“Well, who wants to be the first to try it?” he asked, gesturing around. There were no volunteers.

“How about you?” he asked the man that had tried to gut him for his water skin only a few minutes ago in an attempt to win him over.

“I will not let you poison me!” the man growled, pacing around the edge of the light like an angry cat.

Simon was fairly sure that if he stayed the night here, that man was going to try to kill him in his sleep. That either meant he’d have to put the man down or make friends with everyone else. Fortunately, the latter was going to be pretty easy since he was the only one here with drinkable water.

“Suit yourself,” Simon said, raising it to his lips and downing it like a shot. It was okay.

It was closer to tap water than bottled water, but he detected no taste of corpses amidst the earthy flavors of sand, and he was sure it would get clearer as it went. That’s what all the videos he’d seen had shown anyway.

“Who’s next,” he said, replacing the cup back under the leaking barrel.

Everyone looked at him skeptically, but as a few people like Torrin came over and investigated the setup, they saw it was just as Simon had promised. The top of the barrel was full of watery mud, and perfectly clear water dripped down into the cup out of the hole in the bottom. That was enough for the man to at least take the chance, and as soon as he pronounced it good enough to drink, a line had formed.

There were 14 people strong enough to move around on their own and a few more who were dragged over with the help of their companions. Soon, everyone was taking turns in a way that was more or less peaceful, one glass of water at a time. It was a celebratory atmosphere, and people thanked whatever gods they believed in as they had their first taste of water in days.

Simon knew that it couldn’t last forever, though, and it didn’t. During their second time through the line, things finally came to an end when the merchant argued his horses should get priority over everyone who had already had a turn.

“Your animals can wait until I’ve had my fill,” said the man who’d attacked Simon earlier. “I will not wait in line behind a mere beast of burden.”

“You aren’t the one that makes the rules,” Simon remarked, not bothering to draw his weapon.

“And you are?” the other man Raged, lifting his scimitar high into the night. “You think this water belongs to you now, that you get to make the rules? Only the strong may dictate, and you—”

Without warning, Torrin drew his blade, beheading the other man on the spot and sheathing his blade before the corpse even fell to its knees and began to bleed out into the sand. He smiled ruefully.

“That is quite enough of that,” Torrin answered, with a crooked smile. “Now, whose turn is it. I am thirsty and grow weary of waiting.”

“That wasn’t necessary,” Simon said softly, unsure if he should draw his own sword or not. “I would have been perfectly content to knock him down a peg or two again. The people that are the thirstiest need to—”

“Please don’t misunderstand me,” Torrin said. “I don’t disagree with what the Aganian was saying at all; I simply do not wish to see this small miracle destroyed before I have drunk my fill. Normally, I would claim it for myself and charge all of your obols for the privilege of drinking my water, but tonight, I am feeling generous, especially to you, my good Simon. You have saved my life, so all of us shall take turns, and if the trader wishes to give his cups to the horses, I do not mind at all.”

Simon looked at the man and found the humor from earlier entirely evaporated. In Torrin’s eyes, there was only a cold emptiness now, and Simon wondered what it was he was saving here.

For a moment, everyone froze as they regarded the two of them glaring at each other from opposite sides of the circle of light cast by the lantern. Simon didn’t want to kill this man, and he certainly didn’t want to do it with magic that would make it very obvious to everyone else what he’d done, but he wasn’t about to bow to a bully, either.

Instead, he leaned very slightly against the barrel, making it tilt precipitously from where it stood on the large rock. “The horses are dying just like men, and I say they drink next.”

Despite what he’d said, the merchant didn’t move any closer with his bucket. He could feel the tension between Simon and Torrin as clearly as anyone else.

“Do you know how much horses drink?” Torrin asked. “It could take all night. What about everyone else?”

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“Then it takes all night. Anyone else who is dying may go first, of course,” Simon said. “But don’t forget it was the merchant who brought the barrel that is saving your life. He deserves consideration for that.”

Torrin weighed his options for another minute, noting just how precariously everything was balanced. To Simon, he seemed more than confident that he could kill any challengers, but he didn’t seem at all sure that he could stop Simon before he pushed his tiny miracle off the ledge it sat on, which would almost certainly smash it to ruin.

