He raised his sword to shatter the first one as soon as it started to move, but it didn¡¯t. Instead, it just lay there on its dais, confusing him even more.


    ¡°Why aren¡¯t these ones coming to life?¡± Simon wondered aloud as he explored the room, but he had no answer.


    Unless¡­ for a moment, he stood stock still in that cold room as inspiration struck him. What if the same thing that animated the dead here caused the ghosts to rise in Darndelle. That wasn¡¯t so far-fetched, was it? Here they had bodies to move around in, and there¡­ well, no bodies meant they had to use the souls themselves or something.


    It wasn¡¯t a complete theory, but it was a working hypothesis, and for now, he clung to it as he turned and ran back up the stone stairs, taking them two at a time. Something that was here when he left wasn¡¯t here now. The Warlock in question had taken it, and it was very probably still buried in the graveyard. The question was, what.


    Upstairs, the first thing he did was look for the sword. He found it laying just about where he¡¯d probably left it, but was slightly disappointed by its discovery. I mean, if that was the answer I would have solved this place ages ago by accident, he thought to himself with a sigh.


    Next he looked for the key, since that was the other prominent item he had experience with, however when he turned the skeleton knight¡¯s body over, he found something completely unexpected: there was a giant hole in its breastplate. To him it looked like something had just punched right through it or grabbed the metal and ripped it open like wrapping paper.


    Does that mean there¡¯s a strength word of power? He thought as he studied the hole left behind by whatever had done this.


    Simon had searched the room a couple of times, but he¡¯d never thought to take the armor off the skeleton knight, and now that was biting him in the ass.


    As he looked at the hole in the chest and wondered what might have been there, it suddenly occurred to him. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me that Dark Heart is actually literal and not, like, a cool name for the damn warlock,¡± he sighed.


    He didn¡¯t know whether to laugh or cry at that revelation, but he was fairly sure it was the correct one. Whoever had dug up the rotten corpse had left the cursed artifact behind, and that was what was stirring up all the dead. Now it was up to him to find it and destroy it. The only question was, was it the right thing to destroy it in this level, or back in the skeleton knight level instead?

 Ch. 116 - Digging up the Past

    Simon did some further exploring on the deeper level of the tomb. He found a few inscriptions that talked about holding back the tide, and one said they would rise again to once more protect their homeland if it was ever threatened again. Unfortunately, there was no indication as to what they¡¯d actually fought or what conditions would make them rise again.


    It was clear to him, that whoever had buried these men had thought they were heroes, not villains. But if they were heroes, then why would they reek of unclean magics? Simon wondered. Was it that everyone thought that they were the hero in these sorts of situations, or was there another purpose?


    In desperation to find out more, he used the lesser word of earth a few times to try to make the rusted-out shields give up more secrets. He found a few coats of arms that way and some inscriptions to specific knights, but there were no clues as to what terrible magic animated these corpses.


    He sealed up the tomb just the way he¡¯d found it when he left, and he walked back to the half-abandoned city of Kawsburl. They were no more helpful than before, and by the time he¡¯d finished his second round of investigation that afternoon, he decided it was best to leave.


    Normally he would have stayed one more night at the inn. A few coppers for a bed and a hot meal beat the hell out of shivering beneath the open sky. There was something here that made him think it was time to leave, though. It was like the opposite of the times he¡¯d stayed in the first inn and the old woman had seen some darkness about him.


    Though he couldn¡¯t actually see any sort of miasma, he could feel it. The locals had a secret to keep or an axe to grind, and since he didn¡¯t want this run to end prematurely, he left before someone decided he shouldn¡¯t be allowed to.


    That night he made camp well off the game trail he was following, and a little past midnight, he heard riders and saw torches. They didn¡¯t see him, either on the ride down or back, but only because he¡¯d expected this.


    Simon considered stopping them and questioning them forcefully as to what they were up to but decided against it. That wasn¡¯t because he was concerned about the morality of killing people who were obviously trying to kill him. It was because the temptation to drain their strength and make it his own was much too great.


    He¡¯d largely recovered from his earlier weakness, but the urge to do something terrible remained even after his lassitude had faded. Maybe if it had been goblins or a terrifying wild beast like a wyvern or a griffon, he could have justified it, but people¡­ It was a bridge too far for him in his current state of mind.


    So, he let them pass. Instead of dealing with them, he decided that the mystery of this particular place would last at least one more life while he focused on ending the cursed graveyard. Now that he knew where the tomb was located in the real world, he supposed that he could come back any time to investigate further anytime he wanted, with a little effort. The earlier level had to be decades in the past. Maybe time wouldn¡¯t have done as much damage by that point, and he could learn more.


    For now he focused on more immediate issues. He decided to skip Lyndon Hills and walk straight back to Darndelle to save time, and throw off any further attempts at pursuit. It took him almost two days to decide that where or when to destroy whatever had been taken from the tomb was the wrong question.


    If he destroyed it here, it would almost certainly solve this level, but, then on a later run, if he destroyed it back on the skeleton knight level, it would almost certainly reset this one, to some new state, like Freya¡¯s tavern had. He¡¯d have to defeat something else after that, because the fog itself would never have existed.


    But did he want to do that? ¡°Right now? Definitely not,¡± he said, answering his own questions out loud. ¡°I¡¯m sure I need that fucking sword for Ionar, so I can¡¯t undo this level until I¡¯ve undone that one.¡±


    It was all getting hopelessly confusing, and he spent most nights by the fire, talking to the mirror as he added names and traced designs. As he did so, he started to link the levels to each other in different ways. Once upon a time, it had all been so simple and straightforward in his head, but now, every level seemed to loop backward and forward and link together in strange ways, either because of the people or the locations involved.


    Even though he could check the mirror, it was still confusing. Without it, he was sure he would have been hopelessly lost. ¡°I used to think that the Pit just got hard enough that no one could beat it,¡± he said to himself as he walked further south. ¡°Now I think that most of them just got lost on the way there.¡±


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    He found Darndelle as he¡¯d left it weeks before. It was unchanged, but on his first night back he investigated the graveyard and saw that the fog was stronger than it had been the last time, and as soon as he took a step over the line mist began to pour from the graves.


    Simon didn¡¯t try to fight it that first night back, though. Instead, he waited until morning and began to look through the records once more. He didn¡¯t have the name of the warlock that had started all of this, but he had the place he¡¯d come from, the year it had happened, and general outline of events. He hoped that would be enough.


    Even with those facts in mind and a generous bribe to the archivist, it still took him half a week to find the right scroll. When he did, Simon laughed out loud. He couldn¡¯t help himself.


    He¡¯d spent weeks traveling and asking question after he¡¯d been told that a name was what he needed to solve this mystery, and when he found what he was sure was the correct entry, he found only a blacked-out portion of the scroll.


    Fortunately, the location of the grave site wasn¡¯t blacked out, and with a little more research, they finally figured out where it had been. What had been one large plot decades before was now three smaller ones, all of which were now occupied. Simon wasn¡¯t going to let a little thing like a dead body stop him from reaching the conclusion, though.


    Even though the sun was low in the sky, he still marched straight to the graveyard with the tiny map he¡¯d made on a piece of scratch paper. Even a little light was enough to keep the ghosts, or whatever they were, at bay, though, and he still had the orange glow of the sunset when he reached the right spot.


    ¡°Are they going to try to kill me if I use a little magic here?¡± he asked himself as he looked around. There was no one here, but that didn¡¯t necessarily mean anything.


    It wasn¡¯t like he had a choice, though. He could hardly dig up this whole section in the next few minutes before the last limb of the sun descended below the horizon. So, he didn¡¯t worry about it. Instead, he took a moment to center himself, and then he imagined the earth in this whole section flowing out and receding like the tide, leaving everything that wasn¡¯t the earth behind. He wasn¡¯t 100% sure that was going to work, of course, but if it didn¡¯t, he could always come back with a shovel tomorrow.


    ¡°Gervuul Vosden,¡± he intoned solemnly, feeling the word resonate both within him and the ground he was standing on.


    Simon had just enough time to reflect on how much less the greater words hurt when he really focused before the earth started to recede as if a sinkhole was opening up. The gravestones eased down as the earthen tide flowed out, and a six-foot-deep hole opened that was probably twenty yards on each side.


    It was a lot of earth, and he vaguely wondered where it all went, but in the fading light, he didn¡¯t worry about that too much. He was more concerned that anything he was looking for might have been swept away with it. He needn''t have been, though.


    Even as the earth retreated, there were enough puffs of the dark mist that had been hiding just beneath it to reveal the source. So, Simon uttered a minor word of light to shoo them away and hopped down into the pit as he searched for whatever the source of the black magic at the center of his little crater was. Along the way, he found all the tombstones that had been there already, a coffin, and two bodies buried in sacks that had almost completely rotted away. There was also a broken sword, a few bottles, and the remains of a shovel.


    None of those were what he was looking for. When he finally found the thing, he was most surprised that it was literally a dark heart. Someone had carved a heart out of obsidian or something like it. As he studied it, he saw that it was anatomically correct, though he wasn¡¯t sure how important that was. Whoever made it, had obviously taken great care in both the large details and the small ones. There were very delicate runes carved into it.


    He bent and picked it up, and it was there he made his mistake. He saw the way it smoked at his touch and assumed that it was just more mist, but when he stood and brought the thing into the direct path of sunlight¡­ it immediately started to crumble to ash.


    ¡°Shit!¡± he yelled, lowering it immediately again into the shadow of the grave, but it was too late.


    Even as he watched, all the interesting information he¡¯d wanted to study was going up in smoke. He might have won the level, but he lost a terrible opportunity.


    Still, he did what he could, poring over each mark as they vanished, and when it was done, and there was no more to be gleaned, he sat down right in the hole and started to drawing the symbol combinations he was sure he¡¯d seen. He hadn¡¯t learned any new words in all that, but the way that it had used some of the ones he did know seemed very novel, and he wanted to explore that more.


    Once all that was done, he decided not to fill in his hole, even if it was disrespectful to the dead. Instead, he waited another half hour to see if the mist would reappear, and when it didn¡¯t, he walked back to his inn.


    I could just leave, Simon thought absently, eyeing the exit. There was no need to rush it, though. Instead, he¡¯d tell everyone the good news, make sure it was really done, and then get ready to kill those bloodthirsty servants before they could cause any harm.

 Ch. 117 - Life of the Party

    Though they didn¡¯t believe him at first and only pretended to after he bought everyone a round, after a few guys went out to check the graveyard and confirmed that the mist was finally gone, a real celebration broke out. There had been a few tentative celebrations last time when the unexplained fireball had burned away whatever it was that haunted the graveyard for a few weeks, but since no one had claimed credit, it had never been more than hope.


    This news, though, spread like wildfire. Simon had just been hoping to brighten the night of the few regulars he recognized in the common room, but as word spread, the place filled up to standing room only, and he was forced to tell the story again and again.


    People were feeding him free drinks for hours, and by the time he¡¯d drunk enough to take some liberties with the truth, adding Blackheart¡¯s wraith to the story, along with a part where he thrust his sword into its obsidian heart when the city watch¡¯s Marshall showed up.


    For a moment Simon thought that he was in trouble, but the man instantly joined in the celebrations, congratulating Simon for lifting the curse, and telling him, ¡°The King himself will probably want to hear the story himself tomorrow, when news gets around, so I hope you¡¯re ready to be drowned in gold!¡±


    Simon toasted to that, but truthfully, he didn¡¯t need any more riches than he already had, and if he was offered a fortune he¡¯d gladly give it a way to a worthy cause. It wasn¡¯t like he was going to start carting a backpack full of gold around with him. Truthfully the backpack would be the most important part of that arrangement, and he¡¯d only just purchased one he liked.


    He expected the one he had to last the rest of his life. That thought was enough to make him smirk as he listened to another man tell him about all the heroes who had died in the night trying to claim the reward. It was morbid humor and hardly a joke he could share, but his lives didn¡¯t tend to be that long these days, especially not when he was coming up on the dragon level again.


    Simon doubted he¡¯d survive that one, but he hoped that this time, he could at least get a better lay of the land. He didn¡¯t brood on that too much, though, or the premature loss of the artifact he¡¯d destroyed. What really mattered was that he¡¯d defeated this level cleanly, and he knew how to do it again pretty easily in case it reset on him.


    Simon enjoyed the rest of his drunken evening, though not so much that he let one of the beautiful barmaids join him in his room and congratulate him personally. Maybe if the caravan guard or one of the other ladies had hit on him, he would have gone for it, but a barmaid hit a bit too close to home.


    He did spare himself a lesser word of cure to remove the alcohol from his system. Only when he sobered up that he realized that this was one of the first times anyone had treated him like a real hero. Various villagers had thanked him for his help of course, but this was the very first time he¡¯d slain a monster and there had been a true outpouring of gratitude. It was probably the best quest reward he could have asked for.


    His minor miracle was enough to spare him a hangover in the morning and let him get an early start on the day. Simon didn¡¯t have much in the way of clothes in this life. Nice was out of the question. But, he brushed up his armor as best he could and paid a copper or two for a bath and a shave, and by the time his face was smooth and he felt clean, a herald was sent to collect him.


    Darndelle wasn¡¯t as nice as Leipzin, which was the large city he was most familiar with to the north. That said, it looked a lot nicer from the back of a gilded and upholstered carriage, and Simon was happy for the attention as a growing parade made its way to the castle.


    There, he was met by a number of functionaries. The priests confirmed he¡¯d been to the temple on more than one occasion, the archivist confirmed that he was the man to find the grave¡¯s location the other day, and a couple quiet men with white beards that he was fairly certain were some kind of court wizard glared at him hard enough that he was fairly sure they could see whatever darkness was in his soul.


    They said nothing, though, and after his identity was confirmed, and he was made to swear on a holy symbol that he wasn¡¯t a warlock, he was escorted into court. There, he found dozens of nobles and, of course, the King and Queen.


    Simon didn¡¯t quite know what the protocol for this sort of thing, but as they read of his name as ¡°Sir Simon of the Northern Lands,¡± he stepped forward and knelt deeply. Most problems like this could be solved with a quick display of humility in his experience.


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    ¡°Rise,¡± the King commanded before following up with, ¡°He does speak our language, doesn¡¯t he?¡±


    ¡°I do, Your Majesty,¡± Simon smiled as he stepped forward.


    The King gestured, and a different herald stepped forward to read another proclamation. Today was declared a holiday, and all subjects were to thank the gods for their deliverance.


    Simon stood there stiffly, noting the fine print that no reward would be given until the mist had been gone for a year and a day, but that didn¡¯t bother him. He¡¯d be gone long before that.


    Afterward, a banquet was held in his honor. He was given a seat at the high table next to the King¡¯s own heir, and he was asked to regale everyone with the story of his victory. Simon had only had a single glass of watered wine by that point, so he stuck to a version that was mostly the truth.


    He told everyone that after finding the true name of the Blackhearted one, which he dared not repeat, he went to the graveyard and summoned the creature before destroying it utterly in the light of the setting sun. When he was asked for proof, he offered to draw a sketch of the heart but said that as soon as the wraith was defeated, it crumbled to dust.


    One of the young men asked if he¡¯d used magic to defeat the thing, but Simon merely laughed. He undid his sword belt and passed the man the scabbard as he said, ¡°If I had magic, I assure you I¡¯d be able to afford a nicer sword.¡±


    Everyone laughed at that, but Simon continued. ¡°The only magic I possessed was research. There¡¯s a great power in words, especially in learning the names of evil!¡±


    Everyone agreed with that, though only one of the gray beard from earlier seemed to understand his joke about the power of words. The man chuckled dryly, which moved him right to the top of Simons list of people that he wanted to get to know better. Unfortunately, by the time the feasting was done, the Kings advisor ¡ª Archiman as he was apparently called ¡ª had retreated to his own rooms and made it clear that he didn¡¯t wish to be disturbed.


    So, instead of seeing if someone could finally explain the nature of magic to him, Simon spent more time with the King¡¯s family, and at the end of the evening, he announced that he was going to renounce the reward in its entirety.


    ¡°But Sir Simon,¡± one man gasped, ¡°A chest of gold is a fortune!¡±


    ¡°Aye,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°A heavy fortune, and I travel light. Use it for a good cause instead. A hospital, or an orphanage. Do something to better the lives of those that dwelt in the shadow of that curse for far too long.¡±


    There was more drinking and more cheering after that, and when a couple of the ladies of the court snuck into the room he¡¯d been given for the night, he was far too drunk to think that was a bad idea and far too smart to make himself sober. Thankfully, that night was a blur, and he woke up in the morning to an empty bed.


    He probably should have been surprised he wasn''t assassinated during the night, but really, he was too busy basking in the half-remembered afterglow to bother. It really was the best of both worlds. All of the pleasure and only a little of the guilt to go with it. He wasn''t sure he''d ever gotten either of their names, but he hoped they''d had as good a time as he had.


    Simon lingered for another few days, enjoying the town¡¯s enthusiasm and basking in the adulation of the common people while he got his gear in order. Once he had everything he thought he¡¯d need, including a paper mach¨¦ masquerade mask that he¡¯d gotten because it looked somewhat like the devil on the upper floors, he made his way into the temple and forced the door open.


    Beyond the door he could hear the sounds of music rather than screaming, which told him, that he wasn¡¯t too late. Simon quickly donned his mask and then moved inside. He didn¡¯t remember exactly how to get where he was going but as soon as he found the servant that stopped him last time, he said, ¡°Can you direct me to the wine cellar? I¡¯m running a little late for a private party there.¡±


    ¡°But guests are in the¡­¡± the man said, but he stopped talked as soon as Simon slipped him a couple silver pieces. Then he just nodded and said, ¡°Right this way sir.¡±


    Simon reached the cellar just after Kaylee had opened the door to the side passage that let the men in, and all of them turned toward him. He didn¡¯t draw his sword yet. Instead, he looked down at everyone and said, ¡°Why would you ever think that a bloodbath would help your cause?¡±


    ¡°Who are you?¡± a couple of the men shouted, but Simon ignored them, walking slowly toward the knot of men, trying to figure out who the mage was. He was ready with the words of fire protection on his lips, but he wanted to wait until the last possible moment.


    When no one cast or attacked, he finally said, ¡°I¡¯m here for your confession. Tell me what¡¯s happening here, and maybe this can be ended without bloodshed.¡±


    Most of the men here didn¡¯t have weapons. That made sense because they were all dressed as servants, and they¡¯d stolen weapons previously upstairs. As he spoke they produced knives, broke bottles, and picked up planks. It was clear to him this wasn¡¯t going to end peacefully.

 Ch. 118 - Fighting Fire With Fire

    ¡°Nothing ends without bloodshed,¡± one man said, older than the rest. ¡°Well, bloodshed or fire¡­¡±


    The guy probably thought that he was being clever, but even as he shouted ¡°Meiren¡± and used the word of fire to launch a barrage of flames at Simon, he was already whispering the words, ¡°Karesh Uuvellum Meiren,¡± as he imagined a wall of solid glass reaching from wall to wall of the space he was in between two large wine racks.


    He could have struck back of course, but he wanted to talk to Kaylee, and she could have easily been hurt in the crossfire. So for now he played defense. Lets the waves crash against his invisible fortification. They raged hot enough to light the wood on either side of him on fire, but thanks to his magic he didn¡¯t even feel the heat.


    Instead, he simply stood there, and when the tide of fire receded, he said, ¡°There, now can we talk about this?¡±


    The only answer of his opponent was to shout the word twice more. The second time, he bolstered his shield, but only a little. This man clearly lacked any real power or imagination. When his voice cracked on the second attempt, and he started coughing up blood, he also showed he had very little in the way of stamina either.


    How long has it been since three basic words would have done that to me? Simon said, reflecting, even as the basement was on fire on both sides of him.


    There had been a time, so long ago that he barely remembered it, that two greater words would always reduce him to a painful hoarseness. That was in the past, though. Today, he suspected that the pain came at least as much from failing to pronounce or understand the word correctly as from actually channeling more power than you could handle. That was a lesson he was only slowly learning with time.


    ¡°Say the word,¡± the coughing man said to his companions. ¡°Say it! He¡¯s weakening! If we all say it together!¡± As he tried to convince his allies to attack him, Simon chuckled at the idea that he was the one weakening and whispered ¡°Aufvarum Gelthic¡± to smother the flames with the lesser word of ice before they could burn out of control and cause serious damage to the place.


    That shocked the assembled group visibly. ¡°Listen,¡± Simon said again. ¡°The words of power are cursed, and you damn your soul to use them. Surender and I will ensure that you¡¯re treated fairly by the law. I¡ª¡±


    Simon stopped talking as soon as he saw everyone¡¯s temperament change. When he¡¯d been talking about damnation, he was clearly winning them over. They obviously believed that much. It was the notion that there was any justice to be waiting for them at the hands of their betters that they found to be ridiculous.


    He didn¡¯t have time to formulate another argument, let alone time to figure out where they¡¯d learned such a destructive word. He couldn¡¯t even contemplate the fact that fire seemed to be far and away the most common word out there. Instead, he raised his defenses.


    As one, almost everyone in the group assaulted him with a new wave of fire. ¡°Gervuul Karesh Uuvellum Meiren,¡± he said very clearly, bringing an even stronger wall to deal with such an assault. He¡¯d never faced a group of spellcasters before, so he erred on the side of caution and used a greater word to hold back the inferno.


    It was certainly enough to make him regret his earlier overconfidence, though. He¡¯d never cast a spell as long as that one and almost always used one word or two, and he felt the burn immediately. He wasn¡¯t sure it was drawing more of his life than a normal greater word, but the complexity pulled at his mind and his throat in ways that were more painful than usual. He¡¯d thought that he could keep this up all day, but that was turning out not to be the case.


    Still, nothing they were doing was showing any signs of weakening his spell. The concert of flames roared like a typhoon against him, but no amount of power could cross a line that had been defined so boldly. The only way to make it more powerful would have been to carve the thing into the stone in a sort of reverse summoning circle.


    For a moment, he allowed his mind to wander and wonder if that would actually drain less or more from him than saying the words. However, as soon as the flames started to slacken, he drew his sword and focused on whatever was going next.


    As it turned out, though, he probably wouldn¡¯t need it. Most of the would-be mages were already wounded or dead. Some lay on the ground, coughing up blood, and others were horribly burned. They clearly hadn¡¯t given much thought to what would happen if they released so much heat in such a contained area. Simon muttered a few words to smother the flames before the smoke became a problem, and then he moved toward Kaylee.


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    She was on the ground and obviously wounded, so he was done trying to play nice. A couple of the men still had the strength to menace him with weapons, and Simon didn¡¯t hesitate to cut them down. While he still wasn¡¯t at full strength, they were no match for him.


    After that, everyone who was capable ran for their lives, and he let them go. Those who weren¡¯t visibly burned were already scared by this experience in other ways, and once the guards came for them, he doubted that any of them would survive.


    Kaylee, who was already on the ground, she was burned pretty badly on her left side. To him, it looked like whoever had been standing next to her practically exploded rather than trying to use his will to direct the fire.


    Just looking at her suffering was enough to make him feel bad for her. So, after he carried her some distance from the others to a darkened corner, and despite the strain he¡¯d already put on himself, he whispered, ¡°Gervuul Hyakk,¡± and practically erased her would with a greater word of healing. It wasn¡¯t perfect, and he could do nothing about her burned hair or dress with any of the words that he knew, but she wasn¡¯t going to spend the rest of her days being disfigured, at least.


    ¡°Why did you do this?¡± he asked, taking off his mask as she finally looked up at him with clear eyes. ¡°You didn¡¯t just plan a massacre, but you worked with warlocks? Don¡¯t you understand how insanely dangerous that is?¡±


    ¡°Simon?¡± she asked, confused. ¡°How¡­ Why? You can¡¯t be here.¡±


    ¡°And yet I am,¡± he nodded. His throat was still sore, but he ignored it. After this, he was going to be on a nice relaxing boat cruise for the better part of the week, so he¡¯d have plenty of time to recover. ¡°So talk.¡±


    ¡°But you haven¡¯t aged¡­¡± she said, ¡°Well, maybe a little, but it¡¯s been more than two decades¡­¡±


    ¡°Good genes,¡± he lied. ¡°I get that from my mother¡¯s people.¡±


    ¡°But why didn¡¯t you help us?¡± She asked, tears welling in her eyes. ¡°If you have all this power, then you must know¡­ you must. They were so cruel to us, to Eddek and I. For what they did to him, there can be no answer but violence.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t,¡± he answered, ¡°but I wish I did. Tell me, and maybe I can fix it. I just know that violence isn¡¯t the answer.¡±


    ¡°It¡­ isn¡¯t the answer?¡± she asked in confusion before she looked around and laughed. ¡°How can you, of all people, say that Simon? Violence was the answer against the owlbear and the troll you said you were off to fight. It was certainly the answer you used in this basement today.¡±


    ¡°If you killed everyone up there today, I promise you that worse people would replace them,¡± he explained to her. ¡°You think that these men would have created a better ruling class?¡±


    ¡°We wanted to create a country without rulers. We wanted to be free!¡± she said with a look of wide-eyed passion. ¡°And you¡¯ve ruined it.¡±


    ¡°Trust me,¡± he sighed, ¡°if I¡¯m here, nothing good was about to happen. That¡¯s the way this works.¡±


    This was the first time he¡¯d run across something like democracy in the Pit, even conceptually. He didn¡¯t remember a whole lot from his history classes, but Simon was pretty sure that early attempts were usually bloody affairs that didn¡¯t end well. Right now he didn¡¯t care about any of that. He just wanted information.


    ¡°Oh?¡± she asked. ¡°I always thought of you as a hero of yore. Are you just a harbinger of terrible things to come? An albatross?¡± she asked plaintively, getting more aggressive with each moment, but he really wasn¡¯t sure what to tell her or even what he could tell her. ¡°I see what you are now. You¡¯re no different than the rest of them. You were just going to hold us down like they did!¡±


    ¡°Kaylee,¡± Simon said. ¡°Please calm down.¡±


    He could hear that they were running out of time. The door to the basement hadn¡¯t opened yet, but people were definitely stomping around upstairs, and any second now, the guards would come for them. They wouldn¡¯t be looking for innocents, either.


    ¡°Calm? I am calm. I know what you are,¡± she said, leaning forward to whisper something in his ear. ¡°You¡¯re, Mei¡ª¡±


    Simon sensed the betrayal coming, but he waited until she actually said the first syllable before he seized her by the throat. He held her there so tightly that she couldn¡¯t breathe, let alone speak. Even then, he would have tried to reason with her, though. Was that because this was all somehow his fault because he¡¯d had a hand in bringing her to this fork in the road? He wasn¡¯t sure, but before he could figure out what to say next, the guards burst through the door.


    Simon dumped her off his lap then and bolted toward the door on the far wall before she could blast him. She didn¡¯t disappoint, either.


    The flames licked at him in his wake, and though he heard her cry out that terrible word twice, only the first time was aimed at him. The second time, it was followed by the guards coming down the stairs, who screamed instead.


    It¡¯s not my problem anymore. That¡¯s what he tried to tell himself as he sheathed his sword, opened the door to the Sea Seraph, and then quickly closed it behind him.


    Somehow, those words did nothing to make him feel better. Had he done everything he could to save her? No. Had he let her down in any major way? Not that he could think of. He¡¯d given her every chance to turn from the darkness. He would have gladly brought Kaylee with him, and away from whatever terrible situation it was that she found herself in, if only her presence wouldn¡¯t have been a constant knife, waiting to betray him.

 Ch. 119 - Another Voyage

    Simon contemplated his culpability a lot of the first few days of the trip. Oh, he still played dice with the crew some, even though he knew enough about the ship to blend in without it. He also spent a little time every day trying to find the source of the plague that was bound to happen.


    Mostly, though, he wondered what he could have done differently. Based on the timing of the levels, he was already fairly certain that the purpose wasn¡¯t to stop every tragedy. Sometimes, it was, but most of the time, it seemed to be to mitigate them. He couldn¡¯t say why Helades had chosen the places and the times she did, and he wasn¡¯t going to waste a question asking.


    That was because he already knew the answer. The answer was that this was the answer. This was the way it had to be to get to whatever destiny she¡¯d promised that hero from her story. Beyond that, it didn¡¯t have to make sense. That was only frustrating to him, of course. She could presumably see everything, so it made total sense to her no matter how convoluted things got.


    For any normal person, though, it was hard to figure out how rescuing a couple of kids on their way to a festival so they could be chewed up and spit out by the world would lead to the correct outcome. He had no idea, but that didn¡¯t stop him from feeling like he¡¯d let them down.


    Hell, Kaylee never should have been there. She wasn¡¯t the first time. Before, it had been a different girl accompanying Eddek on that long, dark road. Would this level have turned out better if she¡¯d been the one to survive? These were the sorts of questions that could drive men mad.


    After all, for all he knew, those men had gotten the word of fire from her, and she¡¯d gotten it from him. He had no way to know. Had he used it to fight the owlbear when he went through the level last time? He couldn¡¯t recall.


    That was why he gambled and drank as much as anything. Because trading raunchy jokes with a bunch of strangers blocked out the questions that resonated in his soul.


    He spent some time filling the mirror in on the last level, even though he doubted he¡¯d ever forget Kaylee¡¯s betrayal. He was just trying to build the habit of telling it everything since he was already sure that there was much that he¡¯d forgotten.


    When he felt better he used a word of greater cure in an attempt to purge the whole ship of disease. He doubted that would be enough to unravel the mystery, but he could spare the year.


    Really, I¡¯m unlikely to figure it out this go around, he decided, but at least I can stay with the ship this whole time, see what happens, and then help with the plague when we reach our destination.


    The very last thing that Simon planned to do was to disembark the boat for Ionar, so, one day he was very surprised to see that they were sailing right by it without any intention to stop. He looked closely and thought it looked different, but it wasn¡¯t until he asked one of the sailors about it that he discovered the horrible truth.


    ¡°Ionar? What would we go to that twice-cursed hellhole?¡± he said with a laugh.


    ¡°Twice cursed?¡± he asked. ¡°You mean something happened there besides the volcano erupting?¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t know?¡± the man asked, studying Simon to decide if he was stupid or merely foreign. ¡°That volcanic eruption dragged some monstrosity straight from the lowest pit of hell, and it consumed the whole city. Every place where the lava isn¡¯t, it is.¡±


    Simon¡¯s body went cold. He¡¯d spent half the voyages learning about unintended consequences, and now he discovered that he¡¯d inadvertently unleashed a new evil on an old level. It was shocking, but as he looked at the silhouette of the palace high on the clifftop, it was impossible not to see the truth.


    Simon sighed. ¡°I guess I¡¯m not going to figure out the plague on this trip, either.¡±


    ¡°What plague?¡± the sailor asked, but Simon ignored the man. He was already moving away from the prow where they¡¯d been chatting, the the port side of the ship where they kept one of the long boats. With a word of force, he cut the ropes on both hoists that raised and lowered it into the sea before anyone had any idea what he was up to.


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    There were looks of shock and dismay, but he ignored them. This run was toast anyway. He¡¯d already fucked it up as far as he was concerned. He could do one thing right, though, and that was to fix this fucking mess. He¡¯d spend decades here if he had to undo what he¡¯d done. There was no other choice.


    After the boat splashed into the water, he vaulted over the rail like some guy in a pirate movie and used a word of lesser force to cushion his landing. Then he picked up a pair of oars and did his best to start rowing to shore. It only took a few minutes for the news of what he¡¯d done to spread on the Sea Seraph. Though they didn¡¯t have cannons, they had plenty of crossbows, and he was well inside their range.


    So, once he saw the first one take a shot at him, he used a word of lesser force with every pull of the oars. That little bit of magic pushed him along ten times faster than rowing alone, and he quickly outpaced the ship.


    Simon had no idea what rumors would spread about this moment, but he was sure that they would. He beached the boat, and then drug it slightly higher, even though he never really intended to use it again. This was a desolate place, but he wasn¡¯t leaving until he¡¯d purged every last trace of his stupid mistake.


    ¡°I should never have opened that damn thing,¡± he told himself as he started looking around for evidence that the plants had infested this far.


    Fortunately, it seemed that they hadn¡¯t. Looking, he thought he could see some evidence that there were a few on the trail near the top, but the infestation seemed to be almost completely contained in the area around the main square and the palace. ¡°Because that¡¯s where I buried that fucking thing,¡± he growled, kicking a rock.


    The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. ¡°I fucking boiled it in lava,¡± he yelled, screaming so loudly that it echoed off the cliff face back at him. ¡°What the hell else was I supposed to do!¡±


    Leave it in its fucking container, his mind volunteered instantly.


    Yeah, that would have been the best choice. It wasn¡¯t like the golden cylinder he¡¯d found it in had any magical runes on it, though. He¡¯d thought it was just a superstition, but it clearly wasn¡¯t.


    Simon spent the rest of the day building a shelter and doing a little spearfishing off the now-abandoned jetty. Honestly, it wasn¡¯t bad. He¡¯d never been a seafood guy, but flame-roasted fish and crab that had been buried in the hot ashes of his fire turned out pretty great.


    There wasn¡¯t much variety here, of course. He didn¡¯t seen see much in the way of seabirds, so he was sure he¡¯d get tired of it eventually, but for now, he ate like a king.


    The well still had drinkable water in it, even if the place was abandoned, and the tavern he¡¯d gotten drunk at last time had never been built. If he was going to be here for a while, then he wanted to get the rhythm of life down pat.


    That meant making a gorget so this thing wouldn¡¯t kill him twice the same way. It also meant being methodical and thorough so the damn thing didn¡¯t sneak up on him.


    After only two days of that, he was ready to start making his way up the path. He went a little at a time, and he used fire so things wouldn¡¯t grow back. It wasn¡¯t bad, especially early on. That low, there was really only the occasional creeper vine or orange blossom to mark this thing¡¯s slow, creeping path of destruction.


    It didn¡¯t get bad until he could actually see where the lava had dripped down from the highest level and ruined the few buildings that had been built along the windy road. There, he found that the real infestation had started. The vines actually didn¡¯t seem to like something besides his fire, so he spent several days experimenting as he slowly burned them away to nothing. In the process, he ruled out wind and sun, as well as poor soil, and was forced to conclude it was seawater.


    The first time he poured salt water on a cluster of them, they wilted and died in minutes, and when he checked on that spot two days later, they still hadn¡¯t started to regrow. That was the good news. The bad news was that he didn¡¯t have so much as a bucket to his name.


    Thankfully, the well was shallow, but up until now, he¡¯s used a rope made from spliced-together rope ends he¡¯d cut off the ship¡¯s tackle to lower his helmet in the well a couple times at the end of every day to stay hydrated. That might work fine for drinking, but there was no way that he was going to stop this infestation with a helmet full of seawater a day and the odds that he would make the mile-and-a-half walk up and down the cliffside road more than once or twice each day were equally small.


    So, he did the next best thing and set to work making a large pot for himself. Finding enough clay for that took a week of digging, and he cracked the first one from the heat when he tried to fire it.


    Still, his second try was a success, after he let it bake in the sun for a few days before he baked it over a flame. It was an ugly thing, and though he didn¡¯t think he¡¯d ever be able to balance it on his head, he used leather thongs and a bit of the canvas from his shelter to make a backpack of sorts. Now each day, he could go up, burn away the parts that were likely to attack him, and then drench the soil of a couple dozen weed beds with sea water and watch them die in almost real-time.


    That was when he started to make real progress. Relying on just the words of minor fire, it was liable to take him literally forever to clear this infestation, but with enough sea water, things were finally starting to look up.


    When Simon started this task, he''d thought of it as Sisyphean. He was going to push this boulder up the hill, not because it was possible, but because it was the only fair punishment in a just world since it was his fuck up.


    Now that he was making actual progress, though, he was starting to think it might be possible.

 Ch. 120 - Round Two

    Simon spent the next six months the same way. Every morning, he drank three helmets of water and caught something with a crude spear from the jetty while he still had the energy to do so. Then, he would fill his clay pot with five or six gallons of seawater and begin to climb up the slope.


    There, he would use fire and salt to methodically make it further up the street toward the main square, destroying every tendril of greenery in any building along the way. Nothing behind me. That was his motto. He¡¯d already been through the woodchipper once, and he had no intention of doing this half-assed and being forced to try again.


    After all, the plant couldn¡¯t do shit to him. Not if he was careful. He¡¯d been hit by spines a few times so far, but none of them had penetrated his armor, which he wore no matter how hot he got. His leathers fit him loosely now, even cinched all the way up. Since he could count his ribs when his shirt was off, that wasn¡¯t a surprise.


    He was tanned in a way he¡¯d never been before, too, and in all the time it took to get that tan, he¡¯d counted a hundred and eight shooting stars, nine ships, and no people. The only thing he hadn¡¯t counted in all that time was the number of fish he¡¯d eaten. He might never eat fish after this. He was so sick of them that he¡¯d taken to freediving for clams, oysters, and even shrimp sometimes, though he had very few ways to cook any of them properly.


    ¡°I¡¯m never going anywhere without a pan again,¡± he told himself as he hiked up the cliff with a jug of water that day.


    No, not that day, he corrected himself mentally. The day.


    Today was the day he was going after the central blossom. He¡¯d already killed every trace of plant life between the road and the main square. It wouldn¡¯t be the end of it. He¡¯d still have the rest of Ionar proper, plus the palace grounds to purge, but as far as Simon was concerned, what he was doing today was half the battle. If he succeeded here, everything else was just clean up.


    He¡¯d avoided it for weeks as he laid the groundwork, but that had given him all the time in the world to study the terrible plant. It had been growing for many years, which for a flower was an eternity, so at this point it was the size of an gnarled old oak tree. Instead of foliage, though, was a giant leathery flower that was very nearly blood red compared to the marbled orange and red of most of the other large blossoms.


    He¡¯d already destroyed many that were more than large enough to swallow him whole. Even the largest of those was only half the size of the main plant, though, and today, after what was probably decades of unending growth, he was going to end it.


    Simon started the battle with the words of distant fire. It made the thing scream but did little to affect it. It simply closed its giant flower until the flames had passed. That was something that was largely true for the other large blossoms he¡¯d defeated up until now, but it was still a vital step because that sudden burst of flame was enough to destroy or cripple most of the smaller needle-spitting blossoms.


    Once that was done, he advanced with his freshly sharpened sword. The tendrils attacked him before he was even halfway across the square. The smaller ones moved so slowly that they were only effective against prey that had already been immobilized, but these larger ones were as thick as his thigh and could be wielded like clubs. They were the next hazard that needed to go.


    Simon wove between them, hacking as he went, and over the space of a few minutes, he covered the square in the sticky green sap of his enemy. That was all he needed to do to reach the trunk. At least, that had been all he¡¯d had to do in the past. This time, though, when he got close, the thing launched a cloud of evil-looking, red pollen at him. Simon staggered back, with his eyes and his mouth closed, and it was only when he was far enough away that he felt like the strong sea breeze had cleansed the air that he allowed himself to breathe again.


    ¡°Got yourself a new trick, huh?¡± he said, studying the residue in his hair as much as the strange creature that had released it.


    He felt normal, but he had no idea what that shit did, so he used a word of lesser cure, just in case, then he went back to retrieve his jug of water. This thing was full of surprises. Fortunately, he was too.


    Simon ran at it again, but this time from a slightly different direction, and he was able to dump half of the jug on the things roots before it could turn enough to try to dose him again. Before it succeeded in spraying him though, the thorny mouth at the center of the monstrous blossom started to scream.


    This wasn¡¯t the first time that one of the flowers had made noises at him. He¡¯d heard them growl on several occasions when they thought they were about to get an easy meal. This was the first time that he¡¯d heard such a keening wail, though, and he backed away, fearing another strange sonic attack almost as much as the pollen. Simon backed away once more until his vision cleared, but the third time he advanced, he vowed he wouldn¡¯t stop hacking at it until the thing was finally dead.


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    That¡¯s exactly what he did, and it was messy work. He chopped at it until the tip of his sword broke off, but there was nothing it could do to defend itself anymore. No other part of it was in range to strike at him. Thanks to all his hard work, it was isolated and defenseless.


    Even after he felled it, though, and the thing¡¯s keening screech ceased, the battle still wasn¡¯t done. He still had to dig up the seed itself. If he didn¡¯t, in a day or a week, it would start sprouting all over again. That was just its nature, and by now, he had learned not to underestimate it.


    No matter how hot the lava or how thick the crust of stone it left behind, this awful thing would reach the surface and blossom once more. Even if he drowned it in seawater, he was sure that once it had dried off, it would spring to life all over again. In that sense, it was the most terrible creature he¡¯d ever faced. It was more tenacious than all the zombies he¡¯d ever killed, put together, and if he¡¯d left it lying anywhere besides this desolate place, he was sure it would have eaten half a continent by now.


    That was the only silver lining to this, Simon decided as he poked around in its stump with his sword looking for a dark, fist sized object. No matter how deep he prodded, though, he saw nothing promising.


    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s like a dandelion,¡± he nodded. ¡°You gotta pull those out by the roots, or they always come back.¡±


    ¡°Gervuul Oonbetit,¡± he yelled, starting to feel a little hoarse.


    He¡¯d used a lot of minor words today but didn¡¯t use a lot of major words during his time on Ionar. There was no point. The enemy he faced wasn¡¯t powerful. At this point, it wasn¡¯t even dangerous if you were prepared. It was, however, so numerous as to be nearly endless.


    The stump came out of the ground and was pulled a few feet in the sky by a titanic force that shattered the nearby cobblestones. It came out roots and all, and it was there, at the very bottom of the longest tap root, that he finally found it.


    Simon noted that it was already starting to sprout new life, even as he¡¯d killed its old form. He immediately chopped it off of the now-dead body of its former host with a single quick stroke of his blade before he sheathed it.


    Then, he dumped what water he had left on it to stymie any further growth, then he pulled his coin purse full of gold coins from under his breastplate, and said, ¡°Meiren,¡± heating them so much and so quickly that they became molten almost instantly, and burned right through the thin leather, drizzling down on the cursed thing.


    Simon had to use a word of fire a second time, along with the word of earth, to make sure the thing was fully enclosed and sealed in a metal shell that it could not escape from. It was only when that was done that he retreated to his safe area to rest in the shade for a little bit and decide what to do next.


    He figured it would still take months more to kill everything else, even with the heart cut out of this monster, but over the next hour, every vine stopped twitching, and every bit of foliage began to change colors. First, it faded to yellows and browns, and then, even before the sun started to dip below the horizon, almost all of them were black.


    He was overjoyed but unwilling to be fooled. He wasted no daylight looking for evidence that somewhere, some part of this plant continued to thrive. Simon finally made his way down from the ruins well after nightfall, after he¡¯d checked to make sure every single vine and tendril really was wilting.


    He was exhausted after what he¡¯d accomplished, but not so exhausted that he hadn¡¯t used a few words of distant fire to create a fireworks display to celebrate the event. Even if no one else had seen it, he decided that wasting six months of his life to mark his triumph was more than worth it.


    Once he reached the beach, he looked at the golden orb he held in his hand. Then he started walking out to the jetty to finish this. There were a lot of places he could put this gleaming evil seed. He could take it with him. He could leave it on the cliff, but in the end, given its weakness for salt water he decided the safest place for this thing to end up was the sea.


    After all, no matter where he buried it, once this thing¡¯s container got damaged, it would grow again. He was pretty sure that¡¯s what had happened in the sewers. Someone had died trying to steal it or possess it or something, and eventually, it had grown up and consumed the city. If he had tools, he would have built a salt-filled time capsule and buried it in the deepest part of the ocean. He didn¡¯t, though.


    Instead, he used the word of earth three times. Twice to turn two large rocks into hemispherical shells to contain his golden artifact, and then, one more time, to meld them into a stone egg that he hoped would protect its precious cargo for thousands of years. Then, once that was done, he stood on the farthest point of the ancient stone jetty and launched it with a word of force hundreds of yards out into the water where no one would ever find it again.


    Even after that victory, though, he sat on the beach for several days wondering how much this one thing had already changed history. How many ships didn¡¯t stop here that would have? How many people that were supposed to never meet never did? Other than curing the zombie outbreak, this was probably the biggest single thing he¡¯d done to alter the flow of the world events since he started, and it had been on accident.


    There was no way to fix it now, of course. He would have to get on with his adventure eventually. Still, for a couple nights, he basked in that wonderful feeling of completion and wondered if there was any way to truly fix what it was he¡¯d done.

 Ch. 121 - The Long Way

    With only his mirror, half a sword, a particularly ragged bedroll, some salt-encrusted armor, a small piece of flint, eight silver coins in a canvas pouch, his trusty fishing spear and a pair of boots that weren¡¯t going to last much longer, left to his name, Simon finally left that familiar beach and started walking east along the coast. These lands were not completely wild, and he was sure he would find villages along the way.


    It only took four days to find his first fishing village, and two more to find his second. It even took less than a week to find his first bandits, though he seemed to have little enough worth stealing, and they left him alone as he walked past, looking more than a little like a crazy old hermit.


    It was a pity, too. A couple of those toughs had nice swords, and Simon would have had no compunction stealing one of them from their corpses. He continued his journey in near silence, breaking it only to hail travelers going the other direction and ask them for news from up ahead.


    Well, that and hunting. Thanks to the deprivations of the weather, Simon no longer had a bow, but he was also completely sick of fish. So, when he saw a plump hare feasting on grasses not so far from him. Simon used the lesser word of force to turn a pebble into a sling bullet and gave it the force his arm never could. It was the easiest choice in the world.


    After all, he¡¯d much rather give up a week of his life for something to eat that wasn¡¯t from the sea at this point. That would have been true even if he wasn¡¯t going to get it back when he died.


    That night, he feasted on charred, greasy meat for the first time in months, and he lay there in the scraps of his bedroll feeling blessed. ¡°How can I be this happy with this little?¡± he asked himself.


    He didn¡¯t try to answer his own question. He just appreciated it.


    It wasn¡¯t until he reached the first town of any size in Fia, almost a hundred miles away from where he''d started at Ionar. It was there he learned that he had over a hundred fifty miles to go to reach Abrese, but he wasn¡¯t in a hurry. Why wasn¡¯t he? Because the portal he needed was almost certainly gone by now, and even if he managed to track down the Sea Seraph to whatever port she was currently in, he doubted that the portal would still work after all this time.


    No, I¡¯m probably trapped here for a long time, he decided, for better or worse.


    Still, that certainty was no reason to mope about it. He was sure he could get up to some fine adventures here on the coast. Maybe he¡¯d even take up sailing for fun. He was a strong swimmer now, and other than a bit malnourished, he was in excellent shape. He could do about anything he wanted.


    And tonight, what he wanted more than anything was a hot bath. So, he traded away one of his precious silver coins for a handful of coppers, a soft bed, a warm meal, and a hot bath. He even vowed to get a shave tomorrow when the barber was finally open. Once he was clean and fed, he started to spend those coppers one at a time for another delicacy he¡¯d dearly missed: warm beer.


    After two large tankards, he settled into a warm haze of contentment and listened more than he talked to the other travelers that were there that night. He heard that the plague in Abrese was largely resolved, but he¡¯d already expected that to be the case. These things didn¡¯t last forever. More interestingly, though, was the news about Ionar.


    ¡°I heard someone finally slew that wretched, evil plant monstrosity,¡± an older trader who¡¯d come from the west said. ¡°Of course, I ain¡¯t seen it with my own eyes yet, but I want to believe it¡¯s so.¡±


    ¡°It will never happen,¡± another said dismissively. ¡°Mount Ionis could rain fire across the whole area day and night all over again, and those cursed orange blossoms would still reappear. If you ask me, it¡¯s only a matter of time before they start heading this way.¡±


    The two bickered about it, and Simon was tempted to tell them the truth, but he decided against it. Not only did he not need the fame, but they wouldn¡¯t have believed him anyway. At this moment, he looked more like a crackpot than a hero. Instead, he just listened and only chimed in when topics like goblins or centaurs came up because it wasn¡¯t so far-fetched that he¡¯d actually know something about them.


    That night, after winning enough coppers at dice to pay for his drinks and his meal, Simon went to bed feeling blessed. He¡¯d made the world a better place, and even though he¡¯d fucked up big time by opening that golden container, it had all turned out for the best.


    After the shave, he felt like a new man. It took another week to find a larger town further inland, and from there, he traded his services as a veteran warrior guarding the caravan for steady meals and a new bow. It wasn¡¯t the best quality, but it shot straight enough for him to take out a bandit without magic when they were finally attacked a few nights later, and that was all he could ask for.


    Stolen story; please report.


    The rest of the nights, he stood quiet watches and played dice around the campfire while he traded stories with men he doubted he¡¯d ever meet again. Despite the poor quality of the food, though, it wasn¡¯t so bad. After all, he thought to himself, at least it¡¯s not fish.


    That night was the only danger he faced before he arrived, and even though he was invited to stay on for the next leg of their trip with a better share, he decided against it, and thanked his comrades for watching his back before heading deeper into Abrese. There, he didn¡¯t work as a guard, but as a healer.


    The plague still lingered here, and many of them bore the ugly scars of a survivor. Somehow, though, despite that, life was returning to normal. Most citizens still wore masks and veils as if that would somehow ward away the foul vapors that caused the disease a second time, but he wasn¡¯t about to explain the idea of acquired immunity to them.


    For his part, Simon wasn¡¯t sure exactly what was causing the sickness. It didn¡¯t look like flea bites like last time, but he wasn¡¯t exactly an expert. He¡¯d never gone to medical school or anything.


    Still, he cured enough difficult cases with reasonable advice about nutrition and sunlight, along with a few whispered words of power that people started to treat him as if he were a real healer. He only used that attention to study the symptoms, and he spent a few days looking over the worst cases.


    Those he didn¡¯t really try to save, but it did help him to understand the course that it took. Over the next several months, he did what he could to save lives and bring this suffering to an end. He was in the process of working with a few of the other doctors to try to locate the source, by documenting the cases on a map of the city when he found out that many of the ships were still sunk in the harbor.


    ¡°What if that is where the disease is coming from?¡± the learned Doctor Fallster asked when they were reviewing a cluster of cases near the waterfront. ¡°What if it still leaks from the hold of a submerged ship like poison? How will we cure that?¡±


    Simon might have explained to them that such a thing was extremely unlikely, but instead, he wondered if the Sea Seraph might be down there and, if it was, the portal to the next level might be functional.


    Until that moment, he¡¯d thought that opportunity was lost to him, but now it ate at him, even when he lay in bed at night. These people needed him, but really, how much did he owe them? In his next run, he would prevent this evil and save all their lives. As it was, he would run out of years in his own life before he ran out of people to save.


    He stayed conflicted about that for several days, and he had a particularly terrible idea when he realized it was time to leave. Somewhere in the back of his mind, that thirst for the sweet life force still lingered, even after all these months. It was there even when he healed the sick in his makeshift hospital. The stray thought that he could steal the life of the criminals or the dying and use it to heal those that were worth saving followed him everywhere.


    That was too much power in his hands, and he knew that as noble as his aims might be, he¡¯d end up as a junkie or worse. So, with only a little gray in his hair, he resolved to leave before it was too late. So, he stripped down to nothing but his under clothes and his knife and took to diving in the harbor every day looking for the answer to that burning question.


    At first, his search was slow. It took several days of diving in those murky waters before he found the right ship. Apparently, the city had endured at least as much chaos as it had disease because, ultimately, the pier he sought had been burned to the water line.


    As a result, he dived the wrecks of a dozen ships that weren¡¯t even close to where he needed to be before he found the Sea Seraph. When he finally located her, she was lying on her side, half drowned in silt.


    Simon had no word for air, though he dearly wished he did. So, instead, he rested for half an hour before he dove as deep as he could to see if the portal in the captain¡¯s quarters might still be in place, somehow, against all the odds. Then, refreshing his word of minor light, he took a deep breath and dove deep, kicking as hard as he could to get twenty yards beneath the waves before he felt the nagging need to breathe force him to return to the surface.


    This time, well rested as he was, it was almost easy, and he quickly reached the captain¡¯s cabin in the stern castle. The door was shut, and he couldn¡¯t open it, so he swam around to the back and came in through the broken window.


    He was starting to run low on air, but he wasn¡¯t worried yet, and his light was still bright enough, so he looked around for any clues about what might have happened in all this. All he found, though, was the captain¡¯s skeleton pinned to the wall by the same desk that Simon had seen the man slumped over the last time he was here. The skeleton had been picked nearly clean, but Simon saw a coin pouch on the ground that was not so far away, so he scooped it up.


    He was free-diving with nothing but his small clothes and a knife, after all. If he got through this portal, he¡¯d need funds to buy new gear in Crowvar or somewhere similar.


    With Simon¡¯s air starting to run low, he hurried to the door, and tried it from this side. It was still stuck, which was something he could have fixed in an instant with a word of force. He didn¡¯t have one of those right now, though. So instead he braced himself against one of the roof beams and pushed with all his might.


    I¡¯m not fucking drowning again, Simon thought to himself as he stretched and forced the strong muscles of his legs to give everything they had against the stubborn, waterlogged wood. For a second, he feared it wouldn¡¯t be enough, but then, he felt it budge just the smallest bit, and a second later, it gave way entirely.


    Simon worried the portal wouldn¡¯t open after all this time, but it did, and suddenly, he was riding a waterfall out of the ocean and into the darkness of the cavern beyond. It was a vaguely terrifying experience, and he landed on the stone floor gasping for breath and more than a little banged up. Still, he¡¯d survived, somehow.

 Ch. 122 - The Harder They Fall

    As Simon crouched there on his hands and knees, taking in huge lungfuls of air, it took him almost a minute to remember where he was. ¡°The spiders,¡± he whispered to himself.


    No, the spider, he corrected himself. Remembering the giant that loomed in the darkness somewhere above him in the darkness. Suddenly, it all came back to him. The webs on fire, the spiders surrounding him, and the giant spider towering over it all were each a terrifying memory all on their own, but together?


    For a second, he wondered if he should set the place ablaze again, but then he realized he had precious little choice. Last time, no one had noticed him until he¡¯d sliced through his first web on his quest to get to the next doorway. This time, though, he could hear skittering and chittering around him on all sides in the darkness, and worse, he was glowing.


    Between the exceptionally loud way he¡¯d entered this level and the light, it was like he¡¯d painted a bullseye on himself. So, aiming toward the closest sound, he uttered, ¡°Meiren,¡± and sent a long streamer of fire out into the dark.


    That single blast wouldn¡¯t be enough to kill even one of the dog-sized spiders he saw moving toward him, but it was enough to catch all of their very flammable webs on fire. As the monstrous creatures fled the flames, he ran toward them, seeking the relative safety of the known clear area as the fire started to spread throughout the cavern.


    For now, he wasn¡¯t heading to the exit or to anywhere else. He was just staying a moving target, just in case, as chaos unfolded all around him. It was literally insane, he decided, but he couldn¡¯t help but smile to fight the madness.


    He was running through the center of a firestorm, and that firestorm was illuminating a spider stampede of dozens of eight-legged critters, several of which certainly outweighed him. That was just the warm-up act though. As soon as the fire spread far enough, it finally illuminated the two nearest legs of the spider god that towered over everything else that was going on.


    Simon¡¯s light had dimmed enough to be invisible, and the light of the next level was lost in the thousands of tiny temporary flames that raced along the spiderwebs in every direction. The world was on fire now, and that afforded him just enough light to make out some of the larger details. He could see that this was a city, or at least it had been one, long ago. Beyond that, he could see the bottom of the giant spider¡¯s abdomen and thorax, lording over everything.


    It had to be thirty or forty feet tall at least, and though it was possible he might have been able to cut through one of the thing''s massive legs with a battleaxe, there was no way that the dagger he currently had was going to do more than scratch it. That was okay, though, because he had other weapons.


    He quickly ruled out fire because this didn¡¯t seem to be bothering the thing. Next, he considered force, but he knew that it would take a lot of words to chop up something with eight legs. So, eventually, he settled on earth. Why not? It had worked for the ogre, so it should work for the spider, too, right?


    ¡°Gervuul Vosden!¡± he shouted, aiming past the creature to the ceiling that loomed above it as he tried to cause a cave-in.


    Earth, it turned out, was the wrong word. As a result of his magic, there was a terrific crack, and half of the cavern came down on top of the thing, crushing it like a bug. That much, at least, was appropriate, he thought as he ran to the nearest doorway he could and wondered if he would survive long enough to celebrate his victory.


    At least this will clear the level, even if I die, he reassured himself as he stood there enduring the end of the world.


    The sound of falling rocks was deafening, and once the choking dust billowed throughout the cavern, it was enough to smother any lingering flames, plunging him into total darkness.


    He stood there for a long time, controlling his breathing and waiting for the taste and smell of rock dust to decline before he did anything. He wasn¡¯t dead. That was what mattered. He¡¯d survived, and none of his limbs had been crushed, but even if he lit himself up like a Christmas tree, he wouldn¡¯t see anything but dust.


    So he waited, breathing slowly and deeply in the darkness, ignoring the occasional skittering sound of shifting rubble. It was a terrifying hour or so, but it gave him plenty of time to think, and by the end of it, he had a plan.


    ¡°Gervuul Barom!¡± he shouted before coughing slightly at the strain of using two greater words in a row. After that, he stood perfectly still, listening to his voice echo at random through the partially collapsed cave.


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Greater light wasn¡¯t something he used very often, but in this case, it was the right choice. He didn¡¯t go for anything fancy. He just created an orb of white light hanging in the center of the cavern like a tiny sun. He wasn¡¯t sure how long it would last, but at least it wouldn¡¯t draw the eight-eyed survivors right to him.


    Before Simon moved, he simply took in the devastation. The place had been nothing but ruins before he¡¯d done what he¡¯d done, but now it looked like the aftermath of a disaster movie. There was rubble everywhere, and though in places he could see spiders moving around, the cavern as a whole was dominated by the corpse of the giant spider. It was splattered across half the cavern and¡­


    ¡°Damn it,¡± he whispered as he realized where it was that the crushed monster had landed. It was pretty much right on top of the gateway that he needed to go to the next level.


    That meant that this was the end of his run because, by some miracle, even if the magical doorway had survived the impact, he wasn¡¯t digging a mineshaft through spider guts to reach it.


    ¡°Well, it was a good run,¡± he told himself as he reflected. He¡¯d almost certainly solved this level, and though he still hadn¡¯t managed to figure out what was going on with the plague, the plant should be resolved, too.


    That¡¯s what? Four levels this run? He wondered. Not bad.


    Hell, it might even be five, he realized. He had no idea if what he¡¯d done at that terrible party was enough to count it as solved, but he supposed he¡¯d find out next run.


    Against that backdrop, it was hard to beat himself up too much, but he still felt disappointed in himself. This was the first time he¡¯d ever destroyed a portal, and though he didn¡¯t think that would fuck anything up long-term, he still felt like an idiot. If he¡¯d just been more precise with his spell, he could have¡­


    ¡°Precise with an avalanche, huh,¡± he chuckled to himself. ¡°Good luck with that.¡±


    With that thought in mind, Simon climbed out of the little hole he found himself in and started exploring the place. Even the light he¡¯d made wasn¡¯t enough to illuminate the whole cavern, and shadows were everywhere.


    The first thing that he did was go back to where he¡¯d entered the level to find the pools of salt water he''d left behind from his dramatic entrance. Then, after he washed himself in one to remove the thick layer of dust he¡¯d accrued, he froze water from one of the cleaner pools to his knife like a Popsicle. He would have frozen more, but he had nothing to carry it in, and without a water skin, this was his only real chance to get a drink since frozen salt water was very low in salt.


    After that, as his light slowly faded in the distance, he started looking for a way out of there. His movements were slow and careful so as not to become spider bait, but the catastrophe he¡¯d inflicted on them seemed to be enough to make the survivors slink off to their hidey holes and question their life choices.


    After that, time became harder to track. He was pretty sure that his light spell lasted for another six hours, before he had to turn his dagger into a minor word of light so that he could see, and if each of those smaller lights lasted for about two hours, then it took him half a day to find an exit.


    In that time, he discovered a few human bodies, and a lot of goblin corpses that had long since been reduced to yellowed bones and desiccated flesh. Other than the fact that they¡¯d died to spiders and in turn been eaten by them, there wasn¡¯t a lot he could learn.


    Why did humans live underground? Where was this in comparison to the rest of the world? He had no clue, and that was frustrating, but not as frustrating as finding an iron gate part way down the corridor that he¡¯d thought was an exit from spider city. Not only did the thing look very sturdy, but it had long since rusted shut.


    Fortunately, that wasn¡¯t going to be a problem for him. Even though he spent the next few minutes coughing up blood, Simon used his third greater word of the day. This time, it was force, and with a terrible shrieking noise, both sides of the gate were hit by an invisible fist of forces that had to be at least as strong as the semi that had brought him here.


    He cringed at that memory. It didn¡¯t come up often, but when it did, he was embarrassed by it. How could he have ever been so selfish and stupid, he wondered?


    His embarrassment did nothing to protect the doors, though. Both of them caved in, and the right side of the gate was torn entirely off its hinges and sent tumbling end over end down the hall.


    Simon healed his throat with some effort and then produced another small flashlight and started walking down the hall. This one was the dimmest one he¡¯d made so far. That wasn¡¯t because he couldn¡¯t make them stronger. Instead, it was because he was trying to make them last longer, and there seemed to be a definitive relationship between the strength and longevity of the effect when it came to magic.


    At this point, he¡¯d definitely used too much, and even the weakest words of minor light were a strain, but it wasn¡¯t like there was anything he could do. He was lost in apparently endless caverns, and the best he could manage was to not be completely terrified by the idea.


    Simon went to sleep that night in a crevice without any answers, and the day that followed was no better. On the third day, he continued without light because he worried his throat could no longer even take a minor word. That was until he heard the sound of running water.


    Simon stayed there for more than a day, drinking deeply until he couldn¡¯t and giving himself a chance to rest. At that time, he expected a goblin or a spider attack, but this place was a desert. In the end, his only enemies were silence and thirst, and all he could do was keep going and look for a way out.


    He went as far as he could and as long as he could, but after that, he didn¡¯t find water again. Somewhere, exhausted and hungry, Simon finally succumbed to deprivation and passed out in the dark. He didn¡¯t wake up again, at least not in that life.

 Ch. 123 - Routine

    What should I have done differently? That was Simon¡¯s first thought when he felt himself return to life on his lumpy bed in the cabin before he even opened his eyes.


    It had been a great run. In many ways it had been his best run ever, but the ending left him feeling unsatisfied, not to mention that he could feel that he¡¯d become soft and weak all over again.


    During his most recent run, he¡¯d spent the better part of a year in the Pit that time. He¡¯d become strong and capable. By turns he¡¯d been a hero, a hermit, and a healer. He¡¯d almost become a serial killer.


    Now he was just¡­ Simon, which was simply disappointing.


    But before he got to the business of living, and even before he talked to the mirror to record everything before he forgot and became just plain Simon once more, he reflected on whether or not he should have done anything differently, and eventually, even though he¡¯d met such a tragic end, he decided that he¡¯d done everything he could.


    Once that was done, he got up, rekindled the fire in the hearth, and immediately started cooking his sausages while he had a long conversation with the mirror about everything he¡¯d done. Once he¡¯d eaten and told it every last detail about the plague, the shipwreck and spider city, he finally asked, ¡°Show me which levels are currently accessible.¡±


    ¡®Level 1 - Rats in the root cellar


    Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt


    Level 6 - Zombies in an inn


    Level 10 - Fire elementals in Ionar


    Level 13 - A demon in a church


    Level 23 - The Sea Seraph


    Level 25 - Black swarmer on a farm


    Level 27 - Centaurs near Crowvar


    Level 28 - Poisoned Oasis


    Level 29 - Cultists in a village


    Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains¡¯


    ¡°So, 20 levels down, wait, I thought it was 19?¡± he said to himself, as he started counting the levels off on his fingers.


    ¡°Ohhhhhh,¡± he said finally, ¡°I forgot the trap level. I guess I¡¯m broke now.¡± He would miss that easy source of gold, but he would not miss the bats, not even a little bit.


    ¡°6 levels, out of 20¡­ so of all the levels I¡¯ve completed, I did like a third of those on this run?¡± he said, chatting with himself. The mirror started to answer the question, but Simon ignored it. ¡°That¡¯s fan-fucking-tastic. So, 20 down, 79 levels to go.¡±


    He nodded at that as he looked down at himself. ¡°79 levels to the bottom of the pit, and 79 pounds to lose. We could make this a reality show, it would need a catchier title, though.¡± Simon sighed with the hint of a smile still on his face. ¡°Okay, maybe not 79. That¡¯s a little much.¡±


    After that, he got up and got moving. First, he decided to go get fresh water from the river to save the wine. Then, instead of going fishing because he was sick to death of eating fish, he went to chop wood so that he could start building up at least a little stamina while he tried to decide what to do next.


    The most obvious choices were dealing with level 4 and level 6. At this point he was almost completely sure that if he took off the skeleton knight¡¯s breastplate he¡¯d find that strange obsidian heart, and while he¡¯d study it of course, he wasn¡¯t sure he wanted to destroy it just yet because when it came time to try his hand at that fire elemental again, he was pretty sure he was going to want that icy sword.


    ¡°Even if it is bringing a sword to a bazooka fight,¡± he grunted as he brought the axe down again, hard.


    Of course, the question answered itself. If he wasn¡¯t going to take out the skeleton knight level just yet, then he was going to be headed to Schwarzenbruck again, whether he liked it or not.


    ¡°I mean, I could try to finally figure out what the deal is with level 2 and the rats, or try to hike out of here again,¡± he said to himself as he finally took a rest break in the shade of a nearby tree. ¡°Or maybe I could just wait around here and see who trashes the place before level 2 happens.¡±


    Waiting around here forever wasn¡¯t really an option as far as he was concerned because, eventually, he was going to run out of food. He also didn''t really like the idea of going on a hike for no reason and trying to find civilization from here because even after he found it, he¡¯d still have to hike all the way back.


    ¡°At least it would get me in shape,¡± he said, trying to look on the bright side.


    In the end, his thoughts drifted back to level 2. What could the purpose of that be? To kill the rats? He¡¯d done that. To take the food with him? He¡¯d done that, too.


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    A frequently occurring theme in the pit was disease, and rats were pretty tied in to that, generally. Could they be diseased somehow?


    He was no expert, but he knew that they could have fleas that transmitted nasty stuff like the bubonic plague, and they could also bite and give you rabies, but weren¡¯t there a couple diseases that were spread by inhaling their shit, or was that cats? He couldn¡¯t remember, but afterward, he decided that he should probably just burn the whole thing down, just to be safe.


    ¡°Not the cabin, though,¡± he corrected himself. ¡°The goblins probably do that eventually, and they did it once with me in it, so that¡¯s not enough. I would have to fill the basement with fire without burning myself too badly in the process.¡±


    That was doable, though, wasn¡¯t it? Especially if he tossed some firewood down there beforehand. Maybe it wasn¡¯t even their shit, he decided after he got up and started cutting wood again. Maybe it was their little rat babies in their little rat nest. He had no idea. He just knew that he wanted to complete it so that he could keep moving forward.


    At this point, as far as he was concerned, every level left uncompleted was one more chance for the Goddess¡¯s plan and, by extension, the Goddess herself to fuck with him. Didn¡¯t kill the rats on level two? Sorry, all the plague levels have changed. Do it again. Skeletons still alive? Well, then, I guess you have to fight the Peloponnesian war all over again.


    ¡°What the hell even is a Peloponnesian,¡± he asked himself. He had no answers, though. It was just a funny word he¡¯d learned in high school at this point, and high school was a distant memory after everything he¡¯d been through.


    Simon spent the rest of his daylight sweating and working, though even he knew he was mostly just looking for anything to do that didn¡¯t involve thinking about meeting with Freya again. In principle, he was okay with the idea, but in reality, he was more than a little concerned about what would happen to his mental state if he saw her hanging around with new friends or, worse, a new man.


    So, after all that was done, he took a mercifully quick dip in the cold stream, and then he went back to his cabin and barred the door for the night to avoid any unexpected guests. Once that was done he sat down with his favorite least favorite meal of bread, cheese, and wine and looked to the mirror.


    ¡°Alright, mirror, let''s see my character sheet,¡± he said with a mouthful of bread. ¡°Let¡¯s see what damage I did to myself this run.¡±


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 31


    Deaths: 39


    Experience Points: -912,358


    Skills: Agriculture [Below Average], Archery [Average], Armor (light) [Great], Armor (heavy) [Below Average], Armor (medium) [Average], Athletics [Average], Baking [Poor], Cook [Above Average], Craft [Average], Deception [Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Above Average], Healing [Above Average], Investigate [Good], Maces [Average], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Above Average], Spears [Average], Spell Casting [Good], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Above Average], and Swords [Great].


    Words of Power: Gervuul (greater) Meiren (fire) Aufvarum (minor) Hyakk (healing) Vrazig (lightning) Dnarth (distant) Oonbetit (force) Zyvon (transfer) Gelthic (ice) Karesh (protection) Uuvellum (boundary) Barom (light) Delzam (cure)¡¯


    His character sheet appeared on the screen in small glowing blue letters like always, and he studied them for several minutes before he said anything else. He¡¯d definitely taken a big bite out of his negative experience points last run.


    He couldn¡¯t recall the previous number, but it had to be at least thirty or forty thousand. So he just needed like 30 more runs like that, and he¡¯d be back in the positives.


    The thing was, he wasn¡¯t certain that he¡¯d still be here in thirty more runs. Even if he just cleared three levels at a shot going forward, he¡¯d be done before then.


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t that be ironic,¡± he said to himself. ¡°I beat the pit, but I don¡¯t have the experience to become a human again, so she makes me a damn Koala anyway.¡±


    He laughed at that, and made a note that he should probably take things a little slower and spend more time helping people so he could get his experience situation handled in the near future. Would that work? Probably. He probably could have solved the problem by just spending the rest of his life healing people in Abrese.


    He wasn¡¯t sure if he would have enjoyed that or not, ultimately, but there was no denying it would have been a good deed and would have done wonder¡¯s for his experience or karma or whatever it was. As he laid back on his bed and folded his arms under his head, he said quietly to himself, ¡°Maybe I should just, settle down somewhere for a while. You know, kill a king, rule a kingdom marry a nice princess, whatever.¡±


    He laughed at that, of course, but he probably could have found some noble¡¯s daughter to marry after he¡¯d ended the ghosts plaguing Darndelle. There was a good reason he didn¡¯t, though. Once he put down roots, it would be a lot harder to keep going, and what could be sadder than living the same life over and over again, trying to reclaim what he¡¯d lost?


    No, he was going to have to find some way to spend some downtime between levels without proposing to the first girl who looked at him. He wasn¡¯t sure he could cope with the idea of running around the world on the lookout for his kids and grandkids. That could get weird pretty quick, and there was no telling how just that one detail could screw up future levels.


    Those were the thoughts that Simon fell asleep to, but he found no answers, not even in his dreams.

 Ch. 124 - Side Quests

    The next morning, Simon started to get ready for his trip into the pit, but as he cinched up his armor, he changed his mind and decided that there was no way he could let Freya see him like this. It was exactly the same feeling he¡¯d had when he¡¯d decided not to go to his 10-year class reunion a couple of years, well¡­ a couple dozen lifetimes ago now.


    Then, it had been more about having nothing to show for himself, but now it was simply because he didn¡¯t like the look of himself in the mirror. ¡°This is exactly how she¡¯s always seen you, Simon,¡± he told himself as he stood there, bulging out of his armor in unsightly places. ¡°That¡¯s not important. It¡¯s not like you¡¯re going to hook up with her or anything.¡±


    The words were true. He was, in fact, not going to hook up with her or anything. Honestly, he wasn¡¯t even sure if he could, even if she¡¯d been interested in him. Because she¡¯s not my Freya.


    He sighed, conflicted about what to do next. Some part of him wanted to hike into the woods, go climb a mountain, and wrestle with a bear or something, while the rest of him just told himself to get over it and start this run already. He knew from very recent experience that living a meager life off the land for half a year would be enough to transform him from more than a little overweight to dangerously underweight, so if he just did that for two or three months, he¡¯d probably reach peak Simon.


    At this point, he really didn¡¯t mind when he died and lost his gold or his weapons. Even his beloved backpack was replaceable, but being forced back into the physique? It was definitely the worst part of the experience and, ironically, the biggest motivator to avoid needless deaths. After a few weeks or months of saving people and killing monsters, he started to feel like a hero, but until then, when he was like this, it just felt like he was faking it again.


    The mood persisted. So, Simon went outside and hacked down enough tall grass to bundle together into something resembling an archery target so he could practice because he was definitely slipping where arrows were concerned. It wasn¡¯t hard. It was like thatching a roof; they didn¡¯t need to hold back the rain. He just needed to weave thick sections together so that he could stop an arrow.


    He could have just shot them at a tree of course, but there would be no way to get those arrows back. Since this would be his first run in a long time without a ready source of coin, he imagined he¡¯d be hunting more than usual, which meant saving and reusing arrows where he could.


    He loosed arrow after arrow at the target for the next few hours, doing pretty good and only losing a couple to the tall grass while he contemplated everything. I can¡¯t complete the pit unless I finish the early levels so that they don¡¯t screw the later levels up and reset them, but I can¡¯t get much in the way of supplies unless I keep the early levels right where they are. I guess I finally unlocked hard mode.


    He laughed at that, but truthfully, he still didn¡¯t understand why anyone hadn¡¯t completed the pit by now. It was awful and confusing but not that hard. He¡¯d been a complete idiot for the longest time and managed to complete the first couple of floors by accident. Now that he was methodically trying to understand and finish them, they were dropping like flies.


    ¡°What if there¡¯s something too complicated for me to figure out, though? It¡¯s not like she gives me any instructions,¡± he asked himself as he let his last arrow fly and then went to retrieve them.


    That was true. Some levels were hard physically, like the volcano level. Being expected to beat a giant fire elemental on its own turf was a little challenging, as he already knew. Others, though, like the Sea Seraph, were harder in a different way. He simply didn¡¯t know what he was supposed to do to stop the plague? Did she just want him to sink the ship? Because that wasn¡¯t going to happen.


    He wandered in circles the rest of the day as he wrestled with those thoughts, and it was only when he was starting to get hungry in the evening that he finally decided to go to Schwarzenbruck to get a bite. Paying was another matter entirely, but he was sure he could find something with a little gold on it in the skeleton knight¡¯s crypt.


    Simon took the time to toss down a dozen pieces of firewood before he descended into the basement. That made the giant rats a little harder to fight, and one of the little bastards managed to bite him for the first time in who knew how long, but in the end, they were all still going to die, and he was going to burn their nest down to see if that did the trick.


    Once the fire was going good, and he had a few potatoes tucked in his sack in case he didn¡¯t find a way to get something better, he left the burning room behind and descended into the skeleton crypt.


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    There, he beat the undead warriors effortlessly. Out of shape or not, nothing that moved this slowly could compete with him anymore, and he felt vaguely embarrassed that this knight had the highest kill count on him of any monster in the place. ¡°I guess that makes you my nemesis,¡± Simon grunted. ¡°Not for long, though. Another level or two, and I¡¯ll crush that ugly black heart in your chest, and you and your friends will never come back to life again!¡±


    With his final word, he beheaded the knight, sending its skull clattering away to the far side of the room. When that was done, Simon sat down on the stone sarcophagus for a break, and once he¡¯d caught his breath, he moved to the knight''s corpse and took off the breastplate one rotting leather strap at a time.


    There, glimmering darkly in its ribcage, was what he¡¯d been looking for. It was the source of whatever magic powered the undead. He probably could have sat there for days and studied it, but he was hungry and at the moment he didn¡¯t have a mirror. So, instead he put the chest plate back where he found it, and vowed to look again next time when he was feeling more focused.


    Once that mystery was solved, he started ransacking the room for precious metals. He found a few religious amulets that looked to be made of silver and one gold ring. He used a word of earth to transform them into something resembling coins, and then, hoping that would be enough, he filled his purse, grabbed the key, and opened the gate. Then, with a deep breath, he returned to the inn and shut the door behind him.


    Inside, there were once again no zombies. This time, he didn¡¯t see Freya either, which he counted as a good thing. So, he went up to the innkeeper and bought himself a meal and room for the night. The man looked at his coin-shaped silver skeptically and even bit it before he took it as payment. When he gave Simon his change, he could see that the man had short-changed him by several coppers, but considering it was basically counterfeit, he didn¡¯t complain. He¡¯d get some real cash soon enough, even if he had to go shake down bandits for their drinking money.


    Sitting in the common room long enough to loosen up, he eventually learned plenty. For starters, he learned that the situation was basically identical to last time, which was good news for him. The city was fine; there were no necromancers or zombies to speak of, but trade from across the black bridge had ground to a halt, and no one could say why, so the mercenaries he¡¯d seen Freya in the company of last time were going to check it out.


    They apparently went by the name The Butcher¡¯s Bill, which struck him as more than a little ostentatious, but he didn¡¯t complain about it. Why would he, he was going to have to sign up with them. It took him a few hours and a few drinks to end up at a table with a couple of them, and though they seemed more than a little skeptical at his stories of goblin and centaur slaying, they laughed along with his jokes.


    ¡°No offenssse Sssimon,¡± an older man named Garth slurred, ¡°But ye ssseem a little soft to have done much killing.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m hard enough to take any man here,¡± he said with a smile. ¡°Maybe any two if I wasn¡¯t pullin¡¯ my punchesss enough to avoid hurting anyone.¡± Simon was slurring his words a touch too, though he¡¯d been playing up his drunkenness for just this moment, and could easily dismiss it with a whispered word if he needed to.


    ¡°Big words from a fat man,¡± Hodge laughed.


    ¡°Well, itss only braggin¡¯ if ya can¡¯t back ''em up,¡± Simon laughed, slapping Garth on the back.


    Everyone laughed, but he could see a couple of the men felt a little insulted at the boast. That was good. Simon just hoped they felt insulted enough. Sadly, they didn''t. Garth, probably thinking he was looking out for Simon tried to change the topic to their upcoming journey north, but Simon was determined not to let it go.


    Instead, he fished out his single, thin, almost gold coin and said, ¡°I¡¯d wager this against any man that thinks they can take me.¡±


    That did it. Suddenly, there were bets and discussions, and Hodge decided that he was going to be the one to beat some humility into Simon. He wasn¡¯t a bad choice since he was a head taller and a few inches broader, but Simon wasn¡¯t concerned. Garth again tried to intervene as they moved out into the stable yard and insisted they find wooden weapons or stick to fists, but neither man was interested in that.


    ¡°It¡¯s hard to tessst real ssstrength without sssteel..¡± Simon said, making the other men laugh. They thought he was a fool who was about to pay for the privilege of getting beaten down, and maybe once upon a time, he would have been, but between Hodge¡¯s drunkenness and his overconfidence, Simon wasn¡¯t the least bit concerned.


    The fight that followed was furious and brief. Simon attacked wildly a few times after he cured his drunkenness to seem entirely off balance, and then when his opponent pressed that advantage, he suddenly found that Simon was no longer there. He hadn¡¯t parried. He¡¯d seen the well telegraphed blow coming and side stepped it.


    Suddenly he wasn¡¯t in front of Hodge, he was beside him, and he was coming around hard with the flat of his blade at the back of the man¡¯s skull. Given that Hodge was already delivering a strong blow, the momentum was on Simon¡¯s side, and that was enough to send the other man tumbling to the ground.


    After that, all that was left to do was whirl around and place his boot on his fallen opponent''s ass and deliver a mocking salute with his sword to the other assembled men that had been watching the fight. It was clear by their shocked expressions that they¡¯d expected another outcome but this and that was enough to make him smile.


    ¡°If you need one more for your trip up north, you know who to call,¡± he said, stooping over and helping Hodge to his feet. The man looked annoyed, but not murderously so, and Simon didn¡¯t think he¡¯d have to watch his back while he slept that night. Still, just to be on the safe side, he wedged his dagger into the door jamb as he always did after he got to his room and undressed, wondering whether or not his plan had worked.

 Ch. 125 - The Way North

    That morning, he went down to breakfast early to make sure he didn¡¯t miss an opportunity, so he was still working his way through a mug of watered-down beer and a plate of biscuits and sausages half drowned in a peppered gravy when the other mercenaries came down. The gossip about last night started almost immediately, though Simon pretended to ignore it.


    It sounded like a couple of guys were working themselves up to challenging ¡®that fatass¡¯ to a rematch because the honor of the Butcher¡¯s Bill was at stake. That only came to a stop when a man sat down next to Simon and introduced himself as Kell. Simon recognized him; he should have, of course. He¡¯d seen the man with Freya last time he was here.


    ¡°I heard you kicked Hodge¡¯s ass last night,¡± Kell said, pretending to sound impressed. ¡°Quick fight, too. Not a lot of people can say that. What¡¯s your secret?¡±


    The leader of the mercenary company was a tall, handsome sort, and Simon could see the blonde man¡¯s natural charisma from the first moment. There was a sense that he¡¯d seen him somewhere before, but at this point, Simon got that all the time, especially in Schwarzenbruck, so he ignored it.


    ¡°Goblins mostly,¡± Simon nodded. ¡°I¡¯ve cashed in plenty of ears over the years, and they¡¯re quick little bastards.¡±


    ¡°They are,¡± Kell agreed. ¡°Got any tips on beastmen? Near as we can figure, that¡¯s what we¡¯re up against for our next little stretch.¡±


    ¡°I heard about that,¡± Simon nodded. ¡°Why do you think it¡¯s beastmen and not something bigger, like an ogre?¡±


    ¡°Nah, ain¡¯t been nothing that big in the northern lands in an age,¡± Kell said with a smirk. ¡°It¡¯s just a few farmholds and a lonely road until the hills give way to the mountains. Nothing more scenic than the occasional swamp, and if we get as far as the Bahamed Pass and the fort up there, well, then it''s a northern Kingdoms¡¯ problem, and we can let those desert dwellers deal with it. King Wilden¡¯s charter only covers to the edge of Brin, so if we go that far and find out it''s a civil war or something, well - we get paid just for showing up. Interested?¡±


    Simon doubted very much that it was something as simple as a few beast men sacking trade caravans. In fact, he was almost certain it was zombie playing out, just like before, but on a slightly different timeline, and in a slightly different way.


    He didn¡¯t say any of that, though, because it would sound crazy. Instead he just said, ¡°Well, I¡¯ve rooted out a couple den¡¯s of gnolls. Can¡¯t be much different than that. You just gotta pick your ground and bait ''em, and they fall easy enough.¡±


    ¡°Good to hear!¡± Kell said, shaking his hand.


    They chatted a while longer and agreed on a 3% stake, which was pretty good since the man had tried to talk him into a 1% cut on account of him being so new. Fortunately, for all his talk about how easy this was going to be, some part of Kell seemed to think they didn¡¯t have enough people for whatever it was they were up against.


    Still, Simon was pretty good about the whole thing until Freya came down and kissed the man on the cheek. He introduced her as Frey and described her as the most vicious shield maiden you ever did see, but Simon wasn¡¯t really listening. Instead, he was shaking her hand with wooden fingers while he willed his expression into something approaching normalcy.


    He avoided her after that and fell into line somewhere near the rear with Hodges while they crossed the wide stone bridge and started heading north. Simon had gone this way before once, so he mostly knew the way. Still, it took several days to reach the place he thought they¡¯d find trouble. There, at least, he wasn¡¯t disappointed.


    In their slow trip north, he chatted with the guys and did a little sparing. He even taught some of the guys a few things and started the long, slow process of making new friends, one joke at a time. All that came to an end when they found signs of a fight, and damaged buildings.


    They all stopped to investigate the first burned-out farmstead. It showed plenty of damage and blood, but no sign of corpses, which fit Simon¡¯s zombie theory precisely. When tracks were pointing further north, they all agreed that it was the right move to follow them.


    ¡°These don¡¯t look like beastmen to me,¡± Simon said, pointing out the flaw in their assumptions. ¡°Not unless they¡¯ve learned to wear boots.¡±


    Boots on a beastmen was literally impossible, of course, and that gave everyone pause. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s bandits, then,¡± he ventured. ¡°They don¡¯t usually get this brave, but then this would hardly be the first time that we¡¯ve had to take bandits down a peg, is it?¡±


    The men largely agreed with that, and even though Simon pointed out that the beastmen might take the corpses, but the bandits would only take their valuables, he was largely ignored. Only Garth asked him what he thought it was after they started moving again.


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    ¡°Well, a man wearing boots that doesn¡¯t leave corpses behind¡­¡± Simon said like he was trying to think. ¡°Either we¡¯ve got some deranged cannibals, or maybe something worse than that.¡±


    ¡°Worse than deranged cannibals?¡± Garth laughed. ¡°Like what?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll, there¡¯s lots of things worse than cannibals,¡± Simon shrugged. ¡°I¡¯d rather fight a dozen cannibalistic highwaymen than a single orc. Those things are insanely strong. In this case, though, I was thinking¡­ what if it¡¯s like a warlock? What, however, is killing these people is taking the bodies for some other purpose.¡±


    Garth shuddered at the thought and made the warding sign against evil with his hands as he said, ¡°Well if you think that, why aren¡¯t you telling the boss. Kell needs to know.¡±


    ¡°He does,¡± Simon agreed, ¡°But he probably doesn¡¯t need the new guy to try showing him up by telling him in front of everyone.¡±


    The man got the hint and nodded sagely. They didn¡¯t speak of it again, but that night, Kell informed everyone that, based on the signs he was seeing, they could be dealing with something more evil than man or beast and that, somehow, the risen dead might be involved in all of this. He took complete credit for the idea, but Simon didn''t mind as long as people were warned about what was coming.


    The stories that night around the campfire were told in hushed tones, and the guards were extra vigilant. That was good, because the first alarm rang out some time after midnight.


    Simon was on his feet immediately, with a sword in hand. His first thought was to use a word of light to illuminate the situation, but he knew that with everyone so on edge, being branded a warlock would make for a bad end. Instead, he ran to the fire, pulled out a burning brand, and tossed it in the direction of the guard who was calling for help, then used the words of minor fire to set the underbrush on fire so that he and everyone else could take in the situation.


    The result painted a grim picture. The group had left behind the flat lands and camped on top of a hill, almost a day¡¯s walk north of the trade road. It was a good, defensible spot, with good sight lines in all directions. That wasn¡¯t enough to deter the mob of at least two or three dozen zombies advancing on them in a wide arc, though.


    There was plenty of room to retreat, theoretically, but Simon didn¡¯t think that they were too terribly outnumbered, and thought it was probably worth the fight. ¡°You take their head¡¯s off!¡± he yelled to the other men struggling to wake up and figure out what the hell was going on. Even as they did, though, he was charging the nearest zombies.


    He¡¯d killed plenty of these bastards and was no longer afraid of them. Honestly, he was happy to put them down. His only regret was that with so many other people present, he couldn¡¯t use words of force to scythe them down like the pests they were. Still, he hadn¡¯t gotten to use his mace much in a long time, and the sickening crunch that each of the zombies made as they fell before him was very satisfying.


    Part of him had worried this was going to be a massacre for these men, but it would seem that aside from Riggs, who¡¯d been the man on watch, everyone else was fine. It turned out that his call of warning had been his last, and moments later, his throat had been ripped out by an almost skeletonized ghoul.


    While the rest of the Butcher¡¯s Bill mourned him and discussed what they should do next, Simon went through the bodies. This was both to make sure that they were really and truly dead, but also to see what he could learn. He recognized a few ancient dead from the barrows, but there were what looked to be bandits, soldiers of Brin, and more than a few farmers. There were even children among the bodies. Those were the ones that weighed on his heart the most.


    ¡°How did you know there would be zombies?¡± he heard Freya ask behind him.


    ¡°Why do you think I know anything about anything?¡± Simon played dumb, not turning around to look at her as he continued to study the corpses because he didn¡¯t trust his expressions where she was involved.


    ¡°Don¡¯t play dumb with me. I heard what Garth told Kell over lunch,¡± she said, sounding more pointed and direct than he ever remembered her being in all their lives together. ¡°He as much as said that you knew there was going to be a warlock and zombies coming up.¡±


    ¡°Know is a strong word,¡± Simon said, finally rising and turning to face her. ¡°Let¡¯s say I had a feeling, and we¡¯re lucky someone listened to it. Otherwise, it could have been a real bad time.¡±


    ¡°It was a bad time for Riggs at least,¡± she said with a sad shake of her head like she was disappointed in him. ¡°Wasn¡¯t there more you could have done?¡±


    ¡°You put together companies like this, and people die,¡± Simon shrugged, ignoring the fact that there was a lot more he could have done. ¡°I had a feeling and shared what I knew. Thanks to that, almost everyone lived. You¡¯re welcome.¡±


    She opened her mouth again, thought better of it, and closed it. It wasn¡¯t until much later after the sun had risen, that Kell got him alone and said, ¡°Well, it looks like we lucked out bringing you along, Simon. Tell me, where do you think all this is going? Do you think there¡¯s an evil wizard somewhere up ahead? ¡±


    Simon could see the suspicion in the man''s eyes. He was looking for someone to blame, and Simon was determined not to be it, more than that, though, that phrase, ¡®evil wizard¡¯ rebounded through his mind giving him a terrible sense of deja vu.


    Then it hit him. Kell was the asshole that had tried to kill him during the run he¡¯d solved this level, and he was the guy that had opened the gate the time that Simon had been stuck as a zombie. For a moment, he was filled with rage, not just because he had to help this loser but also because Freya ended up with him.


    Whoever said life wasn¡¯t fair never met Helades, he thought to himself. If they had, they would have said that life was the opposite of fair.


    Simon didn¡¯t say any of that. Instead, he gestured at the bodies and said, ¡°There¡¯s plenty of clues here to a careful eye. We should study them before we burn them.¡±


    ¡°Burn them?¡± Kell said. ¡°That could take all day.¡±


    ¡°It could,¡± Simon nodded, ¡°But better than this spreading, and having to deal with even more zombies, right?¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± he agreed. ¡°Now tell me what you see.¡±

 Ch. 126 - A Trail of Bodies

    ¡°The story is practically written there, in the corpses of the fallen,¡± Simon told Kell, gesturing widely to the beheaded bodies of the fallen.


    ¡°I mean, yeah, I see that,¡± the younger warrior said, pretending like he had some clue about what it was Simon was talking about. ¡°But it¡¯s not like it''s enough to tell us what¡¯s really going on, is it?¡±


    ¡°I disagree,¡± Simon answered with a shake of his head. ¡°You can see these trappers here are freshest, and then these farmers and traders are at least a couple weeks older. That tells me that it spread to the villages along the main road before circling back into the wilderness, which was a stroke of luck. If they¡¯d kept going south¡ª¡±


    ¡°But what does that have to do with the warriors?¡± Kell asked in frustration. ¡°They¡¯re practically skeletonized. Are you saying those came first?¡±


    ¡°Logically, yes,¡± Simon nodded.


    ¡°But how do ye¡¯ know they weren¡¯t like.. Dug up and reanimated by evil magics?¡± Garth asked, joining their little conversation while everyone else got busy stacking bodies or stacking firewood.


    ¡°I kind of think they were¡­ in a sense,¡± Simon said, trying not to give away too much about his own magical insights. ¡°I mean, I have no idea how this stuff works. I¡¯ve heard the same stories you have, but I know armor, and this stuff is ancient. Look at it. It¡¯s not just rusted through. The designs are all wrong. It¡¯s something that your grandfather¡¯s grandfather might have worn.¡±


    Both men nodded at that, and finally, Kell said, ¡°So it started with them and then spread to the northern villages before going back into the forests? Are you saying this came from the north of the pass, or¡­¡±


    ¡°Nah, not that far north,¡± Garth said with a shake of his head. ¡°The style is all wrong. I¡¯d wager someone dug this up from the old barrow mounds. Maybe it¡¯s not even a warlock. Maybe it¡¯s just treasure hunters who woke up some ancient curse or somesuch.¡±


    ¡°I was thinking something like that too,¡± Simon nodded, glad he hadn¡¯t been forced to lead the horse all the way to water before they¡¯d put the pieces together. The less he seemed to know, the better. He could already feel the way people were looking at him after he ¡®predicted¡¯ zombies instead of beastmen, and they appeared almost like magic.


    Kell quickly took the ball and ran with it. A few minutes after Kell started telling Simon and Garth what to do, he explained the whole situation to everyone else as if he were the one who had figured it out, which was practically ideal.


    ¡°Be sure to keep a careful count!¡± he admonished the men as they started stacking pyres. I¡¯m going to make sure we get paid for every bloated corpse we dispose of when all this is done.¡±


    They spent the rest of the twilight hours until morning dawned, arguing about where they were going next and how far this might have spread. Garth argued, quite logically, that if this had started at the Barrow Mounds, that should have been their next stop, but there was no way of knowing if going to their source would get them all. Simon was pretty sure that getting all of them wasn¡¯t required as far as the Goddess was concerned, but he said nothing.


    After all, the last time he¡¯d cleared this level, he¡¯d only saved Schwarzenbruck. He¡¯d never even gone north. Helades didn¡¯t seem too concerned with saving everyone. She just wanted to save a few very specific people, so history went the way it should. Simon was a bit pickier in that regard, but even he acknowledged that there were going to have to be sacrifices.


    ¡°If trade stopped, then this has spread to at least Bahamed Pass, right?¡± Hodge asked, interrupting his brooding after the final pyre was lit and dawn was shining through the oily black smoke the greenwood was giving off.


    Simon merely shrugged. That was somewhere he¡¯d never been either, but maybe he¡¯d fix that this run and add it to the minimap that he was slowly building in his head.


    The group watched the fires burn from upwind, but they didn¡¯t start traveling again until they¡¯d had a little ceremony for Riggs, and Kell had talked to everyone as a group about what was going on. After that, they continued north.


    That first night, they camped at a farmstead after they cleared out three more zombies. Two days later they found a hunting camp devoid of life, but later that night, the village that they stumbled upon at the edge of the moors made up for it by swarming with zombies.


    Simon spent half the night trying to keep everyone in their motley little crew alive. At times, the fighting was desperate, but even so, he was fairly successful until Garth was bitten by a corpse that hadn¡¯t been completely dismembered. It was then Simon was faced with an ugly choice.


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    He could go down the road of the old wives tale and ¡®heal¡¯ the man with salt and wood ash, but that would get someone killed one day when they tried it, and he wasn¡¯t around to use magic to make a fake cure real. The other option was just to let the man die, though, because his friends were certain to kill him when they learned the truth, as they should.


    Instead, Simon chose the third option and healed the man with a word cure and of lesser healing, making it so that it never even happened. Garth looked at him with shock, but Simon merely shook his head and insisted it wasn¡¯t as bad as the other man had thought. ¡°I¡¯m telling you, your armor stopped it,¡± he said, acting confused. ¡°Lucky thing, too, or you¡¯d be one of these poor bastards here in an hour or two.¡±


    As it turned out, Simon was a lot more comfortable with the personal risk of being murdered for dealing with evil spirits rather than the idea that the things he did might get someone else killed down the line. After all, for him, death was just a not-so-temporary inconvenience, and even the weight gain and the weakness it inflicted on him were easier to deal with than the weight of another death on his conscience.


    It was a good thing, too, because the way that Garth spent half his watch staring at a wound he no longer had and half of it staring at Simon, he was fairly sure that he was going to be murdered before dawn. Simon still found it easier to ignore the man¡¯s accusing gaze than the way that Freya and Kell sat extra cozily next to each other, not so far from the campfire.


    Frey, not Freya, he reminded himself. She¡¯s not my Freya.


    It didn¡¯t help, though, and by the time he could finally go to bed, part of him was praying for Garth to strike him down in his sleep. That didn¡¯t happen, though. Instead, in the morning, the Butcher¡¯s Bill continued on to the Barrows.


    This part of their adventure didn¡¯t look any different than the last time he¡¯d been here. Most of the mounds were still sealed, and it was only the largest one that had been opened. Now that Simon knew what he was looking for, he saw the obvious signs of earth magic there. The stones that had once sealed the door into the depths were partially melted as someone had effortlessly pulled them aside with a greater word. That was enough to make him extra cautious.


    ¡°Be careful,¡± he cautioned everyone as the first men started to descend into the darkness. ¡°A place like this is likely full of traps. Don¡¯t touch anything!¡±


    Kell looked at him strangely for a moment but then echoed his comments. ¡°The new guy is right. Treasure hunting can wait until after we make sure everything looks right, and there¡¯s nothing trying to eat us down there.¡±


    Only half the band descended. The rest set up a cordon outside, just in case. It was unnecessary. Even eight people were overkill as far as Simon was concerned.


    There was nothing down there but a sarcophagus that he was going to lack the privacy to truly explore. He didn¡¯t know how yet, but he knew this was the epicenter of the whole level; even if it wasn¡¯t the part that Helades cared about, it was the thing that he most wanted to understand.


    So, he let the various members wander off into the dank side rooms as he proceeded directly toward the heart of the mound. It was there he found exactly what he expected. There was the sarcophagus, and the mocking paper crown on the only wriggling zombie in the place, along with the evidence of what might have been a ritual circle of some kind. Before he could tease out any more details, though, Kell, Freya, and a couple other guys entered the room behind him.


    ¡°This place gives me the creeps,¡± Freya said as Kell walked past him into the room.


    ¡°Yeah, we should probably just burn it or collapse the entrance and be done with it,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°Something dark and terrible happened here.¡±


    Truthfully, he was hoping they went for burying this place. Then, he could circle back in a few weeks, dig back through it when everything else was done, and finish his research. Simon was fairly sure no one wanted to take the time to dump loads of firewood this deep into the tiny dungeon.


    All of that was ignored by Kell, though, who seemed hell-bent on looking for treasure of some kind to make the whole trip worthwhile. There was certainly enough gold left behind on the corpse in the center to justify the effort, after the thing was killed permanently.


    For a moment, though, Kell ignored that as he got closer and said, ¡°Why is this one still moving when none of the rest are¡­ and what¡¯s this note here¡­¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Someone was obviously here before us but¡­¡± Simon started to say. When the man reached for the folded piece of paper on the zombie¡¯s head he shouted, ¡°Don¡¯t touch that!¡±


    ¡°What? Why?¡± Kell said, looking at Simon in annoyance.


    ¡°There¡¯s magic all over this room; can¡¯t you feel it?¡± Simon said, groping for some answer that might satisfy the man. ¡°I say we cut this thing¡¯s head off and then get out of here before we¡ª¡±


    ¡°And that¡¯s why you aren¡¯t the boss of a mercenary company,¡± Kell sneered. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. I get paid extra to make the hard calls.¡±


    As Kell¡¯s hand reached for the paper, Simon reacted without thinking. ¡°Aufvarum Oonbetit,¡± he whispered, pushing the man back with lesser force before he could do something to break the spell in place and bring down the ceiling on all of them. He knew it was a mistake as he did it, but he simply didn¡¯t have any other options.


    ¡°What in the name of¡­¡± Kell blurted out as he was flung against the far wall.


    ¡°Witchcraft,¡± Freya hissed, drawing her dagger, as Simon slowly backed away toward the door.

 Ch. 127 - Complications

    After that, Everything was a mess. He drew his sword, but only so that he could parry whatever was coming next. His Freya or not, he had no interest in striking her down, even though he was fairly certain he could without too much trouble. He didn¡¯t even want to hurt the other members of the Butcher¡¯s Bill, even though he couldn¡¯t even remember their names just now. He just wanted to get free.


    ¡°You touch that paper, and the whole roof is going to collapse,¡± Simon yelled, ignoring the other accusation and the looks in the eyes of his comrades.


    He didn¡¯t think they were listening to him, but then he didn¡¯t think they¡¯d listen to anything he had to say at this point. Instead, he pulled out his shield and started to retreat, using the broad kite shield to cover most of the corridor as he moved back with quick, certain steps into the gloom.


    ¡°Somebody stop him!¡± one of the men yelled, but Freya was already closing in on him with her knife.


    ¡°He¡¯s a warlock,¡± she yelled. ¡°Simon is a warlock!¡±


    He fended off her attacks with a few casual swipes. They weren¡¯t nearly as much trouble as the other people starting to come out of the side corridors as he moved toward the surface, a step at a time.


    ¡°It¡¯s the gas!¡± Simon yelled, seeking to muddy the waters further. ¡°I told them not to go in there, but now they¡¯re seeing things!¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s this now?¡± Garth asked, coming out of the nearest side passage. ¡°Gas? Warlocks? Maybe we should all put away our weapons and¡ª¡±


    ¡°Kill him,¡± Freya yelled, ¡°before he steals your soul, Garth!¡±


    Despite the pain of hearing his one-time love baying for his death, Simon had to smile bitterly as he appreciated the irony of the moment. Garth was the man most likely to believe that Simon was a warlock, but also the guy in the Butcher¡¯s Bill most likely to take his side.


    Everyone held their breath for a moment as the man took it all in, and then Garth turned to Freya and said, ¡°It seems to me you¡¯re the one that¡¯s acting crazy. So why don¡¯t we put down our weapons and talk this out beneath the open sky? We can¡ª¡±


    As the older man tried to talk some sense into the armed group that was stalking Simon through the corridor and get everyone to calm down, a tremendous thud shook the barrow, and a shockwave of sound and dust traveled up the torch lit corridor to them. Simon knew what had happened immediately, but it only took Freya a few seconds longer before she turned and ran back down into the dark.


    ¡°Kell!¡± she cried out, rushing toward the collapse.


    Part of Simon wanted to try to stop her, but he was pretty sure she would be safe. Kell was almost certainly dead, but the collapse seemed to be restricted to the main chamber rather than the entire burial mound. Besides, he thought sardonically, I¡¯m probably not even going to be able to save myself in all this.


    ¡°Screw it,¡± he said finally, as he turned and ran toward the surface, hoping to use the confusion to outpace the danger.


    And, at least for the first minute, that gambit seemed to pay off. Simon reached the surface while everyone else was trying to figure out what had just happened, and when he got there, he started yelling. ¡°There¡¯s been a collapse! Kell is trapped down there. Get the mules. We need shovels and timber! We¡¯ve got to get him out!¡±


    Everyone set to work immediately, and as soon as they were busy, Simon ran around the far side of the barrow and made himself scarce before rumors of his powers could spread any further. This had been a complete bust, and though he didn¡¯t know if they¡¯d done enough to clear the level at this point, he desperately hoped that they hadn¡¯t because he was going to need to come back here by himself and do all this again.


    Once Simon had enough distance, he used a second barrow mound and then a third to hide his retreat before looping the long way back toward the treeline. He felt a little bad leaving everyone here, but not bad enough to try to salvage the situation.


    ¡°They¡¯re probably better off without that asshole,¡± Simon muttered to himself as he hiked as fast as he could from the image of Freya trying to cut him to ribbons. ¡°Seriously, everything that guy touches turns to shit.¡±


    Simon had run into Kell so many times and watched the man ruin so many levels at this point that part of him wanted to figure out where it was the asshole was born so that he could kill Kell before the guy caused so many problems. He wasn¡¯t so myopic not to realize that his urge to strangle the man in his crib was motivated by the fact that he¡¯d managed to end up with Freya in at least one of his miserable little lives.


    ¡°I am so done with this level for a while,¡± Simon sighed as he continued to make good on his escape attempt. ¡°If Kell wants to turn people into zombies with his short-sighted bullshit, that¡¯s on him.¡±


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    He made it back to Schwarzenbruck in less than a week and saw no zombies on the way there, which was enough to make him think that this level probably was done for. Even that wasn¡¯t enough to make him pause and wait around to see what had happened to Freya. She¡¯d survived the collapse, and that was all that mattered.


    Simon immediately took the exit from the inn to the flaming ruins of Ionar. There were no plants there, which he took as a good sign, even though he was pretty sure there wouldn¡¯t be even if he hadn¡¯t defeated them. He wasn¡¯t a hundred percent certain, but he was pretty sure that the levels didn¡¯t connect that way where failed attempts were involved.


    Still, he didn¡¯t stop to ask questions, at least not until he got to the abandoned throne room and saw the gate of the demonic church. There, he relaxed and took the time to check a few things with a mirror mounted on one wall. The mirror could offer no clarification about the plants, but it was able to confirm that level six was still accessible, which meant that he had not, in fact, completed his time with Freya yet. Simon was unsure how he felt about that but resolved to ignore it the same way he planned to ignore the demon in the next level.


    ¡°Back so soon?¡± the devil asked as he strode through the portal, ¡°You¡¯re making fine progress lately, aren¡¯t you.¡±


    Simon ignored the man and paused only long enough to check a few runes to see if anything had changed before he left through the exit. All in all, he spent less than two minutes at that level, which had to be some kind of record. He simply didn¡¯t have time to deal with that forked tongue bullshit just now.


    Instead, he only calmed down when he finally reached the gently rolling decks of the Sea Seraph and walked out onto the darkened deck to enjoy the night sea air. Those other places were levels he could do nothing about, but here, he was certain he could save these people as long as he didn¡¯t let himself get distracted again.


    So, after giving himself enough time to calm down, Simon spent the rest of his days and nights on the ship doing just that: looking for the source of the plague. Sadly, he had no source of magical detection, which seemed like an obvious power that he would have to discover or create one day, but he saw no way to do so with his current words.


    As this happened for the next few days, he resisted the urge to heal anyone. It would have been a simple thing to do. The refugees on the boat were crawling with coughs and rashes, but eliminating them before they¡¯d resolved into something substantial would do very little to help him on this or future runs. Not that I¡¯ll let anyone die, of course, he told himself, but I need to know who¡¯s the cause of all this suffering once and for all.


    This time, given his more limited funds, he was a little less free with his coins than he had been before and stuck largely to telling stories and trading gossip instead of winning and losing coppers at the dice games that sprung up every night. He learned nothing new like that, but in a way, it was nice to see how little things changed. Sometimes, the parts of his journey that changed the least were the most reassuring, and he often found those moments among the soldiers or the sailors of the realm that were just trying to get by.


    Almost a week into their voyage, they reached Ionar as always and stopped to take on water. Even though Simon was fairly certain he wouldn¡¯t see those terrible plants again, it was still a relief to see those desolate cliffs when they arrived.


    Truthfully, he didn¡¯t know how it all worked. Some part of him felt like the plats would have been gone anyway, even if he hadn¡¯t so ruthlessly chopped them up. After all, the levels he didn¡¯t clear reset to some sort of default state. That didn¡¯t quite make sense to him either, though. If he took the seed from one level, it had to end up in another, didn¡¯t it?


    So where is it now? He wondered to himself. He had no answers, though.


    This time, he didn¡¯t even try to leave the boat. It felt like he¡¯d spent half a lifetime here, marching up and down the cliff face in an effort to purge every last tendril and flower, and he wasn¡¯t eager to repeat the experience.


    The next time I make that hike, he told himself as he watched those broken cliffs retreat into the distance, it will be because I¡¯ve saved that cursed city, and there will be something worth seeing from up there.


    It was three days out from that city that he finally found the cause, or at least what he was almost certain was the cause of all this suffering. It turned out the reason that he¡¯d never found it before was because it wasn¡¯t on the ship all along like he¡¯d presumed. Instead, late one evening, as the sun was beginning to set, the lookout called out a ship in distress off the port beam.


    Simon didn¡¯t have to get particularly close to see that they were in rough shape. Their sails were ragged, and their people were gaunt. Some callous part of Simon told himself that he should just discreetly sink the ship from a distance. He was fairly certain he could do that with a word of force.


    It wouldn¡¯t take much to hole the ship and send it below. He wouldn¡¯t be able to live with himself if he did that, though. Instead, he watched as the small boat came alongside, and the survivors were ferried between the ships.


    He saw the sores immediately on a number of people, and while everyone else watched what was happening, he was using a word of cure on each boat load of people just before they came aboard. As a result, he was completely exhausted by the end of that desperate evening.


