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While he let his eyes adjust to the darkness, he considered the layout of the next few levels. With the orcs defeated, that meant that the next level was the ice level and then the plague level. While he hoped that the ice level was defeated because he certainly wasn’t prepared for it again in what he was wearing, it was a shame that he wouldn’t be visiting Hurag again any time soon. Despite the stench, it would have made the perfect spot to study an evil tome for reasons related to the quiet as much as the hideous decor. Plus, if he did some experiments, no one but him would get hurt.

After that came which level exactly? He wondered. Simon had to start counting them off on his fingers because it had been so long. Two more levels, what could it… oh, lizards, twice in a row. That’s right.

First came the swamp, which had been completed for a long time even though he’d barely done anything, and then the Basilisk, which he was fairly certain was behind him for good. The last thing he wanted to do was risk being turned to stone again.

Which meant he had no idea what came after that. If he cleared this level and then died to something crazy, then the opportunity to study the tome would be lost to him forever. Well, probably forever, he thought to himself in annoyance. He’d thought the same thing about Schwarzenbruck, but now he was forced to deal with it all over again.

Simon had almost convinced himself that he shouldn’t try to clear this level when he heard the apprentice-cum-warlock ranting to his evil deity and promising to torture the children in the village above in their name. In return for more power. That did it. Even if it cost him the opportunity to read a book he’d already read and reread several times, it would be worth it. There was no way this scum was going to be allowed to go around one more time on this insane merry-go-round.

“You called, and I have come!” Simon said, feeling a little theatrical as he stepped into the circle behind the warlock. As he did so, he whispered a word for lesser light to give himself a malevolent glow.

The golem rumbled to life immediately, but since Simon was so near to its master now, all it could do was stand there menacingly while the warlock turned around in surprise.

“Call off your toy Andronican, lest I break it by accident when I play with it,” Simon bluffed.

“Y-you know my name?” the warlock said, raising a hand to the golem to stop it in its tracks. “Who are you?”

“You know my name,” Simon said, not sure exactly which evil god he was pretending to be, “but you are afraid to speak it.”

Andronican considered these words and then nodded vigorously instead of speaking. Then he bowed as low as his arthritic form would allow before he finally continued. “So you’ve come to grant my boon? Have I done enough to finally earn your favor?”

“Why else would I be here, for a student of Festauvian?” Simon said, trying his best to speak like an over-the-top, mustache-twirling villain. “But first, I have some questions. Do you recall how old you are, Andronican?”

“Of course, dark one,” the warlock smiled with a crooked, yellowed grin. “At the equinox, I will have lived for nineteen summers.”

“Nineteen summers of life, and yet you’ve spent nearly seventy,” Simon chided, though that was mostly because he’d been taken aback and was playing for time. He’d put together the pieces on his last trip through here. “If I gave you seven, or even seventy more, how would you spend them?”

Not only was the warlock unable to read his own grimoire, but he obviously didn’t understand the words he used to command his golem. Andronican might as well have been saying abracadabra when he commanded it to kill Simon. It would have been laughable if it weren’t so tragic. The one lingering question that Simon still had was whether he’d killed his master or whether he’d gone wild once his master had died some other way.

Either way, this was an apprentice playing with matches, and he’d burned his whole life down. Simon had known that he would be much younger than he appeared, but to be practically a child and have wasted his whole life powering spells. It was almost enough to make him feel bad for the warlock. Almost.

“I’ve killed more than two dozen men in your name!” the apprentice boasted. “I have burned down temples and sacrificed children. I—”

Simon slapped him, as much in annoyance as anything else, as if these were achievements to boast. He wasn’t sure if that was in character for the demon he was supposed to be playing, but he didn’t care.

Really, if I had that black cloak from my performance with the Prince, almost anything would be in character, he thought ruefully.

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“Do not lie to me,” Simon said as Andronican flinched and held his stinging cheek. “How many have you killed without the aid of your stone guardian?”

The warlock looked at him for a moment like he was about to cry before he finally said, “One, sire, but that life was—”

“Was already mine to have!” Simon countered, feigning anger he didn’t really feel. He was happy that he finally had his answer. This little creep had killed his master and used his eight-foot-tall immortal warrior to kill kids once he was let off the leash. No wonder everyone who found out he could use magic wanted to kill him. If this was the average warlock, then he absolutely agreed that they should all be killed on sight.

“I’m sorry!” he whimpered, shielding himself from a blow that never landed. Andronicus shrank from his faux wrath, but the golem continued to stay motionless. Simon noticed that his glow was starting to fade a little but decided that was okay. This was going to be over soon, one way or the other.

