Death After Death 179-182

Well, the promised week has arrived. We will now see Simon three days a week!

...but not this week I do not deliver three chapters. No, I deliver four! Merry Christmas! Please enjoy your bonus chapter in good health and holiday cheer!

Ch. 179 - Digging Deeper

Simon approached his assignment with great care. He looked at the book with suspicion from the first moment, and at first, he refused to even touch it. He was set up in a reading room that was thankfully free of bloodstains and body parts, but a brother of the Unspoken stayed with him and watched the whole time as he started his work. 

Simon tried using leather gloves to look through the book from arm's reach, but they were too clumsy. So, once he opened and inspected the cover, he eventually settled on a stiff piece of paper to turn the pages. It’s not really the way bookmarks are meant to be used, but whatever, he thought as he got to work. 

The thing was definitely a demonic text. That much he could determine even before he read the title. The whole thing reeked of sulfur, and though he had been assured that only living things had auras, he would have bet that this volume glowed darkly for those with the eyes to see. 

The first page was blank save for a few suspicious stains, and the second only bore the title Librium Malifica. Interestingly, no author was listed or even implied. That struck Simon as odd immediately because, from everything he’d seen, mages and warlocks were very vain and often took credit for everything, even things they hadn’t actually done. 

This book had none of that, though, despite the obvious care that had been taken in its creation. Instead, it was written by someone who stuck to the facts as they saw them and wrote only on hell, the devils that dwelled within it, and their machinations. 

‘There is only one end to the eternal cycle of reincarnation that we all face, and that is suffering in the great pits below,’ the book opened very clearly. ‘The devils know this. They know that in time they will get every man and woman that has ever lived, but they are impatient and will offer many boons to have a soul that much faster.’

Simon thought that was interesting since reincarnation didn’t seem to be an idea that most of the religions he’d read about ascribed to. It also happens to be halfway true, he noted, at least according to what Helades has told me. 

Even more than what the introduction said, though, he was struck by the illuminated illustrations in the margins. Though the writing of the book wasn’t especially beautiful, someone had obviously taken great care in its construction. The flames that bordered the page like an elaborate Celtic knot were done in gold leaf and made this tome feel more evil than any of the others he’d read to date. 

He continued, though, slowly, page by page, as he took in the words. Though early on, it described hell as endless in both size and depth, it eventually went on to categorize it into several sections and strata. There were then long-winded sections about what crimes were deserving of what punishment and who would end up where before going into graphic detail on exactly how they would be tortured for all eternity. 

If Simon hadn’t actually seen into hell already, he would have thought this was a bad rip off of Dante’s Inferno or some particularly angry part of the Bible. As it was, he couldn’t say for sure. He ended that first day without any answers, though at least he didn’t die in the process. 

Dying isn’t what I’m afraid of, though, he reflected as he watched the observer lock the book away in an iron-bound chest until he was ready to resume his reading of it tomorrow. 

The fact that the second reader had died in a spray of blood told him little, but the fact that the first man had left behind a limb told him much more. He was fairly sure that those people weren’t simply killed. He was pretty sure that the book had, in some way, dragged him to hell. He was also pretty damn sure that if he suffered the same fate, he might never get out. 

Helades magic had been content to let him stay a zombie for a year and a statue for a century. So, he didn’t think it likely that it would see the need to save him from a lifetime of eternal torment. 

The book did say that those torments would continue until there was nothing left of the soul but suffering, and that it was that mechanism that powered all of creation, which Simon thought was a fairly modern concept, even if it had used archaic and religious terms. In some ways, it resonated with what Helades said about the Pit, which unnerved him a little bit. He wasn’t a big believer in coincidences anymore. 

Could this have been written by my doppelganger? He wondered. It seemed foolish to blame everything he read on whoever that had been. There was no way he could anticipate Simon’s crusade against the centaurs and leave graffiti on the wall for him to find or write a whole book just for this moment. It was impossible. 

But what if he did? He asked himself. Simon was still no closer to understanding how this book had killed its previous readers after all. So far, it was just a normal book. It was prettier than average and a bit spookier, but otherwise, it might have been a religious text. 

That was what he fell asleep thinking about, and in the morning, he approached it with exactly the same level of caution he had the first day. Truthfully, he might have been even slower and more careful than he had been before. As the days went on, though, and he found no problems, he slowly grew less paranoid. It was human nature. He couldn’t stay on his highest level of alert for weeks on end. 

The briefings he had to give only made it worse. Every few days, he would be called into the office of an inquisitor and asked questions about his research. Simon would give short answers, and then his minder would confirm those answers, as if spending half a year untangling a religious scavenger hunt and biting off his own tongue to join the Unspoken wasn’t enough to show his loyalty. 

