There had been a guard at the door when they’d e out, but when Simon reached the side entrahey’d used before, he was missing. Had he joined in the defense, or was he part of the attack? There was no way to know that, but the psycho vibes that Kaylee had been putting out made him fear it was the tter, not the former.

  It killed him that he had to run away from that versation when she was obviously more than ready to spill his guts to him, but he could hardly spare the time to scroll through the quest text to figure out what it was he was supposed to be doing here.

  People were dying, and the fact that the portal had brought him here before the killing started meant that he was supposed to stop that from happening. At least, he retty sure that’s what it meant. Normally, he arrived either right after something bad had happened or long after something bad had happehough, so it had to mean something that he was here just before disaster struck.

  As he shouldered open the door and drew his sword, he had his ahe guard he was looking for was dead, along with several others. One of them hadn’t even had the ce to draw his sword. This was clearly a well-pnned surprise attack, and he would love to know the reasons why, but there was no time for that.

  Simon ran down the hall and found the door to the ballroom had been barred with a chair leg wedged betweewo door handles. He thought about using a word of force but opted to kick it hard instead. Given the flimsy nature of the bar, it broke wide open without much trouble, and he found the ballroom in fmes.

  He’d been here only ten minutes before, but in that time, the pce had been transformed. Now, instead of gentle musid the dull roar of gossip, there were panicked screaming and cries of pain. To make matters worse, someone had brought the delier down as well. So what had been a brightly lit room full of well-dressed partygoers had bee a chaotic mix of shadows and blood, and when several people ran toward him as he forced open the door, the only thing that stayed his hand was the bulky silhouettes of the dresses.

  It was uhat middle-aged womehe ones behind this. So, he let them pass and stepped forward, finding his real targets by the firelight glinting off their ons. Most men in the room had little more than decorative daggers on them, but the few that seemed responsible for the killing bore swords and axes, and they quickly homed in on Simon.

  “One of the guards got missed, looks like,” one man called out to his patriots.

  Then, just like that, three men were advang cautiously toward him. Simon could have tried to beat the answers out of one of them. He could have baited them with insults and questions to learn what their grievance was, but the truth was that right now, he didn’t care.

  As grotesque as the nobility of any society could be at times, he didn’t think that simply murdering everyone was the right answer. He’d eve Varten’s brother live when he was as angry as he’d ever been, so killing the wives and daughters of bad men wasn’t going to cut it with him, no matter the reason.

  When the first man came at him with a sword, Simon didn’t even use a word of power to create an opening. He just sidestepped the clumsy blow and ran his bde through the other man’s throat before pulling it out of the side of his ne a grisly shower of blood to parry the blow from his sed attacker.

  Attackers two and three tried to work together, and Simon parried the several blows to look for an opening. Fortunately for him, the short sword of man 2 and the axe of man 3 weren’t w very well together. As soon as the short sword wielder slipped on the increasingly bloody tile floor, Simon raher man through the chest. While he stood there in disbelief, Simon borrowed the man’s axe and then brought that down hard on the head of the final attacker.

  As soon as he finished with those three, awo came at him. In the brighter firelight, he noticed that all five of them were wearing at least some parts of a servant's livery uheir mismatched armor. That was enough to make him wonder if this might be closer to a sve rebellion than an assassination, but he didn’t have time to think too much about that before he parried the first blow with one of the dead men’s swords.

  It was an unfamiliar bde, and the weighting was a little off, so Simon staggered bader the blow. He sidered lighting them both on fire and being doh it, but he resisted. He didn’t know how many more he’d have to fight after this, so there was no point in wasting his big guns right now.

  Instead, Simohe heavy bde mostly to ward off the men while he maneuvered them into position, and then when one of them tried to step over the body of a nobleman to get a little closer, Simon pushed him hard and used the distra to take the head off his friend that had been wielding a wire-basket rapier.

  It was only when he saw that on that he realized that these weren't their ons. They were too varied and too fancy. Likely, they had all been stolen from the walls of some study or dining hall where trophy ons had been dispyed. That answered one question, but it raised another. If the men who were killing everyone were servants, then who exactly was it that Kaylee had let in?

