Death After Death Ch. 23-24 (Patreon)

Ch. 23 - Traumatized

Simon lay there for a long time, just struggling to put the pieces of his mind back together. He was whole and unharmed, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t escape from the flashbacks that kept springing to his mind unbidden. In the absence of the constant fog of pain and hunger he’d been lost in for so long, his mind was suddenly too sharp, and suddenly all the terrible things he’d done were in better focus now than when he’d been doing them. The taste of flesh. The feeling of impossible hunger. The guilt for the people he killed. All of it consumed him until he wanted to scream.

Instead, he lay there in a fetal position, unable to even work up the strength to grab the bottle of wine that he knew was sitting nearby. That sour grape juice would at least cleanse his mouth of the coppery taste that still lingered, even though he knew that he’d never devoured human flesh before. Just building up the nerve to do that much though took several more minutes of uncomfortable soul-searching.

It was only once he’d risen and finished half the bottle that he even considered what he should do next. Food? He had no appetite. Fighting? He wanted to die. Conversation? There was no one to talk to except for the mirror, and the very last thing he wanted to do was look at his character sheet after everything that had happened.

“You said that every time I died, I would come back here.” Simon said quietly, still staring at the floor between his feet. “I’ve died some pretty gruesome deaths, but at least that was what you promised. This… this isn’t what I signed up for.”

‘You returned to the entrance of the pit as soon as you died,’ the mirror typed as soon as Simon spared it a glance.

“After I spent a FUCKING MONTH in my own corpse,” Simon yelled with a sudden burst of anger that took him by surprise.

‘Undeath is a special case that blurs the lines between—’ the mirror started to print, one flowing character at a time, by Simon was done with it’s bullshit.

“I’m done talking to you. I want to speak to the real boss.” he spat back.

‘Helades is very busy and doesn’t currently wish to—’ The mirror was still typing its painfully slow message when Simon stood up and threw the bottle at the thing, shattering it completely.

“Helades - get out here right fucking now!” Simon roared as the glass started to fall to the floor. It didn’t fall completely, though, as they flew backwards into the gloom of her room, they suddenly stop midair, and then the shockwave started to reverse. For a moment, Simon thought that the mirror was going to reform in the magical equivalent of hanging up on him, but the shards didn’t stop when they reached the mirror's frame. Instead, they kept going until they impacted Simon’s flesh, accelerating the whole way.

He was impaled in a flurry of glittering silver that pierced him over and over again. It was almost painless, but he could feel the warm blood spreading across his now shredded shirt just the same. At least half a dozen of the larger pieces would have been fatal, he realized as his legs gave out, and he toppled to the floor. He had time to feel the sharp pain as he impacted the floor and the shrapnel that filled his chest rearranged itself, but then there was only blackness.

Simon welcomed the blackness, but it lasted only as long as it took for him to open his eyes. Then he was right back where he started, staring up at the ceiling.

This time, when he sat up and reached for the wine, there was already a message typed on the mirror, even though he had yet to say a single word. ‘The goddess is indisposed of and is not to be interrupted without a valid reason. Having a temper tantrum about your current circumstances is never a valid reason.’

Simon clenched his fists, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. He’d found one more game breaking bug in their stupid fucking place, and they weren’t going to do anything to fix it. Typical. So, where did that leave him, he wondered as he stared at his feet.

He could go back to the inn and look for Freya, but it seemed kind of like a fifty-fifty shot as to whether or not the dungeon would spawn his dream girl or the awful blond she worked with. Without her, he’d just be trapped in a level where a single bite could cost him his sanity, because there hadn’t been an exit and he’d checked every door in the place. Simon very much doubted he’d be able to handle another tour in the zombie army. Just thinking about it made him shake. He’d rather face a dozen skeleton knights at once. He’d rather…

Simon’s thought process trailed off as he suddenly realized Helades’ latest trick. “You awful bitch,” he whispered to himself as he stood up. He had to be stuck in this awful place, but did she have to do literally everything she could to screw with his mind like this, he wondered as he started getting ready. He wasn’t bringing anything special. Just the usual weapons and equipment. Working on autopilot would make everything easier. He could bring the weapons he knew best, and lock all the awfulness that was trying to rush to the front of his mind in a little box for safekeeping.

In a few minutes, he’d either be reunited with Freya or on to the seventh floor. There was the remote possibility that he would become a zombie again if he was wrong about the goddess’ cruel nature, so this time he planned to kill himself with the crossbow if necessary, but he doubted he would need it. He had her number now. The pit wasn’t just a punishment. It was an exercise in cruelty and mind games.

