Death After Death 161-162

Ch. 161 - The Day After

The screams didn’t last long. At least, the ones begging to be let in didn’t. Their silence spoke volumes about the state of things happening outside the mine they’d sealed themselves up into, Simon. His heart went out to them, and in those dark moments, part of him wished he’d used that horrible life-draining magic to end them. Only the knowledge that it hadn’t solved the level and that he’d just have to keep doing that over and over again strengthened his resolve. He’d saved as many people as he could, and he had to try other things if he wanted to resolve this.  

After that, there were other screams from time to time as different homes were finally breached by bugs. Soon enough, though, there was nothing but the buzzing. It came and went, but it was so strong near the entrance sometimes that he was certain the things were about to break through, but that never happened. 

Though he’d never heard of these insects outside this level, they didn’t seem to be a new hazard for the region. “They rarely come this far from Mount Hizarth,” Millen said softly, filling Simon in on the particulars of the hazard they faced. “My dad said there was a swarm like this when he was young, but—”

“We couldn’t have known!” the headman growled, interrupting their conversation with preemptive words of self-defense. “I couldn’t have known that he wasn’t just a crackpot.”

That was growing to be a habit for the man, who was certainly feeling the guilt keenly as each new group succumbed to the tiny monsters in a dull chorus of screams. He had to know that if he’d only given the word, everyone would have joined them down here. Now, he was going to live while so many had died. Simon could tell from the sharp looks the old man got that everyone else had those thoughts, too, and for once, he didn’t do anything to try to soften the group up. 

Instead, he talked to them about their stories and learned what he could about the dark swarm. There were many stories to tell, apparently. In some versions of the myth, they were the children of a demon bound beneath a large boulder that reached out into the world for some way to free their sire, and in others, they were the curse of a farmer who had died of starvation amidst his locust ravaged fields cursing the gods. 

The topics were interesting, and placed the monsters outside somewhat closer to the boogieman than a hurricane. Everyone knew about the vicious little bugs, but no one expected them to actually have to deal with them; they existed mostly to scare disobedient children. After he learned all he could about the dark swarm outside, though, and no signs that goblins or giant spiders were about to crawl up out of the underworld and attack them, Simon’s thoughts slowly became fixated on the evil version of himself and everything that had happened after that. 

With so many people and animals crowded around him, most of the time, he couldn’t produce a mirror and ask it any questions, but that didn’t stop his thoughts from churning. For the next day or so, whether he was trying to reassure frightened villagers or chat with the young boy, Aaric, his mind was a million miles away as he tried to untangle that lifetime and figure out what he should do about any of it.

The obvious thing would be to go to the barrow mounds before him and steal the crown. That would cause some kind of time travel paradox by keeping him from existing, though, wouldn’t it? He thought. 

Well, that was true only if it was possible for Simon to get there before his double. There was no reason to suppose that he could if his alter ego had figured out some magic word that would allow him to travel between levels or, worse, timelines at will. 

There was also one other very good reason he couldn’t do that, he realized, at least, not yet. “Elthena,” he whispered to himself in a quiet moment. Until he’d resolved everything he wanted to do in that life, he couldn’t change a single detail before Ionar. 

That wasn’t such a big deal. That just meant he couldn’t end the Skeleton Knight yet, but still, it galled him. The right move was to drop everything and devote every resource and every life to understanding the nature of his doppelgänger until he'd solved the mystery and put that awful version of himself out of his misery.

Was it me? That was the question he wanted to know more than anything. Was it me and not some demon? Then what happened to make me become so awful?

Simon couldn’t answer that, but as long as he was unwilling to let go of his life in Ionar, he couldn’t even really effectively dig into the issue. It was like fighting with one hand behind his back. While he realized that more answers might well present themselves in future levels, he also decided that he might well be playing into the hands of the other version of Simon if he did that. 

I guess I’ll have to get to level 40 and talk with Helades about this, he decided with a shake of his head. It wasn’t ideal, given how far he had left to go, but what choice did he have? From where he was standing, 9 levels seemed like the easiest path to his answers, even if one of those levels was a dragon. 

Maybe I can just find the gate and skip that one for a while, he thought, hopefully. 

Skipping things wasn’t really an option when he was trapped in an old mine shaft, sandwiched between Millen’s young family and half a herd of sheep. 

At least this time, the girls will live, he told himself. It was a small consolation for everything else that was happening and unlikely to be the key to the level, but he would take it. 

Roughly a day after they last heard the sound of humming, they opened a crack in the barricade to look around, not sure what to expect. Simon looked around warily for a few seconds, noting the apparently dead bugs that were scattered across the ground in great numbers. 

