“Alright,” Simon said finally. “You said that the pit used to be something else before. What was it? How did the pit e to be?” His question echoed off the arble walls, and it was only when it had faded pletely that the goddess opened her mouth.

  “Now, that is an excellent question.” Hedes smile widened, but grew a shade colder as she leaned forward ohrone. “I was expeg something a bit more short-sighted from you. You really are growing a bit, aren’t you. A little more every day.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Simon said, failing to hide how flustered the back handed pliment made him.

  “No? The Simon who ehe pit would have said something like…” She cleared her throat, and whearted speaking again it was no longer her melodious voice, but Simon’s voice being pyed back at him. “Why does this pce have such awful level design? Why didn’t you bother to include a tutorial for the magic system at least? What the FUCK was with that zombie level?”

  Simed at what she said, not just because it itch perfect imitation of him, but because all of those had beeions that had run through his head before he settled on the one he had actually asked.

  “None of those will help me uand how to beat this pce,” he mumbled.

  “That’s true,” she agreed. “All your life that stubborn petitiveness has held you back, but suddenly it's a strength. Don’t lose it. You’ll for what es .”

  Simohat veiled threat hang silently in the air for a few seds, unanswered. He wasn’t going to let her distract him.

  “The Pit was a mistake,” she said finally. “My mistake. It was one of many, of course. I’m not perfect. Even the omnipotent are not infallible.”

  “What was your mistake?” Simon asked.

  “I believed in someooo much, and took a leap of faith that didn’t end well. You see, once upon a time, there was a hero. His name is lost to time because this was a very, very long time ago, but he was the opposite of the person you are, iy much every way, Simon.” She expined, not even batting a the casual insult. “He was tall and strong. He was brave and selfless. His previous life had been cut short when he defeated the Archdemon, and I told him that he could have whatever sort of life he wanted as a reward for doing so much good for so many.”

  Hedes stopped for a moment, just before the volo looming over both of them rumbled to life. Its eruptions had been a stant background noise since Simon arrived in this city, but bsts that were loud enough to block out speaking like this had been a rarity. It must be getting worse out there, Simon thought.

  “Do you know what he asked for,” she asked when the noise died down, smiling sadly.

  “A bigger challenge?” Simon tried, taking a stab in the dark while he fumed about her parison. If he was really the opposite of whoever this loser was, that would make him short, weak, cowardly and selfish, which obviously wasn’t the case. She just enjoyed pig on him like everyone else had.

  “In a way, he did,” she answered, nodding her head slowly. “He told me he wao be born into a world that needed no hero. A world so peaceful and kind that he could simply enjoy life. I sadly had to inform him that such a world did , and that even across the infinity of worlds I had access to, there would always be some darkness, and a need for champions to rise to the occasion.”

  “Since his world did , he asked to make one. He asked me to build him a great challenge so that he could se the world, and then ohat was done, he could be born anew within it.” She ughed then, and it that fiery light ing from the fire outside the pace, he could barely reize the beatific goddess that he’d first met when this all started. “ you believe it? What a crazy thing to ask? The ce to fight all the evil in the world? Such a thing could not be done, of course, but I realized it would be possible to ge just the most pivotal moments in history and usher in a goldehat might be so long as to seem endless.”

  “So every level i is one of those moments?” Simon made no attempt to hide how stupid that sounded. “What do a bunch of rats in a basement or a few goblins in a cave have to do with ging the future or making the world a better pce?”

  “Even for a hero like him, such a feat would be extremely unlikely. So, to help him in the epic quest he sought, I wove the reality knot, that bound the infinite possible versions of this world together,” she tinued, ign his question. “That way, he would have an infinite number of ces to create the world he sought to live in.”

  “So what happened?” Simon asked flippantly. “If he was such a great hero, shouldn’t the knot have unraveled after a few attempts into a nice happily ever after?”

  “That was the pn,” she agreed sadly. “He should have been free a long time ago, but things… well, they didn’t turn out well, and so the pit is still here with you, and all the other souls trapped within it.”

  The siletled heavily over both of them, and Simon looked to his feet, trying to find the right way to break the awkward moment without sounding crass. Finally, he decided, and said, “Look, I don’t want to shit on this guy, but…” his words trailed off as he looked up and saw that the throne Hedes had been sitting in was y.

  “What a bitch,” he swore under his breath as he walked to one of the closest windows and looked at the city below. Most of it was on fire now, and the va had long si him off from the bulk of the city.

