The troll was easier to deal with than Simon thought. Instead to run past it, or burn it to a crisp, he just iionally cast his fire spell poorly, and the shower of sparks and feeble streamers sent the thing running just long enough for Simon to get to the churd sm the door behind him.

  It was a terrible way to have to throttle the magic, Simon thought, but what the hell else was he going to do? Actually casting mega-fire at full power was not only exhausting, it was dangerous. If he’d actually dohat, he would have burned himself alive on the bridge, and then he would have had to e back to fight the troll again anyway.

  Because that’s just how The Pit was. Simon could see it in the expression that the asshole demon as he just sat there and watched Simon while he approached. The distorted summoning circle.

  “Back so soon,” the demon asked with a shit eating grin. Usually people take a bit longer. Simon couldn’t figure out if that was supposed to be a pliment or an insult, so he just ig while he focused on studying the circle. It wasn’t quite the same as before, but as far as he could tell, none of the runes had ged. It holy didn’t look too different from the hell rifts that one of his favorite a role pying games used in the sed act. He smiled at that. Level 13 or 14 out of 99 didn’t seem to be the sed a, but he’d take it.

  “Do you have anything useful to say, or are you just going to fuck with me?” Simon asked, the demon. While Simon had literally all the time in the world, he had almost o spare for a creature like this, that had bad news written all over its fabsp;

  “No - not just yet, I think,” the demon shrugged. “No point in talking to any of the warriors trapped in here with me. Not until they start to lose hope anyway.”

  Simon wao ask about that, but even more than that, he wao get the hell away from this guy. As Simon started walking down the swirling bits of floor that made the impromptu stairs down to the door, he wished that the creature looked a little more cssically demonic. It would have made it much easier to deal with than the’re-not-so-differant shtick the thing was obviously leaning in to.

  The door led to the same dusty castle that Simon had died in st time, but this time he paid more attention to his surroundings, and he avoided any halls or rooms that had anything that could be used as an obvious on.

  Even the innocuous rooms and halls still had small objects that floated aimlessly, and pictures that looked at him as he passed, but he forced himself to ighose details, creepy as they were, and focus on the ohat actually might get him killed.

  That forced him to take a very different path from st time, as most of the route he’d wahrough before was obviously off limits, but as he ducked into a small bedroom dowhird hall he could actually travel iive safely, he began to think that the right way to hahis was to get outside. That’s what haunted houses always tried to prevent in the movies, right? There had to be a reason that he only ever found stairs going up, but none going down.

  As he eyed the window, it looked like it was only a twenty or twenty-five foot drop. He’d break his legs if he jumped, but a rope would make it child's py, he realized.

  Unfortunately, he’d left his rope in the . It’s not like he’d ever before, anyway, so he didn’t beat himself up too much about it. “Who would think to carry a rope with them everywhere they go,” he muttered to himself as he set about turning the bedsheets into a new rope.

  It took twenty minutes, and the hardest part of the whole thing was ign the throbbing from his back where the owlbear’s cws had gotten him a little. When the rope was done, Simon used a full length mirror to take a look, and decided they didn’t look bad enough to try to heal, especially not with the way the peist activity was starting to pick up around him. It was just a little blood, and a couple small cuts in his armor. A couple cuts wouldn’t kill him, but if he stayed here too much lohe ghosts might.

  Getting out of the window was harder thahought, though. Even though he tied off his crude bedsheet rope to the frame of the a bed, he wasn’t pletely sure he could trust his weight to it as he eyed the drop.

  When Simon saw the mirrin to float menagly toward him, he finally decided to take the plunge and climb out of the window and down the side of the building. Unfortunately, the bed he was tied to decided to try to join him.

  “Oh shit,” Simon gasped as he felt himself start to sink even though he wasn’t climbing, and put two and two together. In the end, he’d never know if he merely weighted too much to use the bed as a proper anchor, or if the ghosts had decided to help it along. Fortunately, it was too big too fit out the window and crush him like some kind of acme anvil or cartoon piano. Instead, it just wedged in pce, letting him climb down as fast as he could just in case.

  Outside, the sky was heavy and leaden, which erfect for the rest of the vibe this pce had, but it made it impossible for him to tell if it was just after dawn or just before su. Simon was willing to bet it was the tter, because that one would screw him harder, but that was fine. As long as nothing in this level turned him into a zombie for months, he’d be ba a few hours to do it all ain as many times as he o.

  Simon started with the outbuildings. He checked a barn, three sheds, a couple guest cottages, and a greenhouse where everything inside had died. He didn’t find anything unusual in any of those. Not only was there no gate, but there was no haunting activity either. That seemed to be limited to the main house.

