Unfortunately, despite how simple his new cottage was, it wouldn't be something he could move into until the spring, but that didn't stop Simon from working on everything else. His mine continued to churn out silver to the men who worked for him, and then from there, it found half a hundred ways into Ordanvale's economy, at least until harvest time.

When that got close, his labor pool dried up overnight, but that was fine. Despite all of his hard work, he had almost no silver to show for it. He'd used the intervening months to make many strange orders to a variety of traveling merchants for all the tools he'd need to occupy him for the winter.

He purchased a variety of metals to test, and the tools to draw them into wire. He'd obtained a variety of gemstones for similar reasons, along with dyes, pigments, paper, blank tomes, and even a high-quality glass mirror so that he could read his notes better.

Such purchases, in a vacuum, might have been suspicious to some, so he also obtained canvas and the materials to make oil paints. It had been a long time since he'd done a real art project, and the mural he started on the wall of the tavern along the main square to venerate the city's absentee landlord Earl of Greyden, which was a name that sounded more familiar than it should, even if he couldn't quite place it.

Simon started the project to allay suspicion about how much more prosperous the town had become in the last year. After all, how could a noble doubt the success caused by their own hard work of doing nothing at all? So Simon decided a nice vanity mural was in order. He painted the mountains, and an idealized version of the town nestled in them, surrounded by bountiful fields and flocks of sheep.

He'd planned to put the man in the middle of the background, lording over everything, very benevolent and very far away, where he belonged. Simon didn't care if he got the credit, so long as he stayed away.

However, that all changed when the man finally visited, and Simon finally got a look at the man so he could see his face. The Earl smiled and shook his hand. Simon even smiled back, but in that smile, he saw something from a life centuries before. He saw the man who'd ambushed Baron Corwin and the other Barons that served him in the lead up to Brin's civil war. He'd even murdered Simon in that life, though Simon was less concerned about that than his generally duplicitous nature.

Just like that, he was happier than ever that he'd cheated this man out of his share of the mine's wealth. Simon played nice as long as he was there. He introduced himself as a mercenary from the south who liked to dabble in art.

It wasn't exactly his most convincing disguise, but then, the nobleman didn't care. He sat for Simon, so that he could sketch the man's portrait, but Simon could see from the first moment how uninterested he was.

Once the Earl left town, a few days later, Simon changed his plan, but only slightly. He'd already gone to the trouble to paint the rest of the mural, and the residents of the town were clearly looking forward to seeing it finished. So, he didn't disappoint them. Instead of making it a pure vanity project, he made it a slightly subversive piece of propaganda.

The Earl's face was no longer benevolent, and Simon didn't paint his arms as outstretched and welcoming, but as reaching toward the town. He painted the main raining silver coins down on the people… well, at least that was what he would say he'd painted if anyone asked. What he did instead was change the expressions of everyone, looking in the direction of that coin cascade, making them look ever so slightly sad as the Earl drew their wealth away with his outstretched hand.

Simon had no idea what effect such small changes would have. Truthfully, a revolution would be inconvenient for him now. It could spawn a whole series of side quests when he was supposed to be waiting another decade and a half for a certain volcano to erupt. Still, he couldn't help it. The memory of the man left too bad of a taste in his mouth, and Simon knew exactly what sort of opportunist he'd be the moment there was war or strife.

Maybe I should see if his sons are worth salvaging and then find some subtle way to bump him off, he mused as he finished the picture.

No one ever commented on his changes, which were to the good, since he didn't want to have to fight a war or lead a rebellion. Still, he enjoyed the little details whenever he walked through the square, especially the fact that his silver mine was right where the top button on the man's jacket was. It felt like a fine bit of symmetry.

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In the winter, he kept the mine going, but at a much slower pace than in the warmer seasons. This was largely because they'd only managed to stack up enough cords of wood before the harvest to run it for part of the winter. Simon wasn't concerned, and by this point, he'd largely passed off his duties to his foreman, Ennis.