    He didn¡¯t know what the vector for this plague was, of course. If it was rats or fleas, he was probably still screwed, but thanks to his time with Doctor Fallster, he was fairly sure that the spread was largely caused by touching infected fluids, so Simon was pretty sure he had it handled. He¡¯d better, according to the sailors, they were less than two days from port, and he was too exhausted to do much else magically between now and then.


    Instead, he contemplated what this level wanted. Honestly, it probably wasn¡¯t even to save the Abrese. After all, if that was the point, the portal would be there and not on board the ship here.


    So what was it she wants, then? He wondered. Am I supposed to save this ship or the refugees on that one? What¡¯s the important element here?


    It annoyed him that saving the city they were heading to probably wasn¡¯t even the goal, but not so much that he didn¡¯t spend the rest of the voyage obsessing over it as he scrambled for some kind of insight.

 Ch. 128 - For A While

    By the time they docked in Abrese, it was clear that the plague had been strangled in its infancy. It was clear that the health of those they¡¯d rescued on the ship was improving every day, and it was seen as a boon from the Gods. It felt like a real win to Simon, and honestly, he needed one of those.


    At least until they reached the city, where he found cases in progress already. That made him sigh. So this was all about the ship, huh, Helades? He thought to himself. It had to be at this point because he knew for a fact that without intervention, the crew sickened, and the thing sank pier side right here.


    Simon had no idea what that meant, but he was once again annoyed that the boat, or even one person on it, mattered more than the whole city, and when the captain announced they were leaving as soon as possible, it gave Simon an interesting decision.


    When the Sea Seraph left, the gate to the next level would leave with it. That meant that his run was done unless he stayed on for the next leg of the voyage. Only, he didn¡¯t want to.


    Simon was sick of running from level to level with no clear purpose, and even if he¡¯d solved this one, he wasn¡¯t feeling particularly inclined to give up on a city of tens of thousands just because she had no need of them.


    Still, he hesitated and spent a little time talking to the crew about the route they planned to take before he slammed the door on everything he knew. ¡°We come back this way every year or two,¡± the quartermaster said with a shrug. ¡°It¡¯s hard to say exactly. It all depends on the price of wine in Vitilay and the price of rice in¡­ Well, then there¡¯s the storm season around the Summer Isles to consider, too. Certain sure we¡¯ll be back someday, but when is anyone¡¯s guess. Not even the captain can say for certain.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t much of an answer, but it was enough. Simon left the boat with his meager possessions and made his way to the inner harbor. Abrese was a town he¡¯d already spent months in already, so he knew his way around, and instead of wandering around, he made his way to the lower temple courtyard that would eventually become a hospital of sorts and got started.


    Last time, he¡¯d been here six months in the future, so most of the dying had already been done, and the city was pretty hollowed out. This time, it was only just getting started, though, and thanks to the reduced amount of spread, the healthy still outnumbered the sick. That wouldn¡¯t last forever, though.


    The Weeping Pox, as the locals came to call it, because of the pustulant yellow sores and the way the dying cried out in pain wasn¡¯t as deadly as the black plague he¡¯d seen in Hurag. Not by a long shot, but left unchecked, he knew it would still kill half the city. Sadly, many of those deaths would be caused by some of the crazy treatments of the day rather than by the disease itself.


    The local healers believed that the best way to prevent the disease from spreading was to seal the sores with hot irons or molten tar. Predictably, this didn¡¯t end well for the patient, but that didn¡¯t seem to stop them from thinking that next time, it would work, and Simon advocated against it almost from the moment he arrived.


    No one listened to him, though, not at first. Why should they? He was just another guy with a strange accent peddling cures to the desperate public. The only real difference was that he had magic.


    Simon was fairly sure that most of these cases could be solved by keeping them nourished and hydrated. In fact, that was the conclusion he reached over and over again in the circumstances; the disease was the killer, but only because the health of the average person was so bad in this world. It was plain to see when you looked at the rates that the nobles survived compared to the peasants. It certainly wasn¡¯t because they had access to better doctors, he thought with a laugh.


    Still, despite his belief that all most of these people needed was time to heal, he used words of lesser cure liberally in those first weeks to establish his reputation as a gifted healer, just as he¡¯d done before. He even saved a few impossible cases with stronger words of healing and cure. These were just to show off, though. As a rule, he didn¡¯t try to save every life. There were simply too many.


    Instead, he used that early traction to end the practice of sealing wounds with fire and bleeding the feverish. Instead, he focused on nutrition and sterility. He taught the other healers that bandages had to be boiled and not just washed before they could be reused, and slowly, one day and patient at a time, he turned the disused little courtyard into a makeshift hospital of sorts.


    It was a change of pace for Simon. On most levels and in most lives, he lived by the sword and was always on the move, but this time, there were no weapons of violence. Instead, day after day, he did his best to ease the suffering of those who came to him with blankets, bandages, and broth, and he got so used to the sickly sweet smell of disease that after a few months, he couldn¡¯t even smell it anymore.


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    Still, despite the chaos and the death, he saved more than most, and perhaps eight in ten of his patients went on to make a full recovery, with nothing but the ugly, discolored scars that the Weeping left behind to mark its passing. Many of these survivors went on to be nurses in his little field hospital since they were largely immune to it after defeating it the first time.


    As the operation grew, Simon financed the salvation of the poor with donations from the rich. They were often desperate to survive, and eventually, he was the only one who would be sent for when someone important, like the wife of the eldest son of a noble, sickened. After six months, this happened with such frequency that he was forced to invent medicines and potions that did almost nothing, just to make them feel like they were getting their money¡¯s worth.


    It was ironic, of course; he¡¯d spent so long trying to chase the quacks out of business with their tar and their razors, and now he was knowingly peddling snake oil himself that was little more than herbs and alcohol to make the patient sleep and ease their pain. At least it didn¡¯t actively harm them, though, and it wasn¡¯t like he was going to get the funds to save the poor any other way. Even simple fare like bread and soup started to cost a lot when you were feeding dozens of peopleday after day. It was easy to take handfuls of silver for a few bottles of colored water and a whispered word of lesser cure when he remembered what that fraud was paying for.


    Throughout all that he wasn¡¯t tempted once to siphon the lifeforce from any of the dying either. It was strange. He could remember craving it so badly in his previous run that it was like a drug addiction, but it was only now, when he was actively spending months and years of his life to help others that he realized he hadn¡¯t been tempted to top it back up at any point. Simon wondered why that was, but could only assume that the affliction was physiological, and that he lost that dark urge between lives. It was good to know, in case he ever had to do it again.


    After six months, Simon was moving his whole operation into a mostly empty warehouse not far from the ivy-strewn square he¡¯d spent so much time in, thanks to the dying bequest of a merchant he¡¯d saved earlier. That was good because winter was on its way, and the storms that came in off the straight weren¡¯t doing any favors for the survival rate of the sick and the dying.


    Simon didn¡¯t complain about that, though. He¡¯d known what he was getting into when he came here, and the worsening weather did mean there were fewer sick people, at least, thanks to people¡¯s tendency to leave their homes as little as possible. In many ways, he felt like the worst was over, and as the overwhelming crowds diminished, it gave him more time to spend with each patient instead of leaving such tasks to his growing following of acolytes.


    It was on one of those blustery days when even four walls and a stout roof couldn¡¯t quite keep out all the chill that Simon had a most interesting conversation with a dying sailor.


    ¡°Simon, is it?¡± the man coughed. ¡°I should have known it would be a Simon that got me killed after all this time.¡± The man looked like he would have walked right out of Simon¡¯s little hospital if he had the strength to do so. Instead, he lay there looking miserable.


    ¡°That¡¯s a strange thing to tell your doctor,¡± Simon answered dismissively. He¡¯d had lots of less-than-cooperative patients by this point. People could get strange when the fever took them, and he¡¯d long since grown used to the accusations that he was trying to kill them instead of save them.


    ¡°What else should I tell someone named Simon,¡± the man said with a scowl. ¡°Not only is your name a rare one, but it¡¯s well and truly cursed.¡±


    That piqued his interest, and Simon tried to follow up further, but the man quickly became delirious, and all he could really find out about him was that his name was Lem, and he was from the north. It wasn¡¯t until days later when he was past the worst of it and finally on the mend, that Simon learned the truth: the sailor was from Schwarzenbruck, and he had a strange story to tell.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry about before, Doc, but in my defense, I really did think you were poisoning me,¡± Lem told him apologetically once the fever had died down and it was clear he was going to be okay. ¡°You have to understand. Where I come from, up near the Black River, that name is cursed.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡± Simon asked, feigning disinterest. ¡°And why is that?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m surprised you haven¡¯t heard the stories, even this far south,¡± the sailor said, taking a drink of water before he continued. ¡°Simon the Cursed. Simon the Black. Simon the Barrow Wight. It''s an ugly thing. He was a necromancer that summoned the dead and nearly destroyed the whole region.¡±


    ¡°Warlocks do cause untold harm,¡± Simon agreed blandly. ¡°Though I find that most of them are just stories.¡± His manner was almost disinterested as he pretended to check the patient''s temperature and his bandages, but inside, he was seething as he wondered how the events with the Butcher¡¯s Bill had gotten twisted.


    Simon¡¯s anger only grew as Lem proceeded to tell him the story of the brave warrior Kell, who had died thwarting the Arch-necromancer Simon¡¯s evil plan to raise an army of the dead to conquer the region. ¡°There¡¯s still zombies that are found now and then to this day,¡± the sailor said finally, ¡°but even if they weren¡¯t, I can¡¯t imagine a single woman that would dare give her child such an awful name.¡±


    ¡°Well, in my land, it doesn¡¯t have such an evil reputation,¡± Simon said with a shrug before moving on. He was definitely going to have to solve that level because there was no way that he was going to let Kell end up as a storied hero after all the awful things he¡¯d done.

 Ch. 129 - Letting it Simmer

    Simon was forced to live with the information that everyone in the north, probably even as far south as Slany, knew of him as the villain for months, and it ate at him. All through the cold winter and into the spring, when there was a sudden uptick in the number of people afflicted with the weeping, it was there, waiting for him in the quiet moments, ready to make him rage all over again.


    It was so bad that he did everything he could to try to fill the quiet spaces of his life with more work. In the winter, that started off as an attempt to piece together a more accurate map from the knowledge of the sailors under his care. When those became too wildly divergent, he switched gears and spent the dark hours of the night studying the runes of the demon¡¯s circle by candlelight instead.


    Eventually, that was the only task that was engrossing enough to keep his angry thoughts about Kell at bay. He traced and retraced the way the runes fit together from his mirror notes on clean sheets of paper until he finally understood the way they would have looked without all of the distortion from the magics of hell straining against the summoning circle.


    It was only once he¡¯d done that that he understood a number of things. The first was that the reason some of the symbols hadn¡¯t made sense to him was because they were twisted and mirrored. Once everything was in the proper scale and orientation, the whole thing felt a lot less dizzying.


    The second was that he¡¯d been using Dnarth completely wrong. Until now, distance had meant simply hitting something far away from him. That was all he used it for, but the summoning circle used it almost like teleportation. No, he corrected himself. It was more complex than that. It was like translocation - like that old show with the stargate he¡¯d only seen a few episodes of. Simon had no idea how it worked or targeted its location or whatever, but he desperately wanted to. The world was a big place, and being able to move between far-flung points at a pace somewhat faster than walking would be a huge deal.


    Even that idea, as big as it was, wasn¡¯t as important as his third revelation, though. After months of nighttime study, after everyone else finally went to bed and he was left alone with the sick and the dying, he finally figured out which part of the structure he needed to strike out to make the whole thing collapse in on itself.


    In a way, the last two revelations were linked because, at first, every attempt to defuse the circle would have led to the outer boundary collapsing first, letting hell into the world, which was exactly what he didn¡¯t want. However, if he attacked the third layer of runes first and canceled out the line that connected the flow of power to the distant rune, then the spell would collapse inward, as the circle suddenly found itself surrounding nothing, and hell faded away with the barrier still intact.


    Of course, he also realized he understood the whole thing well enough that he could summon demons on pretty much any floor now. He had no desire to do that, of course, and he still didn¡¯t understand exactly what all the connecting pieces and the parts that might have been numbers or designators did, but he was sure he could copy them well enough to reproduce them. He¡¯d been very careful in his copies to leave gaps in the lines lest he do exactly that.


    Of course, Simon burned all of this research after he showed it to the mirror. The very last thing he wanted to do, besides accidentally opening up a portal to hell on something as fragile as paper, was to let anyone else see what he was doing. Not only would that stir all sorts of uncomfortable allegations, but it would release dangerous knowledge in the world that would have entirely unpredictable effects.


    Truthfully, Simon would have preferred to keep all of his research in the mirror at all times. That way, no one but him could access it. However, the interface was pretty jank, and the resolution wasn¡¯t so good. He felt like he was writing on an old drawing tablet or something, so he preferred to work on paper before saving it into the mirror.


    Life might have gone on like that for months or years longer, even after the patients had started to slacken, and his hospital sat half-empty most weeks had someone not informed him that the Sea Seraph was back in port. Just like that, Simon realized it had been more than a year as he lost himself in the depths of his various studies. All this time, he¡¯d told himself he was just waiting for them to come back while he pursued experiments in medicine, geography, and his words of power.


    It had become more than that, though he couldn¡¯t point to exactly when it had changed. At some point, he¡¯d given up on the idea of pursuing his current run any further, and he¡¯d started a new life. Now, he was loath to give that up.


    Still, since it was here, he went down to the harbor and chatted with the quartermaster and some of the other crew, whom he still remembered. He told them about quelling the epidemic, and they told him stories of their most recent voyages. There wasn¡¯t anything about them that stood out to him, though. They¡¯d taken the long way back to Targis on Colloum in the lands across the sea, then gone north before coming back across as they always did. This time, they had a close call with pirates, apparently instead of refugees, but the captain had been able to outrun the bastards in a harrowing chase before a storm had finally separated the ships.


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    All told it made for an interesting story, but there was no part of it that made him think, oh, that¡¯s why the ship needed to be saved. They hadn¡¯t even killed the pirates. In the end, he¡¯d gone back to his mostly empty hospital in a daze, unsure what to do next. He was in no hurry to be burned alive by Dragonfire after all, and he was fairly sure that was the only thing awaiting him if he tried to speed-run things.


    The next morning, he told the few devotees who still clung to him despite the city returning to normal, ¡°I¡¯m going north in search of new challenges.¡±


    ¡°But why?¡± one of his apprentices asked. ¡°Abresse still has many sick, even without the plague. There¡¯s more to do here.¡±


    ¡°And you will tend to them, I¡¯m sure,¡± Simon smiled. ¡°I¡¯ve taught you well, after all.¡±


    ¡°But will you do?¡± Another asked.


    ¡°I will heal the sick as I find them and work on my maps where I can,¡± Simon smiled.


    He¡¯d made no secret of the maps he was working on from the testimony of sailors. In fact, he¡¯d often used that as cover for the research he was doing on the binding circle from level 13, so they were well aware of his obsession in that department.


    Simon had spent a year here, and another five to ten years of life on magic at least, so he was fairly sure that he was approaching middle age. This wasn¡¯t the first time he¡¯d approached that threshold, but it was probably the first time he really felt like an adult, or worse, an elder, as he looked out on all these people who were so much younger than him.


    They held a feast to celebrate his decision once it was clear that it couldn¡¯t be changed, and more than a few nobles attended to praise him for all his good works. They should, he thought with a wry smile. I saved half of them from the weeping. There was some polite roasting, but on the whole, it was a celebration, and he ate better than he had in lifetimes. It was almost enough to make him miss the good life instead of the ascetic he¡¯d become over the last year.


    He enjoyed the night of praise and considered it a more than adequaite reward for all his hard work. Simon left most of the money he¡¯d managed to earn in that time with the men he appointed to keep running the hospital in his absence. He told them he¡¯d be back in three years. ¡°Perhaps sooner,¡± he said. ¡°We shall see how long it takes to get to Darndelle, and past that, to Liepzen perhaps. We shall see where the road takes me.¡±


    That was a lie, though. He only said it to ensure they remained diligent longer than they otherwise might if they thought no one would ever check up on them. While he had no doubt that some of the men who had served under him did so to help people, he was sure that several of them saw his tutelage as a stepping stone to a position of prestige serving the well-heeled citizens of the city and that they would find a way to spend his hospital¡¯s capital reserves all too quickly if they thought there would be no one to explain themselves to.


    Once that was done, Simon left quietly one night out the western gate with no fanfare. The last thing he wanted was people begging to follow him to the ends of the earth, or whatever it was this world was called. ¡°Am I going to have to invent a name for that, too, or do they already have one?¡± Simon wondered. He wasn¡¯t sure.


    He supposed he was going to have to find a library or something and find out. Only he hadn¡¯t actually seen one of those yet. A few nobles had libraries, of course, but in terms of public learning institutions, they hadn¡¯t seemed to have been invented yet.  Simon wondered if maybe he should add that to his to-do list as well but decided that was probably too much.


    He resolved to focus on simple things first, like finishing his map as he put one foot in front of the other, but with only his mule for company as he circled north and the miles drifted by, it was hard not to let his mind wander. After all, a world with magic was full of limitless possibilities, and he could do anything if he wanted to.


    Simon spent almost two weeks ploding north before he reached Mietere. It was a city he¡¯d heard of before, though he couldn¡¯t quite recall where, even if he¡¯d never been there, and was little more than a farming hub and a county seat. Politically it seemed to belong to Darndelle, and marked the furthest eastern point of that tiny kingdom.


    Geographically, that was one of the questions that puzzled him most. He had a pretty good idea of where most cities were in relation to each other at this point, but where they connected and how they aligned with each other. That was harder. Even what language they spoke was often mysterious to him.


    Sometimes it wasn¡¯t the big cities he was looking for, though. Two days out of Mietere he found the town of Esmiran, which was where he¡¯d almost been drowned in the well by that crazy cult. He lingered there for almost a week trying to learn about the men in white, but found nothing which meant that they either liked to keep a low profile, or that they hadn¡¯t come into existence yet; he wasn¡¯t sure which was more ominous.


    A few days after he left that spot, he found the valley where he¡¯d faced the black swarmers, and a week later, he finally reached Darndelle. This level was several years past the one where he¡¯d solved the issue with the Blackheart in the graveyard. As a result, he was able to spend several minutes looking at a fine statue of him that the people of the city had built, which was dedicated to Simon the Witchhunter. It was a surreal experience, and once he got over the shock, he left before anyone could notice just how much he looked like it.

 Ch. 130 - Before It’s a Problem

    As interesting as it was to see himself in statue form and read the only slightly tarnished plaque about how he defeated Blackheart¡¯s curse, Simon didn¡¯t linger in the city and was quickly on his way. It wasn¡¯t that he was afraid that people might catch him or something. His anonymity felt reasonably secure as long as he wasn¡¯t standing right next to that statue.


    Even if that wasn¡¯t the case, though, it had only been a few years. He could always say he¡¯d decided to come back and visit or something. The worst he¡¯d probably face was a series of feasts in his honor. Maybe he¡¯d have to fend off a marriage proposal or two.


    He wasn¡¯t really interested in any of that, though. Instead, he briefly toured the hospital and orphanage that had been built with the reward money he¡¯d refused. They weren¡¯t exactly the nicest-looking places, but that was to be expected. They were functional, at least, and they seemed to be doing some good. Really, in this dark world, that was all he could ask for.


    He thought about joining up with a caravan, but he was enjoying the road too much to bother with company. So, instead, he restocked his meager supplies with things that did well on the road, like potatoes, coarse bread, and salt pork. The only luxury he spared some of his silver on was a thin folio full of blank paper. He had paper for his maps, of course, but as he¡¯d encountered different vistas on the road north, he¡¯d felt the urge to sketch some of them, and he didn¡¯t want to mar his otherwise meticulous cartography with his childish drawings.


    The road north was in better condition than the one he¡¯d used when he¡¯d come in from the east, but Simon didn¡¯t use that to travel any faster. It would have screwed up the scale of his map. He had no idea how professional cartographers did this sort of thing in the days before GPS, but his way was simple. Every day, he tried to go about ten miles at a nice leisurely pace, and every day, he added another millimeter of line to the road on his map. It was tiny, but he had no idea how far apart any of these places were, so he was leaving himself extra room as he documented each village and lake he came across.


    By land, no one seemed to know how far apart anything was. Traders that he talked to spoke in terms of weeks rather than miles, and though people expressed a bit more confidence about the sea routes, from what he¡¯d seen, most of those maps varied wildly, too.


    He wasn¡¯t sure. Hell, Simon wasn¡¯t even sure he was going to share these with anyone when he was done, but he needed it for his own sanity. He needed as much of the world that he knew to fit together as he could. It would give him the information he needed to make better choices. He couldn¡¯t keep treating every level like it existed in a vacuum.


    This point was driven home as he moved north and found the hills he¡¯d been navigating slowly but surely turned into a desert. The Wantari, it was called, according to the traders he dined with one night. He wasn¡¯t exactly equipped for a desert, and he didn¡¯t have the word for water to fall back on, so he paid careful attention to them when they talked about distances and oases.


    It turned out he didn¡¯t have too much to worry about. Four days into the desert, he found a suspiciously familiar oasis that was thankfully unpoisoned. There were some horsemen there that seemed more like nomadic tribesmen than raiders, but he left them alone, and they, thankfully, returned the favor.


    The starry nights there were beautiful, and he noted down some of the more prominent constellations, unsure of what they were actually supposed to be. Two days later, the desert started to fade away in favor of grasslands, disappointing him.


    ¡°If the basilisk city isn¡¯t here, then where the hell is it supposed to be?¡± he grumbled as he searched the desert horizon behind him for any signs of the pillars he¡¯d been hoping to find. Simon might not be able to explore the whole world, but he¡¯d settle for at least finding most of the levels he¡¯d been to before.


    The whole trip was starting to feel self-indulgent to Simon when he finally figured out where he was and what he needed to do. Even though time was meaningless to him, spending weeks slowly traveling to who knew where over the best part of a thousand miles, sketching landscapes as he went, didn¡¯t seem like the best use of his time.


    Then he figured out how near he was to Crowvar. That was all the information he needed to decide that it was time to pay Varten a visit. As far as Simon was concerned, he was the Raithewait family curse, and he would gladly kill every single version of that monster that he found. He didn¡¯t care if it hurt his experience totals or his karma or however that worked. He didn¡¯t even care if it screwed with history. Varten was and always would be, a dead man.


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    That wasn¡¯t the main reason he was going to go to Crowvar, though. That would have simply been petulant. Simon had a much better reason for going - this was the perfect chance to kill the centaurs before they became a real problem in a few years.


    He was fairly certain that Helades did not mean for him to solve levels like this. In fact, because of the way things worked now, he was pretty sure that the horse lords were supposed to win, at least for a while. Doing things like this might well screw things up as far as she was concerned, but he didn¡¯t care.


    All Helades seemed to care about was that he saved that one family he¡¯d found near the exit portal. That wasn¡¯t good enough for Simon, though. He was long past saving one person at a time when the world was falling apart.


    ¡°If I go back in time and kill baby Genghis Kahn before he grows up to conquer all the centaur tribes, then I can save thousands. Tens of thousands maybe,¡± he told himself, and that was exactly what he aimed to do.


    The only problem was that he really only had one shot at this. It was actually refreshing to realize that as he slowly made his way to Crowvar. Normally, he had as many chances as he needed to solve a problem, but win or lose, he was pretty sure this level was complete, which meant that when he died and tried to come back, there would be nothing here. In fact, there would be nothing between the cathedral and the centaur levels, and those were probably a couple decades apart.


    ¡°Figuring out the dates for every level is probably something I should have done first thing,¡± he sighed as he realized he needed a calendar every bit as much as he needed a map. A second try at things like this would involve him whiling away a dozen years doing whatever before baby Genghis Kahn was even born again.


    Obviously, that wasn¡¯t going to happen, and the last thing he wanted to do was solve this Helades¡¯ way, so he was going to have to make this count. Simon spent the next couple of days trying to decide the best way to take over the town and its military resources in a coup, as well as thinking about how he should kill Varten this time, but all that went out the window when he saw the black plume of a village burning in the distance.


    He didn¡¯t have time to play political games at the Raithewait¡¯s expense. There were people to save and hazards to fight.


    Simon had to leave the main road to reach the place and was much too late to do much good. At least, that¡¯s what he thought as he watched the fires already guttering in the distance. That changed when the centaur war band that had done the deed spotted him as they were leaving the scene. Apparently, they hadn¡¯t gotten enough murder in for the day and decided he was worth killing, too.


    That was fine. If they¡¯d run, he would have had to hunt them down, but this way, it made things easy enough for Simon to kill them all with a single blast of greater forces. He didn¡¯t bother to hold back. There was no one around, and they deserved no mercy.


    So, he waited until they were within range, used a world of lesser force protection to keep the arrows that they rained down on him and his donkey from finding their mark, and waited until they got into range. Then he said, ¡°Gervuul Oonbetit.¡± After that, they never saw what was coming. One second, they were charging him with lances down in a tight group of almost twenty warriors as they jockeyed for position and raced each other to be the one to end Simon, and the next, they were only so much cooling meat.


    With a single swipe of his hand, an invisible sword dozens of feet long sliced through the group in a single clean line that left each of the half-men cut in half. Sometimes, their human torsos were cut neatly from their equine bodies, and other times, the line was closer to mid-chest or head. Some of them had time to scream, but most of them simply looked at Simon with uncomprehending eyes as their hearts beat their last.


    It was an unsatisfying victory, and Simon spent more time calming his mule as he tried to walk past the bloody sight than he did actually defeating the group. He sighed. Normally, he wouldn¡¯t have acted with such brutality, but just because this evil wore a human face didn¡¯t mean it was remotely close to human, and he reminded himself of that as he made his way to the village.


    Simon¡¯s heart fell when he didn¡¯t immediately find any survivors, but once he started to shout that the centaurs were dead and it was safe to come out, a few women and children started to crawl out from beneath burned-out buildings. Many of them were wounded, but all of them were covered in ash and dirt.


    The men had died fighting. That much was obvious from the corpses, but they hadn¡¯t done much. For every ten human corpses on the ground, there was only a centaur or two. It was a familiar sight for Simon. He¡¯d seen this kind of carnage before, though not in a long time.


    ¡°Are they going to come back?¡± a little girl asked him as he was bandaging a split around an arm that might have been broken or simply sprained.


    ¡°No,¡± Simon said confidently. ¡°These monsters will never trouble your village again. I won¡¯t let them.¡±


    He wasn¡¯t sure how he would keep that promise yet, but he was sure that he would, and it would take an awful lot more than a few centaurs with bows to change that.

 Ch. 131 - Building a Legend

    The first thing Simon did was escort the survivors to the nearest village. He left his mule there with them, along with most of his supplies, because it would only slow him down. It was only once they were safe, that he followed the centaur¡¯s tracks back to see where they¡¯d come from.


    No one volunteered to come with him, but that was fine. He might be known as a witch hunter or a gifted healer further south, but he had no reputation here. That sort of trust would come in time, which worked out for him because he was more than a little rusty. In fact, he almost resented having to buckle his leather armor back on after going so long without it.


    Of course, by the time he got there, the trail was long cold, but it was a place to start. He¡¯d learned through hard experience during his time serving the Raithewaits that finding the main centaur herd for any given region could be tricky because they were always on the move.


    Theoretically there were dozens of them on the plains, and the only reason they weren¡¯t a bigger problem was because they warred with themselves and the orcs as much as they did the humans. Normally all you needed to do was kill the war bands interested in picking fights with men, and the rest would find something better to do with their time. Simon didn¡¯t feel like that was going to be enough in this case.


    Three days later, he found his first herd and followed them from a distance, waiting to see what they would do as he hid in the tall grass and the other cover the empty plains provided. He didn¡¯t do anything beyond that, though. Not until he saw them fight with a band of gnolls that had wandered too far from the foothills of the mountains that rose up to the east.


    As they skirmished and taunted each other, he moved into position upwind of them, but it was only once the fight was fully joined that Simon lit fires. When he¡¯d worked as a warrior for Baron Raithewait, his favorite tactic had been to bait the trap and surround it with hidden archers. Since he had no army behind him yet, though, he settled for another form of encompassing attack instead: brush fires.


    A centaur herd was more than just the young male war bands that did the killing. It was also full of women and colts that would grow up to become killers. He wasn¡¯t an anthropologist or anything, but that much was plain to see. In that sense, this was some kind of war crime, he supposed, as the fires started to spread and fan out, driven by the wind, but he didn¡¯t care.


    Half a dozen spot fires lit by a lesser word of fire hundreds of feet apart became a wall of fire in less than five minutes when the winds were right, and right now, the winds were perfect. Within minutes, he could no longer see the herd, and the wall of fire raced toward them. He could imagine what was happening, though, based on what he was hearing.


    Right now there was more running than dying. There was probably a stampede, and it was headed right toward the gnolls. That was bad luck for them, but Simon didn¡¯t exactly care if the dog men survived either. They were in no way man¡¯s best friend.


    A centaur attack was so successful, oftentimes, because they were patient. They could dance around with their superior mobility and wear down their foes, even if they were stronger or better armored. That didn¡¯t work so well now, though.


    Now everyone was running, and those who weren¡¯t fast enough were being burned alive, giving the gnolls just what they craved most: the chance to rip out the throats of their enemies up close and personal. The next half hour was a bloodbath, and as Simon approached the fighting once it was all but done, he walked past more than a few charred corpses.


    He had no doubt that much of this herd had gotten away. Perhaps half of them might have escaped, but they were a shadow of what they¡¯d been this morning. It would take them many years to build back up to what they¡¯d once been, and for now, that was enough.


    Simon fought the last few with his bow, sniping a few where he could as he hid amidst the smoke. He was out of practice and didn¡¯t always hit where he aimed, but he would get better. He had to get better.


    By the time it was done, he counted sixty corpses on the ground, including the gnolls. He spent the rest of the day gathering the trophies he¡¯d need to prove he¡¯d done this thing in the form of the ugly bone jewelry that the warriors wore in the noses and ears. A pile of such trophies would make him a lot more believable when he started recruiting people to his side, and if things hadn¡¯t changed too much, they could also be sold in Crowvar for quite a bit of silver.


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    It was grisly work, and once it was done, Simon found a stream not so far away to wash in despite the fact that the sun was getting close to setting. Once he was mostly free of blood and smoke, he slept warily and spent much of the next day making normal-sized arrows from the Centaur¡¯s huge ones before he continued on.


    This far from the main trade roads, the herding villages that dotted the prairie all hid behind palisades to help keep the monsters at bay. As he visited them, one at a time, his legend started to grow with every story he told.


    That was when Simon also started to slowly gather people to his banner, such as it was. One at a time, men interested in either the bounty on the horse lords, or their own personal grudges against the centaurs started asking to fight alongside Simon, and he was happy to let them join.


    After another week, he had three people in his little mercenary troop, and after a month of tracking his equine enemy across the broad plains, he had almost two dozen. They faced the horse lords wherever they found them and with whatever numbers they had. Sometimes, Simon¡¯s men thought he was suicidal, and he was often forced to use a bit of surreptitious magic to balance the scales, but as they won fight after fight against the horse lords, the men started to trust him. Still, it was only when he was lying in his bedroll and overheard some of the men he was fighting with talking about him that Simon understood how far his personal legend had gotten out of his control.


    ¡°They say he lost his whole family, you know,¡± someone said around the low fire, ¡°In the massacre at Teller, or maybe Guin Springs. Hard to say, he don¡¯t talk about that much.¡±


    Simon had been to both villages and could confirm they¡¯d both been sacked by the horse lords more than once. He¡¯d never lived in either place, and he¡¯d definitely never had a family get massacred there. Simon doubted that those truths would have been enough to stop the stories, though. So, instead, he just listened as the tales of his pain became more and more elaborate.


    He¡¯d been at this for years. He¡¯d killed over a hundred centaur warriors by himself, including a few with his bare hands. Also, according to different voices around the fire, he¡¯d sold his soul to the devils below, and he couldn¡¯t die until he¡¯d killed the last centaur.


    ¡°Simon? No,¡± someone else said. ¡°I don¡¯t believe it. He¡¯s a good man. He wouldn¡¯t truck with demons or other infernal things like that. He¡¯s just very driven.¡±


    ¡°Believe what you like,¡± the first voice answered conspiratorially. ¡°I¡¯m telling you it¡¯s true. No man kills so many without a reason or survives so many battles without some kind of magic on his side.¡±


    ¡°But what about you,¡± a third voice asked, ¡°Ain¡¯t you survive plenty yourself? You¡¯re always talkin¡¯ about how you¡¯ve been through half a hundred battles without much more than a scratch.¡±


    ¡°I¡­ that¡¯s different,¡± the storyteller said, making Simon smirk as he lay there staring up at the starry sky. He tuned out the rest of the conversation as he contemplated what they¡¯d said and tried to decide what he should do about it.


    Over the last few weeks, they¡¯d taken down over a dozen small warbands and all but obliterated a herd they¡¯d chased into a box canyon. It wasn¡¯t enough to turn the tide or anything, but as far as Simon was concerned, it was a start. They¡¯d made a dent in the monsters that haunted the land and built up a huge pile of trophies that his men could turn in for the bounty.


    It had also shaken all the rust off him. It felt like forever since he¡¯d fought this often and this hard, and right now, Simon felt like he was as good with the bow and the sword as he¡¯d ever been. He was also in excellent shape, which was nice considering just how often he wasn¡¯t.


    He was showing his age a little, too, though. He¡¯d probably burned through two decades of life on this run so far, and he was starting to feel it in his joints. So far, he¡¯d avoided the temptation to drain the lives of his enemies to solve that problem, but it was ever a temptation, especially during the heat of battle.


    Honestly, the way the last few weeks had gone, he would have been happy to stay out here for a year, avoiding magic as much as possible and just hunting and stalking their next target and then ambushing them when they found the right battlefield. It wasn''t quite as productive as mapping or healing the sick, but it was fun, and that had its place in his quest, too, didn¡¯t it?


    Unfortunately, they couldn¡¯t stay out here forever. Living off the land was hard with such a large group and even harder on the battle-scarred plains they traveled across. They were going to have to stop for supplies again. Normally that wouldn¡¯t be an issue, but this time, fortunately, or unfortunately, they were approaching Crowvar.


    The men Simon fought beside could make up whatever strange backstories they wanted about him, but his real backstory was in the walls of that awful town, and just visiting it for long enough to stock up on the essentials was enough to risk making his whole life spin out of control. He might have grown as a person, but he doubted very much that any amount of personal growth would be enough to forgive Varten for what he¡¯d done and what he¡¯d tried to do.


    Anything Simon did on that front would hopelessly derail his crusade against the centaurs, though. Did he want to stop the tribes from uniting more than he wanted to kill Varten? Did he want to save the whole region instead of just one family? That¡¯s what he was going to have to decide, but for right now, he had no answers; his mind was as empty as the sky above him.

 Ch. 132 - Short Changed

    Crowvar still bore the ugly scars of its failed defense against the orcish attack that had succeeded without Simon¡¯s defense. That wasn¡¯t a surprise. He¡¯d seen them when he was last here with Murphy. Still, it was disappointing. Pretty much every city and town he¡¯d been to had grown as it moved into the future, but Crowvar looked worse than ever.


    Is it that the centaurs grew too strong or that the men of the region grew too weak? He found himself wondering as they walked through the gates.


    The guards that were standing there looked at his group with hard eyes, but Simon could see that the warriors of Crowvar had no chance of stopping him if they tried to keep him out, and he decided to force the issue. It turned out that wouldn¡¯t be necessary, though; as soon as they asked his business, and he told the stern-faced men that they were mercenaries here to collect on centaur bounties, the guards brightened immediately.


    ¡°We¡¯ve been hearing about you, but we wasn¡¯t sure if it was just a tall tale or not. People have been known to exaggerate these things.¡± the guard captain said looking through their sack of bloody trophies, ¡°Say, that¡¯s a hell of a haul. You¡¯re all going to be rich men at the end of this!¡±


    ¡°It is,¡± Simon agreed. He stood there chatting with the guards for the next few minutes about where the best place was to stay in town for a night or two and how the best way might be to ask for a meeting with Baron Raithewait before they proceeded into the city.


    There were a couple of inns left in the city, but there probably weren¡¯t any big enough to accommodate all of Simon¡¯s men. So, instead, they camped in a burned-out lot next to the Happy Harlot and used their common room for a bout of celebratory drinking and to plan their next steps.


    Some of his men were definitely leaving after their payday, but Simon didn¡¯t begrudge them that. They¡¯d signed on to make a little gold, and after they got it, they were welcome to do whatever they wanted. He was pretty sure they could get another volunteer or two here anyway, especially after Simon bought the bar a round or two and stories of their exploits started to spread. Crowvar wasn¡¯t a large town, but even in its current condition, there were a couple thousand people that lived there. Surely, some of them would want more than to eke out a meager existence in this grim place.


    The size was helpful in any case because they needed to resupply. Simon¡¯s crew was desperately short on things besides food. They needed arrows, rope, weapons, and more than a few repairs made on their armor. Fortunately, Crowvar had all of that, even if it didn¡¯t have much else.


    Simon waited until everyone was drunk and having a good time, and then he slipped away to go pay a visit to where his wife¡¯s grave should have been for a few hours. Of course, it was still a blank spot, not far from the graves of nameless strangers. Someday, he¡¯d come back here only to find a stranger buried in her place. Still, for now, he felt connected to her in this place, and he spent a couple of hours just quietly talking to her as he filled her in on his quest. He told her about the places he¡¯d been and the people he¡¯d saved, and when he was done, he was surprised to find it didn¡¯t hurt as bad as it did before.


    Simon and his crew spent the next day buying and packing things, and it was only that evening that he received a summons to Crowvar¡¯s central keep. He¡¯d expected an invitation for sometime later in the week, but when half a dozen guards showed up in the Happy Harlot¡¯s common room, he knew things weren¡¯t going to go quite as expected. Half of them had their halberds gripped tightly enough that they obviously feared a fight.


    ¡°By order of his lordship, Baron Varten Raithewait, the leader of this band is to come with us immediately,¡± their leader declared.


    Simon¡¯s men tossed him worried looks, and Bret, the man sitting nearest to him, said, ¡°You really think you should be doing this?¡± when Simon started to stand.


    ¡°We¡¯re just here to collect what we¡¯re owed!¡± Someone else shouted. ¡°If you think you can intimidate us by¡ª¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll come,¡± Simon said, standing up and speaking to defuse this situation before it got any more tense.


    In an enclosed place like this, if the fighting started, there would be plenty of deaths, including people he¡¯d prefer to survive. If they wanted to get him alone for some treachery, then he was all for it. By himself, Simon could really cut loose and do things he could never do when his allies could see what he was capable of.


    Outside, they made one stop at Simon¡¯s camp to collect the bags of trophies they¡¯d brought with them. After that, the Baron¡¯s guards escorted Simon like he was under arrest and were resistant to his every attempt to strike up a friendly conversation with them.


    He probably should have been afraid, but he wasn¡¯t. Instead, he was overwhelmed with nostalgia. He¡¯d been here before. He¡¯d been here too many times. He could practically see the faces of old friends that he could no longer remember the names of. He could see the places where he¡¯d killed people. It was hard to stay focused on the now when there were so many other ¡®thens¡¯ to see.


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    Simon was led directly into the dining hall that doubled as an audience chamber where he found Lord Varten sitting on a large wooden chair that had been moved onto the dias next to the far wall. It was a poor throne, and it undermined his attempt to look imposing.


    As Simon walked forward he looked around the room, noting the man¡¯s brother wasn¡¯t here in this timeline either. Did that mean he was dead, or had that accident not happened yet? Simon had no idea, but for now it didn¡¯t matter. The only people in the room were the guards that had brought Simon, the maids that were still clearing away the remains of dinner, and the Baron himself.


    He stopped ten feet in front of Lord Varten and gave only the slightest of nods. It was as disrespectful a bow as he could offer, but Simon was fine with that. He was looking for any excuse at this point, and he had a feeling that Varten was going to give him one without too much effort.


    Still, at first, the Baron only looked down on Simon with disdain as the guards brought the bags of totems and trophies he¡¯d collected to the man and, at the Baron¡¯s command, dumped some of them out on the floor.


    Lord Varten looked at them for a moment with surprised eyes and then turned to Simon and, feigning nonchalance, said, ¡°You really expect me to believe you killed so many? There¡¯s got to be dozens here.¡±


    ¡°By my count, we¡¯ve killed 118 warriors, along with 54 colts and almost three dozen mares, your Lordship,¡± Simon said with a smile. ¡°Not all at once, of course. Lots of smaller war bands and ambushes on a couple of different herds made up the¡ª¡±


    ¡°Poppycock!¡± Lord Varten said. ¡°There¡¯s no way. The centaurs simply aren¡¯t that big of a threat. If you think I¡¯m going to pay you for the bones and ornaments you must have dug up in some graveyard out there in the wastes, then you¡¯re a bigger fool than you look.¡±


    ¡°A silver a head for centaur warriors and orcs and half as much for knolls and hobgoblins,¡± Simon answered calmly. ¡°Those are the rates that the Raithewaits have paid out for decades.¡±


    ¡°Perhaps that was true in the past, but that¡¯s a price for men that kill actual threats, not grave robbers,¡± the Baron shot back smugly. ¡°You¡¯ll see not a single silver from me for this.¡±


    ¡°We killed every one of those monsters,¡± Simon retorted calmly, ¡°If we aren¡¯t paid¡­ well, it¡¯s like your father used to say, mercenaries are cheaper than a standing army and much more disposable. How many men do you think will fight and die facing the monsters of the region when they hear they won¡¯t be getting paid for the privilege.¡±


    That made Varten fume for a moment. Simon sympathized. Simply having to talk to the man in a way that was vaguely respectful made Simon fume, too, but he was managing to keep it together better than he would have expected.


    ¡°I might see my way to pay out a few pennies for each of the¡­ what did you say? 81 centaurs, was it?¡± the Baron said finally. ¡°In the name of good relations with the warriors of the region. Let¡¯s call in 5 per head and be done with this argument.¡±


    ¡°400 coppers is 20 silver, your lordship,¡± Simon said, squeezing his hands into fists so tightly his knuckles turned white. ¡°That¡¯s less than twenty percent of what we''re owed, and I¡¯m afraid quite unacceptable.¡±


    ¡°You can leave here with what I¡¯ve offered or with nothing at all,¡± Lord Varten answered dismissively.


    ¡°I know my rights,¡± Simon said, a touch of anger showing in his voice as he resisted the urge to turn the Baron into a bonfire just for the joy of it. ¡°If you won¡¯t pay me a fair price, then I¡¯m afraid we¡¯ll have to resolve this dispute with something besides words.¡±


    ¡°Are you threatening me?¡± the Baron asked, leaning forward. He was a little older than he¡¯d been when Simon had suffered under his yoke, but the man was almost certainly still spry enough to swing a sword. It was obvious from the scars on even the youngest guards that his games hadn¡¯t changed at all in the interim.


    ¡°I¡¯m challenging you,¡± Simon said, ¡°Or your champion if you¡¯re afraid to face me directly. If I was threatening you, you¡¯d know it.¡±


    The Baron purpled with rage for a moment before he yelled, ¡°Guards! Seize him and put him in irons!¡±


    The men began to move at once but uncertainly. Simon didn¡¯t move. Instead, he regarded them briefly before he spoke. ¡°You don¡¯t have to listen to him, you know. He¡¯s already failed this town once, and he will again soon. The orcs might have weakened Crowvar, but the Centaurs will finish the job in a year or two if someone doesn¡¯t handle it.¡±


    There was enough truth in his words that they delayed and looked to each other, trying to figure out what it was they should do. That delay was enough to cause Lord Varten to cry out, ¡°I am the lawful ruler of this region and have the situation well in hand. If you cross me, you can be strung up right next to this man and his ragged little army.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°I have an army. They know how to fight, but maybe after I take over yours too, that will be enough to handle the challenges your domain faces.¡±


    ¡°You insolent little¡­¡± the Baron snarled as he stood and drew his sword. ¡°You think you can take my seat just because you killed a few horsemen?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d planned to settle for silver,¡± Simon said with a smile, ¡°but since you aren¡¯t paying, I suppose that would be the next best option.¡±


    The armed men around Simon had paused and were obviously unsure of what they should do. One particularly zealous guardsman looked like he wanted to punch Simon in the face, but even as he raised his mailed hand to do just that, the man next to him grabbed his arm and held him back with a shake of his head. ¡°Let the Baron fight his own battles this time.¡±


    Simon smiled at that as the Lord approached. He had no sword, but he drew his dagger and waited for the first attack as patiently as he could. He was going to enjoy this.

 Ch. 133 - For the Right Reasons

    It was evident from the first moments that Varten didn¡¯t stand a chance against Simon. In the time since they¡¯d last met, he¡¯d grown older and lazier; his steps were not as sure, and his sword strokes were not as decisive as they¡¯d once been. He was obviously out of practice.


    Simon had grown older, too, but he¡¯d spent the last several seasons using his sword constantly, and he was as sharp as he¡¯d ever been. So, he parried each blow easily, getting inadvisably close to the Baron and practically daring him to do something about it just because he was pretty sure the man couldn¡¯t lay a finger on him.


    ¡°What are all of you doing!¡± Varten yelled to his soldiers after half a dozen slashes, and a few thrusts showed him how one-sided this was likely to be. ¡°Kill this man!¡±


    They¡¯d already made their decision, though, and stood there silently in a wide circle, watching the duel. ¡°They¡¯d fight for a ruler that commanded their respect or their fear,¡± Simon taunted the Baron. ¡°You have neither, though. Not like your father did before the Orcs brought your whole family down a peg.¡±


    ¡°You know nothing!¡± Varten raged, lashing out wildly with a series of strokes that forced Simon to give ground for the first time. ¡°My father was a great man, and the people love me.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s been no love in Crowvar for a long time, and I blame you for that more than anyone,¡± Simon answered, smiling grimly, knowing that his opponent would never understand the comment, not even if Simon explained it to him.


    How could he? The world that Simon remembered had never happened. Crowbar wasn¡¯t important to anyone but him anymore. That was plain to see on the map he was slowly making.


    It was the backwater of a backwater at the very edge of the Kingdom of Brin. That was part of the reason he¡¯d thought it was a safe place to settle with Freya so long ago. Now, though, well, if the desert were to encroach a little further north, and the Barony were to dry up and blow away, no one except the King¡¯s treasurer was likely to notice when the annual tax receipts never arrived.


    ¡°Your family''s stewardship, if you even want to call it that, has ruined this place,¡± Simon taunted. ¡°You hid behind the walls of your fine fortress while everyone else died or fled. Even you can see it''s nothing more than a shell of what it was like in your childhood.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not what happened at all!¡± Varten said, fending off Simon¡¯s words even less successfully than he was fending off his attacks.


    ¡°And now you feast while your people starve!¡± Simon yelled, growing angrier. ¡°You are a vulture, picking at the bones of this place, and when there¡¯s nothing left, the centaurs will sweep across the land, and it will be like Crowvar never even existed!¡±


    Each word was a cut, of course, but most of them were also accompanied by actual cuts too. Simon was in no hurry to kill Varten; he¡¯d done it before, and he¡¯d do it again. For now, he seized every opportunity, slicing at the man¡¯s arm or leg whenever his guard was insufficient or his reach exceeded his grasp.


    No one would miss him, Simon told himself as he rained down a series of blows on the Baron that left him increasingly frantic as he faltered beneath the storm of steel. No one. He¡­


    As Simon knocked the man off his feet and sent his rapier skittering across the floor, he delayed only a moment before making the final blow.


    ¡°No, please. I¡ª¡± Varten cried out, about to beg for his life.


    No words could have softened Simon¡¯s heart, though, and instead of listening, he brought the long sword down into the chest of his enemy. Then he stood there long enough to watch him die, surprised to find that it gave him no joy or peace as it had in the past. He stayed there long enough that he was forced to step back because of the growing pool of blood. It was only then that he regained his senses and turned to the onlookers who were looking at him, unsure of what to do next.


    Simon could see some guards looking at him with relief and others with greed. This had been a fragile situation before he¡¯d gotten here, and he had no doubt that any one of them might try to become the next ¡®legitimate¡¯ warlord of the area. What would follow would be a particularly ugly civil war that would continue until someone who was even more ruthless than a Raithewait took control, and the only way to prevent that, and all the bloodshed that would come with it, was for that someone to be him.


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    ¡°Ding dong, the dick is dead,¡± Simon said to himself as he flicked the blood free from his blade and resheathed it before he cleared his throat to address everyone else.


    ¡°Alright, everyone,¡± Simon said, raising his voice so that no one would misunderstand what he was about to say. ¡°The leech you¡¯ve called your leader for your whole lives is dead. That fixes one problem but creates a lot of others. So I¡¯m going to need people to go fetch everyone of any importance. I want the captain of the guard, the heads of any important guilds and leading families¡ª¡±


    ¡°So you can kill them too?¡± someone asked, obviously expecting some kind of palace coup to follow.


    ¡°No one else is dying,¡± Simon answered wearily. ¡°I mean it. No one, that¡¯s why we¡¯ll post a guard at the door of the Baron¡¯s family. So, no one gets any ideas. I just want to bring everyone together so that the people of Crowvar can decide what¡¯s next. If they want me to leave, then I will. If they want me to stick around until the centaurs are under control, then¡ª¡±


    ¡°What if they want to hang you for killing the Baron?¡± one of the guards shouted at Simon, making him laugh.


    ¡°Well, you are welcome to try, though I do not think that will end well for you,¡± he said as he walked over to a chair and sat down.


    People milled around for a few minutes, and they discussed everything that happened with each other and tried to decide what they should do before going off to do as he instructed. That let Simon breathe a secret sigh of relief before he asked one of the serving girls to bring him something to drink. Even if killing Varten had been on his to-do list for this trip, toppling the government and taking over hadn¡¯t been the plan for today, so he was just sort of winging it.


    Less than an hour later, everyone of any importance had been assembled, and though the Baron¡¯s body had been covered with a linen tablecloth, everyone¡¯s eyes kept wandering the bloodstained lump it hid on the floor. The guards there testified that it was an honorable duel that the Baron had started, leaving out their reluctance to help the man. That wasn¡¯t so unbelievable, at least when he was younger; Varten was fond of such things since he lost so rarely.


    There was no agreement among the group. Instead, there was bickering about what should be done and who should be the one to do it.


    ¡°We must send for advice from the king!¡± the city tax collector advised.


    ¡°That will be months in the waiting,¡± one of the rich men who ran some vineyards to the north of the city sighed. ¡°We should appoint someone, me by preference, as the regent to Lord Raithewait¡¯s son and then elevate him from Viscount to Baron.¡±


    ¡°But the lad is only four!¡± another man cried out in frustration.


    Simon let these conversations go in circles for almost half an hour before he finally stood and said, ¡°All good advice, gentlemen. Thank you. We will do exactly what you have suggested.¡±


    ¡°What we said?¡± the guard captain asked, confused.


    ¡°Who are you to¡ª¡± another started to say.


    ¡°We will notify the King, inform the populace, appoint a reagent, and get to work against the greatest challenges the kingdom faces: the centaurs,¡± Simon said, smiling as if he had all the confidence in the world they¡¯d accept his plan.


    ¡°But who will be the Reagent?¡± the tax collector asked.


    ¡°Why, me, of course,¡± Simon said. ¡°I have no intention of staying longer than I have to, but it¡¯s clear that Crowvar is facing problems right now that only a warrior can solve, and if none of you will pick up the sword, then it falls to me and my men to do it.¡±


    For a moment, the room exploded in bickering, but Simon ignored it. Instead, he started to give orders as if he expected them to be obeyed, and shockingly, they were. No one was happy with it, of course, but he¡¯d very clearly reminded them he was the one with the small personal army, and though many of them might disagree with his methods, he doubted there was a man in this city who didn¡¯t think something had to be done about the depredations of monsters that was currently grinding this country to dust.


    By the time he returned to his small camp next to the Inn hours later, most things had been settled. The widow had been informed, the bounties had been paid at the usual rate, and people were coming to grips with the new reality: the Baron was dead, and though perhaps not in name, Simon was the new Baron. He was well aware that many of the men he¡¯d talked to only obeyed him out of fear and that they hoped the King would strike him down or that they¡¯d poison him or stab him in the back, given the chance.


    Simon didn¡¯t plan to give them one, of course. He planned to stay as far from the center of power and out in the field as much as possible. In the morning, he gave his men the short, short version of what had happened.


    ¡°So he tried to cheat us of our due, and you did what you had to to make sure we got paid?¡± Jak laughed, slapping him on the back. ¡°I knew I liked you for a reason.¡±


    I knew I liked you for a reason. Simon didn¡¯t linger too long that day. He had everyone start packing up and returned to the Baron¡¯s walled compound at the center of town only long enough to get a few proclamations written and stamped. He didn¡¯t expect a lot of help from Crowvar, but with these, the rest of the towns and villages in the regions should be a little more useful, and Simon had a plan.


    Well, he had several, but right now, the one he was most interested in was the most straightforward: push the centaurs and everything else that thought that humans tasted like a delicacy back away from the largest towns and agricultural areas. Nothing was going to get fixed if people were afraid to live their lives. They would just continue to flee north, and the desert and the centaurs would chase them.

 Ch. 134 - A Wider View

    It began with a massive ambush outside the tiny village of Brunn, where Simon used a hundred sheep to lure more than half that number of centaur warriors to their deaths under a fusillade of crossbow bolts and surreptitious magic spells. It was the first victory, but it would not be the last or the largest.


    Every town he went through now, he compelled a few members of the village defense force to join his little band. He didn¡¯t feel great about doing it, but his plans required numbers as much as they required picking just the right battlefield.


    Sometimes, that meant box canyons or cliffs. Other times, it meant camouflage or even swamps, but with a little bait and the right edge, Simon was fairly confident they could win nearly every fight with a little planning. Eventually, the men who fought with him even believed him, and few of them died as a result of that trust.


    Tchul. Krovel. Edenbrooke. Not every battle was bloodless, but everywhere they went, as Simon widened the scope to the north and east, he did his very best to take advantage of the terrain to make it more likely that their enemy would flee instead of fight to the last. Eventually, when they passed close through to Bellum¡¯s Cross, Simon finally made a brief stop and retrieved his maps from where he¡¯d left them with the survivors he¡¯d started this chapter of his adventure with. He did this so he could add all the other places he was visiting to the paper he''d put so much hard work into, but mostly, the villagers took the opportunity to tell his companions about how he¡¯d saved them single-handedly, further expanding his legend.


    Less than two months after he started his second campaign as the Regent-General of the Raithewait Barony, he had a hundred men under him and was approaching a thousand centaur skulls. It was brutal, bloody work, and whenever possible, Simon did it all without magic. He could start to feel the pull of extra years on himself now, and he only spared weeks and months for the injured men who fought valiantly by his side.


    But as time went on, especially during the winter months, new war bands and herds became harder and harder to find. Many of his men took that as a sign that they were winning, but Simon saw it differently. To him, it was evidence that they might never be able to win.


    When all of this had started, Simon had been too simplistic about it. He knew that now. He thought he could hunt down the centaurs like mobs in a video game and grind on them until he reached a certain kill count, and then the future he sought to avoid would simply evaporate, like a quest that had been achieved.


    They were intelligent, though, in their way. They found weakness and fled from strength. When the centaurs faced the inexplicable losses of Simon¡¯s traps, they inevitably fled to another part of the prairie and found another opponent to face on more favorable ground. So, if he¡¯d just been trying to keep them away from Crowvar, that would have been easy.


    There was no guarantee that would prevent the rise of a warrior that would unite the tribes into a single terrible fist, though. That was what forced him out, ever further into the wastelands, away from the streams and the villages that made up the heart of the Barony. It was not a popular decision, but really, there was no one who could tell him no anymore, not after all the victories he¡¯d given them. Still, he could see it in the eyes of his men. They wanted to go back to Crowvar, cash in their winnings, and move on with their lives.


    Simon couldn¡¯t do that, though, because now that he¡¯d pushed the centaurs to the edge of the wastes he had a new plan. Well, it was an old plan that someone else had probably come up with a few levels down. He was just giving it new life: poison the wells and the oases of the border areas.


    Poisoning the water supply hardly seemed like a valorous tactic. He would have preferred to meet the horse lords on the field of battle. However, now that they¡¯d lost so many, the herds were skittish things, and no matter how tempting he made the ambush target, they would rarely take the bait. Instead, they fought with gnolls and orcs in the rocky foothills or the dunes of the desert.


    ¡°You sure we gotta keep going?¡± one of the younger men asked him the other day. Before Simon had drafted him to the cause, he¡¯d been a green member of the city guard. Now, he was practically a blooded veteran who just wanted to go home and start a farm. ¡°The Barony is as peaceful as I¡¯ve ever seen it.¡±


    ¡°It is,¡± Simon agreed, ¡°But I want it to stay that way for longer than a few months. All we¡¯ve done is make it safe enough to get complacent again, but I want to end the threat for¡­ well, for as long as we can.¡±


    He¡¯d almost said forever, but he held himself back. Eliminating all the monsters was probably impossible. Even if it was possible, though, it might not be desirable. The centaurs did good work keeping other invasive species away. If he was actually successful in eliminating the horse lords, then what followed might be worse. He didn¡¯t want that. Not anymore, anyway. He just wanted better boundaries, and right now, the best way to do that was water or a lack of it.


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    So, five months after Simon had started his apparently endless war against the centaurs, it ended with a whimper instead of a bang. There was no final battle. There was no single combat with a twelve-foot-tall stallion with eyes full of murder. Instead, they just filled all the watering holes that were nowhere near the trade roads but still within a few days¡¯ ride of vulnerable villages with corpses of whatever they could kill, leaving behind a toxic curtain that he hoped would be enough to keep the monsters at bay, or at least redirect future attacks to the most defensible locations along the roads and rivers.


    With that done, Simon returned to Crowvar for a hero¡¯s welcome. He hadn¡¯t expected it, of course. But as soon as the gates opened, there was a celebration already waiting for him. They¡¯d seen his small army coming from quite a ways off, it seemed.


    Still, he was determined not to let his guard down, even after both he and his horse were draped with flower garlands. The common man might welcome a warrior, but the powers that be still looked at him with suspicion from balconies and second-story windows.


    Simon didn¡¯t pay too much attention to any of that, though. Instead, he looked at the damaged walls that had never been fully repaired, and the burned-out buildings that had never been replaced from the orcish attacks years before.


    His proactive defense against the centaurs and even his murder of Varten might keep things from getting worse, but really, when he got down to it, had he made things any better? It was hard to say that he had.


    He was welcomed inside both the main gates and the fortified residence in the center, where a small feast awaited him. He brought several of his trusted lieutenants with him, more to honor them for all their hard work than because he feared a trap. There were undoubtedly traps, of course. He just wasn¡¯t afraid of them.


    ¡°Did the King tell you that you can kill me yet?¡± Simon asked the nobles as he came in.


    Most of them only scowled, but the tax collector said, ¡°His Majesty encouraged us to find a solution to the matter ourselves and suggested that perhaps the Regent could marry Lord Raithewait¡¯s widow and¡ª¡±


    ¡°Like that would ever happen,¡± a woman spat, making Simon raise an eyebrow. He agreed with her, of course, but he had no idea that the woman who had been sitting among the rest of the nobles was the widow in question until just that moment.


    ¡°...and barring that,¡± the tax collector continued, ¡°That we find amicable arrangements and solve our own problems, lest he appoint a new champion of the land and send them down to lay claim to ¡®this troublesome province.¡¯¡±


    Simon smirked at the quote at the end. Instead, he sat down at a place at one of the lower tables that obviously hadn¡¯t been the one reserved for him, and he raised his glass to call for wine. ¡°Well, let¡¯s have a toast then,¡± Simon said, ¡°To the defeat of the centaurs and never marrying the widows offallen foes.¡±


    Quite a few people scowled at that, but he was surprised to see that Lady Raithewait at least raised her cup. She was clearly very in favor of at least that idea of his, though otherwise, she seemed unlikely to help put him out if he was on fire.


    The dinner started not long after that, and though the seat of honor at the high table remained conspicuously empty, the servants worked it out. The tables were piled high with roast pork bread while beer and wine flowed like water. It was the best that any of them had eaten in months. At least until Jak started coughing up blood, and it became apparent that the man had been poisoned.


    He started convulsing as Simon lowered him to the floor and whispered a word of lesser cure to see that he lived. He could heal him more later if he needed to. Once that was done, he stood and shouted, ¡°Seal the doors! No one leaves until this is sorted out.¡±


    Simon tasted the wine and then spat it out immediately. The poison was bitter and obvious, and whoever had done it had clearly waited until they were drunk before they¡¯d tried to end Simon.


    ¡°I spend the best part of a year¡­ Jak freezes his ass off most nights fighting to make the world a better place for the people of Crowvar, and this is the thanks he gets?¡± Simon demanded. ¡°We come back only to be killed by those who think they are our betters?¡±


    A few nobles tried to speak conciliatory words then, but Simon kept talking. He didn¡¯t care much for consolation after attempted murder. He would not be mollified. Instead, he marked the faces of every snake in the grass, which let their glee show a little too clearly on their well-bred faces as he spoke. He would never know who had given them poison, but he already knew who wished it had succeeded, and that would be enough.


    ¡°There is no one better than Jak in this room,¡± Simon yelled over them. ¡°There is no one who¡¯s taken more arrows or shed more blood than the man who just took one more blow for me, and someone will pay for this outrage.¡±


    The denials started then, but it was too late for that. Simon picked out the half a dozen men who seemed most gleeful about what had just happened and ordered the guard to ¡°Seize them and lock them in the dungeon before I decide which of them need to be hanged for this outrage.¡± There was a flurry of shock and outrage then, but Simon didn¡¯t care. Instead, he turned his gaze back to his sickened comrade and tried to decide what more needed to be done for the man.

 Ch. 135 - Slow Progress

    Simon deliberated on it for a day before he decided on public executions. Courtiers and Varten¡¯s widow spent that day arguing that he should torture one or more of them to get to the truth so fervently that he was fairly sure that they were in on it, but he ignored them.


    Not only did he have no plans to ever torture someone whose name wasn¡¯t Varten Raithewait, but in this case, he was fairly certain that even those who weren¡¯t directly responsible for what had happened deserved to die. He wasn¡¯t a fan of killing innocent people, but none of the nobles he¡¯d rounded up and named as dangerous co-conspirators had been innocent for decades.


    He gave the condemned men a week to beg for their lives and throw each other under the bus while the gallows were built, but it was done; the sobbing men were still led out and hung in the town square where everyone could see. After the five of them stopped jerking and twitching, Simon stepped out onto the platform and made a speech.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t ask to be put in charge of this town or this region,¡± he told them. ¡°My wife¡­ she died not so far from here, and though I won¡¯t go into the details of that tragic day, I will say that it could have been prevented if powerful men had done the right thing.¡±


    He continued as quiet onlookers listened without interruption. He explained that he hoped to leave in a year or two and that all he wanted to do was leave Crowvar better than he¡¯d found it. There were no cheers when Simon left and walked back to the central keep, but then he didn¡¯t expect any at such a solemn occasion. There were no boos or threats either, and that was enough for now.


    Simon kept a low profile over the next few days, waiting to see if he¡¯d made a mistake, but things got back to normal shockingly quickly. It was only when he was sure riots weren¡¯t going to break out over what he¡¯d done that he met with the remaining three dozen members of his impromptu mercenary and gave them all a different sort of speech.


    For the last year, all he¡¯d done was fight and then move to a new location to fight again, but today, he was giving them a different sort of message. ¡°It¡¯s time to dig in or move on,¡± he told them.


    Some had obviously been expecting that message, but others were surprised by it and had hoped he¡¯d return to fighting on the plains once Jak had recovered fully from being poisoned. Simon told those who wanted to leave and fight on their own that they were welcome to do so and that those who wanted to settle down and build something would be gifted acreage at his expense so they could start a farm or something similar.


    Truthfully, much of the land he wanted to hand out had been seized from the men he¡¯d just executed, but that wasn¡¯t important. There was plenty of Raithewait land that currently laid fallow that anyone with a strong back might put to good use.


    Less than half of the men that were still here took him up on that offer, but that was still more than zero, and he was sure that nearly two dozen proven warriors would have a better impact on Crowvar¡¯s future than five dead leeches. It wasn¡¯t enough to make him stop sleeping behind a locked door every night, though, or eating at random inns throughout the town each day. Simon was sure that he hadn¡¯t gotten all the men and women who wanted him dead yet, and while he worked on his priorities, he did his best to make their job as difficult as possible.


    He worked with the captain of the guard to cut the size of the town watch by almost half since it took up most of the able-bodied men, then he pledged large portions of the town¡¯s scant remaining wealth to projects that would fix the outer wall, tear down the burn-scarred buildings that remained, and start to fix the main trade road.


    Simon was no expert in these things, but as long as the place looked like a shithole, he figured people were going to treat it that way. If, on the other hand, it looked like somewhere you would want to raise a family, then maybe there would be more families. It was simple logic, but he was going to go with it. Not that he was going to stick around to see the consequences in this life; of course, he¡¯d get things back on track, and then he¡¯d move on. Somehow, that never quite happened, though.


    Each time things started to look good, and he packed up his things so that he could head further north, something came up. At first, it was a dispute over the exact height of the southern wall. Then, there was a difference of opinion over whether or not the road to the main trade road should go on the same path it always had or if they should build a new section that took a shorter, more direct path.


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    Simon didn¡¯t really see why the men doing the work couldn¡¯t decide these things and why they needed the Baron¡¯s own Regent to resolve these issues. The Baron couldn¡¯t do it, of course. He was just a ten-year-old boy who was being taught to hate Simon now that he could speak, but Simon ignored that as he focused on things like planning the expansion of irrigation ditches and settling petty disputes.


    Despite all that, though, after three months of adoration from the commoners and mute hatred from the powers that be, he was once again getting ready to leave when there was word of an orc attack at a village not so far away.


    Despite the fact that Simon¡¯s stubble had as much gray as brown in it now, and he had more than his fair share of wrinkles around his eyes, he didn¡¯t hesitate for a second and immediately rounded up two dozen men and set out to stop the war band before it could become something worse.


    Despite the chilly weather, it felt good to get back out of the walls. Here, he didn¡¯t have to look over his shoulder for assassins. Hell, he didn¡¯t even have to watch what he said. Half the time, he had to crack a dirty joke or two just to keep people from treating him like he was a hero that they needed to put on a pedestal in a museum or a temple.


    By the time they reached Krovel, it was a complete loss, as Simon had thought it would be. Only the small tower of the minor lord that was charged with defending this group of villages still stood. He and his family were fine, of course. However, when it was revealed that the only survivors who hadn¡¯t fled were members of the noble¡¯s household and that the reason so many others had died was because he''d barred the gates instead of letting as many villagers as he could take refuge inside those safe stone walls, Simon¡¯s only response to the man¡¯s explanations was to have him hanged for failing to do his duty.


    Part of Simon wanted to see the man flogged first, but he thought that was a bit much, especially after his wife and children begged Simon to spare them. That hurt more than he thought it would, and it made him wonder when he¡¯d become so heartless, but it wasn¡¯t enough to make him relent in his judgment.


    ¡°The tower is there to fight against the things that attack unexpectedly,¡± he lectured to everyone who was still standing, from the man¡¯s family to his own soldiers. ¡°Not to save your skin when things go wrong! The same punishment that I apply to deserters and cowards will be applied to any man that supposed to be better than the men I lead into the field.¡±


    There were some cheers at that, but there were some sobs too, and long after Simon had sent the women and children back to Crowvar with an armed escort and they had moved north to follow the orc tracks, second thoughts haunted him.


    Am I treating people like NPCs because I¡¯ve been doing this too long? He wondered. It was one of his more frequent fears now that he no longer spent most nights missing Freya. He worried that replaying the same events might lead to him losing touch with the world. After all, power corrupted, and these days, Simon had a lot of it. Hadn¡¯t the nobles he was punishing done exactly that? Hadn¡¯t they lost touch with the world in their own way?


    Fortunately for Simon, a group of orcish scouts was happy to help him regain touch with the world again the following morning, and though he took a blow to his shield that was nasty enough to cave part of it in, his blade drank green blood again for the first time in a long time. The battle was short and decisive. By the end of it, there were three dead orcs, and one of his younger men had a broken arm that Simon was fairly sure was going to heal cleanly.


    That evening, they found a second scouting party that was dealt with even more cleanly by peppering them with a hail of crossbow bolts. Everyone lay uncomfortably in their armor, and no one slept well that night as they waited for the final battle to come. That was wise, given that scouts shouted the alarm just before dawn.


    The opposing force was larger than Simon expected but smaller than he feared, with ten orcs. In the past, he preferred a three-to-one advantage or horsemen to deal with groups as large as ten, but this time, he had neither, which was stupid. With all his public works projects going on, horses were in short supply. That would need to be rectified, he decided. Unfortunately, he could only do that after he lived through this.


    For the first time in months, Simon considered using a word of power. He resisted, of course, at least until he realized that one of them was a shaman of sorts and called the lightning to deal with them. That was a shock to Simon, figuratively speaking. The magic arced from the clear sky and hit the two men closest to the orcs before he could speak the words of lightning protection and stop the purplish arcs from hitting anyone else.


    That single strike almost broke the morale of his men. Orcs were scary enough, but orcs with magic? That was another thing entirely. The nascent charge died, even as it had been in the process of being born. Instead, the soldiers around him formed a defensive line and looked to him for some idea of what to do next. Simon gritted his teeth. He wasn¡¯t going to let some orc kill him or anyone else, not with lightning or fists or anything else.

 Ch. 136 - Striking Twice

    When the orcs saw their opponents delay, they roared with bloodlust and charged instead. That was the way they were; they smelled weakness and fear the way that a shark might smell blood, and after what had just happened, there was definitely blood in the water.


    Simon was less concerned about the line of green eight-foot-tall warriors than he was about the talisman-bedecked warlock who was grinning behind them. Still, he waited, just for the right moment, and as soon as the monster raised its hand skyward and opened its mouth to channel the lightning again, he acted.


    ¡°Gervuul Vrazig,¡± he muttered. Greater lighting. He hated the idea of using a greater word in a life where he planned on sticking around for a while, but he needed what came next to be more than a little showy, and the other way to do that was with more power.


    The lightning came down for the orc almost instantly. He didn¡¯t fling it at his enemies, though. Instead, he stood there convulsing with his hand held skyward as the energy radiated through his body and the warlock¡¯s clothing burst into flames.


    None of that dissipated the energy enough to stop it from arcing outward through most of the rest of the group, though. Purple lightning sprayed in a wide arc that bounced and rebounded several times before coming to ground. It was enough of a fireworks show that half of the group was reduced almost instantly into twitching meat, and the other half paused to look around in confusion. It probably would have been enough to reach more of Simon¡¯s own men and turn their swords into lightning rods if the lingering effects of his protection spell hadn¡¯t dissuaded it.


    Still, this was what he wanted, and he ordered his men to charge and reclaim the momentum. No one disobeyed, and they moved forward as an armored wave while he paused to catch his breath. A greater word took more out of him than it used to. Does that put me in my forties or my fifties? He wondered. I can¡¯t be that old yet, can I?


    It didn¡¯t matter. By the time he reached the fight, most of the fighting was done. One man was maimed, and Simon doubted he¡¯d be able to save the arm, but everyone else was fine, and the green blood of the enemy soaked the ground. If there weren¡¯t two men already dead from the dark magic the shaman unleashed, he would have called it an ideal scenario. As it was, though, the loss of three warriors was just enough to dampen his mood.


    ¡°In the name of the pits below, what was that?¡± one man said once the fighting was done.


    ¡°It was witchcraft, is what it was, but where would a monster like that learn such a thing? It had no soul to trade to the devils for their power!¡± another answered.


    Simon said nothing. He just listened and largely agreed with what he was hearing. The truth was, it was an excellent question, and he didn¡¯t have a good answer for it. Where would a goblin learn a word of power? Where would an orc? Was someone teaching them these things? Did the word just happen to be similar to another word in their language? Did they even have a language?


    That gave him pause. He could understand every language in the world, couldn¡¯t he? Had he ever heard them make a noise that he¡¯d understood, or¡ª


    ¡°What do you think, boss,¡± one of the soldiers asked, snapping Simon out of his reverie. ¡°I mean, sir.¡±


    Simon shook his head to clear the cobwebs and focus. ¡°I think that whatever dark powers that thing bargained for were too much for it, and just like all evil things, when it tried to wield them against us, it only succeeded in destroying itself and everyone around it.¡±


    Everyone nodded at that as if they were wise words, but really, Simon was only repeating what he¡¯d heard old men say when they were in their cups. Magic was entirely controllable with a focused mind, but that wasn¡¯t something he could ever explain to anyone else.


    So he didn¡¯t. He just babbled on about how they all needed to be wary of the darkness and that the orcs were likely in league with the devils below, even if he had no idea how that would even happen. After all, there was no way that they could summon a devil, could they? It was a complicated undertaking.


    The longer Simon talked, the more questions built up in his mind, though, and finally, he decided they had to keep going after they¡¯d buried the bodies. ¡°What about Miken,¡± Jak asked. ¡°He ain¡¯t going to be doin¡¯ much fighten with his arm like that.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll drop him off at the next village we come across,¡± Simon promised. Until then, the man could ride one of the supply donkeys.


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    There were no more villages, though. Not this far out. They ended up amputating the arm above the elbow the following day, and Simon used a word of minor healing to make sure that much would heal clean, at least. With infinite power, he might have been able to mend the hopelessly mangled arm, but he could feel himself slowly running down, and no matter how great the temptation was to borrow a cup of life force from his neighbor, he had no wish to walk down that road again right now.


    Despite the misgivings of his men, they trudged on up into the bleak foothills where orcs usually came from. Several times, they saw one or two out hunting, but those were dispatched easily enough with a cloud of crossbow bolts. With this many men, Orcs were only dangerous in crowds or when they took you by surprise.


    This far off the beaten path, both things were possible. Hell, they were probable. So, they took their time as the slopes steepened, and boulders that might hide the enemy became more common on the rocky ground.


    Still, they never found the large villages of greenskins that Simon feared they would. Instead, they eventually came across some half-collapsed ruins that looked less Greco-Roman and more Mesopotamian, with monolithic architecture and bas reliefs that had been all but obliterated by the sands of time.


    He spent some time studying the place but couldn¡¯t decide if it was a tomb or a temple. Simon found what might have been the remains of a summoning circle on the floor in one of the still-standing buildings, but he had no idea if the symbols that had been used were real or nonsense because they were smudged so badly.


    It was only in a deeper room, past the rotting corpses of humans that had obviously been used in some sort of sacrificial ritual, that he found true words of power written in blood. They weren¡¯t written by human hands, though. Instead, they were daubed on the walls with wide orcish fingers. Simon often had trouble telling what language something was written in when he read it, but in this case, he was immediately certain that this was nothing he¡¯d seen before. It certainly wasn¡¯t human.


    More than anything, in that moment, Simon wanted to pull out his mirror and scan this into it for further study later. He¡¯d found something. He didn¡¯t know what it was, but it felt like a loose thread just waiting to be pulled.


    The men holding torches with him would think very dimly of such a plan, though. So, instead, he read through the words quickly while he pretended to wrinkle his nose in disgust.


    ¡°What is this filth?¡± Simon asked no one in particular.


    He knew what it was, though. He just didn¡¯t know why it was. ¡®RUIN FLOWS across the land, no matter what she says, that¡¯s the PLAN.¡¯


    He ordered his men to obliterate it from existence with their torches, but not before he committed the words of power hidden within the graffiti to memory. However, it took him a moment to understand some of the more important aspects of them.


    The first was that Ruin was the word for lightning. It was still spelled Vrazig, but somehow, in this language and with these letters, he read it differently. The second was that for so long, he¡¯d thought that he didn¡¯t know the word for water, but he¡¯d had it the whole time. He thought that initially, he¡¯d learned a new word for water, but it wasn¡¯t. It was just Zyvon, the problematic word for transfer, that occasionally haunted his dreams.


    Only the word Celdura was new, and its meaning was harder to tease out. The way it was used meant plan, quite literally, but as they walked out of the cursed room, he considered what it might be used for. Was it used to dictate what was going to happen next, like it had something to do with fate? Maybe it referred to plans like schematics, and it had something to do with magic, magical items, and summoning circles.


    He wasn¡¯t sure, though. In the end, all he could say was that he felt like it was somehow the opposite of ruin, which very clearly meant decay now in addition to lightning in his mind. It was hard to say quite how that association had happened, but it was there now. Did that make Celdura order as well? That didn¡¯t sound right to him, but it was hard to say exactly why. More experimentation would be required.


    Regardless of who wrote that message or who it was meant for, eventually, he was forced to set these matters aside. No matter how much he wanted to explore them, obsessing over foul runes with a bunch of illiterate mercenaries would get him strange looks at the very least, and they might well get him gutted.


    Going this far into the hinterlands with such a small group had not been popular. So, even though he knew this was far from resolved, he declared victory and told the men they were going home.


    ¡°There¡¯s no doubt in my mind that those foul words and sacrifices were the source of the greenskin¡¯s power,¡± he declared, acting like he meant it. They were probably related, but he doubted the orcs could read any more than his men could. ¡°But now those are gone, and the kingdom is once again safe.¡±


    There were a few scattered cheers at that, but even those who stayed quiet were glad to be going back. Being out here without reinforcements was a great way to get taken by surprise and surrounded. While Simon would gladly unleash hell to save his men, they didn¡¯t know that. So, their respect and obedience only went so far.


    Still, the way home was less eventful than the way there. Miken survived, but they only found a single orc hunter on the way back to more civilized lands, where they found only hospitality once they started to tell stories about black magic and the struggles against the orc menace.


    Simon was happy to let this particular legend grow as large as they wanted it to. He spent his time pondering the strange words they¡¯d found on the wall all the way back to Crowvar.

 Ch. 137 - Duties and Demands

    When all was said and done, almost a season later, just as the heat of summer was starting to set in, they finally arrived in Crowvar once more. As an errand for the domain, it probably had not been worth that much time. However, Simon had learned enough that he really didn¡¯t mind. It wasn¡¯t like time held real value for him, especially not on a level without an exit.


    Still, as they got close enough to the city to make out the details, he was pleased to see that his other hard work had paid off. The walls of the town were no longer ragged. Though still blackened in some places, they had been finished, and the effect was bigger than he would have thought. It looked like a proper walled city again, though he knew that was a trick of distance as much as anything.


    The way they had come did not allow him a chance to inspect the roads he¡¯d commissioned, but he could do that another day. It was not urgent. So, as they walked back, everything was going about as they expected until they saw signs of mourning on the populace coming in and out of the gate.


    A quick conversation with the gate guards cleared that up. The young Baron had sickened and died weeks before from a high fever. Simon had no love for the Raithewait bloodline, but he wasn¡¯t so cruel as to feel anything but saddened by such a young child. Still, given who his father was, Simon didn¡¯t feel guilty that he hadn¡¯t been on hand to use magic to save the lad. He probably would have broken down and done just that, despite himself.


    Now, there was no chance, though. There was just a grieving widow who looked at him with ice in her eyes and a fresh grave not so far from where he¡¯d once buried Freya.


    Adonnia didn¡¯t seem like a bad person, beyond the identity of her deceased husband. She was a pretty, young, blond woman who had probably even been sweet before Varten had gotten his claws into her, not that it mattered to Simon. He was content to give her the run on the now largely empty Raithewait Manor at the center of Crowvar while he dealt with more important issues that had piled up since his departure.


    As it turned out, though, the death of the Baron¡¯s heir wasn¡¯t even the most important thing that had happened in his absence. The Captain of the guard was the first to inform him that there had almost been a palace coup while Simon had been away.


    ¡°I thought for sure it was going to happen too,¡± the man said, giving Simon a list of names that showed who was on which side of the issue. ¡°But when little Varten junior died, the plans collapsed.¡±


    ¡°Because there was no longer anyone to rally around?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡°That too,¡± the Guard Captain nodded. ¡°Really, though, it was that she was the driving force behind the effort as well, and when he sickened, it all just sort of unraveled.¡±


    Simon nodded, reviewing the list. It was all pretty straightforward. Those who thought it was a bad idea were merchants and anyone with a martial background who had to deal with the real world and understood what Simon had been fighting so hard for. Those who had been on the side of barring him from the city and declaring him an outlaw, on the other hand, were largely the nobility and those who had enjoyed a life of privilege.


    As easy as it was to draw a line between those groups, it was harder to decide how to punish them. In the days that followed he could see the guilty filled with tension as they waited for the other shoe to drop, but he¡¯d already killed a handful of nobles after the poisoning, and doing so again would make him appear to be a tyrant, whether he was right or wrong.


    As he thought back to the statue of him in Darndelle and the mention that Simon was a name that was cursed in the north reminded him that he had no wish to hear stories around a campfire on some future level about Simon the Bloody Baron. So, he bided his time, and on his second week home, he brought all of them together in the main hall and gave each of them a choice.


    ¡°Despite all my hard work to make this town a place worth living, you still fight me every step of the way,¡± he said wearily. There were a few denials with varying degrees of volume and sincerity, but Simon continued, talking over them. ¡°I left to purge the orcs and return to find out that you sought to lock me out of Crowvar, even after I treated the last group that plotted against me so harshly? What am I to do with you all?¡±


    There were a few protestations of innocence then, along with some tears and an apology. Adonnia said nothing, though. She just stood there gazing at him with the same cold stare she always did.


    ¡°Each of you will be given a choice,¡± Simon said finally. ¡°You can admit your guilt and pay a fine based on who you are and the wealth you possess, or tonight, you will make the journey out to where the trade road is being rebuilt, and you will work there until it is complete. I do not care if your debt is paid in coins or sweat, but your evil acts will reward the good people of Crowvar, one way or the other.¡±


    The main hall had not been quiet throughout the preceding minutes, but as Simon completed his statement, it erupted in outrage. In retrospect, the finely dressed people in this room probably would have been less upset to find out that they were being executed than that they were going to be put to work digging ditches and hauling gravel.


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    He didn¡¯t care, though. Let them be outraged, he thought, as he left the room without another word.


    The guards stationed at the doors let him by, but they were under strict orders not to let anyone else out of the room until they¡¯d signed the confession and agreed to pay the fine that amounted to ten percent of their wealth, as it had been estimated by the barony¡¯s tax collector.


    Simon didn¡¯t really care which way they chose. He was quite sure that most of the high-born lords and ladies in that room would refuse, sure that he was bluffing. They would be quite surprised come nightfall.


    Only Adonnia Raithwait would be spared. He¡¯d love to see her confess, of course, but he doubted that she would. She was just there to make her reconsider such acts in the future.


    Simon spent the rest of the day reviewing correspondence and reports from far-flung villages about local monster and bandit activity but found them to be remarkably light, given the nice weather they¡¯d been having. ¡°Maybe we¡¯re making a difference after all,¡± he said to himself, feeling good about what he was doing for the first time in a while.


    Maybe I don¡¯t need to do every level, he thought to himself. Maybe I just need one life running every city in the world, and then the future levels will solve themselves. That wasn¡¯t likely, of course, but it was amusing.


    That night, eight remaining holdouts were taken from the main hall in manacles and brought home so they could change into the most practical clothes they owned before they were loaded into wagons and taken out to the worksites in the west. Six confessed their guilt and agreed to pay restitution, which Simon would use to finance further irrigation projects and increase ranching activities.


    He watched them leave out the window of an inn that was just across the street from the gate to the inner fortress with a smile on his face. That was when there was a knock at his door. For Simon, that timing was just enough to raise the hackles on the back of his neck.


    ¡°Come in!¡± he yelled, knowing it might be anyone.


    At that moment, he expected anyone from the Captain of the Guard to a Warlock or an assassin to enter the door. Instead, it was Lady Raithewait who opened it.


    ¡°How dare you treat me like that,¡± she said in a tone just quiet enough not to be called yelling. ¡°I am the wife and the mother of Barons, and I will not be treated this way by the likes of you.¡±


    She didn¡¯t even bother to close the door or approach him. Simon wasn¡¯t surprised. She made no secret about how she felt about him.


    ¡°They¡¯re lucky I didn¡¯t execute them,¡± he said dismissively. ¡°All of you are. Now, if you¡¯ll excuse me¡ª¡±


    ¡°You made an enemy of every person in that room today,¡± She continued. ¡°You¡¯re already so paranoid that you don¡¯t even eat the food that the cooks prepare, and now this? Are you blind or stupid?¡±


    Simon put down the papers he¡¯d been pretending to read to ignore her and looked at the woman straight in the face. ¡°Adonnia¡­ every person in that room was my enemy already, and nothing I did changed that. I don¡¯t want to be here anymore than you want me to be here, but since you and your friends think these petty power games are more important than taking care of your people¡­ well, I¡¯m stuck here until that gets solved.¡±


    ¡°You think you hold a monopoly on caring about Crowvar, do you?¡± she spat.


    ¡°I think that if your dead husband and his dead father had done a better job, this would be a thriving trade city instead of a dying pitstop,¡± Simon said with a little more anger than he intended. ¡°And I think that if it was that city, there would have been a healer worth a damn who might have saved your son from his fever last month.¡±


    It was cruel, but he felt like the only way she would understand was to compare her suffering to the people¡¯s well-being. The way she purpled with rage after that made it clear he¡¯d miscalculated and twisted the knife a little too far.


    Adonnia said nothing to that. She simply stormed off, leaving him feeling a little bad. Mentally, Simon added a note to prioritize some sort of clinic for the town. It wasn¡¯t his job to save everybody, of course, but he¡¯d learned a lot about herbs in Abresse, and the knowledge should be passed on.


    Simon spent the next several weeks improving what he could until a messenger party sent by the King arrived to derail things. The man thanked Simon for all his hard work but said, "In order to ensure regional stability, you will either have to step aside for a new Baron, or you will need to marry the widow of the old one and produce a new heir. The King does not care which option you choose, only that things are decided quickly." Simon laughed at those choices.


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t marry that woman if she were the last one in the world,¡± he said once his gales of laughter had finally been reduced to a chuckle.


    ¡°So then you¡¯ll step aside peacefully?¡± the fop that had been assigned this duty asked. Really, his whole party had been a little too pampered and preening for Simon¡¯s tastes, but he supposed that was normal in the capital.


    ¡°Why? Because the King will make war against me if I don''t? Because I¡¯m a commoner and couldn¡¯t possibly be allowed to be in charge?¡± Simon asked. ¡°Listen, I don¡¯t care who rules Crowvar. I just want someone to do a good job, but I¡¯m not stepping down just because¡­ Ghhhh¡ª¡±


    As soon as he said he would not comply, the garrote slipped around his neck, cutting off both his ability to breathe and speak. Simon gasped like a fish on shore as he stood and moved to break free from his attacker. He elbowed the man more than once, but his assailant''s grip neither broke nor slackened. Simon tried to break the man¡¯s nose with a reverse headbutt, but the man stayed just out of reach. He even drew his knife, but the man who sat across him grabbed Simon¡¯s wrist in an iron grip before he could do much.


    If anything, that was the strangest part, he thought as his vision began to gray and the wire dug deeper into his throat. The courtier that he¡¯d been speaking to was a spindly weasel, and there was no way he could be this strong.


    ¡°Pity,¡± the courtier said. ¡°A soul with this many shadows¡­ we could have found a place for you, I think.¡± It was a strange line, but before Simon could even fully digest it, he was dead, and instead of fighting for his life, he was once more staring at the ceiling of his cabin.

 Ch. 138 - A Matter of Priorities

    Simon reached up and rubbed his eyes in frustration. ¡°Fucking politics, man,¡± he groaned to himself.


    He sat up and unconsciously rubbed his throat as he tried to figure out what their deal was, but sadly, he hadn¡¯t even paid enough attention when they¡¯d introduced themselves to remember the names of the people who had killed him this time. He¡¯d walked into the conversation expecting some additional political maneuvering or perhaps an increased tax levy, and instead, he¡¯d been assassinated.


    ¡°Why would they bother to kill me?¡± he wondered aloud, but he had no answers. His mind started to race with secret conspiracies and secret, shadowy forces that were secretly opposed to his efforts, but all that faded away as soon as he stood and felt how much heavier he was than he¡¯d been only a moment ago.


    ¡°Damn it,¡± he cursed softly. On the bright side, he didn¡¯t feel old or tired anymore, but that was hardly a win since now he needed to drop fifty pounds of lard and gain thirty or forty pounds of muscle all over again. He considered that but pushed it aside. More important things needed to be done first.


    ¡°Mirror, is the ship level still accessible?¡± Simon demanded.


    The mirror instantly sprang to life and asked, ¡®Could you be more specific in your request? Many floors of the Pit contain ships.¡¯


    ¡°Oh, for fuck''s sake¡­¡± Simon sighed, counting the floors off on his fingers. ¡°Level 23, the level I was just at. Is it still accessible?¡±


    ¡®It is not,¡¯ the mirror typed, ¡®That level is currently completed and not required to be repeated.¡¯


    ¡°Well, at least there¡¯s that,¡± Simon smiled as he reached for the wine. ¡°What about levels 24, 26, 27 and... You know what¡­ just show me the list of levels that are currently accessible, please.¡±


    The mirror complied, bringing up the same ever-shrinking list it always did.


    ¡®Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt


    Level 6 - Zombies in an inn


    Level 10 - Fire elementals in Ionar


    Level 13 - A demon in a church


    Level 25 - Black swarmer on a farm


    Level 28 - Poisoned Oasis


    Level 29 - Cultists in a village


    Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains¡¯


    Simon noticed that the rat level was gone, which meant that his attempt to burn them out worked. Something in that basement had been evil, and now it would no longer spread. He¡¯d never managed to figure that out, but that was good enough for him. Even better, solving it didn¡¯t appear to have opened up anything new. The centaur level also appeared to be gone, which was something he¡¯d been hoping for but not something he¡¯d been even remotely sure about, given how Schwarzenbruck kept coming up like a bad penny.


    He took a long swing off the bottle before he put it back down and considered his next steps. He could try to fix Freya¡¯s level again. He could skip it and finally see if all his hard work on the demon in the church had paid off, or he could move on and try to make progress.


    ¡°What I should probably do is take care of the damn fire elementals so I can take out the zombies, but¡­¡± As he spoke, his words trailed off as he remembered that giant magma monster. He wasn¡¯t exactly feeling up to fighting that thing, either.


    To do that, I¡¯d have to make a forge and get some armor, then I¡¯d have to engrave wards of fire protection, and¡­ Simon shook his head. That wasn¡¯t what he needed. What he needed was to figure out what was powering the frost sword and some of the other things he¡¯d seen. Surely the only way to power magic items in this world wasn¡¯t by using himself as a battery, was it?


    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not like you¡¯ve seen very many around, have you,¡± he quipped to himself.


    It was a fair point. He had not. Why was that, though? Was that because they were hard to make, greatly coveted, or feared by simpletons that thought that all magic was evil. Honestly, I¡¯m going to go with D, all of the above, he thought to himself.


    Simon spent the next half hour going through things with the mirror to make sure everything he thought he¡¯d saved was still there. Fortunately, it hadn¡¯t forgotten any of his maps or notes about medicine or the words of power. It occurred to him that given that some of these insights occurred to him only when a given word was written in a different language or written in a different way that he saw them from another angle, he should probably try writing them down in saying them in every language that he knew.


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    Such a task would be easier said than done, of course, since they were all hopelessly jumbled together, and he had nothing to write with. Still, the next time he went to a trade city, he resolved to try to listen carefully to the differences to see if there was some way he could undo this terrible tangle in his mind. Helades had given him a wonderful gift, but it was also a curse now that he needed a little fine control over it.


    It didn¡¯t matter; he scolded himself for getting too negative. He¡¯d figure it out. It was just another long-term project.


    Short-term projects were simpler. He could either take the most efficient move and go after the volcano, he could take the easy win and see if he really had figured out the devil¡¯s summoning circle, or he could try getting to the dragon again and see what it was that awaited him there since he had almost no clue what actually happened in that level.


    ¡°Honestly, I don¡¯t even need to kill the volcano or whatever,¡± he told himself as he relit the stone from the hot coals and started cooking up his sausages. ¡°The doors lead from the market plaza to the palace, so the goal is somewhere around there. I probably just need to get the survivors to safety.¡±


    Well, one particular survivor, he thought to himself, annoyed with how lightly Helades treated the average person in her world.


    Simon spent that lunch trying to digest his meal and trying to digest the idea that he could just cheap out and do the level the easy way, but that didn¡¯t go down as easy as the sausage. He wasn¡¯t just going to sacrifice the city because Helades didn¡¯t care about it. What he really needed, he decided, was to get there before the eruption somehow, and stop it.


    Was that even possible? Simon had no idea. It really depended on what started it. If it was just some natural event, then he probably didn¡¯t have a very good chance. However, if there was some evil cultist, he could stop¡­ Well, that was something to think on.


    Simon was in no hurry to get on the road that day. He let all these thoughts percolate in his head as he tried to decide what he wanted to do, and he went to bed early.


    In the morning, he woke and was surprised to decide that his answer was none of the above. What he wanted to do more than anything was stop the volcano, but there were too many steps and too many unknowns between here and there, so he was going to take a break from all that and do something else. He was going to figure out where this cabin was on his map.


    It was a small goal, but given how much of his little world he¡¯d already charted, it was an important one. Helades tried to make it seem like going deeper in the Pit was all that mattered, but the longer he was here, the more he decided that understanding how all the pieces fit together was what was really important. He could probably never know everything, but with some effort, he could learn enough to see the big picture, and that would probably be enough.


    After all, he decided as he got up and started packing just enough for a little wilderness exploration. That meant he brought all of his basic gear and his leathers, but he was only going to bring his sword, his knife, and his bow. As much as he loved his shield and appreciated having a mace and axe, just thinking about carrying that much without a proper pack was exhausting at this point.


    Getting ready for this made him think about the last time he¡¯d tried this particular trip. That, in turn, forced him to flush with shame as he recalled dying of exposure twice, trying to find his way out of there. It wasn¡¯t even like the goblin level where he¡¯d died in the blizzard. Here, he just¡­ ran out of water and walked in circles until his flabby body succumbed to dehydration.


    That wasn¡¯t going to happen this time. He promised himself that as he started heading toward the highest point, he could see on the horizon. He wasn¡¯t sure if he was actually going to try to summit the snow-capped peak. If he found a nice pass, or other signs of civilization, it would be a hell of a lot easier to go around.


    Still, aside from him getting winded after less than a quarter mile of stomping through the brush, the day went well. Simon pushed hard on the first day to make sure he got as far as possible from the one goblin nest that he knew about. That was no guarantee that there weren¡¯t others, of course. Goblins were like roaches, and they rarely traveled alone.


    That night, he slept without a fire, and the next day, he finished off his bread. It was only when the woods started to thin out into scrubby foothills that he started looking for game to hunt for dinner that night. The last time he¡¯d been here, the woods seemed to go on forever, but this time, keeping more or less in a straight line, he¡¯d gone through them in perhaps fifteen miles. That raised other questions, of course. Who would build a cabin in the middle of nowhere? It was something he¡¯d probably never know the answer to, but it was something he thought about as he tried and failed to find some measure of civilization.


    That night, Simon almost went hungry, but toward sunset, he found a snake small enough that killing it was easy and big enough that it might have meat worth eating. He lopped its head off quickly enough. Gutting it was harder and messier, but eventually, he had it wrapped around a stick and roasting over a low flame.


    It wasn¡¯t the best food he¡¯d ever eaten. It was tough and gamey, and he kept having to pick out little bones. That said, It was better than going hungry, and it was a reminder of how far he¡¯d come. Old Simon would have rather starved than eaten this, but even a shitty meal would give him the strength to keep going, and he had a feeling that he would have a lot of walking to do before he finally got his answer about his current location in the world.

 Ch. 139 - A Long Way from Anywhere

    Simon didn¡¯t have paper to document his journey. Instead, he used a stick to document his time. As near as he could tell, he was going to the south-west. Every day that he made good progress got a big notch, and every day that he made slow progress got a small one as he tried to go as straight a line as possible. He made thin lines through the days when he had to cross rivers but gave up just before he started a system to try to estimate grade and elevation. It simply wasn¡¯t worth it.


    After all, he didn¡¯t need to know the best way over these mountains. This wasn¡¯t a route he expected to take often. He just had to find the closest place he was familiar with and call it a day. Once that was done, he would be out of reasons to procrastinate, and he could get back to more important things.


    It took three days to reach the ridge of the mountain in a low place, and as much as he wanted to try summiting it, he was forced to acknowledge that he simply wasn¡¯t in the right shape for it right now. Simon mentally added that to his bucket list as he made his way down the other side.


    On the way down, he found a boulder that afforded him a view of the next valley. Though he still had a long way to go through the pine trees and almost certainly a few more cold nights in his bedroll, he could see a river, and beyond it, he could see the thin brown line of a road, which instantly became his new goal.


    Simon didn¡¯t sleep well in the nights that followed because he heard the distant screech of what he thought was an owlbear somewhere in the woods. The cries were enough to make him worry, but the thing never actually found him. Instead, he reached the river with nothing but a growing hunger and spent half a day casting into the water a very primitive fishing pole to solve that problem despite his aversion to fish.


    He wanted to cross it, but the thing was raging, and he¡¯d have to go somewhere up or down river to find a better spot to ford it. While he sat there catching fat trout that he wasn¡¯t entirely sure that he wanted to eat, he saw a man with a pair of horses leading a wagon down the muddy road.


    Simon would have loved to ask the man for directions, but given the noise of the river between them, that was impossible. Instead, Simon merely waved while the man looked at him strangely.


    ¡°Probably not a lot of random fishermen just hanging out in fantasy land,¡± he nodded.


    That afternoon, Simon ate well, and despite the flashbacks that the smoky fish gave him to the beach at Ionar, he enjoyed the white, flaky flesh and reluctantly took seafood off of his ¡®never eat again¡¯ list. Then he moved far from the smells of food before making camp for the night in case the owlbear showed up.


    The following day, it took hours to find a good place to cross the river, and he still almost went for a swim more than once on the slick stones of the shallow section. Things were better after that, and he opted to go right when he reached the road on the fire shore. However, even with all the time that it took, he still wasn¡¯t entirely dry by the time he caught up with that wagon hours later.


    He never should have caught up to it, of course, not at his walking speed. But the thing''s rear wheels had been sucked deep into the muck, and the man seemed unable to free himself.


    ¡°I don¡¯t have much,¡± the man said when he noticed him. ¡°I¡¯m just on my way back to the village and don¡¯t want no trouble.¡± Given how nervous he was, he obviously thought that Simon was a bandit when he approached, but Simon just waved off the man¡¯s concerns with a smile.


    ¡°It¡¯s cool,¡± Simon assured him. ¡°Everything is cool. Let¡¯s just get you unstuck from the mud. We¡¯ll do this on three.¡±


    That¡¯s almost all it took. A few hard shoves and the thing was free and clear in a few minutes. What had been a man stuck for hours was ended with only the minorest of interventions. It was enough to make him think about all the little nudges he¡¯d been giving history with Heledes¡¯ help.


    After that, the man offered Simon a lift, and he gladly took it. Just because he needed the exercise didn¡¯t mean he wanted more, and he¡¯d already been walking for days. ¡°I appreciate the help,¡± the Merchant told him. ¡°The name is Ennis, by the way, and I¡¯m sorry I got the wrong idea. I just¡­ well, you don¡¯t see many men around here with a sword on their hip unless they mean to use it.¡±


    ¡°Who says I don¡¯t mean to use it?¡± Simon said with a laugh. ¡°I just hunt goblins and the like for coin. There¡¯s no need to be a brigand when there are so many other ways to make money.¡±


    ¡°Aye,¡± the man agreed. ¡°Maybe you could take time out of your day to teach the rest of the highwaymen that. They¡¯re worse than ever this year. I had to pay three tolls just to get this far if you can believe it.¡±


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    Simon let the man gripe about the area and slowly began to flesh out the area that he was in.


    It turned out that he was in the mountainous Kingdom of Charia, which was to the east of the Kingdoms of Brin and Montain. Though he¡¯d spent more time in the latter, this place didn¡¯t feel so terribly different. The mountains in the distance seemed a little taller, and the man¡¯s accent was a touch thicker, but it all still felt familiar enough. That meant that the nearest big city to him was Adonan, which meant he was somewhere near the werewolf level and the level where a certain masquerade party went horribly wrong.


    It was interesting. He didn¡¯t have his map in front of him, and if he had a mirror, he wouldn¡¯t have taken a look with the skittish merchant looking over his shoulder. Still, it felt like he was sort of in the middle of three countries. He hadn¡¯t quite figured out their size, but he could imagine himself being somewhere near the center of France, Germany, and Spain, or whatever country it was that was south of Germany. Until very recently, he¡¯d had zero interest in geography.


    Now, he didn¡¯t have a choice. It would also seem that he didn¡¯t have a choice in dealing with Bandits because after they turned a corner, Simon could see three men loafing by the roadside who were obviously up to no good.


    ¡°See what I mean,¡± Ennis sighed. ¡°How¡¯s a man supposed to make a living when everyone wants a cut.¡±


    ¡°Them?¡± Simon smirked. ¡°You leave them to me.¡±


    He waited until they got close and began their spiel about money to protect and maintain the road when Simon stood up and said, ¡°Sorry boys, I already hijacked this wagon. You go and get your own.¡±


    ¡°You¡­ what?¡± the talker said. ¡°Listen, we get a cut of every cart that comes through here, I don¡¯t care who owns it. The boss says that¡ª¡±


    ¡°Well, then I shouldn¡¯t be talking to you then, should I. I should be talking to your boss. Get him out here.¡±


    ¡°Your funeral,¡± the weaselly man smirked before yelling, ¡°Boss! We got trouble!¡±


    The man that came out of the underbrush was a head taller than Simon, and every inch of him, from his scowling face to his bulging girth, said he was nothing but a brute and a bully. Truthfully, he¡¯d been planning on solving this as peacefully as possible with a little intimidation, but he could see that any attempts at that would be impossible.


    So, he didn¡¯t bother to try. Instead, despite the smirk on the other man¡¯s face, Simon said, ¡°You¡¯ve got about three seconds to get your goons out of my face and let us on your way, or there¡¯s going to be real trouble here.¡±


    ¡°Trouble?¡± The man laughed, casually holding a bastard sword that probably weighed twice what Simon¡¯s did. ¡°What the hells do you think you¡¯re on about. You¡¯re the one who¡¯s¡ª¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t even wait for the man to finish. Instead, he drew his sword and brought it down hard in an exaggerated overhand chop that gave the man all the time in the world to get his sword up to block. It was a terrible move. It would put Simon off balance, and even as he recovered, the bigger man¡¯s sword would come down and probably take a head or an arm if he was any good.


    That¡¯s what should have happened, of course. Instead, Simon muttered, ¡°Oonbetit,¡± just before he struck, sending a line of pure force through the man like a spectral guillotine. The result was cinematic if nothing else.


    All of the onlookers saw the two swords strike each other before Simon split the man in two, from stem to stern. That wasn¡¯t what happened, though. In truth, the man had already been split apart before that ever happened and fell apart into two clean halves. It was a messy thing and not at all how he wanted it to go, but it wasn¡¯t like he had a choice.


    The result was shock and fear. Even the horses made shrill noises of displeasure, and Ennis had to wrangle them in.


    ¡°So are you going to let us by now, or are more people going to have to die,¡± Simon said in an annoyed tone as he flicked the blood clean from his blade.


    He might be acting confident, but he was nervous as hell. If all these people drew on him, he was going to need fire or lightning to keep Ennis from getting killed in the ensuing fight, and then he¡¯d be a warlock to everyone the man talked to forever more.


    That isn¡¯t what happened, though. Instead, Simon took out the biggest dude, and everyone else freaked out. A couple looked at each other, trying to gauge the amount of support they might have if they attacked Simon, but as soon as the first man turned and ran, most of the rest of them soon followed, leaving him the wagon and a bisected corpse all alone on the road.


    Simon sighed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry you had to see that; things can get ugly sometimes out here.¡±


    The merchant nodded mutely as Simon dragged both sides of the body off the road by the man¡¯s boots and helped himself to the bandit leader¡¯s coin purse. They were a few miles down the road when Ennis finally asked, ¡°So, are you hijacking me then? Are you really going to¡ª¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Simon blurted out in surprise. ¡°No. I was just trying to bluff my way past without bloodshed. That¡¯s all.¡±


    ¡°You seem pretty good at bloodshed to me,¡± the merchant said quietly.


    Simon nodded but said nothing. Truthfully, he was too good at bloodshed and wished he was better at solving situations like that without resorting to violence. However, if he had to choose between an innocent man and a bad man, the bad man was going down every time.


    The two of them rode together for two days, and when they reached the next village, Ennis waited for Simon to leave the wagon to see about buying supplies before the man took off as quick as he could. By the time Simon returned with a loaf of bread to share for lunch, Ennis was half a mile down the road.


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s fair,¡± Simon said, wondering what he should do now.

 Ch. 140 - What needs to be Done

    What Simon did was stick around. The name of that hamlet he found himself in turned out to be Wolvram, and though they didn¡¯t like strangers much, they did have a goblin problem that was causing increasing amounts of trouble in their upland sheep pastures. Since it was one of the few real skills that Simon had, he was happy to help and made quick work of them with smoke and arrows.


    He was bitten, but only once, while he purged all the local caves that he could wedge himself inside over the course of a week. When he came back with over thirty ears, no one gave him a hard time when he decided to stick around. They didn¡¯t quite treat him as a hero or anything, but they no longer shunned him either.


    After that, there was no reason to leave. Well, not right away. He helped out around the town as he slowly got in better shape. He mended fences, scared away bandits, and once it got cold, he spent a lot of time helping out at the small smithy near the center of town.


    That wasn¡¯t just because he was bored, though. For some of the projects he had in mind for the future, he was going to have to get better at that sort of work. It was one thing to speak a word of power, but it was quite another to carve it into something and let the magic do its work for you, and for some of the hard stuff that lay ahead, he was going to have to do better.


    Not that it would be hard to do better, of course, he recalled in embarrassment as he remembered just how ugly that flaming sword had been and just how quickly it had drained years from his life.


    Honestly, the winter was a little cold for the barn he slept in, but by the spring, he was already rehabbing a half-complete cottage that had burned down years before. Part of him kept telling him that he should get back on the road and at least travel to Adonan and make sure it was the town he thought it was in the place he thought it was. Truthfully, he didn¡¯t need to, though. Every merchant said the same thing, and he doubted they were all lying.


    Truthfully, this was the biggest danger of the Pit to him after fighting so many evils. It was making friends and settling down. After all, as cool as it would be to slay a dragon or close a portal to hell, it couldn¡¯t compare to the pretty redhead that had been flirting with him for the last couple of months.


    Rose was the real temptation. She was a vision of beauty right out of a Disney movie, and in a village this small, they ran into each other nearly every day, which made it even easier to imagine a future that involved her. He might have stayed with her forever if he hadn¡¯t accidentally learned from one of the men he drank with that she¡¯d been married before.


    That didn¡¯t bother Simon, of course. Being a 23-year-old widow in this world might make you an old maid, but on Earth, there would have been nothing wrong with that. Still, it wasn¡¯t that she¡¯d been married before. It was the man she¡¯d been married to. He¡¯d heard the name Brul tossed around before, but Simon hadn¡¯t put two and two together until he¡¯d heard that the guy in question was a cruel giant of a man who had made a living in less than savory easy.


    ¡°That Brul was a real pieecce of work before someone up and split the bastard in two, but I reckon you¡¯d be a better match for her than he ever wassss,¡± the town drunk explained as if he was blessing a marriage that had already happened, but that was all it took for things to fall into place for Simon, and he started to pack his few positions immediately.