Each time, his answers were roughly the same. He told them how many pages he’d read, he noted the highlights, and he confirmed that he had yet to find anything suspicious. The book was certainly evil. It might even be true on some level, but as far as he could tell, it wasn’t magical. He had yet to read a single word of power in the thing, which was unusual because he knew for a fact that you needed those to bridge the way to hell and summon the creatures that dwelled there.  

Truthfully, Simon could only take so many passages like, ‘And if you summon Glathran’azusu, bring on to him one goblet of good wine mixed with the blood of a goat. For deals with him are most fortuitous when he has imbibed. After that, he will give you anything you ask for related to animals or fields, though his price is sometimes quite high.’

Each demon had a name, a domain, a symbol, and dozens of other details that were supposedly important to their summoning. Thanks to level thirteen, he knew that demon summoning was possible, but he never planned to try it out himself. 

It was in that lax, dismissive mood that he almost tripped a terrible trap. For the first week, he’d religiously used the bookmark to turn the pages. After that, he’d sometimes used his hand, but only very carefully. Today, he was reaching toward the edge to turn the page on Belthanrth and Vargarzeleth when he noted how the gilded patterns of flames on the edge of the page almost looked like a word of power. 

He knew that he was just seeing shapes in the clouds, as human minds tended to do. Despite that, though, his hand still stopped, fractions of an inch above the page, and refused to move further. Something told him that touching the paper was a bad idea, and he listened to it. 

Instead, he got paper and a quill and started sketching out the symbols that wrapped around all four sides of both pages. It was time-consuming with the materials he had, and he had to redraw them several times as he slowly but surely simplified them. It was enough that eventually, his minder took enough interest to finally ask, “What is it you think you’ve found?” 

Simon didn’t answer him. He didn’t stop until he’d revealed the truth. Then, his only response was to stare at the page in horror. What he’d just drawn was a summoning circle in miniature. This section was the invocation that connected the world to hell, that was the true name of the demon that had been listed on the page, and this was the point that would power it…

And the point that would power it was just about exactly where his hand had drifted to. Had he turned the page, he would have temporarily activated a runic structure that would have opened a book-sized portal to hell. The moment after he did that, he might just have been dragged through screaming. 

Real fear went through Simon for the first time in a long time. Compared to this, a dragon or a vampire was nothing, and he’d just found it and started reading it by accident while he was looking for a place to lay low and wait for a few years to go by so he could try things again with Elthena. 

“Hey, Ennis, you’re acting strange, what’s wrong?” his minder asked. 

Simon held up one finger, indicating for the man to wait, and then he used his bookmark to flip back through the last dozen pages. On every single one that listed the details of a particular demon, he found similar runes. In each case, they were patterned differently, and the contact point was at different points on the righthand margin, but it was always there somewhere, just waiting to be activated by the inadvertent touch of a human hand. 

And I touched several of them… he realized as his heart hammered in his chest. How many had he turned? Where had he touched the page? He couldn’t say for sure, but in that moment, he felt someone walk over his grave, and it was several seconds before he could calm his breathing enough to pick up the quill and write the minder a message. 

‘I figured it out,’ he wrote, not caring at all for once how ugly his handwriting came out. ‘This book is truly a fiendish trap.’

After that, he slammed the thing shut and vowed never again to open it again. Neither of them lingered in that room for long. Even before Simon could write a summary of what he’d discovered, he was taken to the familiar inquisitor to explain his findings. 

As he started to do so, in the older man’s office, the minder who had been Simon’s constant shadow for weeks was dismissed. Simon had a bad feeling about that but did nothing to continue to write. 

When the man finally read Simon’s description of what the book actually did, he paused, set the sheaf of papers down, and closed the door. This added yet another layer of privacy to the conversation and made the hairs on Simon’s neck stand on end. Something was wrong.

“You’re sure of this?” the man asked, looking from Simon’s notes to him and back again. “Are you even sure that magic can work like that?”

Simon nodded. Even as he did so, he felt like he was putting a noose around his neck. 

“That’s very interesting,” the inquisitor said evenly, leaning forward and steepling his fingers together in a way that made him look slightly more villainous. “Shocking, really. Do you know how rarely a brother, or even an archivist, ever comes to that conclusion, even after they see magic items at work? It’s very rare.”

Simon nodded again, not sure what else to do, so the man continued speaking. “That revelation is also the reason that most archivists have to be put down, I’m afraid.”

There it is, Simon realized. He was almost relieved to hear it. That was what he’d been waiting for without realizing it. 

