Death After Death Ch. 110-111 (Patreon)

Ch. 110 - Truly Vile

The sewer stank, as it always did, but this time, Simon didn’t even wait until he was close enough to catch the attention of the carrion crawler. Instead, he used only a very small light spell to guide his feet on the familiar path, and as soon as he turned the corner and saw the bodies at the end of the channel moving slightly while the thing feasted on it, he muttered the word of lightning and sent electricity arcing along the sewage toward the thing. 

The flicker of arcing electricity that followed was brief, and the smell of ozone lasted a little longer, for which he was grateful. It certainly smelled better than the shit and decay, but both were gone by the time he reached the end of the tunnel and found the still-quivering pile of corpses. 

This was the first time that the slimy bastard didn’t climb up to the top of the tunnel to attack him. It was also the first time that he waded into the filthy water to see what it was he’d glimpsed last time. 

Simon flinched as he stepped into the churning slime as it rose first to his ankle, and then to his knee as he waded over to the small mountain of bodies, and began to pull them off the stack one at a time. 

“I’m going to burn these clothes when I’m done with them,” he muttered to himself. “Maybe my hands too.”

The corpses themselves were in a fairly advanced form of decomposition, and when they yanked on an arm or a leg to pull a body out of the way, as often as not, the rest of the body didn’t follow, which was somehow more disgusting than all the other disgusting things he was doing right now, like wading in sewage or touching dead bodies. 

Each time it happened, he gagged, but it wasn’t until the third time that he actually threw up. “What could possibly be worth this,” he wondered aloud. 

Simon wanted to quit, but not as much as he wanted to never do this again. So, instead, he plowed ahead, slowly clearing away the bodies, widening the stack as its height shrank. Part of him wanted to use force to make this easier and faster, but he hesitated. 

He’d seen this whole place collapse before. He knew how fragile this arrangement was, and even as he moved the corpses around, he could hear the rusted grating creaking and screeching as the load against it shifted. It would be very easy for the whole thing to give away and send him tumbling into the darkness that lay beyond. 

After two new minor light spells, several more minutes of messy digging, and one more round of vomiting, Simon finally saw what he was looking for: a glint of gold. It was wedged deep, but it was there, and he threw caution to the side as he went for it. Instead of moving bodies carefully aside a piece at a time, he leaned forward as far as he could to dig it out. 

It was a fine plan, but it was no surprise when he slimed in the muck and gore almost immediately. His added weight to the pile that suddenly destabilized the rest of the mound, and just like that, he could hear the sound of rusted metal tearing as the whole thing slid toward the abyss. 

Even as the darkness opened up around him, his hand closed around the golden cylinder, and he gripped it tight. If he fell into the darkness, he could easily blast his own head from his shoulders with a spell, but he wasn’t going to let that happen. Dying now would mean doing this again in some future life, and he was done digging through corpses. 

So, instead, he yelled, “Oonbetit!” as he felt the whole mound starting to go, pushing himself bodily back toward the sewer. 

There was no subtlety to this spell. It felt like a mule kicking him in the chest as he was lifted bodily out of the water along with a spray of body parts and thrown away from the corpseberg as it started to fall away into the dark. What followed was a feverish struggle as his fingers sought to find purchase on the slimy walls and the far ledge, but each time he found something to grab hold of, he fell away. 

In the end it was neither his resources that saved him or his strength, it was the lack of water. With the blockage removed, the water had flowed very quickly for the first few seconds, but once that was over he was left at the bottom of the sewer channel with barely a trickle of water surrounding him, which was much too little to move his bulk. 

Simon peeled himself off the ground, desperately wishing he knew the power word for water. He didn’t though, so he would have to live for this. As he made his way to the ladder and began to climb toward the light. He’d lost his bow, and probably other things in all of that, but he still had his sword, and more importantly whatever this golden cylinder was, and after he’d bathed for like an hour he was going to open it and investigate it. 

Still, not even the magnetic pull of the languid jungle river that he’d enjoyed more than once before was enough to make him stop and investigate the thing. It looked like a scroll case of some sort but was sealed with what appeared to be molten lead. There might be writing, but he wasn’t sure. The thing was caked in grime. 

It was almost certainly cursed or worse. Simon wasn’t sure what that meant mechanically, but he suspected that whoever had thrown it away in a sewer wanted to make sure that it never saw the light of day again. 

