Ch. 444 - A Bloody Mess

As the darkness deepened and the night passed, Simon wasn’t even tempted to sleep. Instead, he sat there, holding a sharpened stake in both hands as he looked out across the valley. At first, he’d meditated there just to calm his nerves, but the longer he sat, the more it became about seeing the weave of the world. 

Simon hadn’t used a wand in over a week, and while he wasn’t sure that trend would continue with the floors that lay ahead, it was beginning to pay dividends, and he was determined to savor it. He might have to smite some new threat with lightning at any point, which could set him back quite a ways. 

So, for now, he was content to enjoy the world like a painting as he kept an eye out for threats. He enjoyed the faint swirls of gray from the animals that populated the natural world, and the brighter whites that leaked through the windows of the family farm below. 

How pure would my sight become if I just spent a life in a place like this, raising a family and tending my fields, he wondered. Would it be enough to finally understand how all the pieces he’d discovered fit together? 

Without vampires, this seemed like a good place to live. The air was clean, the farms were fertile, and though he knew there were probably still goblins up in the crags of the mountains where he’d once dwelled, it felt safe. 

At least it did until he caught sight of the vampire. It appeared as a single bat cloaked in shadows, flying toward him, and once he realized what it was, that sight was enough to shake him from his vision completely. 

When that happened, he lost sight of the spec of evil completely in the dark sky, and it took him several seconds of concentration to get it back as flashbacks of his last time on this level assaulted him. The wall. The woman. The endless hunger for blood. 

Simon shook free of that just in time to see the black cloud stop coming toward him and move toward the house instead. To his true sight, the vampire’s aura was so dark that he made the night glow like twilight by comparison. This was an evil man who had done evil deeds and needed to be stopped.

It’s all playing out just like before, Simon thought as he rose to his feet and started to run down the hill toward the farmhouse. But why? Freya can’t be a part of this, can she?

He’d been able to assure himself that it was delusional to think that Vampires would return just because the level was the same, but clearly, he’d been wrong. The vampires were still here, and if Freya was too, he had no idea what he was going to do. 

Last time, he hadn’t come until he heard the sounds of struggle. This time, he was already almost there as the vampire used his gaze on the girl at the door and charmed his way inside. Is that Emma or Ara? He wondered as he pushed himself to go that much faster. Last time they’d barred the door behind the monster, and this time Simon had no desire to use a word of force to get inside. 

He managed to get in just before the girl shut it completely. She should have looked at him with fear, but instead she offered him only a dazed look as she opened the door wider to allow him in, just like the vampire. Simon ignored that for now and charged the monster. 

He’d only finished smashing the man of the house into the table, and hadn’t even yet bitten him, when he turned to face Simon. “Oh, another hero?” the vampire laughed as Simon charged the vampire with his sword held high in his left hand. “Isn’t that just—”

He never finished his taunt. As the vampire grabbed the wrist of Simon’s sword arm, he plunged the wooden stake he’d concealed in the sleeve of his right hand deep into the man’s unarmored chest. He felt the second weapon skitter off the bone and sink into his flesh. It wasn’t a deep wound, but it was enough.

Moments later, before anyone could react or even understand what he’d done, the stake caught fire, and the body burned from the inside out, falling to pieces. In moments, the monster looked more like a pile of cinders than a man.

The whole thing was over in seconds; it was anticlimactic, really. Instead of a knock-down, drag-out brawl, it was like his opponent had just vanished in a burst of smoke. There wasn’t even a struggle, really, just a painful wrenching of his wrist, and a moment of absolute panic as he was assaulted by intense deja vu, and then it was over, and there was nothing but screaming and ashes. 

He’d known what the threat was going to be, and he’d reacted. He’d even glimpsed what the vampire’s next actions were going to be thanks to his midnight aura, but Simon couldn’t say for certain if it had been the same one he’d met here twice before or not. 

He was still trying to figure that out when the farmer rose and thanked him profusely. “I don’t know how you knew he’d come for me, but if you hadn’t…” he trailed off, not wanting to further upset the crying women around them. Simon merely nodded, making no move to comfort them either. Their wailing was somehow cathartic. He hadn’t cried in a long time, but right now he wanted to.

This isn’t like the basilisk, he acknowledged. When I killed it, it was over, but now? There are more of them. That castle is almost certainly crawling with the bastards, just like before. 

Simon wanted to do anything but go to that castle. In fact, if he’d known where the portal to the next level was, he would have taken it, regardless of whether or not this level was complete.

