PS: You get an extra chapter for my birthday.

Ch. 434 - Unchained from the Past

Even after he died, the phantom pain of it lingered as he lay on his lumpy, straw-filled bed. Every inch of Simon’s skin tingled with remembered agony, and only his slow, measured breaths kept it at bay until it faded. Even then, he didn’t feel fear or any other kind of traumatic reaction. Instead, he still felt surprise and loss. 

The last one he’d ever expected would have tried to kill him was Zoa. Even when he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, he still reflected on it, looking for warning signs that he might have missed. There’d been nothing, though, save perhaps that his sight had been dulled by a cloud of despair for months.

In the end, he couldn’t think of anything he should have done differently, so he rose. The move reminded him of his unwelcome bulk, but he ignored it, and focused on his hand. For more than a minute, he just sat there on the bed, flexing and unflexing it. He made a fist and wiggled each one of his fingers, enjoying the novelty of a sensation that he’d lost for years and years.

It was only when that was done, and he was reacquainted with the familiar limb that he turned to the mirror. Then he began making notes about everything, which was his habit after every death these days.

He’d been focused on Zoa so much the last few months that he’d written almost nothing down, and he had a few theories he wanted to save in case they slipped his mind in the days to come. It was only when that was done that he turned his attention to his most recent death and how his stats had changed. 

‘Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 33

Deaths: 71

Experience Points: 511,987

Skills: Academics [Average], Agriculture [Average], Archery [Poor], Armor (light) [Below Average], Armor (heavy) [Average], Armor (medium) [Poor], Art [Above Average], Athletics [Average], Baking [Poor], Cooking [Average], Carpentry [Average], Craft [Above Average], Deception [Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Below Average], Healing [Average], History [Above Average], Investigate [Excellent], Maces [Average], Mining [Average], Navigation/Mapping [Average], Research [Above Average], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Below Average], Spears [Poor], Spell Casting [Excellent], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Below Average], Swords [Excellent], Trading [Average], Transformation [Below Average] Warfare [Below Average].

Words of Power: Aufvarum (air, disperse, minor, slow), Barom (illusion, light, vision), Celdura (plan, shape), Delzam (cure, order, repair), Dnarth (command, connection, distant, hidden), Eszloum (soul, emotions), Farzehl (alter, luck, manipulate, twist), Gelthic (ice, death, weakness, bane), Gervuul (greater, power), Hyakk (flesh, healing), Jazaballa (extend, linger, repeat), 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), Weylera (because, on condition of, repeat, time, speed), Zyvon (sacrifice, transfer, plants, water)

“I wonder how much the death of a loved one costs?” he asked himself as he looked at his much higher experience total. Fortunately the mirror did not try to answer that question, but it was clear that his last life had been a good one, despite losing a hand and Zoa. 

After that, he reviewed his levels and saw that there had only been one change, which was expected. “Why is it always the wyvern level that unlocks when I screw with things in the area of the Capital?” he asked himself. He had no idea, but he took solace in the fact that it was a very easy level to beat as long as he took the time to make a lightning wand.

‘Level 9 - A Wyvern on a Mountaintop.

Level 19 - Lizard men in a swamp.

Level 20 - A Basilisk amongst the ruins.

Level 21 - A haunted cemetery.

Level 27 - Centaur raiders near Crowvar.

Level 33 - Vampire at Castle Gravenstone.

Level 34 - ?????’

While most of those levels were wastes of time, there were a couple that put the fear in him, even after all this time. “Calm down Simon,” he ordered himself as he felt his heart rate increasing. “You’ll kill the basilisk from a long way off, and level 33 doesn’t have vampires any more. Freya isn’t a part of this. It’s going to be something else entirely this time.”

Once he’d gotten his focus back, Simon quickly moved on. He’d picked up no new words, but a handful of meanings. More importantly, though, he’d picked a number of gestures, which in many ways, were better. He already knew that the gesture of nullification worked, and soon he’d learn the rest too. 

Gestures: Barom, Farzehl, Gelthic, Hyakk, Meiren, Oonbetit, Uuvellum, Vrazig.

He made notes of all the ones he had, then he pulled his pictures or notes for each one into the mirror, and studied them for a few seconds each. They would damage his sight, but less than spoken words, and they’d be much more versatile than wands. So, he’d make do. 

He didn’t have the gesture for greater or lesser, so there were still some effects where metal talismans would be the best choice, but he’d see what the lower levels provided.

“Learning all of those is definitely a goal for this life,” he told himself as he went outside to find an appropriate stick to transform into a wand. 

That didn’t take long, and soon he was sitting in the shade of the cabin’s porch, carving a simple wand of lesser flesh manipulation. It was just three words, and he’d chosen an oversized stick to make it easier, but even so, he wasn’t finished until his second day. Then he started on his wand of distant lightning for the basilisk.

