The last thing Simon did before he opened the hatch and found a set of stone stairs leading down to the crusty snow of the wyvern level was to use a word of metal to mark his old sword with the runes of lesser draining along the edge. He didn't anticipate needing to kill anyone for the next couple of levels besides monsters he'd have to use magic for, but it was better to be safe than sorry. He'd already burned more than six months of life in the last few days doing his testing, and he was going to need to replenish that where he could.

His thoughts about logistics and trying to remember if had everything he needed were stolen away almost as soon as he stepped out of the door and looked around the vista in front of him. "How long has it been?" he asked himself as he smelled the crisp mountain hair and a wave of memories about all of the different times he'd been here cascaded over him.

For a moment, all he could think about was the first time the beast chased him and how well Freya had handled coming here on their long, terrible trip to Crowvar, but gradually, he filtered back down to more recent events and the most recently he could recall being here was a very long time ago.

"It was just after the White Cloaks and just before I joined the bandits for Ennis' little rebellion," he recalled. What went unsaid was the second half. It was the time I didn't kill the wyvern but still somehow managed to lock in my time in Ionar.

It was bittersweet. When one added up all the time in Ionar and all the time as Freya's unwilling guest, he hadn't been back to this spot in at least a hundred years, which was crazy to think about because it felt like only yesterday that he'd been here every few days as he struggled to solve a single level.

Simon spun in place, and then, seeing the nest, he moved toward it. There was no point in delaying the inevitable, nor was there any point in waiting to kill the wyvern. The sooner he struck it down, the sooner he could wait for the rider to arrive and force him to explain if his message was important enough to justify a whole level to save.

The first time Simon had struck down the wyvern, he'd used force to let gravity do the work. He remembered how difficult it had been to sight down his longsword and slice through the thing's tough wings before it reached him. This time, he did something far easier and blasted it with a spell of distant lightning.

"Vrazig," he intoned, holding his walking stick out and pointing the thing at it.

That was all it took. The beast never even saw him. One moment, it was there circling among the peaks in search of prey, and the next, there was a bolt from the blue, and it fell deflated from the sky. The way that the thing tried to regain control showed that his blast hadn't killed it from this range, but its impact with the ground would. It was impressive, but he didn't even feel good about it.

"It's basically cheating at this point," he sighed to himself as he advanced on the nest. He still doubted he could actually take the thing down with just a sword, of course, but some part of him wondered if he might be capable of getting a lucky shot with his bow before leaping to the side to dodge its wrecking-ball-like tail.

As he pondered his odds on that, he smashed the giant eggs in the nest and then did a brief check to make sure there were no magical artifacts that he was supposed to find before he started down the mountain toward the uneven ribbon of road that he only had a few hours to get to.

Downhill was always easier than uphill, but as he went, Simon was glad he'd finally taken the plunge with his flesh shaping. Partway down, he took a break to examine the shattered carcass of the wyvern because this was hell on his knees as it was. His pride warred with his guilt that he'd been able to take it down so easily, but both of those emotions paled in comparison to his annoyance as he looked back up the mountain. He was not looking forward to the hike back to the top to take the gateway to the next level when he was done.

Despite how fast he was going, Simon was forced to throw caution to the wind and run the last hundred yards when he saw the dust of a horse approaching. Simon was in such a hurry that when he dropped his sack of supplies by the side of the road, he drew his bow and aimed it at the man. He was in too much of a hurry to listen to reason, and Simon was too short of breath to make a coherent argument.

The threat of an arrow brought him up short, and though he looked like he was tempted to wheel around and ride the other way, he thought better of it. "I'm just a messenger," the rider explained. "I carry no riches, only—"

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"I know what you carry," Simon interrupted. That man paled enough that he'd obviously gotten the wrong idea, but Simon didn't disabuse him of his misconceptions. "And honestly, I don't care. I don't even want your scroll. I just want more information about it."

"Scroll… I can't… M-my master said…" the messenger stammered.

