Death After Death Ch. 78 and 79 (Patreon)

Merry Christmas! (Or Happy Holidays. Whichever you prefer).  Please enjoy this bonus chapter from me to you! (And yes, I am still planning on ramping up to two chapters a week on this story toward the end of next month - I just gotta keep building that backlog!)

Ch. 78 - Cataclysm

The ride back to the mountain was far more enjoyable for Simon than his brief stay in Slany. The weather was mild, and the things he could kill to get the unreasonable level of anger he felt about the whole thing out of his system were plentiful.

He beheaded three highwaymen who thought they deserved his purse more than he did with a single word of force, he broke up a bar fight at a tavern he was staying in before it could get too ugly, and he took on a brief side quest to kill a young troll free of charge before it could do much more than decimate the sheep herds of the surrounding villages. The last one was the most interesting, and the villagers did try to pay him for reducing it to ashes, but he wasn’t interested in their coins.

He needed to get back on task. He needed to go deeper. There was nothing here for him.

That was what he told himself as he let the horse free once he stopped on the road not so far from his destination, but he still thought about it on that miserable climb all the way back up to the top. None of those insistences to his brain kept him from thinking about it the whole way back, though.

It was ironic because he’d hoped to find some comfort, but instead, he’d only found new things to feel guilty about, and they followed him all the way to the gate, which led to the end of the world. It was here he got his priorities straight as he watched the volcano erupt in the background and saw the people streaming toward the sea.

He’d love to know what he was supposed to do here. Maybe even more than the jungle level. He simply had no idea what it was supposed to entail. Fight the volcano? Save all of the people? Save just one person?

“Who fucking knows,” he signed as he watched another round of volcanic bombs launch in the sky and reign down as he turned toward the palace and the portal it contained. “I mean, I could try to get a bunch of these people to follow me through there. But right now, it leads to… where?”

He wasn’t sure. The owl bear level was gone because he’d saved the kids. At least, he was pretty sure that was why it was gone. He’d killed the troll, too, so if that was enough to solve the bridge, then that put him in what? The gateway to hell, he realized.

Yeah, he definitely wasn’t taking anyone to that level until he figured it out. Maybe one day, if he still hadn’t solved this particular riddle, he could find a nice safe level to send all these refugees to. Well, safer, he corrected himself.

What he needed to do was ignore this spot for now and go deeper. Maybe he could try talking with that demon for once and see if he could wring any new ideas out of it. The man seemed much more knowledgeable and marginally more helpful than the mirror, so it had to be worth a try, right?

It was the sensible thing to do, but as Simon walked up the long curving street of the island toward the slowly advancing lava, he realized he wasn’t entirely interested in being sensible. He was lost, confused, and almost completely overwhelmed, which made him more than a little pissed off.

He paused there, just before the turnoff to the castle steps, as he watched the lava slowly advance toward him. It was moving slower than walking speed, so he had all the time in the world to avoid it, but suddenly, he realized he didn’t want to. He wanted to do something about this. He was sick to death of always saying he’d come back to this or that later.

Then he remembered that the frost sword was still on his belt. It wasn’t something that could stop the volcano or anything, of course, but the flickering things he could see through the heat shimmer of the lava? It might be able to do something about those, and maybe that would be enough for him to get a clue.

The lava got closer as he looked around the street and started to formulate a plan. This was stupid and foolish, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t feel like spending another three months building a set of fireproof armor to give him a better shot. He just wanted some clue of what was going on.

Getting burned by fire so hot that it could burn away his nerve endings in moments probably wouldn’t hurt too bad. Probably.

That thought made him grip his sword tighter as he cast a protection from fire spell on himself. He wasn’t sure how well it would work or how long it would last, but hey - after this, he would know, right?

Simon walked up to the edge of the lava to see, and though it felt warm, it didn’t seem lethally hot like it should be. He wasn’t about to touch it to find out, though. Instead, he used a word of lesser force to spring as high as he could on the nearest building, and then scrambled his way to the top.

From up there, he had a better view of the ash-choked town and the flickering forms dancing on the surface of the spreading lava, but for now, he ignored them and focused on jumping from rooftop to rooftop to get close enough to study one, or even do some damage.

He found his first fire elemental that was close enough to see devouring the contents of someone’s home the next street over. He considered using magic on it, but given how much he was relying on that for his survival, he opted to try his sword instead.

The thing was a mass of embers in the vaguest shape of a man, and when Simon crashed through the window of the cliff-top home, it barely even noticed him because it was too busy turning the contents of the room to ash.