If they cut out tongues to prevent their researchers from trying to cast spells or share secrets, then they were more than willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent him from doing exactly what he’d done. As soon as an archivist figured out that they could simply write or more properly inscribe spells, then they had to be put down. 

Strangely, though, he didn’t mind. If this man was going to order his execution, he was inclined to let it happen. He’d had a good run, after all, and he wanted to document all this in the mirror in his cabin while it was still fresh. 

So, Simon was even more surprised when the inquisitor said, “I don’t think that will be necessary in your case. All of our inquiries into your background have come back as positive as they can, and I can see just how devoted you are to the cause. I think it's time we use your talents for bigger things.”

Ch. 180 - Small Details

Simon was as taken aback by those words as he was by the new assignment they were giving him. He was being transferred from the library to the forbidden vaults, which were in a dank section of the ruined castle two floors below where he’d been serving so far. 

That was a far cry from the execution he’d expected, but the truth was even stranger than that. At first, he thought his new duties would be similar to his old ones. He’d just be translating artifacts instead of books. He would kill for that opportunity since that was one skill he desperately wanted to improve after the severe case of frost burn he’d gotten from the armor he’d spent so much time making. 

What he found was more than that. However, he only learned that after he was made to take yet more oaths. 

The Unspoken seemed obsessed with them. They made him sign a document in blood, swearing that any betrayal would be met with the most painful of all afterlives. After that, he had to swear eternal service to the order. They also made him swear not to tell any sworn brother what it was he learned from this point forward and that he would only speak freely with the inquisitors from now on, which struck him as both tantalizing and suspicious. 

Simon wasn’t impressed or intimidated by any of that, though he did have to admit that the pageantry associated with the whole thing was rather impressive, especially in a shadowy cathedral. He could see how much all of this would impact him if he’d really been a young scholar with a hard life.

It was only when those rituals and blood oaths and the fasting associated with each of them were complete that the truth was finally revealed. The senior members of the unspoken used magic items. He’d already suspected this from his time with Aaric, of course, but now he knew for a certainty.

They weren’t quite standard issue, but they weren’t exactly uncommon, either, but they had an armory full of them, based on the principles of items they’d found or seized from warlocks, and now his job was to help make more of them. 

“There’s no evil on this,” the inquisitor assured him as he showed Simon around the secluded workshops. “These items are blessed, and in this way, we use the strength of the enemy against them.”  

While that logic made a twisted sort of sense, it also made the Unspoken giant hypocrites, which bothered him even more than their misguided crusade against magic. He wasn’t about to make any waves about it, though. Not in this life. Just from the quality of the tools and the complexity of the patterns, he knew he was going to learn a lot here. 

That was even truer than Simon thought it would be. At first, he was underwhelmed as the silent man in charge put his calligraphy skills to use preparing blades for the acid etching process that they used to score perfect lines. This involved applying a clay mask everywhere they didn’t want to damage the metal. It was tedious work, but once it was complete, he could see why it was so important. 

Simon already understood that the cleaner the line, the better the mana flowed, but that was further reinforced by feedback from the silent smiths. A shape that wasn’t perfect in execution had about the same effect as a word of power that wasn’t spoken perfectly. Either could alter the effect, increase the power required, or flub a spell entirely.

It was interesting work, and Simon thrived in his new environment even more than he had in the library. Once upon a time, he’d played many games where crafting had played a big part, but it had only been crafting it the same way that he used to consider using his mouse fighting. 

This was infinitely more complicated than that. He’d never really made anything more complicated than assembling Swedish furniture with unpronounceable names during his time on Earth, and he didn’t realize how much he enjoyed it. There was something about the perfectionism and the slow process of watching a steel ingot become a long, slender blade that he found very satisfying. 

Well, I probably wouldn’t have then, he realized. 

With enough distance, it was easy enough to be honest about that. Back then, using an Allen wrench had been an insufferable ordeal, but now he didn’t even mind the hardest jobs, like fueling the forges or bumping the bellows for hour after hour, while more experienced men than him turned steel into blades. 

For season after season, he soaked it in, and he admired every little technique that he learned. At first, he was mostly responsible for marking the blades, along with other simple things, like sharpening blades and assisting smiths. 

However, even in those tasks, he learned a great deal. The chief example of that was the way that they refilled those acid-created channels with silver, making the runes both functional and nearly invisible because of how well the silver blended with the steel. Unless you knew exactly what you were looking for, you’d never see them.

Sometimes, they had him translate and attempt to understand the way that new items worked if the language was rare or the symbols were too stylized for other people to work out since he had a good eye for that. Mostly, though, that was handled by more trusted, senior acolytes. 

