Death After Death

The next morning, Simon started to get ready for his trip into the pit, but as he cinched up his armor, he changed his mind and decided that there was no way he could let Freya see him like this. It was exactly the same feeling he’d had when he’d decided not to go to his 10-year class reunion a couple of years, well… a couple dozen lifetimes ago now.

Then, it had been more about having nothing to show for himself, but now it was simply because he didn’t like the look of himself in the mirror. “This is exactly how she’s always seen you, Simon,” he told himself as he stood there, bulging out of his armor in unsightly places. “That’s not important. It’s not like you’re going to hook up with her or anything.”

The words were true. He was, in fact, not going to hook up with her or anything. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure if he could, even if she’d been interested in him. Because she’s not my Freya.

He sighed, conflicted about what to do next. Some part of him wanted to hike into the woods, go climb a mountain, and wrestle with a bear or something, while the rest of him just told himself to get over it and start this run already. He knew from very recent experience that living a meager life off the land for half a year would be enough to transform him from more than a little overweight to dangerously underweight, so if he just did that for two or three months, he’d probably reach peak Simon.

At this point, he really didn’t mind when he died and lost his gold or his weapons. Even his beloved backpack was replaceable, but being forced back into the physique? It was definitely the worst part of the experience and, ironically, the biggest motivator to avoid needless deaths. After a few weeks or months of saving people and killing monsters, he started to feel like a hero, but until then, when he was like this, it just felt like he was faking it again.

The mood persisted. So, Simon went outside and hacked down enough tall grass to bundle together into something resembling an archery target so he could practice because he was definitely slipping where arrows were concerned. It wasn’t hard. It was like thatching a roof; they didn’t need to hold back the rain. He just needed to weave thick sections together so that he could stop an arrow.

He could have just shot them at a tree of course, but there would be no way to get those arrows back. Since this would be his first run in a long time without a ready source of coin, he imagined he’d be hunting more than usual, which meant saving and reusing arrows where he could.

He loosed arrow after arrow at the target for the next few hours, doing pretty good and only losing a couple to the tall grass while he contemplated everything. I can’t complete the pit unless I finish the early levels so that they don’t screw the later levels up and reset them, but I can’t get much in the way of supplies unless I keep the early levels right where they are. I guess I finally unlocked hard mode.

He laughed at that, but truthfully, he still didn’t understand why anyone hadn’t completed the pit by now. It was awful and confusing but not that hard. He’d been a complete idiot for the longest time and managed to complete the first couple of floors by accident. Now that he was methodically trying to understand and finish them, they were dropping like flies.

“What if there’s something too complicated for me to figure out, though? It’s not like she gives me any instructions,” he asked himself as he let his last arrow fly and then went to retrieve them.

That was true. Some levels were hard physically, like the volcano level. Being expected to beat a giant fire elemental on its own turf was a little challenging, as he already knew. Others, though, like the Sea Seraph, were harder in a different way. He simply didn’t know what he was supposed to do to stop the plague? Did she just want him to sink the ship? Because that wasn’t going to happen.

He wandered in circles the rest of the day as he wrestled with those thoughts, and it was only when he was starting to get hungry in the evening that he finally decided to go to Schwarzenbruck to get a bite. Paying was another matter entirely, but he was sure he could find something with a little gold on it in the skeleton knight’s crypt.

Simon took the time to toss down a dozen pieces of firewood before he descended into the basement. That made the giant rats a little harder to fight, and one of the little bastards managed to bite him for the first time in who knew how long, but in the end, they were all still going to die, and he was going to burn their nest down to see if that did the trick.

Once the fire was going good, and he had a few potatoes tucked in his sack in case he didn’t find a way to get something better, he left the burning room behind and descended into the skeleton crypt.

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There, he beat the undead warriors effortlessly. Out of shape or not, nothing that moved this slowly could compete with him anymore, and he felt vaguely embarrassed that this knight had the highest kill count on him of any monster in the place. “I guess that makes you my nemesis,” Simon grunted. “Not for long, though. Another level or two, and I’ll crush that ugly black heart in your chest, and you and your friends will never come back to life again!”

With his final word, he beheaded the knight, sending its skull clattering away to the far side of the room. When that was done, Simon sat down on the stone sarcophagus for a break, and once he’d caught his breath, he moved to the knight's corpse and took off the breastplate one rotting leather strap at a time.

