Death After Death Ch. 137-138 (Patreon)

Ch. 137 - Duties and Demands

When all was said and done, almost a season later, just as the heat of summer was starting to set in, they finally arrived in Crowvar once more. As an errand for the domain, it probably had not been worth that much time. However, Simon had learned enough that he really didn’t mind. It wasn’t like time held real value for him, especially not on a level without an exit. 

Still, as they got close enough to the city to make out the details, he was pleased to see that his other hard work had paid off. The walls of the town were no longer ragged. Though still blackened in some places, they had been finished, and the effect was bigger than he would have thought. It looked like a proper walled city again, though he knew that was a trick of distance as much as anything. 

The way they had come did not allow him a chance to inspect the roads he’d commissioned, but he could do that another day. It was not urgent. So, as they walked back, everything was going about as they expected until they saw signs of mourning on the populace coming in and out of the gate. 

A quick conversation with the gate guards cleared that up. The young Baron had sickened and died weeks before from a high fever. Simon had no love for the Raithwait bloodline, but he wasn’t so cruel as to feel anything but saddened by such a young child. Still, given who his father was, Simon didn’t feel guilty that he hadn’t been on hand to use magic to save the lad. He probably would have broken down and done just that, despite himself. 

Now, there was no chance, though. There was just a grieving widow who looked at him with ice in her eyes and a fresh grave not so far from where he’d once buried Freya. 

Adonnia didn’t seem like a bad person, beyond the identity of her deceased husband. She was a pretty, young, blond woman who had probably even been sweet before Varten had gotten his claws into her, not that it mattered to Simon. He was content to give her the run on the now largely empty Raithwait Manor at the center of Crowvar while he dealt with more important issues that had piled up since his departure. 

As it turned out, though, the death of the Baron’s heir wasn’t even the most important thing that had happened in his absence. The Captain of the guard was the first to inform him that there had almost been a palace coup while Simon had been away. 

“I thought for sure it was going to happen too,” the man said, giving Simon a list of names that showed who was on which side of the issue. “But when little Varten junior died, the plans collapsed.”

“Because there was no longer anyone to rally around?” Simon asked.

“That too,” the Guard Captain nodded. “Really, though, it was that she was the driving force behind the effort as well, and when he sickened, it all just sort of unraveled.” 

Simon nodded, reviewing the list. It was all pretty straightforward. Those who thought it was a bad idea were merchants and anyone with a martial background who had to deal with the real world and understood what Simon had been fighting so hard for. Those who had been on the side of barring him from the city and declaring him an outlaw, on the other hand, were largely the nobility and those who had enjoyed a life of privilege. 

As easy as it was to draw a line between those groups, it was harder to decide how to punish them. In the days that followed he could see the guilty filled with tension as they waited for the other shoe to drop, but he’d already killed a handful of nobles after the poisoning, and doing so again would make him appear to be a tyrant, whether he was right or wrong.

As he thought back to the statue of him in Darndelle and the mention that Simon was a name that was cursed in the north reminded him that he had no wish to hear stories around a campfire on some future level about Simon the Bloody Baron. So, he bided his time, and on his second week home, he brought all of them together in the main hall and gave each of them a choice. 

“Despite all my hard work to make this town a place worth living, you still fight me every step of the way,” he said wearily. There were a few denials with varying degrees of volume and sincerity, but Simon continued, talking over them. “I left to purge the orcs and return to find out that you sought to lock me out of Crowvar, even after I treated the last group that plotted against me so harshly? What am I to do with you all?”

There were a few protestations of innocence then, along with some tears and an apology. Adonnia said nothing, though. She just stood there gazing at him with the same cold stare she always did. 

“Each of you will be given a choice,” Simon said finally. “You can admit your guilt and pay a fine based on who you are and the wealth you possess, or tonight, you will make the journey out to where the trade road is being rebuilt, and you will work there until it is complete. I do not care if your debt is paid in coins or sweat, but your evil acts will reward the good people of Crowvar, one way or the other.”

The main hall had not been quiet throughout the preceding minutes, but as Simon completed his statement, it erupted in outrage. In retrospect, the finely dressed people in this room probably would have been less upset to find out that they were being executed than that they were going to be put to work digging ditches and hauling gravel. 

He didn’t care, though. Let them be outraged, he thought, as he left the room without another word. 

The guards stationed at the doors let him by, but they were under strict orders not to let anyone else out of the room until they’d signed the confession and agreed to pay the fine that amounted to ten percent of their wealth, as it had been estimated by the barony’s tax collector. 

