Death After Death Ch. 29-34 (Patreon)

Death After Death is complete (for the moment). I plan on writing a sequel to continue Simon's story, but it will be on Hiatus for the foreseeable future while I focus on other things.

Ch. 29 - A Walk Through Hell

Simon drew his sword before he began to advance, even though there was no immediate threat. He didn’t need to see the man standing amongst the flames grow horns or brandish claws to know he was bad news. He might not have the red skin that Simon would have expected, but there was no way two ways about it. Every movie he’d ever seen had taught him that that dude was a demon, and after the zombie level, he was taking no chances with getting his soul sucked into hell or whatever it was that the demon had planned.

“Easy,” the man said, holding his arms in a gesture of surrender. “I’m on your side here.”

“My side?” Simon asked skeptically as he studied the demon. He was dressed like what he presumed a noble in this era would dress like, with a white tunic, a dark doublet, and a purple short cape along with an elaborately curled hair-do that. “You don’t have any idea who I am.”

“It’s true,” the demon agreed, “but I know your type. Only one kind of hero shows up in this place anymore. The gods made sure of that.”

“And what kind is that?” Simon asked suspiciously. He stopped when he was still ten feet from the man and didn’t plan to get much closer. From here he could see that the boundary that defined the shattered, flaming unreality that the demon occupied from the normal looking cathedral the Simon stood in was a thin layer of runes drawn in white chalk.

Even from here they were difficult to read, though. In places, they looked like they’d been stretched and tortured beyond recognition, and though it looked like it had started out as a circle, something had deformed it.

“The kind that are just as trapped out there as I am in here,” the demon said succinctly. Simon had just started to imagine what kind of force could make the underlying space under the boundary runes warp like some kind of black hole phenomena, when the demon’s words completely halted those thoughts in their tracks.

“Excuse me?” Simon sputtered, not completely sure he’d heard him right. The demon couldn’t possibly know that.

“I said that you’re just as trapped in your pit as I am by this blasted circle,” the demon said, smiling. It could see that it had caught Simon’s interest now.

“And how is that you know about the pit?” Simon asked, sweating now. This was entirely too meta for his taste.

“Come now, you think you’re the first hero Helades has sent this way?” As the demon spoke, it gestured expansively from the door Simon had come in to another door that stood amidst the shattered ruins of the floor, and far too close to the boundary line for comfort. “She’s sent hundreds, no thousands, of heroes this way, though I doubt any of them ever found what they were looking for.”

“Why do you say that? Did you kill them all before they could advance to the next level?” Simon asked, leveling his sword warily as his gaze flicked back and forth between the demon and the path he was pretty sure he needed to take.

“Kill them?” the demon laughed. “My boy, you are free to leave any time I want. You’ll be back. They always come back, you know. Over and over again, until they finally come to me for answers.”

“And why would a demon like you have any answers I need,” Simon asked. His tone had lost much of the combativeness it had held until now because he was genuinely confused. He had no idea what this thing could want from him. “You’re just a monster in this place. A challenge to be defeated and overcome.”

“Take a look at this,” the demon said, ignoring what Simon said, turning around and facing the fiery curtain behind him. With a gesture, he pulled them aside like they were no more than heavy drapes, revealing a fiery hellscape that definitely looked like it was from something straight out of Dante.

For a few seconds, Simon was overcome, and all he could do was stare at the infinite landscape that assaulted his eyes. It wasn’t just a fiery place of suffering, that would have been too simple. It was fractal and endless, and even though he could feel neither its heat nor its torments, he still felt himself tearing up at the sight.

“Notice anything?” The demon asked expectantly, “Any repeating patterns?” Simon shook his head and looked again, even if he didn’t want to.

The volcanic pits of fire and shit were full of writhing souls just like he’d expected, but neither those nor the rivers of blood were probably what this thing wanted him to notice, so he tried looking for something that didn’t belong. In hell, that was a pretty tall hurdle to overcome, so he tried looking for something that wasn’t mindlessly awful.

He found the first example floating not far away above a crooked tower that was far too damaged to stay standing in the real world. It was a set of strangely familiar floating stairs made out of stone fragments. Seconds later he found another example, and another. Only when he saw them all lined up, in a strange fractal pattern that was nearly identical, did he realize that they were all pretty much identical to the stairs that stood in front of him.

He also noticed that outside of each and every one was a small army of demons just waiting to invade. It was like the hellish version of the beaches of Normandy.

“That’s right,” the demon said. “The goddess you work for is making this scene play out a thousand, thousand times. Those are just the ruptures that are open now, too. Not the ones that haven’t opened yet, or the ones that have been closed”

“But why would more than one version of the pit be open at once?” Simon asked, not comprehending exactly what was going on here.

“Every one of those rifts is another hero, trying in vain to save the world, just like you are. There are thousands of versions of the pit trying to accomplish that, but no matter how many versions of a world your goddess makes, there will only ever be one version of hell,” the demon answered. “None of them will succeed, of course. How could one ever succeed at an impossible task.”

“It’s not impossible, it’s just…” Simon started to say, stopping himself when he realized he was parroting one of Helades’ lines.

“It’s just really difficult, right?” the demon smiled sardonically, letting the fiery curtain behind him fall back into place. “They all say that too, at first.”

Simon ignored the demon’s words and studied the runic boundary, as well as the chaotic path to the door. “I don’t think you can reach me,” he said finally. It wasn’t going to be the easiest walk to get there, because Simon was no fan of platformers, but the way that the stretched lines of the summoning circle were laid out, the path to the door was clear enough.

“I can’t,” the demon agreed. “But you’ll be back. You’ll be back over and over and over again, and maybe after you get tired of playing her games, you’ll decide you’d rather play one of mine instead.”

Simon ignored him and walked towards a swirling debris field that was somewhere between an asteroid field and a set of stairs. For once, The Pit finally had some brilliant level design and art direction, and Simon found it terrifying. Not that he thought it would be hard to stay on his side of the white line, or that things were moving so quickly that he thought he might lose his balance, but because in the empty spaces between the stones he could see straight down into hell.

“Watch your step,” the demon said, suddenly much closer to Simon than he’d been before, as he suddenly teleported to the closest he could get to and still stay on his side of the line.

The sudden shock terrified Simon, but he was able to suppress the scream, and with a dirty look at the demon that was toying with him, he gingerly stepped down onto the first piece of debris. He was worried that any moment they would all fall out of the sky, but the stones that had once made up the cathedrals floor, and perhaps still did, felt rock solid to Simon.

It took five minutes of very careful steps to reach the door, and the whole way there he was focused as much on all the places he could fall to his death as he was at the slow crawling movements of the lines on the blocks he could see.

When he finally reached the doorway, as he placed his hand on the knob, the demon began clapping somewhere behind him. “Excellent work,” he congratulated him mockingly. “You’ll do even better I’m sure the next time you come back, and the time after that, and… well, you get the idea.”