At least, that was the case until he brought his sword down in an overhead chop. For a moment, it seemed like he was just waving the steaming blade through the fire, but then suddenly, the coals went cold, and the flaming outline of a person ceased to be with a silent scream as physical parts of its body fell lifeless to the floor.

That didn’t put out all the other fires in the room, of course. They continued to burn, and Simon fled them as quickly as he could, refreshing his protection spell. He repeated this several times, but it was only when he’d killed the four fire elementals that were reachable that he turned his gaze to the plaza full of lava and saw it walking toward him.

Though the creature seemed somewhat related to the fire elementals he’d just killed, that was all the two monsters had in common. This thing was a two-story wall of dripping magma in the vague shape of a man. Every part of it radiated fire except for its eyes. The were wells of bottomless darkness set above a melting face that was fixed in a crude expression of overflowing rage.

Even as it fixated on Simon and started stomping in his direction, he yelled, “Dnarth Gelthic,” launching a javelin of pure, smoking liquid nitrogen at the thing with the distant ice command.

The projectile was half evaporated by the time it reached it, but that was okay. Simon was already shouting the word again. He uttered the command over and over, and each impact slowed the thing’s advance a little, turning part of its skin into cold, hard stone.

The thing launched volleys of fire at him as well, but they were fairly easy to dodge, and he took cover behind broken walls and the few pillars that were still standing. Through all that, he managed to refresh his protection from fire again. Some part of him felt like it was a waste, but it was a necessary evil. Where he was standing, it was hundreds of degrees, and without that clever piece of magic, he probably would have already been cooked through instead of just sweating like a pig.

Eventually, after a dozen casts that left Simon’s voice raw and his body exhausted, the thing froze into place. The fact that it didn’t disappear or crumble to dust like its smaller cousins and the fact that its now frozen eyes still glowed with dull rage made Simon worry that this wasn’t over yet, but it wasn’t until the rocky layer that entombed the thing exploded like a grenade sending obsidian shrapnel everywhere, that he realized how far from over this was.

The thing was basically untouched, and that was as impressive as it was terrifying.

“What in the fuck,” Simon rasped as he watched the thing glower at him. Before it finally unleashed hell.

Until now, it had merely bombarded him with fire spells that weren't much bigger than the frost javelins that he’d been using. Now, it conjured a firestorm with a roar that was loud enough to shake the precarious building he was standing on before it set the world ablaze.

“Gelthic Uuvellum,” he shouted. Ice barrier. For a terrible moment, he almost got it backward and called for a fire barrier that would have done less than nothing against the blast that was coming for him, but he didn’t, and a several feet thick wall of ice sprang into existence on either side of him.

Simon knew that they needed to move, but where. His back was to the cliffs, and the lava dominated the world on all sides of him. Against something that could toss around so much magical energy like this, his only hope was to be a moving target. He couldn’t move, though. He was out of rocks and buildings to leap to, and his protection from fire was fading. He needed to pause long enough to refresh that spell, but this monstrosity was giving him no time to recover.

Already, his shield was engulfed in flames on both sides from the sheer power of the blast directed at him, and he could see the foot-thick wall of ice sublimating to steam as it thinned before his eyes. Despite that, he struggled to think about what he should do next.

He knew it was a bad idea, but he still shouted, “Gervuul Gelthic Uuvellum.” Greater ice boundary. He immediately tasted of blood and ashes in his mouth as he blew out his throat. In the long run, that meant he was fucked, but he didn’t worry about that just now. As far as deaths went, this wouldn’t be so bad.

The words of power rippled out, not as an ice wall but as a spear and a bridge, countering the massive blast of fire that had been turned against Simon for the last half minute. To his complete surprise, the spell was enough to overwhelm the fire, at least for a moment, and reach his enemy, momentarily freezing it into place.

He knew that reprieve wouldn’t last long, though. Already, it was melting, and when it broke free again, he’d be right back where he started. The realization of just how small his window of opportunity was, was enough to force him into action. He hopped over the remains of his wall and ran toward his fiery, glowing opponent with every ounce of strength he had left.

Taking it out at the cost of his life would be a fine trade, he decided as he raised his icy sword high. He never got there, though. The thing redoubled its fire, drowning Simon in a sea of flames as his sword fell limply from his burning fingertips.

As it turned out, being burned alive hurt worse than he could have possibly imagined, at least for a moment. His exposed skin charred instantly, and his hair and clothing burst into flames. None of those were as bad as what happened when he opened his mouth and inhaled to cast another spell.

His lungs cooked almost instantly, and he pitched forward off his precarious perch into the lava. That was where he lost consciousness, and his final thought was of those terrible, malignant eyes that had burned into his soul. He’d learned something, though perhaps not enough to justify the unexpectedly agonizingly violent burst of pain.

