The screams didn’t st long. At least, the ones begging to be let in didn’t. Their silence spoke volumes about the state of things happening outside the mihey’d sealed themselves up into, Simon. His heart went out to them, and in those dark moments, part of him wished he’d used that horrible life-draining magic to end them. Only the knowledge that it hadn’t solved the level and that he’d just have to keep doing that over and ain strengthened his resolve. He’d saved as many people as he could, and he had to try other things if he wao resolve this.

  After that, there were other screams from time to time as different homes were finally breached by bugs. Soon enough, though, there was nothing but the buzzing. It came a, but it was s he entranetimes that he was certaihings were about to break through, but that never happened.

  Though he’d never heard of these is outside this level, they didn’t seem to be a new hazard for the region. “They rarely e this far from Mount Hizarth,” Millen said softly, filling Simon in on the particurs of the hazard they faced. “My dad said there was a swarm like this when he was young, but—”

  “We couldn’t have known!” the headman growled, interrupting their versation with preemptive words of self-defense. “I couldn’t have known that he wasn’t just a crackpot.”

  That was growing to be a habit for the man, who was certainly feeling the guilt keenly as eaew group succumbed to the tiny monsters in a dull chorus of screams. He had to know that if he’d only given the word, everyone would have joihem down here. Now, he was going to live while so many had died. Simon could tell from the sharp looks the old man got that everyone else had those thoughts, too, and for once, he didn’t do anything to try to soften the group up.

  Instead, he talked to them about their stories and learned what he could about the dark swarm. There were many stories to tell, apparently. In some versions of the myth, they were the children of a demon bouh a rge boulder that reached out into the world for some way to free their sire, and in others, they were the curse of a farmer who had died of starvation amidst his locust ravaged fields cursing the gods.

  The topics were iing, and pced the monsters outside somewhat closer to the boogieman than a hurrie. Everyone knew about the vicious little bugs, but no one expected them to actually have to deal with them; they existed mostly to scare disobedient children. After he learned all he could about the dark swarm outside, though, and no signs that goblins iant spiders were about to crawl up out of the underworld and attack them, Simon’s thoughts slowly became fixated on the evil version of himself and everything that had happened after that.

  With so many people and animals crowded around him, most of the time, he couldn’t produce a mirror and ask it any questions, but that didn’t stop his thoughts from ing. For the day or so, whether he was trying to reassure frightened vilgers or chat with the young boy, Aaric, his mind was a million miles away as he tried to untahat lifetime and figure out what he should do about any of it.

  The obvious thing would be to go to the barrow mounds before him and steal the . That would cause some kind of time travel paradox by keeping him from existing, though, wouldn’t it? He thought.

  Well, that was true only if it ossible for Simon to get there before his double. There was no reason to suppose that he could if his alter ego had figured out some magic word that would allow him to travel between levels or, worse, timeli will.

  There was also oher very good reason he couldn’t do that, he realized, at least, not yet. “Elthena,” he whispered to himself in a quiet moment. Until he’d resolved everything he wao do in that life, he couldn’t ge a siail before Ionar.

  That wasn’t such a big deal. That just meant he couldhe Skeleton Knight yet, but still, it galled him. The right move was to drop everything ae every resourd every life to uanding the nature of his doppelg?nger until he'd solved the mystery and put that awful version of himself out of his misery.

  Was it me? That was the question he wao know more than anything. Was it me and not some demon? Then what happeo make me bee so awful?

  Simon couldn’t ahat, but as long as he was unwilling to let go of his life in Ionar, he couldn’t even really effectively dig into the issue. It was like fighting with one hand behind his back. While he realized that more answers might well present themselves in future levels, he also decided that he might well be pying into the hands of the other version of Simon if he did that.

  I guess I’ll have to get to level 40 and talk with Hedes about this, he decided with a shake of his head. It wasn’t ideal, given how far he had left to go, but what choice did he have? From where he was standing, 9 levels seemed like the easiest path to his answers, even if one of those levels was a dragon.

  Maybe I just find the gate and skip that one for a while, he thought, hopefully.

