Death After Death PLUS 379-381

Ch. 379 - Hidden in the Shadows (part 2)

Despite the fact that there were hours of daylight left, they searched the city no further that day. Instead, every effort went into finding the young man, but there was no luck there. There were moments when Simon smelled a whiff of sulfur in places besides that living room that made him think that there was more going on than met the eye, but he never saw enough to support his suspicions. 

The young man had simply vanished into thin air. Everyone was sure he hadn’t left the small three-room home, but he wasn’t there. It was like he’d gone into the pantry in search of the grimoire, and he hadn’t come back out again.

Eventually, they searched the surrounding houses and buildings without result. Sir Rozman stayed terse and disciplined despite how upset he obviously was. Still, when that was done, and the horizon was growing red, he ordered the house put to the torch, and they returned to the campsite. 

The man was obviously mourning his charge, but he’d done the right thing. There was something hidden in that house, and only its complete and fiery destruction had any chance of striking it down. Still, even that victory cast a pall over the camp that night, and though there was discussion of what else they could do on the following day while they ate, it was half-hearted, but Simon couldn’t blame anyone for that. 

“What could have happened to him?” was the most common question that anyone asked, but he didn’t have an answer for them. 

What could have happened to him? That question nipped at his heels long after dinner wound down, and he took the first watch. Eventually, it transformed into a slightly different form, though, which was, “What did his disappearance have in common with everyone else's?"

That was harder to answer. It was difficult for him to believe that everyone else in all of Daramoore strolled into the dark pantry one after another. Still, it wasn’t until he caught the scent of sulfur that he put the pieces together. 

Someone or something was prowling the darkness nearby him. He couldn’t see it, not really. Simon saw only the occasional glimpse of movement rippling out from trees and other living things. 

Can demons be invisible? He wondered. Simone had considered how an invisibility spell might work, but it was too complicated to cast and would have to be drawn on an amulet or breastplate. He didn’t really know what demons were capable of, but he was about to find out. 

Simon moved toward it, getting further and further from the campfire with the torch in hand. It took him an embarrassingly long time to figure out that it was the light of that torch that kept whatever it was he faced at bay. 

The shadows! He realized. That was why the squire had disappeared in the pantry, but no one else had been affected. Everyone else had a light. 

It was ironic that the same thing that protected him kept him from solving the mystery, but he didn’t hesitate to drop the brand and snub it out under his boot. He’d take this thing out regardless. 

As soon as the light vanished, the shape of the thing clarified. It was like a worm or a snake that wove between the trees like a Chinese dragon, though making out the details was impossible. 

The world around him had been dark up until now, but when he extinguished his torch, it became pitch black. That didn’t blind him. He’d been using his sight to see the outlines of the trees around him as he searched for the disturbance. All of that was gone, though, as the ugly maw swallowed him whole. It didn’t look quite solid. It was more like the shimmer of a portal to another level. 

Simon didn’t run. Instead, he drew his sword and met it head-on. He was prepared to strike it, but that blow did little; he might as well have been trying to slice smoke in two. After that, he was in the belly of the whale, so to speak. 

In this case, it was more of an eel, though, or a worm. His rising anxiety was enough to blur his vision, but the darkness did nothing to hide the smell of sulfur, moist garbage, and rotting flesh. It didn’t hide the feeling of the ground slowly sliding beneath his boots, either. No, not sliding, undulating. He’d been swallowed, and now he was being digested. 

Ignoring the stink, Simon took several deep breaths and refocused. That was when he saw he wasn’t alone. There were corpses here, too, or at least pieces of corpses, but there was a survivor, too, moving weakly in the dark. While using his sight as blindsight didn’t give him enough details to see who it was, he doubted it could be anyone but their missing squire with an aura that bright.

Simon tried to attack the walls of the beast that had consumed them with his sword first, but that worked no better than slicing at its maw had. It barely seemed to notice. After that, it moved to the boy and checked his neck for a pulse. 

The squire squirmed to escape his touch, but when Simon said, “Peace, I’ve come to save you,” he calmed somewhat. 

“I… you can’t,” he gasped, sounding barely coherent. “The darkness feasts. It feasts on us and we are damned!”

