Death After Death

There were some deaths he was frustrated to wake up in his own bed after, but this wasn’t one of them. He had rarely been more relieved to wake up and see the crooked timbers of his roof than he was right now, even if he’d been gone for so long that they now felt unfamiliar.

“A fucking vampire,” he scoffed. “I was killed by a fucking vampire.”

It was almost as an afterthought that he said, “Hell, I almost became a vampire…”

That thought was terrifying. It had been a long time since he’d found a death that really worried him. Even zombies now he was content to just blow his brains out, but would that even work on a vampire? If fire didn’t kill that guy, then who says it would kill me, he wondered.

Simon had vanquished some very hard-to-kill enemies in the past, but none of them had been the sort that he needed to drive through the heart of before. That lay there for some time as he tried to contemplate what his backup plan should be in such a case.

Eventually, he decided that greater light was probably his best option. It’s not sunlight, but if it’s powerful enough, does it even matter?

The idea that he would get to find out didn’t sit well with him. Especially not after he replayed the events of that level over and over again and tried to figure out what he was supposed to do. “That vampire was probably going to gorge himself on that farm or something else close by before he smelled me,” Simon said as he talked himself through it. “On the off chance he didn’t go ahead and do so anyway after he murdered me, the level might already be solved, but I doubt it. I’m not that lucky.”

He sat up, and as he did so, he tried to remember how long it had been since he’d last been here. That, in turn, made him struggle to remember what his last death before this one had even been. “Was it the dragon? Or the spider cave?” he mused aloud. “No, it was those miserable messengers,” he said finally as he started to recount the events of his last few lives on his hands, one finger at a time, until they made sense.

“First, I talked to Helades about Freya, then the dragon burned me alive, then Freya tried to kill me for being a warlock, then I buried myself alive killing a giant spider, then I fought the centaurs until I became a political liability,” he recounted with a sigh. “What a mouthful.”

He grabbed the bottle of wine, noting with distaste how chubby his hand looked after he’d been skinny and gnarled like old leather for the last few years. Then, he took a good drink and found that he missed the taste of red wine after spending so long with the taste of white in Ionar.

As he sat there and drank, he relived his journey north to explore the tomb and then south to Ionar once his armor was ready. He’d spent years there waiting for the attack and then years after until Elthena had banished him. He was surprised that it stung more than the last time he ran into Freya when he reflected on it. It also made him smile, though. Truthfully, he should have seen it coming. It was, after all, completely in character for her.

So that means what? A decade? More? He wondered. Probably more like a decade and a half.

A decade in a half would be enough to make him forty-fiveish, so if he added in a dozen greater words, a pile of words and minor words to the mix, that would have put him somewhere in his sixties, physically when he died. That felt about right, he decided. He’d certainly felt like he was about ready to retire when the vampire had ripped his throat out. If his run had gone on any longer, he would have had to find an old folk's home.

“Mirror mirror on the wall, show me the most experienced loser of all,” he said, with deliberate drama, once he had his answer.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand the command,’ the thing said, provoking a sigh from Simon.

“Show me my damn character sheet, you damn thing,” he said, with a little more annoyance the second time.

‘Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 33

Deaths: 41

Experience Points: -533,822

Skills: Agriculture [Below Average], Archery [Average], Armor (light) [Above Average], Armor (heavy) [Below Average], Armor (medium) [Average], Athletics [Average], Baking [Below Average], Cooking [Average], Craft [Above Average], Deception [Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Above Average], Healing [Above Average], Investigate [Good], Maces [Average], Navigation [Above Average], Research [Average], Ride [Average], Search [Average], Sneak [Above Average], Spears [Average], Spell Casting [Good], Steal [Poor], Swimming [Above Average], and Swords [Great].

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Words of Power: Gervuul (greater) Meiren (fire) Aufvarum (minor) Hyakk (healing) Vrazig (lightning, ruin) Dnarth (distant) Oonbetit (force) Zyvon (transfer, water) Gelthic (ice) Karesh (protection) Uuvellum (null, boundary) Barom (light) Delzam (cure) Vosden (earth) Celdura (plan)’

A quick glance across the sheet revealed nothing unexpected. He was pretty sure his number of skills had grown, but he ignored it. Instead, he focused on one specific number: the number of times he’d died. ř

“This is really my forty-first life?” he said aloud, more than a little blown away by that discovery. He’d died and come back 40 times in the Pit since he’d actually died on Earth.

