When the day iion finally arrived, the main hall was filled with white cloaks. Simon wasn’t wearing one, of course. He and the other archivists and craftsmen were wearing their typical dark robes. The pce was pletely full, and he had to sit he back, but then he hadn’t expected any less.

  Every member of the secret order who wasn’t off on a mission in some faraway locatiouro the Broken Tower for this ceremony. While this was not the first time that Simon had attehis feast, thankfully, it would be the st.

  Traditionally, it was the pce for the senior leadership of the order to crow about their successes and y out their pns for the future. This year, though, it was going to be nothing more than a burial for everyone involved. He was going to bury them all in the unmarked grave that was their ow base, and with any luo one would ever try to dig up all the secrets that were hidden there.

  Simon was in no hurry for that, though. He’d been here for decades. He could wait a little longer. He listeo the speeches and ehe food. He even got a little drunk, if only because he khe part was going to hurt. Then, once his pte was and the deter o him was empty, he rose and walked toward the tral dias.

  Guards were statio the high table, as they always were. They looked at him with i but not . Why should they be ed? He was a feeble man who had lost his youth and gone gray. The archivists were not typically heard at these events for obvious reasons.

  Simon made no attempt to hide what he’d made anyway; that would have aroused suspi. Instead, he held up his final gift to the order like he inteo present it to the Grandmaster or the Abbott. Unfortunately for them, he did her. Instead, he activated it, unleashing the magitrinsic to his design and filling the room with fire and shouts of arm.

  Those shouts turo screams almost immediately, but not before he’d lit the tapestries that hid his demolition charges on fire. That si would have been enough to decapitate the Unspoken, but after all this time, Simon wanted more than that. He wao annihite them.

  He was gd that he’d goo such lengths, too, because even as he crumpled to the ground in agony, he saw the Grandmaster stand and draw his sword. The man had barely been scratched by Simon’s firebomb, and worse, as Simon y there burning, he saw the man speak a word of healing and became almost instantly whole.

  I fug k, Simon thought, holding on to that tiny observatioe the terrible pain.

  The man advanced on Simon, but he would never reach him. Even as his old eyes started to dim, he heard the sound of sundering stone, and two of the three pilrs that held up the hall started colpsing. Simon only had enough time to see the surprise iher man’s eyes before his world went dark uons of rubble.

  This time, Simon was not at all surprised to wake up in the cool, fire-free embrace of his tiny . In most of his lives, he’d been gone for a few weeks or months, and a return had beeed as a punishment. This time, after decades away from this pce, he felt a wave of nostalgia wash across him as he looked around the old pce. It felt good to be back. It was a weird thing to think, but it was true.

  There was no time to spend the day soaking it in, though. He had a good memory, but he knew from experiehat he didn’t have a great one and that the longer he waited, the more holes would appear in his notes.

  Instead, he got to work. ‘Okay, mirror, wake up and…” he paused, appreciating that he could speak properly again. He moved his tongue around his mouth, noting how stra felt to be whole again in such a small way.

  That wasn’t somethihought he would ever have to miss, but then he’d never expected to work in a secret library either. He shook his head. “Anyway,” he tinued. “I’m back, and It's time to take a lot of notes.”

  The thing brightened, and Simohe several hours dictating nonstop into it. Periodically, he would pause to check for uanding or to cssify a bit of knowledge in some way or another so that he’d be able to find it again ter, but he had a lot to cover, aually, after he discussed all of the most important bits of magic lore that he learned he eventually took a break and grabbing his apple and his water skin he decided to go out for a stroll.

  I’m going to be at this for days, he told himself as he stood and stretched. The metalw trivia and the history lessons wait a bit.

  When he’d first arrived here, he recalled hating this meadow, but now that he’d e back after so long, it felt like an old friend, and he walked toward the temple ruins he’d discovered so long ago, both to think and to chee things.

  Along the way, he ate his apple, and when he arrived, he sat on the cool stone for a time before he looked around the pce. Sure enough, many of the marks had been iionally defaced. This was something he doubted he would have noticed before, but he could see the hands of the Unspoken even here.

  “Fug hell,” he said, finishing the apple and tossing the core over by the stream. “They’re like the magical Taliban or something.”

  Simon thought about heading back then, but instead, he walked over to the remains of his apple. Already, there were some ants swarming on it, eager to feast on the remains, but what caught his eyes was the seeds. Instead of going back, he thought about it for a moment and then said, “Aufvarum Zyvon Vosden.”

  He had no idea if it would work or not. He had long theorized how linking more words together would let him do more specifid powerful spells.

  No, powerful is the wrong word, he corrected himself.

  What he was doing with this was exactly the opposite of powerful. It was weak, but it ecific. ower was there was being applied in very specific ways, and, right now, at least in part, it was w.

