Death After Death

Simon woke up slowly, and feeling the lumpy bed beneath him, he sighed. Despite all that, he’d been returned to his cabin, which meant that he was dead again. Only, if that was true, why was he still in so much pain?

His eyelids shot open at the thought, and he stared up at the ceiling. It was not his ceiling, though. This one was thatched instead of shingled. It took him a moment to notice that he was only seeing it through one eye, though. For a moment, he worried he’d been maimed, which would have been a first for him.

Up until now, he’d always been fine or dead after an encounter. It had been a binary thing. To be terribly wounded but alive, though… he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to deal with that.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to. The blindness was merely due to the way someone had wrapped his head in thick bandages, which was a huge relief.

Simon tried to sit up and felt the whole world spin as he did so. He flopped back down after that, but even that soft blow sent a shiver of pain through his body. He groaned softly, catching the interest of someone because they were on their feet and walking toward him almost immediately.

Hard-soled shoes clicked across the wooden floor, and moments later, a cute young woman was leaning over his bed. With her baby face and big doe eyes, it would have been impossible for Simon to guess her age, and he was in no state to try. She was adorable in that Disney princess sort of way that he’d long since outgrown when he hit puberty.

“No - please don’t move. You mustn’t try to get up,” she said nervously. “You’ve been hurt very badly.”

She opened her mouth, but when she heard someone else moaning, she looked away and said, “I’ll be right back.”

Simon turned his head to watch her go and discovered that he was in a makeshift hospital of sorts. Counting him, he could see at least five wounded men in here, which was about right for an orc attack. He’d never had a chance to see just how many wounded he’d left in Crowvar before…

Simon’s head throbbed as the hazy memory of that day forced itself to the surface of his mind, and he pushed it back down. He would have drowned it forever if he could, but he lacked the strength. Instead, he lay there with his throbbing as he tried to understand what he should do next.

He still had that book, of course; he’d hidden it somewhere, though he couldn’t quite recall it just now. He wanted to read that, but he was in no shape for reading just now. He supposed that he could heal himself, but…

The idea of healing a head wound made him very nervous after what happened last time. What if he lobotomized himself? Would that carry over into his next life and the life after that? He’d been a literal zombie once, and his brains had actually rotted away, he reminded himself. He’d recover from anything physical as soon as he returned to the cabin.

He tried to tell himself that with confidence, but he was left with far too many doubts to utter the words. He just lay there quietly until the young woman returned a few minutes later.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “Gramms is in the next building with the worst cases. She’s the healer; I’m just trying to keep everyone comfortable until she can come back to check on you.”

“Wh… where am I?” Simon managed to whisper through a parched throat. That much told him that he’d either been lying here a long time or the new words of power had really taken it out of him.

“It’s okay,” she said, sitting down on the side of his bed and bringing a cup of water to his lips so he could take a sip. “You’re in Rivenwood, and the fighting is done, thanks to you. You saved us. Can you tell me your name?”

Simon nodded. “I’m Simon,” he said, not wanting to give away too much until he better understood his situation. He didn’t know where the village of Rivenwood was, but it would be one more spot for his mental map once he connected those dots.

“Gramm will be so pleased,” the girl smiled. “She said that after a blow like that, sometimes people forget their own names.”

That thought sent a chill through Simon. If he died without his memory, would he get it back, or would he be stuck in The Pit without any idea of who or where he was?

“I’ll be okay,” Simon mumbled. “I’ve had worse. I just need a few days to heal.”

“I’m so glad to hear that,” the girl answered. “Gramm will have a lot of questions for you. She said that you were tainted and that I should keep an eye on you. Do you know what that means?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he answered. Technically that was true, but only technically. He knew that there was something about him that raised the hackles on the sensitive, but he wasn’t sure exactly what caused it.

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“Hmmm,” she said, her eyes hardening. “She wouldn’t tell me either.”

The young woman was cooler to him after that. Like she’d been trying to get some kind of information out of him, or she thought he was lying to her, but he eventually found out that roughly half the town was in ashes, dozens were dead, and that her name was Majoria.

Before he could pry any more answers out of her between her rounds of checking on all the other people in the room, an older woman with an air of authority entered the room.

“Good news Gramm, he’s—” Majoria started to say, but the older woman interrupted.

“I can see that,” she interrupted. “Please leave us. I must speak with our… savior.” She said the last word with obvious distaste.

