He'd often wondered what would have happened to his old apprentice Niko if he hadn't spent a life as a blacksmith and surrogate father for the man, but he was a good kid. So Simon had never expected him to become a highwayman, and as the young man drew a knife on him, Simon couldn't help but feel like he'd let the young man down.

"Hand over your silver, and we'll let you walk away with everything else," their leader said. This one at least had the courage to lead from the front. Simon could respect that.

Simon let his left-hand rest on the hilt of his blade as he tried to decide the best way to handle this. He wasn't going to kill Niko, but did the other best serve as an object lesson or a show of mercy? He wasn't sure. For now, he tried bluster.

"I've got a sword on my hip, and a shield lashed to my pack, boy," Simon answered. "Are you sure this is a fight you want to pick?"

"So you can fight," the bandit leader spat. "If you want to make us work for it, then all you need to do is draw. No way you can take all of us."

As the leader spoke, his four lackeys started to spread out around Simon, almost lackadaisical in the way they held their weapons, as if he really was easy prey. That should have made things more complicated, but really, they made them much simpler.

Jackals. Simon thought as he felt the nervousness beneath those words. Useful only for fighting in packs.

"Last chance, guy," the leader said again when Simon was surrounded. "If you want—"

All of these people were operating under the false assumption that he couldn't take every one of them. Simon might bleed for it, but the idea that he couldn't take five hungry youths with little evident skill and visible ribs was laughable. However, right now, that wasn't enough. The real problem was that he only wanted to kill four of them, which meant he had to take the fifth one out of action.

So, when Simon moved, it was without warning. He didn't draw his sword. Instead, he juked sideways, hooking his booted foot behind Niko's, before shoulder-checking him hard enough to send him sprawling into the dirt.

The shock among the rest of the group at the sudden turn of events lasted only a moment. Then, all of them surged forward, but it was far too late for violence.

"Oonbetit," Simon pronounced, feeling the unfamiliar burn course through him. It had been years since he'd spoken a word of power. It might have been a decade. He wasn't sure, but either way, it made the sulfur taste and the burning in his throat worse than it had been in a very long time.

These words really are hellish, he told himself, wondering how he could get used to such a thing so easily?

In that moment, though, everything changed. The lights and shadows of his vision vanished, leaving him just as blind to the nature of things as the rest of the world, as a thin line of force traveled out for several feet in all directions, beheading all four men that rushed toward him. They never saw it coming, not even when their heads fell from their bodies and four men fell into eight pieces at his feet.

Niko was on his feet seconds later, snarling in outrage that he'd been showed up like that. "Bastard!" he shouted, "That won't work a second time."

He really has gone feral, Simon sighed, studying the man he'd known.

Niko dashed forward as he resolved to attack Simon, but in the time it took him to close the gap, he suddenly realized how the tables had turned. He wasn't one of five anymore. There was no pack to help him. He was all on his own.

Simon could have gutted him at that moment, but he didn't. Instead, he used the moment of distraction to grab Niko by the wrist and disarm him as he gave him a judo throw past the corpses of his comrades on the far side of the road.

"Warlock," Niko gasped, trying and failing to fill his lungs after the blow.

Simon ignored the accusation and said, "It would have been easier to kill five rather than four. You know that. Why do you think I spared you?"

It was an impossible question, and the only response, Niko pulled a knife from his boot before snarling, "You just want my soul," at Simon.

Simon nodded, trying to appreciate the fearlessness more than the anger. Being afraid of warlocks was a perfectly reasonable response, but Simon could already see the young man trying to work up the courage to attack him again.

"Is your mother still alive, or did her illness finally take her?" Simon asked, letting his words disarm the young man more than his actions ever could.

He could only stare at Simon for a moment, completely stunned. Seconds passed before he found the strength to ask, "How do you know about her? Is this more of your dark magic?"

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"In a way," Simon said, not bothering to deny it.

"What are you going to do to her?" Niko asked as some imagined horror went through his mind. "Please… punish me, not her. She did nothing."

"Me?" Simon said as he walked past Niko and started toward his village. "I'm going to save her. It's not as if it's her fault that she's raised such a wretched son."

Simon did just that, as his one-time adopted son dogged at his heels the whole way. He threatened Simon several times and promised he'd tell everyone that Simon was a warlock if he dared to do anything to his mother, but he didn't carry out that threat any more than he could stab Simon despite continuing to hold a knife in his hand.

Simon, for his part, mostly ignored all of that and focused on how strange the world looked now that it was reduced to basic materialism. He'd had trouble grappling with the loss of detail that had come from killing a few days ago, but even as those details had started to come back, he'd wiped away all of that progress with a spell.

