Simhe signs quicker than most would have, even with everything that was going on. Even before he found the bodies, he knew what had dohis. The crude arrows with their red fletg and the hoof prints that were everywhere made it pretty obvious.

  This was the aftermath of a taur raid. It was a big ooo, from the looks of things.

  He even had a pretty good idea of where he was. He wasirely sure which vilge this had been, but betweeyle of the sm huts and the color of the hills, he knew he wasn’t too far from one of his least favorite pces in the world: Crowvar. He’d had enough of the Raithewait family to st a lifetime, and his fiightened into fists at the very thought of them.

  For the moment, he ighat and all the dark feelings that came with it. Instead, he focused on the age around him as he took in the se between the billowing curtains of smoke.

  There were a few dead bodies ireet, and most of those were of the men who’d died defending the town. Simon hat there were none of the Baron’s men among the bodies either. That made sense. If the Baron had bothered to sehen there might not have been a massacre.

  Of course, the true massacre awaited him at the ter of town. As he’d expected, most of the women and children had crowded into the temple. It was a holy building no lohough. Instead, it had bee a mass grave.

  Simon paused a moment to pay his respects, thearted climbing up one of the partially colpsed facades. Other than this building and one of the stone grahe town had basically been leveled, so the top of the rubble, some te above the ground, was where he was going to get his best view of his surroundings.

  Simon quickly searched the horizon in all dires but saw no signs of riders. Which ositive, he supposed. That meant he wasn’t here to kill them. Which begged the question, “What am I supposed to be doing here?” he asked, coughing briefly as he looked around.

  He made an effort to search through the dead, looking for a survivor or two, but he found no one. He didn’t expect he would. Acc to his men, the taurs made great sport of lighting buildings on fire and then shooting the people who tried to run from the burning buildings. It retty thh way to se a pbsp;

  Eventually, he made do with finding some pants and a shirt that wasn’t too bloody, and then he brought them back to his unscious werewolf. Simon sidered killing the man ht again before the stranger had the ce to wake up and freak out, but he decided against it.

  Instead, he kicked him awake and said, “Hey, get dressed. We o move. It’s not safe here.”

  “I… wha-where am I?” the man asked, pletely fused. “And why am I naked?”

  “All of those are great questions that wait until you have some clothes on,” Simon said as he walked outside.

  “But… This… where is Gatia? Where are the trees?” the man protested while Simon ignored him. Instead, he picked through the corpses, repg his sword with a dinged-up longsword that suited his style more and taking a half-full quiver, though he didn’t find a suitable bow to go with it.

  If they’re out there in force, getting a long bow again is going to be kind of a must, he thought to himself while he ignored his involuntary panion’s pathetic whining.

  When the man finally emerged, Simon had his bearings and tossed the man some boots. “I hope those fit you okay because we’re going to be walking for a day or two at least.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me who you are…” Murphy said, trying and failing tain his spine. “No, I want to know where we are and what the hell is going on.”

  He was a dark-haired, skinny man, and Simon had no doubt that he could take him in a fight now that he was a fearful human. He even seemed like a det fellow, but Simon didn’t have time for this shit. He might not know what he was supposed to do here or where he was supposed to go, but he knew whose grave was only a couple of days' travel from here, and suddenly, that was more important than whatever it was that Hedes might want from him.

  Simarded the man as he ighe boots and then said, “I don’t think we’re due for another full moon for a while, so I doubt you stand much of a ce against the taurs, but you’re wele to stay if you like. Me, I’m going to Crowvar to see someone. I’ll figure out everything else ter.”

  Then, as the man sputtered in his wake, Simon turned and started walking to the northwest. He didn’t kly where the city was from here, but it was somewhere over there, and as he got closer, he’d be able to get his bearings straight. Worst case, he’d hit one of the main trade roads, and from there, things would fall together naturally.

  He didn’t even have to wait a minute before the other man tugged on his boots and came running after him, though. “You ’t leave me!” the stranger whined piteously.

  “Last night, you tried to kill me,” Simon said with a shrug. “I think I do just about whatever I want to you. Leaving you for dead would be a kindness by parison.”

  “I would never!” the stranger decred as they walked together. “I get these fits, sometimes it's true, but—”

  “Are you seriously trying to deny that you’re a werewolf?” Simon asked, looking the man dead in the eye.

  “Me? A werewhat? You’d dare call Murphy Dreser, the only begotten son of my mother Franna, a hellhound? Those are fighting words!” Murphy said with feigned e.

  Simon ighe bluster. “Any time you want, man, you just say the word.”

  They walked in silence for a bit before Murphy asked, “You seem awfully calm for a man who cims to be walking through a battlefield with only the damned for pany. Perhaps you’re the ohat’s cursed.”

