Chapter 449 - Hidden Ways

That night passed without incident, and so too did the night after that, and the night after that, as the two fell into a sort of rhythm. By day, Millie tidied up the castle as if whoever came there next would thank her for her service, while Simon spent his time studying the ancient ravings of a madman.

After a few days, they got a fresh delivery of vegetables. Apparently, those deliveries were regular and routine, but that didn’t stop Simon from worrying that bandits or adventurers had decided to lay claim to their castle. Instead, it was just a handful of farmers who came to deliver what they usually did.

When Simon announced that the vampire lord was dead, they rejoiced. They took most of their bounty home, though they did leave some behind in thanks for Simon after he let it slip that he was the one who had done the slaying.

After that, they ate better, and when Simon put out some snares in likely places outside the castle walls, they even added some meat to their diet. It made their evenings nicer, and once they went to a nearby village for a sack of flour and had bread, she even started bringing Simon lunch in the dungeons where he spent nearly all of his time.

That made his days nicer, but didn’t bring him any closer to the truth. The rhythms of his life were getting comfortable here, but truthfully, if he’d found the portal to the next level, he probably would have left already.

That was the real reason he’d laid snares around the walls and visited the nearest village, because he was looking for an excuse to go to new places and look for the tell-tale flicker of magic that would indicate his way out.

What would Helades want me to do on this level that I haven’t already done? he wondered for the hundredth time as he tried not to let his frustration cloud his judgment. I saved the family and cleared out the nest of vampires. Exactly what else is there to do on this level?

He’d solved the level according to the mirror, so presumably he could just kill himself and find his way to the next level from the cabin, via the wyvern level, but that felt cheap. He wouldn’t let such an important piece of information hide from him. The locations of the entrance and exit were some of the only things that gave him some insight into what Helades wanted him to do.

So, every day, Simon devoted a little time to searching the castle, looking for something he’d missed. He searched for hidden rooms first, but after that, he started on the furniture, opening up every cabinet, wardrobe, and chest looking for a secret path forward. ℯ

Millie looked at him strangely when he ran into her now and then during these activities. She always assumed he was looking for treasure, and assured him there was nothing left to find; nevertheless, he persisted. It was that or continue to dig through the rantings in the basement that he’d started to increasingly disregard.

He didn’t care about the harmonic rhyming qualities of a given word. Nor did he think that they needed to be sung for proper effect. At this point, Simon was fairly sure that the proper way to cast spells was with long, linked incantations. Only his desire to maintain his clarity prevented him from experimenting extensively with the concept.

When his doppelganger had helped rehabilitate him from the soul damage Simon had suffered, he hadn’t failed to notice the syntax of his magic. That was almost certainly the right approach. Using the specific purposes of many small words instead of a single large word that had to be brute-forced into shape by your will, as he’d done for most of his time in the Pit, had many advantages.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t something he could carve into wands, nor something he expected he’d be able to mimic with any amount of hand motions. It would be much too slow to be practical in most cases. However, complex as his theories about proper magic use were, they didn’t require optics and rhyming or obscure geometric patterns.

Eventually, though, he tired of all of those activities, and Millie’s visits became the highlight of his day. She’d long since learned not to ask him about his research and instead talked to him about her day. These were mundane conversations that revolved around songbirds or unexpected discoveries in whatever bedroom she’d been cleaning that day.

Those conversations were never important and rarely informative, but they were always a nice change of pace, and Simon grew to look forward to them. After the second week, he grew to think of the old castle as their own private domain. They were the king and queen of a land that held precisely two subjects.

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“You could add to that, you know,” he told himself one day. “You’re the hero who slew the vampire. You could just stay on this level for a lifetime and build a tiny kingdom. Who would stop you? By the time Brin figured out what was going on, they’d probably just have to acknowledge you as the lord of the whole region.”

Part of Simon liked that idea, but his focus wasn’t so easy to change. He’d promised himself new levels and a long-awaited conversation with Helades, and he wasn’t going to trade the promise of temporary power for such an answer, no matter how tempting it might be.

