With only his mirror, half a sword, a particurly ragged bedroll, some salt-encrusted armor, a small piece of flint, 8 silver s in a vas pouch, his trusty fishing spear left to his name, and a pair of boots that weren’t going to st much longer, Simon finally left that familiar bead started walki along the coast. These nds were not pletely wild, and he was sure he would find vilges along the way.

  It only took four days to find his first fishing vilge and two more to find his sed. It even took less than a week to find his first bandits, though he seemed to have little enough worth stealing, and they left him alone as he walked past, looking more than a little like a crazy old hermit.

  It ity, too. A couple of those toughs had nice swords, and Simon would have had no pun stealing one of them from their corpses. Simon tinued his journey in near silence, breaking it only to hail travelers going the other dire and ask them for news from up ahead.

  Well, that and hunting. Thanks to the deprivations of the weather, Simon no longer had a bow, but he was also pletely sick of fish. So, when he salump hare feasting on grasses not so far from him, using the lesser word of force to turn a pebble into a sling bullet and give it the force his arm never could was the easiest choi the world.

  After all, he’d much rather give up a week of his life for something to eat that wasn’t from the sea at this point. That would have been true even if he wasn’t going to get it back when he died.

  That night, he feasted on salty, greasy meat for the first time in months, ahere in the scraps of his bedroll feeling blessed. “How I be this happy with this little?” he asked himself.

  He didn’t try to answer his owion. He just appreciated it.

  It wasn’t until he reached the first town of any size in Fia, almost a hundred miles away from where he'd started at Ionar. It was there he learhat he had over a hundred fifty miles to go to reach Abrese, but he wasn’t in a hurry. Why wasn’t he? Because the portal he needed was almost certainly gone by now, and even if he mao track down the Sea Seraph to whatever port she was currently in, he doubted that the portal would still work after all this time.

  No, I’m probably trapped here for a long time, he decided, for better or worse.

  Still, that certainty was no reason to mope about it. He was sure he could get up to some fine adventures here on the coast. Maybe he’d even take up sailing for fun. He was a strong swimmer now, and other than a bit malnourished, he was in excellent shape. He could do about anything he wanted.

  And tonight, what he wanted more than anything was a hot bath. So, he traded away one of his precious silver s for a handful of coppers, a soft bed, a warm meal, and a hot bath. He even vowed to get a shave tomorrow when the barber was finally open. Once he was and fed, he started to spend those coppers o a time for another delicacy he’d dearly missed: warm beer.

  After twe tankards, he settled into a warm haze of te and listened more thaalked to the other travelers who were there that night. He heard that the pgue in Abrese was rgely resolved, but he’d already expected that to be the case. These things didn’t st forever. More iingly, though, was the news about Ionar.

  “I heard someone finally slew that wretched, evil pnt monstrosity,” an older trader who’d e from the west said. “Of course, I ain’t seen it with my own eyes yet, but I want to believe it’s so.”

  “It will never happen,” another said dismissively. “Mount Ionis could rain fire across the whole area day and night all ain, and those cursed e blossoms would still reappear. If you ask me, it’s only a matter of time before they start heading this way.”

  The two bickered about it, and Simon was tempted to tell them the truth, but he decided against it. Not only did he not he fame, but they wouldn’t have believed him anyway. At this moment, he looked more like a crackpot than a hero. Instead, he just listened and only chimed iopics like goblins or taurs came up because it wasn’t so far-fetched that he’d actually know something about them.

  That night, after winning enough coppers at dice to pay for his drinks and his meal, Simoo bed feeling blessed. He’d made the world a better pce, and even though he’d fucked up big time by opening that golden tainer, it had all turned out for the best.

  After the shave, he felt like a new man. It took another week to find a rger town further innd, and from there, he traded his services as a veteran warriuarding the caravan for steady meals and a new bow. It wasn’t the best quality, but it shot straight enough for him to take out a bandit without magic when they were finally attacked a few nights ter, and that was all he could ask for.

  The rest of the nights, he stood quiet watches and pyed dice around the campfire while he traded stories with men he doubted he’d ever meet agaie the poor quality of the food, though, it wasn’t so bad. After all, he thought to himself, at least it’s not fish.

  That night was the only danger he faced before he arrived, and even though he was io stay on for the leg of their trip with a better share, he decided against it and thanked his rades for watg his back before heading deeper into Abrese. There, he didn’t work as a guard but as a healer.

