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He needed to get back on task. He needed to go deeper. There was nothing here for him.

That was what he told himself as he let the horse free once he stopped on the road not so far from his destination, but he still thought about it on that miserable climb all the way back up to the top. None of those insistences to his brain kept him from thinking about it the whole way back, though.

It was ironic because he’d hoped to find some comfort, but instead, he’d only found new things to feel guilty about, and they followed him all the way to the gate, which led to the end of the world. It was here he got his priorities straight as he watched the volcano erupt in the background and saw the people streaming toward the sea.

He’d love to know what he was supposed to do here. Maybe even more than the jungle level. He simply had no idea what it was supposed to entail. Fight the volcano? Save all of the people? Save just one person?

“Who fucking knows,” he signed as he watched another round of volcanic bombs launch in the sky and reign down as he turned toward the palace and the portal it contained. “I mean, I could try to get a bunch of these people to follow me through there. But right now, it leads to… where?”

He wasn’t sure. The owl bear level was gone because he’d saved the kids. At least, he was pretty sure that was why it was gone. He’d killed the troll, too, so if that was enough to solve the bridge, then that put him in what? The gateway to hell, he realized.

Yeah, he definitely wasn’t taking anyone to that level until he figured it out. Maybe one day, if he still hadn’t solved this particular riddle, he could find a nice safe level to send all these refugees to. Well, safer, he corrected himself.

What he needed to do was ignore this spot for now and go deeper. Maybe he could try talking with that demon for once and see if he could wring any new ideas out of it. The man seemed much more knowledgeable and marginally more helpful than the mirror, so it had to be worth a try, right?

It was the sensible thing to do, but as Simon walked up the long curving street of the island toward the slowly advancing lava, he realized he wasn’t entirely interested in being sensible. He was lost, confused, and almost completely overwhelmed, which made him more than a little pissed off.

He paused there, just before the turnoff to the castle steps, as he watched the lava slowly advance toward him. It was moving slower than walking speed, so he had all the time in the world to avoid it, but suddenly, he realized he didn’t want to. He wanted to do something about this. He was sick to death of always saying he’d come back to this or that later.

Then he remembered that the frost sword was still on his belt. It wasn’t something that could stop the volcano or anything, of course, but the flickering things he could see through the heat shimmer of the lava? It might be able to do something about those, and maybe that would be enough for him to get a clue.

The lava got closer as he looked around the street and started to formulate a plan. This was stupid and foolish, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t feel like spending another three months building a set of fireproof armor to give him a better shot. He just wanted some clue of what was going on.

Getting burned by fire so hot that it could burn away his nerve endings in moments probably wouldn’t hurt too bad. Probably.

That thought made him grip his sword tighter as he cast a protection from fire spell on himself. He wasn’t sure how well it would work or how long it would last, but hey - after this, he would know, right?

Simon walked up to the edge of the lava to see, and though it felt warm, it didn’t seem lethally hot like it should be. He wasn’t about to touch it to find out, though. Instead, he used a word of lesser force to spring as high as he could on the nearest building, and then scrambled his way to the top.

From up there, he had a better view of the ash-choked town and the flickering forms dancing on the surface of the spreading lava, but for now, he ignored them and focused on jumping from rooftop to rooftop to get close enough to study one, or even do some damage.

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He found his first fire elemental that was close enough to see devouring the contents of someone’s home the next street over. He considered using magic on it, but given how much he was relying on that for his survival, he opted to try his sword instead.

The thing was a mass of embers in the vaguest shape of a man, and when Simon crashed through the window of the cliff-top home, it barely even noticed him because it was too busy turning the contents of the room to ash.

At least, that was the case until he brought his sword down in an overhead chop. For a moment, it seemed like he was just waving the steaming blade through the fire, but then suddenly, the coals went cold, and the flaming outline of a person ceased to be with a silent scream as physical parts of its body fell lifeless to the floor.

That didn’t put out all the other fires in the room, of course. They continued to burn, and Simon fled them as quickly as he could, refreshing his protection spell. He repeated this several times, but it was only when he’d killed the four fire elementals that were reachable that he turned his gaze to the plaza full of lava and saw it walking toward him.

