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It took three days to reach the ridge of the mountain in a low place, and as much as he wanted to try summiting it, he was forced to acknowledge that he simply wasn’t in the right shape for it right now. Simon mentally added that to his bucket list as he made his way down the other side.

On the way down, he found a boulder that afforded him a view of the next valley. Though he still had a long way to go through the pine trees and almost certainly a few more cold nights in his bedroll, he could see a river, and beyond it, he could see the thin brown line of a road, which instantly became his new goal.

Simon didn’t sleep well in the nights that followed because he heard the distant screech of what he thought was an owlbear somewhere in the woods. The cries were enough to make him worry, but the thing never actually found him. Instead, he reached the river with nothing but a growing hunger and spent half a day casting into the water a very primitive fishing pole to solve that problem despite his aversion to fish.

He wanted to cross it, but the thing was raging, and he’d have to go somewhere up or down river to find a better spot to ford it. While he sat there catching fat trout that he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to eat, he saw a man with a pair of horses leading a wagon down the muddy road.

Simon would have loved to ask the man for directions, but given the noise of the river between them, that was impossible. Instead, Simon merely waved while the man looked at him strangely.

“Probably not a lot of random fishermen just hanging out in fantasy land,” he nodded.

That afternoon, Simon ate well, and despite the flashbacks that the smoky fish gave him to the beach at Ionar, he enjoyed the white, flaky flesh and reluctantly took seafood off of his ‘never eat again’ list. Then he moved far from the smells of food before making camp for the night in case the owlbear showed up.

The following day, it took hours to find a good place to cross the river, and he still almost went for a swim more than once on the slick stones of the shallow section. Things were better after that, and he opted to go right when he reached the road on the fire shore. However, even with all the time that it took, he still wasn’t entirely dry by the time he caught up with that wagon hours later.

He never should have caught up to it, of course, not at his walking speed. But the thing\'s rear wheels had been sucked deep into the muck, and the man seemed unable to free himself.

“I don’t have much,” the man said when he noticed him. “I’m just on my way back to the village and don’t want no trouble.” Given how nervous he was, he obviously thought that Simon was a bandit when he approached, but Simon just waved off the man’s concerns with a smile.

“It’s cool,” Simon assured him. “Everything is cool. Let’s just get you unstuck from the mud. We’ll do this on three.”

That’s almost all it took. A few hard shoves and the thing was free and clear in a few minutes. What had been a man stuck for hours was ended with only the minorest of interventions. It was enough to make him think about all the little nudges he’d been giving history with Heledes’ help.

After that, the man offered Simon a lift, and he gladly took it. Just because he needed the exercise didn’t mean he wanted more, and he’d already been walking for days. “I appreciate the help,” the Merchant told him. “The name is Ennis, by the way, and I’m sorry I got the wrong idea. I just… well, you don’t see many men around here with a sword on their hip unless they mean to use it.”

“Who says I don’t mean to use it?” Simon said with a laugh. “I just hunt goblins and the like for coin. There’s no need to be a brigand when there are so many other ways to make money.”

“Aye,” the man agreed. “Maybe you could take time out of your day to teach the rest of the highwaymen that. They’re worse than ever this year. I had to pay three tolls just to get this far if you can believe it.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Simon let the man gripe about the area and slowly began to flesh out the area that he was in.

It turned out that he was in the mountainous Kingdom of Charia, which was to the east of the Kingdoms of Brin and Montain. Though he’d spent more time in the latter, this place didn’t feel so terribly different. The mountains in the distance seemed a little taller, and the man’s accent was a touch thicker, but it all still felt familiar enough. That meant that the nearest big city to him was Adonan, which meant he was somewhere near the werewolf level and the level where a certain masquerade party went horribly wrong.

It was interesting. He didn’t have his map in front of him, and if he had a mirror, he wouldn’t have taken a look with the skittish merchant looking over his shoulder. Still, it felt like he was sort of in the middle of three countries. He hadn’t quite figured out their size, but he could imagine himself being somewhere near the center of France, Germany, and Spain, or whatever country it was that was south of Germany. Until very recently, he’d had zero interest in geography.