It was smaller, and used a full word, so he wasn’t going to get a lot of shots with it before it burned out, but he really probably only needed one, from a safe distance. A goblin interrupted his work on the third night, sniffing around like they always did.

With the fog of grief all but gone, Simon’s vision had improved remarkably, but he hadn’t grown so attached to it that he was going to worry about dulling it again as he set to work with his wand. The first thing he did was to trace his most overweight features with the tool and sculpt away the excess pounds.

That took only seconds to do, but since it was a lesser word the magic played out over hours, and by the time the first goblin came around he was still on the chubby side. That didn’t stop him from crushing the vermin with his boot or tossing its corpse out into the tall grass as a warning to the others, though. 

By morning, after a third use, he looked close enough to how he preferred that he considered that part of his project done. He was still a little soft, but that could be fixed with time and effort. Instead of worrying about how he looked he focused on his next task: marking his flesh with his mark of soul triggered death he’d been working on. 

This one was more complicated, and he drew it on the sole of his left foot with a mixture of water and ash before he traced the lines with his wand, visualizing smooth, dark curves of melanin. It was less painful than the brand he’d originally considered, but it would be just as effective once the pigment in his cells realigned. 

His thought was a simple one: he could handle any amount of deaths, but he couldn’t handle any further degradation to his soul. So, if someone touched it, for any reason, he died. This version wouldn’t explode in a flashy way like the last one had. It would just trigger a violent heart attack. His enemy could have his flesh; Simon would just start over with a better plan. 

Once that was done, he geared up and planned to head out on the fourth day, before the angry mob of goblins could arrive to try to burn him out of house and home. At least that was the plan. Still, he delayed. Even after his bag was packed with both of his wands, all of the weapons, and the other gear he needed, he took a stroll through his little valley. Feeling nostalgic, he walked to the ruined temple that had given him his first word and studied it. 

With Uuvellum Vrazig, I might be able to turn back the time on the eroded parts of the stone and see if there are any other clues here, he thought. Or with Karesh, I might be able to gain a superhuman level of understanding and read them, as worn as they are.

There was much he could do to learn from the things he’d experienced before. He knew that now, but only because the way that things had ended with his third wife had unburdened him from his failings with the other two. The rest of his walk was a metaphor for that, and it was only when he’d fixed all three women in his mind and said his silent goodbyes that he finally returned to the cabin near sunset, and opened the trapdoor.

First he tossed his bag through, to watch the way that its arc twisted ninety degrees when down suddenly switched to sideways. He studied that movement, then, without a look back, he jumped through and rolled as gravity twisted. His entrance was a hatch pointing straight down, but his exit was an arch pointing sideways. He hated that, but he was starting to get used to it, and this time at least he rolled to a standing position so smoothly that it looked intentional, even. 

“That would have been impossible with an extra hundred pounds,” he muttered as he stood, dusted himself off, and then fetched his sack. 

After that, he started walking the long way to the overlook where the rider would get attacked. Using his wand of distant lightning would have made this encounter easier, but he was trying to lay off of magic, and save that for the only monster he really feared. So, his plan was simple.

He’d launch an arrow when the wyvern flew by to get its attention, then he’d bring the fight to favorable ground and try to damage its wing enough to make it crash, or stab it bad enough to make it bleed out. Neither would be particularly glorious victories, but any victory without a spell was one worth celebrating. Part of him just wanted to test himself with both hands again, though he’d get the chance to do that against the lizardmen soon enough.

It’s not like it matters if I die right now. He reminded himself as he moved to position before drawing his bow and arrow and looking for his quarry. The worst it will cost me is a painful death and 4 days to start again.

That fatalistic attitude served him well as he waited, but soon enough the giant beast appeared. In fact, it soared low enough that Simon thought he was about to get his fight without an arrow. 

That didn’t turn out to be the case. Instead, as the wyvern flew by his hiding place, only a couple dozen feet above his head, he aimed carefully with his bow for several seconds. He was fully aware his projectile wouldn’t do more than piss it off, but still he hesitated. Then, he lowered the weapon, and after the creature had moved off a bit, he turned around and moved back toward this level’s gate. It wasn’t any sense of guilt or fear that drove him, though. Just a single thought. 

The time may yet come when I want access to an earlier point that isn’t all the way back in the past, he thought as he watched the wyvern dive toward the hapless rider he was supposed to save. This is almost 20 years in the cabin’s future, and a fine waypoint to have in my back pocket just in case. 

While it was possible it might screw something up, it hadn’t seemed to affect any of its surrounding levels so far. So, he decided that on balance it was less risky to keep it than close it, and he didn’t give it a second thought as he moved toward the exit that would take him to the swamp.

Ch. 435 - Getting Dirty

Simon tried and failed to remember the last time he’d been in the swamp. So, he pulled up the mirror and checked, giving out a low whistle. “More than 30 deaths ago,” he said quietly as he checked his crude maps in the rippling water and noted the scant details. He had the direction he needed to go, but little in the way of information about where the ambushes would happen. He’d fix that, just in case he ever came through here again. 

