The dank cavern was just as he left it the st few times he’d been here. There was no way that anything he’d dohe st time he’d been through would have ted as “beating it” in his mind, so he wasn’t surprised to see it. The real question in his mind was whether he wao beat it yet.

  Rivenwood robably goer his decisive victory over the orcs, and he’d stayed there long enough st time to be fairly sure that they hadn’t been the vanguard of a much rger force. That meant that finding a pce to study the book was going to be dicey.

  While he let his eyes adjust to the darkness, he sidered the yout of the few levels. With the orcs defeated, that meant that the level was the ice level and then the pgue level. While he hoped that the ice level was defeated because he certainly wasn’t prepared for it again in what he was wearing, it was a shame that he wouldn’t be visiting Hurag again any time sooe the stench, it would have made the perfect spot to study an evil tome for reasoed to the quiet as much as the hideous decor. Plus, if he did some experiments, no o him would get hurt.

  After that came which level exactly? He wondered. Simon had to start ting them off on his fingers because it had been so long. Two more levels, what could it… oh, lizards, twi a row. That’s right.

  First came the s, which had been pleted for a long time even though he’d barely done anything, and then the Basilisk, which he was fairly certain was behind him food. The st thing he wao do was risk being turo stone again.

  Which meant he had no idea what came after that. If he cleared this level and theo something crazy, then the opportunity to study the tome would be lost to him forever. Well, probably forever, he thought to himself in annoyance. He’d thought the same thing about Schwarzenbruck, but now he was forced to deal with it all ain.

  Simon had almost vinced himself that he shouldn’t try to clear this level when he heard the apprentice-cum-warlock ranting to his evil deity and promising to torture the children in the vilge above in their name. Iurn for more power. That did it. Even if it cost him the opportunity to read a book he’d already read and reread several times, it would be worth it. There was no way this scum was going to be allowed to go around one more time on this insane merry-go-round.

  “You called, and I have e!” Simon said, feeling a little theatrical as he stepped into the circle behind the warlock. As he did so, he whispered a word for lesser light to give himself a malevolent glow.

  The golem rumbled to life immediately, but since Simon was so o its master now, all it could do was stand there menagly while the warlock turned around in surprise.

  “Call off your toy Androni, lest I break it by act when I py with it,” Simon bluffed.

  “Y-you know my he warlock said, raising a hand to the golem to stop it in its tracks. “Who are you?”

  “You know my name,” Simon said, not sure exactly which evil god he retending to be, “but you are afraid to speak it.”

  Androni sidered these words and then nodded vigorously instead of speaking. Then he bowed as low as his arthriti would allow before he finally tinued. “So you’ve e to grant my boon? Have I done enough to finally earn your favor?”

  “Why else would I be here, for a student of Festauvian?” Simon said, trying his best to speak like ahe-top, mustache-twirling vilin. “But first, I have some questions. Do you recall how old you are, Androni?”

  “Of course, dark ohe warlock smiled with a crooked, yellowed grin. “At the equinox, I will have lived for een summers.”

  “een summers of life, a you’ve spent nearly seventy,” Simon chided, though that was mostly because he’d been taken abad ying for time. He’d put together the pieces on his st trip through here. “If I gave you seven, or evey more, how would you spend them?”

  Not only was the warloable to read his own grimoire, but he obviously didn’t uand the words he used to and his golem. Androni might as well have been saying abracadabra when he a to kill Simon. It would have been ughable if it weren’t sic. The one lingering question that Simon still had was whether he’d killed his master or whether he’d gone wild once his master had died some other way.

  Either way, this prentice pying with matches, and he’d burned his whole life down. Simon had known that he would be much youhan he appeared, but to be practically a child and have wasted his whole life p spells. It was almost enough to make him feel bad for the warlock. Almost.

  “I’ve killed more than two dozen men in your he apprentice boasted. “I have burned down temples and sacrificed children. I—”

  Simon spped him, as mu annoyance as anything else, as if these were achievements to boast. He wasn’t sure if that was in character for the demon he was supposed to be pying, but he didn’t care.

  Really, if I had that bck cloak from my performah the Prince, almost anything would be in character, he thought ruefully.

  “Do not lie to me,” Simon said as Androni flinched and held his stinging cheek. “How many have you killed without the aid of your stone guardian?”

  The warlock looked at him for a moment like he was about to cry before he finally said, “One, sire, but that life was—”

  “Was already mio have!” Simon tered, feigning anger he didn’t really feel. He was happy that he finally had his ahis little creep had killed his master and used his eight-foot-tall immortal warrior to kill kids once he was let off the leash. No wonder everyone who found out he could use magited to kill him. If this was the average warlock, then he absolutely agreed that they should all be killed on sight.