    Suddenly, it all made sense. She¡¯d shown zero interest in him for the first few months, then suddenly, she¡¯d been all over him. Rose knew exactly what he¡¯d done to her husband. By now, she had to have. Neither he nor Ennis had told anyone, but the timing was impossible to hide.


    ¡°So she just wanted me to let my guard down so she could have her vengeance, huh?¡± he asked himself as he started walking in the dark back the way he¡¯d come.


    The idea of spending a night in Rose¡¯s bed was probably worth a death or two as long as they were relatively painless. That said, he was done dying in stupid ways and letting a widow murder you in your sleep definitely qualified as stupid.


    Besides, he¡¯d slacked off long enough. Another couple of months like this, and he¡¯d probably spend the rest of his life here. It was just too easy to put down roots and enjoy a quiet life after so much bloodshed.


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    Simon spent a lot of time wondering about that on the way back to the river. Just what were all the heroes in the Pit doing? He thought to himself as he walked through the night.


    If this place really was full of millions of people, all trying to accomplish the same goal, how many of them had gone insane? How many of them were living quiet, enjoyable lives? How many of them were even striving toward the larger goal after a few deaths?


    Though he wouldn¡¯t have thought it possible in the beginning, he now thought the latter hazard was bigger than the former. It was easier to be happy than it was to be insane once you had a little magic up your sleeve. He reminded himself of that as he left this small bit of happiness behind. He¡¯d find more somewhere. The world was a big place.


    These thoughts occupied Simons''s mind more than they should have, so it wasn¡¯t a complete surprise when he suddenly realized he¡¯d walked at least a day past his intended destination. Normally at this point, he would have sighed, grumbled a bit, and turned around, but as he looked at the familiar thing, he found himself smiling as another piece dropped into place.


    Right now, he was looking at a covered bridge, which was not something he''d seen every day. What was more, in the distance, on the far side of the river, he could see a windmill slowly turning in the breeze. That was when he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he¡¯d been here before. Standing on the side of the river he''d never reached on the way back to his cabin, Simon made one more unintentional discovery. He hadn''t even been looking for this spot, but suddenly, he had a new location for his map.


    The woods where he¡¯d heard an owlbear were the same woods where he¡¯d killed an owlbear. ¡°Imagine my shock,¡± he said with a smile as he turned and headed back toward the cabin.


    Simon arrived at his little home away from home three days later. He encountered a second surprise: the place was trashed. Not in the goblin way, either. It was more like he¡¯d seen it the one time he¡¯d come back up through the trapdoor in level two. It was almost like someone had been looking for something. The mirror was shattered into tiny pieces and strangest of all, there was a single muddy footprint just inside the door that belonged to a boot, not a tiny clawed foot.


    ¡°Weird,¡± Simon said, not sure what to make of all of this.


    The trapdoor was closed but exposed, and for a moment, he allowed himself to hope that whoever had done all this had accidentally fallen down the rabbit hole to Wonderland, but he knew that wasn¡¯t possible. Without him around to open the portals, it just led to the root cellar.


    Simon sat there for several minutes, trying to decide what more he should do before he finally shrugged and headed downstairs. He had a date with the knight and a plan for what he was doing next with all that armor.


    Simon went into the crypt only slightly cautiously because, for once, he didn¡¯t have his mace, thanks to whoever had ransacked the cabin. He needn¡¯t have worried, though. These things moved so slowly now that he was in halfway decent shape again that he couldn¡¯t believe he¡¯d ever found them difficult. Once that was done, and the skeleton knight was lying beheaded on the floor, Simon began removing the man¡¯s armor a piece at a time and giving it a good look. It was cold, even though his leather gauntlets, but the lines and markings on the armor itself were strictly heraldic and decorative. He would have to change that.


    He didn¡¯t plan to do that right here, though. Instead, he wanted to study the dark heart and better understand the careful designs that had been inlay on its ebony surface. After he stacked up all of the armor he was going to need and stuffed it in a sack along with its matching sword, he moved back to the glittering artifact and began to unravel it one glyph at a time. There were still parts that he didn¡¯t understand, but what he found was a circuit dominated by life and transfer runes, just like the golem, and powered by something he couldn¡¯t quite tease out.


    It was a complex, compound glyph that was surrounded by a boundary rune. It¡¯s almost like a name, maybe? Simon thought, studying it. It could be. It could be powered by heaven or hell or a god or the soul of a dead archmage. He had no idea how to read that mark, and that meant that the mystery was still very much beyond him.  Still, he spent hours on the floor going back and forth between the mirror-bound notes on the golem and even the hell circle and the dark heart before he finally gave up and rubbed his aching eyes.


    Part of him thought about smashing the thing right there, but he knew he couldn¡¯t do that. Not yet. He wasn¡¯t done with this level. So, instead, he did the next best thing and hid it in the helmet of one of the dead knights in pieces on the floor. Simon doubted that would be enough to reset the level, but it would be enough to give whoever came here to use it later a hard time.


    Then, when all that was done, he used the key to unlock the gate, and he entered the very familiar inn. He found it crowded as usual, but there were no zombies, and for now, that¡¯s all he could hope for. Simon smiled when he didn¡¯t see Freya around and then flagged down his least favorite barmaid, Brenna. Then, while she smiled and tried to pretend like there was a heart in there somewhere, he used a couple of his coppers to order a beer and get the lay of the land.

 Ch. 141 - A Bit of Preparation

    The situation was much as Simon had left it and largely unchanged from his last few visits. There was trouble in the north. No one quite knew what it was or why it had stopped trade to the north, yet mercenaries had been hired and dispatched. In fact, asking around, it sounded like Butcher¡¯s Bill had left a few hours before he¡¯d arrived.


    He didn¡¯t care about that, though. This time, he wasn¡¯t looking for Freya. He wasn¡¯t planning to help her or save her. He wasn¡¯t even planning to visit the Barrow Mounds at all. Hell, if he had a better option for a forge, he wouldn¡¯t even head north at all, but he knew of several villages up that way that had already been cleaned out by zombies.


    So, aside from the occasional member of the walking dead he was sure he¡¯d have to kill, that sounded just about right for Simon. It seemed strange that once he feared the zombies so much that the walls of the city seemed to be barely enough protection, and now he was comfortable with the idea that they might just walk up on him in the middle of something, but the reason was clear. He had magic for that sort of thing now.


    So, not only was he not at risk in a real sense, but with his plan, he could actually help people. He wasn¡¯t sure if his hammer would attract them all, but he could act as a beacon and draw at least some of them to him, and that would save lives.


    Hell, that might even be enough to solve this level, he realized. For a second, that was enough to reconsider his whole plan. He definitely wanted to see that barrow. Should he try to rush up there first? Could he take the chance that Kell and company wouldn¡¯t find it first and bury themselves alive? He wasn¡¯t sure.


    What he was sure about, though, was that he was hungry, so he paid an extra coin for a hearty stew and decided to sleep on it. The right answer wasn¡¯t always apparent, but he usually got there eventually.


    No one tried to kill him that night, though one old woman did give him the stink eye when he went out shopping for supplies the next morning. Simon decided there was no way the Butcher¡¯s Bill would even find those mounds without his help. They¡¯d been planning to follow the road north before he¡¯d changed their plans, and he was happy to let them go off on their own little wild goose chase.


    Instead of devoting much time to worrying about them, though, Simon bought a mule with an attitude problem cheap, half a bag of nails in case he needed to reinforce wherever he was going to be sleeping, along with as much smoked sausage, potatoes, and hard bread as he could afford with the meager coins he had left. He bought a few fresh things, too, for the trip up, but the more delicious something was, the more expensive it was going to be, and he didn¡¯t have much for luxuries these days.


    ¡°You know, this sort of thing is more fun on easy mode,¡± he told his donkey as they left the market and headed toward the north gate. ¡°But I had to go and throw all my gold away. Disappointing, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    He talked with the donkey more than he thought he would on the way up north. Honestly, he talked with it more than was probably healthy, but it wasn¡¯t like there was anyone else around. The whole way up the abandoned village, he only saw one other person, and it was a sun-dried zombie that he dispatched with a sword stroke.


    When Simon got to the village he¡¯d been thinking of, it was every bit as empty as he remembered it, and he set about securing the smithy to be his home away from home for the next few days or weeks, or however long it took to create a magical set of fire-resistant plate mail.


    First, he used the doors and windows of other buildings to seal the gaps in the place, and it was only then that he got ready to work. Only there was one problem. He didn¡¯t even realize it until he¡¯d already lit the forges and begun to stoke the fires that he was missing one key item to do all of this: a hammer.


    ¡°Motherfucker,¡± he cursed as he tore the place apart, looking for it. It was nowhere to be found, though. He could probably make a crude hammer with the word for earth, but he didn¡¯t want to. What he wanted was the blacksmith¡¯s hammer that this blacksmith had used with this anvil.


    In the end, Simon let the fires burn back out in his search for the thing, but it was worth it. With a little effort and looking at every corpse that was scattered throughout the village, he eventually found the blacksmith, who was recognizable by his soot-stained hands and his leather apron. Fortunately, the man¡¯s hammer was not far from him in the weeds, so Simon was finally able to get to work.


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    Ironically, he didn¡¯t even need a very large hammer at first for anything for the first few days. Instead, he mostly scribbled on the armor with charcoal as he outlined the patterns he knew he needed. Simon had been working on this design on and off for a long time. Certainly, since his time in Abresse, and in reality, probably longer in his head.


    All that time, he¡¯d known that he was the only source to power the thing, which he definitely didn¡¯t want to do.


    He¡¯d considered simply copying the runes on the blade that powered it, but he was fairly certain that none of this shit worked without some understanding. He could screech words of power until the cows came home, and if he didn¡¯t do it with intent, they were meaningless. So, instead, he came up with a more convoluted plan: he was going to use the volcano itself to power the runes.


    He had to test it, of course, but in theory, he could use the fire rune with a few linking runes to harvest the incredible heat, and then he would use that to power protection runes along with the cold runes to keep it from cooking alive. In theory, the hotter it got, the more powerful the effect would become. If he didn¡¯t find a way to screw it up in the process, of course.


    The result, at least how he imagined it, was somewhat like a wearable refrigerator, only it used magic instead of electricity and more magic instead of freon and insulation. It was at least an order of magnitude more complicated than the sword sheath he¡¯d made before, and he ended up copying most of that from the frost sword. The end result was a series of ugly swirls, dotted here and there with strange cursive letters that grew off them like cancer.


    Once he¡¯d traced them all out onto the front and back of the breastplate and scratched them into place with his dagger, then he created the linking runes to ensure the magic stretched all the way to his gloves and boots. Those he¡¯d stolen from the devil¡¯s binding ring, but they were simple enough.


    They were like adding pipes so the water could flow, which stretched the credulity of his metaphor even further, but it didn¡¯t matter. It wasn¡¯t like he was going to ever be good at this shit. He just needed to make it work for a few minutes and save Ionar. After that, he could put it all behind him.


    Simon managed to avoid the interest of the undead until he¡¯d done all the planning. It was only when he started pounding with the chisel into the warm metal that they began to seek out the source of the racket. After that, they became regular, if somewhat welcome, distractions.


    He¡¯d spend a half hour banging away, and then when he heard the groaning and the moaning, he¡¯d walk a little ways into the woods and kill anything he saw moving for a little exercise. Zombies that had aged this long were no threat. They were little more than practice dummies. For Simon, the challenge wasn¡¯t in killing them but in doing it far enough away from where he was working that they didn¡¯t add to the stink of the place.


    Each day, he made a little progress, and each day, he fought off another wave or two that it attracted. Eventually, it became like the weather. One day, it was sunny with a chance of zombies, and another, it was overcast and not a ghoul in sight.


    It took him a long time to realize what he was doing, though. ¡°You¡¯re really going to spend weeks of your life preparing for a freaking boss fight, huh, Simon?¡± he chastised himself. ¡°What if you fuck it up? Are you going to go get that armor and do it all again?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, probably,¡± he acknowledged. ¡°Daisy would be disappointed in me if I gave up now, wouldn¡¯t you, Daisy?¡±


    The mule whickered at him. It was very clear to Simon that such a grouchy beast did not like the name or being cooped up in a smoky blacksmith''s shop, but he wasn¡¯t about to leave it outside and let it be eaten by the prowling zombies.


    ¡°See, she wants me to win,¡± he smiled. ¡°She wants me to save Ionar.¡±


    He kept working on the breastplate with his chisel. He¡¯d had this conversation with himself more than once, and he knew how it went. At least, he thought he did. He did until he suddenly blurted out, ¡°But you aren¡¯t saving it, are you? You¡¯re just going to go and put it out of its misery.¡±


    Simon stopped what he was doing and considered those words. Going there after it was on fire wasn¡¯t really saving it, was it? If you want to save it, you have to go there and stop it as soon as it starts, he thought to himself.


    His mind reeled at what that would entail. Now, suddenly, instead of spending weeks on a single attempt at a level, he was going to stretch that into what? Months? Years?


    ¡°I don¡¯t even know how far Ionar is from here,¡± he said as he put down his chisel. He knew where it was, of course, as well as how to get there, but he had no idea how much time he had. Did the thing explode next month? In five years? He had no idea if he could take his time or rush, and that oversight annoyed him.


    Something told him he was going to spend the rest of the day turning over this new wrinkle in the back of his mind. At least, he would have. It was at that moment, when he was considering picking his hammer back up that he heard the voice of someone yelling from the road, ¡°Please, is there anyone there? I¡­ we have wounded.¡±


    Simon¡¯s whole world froze then. He knew that voice. He¡¯d know it anywhere. Despite all he¡¯d done to avoid her this run, Freya had found him again. It was fucking destiny, and he was starting to get pretty sick of it.

 Ch. 142 - Harsh Reality

    Simon walked outside to find the most ragged version of Kell¡¯s little mercenary company that he¡¯d seen to date. It was easy to see what had happened. The Butcher¡¯s Bill had certainly lived up to their name today and paid the price.


    Instead of being over a dozen men and women, the little cult of personality was down to 5 members, a horse, and a cart piled with the bodies of the dead. The fact that they were at least bringing their dead home for burial touched him a little, though he worried about the possible biohazard.


    Simon sighed and used a rag to wipe the soot off his face and his hands as best he could. He was soaked in sweat from the work he¡¯d been doing, and he was sure he looked like a wild man, but he really didn¡¯t care.


    Not at first. When he saw that Freya¡¯s hand had a bloody bandage on it, though, well, his flinty heart melted a little. At least, it did until he saw that they¡¯d tied up a zombie and put it in the cart they were lugging with them. That used up most of the sympathy he had right there, but the rest of it died when he looked closer and saw that it was Kell.


    ¡°He¡¯s the one that bit you, isn¡¯t he?¡± Simon asked, pointing to the bound zombie that was still squirming on the pile of the dead. It wasn¡¯t really a question, though. He already knew it was true. ¡°You tried to save a zombie instead of killing one, and now you¡¯re screwed.¡±


    ¡°I¡­¡± Freya said as tears started to tumble silently down her dirty face. No matter how angry he was, that was still enough to twist the knife in his soul.


    ¡°We have to save him,¡± she continued. ¡°Surely someone knows a way. It¡¯s just a temporary madness. Perhaps a priest could¡ª¡±


    ¡°That man,¡± Simon said, pointing at the squirming corpse, ¡°Is not mad. He¡¯s dead, and dead is dead. There is no bringing him back. All he can do is get free, kill other people, and condemn them to the same fate.¡±


    The words were harsh, but he didn¡¯t know what else to say. He knew more about magic than anyone he¡¯d ever known at this point, and though there might be a way to bring back the dead, he did not yet know it.


    ¡°I told ya,¡± Garth shouted. ¡°We should put him out of his misery and be done with it. We can bring the bodies back to¡ª¡±


    ¡°You should burn the bodies,¡± Simon said, looking over the group. In addition to Freya, it looked like the big man in the back, Hodge, had also been bitten. ¡°You should kill the zombie, burn the bodies, and put those who''ve been bit out of their misery before they start to turn.¡±


    That caused all of the survivors to start screaming at each other. Some of them even drew blades as their accusations got louder, but Simon ignored them. Garth was a good guy, but he didn¡¯t really care who lived or died in this group. He¡¯d put them down himself if he had to. It would be easy.


    Well, it would be easy for most of them. ¡°Tell me how long ago he bit you,¡± Simon asked Freya, taking her hand and unraveling the bandage.


    ¡°L-last night,¡± she said haltingly. ¡°H-he¡­ he turned last night. We¡¯d lost half the company, but then a few hours later, some of the wounded they¡­¡±


    She wasn¡¯t able to get the rest of the story out, but that was fine. He had all the answers he needed. Her bite was already eight hours old, and the skin around the ragged wound was already going necrotic. It was probably too late for her, but it probably wasn¡¯t good enough where Freya was concerned.


    Simon studied her pupils, the pallor of her skin, and every other detail he could bring to bear from the years he¡¯d spent as a healer as he tried to figure out what the right answer was here. Experience said that she was fucked, and that she¡¯d only lasted this long because the bit was on a limb so far from her heart and her brain. Science said that something about the way that magic wiped out the virus or the bacteria was incomplete. It said that the relapse was caused by some reservoir of evil somewhere else in her body that caused it to flare back up.


    It¡¯s not science, though. He corrected himself. It¡¯s magic.


    Was that the problem? Had he been so concerned with curing the body instead of the soul that he¡¯d used magic to make people¡¯s bodies whole while the rot spread on some more etheric level? Not for the first time, he wished he had that sight that let some people see the miasma that was his soul. However, before he could go further down that rabbit hole, there was a cry of alarm that derailed his train of thought.


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    Hodge has been warding off his one-time friends with a blade, but before things could escalate further, he fell to the ground and started convulsing. That made the men who had been about to kill him pull back in alarm, which was something that Simon might have thought was funny under any other circumstances. Instead of smiling, though, he shouted. ¡°You can kill him on the ground now, or you can kill him when he¡¯s trying to kill you in less than a minute. The choice is yours.¡±


    That stirred them to action. Instead of standing around trying to figure out what was happening, they started stabbing the man repeatedly, and though most of the blows were ineffective, eventually, one of them went through the neck, and the dead man stopped twitching.


    ¡°What about her,¡± Garth asked, ¡°She¡¯s bit too, right?¡±


    ¡°She is,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°But if you try to kill Freya, you won¡¯t live long enough to wonder how I murdered you.¡±


    She probably needed to die. He knew that, but he wasn¡¯t going to let a stranger brutalize her like that. For a moment, he thought about using magic to behead her quick and clean. It would have been the kindest thing to do, but he was too weak for that. Instead, he was going to try to save her. All this work carving runes had given him an idea.


    ¡°Kill the zombie in your cart and keep traveling south,¡± Simon said finally. ¡°I¡¯ll take care of your friend, one way or the other.¡±


    ¡°But Frey¡¯s part of the company,¡± one of the other men protested; at the same time, Freya said, ¡°No, you can¡¯t kill him!¡±


    She tried to break away from Simon¡¯s grip, but she was too weak for that now. She didn¡¯t have a lot of time left. It was certainly less than an hour, but it was probably less than ten minutes before she was on the ground writhing and spitting as the evil claimed her body.


    ¡°I admire your sentiments,¡± Simon said to Garth as he lifted Freya into both of his arms, ¡°But I¡¯m going to try something to save this woman and won''t waste any more time talking. Go wait a mile down the road if you like, or follow me and die. The choice is yours.¡±


    With that, Simon turned and walked back toward the blacksmith shop. He needed his mirror, and then he needed some space. No one followed him.


    ¡°What are you going to do to me?¡± Freya asked softly. She was sweating now.


    ¡°Whatever I can,¡± Simon said. Part of him knew that he should be devoting more time to making her feel at ease, but there was no room for that in his mind. He was already trying to figure out how he could more thoroughly purge her body of the disease or the curse that was ravaging her. He imagined that would be something like the summoning circle that was used to bind hell but with a few key differences.


    He just needed a sort of spiritual isolation chamber that he could flood with power so that not a single speck of evil could get away to blossom a second time. He¡¯d never tried to save someone this far along, but even if it cost him a few years of life, it would be worth it; he owed her that much.


    Once Simon had his mirror, he headed for a barn not so far from the blacksmithy that had been his home base for a while. ¡°Alright,¡± he explained. ¡°I need to draw something on the ground, and then we¡¯re going to try to do a little magic to save you, okay?¡±


    ¡°Witchcraft,¡± she breathed. ¡°Was it you that did this? Did you create the zombies?¡±


    Simon suppressed the smirk that came with it, remembering the last time he¡¯d done this level. Instead, he shook his head and said, ¡°I swear that the only thing I¡¯ve ever done to zombies is kill them.¡±


    ¡°So then you¡¯re going to steal my soul?¡± she asked weakly. Freya, as frightened as she looked, sat where he left her.


    ¡°I¡¯m probably going to give you a piece of mine,¡± he said after he whispered a few quiet commands to his mirror and brought up a diagram of the circle in question.


    He quickly discarded all the aspects of summoning or displacement. Instead, he started dragging his heel around in the dirt, scratching in the outline of a circle. Then, once that was done, he started roughing in the runes that would seal the space with the handle of a pitchfork. Once he had all of those added, he started adding the runes for greater cure and greater healing. It was only as an afterthought that he added runes for transfer to the thing.


    It wasn¡¯t a spell he didn¡¯t think he¡¯d ever cast personally again, but it was crucial for the power circuits of these complex circles, and in this case, it would draw power from the surrounding world. That probably included him, of course, but this way, he could share the load with the nearby trees and animals and whatever else, which should blunt the blow.


    ¡°This is magic?¡± she asked in confusion.


    Simon ignored the question. None of this was magic. It was preparation, and it was ugly, but only for a moment. He was going as fast as he could, but even as he did so, he wasn¡¯t sure that it was fast enough.


    ¡°Vosden,¡± he said after a moment of concentration, fixing it all in his mind.


    The runes he needed weren¡¯t ugly things scrawled into the dirt. They were crisp, straight things that existed in his mind. Fortunately, he had a way he could carve something like that into the earth fairly quickly.


    Suddenly, all the ugly squiggles he¡¯d made melted into the earth as lines straightened and curves meshed more clearly. In seconds, all of his ugly preparations had faded. They were replaced by something that looked sort of like a crop circle or a particularly complicated piece of graffiti.


    ¡°None of that was magic,¡± he said with a smile, ignoring the stricken look on the woman¡¯s face. ¡°That¡¯s what we''re going to do next.¡±

 Ch. 143 - A Miracle

    Simon wasn¡¯t sure how this would work exactly, but there was no time left to deliberate. Any minute now, Freya¡¯s heart was going to stop, her body was going to spasm as her organs shut down, and she¡¯d be replaced by an abomination that could only ever be a mockery of the woman she¡¯d been, and there was no way he could let that happen.


    So, he pulled the trigger. In this case, for once, that didn¡¯t involve saying anything at all. Instead, he moved forward and stood in the gap that he¡¯d drawn to render the runes useless, completing the circuit with his own body.


    For a moment, nothing happened, but only for just long enough to make him wonder if he¡¯d screwed something up. That was quickly followed by a tingling that started in his feet and slowly moved up his body as the precisely carved symbols in the ground began to glow with an unearthly light.


    ¡°What¡­ what is this?¡± Freya asked. ¡°What are you doing to me?¡±


    She seemed very uncomfortable about what was happening, but Simon had no way of knowing if that was superstition, or something deeper. At this point, all he could do was watch and wait. He was both the conductor of the circuit and also the off switch. If he stepped out of this spot it would cease working, and all this effort would be wasted.


    He didn¡¯t do that. Instead, he ignored her growing fear and his own trepidation, and watched as the light grew and pulsed, and the magic took hold of Freya.


    ¡°It¡¯s going to be okay,¡± he said. ¡°Just half a minute of this, maybe a little more.¡± He didn¡¯t know how long this would take, though, he was just trying to put Freya at ease as her body started to glow.


    The truth was he was in unexplored territory here, and even if he wasn¡¯t, the atmosphere was so charged and dangerous that things felt like they might end badly for him too, and he had some idea of what was going on.


    It wasn¡¯t possible to explain any of that to Freya. Instead, he prayed silently as the light of his brute forced magic filled her with forces she would never understand.


    If one took away the binding circle and the power circuits, the magic here was remarkably simple. It was built to take a ton of power and flood every aspect of his one time wife¡¯s body with cure and life magic. He literally wanted to purge everything from her, down to the tiniest spec of darkness that might have wormed its way into her soul or her bone marrow. Wherever it was hiding, he would eliminate it.


    The light show aside, it seemed to be working too. Her only obvious wound healed in seconds, barely leaving behind a crescent shaped scar. Simon didn¡¯t rush things, though. After that, he gave it another half minute before he finally stepped back and ended the spell.


    The runes dimmed immediately, but it took Freya a little longer to stop resembling a fey creature instead of the beautiful woman she was once she stopped sparkling with the powers of creation.  While she took in what happened Simon used his mirror to make sure he hadn¡¯t accidentally drained decades of his life and ended up with white hair, but it seemed fine.


    He might have burned a year or two, but honestly he didn¡¯t even think it was that much because he felt fine. Letting the rest of the world take some of the burden had definitely been the right answer, and he¡¯d make sure he did that more in the future.


    ¡°Are you okay?¡± he asked finally, once she met his eyes.


    ¡°You tell me,¡± she said. ¡°I-I, feel strange¡­ Better but¡­ different.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure all of that will fade in time,¡± Simon said. ¡°The important thing is that¡­ you survived.¡± As he spoke, he decided to leave out all the descriptors that might have filled that space. Probably. Against the odds. Impossibly.


    The important part wasn¡¯t that she knew how impossible this was. It was that she hadn¡¯t died, and that she didn¡¯t freak out.


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    Freya didn¡¯t freak out, though. Instead, she laughed and said, ¡°which part? The zombie bite or the warlock¡¯s spell?¡±


    Simon smiled at that, but said nothing. Instead, he just let the moment wash over him. For a moment she wasn¡¯t Frey, the mercenary warrior; she was Freya, with the easy smile and the clever quip. More importantly, she was his Freya, almost, for as long as that moment lasted.


    ¡°How did you know my name, anyway?¡± she asked, suddenly, once she stopped looking at her now healed hand.


    Then it was gone. She was a stranger, again, and he was the suspicious warlock that knew how to heal the sick and consort with the dead.


    ¡°I stayed at the same tavern as you guys back in Schwarzenbruck a couple of weeks back,¡± Simon lied smoothly.


    ¡°I see,¡± she answered skeptically. ¡°And why are you up here, alone, in the middle of a horde of zombies?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m investigating the same problem you are, in my own way,¡± Simon answered cryptically, hoping to leave it at that. However, when Freya opened up her mouth to ask another question he spoke over her. ¡°I believe the phrase you are looking for is thank you.¡±


    ¡°Thank you?¡± she said, suddenly glaring at him. ¡°For what? You saved me so I could live with the loss of the man I love. That¡¯s a special kind of torture. That¡¯s all. If you could have saved me, then you could have saved Kell too.¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t even try to explain that the man was already dead. Instead he just shook his head and said, ¡°If I were you I would put your bandage back on and tell your friends that I used wood ash and salt to purify your wound. It¡¯s a lot better than the alternative. They¡¯re waiting for you down the road.¡±


    She thought about it for a moment and then instead of saying anything at all, she stormed out of the building, leaving him standing alone in the barn. He sighed. ¡°That¡¯s what you get for trying Simon. You should have just stayed out of it.¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t even follow to watch her walk away. Instead, he grabbed a shovel and started destroying his circle. The very last thing he wanted was for someone to find this by accident. He had no idea what would happen then, but he was pretty sure it would unsolve a level or three, which was exactly what he would deserve for trying to help those who so clearly wanted to hate him.


    ¡°Leave the past in the past, man,¡± he chided himself as he worked. It was good advice, and he would try to follow it.


    That only took a few minutes to leave the earth disturbed, and when it was done he finally walked outside. There, he noticed a little more death than he remembered before. A chicken that had been hunting and pecking here and there around the village up until now was laying dead near the barn. It was just one more corpse amongst the dismembered zombies and their victims that were scattered around, so normally his eyes would have glossed right over it.


    That said, he¡¯d just performed magic that had drawn on the life of nearby things, so it was almost certainly his fault. Some of the wilted plants there were nearby might be too. It was hard to say. Still, it was probably better than turning himself into an old man.


    After he checked the area for any other anomalies, Simon walked to the road and saw that Freya was most of the way to her friends, then turned his back on her what he hoped was the last time, and went to finish what it was he¡¯d been working on before she¡¯d managed to appear in his life.


    No matter how hot he stoked the forges, and no matter how hard he pounded with his hammer, though, Simon couldn¡¯t get her off his mind. It was infuriating. It wasn¡¯t even about love or lust, either. It was about the ingratitude of it all. He¡¯d done something impossible and saved her life, and then, just like that she¡¯d thrown it in his face, for her current loser boyfriend?


    ¡°Fucking Kell,¡± he grumbled. Every time Simon went through this level he was losing reasons not to track that kid down while he was still in diapers and throw him off a cliff somewhere. Not that it mattered now. The man was dead. Freya might still pine for him, but no amount of tears would bring him back to life.


    His anger kept him focused at least, and he made great progress that day. Later that night he tracked down one of the few remaining chickens, and after spending half an hour getting and plucking it, he slow-roasted it on a spit for an hour, and then had one of the most delicious campfire meals of his life.


    In the morning, Simon packed up his armor project the day after the survivors of the Butcher¡¯s Bill continued south. That was both because he didn¡¯t trust them not to come back with a lynch mob, and because all the heavy work was done. Everything else could be done on a workbench with smaller tools, and he could find one of those far from here.


    He didn¡¯t have any time pressure now, after all, he wasn¡¯t going to use the door at the inn to go to Ionar. He was going to take the long way, and follow the trade roads south. In the best case he¡¯d get there in plenty of time to explore the locale and understand what had caused everything to happen, and in the worst case, he¡¯d miss it, and have to do it over again.


    Well, he would do all of that after he made one more stop. There was no point in coming this far to give up on checking out the barrow mound first.

 Ch. 144 - A Trail Gone Cold

    Simon thought about leaving the plate mail behind under a pile of branches in the woods because of how heavy and bulky it was, but he decided against it and instead loaded it along with the rest of his meager supplies. He might not come back this way, depending on what he found. The last time, Freya had painted him as the villain, and there was no guarantee that this time would be any different, so there could be a lynch mob waiting for him in a few days, or maybe even something worse.


    He would have honestly preferred to skip Schwarzenbruck on the way back. That, however, would have been difficult. It might even be impossible. The entire reason it was an important city was because the large stone bridge that the town was named for was one of the few good crossing points for quite a ways. He would be crossing there or not at all. Those were all later problems, though, and right now, he needed to focus on the now since the forest was still crawling with the dead in places.


    Simon wasn¡¯t worried. Fresh zombies could be frighteningly vicious. Older ones that started to dry out and decay, though, you didn¡¯t even have to outrun those. You could just out-walk them. The only reason that he bothered to put them down when he found them was because he knew what a mercy it was.


    Freya had no idea how much she was tormenting the man she loved by tying him down to the cart for half a day instead of putting him immediately out of his misery, but Simon remembered it all too well. He''d never forget it. She could never comprehend that hunger and he hoped that she would never have to, despite the fact that with this many lives, countless versions of her had ended up as zombies by now.


    That thought saddened him, but at least this one was saved, probably. It was possible that in a day or two, she could still turn. He knew that; he just tried not to think about it. Her remaining friends seemed to have the right amount of wariness. They¡¯d put her down if it came to it, and if they didn¡¯t - well, he could save Schwarzenbruck again. It wouldn¡¯t be the first time.


    The trip to the barrows was easy enough now that he knew about where it was. The only problem was finding relatively safe places to sleep at night without someone to stand watch. There were just enough dead wandering around that if he did nothing about it, he was likely to wake up teeth in his throat.


    So, he slept in trees both nights and thankfully, as much as the sound his mule made attracted them, the zombies made no attempt to attack the thing. The same couldn¡¯t be said about the reverse, though. Both mornings, Simon woke up to find one or two zombies on the ground with their head or their skulls caved in by a good hard kick.


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve been there,¡± he nodded, remembering the cranky donkey that had taken him out like that.


    He was very mindful of where he was standing in relation to pack animals and horses now. Getting killed that way once was a little amusing, but dying like that repeatedly would just be sloppy.


    If I¡¯m going to get killed again, it''s going to be by something new, he promised himself. That meant no zombie bites, no donkey kicks, and most certainly, no getting crushed to death by the barrow again.


    So, when he found it, he approached it very carefully. First, he checked around outside and on the grassy slope on top.


    There was nothing there, but then, he didn¡¯t expect there to be. So, he tethered Daisy to one of the closest trees and went inside for a closer look.


    The place was very nearly undisturbed, with the exception of the rubble at the entrance and deeper in some zombies that had been killed and lay strewn around the floor. Other than making sure he didn¡¯t see anything that looked like a magical trap, though, he ignored all of those. He was here for a handful of reasons, and all of them were in the central chamber.


    There, in the central sarcophagus, was a single zombie struggling to rip free of the blade that was pinning him down like a bug. On the thing''s head was the crown made of folded paper that he¡¯d come for. Still, he knew better than to go take it. He¡¯d already seen this roof collapse twice, and once was already one too many.


    For now, he ignored both the paper and the zombie and studied the sword before moving to the candles. Someone had stabbed this guy hard enough that it had embedded in the stone. That told Simon that magic was involved, but that was nothing new since he already knew magic was involved with the cave-in.


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    The sword was a plain, long sword that was a little on the short side. It was about the same size as the blades he preferred, but there were no signs that the magic was in the blade. It was just plain steel with a cheap hilt that had seen a fair bit of use.


    That meant someone had cast a spell, using the words for force, earth, or something new he hadn¡¯t yet discovered. If he moved the zombie out of the way, he would definitely get a better idea, but for now, that was chancy.


    Instead, he moved to the candles, and a clumsy circle traced in the ground around them. It was only on a second look he saw that the circle extended all the way around the central sarcophagus. It was an ugly, rushed sort of job that Simon would not feel comfortable trying, but it seemed to be fairly straightforward based on the way he read the runes. There was nothing new there.


    If its boundary was violated, it used the energy of the person that violated it to trigger an earth rune that channeled power to the near wall and brought the whole dome down. It was a controlled demolition of a sort. The only complicated part about disarming it was that it was only at the last minute, when he reached for the transfer rune to strike it out, that he realized that if he did it with his hand, it would likely trigger it as he did so.


    Instead, Simon searched the dead warriors that had already been slaughtered in life and death, and then when he found a broken spear, he wiped the whole thing out from a distance in case he needed to run for it. The moment was anticlimactic, and when the runes were obliterated, nothing happened. Leaving him free to explore the rest of the place.


    The first thing he did was put the poor bastard that the tomb belonged to out of his misery. All it took was a couple hard bashes against the stone to brain him, and he stopped moving once and for all. Simon picked up the paper and, noting that the message was identical, pocketed it.


    Sorry, I needed to borrow this. Maybe we can meet again in your next life and discuss why. Even taking a moment to consider the words.


    ¡°Well, I¡¯m here, buddy; where in the hell are you?¡± he murmured to himself as he searched the tomb.


    There wasn¡¯t much here, though. The warlord or King or whoever it was that was buried here had a golden torc on his arm and a few golden rings. Simon pocketed those, only feeling a little bad. Call it a put you out of your misery fee, he thought to himself. Grave robbing was wrong, but it was a victimless crime, and he was low on cash. This would be enough to tide him over nicely for what he needed to do.


    What it didn¡¯t do was offer him any answers. He¡¯d figured out the trap but not who left it or why. He didn¡¯t even know who this dude was or why he was important enough to be buried in a tomb like this.


    Simon sighed. He almost didn¡¯t want to cut this dude in half to look at the sword, and it was only when he was procrastinating about that and studying the leathery, decayed visage of the tomb''s occupant that he noticed something.


    The rings he¡¯d removed had left marks from where they¡¯d been on this man¡¯s half-mummified skin for decades or centuries. The same sort of marks were visible on the man¡¯s head and the wispy remains of his matted hair. It didn¡¯t match the paper crown that Simon had taken, either. Whatever had made it, it was thinner¡­ like a diadem, as opposed to the chunkier crown that came to mind when he pictured the word.


    ¡°So it¡¯s what isn¡¯t here, huh?¡± he said to himself as he realized the shape of the note had been the clue and not its contents. That made him feel pretty stupid.


    ¡°Why didn¡¯t I figure that out the first time,¡± he asked rhetorically. ¡°Oh, that¡¯s right, I was crushed to death by the ceiling.¡±


    He still didn¡¯t have an answer, of course, but now, at least, he had a question. Who was this guy, and why would his crown be worth stealing? That might be enough to point him at whoever had done this, which in turn might be enough for Simon to figure out who was taunting him. It was a tenuous plan, but it was a plan. There would be libraries or monasteries around here that would know the answer, and if they didn¡¯t, there would be bards or drunks in taverns that would. He could figure it out, but not today.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t spend all this time working on that armor to bail,¡± he sighed. Simon used a word of earth on a silver coin in his pouch to make a mirror and spent several minutes explaining all that he¡¯d learned to it just in case something bizarre and awful should happen.


    I need to get in the habit of using save points, just in case, he thought to himself with a smile as he walked out into the sunlight to fetch his mule.


    As he left the barrow, he considered looting or at least searching some of the other ones just in case for clues but decided against it. If the zombie plague started from this one, and whoever had done it hadn¡¯t broken them open as well, then they probably weren¡¯t too important. Besides, he¡¯d had enough of the dead and was heading south. Solved or not, he was done with the place for a while.

 Ch. 145 - South

    The trip back to Schwarzenbruck was not much more challenging than the trip to the barrows had been. It was a few days longer because Simon chose to stay off the main road as much as possible. Both the rugged terrain and the extra days on the trail meant that he encountered more zombies than he otherwise would have, of course, but he didn¡¯t mind that. They were only a nuisance when found in ones and twos, and every time he killed one, he freed some tormented soul.


    At this point, almost all the zombies he killed had the look of tradesmen or mercenaries, which explained where all the disrupted traffic had come from. Once, he even found an overturned wagon that contained a variety of now-spoiled spices and bolts of beautifully dyed fabric. Simon probably could have sold it for a few coins, but he didn¡¯t feel like the hassle. Between his pilfered grave goods and the coin purses of dead men, he had more money than he¡¯d need for a long time.


    Despite his circuitous route, he made it back to the city in less than a week to find that the only undead that were assaulting it were the ones that were whispered about in rumors. While there was no evidence that a single one had been seen inside the city, the guards were out in force looking for anyone who seemed unwell, and everyone traded stories fearfully about what was to come.


    Of course, Simon was unconcerned. Instead, he went to a different inn on the far side of town and treated himself to a real meal to reward himself for enduring his mediocre attempts at campfire cooking and day after day of cold hardtack. He had a roast chicken to himself, and then after he was finished gnawing the bones clean, he had a few drinks while he caught up on the rumors.


    It was just as he¡¯d heard whispered in the streets. People were afraid, but the story of the Butcher¡¯s Bill was the one he heard the most. That made sense. The prospect of a large mercenary company traveling north but coming back with only a few survivors could be a shocking thing. Simon wasn¡¯t about to explain to him why the majority of those people had died, of course.


    He just listened and gave the same nonanswers as everyone else between questions. Especially when they mentioned what a hero Kell was. There, he bit his tongue, trying to decide if it was worse that Kell would be remembered as a hero, or that last time it was Simon who had been remembered as the villain. In the end, he decided to leave it alone.


    There were no rumors of conditions further to the south, though whether that was because people were so captivated by what was happening to the north or because there was simply nothing brewing, he couldn¡¯t say. It honestly could have been either. Whole wars could be happening, and no one would notice, but Simon couldn¡¯t exactly blame them for that.


    Instead, he just enjoyed a good night¡¯s sleep in a soft bed, and the next day, after he refreshed his supplies and bought some paper to continue his mapping project, he started south. Given the distances he was going to have to travel, a horse was probably the right answer, but neither his weight nor his endurance was where he wanted it to be, so he decided that he was going to walk instead, at least for the first part of the journey.


    Given how rough the roads were in places, it was clear that was the right move. The gap in trade caused by this disruption was clearly taking its toll on the lonely dirt road that snaked through the claustrophobic forest that was a dense mixture of pine and fir trees as well as oak and ash. It was clear that trying to keep the road open through such lonely terrain was a full-time job when he noticed a few saplings growing in the road at various intervals.


    Technically, he¡¯d been through here when he was a zombie, but he didn¡¯t remember any of it. From that terrible experience, though, he knew that somewhere beyond the trees lay more farmland, and after a few days, he reached it. What followed were a series of inns and villages as he made his way south and east. The countryside blurred together a bit after that.


    Some days, it rained, but most of the time, it was sunny, and though much of the Northlands seemed poor compared to places he¡¯d seen further south, they were mostly nice to him. When he stopped to ask for directions, people answered his questions without too much of an attitude, and in places where there were no inns, farmers were happy enough to bring him a meal in the barn for a few coppers, even if they eyed his weapons suspiciously.


    I spent what¡­ two weeks¡­ No, almost three north of the Black River Bridge, he corrected himself as he reviewed his progress one night over a bowl of cheap stew that only tasted a little sour. Then, it was a week through the woods and another three weeks through civilized lands.


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    As he walked through his progress, he reviewed his map, counting dots, making them both a measure of distance and time. He¡¯d been on the road for almost two months. He¡¯d found half a dozen villages and a handful of larger towns. His map was also speckled with the approximate locations of villages and landmarks that were described by people that he hadn¡¯t personally visited. He was still looking for a number of levels, like the demonic church, but so far, he hadn¡¯t found one.


    There were any number of other locations, though. There was even the distant capital city of Liepzen, not so far away. It was still over a week away by foot, maybe even two. He was tempted to stop there and check it out, but it was a distraction to his main mission. No matter how much he might want to make random side trips while he was in the area, he needed to get to Ionar.


    Despite his careful tracking, though, it still surprised him when he went into an inn that seemed to be vaguely familiar, only to find an all too familiar face standing behind the bar. She looked at him a moment and frowned before she made change and told him which room it was he¡¯d be staying in. Simon had forgotten a lot of things during his travels, but he would never forget a woman who had killed him.


    That was only then that he realized how far he¡¯d come. He was in Wellingbrooke, which felt like the crossroads to half of his adventures with a murderous old woman who could see things, including the darkness in his aura.


    He still wasn¡¯t sure what that meant, though, but it was clear that it wasn¡¯t as sinister as it once was. After all, the last few times he¡¯d come through, she looked at him like he was the devil, and this time she merely looked at him like he was just a piece of shit, which, in some contexts, he probably was.


    Ethically or spiritually, though? At this point in his life, with the exception of the occasional grave robbing or revenge killing of someone who really deserved it, he always tried to do the right thing.


    That night, after Simon had eaten and shared his news about the roads to the north of Wellingbrooke with the locals, he went to his room. There, he wedged a dagger in the door frame of his room just in case the proprietor changed her mind about him, and then, in that dark room, he produced his mirror and decided it was long past time to have a very specific conversation with it.


    ¡°Mirror, show me my experience total please,¡± Simon said. The mirror would fit any amount of writing he requested on the small surface, but if he asked for too much, the spirit that controlled all of this would shrink it down so that it was utterly unreadable. So, rather than ask for his whole sheet, he asked only for the relevant bit.


    ¡®Experience Points: -748,292,¡¯ the mirror typed out promptly.


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­ that¡¯s a big change,¡± he said, looking at the number. It had dropped at least a hundred thousand since he¡¯d last reviewed it, and probably more like a hundred and fifty thousand. He was pretty sure he didn¡¯t even bother to look at his character sheet after his last death, but the one before that, well, he wasn¡¯t sure about that either. It had either been two or three deaths since he¡¯d last checked,


    Even if it was a big change though, there were really only a few places he could have shed that many negative points. He¡¯d spent a lot of time healing the sick in Abrese and even more time fighting a war against the centaurs around Crowvar. He¡¯d gotten a lot of satisfaction from both of those, but he¡¯d also helped a lot of people.


    Even after all this time, he wasn¡¯t sure if the number had more to do with the effect his action had or how he felt about it. ¡°If I stab Varten to death, does that number go up or down?¡± he wondered aloud.


    ¡®I do not know the answer to that question,¡¯ the mirror typed, making the other data fade away.


    Simon shook his head, completely unsurprised that was what the thing had done. That was what it always did. It was so literal that it was barely a step above the computer-style interface it very clearly had.


    ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± Simon said. ¡°I don¡¯t need you to tell me. I¡¯m going to find out for myself.¡±


    He put away the mirror and got ready for bed, but his mind was already racing. Not even the vague worry that an old woman might try to kill him again in the middle of the night was enough to dull that excitement.


    Simon had explored the magic system of the Pit extensively. He focused on certain skills to try to improve them enough for the value on his character sheet to click over from fair to good or from good to great, as if it mattered at all in the grand scheme of things. The one thing he hadn¡¯t done, though, was to try to understand that mysterious experience number.


    So, that¡¯s what he spent the next several days doing. Taking some of his precious paper, he kept a small journal. Every day, he¡¯d write the starting number when he woke up, and then in the evening, he¡¯d write the ending number and list a few of the things he¡¯d done that day. Sometimes, it was ¡®had a good dinner,¡¯ and other times, it was ¡®slept in the rain.¡¯


    Slowly but surely, patterns started to emerge. For starters, except on his most miserable days, he seemed to gain at least ten points. Simply existing and leading a normal life seemed to heal whatever karmic wounds he¡¯d caused to himself. On better days, though, he could get twenty or even thirty points. Helping people seemed to spike that number, but so did simply having a nice day.


    It was hard to say for sure one way or the other when the world seemed content enough to leave him in peace. That was when he arrived in Slany.

 Ch. 146 - Nostalgia

    Slany was a town he had a lot of memories of, but encountering it almost out of the blue, even though he knew he was close, felt like something closer to a dream than a reality. Everything looked much the same as the last time he¡¯d left it, but in the half-light of sunset, it seemed that much more magical, and he basked in it. The fact that the little town was still here despite all the strange places he¡¯d been to was a comfort.


    There on the hill were the lights of Baron Corwin¡¯s manor, and all the other homes were just as he remembered them. There was no evidence of resurgent goblins or recent strife, either, and Simon smiled at that. Sometimes, it felt like he wasn¡¯t really making a difference, but having seen what this place looked like on the trip where Gregor only had one arm, he knew he¡¯d really moved the needle.


    This place very easily could have turned into another Crowvar, he thought to himself.


    For a second, he considered whether or not he could go back in time far enough to undo all the damage the Raithewaits caused, but he really couldn¡¯t. While he wasn¡¯t sure exactly how much time passed between level zero and level seven, which is where he spent the most time in the place, he was fairly sure it was a decade or less, and Varten would already be an awful snot-nosed brat by then.


    As he walked to the inn and tied Daisy up outside, he laughed at the image. Finally, a version of the man I¡¯d feel bad about killing, he thought to himself.


    Simon went inside, still trying to puzzle out the exact timeline involved here, so he reacted a little slowly when the owner and two of the patrons looked at him like they¡¯d seen a ghost. He stood there a moment, trying to decide what the problem was. Old man Wonick had never been able to see his aura before, so that shouldn¡¯t cause a problem now. ¡°Is there a problem?¡± he asked finally.


    ¡°Oh, no, nothing,¡± the man said, breathing an obvious sigh of relief. ¡°I just thought you was a ghost, is all. Had a good man die recently, and you¡¯re well - you could say that the two of you had more than a passing resemblance.¡±


    ¡°You can say that again,¡± Norm said. He was one of the regulars who pretty much lived on his bar stool when he wasn¡¯t working the silver mine for the Baron. Simon had spent plenty of nights gambling with him over dice with large beers and small stakes.


    ¡°Oh, well, I¡¯m sorry to hear that,¡± Simon said dumbly as he put the pieces together. ¡°I¡¯m just a peddler traveling south. Nothing more than that.¡±


    ¡°Glad to hear it,¡± the innkeeper said, slapping the bar with both hands in an effort to seem more lively and shake off his shock. ¡°What can I get you, Mister¡­¡±


    ¡°Uhhhm, you can call me Jake,¡± he said, quickly truncating his last name. It wasn¡¯t the most creative decision, but then he was still struggling to take in the news.


    I was only days or weeks away from running into myself? Simon was completely stunned.


    Still, he ordered a beer and a plate of whatever was hot and made small talk with the other men. His mouth moved, but it was on autopilot while his mind raced. He was on level six now, and the goblin level he usually traveled from was level three, so they had to be at least two or three years apart, right? Had he been here that long? He hadn¡¯t thought so at the time, but he¡¯d been through at least one winter, and then he¡¯d started building his house, so maybe¡­


    While Simon was struggling to put the pieces together, he was jarred off his train of thought when Norm said, ¡°Well, isn¡¯t that a small world! Simon¡­ I mean, the dead man said he was from up north, too. Maybe the two of you really are related.¡±


    Simon tried not to cringe as he realized he¡¯d probably just told the three of them much the same backstory as the other version of himself had years before. ¡°Maybe,¡± he nodded, ¡°Taking a sip of beer. ¡°Maybe so.¡±


    When they tried to follow up further, Simon gave fake and misleading answers to avoid repeating his mistake. The men at the bar soon lost interest in him, though. Instead, they began to reminisce about the Simon they¡¯d lost so recently. That conversation intensified as others came in and had a similar reaction.


    To Simon, the whole situation was very strange. It felt almost like he was sitting in his own wake as the people of Slany talked about all the good he¡¯d done over the years. There was nothing he could do, though. It would have been weird to try to change the topic. So, instead, he just listened to old stories about himself that he only vaguely remembered doing because they¡¯d been such minor things at the time.


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    No matter how often they talked about barn raisings or the extra hours that he put in around harvest time, they talked about the goblins more, though. Even mentions of Trinna and how hard the poor girl had taken his passing were less numerous than the greenskins, and the conversation always returned to the silver mines.


    ¡°You know, Simon never said anything about it, and I didn¡¯t want to say while the guy was alive because I didn¡¯t want people to be afraid of him,¡± Norm volunteered finally, ¡°But I was the one that had to drag all those corpses out, and well¡­ let¡¯s just say the man downplayed what he had to do to save Gregor Corwin that day. The man didn¡¯t just put down a couple of goblins and drag the kid to safety. There were a lot more dead down there than all that.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re painting Simon as a killer!¡± one of the newcomers said. He was a farmer that Simon remembered, but not so well that he remembered the man¡¯s name. ¡°I find that difficult to believe. The man was a gentle soul.¡±


    ¡°He was,¡± Norm agreed, ¡°But he had to be a mercenary or worse when he was up north. No one gets that good at killing goblins in a day. Remember, he didn¡¯t even have a scratch on him when he came back to town with Gregor and that coward in tow.¡±


    Simon smiled and laughed where appropriate, but when he finally paid the innkeeper for a room and went upstairs for the night, his mind was spinning from more than just the booze, and he had trouble falling asleep. He felt kind of bad that he¡¯d abandoned everyone so unexpectedly, but it wasn¡¯t exactly his fault. The mule¡¯s kick had hardly been planned.


    The real surprise was that he¡¯d almost recovered. In his mind, it had been lights out, and he¡¯d woken up back in the cabin. Apparently, in the real world, things were quite so clean. What had actually happened was that he¡¯d had a skull fracture or worse and lay in a coma for several weeks before he¡¯d finally succumbed. It was an ugly way to go, and he was glad he didn¡¯t remember it.


    Really, I should have timed my arrival better. I could have picked up right where I left off, he thought with a smile.


    It was fun to think about, but that, of course, was impossible. He might love Slany, but he no longer remembered it the way he once had. Even Trina, who he¡¯d briefly considered asking to marry him, was nothing but a distant memory. He might remember her as a pretty baker, but there was no emotion there anymore, let alone love. The most he could summon when he thought about her flour-streaked face and pretty white smile was nostalgia or fondness. Too much had happened between here and there.


    In the morning, Simon set out early, seeking to avoid any other run-ins. On his way out, he made sure to take the long way around rather than go through the center of the village so that Trinna wouldn¡¯t see him. Along the way, he took advantage of that route to check out the house he¡¯d been building on a hill at the edge of town. No one had yet decided to put a roof on it, which made him a little sad. It had only been a couple weeks since all of this had happened, though, so he hoped when everything blew over, someone would finish it. He¡¯d hate to see all his work go to waste.


    Simon left Slany with mixed feelings and continued south, one day at a time. He was surprised to find that those feelings hadn¡¯t cost him any experience points, though. He¡¯d worried the negativity might have, but when he checked his mirror, he was up almost a hundred points day over day, which was more than the average.


    Now that he was back on the road, and looking more carefully, this was land he¡¯d definitely traveled through more than once on various errands for Lord Corwin. If he went southeast far enough, he¡¯d eventually reach Crowvar. That was another place he wanted to avoid for a variety of reasons. He already had that area handled pretty much like he wanted it, and killing Varten again, as he would inevitably do, would only screw everything up.


    Instead, after asking around at a couple of villages, he found the right track and struck to the southwest, into territory he¡¯d never been in before. It was closer to the coast and, therefore, the mountainous region of Ionia. Near as he could tell, he was perhaps a hundred miles due north of Fia and perhaps a hundred and fifty to the northwest of Ionar.


    That still put him several hundred miles to the south-south-east of Schwarzenbruck, of course, but then, the world was a big place, and one journey at a time, it was all coming together in the map he had in his mirror. The play area, as he sometimes thought about it, seemed to be made up of four or five countries, not counting the Aztec ruins. He still had no idea where those were.


    The Kingdom of Brin was the most central and was ringed by mountains to the east and west. It was also bounded by water to the north and desert to the south. To its north were the uncreatively named the Northlands, which Simon had only brushed up against in Schwarzenbruck.


    To the east of Brin stood the mountainous Charia. That was where he¡¯d encountered the werewolf, the owl bear, and a certain masquerade ball that had gone horribly wrong. Other than Ionia, he was sure he¡¯d been there the least.


    To the south of Brin was Montain. Simon was pretty sure that was the country that controlled the deserts, along with almost all the territory up to Abresse. He was less sure about that. Other than Darendelle, he hadn¡¯t spent a lot of time there, but he would probably have to.


    Finally, to the west was his current goal, Ionia. It seemed much smaller than its neighbors and climbed the marginal lands of the mountains where they hugged the sea. Given the fate of Ionar, it didn¡¯t seem very important in most of Simon¡¯s adventures to date, and he wondered if that would change.


    Apparently, in the past, the large trading city of Abresse had been part of Montain but currently styled itself as an independent city-state. That was why Simon wasn¡¯t sure if the entire world map he was building consisted of four countries or five.


    Individually, each location was confusing, but very slowly, he was building them into a web in his head that was actually starting to make sense. That, as much as anything, was enough to put a spring in his step as he started the uphill portion of his journey. No matter how exhausting it might be, he was getting close to his destination.

 Ch. 147 - Picture Perfect

    It took another three weeks of walking, two run-ins with beast men, and an encounter with bandits that ended very poorly for them before Simon finally set eyes on pre-eruption Ionar. It turned out that his experience points didn¡¯t go down on any of those days either, not even when he killed humans, which surprised Simon.


    He¡¯d expected morality to be deeply tied into that number, but it was more subjective than that. Apparently, since he didn¡¯t have a problem killing bandits that got in his way, they didn¡¯t weigh on his soul very much, and he still gained over 122 experience that day. That was still less than he gained when he killed the beastmen at 167 and 203, respectively, but it still pointed to a worldview that was slightly more subjective than he would have expected.


    Those weren¡¯t even the biggest days of the trip, though. Sometimes, when he did other things, he saw spikes, too. When he found an herb he hadn¡¯t seen since his time in Abresse and picked a few to add to his growing collection or dried them, he made above-average progress on his score as well.


    It wasn¡¯t all violence and hardship, though. Honestly, the hiking was worse than the fighting, and on nights when he wasn¡¯t fighting off men and monsters, he made steady progress on his armor. At this point, it was all down to making the engravings as nice and clean as possible so they could stand up to the terrible strain he expected to put them under.


    When Simon was finally done with the main pattern on the breastplate, he put it in his campfire, and even after it had been sitting in the coals for twenty minutes, the back side of the metal stayed nice and cool. He was so pleased that his efforts had actually worked that his cheers echoed off the mountainside in a way that might have been embarrassing if anyone else was nearby that night as he celebrated his success.


    ¡°Well, if I can make the rest of it work this well, then maybe this time I can drown in lava instead of getting cooked alive,¡± he said with a laugh.


    The next day, he was surprised to find that he¡¯d gotten almost 300 experience the night before. That made some sense, given what he¡¯d accomplished, but he was still pretty psyched.


    ¡°So it¡¯s not what I do, but how I feel about it or what I learn?¡± he wondered aloud once he¡¯d recorded the number.


    That made sense. He learned a lot less from killing his thousandth goblin than he had from killing his first or second. He was sure of that. Pity this whole thing doesn¡¯t have achievements, He thought with a smirk. I¡¯d love to see those kinds of stats. Goblins killed. Nights slept outdoors. Number of Freya¡¯s dead.


    That last one startled him, and he spent the next hour wondering what dark part of his soul that had come from. He¡¯d saved Freya and moved on. His inner demons could go take a hike, just like he was doing.


    The road through the mountains was a long one, and he spent most nights working on the other bits for the arms and legs. It wasn¡¯t done yet, but he was sure it was going to work as long as he was slow and careful. The only complication was the sword since the gauntlet that used it already had magic on it, but he ignored that for now. He didn¡¯t think that the two spells would interact too badly.


    Eventually, all journeys come to an end, though, and this one was no different. He¡¯d seen the lightly steaming caldera of the volcano he¡¯d come to kill for almost a week before he finally got close enough to it that he could see Ionar on the far side of it, where the land met the sea.


    As he stood there on the rise, he had to admit that it was more than a little beautiful. On every other trip here, he¡¯d only seen it in ruins or in the process of being destroyed. Now, he could see the beautiful white buildings standing in stark contrast to the volcano they wrapped around and the blue skies beyond. It was bigger than he remembered it, and he wondered just how much of the city had already been buried under lava and ash before he saw it the first time. In the night of fire and lava, he¡¯d seen so often, there were always thousands fleeing the upper city to the harbor far below. Now that he was looking at it, though, he was fairly sure that there had to be at least ten thousand people living here, making it fairly large as cities went.


    The sprawling city spread partway up the volcano and all the way down the cliffs, but it was the palace that was the real show-stopper. It was a building Simon had been in many times, but only as a door to somewhere else. Now, he could appreciate it as the palace it was, nestled among its surrounding gardens.


    ¡°This is definitely a place people would pay to go on vacation,¡± he said as he eyed the cliffs and beaches.


    On all his previous trips, he¡¯d always assumed that this place existed solely because of sea trade. While that was certainly the majority of the traffic, the overland route he¡¯d just threaded his way through was surprisingly well-maintained and just active enough for bandits to think it was worth the trouble to harass men traveling alone.


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    Simon didn¡¯t feel the least bit bad for using them for a bit of archery practice. He was just glad that they hadn¡¯t hurt Daisy or spooked her into running off a cliff. Some of the roads through the mountains had been perilous.


    Now, though, all of that was behind him. He was here, and fortunately, the volcano had not yet blown its top, which was good because it had taken him a whole season to get here. Still, even as the weather in the north turned colder, it was still balmy here on the coast, and he decided to enjoy it.


    Simon spent those first few days relaxing during the day and working on his armor at night. It was only when he¡¯d lingered in the inn for over a week that people started to ask questions.


    Where was he going? Was he waiting for a ship? How much longer would he be here? The innkeeper didn¡¯t seem inhospitable, per se, and was happy to keep taking Simon¡¯s silver, but the longer he stayed, the more comfortable the man felt being nosy, apparently.


    As bothersome as that could be, even that daily nuisance annoyed Simon less than the seafood, though. For the first few days, he¡¯d lived off mutton since fish dominated the menu of the city. There were some other things he hadn¡¯t had in a long time, too, like feta cheese and white wine, which helped liven things up. He avoided the fish but found that octopus, scallops, and clams weren¡¯t so bad once he started to get tired of lamb. That was ironic, of course, since his dislike of fish was making him tire of everything else on the menu.


    Simon eventually found a villa overlooking the sea near enough to the volcano to rent out not too far from the market square and hung a shingle above the door, calling himself an apothecary and healer. He had plenty of herbs from his trip across the continent, and much of what he didn¡¯t have he could buy.


    That, along with some bandages, some basic knowledge of sterilization and wound cleanliness, and the occasional minor miracle, was all he really needed. The locals were skittish of an outsider for the first few weeks. That was especially true for one who seemed fluent in their language but still had what was described as a strong accent, but Simon couldn¡¯t hear it.


    Still, after a couple minor miracles that might have cost him a week or a year of his life and a few sick kids that walked away from death¡¯s door in one piece, he was accepted by almost everyone. That was about the time he¡¯d finished his armor after almost a month in Ionar, which was fortunate timing because once it was complete, he had to test it. The very last thing he wanted to do after all this preparation was to put it on after the eruption and find that it didn¡¯t work.


    So, once he was ready, he took a brief trip into the mountains with his reliable mule, Daisy. He told his regular patients that it was to collect some herbs, which he would also do, but really, it was so he could stand in a bonfire where no one could see how crazy he was.


    He hiked until he hadn¡¯t seen a living soul for a day, worrying the whole time that the volcano would pick that moment to erupt. It didn¡¯t, though, and once his bonfire was burning brightly, he finally got all dressed up in the armor he¡¯d worked on for so long.


    Even though he was certain it was going to work, it was still with great apprehension. That wasn¡¯t enough to stop him, though. If I fuck this up, all I¡¯ll have to face are burned feet and injured pride, Simon told himself, and I can heal my feet.


    The worst would actually be if the volcano exploded, and after all this, he wasn¡¯t ready to stop the monsters that came out of it. That would be far worse than any injuries he might get from testing. It was that thought that made him close his face mask and step into the raging inferno he¡¯d built.


    The result was nothing. He cringed for a moment, waiting to feel the fire¡¯s sting through one of the parts of the armor, but it never happened. Instead, he stood there, dancing around in his armor while the fire burned around him. This time, he didn¡¯t cheer quite so loudly as he had last time, but he was still thrilled, and in the morning, when he started back to town with some slightly charred plate mail, he pronounced it a complete success and had almost 200 experience to show for it.


    That night, when he returned, he treated himself to a small feast and decided on his next goal. He was going to investigate the caldera itself. Why shouldn¡¯t I? He thought as he made his way through some pan-fried calamari. It beats waiting around waiting for this to happen.


    Still, he put it off until his first morning without patients waiting to see him. As much as he wanted to climb the volcano, he had to balance that out with more menial tasks. After all, his travels had largely exhausted his funds. Without paying customers, he would eventually be forced to start fishing again one day, and that was the last thing he wanted.


    The hike to the rim took almost all day. It wasn¡¯t just steep; it was that there was no real path to go that high. There was a shrine halfway up that was decorated with wilted flowers and other trivialities, but there were no inscriptions he could find. Past that, the last three hundred feet of the trip was more rock climbing than hiking, which was not something he had any practice with.


    Ultimately, when he reached the very top anyway, the view was disappointing. Part of him had expected to see bubbling hot lava or something similarly cool. He was disappointed. Instead of bubbling magma, there was only cracked black stone, spotted here and there with small geysers of steam. At least, that¡¯s all he saw at first.


    After a short break and a long drink from his water skin, before he headed back down, he noticed something else: fire elementals. Well, at least something that looked like them. They weren¡¯t blazing with fire, though. Instead, they seemed to be made out of smoke and steam, which made them halfway invisible as they wandered around the floor of the caldera.


    That blew him away, and he stayed up there until an hour before sunset before he hurriedly started climbing back down. Part of him wanted to stay until after dark to see if they lit up, but he knew that was a terrible idea. Even if they did, it wasn¡¯t worth staying up here until sunrise, which was how much longer he¡¯d have to watch them because if he tried to climb down in the dark, he would break his neck for sure.

 Ch. 148 - The Waiting Game

    Simon hiked to the top of the volcano twice more in the weeks that followed, but neither trip turned up anything new. The most he got out of it was a picture of one of the half-visible elementals that he sketched out as best he could. He was no artist, but he¡¯d been improving slowly. According to his mirror, his art skill had advanced above poor and was now merely below average, and he¡¯d take that as a win considering the crude materials he had to work with.


    Still, as much as the otherworldly creatures might fascinate him, he didn¡¯t learn anything more about them. It is kind of odd that it is one of the few magical creatures I¡¯ve seen so far, he thought to himself one day as he was cleaning his small house. No sooner had the thought formed than he realized how ridiculous that was.


    ¡°You mean besides the dragon, the basilisk, and the ogre?¡± he laughed at himself after he thought about it for a second.


    He had, in fact, fought a lot of different magical creatures. Hell, goblins, skeletons, and zombies were all definitely magical, too, and he¡¯d fought more of them than anything else. The difference in his mind was that they had been real.


    He hadn¡¯t exactly gotten a chance to study a dragon up close or anything, but the wyvern he¡¯d blasted out of the sky was something he could have dissected if he¡¯d wanted to. He could have preserved it and mounted it like a dinosaur in a museum, but the fire elementals, or whatever it was they were, that was something else entirely. It was entirely outside his experience, and other than a few run-ins with ghosts, they were unique.


    That made the whole thing pretty damn magical to him. In the days that followed, even after he stopped going up the volcano, the image lingered with him, though he wasn¡¯t completely sure why. After all, he had a sword that radiated cold and a suit of plate mail that was immune to fire that he¡¯d built himself. That was magical, too, but again, it was something he could put his hands on and understand.


    Every day, he waited for the volcano to erupt, and every day it did nothing. So Simon waited, and he prepared. He started going to the gym, which was a little too naked and Greco-Roman for his tastes. He never oiled himself up in olive oil and wrestled with grown men, but he did enjoy the natural hot springs that fed the bathes of the complex, and in time, he found a couple of guys to practice his sword fighting with so he didn¡¯t get too rusty.


    Some of his sparring partners found it strange that a doctor knew how to wield a blade so well, but Simon let the mystery linger. When the rumor started to spread that he¡¯d been a field healer for the army in the Kingdom of Brin, he didn¡¯t do anything to stop it. He didn¡¯t care what people believed, as long as it wasn¡¯t that he was a warlock.


    Indeed, rumors aside, life became pretty mundane after that. Things became routine. He hid his weapons and armor in a magic-carved hollow beneath the trunk he used to store rarely used medicines, and he waited for the day to be a hero.


    The only problem with that was that it never came. Day after day, he kept one eye on the horizon as he treated small wounds and persistent fevers, but the volcano never erupted, and the ground beneath his feet never shook.


    Well, never was a strong word. The volcano had regular minor tremors every few days, and perhaps once a month, it would rumble slightly more ominously, but it didn¡¯t amount to anything. Each time it happened, Simon held his breath, and each time, silence returned, and the world continued to turn.


    At first, it was frustrating, but after a while, he was okay with it. It wasn¡¯t like he was living a bad life right now. He couldn¡¯t even blame anyone else for this waiting game. He was the one who thought it would be cool to stop it before Helades¡¯ portal even opened up, and he knew that might take a year or more.


    So, he made the best of it and slowly shifted from counting the weeks to counting the months. It had taken almost three months to walk here and two more before he¡¯d gotten the suit completed and tested. It had been six months since then, though, and he¡¯d settled back into the life of a doctor rather than the life of a traveler or an adventurer or a hero. That meant he¡¯d been on this level for almost a year now. Once upon a time, that would have been a rarity, but these days, that was becoming almost par for the course.


    Other than the weapons and armor that he¡¯d secreted away and the donkey he was still paying a few coppers a week to keep well-fed in the stables, there really wasn¡¯t anything left to point to him as adventurer anymore. He kept a knife on his belt when he went out, but he hadn¡¯t worn his leather armor in months.


    In fact, recently, Simon had broken down and bought one of the togas that the locals wore rather than the worn-out tunic and breeches he¡¯d worn for so long. It felt weird to him, but it made those around him treat him with slightly less suspicion and a touch more warmth than they had up to now.


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    No matter what he wore, though, he never got quite used to the food choices here. Beef was imported, which meant it was of poor quality and pointlessly expensive. Potatoes were likewise rare enough to be noticeable when they appeared in the market.


    This limited his diet to seafood, goat, and lamb, which seemed to only ever be flavored with wine sauces. Simon refused to suffer with the dull palate of the locals. He eventually made his own wood-fired oven in his garden just to make better bread than he was used to here. He would have killed for some tomatoes to try making a pizza with, but no one had heard of such a fruit, and pepperoni had yet to be invented, so he was forced to go without.


    Food, much like magic, was still in a remarkably primitive state in this world, and once Simon had that thought in mind, he couldn¡¯t let it go. He had little in the way of cooking knowledge from his time before he died. His skills had largely been limited to boiling water for ramen and choosing the perfect number of seconds for each meal he stuck into the microwave.


    In time, he did figure out how to make flat bread, and with enough lard, he even figured out how to pan-fry fish with a thin flour coating until it was extra crispy and somewhat palatable again. Those two things didn¡¯t quite add up to a fish taco, but it wasn¡¯t bad, and Simon considered it one of the many successes he had in the months that followed.


    Even his pickiness had his plus side, though. Thanks to his proximity to the market, he eventually learned to like both olives and dates, which were things he would never have touched on Earth. Early on, he¡¯d tolerated them just for something to snack on as he hiked up the volcano to inspect the caldera, but in time, he grew to like their flavor, and he almost wished that someone would invent pasta or something so he could try more complicated flavor combinations.


    Sometime after Simon had been in Ionar for almost two years, he had enough friends to start hosting dinner parties. These started quite by accident when he was explaining to one of his sparring partners what the strange meal he¡¯d brought with him for lunch was. It was just a wrap filled with a few of the ingredients that had been available in the market that week. There were some onions, some cabbage, and some slow-roasted pork. It was nothing special, but soon, he was inviting his friends over on a weekly basis for his new creations.


    ¡°You should shut down your apothecary and open a restaurant,¡± Aikolas exclaimed one night after several bottles of wine.


    ¡°I would,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°But where would I get the herbs to flavor all of these sauces without an apothecary?¡±


    Everyone laughed at that, and all agreed he¡¯d be a wonderful host. In time, he became truly accepted by these people despite his foreign background. That was nice. He''d been here for almost two years after all, but it was also when the marriage proposals started coming in. First, they were just the men of Simon¡¯s circle casually mentioning he was getting a little old not to have a family or bringing up the fact that their sister or cousin was single out of nowhere.


    For a while, he missed these social cues completely. Those were easy enough to rebuff, but when drunk men and former customers started to brag to him about the size of their herds or the generosity of their dowry, it became impossible to miss. Now that I¡¯m part of the community, they want me to become part of the community, he thought, realizing the inevitability of the thing.


    He held fewer parties after that because he wasn''t sure what to do, but even so, the offers kept coming. While he wasn¡¯t opposed to finding a beautiful olive-skinned Ionarian woman to marry, of course, it was pretty far down his list of things to do. Instead, he focused on healing by day and half-heartedly studying art and magic at night when the mood struck.


    Things became pretty routine after almost three years of waiting for an eruption that never came. So, one day, Aikolas stopped him one afternoon on the narrow street not far from his home to say, ¡°Ah, I thought you were dressed a little strangely. Is your other outfit for a costume party you¡¯re planning, or were you having a liaison with someone, you sly dog?¡± Simon was greatly confused.


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what you¡¯re talking about,¡± Simon said, looking down at his toga. It was one of three he owned now and looking a little dingy, but it was still good enough to wear in public. He certainly didn¡¯t have a nicer one that he¡¯d been wearing in its place. ¡°I¡¯ve been in my practice all morning, tending to children and¡ª¡±


    ¡°Are you trying to tell me that wasn¡¯t you in the market just a few minutes ago?¡± his friend asked incredulously. ¡°With the leather armor and the strange crown? I would swear that¡ª¡±


    ¡°Crown?¡± Simon asked, his interest suddenly piqued. ¡°And armor, you say? Which way did I¡­ err, did he go?¡±


    ¡°He?¡± Aikolas laughed. ¡°Very droll. Last I saw you, you were heading up the main road toward the high city. I thought perhaps you¡¯d finally gone to make a proposal of your own in your fanciest foreign clothes to make an impression with some noble¡¯s daughter.¡±


    The high city, Simon thought, forcing himself to smile even though he wanted to scowl. Or the volcano?


    ¡°Thank you for telling me; I¡¯ll get to the bottom of this right now!¡± Simon shouted, already running off with nothing but a dagger. Part of him said that he should fetch his armor and that this was it, but the rest of him¡­ practically every fiber of his being screamed that he didn¡¯t have time for any of that.


    ¡°Let us know when you want to introduce her then!¡± his friend laughed, thinking nothing of the encounter.


    Simon¡¯s mind was racing, though, as he ran down to the first main street, he came across and then cut over to start making his way to the north-east, up to the high city. Just mentioning he had a doppelg?nger would have been enough to set Simon¡¯s teeth on edge, but the mention of a crown? That set off all the alarm bells.


    All this time, he¡¯d been waiting for the volcano to erupt on its own, and now, just like that, he was certain that wasn¡¯t how all this had gone down. Someone had done something magical to make this crisis happen, and strangely, almost impossibly, he began to worry that someone might be him.

 Ch. 149 - Impossible

    Simon charged through the knots of people on the road where he couldn¡¯t run around them, outrunning the insults and the outrage even before he could really hear them. None of that mattered. There was no time for politeness. While part of him hoped this was a false alarm, the rest of him was sure this was an emergency, and he charged heedlessly toward it.


    He wasn¡¯t thinking about how, if he failed, he could do this all again. He wasn¡¯t thinking about the hundreds of hours he¡¯d spent making the perfect tools for this encounter. He wasn¡¯t even thinking about saving Ionar, not really. He¡¯d like to, of course, but that was secondary to something even more important: finding out what in the fuck was going on.


    Right now, all he could think about was that damn paper crown and those mocking notes that monopolized his mind as his legs rose and fell and his lungs began to strain. Normally, it would take him half an hour to walk up the steep street that led past the palace and to the uppermost reaches of the city. This time, he did it in less than five.


    Even before he reached the end of the street, he could see someone up ahead, where the wide streets with their dark paving stones turned to a narrow goat path that led up to the strange little shrine halfway up the volcano. The fact that whoever it was that was up there had gone past anywhere that made sense so late in the day only deepened his certainty that he¡¯d been right to throw caution to the wind. Whatever happened was going to happen right now.


    That gave him the motivation to keep pushing himself, and he made it to the trail before the other man made it to the altar. After that, he had to move a little slower, but he went as fast as he could. By the time Simon reached his quarry, though, it was too late. Well, it might have been; he wasn¡¯t sure.


    The man had produced a dark orb, and then, after a little fidgeting, the thing began to glow. First, there were dull orange lines, but then, gradually, they began brightening to a violent yellow. That light was bright enough to reveal some familiar designs to Simon as well as make him wince and shade his eyes.


    ¡°Stop¡­ Whatever you¡¯re doing¡­ ¡±Simon gasped, completely out of breath.


    The man ignored him and instead tossed it up in the air. Simon fumbled with the words of force to slice the thing into pieces, but by the time he got them out, the man must have used a similar spell because it rocketed into the air and toward the caldera, making his spell miss entirely. Instead of being dashed to pieces, the thing arced high into the air and over the top of the caldera, where it disappeared from sight.


    Well, not entirely. The man was wearing a dark cloak, and the gust that came with a spell that had so much force behind it blew the man''s hood back, revealing the crown that Aikolas mentioned. That was enough to make him ready another spell. This time, he¡¯d use lightning to smite the man, and then¡­


    That resolution failed, and the words died on his lips as the stranger turned to face him, and Simon saw that it was indeed himself. Well, someone that looked a lot like him, for sure. The face was a little older, the hair was a little longer, and the smile was a little more malicious, but all the other details¡­ well, the man was even wearing the same sword that Simon was so used to.


    ¡°Well, look who it is,¡± the other Simon said with a knowing smile. ¡°I didn¡¯t expect to see you quite so soon; we grow up so fast, don¡¯t we?¡±


    ¡°What did you just do?¡± Simon asked, ignoring the bait.


    ¡°Me? I just started a thermal cascade event that will dump a lot of fire into this old mountain and wake up some friends,¡± the other Simon said, willingly giving away his plan in a way that made Simon very uncomfortable. The villain typically didn¡¯t do that unless they were lying or unless you had no way to stop them. ¡°You could charge in after it, of course. You might even manage to save the city if you wanted.¡±


    ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t I want that?¡± Simon asked. That¡¯s the whole point!


    ¡°You think that¡¯s the point of the Pit?¡± the other man asked, openly laughing now. ¡°That¡¯s very nearly the opposite of the point. Not everyone can be saved, Simon, no matter what you do. It¡¯s impossible.¡±


    ¡°Maybe,¡± Simon agreed, ¡°But how many more people need to die just because you need to blow up a volcano?¡±


    ¡°Trust me,¡± the other Simon said with a small shake of his head. ¡°The world is better off without Ionar. This event disrupts trade throughout the world! You¡¯ve seen the plagues. How much worse do you think they¡¯ll be with more ships going here and there and everywhere.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re just like Helades,¡± Simon spat. ¡°You¡ª¡±


    ¡°Do not use that bitch¡¯s name so casually,¡± the other Simon shot right back. ¡°Fuck Helades and the horse she road in on. She¡¯s a devil in disguise, man. I don¡¯t want her plan, and I don¡¯t want yours either.¡±


    ¡°But this doesn¡¯t make any sense,¡± Simon protested, still struggling with all of this. ¡°The volcano has always exploded on this level, and if I ¡­ if you were always the cause, then why would the portal even come here. There wouldn¡¯t even be a problem if I wasn¡¯t in the Pit!¡±


    ¡°All good questions,¡± the other Simon smiled. ¡°But all beside the point. The Pit doesn¡¯t have to make sense! It never has, and it never will. It¡¯s not a puzzle that can be solved. It''s just a waste heap. A cosmic fucking meat grinder.¡±


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    Simon didn¡¯t believe any of that, of course. He didn¡¯t understand half of the rules in the place, but so far he didn¡¯t see anything that violated them. Well, nothing happened until I found myself, he corrected himself. Until now, it had just been a matter of learning and preparing, but this¡­ He wasn¡¯t sure what to make of it.


    Another version of him from the future or some alternate timeline or any other bullshit like that seemed unlikely, but what did that leave? Would an enemy mage have enough knowledge of where he¡¯d be to fuck with him? Could it be a devil escaped from hell? Some sort of crazy mimic or doppelg?nger. He had no clue, and it pissed him off. He¡¯d spent months preparing and years waiting. He¡¯d come here to fight a god-damned volcano, which was crazy enough. The last thing he needed was an extra dollop of madness on top, like the cherry on the world''s most insane hot magma Sunday.


    Still, he set all of that aside and said, ¡°Look, there¡¯s still time to stop this. If you didn¡¯t want me to stop it, you would have already killed me, or¡ª¡±


    ¡°Stop it, you say, what an interesting proposal,¡± the other Simon smiled. ¡°And tell me, what would you stop it with? Maybe a convenient sword of ice? Perhaps some armor custom-made for the occasion?¡±


    A chill went down Simon¡¯s spine at the mockery. This asshole really did know everything. Or, maybe he didn¡¯t, he realized, looking again at the crown. Maybe that thing has some crazy magic that lets him read my mind, and this is all some kind of put on¡­


    The other Simon didn¡¯t react to that thought. Instead, he continued, pretending to look around as if he were missing something.


    ¡°Only, I don¡¯t see it anywhere up here. You didn¡¯t really run off half-cocked and leave all that home, did you?¡± the other Simon taunted, making Simon ball up his fists in anger. ¡°That would be embarrassing. Running all the way up a mountain, walking back down to get your shit together, and then walking all the way back up while¡­¡±


    He paused as a distant rumble somewhere deep in the mountain made itself known. ¡°Well, you know.¡±


    ¡°If I stop the asshole that causes the eruption, then I don¡¯t need the armor to fight the volcano, now, do I,¡± Simon said defensively.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯ ship has sailed,¡± the other Simon smirked. ¡°You could try to kill me, but¡­ well, that would just be murder, wouldn¡¯t it.¡±


    Simon was tired. He was tired from the run, and he was tired of the mind games and the new crazy he kept discovering. More than any of that, though, at this moment, he was tired of the moral bullshit. He wasn¡¯t a superhero, and this wasn¡¯t an arch-nemesis that needed to be arrested so he could just escape and kill more people. This was a murderer that detonated a mountain, and if he was responsible for this in every run¡­ well¡­ he had more blood on his hands than Simon ever would, and there wasn¡¯t a thing in the world wrong with killing him.


    ¡°Vrazig,¡± Simon whispered, aiming to kill this asshole as quickly as possible. That¡¯s not what happened, though. Instead, the lightning arced briefly around his target before it fizzled and faded.


    ¡°Lightning, huh?¡± the other Simon said. ¡°Not a bad choice. Fast, deadly, and efficient. It''s not going to work on me, though. I¡­ well, if you haven¡¯t met the whisperers yet, you will. Maybe after that, you¡¯ll understand.¡±


    ¡°How¡­¡± Simon demanded, torn between wanting to know what in the hell was happening and drawing his dagger to stab this guy before there were any more surprises.


    ¡°You¡¯ll see. One day. That¡¯s not what matters right now, though. What you should be caring about right now isn¡¯t me. It¡¯s your armor. You still keep it in the same spot, don¡¯t you?¡± the other version of him said with a smile. Then, he began to whisper something under his breath.


    Simon tensed. Should he lash out at the man again? Could it really be that he was fighting himself or some alternate version of himself? He wasn¡¯t sure. Before he could be sure about anything, though, something familiar appeared in front of him. It was his herb chest and several feet of the floor underneath it. It just popped into existence. One second, there was nothing, and the next, well, it just was.


    Simon looked from that back to the face of the other version of himself, trying to determine how this was even possible, but he had no answers. Greater and Distant definitely had to be used, he thought to himself, but is there a way to say Transfer that causes actual fucking teleportation?


    The man before him obviously had some tricks that Simon had not yet conceived. He didn¡¯t seem like he was about to use them to strike Simon down, either. Instead, he stood there with a shit-eating grin on his face.


    ¡°Pretty cool, right?¡± the other Simon said to himself. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, you¡¯ll learn how to do that one day, I¡¯m sure. We usually do. We¡­¡±


    The other Simon¡¯s words trailed off as the volcano rumbled deeply, and the sound of a minor eruption took place somewhere deep inside of it. Whatever this man had done. It was starting.


    ¡°You can¡¯t be me,¡± Simon said finally. ¡°I would never do something like this.¡±


    ¡°You sound pretty sure of yourself for someone who still has a lot to learn,¡± the other Simon said smugly. ¡°You haven¡¯t even found the mazes yet or the queen. Talk to me again when you get past level 50.¡±


    ¡°Why would I cause a disaster?¡± Simon shot back. ¡°Specifically, why would I cause this disaster? The people of Ionar have been very kind. I would never¡ª¡±


    Simon stopped speaking as the other version of him started to chant again. ¡°Oonbetit!¡± This time, he punched out with a word of force that took the form of a fist, hoping to knock the man out before he could do anything else.


    This time, his spell wasn¡¯t dissipated by whatever mystery technique the whisperers used, but only because the other Simon was gone before the blow landed. Instead, it struck the stone behind where he¡¯d been standing, fracturing the hard igneous rock. The volcano rumbled again in sympathy to the blow and erupted again louder this time. Whatever happened, it was¡­ well, it was happening.


    ¡°What the fuck is going on,¡± Simon muttered to himself as he looked up at the rising smoke, then down at the piece of his floor that held his armor. ¡°Am I really going to do this?¡±

 Ch. 150 - Blow Off

    He really was, he decided as he crouched down and pushed the chest of rare and expensive herbs off the chunk of stone floor that had come with it and let it clatter down the slope, scattering the contents everywhere. As much as he hated to waste them, they didn¡¯t matter anymore. Win or lose, he was done with this town as soon as this fight was done.


    If he lost, he was going to die painfully, and if he won¡­ well, he wasn¡¯t sure what he was going to do. He was probably going to try to track that asshole down, even if he was fairly certain that was impossible.


    No way, that was me, he told himself as he bent down and started putting on his armor, starting with his sabatons and greaves. Never in a million years would I wipe out a whole damn city.


    It was more than that, he realized, though, as he got dressed as quickly as he could and did his best to ignore the sound of volcanic rumblings. The crown that man had been wearing, whoever he was. That was the crown from the barrow mounds, which meant he¡¯d caused at least two disasters. He might have even been the one to leave the message on the wall in the foothills near Crowvar, and if he was¡­ well¡­ Simon¡¯s mind boggled at the thought.


    Suddenly, he stopped putting on his armor as he realized something. ¡°Fuck¡­ if I beat this thing, then this spot is going to be gone. I won¡¯t be able to come back here and try to ambush the asshole.¡±


    That was a painful choice as he realized he could either leave and come back to try again or he could handle this right now. That this asshole wanted him to solve this level made the whole thing that much worse.


    ¡°He definitely knows how the levels work, at least,¡± Simon grumbled as he agonized over the decision. As he struggled to put on his armor a piece at a time, the encounter replayed over and over in his mind. Had he done everything he could? What should he have done differently?


    Now he thought that maybe the crown protected the wearer in some unspecified way instead of giving him some perverse telepathy. He didn¡¯t say anything when my lightning spell failed, did he? He wondered.


    It didn¡¯t matter, he decided, tugging the straps on his breastplate tighter before belting on his sword. The guy might have put up a protection from lightning spell before Simon got there. If he really was half the mastermind that he claimed to be, then he knew all the details before they happened and could have prepared for everything a hundred different ways.


    The volcano erupted louder this time. Simon looked up and saw the first hints of magma coming over the rim, blazing red and orange against the night. It doesn¡¯t matter, Simon told himself. He might have had a codpiece of enhanced insulation or a holocaust cloak. All that mattered was that he needed to destroy that orb.


    Simon took a second to wrap a cloth around his face to block out the worst of the ash. He would have wet it down, but he didn¡¯t have a water skin with him and¡­ It occurred to him he could use a word of minor water to do that, but he decided against it. He wasn¡¯t wasting magic on anything so frivolous. He was already tired enough, and the real challenge hadn¡¯t even started yet.


    ¡°Stop the orb, stop the eruption,¡± He told himself. ¡°Not what I planned at all, but we¡¯ll go with it.¡±


    ¡°Aufvarum Oonbetit!¡± he yelled, using a word of lesser force to propel him up to a likely ledge a dozen feet above his head. Climbing was impossible in this thing, and spending any time in the caldera full of toxic gasses, heat protection or not, was probably a no-go, but then, he hadn¡¯t planned it like this.


    In his mind, some big magma beastie like the one that had killed him once upon a time would climb out of the volcano, and he¡¯d kill it in single combat at the edge of town and save the city. It would be like the worst possible action remake of Mount Vesuvius.


    Violence at Vesuvius, he joked to himself as he stuck the landing on his first hop, landing hard enough to make his teeth rattle in his skull. No, no, no, Man Vs. Mountain. Swords and Sharkanos?


    As much as the thought of what terrible name he¡¯d give his doomed action movie was entertaining, he dropped it as he continued up the mountain like this was some kind of deranged platformer instead of a real-life or death situation.


    It took another half a dozen leaps before he was anywhere close to the top, and by that point, the smoke was getting thick enough that he couldn¡¯t tell if it was the words or the ash that was making his throat hurt. Still, in spite of the terrifying lighting and the truly precarious leaps he was making, he didn¡¯t feel any warmth. If anything, it was starting to get a little chilly, but that suited him fine.


    Plate mail was not something that one was supposed to perform acrobatics in, and even with magic assisting his jumps, he was working up a sweat. That didn¡¯t really change once he got to the top, though. Simon had been to this spot enough times to have a pretty good idea of how it was supposed to look, and this wasn¡¯t it. The view had always been picturesque, but now it took his breath away, and not in a good way. The view was apocalyptic.


    Before, the caldera had been filled with rubble and hardened lava from previous eruptions. Now, it was a lake of bubbling lava, at least a couple of acres in size. And it was swarming with the wispy fire elementals he¡¯d seen before. They weren¡¯t the flimsy creatures of steam and ash he¡¯d seen before. Now, they were flaming and even more clearly man-shaped than before. But there were none of the magma giants he¡¯d died so violently to once before now.


    The lava was already close to the lip, and rising visibly, and for a moment, Simon thought he was screwed. He might be cool as a cucumber standing here mid-eruption, but he couldn¡¯t breathe lava, and he doubted his plate mail would work for very long once magma started leaking in through the cracks. It wasn¡¯t a wetsuit.


    Then, he saw the orb. He¡¯d worried the thing was somewhere down there at the bottom of the lake, but it wasn¡¯t. Instead, it was floating there in midair, close to the center of the volcano.


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    Though it was almost lost in the glare of the eruptions, the billowing smoke could do nothing to hide a light that bright. Simon coughed hard, drawing in a fearful breath. Whatever he was breathing in was not good for him.


    He took careful aim with his mind and even drew his frost blade so he could aim down the line of the thing. When he was ready, he finally said ¡°Oonbetit¡± before coughing again. When he¡¯d tried this with the wyvern, it had taken several tries for the paper-thick lines of force to intersect with his target. This time, it only took one.


    Simon cut the orb neatly in half, and both sides hung there a moment longer before they stopped glowing and fell into the lava. Part of him hoped that it would end the eruption immediately, but that was not the case. Instead, the volcano erupted again. This time, it was harder, and the ground shook violently enough that he almost lost his footing. That would have been ugly, given that if he fell forward, he¡¯d take a bath in lava, and if he fell backward, he¡¯d fall for hundreds of feet before he hit the ground.


    He didn¡¯t, though. Instead, as lava began to overflow the lip of the volcano, he said, ¡°Oh no, you don¡¯t! Gervuul Gelthic!¡±


    The greater word of ice burned as Simon forced it from his raw throat, freezing the wave of lava that had been coming toward him in place. For a moment, the whole landscape was lost in a violent steam explosion, and when he could see again, Simon saw about what he''d expected. His spell had made the wall on this side of the volcano that much higher. So now lava was still spilling out, but instead of going south, it was mostly going west, toward the sea, and north down the far slope.


    Simon smiled at that and took a moment to take pride in the sight. Even if he was struck dead right now, and this would have been all he¡¯d accomplished, he would have said that he¡¯d solved the level, but the moment he saw the large, oozing hand of some giant magma beast climbing up out of the molten pool, he knew this wasn¡¯t over yet.


    Breathing as slowly and calmly as he could to avoid triggering another coughing fit from the sulfurous gasses, Simon moved over to where the beast was rising. He¡¯d planned to strike the thing¡¯s head off its shoulders, but when he saw how thick its tree trunk-like neck was, he decided that was impossible.


    Instead, as the creature¡¯s eyes fixed on him, and it raised one of its giant fists, Simon thrust his blade three feet into the thing¡¯s eye. The sword instantly cooled the thing¡¯s magma body, striking it dead, or at least dying in a single blow, but Simon couldn¡¯t keep hold of the blade after it froze into place and had to let it go as the monster slipped back into the giant pool of magma.


    Simon spent the next half a minute looking around and trying to decide the best way down before he died of smoke inhalation. He was shivering as he did so and knew that right now, he was taking way more heat than he should. He couldn¡¯t feel it, but the metal could, and he knew that sooner or later, the metal would heat up enough that all of his hard work would start to fail. However, before he could find the most graceful way to make his exit, he was interrupted when the beast he thought he¡¯d slain rose up from the lava a second time.


    This time, it burst from the molten pool with a strangled roar and swung at Simon. Half of its face was turned to stone, but the other half was a mask of rage. Simon staggered back, both to stay out of reach and because he started coughing again. All the magic in the world wasn¡¯t very useful if you couldn¡¯t breathe.


    The monster followed, swinging wildly, and never quite willing to get out of the pool, which frustrated Simon. Perhaps it can¡¯t, he wondered, backing out onto the widest part of the rim he could find to stay just out of reach as he tried to figure out the best way to kill it. He would have thought that the sword would have done more than it was doing. Honestly, he¡¯d long considered the sword to be a secret weapon against this level, but it wasn¡¯t doing what he¡¯d hoped. Sure, it was slowly turning this thing¡¯s head to stone, but even that wasn¡¯t enough to kill it.


    Should I try to freeze its body, or shatter its skull? He wondered, not sure what the right choice was. In a perfect world, he¡¯d do both, but with the air being what it was, he didn¡¯t have that many more words in him. He could feel it. He could probably do one more major spell and maybe a couple smaller ones after that, but then he¡¯d be out.


    Hell, I¡¯ll be lucky to keep standing, after that, he thought.


    It was that thought that finally made him decide what it was he needed to do. Simon waited for the thing to lean as far forward as it dared. Then, once it was as over-extended as possible, he shouted, ¡°Gervuul Gelthic!¡± freezing the rest of its head and most of its arms and torso with a thin layer of cold that was enough to freeze it in place for a moment. He was under no illusions about how little time that would give him. This monster would thaw out again in a minute or two. It might even be less than that. As long as it had the infinite heat of the volcano, there was little Simon could do about that.


    Which is why he needed to separate the two of them. With the giant frozen in place, he ran toward it and leaped up, grabbing the hilt protruding from its stony skull with both hands. He still couldn¡¯t pull it free, but his weight, combined with the weight of its partially frozen body, was enough to make the lava of its midsection sag lower. Once that happened, and his feet were again on the ground, he started pulling backward with all his strength.


    He was essentially trying to turn his opponent into an avalanche, and though Simon didn¡¯t like the odds he would manage to survive something so stupid, he was pretty sure he could pull it off. Even now, as it thawed out, it was completely off balance and slowly sliding out of the caldera. Simon could tell, because the more the lava giant slid out of the pool, the more precarious Simon¡¯s position became. Soon, he was hanging over empty air, and then he was hanging several feet below the caldera¡¯s rim.


    Then, just like that, he transitioned from hanging to falling. For a moment, he feared the sword had finally come free, but it had not. He was falling, and a half-molten giant was falling with him. It was an impossible scene, and Simon kicked free of the thing¡¯s grasp. He¡¯d rather die from the impact than from getting burned to death on the way down. After all, there was nothing to fear from a sudden fall like this. It was an easy way to go compared to some of his other deaths.


    Still halfway down, as he watched the monster slowly return to fiery life and reach for him, Simon suddenly decided he wanted to live. That wasn¡¯t a sure thing, of course, not after falling two hundred feet in the last few seconds, and certainly not while he was quickly approaching terminal velocity. It wasn¡¯t impossible, though, not with magic up his sleeve.


    ¡°Aufvarum Oonbetit,¡± he rasped. ¡°Aufvarum Oonbetit. Aufvarum Oonbetit. Aufvarum Oonbetit. Aufvarum Oonbetit.¡±


    Simon had never tried using minor words over and over like this, but there was no reason it shouldn¡¯t work. Well, there was no reason it shouldn¡¯t work besides the coughing fit that seized him after the fourth one.


    Still, each word of lesser force was enough to slow him a little while the giant kept falling at the same rate. After a few seconds, even though they¡¯d fallen from the same height, he was dozens of feet above the magma giant and falling noticeably slower. That was just enough to let Simon see the thing splatter beneath him into a pool of rocks and lava, but not enough that he had any confidence he¡¯d survive the impact that was about to happen.


    ¡°Oonbetit!¡± he gasped one final time, shaking his whole body as the word of force hit him like a ton of bricks. After that, he hit the ground hard, but before he could decide how badly he was hurt, he hit his head, and the whole world went black.

 Ch. 151 - Back in Bed

    Simon woke, groggily. When he felt the blankets beneath him, he assumed that he was back in bed. That was expected, though, and he accepted it as the price of accomplishing the impossible. He only hoped that it was enough to finally solve the damn volcano level. It was only when he tried to rise and felt the pain shoot through him that he realized that¡¯s not what happened. Somehow, he¡¯d survived the impact, but he¡¯d definitely hurt himself in the fall.


    ¡°No¡­ no, no, no, no¡­¡± someone said. A woman, he thought, it was hard to tell in the dark room. ¡°No, Mister Simon, you can¡¯t move¡­ you can¡¯t, you¡¯re hurt too bad for that.¡±


    It was a woman. Someone motherly, perhaps twice his age. He thought she looked familiar, but he wasn¡¯t completely sure. He¡¯d treated so many people in¡­ whatever city he was in, and his mind wasn¡¯t working so well just now.


    ¡°What¡­¡± he rasped through parched lips.


    ¡°No, you just¡­ you lay there,¡± she said, pushing him gently but firmly back into the mattress. ¡°And I will fetch the healer.¡±


    But I am the healer, Simon thought to himself. He might have laughed then, but it would have hurt too bad, and he lacked the energy to try. Something was definitely hurt badly, though. He couldn¡¯t feel his toes, and when the woman hurried off, he tried to reach for a glass of water he''d seen on the nearby table. That was when he found out his hands were swaddled in bandages so completely that he might as well have been tied up.


    The attempt at motion made his body light up with pain in a dozen places again. He wasn¡¯t going anywhere, and until he recuperated a bit more, he wasn¡¯t even sure he could speak a minor word of healing. Even that insignificant effort would be too much. Instead, he lay there, trying to analyze his situation.


    His body was in bad shape. He may or may not be paralyzed from the waist down, and from the taste of blood in his mouth and the uncomfortable sensations he felt when breathing, he was probably bleeding internally. All that was par for the course when falling from a great height, so none of that surprised him.


    What surprised him was his surroundings. He wasn¡¯t in his cabin as he¡¯d first thought, but he wasn¡¯t in his home in Ionar either. Thanks to the pungent smell of herbs, he would have been able to tell that, even in the dim light. He was somewhere nicer than either of those places. The soft bed beneath him and the faint smell of incense marked it as either the palace or else a very nice home somewhere in the upper city.


    That meant he wasn¡¯t a prisoner, of course, officially at least. He might well be one once they¡¯d gotten him healthy enough to execute, but he really couldn¡¯t say for certain. He had no idea what anyone saw or what they might have noticed when they found him. It was possible that his armor had been so damaged that his runes might not have¡­


    Where is my armor? He thought with a start as he looked down. He wasn¡¯t sure if he was naked or if there were clothes beneath some of these bandages and blankets. He supposed that it didn¡¯t really matter, but he would have liked to see his injuries.


    A few minutes later, the woman who had been minding him returned with a man whom Simon recognized, even if he couldn¡¯t remember his name. He was the palace doctor. That answers one question, at least, Simon thought, leaning a little closer to the idea that he was probably under arrest, just not officially yet.


    ¡°Ah, he is awake!¡± the doctor beamed. ¡°This is good news! How are you feeling? Do you remember who you are? Do you know where you are?¡±


    The first time Simon tried to speak, he caused a coughing fit that would have doubled him over in pain if he was capable of doubling over at this moment. Instead, he lay there miserably until they subsided, then he tried again, but quieter. ¡°Water¡­¡± he moaned.


    ¡°Ah, yes, of course!¡± the doctor said, gesturing for the woman to handle that. The man struck Simon as more proud of whatever he¡¯d done to save his patient than grateful the man was alive. He¡¯d seen that type before in the years he¡¯d spent in Abresse. ¡°You¡¯ve been unconscious for days, so a thirst is one more indicator of renewed health!¡±


    ¡°Days?¡± Simon rasped after his throat and tongue were moistened. His head was still fuzzy, but he wasn¡¯t sure if that was a concussion or simply the consequences of everything else that he was suffering from. ¡°Tell me¡­ what happened¡­¡±


    ¡°To you? I¡¯m not sure,¡± the doctor said. ¡°There were some lurid reports about a stone giant, and I¡¯m told they found you in some armor at the base of Mount Karkosia in rough shape. Your armor was¡­¡±


    The man looked like he was about to laugh for a moment, but then he remembered his decorum. And he stopped himself. ¡°Well, I¡¯m not sure what it is you were up to, but even plate mail does precious little against fire, which would explain the burns you have¡­¡±


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    Frostbite, Simon thought to himself. He wasn¡¯t surprised. At no point did the fire burn him, but the cold was certainly more powerful than he¡¯d expected on the rim of the caldera. He hoped it wasn¡¯t too bad, but there was no way to know until he healed the worst of his hurts and started unraveling his bandages and the way he was feeling, that probably wouldn¡¯t be today. He felt too woozy to summon the focus he needed to do a proper healing.


    ¡°No, not me¡­¡± Simon tried again. ¡°The city¡­ Ionar¡­ the eruption¡­¡±


    ¡°Oh, the city is fine,¡± the doctor said. ¡°Lava is still poring into the sea, I¡¯m told, but these things happen. A few houses burned, but the Queen will handle all of that. I¡­ no, we are much more concerned about you, Sir Simon. Can you tell me what you were doing up there?¡±


    ¡°I¡­ I don¡¯t remember,¡± Simon lied. ¡°I can barely remember who I am¡­ Don¡¯t even recall why I came to Ionar right now¡­¡±


    ¡°Well, at least you know where you are,¡± the doctor nodded. ¡°Can you tell me how long you¡¯ve been here?¡±


    ¡°Years? Maybe?¡± Simon said, unable to remember if it had been three or four years at this point. He¡¯d have to check the case notes in his shop to say for sure.


    ¡°Long time.¡± he sighed. ¡°Healing. Quiet life.¡±


    ¡°Good, that¡¯s very good,¡± the doctor said. ¡°I can¡¯t promise that you¡¯ll make a full recovery, but at least your mind is intact, and that counts for something.¡±


    ¡°How bad?¡± Simon asked. The room went quiet for several seconds then, which was all the answer Simon really needed. It was pretty bad.


    ¡°Well¡­¡± the doctor said finally, ¡°Your injuries are severe. I won¡¯t lie to you about that, but I¡¯m confident that they look worse than they really are, and in a week or perhaps two, we will know much more.¡±


    A week was too long, though. Simon knew that. Bones that had been broken were already set wrong. The right time was now, not later. He didn¡¯t say any of that, though. Instead, he let the doctor lead the conversation while he talked about herbs that might help and treatments that could speed recovery. Simon didn¡¯t entirely disagree with the suggested course of treatment, but before he could ask questions or argue about anything, he drifted back off to sleep once more. Even staying awake was too hard for him in his present state.


    When he woke sometime later, it was lighter, which meant it was daytime, but probably not the next day. The doctor was gone, but the woman was there, doing needlepoint in a chair by his bead. When he stirred, she immediately stirred, but when she went to fetch the doctor again, he said, ¡°No¡­ I want to ask you¡­ not him¡­¡±


    ¡°Ask me what?¡± she asked, confused. ¡°I¡¯m just a housemaid; I know nothin¡¯ of medicine like Doctor Nolanth.¡±


    ¡°Not medicine¡­¡± Simon breathed. ¡°The volcano¡­ the stone giant¡­¡±


    ¡°Oh, well, I don¡¯t know much about that either¡­ I¡ª¡± she started to say.


    ¡°Servants talk,¡± he said with just as much volume as he dared. ¡°What¡­ do they say?¡±


    ¡°Well¡­¡± she said, looking at him hesitantly. ¡°They say that an ancient evil woke up in the eruption a fortnight ago and that someone slew it and saved the city. According to some rumors, that hero died, and according to others, he¡¯s recuperating at the palace even now¡­ But I really can¡¯t say.¡±


    ¡°I guess you can¡¯t,¡± Simon said. The two of them exchanged smiles at the unspoken agreement.


    She gave him water this time, and in the light of day, he could see the heavy splints that had been applied to his numb legs. The woman told him a little more gossip now and then. She mentioned that the Queen had tried to visit him twice, but Simon had been unconscious both times. He considered asking her if anyone has seen anyone else that looked like him, but that was too crazy. Honestly, just thinking about it again made him feel crazy, but that was a problem for later.


    Later, his nursemaid brought him a thin broth after the doctor checked in on him again, and he ate some even though he wasn¡¯t hungry. A rising fever had robbed him of his appetite. The one thing she wouldn¡¯t do, though, was loosen his bandages so he could see what the problems were.


    That had to wait until he was left alone the following night. Then, when he was by himself, he whispered a word of lesser healing to heal his throat and clear his mind. Then he got to work, attacking the bandages on his arm that hurt less with his teeth. Working by moonlight, he slowly unraveled the dense weave to reveal patchy burns and torn flesh where his armor removal had taken the skin with it on his upper arm.


    Simon ignored those because none of them looked infected and kept unwinding the thing. His lower arm was much the same, and none of the major bones looked broken. When he finally unwrapped his hand, he found that two of his fingers were splinted, but that wasn¡¯t what concerned him. He held his hand up in the moonlight and saw that all of his fingertips that still remained were blackened from frostbite and probably necrotic. Some of them were missing, though. While he was unconscious, someone had taken the liberty of removing his pinky entirely and the last joint of his ring finger.


    He didn¡¯t like it, but they had probably saved his life. ¡°Well, it¡¯s not the worst you¡¯ve been hurt,¡± he told himself before whispering another word of lesser cure. When he healed his hand, he was careful not to try to restore the missing finger or any of the superficial burns. That would be too suspicious. Instead, he just healed his broken bones and all the damage from the frostbite.


    When it was done, it looked and felt right as far as he could tell. Simon didn¡¯t try to take off the splints. Instead, he used his hand and his teeth to get at his other arm. This one had a splint across the forearm and what felt like a fractured radius. He healed that without any trouble, and when he got to his other hand, he was pleased to see he¡¯d only lost a join of his pointer finger, along with three more fractured fingers.


    Simon healed all of that, looking at the wreck his arms had become. Then he looked down at his blanket-swaddled body and said, ¡°Do I even want to know?¡± Part of him argued he could just kill himself and come back the old-fashioned way, but he didn¡¯t listen to it. He wasn¡¯t feeling very suicidal these days unless it was absolutely necessary; he had a lot more work to do.

 Ch. 152 - When Magic Isn’t Enough

    Given the ugly state of affairs with his hands, he didn¡¯t hold out much hope for the rest of his body, but he still needed to know. Unfortunately, he couldn¡¯t move around well enough to unwrap the bandages that covered his chest, and he was in too much pain to sit up. So, instead, he grabbed his drinking glass, broke it on the nightstand, and then used the biggest part to start cutting away at the bandages.


    Simon didn¡¯t try to be careful. He couldn¡¯t hide any of this work from whoever came on to check on him in a minute or an hour. He just needed to get well enough that he wasn¡¯t going to die or find out if that was the best solution, and then he could decide what to do. There was no sense in beheading himself unless he was permanently crippled, or maybe, not even then. He wasn¡¯t sure what he¡¯d do next exactly, but he didn¡¯t really feel like throwing in the towel.


    Why not just start with a clean slate? He told himself as he cut away at his bandages before shooting back, Have you seen my slate? It¡¯s not that clean. Weight loss. Working out - I¡¯d need to make new fireproof armor¡­ it¡¯s a whole thing.


    The armor might be a valid reason to keep going. It would take him weeks or months to replace, depending on the circumstances, but what would he need it for? Duh, Dragon¡­ The words came back immediately. He hadn¡¯t been planning to fight the dragon, of course. He¡¯d been planning to¡­ Well, he hadn¡¯t really thought about it past the whole volcano thing, and¡­


    Thinking about any of that immediately made him think about his doppelg?nger, and for a moment, that was enough to still Simon¡¯s hand. Compared to that, none of the rest of these mysteries mattered. If he¡­ If some version of him was out there causing some of these problems, then that needed to be his top priority.


