Distantly, just loud enough that he could hear it over the sound of his heavy breathing, Simon. Chamber music. Or something like that, anyway. Cssical music had never been his thing, but he could make out a couple different stringed instruments and realized that there had to be some kind of ceremony or event going on in this building.

  Is it the cause of the fog, he wondered. If it's not, I probably o warn them, but musi the middle of the night in a creepy old temple? It ’t be a bsp;

  Slowly, he rose to his feet and began to look around. What he really needed was a window so he could look around the city and see if it was somewhere he knew or somewhere else entirely. He didn’t get that, though. Instead, the room itch bck, and he was forced to use a word of minht just to get across the room without tripping over furniture.

  The building he’d broken into had been a temple, but this looked like an anteroom or a small hall more than anything. “Maybe this is where they view the corpses before they bury them,” he said with a shrug as he moved to the door.

  The music was definitely louder whe his ear to it, but not so loud that he thought it was directly oher side. So he wanted a minute for his light to fade out in case someone was oher side, and then he cracked it open to take a peek.

  Simon’s caution turned out to be pletely unwarranted. Oher side of the door was ay hallway with several other doors brang off from it. It had stone floors and paintings on both walls of rich people dressed in their fi. It definitely wasn’t a dungeon or anything like that, so there probably wasn’t anything nefarious happening.

  He breathed a sigh of relief and quietly shut the door behind him as he stepped into the hallway and moved toward the door. “If I just…” he mumbled to himself.

  “ I help you?” someone asked.

  Simon whirled at the sound of the unfamiliar void found someohirty feet away he other end of the hallway. He’d been expeg a guard, and though his hand was on the hilt of his mundane longsword, he’d refrained from drawing it. That proved to be a good move because instead of a guard, it turned out to be a manservant.

  “Oh, I was just…” Simon started to say before trailing off. What was he trying to do? What excuse would keep this from esg further? He had no idea aually settled on “I was just lost and—”

  “Oh, you’re one of the party guests,” the man said with a knowing smile. “Do try not to stray from the main rooms then, sir. The rest of the guests are right this way.”

  The servaured with a bow and then escorted Simon the opposite way down the hallway as he decided the best thing to do y along. He had no idea where he was being taken, but sihe most dangerous thing the man esc him had was a silver tray, he went with it.

  With every door that opened, his worldview shifted. This probably wasn’t the same building he’d started in, he realized. It was too big and too nice for a temple. Where does that put me then? He woo himself. Am I on level 22?

  Before he could decide one way or the other, the footman opehe third door orek, revealing a rge ballroom. That was full of people. Well, strangely dressed people.

  The entire room was full of men and women dang or milling about in small knots, drinking gsses of sparkling white wi first, he feared he’d stick out like a sore thumb, but it was only after he took it all in that he realized why the servant had made the mistake that he did. Everyone was wearing a e.

  Though famous historical figures he didn’t reize dominated most of the crowd in the form of heroic warriors wearing paper machete armor aiful queens wearing a bit too much makeup, there were monsters, too. Simon saw a few orcs, a couple of zombies, and one particurly good werewolf, but all in all, nothing to worry him.

  Those closest to the d him briefly and then quickly turned back to their own versations. He might be dressed in dirty armor with a handful of ons, but here in this pce, that looked more like a clumsy disguise than an actual threat.

  The people here didn’t seem too ed about any danger, and as he snagged a wine gss from one of the servants who walked past him, he studied the room as much as the people.

  The dresses were vish, the es were det, and though he could hear many versations as he walked through the room, he could only uand a few bits and pieces because of the noise, and they didn’t tell him very much. The fact that he uood every nguage made it harder at times like this. He could uand every word, but it took a great deal of effort to figure out if those words were even part of the same nguage.

  So, it all bleogether, and in the end, he got more information from the room’s decor than the people. One of the portraits on the wall was of old King Wilden. It wasn’t as rge as some of the other pictures, which made him think that he might not be the monarch here, wherever he was.

  No, Simon realized as he looked again at the mammoth four-foot wide portrait, it wasn’t Wilden the first. It was Wilden the sed. The same boy he’d once preteo be the grim reaper for had not just grown. He’d grown old. Though he bore a definite resembo his father, he had more than a little gray in his beard now. Simon had no way of knowing how old this painting was, of course, so the man was likely older still by now. In fact, it was entirely possible that he’d already died of old age.

  Simon tried to do the math as he stood there. It had to be at least forty or fifty years since level 3, so if he was on level 21 or 22 now, that was… what, 2 years a level? More? It probably wasn’t that simple, of course, but it was iing to think that whe to level 99, he’d probably be 200 years iure.

  I’m a time traveler, he thought to himself as he toasted to no one in particur.

  “Oh?” a woman said, walking to his left elbow, “A man dressed as a bandit drinking to the King? Now I have seehing.”

  “I’m not a bandit. I’m more of an adventurer, really,” he said, not looking at her immediately.

  “Oh? Hunting f game perhaps?” she ughed, “The court of Varbaria is a strange pce for such things, but then the room is full of more mohan usual.”

  “Monsters, huh? Then what does that make you?” He asked as he started to turn around. He realized then that he’d seen her somewhere.

  “Wait, have we met?” he asked as he studied her.

