Ch. 441 - Barely Recognizable

Simon went without food the day before, but because his little companion was now awake, he stopped hiking early that night and hunted up a rabbit. It was skinny and barely worth the effort, but he still dressed the carcass and roasted it so that Nara would have something to eat. 

She was not grateful for the charred flesh or the water. She wanted only her mother and some porridge, but Simon could provide neither. Though she barely ate a thing that night, her first words the following morning were, “I’m hungry.”

Simon had planned for that and saved her a leg of cold rabbit, which she sullenly accepted. As she ate and walked, she wouldn’t even look at him; he’d clearly betrayed her with this maneuver to force her to eat what she had refused the night before. He was only able to make that up to her that evening when they stopped in a village with an inn. It used up more than half of Simon’s scrounged coins, but he paid for a room, a bath for the girl, and fresh bread with butter, just to try to make her happy. 

That didn’t stop her from crying herself to sleep, but Simon figured that would be a part of her life for a long time to come. If I just went to the wyvern level and waited quietly for a few decades, I could be there in time to save her parents, or even to defeat the centaurs, he reflected before dismissing the notion.

While he wanted to save everyone, he wasn’t going to wait decades each time to do it. As much as he wanted to, he’d been worrying more and more lately about the consequences of having too many Simons in the world at any one time. Something about the way the threads of fate started getting weird told him he should probably try to minimize that going forward. 

 Wouldn’t that be ironic, he thought. Making the whole world crash, killing everyone while trying to save them. 

Instead of lying awake half the night thinking about that, he went back downstairs once Nara was asleep and diced with a few of the other merchants that were still awake. Simon often gambled for fun and for information. Losing a few coins and getting drunk made him seem harmless. 

Tonight, though, he wasn’t after information; he was after cash, and so instead of making the wrong moves, he made the right ones. Most dice games had flaws in their odds. Simon had understood that for dozens of lives. Some players seemed to get that, too. Certain bets were considered lucky for that reason, but they didn’t have the math to understand why that was the case.

Simon spent three hours in front of the fire, and quit only when a new player brought in loaded dice that felt different in his hand. In that time, Simon more than doubled the money he’d started with and left more than a few unhappy faces wanting a chance to win it back. 

“Jussst one more throw!” a bearded man with angry eyes insisted. He had a darkness to his aura that indicated a problem, but Simon’s vision was still too blurry to say if the man was just a liar and swindler or something worse.

Simon ignored the request, but he did wedge a dagger in his doorframe for the first time in many lives. He didn’t expect someone to try to slice his throat for a handful of coppers, but he had Nara to consider. 

Fortunately, there was no violence that night, and in the morning Simon treated the girl to a steaming bowl of porridge before they were off again. As they left the village, he wanted to buy a donkey; that would have gotten them to Crowvar faster, but for once, he didn’t have the cash for such a luxury. 

“I guess a new Daisy will have to wait until later,” he breathed as they left town while most everyone else was still asleep. 

He didn’t really need the donkey, though. After another day, he saw Crowvar in the distance. He wasn’t surprised to see it, but he was surprised to see the condition it was in. In Simon’s last few trips through here, it had been an ugly, war-scarred shadow of the city he’d lived in, but now, it was in pretty good shape. 

As they got closer, he could see that a war had indeed been fought. He clearly hadn’t done anything that had prevented the orcs from coming, but whoever had done the defending and the rebuilding had done a better job of it than old Baron Raithwaite. He’d hid inside his keep while the city had been trashed, but someone had held the line and kept the worst of the damage to one long section of the city wall that had clearly been knocked down and rebuilt with fresh stone. 

The difference was even clearer when he got inside. The last time he’d been here, most of the city had shown some kind of damage, but this time, if he hadn’t been looking for it, he might never have found it. That made him smile. 

Finally, someone is taking care of this place, Simon thought with a satisfied nod.

Most of his memories of this city weren’t very positive. In fact, most were terrible, but he still took satisfaction in the knowledge that with the problem removed, things had gotten better. If he’d left Varten here to be rescued and take over the city, it would have stayed the same shithole it had always been. 

