Elthena was never far from his mind on the voyage north, but by the time they’d made ndfall, he’d made peace with it. This life was important, but this body was old and starting to get a little worn out, so he was going to lo the events here as well as he could, then proceed further into the depths. He doubted he was anywhere close to in shape enough to sy a dragon at this point in his life, but he had the armor anyway, so he might as well try just the same.

  After he fixed it, of course. The heat and the impact had done some real damage, but it was hardly a priority.

  Simouro the little town of Bckwater with Daisy in tow, and after promising that he would not seek to return, the captain gave him a generous purse of gold and silver and wished him well. Simon would keep that promise, of course, but only in this life. In his one, he would return to Ionar the day this ship put out to sea.

  He’d have to expin the missing scars or inflict them a sed time, but her of those options bore much thinking just yet. He wasn’t sure if the truth or the lie would be more harmful in this case.

  Instead, Simo some time in his least favorite town, listening to stories aing a feel for the y of the nd after all these years. It turned out that the whole zombie thing retty much over. Every now and then, they’d find a body that made people think it might not be over yet, but usually, that was just a false arm.

  That made sense, sidering it had beeter part of a decade since he’d been back. Meraries had sed the area north of the bridge, and trade had long since restarted. Holy, with the exception of a atue in the ter of town, the pce was lookier than he’d ever seen it. The streets were bustling, the bars were full, and spirits were high. The only thing that rui was the fact that Kel was the one who had gotten all the credit for it. Kel, the asshole that had ied the town in more than one previous version of the level. Kel, the prick that had hidden his own wound until he’d turned and almost taken out his whole pany. The man had very nearly gotten Freya killed, too.

  No, worse than that, he almost turned her into a fug zombie! Simon though, fuming.

  He had no idea what Freya and the other survivors of the Butcher’s Bill had told the people of Schwarzenbruck, but it definitely wasn’t the truth. The only reason he didn’t waste a word of force to knock the thing over was because he wasn’t really in a position to be wasting weeks or months of his life. Physically, he was getting close to forty, but with all the magic he’d burned in those years and the lingering effects of the injuries that had healed as much as they were ever going to heal, he robably pushing sixty at this point, which was as old as he’d ever been except for a brief moment on level 20.

  At least he didn’t see Freya, though. So there was that. He did see Brenna, though she wasn’t a barmaid anymore. She’d gotten married and had a couple kids iween now and the st time he was here, which he thought was fairly cute.

  Simon lingered long enough to get a feel for the pd verify that the portal still existed in the same spot it always did, which was a new piece of information. o self, the portal will exist for as long as what it's attached to exists, as long as I’m close to it.

  Strahan the fact that the portal was still there, though, was where it led. This time, it didn’t lead to the cathedral as he’d expected it would. Instead, it led to the mountaintop where he’d sin the wyvern. I wonder what I screwed up to make that happen? Simon asked himself. In the end, it was a question he couldn’t really answer, but it was a good reminder. If he wao return to Ionar to resolve this, he o make sure he did nothing at all to disrupt any of the levels before this one. Hell, he o make sure he didn’t disrupt any levels between here and the eruption on level 10, either, which meant, for now, there was no wyvern hunting.

  Once he’d determihose things, he bought supplies a north one final time to make sure there weren't any signs of lingering evil. It was a waste of his time. The way north wasn’t eveely dangerous this time. It took him almost a week of searg to find a zombie, and it was a decayed thing that could do little more than moan and grasp toward the road from where its broken and decayed limbs were stu the mud.

  Simon put it out of its misery, but that was the only useful thing he did on the whole trip. He stopped by the barrow mounds and found them a little more looted than they’d been on his previous trip but otherwise unged. The smithy that he’d used so mu his st trip had returo use, and though the town it was attached to never really recovered, many of the other small towns and vilges he main road had.

  In the end, three weeks after he set out from Schwarzenbruck just ahead of the first snow of the seasourned with nothing to show for it but a runny nose. “Well, this level is as solved as solved gets,” he said to himself.

  Still, he took one night whe back to town to rest at an inn and do some drinking before he headed out again. He wasn’t as young as he used to be. As much as he ehe heavy stews and thick slieat that typified northern cuisi did make him miss the Mediterranean food he’d eaten for so long, even though he preferred this. It was just… different. Maybe it was even too different, but somewhere along the way, he started to feel homesick about a pce that wasn’t really his home.