“How can you be sure he didn’t bring this evil upon us, huh?” The farmer’s wife answered, practically daring him to defend himself, even though he did nothing of the sort. “Maybe he’s the one that the monster was looking for!”

“Hush, woman,” the farmer answered. He was still wincing when he moved and probably had at least a cracked rib, but if his pride was more important than his health, Simon wasn’t going to fix the problem. At least not right now.

Maybe I’ll use the wand on him when he goes to sleep, Simon told himself. Regardless, the last time the man had been nearly bled dry in under a minute. So, he was in much better shape than he’d been before. 

It was only as the chaos of the home calmed down that he did. Once the farmer’s wife stopped blaming Simon for what had happened, and the girls picked up the remains of dinner, they made tea, and Simon sat there, drinking and talking. He wasn’t even trying to understand the situation, though he should have been. He was too distracted for that, and for a bit, all he did was nod and listen to their tale of woe. 

That much was easy, since it sounded a great deal like the last time he’d been here. Only one major difference stood out: he eventually realized that no one was talking about a dark lady. Instead, from time to time, they said, ‘our lord,’ and once the farmer said, ‘Lord Souzirin,’ though he crossed himself and his wife chastised him for saying the evil name aloud. 

That snapped him out of his trance. “A lord, you said? No dark lady?”

“I believe he keeps a… harem of sorts in his walls,” the farmer answered, trying to keep his indelicate point vague in the presence of his girls. “That’s what the rumors say, at least, but there isn’t a Lady Sou— He rules alone, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“And the mountain clans? Are they too busy fighting the Murani to come to your aid?” Simon continued?

“The Murani haven’t threatened this region since the time of my father’s father,” the farmer answered, looking at Simon more strangely. “Why would the Charian lords help with a problem that the Brinnish lords have been unable to dislodge?”

“The Brinnish Lords?” Simon asked, dumbly repeating.

“Since I was a boy,” the farmer grumbled. “I don’t much care for it, but I suppose I’d have to pay taxes either way, and it doesn’t matter much who I pay them to.”

That gave Simon another wave of vertigo. He’d walked into fields of battle, but never into the aftermath where a whole territory had been conquered by someone else. And by me, likely, as he considered the timeline, and thought of his short time with the false duke. But why? Why would I conquer the Charan lowlands? Did I stop there? Did I conquer other adjoining lands, too?

If this farmer’s timeline was right, and he had no reason to doubt it, then this would have been a little over a decade after some version of himself had seized the throne of Brin. The idea boggled his mind. His enemy was to the north, not the south-east. He should be forging tighter alliances with the other nations and trying to build something bigger, not conquering them. 

For now, he set that aside and focused on the conversation. Then, when he got all of the answers he could, he stepped outside for some fresh air to try to understand how history might have played out his way. He was nearly 70 years beyond level zero at this moment, but unlike his last runs, the Murani didn’t seem to be a problem anymore, or at least a problem locally. It could be that they’d just shifted their attacks west to Schwarzenbruck or nations he wasn’t even aware of on other borders. 

As Simon pondered, he paced the bounds of the farmhouse perimeter. He’d told the family he was looking for any signs of further attacks, but mostly he was just thinking things through. It occurred to him only when he was about to go back inside that what he’d really been doing was looking for the portal to the next level. As much as he wanted to understand this one and what was happening in the wider world, he wanted desperately to get away from this place. 

Unfortunately, he never found it. It wasn’t in the house, the shed, or the barn, nor was it in any of the fence gates. That meant that he was going to have to go to the castle. That was the most logical place for it to be, after all. 

“I should just skip it,” he told himself. “I should go west, find a nice town somewhere near the capital to settle down and learn what I can, and then I can come here on level zero and level that fucking place with an earthquake and pretend this floor never happened.”

Ch. 445 - No Hesitation

Simon stayed there until morning, on guard the whole time, and constantly searching the sky for more dark magic, but nothing else tried to ambush him. When that was done, he borrowed the farmer’s horse just as he had in his previous attempt on this level, and rode straight toward Castle Gravenstone. 

The only real difference was his urgency. Last time he’d lost by seconds. So, this time, he spurred his horse and kept it at a gallop until his destination was close enough that he slowed to avoid attention. 

Simon spent that last leg riding up to the evil castle on the hill, examining it. While the villages he’d passed through on the way here looked about like they had before, according to his dim memories, the castle itself looked to have seen better days.

