Simon journeyed north after only one night in Lyndon Hills before he headed north to Kawsburl. He probably could have ght back to the city of Darndelle after that, but he tinued because the story resonated so much with him.

  The hills part of Lyndon Hills was no joke, either, that town sat at the edge of the bottom nds, and the edge of proper roads, so from that point on Simon was reduced to game trails and doubling back to avoid washouts.

  It was tough going, but holy, it wasn’t so bad. The weather was nice, and the game lentiful, so he took his time with it. As a mountain range slowly rose above him to the north he wished he had a camera to capture the rugged beauty of the vista, but sadly he had no way to capture it.

  “I guess I’m just going to have to learn to paint,” he sighed after atempt to get his mirror to ‘take a picture’ for him. The thing would faithfully render what it saw, of course, when asked, but it had all the soul of an architect's elevation or an engineer's teical drawing.

  On his third night out of Lyndon Hills he was ambushed by a small of goblins. Fortunately he woke up before the first blow was strud had time to smash the head of the first oo e at him.

  After that, he used a word of lesser force to leap to the top of a rge boulder and used his bow to take them out o a time while the searched for him. Many times he missed the shot and had to fire twice which lead to him chastising himself.

  “You ’t use magic to solve everything,” he grumbled. “That’s how yoing to die horribly one day!”

  That was his mantra these days, both because he thought he was using it too mud because he o resist the urge to drain these little guys dry like some kind of energy vampire. The very fact that he still felt the urge to after weeks without uttering the word Zyvon was w to him. It was like quitting smoking or something.

  The rest of the trip beyond that was fine, and after a few more days of walking and a day spent waiting out the rain, he finally found the town he was looking for. Vilge robably the better word, though. It had seeer days.

  Simon had seen several pces in his trip that had fallen on hard times, though the version of Sny that existed after Gregor lost his arm was the clearest example. This pce had obviously been important, once upon a time, but no more. Someone had worked hard to raise real city walls and create the two stone bridges that crossed the raging river that it sat astride. Even the homes looked like they’d beeed by wealthy people, but no longer.

  Many of them were in various states of disrepair now, ahan half of the homes looked lived in. Other than a tin mine and a tannery, the pce seemed to have little in the way of industry, either.

  No one articurly weling to Simon, though when he lied and told them he’d bee by the temple to gather vital clues necessary to finally se the world of the Bckheart i, people were a little more cooperative.

  “Aint a lot of strangers in these parts,” the gate guard told him. “You ever be too careful.”

  One of the town wat was assigo show him where it had all started so long ago. The man didn’t know much about the actual i, which was less than helpful, but he was able to show him the pque iowery that memorialized the event and the lonely burned-out ruins of a cottage on a rge hill at the edge of the cemetery. The cottage ruins and the pques weren’t much, but the grandeur of the mausoleums in the oldest parts of the cemetery again hi freatness.

  Simon tried to ask the man why he thought all of this had happened, but his escort seemed carefully coached not to have an opinion. Questions like, “Where do you think this warlock came from?” or “Why do you think he chose to stay in Kawsburl?” were met with a studied disi.

  “The Gods work as they will,” the man shrugged, “But I hope that this little trip helps you get some insight to end the blight this monster caused just the same.”

  Those were empty words, though. There was nothing new here, and Simon had to fight the urge to leave on the spot in frustration. The only reason he didn’t was because oail he back of his mind. It wasn’t that there weren’t so much as weeds ging to the low walls of stohat had once been a cottage; that was easily expinable as the result of magic. He was quite sure that he could drain a spot so dead with a spell like Zyvon that nothing would ever grow there again.

  It was that the ruins had a stone floor. That bothered him even after he went to bed in the inn that night. Every cottage he’d ever stayed in, in this world, had a floor of earth, or in rare cases like inns, wood. The Baron’s mansion in Sny had a stone floor. The castles and temples he’d been in did too. A cottage, though? That seemed unlikely.

  Simo at the crack of dawn to give that another look, and after a few minutes of examination, he figured out what game was being pyed here. The stone of the floor was id in after the walls and stuck up slightly above the doorway. Someone had id this down to hide evidenstead of making it look like it had always been here.