Simon turned to tell him off, but when he did, there was no one there. He shrugged. The demon disappearing was by far the least weird part of the whole encounter, and he had been right about one thing at least, Simon would eventually pay him another visit whether he wanted to or not.

With that thought in mind, he very slowly turned the knob and eased the door open, wary of some kind of demonic trap. Instead, he found a dusty hallway lined with oil paintings, and lit candelabras that danced with little blue flames.

“Ghosts, huh?” he asked himself, turning around to take one last look around the hellscape that surrounded him. “I’ll take it.”

Simon stepped through the door without looking back and shut it behind him. He didn’t know how he was supposed to kill ghosts, but he’d take a little ectoplasm or whatever over the risk of eternal damnation.

Simon turned to the right this time and began walking. This felt less like a fantasy video game level, and more like something from the survival horror genre, or maybe even the haunted mansion at Disneyland. The jump scares started small, too.

At first, it was just the eyes on the portraits following him, but the further he went, the weirder things got. In the first door he opened was a library where books randomly floated from one shelf to the next. Shortly after that, he found a ballroom, where random articles of clothing danced with one another like the dancers were still wearing them. This was disconcerting enough, but some of them were doing it high above the rest, near the gilded roof of the ballroom.

Simon shut that door immediately and kept going. The weirder things got, the more he felt like he was being watched, though. That wasn’t Simon’s biggest problem, though. The biggest problem he had was that he was completely lost. Even though no one was trying to kill him, the place was huge and seemed to go on forever. Sometimes the rooms had windows, and he could see that he was on the second or third floor of some kind of decaying palace, and that the grounds were just as dilapidated as the building itself.

The calm, quiet demeanor, lulled him into a false sense of security. Nothing had happened, but that didn’t mean that nothing was going to happen, but he was halfway down a hall displaying the rusting weapons and banners that were trophies before he figured that out.

Simon heard one of the banners rustle a bit, and raised his shield towards it, just in time to deflect a morning star that was heading towards him. The thing bounce off his shield and shattered the window as it went flying outside.

The force of the blow staggered Simon and slammed against the wall, and a pair of daggers followed, embedding themselves on either side of his head.

Simon forced himself to his feet, warily watching a lance that had floated off the wall, and started to take aim at him. He backed up slowly, looking for somewhere he could escape to that didn’t involve a two-story jump through a broken window.

The lance never reached him. Instead, a sword suddenly thrust through him from behind. He watched in horror as the pain slowly spread through him as the sword blade slowly slid out of his chest covered in blood.

It was a blow to the heart, at least, were Simon’s last conscious thoughts before it all went black.

Ch. 30 - A Long Way Back

Simon wasn’t even mad that he’d died this time. It hadn’t hurt too bad in comparison to all the other ways the pit had made him suffer so far. It had ruined his streak, he thought as he sat up, but he could always get that back another time.

“Mirror - show me my character sheet,” Simon said while he reached for the wine. Getting a new streak started would be even easier now that he knew what was on all the early levels.

‘Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 14

Deaths: 29

Experience Points: -136900

Skills: Archery [Below Average], Armor (light) [Average], Athletics [Below Average], Cook [Very Poor], Craft [Very Poor], Deception [Poor], Escape [Very Poor], Investigate [Below Average], Maces [Average], Ride [Very Poor], Search [Poor], Sneak [Below Average], Spears [Very Poor], Spell Casting [Poor], Steal [Very Poor], Swimming [Very Poor], and Swords [Above Average].

Words of Power: Aufvarum Hjakk Gervuul Meiren’

He noted with approval that he’d only gotten to level 14, and that was practically level twenty. He’d only been at this for like a week, and he was already halfway through the damn test.

“Eat your heart out, newbs,” he said, taking another swig of wine.

When Simon noticed the experience line, though, he almost spat the mouthful of alcohol back out.

“What the hell! Why is the experience line like a hundred thousand lower than before,” he demanded. “It was almost back to zero the last time I checked.”

‘The experience category takes into account all of the actions you have undertaken since your Entry into The Pit. It—’ the mirror typed.

“Hey. Stop telling me things I already know. I know how it works, I want to know what I did to cause it to drop like that? Is this place bugging out even more than usual?” Simon asked.

‘I am not aware of the specifics that drive the total higher or lower. I only display the number. Perhaps you did something terrible, or were very upset by something your actions caused.’ the mirror suggested.

That shut Simon right up.

The mirror's words reminded him of the glimpse at that book that summarized his like in Helades’ temple. It dinged him five experience for every wasted day, and there had been a lot of those. How much had a few weeks as a zombie cost him? How much had murdering those poor people while he was an undead monster. The world might have reset so that it never happened, but his soul certainly remembered.

If that was indeed the case, then it would take a long time to dig himself back out of that hole. But that was fine. It really didn’t seem to have any mechanical effect. It was just one more way to measure progress.

Simon looked over the rest of his sheet, noting with approval that several of his skills had actually improved, including spell casting. It was now listed as only ‘poor’. That might help explain why his fire spell had been nuking everything lately. Simon just wished he had some way to turn that dial down a bit. He’d love to have the spell for just burning instead of mega burning.

He cracked his knuckles and rose to his feet. He needed to head back down. Not to beat this place, or do anything stupid like that. The only thing he was in a hurry for was to see Freya again, and if it really was a 50-50 shot between her and Brenna then she was due to be there, and he didn’t want to keep her waiting.

Simon geared up in the way he’d gotten used to, and headed down into the first level. Except for the slime and the skeleton knight, nothing was really a challenge here anymore. Now that he’d learned how to make the sword do what he wanted, and he held his shield up when the goblins tried to shoot him, everything was pretty easy.

This time, his duel with the skeletons cost him a cut on his forearm that was deep enough to bleed like crazy. When the knight was laying in pieces on the floor, Simon removed the bracer and cast his healing spell.

“Aufvarum Hjakk,” he intoned, visualizing his arm without the wound, like it had never been. The words were mostly successful, but even after the skin closed up and he wiped away the blood the wound still ached, and there was still some weakness.

At least there wasn’t an ugly black scar like the zombie bits had left behind, though.

What he sat there and tried to get his armor back on, he talked to himself about his options. “The way I see it,” he opined, “either my healing spell is too low of a level to restore all my hitpoints, or it’s so complicated that it’s basically broken.”

“Well what do you mean by that Simon?” he said, using a slightly different voice.

“I’m glad you asked, Simon,” he continued, laughing at his joke. He hoped that that omnipotent bitch was enjoying how quickly he’d figured out another flaw in her little game. “When I cast the spell, I only imagined the skin closing up, so that was the only part that healed. Since the pit is so pointlessly complicated, it's possible that the damaged tissue beneath the skin didn’t actually get healed at the same time.

“Well, that sounds fucking stupid,” Simon told himself, continuing to play devil's advocate.

