Death After Death Ch. 145-146

Ch. 145 - South

The trip back to Schwarzenbruck was not much more challenging than the trip to the barrows had been. It was a few days longer because Simon chose to stay off the main road as much as possible. Both the rugged terrain and the extra days on the trail meant that he encountered more zombies than he otherwise would have, of course, but he didn’t mind that. They were only a nuisance when found in ones and twos, and every time he killed one, he freed some tormented soul. 

At this point, almost all the zombies he killed had the look of tradesmen or mercenaries, which explained where all the disrupted traffic had come from. Once, he even found an overturned wagon that contained a variety of now-spoiled spices and bolts of beautifully dyed fabric. Simon probably could have sold it for a few coins, but he didn’t feel like the hassle. Between his pilfered grave goods and the coin purses of dead men, he had more money than he’d need for a long time.

Despite his circuitous route, he made it back to the city in less than a week to find that the only undead that were assaulting it were the ones that were whispered about in rumors. While there was no evidence that a single one had been seen inside the city, the guards were out in force looking for anyone who seemed unwell, and everyone traded stories fearfully about what was to come. 

Of course, Simon was unconcerned. Instead, he went to a different inn on the far side of town and treated himself to a real meal to reward himself for enduring his mediocre attempts at campfire cooking and day after day of cold hardtack. He had a roast chicken to himself, and then after he was finished gnawing the bones clean, he had a few drinks while he caught up on the rumors. 

It was just as he’d heard whispered in the streets. People were afraid, but the story of the Butcher’s Bill was the one he heard the most. That made sense. The prospect of a large mercenary company traveling north but coming back with only a few survivors could be a shocking thing. Simon wasn’t about to explain to him why the majority of those people had died, of course. 

He just listened and gave the same nonanswers as everyone else between questions. Especially when they mentioned what a hero Kell was. There, he bit his tongue, trying to decide if it was worse that Kell would be remembered as a hero, or that last time it was Simon who had been remembered as the villain. In the end, he decided to leave it alone. 

There were no rumors of conditions further to the south, though whether that was because people were so captivated by what was happening to the north or because there was simply nothing brewing, he couldn’t say. It honestly could have been either. Whole wars could be happening, and no one would notice, but Simon couldn’t exactly blame them for that. 

Instead, he just enjoyed a good night’s sleep in a soft bed, and the next day, after he refreshed his supplies and bought some paper to continue his mapping project, he started south. Given the distances he was going to have to travel, a horse was probably the right answer, but neither his weight nor his endurance was where he wanted it to be, so he decided that he was going to walk instead, at least for the first part of the journey. 

Given how rough the roads were in places, it was clear that was the right move. The gap in trade caused by this disruption was clearly taking its toll on the lonely dirt road that snaked through the claustrophobic forest that was a dense mixture of pine and fir trees as well as oak and ash. It was clear that trying to keep the road open through such lonely terrain was a full-time job when he noticed a few saplings growing in the road at various intervals.

Technically, he’d been through here when he was a zombie, but he didn’t remember any of it. From that terrible experience, though, he knew that somewhere beyond the trees lay more farmland, and after a few days, he reached it. What followed were a series of inns and villages as he made his way south and east. The countryside blurred together a bit after that. 

Some days, it rained, but most of the time, it was sunny, and though much of the Northlands seemed poor compared to places he’d seen further south, they were mostly nice to him. When he stopped to ask for directions, people answered his questions without too much of an attitude, and in places where there were no inns, farmers were happy enough to bring him a meal in the barn for a few coppers, even if they eyed his weapons suspiciously. 

I spent what… two weeks… No, almost three north of the Black River Bridge, he corrected himself as he reviewed his progress one night over a bowl of cheap stew that only tasted a little sour. Then, it was a week through the woods and another three weeks through civilized lands. 

As he walked through his progress, he reviewed his map, counting dots, making them both a measure of distance and time. He’d been on the road for almost two months. He’d found half a dozen villages and a handful of larger towns. His map was also speckled with the approximate locations of villages and landmarks that were described by people that he hadn’t personally visited. He was still looking for a number of levels, like the demonic church, but so far, he hadn’t found one. 

