Death After Death Ch. 44-45 (Patreon)

Ch. 44 - Like Old Times

As Simon took his time killing the two encroaching zombies and moving the table to re-enforce the broken window before more could join them, he tried to remember what had happened next the last time he was here. Even though he’d have sworn that every detail of those wonderful few days had burned their way into his brain, he was surprised to find that they’d been scoured away just like everything else during his time in the desert.

He remembered Freya, of course, but even his memory of the beautiful dark-haired woman hadn’t done her justice. Everything was the same as it had been, though. The sadness, the outfit, and even bloody hands remained unchanged. So, once the breach was secured, he found it so hard not to stare that he was forced to mumble, “I’m going to make sure that there’s no more of those things in here with us. You keep that knife handy.”

She didn’t respond, but then she didn’t before, either, did she? Simon tried not to let those thoughts and his second-guessing of himself distract him too much. Even though there hadn’t been another zombie in the building before now, it would be just like Helades to add another one just to zombify him when he’d finally found his way to Freya again.

So, taking at least twice as long as he did the first time, he searched in every closet and under every bed from the owner’s room on the third floor down to the basement. Then he reinforced the back door, so it wouldn’t cut their time together short like it had last time. It was only when all that was done that he joined the intermittently sobbing girl again.

Simon thought about trying to hold and comfort her, but as he approached, he saw her grip the knife a little harder, and he decided against that. Instead, he very obviously set aside his weapons and then pulled each of them a pint before he sat down on the opposite side of the table from her.

“Look,” he said finally, trying to break the silence. “It wasn’t your fault, okay? Whatever happened? Whatever you did, I’m sure it needed to be done.”

“How would you know?” she asked, not bothering to look up.

“You aren’t the only one who’s lost someone in all this,” he sighed, trying to push back flashes of that smoke-filled basement. “I’ve… well, the zombies took someone special to me too.”

Somehow the silences seemed more tense than last time, and Simon was trying to figure out what he’d done wrong when Freya finally spoke. “It was Brenna… she just… and then I-I—” she whimpered as she started crying.

As she spoke, Simon remembered what she was going to say next and rose to get her a wet rag. She’d been a basket case last time, too, until she’d wiped all the blood from her hands. Even though he still had no idea what Breanna had done, the little he knew of the woman made him sure that it hadn’t been anything good.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, wiping off first one hand and then the other. Once she was finally done, she looked up at Simon with a hint of panic in her eyes. “I had to, you understand? I didn’t want to hurt Brenna, but then she…” The woman trailed off into silence after that, making the whole situation that much more awkward for Simon.

“It’s okay. It’s over, Freya,” he said, trying to sound sympathetic, even if it was really strange to talk to the same woman again after missing her for so long.

There was a long moment of silence, but when she finally opened her mouth again, her tone was full of suspicion. “How… how do you know my name.”

Simon swallowed hard as he realized he fucked up. He almost fucked up a second time by telling her he saw it on her name tag. That would have worked on a waitress in the real world, of course, but here it would make him sound even crazier. Instead of answering, he took a long sip from his beer to give himself a moment to think and then decided to go with the mostly honest approach and said, “That is your name, isn’t it? I thought I remembered it from my last trip through here, but if I’m mistaken, I’m sorry.”

“No, it is, it’s just…” her suspicion melted instantly. “With everything that happened, and you just appearing and your accent, it seemed like… but it’s fine.”

“This isn’t my first time through Schwarzenbruck,” Simon nodded, “but I admit I haven’t been around in a while. My travels have taken me far from home.”

“What’s your name?” she asked, finally looking at him as a person instead of a possible threat.

“I’m Simon,” he smiled, “and it’s nice to meet you… again.”

“Si-mon?” she asked, mispronouncing the letters of the unfamiliar word, but that didn’t bother him. “That is a very strange name.”

After that, they talked at length about what they knew. Freya told him what the tavern owner, Mr. Olggen, had told her about the adventurers and the necromancer, refreshing his memory. Simon nodded appropriately while he worked his way through his beer. He hadn’t actually gained any additional insight from his time as a zombie to give him any clues there. There had been no orders from a wizard bouncing around in his head or anything like that. All he’d felt during that time was hunger, and all he knew was that in a few weeks, someone would open the south gate to purge the zombies and release them on an unsuspecting world in the process.