“I agree,” Simon nodded. “That’s completely dumb, and whoever designed this system should have their godhood license revoked. If the problem is just a level issue then I can fix that, but it's the later… well, I’d have to spend months studying the anatomy of cadavers and practicing improving, and that sounds pretty disgusting to me.”

Once his armor had been put back into place, and he’d finished his criticism of Helades, Simon stood up and stretched, eyeing the frost sword not far from him. It was just one more game breaking bug as was he was concerned. If he could wield that sword, then he wouldn’t have any problem facing whoever was supposed to be the boss of the Pompeii level. Sadly, it was one more casualty of bad design, he thought with a shrug as he walked to the slime’s cave.

The only problem with the slime was that Simon’s fire spell was still a bit much. It wasn’t quite the blast it had been last time he fought it, but it was still more than the tight ray of fire he tried to visualize as he cast the spell. He didn’t even wait for the thing to completely stop moving. Once it was burning, Simon was already walking past its corpse to the inn, hoping against hope that his Freya would be there this time.

The first person he saw in the inn was the same zombie that always seemed to attack him from the right. This time, Simon brained him before he even got close, and the corpse fell on the ground in a heap. The second person he saw was unfortunately Brenna, but this time she wasn’t wielding a pitchfork, she just barged through the door and lunged for him.

She was already a zombie, he realized slowly as he pushed her away. He could easily kill her, of course, and put her out of her misery. It was without a doubt the right thing to do, but for some reason he had trouble raising his flanged mace against her. It wasn’t just the fact that he’d been trained his whole life not to hit a girl, either, he realized. It was that he might have to do the same thing to Freya in a couple of minutes when he explored the inn more completely.

It was only the idea that if she bit him again, he would have to live as a monster like her for who knew how long all over again. The fear that he would ever have to spend another minute as an undead monstrosity is what finally brought his arm to life, and it only took one good blow to the side of her beautiful face to make her crumple like a marionette that had suddenly had her strings cut.

His chest heaving from the emotional effort more than the physical one, Simon stopped and studied her body after that, because the first thing he noticed was that she didn’t have a bandage on her arm where he presumed she’d been bitten before.

He eventually found an infected looking wound on her shoulder that was almost certainly the cause, but he still had no idea why such details would change. Why would one girl alive or both of them end up dead before he got here. Why was the bartender never the survivor, but the same zombie always attacked him first on arrival.

He had no answers, but for once he was pretty sure it was more than just Helades screwing with him. If he knew what kind of RNG was behind how these levels were generated, then it would give him some kind of edge.

He didn’t have that, though, so instead he searched the bar for Freya. He found her with her skull crushed on the second floor, and almost let the zombies overrun the place while he was busy sobbing over her covered corpse.

Simon spent the next twenty minutes killing the eight zombies that had managed to get into through the window before he could move the table into place. Then, once he barred the back door just in case, he spent the rest of the day in the basement getting rip roaringly drunk.

Simon normally didn’t care for too much drinking, but right now he cared even less for thinking, and he happened to have the spell of ‘cure light hangover’, so why the hell wouldn’t he get blasted.

One day turned into three, though, as he wallowed in self-pity and mourned the loss of a romance that had never really been. He drank the tapped barrels dry, and made quite a mess trying to open the untapped ones, and he spent the whole time castigating the stupid goddess who caused this whole mess.

“None of us would be in this mess if you tried to make your precious hero a bear,” he yelled out of the third story window one night. “Not me, not Freya, and not any of the other poor saps you tricked into getting on this ride, you bitch!”

The zombies didn’t seem to mind his antics, but three days seemed like he was pushing his luck, so on the fourth day after he made his hangover disappear with two little magic words, he finally opened up the front door to face the carrion crawler.

It turned out that the slimy little bastard was a lot less interested in him when he shot first with the crossbow. Once it had a bolt buried in its wiggly torso, it disappeared into its pile of corpses, never to be seen again.

Likewise, the plants didn’t try to do anything with him as long he stayed away from the largest blossoms, that were easy to spot by daylight. This time he was able to stroll right to the pyramid, and then take his time climbing the thing. He reached the top well before sunset and took his time to enjoy the view. The jungle continued as far as he could see in all directions, and the canopy was only broken in two places: a river, and another distant pyramid. He was unable to tell if the city on the horizon was also merely ruins, or if people still lived there, but it didn’t matter. With man eating plants on the loose, the last thing was doing was spending a few days traipsing through the jungle to find out.

The wyvern level was as anticlimactic as anything he’d ever experienced. Since he didn’t try to wander over to its nest this time, no angry mother tried to devour him. Indeed, nothing tried to attack him. Simon walked to the ruins of the castle completely unmolested, and even poked around a bit before he made his way up to the shattered tower.

It wasn’t a very interesting place though. Anything worth taking had long been stolen from the empty rooms, and the weather had rotted away the rest. Now the only thing of value it had was the commanding view. Well, that and the portal he corrected himself.

The city on fire in the wannabe Vesivius level definitely seemed a little further along than last time, but not four days further along. Simon had wondered about that on his way here. Theoretically, if he’d wasted days in the zombie floor, he should have arrived to find a wall of cooling lava blocking his way, but instead it seemed about the same before as he slowly walked to the palace.

In the end, the only real difference was that the goddess wasn’t waiting for him on the throne this time. He’d expected that, though. She only did that last time to tease him with hope.

The joke was on her. He’d left his hope back on level 6 with Freya’s corpse. Everything he did from now on was just spite.

Ch. 31 - A Detour

The first real problem came back up when Simon re-entered the forest to fight the owl bear. Well - to hopefully not fight it, actually. If he didn’t need to fight any of this shit, then discretion seemed to be the better part of valor. At least when the enemy was over eight feet tall and claws that could rip him to shreds anyway.

That monster stalking him through the woods wasn’t even the problem, though, it was that there were no obvious landmarks to guide him. Last time, it was only pure luck that he’d made it to the road and that terrible wreckage. What if this time he turned right when he’d turned left before, and ended up lost in the woods until he starved to death?

He’d done that before, more than once actually, and it wasn’t any fun. With the crossbow and the fire spells, he thought he could make a better showing of it this time, but he’d much rather be exploring the pit than one stupid forest inside it.  The rain fell softly on Simon while he tried to remember what he’d done last time, but he couldn’t exactly, so he decided that he probably would have just gone straight.

A few minutes later he was rewarded with a distant shriek, which he took to be a good sign, so he kept going until the over grown bird got too close for comfort, before hiding as far under a fallen log as he could wedge himself. The Owlbear stopped around the area for almost two minutes looking for him, and at one point even stepped on the tree that hid him, but fortunately the old lightning scared trunk bore the weight.

Last time Simon was in this moment he remembered bolting in a panic, but this time he very slowly slid out from under his hiding place, and did his best to sneak off into the densest part of the underbrush he could actually squeeze through. He didn’t really want to just run and hope for the best. In his current situation, that seemed like a recipe for disaster, so he did his best to be as quiet as possible, and stayed on the lookout for the noises of that thing coming back.