  The pgue still lingered here, and many of them bore the ugly scars of a survivor. Somehow, though, despite that, life was returning to normal. Most citizens still wore masks and veils as if that would somehow ward away the foul vapors that cause the disease a sed time, but he wasn’t about to expin the idea of acquired immunity to them.

  For his part, Simon wasn’t sure exactly what was causing the siess. It didn’t look like flea bites like st time, but he wasly an expert. He’d never goo medical school or anything.

  Still, he cured enough difficult cases with reasonable advice about nutrition and sunlight, along with a few whispered words of power that people started to treat him as if he were a real healer. He only used that attention to study the symptoms, and he spent a few days looking over the worst cases.

  He didn’t try too hard to save those, but he did help make them more fortable while he studied them to better uand the course that the disease took. Over the several months, he did what he could to save lives and bring this suffering to an end. He was in the process of w with a few of the other doctors to try to locate the source by doting the cases on a map of the city when he found out that many of the ships were still sunk in the harbor.

  “What if that is where the disease is ing from?” the learned Doctor Fallster asked when they were reviewing a cluster of cases he waterfront. “What if it still leaks from the hold of a submerged ship like poison? How will we cure that?”

  Simon might have expio them that such a thing was extremely unlikely, but instead, he wondered if the Sea Seraph might be down there and, if it was, if the portal to the level might be funal.

  Until that moment, he’d thought that opportunity was lost to him, but now it ate at him, even when he y i night. These people needed him, but really, how much did he owe them? In his run, he would prevent this evil and save all their lives. As it was, he would run out of years in his own life before he ran out of people to save.

  He stayed flicted about that for several days, and he had a particurly terrible idea when he realized it was time to leave. Somewhere in the back of his mind, that thirst for the sweet life force still lingered, even after all these months. It was there whehe stray thought that he could steal the life of the criminals or the dying and use it to heal those that were worth saving.

  That was too much power in his hands, and he khat as noble as his aims might be, he’d end up as a junkie or worse. So, with only a little gray in his hair, he resolved to leave before it was too te. So, he stripped down to nothing but his underclothes and his knife and took to diving in the harbor every day, looking for the ao that burning question.

  At first, his search was slow. It took several days of diving in those murky waters before he found the right ship. Apparently, the city had e least as much chaos as it had disease because, ultimately, the pier he sought had been buro the water line.

  As a result, he dived the wrecks of a dozen ships that weren’t even close to where he o be before he found the Sea Sereph. When he finally located her, she was lying on her side, half drowned in silt.

  Simon had no word for air, though he dearly wished he did. So, instead, he rested for half an hour before he dove as deep as he could to see if the portal in the captain’s quarters might still be in pce, somehow, against all the odds. Then, refreshing his word of minht, he took a deep breath and dove deep, kig as hard as he could to get twenty yards beh the waves before he felt the naggio breathe force him to return to the surfabsp;

  This time, well rested as he was, it was almost easy, and he quickly reached the captain’s iern castle. The door was shut, and he couldn’t open it, so he swam around to the bad came in through the broken window.

  He was starting to run low on air, but he wasn’t worried yet, and his light was still bright enough, so he looked around for any clues about what might have happened in all this. All he found, though, was the captain’s skeleton pio the wall by the same desk that Simon had seen the man slumped over the st time he was here. The skeleton had been picked nearly , but Simon saw a pou the ground that was not so far away, so he scooped it up.

  He was free-diving with nothing but his small clothes and a knife, after all. If he got through this portal, he’d he funds to buy new gear in Crowvar or somewhere simir.

  With Simon’s air starting to run low, he hurried to the door and tried it from this side. It was still stuck, which was something he could have fixed in an instant with a word of force. He didn’t have one of thht now, though. So, instead, he braced himself against one of the roof beams and pushed with all his might.

  I’m not fug drowning again, Simon thought to himself as he stretched and forced the strong muscles of his legs to give everything they had against the stubborn, waterlogged wood. For a sed, he feared it wouldn’t be enough, but then, he felt it budge just the smallest bit, and a sed ter, it gave way entirely.

  Simon worried the portal wouldn’t open after all this time, but it did, and suddenly, he was riding a waterfall out of the o and into the darkness of the cavern beyond. It was a vaguely terrifying experience, and he nded oone flasping for breath and more than a little banged up. Still, he’d survived, somehow.