So today is a good news bad news situation. I posted Chapter 450, which comes after chapter 449 of course, BUT, apparently I misnumbered the chapters somewhere along the way, and numbered up to chapter 449 twice.

I have no idea how that happened, but the result is, that I skipped a few chapters in today's now deleted post. The answer... the only answer to solve this, is a mega block of chapters that connects the actual chapter I should have posted with the incorrectly released chapters.

This will give everyone plenty to read. I'm very sorry for any accidental spoilers.

Ch. 450 - Somewhere New

All that Simon could say was that wherever they were, it wasn’t Castle Gravenstone. The stones were a different shade of gray; they lacked the scratches that he’d grown used to, and the air smelled distinctly different. Gravenstone had smelled like old death that had turned to dust, but this new tunnel had just enough dampness that the death here was still fresh, and he could taste the hint of copper on his tongue. 

Despite that, he felt certain that the place they stood was at least built by the hands of man, but that was it. Well, something like man, at least, he reminded himself as the spider-filled ruins flashed across his mind. He certainly hoped he wasn’t in a place like that again. He’d never managed to find his way out, and right now, finding a path to safety for Millie was paramount. 

“Stay behind me,” he whispered, “and cover your lamp as much as possible. There could be trouble ahead.”

“Trouble?” she whimpered. “Let’s go back…upstairs, we’ll have the light of the moon and—”

Simon had planned to cut her off with another rebuke, but the sound of his sword sliding out of his sheath was enough to silence her. “There is no way back,” he whispered to her as he started walking down the dark hallway. “I wish there was, but… Well, I’ll explain it to you later.”

Millie said nothing after that. She walked behind him like a ghost, with only the thin beams of light created by her lantern to assure him that she was still there. That was good, because in all likelihood, they were one shouted alarm from an ugly death. 

The screaming reoccurred every minute or so, but as they got closer to the source, there were words mixed in as well. He couldn’t hear them well enough to be certain of what was being said, but the tone made it clear they were demands. It became clear to Simon before he even reached the door that he was listening to someone being tortured.

“Wait here,” he whispered to Millie. “And scream if you see anyone coming.”

That last bit made her pale, but she nodded spasmodically as Simon opened the door as slowly and smoothly as he dared. Aufvarum Uuvellum would be a good spell to use here to dampen the screech of these hinges, Simon realized. It would have prevented him from hearing anything in the hallway, but he still might have considered it if he’d known the gestures for both words. He certainly wasn’t speaking any words of power just yet. 

Though if it comes to losing my sight or getting that poor girl killed… he reflected. Well, that wasn’t a choice at all. He’d fill the corridor with an inferno before he’d get someone killed when it was his fault she was here in the first place. 

Where that place was became somewhat clearer when he opened the door enough to slip inside, and was slapped in the face with the scents and sounds of suffering. Such were the horrors that his sight wavered for a moment as he took it all in. 

He’d expected a torture chamber, and that’s exactly what he found. There was nothing magical about it, and the only inhumans involved were the men inflicting the torments, but still, that was enough. Simon had long become inured to evil, but this was as bad as any goblin lair he’d ever entered. 

The small stone room was lit by several torches, and besides Simon, it contained three men, two corpses, and one man who was halfway in between. I’m undoubtedly here to save him, Simon realized as he looked at the poor bastard. Saving him was a tall order, though, and he didn’t see how this level was even possible without healing magic. 

“Not a lot of time left for you, I’m afraid,” the torturer said with a chuckle. “But you tell us where your friends are hiding, and there’s still enough time for a clean death, eh?”

The torturer who gloated was an ugly man, but not as ugly as the things he’d done to his victim. That man was young, with dark, shaggy hair. He’d been stripped to the waist, which showed off a series of nasty burns, and his nail-less fingertips were bleeding, but all of those horrors paled in comparison to the fact that he’d been partially disemboweled. 

As Simon tried to study the wound to see if it was even healable, the first guard began to turn, so Simon stepped forward, putting his hips into a grand slam two-handed strike at the man’s throat. His gorget robbed the attack of much of its force, and Simon’s blow stuck deep into his trachea instead of beheading him, but that was enough. He released the sword and moved toward the second guard, who was looking at his dying partner as he collapsed to the ground instead of looking at the man who had killed him. 

That instinct served him poorly, because by the time he looked up at Simon and reached for the hilt of his weapon, Simon already had his hands on the guard's helmet, and used its rim as a lever to break the man’s neck. He had just enough time to release his weapon and reach for his leather chin strap, but not enough time to pull it free before there was a violent crack, and he fell limply to the ground. 

The torturer chose that moment to step back and lift up his hands. “Easy!” he shouted. “I ain’t armed, and don’t want no trouble. If you want this’en you can have him.”

“I want to know what information you were trying to get out of him,” Simon countered, relying on his glare and his size as his only weapons. 

It worked, too. The torturer had a small curved blade in his trembling hand, but didn’t brandish it. Instead, he said, “We was trying to get information out of him on where the rebels were hiding, right? Pain in the asses that they are, every time the guards kill one, two more rise up to take their place.”

“Maybe you should stop doing things that inspire rebellion,” Simon answered, before following that up with a barrage of questions about where they were.

Most of it confused the man. “Brin? Muran? Never heard of 'em,” the man grumbled. “Montain, though, pain in the asses that they are, we share a border with them at least.”

“Pain in the asses?” Simon asked. “Are they responsible for the rebellion then?”

“If you want to find out the answer to that, you gots to let me finish,” the torturer complained. “No one can say for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if those two bastards had teamed up to rat-fuck Versia into the ground. We won’t let 'em, though. We’ll—”

The torturer turned back to his charge, and Simon picked up the nearest heavy object, which turned out to be a red-hot poker, and brained him. As much as he would have loved to spend the next few hours learning the what, where, and when of this level, the man’s victim was obviously on death’s door, and there was no telling how much time he had until Millie shouted an alarm.

I wish I knew what he was rebelling against, or fighting for, Simon thought with a shake of his head as he moved to examine his patient. 

At one point, he solved levels just because they were there. Now, while he wanted to save this man, he also wanted to understand what the consequences would be. Hell, he wanted to know where Versia was precisely, but that would have to come later. Any delays now, and this man was going to bleed out. 

“First we save him, then we escape, and then I get my answers,” Simon told himself as he reached for his healing wand and realized he’d left that in the last level along with everything else. 

Well, hopefully no one finds that lightning wand and gets up to no good, he thought as he decided on a different plan. 

“Just let me die…” the man groaned as Simon pushed the man’s intestines back into his abominable cavity, and wiped away the blood on his chest above that gory mess. “I… I won’t tell you any more than I told him…”

“You probably will, but not like this,” Simon muttered. While he did want to know what was going on, at this moment, he was more concerned with keeping this man breathing. So, he dipped a finger in the man’s own blood and started to carefully trace a number of runes. 

Gervuul Vrazig Hyakk Delzam was a complicated symbol when traced together. It looked rather like a spiraling, lopsided flower, but Simon wanted power and speed, so instead of just marking the man with greater healing and hoping for the best, he chose to use the greater word of instant flesh repair. Given how badly he was maimed, repair seemed to be a keyword here. 

Simon had shoved his guts back inside, but without powerful magic, he wouldn’t last the hour without a blood transfusion and a sterile operating theatre, which weren’t something he was likely to see invented here for centuries. 

Simon expected this magic to be violent and likely even painful, but he didn’t really have a choice. “You’re going to be okay,” Simon assured his patient, as he finished connecting the last spiraling mark to the first to complete the flowing circuit. “But I’m sorry for this.”

“For what—” he gasped. 

Those were the last intelligible words out of his mouth. Simon put all thoughts of releasing the man yet out of his mind as the prisoner started to scream and spasm. Instead, he covered his mouth with the rag and watched the transformation.

Simon rarely used big words when small words along with time would do, and as he watched the prisoner's aura flare violently while his flesh began to twist and move, he decided that was probably the correct answer. All that Simon’s magic had done was inflict the torturer’s many torments on his prisoner in reverse.

Instead of inflicting all that pain on him over hours or days, though, it happened in seconds. The burns were the first things to fade, and probably the gentlest. After that, the fingernails that had been ripped out started to regrow, and the major cuts began to grow closed. 

Viscerally, it was a shocking scene, but it was even more so in the man’s aura. It was fairly bright, but the fireworks display that was exploding through it was brighter, and when it was over, and the tortured victim was whole once more, his aura was dimmer than before. Not because it had been darkened, but because it was exhausted. 

Indeed, the man had passed out from the pain, and Simon saw no need to wake him yet. Rather than do that, he used the torturer’s key to undo his manacles, and then he went back out into the hallway to check on Millie, and in doing so, obviously scared her half to death. She very nearly dropped her lantern as she squeaked. 

“Any signs of trouble?” he asked her. “Patrols? Alarms?”

“N-no, nothing like that,” she stammered. “What’s going on in t-there?”

“I wish you never had to find out,” Simon told her. He meant it, too. Unfortunately, she needed to come in here if his plan had any hope of succeeding. “But that’s going to have to… Just steel yourself. We need to get dressed, and you’re not going to like it.”

Ch. 451 - Lay of the Land

Millie didn’t like it. Not when she saw the vile room, nor when she noticed all the corpses a few seconds later. Simon waited for her to finish vomiting in the corner before he told her that she was going to have to wear the clothes of a dead man. She categorically refused. 

“It’s a corpse, Simon!” she insisted. “Even ignoring the blood, I’d be cursed for life!”

He tried to explain that she wouldn’t, but that was less effective than he would have liked, given how little he could explain to her about where they were, or how they’d gotten there. 

“I just don’t understand. We were alone, and now… who are all these people?” she demanded. “This isn’t even Castle Gravenstone, is it?”

“Not the one you knew,” he admitted. “All I can say is… this place is cursed, and we must escape. We must help this man escape, and then we will figure out what’s going on.”

That the castle they’d just left was cursed wasn’t up for debate. Everyone believed that, and with good reason. So, Simon clung to that thin figleaf as he coerced her into putting on the armor of the man with the broken neck. She hated it, but eventually she agreed. Unfortunately, even leaving off as much as he could get away with, it was almost too heavy for her, and he lacked the gesture of strength to fortify her body. 

Instead of that, he took the breastplate back off of her and bundled her up in a cloak instead, hoping that the helmet and the shield would be enough. Then, after he changed himself into the bloodier outfit, he woke the torture victim with a violent shake of his shoulder. 

He woke, reaching for a weapon, but found none. “Easy, easy,” Simon told him. “We’re here to help you escape, we’re going to…”

Simon didn’t really get through to the man until he reached down and found that his mortal injury was nothing but a faded scar. Then he asked, “How is it I’m still breathing? Witchcraft?”

“Divine intervention,” Simon countered. 

“Why would the gods care what happens to me?” The prisoner asked. “Or listen to you for that matter?”

“Good question,” Simon agreed. “Millie. Tell him about the vampires.”

She started to do just that and passionately explained, “He saved me and everyone else in the castle. He’s a vampire hunter for true, and if he asked the Gods to heal you, well, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if someone answered.”