“It’s not like that’s going to happen now that I’m done meddling with the past,” he muttered to no one in particular as he moved toward the closest sandbar. He might not have the ambushes marked, but he had a pretty good idea of the quickest and therefore driest way through the muck.

As he went, Simon forced himself to move slowly and calmly, pushing away any lingering anxiety and trying to get a deeper view of the world around him. Plants didn’t really have auras, but the animals that lived in them did, and this place, being what it was, created a fog of life that he steadily tried to focus on in search of the lizardmen that would be trying to stab him soon enough.

After a few minutes of work, he finally spotted the first one, lingering just below the water like an alligator, and then, two more in the underbrush. None of them was visible to the naked eye, and even knowing where they were, he could barely spot the ripples in the water.

His first instinct was to blast them from a distance, but of course, that wasn’t his game anymore. This time, instead of trying to strike first, he merely avoided them and kept going. Something he hadn’t known the first few times he went through this place was that the Lizardmen were loath to give away their hiding places. That was something he’d learned in one of the many books he’d read at the Broken Tower.

They were a rare enemy to encounter, but they preferred pack hunting and clever ambushes to orcish charges, and this time Simon used that to his advantage and outpaced them, transforming the scenario from an ambush into a mine field. As long as he stayed far enough away from the hunters that they weren’t sure of their throw, they lurked, and he moved. 

It was a good strategy, and one of the many he had tucked away from his time reading. It wouldn’t work for a normal warrior, of course. They wouldn’t see the predators lying in wait, but even the simple gray auras of the lizardmen stood out in stark contrast to the smaller snakes, birds, and mammals that made up the background noise of the place.

Will this be enough to clear the level, though, he wondered as he moved. In the past, he’d always killed a dozen or so of the slow-moving brutes, and then he’d smashed up their nests and eggs. Would avoiding as many as possible, then blitzing through their nesting grounds before they caught up, have the same effect?

Simon didn’t really know, and honestly, it didn't really matter. This wasn’t the level he was concerned about. It was the basilisk that lay ahead, and anything he did to avoid wearing himself out before that fight was a shortcut worth taking. 

Still, he had to break into a run as the lizardmen’s nesting grounds came into view. That was apparently their line. Most of them broke cover as soon as he stepped onto that final sandbar and roared as they charged him. They were too late, though. They were much too late. While brutal warriors, they weren’t exactly fast.

Simon smashed eggs and scattered nests as he went. There were two lizard men in the camp, but they defensively protected their own nests instead of moving to protect everyone’s. That kind of antisocial behavior is going to cost you, Simon thought as he kept moving. 

One spear narrowly missed him, and he was breathing heavily by the time he reached the portal to the next level. A small mob of lizardmen was getting awfully close to him, too. They were less than fifty feet away now, and snarling loudly, but none of those things mattered.

What mattered was where the basilisk might be, and stopping to figure out where that might be was a real problem. “Maybe I didn’t think this through,” he grunted as he looked both ways before moving out into the desert. He didn’t see the ugly monster anywhere. That didn’t mean he wasn’t about to turn a corner and get himself killed, though, so he did the next best thing and retreated.

Normally, Simon moved quickly and quietly toward the temple where the statues were thickest. The basilisk was almost always over there, somewhere. It seemed to prefer the tight confines of the ruins to the open wastes beyond. That was fair since Simon normally hated to go somewhere where there was little cover to be found, given that his opponent could turn him to stone with a glance, but today it was the right move. 

Simon ran away from the ruins and up the nearest slope as he tried to calm his racing heart and focus on seeing the true nature of the world. That was impossible, more or less, until he stopped. What he did notice, though, was the sound of his pursuers following him. That surprised him even though it shouldn’t have. He’d brought people through portals on purpose; there was no reason they couldn’t come through by accident if they were close enough behind him. 

Still, the noise concerned him, and he gave real thought to flattening himself against the sand and playing dead. Only the knowledge that he would turn into a statue just as easily in that position spurred him to the top of the dune. It was there that he took a breather and looked around for any of the threats that might be coming toward him. 

None of the lizardmen were following him. That was a good sign. They’d slowed right down where the whole world has shifted from swamp to desert. The basilisk, too, was nowhere to be found. 

“Is the bastard dead?” he wondered. It would be ironic if he’d finally come to kill the thing again, and some twist of fate had seen it slain by someone else’s hand. Still, as his labored breathing quieted, things started to resolve themselves. 

Before him lay the bones of the ancient city of Ozioptin. It was Ionian, or at least it had been, even if it now technically lay in the no-man's land of the southwestern corner of Brin. Helades had said she’d had ties here, and Elthna had told him the city fell to a curse. He had yet to find information to substantiate either claim, but he was sure he would one day.

