Death After Death Ch. 27-28 (Patreon)

Ch. 27 - A Dark and Stormy Night

“Alright,” Simon said finally. “You said that the pit used to be something else before. What was it? How did the pit come to be?” His question echoed off the cool marble walls, and it was only when it had faded completely that the goddess opened her mouth.

“Now, that is an excellent question.” Helades smile widened, but grew a shade colder as she leaned forward on the throne. “I was expecting something a bit more short-sighted from you. You really are growing a bit, aren’t you. A little more every day.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Simon said, failing to hide how flustered the back handed compliment made him.

“No? The Simon who entered the pit would have said something like…” She cleared her throat, and when she started speaking again it was no longer her melodious voice, but Simon’s voice being played back at him. “Why does this place have such awful level design? Why didn’t you bother to include a tutorial for the magic system at least? What the FUCK was with that zombie level?”

Simon cringed at what she said, not just because it was a pitch perfect imitation of him, but because all of those had been questions that had run through his head before he settled on the one he had actually asked.

“None of those will help me understand how to beat this place,” he mumbled.

“That’s true,” she agreed. “All your life that stubborn competitiveness has held you back, but suddenly it's a strength. Don’t lose it. You’ll need it for what comes next.”

Simon let that veiled threat hang silently in the air for a few seconds, unanswered. He wasn’t going to let her distract him.

“The Pit was a mistake,” she said finally. “My mistake. It was one of many, of course. I’m not perfect. Even the omnipotent are not infallible.”

“What was your mistake?” Simon asked.

“I believed in someone too much, and took a leap of faith that didn’t end well. You see, once upon a time, there was a hero. His name is lost to time because this was a very, very long time ago, but he was the opposite of the person you are, in pretty much every way, Simon.” She explained, not even batting an eye at the casual insult. “He was tall and strong. He was brave and selfless. His previous life had been cut short when he defeated the Archdemon, and I told him that he could have whatever sort of life he wanted as a reward for doing so much good for so many.”

Helades stopped for a moment, just before the volcano looming over both of them rumbled to life. Its eruptions had been a constant background noise since Simon arrived in this city, but blasts that were loud enough to block out speaking like this had been a rarity. It must be getting worse out there, Simon thought.

“Do you know what he asked for,” she asked when the noise died down, smiling sadly.

“A bigger challenge?” Simon tried, taking a stab in the dark while he fumed about her comparison. If he was really the opposite of whoever this loser was, that would make him short, weak, cowardly and selfish, which obviously wasn’t the case. She just enjoyed picking on him like everyone else had.

“In a way, he did,” she answered, nodding her head slowly. “He told me he wanted to be born into a world that needed no hero. A world so peaceful and kind that he could simply enjoy life. I sadly had to inform him that such a world did not exist, and that even across the infinity of worlds I had access to, there would always be some darkness, and a need for champions to rise to the occasion.”

“Since his world did not exist, he asked to make one. He asked me to build him a great challenge so that he could cleanse the world, and then once that was done, he could be born anew within it.” She laughed then, and it that fiery light coming from the fire outside the palace, he could barely recognize the beatific goddess that he’d first met when this all started. “Can you believe it? What a crazy thing to ask? The chance to fight all the evil in the world? Such a thing could not be done, of course, but I realized it would be possible to change just the most pivotal moments in history and usher in a golden age that might be so long as to seem endless.”

“So every level in the pit is one of those moments?” Simon made no attempt to hide how stupid that sounded. “What do a bunch of rats in a basement or a few goblins in a cave have to do with changing the future or making the world a better place?”

“Even for a hero like him, such a feat would be extremely unlikely though, so to help him in the epic quest he sought, I wove the reality knot, that bound the infinite possible versions of this world together,” she continued, ignoring his question. “That way, he would have an infinite number of chances to create the world he sought to live in.”

“So what happened?” Simon asked flippantly. “If he was such a great hero, shouldn’t the knot have unraveled after a few attempts into a nice happily ever after?”

“That was the plan,” she agreed sadly. “He should have been free a long time ago, but things… well, they didn’t turn out well, and so the pit is still here with you, and all the other souls trapped within it.”

The silence settled heavily over both of them, and Simon looked to his feet, trying to find the right way to break the awkward moment without sounding crass. Finally, he decided, and said, “Look, I don’t want to shit on this guy, but…” his words trailed off as he looked up and saw that the throne Helades had been sitting in was now empty.

