Death After Death

Simon lay there for a long time, just struggling to put the pieces of his mind back together.

He was whole and unharmed, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t escape from the flashbacks that kept springing to his mind unbidden. In the absence of the constant fog of pain and hunger he’d been lost in for so long, his mind was suddenly too sharp, and all the terrible things he’d done were in better focus now than when he’d been doing them. The taste of flesh. The feeling of impossible hunger. The guilt for the people he killed. All of it consumed him until he wanted to scream.

But he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

Instead, he lay there in a fetal position, unable to even work up the strength to grab the bottle of wine that he knew was sitting nearby. That sour grape juice would at least cleanse his mouth of the coppery taste that still lingered, even though he knew that he’d never devoured human flesh before. Just building up the nerve to do that much though took several more minutes of uncomfortable soul-searching.

It was only once he’d risen and finished half the bottle that he even considered what he should do next. Food? He had no appetite. Fighting? He wanted to die. Conversation? There was no one to talk to except for the mirror, and the very last thing he wanted to do was look at his character sheet after everything that had happened.

“You said that every time I died, I would come back here,” Simon said quietly, still staring at the floor between his feet. “I’ve died some pretty gruesome deaths, but at least that was what you promised. This… this isn’t what I signed up for.”

‘You returned to the entrance of the pit as soon as you died,’ the mirror typed as soon as Simon spared it a glance.

“After I spent a FUCKING MONTH in my own corpse,” Simon yelled with a sudden burst of anger that took him by surprise.

‘Undeath is a special case that blurs the lines between—’ the mirror started to print, one flowing character at a time, but Simon was done with its bullshit.

‘Helades is very busy and doesn’t currently wish to—’ The mirror was still typing its painfully slow message when Simon stood up and threw the bottle at the thing, shattering it completely.

“Helades - get out here right fucking now!” Simon roared as the glass started to fall to the floor. It didn’t fall completely, though, as they flew backwards into the gloom of her room, they suddenly stop midair, and then the shockwave started to reverse. For a moment, Simon thought that the mirror was going to reform in the magical equivalent of hanging up on him, but the shards didn’t stop when they reached the mirror's frame. Instead, they kept going until they impacted Simon’s flesh, accelerating the whole way.

He was impaled in a flurry of glittering silver that pierced him over and over again. It was almost painless, but he could feel the warm blood spreading across his now shredded shirt just the same. At least half a dozen of the larger pieces would have been fatal, he realized as his legs gave out, and he toppled to the floor. He had time to feel the sharp pain as he impacted the floor and the shrapnel that filled his chest rearranged itself, but then there was only blackness.

Simon welcomed the blackness, but it lasted only as long as it took for him to open his eyes. Then he was right back where he started, staring up at the ceiling.

This time, when he sat up and reached for the wine, there was already a message typed on the mirror, even though he had yet to say a single word. ‘The goddess is indisposed of and is not to be interrupted without a valid reason. Having a temper tantrum about your current circumstances is never a valid reason.’

Simon clenched his fists, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. He’d found one more game breaking bug in their stupid fucking place, and they weren’t going to do anything to fix it. Typical. So, where did that leave him, he wondered as he stared at his feet.

He could go back to the inn and look for Freya, but it seemed kind of like a fifty-fifty shot as to whether or not the dungeon would spawn his dream girl or the awful blond she worked with. Without her, he’d just be trapped in a level where a single bite could cost him his sanity, because there hadn’t been an exit and he’d checked every door in the place. Simon very much doubted he’d be able to handle another tour in the zombie army. Just thinking about it made him shake. He’d rather face a dozen skeleton knights at once. He’d rather…

Simon’s thought process trailed off as he suddenly realized Helades’ latest trick. “You awful bitch,” he whispered to himself as he stood up. He had to be stuck in this awful place, but did she have to do literally everything she could to screw with his mind like this, he wondered as he started getting ready. He wasn’t bringing anything special. Just the usual weapons and equipment. Working on autopilot would make everything easier. He could bring the weapons he knew best, and lock all the awfulness that was trying to rush to the front of his mind in a little box for safekeeping.

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In a few minutes, he’d either be reunited with Freya or on to the seventh floor. There was the remote possibility that he would become a zombie again if he was wrong about the goddess’ cruel nature, so this time he planned to kill himself with the crossbow if necessary, but he doubted he would need it. He had her number now. The pit wasn’t just a punishment. It was an exercise in cruelty and mind games.

Simon did a speed run of the first four levels that didn’t even take twenty minutes. If anything it seemed more like a video game than less after what he’d been through, and he found himself thinking about moves in the way he might in a fighting game, deciding in an instant whether the fast strike or the heavy one was more appropriate from moment to moment rather than the button mashing he’d done on his first few runs. The effect became hypnotic, especially on longer fights like the skeleton crypts, and by the time it ended Simon stood there alone and panting, yet found himself craving even more enemies to destroy.