Unfortunately, it soon became clear there was a problem. Simon might speak both languages, but the other two people in the room did not. So, he had to translate everything back and forth, which blunted the impact of Millie’s words and slowed everything down. 

That went on for several minutes, and as much as Simon wanted to ask basic questions about the man and why he was being tortured, he refrained in an attempt to build trust. Unfortunately, shortly after he learned that the other man’s name was Darius, and was just starting to turn the conversation toward his plan for escape, their luck ran out. 

While Simon was talking, the door to the torture chamber opened, and they all froze. 

“Hey, you get anything yet?” the torch-bearing man asked. “The captain wants to start planning… What the hell happened here?”

As he took in the bodies of his dead comrades, Simon acted without thinking and yanked the guard in by his helmet’s chin strap, sending him sprawling, and tangling his limbs among the other bodies on the ground.

Millie froze in place, but Darius reacted, at least as much as his enfeebled body could, and lurched to the door, slamming it shut again before the panicking guard could really start shouting for help. Simon nodded in approval at that and crouched next to the man, sword in hand. 

“I’ve already killed three men in this room,” Simon said quietly. The guard might work for an odious master, but his aura wasn’t dark enough to justify killing him in Simon’s eyes, not unless it was in self-defense. “And I’d happily trade information for your life to keep from making it a fourth.”

“They’ll c-catch you!” the guard retorted, but there was no defiance in his eyes or his soul. This was a bluff. “After you kill me, they’ll hang the lot of you! There’s no way out.”

“There’s always a way out,” Simon countered. “And if you tell me what I want to know, you’ll live to see us make our escape.”

That visibly calmed Mille. Simon could see that just the thought of more bloodshed was making her faint. Darius’s reaction, though, was just the opposite. He picked up the torturer’s blade and gestured at the guard with it. “You can’t be serious. Killing isn’t enough for these monsters. We need to gouge out their eyes and—”

“We need to escape,” Simon countered. “That’s the only consideration, and if he helps us with that, then as far as I’m concerned, manacles will work just as well as a sword to keep him out of our hair until we’re free.”

The two of them argued about it, but as Darius’s words grew more bloodthirsty, the guard eventually cracked without Simon having to do any further pushing. “Please, just tell me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you. Just keep that maniac away from me.”

Simon smiled at that and had the frightened man draw a map of the grounds for him on the dirt floor. He showed them where the curtain wall was, and where all the gates were, and he talked about guard patrols, and who should be where at this hour. 

“Garvik’s usually snuck off with one of the maids this time of night,” he declared, “and Heltrig is likely as not asleep, so if you stay close to the eastern wall and loop around to the main gate, you should be able to get out without being seen. After that, well, I can’t help it if the watch spots you and blows the horn, now can I?”

As the man spoke, the plan came together in Simon’s mind quickly enough. He and Millie would post as guards and escort the prisoner. It wasn’t likely to be convincing, but this time of night, there would be few people to convince. Then, once they got to the courtyard, they could steal three horses from the stables and ride out the main gate as fast as possible, since it was usually left open overnight. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was a pretty good one. 

Simon saw little that could go wrong with it until they actually started to implement it. After they bound their informer with the same manacles that had held down Darius, they made their way out of the dungeon and toward safety. 

Except for the man’s desire to gouge out the helpless guard’s eyes as recompense for what he’d suffered, that part went smoothly. Simon rejected that horrifying suggestion firmly, and as much as Darius might have wanted to carry it out, he was too weak to stand up to Simon. 

In the courtyard is where things got complicated. That wasn’t because the fortress was larger or more imposing than he’d expected, or that a guard spotted them, though, because their move to the stables seemed to go entirely unnoticed. 

The night was almost picturesque. The crescent moon showed through the gaps in the clouds, and gave him enough light to study the unfamiliar stonework. He didn't recognize the style, but it was clearly meant for war more than decoration. This was likely a border fort and not anyone's palace.

His problems weren't with any of those details, but with the gate itself. The portcullis was up, and the drawbridge was down; leaving wouldn’t be a problem. Well, at least it wouldn’t be a problem for anyone but Simon. The real dilemma was something no one else even noticed. When they moved closer to it, the edges of the portal lit up to his sight, and Simon could clearly see the next level appear before he took a few steps back. 

Normally, it would have been a relief to find the portal so quickly. Not only did it show that he was on the right track, but it also showed that he was all but done with this level. The only problem was that he didn’t want to leave this level, not yet anyway. He’d just gotten somewhere new. There was a struggle in a country that Simon had only ever heard of in passing, and he desperately wanted to learn more. 

More so, he wanted to find somewhere safe to drop off Millie. What he’d glimpsed of the next level was a dark cavern, and that was exactly the opposite of where he wanted to take her. 

It was only when they were safely in the stables, and a horse for Darius was saddled up, that he let everyone know they weren’t riding out together. “I think this is where we say goodbye, Darius,” he told the stranger, before he translated that again for Millie. She took it harder than he did. 

“I thought you said we were going to get horses, and—” she started to say, but Simon cut her off. 

“There’s been a change of plans,” he sighed. “We won’t be joining Darius after all.”

“Why not?” he asked, as confused as Millie was. 

Simon couldn’t very well tell them that Helades had strung the portal across the main gate, and that if he was close by, it wouldn’t go anywhere he wanted to be. So, instead, he lied. 

“I have been given a revelation,” he said, falling back into the language of the Whitecloaks he’d lived with for so long. “If we ride together, then we will not escape. You must go alone, while we provide a distraction. We will then find another way out.”

“Another way?” Millie asked. “If we’re trapped here then—”

Simon could see fear of ending up back in that torture chamber flash across her face. He felt terrible about bringing her along. She was an innocent and not ready for this sort of danger. 

Her heart’s about to give out already, Simon reflected. Can she really take another level? Not that he really had a choice in the matter. He’d love nothing more than to find her another way out. While he could send her off with Darius, he didn’t really want to leave her in the midst of a violent rebellion in a country where she didn’t speak the language. She had already shied away from him after his violent reaction to letting the guard live, and he doubted very much that things would end well for her here. 

It will be fine, he told himself. Just one more level and you can find her someplace close to home. First, you get out of the castle, and then you get out of the cave, and you’re home free.

Ch. 452 - Blindsight

Darius rode out first once he changed into Millie’s disguise, while she and Simon waited in the shadows. He rode at a slow trot until he was over the drawbridge. And only picked up speed once he was out of sight. Simon waited there, ready to trace a word of light or set fire to the barn at the first sign he’d been noticed, but this early in the morning, no one seemed to be paying attention. Still, he gave the man a slow count of five minutes before he turned to Millie and explained the plan as he stripped off his armor. 

“The drawbridge will lead to a cave for us?” she asked when he was done. “Why, no, how could it lead us anywhere different than where it led Darius? He rode away just fine, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Simon agreed. “But the same magic that led us here… It’s going to lead us away again.”

“Underground, though?” She asked, squirming. “Why not another castle? Will it be dangerous?”

“Almost certainly,” Simon answered. His tone was confident, but he was anything but. “Until we escape the grip of this dark magic, I expect that everything will be dangerous, but I’ll protect you.”

That much she obviously believed, and responded with a hug. “Thank you, Simon,” she whispered as she clung to him like a drowning victim. “What would I do without you?”

Be safe in bed, he thought. He’d never say that aloud, but it was certainly true. The most frustrating part, though, was that he might not have found the portal without her accidental assistance. 

After ten minutes, when no alarm had sounded, they finally walked toward the gate. He wore armor still, but Millie didn’t. It was too heavy and loud to be effective for her anyway. 

They walked into the dark and were swallowed up unnoticed into the void. It was only when the portal faded behind him that he summoned a tiny blue mote to float out ahead of him. 

The gesture was a simple one that he’d studied quite a bit, and so he didn’t need to try again. What he did notice, though, since he was as deep in his sight as he was ever likely to be, was the way he fingerpainted with the colors of creation on the darkness. He might touch the magic, and it was certainly powered by him, but it was the air itself that was the canvas. In that way, it wasn’t so different from the violent healing wards he’d used on the last level.

The gesture isn’t exactly like tracing the shape in thin air, he realized as the afterimage of his magic faded. It was similar, though. At least it was similar enough to merit further study. 

The light he created with that gesture was no larger than a candle flame, and not much brighter, but it was more than Simon needed. Just the circulating flow of his own aura, and Millie’s, let him see the shape of the rock walls around them, but he wasn’t going to make the woman walk through the dark with him without even that much to guide her. 

“Magic,” she breathed. She almost certainly would have made a warding gesture if her hands were free, but she was terrified of letting go of Simon, and clung to his left hand with both of hers, and her pulse was racing so fast that he could feel it throb through her cool skin. Despite her terror, she said nothing, just like he’d instructed her. Her grip was tight, but he didn’t imagine he’d have any trouble shaking her loose.

Once the light illuminated the dank cavern they were in, he drew his sword and started forward with slow, measured steps, guiding his terrified charge around obstacles she’d never see coming. 

Even with his vision helping him and his light, he had trouble seeing more than a few feet in front of him. Still, he wasn’t tempted to make a brighter light. He had no idea what that would reveal, but he knew it would be little different than ringing a dinner bell, and there was no way that Simon could fight a hundred goblins simultaneously once they discovered their next meal.

For a time, he followed the left wall, looking out into the dark as much as his footing would allow, looking for any signs of life. He found none, though, only the distant sound of trickling water, and smooth basalt on his left. 

Despite the moisture, he felt like he was in a lava tube, and saw no stalagmites or stalactites. Instead, he avoided rocky debris that might have been washed down this far in flash floods. 

Or carried here by the inhabitants, he reflected darkly. 

Simon tried to look on the bright side. A lava tube was likely to be less of a maze than a warren of limestone caves. Surely, that meant they’d find their way out quickly, or at least their way to what the Goddess wanted him to fight. That was true enough, and after a few minutes, their cramped space opened up into a wider cavern. 

At first, Simon thought very little of that. Then he noticed broken bricks mixed in amidst the stony rubble they’d picked through so far. This must be the place, he thought, tempted once again to make the light brighter. 

Then he froze. Up until now, he’d heard only the sounds of their own passage and the distant water, but then, he heard a shifting, scraping sound that seemed organic to him. It was too soft to be shifting stone or a cave-in. 

“Whatever it is we’re supposed to find, it’s here,” he whispered, freeing his hand from Millie’s and moving his sword to his left. While Simon wasn’t very good at fighting with his offhand, he couldn’t use magic with it at all, so it was a needful compromise. 

“But—” she managed to get a single word out before he brought his hand to her mouth in the dark. 

“Be silent and follow the light,” he whispered. “It is a blessing that moves where I do. I will not abandon you.”

That didn’t calm Millie down at all, but then, he hadn’t expected it to. He just needed space to swing a weapon without worrying about slicing her by accident. He certainly had all the space in the world now, because the cavern was obviously vast.

He didn’t realize how vast the cavern was, though, until he saw something moving. From this distance, it was a fuzzy blob of light, but as they kept moving forward, it moved toward them, and its dim aura gained definition. Eventually, it took on the shape of a crude, ugly man, and Simon feared the worst. 

Another ogre, he thought, willing himself not to panic.