Simon knew something was wrong even before his head popped above the street level. He could hear screams, which weren’t a thing before. He’d never encountered a single living soul in the jungle level, and that anomaly made him stop his studying of the cylinder, and rush up the ladder even faster. 

What he found was not the jungle, the river, or even the ruins. The level had disappeared, though he didn’t know why. Instead, he was back in Ionar and was burning the same as it ever was. 

That was, interesting, concerning even, but not as concerning as the fact that his planned bath was going to need to be delayed. Simon looked to the erupting volcano in annoyance, and then cast his gaze around the street as he watched people flee by looking for some place to bathe. 

He found his answer in a fountain a little ways up the street, and he started walking toward it with a purpose. Even though he was going against the streaming, screaming masses, he had no trouble reaching it. Because of the awful smell, all of them gave him a truly wide berth. 

So, as the world ended for the residents of this beautiful cliffside city, he began to strip down, throwing each piece of his armor in the lukewarm fountain water as he went. By the time he was almost naked, the place was mostly a ghost town as they fled down the road toward the distant harbor. That left him plenty of time to soak while he tried to figure out what the hell was going on. 

“Did I do anything on my last trip that might have cleared the ruins?” he asked himself as he sat beneath the spray in the waste-deep pool. The water was cool, but the night air was very warm, and it balanced out well enough. 

“No, no, I definitely didn’t,” he said after he thought about it for a moment. The last time he’d gone up those temple stairs, he hadn’t done a single thing. He’d just been passing through because he didn’t want to try to fight his way through those horrid flowers again. 

So what did it do? He wondered. 

He thought back through his last run. He’d done a lot of stuff in levels after the temple, but they shouldn’t be able to effect it. Not unless there was some weird reverse causality at play. 

So what did he do before that? He’d finally found out where the rat level was, which was the most minor change he could have imagined. That was it, though. He’d fought the Skeleton Knights the same as always and breezed right through the inn without talking to anyone. 

“Was that the first time I left the sword there?” he wondered aloud. “No, because I couldn’t figure out how to pick it up safely for ages. So, that couldn’t have been it either.”

Finally, his eyes fell upon the scrollcase. That was really the only change he’d made, actually before the missing level in time, that might have been major enough to affect it.

Simon carefully washed the debris clean off the outside and looked at it. The whole thing was beaten gold that had been decorated with death imagery in delicate bass reliefs that had already been damaged by how soft and ductile the gold was. 

“If you want to seal something away forever, then why would you build it out of gold?” Simon asked dismissively. Stamped into the lead seal that oozed out of the two halves like they were some kind of thermos that overflowed, he found the words, “Do not think to open, even to destroy this. Better men than you have failed.”

“What an oddly specific warning,” Simon said quietly as he tried and failed to twist the thing open. 

He shook it, and heard only one thing rattling around in there. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it definitely wasn’t a scroll. 

He weighed his options for a moment. He could keep it sealed and find somewhere to hide it, or he could open it up, and if he didn’t like what he found he could always melt it closed again. He chose the latter option. He didn’t see the harm. 

“Vosden,” he said as the volcano rumbled ominously in the background. The lava hadn’t reached this spot yet, but it was coming down the street. He would probably have to start getting dressed in his wet clothes in a little while. 

As he spoke the word, the top melted off, letting Simon look inside for the first time. What he saw was… an orb? No, a crystal, maybe? It was oblong and bulbous, but it was hard to make it out in the darkness of the container. 

He studied it for a moment, then upended the case like a Pringles can and dropped the thing into his hand. It was definitely a stone of some kind. It was heavy, too, and reminded him somewhat of a chestnut made out of malachite. 

He shrugged and was about to put the thing back in the case since he couldn’t figure out what it was for when suddenly it bit him. Bite might have been the wrong word, but whether it was a stab or a sting, he felt a painful jolt into his flesh, and he dropped the thing immediately. 

He tried to, at least. The stone stayed stuck to his hand, and it was only when he grabbed it in his right hand and pulled hard that it came loose. He couldn’t see what had happened, but what he could see was blood and lots of it, along with a series of small fresh wounds in his palm.

