Death After Death PLUS 214-216

Ch. 214 - Ambushed

He wasted no time and kicked down the door. It was barred, but even so, the flimsy thing gave without the need for a word of force. That let Simon finally see what was happening. The small dining room contained the ruins of dinner spread across the floor, along with an elderly farmer and his wife and their younger daughters, who both seemed to be women in their twenties. 

It wasn’t the young women that the thing was attacking, though. They were just screaming. Instead, the vampire had the man pinned to the wall high enough that his feet weren’t touching the floor. 

No one looked at Simon despite his dramatic entrance. He didn’t blame them. The vampire had just torn out the man’s throat and was glorying in a grisly waterfall of blood. Compared to that, it was hard to imagine anything more shocking. 

Simon wasn’t sure the vampire would have turned even if he’d uttered some stupid battle cry. He didn’t, though. Instead, he just walked right up behind the vampire and stabbed him with his stake as hard as he could.

All the best deaths are anticlimactic, Simon thought, hoping to drop this prick in a single blow.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to pull it off. Even though the piece of sharpened wood bit deep into his flesh, the thing reacted almost instantly, dropping its victim, and whirling on Simon with a vicious backhand that knocked him backward. It roared in pain, but even before Simon hit the table, he whispered a word of force, and the stake in his left hand shot forward like a bullet, piercing the thing’s chest a second time.

This one went even deeper, and it staggered it. Simon had no idea if that was enough, and immediately pulled out two more weapons, but even as he did so, he decided that it was unnecessary. The thing was dying. 

No, scratch that, he clarified as he watched it smolder and decay. It’s dead already. The vampire might not know it yet, but he did. It roared in pain a second time, but as it did so, it started to fall apart into little chunks of ash. 

Once Simon decided the thing was toast, he ignored it and dropped the stakes. Part of him told him that was a terrible mistake, but there was a man bleeding out feet away from him, and literally every second mattered. So, instead of watching the vampire’s death throes for the next minute. Simon moved to heal the other man.

It was a rough time. “Hyakk,” he muttered, using a word of healing to repair just the jugular and refill as much of the lost blood as he could. Then, as he tried to understand what parts of the muscle and the trachea were damaged, the farmer’s hysterical wife tried to pull him off of the man. 

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Get off him! Leave the man his dignity at least!”

Simon didn’t bother to respond to her charges. Her fists were tiny, and her blows lacked strength. She was barely a distraction. 

“Mama! Leave him, mama! He’s trying to help!” one of the young woman said as both of them pulled her bodily off of him. Simon ignored them, other than a quick check back at the ashes to make sure the vampire really was staying dead. 

The maimed farmer was still choking, which meant that he was trying to breathe, but he wouldn't keep doing so for long without a little help. Simon tackled that next, using several words of lesser healing to pin the mangled flesh back into place a little at a time, followed by a full word of healing to try to put it back together. He had no idea how to make a larynx or an epiglottis, but he was pretty sure if he put it all back together, the body would do most of the heavy lifting for him.  

Slowly, the man’s breathing improved, and even though he was unconscious and flayed open, Simon thought he would probably make it. He used one more word of healing to put the muscle, fat, and skin back together, then followed that up with a word of greater cure in case the man had been infected with vampirism. He had no idea how that would work, but if it was anything like it did with zombies, it was better to be safe than sorry. 

It was only when all of that was done, and the man seemed likely to make it, that he turned to the women and said, “Please, could I have some water to wash my hands and his wound.”

One girl moved to comply while the other asked, “Was that magic… are you a warlock?”

Simon nodded because no other explanation was likely to work. “I am,” he agreed. “I was hunting this vampire, and I got here too late.”

“Too late?” the mother gasped. “In disbelief. How could you have been too late? Do you know what that animal would have done to us if you hadn’t…”

“Shhhh, Mama, be still,” the second daughter said as she handed Simon a pitcher of water. “It's all going to be okay. Isn’t it, stranger.”

“I think it might be,” Simon agreed as he used the pitcher to rinse away the blood from the wound to make sure it was healed shut before he rinsed off his hands. 

After that, he lifted the deathly pale farmer and carried him to his room. He’d been planning to leave him there and introduce himself more properly to the other women in the cottage, as well as see what he might do to fix the splinted door. 

However, as soon as Simon set the man down, he stirred and grasped Simon’s sleeve. Simon paused, and the farmer tried to speak more than once but was having real difficulty with it. That was only to be expected since he’d only just had his throat ripped out. 

