Simon hiked to the top of the volo twice more in the weeks that followed, but her trip turned up anythihe most he got out of it icture of one of the half-visible elementals that he sketched out as best he could. He was no artist, but he’d been improving slowly. Acc to his mirror, his art skill had advanced above poor and was now merely below average, aake that as a win sidering the crude materials he had to work with.

  Still, as much as the otherworldly creatures might fasate him, he didn’t learn anything more about them. It is kind of odd that it is one of the few magical creatures I’ve seen so far, he thought to himself one day as he was ing his small house. No sooner had the thought formed than he realized how ridiculous that was.

  “You mean besides the dragon, the basilisk, and the ogre?” he ughed at himself after he thought about it for a sed.

  He had, in fact, fought a lot of different magical creatures. Hell, goblins, skeletons, and zombies were all definitely magical, too, and he’d fought more of them than anything else. The differen his mind was that they had been real.

  He hadly gotten a ce to study a dragon up close or anything, but the wyvern he’d bsted out of the sky was something he could have dissected if he’d wao. He could have preserved it and mou like a dinosaur in a museum, but the fire elementals, or whatever it was they were, that was something else entirely. It was entirely outside his experience, and other than a few run-ins with ghosts, they were unique.

  That made the whole thing pretty damn magical to him. In the days that followed, even after he stopped going up the volo, the image lingered with him, though he wasn’t pletely sure why. After all, he had a sword that radiated cold and a suit of pte mail that was immuo fire that he’d built himself. That was magical, too, but again, it was something he could put his hands on and uand.

  Every day, he waited for the volo to erupt, and every day it did nothing. So Simon waited, and he prepared. He started going to the gym, which was a little too naked and Grean for his tastes. He never oiled himself up in olive oil and wrestled with grown men, but he did enjoy the natural hot springs that fed the bathes of the plex, and in time, he found a couple of guys to practice his sword fighting with so he didn’t get too rusty.

  Some of his sparring partners found it strahat a doctor knew how to wield a bde so well, but Simohe mystery linger. When the rumor started to spread that he’d been a field healer for the army in the Kingdom of Brin, he didn’t do anything to stop it. He didn’t care eople believed, as long as it wasn’t that he was a warlobsp;

  Indeed, rumors aside, life became pretty muer that. Things became routine. He hid his ons and armor in a magic-carved hollow beh the trunk he used to store rarely used medies, and he waited for the day to be a hero.

  The only problem with that was that it never came. Day after day, he kept one eye on the horizon as he treated small wounds and persistent fevers, but the volo never erupted, and the grouh his feet never shook.

  Well, never was a strong word. The volo had regur minor tremors every few days, and perhaps once a month, it would rumble slightly more ominously, but it didn’t amount to anything. Each time it happened, Simon held his breath, and each time, sileurned, and the world tio turn.

  At first, it was frustrating, but after a while, he was okay with it. It wasn’t like he was living a bad life right now. He couldn’t even bme anyone else for this waiting game. He was the one who thought it would be cool to stop it before Hedes’ portal even opened up, and he khat might take a year or more.

  So, he made the best of it and slowly shifted from ting the weeks to ting the months. It had taken almost three months to walk here and two more before he’d gotten the suit pleted aed. It had been six months sihen, though, and he’d settled bato the life of a doctor rather than the life of a traveler or an adventurer or a hero. That meant he’d been on this level for almost a year now. Once upon a time, that would have been a rarity, but these days, that was being almost par for the course.

  Other than the ons and armor that he’d secreted away and the donkey he was still paying a few coppers a week to keep well-fed iables, there really wasn’t anythio point to him as adventurer anymore. He kept a knife on his belt when he went out, but he hadn’t worn his leather armor in months.

  In fact, retly, Simon had broken down and bought one of the togas that the locals wore rather than the worn-out tunid breeches he’d worn for so long. It felt weird to him, but it made those around him treat him with slightly less suspi and a touch more warmth than they had up to now.

  No matter what he wore, though, he never got quite used to the food choices here. Beef was imported, which meant it was of poor quality and pointlessly expensive. Potatoes were likewise rare enough to be noticeable when they appeared in the market.

  This limited his diet to seafood, goat, and mb, which seemed to only ever be fvored with wine sauces. Simon refused to suffer with the dull pate of the locals. He eventually made his own wood-fired oven in his garden just to make better bread than he was used to here. He would have killed for some tomatoes to try making a pizza with, but no one had heard of such a fruit, and pepperoni had yet to be ied, so he was forced to go without.

