Death After Death

When Simon arrived at the next level, he could still hear the golem thundering and crashing impotently beneath him. The thing was bigger than the portal, so he doubted it could even make it across to follow him even if it could get up here, but out of curiosity, he shut the door, and the rumbling instantly ceased. When he reopened the door, though, the stairs he’d come up were replaced by a different set that looked much less precarious.

The way he’d just come up had obviously belonged to some castle basement, dungeon, or something similar. This one just led down to an unremarkable root cellar. He supposed he could go back down and scavenge some supplies, but he wasn’t really going anywhere where he needed more food. He was only a few floors left from his main goal now, and he hadn’t been hungry since he’d last camped on the wyvern level hours ago. Or was it days? It felt like lifetimes, and just thinking about that sweet little chapter of his life filled him with so much pain, he trembled and leaned heavily against the door frame.

“Just keep it together, Simon. You’re almost there. Almost. You can do this,” he told himself, breathing deeply.

He looked down at the book he was holding and tried to find some joy in that. This was a victory he would have killed for on any other day, but unless it had a resurrection spell, he wasn’t going to get too excited. Still, he’d have to find some time to study it before he got too much deeper.

“The plague level seemed pretty quiet,” he said to himself. “Maybe I could do some research there for a few days.”

Knowledge was the only thing that stayed with him between deaths, so he needed to make the most of this ugly black book which meant that maybe he would need supplies, he realized. He started to think about what he might want for a short study session when he heard the first scream.

“Oh, that’s right. This place was under attack, wasn’t it.” Simon said, finally recalling where he was. “Was it goblins? Or orcs? Did I fight them once already?”

Simon racked his brain as he walked to the front door and looked down at the village that was on fire. When he saw the ice doorway, though, he finally remembered the last time he’d been here.

“Oh yeah,” he muttered unhappily. “I skipped the whole thing, didn’t I?”

He could see why he’d done it that way, of course, the exit was right there, but somehow that didn’t feel right to him now. Maybe it was because he’d fought to defend enough villages now that he knew how unprepared they were down there. People were dying right now, and just because he didn’t know them didn’t make it less real.

He’d already made his decision before he knew it. There was only one answer, even if the past version of him hadn’t realized it. That was okay. He’d redo this as many times as it took to get it right.

“Well, hopefully, that door will still be there in an hour or two,” he said to himself as he walked to the end of the porch and tucked the book away. He didn’t think this would be too much trouble, and honestly, killing something that could fight back sounded pretty good to him right about now.

Simon drew his sword as he advanced on the village and took in the carnage. There were some shapes in the dark that told him he was definitely dealing with an orc-raiding band. The fact that the village hadn’t already been leveled told him it was a small one, though, so maybe this was the beginning of an outbreak.

It was also the chance to try out his new spells, he thought, hopefully, as he advanced down the hill. The situation wasn’t looking too good. Half the houses were on fire, so he hoped that the people here had evacuated first, but that seemed unlikely given the number of bodies in the streets.

Simon sighed, wondering whose job it was to defend these people. The community had neither walls nor any sign of fortifications, so they clearly weren’t expecting this.

When the first orc near the edge of the settlement finally noticed him, it roared, “Fresh prey!” in approval. That had been one of his stranger discoveries in this life. Goblins didn’t seem to have a language, but orcs did. Most monsters he’d fought during his service in Crowvar did, actually. Gnolls, Orcs, and even centaurs did, though that last one made more sense to him than the other two.

Orcs didn’t communicate anything but very simple ideas, though, and right now, its only concern seemed to be hunger as it advanced on Simon with a crude club. That was okay. Simon’s only concern was on testing out his new powers.

“̵̳́D̸̰̈n̷̰̑a̸̢̕r̴̻͋ẗ̵̝́ḧ̸͖́ V̸̨̄r̴̡͒ä̸͖́z̸͍͊i̸͇̋ğ̶̤” he shouted. Distant lightning. As he spoke, he pointed his sword, and lightning shot from the tip of it, instantly crossing the 30 yards that separated the two combatants and striking the orc in the chest.

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The orc fell to the ground without a sound. It was utterly anticlimactic, but Simon would take it. As he approached the corpse, he noted that there wasn’t much of a wound. Just a tiny char mark in the center of its chest. Even though that probably meant he fried the heart, he stabbed it in the chest with his sword just to be sure.

“Now, where are all your friends?” Simon asked the corpse as he looked around for more enemies to fight.

He found them down the street and to the left, where the villagers seemed to have taken shelter in a small church. There were a dozen of the savages attacking the building at every door and window, and the fact that many of those positions were being defended by people with farming implements instead of real weapons wasn’t a good sign.