That was even truer when he got close enough to see that the place seemed to have only a single watchman and an open postern door. It was practically undefended, and when the man on the wall called out for Simon to identify himself, all he had to do was yell, “I’ll be right up with a message for your master,” and the man shrugged it off. 

Simon could have zapped him with lightning from there, but that was far too showy. Even though he didn’t see anyone else around, there probably was. So he waited until he’d tethered his horse and climbed the stairs. At the top, he’d been planning to push the man over the side, but once he got a good look at him, that determination wavered. 

What he saw tugged at his heartstrings too much. While the young guard didn’t have a radiant aura, it was clear to Simon that he wasn’t a bad person. That wasn’t what stayed his hand, though. What did were the tiny blotches of darkness here and there around his body. Some had faded to gray, but it looked like a spiritual pox more than anything.

It took several seconds for Simon to figure out that the paired markings were the spiritual scars of vampire bites. The older ones were gray and blurry, but the new ones were ebon flecks that made the light of the soul around them gleam all the brighter. Simon was reminded then of when his own hand had been tainted by the darkness of hell, and he wasn’t sure he could send someone to meet their maker with so much unearned evil. 

“Well, where’s the message?" the guard asked, interrupting his thoughts. Now that Simon looked past his aura, he could see the man was pale and thin, too. He was as threadbare as the rest of the castle. 

“It’s more of a question, really,” Simon asked. “Why haven’t you killed the bloodsuckers in their sleep?”

The guard’s eyes widened at that, and his hand went for his sword, but Simon closed his right hand over the guard’s and held the man’s blade in his sheath. “This doesn’t have to end in violence,” he continued. “You’re free to leave. In fact, that’s exactly what you should do. You should flee far and fast before your neighbors find out that your master is no more and decide it's time for vengeance.”

“What? He’s… ‘Lord Souzirin is gone?” the guard asked, with a voice heavy with shock and incredulity. “When did this happen?”

“About an hour from now, I’d wager,” Simon said, looking deep into the other man’s eyes. “No more. By sunset, there will be no more bloodsuckers in these walls or in this valley.”

Relief warred with something else in his eyes for a moment. Simon had just enough time to figure out that it was the dark magic of compulsion before the other man opened his mouth to shout an alarm. 

Before he could do that, Simon brought his head down hard against the other man’s forehead, stunning him long enough that he could choke him into submission. The two of them wrestled there atop the tower, hidden only by the crenelations as Simon berated himself. 

Of course, there’s a reason they didn’t handle this themselves, he chastised himself. You should have known better. You knew how strong Freya’s grip was better than anyone. 

Still, despite his error, he recovered and won against the underfed guard, then he stripped him, bound him hand and foot with strips of the man’s own tattered pants, and donned his helmet, cloak, and breastplate, so he could fit in a bit better. 

“I’ll hand this,” Simon said, patting the unconscious man on the head before hurrying off. “When you get free, you’ll finally be free, even.”

The next thing he did was rush to the tower where Freya had hidden. He had priorities, and the most important one was to kill whoever was in charge. Even if he was trying to save the humans worth saving, he still wasn’t about to risk getting bitten himself. Theoretically, the gaze of a vampire would kill him dead, but he didn’t want to test that.

Unfortunately, the tower was empty. That annoyed Simon, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. He checked the second tower on the far wall, too, before he went downstairs toward the crypt next.

During Simon’s second attempt, he took the threat of brainwashed guards and servants a bit more seriously and strode forward like he belonged. Anyone who looked at him for more than a few seconds obviously didn’t recognize him, but the few who got close enough obviously decided it wasn’t their business and scampered away, making themselves scarce. 

He bluffed his way into the basement like that. His confidence worked all the way until the last guard that was standing just inside what looked to be the crypt. Why he was standing inside with the door open instead of outside made sense as soon as Simon saw that the door could only be barred from the inside. 

Don’t want to lock yourself inside with them, but can’t abandon your post in case you need to lock the door, huh? Simon thought as he approached. I can understand that.

I made him feel good about his approach. He would have been screwed if he’d raised the alarm and that guy had gotten the bright idea to bar the door. As it was, though, he didn’t react until Simon was almost to him. 

“It’s too early for a relief, ain’t it?” the dark-haired man asked. “It can’t be lunch already.”

Simon didn’t answer. He just kept his head tilted forward enough that the helmet helped to hide his features. Then, when he was within arm's length, he struck, punching the guard in the throat. Normally, that blow would have dropped him, but his gorget absorbed much of the force. So, coughing, he stepped back and pulled out his dagger as he shouted for help.

