Death After Death Ch. 25-26 (Patreon)

Ch. 25 - A Ruined Life

Simon’s first thought was to panic, but his second thought was to do it quietly. He didn’t know what his situation was, or how much worse it would be if he screamed, so instead he flexed and shifted to gauge the strength of his bonds and looked around.

Nothing he found made the situation any better. Not only was he tied up so tightly that it was hard to breathe, but he seemed to be being dragged slowly in the direction of his feet. He also couldn’t see who had done this to him, but with the tropical theme he was thinking it had to be lizard men.

He was starting to give up hope, when he remembered the dagger. He’d held onto it while he slept, and even now it was clutched against his chest.

Working it free without stabbing himself was another problem, but at least it was a problem he could try to solve. It took almost two minutes to get the blade exposed, and even when he started sawing, he wasn’t able to apply much leverage.

His only hope was that he would at least be able to cut through the thing without anyone noticing, and for half a minute he made some progress, cutting first through one vine as thick as his thumb, and then another. Those cuts had made all the difference in the world, and he actually had enough room to work now. He was sure he’d cut himself free in another half a minute.

Then he heard something roar. It was a strange wheezing thing that sounded like a particularly ill Tyrannosaurus Rex. Simon drew a complete blank of what could possibly make a noise like that, in or out of a video game, but one thing was for sure. He’d been noticed. At that point he gave up all pretense at trying to be subtle and started cutting as fast as he could.

His hand shook with adrenalin as he worked his way through one vine, and then another, and another. It confused him that nothing had come to stomp him or skewer him yet, but he wasn’t about to let that gift go to waste. The only thing that had happened is that they had started dragging him slightly faster. He had no idea what that meant.

Perhaps they were Lilliputians, or pygmies, and they only stood a chance against him as long as he remained bound. He smiled at that thought. Did that mean that he was in a desperate race to get free before they could drag him off a cliff or sacrifice him to their volcano god, he wondered, as he cut the last few vines off of him and was able to crawl free.

What he saw terrified him.

He wasn’t being dragged towards a cook pot or a volcano caldera by a couple of burly lizard men or a tribe of angry pygmies. He was being dragged by the vines themselves towards the waiting maw of a giant toothy blossom. It stood almost twelve feet tall, and the magenta and orange swirls of its leathery petals blended in with the bloody sunset to create a scene that was not of this world.

Simon stepped back as it roared and quaked in rage at being denied its meal. To think - he’d been only minutes away from being eaten alive by a plant, he thought, recovering a bit from how shaken he was a moment ago now that he realized that the thing was hardly a threat to him.

“I’ll bet you’re pretty hungry,” He taunted, “Too bad for that you never invented opposable thumbs. Sorry, I meant to say grew. Without those, you’ll always be— ”

He was interrupted, by the whistle, as it shot the first thorn at him.

“What the fuck?” Simon shouted, surprised by the sudden turn of events. The creature missed, but it was enough to send Simon running for his life as another volley sprayed the surrounding air. He had no idea what sort of poison was in those darts, and he didn’t want to know because it wasn’t going to be anything good.

Simon started running, and even without his boots, he didn’t stop until he got back to the river. There didn’t seem to be any of the dart launching plants this far from the main body of the nightmare plant he’d just escaped. In the fading twilight, he put his still damp armor and boots on. And pulled out his shield and sword. He hoped that the leather would provide him with some resistance to unexpected attacks, but he wasn’t betting on it.

He had to hand it to Helades. He didn’t see this one coming. A few hours ago this place was a tropical paradise, and now it was a dark nightmare jungle where even the plants wanted him dead.

“You win this round,” he said under his breath, “but I’m not dead yet.” He wasn’t dead, but he had no doubts he soon would be. He didn’t dare leave the ruins where the stones offered at least some protection from the plants, but he had no idea where he should go within them.

