Death After Death 169-170

I know I promised an updated 20+ tier. I'm still working on that. My publisher moved up some editing deadlines on me, so I'm currently 14 chapters ahead on Death After Death, and want to be 20 chapters ahead (because as soon as I launch that tier, I will instantly reduce that buffer by 10.) So, I haven't forgotten, just a little distracted by other topics. You should still see it by the end of the month.

Ch. 169 - A Bloody Mess

As soaking wet and in pain as Simon was, he still didn’t just stumble through the next exit blind. Instead, he stood at the threshold and looked for some hint as to what might await him next for several minutes. There was nothing that stood out to him as dangerous, though. It was an idyllic scene full of birdsong, not battle cries, and that made part of him trust it less.

These are in chronological order, not order of difficulty, he reminded himself. “Maybe someone needs some wood chopped,” he said to himself with a chuckle. “Or maybe the orcs just haven’t attacked yet.” 

In front of him was a hill, and behind it, a setting sun formed a picture-perfect backdrop that he would have loved to paint if he had any talent. The spacing of the trees indicated that this was an orchard, or perhaps was one in the past, though it wasn’t immediate what fruit they were growing because none was visible. There weren’t even any footprints to indicate men or monsters. 

So, after hesitating for so long, Simon walked into the warm, balmy temperatures of what felt like a summer evening. Then, he staggered up the hill, so he could get a better view before he tried to engage in major surgery and rip this damn arrow out. 

Along the way, he thought about picking up deadwood to build a small fire. It would be dark soon, and that would be the smart thing to do. He didn’t, though, because he feared that if he bent down, he might not rise again; every movement hurt, and the only reason he plodded forward was stubbornness. Every step to the top was one closer to making sure that no one would surprise him when he was writhing in pain in a few minutes. 

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” he grumbled to himself as he limped, willing the imaginary laugh track to play in his head. The line was cliché but entirely justified in his case.

When Simon reached the crest of the hill, the sunset had gone gray, but he could see a verdant landscape filling the valley he was in. In the distance, the mountains were sharp and jagged, indicating to him that he was probably in the Kingdom of Chiara, though he supposed he could also be somewhere else he’d yet to see. That put him in the territory of high mountains, werewolves, and dangerous dinner parties, though he didn’t know too much else about it beyond the cheerful little farmstead at the foot of his hill. 

“Maybe I’ll take it easy for the rest of this life,” he said to himself as he got down on his knees next to the tree and looked at the last dying rays of the setting sun. “It’s a big blank spot on my map. Maybe I’ll just relax here and fill it in for a while.”

It was a nice dream, but mostly, what Simon was doing was steeling himself for what he needed to do next, which was going to hurt like hell. He reached behind him with his left hand and tried to force the arrow all the way through so he could pull it out the other side. The jolt of pain that ran through him in that moment was awful. 

Enduring pain had gotten to be almost easy for him. Inflicting it on himself, though? That was still very hard. 

If he could have gotten a better grip, Simon was sure he could have done it, but his hand was blood-slick, and the angle was absolutely terrible. So, he could push hard enough to make it hurt but not enough to drive the thing deeper and deeper. 

Simon swallowed hard and decided that he should use a word of lesser force to see if that would do the trick. He took a moment in the fading twilight to breathe deeply and slow his racing heart as he pictured the moment and exactly what he wanted to happen. The bolt had already speared his kidneys and would probably puncture his intestines and whatever else on the way out, but he didn’t think that there would be bone in the way. That meant that a few seconds after he got the thing out, he could heal it all up, nice and clean.

Easier said than done, he thought, swallowing again before he opened his eyes and whispered, “Aufvarum Oonbetit.”

The pain that followed those words as the arrow was shoved forward was instant and blinding but not as bad as he feared. A lesser word of force was less like magic and more like being kicked by a mule. As a result, the arrow surged forward, out of his stomach, and the ruins of his shirt were covered in blood before it clattered to the ground a couple feet in front of him. It was an ugly sight, but he was glad it was over with. 

When the sharp pain passed and left him with the dull ache of that passing, he felt like he’d been stabbed all over again. All he wanted to do was curl up into a ball. The air was warm, but he was still shivering from being damp. He couldn’t do that yet, though. A kidney wound would bleed out if he fell asleep, and if he’d torn anything in his guts, which seemed very likely, it would get infected very quickly. 