Part of him thought he should find out who the new boss was and send them flowers. He might have, if he had the ready coin. Instead, even as he opened his mouth, he froze, as flowers triggered a somber memory. 

This is the first time I’ve come back without visiting Freya’s grave, he realized. He felt bad about that. In fact, he felt a compulsion to rectify the oversight at that moment, and only Nara looking at him strangely, as if to wonder why he’d stopped, that he forced himself to move again. 

Simon felt like he’d put a lot behind him with Zoa, but he didn’t feel like he’d put so much behind him that he’d forget to honor his first wife. Instead of visiting that little unmarked plot of land, he vowed to gather some wildflowers and visit her tomorrow. For now, he needed to find them a place to stay for a night or two while he figured out where to drop Nara off.

While she’d been cranky on the last leg of the trip, that quickly faded when he secured her some warm vegetable soup, while he settled for some bread and cheese. Simon was hungry enough to eat both their meals, but he had to save enough silver to do a little dicing in the evening. 

For now, he merely listened to the chatter, hoping to learn a bit about the new Crowvar. There, he gained little. There was plenty of gossip, and even some talk of the centaur menace, but most of the grievances that the other travelers discussed were too personal to parse much, either way.

“The caravan is late,” one man grumbled. “Elsie never misses a deadline. Something’s wrong.” 

Another said, “It’s hard to feel too bad for the villages when they coulda moved behind these stout walls a long time ago. Lords above know the Baron told them to.”

Simon didn’t even try to figure out who they were referring to, but it was clear that the situation was coming to a head. Some whispered the King's men were coming south to help; others insisted it was a rumor. Simon took Nara up to their room before the tension of the room soaked into her.

He stayed up there until dark and told her a bedtime story to try to get to sleep. She asked, “When will mommy and daddy get here?” but Simon just changed the topic. They had enough problems without the tears that would follow. 

When that was done, he checked the mirror and confirmed that he’d done enough to solve this level. Then he went back downstairs and diced some more. This time, he wasn’t trying to win big and alienate people. He just gathered stories and news as he made a few coins. The news wasn’t so grim that he felt the need to change his plans with Nara, but it was bad enough that it tempted him to stay. 

He asked around, and there were a couple of orphanages in the town these days, in light of everything that had happened. So, that was probably the best place for the girl to end up, regardless, providing that he saw bright auras instead of dark ones the following day. 

Only the fact that the new Baron seemed to have a decent head on his shoulders kept Simon from spending another life trying to grind the horselords into dust. The way people spoke of him made it sound like he was already spending half his time in the field routing the bastards, and Simon doubted he’d have to come back to this level another time. 

It’s always best if people solve their own problems, Simon reminded himself as he trudged upstairs to bed. Just because every battle needs to be fought doesn't mean you have to be the one to do all the fighting. 

That night, he slept poorly, though if he was honest, it was more because he hated the idea of dumping the girl than because of the coming war. Centaurs weren’t orcs; they wouldn’t breach fortifications. 

In the morning, he bought Nara some oatmeal and left her with the innkeeper’s wife, who seemed half smitten with her, and went to run his errands. Before he visited the orphanages, though, he left the walls and went to gather white daisies and blue forget-me-nots. Then he made the trek to Crowvar’s cemetery, where he found something unexpected: there was a grave where there shouldn’t be one. 

For a moment, he worried he’d crossed timelines to one where he actually marked Freya’s falling, or that his doppelganger had left him a surprise. It proved to be neither. 

What Simon found on the plot of land that should have been empty was a war memorial. That angered him, even though he had no reason to be upset. This might be sacred ground to him, but to everyone else it was just an unused plot in the cemetery. With a recent war, it wasn’t at all surprising that the cemetery had grown. 

The monument itself was nothing special, artistically. It was some brave nameless soldier, embossed into a large stone slab, along with a list of names of those who had fallen and a prayer to the gods to “Vouchsafe the souls of these heroes forevermore.”

