Simon woke up in bed, in a dark room. At first, he feared he’d returo the , but when he didn’t feel the familiar lumps in that straw mattress, he calmed down. Well, woke erhaps not the right word. His dreams tore at him violently, and he would have sworn that he’d woken up and fallen asleep for a week's worth of nights, but when he asked the gray-robed priestess about it, she said he was brought baly a few ho.

  His clothes and other things had been folded and stacked ly beside him in the dim room. Part of him felt like what had happe night was just a dream, but he khat it wasn’t. Even without the headache, he would have known that.

  Food was brought to him evenings and ms by Diara, and when he asked her how long he was supposed to stay there, she just smiled patiently before expining, “Seeing through the mists of time be very hard ohe most prepared.”

  “But I didn’t look through time,” he insisted. “I just had… strange dreams.”

  “That is what they all say,” she agreed, “But if such things were easy, then they would not be valuable.”

  Simoated on her words and on those dreams. He even expined as much as he could remember to his mirror. Still, it was two days before he rose once more.

  When he emerged from his room armed and armored, she asked, “Will you be leaving already?”

  “That depends,” Simon answered with a smile, “Is there any ce I could get a tour of the city before I go?” Even before she opened her mouth, he khe answer was going to be no, but some part of him had to ask.

  “You could,” she said, “If that is what the mists showed you, but our city… it’s not a pce people e back from. Those who stay must stay forever.”

  “Oh?” he asked, somewhat surprised by her answer. “I thought it was just for the priests and priestesses and the like.”

  “It’s for that too,” she agreed, “But we do not leave the mountaiher, so that distin hardly matters. Did your visions tell you that you should stay?”

  He shook his head. Maybe they told me I should take one more bath with you, he told himself, but he didn’t say any of that out loud. Instead, he thanked her for her time and hospitality, and then, with o look at the stunning caldera city, he started traveling down the mountain.

  Just as he’d suspected when he’d first seen the narrow trail, it was a dozen times easier to traverse tharail he’d bzed. It had taken him over a week to climb up the mountain, but he was only forced to sleep a single night under an on the way down, and the weather slowly got warmer approached the ground.

  The trail was never wide, and sometimes it was damaged by beast men activity or ndslides. It was never perfect, but it was a thousand times better than sheer cliff faces and gravel-strewn slopes.

  Most of the way, his view was obscured by the same clouds that had pgued him on the the mountain. There were occasions where he got glimpses of the wider ndscape, though, and they were enough to make him uand Diara’s fasation with the sea. Even in those foggy glimpses, it appeared endless from here, and save for the occasional isnd, it probably was.

  “I could get enough moogether to buy a ship and outfit properly,” he told himself. “There’s a whole world out there just waiting to be explored.”

  While his fume-powered visions had given him some hint of what y out there, those could in no way be trusted. Still, he loo test them, if only to uand everything else he saw that much better.

  The way down ended not so far from where he started, he mohat he’d spent the night at, making him feel stupid. He’d read their i in his destination as protectiveness of it, but iy, if he’d simply fessed where he was going, they probably would have sent him here.

  “Well, they would have tested me a me here if they’d found me worthy,” Simon decided. “If they’d found me unworthy, they still probably would have killed me.”

  After a couple days of refle, Simo like he had a wider view of what it was he was doing. He felt like he could see the outlines of all of this in broad strokes, even if he had trouble putting it into words. Even without that, though, this would have been worth it, iif only for the beauty of the trip, and he made several sketches that he wao try to turn into proper paintings one day when he had the time and the skill.

  Once he reached Thebian again, though, he had some hard choices to make. He had years to waste yet, and he no longer knew what he should do with them. He’d po solve a curse for Elthena as a sort of wedding present, but he had found no real evidehat it existed. Indeed, now that he’d seen the Oracle, he wouldn’t be surprised to know that the whole thing had been made up by her Grandfather after he’d e down that mountain or beeten by someoer the faone of that helped him.

  “I suppose I could just make up a new prophed try to spread it around,” he told himself while walking through the market the day he arrived, as he tried to put all of this together. “Some theatrics here… maybe an a carved tablet there… I could probably make it happen.”