    ¡°No,¡± he whispered to himself as he returned his focus to the matter at hand while he looked at the ugly bruise that colored the left half of his rib cage. ¡°My top priority is making sure I don¡¯t die. My evil twin can be handled after that.¡±


    Simon used a word of healing on his chest after he¡¯d probed all his bruises and felt for broken bones. There were enough broken ribs on his left side that he felt sure a lung or something worse must have been punctured, so he took his time, trying to hold all of that in his mind before he finally said the words.


    The relief he felt was palpable, but so was the fatigue that washed over him as his body tried to fix everything on his wishlist. He¡¯d left the bruises and the burns in place, no matter how ugly they looked, but he could breathe deeply again, so that was worth it.


    Simon sat up, or at least he tried to¡­ the pain in his back was so bad that he instantly knew where the problem was with his feet. He rolled onto his side and gingerly reached back to prod his spine. It was a painful mistake, but that didn¡¯t stop him. He didn¡¯t know if it was broken, fractured, or just plain crushed, but everything in his upper lumbar hurt, and everything below that didn¡¯t feel like anything at all.


    It would be easy just to start over, he reminded himself. The experience penalty for a reset can¡¯t be too bad, can it? The last part gave him pause, but only enough to wonder what the penalty for killing himself actually was in the pit. He would need to measure that. Not right now, though.


    Right now, he kept going. Then, when he had what felt like the complete picture of what his damaged spine might look like, he spent the better part of a minute breathing deeply as he pictured it. Half of that was spent trying to decide whether or not he should try to use a greater word, but all of it was spent desperately trying to remember snippets of biology class and back pain commercials to remember exactly how the spin fit together.


    The most important part, of course, was making sure that the spinal cord was connected, but there were so many moving parts he was certain to screw it up. There were pads that fit between them and fluid somewhere, but he wasn¡¯t sure.


    There were times when Simon wondered how much of a given spell was the magic and how much of it was the instructions he gave it, but this time, he left nothing to chance, and when he finally worked up the nerve to whisper ¡°Gervuul Hyakk,¡± it was as detailed a spell as he had ever put together.


    That was fortunate because trying to force those words of power from his throat in his weakened state was harder than he thought they would be. Despite the familiar spell, he almost choked on them, and he felt his soul strain under the opposites of physical weakness and magical power. In the end, he didn¡¯t get to see the results because unconsciousness took him before he did more than feel the warmth and tingle of magic as it started to stir through him.


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    When Simon awoke next, the sun was bright in the sky, and someone was talking. No, someone was reading to him. For a second, he struggled to make out the words. Is someone reading me my last rites? Is this a religious ceremony? He wondered. No, it¡¯s a children¡¯s story.


    As Simon slowly swam through molasses to return to consciousness and to the real world, he listened to a story about three children trying to navigate through a dark forest. The first one decided not to leave the path and was set upon by bandits. The second one decided that it would be safer to cut through the dark woods and leave little bread crumbs so he wouldn¡¯t get lost. That worked fine until an owlbear found the crumbs, which led it straight to the boy to gobble him up.


    Simon didn¡¯t get the chance to find out how the third boy surmounted the challenge, because that was when his narrator noticed that he was stirring and stopped the story. ¡°Welcome once more to the land of the living, Sir Simon," she said with a smile on her face.


    Until that moment, Simon had thought it was the maidservant who was reading to him, but when she smiled, he noticed how pretty she was, and that misapprehension fell quickly away. For a moment, he wondered who she was, and then he saw the crown. After that, it didn¡¯t take a genius to work out that the Queen of Ionar was sitting by his deathbed reading him a bedtime story.


    ¡°How long¡­ this time?¡± he managed to ask.


    ¡°Since you almost ruined all of Doctor Nolanth¡¯s hard work,¡± she asked lightly. ¡°Two days. He said you might not recover from that.¡±


    A quick glance down revealed that he was once again swaddled in bandages from head to toe. ¡°Sorry¡­¡± he whispered. ¡°The fevers¡­¡±


    ¡°Indeed,¡± she agreed. ¡°The doctor said it was certainly a temporary madness caused about by brain swelling. He advised that we drill into your skull to relieve the pressure, but I decided against it. You were too weak for another operation.¡±


    Simon nodded weakly at that as she scooted her chair closer, unsure of what to say. ¡°How are you feeling?¡± she asked finally as she took his bandaged hand in two of her own.


    ¡°Better,¡± he answered, surprised to find that it was so. His body was exhausted, and utterly spent by the magic he¡¯d used on it, but he didn¡¯t hurt half so bad as he had before, so he¡¯d clearly done some good.


    ¡°Why am I¡ª¡± he asked


    ¡°Alive? In the palace?¡± she responded with a smile.


    ¡°I do not claim to know who you are, Simon, or why you did what you did,¡± she answered, squeezing his hand, ¡°but I do know what you did, and I will be grateful to you for it even if the city as a whole will never know that you struck that monster down.¡±


    ¡°But¡­ what was it?¡± he asked. ¡°The giant.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t know?¡± she said before uttering a laugh so musical that it was almost enough to make him smile on its own despite the pain. ¡°You struck down a monster from the stories just because¡­ what¡­ you felt like it?¡±


    ¡°Well, Ionar has been a nice place so far,¡± Simon said before he started coughing badly enough that the Queen had to get him some water.


    ¡°I¡¯m glad it meets your approval,¡± she said wryly when he was done, but I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t let this rest. ¡°If you didn¡¯t know who Brogan was, then why did you slay him in such heroic style?¡±


    ¡°All I knew is that¡­ if the volcano was allowed to erupt, then the city would be forever ruined,¡± he lied. ¡°It''s an old prophecy from the north.¡±


    ¡°Prophecy, huh?¡± she asked with obvious suspicion, ¡°So a man from far away comes to town to what¡­ stop a volcano from exploding? You¡¯ll forgive me for saying so, Mister Simon, but that seems¡­ unlikely.¡±


    ¡°Maybe I can explain things better when my mind is clearer,¡± he answered, groping at straws. ¡°Things are¡­ I¡¯m not sure.¡±


    It had been a dumb story on his face. If he¡¯d been in better shape, he would have seen that, but then, he¡¯d never planned for anyone to actually talk to home about any of this. He¡¯d planned to solve the level, beat the elemental, and move on to the next task.


    ¡°Why are you here¡­ with that book?¡± Simon asked finally, trying desperately to change the topic.


    ¡°Our beloved doctor said that you could slip away at any moment last night but that the sound of speaking might yet lure your spirit back to its body,¡± she answered smoothly, ¡°And I could not let our protector slip away without thanking him, so I did everything possible to make sure he stuck around at least that long.¡±


    ¡°Well, I appreciate that,¡± Simon said, not sure what else to say.


    ¡°And I appreciate you slaying a monster from the legends,¡± the Queen smiled. ¡°If only that had happened for the other lost cities, Ionia would be better for it, Simon.¡±


    The two of them kept talking for some time, and it was only when the doctor returned that the Queen took her leave. The doctor scolded Simon for what he did, explaining that it had nearly cost him his life, but Simon knew the truth. The Bandages were only hiding the ugliness of his wounds. The true war for his survival was happening deep inside his body, and when he¡¯d used magic to heal so many grievous injuries at once, it had strained him to the limit.


    He was better now, though, at least a little. He still wasn¡¯t sure if he¡¯d ever walk again, but that was a later problem. For now, he was content to heal in his sick bed, and as his fever wanned, his appetite soared, and he was soon eating full meals again. The palace food was pretty good, even. It just wasn¡¯t as good as the meals he¡¯d make for himself in his little home off the market in the lower city.


    It took three weeks for the good news, though. That¡¯s how long it took him to feel anything in his feet. But once he realized he could move his legs again, even if clumsily, he kept trying to wriggle and stretch his toes until, one day, they started to move. That¡¯s when he knew this life wasn¡¯t worth giving up on just yet.

 Ch. 153 - A Nice View

    Simon¡¯s recovery was slow, only compared to everything else he¡¯d been through. He was used to healing or dying almost immediately, and there had been only a few instances where he¡¯d been forced to actually let his body mend, the most notable of which had been ages ago when he¡¯d fought with the orcs. There, he¡¯d been afraid of scrambling his brains with the wrong healing spell, and he¡¯d been forced to spend weeks in bed, letting the concussion heal on its own.


    The view from his sickbed in Rivenwood wasn¡¯t half so lovely as his view from the palace¡¯s guest room, though, and the Queen was much nicer to him than the shrew that saw only Simon¡¯s evil aura and not the man behind it. He paused for a moment to try to remember the village wise woman¡¯s name but found that he couldn¡¯t. He was still glad that he¡¯d saved her, of course, but happy not to think of her most of the time. Still, Simon wondered what she might say about him with his steadily improving aura.


    Though he enjoyed time to think about this and other topics and frequently used a borrowed hand mirror to ask questions of it from his growing pile of notes, Simon was back on his feet in less than two weeks. There was simply only so much laying in bed he could take. Those first steps were halting, and only across the room to use the chamber pot or to go outside and stand on the balcony, taking in the sea air and the commanding view of the ocean that surrounded the city on three sides.


    What it didn¡¯t show him was the volcano, though. Simon was unsure if that was on purpose or a happy accident, but the one direction he most wanted to look in, he couldn¡¯t. He didn¡¯t dwell on it, though. He could tell from the smell of the air and the manner of servants that it wasn¡¯t still erupting. So, if there was no danger, everything else could wait.


    The Queen continued to visit him often. It wasn¡¯t daily. She was a busy woman. Still, every two or three days, she would come to his room and bring him a book to read or an expensive piece of fruit to savor. Whether she was attempting to subtly remind him of his place in the pecking order with these luxuries or just giving him rewards worthy of a hero, he couldn¡¯t say. That¡¯s just the way she was. One moment, she was so dignified that she bordered on the formal, and the next, she was just a woman, and the illusion of formality fell apart as she laughed at some joke or beamed when she saw him standing for the first time.


    She was a canny woman, though, and even when she was being friendly or even flirtatious, she was still probing him and looking for answers to her questions. What was he really doing here? How did he really slay Brogan? How did Simon know to slay the giant if he didn¡¯t know who that was?


    Simon¡¯s protests and memory lapses only went so far, but eventually, he got enough information about the cursed land of Ionia to make up a suitable story. As they talked, she told him of how her great-grandfather, Andus, carved out a vast country from these rocky slopes by killing or sealing away each of the monsters that plagued it. ¡°He stole the north from the harpy queen and sealed away Brogan the burning to build Ionar, among other terrible beasts. For a generation, everything was perfect until the curse.¡±


    Apparently, an oracle had prophesied that his reign would spell only doom for the world and that every time one of his progeny got married, one of the monsters Andus sealed away would return to torment his descendants. It was a crazy story, and Simon was extremely skeptical, at least until the Queen said, ¡°No one was really sure it was true until my mother remarried, almost 50 years after her father¡¯s death. She fell to love, despite all the warnings. That¡¯s when the basilisk returned and destroyed the city of Ozioptin.¡±


    A chill went through Simon at those words. He¡¯d never known the name of the city, but he¡¯d been there before. He¡¯d been there longer than he¡¯d ever been anywhere else. ¡°Ozioptin?¡± He asked, his mouth suddenly dry. ¡°Could you show me that on a map?¡±


    ¡°A world traveler like you doesn¡¯t know about the city of stone?¡± she asked with a sad smile. ¡°Did your prophecy not have enough room for two doomed cities?¡±


    ¡°All I know is that if Ionar falls, trade will halt, and wars will start,¡± Simon said, ¡°So I came to see what I could do to stop that.¡±


    She pursed her lips but said nothing. Instead, she had a servant bring her a map of the kingdom. Simon admired its workmanship immediately, even if he wasn¡¯t sure about some of the choices the author had made distance-wise. Still, it was nice to see Ionia laid out so neatly, pinned between the Raiden Mountains and the Grekan Sea. There were some islands off the shore he hadn¡¯t known about, and there, on the other side of the mountains, was the desert he¡¯d passed through more than once and neatly marked not so far away from the mountain range.


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    Oziopin. Just seeing that was almost enough to give Simon flashbacks. He¡¯d stared at that range for lifetimes. He could draw it in his sleep. He didn¡¯t say any of that, though. Instead, he asked, ¡°Why was there a city built in such an out-of-the-way place, in the desert?¡±


    ¡°That would be a good question, except that it wasn¡¯t always desert,¡± she answered with a shake of her head as she traced out a line on the map with her finger, briefly touching his. ¡°It''s true that the Wantari wastes have been there forever, but Oziopin was built in the midst of a fertile valley. There was even a beautiful lake there once. It was only when the curse came that the water fled, and the beast appeared. They say that the place will stay that way until someone manages to strike down the monster. That¡¯s a cruel prophecy since no one can beat it, of course, but it¡¯s there just the same.¡±


    ¡°No one can beat it?¡± Simon asked, suddenly putting a lot less stock in this talk about curses and prophecies since he¡¯d already beaten it a few years in the future. ¡°How do you know someone hasn¡¯t struck it down already.¡±


    ¡°Because no one can,¡± she answered with a shake of her head. ¡°Every year, another young hero tries, or a merchant caravan that strays too close disappears. The thing is a true monster. ¡®No hero of Ionar or any other kingdom of the known world shall ever be able to slay this beast, and it will squat over Ionar until the impossible happens.¡¯¡±


    She spoke, reciting the prophecy from memory and making his blood run cold. She clearly interpreted the thing to mean forever, but as someone who had killed the basilisk, he knew that simply wasn¡¯t so, but he knew something else too. He wasn¡¯t exactly from around here. Suddenly, he very much wanted to meet whoever had prophesied all of this or at least read their other work for clues about what else might happen in the future.


    ¡°Who was it that said all these things, and why do you believe them anyway?¡± Simon asked, rolling up the map. ¡°The future can be whatever it is you want it to be.¡±


    ¡°I only wish that were so,¡± the Queen sighed, ¡°But the Oracle is never wrong.¡±


    ¡°Never wrong?¡± he asked skeptically. ¡°Didn¡¯t your evil lava monster wake up recently despite the fact that you hadn¡¯t violated your Grandfather¡¯s prophecy?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± she agreed. ¡°But you stopped it before it could doom the city. Clearly, you were always intended to be a part of that destiny, so she still wasn¡¯t wrong.¡±


    ¡°Wasn¡¯t wrong?¡± he asked, flabbergasted. She¡¯d been wrong in every single life except for this one so far. Before he could protest that, though, she continued.


    ¡°Don¡¯t you see? It''s all part of the plan, and just like you, if we all do our part, then we can make the world a better place, one life at a time.¡± As the Queen spoke, she took the map back from him, touching his hand, before she rolled it up. She left him then with a lot to think about.


    Oracular magic might hint at some new aspect of magic he did not yet understand, and being able to predict what was going to happen would certainly be useful. ¡°More than useful,¡± he said to himself as he carefully stretched. ¡°It would be OP as fuck.¡± Still, the idea of fate made him nervous. He didn¡¯t like the idea that whatever he was doing had already been taken into account by someone, somewhere.


    Helades had shown practically unlimited power and at least a limited knowledge of what he was mostly likely to do, but he didn¡¯t believe that even she was omnipotent. He was sure he¡¯d surprised her more than once or twice so far. So, while the idea that someone less than her could know such things was unlikely, he couldn¡¯t rule it out entirely.


    Simon used words of healing twice more after that. Once to fix the tibia in his left leg that had been set crooked, and again to regrow his big toe when he discovered that the balance problems of losing it were just too big to compensate for. Despite his best efforts, the digit was an ugly, misshapen thing. It looked like a mutated version of a toe as drawn by a kindergartener. The new toe did the job and moved in roughly the way a toe should move, but it dispelled any notions about him replacing his fingers when he left. The only way he¡¯d do that is if he bought some nice gloves and never stopped wearing them. At least he didn¡¯t have to look at his feet as long as he kept his boots on.


    Slowly, piece by piece, Simon put himself back together again. He didn¡¯t think he¡¯d be fighting with a sword anytime soon, but he was pretty sure in a few weeks, he wouldn¡¯t need a servant or a wall to lean on if he wanted to move further than a few steps. That didn¡¯t make him any prettier in the mirror, though. The frostbite his armor had inflicted on him had given him gnarly scars across his arms and legs especially. His face was mostly fine, fortunately. It hadn¡¯t been in direct contact with any cold metal. At least not until he¡¯d hit the ground. All in all, he considered this to be a success. He didn¡¯t know how much, though, until they finally brought him his armor.


    It was only when he saw how mangled it was that Simon understood how lucky he was to be alive. Cooled magma clung to the outside of several pieces, and the way the leg plates were bent pointed to some very bad breaks. Without magic, Simon would certainly have been dead by now.

 Ch. 154 - Small Indulgences

    Almost a month after his fall, Simon was walking around outside. Mostly, he limited himself to short walks in the garden, but in time, he found he could wander a bit around the upper city, too. He was more than aware of the eyes on him then, though that seemed to be the scars more than anything.


    The first time a child pointed at him and said, ¡°Look, mommy, a leper,¡± he decided there and then that he would get some new shirts made to cover the scarring as much as possible and that he would get some gloves to hide the bits of fingers he¡¯d lost.


    The Queen was happy to help him with that, and soon thereafter, tailors had arrived to make him clothes finer than he¡¯d worn in several lifetimes. However, it was only when he noticed how the otherwise businesslike tailor shuddered when he touched Simon that he realized that he might be a little more hideous than he thought.


    That night, he stared long and hard at himself in the mirror, trying to decide if he should try to ameliorate the scars, but he decided against it. They didn¡¯t really bother him, and when he got some clothes that had been cut with this problem in mind, they wouldn¡¯t bother anyone else, either. After all, it wasn¡¯t like anyone was going to see him naked any time soon.


    When Simon was finally healthy enough, he made the long walk up to where he¡¯d almost died with the help of a walking stick. He shouldn¡¯t have done it. He was still too weak for a mile walk, but he couldn¡¯t help it. It was something I needed to see.


    When he got close enough to see the giant statue, he thought for a moment that someone was carving something to commemorate the occasion. It took him far too long to realize that what he was seeing wasn¡¯t a statue. It was the remains of the monster he¡¯d been fighting, frozen in stone.


    Several thoughts hit Simon at once after that. The first one was that the thing wasn¡¯t dead. It was just frozen in a statue like he¡¯d once been so long ago. The second realization dispelled any sympathy from the first one, though.


    The statue was on one knee, with its hands raised in the air and its two fists balled together like it was about to deliver the final blow. In that moment Simon could see what he must have looked like. There he was, lying where the ossified lava monster had been about to strike, broken beyond any measure. He could see his battered armor and the way it failed to hide the unnatural way his legs were bent. He could even see the fog of cold rising from him while the still-molten Brogan shimmered with heat.


    The monster was going to end me, but it ran out of steam before it could, he thought to himself as he returned to his senses and sat back down before he fell over.


    He stayed there for some time, looking at how little separated life and death. ¡°I never would have known if it had succeeded,¡± he thought with a shrug, trying to put everything in its proper context. ¡°I would have just come back and tried all of this again. So, it''s not like any of this matters.¡±


    It did, though. It mattered to him. He could die, and if he did, he¡¯d come back, but the amount of deaths he was wracking up was starting to weigh on him. He stayed there long enough to think about how hard it was going to be to get back to the palace. Fortunately, someone had thought of that and sent a curtained palanquin to retrieve him. When he asked the guard in charge about that, he just said, ¡°The Queen decided that you were in no fit shape to return under your own power but that you were stubborn enough that you needed to find that out for yourself.¡±


    Simon grinned at that, but he did not disagree. He spent the next two days in bed as a result of his expedition, but every day after that was easier. There were only a couple occasions where he was tempted to find something to drain the life force from something to speed the process, but he resisted. Instead, he took up drinking once more, but only for the pain. He wasn¡¯t much of a fan of white wine when he started, but by the end of the twice or thrice-weekly benders, he had to admit it wasn¡¯t so bad.


    Instead, he stopped and smelled the roses, literally and figuratively. The palace made it clear he was welcome to stay as an honored guest for as long as he liked, and even if some of the nobility were not pleased to see a foreigner held in such high esteem, they said nothing to him at least.


    So, Simon drew, read voraciously through the palace library, and worked on his map. The resources they had for that were impressive but entirely understandable, given their position as a trade hub.


    Even more than the maps, though, he found himself spending more and more time amongst the books. This was the first opportunity Simon had really had a chance to read for pleasure since his life back on Earth, and he basked in it. At first, he tried to pick books and scrolls that seemed the most practical. He looked for history books and treatises on geography to help tie the world together better in his mind. Eventually, though, he grew tired of those and focused on books for pleasure. He read children¡¯s stories and books of epic poetry. He read anything that interested him while he waited for his body to heal, and he enjoyed it immensely.


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    Truthfully, aside from the grimoire he¡¯d spent weeks studying once upon a time, he couldn¡¯t remember the last time he¡¯d read anything this substantial since a binge through the walkthroughs of a particularly challenging game he¡¯d had trouble with when it came out.


    I probably haven¡¯t read for fun since I was a boy, he reflected, wondering why he¡¯d ever given it up.


    Some days, the doctor would check on him, though those visits were less and less frequent now. He spent more time bragging about how he¡¯d saved Simon¡¯s life than he did trying to understand why Simon had survived, which was good because digging too deeply in that regard would not end well for him.


    Other days, the Queen made an appearance. She asked most regularly about his choice in books and what he had learned. She no longer asked how he was doing, though. Instead, she simply chatted with him between her official duties.


    Simon was honored, but whenever he tried to protest, she simply said, ¡°Nonsense, for the hero of Ionar, this is the very least I can do.¡±


    ¡°Well, if I¡¯m such a hero, then why does no one mention what happened,¡± he shot back one day when he grew tired of the statement.


    That gave her pause before she said, ¡°Simon, why do you think it¡¯s a good idea that the less anyone knows about what really happened, the better?¡±


    ¡°Because it might cause a panic?¡± he guessed, feeling certain he knew the real answer.


    ¡°It might. Anyone might walk up to the foot of the volcano and see the statue you left there, though,¡± she answered with a shrug. ¡°The rumors have spread far and wide by now, and the shrine to placate it is heavy with flowers and other offerings. I don¡¯t think there¡¯s any hiding that something supernatural happened; I just think maybe who did it might be a secret better left forgotten.¡±


    ¡°Because it would take tremendous strength to defeat such a foe,¡± he hazarded, trying again.


    This made her laugh. ¡°Simon, do you know what temperature your armor was when the first guards found your broken body?¡±


    Simon¡¯s heart sank. All this time, he thought he was hiding the important things, but she knew the truth already. ¡°I imagine it was quite cold,¡± he said finally.


    ¡°It was,¡± she agreed. ¡°It was colder than ice. That¡¯s quite something under normal circumstances, but when there¡¯s still smoldering lava clinging to it¡­ well, I think that¡¯s quite remarkable.¡±


    ¡°I can explain,¡± he started to answer, but she ignored him.


    ¡°My Vizer says that the armor is quite well made and that he doesn¡¯t recognize all of the runes that were used to make it,¡± she continued. ¡°He recommended that we should kill you in your sleep just in case that someone was you. Was it?¡±


    ¡°It was,¡± Simon answered, tired of lying to the people who had saved his life. ¡°I put that armor together for the express purpose of this eruption.¡±


    ¡°Impressive,¡± she answered, leaning forward to rest her chin on her interwoven hands. ¡°But how precisely did you know that Mount Karkosia was going to erupt?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s more complicated,¡± Simon said after only a short pause.


    ¡°More complicated than making magical armor or fighting a monster of legend?¡± she answered with a smirk. ¡°More complicated than knowing several terrible words or confessing all of these facts to the Queen of Ionar? You are a strange man, Mister Simon. I look forward to finding out the rest of your story.¡±


    ¡°I can leave if you prefer,¡± he said finally.


    ¡°Why would I want you to leave after I¡¯ve spent so much time hiding your secret for you?¡± she asked.


    ¡°Well, your Vizer¡ª¡± he started to say.


    ¡°Refuses to meet with you, but he has promised me that he will strike you down the moment you even think of using magic. Is that understood?¡± she asked, suddenly serious.


    ¡°It is,¡± Simon said, suppressing a grin. He¡¯d used half a dozen spells since he¡¯d been here, and the man hadn¡¯t done a thing to him, which meant he had no better way of detecting magic than Simon did: watching it happen.


    ¡°Good, then there¡¯s no reason for you to leave any time soon,¡± she smiled.


    ¡°I do plan to leave when I¡¯ve recovered, though,¡± he told her. ¡°There¡¯s more I need to do.¡±


    ¡°More volcanoes to fight, are there?¡± she asked, with glittering eyes.


    ¡°Next on my list is a dragon, actually,¡± he said with a smile that made it impossible to tell that he was being serious.


    ¡°A dragon?¡± she laughed again. ¡°Now that is impressive. If you told me you¡¯d slain a dragon before, I¡¯d almost believe it.¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t,¡± he admitted. ¡°A wyvern, a troll, a ba¡­ a batch of goblins like you wouldn¡¯t believe, and a few other things. ¡±


    He cringed as he realized he¡¯d almost told her about the basilisk. That had been too close.


    ¡°Oh, I look forward to these stories,¡± she answered, leaning back and stretching just enough to show off her figure before she rose. ¡°But if you try to crib from any of these books and pass them off as your own exploits, I¡¯ll know. I¡¯ve read nearly every book in here.¡±


    ¡°Nearly?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Well, except for the boring ones,¡± she agreed. They both laughed at that.


    The Queen left him then, but he continued to smile long after she was gone. It was the first time in a long time that someone had gotten a hint of who he really was without shying away at all. He liked that and hoped that would continue if he worked up the nerve to tell her more.

 Ch. 155 - Turning of the Years

    Simon spent most of the next few weeks and months in the library. He started going on longer and longer walks, and eventually, he went to the gym. That was mostly for the restorative hot springs, though he did eventually try to spar with men he¡¯d once been able to beat handily.


    The results of those bouts were ugly, and when his opponents asked him what had happened to him, Simon told them a story about being set upon by a small pack of orcs while he was out gathering herbs one day. In the broad strokes, the lie was perfectly adequate; he¡¯d fought more than his share, and few men alive knew more about the sheer unrestrained power of the brutes than he did. Still, all of the details were outlandish without the use of magic to back them up.


    Eventually, he stopped going to the baths when his scars got a bit too much attention. Curiosity he could handle, but open disgust¡­ well, Simon already thought little enough of his body, so he didn¡¯t exactly need that.


    The Queen noticed that, though, and eventually offered to let him use the Royal Baths. They were not so large as the public baths, but they were about a hundred times nicer, with white glazed tiles and marble statues. Either way, the water did him good, but after a couple mix-ups where he almost walked in on the Queen while she was using them, he decided that maybe he¡¯d healed enough that he didn¡¯t need that magic warmth for his joints anymore.


    Magic wasn¡¯t something he was doing a lot of these days. That wasn¡¯t because the Queen''s Vizer was supposedly keeping an eye on him, either. It was because he wasn¡¯t sure what to fix after all the work he¡¯d already done on himself.


    In his games, when you drank a potion or you cast a healing spell, you were restored to full hit points and were as good as new. In this world, though, he still suffered from any number of aches and pains, even after the last bandages were removed and the last wound was closed.


    He¡¯d cast a few lesser healing spells to fix the cartilage in his knees when that had started to bother him. That had seemed to work well enough, but other problems were less easy to quantify. Was his poor balance brain damage, or was a bone that had healed crooked, or a muscle that had gotten weak during all this bed rest. He had no idea.


    Simon had a couple options that he thought would fix that. The first would be to drain the life out of some miscreants or vermin. He knew from experience that definitely made everything feel better. He also knew how addictive that was, though.


    He considered trying to filter lesser transfer through a sword or a dagger to see if that would mitigate that problem, but that solution had the same problem as the other one he wanted to try: he simply lacked the privacy for complicated magic in the palace. Whether this mysterious visor or anyone else was actually watching him didn¡¯t matter.


    There was always a servant or an official walking through the room, no matter which room he was in. Now that Simon was out of his sick bed, he was quite popular, which meant that unless he was going to lock himself away, real, complicated works of magic were out of the question.


    That was a pity, too, because he thought that if he tried the same sort of ritual he¡¯d tried with Freya, he might just be able to draw the power necessary to fuel the spell from the world around him instead of from an unwilling donor. Hell, I could probably fuel that sort of ritual with the heat of the volcano, he thought as he looked up at the still-smoldering mountain. Too bad there¡¯s no way I¡¯m climbing that thing right now.


    All told Simon was pretty sure he¡¯d only used up a handful of years in that fight. This life was getting a little long, though, at least for him. With everything he¡¯d done, plus some of the magic he¡¯d used before he even arrived in Ionar, he was pretty sure he was pushing 40. Only a couple of those years had been lived, but¡­ well, either way, he wasn¡¯t old enough to be this ineffectual and weak just yet. He had at least 10 or 15 good years left in this life, and he was determined not to waste them.


    Between books, Simon continued to work on his map, using the accounts he read to fill in the missing areas that he hadn¡¯t yet explored. When it was all done, it was very impressive, showing off tens of thousands of square miles with relatively high levels of detail. That¡¯s only a state or two, he reminded himself as he looked over the way the mountains and rivers were laid out.


    The Kingdoms of Ionia and Brin were the most detailed by far. That was both because those were the places that Simon had been the most often and because that was what the Queen''s library contained the most information about.


    Charia was what interested him the most, though. The rugged mountains seemed to forbid explorers and historians from talking about them, and there were huge blank spots Simon was going to need to dig through. At least one of those belonged to the dragon, and he was pretty sure he¡¯d be meeting it again soon, but the others? He had no idea.


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    ¡°When you are done with it, I shall hang it in my study,¡± the Queen told him. ¡°Outside of a few sea captains'' hands, I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever seen a map half so fine.¡±


    ¡°Well, it''s easy to work on the details when you have nothing but time on your hands,¡± Simon answered. ¡°I ain¡¯t exactly moving around a lot these days.¡±


    ¡°Nonsense,¡± the Queen declared, ¡°You¡¯re getting better every day.¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± he agreed. ¡°Better at walking around the garden.¡±


    They both laughed at that. She was right, of course. He was getting better. Just not fast enough. That was silly since anyone else would have been in a wheelchair for the rest of their life after what happened, but he didn¡¯t accept that. After all, wheelchairs hadn¡¯t been invented yet.


    He continued to spend as much time with her as ever, though after he was there for almost a year, she insisted that he started calling her by her given name rather than her title, at least when no one was around. ¡°It¡¯s Elthena, please,¡± she insisted in one of their many conversations. ¡°I do not let my friends call me by my title unless we are in public.¡±


    ¡°So I¡¯ve graduated from guest to friend?¡± Simon asked. ¡°It sure took long enough.¡±


    ¡°Well, you¡¯ve been a very demanding guest,¡± she answered with a smile. ¡°Troublesome to no end! You should hear what my physician says about you!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure,¡± Simon smirked. ¡°The man can¡¯t shut up about what a miracle worker he is after saving my life. He should be paying me for all the free advertising I¡¯ve given him.¡±


    It was a lame joke, and it landed flatly, both because of that and because she probably didn¡¯t even know what advertising meant. It was a mistake he still made sometimes, even after all these years. Still, there was a moment there that hung between them as she tried to think of the right response where he was sure he could have kissed her without getting slapped.


    There¡¯d been a growing tension between them of some sort ever since he¡¯d gotten out of bed. He avoided it for his own reasons, of course, but also because he knew getting involved with someone who was literal royalty was a terrible idea.


    The moment passed almost as quickly as he noticed it, but after that, he made an effort to keep a little more distance between the two of them so as not to complicate things further. He made other friends among the courtiers, or at least people who spent time with him to ask him about his travels. In the right mood, those were almost the same thing.


    Even living in a palace could become monotonous when one yearned to get back on the open road, though. Injuries notwithstanding, this was as fine a life as Simon had enjoyed during his time in the Pit. He had all he could eat, a comfortable bed, and more knowledge about the world of Erden than he could have hoped for in any of his previous life. Still, after a while, it did not satisfy him.


    He longed to get back to being a hero. He didn¡¯t so much crave finishing off more levels in the Pit as he did just finding wrongs to right. Just because those good deeds would be erased with his death didn¡¯t mean that they weren¡¯t worth doing.


    At one point, Simon spent weeks making elaborate plans to go all the way back to Blackwater to see if the portal was still there. He decided the best routes, made lists of supplies, and decided what he would do on subsequent levels if he made it that far.


    He didn¡¯t go, though. As long as he couldn¡¯t hike to the base of the volcano or wield a sword like he meant to use it, spending any serious time on the road was a terrible idea.


    Instead, he let first two, then three years, pass by in relative comfort. Things might have continued on that way for months or years more if he hadn¡¯t had a bit too much to drink one night while he was having dinner with the Queen¡­ or rather, Elthena. He didn¡¯t remember quite how it happened the next day. Why should he? That was the least memorable part of the whole evening.


    The two of them had been sharing a private dinner in one of the small rooms, and the wine had flowed freely enough that the kissing, along with everything else, quickly followed. That he never made it back to his chambers. Instead, he woke up in hers with her curled against him.


    Simon hadn¡¯t meant to end up there, of course, but in the morning, he did not exactly regret it either. Certainly not enough to stop her from starting things all over again when she woke shortly after dawn, despite the painful protests from parts of his body.


    ¡°Should we be doing this?¡± he asked, finally, when they were both spent.


    ¡°Well, I can ask my physician if you like, but you certainly seem healthy to me,¡± she answered with a smirk.


    ¡°That¡¯s not what I mean,¡± he said after a moment, appreciating the view. ¡°You¡¯re¡ª¡±


    ¡°An unwed woman?¡± she asked. ¡°It¡¯s true. I am, and I think you¡¯ve been playing hard to get quite long enough.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re also the Queen¡­¡± he said. ¡°Won¡¯t this cause problems?¡±


    ¡°Simon, I¡¯m a queen that¡¯s forbidden to marry lest she bring about the doom of her people,¡± she said with a smile. ¡°The only perk of that arrangement is that I can take a lover whenever it suits me without regard to such things. After all, I can¡¯t exactly marry you, can I?¡±


    ¡°We can¡¯t get married,¡± he said, feigning shock. ¡°Whatever will we do?¡±


    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll think of something,¡± she teased.


    Simon smiled. There were a lot of things he could think of, but right now, none of them mattered half so much as the beautiful, dark haired woman whose bed he was sharing.

 Ch. 156 - Telling the Truth

    Simon expected that his little liaison with Elthena would have been a one-time thing, even though he hoped it might become at least a sometimes thing, but the Queen made no effort to hide their relationship. Soon, he became known as Her Highness¡¯s consort on an official level.


    That felt strange to Simon. It was a fact that was both widely known and also rarely mentioned by anyone to him directly, though some of his friends would tell him about the rumors sometimes.


    ¡°Have you heard the latest,¡± Aikolas asked him one day when they were strolling through the city together. ¡°They say that the queen was forced to offer her hand to a monster to save the city?¡±


    Simon laughed at that. ¡°So I¡¯m a monster now?¡±


    ¡°In the eyes of some, all foreigners are,¡± Aikolas answered, making Simon laugh all the harder.


    He¡¯d been expecting to be told how his scars made him unacceptable to royalty, but the truth was, he could be the prettiest guy in the world, but since he wasn¡¯t Ionian, some of the locals would still turn their noses up at him past a certain point. Not all of them were like that, but the residents could be very clannish.


    They weren¡¯t rude about it, mostly. They were happy to sell him things or buy his medicines when he¡¯d been a doctor and herbalist. Some of the poorer families would have even let him marry their daughters on the account of his success before all this happened, but even if he¡¯d been proclaimed a hero in public, he doubted the nobility of the city would have ever come to see him as one of their own. In truth, he¡¯d probably never entirely understand the customs of Ionar as a foreigner.


    That was fine; Simon could stay here for a dozen more lifetimes, and he doubted he¡¯d ever think of it as home either. Right now his only true home was the road, and the only reason he stayed here was because of what a delightful woman Elthena was, with or without clothes.


    He often sat in on her court sessions now, not in any official capacity, of course. He just watched as she handed out justice and took petitions from clients, aristocrats, and sometimes the governors of other cities. It was deadly dull most days, but sometimes it could get interesting. Once, after she¡¯d turned down the request of a powerful trader prince for more favorable tariffs and a monopoly related to certain imported goods, he¡¯d been forced to stop an assassination attempt.


    In the moment, it had been terrifying, but he reacted on instinct and sprang into action even before he was quite sure what was happening. Honestly, in the aftermath, he had to admit to himself that it was the most fun he¡¯d had all year.


    One moment, he¡¯d been naked in bed with the Queen, and the next, he¡¯d been fighting off two armed men who crept in through the window. They both wore black armor that marked them as some kind of professional assassins in his eyes, and they both wielded long curved knives.


    He fought the first one off with a particularly heavy candle stick while Elthena screamed for help. He mostly parried that strike, turning it from a death blow into something more glancing before he brained the bastard.


    However, the second one was too far away and moving too quickly for him to repeat that performance. So, instead, he took the man¡¯s head off with a whispered word of force, sending him tumbling to the floor before the assassin could reach his target.


    He had a knife now, and it was dark. He planned to tell her he¡¯d done it with the first assassin''s weapon. After all, in the chaos of the moment, everything happened at once. No one could say who did what exactly. By the time the guards arrived, it was already over.


    Simon was bleeding, and apparently, based on the slow numbing sensation spreading across his chest. So, while the Queen ordered the guards to wake the palace and put everyone on alert, he took care of that with a word of lesser cure.


    Slow down there, Simon, he joked to himself. Two spells in two minutes. You aren¡¯t as young as you used to be.


    He cured the poison, but he didn¡¯t bother to heal the wound. That would have been too obvious. Instead, he waited for the palace physician to arrive in his nightgown and stitch Simon up one more time.


    ¡°You just can¡¯t take care of yourself, can you,¡± the man muttered good-naturedly as he closed the long, shallow wound one stitch at a time. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    ¡°He took care of me, and that¡¯s all that mattered,¡± the Queen answered peevishly. She was worried as she summoned her ministers and issued orders, but Simon could tell that she was worried about him more than the assassination attempt.


    ¡°Of course, this means war,¡± she told her chancellor as they discussed the events and asked her what she was going to do about this.


    Elthena was many things, but indecisive was not one of them. Still, the talk of war made Simon cringe. The last thing he wanted to do was see more violence come to this place. Still, it wasn¡¯t his place to contradict her, at least not while there were people around. That discussion could wait until they were by themselves.


    Unfortunately, alone was a long time coming that day. Even though the attack had occurred just after midnight, it was only when they finally stopped the maelstrom of activity long enough for breakfast a few hours after sunrise that she dismissed everyone. By then, the harbor had been locked down, people had been arrested, and all manner of other preparations had taken place.


    ¡°First you save the city, and then you save me,¡± she said unexpectedly between bites of her eggs. ¡°Tell me, Simon, how exactly did you do that? I know you''re a fine warrior, but wasn''t the second one a bit too far away, even for you?¡±


    He was supposed to tell her about the knife. He wanted to tell her. That would have been the smart thing to do. He couldn''t bring himself to lie to this woman, though. He wasn¡¯t sure if he loved her, but he certainly respected her too much for that. So, instead, he said, ¡°Magic. It was the only way.¡±


    She nodded and said, ¡°My Vizer tells me that no magic occurred on the palace grounds tonight, but I thought as much. There was too much distance for anything else, and the only sword you had on you, well¡­¡± She chuckled at that, taking the news a lot better than he thought she would.


    Simon smiled back, not sure what to say about that exactly, so she continued. ¡°Why do you think he cannot see the spells you cast?¡±


    It seemed strange to him that Elthena was more concerned about that than his admission that he¡¯d done such an awful thing by her society''s standards, but he ignored that for the moment and answered her honestly. ¡°I doubt very much that he has such an ability. I haven¡¯t come across a lot of mages in my time, but the ones I have¡ª¡±


    ¡°Oh, Simon, stop,¡± she said, ¡°I appreciate the honesty, but you make it sound like you¡¯ve done battle with dozens of warlocks, and you¡¯re not that much older than me.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not in this life,¡± he agreed. Once he started with honesty, all the rest started to leak out of him.


    ¡°I¡¯ve lived many lives and fought many battles,¡± he answered, ¡°but only a few of them were warlocks. They¡¯re pretty rare.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re serious, aren¡¯t you?¡± she said after a moment of silence.


    ¡°I am,¡± he agreed.


    Telling anyone everything he¡¯d been through was a bad idea, but Simon had lived dozens of lives now without really telling anything. It was all bottled up inside him now and at this point. He had to tell someone. So, it might as well be her.


    They spent hours on the balcony that morning as he let it all pour out of him. He didn¡¯t tell her everything, but only because it would complicate things even more. He didn¡¯t tell her about the time loop or the fact that her city had been buried beneath lava more times than he could count. He didn¡¯t tell her about the basilisk or the fact that it had turned him to stone for decades.


    But he did tell her about all the endless killing and about how when he died, the gods brought him back to keep doing it. He told her about his time as a zombie, along with the wars and revolutions and everything else he participated in. When it was all over, the most surprising thing of all happened. She hugged him.


    When he¡¯d even hinted at this stuff with Freya, she¡¯d been cold and distant for days while she processed it, but the Queen of Ionar was a much more confident woman, and she simply accepted it and him for who he was. Simon was reasonably certain she would have done the same thing if he hadn¡¯t just saved her life, but it certainly helped.


    ¡°So, were you sent here to save the city, then?¡± she asked. ¡°Did you know about the assassination? Is that why you stuck around?¡±


    ¡°I knew about the volcano,¡± Simon answered with a shake of his head. ¡°Everything else¡­ well, even if I was in better shape, I would have stuck around for you anyway.¡±


    Emotions overwhelmed Elthena then, and she teared up even as she kissed him. It was only after they¡¯d finished that discussion, that they finally got to questions of war and all the rest. Simon argued she should find a more peaceful solution and that many would die if they took this route, but she wouldn¡¯t relent.


    ¡°My hands are tied here,¡± she sighed. ¡°If Alfonsic wants a fight, then I shall give them one. They are nothing but a tiny island, and I can¡¯t see why they think they could best our Triremes at sea, but¡ª¡±


    ¡°But don¡¯t you see, that¡¯s exactly what they want, or at least someone does,¡± Simon answered. ¡°This was provoked for this outcome.¡±


    ¡°Maybe,¡± she agreed doubtfully. ¡°But there isn¡¯t much I can do.¡±


    They didn¡¯t talk about the subject anymore after that. Instead, the Queen called for a war council and left Simon to rest. Some part of him couldn¡¯t shake the feeling that all of this was a very bad idea. ¡°There¡¯s more at work here than I¡¯m seeing,¡± he told himself as he finally cast heal lesser wounds on his gash. He didn¡¯t think he was in any danger if he didn¡¯t; of course, they just hadn¡¯t invented painkillers in Ionia yet, and the way that the freshly stitched wound throbbed painfully, he couldn¡¯t think straight.

 Ch. 157 - A Short War

    The war that followed was both brutal and short, at least if the reports were to be believed. Simon attended court every day during that period, listening to the infrequent updates from messengers that relayed the status of the war, one engagement and naval battle at a time. Simon would have much rather joined the fleet, but Elthena forbade him from doing that, not that he blamed her. He still wasn¡¯t in good enough shape to play swashbuckler, but his magic could have come in really handy in some subtle ways if it was necessary.


    It turned out that it almost was when it was revealed the enemy had warlocks of their own. Their fire spells sank a dozen ships of the Queen''s fleet before they were taken down if the reports were to be believed. For someone raised on 24-hour news networks, the whole ordeal was painful to him. He couldn¡¯t see it; he had no idea how it was going, and then one random afternoon, there was a report that they¡¯d either won or lost a battle and a list of casualties.


    Sometimes, the messengers got lost or sent off course by storms, and the reports came in out of order, which somehow made the whole thing even worse. Simon spent some time trying to surmount this problem by weaving together the words distant minor light transfer in the hopes of making a scrying spell that might let him at least peek in on events, but other than temporarily blinding himself, those experiments accomplished nothing except for burning a few more weeks of his life.


    When the enemy mages were sighted, Elthena spoke to him again about his magic after getting less than satisfactory answers from her vizier about the situation. Simon explained how it worked, broadly speaking, but didn¡¯t teach her any of the words and made it very clear that the words of power were dangerous.


    ¡°So every time you use magic, you sacrifice a bit of your life?¡± she asked. ¡°How ghastly.¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t dispute that and pointed out that it was that much more dangerous than their enemies had such powers because it spoke to desperation or zealotry. Still, before they could worry more about that, the report came that the Alfonsic¡¯s island fortress had been captured thanks to the bravery of Ionian warriors. The place was apparently quite well fortified, but because most of the defenders had been sacrificed to fuel evil magics, there weren¡¯t enough guards to hold the walls when the time came.


    Simon thought that was more than a little anticlimactic, but from hundreds of miles away, there was little he could do about it. Still, it was a complete victory, and even now, captives, including the merchant prince, along with other men of importance, as well as ships full of spoils, were on their way back to Ionar. That was excellent news, and a week of celebrations was ordered to commemorate the event, and a fine new temple would be raised to celebrate Elthena¡¯s wisdom.


    Unfortunately, that wasn¡¯t all the ships brought back. Even as the seized wealth was shown off in the form of gold, jewels, and expensive bolts of cloth, and the most important prisoners were paraded through the streets to be pelted with rotting produce, the same black plague he¡¯d cured once so long ago had found its way into some of the ships too. Unfortunately, no one suspected a thing until it had swept across the waterfront in a wave of fevers and blackened sores.


    ¡°We have to restrict all traffic from the lower city,¡± Simon explained, the evening that the Queen¡¯s physician had given a report and explained that with the proper oils, there was nothing to worry about.


    ¡°You don¡¯t trust Doctor Nolanth¡¯s judgment?¡± she asked. ¡°Need I remind you that he saved your life?¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t,¡± he agreed, unwilling to explain just how little the doctor had to do with his survival, given how difficult she could be when the topic of magic came up. ¡°But I have treated this plague before, during an outbreak in the north, when I was in Brin.¡±


    Simon was fairly sure that the outbreak he''d experienced before hadn¡¯t actually happened yet, but it didn¡¯t matter. Saving Ionar would have changed history in a million little ways, and he wasn¡¯t about to figure out how all of those fit together.


    ¡°It is not spread by bad air, or the death curse of your enemy, or evil warlock magic,¡± Simon explained. ¡°It is spread by fleas on rats and other animals, and the more the populations of the city mix, the faster it will spread.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure there¡¯s much we can do for the poor,¡± she said sadly, much as my heart goes out to them.


    ¡°You can¡¯t,¡± Simon said, ¡°But I can. I¡¯ll head down there tomorrow, open up a clinic, and see what can be done for the worst cases.¡±


    ¡°You will do no such thing!¡± she answered, suddenly imperious again. ¡°I could never forgive myself if my Simon got sick and died during such an errand.¡±


    ¡°You know, before I met you, and before I fought the monster in your volcano, I was a doctor for many years,¡± Simon said with a shake of his head, ¡°But even before that, I was a hero, and this is something I have to do.¡±


    ¡°But what if you catch the plague?¡± she asked, more sad than angry at his defiance. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    ¡°I¡¯ve caught it before,¡± he lied, ¡°So now I have an immunity or at least a resistance. I¡¯ll be fine. It''s you I¡¯m worried about.¡±


    When she saw that he couldn¡¯t be dissuaded, she finally came around and helped him plan what he needed to do the most good. Medicines were in short supply, but cots, blankets, and everything else he needed to make the sick comfortable would be given to him from the army barracks.


    The next day, roads were blocked, proclamations were read, and the city was sealed off into three sections: low, middle, and high. Simon was under no illusions that this would be enough to spare the palace. Only a complete quarantine could have done that. This would be enough to slow the spread, though, and keep those who were trying to heal the sick from being completely overwhelmed.


    At first, things went okay. This was Simon¡¯s fourth time playing plague doctor, and after a word of lesser curing on himself and those men and women who were brave enough to help him at the onset of the first symptoms, they did their best. Every morning, new patients were brought to the lower market square that had become his base of operations, and slowly but surely, the cots beneath the awnings filled up until they were overflowing.


    Every day, a dozen people got sick, while very few got better. In the meantime, deaths mounted daily. After a week, a handful were dying every day, but after three weeks, nearly two dozen were dying. There were survivors, of course. They even outnumbered the dead, but this was a nasty plague, and it took almost a third of the young and healthy, along with most of the old and infirm.


    Simon did not visit the palace or even the upper city at all once he left it. He did not want to be the one to cause cross-contamination. Still, eventually, he received word that the plague had been found in the upper city. At first, it was restricted to a single noble house that had obviously broken quarantine, but soon enough, it spread to other nearby families as well.


    After that, Simon was forced to split his time between the upper and lower cities, doing what he could for rich and poor alike. The wealthy complained and offered him riches to stay by their side, but he refused. Truthfully, he could have healed them with a word for that price, but a month of his life was a dear thing now. Simon had been here for the better part of a decade and had gray hairs to contend with. So, instead of trying to save everyone with magic, he simply did his best with medicine and let fate decide who lived and died.


    At least, that was what he did until he received word from the Queen''s own doctor that Elthena was sick. ¡°I didn¡¯t see a need to worry you when her fever grew, but¡­ well, she¡¯s in a bad way now and clearly beyond my powers, so I thought that¡ª¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t wait for the portly man to finish. He simply sucker-punched the man with a right hook. The move surprised both of them, but Simon wasn¡¯t about to apologize. Instead, he walked over the man¡¯s prostrate form and started toward the palace. Some lives were worth leaving to chance, and some were not.


    No one attempted to bar his way, and he quickly made his way to her dark room and sick bed, where he found the frail form of his lover. ¡°Don¡¯t,¡± she whispered as he sat down on the bed beside her and took her hand, ¡°Don¡¯t squander your life¡­ for mine¡­¡±


    ¡°You want me to let you die?¡± he asked incredulously as he looked at her sallow cheeks and sweating forehead.


    ¡°If need be¡­¡± she gasped. ¡°There are¡­ others for you to save.¡±


    ¡°Then I will heal you with medicine instead of magic,¡± he lied, ¡°But I will heal you just the same.¡±


    He whispered a word of lesser curing even as he stood up to begin looking through the herbs. He could have cured her on the spot with a full word or perhaps even a greater one, but she was smart enough to put two and two together and would have been very angry at him for that sort of obvious magic. So, instead, he gave her immune system just enough help to get through the worst of it. Then he spent the next few days feeding her different powders and watching her vital signs for any change.


    The Queen¡¯s physician didn¡¯t come close to him after that, though the Vizeie did, to check on her and assure himself that Simon had not used dark magic on her. It was the first chance that Simon had to study the man, but he saw nothing to fear in those eyes. The man was an alchemist who was closer to being a witch doctor than a true mage.


    Slowly but surely, the Queen made progress. And when her fever broke, her boils finally started to heal. There would be some scarring, but he didn¡¯t think it would be particularly bad. According to his assistants, who were now running both the upper and the lower clinic, the worst was over, and new cases were coming in slower than ever. In less than half a year, they¡¯d managed to win two wars: one with ships against an assassin and one with medicine and magic against disease.


    All in all, it wasn¡¯t a bad performance. Simon was proud, even though he had no one he could brag to about it. He didn¡¯t bring it up to Elthena when she became lucid enough to start talking again. He just focused on her, even when she got dangerously philosophical about the whole thing.


    ¡°I shouldn¡¯t have gone to war so quickly,¡± she confessed finally when they were lying there together. ¡°This is a punishment from the gods for my hubris.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know; from what I¡¯ve seen, the Gods enjoy a bit of hubris,¡± Simon answered with a patient smile. ¡°Wars only hasten the spread of disease, though. They don¡¯t cause it. It would have happened eventually, no matter what you did.¡±


    ¡°Would it?¡± she asked. ¡°How can you know that? Would the plague have come¡­ would so many people have died if the war had never been fought or if you hadn¡¯t stopped the eruption? You say these things with such certainty but to me¡­ I just have so many questions.¡±


    ¡°Shhhh,¡± he soothed, stroking her hair. The Queen wasn¡¯t wrong, of course. She was absolutely right, but trying to explain anything further to her fervid imagination was a mistake. Right now, he didn¡¯t have to worry about how saving the city or spreading the plague had changed the world. He just had to help her calm down and heal.


    ¡°Who knows what will happen,¡± Simon answered. ¡°All we can do is all we can do.¡±


    It didn¡¯t mean anything, but it didn¡¯t have to. She was going to make it, and that was all that mattered.

 Ch. 158 - No

    Three months after his last patient recovered and six months after the Queen recovered, Simon received two unexpected pieces of news. The first was that Elthena was pregnant, and the second was that she was banishing him from the kingdom.


    ¡°What?!¡± Simon blurted out. Either piece of news would have shocked him, but the two of them together completely bowled him over.


    ¡°You heard me,¡± she answered calmly. ¡°As much as I might love you, you can¡¯t be here when I start to show, my dearest Simon.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± he asked, genuinely confused. ¡°Everyone was pretty cool with the whole consort thing, but after the whole plague deal, I don¡¯t think that anyone will object to me¡ª¡±


    ¡°No one would object,¡± she agreed, interrupting him. ¡°It¡¯s worse than that. They¡¯d demand that we marry.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s so wrong with that?¡± he asked. ¡°I¡¯d happily marry you. We could¡ª¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s out of the question,¡± she shot back.


    ¡°Because of the prophecy?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Because of the prophecy,¡± she agreed.


    Simon sighed heavily. He¡¯d expected this insanity to resurface again one day, but not like this. He¡¯d never expected anything like this.


    ¡°I don¡¯t accept this,¡± he said flatly, trying to stay calm.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t expect you to,¡± she said, leaning forward to hug him, ¡°But still, it must be done.¡±


    ¡°You can¡¯t make me, you know,¡± he said. ¡°I could fight your entire royal guard to keep them from escorting me out of the building.¡±


    ¡°And with enough of your dark powers, I expect you¡¯d win,¡± she agreed, ¡°and then I¡¯d have no choice but to throw myself into the sea.¡±


    That terrible turn of phrase hurt more than he could have thought possible, and he was quiet for several seconds as he let it pass. He knew that his Elthena was strong-willed, but he had no idea that she was a zealot about this. Instead of freaking out, he tried another tactic.


    Simon spent the next half hour slowly going through everything they knew about the supposed curse. Simon reminded her that Brogan had broken free of his volcanic prison without any help from her and that there was no reason to expect that the whole thing was a myth at this point. Still, she would not be denied.


    ¡°What if I go kill the Basilisk that haunts your dead city,¡± he said, ¡°Then will you see reason?¡±


    ¡°I would never dream of putting you in such danger!¡± she exclaimed. ¡°No, this is for the best, I think. The city will be safe, you will be free to be a hero once more, and our child¡ª¡±


    ¡°Our child will need a father as well as a mother,¡± he shot back.


    ¡°Oh, Simon,¡± she sighed, ¡°I wish I could marry you. You¡¯re a good man. Maybe even the best man I''ve ever known, but it''s never going to happen; it can''t.¡±


    They argued on the topic until dinner, but he wasn¡¯t done. Not by a long shot. There was no way he was letting this go. At least, he didn¡¯t plan to. However, sometime between the custard and port wine they had for dessert, getting up for bed in the morning, Simon passed out hard. He remembered being really drowsy and going to bed early. What he didn¡¯t remember was how he got on a ship because he could definitely feel the wood beneath him rocking gently from side to side.


    That bitch! He thought as he groggily put it all together.


    He instantly regretted it, of course. One did not call the mother of your children a bitch, even in your own head, but still, he was furious. Somehow, he should have expected this. She¡¯d drugged him and sent him somewhere far away without so much as saying goodbye. He hadn''t even seen it coming.


    No, that was goodbye, he realized belatedly as he started to stir and realized he was bound and gagged. The hug, those tears. That was her goodbye. Suddenly, he felt terrible; all he¡¯d felt in those last moments was anger. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    So, he forced himself to calm down as he came to grips with that decision. She had her reasons, and even if he disagreed with them violently, he understood them. He also understood that she couldn¡¯t actually stop him from coming back. No matter where she sent him, the world was a finite place, and he¡¯d already walked and mapped a good part of it. Three months? Six months? Depending on where it was she¡¯d shipped him, he might even get back in time for the birth.


    Slowly, his mode was improving, and by the time a sailor came down to check on him, he was resolved. He could fix this. He¡¯d sail back to the other side of the world, slaughter the basilisk, and bring her its head as a baby shower gift.


    ¡°Now her majesty said ye¡¯d be a might perturbed like when you woke up,¡± the young man said, ¡°She said you could hurt us pretty bad, and we should make sure you¡¯d calmed down first before we¡¯d untied you, right?¡±


    Simon nodded, not sure what else to do.


    ¡°The captain has a scroll to give you from her,¡± the sailor continued, reaching down to untie Simon¡¯s gag. ¡°Along with some other details, but you¡¯ll want to speak with him about that.¡±


    When Simon¡¯s gag was removed, he flexed his jaw and contemplated what the sailor had done. She clearly hadn¡¯t warned them that he was a warlock or that he possessed powers they could barely comprehend. She couldn¡¯t have, though, or they would have killed him themselves, which meant that this man had just done the dumbest thing in his whole damn life. He could cut a bloody swath through this whole crew if he wanted. The only thing that held him back was his own morals. Still, for a moment, he thought about it. He couldn''t help it.


    So, he resisted and instead looked up at the man and said, ¡°I¡¯m good. We¡¯re good. Just take me to the captain and tell me where the hell it is she sent me, anyway.¡±


    The sailor smiled nervously at that and delayed a moment before he cut Simon¡¯s bonds and released him. After that, the two went up on deck, where he found himself well out of sight of land, which meant they were at least half a day underway and well out to see.


    The captain was a gruff man almost Simon¡¯s age who took a look at him and then, uncharacteristically, smiled. ¡°You know when Her Highness told me I¡¯d be taken a mule onboard this ship, I almost refused, but when I heard it was for the Miracle Worker of Ionar, well, now how could I refuse that man whatever it was he wanted?¡±


    ¡°Mule?¡± Simon asked, confused.


    ¡°Aye,¡± he nodded. ¡°In the hold along with the rest of your things. A right cranky old thing, too.¡±


    ¡°Ohhhh, Daisy,¡± Simon said as he suddenly figured out he wasn¡¯t being called a stubborn old mule. Elthena had probably sent just about everything he might need with him. If she¡¯d planned to send him away, she would have planned well. It was one more reason to love her.


    ¡°Aye,¡± the captain agreed. ¡°That would be the one.¡±


    The two of them talked for a while after that, and when they saw that he intended no violence, the sailors and their captain eventually loosened up around him. What did she tell them about me? He wondered.


    Simon learned that he¡¯d saved the life of the captain¡¯s wife during the epidemic. The man was more than a little grateful for that and was happy to tell him exactly where they were going, even though he wasn¡¯t supposed to until they were closer to their destination. He was even happy to alter plans slightly if Simon would rather go somewhere else.


    ¡°Within reason, you understand,¡± the captain explained. ¡°The Queen would have my balls if I took you back to anywhere in Ionia so that ain¡¯t happening.¡±


    The ship was already on the way to the northern kingdoms, which was the right way as far as he was concerned. He told the man he¡¯d think about it, but really, there were only a few port cities up that way, including one place that he definitely wasn¡¯t going: Schwarzenbruck.


    At least, that¡¯s what he thought at first, but in the days that followed, as he was having a maudlin conversation with the ship''s captain about the nature of life and death, the man said, ¡°I really love the sea, I do. The only thing that bothers me about this life is the impermanence of it. You can¡¯t see where you¡¯ve come from or the way to get to where you¡¯re going, and one day, when you catch a bad storm and sink beneath the waves, no one will even notice your passing except those you left behind at port. It''s a tragic thing.¡±


    Simon nodded along, sympathizing with that. If anyone knew impermanence, he did. However, when he lay awake in his hammock that night, he had a horrible thought. If what he¡¯d done hadn¡¯t been good enough to finish this level, then Elthena and the life they¡¯d lived together would disappear in the blink of an eye. If he did, though, well, then he could come back in any other life he wanted. Hell, he thought. I could time my next arrival for the very day she sent me away and surprise her.


    That would be clever, of course, but perhaps a bit too clever. More than anything, he thought about the grave for Freya that didn¡¯t exist and how, no matter how many times he visited Crowvar or slew Varten, it would never appear.


    That whole life, from the way he¡¯d neglected her to the crude little ring he¡¯d made to the way he hadn¡¯t been able to save her, had never happened, and the fact that her missing tomb would never appear was a terrible testament to that.


    That, more than anything, was what changed his mind. In the end, he was going to have to go back to Schwarzenbruck because that was the only place he could make sure these events were locked in just in case the worst happened.

 Ch. 159 - Save Point

    Elthena was never far from his mind on the voyage north, but by the time they¡¯d made landfall, he¡¯d made peace with it. This life was important, but this body was old and starting to get a little worn out, so he was going to lock in the events here as well as he could, then proceed further into the depths. He doubted he was anywhere close to in shape enough to slay a dragon at this point in his life, but he had the armor anyway, so he might as well try just the same.


    After he fixed it, of course. The heat and the impact had done some real damage, but it was hardly a priority.


    Simon returned to the little town of Blackwater with Daisy in tow, and after promising that he would not seek to return, the captain gave him a generous purse of gold and silver and wished him well. Simon would keep that promise, of course, but only in this life. In his next one, he would return to Ionar the day this ship put out to sea.


    He¡¯d have to explain the missing scars or inflict them a second time, but neither of those options bore much thinking just yet. He wasn¡¯t sure if the truth or the lie would be more harmful in this case.


    Instead, Simon spent some time in his least favorite town, listening to stories and getting a feel for the lay of the land after all these years. It turned out that the whole zombie thing was pretty much over. Every now and then, they¡¯d find a body that made people think it might not be over yet, but usually, that was just a false alarm.


    That made sense, considering it had been the better part of a decade since he¡¯d been back. Mercenaries had cleansed the area north of the bridge, and trade had long since restarted. Honestly, with the exception of a new statue in the center of town, the place was looking better than he¡¯d ever seen it. The streets were bustling, the bars were full, and spirits were high. The only thing that ruined it was the fact that Kel was the one who had gotten all the credit for it. Kel, the asshole that had infected the town in more than one previous version of the level. Kel, the prick that had hidden his own wound until he¡¯d turned and almost taken out his whole company. The man had very nearly gotten Freya killed, too.


    No, worse than that, he almost turned her into a fucking zombie! Simon though, fuming.


    He had no idea what Freya and the other survivors of the Butcher¡¯s Bill had told the people of Schwarzenbruck, but it definitely wasn¡¯t the truth. The only reason he didn¡¯t waste a word of force to knock the thing over was because he wasn¡¯t really in a position to be wasting weeks or months of his life. Physically, he was getting close to forty, but with all the magic he¡¯d burned in those years and the lingering effects of the injuries that had healed as much as they were ever going to heal, he was probably pushing sixty at this point, which was as old as he¡¯d ever been except for a brief moment on level 20.


    At least he didn¡¯t see Freya, though. So there was that. He did see Brenna, though she wasn¡¯t a barmaid anymore. She¡¯d gotten married and had a couple kids in between now and the last time he was here, which he thought was fairly cute.


    Simon lingered long enough to get a feel for the place and verify that the portal still existed in the same spot it always did, which was a new piece of information. Note to self, the portal will exist for as long as what it''s attached to exists, as long as I¡¯m close to it.


    Stranger than the fact that the portal was still there, though, was where it led. This time, it didn¡¯t lead to the cathedral as he¡¯d expected it would. Instead, it led to the mountaintop where he¡¯d slain the wyvern. I wonder what I screwed up to make that happen? Simon asked himself. In the end, it was a question he couldn¡¯t really answer, but it was a good reminder. If he wanted to return to Ionar to resolve this, he needed to make sure he did nothing at all to disrupt any of the levels before this one. Hell, he needed to make sure he didn¡¯t disrupt any levels between here and the eruption on level 10, either, which meant, for now, there was no wyvern hunting.


    Once he¡¯d determined those things, he bought supplies and went north one final time to make sure there weren''t any signs of lingering evil. It was a waste of his time. The way north wasn¡¯t even remotely dangerous this time. It took him almost a week of searching to find a zombie, and it was a decayed thing that could do little more than moan and grasp toward the road from where its broken and decayed limbs were stuck in the mud.


    Simon put it out of its misery, but that was the only useful thing he did on the whole trip. He stopped by the barrow mounds and found them a little more looted than they¡¯d been on his previous trip but otherwise unchanged. The smithy that he¡¯d used so much on his last trip had returned to use, and though the town it was attached to never really recovered, many of the other small towns and villages near the main road had.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    In the end, three weeks after he set out from Schwarzenbruck just ahead of the first snow of the season, he returned with nothing to show for it but a runny nose. ¡°Well, this level is as solved as solved gets,¡± he said to himself.


    Still, he took one night when he got back to town to rest at an inn and do some drinking before he headed out again. He wasn¡¯t as young as he used to be. As much as he enjoyed the heavy stews and thick slices of meat that typified northern cuisine, it did make him miss the Mediterranean food he¡¯d eaten for so long, even though he preferred this. It was just¡­ different. Maybe it was even too different, but somewhere along the way, he started to feel homesick about a place that wasn¡¯t really his home.


    None of that stopped him from following the plan, though. He was going back, just not with the dregs of life he had left. When he returned to Ionar, it would be fresh and ready to do what needed to be done.


    The wyvern level was just as Simon had left it any number of times in the past, and once he made sure that nothing was about to swoop down and eat him, he made his way toward the ruins that held the exit. There, he found the cathedral waiting for him, which was, in its own way, a relief, even though it was one of the weirder levels, and he never really felt comfortable in it.


    Still, it was better than finding yet another level he¡¯d already beaten. That was something he worried about sometimes in bed at night, just before he drifted off to sleep. There was always the possibility that he would do something and reset all the progress he¡¯d made so far. That wouldn¡¯t be the end of the world normally, but right now, he had a life on pause he was eager to pick back up, so he was keeping a careful eye open for signs that things might be spinning out of control.


    Still, as he stepped through the door and shut it behind him, he couldn¡¯t help but wonder if today was the day he would finally solve this level. After all, it was level 13, so it was months or years past his life in Ionar. Nothing he did here would affect that, so it might be worth a shot.


    This time, the devil was eating, and when Simon approached, the well-dressed monster raised his wine glass in a toast to him. ¡°I¡¯d wish you a long life, but it would seem you already had one,¡± the devil said, laughing at his own joke.


    ¡°I¡¯ve had a nice time, I¡¯m glad to see you¡¯ve missed me,¡± Simon answered dismissively as he approached the circle and began to read the runes once more.


    In the past, he¡¯d had a lot of trouble with that, given their distorted nature, but he¡¯d done a lot of magic study between the last time he¡¯d come through this level and now, and he was able to read much of the circle without effort. Only the most tortured sections required real study.


    ¡°Oh, but I have, I have,¡± the red-skinned man said with a smile before cutting another bite of whatever it was he was eating on his fine china. ¡°I see so many of you heroes, but to see the same ones over and over? Well, that gets rarer as time goes on; I''m sure you¡¯ve guessed the reasons by now.¡±


    Simon had hoped to tell the devil his own name and surprise him, but it didn¡¯t seem to be written on the ring. Whoever had cast this spell had meant to open a gateway to hell, not a particular demon, which made it all the stranger. Why would someone want that?


    He didn¡¯t know, but he did know that the devil had nothing useful to add, so Simon tuned him out and focused on the task at hand, tracing the runes back further and further until he finally isolated the power. The thing was both powered by hell and summoned hell, which seemed like a paradox waiting to happen, but this was magic, and he was pretty sure that sometimes making sense was entirely optional.


    For a moment, he thought he¡¯d found the solution, but it was only when he reached for it that he realized it was wrong. If he wiped out the rune that powered the thing the way it was laid out, the circle would stop working before hell vanished, which was, of course, exactly what he didn¡¯t want.


    ¡°Finally found my weakness, have you?¡± the devil feigned, concerned over what was obviously the wrong rune. Simon pretended to hesitate just to screw with the monster, but he wasn¡¯t dumb enough to take any reaction from this thing, positive or negative, for advice.


    What he needed was to make hell disappear before the circle faded, which meant the summoning rune itself, which was a combination of distance and boundary with a couple of other symbols he couldn¡¯t recognize. That was where he decided the weak point in the spell was, ultimately. The union of distance and boundary. It was there that the space where the summoned area could exist was defined, and if he undefined it, well, the rest of the circle should just keep right on existing even with nothing in it.


    ¡°Are you sure,¡± the demon asked as Simon pretended to waiver. ¡°Maybe you¡¯d better go around another time or two until you¡¯re sure.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡± Simon asked as his hand moved above the rune he planned to scrub away, ¡°will you miss these little chats of ours?¡±


    ¡°I have plenty of other heroes I can talk with, but if you close the gate¡­ well, you might live to regret it,¡± he said, feigning sympathy. ¡°It¡¯s one of the only ways out of your little prison you see¡­ It¡¯s a loophole, and I think we could yet¡ª¡±


    Simon looked the bastard in the eyes as he wiped away the rune and watched the portal into the yawning fiery pit start to close. It wasn¡¯t even a tense moment. He knew he was right the moment he saw the fear in the demon¡¯s eyes, and he took pleasure in watching the thing vanish completely.


    Simon stood and watched as the portal slammed shut and the twisted, floating pieces of the church slowly fitted back together. A few seconds after he¡¯d wiped away the rune and the demon¡¯s smug smile, all that was left of the entire thing was a chalk outline, which Simon took another couple of minutes to scrub away so that no one else got any ideas.


    Then, once that was done, he walked over to the portal and stepped through it to the next level, which was a farm field he¡¯d seen before.

 Ch. 160 - Words of Warning

    When Simon walked out into that sunny field from the barn, he knew exactly where he was and exactly what was going to happen, but he wasn¡¯t sure exactly what to do. Well, he knew that he needed to convince the family that lived here of the danger that was coming, but how exactly to do that was an open question.


    What he knew for sure, though, was that using magic was probably not going to last time; if Aaric was to be believed, it had some pretty negative side effects for the family that lived here, and he didn¡¯t exactly have another spell that was subtle enough to¡ª


    ¡°Hey! Who are you!¡± the voice of a young boy called out, derailing Simon¡¯s train of thought. ¡°What in the hells are you doing in our barn?¡±


    ¡°Barn, child?¡± Simon asked, pretending to be a little older than he already looked. When he turned around, he saw the boy recoil from some of his more obvious scars, but he was polite enough not to say anything. ¡°Come now, tell me where your parents are. I¡¯ve come to warn them.¡±


    ¡°Warn them of what?¡± Aaric asked, more eager than afraid. ¡°What¡¯s going to happen.¡±


    Simon shook his head and insisted that he had to speak with his father. So, Aaric begrudgingly led him out to the field where the man was working the plow.


    They made no secret of their approach, and when Millen saw Simon approaching with his boy, he stiffened and stopped. ¡°What can I do for you, stranger,¡± he asked. He wasn¡¯t quite unfriendly, but he certainly wasn¡¯t friendly either. That combination was enough to make Simon try the direct approach.


    ¡°I¡¯m here to warn you,¡± Simon said, ¡°You and everyone else on my way west. A dark cloud is coming. You know what that means, don¡¯t you?¡±


    Millen looked confused for a moment, then he figured it out and looked to young Aaric with a touch of fear. ¡°Are you sure?¡± the farmer asked. ¡°When? How?¡±


    His questions came as a barrage, and Simon answered them as calmly as he could. ¡°It has been foreseen,¡± Simon said, choosing not to provide any source for the statement, mostly because he didn¡¯t know who these people might find to be a credible authority. ¡°That is all that matters, and tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, the swarm will pass through this valley.¡±


    Millen looked deeply conflicted, and he tried to push Simon for more answers, but he just shook his head. ¡°I must take my leave,¡± he insisted, ¡°There are others to warn and shelter to find.¡±


    ¡°Warn them about what, papa?¡± Aaric asked, but both of the adults ignored him.


    ¡°There¡¯s not much in the way of shelter around here,¡± the farmer said finally. ¡°Even less where animals are concerned.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not the animals I¡¯m concerned about,¡± Simon said brusquely.


    ¡°You would be if you had to eat them,¡± Millen said, shaking his head, ¡°If the swarmers really do come, this field and all the other ones like it will be gone. We¡¯ll need what little we can save.¡±


    ¡°Fair enough,¡± Simon agreed, turning to leave, surprised that his words had been accepted so readily. This was either a regular problem or at least something that had happened in living memory.


    ¡°Wait, where are you going?¡± Millen asked.


    ¡°It¡¯s as I said,¡± Simon answered, ¡°Lots of other people to warn and many more miles to walk before nightfall.¡±


    ¡°Would you speak with the village elder with me? Over there in Screeton?¡± Millen asked, pointing toward the hills to the north.  ¡°I¡­ If I try to tell him that something bad is going to happen, he¡¯s liable to ignore me, but if you do it¡­ an outsider¡­ well, he¡¯s got to listen. If we can get him to reopen the old tin mine, then maybe that can give the herds a chance.¡±


    ¡°What about your neighbors?¡± Simon asked. ¡°Are you really more concerned about your horses and your sheep than them?¡±


    ¡°The boy can warn them, can¡¯t you, Aaric?¡± Millen asked.


    ¡°I can¡­ if I knew what it was I¡¯m supposed to be warning them about¡­¡± the boy said, obviously ready to explode from anticipation.


    ¡°Just tell them that black swarmers have been sighted, and they¡¯re on the way. Tell them to head to the village, and we¡¯ll take shelter in the mine.¡±


    It took more than a little willpower for Simon to resist the urge to smirk as the eager young boy paled as his father told him about bugs that could devour everything in sight in the space of only an hour or two. One moment, he¡¯d been ready to pick up a sword and be a hero, and the next, he looked like he might faint. Simon remembered the lad being a little braver in their brief goblin hunt, but then one goblin was a lot less scary than a cloud of thousands of vampiric bugs.


    After that, he and Millen stopped briefly by their cabin, where he briefly introduced his wife, who was spinning, and his daughter, who was helping to make dinner. Neither woman looked at him very kindly, but Simon was used to it. He was old and disfigured. That apparently made him perfect to deliver mysterious messages but utterly unsuited to speak with women in places where he hadn¡¯t saved their kingdom. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Just as well, Simon thought as Millen explained things, and the women sprang up to start packing. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m all that interested in looking at anyone else anymore, either.


    The village elder was an older man who quizzed Simon several times as to where he got this information and why he thought it could be trusted. That was reasonable enough, but Simon was already too into his role of mysterious old prophet and gave his best Obi-Wan impression as he answered questions with questions and spoke in mysterious generalities.


    ¡°For Gods¡¯ sake, Sir, it¡¯s just a day. Two at the worst.¡± Millen barked finally. ¡°If he¡¯s wrong, we lose a little time, but if he¡¯s right¡­¡±


    Simon could tell that outburst only weakened their argument, but he said nothing. This was the sort of man who did not like to have his authority questioned, and even though Simon was old enough for many to consider him an elder at this point, it was obvious that the village elder, only a few years his senior, felt no need to do likewise.


    Even after an hour of mysterious warnings, the elder was on the verge of telling them both to go pound sand before other men and women started to show up, demanding answers. After that, things just sort of fell into place, and eventually, the steel-haired old man told them that he would allow the mine to be reopened.


    ¡°But only for two days!¡± he snapped, glaring at Simon, ¡°And it will not be on my head if goblins or worse get you while you are hiding from shadows and the lies of some charlatan.¡±


    After that, Simon almost had to shelter with them. Not only did he want to see what was going to happen, but the idea of fighting more goblins practically called to him. He hated the way that the little bastards stunk, of course, but he¡¯d been looking for an excuse to see if he was worth a damn in a fight anymore, and they would be a better test than most. Besides, if things went the same as they did last time, he¡¯d be seeing Aaric in a few levels, and this time, he¡¯d want to leave behind some fond memories.


    Simon spent that afternoon ripping down old boards and helping to round up and drive innumerable goats and sheep toward the mine. It was a complete mess, but it wasn¡¯t hard work, and the sheer chaos of trying to save everyone and everything from their tiny, local Armageddon made him laugh more than once. By the time he was done, he was a little sunburned but happy enough that he went whole hours at a time without thinking about Elthena.


    Simon, along with pretty much everyone else, spent the night in the old mines that night. Not many people actually slept. It was hard to do much sleeping with the sounds of hundreds of frightened animals echoing through the tunnels.


    Most people at least tried to sleep, though. Simon prowled the farthest end of the oldest tunnels, though, searching for anything that didn¡¯t belong. That deep, there was water dripping from the ceiling in places, which made sense because he¡¯d been told the lower tunnels were long flooded, which was why the place was closed. As much as part of him wished to find goblins, he came up empty, though. The closest he got was when he was ambushed by young Aaric sometime after midnight.


    ¡°You find any monsters yet?¡± he asked, scaring Simon half to death.


    ¡°No, the only monsters down here are you, and whoever that is that¡¯s snoring so loud,¡± Simon quipped, continuing to search for as long as his torch allowed.


    ¡°That¡¯s just Mister Branaugh,¡± Aaric said with a laugh. He was a boy on the cusp of manhood, and he tried to act serious, but there was glee just beneath the surface, waiting to burst free at any moment. ¡°And if there are no monsters, what are you doing all the way down here?¡±


    ¡°Well, the only way to make sure there are no monsters is to keep looking for them,¡± Simon said with a shake of his head, suddenly feeling very old. ¡°Because as soon as you stop looking, that¡¯s when they pounce. How¡¯s the front door looking?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s all sealed up,¡± Aaric answered with a shrug. ¡°Dad finished helping with that hours ago. Tight, too, with cloth wedged in all the cracks, just like you said.¡±


    Simon nodded. Part of him wanted to go cast a spell to reinforce it, but he knew that would only get him into trouble. No, he¡¯d already done his part, and the only magic he¡¯d needed was a little foreknowledge that played on people''s fears.


    Sometime that morning, he finally went to sleep, sure that the place was safe enough for a short nap at least. Despite the sounds of baaing and mooing, he actually managed to fall asleep, which was a minor miracle in its own right. He slept soundly, too, right up until the bounding and the shouting.


    Once Simon had scoured the back of the tunnels, he¡¯d made his way slowly to the entrance, where he¡¯d fallen asleep, not far from the barricade, in case anything bad happened. That turned out to be a good idea because sometime that morning, something bad started to happen.


    Not everyone had believed his warnings. Though some people, had decided to sleep in their own beds despite Simon¡¯s pleas, the village elder had joined them at the last minute, marking him as a coward among other things. He had no doubt they were looking forward to mocking him when they all left the tunnels in a day or two, and nothing had happened, but that wasn¡¯t how things worked out.


    Instead, when the bugs were sighted on the horizon, they came running. First, there were only a couple pounding on the door and begging to be let in, but more and more came after that. It was an awful moment because there was nothing to do. This wasn¡¯t a modern door with a deadbolt that they could open for just a second like in a horror movie.


    This was a barricade that had been hammered together from the existing planks that had sealed the mine for years, along with scraps from dozens of houses and farms. Even if they could take it apart without destroying it, it would take hours to put it all back in place, and from the sound of things, they didn¡¯t have hours. They had minutes. They might even have less.


    Arguments erupted then between those who said that something had to be done and those who insisted nothing could be done. Simon didn¡¯t join in the arguments on either side; he just walked to the barricade, drew his sword, and stood there as a barrier between those who might do something stupid and the place they would have to stand to do it.


    It wasn¡¯t his preferred answer, and there were more than a few men in here with him who could probably take him at this point if they wanted to try. That didn¡¯t matter, though. What mattered was that there were too many women and children in here to take any chances, and he wasn¡¯t going to let them all get eaten alive because someone they cared about hadn¡¯t heard the warning.


    There were some hard looks and a few threats, but once the shouting and the begging turned to screams, no one talked about opening the door again. It was a settled matter. If they opened it, then everyone would die, and that was apparently all the deterrent anyone needed.

 Ch. 161 - The Day After

    The screams didn¡¯t last long. At least, the ones begging to be let in didn¡¯t. Their silence spoke volumes about the state of things happening outside the mine they¡¯d sealed themselves up into, Simon. His heart went out to them, and in those dark moments, part of him wished he¡¯d used that horrible life-draining magic to end them. Only the knowledge that it hadn¡¯t solved the level and that he¡¯d just have to keep doing that over and over again strengthened his resolve. He¡¯d saved as many people as he could, and he had to try other things if he wanted to resolve this.


    After that, there were other screams from time to time as different homes were finally breached by bugs. Soon enough, though, there was nothing but the buzzing. It came and went, but it was so strong near the entrance sometimes that he was certain the things were about to break through, but that never happened.


    Though he¡¯d never heard of these insects outside this level, they didn¡¯t seem to be a new hazard for the region. ¡°They rarely come this far from Mount Hizarth,¡± Millen said softly, filling Simon in on the particulars of the hazard they faced. ¡°My dad said there was a swarm like this when he was young, but¡ª¡±


    ¡°We couldn¡¯t have known!¡± the headman growled, interrupting their conversation with preemptive words of self-defense. ¡°I couldn¡¯t have known that he wasn¡¯t just a crackpot.¡±


    That was growing to be a habit for the man, who was certainly feeling the guilt keenly as each new group succumbed to the tiny monsters in a dull chorus of screams. He had to know that if he¡¯d only given the word, everyone would have joined them down here. Now, he was going to live while so many had died. Simon could tell from the sharp looks the old man got that everyone else had those thoughts, too, and for once, he didn¡¯t do anything to try to soften the group up.


    Instead, he talked to them about their stories and learned what he could about the dark swarm. There were many stories to tell, apparently. In some versions of the myth, they were the children of a demon bound beneath a large boulder that reached out into the world for some way to free their sire, and in others, they were the curse of a farmer who had died of starvation amidst his locust ravaged fields cursing the gods.


    The topics were interesting, and placed the monsters outside somewhat closer to the boogieman than a hurricane. Everyone knew about the vicious little bugs, but no one expected them to actually have to deal with them; they existed mostly to scare disobedient children. After he learned all he could about the dark swarm outside, though, and no signs that goblins or giant spiders were about to crawl up out of the underworld and attack them, Simon¡¯s thoughts slowly became fixated on the evil version of himself and everything that had happened after that.


    With so many people and animals crowded around him, most of the time, he couldn¡¯t produce a mirror and ask it any questions, but that didn¡¯t stop his thoughts from churning. For the next day or so, whether he was trying to reassure frightened villagers or chat with the young boy, Aaric, his mind was a million miles away as he tried to untangle that lifetime and figure out what he should do about any of it.


    The obvious thing would be to go to the barrow mounds before him and steal the crown. That would cause some kind of time travel paradox by keeping him from existing, though, wouldn¡¯t it? He thought.


    Well, that was true only if it was possible for Simon to get there before his double. There was no reason to suppose that he could if his alter ego had figured out some magic word that would allow him to travel between levels or, worse, timelines at will.


    There was also one other very good reason he couldn¡¯t do that, he realized, at least, not yet. ¡°Elthena,¡± he whispered to himself in a quiet moment. Until he¡¯d resolved everything he wanted to do in that life, he couldn¡¯t change a single detail before Ionar.


    That wasn¡¯t such a big deal. That just meant he couldn¡¯t end the Skeleton Knight yet, but still, it galled him. The right move was to drop everything and devote every resource and every life to understanding the nature of his doppelg?nger until he''d solved the mystery and put that awful version of himself out of his misery.


    Was it me? That was the question he wanted to know more than anything. Was it me and not some demon? Then what happened to make me become so awful?


    Simon couldn¡¯t answer that, but as long as he was unwilling to let go of his life in Ionar, he couldn¡¯t even really effectively dig into the issue. It was like fighting with one hand behind his back. While he realized that more answers might well present themselves in future levels, he also decided that he might well be playing into the hands of the other version of Simon if he did that. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    I guess I¡¯ll have to get to level 40 and talk with Helades about this, he decided with a shake of his head. It wasn¡¯t ideal, given how far he had left to go, but what choice did he have? From where he was standing, 9 levels seemed like the easiest path to his answers, even if one of those levels was a dragon.


    Maybe I can just find the gate and skip that one for a while, he thought, hopefully.


    Skipping things wasn¡¯t really an option when he was trapped in an old mine shaft, sandwiched between Millen¡¯s young family and half a herd of sheep.


    At least this time, the girls will live, he told himself. It was a small consolation for everything else that was happening and unlikely to be the key to the level, but he would take it.


    Roughly a day after they last heard the sound of humming, they opened a crack in the barricade to look around, not sure what to expect. Simon looked around warily for a few seconds, noting the apparently dead bugs that were scattered across the ground in great numbers.


    He used a whispered word of minor force to move a few of them around and see if they would stir to life, and when they didn¡¯t, he pronounced it safe to leave the shelter. When the townspeople returned to the surface, it was to a different world. The buildings were still intact and unchanged, except for the littered corpses of the thumb-sized bug corpses. Anything that was edible, though, was gone.


    That extended to the obvious, of course, like people and plants. That was never in doubt. What was more curious, though, was that it included cloth and leather, too. Skeletons were scattered throughout the small village, and all the trees and crops that he should have been able to see from here were entirely denuded. The area hadn¡¯t exactly been lush or anything, but there had been more than a few fruit and nut orchards scattered around the place. Now, there were only the bare limbs and scared bark. It was like the world had gone from summer to winter and entirely skipped the harvest season.


    The heartbreak on the faces of many was plain, and Simon chose not to patronize them by telling them that they could rebuild. They knew that as well as he did, but more than that, they knew what a hard road it would be between here and there. Such a thing might take years, given the damage.


    Instead, Simon asked, ¡°Will you move the village further away? How do you know this won¡¯t happen again?¡±


    ¡°Aren¡¯t you the one that¡¯s supposed to tell us that?¡± Millen said, trying to turn it into a joke. ¡°You were the one that predicted this, weren¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°True enough,¡± Simon nodded, mentally kicking himself. ¡°Unfortunately, the Gods have provided me with no new insights.¡±


    ¡°Well, you be sure to tell us if they do,¡± the farmer nodded. ¡°Until then, we¡¯ll be here doing what we can.¡±


    That night, many of the villagers found their way to Simon to thank him for saving them. He accepted that gratitude but took no part in any of the small celebrations that followed. Instead, he studied the remains of the bugs, trying to figure out what might happen next.


    He¡¯d worried that they¡¯d burrowed into the ground and laid eggs that might not hatch for years like some kind of demonic cicada, but they seemed even less natural than that. The hard carapaces had become brittle, and the innards didn¡¯t contain eggs but ashes. There was definitely a touch of sulfur about these things.


    ¡°Please don¡¯t tell me this comes back to hell too, somehow,¡± he sighed to himself.


    It was hard to draw that conclusion from a single smell, but he had his concerns already with other things like that awful seed and even his double. Someone or something was periodically injecting really evil things into this world, and he was pretty sure that sooner or later, he was going to have to cut the head off that snake.


    The next day, he gathered as many of the women and children as he could and set them to gathering the husks just in case. They tried burning them in a large fire. They didn¡¯t burn very well at first, but once the fire got hot enough, they sizzled and exploded like sap-drenched pine as they sputtered and sparked before crumbling to ash.


    There was no way they could get all of them, of course, but it was better safe than sorry. While they were doing all this, he decided that the true resolution for this level was probably on the mountain that Millen had mentioned earlier, but Simon didn¡¯t plan to investigate that on this trip. Not when he had some nearly fireproof armor that needed fixing and a date with a dragon.


    Besides, he thought with a shake of his head as he recalled just how much gray was in his hair at this point. This run is coming to a close soon, one way or the other. Simon wasn¡¯t giving up, of course. He was just being realistic. He was still half crippled from falling off the volcano, and he didn¡¯t rate his odds of solving another level very high just now. Still, he wasn¡¯t in the mood to give up and hit the reset button.


    Simon spent three days helping the villagers gather the husks and another week helping Millen¡¯s family get settled into their place. In the end, he slipped away in the night shortly after that.


    He was fairly certain that the next level was the crossroads, and after a quick peek confirmed it, it sealed the deal. He¡¯d been fairly certain that he was going to leave Daisy behind as a parting gift, but with such a convenient location and a pocket full of gold, he was certain he could buy a new mount or pack animal to haul his junk around. Millen¡¯s family needed another animal a lot more than he did at this point. So, without so much as a goodbye, he hauled his bundle over the threshold and closed the door behind him, disappearing into the next level.

 Ch. 162 - Low Profile

    The first thing that Simon did once he was standing in the streets of Esmiran was stash his junk in the alley next to the bakery. Then, he walked across the street to secure a room at the inn. One silver piece later, he was back across the street collecting his things.


    The last time he¡¯d been here, he¡¯d spent a few days relaxing from the awful pace of the last run before he¡¯d saved that girl and been ambushed by those white cloaks. This time didn¡¯t seem to be any different so far, but then, he didn¡¯t have the clearest memories of this place beyond the fight, the whisperer, and how cute the baker was.


    No matter what was going to happen this go around, he didn¡¯t have time to waste. So, instead of drinking and getting to know the regulars around the bar, he went straight to the blacksmith to size the man up.


    Simon introduced himself as he looked around. Haadon, which turned out to be the smith¡¯s name, was a man of only average talents; judging by some of the pieces he had lying around, Simon was probably almost as good as him at most things, but there was no abandoned forge Simon could spend weeks screwing with on the off chance that he could do the work himself.


    Instead, he got straight to the point and let his money do the talking. ¡°I have some armor in pretty bad shape,¡± he said, pulling a handful of gold coins from his coin purse and setting them down in a small stack on the anvil while Haadon eyed him with growing interest. ¡°It''s some custom pieces, of course, so I¡¯d need the utmost discretion.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure we can handle that,¡± the smith answered, practically licking his lips.


    ¡°You say that, but some of the markings¡­ well, let¡¯s just say if the white cloaks or the village busybody caught wind of it, there would be real trouble,¡± Simon emphasized, setting down another small stack of coins. ¡°Trouble for both of us, you understand?¡±


    This was enough to make the blacksmith meet Simon¡¯s eye, but only briefly, before he returned to the growing stack of gold. ¡°Yes, sir. I don¡¯t want no trouble here in Esmiran, so as long as you¡¯re just passing through, I¡¯m not inclined to ask about your business.¡±


    Simon smiled at that but quickly suppressed it. He¡¯d forgotten how powerful the magic of greed could be because he¡¯d been poor for several runs in a row now.


    After they agreed on a price and another coin for the man¡¯s apprentice to look the other way, Simon returned to where he¡¯d tucked away his bundle and brought it to the smithy. On most pieces, the damage was relatively minor. The chest piece and arms had a few dents, as well as some cooled lava that needed to be hammered off. It was only the legs and back that were in really rough shape.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how you could have survived whatever blow did all this,¡± the smith said, swallowing hard as he reconsidered their arrangement.


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t a battle,¡± Simon said hastily. ¡°It was a natural disaster in Ionia. A mudslide and other things.¡±


    ¡°Well, then, you¡¯ve come a long way, haven¡¯t you?¡± the man responded, sidestepping the answer entirely as he studied the armor.


    It wasn¡¯t much of a lie, but the blacksmith clearly wanted to believe it, and he just nodded dumbly as Simon went through the details about which straps needed to be replaced and which plates needed to be fixed.


    ¡°The most important thing is these lines,¡± Simon emphasized, pointing to the delicate tracery of patterns that were present on every piece. ¡°None of them can be removed, and any of them that have started to wear away need to be re-etched. If you are ever unclear about what goes where don¡¯t guess. Send your apprentice to find me. I¡¯ll be at the inn, and I¡¯ll redraw them for you.¡±


    ¡°That specific, huh?¡± the man asked, a little pale. ¡°These aren¡¯t dangerous, though, are they? They¡¯re just like¡ª¡±


    ¡°They are important family heraldry,¡± Simon shot back, trying to keep everything moving, figuratively speaking. He was well aware of how this looked. He was a deformed stranger appearing out of nowhere and offering a craftsman a small fortune to do some strange work. It was practically a fairy tale. In a sane world, this man would turn Simon into the authorities as soon as he left, but today, Simon didn¡¯t think that likely.


    So, he left with a firm handshake and a promise of another payment when the work was completed and the satisfaction that this problem, at least, was left behind him. From that point on it was someone else¡¯s problem, he decided, and he wasn¡¯t going to worry about it. He had other things to worry about anyway, like what he could do to prepare for this evening.


    He started by buying a horse. It was only after he¡¯d purchased it that he realized it was a complete waste. He¡¯d imagine himself riding to the mountain village where he¡¯d find the dragon slayer. However, it was only when he was walking that horse across the town square that he recalled where the portal entrance for this town was.


    It¡¯s in the fucking well, he groaned mentally as he willed himself not to cry out anything weird. Does that mean I have to walk all that way in plate mail? I¡¯m never going to get there in time.


    Simon spent the next few minutes consoling himself about that as he thought through the problem. Truthfully, he wasn¡¯t sure where he would end up when he came out of this portal since the ogre was dead as dead could be. So, he would try to stay positive about that.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    He also decided he could use the horse to speed the mystery woman¡¯s escape if she showed up again. He didn¡¯t look forward to fighting a whole group of those weirdos, but he was hopeful he could get her out of there either way and was pretty sure that was how he would solve this level.


    He didn¡¯t have his leather armor anymore for a start. That was something he¡¯d sorely miss if it came to combat. He did have his knife and sword, though, and he made sure he was wearing both when he came down for dinner.


    He bought himself some stew and a beer, and then he bought a round for the house, too, which was starting to get crowded. This was to try to mitigate some of the looks he was getting. He told a few stories, too, about faraway places he¡¯d been, though he tried to avoid talk of killing.


    When one bearded drunk who was almost as old as he was finally asked him about his scars, Simon responded. ¡°Goblins raided my village when I was young. Ugly business.¡± The topic didn¡¯t come up again after that, at least not in his presence.


    It wasn¡¯t until the sun set that he saw the girl from last time. Part of Simon had hoped that this time, she would have run faster or farther, and she would have already moved on, out of harm''s reach. Then he wouldn¡¯t get mixed up in this. That was a selfish desire, given the shape he was in, and almost certainly an unreasonable one. The very fact that the portal still opened on this level meant that this needed to be done.


    This time, he didn¡¯t wait for the white cloaks to arrive and moved to the fire to warn her. It was there he got his first surprise of the night. This time, there was someone with her, and strangely enough, it was someone he recognized: Aaric.


    He¡¯d seen the boy before on this level, though it wasn¡¯t really proper to call him a boy. He was a man now, and a look of recognition passed between them both immediately.


    ¡°Simon?¡± the young man asked, ¡°What are you doing here?¡±


    ¡°Why aren¡¯t you with the white cloaks this time?¡± Simon responded, forgetting himself for a moment.


    That should have caused consternation, or at least confusion with the boy, but instead, without missing a beat, he sighed and said, ¡°You know about that too? I should have known. It''s a long story, but we¡ª¡±


    ¡°Long stories can wait,¡± Simon interrupted, ¡°We need to get her out of here before your friends show up.¡±


    ¡°The Unspoken are coming? When?¡± This time, Aaric¡¯s answer was a whisper, but as soon as he said that word, Carelyn¡¯s eyes widened.


    ¡°They found me? So quickly?¡± the woman asked, whirling around to face Aaric. ¡°I told you this would happen, Aaric. I told you¡­¡±


    It was obvious to Simon that these two were more than prisoner and warden. They probably weren''t just friends, either. That was enough to make Simon wonder just how much one small change in his childhood had changed the man, but that was hardly the right question.


    The right questions were things like who was she and why was she running away before she could be one of the chosen. For that matter, what he really wanted to know was who these people were and what word of power they were using to suppress magic.


    His mind was racing with questions, but none of those could be asked here. Not when people were already starting to give the three of them strange looks. So, he saved those for later and said, ¡°Come on, I¡¯ve got a horse in the stable you can use. We can¡ª¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ve got one too,¡± Aaric agreed. ¡°Let¡¯s get as far from here as possible, and then I¡¯ll tell you what¡¯s happened since you saved my village from the dark swarm so long ago. I owe you that much, at least.¡±


    The three of them got up and moved to the stable. None of them wasted any time, but even as they started to saddle up their mounts, a group of riders wearing white cloaks came to a stop in front of the inn, not so far from them.


    ¡°Damn it,¡± Aaric cursed. ¡°They really are here.¡±


    ¡°Is there any reason I shouldn¡¯t kill all of them?¡± Simon asked in a cold tone.


    Violence usually wasn¡¯t his first answer, but he didn¡¯t see another way out of this. One or two, he might be able to fight with his sword. Three might be possible if he got the drop on them, but in a case like this, that was his limit. There was no way to sneak out the back from the stables, and he doubted they could outrun the larger group for long if they bolted. So, given that there wasn¡¯t really a martial option, all he had left to fall back on was magic.


    ¡°Kill them?¡± Aaric asked as he climbed up on his horse. ¡°What? How?¡±


    ¡°Unless you give me a better answer than that, I¡ª¡± Simon hissed, worried as the people started to spread out a bit more, which would make what was about to happen harder.


    ¡°Do what you need to do, Simon,¡± Aaric answered. ¡°I just need to keep Carelyn safe.¡±


    No sooner were the words out of Aaric¡¯s mouth than Simon called out, ¡°Gervuul Oonbetit!¡± both of his companions gave him a look of pure horror as they recognized what he was doing on some level, but the real horror was yet to come.


    Simon had considered fire and lightning for this. It would have sown more chaos. This close to the inn, though, the fireball would light the place up, and there was no telling where the chain lightning would go once unleashed. So, instead, he used greater force and the magic of his words combined with his focus to create a scythe of pure power that stretched across most of the courtyard before it raced across it toward his enemies.


    Simon had really leaned into the hero bit over the last few lives and tried not to kill more people than he absolutely had to unless they happened to be related to a certain despot from Crowvar. This time, though, there was no way around it. Even as some of the men and white cloaks turned to face him, the paper-thin shockwave passed through them, neatly slicing their heads from their necks.


    In a few cases, amulets that the men were wearing flared to life briefly. Simon would have liked to study that more, but he was already moving. It did not seem to be enough to save the men in most cases anyway, but it seemed to be evidence of magical items, which wasn¡¯t something he¡¯d seen very often in this world.


    Such magic didn¡¯t come without cost to Simon. Not at the age he felt now. A year''s worth of life meant a lot more to someone who was already fifty or sixty than it did the 29-year-old he was whenever he reset the Pit. Even as he felt the energy leave him, though, he knew he¡¯d made the right decision.


    At least, that was the goal. It went over the heads of a couple of people who had bent down or dismounted. In a few cases, it gashed deeply into people¡¯s chests or simply sliced through the top of their skulls. For a moment, though, it was like nothing had happened. It was only seconds later, as one of the survivors shouted an alarm and their two horses darted off into the night, that the true carnage was unleashed, and most of the Unspoken simply fell to pieces.

 Ch. 163 - Whispered Words

    There was confusion at first as the survivors tried to figure out what had happened. That gave Simon¡¯s group an early lead of a dozen yards. However, after the survivors watched their brothers die around them, a cry of anger rang out, and soon the survivors were giving chase.


    Four horses chased after two as Simon, Aaric, and Carelyn blazed out into the night. Simon didn¡¯t know where they were going, and he wasn¡¯t entirely sure that Aaric did, either, but he followed the young man just the same. While they rode, Simon cursed his unwillingness to aim the spell a little lower and kill all the horses that the white cloaks were riding while he was at it.


    In the moment, it wasn¡¯t that he¡¯d worried it might have blunted the spell¡¯s effect. It might have, of course, but he was far more concerned with Still, there was nothing he could do now. His magic had winded him, and though he could certainly spare another word or power of two so long as they weren¡¯t major ones, he was unwilling to unless it was absolutely necessary.


    In the Pit, Simon had died a lot of times. So many that he¡¯d lost count. He didn¡¯t think about mortality often. Even now, he wasn¡¯t worried about dying. He was shepherding his remaining years more like a mana bar in a video game. The way things were going, he might have twenty or thirty years left, but he wasn¡¯t sure all of those years were created equal, and he doubted that Helades quick sketch of how cosmic powers worked was the whole story. So, he was leaning toward the lower end of that scale.


    It might even be less than that, he thought as the horse''s hooves pounded away at the muddy road. At this point, every major word burned five percent of his power, every word burned almost half a percent, and every minor word was about a tenth of a percent. None of those were big numbers, but he could see that he was approaching the bottom of the barrel, and it made him think about the big picture more.


    He had his bow on him. Unfortunately, he¡¯d barely practiced archery from horseback, and unlike the centaurs he¡¯d fought for so long, he doubted that skill would ever come naturally to him. Regardless, four pursuers became three pretty quickly as one peeled away because of their wounds.


    After that, he didn¡¯t have to let off too many shots before the other three pulled up short to avoid becoming another casualty. Just because he was very nearly firing at random didn¡¯t mean that they knew that. In the dark, they could only hear the whistle of the arrow as it flew somewhere nearby in the darkness.


    It seemed too easy, and Simon¡¯s first instinct was that it was a trap. It didn¡¯t seem to be, though. As they dropped further and further behind the group, he expected some large spell to ring out and kill them all. He had the word for barrier and protection on his lips, but he never needed to speak them.


    Maybe they don¡¯t know any magic, he thought to himself. He was incredulous, but he had to admit that it was true. They knew at least one word of power, but it was possible that they did not know the rest.


    That was just one more question he added to the pile for Aaric. It would have to wait, though. They needed to put more distance between themselves and these people. By morning, there would likely be a whole mob riled up and coming for them.


    Simon thought about what that might mean for his armor, but he just shrugged at the thought. He could always make a new set if he needed to. It had served its part, and though the idea of using such a time-consuming piece of gear to try to solve two levels appealed to him, he¡¯d figure something out. Compared to the value of the answers these two could provide him, it was only so much rusting junk.


    He considered these thoughts while the three of them rode until sunrise. When they finally stopped, it was at a small, half-toppled farmhouse well off the main road that Aaric must have known about because he rode straight there.


    ¡°This was our stop last night,¡± he explained as they tethered their horses around back. ¡°We¡¯d planned to go on further, to the south, so that we could lose ourselves in the vastness of Abrese, but¡­¡±


    His words trailed off before Simon finished, ¡°But then your friends found you sooner than you were expecting.¡±


    ¡°Exactly,¡± Aaric agreed. ¡°We were¡ª¡±


    ¡°Aaric,¡± Carelyn hissed. ¡°Why are you telling this¡­ this warlock our plans? We should be away from him. Now.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t understand,¡± Aaric answered with a shake of his head. ¡°This isn¡¯t the first time that Simon has saved my life. It¡¯s the second, and¡­ no, I know what you were thinking, but I had no idea he knew magic or that he¡¯d even be here. I swear I didn¡¯t. You and I, we were going to¡ª¡±


    What followed was a lover¡¯s quarrel in hushed tones. Simon couldn¡¯t make everything out, but it was clear that while neither of them was happy to be in the same room with a warlock, Carelyn was not willing to give him even the smallest benefit of the doubt despite the fact that he¡¯d just saved her life. Stolen story; please report.


    The two of them stepped outside, where they continued their argument for quite a while. By the time they returned, Simon had started a small fire in the fireplace. He had nothing to cook over it, but it chased away the night¡¯s chill at least.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry about that,¡± Aaric said as he returned to the room alone. ¡°She doesn¡¯t¡ª¡±


    ¡°She doesn¡¯t have the least idea who I am,¡± Simon nodded. ¡°Nor do you. Not really.¡±


    ¡°I know you wouldn¡¯t hurt us,¡± Aaric agreed. ¡°I know that much.¡±


    ¡°Are you so certain,¡± Simon asked with a flat expression as he stared into the fire. ¡°I killed a dozen people earlier tonight.¡±


    ¡°You did. They weren¡¯t even bad people, mostly. Not really,¡± Aaric said. ¡°But back in Screeton¡­ you saved everyone, and you didn¡¯t have to. If you¡¯d just saved yourself, no one would have known.¡±


    That outpouring of gratitude made Simon a little uncomfortable, and he switched topics immediately, even as he pondered how much that one event had changed this boy''s life. If Simon had never existed, then Aaric and his whole family would be dead, of course. Still, the last time Simon had seen him as an adult, he was a zealot, almost certainly because he thought his family had been killed by a warlock. This time, without any of that angst, he¡¯d come out somewhat more normal, and though it might not change all of history, it certainly changed Carelyn¡¯s life.


    Simon didn¡¯t say any of that, though. Instead, he said, ¡°Tell me about these unspoken. Is it a religion? A cult? In all my travels, I¡¯ve never heard of them.¡±


    Aaric didn¡¯t seem surprised to hear that. The Unspoken, as it turned out, was something closer to a secret society than a cult. People knew that they existed in this part of the world, but almost no one who wasn¡¯t initiated in their secrets knew what they were about beyond witch-hunting.


    The truth was deeper than that, though. It turned out that they were the answer to one question that he¡¯d had for a very long time: why didn¡¯t he see more mages floating around the world because Aaric¡¯s white-cloaked friends were killing them wherever they found them? It didn''t sound like they were particularly common in the first place, of course, but at last, things started to click into place a little.


    ¡°You know that with practice, anyone could use a word of power,¡± Simon explained, but Aaric denied it.


    ¡°That¡¯s simply not so,¡± he disagreed. ¡°Women like Carelyn, and men like you¡­ you¡¯re special. If you weren¡¯t, then magic would be everywhere.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, maybe for a generation,¡± Simon answered with a shrug. ¡°After that, well, I think it would snuff itself out pretty quick.¡±


    He explained what a toll magic took on the body, but he also told Aaric the story about the thugs he¡¯d fought in the castle basement once upon a time and the way that they¡¯d all cast fire spells at him, no matter how inexpertly as evidence for his assertion that anyone could do it.


    ¡°That¡¯s not what we¡¯re taught at all,¡± the younger man answered uncertainly. ¡°For the initiated, it''s more like¡­ either we find those with talent before they turn to evil, or we strike them down before they can drag others down with them.¡±


    Most of the answers to Simon¡¯s questions turned out to be ¡®I don¡¯t know,¡¯ or ¡®I¡¯m not sure.¡¯ That changed a little when Carelyn came back inside and grudgingly started to answer some of Simon¡¯s that Aaric couldn¡¯t. It turned out she¡¯d been with the Unspoken for much longer than her boyfriend had before she ran away.


    While she was light on details about why exactly they decided to run, Simon decided they probably didn¡¯t treat her the best, based on some old scars around her wrists and ankles that indicated manacles were involved. On the way whisperers worked, though, she was more forthcoming.


    ¡°That¡¯s what I was supposed to be one day,¡± Carelyn confessed. ¡°That¡¯s all women with the gift are to the Unspoken. Whispers or witches. There¡¯s no in-between if you have the sight.¡±


    Her story made it clear why she¡¯d escaped, even if he was sure she left out some of the worst parts. He learned the word that the Whisperers spoke, though the girl could not speak it. She was capable of tracing it into the dirt on the ground by the hearth, though, and Simon was immediately able to sound that out as Ovelum.


    The word translated roughly to stop or null, and it had a strong meaning of finality. It wasn¡¯t until he spoke it out loud as a minor word, though, that he realized it was actually Uuvellum, a word that he already knew. He¡¯d thought it was strictly for boundary, and he¡¯d mostly found it in summoning circles, like the gateway to hell. This cast it in a new light, and he would have to think more on that when he had the time.