It wasn’t what he’d expected to find, but it was a version of a battle he’d fought in before, the day before he lost her, so it was probably a fitting epitaph for a woman who never existed. He stood there for a long minute in reflection of Freya, and the dimly remembered tides of battle on that terrible day, all the while trying to figure out who the man they’d used for the engraving was. 

He looked too familiar for Simon to believe that it was someone who had simply been invented. It wasn’t the Duke, or even an aged-up version of Varten or his brother. It didn’t look anything like him. Still, there was something familiar about the man. 

“He must have been a guard that performed especially valiantly that day,” Simon murmured as he finally stooped to deposit his little bouquet of wildflowers at the base of the memorial with the other offerings.

He felt a little silly doing so, but not as silly as he felt when someone picked that moment to ride up to him. “Did you know someone who died on the walls?” the voice asked. 

If the statue had been naggingly familiar, then the voice was instantly recognizable. Varten. Much older than he’d been when Simon had left him, but there was no mistaking the flat affect, or the aristocratic tone, even after all these years. 

Ch. 442 - Someone Else’s Grave

Meeting Varten wasn’t something he’d expected or even planned for, and for a moment Simon stood there frozen, unwilling even to turn around. He nodded, coughing before grunting, “A long time ago,” in an attempt to disguise his voice as his mind raced.

He stood to leave, but as he did so, he heard the sound of the boy dismounting. No, not boy, Simon corrected himself, Man. It had been decades since Simon had left the Broken Tower. Varten was probably a little older than him now. 

Suddenly, it all made sense. Simon had heard people use the Raithewaite name the night before, but he’d assumed that it had referred to some distant cousin, or perhaps someone else taking up the name of the old leaders to make the transition easier. That hadn’t been the case at all, though. 

It was obvious that he’d come back here if the Whitecloaks were done. That realization surprised him. He should have realized it before. After what he’d done, the order was finished. Normally, that revelation would have merited a lot of thought, and maybe even a celebration, but right now all he wanted to do was get away from Varten before the boy realized who he was. 

Still, he didn’t get the chance. Even as he stood, Varten came and stood beside him, bowing his head in a silent prayer. That struck Simon as odd. It was probably the most humble thing he’d ever seen the boy do, which was saying a lot given all the menial chores he’d tasked him with as a younger man. 

Simon took the opportunity to turn, but his way was blocked, not just by the baron’s horse, but by the two men riding up to join them. “Not so much as a by your leave, your Lordship?” the first man asked as Simon went to move past him. 

Simon shook his head but wasn’t tempted to respond. The less he used his own voice, the better. “Ease off, Jimen,” Varten sighed, turning toward the brewing altercation slowly. “The man was just paying his respects. He’s obviously traveled a long way, so he might not even be my subject, or even know who I… Enis? Sir Enis?”

Simon’s heart fell in that moment, as he thought of all the ways that this could go wrong. The boy was trained as a witchhunter for years, and there was no way he’d accept Simon’s hand regrowing as a lucky break or a miracle. Worse, it wasn’t like Simon would strike him down, even if given the chance. 

He thought about all of that as Varten approached him with an expression of shock plain on his face, but mostly he thought about Nara. If Varten slew him, or worse, burned him at the stake, would the girl suffer for that? She will when they find my wands, he realized. He hadn’t even thought about the consequences of leaving them in the inn, but now he couldn’t think of anything else.

Still, Varten stopped halfway to Simon, and said, “No, it couldn’t be you, could it? Sir Enis is dead, and if he were still alive, he’d be almost 60.”

Simon noted that he left out the extra hand, but said nothing. Maybe Varten didn’t want to remember his old master that way. Simon didn’t ponder what that might mean, exactly; instead, he felt a wave of relief pass through him. 

“I mistook you for someone else,” the baron said, still pale.

In that moment, something clicked. Simon looked past the boy who had become a man, to the war memorial that stood behind him, and saw the monument for what it was. It was him. The statue of Simon outside the orphanage in Darndelle might be long gone, but someone had erected a cruder one of him here, at a battle he hadn’t even fought. 