Though the owlbear got uncomfortably close a couple of times, Simon managed to avoid crossing its path before he reached the road. This time he noticed that he’d walked quite a bit farther than he had originally, and the wreckage of the wagons was only just visible at the next bend in the road.

Simon felt naked in the open without his trusty pike, but he drew his sword and kept his shield up in case of ambush. Fortunately, one never materialized, and he reached his goal. The clouds cleared up a bit as he got closer, but being able to see better did him no favors.

Both of the wagons were still wrecked, with one shattered, and the other one on its side. That wasn’t the problem, though. The problem was that the men and horses surrounded them hadn’t been butchered… they’d been shredded. Simon doubted him could have matched the bloodstained limbs to the body they belonged to if he tried.

Not that he would ever engage in such a gory pastime. This time he would take a minute to go through the more intact wagon, though. A water skin would be a nice score, if he could find one. He was feeling thirsty, and he still had half a dozen floors to get through before he would see new content.

Simon didn’t find a water skin, but he did find movement. As soon as he opened the canvas tarp in the back, he saw someone in the darkness move, and he jumped back, pointing his sword at them.

“Who’s… come out of there right now!” Simon yelled, before quickly looking around to see if the Owlbear might have heard that.

“I… I can’t.” a soft voice said so softly that Simon could barely hear it. “The monster will eat us if I do.”

Simon was puzzled by this response, and it took him a second to figure out that the voice belonged to a child. He shook his head. “Really, Helades? Fuck.” he swore under his breath. There were monsters in the forest, and she was bringing kids into this? Simon was starting to think that she was an evil goddess, not a good one like he’d originally thought.

Using the tip of his sword, he flipped the cover back, to make sure it wasn’t some weird ambush, but there was just a young boy that couldn’t have been much older than 12, and a slightly older girl, clinging together in fear. At first, Simon thought they were siblings, but when he noticed how fine his clothes were, and how simple the girls were, he realized that it had to be more complex than that. Simon didn’t care about that, though. Answers could wait until he got them somewhere safe, not that he had any idea where that would be.

“Come on,” Simon said, “Both of you out right now. You can’t stay here.” He wanted to ask what happened, but that seemed too insensitive, so instead he just helped them out of the wagon, pulling them to the axel side, where the violence was less obvious.

The fair haired boy was hesitant, and looked at him with undisguised fear, though Simon couldn’t figure out if that was because of the horrible things that had already happened to him, or if it was because he was a stranger with a sword. The girl, on the other hand, clung to him like her life depended on it.

Simon peeled her off him and then sheathed his sword as he told them both, “You two wait here. Don’t go wandering off or looking around. I’m going to get a weapon, and then we're going to find somewhere to get you two out of the weather.”

“But you already have a weapon,” the boy said, confused.

“Not this one,” Simon said, turning to face him as he walked to where the huge speak lay on the ground. “I—”

It was almost over before it began. Simon caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he knew he’d never get his sword out and in time. All he could do was point and pray as he shouted  “Gervuul Meiren,” while he dove to one side.

Since he barely had time to imagine much more than this big ass bird on fire, the results were less than spectacular, but even so, a few streamers of powerful fire leapt from his hand, and judging by the ear-piercing shriek the thing made, Simon knew that at least one had landed. He didn’t look, though. He ran to the pike on the ground, and raised it before he could turn around to wield it.

It was lucky that he did.

No sooner did he had the spear end of the weapon off the ground somewhere behind him, then he was pushed forward by a sudden impact that sent him sprawling, and buried the butt of the weapon in the mud.

Simon expected to be killed before he could rise to his feet, but other than a little bit of sharp pain from his back, and dull pain from his knees, he was fine. The shrill screaming behind him told him the owlbear didn’t exactly feel the same way, and Simon finally turned to see why.

The big dumb creature hadn’t been burned too badly by his fire spell, but it had obviously been enraged by it, because it hard charged right into the pike, and now it had four feet of the weapon sticking out from behind it, while it shrieked in pain.

Simon pulled out his sword and approached it. They said that you weren’t supposed to approach an animal in pain, because it could lash out violently, but Simon didn’t care about that right now. He cared about what this thing was doing to his ears. It was like nails on a chalkboard.

“Sorry about this big bird,” he said as he swung his sword as hard as he could at the back of the thing’s neck with a vicious two-handed blow. He’d hoped to behead it, which would have been super cool, but as it was he at least severed the thing’s spinal cord mercifully enough to put everyone out of its misery.

When he finished that ugly business, Simon sheathed his sword and looked to make sure the children were okay. He saw a mixture of awe and fear on both their faces. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he said, trying to reassure them as he walked over.

The boy nodded eagerly, but the girl ran to him and started crying. He still had no idea how to cope with that, so he let her sob for a few minutes before he shook her loose.

“Come on,” he said, We need to get out of here.

Both of them came easily enough after that, and he held hands with both of them while the left all the evidence of violence far behind them.

On the conversation along the way, the girl mostly relayed what had happened. They were traveling from the capital to Adonan for some festival that meant nothing to him. Apparently Eddek had to attend and give it his blessing because he was someone important, but when their wagon was attacked at night by monsters, all they could do was hide.

Simon listened, but mostly he just felt like shit that he’d left them in there the first time without saving them. Saving everyone wasn’t his job, of course, but these were just kids. The last thing that Helades should do was put innocents like that in her sick games.

Once the boy found his voice, he asked about the magic that Simon had wielded, but Simon didn’t have much to say.

“Is it demonic? Is it from the gods?” Eddek asked.

Simon just shrugged. “Who can say. It’s just a little trick I picked up.” He spent much of the walk trying to act like he knew what he was doing, but in reality, he was lost. He couldn’t take them to the bridge. He’d never be able to get them past the troll. Hell - he wasn’t sure how he was going to get past that brute without his pike. As a weapon it hadn’t been much, but it bought him a few precious seconds.

It started to rain again just before he caught sight of the mill. Simon started towards it. It still creeped him out a little because it looked like the location for some B horror movie, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and he was sure these kids would catch their death of cold if he didn’t get them somewhere warm and dry.

There was still enough of a fire burning in the hearth of the small home next to the mill that Simon could see a small amount of light through the shutters as he banged on the front door loud enough to wake whoever was sleeping in there.

They stirred only reluctantly after the second round of banging, and loudly shouted through the door, “I ain’t openin’ my door to strangers in the middle of the night!”

“That’s very wise,” Simon agreed, pushing the children forward even as he stepped back. “I wouldn’t either if I was you, but I’m going to go back to the road now, and someone needs to look after these kids I saved in the woods. If that’s not you, then I guess they’ll just freeze to death out here.”