Simon didn’t really care which way they chose. He was quite sure that most of the high-born lords and ladies in that room would refuse, sure that he was bluffing. They would be quite surprised come nightfall. 

Only Adonnia Raithwait would be spared. He’d love to see her confess, of course, but he doubted that she would. She was just there to make her reconsider such acts in the future.  

Simon spent the rest of the day reviewing correspondence and reports from far-flung villages about local monster and bandit activity but found them to be remarkably light, given the nice weather they’d been having. “Maybe we’re making a difference after all,” he said to himself, feeling good about what he was doing for the first time in a while. 

Maybe I don’t need to do every level, he thought to himself. Maybe I just need one life running every city in the world, and then the future levels will solve themselves. That wasn’t likely, of course, but it was amusing. 

That night, eight remaining holdouts were taken from the main hall in manacles and brought home so they could change into the most practical clothes they owned before they were loaded into wagons and taken out to the worksites in the west. Six confessed their guilt and agreed to pay restitution, which Simon would use to finance further irrigation projects and increase ranching activities. 

He watched them leave out the window of an inn that was just across the street from the gate to the inner fortress with a smile on his face. That was when there was a knock at his door. For Simon, that timing was just enough to raise the hackles on the back of his neck. 

“Come in!” he yelled, knowing it might be anyone. 

At that moment, he expected anyone from the Captain of the Guard to a Warlock or an assassin to enter the door. Instead, it was Lady Raithwait who opened it. 

“How dare you treat me like that,” she said in a tone just quiet enough not to be called yelling. “I am the wife and the mother of Barons, and I will not be treated this way by the likes of you.”

She didn’t even bother to close the door or approach him. Simon wasn’t surprised. She made no secret about how she felt about him. 

“They’re lucky I didn’t execute them,” he said dismissively. “All of you are. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“You made an enemy of every person in that room today,” She continued. “You’re already so paranoid that you don’t even eat the food that the cooks prepare, and now this? Are you blind or stupid?”

Simon put down the papers he’d been pretending to read to ignore her and looked at the woman straight in the face. “Adonnia… every person in that room was my enemy already, and nothing I did changed that. I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me to be here, but since you and your friends think these petty power games are more important than taking care of your people… well, I’m stuck here until that gets solved.”

“You think you hold a monopoly on caring about Crowvar, do you?” she spat.

“I think that if your dead husband and his dead father had done a better job, this would be a thriving trade city instead of a dying pitstop,” Simon said with a little more anger than he intended. “And I think that if it was that city, there would have been a healer worth a damn who might have saved your son from his fever last month.”

It was cruel, but he felt like the only way she would understand was to compare her suffering to the people’s well-being. The way she purpled with rage after that made it clear he’d miscalculated and twisted the knife a little too far. 

Adonnia said nothing to that. She simply stormed off, leaving him feeling a little bad. Mentally, Simon added a note to prioritize some sort of clinic for the town. It wasn’t his job to save everybody, of course, but he’d learned a lot about herbs in Abresse, and the knowledge should be passed on. 

Simon spent the next several weeks improving what he could until a messenger party sent by the King arrived to derail things. The man thanked Simon for all his hard work but said, "In order to ensure regional stability, you will either have to step aside for a new Baron, or you will need to marry the widow of the old one and produce a new heir. The King does not care which option you choose, only that things are decided quickly." Simon laughed at those choices. 

“I wouldn’t marry that woman if she were the last one in the world,” he said once his gales of laughter had finally been reduced to a chuckle. 

“So then you’ll step aside peacefully?” the fop that had been assigned this duty asked. Really, his whole party had been a little too pampered and preening for Simon’s tastes, but he supposed that was normal in the capital. 

“Why? Because the King will make war against me if I don't? Because I’m a commoner and couldn’t possibly be allowed to be in charge?” Simon asked. “Listen, I don’t care who rules Crowvar. I just want someone to do a good job, but I’m not stepping down just because… Ghhhh—”

As soon as he said he would not comply, the garrote slipped around his neck, cutting off both his ability to breathe and speak. Simon gasped like a fish on shore as he stood and moved to break free from his attacker. He elbowed the man more than once, but his assailant's grip neither broke nor slackened. Simon tried to break the man’s nose with a reverse headbutt, but the man stayed just out of reach. He even drew his knife, but the man who sat across him grabbed Simon’s wrist in an iron grip before he could do much.