He ignored that and tried to decide what the best move was here. He’d just been devoured by a demon that was made of pure shadows. It didn’t seem to be intelligent like the devils he’d mostly dealt with in the past. It was more like an earthworm the size of a street. If I die here, does my soul end up in hell? He wondered. 

It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to let that happen. He was going to get out of here. He just needed light, and fortunately, he had a quick way to generate that. 

He cast around for something to write on, and then, when he found it, he used his sword to slice open his left forearm. He started to bleed on the ground immediately, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the discarded shield. He was pretty sure it was the way out of here. Simon cast down his sword, then, using his right hand as a pen and his left as an inkwell, he began to draw the symbol for light. He considered greater light, but he doubted his blood would activate it. 

Strictly speaking, it shouldn’t be necessary, either, he told himself. If a torch can hold it at bay, a word of minor light is probably enough.

Almost as soon as the light blossomed from his bloody mark, the hellish world around them began to dissolve as a keening scream erupted from the throat of the monster that sought to consume them. One moment, he’d been devoured by a worm that was dragging him deeper into the darkness along with all of his other victims, and the next, that ugly mucus-covered flesh was dissolving to reveal the world beyond. They’d barely traveled through the woods, and though Simon couldn’t see the distant bonfire, he could see the threads that connected Sir Rozman with his squire. 

More than the young man and Simon had been spat out by the hellspawn. There were partially dismembered bodies, along with weapons and armor that were more or less corroded. Simon didn’t worry about any of that, though. Instead, innervated and still bleeding, he stumbled back to camp carrying the boy. 

The squire tried to talk to Simon about what they’d seen several times, but he was largely unintelligible. He could make out a few words like angel and light, but beyond that, there were only random sounds strung together. I hope he didn’t suffer some kind of brain damage, Simon thought, worried for him. He’d only been inside the demon for a short time, but the squire had been in there for half a day, and it showed in his sunken cheeks and feverish brow. 

They stumbled across a patrol before they got back to camp, and while Sir Harvin looked at Simon’s appearance with alarm and raised his sword like he was about to attack, that calmed as soon as he saw who it was Simon was carrying. 

“Gods, man, where did you go, how did you find the lad?” the knight asked, lowering his sword and escorting him back to camp. 

“I… he was swallowed up by the darkness,” Simon answered. “The pantry… that’s where it was hiding earlier. No one else saw it because they came in with torches, but when this young man went in alone, it swallowed him in a single bite.”

Sir Harvin was incredulous at that answer, but Simon was more concerned about returning his charge and getting clean than being believed. Fortunately, when they reached the camp and Sir Rozman saw them, his reaction was much more gracious. 

That night, they quizzed him intensely on how he’d been snatched up by the demon and where it had taken him. He explained to them that it seemed to be a creature of pure darkness, and that he’d glimpsed it with his sight. “It was my own fault,” he admitted. “I wanted it to come closer so I could slay it, so I extinguished my torch, and then, when the clouds were thickest, it swallowed me completely.”

He and the squire were allowed to rest after that, though most everyone else was up for the rest of the night investigating the clearing that they’d been deposited in. In the morning, though, Sir Rozman approached Simon almost as soon as he was awake and dressed. 

“My squire said some… interesting things about where the two of you were. He claims that you summoned an angel with a word and that you were freed by a blow from their radiant sword.” Sir Rozman said finally, after the uncomfortable silence. “I see no taint on you, but…”

“I’m not sure what to say to any of that. He wasn’t in good shape when I found him.” Simon asked, pretending he had nothing to hide. 

“You could tell me that it wasn’t true,” the knight answered. He was trying not to let it show, but his aura rippled with suspicion. “He said it carved into the body of the beast itself with a blade of light. What do you say.”

Simon swallowed. That was certainly close enough to the truth, though he’d hoped the sunken-cheeked youth would have been too far gone to notice. In this moment, he was sure that if he lied, the other knight would see it, so he looked for ways he might bend the truth instead. 

Eventually, he settled for the easiest out. “I didn’t summon or carve anything,” he said, which was arguably true. He’d cut himself open for blood, but that was just a shallow wound to give him the blood he needed to trace the mark that had set them free. “As to the light, all I can say is that my prayers were answered.”