Simon wasn’t really sure what he could do with that information, though. He could hunker down here with Freya until it was safe to leave, but he didn’t really need to. He could just open a door for them at any time, and they could go say hello to the wyvern by way of the sewers and the jungle.

But wouldn’t that freak her out?

The thought came completely unbidden to his mind, but he was forced to agree with it. Even trying to open the front door would make her attack him, but seeing a portal open like that? Would she turn on him the same way that the villagers had in his last life, or would she try to give him the benefit of the doubt the way that Gregor had? He didn’t know, so for now, he decided it was best to just stay quiet.

Simon enjoyed their conversation more than anything in a long time. The feasts at the Baron’s, as well as the dueling yards before it had gotten too warm, were nice, of course. They just weren’t as nice as this because Freya had the advantage of being a beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties.

“Do you suppose there’s enough food in this place that we could make ourselves something to eat?” Simon asked, making her smile slightly for the first time.

“There’s more food than two people can eat before it starts to spoil,” she said, finally setting aside her knife as she seemingly decided Simon wasn’t going to murder her.

After that, they busied themselves in the kitchen. She mostly focused on reheating some stew left over from the night before, and he spent his time trying to clean up the place. By the time he’d removed all the bodies from the common room and the kitchen and wiped away as much blood as he could, she’d almost stopped flinching when he walked by.

The food was great, especially for leftovers, and they were both hungry enough that they ate in relative silence while they focused on the meal. It was only when Freya’s bowl was finally empty that she asked, “What are we going to do now?”

“Well, you said so yourself; we have plenty of food and even more beer, so we’ve got plenty of time to figure that out,” Simon tried to reassure her, though she didn’t seem reassured, exactly. “We’re safe for now. That’s all that matters.”

The rest of the day passed in idle discussions, and Simon told her about the time he helped Gregor kill a mine full of goblins to try to convince her that he knew what he was doing, but she kept her distance both physically and emotionally. Simon couldn’t remember if she’d been this standoffish last time, so eventually, he decided to go take care of something he was sure he’d done the last time he was stuck here with her: remove the corpses scattered throughout the inn.

Putting on his thick leather gloves, he dragged them upstairs one at a time and tossed them out of the second-story window. It was backbreaking work, and it made him curse his newfound weakness again as he realized how much work he needed to do to get back to where he was so recently. The Simon he was yesterday would have been able to get rid of all the bodies without taking a single break, but the Simon of today had to stop and rest after each one, and it was aggravating.

By the time that was done, the night was starting to fall, so after one last perimeter check to make sure there weren’t any boards that were going to break free in the night and cut his time with Freya short, he went upstairs and started getting the innkeeper’s room ready for bed. He wasn’t completely surprised when he heard a knock on the door while he was laying out the sheets.

“Do you mind if I sleep in here with you tonight?” Freya asked meekly. “It’s just that—”

“It’s fine,” Simon said, pulling back the covers and offering her a spot. “There’s plenty of room.”

Freya shook her head and took a spot on the floor instead, though. Curling up fully clothed with a blanket and a weapon. “This is fine,” she said, pulling the blanket up to her chin. “Don’t even think of trying anything. I’m sleeping with this knife. Just so you know.”

That made Simon smile as he brought the last remaining lantern to the bedside table. This was a moment he remembered too. She’d been so nervous the first time he was here, and even though he was pretty sure that she was going to crawl in bed with him again later that night, he couldn’t help but find the moment of Déjà vu completely adorable.

“The last thing I’d ever do would be to take advantage of a woman,” Simon assured her, amused by the repetition. It, more than anything else that had happened today, assured him that he was on the right track with her.

Simon had already taken his armor off during dinner, but he stacked it up neatly after he barred the door and hung his weapons in an easy-to-reach place in case something went bump in the night. After that, he crawled into bed and stripped down to his small clothes. This mattress was filled with something besides straw, so while it was much more comfortable than the one he’d grown used to in the cabin, it still wasn’t quite as comfortable as the one he’d had while he lived in Slany.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Simon was awoken by the familiar sensation of Freya sliding into bed with him. “I had a nightmare,” she whispered. “Do you think that I could… maybe…”

“Of course,” he yawned, pulling the covers back. “Make yourself at home.”

She fell asleep clinging to the edge of the bed, but by the time morning came, she was clinging to him like a drowning victim, just as he remembered. That made Simon smile, too, as he looked at dawn’s rising light through the shutters. “Maybe everything was going to be okay after all,” he whispered to himself as he lay there. He didn’t dare move right now, because the last thing he wanted to do was wake her and spoil this perfect moment.