  No one else challenged him after he left five men dead at his feet, and by the time their brutal little dual was done, and Simon had retrieved his on, the room was pletely abze. At that point, everyone living had either perished or escaped. Fortunately, the light meant that he could see the st of the rats running from him through the far door. He coughed ihiing smoke, sadde hoeople had died because he was slow to react. If he hadn’t let Kaylee pull him away, he was sure he would have prevented most of these needless deaths just by being at the right pce at the right time.

  He looked up at the burning portrait of the aging King he’d studied earlier. The man seemed to be judging him, and give the sort of man he was, that didn’t sit well with Simon.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll get 'em,” he said to himself as he started toward the door.

  The st thing Simon needed was a dead brat telling him he wasn’t doing enough. The other side of the door was a darkened hallway, but the sound of running and the drips of blood on the floor made it perfectly obvious where they’d gone, so he picked up speed and started jogging down the hall after them. At one of the servants' staircases, he slowed down just enough to make sure he wasn’t running into an ambush, and then he went deeper into the darkness.

  He whispered a word of light, making the room below him light up, just in case. This was enough to startle at least one person, though, because as soon as that happened, he heard a man shout, “Shit. Someone’s ing. Fug mage, too!”

  “Meiren!” someone shouted, and for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t Simon.

  This was the first time sihe goblins that someone had dared to cast a spell at him, and for a moment, he almost panicked. Simon was shocked. Not only had he run into someohat he’d met on another level, but now there was someone else who knew magic?

  Just what in the fuck is going on here? He thought to himself as he retreated several steps higher while the lowest stairs were momentarily ed with fmes.

  He felt the wash of heat across him but waited for the fire to clear before he moved or spoke. Instead, he straio hear whatever might be . The fire spell would have cooked him if he’d charged straight ahead, but there was no telling if he’d be as lucky the ime.

  “e on!” someone hissed.

  There was the sound of a door smming after that. It might have been a trap, of course, but he didn’t think it was. Rather than risk losing his now very iing quarry, he ran dowairs. However, by the time Simon got there, they’d already fled to another room as he'd expected. He shook his head in annoyance. “When I said I was going to go deeper into the Pit, this was not what I meant.”

  Still, as he went forward, he couldn’t help but smile. He definitely hadn’t solved this level, but he had a much better idea of what he would o do ime. ime, he’d be waiting for whoever it was that had dohis, and after that, he could sit down with Kaylee and have a nice long chat about what god-awful things had happeo her between when he’d left the young version of her at the Miller’s and now to make her think that something like this was a good idea.

  Before he could do any of that, though, he had to kill someone very iing. So, without any further ado, he carefully opehe door and stepped inside.

  The room was dark, and the floor was wooden. His first instinct was to cast anht spell, but he resisted. Having a fshlight in a dark room might let you find what you were looking for, but it painted a hell of a target on you if you tur on, and right now, he was hunting someoh a fmethrower.

  Whe five cautious steps in, and he heard someoly sn, he knew something was off, but it wasn’t until the floor swayed beh him that he realized what it was exactly. In his hurry to track down and finish off the murderers, he’d found the door to the level and guarahey’d get away.

  Simon rolled his eyes and thought about going back toward the door to see if the portal might still be open, but he decided against it. He’d killed a handful, and that would have to be enough for this run. He’d do better ime.

  Besides, that didn’t matter now. What mattered was that the moving deck meant only ohing in his mind: he was on a ship.

  How does a portal even work on a ship? He woo himself. It was moving, wasn’t it? If he left it open for too long, would he just fall into the o ime?

  Simon was somewhere below decks, and the stink of unwashed sailors overwhelmed even the salty sea air. Eventually, as he picked his way toward the stairs, he smelled something else too, though: the sts of death and disease were present as well.

  Things were quiet, but this definitely wasn’t a cruise ship. His magic was definitely going to be needed here. Well, that and find a way to disguise himself before people decided he was a stowaway and made him walk the pnk or something.