  “Perhaps I am,” Simon agreed without eboration.

  He let the man stew in the unfortable silence for a long time with only monosylbiswers to satiate Murphy until he was sure that they were going the right way and that no one was nearby. Eventually, he expined where they were and that the taurs seemed to be worse than usual, but he left out his business in Crowvar and Freya entirely.

  Several times, Simon tried to get the man to admit that he was a monster, but the most he would admit to was bckouts. “Look, I drink too much, okay?” Murphy yelled at one point. “Sometimes I get bckout drunk and wake up in the m feeling like shit. I ain’t proud of it.”

  In the end, Simon was forced to assume that the man didn’t know he was a monster. He wondered if he should just put Murphy out of his misery, but ultimately, he wasn’t in the mood to kill anyone just now, so he left it alone.

  It could wait until at least the full moon, whehat was.

  Shortly after they reached the main road, they had to hide in the brambles as a herd of taurs made their way to the northeast. Simon was ed by both the amouaur war bands and their proximity to the main roads, but he said nothing.

  As the day wore on, this became literally true. And first Simon tio speak a few words here and there, but as the day wore on, he found himself so hoarse he’d basically lost his voibsp;

  He’d used a lot of magic a few hours before, and he didn’t have a waterskin or the privacy he would have liked to do some healiually, all of Murphy’s questions about how they’d ended up so far south or what they were going to do about these taurs were greeted only with shrugs and stony silences.

  Simon kly what he was going to do to the taurs. If it came to it, he was going to murder every st one of them. Preferably with fire, though force would probably be more subtle. He had at least one more word of greater for him, though he imagi wouldn't o be greater to simply create a slender invisible wire that a whole group of galloping stallions could decapitate themselves on.

  Force wasn’t required for the first group or the sed, though it did disturb Simoly that there were so many of them so close to civilization.

  In the end, they made it to Crowvar without any issues, and the only difficulty was binding Murphy’s hands at night so the man didn’t try to slit Simon’s throat in his sleep. Murphy hadn’t liked that, but when Simon gave him the choice between that and finding his own way to the city, the man had relented.

  Simon found the trip to be almost disorienting in the level of nostalgia he faced those st few miles once he could see the tower on the horizon. In the end, when he went to the graveyard instead of the main gate, Murphy was fused, and Simon enced the man to go on without him, but he wouldn’t budge.

  Instead, Simon made the man wait for him by the main gate while he went and found Freya’s grave. The first thiiced in the graveyard was how much rger it had gotten. It had more than doubled in size since he’d st been here, but worse, most of the graves seemed to be new, and it was impossible to miss the rge amounts of freshly turh.

  He k would take some time to find a needle in this particur haystack, as he wandered down the weed-strewn paths. Still, it took lohan he would have thought. Finally, after an hour of searg and going grave by grave in the se he was fairly certain he’d buried his wife in, Simon reached one inescapable clusion: she was no longer here.

  That broke his heart wide open all ain. While it ossible that they’d uhed her thanks to what he’d done iermath of her burial, Simon found that unlikely. Instead, it was far more likely that what he’d done here had never happe all now.

  “When did that get erased, though?” he asked himself as he sat on a bench at put his head in his hands. “Was it when I fought with Gregor or was it before that, when I came through the portal and killed the Wyvern?”

  Though he wao believe it was the former, and that he’d fucked up the timelines when he’d battle beside his friends, the longer he thought about it, the more he was resigo the tter. After all, each level reset every death unless he beat it, right? And he most definitely had not killed the wyvern on the way out, which seemed to be the goal, so he’d lost Freya right there.

  For a moment, he almost screamed out loud in frustration. If only he’d dohat otle thing, he could visit her right now, even like this. He didn’t though, and now he was all alone all ain. Simon stayed on that bench for some time, and it was only whe his head clear about what he o do hat he looked for Murphy.

  When he finally returo his involuntary panion, the man asked, “Where are we going now?”

  “Where else? We’re going to stop by the Baron’s pd see if Erik or Varten is the Baron these days,” Simon said with a faraway look in his eyes. “If it’s the former, I might help him with this little taur problem, but if it’s the tter… I might just strangle him to death instead. It’s hard to say.”

  “Strahe Baron?!” Murphy asked, taking a step back. “They’ll kill you! They’ll kill me just for walking into town with you! Why in all the bzes would you want to do that?”

  “Because no matter how many times I kill the man, it will never be enough,” Simon said softly as he walked purposefully toward the east gate.

  As he went, he decided to stop by the inn a a fine meal first. If he was going to die, then he wao do it on a full stomach. The fare of Millen’s farm had been excellent, but it had been days sihen, and he was starving.