“There’s an intruder in the crypt!” he bellowed, as he stabbed at Simon. 

Simon, for his part, let him thrust blindly, ignoring his cries until they were in the doorway. Then, he seized the man’s arm and used it to pull him off balance and out into the hallway, where he promptly retreated from the fight. 

He could have killed him. As dark gray as his aura was, he might even deserve death, but that could wait. Right now, he had some bloodsuckers to kill. 

Simon slammed the door and put the bar in place before the guard could get to his feet. Then, as the guard pounded his fist against the door, Simon turned and drew his first stake from his belt. 

“Someone get an axe!” the guard’s muffled yell came through the door. “We’ve got a maniac after our master!”

“Yeah, I’m the maniac,” Simon muttered to himself as he took in the scene. He was in a windowless stone room with a single exit, a lit lantern, and a whole lot of coffins. The walls contained a lot of the scribblings he’d seen on his way down here, but for now, he ignored them. Those could be studied after the undead had been made permanently dead.

The problem was actually quite a bit worse than it had been with Freya. There were more than a dozen coffins laid about the room. There was a large one on a dais in the back, and then a bunch scattered around it on the floor. 

While part of him wanted to go to the last one immediately, he decided to open the closest one first. When he flipped it open, he found a woman who had been made forever young by the vampire’s bite. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a trace of youthful innocence in her. Her aura was as black as any he’d seen, and her pretty face did nothing to stop him from driving a stake through her heart. 

A single pang of empathy rippled out from his heart when her eyes shot open from the blow, and her mouth opened in a silent scream, but that was only a natural reaction to a woman being murdered. Whoever this was, she hadn’t been human for a long time, and as soon as she started to come apart, any guilt about what he’d just done evaporated in the same way she did. 

Her beauty curdled first, in the same way a witch’s might, but flesh around her mortal wound rotted next as her corrupted flesh failed. It was a horrifying sight, but Simon kept watching, and after a few minutes, all that was left was a blackened skeleton and a coffin full of foul ooze. 

When he could learn no more, he shut the lid to minimize the smell of decomposition and moved on to the next coffin. The act might have been traumatizing for some to repeat over and over again, but for him, the grisly task was almost as cathartic as smashing statues on the basilisk level.

He was purging evil from the world and setting souls free. None of these people would thank him, but he was still setting them free.   

One at a time, he executed vampires, and they were completely helpless to stop him. Some of them managed to hiss or squirm before he brought down the stake, but that was the most they could manage. One after another, they perished, and while most of those who died were women just like the farmer had hinted at, there were men in the mix too, leaving Simon to wonder. 

Are they part of the Lord’s harem too, or does he just prefer to keep all of his spawn where he can see them to prevent intrigues, Simon wondered as he cut a bloody swath through the room. He’d never find out, of course. Even if they were capable of speech with the sun up, he wasn’t about to test his luck. The only good vampire was a dead vampire. 

Unfortunately, the mortal servant of this place disagreed. As Simon killed the first few, there had been shouting and a rising sense of urgency. Now, someone was going to town with an axe, trying to cut their way through the door. 

“Better make this fast,” Simon muttered, as he approached the last coffin, “As soon as they cut a hole through that thing, they’re liable to shoot me with a crossbow.”

Still, he wasn’t afraid; even if he bled out as he finished, this would still be a life well lived. Truthfully, he should have done this last one first. The only thing that prevented that was that, according to legends, the other vampires might have become human once more. While Simon doubted that, it would have made for a terrible choice. He would have had a much harder time killing a dozen sleeping people who were just flesh and blood.

I would have, if they were worth saving, he reflected, but they’re too far gone. Letting them continue like this after all they’ve done would be too cruel.

Simon should know. He’d had to live that life. Spending a couple of lifetimes as a mole or an owl would probably be a good palate cleanser for these poor souls.

Ch. 446 - Shadows of the Past

Simon expected something ugly when he opened the final coffin. It was larger and better built than the rest, but from the moment he opened it, the shadows from the black aura contained within leaked out like smoke. 

Simon stepped back to take that in, but the only current he could pull out of the miasma was hunger. Composed of black deeds and pain, it was suffused with a terrible hunger that Simon knew all too well. 

He pulled out one of his last few stakes and punished the sight so he could look beyond the shadow to the vampire himself. The man was a stranger to Simon, but he looked like a southerner of middle age. He probably wasn’t yet 40 when he’d been turned. Simon might have cared about that story at one point, but even without glimpsing his aura, Simon couldn’t help but see the plain man as vermin.  

