Death After Death 177-178

Well everyone, enjoy your last update of two chapters a week. Next week we ramp things up...

Ch. 177 - Silent Study

Simon spent days looking through the Tome of Bahgmorrda, making notes and scribbling over them or crumpling them up and throwing them away, but that was all for show. He’d already solved the code, and the only difficulty was going slow enough to take it all in without giving himself away. 

On its surface, the thing looked like the grimoire he’d stolen from Festuvian so long ago. That was to say, it was half full of garbage and meaningless rituals. Amidst those rituals, though, were words of power. He didn’t discover any new ones, but in many cases, the ones that were mentioned were used in ways he’d never seen them. That was enough to rapidly expand his knowledge. 

The first word he dug into was Vrazig. Simon had used that one plenty to strike people down with lightning. It was his favorite assassination spell. He’d also learned from the strange orcish graffiti that it had connotations of entropy when it was pronounced as ruin. It was more than that, though. 

Truthfully, all the words were, as he was quickly finding out. He’d once thought that each word only had a single power and a single meaning. Actually, I once thought that lesser was only associated with healing and greater with fire, he thought with a smirk as he remembered how foolish he’d been. There was far more to it, though. 

In the case of Vrazig, there was lightning and ruin, but that was because they were both related to air. Well, wind, really, he corrected himself. It had elemental qualities, which made sense, but it also seemed to be related to chance. 

That made Vosden its opposite since it was earth, but that was also true of Delzam, which turned out not to be just related to curing but a reordering of things. 

Simon happily went through the book, a few pages at a time, collecting more associations and linkages. He pretended to scribble notes while he acted like his frustration continued to deepen. At dinner that night, he told the Head Librarian through a series of notes that he was trying a substitution cipher using common words, and he hoped for some results soon. 

The man was polite enough, but the manner of his responses and his expression when he read Simon’s updates told him all he needed to know. As far as his superior was concerned, this was busy work, and he didn’t expect results. 

That was good news as far as Simon was concerned, and he spent the next week drinking deep of this new font of knowledge. They think that taking my tongue is a setback, but in my next life, they will live to regret this, he told himself as his knowledge broadened. 

That said, it was only when he figured out the nature of the illustration near the end of the book that he really had a breakthrough. 

The thing was a series of disconnected shapes. Most of them had coded symbols on them, but a few were left blank, with only a question mark. He eventually decoded the elemental symbols, and a few minutes after that, most everything else, thanks to the process of elimination. 

Vrazig was air, so it opposed earth, but it was also chaos, so it opposed order. 

Vosden was earth, so it opposed air, but it was also strength, so it opposed weakness.

Meiren was fire, so it opposed water, but it was also heat, so it opposed cold. 

Zyvon was water, so it opposed fire, but it was also transfer, so it opposed boundary. 

Slowly but surely, a number of conclusions were built up from these basic oppositions. For most of the time that Simon had known a single word of power, he’d thought of them as discrete things, but really, they were almost a language onto themselves. Though it wasn’t quite a language that he was used to, with adverbs and punctuation, he could see how it now had nouns and verbs. 

Each word modified the next, and though he wasn’t sure how much that increased the cost of the spell, he could see how that could increase the specificity of the effects. That kind of precision and flexibility would allow him to do any number of complex things with only a few more syllables spoken.

After only a week of studying this profane tome, Simon felt like his brain was melting from the implications. He felt like he’d been using the powers he’d found all wrong. Up until now, it was like he’d been spamming a fast kick in a fighting game without ever bothering to learn the combos. 

That was what he wanted to do right now, more than anything. He wanted to try out at least a few of the ideas that this book was giving him, but he couldn’t, not unless he was willing to go out and commit suicide, and after making such huge gains only a couple years into this life, and only a few weeks into his time among the Unspoken, that would be the dumbest thing he could do. 

So, he bided his time and devoured the grimoire, which mostly involved reading about how Bahgmorrda did terrible things in exchange for power. Some of these, like blood sacrifice, were pretty straightforward. He used animals and even strangers to power some spells so that he didn’t have to trade his own valuable life for his magic. 

Other stories were stranger, and if Simon hadn’t done all he’d done, he would have had trouble believing them. He traded openly with devils of the pit on several occasions for terrible secrets. Often, this included throwing his own family members into hell, which was all the more terrifying because of the way it was discussed so nonchalantly. 