Simon tried to tell him to save his strength, but he seemed insistent. So, instead, Simon got him a glass of water, and after choking and sputtering on that for a few seconds, Simon was surprised to find that it helped remarkably. 

Once he’d finished the glass, the farmer began to speak again, and this time, Simon could finally understand what he was saying if he leaned in close. 

“I should be dead,” the man whispered, “But I ain’t. Still, you should kill me just to be sure. I don’t want none of that curse near my daughters, you understand? They’re old enough to start families of their own, not to start killing them!”

“You won’t have to worry about that,” Simon assured him, hoping it was true. “I healed your body and purged your blood of the curse. You won’t be having any troubles there.”

“Well, if that’s the case, it will be a miracle,” the man sighed. “But you should be saving those fer yerself. You killed the dog that did that, but the witch that he serves will take that personally.”

“He had a master?” Simon asked. Simon seemed to recall him mentioning something about that just before this asshole had killed him the last time, but that was a long time ago, and he would have to consult the mirror for those details.  

The farmer nodded. “The dark lady.” he rasped with his raw throat. “While I thank you for your help, she’ll know what you did. She’ll come for you. You should flee while you can.”

“Maybe I’ll pay her a visit too,” Simon said, not put off by this. He’d been planning to look for the next level and leave right away, but dawn was only a few hours away, and vampires were kind of helpless when the sun was out, so putting down a few more might be fun. “Do you know where their lair is?”

“Everyone knows,” the man whispered, pointing at the wall across from him. “Castle Gravenstone. It is a cursed place that was empty for decades, but a few years ago, she returned and brought all manner of wickedness with her.”

Simon shook his head at that. Evil was like a fire, and no matter how many times and places he put it out, it always sprang up somewhere else. This one he probably didn’t even need to pin on his doppelgänger. There was a lot of evil here in the east that he’d barely touched on. He’d found one werewolf, along with rebels and cultists. That probably meant there were a lot more of each, just waiting to unleash their evil on the world. 

“If it was morning, you could see it from here,” the farmer continued. “It’s not even half a day's ride, and it lords over the whole valley, but I wouldn’t go there. It is a fearsome fortress and the living that follow her as well as the dead. The region prospers under her peace, but even so… the beasts must feed, and sometimes a family just… they just vanish, but we all know what happens.”

Maybe the Unspoken aren’t so bad after all, he reflected.

“I’m pretty fearsome myself,” Simon said, “But what I want to know is if it’s so terrible here, why not simply pack up and go somewhere else?”

“Where would we go?” the farmer asked. “I don’t speak the westerling languages as you clearly do, and the south and eastern lands are much more dangerous. They’re full of monsters. As to the north, well, we both know that’s impossible with the war.”

“What war?” Simon asked as he wondered about the monsters the man mentioned. He was getting the sneaking suspicion that with all the problems he’d had in Brin and Ionia, they were the easiest zones that he was likely to encounter. Chiara was shaping up to be much uglier, and then, of course, there was Murani to deal with and—

“The one that the Mountain Lords are losing, with the Murani,” the farmer interrupted Simon’s thoughts by reading his mind. 

“Here, too?” Simon asked. “You’ll forgive me. I come from the west, as you’ve guessed, but I thought that war was done.”

“Aye, in the west, it has been for a time, as I understand it,” the man nodded, “But that doesn’t mean they’ve given up. They’ve simply turned their sights elsewhere.”

“So, you’d rather live beneath the threat of vampires than die from one of these other dangers?” Simon asked sourly. 

The man went to answer but instead suffered a coughing fit, and all he could do was nod until it finished. “It’s a bargain with the devils, I grant you, but it’s worked out pretty well until tonight.”

That answer annoyed Simon, but before he could press the man any further, he was shooed away by his wife, who insisted that he needed his rest. He did. The farmer’s life had been spared, but he was probably still looking at pneumonia or something, in the best case. Simon could stay and tend to him for a few days. Even without magic, a few herbs he knew would go a long way. However, if what he’d said about vengeance was true, all of that would probably have to wait until tomorrow at least. 

Simon asked the daughters a few more questions, and though they were obviously afraid of him, they answered his questions quickly and as honestly as he could. They didn’t know a lot, but they shared what they did. 