If anything, that was the strangest part, he thought as his vision began to gray and the wire dug deeper into his throat. The courtier that he’d been speaking to was a spindly weasel, and there was no way he could be this strong. 

“Pity,” the courtier said. “A soul with this many shadows… we could have found a place for you, I think.” It was a strange line, but before Simon could even fully digest it, he was dead, and instead of fighting for his life, he was once more staring at the ceiling of his cabin.

Ch. 138 - A Matter of Priorities - Begin Book 3

Simon reached up and rubbed his eyes in frustration. “Fucking politics, man,” he groaned to himself.

He sat up and unconsciously rubbed his throat as he tried to figure out what their deal was, but sadly, he hadn’t even paid enough attention when they’d introduced themselves to remember the names of the people who had killed him this time. He’d walked into the conversation expecting some additional political maneuvering or perhaps an increased tax levy, and instead, he’d been assassinated. 

“Why would they bother to kill me?” he wondered aloud, but he had no answers. His mind started to race with secret conspiracies and secret, shadowy forces that were secretly opposed to his efforts, but all that faded away as soon as he stood and felt how much heavier he was than he’d been only a moment ago. 

“Damn it,” he cursed softly. On the bright side, he didn’t feel old or tired anymore, but that was hardly a win since now he needed to drop fifty pounds of lard and gain thirty or forty pounds of muscle all over again. He considered that but pushed it aside. More important things needed to be done first. 

“Mirror, is the ship level still accessible?” Simon demanded. 

The mirror instantly sprang to life and asked, ‘Could you be more specific in your request? Many floors of the Pit contain ships.’

“Oh, for fuck's sake…” Simon sighed, counting the floors off on his fingers. “Level 23, the level I was just at. Is it still accessible?”

‘It is not,’ the mirror typed, ‘That level is currently completed and not required to be repeated.’

“Well, at least there’s that,” Simon smiled as he reached for the wine. “What about levels 24, 26, 27 and... You know what… just show me the list of levels that are currently accessible, please.”

The mirror complied, bringing up the same ever-shrinking list it always did. 

‘Level 4 - Skeletons in a crypt
Level 6 - Zombies in an inn
Level 10 - Fire elementals in Ionar
Level 13 - A demon in a church
Level 25 - Black swarmer on a farm
Level 28 - Poisoned Oasis
Level 29 - Cultists in a village
Level 31 - Dragon in the mountains’

Simon noticed that the rat level was gone, which meant that his attempt to burn them out worked. Something in that basement had been evil, and now it would no longer spread. He’d never managed to figure that out, but that was good enough for him. Even better, solving it didn’t appear to have opened up anything new. The centaur level also appeared to be gone, which was something he’d been hoping for but not something he’d been even remotely sure about, given how Schwarzenbruck kept coming up like a bad penny. 

He took a long swing off the bottle before he put it back down and considered his next steps. He could try to fix Freya’s level again. He could skip it and finally see if all his hard work on the demon in the church had paid off, or he could move on and try to make progress. 

“What I should probably do is take care of the damn fire elementals so I can take out the zombies, but…” As he spoke, his words trailed off as he remembered that giant magma monster. He wasn’t exactly feeling up to fighting that thing, either. 

To do that, I’d have to make a forge and get some armor, then I’d have to engrave wards of fire protection, and… Simon shook his head. That wasn’t what he needed. What he needed was to figure out what was powering the frost sword and some of the other things he’d seen. Surely the only way to power magic items in this world wasn’t by using himself as a battery, was it?

“Well, it’s not like you’ve seen very many around, have you,” he quipped to himself. 

It was a fair point. He had not. Why was that, though? Was that because they were hard to make, greatly coveted, or feared by simpletons that thought that all magic was evil. Honestly, I’m going to go with D, all of the above, he thought to himself.

Simon spent the next half hour going through things with the mirror to make sure everything he thought he’d saved was still there. Fortunately, it hadn’t forgotten any of his maps or notes about medicine or the words of power. It occurred to him that given that some of these insights occurred to him only when a given word was written in a different language or written in a different way that he saw them from another angle, he should probably try writing them down in saying them in every language that he knew. 

Such a task would be easier said than done, of course, since they were all hopelessly jumbled together, and he had nothing to write with. Still, the next time he went to a trade city, he resolved to try to listen carefully to the differences to see if there was some way he could undo this terrible tangle in his mind. Helades had given him a wonderful gift, but it was also a curse now that he needed a little fine control over it.

It didn’t matter; he scolded himself for getting too negative. He’d figure it out. It was just another long-term project. 

