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People were dying, and the fact that the portal had brought him here before the killing started meant that he was supposed to stop that from happening. At least, he was pretty sure that’s what it meant. Normally, he arrived either right after something bad had happened or long after something bad had happened, though, so it had to mean something that he was here just before disaster struck.

As he shouldered open the door and drew his sword, he had his answer. The guard he was looking for was dead, along with several others. One of them hadn’t even had the chance to draw his sword. This was clearly a well-planned surprise attack, and he would love to know the reasons why, but there was no time for that.

Simon ran down the hall and found the door to the ballroom had been barred with a chair leg wedged between the two door handles. He thought about using a word of force but opted to kick it hard instead. Given the flimsy nature of the bar, it broke wide open without much trouble, and he found the ballroom in flames.

He’d been here only ten minutes before, but in that time, the place had been transformed. Now, instead of gentle music and the dull roar of gossip, there was panicked screaming and cries of pain. To make matters worse, someone had brought the chandelier down as well. So what had been a brightly lit room full of well-dressed partygoers had become a chaotic mix of shadows and blood, and when several people ran toward him as he forced open the door, the only thing that stayed his hand was the bulky silhouettes of the dresses.

It was unlikely that middle-aged women were the ones behind this. So, he let them pass and stepped forward, finding his real targets by the firelight glinting off their weapons. Most men in the room had little more than decorative daggers on them, but the few that seemed responsible for the killing bore swords and axes, and they quickly homed in on Simon.

“One of the guards got missed, looks like,” one man called out to his compatriots.

Then, just like that, three men were advancing cautiously toward him. Simon could have tried to beat the answers out of one of them. He could have baited them with insults and questions to learn what their grievance was, but the truth was that right now, he didn’t care.

As grotesque as the nobility of any society could be at times, he didn’t think that simply murdering everyone was the right answer. He’d even let Varten’s brother live when he was as angry as he’d ever been, so killing the wives and daughters of bad men wasn’t going to cut it with him, no matter the reason.

When the first man came at him with a sword, Simon didn’t even use a word of power to create an opening. He just sidestepped the clumsy blow and ran his blade through the other man’s throat before pulling it out of the side of his neck in a grisly shower of blood to parry the blow from his second attacker.

Attackers two and three tried to work together, and Simon parried the next several blows to look for an opening. Fortunately for him, the short sword of man 2 and the axe of man 3 weren’t working very well together. As soon as the short sword wielder slipped on the increasingly bloody tile floor, Simon ran the other man through the chest. While he stood there in disbelief, Simon borrowed the man’s axe and then brought that down hard on the head of the final attacker.

As soon as he finished with those three, another two came at him. In the brighter firelight, he noticed that all five of them were wearing at least some parts of a servant's livery under their mismatched armor. That was enough to make him wonder if this might be closer to a slave rebellion than an assassination, but he didn’t have time to think too much about that before he parried the first blow with one of the dead men’s swords.

It was an unfamiliar blade, and the weighting was a little off, so Simon staggered back under the blow. He considered lighting them both on fire and being done with it, but he resisted. He didn’t know how many more he’d have to fight after this, so there was no point in wasting his big guns right now.

Instead, Simon used the heavy blade mostly to ward off the men while he maneuvered them into position, and then when one of them tried to step over the body of a nobleman to get a little closer, Simon pushed him hard and used the distraction to take the head off his friend that had been wielding a wire-basket rapier.

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It was only when he saw that weapon that he realized that these weren't their weapons. They were too varied and too fancy. Likely, they had all been stolen from the walls of some study or dining hall where trophy weapons had been displayed. That answered one question, but it raised another. If the men who were killing everyone were servants, then who exactly was it that Kaylee had let in?