Those were hardy beasts, and hard to kill, even while shouting words of power. It didn’t get much better when it got closer, and he decided that it was actually a troll. That was both better and worse. Better in that they were easy to defeat, but worse in that they were harder to keep dead.

Still, at least it was alone; trolls were invariably solitary hunters, and according to the Whitecloaks, they bred by losing a piece of themselves in a fight that went on to grow a whole new troll.  

I guess there’s only one choice of weapon here, he thought as he continued to walk evenly, observing the thing as it tried to move to one side to ambush them. Those efforts did little but give Simon the chance to study their environment by using its form as a sort of spotlight. 

Its aura might be dim, but it was brighter than anything else in the abyssal place, and as it moved, Simon was able to pick out the remains of buildings that it moved through. That intrigued him, though for now he couldn’t let himself get too distracted by those details. 

The troll wasn’t particularly stealthy, but it tried to sneak, at least until Millie squeaked in fear and gave away their knowledge that it was there. After that, it roared and charged them. 

As the troll galloped toward them on all fours with large, loping strides, Simon held his position, focused on what was to come. The timing would be tricky. He lacked the distant word, but he still needed to strike at this monster from as far away as possible.

Too far and the spell will flare pointlessly and do little but scare it off, he told himself. Too close and we’ll be crushed by its burning bulk. 

He waited until the last possible second, visualizing what was to come, and then he unleashed his magic with a liquid flourish that wasn’t so different from tossing a lit match. Simon wasn’t tossing a lit match at this menace, though; he was tossing a wad of sticky napalm that wasn’t much bigger than his fist when it flew out. 

The mere appearance of fire was enough to make the giant troll slide to a halt in its tracks, just out of reach of Simon’s sword. Neither that maneuver nor its attempt to jump to one side was enough to save it from the burning that followed.

Simon’s spell exploded like a firework, turning the upper half of the slimy green monster’s body into an oil slick. It reared back then and screamed, but it didn’t try to lash out at Simon. It probably couldn’t, because the fire covered its face, and its eyes were almost certainly burned out of its ugly head. 

Simon could see, though. For a brief moment, he could see everything by the light of their monstrous bonfire, and what he saw was a city, more or less. In fact, for a moment, he thought he’d wandered into the spider level, before he reminded himself that the geology was completely off, and the architecture didn’t look quite right. 

While he looked out at the strange cavern city, the troll rolled around until it partially extinguished. Then, it ran. 

Simon braced for a moment, ready to cast the spell again, but he didn’t have to, because it bolted in the opposite direction, toward the lake he’d seen at the edge of the firelight. Still, as the burning monster retreated, its remaining flames gave off lurid shadows and illuminated more details. It was remarkably well preserved, to the point that all Simon wanted to do was pause and study some of the walls. 

I'd give almost anything to go back and search those spider ruins again, he told himself as he observed the troll’s frantic retreat.

He’d always regretted not finding them again, and while he’d thought this might be the same place at first glance, it was clear now that it wasn’t. What was also clear, in the wake of the troll, was how much better shape this place was in, which made it ideal for a little archaeology on a future visit. 

That made Simon want to kill the troll even less. If anything, as he watched the howling brute escape, he wanted to gather supplies and make an expedition of it. Still, it was hard to mentally plan that when Millie was screaming in his ear so loudly, he thought she was about to have a seizure. 

“Easy, easy,” he told her again and again, dragging her forward. “It’s gone now. I’ve got you.”

Those reassurances did little for her, and ultimately, he was forced to sheathe his sword to shake her bodily. “Millie,” he half-shouted her name, and it echoed in the shocked silence her panic left behind. “Do you want to live? Do you?”

She didn’t answer, but she nodded vigorously, so he continued. “Then calm down, and stay close, and we’ll get out of this.”

After that, she shuddered every time the monster roared from somewhere in the dark, but when he scooped her up and started to jog in the direction he guessed led out, she ceased freaking out and only sobbed quietly in his arms. 

It’s not like you’re truly hiding from it, nor it from you, Simon told himself as he considered how he might quiet her further. A little wisp of light followed him everywhere, and even after the magic he’d used, Simon could see the monster’s aura from halfway across the cavern. At least he could. It had vanished for the moment, in what looked to be a lake, but it would doubtlessly return when it had fully extinguished itself. 

His concern wasn’t the troll. Trolls and their insatiable hunger were predictable. They avoided fire and the sun, and devoured everything else that crossed their path. Simon could try to escape, but as long as it could smell them, that was unlikely. 

So, as he continued through the underground ruins, he looked for any indication of a portal or an exit. However, as he did so, he always, always kept an eye out for the next monster that might decide to make them a meal.

Ch. 453 - The Way Out

Simon was not in good enough shape to run with such a load, and after a hundred yards, he was forced to put Millie down. When he did so, he sheltered both of them behind a low wall so he could stop and look for trouble.

He spotted no other predators, which made sense to him. A troll would eat all comers, so eventually it would be the last one left. A little fire won’t keep it away forever either, he reminded himself. In hours to days, it would be back to try for another taste, and next time his timing might not be as good. He could only imagine how easily it would have been to be crushed to death by the monster’s flaming bulk during its last attack.

If it were anything else that they faced, they’d probably be in the clear already, but a troll would just keep coming, and eventually it would catch them unaware, or worse, asleep, and that would be the end for Millie. 

He looked at her again as they crouched there in hiding. He could really only see her silhouette against the utter blackness of the cave, but he didn’t need to see even that much to see the fear that consumed her aura. She’d been through a lot recently. First, she’d been sent to work for vampiric monsters, then that situation had been turned upside down, only for her to end up in a fresh hell that wasn’t of her own making. 

Simon sympathized. He could not clearly recall his earliest days in the Pit, but he remembered the fear and the confusion, and it was those murky yellows and browns that played across her aura now. Back then, I blamed Helades, Simon reflected. Is it the gods she blames now? Or does she know this is all my fault?

It didn’t matter. What mattered was finding a way out. So, after she stopped panting, they started moving again. This time, they proceeded directly away from the lake where the troll had gone, and after a few false starts, they found themselves walking down a wide street strewn with rubble. 

“Where are we?” Millie eventually asked. 

Simon shook his head. Then, when he recalled that she couldn’t actually see that, he said. “I wish I knew. Don’t worry, though, we won’t be staying for long.”

“Will you use magic to get us free?” she asked. Simon flinched. Just the way she said the word magic made it clear what she thought of it, and probably of him. 

He was silent for a long moment before he agreed. “I’ll use whatever I have to to get you home safe.”

Even those whispers echoed, and as they continued on, Simon occasionally glimpsed the troll. It was keeping its distance, but it hadn’t disappeared entirely. When they reached the edge of the city, they started circling along the wall, looking for an exit from the cavern.

Simon found many interesting details worthy of study, but that wasn’t going to happen this visit. Even during rest breaks, he was too busy looking for an ambush or some other unexpected event. Traps certainly aren’t impossible, he reminded himself whenever his footing seemed strange. 

They spent an hour walking methodically before Simon slowly reached the conclusion that they weren’t going to find their way out that easily. He didn't say anything, but he did begin to rack his brain. For a while, he tried to focus, looking for some essence currents that might indicate surface flows. When that failed, he felt for a breeze, but he struck out there, too. 

Simon only had a breakthrough when he checked on Millie and noticed her small pendant glittering in the light of his dimming blue flame. It was a plain bronze charm, but it reminded him that divination was an option too, and probably perfect for their current circumstances. 

“I need to borrow that, Millie,” he whispered. 

She asked why, but only as she started to undo the knot. It might have been the most precious thing in the world to her, but she wasn’t about to argue with him. He doubted she would have done so under normal circumstances, but right now, he held her life in her hands. 

When he held the small medallion, he made sure that the troll was nowhere close, and then he started to carve the word of location, Karesh, onto the backside with the point of his dagger. Working in the dark, with poor tools, didn’t produce the best results. When he was finished, he could see that the thing would bleed far more power than it should, 

Pity I don’t have the space to add distant or lesser, he thought as he studied it. This would work, but it would get hot fast, and it wouldn’t reach as far as he liked. 

Before Simon started using the pendulum, he explained to Millie that he was going to need to concentrate for several minutes. “I’m going to try to use magic to find us a way out, and I’m not to be interrupted unless you think our lives are in jeopardy, do you understand?”

She flinched at the word magic, but nodded, and seemed to understand. So, after one last look around, Simon started to breathe deeply and focus. First, he chose a known target to make sure it worked, and searched for the troll. That didn’t even take ten seconds before he felt the familiar tug pointing the way off to his left somewhere. He could have tried to determine its exact range this way, but he resisted the urge and released the magic instead. 

Now that it’s tested, I need to look for something that matters, he decided, turning his attention to the exit.

That was harder for him to fix on. It was easy for him to imagine a burned troll and instantly find it, but what did an exit look like? Was it a cave entrance? Was it fresh air? Ultimately, he decided it was light, and when he didn’t find that after a couple of minutes of focus, he looked for other things. Grass, animals, and insects were his next targets.

Simon found no animals or plants of any kind, but insects triggered some weak readings that were generally up and to his right. That might indicate a passage, but it also might just indicate whatever it was that the troll had been eating until they’d arrived, and honestly, Simon didn’t feel like checking. 

Instead, he looked for his last option and targeted the portal. This one produced a reaction immediately, but an indistinct one. It was here, but something about how he visualized it was making it unclear and hazy. 

So, Simon spent the next minute or so playing the hot and cold game with the damn thing, and as he did so, he felt the metal of the pendant he was using start to heat up. He pictured it as a tunnel, then a door, and finally an arch. That was when the pendant really responded and pointed almost straight ahead, toward the lake. 

It figures, he thought sullenly. Of course, Helades would want us to go right toward the troll. 

That was fine. He had a direction, and he had a good idea of what it looked like. There could only be so many arches down here. He—

As Simon opened his eyes, he moved to grab the pendant, but he pulled his hand away immediately as he made contact with the burning metal, and dropped it with a metallic tinkle as he shoved his scorched finger into his mouth.

“Are you okay?” Millie asked. 

“Fine,” Simon lied, unwilling to admit his stupid mistake. “What matters is I found our way out.”

“You did?” This time, there was excitement in her voice. There might have even been hope, too. That was harder to judge. 

Simon spent a moment explaining where they would go and what the arch looked like. After that conversation, he tried to hand her back her necklace, but she refused. 

“Keep it,” she told him. “You might ah.. Need it again.”

That was a lie, of course, but one he could hardly blame her for. These superstitions ran deep, and if he’d used it for magic, it was probably cursed now. She probably thinks she’s cursed now, too, he realized, but he didn’t say anything. That was a problem for later. 

For now, they started to move again. Simon might not be able to see far, but he had a pretty good idea of the cavern’s layout now, so they were able to walk swiftly and with a minimum amount of detours, aside from their efforts to find a way around the lake that didn’t involve getting his boots wet. 

At one point, the troll started to move closer to them, but Simon took out his sword and banged the hilt hard against the closest crumbling wall, sending it scurrying away. He’d use magic if he had to, but for as long as it was weak, a bluff would be enough. 

Still, that approach gave Millie a heart attack, and he had to pause a moment to soothe her. “I was just scaring it off again,” she explained. 