It’s probably because they’re afraid of me, not in spite of it, he realized as he finally decided to get a few hours of sleep before daylight. 

Staying up all night would be the smart thing, but whatever vengeance awaited him wasn’t going to happen instantaneously in a world without cell phones. If he wanted to purge the castle of whatever creatures lay within it, he was definitely going to need to rest. He’d used a lot of magic in a short time, and he felt drained. 

Ch. 215 - Wrecking Crew

Simon slept fitfully and awoke at the smallest sounds throughout the night. Each time he awoke with stakes in hand, worried that he’d meet his end at the hands of a paranoid farmer’s wife, or worse, some awful witch that commanded vampires, and perhaps worse, he was instead woken by the sound of a rooster. That was a reassuring sign, and when he opened his eyes, he saw light coming in through the shutters. 

When he got up and went to check on the farmer, he found him deathly pale. The man had a fever, but he was still breathing. He whispered a word of lesser cure to give his immune system a chance, but there was no easy fix. With the messy surgery he’d done, his body was still trying to put everything together. Even beyond all of that, there were likely a dozen different pathogens to contend with as well. He was in for a rough ride, but Simon believed he would get through it. 

Even that wasn’t enough to wake the man up, though it did wake his wife up, and she glared daggers at Simon. “I want you out of my house,” she hissed. “The fever won’t go down as long as your cursed presence is sucking the life out of him.”

Simon didn’t laugh at that, but he wanted to. Instead, he said, “I’ll see what I can do to solve your little vampire problem, and then, after, I’ll see if I can find some herbs on the way back.”

She didn’t answer and only glared at him. So, he bid both of her daughters good morning in an effort to reduce their fear of him. Then left the house, if only to make her happy. Outside, he took a look around, and opposite the orchard he’d come in from, there was indeed a foreboding, ancient-looking castle partway up the far wall of the valley. 

Well, that’s not quite as close as the farmer made it sound, he thought with a sigh. That sealed the deal; he was definitely borrowing their horse. 

Before he did that, though, he looked at his equipment and took stock of the situation. He hadn’t been planning to fight vampires or attack any castles. He wasn’t exactly in the best shape either yet, so it was clear he was going to need a little help. 

“It’s not too late to dig around and find the portal out of here,” he told himself. “It’s probably right around here somewhere.”

That would have been the easy way, though. That would have been Helades way. He didn’t just want to get to the end anymore; he wanted to save everyone that he could along the way. 

So, he spent a few minutes referencing some of the patterns from his notes before transforming his sword into a vorpal blade and a couple of his arrows into lightning arrows. While he did so, he marveled at the fact that what he would have once needed a forge and days of time to create, he could now do with only a few words of metal shaping. 

He chose to create the sword in a configuration that would be powered by him instead of by his target. So. he’d have to toss it when it was done so he didn’t burn through years of his life. Still, he was probably going to need to get through a castle gate or portcullis or something, and this would be a hell of a lot easier than trying to knock it down. 

Once all that was done, he grabbed some more wood that he could fashion stakes from on the way, then he saddled up the horse he found in the barn and started riding across the valley to rest up. “After this, no more magic for a month,” he told himself while he used his dagger to whittle fine points. He’d probably burned two or three years of his life already, and he’d barely even done anything. 

“Well, barely done anything is a bit of an exaggeration,” he corrected himself while he rode on. “I only killed a vampire, saved a life, and probably solved a level. No big deal.”

As he went, he noted that with the exception of the evil-looking castle he was riding toward, the valley he was riding across really did seem like a nice place. It was full of tiny farmsteads and dotted by the occasional hamlet that looked inviting, even though he made no move to visit them. The place bordered on idyllic, with small herds and large grainfields here and there.

He’d been all over Brin and had only seen a few places that looked as bountiful. That was enough to make him see the farmer’s point on some level, but it seemed like a pretty brutal trade-off. “Live here, be perfectly safe, until one day your whole family is ripped to pieces,” he muttered to himself. “How’s that any different from living on the plains south of Crowvar? At least there, when the centaurs attack you, you can actually fight back.”

Here, he wasn’t really sure what the common people were supposed to do about vampires. “I thought you had to invite them in or something?” Simon said in exasperation. Truthfully, he wasn’t really sure. It had been a long time since he’d read any vampire stories. They were never his favorite. All he really remembered was that the real ones didn’t sparkle and that the only way to take them out was to stake them. 