Ch. 79 - Good People

Simon lay there for several minutes, just staring at the ceiling as he thought about the battle he’d just fought and the things he might have done differently. It was a battle he almost certainly needed to face and one that he doubted he could have won without some serious preparation, but it had still been cool, in a way.

Not the burning alive part, he thought wryly.

The rest, though, even though he’d been deep fried in molten lava, it had been kinda cool. Running just above flowing magma and slaying elementals. It was probably the most cinematic thing he’d done so far in the pit, and if anything, the lesson was that he still wasn’t thinking big enough. He’d spent what? Two years of his life on that run? Three? It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d spent ten, because he’d reset himself again anyway. He needed to get used to using more magic each run. He’d get a lot farther, he needed to.

“Hey, mirror, next time I decide that I’m going to go to level 10 to fight a freaking volcano, remind me that it’s not a good idea,” he said, not bothering to look away from the rafters.

“Actually,” he said, sitting up, “Show me my experience points.”

‘Experience Points: -993,361,’ the mirror typed.

Benjamin tried to do the math on that. He was pretty sure he’d died twice since the last time he’d looked, and that time, he was still at basically negative one million.

“Well, I’m still basically at negative one million now,” he laughed. “Hmmm…”

Two deaths, maybe three levels cleared, and no particularly good or bad memories. He had killed some pretty big monsters, though - maybe that accounted for the shift. Still, even at this pace, it would take… three hundred thousand more deaths before he got back to zero?

“There has to be a way to speed that up,” he said to himself. “Maybe if I meet whoever wrote that fucking note they can explain it to me.”

He had no interest in speeding things up right now, though. Instead, he went outside, picked up his fishing pole, and went to the stream to do some thinking about everything he’d just gone through.

Especially after an ugly death, the last thing he wanted was to go right back and do it again. He needed to slow down and reflect on everything that was happening to him.

By noon, Simon had caught and gutted two trout, but he still hadn’t come any closer to locking his thoughts into place. What was he supposed to do on levels eight and ten? One was ruins, and one was about to be, so what was the point? How would either of those make the world a better place?

The only thing he’d really learned last trip, besides the fact that fire elementals definitely existed, was that the levels seemed to span a longer section of time than he’d thought. If this was a game or a movie, then all of these bad things would be happening more or less simultaneously. The whole idea would be to stomp out every ember of evil before it could ignite some new threat, but this seemed more complicated. It was like a Rube-Goldberg Device that seemed almost random.

This outbreak of zombies needed to be stopped, and this wyvern needed to be killed, but this plague was okay to happen, and this town could totally burn to the ground. There was no apparent rhyme or reason to it.

Worst of all was Gregor. In the grand scheme of things, he almost certainly didn’t matter, at least as far as the pit was concerned. He and his family were just random NPCs that he probably shouldn’t have ever met. He had, though, and he’d grown attached to them, and it was a shame to see the bitter, broken old man that the fierce, kind-hearted boy had become.

Simon could blame himself, of course. He probably would no matter what, even though he knew it wasn’t his fault. As he fried his fish in bacon grease over low heat, he couldn’t help but obsess about it though.

The Gregor he’d known once upon a time would have still turned out okay, even without an arm. It was his missing father that had likely caused everything else to happen. He sighed and flipped his fish as he remembered the desperate battle that had caused him to get stabbed in the back.

“So what’s the right answer then?” Simon asked himself. “Do I go back and stop the war?”

Honestly, it wasn’t the worst idea. Killing all of the goblins hadn’t solved that particular level, and the portal was an awful long way from the capital, but it wasn’t inconceivable that was what he was supposed to do. After all, a war of succession would cost countless lives, but how the hell was he supposed to stop a war?

He thought about that long and hard as he ate. Technically, this whole thing was probably an elaborate side quest, but some part of him wouldn’t accept that he needed to go straight to 30 until he’d done something to save Gregor.

In the end, he slept on it, but that didn’t change his answer when he woke up in the morning. He was going to play peacemaker. He just wasn’t sure exactly how.

Simon geared up as usual and didn’t let those thoughts distract him as he killed rats, bats, and goblins. It was only when he reached the mouth of the snowy cave and looked out at the wintry valleys below that he made his decision. He was going to go to the capital and kill the King’s brother.

“If there’s no brother, then there’s no one to dispute the line of succession, and if there’s no dispute about that, then there’s no war, right?” he told himself as he walked down the mountain.

It made sense to him, and that was all that mattered. Simon took it easy on the way down, and he stopped early the day the snowstorm always struck, using the time to build himself a small shelter of pine branches in the lee of a boulder. It was still cold, but with a good fire and a couple baked potatoes, it was hardly miserable, and he made it down the mountain without issue.