Ch. 111 - Root Cause

Simon dropped the stone immediately lest it attach to his other hand, too, and he scrambled away to the other side of the fountain. For a moment, it was lost in the murky water, but as soon as the cloud of his blood dissipated, he finally understood what it was. 

It wasn’t a stone, he thought plaintively. It was a seed!

Suddenly, a variety of questions were answered. He now knew where the sewers were and why the level with the ruins had been missing. It was because those carnivorous plants weren't there anymore. They were here with him, and they were growing. 

Already it had latched the bottom off the fountain, and its roots had begun to fan out, digging into the stone just as easily as they had dug into his hand. As he watched, transfixed, a stalk began to grow out of the top of the thing, and as soon as it was free from the water’s surface, leaves began to unfurl. 

Simon flailed back in a panic as that stalk shot upward and began to branch out. It wasn’t that he was concerned that he might hurt him. It was too small for that. The rate that it was growing at was shocking, though, and in another few minutes, it might be able to grow flowers or sprout teeth. He wasn’t sure. 

Simon staggered out of the fountain completely naked and ran across the hot stones to where he’d left his sword propped up, and drew it immediately. Once he had it in hand he immediately slashed off the top of the creeping vine, and then reversed his grip and brought it down hard on the nodule of the seed, splitting it in two. 

For a moment, that seemed like it would be enough. The thing's insane level of growth stopped, and the debris just floated there. After a few seconds, though, two new shoots started to spring up. One from each side of the seed. 

“Mother. Fucker,” Simon cursed. 

Fire was the obvious answer, but that was unlikely to be very effective underwater as it was. So, instead, he tried cold. He didn’t know if being frozen solid would be enough to kill something like this, but it should at least give him some breathing room to think. 

“Gelthic!” he yelled, instantly turning the fountain’s water to solid ice. It happened so quickly that the arcs of water froze midair, and the stone pool cracked from the force of the expanding ice. 

He didn’t care about that. Instead, he…

Simon looked down to tend to his own wound and saw a few tiny leaves sprouting from the wound that had since stopped bleeding. 

“What in the actual fuck?!” he hissed as he dropped the sword.

He could see the roots starting to radiate out under the skin. Simon reacted immediately, grabbing the small sprout and pulling it out along with several of the roots before tossing them on the ice. 

It hurt, but he’d gotten some of them out. Some wasn’t good enough, not with this thing, though. He could see that. Even a speck would be enough to devour him whole eventually. 

So, forcing himself to calm down he studied the wound, he imagined each one of those tiny little roots as they probed and grew, and when he had all of it fixed in his mind he whispered, “Aufvarum Meiren,” sending liquid fire coursing through a small part of his flesh. 

Visually, it wasn’t very impressive. He’d expected something like that scene in an action movie where the hero uses gunpowder to cauterize a wound. In this case, it had been the opposite. There had been no flash. Instead, one second, he had a root-shaped tumor, and the next, he had a terrible burn. 

Simon followed up on that with a word of cure and a word of healing before he coughed and had to clear his throat from the strain. After all that, though, all that was left to show what had happened was a lichen lichen-shaped scar spreading out from his left palm. 

He watched it for a moment, suspicious that it would sprout again, and he’d have to cut his whole hand off to stop it, but instead, it just sat there. That was when he heard the ice crack. 

Simon looked up just in time to see a tendril force its way out of the ice, and a thick bulb began opening to reveal a familiar orange blossom. Before it could completely, though, he cut it off. It wasn’t the only one, and Simon spent the next several minutes hacking away at each stalk while the lava closed in. 

The version he’d fought amongst the ruins had taken days to regenerate, while this one was happening in seconds? What makes it different? He wondered to himself. 

“Because that’s what happens when you open Pandora’s box!” he grumbled. 

Simon put down his sword when he noticed the things were beginning to sprout from the ashen cobblestones where the sliced off stalks were scattered. He didn’t have time for this. The lava was going to reach them in less than five minutes and he was still running around naked. That devil guy was already a prick, and the last thing Simon wanted to do was let the thing see him in such disarray. 

So, he used a word of greater fire to burn away all the small bits and sprouts, and then he used another word of ice to stop the big one from growing for a couple minutes so he could put his clothes back on. It was a miserable experience.

From the soaking clothes and waterlogged armor to the choking air and the sense that, at any moment, more leaves were going to burst out of his skin, everything was just as awful as it could be. It also made everything take twice as long as it should have. 