Sir Rozman studied him skeptically for a moment before finally answering. “I’m glad you're both safe. My report will reflect prayer as the weapon that banished the demon, but don’t be surprised if the powers that be have more questions for you once we return to the Broken Tower.”

Simon nodded. He knew that magic was a risk, but in that moment, he didn’t really have another choice. He’d been swallowed by a demon, and light had been the only weapon likely to set any of them free. Better to be burned at the stake upon my return than roasting in hell forevermore, he reminded himself as they prepared to depart. 

Ch. 380 - A Penitant Man

While Simon had believed Sir Rozman when the man had said there would be an investigation, he was taken off guard by the aftermath of his actions upon his return. Simon had been hoping to find a chance to read the grimoire that had been found on the path back, or at least upon their return, but he never got the chance. 

Instead, they arrived at the Broken Tower a little before sunset, and all surviving members of the party were bundled off for a debrief. There was some praise at first, certainly, but the treatment of those among them who'd been touched by the demon was far different than those who had not. No one of any importance even shook Simon’s hand, or even got within arm's reach of him. 

“You have done as fine a service as could be asked of any knight on their first mission,” the master that they’d reported to told him in front of anyone, just before he was taken away.

Simon wasn’t even given the chance to feast or celebrate with everyone else before he was isolated. The only delay involved a cleansing ritual that had left his skin scrubbed red and raw; it had more in common with torture than with a bath. The squire he’d rescued was taken aside, too, though Simon didn’t see where he’d been taken after he was similarly cleansed. 

After that, the days sort of bled together, and he was forced to fast for a day before he was given soup and water “to cleanse and purify his troubled soul.” Simon didn’t mind that so much, at least at first; he doubted dietary restrictions did anything to the soul with the possible exception of cannibalism, but he appreciated the effort.  

For a moment, he’d feared he was going to be tortured, or worse, because they’d somehow decided he was a warlock, but he was way off there. The three men who questioned him didn’t ask about any of that, except for the first time they asked for his personal account and wrote everything down. He recognized one of the three as a Black Library archivist, which made him a little nostalgic, and the second was a knight who didn’t volunteer his name, leaving only the third one’s identity a mystery. 

After the initial questioning and account, they went back through what he’d said, digging into every little detail, especially where a demon was concerned. It would have been easy to get annoyed at this, but Simon tried to remember who’d survived a fight with a demon, and he would have asked them a million questions, too. 

“What was it like in the belly of the beast?” was something they found a hundred different ways to ask him. What did it smell like? What else did you see in there? Could you feel the presence of hell? They asked him for so many details that eventually Simon volunteered to draw it just to get them to move on. 

He spent two days on the sketch, using ink and charcoal on a large piece of fine vellum to create the hazy, ethereal look that he remembered from using his sight. That made hard, defined lines almost nonexistent in his illustration. He reserved those for the squire he’d saved, along with the other debris he’d found in the body of the worm. Everything else he built up from shading and hatching. 

The end result was monstrous, and though he was proud of it, he could understand the looks of revulsion that his questioners gave upon viewing it. When they rolled it up and bundled it off, he wondered whether it would be burned or end up filed away forever in the black library. 

Once that was done, the second round of questioning focused on his soul. Did Simon feel tainted by it? Could he feel its presence even now? Had he made a pact of some kind with it?

Simon rejected all of that, of course. The clothes he’d been wearing when the thing swallowed him whole were ruined, and the armor would need a good scouring to remove the rust and bile, but his mind and soul? They’d come through without a blemish so far as he could tell. 

When that conversation was concluded on the fifth day of his isolation, he expected they were nearly done with this charade, which was good, because his glacial patience was starting to reach its limits. He was tired of this dusty hall and this cold stone floor, and the sounds of normalcy that came to him from the outside called to him. Unfortunately, that’s where the conversation took a turn for the strange, and the questioners lingered on how they found the demon in the first place. 

“It’s quite a coincidence that you found the house where the demon had been summoned and then the demon itself. How do you suppose that happened?” one of the men asked. “Did you find the demon, or did it find you?”

“I didn’t find it,” Simon said quite honestly. “It was Sir Harvin who lifted the rug, and Sir Harvin who blew his horn to summon the other knights. I didn’t know what we’d found until Sir Rozman showed up.”

That last part was a lie, but they didn’t call him on it. Instead, all three of his questioners took turns asking him what the demon had tried to tempt him with. 