What he could see now was a complete deadzone, aurically. The half-buried streets were neat and well laid out, but almost nothing dwelt here. The largest concentration of auras was a group of lizardmen that he’d accidentally led here. They were still milling around the immediate area of the portal, and most likely looking for the way back. 

“Can’t help you there,” he sighed as he looked past them and finally found his quarry, slowly heading toward the noise that the lizardmen were making.

For any other situation, he would have moved to his left to get a clear view of what was going to happen. For the basilisk, though, he wasn’t about to catch a stray. Instead of moving to the left, he slid down the back side of the dune and then jogged a few hundred yards to the right so that he’d be behind the basilisk when it found its next meal. 

Does a giant lizard eating lizardmen count as cannibalism? He asked himself as he waited to catch his breath a second time. This time, he didn’t even pop his head above the edge of the dune until the basilisk had moved beyond his vantage and turned toward the source of the noise.

Then, he peeked back up and watched the clumsy monster advance. Well, watch was a bit of a stretch. He watched its aura move behind two layers of walls while the lizardmen loitered and hissed, completely unaware of the doom that was moving toward him. 

“I could probably hit it from here,” he told himself as he laid his sword down, fished around in his sack blind, and pulled out his wand of distant lightning. It was untested, but unlikely to blow up in his hand when he launched a spell. If it did, well, he knew the gesture for Vrazig, which was a fine back-up plan. 

If it had been humans the creature was about to petrify, Simon would have fired already, but murderous lizardmen? Well, in case even had souls, he’d make sure to smash their heads before he left. He wouldn’t leave them to suffer for an eternity, but he also wouldn’t interrupt what was about to happen, because it was probably the only time he was ever going to get to really see it. 

He’d seen dragon magic and demonic magic without sight. He’d seen glimpses of Helades and the Oracle’s power, too, but this, well, it was going to be special, especially since he wasn’t in any danger. 

Seconds later, he saw the first blast. Three of the seven lizardmen's auras vanished in an instant, but that instant was a form of magical fireworks he’d never forget. 

The moment the basilisk used its glare, the normally diffuse glow of their auras compressed. They diminished to prismatic, radiant outlines, almost like an eclipse, and then vanished completely beneath the stone.

Their souls are trying to resist the magic being used on them, he realized. That gave him some hope, and a new fear. While the magic wasn’t affecting their souls, it was clearly touching them. 

Did I make my counterspell too broad? He wondered as the remaining lizardmen reacted to the danger. Three fled, one charged. Will I keel over the second I face a mage with a trick or two?

That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, he realized as he watched the next lizardman get transformed into stone in mid jump, and shatter as he landed. The basilisk nibbled pieces of the broken statue as it moved past it in search of its remaining quarry.

What followed was a game of cat and mouse that lasted nearly an hour, but Simon watched it intently, except for the brief period where the basilisk turned in his direction. Then he hid and waited.

In that time, he saw several interesting things. The first was the way the lizardmen’s own auras reacted, of course. That was the brightest and most obvious change, but there were others, too. There was the way that buildings and even the sand seemed to go monochrome for a few seconds and lose their color, like whatever the basilisk was doing was draining everything that the world had to offer to power its spells. 

Maybe it really is the cause of the desert, he mused. Elthena has said as much, but he hadn’t been sure until now. On some level, he’d just assumed that a drought had happened around the same time this monster had emerged, and the two catastrophes had been conflated into one. 

He could definitely see this power devastating an ecosystem, though. If there had been any plants in its sight, they probably wouldn’t have turned to stone, but shriveling up and dying was the most likely option. It would make a handy power for eliminating the blossoms and the tendrils of the hell seed if he ever found those ziggurats again. Still, that would require Simon to understand how the gaze worked, and he still didn’t have a clue. 

Would he be able to replicate the effects with a word of earth, powered by a word of draining? Celdura Hyakk Vosden Zyvon? Shape flesh to stone, powered by draining the world? It seemed possible, but still felt like it was missing something.

Simon had transformed one metal into another. He'd attached dead limbs and even turned stone to flesh with limited success, but this felt more powerful and primeval. This would be like using magic with a thought, instead of wiggling his fingers, carving a wand, or speaking a word of power.

The lizard was a stupid beast. It wasn’t using magic consciously. It was some inborn power, and the way its aura focused when it used its gaze offered Simon no real clues. Those only came when it devoured the leg of one of the unfortunate lizardmen. 

Then, Simon was able to watch in real time as the stone transformed back into flesh and was consumed by the beast. Its aura spasmed then, too, and Simon spent several hours watching intently, trying to learn what he could from the aberration. 

Finally, when he decided he could learn no more, Simon raised his wand and struck the beast with a slender lightning bolt from the clear blue sky. It let out a high-pitched squeal of pain before casting about in every direction, looking for the source of its torments.