There were any number of other locations, though. There was even the distant capital city of Liepzen, not so far away. It was still over a week away by foot, maybe even two. He was tempted to stop there and check it out, but it was a distraction to his main mission. No matter how much he might want to make random side trips while he was in the area, he needed to get to Ionar. 

Despite his careful tracking, though, it still surprised him when he went into an inn that seemed to be vaguely familiar, only to find an all too familiar face standing behind the bar. She looked at him a moment and frowned before she made change and told him which room it was he’d be staying in. Simon had forgotten a lot of things during his travels, but he would never forget a woman who had killed him.    

That was only then that he realized how far he’d come. He was in Wellingbrooke, which felt like the crossroads to half of his adventures with a murderous old woman who could see things, including the darkness in his aura. 

He still wasn’t sure what that meant, though, but it was clear that it wasn’t as sinister as it once was. After all, the last few times he’d come through, she looked at him like he was the devil, and this time she merely looked at him like he was just a piece of shit, which, in some contexts, he probably was. 

Ethically or spiritually, though? At this point in his life, with the exception of the occasional grave robbing or revenge killing of someone who really deserved it, he always tried to do the right thing. 

That night, after Simon had eaten and shared his news about the roads to the north of Wellingbrooke with the locals, he went to his room. There, he wedged a dagger in the door frame of his room just in case the proprietor changed her mind about him, and then, in that dark room, he produced his mirror and decided it was long past time to have a very specific conversation with it. 

“Mirror, show me my experience total please,” Simon said. The mirror would fit any amount of writing he requested on the small surface, but if he asked for too much, the spirit that controlled all of this would shrink it down so that it was utterly unreadable. So, rather than ask for his whole sheet, he asked only for the relevant bit. 

‘Experience Points: -748,292,’ the mirror typed out promptly.

“That’s… that’s a big change,” he said, looking at the number. It had dropped at least a hundred thousand since he’d last reviewed it, and probably more like a hundred and fifty thousand. He was pretty sure he didn’t even bother to look at his character sheet after his last death, but the one before that, well, he wasn’t sure about that either. It had either been two or three deaths since he’d last checked, 

Even if it was a big change though, there were really only a few places he could have shed that many negative points. He’d spent a lot of time healing the sick in Abrese and even more time fighting a war against the centaurs around Crowvar. He’d gotten a lot of satisfaction from both of those, but he’d also helped a lot of people. 

Even after all this time, he wasn’t sure if the number had more to do with the effect his action had or how he felt about it. “If I stab Varten to death, does that number go up or down?” he wondered aloud.

‘I do not know the answer to that question,’ the mirror typed, making the other data fade away. 

Simon shook his head, completely unsurprised that was what the thing had done. That was what it always did. It was so literal that it was barely a step above the computer-style interface it very clearly had. 

“That’s fine,” Simon said. “I don’t need you to tell me. I’m going to find out for myself.”

He put away the mirror and got ready for bed, but his mind was already racing. Not even the vague worry that an old woman might try to kill him again in the middle of the night was enough to dull that excitement. 

Simon had explored the magic system of the Pit extensively. He focused on certain skills to try to improve them enough for the value on his character sheet to click over from fair to good or from good to great, as if it mattered at all in the grand scheme of things. The one thing he hadn’t done, though, was to try to understand that mysterious experience number. 

So, that’s what he spent the next several days doing. Taking some of his precious paper, he kept a small journal. Every day, he’d write the starting number when he woke up, and then in the evening, he’d write the ending number and list a few of the things he’d done that day. Sometimes, it was ‘had a good dinner,’ and other times, it was ‘slept in the rain.’ 

Slowly but surely, patterns started to emerge. For starters, except on his most miserable days, he seemed to gain at least ten points. Simply existing and leading a normal life seemed to heal whatever karmic wounds he’d caused to himself. On better days, though, he could get twenty or even thirty points. Helping people seemed to spike that number, but so did simply having a nice day. 

It was hard to say for sure one way or the other when the world seemed content enough to leave him in peace. That was when he arrived in Slany. 

Ch. 146 - Nostalgia

Slany was a town he had a lot of memories of, but encountering it almost out of the blue, even though he knew he was close, felt like something closer to a dream than a reality. Everything looked much the same as the last time he’d left it, but in the half-light of sunset, it seemed that much more magical, and he basked in it. The fact that the little town was still here despite all the strange places he’d been to was a comfort. 