When he reached the road to Wellingbrooke, he found the familiar bandits just where he’d left them, and he flipped Luken a silver as soon as the man opened his mouth to begin his familiar speech. Simon didn’t condone the highway robbery exactly, but he was tired of killing this group over and over again.

“Such a generous traveler,” Luken Smiled, “Maybe you’d pay extra for some protection; after all, it’s a—”

“A man that travels alone is the sort you and your friends should worry about the most,” Simon said, not even bothering to slow down as he walked by the cocky highwayman. “Do yourself a favor. Take the coin, keep the change, and live to fight another day.”

For a moment, he thought that the bandit was going to give the signal, and they were going to have to do this dance all over again. He didn’t, though. For whatever reason, the man just stood there and let him pass, and none of his hidden friends struck either. It was good. It was pretty much the best outcome for everyone; he was down a silver he didn’t really need, and they weren’t another stain on his already bloody hands.

In Wellingbrooke he stayed at his least favorite inn, but when he paid for his room he fixed the woman behind the counter with a stern gaze and said, “I know what you see, and I want no trouble. You understand? I’ll be gone in the morning.”

She scowled and short-changed him but otherwise said nothing. The food was decent, but he resisted the urge to have a few beers, knowing how that had turned out in the past. In the evening, he still embedded his dagger deep into the door frame to lock the door the best he could, but no one tried to sneak in and murder him. It was a nice change of pace, and he made a mental note to do that again if he ever came this way so that next time he could get a little drunk and play dice with the other men downstairs.

Today wasn’t the day for drinking, though. It was time for more traveling. Simon paid the ferryman to cross the river, enduring twenty minutes of his prattle before he reached the far side and began heading due east toward Liepzen.

He’d considered getting a horse, but he wasn’t in that much of a hurry, and he definitely needed to lose some weight. So, he walked all the way to the capital of the region. Building his map of the way the world was laid out in his mind as he went. He stayed in one more inn and shared the fire of two merchants heading west. In both places, Simon encountered mercenaries eager to swear allegiance to the King’s brother, Duke of the northern lands of the Kingdom of Brin.

Simon said he planned to do the same, but only to make friends. In truth, he had no idea how he’d accomplish what he needed to do. Deciding to kill the man was one thing, but accomplishing it was quite another. So, he laughed and joked and tried not to get too drunk at each encounter as he learned pieces of the truth.

Apparently. the King’s son was weak and young, and as the aging man got sicker and sicker, war between the two claimants appeared all but certain. Simon already knew all that. Actually, he knew more than everyone else; he knew that the King would die within weeks and war would begin shortly thereafter, reaching the sleepy town of Slany a few months from now. That was a certainty unless he stopped it. What he didn’t know until now was that the Duke was a hard but well-respected man who would surely become King in the absence of the 12-year-old heir and his scheming advisors.

That was almost enough to make Simon change tactics and go after the boy instead, but murdering a twelve-year-old simply wasn’t going to happen, and he was sure that there would be less chaos if the legitimate heir took the throne.

So, when he walked into Liepzen, he was a man on a mission, and the beautiful gothic architecture of the capital city aside, he quickly made his home at the inn closest to the cathedral that was frequented by the royal family. This wasn’t because he had the gold to pay for good food and a clean inn, though. It was because here he could see the path of the claimants as they strolled by several times a week with their entourage as they prayed for the health of the king from his third-story window.

It was in the second week he was staying there, after looking at the proud warrior and the young prince, that he finally pulled the trigger, so to speak. He’d been putting it off for days even after he formulated his plan, but once the skies clouded over and he saw the approaching carriage, Simon knew that he was out of time.

“Dnarth Vrazig,” he whispered from his window as the man made a speech on the steps of the church. Distant lightning.

It was a hundred yards away, and Simon hadn’t been entirely certain it was going to work, but then a single bolt of lightning arced down from the stormy sky above, striking him and the guard closest to him.

Simon winced at that. The last thing he wanted to do was get anyone else hurt, but he doubted very much that either of them would survive.

A few minutes later, he was proven right. Neither of the men would ever rise again. Simon mourned the dead and felt bad about what he’d done, but weighed against the bodies of the thousands of people who would have died if this hadn’t happened, he wasn’t really sure what to say.

At least he got the effect that he wanted. By the time dinner came around, the small inn was packed with people gossiping about Duke Brin, who was struck down by the gods for hubris and daring to upset the order of things by seeking to replace the true heir.

Simon smiled at that. It was a nice, clean explanation that a simple medieval mind could believe, freeing him up to go pay Baron Corwin and his son another visit.