Simon waited that out behind cover, then struck it again. It took three lightning bolts for the monster to stop moving, and another few minutes for it to die, and for its aura to dissipate completely. It was only when that was done that Simon picked up his sword, sheathed it, and started walking down the dunes toward the scene of the crime. 

He’d been in a hurry to get to this point, but now he was in no hurry at all. He never planned on coming back here, so before he left, he was going to smash every single statue he could find. It was the least he could do for the poor bastards who’d been here for decades or centuries. 

Ch. 436 - Dust to Dust

Simon spent more than a day walking around the city smashing statues. He pushed them over wherever he could, and then he shattered their heads with a larger stone. Often, he bashed one head against another just to reduce the number of times he’d have to repeat the task.

The work was exhausting, and even doing only a dozen or so every hour forced him to take frequent breaks. That was exacerbated by the lack of water. He had his skin, of course, and there was a well in the next level that he was pretty sure had water in it, but on this level, there simply wasn’t any that he could find. 

While that made sense, given that he was in the middle of the desert, it was also quite troublesome. Still, Simon didn’t let that stop him. He stayed and worked for two full days, nursing along his water, until he couldn’t find any more statues worth bashing to pieces. 

The effort bordered on obsession. In several cases, he broke apart what turned out to be actual marble statues just to make sure they weren’t people. He didn’t sleep well, either. He kept dreaming that the basilisk had found him, and both nights he woke up several times as a stray rustling made him worry he was about to be ambushed. 

During all of that, he saved the lizardmen near the basilisk for last. It was only when his skin was as empty as the city, and his thirst was rising, that he approached the lightning-scarred carcass of the beast. Some part of him worried that the thing had been playing possum and would manage to open its eyes one last time, and make him regret saving the lizardmen, but that didn’t happen. Nevertheless, he took their heads into a patch of shade around the corner before pounding them into dust just to be sure. 

“You. Can. Never Be. Too. Careful,” Simon grunted with each strike. 

As he worked, Simon considered doing some kind of autopsy on the slain monster and looking for some biological answer behind the magic it wielded so casually. It’s possible it's some kind of gland, or lens, he told himself. It might be a piece of its brain, or…

Those thoughts continued to loop until he completed his task, but in the end, he decided against it. As cool as the idea of dissecting a mythical creature was, he hadn’t had water in a day, and his hands were shaking. So, if the power really was biological in nature, there was a fair chance he’d cut it wrong and get himself petrified all over again, which he had no interest in enduring. 

Instead, he walked by the bloated, leathery carcass and moved toward the temple he’d walked with Helades so long ago. If he’d had the moisture, he would have spit on it, but as it was, he saved that water for climbing the sandy stairs.

Getting close enough to the portal caused it to ripple open invisibly. It was dark on the other side of the portal, too, so there was no visual indication that it was there, but Simon could see the magic, and he paused to study the ripple of magic that emanated from it. 

He’d be on the blasted plains around Crowvar soon, but for now, he ignored it and strode past, looking at the well-preserved friezes on the walls. There was nothing here that he hadn’t seen the last time. The place was Ionian, and no ancient secrets were hidden in it. Still, it calmed him to look at it again and rekindle those memories of his first time here. 

“Well, first time where I didn’t get turned into a statue,” he corrected himself.

Those memories were old now. They were older than a normal person could hope to live, and at least two centuries in the past, so it did him good to reconnect with them. He studied the delicate decorations and read the inscriptions, looking for evidence to support Helades' claim, but he didn’t find her name anywhere. He didn’t find any goddesses that looked like her either, though he did find a couple that reminded him of Elthena, since they had Ionian features. 

Finally, when he could stand his thirst no longer, he walked back outside and through the gate without ceremony. There was no reason to delay. He’d been through this one many times and never seen a threat. 

It was only when he’d stepped through the portal and found the smell of mist and wet earth instead of the smell of ash and charred flesh that he realized something was wrong. For just a moment, Simon worried that he’d done something to break the magic or reopen a level.

He had no mirror on him to call up, but as he started counting the levels off on his fingers, he quickly realized what had happened. The heat had gotten to him; it wasn’t Crowvar that came next, but Darndelle. He was in the graveyard!

For just a moment, fear flashed through him as he remembered what the graveyard was like. It was only when he reminded himself that he’d crushed the blackheart to dust that his eyes stopped darting around looking for ripples in the fog. 

“It’s just a stupid mistake,” he told himself. “Happens to the best of us. This is what you get for neglecting the lower levels for so long!”

As Simon berated himself quietly and reminded himself that the centaur level was a daytime level, he suddenly stopped as he heard a noise. For a moment, he feared the demons in the fog were back, but as it repeated again, he identified it as nothing more than a shovel. Someone was digging nearby. 

That calmed him almost as quickly as the realization of where he was, and he set down his sack of supplies very carefully. He was still incredibly thirsty, but that would have to wait another few minutes. 