    Apparently, the women who spoke this word would start to chant it quietly under their breath every few seconds once the warlock approached, and they would keep doing so until he was slain or they passed out from the strain. Simon was appalled by this. He knew how draining magic was more than anyone, but to have random women spend their lives until their throats bled with no real understanding of what they were doing? It was hideously cruel.


    ¡°You should never do such a thing,¡± he cautioned Carelyn.


    She agreed wholeheartedly, of course, and swore up and down that she didn¡¯t want to damage her eternal soul. It was during that discussion about souls that it became clear that this cult only recruited people who could see auras could speak the words of power.


    That was false, of course. Simon knew that because he could speak them, but he couldn¡¯t see the miasma that he¡¯d heard described before around anyone. Even if it wasn¡¯t true, though, they believed it.


    That revealed that Aaric could see them too, of course, but when Simon asked him about it, he said, ¡°I didn¡¯t start seeing the halos until the year after your visit.¡±


    Still, talking with both of them, he learned that the shadows that surrounded him had dimmed quite a bit, but were no longer obvious. Simon made a note to check the mirror later to find out what his experience was currently at. He didn¡¯t want to freak them out any more than they already were with new tricks.


    Instead, he steered the conversation toward safer waters and asked them about their obvious romance and what they hoped to do once they were free of all this.

 Ch. 164 - A Slight Detour

    That night, Simon lay awake for hours. It wasn¡¯t his fear that one of the two people he was sleeping beside might off him in his sleep that kept him up, even though they might. It wasn¡¯t even the nagging worry that they were sleeping in the same place that Aaric and Carelyn had stayed the night before and that their pursuers might have that information.


    Simon didn¡¯t let that bother him, either. If there was going to be a fight, then there was going to be a fight. Instead, he thought about everything he¡¯d spent the last few hours learning from the conversation before everyone was tired enough to go to bed. Now, his mind was spinning with the implications of it all.


    Nothing anyone had said had offered a hint about evil Simon, of course, but he¡¯d solved a couple other mysteries that put a number of events in a new light. First was the word of power, of course, but more than that was the whole aura thing.


    Thinking about it while he lay here, he realized he couldn¡¯t actually prove that this cult was wrong, of course, at least on this issue. He¡¯d already tried to explain to both of his companions that the other white cloaks had been wearing items inscribed with words of power to protect them from his magic, though they insisted those were simply ceremonial items.


    That was ridiculous, but it was possible that only those that only he and those who had the ability to see things could cast magic. He wasn¡¯t a part of this world, so the rules might not apply to him, but he wouldn¡¯t know, one way or another, until he did some experimentation.


    Another thing, though, was why there were so few mages. To date, the only one that Simon was sure he¡¯d seen in the wild besides the ones he¡¯d killed was the one that had killed him as a zombie. He hadn¡¯t even seen a dozen of them yet. Not in the whole world, across all his lives. He¡¯d always assumed that they kept themselves to themselves, and there was some secret wizard school or guild, and he just hadn¡¯t discovered them.


    That wasn¡¯t the case, though. They were being picked off pretty methodically, and if you could pick them out of a crowd, though, then things became more complicated. Not just in general, either, but for him specifically. Until he got his experience a little more under control, he was going to have to keep an eye out for them.


    That thought was enough to make him wonder if he might have died to any of these assholes in the past without knowing it. It was impossible to say, though.


    When they talked about the nature of looking at people¡¯s auras, both of them pointed out that even non-warlocks could swirl with shadows if they¡¯d done enough bad things in their lives. Aaric actually argued that it wasn¡¯t even the magic that tainted the aura but the terrible things they did with it that probably caused the problems, but Carelyn disagreed and argued that every use of magic tainted the soul; she argued that was the only way to argue what happened with the Whisperers, but she did not elaborate.


    Both of them explained that Simon looked like a run-of-the-mill criminal or lifelong soldier rather than a warlock of tremendous power. That was cold comfort to him, of course, but the young man delivered that information like it was supposed to be good news. He, however, was not about to celebrate the idea that he looked like a guy who¡¯d only done bad things, not unspeakable things.


    Simon¡¯s thoughts continued to war and swirl until sleep finally took him. In the morning, he was pleased to find that he was neither dead nor bound and gagged. Instead, the two lovebirds were trying to decide where to go to next. Simon volunteered to stay with them a while longer. Truthfully, he was willing to stay with them all the way to Abrese if they wanted, but he could see in Aaric¡¯s strained smile that he would be grateful if Simon didn¡¯t outstay his welcome.


    That was fine. None of them had any food, so they got on the road quickly and stayed there until they¡¯d taken a wide path around the village of Esmiran. They didn¡¯t stop until almost dinner when they found a large farmstead down the road that was willing to share their table with some strangers for a few coppers.


    That song and dance was repeated for a couple nights, and it wasn¡¯t until they reached a village even smaller than Esmiran that they were able to resupply properly. Simon bought everything he thought the two would need that was actually available and even traced them a small map from his mirror so they would have the best chance at reaching their destination. Abrese wasn¡¯t the worst choice, and he didn¡¯t try to talk them out of it.


    The closest he came to that was pointing out that two star-crossed lovers might not be able to blend into the crowds as much as they would like if the Unspoken could just pick them out at random. They were smart kids but apparently hadn¡¯t thought of that. So, he gave them enough silver to book passage from there to somewhere even farther away if it came to it.


    ¡°Thank you for everything. I mean it.¡± Aaric said on their last night together. ¡°We wouldn¡¯t be standing here today if not for you.¡±


    Simon just nodded as he looked up and studied the two of them. ¡°You¡¯re a good kid. You¡¯ll do fine. You both will.¡±Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    He looked like he was about to say something when Carelyn spoke over him. ¡°Why haven¡¯t you stolen out souls yet? Why? Is this some sick game to you?¡±


    ¡°Carelyn,¡± Aaric sighed. ¡°With everything else they lied about, don¡¯t you think that¡ª¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she shouted over him as the three of them sat around that campfire. ¡°I have seen it before. My own uncle had his soul stolen. You know this! They found his body shriveled and¡­¡±


    She trailed off as the emotion swelled within her, and Simon gave her a moment before he answered. ¡°I know the spell you speak of,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s a hideous thing. Perhaps even the most hideous thing I know how to do, but it¡¯s definitely real. It doesn¡¯t steal your soul, though, just your life.¡±


    ¡°Just your life? Just your life?!¡± she asked with growing outrage.


    Simon let her blow up a little at him before he said, ¡°A poor choice of words. It drains you, never mind how, and uses you to fuel other dark magics. There¡¯s nothing more despicable than that.¡±


    While Simon generally agreed with that, he wouldn¡¯t mind using it himself, in moderation at least. As things stood now, though, until he mitigated that terrible addictive effect, there was no way that moderation would stay moderated for very long. Even if he hadn¡¯t been fairly certain that the trip from well-intentioned hero to maniacal sorcerer king was a short one, the appearance of dark Simon had hammered that point home.


    In the morning, they both went their separate ways. Simon watched them move south as he turned around and headed back the way he came. A day out from Esmiranhe encountered a group of riders, including a few wearing white cloaks, making him swear softly; he thought about turning and running but decided that they might simply ride by him if he stayed calm.


    Unfortunately, that was not the case, though, and they pulled up around him. At first, Simon thought he was going to have to fight his way out, but that wasn¡¯t how it played out. Instead, they pulled up short, and everyone¡¯s swords stayed in their sheathes as they started to ask him questions. Who was he? Where was he going? Had he seen a group of either two or three people, including a pretty young woman?


    To the latter, Simon played dumb, and to the former, he pretended to be an out-of-work mercenary since he didn¡¯t have the equipment on him to go with his normal healer act. ¡°Two or three riders headed south? I¡¯ve seen plenty of those,¡± he answered with a shrug. ¡°Can¡¯t say I remember any of them, though. A pretty young woman, though? Her, I¡¯d remember. I ain¡¯t seen one of those in ages. I¡¯m available to help join the search if you¡¯re payin¡¯, though¡­¡±


    ¡°We have enough warriors, old man,¡± the lead rider said as he spurred his horse to move past Simon. ¡°If you see her, remember, we¡¯re paying well for that information.¡±


    ¡°Who¡¯s we?¡± Simon asked, genuinely curious how they would answer. He didn¡¯t find out, though. Whether they hadn¡¯t heard him or they were being intentionally mysterious, they started riding south once they decided that he couldn¡¯t be of any help to them.


    Simon didn¡¯t see any other riders for the rest of the day or in any of the days that followed before he reached Esmiran. When he arrived in that village, he restocked a few of his supplies but avoided the inn. Instead, he went straight to the blacksmith shop to see what had become of his armor.


    ¡°You¡¯ve got some balls on you to come back after all that,¡± the Haadon said, looking at Simon scornfully as he entered the wooden shack and closed the door behind him.


    ¡°Well, at least now I know that you didn¡¯t give it to the Unspoken,¡± Simon said, deciding that acting tough was the right play given the look of fear that the smith was trying hard to hide.


    ¡°Don¡¯t say that name in here; it¡¯s bad luck,¡± the smith chided him. ¡°Anyway, you don¡¯t know what I did or didn¡¯t do with what. I¡¯d give those men everything I had on you if their gaze turned on me.¡±


    ¡°You would,¡± Simon agreed, looking around. ¡°But you didn¡¯t because you knew it wouldn¡¯t save you. You know they¡¯d burn you just for consorting with my type, so you hid it.¡±


    ¡°Threw it in the pond is more like,¡± Haadon said, swallowing hard. ¡°That way, it wouldn¡¯t hurt anyone else.¡±


    ¡°That would have been the smart thing to do,¡± Simon answered, ¡°But we both know you hid it in here. You had to. You couldn¡¯t take it outside, and you were afraid I¡¯d be angry with you if you tossed it. So you hid it to avoid the white cloaks and placate me in case I came back.¡±


    ¡°You sound awfully sure of that,¡± the smith answered, trying to sound tough, but the quaver in his voice gave him away.


    ¡°I am sure,¡± Simon said, noting some freshly compacted earth on the hovel¡¯s dirt floor. ¡°It¡¯s buried right there, and you¡¯re going to have your apprentice dig it up, or there¡¯s going to be hell to pay.¡±


    There was no more talking back after that. The man gave in, and as he and his apprentice dug, Simon noticed that the fragile resistance that the smith had shown before was entirely gone. Simon hadn¡¯t done anything to either of them nor even threatened them, but their fear was plain to see now. He wasn¡¯t sure how he felt about wielding fear so casually, but as his plate mail started to resurface, he decided that it was probably the best he could do in this case.


    The armor itself was still a long way from being pretty, but the lava had been removed, and the worst of the dents had been hammered out. The straps had even been replaced, though clumsily so. The only thing that didn¡¯t work was that the runes on the left leg weren¡¯t yet reconnected to the structure due to a badly mangled section.


    That wasn¡¯t going to be enough to stop him, though. Haadon gave his excuses and offered to keep working on it after the white cloaks were gone for good, but Simon decided that he didn¡¯t want to wait that long. Instead, he wore it as it was, and once he verified he could move well, he paid the men the rest of the agreed-upon price before he strolled outside.


    Then, without a word of explanation, and carrying little with him besides his sword, coin purse and water skin, Simon walked over to the well, dressed all in plate mail, and threw himself over the edge into the waters below.

 Ch. 165 - Wasted Effort

    Simon splashed down in the water, confident that he wouldn¡¯t drown. He didn¡¯t, either. The portal opened beneath him and spat him out almost immediately. Last time, it had reminded him, somewhat uncomfortably, of a flushing toilet, but this time, it was more violent than that, and it took him a moment to figure out why that was the case, though, as he was flung sideways like a rag doll while water splashed around him.


    As he sat there on the dirt path, it came together a piece at a time. He had fallen through a vertical portal but came out of a horizontal portal, causing his trajectory to change ninety degrees as his momentum remained unchanged.


    ¡°Let¡¯s not have any more doors like this, please,¡± he muttered to himself as he dusted himself off and looked at the opening he¡¯d emerged from.


    He was disappointed immediately. He¡¯d hoped that because he¡¯d already slain the ogre, this portal would dump him much closer to his objective than he had been the last time. That wasn¡¯t the case, though, which meant that the cave he could see was the portal from the last level and that whatever lay inside wasn¡¯t an ogre.


    ¡°Because, of course, it isn¡¯t,¡± he grumbled as he started walking.


    The last time he¡¯d come, he was beaten and exhausted, but he was younger, too, and he wasn¡¯t wearing 40 pounds of steel. All these factors made it a toss-up, and after less than an hour of hiking, he was already sucking wind.


    I¡¯m not in a hurry, not yet anyway, he tried to tell himself as he struggled to remember just how long he had. He was pretty sure he slept the night there, and the inn wasn¡¯t burned down until the following day. That gave him a day, and he was fairly sure, and though he didn¡¯t have an exact measurement, he was fairly sure that he only had eight or ten miles to go.


    ¡°But why does this portal start me so far from my goal?¡± he wondered aloud to himself.


    That was what he chewed on as he walked. Though there were a few levels he could think of like that, there weren¡¯t many. The village was an awful long way from where he started in the goblin level, for instance.


    ¡°But I never really proved that place was the point,¡± he told himself. ¡°Honestly, it probably isn¡¯t. The point of a level doesn¡¯t seem to be after the exit.¡±


    In this case, he didn¡¯t know where the exit was, so he couldn¡¯t say for sure that he was here to kill a dragon, but it seemed pretty damn likely. ¡°It would be pretty funny if I was here, so close to the dragon, but that wasn¡¯t the point,¡± he joked to himself.


    That thought was almost enough to make Simon double back and check that cave, but he resisted the urge. Not only was he unwilling to add a couple extra miles to his trip. He also decided it was unlikely that the exit portal would be the way he was supposed to go. He hadn¡¯t yet found an example of that on any of the levels he¡¯d been on so far.


    Still, as the day wore on, things weren¡¯t as bad as he feared they would be. That was only because he had a subtle form of air conditioning built into his armor. Though the weight was still oppressive, he wasn¡¯t roasted by the sun like he expected. Instead, when the metal got hot enough, it activated the runes he¡¯d built for harvesting the heat of the volcano and started to cool him off.


    This took him quite a while to discover because, until that point, he¡¯d been trying to walk in the shade as much as he could, but once he started walking in the sunlight, things cooled off nicely. Simon had been thinking about reworking the whole concept because of the unfortunate freezer burn the last encounter had caused, but given the mild heat, it actually worked quite nicely. It wasn¡¯t enough to make him feel cold or anything, but it kept the heat of the day at bay.


    Periodically, on his rest breaks, Simon would talk to the mirror that he produced from his now much-depleted coin purse. For a while, this was just to tell it everything that had happened in case he needed to remember it in the future. Eventually, though, he went back to asking it questions and trying to understand his current rate of experience decay.


    It couldn¡¯t offer him any concrete numbers in terms of how much life he¡¯d burned with magic or how much life he had left, but for experience, at least, that was easier to study.


    When he asked it what his current total was, it promptly showed, ¡®Experience Points: -534,319¡¯. He hadn¡¯t done any day-by-day calculations in a long time, but rough calculations made that feel about right. He averaged a hundred-plus experience a day, and it had been a few years since he¡¯d started this study in Ionar. So, everything seemed to more or less lineup. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    It still wasn¡¯t anywhere close to even, but he was halfway to the finish line and well under the minus one million number that had so terrified the few people who could see his aura up until this point.


    ¡°I wonder what it''s going to look like when it gets into the positives?¡± he asked himself. He wished he could see it for himself at that moment. It might make something interesting to paint.


    The mirror responded, ¡®I¡¯m sorry, I don¡¯t understand the question,¡¯ but he just ignored it.


    Simon spent the whole day walking, and by sunset, he still wasn¡¯t at his destination, but at least he could see it in the distance, where the road turned slightly up to the right and went into the valley beyond. He was only a few more hours away, and despite how exhausted he felt, he knew he would make it in time.


    That was when he heard the roar. It echoed through the whole of the valley above him, then down the mountainside to him. That was when Simon saw his first dragon soaring near a peak.


    ¡°No, no, this isn¡¯t supposed to be happening,¡± he told himself, ¡°Not yet!¡±


    The distant reptile ignored his words, though, and flew down into the valley. It dipped out of sight in that moment, but the wall of fire it unleashed momentarily became a second sunset as the valley was filled with flames.


    Simon¡¯s mind warred between the sadness of all the people who must have died in the firestorm and the memory of having been in it the last time for a moment. Those thoughts were lost, though, when it pulled up and out of the valley. The image he saw then was one that would be burned into his mind forever.


    The dragon didn¡¯t pass close to him, and certainly not close enough for him to try a spell, but even from this distance, it was clear that it was many times larger than the wyvern he¡¯d brought down before. This wasn¡¯t a beast. It was a force of nature, and its giant body covered in scales of tarnished bronze glittered red in the firelight as it soared skyward once more.


    After that, it circled twice and then turned and started flying back toward the mountain. By then, though, Simon was already stripping his armor off, a piece at a time, and tossing it aside into the bushes. He needed to get there to help anyone who could might still be helped. Dragon slaying could wait for later.


    Though his heart was in the right spot, he was already halfway to exhausted, and though suddenly weighing less made it easier, by the time he got to the village, though, there were only scattered fires and ashes.


    Simon looked around and found a few bodies, but strangely, he didn¡¯t find the caravan of dragon slayers he had expected to find up here, devastated along with everyone else. ¡°Did I do something to screw up the whole timeline?¡± he wondered aloud.


    That was certainly possible. He¡¯d changed an awful lot of things since he was here last, but he wasn¡¯t sure what he was supposed to do now. Was he still supposed to kill the dragon? Was he supposed to find that dragon slayer? Was he supposed to slay the dragon alone?


    At night, in the dark, there wasn¡¯t a lot he could do. It wasn¡¯t until most of the wildfires had winked out, and he saw a cluster of campfires higher up on one of the mountains, that he thought that was his best lead.


    ¡°It might just be trappers,¡± he told himself as he started hiking in that direction. ¡°It might be nothing related to you.¡±


    Even as he went, though, he knew he was right. He was pretty sure this was the way to the peak they¡¯d mentioned before. Scribes peak? Quill peak? He couldn¡¯t remember the name, only that it looked kind of like the tip of a quill jutting up against the sky and was supposedly where the dragon¡¯s lair was. If there were survivors in that direction, then they were part of all this.


    Finding them was easier said than done, though. He quickly lost sight of the fires as he started climbing that slope, and it took him ages to find the path higher in the dark. Still, he persevered and eventually heard the wagons he¡¯d expected to find last night as dawn approached.


    When he finally caught up to the long wagon train winding its way up the mountain and warned the first teamster that the village had been burned to the ground and that they were all in danger, the man just laughed. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t worry about that, none,¡± he answered, apparently not even a little bothered by the news. ¡°Sir Anias has probably already slain the beast.¡±


    ¡°Slain it?¡± Simon asked, stunned. ¡°Weren¡¯t you listening to me? Didn¡¯t you see it fly overhead a few hours ago? That monster is anything but dead.¡±


    The wagon driver just chuckled at that and said, ¡°That was then. It had its fun, but that time has passed.¡±


    This guy wasn¡¯t making any sense to Simon, so he left him behind and kept going up. Periodically, he would find another wagon. Sometimes, he would even chat with the man driving it up the long, winding road before he left them behind.


    Very slowly, a picture of what had happened came together. The man in charge of this outfit had killed a couple of dragons in his life, though none as large as Icefang. That much he already knew. What Simon hadn¡¯t known until this series of conversations was that it wasn¡¯t anything approaching honorable battle. Instead, he would trick the dragon out of its cave and then set a trap for it so that when it returned, they didn¡¯t have a chance.


    No one seemed to know what this trap was. Some thought it was just a clever ambush, while others were fairly sure that it involved dark powers or a pact with a demon. It wasn¡¯t their department, though. All of these people had apparently been hired to cart off the dragon¡¯s hoard, except for a single group of hunters who said they¡¯d come along to help butcher the giant thing.


    The whole thing boggled Simon''s mind. Both that this was something that was actually happening and that it was something he apparently needed to be here for. The whole thing felt like a big waste of his time, but he wouldn¡¯t really be able to say for sure until he reached the mountain peak and saw for himself.

 Ch. 166 - Bloodbath

    Simon didn¡¯t arrive near the top of the peak by dawn, and by then, he was completely spent. He¡¯d been up for more than a day, counting the ride back to the smith, and half of that time was spent walking around in full plate, which had not been one of his better ideas.


    So, rather than keep going, he found a patch of grass off the beaten path before the treeline and passed out to grab a short nap. His sleep was fitful, and he woke up many times, but by noon, he could no longer sleep, even in the shade. Instead, he got up and kept going.


    It turned out that he didn¡¯t have far to go. He realized that as soon as he saw many of the wagons parked next to each other near the top. A few minutes later, he noticed the giant cave entrance, which led into the creature¡¯s lair, and right after that, he saw the dead dragon lying there.


    It was an awful sight, made even worse by the awesome nature of the beast he¡¯d seen the night before. Even lying on its side, dead to the world, the giant corpse would have covered a football field. From nose to tail, it might even be longer. He wasn¡¯t sure. He couldn¡¯t see too well from here.


    What he could see was that it was impossible to see how the dragon had died now because they¡¯d already carved away too much of the corpse. At first, he didn¡¯t really understand what they were doing and why they were using tools more appropriate to felling a tree than butchering a corpse, but then he saw the way they were carefully slicing away the scaled skin and pulling out the teeth and horns. Then, it all made sense. That stuff was probably worth as much as the glittering hoard he could see in the distance.


    Beyond that, though, everything was blood. Blood flowed out of the giant open wounds that these men were carving into it. It was splattered on the walls, sprayed across the treasure, and pooled on the floors so high that the men in boots waded in it up to their ankles. It had been a giant among mortals, but now it was just a giant mess, and lines of men were gathering it up and buckets and then walking out to the edge of a cliff where they were dumping it out.


    As he passed the line of wagons and approached the entrance, one of the men with an air of authority yelled at him. ¡°We aren¡¯t paying you to stand around, old man. If you want a piece of this, get to work. That blood won¡¯t get itself out of there!¡±


    For a moment, the urge to kill the man was strong, just because of the bloody nature of the scene. He resisted, though. If these guys thought he was just another hand, well, there wasn¡¯t a better disguise to get close to things that he could think of, so he went with it.


    Simon spent the next few hours doing exactly what everyone else was doing: dumping the blood of the dragon into the valley below. As the day wore on, a giant flock of carrion feeders gathered above them, making the whole scene even stranger.


    Simon was determined not to be distracted by any of that, though. Instead, he kept his ears open and learned everything he could about what had happened here. People talked freely about it, of course. They talked about how much they were going to get paid and how cool it was that the job was already done. They even talked about how the dragon wasn¡¯t nearly as tough as they thought it would be, and when Simon let them know that the village was no more, his fellow workers shrugged it off. ¡°Just the price of doing business,¡± someone said. ¡°Better them than me,¡± another added.


    He was disgusted by those responses, of course, but he tried not to let it show. Instead, he kept his head down and learned, especially about their leader. There was no mystery why Sir Anias was called the Red Knight now. The man had practically bathed in blood. According to some people, he¡¯d slain dozens of dragons, and according to others, it was only his second or third one.


    Simon wasn¡¯t even aware that there were dozens of dragons in the whole world. He¡¯d heard a few stories of them before, and he¡¯d heard a few bards sing about them. Even after he¡¯d read some detailed accounts while searching for information about the Blackheart, he¡¯d consigned them to myth more than a real threat he might have to face one day. He wasn¡¯t sure exactly how he was supposed to face something so huge, though, or for that matter, how the Red Knight had done it.


    Sir Anias didn¡¯t answer that question directly, even though several people asked him in earshot of Simon over the course of the day. He''d even caught the man''s eye once; he''d given Simon a weird look but said nothing to him. Every time, all he would do was simply stand there, strike a pose, and say something like, ¡°Everything has a weakness; you just need to know where to look for it,¡± which was less than useless.


    While Simon did all this, gallon by gallon and bucket by bucket, the floor was returned to something close to dry. After it was merely sticky and slimy with the occasional puddle, some of the men switched to something even worse: hauling off slabs of flesh that that were in the way of gathering the valuable scales and treasure. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    Some of these were set on skewers for the feast that had been planned tonight, but the rest were dumped off the cliffside one at a time. That part was much harder work than the blood and the way that the thing''s dead, milky eye looked at his as he did so made Simon feel like a grave robber more than anything.


    That night, they ate well, and the Dragonslayer promised every man they¡¯d receive more than their contracted share. ¡°This bitch had more coin than I ever thought possible. It might take two trips just to get it all down the mountain!¡±


    A wave of cheers went up at that, and the admonishments that ¡°Anyone caught thieving would be thrown off the cliff with the rest of the useless meat did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm.¡±


    Simon had no enthusiasm, though. He had some of the charred meat just to taste dragon. It was pretty good, and the fact that he¡¯d definitely worked up a hunger with all the hard work over the last couple of days made it even better. Mythological barbecue had never been on his bucket list, but some part of him enjoyed it.


    The taste was largely spoiled for him because of the attitude of the people he was surrounded by. This way of treating such a majestic creature like an industrial strip mining operation left him picking listlessly at his meal. It just didn¡¯t feel right.


    That night, he slept like the dead, and in the morning, they repeated the previous day all over again. This time, they weren¡¯t hauling blood and meat, though, so much as gold and silver. The dragon¡¯s hoard contained many strange objects. This wasn¡¯t limited to decaying chests or gems as large as his fist, either. There were weapons scattered around, along with other items that obviously had magical properties.


    Simon dearly wanted to study those, but when he saw the men destroying the most obvious examples of such priceless artifacts, he knew he¡¯d get treated the same way. I¡¯ll just have to find a way to get at those next time, he thought to himself.


    Of course, that thought led to others, and soon, he was wondering if he didn¡¯t have to save the town or kill the dragon at all. Perhaps I just need one of these pieces of treasure for a future level, he thought to himself. Which one exactly, though, was a complete mystery.


    It wasn¡¯t even a mystery he could really solve, not until later levels. He had no firm evidence for this, of course, but he was pretty sure the slime was put there for the zombie level, and the death knight was in front of the volcano level for a reason. He wasn¡¯t about to waste a question to Helades confirming it, but he was sure enough. If that was the case, then whatever was on the next level might well be solved by something in this room.


    The vultures he was working with didn¡¯t seem particularly interested in any of that, though. They just wanted to break anything they were afraid of and melt down the pieces for the gold they contained, and as far as Simon was concerned, that was like burning hundred-dollar bills to get a few pennies out of the deal.


    He did his best to ignore that, though, and focused on the task at hand: carrying gold coins out, one bucket at a time. He might have done that all day if one of the men working nearby had not said, ¡°What the hell?¡± making him stop what he was doing and look over.


    The other man¡¯s dark, scraggly beard almost entirely hid his look of shock, but Simon could see the whites of his eyes clearly enough to know that something in the chest he¡¯d just opened up had spooked him. ¡°What is it?¡± Simon asked, trying not to seem too interested. ¡°More evil magic? Human remains?¡±


    ¡°Nuh-uh,¡± the man said with a shake of his head as he stepped back and gestured at it. ¡°It¡¯s none of that shite. It¡¯s a road or something¡­ I think¡­¡±


    This piqued Simon¡¯s interest, and he looked and found it was indeed a muddy-looking road on a drizzly day, with a forest in the distance. He didn¡¯t recognize the area specifically, but it was definitely somewhere in the north. There were a few crates scattered around in view, but otherwise, there was nothing visible to give any clues as to what might be going on there. One thing was for sure, though, Simon had found the gate to the next level.


    The fact that it was in the Dragon¡¯s Hoard seemed less than ideal. What if I need to use it again? He wondered. What if this big beasty is alive next time?


    Still, he wasn¡¯t about to hesitate now. He had a lot more questions about this level, but he was fairly certain that he could get the answer to some things on the next level and make his next trip here more productive. So Simon said, ¡°Wow, that is crazy. You better go get the boss to take a look at this,¡± as he closed the lid. ¡°I¡¯ll stay here to make sure no one tries to mess with it.¡±


    The bearded man squinted at him for a moment as he searched for some ulterior motive, but when he couldn¡¯t find one, he just said, ¡°That¡¯s right. Don¡¯t want you stealing my credit for finding this!¡±


    The man waddled off, looking quite pleased with himself, and Simon waited until he was far enough away that he couldn¡¯t intervene. Then he opened the chest back up, shoved a handful of gold in his pocket, and grabbed the closest sword before he dove through and slammed the lid shut behind him.


    Yesterday, Simon had vanished down a well in full view of everyone, and today, it was an ancient treasure chest. I need to stop making this a habit, he thought with a smile.

 Ch. 167 - Down on Their Luck

    Simon crawled into a chest, and as he crawled out of the other side, he realized that was exactly what he¡¯d crawled out of as well. That was weird enough, but he was somewhat reassured to see that it wasn¡¯t the same chest. That might have meant that there was some other magic at play.


    Going down the wrong path like that would be kind of funny, he thought as he slowly got to his feet and stretched his aching back. Even if it would kill the run.


    The chest in the dragon¡¯s lair had been a weighty, ancient thing with rusted steel banding. It had been built to hold something valuable, like golden jewelry or religious artifacts. The one he climbed out of, on the other hand, was a flimsier thing, made for books or bolts of cloth; it didn¡¯t even have a lock on it.


    Simon looked down to the unfamiliar blade in his hand and studied the red leather scabbard. The thing was crisscrossed in gilt lines, and though most of the gems that decorated it were missing, it was easy to see that this saber had belonged to someone very rich or important. The thing was fancy enough that he almost pulled the slightly curving blade from its sheath to see if it was magical. It was only then that he realized he wasn¡¯t alone.


    The light fall of rain had dulled all other sounds, but a word cut through the gloomy afternoon when someone yelled, ¡°Heave!¡±


    Simon whirled around and understood a lot more about the scene. He¡¯d noticed the chest and a few of the crates next to it, but now that he¡¯d turned fully around, he could see that they weren¡¯t alone. Someone had emptied an entire wagon, and now the people who had done so were trying to push it out of where its wheels had gotten in the thick mud.


    I was summoned to this level to help people get their wagon unstuck? Simon thought, smirking as he studied the group. It seemed pretty ingenious, but he supposed that history turned on such things. He¡¯d been hoping for a beast, but this, at least, was straightforward.


    The group didn¡¯t seem dangerous. On the contrary, they seemed almost helpless. Two wagons drawn by oxen had been pulled forward quite a ways, and everyone from those wagons was trying to get this one unstuck. The only people still inside the thing were the driver and a woman with her child.


    Simon wondered if they were merchants, but as he looked past them, he decided that they were probably refugees. The surrounding countryside was in rough shape. The fields had been planted but never harvested, and the village passed, which had mostly been burned down.


    For a moment, Simon had second thoughts as to whether this group, or whatever villagers remained over there, were his priority, but he decided that didn¡¯t matter. First, I can help these people get moving, and then I can check out over there. There¡¯s no hurry. He¡¯d long since learned that rushing new levels wasn¡¯t a very good idea.


    He almost moved to join them, but when he looked down at himself, he realized. He realized he was still half covered in blood and quickly ducked. When no one screamed, after he waited for a few seconds, he started scrubbing himself in mud to cover the bloodstains that reached his knees. He¡¯d been slaughtering a dragon for the best part of a day, and he certainly looked the part.


    ¡°Put you¡¯re back into men!¡± the same voice called out again. ¡°We¡¯ve got miles to go before dark. This is the last place should be spenden¡¯ the night!¡±


    Simon ignored their efforts and focused on getting himself as dirty as possible. A few moments later, he no longer looked like a blood-soaked maniac. Instead, he merely looked homeless and downtrodden, which he saw as a serious improvement. Then he belted on the sword and walked over to help them out.


    When he approached the group, no one noticed him right away. But when he got close enough, it raised sudden shouts of alarm, and several men put their hands on their hilts. Simon made no sudden moves. He didn¡¯t need to. No one in this group was a trained warrior. They were out-of-work tradesmen and men too young to grow beards. He could take all of them at once without a single spell.


    ¡°Who are you?¡± the man who had been calling time for those who were pushing and pulling on the stuck wagon. He was the most imposing of the lot, with a barrel chest and a loud voice that was used to being obeyed. He was also unarmed.


    ¡°Just a traveler on the road, same as you,¡± he said calmly. ¡°It looked like you could use some help.¡±


    ¡°We can¡¯t pay,¡± the man snapped, even as other people in the group looked at him with more gratitude. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    ¡°Who can in these times,¡± Simon answered with a shrug. Normally, he would have left it there, but he could see these people were still unreasonably paranoid. He couldn¡¯t say why, but if he wanted them to trust him even a little, being selfless wasn¡¯t the way to go. ¡°I¡¯d take a ride to the next town, though, assuming we get it unstuck. How''s that?¡±


    A few of the men conferred for a moment, and after a little yelling, they decided to let Simon help them, though several people grumbled about what good he could possibly do. Simon ignored those. He knew he couldn¡¯t push this thing out of the mud. He did know they were doing it wrong, though.


    This group was pushing it as hard as they could and then giving up, each time, it would slide forward slightly and then slide back again into the same ruts. It was a complete waste of time, and after doing that two more times, they let him try it his way. So, one small push at a time, he got them synched up until they were rocking the thing back and forth. After that, it was just a matter of seconds before the whole thing gave, and the wagon moved forward once more.


    It got stuck twice more in the broad puddle before it escaped immediately, but a few minutes later, it was stopped on dry ground and the top of the small hill, and everyone else was busy loading it back up with all the goods that had been removed. The more Simon studied those goods, the more he decided they were refugees, and the less he thought they were traders.


    He struck up a conversation with some of them, and slowly, the picture started to come together. As expected, he was back in Brin, not so far from the capital, as it turned out. He was unsurprised to find out that there was another war for succession taking place, though this time at least it wasn¡¯t between the prince and a duke, but between the prince and confederation of southern barons and counts that thought they were being mistreated.


    ¡°Sounds complicated,¡± Simon remarked, not completely feigning his disinterest.


    It was important stuff, and he should know it, but in this rain, it was all he could do to cope with the idea that no matter how many times he tried to make peace rein in Brin, war returned. It was a constant problem.


    That made him reflect on what it was Helades had planned with her elaborate path. He had no idea how anything could lead to peace in a land like this.


    Gradually, the topic turned from the broader conflict and who was usurping the rights of whom into the more specific horrors of where they were at currently. ¡°You keep gabbin¡¯ about who¡¯s owed what instead of getting a move on, and the bandits are sure to settle that question for you come nightfall,¡± the presumptive leader growled. ¡°The sooner we cross the river and head north, the better I¡¯m liable to feel.¡±


    Simon understood his point. In hard times, the only things that proliferated were rats and bandits, which weren¡¯t much more than rats in human form, according to some. He¡¯d tried to show them mercy in the past because he knew most of them would become decent human beings again when whatever troubles had caused their situation were past. He¡¯d even paid a few for expediency. These days, he felt more inclined to end them on sight, but flashbacks of that awful version of himself he¡¯d seen so recently kept him on his best behavior.


    When it was all said and done, Simon took a spot on the damp buckboard near the driver. It didn¡¯t shield him from the rain, but there was no more room in the back with everyone else. That suited him fine.


    I still have some gold, he thought to himself. When we get where we¡¯re going, I¡¯ll get some hot wine and a warm bath and chase the chill away. Where they were going - that was an open question, as it turned out.


    ¡°It ain¡¯t been decided,¡± ultimately, the gray-bearded driver confessed. ¡°Away, that¡¯s all we know for now. To somewhere in Duke Brin¡¯s lands. The late King¡¯s nephews have stayed entirely out of this war, and they¡¯re strong enough to maintain the peace in at least that small corner of the world.¡±


    ¡°Well, if things fall apart, we can always go west and keep on going until we get to Schwarzenbruck,¡± Simon answered with a laugh, suddenly grateful that he hadn¡¯t killed the Duke in the final version of that conflict so long ago. The man was a scumbag, but had he done so, it was likely he would have made this level that much worse.


    That sparked an idea in Simon¡¯s mind, and he started to go down the rabbit hole of exactly what might be influencing what when the driver next to him shot him a dark look. ¡°Don¡¯t even joke about that place. Its very name is cursed.¡±


    That¡¯s a bit of a strong reaction, Simon thought, taken aback. He let the topic shift back to the roads and the weather, which seemed to be the driver¡¯s favorite things to complain about, but he definitely planned to revisit that topic later if he got the chance.


    He never did, though. As the sun started to set, not long after that, one of the members of the wagon ahead of them whistled and gestured to the right. He and the driver turned to look but initially saw nothing. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, though, he saw motion in the ruined village, armed motion. There were almost a dozen of them that Simon could see spreading out near the edge of the village; some had swords, and others had bows, but all were armed.


    The road that they were on was a windy one, and the bridge was only just visible in the distance, but with overloaded wagons and tired oxen, it wasn¡¯t like they could just drop the hammer and outrun whoever was approaching them. No, they had to follow the road, which meant they¡¯d get even closer to these assholes before they got further away.


    ¡°Guess I didn¡¯t get you guys unstuck fast enough,¡± Simon thought with a sigh.


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± the driver asked, looking at him nervously.


    ¡°I¡¯m saying, this is my stop,¡± Simon said, hopping off the side of the wagon and walking out into the field. ¡°Drive safe. I¡¯ll do what I can.

 Ch. 168 - Not so Tough

    ¡°What are you doing,¡± the driver hissed. ¡°They¡¯ll kill you.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯ll certainly try,¡± Simon said, too quietly for the other man to hear, as he trudged off the muddy roads and into the wilted fields.


    Simon noted that despite the concern in his voice, he didn¡¯t stop the wagon. That was smart. Risking getting stuck a second time at this moment would be the dumbest thing anyone could do. He wasn¡¯t worried about that, though; the men in that wagon didn¡¯t seem especially inclined toward selfless acts.


    When he walked through the field, his traction got much better immediately as he stomped across the grains that should have long since been locked away in the granary. The strangers didn¡¯t come out to meet him, though, until he was almost to the village. Instead, they moved away from him and toward the road.


    Simon shook his head at that. ¡°Fight me, not them,¡± he growled to himself.


    He knew he¡¯d have to use magic in this fight, but he was trying to hold off as long as he could. He wasn¡¯t as young as he used to be.


    When one of the ragged looking men stepped out to meet him, Simon¡¯s appraisal of the situation changed. These weren¡¯t bandits, they were deserters. That made them an order of magnitude more dangerous. Still, he kept his hand off his sword for now, but only because it would invite trouble that much faster.


    ¡°Where are your friends off to, old man?¡± the soldier nearest to him called out as he approached them. No one was afraid of Simon, and no bows were pointed in his direction. Most of those were with the group that had set up a ways off to deal with the caravan. They were waiting for some order, though, and for now, they just stood there.


    ¡°Those poor bastards?¡± Simon asked, trying diplomacy. ¡°They were just giving me a ride. I wouldn¡¯t worry too much about them. They¡¯re just skin and bone like the rest of us.¡±


    ¡°I dunno,¡± the man said with a scowl, ¡°Even a skinny ox will still feed us for days. We¡¯re the King''s men and at liberty to scavenge whatever supplies we need to continue the fight. Now, hand over your coin purse, and we¡¯ll let you off with a warning.¡±


    ¡°If I give you my purse while you spare the caravan, Simon asked?¡± He didn¡¯t care too much about his gold at this point, but it was probably worth more than anything that group had. It would have been a good deal for everyone. The caravan would go free, the deserters would get paid, and Simon wouldn¡¯t have to waste any more magic. Sadly, he didn¡¯t think this guy was smart enough to go for it.


    ¡°Why would I do that when I have archers?¡± the deserter asked. With a whistle, he pointed at them, and they started to draw arrows. ¡°See - men like us, we can do two things at once. Now, hand it over before I take it.¡±


    ¡°Yes, but what if you don¡¯t have archers?¡± Simon asked.


    The man¡¯s face twisted into a look of confusion, and he took a moment to enjoy it before he pointed and said, ¡°Dnarth Vrazig.¡±


    Distant lightning wasn¡¯t a spell he used a lot anymore, but it never disappointed and came down from the sky like a bolt from the blue, killing one man immediately before jumping to one or two others. Simon didn¡¯t know if they would live or not, but the damage was done, and their shot was spoiled as suddenly everything came into chaos.


    ¡°Shit, he¡¯s a warlock,¡± the deserter said, taking several steps backward as he fumbled with his sword. ¡°He¡¯s a¡ª¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t let him get away, though, and matched him step for step, drawing his blade. There was no fear in him to slow him down, though, and he beat the other man for a draw, stabbing his sword through the other man¡¯s chest before he could draw his own sword and parry.


    No, that wasn¡¯t quite right, Simon realized as the man stumbled backward and onto the ground. He had brought his sword up in time, but Simon¡¯s blade had cut right through it so easily that he hadn¡¯t even noticed the resistance. That surprise was matched when he realized that he¡¯d gone right through the man¡¯s chain mail just as easily.


    ¡°Woah,¡± Simon gasped in surprise, ¡°What in the hell is this?¡±


    He looked down at the blade for a moment. He had no time to study it in any detail now that the alarm had been sounded and people were moving on him, but he felt an overwhelming desire to do so just the same.


    The blade¡¯s scabbard had seen better days, but the weapon itself gleamed. He wasn¡¯t even sure it was steel. There wasn¡¯t a spot of rust on it, and the lines and runes that had been carved on it were clear and bright. No, they¡¯re more than bright, he realized. There¡¯s no light to reflect in this gloom. They¡¯re glowing.


    At a glance, Simon didn¡¯t recognize any new words of power. There was no word of vorpal or laser sword, but there was definitely more to learn once the fighting was done. Now, he had to turn to fight the other men who were running at him, and Simon turned to face them as the gleaming blue-gray lines shone across his magic sword. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    The first parry he made with the blade was almost his last, as it turned out. That wasn¡¯t overconfidence or anything, not really. Instead, as he raised his blade to parry the overhand chop, he sliced right through the blade again, and the solider that he was fighting thrust the blade further in, taking advantage of the unexpected opening and striking a glancing blow that deflected painfully off of several ribs.


    Simon grunted in pain as he took the man¡¯s head. If that warrior had been much better, he would certainly be dead by now. He considered using a healing spell, but he could still move well enough and didn¡¯t want to be distracted while two more men drove toward him.


    This time, he didn¡¯t parry with the edge. He used the side of the blade to block the blow of the first man¡¯s broadsword before he cleaved off the arm that was wielding it with the counterstrike. While he tried to process what had just happened, the man behind him with a spear thrust forward. Rather than trying to dodge in his current state, he lopped the point of the spear and the foot of wood that followed it off directly. He still took a quarterstaff-like blow to the gut from the spear that doubled him over for a moment, but even as he grimaced in pain, he decided it had been the best choice.


    The spearman was looking at him warily now, but the swordsman was busy screaming in shock. ¡°My hand, he took my fucking hand!¡± the man bellowed.


    Simon feinted at the spearman, grimacing himself from the sudden movement, but the man was smart, and even as he drew a dagger, he jumped behind his maimed companion. Simon took the opportunity to finish off the injured man with a quick thrust that ignored the pot helmet he was wearing.


    ¡°There¡¯s still time to run,¡± Simon said calmly. It wasn¡¯t because he cared about his opponent''s life, of course. It was because he could feel himself starting to run on empty. He was more tired than any spell warranted, and for a moment, he thought to blame the sword, but it didn¡¯t feel like a magical drain. It was deeper than that. Bloodloss, he thought to himself. That only further increased his sense of urgency.


    ¡°Why run when I could kill you and take your fancy sword, you devil,¡± the spearman answered, flashing him a smile that was missing a few teeth. ¡°You might have some neat tricks, but you can barely reach me, can you?¡± As he spoke, Simon gave a few half-hearted slashes, but the man danced back out of reach. He might only be armed with a dagger now, but he also had a pretty good eye.


    ¡°You think a Warlock can¡¯t hit you for ten feet away?¡± Simon smirked, trying to decide if he wanted to waste on the spell.


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± the warrior spat. ¡°I know my friends can reach you from there¡­¡±


    Simon only had the barest urge to turn, but he resisted the oldest trick in the book, and he paid for it with an arrow in the back. ¡°Fuck,¡± he growled, staggering back a couple steps as two others landed close by. He wasn¡¯t alone, Simon remembered. He¡¯d know his lightning probably hadn¡¯t gotten all of them, but¡­


    His opponent took that moment to strike, but Simon was ready for that one at least. Though he¡¯d been looking intentionally weak, he had more than enough strength left to carve this guy up. He brought the sword up in a swing that took the warrior''s arm at the elbow before he brought it down in a vicious strike that cut him in two from clavicle to groin.


    That was his last gasp, though, and he fell to one knee as he tried to survey his surroundings. There were still three left that he could see and maybe more that he couldn¡¯t.


    For the moment, Simon ignored hypotheticals and dragged himself against the closest building as best he could. Then, once he had some cover, he tore open his shirt so he could get a good look at that wound. He healed it with a word of healing after only the quickest of inspections, opting to skip a minor word so that he could try to ease the blood loss rather than just close it.


    It worked, and he instantly felt better. The thing resulted in a jagged scar, and he doubted he¡¯d healed all the musculature correctly, but right now wasn¡¯t the moment to worry about such things. Instead, he slowly got to his feet and peeked around the corner, sword in hand. He would have preferred to heal his arrow wound, but the arrowhead had a barb on it, and there was no way he was healing it until he¡¯d removed it.


    He saw all three advancing toward him but decided they weren¡¯t grouped up quite closely enough yet. So, he retreated deeper into the ruins of the village, making noise as he went to try to get them closer together.


    ¡°Surely we can talk about this,¡± he yelled, feigning weakness. ¡°I¡¯ve got coin!¡±


    ¡°We want your head, old man!¡± one yelled.


    ¡°You¡¯ll pay for what you did to Trenton!¡± another called out.


    Despite their anger and his best efforts to act like he was bleeding out, they were still being extra cautious. That made sense since they had some idea of what his powers were, but even so, he found it to be frustrating as he weaved between buildings slowly while the arrow in his back dug ever deeper into his kidney.


    ¡°I¡¯m going to be pissing blood for a damn week,¡± Simon cursed as he tried to find the right vantage to strike them down.


    He jumped when a red light suddenly appeared behind him, sending a long silhouette out ahead of him. Simon spun around with blade in hand and found the portal he hadn¡¯t even been looking for yet.


    He shook his head and turned away again. If the group had been the goal, then he was sure that this or the bridge they were going to cross had the portal he was looking for, but he still had three assholes to deal with, So if he bounced, he¡¯d pretty much be guaranteeing himself that he¡¯d have to do all this again next time.


    Still, now that he knew where the finish line was, though, he could afford to burn a little hard. Simon leaned around the corner and spotted where two of them were positioning inside a house on the far side of the square from him for some ambush. ¡°Meiren!¡± he shouted, enveloping the entire interior of the place in fire before the roof fell in on them. They died screaming, but Simon didn¡¯t care. He was already looking for his next, and hopefully final, target.


    Simon found him attempting to flee near the edge of the village. He would have let him go, too, except for the fact that the idiot was heading in the one direction he couldn¡¯t allow. He was running right back to the retreating caravan.


    Simon sighed and finished the fight with another word of distant lightning. It wasn¡¯t such a strong spell, but it made him see stars as his vision greyed out for a moment. By the time he recovered, the fleeing man was dead.


    So, Simon started back toward the portal he¡¯d seen earlier. It looked nicer on the next level, and if he was about to cause himself unspeakable pain to heal up, he at least wanted to get out of the rain and mud.

 Ch. 169 - A Bloody Mess

    As soaking wet and in pain as Simon was, he still didn¡¯t just stumble through the next exit blind. Instead, he stood at the threshold and looked for some hint as to what might await him next for several minutes. There was nothing that stood out to him as dangerous, though. It was an idyllic scene full of birdsong, not battle cries, and that made part of him trust it less.


    These are in chronological order, not order of difficulty, he reminded himself. ¡°Maybe someone needs some wood chopped,¡± he said to himself with a chuckle. ¡°Or maybe the orcs just haven¡¯t attacked yet.¡±


    In front of him was a hill, and behind it, a setting sun formed a picture-perfect backdrop that he would have loved to paint if he had any talent. The spacing of the trees indicated that this was an orchard, or perhaps was one in the past, though it wasn¡¯t immediate what fruit they were growing because none was visible. There weren¡¯t even any footprints to indicate men or monsters.


    So, after hesitating for so long, Simon walked into the warm, balmy temperatures of what felt like a summer evening. Then, he staggered up the hill, so he could get a better view before he tried to engage in major surgery and rip this damn arrow out.


    Along the way, he thought about picking up deadwood to build a small fire. It would be dark soon, and that would be the smart thing to do. He didn¡¯t, though, because he feared that if he bent down, he might not rise again; every movement hurt, and the only reason he plodded forward was stubbornness. Every step to the top was one closer to making sure that no one would surprise him when he was writhing in pain in a few minutes.


    ¡°I¡¯m getting too old for this shit,¡± he grumbled to himself as he limped, willing the imaginary laugh track to play in his head. The line was clich¨¦ but entirely justified in his case.


    When Simon reached the crest of the hill, the sunset had gone gray, but he could see a verdant landscape filling the valley he was in. In the distance, the mountains were sharp and jagged, indicating to him that he was probably in the Kingdom of Chiara, though he supposed he could also be somewhere else he¡¯d yet to see. That put him in the territory of high mountains, werewolves, and dangerous dinner parties, though he didn¡¯t know too much else about it beyond the cheerful little farmstead at the foot of his hill.


    ¡°Maybe I¡¯ll take it easy for the rest of this life,¡± he said to himself as he got down on his knees next to the tree and looked at the last dying rays of the setting sun. ¡°It¡¯s a big blank spot on my map. Maybe I¡¯ll just relax here and fill it in for a while.¡±


    It was a nice dream, but mostly, what Simon was doing was steeling himself for what he needed to do next, which was going to hurt like hell. He reached behind him with his left hand and tried to force the arrow all the way through so he could pull it out the other side. The jolt of pain that ran through him in that moment was awful.


    Enduring pain had gotten to be almost easy for him. Inflicting it on himself, though? That was still very hard.


    If he could have gotten a better grip, Simon was sure he could have done it, but his hand was blood-slick, and the angle was absolutely terrible. So, he could push hard enough to make it hurt but not enough to drive the thing deeper and deeper.


    Simon swallowed hard and decided that he should use a word of lesser force to see if that would do the trick. He took a moment in the fading twilight to breathe deeply and slow his racing heart as he pictured the moment and exactly what he wanted to happen. The bolt had already speared his kidneys and would probably puncture his intestines and whatever else on the way out, but he didn¡¯t think that there would be bone in the way. That meant that a few seconds after he got the thing out, he could heal it all up, nice and clean.


    Easier said than done, he thought, swallowing again before he opened his eyes and whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Oonbetit.¡±


    The pain that followed those words as the arrow was shoved forward was instant and blinding but not as bad as he feared. A lesser word of force was less like magic and more like being kicked by a mule. As a result, the arrow surged forward, out of his stomach, and the ruins of his shirt were covered in blood before it clattered to the ground a couple feet in front of him. It was an ugly sight, but he was glad it was over with.


    When the sharp pain passed and left him with the dull ache of that passing, he felt like he¡¯d been stabbed all over again. All he wanted to do was curl up into a ball. The air was warm, but he was still shivering from being damp. He couldn¡¯t do that yet, though. A kidney wound would bleed out if he fell asleep, and if he¡¯d torn anything in his guts, which seemed very likely, it would get infected very quickly.


    Instead, he slapped himself to maintain focus and forced himself to concentrate on what that wound track looked like and all the ways that he needed to fix it if he wanted to wake up in the morning with some semblance of health. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    ¡°Hyakk,¡± he said when he was ready and opened his eyes to watch the wound close before them. Even if the blood remained, the wound itself had vanished with barely more than a scar.


    Once that was done, though, even though the pain was gone, he gave in and passed out at the foot of the tree. Three words of power and a handful of lesser words had taken their toll. He was completely spent.


    The sleep that followed was deep and dreamless, and for a time, he knew only oblivion. Sometime hours later, Simon was woken by the sound of footsteps feet from him. Despite feeling groggy, he considered springing to his feet, but he realized that might not be the best move. Instead, he cracked his eyes open ever so slightly but could only make out the finely tooled riding boots of a single man, only a few feet from his face.


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to pretend to be asleep,¡± the stranger said in a confident voice moments after that. ¡°I can tell when they fake it.¡±


    Simon considered ignoring that line, but in the end, he opened his eyes and sat up. Whether the person that he was facing had any real insight into his state, he was weak enough that being cooperative was the correct play. If worst came to worst, he still had a magic blade that could slice through anything. With that, he only needed a moment of distraction to win most fights.


    ¡°Who are you, and what are you doing in these lands?¡± the dark man asked, regarding him coolly.


    Simon looked up from where he sat on the ground and was surprised by what he saw. He¡¯d expected a farmer or perhaps bandits, but this man appeared to be a noble rather than either of the other groups. He had fine clothes that matched his perfectly polished riding boots, and though the style was unfamiliar to Simon, it was easy to tell the man was young and wealthy. That made the contrast between the two of them that much more dramatic, given that, at this point, he was an old man in bloody rags. He wasn¡¯t even entirely dry yet.


    ¡°I¡¯m¡­ I¡¯m just passing through,¡± Simon said, trying and failing to think of a cover story under the piercing gaze of the stranger. ¡°A night under this tree, and I¡¯ll be gone in the morning with no harm done. I¡¯m sorry that I picked your land, but as you can see, I¡ª¡±


    ¡°I asked you a question; don¡¯t make me repeat myself,¡± the man said, glaring hard. ¡°Who are you, and what are you doing here?¡±


    Simon wanted to tell the man that it was none of his business, but when he opened his mouth, that wasn¡¯t what came out. Instead, he said, ¡°I¡¯m Simon Jackoby, and after I removed the arrow. I needed a place to rest. I¡¯m not sure what I¡¯m doing next.¡±


    ¡°An arrow, is it?¡± the man answered with a cruel smirk as he noticed the thing and bent to pick it up. ¡°Yes, this would cause a nasty wound. I¡¯m surprised you aren¡¯t already dead.¡±


    Simon barely heard him, though. Instead, he sat there in shock, trying to figure out what had just happened. Why would I say that? He wondered. Who is this guy?


    What happened next shook him free of his reverie, though, as the man lifted the bloody arrow to his nose and smelled it. ¡°But this is only one of the scents I smelled,¡± the noble mused. ¡°I smell others¡­ that¡¯s actually why I sought you out. I smelled a feast of barbarity on the wind. Imagine my disappointment when I sought you out and found only a single scrawny human. How many did you kill, exactly?¡±


    ¡°Nearly a dozen,¡± Simon said. This time, he didn¡¯t feel a compulsion. He just answered honestly to avoid that dread gaze again while his mind raced to figure out what he should do. ¡°In a village not far from here. Bandits. It wasn¡¯t my fault.¡± In the end, he chose violence.


    ¡°A scrawny, dried-up thing like you killed a dozen men?¡± the noble laughed, revealing a set of sharp fangs. ¡°Were they asleep? I don¡¯t see any other way that¡ª¡±


    For all his speed, he was only just turning when Simon started swinging, and it was obvious that he underestimated the blade. The vampire¡¯s limbs blurred, but they made no move to avoid the enchanted edge of Simon¡¯s saber. He lost his right arm for that and howled in pain even as he lifted Simon up with his left by the throat before slamming him against the tree so hard that he heard ribs crack, and the sword slipped free of his grasp.


    ¡°Faa! What is¡ª a rune blade?¡± the man yelled, more in outrage than pain. ¡°I do not think we shall be doing that again. Now tell me, Simon, where did you get such a weapon, and what is it you are doing in my mistress¡¯s lands?¡±


    Simon felt the weight of the gaze on him again, but he shut his eyes tight, and when he opened his mouth, it was to say, ¡°Meiren!¡±


    This time, the vampire¡¯s screams were pure pain as he went up like a bonfire, dropping Simon to the ground. Simon gasped for breath while he watched the monster burn. Then he rolled over and started crawling toward his blade.


    Before he could reach it, though, or even utter another word of power, the still-burning vampire was on him again. He reached forward with blinding speed and ripped out his throat.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think we¡¯ll be having any more of that,¡± the monster growled, looking briefly conflicted. His fine clothes were all but gone, and the burns on his face and chest continued to heal. Simon could see that the monster wanted to interrogate him further, but that desire warred with bloodlust as Simon¡¯s lifeblood went everywhere. ¡°We can¡¯t be letting any more of this go to waste, though, can we?¡±


    As he finished speaking, he sank his fangs into Simon¡¯s neck and drank deeply. Simon gasped from the pain, but his struggles for the next few seconds were weak as his consciousness left him.


    Please don¡¯t let me be a vampire when I wake up, was his final thought before the darkness took him.

 Ch. 170 - Forty Lives

    There were some deaths he was frustrated to wake up in his own bed after, but this wasn¡¯t one of them. He had rarely been more relieved to wake up and see the crooked timbers of his roof than he was right now, even if he¡¯d been gone for so long that they now felt unfamiliar.


    ¡°A fucking vampire,¡± he scoffed. ¡°I was killed by a fucking vampire.¡±


    It was almost as an afterthought that he said, ¡°Hell, I almost became a vampire¡­¡±


    That thought was terrifying. It had been a long time since he¡¯d found a death that really worried him. Even zombies now he was content to just blow his brains out, but would that even work on a vampire? If fire didn¡¯t kill that guy, then who says it would kill me, he wondered.


    Simon had vanquished some very hard-to-kill enemies in the past, but none of them had been the sort that he needed to drive through the heart of before. That lay there for some time as he tried to contemplate what his backup plan should be in such a case.


    Eventually, he decided that greater light was probably his best option. It¡¯s not sunlight, but if it¡¯s powerful enough, does it even matter?


    The idea that he would get to find out didn¡¯t sit well with him. Especially not after he replayed the events of that level over and over again and tried to figure out what he was supposed to do. ¡°That vampire was probably going to gorge himself on that farm or something else close by before he smelled me,¡± Simon said as he talked himself through it. ¡°On the off chance he didn¡¯t go ahead and do so anyway after he murdered me, the level might already be solved, but I doubt it. I¡¯m not that lucky.¡±


    He sat up, and as he did so, he tried to remember how long it had been since he¡¯d last been here. That, in turn, made him struggle to remember what his last death before this one had even been. ¡°Was it the dragon? Or the spider cave?¡± he mused aloud. ¡°No, it was those miserable messengers,¡± he said finally as he started to recount the events of his last few lives on his hands, one finger at a time, until they made sense.


    ¡°First, I talked to Helades about Freya, then the dragon burned me alive, then Freya tried to kill me for being a warlock, then I buried myself alive killing a giant spider, then I fought the centaurs until I became a political liability,¡± he recounted with a sigh. ¡°What a mouthful.¡±


    He grabbed the bottle of wine, noting with distaste how chubby his hand looked after he¡¯d been skinny and gnarled like old leather for the last few years. Then, he took a good drink and found that he missed the taste of red wine after spending so long with the taste of white in Ionar.


    As he sat there and drank, he relived his journey north to explore the tomb and then south to Ionar once his armor was ready. He¡¯d spent years there waiting for the attack and then years after until Elthena had banished him. He was surprised that it stung more than the last time he ran into Freya when he reflected on it. It also made him smile, though. Truthfully, he should have seen it coming. It was, after all, completely in character for her.


    So that means what? A decade? More? He wondered. Probably more like a decade and a half.


    A decade in a half would be enough to make him forty-fiveish, so if he added in a dozen greater words, a pile of words and minor words to the mix, that would have put him somewhere in his sixties, physically when he died. That felt about right, he decided. He¡¯d certainly felt like he was about ready to retire when the vampire had ripped his throat out. If his run had gone on any longer, he would have had to find an old folk''s home.


    ¡°Mirror mirror on the wall, show me the most experienced loser of all,¡± he said, with deliberate drama, once he had his answer.


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry, I don¡¯t understand the command,¡¯ the thing said, provoking a sigh from Simon.


    ¡°Show me my damn character sheet, you damn thing,¡± he said, with a little more annoyance the second time.


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 33


    Deaths: 41


    Experience Points: -533,822


    Skills: Agriculture [Below Average], Archery [Average], Armor (light) [Above Average], Armor (heavy) [Below Average], Armor (medium) [Average], Athletics [Average], Baking [Below Average], Cooking [Average], Craft [Above Average], Deception [Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Above Average], Healing [Above Average], Investigate [Good], Maces [Average], Navigation [Above Average], Research [Average], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Above Average], Spears [Average], Spell Casting [Good], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Above Average], and Swords [Great].Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    Words of Power: Gervuul (greater) Meiren (fire) Aufvarum (minor) Hyakk (healing) Vrazig (lightning, ruin) Dnarth (distant) Oonbetit (force) Zyvon (transfer, water) Gelthic (ice) Karesh (protection) Uuvellum (null, boundary) Barom (light) Delzam (cure) Vosden (earth) Celdura (plan)¡¯


    A quick glance across the sheet revealed nothing unexpected. He was pretty sure his number of skills had grown, but he ignored it. Instead, he focused on one specific number: the number of times he¡¯d died.


    ¡°This is really my forty-first life?¡± he said aloud, more than a little blown away by that discovery. He¡¯d died and come back 40 times in the Pit since he¡¯d actually died on Earth.


    ¡°And how many levels have I cleared?¡± he started to ask before realizing the mirror wouldn¡¯t understand that. ¡°I mean, how many levels are currently accessible?¡±


    ¡®There are four levels that are currently accessible,¡¯ the mirror answered in its typical fashion.


    Simon smiled at that, happy he¡¯d made progress. He was just about to ask which levels exactly remained open when he realized he was doing this out of order. If I start asking it questions and getting wrapped up in the details, I¡¯m going to forget some parts of what I just went through, he decided.


    So, he took a step back and headed to the stove to fan the coals to life so he could cook up the sausage; he started to tell the mirror all about his most recent life. Absentmindedly, he almost started at the very beginning with Freya before realizing he¡¯d told the mirror all those details a long time ago. Over the years, he¡¯d talked its ear off about the various encounters and all of the details he¡¯d learned, especially once he¡¯d had access to the libraries at Ionar.


    Instead, while he sliced up the sausages into thin sections and fried them up in their own fat, he talked at length about the new stuff, which was mostly the dragon. Oh, and the white cloaks too. He spent a little time talking about what he learned from Aaric and even asked the thing if it had any information on the Unspoken, but it did not.


    That was about what Simon had expected, since he¡¯d never told the mirror anything about them, of course. He had to try anyway, of course. That was definitely a topic he planned to dig into more once he had access to Ionar¡¯s library again.


    ¡°If Elthena doesn¡¯t kick me out again,¡± he said with a laugh.


    It was only when he got to the level with the wagon and the deserters, and he was discussing his speculation since he hadn¡¯t actually learned a whole lot about the place, that he finally realized he made a serious mistake.


    ¡°Damn it!¡± he cried out, taking the sandwich he¡¯d been in the midst of making off of the stove. ¡°Of all the shit to forget!¡±


    It turned out that the worst consequence of dying on level 32 wasn¡¯t that he¡¯d almost become a vampire. It was that he¡¯d forgotten to record the details of the magic sword he¡¯d been wielding. In my defense, I was kind of bleeding out at the time, he told himself, but it did nothing to lessen the blow.


    ¡°If I want that thing back, I''m going to have to go through all of that again,¡± he sighed, feeling slightly defeated that he¡¯d let himself down so much.


    He took a piece of burned wood from the fire and started sketching out all the elements that he could remember, but it wasn¡¯t going to be enough. He knew that almost as soon as he started. Despite that, he continued to try to link runes together for several minutes in a way that made sense.


    ¡°Maybe more will come to me later,¡± he said hopefully, resigned that he would have to go find the thing again. It''s not like I know how to defeat the dragon level right now, anyway. The thing was already dead!


    Simon moved back to his meal after that, however reluctantly, before it got cold. He cut the loaf in half, used it to fry up the bread a bit so that the grease could soften it up, and then added chunks of cheese to the meat and the hot bread so it could melt.


    As a whole, it wasn¡¯t the worst Philly Cheese Steak he¡¯d ever had, but it tasted a little like ashes as he brooded on the sword. Simon spent those minutes trying to decide where he wanted to go next, but it really didn¡¯t take that long. He was going to go to the skeleton crypt, bypass the portal, take the exit outside, and then keep a low profile until the last version of himself was banished from Ionar. Then he would show back up the same day and have a nice talk with her.


    He knew he should be trying to deal with the doppelg?nger or heading straight back to the dragon level to figure out what was going on there, but compared to continuing his life with Elthena, he really couldn¡¯t be bothered. He wanted her, and more importantly, he didn¡¯t want his child to grow up without a father, even if he didn¡¯t think he¡¯d make a very good one.


    A fancy magic sword didn¡¯t even really figure into those plans. There was no way he could keep a low profile if he was running around slicing people in half. He supposed that he could spend that time researching some of the more important questions on his mind, but even so, it sounded boring.


    Am I really going to hide away for half a decade or however long it is until the volcano erupts, so I don¡¯t fuck up the timeline? He asked himself. In the end, it wasn¡¯t a question he even needed to dignify with a response, though. While he didn¡¯t yet feel the same sort of siren song he¡¯d felt for a while to relive his life with Freya over and over again, he¡¯d left his last life unfinished, and he was going to do something about that.

 Christmas Bonus Chapter: Ch. 171 - Not this Run

    Simon spent most of that afternoon beating himself up. It wasn¡¯t even about the sword after a while. It was about being fat, the way he¡¯d left things with Elthena, the mystery of his evil twin, starting over again in the Pit, and even the fact that he¡¯d spent 40 lives with so little to show for it. Somehow, despite all the progress he¡¯d made so far, he couldn¡¯t help but feel sorry for himself as he considered how pointless all of this was.


    It¡¯s not like you have a limit, he grumbled at himself as he packed and prepared to do this all again. You can do this a million more times if you have to.


    Though true, those thoughts didn¡¯t help. Living the same life a million more times was not exactly the silver lining he¡¯d hoped it would be when he¡¯d thought of it. It certainly didn¡¯t help with the idea that he was going to have to face down a vampire and a dragon sometime soon.


    Either one was terrifying, and though the dragon would at least end in a quick death. With the vampire, he didn¡¯t even have that guarantee. He was going to need more than stakes to fight such a monster. He needed to come up with one hell of a plan for that.


    ¡°Not this run, though,¡± he reassured himself. ¡°First, I''ll deal with the mess I left behind last time; then, I''ll deal with future levels.¡±


    Those words rang hollow to him as he considered his plan for what he needed to do next. ¡°What I need to do is not fuck up the timeline!¡± he said to himself glumly as he considered how easy it would be to do just that while he went out for a walk.


    ¡°If I fight the wrong guy¡­ hell, if I kill anybody,¡± Simon sighed. ¡°Even saving people will have some repercussions. What am I supposed to do for half a decade that doesn¡¯t save or kill anyone?¡± He wasn¡¯t sure, but he needed to think of something.


    Eventually, after a couple of hours, he decided that the best he could do was distance. He could stick to the big cities far from Ionar as he could and just do his best to blend in. ¡°Maybe I¡¯ll become a scribe or a mapmaker or something,¡± he told himself, trying to find alternatives to the mercenary and healer paths that had been his favorite for so long.


    With that decided, he kept himself busy until sunset. That night, in bed, he tossed and turned rather than getting any real sleep. So, eventually, sometime after midnight, he got up and dressed silently in the dark. He could stay here for days, but there wasn¡¯t any point to that. Not when he knew where he was going next.


    When Simon was ready, he skipped the torch and spoke a word of lesser light, making his flanged mace glow a pale blue-white, not unlike a glow stick. Then he descended through the trapdoor. It used to lead under this house to some point in the future where he would have to deal with the rats, but now that level was gone, and instead, it led to the skeleton crypt.


    This was a place he knew well. There were always some minor variations, but thanks to his struggles with the Blackheart, he had a pretty good idea of where he was in the timeline, and he knew exactly where he was in the wider world. He was about six years before the volcano exploded and about three before the old version of him went to Ionar, directly beneath the graveyard at Kawsburl.


    It wasn¡¯t the nicest place, but that didn¡¯t really matter to Simon. He wasn¡¯t staying long.


    Once he was on the stairs, he closed the trapdoor behind him. Then, once he was satisfied that the portal that had brought him here had dissipated, he tried to reopen it. It was stuck pretty good. For a moment, he thought he would have to blow a word of force on it, even though the very last thing he wanted was to leave the entrance gaping open for anyone to find. That will definitely screw up the timeline, he reminded himself.


    However, after a few tries, it opened in a shower of earth to reveal the short shaft he remembered from his last visit. The house hadn¡¯t yet been built over the top of it, so instead, he gazed out into the sunlit sky.


    He closed it immediately. Not only did he not want to leave until dark to avoid drawing attention, but he also had no money. That meant he needed to gather what gold and silver he could from the baubles and relics in the tomb.


    ¡°Cheer up,¡± he told himself as he turned back around and descended the stairs, ¡°This is what you¡¯re going to have to do every time until you find a better source of cash.¡±If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    When Simon started to kill the dead warriors in this room this time, he didn¡¯t try to set a new speed record. He didn¡¯t even do his best to be graceful and efficient. Instead, he just used it as a particularly vicious game of whack-a-mole to work out his frustrations as he turned the lesser skeletons into bone dust and splinters.


    When the death knight finally arose, Simon didn¡¯t even bother to draw his sword like he usually did. Instead, he parried a few of the blows, and then when the knight got a little overextended, he tripped it, pushing the monstrosity down to the floor and crushing his head with his boot.


    ¡°Thanks for the sword,¡± Simon taunted as the thing ceased moving. ¡°It worked great.¡±


    For a moment, he really wanted to rip open the thing¡¯s breastplate and crush the Blackheart, too, but he didn¡¯t. At a minimum, that would reset a couple of levels. It might reset half of them. It was something that he needed to do eventually, but not until he¡¯d resolved things in Ionar.


    None of this was the hard part of the level, though. He¡¯d beaten these guys dozens of times now. Now, he needed to use lesser words of earth to scrape off the thin lairs of gilding on the grave goods of the men he¡¯d just killed for the second time.


    That wasn¡¯t hard. It only took a few minutes of searching before he had a handful of coin-looking objects, even if they lacked the details. The only problem was that those weren¡¯t going to be enough.


    Simon didn¡¯t have to find enough cash to live the rest of his life on down here, but he needed enough to travel and establish himself. That wasn¡¯t just going to happen on its own. I¡¯m going to need more, he eventually decided as he looked at the locked gate. He knew exactly where he was going to get it; he just didn¡¯t know how he was going to get there.


    He stood there for several moments contemplating how best to do that. His first option was to use a word of greater earth to try to dig around it. It seemed straightforward. It might require several spells, though, and I don¡¯t want to sleep here to recover if I don¡¯t have to, he argued.


    Instead, after examining the rusted wrought iron bars, he decided that simply knocking the gate over might work. ¡°The portal is in the doorway itself,¡± he reasoned. ¡°So if I push that aside, along with the partition it''s attached to¡­ well, that¡¯s not going through the portal, now is it.¡±


    Simon smiled at that, feeling like he¡¯d outsmarted something. Then, he gave it a shot. ¡°Gervuul Oonbetit!¡± he shouted, visualizing the force focused around the edge of the thing, where it was anchored into the stone of the cavern. The whole thing gave like crumpled tinfoil and landed in a heap on the dusty stone with a terrible racket.


    Simon paused a moment to see if that triggered any further dead to rise, or worse, for human watchmen to see what had happened, but only silence lingered. While he stood there, he realized that he had what was effectively a working gate that he could transfer anywhere now if he so desired. For a moment, Simon thought about taking it with him but laughed when he imagined dragging the thing around the world.


    ¡°What would I even use it for?¡± he chuckled as he stepped over it.


    Simon descended into the lower level, curious if the men that were buried here would rise to fight him as well. They hadn¡¯t last time, but then, when he¡¯d discovered this last time, the Blackheart had been long gone.


    He didn¡¯t have to wait long for the answer. As soon as he pulled a gold chain off the body of a dead man, he started to rise. Simon responded in kind and put him right back down with his mace. He then spent the next few minutes doing the same with everybody in there.


    None of them had a tenth of the strength of the knight upstairs, and he moved to put all of them down without a second thought. Unfortunately, his endurance was no longer what it had been a few days ago. Even as an old man, he had more steel in his spine than the original version of Simon, and as the fight went on, he started to slow down visibly.


    I should have rested, first, he cursed himself as his swings became more desperate, and his few remaining enemies started to close in.


    Eventually, it was only his shield that was keeping his head on his shoulders since blocking required much less effort than dodging with his current weight. For a minute there, he thought these guys might take him out. It was only the embarrassment at the idea that allowed him to power through the last few enemies. Afterward he all but collapsed onto a sarcophagus to sit and rest, chest heaving from the effort. After that, he began to gather more of the spoils.


    Simon felt a little bad robbing the graves of brave warriors, but he knew they weren¡¯t going to be doing anything with it. He had a much better idea of how the afterlife worked than most, and these souls had long since moved on to what he hoped was a better place.


    Simon spent hours in the crypt, but only because he didn¡¯t have anything better to do. He¡¯d already searched this whole place for secrets, so he wasn¡¯t too concerned with those. He just wanted to make sure he didn¡¯t leave behind anything that was useful.


    When he checked on his situation hours later, it was night, so he rose up from the crypt as quietly as he could and covered up the entrance with soil to hide it. Then he headed off south. He¡¯d originally been planning to head off north, but after remembering what poor shape he was in, Darndelle seemed to be the better option for now. He was much closer to it. He could spend some time there, at the city on the crossroads, and then go north once he¡¯d finished searching their libraries for useful information.

 Ch. 172 - Blending In

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 Ch. 173 - Found Out

    Simon¡¯s first instinct was to cast a spell and murder all three of them, but he held back. That wasn¡¯t because he thought he could learn something or even because it would screw up the future. It was because everything in their body language told him they didn¡¯t consider him to be the least threat to them.


    That made sense. While Simon was still a little softer than he would have liked because he¡¯d spent more time reading than fighting in this life, he¡¯d still lost a ton of weight. As a result, he must have looked like a scrawny scribe or courtier to these men. He didn¡¯t even carry more than a knife these days, further reinforcing the image.


    ¡°Is there a problem?¡± he asked with more indignation than might have been appropriate for the situation.


    He quickly caught himself and continued. This time, he tried to add a touch of fear to his surprise, ¡°I mean¡­ what are you doing in my room. This is¡ª¡±


    ¡°This is a long time coming,¡± the seated man said. ¡°You¡¯ve been flitting around the court for a while with a little storm cloud over your head. That¡¯s not so much for the circles you run in, but it¡¯s long past time we do something about it.¡±


    ¡°Circles? Stormcloud?¡± Simon asked, only partially pretending to be lost by the strange turns in conversation. ¡°Will someone tell me what this is about?¡±


    One of the standing men had moved behind him and, very gently but firmly, guided Simon to the nearest chair at his small table before pushing him down into it. He didn¡¯t resist, even though it was a terrible tactical position to be in, but only because he didn¡¯t want to arouse their suspicions.


    ¡°Oh, with the works you¡¯ve been reading in the library, I don¡¯t think I need to spell that out. Not for you. You may not know exactly who we are, but after reading¡­¡± the man pulled out a list, ¡°The Histories of Sanit Modraine, the Chronicles of Ionia¡¯s first Kings, At the Crossroads, Travelers Tales of Darkness, The Wars Against Witchcraft¡­ you get the idea. This is not a normal list of scrolls and tomes. It goes on at length.¡±


    ¡°I-I was searching for all the monsters of the region so that I might present my Lord with¡ª¡±


    ¡°Aye, you did that too, but to what end?¡± the man asked, leaking forward far enough that Simon could see most of his face along with a cruel, thin-lipped smile. ¡°The Baron you claim to work for might be a country lord, but he¡¯s no monster slayer. He hasn¡¯t even heard of a Nimos before.¡±


    That took Simon by surprise by a little, but only a little. A good man with a strong horse could cross the deserts and reach Corwin lands in two or perhaps three weeks. They weren¡¯t so far from the main trade roads, but the idea that they would look into him so thoroughly spoke volumes.


    ¡°For a while, we thought you were simply a social climber who¡¯d padded your resume with the names of strangers for pure clout,¡± the hooded man said with a shrug, ¡°But given your reading list and the gray haze that clings to you at your age¡­ well, we were more concerned that your master might be the true source of evil. He might still be, too.¡±


    ¡°I thought you just said that the Baron didn¡¯t know me?¡± Simon answered, actually confused now. ¡°How can he be my master if I don¡¯t¡ª¡±


    His words were cut off as one of the men beside him unsheathed a dagger and slammed it deep into the wood of the table between his spread hands. It was obviously meant to be an intimidation gesture, but it worked.


    ¡°Your true master,¡± the man growled, ¡°We know you have alternative purposes. Tell us the who and why of it willingly, though, and this will hurt less.¡±


    Simon paused, considering his options, before saying, ¡°I may not know your names or what you¡¯re after, but I know you¡¯re the ones purging the books I¡¯ve been searching through.¡±


    ¡°Are we now?¡± the man across from him leaned forward, steepling his fingers and revealing enough of his face that Simon was sure he¡¯d seen him at one or two of the parties in the last year. ¡°And why would we do that?¡±


    ¡°To eliminate witches and keep more people from becoming them, of course,¡± Simon said confidently. ¡°I think it''s a wise and noble idea, but can¡¯t you see that it''s harming people¡¯s ability to solve other problems, like the one right here in¡ª¡±


    ¡°Problems made by witchcraft cannot be solved by witchcraft,¡± the third hooded figure said, sitting down at the table to join Simon and the first man. ¡°And giving men the tools of warlocks will not reduce the number of warlocks in this world, young man.¡±


    Of the three, his words carried by far the most weight, and Simon instantly understood he was the boss. No, it was more than that. Simon realized. He¡¯s the boss, and he¡¯s been using these other two here to play good cop, bad cop with me so that he can get a read on how I react.


    Simon sat there quietly while he waited for the next shoe to drop, but in his mind, his heart was already racing, looking for a story to tell these people. He wasn¡¯t sure what story they wanted to hear yet, but he knew that they wanted to hear one.


    So, even as he listened to the ominous man start to lecture about responsibilities and the subtle nature of evil, his mind was already stitching the pieces together. He needed an origin that couldn¡¯t be corroborated, and he did his best to craft that from the pieces of the world he¡¯d most experienced around the Kingdom of Brin.


    His first instinct was to give them the Schwarzenbruck sob story. He would have, too, if he hadn¡¯t figured out that those events hadn¡¯t happened yet or were happening right about now. So, instead, he decided to go with Maritin. That was the tiny village he¡¯d rescued from starvation with a load of basement vegetables. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    It probably still existed, too but wasn¡¯t the sort of place for keeping records, and he knew just enough names to make it plausible. Plus, it was only a few days from Lord Corwin¡¯s lands, so it spliced nicely into what he¡¯d already told them.


    When the man was tired of the sound of his own voice and asked Simon who he really was, he was ready. ¡°Nimos is a false name,¡± he admitted, ¡°And I¡¯m not a scholar. I grew up poor, but I just learned to read and write during my time in Leipzen and found out that fancy names can open the doors to lots of places that mine can¡¯t.¡±


    They stayed quiet, so Simon explained his life. This time, he gave his name as Ennis. It was the name of a couple people he¡¯d met and a common enough name for the region. Anywhere he was asked about would remember an Ennis or three, and if he was lucky, one of them would be from a family who¡¯d been wiped out during a plague. He definitely needed a plague, too, along with as much suffering as he could heap on his fictional self.


    These men were under the false impression the dark auras came from magic use, but thanks to his conversations with Aaric, Simon knew that it was just the visible representation of what the mirror called experience. While it was nice to know that his aura had gone from swirling black to merely a steel-gray color, he needed an explanation for how his aura could have gotten so polluted at such a young age.


    So, he lied his ass off. First, in broad strokes, and then, when he was asked about details, he filled those in with more tragedies. Parents dead to disease and starving in the streets of Brin, he gave the saddest version of the old story about a kid that pulled himself up by his bootstraps he¡¯d ever heard. He told them how he¡¯d gone to the capital where he was beaten and bullied. Later he confessed that he¡¯d risen up to become a messenger. The man who took him in and taught him his letters. He turned out to be a molester as well as young Ennis¡¯s first murder victim.


    By the time he was done, he¡¯d painted himself as an awful person who had come to Darndelle to start over, who¡¯d developed a love of reading rather than a warlock in hiding or anything like that, and after making him go through the story twice more, backward and forwards, it looked to him like they bought it. The hardest part of the whole thing wasn¡¯t even keeping everything straight at this point; it was remembering that he couldn¡¯t call these guys the Unspoken because they hadn¡¯t mentioned it yet.


    ¡°You can¡¯t see them, though, can you?¡± the white cloak leader finally asked him toward the end. ¡°The auras. The dark residue that the use of magic leaves behind.¡±


    ¡°What auras?¡± Simon asked, feigning confusion. ¡°I mean, I can pick a bad guy out of the crowd, but it''s the look in his eyes, not the¡ª¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not what we mean,¡± he said, interrupting Simon as he pulled a card out of his pocket and slid it face down across the table to him. ¡°I want you to read the word on this card, and as you do, I want you to imagine it bursting into flames.¡±


    ¡°Imagine it? Why?¡± Simon said as he picked up the card and looked at it. It said, ¡®Meiren,¡¯ in neat handwriting. ¡°What¡¯s this for?¡±


    They''re testing me, he realized instantly. He willed himself not to go pale as he shrugged at the supposedly inscrutable word.


    ¡°This is the time to do what you are told, not ask questions,¡± the man said. ¡°As to what it¡¯s for¡­ well if you can do it, I can promise that you¡¯ll get one hell of a reward¡­¡±


    ¡°Reward, huh?¡± Simon asked with a nervous smile, willing himself to believe the lie. ¡°Count me in.¡±


    He tried to stay sounding nonchalant, but inside, his heart was hammering. He could practically feel the garrote that the man behind him undoubtedly had, ready to murder him if he screwed this up.


    For a moment, Simon thought about murdering all three of them. It would have been easy. A simple word of force radiating out would kill all of them before they had the chance to speak. Then, he could flee the inn, journey north, and try this whole scam in reverse in Leipzen.


    This is an opportunity, though, his mind insisted, warring with itself for a moment. If they kill me, I just reset, but if they don¡¯t, I might finally get a line in on these guys.


    In the end, if the choice was knowledge or death, it wasn¡¯t really a choice at all. So, he looked at the card again, pretended to concentrate, and then at the last minute, he realized his mistake, and said ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I can¡¯t read it. What¡¯s it supposed to say exactly?¡±


    One of the men sighed, and then very slowly, a syllable at a time, he sounded it out for Simon. Simon listened, then repeated the word, mispronouncing slightly on purpose by giving the second ¡®e¡¯ a hard sound rather than a soft one, but there was no way they were going to let that slide.


    ¡°Try it again,¡± the boss insisted after a short conversation on pronunciation. The other man didn¡¯t say the whole word at once. Instead, he pronounced only a single syllable at a time.


    ¡°Meiren,¡± Simon said, pronouncing it correctly this time. He tasted sulfur and knew he¡¯d said it correctly, but nothing happened. At least, nothing appeared to.


    If he¡¯d done as they asked, the whole area would have lit up in flames, but that was the worst outcome. So, since he couldn¡¯t fool them one way, he fooled them another. Instead of manifesting the energy in the room with them, he manifested it in the common room chimney that ran up one wall. He imagined a thousand tiny cinders rather than a single explosive flame because he didn¡¯t want to make a sound, but just the same, he dumped all the heat into the appropriate vessel.


    If there were men watching them outside, then he supposed they might have seen a burst of flu gas catch fire, but Simon wasn¡¯t super concerned about that. He was fairly sure that these three people were all there were.


    When none of them moved, he did it a second time in his bid to look sincere. He was only slightly annoyed that he was throwing away months of his life for no reason at all, but after the second time, the man reached across the table and took the slip of paper back.


    ¡°Was that it?¡± he asked. ¡°I didn¡¯t pass, did I?¡±


    The leader of the three white cloaks shook his head as he stood. ¡°No, I¡¯m afraid you failed.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t I try again?¡± Simon asked, trying to be as convincing as possible.


    ¡°No, failure is good in this case; it means you get to keep your life,¡± The other men were moving toward the door now.


    ¡°My life?¡± Simon asked, pretending to take that in slowly. ¡°But I thought you were here to¡­ I don¡¯t know, recruit me, not kill me.¡±


    ¡°Our little¡­ organization typically only accepts those who can see what is unseen,¡± the man said after studying Simon for a moment. ¡°Still, there are some uses for the blind like you when you are willing to get your hands dirty. We¡¯ve hidden a few needles in your chosen haystack,¡± the mystery man said with a smile. ¡°If you find one of them, well¡­ You¡¯ll know what to do then, won¡¯t you, and if you¡¯re not that clever¡­ Well, I don¡¯t think we¡¯ll need to bother you again.¡±


    Simon waited until all three of them were gone before he moved a muscle. It was only when he could hear their footsteps down the stairs that he finally removed the carefully crafted mask that he¡¯d spent the evening building, and he slumped in his chair, completely exhausted by the hours of questioning he¡¯d just endured.

 Ch. 174 - Haystacks and Needles

    After that encounter, Simon waited for the other shoe to drop for weeks. Even as he did, he still went through the motions, and carried on with business as usual. Well, he did his best to, at least. For a while, he was still jumping at his own shadows whenever a scroll fell off a shelf or a beggar he hadn¡¯t noticed accosted him on the street for a few coppers.


    That¡¯s probably a good thing, though, he tried to convince himself. If I¡¯m being watched, this is the sort of behavior that they¡¯d want to see. It would take a much harder man than Ennis to shake off that kind of unexpected visit.


    Even after the fear began fading, though, the confusion and curiosity lingered. He took measures to protect himself anyway. He¡¯d been staying at the inn for too long. He¡¯d grown used to its easy meals and the habit of coming home to a place that was already warm.


    If people were watching him, though, and he was supposed to be afraid, or worse, hiding something, he should be making it harder for them. So, he used some of his growing savings to rent a small place that was closer to the library on the rickety third floor of an old building, and he made a point to be seen carrying notes home almost every night.


    ¡°Let them worry about what I might have found,¡± he told himself the next time he thought he was being followed.


    Simon was sure that the more interesting he made himself to the white coats, the more likely he was to get a second visit from them. However, as the weeks passed and his cryptic notes swelled, that certainty began to wane.


    He¡¯d started doing all sorts of paranoid things like leaving small stones by the doors and shutters as well as leaving papers in very specific orders. Despite all of those efforts, he¡¯d never once come back to find that any of those things had been disturbed.


    While he was initially annoyed that they¡¯d intruded on his life on that first visit, slowly but surely, he grew more annoyed that they didn¡¯t seem to be watching him after that. If I can¡¯t cast spells, then there''s no need to keep tabs on me, huh? He thought to himself as he continued his research. In that area, at least, he was making progress.


    The haystacks were fairly obvious, at least. They were the city library that he¡¯d spent so much time in over the last year, along with a few of the private collections he¡¯d gained access to over that time.


    The needles he was supposed to be seeking out, though. That was harder. They were clues of some sort, probably, but clues about what? Where were they hiding, and how would he know when he¡¯d found them?


    Simon asked himself that question with every new book he read. He looked for hidden meanings in the words and the symbols, checked the illuminated portions of the text for coded messages, and looked in the illustrations for details that most might miss. He was always searching for more. What that more was, he wasn¡¯t exactly sure.


    When he¡¯d originally decided what he was going to do with this life, he¡¯d always hoped that he¡¯d stumbled upon a few words of power that he didn¡¯t already know. The white cloaks had obviously thought of that, though. Given how easy it was for witches and warlocks to pass their powers to each other, they¡¯d obviously gone to great lengths to make sure that didn¡¯t happen.


    Months passed like that, and though he still sold maps when he needed to and attended banquets when the opportunity would come up, there was no joy in it. Where once he¡¯d enjoyed the fancy food and the chance to listen to the rumors of the day with those of importance in the city, he now only wondered who might be watching him at the dinner tables.


    That was just as well because the longer he stayed in this city, the less of an oddity he became. Eventually, the invitations he received to be shown off as one slowly trickled to a halt. Should his mythical patron arrive in town to slay some monsters, he was sure that trend would quickly reverse, but that was never actually going to happen.


    Eventually, he even grew tired of trying to track down the identities of the men who had waylaid him. He¡¯d only seen one of their faces clearly enough to recognize through the shadows of their cloak, but he was confident that he could recognize their voices if heard them again.


    What was he supposed to do with that information, though? Kidnap them and torture the truth out of them? It was a fun idea, but it was hardly his style. Even his least favorite, Raithwaite, barely conjured up that level of bloodlust at this point.


    The last thing that Simon ever wanted to be was a vampire. However, right now, he had to admit that the strange compulsion power he¡¯d endured would come in handy at times like this.


    Still, eventually, he lost interest in even those pursuits as he pursued his blind treasure hunt with more and more intensity. There are clues in these books, and I¡¯m going to find them, he told himself. Eventually, it was all he lived for. Days could pass by in the blink of an eye as he pored through tomes, cross-referencing them against each other in a search for some hidden meaning beyond what they actually said. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Not even actual references to men who claimed to have experienced doppelgangers, as was discussed in the Temptation of Saint Karell, would get as much interest as a line like, ¡®a secret that cannot be spoken,¡¯ or ¡®victory was born on white wings that day.¡¯ It got to the point where he started to feel like a conspiracy theorist.


    Though he doubted that every one of those references was part of a secret society, the longer he studied the history of the region, the more he could see fingerprints left by some hidden hand. Sloppy record-keeping was one thing, but when nine out of ten books left out a name or two, and only one included them, that just meant it hadn¡¯t been purged yet.


    During the winter, his favorite clue was when the handwriting that a book was copied in suddenly changed. That was doubly true when it changed back to the original a page or two later. It was a clear indicator that something had been removed, but often, it was impossible to say what that something had been.


    In rare cases, he was able to find two copies of the same book from different libraries with differing page counts. Sometimes, this addressed his concerns. In almost every case, it turned out to be a hero doing some great deed that might have used magic. The text never said, ¡®and then he smote the beast with a word of greater fire,¡¯ but the inevitable replacement text usually read something like, ¡®Then with white wings and the strength of the divine he slew the beast with his own two hands.¡¯


    Women seemed to get the worst of this treatment, and almost every heroic woman was carefully removed from the records. Often as not, she was replaced by an effeminate-looking man when the illustrations were altered.


    ¡°Man, these guys really hate witches,¡± Simon muttered as he made note of Kanara, another woman who no longer existed according to the annals of history.


    Simon sometimes wondered how his efforts would be felt by history, but that interest intensified as he slowly made a list of people who appeared to have been scrubbed out of the official narrative. Not that anyone cared. Almost two years after his arrival, people stopped noticing him. He was no longer a novelty but a fixture. Sometimes, one of the other scribblers in the library might ask him how his research was coming, but Simon had little to tell them beyond, ¡°The problem seems intractable, but in time I¡¯ll figure something out.¡±


    He wasn¡¯t talking about his Patron anymore, of course, but they didn¡¯t need to know that. Instead, the questions in his mind about the Unspoken multiplied. He could see what they were doing on every level now; he could even guess why. How, though, was more of an open question.


    They didn¡¯t seem to be a religious order in that he found their breadcrumbs related to several gods and goddesses. They didn¡¯t exactly seem to be royalty, though, either.


    As near as he could tell, history and scholarship were far less important here than they had been on Earth. He hadn¡¯t even been in this town for two years, and he felt like he¡¯d read half of the libraries he had access to at this point. Well, skimmed, at least, he corrected himself mentally.


    His point still stood, though. Very little of what he read was actual scholarship. Instead, most books were either devoted to glorifying some King or Duke who had no doubt paid for their writing, or they were religious texts that were as much fiction as they were history.


    It was in those religious texts that Simon finally found his first real loose thread. Religion wasn¡¯t something he¡¯d given a lot of thought to since coming to this world. That was largely because he found out that Helades wasn¡¯t worshiped as a Goddess. No one had heard of her, though he supposed that it was possible that if he brought her up to the demon, it might know her name.


    Everyone else, though, mostly worshiped whoever they wanted in their temples and churches, and those names largely varied by region and country. In Ionia, one god was responsible for lightning and thunderstorms, but in Brin, it was an entirely different woman who was the bringer of rains. The former was a war god, while the latter was the goddess of spring. It was conflicting enough that he felt sure in his decision that the mortals without magic had no idea what they were talking about.


    However, since the religions were, by and large, the keepers of history, he still had to read their books. That was why when he was doing a read-through of the saints of Hypaltia, who was the goddess of winter in this region but the goddess of light and further north, he took note that there was no Saint Geregus listed.


    That shouldn¡¯t have been important, but it was because Simon was sure he¡¯d seen references to that saint listed a dozen times in random places. He was sure because the man often went by another name, too: the Silent Saint.


    Sure that such an oversight couldn¡¯t be correct, Simon went through another volume by a different author and another after that. The story repeated itself. Those works were not written by any of the relevant religions, but that only intrigued him more because he could go back through his notes and find many places where victory had been associated with this nonexistent saint.


    ¡°This is the hint I¡¯ve been waiting for,¡± he told himself, smiling as he slammed the book shut and shelved it.


    He didn¡¯t think it likely that the church had edited one of their own heroes out of existence. Instead, after reviewing his notes on the subject, Simon decided that it was far more likely that the saint was yet another stand-in for the white robes. This rabbit hole went deeper than doves, though. On occasion, after great victories, certain rituals would sometimes be discussed, and even what turned out to be a nonexistent feast day was mentioned.


    This, Simon decided at long last, was the way in, at least for him. He was sure that an organization like the Unspoken had many ways to recruit. He was certain that neither Aaric nor Carelyn had been big readers. He wasn¡¯t even sure they were literate at all, beyond the very basics. The day in question was coming up, and he would be ready.

 Ch. 175 – A Feast for Paupers

    As the day drew closer, Simon did all of the rites that had been mentioned for the fictitious Silent Saint, no matter how trivial. These were carried out as faithfully as the text allowed, even though he wasn¡¯t sure that anyone was actually watching him. He took a vow of silence for the winter, dressed in harsh sackcloth robes, and fasted for the week leading up to the feast, abstaining from everything besides water and, strangely enough, beer.


    In times such as these, it was apparently all the monks were allowed to drink. He supposed it made sense from a caloric perspective, but even so, it felt strange to be drinking that much after going so long without any alcohol.


    He even prayed to a Goddess that he didn¡¯t believe in every morning, just to cover all of his bases, though he wasn¡¯t sure that was strictly necessary. The few friends and acquaintances he¡¯d made during his time in the city drifted away during all of this, but they weren¡¯t important in the grand scheme of things. Not compared to the Unspoken and their secrets. The only thing that might have been enough to shake him free of this goal now that he¡¯d set it would be a lead on his evil twin, and that didn¡¯t seem likely.


    So, after all of those preparations were made, on the night of the new moon that occurred just after the start of spring, he made the long, cold walk to the Temple of Hypaltia. This was a holy day for the saint because it was the hungriest time of the year. Everyone had survived the winter, and the planting of fields had started, but the fruits of the harvest were still a long way off.


    The symbolism was interesting. Simon didn¡¯t know exactly how it was supposed to translate to fighting the evils of witchcraft exactly, but he pondered it as he walked down the empty dawn streets toward his destination.


    Unlike some of the grander temples in the city of Darndelle, it was a small building that was barely more than a shrine with four walls and a roof. It was made of local sandstone instead of imported marble.


    Unlike everyone else, that, at least, made sense to him. Winter wasn¡¯t nearly as sexy a concept to sell to prospective worshipers as war, prophecy, or disease. Famine and harvest weren¡¯t even ascribed to this Goddess either, so there was no mortal dread to convince people to worship her beyond the endless cold of her season. As a result, the Gods and Goddesses of those things all had much cooler temples and shrines.


    When he arrived, he found the place empty, except for a few flickering candles on the altar. That didn¡¯t discourage him. If this was a wild goose chase, there would be nobody here this time of day. On the other hand, if this was a test, and he really had been following a trail hidden across dozens of books and a handful of libraries, well¡­ He hadn¡¯t seen anyone else studying feverishly next to him in the library, so he doubted very much that there would be two people attending the Feast of Paupers.


    Simon knelt on the cold stone and prayed. Well, he mouthed the words to the prayers he¡¯d memorized about the cleansing nature of winter and how it would sweep away pestilence and strengthen the hearts of men and all that, but there was no belief behind those words. He had to repeat them several times until the candles had burned out and the thin light of dawn was creeping through the door. That was when someone finally came for him.


    A white cloak came behind Simon, and after a tap on the shoulder, he helped Simon to his feet. Then, without a word, he escorted Simon to the back wall and revealed a secret door that led to a dark hallway. He¡¯d been expecting, or at least hoping for, something like this, but still, the theatrical nature of the thing left him a little awed. It was like he¡¯d been playing an open-world video game up until now, and he¡¯d accidentally stumbled onto a real quest line.


    The hall led to a smaller room, and it took Simon¡¯s eyes a minute to adjust to the gloom, but as he did so, he saw what he¡¯d been hoping to see: a meager table set in the center of the room. It had twelve places set with dishes. At the head of the table, the place was set with fine china and a chalice. Things deteriorated rather quickly as his gaze drifted down the table, though.


    The seats closest to the head still had ceramic plates and glasses, and the ones further down had wooden bowls or mugs and mismatched utensils. It was only the seats farthest from that point, at the foot of the table, that were entirely empty.


    Besides the two of them, the room was empty. No one was seated at any of them. The white robbed figure said nothing either. He merely gestured for Simon to take a seat.


    Simon had expected this part. In the last few weeks, he¡¯d reread all the parables he¡¯d found and knew what it was he should do here, so without any deliberation, he walked over and sat in the rickety chair at the foot of the table.


    The virtues ascribed to the saint in the stories he¡¯d read were quite clear. Silence was right at the top, Which meant that you had to display your virtue rather than speak it, but there was a whole laundry list of others, and right near the top was humility and poverty. So, he sat there, and he waited.


    He had a few ideas about what would happen next, but first, he had to endure another test of patience as they left him alone in the dark for some time. Later, other guests started to file in. All of them wore white cloaks and sat at the far end of the table. They ignored him, and though he pretended to do likewise, he studied them intently. There was nothing to be learned, though. Beyond the fact that he thought they might be talking together in several different languages, they were mostly discussing the feast and the coming year. The torment only truly became difficult when the food started to arrive. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Simon hadn¡¯t eaten in over a week now, and his stomach growled audibly as the first course came in and was served to the already initiated on the far side of the table. Twenty feet wasn¡¯t enough to spare him from the smells of grilled meat and roasted vegetables, and his hunger was magnified five-fold before they even put a plate down in front of Simon.


    That was a cruel move. The feast had started extravagantly at the head of the table, and as it moved down, each man had been given smaller and less appetizing portions, though they ate them just the same. For Simon, though, they had heaped the delicacies high. Looking down, he could see he had his choice of roast pheasant, braised ribs, warm bread, hot buttered potatoes, and half a dozen other sides.


    It was a true feast, but he couldn¡¯t have any of it, and he marveled at the cruelty of the thing. It was as tormented as he¡¯d ever felt in a situation in the Pit where pain wasn¡¯t involved. His stomach protested his restraint loudly as he sat there with his head bowed and his hands folded in prayer.


    Simon was forced to endure that scene for the best part of an hour. It was only when everyone else had cleaned their plates, and the food on Simon¡¯s plate had long since grown cold, that the other guests left, taking their oil lamps with them and leaving him in the dark. He was there for just long enough to wonder if he¡¯d fucked something up before the hooded man re-entered and, with a gesture for Simon to follow him, led him down a different hallway.


    This one led to an even smaller room. There was no food here, just a roaring fireplace and two chairs set in front of it.


    The white-robed man took off his hood then and sat down in the far chair. ¡°You¡¯ve done well to follow our clues, Ennis,¡± the man said in the same voice that Simon had thought of as the boss in their encounter the year before. He wasn¡¯t quite as old as Simon imagined him. He had close-cropped black hair with only a sprinkling of gray to go with his piercing green eyes. ¡°I thought you would make it this far, though, So that¡¯s no surprise. Did you enjoy your feast?¡±


    Simon sat there quietly, then, after a moment, decided to nod once. This was likely some other strange test, and it would be a shame to blow it at the finish line like this.


    That response made the other man laugh a little. Then he said, ¡°That¡¯s fair enough. Silence is the one trait that all members of the unspoken must have, though in your case, it will have to be rather more strictly enforced.¡±


    Simon looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but the white cloak was already speaking again. ¡°Let me explain,¡± he continued. ¡°You already know that we are witch hunters and that we keep the evils of magic from corrupting society in all the lands we hold sway. That¡¯s why you want to join us, yes?¡±


    Simon nodded again. That much wouldn¡¯t hurt. At this stage, he expected that if he rejected their offer, death would come swiftly.


    ¡°Well, all of that is true, but that¡¯s only the most surface level. Up until now, you have only discovered the brothers who do the fighting and dying. You might have even discovered a sister or two. There are other roles, though,¡± the man nodded. ¡°You lack the gift of the gods to be a proper brother, and you¡¯re completely unfit to be a whisperer, but I knew from the moment we figured out you weren¡¯t a warlock waiting to happen that you would make for a perfect archivist.¡±


    The man went on to explain what that role was exactly, and with each revelation, he found it harder and harder not to salivate. The brothers killed the witches and warlocks, but they rarely destroyed the trappings of either on their own. Instead, they brought those things back to be understood and disposed of. Sometimes, that meant rewriting fake histories to replace real ones, but more often, that meant unraveling the mysteries of relics and grimoires so that the Unspoken would be better prepared for such tricks.


    ¡°We cannot entrust these secrets with any who might actually use them, though, you understand?¡± he repeated. ¡°Every brother in our order might use the words of power if he sought to damn his immortal soul. So it falls to people like you to organize and safeguard knowledge that will forever be beyond you.¡±


    Simon nodded again, sweating now from the heat of the small room. He wasn¡¯t nervous, though; he was certain that this was the right path. He didn¡¯t even need to follow it for years if he didn¡¯t want to. Just a few days or weeks in such a forbidden library, and he might be able to answer dozens of questions that had been a mystery to him up until now. He was more than eager to start down this road, even if he had to keep up this silly vow of silence until it was time to turn back toward Ionia.


    ¡°Do you understand, then?¡± the green-eyed man asked, reaching over and picking up a hot iron from where it had been resting among the coals before practically holding the burning red metal in Simon¡¯s face. ¡°You are a bright young man and good with words, but from each of us, a sacrifice is called for, and in your case¡­ well, you can¡¯t do the job we require if you are capable of whispering those secrets to another soul, can you? If you want this, there¡¯s only one way forward.¡±


    Simon nodded, slowly understanding. This is going to fuck up my run, he thought to himself as he considered the man¡¯s words. They didn¡¯t just want a vow of silence. They wanted something more irrevocable than that. That made sense. Whoever they entrusted this knowledge to would be incredibly dangerous if they could actually use it themselves.


    Still, it¡¯s worth it, though, right? He argued with himself. If I do this, I get a look inside - I could find out all kinds of insane things, even if I can¡¯t use them until my next life. I can see Elthena then¡­


    It was a terrible decision, but once he¡¯d made it, there was no going back, and he bit his tongue off.

 Ch. 176 - Broken Tower

    It hurt like hell, but that didn¡¯t stop Simon from doing it. Even the idea that he¡¯d be cutting himself off from his most powerful abilities for the rest of this run wasn¡¯t enough to change his mind, as his mouth filled with blood.


    The white cloak that sat across from him was nonplussed when Simon spit out the piece of ragged meat that had once been his tongue. He just smiled and then shoved a leather-wrapped stick as far back between Simon¡¯s teeth as he could to hold his mouth open before cauterizing the wound.


    It was a painful experience, and Simon groaned, but even as terrible as the pain was, it wasn¡¯t nearly as bad as some of the deaths he¡¯d had up to this point. So, he endured it with as much dignity as he could muster. Even when he smelled his own burning flesh, he didn¡¯t scream or try to turn away.


    ¡°Excellent,¡± the man said, ¡°I knew you were sterner stuff. If the infection doesn¡¯t claim you, we¡¯ll have someone take you to the Broken Tower, where I think you¡¯ll find answers to questions you didn¡¯t even know you had. The truth of the world awaits you, son.¡±


    Simon nodded, but even as the pain assaulted him, all he wanted to do was lie down. It had been a rough day on top of an exhausting week.


    Yeah, I¡¯m sure I¡¯ll be asking lots of questions from now on, Simon thought as another white robbed brother was called.


    The younger man took Simon away and brought him to a smaller room somewhere deeper in the maze of claustrophobic hallways. When they reached their destination, it was a small, windowless room with a straw palette and a keg of sour beer.


    ¡°This is for the pain,¡± the man explained. ¡°That, and it will be a week at least before you can handle solid food again.¡±


    Simon nodded, both in understanding and gratitude, but didn¡¯t get drunk. That could wait until later. For now, the shock was holding the worst of the pain at bay, and his body was crying out desperately for sleep, so that¡¯s what he gave it.


    The days that followed that awful experience passed by in a blur. The fact that in all that time Simon never saw the sun, just made it all that much more confusing, but he endured. I¡¯ve been in worse situations before, he told himself. It was true. He¡¯d been much worse off than this. At least here, he could drink away the pain, and people checked on him somewhat regularly. Still, it was at least a week before he was eating soup and, eventually, real food.


    When he was alone, he tried forming words sometimes to see just how badly he¡¯d mutilated himself, but after a few attempts, it became clear that though he might be able to make himself understood to a determined listener, he¡¯d never again speak the words of power.


    That¡¯s okay, though, he told himself. This will be worth the tradeoff.


    Whether that optimism would be rewarded or not, though, was an open question. After the first week, boredom became a bigger problem for him than pain. Despite that, It was almost two weeks before Simon saw the outside world again. Even that time consisted of short errands to put the rest of his affairs in order so there would be no loose ends. His minder watched closely as he sent off letters to those who mattered, informing them that he was returning to his liege¡¯s lands without the hoped-for breakthrough. Then, he burned most of his papers without any apparent concern. It was easy for him to do that, though, when he¡¯d already scanned everything that mattered into the mirror.


    It was only when all of that was done, and another group needed to go to the Broken Tower four weeks later, that he was allowed to depart. They sent him off with several other riders to the north-east. The ride there was short, but it didn¡¯t go exactly as Simon expected. He thought they were riding toward some hidden valley in the distant mountains to the north-east. They were the main geological feature of the area and marked the boundary between the Kingdom of Montain, where he was now, and the mysterious Kingdom of Chiara, which he never quite got around to exploring.


    They never reached there, though. Instead, they stopped at the ruins of an old castle in the foothills. A small village clung to the ancient, falling down place like barnacles, but otherwise, it was unremarkable; it didn¡¯t even have a tower left standing. Then, they dismounted before walking their mounts through the half-fallen-down gate.


    It didn¡¯t seem very impressive to Simon, and he thought that this might be another test of sorts. That opinion only held until he was escorted inside one of the buildings and found a hive of activity. To anyone passing by, the place appeared to be utterly unimportant, and now he could see how calculated that was.


