Simon slept the day away. He luxuriated in the feeling of having his armor off for the first time in days, and despite how much he hated looking at his chubby body when he was stripped down to his boxers, he wouldn’t have enjoyed those scratchy linen sheets anymore if they were made of silk.

It was only when the sun was close to setting that he finally decided to stop being lazy and get his act together. He made his way downstairs without his armor or his sword and inquired about where a man might be able to get a bath. He would need to do some laundry tomorrow to get the salt and the sand out of his clothes, and he would definitely need to take a whetstone to his weapons sometime after that before he went to the next level because the rust spotting was growing worse.

Still, all of that could wait until he’d wasted a few coppers on a nice hot soak. While he was in the bathhouse, he learned he was in the town of Esmiran and that he was somewhere to the east of Mietere.

The only time he’d heard the name of that city before, he was dealing with that locust-leech storm at Millen’s farm. He wondered if that meant he was close or not but decided not to ask.

He was definitely in another country or region, though. People’s skin was slightly darker than he was used to, and their clothes were just a little bit different from his. When one of the other men mentioned that he looked like a sailor, Simon laughed and said, “I haven’t spent much time on a ship since Abrese.”

That got him some dark looks, and though no one explained, Simon quickly found himself alone after that. He made a mental note not to mention random places he’d been without understanding why the populace might hate them.

Fortunately, nothing bad came of it, and as he reentered the inn, he found no lynch mobs waiting for him. Instead, he ordered a beer and some food and listened more than he talked as he waited for his food to arrive.

All in all, he would have called the fare in this place only decent. The meat was too stringy, the bread was too coarse, but the beer was decent enough. He didn’t complain, though. At least it was new, and the part of him that feared he’d be stuck eating that same wedge of cheese and loaf of bread forever. So that was okay.

It was only later when he had joined some strangers in a friendly game of dice, that they arrived. Simon had been on a winning streak and managed to win almost a whole silver coin after seven straight rounds of guessing whether the dice would come up even or odds.

Normally, that wouldn’t have been much money to him, but his coin purse was getting pretty low. He might have only been on this run for a few weeks, but he’d been to a lot of places in that time, and traveling was a lot more expensive than just hanging out in a single town and getting to know the locals for a year or two.

So, he wasn’t paying much attention to anything but the growing pile of coppers that were the stakes, and he didn’t even notice the strangers and their white robes come in until the bar went silent.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” the proprietor asked. “We don’t want no trouble.”

“Peace, brother,” the apparent leader of the group said, raising a leather-gloved hand to show he was unarmed. “We only seek heretics. The worthy and the righteous have nothing to hide.”

This gave Benjamin pause as he looked over the 6 men and women who wore white cloaks and robes that did little to hide their armor and weapons. Only the one wearing gray from head to toe seemed unarmed, but that probably just meant that they were even more trouble.

Suddenly, he felt naked without his sword, and he cursed himself for being in this common room with nothing but a dagger now that these weirdos were here. It smelled like trouble. This was almost certainly the reason he was here, which seemed strange, given that he’d been here for almost a day. Things usually happened quicker than that.

Still, he didn’t let that distract him as he tried to feign disinterest while he studied these strangers and tried to determine what the threat was going to be. The leader walked slowly around the room, studying each face one at a time, and even the men who seemed most likely to bluster or pick a fight over something like this were quiet and still.

They know what’s going on here, even if I don’t, Simon thought to himself. That, as much as the cool deliberation that was going on, was enough to keep him right where he was even as the man slowly made his way across the bar toward him.

Simon was certain he’d be picked out of the crowd for whatever aura it was he had about him. He’d been told so many times, but that didn’t happen. Instead, only a few people before him, the man reached out and grabbed a hooded woman sitting by the other side of the fire and pulled her to her feet.

“Here you are, Carelyn,” the man smiled cruelly. “Did you really think you could hide from us so—”

He stopped speaking as she lashed out with a knife instead of words, but it didn’t penetrate the chainmail that was hidden underneath the man’s robes, and he only smirked as he twisted her arm so hard that she dropped the knife even as he started to drag her off.

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“No! No!!!” she screamed. “I’m not going back. You can’t make me!”

“No, you’re not,” the cult leader agreed. “That bridge has been burned.”

Some small part of Simon breathed a sigh of relief right then. He’d been sure this dude had some mystical power to seek out people like Simon, but in the end, this was just some wacky cult thing. These guys were here to collect some runaway. Now, things fell into place a little more.