He passed a couple of people on the road, but other than wishing him a good morning, no one tried to stop him. When Simon reached the last bend in the road before the castle, he tethered his horse in the shade of a tree and continued on foot. This was both because he would seem less threatening and because he had no wish to harm the farming family’s animal. Horses were the lifeblood of a farm, and losing it to an arrow would be dumb. 

When he reached the gate, it was still before noon, and the thing was shut tight, which was just what he’d expected. Even the postern gate was closed, and he suspected the portcullis was, too. Only a single watchman was in the nearest tower, and he called out, “Who goes there!”

Simon thought about it for a moment before he called back, “I have business here! I’m expected!”

The watchman yelled out, “Well, what is it then?”

Simon shook his head and spread his arms before he called back, “It's not the sort of business I should be yelling about in public!”

The man cursed a streak then but didn’t follow up further. Simon had been completely bullshiting, but apparently, that worked. Instead of yelling down anymore, he opened the trap door and started walking loudly down the staircase. A few minutes later, he reached the gatehouse and opened up a small hole for peeking out the postern door. 

“Alright,” the portly man said, half out of breath from the walk. “Who is it that’s expecting to see you then.”

That was the moment Simon realized he was probably fucked. He opened his mouth to try to make someone up, but as he did so, the self-important guard kept talking. “Gotta warn you, though, whoever it is, you ain’t gettin’ in here until after sunset. Something happened, and well, I’m sure a man like you knows the drill. This place ain’t much as long as the sun’s out.”

Simon nodded at that and said, “Yeah, I totally get it.” Then he drew his sword and shoved it right through the wood with only the slightest resistance. The steel chest piece of the guard didn't do much better than that. 

He aimed for the Carnia but came in a little above that junction between the lungs, slicing through the trachea instead. The result was the same. He pulled his sword back out, and as that happened, the guard backed away, already mortally wounded, even if he didn’t quite understand what was happening. 

“What… I… Help, help…” the man tried to call out, but he lacked the air to project any more than a whisper. 

Simon drew his sword back, then forced it into the notch between the postern gate and the larger gate, slicing clean through the thick wooden bar that was the locking mechanism. Then he pushed it open without issue, even as the other man staggered back. He collapsed to the ground before Simon could reach him, which was fine. The guard had died as merciful a death as he could grant him. 

Next, Simon walked over to the portcullis and cut through that too. It took longer, but took no more effort. The only issue was that his blade was only magical in the cutting direction, so he had to do it in three straight cuts instead of one long arc. 

There were a few other men wandering around the courtyard, and he could see two standing together on the far wall near the cramped keep, but no one paid him any mind. “They will the second I push this over, though,” he said to himself as he sheathed his sword for a moment and looked at the heavy chunk of steel he’d have to topple to enter. 

While his sword treated armor like tinfoil, he still chose his bow for the next portion of his attack. As soon as he kicked over the cutout he’d just made and stepped through, he was knocking an arrow to his weapon and pulling back. For his first shot, he didn’t bother to use magic. It was only twenty or so yards away. He just aimed for the man in the middle of the group and fired.

The result was spectacular. Even as the first man started to shout an alarm, and two more drew their weapons, one of the younger men, who might have been a squire, was hit square in the chest. On its own, that would have been a killing shot for one and not a bad opener, but even as the shaft sunk into the young man, lightning arced out of the arrowhead in all directions. 

Simon could have used fire and blown him to pieces, but great diffuse lightning caused chain lighting to reach out in a dozen different directions, catching almost all of his fellows. Those who were not killed in the blast were maimed and stunned by it. Simon smiled at that, deciding that it was even more effective than he thought it would be, as he looked for his next target. 

He found it in the form of the man who was running toward the large bell in a tower at least fifty yards away, and he calmly took another arrow from his quiver and took aim.

Not all of his experiments worked. His attempt to harvest strength from wretched goblins had been a complete failure, but apparently, magical frag grenades were a thing now, and if he was going to kill someone anyway, he had no qualms with using their life to fuel that sort of spell. 

The next arrow he fired was perfectly normal. It was only the words of distant shaping he whispered as he released it that made it special. At this distance, Simon didn’t have a prayer of hitting that guy from here in a single shot, but with magic, he didn’t need to. The arrow found its way right to the base of his neck in a single arcing shot that was utterly improbable. 

