The grimoire’s cover was burned badly enough to be unreizable, but the pages were barely si the edges, so the whole thing was readable. Simohed a sigh of relief at that, and using the minor word of light, he briefly ied a few passages to see if anything had ged, but it looked the same as he remembered it.

  Once he was satisfied with that, he iigated the golem’s runes. And found them to be rgely readable but not pletely prehensible. The thing seemed to be powered by a rge pound word that he didn’t truly uand and couldn’t quite bring himself to pronou was very simir in that respect to the uified ruhat powered the icy sword on his hip.

  They weren’t the same, though. Simo several minutes paring the two to make sure that was the case. Both of them were several times rger than any of the other runes oher objed resembled a knot that was like a long pound word, but it was hard to say for sure. He just…

  Simon shook his head to clear it. Then he looked through the smaller runes for any words he didn’t already know. There was Zyvon, which was what transferred the power from whatever the rge rune was to the spell itself, and these were eg ruhat didn’t have a direct literary meaning. This one he couldn’t say, but he k reguted the strength of the mana going through it. It was a mess. He would have thought that something this plicated would use much different pieces than he was used to, but instead, it seemed to use the same parts in a much more plex way.

  The part that he found most iing was the Hyakk ruhough. It was tral to the whole thing, but in his experie had always meant healing. Here, though, in the text it was being used, the ru life more literally.

  “Just how much are these things open to interpretation?” he asked himself in annoyance. “A circuit board or a line of code doesn’t o be read in text, but if these things are more like a haiku, then I’m fucked.”

  Every time he felt like he was starting to uand the magic system of this pce more, he came across some new wrihat had put him ba his heels. Now, at least one rune in his colle could be used in multiple ways but were there more lessons to be learned here.

  Apparently so, he decided. After going through the rger ks of rocks he’d shattered off of the golem’s rune circuit on the floor, he found airely new rune he didn’t have in his colle. Vosden, huh? Ah ruhat’s iing.

  He traced it several times in the dust to be sure he was getting it right from the three ks of limestone, and it was only then that he whispered, “Aufvarum Vosden,” as he touched his drawing of the ru instantly carved itself into the floor like it had been done by a craftsman with finger paints. It wasn’t the est, and he could have probably done a better job with a chisel, but it was iing, that was for sure.

  What he wao do immediately was summon the mirror and record all of this, but his water skin was empty, and there was nothing else that was reflective in there.

  “I could make a pool of my own blood and then heal myself,” he said with obvious distaste. “That’s what a real warlock would do, but fuck that.”

  Instead of being a ghoulish weirdo, he found some scorched wood and copied the golem’s sigils into a bnk page in the warlock’s tome. When he did so, he was careful not to actually ect them all. He didn’t think he could actually bring the book to life by act, but he wasn’t about to risk it.

  Ohat was done, he took a lunch break and reflected on all that he had learned or thought he had learned, and then made his the stairs to see what awaited him.

  “Is it going to be a re-do of the s or the desert, or will it be something brand new?” he asked as he opehe door and came face to face with a graveyard.

  “Yeah, that’s definitely new.” He tried to imagine how the ice level might look unfrozen or the s level might look if someone had drai and built a city in its pce, but her seemed to be the case. Instead, he was now in a pce he’d never been before. “Wele to level twenty-one!”

  He stepped out of the dusty cavern into the chilly night and took it all in. Above him, the sky artially cloudy, but he could see enough stars to spot a few familiar steltions along with the sliver of a waning moon. It was nice, refreshing even.

  The sery was less so. In the distance, he could see the silhouettes of se houses in one dire that suggested that he was in some sort of city, but the ground o him was full of grave markers and mausoleums. These weren’t small tombs, either. Some of them were ornate marble things the size of an SUV.

  He was getting some distinctly New Orleans vibes from the whole pce. “Yeah, nothing could g here,” he whispered to himself as he stepped onto the stoh that wound its way through the pd started looking for the way out.

  There were dozens er tombs scattered around him, but probably not hundreds and eae of them could just as easily be the reason he was here as it was the exit. Simon was undecided oher he wao solve this one on his first go. His first priority right now was to go deeper. So, he would just have to see how it went.

  He checked out a few of the tombs along the way toward the main gate. Some had beautiful statues or carvings, and all of them had a family name somewhere on them. He saw more than a few ‘loving husbands’ and ‘departed wife and mothers’ along with enough dates that were small enough to suggest an infant or child to st a lifetime, but he saw nothing suspicious. Each of them was locked up tight, and there didn’t seem to be any zombies or vampires lurking about.

