Simon waited for his moment; he parried and feinted, and each time, he pulled back as he looked for an opening. It wasn’t long before one of the men he faced off against was foolish enough to charge him.

Simon was still a little too round to cleanly dodge such an attack, but he guided the tip of his opponent’s blade away with his dagger before he moved forward, inside the other man’s guard, and shoved his dagger into the gap between the man’s gorget and his helmet. Then, while his opponent was choking on his own blood, Simon stole his sword.

The weapon was a little heavier than the long sword he was used to, but it was a thousand times better than the dagger he’d had moments ago. Until now, he’d been forced to give ground constantly, but now he lashed out, taking his opponents by complete surprise.

He cursed himself for growing too reliant on his magic. Even as he moved, he imagined the openings he’d make if he could use even a minor word of force to parry a blow or knock the man across from him off balance even a little.

Despite that, the two nearest him were on their back foot. Their armor saved them from any real damage, as Simon ended each parry with a hard slash that contained enough force to stagger them. Despite that, the best he was able to do was knock a few of the men over as he tripped and pushed them while he kept the rest back off with wild swings of his sword.

Those combinations were effective, but they were exhausting. As much as he would have liked to, there was no way he could keep that tempo up forever.

Steel rang out against steel for almost a minute before he managed to take another one of them down, bringing the odds down to the still impossible eight on one. That was worlds better than ten on one, of course, but he’d been fresh then, and he was exhausted now.

Still, he did his best, at least until he was surrounded. That was when he made a desperate push toward the person in gray robes. If he could take them down, then he could burn everyone else alive and escape.

Sadly, the warriors in white anticipated that and never let him close to their whisperer, whatever the hell that was. On his third attempt, the closest he got was when he knocked down the warrior who had looked familiar earlier.

As Simon raised his sword to gut the young man, he finally figured out who it was he’d been fighting. For a brief moment, he saw the man a few years younger as a boy, rolling around on the floor as he tried to pull those biting insects off of him.

It was a gut-wrenching moment, and it was enough to stay his blade. “Aaric?” Simon asked.

It was a mistake. In his flashback, the boy looked up at him plaintively, but now he was back to the same hard-eyed man he’d been seconds before, practically daring Simon to strike him down with his eyes.

He couldn’t, of course, and so, he lost the initiative rather than turning the fight into seven-on-one. He didn’t last much longer after that. Soon, his already heavy sword was made of lead, and once he was hemmed in between a few men with shields, he was quickly disarmed and then knocked off his feet.

Once he was on the ground, it was over. Strangely, though, no one stabbed him. That was what he’d been expecting. Instead, they proceeded to start kicking him and beating him with the flat of their blades.

They want me alive? He wondered as his fear rose along with his pain. Why?

He had no answers, though. His world was reduced to a cluster of bruises that slowly expanded wider with every passing second. One sharp kick to the head almost knocked him unconscious, but the leader of the zealots called his men off then, and instead, they began to bind his hands.

“Patience!” he called out. “Giving this demon a painless death will do nothing to save his eternal soul. First, he must be cleansed!”

Everyone cheered at that, and even Aaric took a moment from glaring at Simon with hate to pray. He didn’t have to wait long to find out what that meant for him, though. Part of him hoped they’d do something simple, like burn him at the stake, but it turned out to be even simpler than that as two men started dragging him toward the well in the center of the square.

“Wait, you’re going to drown me?” Simon asked, coughing up blood. He was fairly sure he’d broken a rib. “In the town well? That’s your cleansing?”

“Of course,” the cult leader laughed. “And Carelyn will suffer the same fate as soon as we run her to ground again.”

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“Yeah, but people drink from there,” he said, confused. “Maybe, I don’t know, find a pond or something?” The cleansing metaphor he could get, even though it was dumb, but why not a river or something. This was a great way to cause a cholera outbreak or worse.

Not that it would affect him. Drowning was a miserable way to go, but maybe if he could convince this asshole to go somewhere further afield, he’d have a chance to escape.