  None of that stopped him from following the pn, though. He was going back, just not with the dregs of life he had left. Wheuro Ionar, it would be fresh and ready to do what o be done.

  The wyvern level was just as Simon had left it any number of times in the past, and once he made sure that nothing was about to swoop down a him, he made his way toward the ruins that held the exit. There, he found the cathedral waiting for him, which was, in its own way, a relief, even though it was one of the weirder levels, and he never really felt fortable in it.

  Still, it was better than findi another level he’d already beaten. That was something he worried about sometimes i night, just before he drifted off to sleep. There was always the possibility that he would do something a all the progress he’d made so far. That wouldn’t be the end of the world normally, but right now, he had a life on pause he was eager to pick back up, so he was keeping a careful eye open fns that things might be spinning out of trol.

  Still, as he stepped through the door and shut it behind him, he couldn’t help but wonder if today was the day he would finally solve this level. After all, it was level 13, so it was months or years past his life in Ionar. Nothing he did here would affect that, so it might be worth a shot.

  This time, the devil was eating, and when Simon approached, the well-dressed monster raised his wine gss in a toast to him. “I’d wish you a long life, but it would seem you already had ohe devil said, ughing at his own joke.

  “I’ve had a ime, I’m gd to see you’ve missed me,” Simon answered dismissively as he approached the circle and began to read the runes once more.

  In the past, he’d had a lot of trouble with that, given their distorted nature, but he’d done a lot of magic study betwee time he’d e through this level and now, and he was able to read much of the circle without effort. Only the most tortured ses required real study.

  “Oh, but I have, I have,” the red-skinned man said with a smile before cutting another bite of whatever it was he was eating on his fine a. “I see so many of you heroes, but to see the same ones over and over? Well, that gets rarer as time goes on; I'm sure you’ve guessed the reasons by now.”

  Simon had hoped to tell the devil his own name and surprise him, but it didn’t seem to be written on the ring. Whoever had cast this spell had meant to open a gateway to hell, not a particur demon, which made it all the stranger. Why would someone want that?

  He didn’t know, but he did know that the devil had nothing useful to add, so Simon tuned him out and focused oask at hand, trag the runes back further and further until he finally isoted the power. The thing was both powered by hell and summoned hell, which seemed like a paradox waiting to happen, but this was magid he retty sure that sometimes making sense was entirely optional.

  For a moment, he thought he’d found the solution, but it was only when he reached for it that he realized it was wrong. If he wiped out the ruhat powered the thing the way it was id out, the circle would stop w before hell vanished, which was, of course, exactly what he didn’t want.

  “Finally found my weakness, have you?” the devil feigned, ed over what was obviously the wrong rune. Simoeo hesitate just to screw with the monster, but he wasn’t dumb enough to take aion from this thing, positive ative, for advibsp;

  What he needed was to make hell disappear before the circle faded, which meant the summoning ruself, which was a bination of distand boundary with a couple of other symbols he couldn’t reize. That was where he decided the oint in the spell was, ultimately. The union of distand boundary. It was there that the space where the summoned area could exist was defined, and if he undefi, well, the rest of the circle should just keep right oing even with nothing in it.

  “Are you sure,” the demon asked as Simoeo waiver. “Maybe you’d better go around aime or two until you’re sure.”

  “Oh?” Simon asked as his hand moved above the rune he po scrub away, “will you miss these little chats of ours?”

  “I have plenty of other heroes I talk with, but if you close the gate… well, you might live tret it,” he said, feigning sympathy. “It’s one of the only ways out of your little prison you see… It’s a loophole, and I think we could yet—”

  Simon looked the bastard in the eyes as he wiped away the rune and watched the portal into the yawning fiery pit start to close. It wasn’t even a tense moment. He knew he was right the moment he saw the fear in the demon’s eyes, aook pleasure in watg the thing vanish pletely.

  Simon stood and watched as the portal smmed shut and the twisted, floating pieces of the church slowly fitted back together. A few seds after he’d wiped away the rune and the demon’s smug smile, all that was left of the ehing was a chalk outline, which Simon took another couple of mio scrub away so that no one else got any ideas.

  Then, ohat was done, he walked over to the portal and stepped through it to the level, which was a farm field he’d seen before.