    Simon was introduced to the Abbott, who handled the day-to-day operations, as ¡°Ennis, an archivist in training, with great potential.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll see about that,¡± the senior man said sourly. ¡°I recall you promising that about the last one you sent me, but he can only read three languages!¡±This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Simon obviously had no chance to defend himself in the conversation that followed, but he cared little about what this man thought of him, and the longer he was in this place, the less he cared. He hadn¡¯t thought much of the common hall where the brothers and sisters had their meals. Likewise, the politics of the place, as they explained who was beneath the Grandmaster and how Simon should address them, mattered little to him. Not when there were other wonders to see.


    There was apparently a convent where they trained whisperers further on, along with vaults for the more dangerous and less well-understood artifacts they¡¯d found over the years. None of that mattered, though, compared to the library. Once he was shown that, he had very little interest in anything else. The place wasn¡¯t beautiful or even frightening, but with row upon row of books and scrolls on shelves labeled things like demon summoning, secret histories, and spell books, he was instantly in love.


    Unfortunately, his heart was broken not long after that when the head librarian explained his new duties to him. Those words took longer than he would have expected because the white-haired man couldn¡¯t speak any more than Simon could, so the conversation was in writing. Still, it was clear almost from the beginning that he wouldn¡¯t get to peruse the shelves at random.


    ¡®Your task is to take one of the books that are brought here, review it, and decide which section it belongs in,¡¯ the old man explained, one sentence at a time. ¡®The minder of that section will then review the book and decide whether it can be revised and released, and if not, whether it should be stored or destroyed.¡¯


    Simon nodded, but it was hard not to be disappointed; the older man somehow detected that immediately, and rather than getting angry about it, he sympathized. ¡®I get it,¡¯ he continued unexpectedly. ¡®Thirty-four years ago, I stood where you stand now. In time, if you do a good job, you¡¯ll be promoted to a section minder, and perhaps one day, if you serve the Unspoken well, you will have my job. None of us were ever meant to know all of these secrets, but I¡¯ve learned more here than I ever would have out there.¡¯


    Simon was somewhat mollified by that display of concern. Unfortunately, he didn¡¯t get to read anything that day. Eventually, he was shown to dinner and his new room. On the following day, though, he was finally allowed to see what it was he¡¯d done all of this for.


    On the shelf, labeled Unknown, were more than two dozen books, and every one of them was a chance to learn something he didn¡¯t know before. There was one other man working on this task.


    That¡¯s probably the one that the Abbott complained about, Simon thought, evaluating the man before walking over to introduce himself with a brief written note. The other man was a little older and a little balder than Simon, but he seemed to have little interest in being sociable. Instead, he waved him off as he continued to peruse the scroll that was open before him.


    Simon didn¡¯t fault him for that. He¡¯d much rather read as well. So, he picked up the first book on the stack and got to work. That was the point where hours blurred into days, and days blurred into weeks fairly quickly as Simon lost himself in the forbidden knowledge that was on offer here.


    The first book was largely a bust. It was a heretical treatise of medicine that had some correct ideas about nutrition and disease but no witchcraft or words of power. He rated it as Naturalism, which was the closest category they had on the subject, and then moved on.


    The next book offered him no forbidden secrets either, though it was an unredacted copy of a chronicle he¡¯d read before. This one, though, rather than attributing the victory to ¡°A miracle brought about by holy champions on wings of light,¡± told the story about a warlock who had animated the corpses of an entire graveyard with ¡°a baleful sign carved into the earth,¡± and used his impromptu army to turn the tide against the rampaging beast men that would have otherwise sacked the city.


    Even though Simon had to remove those pages and add in false ones afterward, taking up days of precious time that he could have spent reading, he still found the account insightful. The chronicle didn¡¯t mention what words the mage had used, and Simon didn¡¯t think he had everything he¡¯d need to do the same feat, but the execution was interesting and made him think about what he¡¯d done to heal Freya¡¯s dying body a few lifetimes back.


    In time, these things became almost mundane. The books here might make for more interesting reading than the ones he browsed at random in Darndelle, but at the end of the day, he was still just going through the motions. By day, he would read, then join the others for a communal meal. After that, he would sleep until he did it all again. It got to be a deadly dull routine.


    I don¡¯t have to make money here, at least, he told himself. But I can¡¯t use my mirror anymore, either.


    It wasn¡¯t something he bargained on when he¡¯d made this decision, but he wasn¡¯t here long before he¡¯d figured it out. As soon as he saw an interesting map, he wanted to make sure he didn¡¯t forget before he incorporated it into his main map; he realized that, for now, that ability was lost to him.


    No time for second thoughts now, he told himself.


    Eventually, he started sparring with the Brothers in the side courtyard just to have something to do. That was apparently something that wasn¡¯t done often, but there were no rules against it. For the first months, they wiped the floor with him, further demonstrating how soft and out of shape he¡¯d grown as he spent all of his time in Libraries.


    Truthfully, Simon was starting to have second thoughts. The books that he was going through were not what he¡¯d hoped to find. They were heretical, not diabolic. At least, that was the case until he hit pay dirt on his eighth volume, halfway through his second month in the Broken Tower. Unlike all the other heretical tomes he¡¯d read so far, it was an actual spell book.


    He didn¡¯t realize it at first, though. Not until he figured out that the letters were written in a sort of code that wasn¡¯t much more complicated than pig Latin. After that, it all fell into place fairly quickly. This tome had apparently been sitting on the shelf for quite some time, and the Librarian tasked Simon with cracking it specifically because no one else had.


    The fact that he did so in less than forty-eight hours would have been a cause worth celebrating, too, but Simon didn¡¯t want to tip his hand too quickly. Not when there was so much here to learn.

 Ch. 177 - Silent Study

    Simon spent days looking through the Tome of Bahgmorrda, making notes and scribbling over them or crumpling them up and throwing them away, but that was all for show. He¡¯d already solved the code, and the only difficulty was going slow enough to take it all in without giving himself away.


    On its surface, the thing looked like the grimoire he¡¯d stolen from Festuvian so long ago. That was to say, it was half full of garbage and meaningless rituals. Amidst those rituals, though, were words of power. He didn¡¯t discover any new ones, but in many cases, the ones that were mentioned were used in ways he¡¯d never seen them. That was enough to rapidly expand his knowledge.


    The first word he dug into was Vrazig. Simon had used that one plenty to strike people down with lightning. It was his favorite assassination spell. He¡¯d also learned from the strange orcish graffiti that it had connotations of entropy when it was pronounced as ruin. It was more than that, though.


    Truthfully, all the words were, as he was quickly finding out. He¡¯d once thought that each word only had a single power and a single meaning. Actually, I once thought that lesser was only associated with healing and greater with fire, he thought with a smirk as he remembered how foolish he¡¯d been. There was far more to it, though.


    In the case of Vrazig, there was lightning and ruin, but that was because they were both related to air. Well, wind, really, he corrected himself. It had elemental qualities, which made sense, but it also seemed to be related to chance.


    That made Vosden its opposite since it was earth, but that was also true of Delzam, which turned out not to be just related to curing but a reordering of things.


    Simon happily went through the book, a few pages at a time, collecting more associations and linkages. He pretended to scribble notes while he acted like his frustration continued to deepen. At dinner that night, he told the Head Librarian through a series of notes that he was trying a substitution cipher using common words, and he hoped for some results soon.


    The man was polite enough, but the manner of his responses and his expression when he read Simon¡¯s updates told him all he needed to know. As far as his superior was concerned, this was busy work, and he didn¡¯t expect results.


    That was good news as far as Simon was concerned, and he spent the next week drinking deep of this new font of knowledge. They think that taking my tongue is a setback, but in my next life, they will live to regret this, he told himself as his knowledge broadened.


    That said, it was only when he figured out the nature of the illustration near the end of the book that he really had a breakthrough.


    The thing was a series of disconnected shapes. Most of them had coded symbols on them, but a few were left blank, with only a question mark. He eventually decoded the elemental symbols, and a few minutes after that, most everything else, thanks to the process of elimination.


    Vrazig was air, so it opposed earth, but it was also chaos, so it opposed order.


    Vosden was earth, so it opposed air, but it was also strength, so it opposed weakness.


    Meiren was fire, so it opposed water, but it was also heat, so it opposed cold.


    Zyvon was water, so it opposed fire, but it was also transfer, so it opposed boundary.


    Slowly but surely, a number of conclusions were built up from these basic oppositions. For most of the time that Simon had known a single word of power, he¡¯d thought of them as discrete things, but really, they were almost a language onto themselves. Though it wasn¡¯t quite a language that he was used to, with adverbs and punctuation, he could see how it now had nouns and verbs.


    Each word modified the next, and though he wasn¡¯t sure how much that increased the cost of the spell, he could see how that could increase the specificity of the effects. That kind of precision and flexibility would allow him to do any number of complex things with only a few more syllables spoken.


    After only a week of studying this profane tome, Simon felt like his brain was melting from the implications. He felt like he¡¯d been using the powers he¡¯d found all wrong. Up until now, it was like he¡¯d been spamming a fast kick in a fighting game without ever bothering to learn the combos.


    That was what he wanted to do right now, more than anything. He wanted to try out at least a few of the ideas that this book was giving him, but he couldn¡¯t, not unless he was willing to go out and commit suicide, and after making such huge gains only a couple years into this life, and only a few weeks into his time among the Unspoken, that would be the dumbest thing he could do.


    So, he bided his time and devoured the grimoire, which mostly involved reading about how Bahgmorrda did terrible things in exchange for power. Some of these, like blood sacrifice, were pretty straightforward. He used animals and even strangers to power some spells so that he didn¡¯t have to trade his own valuable life for his magic. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Other stories were stranger, and if Simon hadn¡¯t done all he¡¯d done, he would have had trouble believing them. He traded openly with devils of the pit on several occasions for terrible secrets. Often, this included throwing his own family members into hell, which was all the more terrifying because of the way it was discussed so nonchalantly.


    Simon couldn¡¯t be one hundred percent sure without checking his notes in the mirror, but he was fairly certain that none of the devils that the warlock listed by name were the ones he¡¯d spoken to on level thirteen. Grevelzarthrik, Bromathazin, and Varmathereon were all strange names, and Simon was fairly sure he would remember them if he¡¯d ever heard them before.


    More than that, though, they reminded him of the words of power in their pronunciation, and they made him think there might be some deeper connection there. Could the Unspoken be right? He wondered. They think that all magic is infernal, and infernal creatures seem to know a lot about it.


    Simon wasn¡¯t convinced yet, but it seemed like a fine thesis for now. Still, some of the stories were so lurid that Simon had trouble believing them. Apparently, Bahgmorrda used words of power to teleport to distant lands on more than one occasion, resurrect loved ones, and even level stone structures with his magic. Despite some of the hocus pocus and pageantry involved in some of the stories, based on the words he¡¯d used and the methods he described, Simon was inclined to take the stories at least somewhat seriously.


    One thing was clear. A lot of preparation was required for such effects, and even with all that preparation, terrible things could still happen.


    At one point, Bahgmorrda attempted to reincarnate his favorite wife into a perfect alabaster body that had been carved in her image. It was perfect in every last detail, but when he cast the spell, and the stone turned to flesh, the clothing had turned to flesh too, resulting in a woman-shaped abomination with wide skirts made of skin and legs that were only a few inches long before they ended in tiny feet shaped like high heels. The woman, if that was indeed what she was behind the veil that the stone masons had carved across her features, could barely move until he finally put her out of her misery.


    For all the man¡¯s accomplishments, though, he didn¡¯t seem to know as much about creating magical items as Simon already did. It was a blindspot for him and a real indication that the Unspoken were winning. By suppressing knowledge the way they were, each aspiring wizard had to learn each secret anew, with only a few scraps of knowledge from their predecessors.


    He imagined that most of them died in that process. He certainly would have.


    Now maybe, I wouldn¡¯t have to, he mused as he considered the various spells he could try. Aufvarum Hyakk was a spell he¡¯d used a great many times, but up until now, he¡¯d only used it to heal himself. It was possible, he realized now, though, that he could use the same words to shape his own appearance. Oftentimes, an illusion would be easier and more effective, but if he really had to impersonate someone else for the long term, it could definitely do the job.


    Likewise, though he was not entirely sure how Bahgmorrda had used teleportation magic because the references he made were too coded and obscure, Simon was pretty sure he could use Dnarth Oonbetit to similar effect. He might use Dnarth Zyvon instead, though, because he wasn¡¯t sure if distant motion or distant transfer would give him the effect he wanted. One or both of them might simply grant him a particularly ugly death. More study would be required.


    Simon made a point to read Bahgmorrda¡¯s failed experiments for these reasons. Every lesson he didn¡¯t have to learn the hard way himself was a good one, as far as he was concerned.


    Toward the end of the volume, and probably toward the end of his long life, the mage became obsessed with the idea of transferring his soul into a younger body. He was apparently unable to realize this goal before the end, though, and the pages abruptly went blank after a proposed experiment involving the words of greater understanding transfer, indicating that something had gone terribly wrong.


    Or maybe he just ran out of power, Simon thought to himself with a shrug. He considered the whole thing very informative in a cautionary tale sort of way and made a note never to become an obsessive megalomaniac.


    Three weeks after he started reading the tome, once he had finished squeezing it of everything of obvious value, he announced to his boss that he had made the first tentative strides in understanding it, providing him with a partially translated copy of the first page, complete with errors to make it look like it was still a work in progress.


    It was good that he¡¯d waited for so long to reveal even that much because their response was to take the thing away from him immediately and pass it off to the reader of the Grimoire section of the library. That frustrated Simon, but truthfully, he¡¯d expected it, which was why he¡¯d done exactly as he did. Let them struggle to learn even a tenth of what I did, he thought as he reflected on everything he knew now.


    Aufvarum (disperse, minor)


    Barom (illusion, light)


    Celdura (plan, shape)


    Delzam (cure, order)


    Dnarth (connection, distant, hidden)


    Gelthic (ice, weakness)


    Gervuul (greater, power)


    Hyakk (flesh, healing)


    Karesh (location, protection, understanding)


    Meiren (creation, fire, life)


    Oonbetit (focused, force, motion)


    Uuvellum (null, boundary)


    Vosden (earth, metal, strength)


    Vrazig (lightning, ruin, wind)


    Zyvon (transfer, water)


    Every word of power that Simon knew now had more than one association, and he suspected that there was still more to learn. Hopefully, he¡¯d find all of that and more as he delved even deeper into the library.

 Ch. 178 - The Things You Hear

    Three months after he¡¯d had the Tome of Bahgmorrda taken away from him, the librarian returned it. Apparently, that was because it was written in five different languages, and the crude cipher worked differently on each of them. Simon had barely noticed that fact, but the person that they¡¯d had working on it since was having great difficulties with translating it.


    ¡®We¡¯ll be relying on you to make continued progress,¡¯ read the note that the Head Librarian gave him with it.


    Simon nodded and made all the gestures that he would do his best on it, but he wasn''t really interested in it anymore. Truthfully, translating the whole thing, line by line, would take months, or maybe even a year, and his time would be better spent reading new books to pass on. He didn¡¯t have a choice in the matter. So, instead, he got to work.


    Even though he didn¡¯t really get anything out of it, there was something very zen about sitting in a library filled with other men who could not speak, scribbling away in the quiet as he attempted to make his writing as beautiful and readable as possible.


    Simon had terrible penmanship for most of his lives. It was only after reading so many barely legible scrawls or awkwardly crabbed writing and trying hard to puzzle out its meaning over his last few lives that he¡¯d tried to improve that small but important aspect himself. He hadn¡¯t even used cursive since he was a child, but with every page he transcribed, he did his best to improve. The result after a few hours was something close to a trance.


    He could think much faster than his pen could move while he tried to create something clean and clear that bordered on calligraphy. As a result, he had more than enough time to consider how each line might be reworded. For a time, he used that extra time to think about how he might clarify or obscure the meaning of the words. After all, he wanted to preserve knowledge, but he didn¡¯t necessarily want the white cloaks to have it. It was a conundrum, but in the end, eventually, he opted to write largely what was written while he used that extra time to ponder the nature of magic.


    That was mostly all he did anymore. Even his initial fervor for spending his spare time in the fighting yards slowly faded, and those workouts became less and less frequent. It wasn¡¯t because he didn¡¯t want to be in better shape or anything; it was because the nature of what he reflected on consumed him.


    Each night, after work but before dinner, he would go on walks around the walls to try to clear his mind. He tried to think about Elthena and his son or daughter, who was not yet born. Sometimes he even reflected on other things, like the dragon, and what the point of that strange level was. However, invariably, those were forgotten in favor of questions about the nature of magic more and more as time went on. Eventually, it bordered on obsession, as strange symbols and words would dance in front of his eyes later that night while he tried to sleep.


    In time, only the occasional words and shouts of the white cloaks intruded on his peace. Mostly, he could tune these out because people rarely asked him questions about what he was working on directly. He¡¯d succeeded in fading into the background.


    Sometimes, though, that solitude became impossible, such as the day that a patrol came back to the Broken Tower all but annihilated by zombies north of Schwarzenbruck. That was enough to pique Simon¡¯s interest, and while they built a war party to counter the threat, he listened in to the talk. For a few days after the survivors came back it was all anyone talked about. Even the library wasn¡¯t completely silent as commanders and other members visited, looking for more information about what it was they faced.


    At times, it bordered on the apocalyptic. Though the leaders tried to downplay the threat, in private, many whispered that it was a sign of the end of the world and a fulfillment of the prophecies. However, through all of the chaos and panic, Simon mostly just smiled to himself. He knew that by the time the men they were assembling made it back to Schwarzenbruck, they¡¯d find nothing at all to fight, thanks to him.


    That didn¡¯t stop him from leaping at the chance to dig through the section of the archive that dealt with necromancy and the dead when the Abbott came down and gave them all new orders. ¡°Though all of your work is vital,¡± he explained to them sourly. ¡°Right now, the urgent takes priority over the important. Effective immediately, all other research will cease, and we will focus solely on the dead and the foul necromancers that raise them until our expeditionary force departs.¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t mind those instructions at all. He was over a hundred pages into his grimoire, and it had long since become an exercise in patience and penmanship rather than anything scholarly. He was more than happy to see if he could find some bit of lore or information that could help the order in the trials to come. Unfortunately, all he ever found for them was remarkably unhelpful, though he didn¡¯t share that with anyone.


    For the next week, Simon dutifully copied down and delivered significant amounts of information, even if his experience told him it was nonsense. He recorded an entry that explained the proper prayers that would put the dead back into their graves, noting that they contained no words of power. After that, Simon translated a document that explained how a zombie could be stilled once more by driving a stake through its heart. He even relayed the old wives'' tale that he¡¯d heard so many times before about how the bites of a zombie could be cleansed with salt and ashes. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    It¡¯s too bad they¡¯re unlikely to actually find zombies by the time they get back, he told himself. Because I¡¯d love to see how they fare with all this knowledge.


    In the end, over a hundred people, including sworn brothers, acolytes, and whisperers, set off to save the world, and Simon¡¯s time in the necromantic archives came to an end. Still, it wasn¡¯t a total loss for him. In that time, he learned that Gelthic had an association with death, and thanks to one particularly gruesome story about a necromancer that sought to have an army erupt from the graveyard around him, Simon learned that Uuvellum could also be used as a modifier in the form of anti-.


    In this case, the man had attempted to cast a spell of greater antilife with Gervuul Uuvellum Meiren. He¡¯d succeeded too, but according to the witch hunter who found his corpse once the battle had done, the man had been reduced to nothing but a shriveled corpse that was halfway mummified by the dark magics he used.


    Simon spent several days trying to figure out what might have happened to cause that effect, assuming the document was entirely accurate. In the end, he decided it wasn¡¯t that the greater word had burned too much vitality or that the caster had botched the spell by mispronouncing something. Instead, he was fairly sure that the caster had used the spell over a large area that he himself had been standing in. So, while all of the dead were infused with the antilife as he¡¯d intended, he was as well.


    It would be like casting a fireball and centering it on yourself, he decided, almost certain that was what occurred. He imagined he¡¯d try it at some point, too. He wouldn¡¯t be able to see what it did to him, of course, but it would be a fairly painless suicide if he ever needed one of those.


    Simon enjoyed little riddles like that and looked forward to the day when he¡¯d finished the grimoire that he was working on. As it turned out, though, he never got the chance. Not long after the expeditionary force returned and declared the zombie menace to be eradicated after taking suspiciously few losses despite the heroic and unlikely stories that circulated, two of his brothers in the library died under mysterious circumstances.


    The first to go had been the archivist in charge of the section on demonology. All they¡¯d found of him was a boot with a foot still in it, which was fairly horrifying, even for someone as jaded as Simon. A few days later, though, while an inquisitor was investigating, he also vanished. The second man''s disappearance wasn¡¯t quite so subtle. There was a brief explosion when it happened, but by the time the first people arrived in the reading room, the only sign that anyone had been in there was a spray of blood on one of the walls and a stack of books on the desk.


    At first, the worries were that one of the men that had come home had gone crazy or been replaced with a warlock or worse. The entire compound was locked down for the better part of a week. Simon didn¡¯t mind that; he spent his time sitting in his cell contemplating what might have happened, but he didn¡¯t have information to say one way or the other.


    After that, they started interviewing everyone who¡¯d been in or near the library on either occasion, moving Simon much closer to the top of the list of suspects. He wasn¡¯t concerned. Even if they decided to execute him for some crazy reason, this sort of weirdness was exactly the reason he was here.


    ¡°Do you have any idea what happened to Archivists Malen or Shroud?¡± the inquisitor asked when he was escorted into the small room where questioning was taking place.


    Instead of picking up the provided quill and ink, Simon simply shook his head. That was obviously the wrong answer because the man¡¯s face reddened slightly at it.


    ¡°Are you taking this seriously, Ennis?¡± the man asked a little more forcefully. ¡°People have died. Someone is to blame!¡±


    ¡®They were both reading the same book when they died.¡¯ Simon wrote finally. It wasn¡¯t a question. He wasn¡¯t sure, of course, but after thinking about it for days, he realized it was his best answer to this locked room mystery. No one had done it. Instead, a particularly dangerous book in the collection had, he just didn¡¯t know how.


    The man¡¯s eyes narrowed as he looked at him silently for several seconds. Then he said, ¡°How do you know that?¡±


    ¡®I don¡¯t know.¡¯ Simon admitted in a quick flourish. ¡®Just a guess.¡¯


    ¡°Pretty damn good guess,¡± the man grumbled as he reached into a bag by his feet and pulled out a particularly evil tome. The thing was bound in dark leather and had no title. If Simon had been a betting man, he would have said the thing was human skin, but he couldn¡¯t say for sure without a closer explanation. ¡°Have you seen this before?¡±


    Simon answered with a shake of his head. He¡¯d remember a book like that.


    ¡°So you didn¡¯t see it before, but you know that it killed them?¡± the inquisitor tried again. ¡°How does that work?¡±


    ¡®I¡¯ve been translating a grimoire for months,¡¯ Simon responded. ¡®Ask the Head Librarian.¡¯


    ¡°We already have,¡± the other man nodded. ¡°But now you¡¯re on this instead.¡±


    ¡®Why me?¡¯ Simon protested in one quick line, frowning that he¡¯d smudged the ink on the y because he was in too much of a hurry.


    ¡°Because you were the only one to guess it had to do with a book,¡± the man answered smugly. ¡°I¡¯ve been through it myself, and though I can¡¯t read all of it, I¡¯m hoping you have better luck.¡±


    Simon sighed and then nodded. There was no point in fighting this because he knew he wouldn¡¯t win.


    On the plus side, it beats transcribing any more of the Tome of Bahgmorrda, he told himself. That was soft-pedaling this more than a little bit, though, he noted grimly. If he wasn¡¯t careful, this could definitely be one of those deaths that wasn¡¯t just a death.

 Ch. 179 - Digging Deeper

    Simon approached his assignment with great care. He looked at the book with suspicion from the first moment, and at first, he refused to even touch it. He was set up in a reading room that was thankfully free of bloodstains and body parts, but a brother of the Unspoken stayed with him and watched the whole time as he started his work.


    Simon tried using leather gloves to look through the book from arm''s reach, but they were too clumsy. So, once he opened and inspected the cover, he eventually settled on a stiff piece of paper to turn the pages. It¡¯s not really the way bookmarks are meant to be used, but whatever, he thought as he got to work.


    The thing was definitely a demonic text. That much he could determine even before he read the title. The whole thing reeked of sulfur, and though he had been assured that only living things had auras, he would have bet that this volume glowed darkly for those with the eyes to see.


    The first page was blank save for a few suspicious stains, and the second only bore the title Librium Malifica. Interestingly, no author was listed or even implied. That struck Simon as odd immediately because, from everything he¡¯d seen, mages and warlocks were very vain and often took credit for everything, even things they hadn¡¯t actually done.


    This book had none of that, though, despite the obvious care that had been taken in its creation. Instead, it was written by someone who stuck to the facts as they saw them and wrote only on hell, the devils that dwelled within it, and their machinations.


    ¡®There is only one end to the eternal cycle of reincarnation that we all face, and that is suffering in the great pits below,¡¯ the book opened very clearly. ¡®The devils know this. They know that in time they will get every man and woman that has ever lived, but they are impatient and will offer many boons to have a soul that much faster.¡¯


    Simon thought that was interesting since reincarnation didn¡¯t seem to be an idea that most of the religions he¡¯d read about ascribed to. It also happens to be halfway true, he noted, at least according to what Helades has told me.


    Even more than what the introduction said, though, he was struck by the illuminated illustrations in the margins. Though the writing of the book wasn¡¯t especially beautiful, someone had obviously taken great care in its construction. The flames that bordered the page like an elaborate Celtic knot were done in gold leaf and made this tome feel more evil than any of the others he¡¯d read to date.


    He continued, though, slowly, page by page, as he took in the words. Though early on, it described hell as endless in both size and depth, it eventually went on to categorize it into several sections and strata. There were then long-winded sections about what crimes were deserving of what punishment and who would end up where before going into graphic detail on exactly how they would be tortured for all eternity.


    If Simon hadn¡¯t actually seen into hell already, he would have thought this was a bad rip off of Dante¡¯s Inferno or some particularly angry part of the Bible. As it was, he couldn¡¯t say for sure. He ended that first day without any answers, though at least he didn¡¯t die in the process.


    Dying isn¡¯t what I¡¯m afraid of, though, he reflected as he watched the observer lock the book away in an iron-bound chest until he was ready to resume his reading of it tomorrow.


    The fact that the second reader had died in a spray of blood told him little, but the fact that the first man had left behind a limb told him much more. He was fairly sure that those people weren¡¯t simply killed. He was pretty sure that the book had, in some way, dragged him to hell. He was also pretty damn sure that if he suffered the same fate, he might never get out.


    Helades magic had been content to let him stay a zombie for a year and a statue for a century. So, he didn¡¯t think it likely that it would see the need to save him from a lifetime of eternal torment.


    The book did say that those torments would continue until there was nothing left of the soul but suffering, and that it was that mechanism that powered all of creation, which Simon thought was a fairly modern concept, even if it had used archaic and religious terms. In some ways, it resonated with what Helades said about the Pit, which unnerved him a little bit. He wasn¡¯t a big believer in coincidences anymore.


    Could this have been written by my doppelganger? He wondered. It seemed foolish to blame everything he read on whoever that had been. There was no way he could anticipate Simon¡¯s crusade against the centaurs and leave graffiti on the wall for him to find or write a whole book just for this moment. It was impossible.


    But what if he did? He asked himself. Simon was still no closer to understanding how this book had killed its previous readers after all. So far, it was just a normal book. It was prettier than average and a bit spookier, but otherwise, it might have been a religious text.


    That was what he fell asleep thinking about, and in the morning, he approached it with exactly the same level of caution he had the first day. Truthfully, he might have been even slower and more careful than he had been before. As the days went on, though, and he found no problems, he slowly grew less paranoid. It was human nature. He couldn¡¯t stay on his highest level of alert for weeks on end. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    The briefings he had to give only made it worse. Every few days, he would be called into the office of an inquisitor and asked questions about his research. Simon would give short answers, and then his minder would confirm those answers, as if spending half a year untangling a religious scavenger hunt and biting off his own tongue to join the Unspoken wasn¡¯t enough to show his loyalty.


    Each time, his answers were roughly the same. He told them how many pages he¡¯d read, he noted the highlights, and he confirmed that he had yet to find anything suspicious. The book was certainly evil. It might even be true on some level, but as far as he could tell, it wasn¡¯t magical. He had yet to read a single word of power in the thing, which was unusual because he knew for a fact that you needed those to bridge the way to hell and summon the creatures that dwelled there.


    Truthfully, Simon could only take so many passages like, ¡®And if you summon Glathran¡¯azusu, bring on to him one goblet of good wine mixed with the blood of a goat. For deals with him are most fortuitous when he has imbibed. After that, he will give you anything you ask for related to animals or fields, though his price is sometimes quite high.¡¯


    Each demon had a name, a domain, a symbol, and dozens of other details that were supposedly important to their summoning. Thanks to level thirteen, he knew that demon summoning was possible, but he never planned to try it out himself.


    It was in that lax, dismissive mood that he almost tripped a terrible trap. For the first week, he¡¯d religiously used the bookmark to turn the pages. After that, he¡¯d sometimes used his hand, but only very carefully. Today, he was reaching toward the edge to turn the page on Belthanrth and Vargarzeleth when he noted how the gilded patterns of flames on the edge of the page almost looked like a word of power.


    He knew that he was just seeing shapes in the clouds, as human minds tended to do. Despite that, though, his hand still stopped, fractions of an inch above the page, and refused to move further. Something told him that touching the paper was a bad idea, and he listened to it.


    Instead, he got paper and a quill and started sketching out the symbols that wrapped around all four sides of both pages. It was time-consuming with the materials he had, and he had to redraw them several times as he slowly but surely simplified them. It was enough that eventually, his minder took enough interest to finally ask, ¡°What is it you think you¡¯ve found?¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t answer him. He didn¡¯t stop until he¡¯d revealed the truth. Then, his only response was to stare at the page in horror. What he¡¯d just drawn was a summoning circle in miniature. This section was the invocation that connected the world to hell, that was the true name of the demon that had been listed on the page, and this was the point that would power it¡­


    And the point that would power it was just about exactly where his hand had drifted to. Had he turned the page, he would have temporarily activated a runic structure that would have opened a book-sized portal to hell. The moment after he did that, he might just have been dragged through screaming.


    Real fear went through Simon for the first time in a long time. Compared to this, a dragon or a vampire was nothing, and he¡¯d just found it and started reading it by accident while he was looking for a place to lay low and wait for a few years to go by so he could try things again with Elthena.


    ¡°Hey, Ennis, you¡¯re acting strange, what¡¯s wrong?¡± his minder asked.


    Simon held up one finger, indicating for the man to wait, and then he used his bookmark to flip back through the last dozen pages. On every single one that listed the details of a particular demon, he found similar runes. In each case, they were patterned differently, and the contact point was at different points on the righthand margin, but it was always there somewhere, just waiting to be activated by the inadvertent touch of a human hand.


    And I touched several of them¡­ he realized as his heart hammered in his chest. How many had he turned? Where had he touched the page? He couldn¡¯t say for sure, but in that moment, he felt someone walk over his grave, and it was several seconds before he could calm his breathing enough to pick up the quill and write the minder a message.


    ¡®I figured it out,¡¯ he wrote, not caring at all for once how ugly his handwriting came out. ¡®This book is truly a fiendish trap.¡¯


    After that, he slammed the thing shut and vowed never again to open it again. Neither of them lingered in that room for long. Even before Simon could write a summary of what he¡¯d discovered, he was taken to the familiar inquisitor to explain his findings.


    As he started to do so, in the older man¡¯s office, the minder who had been Simon¡¯s constant shadow for weeks was dismissed. Simon had a bad feeling about that but did nothing to continue to write.


    When the man finally read Simon¡¯s description of what the book actually did, he paused, set the sheaf of papers down, and closed the door. This added yet another layer of privacy to the conversation and made the hairs on Simon¡¯s neck stand on end. Something was wrong.


    ¡°You¡¯re sure of this?¡± the man asked, looking from Simon¡¯s notes to him and back again. ¡°Are you even sure that magic can work like that?¡±


    Simon nodded. Even as he did so, he felt like he was putting a noose around his neck.


    ¡°That¡¯s very interesting,¡± the inquisitor said evenly, leaning forward and steepling his fingers together in a way that made him look slightly more villainous. ¡°Shocking, really. Do you know how rarely a brother, or even an archivist, ever comes to that conclusion, even after they see magic items at work? It¡¯s very rare.¡±


    Simon nodded again, not sure what else to do, so the man continued speaking. ¡°That revelation is also the reason that most archivists have to be put down, I¡¯m afraid.¡±


    There it is, Simon realized. He was almost relieved to hear it. That was what he¡¯d been waiting for without realizing it.


    If they cut out tongues to prevent their researchers from trying to cast spells or share secrets, then they were more than willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent him from doing exactly what he¡¯d done. As soon as an archivist figured out that they could simply write or more properly inscribe spells, then they had to be put down.


    Strangely, though, he didn¡¯t mind. If this man was going to order his execution, he was inclined to let it happen. He¡¯d had a good run, after all, and he wanted to document all this in the mirror in his cabin while it was still fresh.


    So, Simon was even more surprised when the inquisitor said, ¡°I don¡¯t think that will be necessary in your case. All of our inquiries into your background have come back as positive as they can, and I can see just how devoted you are to the cause. I think it''s time we use your talents for bigger things.¡±

 Ch. 180 - Small Details

    Simon was as taken aback by those words as he was by the new assignment they were giving him. He was being transferred from the library to the forbidden vaults, which were in a dank section of the ruined castle two floors below where he¡¯d been serving so far.


    That was a far cry from the execution he¡¯d expected, but the truth was even stranger than that. At first, he thought his new duties would be similar to his old ones. He¡¯d just be translating artifacts instead of books. He would kill for that opportunity since that was one skill he desperately wanted to improve after the severe case of frost burn he¡¯d gotten from the armor he¡¯d spent so much time making.


    What he found was more than that. However, he only learned that after he was made to take yet more oaths.


    The Unspoken seemed obsessed with them. They made him sign a document in blood, swearing that any betrayal would be met with the most painful of all afterlives. After that, he had to swear eternal service to the order. They also made him swear not to tell any sworn brother what it was he learned from this point forward and that he would only speak freely with the inquisitors from now on, which struck him as both tantalizing and suspicious.


    Simon wasn¡¯t impressed or intimidated by any of that, though he did have to admit that the pageantry associated with the whole thing was rather impressive, especially in a shadowy cathedral. He could see how much all of this would impact him if he¡¯d really been a young scholar with a hard life.


    It was only when those rituals and blood oaths and the fasting associated with each of them were complete that the truth was finally revealed. The senior members of the unspoken used magic items. He¡¯d already suspected this from his time with Aaric, of course, but now he knew for a certainty.


    They weren¡¯t quite standard issue, but they weren¡¯t exactly uncommon, either, but they had an armory full of them, based on the principles of items they¡¯d found or seized from warlocks, and now his job was to help make more of them.


    ¡°There¡¯s no evil on this,¡± the inquisitor assured him as he showed Simon around the secluded workshops. ¡°These items are blessed, and in this way, we use the strength of the enemy against them.¡±


    While that logic made a twisted sort of sense, it also made the Unspoken giant hypocrites, which bothered him even more than their misguided crusade against magic. He wasn¡¯t about to make any waves about it, though. Not in this life. Just from the quality of the tools and the complexity of the patterns, he knew he was going to learn a lot here.


    That was even truer than Simon thought it would be. At first, he was underwhelmed as the silent man in charge put his calligraphy skills to use preparing blades for the acid etching process that they used to score perfect lines. This involved applying a clay mask everywhere they didn¡¯t want to damage the metal. It was tedious work, but once it was complete, he could see why it was so important.


    Simon already understood that the cleaner the line, the better the mana flowed, but that was further reinforced by feedback from the silent smiths. A shape that wasn¡¯t perfect in execution had about the same effect as a word of power that wasn¡¯t spoken perfectly. Either could alter the effect, increase the power required, or flub a spell entirely.


    It was interesting work, and Simon thrived in his new environment even more than he had in the library. Once upon a time, he¡¯d played many games where crafting had played a big part, but it had only been crafting it the same way that he used to consider using his mouse fighting.


    This was infinitely more complicated than that. He¡¯d never really made anything more complicated than assembling Swedish furniture with unpronounceable names during his time on Earth, and he didn¡¯t realize how much he enjoyed it. There was something about the perfectionism and the slow process of watching a steel ingot become a long, slender blade that he found very satisfying.


    Well, I probably wouldn¡¯t have then, he realized.


    With enough distance, it was easy enough to be honest about that. Back then, using an Allen wrench had been an insufferable ordeal, but now he didn¡¯t even mind the hardest jobs, like fueling the forges or bumping the bellows for hour after hour, while more experienced men than him turned steel into blades.


    For season after season, he soaked it in, and he admired every little technique that he learned. At first, he was mostly responsible for marking the blades, along with other simple things, like sharpening blades and assisting smiths.


    However, even in those tasks, he learned a great deal. The chief example of that was the way that they refilled those acid-created channels with silver, making the runes both functional and nearly invisible because of how well the silver blended with the steel. Unless you knew exactly what you were looking for, you¡¯d never see them.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Sometimes, they had him translate and attempt to understand the way that new items worked if the language was rare or the symbols were too stylized for other people to work out since he had a good eye for that. Mostly, though, that was handled by more trusted, senior acolytes.


    Still, the glimpses he got into various patterns and designs were fascinating. Many of them were so complicated that they made the frost sword that had been his major inspiration seem clumsy and primitive by comparison.


    Still, he was inspired by many of the designs he saw, both in what they did and the way that they were fueled. The blades that they made all seemed to share a few traits; the first was that the effects were subtle. After all, it wouldn¡¯t do to have the secret antimage society be seen wielding magical weapons all the time.


    Simon was surprised that he hadn¡¯t had to blot out more of those references in the books he¡¯d seen, but then the common people really didn¡¯t have any idea what magic was. If someone said a weapon was holy instead of witchcraft, then how were they supposed to know the difference? So, a lot of them had subtle glow effects or minor strengthening and healing effects for their wielder.


    The purpose wasn¡¯t to make the most powerful weapon but the most in-character weapon. Simon imagined that the rune blade that had briefly been in his possession worked in a similar fashion. Truthfully, he probably could have puzzled out how it had been built after so much exposure, but the second design element was what interested him more because he hadn¡¯t seen it before.


    Rather than being powered by the wielder or even the environment, all of their weapons were powered by their victim''s life force via a simple rune circuit near the tip of the blade in the blood gutter. It was an ingenious design, and he studied it as much as he could without attracting attention because he was definitely going to copy it in the future.


    The future was coming at him more quickly than he would have thought down there in the dark. Ever so slowly, he moved his way up from assisting those with the plans in the hammers to being the one to wield them under the observation of others.


    The place was a small factory, and with all the slow, careful steps, nearly half of the final blades were rejected for some defect, but they still made several a month. That wasn¡¯t all that they made, either. It was sometime in his second or third year when he graduated from forging to sand casting. Simon¡¯s time at the anvil had made him strong, but there was no strength was needed for this.


    Instead, it involved taking finished, nearly functional amulets that had been carved from wood that had all the proper runes and using them to create molds with sand. Once that happened, those molds were then filled with molten metal, which was usually silver but sometimes brass or gold, depending on what it was they were making. Most of the amulets they made were in the shape of holy symbols to further hide their true purpose. Simon had seen a couple of those explode while trying to carry out their purpose when he¡¯d taken out that group of white cloaks a few lives ago, so he knew they had something to do with protection. At least, some of them did.


    The Unspoken were more creative with their amulets than they were with their blades, and they had a whole array of uses. One category warned of undead or demonic taint nearby. Another attempted to shield the wearer from certain specified forces via boundary runes. According to their scant documentation on those, they only worked on spells of lesser power, which explained why a greater word had caused them to explode.


    Even in the best case, though, they were fragile things. Most of those were rejected because of air bubbles, cracks caused by cooling, or other imperfections. Unlike the swords, this wasn¡¯t a problem because the metal could just be melted down a second time for them to try again.


    The amulets had no victims to power them, so instead, they stole essence from the surrounding world in a way that was similar to how he¡¯d powered his armor with waste heat. The Unspoken used runes of order and connection to draw apparently free energy from the world, but Simon had been alive long enough to know that there was no such thing as a free lunch. Still, he couldn¡¯t figure out what exactly they were siphoning away. It had to be something, though, because they obviously worked. He¡¯d seen them in action.


    Several times, early on, he tried to improve these objects by simplifying their shapes, but those who supervised him wouldn¡¯t allow it. ¡®Tradition demands it look this way,¡¯ was what the notes that came back to him would say. ¡®They are ceremonial objects first, and holy weapons second!¡¯


    Simon understood that, but he also knew that it was the complex shapes that caused so many of them to fail, not the runes themselves. A simple, flat amulet of bronze scored with runes that was then covered in a layer of silver or gold would have been a hundred times easier to mass produce. They could give one to every man wearing a white cloak in the space of a year.


    Still, he didn¡¯t fight this point too hard. Instead, he focused on learning every technique that a more experienced craftsman was willing to teach him. He rarely left that silent world after a while, except to sleep, and for a long time, nothing seemed to change but him as he slowly grew older. Brothers would come and go, but mostly, they would come back safe and sound. The Abbott, too, along with other people like the Head Librarian and the Commander of the Order, seemed almost eternal.


    The only people that really seemed to change often were the sisters. They cycled much more frequently than the brothers, though everyone pretended not to notice. It wasn¡¯t talked about, but Simon knew the answer. It was because they were only taught a single word of power, and they were expected to chant it at every encounter with a possible warlock until their pretty throats bled.


    They might not know what that cost them, but he did. Whispering null over and over again would take decades off their lives with every encounter, and for what? It was sloppy and wasteful. They could get the same effect with a more complex spell using lesser words. He couldn¡¯t share that with anyone, though. That would just make the powers that be look at him with suspicion.


    Still, he couldn¡¯t look away from the travesty. It was good that he didn¡¯t, too. If he had simply stayed wrapped up in his own tasks and experiments, he would never have noticed the day that Carelyn finally arrived at the Broken Tower.

 Ch. 181 - Days Go By

    Simon had not noticed Aaric¡¯s arrival, but after he saw the girl, he started to look for the young man. It only took a few dinners to find that he had become a squire in the service of an older brother. That allowed him to line up his timeline between the levels a little better, but it also helped him regain interest in what was going on in the outside world.


    Though he¡¯d occasionally gotten involved in some of the minor mysteries and petty power struggles that typified this strange place, he¡¯d mostly lost interest in the outside world as he¡¯d focused on ever more detailed handiwork and learned more complicated metalworking techniques. Never in his life did Simon think that he would learn about the ins and outs of various forms of annealing and quenching to get just the right properties from metal, but here he was. Worse, knowing what he knew now, he could see just how much there was to learn. It was a humbling thing for him to realize that one could spend a lifetime learning a skill and still not know all there was to know about it.


    Life is basically the opposite of a video game in that sense, he decided, which was funny because crafting, as it turned out, was addictive. It was even more addictive than learning, and it was as close to playing a good game as he¡¯d found so far in the pit, and he lost years of his life exploring those delicate techniques.


    Familiar faces, though, that was new, and for the first time in a long time, it was enough to make him set down his hammers, files, and his ever-expanding sheaf of notes and poke around a bit in the outside world. As it turned out, very little had changed except for the women he saw at the evening meal.


    Sisters were not often seen for long because, as he¡¯d noted previously, whisperers were used up rather quickly by the needs of the Unspoken. One could see them around the compound, it was just hard to see the same one for more than a few months or years. It took only a few missions to turn a sweet young girl into a crone because they bled out their entire life just to stop a hedge wizard or two. That was a high price to pay to stop a man who was experimenting with things that the unspoken didn¡¯t want anyone to know.


    He¡¯d seen the two of them talking in the courtyard on more than one occasion. While romance was forbidden by the Whitecloaks, it sometimes happened among the junior members of the order. Simon had never seen any harm in it, though he had seen members of both sexes punished very publicly on more than one occasion. He was sure that the two of them would get together and escape soon enough.


    However, Simon eventually decided to intervene anyway. It was just his nature at this point. He couldn¡¯t simply trust that they would get away as they always had before; he might have already screwed that up in some small way. One day, when no one was looking, he placed a short tract on the nature of the whisperer problem in young Aaric¡¯s cell so that the boy could become better acquainted with the costs of the cult he¡¯d joined.


    The document was something that Simon had read years before, and technically, it was secret from junior members of the order, but he didn¡¯t care. He supposed that it wouldn¡¯t be too hard to trace it back to him, but that didn¡¯t bother him too much, either.


    He¡¯d long since prepared a self-destruct switch in the form of a sharp-edged amulet that he wore. He hadn¡¯t shared the design with any of his peers, and no runes were visible on its polished brass surface, but the thing would be more than sufficient to blow his head off with a word of fire if he cut himself on it and bled a bit.


    He expected that to be almost as effective as the words he¡¯d left for the young devotee to read. ¡®The nature of magic is caustic to the soul,¡¯ it read. ¡®And the words of a whisperer are still magic, even though we might wish that they weren¡¯t. They are a rare and powerful weapon Necessary to beat our foes, and it is through their sacrifice that the many will be saved by our foe and the damnable words of power they use for such ill purpose.¡¯


    He ended the note by including the name of the man who¡¯d written it, but Simon very much doubted that Aaric would know or care who Master Arvand Broodmark was, even if he was a storied leader of the order only fifty years ago. Still, he didn¡¯t have a choice; after working in the library for so long, it was almost a compulsion.


    He obviously never asked Aaric if he¡¯d read the thing, but the inquisitors never came looking for Simon, and the young man¡¯s gaze had only become more furtive after that, which told Simon everything they needed to know.


    Less than two weeks later, the two of them tried to make their escape. Simon had taken to sitting in the afternoon light to warm his aging bones for the last few years when the weather was warm, and he worked on new ideas for spells and weapons. He¡¯d been at the Broken Tower long enough that no one doubted him or often even noted his presence anymore. He wasn¡¯t just a ghost to the broader world now; he was in this secret world as well.


    Some days, he would sit just outside the walls or in a grove slightly beyond that, and other times, he would sit atop the ruined keep not so far away from where the sentry kept watch over the surrounding area. On the day that Aaric and Carelyn started to ride away just before sunset, while everyone else was at dinner, Simon was sitting up there as he had been every night for the last week. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    The guard had acknowledged him when he¡¯d arrived but tuned him out the rest of the time because, these days, Simon made for a remarkably poor conversationalist. When he saw the two riding away on one horse, though, he asked Simon, ¡°Do you think I should sound the alarm?¡±


    Simon nodded vigorously as he pointed at the couple, but as soon as the sentry reached for the horn, Simon pushed the man over the wall. He sent him thirty feet to the ground without the slightest bit of guilt, and the man barely had time to scream before he hit the ground with a dull, wet thud. Even as so many other parts of Simon¡¯s mind and skills had strengthened on this trip, he¡¯d fallen entirely out of practice with weapons, and his combat reflexes had been hopelessly dulled.


    So, while the sentry breathed his last in the dirt, Simon gathered his things. Then, he went to dinner and sat among the same people he always did while waiting for someone to sound the alarm. That didn¡¯t happen until shift change almost an hour later.


    Though the young lovers would doubtlessly be blamed for the death, he didn¡¯t think they¡¯d mind. It was possible that the unspoken would never even find them again with their current headstart.


    That¡¯s pretty much the best case, even if I have to solve that level again, he told himself while the rest of the compound scrambled like an agitated ant hill.


    It was only a few days after that event, when everything started to get back to normal that he decided he was pretty much done with this life.


    He hadn¡¯t meant to stay here long enough to see things come full circle, but now that he had, it was something of a wake-up call for him. He¡¯d stayed here for an entire life and soaked up more knowledge about the Unspoken as well as the history of the world that they were ¡°protecting¡± than he ever thought he would.


    He learned almost as much about how magic worked in this life as he had in all of his others combined, and he¡¯d learned more about how the events of history fit together than he would have thought possible before this life. Well, the events of history in a very small portion of the world, he reminded himself.


    The white cloaks were a cancer, but they were not yet a cancer that had consumed the world, and even if this life was not going to stick because he didn¡¯t solve the level, he still didn¡¯t plan on letting them continue to grow.


    He didn¡¯t hate them precisely. Hate was too weak a word. Had the order merely been what it claimed to be on its face, then he would have hated them, but now that he knew that those at the top of the pyramid hoarded power and used magic with impunity even as they tried to deny that same knowledge to the rest of the world, he loathed them.


    He only had firm evidence that anyone of any power used enchanted swords and amulets, but he suspected it was more than that. He¡¯d seen gray-haired men look more youthful when they returned from a mission than they had when they went out, and he was quite certain that they weren¡¯t above using the very spells they sought to suppress. After all, even though their entire order could see the auras, very few knew what they really signified.


    At this point, Simon was quite certain that Jack the Ripper might not be the darkest aura in a room. After all, if you did what you loved, it blunted the impact of even the worst behaviors as far as he¡¯d seen.


    The only question was what to do about it. Simon spent weeks on that question while he worked on other projects and started getting his affairs in order. What¡¯s the most awful, painful way I can hurt these bastards? He pondered to himself for hour after hour and day after day whenever he wasn¡¯t too busy.


    For a while, he considered trying to open a giant portal into hell to swallow the entire base whole. It was perfectly possible in a theoretical sense. In the end, it wasn¡¯t even the fear of the havoc it might wreck on the wider world that stopped him; it was the logistical issues. The amount of work he¡¯d have to do in public spaces would almost certainly get him caught.


    No, it needs to be something stealthier than that, he decided. It needs to be something small that doesn''t require so much preparation.


    He gave a lot of thought to how he could kill the most people with the least effort before he finally decided on the Feast of the Ascendance. Dropping the roof on the assembled grandees during the evening, when most or all of the most important people would be in attendance.


    It wouldn¡¯t be hard. He still had a few months, and he was sure he could create more than a few force wards on the main supports. If he still had a tongue, he could have severed all three with a greater word, but even runes of gold didn¡¯t care for greater words, so he would have to make the magics a bit more compact.


    Despite his creative plan, it didn¡¯t seem to be enough to pay them back for all of the horrors they¡¯d unleashed on the world. Still, enough or not, that was what Simon did. He told his supervisor he was working on a shield that might deflect arrows over large stretches, protecting whole cadres from archers during battle, but really, he was creating shaped demolition charges.


    That wasn¡¯t the hard part, though. The hard part was finding a way to activate all three of them at once. That took a little creativity. In the end, he was forced to create a firebomb between all three charges. It would detonate first, immolating everyone, including Simon. Then the heat of that fire would melt the lead in the force runes he¡¯d designed, triggering them. It was an ugly piece of work, but at least it would be dramatic.


    Well, I got more than I wanted from this life, he decided as he made his final preparations and reviewed his notes again so that he could try to remember as much as he could when his next life started.


    He had no regrets. Well, he had very few regrets, at least. The only thing he hadn¡¯t gotten to do in this life was see Elthena, and the frequency with which he drew her face in his sketchbooks was steadily increasing. It was as clear an indicator as any that it was time to start over.

 Ch. 182 - Going Out with a Bang

    When the day in question finally arrived, the main hall was filled with white cloaks. Simon wasn¡¯t wearing one, of course. He and the other archivists and craftsmen were wearing their typical dark robes. The place was completely full, and he had to sit near the back, but then he hadn¡¯t expected any less.


    Every member of the secret order who wasn¡¯t off on a mission in some faraway location returned to the Broken Tower for this ceremony. While this was not the first time that Simon had attended this feast, thankfully, it would be the last.


    Traditionally, it was the place for the senior leadership of the order to crow about their successes and lay out their plans for the future. This year, though, it was going to be nothing more than a burial for everyone involved. He was going to bury them all in the unmarked grave that was their own secret base, and with any luck, no one would ever try to dig up all the secrets that were hidden there.


    Simon was in no hurry for that, though. He¡¯d been here for decades. He could wait a little longer. He listened to the speeches and enjoyed the food. He even got a little drunk, if only because he knew the next part was going to hurt. Then, once his plate was clean and the decanter nearest to him was empty, he rose and walked toward the central dias.


    Guards were stationed at the high table, as they always were. They looked at him with interest but not concern. Why should they be concerned? He was a feeble man who had lost his youth and gone gray. The archivists were not typically heard at these events for obvious reasons.


    Simon made no attempt to hide what he¡¯d made anyway; that would have aroused suspicion. Instead, he held up his final gift to the order like he intended to present it to the Grandmaster or the Abbott. Unfortunately for them, he did neither. Instead, he activated it, unleashing the magic intrinsic to his design and filling the room with fire and shouts of alarm.


    Those shouts turned to screams almost immediately, but not before he¡¯d lit the tapestries that hid his demolition charges on fire. That single act would have been enough to decapitate the Unspoken, but after all this time, Simon wanted more than that. He wanted to annihilate them.


    He was glad that he¡¯d gone to such lengths, too, because even as he crumpled to the ground in agony, he saw the Grandmaster stand and draw his sword. The man had barely been scratched by Simon¡¯s firebomb, and worse, as Simon lay there burning, he saw the man speak a word of healing and became almost instantly whole.


    I fucking knew it, Simon thought, holding on to that tiny observation despite the terrible pain.


    The man advanced on Simon, but he would never reach him. Even as his old eyes started to dim, he heard the sound of sundering stone, and two of the three pillars that held up the hall started collapsing. Simon only had enough time to see the surprise in the other man¡¯s eyes before his world went dark under tons of rubble.


    This time, Simon was not at all surprised to wake up in the cool, fire-free embrace of his tiny cabin. In most of his lives, he¡¯d been gone for a few weeks or months, and a return had been treated as a punishment. This time, after decades away from this place, he felt a wave of nostalgia wash across him as he looked around the old place. It felt good to be back. It was a weird thing to think, but it was true.


    There was no time to spend the day soaking it in, though. He had a good memory, but he knew from experience that he didn¡¯t have a great one and that the longer he waited, the more holes would appear in his notes.


    Instead, he got to work. ¡®Okay, mirror, wake up and¡­¡± he paused, appreciating that he could speak properly again. He moved his tongue around his mouth, noting how strange it felt to be whole again in such a small way.


    That wasn¡¯t something he¡¯d thought he would ever have to miss, but then he¡¯d never expected to work in a secret library either. He shook his head. ¡°Anyway,¡± he continued. ¡°I¡¯m back, and It''s time to take a lot of notes.¡±


    The thing brightened, and Simon spent the next several hours dictating nonstop into it. Periodically, he would pause to check for understanding or to classify a bit of knowledge in some way or another so that he¡¯d be able to find it again later, but he had a lot to cover, and eventually, after he discussed all of the most important bits of magic lore that he learned he eventually took a break and grabbing his apple and his water skin he decided to go out for a stroll.


    I¡¯m going to be at this for days, he told himself as he stood and stretched. The metalworking trivia and the history lessons can wait a bit.


    When he¡¯d first arrived here, he recalled hating this meadow, but now that he¡¯d come back after so long, it felt like an old friend, and he walked toward the temple ruins he¡¯d discovered so long ago, both to think and to check some things.


    Along the way, he ate his apple, and when he arrived, he sat on the cool stone for a time before he looked around the place. Sure enough, many of the marks had been intentionally defaced. This was something he doubted he would have noticed before, but he could see the hands of the Unspoken even here.


    ¡°Fucking hell,¡± he said, finishing the apple and tossing the core over by the stream. ¡°They¡¯re like the magical Taliban or something.¡±


    Simon thought about heading back then, but instead, he walked over to the remains of his apple. Already, there were some ants swarming on it, eager to feast on the remains, but what caught his eyes was the seeds. Instead of going back, he thought about it for a moment and then said, ¡°Aufvarum Zyvon Vosden.¡±


    He had no idea if it would work or not. He had long theorized how linking more words together would let him do more specific and powerful spells.


    No, powerful is the wrong word, he corrected himself. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    What he was doing with this was exactly the opposite of powerful. It was weak, but it was specific. What power was there was being applied in very specific ways, and, right now, at least in part, it was working.


    What he¡¯d tried to cast was a spell of lesser plant growth. At seven syllables, it wasn¡¯t exactly something he could use in combat, but then, unless that damn seed level respawned, he didn¡¯t expect to ever need to fight a plant in combat again.


    As he watched, a tiny seedling sprouted from the apple core. Then, as its cotyledon reached up and its roots stretched into the earth, over the next few seconds, it graduated from seedling to sapling, growing a pencil-thin trunk. It wouldn¡¯t be bearing fruit overnight or anything, but it was still an achievement, and he smiled wider.


    ¡°At least that life wasn¡¯t wasted,¡± he told himself as he turned to refill his now-empty skin before he went back to the cabin to get back to work.


    Simon spent the next several days doing little else but dictating whole swaths of history into his mirror and adding bits and pieces to his map from other maps he¡¯d glimpsed. Once he was in a good place with all of that, he finally got around to checking his character sheet.


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 33


    Deaths: 42


    Experience Points: -187,991


    Skills: Agriculture [Below Average], Archery [Below Average], Armor (light) [Average], Armor (heavy) [Below Average], Armor (medium) [Average], Athletics [Below Average], Baking [Below Average], Cooking [Average], Craft [Excellent], Deception [Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Average], Healing [Above Average], History [Excellent], Investigate [Excellent], Maces [Average], Navigation [Above Average], Research [Excellent], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Average], Spears [Average], Spell Casting [Great], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Below Average], and Swords [Above Average].


    Words of Power: Aufvarum (disperse, minor), Barom (illusion, light), Celdura (plan, shape), Delzam (cure, order), Dnarth (connection, distant, hidden), Gelthic (ice, death, weakness), Gervuul (greater, power), Hyakk (flesh, healing), Karesh (location, protection, understanding), Meiren (creation, fire, life), Oonbetit (focused, force, motion), Uuvellum (anti-, null, boundary), Vosden (earth, growth, metal, strength), Vrazig (lightning, ruin, quickening, wind), Zyvon (transfer, plants, water)¡¯


    While his skills had gone up nicely, he noted that more than a few had actually gone down. That made sense since he hadn¡¯t actually fought for his life with a sword in well over a decade, but it was still sad to see. ¡°Worth it,¡± he said before asking the mirror to switch to which levels it could access.


    ¡®Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt


    Level 9 - Wyvern in the mountains


    Level 29 - Cultists in a village


    Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains


    Level 33 - ???¡¯


    The first thing Simon did was laugh and change the entry for level 29 to read ¡®The Unspoke in Esmiran¡¯ since he knew a lot more now than he did when he¡¯d populated this list so long ago. He did the same thing to level 33, adding ¡®Vampire in the orchard¡¯ to his list.


    Simon noted that level 32 was solved and that he only seemed to have screwed up a couple levels with his recent trips. That was okay; he could live with that.


    He went fishing once to have a proper dinner, caught a rabbit to eat the day after, and he made some time to experiment magically every day though, and after a few lesser experiments, he was finally ready to try what he wanted to try.


    Over the last few days, Simon had made a stone crumble to dust with words of lesser stone entropy, struck a goblin dead with lesser death, and made his bed less lumpy with lesser dispersal. However, just like the apple core, those were all experiments for what came next.


    On the fourth day, he grabbed his embarrassingly bulging belly, and then, after giving it as much thought and focus as he could muster, he said, ¡°Aufvarum Meiren Celdura,¡± using the words of lesser life shaping on himself.


    The results were uncomfortable but instantaneous. He¡¯d struggled hard to focus on the fat tissue rather than the underlying organs in an attempt to do magical lipo. He was more than aware that if he accidentally shrunk or eliminated his stomach or his intestines, this would be a pretty short run.


    None of those terrible things seemed to happen, though. Instead, his gut shrank before his eyes. When it was done, he didn¡¯t have washboard abs or anything, but he didn¡¯t feel like such a fat ass, either.


    ¡°Well, at least now I know how to make myself look the scarred-up version of me when I visit Elthena,¡± he thought cheerfully.


    Truthfully, he could probably use this spell to make himself look like anything or anyone, but he wasn¡¯t enough of an artist to pull that off. He could only imagine how horrific the finger-painted version of handsome Simon would be.


    No, he decided, for now, this is enough.


    He was in no hurry to go anywhere, just like he was in no hurry to lose all his weight. He just wanted to feel a little closer to normal while he did all of this.


    ¡°I could try boosting my strength, I guess?¡± he said to himself that night before dismissing the thought. Getting rid of fat was one thing, but boosting various small parts of his body without any real knowledge of what that looked like? He¡¯d pull something, or rip a tendon, or worse. No, he didn¡¯t need shortcuts. He¡¯d get there when he decided where he was going; he knew he¡¯d find some way to work out. He¡¯d get in pretty good shape after that.

 Ch. 183 - Something To Do

    This time it wasn¡¯t a question of where he wanted to spend his time, it was a matter of how he wanted to spend this life, and Simon spent several days considering that question. At this point his lives were stretching for decades rather than ending in weeks, so in a way, he was picking what kind of play-through he wanted to have. Maybe picking my major would be a better choice, he added as he reflected on his previous life.


    It was that thought that made him decide he definitely wasn¡¯t going to do what he¡¯d planned. Once he finished recording every fact worth remembering into his ever-expanding personal library, he¡¯d thought about going to Liepzen and living a similar life for as long as he had the last time in a different library. It was sensible. The facts were all fresh in his head, after all. Surely, he¡¯d be able to learn the most by comparing what he¡¯d read in Darndelle and the Broken Tower.


    But it sounded incredibly dull. He¡¯d spent years reading and tinkering, and right now, he wanted to do what? Besides seeing Elthena, he wasn¡¯t sure, but seeing his sword leaning against the wall, called to him more than a little, and he wondered what enchantment he might put on it when the time was right.


    Strangely, though, he didn¡¯t feel like enchanting anything. He wanted to in theory, but he knew exactly how much work that was. It would be weeks and months to set everything up, depending on what he wanted to do, and right now, that all just looked like more waiting to him. Truthfully he was chaffing at spending so much time just talking to the damn mirror for day after tedious day, but he knew if he stopped, he¡¯d never pick that back up again, and he¡¯d forget an awful lot.


    ¡°You know, you do a terrible job and holding up your side of the conversation,¡± he told the mirror at one of the points he felt like giving up on this part of the project.


    ¡®I do not understand the point you are making,¡¯ the thing said after only a slight delay.


    ¡°Exactly,¡± he laughed. ¡°That¡¯s the problem.¡±


    Simon managed to put up with the boredom for almost two weeks before he gave up. In that time his only real entertainment was hunting, fishing, and thwarting the increasingly aggressive goblin raids.


    Simon had never tried to stay on this level for so long. Indeed, he remembered a time when he regarded staying here for five days as impossible. This time, though, he looked forward to the sunset raids that only intensified day after day.


    The first time they tried to burn him out was on day four. Simon didn¡¯t even have to resort to magic for the half a dozen little bastards. He just took out the shaman with a well-aimed shot, then plinked off a few more of the buggers before they scattered. He¡¯d been forced to use his crossbow ammo for that fight because he was saving his good arrows for hunting. Still, it worked well enough.


    After the shaman was dead, he hoped to see more new monsters he hadn¡¯t seen before, but instead, it was just more angry swarms of goblins. Without the spells splashing against the side of his cabin, though, he finally got a workout with his sword.


    Even five- or six-on-one, the goblins were only challenging in that he wasn¡¯t half the swordsman he¡¯d been a couple lives ago. Simon was happy to take that frustration out on them, though. ¡°Note to self,¡± he told himself, gasping for breath after he finished night eight¡¯s fight, ¡°Don¡¯t stop sword fighting for like thirty years, between two lives.¡±


    Shockingly, the last really good fight he¡¯d had was against the monster in the volcano, and that was a long time ago. Still, slowly, but surely some of it came back to him, and by the time he decided he was ready to go, he felt like bandits wouldn¡¯t be an imminent danger for him.


    Of course, the skeletons almost proved him wrong. Simon hadn¡¯t fought them in decades, either, and it was the first time he struggled against them in a long time. They didn¡¯t wound him, of course, at least, not badly, but it took a little bit to clear the room enough that he could take down the death knight in a good clean fight.


    Afterward, he paused and took the Blackheart out of the knight¡¯s chest to examine it more closely. That, at least, was interesting, and he paused only long enough to gather some silver and use a lesser word of earth to make a mirror so he could compare his current analysis to his previous notes. He decided he wasn¡¯t far off. The thing used runes of Uuvellum to create anti-life and area effects, forcing the dead to come to life. That much was easy to understands. Whether the original sorcerer had actually used it, or if it had worked, though, were open questions, and Simon doubted that the mage had gotten what he wanted out of the deal. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    ¡°From my brief stint as a zombie, I¡¯m leaning toward no on that one,¡± he decided before he put it carefully back. Then, he gathered as much gold and silver as he could before he continued on his way.


    This time, he didn¡¯t dig down into the subchamber. Instead, he just took the exit to the Wyvern level.


    ¡°A handful of silver is enough to get to where I¡¯m going.¡± He decided. ¡°I only have half a decade to waste before I go back to Ionar.¡±


    His logic on that was pretty straightforward. The wyvern level was the level before the volcano level. That meant that somewhere between tomorrow and a couple of years from now, he was going to fight that thing, and then about four years later, his lover was going to refuse to marry him and send him away.


    Which meant that in the meantime, he¡¯d fight and maybe do a little exploring. Simon¡¯s map had largely been filled in through the Kingdom of Brin and up to the Northlands. Likewise, he¡¯d traveled past Ionia all the way to Abresse and the seas beyond that.


    So his blank spots were mostly Ionia in the west and the mountainous Kingdom of Chiara in the mountains to the east of all of this. Chiara was almost a complete mystery, but in Ionia, at least, he knew where the cities along the coast and on the islands were.


    The Kingdom was a large peninsula surrounded by a scattering of islands off the coast to the west and south. Knowing the names on the map and what those places were actually like, though, well, there was a world of difference between those two.


    And this time, once the volcano exploded, he was going to start purging other parts of this supposed curse. At least, he would once he learned more about it. He was resolved. In this life, he was going to solve Ionia. Well, probably not solve, he corrected himself. I doubt I can go fix everything, then come back and kill the wyvern a decade from now, and Helades will let that count.


    Understand was a more doable goal. By the time this was done, he was going to figure out everything he needed to know to fix it. ¡°That should be easy enough,¡± he said to himself as he made his way down the mountain.


    He spotted the wyvern half a dozen times over the next few days, and each time, he crouched behind a boulder or a tree and waited for it to turn toward him. Fortunately, it never did. However, on the second day, someone else¡¯s fortune obviously wore out, and Simon spotted it carrying the corpse of someone back to its nest.


    ¡°That¡¯s probably the thing I¡¯m supposed to prevent,¡± he decided. Simon didn¡¯t take the failure to heart, but he did decide to go and investigate where it was the wyvern had taken off from, even if it meant a little extra walking.


    He spent the trip wondering just how many levels had minor, almost petty events. ¡°Kill this owlbear, and those children live. Stop this plague in that village, but let everyone die first,¡± he said to himself, looking for the logic. ¡°Oh, and don¡¯t forget to bring this village food so everyone doesn¡¯t starve to death.¡±


    He¡¯d hoped that his intensive study of history for a few years would have given him a better perspective on this issue, but he still found it more than a little confusing. All he could do was hope that if he found this guy¡¯s wagon or whatever, this level would make a little more sense.


    Simon was huffing and puffing that evening when he found the site of the battle. There was no wagon, but even so, it was pretty unmistakable. There were other corpses, along with the remains of two horses. The first lay atop the dead man, and the second split into two gory halves. One half of it lay in the middle of the road where a vulture had claimed ownership, and the other half of it was up a tree where the ravens were having a party.


    Simon left them alone and decided that he wasn¡¯t camping anywhere near there. Before he left, though, he took the coin purse off the corpses, and then he dug through both sets of saddlebags. Mostly, he found camping supplies for people traveling light. He helped himself to some of those since it would reduce his need for hunting.


    More interestingly, though, was a sealed letter that he found on the half a horse. There was no name on it. All there was was the impression of a signet ring on the wax seal. Simon thought it looked like Brin Hearldy, but he wasn¡¯t a hundred percent sure.


    Inside, there were some names, but not enough that he¡¯d ever find who this had been meant for. ¡®Dearest Antonia, we have been betrayed. If this letter reaches you before the worst should befall you, I urge you to kill your brother and flee south. I will meet you in Abresse. Look for my ship. L.¡¯


    ¡°So, this woman never gets this letter, and the worst befalls her, and what? She gets killed? He gets heartbroken and commits suicide?¡± he said aloud as he talked himself through the sequence of events. ¡°I can¡¯t even find who sent it because he didn¡¯t even sign his damn name!¡±


    Simon crumpled up the letter and threw it away. Then, he started walking to the northwest. He couldn¡¯t sleep until he put some distance between himself and the wyvern nest, but even without the frustrating letter, going this way was clearly the right choice. He¡¯d never gone this way around these mountains before, and he wanted to approach Ionia from a new direction.


    That was one part of the world where he knew what went where, thanks to the map in the Queen¡¯s library. This time, instead of approaching the northern reaches of Ionia through the mountains and starting in the south, he was going to travel around the mountains to the north and then travel south along the shore. It would be a lot of walking, but he was sure he could find plenty of paying mercenary work. The people of Ionia weren¡¯t very trusting, but they weren¡¯t especially peaceful, either, and during his time in the capital, he¡¯d never seen a sell sword go hungry.

 Ch. 184 - Out of the Way

    Simon didn¡¯t miss a lot of things about the Broken Tower, but after a week of sleeping on rocks and damp grass, he did miss the bed he¡¯d had there. It was almost as hard as the stone floor it sat on, but at least he¡¯d slept like the dead. So, most mornings, he used his recently returned ability to speak, and sang a little song, or at least talked to himself as he continued on, and as soon as he had the chance to splurge and get a room at an inn, he did so.


    The little village of Elbenval was too small to matter; in fact, it was barely big enough to be noted on his ever-widening map.  It was little more than two dozen homes and a few fields next to the neglected trade road he was walking along.


    What it was good for, though, was information. For the price of a few beers spread around the small common room, he heard every scrap of gossip in the county. Mostly, that was about people who didn¡¯t matter and feuds that would never go beyond the families who held their grudges for generations, but it was entertaining, at least, and he did learn a few useful facts. The two most important things he learned were that he was approaching the western limits of Brin and that the Viscount was a petty old weasel with a bandit problem.


    While Simon didn¡¯t have so little money that he had to go track down assholes like that, he definitely wanted to. He could use the funds to get a mule and a backpack, or maybe even a horse once he could hike for a day without wanting to die.


    In the morning, on the way out of town, Simon checked the notice board, promising three golden crowns for information leading to the whereabouts of the Bandit leader, Ennis, ironically enough. The notice had a picture of the man on it, but it was a likeness drawn by what appeared to be a child. Beyond showing that the man in question had a mustache, it was less than useless.


    Still, after Simon had finished feeling wounded by the sloppy handwriting of the man who had written the wanted poster, he folded it up and pocketed it.  It might be useless for identifying his target, but it did say where his men had been recently seen, in places that weren¡¯t so far up the road from here. More importantly, it spelled the reward out very clearly, which was what Simon was really after. His experience with Varten and the centaurs had taught him to get things like this in writing.


    Simon spent two more days traveling through the area. He approached every roadside grove of trees with caution, though he needn¡¯t have. When he finally found his bandits, it was he who caught them by surprise. Toward sunset on his third day north, Simon smelled wood smoke on the wind and followed it. While he¡¯d found the bandit camp, it was just a dozen half-starved farmers, not the rogue''s gallery of bloody-thirsty killers he¡¯d been promised.


    This disappointed Simon because he¡¯d been looking forward to a real fight. He thought he might even get the chance to throw around a few fire spells. Sadly, that turned out not to be the case. Instead, when he sat down at their fire and asked about the fire, he got more humor than hostility.


    ¡°If that skinflint has the three gold coins to actually pay that reward, I¡¯ll give you my thumbs!¡± Most of these men couldn''t read, so Simon read the thing aloud before he gave the flyer to the man on his left, and it slowly passed around the fire. When it reached Ennis, the man had a hearty laugh at the illustration.


    ¡°Even if he had, it ain¡¯t like he¡¯s capable of giving the things away,¡± another man laughed.


    Slowly, in dribs and drabs, a not-so-unfamiliar story came out. The domain of Viscount Bracken wasn¡¯t as large as the ones that belonged to Barons Corwin or Raithwaite, but it was every bit as mismanaged as the latter, and the men in question were more like tax cheats than bandits. Even tax cheats wasn¡¯t very appropriate since, in their version of events, he charged them enough to run them off their land, and then he still pursued them for debts they had no way to pay after their plots had been seized.


    ¡°Not a lot of good nobles in this land, is there?¡± Simon asked after he took a sip from the wineskin being passed around.


    ¡°If there¡¯s a single one, they must live pretty damn far away,¡± the man to Simon¡¯s right said, ¡°Because I ain¡¯t never seen em.¡±


    That brought another chorus of laughs, but it wasn¡¯t something Simon could refute. He agreed with the man. The rulers of every city he¡¯d seen mostly seemed to care about the area around the capital, but everywhere else, well¡­ as long as they paid their taxes, it was an out-of-sight, out-of-mind situation.


    ¡°So is this the part when you take my head to see if he pays up?¡± Ennis said finally. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°Seems like an awful hassle,¡± Simon answered with a shrug.


    ¡°Didn¡¯t think so,¡± Ennis said, spitting into the dark. ¡°You don¡¯t look much like a bounty hunter yourself.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t let the flab fool you, I¡¯m just a little out of practice, that¡¯s all,¡± Simon answered. ¡°Once upon a time, I used to fight centaurs down south, but lately, it''s just been goblins and whatnot.¡±


    There were a few more jokes at Simon¡¯s expense, but they didn¡¯t mean anything by it. Honestly, he didn¡¯t blame them. He went to bed that night trying to decide if he should make this his problem, and he woke up deciding that he should just continue on his way and leave these men to their fate. He would have done just too if the riders hadn¡¯t arrived while he was packing up the canvas tap he used as a tent.


    One of the men was making fry bread when the sound of galloping filled the glen they¡¯d made their hideout. Everyone looked around in confusion, and Simon readied a spell as he thought he¡¯d see a wall of heavy horse coming over the rise, but it turned out to be only five men with lances. That changed things a bit.


    ¡°We outnumber them already,¡± Simon laughed as he unlimbered his bow and drew an arrow.


    The five soldiers had paused on the rise not far from them, and one of them lifted his faceplate to make an announcement about coming peacefully; Simon wasn¡¯t really interested in peacefully this morning, though. Instead, he put an arrow in the eye of the man doing the walking at fifty feet.


    ¡°In the name of your Lord, the Viscount of¡ª¡± he started. His screaming spoiled the rest of whatever it was he¡¯d been about to say, spooking the horses and sending them in all directions.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± the supposed bandit nearest to Simon gasped as Simon drew his sword.


    ¡°Five riders? Three crowns?¡± This Viscount fella really doesn''t take you guys seriously, Simon answered with a smile. ¡°I¡¯m just teaching him a lesson on that. After this, the price should go way up.¡±


    Simon took the head off the first man to charge him with a word of force as he parried Simons''s strike. It had been a clumsy thing, and Simon never had a chance of taking the man from this angle, but then, he¡¯d never intended to. The blow had been for show because he couldn¡¯t exactly strike people dead with lightning and expect to make friends. Just pretending to take the man¡¯s head off with a lucky blow would keep people from asking questions later, and for now, all Simon needed was plausible deniability.


    Well, plausible deniability and a damn mount, he thought as he pushed the rider off of his horse and then mounted it. It had been a long time since he¡¯d ridden a horse and even longer since he¡¯d fought from one, but he found it came back to him, more or less.


    With a yank on the reigns, he wheeled and spurred the animal toward the nearest soldier with his heels. The move was clumsy enough that it would have embarrassed him once upon a time. He wasn¡¯t great on horseback these days, but that didn¡¯t matter. These soldiers weren¡¯t going to kill him, and even if they did, this fight was completely pointless.


    What mattered wasn¡¯t the details of the peasant''s cause or who had wronged who. What mattered was that he was having fun. He was on the side of the angels, he was having a good time, and he was remembering how to be a badass, which was what he needed as much as he needed to reach Ionar one day.


    While the other bandits clustered together, brandishing their pitchforks and short swords like a pathetic porcupine, he fought with lucky soldier number three. The last soldier was green but not entirely untrained, and as they crossed swords, he managed to give Simon a glancing wound that skittered painfully across three of his ribs. Unfortunately, he paid for it by taking a sword thrust to the chest. Simon rode by, leaving it impaled in the other man as they both slowly came to a halt.


    The other two men had seen enough. They turned tail and ran as fast as they arrived. Simon didn¡¯t try to stop them, either. Instead, he just took a breath to make sure the man hadn¡¯t broken a rib or punctured a lung. Then, he used a whispered word of lesser healing to staunch the bleeding. He didn¡¯t try to heal it completely. A wound would make him look more human. No one would be inclined to call him a warlock if he just looked like a foolhardy asshole that didn¡¯t always win.


    He pretended to check his wound, then satisfied that he wasn¡¯t going to die, he rode over to the man who was bleeding out on his sword and took it back. Once that was cleaned and resheathed, only then did he approach the men he¡¯d technically just fought beside.


    By day, they looked even more hungry and ragged than they had by the fire the night before. To call any of them bandits was an insult to bandits, but for better or worse, he¡¯d taken up their cause. It had nothing to do with this level or with his plans, but he had half a decade to kill. He could play hero every now and then when he found the right cause.


    ¡°Didn¡¯t look like a bounty hunter, huh?¡± Simon laughed. ¡°Probably never seen a centaur?¡±


    There was some nervous laughter then because no one knew where he was going with any of this.


    ¡°What say we go string up a tax collector or two and see if your Viscount takes you seriously then, eh?¡± Simon asked, giving them a manic grin.


    A ragged cheer went up at that, but really, his mind had already moved on. He was trying to think of the last time he¡¯d felt this way; the answer didn¡¯t completely surprise him. It was when he¡¯d fought for Crowvar. I might hate that place, but I did miss this, he decided instantly, as he tried to figure out how he could turn his little rag tags bandits into something worthy of the name.

 Ch. 185 - Teach a Man to Fish

    Over the next few days, Simon turned his dejected farmers into something closer to fighting men. Their abilities were entirely inferior to the fighting force he¡¯d built to fight the centaurs, but so too was his opponent, which was good because Simon needed the practice.


    ¡°We don¡¯t want to fight; we just want our land back¡± was a popular refrain, but Simon ignored it after the first ten times. He¡¯d run out of patience for explaining why no one was going to do the right thing just because it was the right thing to do.


    ¡°If you want to leave, that¡¯s your right,¡± he would answer dismissively if he even answered at all.


    No one left, though he attributed that more to fear and cowardice than men who wanted to fight for what was theirs, at least at first. Most of them knew how to use bows, though, and a couple of the farmers were even halfway decent at fletching new arrows, which was the skill that really came in handy because, after a few encounters on open ground, he steadily went the way of Robinhood.


    He didn¡¯t fight with a bow, of course. He stuck to his sword practice whenever he could, but once the hornets'' nest was riled up, small patrols were darting here and there in an effort to protect the Lord of the land from his own mistakes.


    Simon used each of these as an opportunity for his men to practice their ambush techniques. If a dozen men could all loose at once, there was no reason they couldn¡¯t take out half that number, whether they were on horse or foot. Still, try as they might, they disappointed him on that front.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± Simon assured them after survivors would ride free and escape or once he¡¯d finished cutting down the last of the wounded. ¡°Rebellion 101 is just taking a little longer than we thought it would.¡±


    In the end, though, Simon decided that his chosen side quest was probably hopeless. That didn¡¯t mean he wasn¡¯t enjoying it, of course. Once they¡¯d started fighting back, they were widely regarded as heroes by the other local villagers. Simon¡¯s little band of merry men even started to get a few new recruits in time.


    They didn¡¯t know just how poorly their local heroes were doing in most engagements, of course, but they didn¡¯t have to. Simon certainly didn¡¯t tell anyone. He just drank his beer and did his part to spread the legend of Ennis the Bold, which is what they¡¯d taken to calling the imagined leader of the little rebellion. Simon absolutely refused to let the man give credit to anyone else.


    ¡°You¡¯re the symbol,¡± he¡¯d insisted, ¡°These people will need a leader, especially once the Viscount is gone.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve seen us in the thick of it,¡± the old farmer said with a laugh. ¡°The wicked little man is going nowhere.¡±


    ¡°Oh, he¡¯s going, and soon,¡± Simon promised. ¡°I have places to be, but I¡¯ll stay here until you¡¯re out from under the thumb of tyranny. Whatever happens then is on you.¡±


    With every disappointing engagement, they whittled down the Lord¡¯s men, and with every battle, Simon shook a little more of the rust off. After a month of fighting skirmishes and tending to the wounded, he actually felt like he was getting to where he needed to be, or at least he was back on the road there.


    Just because all of his men lived didn¡¯t mean that all of his enemies died. Even after they stopped escaping, there were survivors that they didn¡¯t just murder outright. Instead, Simon interrogated them and let those who cooperated best go with the terrible messages for their liege.


    Those interrogations told him that this couldn¡¯t last too much longer anyway. The Viscount had started with less than fifty good men, and they¡¯d already cut down half of them. The man¡¯s patrols had even started to thin out as he cowered in his hall and waited for the farmer¡¯s rebellion to come for him.


    ¡°It¡¯s not even a proper fortress,¡± Simon said with a sigh as he looked at it for the first time. ¡°It¡¯s just a big house.¡±


    ¡°The Viscount said that Bracken Hall is impenetrable,¡± one man volunteered.


    ¡°I¡¯ve seen few buildings more penitrable in my time,¡± Simon said with a laugh.


    ¡°Well, even if someone were to take it, he could fall back to that tower there and wait it out,¡± another man said, pointing. ¡°The walls are stone and stout. A few archers could hold off an army until it lost interest.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s closer to true,¡± Simon agreed as he studied the thing that he¡¯d first thought was a watchtower. He could probably implode it with a single word of earth or ruin, but that was hardly a conventional siege tactic.


    The longer he studied it, the more he decided that he had a better way. They didn¡¯t move on the manor the following morning, though. Instead, they played with the man for a few more nights to try to deplete his guards that much further. Then, once they had an appropriate prisoner, Simon finally revealed the endgame to everyone else.


    . . .


    On the night that Simon rode to Bracken hall, he rode with one hooded man in tow, who he swore up and down was the leader of the fearsome resistance, Ennis himself. It wasn¡¯t Ennis, of course; it was just a captured guard with a passing resemblance, but the men at the door didn¡¯t need to know that. Simon had bound him well and swore, ¡°I¡¯ve come for my reward and will not be cheated out of it. I will only deliver this man to the Viscount himself!¡±Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    The guards at the door tried to dissuade him, and once, he almost had to draw his blade, but eventually, he was allowed to proceed and present his prisoner, though they forced him to disarm first.


    Simon took his time as they went inside. The man¡¯s home might not have been a grand castle, but it was certainly well-appointed, and the smells of dinner drifted down to him, even from the entryway. He took his time appreciating the finely made furniture and the trophies and weapons of ages past. He saw nothing obviously magical, but now that he had a better eye for such things, he vowed to make a second pass through on his way out the door and see if there were any upgrades.


    In the main hall, he found what he¡¯d expected, a small family around a large table, completely outnumbered by their own guards. The size of the man at the head of the table made it clear to Simon that he wasn¡¯t a fighter, but some part of him still hoped for a good duel.


    ¡°Do these people ever realize that once they need so many guards, they¡¯ve already lost?¡± Simon asked the guard who was escorting them in, but his only response was to look at Simon strangely.


    ¡°State your name and your business, and present yourself to the Lord Bracken,¡± the guard demanded loudly, stopping just inside the door and far from the table.


    Simon responded by yanking on the leash and pulling his prisoner forward into the room where everyone could see him clearly. ¡°Who I am is unimportant,¡± Simon said. ¡°Just as this man is. Not in the sense that all of us are unimportant, of course, but just in the sense that he¡¯s not the person leading your little tax rebellion. For better or worse, that man is the Viscount himself. You could kill my prisoner right now, and it would solve nothing.¡±


    ¡°Nothing? What nonsense is it that you¡¯re saying?¡± the Viscount demanded as he stood, visibly annoyed. ¡°Did you bring me the leader of this rabble or not? Either he dies, or you do, but both of you aren¡¯t leaving this room alive.¡±


    ¡°Kill him you like,¡± Simon answered, as he stepped forward and stole a bite of bread off the nearest guest¡¯s plate, ¡°But hospitality laws being what they are, I don¡¯t think you should casually threaten those that you¡¯ve invited into your home and allowed to dine at your table. The Gods take a dim view of those sorts of people.¡±


    The man looked even more incensed as he strode over to Simon and drew his sword. The other guards drew their weapons as well but backed off a bit to leave their weaselly-looking master room to work.


    The man thrust his sword right through the prisoner without even looking at his face. ¡°This is what happens to those who oppose me,¡± he said with a sneer as he looked at Simon, but Simon didn¡¯t even flinch.


    Instead, he removed the man¡¯s hood and shrugged. ¡°Killing your own guards probably isn¡¯t the smartest move, either. You keep it up, and soon, no one will be loyal to you at all.¡±


    The noble looked completely unconcerned, but Simon could see the recognition and the revulsion on the faces of all the other armed men as his false Ennis fell to the ground in a pool of his own blood. It was one thing to understand that you were poorly paid and disposable. It was another to see it.


    ¡°Why would you bring one of my¡­¡± the noble asked in confusion before a spark of recognition crossed his face.¡°You¡¯re one of them!¡±


    ¡°I am,¡± Simon agreed, elbowing the man in the face as the noble tried to pull his blade free from the dying man before taking it for himself. The blow was light, but it still sent the blustering bully sprawling. ¡°And right now, your home is surrounded by dozens of rebels. There¡¯s no escape for anyone here!¡±


    It was a lie, of course, but it was a useful one, and the armed guards looked to each other uncertainly. A moment ago, they¡¯d all been about to rush Simon. Now, they were less sure. When Lord Bracken bolted from Simon like a coward, that uncertainty only grew.


    ¡°Oh, come on,¡± Simon sighed. ¡°I come into your place of power looking for a good fight, and you do this? Even Varten would fight me, and he¡¯s the worst person I¡¯ve ever met!¡±


    For a moment, Simon allowed himself to hope that the Viscount was running to get a new weapon. However, when he seemed content to cower behind the two closest guards, Simon just shook his head in disbelief.


    ¡°Are you two going to defend him? Or do you just want to walk away?¡± Simon asked, trying to be sporting.


    The first man glanced back at the noble and said, ¡±He¡¯s my Lord, and you¡¯re just mercenary scum. Who do you think I¡¯m siding with.¡± The second man wasn¡¯t nearly so bold and just nodded in agreement with the first.


    Simon shrugged again, then took both of them out in seconds. He used a vicious, showy thrust to get them off balance, and then he used the half-hearted feint of the quiet man to shield himself from the more serious attack of the first man. These two weren¡¯t used to fighting together, which was fortunate because they would never do it again.


    Simon¡¯s second slash caught the bolder guard just above his breastplate at the base of his throat. Then, once he was bleeding instead of breathing, Simon batted the blade of the other man aside and ended him quickly with a thrust under the armpit. Before the second guard had even joined the first, the Viscount stopped cowering and started running once more.


    This time he¡¯d learned that no one in this room was going to save him at least, and he was running for it, but that suited Simon fine. It was part of his plan.


    A couple of the guards looked like they might want to slow him down, but Simon said, ¡°You can fight me and die just like your friends, or you can wait here and surrender once the Viscount is taken care of. Maybe take care of his family and make sure no accidents happen.¡±


    He regarded them a moment longer, then set off at a jog after the waddling Viscount. He almost caught up with him just outside the back door when the man slipped and fell. Simon laughed at that and taunted. ¡°Stop making this so easy! Just put up a fight. Something. Anything!¡±


    Muddied and bloodied, the Viscount reached the door seconds before Simon and slammed it shut in his face. Simon didn¡¯t gnash his teeth or threaten to break it down, though. He didn¡¯t even use a word of force to shatter it. Instead, he smiled.


    He did that because Ennis and his own private army were already in that drum tower waiting for the man. Now, they could hash things out for themselves, or they could just kill the man and take their vengeance that way. Though Simon thought it likely that they would choose the former rather than the latter, he left that decision entirely to them.


    So, instead, he went back to the man¡¯s main hall to have a little dinner and explain what was about to happen to Lord Bracken¡¯s family. Once that was done, he¡¯d pick out a better sword, take a quick swing by the kitchen for some decent food to take with him, and then he¡¯d go to the stables to pick out a horse. He¡¯d fought against injustice for weeks, but that was the only reward he needed. He had places to be, after all.

 Ch. 186 - Lay of the Land

    Simon was gone before Ennis emerged from the tower, but he preferred it that way. He¡¯d done a good deed, but there was no knowing how it would all play out from this point forward. The best of intentions could still have horrible effects, and Simon didn¡¯t need all of those on his conscience.


    His only regret in all this was not finding out if the Viscount would have paid him or not. Simon would have bet not, but now he would never find out. Not that he needed the money, of course; it was just the principle of the thing.


    He had a good horse, a full purse, and overflowing saddlebags. Other than a good backpack and a book to write things down in, he was in pretty good shape. Still, the roads only got worse as he made his way to the coast, so it was good he was traveling light.


    Simon saw evidence of beastmen at one point. They were fresh enough that he shifted camping sites, but he never did encounter them. Civilization all but disappeared until he reached the coast.


    Once there, he was never out of sight of a fishing village. They dotted the coast and were never built far from the next one. Bigger cities than that took a little longer. Though it took him almost a week to reach the coast, the first town of any size, Coramin, took another three days to reach.


    Simon took that in stride and adjusted its position on his map. When he arrived, he took on the role of a trader waiting for his ship to come in. That worked well since there were always ships coming and going from its broad harbor.  Coramin wasn¡¯t even half as nice as Ionar, but it was big enough to have a lighthouse, two markets, and even some gardens and an amphitheater.


    He was in no rush here and took his time eating seafood and getting to know some of the regulars at a few of the most popular taverns over the next week. It was men like that who had what he really needed: information.


    All of it was useful, and he didn¡¯t try to stop anyone from talking about news from abroad or even the political climate between the governors of the different cities. He even spent hours listening to someone trash talk Elthenna and what a poor job she was doing in ruling the nation. What he was really interested in, though, were the myths and legends of the region.


    Some of those people seemed inclined to talk about it. They would tell him about mortal demigods who had walked the world in ages past. Apparently, some people considered Elthenna¡¯s grandfather, who had founded her dynasty, to be a demigod, making her divine in a way. That thought made him smile.


    Finding out about the curse was harder, though. There were strange superstitions around it. It was a strange cultural taboo, but in time, familiarity and enough free drinks penetrated it, and Simon found a couple willing to tell him the whole story of Andus the Undefeatable, the first king of Ionia as it was today.


    Though the thespian and the fisherman who told Simon the story disagreed on some parts, they agreed on enough that he was pretty sure he got the gist of it.


    ¡°In the time before time, this land was almost uninhabitable,¡± the thespian started, playing as much into the drama as he could. ¡°The three elements ground against each other with all the inevitability of a millstone, and the few settlements that existed between them were nothing but grist for the mill!¡±


    It was a little over the top, but it did remind Simon that so many people bought into a strange three-element formulation of nature, like the plague doctor he¡¯d saved so long ago. In their world, only air, metal, and water existed. Fire was just elevated air, which explained the sun and why no light from it could reach all the way to the depths of the sea.


    Simon didn¡¯t buy into it, and neither did his magic. If anything, it implied that the world very much had four elements at a minimum. Really, one interpretation was that all of his words were an element, and there were dozens of them, but that was too much for him to speculate on.


    The point that both storytellers agreed on was that the region had been a very dangerous place until a hero came through and cleaned the whole place up. He slew the sirens that dragged sailors to their deaths, giving Ionia access to all the fish in the sea, and then he did likewise with the harpies, making the world safe for shepherds and their herds. He bound the hideous fire spirit Brogan to the heart of a volcano, giving the riches of the earth to his people, drove off the basilisk, giving them back the southern plains.


    Since then, except for the basilisk, who had returned a few generations later, the rest of the monsters had stayed banished. Sailors still sometimes whispered about sirens in the sea, and shepherds occasionally vanished, but there was nothing conclusive in either case. More mundane monsters like hydras and wyverns occasionally made a nuisance of themselves, but they were dealt with by heroes or the army.


    In the end, it was less than Simon had hoped for. He¡¯d wanted some grand curse that he might learn from. Perhaps he¡¯d even learn some strange new magic, but he was left feeling more like he was reading the adventures of Hercules after all of this than uncovering a real mystery, which was disappointing. If he couldn¡¯t find a way to disprove all of this before the past version of him was shanghaied, then he was going to have a much harder time explaining to Elthena that her stance was more silly superstition than it was wise sacrifice. Stolen novel; please report.


    ¡°The basilisk came back because of the previous queen, right?¡± Simon asked. ¡°Any idea where it came from?¡±


    ¡°It was vomited up from the depths of hell because the prophecy was broken,¡± the actor agreed with gusto. ¡°It turned a city to stone and then devoured those stones as well.¡±


    ¡°But like¡­ How was Ozioptan doing before that?¡± Simon asked. ¡°Was it prosperous?¡±


    The man just shrugged. ¡°The prophecies don¡¯t say. Does it matter? The Oracle warned us what would happen, and then that damn fool of a queen¡ª¡±


    ¡°Oh, that¡¯s right,¡± Simon asked. ¡°There¡¯s an Oracle, isn¡¯t there. Where is she?¡±


    ¡°Where is ssshe?¡± the man laughed, slurring slightly. ¡°You foreigners are ssho funny. You think you can just climb Mt. Elian and talk with a divine creature like her? You would be smote for your insolence if you even tried to do such a thing.¡±


    Simon laughed along with the other man, but even as their conversation drifted off to other stories, he¡¯d already decided that was exactly what he was going to do. He¡¯d already been thinking about going into the highest parts of the mountains to see if harpies still existed, but if there was a prophet up there, too? While he might as well kill two harpies with one stone.


    The next day, it wasn¡¯t hard to get a local to name a few of the mountains for him. Simon dutifully recorded all of them on his map, but when he asked where Mt. Elian was. They just looked at him balefully until he got the hint and moved on.


    Simon was unconcerned by that. He just went further south and repeated the same act for a few days at a time. Though no one ever pointed out the mountain in question to him, eventually, he reached Thebian, which was the next large city on his way. There, none of the locals seemed willing to name the tallest mountain in view, even though he eventually got the names of every other one. The unmentionable one was half shrouded in clouds, too, making it even more mysterious. That was when he decided he¡¯d found his target.


    Simon sold his horse and other things he wasn¡¯t likely to need, and then he started walking. The road lasted longer than he thought it would have, and he almost regretted getting rid of the horse. Eventually, the mountains got wild enough that he would have been forced to abandon it.


    At the end of that road, less than halfway up the mountain, he found a monastery that had been built into the cliffside. It was populated only by old men. They offered him hospitality for the night and told him many interesting stories, including one about how basilisks roam wild beneath the earth, where they gnaw at the roots of the world and cause earthquakes. Simon doubted that was true, but he still found it interesting.


    He, in turn, told them the story of the blackheart and the haunted graveyard, though he embellished it in places to make it seem more fictional. When the time finally came for them to ask him where he was traveling to and why he was so deep in the mountains, he lied, showing some of the sketches of fishermen and landscapes that he¡¯d done since he¡¯d bought a journal in Coramin. ¡°I¡¯m an artist and an explorer. That¡¯s all, and Ionia is not well known where I come from, so I plan to write a book on the subject.¡±


    The sense of relief in a few of the men he was talking to was obvious, and Simon was very sure that if he¡¯d admitted that he planned on visiting the oracle, they would poison him or murder him in his sleep.


    That didn¡¯t happen. Instead, after they tried to convince him that the Raiden mountains were a dangerous place and that he should not trifle with them lest his body never be found, they wished him well. In the morning, he continued on his way, well-rested with a full belly.


    It wasn¡¯t that Simon didn¡¯t believe the monks, of course. There was a reason they built their little monastery as if it were a fortress. There were clearly monsters in these hills. He was just hoping to fight them. Fortunately, in that regard, he didn¡¯t have to wait too long. The higher he rose on the mountain slopes, the more signs of beastmen he saw. He still hadn¡¯t seen a single harpy, though a couple of times when he saw vultures or condors, he thought that perhaps he had. On his third night past the monastery, the goat-men attacked him for the first time.


    He was lucky in that the wind shifted just before they attacked, and he smelled their foul musk only half a minute before they charged out of the night, screaming and braying. They had spears, but Simon very quickly realized they weren¡¯t trying to kill him with them or even fight him in hand-to-hand combat if they didn¡¯t have to. Instead, they were trying to herd him off of one of the nearby cliffs so that he would dash his own skull on the rocks before.


    That¡¯s a very interesting hunting tactic, Simon told himself when he figured it out, but he had no interest in obliging them. Instead, he slew two with his sword and then used a word of force when another six tried to charge him in mass, blasting them all sideways. The beastmen had an impossible sense of balance, but even they weren¡¯t prepared to be slammed past Simon, and right over the edge by enemies that weren¡¯t there.


    He enjoyed that fight, which was good because it was repeated every couple of nights after that. He never found anything resembling a village where the beasts were coming from, but he did occasionally find bloody altars decorated with the corpses of men and, more occasionally, goblins. Once, as he rose above the tree line, he even found an altar with the remains of what had to be a harpy on it. That made him smile, and he spent his few remaining hours of daylight trying to sketch it so that he would have a better idea of what it looked like.


    When he was done, they looked like a real horror show in his mind, but he didn¡¯t think they¡¯d be so tough. Even an eight-foot tall wingspan and vicious hooked claws didn¡¯t mean much when you had hollow bones and couldn¡¯t have weighed more than thirty or forty pounds.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s one mystery solved,¡± he said as he set off on the ridgeline, looking for a defensible place to camp. ¡°Endangered, yes. Extinct, probably not.¡±


    As the sun set, Simon still couldn¡¯t see the peak of the mountain he was climbing. That was frustrating, but not entirely unexpected. It didn¡¯t matter. He had to be more than halfway, and soon enough, he would answer a completely different question.

 Ch. 187 - Hell of a View

    Rock climbing was not something that Simon had spent a lot of time doing in any life, but as he got closer to the peak, he spent more and more time doing that instead of hiking. He lacked ropes and pitons, along with the skill to use them, though, so even climbing often required several attempts to find a way that was easy enough that he could do it without feeling like he was taking his life in his hands.


    This high up, the nights were frigid, but at least there were no more attacks. It would seem even the rugged goatmen had no interest in fighting over the barren, craggy slopes.


    The day before Simon finally found the temple carved high into the peak of Mt. Elian, he had convinced himself that he was on a wild goose chase. He¡¯d almost succeeded in convincing himself to turn around, but he¡¯d been on this mountain for a week now, and pure stubbornness won out.


    ¡°There¡¯s no way that I¡¯m leaving without seeing the top of this thing,¡± he told himself often enough that it became a mantra of sorts. In time, the only thing he was grateful for was that even in the endless cloud cover that kept him from viewing the top of the mountain, there was little in the way of snow or ice. The nights were cold, but the days were still warm enough that such things didn¡¯t last long.


    Still, it felt like a fruitless quest, and then, finally, after six full days, he saw it. The temple was a small thing, but it was larger and more ostentatious than it had any right to be this high up. He had no idea how the stone masons would have worked at such altitudes or how they would have been fed.


    ¡°I don¡¯t even know how someone living there could be fed now,¡± he grumbled as he admired the sheer, smooth walls, along with the decorative elements like the pillars and the dome. It was an impressive work of art. He just hoped this would become more than a sightseeing trip.


    Even though Simon had been able to see it for a moment, the clouds soon obscured it again, leaving him a difficult hike along a scree-choked ridgeline to get there. Still, by evening, he was scaling the last of the cliffs, and he finally arrived in the mosaic-decorated courtyard.


    A woman in fine white robes was there to greet him, and even as he gasped for breath, she smiled and said, ¡°Welcome, Simon, the Oracle is expecting you. It is rare to have any guest that does not take the hidden way. You are the first in an age.¡±


    For a moment, Simon almost asked how she knew his name, but the second statement answered the first. If an Oracle really lives here, then knowing your name is practically a cheap party trick, he decided. So, instead, he just breathed heavily while he took it all in. Then he asked, ¡°hidden way?¡±


    She smiled and gestured to the far side of the courtyard, where there was a gate and a narrow path. Wordlessly in disbelief, Simon rose and staggered across the courtyard to look at it, and when he saw it winding its way down the mountain, he despaired a little. That would have been a hell of a lot easier than the way I took, he thought with a sigh.


    ¡°How could I have missed that?¡± he wondered aloud.


    ¡°You could not have seen it,¡± she answered. ¡°Such ways are invisible to the uninitiated, which is why it is so rare for us to have any visitors at all. Now please, come with me. You must have a meal and a rest. The Oracle will see you tomorrow.¡±


    Simon thought about protesting but instead let himself be led away. He was, truthfully, completely exhausted. I probably smell like one of those goat men, too, he thought, smirking to himself. I¡¯ll bet a bucket of water and some soap would do wonders.


    As if the woman escorting him could read his mind, she said, ¡°After you have eaten, I will show you to the baths so you might refresh yourself.¡±


    Simon boggled at that but said nothing. He didn¡¯t have a chance. He was still trying to decide how a place this high up into the middle of nowhere could have baths, when they walked into the temple, and he saw the view from the far side. It took his breath away.


    The temple, as he¡¯d imagined it from a distance, was a large, two or three-story building carved into the mountainside and crowned by a dome. It had enough room for an altar and perhaps some rooms for the priests and acolytes to stay. He¡¯d been completely wrong.


    What he had seen was merely a gatehouse to a much larger complex. No, complex didn¡¯t do it justice. What he¡¯d found here, far from anywhere, was a town and, in a way, its own little world. It was far from crowded, but here and there, people moved among the narrow streets, and he could see other gray-robed women in the halls of the temple complex as well.


    The temple was built into a volcanic caldera. At the bottom of it was a small steaming lake, which explained the constant cloud cover he¡¯d been dealing with as he got higher. More interesting, though, were the structures and fields that ringed that lake. Around the temple entrance he¡¯d just walked through was a tiny city clustered together. Most of the rest of the ring, though, was reserved for endless terraced fields. It was only the people working in the fields that gave the whole place a proper sense of scale. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Every one of those barely visible dots is a person, which meant they¡¯re at least half a mile away, he thought as he leaned on the stone rail, awestruck by the view.


    The priestess said nothing. Instead, she waited patiently for him to take it in before she cleared her throat and said, ¡°Right this way. Our guest quarters are through here.¡±


    Simon spent the rest of their short walk turning those images over in his mind. How is this not a myth they tell in Iona? Why wasn¡¯t this in the Broken Tower¡¯s Forbidden Library? Simon was quite sure he would have read about a tiny little paradise high up in the mountains if he¡¯d read about it anywhere.


    Eventually, even after his guide left him in an undecorated cell and told him that dinner would be brought to him shortly, one question overrode all of the others. If I didn¡¯t know about this, then what other secrets are still hiding out there, waiting to be found?


    This time, he didn¡¯t even mean things he knew about, even if he didn¡¯t know anything about them, like vampires or dragons. What mysteries lay beyond all of those places. Even after they brought him a simple meal of couscous and chicken skewers along with a jug of strong white wine, he spent a lot of time pondering that. The spiced meat was better than any of the tough roasted meat that he¡¯d had in days, but even that was not enough to make him think about the wider world.


    He knew of five countries and only two or three of them in detail, but there was a whole world out there that he didn¡¯t know anything about, and if something like this could exist smack-dab in one of the places he thought he knew best, then he really knew nothing about this world. It was a humbling thought but an exciting one, too, and he was drunk on both when the woman came back and took his tray before escorting him to take a bath.


    Simon tried a few questions on the way, but most of them were rebuffed. ¡°What¡¯s this place called exactly?¡± and ¡°How come no one knows about this place?¡± were met with cryptic lines like ¡°The best secrets are always the most well-kept.¡± Likewise, when he asked about Ionia or the curse, she answered more directly. ¡°I¡¯m afraid that those are questions for the oracle, not for me.¡±


    Simon was satisfied with neither, but it was clear that she wasn¡¯t going to tell him much of anything, and he felt no need to force the issue yet. So far, he¡¯d been here for only a couple of hours, and he¡¯d been well-fed and well-treated. He hadn¡¯t even seen a guard, but he was sure that a place like this had a way to deal with unwelcome guests, and he had no desire to find out what that was. The last thing he wanted to do was find himself blacklisted from Shangri-la or whatever this place was.


    He wasn¡¯t sure what he¡¯d been expecting from a bath in a place that was a strange mixture of spartan and luxury, but it certainly wasn¡¯t this. The baths were an open-air set of steaming pools that hugged the edges of the cliff they were on in a way that made them look both elegant and precarious. The priestess made no move to leave and instead stripped and entered the water before he¡¯d even gotten his armor off.


    ¡°You dress very strangely,¡± she told him when he finally submerged up to his chest in the warm bathwater of the place.


    ¡°I like the togas, but they aren¡¯t so good for mountain climbing,¡± he quipped, trying not to pay attention to the other knots of people scattered throughout the expansive pools. Ignoring her beauty was hard when so much of her bronze skin was on display, but he did his best. She wouldn¡¯t answer questions about the place they were, but in time, Simon figured out that she would answer questions about herself, which seemed like a roundabout loophole to find out more about the place.


    The priestess¡¯s name was Diara, and she had never left her mountain peak. ¡°I dream of doing so sometimes, but I know that my place is here.¡± He learned about what she ate and a bit about how she lived her life. She wasn¡¯t entirely incurious either, so when she asked him questions, Simon happily told her about his life, though she mostly stuck to questions about boats and beaches.


    ¡°I have seen the sea many times,¡± she explained, ¡°but it is a place I will never touch, and I find it strange that people can live on it for most of their lives.¡±


    Simon learned that they had little in the way of fish here because the volcanic lake was too hot for such things. Instead, they made do with chicken, goat, and several grain crops. Honestly, it seemed like a nice life to him. It was certainly nicer than the Broken Tower, even if it had a similarly culty vibe about it. He was sure there was a library here somewhere that he would have loved to devour, but he knew asking about it would get him nowhere, so he didn¡¯t try. Instead, he enjoyed the nighttime view of the stars above the caldera while he tried not to enjoy the other nighttime view sitting in the water so near him.


    Eventually, when he went to get redressed, he found that his clothes had been taken and replaced with a robe not so dissimilar from hers, though it was brown instead of gray. Does brown mean male or outsider, he wondered.


    ¡°Your clothes have been taken to be washed,¡± Diara explained. ¡°They will be returned to you tomorrow.¡±


    He nodded, not even caring that they¡¯d taken his weapon and armor with them. If this was a trap, this was exactly how they¡¯d lull him into a false sense of security, but if it wasn¡¯t, well, he knew as well as they did that his clothes were rancid, and he would certainly appreciate a laundry service. He¡¯d only really expected a lone hermit or something at the top of the peak, so as far as he was concerned, all of this was above and beyond.


    When they reached his cell, the priestess lingered a moment and then asked, ¡°Do you wish for me to stay?¡± she asked, nodding to the bed. ¡°The mountain can be a very cold place at night.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll be fine, thank you,¡± he said, trying not to be rude as he rebuffed her offer. Temple prostitution wasn¡¯t his thing, no matter how good the dark-haired beauty looked naked. The only woman he had an interest in sharing his bed with right now was Elthena, and that moment was still years away, if it ever came at all.