No one else challenged him after he left five men dead at his feet, and by the time their brutal little duel was done, and Simon had retrieved his weapon, the room was completely ablaze. At that point, everyone living had either perished or escaped. Fortunately, the light meant that he could see the last of the rats running from him through the far door. He coughed in the thickening smoke, saddened at how many people had died because he was slow to react. If he hadn’t let Kaylee pull him away, he was sure he would have prevented most of these needless deaths just by being at the right place at the right time.

He looked up at the burning portrait of the aging King he’d studied earlier. The man seemed to be judging him, and given the sort of man he was, that didn’t sit well with Simon.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll get 'em,” he said to himself as he started toward the door.

The last thing Simon needed was a dead brat telling him he wasn’t doing enough. The other side of the door was a darkened hallway, but the sound of running and the drips of blood on the floor made it perfectly obvious where they’d gone, so he picked up speed and started jogging down the hall after them. At one of the servants' staircases, he slowed down just enough to make sure he wasn’t running into an ambush, and then he went deeper into the darkness.

He whispered a word of light, making the room below him light up, just in case. This was enough to startle at least one person, though, because as soon as that happened, he heard a man shout, “Shit. Someone’s coming. Fucking mage, too!”

“Meiren!” someone shouted, and for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t Simon.

Goblins sometimes used magic, and the warlock he'd crossed paths with a number of times had as well, but this was new. This was the first time in a long time that someone new used magic against him, and he didn't like it. In that moment, he almost panicked. Simon was shocked. Not only had he run into someone that he’d met on another level, but now there was someone else who knew magic?

Just what in the fuck is going on here? He thought to himself as he retreated several steps higher while the lowest stairs were momentarily consumed with flames.

He felt the wash of heat across him but waited for the fire to clear before he moved or spoke. Instead, he strained to hear whatever might be next. The fire spell would have cooked him if he’d charged straight ahead, but there was no telling if he’d be as lucky the next time.

“Come on!” someone hissed.

There was the sound of a door slamming after that. It might have been a trap, of course, but he didn’t think it was. Rather than risk losing his now very interesting quarry, he ran down the stairs. However, by the time Simon got there, they’d already fled to another room as he'd expected. He shook his head in annoyance. “When I said I was going to go deeper into the Pit, this was not what I meant.”

Still, as he went forward, he couldn’t help but smile. He definitely hadn’t solved this level, but he had a much better idea of what he would need to do next time. Next time, he’d be waiting for whoever it was that had done this, and after that, he could sit down with Kaylee and have a nice long chat about what god-awful things had happened to her between when he’d left the young version of her at the Miller’s and now to make her think that something like this was a good idea.

Before he could do any of that, though, he had to kill someone very interesting. So, without any further ado, he carefully opened the door and stepped inside.

The room was dark, and the floor was wooden. His first instinct was to cast another light spell, but he resisted. Having a flashlight in a dark room might let you find what you were looking for, but it painted a hell of a target on you if you turned it on, and right now, he was hunting someone with a flamethrower.

When he got five cautious steps in, and he heard someone gently snoring, he knew something was off, but it wasn’t until the floor swayed beneath him that he realized what it was exactly. In his hurry to track down and finish off the murderers, he’d found the door to the next level and guaranteed they’d get away.

Simon rolled his eyes and thought about going back toward the door to see if the portal might still be open, but he decided against it. He’d killed a handful, and that would have to be enough for this run. He’d do better next time.

Besides, that didn’t matter now. What mattered was that the moving deck meant only one thing in his mind: he was on a ship.

How does a portal even work on a ship? He wondered to himself. It was moving, wasn’t it? If he left it open for too long, would he just fall into the ocean next time?

Simon was somewhere below decks, and the stink of unwashed sailors overwhelmed even the salty sea air. Eventually, as he picked his way toward the stairs, he smelled something else too, though: the scents of death and disease were present as well.

Things were quiet, but this definitely wasn’t a cruise ship. His magic was definitely going to be needed here. Well, that and finding a way to disguise himself before people decided he was a stowaway and made him walk the plank or something.