“What a bitch,” he swore under his breath as he walked to one of the closest windows and looked at the city below. Most of it was on fire now, and the lava had long since cut him off from the bulk of the city.

It was beautiful, in a terrible sort of way, Simon thought. It was like a classical painting, not a real place. A painting wouldn’t have the smell of sulfur or the screams of the dying, though, he reminded himself as he tried to focus on what the goddess had said. It raised more questions than answers, and honestly it was pretty dumb of her to set something like this up in the first place. To trap someone in a place where they would die over and over again until they finally succeeded, it was…

Simon shook his head to clear it as he suddenly realized he was getting a bit too close for comfort to describing himself. What he’d done had been totally different from what the original hero had done, though. In that way at least they were total opposites. Still, the thought didn’t bear more thinking about right now, he decided, as he moved over to the portal to the eleventh level. If Helades was going to leave him hanging, that was one thing, but the last thing he was going to do was let her distract him and ruin his streak.

Walking up the portal, he had no better idea what he would be facing than when he saw it from afar. It was a dark forest at night, and though there seemed to be a thunderstorm in the distance, it was only drizzling where he was right now.

Simon thought about waiting here for the storm to die down completely, or for morning to dawn. He was sure that a city being destroyed by a volcano was a pretty big history altering sort of deal, but he had no idea what he was supposed to do about it. Even if he had an ice spell, there was no way he could cast it enough times to stop a volcano.

After a few more minutes of waiting, though, another large earthquake rocked the palace so hard he had trouble standing. That was what finally forced him out into the cold, wet darkness. As much as he didn’t relish the idea of fighting anything blind like this, getting rained on beat the hell out of being boiled alive when the eruption finally turned into a pyroclastic cloud, so with his sword and shield at the ready, Simon walked into the portal without looking back.

The forest was a damp, towering monstrosity, that felt more like the redwoods he’d visited once than the forest he’d navigated around the cabin or the temple he’d discovered since he’d been here, and there were no real landmarks to show him which way he should go for once, so this time he just went straight. He used the few glimpses of the moon he could occasionally see through the canopy and the patchy cloud cover as he stomped through the ferns that were almost as tall as he was.

The first hint that he had that he wasn’t alone was the screech that suddenly shattered the night. Simon looked around, shocked that the wyvern had somehow followed him, and expecting an attack at any moment, but nothing assaulted him except for the drizzling rain.

“It’s just the wildlife,” he told himself quietly as he continued on. Even forests in the real world were filled with all kinds of dangerous critters and strange noises. He’d learned that in the few months his parents had forced him to be in the scouts, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise. It was just a shock. That worked until he heard something crashing through the underbrush not far from him.

Leaning as close as he could to a nearby tree as he tried to figure out if the creature was moving towards or away from him. When he realized it was getting louder and louder, he held his breath. Moments later, a large dark shape burst out of a large clump of ferns not far from him.

In the darkness, Simon couldn’t make out what it was, but from its outline and its size, the only creature he could compare it to was a brown bear. For a long moment it looked around the area, its large golden eyes shining as they picked up the barest fragments of light, and then suddenly it was gone again, charging off in a different direction.

It wasn’t a coincidence. Simon was sure of that much. That thing was hunting him, and the last thing he wanted to do was give it a chance to try again, so he slowly counted off ten seconds to give himself a head start, and then he bolted, not even trying to be quiet. He just ran in the opposite direction as if his life depended on it.

A few seconds later, he heard the thing screech again. It was back on his trail, and that fear made him run that much faster as he tried to find the easiest path through the moonlit forest. Soon enough, he could hear it somewhere behind him, crashing and thrashing through every plant in the forest as it tried to catch its prey.

Up ahead, Simon saw some light, and he pumped his legs even quicker to try to reach it. Maybe there would be people there - someone that could help him, or a place to hide. When he broke through the final wall of underbrush, though, it wasn’t a building, or even people. It was the scene of a massacre.

Ahead of Simon was a deserted dirt road littered with half a dozen dead bodies, along with a couple of horses that had been practically ripped to pieces, and the remains of two wagons. The one to his left was on its side, and the one to his right was smashed to bits.

