Simon charged through the knots of people on the road where he couldn’t run around them, outrunning the insults and the e even before he could really hear them. None of that mattered. There was no time for politeness. While part of him hoped this was a false arm, the rest of him was sure this was an emergency, and he charged heedlessly toward it.

  He wasn’t thinking about how, if he failed, he could do this all again. He wasn’t thinking about the hundreds of hours he’d spent making the perfect tools for this enter. He wasn’t even thinking about saving Ionar, not really. He’d like to, of course, but that was sedary to something even more important: finding out what in the fuck was going on.

  Right now, all he could think about was that damn paper and those mog hat monopolized his mind as his legs rose and fell and his lungs began to strain. Normally, it would take him half an hour to walk up the steep street that led past the pad to the uppermost reaches of the city. This time, he did it ihan five.

  Even before he reached the end of the street, he could see someone up ahead, where the wide streets with their dark paving stouro a narroath that led up to the stratle shrine half the volo. The fact that whoever it was that there had gone past ahat made sense so te in the day only deepened his certainty that he’d been right to throw caution to the wind. Whatever happened was going to happen right now.

  That gave him the motivation to keep pushing himself, and he made it to the trail before the other man made it to the altar. After that, he had to move a little slower, but he went as fast as he could. By the time Simon reached his quarry, though, it was too te. Well, it might have been; he wasn’t sure.

  The man had produced a dark orb, and then, after a little fidgeting, the thing began to glow. First, there were dull e lines, but then, gradually, they began brightening to a violent yellow. That light was bright enough to reveal some familiar designs to Simon as well as make him wind shade his eyes.

  “Stop… Whatever you’re doing… ”Simon gasped, pletely out of breath.

  The man ignored him and iossed it up in the air. Simon fumbled with the words of force to slice the thing into pieces, but by the time he got them out, the man must have used a simir spell because it rocketed into the air and toward the caldera, making his spell miss entirely. Instead of being dashed to pieces, the thing arced high into the air and over the top of the caldera, where it disappeared from sight.

  Well, irely. The man was wearing a dark cloak, and the gust that came with a spell that had so much force behind it blew the man's hood back, revealing the that Aikos mentiohat was enough to make him ready another spell. This time, he’d use lightning to smite the man, and then…

  That resolution failed, and the words died on his lips as the strauro face him, and Simon saw that it was indeed himself. Well, someohat looked a lot like him, for sure. The face was a little older, the hair was a little longer, and the smile was a little more malicious, but all the other details… well, the man was even wearing the same sword that Simon was so used to.

  “Well, look who it is,” the other Simon said with a knowing smile. “I didn’t expect to see you quite so soon; we grow up so fast, don’t we?”

  “What did you just do?” Simon asked, ign the bait.

  “Me? I just started a thermal cascade event that will dump a lot of fire into this old mountain and wake up some friends,” the other Simon said, willingly giving away his pn in a way that made Simon very unfortable. The vilin typically didn’t do that uhey were lying or unless you had no way to stop them. “You could charge in after it, of course. You might even mao save the city if you wanted.”

  “Why wouldn’t I want that?” Simon asked. That’s the whole point!

  “You think that’s the point of the Pit?” the other man asked, openly ughing now. “That’s very nearly the opposite of the point. Not everyone be saved, Simon, no matter what you do. It’s impossible.”

  “Maybe,” Simon agreed, “But how many more people o die just because you o blow up a volo?”

  “Trust me,” the other Simon said with a small shake of his head. “The world is better off without Ionar. This event disrupts trade throughout the world! You’ve seen the pgues. How much worse do you think they’ll be with more ships going here and there and everywhere.”

  “So you’re just like Hedes,” Simon spat. “You—”

  “Do not use that bitch’s name so casually,” the other Simon shht back. “Fuck Hedes and the horse she road in on. She’s a devil in disguise, man. I don’t want her pn, and I don’t want yours either.”

  “But this doesn’t make any sense,” Simon protested, still struggling with all of this. “The volo has always exploded on this level, and if I … if you were always the cause, then why would the portal even e here. There wouldn’t even be a problem if I wasn’t i!”

  “All good questions,” the other Simon smiled. “But all beside the point. The Pit doesn’t have to make se never has, and it never will. It’s not a puzzle that be solved. It's just a waste heap. A ic fug meat grinder.”

  Simon didn’t believe any of that, of course. He didn’t uand half of the rules in the pce, but so far he didn’t see anything that vioted them. Well, nothing happened until I found myself, he corrected himself. Until now, it had just been a matter of learning and preparing, but this… He wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  Another version of him from the future or some alterimeline or any other bullshit like that seemed unlikely, but what did that leave? Would an enemy mage have enough knowledge of where he’d be to fuck with him? Could it be a devil escaped from hell? Some sort of crazy mimic or doppelg?nger. He had no clue, and it pissed him off. He’d spent months preparing and years waiting. He’d e here to fight a god-damned volo, which was crazy enough. The st thing he needed was ara dollop of madness on top, like the cherry on the world's most i magma Sunday.