There on the hill were the lights of Baron Corwin’s manor, and all the other homes were just as he remembered them. There was no evidence of resurgent goblins or recent strife, either, and Simon smiled at that. Sometimes, it felt like he wasn’t really making a difference, but having seen what this place looked like on the trip where Gregor only had one arm, he knew he’d really moved the needle. 

This place very easily could have turned into another Crowvar, he thought to himself. 

For a second, he considered whether or not he could go back in time far enough to undo all the damage the Raithewaits caused, but he really couldn’t. While he wasn’t sure exactly how much time passed between level zero and level seven, which is where he spent the most time in the place, he was fairly sure it was a decade or less, and Varten would already be an awful snot-nosed brat by then. 

As he walked to the inn and tied Daisy up outside, he laughed at the image. Finally, a version of the man I’d feel bad about killing, he thought to himself. 

Simon went inside, still trying to puzzle out the exact timeline involved here, so he reacted a little slowly when the owner and two of the patrons looked at him like they’d seen a ghost. He stood there a moment, trying to decide what the problem was. Old man Wonick had never been able to see his aura before, so that shouldn’t cause a problem now. “Is there a problem?” he asked finally. 

“Oh, no, nothing,” the man said, breathing an obvious sigh of relief. “I just thought you was a ghost, is all. Had a good man die recently, and you’re well - you could say that the two of you had more than a passing resemblance.”

“You can say that again,” Norm said. He was one of the regulars who pretty much lived on his bar stool when he wasn’t working the silver mine for the Baron. Simon had spent plenty of nights gambling with him over dice with large beers and small stakes. 

“Oh, well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Simon said dumbly as he put the pieces together. “I’m just a peddler traveling south. Nothing more than that.”

“Glad to hear it,” the innkeeper said, slapping the bar with both hands in an effort to seem more lively and shake off his shock. “What can I get you, Mister…”

“Uhhhm, you can call me Jake,” he said, quickly truncating his last name. It wasn’t the most creative decision, but then he was still struggling to take in the news. 

I was only days or weeks away from running into myself? Simon was completely stunned. 

Still, he ordered a beer and a plate of whatever was hot and made small talk with the other men. His mouth moved, but it was on autopilot while his mind raced. He was on level six now, and the goblin level he usually traveled from was level three, so they had to be at least two or three years apart, right? Had he been here that long? He hadn’t thought so at the time, but he’d been through at least one winter, and then he’d started building his house, so maybe… 

While Simon was struggling to put the pieces together, he was jarred off his train of thought when Norm said, “Well, isn’t that a small world! Simon… I mean, the dead man said he was from up north, too. Maybe the two of you really are related.”

Simon tried not to cringe as he realized he’d probably just told the three of them much the same backstory as the other version of himself had years before. “Maybe,” he nodded, “Taking a sip of beer. “Maybe so.”

When they tried to follow up further, Simon gave fake and misleading answers to avoid repeating his mistake. The men at the bar soon lost interest in him, though. Instead, they began to reminisce about the Simon they’d lost so recently. That conversation intensified as others came in and had a similar reaction.

To Simon, the whole situation was very strange. It felt almost like he was sitting in his own wake as the people of Slany talked about all the good he’d done over the years. There was nothing he could do, though. It would have been weird to try to change the topic. So, instead, he just listened to old stories about himself that he only vaguely remembered doing because they’d been such minor things at the time. 

No matter how often they talked about barn raisings or the extra hours that he put in around harvest time, they talked about the goblins more, though. Even mentions of Trinna and how hard the poor girl had taken his passing were less numerous than the greenskins, and the conversation always returned to the silver mines. 

“You know, Simon never said anything about it, and I didn’t want to say while the guy was alive because I didn’t want people to be afraid of him,” Norm volunteered finally, “But I was the one that had to drag all those corpses out, and well… let’s just say the man downplayed what he had to do to save Gregor Corwin that day. The man didn’t just put down a couple of goblins and drag the kid to safety. There were a lot more dead down there than all that.”

“You’re painting Simon as a killer!” one of the newcomers said. He was a farmer that Simon remembered, but not so well that he remembered the man’s name. “I find that difficult to believe. The man was a gentle soul.”