Short-term projects were simpler. He could either take the most efficient move and go after the volcano, he could take the easy win and see if he really had figured out the devil’s summoning circle, or he could try getting to the dragon again and see what it was that awaited him there since he had almost no clue what actually happened in that level. 

“Honestly, I don’t even need to kill the volcano or whatever,” he told himself as he relit the stone from the hot coals and started cooking up his sausages. “The doors lead from the market plaza to the palace, so the goal is somewhere around there. I probably just need to get the survivors to safety.”

Well, one particular survivor, he thought to himself, annoyed with how lightly Helades treated the average person in her world.

Simon spent that lunch trying to digest his meal and trying to digest the idea that he could just cheap out and do the level the easy way, but that didn’t go down as easy as the sausage. He wasn’t just going to sacrifice the city because Helades didn’t care about it. What he really needed, he decided, was to get there before the eruption somehow, and stop it.

Was that even possible? Simon had no idea. It really depended on what started it. If it was just some natural event, then he probably didn’t have a very good chance. However, if there was some evil cultist, he could stop… Well, that was something to think on. 

Simon was in no hurry to get on the road that day. He let all these thoughts percolate in his head as he tried to decide what he wanted to do, and he went to bed early. 

In the morning, he woke and was surprised to decide that his answer was none of the above. What he wanted to do more than anything was stop the volcano, but there were too many steps and too many unknowns between here and there, so he was going to take a break from all that and do something else. He was going to figure out where this cabin was on his map. 

It was a small goal, but given how much of his little world he’d already charted, it was an important one. Helades tried to make it seem like going deeper in the Pit was all that mattered, but the longer he was here, the more he decided that understanding how all the pieces fit together was what was really important. He could probably never know everything, but with some effort, he could learn enough to see the big picture, and that would probably be enough.

After all, he decided as he got up and started packing just enough for a little wilderness exploration. That meant he brought all of his basic gear and his leathers, but he was only going to bring his sword, his knife, and his bow. As much as he loved his shield and appreciated having a mace and axe, just thinking about carrying that much without a proper pack was exhausting at this point. 

Getting ready for this made him think about the last time he’d tried this particular trip. That, in turn, forced him to flush with shame as he recalled dying of exposure twice, trying to find his way out of there. It wasn’t even like the goblin level where he’d died in the blizzard. Here, he just… ran out of water and walked in circles until his flabby body succumbed to dehydration. 

That wasn’t going to happen this time. He promised himself that as he started heading toward the highest point, he could see on the horizon. He wasn’t sure if he was actually going to try to summit the snow-capped peak. If he found a nice pass, or other signs of civilization, it would be a hell of a lot easier to go around. 

Still, aside from him getting winded after less than a quarter mile of stomping through the brush, the day went well. Simon pushed hard on the first day to make sure he got as far as possible from the one goblin nest that he knew about. That was no guarantee that there weren’t others, of course. Goblins were like roaches, and they rarely traveled alone. 

That night, he slept without a fire, and the next day, he finished off his bread. It was only when the woods started to thin out into scrubby foothills that he started looking for game to hunt for dinner that night. The last time he’d been here, the woods seemed to go on forever, but this time, keeping more or less in a straight line, he’d gone through them in perhaps fifteen miles. That raised other questions, of course. Who would build a cabin in the middle of nowhere? It was something he’d probably never know the answer to, but it was something he thought about as he tried and failed to find some measure of civilization.

That night, Simon almost went hungry, but toward sunset, he found a snake small enough that killing it was easy and big enough that it might have meat worth eating. He lopped its head off quickly enough. Gutting it was harder and messier, but eventually, he had it wrapped around a stick and roasting over a low flame. 

It wasn’t the best food he’d ever eaten. It was tough and gamey, and he kept having to pick out little bones. That said, It was better than going hungry, and it was a reminder of how far he’d come. Old Simon would have rather starved than eaten this, but even a shitty meal would give him the strength to keep going, and he had a feeling that he would have a lot of walking to do before he finally got his answer about his current location in the world.  

So, what do all of you think? Book 1 is from the very beginning until Simon kills the Basilisk, book 2 is from there until Simon gets garroted here, and book 3 is... Well, we'll see that soon enough.

I think I want to go back in the rewrite and more to this. Not to the death necessarily, but more to the kingdom building part... like he was right on the cusp of building something, and then it was snatched away. Maybe next time it won't, right? I mean, to me it feels like we're building toward something. I guess we will see what in time.