Simon had intended to walk straight to Abreese, past the plains that surrounded Crowvar and the desert to the south of them, without any real distractions. Oh, he'd have to do some hunting and fishing on his way south, and when a small group of bandits demanded his money or his life Simon quickly dispatched them without a single spell.

He'd been trying not to kill so many people, and noted that it dropped his experience by a couple of hundred points, but if they wanted to force the issue, he'd oblige them. He left their weapons to rot, but did use their coins and jewelry to fill up his empty coin purse. He even put on a gold ring topped with a large citrine stone, just because he liked the look of it.

Still, as carefree as that leg of the journey was, all of that stopped when he found the first town of any size. Along the way, he'd passed through several villages and traded some labor for a place to sleep at a handful of farmsteads as he made his way south.

He'd never gone quite this way, so he couldn't recall having seen it before, but it seemed to be a simple, prosperous town with enough population for two and three-story buildings along its main street and a scattering of farmhouses spread more widely before it faded entirely into rich farm fields. It even had a mill on the river that cascaded down from the mountain and a temple at the end of the main street. It would have been lovely if someone hadn't recently tried to burn half of it to the ground.

Simon could smell the damage even before he could see it, and when he was close enough to hear people talking over the sound of work, it was impossible to miss the fresh char stains on whitewashed buildings. A day or two ago, this place had been idyllic, but now, it looked like a warzone, and he only needed to see the occasional green splash of blood to know who had done all this, even if they'd done a pretty good job of piling up the corpses and burning them.

Don't get involved, he told himself as he approached the place that he only found out after several conversations was named Ordanvale. You have things to do that have nothing to do with any of this.

He knew he wouldn't listen, though. He had two decades to kill, and as much as he wanted to study runes and work on projects that would help him kill Brogan, none of that would stand up to people in obvious need. He could spare a lot more than a day of his life for the right cause.

Before he could help anyone, though, the first thing he needed to do was find out what happened, and as was so often the case in this part of the country, the answer turned out to be goblins.

"Last night was worse than usual," the town's headman explained while he carted half a dozen dead to a graveyard. While others worked on repairing roofs and some of the ad-hoc defenses that had sprung up around the place.

Simon asked why they hadn't just purged their lairs, but the man's answer only disappointed him. "Even with the bounties we have fer goblin ears, there always seem to be more of them, and after a few smaller raids last night, they showed up in force for the first time in an age."

As he spoke, Simon felt bad he'd never noticed this place before. Across all of his lives, it had burned down almost fifty times, and he'd never done anything about it. There's a thousand other towns and villages like this throughout the world, he reminded himself as they walked.

Simon didn't stay to watch him bury the bodies or even to help. That felt too much like an imposition; funerals were for family, not strangers with swords on their belts. He did stay to help, but only for a few hours. He spent that time bandaging the wounded and using words of lesser healing on the worst cases.

They needed it, too, because they didn't seem to have a real healer. When he asked about that, someone said, "Mari's helping the worst cases. We can wait." On that, Simon was skeptical; many of the bites he examined were already infected. Goblins had filthy mouths.

People were leery of strangers, but not so much that they were willing to refuse his help when it was obvious that he knew what he was doing; Simon hadn't been a full-time healer for several lives, but he'd never forget the basics at this point, even if someone turned him to stone for a thousand years.

Once that was done, he thought about seeing how the healer was coming along with her cases, but since the sun was getting low in the sky he decided to help in a more timely way, with his sword. So, he asked around and learned all he needed to about the area where the goblin's lairs seemed to concentrate, he was off again. This time, he left everything behind at the headman's house except his weapons and armor. He didn't really have anything worth stealing, but he didn't want to be any louder and clumsier than he needed to be when he was fighting green skins.

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The sun was getting lower by this point, but that didn't worry Simon. The tracks were clear and easy to follow, and it was clear to him from the very beginning that the place was infested. There were probably closer to hundreds than dozens, but he wasn't afraid of them.

When he arrived at the first cave, he killed the lone sentry with an arrow. Although the shot was perfectly routine, he almost made a catastrophic error and used the arrow of fire he'd created earlier for the white cloaks that had never shown up.

That would have been embarrassing, he thought ruefully as he dragged the corpse away. Trying to ambush these monsters, I end up waking all of them up.