“It got close?” she asked, clinging to him tighter. “The monster was going to attack?”

Simon patted her head, but eventually forced her to start moving again, and the two of them skirted the edge of the lake, approaching the arch that was his goal. When they arrived, the troll was nowhere to be seen. That meant it got to live another day, but Simon didn’t regret that at all. As long as the bastard lived, he could come back to this level in another life and explore it more fully. 

Next time I’ll skewer you to the stone and use you to power a set of magical lanterns, Simon thought. It was a random idea, but the idea of troll-powered magic was a good one. Given the way they regenerated, he could probably harvest far more than a single human lifetime from them. He made a mental note to experiment with it sometime.

All thoughts of experimentation vanished from his mind, though, when the portal started to open. Simon watched the edges of the frame ripple with bursts of cyan and white light. Such wonders were invisible with Millie, but to him they were lovely. What was less beautiful was the burst of cold air that accompanied them. The way ahead was nearly as dark as the cavern they were leaving, but it was much colder, and that concerned him. 

It’s not like we have any other options, he reminded himself, as they moved quickly for the exit. Cold was less dangerous than trolls, and it also meant that wherever they were going, it was close to the surface. 

Close to the surface was, in this case, an understatement. As soon as the pair turned the corner, the darkness became gray twilight, and then, a dozen feet later, real light could be seen from the entrance, along with fresh air, cold and crisp. 

Simon was blinded by that light momentarily, but still he searched for goblins, or whatever it was they were here to fight. He appreciated the fresh air, though, even if it told him nothing about where they were as he approached the mouth of the cave, and gazing out on the snowstorm sweeping through the unfamiliar valley, he realized he couldn’t just tug Millie along into the next level. There was no way of knowing where they even were at this point.

“Are we safe now?” she asked. 

“Safer,” he answered with a nod as he looked around at the near whiteout conditions. “There won’t be any more trolls at least.”

She smiled at that, even as the slender woman started to shiver. She’d looked pale before the frigid air, but now she looked like she was about to faint.

“Come on,” Simon said, taking her by the shoulder. “Let’s get you warmed up, and then I’ll find some wood and start us a fire.”

Ch. 454 - Snowblind

Neither of them was dressed for this weather, and Simon dearly missed his leather armor. The breastplate he was still wearing from his disguise got cold so fast that he had to remove it or risk hypothermia. Still, he did what he could, and after he tucked Millie away in a crevice near enough to the front of the cave that she still had light, he went to get firewood. 

Well, at least he tried to. She stopped him immediately with her tears and fears. “W-what if it comes back?” she asked, before pleading not to leave her behind. 

“It can’t,” Simon told her. Rather than try to explain the portals to her, he said, “Even this much sunlight is enough to turn them to stone.”

He went round and round with her several times about how they would freeze to death without wood before she finally calmed down enough to let him go. “Ten minutes,” she called after him. “You said ten minutes and no more!”

Simon ended up taking at least fifteen that time, but there was little he could do. The snow was a foot deep, even under the thickest firs, and he had trouble finding much in the way of dead wood. By the time he returned with his snowy bundle, he could barely feel his hands and had to spend almost a minute warming them in his armpits before he could ignite a small fire with magic and start feeding it twigs and branches. 

Millie flinched at that use of magic, too, but said nothing. She was probably too afraid to say anything, but for now, Simon didn’t feel like having that discussion. Mostly, he was just annoyed that he lacked the gesture for Karesh, which prevented him from using the Gelthic gesture to cast protection from the cold without speaking the words. 

I really need to find the rest of those and fill in those gaps, he told himself. This shit is getting old.

Almost as soon as the fire was going strong in the mouth of their cave, Simon was ready to go back out for more wood. This time, though, it was with sense rather than fear that she tried to hold him back. 

“The storm’s getting worse, not better!” she insisted, pointing at the growing blizzard. “You have to wait for it to pass at least a little!”

“I’d love nothing more,” Simon agreed, “But we don't know how high we are nor how far north we are. This could last for a week, and we’ll be out of wood in a few hours.”

Millie didn’t have an argument against that, at least not one that he’d accept, so he went back out into the weather, which was just as miserable as it sounded. While the fireside hadn’t exactly been warm, it had at least been out of the wind; now it cut right through him, and the guard’s flimsy cloak did little to keep it away. 

For a few minutes, Simon trudged from tree to tree, but after gathering only a few small branches, he decided there had to be a better way. 

I should look through the snow with my sight and find a proper deadfall, he told himself. 

While that was a fine idea, living trees didn’t have much of an aura, and dead trees had none at all. But the animals in hibernation, they should be able to offer me clues, right?

That was a fine idea, and for several seconds Simon stood there, slowly tuning out the wind and snow. As far as he was concerned, this was just like the cold waters of his daily swim in Hepollyon; if he could tune that out, then he could tune this out. 

Once he started to focus, though, the desolate wasteland came to life. First, he spotted birds in nests that he hadn’t noticed with the naked eye, and then other creatures burrowed into shallow dens on the ground. 

Finally, though, he spotted what he was looking for. While most of the mounds were in fact boulders, a couple of them were occupied enough that they were probably bushes. One, though, appeared to be a deadfall between two larger boulders, which was exactly what he was looking for. 

Simon had to disturb the poor hedgehogs or whatever it was that were trying to sleep peacefully underneath the tangle of wood, but that didn’t stop him. Once he verified that these were indeed dead branches and not green wood, he started hacking into them until he’d had enough to take back and justify all of this effort. 

Two branches would be enough to get them through the night, and probably through the following day, too, Simon realized. So, he took one in each hand and started dragging them back through the snow, which was a slow process given how each of the heavy burdens acted like an anchor.

Worst case, if we run out of firewood before the sky runs out of snow, I can use the ashes to make a circle of cold protection to keep us warm until the weather lets up, he told himself. 

If he was out any longer, he risked frostbite, which, in addition to being awful, might really limit his options. “It-t’s going to be h-hard to cast spells d-down a finger,” he told himself through chattering teeth. It would probably be even harder to learn to do so left-handed as a backup, but that was still something he wanted to learn eventually. In a perfect world, he’d be able to use every word of power with both hands. 

No, in a perfect world, I’d know all of them and use them with my hands and voice simultaneously, he corrected himself. The longer he used magic, the more he was convinced that it was less about power and more about specificity.

Complexity was a multiplier effect, whether it was found in the creation of artifacts or more complicated spells. He could burn a greater, greater word and wreck himself for months, or he could channel normal words in just the right sequence and get something nearly as spectacular. He was sure of it. 

There was a huge gulf, though, between knowing and doing, and he contemplated that as he trudged through the snow, back to the cave. At least, he was pretty sure it was back to the cave. He’d been gone for half an hour this time, and his earlier tracks had been all but obliterated by the heavy snow. 

I still have the pendant, he reminded himself. I can still use it to find Millie if I need to.

When Simon returned, he was bone tired. His worst instincts anticipated a lot of possible disasters, with a goblin massacre or an icy avalanche being the most likely terrible endings. What he hadn’t expected at all was to find ponies tethered just outside their little cave. 

“Visitors,” Simon murmured, not sure if that was a good or a bad thing. He dropped the long branches he’d been dragging on the spot and moved up between the mounts, resting a hand on each of their flanks as he went so as not to startle them. 

The ponies stirred restlessly, but didn’t try to kick him, and they made good cover as he approached the cave entrance. There he saw two men, standing on either side of the fire, crowding Millie as she looked like she was trying to decide if she wanted to risk running out past them into the snow, or deeper into the darkness of the cave. Neither of the men saw him there, as he lurked between their ponies, but Simon saw them, and what they planned to do was clear. 

Not only was one of them holding a knife behind his back, but lust practically coruscated across their auras. The other man might be trying to soothe her with words as he would a horse, but Millie didn’t seem to understand any of it. That was okay, because neither man understood what was about to happen to them. 

Simon didn’t hesitate. Before they could do anything that would traumatize the maid further, he pointed at the man with the knife and made the gesture of force. That launched him hard directly away from Simon, and he nearly disappeared amidst the shadows. Still, Simon heard more than saw the man’s skull hitting the stone wall, and felt certain he’d be out of the action for at least a minute or two from that sort of hit. 

Then, he pulled his dagger and charged toward the other man. He obviously hadn’t seen exactly what happened to his partner, but even if he had, Simon doubted he’d have understood. At least, he did until he recognized something familiar that the man was wearing. 

Murani, he realized as he looked at the familiar Magi medallion. He probably should have recognized their clothing before that moment, but he hadn’t been thinking about who these men were, only how they were going to die.

In a way, that was good news, as it told him they were almost certainly somewhere in the lands he was familiar with. Unfortunately, it told Simon something else, too. He couldn’t kill him, at least not here, not at close range. The Magi was a time bomb, and the last thing he needed was to die like that. 

So, Simon pulled his blow, and even as the magi barked the words “Hyakk Vrazig—” Simon didn’t stab him in the heart as he’d planned. Instead, he brought his elbow around and slammed it into the Magi’s throat, cutting it off before he could complete the spell. Flesh ruination was bad enough, and Simon had no desire to find out how those words ended.

While the magi choked, Simon said, “Too many words, and not enough manners. Bad combination. If you’d just used the word of fire or lightning, you might have won.”

Even as he berated the magi, though, he was moving. He grabbed him by the collar and the belt and flung him out into the snow. He landed far enough away that Simon could still keep an eye on him if he tried to rise, but not so close that the blast he expected would reach them. 

He didn’t have to wait long. Less than a minute later, a ball of fire rippled outward in all directions, sending both ponies fleeing into the worsening blizzard and even chasing away the chill with a wall of warmth until the flames vanished. 

“I… Who was that?” Millie asked, but Simon ignored her, striding deeper into the cave to check on the first man. If he were a magi, he’d have to be moved as well, but if he wasn’t, well, maybe he could provide Simon some answers. 

When Simon found the warrior, he confirmed that he wasn’t a magi, but he also confirmed that he wasn’t breathing. His gesture of force had propelled the man into the unforgiving granite wall of the cave and cracked his skull. Simon didn’t feel bad about that, but he did wish he’d pulled his punch a little bit. 

Simon dragged him out of the cave, too, but only just out of sight in the snow. The man was dressed warmly, and he’d steal those clothes later. First, he needed to tell Millie what in the hell was going on.

She clung to him from the moment he sat down next to the fire. “It’s okay,” he assured her, stroking her hair. “Those weren’t men, they were just monsters in human form. From now on, all we have to worry about is the cold and finding something to eat. Everything else will take care of itself.”

Ch. 455 - Winter Wonderland

For a short time Millie was beside herself. She’d thought the men had been about to murder her. While they probably would have eventually, Simon chose to let her believe her version, because it was kinder than the truth. Somehow, the idea that other humans could be so monstrous bothered her more than the idea that a troll or a vampire would be. 

So, as the two of them sat there, feeding their small fire, he gave her a primer on the Murani. He did not attempt to be even-handed about it, either. He didn’t try to explain the honor culture of their nomadic horse tribes, or the strange schools of the Magi, and how they were as learned as they were monstrous. Instead, he gave her ghoulish details meant to make her see them as anything but human so that it would be easier to put this event behind her.