“I don’t want your apologies,” Simon said, walking past him to examine the golem. In all this time, he’d never gotten a good look at it, but right now, the one thing he wanted even more than Festauvian’s tome was to know what was powering this thing. That was a secret that would be worth eating another death for. “I want to know what you will do if I grant you the favor you’ve beseeched me for. Do you think I would give such a gift to a man who would use this to do his killing for him?”

Simon only started to smile once he’d turned away from the warlock. Pretending to be such an evil caricature was easy, it was keeping himself from busting up laughing that was the hard part.

“I… no… but…” Andronicus was completely frazzled by this point. For a moment, Simon thought he might have gone too hard on the guy. He clearly thought he was consorting with dark powers, and that could put anyone on edge. He was way off, though. “My… my lord, how did you leave my summoning circle?”

Simon swallowed, finally aware that he’d fucked up. He could see the runes on the creature’s back now, and given a moment of study, he was sure he could parse some of them out. He might not have a moment, though, he thought to himself as he turned to face the warlock.

“Your circle was enough to draw me into this world,” he explained, “But there are gaps, you see, here between the—”

“You are not the Reaper of Souls!” Andronicus screamed, no longer buying the act. “Tell me who you are before my guardian crushes you like an egg!”

Simon didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he shouted “Oonbetit” and used the word of force to cleave a line in stone between the portion of the magical circuit that brought the golem to life and the portion that powered the spell as he stepped behind its leg.

“Rise up, my pawn, and defend your Master!” the warlock yelled.

It was a tense moment. Simon realized the thing would really just have to fall backward to crush him, but that didn’t happen. Instead, it simply stood there now that its spell was broken. Simon looked up at the damaged runes, but before he could do much more than determine that most of them were still legible, he heard the warlock shouting the word for fire.

Simon responded almost instinctively, moving closer to cover as he whispered, “Karesh Meiren,” to protect himself from the gout of flame that shot out of both sides of the pillar-like stone leg he was sheltering behind.

When Simon saw he was uninjured, he laughed and said, “Is that all you got there, Andy?” as he bolted for the stalagmites on the floor that would offer more cover and drew his sword.

Simon knew that the right move was to blast this guy instead of taunting him, but he couldn’t help it. Besides the goblins, which didn’t really count, he’d never faced another mage before, and that made this a valuable experience. He would have probably let this fight linger just to get that perspective, but something about this guy just got under his skin, which was enough all on its own.

“When I am done with you, there will be naught left but ashes!” Andronican screamed.

Simon didn’t have to wait long. The apprentice was hardly imaginative, and he followed fire up with greater fire.

The blast that followed was intense, and Simon noted, substantially different from the way it looked when he used it. When Simon used greater fire, it looked like some kind of superhero beam attack, but when Andronican cast it at him, it was like a wave of liquid fire crashing toward his target. Simon thought it was almost pretty, but he quickly hunkered down behind the rocks and let the wave pass over him.

This time, and distance better cover did as much as the lingering effects of his protection spell and dissipated the heat harmlessly around him. Simon smiled as he popped his head back up. This dude was definitely no fire elemental.

“You wasted a year of your life for that?” he said with a laugh. “No wonder you’re down to scraps. Why don’t you quit while you’re ahead!”

“Never!” The warlock screamed before yelling, the last thing that Simon would have expected. “Gervuul Gervuul Meiren!”

Simon had only a moment to ponder those words. Greater, greater fire? Does that double or multiply the effect? Would it take two years or—

That was as far as he got before the room was awash in flame. This time, it wasn’t like a wave of flame. It was like the beginning of a powerful explosion, but that only lasted for an instant. Then, instead of blowing everything apart and burying him under tons of stone, it just stopped.

While dust continued to rain down on him, Simon stood cautiously and surveyed the dark, dusty room. He couldn’t see shit until he used a word of lesser light and advanced on the place where the warlock had stood.

Simon didn’t know what to expect. His gut told him the body would be burned to a crisp, or that it would have been blown apart so thoroughly that there was nothing left. Instead, he found the warlock curled up in a fetal position. Not only was he the only thing in the area that was unscorched, but he was practically mummified.

Simon couldn’t say exactly how much a spell like that took out of the man, but looking at him, it was hard to say just ten years. The corpse in front of him appeared to age decades in the final moments of its life.

“And that, kids, is why you never play with matches,” he said to himself as he turned away and went to check on the book. It was an interesting experiment, but it would still be terribly ironic if he’d done all this only to lose his shot to do some more light reading.