Still, the glimpses he got into various patterns and designs were fascinating. Many of them were so complicated that they made the frost sword that had been his major inspiration seem clumsy and primitive by comparison. 

Still, he was inspired by many of the designs he saw, both in what they did and the way that they were fueled. The blades that they made all seemed to share a few traits; the first was that the effects were subtle. After all, it wouldn’t do to have the secret antimage society be seen wielding magical weapons all the time. 

Simon was surprised that he hadn’t had to blot out more of those references in the books he’d seen, but then the common people really didn’t have any idea what magic was. If someone said a weapon was holy instead of witchcraft, then how were they supposed to know the difference? So, a lot of them had subtle glow effects or minor strengthening and healing effects for their wielder. 

The purpose wasn’t to make the most powerful weapon but the most in-character weapon. Simon imagined that the rune blade that had briefly been in his possession worked in a similar fashion. Truthfully, he probably could have puzzled out how it had been built after so much exposure, but the second design element was what interested him more because he hadn’t seen it before. 

Rather than being powered by the wielder or even the environment, all of their weapons were powered by their victim's life force via a simple rune circuit near the tip of the blade in the blood gutter. It was an ingenious design, and he studied it as much as he could without attracting attention because he was definitely going to copy it in the future.   

The future was coming at him more quickly than he would have thought down there in the dark. Ever so slowly, he moved his way up from assisting those with the plans in the hammers to being the one to wield them under the observation of others. 

The place was a small factory, and with all the slow, careful steps, nearly half of the final blades were rejected for some defect, but they still made several a month. That wasn’t all that they made, either. It was sometime in his second or third year when he graduated from forging to sand casting. Simon’s time at the anvil had made him strong, but there was no strength was needed for this. 

Instead, it involved taking finished, nearly functional amulets that had been carved from wood that had all the proper runes and using them to create molds with sand. Once that happened, those molds were then filled with molten metal, which was usually silver but sometimes brass or gold, depending on what it was they were making. Most of the amulets they made were in the shape of holy symbols to further hide their true purpose. Simon had seen a couple of those explode while trying to carry out their purpose when he’d taken out that group of white cloaks a few lives ago, so he knew they had something to do with protection. At least, some of them did. 

The Unspoken were more creative with their amulets than they were with their blades, and they had a whole array of uses. One category warned of undead or demonic taint nearby. Another attempted to shield the wearer from certain specified forces via boundary runes. According to their scant documentation on those, they only worked on spells of lesser power, which explained why a greater word had caused them to explode. 

Even in the best case, though, they were fragile things. Most of those were rejected because of air bubbles, cracks caused by cooling, or other imperfections. Unlike the swords, this wasn’t a problem because the metal could just be melted down a second time for them to try again.

The amulets had no victims to power them, so instead, they stole essence from the surrounding world in a way that was similar to how he’d powered his armor with waste heat. The Unspoken used runes of order and connection to draw apparently free energy from the world, but Simon had been alive long enough to know that there was no such thing as a free lunch. Still, he couldn’t figure out what exactly they were siphoning away. It had to be something, though, because they obviously worked. He’d seen them in action. 

Several times, early on, he tried to improve these objects by simplifying their shapes, but those who supervised him wouldn’t allow it. ‘Tradition demands it look this way,’ was what the notes that came back to him would say. ‘They are ceremonial objects first, and holy weapons second!’

Simon understood that, but he also knew that it was the complex shapes that caused so many of them to fail, not the runes themselves. A simple, flat amulet of bronze scored with runes that was then covered in a layer of silver or gold would have been a hundred times easier to mass produce. They could give one to every man wearing a white cloak in the space of a year. 

Still, he didn’t fight this point too hard. Instead, he focused on learning every technique that a more experienced craftsman was willing to teach him. He rarely left that silent world after a while, except to sleep, and for a long time, nothing seemed to change but him as he slowly grew older. Brothers would come and go, but mostly, they would come back safe and sound. The Abbott, too, along with other people like the Head Librarian and the Commander of the Order, seemed almost eternal. 

The only people that really seemed to change often were the sisters. They cycled much more frequently than the brothers, though everyone pretended not to notice. It wasn’t talked about, but Simon knew the answer. It was because they were only taught a single word of power, and they were expected to chant it at every encounter with a possible warlock until their pretty throats bled. 

They might not know what that cost them, but he did. Whispering null over and over again would take decades off their lives with every encounter, and for what? It was sloppy and wasteful. They could get the same effect with a more complex spell using lesser words. He couldn’t share that with anyone, though. That would just make the powers that be look at him with suspicion. 