He felt a wave of vertigo then, as Varten moved past him, as he tried to connect those dots. A boy who had become a man, but still yearned for the man that Simon had been a lifetime before, and then to meet him here, now. For a moment, the odds seemed impossible, but really, the only unlikely thing was that they met here at this grave. If Simon destroyed the Whitecloaks, then this was always where Varten was going to end up; if Simon thought it through, he would have known that from the moment he saved Nara, and gone south to the City of the Crossroads instead. 

“He was my father,” Simon lied.

He wasn’t sure why he did it. He could have left well enough alone, but he could see that Varten needed closure, and for whatever reason, Simon couldn’t walk away from that. He owed his squire too much for that; he’d cut off Simon’s arm and saved his soul in the process. 

That stopped Varten dead in his tracks, and he turned to face Simon again. “Who was your father? The person that died, or Sir Enis?” the baron asked. Simon noted not just the touch of gray in Varten’s thin goatee but the way his sharp eyes focused on him. 

It’s easier to be a good leader when you can detect who’s lying to you, Simon reminded himself.

Instead of answering and risking the lie, Simon nodded and pointed. “That man,” he said. “The person who inspired this statue. He and I are related.”

“That’s just the watcher of the west wall,” Varten’s lieutenant answered. “He was no knight, he—”

The man stopped speaking immediately as the baron raised a finger, so Simon continued. “I don’t know that he was a knight either, not truly, I heard some stories, but there were so many secrets that…”

Varten nodded. “Aye, sir Enis was a man of many secrets,” he agreed. “I can’t tell you all of them, or even most of them, but I can tell you that he was a knight. No, he was better than that. He was the best of us.”

Simon was touched by his old squire’s words, but kept the emotions those words raised in him down as hard as he could. That wasn’t just because it was the right move; it’s because that thrill of connection and gratitude erased his sight for a moment. 

Just keep him emotional, he won’t be able to tell the truth from the fiction, Simon reminded himself, as the baron insisted that Simon return with him to Crowvar. 

Simon tried to decline the honor, but Varten wouldn’t hear of it. “You’re the first person I’ve met to know Sir Enis in decades,” he insisted. “You’re not leaving until I get stories about the man he was before he joined the… Well, before I knew him.”

Still, Simon tried to beg off. “I only have memories of him from when I was very young,” he answered, not sure the timeline even lined up for that to work. “He was… Well, my mother said he was a good man, and there’s a painting of him in our home to this day, so when a family friend… A merchant saw this memorial and said that both figures were one and the same. Well, how could I not come to see if it was true?”

The lie was blatant, and silly even, but with all the emotions here, it was almost certainly undetectable. Better, though, it was so ridiculous that it almost had to be the truth? If he were Enis’s son, and he’d come from far away, then how else would he have even known about this statue?

Varten didn’t even question it. He didn’t question anything at all. Instead, he clapped Simon on the back and apologized. “He didn’t fall here, or even recently, I’m afraid, but he lived a life worthy of being remembered, so I used him as a symbol, even if no one else will ever know his name.”

The baron shook his head ruefully. “Well, no one but you and I, and I suppose your mother, if she—”

“She’s gone,” Simon hastily added. “I’m all alone in the world now, except, of course, for the little girl I picked up on the road a few days ago. A refugee from a burned-out village.”

Varten shook his head. Simon had dropped Nara’s identity very specifically to try to tangent the conversation, but Varten would not be dissuaded. Normally, Simon was used to steering these sorts of conversations, but whether it was  because Varten had spent years dealing with Simon’s tactics as a child, or simply because he was on the back foot about this whole situation, he always returned to the topic at hand. 

Before they made it back to the baron’s fortress home in the heart of Crowvar, Simon had been forced to invent a mother, anecdotes about his father from when he was very young, a few siblings, and a hometown only a few days' ride from the capital. For the village he came from, at least, he picked a place where he was fairly certain he’d never taken Varten, but some of the other details got sloppy. 