    She smiled at that, then nodded and left, leaving him to wonder if whatever just happened was a test or not. ¡°If it was, did I pass or fail,¡± he wondered aloud as he lay there and stared up at his dark ceiling.

 Ch. 188 - Questions from on High

    Simon was awoken in the middle of the night by two men wearing white robes, clay masks, and a lantern. Though he was startled at first and almost lashed out in anger at the thought that the Whitecloaks had somehow found him. He restrained himself when he realized that all of this was part of some elaborate ceremony. He donned his brown robes and then followed them down another hallway that led in the opposite of the one he¡¯d traveled in previously.


    The hallway led past a long colonnade of dark volcanic pillars on one side before it ended at a winding stairwell that led further up. It had no lights, and they made no move to climb it. Instead, one of them thrust the glassed lantern into his hand, and the other gestured to continue on without them.


    Simon did just that, and as the stairs looped at random through what was probably a lava tube, he wondered exactly where this oracle might be since he didn¡¯t think this passage could continue for very long. As it turned out, it continued for longer than he would have thought, becoming a passageway that dipped down again before becoming stairs once more. Halfway down the passageway, there was a rent in one side large enough for him to see the volcanic lake far below him. He was definitely moving along the rim of the crater. Somehow, knowing that made the whole thing seem that much more precarious despite being surrounded by stone.


    After a few minutes, he finally reached the end of the stygian maze. There, in a steaming crag, was another smaller temple. Three large pillars held up a small roof, making the whole thing feel almost cave-like, and the delicately mosaiced floor was rent in half by a crack that glowed angrily from somewhere far below. Besides his lantern, it was the only light in the room, which was empty save for the veiled woman who sat Indian style, just on the far side of the crack.


    He approached her, then sat down on the nearside, opposite her. Only the thin layer of sulfurous fumes and the thin glowing line separated them.


    ¡°Greetings to you, Simon. That was once such a rare name in the world but now, if the stories are to be believed, it is becoming quite common,¡± she said smoothly. ¡°It has been a long journey for you to reach me, but I knew that one day you would sit here beside me.¡± Her outfit showed him little of her body, though he could see her mouth as she spoke.


    One thing was for sure, though. She didn¡¯t look nearly old enough to have advised Elthena¡¯s grandfather about anything. The woman that sat across from him was not a wizened old crone; she was a woman in her twenties or thirties.


    ¡°It¡¯s an honor,¡± he said, meaning it. ¡°Though truthfully, I didn¡¯t expect all of this. ¡±


    ¡°They never do,¡± she smiled sardonically. ¡°And that is why the number of my visitors is so few. It is a necessary evil, I am afraid.¡±


    ¡°If you see the future, then why not share your gift with the world to make it a better place?¡± he asked.


    As soon as he realized he probably shouldn¡¯t have done that so flippantly, she said, ¡°This is not the question you have come here to ask me, Simon, but because you and I are so similar in this one regard, I will tell you about it while you think of a better question.¡±


    ¡°The world is in flux. Everything is always changing,¡± she began. ¡°But a still pond is no different, and so long as no one with knowledge from outside of that pond does anything, then all of that chaos will reach its preordained conclusion. It is the natural order of things.¡±


    Simon had no problem following any of that, so he stayed silent as she continued. ¡°Each time you or I touch that pond, though, we leave a ripple, don¡¯t we? If I tell a queen the answer on how to break a curse or give a king advice on how to wage war, then that will ripple out until the whole world is changed, and I must wait for the waters to still before I can again be sure of what is true. It is a slow process. To change things every day would render the picture muddy and incomplete. It is better to make one certain change than a dozen guesses, don¡¯t you find?¡±


    Simon found himself flabbergasted by the Oracle¡¯s words. This was a conversation that he never thought it would even be possible to have with anyone except for Helades, but this strange woman was laying things bare in a way that was practically impossible.


    ¡°I think we both know that my mere existence makes those waters ripple,¡± he answered, uncertainly.


    ¡°This is true,¡± she agreed. ¡°Sometimes you make large waves, and other times you make small ones, but you are always an element of uncertainty that changes things. I would be the same way if I were to descend from this mountain and try to save the world as you suggested, and that would do no one any good. It is far better if I do nothing at all and wait for the world to come to me when they feel like it is necessary.¡±


    Simon wanted to say a million things there, but he ruthlessly suppressed all of them. The last thing he needed was to accidentally ask another stupid question. Are you saying I should do nothing at all? What do you think I should do then? How would you handle this? Are you a Goddess?


    All of those were questions that might waste this opportunity, and he had no wish to do that. Truthfully, he hadn¡¯t expected to find a true oracle, and if he did, he¡¯d planned to ask them about Iona¡¯s supposed curse, but that seemed like almost a waste now. He needed to think bigger.


    ¡°What can I do to save the most people?¡± he asked finally. ¡°How can I make the world a better place?¡±


    ¡°That is as noble a goal as it is impossible,¡± she answered with another smile. ¡°The Gods tried, but where are they now? If another leader sat in front of me, I might tell them the only way was magic, but I think you would take that somewhat too literally. Let us try another answer instead. Most are too fragile for an approach like this, but you¡¯ve been through much and might appreciate a new perspective.¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    The Oracle reached across the line that divided them and took his head in both of her hands. Then she whispered, ¡°Breathe deeply, and know that no matter how frightening it gets, I will catch you when you fall.¡±


    Simon wondered what any of that meant, but as she pulled his face down into the hot volcanic gases, he did as she instructed. The result was overwhelming. No, overwhelming was the wrong word. One second, Simon felt like he was breathing poison, and the next, he was melting. His mind was gone. It slipped free of the mysterious woman¡¯s fingertips, and it plummeted down through the crack into the glowing hellscapes beyond.


    One second, he was alive in the real world, but now he was on fire, descending lower and lower. First, those fires were merely literal flames and fountains of magma, but somewhere past that, he slipped into literal hell. There, he fell past legions of souls being tormented and consumed in an infinite variety of depravity that was somehow appropriate to the terrible lives the victims have lived.


    ¡°The whole universe is powered by pain,¡± A familiar-looking demon assured him as Simon fell by. ¡°Sooner or later, we all burn. We have to, or all the stars would go out.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s right, you know,¡± Helades said, appearing beside him. ¡°That¡¯s why I have to keep shoveling garbage like you into the Pit.¡±


    ¡°The Pit!¡± as soon as Simon¡¯s dissolved mind heard those words, things started to restructure. ¡°I can¡¯t be in hell; I''m still in the Pit.¡±


    ¡°Only until you burn like all the rest,¡± she quipped, fading away just as the demon he¡¯d left somewhere far above.


    He wasn¡¯t falling past wicked hellscapes anymore. Instead, he was falling past each level, one by one, as if they were all connected in a winding staircase. The goblins, the zombies, the bandits, and the plagues. Every one of them was laid out together like an old-school game, complete with 8-bit fonts and basic animation loops.


    On the zombie level he locked eyes with Freya for a moment. She looked at him with fear and love, and in that single moment he saw a thousand futures together with her. In some he was a better husband to her, and they even had a happy family. In others, things ended worse than they already had. She died because he could save her from a dozen different fates. Sometimes she even killed him; he even saw her rip out his throat on one occasion. All of the slipped away as he fell past her, though, leaving only regret on both their faces.


    On the volcano level, he tried to climb in, to rejoin Elthenna, but his inertia wouldn¡¯t let him. Instead, he was swept by for level after level to whatever awaited him below. The deeper he fell, the faster he went. It would have been frightening, but he was too lost to feel afraid.


    He saw the dragon, but it didn¡¯t attack him. It simply tried to explain the nature of navigating reality as he just kept falling further and faster. There were other levels he¡¯d yet to see, but they flew by before he could do much more than glimpse them. Haunted castles, angry ghosts, wars, and armies of green skins churned and pulsed, making his task ever more complicated, and at the bottom of that, there was a pool of dark water rushing up at him.


    No, not water, he realized just as he struck it. A giant mirror. He expected to dash himself against it like an insect, leaving behind only a bloody smear. Instead, he smashed through it like a rock through a window, and shards of broken glass rained down with him through the darkness.


    ¡°What is going on?!¡± Simon yelled out into the dark, trying and failing to remember how he¡¯d gotten into such a surreal moment.


    Somewhere far below him, the globe of the world was starting to resolve below him. It was a massive place, with islands and continents he¡¯d never glimpsed before. From here, he could only really make out the distinctive peninsula and cluster of islands that were Ionia, but as he fell, he was able to make out more and more familiar details. Simon ignored them in favor of the unfamiliar ones at the edge of his map until the mirror shards distracted him.


    No one answered, but all the different pieces of mirrors suddenly lit up in that familiar glowing blue writing. Each of them tried to answer his question, but every answer was different, and he didn¡¯t know which one was correct.


    ¡®This is the bottom of the Pit; you have beaten the game. Congratulations!¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry Simon, your Princess is in another castle.¡¯


    ¡®You have run out of lives, and your game is over. Please press any key to continue¡­¡¯


    ¡®This is nothing but a bad dream. Simply wake up to end it.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry, I do not understand the question.¡¯


    It was that last one that was most familiar to Simon, so even as he saw the ground looming at him out of the darkness, he glided toward the honest mirror, and before he fell to his death, he crawled through the shard, not even sure what was on the other side.


    ¡°Oh, would you like to take a turn in here keeping notes while I go outside and play?¡± the glowing will-o-wisp he hadn¡¯t seen since his first day in the Pit. As it asked, he looked behind it to the mountain of information he¡¯d collected in his time in the Pit. It was a strange assortment. Some sections, like magic and history, were so full they were overflowing, but others had almost nothing.


    Simon walked past all of those. Instead, he went to the section titled, ¡®What the Hell am I supposed to do next,¡¯ and opened the only book on the shelf. The book was blank except for one small paragraph. ¡®Helades plan is so impossible; no one¡¯s ever done it, so try things your own way, on your own terms, instead and see how that goes.¡¯


    Simon found that answer both unsatisfying and undeniable. It was not the great philosophical revelation that he¡¯d come here to find, but when he closed the book, all the lights in the strange, impossible library went dark with it, leaving him to wonder what it was he¡¯d done.


    Then he understood. As he closed the book in his hand, the book that he was also inside of closed on the desk of the mage that was reading it. That book was in turn closed by the mute, Unspoken archivist, who was in turned slammed shut on by the child reading his fairy story for fun. All of those stories ended, and all of those books placed on shelves, and he was buried at the bottom of the smallest one, as little more than a footnote.


    That was when his eyes opened tremulously, and he looked past the small roofed enclosure to the light of dawn beyond. That was a hell of a trip, he thought to himself. Hours passed in only a couple of minutes. For a moment, he wanted to believe that this wasn¡¯t real either, but the headache rising behind his eyes as a result of whatever it was he¡¯d breathed in argued persuasively that he was definitely really here.


    It took him that long to realize that he was sitting with his head in the oracle''s lap. ¡°I-I didn¡¯t learn anything,¡± Simon rasped through a dry throat. ¡°There were just a bunch of strange¡ª¡±


    ¡°Shhhh,¡± she soothed him, stroking his hair. ¡°The lessons of the visions are not always grasped at first, nor are they the most obvious. In time, you will understand, but now you must rest.¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t know about the former, but the latter was definitely true. He stayed awake only a few minutes before he drifted back down into slumber¡¯s irresistible embrace.

 Ch. 189 - Shifting Paths

    Simon woke up in bed, in a dark room. At first, he feared he¡¯d returned to the cabin, but when he didn¡¯t feel the familiar lumps in that straw mattress, he calmed down. Well, woke was perhaps not the right word. His dreams tore at him violently, and he would have sworn that he¡¯d woken up and fallen asleep for a week''s worth of nights, but when he asked the gray-robed priestess about it, she said he was brought back only a few hours ago.


    His clothes and other things had been folded and stacked neatly beside him in the dim room. Part of him felt like what had happened last night was just a dream, but he knew that it wasn¡¯t. Even without the headache, he would have known that.


    Food was brought to him evenings and mornings by Diara, and when he asked her how long he was supposed to stay there, she just smiled patiently before explaining, ¡°Seeing through the mists of time can be very hard on even the most prepared.¡±


    ¡°But I didn¡¯t look through time,¡± he insisted. ¡°I just had¡­ strange dreams.¡±


    ¡°That is what they all say,¡± she agreed, ¡°But if such things were easy, then they would not be valuable.¡±


    Simon meditated on her words and on those dreams. He even explained as much as he could remember to his mirror. Still, it was two days before he rose once more.


    When he emerged from his room armed and armored, she asked, ¡°Will you be leaving already?¡±


    ¡°That depends,¡± Simon answered with a smile, ¡°Is there any chance I could get a tour of the city before I go?¡± Even before she opened her mouth, he knew the answer was going to be no, but some part of him had to ask.


    ¡°You could,¡± she said, ¡°If that is what the mists showed you, but our city¡­ it¡¯s not a place people come back from. Those who stay must stay forever.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡± he asked, somewhat surprised by her answer. ¡°I thought it was just for the priests and priestesses and the like.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s for that too,¡± she agreed, ¡°But we do not leave the mountain either, so that distinction hardly matters. Did your visions tell you that you should stay?¡±


    He shook his head. Maybe they told me I should take one more bath with you, he told himself, but he didn¡¯t say any of that out loud. Instead, he thanked her for her time and hospitality, and then, with one last look at the stunning caldera city, he started traveling down the mountain.


    Just as he¡¯d suspected when he¡¯d first seen the narrow trail, it was a dozen times easier to traverse than the trail he¡¯d blazed. It had taken him over a week to climb up the mountain, but he was only forced to sleep a single night under an overhang on the way down, and the weather slowly got warmer approached the ground.


    The trail was never wide, and sometimes it was damaged by beast men activity or landslides. It was never perfect, but it was a thousand times better than sheer cliff faces and gravel-strewn slopes.


    Most of the way, his view was obscured by the same clouds that had plagued him on the way up the mountain. There were occasions where he got glimpses of the wider landscape, though, and they were enough to make him understand Diara¡¯s fascination with the sea. Even in those foggy glimpses, it appeared endless from here, and save for the occasional island, it probably was.


    ¡°I could get enough money together to buy a ship and outfit properly,¡± he told himself. ¡°There¡¯s a whole world out there just waiting to be explored.¡±


    While his fume-powered visions had given him some hint of what lay out there, those could in no way be trusted. Still, he longed to test them, if only to understand everything else he saw that much better.


    The way down ended not so far from where he started, near the monastery that he¡¯d spent the night at, making him feel stupid. He¡¯d read their interest in his destination as protectiveness of it, but in reality, if he¡¯d simply confessed where he was going, they probably would have sent him here.


    ¡°Well, they would have tested me and sent me here if they¡¯d found me worthy,¡± Simon decided. ¡°If they¡¯d found me unworthy, they still probably would have killed me.¡±


    After a couple days of reflection, Simon felt like he had a wider view of what it was he was doing. He felt like he could see the outlines of all of this in broad strokes, even if he had trouble putting it into words. Even without that, though, this would have been worth it, iif only for the beauty of the trip, and he made several sketches that he wanted to try to turn into proper paintings one day when he had the time and the skill.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Once he reached Thebian again, though, he had some hard choices to make. He had years to waste yet, and he no longer knew what he should do with them. He¡¯d planned to solve a curse for Elthena as a sort of wedding present, but he had found no real evidence that it existed. Indeed, now that he¡¯d seen the Oracle, he wouldn¡¯t be surprised to know that the whole thing had been made up by her Grandfather after he¡¯d come down that mountain or been rewritten by someone after the fact. None of that helped him.


    ¡°I suppose I could just make up a new prophecy and try to spread it around,¡± he told himself while walking through the market the day he arrived, as he tried to put all of this together. ¡°Some theatrics here¡­ maybe an ancient carved tablet there¡­ I could probably make it happen.¡±


    Still, it seemed like an awful lot of hassle just to get back together with a woman, and he wasn¡¯t sure making up a new religion for the region just to make things work with her was the right idea. So, undecided, he continued further down the coast. This time, he was on foot, though he was tempted to get another mule just for old time''s sake.


    Bandits accosted him once, a week north of Ionar, but they scattered when he took the hand of their leader in a duel. The man screamed bloody murder, even as Simon helped him tie off the stump with a leather thong. ¡°Losing a hand is an appropriate punishment for theft,¡± he said, unperturbed when the man asked him why he didn¡¯t kill him outright. ¡°But murder would not be.¡±


    The man seemed confused by that, but he was even more confused by what Simon said next. ¡°The sad part is I could reattach your hand, but you¡¯d just keep using it to make the world even worse than it already is.¡±


    ¡°It is no crime to steal when you are hungry,¡± the man shot back, basically agreeing with Simon. He used a word of lesser healing to stop the bleeding and ease the pain for that honesty at least.


    ¡°If you must steal, then steal from those who have stolen from others, or else from the sea, not your fellow man,¡± he said, rising and continuing on to leave the maimed bandit to his fate.


    He took his time walking down the coast to consider what it was he wanted to do. He¡¯d already done medicine and research. Art might be fun, but then again, fighting the Viscount had been a wonderful time. On some level, the idea of leading an armed insurrection appealed to him the most. Being a rebel was fun. Hell, even running Crowvar until he¡¯d been assassinated had been enjoyable. He was pretty sure that he could have made that whole area better with a few more years of work.


    In the end, Simon took up the hammer again, in the little village of Olven¡¯s Narrows, which was close enough to Ionar that he could see the volcano and ships leaving the port. This wasn¡¯t by choice so much as happenstance. He was walking through the half-abandoned place when he saw a dozen men crowded around a blacksmith''s shop that had seen better days.


    He decided to take a look and quickly found the problem. A medium-sized merchant ship had damaged their rudder just enough that they were unlikely to make it past the rocks into Ionar¡¯s harbor, but the village blacksmith had died years before, so they were trying and failing to do it themselves.


    Simon watched the sailors take turns trying to hammer the brass fitting into shape, making it worse and worse until it finally cracked. Eventually, he volunteered to do it himself.


    ¡°You?¡± one man laughed. ¡°Look at those soft hands. Are you an artist? A scholar?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m no blacksmith,¡± Simon agreed, causing a wave of laughter, ¡°Not usually. But I spent years at the forge in my youth, which is probably more than all you lot put together, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s your price then?¡± the merchant asked testily. ¡°The red wine I carry from the north is in no hurry, but some of my other goods are perishable, and I aim to be on my way!¡±


    ¡°For me? Nothing,¡± Simon answered with a shrug. ¡°But for the people of this little town, how about you throw a proper feast. Food, drink, the works. You know, as gratitude for their assistance to you in their time of need.¡±


    ¡°A feast?¡± he asked, ¡°growing red in the face, but that could cost a fortune with what I''m carrying.¡±


    Simon shrugged, setting the two halves of the broken rudder strap back down. ¡°That¡¯s fine. Good luck on the remainder of your voyage.¡±


    ¡°But¡­ I¡¯ll pay you in gold!¡± the portly man said. ¡°We can work this out!¡±


    ¡°I already have gold,¡± Simon answered, jingling his own purse. ¡°And a strong sword arm to go with it. I was just going to do this out of the goodness in my heart, but I can see you have no goodness in yours.¡±


    Simon only got a dozen steps away before the man caved, and a cheer went up among the sailors. Simon let them go to their tasks while he got the ramshackle forge back in some kind of order. Then, after he fetched some driftwood, he got to work.


    The villagers came up to him, wondering what he was doing, but Simon just smiled. ¡°Just getting you guys a good dinner out of the deal. There''s nothing wrong with that, right?¡±


    No one harassed him after that, and it took only a few hours to rework the metal into the shape it needed to be and repair the crack. He didn¡¯t deliver the work until the evening when the pig was roasting, and the wine was flowing, though. He even rowed out to the ship with the quartermaster, reattached it, and restrung the steering ropes while everyone else celebrated.


    Afterward, he joined them but didn¡¯t get drunk. After he¡¯d flashed his own wealth to make a point, that would have been more than stupid. Instead, he socialized with the locals and the sailors and learned a little more about what was going on in the area. Given that another version of him was currently living in Ionar right now as a healer, though, none of it was a surprise to him.


    In the morning the little ship was gone, but Simon stayed behind, and no one gave him any trouble about setting up in the old smithy if that was indeed what he intended to do.

 Ch. 190 - A Little Like Home

    This time his first order of business, even before he built a place to stay was to establish an alias. Though the Oracle had mentioned it casually, there were indeed a lot of Simons in the world lately, and all of them were him, at some point in time. Right now, there was an herbalist in Ionar named Simon, and the last thing he wanted someone to do was make that association.


    So, he went around the village, introducing himself as Ennis instead. It was only once that was done that he started the hard work of getting a roof over his head and a bed underneath him. That took a few days and started out as a lean-too. Once he¡¯d made it clear he was setting up shop, he went into the city to the lower market, which the past version of himself used, and he bought the mule he¡¯d been craving, along with a few tools he was missing and a stout axe.


    The axe was for timbers, which he would need if he wanted to build something that resembled an actual shop again instead of just a forge. He made two trips into the mountains for two-inch thick pines that were the right size. Simon chose the straightest ones he could find. Then, he delimbed and debarked them before he brought them back to continue his progress.


    After that, his trips into the mountains were for something entirely different: coal. He¡¯d discovered several small seams of the stuff on his previous explorations in the area, and it wasn¡¯t hard to find one of them again.


    The people of Ionia largely seemed to frown on the stuff for reasons that were as much related to the smell and to superstitions about how rocks shouldn¡¯t burn, but Simon didn¡¯t care about that. He just knew that hauling a ton of coal would get him a lot more bang for his buck than a ton of waterlogged driftwood, and he was all in favor of that.


    It took months to set things up to a level where he was happy with them. Even then, it still wasn''t as nice as his long-lost cabin, but that was fine. He was in no hurry, and the customers in this out-of-the-way place were few and far between. Sometimes, he might mend a chain or shoe a horse, but mostly, his days were his own to do whatever he wanted with, and he spent much of that time sketching, though occasionally, after everyone went to bed, he would do some magical experimentation.


    Most of his art projects involved charcoal and a whitewashed wall that he would scrub after each attempt as he erased the face he had worked so hard to create. Paper was expensive, after all. The experience was ephemeral, but then, that was the point. He wasn¡¯t trying to paint something that would hang in a gallery. He was trying to replicate the tiny features and imperfections that made someone seem like a real person rather than a plastic surgery victim or a cartoon character.


    That was the only way he¡¯d ever be able to use magic to disguise himself, and that was an ability he badly wanted. As much as part of him liked the idea of every city he saved having a different statue of him, he was fairly sure that people like the Unspoken would put that together eventually, complicating future levels.


    ¡°I¡¯ll also need it if I want to go for a seamless transition between old me and new me,¡± he said aloud as he sketched. ¡°Though, I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s the best approach.¡±


    Up until now, he¡¯d been pretty honest with Elthena, and he wasn¡¯t sure he could bring himself to lie to her like that, pretending that the old Simon had just slipped through her grip and come right back to the palace. He didn¡¯t even have teleportation magic yet. He was working on it, though.


    He¡¯d tried two experiments with words of distance. In one case, he¡¯d used Dnarth Celdura, and in the other, he¡¯d used Dnarth Zyvon. But neither had gone as intended. In the former case, the rock he¡¯d tried to teleport from one spot on the beach to another a few feet away had seen the thing disappear, never to return, and in the other, the thing had simply exploded, piercing his arm with shrapnel in several places.


    He planned to do more experiments on the subject, but those would have to wait for inspiration to strike. There were always other projects he could work on.


    One that he had given a lot of thought to but not actually done yet was to try using his least favorite word in a slightly more positive way. Zyvon was dangerous, but more than that, it was addictive. Simon was hopeful that if he channeled a lesser word of transfer through something else, though, like a blade, it might mute those effects. If he wanted to live a long life that involved any magic at all, then he was going to have to find a way to balance between the amount of energy he harvested and the amount of energy he burned.


    Still, something stopped him there, and the only move he made toward it was to get better at making blades since that was never a strong point of his. Even after years in the dark forges of the unspoken, he was always better at getting the runic inscriptions on the finished weapons than he was at making them. Stolen story; please report.


    Still, as his reputation grew, he started to get more customers, and people visited him rather than making the trip all the way down the coast to the city. It was about that time that the volcano finally erupted.


    Simon had hoped to learn to teleport before that happened so that he could go watch himself battle the lava beast, but that was not to be. Instead, he stood on the sand with everyone else while they wondered what was going to happen. Some argued that they should flee immediately. That they should take their fishing boats and get as far away as possible.


    Normally, Simon would have agreed with such sensible advice, but this time, he stayed where he was and told everyone, ¡°It¡¯s likely just a small eruption. It will be no more than that. You¡¯ll see.¡±


    From where they were, that was all it looked like, but Simon¡¯s memories helped him remember more than anyone else could make out. He saw the lava spill over the near side of the rim to save the town, and after that, he saw a slow tendril of it rise up that he knew must have been that awful lava titan, even if it didn¡¯t look like anything from here.


    Still, he knew. Even while everyone else talked and pointed excitedly, he remembered what it was like to make that long fall to the ground. It was worse than he thought it would be, and truthfully, it was more than a little traumatic to relive all that. He kept thinking about the evil version of himself he¡¯d encountered, and the fight that had left him basically crippled. Both of them were impossible images to get out of his mind. After the eruption fizzled out half an hour later, he went and got drunk for the first time in a long time on the cheap white wine that was so common in the region.


    The following day, after he¡¯d used a lesser word of cure to eliminate his hangover, he finally announced that he would take on an apprentice. This was something that he¡¯d been asked about more than once during the last few months, but it was always something that he pushed away because he had no need for an extra set of hands.


    Now, though, he had a need. He was on a timer. A few years from now, he would leave this village, and he decided that it would be wrong to leave them empty-handed. Fortunately, there was no shortage of applicants. Almost every boy in Olven¡¯s Narrows wanted to do something besides be a fisherman.


    He gave each of them a brief interview, both to find out what they knew and why they wanted to do this work. Most answered with some version of ¡°I want to learn a skill so that I can leave this tiny nowhere place and go somewhere important like Ionar.¡±


    All of those boys ruled themselves out immediately, without knowing it, but even after that, there were still a few contenders. Simon eventually went with a boy named Niko, who was a good choice both because of his powerful build and because he wanted to learn a skill so that he could provide for his widowed mother. Both of those were excellent reasons to take the time to teach him how hot the fires needed to be and the skills he¡¯d need to be successful. Truthfully, he probably didn¡¯t have enough time to teach the kid everything he needed to know. In three to five years, he planned to move to the city to be ready for his eventual exile, but that would still be enough to give the kid the basics.


    He also added swordplay to the kid¡¯s curriculum, just because, it was always a good skill to have. This close to Ionar, there was never likely to be any trouble, but even so, the strong needed to protect the weak, and he had no doubt that a few years swinging a hammer would turn Niko into the strongest young man for miles around.


    Most of the time, he helped Simon with other smaller things, like going into the upper hills of the Raiden Mountains to fetch more coal. Other times, when Simon didn¡¯t have a job for the boy to watch or help with, he would send him off to fish for their supper while he sketched or planned.


    The most welcome part of this life so far was that he¡¯d entirely gotten over his aversion to seafood. It had been so long since he¡¯d had it that he¡¯d actually missed it, and once he got his hands on salt and citrus fruits, he was able to make some amazing things in his tiny, barely functional kitchen.


    It was at dinner time that Niko would ask him the most questions. Those started off with questions about Blacksmithing but usually ended up with some story about one of Simon''s adventures or some physical principle that was largely unknown to even the educated of this world. He taught the boy bits about herbalism, and eventually, he even taught him to read, though Niko showed zero interest in it.


    ¡°Why should I read a book when I can just ask you?¡± he laughed. ¡°You know everything, and I don¡¯t even know how you do it!¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s lots of things I have yet to learn and some things I have already forgotten,¡± Simon admitted. ¡°No one can know everything. I don¡¯t know how to mend a net or fish with one. I don¡¯t know how to build with stone or even how to paint.¡±


    ¡°Your drawings are very good,¡± the boy insisted. ¡°You could paint if you wanted to. I think you just like drawing in the soot too much.¡±


    That at least made Simon smile. He¡¯d grown to love the ease of his medium. Though he would have preferred to use paper, the way he could blend charcoal together really had become a form of painting to him. That was what allowed him to get past the lines he¡¯d been hung up on for so long and into the shapes and values of images.


    He hadn¡¯t yet tried to remake his face in disguise, but he planned to when he left the city, though he hoped to find a leaper or a cripple to practice on first. It would be a fair trade. He¡¯d find someone to fix, and in the process, he would be sure he wasn¡¯t about to turn himself into a hideous freak. Everyone would win.

 Ch. 191 - Crossover Episode

    While the volcanic eruption made it pretty easy to know where he was in the timeline, Simon was surprised how quickly things got back to normal. People still talked about it in the days and weeks after it had happened, and there was a resurgence of interest after that when there were whispers that a brave hero had died fighting a terrible stone giant.


    After that, though, things calmed down surprisingly quickly. Life, it would seem, went on, as long as the world was in no immediate danger of ending. That surprised Simon a little bit, but he supposed that he¡¯d seen similar things happen in the aftermath of Schwarzenbruck¡¯s zombie apocalypse.


    After that, keeping track of the slow sequence of events that made up his past life wasn¡¯t hard, not even a day''s ride from the city. The rumors about what had really happened the night the volcano had erupted came and went whenever a new trade ship would dock for a night or two. However, more and more, those stories were eclipsed by a new one: the Queen of Ionia had taken a consort. If rumors were to be believed, he was an ugly foreigner, but most doubted that could possibly be the case for someone as radiant and dignified as the queen.


    Sometime after that, Simon started making monthly trips to the city just to try to catch a glimpse of himself. He even used stealth and a little magic to climb the palace walls a few times and just watched his own recovery. It was an interesting sensation, and he wondered what would happen if he took out the past version of himself.


    That would be a paradox, for sure, his brain told him. He believed it mostly, too, but with magic in play, he honestly had no idea. I¡¯m not him, right? I mean, he was me, but he died, and I¡¯m me now, so if he ceased to exist, nothing about me would change, but the future of this level certainly would¡­


    He obviously had no intention of killing himself, but as a thought experiment, it crept into his mind again and again when he observed himself in the garden or the library as past Simon made his slow recovery. It was only when he saw himself with Elthena that those positive memories pushed aside his darker thoughts.


    Still, all of that came to an end when the war started. Simon knew that little would come of it beyond the spread of disease, but during that time, the normally lax atmosphere around the palace transformed, and sneaking in without killing one or two people became effectively impossible.


    ¡°Past me would probably notice if future me started dropping bodies,¡± he told himself one day as he walked back to Olven¡¯s Narrows with his mule, which was heavily loaded with the various supplies he¡¯d purchased on this trip. ¡°But would that cause a paradox? How much can I change the circumstances of past me before future me ceases to exist, if it even really works like that? What do you think, Daisy Two.¡±


    The mule, of course, had no answers. Really, he should probably do an experiment to figure this out, but he had no idea how to do something like that without causing catastrophic consequences if he was wrong. ¡°Do I bring someone else through a portal with me, solve a level, and then kill them in the past to see how that ripples out through the future?¡±


    As the plague started to sweep across the region, he thought about this more and more, as well as the idea that some other version of himself might be watching him, even as he watched himself now. Really, though, all of those thoughts were just to keep himself from worrying about his impending reunion with Elthena.


    It was something that he¡¯d yearned for, for decades now, and day by day, it was getting closer. Of course, that also meant that his time in his sleepy little village was coming to an end, which was sad in its own way.


    Simon had worked hard to make sure that no one died as the plague swept through it. It had a wise woman, of course, who was good with herbs, but under her treatments, a few older people had almost passed away. They would have, if not for a few surreptitious words of lesser curing he¡¯d used to help them get through the worst of it.


    That happened less often as he taught her some better ways to do things. ¡°A blacksmith teaching me how to do my job,¡± she complained in an amiable enough way on more than one occasion. ¡°Now I¡¯ve seen everything.¡±


    ¡°Blacksmithing is just for fun,¡± he assured her. ¡°Before I came here, I was a scholar. Everywhere I go, I just learn from people smarter than me.¡±


    ¡°Then I¡¯ll be sure to teach you a few things before you continue on,¡± she responded.


    Simon smiled at that. She had nothing to teach him, but he suspected she could see the auras he could not because of the way she acted around certain strangers. So, the mere fact that she didn¡¯t bristle at him was a welcome victory of a sort.


    The only person that Simon would miss in all of this was Niko. He was growing up to be a fine young man, and the fact that he¡¯d practically run the blacksmith shop while Simon had tended to the sick had been a good sign for the things ahead.


    So, it was especially heartbreaking when he told the boy that he would probably be moving on soon, and Niko reacted so poorly. ¡°But why?¡± the boy had practically wailed. ¡°Are you unhappy here? Did I do something wrong?¡±This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    ¡°It''s not about that,¡± Simon said. ¡°I love it here, but soon it will be time for me to move on. I¡¯ve¡ª¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll go with you Master Ennis!¡± Niko volunteered immediately.


    They both knew that was impossible, of course. He had his mother to think of, but even as Simon worked through those messy emotions, he realized that he¡¯d come to look on the boy as a son more than an apprentice after the years Simon had spent training him. It hurt him more than he would have thought to discover that, even as he tried to cut the only bond he¡¯d had like this since his time with Gregor so long ago.


    ¡°I¡¯ll be in Ionar for a while at least before I leave the region,¡± Simon promised his apprentice, ¡°So It¡¯s not like I¡¯ll just disappear. I¡¯ll still visit now and then, and just think you¡¯ll finally have all of this to yourself, just like we talked about.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d rather work for you, even if I make less money,¡± the boy sighed.


    The conversation wasn¡¯t finished that night, or even that week, but eventually, the boy grudgingly accepted the reality of the situation. Things weren¡¯t the same between them after that, but despite the increased distance, Niko still hugged Simon when he finally went to leave the following week.


    ¡°Thank you,¡± he whispered. ¡°For everything.¡±


    Simon smiled at that but kept the tears in his eyes until he was well down the beach. He left the boy pretty much everything. The only things he¡¯d taken when him were a few blades, his armor, and a backpack full of his most important possessions.


    He''d never actually gotten around to making a magic blade, like the vampiric sword he¡¯d designed, but he probably wouldn''t need one anyway. Everything else, including most of his ready cash, he¡¯d left to the boy. He wouldn¡¯t need more than money for a room with a view of the harbor for a few weeks, after all.


    Simon''s days in Ionar this time were characterized by anxiousness more than anything. He kept trying to tell himself that he should be happier, but with everything that had happened and everything that might yet happen, that was harder.


    His mind just kept going in circles about two twin mysteries: time and relationships. How can I live my strange life without screwing everything up for me and the ones I love? He asked himself.


    He didn¡¯t have an answer. Instead, all he could do to distract himself was sketch pictures of ships coming into the harbor while he waited for one specific ship to indicate that Elthena was about to send him off and out of her life forever. The place he¡¯d picked to keep a look out for that, at least, was beautiful. Ionar was a shining work of art as much as it was a place, and from where he was staying in the upper city, he could see the lower city, the beautiful harbor, and the steady parade of trade that was the place¡¯s lifeblood as it came and went.


    In that time, he experimented with small magical alterations to his features. He gave himself the touch of gray that his doppelg?nger had, and he toyed with a few of the more visible scars he could remember with the words of lesser flesh shaping. It worked better than he expected. Honestly, they looked pretty similar, at least as far as his memory went, but in the end, he decided to remove them.


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to lie to her,¡± he told himself. ¡°Not about this or about anything else. That¡¯s not how we fix this.¡±


    Nearly a month after he arrived in town, he saw a familiar ship docked near the breakwater. He hadn¡¯t seen the Belaphora in a long time, but he recognized her instantly, even from this distance, so high above the harbor. There was just something about a ship you¡¯d spent time on that made it stand out from all the other boats docked around it.


    From that point on, Simon was up before dawn every morning, watching and waiting to see if this was the night that he was sent away. For four days and nights, his vigil went unrewarded, but on the fifth, he noted a man wrapped in a carpet being bundled off to the lower city on the back of his own donkey. It was an interesting scene, and when he looked up, he saw a teary-eyed queen standing on her balcony on the third floor, watching as he was led away.


    ¡°Daisy, how could you do me like this?¡± he whispered to himself, using the gallows humor to shield himself from the darker emotions that seeing Elthena like that inspired.


    As soon as the sailors were out of the gate and heading down the main avenue, Simon took advantage of the dim light to vault the wall in an area that he already knew wasn¡¯t well guarded. From there, he stole quickly and quietly along the deserted pre-dawn hallways as he made his way to the queen¡¯s chambers.


    Once, he almost ran into a servant on a blind corner, but the maid apologized and bowed. ¡°I¡¯m so sorry, mister Simon, sir,¡± she apologized, but he waved her off.


    ¡°Think nothing of it,¡± he said as he moved past her. For a moment, he felt supremely lucky, but a few seconds later, he realized that all of these people were used to seeing him around the palace every day, and the news would not yet have gotten out that he¡¯d been exiled.


    Simon spent a moment wondering what he might be able to do with that information, but he didn¡¯t figure anything out by the time he slipped into the queen¡¯s chambers. She was still standing on her balcony and didn¡¯t come back in for a long time. He wondered if she planned to wait until he descended the winding cliffside road to the lower city, but she stayed out even longer than that.


    She waited until the sun was up and the ship had actually left port before she came in. It was a gesture he found more than a little touching. In that time, servants came in twice, bringing her breakfast the first time and a message the second time.


    As he stood there behind the bed curtains, waiting for her servants to leave, he could feel his heart beating harder in anticipation. He¡¯d imagined this moment a thousand times, and even though it was going just as well as he could have hoped, he was still incredibly nervous.


    ¡°Guess who?¡± he asked in a gentle tone, trying not to startle her too badly.


    He needn¡¯t have worried. The woman barely reacted at all.


    ¡°Of course, it¡¯s you, Simon. Who else would it be? I thought you would do something like this,¡± she sighed, not bothering to turn around and look at him. ¡°Sit down, Simon. Let¡¯s talk.¡±

 Ch. 192 - A Reunion of Sorts

    ¡°I told the sailors not to untie you lest you¡­Oh,¡± she exclaimed in surprise as she turned around and saw him, but even that was muted as she quickly buried it beneath the expression she used for formal occasions and at court. ¡°What¡¯s all this then? If you could have healed yourself at any moment, why not do so after the battle?¡±


    The way she reacted to his miraculous reappearance was not what he¡¯d hoped for. Even anger would have been better than the weariness she greeted him with. He was disappointed that she wasn¡¯t surprised by his reappearance, but he was a little pleased at the astonishment he saw flicker across her face as she took in his current appearance. That, at least, was something.


    ¡°It¡¯s not as simple as all that,¡± he explained, resisting the urge to move to her. Her body language was very clearly telling him to stay the hell away. ¡°I¡­ a lot has happened since I last saw you. An awful lot.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s been less than eight hours since you shared my bed,¡± she remarked, smiling sadly as she approached him, and sat on the corner of the bed farthest from him. ¡°How much could have happened in one night?¡±


    ¡°Well, you turned my whole world upside down last night,¡± Simon reminded her. ¡°When you bundled me off on that ship, I was distraught.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry about that,¡± she said. ¡°I won¡¯t defend or explain my actions, though. You know exactly why¡ª¡±


    ¡°I do. I¡¯m not asking you to. I¡¯m just explaining things,¡± he interrupted. ¡°We¡¯ve always been honest with each other, haven''t we?¡±


    ¡°We have,¡± she agreed, ¡°relaxing slightly.¡±


    ¡°What has been 8 hours for you was nearly fifty years for me,¡± he said, forcing the words out of his mouth, even though part of him suspected that saying them was a terrible mistake. ¡°I¡¯ve lived whole lifetimes, and I¡¯ve spent all that time missing you.¡±


    Simon didn¡¯t explain every last detail. He didn¡¯t tell her how a vampire had killed him or that he¡¯d bitten off his tongue in an insane pact with a crazy cult to unlock more secrets of the universe. Instead, he told her the broad strokes. He told her how he¡¯d died and started over, spent some time studying in some strange places. When he reached his discussion of the Oracle, that piqued her interest.


    ¡°I¡¯ve never been,¡± she confessed, ¡°But I always wanted to. Please, tell me everything you saw.¡±


    It was a tangent from what he wanted to talk about, but it was also the first time she looked at him with wonder instead of dread, so he decided it was a worthwhile one.


    He told her about his whole trip, starting at the base of the mountain. He told her about his battles with the beastmen and the strange harpy skeleton he found. He even mentioned how he almost gave up because of the endless clouds before he finally found the tiny utopia. That he described in intimate detail, and between his description of his time with the oracle and her prophecies and the queen¡¯s questions, the two of them were still sitting there when one of the queen¡¯s handmaids arrived and asked where she wanted to have her midday meal.


    The woman expressed surprise that Simon was there, as well. ¡°I was told he wouldn¡¯t be¡ª¡± she started to say, but the queen waved her off.


    ¡°It''s fine,¡± Elthena answered. ¡°You may bring lunch here for both of us.¡±


    The maid nodded and left, but even that small interruption disrupted the rapport that they¡¯d been rebuilding.


    ¡°What you say is fantastical, of course, but I¡¯m still inclined to believe you,¡± she said, suddenly cold again. ¡°But you have to realize this changes nothing, don¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°It changes everything!¡± he insisted, but she only shook her head sadly at that.


    ¡°The prophecy¡ª¡± she started to answer, but Simon cut her off before she could even get the word out.


    ¡°Damn the prophecy!¡± he raged, making her pull away a bit. ¡°Your nation has a damn Oracle. Why not simply go to her and ask her what you should do. She¡¯ll tell you there¡¯s no such thing.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not as simple as you make it out to be,¡± Elthena sighed.


    ¡°Look, I know it''s a long way, but I told you about the Hidden Way,¡± Simon countered, ¡°If I went with you, we could be there and back in less than a week. I¡¯m sure of it.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not what I mean,¡± she shook her head. ¡°It would be selfish of me to use the Oracle like this.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± Simon asked, exasperated. He wanted to tell her that she was being incredibly selfish already, but he bit his tongue on that and waited for what he hoped was a better answer.


    ¡°Because no person, not even the queen, can visit the Oracle more than once,¡± she said in a disappointed tone. ¡°What if someday there is a great calamity, and I need to seek out her wisdom, but I¡¯ve already used that boon up on my own romantic prospects. What a terrible ruler I would be then.¡±


    ¡°Calamity?¡± he asked. ¡°You¡¯ve already dealt with a war and a plague on your own. What terrible fate do you think could befall you, Ionia, that you couldn¡¯t handle?¡±If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°Well, what if the basilisk¡ª¡±


    ¡°I already killed that monster,¡± he said, only barely managing not to yell. ¡°Well, it hasn¡¯t happened yet, but it''s going to.¡±


    ¡°Simon, you¡¯re not making any sense,¡± she said, pulling away a little more.


    He sighed and calmed himself, and then he tried again. ¡°In a few years, some nameless hero will kill that beast. That will be me. I¡¯ve already done it in a previous life, but it will take place in our future.¡±


    His second attempt met with more confusion than fear, but before he could try to explain things any more clearly, he was interrupted by servants bringing them lunch. That ended their talk for the next half hour as they ate. Simon wasn¡¯t hungry, but he picked at his food until the servants finally came and took it away.


    ¡°I will see her,¡± Elthena said finally when they were alone again. ¡°But you are not coming with me, nor will you stay here in my absence.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡°Why?¡± she shot back. ¡°Because you are not the same man you were, Simon. Didn¡¯t you see the looks those maids gave you? They can see you¡¯re transformed as well as I. There will be talk of witchcraft throughout the castle before the day is out. My visor will be beside himself!¡±


    ¡°I can fix that,¡± Simon volunteered. ¡°I could¡ª¡±


    ¡°Please don¡¯t,¡± she sighed. ¡°Just leave for a time. After I make my trip and return, I will talk about these things further, but for now, I need space to grieve for us.¡±


    Grieving for him while he was standing right in front of her struck him as exceptionally cruel, but he said nothing. He simply hardened his expression, pulled the cloak over his head, and then bowed deeply before he departed.


    ¡°By your leave, my Queen,¡± he said sarcastically, making her frown at him before he turned to leave. ¡°When you have made your decision, I will be tending my forge in Olven¡¯s Narrows.¡±


    Then, just like that, he was gone again, and the further he got from the palace, the angrier he got. He¡¯d expected this to be difficult, but he hadn¡¯t expected to be completely stonewalled like this, and it infuriated him. ¡°Fuck the prophecy,¡± he grumbled to himself as he made his way back to his room at the inn to collect his things.


    Once he¡¯d calmed down, Simon considered following her up the mountain to make sure she stayed safe, but eventually, he decided against it. Not only was she likely to be livid if she found out, but she had an entire army with her.


    So, he went back to his little smith, which pleased Niko to no end. ¡°I¡¯m not staying forever,¡± he assured the boy. ¡°Just until the queen sends for me.¡±


    His former apprentice didn¡¯t believe him, of course, which was exactly why Simon had said it. He didn¡¯t expect anyone to believe him. Here in Olven¡¯s Narrows, he was an outsider but a very familiar one, and there was some comfort in that.


    He spent the next few weeks working on various projects. He helped Niko with a few more complicated jobs but mostly just worked more on his rune blade ideas and his art.


    Simon¡¯s experiments with changing his appearance had been promising, and he decided he could probably change himself into a very convincing stranger or even replace someone who already existed with a little familiarity and careful observation. In fact, he realized I could probably replace one of the men of her court, even her trusted Vizier, and stay as long as I wanted.


    That was something he¡¯d never do, of course. It was creepy as hell, but the idea that such an impossible thing was even an option intrigued him. ¡°I¡¯ve been a scholar and an artisan already,¡± he mused to himself, ¡°Why not a deep-cover spy.¡± The truth was that he wasn¡¯t interested in making other plans. He¡¯d put a lot of work into getting back to this moment with Elthena, and he wasn¡¯t leaving until they¡¯d worked things out.


    It was just shy of a month before she returned. When she appeared in the village herself, near the head of a parade of soldiers, Simon was not expecting that. Trumpets and bells were the first sign that anything was amiss, and even before she got close, everyone, including Simon, who was filthy and stained with soot, was kneeling.


    ¡°You really do know the queen!¡± Niko hissed excitedly.


    Simon smiled to himself but said nothing. He could tell, as soon as he looked at her, that this wasn¡¯t the good news he¡¯d been hoping for. It wasn¡¯t just that she looked a little frailer and a little more pregnant after the trip, either. It was that whatever she¡¯d been told had obviously increased the distance between them, not reduced it.


    At first, the queen did not speak to him. Instead, she spoke with the Town Father and the Wisewoman. It was only when she¡¯d complimented everyone for their hard work and prayed publicly to the gods on their behalf that she summoned Simon.


    He¡¯d cleaned up a little in that time, so he was somewhat presentable when he met her on the beach beneath an awning where she was holding court. When he arrived, she dismissed her guards and spoke with him alone, though she did so from her chair as an obvious reminder of who was in charge.


    ¡°The Oracle¡¯s mountain was every bit as beautiful as you said it was,¡± she said. ¡°Thank you for convincing me to go.¡±


    ¡°And what did she say?¡± Simon asked.


    ¡°That all prophecies were, in their way, self-fulfilling,¡± she sighed.


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure what that means,¡± Simon answered.


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure I do either,¡± she agreed. ¡°But what matters is this. We are done. A romance is not like a hearthfire, to be relit whenever you feel cold. Flames are not interchangeable, and neither are Simons.¡±


    He nodded. Unwilling to trust his voice at the answer he knew was coming.


    ¡°But,¡± she said just as he started to look down at his feet. ¡°It would be wrong to deny you access to your own child. I learned that from the Oracle, too.¡±


    ¡°I see,¡± Simon answered cautiously. ¡°What does that mean?¡±


    ¡°It means that you are not to return to the palace until the son I will bear you is eight years old,¡± she said. ¡°Somewhere around that time, I will choose a tutor to help my child grow into the King that Ionia needs. If you wish to be a father to him, that will be your chance, even if he will never know it.¡±


    Simon¡¯s mind flashed to his experiences with Niko as she said that, and he nodded.


    ¡°You will need a new face and a new name to go with it,¡± she continued. ¡°My visions seemed to imply that this wouldn¡¯t be a problem for you.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve been going by Ennis here, actually. Long story,¡± Simon answered without hesitation, as he chose to put a slightly more Ionian spin on his previous nom de guerre.


    ¡°Very well, then,¡± she nodded, ¡°I will expect you then. Do not disappoint me.¡±

 Ch. 193 - A Little Longer

    ¡°Eight years,¡± he sighed as he lay in his old bed, which Niko had so graciously lent to him after he¡¯d come back. ¡°I waited for five years only to be told to wait for another eight. Who does that?¡±


    Part of him wanted to say fuck it and just leave, but he knew he couldn¡¯t abandon his own child like that. Son, he corrected himself; Elthena seemed to be pretty certain she was going to have a son. She must have seen that in her vision.


    It was a sleepless night for him and a heartbreaking one, too. He considered getting drunk again but decided that was an unhealthy coping mechanism. So, instead, he tried to figure out what it was he was supposed to do with another decade.


    He didn¡¯t figure it out, though, not that night or in the day that followed. It wasn¡¯t for almost a week, when he was helping one of the older fishermen recaulk the seams in his boat, that he decided what the right answer was. If he was going to end up being a teacher, then he was going to teach people. It wasn¡¯t like he had a skill for that, but Simon was sure that he was in no way naturally talented at it, either.


    He spent a few weeks trying to teach a couple of the other boys and girls of the narrows how to write their names and learn the most basic letters, but they showed no more interest in the subject than Niko had. ¡°I told you,¡± his former apprentice laughed. ¡°That stuff¡¯s a waste of time!¡±


    ¡°You learned, eventually,¡± Simon countered.


    ¡°Yeah, but only because you made me,¡± Niko laughed. ¡°And what do I do with it? The math tricks you taught me can be helpful, but the letters? What is it I''m supposed to read?¡±


    That was a good point. Other than Simon¡¯s own journal, he didn¡¯t really have anything for these kids to read. He didn¡¯t have any adventure books or horror stories to share with them. So, it was like teaching them to use a computer without offering them the video games that would keep them playing and learning.


    Simon thought about it for days but had no good answer. The proper thing to do would be to kick off an industrial revolution and create movable type and printing presses, but that would take forever and require a lot more money than he had at his disposal.


    So, eventually, he started to teach the children swordplay with wooden weapons because it was easier to draw students. That, at least, they flocked to. Soon, that was what almost every young man in the village did in the afternoon after their chores were done. He couldn¡¯t get them to muster up any energy to draw symbols in the sand with sticks, but somehow, more than a dozen boys and girls could find the energy to swing wooden swords around with all their might.


    That was fun, and a couple of them showed some promise, too, but eventually, he decided that this was probably a dead end. Much to Niko¡¯s disappointment, he started taking longer and longer trips abroad once more.


    His journey started out simple and almost aimless. He went north along the coast, stopping in villages along the way every night, where he would trade stories and a little labor for a place to sleep and a simple seafood meal. Sometimes, he would help the local blacksmith or herbalist, and other times, we would just contribute menial labor, hanging fish on drying racks or scrubbing barnacles off the bottom of beached boats.


    None of it was particularly hard work, and along the way, he would gather certain minerals and broken shells for the next part of his plan, which was slowly taking shape in his mind. He¡¯d been given another eight years, which felt like a prison sentence inside the large prison sentence that the Pit already was. During that time, he probably shouldn¡¯t fight monsters if he could avoid it because dying would complicate things.


    That part might have been easy enough, but in that time, he also had to become an excellent teacher for his son and attract enough notice and renown that it would make sense for the queen to hire him without her court raising any eyebrows and being the highly admired blacksmith of Olven¡¯s Narrows was hardly going to cut it.


    ¡°That¡¯s more her problem than mine,¡± he told himself, but really, his pride wouldn¡¯t allow that answer to stick.


    He¡¯d gotten famous several times as a monster hunter and more than once as a healer, but beyond that, well, he felt like there was more he could do. So, this time, he tried art.


    For the last few years, he¡¯d been drawing and painting, but he¡¯d preserved very little of his work. It had all been scribbled on his walls or scratched into the sand, and the next day they were gone. Now, though, he''d decided to think bigger. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Simon didn¡¯t have much experience painting, no matter what Niko said, but he did have a lot of experience drawing on walls, so he decided to try his hand at making a fresco. The first one he did was in a moderately sized town just south of the larger city of Thebian. He didn¡¯t even have all of the colors for that project. Because of the geology of that area, Black, red, brown, and yellow were pretty common in the form of various clays. Blue, green, and purple, though, were basically nonexistent. There were blue dyes for clothing, and he¡¯d seen some green pottery glazes in some cities that probably had something to do with copper, but that was pretty much it.


    His first project was simple enough, anyway. After spending a morning slicing and dicing some of the large fish that a man had caught the night before, Simon casually mentioned how much better the fishmarket would look with a little decoration. The red-tiled plaza and the colorful awnings were picturesque, but the plain white stuccoed building that the fish were sold from, along with the plain wooden stalls in front of it, looked almost out of place.


    Mercuto was taken with the idea almost immediately, but then Simon suspected he would be. He was a proud man with a large enough operation that several men worked for him, but it was well below where he saw himself in life. As far as he was concerned, he should be running his town, or maybe Thebian or Ionaia itself, and proud men were generally pretty easy to lead around by the nose.


    That night, Simon used some of his precious paper to sketch an image of the big man proudly holding an impossibly large grouper, and just like that, Mercuto was sold on the idea. The man was only willing to pay a pittance, of course, but Simon didn¡¯t need more than that. His ingredients involved grinding bones and shells, along with trips to the mountains for coal and clay. His mediums were limited. He could use eggs to make tempura like paints, or he could use clays to bind together something closer to pastel sticks with a binder and a little pressure. Still, all that took was time, and that was the one currency that Simon was rich in.


    He spent weeks in preparation, gathering everything and laying out the images, but once he got started, it was done in less than forty-eight hours. Well, not everything was done. He¡¯d still have to mix paint to redo the stands in red to make them more eye-catching, but the wall art was completed in record time. Once he started, he just couldn¡¯t stop. In fact, pausing to mix another batch of black or ocher so he could keep going was the most annoying part. Though he¡¯d never really needed an apprentice while he was a blacksmith, he would have loved one just now.


    Sadly, he was a nobody without a lucrative career to offer to a young man. He was just a homeless guy who liked to draw and had some time to kill. So, he¡¯d have to do it himself.


    Though Simon was not completely happy with the final result, his employer was thrilled and paid him more than the agreed-upon amount. He offered to let Simon paint his boat next, but Simon knew just enough about paints to know that nothing he created would last long in the sea. He was trying to create art that people would notice, and in that, at least, he succeeded. Before the week was out, Simon had offers from three other merchants seeking similar treatment. Two just wanted the extra vivid reds and yellows he¡¯d worked out how to create, but in the end, it was the third one he went with.


    The local cooper had heard the news that the queen¡¯s virtue and chastity had stopped Mount Karkosia from erupting, and though he¡¯d long since established a meager shrine on the side of his shop, he wanted to make it grander and more noticeable. Though the cooper was much less well off than Simon¡¯s previous client, he paid nearly as much, but truthfully, that was one project that Simon probably would have done for free.


    His first job had been a test of techniques and materials more than anything, but this one, he vowed, would be a work of art worthy of Elthena, even though he doubted that she would ever see it. Simon planned all of it carefully. He built scaffolding, fetched more materials than he thought he would use, and patched the building''s stucco before he began to ensure that what he made would last for a long time. This time, it took nearly a month to get everything ready, but it was worth the wait.


    Simon¡¯s painting had attracted attention last time, even though it had been done after market hours so as not to harm the fishmonger¡¯s business. This time, though, he painted throughout the day, and often many of the passersby would stop to watch. He¡¯d never thought of painting as entertainment, but at least while he did this project, it brought new meaning to watching paint dry.


    He did the background of the work in deep reds, oranges, and browns, which were among the best colors he had access to. In the foreground, though, he painted Elthena only in black and white, creating as stark a contrast as possible. For her pose, he chose a beatific expression of prayer, and though he didn¡¯t know for a fact that he was probably ripping off some classic pose involving the Virgin Mary, he suspected that was the case. On earth, he hadn¡¯t been remotely religious, but he recalled that his mother had, and there were more than a few of those sorts of icons scattered throughout the house.


    The background was vivid, though because of how inspired he was by the fiery mountain, it took only two days, which was nothing, given its size. It did a good job of depicting Ionar as only he had seen it that night. The queen, though, he agonized on for over a week, and he still wasn¡¯t completely happy about it.


    Everyone thought he¡¯d done an amazing job, but then, they¡¯d never seen the queen before. He had, though, more than most, so there was no excuse for his imperfection.


    In the end, there wasn¡¯t a single feature he could point to that was the problem, though. Her eyes were just as kind as the real woman¡¯s, and even though her mouth was almost eight feet wide in his fresco, it was every bit as full and kissable as Elthena¡¯s actually was. There was nothing wrong with it, but to him, it just lacked that spark.


    No one agreed with him. Not the cooper who was ecstatic about the whole thing, nor the townspeople who began to pray there much more often as a result, nor even the rich nobility who traveled from Thebian and even further away to see what rumors were calling a masterpiece.

 Ch. 194 - An Eye for Art

    Simon had no shortage of other offers after that, but what he was really frustrated by were his material. The nobles that wanted him to paint murals to their greatness offered him significant sums, but even with money, he wasn¡¯t really sure where he could get better materials to work with.


    On Earth he could have just ordered paint in any color online, or gone down to the local hardware store, but here, things were harder. So, while he took a couple of straightforward jobs to finance his research in that regard, the next few months were spent mostly on trying to expand beyond those limitations in Thebian. It was there that he discovered from another local artist of significant repute that some colors like deep, vibrant blue could only be created by crushing literal precious gems, which seemed insane to Simon.


    ¡°I do not have time to invent chemistry from scratch,¡± he told himself. Sometimes, though, it felt like he should. It was a special sort of torment to know that a tool like bright blue paint or broad spectrum antibiotics existed, but to have absolutely no way to use it himself.


    ¡°It took millions of humans thousands of years to invent all of that stuff,¡± he lectured himself while he painted his current patron at the height of two stories tall on a watchtower overlooking the grand market. ¡°So don¡¯t beat yourself up too much. You¡¯re doing pretty good, for one guy.¡±


    While Simon couldn¡¯t deny that, he was hardly thrilled by it. Good enough had once been his mantra, but now it was like a stone in his shoe. Even projects that he personally didn¡¯t care about at all, like a mural of the man who was hoping to win a seat on the city council in the coming election, had to be just right.


    Of course, he wasn¡¯t all work. He had his distractions. In a city as large as Thebian there were a dozen ways to party on any given night. Even beyond drinking, drugs, and whores, which he stayed away from, there had been a couple noblewomen interested in some private portraiture that threatened to become something more after only a few minutes of being alone with them.


    Simon drew them, of course, often in much less than he¡¯d originally intended to, but he didn¡¯t sleep with them. As beautiful as one or two of the women had been, and as single as he very much was, he simply wasn¡¯t interested in random flings with women he didn¡¯t know. If I do that, I might spend the rest of my lives just wandering around the world and spending the night with anyone that catches my eye, he thought sullenly. What a waste that would be.


    The cynical part of his brain pointed out that he¡¯d actually already done precisely that with Freya, but he batted that thought away immediately. ¡°That¡¯s different,¡± he told himself. ¡°We were in a life or death situation, then. Things got weird.¡±


    Beating himself up about getting together with her too easily was a lot better than the things he used to think about when she came to mind, so he let that go easy enough. Still, thoughts of Freya made him wonder if he might be holding himself too far away from the wider world. He was still considering whether he should take the chance to get to know more women, when the news suddenly spread through town.


    ¡°The Queen has given birth to an heir!¡± the town crier read out the following morning. ¡°She, and her boy Seyom, are doing well, gods be praised!¡±


    Everyone cheered at that news, but Simon was just pleased that she¡¯d named the boy after him in her own way, with a local name that was slightly similar to his. That softened his feelings toward her more than he would have thought possible.


    Despite the fact that the city immediately declared three days of public feasts at the news, it immediately banished any thoughts of debauchery that he might have had. Now, suddenly, he was inspired, and he went to the richest of his prospective patrons with a proposal. Lord Hepholon was the owner of several large vineyards, a winery, and he dabbled in shipping up and down the coast. He had more wealth than Simon would have in a dozen lives.


    He was supposed to be a hard man to reach, with many petitioners, but thanks to his growing reputation, Simon had no problems with that. He had even less of a problem getting the man to approve the large mural that he wanted to do to celebrate the queen and her son. He merely looked at Simon¡¯s sketch and asked, ¡°When can you start?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s¡­ you know that much blue will be very expensive, right?¡± Simon asked. This project would cost as much as all of his previous endeavours combined thanks to the price of lapis lazuli, but the man was utterly unperturbed, and instead of dismissing Simon, he dismissed his servants so he could speak more frankly to him.


    ¡°You are an artist. A skilled artist, but an artist nonetheless, so I will forgive your naivety,¡± the older man smiled grimly, ¡°But you must understand that for a man like me, a work like this is meant to be expensive. Indeed, you should lie to everyone who asks. You should tell them it cost ten times what it did, and that your blue paint is worth its weight in gold. Such displays are lovely for the common man, but for those in the rarefied air near the top of the city, they are nothing but a contest for status, and in such contests, cost matters almost as much as beauty.¡±


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    Simon understood all of that on some level, but to have it spelled out so clearly was refreshing. It was a nice reminder that at least in this life he wasn¡¯t important. In any of his others, where he wielded a sword instead of a brush, he might have crushed such an egotistical merchant beneath his sandals. However, here and now he was nothing but a status symbol, and one that was slowly increasing in value at that.


    Simon spent a season on his mural to his son. It was painted across the second story of a wide municipal building that looked out over the harbor and the lower market. It was placed so blatantly that everyone in the city could see it, but really, he¡¯d lobbied to have it put there so that the queen herself would have no choice but to see it the next time she came through the city.


    Most of that time was spent waiting for the rare blue stones, so that he could grind them to powder and mix them with a binder and water, but other that building the scaffolding and sketching out the outline for the painting to come.


    Once he had everything he needed, along with a handful of assistants eager to learn his craft, he was done in less than a week. This time he started with his queen, and the infant that she carried. She was done in nearly pure white again, as was befitting of purity and power. Then, once he was done with all of the chiaroscuro details needed to make her look like the woman rather than the ideal of one, he drew his son.


    There Simon could only do his best. He¡¯d never seen the boy, nor would he for years. What really mattered was the bright blue swaddling he was displayed in, and the darker blue background that he painted behind both of them.


    Simon had drawn the whole thing in such a way that it was the infant who was the source of light in the painting. It was he that was illuminating his mother, and pushing away the darkness of the night. He even painted faint stars at the edges of the giant forty-foot mural that very subtly spelled out ¡°Glory to Queen Elthena and Prince Seyom!¡±


    The effect was muted, and very effective, and received nothing but acclaim. Simon¡¯s patron held a lavish party in his honor when it was done, where Simon was expected to thank the man for bearing the crippling expense of the thing. Lord Hepholon of course reciprocated and praised him for making something truly priceless in it beauty at the cost of mere coins. Afterwards he even tried to marry off Simon to the daughter of an important client, but Simon left town after that, traveling further north.


    While his destination was Coramin, he left little works of art up and down the coast, all the way there. Sometimes he beautified the shrines of a God or a Goddess, and other times he decorated the shop of a merchant much too poor to afford his services, but he always left the place he stayed prettier than he found it.


    Even with such an indolent and haphazard journey, only a year had passed by the time he¡¯d reached the northernmost city in Ionia. He thought that he might tour the islands next. Some of them were supposed to be quite beautiful. However, even after he discussed the prospect with a ship captain, that never happened. Instead, he fell in with the Alexin¡¯s.


    They were a noble family of some importance not just in the city, but in the country as a whole.  According to rumors they were perhaps the third or fourth most prominent noble family in the entire country. Simon wasn¡¯t surprised to receive an invitation to their estate, but he was surprised by their request.


    He¡¯d planned on doing more art, and taking some time to investigate the strange art of ceramics, but they made him a different offer. ¡°Our middle son is absolutely fascinated by your work,¡± she explained, ¡°When he saw your mural in Thebian he absolutely insisted we hire you as a tutor. So, we¡¯ve been looking for you ever since.¡±


    Simon explained his long winding trail up the coast and the woman merely laughed politely. Her husband was more direct. ¡°What is the point of making art that will never be seen?¡±


    Simon thought about pointing out that it would be seen every day by the people that lived there, but the context was quite clear, and he didn¡¯t need to argue the point. Instead, he simply said, ¡°One cannot improve without practice, so I practice where I can.¡±


    Lord Alexin nodded at that. ¡°I would prefer that the boy take up architecture, or sculpting. They are much more reputable than painting, but if it is to be painting, then let it be with a master.¡±


    Simon smiled at that, but said nothing, instead he talked about some of his next projects he had planned, and the three of them worked out an arrangement. The Alexins would finance those endeavors, if he would allow their son to be his sole assistant, and receive extensive instruction throughout.


    Simon was perfectly happy to agree to those terms, though they didn¡¯t last nearly as long as he expected. Their agreement was for art tutoring, but when it became apparent to Simon that young Bertand as well as his younger siblings were woefully behind where they should be in reading and writing, Simon took that on as well, much to the children¡¯s disappointment.


    Simon still worked on his art, of course, and he let Bertrand assist him with that, but it was the carrot to make him work on the other more necessary skills, since he clearly had no talent when it came to drawing, and other important skills.


    Simon didn¡¯t see that as a dealbreaker, necessarily. He¡¯d been terrible at art once upon a time too, and he would have long since given up had a vivid imagination not proved so vital for the casting of magic spells. Still, Bertrand didn¡¯t have half a dozen lifetimes to improve. So, Simon kept him busy from morning to night sketching commoners that admired his murals while Simon worked on the larger works of art. ¡°Just be glad that your parents can afford so much paper,¡± Simon laughed when the boy complained about so much practice. ¡°I did most of my practice on a whitewashed wall with sticks of charcoal. You¡¯ll learn much faster than me.¡±

 Ch. 195 - Time Flies

    The years slipped by in the service to the Alexins faster than he would have thought as Simon lost himself in the pursuits of art, teaching art, and just plain teaching. It was a mixture of experiences, and all of it happened in the beautiful city of Coramin in what felt like the blink of an eye.


    At the start, Simon had spent most of his time with Bertrand, but once the older boy found his rhythm in his practice assignments, Simon spent more and more time teaching the younger children to write. Though that started out more tedious than he would have thought, in time, he found it even more enjoyable than art. Over the next few years, he watched them transition from precocious brats to thoughtful adolescents who asked interesting questions about the world around them.


    Unfortunately, Simon didn¡¯t know enough about physics to explain why the sky was blue and things like that. He could explain simple things like the evaporation cycle of the ocean and why the rain fell, but for other things and more complex questions, he eventually fell on the idea of answering their questions with questions. This didn¡¯t necessarily produce answers in most cases. It was better than lies, though, and what few books and scrolls he had to teach them with were full of those.


    Almost everything was explained away by the gods, and while there were at least little grains of truth sprinkled in some of those myths, by and large, it was just nonsense. Well, at least he thought it was nonsense. He still wasn¡¯t exactly a master of magic yet, and he had no explanation whatsoever for the oracle he¡¯d met so recently, but on the whole, he still tended to think that things worked because of cause and effect and the causes of most things were almost certainly not divine intervention.


    If there were Gods floating around this world, wouldn¡¯t I have seen them by now? He wondered one day, after a particularly heated debate about which god made the volcanoes erupt with young Theo and his sister Sophia. That was a stupid question, of course, since he¡¯d literally met a Goddess on more than one occasion. In fact, if he got to level forty, he¡¯d be able to meet her again.


    That¡¯s different, though, he argued in his head. Helades is not a Goddess that anyone in this world worships, and I¡¯ve never seen any evidence that the Gods they do worship really exist.


    It was a conundrum, but not a particularly important one. People on Earth could make microchips and launch rockets, but they still worshiped gods who didn¡¯t exist. Things didn¡¯t have to make sense to be passed through the ages. Hell, art didn¡¯t make sense, but he¡¯d spent almost a decade now slowly improving at it step by step.


    Honestly, until a recent breakthrough, Simon had been starting to sour on it. Not painting and drawing, of course. He still loved that, but having Bertrand tagging along had really been dragging him down. As the years had gone on, Simon had become more and more sure that the young man lacked the talent to really pursue this field.


    No, talent is the wrong word, he corrected himself. Drive is more like it.


    Bertrand was a child of wealth. He wanted for nothing, yet each day, he only completed the bare minimum of the assignments that Simon gave him. It hadn¡¯t been like that at first, of course. In those first few months, Simon would come down from his scaffolds to find the boy had sketched a dozen strangers. None of those sketches had been any good, but they had shown small, consistent improvements, and that was all that mattered.


    Somewhere between here and there, though, Bertrand had grown disillusioned. ¡°I¡¯ll never be as good as you!¡± he complained bitterly in private when Simon talked to him about it. Bertrand¡¯s younger siblings were still too young for this sort of angst. Instead, they were lost exploring all the new doors that their newfound literacy had opened for him in their father¡¯s libraries. Bertrand, though, already nearly twenty, was starting to grow jaded.


    ¡°You¡¯re much better than I was at your age,¡± Simon answered truthfully. ¡°Skill, real skill takes a lifetime, and even then¡ª¡±


    ¡°Oh, enough of that!¡± Bertrand cried out in frustration. ¡°I¡¯ll never be ready to showcase my talents in public at this rate. My hands just won¡¯t cooperate with what I see in my mind. That¡¯s the real problem. How do I fix that?¡±


    Simon nodded sagely. He was getting better and better at that little gesture, thanks to both practice and the small changes he was slowly making to his appearance as time went on. He¡¯d given himself a deeper tan, like the Ionians, and his hair was almost entirely gray now. He even had a few unnaturally added wrinkles to go with it. The result made him look much wiser than he was, so he tried to act that way whenever possible around his students.


    ¡°Perhaps the problem is not in the artist but in the medium,¡± Simon said cryptically. He refused to elaborate further, but that night, he went to Bertrand¡¯s father and explained the issue briefly.


    ¡°I do not think your son will be a painter,¡± Simon said simply.


    ¡°If that is the case, then the fault certainly lies with his teacher, does it not?¡± the man asked. Simon had known that Lord Alexin would go there immediately. He was a cutthroat man to the very core.


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    ¡°I did not say that he would not be an artist,¡± Simon countered. ¡°In that regard, he¡¯s coming along well. I just think a slight change of plan might be in order.¡±


    ¡°What do you propose?¡± the older man asked.


    ¡°A field trip,¡± Simon said with a nod. ¡°A very expensive field trip. If all goes according to plan, young Bertrand will not be coming home for a while.¡± The Lord didn¡¯t so much as blink at that word, but then Simon knew that he wouldn¡¯t. However, when Simon proposed his plan in more detail, the man flashed him a fierce smile before granting his approval.


    The following morning, Simon said goodbye to his young pupils and promised them he¡¯d be back in a few weeks, packed a few tools and supplies in his trusty mule cart, and then set off with Bertrand.


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± the young noble asked.


    ¡°Shopping,¡± Simon answered cryptically, offering no details, as the two of them made their way to Coramin¡¯s upper market.


    The city itself was built to emulate Ionar in the south. That was plain to him. The only problem was that its cliffs weren¡¯t nearly so grand, and its beach was much too inviting. So, instead of there being hundreds of feet between the upper and lower markets, there were only a couple dozen. Still, Simon appreciated the attempt. He came here often to paint the sea, but today, that was not the mission. In fact, he¡¯d left the voluminous bundle of papers he usually traveled with at home because they wouldn¡¯t need them.


    Instead, he set about ordering sand and lime, and then, when all the basic supplies were purchased, he took his student to the most expensive potter in the city. ¡°Tell me, Bertrand,¡± Simon said, beginning one of his lessons in a style that his student had long since grown used to. ¡°What is Beauty?¡±


    ¡°It is that which is pleasing to the eye,¡± his student said, offering a familiar answer.


    ¡°Then which of these is the most pleasing to the eye?¡± Simon asked, gesturing widely around the yard filled with decorated vases in a hundred styles.


    ¡°Its¡­ That would be impossible to say,¡± Bertrand said after a moment. ¡°The answer to that question is different for every man who has eyes to see.¡±


    ¡°Then show me which is most beautiful to you through your eyes,¡± Simon insisted. ¡°Help me understand that.¡±


    The boy was obviously uncomfortable, even though the request was simple enough. Simon didn¡¯t blame him. Who was the student to lecture the master about beauty?


    Still, after a few minutes, they fell into a steady rhythm. Bertrand would walk slowly down a row, admiring several, before he would stop to explain why one in particular stood out to him. ¡°It¡¯s just the way the leaves on these flowers curl so precisely,¡± he would explain, or ¡°The deep blue on this one is remarkable. You almost never see a blue this deep in ceramics.¡±


    Each time he selected one, Simon had one of the merchant¡¯s helpers set it aside, and by the end they had nearly a cartload of pottery waiting for them. Despite the fact that they took half the day doing so, no one rushed them. He was a renowned artist, and his pupil was the son of one of the richest men in the city. Men were eager to bow and scrape for the master artist Ennis now, no matter how distasteful he found it.


    ¡±You¡¯re not really going to buy all of those, are you?¡± the boy asked when they were nearly done.


    ¡°Why shouldn¡¯t I?¡± Simon asked. ¡°You said that they were the most beautiful, did you not? Surely, all of them are worth purchasing.¡±


    ¡°But that would cost a fortune,¡± Bertrand protested.


    ¡°That it would,¡± Simon agreed, ¡°Fortunately, your father has several to spare.¡±


    Despite Simon¡¯s words, he negotiated a hefty bulk discount. Haggling was one of the most valuable skills he¡¯d learned during his time in Coramin. So, the lesson was only going to cost half of what he¡¯d told Lord Alexin it would.


    The servants packed the myriad of vases that they¡¯d purchased in the back of Simon¡¯s cart with wood and straw so they would not be harmed during transit, and then Simon started going north out of town.


    ¡°Aren¡¯t we taking these home?¡± Bertrand asked, suddenly confused.


    ¡°Why would we do that?¡± Simon asked. ¡°They were chosen by you, and so they will not be the most beautiful vases to your father or your mother.¡±


    ¡°Well then, what about my townhouse?¡± the boy asked.


    ¡°No, not there either, I¡¯m afraid,¡± Simon said. ¡°With all those hangers-on you have, the distractions are infinite. Art is a solitary endeavor, not a social one.¡±


    ¡°But people always watch you work, and you paint in public, Master Ennis,¡± his student insisted.


    ¡°I paint where the canvas is,¡± Simon corrected him, ¡°But when I paint, I am alone, and even if the whole world watched me, I would not notice.¡± That wasn¡¯t true, of course. He actually took no small amount of delight in the audiences he drew, but it was beside the point in this lesson.


    Their conversation continued like that for some time as Simon led his mule out of town and into the foothills to a particular canyon he had in mind. The boy periodically asked where they were going but got no answers. Instead, they just trekked further and further away until they were completely alone in some fairly rugged foothills.


    When Simon finally reached the promontory overlooking his destination, he looked down at the flat basalt flow and said, ¡°Behold our campsite.¡±


    ¡°Campsite?¡± the young man asked, suddenly nervous. ¡°But why would we¡ª¡±


    ¡°The answers will come tomorrow,¡± Simon explained, cutting him off. ¡°For now, all we can do is prepare.¡±


    They left the mule there to graze on the scrubby grass and took the things that Simon had packed earlier down one load at a time. It was nearly dark by the time they had the tarp up, the bed rolls laid out, and the cookfire going, but Simon didn¡¯t mind. He had a few years left to wait and was in no hurry.


    When Bertrand tried to ask what they were doing again, Simon¡¯s only explanation was, ¡°I have a ¡­ longer-term project in mind for you. We¡¯ll start it in the morning. There¡¯s no rush.¡±


    ¡°But you didn¡¯t bring enough supplies for anything long-term,¡± the boy complained. ¡°Just a little bread and endless pottery. What are we to eat?¡±


    ¡°It is enough,¡± Simon repeated. ¡°You will create, I will hunt, and together, we will focus on what is truly important.¡±

 Ch. 196 - Making A Mess

    The first thing they did that morning was sweep with the straw brooms that had been brought for just this purpose. Bertrand had balked at that, but Simon had insisted it was a vital part of the process. It wasn¡¯t, truthfully, but it would make what was coming next easier.


    Next, they went back up to the clifftop, and in the full light of day, Simon bid his student study the dark canyon floor below. ¡°Tell me, Bertrand, do you see the canvas we have prepared?¡±


    ¡°I do,¡± he agreed, ¡°But it is too dark for charcoal. Are we going to use chalk to draw this time?¡±


    ¡°Draw?¡± Simon asked. ¡°You said that your hand would not obey your mind. I think we will cease with the drawing and try something else.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡± the young man expressed surprise. ¡°What did you have in¡­¡±


    Bertrand¡¯s words trailed off as Simon moved to the wagon, picked up the closest vase, and then, without a word of explanation, threw it over the cliff, where it shattered into a million pieces on the ground below.


    The boy only looked on in shock as Simon reached for the next one. ¡°Well, what are you waiting for?¡± Simon asked. ¡°Help me get these down there so we can get started.¡±


    ¡°Get started? What? Master, stop!¡± Bertrand cried out as Simon through the second vase down to join the first. ¡°What are you¡­ why are you destroying such beautiful¡­¡±


    Simon stopped the boy¡¯s speech by thrusting the third one into his hands. ¡°You said that your art was getting nowhere because your hands would not produce the beauty you could imagine, so we are going to try something else,¡± Simon said closely, forcing Bertrand to meet his eye. ¡°I have found you the most beautiful ceramics in all of northern Ionia. You could ask for no finer materials, and together, you and I will try our hands at mosaics instead.¡±


    ¡°Mosaics?¡± the young man asked.


    ¡°Yes, mosaics,¡± Simon nodded. ¡°Now, get the rest of our tiles together while I take the cement and the grout down.¡±


    Simon left him standing there holding that vase. The boy didn¡¯t say a word, but then he didn¡¯t need to. The look on his face made it clear that he thought Simon had gone completely mad, and Simon was inclined to let him.


    It took him another five minutes to throw the next vase down, and it was more than half an hour before the cart was emptied. They spent much of that second day sweeping a second time. The first time, it had been to remove the rocks and sand, and the second time, it was to gather the thousands of shards they¡¯d created into one giant, glittering, multicolored pile.


    The experience was hard on Bertrand, but Simon ignored that. Instead, after they had dinner, he started to pick out the pieces of plain white and build a giant border on the floor of the canyon. The work would take days to complete, but in his mind, it was an important part of the process.


    ¡°Mosaics, I understand,¡± his student complained, ¡°but why out here? Why not in our mountain summer home or with¡ª¡±


    ¡°In the city, you will be distracted by your friends, and in the country, you will be distracted by the serving girls,¡± Simon answered simply. ¡°Here, there is only me, and I will keep all distractions far away from you until you make progress.¡±


    ¡°What is it I¡¯m supposed to make anyway?¡± The boy asked, still looking for direction instead of making his own. ¡°I¡¯ve never even thought about¡ª¡±


    ¡°Your subject matter can be whatever you like, so long as it fills the canvas I am making for you,¡± Simon explained. ¡°But neither of us will leave here until you have something worth showing to your father. He¡¯s invested significant funds into this lesson and will want to see it pay off.¡±


    Bertrand protested that he could leave whenever he wanted, even after Simon explained to him that he would not be welcome at his estates unless he came back with a satisfied teacher, so eventually, Simon¡¯s most powerful rebuttal was to lay down by their fire and go to sleep.


    In the days that followed, the boy sullenly sorted the large pile of shards by color, cutting his fingers a handful of times in the process. He made no further progress, though, content to complain instead of seeking inspiration.


    Simon found it tiresome but ignored it. It seemed like a vital part of the process. Instead, he used his chalk to decorate the walls of the canyon, leaving the illustrations up until the infrequent rains washed them away. Sometimes, he drew people he¡¯d known, like Gregor or Freya, but more often, he drew monsters he¡¯d fought before. Sometimes, it was goblins and other times, it was wyverns or spiders, but all of them were terrifying when drawn as close to life-size as he could manage on the vast dark walls of the canyon.


    Simon didn¡¯t do it to inspire his student, though it turned out that¡¯s what he did, eventually. He was just doing it to pass the time between hunting trips. Still, on one occasion, after almost two weeks of waiting, he found Bertrand busily moving pieces around the vast twenty-foot-wide canvas that Simon had framed for him.


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    Simon didn¡¯t ask what the boy was up to. Not for a long time. Instead, he waited for him to volunteer that information. It was apparent that he had no plans to do that, though. He obviously wanted Simon to guess, but Simon refused to, so the two shared an amiable sort of silence. They would still talk about other things like the weather or his most recent hunting trip, but those conversations never wandered quite to the subject of the artwork that was slowly but surely taking shape.


    The thing started with a piece of the sea, using elaborate little swirls of light blue on dark to indicate the waves. Simon could see at once that the limitations of the medium were helping his student. He was no longer trying to make things perfect. Instead, he was using the best he had, which was exactly what Simon had hoped for.


    Still, for as long as he thought the boy was making a map of Ionia, he was a little disappointed. That showed a real lack of imagination, even if it was exactly the sort of art his father would have approved of.


    In the third week of the endeavor, though, as the boy started off on a different section, Simon finally understood what it was he was making. Unfortunately, that was also when they were attacked by bandits.


    ¡°What do we have here?¡± a rough-looking man asked, intruding on them one morning while they were making frybread over an open fire. ¡°All this food, and you didn¡¯t ask us to join you. How shameful.¡±


    Of course, they had very little in the way of food, but men like this didn¡¯t really care. They would take the last crumbs from a starving man if they could. Still, even as the small gang of ruffians approached the fire, Simon did not stand, nor did he draw his sword or his dagger, though he had them both belted on under the robes he favored these days.


    ¡°You are welcome to warm yourselves by our fire,¡± Simon said. ¡°Though we have little else to offer you.¡±


    ¡°Two fancy men making art in the middle of nowhere?¡± the leader laughed as he came to a stop, standing over the two of them. ¡°You may not have much, but I¡¯ll wager your families would pay a hefty ransom to see you safe again.¡±


    ¡°My father¡ª¡± Bertrand started, but Simon cut him off.


    ¡°Send ransom letters to whoever you like,¡± Simon spat. ¡°I¡¯ll help you draft them if you don¡¯t know how to write, but I must insist that you do not interrupt our project. Not when Andus the Undefeatable is so close to taking shape.¡±


    ¡°Oh yeah,¡± the leader asked, brandishing a knife while his friends chuckled. ¡°What are you going to do if I cut an ear off the boy to include in the letter to his¡ª¡±


    He never had a chance to finish that statement. It was clear he didn¡¯t think much of Simon as an old man, but he wasn¡¯t half so old as he pretended to be, and even as the bandit leader looked away, he grabbed the handle of the cast iron frying pan and sprang to his feet.


    By the time the man had turned back to face Simon, it was just in time to take the hot metal across the face, and his skin sizzled even as his nose was crushed by the force of the blow. The other three men looked confused as their leader crumpled and scampered back, but that only gave Simon the chance to draw his weapons.


    He didn¡¯t give them the same courtesy. Though he very much missed his shield, it wasn¡¯t a good fit for the person he was in this life, so instead, he wielded a dagger in his offhand to parry certain blows. This time, he took the second man in the chest with it and the third man across the throat with his saber before the fourth man had even drawn his blade.


    There were screams and chaos as everyone tried to fight him then, but as far as he was concerned, the fight was already done. One man was dead, one was dying, and though he took a few shallow cuts that proper armor would have prevented, he was soon surrounded by bodies while his student sat there gawking.


    ¡°Master Ennis, you¡¯re bleeding,¡± Bertrand gasped when it was all done.


    ¡°A little,¡± Simon agreed, ¡°But not so bad as any of them.¡±


    The truth was that at least one of the stabs was quite deep, and Simon had a hard time disguising his pain while he went to fetch the donkey and use words of lesser healing to mend the worst of it. He made sure not to burden his charge with that, though. He simply sent the boy off to continue with his art, and once Simon was cleaned up, he dumped the bodies far enough away that he wouldn¡¯t have to smell them rot.


    Simon spent much of that day recuperating, and by the evening, he decided he might have to heal himself further. No matter how much he tried to walk it off, he wasn¡¯t as young as he used to be.


    ¡°Where did you learn to fight like that, master Ennis,¡± Bertrand finally asked softly once the cook fire had all but dimmed later that night.


    ¡°I am an old man,¡± Simon answered with a shrug. ¡°I have done many things in my life. Haven¡¯t you noticed the monsters I draw? Do you think they come solely from my imagination?¡±


    ¡°I mean, you¡¯d mentioned it before, but I always thought such things were just stories,¡± he added.


    ¡°Even things that are just stories have a measure of truth,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°I was once a fierce warrior, but I turned to art to find some peace, and as you can see, those men took a few pieces out of me because of that. In my prime¡­ in armor¡­ I would have cut them down like the mangy scavengers they were.¡±


    Bertrand nodded, then said, ¡°I have one other question. When did you know what I was working on? In the mosaic?¡±


    ¡°From the very beginning,¡± Simon lied. ¡°I could see it in the colors you chose when you laid down the first few pieces.¡±


    Bertrand accepted that answer. Indeed, he treated it almost as a form of praise.


    Simon thought that the act of violence would have disrupted the flow that his student was slowly building, but he only sped up after that. The first part of the large mosaic had taken over a week to lay out, but the second took half that time, and the third was faster still. As the man that had founded the nation finally appeared in the center as Bertrand slowly moved to fill in the last of the space with a flock of harpies descending from the jagged mountains, Simon was reasonably certain that the boy had chosen to make the legendary hero look just a bit like him, and he was touched by the gesture.

 Ch. 197 - Introductions

    Of course, even after a month, the work was only halfway done. They still spent days and days cementing the thing in place once Bertrand was happy with the placement of all the pieces. It was only when the entire project wasfinished, and they¡¯d spent half a day sealing and polishing it with a cake of beeswax that they sat on the canyon rim and admired it from above with a celebratory bottle of wine.


    Simon was pleased. Even if it wasn¡¯t perfect, the giant mosaic below was a much better effort than all of the paintings that Bertrand had made up until now. Once he stopped obsessing over the quality of his lines and his strokes and was forced to use nothing but imperfections, he finally got out of his own way, Simon thought to himself. He said none of that to the boy, though. He was already smiling from ear to ear. Now, all that needed to be done was show his father.


    The two of them returned from the canyon skinner and dirtier from the wear. Simon said nothing about the fight, and Lord Alexin was pleased enough at the mosaic once he¡¯d set eyes on it that he said, ¡°It¡¯s a shame you put it all the way out here where I cannot rub the faces of my rivals in the work of my son.¡± That was as high a praise as Bertrand was ever likely to receive from the man, but even so, he beamed.


    ¡°Sometimes art must be done for its own sake,¡± Simon said, ¡°In this case, the audience was only a single person.¡± He let that comment hang there, unwilling to specify whether the audience was the father, the teacher, or the artist himself. That was the main lesson he¡¯d got from being a teacher so far. The longer he asked questions of children to get them to think about things, the more he realized there were often many answers to the same question.


    The three of them rode back to the house together after that, and on the way, Bertrand¡¯s father offered him a commission to retile the guest house at their summer estate in similar heroic themes. The price for the task was a little low, but that was the way the man was with his tests, and Simon vowed to help the boy cut some costs with a couple of the suppliers he knew to make the project that much more lucrative for him.


    In private, Lord Alexin confessed, ¡°I did not know if your mad plan would work, but now, after thinking on it, I believe that simply tearing that boy away from his friends and the girls might have done as much good as all the broken pottery and high-minded ideals in the world.¡±


    ¡°Hence the guest house,¡± Simon said, acting perfectly aware of the man¡¯s ulterior motive, even though he hadn¡¯t given the isolation part of the project a lot of thought since those first few days when his pupil had been nothing but complaints.


    ¡°Hence the guest house,¡± the Lord agreed.


    Bertrand never mentioned the way that Simon slew the bandits to anyone, but once he completed his task and redid the floors with brand-new works of art for his father to brag about, he begged Simon to add sword lessons to his curriculum. Simon saw no problem with that. He¡¯d done plenty of art at this point and was spending more and more time teaching Bertrand¡¯s younger siblings, so he had plenty of time. He was running down the clock now.


    He¡¯d already established himself as a man with a reputation up and down the coasts of Ionia, and over the next couple of years, he took it somewhat easier. He still worked on art, of course, but they were small private studies rather than giant public works as he¡¯d done so far. He¡¯d gone as far as he could with honing his skills on the sides of buildings. If he wanted to make further progress, he was going to need a more refined medium. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to make oil or even acrylic paints.


    There were clues in the name, he supposed, but it was hardly a common art form in Ionia. He¡¯d seen a few paintings in the houses of the wealthy in Abresse, but the only stretched canvases he¡¯d seen were in Brin and their mountainous neighbor to the east.


    It¡¯s so weird that a few hundred miles make such a difference, he thought to himself. On Earth, I could have gotten all this from one trip to the mall.


    That was as true of foods as it was of art supplies, of course, though he wasn¡¯t sure if that was true anymore. He had no idea how much time had passed on Earth now since all of this had started. It might have been centuries. At this point, they were in some weird post-human future where they could replicate anything with machines, or the entire place was a post-apocalyptic wasteland. There was no way to know for sure.


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter,¡± he sighed to himself contentedly. ¡°Either way, I¡¯m still out here trying to invent paint.¡±


    Sometimes, he thought about what he could have done with his life if he¡¯d been like this from the start, but it was always an irrelevant question. He never could have been this person from the start. It had taken an awfully long time to hike this far on the road of life, and he felt like he was still nowhere near the peak of the mountain.


    In Simon¡¯s last few years before he turned south again, he only engaged in one complex project, and that was the vampiric knife he¡¯d been designing and daydreaming about for some time. It wasn¡¯t like it was even hard at this point. He had a small private forge he used to make his tools on the Alexin estate already, and even rare materials were easy enough for him to afford.


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    Something about the transfer magic just kept him away, and for years, he always found something more important to do. It was only when he felt the beginnings of arthritis after particularly intense sparring sessions that he realized he probably needed something more if he wanted to provide the same sort of instruction to his own son that he¡¯d provided to the Alexin family for the last few years.


    Before he started, though, Simon did some experimentation on small farm animals and noted that lesser life transfer was nearly as powerful but less euphoric than nothing but a pure word of transfer. He was unable to determine if it was more or less powerful, though, because both the written and spoken versions of the lesser word killed chickens and goats, and he was unwilling to test if on ne¡¯er do wells, or even his beloved donkey, Daisy the Third.


    Eventually, he was ready. So, using the same techniques he¡¯d learned in the forbidden forges of the Unspoken, he finally got to work. First, he forged three identical daggers, knowing full well that half of all the blades were rejected for quality issues in the second stage. He carefully tempered and sharpened all of them over the course of several weeks before he did anything remotely magical.


    Once that was done, he carefully drew the inverse of the symbols on the blade in inert clay. The pattern he¡¯d chosen was complex but not ridiculously slow. It has a trigger point on the tip so that it would activate whenever it stabbed into something living. To that circuit, he added the words of lesser life transfer.


    Then, when it was masked appropriately, he soaked the thing in acid overnight. The next day, he found that his efforts were in vain and that he would have to start again. Though most of the marks were fine, one of the sections of clay had come loose, marring the lesser word that was now etched on one side of the blade.


    After the failure, he hammered that blade into unrecognizable uselessness, and then he started again. The second result was much better than the first, and Simon spent a few days carefully gilding and polishing it before he started to carve the handle and fit it to a pommel and crossguard. He might have lavished a month on clever designs. The idea certainly appealed to him, but not as much as the idea of keeping a low profile, at least in some regards.


    In the end, his only effort at artistry was to carve a skull into the pommel as a small memento mori. After that, he tested the thing. For this, at least, he went into the mountains until he found evidence of a beastman tribe. Then, he hunted them until he found a group of two of the creatures alone. The first one he slew quickly, only grazing it with his new dagger once for a noticeable jolt of life force.


    The monster¡¯s friend wasn¡¯t so lucky. Once Simon was faced with only a single foe, he took his time, and he used his sword only to parry the creature¡¯s weapon. He wasn¡¯t trying to torture the beast or anything, but he wanted to know just how potent the life-drain effect was.


    This sure would be easier if I could see damage numbers above his head every time I struck him, he sighed as he inflicted a death of a thousand cuts on the monster. In the end, it took six stabs with the knife to drop it to the ground where it lay, bleating weakly. After that, Simon plunged the knife into the thing''s back and felt the energy flow through that bloody link for several seconds before the creature finally stilled.


    In the end, there were too many variables for him to know for sure. He wasn¡¯t sure how long beastmen lived and how much of the fatal damage was done by the blade rather than the magic in it, but Simon felt like each stab had gotten several minor words worth of power back from the creature, but not quite a full word.


    That means what? Two or three weeks'' worth of life per stab? He thought on the way back. Maybe four months altogether?


    Simon thought that was very interesting. For two or three hunting trips like this a year, he might never age again. It seemed ridiculous, but he could find no fault in the logic. Well, only one, at least.


    At the moment, he hadn¡¯t noticed the terrible euphoria building one stab at a time. It only wore off while he slept that night, and in the morning, he felt a terrible craving he hadn¡¯t felt in a long time. That both annoyed and disturbed him because he hadn¡¯t felt any similar cravings when he¡¯d been testing the blade on farm animals. That complicated things, and he vowed to leave the blade in its sheath until he determined if it was the dose or the type of victim that caused him to feel like this.


    Simon took that as his cue to leave. He gave his patron little notice. He just packed up his most prized possessions, left a note for Bertrand regarding a few unfinished projects if the boy wanted a challenge, and then approached Lord Alexin for a letter of recommendation.


    ¡°You¡¯re leaving us already, Master Ennis? What have we done to deserve the shoddy treatment?¡± the man asked. ¡°I¡¯ll double your wages again if that¡¯s what it will take to keep you a good while longer.¡±


    Money, of course, was no object to either of them, but this was all part of the dance when it came to his patrons. They all wanted a famous, talented artist in their pocket that they could show off to their friends and enemies alike. At this point, half of Simon¡¯s job involved attending parties and sounding wise.


    He refused the man, of course, insisting, ¡°I¡¯ve heard that the queen will soon be selecting a tutor for the young prince. I aim to shape the future of the nation. Should she reject me, I will return in due time.¡±


    ¡°Oh, well, then we shall just consider this a vacation,¡± he mused. ¡°A loan to the queen until you come back here to continue your great works.¡±


    Simon laughed at that. Lord Alexin¡¯s youngest children were already almost as old as Bertrand was when Simon started here, and his eldest son was an artist with a growing reputation in his own right. Simon had done everything he needed to here, and he doubted that he¡¯d ever be back.

 Ch. 198 - Worth the Wait

    Simon¡¯s trip south gave him only one chance to experiment with his blade, and that was against a group of drunken mercenaries that took him for a helpless old man. Though he didn¡¯t kill all of them because they weren¡¯t bandits or worse, he did take the fingers on one man¡¯s right hand, and he cut the pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi muscles on the other man¡¯s dominant arm when he took him under the armpit, ensuring he¡¯d never be able to fight again either.


    He left both men bleeding and crippled but alive. He also learned that a single dose of life force, even from a human, wasn¡¯t enough to make him fiend for more. That was good but also troubling.


    ¡°So let¡¯s say I can stab someone twice without feeling like I need another hit tomorrow,¡± he told himself. ¡°That¡¯s just enough for one word of power or enough to counteract a month of natural aging. That means I¡¯d need to fight all the time to keep from getting old.¡±


    Or I¡¯ll need to build up a tolerance so I can drain more energy on the occasions where an opportunity presents itself, he added belatedly.


    Realistically, the only way he¡¯d be able to keep up with the way he used magic, even sparingly, would be to lead a very bloody existence. While he¡¯d certainly done that in the past, in lives where he¡¯d participated in Brin¡¯s civil war or fought against the centaurs at Crowvar, he didn¡¯t expect that he¡¯d suddenly be plunged into anything similar in this life. One thing he knew for sure was that he didn¡¯t want all of his lives from now on to be bloodbaths, even if he eventually died of old age now and then as a result.


    Still, he had a long time to think about all of these issues and more on his long walk south. Along the way, he visited with Niko and met his old apprentice¡¯s young family and admired some of the other works of art he¡¯d painted years before, but mostly, he mulled things over. He thought about what he should do with his next life, he thought about where his evil twin had ended up, and most of all, he thought about how he was going to handle reunification with Elthena and so much time with a son.


    My son, he repeated, almost disbelievingly. He¡¯d painted several large murals of the boy, but he¡¯d never seen him. Truthfully, Simon had never even imagined he¡¯d become a father. Not even after he and Freya had almost had a family of their own. Such an idea was too painful to be allowed to be anything but a distant dream.


    It wasn¡¯t painful now, though. Despite his initial trepidation, his heart grew lighter and lighter as he approached Ionar, and by the time he reached the city itself, the day of his son¡¯s eighth birthday was drawing near.


    Simon had himself a fine new toga sewed for the occasion and spent those last few weeks hobnobbing with the city''s elites as he put his reputation to use. Though he never presented himself to court, by the day of the audience, his name was on the lips of everyone who mattered. It felt strange for him to seek out attention like this, but it was what needed to be done. The Queen said she would choose him, but he knew better than anyone the Queen did not always have the final say in these things, not when she had to think about the opinions of her advisors.


    When the day finally arrived, and he presented himself to the court, he was one of dozens of faces that were there seeking the role. Some of them he¡¯d heard of, but most were opportunists. They were simply men eager for the fame or the salary that would come with working for the royal family. Simon strove for neither, but then, at least according to their words, neither did they.


    Simon had expected other applicants. That did not bother him, though he was slightly disappointed that Seyom wasn¡¯t there in person for him to see.


    All the other men had flowery words about public service and young minds in the brief speech each of them was presented to make. Simon largely eschewed that. Instead of lavishing himself with elaborate praise, he let his accomplishments speak for himself. ¡°I am Ennis of Coramin. I need no introduction. I have tutored Lord Alexin¡¯s children and created many public works of art. You may see them and judge them for yourself if you wish to know me better.¡±


    ¡°Thank you, Master Ennis,¡± the Queen said when he was done. ¡°I have seen the mural that you did in Thebian, of Seyom and I. It was quite lovely.¡±


    He, of course, bowed at that but said nothing else. Instead, he simply studied the aging beauty on the throne. The Queen had gray hairs of her own now and more than a few smile lines around her mouth, but that didn¡¯t make him love her any less. Not after all these years.


    After that, he endured another pack of introductions, each of which was longer than the last, before they were finally permitted the next portion of the very public ceremony. Slowly but surely, the field was winnowed as each of the would-be teachers were themselves tested by nobles with standing in the city.


    The results ranged from impressive to humorous, depending on who it was that asked a question and how hard it was to achieve the answer. The assembled men of learning were made to do complex math problems and explain how they did them as if they were speaking to a young child. If they failed to get the correct answer, or they got the correct answer but explained it in such a way that a child could not grasp it, they were escorted out of the grand hall.


    Simon was never the best at math, so he felt fortunate that the good people of Ionia had never invented anything more difficult than simple geometry and basic algebra, so everything was within his abilities, more or less. The explanation portion, though, was where he really excelled. It turned out that spending years teaching children made you good at pretending to teach to imaginary children, and Simon¡¯s response for how one would calculate the perimeter of a circle received a smattering of applause when he was finished.


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    The oratory portion and the art portions gave him even less trouble. He read a poem about the Queen¡¯s grandfather and the great curse, which was apropos, though he did not let on to his cynicism there. That section only took out a few men who were poor public speakers, but combined with the math, there were only half a dozen remaining applicants left for a very public art project.


    Each of them was given an easel with fine paper, charcoal, and an hour and told to draw whatever they liked. Simon had to think about it only for a moment before he started putting charcoal to paper and skillfully blending it to create the sketch of the work he¡¯d planned. With only an hour there was only so much to do, even after all these years he held the image so clearly in his mind that he felt like he was halfway done before everyone else had done more than sketch the barest outlines.


    There were many things he could draw that would let Elthana know that it was him as if there was any doubt, but there was only one that was perfect for this moment. It was a place that only the two of them had seen. And as the minutes ticked by, he sketched out the tiny cloud city of the oracle, one stroke at a time. The wispy clouds along the rim were easiest, and after that came the still lake in the center and the city proper. When their hour was declared up, he wasn¡¯t quite done with all the terraced fields that lined the rim, but he was close.


    The end result wasn¡¯t even close, as far as he was concerned. To a man, every other applicant had drawn either Seyom in a way that made him look less like a boy and more like a young demigod or Queen Elthena as she might have looked when she was a little younger and prettier. He knew that she would hate all of those.


    Still, she pretended to appreciate them and gave all the other men praise as she walked around the hall judging the results. ¡°What is this place then?¡± she asked when she reached him.


    ¡°It is, at least according to the sages, the place where the oracle dwells,¡± he admitted. ¡°No one but the Kings and Queens of the realm might go there, of course, but this is how I see it when I read the myths and legends.¡±


    She said nothing to his response and walked on, but he saw her eyes tear up briefly and knew his art had found its mark. When it was all said and done, she allowed three contenders to stay, including him. Then, she allowed the court to debate the issue for a time.


    Simon felt certain he was the front-runner and that all he had to do was bide his time and politely answer further questions. Still, when one of the local Lords loudly complained, ¡°A boy who will one day be King should not be educated by an artist. It will give him too many feminine sensibilities.¡±


    ¡°Who would you suggest that he be trained by then?¡± Simon asked amiably.


    ¡°He already has one mother,¡± the man proclaimed, causing a few laughs. ¡°I say he does not need a second one. Let him be trained by some retired general. Or perhaps a nobleman that has served in the army.¡±


    ¡°Our prince will doubtlessly need to know how to fight,¡± Simon agreed. ¡°The world is a dangerous place. How is your skill with a blade, sir?¡±


    ¡°Impeccable,¡± the lord proclaimed, striking a pose as the rest of the court started to wonder exactly where this was leading.


    ¡°Excellent,¡± Simon said. ¡°Duel me then, and we shall ensure that the future is in good hands.¡±


    There was a long silence then, before the man finally croaked, ¡°Excuse me?¡±


    ¡°I said, you require that Prince Seyom¡¯s skill with a sword to be a priority, therefore, let me, or any of the other candidates for his teacher duel you, as a final test.¡±


    This made the Queen lean forward in interest, but she said nothing. Instead, the man said, ¡°Well, surely there are other people who are better equipped to¡ª¡±


    ¡°Do not change your mind now, good sir,¡± Simon insisted. ¡°Not in front of all these fine Lords and Ladies, lest they confuse your pragmatism for cowardice. Surely, you are not afraid of one old artist.¡±


    That was the push the noble needed, and with a look at the Queen, he strode forward and said, ¡°Please, Your Majesty, let me put this charlatan in his place.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll allow it, but to the blood or the surrender only. There is nothing here worth dying for,¡± she said mildly, gesturing for one of her guards to lend me his sword. ¡°We shall consider this the final test then. If good master Ennis prevails, he can be my son¡¯s tutor. The other learned men will, of course, be allowed to challenge him in turn afterward if he¡¯s so confident.¡±


    Simon repressed the sarcastic thank-you he almost gave her for that second part. Instead, the floor cleared, offering the two fighters wide berth as Simon and his opponent moved to the center of the floor and loosened up. For his part, Simon pretended to be stiff and inexperienced with the type of blade he¡¯d been given, but that was just to make the show that was going to happen next that much better.


    He could tell from the first few moves that his noble opponent had made that the man had studied dueling in his youth but had done little with it in the remainder of his very important life. He¡¯d certainly never fought in a war or killed a man.


    When the duel started, the noble came out quick and hard, hoping to end this quickly. Simon stayed just out of reach, parrying only now and then as he led the man around the room by his nose for half a minute to get the measure of him. Still, he waited for him to get frustrated and shout, ¡°Strange behavior for one who insisted on this battle.¡±


    That was when Simon struck. He didn¡¯t even move too fast. He just lashed out with a series of blows to force his opponent on the defensive. Then, when the man¡¯s pommel was where Simon wanted it to be, he struck it instead, disarming him immediately as his blade soared through the air.


    Simon had meant to catch it and end up with both blades, but his angle was off, and the thing went wide. Drama aside, his blade was still pressed against his opponent''s neck when it was done, and the applause that followed was raining down on him, not on the humiliated noble who had been talking such a big game.


    Simon immediately offered both other prospective teachers the opportunity to fight him. ¡°You can come at me together if that would make you feel more comfortable,¡± he offered, though they both hastily declined.


    After that, there was nothing left for him to do but accept the Queen¡¯s offer, meet his son, and settle into his new life, or at least what was left of it.

 Ch. 199 - A New Beginning

    Later that evening, Simon was finally allowed to meet his son. Before that, though, he was given a tour of the palace he already knew reasonably well and shown the apartments he¡¯d be living in until such time as Seyom was grown or the Queen grew dissatisfied with his performance. While he certainly didn¡¯t expect the latter to apply, he did note that she¡¯d given him a room at the top of the tower, furthest from her own bedchambers, which was very clearly a message all of its own.


    Don¡¯t get any ideas indeed, he thought to himself.


    He didn''t mind, though. The space was private, out of the way, and unlikely to be spied upon. It was even fairly defensible should he ever require that, and there was ample room for him to work on several of his art and magic-related experiments.


    It was only later that evening when Simon had unpacked his possessions and sent servants to the library and the bazaar to retrieve the things he thought he¡¯d need for the upcoming lessons Simon was actually introduced to Seyom, he was stunned for a moment.


    He could see plenty of the Queen in his dark-eyed features, but he could see something of himself, too, and it had more of an effect than he¡¯d expected. Simon had tutored Gregor, Niko, and the Alexin children, but something about Seyom being his own flesh and blood, even if the child didn¡¯t know it, changed that dynamic immediately.


    He¡¯d had a short speech prepared about discovering the wonders of the world together, but he only got a few words out before it was clear the boy wasn¡¯t listening, which ruined the moment. At first, Simon thought that his son had just grown up into a precocious brat, but as it turned out, he¡¯d simply been coddled within an inch of his life.


    The boy clung to his mother¡¯s skirts whenever possible, which wasn¡¯t so unusual for a boy of eight, but even when he was apart from her, he was surrounded constantly by half a dozen servants to tend to his every need. He could not sneeze without being offered three handkerchiefs.


    When it came to eating, he wasn¡¯t even seated by Seyom; the boy was seated at a small table with three other servants, and he was put at the Queen¡¯s left hand at the high table. ¡°Well, what do you think?¡± she asked.


    ¡°I think that you do not want that answer,¡± Simon mused, drinking some of his wine.


    She didn¡¯t challenge him directly on it, and the polite conversation continued, interrupted only occasionally by their verbal fencing. It was only after the dinner was winding down after Simon was stuffed within an inch of his life by fine dishes of rice and lamb, that she asked to speak with him about his planned curriculum in private that he finally told her the truth.