“They raid from the north, year after year, and century after century in a constant quest for slaves that’s as predictable as the seasons,” he explained. “The ones that are worked to death are the lucky ones, though, because those who are too weak to work are sacrificed to their Godking on bloody ziggurats.”

He had to explain what a ziggurat was, of course, because she’d never seen one. He also explained how the Magi drew their power from their magical overlord via the amulets they wore. He even fetched the twisted, charred example off the corpse to show her after she’d calmed down. She held on to it with white knuckles for the rest of the day like a charm, and he didn’t try to stop her. It wouldn’t hurt anything.

Instead, he busied himself looking through the surviving gear of both men and the saddlebags of the dead pony. The other animal vanished in the snow, but even so, they had a bounty of supplies they hadn’t had when they walked into the level. There were warm clothes on the dead man that Simon took for himself, a fur-lined cloak he’d let Millie wear, and even a bedroll that would help them get through these dark nights, so long as they shared it. 

Simon even found a small journal on the Scout, along with coins and a crystal that might have been used for communication or scrying. The journal was too burned to get a lot out of the first half, but the second half offered some clues about what they were doing, at least.

The two men had been part of a larger expeditionary force scouting for weakness in Charian clan holds for a spring assault. The way he wrote it implied that it was part of a larger campaign that had been going on for a while, which made Simon uneasy. That was further verified by a crude map he found on the warrior’s body. 

It combined with Simon’s knowledge of the area to give him a pretty good picture of where they were. They were in the northernmost part of Charia, where the brutal peaks were least inhabited, and the terrain formed a defensible barrier against the Murani lands to the north. At least that was supposed to be the case. As things stood now, it sounded like they might be Murani lands at this point, but Simon wasn’t going to worry about that right this moment. 

Mentally, he planned the trip back and decided it was more than doable with decent weather. In a week, or perhaps two, depending on the condition of the passes between here and there, they could be back in the familiar lowlands, unless Brin had set up border forts anywhere that was particularly inconvenient. Still, before he told Millie any of that, he decided to go out and do some exploring. He wasn’t going to get her hopes up until he had the lay of the land for himself. 

That night they slept fitfully, pressed together in the small bedroll, with the hot embers of the fire on one side, and the cave wall on the other. It wasn’t the most comfortable bed Simon had ever slept on, but with a few hot rocks at the bottom of their bedroll, they made do. 

He would have slept soundly if not for her nightmares. Millie woke up three times that night, convinced they were about to be murdered by one monster or another, and each time he had to soothe her until she calmed down. The following day, the weather had improved, but only by a little.

So, except for brief trips to his deadfall to gather more wood, he stayed with the girl, and they chatted about better days as he subtly challenged her to imagine what a great life she’d have in the future in an attempt to make her focus less on their dire circumstances. In that he was only partially successful. Still, as the days wore on, and they slowly worked their way through the supplies of their attackers, he learned a few things. 

He learned that she grew up on a farm and missed her family's sheep and her mother’s spinning wheel. He learned she had four sisters, even if she said it in a way that implied her parents were probably happy to have one less mouth to feed. She also admitted she really wanted a dog again, which Simon thought was too adorable.

“What?” she protested as he made a big deal out of it. “I miss our hound, alright? He was a tireless guardian of our flock, and stayed with me every day we grazed, even in the worst weather.”

Eventually, their worst weather cleared, giving them their first view of the snow-filled crags they found themselves in. Millie tried to come with him, but Simon wouldn’t allow it. “I see things you don’t,” he explained. You might step there, or there, and simply go sliding down the mountain. Millie tried to make the same argument in reverse, but eventually relented. 

While he wanted to find some high ground to see how far he could see west, the first thing he did was walk down to the edge of the frozen pond so he could get access to a mirror. There, he reviewed a few things. That started with his map, which was largely as he remembered it, but eventually he queried the level.

‘You are currently on level 37, which remains unresolved,’ the mirror answered, with floating blue text.

That piece of information annoyed Simon. It meant that in Helades' preferred version of history, the two Murani scouts needed to live, while he was sure just the opposite was true. 

What is she thinking? He thought in frustration. Why is she so bent on the Murani being the winners in all of this? Do they mellow out after there’s no one left to enslave, or do they just go extinct?

Simon doubted that the Goddess had been trying to give her chosen hero the peace of the grave, so he ruled the second option out. Still, he mulled it over as he crunched through the snow, trying to figure out what her grand design could be as he made his way higher up the slope. In fact, he was so focused on his petulant thoughts that he almost made a terrible mistake. 

Simon had been walking forward without really paying attention when a flash caught his eye, and he stopped. He was glad that he did, because another few strides and he would have walked into the next level and left Millie behind. 

Simon cursed quietly as he stood there, looking at the scene. Beyond him lay a desert, with mountains in the distance, and what might have been a sandstorm darkening one side of the horizon. The sand was whiter than the deserts he was used to, so it almost blended in with the snow. As he stood there appreciating the warm breeze, he decided that it probably didn’t lead to any desert he’d explored already.

“So where does it go?” he wondered aloud as he looked for details that might explain it. He was fairly sure that they wouldn’t be going to the next level, at least not right away. He was only a hundred or so miles from where he’d accidentally kidnapped Millie, so for now, he’d just mark it on his map and come back to it after she was safe, but he still found it curious.

Most levels bring me back to the same places over and over, but every once in a while they give me a curve ball, he thought, as he finally stepped away enough for the thing to close and studied the pattern of melted snow that its warmth had left behind.

Simon pondered the crossroads of history as he got enough of a view to confirm their location and made his way back from his little scouting expedition. When he returned, the first thing he did was butcher the dead horse. It had been burned on one side and had not outlasted its master by more than a few minutes. Given the choice, Simon wouldn’t have eaten the animal, but in their current situation, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Horse wasn’t great meat, but it was better than starving, and if they roasted it on skewers, it should be enough. It would even pack well. 

She made a face at that when he brought back the haunch, but rightly agreed there were no other options. “I just want a warm, soft bed, and a bowl of steaming porridge,” she sighed as he set about carving chunks off the frozen haunch with his sword. 

They talked a little while he focused on that, but when he was done, he gave Millie the good news. “There’s no more of these guys lurking anywhere nearby that I can see,” he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at where the corpses were being stored outside in the snow. “I did see some smoke from the next valley, though, that might be a clanhold.”

“It might also be fighting,” she answered morosely. 

When Simon explained that it was a bit too steady for that, she brightened and asked, “Is that where we’re going then?”

“It’s the wrong direction,” he answered with a shake of his head. “We’re going west. This is a late spring snow, so I think things will start to thaw in the next few days. Once the temperature warms up, we’ll head down into the valley and make our way back to familiar ground. I can even bring you back to your home village if you want.”

“To Nolfast?” she asked, like it was a foreign concept. “Anyplace but that. If I did, then I’d be breaking the rules of the lottery, and my parents would…”

As she trailed off, Simon thought about reminding her that the vampires were dead and the lottery that had determined his fate had likely vanished with it. 

“What about Lostelam?” she asked. “You said it was nice, we could live there?”

We? Simon almost choked on the word and barely avoided speaking it by coughing into his hand. He definitely didn’t plan on hanging around. 

While the scullery maid was pleasant company, she wasn’t helping him to dig deeper into the pit. He was on level 37 now and knew the way to level 38. That was as deep as he’d ever gone, and as far in the future as he’d ever seen without the benefit of being walled in his own grave for decades.

No, he was only two levels from getting to ask Helades the big questions, and he had no plans to stick around here for longer than it took to make sure Millie landed on her feet. He’d find her a safe place to live, and maybe kill the local goblins or thatch the roof of whatever cottage he got her settled into, but after that, he was coming right back here. Maybe after he got his answers from the Goddess, he’d take it easy and spend a couple of years researching that new information.

Ch. 456 - Roughing It

Once they had better weather and a plan, there was nothing to do but start hiking down the mountains at first light the following day. The goal was to return to something like civilization, but for now, Simon would just take somewhere a little warmer, and at first, that went well.

Though it might go better if I could find that damn pony, Simon thought as he paused for the twentieth time so that Mille could catch up.

He didn’t resent her for it, of course, but she was slow and needed frequent breaks. Given the way she was dressed, it was hard to blame her at all. The dead men’s clothes didn’t come close to fitting her, and her skirts frequently dragged in the snow. While the drifts got smaller as they descended toward the valley floor, her skinny limbs were pale enough that he worried about her the whole way down. 

If he were by himself, Simon might have used his shield as a sled. He wasn’t in a hurry, but it would have been a lot of fun, Millie, though, had enough adventures for the rest of her days, and brought up how much she wanted a “nice, quiet, normal life,” only every hour or two. 

Simon could sympathize. That would never be his lot in life, but something about having a flock of sheep and listening to a beautiful woman like Millie sing while she spun wool into yarn sounded just about right to him. Toss in a dog and a fireplace, and he was sold. 

But that won’t get me any closer to unraveling all of this, will it? He reminded himself as he helped Millie over a rough patch. I could have the best life ever, but I’d still wake up in that cabin when I eventually died of old age, and then what? Do I spend lives stalking my grandchildren to make sure they turn out okay?

Simon’s only real answer there was to avoid further emotional entanglements and just keep moving forward. In that way it was almost the same as his current tactic of pushing forward in a bid to escape the snow before the next storm came.

Every day, they stopped before they lost the sun, and he used pages from the Magi’s journal to kindle a fire that did little to keep away the cold or the dark. Then, in the morning, after a night of sharing each other’s warmth, the two of them got up and started moving again. It was a simple, but dull rhythm that served them well until Millie started to get sick on their fifth day of sleeping under less than ideal conditions.

She tried to hide the severity of it from Simon for a day or two, insisting that she was fine, but as they summited the mountain on the far side of the snow-filled valley they’d just left, and saw greener slopes in the lower valley beyond, she finally gave in to her fever and collapsed. 

Simon used the gesture of healing to revitalize her, but that was just a stopgap. He needed the word of curing to really heal her, and he lacked the gesture for that word. So, instead, he had to carve something. 

“I’ll be fine,” she insisted as they started moving again. “There’s no need to fuss.”

Simon didn’t argue with her. He just kept the slender scullery maid moving until they got below the snowline. Then they made a defensible camp in the lee of a large flat boulder, and he got to work carving a curing talisman that wasn’t so different from the ones he’d made in other lives. 

By the time he was finished with it, almost two days later, she was so sick she tried to refuse it when he gave it to her. “I’d rather die than lose my soul,” she explained weakly. 

“No one is losing their soul today,” Simon sighed. “In fact, this one is powered by the campfire. As long as we don’t run out of firewood, you’ll get better.”

Millie was skeptical, but too weak to fight him, and took a nice, long nap while Simon kept their little campfire stoked. That night, he noticed a pair of goblins creeping around looking for the source of their smoke, and cut them down without waking her. In the morning, he didn’t even mention the danger; he just congratulated her.

“It looks like you’re out of the woods now,” Simon told her. “With your soul intact, too.”

She thanked him for that, but now that the taboo about the magic she’d feared had been broken, she became quite inquisitive and bombarded him with questions. 