Simon couldn’t be one hundred percent sure without checking his notes in the mirror, but he was fairly certain that none of the devils than the warlock listed by name were the ones he’d spoken to on level thirteen. Grevelzarthrik, Bromathazin, and Varmathereon were all strange names, and Simon was fairly sure he would remember them if he’d ever heard them before. 

More than that, though, they reminded him of the words of power in their pronunciation, and they made him think there might be some deeper connection there. Could the Unspoken be right? He wondered. They think that all magic is infernal, and infernal creatures seem to know a lot about it.

Simon wasn’t convinced yet, but it seemed like a fine thesis for now. Still, some of the stories were so lurid that Simon had trouble believing them. Apparently, Bahgmorrda used words of power to teleport to distant lands on more than one occasion, resurrect loved ones, and even level stone structures with his magic. Despite some of the hocus pocus and pageantry involved in some of the stories, based on the words he’d used and the methods he described, Simon was inclined to take the stories at least somewhat seriously.

One thing was clear. A lot of preparation was required for such effects, and even with all that preparation, terrible things could still happen. 

At one point, Bahgmorrda attempted to reincarnate his favorite wife into a perfect alabaster body that had been carved in her image. It was perfect in every last detail, but when he cast the spell, and the stone turned to flesh, the clothing had turned to flesh too, resulting in a woman-shaped abomination with wide skirts made of skin and legs that were only a few inches long before they ended in tiny feet shaped like high heels. The woman, if that was indeed what she was behind the veil that the stone masons had carved across her features, could barely move until he finally put her out of her misery.    

For all the man’s accomplishments, though, he didn’t seem to know as much about creating magical items as Simon already did. It was a blindspot for him and a real indication that the Unspoken were winning. By suppressing knowledge the way they were, each aspiring wizard had to learn each secret anew, with only a few scraps of knowledge from their predecessors. 

He imagined that most of them died in that process. He certainly would have.

Now maybe, I wouldn’t have to, he mused as he considered the various spells he could try. Aufvarum Hyakk was a spell he’d used a great many times, but up until now, he’d only used it to heal himself. It was possible, he realized now, though, that he could use the same words to shape his own appearance. Oftentimes, an illusion would be easier and more effective, but if he really had to impersonate someone else for the long term, it could definitely do the job. 

Likewise, though he was not entirely sure how Bahgmorrda had used teleportation magic because the references he made were too coded and obscure, Simon was pretty sure he could use Dnarth Oonbetit to similar effect. He might use Dnarth Zyvon instead, though, because he wasn’t sure if distant motion or distant transfer would give him the effect he wanted. One or both of them might simply grant him a particularly ugly death. More study would be required. 

Simon made a point to read Bahgmorrda’s failed experiments for these reasons. Every lesson he didn’t have to learn the hard way himself was a good one, as far as he was concerned. 

Toward the end of the volume, and probably toward the end of his long life, the mage became obsessed with the idea of transferring his soul into a younger body. He was apparently unable to realize this goal before the end, though, and the pages abruptly went blank after a proposed experiment involving the words of greater understanding transfer, indicating that something had gone terribly wrong. 

Or maybe he just ran out of power, Simon thought to himself with a shrug. He considered the whole thing very informative in a cautionary tale sort of way and made a note never to become an obsessive megalomaniac. 

Three weeks after he started reading the tome, once he had finished squeezing it of everything of obvious value, he announced to his boss that he had made the first tentative strides in understanding it, providing him with a partially translated copy of the first page, complete with errors to make it look like it was still a work in progress. 

It was good that he’d waited for so long to reveal even that much because their response was to take the thing away from him immediately and pass it off to the reader of the Grimoire section of the library. That frustrated Simon, but truthfully, he’d expected it, which was why he’d done exactly as he did. Let them struggle to learn even a tenth of what I did, he thought as he reflected on everything he knew now. 

Aufvarum (disperse, minor) 

Barom (illusion, light) 

Celdura (plan, shape)

Delzam (cure, order) 

Dnarth (connection, distant, hidden)

Gelthic (ice, weakness)

Gervuul (greater, power) 

Hyakk (flesh, healing) 

Karesh (location, protection, understanding) 

Meiren (creation, fire, life) 

Oonbetit (focused, force, motion) 

Uuvellum (null, boundary) 

Vosden (earth, metal, strength) 

Vrazig (lightning, ruin, wind)

Zyvon (transfer, water) 

Every word of power that Simon knew now had more than one association, and he suspected that there was still more to learn. Hopefully, he’d find all of that and more as he delved even deeper into the library.