“No, please don’t go,” the boy pleaded. “My father will give you a fine reward, and I’ll make sure to appoint you to the household guard if you just stay and—”

“You hear that?” Simon said, shaking his head at Eddek’s fine offer, even as continued to move back. “This kid’s dad is rich, and you’ll be well rewarded if you take care of them until the rest of their party catches up with them!”

Both children came running towards him, and Simon knelt to hug them, his heart melting a little at the sight. “Don’t worry. You’re far safer with this man than you are with me. I didn’t even plan to fight the owlbear tonight - I’ve got a date with a troll later, and you definitely can’t come to that.”

“But - but… we need you,” the girl said. “We would never have made it without you…”

Her words trailed off as the door began to open up, and the miller peeked out nervously, fearful of some trick. “Kids you say? Reward?”

Far from being the sunken cheekbones serial killer that Simon feared he would find, the old man seemed to be decent enough. “The world is a big place. I’m sure we’ll see each other again,” Simon said, not especially looking forward to having to save them and go through this tear-jerker every time from now on, even if it was better than the alternative.

Simon thanked the miller, gave the children another two goodbyes, and then headed back down hill towards his date with the bridge.

Ch. 32 - A Rock and A Hard Place

The troll was easier to deal with than Simon thought. Instead of trying to run past it, or burn it to a crisp, he just intentionally cast his fire spell poorly, and the shower of sparks and feeble streamers sent the thing running just long enough for Simon to get to the church and slam the door behind him.

It was a terrible way to have to throttle the magic, Simon thought, but what the hell else was he going to do? Actually casting mega-fire at full power was not only exhausting, it was dangerous. If he’d actually done that, he would have burned himself alive on the bridge, and then he would have had to come back to fight the troll again anyway.

Because that’s just how The Pit was. Simon could see it in the expression that the asshole demon as he just sat there and watched Simon while he approached. The distorted summoning circle.

“Back so soon,” the demon asked with a shit eating grin. Usually people take a bit longer. Simon couldn’t figure out if that was supposed to be a compliment or an insult, so he just ignored it while he focused on studying the circle. It wasn’t quite the same as before, but as far as he could tell, none of the runes had changed. It honestly didn’t look too different from the hell rifts that one of his favorite action role playing games used in the second act. He smiled at that. Level 13 or 14 out of 99 didn’t seem to be the second act to him, but he’d take it.

“Do you have anything useful to say, or are you just going to fuck with me?” Simon asked, the demon. While Simon had literally all the time in the world, he had almost none to spare for a creature like this, that had bad news written all over its face.

“No - not just yet, I think,” the demon shrugged. “No point in talking to any of the warriors trapped in here with me. Not until they start to lose hope anyway.”

Simon wanted to ask about that, but even more than that, he wanted to get the hell away from this guy. As Simon started walking down the swirling bits of floor that made the impromptu stairs down to the door, he wished that the creature looked a little more classically demonic. It would have made it much easier to deal with than the’re-not-so-differant shtick the thing was obviously leaning in to.

The door led to the same dusty castle that Simon had died in last time, but this time he paid more attention to his surroundings, and he avoided any halls or rooms that had anything that could be used as an obvious weapon.

Even the innocuous rooms and halls still had small objects that floated aimlessly, and pictures that looked at him as he passed, but he forced himself to ignore those details, creepy as they were, and focus on the ones that actually might get him killed.

That forced him to take a very different path from last time, as most of the route he’d wandered through before was obviously off limits, but as he ducked into a small bedroom down the third hall he could actually travel in relative safely, he began to think that the right way to handle this was to get outside. That’s what haunted houses always tried to prevent in the movies, right? There had to be a reason that he only ever found stairs going up, but none going down.

As he eyed the window, it looked like it was only a twenty or twenty-five foot drop. He’d break his legs if he jumped, but a rope would make it child's play, he realized.

Unfortunately, he’d left his rope in the cabin. It’s not like he’d ever needed it before, anyway, so he didn’t beat himself up too much about it. “Who would think to carry a rope with them everywhere they go,” he muttered to himself as he set about turning the bedsheets into a new rope.

It took twenty minutes, and the hardest part of the whole thing was ignoring the throbbing from his back where the owlbear’s claws had gotten him a little. When the rope was done, Simon used a full length mirror to take a look, and decided they didn’t look bad enough to try to heal, especially not with the way the poltergeist activity was starting to pick up around him.  It was just a little blood, and a couple small cuts in his armor. A couple cuts wouldn’t kill him, but if he stayed here too much longer, the ghosts might.

Getting out of the window was harder than he thought, though. Even though he tied off his crude bedsheet rope to the frame of the ancient bed, he wasn’t completely sure he could trust his weight to it as he eyed the drop.

When Simon saw the mirror begin to float menacingly toward him, he finally decided to take the plunge and climb out of the window and down the side of the building. Unfortunately, the bed he was tied to decided to try to join him.

“Oh shit,” Simon gasped as he felt himself start to sink even though he wasn’t climbing, and put two and two together. In the end, he’d never know if he merely weighted too much to use the bed as a proper anchor, or if the ghosts had decided to help it along. Fortunately, it was too big too fit out the window and crush him like some kind of acme anvil or cartoon piano. Instead, it just wedged in place, letting him climb down as fast as he could just in case.

Outside, the sky was heavy and leaden, which was perfect for the rest of the vibe this place had, but it made it impossible for him to tell if it was just after dawn or just before sunset. Simon was willing to bet it was the latter, because that one would screw him harder, but that was fine. As long as nothing in this level turned him into a zombie for months, he’d be back in a few hours to do it all over again as many times as he needed to.

Simon started with the nearest outbuildings. He checked a barn, three sheds, a couple guest cottages, and a greenhouse where everything inside had died. He didn’t find anything unusual in any of those. Not only was there no gate, but there was no haunting activity either. That seemed to be limited to the main house.

Simon found a very overgrown hedge maze shortly after that, but decided against checking it because it creeped him out. Nothing good happened in there, he could tell. So instead, he just circled around until he finally found the front door to the house.

Simon wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find when he opened it. He thought that he might find a vampire count who would explain his whole plan to him, or perhaps a ghostly countess doomed to keep reliving some horrible moment of her life over an over. All Simon knew was that if this had been a video game, when he opened those gilded, paneled doors, he would have gotten one hell of a cutscene.

Instead, he found a cave. A dark, dingy cave that more properly belonged under the mansion, not in its foyer.

It took Simon several seconds longer than it should have for him to realize that this was the gate to the next level, and not a truly bizarre decorative choice. After that, all that was left to do was to go inside.

The cave was an old limestone formation with stalagmites and stalactites that had mostly fused into uneven, misshapen pillars. Simon didn’t have a torch, but once he was inside, he let his eyes adjust a bit. There was a dim light coming from further on in the cave, and while he wouldn’t want to fight in the near darkness, it was enough for him to walk slowly forward without tripping and breaking his neck.