“Money? Power? Women? What blandishments did it offer you?” another of the inquisitors repeated for the third time, but Simon shook it off. 

“The thing spoke no words to me before or after it devoured me,” Simon insisted. “My partner found its summon circle, and I was attacked instead of the other knights because I wandered furthest from the light. There is no great mystery to the story beyond that.”

Though all three of the men didn’t seem to believe him, he was finally released on the seventh day, which seemed to be some kind of deadline in the process, though they didn’t explain that to him. In the end, they didn’t even render him a verdict like a proper court. He was simply given a litany of prayers to be recited each night to keep the darkness at bay and told, “If you have any troubling dreams or urges, you are to report them at once.”

Like hell I will, Simon thought, even as he agreed and left. 

So they’ve got seven days to decide whether to burn me at the stake or not, Simon reflected as he went to the mess hall for some real food. Fasting for a week on broth and water had taken a toll, and he was all too happy to put that behind him. 

It only dawned on Simon halfway through his second bowl of stew that everyone was treating him totally different now than they had before he’d left for his little adventure. Then, most of the other knights had been standoffish at best. That tense atmosphere had all but vanished in the face of exuberance as grown men sat down at his table and pestered him for details like excited young squires. 

Simon was not a new knight now. He was not the oldest Unspoken squire anymore. Now he was the demon slayer, and the tone of their questions was entirely different from what the inquisitors' had been. There was little in the way of suspicion, of even attempts to get useful information from him. Instead, they focused on the danger and glory, which was exactly what he would have suspected from warriors. 

Simon was only too happy to give them what they wanted, and as he finished eating, his answers became longer and more dramatic as he described facing down the shadow worm and unraveling the mystery of what must have happened in the belly of the beast. Though he repeated the lie that it was prayer that slew the thing, he described in detail the way he tried to slay it with his sword. 

“That did little more good than it would to hack away at a fog bank, though,” he explained as a dozen knights and half as many squires hung on his every word. 

Demons were not a common thing to encounter, which he knew, but the men he was telling the story to made sure that he knew how rare it was to survive such a thing. “For every ten knights that meet a witch, maybe five come back,” one man with a droopy mustache explained. “For demons? Well, nine die for sure, but the tenth? That’s a coin flip.”

Simon didn’t feel like he was particularly lucky to have survived. He just understood the threat. If he could have, he would have explained to everyone how he’d really beat the thing, but of course, then he’d be the one burned at the stake. 

When Simon asked where they were off to next, Sir Rozman sent him back to Sir Kulthen, who informed him it was back to the library. “Your devout heart might have saved you from the clutches of one demon, but it will take knowledge, and plenty of it, if you hope to repeat that trick.”

Simon didn’t disagree with that stance even a little and was happy to return to the reading and sparring, especially given how much friendlier his fellow knights had become. Even as he returned to his usual routine of study in the days that followed, he reflected on the nature of the demon. 

Most of those that he’d dealt with until now had looked like humans, at least at first. Though the books he read that mentioned them didn’t sort them by the way they looked, Simon started to categorize them in his mind. Demons were anything that hell vomited up. 

He supposed there were probably lesser and greater varieties within that category. If there were worms, there could just as easily be dragons or hellhounds after all. For the ones that spoke and thought like men, though, he started thinking of those strictly as devils. Up until now, he used the words interchangeably, just as most texts on the subject did, but he vowed to change that. 

One day I’ll put out a guide to all of this myself, he decided as he continued to read the manual on the hunting of werewolves he was trying and failing to memorize. I’ll make a neat little book and send out copies across the world so people can solve this problem themselves. 

It was easy enough to say, of course, but it wouldn’t be much harder to actually do. The really tricky part, he decided, would be to make sure that he didn’t let any truly dangerous knowledge slip in the process. After all, he didn’t want to write a book on defusing bombs that taught people the best way to build them by accident. 

Ch. 381 - Don’t Come Back

Simon continued to study for several weeks while his armor was cleaned and repaired, and new clothes suitable for a Whitecloak had been sewn for him. While the Unspoken were not dandies as a rule, and a number of knights could be seen throughout the courtyard on any given day whose outfits had seen better days, everyone agreed that there was a difference between a few old bloodstains and being soaked in demonic ichor, and Simon had no intentions of disagreeing with them. 

