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believed that he truly did exist, a living repository for all the magickal knowledge that had ever existed.
    The name of the legend was Ignatius Hallow, and Simeon had traveled long and far to finally find him.
    Standing on English soil, in the pouring rain, the forever man looked upon the ruins of the castle he had been directed to, and felt the beginnings of despair.
    “How can this be?” he asked the foul elements, as he stumbled through the mud toward the ruins.
    In a tavern in the town of York he had met an old man whose neck had been broken but he still managed to be alive. Those in the tavern whispered that this one was so insane that neither God nor the Devil wanted him, and they had sent him back to the world. They also said that the man with the twisted neck knew things—dark secrets that he would share for a price.
    That had been good to know, for Simeon had need of such information.
    By its appearance, the castle had been taken a long time ago, in some long-forgotten conflict that had caused its battlements to fall. There was not a sign of life to be found.
    Simeon snarled as the realization that he’d been had began to sink in. He and the insane old man had made a deal: the first digit of his little finger from his right hand in exchange for the whereabouts of the legendary magick user. A bizarre price to pay, but it was what the man with the broken neck had demanded for his services. The madman had said that he could see the remnants of many years in Simeon’s eyes, which made him—as well as pieces of him—so very special.
    The eternal man could still hear the old-timer’s cackle as he wondered aloud whether perhaps Simeon had been discarded by Heaven and Hell as he himself had been.
    Simeon stared down at the bloody bandage wrapped around his hand. He could feel it throbbing with the angry beat of his heart as what had been cut away slowly, painfully, grew back.
    Looking out over the ruins as he was assaulted by wind and rain, Simeon debated his next course of action. There was a part of him that wished to continue on his way, wandering to the next location, hoping for a piece of forbidden knowledge to add to his growing arsenal.
    Or he could return to the tavern in York, for a piece of the twisted old man.
    The wind pushed him even closer to what remained of the forgotten castle’s walls, as if the elements were urging him to be certain that the madman had indeed been wrong. He was about to step back, to prepare himself for the long trek to York, when the ground in front of him began to churn.
    At first he believed it to be a trick of his eyes, the way the heavy rain pelted the muddy patches of exposed earth, but he quickly came to realize that wasn’t the case at all.
    The vines, their bodies as fat as the thickest rope, and covered in large thorns that looked as though they could strip the flesh from his body, erupted from the saturated ground in a writhing tangle. Simeon managed to throw himself back, away from the thorn-covered tendrils, only to have another patch of the virulent growth explode from the ground behind him. Everywhere he looked the ground churned, and more of the serpentine vines grew, reaching for him, ensnaring him in their constricting embrace.
    Simeon screamed as the thorns dug into his skin, tearing it through his garments. The tentacle-like growths held him tight, and began to squeeze the life from his body.
    The more he struggled, the tighter the vines became, until his bones began to snap like pieces of dry wood.
    Simeon’s screams filled the night, diminishing to little more than a pathetic whine as his blood flowed, watering the hellish vegetation. He was waiting for the inevitable death that would not hold, when through a darkened stone doorway in the ruins of the castle something appeared and began to move toward him.
    The man was tall and of indiscriminate age, clad in robes that seemed to be cut from the fabric of night. He leaned on a staff as he slowly