Instead, he slapped himself to maintain focus and forced himself to concentrate on what that wound track looked like and all the ways that he needed to fix it if he wanted to wake up in the morning with some semblance of health. 

“Hyakk,” he said when he was ready and opened his eyes to watch the wound close before them. Even if the blood remained, the wound itself had vanished with barely more than a scar. 

Once that was done, though, even though the pain was gone, he gave in and passed out at the foot of the tree. Three words of power and a handful of lesser words had taken their toll. He was completely spent.

The sleep that followed was deep and dreamless, and for a time, he knew only oblivion. Sometime hours later, Simon was woken by the sound of footsteps feet from him. Despite feeling groggy, he considered springing to his feet, but he realized that might not be the best move. Instead, he cracked his eyes open ever so slightly but could only make out the finely tooled riding boots of a single man, only a few feet from his face. 

“You don’t have to pretend to be asleep,” the stranger said in a confident voice moments after that. “I can tell when they fake it.”

Simon considered ignoring that line, but in the end, he opened his eyes and sat up. Whether the person that he was facing had any real insight into his state, he was weak enough that being cooperative was the correct play. If worst came to worst, he still had a magic blade that could slice through anything. With that, he only needed a moment of distraction to win most fights. 

“Who are you, and what are you doing in these lands?” the dark man asked, regarding him coolly. 

Simon looked up from where he sat on the ground and was surprised by what he saw. He’d expected a farmer or perhaps bandits, but this man appeared to be a noble rather than either of the other groups. He had fine clothes that matched his perfectly polished riding boots, and though the style was unfamiliar to Simon, it was easy to tell the man was young and wealthy. That made the contrast between the two of them that much more dramatic, given that, at this point, he was an old man in bloody rags. He wasn’t even entirely dry yet. 

“I’m… I’m just passing through,” Simon said, trying and failing to think of a cover story under the piercing gaze of the stranger. “A night under this tree, and I’ll be gone in the morning with no harm done. I’m sorry that I picked your land, but as you can see, I—”

“I asked you a question; don’t make me repeat myself,” the man said, glaring hard. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

Simon wanted to tell the man that it was none of his business, but when he opened his mouth, that wasn’t what came out. Instead, he said, “I’m Simon Jackoby, and after I removed the arrow. I needed a place to rest. I’m not sure what I’m doing next.”

“An arrow, is it?” the man answered with a cruel smirk as he noticed the thing and bent to pick it up. “Yes, this would cause a nasty wound. I’m surprised you aren’t already dead.” 

Simon barely heard him, though. Instead, he sat there in shock, trying to figure out what had just happened. Why would I say that? He wondered. Who is this guy?

What happened next shook him free of his reverie, though, as the man lifted the bloody arrow to his nose and smelled it. “But this is only one of the scents I smelled,” the noble mused. “I smell others… that’s actually why I sought you out. I smelled a feast of barbarity on the wind. Imagine my disappointment when I sought you out and found only a single scrawny human. How many did you kill, exactly?”

“Nearly a dozen,” Simon said. This time, he didn’t feel a compulsion. He just answered honestly to avoid that dread gaze again while his mind raced to figure out what he should do. “In a village not far from here. Bandits. It wasn’t my fault.” In the end, he chose violence.  

“A scrawny, dried-up thing like you killed a dozen men?” the noble laughed, revealing a set of sharp fangs. “Were they asleep? I don’t see any other way that—”

For all his speed, he was only just turning when Simon started swinging, and it was obvious that he underestimated the blade. The vampire’s limbs blurred, but they made no move to avoid the enchanted edge of Simon’s saber. He lost his right arm for that and howled in pain even as he lifted Simon up with his left by the throat before slamming him against the tree so hard that he heard ribs crack, and the sword slipped free of his grasp. 

“Faa! What is— a rune blade?” the man yelled, more in outrage than pain. “I do not think we shall be doing that again. Now tell me, Simon, where did you get such a weapon, and what is it you are doing in my mistress’s lands?”

Simon felt the weight of the gaze on him again, but he shut his eyes tight, and when he opened his mouth, it was to say, “Meiren!”

This time, the vampire’s screams were pure pain as he went up like a bonfire, dropping Simon to the ground. Simon gasped for breath while he watched the monster burn. Then he rolled over and started crawling toward his blade. 