He had no idea what could have done this, but when the thing that was following him finally broke through the woods behind him, he had a pretty good idea. It was an owlbear, and Simon would have no trouble believing that it’s beak and talons could have done all the damage he was seeing. Simon dropped his sword and piked up the pike of a dead man before he whirled to face his enemy. For something this big, he definitely needed more reach than a long sword could hope to provide.

Ch. 28 - The Bridge

Simon lashed out with the pike twice as he slowly backed up. The weapon wasn’t just a big spear, though. It was a giant spear. It was heavy enough that the only way he could wield it effectively was to leave the butt of it on the ground behind him.

Both strikes missed the Owlbear as it danced back away from him. It was a bloodthirsty monster, for sure, but it was also more than a little skittish, and didn’t seem nearly as interested in him out and in the open as it had been in the underbrush.

The result of all that, was as Simon backed away to the far side of the road it backed away into the shadows beneath the trees. Simon didn’t feel any safer once the thing had vanished, though. That just made him jumpy.

Now that it vanished, it could be anywhere, and it could spring out at him at any time. Simon stooped to retrieve and sheath his sword, while he still held onto the pike with his other hand. The last thing he wanted to do was walk very far holding this heavy ass piece of junk, but it was better that than getting his throat torn out by that thing’s razor beak, he decided as he lifted the thick shaft of his giant spear and started to walk slowly down the path.

He’d thought about looking through the remains of the wagons. There was probably something he could use in there, but it was dark and rainy, and the last thing he needed to do was dig through the remains of people and animals for a few coins or a new sword.

Especially not with that thing still out there.

As Simon walked, he heard it screech occasionally, and he kept thinking that he was in one of those dinosaur movies where it's not the raptor you were looking at that gets you, but the one that sneaks up on you from behind that rips you to pieces.

There was no evidence of a second monster of that size out here, though, and Simon was pretty sure that it was a solo predator. As long as he kept a hold of his pike and left the road between the two of them, the thing left him alone. Simon would be happy to stab it if it came back out, but there was no way he was going into the woods after it. He had no idea what effect a lone owlbear was going to have on history, but he didn’t really care. His mission wasn’t to fix this alleged hero’s fuck-ups. It was just to get to the end.

Once he did that, he would get his dream incarnation and leave Helades to clean up her own mess.

As the woods tapered off, Simon saw a windmill on a bluff overlooking a river off to his right. He thought about going for it, but the place looked creepy as hell in the storm, and after a particularly theatrical bolt of lightning silhouetted the place, he took it as a sign not to go check it out. He had no doubt that the headless horseman, or something equally awful, was over there waiting for him.

Instead, he kept on the road and walked to the covered bridge. It was almost as creepy, honestly, but it was basically just a hallway, so there was less searching involved.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Simon said as he stepped inside.

Ten feet in, Simon understood why they didn’t make bridges like this anymore. They were pretty much tailor-made for serial killers and horror movies, but it’s not like he had any other choice right now. Halfway through, when he was worried that maybe he should have taken a right on the main road he’d found instead of a left, he noticed there was a village on the far side. With the weather and the lighting the way it was, he couldn’t say for sure if it had always been there and he hadn’t seen it through the rain, or if he’d just managed to cross another level boundary, but it didn’t matter.

Civilization was civilization, and he would take it. The place looked a little run down, and there wasn’t a light to be seen. It was the middle of the night though, and that could be poverty as much as anything, so he tried not to overreact to that.

Keeping his calm worked pretty well, until he was most of the way through to the far side, and he heard the timbers start to shift and creek. Simon worried that the thing was less stable than it looked and that it all might crashing down on him, at least until he saw the silhouette appear on the far side. This thing was less bear and more ape, he decided, which made it, what? An ork? Weren’t those supposed to be pig creatures?

“I’m armed,” Simon yelled, swallowing hard to keep his fear down. “Come any closer, and I’ll fuck you up.” The thing might be big, but it wasn’t any bigger than his mega spear. Orcs might be scarier than goblins, but one or two would be manageable. Simon was confident that he could take it out unless the thing had a whole warband to back it up.

At least, that was the case until it raised itself to its full height, and roared. It was a terrifying sound that could have easily fit into Jurassic Park. At that moment, Simon considered dropping his weapon and running as fast as he could instead. The only reason he didn’t, was that he could tell, from how fast it was moving, he’d never get to the other end of the bridge in time.