Even when that was done and he was dressed properly once more, he noticed that he still didn’t have a white cloak to go with everything else. When he asked about that, he was told he’d receive one when he was ready, which was less than helpful. Fortunately, on his next mission abroad to purge some reported goblins, the knight he’d been paired up with explained the facts of life to him while they sat around a campfire on the way to the small foothill community they were visiting. 

“It’s like this,” Sir Feldrik explained. “For most people, you spend years as a squire… Unlike you, I was one for nearly a decade after Sir DeVolten found me at the age of ten.”

“Yeah, I get that I’m the exception that proves that particular rule,” Simon answered, hoping this wasn’t going to be a sore spot, but the man just waved it away.

“Even after they decide you’re ready, though. Even after they test you and make you speak the words and swear the oaths, you still don’t get to wear the white in public where you represent the order, so to speak, until you’ve proven yourself.”

“Killing a demon doesn’t prove anything?” Simon asked skeptically, tossing the stick he was fidgeting with in their small fire. 

“No matter how triumphant the victory, it’s still just one victory,” Sir Feldrik answered with a laugh. From the strange voice he used, it was apparent he was imitating someone. “Sorry, that’s something my master used to tell me. To the order, one victory doesn’t matter. They want to see a trend. If everything goes smoothly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they send you off on three missions together with someone more senior like me, and then one on your own. That’s how it usually works out, though you’re kind of a special case, so it’s hard to say.”

It was good advice, and though it didn’t help them reinforce the herding village of Dafrey, or smoke the goblins out of their holes once the people were no longer in jeopardy, it put Simon’s heart at ease and gave him a goal to work toward. He still didn’t like being treated so differently, but at least now he understood why. 

I just hope I don’t have to do this all over again, he thought. Being a kid for a bit was fun, but not that fun. 

It was an oversight that he hadn’t thought of it, honestly. Though, to be fair, the Unspoken were much more secretive than the Magi had been up north. There, it was very clear that they only recruited young kids with a certain talent. The Unspoken, well, people knew of them enough to respect and fear them, but who they really were and what they were up to besides witchhunting didn’t get talked about very much. 

After the orcs, he was dispatched again after another few months of study to face off against a wight. At least, that was what the orders were. Unlike the previous orders, there was no actual undead to be found. There was only a local fortune teller who was trying to extort money from a local viscount, and the bodies he left in his wake when the people who caught on to his song and dance had to be eliminated. 

As thrilling as the two-week chase for the man was before Simon and the other Whitecloaks caught up to him and brought him to justice, he was disappointed by how it turned out. Simon didn’t mind watching the man hang, of course; even if he wasn’t a practitioner of witchcraft, he was still a murderer. 

Simon just really wanted to see another form of undeath besides zombies. The books he’d spent the last season had gone over them in great detail and categorized them into any number of types. It wasn’t just ghosts or zombies either. If something lingered as a specific place, it was usually a ghost, haunt, or ghast. If it followed a person around, it might be a ghost, but a nemesis, poltergeist, or shade was more likely. 

While he’d actually seen ghosts on one of the early levels, that didn’t exactly indicate they were common. After all, I’ve seen vampires on exactly one of the levels too, and they aren’t crawling out of the woodwork, he reminded himself as he rubbed his eyes. This book doesn’t even mention them. 

Much like the Fae that the books and his fellow knights mentioned, Simon had no idea how many of these categories were simply fanciful stories, and how many of them were real hazards to be fought and overcome. Still, he memorized everything he could by day in the library and documented the most important bits by night in the mirror, creating a concise list of ghosts and their weaknesses to add to his growing collection of lore. 

He was learning a lot about monsters, and while some of it was suspect, most of it was interesting. What he wasn’t learning, though, was anything that would specifically protect his soul from witchcraft, particularly soul damage. That was the point of this life, and the reason he was here instead of venturing deeper into the Pit. 

It annoyed him, but not enough to quit. Be patient, he told himself at least once a week. Even if I don’t learn what I came here for, I’m still learning a great deal about the Unspoken, and sooner or later, I’ll definitely have to face them and probably even end them. 