Up ahead somewhere Simon could hear muted chanting. At first, he couldn’t quite make out the words, but as he got closer he began to piece them together. Someone was beseeching gods for some sort of divine favor. Simon obviously hadn’t walked into this at the beginning, so he wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but the fact that the wizard or priest or whatever he was talking about blood sacrifice meant it couldn’t be anything good.

Simon found the wizened old man standing in a protective circle as he continued to cast his strange spell. It wasn’t real magic, of course, because nothing interesting was happening. This guy clearly didn’t understand as much about the world as Simon did, because he’d probably been studying magic for decades, whereas Simon had been doing it for a couple of weeks and had actual magic to show for it.

Simon thought about just ignoring this dude and trying to sneak past him. With his little circle and a few candles, Simon didn’t think it likely he could hurt anyone. He was obviously just a crazy old man. That changed when Simon heard him say, “grant me my boon and I will not stop with the village. I will burn the whole kingdom to the ground in your name.”

That was enough for Simon. Leaving this guy breathing was clearly a mistake, so he pulled out his crossbow and shot him in the back. The wanna-be mage crumpled immediately into a pool of his own blood as soon as the bolt embedded itself in his left lung. He struggled uselessly for a second, but didn’t rise after that.

Simon waited for a few seconds for the other shoe to drop. This was clearly too easy for any level in the pit. It was easier than the rats on the first floor, so there was no way that this was all there was to it, but nothing happened.

Finally, after the moment had passed, and it all felt terribly anticlimactic, Simon stepped forward, over the body of the madman and towards his ritual area. There he found all sorts of strange powders and ritual implements, but none of them particularly interested Simon. Instead, he reached for the book. Even if this guy didn’t know any real magic, it would be interesting to see what strange ideas he had.

He never got that far. As the shadows moved slightly, he pulled his hand back as a giant shape suddenly loomed out of the darkness and brought its stony hands down toward’s Simon’s skull.

It was a fucking golem. How did a guy like this who didn’t even know how to cast magic properly have a golem, Simon wondered. He’d never find out, though. At least not this run. As the golem brought its fists down, it shattered the table where everything had been laid out, sending pages flying as grimoire was crushed by the titanic blow.

Simon ran. Not because he had no way to fight several hundred tons of animate rock, even though he didn’t. He ran because it was terrifying. The thing was like the hulk, made out of granite, and a single blow would turn him into a fine red paste.

Running headlong across the uneven ground of the cave was much harder than picking his way through the darkness had been. Even though Simon was much faster than the golem, it gained a little more on him every time he tripped over some obstacle, and Simon only barely reached the wooden stairs before the golem reached him.

There, at least, Simon was safe. The stairs were flimsy wooden planks that barely bore Simon’s weight, and would never let the golem follow. Even so, he didn’t delay. The last thing he wanted was for that nightmare to start throwing boulders or something at him.

When Simon reached the top of the stairs, he opened the door without hesitation and slammed it behind him. It was just someone’s kitchen, after all. Even if all the knives suddenly sprang to life and started attacking him at once, he’d still have a better shot than going one on one with a stone giant like that.

Ch. 33 - A Sinking Feeling

Simon sat there on someone’s table for several minutes before he noticed the screams. They were faint, from somewhere outside, but as soon as he caught his breath, they were unmistakable.

He walked to the nearest window and opened the shutters to reveal a village on fire. He had no idea if this was the village the evil warlock he’d just killed had talked about sacrificing downstairs, or if this was the challenge of the new floor, but it didn’t matter, because from here he could see the next gateway. That meant it wasn’t his problem.

This house had a commanding view of the village from the hill it was on, and from the window Simon could see a particularly strange doorway in one of his neighbors houses. Many of the buildings were on fire, but only one of them had snow blowing out its front door. It was close enough that Simon wouldn’t even have to join the fighting against whatever was attacking the town.

If it was the Warlock’s doing, Simon would have said demons, but if this was the next level, his money was on orcs. It didn’t matter either way, because there was little point in him sticking his neck out when the thing he was looking for was right here.

“I can’t save everyone,” he reminded himself as he investigated the chilly doorway. “And even if I did, they’d just die again next time.”

With that thought in mind, Simon walked through the door. He started shivering on the other side almost immediately, as he wondered what terrible monster he’d have to fight here. An elemental? A yeti? It didn’t matter much. If he didn’t get through this place pretty quick, the cold would kill him just as easily.

That looked to be what had happened to everyone else. Tucked amidst the snow drifts were a few bodies that had frozen solid without a mark on them. The buildings were in no better shape, and were thickly crusted in ice, even if nothing about them seemed to indicate they’d been build for harsh winters. It seemed to be a quaint European village that had just frozen over one day, which was obviously ridiculous.

After a few minutes of looking, though, his target became fairly obvious. In a sea of white, there was only one spot of color, in the temple at the end of the street. At first Simon thought that the baleful red color was a painting, but as he walked towards it, he watched it shift slowly from the orange red it started at to a slightly dimmer purple red.

It was definitely a sunset, and it was almost certainly somewhere warmer, which meant that it was the place to be, whether it was the next floor or not. Simon continued to trudge down the street, and by the time he got to the temple the light was coming from it had practically faded to the dark indigo gray of twilight. Simon didn’t think he was going that slow, but in the begging, the drifts had only been as high as his shins. By the time he reached the temple steps, they were all the way to his thighs, which made even a few steps fairly exhausting.

Simon barely spared a glance at the people that had died frozen in place in prayer, clustered around the altar. If it hadn’t been so freezing, he might have investigated it a bit more thoroughly, since there were a lot of them, but right now he couldn’t be bothered.

It wasn’t until he’d practically reached the door though that he realized there was a problem. The doorway had frozen over completely with translucent ice, so he could see the way forward, but he couldn’t reach it. Simon tried to shoulder check it a couple of times, but it didn’t budge. It had gotten thick enough that it was at least as strong as bank plexiglass, which meant that his sword would be almost as useless.

Fortunately, he still had one weapon that should be reasonably effective on ice.

Simon stopped for a second, stilling his mind. Unlike the last few times he’d cast this spell, this time he really needed to do a good job. He was already feeling tired, and while he had trouble feeling his fingers, his toes were already completely numb. He needed to get through this level fast, or he’d have to start all over, and he was not ready to find Freya dead on the floor again.

So Simon imagined a blast of fire that would have been more appropriate to a comic book than a fantasy novel. He pictured a rippling flame thrower-like stream of pure heat rippling with heat even in the current cold, and when he was ready - when he could see the icy barrier melt in his mind's eye, he finally intoned the words, “Gervuul Meiren.”

The result was extreme. The gout of fire that Simon summoned from whatever dark pit it came from vomited into existence even as the words tore themselves out of Simon’s throat. It sprayed against the ice with enough fury that for a moment the world was lost in steam. That was warm at least, and Simon was grateful for the reprieve. A few seconds later, when the steam finally died away, the ice was warped and obviously thinner, but still standing.