Though the creature seemed somewhat related to the fire elementals he’d just killed, that was all the two monsters had in common. This thing was a two-story wall of dripping magma in the vague shape of a man. Every part of it radiated fire except for its eyes. The were wells of bottomless darkness set above a melting face that was fixed in a crude expression of overflowing rage.

Even as it fixated on Simon and started stomping in his direction, he yelled, “Dnarth Gelthic,” launching a javelin of pure, smoking liquid nitrogen at the thing with the distant ice command.

The projectile was half evaporated by the time it reached it, but that was okay. Simon was already shouting the word again. He uttered the command over and over, and each impact slowed the thing’s advance a little, turning part of its skin until cold, hard stone.

The thing launched volleys of fire at him as well, but they were fairly easy to dodge, and he took cover behind broken walls and the few pillars that were still standing. Through all that, he managed to refresh his protection from fire again. Some part of him felt like it was a waste, but it was a necessary evil. Where he was standing, it was hundreds of degrees, and without that clever piece of magic, he probably would have already been cooked through instead of just sweating like a pig.

Eventually, after a dozen casts that left Simon’s voice raw and his body exhausted, the thing froze into place. The fact that it didn’t disappear or crumble to dust like its smaller cousins and the fact that its now frozen eyes still glowed with dull rage made Simon worry that this wasn’t over yet, but it wasn’t until the rocky layer that entombed the thing exploded like a grenade sending obsidian shrapnel everywhere, that he realized how far from over this was.

The thing was basically untouched, and that was as impressive as it was terrifying.

“What in the fuck,” Simon rasped as he watched the thing glower at him. Before it finally unleashed hell.

Until now, it had merely bombarded him with fire spells that weren\'t much bigger than the frost javelins that he’d been using. Now, it conjured a firestorm with a roar that was loud enough to shake the precarious building he was standing on before it set the world ablaze.

“Gelthic Uuvellum,” he shouted. Ice barrier. For a terrible moment, he almost got it backward and called for a fire barrier that would have done less than nothing against the blast that was coming for him, but he didn’t, and a several feet thick wall of ice sprang into existence on either side of him.

Simon knew that they needed to move, but where. His back was to the cliffs, and the lava dominated the world on all sides of him. Against something that could toss around so much magical energy like this, his only hope was to be a moving target. He couldn’t move, though. He was out of rocks and buildings to leap to, and his protection from fire was fading. He needed to pause long enough to refresh that spell, but this monstrosity was giving him no time to recover.

Already, his shield was engulfed in flames on both sides from the sheer power of the blast directed at him, and he could see the foot-thick wall of ice sublimating to steam as it thinned before his eyes. Despite that, he struggled to think about what he should do next.

He knew it was a bad idea, but he still shouted, “Gervuul Gelthic Uuvellum.” He immediately tasted of blood and ashes in his mouth as he blew out his throat. In the long run, that meant he was fucked, but he didn’t worry about that just now. As far as deaths went, this wouldn’t be so bad.

The words of power rippled out, not as an ice wall but as a spear and a bridge, countering the massive blast of fire that had been turned against Simon for the last half minute. To his complete surprise, the spell was enough to overwhelm the fire, at least for a moment, and reach his enemy, momentarily freezing it into place.

He knew that reprieve wouldn’t last long, though. Already, it was melting, and when it broke free again, he’d be right back where he started. The realization of just how small his window of opportunity was, was enough to force him into action. He hopped over the remains of his wall and ran toward his fiery, glowing opponent with every ounce of strength he had left.

Taking it out at the cost of his life would be a fine trade, he decided as he raised his icy sword high. He never got there, though. The thing redoubled its fire, drowning Simon in a sea of flames as his sword fell limply from his burning fingertips.

As it turned out, being burned alive hurt worse than he could have possibly imagined, at least for a moment. His exposed skin charred instantly, and his hair and clothing burst into flames. None of those were as bad as what happened when he opened his mouth and inhaled to cast another spell.

His lungs cooked almost instantly, and he pitched forward off his precarious perch into the lava. That was where he lost consciousness, and his final thought was of those terrible, malignant eyes that had burned into his soul. He’d learned something, though perhaps not enough to justify the unexpectedly agonizingly violent burst of pain.