Normally, Simon's conversations with the oracle were fairly short things. His first one with the strange volcanic gases had been only a few minutes, and all the ones he had with her since then had lasted less than an hour. This one lasted for hours, and acolytes were already rising for their chores before they parted ways, but in that time, he learned a great deal.

Mostly, beyond her complaining about what he was doing to the tapestry of the world, they talked about what a snarl was and why it drew the eyes of those who could see it. Everything was connected. He could see that now, mostly, and though she frowned at the way he used divinatory means to find answers, she agreed that was how it worked.

"Magic is as complicated as it is powerful," she insisted, as she always did. She didn't say it was evil or that he should never use it. He'd seen her use it, but when he commented on that, she waved it off. "I know what the world looks like, and whatever minor spells I might use to help my pupils… well, they cloud my vision for minutes, not days, and I rather think that the powerful magics you prefer to kill people with blur things for you much longer than that."

He couldn't argue with her there. He explained his theory that magic needed a vessel and that the vessel didn't have to be the mage himself. It could just as easily be something that he possessed or used. The Oracle nodded but offered no clear opinion on the subject until he told her about the way he'd used a fruit to reduce his age.

"You tread dangerously close to real magic there, Simon," she chastised him, refusing to go into further detail as he revisited the topic. Instead, she kept coming back to the tapestry of fate.

They looked at the threads that surrounded both of them and though he explained what he could, she always saw deeper than him, which was no surprise. "With a few years of study, you might yet understand things as they really are," she explained, "I'd invite you to stay, but it's very clear that your fate lies to the south."

"Does that mean I'm not allowed to stay?" Simon asked.

"You can, if you like, for a week or two," she nodded. "Time enough to spend with Zoa, but I do not think there is much learning to be had for you here right now. Perhaps things will change in your next life."

"Is that a hint?" Simon asked, trying to sneak information out of here. "Can you already see me somewhere else in the world?" He'd tried to get an answer to that question earlier in their conversation, asking how two of him could start in the same location without them seeing each other, but she disowned all of Helades's magic, even if she wouldn't say the Goddess' name directly.

This time, she only offered, "If I could, it would not be my place to say, for that has little to do with your question."

By the time Simon returned to Zoa's dark cell, she was already getting dressed to start her day. She seemed relieved to see him, but Simon was too tired and distracted to do much besides kiss her on the forehead before she was on her way. After that, despite his fatigue, he lay there for at least ten minutes with all the strange contradictions of destiny, sight, and tangled timelines swirling together in his mind.

The days that followed cleared his head, but mostly, he did his best to mend a half-remembered relationship with a woman he barely knew. It wasn't entirely comfortable, but just like the morning swims, once he started indulging in it, he found the experience very grounding.

This time, he was able to see the currents that had elluded him for so long without much effort. Just because he could see what he was doing didn't make it completely easy, though. Now he could watch the temperatures ebb and flow, but predicting that required him to concentrate on other, darker lines that shifted almost as much as the water. That made the puzzle quite devious, since holding his concentration while trying to swim bordered on the impossible. Still, he made it across mostly unscathed to work with the other acolytes and help them with all the other tasks.

He couldn't stay long; he knew that. He did stay long enough to make things right, more or less. Simon spent his third evening there telling Zoa at least part of the truth, even if it was wrapped in a lie.

"My sight has progressed to the point where I can see when some bad things are about to happen," he explained to her. "The last time I left, I had to go stop a necromancer and his zombies, and this time… well, there's a volcano I have to stop."

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"Simon, how can that be?" Zoa asked. He could see that she was trying to believe him, but even that much had overwhelmed her.

"Well, this is a city for cultivating clarity, right? I—" he started to explain.

"No, I understand that," she explained. "Sometimes I get glimpses too. Mostly of you, in faraway places. It's hard to say if they're real or just wishful thinking, but they make me believe that you're still safe. I just don't see how you could stop a volcano from erupting. You're just a man."