He decided that he needed to get to slightly higher ground to figure that part out. Even without much light left, he could still try to get some idea of how this city had been laid out to see if anything obvious stood out, or if there was some place he could spend the night holed up in relative safety.

A short climb later, he was on top of what had once been a two-story building and looking across the city. From there, the answer was pretty obvious. He hadn’t seen it earlier in the daylight, but at the top of the tallest ziggurat was a faintly yellow light coming from the door at its apex.

“That might mean there’s something to fight up there,” he said to himself. “I’d still rather die to whatever witch doctor rules over this ghost town than be eaten by a fucking plant, though.”

Simon picked his way down the rubble and started heading towards the pyramid, making sure to take the long way around the flower that had tried to eat him earlier. It struck him that all this was veganism gone horribly wrong, but then he realized that joke didn’t make sense because the plant actually ate meat. He spent most of the walk trying to turn it around into something funny, but eventually gave up in disgust when he reached the bottom of the ziggurat and looked up the hundreds of stairs he was going to have to climb to get where he was going.

If he hadn’t already hated that bitch of a goddess, this would be enough to make him start, he thought to himself as he started hiking his way to the top.

At first, he took a break every twenty steps, but after a few rounds of that he found himself taking a break after ten steps. That wasn’t because he couldn’t do more, he told himself. He just needed to make sure he didn’t get too tired in case some of the surrounding vines tried to attack him again.

They didn’t though. They just laid there, clinging to the stones just like vines should. Even that was enough to make him nervous though as he thought about his grisly brush with death. It took twelve rest breaks to reach the top of the pyramid, and as beautiful as the stars were above the jungle, Simon wished he’d done this during the day. From this high up, he could have gotten a much better idea of where he was.

It’s not like there wasn’t going to be a next time, though, as he stood to make the final accent.

The chamber at the top of the pyramid was empty, and the light spilled in from a sunlight mountain scene that was just beyond the doorway to the next level. Simon thought that was ironic as soon as he saw it. He’d just hike up an artificial mountain, and now he needed to climb down an actual one.

“Is this a dungeon or a work-out routine, Helades,” he said sarcastically. “Make you up your mind.” Still, after his last taste of altitude on the goblin level, he wasn’t looking forward to another hike, even if it was downhill.

So Simon stood there for a long moment, looking at the scene and trying to figure out where he was supposed to go to next. It was a sunny day, and the mountainside alternated with scree covered slopes and patchy chunks of snow that were so old they’d basically turned to ice. That meant that it was in the spring or summer, but still pretty cold. It definitely wasn’t a place he would want to spend the night, which was a problem, because the only thing that seemed worth exploring was a rocky outcropping separated from the door by a ridgeline. Other than that, it was just long slopes that lead down into high valleys.

Simon stepped out of the door and started to walk, towards the outcropping. The only thing that broke the perfect silence was his breathing and the sound of his boots crunching in the snow, so he didn’t immediately pull out his sword. He just walked along, casually looking to the left and the right for some idea of what he was supposed to be doing.

He quickly gave that up and focused on what was right in front of him, though because the drops were perilous enough to make him queasy. He even put off celebrating his success on getting to level nine because of how risky he thought walking across this slope was. Death by falling down a mountain would have been slightly more embarrassing than the time he fell down the stairs, and far more terrifying. He definitely wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction on that one. His streak was already three levels, but these open world ones seemed easier than the dungeons, so maybe shooting for number four was within his reach.

He didn’t fall though and quickly reached the rust-colored granite outcropping he wanted to investigate. There wasn’t much there at first glance. There were no ruins or towers, or even anything to fight. As he climbed a little higher, though, he changed his mind. Near the top, in the sheltered lee of the crumbling peak, he found a nest that was much too big for any bird he’d ever heard of, and his stomach instantly sank. He’d wondered what was going to try to kill him this level, and the answer was obvious now: Griffons.

He started to back away as soon as he saw the eggs that were bigger than his head. “The last thing I want is to be anywhere near those when Mama gets back,” he said to himself.