  Simon found a very rown hedge maze shortly after that, but decided against cheg it because it creeped him out. Nothing good happened in there, he could tell. So instead, he just circled around until he finally found the front door to the house.

  Simon wasn’t sure what he was expeg to find when he ope. He thought that he might find a vampire t who would expin his whole pn to him, or perhaps a ghostly tess doomed to keep reliving some horrible moment of her life over an over. All Simon knew was that if this had been a video game, when he opehose gilded, paneled doors, he would have gotten one hell of a cutse.

  Instead, he found a cave. A dark, dingy cave that more properly belonged uhe mansion, not in its foyer.

  It took Simon several seds lohan it should have for him to realize that this was the gate to the level, and not a truly bizarre decorative choice. After that, all that was left to do was to go inside.

  The cave was an old limestone formation with stagmites and stactites that had mostly fused into uneven, misshapen pilrs. Simon didn’t have a torch, but once he was inside, he let his eyes adjust a bit. There was a dim light ing from further on in the cave, and while he wouldn’t want to fight in the near darkness, it was enough for him to walk slowly forward without tripping and breaking his nebsp;

  Up ahead somewhere Simon could hear muted ting. At first, he couldn’t quite make out the words, but as he got closer he began to piece them together. Someone was beseeg gods for some sort of divine favor. Simon obviously hadn’t walked into this at the beginning, so he wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but the fact that the wizard or priest or whatever he was talking about blood sacrifice meant it couldn’t be anything good.

  Simon found the wizened old man standing in a protective circle as he tio cast his strange spell. It wasn’t real magic, of course, because nothing iing was happening. This guy clearly didn’t uand as much about the world as Simon did, because he’d probably been studying magic for decades, whereas Simon had been doing it for a couple of weeks and had actual magic to show for it.

  Simon thought about just ign this dude and trying to sneak past him. With his little circle and a few dles, Simon didn’t think it likely he could hurt anyone. He was obviously just a crazy old man. That ged when Simon heard him say, “grant me my boon and I will not stop with the vilge. I will burn the whole kingdom to the ground in your name.”

  That was enough for Simon. Leaving this guy breathing was clearly a mistake, so he pulled out his crossbow and shot him in the back. The wanna-be mage crumpled immediately into a pool of his own blood as soon as the bolt embedded itself in his left lung. He struggled uselessly for a sed, but didn’t rise after that.

  Simon waited for a few seds for the other shoe to drop. This was clearly too easy for any level i. It was easier thas on the first floor, so there was no way that this was all there was to it, but nothing happened.

  Finally, after the moment had passed, and it all felt terribly anticlimactic, Simon stepped forward, over the body of the madman and towards his ritual area. There he found all sorts of strange powders and ritual implements, but none of them particurly ied Simon. Instead, he reached for the book. Even if this guy didn’t know any real magic, it would be iing to see what strange ideas he had.

  He never got that far. As the shadows moved slightly, he pulled his hand back as a giant shape suddenly loomed out of the darkness and brought its stony hands down toward’s Simon’s skull.

  It was a fug golem. How did a guy like this who didn’t even know how to cast magic properly have a golem, Simon wondered. He’d never find out, though. At least not this run. As the golem brought its fists down, it shattered the table where everything had been id out, sending pages flying as grimoire was crushed by the titanic blow.

  Simon ran. Not because he had no way to fight several huons of animate rock, even though he didn’t. He ran because it was terrifying. The thing was like the hulk, made out of granite, and a single blow would turn him into a fine red paste.

  Running headlong across the uneven ground of the cave was much harder than pig his way through the darkness had been. Even though Simon was much faster than the golem, it gained a little more on him every time he tripped over some obstacle, and Simon only barely reached the wooden stairs before the golem reached him.

  There, at least, Simon was safe. The stairs were flimsy wooden pnks that barely bore Simon’s weight, and would never let the golem follow. Even so, he didn’t dey. The st thing he wanted was for that nightmare to start throwing boulders or something at him.

  When Simon reached the top of the stairs, he opehe door without hesitation and smmed it behind him. It was just someone’s kit, after all. Even if all the knives suddenly sprang to life and started attag him at once, he’d still have a better shot than going one oh a stone giant like that.

  Only two more chapters to go in the first ard for whatever reason I felt like pying with a new picture of our protagonist. I wele your feedback (on the picture and the story).

  I know you're asking yourself - 'Dear author, how could you possibly hope to all this up in only two more chapters? All we have are unresolved story threads, and he hasn't evehrough 80% of the pit.' The answer of course is...

  SpoilerA teeny-tiny-itty-bitty cliffhanger. But we discuss that in a few weeks...

  [colpse]