Chapter 466 Ch. 466 - They Grow up So Fast

Simon and Millie had three children in four years, and in all that time, things never really calmed down. It was a pure, joyful chaos, and Simon used magic more than ever, just to keep up. By the time it was done, he’d expanded their home so that it was almost double the size it had originally been, ensuring that each child would eventually have their own small bedroom when they grew up.

He also installed the tile roof he’d threatened to for so long, and he’d built a larger walled-in barnyard, along with a deep well, a collection of sheds, a nice outhouse, and an expanded garden. Even the basement was expanded, though that was the easiest adjustment, since he could shift the earth magically without anyone noticing.

He added a refrigerated area for storing food, and a small office and studio for himself in the extra room. Eventually, he even added a set of internal stairs that connected their home and cellar because he got tired of going out in the rain. In all of this, he never quite added the running water he kept threatening to install. That would have probably been called witchcraft regardless of how he accomplished the feat, but it was only time that kept him from accomplishing the goal, rather than fear of the reaction.

The Simon family, as his more distant neighbors referred to them, since surnames weren’t common in this region, was on good terms with his neighbors. Barring the count himself, the locals loved him. He was quite literally a local hero, and every fall, in the lead-up to harvest, he drilled the men of the region just as he had the first year. Their enemy never materialized, but it did everyone good to think they were ready for whatever might have happened next.

While Simon’s magical experiments had been put on the back burner, they’d never quite faded entirely. He built a very complex charm of brass wire enlaid in the wooden frame of their family portrait he’d painted. It radiated minor minor health and minor minor curing throughout their home whenever the hearth was lit, which kept everyone in blessedly good health.

That was the most important thing he’d done, but he had other experiments too. Simon had turned some of the tiles on his roof into gathering panels, which used the sun to charge small crystals that he used to power his other experiments. He had a sprinkling of gray in his beard when he let it grow out in the winter, and didn’t wish to accelerate that any further with magic, so he powered most of his experiments externally now.

He’d given some thought to making himself younger, even though he’d told Millie he wouldn’t. That was just to keep their ages close so she didn’t outlive him, rather than for any truly selfish reason. He’d erected plain-looking standing stones at two corners of his property. Both had runes on the bottom, though. He added one to the west corner that used the words Celdura Vrazig Zyvon, along with a few connecting symbols, to summon storms during dry periods, and the other with Aufvarum and the same words rearranged to disperse them when the weather got too bad.

It took about fifty days of sunlight to equal one act of weather change, according to his math. He had no idea how that compared to the energy involved in evaporation, but it didn’t matter much.

It kept things nice and stable, which Simon appreciated since he spent so much time in the pasture tending to their growing herd while Millie stayed at home and tended to their children. Simon took their oldest daughter with him every few days to let her play among the flowers and grasses. In time, he planned to alternate between all three of them and spend time with each once they’d been weaned.

“Someday we’ll have a little school session right there among the flock,” he told his wife at night. She always laughed, thinking that the idea sounded insane, but Simon disagreed.

“What could be better?” he insisted. “A small slate for writing, and the whole of the natural world for learning and asking questions.”

All in all, it was a wonderful life. He occasionally wished he’d delved deeper into the Pit, but regretted nothing.

It was sometime toward the end of that fourth summer that Simon made a terrible discovery when he was looking at the mirror one afternoon. He’d asked it to display his character sheet, and noticed that his experience points were continuing to go up nicely when he noticed that the level he was on was no longer locked in.

“There’s got to be some kind of mistake,” Simon told the mirror, but it disagreed.

‘This level is currently not completed, and will be available on your next descent into the Pit,’ it wrote.

That chilled Simon’s blood, and for the first time in years, he shouted at the damn thing. “No, it was completed before we ever came down from the mountains. I’m sure it was!”

Simon was more than sure. He’d found the scout’s notes and burned them. Before that, the level had been unfinished, and after, it had been completed. What could have possibly changed?

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‘It was,’ the mirror agreed in its slow, measured way. ‘But it came undone.’

“What?” Simon asked. “When? How?”

His first impulse was to blame his doppelganger, but after a deep breath, he considered the other option. I didn’t find any notes on the Magi. Maybe it’s something he knew that others can’t find out?

It was his best guess, and the mirror could provide him no information about the how or the why, but the timing it offered gave Simon clues. The level had come unstuck three times in the last four years. It always in the summer after he counted the days between the events; it was the only measurements the thing had to offer.