No sooner were those words out of his mouth than a hideous shriek shattered the stillness and echoed across the peaks. Simon looked up just in time to see something big and scaly fly over him. As he pulled out his sword. For a second he thought it was a dragon, or at least a drake. It was only when it was well past him, and he saw the large bulge at the tip of it’s tail, that he made a different sort of determination.

The thing that wanted to tear him limb from limb was a wyvern.

Simon turned and started to climb down from the rocky peak as fast as he could, but waited for it to swoop past him again before he took off at a run across the ridge he’d just so carefully hiked across moments ago.

Running on old snowpack that could giveaway might kill him, but being caught out in the open by a twenty-foot-long flying lizard would definitely kill him, and he wasn’t about to stand there and try his luck against the thing.

For a second he thought about running back to the ziggurat until the wyvern lost interest, but he could see now that the archway that had been a door a few minutes ago, was now just a few pieces of decorative stonework that framed an empty sky. For the moment, he didn’t worry about his destination. The only destination that mattered was away.

Away didn’t seem to matter much as the giant reptile wheeled around in the sky and came swooping down for another pass, screeching bloody murder the whole time. Simon spared a few glances over his shoulder as the thing got closer to try to judge the timing.

At the very last second, when he could practically feel the thing's hot, angry breath on his neck, he finally dove forward into the snow. He felt the wyvern’s claws graze his armor, but no pain followed that terrible moment, and it was soon past him.

“Holy shit,” Simon exclaimed as he pulled himself to his feet. He was shocked that hadn’t grabbed him and yanked him into the sky, but he knew that he had less than a minute until it came around to try again, and if history was any guide, his luck wasn’t going to hold out much longer.

Ch. 26 - The End of the World

Simon made a mad dash for the gate as the wyvern swung around for the third time. Its shriek was like nails on a chalk board to his ears, but the awful noise let him gauge the distance without having to turn around.

He didn’t quite reach the pillars before the wyvern reached him, but he was so close that the monster was forced to pull up before it could rip Simon’s head off. Even so, it was a close call, and he saw the barb on the thing’s scorpion like tail cut a gouge in the left pillar just as he ran through it.

After that, he stopped for a moment. Not because he was protected by the stone, but because he felt like an idiot. “Mother fucker,” he cursed, realizing that once again Helades had set him up. On the far side of the portal or whatever it was that he’d walked through, he’d only seen the ridge that had led to the wyvern’s nest, so of course that was where he’d gone. In exactly the opposite direction were the rest of the ruins that this arch had belonged to, which was obviously where the next portal would be.

Simon quickly scanned the horizon, taking in the ruined castle and looking for anything that might indicate the next portal, but nothing stood out. Just like the last level, it was ruins, but instead of the sprawling vine choke city this was some kind of fortification that had long ago fallen, and there was nothing to hide threats from him. He knew exactly what the threat in this level was. It was flying around his head, trying to crush his spine with that wrecking ball of a tail that it had.

So, with the Wyvern slowly circling back towards him, Simon started running again. This time for the main gate. Halfway there, he was gasping for breath and too tired to even blame the altitude. He just wasn’t cut out to do stuff like this. His endurance bar was way too short to be running laps like this. As winded as he was, he didn’t beat the giant reptile there, and it landed in his path, snapping and hissing as it blocked his way.

“Hey - I’m sorry, okay!” he shouted. “I promise. I leave your stupid nest all alone!” He moved to pull out his sword as he slowly backed away, but the thing lashed out with a sudden bit as it extended its neck enough that Simon practically fell over in his desperation not to get his head bitten off.

He barely managed to avoid letting out a shrill scream, and was able to scramble to his feet on all fours as the wyvern started chasing him on foot. He started running again. This time he ran along the wall to the left of the gate, looking for another way in. Unfortunately, it would seem the lizard was still plenty fast on land, and he realized he was quickly losing ground.