  The woman was a little older than him, with dark hair and a mischievous smile. She was dressed as a nymph or a wood spirit or something like that, and her green makeup matched her dress. For the life of him, he couldn’t think of who the woman might be, but still, he couldn’t shake the feeling.

  Could she have been a girl in Schwarzenbruck during the zombies? He wondered. Wait, there were no zombies in this timelihen who…

  “A monster, obviously. As to making your acquaintance, I really ’t say,” she asked in a tohat all but told him he was right. “Somehow, I always thought I’d see you again, but in the same outfit, without aging a day? That’s wild.”

  “Listen,” he said, suddenly on the back foot. “I expin that, it’s just that—”

  “Later,” she said. “You keep standing in this room, and yoing to have a really bad day, okay? We catch up on old times after what happe.”

  The way she was dragging Simon through the room toward the exit. “Bad day, huh?” he asked. “What’s going to happen?”

  Whether she was familiar or not suddenly became less important; if she to no good, then he o figure out what she was going to do and stop it. When he pulled on her hand t her to a stop in front of the open door, her slender fingers slipped free of his grip.

  “It’s your choice, Simon,” she smiled. “You either e with me and find out who I am or stay here and find out what happe. It’s entirely up to you.”

  Then, without a backward gnce, she turned and started to walk away, showing off the sinuous way her hips moved beh her sheer green dress with every step. For a moment, he was torn, and as he stood there, the doorman started to shut the rge double dain.

  Simoually pushed past him, though, and jogged to catch up to his mystery woman. She knew his name. Something like that had never happened before. Not iire time he’d been i, and he had to find out who she was.

  If something terrible happeo him, well - he’d just have to stop it, like always. Isn’t something terrible kind of guarao happen, though? He wohat was kind of why he was here.

  He did a double-take at that and blurted out, “Wait, the terrible things usually happen before I get there, don’t they?”

  “If you say so,” she murmured, taking her hand in both of his aing her head on his shoulder as they tinued walking down the hall. “As far as I’m ed, terrible things have been happening for far too long. I’d hoped that we would have left that behind in Adonan, but I suppose that was never Eddek’s lot in life.”

  “Adonan? Eddek?” Simon murmured to himself as he thought about what she was saying. He’d definitely heard both words before. One ce he’d never been, and the other was a name, probably. Then, in a fsh of inspiration, he figured it out, but before he could speak, she interrupted him.

  “And to think I thought you were the bad guy whe on that road so long ago,” she ughed, esc him out into the courtyard and then further out into the night.” But it turns out that not all monsters have dark shadows, and not all those with more than their share of darkness are monsters. Isn’t that iing?”

  He didn’t know where she was taking him, but at least he knew a little more about where they were. They were in some kind e manor house or small pace that was either just outside of a rger city or had grounds se that it might as well be surrounded by wilderness. It was hard to say.

  Either way, all the pces she was mentionio the east of the pces he was more used to in the Kingdom of Brin, like Sny and Liepzeill hadn’t mapped where all the levels were iion to each other, but it was a goal of his when he had the time and the resources.

  “All this would be a lot more iing to me if I knew what was going on, Kaylee,” he said, trying to redirect the versation. “What are we celebrating, and why wouldn’t I want to stick around and find out?”

  “Simon, I only meant that that wasn’t your crowd, and if they’d figured out you weren’t a hey might have done something harsh to you,” she lied. “After all, I should know. I’m just a maid in a borrowed dress, after all.”

  “A borrowed dress, huh?” he said, not rexing. She was clearly up to something. “Look - I’d love to catch up with you, but you o be straight with me. Yoing to hurt those people, aren’t you? What did they do to you?”

  “Me? I’m just a poor, insignifit maid. I would never dream to hurt my betters,” she ughed as she sat down on a stone bench with a anding view of the grounds. From here, they could see the lights of the party through the giant picture windows on the front of the house. “I’m gd you could be here to share this moment with me, though. Eddek would have liked that. He spoke about you often in the years after you rescued us, you know. You made a big impression on his life.”

  “That’s always o hear,” Simon answered numbly as he tried to figure out what was going on here. The grounds were lovely, and he’d love to spend a few hours just looking at the starlit gardens and hearing this woman’s story, but he had a feeling that time was of the essence, and they’d already wasted twenty minutes of it. “So, did these nobles wrong you, or…”

  “They wrong everyone,” she shrugged. “That’s their nature. Still - if they hadn’t murdered my beloved Master during one of their little intrigues, it probably never would have e to this.”

  “e to what?” he asked. As if to answer his question, he heard a scream from somewhere ihe party, and as he looked over at the building, he could see fmes climbing one of the tapestries inside.

  “I was rong. Not like you or Eddek, but you don’t o be strong to turn a key ahe wrong person in, now do you?”

  Simon recoiled from the woman. Ifit she was wearing, Kaylee was more than lovely, but whatever had happeo her had long since poisoned her soul and made her some kind of monster.

  “I ’t just stand by ahis happen,” he told her as he got to his feet and pulled out his sword.

  “And I ’t stop you,” she said with a shrug. “Eddek wouldn’t have wahat. Go off and py the hero if you like. That does seem to be your role in all this…” She might have kept talking after that, but he couldn’t hear her over the sound of g gravel as he ran back toward the manor house and whatever butchery was happening there.