  Still, he set all of that aside and said, “Look, there’s still time to stop this. If you didn’t wao stop it, you would have already killed me, or—”

  “Stop it, you say, what an iing proposal,” the other Simon smiled. “And tell me, what would you stop it with? Maybe a ve sword of ice? Perhaps some armor ade for the occasion?”

  A chill went down Simon’s spi the mockery. This asshole really did know everything. Or, maybe he didn’t, he realized, looking again at the . Maybe that thing has some crazy magic that lets him read my mind, and this is all some kind of put on…

  The other Simon didn’t react to that thought. Instead, he tinued, pretending to look around as if he were missing something.

  “Only, I don’t see it anywhere up here. You didn’t really run off half-cocked and leave all that home, did you?” the other Simon taunted, making Simon ball up his fists in anger. “That would be embarrassing. Running all the a mountain, walking back down to get your shit together, and then walking all the way back up while…”

  He paused as a distant rumble somewhere deep in the mountain made itself known. “Well, you know.”

  “If I stop the asshole that causes the eruption, then I don’t he armor to fight the volo, now, do I,” Simon said defensively.

  “Well, that’ ship has sailed,” the other Simon smirked. “You could try to kill me, but… well, that would just be murder, wouldn’t it.”

  Simon was tired. He was tired from the run, and he was tired of the mind games and the new crazy he kept disc. More than any of that, though, at this moment, he was tired of the moral bullshit. He wasn’t a superhero, and this wasn’t an aremesis that o be arrested so he could just escape and kill more people. This was a murderer that detonated a mountain, and if he was responsible for this in every run… well… he had more blood on his hands than Simon ever would, and there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with killing him.

  “Vrazig,” Simon whispered, aiming to kill this asshole as quickly as possible. That’s not what happehough. Instead, the lightning arced briefly around his target before it fizzled and faded.

  “Lightning, huh?” the other Simon said. “Not a bad choice. Fast, deadly, and effit. It's not going to work ohough. I… well, if you haven’t met the whisperers yet, you will. Maybe after that, you’ll uand.”

  “How…” Simon demaorween wanting to know what in the hell was happening and drawing his dagger to stab this guy before there were any more surprises.

  “You’ll see. One day. That’s not what matters right now, though. What you should be g abht now isn’t me. It’s your armor. You still keep it in the same spot, don’t you?” the other version of him said with a smile. Then, he began to whisper something under his breath.

  Simon tensed. Should he sh out at the man again? Could it really be that he was fighting himself or some alternate version of himself? He wasn’t sure. Before he could be sure about anything, though, something familiar appeared in front of him. It was his herb chest and several feet of the floor underh it. It just popped ience. One sed, there was nothing, and the , well, it just was.

  Simon looked from that back to the face of the other version of himself, trying to determine how this was even possible, but he had no answers. Greater and Distant definitely had to be used, he thought to himself, but is there a way to say Trahat causes actual fug teleportation?

  The man before him obviously had some tricks that Simon had not yet ceived. He didn’t seem like he was about to use them to strike Simon dowher. Instead, he stood there with a shit-eating grin on his fabsp;

  “Pretty coht?” the other Simon said to himself. “Don’t worry, you’ll learn how to do that one day, I’m sure. We usually do. We…”

  The other Simon’s words trailed off as the volbled deeply, and the sound of a miion took pewhere deep inside of it. Whatever this man had do was starting.

  “You ’t be me,” Simon said finally. “I would never do something like this.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself for someone who still has a lot to learn,” the other Simon said smugly. “You haven’t even found the mazes yet or the queen. Talk to me again when you get past level 50.”

  “Why would I cause a disaster?” Simon shot back. “Specifically, why would I cause this disaster? The people of Ionar have been very kind. I would never—”

  Simon stopped speaking as the other version of him started to t again. “Oo!” This time, he punched out with a word of force that took the form of a fist, hoping to knock the man out before he could do anything else.

  This time, his spell wasn’t dissipated by whatever mystery teique the whisperers used, but only because the other Simon was gone before the blow nded. Instead, it struck the stone behind where he’d been standing, fracturing the hard igneous rock. The volbled again in sympathy to the blow aed again louder this time. Whatever happened, it was… well, it was happening.

  “What the fuck is going on,” Simon muttered to himself as he looked up at the rising smoke, then down at the piece of his floor that held his armor. “Am I really going to do this?”