“Gervuul Meiren!” Simon shouted, pointing his hand back towards the monster bent on ripping him to pieces. The result was poorly focused and more smoke than fire, as a few scattered streamers of fire and a storm of sparks filled the air behind him.

It wasn’t his best work, but it did stop the creature in its tracks for a few seconds as it roared at the unexpected danger. Simon was quick to take advantage of the distraction and climbed the lowest point he could find on the wall. There it was mostly collapsed and only about four feet high, so he was able to scramble up and over the top before the wyvern could devour him.

Simon took one look at the wide and mostly empty courtyard and decided there was no way he was getting across that alive. Not without a rest first. The closest place he could find a moment to sit was probably in the lone remaining watch tower that hadn’t already collapsed on this part of the wall, though. So he scrambled another ten feet up the broken wall section while the wyvern took to the sky and pulled out his sword as he started running to the tower.

This time he made it first, but all that allowed him to do was discover that the other half of the thing was missing. It would be at best a momentary distraction for the angry mother that was trying to make him lunch.

Simon was about to start running again when he noticed that it did have one old, weathered, oak door that was closed on the remains of the far wall. Logically, that door went nowhere, but there was nothing logical about the pit, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt now that the goddess that tormented him loved to hide these things in obscure places.

So, even though the wyvern was bearing down on him, he took a few precious seconds to open it, and on the other side wasn’t the empty air of the battlement and the courtyard. It was a nighttime cityscape that looked straight out of some text book on ancient Rome or Greece. It wasn’t even ruins. It was a real live city with people and everything.

The only problem was that he immediately noticed two things. The first was that pretty much everyone was running from something behind the portal that he could see, and there were a few scattered fires in the part of the city that he could see.

It was an awful choice. Stand her and definitely die, or jump into the next level without a clear idea of what was going on and probably die right away from some new horrible thing.

In the end, Simon did the only thing he could do, and jumped through the doorway moments before the wyvern was able to end him. No one noticed his sudden appearance, but then he didn’t expect him to. They were all running for their lives towards the harbor with whatever they could carry. It was every man for himself.

As soon as Simon stepped out of the alley he was standing in and turned around, he saw why, and his heart sank. There was an erupting volcano behind him. It wasn’t particularly close, but it was turning night into day with the amount of lava it was spewing into the sky, and magma was slowly flooding the street, moving towards him at a fast walk.

Simon coughed. The air wasn’t particularly smokey, but it was foul, and he was probably breathing in all sorts of toxic gas just standing here. It was almost as bad as his dad’s smoking. Even so he breathed deeply and stood there, completely winded, as he tried to understand the situation.

Everyone was running downhill, away from the volcano and towards the harbor. They might live longer that way, and they might not. He wasn’t sure. He’d seen more than a few documentaries on Pompeii, and if this volcano erupted like that, then nowhere was safe. Simon didn’t care about being safe, though. A volcano would be a quick, clean death. He wasn’t so afraid of those anymore. What he cared about was understanding why this level was here, and where his deranged goddess would put the next level.

If he had to search the whole city, it could take literally a hundred lives to do that. He needed to narrow that down.

“She definitely wouldn’t put it somewhere I definitely can’t get to, but she probably would put it somewhere I couldn’t get to for long,” he told himself as he looked around the city.

That meant it was probably in the direction that the people were running from, not where they were running to, unless she’d done something extra tricky like putting it in the lighthouse he could see at the far end of the bay, or in one of the ships that were already leaving the harbor. That didn’t seem very likely to him, though.

“She’ll want me to be somewhere dangerous, where the chance of a painful death is at its highest,” he mumbled as he looked at the temples on the far hillside. “Somewhere obvious and flashy. Like a… Palace.”

As he finished speaking, his eyes settled on the palace, which was in the shadow of the volcano and had a commanding view of the town and the sea. That was definitely the sort of place she would pick. He was sure of it.