There, glimmering darkly in its ribcage, was what he’d been looking for. It was the source of whatever magic powered the undead. He probably could have sat there for days and studied it, but he was hungry and at the moment he didn’t have a mirror. So, instead he put the chest plate back where he found it, and vowed to look again next time when he was feeling more focused.

Once that mystery was solved, he started ransacking the room for precious metals. He found a few religious amulets that looked to be made of silver and one gold ring. He used a word of earth to transform them into something resembling coins, and then, hoping that would be enough, he filled his purse, grabbed the key, and opened the gate. Then, with a deep breath, he returned to the inn and shut the door behind him.

Inside, there were once again no zombies. This time, he didn’t see Freya either, which he counted as a good thing. So, he went up to the innkeeper and bought himself a meal and room for the night. The man looked at his coin-shaped silver skeptically and even bit it before he took it as payment. When he gave Simon his change, he could see that the man had short-changed him by several coppers, but considering it was basically counterfeit, he didn’t complain. He’d get some real cash soon enough, even if he had to go shake down bandits for their drinking money.

Sitting in the common room long enough to loosen up, he eventually learned plenty. For starters, he learned that the situation was basically identical to last time, which was good news for him. The city was fine; there were no necromancers or zombies to speak of, but trade from across the black bridge had ground to a halt, and no one could say why, so the mercenaries he’d seen Freya in the company of last time were going to check it out.

They apparently went by the name The Butcher’s Bill, which struck him as more than a little ostentatious, but he didn’t complain about it. Why would he, he was going to have to sign up with them. It took him a few hours and a few drinks to end up at a table with a couple of them, and though they seemed more than a little skeptical at his stories of goblin and centaur slaying, they laughed along with his jokes.

“No offenssse Sssimon,” an older man named Garth slurred, “But ye ssseem a little soft to have done much killing.”

“I’m hard enough to take any man here,” he said with a smile. “Maybe any two if I wasn’t pullin’ my punchesss enough to avoid hurting anyone.” Simon was slurring his words a touch too, though he’d been playing up his drunkenness for just this moment, and could easily dismiss it with a whispered word if he needed to.

“Big words from a fat man,” Hodge laughed.

“Well, itss only braggin’ if ya can’t back 'em up,” Simon laughed, slapping Garth on the back.

Everyone laughed, but he could see a couple of the men felt a little insulted at the boast. That was good. Simon just hoped they felt insulted enough. Sadly, they didn't. Garth, probably thinking he was looking out for Simon tried to change the topic to their upcoming journey north, but Simon was determined not to let it go.

Instead, he fished out his single, thin, almost gold coin and said, “I’d wager this against any man that thinks they can take me.”

That did it. Suddenly, there were bets and discussions, and Hodge decided that he was going to be the one to beat some humility into Simon. He wasn’t a bad choice since he was a head taller and a few inches broader, but Simon wasn’t concerned. Garth again tried to intervene as they moved out into the stable yard and insisted they find wooden weapons or stick to fists, but neither man was interested in that.

“It’s hard to tessst real ssstrength without sssteel..” Simon said, making the other men laugh. They thought he was a fool who was about to pay for the privilege of getting beaten down, and maybe once upon a time, he would have been, but between Hodge’s drunkenness and his overconfidence, Simon wasn’t the least bit concerned.

The fight that followed was furious and brief. Simon attacked wildly a few times after he cured his drunkenness to seem entirely off balance, and then when his opponent pressed that advantage, he suddenly found that Simon was no longer there. He hadn’t parried. He’d seen the well telegraphed blow coming and side stepped it.

Suddenly he wasn’t in front of Hodge, he was beside him, and he was coming around hard with the flat of his blade at the back of the man’s skull. Given that Hodge was already delivering a strong blow, the momentum was on Simon’s side, and that was enough to send the other man tumbling to the ground.

After that, all that was left to do was whirl around and place his boot on his fallen opponent's ass and deliver a mocking salute with his sword to the other assembled men that had been watching the fight. It was clear by their shocked expressions that they’d expected another outcome but this and that was enough to make him smile.

“If you need one more for your trip up north, you know who to call,” he said, stooping over and helping Hodge to his feet. The man looked annoyed, but not murderously so, and Simon didn’t think he’d have to watch his back while he slept that night. Still, just to be on the safe side, he wedged his dagger into the door jamb as he always did after he got to his room and undressed, wondering whether or not his plan had worked.