Simon was forced to live with the information that everyone in the north, probably even as far south as Sny, knew of him as the vilin for months, and it ate at him. All through the cold winter and into the spring, when there was a sudden upti the number of people afflicted with the weeping, it was there, waiting for him in the quiet moments, ready to make him rage all ain.

  It was so bad that he did everything he could to try to fill the quiet spaces of his life with more work. In the wihat started off as an attempt to piece together a more accurate map from the knowledge of the sailors under his care. When those became too wildly divergent, he switched gears and spent the dark hours of the night studying the runes of the demon’s circle by dlelight instead.

  Eventually, that was the only task that was engrossing enough to keep his angry thoughts about Kell at bay. He traced araced the way the runes fit together from his mirror notes on sheets of paper until he finally uood the way they would have looked without all of the distortion from the magics of hell straining against the summoning circle.

  It was only once he’d dohat that he uood a number of things. The first was that the reason some of the symbols hadn’t made seo him was because they were twisted and mirrored. Once everything was in the proper scale and orientation, the whole thi a lot less dizzying.

  The sed was that he’d been using Dnarth pletely wrong. Until now, distance had meant simply hitting something far away from him. That was all he used it for, but the summoning circle used it almost like teleportation. No, he corrected himself. It was more plex than that. It was like translocation - like that old show with the stargate he’d only seen a few episodes of. Simon had no idea how it worked or targeted its location or whatever, but he desperately wao. The world was a big pce, and being able to move between far-flung points at a paewhat faster than walking would be a huge deal.

  Even that idea, as big as it was, wasn’t as important as his third revetion, though. After months of nighttime study, after everyone else finally went to bed and he was left aloh the sid the dying, he finally figured out which part of the structure he o strike out to make the whole thing colpse in on itself.

  In a way, the st two revetions were linked because, at first, every attempt to defuse the circle would have led to the outer boundary colpsing first, letting hell into the world, which was exactly what he didn’t want. However, if he attacked the third yer of runes first and celed out the lihat ected the flow of power to the distant ruhen the spell would colpse inward, as the circle suddenly found itself surrounding nothing, and hell faded away with the barrier still intabsp;

  Of course, he also realized he uood the whole thing well enough that he could summon demons oy muy floor now. He had no desire to do that, of course, aill didn’t ualy what all the eg pieces and the parts that might have been numbers or designators did, but he was sure he could copy them well enough to reproduce them. He’d been very careful in his copies to leave gaps in the lines lest he do exactly that.

  Of course, Simon burned all of this research after he showed it to the mirror. The very st thing he wao do, besides actally opening up a portal to hell on something as fragile as paper, was to let anyone else see what he was doing. Not only would that stir all sorts of unfortable allegations, but it would release dangerous knowledge in the world that would have entirely uable effects.

  Truthfully, Simon would have preferred to keep all of his resear the mirror at all times. That way, no o him could access it. However, the interface retty jank, and the resolution wasn’t so good. He felt like he was writing on an old drawing tablet or something, so he preferred to work on paper before saving it into the mirror.

  Life might have gone on like that for months or years longer, even after the patients had started to s, and his hospital sat half-empty most weeks had someo informed him that the Sea Seraph was ba port. Just like that, Simon realized it had been more than a year as he lost himself in the depths of his various studies. All this time, he’d told himself he was just waiting for them to e back while he pursued experiments in medie, geography, and his words of power.

  It had beore than that, though he couldn’t point to exactly when it had ged. At some point, he’d given up on the idea of pursuing his current run any further, and he’d started a new life. Now, he was loath to give that up.

  Still, si was here, he went down to the harbor and chatted with the quartermaster and some of the other crew, whom he still remembered. He told them about quelling the epidemid they told him stories of their most ret voyages. There wasn’t anything about them that stood out to him, though. They’d taken the long way back tis on in the nds across the sea, then gone north before ing back across as they always did. This time, they had a close call with pirates, apparently instead ees, but the captain had been able to outrun the bastards in a harrowing chase before a storm had finally separated the ships.