“If magic doesn’t devour the soul, then how does it work?” she asked after they finished crossing an iced-over stream. 

“The way most warlocks use it, it devours their own life span,” he explained. “Think of it as throwing away years of your life to be smarter or stronger today.”

“Oh dear, you didn’t throw away any years for me, did you?” she asked with concern. “I’m hardly worth that sort of effort.”

Simon's first impulse has been to answer ‘of course not,’ but her pitious statement at the end momentarily short-circuited his brain. In the end, he said, “The talisman that chased away your infection didn’t use anyone’s life or soul. It’s as I told you. I used nothing but firewood.”

“Well, if firewood can become good health, and years can be converted in the same fashion, then can’t firewood make someone live forever?” she asked after a moment’s thought. The question took Simon entirely by surprise. 

“Maybe not forever, but it could certainly extend life for a long time,” he answered cautiously. 

While it was an insightful question, he wasn’t sure where she was going with it, and he was relieved when she moved on to other, more frivolous ideas. “Well, is that true for everything? Can you turn sunlight into moonlight? How about stars? Can you transform them into butterflies?”

While he’d been about to seriously address the former, and explain that magic light wasn’t precisely like true sunlight, the idea that something as small as a butterfly could be made into something as giant as a star made him laugh. Suddenly, for the first time in a very long time, Simon wanted to paint. He wanted to make a giant mural of a sphere of luminescent butterflies. 

He tried to explain why that didn’t make sense to Millie eventually, and why he found it funny. Sadly, he lacked the words to do so to any coherent degree. She was unwilling to believe that stars were distant suns, and he no longer had the knowledge of science to argue seriously that it was the case, and for some reason, it felt wrong to tell her he knew because of magical insight. 

As they walked through the second, and slightly warmer valley, they spent a few days talking about all the things magic could do. Could it bring the dead to life? After a fashion. Could it make the blind see or curse your enemies? Absolutely. 

What it couldn’t do was harder. While Simon understood that he himself had plenty of limitations as a mage, he was fairly certain that with the right words and enough time to craft a spell or a talisman, he could do almost anything. He had no idea how planes worked, or even cars, but he had a pretty good idea how he could use words of force to propel something similar. The only question was what he would power them with.

During this time, they dealt with nothing worse than howls in the night and a shepherd boy who pointed the way to the closest clanholds, though Simon didn’t plan to stop at either. He did, however, note that the level now counted as solved during a brief consultation with the mirror in a stream. That surprised him. 

Well, I guess it wasn’t that the Murani needed to live, it was that their notes needed to die, he reflected. That was all he’d really done since he’d checked previously, after all. He’d burned the scout’s notes, and apparently, in doing so, he’d changed something important. 

Simon didn’t share that detail with Millie because she wouldn't understand. Still, he did spend the rest of the day smiling to himself and toying with the idea that it had been nothing he’d done, but something to do with the escaped pony. Somehow, that was funnier than the idea that a moment in history pivoted on a single pack animal. 

He waited until Castle Gravenstone was on the horizon, though, before he told her the truth. “Some time will have passed since we were here last,” he explained. “More than a season, at least. That magic that sent us so far away did something with time, too.”

She seemed relatively unfazed by that, at least until they could see that the castle had been halfway leveled and bore a number of burn scars. After that, she became more frantic. Truthfully, Simon did too, but only for a moment. Once, they stopped a farmer on the road and asked him, the man filled them in. 

“Oh, you didn’t miss much,” he told them when Simon confessed they hadn’t been around in some time. “After someone struck down the bloodsuckers, the King tried to send a new lad around to put his boot on our necks, and a few of the lads decided to burn the old place out first.”

“So there’s no new lord?” Millie asked hopefully.

“Nah, Count Viscaro is still here, but he don’t have high walls around his manor, so he’s still stepping lightly, at least for now,” the farmer answered. 

They talked for a while, and a number of things became clear to Simon. The first was that they’d moved about half a decade into the future. Except for the ruined castle, the valley was the same; it was only the people who were slightly different. Simon was unsurprised that a new lord was administering the region, too, though he did wonder why the vampire problem had been allowed to fester for so long. 

If I was or am the king, why would I have tolerated that? He wondered. Surely a brave knight could have found and fixed the problem in months, not years. 

For now, it was a mystery, but one he didn’t have to solve. Instead, he focused on his next project: finding Millie a home. 

Simon suggested they try to find her work in the lord’s service, but she made a face at that and insisted that she “didn’t want to work for a vampire, no matter who he worked for.”

For a moment, Simon believed that she’d taken that metaphor at face value, and it was only when he started to explain the true situation that she laughed and revealed the prank. “I’d serve again if I had to,” she confessed, “But after all this… surviving those monsters would be a horrible waste if I didn’t do something more joyful, you know?”

Simon nodded at that and agreed. “We’ll then let’s see if we can’t find you something better.”

Ch. 457 - Staking a Claim

The idea that Millie wanted to stand on her own two feet was wonderful, but unfortunately, the reality was a little more complicated. The real problem was that this region wasn’t exactly unowned. It had long been full of farming communities, and the fact that it had changed ownership several times in recent decades didn’t change anything but the maps.

While the land around the hulking castle ruins might have been empty, all of the land that was worth owning was already owned. The rolling hills that surrounded it were dotted with villages, fields, and pastures in all directions. Really, none of them looked much different than Lostelam. Some might have grown a bit in the past few years, but really, Simon couldn’t remember clearly enough to say. 

While he had enough coin for them to stay in an inn for a few days, he hadn’t planned to need enough gold to buy pasture land. As he relayed the problem, Millie asked, “Why not just turn stones into gold? Isn’t that what magic is for?” 

Simon considered explaining to her that he didn’t have the gesture of metal, and had no desire to explain why he wouldn’t speak the words. Instead, he said, “Magic should not be wasted on such frivolities. Would you sacrifice bits of your life just for money?"

As he spoke the words, he realized he’d described work, and felt foolish. Still, some part of him believed it. His life was infinite in a sense, but at the same time, any life was too precious to be spent in such base ways.

Even as he said the words, he recalled how he’d used the word for that on more than one occasion earlier in his magical journey. Rather than dwell on that, though, he considered simply making the journey to the southeast to retrieve one of the coin caches he’d buried previously near the crossroads not far from Ordanvale.

Would walking for so long waste any less energy than simply creating gold from stones? His mind teased as he considered the proposition. 

He certainly had enough stashed away for a rainy day, and truthfully, he would have done exactly that, if not for some chance gossip that Millie had heard while loitering with the washerwomen by the river. “Do you know why no one lives around the castle?” she asked. “Not even the new lord?”

“Is it because it’s cursed?” Simon asked with a yawn, “Or perhaps it’s haunted?”

“Well, that too,” she smiled, “But really, it’s because the land is held in trust for the man that saved the valley from the bloodsuckers.”

Simon laughed. “So if we’d stayed instead of finding that secret door, it really could have been your castle. How ironic.”

“Not my castle,” she responded in annoyance as she poked at his chest. “Your castle, mister.”

“I don’t need a castle, functional, or in ruins,” Simon laughed, “but if it comes with the land, you can keep it too. I don’t mind.”

It was an unexpected windfall, but it did come with the clause that Simon actually had to claim it and prove it somehow. Honestly, he would have preferred the walk to Ordanvale, even at Millie’s slow pace, but this was better.

I’ll have to deal with another lordling, Simon told himself. Still, he tried to assure himself that it wasn’t going to be so bad, and for once. 

He visited the family he’d saved years before, and they recognized him instantly. The farmer he’d hoped to enlist as a witness to attest to the truth of his claim had passed away, but his daughters, Emma and Ara, both volunteered to do exactly that. In fact, they fought over it just politely enough that it started to get weird. 

“I’d be happy to speak to Lord Viscaro on your behalf,” Ara volunteered. 

She looked older now than she had as the hundred-year-old vampire she’d become during their last encounter, but even approaching thirty, that didn’t help him see her as someone but the pale woman that had woken him long ago. 

Her younger sister Emma was only a little older than Millie, with lighter hair and a brighter smile. Simon remembered her less fondly, even though she’d never become a vampire. Still, he smiled blandly as she said, “Now, sister, you’ve got such a busy week, let me handle this while you attend to your other chores.” 

Simon was about to answer that it was fine either way, and there was no rush, until their mother intervened. It was then that he realized she was trying to play matchmaker as much as peacemaker in that conversation.

“It’s fine, girls,” she told them. “You can both escort Mr. Simon to meet his lordship on the morrow. Two witnesses are better than one. That way… Millie, was it? That way, she can relax. It sounds like she’s had a frightful trip in all of this.”

Simon expected the normally meek Millie to say something conciliatory, there, but instead she stepped a little closer to Simon and said, “I was there at the castle when the monsters fell. My word is as good as anyone else's."

After that, he didn’t try to intervene because he was too busy trying to parse what had happened. He was so used to reading auras and etching lately that his social graces had slipped a little bit.

I’m being treated as an eligible bachelor instead of a witchhunter or a mage, he realized slowly.

It wasn’t what he was here for, but he did find the thought mildly amusing. It was obvious that they’d be interested, of course. He was about to inherit a vast tract of land. Any peasant girl would want that, even if it came with the ruins of a haunted castle. 

As they eventually all agreed to call on the Lord together in a few days after sending a messenger ahead, Simon made a mental note to investigate the ruins at some point. They probably weren’t actually haunted, and his wands had likely been destroyed in the fire, but if the basement was still accessible, there might be some surprises down there. 

After that encounter, the most lasting effect was that Millie seemed more clingy than before, and no amount of assuring her that she’d get to keep the land no matter where he ended up dissuaded her. “I understand that you’ve got other adventures to be on,” she told him the one time he actually tried to make it clear he had no interest in romance. 

“It’s not about you,” he told her. “It’s—”

“It’s fine,” she answered. “I understand. A powerful man like you would never be interested in a nothing like me.” If anyone else had said that, he would have thought they were trying to manipulate him, but with Millie, her lack of guile and low sense of self-worth made that the least likely response. 

Is it? Do you? Simon almost followed up before waving it off with a shake of his head. He couldn’t respond like that after what she’d just said. She swore that she understood, but according to her aura, she wasn’t so sure.

Simon ignored her furtive flirting, but it wasn’t as easy as putting off Emma and Ara a few nights later, or the count’s own daughter, for that matter. She was the prettiest of the four women who interacted with him that night. The count barely even asked him for evidence that he was the man who had done the deed. Apparently, word of his heroism had been spreading since that night in the tavern, and he’d be well known in this area for a long time to come. 

Count Viscaro wasn’t the brute like the Raithwaite’s, not a good man like the Corwins, and Simon could tell from his slick gray aura the moment they met that he sized Simon up as an asset for his rule. The noble’s smiles were wide and genuine as anyone else’s that night, but they never reached his cold, calculating eyes. 

He assured Simon, “The plot is yours by right, but in time I might wish to purchase the defenses from you at least, should taxes allow us to rebuild this region’s true strength.”

Simon nodded at that. He’d happily sell the man most of the region back if it set Millie up for life; he didn’t need any money.