Ennis worried they'd tap out the mine soon, but Simon assured him that there was nothing to worry about. "There's other minerals nearly as valuable out there in the mountains. Train your replacement well, because when it warms up, we'll be out there starting something new."

Mostly, once it got cold, Simon worked on his magical experiments, only venturing from the village to do some killing if someone reported monster activity or a particularly aggressive wolfpack.

Every day, he pretended to be another member of the community and helped people in the community with various projects. It was only at night when he closed his shutters and worked on what really mattered.

He designed a blade with selective runes depending on how he held it. He designed a wand that would cast its spells from a charged stone rather than from his own lifespan. He sketched out dozens of small things he could use to make his life easier.

He didn't make all of those things, of course. He would do that when he had his own private cottage and small forge well outside of town. For now, he only designed interesting things; the only actual artifact he worked on over the course of the winter was the rough draft of the orb that he planned to use to shut down the eruption at Mount Karkosia.

He'd still show up with fire-resistant armor and a sword that could channel cold just in case, though, but they would be plan B. He'd died in that place, every way he cared to, and had no wish to recover from a shattered spine again.

This time, his plan was a simple one. He was going to drop a bomb, the same way his doppelgänger did. Evil Simon threw in something that was hot enough to light the volcano off. He was going to throw in something to turn all that heat into cold.

He knew it was possible. He'd done it with armor before, and doing it with the orb was even easier. It was like working with a sheet of paper that continued on all directions, so you could draw lines without crossing over each other.

In his case, he planned to cast the thing in ceramic and make a silver-infused glaze to survive the extreme temperatures, but for now, he was just using ink on wood. It didn't look like much to the uninitiated, and if anyone noticed it, he could say it was an art project or a map of the night sky. He rarely had guests in his simple one-room apartment, but those that he did have wouldn't know the difference.

Line by line, he worked it out. He'd need materials that could stand up to greater words, but he was testing those, too. Originally, he planned to make it steal heat to power runes of distant cold. He'd almost worked out the design of that when he realized that the thing would have one terrible problem: if it cooled everything it touched, it would quickly insulate itself and before nothing but a rocky ice cube in the flaming caldera.

"For it to work, it needs to be exposed to heat," Simon muttered as he sanded away some of the lines to try again.

His second draft was better. This time, he didn't plan to use direct heat to power it. He planned to use the area of heat and radiate cold as distant diffuse cold. While that still meant that someday it would become an ice cube, it would really be more like an iceberg, and that was all he really wanted. Something that size would keep a lid on things and keep the volcano nice and sedate, which was all he wanted.

Adding that many extra runes complicated his design, but it was doable, even on a small sphere, and let him practice his calligraphy quite a bit, which he appreciated. Simon was almost done with the prototype of this project one night when he made one crucial error.

He'd drawn the thing in great detail, but intentionally kept the power runes separated from the effect runes so as not to cause any mishaps. One dribble of ink from his quill later, Simon almost had a serious mishap.

As the ink drooled down the side of the thing, he caught it and wiped it away with his finger. Even as he did so, though, he froze, not because of the cold, but because of a memory.

Even if he connected every rune on this thing, he didn't think it could instantly freeze him fast enough to stop it, but he had seen an orb that could, once upon a time, and for just an instant, the similarities were eerie.

Simon remembered finding that metal orb. He remembered the building and the town they were in. He even remembered how close it was to the temple he ultimately left through, and though that place was hundreds of miles and years away from where he was right now, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the memory of it. It seemed too close a parallel to be a coincidence. He was even on the third floor, just like the man who'd actually frozen his home.

Lost in thought, Simon didn't work on anything else for the rest of the night. In fact, he didn't work on anything else that might hurt anyone for the rest of the winter. He still theorized and made notes, but the idea that some experiment of his might go berserk because of a single drop of ink and kill a dozen people whose only crime was living too close to him was too much for his conscience to bear.

"Just imagine how much a mistake like that could cost you if you summoned a demon," Simon chastised himself on a regular basis after that. Every time he screwed something up when he was working on a new project, he imagined that he was dragged to hell as a result. It did an excellent job of making him more careful.

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