He’d used the first woman’s name that had come to mind, which had turned out to be Zoa. That was unfortunate, but what was more unfortunate was that it was foreign. Varten didn’t balk at that either. Instead, he just nodded and said, “So he did marry a foreigner. I always wondered how he knew so many languages. That makes sense.”

“It does,” Simon agreed. “Sim… Sir Enis is… was the only real warrior of our line, but I have ancestors that were merchants, healers, and travelers of every sort.”

When they reached the baron's manor, he was invited to sup with the man’s family. Simon tried to beg off, reminding him, “I have Nara to fetch. She doesn't have anyone to care for her.”

“I’ll send someone to fetch her,” Varten answered, “and see that she’s given a good meal and tucked in for that night.” 

That was the only reprieve that Simon got. He just waved him off and then introduced Simon to his wife and children. The woman seemed affronted that a commoner would share their table until Varten said, “he’s the son of a dear, dear friend, and he’s come a long way. He’ll always be welcome here.”

That mollified her, and for a time, the conversation about Sir. Enis decreased. That was both good news, though, and bad. The good news was that Simon didn’t have to keep talking about himself in the third person, but the bad news was that Varten was now much more focused on him, and on his answers. Worse, he didn’t seem nearly as emotional as before, so Simon had to try to tell some version of the truth just in case. 

As the guest, Simon was the center of attention. So, he framed himself as a traveler who had been to many places. That was true. It was even true that he was following in Sir Enis’s footsteps. Only the children’s questions made it hard to keep up for a while. 

“You came all this way because you heard about a statue?” one boy asked. “But Crowvar isn’t even anywhere important.”

“I’ve been to many less important places than Crowvar,” Simon confessed. It was true, too. He could list off a hundred villages that he’d probably never visit again, but some places like this one just kept drawing him back in. History had a pull to it, and he and Crowvar had a lot of history.

“Why aren’t you a knight like your dad?” the older boy asked. “I’m going to be the Baron like my father.”

Simon smiled at that and congratulated him. In truth, both boys were spoiled, but not nearly so bad as Varten and his brother had been. The cycle had been broken, and for that much he was grateful. 

Ch. 443 - Ghosts of the Past

Dinner was neither rushed nor drawn out, but as soon as Simon set down his fork for the last time, he was quickly ushered off to Varten’s study after the briefest of pauses to check on Nara. She sleepily bragged about all the sweets she got to eat. As far as Simon was concerned, he was the best thing to come out of this complication, and enough to distract him momentarily from the history of this place. 

Three glasses of wine had loosened his mind, and hours of talking about the man he’d been had bathed him in nostalgia, which made it impossible for Simon not to see the past everywhere they went. The dining hall was where he’d dueled Varten for the first time, the hallway was where he’d impaled the old baron to a door with a crossbow, and the study they eventually retreated to was where Simon had been garrotted only a century or so before.

It wasn’t worrying, or even humbling anymore; it just was. Really, more than anything, it made him want to go deeper into the pit. He’d been running in circles for centuries now. 

Whatever happened to that speedrun you wanted? He teased himself as he sat down in the comfortable chair he was reasonably sure he’d died in, and accepted a snifter of brandy from his onetime squire. 

“All of this really isn’t necessary,” Simon repeated for the hundredth time, even though he knew Varten wouldn’t listen to him. This was no longer about getting answers that Sir Enis’s son couldn’t possibly have; Simon had become Varten’s confessor, for things that he would never say. 

The only problem with that was the oaths and the secrets. Simon could see it in the pained expression on the man’s face. He’d been a gentleman, if a bit forceful during their meeting and through dinner, but as the drinks added up, and he became more lubricated, the dignity and the manners fell away, and Simon saw something of the boy he’d once helped civilize.

That familiar arrogance was still there, but it had been tempered by the world, and he liked to think by their time together. After that, it was just drinking and talking. Fortunately, he was better at lying drunk than Varten was at finding problems in his story. As the night progressed, it was Varten who ended up doing most of the talking anyway. 

He never quite said the words Unspoken or Whitecloak, but he was clear enough about what he meant that anyone could have figured out the broad strokes. Simon could easily read between the lines, and the longer that he listened, the worse he felt. Not for destroying the order; he was okay with that, happy, even. 