“Fuck!” Simon yelled in frustration, not sure what to do. His vision had dimmed around the edges during the last spell, and he was fairly sure that he’d pass out if he tried to cast it again.

In frustration, he leaned against the barrier, banging his head against it lightly as he struggled to think of what he should do next. He didn’t have to think long. After only a few seconds of leaning on it, he felt the whole thing begin to lean forward. It occurred to his frostbitten mind too slowly that while he hadn’t melted through the barrier, he’d melted enough around the edges that it was no longer attached to anything, and that it was nothing but a freestanding block of ice which he rode ungracefully to the ground.

Simon shook his head to clear it of the cobwebs and slowly stood up. It was a chilly night, but compared to where he’d just been, it was practically a sauna, and he basked in relative warmth, even if he might have complained about it at any other time.

It was only after he appreciated the fact that he wasn’t going to freeze to death that Simon slowly looked around. He was in a town somewhat bigger than a village, or maybe the rural part of a small city. He wasn’t sure. In either case, though, it had a ghetto, and he was in it.

Maybe it was worse than that, he realized, as he looked around.  Maybe it wasn’t a ghetto. Maybe everyone was dead. The doors to several houses stood open, and many others had a red X painted across them.

Simon walked over to the closest building with an open door, and knocked gently. “Hello,” he called out softly into the darkness, but there was no response.

If no one was actually here, then this would be a good place for Simon to take a little nap, he decided, as he slowly shut the door behind him.

“Hello,” he called out again, a little louder this time, “Anyone here? Anyone?” He couldn’t see many details, but the place looked pretty run down. There were stains on the walls and floors, and trash laying at random by the walls. The place stank too, but not like goblin bad or anything. He didn’t care, though. He was only got to here for a few hours. He could tolerate anything that long.

After a quick search of the two room hovel, Simon quickly decided that no one would mind if he stayed here, so he put a chair against the door to give him warning for any uninvited guests, and passed out in the bed.

He’d intended only to sleep for a couple of hours, but it wasn’t until the sun shining through a crack in the shutter lanced painfully into his eyes that he finally woke up.

“That fire spell really takes it out of you,” he said to himself, stretching. It was kind of stupid, though, he decided as he thought about it. Mana and stamina were supposed to be two entirely separate systems, but every time he cast one big spell, he felt completely worn out.

When Simon sat up, he was only barely able to stifle a scream, and all his thoughts on system design disappeared. What he’d taken to be a pile of trash or clothes against the far wall was a decaying human corpse.  A shiver went through him as he realized he was almost certainly sleeping a dead man’s bed. It didn’t get any better when he looked around and saw suspicious dark stains on the blankets he’d just spent the night using.

Simon jumped out of bed. He needed to leave now, before he could think about this anymore. He was definitely going to be sick if…

There were two more corpses in the living room. One was a child, curled up by the hearth, and one was a man slumped over the far side of the table. As Simon bolted for the door, it dawned on him where he’d seen X’s like that on doors before. In a game he’d played about the plague.

It wasn’t that thought that made him vomit, but it was what he thought about as he heaved his guts out in the street. He hadn’t just been staying in the house of a dead man. He’d been sleeping in the bed of a dead family… while their corpses slowly moldered in the dark. It was vile, but for once he couldn’t blame Helades.

If she hadn’t frozen him solid, he would have recognized the signs, of course, but he was the one that had slept in that bed without giving everything a thorough look. Simon spent the next few minutes trying to assure himself that even if he got infected by the worst plague imaginable, he’d still leave it behind when some monster ripped him in half.

“Keep it together. It’s gross, but it’s not your biggest problem,” Simon told himself as he paced the streets. After half an hour of walking and seeing nothing made of stone or over two stories, he finally decided that he was walking through a town, or at least the remnants of one. The buildings might be standing, but everything that made it a living place was already dead.

At first, he was merely searching for the next gate, but after a while he would have settled for finding anyone alive at all. There was no one, though. He hoped that eventually he would at least find the fantasy equivalent of plague doctors and corpse collectors, but the closest he got was a cart full of corpses near the end of a muddy street.

Even the people who were supposed to be picking up the pieces had perished.

Simon finally found his way to the temple. But it, too, was crowded with bodies. “Jeez,” he said, trying to pick his way through without stepping on any of them, “You know your fantasy world suck when your divine magic can’t even cure the plague. I mean, zombies I get, but the plague?”

He finally found the way out of this awful place in the center shrine of the temple to the Goddess Ethryes, whoever that was. The rest of the room was a pristine white, except for the corpses on the floor, but the other door didn’t lead to the rear of the building. Instead, it led to a swamp. Normally Simon would have hated the idea of tramping through the mud, but somehow today it seemed cleaner than the city of the dead he was in now, and so he stepped through without any hesitation.

“Well, I have no idea where I’m going,” Simon said as he looked around the sandbar and took in the shallow muck in every direction. “But I’m getting there in a hurry.” He smiled. His streak was back up to at least four, and by his count he was on level 18 or 19, which made him feel like a badass.

Ch. 34 - True Immortality

He wasn’t in the swamp long before they struck. Simon’s only warning that he was under attack was the spear that missed his head by only two feet, embedding firmly in a large mangrove tree at head level not far from him.

A lizard man, he thought with a touch of excitement as he raised his shield and unsheathed his sword. This was one of the enemies he’d been waiting for, he thought as he charged the creature.

He regretted that decision when two more emerged from the stagnant water beside the first, but not by much. After some of the awful floors he’d been through lately, it was nice to see something he could actually fight. What was he supposed to do against cold and disease? He was here to fight, and lizards were something that could fall beneath his blade.

That was the idea, at least. The next spear he took in the shield, but apparently the lizards were freakishly strong, because the blow ripped right through the wood in a way the skeleton knights blows never had and gouged into the flesh of his arm deeply.

Simon hissed in pain, but didn’t stop charging through the shallow water, and he beheaded the first one he reached in a vicious blow that he hoped would scare off its compatriots. It didn’t though. Instead, as Simon let his back swing carry him around the one that still had its spear jabbed at him hard enough to pierce his leather armor, and embed the tip several inches into his guts before he pulled back.

A dozen deaths ago, that pain might have been enough to make Simon retreat, but now it just pissed him off.

“You think that’s going to stop me?” he growled before he lunged at the thing. Its fellow warrior clawed at Simon, but those claws barely pierced his boiled leather. These things were certainly strong. They might even be dangerous in packs like this, but Simon was over a foot taller than them, and had a huge reach advantage. He quickly cut them to pieces in a series of frenzied strikes that left him winded when he was finally surrounded by the bodies of the dead.

Only once the killing was done did Simon realize why they’d attacked him: he practically stumbled onto their crude encampment without realizing it. As he walked towards it, he quickly noticed the portal to the next floor was hanging in the doorway of the closest hut. As he approached it, he realized that this camp was certainly big enough that this wasn’t going to be their only hunting party.