By the time the thing was growing again, Simon still didn’t have his armor or his boots on, so he shoved them in his sack and slowly backed away. The lava was almost here anyway, and it would finish this. 

Simon used a word of force to bound to a nearby rooftop, where he watched the mutant plant grow and flourish over the next ten minutes, becoming even talled that Simon itself. It climbed all the way to the top of the fountain, and had extended tendrils toward the nearby buildings, but none of those was going to be fast enough to escape the tide of lava. 

He sat there on the roof for several minutes, even after he’d gotten fully dressed, watching the whole thing burn, and he didn’t leave until the water and ice of the fountain had been buried under a slow tide of lava and stopped steaming entirely. That was enough for him to believe that this was finally put to bed. 

So, with one last look at the scar on his palm to make sure it wasn’t sprouting, he started to make his way uphill toward the palace. The way there was trickier than usual because he had lingered so long, but he made it work. He walked on rooftops where he could and used words of lesser force and force where he had to. There was only one spot where he needed to freeze the lava to have a place to land, but that was enough to get him on the stairs and head up to the rise the palace was seated on. 

By the end of all that, he was so hoarse that he could barely talk. Both the words of power and the worsening air quality had done a number on his throat. By the time Simon entered the throne room, he could see the portal to the demon-infested church floating there, but part of him was afraid to enter it. 

What if I wake up in the morning and that fucking thing is growing out of my hand again, he thought to himself. 

It didn’t seem likely, but it did seem possible. He’d gotten really lucky that he’d opened that container right next to a volcano where his mistake could be incinerated, but if he was already contaminated like the victim of a zombie movie, then couldn’t he start the whole thing all over again?

Simon imagined one of the cities that he actually liked gripped in those awful vines. It was a terrible thought that kept him paralyzed as the eruption continued to worsen. It was only when he’d waited the better part of an hour, and a serious earthquake sheered part of the roof of, that he finally went through. 

It had been hours. That was enough time to be sure, right? He reassured himself.

The beautiful stone church hadn’t changed at all. This time, the demon was sitting at a desk writing away. As if he didn’t notice his guest. 

Simon was happy to play along with that, of course, and he sat down on one of the pews at the back of the church to center himself. He looked like shit, he felt like shit, and unless something changed, the next level was that damn cemetery that had almost killed him last time. He wouldn’t survive that in his current state. He needed a plan. 

So, still wary that the devil’s slackening bonds might let him free at any point, he crossed his arms on the pew in front of him and lay his head down at least until he caught his breath. That moment of rest became something much longer as his exhaustion caught up with him, and he took an accidental nap. 

Simon slept peacefully, and it was only after he realized he slipped off that he bolted upright in his chair. 

“You’re a bold man,” the demon chuckled. “Not many dare sleep while a rift to hell churns only a few feet away.”

Simon shrugged as he got up and approached the thing. “What are you going to do to me when you’re trapped in there and I’m out here?”

The demon smiled, but said nothing, so Simon looked past him, to the portal, and the broken floor. It didn’t seem any bigger than any of the other times, and he was fairly certain that the monster was bluffing. That’s what they did in the stories, anyway.  

“Have you tired of the eternal torment yet?” the demon asked, finally. “There is a way out if you would like to make a—”

“Pass,” Simon said. He considered examining the runes again, but he already had a copy, and he was in no state to try to finish this level. “Anything that you’re going to offer me is on the other side of that line, which is exactly the opposite of where any sane person should be, right?”

“Well, Sanity only lasts so long here,” the demon agreed. “You’ll change your mind eventually. They all do.”

Simon rolled his eyes and pulled out his small silver mirror, then he spent the next few minutes going through the fracturing circle of protection line by line and symbol by symbol. It was only when he was satisfied that nothing had changed since his last visit that he turned to the demon and said, “My sanity probably won’t last forever, but sooner or later, I’m going to figure out how to close this rift, and then you’ll have to go find someone else to tempt.”

“We shall see,” the red-skinned man said as he sat back down at his desk, opened his book, and started writing again. Simon thought it was interesting that the demon left tiny scorch marks on the page instead of ink, but not so interested that he stuck around for very long before he looked around to see what he could do to prepare for the next level.