“That damn horse,” he growled, slamming his hand on the table. “It died somewhere below the snow line, and every summer, whatever it is I’m supposed to find or fix gets uncovered where anyone could find it.”

For a moment, he reflected on the damn messenger on the wyvern level. All he had to do to solve it was throw away the message, and it was done. This was probably something similar, but the last thing he wanted to do was die with this level unfinished.

Since he and Millie had discussed it, he’d taken solace in the fact that if he were struck down by a bolt from the blue, his family would still live on, comfortable and happy. Sure, they’d be sad without him, but they had a decent-sized flock, a cellar full of food, and the nicest home for a hundred miles in any direction.

This revelation ripped away all of that, though, and he started making plans to find whatever it was that was causing the problem. Before he broke that news to Millie, though, he had to confirm that the problem was what he thought it was. So, he spent a day and a night crafting a wand of solid silver that he used to cast greater distant location.

It was also capable of distant location, depending on how he held it. He’d tried the lesser setting first, but it hadn’t worked at this distance. On the high setting, the wand pointed to it immediately, like a hunting hound, but it got so hot that it almost melted after just a few seconds, and Simon had to drop it and heal the burn on his hand.

Once he’d done that and determined that he could find whatever it was he was looking for, he went to talk to his wife. “There’s an evil I need to investigate,” he told her after they’d tucked little Mirah, Lannie, and Nolin into bed. “I won’t be gone long. Perhaps a week or two. I—”

Simon’s prepared speech was stopped when, rather than argue with him, Millie simply clung to him. Instead of asking what was wrong, he just hugged her and waited for her to talk.

Unfortunately, words were not immediately forthcoming. First came the sobs. Finally, after almost two minutes of him stroking her hair, she said, “I always knew this day would come. I always knew your quest would take precedence over—”

It took an act of will to prevent Simon from shaking her like a rag doll. “I’m not going off on a quest,” he promised her. “And if I could leave this alone, I promise I would, but it’s more of a danger to you than it is to me if I let it linger.”

She asked for details, but Simon couldn’t give them to her. All he could say was, “It has something to do with those men who attacked you in the mountains; do you remember?” That was vague, but the last thing he was going to do was explain the portals and the fact that if he didn’t complete the level before he died, they might wink out of existence.

They’ll still exist, he reminded himself, they’ll just be forever beyond your reach.

Nothing he said swayed Millie one way or the other. She had a terrible sort of fatalism that made her aura swirl darkly, and no matter how much she said she believed him, her aura told a different story.

It wasn’t until he turned the conversation to their children and said that he was doing this for them that she started to really accept what he was saying. After that, her arguments became a list of complaints.

Who will take care of the sheep? What about the kids? What will happen if you never come back? Those were easily answered, even the last one. So long as he retrieved whatever was causing this problem, he could die and return the day after he left, but he didn’t tell her that.

Instead, when their conversation was done, he didn’t linger for long goodbyes, because he knew that seeing Millie crying again would threaten his resolve. He just left and went to their local inn. There, he hired one of his neighbors to mind their sheep for a couple of weeks, and promised a generous payment upon his return. Then, he slept lightly in the common room and left before first light.

Simon pushed himself harder than he needed to as he crossed the largely cultivated areas that surrounded his valley. He walked around fields and cut through pastures when it was quicker, walking from dawn till dusk for several days in a row. Then, after crossing the river that divided Brin from Charia and skirting around a fortified clanhold, he started into the foothills.

There, the land was rougher, and honestly, more beautiful, but he didn’t linger for any of the vistas as he trekked between boulders and pines. No matter how much he rushed, though, the days ticked by, and he regretted each one. He’d told Millie he’d be gone less than a month, but that was going to be a hard timeline, considering it took him almost a week to reach trails that were actually steep.

That day, he started ascending into the mountains in earnest. He checked the location that night when he went to bed, as he’d done almost every night of the trip using his wand’s low setting. This close, it pointed unerringly toward his goal. However, since he was dealing with complex topography, he checked one more time in the morning to plan his route, even though he remembered the bearing from the night before.

It had been a whim, but it yielded an entirely unexpected result. Sometime during the night, whatever it was he’d been looking for had moved, and it was now farther north than it had been before.

“That damn horse can’t still be alive, can it?” Simon asked himself. It didn’t really matter. All that mattered was finding whatever it was that this level hinged on, and burning it so he could go back to his kids.