Simon did a speed run of the first four levels that didn’t even take twenty minutes. If anything it seemed more like a video game than less after what he’d been through, and he found himself thinking about moves in the way he might in a fighting game, deciding in an instant whether the fast strike or the heavy one was more appropriate from moment to moment rather than the button mashing he’d done on his first few runs. The effect became hypnotic, especially on longer fights like the skeleton crypts, and by the time it ended Simon stood there alone and panting, yet found himself craving even more enemies to destroy.

On level five, Simon had to try twice to incinerate the slime. Before he’d uttered the words and cast the spell as always, he’d wondered in the rage and pain would make it even more powerful than last time, but instead it fizzled almost completely and only a few stray sparks showered his hungry opponent. As he backed up, trying to figure out what went wrong, the answer came to his mind almost unbidden: he hadn’t really visualized anything. He’d just pictured it like a video game screen, as he had for this whole run, and selected the spell from his internal menu. The result lacked passion of any kind.

It was an unpleasant realization for Simon. Life was more comfortable this way, when he was partially dissociated from everything that had happened to him and treated everything that was happening to him as a sort of game, but without a mental image of what he wanted to happen a real emotion behind it, magic was lost to him. The dilemma made his mouth go dry. Spell casting was too valuable a skill to throw away, especially on this level, but the idea of letting himself feel all the horror that was churning inside him? It was too much.

“What a broken ass magic system,” he swore, his eyes tearing up as he continued to walk slowly backwards. As Simon approached the back of the cave, he stopped to take in the beautiful sight. His back was against the wall, literally and figuratively, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t stop to take in the hints of rainbow that danced in the spray of water where the breeze caught the stream.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to be present, taking it all in. Not just the waterfall and the slime, but the part of him that was terrified at going through the door to the zombie level and the part of him that just wanted to die too. If he had to be present, then he was going to be completely present. He gazed down at the slime that was only ten feet from him and closing, and imagined it blistered and burning as its skin was cooked away by a blazing fire. When he was ready, he didn’t he yell the words. He just whispered, “Gervuul Meiren.”

For a moment, Simon feared he’d screwed up again, as everything was lost in the burst of fire that exploded from his outstretched hand. It wasn’t the tight little beam he’d summoned the last few times. It was a firestorm, and when the fire disappeared, there were only ashes left of his enemy. Simon felt light-headed enough to sit down for a moment and rest. Not just because he was delaying the inevitable, either, but because that had taken a lot out of him.

At this point he seemed to have a good understanding of what it took to cast a spell successfully, but no ability to control the throttle, or really, any understanding of what that should look like. What he’d done was definitely overkill, but more than a little satisfying just the same. He sat there for a few minutes, enjoying the moment, but once he started to feel the need to take a nap, he forced himself to his feet. He could sleep later. First, he needed to know the truth.

When Simon walked into the tavern he found two zombies to kill, not one like usual, but his mace took care of both quickly. This time, neither of the barmaids were there to greet him. After a little searching, he found that they were both dead on the second floor. Simon covered Freya with a blanket and stood there for a moment of silence. “You weren’t here waiting for me this time, but you will be next time,” he whispered, before he went down to help himself to a drink or two.

By the time he got down there, the usual suspects were starting to break through the window, and Simon quickly put them both down and poured himself a pint of warm dark ale and took a break before doing what came next. He didn’t bother to drag the table over to the stop, more from trying to work their way through. He was already going to have to move too much furniture to add one more to the pile.

Once he finished with his drink, Simon started moving the chairs and tables stacked in front of the front door. On some level he knew this was a terrible idea, but on another he knew this was exactly the sort of thing that the twisted goddess would do. His certainty weakened slightly as he cleared a path to the door, though, and by the time he was in a position to finally open it he’d all but lost his nerve.

Simon knew that he was right, but he was also racked by doubts. If he opened that door and zombies poured in, he could probably still get upstairs in time, but he didn’t know that for sure. He just… While he stood there thinking about all the what if’s he noticed one very strange detail. Despite nothing but the bar across it holding the door closed, nothing was jostling against it. All the boards across the windows flexed and bowed as the zombies tried to force their way inside, but not the door. It just hung there limply and never tried to bang against the bar resting half an inch away from it.

Buoyed by the observation, Simon removed the bar, and then drew his mace and pushed the door open. On the other side of the open door, there should have been a street crowded with zombies. There wasn’t though. Instead, there were a few stairs that lead down into a large sewer tunnel.

“Welcome to level seven,” he told himself quietly, wondering what fresh hell awaited him down there.

Ch. 24 - A Rat in a Maze

Simon lit his torch from the dying embers that remained in the hearth, and gazed into the rancid tunnel. The magic of the doors superimposing themselves into a place they should not be still hadn’t quite worn off for Simon, though the disgusting order certainly had.