On level five, Simon had to try twice to incinerate the slime. Before he’d uttered the words and cast the spell as always, he’d wondered if the rage and pain would make it even more powerful than last time, but instead it fizzled almost completely and only a few stray sparks showered his hungry opponent. As he backed up, trying to figure out what went wrong, the answer came to his mind almost unbidden: he hadn’t really visualized anything. He’d just pictured it like a video game screen, as he had for this whole run, and selected the spell from his internal menu. The result lacked passion of any kind.

It was an unpleasant realization for Simon. Life was more comfortable this way, when he was partially dissociated from everything that had happened to him and treated everything that was happening to him as a sort of game, but without a mental image of what he wanted to happen and real emotion behind it, magic was lost to him. The dilemma made his mouth go dry. Spell casting was too valuable a skill to throw away, especially on this level, but the idea of letting himself feel all the horror that was churning inside him? It was too much.

“What a broken ass magic system,” he swore, his eyes tearing up as he continued to walk slowly backwards. As Simon approached the back of the cave, he stopped to take in the beautiful sight. His back was against the wall, literally and figuratively, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t stop to take in the hints of rainbow that danced in the spray of water where the breeze caught the stream.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to be present, taking it all in. Not just the waterfall and the slime, but the part of him that was terrified at going through the door to the zombie level and the part of him that just wanted to die too. If he had to be present, then he was going to be completely present. He gazed down at the slime that was only ten feet from him and closing, and imagined it blistered and burning as its skin was cooked away by a blazing fire. When he was ready, he didn’t even yell the words. He just whispered, “G̴̝̈́͒͠ḛ̷͕̮̕͘r̵̛̫̮̔͠ͅv̴̿̀͠ͅu̷̝͚̜̎u̴͚͈̎ḻ̸̣̈́ ̸̦̟̜̈́̍M̷̪̹̪̓̓͒e̴̪̎i̴͓̗̔̔͆ͅr̸̹͓͚͐̅è̵̛͇̱̾n̴̩̜̍.”

For a moment, Simon feared he’d screwed up again, as everything was lost in the burst of fire that exploded from his outstretched hand. It wasn’t the tight little beam he’d summoned the last few times. It was a firestorm, and when the fire disappeared, there were only ashes left of his enemy. Simon felt light-headed enough to sit down for a moment and rest. Not just because he was delaying the inevitable, either, but because that had taken a lot out of him.

At this point he seemed to have a good understanding of what it took to cast a spell successfully, but no ability to control the throttle, or really, any understanding of what that should look like. What he’d done was definitely overkill, but more than a little satisfying just the same. He sat there for a few minutes, enjoying the moment, but once he started to feel the need to take a nap, he forced himself to his feet. He could sleep later. First, he needed to know the truth.

When Simon walked into the tavern he found two zombies to kill, not one like usual, but his mace took care of both quickly. This time, neither of the barmaids were there to greet him. After a little searching, he found that they were both dead on the second floor. Simon covered Freya with a blanket and stood there for a moment of silence. “You weren’t here waiting for me this time, but you will be next time,” he whispered, before he went down to help himself to a drink or two.

By the time he got down there, the usual suspects were starting to break through the window, and Simon quickly put them both down and poured himself a pint of warm dark ale and took a break before doing what came next. He didn’t bother to drag the table over to the window to stop more from trying to work their way through. He was already going to have to move too much furniture to add one more to the pile.

Once he finished with his drink, Simon started moving the chairs and tables stacked in front of the front door. On some level he knew this was a terrible idea, but on another he knew this was exactly the sort of thing that the twisted goddess would do. His certainty weakened slightly as he cleared a path to the door, though, and by the time he was in a position to finally open it he’d all but lost his nerve.

Last time he’d done what anyone would do. He’d checked every door in the place but this one.

Simon knew that he was right, but he was also racked by doubts. If he opened that door and zombies poured in, he could probably still get upstairs in time, but he didn’t know that for sure. He just… While he stood there thinking about all the what if’s he noticed one very strange detail. Despite nothing but the bar across it holding the door closed, nothing was jostling against it. All the boards across the windows flexed and bowed as the zombies tried to force their way inside, but not the door. It just hung there limply and never tried to bang against the bar resting half an inch away from it.

Buoyed by the observation, Simon removed the bar, and then drew his mace and pushed the door open. On the other side of the open door, there should have been a street crowded with zombies. There wasn’t though. Instead, there were a few stairs that led down into a large sewer tunnel.

“Welcome to level seven,” he told himself quietly, wondering what fresh hell awaited him down there.

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