The thing indeed had green skin, but at over eight feet tall, it was a bit big for an orc. In Simon’s eyes, that left only one option: a troll. It was a bit of a cliché to use on a bridge, but no one was ever going to accuse Helades of being original and creative.

Not like Simon.

The moment he figured out what he was fighting, he formulated a plan. He braced his spear, and prepared to cast a spell as he imagined the creature lighting into a roaring bonfire that would… it was only just before the monster reached him that Simon realized he couldn’t cast the fire spell in here. He’d catch the troll on fire, and that was their weakness. He remembered that much, but he’d also burn the bridge down while he was still inside.

No, the fireworks had to wait until they were out in the open.

None of Simon’s hesitancy or indecision was mirrored by the horrifying troll that was charging him, though. It just kept barreling forward, as it alternated between terrible gibbering noises that were almost speech, and bloodthirsty howls of hunger. The noises it made were almost as frightening as the noises under the wood beneath its feet, and Simon was worried the whole thing was going to give way before he had the chance to fight his way clear.

When the creature voluntarily impaled itself on Simon’s pike, that didn’t surprise him. He’d expected that much. To a creature that could regenerate as well as a troll, wounds like that were meaningless. He’d braced the but against the wood to delay the thing. Originally he’d planned to use that delay to melt its face off, but instead he used it to dive under the creature’s grasping hands, pick himself up off the wood and run as fast as he could.

He heard the haft of the weapon before he’d even reached the end of the bridge. The wood had been almost as thick as his wrist, and Simon had thought that the thing would slow down the brute a little longer than it did. When it was free of the bridge, he spared a glance over his shoulder, but wished that he hadn’t.

Simon’s second plan had been to turn around when he reached the end of the bridge and burn the whole thing down with the troll still inside. There was no way that was happening now, though, because the creature was practically right behind him. His head would be ripped off before he had the chance to say the two words that might save his life.

So he did what he did best: he ran. Simon sprinted in a zigzag path across the town square, screaming for help.

“There’s a troll!” he yelled. “Someone! Anyone!”

No one stirred, and no help made itself known. To all appearances, the town had been entirely deserted. He was all on his own, just like always. Which was fine with him. Help would have been better, but a quick mind like his was probably the best help he was going to get. Simon quickly realized that this thing was fast as hell, but only in straight lines. It had trouble turning, and even more trouble stopping, so he led it on a random path through the area. His winding path at least was a little more effective than running in a straight line had been. The troll was simply too big, but it would never be as smart as him. With each turn it’s bellows of frustration came from slightly further behind him.

In their path, the troll left a trailed of ruined awnings, overturned, carts, and even a knocked over anvil as Jon darted through the blacksmith shop. It was only then that Simon saw that the small whitewashed church had a little light coming from the windows. Was that a sign, he wondered? Was there some kind of sanctuary effect he could get there that would keep evil monsters like this at bay?

Simon wasn’t sure, but he didn’t have any better ideas, and with his legs starting to give out, he couldn’t stay in front of this lumbering behemoth much longer. So, with a final burst of speed, Simon crossed a dangerously open street and tried the door. He realized that if it didn’t open, he would be a dead man, but at the same time, he could bring himself to care too much. He was on level 11 or 12 now, and had collected more than enough information to justify another death or two, as long as they weren’t too painful.

The door was unlocked though, and as he dove inside, her slammed the door behind him. It was only when he got up, he realized that he definitely wasn’t where he had been a moment ago. The church he’d entered had been a collection of whitewashed timber and clapboard, with a few high windows and a tiny little bell at the top of the steeple. Where he was standing now wasn’t a church… it was a temple or a cathedral or something.

None of that was the strange part, though. Simon had long since accepted that the crazy goddess in charge to reconnect the world however she wanted, but he’d never been a level that was defying the laws of physics until now.

At the front of the pews, where the altar usually would be in a place like this, there was a gaping fiery hole in the ground, and the sheets of fire that erupted from it seemed to stop at very well-defined lines, like some kind of graphical glitch. The more he studied it, though, the wronger everything got, though. The stained-glass windows near the front of the chapel had broken and were in the process of shattering, but hung together in mid shockwave. This level had glitched out and frozen completely somehow.

At least that’s what he thought until someone walked out of one of the sheets of fire and said, “Oh, look - a new player in our little game.”