  What he’d tried to cast ell of lesser pnt growth. At seven sylbles, it wasly something he could use in bat, but then, uhat damn seed level respawned, he didn’t expect to ever o fight a pnt in bat again.

  As he watched, a tiny seedling sprouted from the apple core. Then, as its cotyledon reached up and its roots stretched into the earth, over the few seds, it graduated from seedling to sapling, growing a pencil-thin trunk. It wouldn’t be bearing fruit ht or anything, but it was still an achievement, and he smiled wider.

  “At least that life wasn’t wasted,” he told himself as he turo refill his y skin before he went back to the to get back to work.

  Simohe several days doing little else but dictating whole swaths of history into his mirror and adding bits and pieces to his map from other maps he’d glimpsed. Once he was in a good pce with all of that, he finally got around to cheg his character sheet.

  ‘Name: Simon Jackoby

  Level: 33

  Deaths: 42

  Experience Points: -187,991

  Skills: Agriculture [Below Average], Archery [Below Average], Armor (light) [Average], Armor (heavy) [Below Average], Armor (medium) [Average], Athletics [Below Average], Baking [Below Average], Cooking [Average], Craft [Excellent], Deception [Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Average], Healing [Above Average], History [Excellent], Iigate [Excellent], Maces [Average], Navigation [Above Average], Research [Excellent], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Average], Spears [Average], Spell Casting [Great], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Below Average], and Swords [Above Average].

  Words of Power: Aufvarum (disperse, minor), Barom (illusion, light), Celdura (pn, shape), Delzam (cure, order), Dnarth (e, distant, hidden), Gelthic (ice, death, weakness), Gervuul (greater, power), Hyakk (flesh, healing), Karesh (location, prote, uanding), Meiren (creation, fire, life), Oo (focused, force, motion), Uuvellum (anti-, null, boundary), Vosdeh, growth, metal, strength), Vrazig (lightning, ruin, quiing, wind), Zyvon (transfer, pnts, water)’

  While his skills had gone up nicely, he hat more than a few had actually gone down. That made sense since he hadn’t actually fought for his life with a sword in well over a decade, but it was still sad to see. “Worth it,” he said before asking the mirror to switch to which levels it could access.

  ‘Level 4 - Skeletons in a cryptLevel 9 - Wyvern in the mountainsLevel 29 - Cultists in a vilgeLevel 31 - Dragon in the mountainsLevel 33 - ???’

  The first thing Simon did was ugh and ge the entry for level 29 to read ‘The Unspoke in Esmiran’ since he knew a lot more now than he did when he’d poputed this list so long ago. He did the same thing to level 33, adding ‘Vampire in the orchard’ to his list.

  Simon hat level 32 was solved and that he only seemed to have screwed up a couple levels with his ret trips. That was okay; he could live with that.

  He went fishing oo have a proper dinner, caught a rabbit to eat the day after, and he made some time to experiment magically every day though, and after a few lesser experiments, he was finally ready to try what he wao try.

  Over the st few days, Simon had made a stone crumble to dust with words of lesser storopy, struck a goblin dead with lesser death, and made his bed less lumpy with lesser dispersal. However, just like the apple core, those were all experiments for what came .

  On the fourth day, he grabbed his embarrassingly bulging belly, and then, after giving it as much thought and focus as he could muster, he said, “Aufvarum Meiren Celdura,” using the words of lesser life shaping on himself.

  The results were unfortable but instantaneous. He’d struggled hard to focus o tissue rather than the underlying ans in an attempt to do magical lipo. He was more than aware that if he actally shrunk or eliminated his stomach or his iihis would be a pretty short run.

  None of those terrible things seemed to happen, though. Instead, his gut shrank before his eyes. When it was done, he didn’t have washboard abs or anything, but he didn’t feel like such a fat ass, either.

  “Well, at least now I know how to make myself look the scarred-up version of me when I visit Elthena,” he thought cheerfully.

  Truthfully, he could probably use this spell to make himself look like anything or anyone, but he wasn’t enough of an artist to pull that off. He could only imagine how horrific the finger-painted version of handsome Simon would be.

  No, he decided, for now, this is enough.

  He was in no hurry to go anywhere, just like he was in no hurry to lose all his weight. He just wao feel a little closer to normal while he did all of this.

  “I could try boosting my strength, I guess?” he said to himself that night before dismissing the thought. Getting rid of fat was ohing, but boosting various small parts of his body without any real knowledge of what that looked like? He’d pull something, or rip a tendon, or worse. No, he didn’t need shortcuts. He’d get there when he decided where he was going; he knew he’d find some way to work out. He’d get iy good shape after that.