  Skipping things wasn’t really an option when he was trapped in an old mine shaft, sandwiched between Millen’s young family and half a herd of sheep.

  At least this time, the girls will live, he told himself. It was a small sotion for everything else that was happening and uo be the key to the level, but he would take it.

  Roughly a day after they st heard the sound of humming, they opened a cra the barricade to look around, not sure what to expect. Simon looked around warily for a few seds, noting the apparently dead bugs that were scattered across the ground i numbers.

  He used a whispered word of minor forove a few of them around and see if they would stir to life, and when they didn’t, he pronou safe to leave the shelter. Wheownspeople returo the surface, it was to a different world. The buildings were still intad unged, except for the littered corpses of the thumb-sized bug corpses. Anything that was edible, though, was gone.

  That exteo the obvious, of course, like people and pnts. That was never in doubt. What was more curious, though, was that it included cloth aher, too. Skeletons were scattered throughout the small vilge, and all the trees and crops that he should have been able to see from here were entirely dehe area hadly been lush or anything, but there had been more than a few fruit and nut orchards scattered around the pow, there were only the bare limbs and scared bark. It was like the world had gone from summer to winter airely skipped the harvest season.

  The heartbreak on the faany in, and Simon chose not to patrohem by telling them that they could rebuild. They khat as well as he did, but more than that, they knew what a hard road it would be between here and there. Such a thing might take years, given the damage.

  Instead, Simon asked, “Will you move the vilge further away? How do you know this won’t happen again?”

  “Aren’t you the ohat’s supposed to tell us that?” Millen said, trying to turn it into a joke. “You were the ohat predicted this, weren’t you?”

  “True enough,” Simon nodded, mentally kig himself. “Unfortunately, the Gods have provided me with no new insights.”

  “Well, you be sure to tell us if they do,” the farmer nodded. “Until then, we’ll be here doing what we .”

  That night, many of the vilgers found their way to Simon to thank him for saving them. He accepted that gratitude but took no part in any of the small celebrations that followed. Instead, he studied the remains of the bugs, trying to figure out what might happe.

  He’d worried that they’d burrowed into the ground and id eggs that might not hatch for years like some kind of demonic cicada, but they seemed even less natural than that. The hard carapaces had bee brittle, and the innards didn’t tain eggs but ashes. There was definitely a touch of sulfur about these things.

  “Please don’t tell me this es back to hell too, somehow,” he sighed to himself.

  It was hard to draw that clusion from a single smell, but he had his s already with other things like that awful seed and even his double. Someone or something eriodically iing really evil things into this world, and he retty sure that sooner or ter, he was going to have to cut the head off that snake.

  The day, he gathered as many of the women and children as he could ahem to gathering the husks just in case. They tried burning them in a rge fire. They didn’t burn very well at first, but ohe fire got hot enough, they sizzled and exploded like sap-drenched pine as they sputtered and sparked before crumbling to ash.

  There was no way they could get all of them, of course, but it was better safe than sorry. While they were doing all this, he decided that the true resolution for this level robably on the mountain that Millen had mentioned earlier, but Simon didn’t pn to iigate that on this trip. Not when he had some nearly fireproof armor that needed fixing and a date with a dragon.

  Besides, he thought with a shake of his head as he recalled just how much gray was in his hair at this point. This run is ing to a close soon, one way or the other. Simon wasn’t giving up, of course. He was just being realistic. He was still half crippled from falling off the volo, and he didn’t rate his odds of solving another level very high just now. Still, he wasn’t in the mood to give up and hit the reset button.

  Simohree days helping the vilgers gather the husks and another week helping Millen’s family get settled into their pce. In the end, he slipped away in the night shortly after that.

  He was fairly certain that the level was the crossroads, and after a quick peek firmed it, it sealed the deal. He’d been fairly certain that he was going to leave Daisy behind as a parting gift, but with such a ve location and a pocket full of gold, he was certain he could buy a new mount or paimal to haul his junk around. Millen’s family needed another animal a lot more than he did at this point. So, without so much as a goodbye, he hauled his bundle over the threshold and closed the door behind him, disappearing into the level.