  Somewhere iy that y beyond the cemetery, he heard the sound of a bell tolling, aopped to t the chimes. “Midnight, huh? That should be just about the time…”

  Simon’s words trailed off as the fog started to boil up right on cue. If this was the witg hour, and he was in an evil graveyard, then he would have expected something like this to happey much exactly. When the fog grew thiough froping limbs and haunted faces to bee visible, though, he took a step bad drew his sword.

  Stepping back didn’t do any good, of course. The fog was boiling up from every grave, and he was surrounded by it. It stayed mostly clear of the path, and he tio back slowly toward the gate, but as it got thicker, it began to spill over, and soon, there were tendrils of mist in the shape of groping hands that he found himself stepping carefully over as he turned and moved more quickly. The gate was in sight now, and with luck, he could escape this before whatever this was noticed him.

  That only worked for a few more mihough. The longer he walked, the slower he was forced to go as he stepped between the grasping, vaporous limbs. However, it was only when his foot disrupted ohat everything ged. The hand he actally stepped on disappeared in a puff of vapor like it had never been.

  He saw the ge in the surrounding fog almost instantly, though. Until now, the eyes had simply been staring blindly as the faces appeared and disappeared in the ebb and flow of the mist. Now those blind eyes were searg, and the hands pulled bato the fog banks oher side of the path. When they returhough, they were rger grasping limbs that looked somehow more substantial, and they were reag toward him.

  Simon shed out with his icy bde, but the limbs that he dissipated only vanished for a moment before more extended out from the growing fog banks that nearly surrounded him. The roiling grey mist was almost to his chest now, and it was clear that it was drawn to life somehow.

  “Meiren,” he barked, sending a broad wave of fire at the wall to him. It had been slowly coalesg into a giant, hideous skull, and Simon wasn’t at all ied in seeing what would happen after that.

  The fire temporarily worked wonders. Everything that had been about to assault him from that side of the path vanished as though it had never been. However, seds ter new fog was already boiling up to repce it. As he watched that in real , he never even noticed the blow from behind that struck at his right arm.

  The cold sensation that traveled through his bohen ainful, and his arm went so numb that the strike caused him to drop his bde as he cried out in pain.

  “Barom!” he yelled, surrounding himself in a bright white light. This was enough to force the limb that had grabbed onto him to let go, but not much more than that.

  The mist didn’t try to touch him through the fog, but it also didn’t stay nearly as far away as it should have, and worse, Simon noticed as he examined his arm and flexed his fihat the light was fading a lot faster than it should have. A word of light should have sted for the better part of an hour, but this one would be gone ihan a mi the rate it was dimming.

  That was when he decided to ruher fire nht worked on this thing, and the forms that were surfag in the sea of mist that surrounded him were only being more terrifying. He o bouil he had a better pn of attack tha my soul ripped out of my body and die in terror.’

  So he left his sword where it y, and he ran. He used fire twice more on his way to the gate to give himself some breathing room, but each time he dissipated the mist, it came back faster than before.

  It’s probably feeding on the magic itself, he realized, but there was nothing for it. If he used no magic, he would die. If he used magic, he would die ter. That was as plicated as it o be.

  Simon ran toward the main gate and the small temple that adjoihat, still carrying his grimoire, and reached the gate ahead of a growing tide of evil that was swelling behind him and rattled the locked bars. Part of him wao knock the thing down or cut through the with a word of force, but another part of him said that unleashing this thing into the city where people were sleeping was incredibly dangerous.

  Instead, with another bst of fire to opeh, he darted toward the side gate that ected to the temple. Getting off the main path was an obviously bad idea, but it was his hope that at least at the temple, there would be some sort of holy effeaybe some hallowed ground that would hold back the tide of ghosts or evil, or whatever it was that was assaulting him.

  He was in luck. Around the temple, there were indeed a dozen or so feet of grassy earth that was almost pletely vapor-free, and he leaped for it even as the mist tried to grasp his feet. When Simon nded, he darted for the door. He’d been prepared to body sm it open if need be, but it wasn’t locked, and the heavy wooden thing opened into a dark room with a loud creak.

  He ran inside and smmed it shut without looking back, and then, after looking around to make sure that nothing else was going to eat him, he slumped to the ground with his back to the door, and with great heaving breaths, he forced himself to calm down.

  It was only after he’d dohat for several mihat he noticed something strange. Faintly, in the distance, he could hear a sound he hadn’t heard in a long time: music.