That meant that he needed to be fast, Simon decided as he shoved the cloth he used for wrapping his cheese into the wound to slow down the bleeding as he winced in pain. Healing could wait until he was on the next floor, but before he left this one, he decided that he wanted to send them a message of his displeasure, and began to wreck everything he could get his hands on between here and there.

Simon didn’t think that toppling the totem was required, but after the way those scaly bastards had ambushed him, he thought it was the least they deserved. So, instead of going directly to the gate that looked like it led to a desert somewhere, he took the time to kick it over, and then just for good measure he stomped on both the nests that he found, crushing half a dozen eggs.

That wouldn’t stop him from having to fight the things again the next time he came through here, but it would make him feel better about how much those dull spears hurt.

“Seriously, wood? Even if I heal it, I’m never getting all those fucking splinters out, you assholes.” he swore. “Would it kill you to enter the Bronze Age?”

As Simon limped toward the gate, he noticed that his bandage had darkened noticeably too from the effort. He definitely needed to heal himself, but he didn’t want to do it here. Just being in the swamp made him feel unclean. The desert might be awful in a lot of ways, but at least it was relatively sterile.

When Simon got through the door, he stopped and took a look around. The place had a real Athens vine to it, he decided. Everywhere he looked, he saw lots of pillars and stairs, along with a few broken classical statues of warriors slowly being devoured by the desert sands. He had no idea where it was, but it looked like it had probably been a nice place once upon a time.

There wasn’t much here to protect him from the elements, but that was fine. Simon just looked for the largest building and started walking. All he needed was a little shade, and then he could cast a few spells and take a nap to take the edge off.

He was flying through the levels again, and the last thing he was going to do was let some dumb Stone Age lizard man be the death of him. The only lizard he was willing to die to was a dragon, or maybe that Wyvern if he ever decided to try fighting it. It might be fun when he learned how to use the longbow, Simon thought cheerfully, trying to distract him from the pain in his side.

That was win he saw it. Another damn lizard, crawling around the ruins not far from him.

“Lizards? Two level’s in a row,” he whispered to himself quietly as he saw the creature rounding the corner. “Come on Helades. Get creative already, is that so much to ask?”

The thing was a squat, ugly thing that had more in common with a Komodo dragon than a crocodile. It was uglier than both of them put together, though. The thing had six short legs connected to its molted beige and gray body. To Simon, the creature didn’t look a threat. It looked like it was dying.

It hissed at him as he pulled out his sword and advanced.

“Sorry, buddy, it’s you or me,” Simon said as he advanced.

He needed somewhere to rest and heal some of the wounds the lizard men had given him, and he couldn’t do that with monsters wandering around these bizarre ruins. He never even got close to the thing.

Halfway there, a third eye sprang open. It was deep purple and glowing, which was in stark contrast to the other two that looked so milky that he thought that perhaps it was blind. Simon didn’t like the look of it, and charged, but he was too slow. A second later, the glow rippled out, reaching him almost instantaneously. That’s when his body stopped responding, and Simon started to struggle against the paralysis that had been inflicted on him.

Seconds later, as the lizard got closer and closer, he began to panic. He was going to get eaten alive after all, but it wasn’t the carrion crawler that was going to do it. It was this fucking lizard! It was only then that he noticed a further problem. His shield arm was still in his line of sight as he stood there transfixed, but his hand looked strange.

As soon as he focused on it, he understood why: the leather armor was still brown, and the shield still looked like it always did, but his hand had turned gray. Not gray like - he had some kind of disease, or he was starving, either. Like concrete gray. Like somehow the stupid lizard had encased him in a layer of stone.

While Simon struggled to try to break through this strange effect, the lizard continued to advance. Moments later, its powerful jaws latched onto his leg and chomped down. Simon felt the blow more than he heard it. He could feel a dull ache from whatever the creature had done to it, but he could hear the coating of stone shattering to get to the part that hurt.

At least that’s what he’d imagined had happened.

It was only when he toppled over into the sand that he realized his leg was entirely missing somewhere below the knee. He knew that because he could see the lizard devouring it at leisure not far from him.

That was the least disturbing part of the whole picture, though. That wasn’t what made him start to scream inside his own mind while he lay there in the sand. The leg that the lizard was gnawing on wasn’t just covered in stone. It was stone. The fucking thing had petrified him, and he was still stuck inside his body.

It was the zombie level all fucking over again, and there was literally nothing he could do.

That meant that fucking lizard wasn’t just any lizard, he realized. It was a basilisk. Suddenly everything clicked into place. The statues. The six legs. All of it. A damn mythological monster had just ended him with a glance? How was that fair? Getting killed and sent back to the cabin like that would have been bad enough, but to be trapped inside your own petrified body until it finished eating you? That was all kinds of screwed up.

Could rock even really die, though, Simon wondered. The basilisk might be capable of crushing his body into little pebbles, but even if it did, would that be enough to get him off the hook and back to the cycle of reincarnation he’d been stuck in for so long? Zombies died when they got shot in the head. How did statues die?

For the better part of the next hour, Simon watched the creature gnaw on his limbs as it broke them off one at a time. It hurt, but it was a dull, muted ache. Something that he would have associated with a sprain, or anesthesia, not with dismemberment. The real torture was understanding what was happening and knowing how long it might last.

For a while, Simon was hopeful that the thing would rip his head off next and end his suffering, but it didn’t. Eventually it got bored with him and moved on somewhere out of sight, leaving him laying in the sand at the foot of the temple he’d toppled from. From where Simon lay, he could only stare at the dune covered horizon.

Soon, boredom was a more irritating companion than the ache of his missing limbs. That gave him plenty of time to remember the other broken statues he’d passed by. At the time, he’d thought that they’d been just another part of the ruined architecture. Only now could he see that they were other warriors just like him who’d been caught unaware by that fucking lizard.

Day turned into night, and still Simon raged inside his own skull. He tried to cast his healing spell on himself, but it did nothing before he couldn’t speak the words. He tried to pray to Helades, but whether it was because she couldn’t hear him or she enjoyed his suffering, she didn’t respond. Nothing happened.

All he could do was shift between rage and panic as he tried to think of some clever way out of this. He couldn’t though. Once again, he was trapped inside his head. All he could do was watch the arc of the sun across the sky, and the slow march of the dunes as the storms moved them every day, while he slowly went mad inside his skull.

At first, Simon tried to keep track of the number of sunrises he was forced to endure, but he lost count before he even reached thirty. Sometime after that, probably weeks later, was when he left eye became completely covered by blowing sands that were slowly gathering around him.

Until now, he’d been consumed with frustrated rage that he would have to look at such a boring view for weeks or months. It was only when his right eye became partially obscured by the rising sand that he realized a far worse fate was possible: he could be buried alive so that the Basilisk would never finish him. If that happened, then he would have to endure an eternity alone in the dark.

It was a chilling thought, but day by day that seemed to be exactly what was going to happen…