He used a whispered word of minor force to move a few of them around and see if they would stir to life, and when they didn’t, he pronounced it safe to leave the shelter. When the townspeople returned to the surface, it was to a different world. The buildings were still intact and unchanged, except for the littered corpses of the thumb-sized bug corpses. Anything that was edible, though, was gone. 

That extended to the obvious, of course, like people and plants. That was never in doubt. What was more curious, though, was that it included cloth and leather, too. Skeletons were scattered throughout the small village, and all the trees and crops that he should have been able to see from here were entirely denuded. The area hadn’t exactly been lush or anything, but there had been more than a few fruit and nut orchards scattered around the place. Now, there were only the bare limbs and scared bark. It was like the world had gone from summer to winter and entirely skipped the harvest season.

The heartbreak on the faces of many was plain, and Simon chose not to patronize them by telling them that they could rebuild. They knew that as well as he did, but more than that, they knew what a hard road it would be between here and there. Such a thing might take years, given the damage. 

Instead, Simon asked, “Will you move the village further away? How do you know this won’t happen again?”

“Aren’t you the one that’s supposed to tell us that?” Millen said, trying to turn it into a joke. “You were the one that predicted this, weren’t you?”

“True enough,” Simon nodded, mentally kicking himself. “Unfortunately, the Gods have provided me with no new insights.”

“Well, you be sure to tell us if they do,” the farmer nodded. “Until then, we’ll be here doing what we can.”

That night, many of the villagers found their way to Simon to thank him for saving them. He accepted that gratitude but took no part in any of the small celebrations that followed. Instead, he studied the remains of the bugs, trying to figure out what might happen next. 

He’d worried that they’d burrowed into the ground and laid eggs that might not hatch for years like some kind of demonic cicada, but they seemed even less natural than that. The hard carapaces had become brittle, and the innards didn’t contain eggs but ashes. There was definitely a touch of sulfur about these things. 

“Please don’t tell me this comes back to hell too, somehow,” he sighed to himself. 

It was hard to draw that conclusion from a single smell, but he had his concerns already with other things like that awful seed and even his double. Someone or something was periodically injecting really evil things into this world, and he was pretty sure that sooner or later, he was going to have to cut the head off that snake.

The next day, he gathered as many of the women and children as he could and set them to gathering the husks just in case. They tried burning them in a large fire. They didn’t burn very well at first, but once the fire got hot enough, they sizzled and exploded like sap-drenched pine as they sputtered and sparked before crumbling to ash.  

There was no way they could get all of them, of course, but it was better safe than sorry. While they were doing all this, he decided that the true resolution for this level was probably on the mountain that Millen had mentioned earlier, but Simon didn’t plan to investigate that on this trip. Not when he had some nearly fireproof armor that needed fixing and a date with a dragon. 

Besides, he thought with a shake of his head as he recalled just how much gray was in his hair at this point. This run is coming to a close soon, one way or the other. Simon wasn’t giving up, of course. He was just being realistic. He was still half crippled from falling off the volcano, and he didn’t rate his odds of solving another level very high just now. Still, he wasn’t in the mood to give up and hit the reset button. 

Simon spent three days helping the villagers gather the husks and another week helping Millen’s family get settled into their place. In the end, he slipped away in the night shortly after that. 

He was fairly certain that the next level was the crossroads, and after a quick peek confirmed it, it sealed the deal. He’d been fairly certain that he was going to leave Daisy behind as a parting gift, but with such a convenient location and a pocket full of gold, he was certain he could buy a new mount or pack animal to haul his junk around. Millen’s family needed another animal a lot more than he did at this point. So, without so much as a goodbye, he hauled his bundle over the threshold and closed the door behind him, disappearing into the next level.

Ch. 162 - Low Profile

The first thing that Simon did once he was standing in the streets of Esmiran was stash his junk in the alley next to the bakery. Then, he walked across the street to secure a room at the inn. One silver piece later, he was back across the street collecting his things. 

The last time he’d been here, he’d spent a few days relaxing from the awful pace of the last run before he’d saved that girl and been ambushed by those white cloaks. This time didn’t seem to be any different so far, but then, he didn’t have the clearest memories of this place beyond the fight, the whisperer, and how cute the baker was. 

No matter what was going to happen this go around, he didn’t have time to waste. So, instead of drinking and getting to know the regulars around the bar, he went straight to the blacksmith to size the man up.

