Ch. 443 - Ghosts of the Past

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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