Simon pted his culpability a lot of the first few days of the trip. Oh, he still pyed dice with the crew some, even though he knew enough about the ship to blend it without it. He also spent a little time every day trying to find the source of the pgue that was bound to happen.

  Mostly, though, he wondered what he could have done differently. Based oiming of the levels, he was already fairly certain that the purpose wasn’t to stop every tragedy. Sometimes, it was, but most of the time, it seemed to be to mitigate them. He couldn’t say why Heledes had chosen the pces and the times she did, and he wasn’t going to waste a question asking.

  That was because he already khe ahe answer was that this was the ahis was the way it had to be to get to whatever destiny she’d promised that hero from her story. Beyond that, it didn’t have to make sehat was only frustrating to him, of course. She could presumably see everything, so it made total seo her no matter how voluted things got.

  For any normal person, though, it was hard to figure out how resg a couple of kids on their way to a festival so they could be chewed up and spit out by the world would lead to the correct oute. He had no idea, but that didn’t stop him from feeling like he’d let them down.

  Hell, Kaylee never should have been there. She wasn’t the first time. Before, it had been a different girl apanying Eddek on that long, dark road. Would this level have turned out better if she’d been the oo survive? These were the sorts of questions that could drive men mad.

  After all, for all he khose men had gotten the word of fire from her, and she’d gotten it from him. He had no way to know. Had he used it to fight the owlbear when he went through the level st time? He couldn’t recall.

  That was why he gambled and drank as much as anything. Because trading raunchy jokes with a bunch of strangers blocked out the questions that resonated in his soul.

  He spent some time filling the mirror o level, even though he doubted he’d ever fet Kaylee’s betrayal. He was just trying to build the habit of telling it everything since he was already sure that there was much that he’d fotten.

  When he felt better he used a word of greater cure in an attempt te the whole ship of disease. He doubted that would be enough to uhe mystery, but he could spare the year.

  Really, I’m uo figure it out this go around, he decided, but at least I stay with the ship this whole time, see what happens, and then help with the pgue when we reach our destination.

  The very st thing that Simon po do was to disembark the boat for Ionar, so, one day he was very surprised to see that they were sailing right by it without any iion to stop. He looked closely and thought it looked different, but it wasn’t until he asked one of the sailors about it that he discovered the horrible truth.

  “Ionar? What would we go to that twice-cursed hellhole?” he said with a ugh.

  “Twice cursed?” he asked. “You mean something happehere besides the volo erupting?”

  “You don’t know?” the man asked, studying Simon to decide if he was stupid or merely fn. “That volic eruptied some monstrosity straight from the lowest pit of hell, and it ed the whole city. Every pce where the va isn’t, it is.”

  Simon’s body went cold. He’d spent half the voyages learning about unintended sequences, and now he discovered that he’d iently unleashed a new evil on an old level. It was shog, but as he looked at the silhouette of the pace high on the clifftop, it was impossible not to see the truth.

  Simon sighed. “I guess I’m not going to figure out the pgue on this trip, either.”

  “gue?” the sailor asked, but Simon ighe man. He was already moving away from the prow where they’d been chatting, the the port side of the ship where they kept one of the long boats. With a word of force, he cut the ropes on both hoists that raised and lowered it into the sea before anyone had any idea what he to.

  There were looks of shod dismay, but he ighem. This run was toast anyway. He’d already fucked it up as far as he was ed. He could do ohing right, though, and that was to fix this fug mess. He’d spend decades here if he had to undo what he’d dohere was no other choibsp;

  After the boat spshed into the water, he vaulted over the rail like some guy in a pirate movie and used a word of lesser force to cushion his nding. Then he picked up a pair of oars and did his best to start rowing to shore. It only took a few minutes for the news of what he’d doo spread on the Sea Seraph. Though they didn’t have ons, they had plenty of crossbows, and he was well iheir range.

  So, once he saw the first oake a shot at him, he used a word of lesser force with every pull of the oars. That little bit of magic pushed him aloimes faster than rowing alone, and he quickly outpaced the ship.