“And how many levels have I cleared?” he started to ask before realizing the mirror wouldn’t understand that. “I mean, how many levels are currently accessible?”

‘There are four levels that are currently accessible,’ the mirror answered in its typical fashion.

Simon smiled at that, happy he’d made progress. He was just about to ask which levels exactly remained open when he realized he was doing this out of order. If I start asking it questions and getting wrapped up in the details, I’m going to forget some parts of what I just went through, he decided.

So, he took a step back and headed to the stove to fan the coals to life so he could cook up the sausage; he started to tell the mirror all about his most recent life. Absentmindedly, he almost started at the very beginning with Freya before realizing he’d told the mirror all those details a long time ago. Over the years, he’d talked its ear off about the various encounters and all of the details he’d learned, especially once he’d had access to the libraries at Ionar.

Instead, while he sliced up the sausages into thin sections and fried them up in their own fat, he talked at length about the new stuff, which was mostly the dragon. Oh, and the white cloaks too. He spent a little time talking about what he learned from Aaric and even asked the thing if it had any information on the Unspoken, but it did not.

That was about what Simon had expected, since he’d never told the mirror anything about them, of course. He had to try anyway, of course. That was definitely a topic he planned to dig into more once he had access to Ionar’s library again.

“If Elthena doesn’t kick me out again,” he said with a laugh.

It was only when he got to the level with the wagon and the deserters, and he was discussing his speculation since he hadn’t actually learned a whole lot about the place, that he finally realized he made a serious mistake.

“Damn it!” he cried out, taking the sandwich he’d been in the midst of making off of the stove. “Of all the shit to forget!”

It turned out that the worst consequence of dying on level 32 wasn’t that he’d almost become a vampire. It was that he’d forgotten to record the details of the magic sword he’d been wielding. In my defense, I was kind of bleeding out at the time, he told himself, but it did nothing to lessen the blow.

“If I want that thing back, I'm going to have to go through all of that again,” he sighed, feeling slightly defeated that he’d let himself down so much.

He took a piece of burned wood from the fire and started sketching out all the elements that he could remember, but it wasn’t going to be enough. He knew that almost as soon as he started. Despite that, he continued to try to link runes together for several minutes in a way that made sense.

“Maybe more will come to me later,” he said hopefully, resigned that he would have to go find the thing again. It's not like I know how to defeat the dragon level right now, anyway. The thing was already dead!

Simon moved back to his meal after that, however reluctantly, before it got cold. He cut the loaf in half, used it to fry up the bread a bit so that the grease could soften it up, and then added chunks of cheese to the meat and the hot bread so it could melt.

As a whole, it wasn’t the worst Philly Cheese Steak he’d ever had, but it tasted a little like ashes as he brooded on the sword. Simon spent those minutes trying to decide where he wanted to go next, but it really didn’t take that long. He was going to go to the skeleton crypt, bypass the portal, take the exit outside, and then keep a low profile until the last version of himself was banished from Ionar. Then he would show back up the same day and have a nice talk with her.

He knew he should be trying to deal with the doppelgänger or heading straight back to the dragon level to figure out what was going on there, but compared to continuing his life with Elthena, he really couldn’t be bothered. He wanted her, and more importantly, he didn’t want his child to grow up without a father, even if he didn’t think he’d make a very good one.

A fancy magic sword didn’t even really figure into those plans. There was no way he could keep a low profile if he was running around slicing people in half. He supposed that he could spend that time researching some of the more important questions on his mind, but even so, it sounded boring.

Am I really going to hide away for half a decade or however long it is until the volcano erupts, so I don’t fuck up the timeline? He asked himself. In the end, it wasn’t a question he even needed to dignify with a response, though. While he didn’t yet feel the same sort of siren song he’d felt for a while to relive his life with Freya over and over again, he’d left his last life unfinished, and he was going to do something about that.