  It was beautiful, in a terrible sort of way, Simon thought. It was like a cssical painting, not a real pce. A painting wouldn’t have the smell of sulfur or the screams of the dying, though, he reminded himself as he tried to focus on what the goddess had said. It raised more questions than answers, and holy it retty dumb of her to set something like this up in the first pce. To trap someone in a pce where they would die over and ain until they finally succeeded, it was…

  Simon shook his head to clear it as he suddenly realized he was getting a bit too close for fort to describing himself. What he’d done had been totally different from what the inal hero had dohough. In that way at least they were total opposites. Still, the thought didn’t bear more thinking abht now, he decided, as he moved over to the portal to the eleventh level. If Hedes was going to leave him hanging, that was ohing, but the st thing he was going to do was let her distract him and ruin his streak.

  Walking up the portal, he had er idea what he would be fag than when he saw it from afar. It was a dark forest at night, and though there seemed to be a thuorm in the dista was only drizzling where he was right now.

  Simon thought about waiting here for the storm to die down pletely, or for m to dawn. He was sure that a city beiroyed by a volo retty big history altering sort of deal, but he had no idea what he was supposed to do about it. Even if he had an ice spell, there was no way he could cast it enough times to stop a volo.

  After a few more minutes of waiting, though, ane earthquake rocked the pace so hard he had trouble standing. That was what finally forced him out into the cold, wet darkness. As much as he didn’t relish the idea of fighting anything blind like this, getting rained ohe hell out of being boiled alive when the eruption finally turned into a pyrocstic cloud, so with his sword and shield at the ready, Simon walked into the portal without looking babsp;

  The forest was a damp, t monstrosity, that felt more like the redwoods he’d visited ohan the forest he’d navigated around the or the temple he’d discovered since he’d been here, and there were no real ndmarks to show him which way he should go for once, so this time he just went straight. He used the few glimpses of the moon he could occasionally see through the opy and the patchy cloud cover as he stomped through the ferns that were almost as tall as he was.

  The first hint that he had that he wasn’t alone was the screech that suddenly shattered the night. Simon looked around, shocked that the wyvern had somehow followed him, and expeg an attack at any moment, but nothing assaulted him except for the drizzling rain.

  “It’s just the wildlife,” he told himself quietly as he tinued on. Even forests in the real world were filled with all kinds of dangerous critters and strange noises. He’d learhat in the few months his parents had forced him to be in the scouts, so it wasly a surprise. It was just a shock. That worked until he heard something crashing through the underbrush not far from him.

  Leaning as close as he could to a nearby tree as he tried to figure out if the creature was moving towards or away from him. When he realized it was getting louder and louder, he held his breath. Moments ter, a rge dark shape burst out of a rge clump of ferns not far from him.

  In the darkness, Simon couldn’t make out what it was, but from its outline and its size, the only creature he could pare it to was a brown bear. For a long moment it looked around the area, its rge golden eyes shining as they picked up the barest fragments of light, and then suddenly it was gone again, charging off in a different dire.

  It wasn’t a ce. Simon was sure of that much. That thing was hunting him, and the st thing he wao do was give it a ce tain, so he slowly ted off ten seds to give himself a head start, and then he bolted, not even trying to be quiet. He just ran in the opposite dire as if his life depended on it.

  A few seds ter, he heard the thing screech again. It was ba his trail, and that fear made him run that much faster as he tried to find the easiest path through the moonlit forest. Soon enough, he could hear it somewhere behind him, crashing and thrashing through every pnt in the forest as it tried to catch its prey.

  Up ahead, Simon saw some light, and he pumped his legs even quicker to try to reach it. Maybe there would be people there - someohat could help him, or a pce to hide. When he broke through the final wall of underbrush, though, it wasn’t a building, or even people. It was the se of a massacre.

  Ahead of Simon was a deserted dirt road littered with half a dozen dead bodies, along with a couple of horses that had been practically ripped to pieces, and the remains of two wagons. The oo his left was on its side, and the oo his right was smashed to bits.

  He had no idea what could have dohis, but whehing that was following him finally broke through the woods behind him, he had a pretty good idea. It was an owlbear, and Simon would have no trouble believing that it’s beak and talons could have done all the damage he was seeing. Simon dropped his sword and piked up the pike of a dead man before he whirled to face his enemy. For something this big, he definitely needed more reach than a long sword could hope to provide.