Ch. 45 - Trust Me

Simon fell back asleep, but when he woke up once more, it was to the smells of cooking meat, and he quickly got dressed and went downstairs. He brought his mace with him, but not because he thought he’d actually need it or anything. Hard experience had just taught him that he should be ready for whatever mindfuck Helades was going to throw at him next.

“I’m sorry that we’re out of eggs,” Freya apologized as she started serving a plate of sausage links and fried potatoes. “We ran out of those a few days ago.” That statement sparked a similar conversation to one he remembered having with her lifetimes ago as she told him about how things had started here and how quickly they’d gotten ugly.

Once they finished eating, she started explaining how everyone had died one at a time, from infighting as much as the zombies, and how at the end, there’d only been a few of them left. By his count, there would have been three left when she started getting vague, and he was tempted to ask what happened to Brenna or Mr. Olggen, but he refrained. Something in her expression said that she absolutely didn’t want to go there.

So he shifted topics and talked about other things. Using scraps of food, Simon explained the geography of the world as he understood it, showing where Slany and Hurag were in the south, and she corrected him slightly, pointing out the coast and a number of other land features that Simon had not yet heard of. It was a useful conversation, and it made Simon wonder if every level was just another part of the same world.

Honestly, it seemed more likely than not at this point between the way the land areas overlapped and some of the things the goddess had said, but he didn’t mention any of that to Freya. He just waited for her to stop talking about how important the black bridge was for local trade routes and how it was the only year-round crossing for the Diener River for fifty miles in either direction before he turned the topic a little further towards where he wanted it.

“If we could escape tomorrow, where would you like to go?” Simon asked, catching her off guard.

“But we can’t escape, can we?” she pushed back, confused.

“Maybe not this minute, but I hope we’ll find a way out soon,” Simon answered, trying to stay upbeat, “and when that happens, we’ll need a goal. Do you have any family nearby we could stay with or…”

“All my family dies here in Schwarzenbruck,” she said, as her eyes started to tear up. “At least, I think they did. I’ll probably never know.”

The conversation was going nowhere after that, so Simon dropped it and focused on other things for the next few hours. He cleaned his armor and sharpened his sword because it had been ages since he’d done either of those things and then when he noticed that the small keg they’d been drinking from was out, he managed to wrestle a new one upstairs and tap it without making too much of a mess.

This time there was no need to search for the way out. He knew where that was, but he had to earn Freya’s trust before he could show her, and that would take time. Fortunately, they still had time. A little, at least. There was a sea of dead surrounding the building, of course, and their collective moaning and groaning were enough to make him feel like he was going to go crazy when he wasn’t doing something else, but other times when he was chatting with Freya, it was a barely noticeable background drone.

Still, he let things proceed at their own pace because he knew that if he rushed it, he would ruin it. He’d seen that theme play out plenty of times in movies and anime: he just needed to let it happen. That night, she didn’t even try to sleep somewhere else. She just looked at him expectantly until he said, “Why don’t you sleep with me. It will be safer that way.”

She still gave him a look as she crawled into bed and said, “I appreciate your kindness… but that doesn’t mean we’re doing anything but sharing a little warmth. You keep your hands to yourself.”

Simon nodded. He knew the drill. This time when she fell asleep with her head on his chest, their cuddling was an intentional thing, and the sound of her gentle breathing was enough to block out the cries of a thousand zombies as he basked in a single perfect moment that he hoped would never end. This just felt too right for him to want anything else.

The next few days, they enjoyed each other’s company, and he got Freya to open up a bit about what it was she wanted out of life and how, before these zombies had risen up to devour everyone and everything in her path, all she’d wanted was a small garden and a couple of kids. By contrast, he told her that for years all he’d wanted to do was fight monsters and become a hero, but as he got older, he thought a quiet life might suit him more.

This time their first kiss wasn’t a drunken spur-of-the-moment thing. It was something that built during the entirety of their fourth day together. He’d started to get the feeling that she was into him by the way she kept asking him if there was a Mrs. Simon waiting for him when he got home and when he worked up the nerve to kiss her, she kissed him back eagerly.