Finally, he said, “Fine, I will take a short nap, and when I wake up, I will cut down anyone who tries to stop me from slaking my thirst. Do you understand?”

Simon nodded, but even when the other man wandered off into the darkness, he didn’t let his guard down. He was well aware that Torrin could sneak up behind him.

He didn’t, though. Despite the sleepless night, Simon saw to it that everyone drank their fill and no one with two legs or four died on his watch.

Unfortunately, that meant that by the time the sun rose, he was exhausted. He’d eventually gotten the other men to fetch more water when the barrel had started to slow down, but he was unwilling to trust his life to any of them. The merchant was a coward, Torrin was a killer, and everyone else obviously had their own separate agendas.

Though at first, he had thought he might have found a kindred spirit in the Torrin, as soon as the man had decided he wasn’t going to die, he’d become someone else entirely. In the end, his only real choice was to walk away.

So that’s what he did. Some small, petty part of him wanted to smash the barrel as he left, but with a yawn, he decided to let them fight over it. He wasn’t here to be their mother. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what he was here for. Maybe he’d fucked the whole thing up, and he was supposed to purify the oasis.

Honestly, it probably was, he realized, but he didn’t care.

He wasn’t particularly interested in helping these people any more than he already had, and he probably wouldn’t feel any better about it next time. It wasn’t until he got to the top of the dune he was very slowly scaling that he realized why, either.

Not one of them had said thank you. “Thank you, Simon, for saving our lives. Thank you for keeping us from dying from dehydration,” he said in a mocking tone. “Thank you for giving us more petty bullshit to fight over.”

He was even more annoyed when he got to the top of the dune and realized there was no portal waiting for him in this damn arch. He took a deep breath to resist yelling in frustration. He’d been so sure it would be here, both because there was nowhere else for it to be and because Helades liked putting them in unlikely places.

“Did she really bury it?” he wondered as he scuffed the sand with his toe and saw that the building the arch was attached to did indeed go down into the sand.

He could just use more earth magic to move it and see, but somehow, that didn’t strike him as quite right. Sometimes, he felt like he was relying on magic too much in all this. It had its place, but given the costs… well, there had to be other ways.

Simon took a long look at the oasis he’d just come from and began to worry that portal was actually hiding in the back of the merchant’s wagon or maybe even one of the man’s other empty water barrels.

He resisted the urge to go down and check, though. Going back down there would mean killing Torrin, and he had no wish to murder more people if he didn’t have to. Much like magic, he felt like that had become his go-to answer, and he was fairly certain that when you got too comfortable killing people, you were the bad guy.

So, before he walked back down the dune, he resolved to carefully check every other direction. He didn’t find anything, of course. He knew he wouldn’t, but when he spit around, there was a door right behind him in the arch he’d just left.

“Son of a bitch,” he shouted, checking both sides of the thing. On the east side toward the oasis, there was still no door, but on the west was a wooden door just like you could find in any tavern in the land.

“God, not another tavern,” Simon said with a shiver. “Anything but that.”

Well, maybe not anything, he thought to himself. That castle and the haunted house sucked pretty bad too.

Honestly, he didn’t know what he hoped for, so instead, he just opened the door. And he found something quite quaint.

On the other side of the door was a little crossroads town somewhere in the north. The streets were mud, and the low fences were stacked rocks topped with gnarled hedges. There was an inn, but as he stepped out into the chilly air of the street and shut the door behind him before anyone realized he’d been standing in a desert, he realized he’d come out the door to the bakery, which had a nice homey feel about it.

For just a moment, Treena came to mind, but even as the nostalgia of her perfect loaves threatened to overwhelm him, a yawn tore its way out of his body, and he decided that despite what he’d said earlier, the inn was looking like a pretty solid idea.

Simon looked back and forth down the roads several more times, and after he found no evidence of zombies or wars, he decided that was exactly what he was going to do. He walked across the street into the establishment, and for the price of a single silver coin, he procured himself a bed and meals for three nights. He was going to relax and recover for a bit if this level let him.

He’d been on a tear for so long he was having trouble keeping all the details straight, and he wanted to lay out some of these details to the mirror before he found out what was on level 30 or even what it was he was going to have to do here. First, though, he decided to stop by the bar and grab a pint. The desert was thirsty business, and a beer or two would make sleep come much quicker in one of these lumpy in beds.