As soon as he’d fallen off the catwalk, Simon was drawing his sword once more to deal with the other men who were approaching him. He still had like six hours before crunch time, but if he was going to purge a vampire nest, then he absolutely wanted to make the best use of his time. The clock was ticking, and unlike most of his quests, he was on a timer here. 

Ch. 216 - To the Grave

At first, the men came at him one at a time. Simon fought each of them in turn, but none of those fights became grand duels. Some of the men were nearly as good with a sword as he was, but against the blade that he’d chosen for today’s combat, they were helpless. It cleaved right through their weapons and armor without any issues at all. 

Weapons like this will make me lazy, he reminded himself as he cut down his fourth opponent. 

In some ways, it was fortunate that he couldn’t just do this whenever he wanted. If he used a sword that left such an obvious path of carnage behind most of the time, it would start some very bad rumors and leave some awful legends about Simon the Butcher in his wake. He didn’t want that, but today, he wasn’t going to leave anyone alive, or undead, or whatever. If you were working for a vampire, you would meet the same end they did, as far as he was concerned. 

After he cut down some of the best warriors the other side had to offer, the rest started to bunch up. He discouraged that by launching another arrow at the eight men who were forming up with pikes and spears on the steps of the inner keep. Then, when they slammed the front door shut on him while he was walking over those smoking corpses, he leveled it with a word of greater force. 

I've got to pace myself, he reminded himself. He could have easily cut his way through the heavy iron-bound doors, just as he’d done with the castle door, but the time for subtlety was done. He’d taken out all the most ready defenders, and he wanted those that were ahead of him to flee before him, which meant that being a little showy was in his interest, even if he could probably only use another two or three major words today. 

“I won’t need nearly that many,” he said aloud as he walked over the shattered doors and the bodies of the men that had been crushed by them. “This place isn’t half the nightmare I thought it would be.”

Really, the castle seemed to be pretty normal compared to what he’d seen. It was a bit undermanned, and it looked a little evil, but even with all of that, he wouldn’t have believed there were vampires hiding out here if he hadn’t killed one of them last night. 

He kept expecting one of them to spring out and attack him or unleash some hideous secret weapon. He had to keep reminding himself that’s not the way these things worked. This isn’t Hollywood. In the daylight, these things are helpless. Fortunately, he had almost six more hours of helplessness before things got dicey. 

As he went, he found limited pockets of resistance, but after only a couple more fights, the strength of these combatants faded from men at arms, or even half-dressed mercenaries, to cook’s boys with knives and maids armed with broomsticks. Though he’d originally told himself he was going to kill everyone here, he quickly decided that he lacked the resolve to slaughter servants and let those people flee. He was certain that their fellow men would find the right way to deal with the collaborators. 

Once he started letting those who were wearing armor or bearing arms flee, the place emptied out in record time, leaving Simon with just enough true believers to be on his guard but no real force left to stop him. “Pity,” he sighed. “I still have one more arrow.”

After Simon had done a quick sweep of the main building and the smaller two- and three-story wood-framed houses on either side, which seemed to be where the servants lived, he finally descended into the cellars. In every horror movie he’d ever seen, this was where the hero ran into the villain. Of course, they made the mistake of doing it at night, which was a lot riskier. 

Simon was happy to learn from their mistakes, though, and did it right, going one room at a time in a search for coffins. That turned out to be a bigger undertaking than he would have thought. Though the castle above wasn’t very large, the basements below were fairly extensive. Some of the rooms, such as those that were used to store wine and cheese, were quite clean and almost pleasant, but once he reached the dungeons, the real horror show started.

The first time Simon opened a door that smelled of death, he knew he’d regret calling for more light, but that was exactly what he did. He whispered a small white flame into existence, and it appeared just above his head, almost like an undeserved halo. It was the most convenient place to put a source of illumination since it would stay out of his way. It wasn’t like he was going to be doing any hiding until he was done purging this place anyway. 

The glow of a minor light spell was enough to show him every gory inch of the blood-spattered feeding room, or butchery, or whatever it was. There wasn’t enough evidence to say why this abattoir existed, but the unmistakably human bones marked it as one of the more vile places he’d ever been, and he quickly moved past it after poking the most intact corpses to make sure none of them moved. 

While he did that, he noted there was some writing carved or scratched into the walls, but with all the gore, it was impossible to read. He was curious, but curious could wait until he’d completed his purge. He didn’t need to be distracted now. 