It was probably just because she was scared or because they could both die at any moment. That was what he thought as they made out in the common room. The only thing he was sure about was that it couldn’t be him that had been the cause of this, but he couldn’t explain why else things would be playing out differently this time. When this happened before, they’d had to get drunk to kiss, and it had still been a few more days before they’d had sex for the first time. Today though, there was no mistaking her need as she pressed against him, and he tried to unlace her top without breaking their kiss.

They had sex twice that day. Once urgently on the table and once more gently in the bed after a few drinks and some talking. The second round hadn’t been intentional, at least not on Simon’s part. He’d been trying to work up the nerve to talk to her about what had just happened, and she’d either gotten the wrong idea or decided that the only way to shut him up was more sex. After that, he was too exhausted to do anything but hold her.

It wasn’t until two days later that he finally returned to the topic of escape. “What if there was a way out of here, but it required well… magic, Freya?” he asked one morning while they were lying together enjoying the relative peace of the early hours.

“I think it would kind of have to at this point, Simon,” she answered playfully. “Magic or starvation are pretty much the only ways we’re getting out of here.”

Simon swallowed hard at that, remembering that there was a third way that had ended in fire and smoke, but he pushed that back down. “I’m serious. What if there was a way? Would you try it? Even if it was dangerous?”

“What are you talking about, Simon?” she asked, confused. “If you know something, then you need to tell me.”

“It’s easier to show you,” he said hesitantly, “but you need to promise me you’ll remain calm, okay? Can you do that?”

“I-I can,” she whispered after a moment’s consideration. “I trust you.”

He smiled and then agreed they would make the last of the ham for breakfast before he did anything crazy. She spent the meal peppering him with questions about magic, but he deflected them clumsily rather than answer, and when they were finished, he sent her into the pantry.

“Why don’t you start packing provisions for the two of us for a few days, Freya,” he said finally. “Things that can be cooked easily on a fire, or that can be eaten cold. I can’t promise that we’ll get to a town right away. So we’ll have to bundle everything up in a blanket or two and take as much as we can with us.”

“Where are we going?” she asked again, but Simon just shook his head.

“Even when I show you, it’s going to be crazy, but trying to explain would… well, you’d never believe me,” he said. “Just promise me that you won’t come out until I call for you, okay? Can you do that for me?”

She nodded, and he kissed her on the forehead before he sent her out of the room and started to unblock the front door. While he did so, the fear that Helades might have suddenly switched the position of the portal just to kill him at the most awful moment niggled at the back of his mind, but he ignored it. None of the portal positions had ever moved before, and though he didn’t rule that out, it seemed unlikely that it would be this portal on this day that was the one to finally break the trend.

When Simon had the door open to reveal the sewer, he finally called for Freya, and she came running, but when she saw the impossible sight, she dropped the things she was carrying and gawked. “What in the names of all the gods is that?” she asked. He could see the whites around her eyes and the way her hands were trembling. There was no disguising that level of terror, so he walked to her and held her for a moment, blocking her vision with his body.

“It’s our only way out,” he said softly as he stroked her hair and tried to calm her down. “It’s a sort of magic doorway… it leads to a sewer that’s kind of gross, but it’s not too dangerous. From there, it leads to a … I guess you could say temple and—”

“Simon!” she cried out, “What are you talking about? How do you know all these terrible things? It isn’t natural.”

“It’s not, he agreed,” feeling his heart break a little as she looked at him with fear now too. “But it’s the only way out, and even if you hate me by the time I’ve saved you, I still have to save you. It’s the most important thing right now, so please, gather the supplies I asked you to, so we can leave this cursed place.”

She moved slowly and worked silently, but she obeyed him, and even as he thought she might not come back down from retrieving the blanket, she did so, though she was especially chilly after that. Then, with each of them carrying a bundle over their shoulder, they stepped towards the door. There he pressed a knife into her hand before he picked up his loaded crossbow to deal with the creepy crawler as far away from his beloved as possible and whispered, “Just in case,” before kissing her on the forehead.

Not willing to put anything past Heledes at this point, he stood in the portal itself, with one foot on either side of the line, and watched Freya go all the way to the next level before he stepped through himself. As frightened as she was in that moment, he was terrified that she would disappear as she failed to spawn in the next level or that the portal would close when she was only part way through and cut her in half. He was taking no chances with that bullshit today. Today Freya was going to live even if he didn’t get his happily ever after. He swore to himself that he’d save her every single time he came through here if that’s what it took.