Still, he couldn’t look away from the travesty. It was good that he didn’t, too. If he had simply stayed wrapped up in his own tasks and experiments, he would never have noticed the day that Carelyn finally arrived at the Broken Tower. 

Ch. 181 - Days Go By

Simon had not noticed Aaric’s arrival, but after he saw the girl, he started to look for the young man. It only took a few dinners to find that he had become a squire in the service of an older brother. That allowed him to line up his timeline between the levels a little better, but it also helped him regain interest in what was going on in the outside world.

Though he’d occasionally gotten involved in some of the minor mysteries and petty power struggles that typified this strange place, he’d mostly lost interest in the outside world as he’d focused on ever more detailed handiwork and learned more complicated metalworking techniques. Never in his life did Simon think that he would learn about the ins and outs of various forms of annealing and quenching to get just the right properties from metal, but here he was. Worse, knowing what he knew now, he could see just how much there was to learn. It was a humbling thing for him to realize that one could spend a lifetime learning a skill and still not know all there was to know about it. 

Life is basically the opposite of a video game in that sense, he decided, which was funny because crafting, as it turned out, was addictive. It was even more addictive than learning, and it was as close to playing a good game as he’d found so far in the pit, and he lost years of his life exploring those delicate techniques. 

Familiar faces, though, that was new, and for the first time in a long time, it was enough to make him set down his hammers, files, and his ever-expanding sheaf of notes and poke around a bit in the outside world. As it turned out, very little had changed except for the women he saw at the evening meal.

Sisters were not often seen for long because, as he’d noted previously, whisperers were used up rather quickly by the needs of the Unspoken. One could see them around the compound, it was just hard to see the same one for more than a few months or years. It took only a few missions to turn a sweet young girl into a crone because they bled out their entire life just to stop a hedge wizard or two. That was a high price to pay to stop a man who was experimenting with things that the unspoken didn’t want anyone to know.

He’d seen the two of them talking in the courtyard on more than one occasion. While romance was forbidden by the Whitecloaks, it sometimes happened among the junior members of the order. Simon had never seen any harm in it, though he had seen members of both sexes punished very publicly on more than one occasion. He was sure that the two of them would get together and escape soon enough. 

However, Simon eventually decided to intervene anyway. It was just his nature at this point. He couldn’t simply trust that they would get away as they always had before; he might have already screwed that up in some small way. One day, when no one was looking, he placed a short tract on the nature of the whisperer problem in young Aaric’s cell so that the boy could become better acquainted with the costs of the cult he’d joined.  

The document was something that Simon had read years before, and technically, it was secret from junior members of the order, but he didn’t care. He supposed that it wouldn’t be too hard to trace it back to him, but that didn’t bother him too much, either. 

He’d long since prepared a self-destruct switch in the form of a sharp-edged amulet that he wore. He hadn’t shared the design with any of his peers, and no runes were visible on its polished brass surface, but the thing would be more than sufficient to blow his head off with a word of fire if he cut himself on it and bled a bit. 

He expected that to be almost as effective as the words he’d left for the young devotee to read. ‘The nature of magic is caustic to the soul,’ it read. ‘And the words of a whisperer are still magic, even though we might wish that they weren’t. They are a rare and powerful weapon Necessary to beat our foes, and it is through their sacrifice that the many will be saved by our foe and the damnable words of power they use for such ill purpose.’ 

He ended the note by including the name of the man who’d written it, but Simon very much doubted that Aaric would know or care who Master Arvand Broodmark was, even if he was a storied leader of the order only fifty years ago. Still, he didn’t have a choice; after working in the library for so long, it was almost a compulsion. 

He obviously never asked Aaric if he’d read the thing, but the inquisitors never came looking for Simon, and the young man’s gaze had only become more furtive after that, which told Simon everything they needed to know. 

Less than two weeks later, the two of them tried to make their escape. Simon had taken to sitting in the afternoon light to warm his aging bones for the last few years when the weather was warm, and he worked on new ideas for spells and weapons. He’d been at the Broken Tower long enough that no one doubted him or often even noted his presence anymore. He wasn’t just a ghost to the broader world now; he was in this secret world as well. 

Some days, he would sit just outside the walls or in a grove slightly beyond that, and other times, he would sit atop the ruined keep not so far away from where the sentry kept watch over the surrounding area. On the day that Aaric and Carelyn started to ride away just before sunset, while everyone else was at dinner, Simon was sitting up there as he had been every night for the last week. 

The guard had acknowledged him when he’d arrived but tuned him out the rest of the time because, these days, Simon made for a remarkably poor conversationalist. When he saw the two riding away on one horse, though, he asked Simon, “Do you think I should sound the alarm?”