Simon started in that direction, but for the first few minutes he just walked, because he was exhausted. When the lava started to get close, he jogged again, but just enough to stay in front of it. In the slowly spreading carpet of magma, he occasionally saw flaming human shapes. He wasn’t sure if those were people being burned alive, or fiery elementals, but he didn’t want to find out. In the former case it was awful, and in the later he had no way to fight them. He doubted that his only spell would do any better than his sword against that sort of enemy.

Fortunately, he never found out which was the case because he arrived at the palace without incident and found the place abandoned. The guards that he’d passed on the way up were running away with whatever valuables they could carry. They didn’t try to stop him. They just looked at him like he was crazy.

The palace was a work of art, and even though that wasn’t really Simon’s thing, he would have gladly spent half a day just admiring and exploring it.

Simon very much doubted he had that sort of time, though, so instead of stopping to admire every statue and frieze, he hustled from room to room, opening every door and trying to figure out which obscure pantry would turn out to be his salvation.

At least that was true until he got to the throne room, then he stopped dead in his tracks. In a large archway at the back of the room was the next portal. It led to a nighttime forest that looked positively primeval.

That’s not what stopped him, though.

What stopped him was the fact that on the throne in front of him lounged Helades, or someone that looked a whole lot like her.

Simon walked forward in stunned disbelief, still holding his sword in his hand. When he entered the room, he heard the volcano outside erupt again. It was loud enough that the noise shook the building even before the tremors reached it, but neither of those things stopped him from approaching the goddess.

When he got close enough, she regarded him and started to clap. “Congratulations, Simon,” she smiled. “Truthfully, I never thought you’d get this far.”

“Are you here to mock me or just watch me burn?” Simon asked acidly. “If you wanted to watch me suffer, you really should have been there for the zombie level. That was the best one yet.”

“I’m an omnipotent being, Simon. I’m always watching you,” she answered before her tone softened a bit. “And Schwarzenbruck is a terrible place. No one that reaches it gets through it without suffering, sadly. It stops more heroes from advancing than almost any other level.”

Simon thought about not just chastising her, but attacking her for saying something so flippant. He hadn’t just suffered. He’d been a zombie for months. He’d watched the only person he cared about in this place die in his arms. It wasn’t suffering. It was heartbreaking.

He didn’t rant about any of that, though, because she wouldn’t care. Instead, he asked coldly, “I’ll ask again. Why are you here now if you're always watching?”

“Just to check in on your progress and congratulate you,” she answered warmly. “As I said, you’ve been doing much better than expected, and so few people reach this far. Out of every twenty warriors that enter The Pit, only one reaches level ten.”

Simon hadn’t had a chance to think about it, but once she said it, he realized he had indeed made it another level down. Hell - he’d all but made it another two levels down, because unless Helades was actually going to get her hands dirty for once, there was no way he wasn’t making it to level eleven.

“Thanks,” he said, filing that information away for later. Only 1/10th of the way through this awful place and he was already in the top 5%. That would have given him gold rank in the ladders of his favorite online game, but he’d always been more of a diamond player, so he wasn’t ready to settle for the top 5%.

“You’re welcome,” she smiled. “Every ten levels or so, I like to check in on the people like you that haven’t yet given up to the awfulness of the pit and see if there are any questions I can answer.”

“Well, you can start by—” Simon had a whole list of questions, so if she was offering, he’d gladly keep asking them until the lava was at the doorstep.

“Just one though.” She interrupted. “One question per level. Those are the rules, I’m afraid.”

Simon clenched his fists in annoyance. Of course, she had a rule about that. Of course, she did. He thought about asking why that was, but quickly stopped as he realized that would be his question. Instead, he stood there quietly to think, filtering through the dozens of possible questions that swirled though his head.

Finally, after a lot of thought, he decided what was truly important, and opened his mouth to speak again, while the goddess looked on at him amusedly.