He wasn’t exactly about to let that happen, though, and even as the group began to condense and move toward the door, he got up and followed them outside. One of the men he was playing dice with shook his head almost imperceptibly, urging Simon not to, while the other just smiled. He was obviously looking forward to taking Simon’s money as soon as these men struck him down, but he wasn’t about to let that happen.

“There’s no point in resisting us, Carelyn,” Simon heard the leader say as soon as he stepped outside, “The auguries were quite clear. You could have been one of the chosen, but now you are hopelessly tainted by this… can I help you?”

The man’s focus shifted to Simon as soon as he stepped out of the front door. The front yard of the inn was full of horses and men, and the group’s size had almost doubled to 10 warriors in white, but Simon still wasn’t concerned.

“If the lady doesn’t want to go with you, then you’re not taking her anywhere,” he said simply.

“Oh?” the leader of the group smiled as his men began to fan out. It was clear to Simon that they knew what they were doing, unlike most of the people he’d fought on other levels. “Those are big words, but unless you go right back inside, I’m afraid my men are going to have to dirty their weapons on—”

“Oonbetit,” Simon muttered, using a word of force to knock everyone in front of him backward except the girl as he walked forward and grabbed her by the arm.

That was enough to knock most of them off their feet, including the leader. Simon’s eyes weren’t on him, though. One of the other men, a younger warrior to the leader’s left, looked familiar to Simon somehow. He had no idea who the man was or where he might have seen him, but neither that uncertainty nor the fact that Simon had just knocked him off his feet was enough to shake the look of recognition on his face.

He’d clearly done something to piss that guy off. Before Simon could figure out what that was, though, the leader of these zealots was back on his feet. Simon had expected to knock some sense into them with that, but it wasn’t fear in the other man’s eyes. It was hunger. “Allying with actual warlocks now, Carelyn,” the man growled, drawing his sword. “Now things finally make sense.”

“I…” Carelyn started speaking, but Simon already knew what she was going to say. He could see it in the fear in her eyes even before she shook free of his grip. “I’m not… I would never…”

She backed away, and once she was a few feet from Simon, she turned and ran, but he didn’t take it personally. He’d known from the moment he started using magic no one was going to be on his team. That’s just the way it was. He needed to be pitted against a literal zombie apocalypse for people to think he was the good guy, and apparently, religious zealots didn’t rise to that level.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Simon said, not yet drawing his dagger. “If you just leave now, we can…”

“Oonbetit,” he barked for a second time as the three of the soldiers broke from their ranks and began to chase down the girl.

Strangely, though, nothing happened. Simon was still processing that and wondering what he did wrong when their leader yelled out, “Don’t worry about her; she won’t get far. We have a higher calling now. We must cleanse this warlock.”

Between the level of confidence in the man’s eyes and the way his magic had fizzled, Simon knew he should run. He might have, too, if he had any idea where it was he was supposed to run to.

If he did, though, they’d just go after that woman again, and he wasn’t about to trade his life for hers. Even if they killed him, he would buy her the time she needed to get away. He could always come back here. It wasn’t like he didn’t know the way.

He could do that a lot easier if he had his sword, though, he thought to himself as he pulled his dagger and dropped into a fighting stance.

No weapon, no armor, and apparently no magic was really going to limit his options, though.

“Gervuul Meiren,” he said, trying one more time as the men came cautiously closer.

Simon felt the words come to life as he pronounced them as always, and he felt the power flow out of him, but for some reason, instead of the torrent of fire he visualized, only a few sparks appeared.

“Rage as much as you like,” the other man taunted at that. “As long as we have a whisperer here, your tricks are useless!”

Simon had no idea what this asshole was talking about, but as soon as he and his men charged Simon, he no longer had time to think about it. Instead, he made a fighting retreat from the village square until he could use the wall of the inn to keep one of his flanks safe.

It was a losing battle, though. Not only was he nearly defenseless, but he wasn’t as strong or as fast as he would like to be, so without magic, he was pretty much screwed. It took only a couple of minutes to realize that the person in gray, who stayed close to them but well behind the line of combat, was to blame for that. They were the whisperer, whatever that was, and if he wanted the power to take these weirdos down, that was the person he had to take down.

He could have done it, too, if he had a bow. Sadly, he didn’t. So, he was going to have to improvise.