I wonder how long it will take to come back, he asked himself as they went. He didn't know, but he supposed it would be a good experiment. How much enlightenment or clarity did a single spell remove.

Olven's Narrows was much as Simon had left it in his previous lives. Other than the fact that the smithy had never been rebuilt, it was unchanged, reminding him of just how little of an impact he could have on the larger scale of things.

Simon walked right to Niko's hovel, even though the young man tried and failed to lead him astray. Simon only stopped when they reached it, when he said, "Out of respect for the old woman, I'll make you a deal. You don't tell her about how she was healed, and I won't tell her that her son grew up to be a murderer."

That chastened Niko enough for him to nod. Then Simon went inside and used a word of greater healing on the sleeping woman. He wasn't dramatic about it, and truthfully, he probably didn't even need the greater word, but he wasn't going to be coming back to check on her, so he might as well be safe than sorry.

So much for not using magic, he sighed internally as he used spells for the second time in an hour. When it was over, he didn't explain anything to Niko or his mother. He just walked to the shore, found a returning fisherman he recognized, and offered him a good price for a few of the sea bass he'd caught, then set about making an early dinner.

"That's it?" Niko asked, pestering him as Simon seemed to lose all interest in him or his mother. "You didn't have enough time to curse her or heal her."

"Because it took so long to slice apart your friends," Simon chuckled darkly as he boned and gutted his fish. "I didn't realize you were such an expert on magic."

"You can really use magic then?" Niko asked. Simon ignored the question because it was a stupid one and instead directed the boy to build a fire, which he grudgingly did.

By the time Niko's mother was awake from her nap, dinner was all but done, and Simon shared it with both of them, along with a little white wine that they had. The meal was simple, but it was as delicious as it was quiet.

Nikos's mother was a wonderful host and exemplified the hospitality that Ionians were supposed to show guests. Niko was a little tightly wound throughout the whole affair, but once he saw how much better his mom was feeling, he calmed down some. He didn't say much, though, until after the meal when Simon went outside and sat amongst the ruins of the smithy he'd once worked for years.

"You act like you know us," Niko said finally. "Did you use your magic to find the way here, or did you just know the way?"

"I lived half a lifetime here once," Simon confessed. "And it was a good life."

"I… Why did you leave or come back?" Niko asked, obviously unsure what Simon had meant.

"I stayed because it was a good spot to wait for things to play out," he answered with a shrug, holding back the most important part. I did it because it was nice to be the father you never had and teach you a skill. "As to why I'm back? Well, I'll be gone tomorrow. Someone will need to stop the volcano again."

"The volcano?" Niko asked, his eyes widening. "Is it going to erupt again?"

"Not until next year," Simon answered, meeting the young man's gaze. "I'll handle that. The question is, what to do about you?"

"Me? How's that compare to an erupting—" Niko protested, but Simon ignored him.

"I've had a decade to solve that problem, but you're a new wrinkle," He answered, taking the measure of the man as best he could without magic. "By rights, I should have killed you along with your friends, but I've spared you. Why is that?"

"I have no idea," the boy answered, which was, at the very least, an honest answer.

"It's because I believe there's good in you," Simon said. "At least I want to."

Niko defended himself and his decisions. He pled poverty and claimed he'd never killed anyone. Simon couldn't see the truth, but he chose to believe him. What had started as a conversation about the profound slowly devolved into something closer to a paternal heart-to-heart, only making Simon feel that much worse about the whole thing.

It's not your fault, he told himself, about the time he made his excuses about how he needed to be going. You can't be everywhere to right every wrong.

"You're welcome to stay with us for the night," Niko answered. He'd promised to do better going forward, but it was obvious to Simon just how much he enjoyed this attention. He craved a dad just as much as he had in his past life, and that need was apparently strong enough to overwhelm his fear of a murderous warlock, which surprised Simon.

Despite the kind offer to stay the night, Simon didn't follow Niko back to his home when it got too late. Instead, he waited for the occupants of the hovel to extinguish their oil lamp while he looked out at the sea.

With a heavy heart, Simon left the town and went to Ionar. As much as he might want to fix his one-time apprentice, he had higher priorities right now. While he would have loved nothing more than to rebuild the smithy one more time and teach the lad a trade, it just wasn't in the cards.

"I'm sorry, Niko," Simon said as he left the village.

With any luck, the young man wouldn't fall in amongst a bad element like he had last time. As long as his mother's health held up, he could make enough to support them both as a fisherman or a laborer. As he looked up to the silhouette of the volcano that was only visible in the way that it blotted out the stars behind it, Simon reminded himself he had much bigger concerns than any one man.

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