“Nonsense,” the sneering man said, looking more and more like the caricature of a villain. “We shall cleanse you here so everyone can see how you suffer for salvation. Then we’ll fish your corpse out afterward and hang it from a post so that everyone will know the price for selling their soul. Your death here will save countless others. That at least I can thank you for.”

Simon rolled his eyes at that but said nothing as the man began to give a speech about how anyone who covets the powers of the gods should be struck down. He continued to struggle as the man’s still-living minions held him, but they never got distracted enough for him to break free.

He picked off a few things about the principalities of the waters, the sins of the ancestors, and the tainting of the source, but on the whole, the whole thing was impenetrable to Simon. All he really got out of listening to the rambling five-minute sermon was that these guys weren’t completely crazy, but they were pretty crazy about purging the unclean from the world, which he took to mean warlocks and magic users, as well as the fact that this guy’s title was ‘seeker.’

The only part he really stopped struggling was when Aaric made a tearful speech about how Simon had sucked the life out of his family. “My sisters both died that year, and our farm never had a good season after that, thanks to this monster!” the young man declared. “I offer thanks to my father and all of his ancestors that such a wretch will finally be cleansed!”

“What are you talking about?” Simon yelled. “I saved your family from the black swarm! I—”

“Shut up!” Aaric roared. “Neither of them ever had the blood sickness before you stayed with us. You did that to them!”

Before he could interject again, Simon was rewarded for his efforts by being dragged to his feet and punched in the stomach hard enough to shut him up and leave him gasping. That didn’t end the whole ritual, of course. The Seeker continued, and other people came forward, accusing Simon of things he’d never done.

He was accused of making sheep barren and the winter too long. He was accused of burning down houses and souring milk.

He laughed at those, at least. They were pure insanity. The only one that got under his skin was Aaric’s testimony. That left Simon wondering if there might be some truth to the aftermath of what he’d done to that swarm.

Everything about that day horrified him already, from the bugs to how badly he wanted to try the word of transfer again. Even weeks later, the idea that he could use it on someone else still lingered most nights while he lay in bed.

All he wanted to know was if he’d actually hurt someone, but each time he tried to ask, he was beaten and spit upon. Eventually, the Seeker ended the ceremony and turned to face Simon.

“Do you have any last words?” the prick asked as Simon was perched on the edge of the well.

“Yeah, next time, I’m killing you first,” Simon said. As he did so, he tried to wrap his legs around the guy and drag him to hell along with him, but unfortunately, he was still exhausted, and the zealot’s men succeeded in separating the two of them before Simon could fling himself down the well.

He expected to hit the cold water and sink immediately, only that isn’t what happened. As soon as he hit the water, it started falling, too. He had only a second to understand why before the whole thing flushed beneath him.

That was the only way he could think about it. Like he’d been flushed down a toilet, only those obviously weren’t going to exist for a few more centuries.

Portal. The word flashed through his mind just before he hit the cavern floor. He hit hard, and what felt like a few rotting corpses broke his fall even as the water splashed widely around him. Simon had a few seconds to look around and listen to the cries of confusion from the well above him, but after that, the light that came from the hole faded from view, leaving him in the dark.

“What in the fuck was that?” he asked himself.

Simon had just enough time to recall that they were going to dump that girl in here, which made the exit’s location make a strange sort of sense, but before he could piece things together more than that or try to figure out how to free his hands, a low growl echoed through the cave.

Wherever he was, he wasn’t in here alone.

For a moment, Simon didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe. He just listened and tried to gather clues from that.

Though the place stank, it sounded like there was only one creature in there with him. At least, he thought there was as he listened to the shuffling and the snuffling. Whatever it was, it was big, though. Like - really big. Simon instantly ruled out orc but struggled to think of what it might be instead.

Troll? He thought with more than a little trepidation. But those could see in the dark, couldn’t they?

A shiver went down his spine. He had his magic back, presumably. He just wasn’t sure if he should use it or not. Would light make this worse or better, he wondered. For now, at least, he let his eyes grow accustomed to the dark and listened carefully for any sign that whatever was in here with him might be getting closer.