Before he could reach it, though, or even utter another word of power, the still-burning vampire was on him again. He reached forward with blinding speed and ripped out his throat. 

“I don’t think we’ll be having any more of that,” the monster growled, looking briefly conflicted. His fine clothes were all but gone,s and the burns on his face and chest continued to heal. Simon could see that the monster wanted to interrogate him further, but that desire warred with bloodlust as Simon’s lifeblood went everywhere. “We can’t be letting any more of this go to waste, though, can we?” 

As he finished speaking, he sank his fangs into Simon’s neck and drank deeply. Simon gasped from the pain, but his struggles for the next few seconds were weak as his consciousness left him. 

Please don’t let me be a vampire when I wake up, was his final thought before the darkness took him.

Ch. 170 - Forty Lives

There were some deaths was frustrated to wake up in his own bed, but this wasn’t one of them. He had rarely been more relieved to wake up and see the crooked timbers of his roof than he was right now, even if he’d been gone for so long that they now felt unfamiliar. 

“A fucking vampire,” he scoffed. “I was killed by a fucking vampire.” 

It was almost as an afterthought that he said, “Hell, I almost became a vampire…”

That thought was terrifying. It had been a long time since he’d found a death that really worried him. Even zombies now he was content to just blow his brains out, but would that even work on a vampire? If fire didn’t kill that guy, then who says it would kill me, he wondered.

Simon had vanquished some very hard-to-kill enemies in the past, but none of them had been the sort that he needed to drive through the heart of before. That lay there for some time as he tried to contemplate what his backup plan should be in such a case. 

Eventually, he decided that greater light was probably his best option. It’s not sunlight, but if it’s powerful enough, does it even matter? 

The idea that he would get to find out didn’t sit well with him. Especially not after he replayed the events of that level over and over again and tried to figure out what he was supposed to do. “That vampire was probably going to gorge himself on that farm or something else close by before he smelled me,” Simon said as he talked himself through it. “On the off chance he didn’t go ahead and do so anyway after he murdered me, the level might already be solved, but I doubt it. I’m not that lucky.”

He sat up, and as he did so, he tried to remember how long it had been since he’d last been here. That, in turn, made him struggle to remember what his last death before this one had even been. “Was it the dragon? Or the spider cave?” he mused aloud. “No, it was those miserable messengers,” he said finally as he started to recount the events of his last few lives on his hands, one finger at a time, until they made sense.

“First, I talked to Helades about Freya, then the dragon burned me alive, then Freya tried to kill me for being a warlock, then I buried myself alive killing a giant spider, then I fought the centaurs until I became a political liability,” he recounted with a sigh. “What a mouthful.”

He grabbed the bottle of wine, noting with distaste how chubby his hand looked after he’d been skinny and gnarled like old leather for the last few years. Then, he took a good drink and found that he missed the taste of red wine after spending so long with the taste of white in Ionar. 

As he sat there and drank, he relived his journey north to explore the tomb and then south to Ionar once his armor was ready. He’d spent years there waiting for the attack and then years after until Elthena had banished him. He was surprised that it stung more than the last time he ran into Freya when he reflected on it. It also made him smile, though. Truthfully, he should have seen it coming. It was, after all, completely in character for her. 

So that means what? A decade? More? He wondered. Probably more like a decade and a half. 

A decade in a half would be enough to make him forty-fiveish, so if he added in a dozen greater words, a pile of words and minor words to the mix, that would have put him somewhere in his sixties, physically when he died. That felt about right, he decided. He’d certainly felt like he was about ready to retire when the vampire had ripped his throat out. If his run had gone on any longer, he would have had to find an old folk's home. 

“Mirror mirror on the wall, show me the most experienced loser of all,” he said, with deliberate drama, once he had his answer. 

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand the command,’ the thing said, provoking a sigh from Simon. 

“Show me my damn character sheet, you damn thing,” he said, with a little more annoyance the second time. 

‘Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 33

Deaths: 41

Experience Points: -533,822

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

Words of Power: Gervuul (greater) Meiren (fire) Aufvarum (minor) Hyakk (healing) Vrazig (lightning, ruin) Dnarth (distant) Oonbetit (force) Zyvon (transfer, water) Gelthic (ice) Karesh (protection) Uuvellum (null, boundary) Barom (light) Delzam (cure) Vosden (earth) Celdura (plan)’

A quick glance across the sheet revealed nothing unexpected. He was pretty sure his number of skills had grown, but he ignored it. Instead, he focused on one specific number: the number of times he’d died. 