Despite his pale complexion, he still had the ghost of tan olive coloring his skin. He was well dressed, too, and clearly in charge as he slumbered there in the crypt. 

Of course, it wasn’t really sleep. Simon knew that. The condition that vampires experienced was closer to a human having a night terror than anything else. They couldn’t move, but the whole time they lay still, they dwelled in dread of the light above. 

“Last one,” said, pulling out a fresh stake. The other ones were bloody and charred from repeated use. While he didn’t think a few drops of blood would do anything for the vampire lord that was about to die, it felt right to him. 

What felt less right was that the man managed to move as Simon drove the weapon down toward his unprotected heart. It shouldn’t have been possible, but as Simon lowered his arm with enough force to puncture the vampire’s thin skin and destroy his black heart, his near hand flashed up and grabbed Simon by the wrist as he opened his red eyes. 

Simon’s first instinct was to struggle, but before he did that, he did one thing that was even more important. He closed his eyes.

“I’ll rip your arm off before I let you stake me,” the vampire lord growled. “But death would be too easy after what you’ve done. I’ll break you apart piece by piece, and make you eat what’s left.”

Simon barely heard his threats. He was still impressed that he could move at all. He remembered the weight of the sun all too well when he’d hidden in caves and felt its light weighing on him through the stone itself.

The others only moved when they actually died. Why would he be— Simon wondered before the vampire’s vice-like grip sent a jolt of pain through his wrist as something broke. 

He didn’t see his injury because he’d shut his eyes, but then he didn’t need to for what came next. He moved his left hand above his right, not to push his fist down, though. He’d never win against a vampire’s strength. Instead, he traced the gesture of force for real for the first time. 

It was a simple movement. A joining of his thumb and third finger, a circling of his wrist, and a flicking motion of his first two fingers in the direction he wished to move something. In his fear, it wasn’t even perfectly executed, but it was enough. His magic sent the rough wooden stake rocketing out of his hand and into the prone form beneath it like a bullet. 

It tore at the soldier’s borrowed leather gauntlet and embedded deeply in the vampire. In fact, it launched with such force that it probably would have passed through him harmlessly were it not for the stone plinth that his casket rested on. The stake shattered when it hit that, and the vampire barely had time to gasp, “how…” before his body faded to ash. 

Compared to the others, it was a fairly dramatic display. There was no blood whatsoever, as there had been with his harem. There was barely any decay, either. It was like he’d been hollowed out, and as soon as Simon slew him, he popped like a dusty soap bubble.

The scent of sulfur was overpowering, and the sheer amount of malevolence that was dissipating in the room made Simon feel faint, but even as he stood there in a daze, looking past his throbbing arm to the now-empty coffin, he studied the fading patterns. 

When a human died, their aura was snuffed out almost instantly as their soul left their body, but here it was almost the reverse. The body had vanished in seconds without leaving even chunks of bone or vile decay the way the others had, but the afterimage of the man who had been there lingered, becoming more and more threadbare. 

While Simon didn’t see the man’s organs per se, it was like he was looking at pieces of the vampire’s failing soul, thanks to the darkness of the outlines, and he was entranced, right until a bolt sailed over his left shoulder, nearly clipping his ear. 

Simon spun, but even as he did so, he moved to his left, toward the nearest wall, which would protect him from further fire. It was a good move, too, because as soon as the first crossbowman moved away from the gap, the second one fired in the spot Simon had just been standing.

“Why are you still shooting?” Simon yelled when he was out of their line of sight. “Your master is dead. His magic can’t compel you anymore.”

That caused a pause, and apparently some bickering, but the second guard he’d thrown out of the hall before eventually yelled back. “The man might have been a son of a bitch, but he paid well, and you just ruined the whole arrangement.”

“So there’s nothing I can do to get you to go in peace?” Simon asked, pulling out his lightning wand. 

He tried to do so with his right hand first, but it hurt too much, so he switched to his left. Once armed, he peeked around the corner again and saw that the angry guard seemed to have been abandoned by his friends, which made what was probably coming next easier. 

“Peace?” the guard chuckled. “You’re the one who threw me, you prick. I’ll—”

He never got a chance to finish his threat. Simon turned and fired from cover, sending a long, slender bolt of superheated light at the petulant man. He never had a chance. His chainmail acted as a magnet for the energy and cooked him to death. In response, he managed to issue a strangled cry and fire his weapon again at random. Then he was just a steaming corpse on the ground.

