Simon made a mad dash for the gate as the wyvern swung around for the third time. Its shriek was like nails on a chalk board, but at least the awful him gauge the distahout having to turn around and waste precious seds looking.

  He didn’t quite reach the pilrs before the wyvern reached him, but he was so close that the monster was forced to pull up before it could rip Simon’s head off. Even so, it was a close call, and he saw the barb ohing’s scorpion like tail cut a gouge in the left pilr just as he ran through it.

  After that, he stopped for a moment. Not because he rotected by the stone, but because he felt like an idiot. “Mother fucker,” he cursed, realizing that once again Hedes had set him up. On the far side of the portal or whatever it was that he’d walked through, he’d only seen the ridge that had led to the wyvern’s , so of course that was where he’d gone. Ily the opposite dire were the rest of the ruins that this arch had beloo, which was obviously where the portal would be.

  Simon quickly sed the horizon, taking in the ruined castle and looking for anything that might indicate the portal, but nothing stood out. Just like the st level, it was ruins, but instead of the sprawling vine choke city this was some kind of fortification that had long ago fallen, and there was nothing to hide threats from him. He kly what the threat in this level was. It was flying around his head, trying to crush his spih that wreg ball of a tail that it had.

  So, with the Wyvern slowly cirg back towards him, Simon started running again. This time for the main gate. Halfway there, he was gasping for breath and too tired to evehe altitude. He just wasn’t cut out to do stuff like this. His endurance bar was way too short to be running ps like this. As winded as he was, he didn’t beat the giaile there, and it nded in his path, snapping and hissing as it blocked his way.

  “Hey - I’m sorry, okay!” he shouted. “I promise. I leave your stupid alone!” He moved to pull out his sword as he slowly backed away, but the thing shed out with a sudden bit as it extes neough that Simon practically fell over in his desperation not to get his head bitten off.

  He barely mao avoid letting out a shrill scream, and was able to scramble to his feet on all fours as the wyvern started chasing him on foot. He started running again. This time he ran along the wall to the left of the gate, looking for another way in. Unfortunately, it would seem the lizard was still plenty fast on nd, and he realized he was quickly losing ground.

  “Gervuul Meiren!” Simon shouted, pointing his hand back towards the monster bent on ripping him to pieces. The result oorly focused and more smoke than fire, as a few scattered streamers of fire and a storm of sparks filled the air behind him.

  It wasn’t his best work, but it did stop the creature in its tracks for a few seds as it roared at the ued danger. Simon was quick to take advantage of the moment and climbed the lowest point he could find on the wall. There, it was mostly colpsed and only about four feet high, so he was able to scramble up and over the top before the wyvern could devour him.

  Simon took one look at the wide and mostly empty courtyard and decided there was no way he was getting across that alive. Not without a rest first. The closest pce he could find a moment to sit robably in the lone remaining watch tower that hadn’t already colpsed on this part of the wall, though. So, with his chest heaving, he scrambled ae up the broken wall se while the wyvern took to the sky and pulled out his sword as he started running to the tower.

  This time he made it first, but all that allowed him to do was discover that the other half of the thing was missing. It would be at best a momentary distra for the angry mother that was trying to make him lunbsp;

  Simon was about to start running again wheiced that it did have one old, weathered, oak door that was closed on the remains of the far wall. Logically, that door went nowhere, but there was nothing logical about the pit, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt now that the goddess that tormented him loved to hide these things in obscure pces.

  So, even though the wyvern was bearing down on him, he took a few precious seds to open it, and oher side wasn’t the empty air of the battlement and the courtyard. It was a nighttime cityscape that looked straight out of some text book on a Rome reece. It wasn’t even ruins. It was a real live city with people and everything.

  The only problem was that he immediately noticed two things: the first was that pretty much everyone was running from something behind the portal that he couldn’t see, and the sed was that there were a few scattered fires in the part of the city that he could.

  It was an awful choice. Stand her and definitely die, or jump into the level without a clear idea of what was going on and probably die right away from some new horrible thing.

  In the end, Simon did the only thing he could do, and jumped through the doorway moments before the wyvern was able to end him. No oiced his sudden appearance, but then he didn’t expect them to. They were all running for their lives towards the harbor with whatever they could carry. It was every man for himself.

  As soon as Simon stepped out of the alley he was standing in and turned around, he saw why, and his heart sank. There was aing volo behind him. It wasn’t particurly close, but it was turning night into day with the amount of va it ewing into the sky, and magma was slowly flooding the street, moving towards him at a fast walk.

  Simon coughed. The air wasn’t particurly smokey, but it was foul, and he robably breathing in all sorts of toxic gas just standing here. It was almost as bad as his dad’s smoking. Even so he breathed deeply and stood there, pletely winded, as he tried to uand the situation.