“It wasn’t your father’s fault, of course,” Varten repeated again and again, like he was willing it to be true. “Some said he was to blame, but the rot was much deeper. By that point, Sir Enis was terribly injured; I’m not sure he even had a hand in the outcome.”

The other man flinched as he realized what he’d said. A hand. It was all Simon could do not to smirk. Decades later, the guilt of cutting off the limb still haunted Varten. Simon wanted to give him a hug and forgive him. Hell, he wanted to thank him for doing as he was told, but instead, he changed the topic for the fifth time to the centaurs, the orcs, and Varten’s return to his ancestral home. 

Simon didn’t learn anything that he didn’t already know, but those were less emotionally laden topics than both of them, and it was easier to drink and discuss war stories than relive past sins. As midnight approached, he was relieved to find they were no longer talking about Sir Enis at all. Instead, the two of them discussed Varten’s adventures and the steps he’d taken to set things right when he returned home, which Simon found to be far more interesting. 

Varten had murdered the noble who had been installed here on his family's death when he stepped down, which was a tad harsh in Simon’s mind. “Cut him down like the dog he was,” were his exact words. “Just because he was my father’s distant cousin doesn’t mean he can call himself a Raithwaite.”

Only the timing of the orcish attack had prevented the King from cracking down on him for that, and afterward, he’d been a hero, so he was basically untouchable. It was neat timing, and Simon hoped he’d remember that through the haze of alcohol for his notes. 

On the whole, Varten had been more than a little draconian, but his people had benefited from that, so on balance it was probably fine. I’ve certainly killed my share of bandits that could have probably been rehabilitated, Simon reminded himself. 

Simon went on to be roaringly drunk that night in one of Varten’s guest bedrooms, but at least he didn’t need help getting to bed. It took Simon and another footman to drag Varten to his room and pour him into the master bedroom, where an annoyed wife was waiting for him in a dressing gown.

The following morning, Simon didn’t stay long. In fact, he intentionally left before Varten was up, because the longer he stayed, the more likely he was to slip and unravel any number of threads; this was a happy ending for Varten, and the last thing Simon wanted was to spoil it. 

On his way out, he lifted a few things from the noble’s home and only felt a little bad about it. He stole a clean shirt of Varten’s that was better than his own, and a nice knapsack with a shoulder strap, because he was tired of carrying his ratty bag. The most important thing he pilfered, though, was a small silvered hand mirror. 

He wanted to study some of the voluminous notes he’d made about his last level now that he would be alone by his campfire, and that was currently impossible. So, unless he was going to use a word of metal to flatten his last silver coin into a mirror, he needed a backup plan. 

They won’t miss a mirror, he assured himself. They won’t even miss me. 

He’d planned to leave Nara here with them, of course. It was ideal and better than any orphanage for the poor girl.

What he hadn’t expected to find was the girl being doted on by the lady of the house. The woman had taken it upon herself to give the girl an elaborate breakfast, and there was no way that Simon could tear the girl away from such an elaborate feast of sweetcakes, honeyed bread, and fresh fruits. 

So, while the girl feasted, he chatted with the noblewoman on the far side of the room, and explained, “I’m sure I mentioned it to you last night, but the girl is a war orphan I found injured by the roadside a few days ago, I can’t take her with me, and her parents will never come.”

“Poor dear,” the woman mouthed coldly, but Simon could see the truth behind her words. “She seems such a sweet girl, too, for a commoner.”

She might act disaffected, but there were pink swirls blossoming across the surface of her aura whenever she looked at Nara, and Simon didn’t need sharper vision to understand that. Varten’s wife was a woman who longed for a daughter. He saw that last night, drunk as she sighed and scolded her way through her boys’ antics.

“Well, the Baron offered to find her a good home,” Simon said absently. “She is one of his subjects after all.” Varten’s wife said something noncommittal then, but she couldn’t hide her enthusiasm as Simon walked off to say his goodbyes. 