Now, he didn’t have a choice. It would also seem that he didn’t have a choice in dealing with Bandits because after they turned a corner, Simon could see three men loafing by the roadside who were obviously up to no good.

“See what I mean,” Ennis sighed. “How’s a man supposed to make a living when everyone wants a cut.”

“Them?” Simon smirked. “You leave them to me.”

He waited until they got close and began their spiel about money to protect and maintain the road when Simon stood up and said, “Sorry boys, I already hijacked this wagon. You go and get your own.”

“You… what?” the talker said. “Listen, we get a cut of every cart that comes through here, I don’t care who owns it. The boss says that—”

“Well, then I shouldn’t be talking to you then, should I. I should be talking to your boss. Get him out here.”

“Your funeral,” the weaselly man smirked before yelling, “Boss! We got trouble!”

The man that came out of the underbrush was a head taller than Simon, and every inch of him, from his scowling face to his bulging girth, said he was nothing but a brute and a bully. Truthfully, he’d been planning on solving this as peacefully as possible with a little intimidation, but he could see that any attempts at that would be impossible.

So, he didn’t bother to try. Instead, despite the smirk on the other man’s face, Simon said, “You’ve got about three seconds to get your goons out of my face and let us on your way, or there’s going to be real trouble here.”

“Trouble?” The man laughed, casually holding a bastard sword that probably weighed twice what Simon’s did. “What the hells do you think you’re on about. You’re the one who’s—”

Simon didn’t even wait for the man to finish. Instead, he drew his sword and brought it down hard in an exaggerated overhand chop that gave the man all the time in the world to get his sword up to block. It was a terrible move. It would put Simon off balance, and even as he recovered, the bigger man’s sword would come down and probably take a head or an arm if he was any good.

That’s what should have happened, of course. Instead, Simon muttered, “Oonbetit,” just before he struck, sending a line of pure force through the man like a spectral guillotine. The result was cinematic if nothing else.

All of the onlookers saw the two swords strike each other before Simon split the man in two, from stem to stern. That wasn’t what happened, though. In truth, the man had already been split apart before that ever happened and fell apart into two clean halves. It was a messy thing and not at all how he wanted it to go, but it wasn’t like he had a choice.

The result was shock and fear. Even the horses made shrill noises of displeasure, and Ennis had to wrangle them in.

“So are you going to let us by now, or are more people going to have to die,” Simon said in an annoyed tone as he flicked the blood clean from his blade.

He might be acting confident, but he was nervous as hell. If all these people drew on him, he was going to need fire or lightning to keep Ennis from getting killed in the ensuing fight, and then he’d be a warlock to everyone the man talked to forever more.

That isn’t what happened, though. Instead, Simon took out the biggest dude, and everyone else freaked out. A couple looked at each other, trying to gauge the amount of support they might have if they attacked Simon, but as soon as the first man turned and ran, most of the rest of them soon followed, leaving him the wagon and a bisected corpse all alone on the road.

Simon sighed. “I’m sorry you had to see that; things can get ugly sometimes out here.”

The merchant nodded mutely as Simon dragged both sides of the body off the road by the man’s boots and helped himself to the bandit leader’s coin purse. They were a few miles down the road when Ennis finally asked, “So, are you hijacking me then? Are you really going to—”

“What?” Simon blurted out in surprise. “No. I was just trying to bluff my way past without bloodshed. That’s all.”

“You seem pretty good at bloodshed to me,” the merchant said quietly.

Simon nodded but said nothing. Truthfully, he was too good at bloodshed and wished he was better at solving situations like that without resorting to violence. However, if he had to choose between an innocent man and a bad man, the bad man was going down every time.

The two of them rode together for two days, and when they reached the next village, Ennis waited for Simon to leave the wagon to see about buying supplies before the man took off as quick as he could. By the time Simon returned with a loaf of bread to share for lunch, Ennis was half a mile down the road.

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Simon said, wondering what he should do now.