  “I’m sorry!” he whimpered, shielding himself from a blow that never nded. Andronicus shrank from his faux wrath, but the golem tio stay motionless. Simon noticed that his glow was starting to fade a little but decided that was okay. This was going to be over soon, one way or the other.

  “I don’t want your apologies,” Simon said, walking past him to examihe golem. In all this time, he’d never gotten a good look at it, but right now, the ohing he wanted even more thaauvian’s tome was to know what this thing. That was a secret that would be worth eating another death for. “I want to know what you will do if I grant you the favor you’ve beseeched me for. Do you think I would give such a gift to a man who would use this to do his killing for him?”

  Simon only started to smile once he’d turned away from the warlock. Pretending to be su evil caricature was easy, it was keeping himself from busting up ughing that was the hard part.

  “I… no… but…” Andronicus was pletely frazzled by this point. For a moment, Simon thought he might have gooo hard on the guy. He clearly thought he was s with dark powers, and that could put anyone on edge. He was way off, though. “My… my lord, how did you leave my summoning circle?”

  Simon swallowed, finally aware that he’d fucked up. He could see the runes on the creature’s baow, and given a moment of study, he was sure he could parse some of them out. He might not have a moment, though, he thought to himself as he turo face the warlobsp;

  “Your circle was enough to draw me into this world,” he expined, “But there are gaps, you see, here between the—”

  “You are not the Reaper of Souls!” Andronicus screamed, no longer buying the act. “Tell me who you are before my guardian crushes you like an egg!”

  Simon didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he shouted “Oo” and used the word of force to cleave a line in stoween the portion of the magical circuit that brought the golem to life and the portion that powered the spell as he stepped behind its leg.

  “Rise up, my pawn, and defend your Master!” the warlock yelled.

  It was a tense moment. Simon realized the thing would really just have to fall backward to crush him, but that didn’t happen. Instead, it simply stood there now that its spell was broken. Simon looked up at the damaged runes, but before he could do much more thaermihat most of them were still legible before, he heard the warlock shouting the word for fire.

  Simon responded almost instinctively, moving closer to cover as he whispered, “Karesh Meiren,” to protect himself from the gout of fme that shot out of both sides of the pilr-like stone leg he was sheltering behind.

  When Simon saw he was uninjured, he ughed and said, “Is that all you got there, Andy?” as he bolted for the stagmites on the floor that would offer more cover and drew his sword.

  Simohat the right move was to bst this guy instead of taunting him, but he couldn’t help it. Besides the goblins, which didn’t really t, he’d never faced ane before, and that made this a valuable experience. He would have probably let this fight linger just to get that perspective, but something about this guy just got under his skin, which was enough all on its own.

  “When I am doh you, there will be naught left but ashes!” Androni screamed.

  Simon didn’t have to wait long. The apprentice was hardly imaginative, and he followed fire up with greater fire.

  The bst that followed was intense, and Simon noted, substantially different from the way it looked when he used it. When Simon used greater fire, it looked like some kind of superhero beam attack, but when Androni cast it at him, it was like a wave of liquid fire crashing toward his target. Simon thought it was almost pretty, but he quickly hunkered down behind the rocks ahe ass over him.

  This time, distater cover did as much as the lingering effects of his prote spell and dissipated the heat harmlessly around him. Simon smiled as he popped his head back up. This dude was definitely no fire elemental.

  “You wasted a year of your life for that?” he said with a ugh. “No wonder you’re down to scraps. Why don’t you quit while you’re ahead!”

  “Never!” The warlock screamed before yelling, the st thing that Simon would have expected. “Gervuul Gervuul Meiren!”

  Simon had only a moment to pohose words. Greater, greater fire? Does that double or multiply the effect? Would it take two years or—

  That was as far as he got before the room was awash ihis time, it wasn’t like a wave of fme. It was like the beginning of a powerful explosion, but that only sted for an instant. Then, instead of blowing everything apart and burying him uons of sto just stopped.

  While dust tio rain down on him, Simon stood cautiously and surveyed the dark, dusty room. He couldn’t see shit until he used a word of lesser light and advanced on the pce where the warlock had stood.

  Simon didn’t know what to expect. His gut told him the body would be buro a crisp, or that it would have been bloart so thhly that there was nothi. Instead, he found the warlock curled up in a fetal position. Not only was he the only thing in the area that was unscorched, but he ractically mummified.

  Simon couldn’t say exactly how much a spell like that took out of the man, but looking at him, it was hard to say just ten years. The corpse in front of him appeared to age decades in the final moments of its life.

  “And that, kids, is why you never py with matches,” he said to himself as he turned away ao che the book. It was an iing experiment, but it would still be terribly ironic if he’d done all this only to lose his shot to do some more light reading.