Simon nodded vigorously as he pointed at the couple, but as soon as the sentry reached for the horn, Simon pushed the man over the wall. He sent him thirty feet to the ground without the slightest bit of guilt, and the man barely had time to scream before he hit the ground with a dull, wet thud. Even as so many other parts of Simon’s mind and skills had strengthened on this trip, he’d fallen entirely out of practice with weapons, and his combat reflexes had been hopelessly dulled. 

So, while the sentry breathed his last in the dirt, Simon gathered his things. Then, he went to dinner and sat among the same people he always did while waiting for someone to sound the alarm. That didn’t happen until shift change almost an hour later. 

Though the young lovers would doubtlessly be blamed for the death, he didn’t think they’d mind. It was possible that the unspoken would never even find them again with their current headstart. 

That’s pretty much the best case, even if I have to solve that level again, he told himself while the rest of the compound scrambled like an agitated ant hill. 

It was only a few days after that event, when everything started to get back to normal that he decided he was pretty much done with this life. 

He hadn’t meant to stay here long enough to see things come full circle, but now that he had, it was something of a wake-up call for him. He’d stayed here for an entire life and soaked up more knowledge about the Unspoken as well as the history of the world that they were “protecting” than he ever thought he would. 

He learned almost as much about how magic worked in this life as he had in all of his others combined, and he’d learned more about how the events of history fit together than he would have thought possible before this life. Well, the events of history in a very small portion of the world, he reminded himself. 

The white cloaks were a cancer, but they were not yet a cancer that had consumed the world, and even if this life was not going to stick because he didn’t solve the level, he still didn’t plan on letting them continue to grow. 

He didn’t hate them precisely. Hate was too weak a word. Had the order merely been what it claimed to be on its face, then he would have hated them, but now that he knew that those at the top of the pyramid hoarded power and used magic with impunity even as they tried to deny that same knowledge to the rest of the world, he loathed them. 

He only had firm evidence that anyone of any power used enchanted swords and amulets, but he suspected it was more than that. He’d seen gray-haired men look more youthful when they returned from a mission than they had when they went out, and he was quite certain that they weren’t above using the very spells they sought to suppress. After all, even though their entire order could see the auras, very few knew what they really signified. 

At this point, Simon was quite certain that Jack the Ripper might not be the darkest aura in a room. After all, if you did what you loved, it blunted the impact of even the worst behaviors as far as he’d seen. 

The only question was what to do about it. Simon spent weeks on that question while he worked on other projects and started getting his affairs in order. What’s the most awful, painful way I can hurt these bastards? He pondered to himself for hour after hour and day after day whenever he wasn’t too busy. 

For a while, he considered trying to open a giant portal into hell to swallow the entire base whole. It was perfectly possible in a theoretical sense. In the end, it wasn’t even the fear of the havoc it might wreck on the wider world that stopped him; it was the logistical issues. The amount of work he’d have to do in public spaces would almost certainly get him caught. 

No, it needs to be something stealthier than that, he decided. It needs to be something small that doesn't require so much preparation.

He gave a lot of thought to how he could kill the most people with the least effort before he finally decided on the Feast of the Ascendance. Dropping the roof on the assembled grandees during the evening, when most or all of the most important people would be in attendance. 

It wouldn’t be hard. He still had a few months, and he was sure he could create more than a few force wards on the main supports. If he still had a tongue, he could have severed all three with a greater word, but even runes of gold didn’t care for greater words, so he would have to make the magics a bit more compact. 

Despite his creative plan, it didn’t seem to be enough to pay them back for all of the horrors they’d unleashed on the world. Still, enough or not, that was what Simon did. He told his supervisor he was working on a shield that might deflect arrows over large stretches, protecting whole cadres from archers during battle, but really, he was creating shaped demolition charges. 

That wasn’t the hard part, though. The hard part was finding a way to activate all three of them at once. That took a little creativity. In the end, he was forced to create a firebomb between all three charges. It would detonate first, immolating everyone, including Simon. Then the heat of that fire would melt the lead in the force runes he’d designed, triggering them. It was an ugly piece of work, but at least it would be dramatic. 

Well, I got more than I wanted from this life, he decided as he made his final preparations and reviewed his notes again so that he could try to remember as much as he could when his next life started.

He had no regrets. Well, he had very few regrets, at least. The only thing he hadn’t gotten to do in this life was see Elthena, and the frequency with which he drew her face in his sketchbooks was steadily increasing. It was as clear an indicator as any that it was time to start over. 

Ch. 182 - Going Out with a Bang

When the day in question finally arrived, the main hall was filled with white cloaks. Simon wasn’t wearing one, of course. He and the other archivists and craftsmen were wearing their typical dark robes. The place was completely full, and he had to sit near the back, but then he hadn’t expected any less. 