He thought that was about the worst he’d see, but then he found the cages. The owners of this castle had turned what might have once been a small dungeon into an overcrowded pantry that was every bit as vile as the abattoir he’d just left. Some of the prisoners were too weak to move, and a few looked dead, but all of them had bites on them. Most had half a dozen, at least. 

“They’re keeping these people alive so that they can feed off them over and over again,” Simon murmured to himself in horror. He hadn’t checked the servants or the guards, but he wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been drained once or twice as well.

That tugged at Simon’s heartstrings, and even before the strongest of them were up and begging at the bars, he was already cutting the locks off the cells. It was only when he started to open them that he realized they were begging him to kill them, not free them. 

“Go!” Simon commanded, “You’re free. Get out of here!”

Some did, but most simply sobbed, and Simon left them to their fate as he moved on deeper into this house of horrors. There were some things he couldn’t heal with magic. He knew that. He’d died in some pretty rough ways, but those people had lived some pretty awful lives, and there was little he could do to help them. He just hoped that their next lives were better than this one. 

After that was when he finally found the first coffins. They weren't particularly fancy or well hidden and were only guarded by a door that had been barred from the inside. Simon cleaved through it without issue, and inside, he found three coffins in an otherwise empty room. 

Simon spent a moment looking around for any possible traps. It seemed unlikely, given that these people had to walk through here every day, but perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps they just turned into bats and flew over cursed runes or some bottomless pit trap. 

Still, he found none, and when he opened the first coffin, nothing stopped him.

In the thing, he found a man who was both handsome and pallid, and Simon staked him without a second glance, using the pommel of his sword to hammer it in. The vampire opened his mouth in a silent scream but wasn’t even able to lift a finger in his own defense as he crumbled into ash.

The second coffin was empty, which was worrisome until he realized it probably belonged to the asshole he’d killed the night before. “Maybe they keep spares around,” he said to himself as he opened the third. 

There, he found another man who looked like he might have once been a warrior before someone dressed him up in noble’s clothing instead of armor. He was a bit rough around the edges and probably Murani. Unlike the one he’d just killed, this one managed to struggle weakly and raise a hand to try to ward off Simon, but there was nothing he could do.  

His behavior and appearance were enough to make Simon a little curious as to what this guy’s story was, but he wasn’t about to let him keep breathing until nightfall, and he quickly drove a stake through his heart as well, transforming him into dust and ashes in seconds. 

When both of them were done burning, and nothing remained behind but a foul odor, Simon shrugged and said, “Three down, one to go. Hopefully.”

Truthfully, he had no way of knowing how many there were in total, but he knew there was at least one more. Three coffins were empty, and three vampires were dead, if he included the one he’d killed last night, but none of them had been women, which meant that she was still out there. 

Still, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t find her. He scoured the dungeons twice before he switched to the other outbuildings as the hours ticked by. 

“Think, man, think,” he told himself. “There’s only so many places. Where could she be?”

He’d already searched basements and the bottom floors of every room that didn’t seem to have a basement. He’d also searched the area where the throne room might be in a real castle in case the previous occupants were human and had included human details like a second way out. Such secrets could easily have been repurposed into an extra hidden lair. 

“But if there’s another better hiding place than the nest in the basement, then why weren’t all the coffins there?” he asked himself. “Well, it's either because those were a decoy or because the better spot is too small. That probably rules out a cavern or secret passage, which means it's got to be something stupid. Like, something practically in plain sight.”

Simon looked around again, trying to filter his perceptions through that premise. He considered the well but instantly dismissed it. Instead, after a moment’s thought, he decided it was probably somewhere incredibly unlikely, like one of the towers. 

“Who would look for something that hates sunlight in the place that gets the most sun?” he asked himself. 

That clinched it, and after a brief debate about which one he should check, he decided that considering the ego on these sorts of villains, the highest tower of the keep was the best bet, even if he wasn’t looking forward to running up those stairs. “There’s still time to run and live to fight another day,” he told himself as he eyed the horizon. He had maybe half an hour left until this was over, one way or the other. 

Finding the door that led to the stairs was easy enough, and even the lock only stopped him for a few seconds. Halfway up the tower, he found a new problem. The thing had been physically walled off with bricks. Judging from the work, it had been done rather recently. 

While that was bad, in a way, it was a good sign. If someone was taking the time to brick up stairwells, then there was something worth hiding, and he could only think of one thing that might be: the leader of this whole nightmare.