    ¡°I think that boy is being smothered within an inch of his life,¡± Simon exclaimed as soon as the door was closed.


    Elthena, for her part, only made a few excuses about how precious Ionia¡¯s heir was before she grudgingly agreed. ¡°What do you propose, then?¡± she asked.


    ¡°Besides that, you cut the apron strings? Give the boy some friends!¡± Simon said, exasperated. ¡°Why is he sitting with servants three and four times his age. Why is he not with other children.¡±


    ¡°Well, as you well know, I have no other children, Simon,¡± she answered playfully.


    ¡°Your choice, not mine,¡± Simon shot back before adding, ¡°I have no doubt your court is overflowing with other children whose parents would love to get into your good graces. Surely they will do.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯d planned that, of course, but¡­¡± she hesitated. ¡°When he¡¯s older, you know?¡±


    ¡°Older? Impressionable?¡± Simon sighed. ¡°Elthena, I love you, but you are going to ruin our¡­ You will ruin Seyom. When he is still young and impressionable is exactly the moment you want him to be exposed to other children. That''s where he will learn virtues like curiosity, independence, and masculinity.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s too harsh,¡± she insisted. ¡°My son is very curious and intelligent. He often asks questions that men twice his age have not yet considered.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡± Simon asked, ¡°And when he asks these fine questions, what answers is he given?¡±


    ¡°I have the finest scholars of my court. They tell him whatever he wants to know,¡± she answered softly. This made Simon pound the windowsill he was standing beside in frustration.


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    ¡°Then all you have taught him is that he can rely on men smarter than him to explain things to him,¡± Simon sighed. ¡°Is that what you want? To be led around by his advisors?¡±


    ¡°Well, of course not,¡± she insisted. ¡°But I was raised much the same way, and I turned out alright.¡±


    ¡°And so will he, eventually,¡± Simon sighed, ¡°But I want more than, alright. I want exceptional. I don¡¯t think that¡¯s asking too much. Not for my¡­ pupil.¡±


    When he was in public, he had no problem referring to Seyom as a near stranger, but in private, with the Queen, it was much harder. There, the secret was evidence of the life that he might have led.


    ¡°How would you change things then?¡± Elthena asked.


    ¡°Completely,¡± Simon said. ¡°From top to bottom.¡± He spent the next few minutes laying out what he meant by that. To start with, he wanted the number of minders around Seyom to be slowly reduced.


    ¡°He should never be outnumbered by his own servants,¡± Simon explained. ¡°He may have one servant, but not when I am teaching.¡± She balked at all of that, but he continued, explaining that henceforth, instead of being Seyom¡¯s private tutor, their class was about to get larger.


    ¡°I would like five to eight students around his age,¡± he insisted. ¡°And some of them should be girls. An even mix will make him feel less special.¡±


    ¡°But he is special,¡± Elthena insisted.


    ¡°He is,¡± Simon agreed, ¡°But he should feel the need to prove that, not have it handed to him. He will go nowhere in life until we build that drive.¡±


    They argued about it for some time, and Simon wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d made any headway on the matter. He was certain that his insistence that his son have more men in his life hurt the Queen, but still, somehow, at breakfast the following morning, which he had with the Queen and her son in private, he was only waited on by a single servant.


    There, in front of a few of her advisors, she proceeded to explain to him that his duties would be expanded to include a few other boys and girls who were the children of court luminaries. Simon nodded along, agreeing to everything.


    In the end, only her Vizer protested the new arrangement in any serious way. He was a different one than Simon had known when he¡¯d last been here, but the Queen dismissed his concerns about the increased risks of injury that came with roughhousing. ¡°Our dear Mister Ennis is too talented to keep all to ourselves. Surely, the future of the Kingdom will be much enhanced if he helps to mold as many young minds as possible.¡±


    After that, Simon hoped to get to work, but instead, he was tasked with going out to find more students for his class. A few of the Queen¡¯s courtiers provided him with a list of names, which included all of the best families with children who were between six and ten, and then left him to his own devices.


    Simon spent the next week of his life having lunches and dinners with the cr¨¨me de la cr¨¨me of the city, discussing art and some of his travels, along with court gossip. It wasn¡¯t wasted time, truthfully, he just did not care for it. At his age, he could eat only so much rich food before he started to pay for it at night with heartburn and sleeplessness, and truthfully, all he wanted to do was spend time with Seyom.


    Eventually, he settled on five likely children to join his son and had the palace carpenter fashion six desks in a small out-of-the-way room near the gardens. ¡°Do you really mean for the prince to learn in such a drab place?¡± the Vizer asked one day when the Queen was visiting to inspect his new classroom.


    ¡°Not at all,¡± Simon said. ¡°We will only be in here to learn letters and when the weather is poor. The rest of the time, I plan to teach them outside.¡±


    ¡°Outside?¡± the man asked. ¡°What can they learn in the gardens that¡ª¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll only be in the gardens for a few years,¡± Simon corrected the man. ¡°When Seyom and the rest are a bit older, the city, the mountains, and the sea will be our laboratory just as much as everywhere else.¡±


    ¡°Wha-what?!¡± the man exploded. ¡°Queen, surely this tutor has gone quite mad. He would risk the lives of the prince and¡ª¡±


    ¡°Yes, explain yourself,¡± the Queen responded, only slightly annoyed.


    ¡°What can you learn of the world without being in it?¡± Simon asked. ¡°How can you learn to swim without stepping foot in the water? I assure you, all of them will be fine. There is no safer place in the world than there is with me.¡±


    The conversation was dropped when workmen arrived to install the large piece of slate that he planned to use as a chalkboard, but it was far from resolved. In private, the Queen expressed her disapproval very clearly, despite further explanations. ¡°You will have the chance to see the results for yourself from the garden sessions alone,¡± Simon promised her.


    Those started shortly after that. At first, they were little more than play time, with Simon functioning as a doting grandparent or elderly babysitter. He noticed the Queen would often watch from one of the windows on the upper story, but she didn¡¯t interfere, which was for the best.


    Simon did very little teaching in those first few weeks. Instead, he did significant untraining that their servants and parents had unwittingly inflicted on them and taught them how to be kids again. At first, he dictated the games they would play and taught them tag and hide and seek, along with tug of war and a few others, but after a few days, they mostly handled that themselves and he could see friendships starting to form, which pleased Simon to no end.


    It was only after they were comfortable with each other and with him that the real learning could begin. It started in small ways, with discussions about where the rain came from and why the grass grew, just as it had with the Alexin children. He made finger paints for the children, which led to the briefest of discussions about alchemy, but it was a start, and once the children saw learning as a form of play rather than torture that involved words on a page, his job was halfway done.

 Ch. 200 - Playtime

    Within half a year, all of the children could spell their names, however poorly, and some of them knew all of their letters, though reading was still beyond them, and when the time came for stories, only a few would even try to sound out the smaller words, leaving him to do the reading on his own.


    Simon had no idea if that was fast or slow. He couldn¡¯t remember enough about his own childhood to say, and school wasn¡¯t exactly common in this world, no matter which region he dwelled in. He was in no hurry, though. He had a decade to get them where they needed to go, and in scales he thought of things that was all the time in the world.


    With these things, there is always the temptation to rush them, he told himself. But you must resist. There is no need to hurry.


    There really wasn¡¯t, either. Unfortunately, that wasn¡¯t the only temptation. There was also the temptation to favor Seyom, or spend more time with him than the other children.


    That could have been natural, because he was the Prince and the heir to the country of course, but Simon held back. It was a slippery slope and he knew he¡¯d been tempted. Instead, if anything, he held him further at arms length than the other children. Simon still greeted each of the boy¡¯s small triumphs with a patient smile and questions about what they would learn next, but it was a hard balance.


    Time alone helped with that balance. Since he¡¯d started, he took one weekend a month to go into the mountains. He told the court that he needed alone time to gain inspiration and ponder the stars. He sometimes even did those things, especially at first when he was sure he was being followed. Truthfully, though, he went for bloodier reasons.


    Those little camping trips didn¡¯t always find beastmen or bandits. Both were in short supply this close to the city, but he found them both often enough that he was very slowly reversing his aging. As time passed, he was becoming younger. Simon doubted he¡¯d even be a year younger by the time his son reached eighteen by this rate. He would at least hold himself steady in the stream of time, and that was enough.


    Truthfully, he didn¡¯t want to do much more than that. While it would have certainly been convenient to be a little younger around so many children who were constantly trying to wear him out, it wouldn¡¯t do to start rumors. The last thing he wanted to bring to the Queen¡¯s court were whispers of witchcraft and heresy.


    There were already enough troubles brewing, and for once, none of them were of his making. While, at least, he was pretty sure they weren¡¯t of his making. He did worry about his doppelg?nger, though. The evil version of Simon hadn¡¯t just disappeared. He was out there somewhere, causing no end of trouble. He was certain of it.


    He also started taking small hikes with the children up the mountain during this time. The Queen forbade him to take them beyond the nicest parts of the high city, so they mostly walked to the shrine at the very end of the main road, at the foot of the mountain he¡¯d almost died at so long ago. Even then, they were trailed surreptitiously by a handful of guards at a distance.


    Still, it did all of them good to see life outside the palace walls, even if only a few steps. They probably weren¡¯t ready to interact with commoners, or worse, poor people, but from so high up, he and his little gaggle of students could sit on the rocks on sunny days and talk about volcanos, mountains, and all the little sailing ships that came and went, which made it time well spent.


    ¡°Why do you think the sky it red only in the morning and the evening but the stones are red all day long?¡± Simon would ask. ¡°Do you think its a coincidence that the sky and the water are the same color?¡±


    These were the sorts of questions that Simon would ask his little flock of students, and though the answers were never particularly accurate, it did get them thinking, which was the whole point. Once Seyom suggested that one was probably a mirror of the other, and Simon was forced to agree with him, though he did not remember the true reason that the sky was blue.


    He also sought to channel the occasional argument between Sayom and some of the other boys into exercise. He did not use the opportunity to introduce them to sword fighting, though. The last thing he wanted to do was to see someone lose an eye, and none of them had the discipline to learn the blade yet, even in wooden form.


    Simon had been in the palace acting as an instructor for almost a year when the news reached him that Brin was at war with their neighbors to the north beyond the Black Bridge. It was a place he¡¯d never been, though he¡¯d once almost gone as far as the Bahmed pass with Kell and his mercenary company before all that had gone to shit.


    According to the books he¡¯d read on the subject, past those mountains and the desert beyond them were the lands of the Murani. They were largely nomadic, and the trade road that connected the kingdom was dominated by high-valued luxury goods like silk and spices.


    He certainly hadn¡¯t seen that coming. From this distance, information was inconsistent, so it was hard to say much about it beyond the fact that it would impact land-based trade. Ionar didn¡¯t engage in too much of that, though, and the fighting didn¡¯t spread too much by sea because neither of the combatants were large naval powers, so sea trade was largely unaffected.


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    Simon wondered how the fighting would be affected by an Ionar that was still thriving rather than one that had been destroyed by a certain eruption. However, without viewing the same events from a different timeline, it was impossible to say for sure.


    Both kingdoms sent envoys, pleading that Ionar ally with them for their mutual benefit, but the Queen told both sides no, politely but firmly. Simon made no attempt to advise her in these matters. He knew that she wouldn¡¯t listen and that even the attempt would upset her. She was the Queen, not him. Still, she let him attend both audiences, which was enough for him.


    From the back benches, he could study the mysterious northerners and the more familiar envoys of the Kingdom of Brin. Their King did not attend, but from the way they spoke, at least, it sounded like the brat he¡¯d scared half to death in one of his past lives had turned out to be an okay ruler, giving Simon that much more hope that Seyom would be okay.


    The horselords of the north were a proud people, and they offered the Queen extravagant gifts to change her mind. In the end, both sides settled for neutrality, but only grudgingly. Queen Elthena made it quite clear that if either side crossed into her mountainous territory, they would regret it.


    Simon doubted that, given that Ionar had a smaller army than either of the other sides. Fortunately, their territory was very defensible, and the other nations were in the dark about their true capabilities. Still, after that, Simon suggested that they expand the nation''s small army, and she agreed, leaving much of the details in the hands of her general and Vizer. Though she occasionally asked Simon¡¯s opinion on things after that, he largely left those matters to her and her people and returned his focus to the children where it belonged.


    In the second year, the war dragged on, with no side gaining or losing much ground, while Simon focused on teaching his charges the basics of math. He did this first with colored beads and later with exercises on the chalkboard.


    No one took to this quickly. Instead, they much preferred playtime and story time. Simon couldn¡¯t blame them for that, of course. They were children, after all. Instead, he set about devising new stories that incorporated simple word problems and riddles he could use to engage their minds that much better. He also hired a carpenter to make wooden blocks, and then he painted them in colorful ways to allow for more learning games. This world might not have Legos for another few centuries, but he was determined to fill that gap any way he could.


    Over time, those blocks largely served a different purpose altogether. Though he¡¯d long since drawn them a fairly accurate world map of the region to study, when news of a major battle would come in, Simon would take it down from the hall and then use the red and blue bricks to map out the forces as best he understood them, to explain the events to the children, as the ebb and flow of battle, moved around the edges of their little mountainous kingdom.


    ¡°Don¡¯t you think they¡¯re a bit young to be worrying about such things?¡± the Queen asked after she caught him explaining it to them once.


    ¡°Certainly,¡± he agreed. ¡°But these are your future leaders, and the longer it drags on, the more likely it is to be their problem.¡±


    ¡°This will not be the first time the Murani have tried to claim southern lands, nor will it be the last,¡± Queen Elthena sighed, not bothering to refute his point. ¡°Their last attempt was in my Grandfather¡¯s time, so I do not expect that Seyom will have to worry about it.¡±


    ¡°I hope that is the case,¡± Simon agreed, but he had his doubts. He¡¯d read accounts of that previous war, and it didn¡¯t drag on as long as the last one had. Either Brin was weaker, or their enemy had grown stronger. Simon didn¡¯t have enough information to say.


    He did, however, use the ongoing war to eventually introduce his pupils to swordsmanship, causing another scandal in the process. It would seem that the elite of Ionar had a problem with their daughters learning to fight with swords. That surprised Simon, even though he knew that it shouldn¡¯t.


    ¡°I''ve known many women that can fight,¡± he insisted, leaving out the fact that most of them were peasant girls who needed those skills a lot more often.


    Not even Elthena accepted that excuse, though, strange as it was for a woman to be enforcing sexism on his students. In the end, Simon relented because it wasn¡¯t a fight he could win. So, they compromised. Instead of teaching his female students swordsmanship, he would teach them archery. The bows he had made for this had laughable pull strengths, but it sufficed to make sure that no one felt left out.


    So, on those days when he forced Seyom and the other boys to practice their forms when all they wanted to do was duel with each other, the girls practiced marksmanship, and everyone was happy. Well, everyone except for Simon.


    He¡¯d come here to teach Seymon reading and art. He¡¯d planned on raising his son up to be an independent young man like Bertrand, but the longer the war dragged on around them, the more likely it was that he was going to have to train a warrior instead of a man who could choose his own fate. Simon didn¡¯t care for that at all, but he still found time to take a measure of pride in the boy¡¯s advances. It had been only a couple years, but he was making great strides.


    He was no longer the timid, distractible young boy Simon had found when he¡¯d first arrived. Instead, he was fast becoming a decisive young man, and though Simon was concerned that the whole ¡°heir to the Kingdom¡± thing was going to his head, he did not often try to invoke that authority during his studies anymore, which was as a small victory.


    It was at about this time that Simon took to walking with a cane. He didn¡¯t need it but felt it wise to age gracefully, as much as he enjoyed using it to duel his students on occasion. He was as spry now as he¡¯d been in years, but no matter how softly he trod within the social sphere of the palace, he was sure he was makeing enemies in the background and wanted them to underestimate him as much as possible.


    Unfortunately, that meant that when it was time to review new units for the army, he could do little but watch. The last thing he wanted to do was give the generals cause to grow concerned with him, too. In a time of war, they were becoming ever more influential.

 Ch. 201 - Hints and Warnings

    As time went on, it became increasingly apparent that one of the reasons that Brin was losing was the white cloaks. It wasn¡¯t them directly. While Simon had no inside knowledge in this regard, he was sure that they were fighting alongside their countrymen against the external threat, given the dark rumors that were becoming increasingly common.


    If one side was using evil magics and the other was not, then it was like waging a war with arrows against forces that had gunpowder. The odds were against it. Simon knew that better than anyone. Even as an old man who could barely fight three guards at once anymore without a good chance of success, he could fight ten if he used magic subtly, and he could probably kill hundreds if he went all out and used words of power indiscriminately.


    It was a troublesome development, and when that news reached the court, it was one of the few times she placed his counsel above those of her generals and even Vizer. ¡°What should I do?¡± she asked. ¡°To refuse to take sides in a normal war is the right answer, but in something like this¡­¡±


    Simon believed that she should throw in with Brin directly, but he also knew that as open to that as she was, she would bristle if he tried to tell her what to do. Instead, he offered her advice that would lead to that eventual conclusion. ¡°Send more spies,¡± he advised. ¡°Dispatch more patrols along the main roads and in the passes. If they truly wield mages in their army, then one or two men sneaking into Ionia could cause as much damage as a hundred soldiers.¡°


    She listened to his advice and did as he suggested, even though her other advisors chafed at it. Some of them had started to advise openly that they should throw in with one side or another before the extended stalemate took that choice out of their hands.


    That¡¯s probably what would have happened without me here, Simon thought, realizing that he¡¯d already changed the future in a fairly substantial way. Or maybe Ionia would never have been a player to begin with because of the eruption.


    With everything that had happened and all the different versions he¡¯d seen, it was getting hard to determine which event caused or stopped which other event. Even looking at the notes his mirror held at night after everyone else had gone to sleep didn¡¯t clear that up.


    One thing that was totally clear, though, was how much magic was starting to shape things. Until now, he¡¯d gone back and forth as to whether or not the mage killers were doing more good than evil with their secretive, murderous ways. On the one hand, almost all of the warlocks he¡¯d met or read about seemed to be pretty awful people. Power corrupted, and absolute power corrupted absolutely, and denying that seemed like a net good if you ignored how they achieved it.


    In light of some of the things he was hearing about the war, though, that was less certain. He knew for a fact that the White Cloaks were not a world-wide, monolithic organization. They had power in Ionar and the lands to the south, but to the east, west, and north, they had only occasional dealings with those powers, and hedge mages tended to flourish more there.


    That didn¡¯t mean that Ionar tolerated magic, of course. They still burned witches now and then or banished hermits. Both of those seemed unlikely to be true mages, though. If you had words of true power, you were unlikely to get taken alive in his experience.


    But now, there were rumors of necromancy and war mages at key engagements. One thing was clear to Simon after spending more time in the library; these Murani were not the same ones that had attempted to invade the region a half-century before. Those men had been part of a simpler, more martial culture based on light horse and lightning tactics. These invaders might look the same and speak the same language, but they acted very differently.


    Simon dearly wished he could go to the fronts and learn firsthand, or even beyond it and learn about the people from their own books and mouths. He wished even more than he¡¯d taken the time in previous lives to learn about this group. Hell, for that matter, he wished he knew exactly where he was in relation to other levels.


    As near as he could figure, the levels were mostly a year or two apart, which meant that he was somewhere around the time that he slew the basilisk probably, but there was no way to know for sure.


    A war would sure be a good reason for people not to notice that thing dying one day, he decided.


    Ultimately, he was pretty sure that Brin won, but he didn¡¯t know that for sure. He was just pretty sure that the country still existed based on his limited interactions with the powers that ruled the area in a couple of decades when he¡¯d fought to purge the centaurs.


    Poor Brin, he told himself. Zombie apocalypse, civil war, then invasion, followed by centaur outbreak. They can¡¯t catch a break.


    Simon couldn¡¯t investigate personally. Not only did he have duties here, but he was enjoying watching his son shape up into a fine young man, and he was not willing to sacrifice that.


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    Still, the idea that Brin couldn¡¯t catch a break did not leave him, not during lessons, art, or even his time spent tinkering on various experiments.


    Between lessons with the children, he began to spend more and more time in the Queen¡¯s library, researching it, and slowly but surely, he came to an inescapable conclusion: those large lowland plains between Ionar¡¯s mountains in the west and Charia in the east were sort of a crossroads of history.


    Everything that happened only seemed to matter when it was there. Ionar¡¯s disasters and curses rarely reached beyond its borders, but what happened in Brin, or even Montain to the south, spread far and wide thanks to the easier routes and more extensive trade network.


    He had no idea if that trend continued to the north, in the Murani lands. He¡¯d never found a book in any library that had covered the northlands or anything but the most important trade cities across the sea as anything more than a passing reference.


    ¡°I¡¯ll need to fix that one of these days,¡± Simon told himself, pondering the expeditions he could make to explore the world and better flesh it out.


    He promised himself he¡¯d get ready for that by taking advantage of the city he was in to learn a bit more about sailing, but he never quite found the time for it. He was just too busy teaching. The only times that he found himself even touching on ships with them was when he taught the children about the stars and how to navigate by them.


    What he wanted to do was take them on a camping trip so that they could navigate by them. Unfortunately, the Queen forbade it. ¡°These are not commoners, Simon,¡± she sighed after the third time he brought it up in as many weeks. ¡°Skills that are valuable for peasants, like foraging and navigation, will never be used in the palace!¡± She didn¡¯t ever say it was too dangerous, but he knew that''s what she really meant. It was a common refrain in their disagreements about his curriculum.


    Simon thought that such an impulse was overprotective and totally unreasonable, of course. At least, he did until the war expanded to impact Ionar directly. The news of an entire unit far to the north being crushed was as unexpected as it was impactful. Of course, the ambassadors of both nations denied having a hand in it, but the writing on the wall was clear. Brin had been pushed far enough east that there was no way they could have reached out to cause such a devastating blow.


    This was worrying. Thanks to their naval power and the oceans to the west and the mountains to the east, the easiest and perhaps only way to attack Ionia was by sweeping down along the coast from the north in force. There were various fortresses erected to prevent exactly that, of course, but magic made planning and forecasting that much more complicated.


    Ionia wasn¡¯t at war yet, but it soon would be, he feared. Simon continued his updates about the war as an academic topic, but he did his best to shield his students from the realities of how close it might be to affecting them, at least at first. It was one thing for the Prince to understand war and how it should be dealt with. It was another to go to bed afraid of what was going to happen any earlier than had to.


    All of that changed when he was ambushed one chill fall night when he was deep in the mountains to the northeast of the city during his usual monthly expedition.


    Simon had heard the subtle sounds that he was being tailed for an hour before it happened. Here, he¡¯d see a few rocks clattering down the slope, and there, he¡¯d hear a little scree giveaway under heavy footfalls when the breeze was just right. He wasn¡¯t afraid. He was out here to kill, after all. If he didn¡¯t, he wouldn¡¯t be able to keep celebrating his fiftieth birthday every year for the foreseeable future.


    He¡¯d assumed that it was a timid group of beastmen, not sure of their ability to take him down. It wasn¡¯t until dark that they actually struck, and when they did, it was not the brute force charge he¡¯d expected to face. Instead, it was a flurry of crossbow bolts.


    No, he corrected himself as one bit deep into his liver while he lay in his bedroll pretending to be asleep. Poison crossbow bolts. Seven or eight struck the dirt around him, but only one hit him in the side.


    He screamed in pain as he rolled away from his tiny fire, but only to cover up the sound of him ripping the thing free. The wound was painful, but from the way the liquid fire raced through his veins, he could tell that it would be fatal in short order.


    Simon used a word of healing and cure to repair the problems, using more magic at once than he had in years in a single moment. Then he whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Barom Aufvarum,¡± and faded from view.


    The illusion wasn¡¯t quite invisibility. It was something he¡¯d worked on a few months ago. In a well-lit room, it mostly just looked disturbing. The spell was actually lesser anti-light, and except for his eyes, his body did its best to reject light. This made him look almost like a blurry, animate shadow, but at night, he was basically the predator. That was good because he wasn¡¯t as fast as he used to be.


    Simon took a moment to fling his bedroll over a large stone that might have been big enough for a person while his attackers reloaded, and then he slipped off into the night. He wasn¡¯t planning to retreat or to flee, though. Instead, he retraced his footsteps back along the goat path he¡¯d used earlier that day even as they loosed another volley, and then he started to outflank his attackers.


    He had no idea who they were, but they clearly knew who he was, or at least had some idea. Bandits didn¡¯t use poison arrows from a distance, and monsters didn¡¯t even use crossbows. This is a hit, he decided. He was certain of it. Someone wanted to kill him, specifically, and they knew he was enough of a threat that attacking him from a distance was the best way to make sure he didn¡¯t make them explode.


    ¡°You should have been a better shot,¡± he whispered to himself. ¡°It might have worked.¡±


    Even the one arrow that had struck him was still hurting despite the magic he¡¯d used. He suspected he didn¡¯t get all the poison out, but he could always do that again later. It''s not like it will be the only wound I get before this battle is done, he told himself as he closed on the enemy.

 Ch. 202 - Brutality

    For as long as he was moving quickly, Simon stayed on the trail. After that, he made his way up the slope, sticking to the largest rocks he could. Despite the fact that they¡¯d fired two volleys, and he¡¯d made a big show of being hit once, they still waited an awful long time before they started to fan out and descend down the slope.


    They definitely know they should be afraid of me, he said, repeating his earlier assertion now that he saw more evidence.


    Once they were moving, he stopped moving and waited for the nearest man to come toward him. He¡¯d planned to draw his blades immediately, but instead, he found himself studying the man¡¯s armor. It was irregular enough to make him a mercenary, but there were enough pieces of leftover Ionian kit, including a well-blackened breastplate, to mark him as a former soldier.


    His features, too, were Ionian rather than Murian, which he¡¯d honestly expected. A bunch of army veterans? He wondered to himself as he waited for the man to pass by his nearly invisible shadowy form. I wonder which general it was I pissed off.


    No sooner did the man move past him than Simon pulled his sword and swung it with both his hands at the back of the man¡¯s neck. He had just enough time to turn at the sound of metal scraping on leather but not nearly time to dodge before Simon shattered his cervical vertebrae and dropped him like a sack of potatoes before he could make a sound.


    The group¡¯s line was diffuse and continued on without him, but for a moment, Simon ignored them. Instead, he pulled out his skull-marked dagger and embedded it in the man¡¯s throat, just above his collarbone, seeking to drain the last few drops of his life. This was going to be ugly, and if there was ever a time when he needed to feel a little younger and more energetic again, it was this.


    Simon held his blade there for the length of ten heartbeats until he felt the flow stop. That was enough for the rush to fill him. Though part of his mind said that he shouldn¡¯t do this with everybody, another part of him hungered for it. Even with the metal as a filter of sorts, drinking in so much pure human life energy was far and away better than bleeding goats or slaughtering goat men.


    It was a pleasure he¡¯d denied himself for decades, and now he craved it. In the short term, though, the only way to push that craving away was bloodlust. He approached the second man more cautiously, but now there was a certain looseness in his steps that hadn¡¯t been there in a long time, and Simon was slitting the second man¡¯s throat before he knew he was in trouble.


    As his dagger drank deep a second time, he regretted not doing this more often. He might have only drained six months of life from the first man and three months from the second, but at the moment, the intensity of it was enough to make him feel like a man of half his age, and with a burst of speed he no longer thought himself capable of, he raced toward the next target.


    Simon took out four of them and was almost on the fifth before someone shouted, ¡°It¡¯s not him. Bastard got away!¡±


    That warning was all it took for the fifth man to see the shadow of death approaching for him. He didn¡¯t get to shout in alarm before Simon took his head clean off, but he did get to parry twice. Once high and once low. Each of those blows rang through the empty night like a bell.


    ¡°He¡¯s out there!¡± someone shouted. ¡°He took out Leo. God¡¯s Above, Leo and Philip both!¡±


    They were on alert now, but Simon didn¡¯t care. He heard a few crossbow bolts ricochet somewhere behind him to both his left and his right. They had no idea where he was. They were just firing blind.


    Even worse for them, he decided, was that he was having a great time. He bolted toward the next one, only detouring to weave to the right enough to kick up a spray of scree before weaving back to the left. The result was that his sixth opponent was facing entirely the wrong way when Simon kicked the back of his legs, dropping the mercenary to his knees long enough for Simon to plunge his sword down through his collarbone and cleave the man¡¯s heart in two.


    This time, he didn¡¯t use his dagger to drink the man¡¯s life force. He was already buzzing with energy. Maybe even with too much energy. He would regret the way he was using his vampiric blade when this was done. He¡¯d promise himself that he¡¯d never use it again, but that wasn¡¯t quite true.


    The truth was that he¡¯d never use it again unless someone deserved it. Murder was wrong. Even murdering bandits and drunks was wrong. Murdering people like the Unspoken might even be wrong in some circumstances; they might be awful, but at least they meant well in theory. In their minds, they were trying to save the world.


    As he considered this, he ran toward the seventh man, even as he was running away from Simon. He wasn¡¯t running away from him specifically, of course. He couldn¡¯t see Simon. He was running to get into formation.


    Assassins armed with poison and a plan that was trying to get him alone so they could take him out without ever having to risk their own necks? Their lives were forfeit. He hadn¡¯t been this angry since he¡¯d nailed Varten¡¯s father to a door with a crossbow of his own.


    Simon hadn¡¯t hurt anyone in years. He hadn¡¯t killed a human since the bandits had tried to interrupt his time spent teaching Bertrand to make art. He was retired now. He taught kids how to read, and someone had hired these pricks to take him out and steal the rest of the time he might have shared with his son?


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    ¡°Monstrous,¡± he spat as he shoved his sword through the man¡¯s back, sending him troubling down the slope.


    There were four left now, and part of Simon wished he could take prisoners for questioning, but given the power of magic, he knew that would be a fatal mistake. A talented warlockcould make his head explode with a word.


    Well, that¡¯s probably a bit extreme, he decided. If they could have done that, they would have skipped the crossbows.


    That thought put prisoners back on the table, but he still decided that it was best not to risk it. Truthfully, he didn¡¯t know if that was because he just wanted to kill them or not. He supposed it didn¡¯t really matter, not after one of them cast a fire spell, sending a gout of flame arcing out into the darkness.


    The four of them stood in a circle now, shoulder to shoulder, practically daring him to try all four of them at once. It was a bad bet. Even as energized as he was at the moment, he knew he had trouble taking on three men on a good day as he was these days.


    ¡°Tell me who put you up to this!¡± he yelled out as he ducked behind a boulder, in case a bolt of force lashed out at where his voice had been.


    ¡°He¡¯s here!¡± the youngest of the four called. ¡°Ennis will¡ª¡±


    ¡°Show some spine,¡± the older man growled, silencing the junior soldier before shouting. ¡°Nothing personal. We were hired for a job, and clearly, we bit off a bit more than we could chew.¡±


    Simon let the silence reign for a moment, trying to decide which spell he should kill them with and if he should do it one at a time or separately when the man that seemed to be the leader spoke again. ¡°I¡¯ve got some information, and I¡¯d happily trade it for our lives.¡±


    There were some tense whispers then between the leader and the mage. At least Simon was pretty sure it was between those two. It was too far away for him to say for sure.


    ¡°I can¡¯t say I trust those that use magic so flagrantly,¡± Simon called back, moving slightly after speaking again.


    ¡°You know, I can¡¯t say I blame you,¡± the man he¡¯d been talking to said right before he drew his sword and put it through the neck of the mage, leaving him to fall to his knees and choke on his own blood. His hands were now free, and he held them up in a gesture of surrender. With a word, his two remaining men did likewise. ¡°What say we talk like men, then, and I can tell you exactly what happens¡ª¡±


    He never finished talking. The mage had been silenced and killed, but death did not come soon enough, or perhaps it did, and what happened next was triggered by his death. Simon couldn¡¯t say. Either way, the ground around the three remaining men erupted in a vicious firestorm, and when it was done, everyone was dead.


    ¡°And that is why you don¡¯t try to take prisoners,¡± Simon told himself.


    After that, he didn¡¯t even really want to approach the bodies. He just sat there for a long time, running the scene over and over again in his head. Eventually, his spells wore off, and sometime after that, when his stolen energy started to fade, he went to retrieve his sword.


    He tried to think of a way that he should have handled this differently or better, but really, he couldn¡¯t. He decided to wait for dawn to investigate the corpse of the mage and instead busied himself with the corpses he¡¯d killed earlier that night.


    He found gold in every man¡¯s pouch, which was unusual. However, the fact that it was neither Ionian, Brinish, nor any other kingdom he recognized almost certainly meant that it was Murani, which told him any number of things at that moment, and all of them were terrible.


    Although he searched the last bodies once the sun was up, he found no smoking guns. In fact, he became more certain than ever that the magic that had tied up loose ends so neatly was triggered by the mage¡¯s death precisely because of how little evidence was left behind. He eventually found the mage¡¯s amulet, but the forces it had channeled were a charred ruin, and it offered no clues about how it worked.


    Simon walked back to Ionar that morning, a day earlier than planned. Even though he found no trouble at any of the little villages he went back through on his way to the palace, he stayed ever vigilant, going so far as to buy a Shepherd¡¯s colorful wool poncho to look less like himself.


    Just because he¡¯d survive one assassination attempt didn¡¯t mean he¡¯d survive another. The whole way back, he worried about who else might have been killed, and he feared for the lives of both Seyom and Elthena. Ultimately, though, those fears were unfounded, and he found the palace little changed from how he¡¯d left it.


    Seyom laughed at Simon¡¯s ridiculous outfit, but when he saw the storm clouds in his expression, he quickly stopped laughing. Simon didn¡¯t tell him anything, of course. Only that ¡°my outing was a bit more exhausting than I was expecting, that¡¯s all.¡±


    Once he was shooed from the room, he laid out to the Queen what had happened to him. He told her a bit of a toned-down version, of course, because she would have to tell it to other people who didn¡¯t know what he was capable of. Still, her horror grew with every word, especially after he told her of the mage that had self-destructed and showed her the coins his thugs had been paid in.


    ¡°This will be war!¡± she swore.


    Simon sighed at that. He needed to lay down. Now that the emergency was over, he could feel the cravings for more life force crawling under his skin like ants. He needed a week to himself just to zen this shit out of his system. He wasn¡¯t going to get it, though, not with everything that was happening.


    On the plus side, now, I¡¯m definitely a year or two younger than I was before all this bullshit, he thought, trying to find some way to tamp down all the emotions that were threatening to boil over inside of him.


    ¡°It probably already is war, truthfully,¡± he replied, ¡°Even though I wish it wasn¡¯t. If I had died, they would certainly have used my lack of council to convince you to join the winning side, but if that is impossible, then a surprise attack somewhere on the northern border is probably only a matter of time.¡±


    ¡°Why would the Murani want to fight us anyway,¡± she answered with a shake of her head. ¡°We¡¯ve done nothing to them.¡±


    ¡°Ionar is just territory to be conquered,¡± Simon explained, ¡°And in this case, the territory is particularly valuable because it allows them to outflank their opponent via a dozen different passes. Brin holds the line because it is so narrow, but if they had to defend everywhere at once, they would surely fall.¡±

 Ch. 203 - Not so Surprising

    The declaration of war followed quickly after that, but because of petty pissing contests in the wording of the agreement that had to be sabotage, the alliance that Ionar desperately needed took somewhat longer. Somehow, despite the attack on him and a few other scattered attacks throughout Ionar that were almost certainly the work of the Murani, it was months before Ionar officially allied with the Kingdom of Brin to push the invaders back in any real way.


    Unfortunately, that turned out to be about how long it took Simon to shake himself free of the terrible urges to use more transfer magic. It was hard to spend time with anyone, let alone his son when he was hopped up what amounted to magical drugs.


    In the moment, his actions had been reasonable and even justified, but now there was no denying that it was a budding addiction. This time, he vowed not to let it control him. So, for better or worse, during that time, Simon''s life changed almost as drastically as the world around him.


    The first and most obvious change was that he was always armed now. For a long time, he¡¯d rarely even worn a dagger unless he was leaving the city. Now, he was always armed with both sword and dagger, and he made sure that Seyom was with a real short sword as well. Simon rarely left the palace after that day, and he never left the city anymore.


    Instead, he spent all his time with either the children, the generals, or in seclusion, coping with the withdrawal symptoms of his foolish act and planning for what he could do in the face of the new threats. One thing that his most recent opponent''s methods had done was make it clear that there was more he could be doing. Just because he didn¡¯t plan to start using blood magic to fuel powerful rituals didn¡¯t mean he couldn¡¯t use the power of his foes to more effectively eliminate them.


    He felt badly for locking himself in his study more often than not, and neglecting his students, sometimes for days on end. Still, these efforts all bore fruit, and as time passed, he felt more and more ready for any surprise. Despite that, it was aggravating that even in failure, the assassins had still managed to shatter the perfect little life he¡¯d been building.


    He rarely held lessons in the gardens now, and even those were always accompanied by a detachment of the Queen''s personal guards. Worse than that, though, was the fact that his curriculum had become almost entirely martial.


    Seyom was only just fourteen, and two members of Simon¡¯s class were only twelve. They were old enough to know their way around wooden blades but far too young to worry about killing or dying. Yet those were now inevitable consequences of what he was teaching them.


    It was unavoidable. One assassination attempt would lead to more and next time, he was unlikely to be the target. So, he taught them basic first aid and where the most vulnerable spots on armored training dummies were. He taught the girls to aim for the throat of anyone that they suspected might be a mage, and he taught them all what signs to look for that indicated that magic might be afoot.


    He hoped they¡¯d never need to use it, though. He wanted his son to be a competent warrior, but more than that, he wanted him to be a talented general and a wise leader. Reality, though, might not be giving him those choices.


    He still found little moments, like when Seyom asked him, ¡°What is it like to kill someone?¡± Simon had a long heart-to-heart with him that day, and the line between student and father blurred as much as it ever did.


    ¡°It can be hard to bear,¡± Simon admitted, trying to remember what he¡¯d felt like when death really had been a hard thing for him to bear. ¡°But it is never wrong to defend yourself.¡±


    The Queen expressed in private that she thought Simon was being a touch paranoid, but she never did so in public, nor did she ask him to stop. Where the safety of their son was concerned, paranoia was acceptable, it would seem, as long as it did not cause too much of a stir.


    He wasn¡¯t the only one who was more paranoid than usual, though. Guests to the palace were limited, fortifications were increased, and guard patrols were doubled.


    Elthena eventually even took on a full-time poison tester, which was something she¡¯d resisted for a long time. It was something that Simon had never worried about too much since poison was easy enough for him to handle, but it was a gesture that she was taking all of this very seriously.


    How could she not? The battle reports came nearly daily now, and though the fighting itself was still far away because the northern front was holding up well, that didn''t make it any less inescapable.


    More than that, though, most of their legions were trained, equipped, and dispatched from Ionar, and the upper market had been converted into a drilling space and parade ground. This made the sounds of that far away war inescapable, even from the palace. The northern cities and the island kingdoms still supplied money and men for the war effort, of course, but it was dwarfed by the contributions of the capital.


    Still, when the hammer finally dropped, Simon was surprised only by the timing, not by its nature. He¡¯d known that a betrayal was coming. He could feel it in his bones, even if he couldn¡¯t figure out who the one to cause it would be. The Murian wielded money and magic as well as armies, so bribery was certainly a tactic that he expected.


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    Still, he hadn¡¯t expected it in the middle of one of his lessons. He¡¯d been in the classroom teaching the children about phalanx tactics and the importance of spears against cavalry attacks when he heard a scuffle in the hallway. That was unusual enough, but when armed soldiers in full kit threw open the door and demanded, ¡°The Prince is to come with us immediately!¡±


    Knowing something was going to happen and experiencing it were very different things when he experienced his first palace coup. Simon didn¡¯t hesitate, though. He strode toward the Prince even as the two soldiers did, while Seyom looked around like a deer in the headlights.


    ¡°What is the meaning of this outrage!¡± Simon shouted, waving his empty hands about as if he had no idea what was about to happen. ¡°The Prince is in the middle of his lessons and is not to be disturbed unless the sky is falling, do you understand?!¡±


    For what happened next, it was imperative that they think him nothing more than a harmless old man. Any violence that happened in the same room as his pupils had to be as quick and precise as possible, or young lives would be shattered and lost.


    Of course, the fact that both men had swords in their hands and blood was pooling in the doorway where they¡¯d taken out the Queen¡¯s guard that had been positioned there made it more than obvious what was happening. The sneer of the man in the lead certainly made no secret of the fact that they were about to run Simon through and kidnap his son.


    That was the way coups worked. Capture or kill the high-value targets, then take control for everyone¡¯s good. The Queen was a reasonably popular ruler, so he wasn¡¯t sure this would go exactly the way that whoever was in charge wanted it to, but Simon aimed to make sure that it didn¡¯t happen at all.


    When the sword came for Simon¡¯s guts, he twisted just enough that it stabbed into his robes but missed his flesh. Then he grabbed the man¡¯s overextended wrist and twisted it, disarming the first soldier even as he flung him to the floor.


    The second soldier had time to react to this and dropped into a ready stance. Simon didn¡¯t hesitate. He reversed the grip on the stolen sword and shoved it through the man¡¯s unprotected throat before he could raise his own blade high enough to parry the unexpected blow. Then he turned and stomped on the first man¡¯s skull before he could rise and collapsed face-first onto the stone floor.


    Normally, Simon would have delivered a coup de gras then, just to be sure. The man was limp and probably had a skull fracture from the way his head had bounced violently off the stone floor, but with the way that his class was looking at him, now was not the time for more unrestrained violence.


    Instead, he picked up the second sword from where the man who was still in the process of drowning in his own blood had dropped it. ¡°I hope that everyone has been paying attention because we are now going to have to fight our way to the throne room to make sure that all of you are kept safe,¡± he said, trying to keep his tone light despite the bloodshed that had just happened, and the shocked look on the faces of some of the children. ¡°Now, quickly, don your arming jackets and ready your weapons. Time is of the essence.¡±


    He would have preferred a couple more years before this had happened, he realized as he watched the door while the children burst into action. No, I would have preferred they¡¯d never known war at all, he corrected himself. But if they had to know war, I just wish I¡¯d had more time to train them.


    That wish was in vain. Unfortunately, you went to war with the army you had, not the army you wanted, which meant that Simon would have to do more of the fighting himself.


    For a moment, he thought about taking some of the dead men¡¯s armor for himself, but he decided against it. He would have killed for the chance to return to his room and put on his own well-worn leathers, but at this moment, looking like a strange soldier was not likely to be an advantage.


    Instead, he waited impatiently for the boys to draw their swords and the girls to string their bows, and then he said, ¡°Alright, we move as one. No matter what you see next, follow me, and just keep moving.¡±


    Then he moved out into the hallway. There was no hiding the dead body; he didn¡¯t even try. He just urged them to keep moving as he took the way that was likely to have the least traffic between where he was on the garden side and the grand hall. A quick look out some of the windows revealed that the city was placid, but he could hear chaos coming from the courtyard side.


    There was other fighting going on. It simply hadn¡¯t spilled out into the city yet. Depending on who won, that was a foregone conclusion, though. As they transitioned to the south side, he saw exactly what he feared: an entire legion of at least 500 freshly minted soldiers marching up the long path toward the palace. If loyal soldiers controlled the gates, they¡¯d never get inside. But then, if loyal soldiers still controlled the gates, he reminded himself, then the coup plotters weren¡¯t doing their job.


    Simon wanted to rush there immediately, but with his tiny entourage, he couldn¡¯t. Instead, he continued on to the throne room. Along the way, there was blessedly little fighting. There were two stampedes of servants and one soldier that Simon disemboweled as he was chasing after a particularly pretty maid.


    It wasn¡¯t until he got to the main hall that he found real opposition. There, he found more than a dozen men facing off the last four of the Queen¡¯s guards that were still standing.


    Simon¡¯s first impulse was to behead all of them with a wave of force, but he decided against it. It was far too public for such an overt act. So, instead of that, he told his students, ¡°Boys, stay back and defend the girls. Girls, do what you can to hurt these brutes, but aim carefully. Those bows won¡¯t even penetrate light armor.¡±


    He didn¡¯t expect much, but as he drew his skull-marked dagger and prepared for real combat, he didn¡¯t want much from them. A few arrows would cause a little chaos, and the archers would provide the boys with something to guard without feeling like they needed to strive for something more heroic.


    This place is going to be a bloodbath, he told himself. But there¡¯s nothing I can do about that.

 Ch. 204 - The Truth Comes Out

    Simon didn¡¯t use magic to fight or hide as he rushed the soldiers in the rear of the rush, pressing toward the throne. There would be time for that once the chaos started and children weren¡¯t looking as much at him specifically.


    For now, no one was looking at him at all. Instead, the soldiers in the front were fighting the Queen''s guards while those behind them shouted angrily. ¡°You¡¯ve led us to this terrible crossroads!¡± one man cried.


    ¡°We could have had peace if only you¡¯d allied with the Murian. Then all of this could have been avoided!¡± another man shouted.


    Despite wearing identical armor in identical colors, the men managed to look like a mob, somehow. That spoke to both the poor quality of the men the army was being forced to induct now as well as just how green this group was. Half of them weren¡¯t even wearing their helmets. Simon would make them regret that.


    I would kill for some armor right about now, he sighed as he strode toward his enemies. A toga was not the best outfit to do battle in.


    No one was paying attention to him. Why should they? The throne room was filled with dead guards and the bodies of other fallen traitors. There was no one left to oppose them.


    All of them had thought they¡¯d won. Why shouldn¡¯t they? The Queen was cornered, and the palace was under siege. The traitors had won by every measure. Unfortunately for them, Simon was a fan of lost causes, and Elthena was one cause he¡¯d never give up on.


    He opened by burying his dagger in the neck of one of the men and holding it there, letting it drink deeply. The man screamed, causing all those around him to turn, but that was exactly what Simon had been waiting for. As soon as they turned, he lashed out in a wide slash with his long sword, taking one man in the neck, one across the face, and one in the eye, blinding him on his left side.


    Simon was very overextended by that move and would have fallen over if not for the man who he was still bleeding with his dagger. Instead, he used him as an anchor and, after a moment, as a shield. Several men struck out at Simon as he retreated two steps, but they only struck their friend in the process.


    As his human shield slumped to the floor, Simon gauged the room. There were ten people in front of him, but six were still facing the other way, fighting their own fight. That left four, and two of those were pretty substantially wounded. Simon chose where to move next, based on those wounds, and moved into theblind spot of the man who had lost an eye, using another broad slash to keep people back.


    He wasn¡¯t trying to take any more of these assholes out. Even with the flood of life energy that was roaring through him, he was still far too old to take out four armed and armored men by himself. Even with the arrows that were bouncing off their armor here and there, that was a losing battle. What he needed to do was break the deadlock around the Queen and get those four soldiers back into the fight to even things up.


    ¡°What are you thinking, old man!¡± the largest soldier yelled. ¡°I¡¯m going to make it slow for not knowing when to stay out of things!¡±


    Simon ignored the threats. His only response to the man was a feint to keep him at bay, but even as he did so, his mind was racing, watching the ebb and flow of battle.


    Once he figured out the best way to break this conflict open, he whispered, ¡°Vosden,¡± and thrust into the scale mail of the man in front of him. The man had been guarding high, expecting another blow to his unprotected face, but Simon knew that. Instead, he used a word of strength to go right through the armor that covered both his chest and back, along with the back of the soldier who had been standing behind him, fighting another foe.


    Simon''s sword should have deflected harmlessly at such a clumsy strike. Instead, it went right through.


    And just like that, their line started to collapse. Simon was forced to give ground after that, both because he was outnumbered three on one, as well as the fact that he no longer had a sword, but the blow he¡¯d struck had already been fatal. A moment ago, eleven men had dominated the throne room. Now, only eight were standing, and half of them were wounded, their chokehold was already evaporating. Suddenly, the battle for the throne was not a one-sided affair, and the green soldiers were being cut down like grass by her veteran bodyguards.


    Simon smiled grimly at that, even as he moved further back into the corner to protect the children from his assailants. Part of him was trying to figure out the right spell to unleash in this moment, but before he needed to do that, the traitors broke. Reduced to only half a dozen men, they fled like the rats they were toward the courtyard, leaving only blood and death in their wake as Simon and his class approached the throne.


    ¡°I had no idea you could fight like that,¡± one of the Queen¡¯s bodyguards joked. ¡°Pretty good moves for an old man.¡±


    ¡°The children keep me young,¡± Simon answered automatically. His mind wasn¡¯t on what people might think of him or how well he¡¯d fought. It was on getting the Prince safely to Elthna. She was moving quickly toward them, too, and he met her at the foot of the stairs. She didn¡¯t sweep Seyom into her arms, though. It was Simon that she hugged, which took him by surprise. Normally, she would have never done such a thing in public, but after this, he supposed that he couldn¡¯t blame her. She was a woman with an iron will, but everyone had a breaking point.


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    ¡°You kept him safe!¡± she gasped. ¡°You kept him safe, and you came for me despite everything! I can¡¯t believe how dashing you still are after all these years.¡±


    ¡°I would never let the Prince of Ionar be harmed while in my care,¡± he said very carefully as he tried to pull away.


    ¡°The Prince is it?¡± she chided. ¡°If this is to be our last day, do you think he does not deserve to know the truth?¡±


    ¡°My Queen,¡± the bloody captain of her guards cut in, ¡°We have to get you and the Prince somewhere safe. The palace is not safe, and it may yet fall.¡±


    Simon¡¯s heart sang at the very idea of what she was saying, but the idea that she might regret it later, along with the sober words of the guard, held him back. ¡°I think the time for talk can wait until the battle is won,¡± he shot back.


    She searched his eyes, and then nodded, and pulled away. ¡°No, she insisted, pulling away from her guard¡¯s grip, even as she held to Simon. I will wait no longer.¡±


    ¡°The truth about what?¡± Seyom asked, finally figuring out that they were talking about him. The other children milled around still, and past them, the guards.


    Everyone was listening, but at this point, events were out of Simon¡¯s hands. There was nothing he could do as the Queen released him and hunched down to look her son in the eye. ¡°Remember that I told you your father was a brave warrior who saved the city from Brogan and the tides of lava that almost washed over the city?¡± she explained. ¡°I could not marry him because of the curse, but the Oracle herself told me that I should keep him close to you. She didn¡¯t tell me why, but I am sure it was for this moment.¡±


    ¡°Wait¡­¡± the boy said, looking back and forth between the two of them in shock. ¡°Master Ennis is my father?¡±


    She nodded, with tears in her eyes. ¡°He is, I promise you, and a more heroic one than any of us deserve.¡±


    Simon wasn¡¯t sure of that. He felt like something he¡¯d done altered the timeline to cause this war. It might have just been the thorough way he¡¯d cleaned up the zombies this time. A few zombies going north might have been enough to delay these hostilities for years or decades. It might not even have been me. It might have been my doppelg?nger who caused this, he realized.


    Ultimately, the why didn¡¯t matter. All that mattered was that he needed to solve this. Even if they weren¡¯t his family, he would need to save these people. The love that he had for them both, though, only increased that urgency, and it was impossible not to see that love reflected when he looked at young Seyom once more. He was still so young, but his dark eyes shone with intelligence, and even now, Simon knew he would grow up into a fine young man.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry I couldn¡¯t tell you before now,¡± Simon said, wishing he had time to allow this moment to linger, but the longer he waited, the more dire things would become. ¡°I would have, but it was your mother¡¯s wish.¡±


    ¡°I understand,¡± he nodded. There was an awkward moment then, as the boy obviously wasn¡¯t sure what to do, but Simon erased it by kneeling and hugging both the boy and his mother.


    ¡°I love you both,¡± he said, ¡°And when I am done we shall all talk about a great many things, but now I have at least one more fight to win, and need you both to do something for me.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Elthena asked.


    ¡°I am too old to fight what comes next without extraordinary means. So, no matter what you see me do, no matter what powers I unleash on our enemy, remember that I have not sold my soul to hell for dark powers,¡± he said very soberly. ¡°I have learned all these things over a very long time, and today, I will have to put them to use whether I want to or not.¡±


    ¡°Magic?¡± Seyom asked. ¡°What are you going to do?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s going to be quite the show,¡± Simon said, forcing a smile as he mussed the boy''s hair and rose to his feet again. ¡°You should go to the tower for the best view.¡±


    Then he turned to the captain of the Queen¡¯s guard and said, ¡°You¡¯ll see to it then? I¡¯ll retake the gate, and I can count on you to keep them safe?¡±


    The man nodded and then started shouting orders. At that moment, everything started happening at once. Simon wanted to kiss Elthna. He wanted to tell his son a hundred things, but there was no time. Simon might have a chance against a hundred men with magic, but if hundreds more showed up, he¡¯d tap out long before they ran out of bodies to throw at him.


    So, instead, he watched them leave the room, and then he turned and picked out the best-looking sword from the carnage and focused on it for a moment. He thought back to all the illustrations and the sketches and designs he¡¯d made over the last few years, and then when he had the pattern in mind for the rune blade of sharpness, which was supposed to work much like the one he¡¯d taken from the dragon¡¯s horde, he said, ¡°Celdura Vosden,¡± and used the planning magic to embed the magical design into the metal permanently.


    The former was a weapon he¡¯d wanted to make for some time, but he¡¯d never gotten around to it. The technique, though, was something he¡¯d practiced several times since the botched assassination attempt on him. It worked fairly flawlessly, transforming part of the steel in his blade to a gleaming silver directly without all the steps he¡¯d used to create his dagger. So, as much as he liked to work metal, that was probably a skill he¡¯d need less and less as time went on.


    Physically, the sword didn¡¯t look that much different, but as he slashed it through a candelabra and the metal candleholders parted cleanly before his blade, he knew that it worked. ¡°Now I¡¯m ready,¡± he told himself, gripping both magical weapons tightly as he started to walk to the courtyard.


    While he would have loved to run back to his rooms and grab his leather armor, there was no more time for that than there had been to kiss Elthana. It was time to fight and save the whole Kingdom of Ionia or die in the attempt.

 Ch. 205 - Enemies at the Gate

    By the time he reached the palace steps, it was worse than he feared. There were almost no defenders left, though in the swirling scrum of combat, it was hard to say for sure. Everyone was wearing the same uniforms.


    Simon didn¡¯t worry about that yet though. Instead, he looked around for anyone that looked strange. There were certain to be other mages here, and as soon as he made himself a target, he would be a dead man unless he found them first.


    So, instead of opening up with pyrotechnics and killing the men nearest to him, he stood there, content to look like an old man with a sword who was way out of his depth as he studied the crowd. It took only a moment to find a dark-skinned man in robes near the gatehouse. He stood out like a sore thumb against the armored units that filled the plaza, and Simon instantly muttered, ¡°Dnarth Vrazig,¡± striking him down with a bolt of distant lightning.


    The bolt from the blue did little besides kill a few other men near the enemy warlock, but the explosion that engulfed the warlock when he died knocked back dozens more men, tossing them like rag dolls. Simon had been counting on that strange death-activated magic. However, even as the inferno caused combat to cease for a moment and everyone wondered what happened, Simon ignored it. Instead, he was already searching for his next opponent.


    He found him across the yard near one of the walls. This one had figured out what was going on and had locked eyes with Simon in his final moment. He was too slow, though, and even as he opened his mouth, another lightning bolt was racing down from the sky. This one was also followed by an explosion.


    Suddenly, the attacker¡¯s momentum was gone as they tried to figure out who was attacking them and from where. A moment ago, they had been moments from victory, and now that was in doubt.


    As all of this happened, Simon realized that he should probably be standing behind cover himself. True combat was not yet joined, but he was already in a sniper¡¯s duel of sorts.


    It was only after another minute had passed and he found no other targets that Simon entered the fray on his own. He had to. Not only were there dozens and dozens of men already in the courtyard, but the legion he¡¯d seen earlier was approaching the main gate, and he needed to drop the portcullis.


    There was no way for him to do that from hundreds of yards away, though. Even a major, distant word of force wouldn¡¯t bite through the thick chains of the gates with this much distance between them. He didn¡¯t have a mathematical model for magic yet, but there was definitely a sharp fall-off past a certain point, which meant he needed to cut a bloody swath through the field and get closer.


    At first, this was accomplished with his sword. He cleaved right through the first few men to cross his path in quick, casual strokes that severed heads and arms. He saved real magic until the alarm was raised, and he faced a wall of swords and shields. That was when he unleashed his true fury.


    ¡°Gervuul Oonbetit!¡± he called out, using a greater word of force.


    This was not to blast them all away, though. This was a guillotine, and it rippled out and away from him in all directions like a drop of water in a still pond. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the twenty men arrayed against him came apart at the seams.


    Simon couldn¡¯t enjoy their looks of terrible surprise as the survivors lost limbs and friends. Instead, he immediately cast a boundary of force to deflect the arrows that would certainly be fired at him next. He would have preferred to carve that one in the stone of the courtyard to make it longer lasting, but he could hardly stand still and wait for people to come to him. He was still only halfway across the corpse-strewn courtyard.


    That was the sixth spell he¡¯d cast in almost as many minutes, though, and even as Simon whispered his seventh, which was a word of lesser healing, to soothe his already aching throat, he could feel it taking a toll.


    How long has it been since I let loose like this? He wondered as he cut down another man brave enough to face him with his enchanted sword.


    There was only one answer to that question, of course, and that was the dual on the volcano rim so long ago. In this timeline, it was about a decade and a half in the past, but for Simon, it was decades and one life in the rearview mirror.


    It felt good to flex his muscles like this, but it was worrying too. Even in all his lives, he could still count the number of times he¡¯d fought like this on one hand, and he knew well how unsustainable it was. He¡¯d probably already slain fifty people, but because more kept coming, little had changed, except that now everyone was focused on him.


    Still, there was nothing he could do but watch arrows deflect harmlessly away from him as he cut down foes and continued to advance. When he neared the gates and could see the chains, he saw another warlock advancing alongside the unit that was already entering, and he wasted a precious moment, along with another month of his life, to strike that bastard down, too. This one must have known that there was some trouble because he had some sort of protective magic up, and it deflected the bolt wide, killing a swath of armored men instead.


    Simon blinked at that. Well, that¡¯s new, he thought, even as he switched tactics. He cast again, but this time, he used a greater word of distant fire. The result was a tiny tornado of flames that descended on the man. He¡¯d cast some kind of flame spell, too, but he either didn¡¯t know the distant word or he¡¯d chosen not to use it because the enemy warlock''s flame fell well short of Simon even as the enemy caster was consumed by fire.


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    That one did enough damage to his throat that he coughed up blood for a moment and very nearly lost his life when a brave young soldier tried to take advantage of his moment of distraction. He didn¡¯t succeed.


    One could not parry a sword with an infinitely sharp edge. So, he lost his life right as the secondary explosion sent the unit marching toward Simon into chaos. He died bravely, at least, which was more than Simon could say about almost everyone else at this point. Few people dared to approach him now. He didn¡¯t blame them.


    When he finally reached the gatehouse, his chest was heaving from exhaustion, but he let that delay him only a moment before he said the painful words of greater force in an attempt to shear them in half and bring the portcullis down.


    It didn''t work, though, and he only coughed up blood for his effort. I thought that would be enough, he told himself, looking at the arm thick steel links that held up the massive portcullis. The giant chain was only cut through on one side, but somehow it still held.


    One side was cut clean through, and that seemed to be enough to force the other side to bend, yet it didn¡¯t. It was too high for him to reach with his blade, too, and if he leaped up with a word of force, the enemy would definitely spot him and redouble their focus on him.


    Annoyed, he used a word of lesser healing on his throat as he contemplated his options. Another greater word is out, he told himself. And a regular word of force won¡¯t cut it. What does that leave me. I don¡¯t really need to cut it. I just need to weaken in a little and¡­


    Simon¡¯s words trailed off as he realized that if he needed to weaken metal, then he could just use the words of weaken metal and watch the thing warp and corrode over several seconds. Then he said the painful words, ¡°Vrazig Vosden.¡±


    The spell had no visual effect, but the entropy was apparent immediately as the steel began rapidly corroding. After that, all he needed to do was hold the line and wait for it to fail under its own weight.


    I¡¯ve won, he thought to himself. No, we won.


    Even if the gate hadn¡¯t dropped yet. It would. He could already hear the chain creaking under the heavy weight, and even if someone struck him down right now, he would still seal the palace away from the advancing forces long enough to let the defenders regroup.


    But will that be enough? He wondered.


    The three Murani warlocks he¡¯d struck down already had surely been central to whatever conspiracy was happening here, but what if there were more. When Simon was spent, couldn''t they just force the gates back open? Part of him thought that he should stride out there and continue to do battle for as long as he could. It thought he should purge the city of every last traitor, but the rest of him knew that he was approaching his limits and that he should lie down.


    He couldn¡¯t do that yet, either. All he could do was stand at that threshold, fighting and waiting for the damn gate to drop.


    ¡°He¡¯ll be a good King,¡± Simon told himself as he stopped relying on his sword even a little. Instead, he switched to purely destructive magic. Even a blood-sucking dagger or a sword that could slice through steel bordered on useless when they were wielded by arms of lead.


    So, instead, he used lightning and fire. He didn¡¯t even bother to try to use major words anymore. He was too spent for that. Instead, his world narrowed to a simple rhythm. Simon would shout a word of power and then whisper the words of lesser healing to fix his throat.


    Simon had done a lot of things before. One thing he¡¯d never done, though, was use so much magic in such a short period of time, and it was taking a toll. Still, he promised himself he would stand there forever until the damn gate closed. It would be any second now. He could see the chain link starting to stretch and deform as it parted.


    No matter how good his pronunciation or how precise he imagined the effects, every word burned as he spoke it now. Still, the men opposing him died by the score, and the few arrows shot in his direction scattered off the boundary of force protection he¡¯d established earlier.


    Simon couldn¡¯t keep fighting, though, not forever. No one could. Eventually, he couldn¡¯t even gasp another light healing spell to soothe his burning throat. He¡¯d burned so brightly and for so long that when the portcullis finally slammed shut inches in front of him, he had no strength left to him. First, his dagger slipped from his grasp, and then after one more slash from his sword, it fell as well, tumbling end over end until it embedded in the stone of the courtyard.


    I couldn¡¯t have used thirty years of power in this battle, could I? He wondered, staggering against the gatehouse.


    A few men still alive in the courtyard eyed him warily, like he might have some trick left up his sleeve. He didn¡¯t, of course. The only trick he had left was to stay standing.


    ¡°If you run¡­ If you jump the walls and flee the city, I may not send you straight to hell with the rest of your friends,¡± Simon croaked with a ruined voice. As painful as speaking was, at least these words didn¡¯t burn his fraying vocal cords when he said them.


    That was all it took. Suddenly, the few scattered survivors were running for their lives. Simon had nothing left, but how could they know that. He¡¯d slain hundreds of men, and those few who remained wanted to live.


    As the retreat of the men arrayed against him threatened to become a rout, he finally lost the ability to stand as well, and he slowly sank against the wall until he was just sitting there, leaning against the cool stone. As he sat there, he took in the carnage of what he¡¯d done, but even that wasn¡¯t enough to make him regret it. If this makes me a murderer, then so be it, he decided.


    His only regret was that he hadn¡¯t locked in this level in a way to save the progress. That meant that everything he¡¯d done to raise Seyom was gone, and the idea of reliving all of this just to try to raise him even better was too heartbreaking and complicated. ¡°If only I¡¯d killed that damn wyvern,¡± he whispered to himself as the darkness took him.

 Ch. 206 - The End of the Beginning

    After he collapsed at the end of the last battle, as disappointing as it was, Simon expected to wake up in his cabin all over again. That¡¯s not what happened.


    Instead, he drifted in and out of sleep in a bed that was much more comfortable and far too white to belong to him. It occurred to him only after several days that he was not, in fact, dreaming it. He was lying in a bed somewhere in the palace. He could barely move, and even opening his eyes was too much work at first, but in time, he could feel Elthena¡¯s dry, cool hands holding his. Eventually, he could even squeeze them back, but only softly.


    It turned out that she¡¯d been talking to him the whole time, but it took days to differentiate that from the background birdsong or other people speaking in the same room. He had to focus to a painful degree to understand even part of what she was saying. He didn¡¯t need to understand her to know that they¡¯d won, though. If they hadn¡¯t, the sound of birds would have been replaced by the sound of battle, and the smell of Elthena¡¯s perfume would have been lost in the smell of burning.


    In a way, the fugue state he was trapped in felt like brain damage, and that idea sent a chill down his spine. Given that he could still think and reflect when he was half asleep, though, it was probably something closer to exhaustion, complete and utter exhaustion.


    He was certainly tired. He¡¯d burned through years, or perhaps decades, of life in a single hour. He¡¯d channeled enough energy that he should have become a bonfire himself, but somehow, he did not. Somehow, he didn¡¯t even die, but he was dying now; he was sure of that much.


    In the days that followed, even as some parts of him healed and his mind became clearer, other parts of him, like his heart and his lungs, labored ever harder to keep up. He¡¯d burned through an entire season of his life just to win a single fight. But I did win it, he told himself. That¡¯s all that matters. I won. It would have been worth it at twice the price.


    It took days for him to be able to meaningfully interact with the woman who should have been his wife or the boy that was his son. Each of those moments was brief because sleep was always chasing at his heels, but they were still nice. Most times, he would wake up to find Seyom or Elthena sitting by his bedside. Whether this meant that they were always there or he only awoke when they were, Simon couldn¡¯t say, but he found their presence infinitely comforting.


    All he could do was bask in their affectionate words or listen to them offer updates on the situation. One thing he couldn¡¯t do, though, was answer them. His efforts had completely fried his vocal cords, and when he tried to talk now, only hacking coughs came out.


    So, he stopped trying to answer. Part of him regretted that he couldn¡¯t tell them to burn his papers or destroy his weapons, but he didn¡¯t let that bother him too much. His notes were cryptic enough that copying them would be difficult. Instead of worrying about what he wanted to say or do, he simply did his best to bask in the time they had left together because he knew it would be over soon.


    Then, one day, he fell asleep, and he never woke up again, at least not in Ionar. He lingered there between life and death, lost in the darkness for a long time. Or, at least, long enough to be frustrating. Eventually, though, when he woke up, it was on the same lumpy bed that it always was.


    He felt whole and rejuvenated when that happened, but he also felt greatly saddened by it. He¡¯d finally gotten a perfect sort of life, and then he¡¯d lost it. ¡°That¡¯s just the way of these things,¡± he muttered, testing his voice even as he reached for the bottle of wine.


    He sat there in silence for a long time this time. He didn¡¯t ask the mirror questions, nor did he try to drown his sorrows. Instead, he just reflected on his life and what he might have done differently. Would it have been worth pressing myself less hard to spend more time with them? He wondered. If he could have been victorious with less effort, then maybe. He supposed that his real mistake in all of this might have been urgency, but if he¡¯d pushed himself less hard, he still would have been laid up for days or weeks. If our enemies would have regrouped in that time, well¡­


    He let that question linger. He had no good answer for it, and the more lives he lived, the less interested he was in second-guessing himself. Even if he made a mistake, fixing it would be difficult or impossible, and getting caught in that loop was a trap. In this case, at least, he couldn¡¯t revisit that moment because it no longer existed. All those years spent in Ionia were like they¡¯d never happened. He¡¯d never solved that level, which made things easier but also that much more heartbreaking.


    For a moment Simon tried to think constructively about his last moments, and any lessons he might have learned. He considered the tactics of the Murani, and what the consequences of Ionar¡¯s fall might be. Ultimately, his mind kept drifting back to his Son¡¯s face, though, and not even thinking about the consequences of the over use of magic was enough to shake those looks of love and respect that Seyom had given him while he lay dying.


    Simon studied his socks with an intensity usually reserved for facing down dire opponents in that moment as he struggled not to cry. Then, when he¡¯d mastered the emotion, he got up and said, ¡°Okay, enough of that. Note to self, even if you have the years, if you spend them all at once, you¡¯re going to have a bad time.¡± For a moment he thought about the time he¡¯d cast greater greater fire, and decided he¡¯d just done the same thing with extra steps in his last life. Then he said, ¡°Alright, mirror, you know the drill, show me my character sheet.¡±


    The mirror complied and brought up the sheet in its faint blue writing.


    ¡®Name: Simon Jackoby


    Level: 33


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    Deaths: 43


    Experience Points: 3,084


    Skills: Agriculture [Below Average], Archery [Below Average], Armor (light) [Below Average], Armor (heavy) [Poor], Armor (medium) [Below Average], Art [Excellent], Athletics [Below Average], Baking [Below Average], Cooking [Below Average], Craft [Excellent], Deception [Below Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Average], Healing [Excellent], History [Excellent], investigate [Excellent], Maces [Average], Navigation [Above Average], Research [Excellent], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Average], Spears [Below Average], Spell Casting [Excellent], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Below Average], and Swords [Above Average].


    Words of Power: Aufvarum (disperse, minor), Barom (illusion, light), Celdura (plan, shape), Delzam (cure, order), Dnarth (connection, distant, hidden), Gelthic (ice, death, weakness), Gervuul (greater, power), Hyakk (flesh, healing), Karesh (location, protection, understanding), Meiren (creation, fire, life), Oonbetit (focused, force, motion), Uuvellum (anti-, null, boundary), Vosden (earth, growth, metal, strength), Vrazig (lightning, ruin, quickening, wind), Zyvon (transfer, plants, water)¡¯


    He reviewed the whole sheet with passing interest, but his mind wasn¡¯t really on it, so it took a while to notice that his experience total had finally turned positive. ¡°Huh, well, that¡¯s not the silver lining I was expecting,¡± he said to himself, ¡°but I¡¯ll take it.¡±


    Truthfully, he still had no idea what that was for beyond an indicator of how miserable he was. He occasionally thought about asking Helades, but after the last way she¡¯d cut him to ribbons with the mirror, well, he¡¯d wait until it was more important. He¡¯d long since learned the truth. The mirror showed him these things because he thought that they were important. What she thought was important, and the Pit thought were important, though, were entirely different.


    Other than clearing levels, he wasn¡¯t sure exactly what either of them thought were important. He didn¡¯t need the mirror to show him what he needed to do there, at least. He had to decide when he was going to purge the Blackheart on level 4, which would certainly unlock several or perhaps many levels after that. Then he had to kill a wyvern and deal with the fallout of helping Aaric escape. After that, it was back to the dragon and the vampire, along with whatever else unlocked as a result. In theory, it was a short list, but there was nothing simple about it.


    ¡°The real problem is the Blackheart,¡± he said aloud as he worked through the problem. ¡°The right thing to do is to do all of the floors in order so they can¡¯t reset and screw me over later, but if I do that, I¡¯ll probably reset all of Ionar. Am I really okay with that? Am I really okay with the queen not knowing who I am? Am I okay with the idea that my son will never exist?¡±


    A lot of the people that Simon had known no longer knew him. Almost all of them, really, but this one stung more than most.


    It had to be done someday, but even if he never got to relive the life he¡¯d just finished living, the idea of erasing it in his quest to go deeper struck him as entirely too soon. He wasn¡¯t ready to say goodbye yet, and for as long as he wasn¡¯t ready to do that, going deeper into the Pit was probably a fool''s errand.


    ¡°I could go try to learn more about the dragon,¡± he suggested to himself before taking another sip of wine. ¡°That at least would be useful. Maybe this time, instead of trying to kill it, I can try to save it and see what that does.¡±


    The idea of trying to save a dragon made him chuckle, which was useful in that it finally cracked the feeling of despair that he was shrouded in. He¡¯d probably get cooked for his trouble if he tried, but he was kind of in the mood for a throwaway life anyway.


    ¡°If I¡¯m going there, though, I need to get in better shape because I¡¯ll never make it in time like this.¡±


    Simon had no idea why the start of the level was so far away from the finish, but it certainly made it an oddity. Most levels had entrances and exits within fifty feet of each other. Only a few, like the owlbear level, were spread out, and that was presumably to make sure that he found the wreckage of the caravan on his way to the covered bridge.


    ¡°If I had one level to go back and do again, it would probably be that one,¡± he decided as he put on his boots and forced himself from bed. ¡°Saving them wasn¡¯t enough. Something bad happened to those kids down the road, and fixing that would do a world of good.¡±


    He didn¡¯t feel that way about a lot of levels, of course. Usually, it was just the places where he¡¯d left loved ones behind that stuck with him, but in a few, he felt like he could have done more. His most recent life made even that outlook more complicated.


    After all, all of his good deeds had allowed a war to happen that he was pretty sure hadn¡¯t happened before. If it had, it would certainly have been smaller in scope before his meddling. That further reinforced that the good and evil of everything he did was ambiguous at best. It also further drew into question what Helades¡¯ whole point was.


    Simon wasn¡¯t about to get bogged down into that quagmire, though. He¡¯d already decided on his current quest: get his fat ass in shape. That was going to be done with magic, of course, but given how much power he¡¯d channeled recently, he was still feeling a bit fragile. It was probably all in his head, of course, but he wanted to try some new things he¡¯d decided against in the battle for Ionar, and he had a ready supply of goblins he could burn, which would certainly take his mind off of everything that had just happened.

 Ch. 207 - Getting Into Gear

    Mentally and Morally, Simon was deeply opposed to blood magic, but after he¡¯d seen what the Murani had done with some of their spells, he understood the appeal. Whether he was willing to do something like that to an actual human was out of the question, but a goblin was something he was more open to, even if he hadn¡¯t decided one way or the other.


    Thanks to the coma he¡¯d drifted in and out of for who knew how long, what should have been a desperate need to devour their life force was just the slightest tickle at the back of his skull. That wasn¡¯t the driver. It was that he¡¯d allowed secrecy to stymy his creativity in his final years in Ionar. Until that final battle, he¡¯d worked hard to keep his secrets under wraps for reasons that were both personal and political.


    If he¡¯d had the chance to run back to his rooms, he could have retrieved some of the rune-carved arrowheads he¡¯d crafted to try. They weren¡¯t quite grenades or shoulder-fired missiles or anything, but it would have been fun to see them in action just the same. Simon had other ideas, too. Honestly, he probably had too many. He still wasn¡¯t sure how far he wanted to go down the road of magical warfare, but he did kind of want to test some of his ideas out on the little green vermin while they were around.


    They could help him lose weight. He definitely needed that. Being back at the beginning of things felt like he¡¯d been shoved into someone else¡¯s body. He no longer recognized, or even identified with, who he¡¯d been when he¡¯d come here.


    It is nice to feel young again, though, Simon thought as he walked outside and into the sunlight.


    He¡¯d felt old for so long that he¡¯d kind of forgotten what it was like. He¡¯d just stayed fiftyish for a decade. Even with his excess weight now, he could feel the difference in his joints and in his lungs, and for a while, he just stood there, feeling the breeze and the heat of the sun play upon his skin.


    It was only when he felt revitalized that he walked to the stream. This time, it wasn¡¯t to fish or get some cool, clean water. He just wanted that soft, clean sand to draw in as he tried to come up with the right tool for the job.


    He had a sword and a dagger, and though neither one was of particular quality, they were both acceptable enough to be imprinted with magic. The question was what spell to fix them with. Having grown old more than once now, Simon was becoming stingy with his years, and he wasn¡¯t so happy to fritter them away as he had in the past.


    ¡°Age catches up to you quick, even on runs where my not-wife doesn¡¯t make me wait a for A FUCKING DECADE to see my son,¡± he grumbled to himself.


    When he arrived at the river, he found a rock in a shady spot to sit on and said, ¡°Okay, mirror, bring up my notes on Meiren.¡±


    This was another trick he hadn¡¯t discovered until far enough into the pit that it was embarrassing, but he used it often now, even it a stream, wasn¡¯t ideal because it made the letters blurred and distorted. Calling the mirror did not require a physical mirror, after all, it only required a reflective surface.


    He studied his notes for a moment and drew a few lines on the bank nearby. Then he brought up Vosden, Hyakk, and Celdura and made a few more notes. Up until now, he¡¯d always used drain to drain literal life energy for himself, but that had been from convenience as much as habit. In his last life, all he¡¯d really needed was to stay a little younger, a little longer.


    He¡¯d done experiments that had transferred other things, though, like heat and hardness. He¡¯d been able to make a steel chest piece as fragile as glass and a cotton frock as hard as leather in that way. So, he knew he was only nibbling around larger ideas.


    So, if he wanted to go pay the dragon a visit, he was going to try siphoning physical health, strength, and fitness from the little green bastards. ¡°Maybe that won¡¯t be quite so addictive,¡± he told himself.


    The fact was that even as good as Simon was at drawing human anatomy at this point, he still didn¡¯t trust himself to alter his own fat and muscle cells without mutilating or crippling himself. That was something that the body needed to sort out. He just needed to give it the resources to do it.


    So, he spent the afternoon sketching in the soil with a stick, and when he had a good idea of what the final rune needed to look like, he returned to his cottage to work out the final formulation. He did this by mixing a little water with wood ash to create something closer to paint than ink and then drawing the final design carefully on his mirror. That took an hour, and since it was so complicated, he opted to make the designs on the opposite faces of the blade different to spread out the impact.


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    In the end, when he finally sat back to appreciate it, he was satisfied by what he¡¯d made. It was certainly one of the most complicated works of artifice he¡¯d made so far, and if he¡¯d had to construct the thing with acid and clay, he probably would have had to try a dozen times to make it. With magic that wouldn¡¯t be a problem.


    The front side held Aufvarum Zyvon Hyakk Vosden, but the back side was marked with Aufvarum Aufvarum Zyvon. While he expected the main rune set of lesser transfer of health and strength to do the lion''s share of the work, he also included the crippled alternate rune of lesser lesser transfer as well.


    It was very inefficient. What he needed was a way to use greater drain in a single thrust and then harvest that energy for later use, either as to give him a day of life every day or else to fuel the spells he cast. He just didn¡¯t know how to do that yet. He¡¯d figure it out, though. Every experiment like this was one step closer in the grand scheme of things.


    When the runes were ready, he stilled his mind and meditated on his sword for several minutes. It was only when he could see the glowing designs on the surface of the chipped blade that he finally said the words, ¡°Celdura Vosden.¡±


    Part of him feared the pain of casting magic again, but with a new throat and a new life, there was no sting, and the magic rippled out from him harmlessly, changing nothing except for the composition of metals in his blade in a very precise pattern.


    Simon studied both sides, noticing the way that the silver and steel glinted slightly differently in the light. Then, once he¡¯d done that, he pronounced himself satisfied and started to don his armor. He hated the way the tight leather made him feel like it was a sausage casing around his body, but there was nothing for it. Maybe after I kill a couple of goblins, things will start to loosen up a bit, he thought.


    When all was in preparation, he started a fire and cooked one of his sausages. This wasn¡¯t for eating, though; it was for bait. Once it was half cooked and sizzling, he tied it to some twine and then went out into the dark woods to find a likely tree branch to secure it to.


    As he went, Simon observed that things got darker and darker until he could hardly see at all unless he was looking up toward the sky. When the foliage got thick enough that even that didn¡¯t work, he finally whispered, ¡°Aufvarum Barom Oonbetit.¡± And watched the world spring back into focus.


    The spell was essentially the opposite of the limited invisibility spell he''d invented a couple years ago. Rather than making his body repulse light, though, his eyes attracted the limited light of his current surroundings, making everything that much brighter. He imagined that they probably reflected creepily right now, like a cat''s eyes, but he wasn''t particularly interested in hiding right now. He wanted the bastards to find him.


    The magic made things a touch hazy at first, but after only a few seconds, he could see almost as well as he might in daylight. On some level, it felt like the waste of a week, but he hated being bitten by goblins, and it cost him less to cast lesser light focusing on his retinas than it would to cure and heal wounds after the fact.


    ¡°Of course, I won¡¯t be able to go back to the cabin for a few hours or my hearth will blind me,¡± he thought to himself, but then, he didn¡¯t plan to. He planned to spend hours murdering goblins and seeing what that did for his lackluster physique. While he didn¡¯t want to look like a body builder or anything, he would settle for not looking like the Doughboy.


    Simon didn¡¯t have to wait long for the first goblin to show interest in the smell of cooked meat. That¡¯s probably how they eventually find my cabin, he thought to himself as he watched the vermin approach.


    Unfortunately, it never got its meal. Instead, Simon waited for it to reach the tree and start climbing before he pinned it to the bark with his blade. He didn¡¯t even try to kill it with that first stroke. He just let it scream and rage helplessly while he focused on the sensations coursing up his sword arm. He felt the trickle of pure life essence, as he expected, but he felt another stranger sensation, too. It was too little to say for sure that it was working as expected, but it was definitely the first sign that it might be.


    If it turns me into the incredible goblin hulk, I can always reset the hard way and start over, he told himself. He didn¡¯t want that. He didn¡¯t even think it was likely, but when one started working with fuzzy concepts, it certainly wasn¡¯t impossible. Simon supposed that siphoning intelligence, skills, or even more intangible things like Karma or Memories off of other humans might be possible with a similar spell, but he had no intention of trying. At least, he had no intention of trying yet. He could replace his body, even if it became a zombie, but his mind? If he screwed that up, it was screwed up forever.


    I¡¯m still dealing with problems because of Helades stupid language potion, he thought dispassionately as he watched the goblin weaken visibly.


    After half a minute of struggling, the goblin¡¯s body ceased its struggles, and Simon released it, letting its corpse flop lifelessly to the ground. It hadn¡¯t contributed much, but it had been an excellent test subject, and it had done its job. It had rung the dinner bell, and even now, he could hear other members of the goblin tribe racing through the forest, howling for blood.


    The goblin life was kill or be killed. Sometimes, he didn¡¯t even think they cared which side they were on, so long as it happened and it was bloody.

 Ch. 208 - Limited Results

    Simon spent hours slaughtering the green vermin that night. At first, they hunted him in packs of three and four, but after he eliminated several of those, the tables turned. He was hunting them. For a time, that was the rhythm. Ambush a group of goblins, slaughter them until there was only one left, then drain the last member dry and use its ragged screeching to call for more.


    That worked for a while, but eventually, they grew wary and defensive. Assembling around their lair, causing larger confrontations. Even the shaman that he owed so much to eventually came out to play, which usually didn¡¯t happen until the second or third night. The thing managed to cast greater fire twice, but Simon took its head off before it could do it in a way that threatened him.


    Where does a goblin learn magic? He wondered for at least the tenth time. They seemed to have a language, but Simon couldn¡¯t understand it, which meant he was probably reading too much into it.


    His best answer was that demons were planting that evil little seed into the various warrens he¡¯d seen that had it, but he supposed they might have some evil little god. Still, how could they have enough language for spells but not enough language that he could understand their other grunts and cries?


    He had no idea, and tonight, he really didn¡¯t care. He just killed them and harvested as much of their energy as possible, and he could feel the results. He didn¡¯t feel much stronger, but the fact that he was able to keep fighting for hours without pausing to catch his breath certainly said something was happening. He even descended into their warren for the first time, though he refreshed his dark vision before he did so.


    It was one of the few places he hadn¡¯t been in his little starting zone, but he wasn¡¯t impressed. Simon had hoped for some overlooked secret, but instead, he found cramped tunnels and shit-smeared walls. He spent a while down there. It was hard to say exactly how long or how many goblins he killed in those claustrophobic spaces. There was just enough order and artistry to the ugly graffiti that he wanted to keep going. There was some intelligence in there worth understanding.


    Sadly, before he found anything worth pushing on for, he reached the limits of his light amplification magic. Without getting a torch or casting another spell, eventually, the faint starlight from the crevice that was the place¡¯s entrance faded to pure darkness, and he turned back toward the surface.


    Still, he hadn¡¯t expected to find the holy grail buried under his feet, and he¡¯d made good progress during the night. ¡°It would have been cool if I¡¯d discovered the spider city, though,¡± he told himself as he climbed back to the surface.


    It was there he found out it was daytime, or at least it would be soon. He was forced to turn his eyes away from what should have been the thin blue line of false dawn because, under the effects of his night vision spell, it was bright enough to make his eyes water.


    It was only after he¡¯d given his eyes time to clear that he realized that meant that he¡¯d been fighting almost continuously all night. That was a real surprise. ¡°Well, I guess this thing works pretty good!¡± he said, looking at his blood spattered sword.


    Simon walked through the forest toward the stream, and then, after looking around to see if there was anything around to ambush him, he started stripping to the waist so he could see if there were any results. What he saw next made him throw the sword away in the stream bed. It was better to let it rust than keep using that cursed thing, he decided instantly.


    Simon had lost some weight and gotten some visible muscle, too, but it was a terrible skinny-fat combination that lent more than a hint of goblin to his physique. He didn¡¯t actually think he¡¯d become part goblin, of course. Instead, what had happened was that the spell effects were quite literally siphoning a bit of the strength from each of the creatures he¡¯d killed and giving it to him, but goblins weren¡¯t exactly Mr. Universe.


    The things were ugly and disproportional. Not only were their limbs too long, but they skipped every leg day and relied on sinewy upper body strength. Simon tried to imagine how he would look if he had the same proportions as a goblin, and it was a horror show.


    ¡°You know what? I¡¯ll just get a new sword at the death knight level after I smash all their skulls with a mace,¡± he said as he walked away from his failed experiment. The silver lining was that he¡¯d lost enough weight for his armor to fit him better, but it was going to take some time and some serious exercise for the unnatural gains of his pecs and biceps to smooth out into something that resembled natural.


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    He ruminated on that until he got back home. Then, after he closed all the shutters to keep out the rising sun, he studied himself in his mirror a second time. The results weren¡¯t quite as bad as he¡¯d feared. His chest definitely didn¡¯t look quite right, but he didn¡¯t look like a horrible mutant either, now that the shock had worn off.


    While this wasn¡¯t precisely the reason he was nervous about using the words of flesh shaping and strengthening to enhance his own body for the long term, he was pretty close to it. It felt like he was dabbling with things only just barely within his understanding or control. Simon could only imagine what malproportioned features and strange cancers he¡¯d give himself if he tried to meddle too directly with his crude tools.


    After studying himself with a critical eye, he decided to adjust things only a little bit. He could reevaluate after that. ¡°Aufvarum Hyakk Celdura,¡± he said, using the words of lesser flesh shaping to even out the worst of it as he tried to force the excess fat from his body. He was a little more aggressive than the last time he¡¯d tried this but unwilling to lose any internal organs due to what was essentially magical liposuction, he settled for merely being slightly overweight.


    ¡°I guess the lesson here is that if I''m going to dip into a wellspring of anything, I should make sure the water is clean,¡± he mused as he disrobed and prepared for bed. His plan probably would have worked fine if he¡¯d been fighting and killing other men, but slaughtering his way through strangers to become ever more muscular seemed like a remarkably poor use of magic, and he shook his head at the idea.


    No, harvesting strength rather than life force doesn''t seem as addictive, but it¡¯s no less wrong, he decided as he laid down for bed. There was only one problem; he wasn¡¯t tired at all. He still felt alert despite everything he¡¯d done, but becoming a night owl in a fantasy world was inadvisable. It was just one more reason for people to think he was a weirdo when he arrived at civilization in a few levels.


    Simon had a hard time going to sleep. In fact, after laying there for hours, he was almost desperate enough to see if the weakness aspect of Gelthic could be used to induce sleep, but he decided against it. Instead, he simply waited, and eventually, his rampage hit him like a ton of bricks. As soon as whatever energy had been keeping him awake finally faded, he was out like a light, and he stayed that way for half a day.


    In the morning, he looked himself over, noting that he looked a little thinner and had fewer features he would call goblinish about his upper body. It was almost enough to make him go back for his sword, but he decided to leave it. Instead, he had his apple for breakfast to keep the hunger at bay and started packing for his trip.


    ¡°It¡¯s not like I have far to go,¡± he told himself as he belted on his leather armor and set out his mace, shield, and a few other things. ¡°Down into the crypt, kill a few skeletons, scrounge a little silver, then walk through some ruins and dodge a wyvern. After that, I can get something hot at the inn in Esmiran, then after I save the lovebirds, I can go see a man about a dragon.¡±


    Simon realized that if he wanted to build up his endurance before he tried to jog up the mountain, he should probably spend some more time in one of those levels, but he¡¯d have to see what felt right. Staying in the wyvern level might tempt him to wait around for decades to see his son again.


    Simon blasted through the skeletons with almost no effort this trip. Thanks to the boost his goblin harvest gave him, he was only a little winded, too. He actually spent more time studying the swords that were available than he did fighting the undead or harvesting the precious metal he needed with a few minor words of metal.


    Half that time, he spent deciding which sword he was going to use for a while before settling on a nicely weighted hand and a half broadsword with a bronze hilt and only a little rust on the blade. He chose it both because it fit his fighting style and because he was pretty sure he could clean it up without magic, unlike most of the rest. It just needed a little polish and a lot of sharpening.


    The rest of his time was spent studying the death knight¡¯s sword. The frost blade, as he¡¯d long since thought of it, was made with entirely different patterns than the blades that the unspoken forged, and even though he had the schematics drawn up in his notes, he still took some time to look at the whole thing again.


    It seemed drastically inefficient compared to the other designs he¡¯d had so much experience with recently. Not only was it powered by the wielder, but the magic that was required to protect the person holding it was in the gauntlet. ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t you just put the protective circuit in the cross guard to keep the handle at a safe temperature?¡±


    Sadly, the answer was almost certainly that whoever had made it hadn¡¯t thought of it. That was one of the consequences of magic being so forbidden in this part of the world. Everyone had to reinvent the wheel, and most of them didn''t choose the optimal method.


    Simon left it where it lay, picked up the key instead, and moved to the exit. However, when he opened the gate, he was surprised to see a level other than what he¡¯d expected. He¡¯d thought he was going to the Wyvern level, but instead, the sleepy little village that would soon be host to a dozen white cloaks lay before him.


    Simon blinked in surprise, trying to digest the implications of that one little change, but that didn¡¯t stop him from stepping through and shutting the door behind him. The last thing he needed was for someone to notice that the bakery¡¯s door was leading to a dank tomb. That would not be good for him.

 Ch. 209 - Ripples

    I didn¡¯t solve that level, he told himself as he walked numbly to the inn. All I did was pick up a lousy scroll. The wyvern lived, the messenger died, and it still didn¡¯t get delivered.


    He had no idea what to make of that, but as soon as he walked into the inn, he could see it was a dramatically different place than it had been the last time he¡¯d been there. On his last few visits, the place had been half empty until sunset, and even then, it had only been filled with a smattering of traders and locals. This time, the place was nearly full, and the benches were mostly packed with soldiers or at least mercenaries. They looked a little ragged, to say for sure, and with the hard looks he received, he leaned toward the latter.


    For a moment, he thought he might have to fight these strangers; then, he saw a look of recognition flit across a few faces, and the conversations he¡¯d interrupted resumed.


    ¡°Ah, there he is,¡± the innkeeper said, acting like he knew him. ¡°What kept ya, Simon? You said you¡¯d be back yesterday!¡±


    He doesn¡¯t think he knows me, Simon corrected himself. He does know me. Or at least, my doppelganger¡­ It was a chilling realization. He¡¯d thought about the strange evil Simon since that day, three lifetimes ago, but the man had never turned up again until now, and somehow, he didn¡¯t think that was a coincidence.


    ¡°Well, you know how it is out there,¡± Simon answered, hoping that made any sort of sense.


    ¡°I do, I do,¡± the man nodded. ¡°Ugly time to be traveling, but if you have to, then you have to.¡± As he spoke, he slid a key out from under the counter and handed it to him. ¡°Still, kept your room all locked up for you, just like you asked.¡±


    ¡°Thanks¡­¡± Simon said, not quite sure what was going on. He¡¯d planned on getting a meal and leaving, but digging into this was too big of an opportunity to miss, and he headed upstairs in search of his room with a few words about how he¡¯d be back down for something to eat in a little while.


    Half of him felt like he¡¯d just gotten away with the heist of the century, but the other half was certain he was walking into a strange, elaborate trap. So, when he reached the door with the number on it that matched the key, he paused and waited, examining the door frame, the lock, and any other details that were apparent before he went further.


    For a moment, he was reminded of the delicate gilding that had hidden inside the Librium Malifica. The idea that hell could open up around him from something as simple as gilded text decoration made him move with the utmost care, but after more than a minute of examination, he saw no reason not to insert the key and turn it.


    Inside, he found nothing more than an ordinary room. It was empty, save for the bed, a small desk, and a packed backpack sitting against the wall. He still took nothing at face value, and he continued his slow examination, one object at a time. He didn¡¯t even fully step through the door until he¡¯d looked at the door jamb on the far side of the wall.


    Something stinks here, he told himself. He just couldn¡¯t figure out what it was. It was simply too strange. The last time he¡¯d met the man, he''d appeared at a pivotal moment and then vanished again, but this time, Simon just happened to have come to the place where he was staying? He didn¡¯t buy it.


    ¡°If he is me, then he knows I¡¯ve been here before. He knows where the portals are, too,¡± Simon told himself. ¡°Hell, he probably knows where more of them are than I do, depending on how far in the future he¡¯s from.¡±


    None of that made him feel any better as he methodically tore apart the room. After he examined the furniture, he took apart the backpack very carefully, examining what had been left behind. None of it appeared to be anything special. There was a sack of foreign gold and silver coins, a few changes of warm clothes that would have been a little snug for him right now, a bedroll, a tent with some stakes, and a couple of weapons that would definitely have been the sort of thing that he¡¯d wield. One of the daggers even had runes of lesser transfer magically embossed into it in the way he¡¯d done so recently in the same style that he¡¯d used on his skull-marked blade.


    Simon was tempted to take that but could imagine a second layer of runes somewhere beneath the surface that would do something horrible if it was activated, so he left it alone. ¡°I can¡¯t trust anything here,¡± he reminded himself as he checked the stitching of the pants for hidden pockets and the backpack for hidden compartments.


    Still, there was nothing. It looked, for all intents and purposes, as if some version of him left his things at the inn to run an errand and never came back. Simon didn¡¯t buy that for a minute. ¡°For starters, I would have hid my money better,¡± he said, looking down at the handful of coins. It was a fortune, no matter what the denominations were. ¡°This much gold represents years of¡­¡±


    Simon stopped and did a double-take as he looked at one of the coins. It bore an uncanny resemblance to him. No, it was him, too, or at least it was his doppelg?nger.


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    ¡°Son of a bitch,¡± Simon cursed. The coins definitely weren¡¯t Ionian, and they weren¡¯t from Brin. They also didn¡¯t look like the one he¡¯s seized from the Murani blood money.


    ¡°Has this already happened then, and I wasn¡¯t a part of it?¡± Simon wondered aloud as he tried to make out the inscription. ¡°Or is this asshole bringing back artifacts from the future to change the past?¡±


    Simon was irritated by that for a moment, but once he made out what the coin said, he practically yelled out, ¡°Oh, come on!¡± in frustration. The coin didn¡¯t just look like him. It was him. The inscription read Simon the Merciless, and though there wasn¡¯t a date, it was worth 50 drachma. He had no idea how much that was, but he knew that it was half a crown by weight and that the merchants of the area would likely chisel him and give him only 70 or 80% of that.


    Right now, Simon didn¡¯t care about exchange rates, though. He cared about what in the fuck this asshole had done to be given the moniker ¡®the Merciless.¡¯


    ¡°There has to be more,¡± Simon said to himself. ¡°This motherfucker is taunting me.¡±


    Simon tore the room apart a second time but didn¡¯t find anything until he checked on the beam that ran along part of the ceiling. It looked like it was doing nothing but holding up the ceiling, but given that Simon was sure he would have hidden his gold up there if he was going out for a bit, he used the chair to climb up. It was there he found one of his old sketchbooks. At least, it was something that looked an awful lot like one of his old sketchbooks from his days in Ionia before he¡¯d finally gotten to see his son.


    With trembling hands, Simon opened it, wondering if it could really be the case. When he saw that it was filled with places he¡¯d never been or seen, he breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn¡¯t his book. The doppelg?nger hadn¡¯t been stealing from his own life at least. Simon knew it was paranoid, but sometimes he couldn¡¯t help but wonder if this asshole was wandering around, undoing all the good works that he was doing in real-time.


    Still, it very much looked like one that he¡¯d owned once, though, and worse, it was definitely his style. Some version of him had drawn every one of these pictures. The style was nearly identical, save for the fact that it looked a little more smudged on some of the softer mediums. He would have been more careful than that.


    If the thing was a forgery, though, it was a good one. It was filled with places he¡¯d never been. They seemed to be in the mountains, and there was a castle and¡­


    As he took it all in, he stopped as he finally found someone familiar. On one page near the middle of the book was Freya, pale and perfect. She didn¡¯t look so different from when he¡¯d last left her. The very fact that his evil twin might have gotten his hands on her enraged him. However, for a moment, not even that rage could interfere with that moment of perfect longing. It was heartbreaking, in its way, and it was several seconds before he could turn the page or even look away from those piercing eyes.


    When Simon finally managed to shake off that feeling of nostalgic sadness and turned the page, he was rewarded with nothing. The book was simply blank. He started to turn the pages faster and faster, but there was nothing there, not until he reached the very end where he found a long note addressed to him.


    ¡®My dear, dear Simon,¡¯ Simon read aloud in a whisper. ¡®By now, you know who I am, or at least you think you do. Perhaps you will change your mind after the trials ahead. I hope you enjoyed your time in Ionia so recently. I thought both of the fireworks shows that you put on were masterfully done.¡¯


    Simon paused for a moment, thinking about the words before he decided that both fireworks shows meant the Volcano fight with the lava titan and the final battle for the palace where he¡¯d perished. That asshole was watching me then too? He wondered before continuing.


    ¡®This would be the part where I¡¯m supposed to offer you some advice about the nature of the Pit or taunt you with some great secret, but I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t do that. I am exactly what you see and have gone no deeper into this horrid place than you have. All I can offer you, instead, is regret.


    One of your next trials is so terrible that I would spare you from it if such things were possible. I really would. Sadly, some things like the Basilisk have to happen, and other things, like saving Freya, you will never quite manage to accomplish. Don¡¯t worry, when all of that is done, We¡¯ll meet once more in the north. Perhaps I will tell you a bit of what Helades has left out.


    Sincerely,


    You Know Who.¡¯


    When Simon was done, he almost ripped the book in half in pure outrage. He was sure that was meant to be the reaction, of course. The man was taunting him, but he knew that he was lying. He was certain he¡¯d saved Freya on more than one occasion.


    In fact, he told himself, she was only alive when I last saw her, thanks to my magic. Nothing else could have possibly saved her.


    That feeling of pride was enough to allow Simon to regain his composure, and after a few deep breaths, he was fine again. ¡°He¡¯s just lying to upset me or to make me do something stupid,¡± Simon repeated to himself.


    Once he decided that, he decided to go downstairs and get some dinner. Acting rashly was the last thing he needed to do, and he¡¯d think much better on a full stomach.


    The roast that he was served was better than he remembered, though trying to pretend he knew people he¡¯d never met before was a bit awkward. Still, Simon started down there in the common room for hours, drinking and dicing. The two love birds he was waiting for never showed up, but the Unspoken did, briefly.


    This time, the number was smaller than he remembered before, and after a few checks, they quickly left again. This confused Simon further, and even as he turned his doppelganger¡¯s words over in his mind, he tried to figure out what might have happened.


    Simon waited for two days for Aaric and the young whisperer he was infatuated with to arrive, but they never did, leaving him wondering what in the hell was going on with this level. Simon was conflicted then. Should he stay on the path he¡¯d planned and leap down the well, or should he take some extra time to get in shape first?


    What does my doppelg?nger expect me to do? He wondered, planning to do exactly the opposite.

 Ch. 210 - Perfect Timing

    Depending on what was going on, the right answer was either to linger for a long time until Simon was in excellent shape or if it was to immediately proceed to the next level. He chose neither and instead lingered only a couple more days, spying on the white cloaks as they came and went in the hopes that he could read the tea leaves to figure out what had happened to Aaric.


    When he finally jumped down the well in the dark of night a few evenings later, though, all he¡¯d really done was get rid of some of the other Simon¡¯s junk before he took the backpack with him. The gold and silver, especially, he dumped. Except for a couple silvers, in case he had the chance to use them in the next level, and one of the gold coins bearing his image, he left the hand-sized sack just inside the bakery¡¯s oven where the woman that ran the place would find it when she woke up.


    Simon had no idea if she was a good person or if those coins would help or hurt the arc of history. He knew that the other him had anticipated he would be here at this moment, so he was trying to be a bit more unpredictable from now on.


    The ride down the well and out of the cave was just as wild as it had been before, but at least this time, he was a little ready for it, and he stood and dusted himself off on the trail without too much effort.


    Simon was just getting his bearings and mentally preparing himself to start jogging uphill, which sounded like about the most awful thing in the world when he noticed there was a large caravan of people coming up the road behind him.


    Most of the wagons were still behind the curve of the mountain, and he could only see the lead riders, but Simon immediately recognized them as the dragon slayer¡¯s caravan. That confused him quite a bit.


    ¡°Shouldn¡¯t they be in the valley already?¡± he asked himself. In the past, they¡¯d beaten him by hours or days, but now he was ahead of them? It didn¡¯t make sense.


    ¡°But really, what does in this run,¡± he said with a shrug as he sat down on a rock and waited for them to catch up.


    Truthfully, Simon had no idea what was going on, but it was giving him a lot of time to think. These were either changes he¡¯d induced with his last run or something that had been inflicted on him by the version of himself that had left him the journal. He really couldn¡¯t say which, and right now, he didn¡¯t care. He just scrambled to figure out what he was going to tell the dragon slayers.


    It turned out that he needn¡¯t have worried. He decided to pose as a mercenary and twice tried to tell his story, but each time he was rejected. The lead riders couldn¡¯t have cared less once they decided he wasn¡¯t a bandit, and the caravan master just laughed and said, ¡°We need men with strong backs a plenty for butchery and gathering treasure if you''re inclined to that sort of work, but dragon slaying? Well, you just stand back and leave that to Sir Anias unless you¡¯re in a mood to be used as bait.¡±


    That line got plenty of laughs from the surrounding men, and Simon feigned some embarrassment, but really, he didn¡¯t care. He just shook the man¡¯s hand, climbed on board the wagon, and endured the ribbing that the other men gave the new guy as he learned what he could.


    Though the timing was a day or two off what he was used to, nothing else seemed to have changed. The men still planned on getting up to Weldon and spending a day or perhaps two resting and scouting before they finally moved on to the dragon''s peak itself. That seemed a bit fast to Simon. If he was planning on taking out a dragon, he¡¯d want to spend days on reconnaissance alone, but no one seemed concerned when he raised that point.


    ¡°Sir Anias? Nah!¡± one big man blustered. ¡°He¡¯ll just walk in there with his big magic sword and cut the big scaly bastard in half.¡±


    Another man insisted, ¡°No, he uses a giant bow and shoots a magic arrow straight into its heart!¡±


    The fact that none of them could agree told Simon only one thing: none of these men knew how the dragon slayer did it. According to those who did most of the talking, this was either the third or the fourth dragon that the man was going after, but even that they couldn¡¯t decide on.


    Still, from those flimsy foundations, he was able to build a fairly solid thesis. If no one knew the truth about the knight, then that was because no one had seen him make a kill. Truthfully, if he hadn¡¯t seen the body himself, he would have never believed that the man had killed anything. Since he had, though, that theory was right out.


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Which meant there had to be a trick to it. There were excellent reasons why a hunter might not want an audience, of course. They could be distracting. Their scent or sounds might alert the prey that it was in danger. In this case, though, Simon doubted that it was any of that. He¡¯d seen the knight in person. He¡¯d been a strong, bold-looking man covered in blood, but Simon doubted that anyone of any strength could kill a dragon the size of a small whale with steel weapons, no matter what he used.


    By the time they reached the village, and the giant caravan had descended on the place like a swarm of locusts, Simon had settled on the idea that the man had a rune blade and perhaps even runic armor to shelter him. While those weren''t entirely disputed when he saw the man later, at the inn while Simon was unloading some crates, it was replaced by a new one.


    Unspoken. Simon wouldn¡¯t have bet his life on it, but he was almost certain that the clasp the man wore to hold his cloak closed was an amulet of protection against fire. It was a small detail, and he only glimpsed it for a moment, but it was enough for Simon to decide that it was probably him.


    Rather than make their amulets simple, hidden things, they made them into holy symbols of sorts, and though there were dozens of patterns for that, and some were more subtle in their symbolism than others, Simon had seen them all and helped to make most of them.


    As strange as he found that detail, it made their only other encounter make a bit more sense to him. The last time Simon had met the man, he''d looked at him strangely. Simon had still been pretty deep in his karmic hole at that point, and if he remembered correctly, he¡¯d still been floating somewhere below negative half a million experience points. So, the aura that cloaked him was almost certainly still black enough to warrant a closer look.


    That was only fair since now he was examining the other man more intently. Simon still wasn¡¯t sure what was supposed to happen on this level. He was pretty sure that he was supposed to save this village or the dragon, or maybe both, but now that he knew who he was facing, he wanted to oppose them on principle.


    Simon cursed himself for not taking the time to look up dragons in the Black Library of the White Cloaks when he was there. He¡¯d obsessed over magic and history, with only a little demonology and necromancy thrown in on occasion, before he¡¯d been taken down to the forges.


    Wasted opportunity, he sighed inwardly, But not so wasted that I think I¡¯ll go for another life without a tongue just for another chance to read through it.


    Truthfully, now that Simon knew where it was, there was nothing to prevent him from going and sacking the broken tower on his own. It wouldn¡¯t be easy, but he could probably do it if he wanted to. Right now, he didn¡¯t need to know more about dragons, though. He needed to know more about Sir Anias.


    That night, as both the tavern and its courtyard overflowed with drunks and stories, he was surprised at how little he found out. Everyone had a story, and in that story, every dragon was named something different, but none of them had the ring of truth, and the only thing that came from the knight¡¯s mouth were platitudes.


    Still, as the night wore on, Simon found a number of other clues that led him to believe that a few of the other lesser authorities in this circus might be White Cloaks as well. Or they might just be normal guys, and I¡¯m just getting paranoid, he reminded himself.


    Simon had plenty of shadows to jump at these days. There was the doppelg?nger and the White Cloaks, true, but there was also the Murian, lingering doubts about Helades, demons, and plenty of other strangeness from past levels to choose from. That wasn¡¯t even the whole list. There were also warlocks and vampires and whatever else.


    He could worry about everything so much that it paralyzed him, but that wouldn¡¯t help any more than letting his paranoia run out of control and deciding that everything was a White Cloak plot that needed to be unraveled.


    Still, as Sir Anias slipped out the side door with one of the other men that Simon was suspicious of, he whispered a word of lesser cure to flush most of the drunkenness from his system and staggered after them.


    They left the inn and the grounds, but not so far away that it would be easy to follow them. So, instead, Simon staggered to the back of the stables that wasn¡¯t so far away from them and took a piss, which they ignored.


    He couldn¡¯t hear what they were saying from that distance, but he could see their body language, and they were clearly in cahoots. Even as he tried to contemplate a spell that might let him eavesdrop, though, the conversation was already over, and the knight was walking to the front of the stables to ready his horse. Presumably, that was so that he could be in position for what came next.


    ¡°Definitely a trick to it,¡± Simon said to himself as he watched the man mount up and ride into the dark toward the mountain.


    Simon didn¡¯t know exactly how it worked yet, but at this point, he was pretty sure that it involved either springing a trap on the thing or using the town as bait to prepare a trap in the dragon¡¯s absence. Simon couldn¡¯t be sure, but the longer he thought about it, the more he leaned toward the latter, which made him angrier and angrier.


    He waited for a few minutes for the commotion to die down and the hoofbeats to retreat into the distance. Then he saddled the nicest horse left and rode up the mountain after the man. Simon had no idea if this was the right way to solve the level, but even if he had to do it again, he would learn a lot from watching whatever it was that was going to happen next.