Still, as days passed, he was forced to concede he might not have a choice in the matter. At least, that was the case until a minor miracle occurred.

One day, Simon was in the portion of the basement that had been devoted to wine, and he was poking around for anything that might have been hidden beneath the floor when Millie came to visit him again. She started telling him at length about how much wine had been stolen from the room the day after Simon had slain the vampires, but he didn’t really care.

“Some of it was quite valuable, I’m told,” she said, trying to keep the conversation going a little while longer. It occurred to him at that moment that she might be flirting with him, but then, as he looked at her and smiled, he noticed the way her shadow was moving.

He couldn’t hear what she was saying after that. He was looking past her, to where she’d set her oil lamp. Its flame was small, but it was doing something he hadn’t seen it do up until now. It was flickering.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, as she noticed his distraction.

“No, not wrong,” he told her. “But something might be right. See if you can figure out where that breeze is coming from.”

At first, she didn’t understand, but after she finally noticed her lantern’s behavior, she started to look at the wall behind the shelf. Even as she did that, though, Simon was breathing slowly and deeply, sharpening his sight, and looking for any clues. Walls might not have auras, but with better senses, he could focus and perhaps figure out what it was he’d been missing this whole time.

Have I finally found the warlock’s laboratory? Is this where I learn how his crackpot theories about the words of life and death led him astray, and he accidentally transformed his wife into a monster?

He didn’t know, but could see a seam that didn’t make sense, and even as Millie pointed it out, he was already moving toward a stone that had a slightly different color than the rest of the wall.

“You’re right,” she told him as Simon pushed the stone and felt it give. “It’s coming from right here. What do you think it is? A vault? A treasure room?”

“Better than that,” he said quietly as the gap she’d pointed out began to widen as the false wall swung inward. Simon expected to see the altar he’d long sought, but it was too dark to see much. He could see in the dark, of course, with some effort, but not when he was being blinded by Millie’s bright aura. He suppressed his sight to rely on his vision and her lantern, then, but even as he did that, something felt wrong.

Millie moved toward it with her lantern to investigate, but even as she did, Simon moved toward her and saw something else he hadn’t expected. Just before she walked through the doorway, the portal he’d sought sprang into existence, and she walked into the next level.

“Hold on,” Simon called out, striding toward her and grabbing her by the arm, but he was a moment too late.

He couldn’t pull her back through, though. Even as he tried, she came up against an invisible barrier. Simon had long known that he couldn’t go backward through the levels. Once he was in one, the previous was off limits. He could transport people and things forward, but he couldn’t return. That seemed to be just as true here, for Millie, and he swore beneath his breath.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, as a hint of fear flashed across her aura. He wasn’t sure if she’d noticed her predicament, or if she’d only noticed his reaction to it, but either way, she was spooked.

“It’s fine,” Simon answered. “Everything is—”

As he was trying to calm her down, a scream rang out from somewhere in the dungeon ahead. It was distant, but bloodcurdling, and it told Simon that whoever had made it was in a great deal of pain.

He had a terrible decision to make. Simon had left most of his gear upstairs. While he wore his sword on his belt, his armor, his supplies, and even his mirror were five stories above them. He hadn’t expected to find the portal to the next level. He certainly hadn’t expected to blunder into it like this, but now, if he retreated to fetch all of that, the portal would close, and Millie would be alone and terrified.

Part of him felt confident that no time at all would pass. He’d step away from the portal, it would vanish, and then when he came back, it would reappear at that exact moment. Still, he couldn’t take the risk.

I can get another mirror, he told himself, as he stepped through and covered Millie’s mouth before she could scream.

“You must be very brave,” he whispered in her ear. “This wasn’t what I expected to happen. I never meant to involve you, but you must be very brave, and very quiet, do you understand?”

Millie was stiff for a moment, then she nodded in a brief, frantic burst, and he released her and drew his sword. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do on this level, or what he was meant to kill, but right now, that didn’t matter. He could do the level over again, but if he got a helpless thing like the scullery maid who clung trembling to him killed, it would take a long time for him to forgive himself.