  Simon had no idea what rumors would spread about this moment, but he was sure that they would. He beached the boat, and the drug it slightly higher, even though he never really inteo use it again. This was a desote pce, but he wasn’t leaving until he’d purged every st trace of his stupid mistake.

  “I should never have opehat damn thing,” he told himself as he started looking around for evidehat the pnts had ied this far.

  Fortunately, it seemed that they hadn’t. Looking, he thought he could see some evidehat there were a few orail he top, but the iion seemed to be almost pletely tained in the area around the main square and the pace. “Because that’s where I buried that fug thing,” he growled, kig a robsp;

  The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. “I fug boiled it in Lava,” he yelled, screaming so loudly that it echoed off the cliff face back at him. “What the hell else was I supposed to do!”

  Leave it in its fug tainer, his mind volunteered instantly.

  Yeah, that would have been the best choice. It wasn’t like the golden der he’d found it in had any magical runes on it, though. He’d thought it was just a superstition, but it clearly wasn’t.

  Simohe rest of the day building a shelter and doing a little spearfishing off the now-abandoned jetty. Holy, it wasn’t bad. He’d never been a seafood guy, but fme-roasted fish and crab that had been buried i ashes of his fire turned out pretty great. T

  There wasn’t much variety here, of course. He didn’t seen see mu the way of seabirds, so he was sure he’d get tired of it eventually, but for now, he ate like a king.

  The well still had drinkable water in it, even if the pce was abandoned, and the tavern he’d gotten drunk at st time had never been built. If he was going to be here for a while, then he wao get the rhythm of life down pat.

  That meant making a get so this thing wouldn’t kill him twice the same way. It also meant beihodical and thh so the damn thing didn’t sneak up on him.

  After only two days of that, he was ready to start making his the path. He went a little at a time, and he used fire so things wouldn’t grow back. It wasn’t bad, especially early on. That low, there was really only the occasional creeper vine e blossom to mark this thing’s slow, creeping path of destru.

  It didn’t get bad until he could actually see where the va had dripped down from the highest level and ruihe few buildings that had been built along the windy road. There, he found that the real iion had started. The vines actually didn’t seem to like something besides his fire, so he spent several days experimenting as he slowly burhem away to nothing. In the process, he ruled out wind and sun, as well as poor soul, and was forced to clude it was seawater.

  The first time he poured salt water on a cluster of them, they wilted and died in minutes, and when he checked on that spot two days ter, they still hadn’t started trow. That was the good news. The bad news was that he didn’t have so much as a bucket to his name.

  Thankfully, the well was shallow, but up until now, he’s used a rope made from spliced-together rope ends he’d cut off the ship’s tackle to lower his helmet in the well a couple times at the end of every day to stay hydrated. That might work fine for drinking, but there was no way that he was going to stop this iion with a helmet full of seawater a day and the odds that he would make the mile-and-a-half walk up and down the cliffside road more than once or twice each day were equally small.

  So, he did the best thing ao work making a rge pot for himself. Finding enough cy for that took a week of digging, and he cracked the first one from the heat wheried to fire it.

  Still, his sed try was a success, after he let it bake in the sun for a few days before he baked it over a fme. It was an ugly thing, and though he didn’t think he’d ever be able to ba on his head, he used leather thongs and a bit of the vas from his shelter to make a backpack of sorts. Now each day, he could go up, burn away the parts that were likely to attack him, and then drench the soil of a couple dozen weed beds with sea water and watch them die in almost real-time.

  That was whearted to make real progress. Relying on just the words of minor fire, it was libel to take him literally forever to clear this iion, but with enough sea water, things were finally starting to look up.

  When Simon started this task, he'd thought of it as Sysiphean. He was going to push this boulder up the hill, not because it ossible, but because it was the only fair punishment in a just world si was his fuck up.

  Now that he was making actual progress, though, he was starting to think it might be possible.