Simon sighed heavily, wishing he understood how vampiric mesmerism worked so he could force the man to tell him everything. "Listen," Simon barked. "I just told you that I'm going to let you deliver the thing. I know that they've been discovered, blah blah blah and that he wants her to meet him somewhere."

Truthfully, Simon didn't remember that part well, and even reviewing it in the mirror didn't help because he'd been too frustrated to note more than just their names. A missive from L to Antonia to go to Abresse was all he'd written. "I just want to know where your journey started and where it ends. That's all."

The man swallowed hard, apparently trying to decide if that information was worth his life or not. Finally, he answered, "I ride from Coramon to meet the lady… my destination is Liepzen. Will that suffice? My cause is urgent, and I must be on my way!"

Simon considered it. There was certainly more information to be gleaned here, but that would require torture or murder, and he was unwilling to do either on someone who hadn't done anything wrong. Then there was the fact that the level was solved when he didn't even save this guy's life, which said something, too, but what?

Finally, things clicked into place as he looked at him. It's not about making sure that his message gets through, Simon decided. It's about making sure it's not intercepted. That's why all I had to do was pick it up and throw it away.

"Do you fear you're being followed?" Simon asked. "Is that it? You need to keep this message out of enemy hands?"

The man looked startled at that statement, but he nodded. "Who is it?" Simon asked.

"I, uhm… the people in question… I-My Master said I was not to speak of the angels who—" the messenger.

"White cloaks," Simon growled, recalling the symbols they hid behind. "Go on then, I'll take care of them."

The man seemed surprised by that. He was more surprised when Simon lowered his bow, but smartly, he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and kicked his horse into a gallop.

Simon hadn't been looking forward to going back up the mountain today anyway, so he made camp right there by the road in the shade of a boulder and decided he'd wait to see who came. He even used a word of metal to engrave one of his arrowheads with the word of disperse fire. While that looked similar to minor fire, he was pretty sure that it would create minor fire over a much broader area, which was exactly what he would need if there was a group of them.

Simon stayed up late into the night, and after he made a small mirror to make sure this level really was complete, he fell asleep sitting against the boulder, waiting for his guests, but no one arrived. Just to be on the safe side, he waited for two more days, but other than one old tinkerer who shared his fire long enough for Simon to be sure he wasn't a member of the order, no one came.

He spent that time slowly sorting levels into categories and reached the conclusion that except for one-offs like the jungle pyramid or the spider level, the outcome of almost every level was something to the effect of 'and then Brin got weaker because X happened, or didn't happen.' Even the zombies fell into that category when you knew that they were the thing that ended an extended civil war.

"What does Helades have against this part of the world exactly?" he asked himself, trying to decide if that should be his question to her on level 40. "How does that make the future brighter?" Simon struggled to think of some parallels in Earth's history, where making a specific country weaker would result in a safer world, but he no longer remembered enough about his original world to make an appropriate metaphor.

Frustrated by his lack of a good answer, he spent the third day summiting the mountain, which turned out to be a lot taller on the way up than it had been on the way down. He didn't bother to camp at the top. He just rested for a few minutes and made sure he'd noted down all the relevant information so he wouldn't have any blank spots if it took him another hundred years to get back here.

As he opened the door, he told himself, "I guess this will just remain one of those little mysteries."

The far side contained the level he expected, but even knowing that he'd see Ionar burning again struck him like a physical blow. He'd fought for lifetimes to save this city, but no matter how many times he succeeded, it still caught on fire.

"No this time," Simon told himself as he walked out onto the ashy street and shut the door behind him. "Today I'm going owl bear hunting. Next time I will deal with you."

Simon headed straight to the palace after that. The only stop he made along the way was to stop several people in the street in attempt to learn the date this happened. If he was going to fight Brogan atop Mount Karkosia again, the last thing he wanted was to stay in this city longer than he had to, but given that fire was raining from the sky no one seemed particularly interested in giving him the date.

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