Every member of the secret order who wasn’t off on a mission in some faraway location returned to the Broken Tower for this ceremony. While this was not the first time that Simon had attended this feast, thankfully, it would be the last. 

Traditionally, it was the place for the senior leadership of the order to crow about their successes and lay out their plans for the future. This year, though, it was going to be nothing more than a burial for everyone involved. He was going to bury them all in the unmarked grave that was their own secret base, and with any luck, no one would ever try to dig up all the secrets that were hidden there. 

Simon was in no hurry for that, though. He’d been here for decades. He could wait a little longer. He listened to the speeches and enjoyed the food. He even got a little drunk, if only because he knew the next part was going to hurt. Then, once his plate was clean and the decanter nearest to him was empty, he rose and walked toward the central dias. 

Guards were stationed at the high table, as they always were. They looked at him with interest but not concern. Why should they be concerned? He was a feeble man who had lost his youth and gone gray. The archivists were not typically heard at these events for obvious reasons. 

Simon made no attempt to hide what he’d made anyway; that would have aroused suspicion. Instead, he held up his final gift to the order like he intended to present it to the Grandmaster or the Abbott. Unfortunately for them, he did neither. Instead, he activated it, unleashing the magic intrinsic to his design and filling the room with fire and shouts of alarm. 

Those shouts turned to screams almost immediately, but not before he’d lit the tapestries that hid his demolition charges on fire. That single act would have been enough to decapitate the Unspoken, but after all this time, Simon wanted more than that. He wanted to annihilate them. 

He was glad that he’d gone to such lengths, too, because even as he crumpled to the ground in agony, he saw the Grandmaster stand and draw his sword. The man had barely been scratched by Simon’s firebomb, and worse, as Simon lay there burning, he saw the man speak a word of healing and became almost instantly whole. 

I fucking knew it, Simon thought, holding on to that tiny observation despite the terrible pain. 

The man advanced on Simon, but he would never reach him. Even as his old eyes started to dim, he heard the sound of sundering stone, and two of the three pillars that held up the hall started collapsing. Simon only had enough time to see the surprise in the other man’s eyes before his world went dark under tons of rubble. 

This time, Simon was not at all surprised to wake up in the cool, fire-free embrace of his tiny cabin. In most of his lives, he’d been gone for a few weeks or months, and a return had been treated as a punishment. This time, after decades away from this place, he felt a wave of nostalgia wash across him as he looked around the old place. It felt good to be back. It was a weird thing to think, but it was true.  

There was no time to spend the day soaking it in, though. He had a good memory, but he knew from experience that he didn’t have a great one and that the longer he waited, the more holes would appear in his notes. 

Instead, he got to work. ‘Okay, mirror, wake up and…” he paused, appreciating that he could speak properly again. He moved his tongue around his mouth, noting how strange it felt to be whole again in such a small way.

That wasn’t something he’d thought he would ever have to miss, but then he’d never expected to work in a secret library either. He shook his head. “Anyway,” he continued. “I’m back, and It's time to take a lot of notes.”

The thing brightened, and Simon spent the next several hours dictating nonstop into it. Periodically, he would pause to check for understanding or to classify a bit of knowledge in some way or another so that he’d be able to find it again later, but he had a lot to cover, and eventually, after he discussed all of the most important bits of magic lore that he learned he eventually took a break and grabbing his apple and his water skin he decided to go out for a stroll.  

I’m going to be at this for days, he told himself as he stood and stretched. The metalworking trivia and the history lessons can wait a bit. 

When he’d first arrived here, he recalled hating this meadow, but now that he’d come back after so long, it felt like an old friend, and he walked toward the temple ruins he’d discovered so long ago, both to think and to check some things. 

Along the way, he ate his apple, and when he arrived, he sat on the cool stone for a time before he looked around the place. Sure enough, many of the marks had been intentionally defaced. This was something he doubted he would have noticed before, but he could see the hands of the Unspoken even here.

“Fucking hell,” he said, finishing the apple and tossing the core over by the stream. “They’re like the magical Taliban or something.”

Simon thought about heading back then, but instead, he walked over to the remains of his apple. Already, there were some ants swarming on it, eager to feast on the remains, but what caught his eyes was the seeds. Instead of going back, he thought about it for a moment and then said, “Aufvarum Zyvon Vosden.”

He had no idea if it would work or not. He had long theorized how linking more words together would let him do more specific and powerful spells. 

No, powerful is the wrong word, he corrected himself. 

What he was doing with this was exactly the opposite of powerful. It was weak, but it was specific. What power was there was being applied in very specific ways, and, right now, at least in part, it was working. 