Simon had been ready for any number of objections, but not that one, and he laughed uproariously at it. In fact, he laughed so hard that he had to stop because Zoa thought he was laughing at her. He apologized for that, and then he showed her the orb he'd crafted for what came next. It was the first person he'd ever gotten to show it to, and even if she wouldn't understand half of it, he was still proud to do so.

"This is an… an artifact that I've been on a quest for," he lied. "I don't know quite how the magic works, but if you throw it into a volcano, it's supposed to stop it from erupting."

He wasn't sure she even heard him as she held the golden ball in her hand. The thing itself wasn't pure gold, of course, but it was a carved silver sphere that had been plated in the stuff. He'd had to use magic for that since he had no idea how electroplating worked.

The golden orb was quite heavy, and while there were any number of glyphs that would get the Unspoken on his case in no time, they were utterly inscrutable to Zoa, and unless they put it in a fire, it was harmless to both of them. There were a lot of little design optimizations involved in it, and though he couldn't talk to her about the details, he was quite proud of them. There were inner runes in the core that would freeze the water into ice as soon as the surface started to warm so that the ball wouldn't melt. He had a high degree of confidence that it would work, but nothing was ever a sure thing.

It's better, he told himself. I do not want to be walking through the first level over and over again if half of what the Oracle said is true.

"So if you didn't have this, then you'd stay?" Zoa asked finally, shaking him from his reverie as she gripped it tighter and tried to heft it.

For a moment, Simon imagined chasing her naked through the dark, empty streets of the temple city before she threw it in the wrong caldera and froze Mount Elian solid. It was a chilling thought because it would ruin this beautiful place, and there'd be no way for him to get it back. He wasn't even sure if he could fix that if he wanted to, save to go make another orb that did just the opposite, and that would be too hard to balance out. He was bound to screw something up.

"I would," he said, with a dry mouth, as she regarded him. He meant it too, but as he saw her with the thing, all he could think of was how he'd let the demon seed loose on Ionar before. He'd gotten so used to thinking of doing things without a safety net that he'd forgotten what it was like.

She released the thing and hugged him as he spoke. That relaxed him, but only a little, and after that, he made a point of hiding the object better whenever he left the room.

Still, much as he feared someone would have tried to steal the orb, after a few days, he recognized that was pretty close to impossible. There were no threads attached to it except for his own. He meditated on that as his vision improved over the course of the week, but eventually, when things reached an equilibrium, he decided it was time to go.

As much as he enjoyed his stay, after a week, he didn't want to overstay his welcome. Zoe was less than pleased by the development, and watching her cry because he wouldn't stay with her hurt more than most of his deaths. Besides holding her, he wasn't entirely sure what to do about it, either. While he had many skills rated as poor or very poor on his character sheet, women and understanding them was probably his weakest skill.

Simon swore he'd be back, but he honestly didn't know when he would this time. Using level zero like this made him nervous enough that he expected he'd stick to using the gates for a while.

If I fuck up through a gate, I get to try again, he reassured himself.

While that was an interesting thing to worry about, once he changed back into his armor, hugged Zoa goodbye, and left through the main gate, he decided to do more than ponder it. As he descended the mountain, he asked the mirror, "Is there any way to reset level zero like I can the other levels?"

'Levels in the pit are not reset,' the mirror clarified, 'if the conditions for that loop are not completed, they are simply undone and persist in your next attempt.'

"Fine, fine," Simon grumbled. "So can the zero level… this level, can it be restarted by unraveling or retrying or whatever?"

'The only way that this level can be untied is by completing the rest of the Pit.' the mirror answered.

"I thought you were going to say that," Simon sighed as he continued his way down the mountain. "It's going to be a long fight until I'm clear of this place."

Still, no matter how much he complained about it, there was nothing he could do. A little over a year from now, there would be an eruption, and if the thing he'd worked so hard to create didn't solve it, then he was going to have to fight it. It would be nearly impossible to survive, of course, even with his new fire-resistant armor, but fortunately, he didn't care if he survived. As long as he won, it didn't matter what happened to him.

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