Simon introduced himself as he looked around. Haadon, which turned out to be the smith’s name, was a man of only average talents; judging by some of the pieces he had lying around, Simon was probably almost as good as him at most things, but there was no abandoned forge Simon could spend weeks screwing with on the off chance that he could do the work himself. 

Instead, he got straight to the point and let his money do the talking. “I have some armor in pretty bad shape,” he said, pulling a handful of gold coins from his coin purse and setting them down in a small stack on the anvil while Haadon eyed him with growing interest. “It's some custom pieces, of course, so I’d need the utmost discretion.”

“I’m sure we can handle that,” the smith answered, practically licking his lips. 

“You say that, but some of the markings… well, let’s just say if the white cloaks or the village busybody caught wind of it, there would be real trouble,” Simon emphasized, setting down another small stack of coins. “Trouble for both of us, you understand?”

This was enough to make the blacksmith meet Simon’s eye, but only briefly, before he returned to the growing stack of gold. “Yes, sir. I don’t want no trouble here in Esmiran, so as long as you’re just passing through, I’m not inclined to ask about your business.”

Simon smiled at that but quickly suppressed it. He’d forgotten how powerful the magic of greed could be because he’d been poor for several runs in a row now. 

After they agreed on a price and another coin for the man’s apprentice to look the other way, Simon returned to where he’d tucked away his bundle and brought it to the smithy. On most pieces, the damage was relatively minor. The chest piece and arms had a few dents, as well as some cooled lava that needed to be hammered off. It was only the legs and back that were in really rough shape.

“I don’t know how you could have survived whatever blow did all this,” the smith said, swallowing hard as he reconsidered their arrangement. 

“It wasn’t a battle,” Simon said hastily. “It was a natural disaster in Ionia. A mudslide and other things.”

“Well, then, you’ve come a long way, haven’t you?” the man responded, sidestepping the answer entirely as he studied the armor.

It wasn’t much of a lie, but the blacksmith clearly wanted to believe it, and he just nodded dumbly as Simon went through the details about which straps needed to be replaced and which plates needed to be fixed. 

“The most important thing is these lines,” Simon emphasized, pointing to the delicate tracery of patterns that were present on every piece. “None of them can be removed, and any of them that have started to wear away need to be re-etched. If you are ever unclear about what goes where don’t guess. Send your apprentice to find me. I’ll be at the inn, and I’ll redraw them for you.”

“That specific, huh?” the man asked, a little pale. “These aren’t dangerous, though, are they? They’re just like—”

“They are important family heraldry,” Simon shot back, trying to keep everything moving, figuratively speaking. He was well aware of how this looked. He was a deformed stranger appearing out of nowhere and offering a craftsman a small fortune to do some strange work. It was practically a fairy tale. In a sane world, this man would turn Simon into the authorities as soon as he left, but today, Simon didn’t think that likely.

So, he left with a firm handshake and a promise of another payment when the work was completed and the satisfaction that this problem, at least, was left behind him. From that point on it was someone else’s problem, he decided, and he wasn’t going to worry about it. He had other things to worry about anyway, like what he could do to prepare for this evening. 

He started by buying a horse. It was only after he’d purchased it that he realized it was a complete waste. He’d imagine himself riding to the mountain village where he’d find the dragon slayer. However, it was only when he was walking that horse across the town square that he recalled where the portal entrance for this town was.

It’s in the fucking well, he groaned mentally as he willed himself not to cry out anything weird. Does that mean I have to walk all that way in plate mail? I’m never going to get there in time. 

Simon spent the next few minutes consoling himself about that as he thought through the problem. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure where he would end up when he came out of this portal since the ogre was dead as dead could be. So, he would try to stay positive about that.

He also decided he could use the horse to speed the mystery woman’s escape if she showed up again. He didn’t look forward to fighting a whole group of those weirdos, but he was hopeful he could get her out of there either way and was pretty sure that was how he would solve this level. 

He didn’t have his leather armor anymore for a start. That was something he’d sorely miss if it came to combat. He did have his knife and sword, though, and he made sure he was wearing both when he came down for dinner. 

He bought himself some stew and a beer, and then he bought a round for the house, too, which was starting to get crowded. This was to try to mitigate some of the looks he was getting. He told a few stories, too, about faraway places he’d been, though he tried to avoid talk of killing. 

When one bearded drunk who was almost as old as he was finally asked him about his scars, Simon responded. “Goblins raided my village when I was young. Ugly business.” The topic didn’t come up again after that, at least not in his presence. 