  All told it made for an iing story, but there was no part of it that made him think, oh, that’s why the ship o be saved. They hadn’t even killed the pirates. In the end, he’d gone back to his mostly empty hospital in a daze, unsure what to do . He was in no hurry to be burned alive by Dragoer all, and he was fairly sure that was the only thing awaiting him if he tried to speed-run things.

  The m, he told the few devotees who still g to him despite the city returning to normal, “I’m going north in search of new challenges.”

  “But why?” one of his apprentices asked. “Abresse still has many sick, even without the pgue. There’s more to do here.”

  “And you will tend to them, I’m sure,” Simon smiled. “I’ve taught you well, after all.”

  “But will you do?” Another asked.

  “I will heal the sick as I find them and work on my maps where I ,” Simon smiled.

  He’d made of the maps he was w on from the testimony of sailors. In fact, he’d oftehat as cover for the research he was doing on the binding circle from level 13, so they were well aware of his obsession in that department.

  Simon had spent a year here, and another five to ten years of life on magic at least, so he was fairly sure that he roag middle age. This wasn’t the first time he’d approached that threshold, but it robably the first time he really felt like an adult, or worse, an elder, as he looked out on all these people who were so much youhan him.

  They held a feast to celebrate his decision o was clear that it couldn’t be ged, and more than a few teo praise him for all his good works. They should, he thought with a wry smile. I saved half of them from the weeping. There was some polite roasting, but on the whole, it was a celebration, ae better than he had in lifetimes. It was almost enough to make him miss the good life instead of the ascetic he’d bee over the st year.

  He ehe night of praise and sidered it a more than adequaite reward for all his hard work. Simo most of the money he’d mao earn in that time with the men he appoio keep running the hospital in his absence. He told them he’d be ba three years. “Perhaps sooner,” he said. “We shall see how long it takes to get to Darndelle, and past that, to Liepzen perhaps. We shall see where the road takes me.”

  That was a lie, though. He only said it to ehey remained diligent lohaherwise might if they thought no one would ever check up on them. While he had no doubt that some of the men who had served under him did so to help people, he was sure that several of them saw his tutege as a stepping stoo a position of prestige serving the well-heeled citizens of the city and that they would find a way to spend his hospital’s capital reserves all too quickly if they thought there would be no oo expin themselves to.

  Ohat was done, Simo quietly one night out the western gate with no fahe st thing he wanted eople begging to follow him to the ends of the earth, or whatever it was this world was called. “Am I going to have to i a name for that, too, or do they already have one?” Simon wondered. He wasn’t sure.

  He supposed he was going to have to find a library or something and find out. Only he hadn’t actually seen one of those yet. A few nobles had libraries, of course, but in terms of public learning institutions, they hadn’t seemed to have been ied yet. Simon wondered if maybe he should add that to his to-do list as well but decided that robably too mubsp;

  He resolved to focus on simple things first, like finishing his map as he put one foot in front of the other, but with only his mule for pany as he circled north and the miles drifted by, it was hard not to let his mind wander. After all, a world with magic was full of limitless possibilities, and he could do anything if he wao.

  Simo almost two weeks ploding north before he reached Mietere. It was a city he’d heard of before, though he couldn’t quite recall where, even if he’d never been there, and was little more than a farming hub and a ty seat. Politically it seemed to belong to Darndelle, and marked the furthest eastern point of that tiny kingdom.

  Geographically, that was one of the questions that puzzled him most. He had a pretty good idea of where most cities were iion to each other at this point, but where they ected and how they aligned with each other. That was harder. Even what nguage they spoke was often mysterious to him.

  Sometimes it wasn’t the big cities he was looking for, though. Two days out of Mietere he found the town of Esmiran, which was where he’d almost been drowned in the well by that crazy cult. He lihere for almost a week trying to learn about the men in white, but found nothing which meant that they either liked to keep a low profile, or that they hadn’t e ie; he wasn’t sure which was more ominous.

  A few days after he left that spot, he found the valley where he’d faced the bck swarmers, and a week ter, he finally reached Darndelle. This level was several years past the one where he’d solved the issue with the Bckheart in the graveyard. As a result, he was able to spend several minutes looking at a fiatue of him that the people of the city had built, which was dedicated to Simoter. It was a surreal experience, and once he got over the shock, he left before anyone could notice just how much he looked like it.