It was just as true for the witch hunters as it was for the Magi, though neither were urgent. He’d recently learned from a knight who had gone north years before that one of their pyramids had collapsed. No one but Simon understood the significance of that, and he wasn’t about to share, but it was still interesting. 

It was almost as interesting as how poorly they understood the desert mages. Simon could be smug about that, but it wasn’t as if he really understood the Unspoken much better. He knew that there was a Grandmaster. Below him were the Masters, who seemed to be in charge of various regions. He still hadn’t even met all of them. There were also various lieutenants, like the Chief Archivist and the Mother of Silence, whom he’d seen in passing, and the Chief Artificer, whom he hadn’t seen since his previous life. 

Not all of those had even been named, either. The Unspoken didn’t have an organization chart or a handbook to explain all of this. Instead, they only told you what you needed to know, when you needed to know it. At first, he’d thought that this behavior was nothing more than petty pissing contests and territorial disputes. Only later did he realize it was a security strategy. It was just a bad one.

In the archives, at least, there was a reason to keep people from reading too much dangerous knowledge, he thought, unwilling to agree that cloak and dagger was the best way to run an organization of any seriousness.

Still, Simon didn’t complain. He did what he was told and played the dutiful soldier as he wondered if three missions were enough to send him off on his own. 

Someone must have heard his silent prayer, because a few days later, some Master decided it was time, and Sir Kulthen came to him while he was reading a treatise on ensuring adequate supplies in a long-running campaign and handed down a mission just for him. “You are to leave the Broken Tower by sunset tomorrow and travel the lands helping however you can,” the knight explained. 

“That’s pretty open-ended,” Simon answered. “Is there somewhere specific you want me to do that at?”

The older knight shook his head. “You may go where you want, do what you want. Just know that your actions will be judged accordingly upon your return.”

“Do I at least get to know how long this little adventure should last?” he asked, already trying to decide if he wanted to go north or south for monster hunting. 

Which area can I do some good without doing much damage to the timeline? He asked himself. He was in level zero, so doing something of any importance almost anywhere ran the risk of unlocking something. Perhaps I can go purge Castle Gravenstone’s evil now that it no longer matters, or fight in the badlands around Crowvar without causing too much trouble.

If Simon had a mirror and some privacy, he would have spent the next ten hours just reflecting on the right answer to this question. He had neither, though. So, as soon as Sir Kulthen started talking again, he made a mental note and set the thought aside.  

“You may come back when you fulfill two criteria,” the man agreed. “Not before. The first is that you must stay away for at least a year and a day.”

Simon nodded. That was a bit longer than he’d been expecting, given that the missions up until now had been measured in weeks, but if they wanted to see what he could do, well, he’d show them. Before he came up with an appropriate answer, though, the knight gave the second criterion. 

“Finally, you must find a worthy squire at that time, and bring him back with you,” Sir Kulthen explained. “You will be judged on the boy’s fitness as much as on the deeds, so make sure you choose well.”

“You want me to just… pick someone?” Simon asked. It took a lot to surprise him these days, but this had caught him completely by surprise. Fight monsters and save lives for a year? That was no problem, but to randomly adopt a child to assist him for the next decade? That bordered on capricious and seemed a bit extreme. 

“Well, there are rules to these things. They should be of good character and see into people’s souls, of course. Ideally, they should be an orphan, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…” Sir Kulthen sighed. “I forgot you haven’t been a squire yourself. Normally, this part doesn’t require explanation. Seek out another knight or two before you go and ask them. They will explain it to you.”

Simon obeyed and did just that once their conversation was over, but if anything, the answers he got made him more wary, not less. Most of what Sir Feldrik said made sense. Questing, as he called it, wasn’t just a rite of passage, it was what most knights spent their lives doing. The first time was a little different, in that Simon had to find a squire that would accompany him on future adventures. He had to choose someone smart, brave, and special that would be a credit to the Unspoken. 

“Orphans make the best Unspoken,” the knight explained. “Especially if you save them yourself. There’s a certain bond there that can’t be replicated.”

All of that Simon understood and even agreed with; however, the final thing that the knight added, almost as an afterthought, made Simon doubt the entire enterprise. “Remember, if the Masters don’t approve of your choice, it’s not just a black mark on your record. They’ll likely kill the child and send you out to repeat the process. So think twice.”