“This place is almost as bad as the goblins,” he complained to no one in particular.

Even breathing through his nose, he had to fight off the urge to gag. This was one detail that had been left out of every fantasy novel and game he’d ever played: the past was gross, and the monsters that populated it were even grosser.

When he got out of this and was isekaied into a more appropriate fantasy world, he was definitely choosing anosima for his character now that he knew what an OP advantage the lack of smell really was.

In the meantime, though, he didn’t let that stop him from seeing where this tunnel went. It was turned out not to be very interesting. It just a dismal, tube that was eight or ten feet around, and had a small footpath that was about a foot and a half wide on either side of the foul river that flowed between them.

The side passages that occasionally crossed were only half as wide, and Simon had very little interest in crawling down one of them unless he was forced to. This was already disgusting enough.

After ten minutes of uninterrupted boredom, Simon found himself yawning. If this place didn’t reek of shit, his immediate priority would be to find somewhere safe to take a nice long nap. The fighting hadn’t been any tougher than usual, but that fire spell had really taken it out of him for some reason. He wished for the millionth time that

At least there was nothing that was bent on attacking him, he thought hopefully, until he remembered that the goblin level started off that way too. So far he’d just seen a few sewer rats that had run away from him as soon as he’d gotten too close, and the biggest hazard had been the trickles of filth that occasionally sprayed out of the small pipes that joined this one from the wall and the ceiling now and then.

It certainly seemed more dungeon-like than some of the other levels, but it would need monsters to complete the look. A giant crocodile seemed the most cliché choice, but he could see rat men or lizard people down here too, so he stayed focused, looking for anything that didn’t belong.

Things that didn’t below showed up pretty quickly after that, in the form of a corpse floating in the sewage. It was actually dead though, and the only thing it did to Simon was to practically give him a heart attack, so he continued on. Around the curve though he saw that the tunnel ended in a large great, and major passages went off to the left and right forming a T-junction.

Even from this distance he could see some light shining around the corner from the left-hand side, so he guessed that was the way out, but right now he couldn’t make himself care about it. Not when there was a pile of bodies so tall it obscured most of the grate and practically blocked the flow of the fetid sewer water.

Simon pulled out his sword. Even though there wasn’t an enemy in sight yet. He didn’t need to see what was out there when he could see their handiwork so clearly. He slowly picked his way along the wall, mindful of his footing, and he focused on the inevitable ambush that was to come while he tried to think of what might be invisible enough to hide in plain sight like this.

He drew a blank, but thinking about it was still better than focusing on the decaying dead around him. These were not the victims of the same fight. They didn’t die the same way or at the same time. He supposed that the currents of the sewer could have led them here from wherever they had been killed, but that seemed too easy an answer. His paranoia was rewarded when the largest pile by the grate began to stir.

“Zombies? Down here?” he asked himself, feeling an irrational jolt of fear slide its way down his spine. What burst out of the pile wasn’t human at all. It was some worm thing half as big as a man, and full of tentacles.

It was disgusting, but looked a bit like something he’d seen in a couple RPGs he’d played over the years. A carrion crawler. He only remembered it because of the cross name and grosser appearance, and right now there was one staring him down from two dozen feet away.

The thing reared up at him and hissed. Simon countered by throwing his torch at it. With the light around the corner he had enough light to see, and he had a pretty good shot at this thing, being weak to fire since it was an underground carrion eater.

The creature dodged his throw by skittering up the grate and on to the ceiling. Simon had just a second to wonder how the hell it was keeping itself up there, when it suddenly charged him. Simon was ready for that, though. He’d freed up his left-hand, so he could use his shield better, and he raised his sword to strike as soon as it got within range.

It didn’t though. The slimy four-foot-long worm-centipede-thing jut held itself there over the churning sewage while it regarded him, still several feet out of reach. It wasn’t until Simon tried to edge past it that the thing’s tentacles lashed out at him.

Simon raised his shield high, blocking most of them before swinging his sword down at the slimy appendages. Several were severed by the blow, and Simon smiled in triumph even as the creature screamed and hissed, slowly backing away. Only after that moment was passed though did he feel the burning numbness that was spreading through his left arm. At first, it felt like Novocaine, but seconds later he was loosing feeling in his fingers, and he was having trouble keeping his arm up.

Paralysis. That certainly scared the crap out of him as he realized what was happening. He’d already had some awful deaths, but watching this thing nibble on him for a day or two while he was alive but powerless to move would rank way up there for worst death.

A number of thoughts flashed through his mind in a single moment. Should he try to light this thing on fire? Should he try to cast his healing spell? Did it even work on poison?