Once Simon’s hands were free, he pulled out his dagger and then rubbed it in the earth to take off the shine a bit. He didn’t know what he was up against, which made the element of surprise key. 

Probably just grave robbers, he told himself as he crouched and padded from one gravestone to the next toward the sound. 

Just graverobbers might not stay that way, though. Something evil had been buried in this graveyard once before. It might not be the people who were the problem. It could be what they were about to dig up. 

That thought summoned a whole swirling nebula of recursive thoughts. How many levels had he solved only for them to come unsolved again with a similar problem? What were the odds that a single graveyard would get multiple evil artifacts? Was the universe self-correcting? Was it—

He banished those thoughts and instead forced himself to focus on what his eyes and ears were telling him. There was a light ahead that was probably a lantern, but the fog made it hard to see who was there and what they were up to. There was no talking, either, which meant there might just be one person. Did that make it just the town grave digger then?

That made things easier in a way. If it were just someone doing their job, then surely he could stop them before they opened the gate to hell or some other terrible fate. 

It wasn’t a grave digger, though. That bit of wishful thinking vanished as soon as Simon got close enough to see the aura of the man doing the digging. It was so dark that at first he mistook it for a shadow. The only problem was that the light wasn’t bright enough to cast a shadow that dark. 

Simon paused to study that. The shadow was actually darker than the night around it, and it was attached to a person. A wicked, wicked person, which was clearly the reason he was here. He tried to peer into the shadow, to get some idea of what he was dealing with, but the colors were washed out by the darkness and his still-blurry vision. 

That was only half of the confusing part, though. The man wasn’t actually in the grave. He wasn’t doing the digging, yet the shovel still moved. Simon studied the scene, trying to parse it out since he didn’t see the aura of any apprentices or other underlings. 

That was how he found out that skeletons reanimated by dark magic didn’t have an aura. Well, no aura wasn’t quite true. Living beings had a cloud of energy around them that he could read like a scroll or a tavern sign, but the animating magic that flowed through the creature was visible enough if he stared. It was more of an outline than a cloud, but it flashed with dark menace. 

Simon wished his vision was clear enough that he could study it in greater detail, but that was beyond him. All he could see was that the magic was in some way linked to the graveyard itself.

That’s why it was so hard to notice, he realized with a sinking feeling. It has no power source. There’s no crystal or tether to its master. The land itself is fueling it, but how?

Suddenly, Simon wondered if the dark magics of this necromancer might be fueled by the souls of the graves that they stood atop. That horrified him, and he quickly retreated. It wasn’t because he was afraid to act, though; it was because he needed his bow.

Simon had it, and at one time he was pretty good with it, but he’d grown rusty with lifetimes of disuse. Rust didn’t matter, though. There was no way he was closing this much open ground with someone who could tap into the souls of others to fuel his creations. 

I could use my wand, he reflected, but he decided against it. Magic needed to stop being his first resort and start being his last resort. Still, when he retrieved his bow, he moved the wand to his quiver just in case he needed it. Then he withdrew an arrow, nocked it, and moved back to his opponent. He didn’t know what the man was up to, but he knew that the necromancer needed to be stopped as quickly as possible. 

Simon crept up on him one grave at a time, from the rear. He stopped every few graves and waited for the mage to look around. Even alone at night in a fog-shrouded graveyard, he was paranoid, but not paranoid enough to notice that his doom was upon him.

Normally, Simon would have felt comfortable making the shot from fifty feet, but at night, when it was this desperate, he creeped all the way to thirty feet before he pulled back, aimed carefully for the necromancer’s throat, and loosed.

He missed by inches, and the arrow soared off into the night before ricocheting noisily off a mausoleum somewhere not far away. That was enough to make the necromancer take notice, and with a clipped command, he ordered his skeleton out of the grave to investigate. Even as he was doing so, though, Simon lined up his second shot for several extra heartbeats to be sure it would find its mark.

The mage never saw it coming. His skeleton had barely escaped the man’s lantern light when the arrow stabbed right through his throat and came out the other side in a spray of blood. 

Choking on his own blood made speaking a word of power impossible; still, Simon was wary and did not reveal himself immediately lest the man have a wand or other types of magic at his disposal. That was good, because he made a series of gestures, and a ripple of force left him and traveled outward, shattering several gravestones to Simon’s right like an invisible wave. 

Simon didn’t have to fire a second shot. He just had to wait a little longer. Less than a minute later, unable to breathe, the necromancer fell back into the grave his minion had been digging up. 

The death looked genuine, but it was only when the dark aura coming from the hole faded that Simon got up to investigate. You could pretend not to breathe, but you couldn’t fake your soul leaving your body. 

“Let’s see what you were up to,” Simon said as he approached the pit and looked down. He was much more interested in finding a fountain or a tavern that was still open to slake his thirst, but investigating this wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that could wait until later. 