Simon unbarred the mangled door and pushed the body out of the way with it, then he went upstairs to see what had become of the disused castle. 

What he found was chaos. The death of the vampire lord had clearly had an effect on those he held in thrall. When he’d gone down, it seemed like the castle was half abandoned, but now there were several people exiting, others fighting, and more hauling various pieces of loot across the courtyard. 

I’m probably going to have to go back upstairs and make sure no one wanders off with my mounts, he thought with a shake of his head. 

Simon didn’t care about the people hauling dresses or bags of cutlery and candlesticks across the yard. What he did care about was that someone was about to steal his horse. 

Simon dashed across the yard and put a stop to that just as the cook was tying another bag to the saddle. She didn’t seem like a bad woman, so he didn’t backhand her, but he did seize the reins from her before she could mount it. 

“Hey!” she yelled, pulling a cleaver from her sash. “That’s my horse, you here! If you try to steal it from me, I’ll slice you up like a ham. I’ll—”

“Ma’am, take your food and get out before you hurt yourself with that,” Simon admonished her with a smirk. He was more than a head taller than her, and had a sword on his belt, and she didn’t seem to care at all. “This horse isn’t any more yours than it’s mine, and if the farmer I borrowed it from doesn’t get it back, his family will go hungry.”

“Just who the hell do you think you are to tell me what to do?” she said, squinting at him, knife still raised.

“I’m the man who ended this awful situation,” he answered. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Y-you killed Lord S… You killed the monster that did all this?” she asked in disbelief. When Simon confirmed that, she apologized profusely and made her escape just as soon as her sacks could be untied. After that, she made her way out with the constant trickle of people. Which left Simon with quite the conundrum: how was he going to untie the guard AND keep someone from stealing his horse? 

In the end, he decided he couldn’t, so he flagged down a scullery maid who seemed confused as to what she was doing next. Simon chose her because she had the brightest soul of the group, and when he explained the problem, she practically volunteered and ran upstairs with a kitchen knife to free the half-naked man.

When he came downstairs, he didn’t even attack Simon as the other guard had. He just thanked him for ending it. “It’s like the shadow on my soul is gone,” he explained. 

Simon could see that it wasn’t gone by a long shot. The man was riddled with shadowy scars. Still, he didn’t tell the guard that; he just gave him back his armor and cloak and wished him well. 

Maybe in a few years, with some healthy living under his belt, it will be the case, Simon thought to himself as he watched the man leave along with most of the rest of the staff. 

When that happened, Simon decided it was probably time for him to leave, too. He asked the maid, whose name turned out to be Millie, if she’d take the horse back for him when she confessed to having nowhere to go. “It’s not far,” he told her. “And the family is very kind. I can draw you a map.”

She declined, though, which was a shame. More than anything Simon wanted to search the catacombs before he left this level for good, but no one else seemed trustworthy, and he wasn’t about to screw up and lose this farmer’s horse every time he visited this place. 

“I guess that it will have to wait until tomorrow,” he told himself as he mounted the old gray mare and started rising slowly back. 

After he was alone, he pulled out his wand of lesser flesh, and used it to knit the fracture bone. It wasn’t quite a pure healing spell, the way he’d carved it, so there would likely always be a bump on the bones there, but he doubted his first life deeper into the Pit would be a long one. 

After that, he tried to come up with a plan for what he was going to do next, but mostly the overwhelming sense of relief he felt that the vampires were dead and he was still human kept interrupting him. He wanted to focus on runes on the walls he’d glimpsed, but just being out of that shadowed place was enough to make him feel alive. 

He’d been carrying around a weight in his heart since his first encounter with Freya long ago, and this finally let him breathe easy. So, he spent most of the way back just waving to other travelers on the road and whistling as he went, and he regretted none of it. That was doubly true when he reached the farmhouse where all this started and pronounced that the deed was done. 

The family was shocked, but his host refused to allow the moment to go unmarked. “This is the happiest day of my life since my youngest was born healthy,” the man declared as he dragged Simon to the nearest village where they could properly celebrate in the pub, “And we’re damn sure gonna mark the occasion. Hell, we’ll have a local holiday and celebrate it every year if need be.”

“It’s nothing,” Simon insisted, but it wasn’t. He knew that. Humility demanded he downplay the event, but that wasn’t likely to last much past the first few pints, and really, it felt good for someone to celebrate his achievement, even if they didn’t know the real reason that it was such a powerful personal victory.