Ultimately, he decided that fighting was no longer an option, and he had to get away. So, he swung wildly, over and over to keep the thing back as he carefully tried to get around it and towards the light while his left arm became ever more useless. Cut once by his sword, the creature had no real interest in getting close enough for that to happen again.

Simon was able to skirt around it and then back down the left passage. He slipped once on someone’s guts, that had been splayed across the narrow ledge he walked, but he was able to grab the ladder with his right hand as he slipped to avoid taking a bath. As it was, he went in with his right leg up to his knee.

It was disgusting, he thought as he fought the urge to wretch, but it was still better than being eaten alive by that thing. Simon swore that he would shoot it with the crossbow the next time he was here, before it had a chance to get close, not that that would help him this time.

Right now the sunlight pouring down from above him seemed to be doing a good job of keeping the thing away, but he had no way of knowing if that would hold once he started the ladder, since he would have to do that one-handed, and would be completely defenseless while he did so.

Once he was far enough away from the disgusting monster’s even more disgusting pile of corpses, though, it backed off, surprisingly. When Simon realized it had attacked him because it thought it was going to steal its dinner, he laughed out loud. He couldn’t help it. This made the creature hiss at him again, but it only retreated further into its mound of death. Simon shrugged. If the thing was going to let him by… well, that suited him just fine.

He sheathed his sword and scampered up the ladder as fast as he could with one arm, which wasn’t terribly fast.

Honestly, by the time he got up and out into the daylight, he was too surprised that that thing hadn’t snuck up behind him and dragged him back down to notice where he was. It took him a moment to notice that this wasn’t the sort of city he would have expected to have a working sewer system, and even longer to realize it hadn’t been a city for a long time, not really.

Simon was standing amidst ancient ruins that looked like they were more vine than stone at this point. They hadn’t been home to anyone in a long time. It wasn’t that nature was winning, though. It had won. Rainforest surrounded the ruined walls and crumbling ziggurats, and a river cut through what had once been a main thoroughfare.

“It’s beautiful,” Simon said to himself.

It was better than beautiful, though, it was exactly what he needed.  He could just feel the hepatitis and the cholera trying to invade his body through the sewage drenched armor, and he could definitely do with a short bath.

Even as he walked down to the river, though, he forced himself to keep his guard up. The water fall on the fifth floor had been beautiful too, until the slime had melted his face off, though.

Here, there didn’t seem to be anything around that could hurt him, though. There was nothing but Incan style ruins, flowering vines, and the occasional fruit. The fruits looked delicious, but he could give them a try later, after he was clean. Even the song birds weren’t anywhere close to him, and he would hardly count them as a threat.

The numbing poison was still spreading throughout his body, making Simon feel weak, but aside from his left arm he could still move everything. He’d be able to fight if it came to it, he decided as he slowly removed the buckles and the straps of his greaves and cuisses.

Until he regained the feeling in his arm, getting his cuirass off was out of the question, but that wasn’t nearly as important as cleaning his legs before the gangrene set in. The river was cool but not quite cold, and Simon endured it as he waded into the water. A little bit over suffering was worth it to avoid getting jaundice and whatever else was down there, he told himself.

So he suffered through it, and wiped everything down and 20 minutes later he was leaning back against the remains of a low stone wall, keeping his eyes out of the sun while his body dried on the warm flag stones that had once been a plaza.

This place was amazing, and Simon wanted to look around it more, but he was exhausted. That damn spell he’d cast earlier had taken it all out of him, and when you added a little fighting on top of that, well - he was beat. He yawned and stretched, and then picked up his dagger, determined not to be caught entirely unaware if he did accidentally drift off.

This was probably the longest he’d been alive for one shot since he’d entered The Pit. Well - it certainly had been since Freya, he realized sadly. “That was only two deaths ago,” he whispered to himself, as he realized it. The half an eternity he’d spent as a member of the living dead made it seem much longer, but in reality it was practically yesterday.

Somehow that made it more tragic.

Simon tried not to dwell on either of those terrible tragedies and instead focused on the positive. This was almost certainly level eight - which meant that this was his most successful run to date.

“Speed run bitches!” He yelled out, not caring who heard. He listened the echo of his voice fade before he turned towards the tallest ziggurat and the sun that would start to move behind it within an hour. “I know you can hear that, Helades. Two levels down, 91 to go. I’m coming for you. I understand your games now, and you can’t stop the inevitable.”

Simon drifted off to sleep shortly after that. His dreams were strange and restless, dealing mostly with levels he hadn’t yet conquered, and when he woke up it was getting close to sunset.

It was only when he tried to stretch that he realized he was engulfed in vines.