The girl, for her part, obviously didn’t understand that his goodbye was forever. She was too distracted by food to really listen, and she smiled and nodded as she continued to stuff her face with sticky fingers. 

Simon made no real effort to drive the point home, though, either. He might have saved her, but he’d tried to feed her rabbit, so he wouldn’t be remembered nearly as kindly as the nice lady with the sweets, and he was okay with that.

Honestly, he hoped they'd adopt her, or at least keep the girl on as a maid when she grew up. Simon didn’t know what her destiny was supposed to be, but he would make it a point to find out, and not just because he was growing more interested in the moments in history that Helades thought were worth intervening. 

Simon took twice as long to get back to Nara’s burned-out village as he had with the poor girl slowing him down, but that was because he took generous breaks each day to consult his mirror. He was no longer in a hurry, so every time a new question popped into his mind, he focused on it, which was no small thing. These days, his curiosity was much more ravenous than his other appetites.

He spent some time reviewing the gestures he hadn’t yet committed to memory. He practiced them too, to a small degree, though he didn’t outright cast anything.

Mostly, though, he read through the Necromancer’s voluminous collection. Reading pictures of books could be a pain on the small, blurry surface, but he made do, and the more he read, the more he was intrigued. The Necromancer painted an interesting theory of the world that lined up with some of Simon’s own observations. 

The merchant apparently used much of his wealth in search of the ruins that appeared and disappeared in the deserts to the north, and though they rarely gave up their secrets he paid a great deal when a rider turned up an artifact of metal or stone that had survived the ravages of time. 

By the time he reached his destination, part of him wanted to give up on descending into the next level of the Pit and strike off in search of ruins to test out some of these ideas on, but he resisted. 

“One more level,” he told himself. “You clear it, you can finally see something new. You clear seven more, and you can ask Helades about it if you want.”

Simon probably wouldn’t. At this point, he had his heart set on the reality knot. He needed to know, did the gods use the same magic as he did? Did the denizens of hell? That was what he truly needed to understand. Was he learning just the tip of a larger iceberg, or was it the first hints of everything? He didn’t know, but the way that so many of these warlocks seemed to be groping around in the dark in the same general direction as him, it seemed likely that it was more the latter than the former. 

So, when Simon reached the portal, he didn’t hesitate; he just strode through with his hand on his hilt just in case. The location was familiar. Some part of him had expected the gateway to take him some place besides this damnable orchard, but here he was, face to face with one of the worst levels in the entire pit. He’d spent so much time not thinking about that that the sight of the familiar valley hit him like a slap in the face. 

“Freya is dead,” he told himself, willing away the stirrings of a panic attack blossoming in the depths of his soul. “Or maybe she’s alive, and has grandkids, but either way, she’s not a vampire, and she’s not here. This level is about something else now, like Darndelle was.”

Yeah, something worse, he added silently as he took a few deep breaths. 

It probably wasn’t vampires, but even so, it wasn’t immediately obvious what that something else might be. The scenery was idyllic, and while Simon didn’t know exactly where the exit gate on this level was, he was pretty sure it was somewhere on the little farm he could see below. The problem was that nothing in particular seemed to be wrong.

“Of course, nothing seemed wrong when the place was being ruled over by bloodthirsty vampires either,” Simon reminded himself. “At least not during the day.”

With a sigh, Simon gathered a few branches and then sat down against the nearest tree and started carving stakes with a knife. He wanted to believe this wasn’t vampires, but he would be ready, in case it was.

As he worked, he looked at the distant bulk of Castle Gravenstone and wondered if anything had changed there. “You can use magic any time you want,” Simon reminded himself. “You could just nuke the castle from here with greater greater fire. It’s the only way to be sure.”

No, he shook his head, not only was that kind of reach nearly impossible without attaching a greater word of distance, but he probably didn’t need to go back there at all.

A tremor of fear went through his hand, but he mastered it. Part of him wanted to just skip this level and move on, but he dismissed that, too. With his current countermeasure, he’d die as soon as Freya or anyone like her tried to touch his soul to command him, but somehow that was cold comfort as the sun set in the distance.