“He was,” Norm agreed, “But he had to be a mercenary or worse when he was up north. No one gets that good at killing goblins in a day. Remember, he didn’t even have a scratch on him when he came back to town with Gregor and that coward in tow.”

Simon smiled and laughed where appropriate, but when he finally paid the innkeeper for a room and went upstairs for the night, his mind was spinning from more than just the booze, and he had trouble falling asleep. He felt kind of bad that he’d abandoned everyone so unexpectedly, but it wasn’t exactly his fault. The mule’s kick had hardly been planned. 

The real surprise was that he’d almost recovered. In his mind, it had been lights out, and he’d woken up back in the cabin. Apparently, in the real world, things were quite so clean. What had actually happened was that he’d had a skull fracture or worse and lay in a coma for several weeks before he’d finally succumbed. It was an ugly way to go, and he was glad he didn’t remember it. 

Really, I should have timed my arrival better. I could have picked up right where I left off, he thought with a smile. 

It was fun to think about, but that, of course, was impossible. He might love Slany, but he no longer remembered it the way he once had. Even Trina, who he’d briefly considered asking to marry him, was nothing but a distant memory. He might remember her as a pretty baker, but there was no emotion there anymore, let alone love. The most he could summon when he thought about her flour-streaked face and pretty white smile was nostalgia or fondness. Too much had happened between here and there. 

In the morning, Simon set out early, seeking to avoid any other run-ins. On his way out, he made sure to take the long way around rather than go through the center of the village so that Trinna wouldn’t see him. Along the way, he took advantage of that route to check out the house he’d been building on a hill at the edge of town. No one had yet decided to put a roof on it, which made him a little sad. It had only been a couple weeks since all of this had happened, though, so he hoped when everything blew over, someone would finish it. He’d hate to see all his work go to waste. 

Simon left Slany with mixed feelings and continued south, one day at a time. He was surprised to find that those feelings hadn’t cost him any experience points, though. He’d worried the negativity might have, but when he checked his mirror, he was up almost a hundred points day over day, which was more than the average. 

Now that he was back on the road, and looking more carefully, this was land he’d definitely traveled through more than once on various errands for Lord Corwin. If he went southeast far enough, he’d eventually reach Crowvar. That was another place he wanted to avoid for a variety of reasons. He already had that area handled pretty much like he wanted it, and killing Varten again, as he would inevitably do, would only screw everything up. 

Instead, after asking around at a couple of villages, he found the right track and struck to the southwest, into territory he’d never been in before. It was closer to the coast and, therefore, the mountainous region of Ionia. Near as he could tell, he was perhaps a hundred miles due north of Fia and perhaps a hundred and fifty to the northwest of Ionar. 

That still put him several hundred miles to the south-south-east of Schwarzenbruck, of course, but then, the world was a big place, and one journey at a time, it was all coming together in the map he had in his mirror. The play area, as he sometimes thought about it, seemed to be made up of four or five countries, not counting the Aztec ruins. He still had no idea where those were. 

The Kingdom of Brin was the most central and was ringed by mountains to the east and west. It was also bounded by water to the north and desert to the south. To its north were the uncreatively named the Northlands, which Simon had only brushed up against in Schwarzenbruck. 

To the east of Brin stood the mountainous Charia. That was where he’d encountered the werewolf, the owl bear, and a certain masquerade ball that had gone horribly wrong. Other than Ionia, he was sure he’d been there the least. 

To the south of Brin was Montain. Simon was pretty sure that was the country that controlled the deserts, along with almost all the territory up to Abresse. He was less sure about that. Other than Darendelle, he hadn’t spent a lot of time there, but he would probably have to. 

Finally, to the west was his current goal, Ionia. It seemed much smaller than its neighbors and climbed the marginal lands of the mountains where they hugged the sea. Given the fate of Ionar, it didn’t seem very important in most of Simon’s adventures to date, and he wondered if that would change. 

Apparently, in the past, the large trading city of Abresse had been part of Montain but currently styled itself as an independent city-state. That was why Simon wasn’t sure if the entire world map he was building consisted of four countries or five. 

Individually, each location was confusing, but very slowly, he was building them into a web in his head that was actually starting to make sense. That, as much as anything, was enough to put a spring in his step as he started the uphill portion of his journey. No matter how exhausting it might be, he was getting close to his destination.