As it turned out, there was nothing special in the hole. There was no coffin, and the only corpse was still warm. Simon regretted that asking him what he was up to was impossible, but he didn’t feel like taking any chances tonight. Still, the mage died clutching a thick tome, and Simon was definitely going to take that with him, so he hopped down there to get it. 

Ch. 437 - Montain, Again and Again

Simon used the shovel to poke around the hole, probing for what the necromancer might have been looking for. It was then that he got the scare of his life, when the skeleton that had been digging the hole returned to the grave. 

He’d assumed that the abomination had died along with its master, but it hadn’t, and it returned, practically diving into the pit to attack Simon. Fortunately, he still had the shovel in hand and swung with all his might, shattering the thing apart in a cloud of bones. That was satisfying. What was less enjoyable was that the pieces continued to tremble where they fell. 

At first, Simon thought that was some residual magic dissipating, but it was easy enough for him to see that most of the larger chunks were still connected by a thin black thread of power. Indeed, they were slowly reunifying a piece at a time. As he watched the phalanges of a hand snap together one at a time, which was concerning. 

“Now how’s it managing that trick?” he wondered as he traced the lines of power from one point to the next, noting how they twined together as they approached the skull. 

Simon picked up the tome and dug around until he had the man’s coin purse, since he was broke. Then, he tossed those things along with the shovel out onto the grass. Then, as an afterthought, he cut off one of the necromancer’s fingers and pocketed it as well, in case he needed to have a talk with the man later. Simon disliked the idea of summoning the dead, but he disliked it less when the man was guilty of doing the same thing. 

After that, he lifted himself out of the shallow grave with a grunt, picked up the shovel, and smashed the skull with one good whack. The blow rang out into the darkness, but at this point, Simon was less concerned about getting caught than that the magic lines had vanished. That was progress, and as soon as he examined the skull, he found out why. The circle rune that powered it was cracked by his blow, but still largely legible.

He started to study it, but when he saw another lantern approaching, he quickly thought better of it and pocketed the bone fragment. Then he grabbed the book and the pouch and ran back to his own bag. By the time the nightwatchman was blowing his horn in alarm, Simon had already collected everything that connected him to the place and was coming out of the far gate.

He could have gone out through the temple gate, which was the portal to the next level, but he wanted to do some research before he moved on. Well, research, a few drinks, and a nice long nap; he was exhausted.

Simon went into the first inn that was still open, even though a search to find one that hadn’t already shuttered wasn’t an easy thing this time of night. He was pretty sure he’d never slept in the Tarnished Tankard before, but he couldn’t be sure. He ordered two drinks, a warm meal, and a room for a few days, but only got stale bread and cold mutton, which was enough. 

Simon ate and drank ravenously, then immediately crashed out without sparing a conscious thought about the necromancer he’d just killed. The closest he came to that was choosing coins that didn’t have blood from the man’s finger on them when he paid for his accommodations from the dead man’s coin purse. 

In the morning, he woke with a headache that exceeded even his hunger, but he set aside both of those and leafed through the book he’d obtained for a few minutes before hiding it under the bed and heading back downstairs. At first glance, it looked like another volume of nonsense, but the man who’d owned it had known enough to raise the dead, animate them with a source of power other than his own soul, and make the damned things reassemble themselves. So, he clearly knew something.

Simon pondered that riddle while he drowned himself in warm porridge and beer. He didn’t want to get drunk exactly, but the innkeeper refused to serve him water, and he would take any source of hydration at this point. 

“You want water, you can go drink it out of the trough out back with the horses,” he laughed. 

Simon didn’t find it funny, but he didn’t complain. When he was finished with his meal, he went to check out the graveyard where he surreptitiously observed the scene of the crime. That part of the graveyard was swarming with men, most of whom were guards. They’d clearly found the person Simon had killed, but rumors about what they’d discovered hadn’t yet percolated into the crowds he walked through. 

He didn’t linger there and instead made his way to a public fountain. There, he had his fill of water to drink and shook off the growing buzz breakfast had given him. Then, he used a clear part of the reflection to confirm that the level had indeed been solved. 

“Well, there we go,” Simon said with a nod as he swirled the water to make the glowing words fade. 

He could leave now in good conscience, but of course, he wasn’t going to. Instead, he went back to the inn and spent the next few hours reading and studying the bone fragment.

Between the two, it was the bones that were the more interesting. While they explained the way he used the souls of the dead to fuel his creations, the book told him little about magic. It did tell him who the man was, though.

After that, it only took a little asking around to find out that Rigel Blackton was a prosperous merchant and a fixture of the southern market. That no one had seen him in days didn’t surprise Simon; what did was why the name hadn’t crossed paths with him in previous lives. 

You couldn’t see his aura, Simon reminded himself. You could have walked right past him in the street and never known it. 

That was one option. The other was less charitable. He was currently a little over a decade from the blows he’d dealt to the Unspoken. While there were doubtless witchhunters still walking around the country, it was entirely possible that there would be more witches and warlocks in the future because of his actions. 