“But…” Majoria started to protest, but her words wilted beneath the older woman’s gaze, and instead, she mumbled something about going to check on everyone else and quickly left them alone with the other unconscious men.

“Perhaps you could help an old woman understand something,” the healer said to Simon as she moved a wooden chair next to his bed and sat down heavily in front of him. “I have three questions for you, and if you answer them all to my satisfaction, which means honestly, then I might not mix poison into your medicine and tell my granddaughter that you slipped away during the night.”

Just as his previous nursemaid had been indeterminately young, this woman was indeterminately old. Her hair was almost completely white, her wrinkles had wrinkles, and from the look in her hard blue eyes, Simon could tell that if he tried to lie to her, she’d know.

“Shoot,” he said, not bothering to try to explain. He wasn’t in any shape to defend himself, so if she decided that he needed to die, he wasn’t going to do a lot to stop that.

“What is a warlock like you doing in my sleepy little part of the world,” she asked, “and why would a man as stained as you bother to help a small village like ours in need?”

“That’s only two questions,” Simon answered dumbly after spending a few seconds waiting for the third.

“We’ll get there, son, don’t you worry,” she said, glaring at him.

“Well, I have no idea where I am, and if you want to call me a warlock, that’s fine, I guess; I’d go with mage or arcane warrior or something, but warlock too,” he said with a shrug. “You’re saying that because you can see my magic use, right? It does something to my aura?”

“Your aura is a mess; it’s true,” she agreed without elaboration. “As to everything you said, you’re kind of a mess, too, aren’t you. If you don’t know where you are, then you must at least tell me how you got here.”

“Through a portal, and don’t worry, as soon as I’m feeling a little better, I’ll be gone. I promise,” Simon said, trying to ignore the throbbing as it slowly got worse.

“I’m sure. Off to some other town to ruin good people’s lives,” she replied with a shake of her head. “Still, you do have a little spark of good in you, way down deep. Maybe I won’t regret it too much if I let you live. Hard to say.”

“Let me live?” he asked, his brain starting to feel foggy. It was very strange to him that even a conversation was enough to exhaust him, but then he’d never been hurt this badly before and lived. It was a new experience, and he hated it.

“Well, of course,” she answered. “If I saw someone tainted even half as bad as you, I’d kill them without hesitation. As soon as they closed their eyes, I’d get my sons and grandsons together and chop them into pieces, but you did save all of them with your fancy lightning magics. You killed over a dozen orcs all by yourself, and that buys you a fair hearing when you’re feeling good enough to explain what it is you’re up to.”

“I…” he tried to ask what the third question was, but she brushed him off.

“You just rest now,” she said. “You’ve been asleep for three days, and I expect you’ll need another week at least before you can do much more than this right here.”

Simon wanted to dispute that and tell her he was stronger than that, but the truth was he could barely keep his eyes open. Soon he was swallowed up by a dark and fitful sleep where he fought against golems made out of the petrified versions of his past lives using words of forbidden power like ‘Freya’ and ‘Love.’ It was a sad dream, but no matter how hard he fought, though, eventually the golems bit him, and he became one of them.

Each time he woke up over the next few days, he got a sip of water or a bite of soup. Sometimes his nursemaid Majoria would wake him and force him to drink vile, bitter concoctions that she referred to as medicine, but it occurred to him gradually that almost every time he saw her, she was dressed differently.

At first, Simon feared that his memory was fried, but then one day, he looked around the room and noticed all the other beds were empty. That was when he realized time was passing.

“How long has it been since the fight,” he asked.

“Since your injury, you mean?” she asked, thinking hard about it for a moment. “Ummmm… more than half a moon but not quite a full one, I don’t think.”

So, three or four weeks, Simon realized. That was pretty serious, even for a head wound. Which meant what? Skull fracture? Infection? It had to be something like that, not that these people would know. He reached up and found his chin covered in stubble, which was just about right.

“I’m feeling better now, Majoria,” Simon said, mostly meaning it. “What do you say we try to get some fresh air.“

She seemed unsure, but she didn’t try to stop him as he rose and stumbled toward the door. Outside, it was somewhat past noon, and there were plenty of people out and about, but no one seemed to pay him too much attention as he leaned heavily on the door frame.

It was only when he saw the town he remembered the portal he needed to take to get to the next level. He turned to look up the street toward the house on the hill, and he saw that the home with the portal had not been burned down, but the door was closed. Did that mean that the way was closed to him now? Was this as deep as he was going to go in this life?

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