“This is really my forty-first life?” he said aloud, more than a little blown away by that discovery. He’d died and come back 40 times in the Pit since he’d actually died on Earth. 

“And how many levels have I cleared?” he started to ask before realizing the mirror wouldn’t understand that. “I mean, how many levels are currently accessible?”

‘There are four levels that are currently accessible,’ the mirror answered in its typical fashion. 

Simon smiled at that, happy he’d made progress. He was just about to ask which levels exactly remained open when he realized he was doing this out of order. If I start asking it questions and getting wrapped up in the details, I’m going to forget some parts of what I just went through, he decided. 

So, he took a step back and headed to the stove to fan the coals to life so he could cook up the sausage; he started to tell the mirror all about his most recent life. Absentmindedly, he almost started at the very beginning with Freya before realizing he’d told the mirror all those details a long time ago. Over the years, he’d talked its ear off about the various encounters and all of the details he’d learned, especially once he’d had access to the libraries at Ionar. 

Instead, while he sliced up the sausages into thin sections and fried them up in their own fat, he talked at length about the new stuff, which was mostly the dragon. Oh, he spent a little time talking about the white cloaks, too. He even asked the thing if it had any information on the unspoken, but it did not. 

That was about what Simon had expected, since he’d never told the mirror anything about them, of course. He had to try anyway, of course. That was definitely a topic he planned to dig into more once he had access to Ionar’s library again.

“If Elthena doesn’t kick me out again,” he said with a laugh.

It was only when he got to the level with the wagon and the deserters, and he was discussing his speculation since he hadn’t actually learned a whole lot about the place, that he finally realized he made a serious mistake. 

“Damn it!” he cried out, taking the sandwich he’d been in the midst of making off of the stove. “Of all the shit to forget!”

It turned out that the worst consequence of dying on level 32 wasn’t that he’d almost become a vampire. It was that he’d forgotten to record the details of the magic sword he’d been wielding. In my defense, I was kind of bleeding out at the time, he told himself, but it did nothing to lessen the blow. 

“If I want that thing back, I'm going to have to go through all of that again,” he sighed, feeling slightly defeated that he’d let himself down so much. 

He took a piece of burned wood from the fire and started sketching out all the elements that he could remember, but it wasn’t going to be enough. He knew that almost as soon as he started. Despite that, he continued to try to link runes together for several minutes in a way that made sense. 

“Maybe more will come to me later,” he said hopefully, resigned that he would have to go find the thing again. It's not like I know how to defeat the dragon level right now, anyway. The thing is already dead!

Simon moved back to his meal after that, however reluctantly, before it got cold. He cut the loaf in half, used it to fry up the bread a bit so that the grease could soften it up, and then added chunks of cheese to the meat and the hot bread so it could melt. 

As a whole, it wasn’t the worst Philly Cheese Steak he’d ever had, but it tasted a little like ashes as he brooded on the sword. Simon spent those minutes trying to decide where he wanted to go next, but it really didn’t take that long. He was going to go to the skeleton crypt, bypass the portal, take the exit outside, and then keep a low profile until the last version of himself was banished from Ionar. Then he would show back up the same day and have a nice talk with her.

He knew he should be trying to deal with the doppelgänger or heading straight back to the dragon level to figure out what was going on there, but compared to continuing his life with Elthena, he really couldn’t be bothered. He wanted her, and more importantly, he didn’t want his child to grow up without a father, even if he didn’t think he’d make a very good one. 

A fancy magic sword didn’t even really figure into those plans. There was no way he could keep a low profile if he was running around slicing people in half. He supposed that he could spend that time researching some of the more important questions on his mind, but even so, it sounded boring. 

Am I really going to hide away for half a decade or however long it is until the volcano erupts, so I don’t fuck up the timeline? He asked himself. In the end, it wasn’t a question he even needed to dignify with a response, though. While he didn’t yet feel the same sort of siren song he’d felt for a while to relive his life with Freya over and over again, he’d left his last life unfinished, and he was going to do something about that.