  Still, it seemed like an awful lot of hassle just to get back together with a woman, and he wasn’t sure making up a new religion for the region just to make things work with her was the right idea. So, undecided, he tinued further down the coast. This time, he was on foot, though he was tempted to get another mule just for old time's sake.

  Bandits accosted him once, a week north of Ionar, but they scattered wheook the hand of their leader in a duel. The man screamed bloody murder, even as Simon helped him tie off the stump with a leather thong. “Losing a hand is an appropriate punishment for theft,” he said, uurbed when the man asked him why he didn’t kill him ht. “But murder would not be.”

  The man seemed fused by that, but he was even more fused by what Simon said . “The sad part is I could reattach your hand, but you’d just keep using it to make the world even worse than it already is.”

  “It is no crime to steal when you are hungry,” the man shot back, basically agreeing with Simon. He used a word of lesser healing to stop the bleeding and ease the pain for that hoy at least.

  “If you must steal, then steal from those who have stolen from others, or else from the sea, not your fellow man,” he said, rising and tinuing on to leave the maimed bandit to his fate.

  He took his time walking down the coast to sider what it was he wao do. He’d already done medie and research. Art might be fun, but then again, fighting the Vist had been a wonderful time. On some level, the idea of leading an armed insurre appealed to him the most. Being a rebel was fun. Hell, even running Crowvar until he’d been assassinated had been enjoyable. He retty sure that he could have made that whole area better with a few more years of work.

  In the end, Simon took up the hammer again, itle vilge of Olven’s Narrows, which was close enough to Ionar that he could see the volo and ships leaving the port. This wasn’t by choiuch as happenstance. He was walking through the half-abandoned pce when he saw a dozen men crowded around a bcksmith's shop that had seeer days.

  He decided to take a look and quickly found the problem. A medium-sized mert ship had damaged their rudder just enough that they were uo make it past the rocks into Ionar’s harbor, but the vilge bcksmith had died years before, so they were trying and failing to do it themselves.

  Simon watched the sailors take turns trying to hammer the brass fitting into shape, making it worse and worse until it finally cracked. Eventually, he volunteered to do it himself.

  “You?” one man ughed. “Look at those soft hands. Are you an artist? A schor?”

  “I’m no bcksmith,” Simon agreed, causing a wave of ughter, “Not usually. But I spent years at the fe in my youth, which is probably more than all you lot put together, isn’t it?”

  “What’s your price then?” the mert asked testily. “The red wine I carry from the north is in no hurry, but some of my oods are perishable, and I aim to be on my way!”

  “For me? Nothing,” Simon answered with a shrug. “But for the people of this little town, how about you throroper feast. Food, drink, the works. You know, as gratitude for their assistao you iime of need.”

  “A feast?” he asked, “growing red in the face, but that could cost a fortuh what I'm carrying.”

  Simon shrugged, setting the two halves of the broken rudder strap back down. “That’s fine. Good lu the remainder of your voyage.”

  “But… I’ll pay you in gold!” the portly man said. “We work this out!”

  “I already have gold,” Simon answered, jingling his own purse. “And a strong sword arm to go with it. I was just going to do this out of the goodness in my heart, but I see you have no goodness in yours.”

  Simon only got a dozen steps away before the man caved, and a cheer went up among the sailors. Simohem go to their tasks while he got the ramshackle fe ba some kind of order. Then, after he fetched some driftwood, he got to work.

  The vilgers came up to him, w what he was doing, but Simon just smiled. “Just getting you guys a good dinner out of the deal. There's nothing wrong with that, right?”

  No one harassed him after that, and it took only a few hours to rework the metal into the shape it o be and repair the crack. He didn’t deliver the work until the evening when the pig was roasting, and the wine was flowing, though. He even rowed out to the ship with the quartermaster, reattached it, arung the steering ropes while everyone else celebrated.

  Afterward, he joihem but didn’t get drunk. After he’d fshed his owh to make a point, that would have been more than stupid. Instead, he socialized with the locals and the sailors and learned a little more about what was going on in the area. Given that another version of him was currently living in Iht now as a healer, though, none of it was a surprise to him.

  In the m the little ship was gone, but Simon stayed behind, and no one gave him any trouble about setting up in the old smithy if that was indeed what he inteo do.