Since he had the element of surprise, he decided to keep it. After all, he knew from experience that taking on two orcs at once was a gamble, and three or four was a death sentence. Even though they might look and stink similar to their cousins, the hobgoblins, these bastards were twice as strong as a man, and it was only their stupidity that kept them from conquering the whole world as far as he was concerned.

Simon looked around for who the leader might be, but when he didn’t see anyone that stood out, he just decided to target the biggest bastard that was standing there wearing a loincloth and holding a broken sword among several other orcs waiting for their turn to kill a few human defenders.

“Yeah, he’ll do nicely,” Simon said to himself before shouting. “G̴̝̈́͒͠ḛ̷͕̮̕͘r̵̛̫̮̔͠ͅv̴̿̀͠ͅu̷̝͚̜̎u̴͚͈̎ḻ̸̣̈́ V̸̨̄r̴̡͒ä̸͖́z̸͍͊i̸͇̋ğ̶̤!"

This time, he tried greater lightning, even though he knew it was a gamble. As soon as he’d figured out that these things were actually modular and that he’d known greater and fire as opposed to greater fire for ages now, he could have kicked himself. He would have killed to be able to cast lesser fire or regular fire a hundred times by now.

That was especially true when he still hadn’t mastered flint and steel. Now he didn’t even need to use it for those occasions, especially because of the way the word greater exhausted him, but he absolutely needed it for this experiment because he was going to do something he’d always wanted to do since he’d first started playing role-playing games in junior high.

He was going to summon lighting from the sky. Simon told himself he was doing this because it would be more deniable in case the people of this town were the magic-hating types, but really, he just wanted to see if he could. There were few ideas more magical to him than the idea of summoning a bolt of thunder to smite his enemies, and as the jagged bolt of electricity leaped from the dark sky to the ground and the thunder shattered the night, he felt like he was somewhere between Zeus and Thor in the grand scheme of things.

For a moment, the night was shattered by his spell, and he could feel the heat even where he stood twenty yards away, but as he approached the monsters, they all stayed standing inexplicably for several long seconds, and he worried he’d done something wrong.

Then he realized they’d just been paralyzed by the electricity and had stood there perfectly rigid before they all started collapsing like dominoes. That brought a smile to Simon’s face, and he took advantage of the confusion to strike down the first orc in his path before it knew he was there.

That roar of pain caught everyone else’s attention, though, and soon it was him versus the only two left standing beside those that were still attacking the townspeople’s last stand. It was a short but vicious fight, and the motherfucker closest to him broke his shield and probably his arm too on his second swing. That wasn’t enough to stop Simon from running the orc through, though.

For as long as he faced two enemies, he kept circling slowly to his right around his target, always keeping the second one in an inopportune position to coordinate their attacks. Simon had learned it from some bandits that had been particularly frustrating to kill and much more talented than these orcs would ever be, but it served him well here.

“Shit human!” the second orc growled as the first one slumped over dead. “Tough meat is the tastiest!”

After he was down to a single opponent. Simon relied more on parries and feints, but mostly because he didn’t trust his left hand until he’d had a chance to heal it. The feeling of painful numbness was spreading, and he wasn’t sure if that was because of the strength of the blow or because the orc had managed to cause some nerve damage.

It didn’t matter, it was a later problem, and even fighting defensively, he was still sure he could take this big ugly bastard down. A quick glance at the rest of the fighting showed that no one was in mortal peril, so he kept whittling away at the orc while dancing out of reach. A slice here, a cut there, and soon enough, the monster could neither grip his weapon nor move quickly as Simon cut important tendons in the thing’s wrist and heel. After that, it was just a matter of finding the right opening and delivering a coup de grâce, but eventually, Simon thrust two feet of steel through the orc’s heart and let it stand there confused for a moment as it bled out.

Then, he turned toward the last orc standing that was currently fighting three wounded farmers. He noticed he was limping as he walked, but he ignored it. He just needed to help bring the last one down, so they could end this and focus on the fires.

He didn’t see the blow coming. He’d thought that he’d killed them all, but one of the bastards must have gotten back up from his lightning strike because as he walked to the church to see if there were any survivors he might be able to save with a little healing magic, he was suddenly struck hard in the back of the head.

Simon whirled around, disemboweling the creature before it could make a second strike, but the first one had done enough damage. He staggered back, dropping his sword as he raised his hand to his head and tried to remember the word to fix it. Wait, should he fix it, he wondered? Brains were delicate, and it was his magic that had probably ultimately killed…

Mercifully, the world went dark, and he collapsed to the ground before he could finish the thought. He lapsed into unconsciousness.