Chapter 63: A Little Mistake
The answer proved to be zero, as it turned out. Without magic, he might have lost all of his digits, of course, but with a few applications of lesser healing, Simon was able to turn all his toes and even his blue and black nose back to a healthy pink color. That was great, of course, because he was fairly certain he would have hit the reset button and started this run-over if he had to cut his own nose off. That was too disgusting for words.
The home he’d chosen to spend the night in had no bodies, but it had plenty of meat and vegetables that were suffering from only a little freezer burn. The fact that they were edible after he turned them into a stew that he’d let simmer for hours while he soaked in the heat from the small cookfire only proved that this had happened recently.
“But why now, though,” he asked himself as he took another bite.
If Helades had truly wanted to stop this tragedy, couldn’t she have had the portal open up in the moments before the mage had completed his experiment? That frozen look of panic flashed unbidden in front of Simon’s face as he contemplated the moment.
Clearly, the man had just enough time to figure out the fact that he’d screwed something important up to run away. So why couldn’t Helades have sent Simon here at that moment, or even ten minutes before, to do what he’d just done before everyone else who lived in this town had paid the price?
“At least some people got away,” he said to himself, poking the fire absent-mindedly before taking another bite of his mushroom and mutton stew.
It wasn’t as good as Freya would have made, he decided for the dozenth time, but he instantly forced the thought out of his head before he allowed his mind to wander to all the painful places an errant thought like that could lead.
After his somber, tasteless dinner, he searched the small two-room hut twice for alcohol but found none. So, he decided to go to bed early. He’d cleared this level as far as he was concerned, but he still wanted a day or two to poke around and see what could be learned from this mage’s mistake.
. . .