It wasn’t until the sun set that he saw the girl from last time. Part of Simon had hoped that this time, she would have run faster or farther, and she would have already moved on, out of harm's reach. Then he wouldn’t get mixed up in this. That was a selfish desire, given the shape he was in, and almost certainly an unreasonable one. The very fact that the portal still opened on this level meant that this needed to be done. 

This time, he didn’t wait for the white cloaks to arrive and moved to the fire to warn her. It was there he got his first surprise of the night. This time, there was someone with her, and strangely enough, it was someone he recognized: Aaric. 

He’d seen the boy before on this level, though it wasn’t really proper to call him a boy. He was a man now, and a look of recognition passed between them both immediately.   

“Simon?” the young man asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Why aren’t you with the white cloaks this time?” Simon responded, forgetting himself for a moment. 

That should have caused consternation, or at least confusion with the boy, but instead, without missing a beat, he sighed and said, “You know about that too? I should have known. It's a long story, but we—”

“Long stories can wait,” Simon interrupted, “We need to get her out of here before your friends show up.”

“The Unspoken are coming? When?” This time, Aaric’s answer was a whisper, but as soon as he said that word, Carelyn’s eyes widened. 

“They found me? So quickly?” the woman asked, whirling around to face Aaric. “I told you this would happen, Aaric. I told you…”

It was obvious to Simon that these two were more than prisoner and warden. They probably weren't just friends, either. That was enough to make Simon wonder just how much one small change in his childhood had changed the man, but that was hardly the right question. 

The right questions were things like who was she and why was she running away before she could be one of the chosen. For that matter, what he really wanted to know was who these people were and what word of power they were using to suppress magic. 

His mind was racing with questions, but none of those could be asked here. Not when people were already starting to give the three of them strange looks. So, he saved those for later and said, “Come on, I’ve got a horse in the stable you can use. We can—”

“We’ve got one too,” Aaric agreed. “Let’s get as far from here as possible, and then I’ll tell you what’s happened since you saved my village from the dark swarm so long ago. I owe you that much, at least.”

The three of them got up and moved to the stable. None of them wasted any time, but even as they started to saddle up their mounts, a group of riders wearing white cloaks came to a stop in front of the inn, not so far from them. 

“Damn it,” Aaric cursed. “They really are here.”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t kill all of them?” Simon asked in a cold tone. 

Violence usually wasn’t his first answer, but he didn’t see another way out of this. One or two, he might be able to fight with his sword. Three might be possible if he got the drop on them, but in a case like this, that was his limit. There was no way to sneak out the back from the stables, and he doubted they could outrun the larger group for long if they bolted. So, given that there wasn’t really a martial option, all he had left to fall back on was magic. 

“Kill them?” Aaric asked as he climbed up on his horse. “What? How?”

“Unless you give me a better answer than that, I—” Simon hissed, worried as the people started to spread out a bit more, which would make what was about to happen harder. 

“Do what you need to do, Simon,” Aaric answered. “I just need to keep Carelyn safe.”

No sooner were the words out of Aaric’s mouth than Simon called out, “Gervuul Oonbetit!” both of his companions gave him a look of pure horror as they recognized what he was doing on some level, but the real horror was yet to come. 

Simon had considered fire and lightning for this. It would have sown more chaos. This close to the inn, though, the fireball would light the place up, and there was no telling where the chain lightning would go once unleashed. So, instead, he used greater force and the magic of his words combined with his focus to create a scythe of pure power that stretched across most of the courtyard before it raced across it toward his enemies.

Simon had really leaned into the hero bit over the last few lives and tried not to kill more people than he absolutely had to unless they happened to be related to a certain despot from Crowvar. This time, though, there was no way around it. Even as some of the men and white cloaks turned to face him, the paper-thin shockwave passed through them, neatly slicing their heads from their necks. 

In a few cases, amulets that the men were wearing flared to life briefly. Simon would have liked to study that more, but he was already moving. It did not seem to be enough to save the men in most cases anyway, but it seemed to be evidence of magical items, which wasn’t something he’d seen very often in this world. 

Such magic didn’t come without cost to Simon. Not at the age he felt now. A year's worth of life meant a lot more to someone who was already fifty or sixty than it did the 29-year-old he was whenever he reset the Pit. Even as he felt the energy leave him, though, he knew he’d made the right decision. 

At least, that was the goal. It went over the heads of a couple of people who had bent down or dismounted. In a few cases, it gashed deeply into people’s chests or simply sliced through the top of their skulls. For a moment, though, it was like nothing had happened. It was only seconds later, as one of the survivors shouted an alarm and their two horses darted off into the night, that the true carnage was unleashed, and most of the Unspoken simply fell to pieces.