He didn’t even mind the man’s mercenary attitude. It only bothered him when the count set his daughter to seducing the prodigal hero. There are easier ways to earn my loyalty than trying to prostitute your nearest and dearest, he thought with disgust. 

He might have said it out loud, too, if he’d been a little drunker. Still, he didn’t want to cause problems for Millie when he was gone. So, he smiled as long as the girl tried to ingratiate herself with him over dinner, but didn't go past that. 

While the food was excellent, enduring that much attention was a painful experience for Simon. Attracting the attention of too many beautiful young women would have been a strange thing to complain about, so he said nothing, but still, it made him uncomfortable, and by the end of the meal, he’d half made up his mind that his brightening aura was attracting them like moths to the flame, even though that was impossible. 

My experience isn’t even up to 600,000, he reminded himself. Something like that might matter when I get above a couple million, but for now it's just the money. 

Well, it was the money and the reputation. He didn’t even have to tell the story that night. The sisters and the count did that for him. Years had passed, but he was a location legend. 

When the meal was over, they stumbled back from the gathering far drunker than Simon had intended, though that was only because it would have been rude not to drink to toasts given in his name. It was nice to be seen as a hero again, but it was nicer to be alone with Millie. He’d missed that. 

Because she doesn’t look at you with greed in her eyes, he reminded himself as he looked at the pretty young woman.

Only with adoration, Simon tried to assure himself that he also appreciated her because she was kind, and she hadn’t once even hinted at his magical powers throughout the whole evening, but even considering all of that, her beauty still drew him in. 

You’re drunk, he scolded himself. She’s like twenty, which is what, five percent of your age? You want to hit on someone, go see if the Oracle is single. She’s probably old enough at least. 

Simon had no desire to find out what the Oracle was hiding beneath her veils, at least not in a sexual sense. He kept his hands to himself with Millie, too, even though she still slept in the same bed as him. That was harder, because she clearly wanted to be kissed on the way back to their inn. 

Fortunately, in the morning, the only thing he regretted was the hangover, and when he went downstairs, he pocketed his curing talisman to take care of that while he got both of them some porridge. 

Just a few more weeks, Simon, he told himself. You just need to help her build a cottage, start a herd, and find a hound, and then you can leave in good conscience and explore the desert.

That calmed him. It was true. A week, a month, or even a year from now, the desert would still be there, utterly unchanged. Realistically, he had more than a season to finish business here and start back before he even had to worry about the weather. That let him breathe easier; as much as he really had all the time in the world, he never truly felt like it.

Ch. 458 - Building a Life

The first thing that Simon did with Millie was walk the land the next afternoon. Given the amount of hectares involved, they actually were quite finished until the sun was all but set, and they had to walk back to their room in the tiny hamlet of Burlwick in the dark. 

That was Simon’s fault, though. He’d stopped partway through their trek and trimmed a small dowsing rod to search for water when Millie had chosen the area where she thought the lay of the land was nicest. Once he had a well picked out, he then made some rough stakes. Then he marked the approximate location of the cottage he planned to build, the well he’d use magic to dig once that was done, and the general flow of the fenced paddock for the herd of sheep they’d procure for her down the road. 

By the time they were done, she complained playfully, “Now that we’ve finished, it’s too dark to see any of our work!” Simon could, of course. The outlines of the freshly hewed branches he’d marked the ground with lingered, lying pale, dying glowsticks to his vision, but he said nothing. He didn’t need to see it. He could imagine it. 

That night, they celebrated with mugs of hard cider, and then they spent the remainder of their evening discussing the outlines of her perfect dreamhouse. Simon had no paper on him at this moment, but a little charcoal and the whitewashed walls of their room became a fine canvas. 

“I’ll clean it later,” Millie swore, but Simon wasn’t concerned.

He’d drawn half of his art pieces this way. The images he traced were ephemeral, but the ideas that they built up intensified with every detail. First, he rotated the whole building slightly to give it the best views. Then he extended the design for the thatched eaves so that they’d shield the building’s interior from the high summer sun while still letting in warming winter rays.

He moved the chimney so that the cookstove’s back wall would heat the bedroom, and still be able to share a single flue with the second fireplace in the living room. “Two fireplaces, Simon, really?” she asked skeptically. “I thought you said we weren’t going to build a palace. What happened to simple?”

“It gets cold in the winter,” he answered with a shrug. “It's not like…” he paused as he realized he’d been about to make a joke about how hot she was. Instead, he finished with, “I just don’t want to see you as cold as you were in the mountains ever again.”

Her gratitude for even that much overwhelmed her enough that she hugged him again, which somehow turned into an awkward moment of silence he was forced to paper over by discussing how he planned to make plaster, and how he’d much prefer to buy bricks rather than make them if it was possible, because it was backbreaking work. 

Individually, the details didn’t matter, but in total, they were hugely important. By the time they were done that night, Simon had imagined the rest of Millie’s life into existence, and honestly, he was tempted by it. Saving lives and exploring mysteries still inspired Simon, but killing monsters as well as occasionally dying to them had grown a little old, and Simon would have loved nothing more than to see what a couple of decades of carding wool, tending flocks, and growing his own garden would feel like. 

For the next few days, that was all they did. They planned and dreamed. Once that was done, and they had a good plan for the land that Millie would actually put to use, he returned to the count and drew up an agreement that gave away Castle Gravenstone and its immediate environs, along with the whole northern part of his new land for a song. 

In this case, that song was worth hundreds of gold coins now, and a smaller annual payment to him or his heirs for the next twenty years. The castle itself was worth fifty times that, but Simon was keenly aware that any money he squeezed from the noble would be recouped twice over from its people, and he had no wish to rob them. This much was more than enough to set his little scullery maid up for life, and he made a note to build her a hidden floor safe to store it in when he’d left. 

Count Viscaro used the opportunity for another chance to make it clear that his daughter could be made a part of the price as well. “I assure you,” he told Simon. “For a man of your bravery, your common birth will hardly be held against you.”

“That’s very kind, your Lordship,” Simon answered, trying to keep his sarcasm to a minimum. “And open-minded, too, but right now I must focus on constructing a home, not on building a family.”

The man waved him off, and Simon returned to their hamlet, where he purchased more supplies to build himself and Millie a more permanent camp amidst the stakes of what would become a proper home. 

They talked through the plan there for a few more days, but before Simon could move the first stone, though, or even cut it, he needed the proper tools. Each of the castle stones was much too large for him to move, even with timbers and a mule. He needed something much smaller, and quartering each one three times until they were reduced to eight smaller blocks that were each a little bigger than one of his boots would be just about right. 

Cutting that many blocks by himself would have taken him at least the rest of the year, though, even if they were only limestone instead of granite or basalt, so he needed something to speed that up, and he had a few ideas in mind. 

So, he stopped by the blacksmith with a series of sketches for the crude implements he needed. The first was a scribe, which was a sharp, pointed steel tool with a fine point. It was too slender to inscribe, but the handle that he mounted it in wouldn’t be, and it was what he’d use to scribe everything else with a crystal-powered rune of lesser shaping, Celdura. He’d also need a chisel that would eventually bear the marks of breaking, Uuvellum Delzam, a talisman he’d use to fuse the pieces powered by Vosden, and a couple of other odds and ends. 

If this were his home, and he was planning to stay, he would have built the forge first and made these himself. It would have saved the gold and the questions, especially about loose ends.

When the smith asked Simon. “What sort of mallet will you be using on this chisel?” For instance, he’d been reminded that he didn’t actually own a hammer. 

Still, ordering and paying for the tools was the easy part. After he had them, he couldn’t really use them until he made them magic, which was weeks more work since he wasn’t about to start flinging magic about for this part. First, he had to make the scribe, and then he had to use it to carve the rest of the tools.

It wasn’t hard work; Simon even enjoyed the detailed nature of it, but each time he had to send Millie away, and she never liked that. “It’s not like I don’t know what you do,” she told him once. 

“It’s true,” he agreed, “But it’s important that you’re the only one with that knowledge. What if I should be working on an experiment into something forbidden, and someone unexpected arrives? Alone, I could flee, but if you were sitting there knitting, my only choice would be to strike them down.”

“We could flee together,” she volunteered, but he shook his head. 

“I think after the troll we both know that there are paths that I must walk alone,” he answered, in a tone that made it clear the conversation was over. 

She didn’t like Simon’s answers like that, but she did respect them, and took the opportunities to go into their hamlet to do research on the shopping list Simon had given her. She needed to find him the closest lumber mill, as well as a place where she could find a good spinning wheel, and all the other furniture she’d need later that year once he’d built her a house to put it in.

When Simon had all of that hard work complete, he finally bought a good working horse and fashioned a sledge for it to drag. By the time he was done with all of that and ready to cut the first stone, nearly three weeks had passed since their arrival.

That was longer than he planned. But to be fair, you didn’t originally plan to build her a fortress made of old fortress pieces, he reminded himself.

That was okay; it was an interesting project, and he had no one to blame but himself, and these were all good experiments. It wasn’t like he’d regret refining a chisel of stone splitting in future lives if he wanted to build a golem or anything similar. 

“Hell, a sword of flesh splitting would probably be just as effective,” Simon told himself as he lined up the tool for his first blow. The blow rang out with a crack that split the stone neatly in two along the line. 

He gave a low whistle at that and then looked at the tool again, noting the minimal damage. “Where were you when I had to cut through the walls of the Broken Tower, huh?”

He smiled at that. Force had been the wrong word to use there. It was too brute force. Using anti-connection to divide the block conceptually made far more sense. He could see it when he struck. An instant before the rock split, the aura did. Once it became two, the physical reality had no choice but to follow, as he’d suspected. 

Once Simon started, he made quick work of the half a dozen broken stones he’d selected. Each one took exactly three blows to become eight pieces. Then all he had to do was load them onto his sledge and use his horse to pull the ugly vehicle forward.

Weeks spent on this project, and I haven’t even laid the first stone, Simon chastised himself to celebrate the sudden bout of progress.

He hadn’t expected things to move this fast. It certainly wasn’t the plan he’d told Millie when she’d left that morning, but really, he always doubted his new toys before he tested them thoroughly. He went back and forth about all of that, and more, as he pulled on the reins and clicked his tongue to start moving the load across the hundred of hards that separated him from his construction site. 

That didn’t take long. In fact, the horse made it look easy, but even with Simon’s artificially enhanced muscles, placing and aligning the stones on the bottom course was still back-breaking work. If he had to mortar them the old-fashioned way, he would have had to do it all again, too, but fortunately, he took out one of the other charms he’d created, and after checking to make sure the alignment was exactly right, he tapped the talisman against the stone with a sharp jingle and focused. 

Visibly, nothing happened, but Simon saw a flash of invisible magic flare between the two otherwise inert stones. And felt a wave of cold as the word of lesser stone drained all the heat from the nearby air, and probably even him to power the spell. 

Visibly, neither of them changed. If they had, that would have been undesirable. He wasn’t building Millie a palace. He was building her a rude cottage, just one that happened to be built like a fortress.

Each of these stones would be bonded together, heaven, the stone he would bury at the threshold. That limestone ring would be the foundation. He’d then cut some proper holes for the timber frame he planned to procure next, and it was only when all of that was done that he’d add the daub and wattle walls that were so common in the area. In the end, it would look only a little nicer than everyone else's house, but he’d strengthen it with so much earth magic that it might as well have been reinforced concrete. 