Ch. 178 - The Things You Hear

Three months after he’d had the Tome of Bahgmorrda taken away from him, the librarian returned it. Apparently, that was because it was written in five different languages, and the crude cipher worked differently on each of them. Simon had barely noticed that fact, but the person that they’d had working on it since was having great difficulties with translating it. 

‘We’ll be relying on you to make continued progress,’ read the note that the Head Librarian gave him with it. 

Simon nodded and made all the gestures that he would do his best on it, but he wasn't really interested in it anymore. Truthfully, translating the whole thing, line by line, would take months, or maybe even a year, and his time would be better spent reading new books to pass on. He didn’t have a choice in the matter. So, instead, he got to work. 

Even though he didn’t really get anything out of it, there was something very zen about sitting in a library filled with other men who could not speak, scribbling away in the quiet as he attempted to make his writing as beautiful and readable as possible. 

Simon had terrible penmanship for most of his lives. It was only after reading so many barely legible scrawls or awkwardly crabbed writing and trying hard to puzzle out its meaning over his last few lives that he’d tried to improve that small but important aspect himself. He hadn’t even used cursive since he was a child, but with every page he transcribed, he did his best to improve. The result after a few hours was something close to a trance. 

He could think much faster than his pen could move while he tried to create something clean and clear that bordered on calligraphy. As a result, he had more than enough time to consider how each line might be reworded. For a time, he used that extra time to think about how he might clarify or obscure the meaning of the words. After all, he wanted to preserve knowledge, but he didn’t necessarily want the white cloaks to have it. It was a conundrum, but in the end, eventually, he opted to write largely what was written while he used that extra time to ponder the nature of magic. 

That was mostly all he did anymore. Even his initial fervor for spending his spare time in the fighting yards slowly faded, and those workouts became less and less frequent. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to be in better shape or anything; it was because the nature of what he reflected on consumed him. 

Each night, after work but before dinner, he would go on walks around the walls to try to clear his mind. He tried to think about Elthena and his son or daughter, who was not yet born. Sometimes he even reflected on other things, like the dragon, and what the point of that strange level was. However, invariably, those were forgotten in favor of questions about the nature of magic more and more as time went on. Eventually, it bordered on obsession, as strange symbols and words would dance in front of his eyes later that night while he tried to sleep. 

In time, only the occasional words and shouts of the white cloaks intruded on his peace. Mostly, he could tune these out because people rarely asked him questions about what he was working on directly. He’d succeeded in fading into the background. 

Sometimes, though, that solitude became impossible, such as the day that a patrol came back to the Broken Tower all but annihilated by zombies north of Schwarzenbruck. That was enough to pique Simon’s interest, and while they built a war party to counter the threat, he listened in to the talk. For a few days after the survivors came back it was all anyone talked about. Even the library wasn’t completely silent as commanders and other members visited, looking for more information about what it was they faced. 

At times, it bordered on the apocalyptic. Though the leaders tried to downplay the threat, in private, many whispered that it was a sign of the end of the world and a fulfillment of the prophecies. However, through all of the chaos and panic, Simon mostly just smiled to himself. He knew that by the time the men they were assembling made it back to Schwarzenbruck, they’d find nothing at all to fight, thanks to him. 

That didn’t stop him from leaping at the chance to dig through the section of the archive that dealt with necromancy and the dead when the Abbott came down and gave them all new orders. “Though all of your work is vital,” he explained to them sourly. “Right now, the urgent takes priority over the important. Effective immediately, all other research will cease, and we will focus solely on the dead and the foul necromancers that raise them until our expeditionary force departs.” 

Simon didn’t mind those instructions at all. He was over a hundred pages into his grimoire, and it had long since become an exercise in patience and penmanship rather than anything scholarly. He was more than happy to see if he could find some bit of lore or information that could help the order in the trials to come. Unfortunately, all he ever found for them was remarkably unhelpful, though he didn’t share that with anyone. 

For the next week, Simon dutifully copied down and delivered significant amounts of information, even if his experience told him it was nonsense. He recorded an entry that explained the proper prayers that would put the dead back into their graves, noting that they contained no words of power. After that, Simon translated a document that explained how a zombie could be stilled once more by driving a stake through its heart. He even relayed the old wives' tale that he’d heard so many times before about how the bites of a zombie could be cleansed with salt and ashes. 

It’s too bad they’re unlikely to actually find zombies by the time they get back, he told himself. Because I’d love to see how they fare with all this knowledge. 