  Everyone was running downhill, away from the volo and towards the harbor. They might live lohat way, and they might not. He wasn’t sure. He’d seen more than a few dotaries on Pompeii, and if this volo erupted like that, then nowhere was safe. Simon didn’t care about being safe, though. A volo would be a quick, death. He wasn’t so afraid of those anymore. What he cared about was uanding why this level was here, and where his deranged goddess would put the level.

  If he had to search the whole city, it could take literally a hundred lives to do that. He o narrow that down.

  “She definitely wouldn’t put it somewhere I definitely ’t get to, but she probably would put it somewhere I couldn’t get to for long,” he told himself as he looked around the city.

  That meant it robably in the dire that the people were running from, not where they were running to, unless she’d done somethira tricky like putting it in the lighthouse he could see at the far end of the bay, or in one of the ships that were already leaving the harbor. That didn’t seem very likely to him, though.

  “She’ll wao be somewhere dangerous, where the ce of a painful death is at its highest,” he mumbled as he looked at the temples on the far hillside. “Somewhere obvious and fshy. Like a… Pace.”

  As he finished speaking, his eyes settled on the pace, which was in the shadow of the volo and had a anding view of the town and the sea. That was defihe sort of pce she would pick. He was sure of it.

  Simon started in that dire, but for the first few minutes he just walked, because he was exhausted. When the va started to get close, he jogged again, but just enough to stay in front of it. In the slowly spreading carpet of magma, he occasionally saw fming human shapes. He wasn’t sure if those were people being burned alive, or fiery elementals, but he didn’t want to find out. In the former case it was awful, and ier he had no way to fight them. He doubted that his only spell would do aer than his swainst that sort of enemy.

  Fortunately, he never found out which was the case because he arrived at the pace without i and found the pce abahe guards that he’d passed on the were running away with whatever valuables they could carry. They didn’t try to stop him. They just looked at him like he was crazy.

  The pace was a work of art, and even though that wasn’t really Simon’s thing, he would have gdly spent half a day just admiring and expl it.

  Simon very much doubted he had that sort of time, though, so instead of stopping to admire every statue and frieze, he hustled from room to room, opening every door and trying to figure out which obscure pantry would turn out to be his salvation.

  At least that was true until he got to the throne room, theopped dead in his tracks. In a rge archway at the back of the room was the portal. It led to a nighttime forest that looked positively primeval.

  That’s not what stopped him, though.

  What stopped him was the fact that ohrone in front of him lounged Hedes, or someohat looked a whole lot like her.

  Simon walked forward in stunned disbelief, still holding his sword in his hand. Wheered the room, he heard the volo outside erupt again. It was loud enough that the noise shook the building even before the tremors reached it, but her of those things stopped him from approag the goddess.

  Whe close enough, she regarded him and started to cp. “gratutions, Simon,” she smiled. “Truthfully, I hought you’d get this far.”

  “Are you here to mock me or just watch me burn?” Simon asked acidly. “If you wao watch me suffer, you really should have been there for the zombie level. That was the best o.”

  “I’m an omnipotent being, Simon. I’m always watg you,” she answered before her tone softened a bit. “And Schwarzenbruck is a terrible po ohat reaches it gets through it without suffering, sadly. It stops more heroes from advang than almost any other level.”

  Simon thought about not just chastising her, but attag her for saying something so flippant. He hadn’t just suffered. He’d been a zombie for months. He’d watched the only person he cared about in this pce die in his arms. It wasn’t suffering. It was heartbreaking.

  He didn’t rant about any of that, though, because she wouldn’t care. Instead, he asked coldly, “I’ll ask again. Why are you here now if you're always watg?”

  “Just to che on your progress and gratute you,” she answered warmly. “As I said, you’ve been doing much better than expected, and so few people reach this far. Out of every twenty warriors that ehe Pit, only one reaches level ten.”

  Simon hadn’t had a ce to think about it, but once she said it, he realized he had indeed made it another level down. Hell - he’d all but made it awo levels down, because unless Hedes was actually going to get her hands dirty for ohere was no way he wasn’t making it to level eleven.

  “Thanks,” he said, filing that information away for ter. Only 1/10th of the way through this awful pd he was already iop 5%. That would have given him gold rank in the dders of his favorite online game, but he’d always been more of a diamond pyer, so he wasn’t ready to settle for the top 5%.

  “You’re wele,” she smiled. “Every ten levels or so, I like to che on the people like you that haven’t yet given up to the awfulness of the pit and see if there are any questions I answer.”

  “Well, you start by—” Simon had a whole list of questions, so if she was , he’d gdly keep asking them until the va was at the doorstep.

  “Just ohough.” She interrupted. “One question for every ten. Those are the rules, I’m afraid.”

  Simon ched his fists in annoyance. Of course, she had a rule about that. Of course, she did. He thought about asking why that was, but quickly stopped as he realized that would be his question. Instead, he stood there quietly to think, filtering through the dozens of possible questions that swirled though his head.

  Finally, after a lot of thought, he decided what was truly important, and opened his mouth to speak again, while the goddess looked on at him with amusement.