  Food, much like magic, was still in a remarkably primitive state in this world, and once Simon had that thought in mind, he couldn’t let it go. He had little in the way of cooking knowledge from his time before he died. His skills had rgely been limited to boiling water for ramen and choosing the perfeumber of seds for each meal he stuto the microwave.

  In time, he did figure out how to make ft bread, and with enough rd, he even figured out how to pan-fry fish with a thin flour coating until it was extra crispy and someatable again. Those two things didn’t quite add up to a fish taco, but it wasn’t bad, and Simon sidered it one of the many successes he had in the months that followed.

  Even his piess had his plus side, though. Thanks to his proximity to the market, he eventually learo like both olives and dates, which were things he would never have touched oh. Early oolerated them just for something to sna as he hiked up the volo to ihe caldera, but in time, he grew to like their fvor, and he almost wished that someone would i pasta or something so he could try more plicated fvor binations.

  Sometime after Simon had been in Ionar for almost two years, he had enough friends to start hosting dinner parties. These started quite by act when he was expining to one of his sparring partners what the strange meal he’d brought with him for lunch was. It was just a filled with a few of the ingredients that had been avaible in the market that week. There were some onions, some cabbage, and some slow-roasted pork. It was nothing special, but soon, he was inviting his friends over on a weekly basis for his new creations.

  “You should shut down your apothecary and open a restaurant,” Aikos excimed one night after several bottles of wine.

  “I would,” Simon agreed. “But where would I get the herbs to fvor all of these sauces without an apothecary?”

  Everyone ughed at that, and all agreed he’d be a wonderful host. In time, he became truly accepted by these people despite his fn background. That was nice. He'd been here for almost two years after all, but it was also when the marriage proposals started ing in. First, they were just the men of Simon’s circle casually mentioning he was getting a little old not to have a family ing up the fact that their sister or cousin was si of nowhere.

  For a while, he missed these social cues pletely. Those were easy enough to rebuff, but when drunk men and former ers started t to him about the size of their herds or the generosity of their dowry, it became impossible to miss. Now that I’m part of the unity, they wao bee part of the unity, he thought, realizing the iability of the thing.

  He held fewer parties after that because he wasn't sure what to do, but even so, the offers kept ing. While he wasn’t opposed to finding a beautiful olive-skinned Ionarian woman to marry, of course, it retty far down his list of things to do. Instead, he focused on healing by day and half-heartedly studying art and magic at night when the mood strubsp;

  Things became pretty routier almost three years of waiting for aion that never came. So, one day, Aikos stopped him oernoon on the narrow street not far from his home to say, “Ah, I thought you were dressed a little strangely. Is your other outfit for a e party you’re pnning, or were you having a liaison with someone, you sly dog?” Simon was greatly fused.

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Simon said, looking down at his toga. It was one of three he owned now and looking a little dingy, but it was still good enough to wear in public. He certainly didn’t have a nicer ohat he’d been wearing in its pce. “I’ve been in my practice all m, tending to children and—”

  “Are y to tell me that wasn’t you in the market just a few minutes ago?” his friend asked incredulously. “With the leather armor and the strange ? I would swear that—”

  “?” Simon asked, his i suddenly piqued. “And armor, you say? Which way did I… err, did he go?”

  “He?” Aikos ughed. “Very droll. Last I saw you, you were heading up the main road toward the high city. I thought perhaps you’d finally goo make a proposal of your own in your fa fn clothes to make an impression with some noble’s daughter.”

  The high city, Simon thought, f himself to smile even though he wao scowl. Or the volo?

  “Thank you for telling me; I’ll get to the bottom of this right now!” Simon shouted, already running off with nothing but a dagger. Part of him said that he should fetch his armor and that this was it, but the rest of him… practically every fiber of his being screamed that he didn’t have time for any of that.

  “Let us know when you want to introduce her then!” his friend ughed, thinking nothing of the enter.

  Simon’s mind was rag, though, as he ran down to the first main street, he came across and then cut over to start making his way to the north-east, up to the high city. Just mentioning he had a doppelg?nger would have been enough to set Simon’s teeth on edge, but the mention of a ? That set off all the arm bells.

  All this time, he’d been waiting for the volo to erupt on its own, and now, just like that, he was certain that wasn’t how all this had gone down. Someone had done something magical to make this crisis happen, and strangely, almost impossibly, he began to worry that someone might be him.