In the end, over a hundred people, including sworn brothers, acolytes, and whisperers, set off to save the world, and Simon’s time in the necromantic archives came to an end. Still, it wasn’t a total loss for him. In that time, he learned that Gelthic had an association with death, and thanks to one particularly gruesome story about a necromancer that sought to an army erupt from the graveyard around him, Simon learned that Uuvellum could also be used as a modifier in the form of anti-. 

In this case, the man had attempted to cast a spell of greater antilife with Gervuul Uuvellum Meiren. He’d succeeded too, but according to the witch hunter who found his corpse once the battle had done, the man had been reduced to nothing but a shriveled corpse that was halfway mummified by the dark magics he used. 

Simon spent several days trying to figure out what might have happened to cause that effect, assuming the document was entirely accurate. In the end, he decided it wasn’t that the greater word had burned too much vitality or that the caster had botched the spell by mispronouncing something. Instead, he was fairly sure that the caster had used the spell over a large area that he himself had been standing in. So, while all of the dead were infused with the antilife as he’d intended, he was as well. 

It would be like casting a fireball and centering it on yourself, he decided, almost certain that was what occurred. He imagined he’d try it at some point, too. He wouldn’t be able to see what it did to him, of course, but it would be a fairly painless suicide if he ever needed one of those.  

Simon enjoyed little riddles like that and looked forward to the day when he’d finished the grimoire that he was working on. As it turned out, though, he never got the chance. Not long after the expeditionary force returned and declared the zombie menace to be eradicated after taking suspiciously few losses despite the heroic and unlikely stories that circulated, two of his brothers in the library died under mysterious circumstances. 

The first to go had been the archivist in charge of the section on demonology. All they’d found of him was a boot with a foot still in it, which was fairly horrifying, even for someone as jaded as Simon. A few days later, though, while an inquisitor was investigating, he also vanished. The second man's disappearance wasn’t quite so subtle. There was a brief explosion when it happened, but by the time the first people arrived in the reading room, the only sign that anyone had been in there was a spray of blood on one of the walls and a stack of books on the desk. 

At first, the worries were that one of the men that had come home had gone crazy or been replaced with a warlock or worse. The entire compound was locked down for the better part of a week. Simon didn’t mind that; he spent his time sitting in his cell contemplating what might have happened, but he didn’t have information to say one way or the other. 

After that, they started interviewing everyone who’d been in or near the library on either occasion, moving Simon much closer to the top of the list of suspects. He wasn’t concerned. Even if they decided to execute him for some crazy reason, this sort of weirdness was exactly the reason he was here. 

“Do you have any idea what happened to Archivists Malen or Shroud?” the inquisitor asked when he was escorted into the small room where questioning was taking place. 

Instead of picking up the provided quill and ink, Simon simply shook his head. That was obviously the wrong answer because the man’s face reddened slightly at it.

“Are you taking this seriously, Ennis?” the man asked a little more forcefully. “People have died. Someone is to blame!”

‘They were both reading the same book when they died.’ Simon wrote finally. It wasn’t a question. He wasn’t sure, of course, but after thinking about it for days, he realized it was his best answer to this locked room mystery. No one had done it. Instead, a particularly dangerous book in the collection had, he just didn’t know how. 

The man’s eyes narrowed as he looked at him silently for several seconds. Then he said, “How do you know that?”

‘I don’t know.’ Simon admitted in a quick flourish. ‘Just a guess.’

“Pretty damn good guess,” the man grumbled as he reached into a bag by his feet and pulled out a particularly evil tome. The thing was bound in dark leather and had no title. If Simon had been a betting man, he would have said the thing was human skin, but he couldn’t say for sure without a closer explanation. “Have you seen this before?”

Simon answered with a shake of his head. He’d remember a book like that. 

“So you didn’t see it before, but you know that it killed them?” the inquisitor tried again. “How does that work?”

‘I’ve been translating a grimoire for months,’ Simon responded. ‘Ask the Head Librarian.’

“We already have,” the other man nodded. “But now you’re on this instead.”

‘Why me?’ Simon protested in one quick line, frowning that he’d smudged the ink on the y because he was in too much of a hurry. 

“Because you were the only one to guess it had to do with a book,” the man answered smugly. “I’ve been through it myself, and though I can’t read all of it, I’m hoping you have better luck.”  

Simon sighed and then nodded. There was no point in fighting this because he knew he wouldn’t win. 

On the plus side, it beats transcribing any more of the Tome of Bahgmorrda, he told himself. That was soft-pedaling this more than a little bit, though, he noted grimly. If he wasn’t careful, this could definitely be one of those deaths that wasn’t just a death.