  He thumped on each stoh the hilt of his bde until he found a cluster that sounded hollow. He tried to pry one of them up with his dagger, but the mortar was too tight to make fast progress.

  “Fuck it,” he growled, looking around to make sure no one was nearby to call him a witch before he whispered, “Aufvarum Vosden,” and used lesser earth to make the mortar flow aside like muddy water.

  Ohat was doarted lifting paving stones out of the way, and he quickly found what he’d expected to, a dry rotted old trapdoor. For a sed he got the feeling of déjà vu, but he quickly realized that this couldn’t possibly be his . Despite the onality, they were in totally different locations.

  The sed wave of déjà vu hit him harder when he finally opehe door and saw the stairs beh. Those he’d definitely seen before. He khat even before he felt the cold air wash over him.

  “Son of a bitch,” he swore as he drew his sword and started down into the cottage. It wasn’t built on a hill. It had been built on a burial mound… like the one he’d been crushed to death in not so long ago.

  Suddenly, he was on edge, and he moved down each step with caution as he retraced a path he’d taken at least three dozen times by now. This was the skeleton knight level; he was sure of it, and somehow, he’d made his way back to it.

  It looked a little worse for the wear since he’d seen it st, but he was too ed about that. His first was why it was here, and what this could possibly have to do with what he was looking for, but his sed was even bigger.

  If those stairs are in a burial mound, then what’s normally behind the door in the goblin cave? He wondered.

  In his mind, everything had fit together in a certain way. They were in order. First, there was this level, and then there was that one, and now, suddenly, they were lining up more with the real world than with the levels i. The idea made him dizzy.

  When he reached the bottom, he found nothing ued. The room was scattered with the wreckage of bodies and looked about like he remembered. The knight itself was dead on the floor, too, but Simon looked at it only briefly before he produced some light and moved to the gate at the far end of the sepulcher. If that didn’t actually lead to the level, then where did it lead to?

  The aurned out to be an antechamber and another set of stairs. He ged his mind. This was nothing like the burial mounds he’d been in before near Schwarzenbruck. This was more like one of the Egyptian tombs he’d seen while watg ooo many dotaries on the Valley of Kings.

  There were no hieroglyphics, though. Whatever had been painted on the walls had long since fked away. Simon tinued down into the darkness, and it was there he found another room full of the dead.

  He raised his sword to shatter the first one as soon as it started to move, but it didn’t. Instead, it just y there on its dais, fusing him even more.

  “Why aren’t these ones ing to life?” Simon wondered aloud as he explored the room, but he had no answer.

  Unless… for a moment, he stood stock still in that cold room as inspiration struck him. What if the same thing that animated the dead here caused the ghosts to rise in Darndelle. That wasn’t so far-fetched, was it? Here they had bodies to move around in, and there… well, no bodies meant they had to use the souls themselves or something.

  It wasn’t a plete theory, but it was a w hypothesis, and

  for now, he g to it as he turned and ran back up the stoairs, taking them two at a time. Something that was here when he left wasn’t here now. The Warlo question had taken it, and it was very probably still buried in the graveyard. The question was, what.

  Upstairs, the first thing he did was look for the sword. He found it ying just about where he’d probably left it, but was slightly disappointed by its discovery. I mean, if that was the answer I would have solved this pce ages ago by act, he thought to himself with a sigh.

  he looked for the key, sihat was the other promi item he had experieh, however wheurhe skeleton knight’s body over, he found something pletely ued: there was a giant hole in its breastpte. To him it looked like something had just punched right through it rabbed the metal and ripped it open like ing paper.

  Does that mean there’s a strength word of power? He thought as he studied the hole left behind by whatever had dohis?

  Simon had searched the room a couple of times, but he’d hought to take the armor off the skeleton knight, and now that was biting him in the ass.

  As he looked at the hole in the chest and wondered what might have been there, it suddenly occurred to him. “Don’t tell me that Dark Heart is actually literal and not, like, a cool name for the damn warlock,” he sighed.

  He didn’t know whether to ugh or cray at that revetion, but he was fairly sure it was the corree. Whoever had dug up the rotten corpse had left the cursed artifact behind, and that was what was stirring up all the dead. Now it to him to find it aroy it. The only question was, was it the right thing to destroy it i this level, or ba the skeleton knight level instead?