What he’d tried to cast was a spell of lesser plant growth. At seven syllables, it wasn’t exactly something he could use in combat, but then, unless that damn seed level respawned, he didn’t expect to ever need to fight a plant in combat again. 

As he watched, a tiny seedling sprouted from the apple core. Then, as its cotyledon reached up and its roots stretched into the earth, over the next few seconds, it graduated from seedling to sapling, growing a pencil-thin trunk. It wouldn’t be bearing fruit overnight or anything, but it was still an achievement, and he smiled wider. 

“At least that life wasn’t wasted,” he told himself as he turned to refill his now-empty skin before he went back to the cabin to get back to work. 

Simon spent the next several days doing little else but dictating whole swaths of history into his mirror and adding bits and pieces to his map from other maps he’d glimpsed. Once he was in a good place with all of that, he finally got around to checking his character sheet. 

‘Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 33

Deaths: 42

Experience Points: -187,991

Skills: Agriculture [Below Average], Archery [Below Average], Armor (light) [Average], Armor (heavy) [Below Average], Armor (medium) [Average], Athletics [Below Average], Baking [Below Average], Cooking [Average], Craft [Excellent], Deception [Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Average], Healing [Above Average], History [Excellent], Investigate [Excellent], Maces [Average], Navigation [Above Average], Research [Excellent], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Average], Spears [Average], Spell Casting [Great], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Below Average], and Swords [Above Average].

Words of Power: Aufvarum (disperse, minor), Barom (illusion, light), Celdura (plan, shape), Delzam (cure, order), Dnarth (connection, distant, hidden), Gelthic (ice, death, weakness), Gervuul (greater, power), Hyakk (flesh, healing), Karesh (location, protection, understanding), Meiren (creation, fire, life), Oonbetit (focused, force, motion), Uuvellum (anti-, null, boundary), Vosden (earth, growth, metal, strength), Vrazig (lightning, ruin, quickening, wind), Zyvon (transfer, plants, water)’

While his skills had gone up nicely, he noted that more than a few had actually gone down. That made sense since he hadn’t actually fought for his life with a sword in well over a decade, but it was still sad to see. “Worth it,” he said before asking the mirror to switch to which levels it could access. 

‘Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt
Level 9 - Wyvern in the mountains
Level 29 - Cultists in a village
Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains
Level 33 - ???’

The first thing Simon did was laugh and change the entry for level 29 to read ‘The Unspoke in Esmiran’ since he knew a lot more now than he did when he’d populated this list so long ago. He did the same thing to level 33, adding ‘Vampire in the orchard’ to his list. 

Simon noted that level 32 was solved and that he only seemed to have screwed up a couple levels with his recent trips. That was okay; he could live with that. 

He went fishing once to have a proper dinner, caught a rabbit to eat the day after, and he made some time to experiment magically every day though, and after a few lesser experiments, he was finally ready to try what he wanted to try. 

Over the last few days, Simon had made a stone crumble to dust with words of lesser stone entropy, struck a goblin dead with lesser death, and made his bed less lumpy with lesser dispersal. However, just like the apple core, those were all experiments for what came next. 

On the fourth day, he grabbed his embarrassingly bulging belly, and then, after giving it as much thought and focus as he could muster, he said, “Aufvarum Meiren Celdura,” using the words of lesser life shaping on himself.  

The results were uncomfortable but instantaneous. He’d struggled hard to focus on the fat tissue rather than the underlying organs in an attempt to do magical lipo. He was more than aware that if he accidentally shrunk or eliminated his stomach or his intestines, this would be a pretty short run. 

None of those terrible things seemed to happen, though. Instead, his gut shrank before his eyes. When it was done, he didn’t have washboard abs or anything, but he didn’t feel like such a fat ass, either. 

“Well, at least now I know how to make myself look the scarred-up version of me when I visit Elthena,” he thought cheerfully. 

Truthfully, he could probably use this spell to make himself look like anything or anyone, but he wasn’t enough of an artist to pull that off. He could only imagine how horrific the finger-painted version of handsome Simon would be. 

No, he decided, for now, this is enough. 

He was in no hurry to go anywhere, just like he was in no hurry to lose all his weight. He just wanted to feel a little closer to normal while he did all of this. 

“I could try boosting my strength, I guess?” he said to himself that night before dismissing the thought. Getting rid of fat was one thing, but boosting various small parts of his body without any real knowledge of what that looked like? He’d pull something, or rip a tendon, or worse. No, he didn’t need shortcuts. He’d get there when he decided where he was going; he knew he’d find some way to work out. He’d get in pretty good shape after that.