After that, he followed his sense of smell as much as the tracks to look for other nests. He ended up finding three, which was about right. Goblins were an invasive species, and they spread as long and as hard as food and geology allowed. In this case, the clearings around all three holes were muddy things that had been practically denuded of small plants. Even the tree bark was patchy, for that was their nature.

Three entrances to the same tunnels or three different caves? Simon wondered. There was no way to tell. Normally, he would have left all three open and explored them at his leisure, but as things stood, he didn't want the poor people of Ordenvale to have to deal with another night of blood and fire. So, he collapsed the second and third entrances he'd found with a word of major earth.

In each case, the spell took the form of a complete collapse of the first dozen or so feet of the tunnel. Compared to what he'd done in the Pyramid of Lesser Miracles, it was hardly violent. In fact, it was almost natural. It was as if a mudslide simply erased the two holes, which weren't so far apart.

Two large spells back to back were enough to make him taste blood, but he ignored it. He wouldn't need much magic going forward. Even rusty as he was, fighting goblins was a little beneath him at that point, but that didn't stop him from enjoying it.

Still, it was enough to agitate the local goblins, and by the time he returned to the first lair, perhaps twenty had boiled out of the hole, even though the sun was still an hour from setting. So much for my element of surprise, Simon sighed as he pulled out his magic arrow and took careful aim at one of the goblins toward the middle of the group.

Simon loosed the arrow and enjoyed the fireball that followed. It wasn't as bright as it might have been if he'd struck a human, but then, the rest of the goblins were much weaker than a human would be as well, and none of them stood a chance.

Moments later, he was walking through the smokey clearing and heading for the tunnel with his shield and dagger in his hand. His dagger lacked any enchantment runes on it because he hadn't thought he'd need them. He considered skipping that step because Simon wanted his voice to hold out for at least a few more healing words that he'd undoubtedly need as he descended into the agitated lair. Instead, he paused and decided to try an experiment.

Despite the rising clamor coming from the depths, he paused to consider a new runic configuration he hadn't tried before. Then, when he fixed it in his mind, he inscribed it on his dagger. It hurt, but with any luck, that would be the last spell he'd need to speak tonight.

He'd never tried to inscribe a word of healing on a weapon before, but there was a first time for everything. For a moment, he'd considered trying to use a greater word. It would have been possible; there was room on the knife. It wasn't like the word of transfer. The reason he didn't use that one in a more powerful way was because he didn't want to become hopelessly addicted to the narcotic effects of life force.

That wasn't going to be an issue with straight healing, though. Healing rarely felt good. It usually felt a little painful or very disturbing. The only reason he didn't use a word of greater healing was because he wasn't sure the material would be able to handle the strain of repeated uses.

Once that was complete, Simon charged into the churning, cramped darkness. He was immediately overwhelmed by the smell, but he ignored it and focused on the first goblin to cross his path. The thing snarled viciously at him before letting out a high-pitched war cry and jabbing at him with a spear, but all that got it was losing the tip of his weapon as Simon lopped it off before he crushed the thing against the wall with his shield.

After that, it didn't get up again, but Simon barely made it two steps deeper into the warren before the next two appeared. This was nothing, and truthfully, he was expecting much worse before this was done. Neither lasted more than a few seconds against Simon. The second one actually died trying to flee as Simon cleaved open its comrade.

Simon followed it a bit too eagerly. He struck the killing blow, but in doing so, he opened himself up to his first wound. He chastised himself for that. Sloppy. Focus, and it will hurt less. That one managed to surprise him, but only because it skulked in the shadows behind an outcropping.

Still, it wasn't even a setback. Not really. By the time it lost its head, Simon's wound had already closed, which was enough to make him smile grimly, but even as he did so, he took one last glance back to make sure he was far enough in the cave, and then he whispered what he hoped would be his last spell for the night, "Celdura Barom."

As he did so, the light blossomed across the shadowy conditions. In fact, it became almost painfully bright, which was a big change considering a moment ago, it had been so dark that he'd missed an ambush. It proved to be the correct move because, almost immediately, he saw half a dozen pairs of eyes lurking in the deeper shadows not far ahead of him.

Simon let his eyes drift across like he hadn't seen them. There was a lot of killing left to be done tonight. It was pretty much the tip of the iceberg.

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