“It could be that the blackheart killed him when it was still here,” Simon mused aloud in his room, but of course, he’d never be sure. An ancient necromancer certainly would have tried to figure out how that curse worked, and probably paid for it with his life. 

Simon didn’t break into the man’s home until his fourth day in Darndelle. That wasn’t because he wasn’t interested in the necromancer’s secrets, though. It was because it had been swarming with guards and agents of the crown on the second and third nights he checked. Obviously, they found the body, so they’d gotten here first, but he doubted that they’d found all that there was to find.

For better or worse, Simon was used to the way that men like this hid their secrets, and as he crept toward an easy place to climb for a second-floor window, he made a note to add that to the book he’d been writing on witchhunting. Secrets Don’t Stay Buried. He quite liked the sound of that. 

The first window he tried was locked, but the second had been left open a crack, and Simon crept in after ensuring there were no servants about. The house wasn’t guaranteed to be empty, after all. He went from room to room on the second floor looking for auras, but all he found were occasional signs of violence; the king’s men had not been gentle when they’d come for the servants of the necromancer, and Simon didn’t blame them for that one bit.

While he poked around the man’s bedroom, all he found there were ledgers that had already been rifled through. Simon didn’t bother to look for secret passages because the layouts of the surrounding rooms made sense. Instead, he went downstairs and repeated the process, looking for a void where there shouldn’t have been any. In the end, he didn’t find much to go on there and was about to go down into the basement when he realized there was a window missing. 

The downstairs study took up one corner of the house, next to the dining room. It was well-appointed and symmetrical, with bookshelves on two walls and windows on two walls. The only thing that would have made it perfect would have been one more window. If he’d lived here, he would have certainly had it constructed that way. So, he looked around there and quickly found evidence that the nearest bookshelf was a secret door. 

Finding it was easy, but finding how to open it was somewhat harder. Simon pulled on mundane books in vain for several minutes before he found that one of the intricate carvings in the wood was actually a switch. Pressing hard on that released a hidden latch, allowing the expensive furniture to swing a little to one side, revealing a narrow staircase. 

“Not so different from how I would have done it,” Simon thought back to his time in Ordanvale. In fact, for a moment, the deja vu was so strong he had to assure himself that he didn’t kill some version of dark Simon. 

“There’s just only so many ways to hide secrets in simple structures,” he told himself as he scrounged a candle and breathed life into an ember to light it. Then, he descended into the darkness, sure that whatever he found wouldn’t be pleasant.

While Simon wasn’t disappointed in his eternal quest to find more books, there were fewer than he would have hoped. Instead, this seemed to be a place for experimentation. There was a body on a sturdy table that had been embalmed, but not yet completed, and several skeletons that had been taken completely apart and were in the process of being put back together. 

At least that’s what Simon thought was the case. As he took the whole situation in, he quickly discovered they’d probably been working away until recently and then collapsed in a pile of bones.

The room was much larger than he would have given it credit for at first, which was an easy mistake to make considering that he only had a few candles lit. The place wasn’t a piece of an existing basement; it had been dug out by the man’s undead laborers. It actually burrowed out under the street, and then down it for a ways like tunnels, or catacombs.

Simon got flashbacks of the last necromancer he’d killed, who’d turned merchants and their guards into zombies to mine gold. This was similar, but apparently much more stealthy. “Where does he put all the earth?” Simon wondered aloud as he wandered around. “What is the point of all of this?”

While he found many tunnels, including some with strange markings and even words of power, he found few answers. It wasn’t until the third passage that he tried dead-ended at the external wall of someone else's basement that he found his first major clue. There, affixed to the wall, was a bronze plaque with a complex word cast in it. 

It took Simon a few minutes to parse it. When he was done, though, he was sure that unless the mage who had made it was very long-lived, it was certain that he'd borrowed the idea from somewhere else. In a sense, he’d enslaved everyone that lived in the dwelling it was attached to a minor degree. 

How did that even work? Simon hoped that Mr. Blackton had written that part down, because Simon desperately wanted to know that. One thing was for sure, though, he was glad that the Murani had never thought to use Dnarth Eszloum in such a way. He could almost imagine them attaching these to the walls of the city, and forcing everyone in it to obey the will of the Godking.

“He reinvented witchcraft from first principles,” Simon realized as he read the glyphs. “Only instead of marking the people individually, he’s marking their homes.”

Simon almost touched it, but thought better of it. It didn’t seem to be powered, but he didn’t want to change that or be affected by it. If it touched his soul, his other mark would trigger, and his run would be over. 

That put some things into perspective and helped him understand the graveyard a bit more. One of these tunnels undoubtedly led to the graveyard, and whatever mechanism powered the dead, another one probably led to wherever they were dumping the earth, but the rest… it was a maze down here, and Simon quickly realized he could spend months trying to figure out what the warlock he’d shot in the back had been up to.