Simon smiled at that. For some reason, it felt really good to know that even after he left, the girl would be taken care of. 

She’s growing on you, he told himself. He didn’t even try to deny it. She’d bounced back better and faster than he’d hoped from the traumas he’d put her through in the portals, and hardly ever woke with nightmares now. Better, she was just so innocent, and unlike the other women of the area seemed to want nothing of him beyond his company. 

In fact, when she finally returned with their dinner, he’d finished erecting the footing of her small home, she complained. “Simon!” she scolded as much as she could with such a large smile. “I told you to take it easy! How did you move all of this? I thought you’d be cutting stones for days!”

He nodded, glad she didn’t notice that he was almost shivering from the cold he’d been using. “I was. Really, I can’t believe it took this long to do the first step. We can’t even start on the floor until the walls are done, and the frame for the ceiling is in place.”

She swatted him playfully for his disagreement, even as she moved to their tent and started to unpack her picnic basket. “Why would we need a floor?” she asked, as she moved. “A little river sand to season the soil and a lot of walking, and before you know it, we’ll have—”

“Bugs,” Simon agreed. “Forever. I was thinking, instead of ants, you could try some terracotta tiles. If we built a simple kiln and used river clay…”

“Terawhatta tiles?” she asked, confused. “Simon, I am no countess. This is not a palace. We don’t need anything half so fancy!”

“That’s not fancy,” he told her with a shake of his head as he unwrapped the cloth-covered cheese she handed him and started slicing it. “Fancy would be a full-blown mosaic. I’d love to do something like a flower garden, so you have a little color, even in the winter, but I probably don’t have the time for that.”

“I—” Whatever she was going to say there died on her face as he reminded her he’d be gone soon. She was clearly growing less fond of that idea as he lingered. Still, she didn’t complain. Instead, she turned the conversation away from topics that might lead to more talk of tomorrow, and back to what it was they were eating tonight.

Simon said nothing else on the subject either. Instead, he wondered if lingering this long was hurting the poor girl more than it was helping her. 

Ch. 459 - Building a Life (part 2)

The foundation was the slowest part of the entire job, but physically, it was the easiest. He’d been able to use magic for almost all of that, and only had to lift each stone twice: once to put it on his sledge, and again to fit them into place. The timbers, as well, were fairly easy, since he used magic to cut the pockets they’d slide into. That work, at least, was assisted by hiring a few men from one of the nearby villages to help him fit them all into place.

That job had only lasted a couple of days, but over the course of it, every single laborer managed to imply that Simon was a lucky man for finding such a beautiful bride. They wouldn't hear any explanations to the contrary. Instead, they offered him a wink and a nod like he was protesting too much.

When all of the heavy lifting was done, though, the hard work truly began. Once Simon had the vertical stakes in place, he enlisted Millie to help him do the daub and wattle instead of keeping her occupied elsewhere. Still, he gave her the easy part. She gathered reeds and willow branches and wove them between the stakes, creating a flimsy fence that would serve as the anchor for the clay that he would gather. 

Constructing walls in this way was simple enough; he’d never done more than help others with patch jobs, but there was little that could go wrong. All that daub and wattle construction required was a structure with strong vertical branches that was woven through with thinner, flexible horizontal branches. It was like making the ugliest, coarsest tapestry imaginable, and then coating the whole thing with a muddy clay coating, because you were ashamed at how it looked. 

There were lots of particulars, and Simon spent a couple of nights at their local tavern, asking for tips before he started mixing clay, straw, and sand together in just the right amounts to create a goey, lumpy mess. Working with Millie was almost as fun as it was exhausting, and they made steady progress. Even though they still slept in a tent, the walls of their tiny fortress slowly grew up around them.

Millie seemed very pleased to be helping, and worked hard at her task, though eventually Simon caught up with her, near the end of the west wall, despite a several-day headstart. Simon paused his plastering work then and switched to helping her, and after a few trips to gather more material, they had enough switches and reeds that he expected they’d have to burn a few when all was said and done. 

“It really is starting to look like a home,” she remarked as they were tidying up for the day. “But only if you stand exactly in this spot.”

Simon moved to join her and found that she was right. The cottage hadn’t been whitewashed yet, and it didn’t have a roof, a chimney, or even a front door, but it had two good walls, and from a certain point of view, it really was starting to look nice. 

As they made the walls, Simon was too tired at night to research or work on any new magical implements, so he mostly just chatted with Millie as they ate simple meals over the fire or fancier ones retrieved from the village. 

“What I miss most is having a proper kitchen,” Simon admitted one night. “There’s only so much you can do over an open flame, but with a decent setup and some proper cookery, I’m actually a decent chef.”

“A cook and a mage,” she answered cheerfully. “Truly the stuff of miracles. Why would you bother to learn to cook, though, if you could just summon a nice meal? Is such a miracle really beyond the bounds of magic?”

Simon answered that it would be frivolous and wasteful, but it was a riddle that kept recurring in his mind the rest of the week. What would be the constraint that would keep me from making something like that? He asked himself. Is it the words I have? Is it a lack of imagination?

Meiren was quite literally the word of creation. He might use it as life most of the time, but was there a reason he couldn’t use it to make a medium rare steak, or even a cheeseburger? Would he have to add words for earth and plants? 

He eventually decided that the word of lesser cheeseburger would be something like, Meiren Aufvarum Hyakk Zyvon Vosden. While he had no desire to test it right now, what the thought experiment really told him was that he was still thinking too small about this world’s magic. If he could summon a cheeseburger, which was still very much an open question, why couldn’t he summon a wand, or even a monster?

A monster like a golem would doubtlessly be complicated, and he doubted that he knew enough about anatomy and biology to make true life, but a false life was certainly doable. Mages less talented than him seemed to do it pretty regularly with zombies. 

Having a golem would certainly speed all of this up, he thought, pity the farmers would react rather poorly to it. 

All it took was one look back at the scorched ruins of Castle Gravenstone, a few hundred yards away, to remind himself that he couldn’t test anything so obvious out in this place, but he still thought about it. How could he now, while he was harvesting this much clay?

He could sculpt a servitor to be artistic as well as functional, with ball joints, and then harden the whole thing with magic. He could hide the runes of activation underneath a breastplate… No, he corrected himself. I could hide the whole thing in platemail to better disguise it, or maybe I could just animate platemail by itself…

Simon’s thoughts went round and round while he worked, but they were eventually banished when they finished all of the wattle, and Simon enlisted Millie to mix the clay and sand with the straw using her bare feet. It was like a dirtier version of stomping grapes into wine, and as much as he sped up his work, it slowed him down significantly, because he couldn’t help but look at the spectacle. 

Millie was pretty enough, but he never really looked at her in a sexual way until her skirts were hiked up to her knees as she moved. Those moves weren’t quite a dance, but they were close enough that he found them titillating as he got flashes of her pale thighs whenever he fetched more daub. 

He looked away to preserve her modesty, but after he’d been reminded of what a pretty young thing she was, it was harder to sleep next to her. As Simon lay awake that night, he chastised himself for his weakness. The girl is barely twenty. You’d be too old for her even if you were your physical age. As it is, you’re more than ten times her age. What could you possibly have in common with her?

Those stray thoughts only got worse as the heat of summer arrived and slowly intensified. Simon often worked stripped to his waist on the hottest days and took a dip into the water with every load of clay he harvested from the river banks with an adze. Sometimes, though, Millie followed suit, and she did; her blouse was made practically transparent, showing him just how juicy the forbidden fruit could be. 

If it had just been her body he was attracted to, that would have been easier, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. She was a kind person with a bright soul. 

As they worked on the third and eventually fourth wall, Simon tried to put some emotional distance between the two of them, but paradoxically, that only made Millie more clingy. She knew he would be leaving soon, and even though she never brought it up, it was clear that it was weighing on her. 

Before this, you were in her life for a week, Simon reminded himself. You’re already going above and beyond here because you dragged her through a portal. If not for that, you wouldn’t even remember her name in a couple of lives. You don’t owe her anything more than this. 

It was a simple message, but he had trouble making himself believe it when she told him stories about what it was like growing up in a simple community not so different from where they were now. The lottery had screwed up her life, and then Simon had gone and screwed it up a second time. 

He had plenty of time to think about that as they finished the fourth and final wall, and he marked where the chimney would go, halfway between the two planned hearths. After that, the last thing they had to do to complete the walls was whitewash them. 

Simon did that with a smooth coating of lime over the course of three days while Millie sprinkled water behind him as he went to keep them moist. According to the men he spoke to about the process, the step was vital, or the cottage would get cracks when it dried too quickly, and Simon had no desire to do this backbreaking step twice. 

When he finished that, and the maid was off cleaning up, Simon used his talisman of earth to solidify the walls further. They wouldn’t stand up to dragon fire or anything, but as the cold rippled through the building, he felt quite confident that no amount of goblins would ever manage to burn it down. 

I should visit this place in future ages, he told himself as he looked upon it with pride. To see how well it stands up to the tests of time.

When that was done, the house still wasn’t complete. They had to do the roof, the floor, the door, and the chimney at a minimum. He probably also needed to do shutters, proper windows, and arrange for someone to make Millie some furniture, but that all felt doable. It was only the height of summer. 

To celebrate, Simon paid Burlwick’s Innkeeper several silver coins to prepare a small feast for them. It was a complete surprise to Millie. He sent her to fetch their dinner as he often did while he worked on framing a window. Then, when she was out of sight, he mounted up and rode the long way, beating her there by ten minutes, which was enough time to help the innkeeper's wife finish setting up one of their rooms on the ground floor as Simon and Millie’s private dining room for the evening. 

By the time she arrived, he was sitting there casually as if he hadn’t just spent the last few minutes frantically moving furniture around. 

“Simon!” she cried out in shock. “What’s all this?”

“I just thought our progress was worth celebrating,” Simon answered with a shrug. “We’ve got four walls. That’s practically done as far as I’m concerned.”

“Always another magic trick with you,” she said with a smile as she surveyed their tiny feast. “If you'd told me you’d done all this, I would have freshened up!”

Simon almost told her she looked beautiful the way she was, but he held his tongue and at the last moment said, “I would have, if you owned more than the one outfit.” 

That earned him a playful slap, but soon enough, they were feasting. Their meal was still rustic, and in no way compared with the dinner they’d had at the count’s, but it was the first meal they’d eaten at a table with utensils in a month, and that, as much as anything, made all the difference. 

That night, they shared a pork roast, with roasted potatoes, crusty bread, and a sweet berry pie, and they did their fair share of drinking, too. They started with a bottle of red wine, but after that ran out, Simon had several more beers besides as they traded jokes and talked about futures. 

Well, about her future, anyway. Simon didn’t mention that his future was in the mountains, in that portal he’d found while searching for firewood. Still, he was more than a little jealous of hers.

He allowed himself to silently acknowledge that if he ever completed the Pit, this was the sort of life he’d like to have. A peaceful land, few neighbors, and all the room in the world to do whatever the hell I want, he thought wistfully.